“Terry!” Her voice was tight with excitement. “She’s back in London!”
“Who is, Mum?”
“Jenni Hilton. Who do you think?”
For a moment he was bewildered, then appalled as a sleeping spectre awoke to face him. The day of Barry’s funeral when his mother had frightened him, first with the rigid cold of her grief, then with the searing heat of her anger, leapt back to him. Helpless to assuage her, he had been battered by the animal fury which had poured over him. However many years had passed, however much he had pushed it all away, he still carried the scars of that night and suddenly felt the sting of reopened wounds.
“Jenni Hilton?” Mind and emotions were reeling. “How do you know?”
“It’s in the Daily Express. She was at the theatre last night.” He heard her take a triumphant breath of satisfaction. “After all this time.”
“Look, someone’s with me,” he lied hastily. “I’ll come and see you this evening.” He half lowered the phone, then snatched it back to his mouth. “Just stay in. Don’t do anything.”
He rang off and stared at a disputed invoice on his desk, figures as incomprehensible as hieroglyphics, before opening a drawer and hastily swallowing two of the pills his doctor had prescribed for stress. Then he went down to reception where all the morning papers were provided for waiting customers. Back in his office, he read the Diary piece in the Express, examining Jenni Hilton’s face as though she was some fabled malignant creature in whose existence he had never really believed. As the shock of his mother’s call began to recede, all the irrationality of her behaviour reached him. Apart from the fact that revenge for Barry after more than twenty years was sick, there was not a shred of evidence that Jenni Hilton had been responsible for his death; Maureen Kershaw had based her conviction on nothing more substantial than the mysterious disappearance, inexplicable to everyone except herself.
“She’s run away so she won’t get found out,” she had hissed when she read the constant reports. “It must have been her in Barry’s flat that night who answered the phone when that reporter rang.”
His cautious arguments that she could be wrong were dismissed. Why should anyone give up all that success, all that adulation, most importantly all that money, without a reason? She’d been one of the worst liars at Barry’s inquest, now she was scared that someone would come out with the truth and had scuttled away to hide. For weeks Maureen Kershaw had scoured newspapers, frustrated at the conflicting reports of where Jenni Hilton might be, and even now — he suddenly saw the depth of an obsession which he had failed or refused to recognise — even now she had every morning paper delivered for the same reason. For a son who had died in 1968.
Terry Kershaw lay the paper down and swivelled round in his executive chair, gazing across the flat roof of the showroom below his window at the traffic flowing along London’s North Circular Road. Did any of those drivers also have a wife who only tolerated them and a mother who was mad?
*
Jenni Hilton removed her reading glasses — a vanity she mocked herself for kept their necessity secret — as she finished Maltravers’s account of their meeting. There was so much about it that she liked, his understated skill with words, the apt and telling adjectives, the acute observations. But there was that single, bald paragraph, discreetly inserted towards the end, apparently innocent to the reader but loaded with dangers. She could not believe that he had included the information just because it was there; his casual comment over lunch had revealed something of how his mind was working. How could she persuade him to remove it without making him more suspicious than he probably was already? She read the word-processor type again more carefully, making a couple of marks in the margin, then found the scrap of paper on which he had written his telephone number.
“Gus Maltravers? It’s Jenni Hilton. How are you?”
“Fine. Good to hear from you.” He picked up a pen and scribbled her name on a pad; he wanted a record of their conversation. “Has The Chronicle sent you my copy?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m calling about.”
“Any problems?” he asked mildly.
“Only a couple of minor things … ” There was a pause as she put her glasses back on, “I wasn’t brought up in Paris. I was born there because my father was stationed at the British Embassy, but we came back to England about a year later. I spent my childhood in Hertfordshire.”
“I’ll fix that. Anything else?”
“I’d forgotten about my son’s birthday. It’s tomorrow, which means he’ll be nineteen, not eighteen as I told you. Better get it right.”
“Of course.” Maltravers waited to see if there were going to be any other minor corrections before she reached what he was certain was the real motive for the call. He wrote the shorthand outlines for “change of tone” on the pad when she spoke again.
“And why have you included a paragraph about Barry Kershaw?”
I’m certainly not going to tell you that, he thought, as he parried with his own question. “Is there anything wrong with it? I’m sure I mentioned his name at some point.”
“Yes, but that was afterwards … at lunch. It never came up in the interview.”
“I thought it had,” Maltravers lied. “I came across it when I was doing my research.”
“That’s not what you said,” she told him sharply. “You told me that someone who used to know me had mentioned him. Louella … something.”
“Louella Sinclair. Now I think about it, you’re right, but I knew about it before.” She tried to say something else, but he deliberately overrode her. “Anyway, is what I’ve written wrong? Hang on, I’ve got my own copy here. Near the end isn’t it … here we are. ‘Jenni Hilton’s disappearance came a few weeks after she gave evidence at the inquest into the death of Sixties pop promoter Barry Kershaw. There were attempts to link the two events, but there was nothing to show they were connected. Newspaper efforts to turn a coincidence into some sort of scandal owed more to imagination than reality.’ That’s right isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I can’t see that it’s relevant … It isn’t relevant. I would like it taken out, please.”
She braced herself for an argument. She had accepted The Chronicle’s terms that she could only correct any errors of fact, not information or comment which Maltravers chose to include. But the risks of pressing him to leave it out were less dangerous than what people might start to remember if the paragraph was published. She wanted Barry Kershaw’s death to remain buried.
“No problem,” he agreed unexpectedly. “I’ll tell them to drop it.”
“Oh.” He smiled at the surprise in her voice. “Will they?”
“Why not? A background par from more than twenty years ago isn’t that important. Nobody ever established a connection with your disappearance and there’s nothing to suggest there was one. I came across it in my research, but if I’d realised it would upset you, I wouldn’t have used it in the first place. Don’t worry about it.”
“Can I believe you?” she asked cautiously.
“Totally,” he assured her. “They’re planning to run it on Saturday and that par will not be in. Trust me … By the way, did you read about Caroline Owen?”
“Pardon?” The switch of conversation threw her momentarily. “Oh, yes. She was killed on the Underground wasn’t she? How do you know that I knew her?”
“Louella again. I knew her as well. Was she a close friend of yours?”
“Fairly, but we haven’t been in touch for years. It was an accident wasn’t it?”
“That’s certainly what the police think … Anyway, sorry about the Kershaw business, but we’ve sorted that. I’d still like you to come round for dinner sometime. Tess wants to meet you.”
“Fine … but I’m going to Exeter on Saturday to see Russell. I’ll be back next Wednesday.”
“I’ll call you after that. Now I’ll get on to the office and take that par out. Leave it with me. Cheers.”
Tess walk
ed into the room as Maltravers rang off. “Who was that?”
“La belle Hilton.” He did not look up as he reread his notes. “I lied to her slightly … but I think she lied to me a lot.”
“What about?”
“The late and greatly unlamented Kershaw. She lied better than when I mentioned his name when we met, but if that paragraph … ” he tapped a sheet of his copy, “is so irrelevant, why is she so anxious that it doesn’t go in?”
Tess crossed to the desk and read over his shoulder. “Will it go in?”
“No, because I’ve promised it won’t.” He smiled cynically. “But I know that it was there … and I know that it worried her.”
“So is it relevant?” Tess asked.
“It has to be,” he replied. “I can’t see how — and I certainly can’t see any connection with Caroline’s death — but I’d like a bit more information.”
“Who from?”
“Louella. What time is it? I’ll ring her and suggest a pub lunch somewhere.” He picked up the telephone again. “But first, a call to The Chronicle … and not just to tell them to exorcise the ghost of Kershaw.”
He called Mike Fraser on his direct line and sorted out the deletion with a spurious explanation that Jenni Hilton had been upset by it, then asked for the name of the paper’s crime reporter.
“Matt Hoffman,” Fraser told him. “What do you want him for?”
“Bit of off-the-record stuff he might be able to let me have. If it turns out there’s a story in it I’ll keep him posted. Can you put me through?”
“Sure. Good piece, incidentally. Nothing that one of the subs won’t be able to tidy up … I assume you’re prepared to trust us with your gilded prose?”
“Unlike some writers, I have a great respect for sub-editors,” Maltravers replied. “At least the ones who know that the secret of cutting copy is to do it so that it doesn’t bleed. A lot of my stuff has been improved by them.”
“I’ll give it to a freelance who’s working for us at the moment,” Fraser said. “He’s an artist. Hang on and I’ll transfer you to Matt.”
The line went silent for a moment, then a faintly Boston American voice announced “Home News”.
“Matt Hoffman? Hi. My name’s Gus Maltravers. Mike Fraser, the features editor, gave me your name. I’m interested in a woman called Caroline Owen who was killed at Tottenham Court Road Tube station a couple of days back. Did you carry anything on it?”
“I think we had a brief. Accident. There was nothing in it.”
“There may have been,” Maltravers told him. “If there is, it could be a good story. If you can get me some background, I’ll chase it from there. Anything I turn up you can have as an exclusive. I’m not in the business of writing news stories any more.”
“What sort of background?”
“Just any inquiries the police made after her death … particularly about her husband and his girlfriend.”
“What’s going on?” Hoffman sounded interested.
“I don’t know … but I think there’s something. Can you do it?”
“I can try,” Hoffman agreed. “Things are fairly quiet at the moment. Where can I get back to you?” Maltravers gave him the number. “OK, but the deal is that you give me any results.”
“Chapter and verse,” Maltravers promised. “Thanks.”
During the call, Tess had been reading his feature again. “You persuaded Louella to accept that Caroline’s death was an accident and nothing to do with Kershaw,” she said as he rang off. “Did you mean it?”
“At the time, yes, but now that Jenni Hilton’s risen to the bait, I’m becoming intrigued.” For a few moments, he stared out of the window, mentally running over what he knew. “Louella is convinced Kershaw was murdered and at least half suspects the same thing happened to Caroline. Jenni Hilton deliberately lied about knowing Kershaw when I first mentioned his name and is worried about anything to do with him appearing in my feature. Only connect.”
“How?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
*
Daphne Gillie’s eyes were frost hard as she stared down the account executive, nearly twenty years her senior, sitting opposite.
“OGM doesn’t carry passengers and I don’t take prisoners,” she said coldly. “You’ve screwed up for the last time. Go and find a crap agency where you’ll fit in. We’ll post your severance pay’”
As the man went red with incipient anger, she opened a file and began to look through rough drafts for a new campaign, writing occasional comments with a solid silver propelling pencil; it was as though he had simply ceased to exist.
“I want to see Ted.”
“He’s busy. I’ve told you the position.”
As she continued indifferently, he remembered when Daphne Gillie had arrived at the agency and had started the manipulation which he — and several other men — had recognised too late. She had been anxious to please and eager to learn, constantly questioning them, replacing her ignorance of the business by absorbing all they knew with frightening assimilation and total recall. There had been occasional flashes of temper towards her own generation, but she had flattered the senior executives, teasing middle-aged men with the possible chance of very personal attentions if that was necessary. By the time her relationship with Ted Owen had emerged from discreet liaison to open affair, she was established and confident enough to let another side reveal itself; ambitious, nail hard and ruthless. Now she was only pleasant to top executives of the most prestigious global agencies in the West End and Madison Avenue; she no longer needed the people who had helped her and had no intention of helping them in return. A gleam of sunshine through a chance gap between the high office blocks outside broke into glittering fragments as it caught the diamond locked in a circle of rubies on her left hand.
“You couldn’t wait could you?” he said. Only a momentary stillness of the moving pencil indicated that she was aware he had spoken. “Caroline Owen’s body isn’t cold yet and you’re already flaunting that ring.”
He was not a weak man — such do not survive in the advertising world — but her response devastated him. Instead of an explosion of anger which would at least have given the satisfaction of a final stand-up cat fight, she reacted with the calm of a professional killer clinically pulling the trigger on a helpless victim. Without looking up from what she was doing, she quietly destroyed him.
“Strange, I never thought you were stupid. You’re not just finished with OGM now, you’re finished full point. I will personally make sure that no agency that’s even half good will take you on. I know the people and I can do that. Now, if you’re not out of this building within sixty seconds, I will call security and have you thrown out. Your secretary will clear your desk and we’ll send on anything that belongs to you.”
Her voice had the emotion of a judge passing a death sentence without any ameliorating hope of the mercy of God. He was too shaken to even slam the door as he left. Daphne Gillie calmly completed her comments on the artwork before contacting Ted Owen on the intercom.
“He’s gone,” she said tersely.
“Any blood on the walls?”
“Only his. When are we meeting his replacement?”
“Lunchtime at Kensington Place. Seventy-five grand and a top-of-the-range BMW will clinch it. Incidentally, I’ve just fixed the honeymoon. QEII to New York, three weeks in Barbados and home by Concorde. You like?”
Daphne Gillie’s feline growl of pleasure was filled with satisfaction and sensual anticipation. “I like!”
*
Why had he agreed so quickly? Why hadn’t he argued, defended what he had written? What was he plotting? Jenni Hilton ricocheted between reassuring explanations — he really was an honest and ethical journalist — and frightening ones — he had the scent of a story in his nostrils and was tracking it like a hunter. Suppose he had deflected her with a lie and the paragraph actually appeared? She wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. It
wasn’t libellous and if she played hell with him it would only confirm what he was thinking … but what was he thinking? And why had he mentioned Caroline? The police said it had been an accident. Did he know something that … ? As she stared blankly at the birthday card she was about to send to Russell, she felt fear creeping through her.
Chapter Nine
Whether from man-made greenhouse gases or natural vagaries that make weather forecasting in England as hazardous as backing horses, it had become stiflingly hot. London’s pavements were an anvil beaten by a hammer of scorching sun, smothered by a thick blanket of motionless ozone-polluted haze that blurred vistas of domes and offices. Windows thrown open for relief (air-conditioning is nearly as rare in Britain as centrally-heated igloos), only offered air unbreathably thick in exchange for air unbreathably stale. Several million throbbing exhausts, many snarled up in ovens of traffic jams, added torrid poisonous fumes to a cauldron of panting animals and sweltering human beings. Underground tunnels offered temporary relief, but only before entering a furnace again. City gents still went to work in dark suits and ties because none dared defy sartorial tradition, but all clothing became sticky with dripping sweat. Movement was wading through warm treacle, lying naked outside was an invitation to be baked alive, staying indoors gave a feeling of being trapped by raging forest fire.
“Definitely on the warm side,” Maltravers commented as he placed three spritzers containing enough ice to alarm the captain of the Titanic on the garden table of the Chiswick pub where he and Tess had arranged to meet Louella Sinclair. Despite having chosen a spot at least half shaded by a copper beech, their wooden seats were painful to sit on and twenty yards away the waters of the Thames oozed like sluggish oil about to ignite.
“Don’t even joke about it,” Tess groaned. She loathed excessive temperatures. “I’d rather play Joan of Arc with a real ending.”
Perspiration was beginning to smudge Louella’s make-up as she looked at Maltravers sitting opposite her. “What’s happened?”
Murder in Waiting (Augustus Maltravers Mystery Book 5) Page 9