by Joan Smith
‘Oh, I see – you’re just guessing,’ said Sally, sounding relieved. ‘But surely, Loretta, there could be lots of reasons? What did he sound like, this bloke?’
‘Oldish. South London accent.’
‘That doesn’t make him a crook, does it?’ Sally’s voice was reproving. ‘Lots of perfectly honest people live in South London.’
‘No, of course not,’ Loretta agreed hastily, anxious to clear up the misunderstanding. ‘It’s nothing to do with his accent, it’s the way he – Oh, I can’t explain.’
‘Could be an ex-client, have you thought of that? Not from her last job, necessarily – I think the Holland Park project deals mainly with younger people. She worked for Westminster for quite a long time – could be somebody she knew from back then. Did she do any private counselling, do you know?’
‘Gosh, I’ve no idea.’ Bob Fleming hadn’t struck Loretta as the sort of person who’d have much time for psychotherapy.
‘On the other hand – maybe you should tell the police. Just to be on the safe side. They do have their uses, you know.’
‘I thought of that.’ Loretta paused.
‘But?’
‘Well, as you say, I haven’t got any evidence . . . All he wants is to talk to me, or so he says.’
‘And you’re curious.’
‘Yes.’
‘Curiosity killed the cat, remember. Where did you say you were meeting him? In some caff?’
Loretta told her.
‘At least you had the sense to choose a public place. What time?’
‘Eleven.’
‘Hmmm – I think I’d better come with you.’
‘Oh, Sally, would you?’ Loretta felt a surge of relief. ‘It’s not far from you, six or seven minutes’ walk, I should think.’
‘I’ll have to bring Felicity, of course. Peter’s working in the morning.’
‘Felicity?’ Loretta guiltily realized she had forgotten Sally’s baby. ‘Oh, in that case I couldn’t possibly –’
‘No, it’s all right, she won’t be any trouble,’ Sally assured Loretta, misinterpreting her misgivings. ‘She’ll probably sleep, she usually has a nap in the mornings. Tell you what, Loretta – why don’t we get there early and have some breakfast? I haven’t been to a caff for ages.’
Loretta blinked, startled by Sally’s sudden display of levity. Anyone would think they were arranging an outing –
‘Egg and chips with lots of brown sauce, that’s what I fancy,’ Sally went on. ‘Shall we say half past ten? Is that early enough?’
‘Yes, I suppose. . .’
‘Great. Goodnight, Loretta.’
‘Oh – goodnight.’ She heard Sally put the phone down.
Chapter 12
The waitress had just cleared away their plates next morning when Sally leaned across the table and whispered to Loretta.
‘Think this is him?’
Loretta turned. A short man with black, slicked-back hair was standing inside the door, a copy of the Sun sticking jauntily out of the pocket of his sheepskin coat. The jacket emphasized the width of his shoulders, and his crooked nose gave him the look of an ex-boxer – or worse, Loretta thought, remembering her theorizing the previous evening about loan sharks and broken legs.
‘Crikey – I hope not,’ she said sotto voce, looking back at Sally in alarm.
‘It is him,’ Sally insisted. ‘He’s looking for someone, you can tell.’ Her hand went out to the handle of Felicity’s pushchair.
Loretta turned to face the door again, and she had to admit that Sally was right. The man was scanning the occupants of the café, and his face was growing darker by the minute.
‘Do something,’ whispered Sally.
Loretta’s own inclination was to lie low, using Sally and the baby sleeping beside them as cover; Fleming was expecting her to be alone. But her friend’s injunction, combined with the fear that this gorilla-like person might turn up at her flat if she ducked out of the meeting, impelled her to act. She stood up, nervously clearing her throat to gain his attention.
‘Ah, Mr Fleming?’
The man’s head swivelled to stare at her. ‘Yeah?’
Loretta had no difficulty in recognizing the voice. Any lingering hope that there’d been a mistake, that this was some innocent local with nothing more sinister on his mind than tucking into a Superior Mixed Grill, was swept away. She saw his eyes slide suspiciously past her to Sally and the baby, then back again. She braced herself for an explosion: instead, to her astonishment, his mouth opened, an uncertain smile appeared on his lips, and he took a couple of steps in her direction.
‘You Dr Lawson?’
‘Yes.’
‘How d’you do? Glad to meet you!’ He surged forward, beaming, and extended his right hand.
Loretta had no choice but to offer hers in return; a thick gold ring bit into her fingers, and she winced at his grip.
‘Had me worried there, you did,’ he said, releasing her. ‘Thought you’d changed your mind. Who’s your friend?’ He nodded at Sally, conveying the impression he was just as pleased to see her as he was Loretta.
‘This is Sally. She knew Sandra, too.’
‘Oh yeah – Sandra.’ He looked serious for a moment, then brightened. He pulled out the chair next to Loretta. ‘Mind if I-?’
‘No, of course. . .’
He sat down. ‘Sally, Laura, and – who’s this little fella?’ He pointed to the pushchair.
Loretta frowned. Somewhere in her brain a connection was made, but she wasn’t yet fully conscious of it. ‘It’s not Lau-’ she began, but Sally interrupted.
‘She’s a girl,’ she said with the vigour of affronted motherhood. ‘She’s called Felicity.’ The baby stirred in her sleep, perhaps in response to her mother’s use of her name, and let out a faint whimper.
‘She is? Why you put her in that, then?’ Fleming indicated Felicity’s blue romper suit. ‘Don’t you know the old saying? Blue for a boy, pink for a girl –’ He registered Sally’s expression and chuckled. ‘Suppose you young people don’t go in for that sort of thing any more,’ he conceded. ‘You married, girl?’ he asked, glancing at Sally’s left hand where it still rested on the handle of the pushchair.
‘No. Are you?’
‘Me? Course I am. Been married to the same woman for thirty-two years, haven’t I? Lovely woman, she is, wouldn’t change her for the world. . . here, love.’ This was addressed to the waitress, a teenager with olive skin and short dark hair whom Loretta knew to be the daughter of the owners. As she obeyed his summons, Fleming threw out a question: ‘You girls want anything else?’
‘No thanks,’ they said in unison.
‘Suit yourself – and I was gonna treat you.’ He looked up at the waitress. ‘A nice cup of tea, love, with two sugars. She an Eyetie?’ he asked in a scarcely lower voice as the girl disappeared into the kitchen.
‘Her parents are Italian, yes,’ Loretta said, frowning at the pejorative.
‘It’s all right, love, I got nothing against the Eyeties,’ Fleming assured her without malice. ‘Make a bloody awful cup of tea, that’s all. What’s the nosh like here?’ He seemed in no hurry to address the subject of the meeting.
‘Mr Fleming –’ Loretta began.
‘Bob, love – we’re all friends here, aren’t we?’
She ignored the remark, distrustful of his bonhomie. She hadn’t forgotten the scowl she had seen on his face when he thought she had stood him up.
‘You wanted to talk about Sandra,’ she said without preamble, and waited for his reaction.
At once his expression changed; she was aware of intense feeling in his face, though she wasn’t certain what it was. His eyes, though, were cunning.
‘You’re right there, girl,’ he said, dropping his jocular manner. ‘Now don’t get me wrong, I know she was a mate of yours. Liked her myself, I did.
‘Yeah, I did,’ he went on, nodding as though someone had contradicted him. ‘But that don’t change the fact
she took me for a proper ride.’ His eyes glittered.
‘What do you mean?’ Loretta asked, doing her best to disguise her foreboding. ‘I don’t even – you haven’t said how you knew her.’
‘Worked for me, didn’t she? Didn’t she tell you?’ He was watching her closely, and Loretta was relieved to be able to tell the truth.
‘No.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘I’m sure she never mentioned you.’
‘Oh. Funny, that.’
‘Where?’ asked Sally, coming to Loretta’s rescue. ‘Where did she work for you?’
‘At the club,’ Fleming said, frowning at these questions.
‘At the –’ Loretta’s forehead wrinkled as she tried to imagine Sandra in the sort of club she associated with Fleming – almost certainly some dive in Soho, she thought. ‘Doing what?’ she asked.
‘Manageress,’ Fleming said, feeling inside his jacket. ‘I put her in charge – trusted her, I did. Here, have a butcher’s at this.’ He brought out a leaflet and handed it to Loretta.
‘In The Pink,’ she read aloud. ‘Oh! You mean –’ She stopped and went on reading. ‘South London’s premier health and fitness centre. Sauna, gym, jacuzzi, weight training – our experienced instructors will devise your very own programme, tailored to your individual needs.’ There was a line drawing of a woman in a stripey leotard, her outstretched leg pointing to the club’s address and a telephone number for making bookings. The leaflet was pale pink and Loretta suddenly remembered the blue membership cards in Sandra’s suitcase.
‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘She wasn’t supposed to start this job till after Christmas. I don’t see how –’
‘After Christmas? That what she told you? Nah – July she came. Keep it – you never know. . .’ He waved away the leaflet, which Loretta was attempting to return to him. ‘Yeah, July she started. It’s all in the records. I couldn’t get her to move into the flat straightaway, there was a bit of argy-bargy about that – had to find someone for her place first, she said. August it was by the time she moved in – place was standing empty for weeks.’
‘The flat?’
‘Goes with the job, see. I like my managers on the premises where they can keep an eye on things. Leastways I do usually, but I made a big mistake with Sandra – had her fingers in the till, didn’t she?’
‘She what?’ Sally looked aghast.
Loretta bit her lip, hardly shocked at all. She hadn’t been far out – the cash in the suitcase did belong to Fleming, and probably the money Sandra had paid into her bank account as well. She looked at him covertly, observing his air of flash affluence: the expensive coat, the signet ring which had crushed her fingers, the Rolex watch. She doubted if the amount Sandra had stolen was large by his standards, but she guessed it would be a matter of pride with him to get it back. Sandra had been on the run – and quite suddenly she wondered where Fleming had been on the night of the car crash. No, not Fleming himself, more likely one of his associates. . . She shivered.
‘Not very warm in here, is it?’ she said quickly, and began pulling on her denim jacket. To her relief the waitress appeared with Fleming’s tea and there was a natural lull in the conversation while he tasted it.
‘Ugh.’ He pulled a face and reached for the sugar bowl. ‘Like I said – these Eyeties don’t know how to make a decent cuppa.’ He added two heaped teaspoons and stirred noisily.
‘How much did she. . .?’ Loretta prompted, thinking she might as well know the worst.
‘Who knows?’ Fleming scowled. ‘Five grand, maybe.’ Loretta could see that even the thought of it made him angry.
‘Five thousand?’ Sally said incredulously.
‘Thereabouts. By the time you add in what she was creaming off from the juice bar –’
At another time the peculiar image conjured up by this metaphor would have made Loretta smile. Now she said: ‘How d’you mean, add in?’
‘Only the icing on the cake, that was. Mainly it come from the membership cards fiddle.’
He saw their blank looks and launched into a lengthy explanation, the crux of which was that Sandra had falsified the club’s records, offering a discount for cash on the annual fee of £200 to a small number of would-be members, and pocketing the money. The scam had been discovered by accident, two days before Christmas, when a woman who claimed to have lost her membership card couldn’t be found on the list in the drawer of Sandra’s desk. Had she not been careless, leaving her office unlocked while she slipped out to the bank, it was quite likely that the fiddle would have continued for some time.
‘What did she say when you – I presume you told her she’d been found out?’ asked Loretta.
‘Never got the chance. Christmas Eve it was, by the time Sharon got hold of me. I goes straight down to the club and she’s already scarpered. She was very matey with some of the instructors, Sandra, so maybe they tipped her off. Next thing I know is the wife’s sister gets on the blower and says have we seen about Sandra in the Daily Telegraph. Her old man’s a dentist,’ he added obscurely, perhaps to explain his sister-in-law’s choice of newspaper.
‘I had no idea,’ Loretta said quietly, thinking back to the evening of Sandra’s arrival at her flat. Even when she found Sandra in tears, it had never occurred to her. . . Loretta realized she had at no point doubted Fleming’s story, that it fitted all too well with the extraordinary picture of Sandra which had been emerging since the inquest.
‘What’s that, love?’ Fleming glanced at his watch and smiled at her encouragingly, his good humour returning for no obvious reason.
‘I was just wondering,’ Loretta said, taking the bull by the horns, ‘what all this has to do with me.’
Fleming held up his hands. ‘Obvious, innit? I want my money. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not accusing you – but I gotta ask, haven’t I? Mind if I smoke?’ he asked unexpectedly, looking down and fumbling inside his jacket.
‘Yes,’ Sally said flatly.
He brought his hand out empty, and there was a tense silence. Loretta wondered what reaction he expected from her.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said eventually, preparing herself for veiled threats. ‘I haven’t got it.’
‘Not saying you have, am I? She might’ve left it at your place without you knowing, in her handbag or something.’
‘She took her handbag with her. She did leave a couple of bags behind – a holdall and a suitcase. I phoned her husband and he collected them last week.’
‘Oh.’ Fleming sounded disappointed. ‘That’s it, then.’ The hand with the signet ring lay on the table, and he regarded it in silence.
Loretta’s eyes narrowed; she hadn’t expected him to give up as easily as this. She had an urge to say more, to protest her innocence, but repressed it, waiting to see what he would do next. Fleming withdrew his hand from the table and felt in one of his pockets, bringing out two twenty-pence pieces and placing them in front of him.
‘For the cuppa,’ he said, and glanced at his watch. ‘Is that the time? Time I was off.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up, nodding to each of them in turn. ‘Nice to meet you, Sally, Laura.’
Loretta opened her mouth but he was already heading for the door. He went out without a backward glance, leaving the two women staring after him in astonishment.
‘What did you make of that?’ Sally demanded, turning to Loretta.
She shrugged, saying nothing.
‘But do you – d’you think he was telling the truth?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘But it’s – it’s incredible. I can’t imagine – how on earth did Sandra get mixed up with him?’
‘He may have advertised the job somewhere,’ Loretta suggested, remembering that Sandra had used the Evening Standard to find a tenant for her flat. Perhaps she’d also looked at the sits vac columns.
‘Yes, but she must’ve been desperate. . .’
‘Well, if she was sacked from her last job. . . You did say she left under some sort of
cloud. She probably didn’t have any references.’
‘Even so – Sandra’s the last person. . . You really think she stole all that money?’
‘I don’t suppose he paid her much,’ Loretta pointed out, ‘especially with the flat thrown in.’
Suddenly Sally’s expression changed from unease to alarm. ‘God, Loretta, you don’t think –’
Loretta sighed and held out her hands. ‘I doubt if he personally – I imagine he has other people. . .’
Abruptly Sally bent to wipe a dribble of saliva away from Felicity’s lower lip. ‘I thought she might be awake by now,’ she said in a distracted voice. She screwed the paper handkerchief she had been using into a ball and dropped it into her bag.
‘But how did he – who told him about Sandra staying with you?’
Loretta said: ‘I think I can guess.’
Sally waited.
‘Did you notice he called me Laura? Twice, when he arrived and at the end. . .’
‘Oh yes, so he did.’ Sally frowned, not seeing the significance.
‘Nobody knows – I haven’t used it for years. Except when I was giving my statement last week. It says Laura Anne Lawson at the top. That policeman, the one who rang me at work, he asked for Laura Lawson.’
‘You don’t think –’
‘It’s too much of a coincidence, surely?’
Sally screwed up her face in thought. ‘I don’t know, it doesn’t seem all that likely. . .’
‘I’m surprised to hear you defending the police.’
‘I’m not. But Fleming’s here in London and this detective you’re talking about is down in Hampshire. I can’t see – well, let’s not argue. What are you going to do now?’
Loretta shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘What about the other detective, the nice one?’
‘Ghilardi. He still hasn’t phoned. Maybe I’ll try the station again...’