by Joan Smith
Sally was looking at her watch. ‘Loretta, I’ve got to go. I promised to take Fliss round to Peter’s mother’s – I’m sorry.’
Loretta’s shoulders drooped, but she said: ‘Don’t worry. Thanks for coming. Is it all right if I ring you later, when I’ve had time to think?’
‘Of course. I’ll be in this evening.’ Sally stood up and released the brake on Felicity’s pushchair. ‘Oh, the bill –’
‘Leave it, I’ll see to it.’ Loretta began looking inside her shoulder-bag for her purse.
Still Sally hesitated. ‘Loretta – you will be careful, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’ Loretta looked up and smiled, though she didn’t feel very cheerful.
‘If I don’t hear from you I’ll ring,’ Sally continued, a worried look on her face. She bent and kissed Loretta’s cheek, then manoeuvred the pushchair between tables to the door. An elderly man got up and opened it for her. Sally paused on the threshold and looked back over her shoulder.
‘Bye, Loretta.’
‘Bye.’ Loretta watched Sally disappear into the street, suddenly aware of an uncomfortable prickling sensation at the back of her neck.
It took Loretta twenty minutes to walk home from the Superior Snack Bar, and she was fitting her key into the lock of the street door when she heard a faint miaow. It sounded like Bertie, and she turned her head, puzzled. How could he have got out into Liverpool Road? The noise came again; this time, to her immense relief, clearly from inside the house.
‘Bertie?’ She bent to peer through the letter-box and was rewarded by a loud wail from the cat, who jumped up and rested his paws on the door in an attempt to reach her.
‘It’s all right, I’m coming,’ she said, wrinkling her brow and wondering how he’d got into the hall. She turned the key and pushed open the door, herding him inside with her foot as he began to display an unhealthy interest in the outside world. She closed the door behind her and gave the light switch a hard push, glancing up the stairs. They stretched emptily in front of her, and she could hear nothing except the ecstatic purring of the cat as he rubbed himself against her calves. Still perplexed, she went to the front door of the downstairs flat, rapping on it with her knuckles.
‘Shahin?’
As far as she knew Shahin had never used her key to the upstairs flat, and Loretta couldn’t imagine what might have taken her up there this morning. In any case, Shahin was fond of Bertie, it seemed unlikely she would have been so careless –
‘Shahin?’ Loretta knocked more loudly, her stomach tightening. There was silence inside the flat and after a moment she turned away, noticing that the woman’s mail was still lying undisturbed on top of the meter cupboard. She’d put it there on her way to meet Sally, observing that the top letter was from Shahin’s relatives in Iran – a rare event as the postal service in that country had been brought almost to a standstill by the war with Iraq. Loretta wondered if she had gone away for the weekend.
‘Come on, Bertie.’ She scooped him up and began climbing the stairs. Had she inadvertently let him out of the flat herself when she set off for the Superior Snack Bar? She didn’t think so; she hadn’t been in a hurry, and she had a fairly clear memory of leaving him curled up on the kitchen table. But that meant – she shook her head, rejecting the only other explanation that came to mind. He must have slipped past when she wasn’t looking; she would have to be more careful in future. As she reached the bend Bertie struggled violently and leapt from her arms, hurtling down the stairs the way they had come. He was determined to make the most of his new-found freedom, Loretta thought, glancing uneasily upwards before continuing her climb.
She had just reached her front door when the light went out, plunging her into darkness. She groped for the time-switch, little shivers running up and down her spine, and breathed a sigh of relief when she could see again. Inserting the key into the lock, she pushed the door inwards and took a couple of cautious steps across the threshold. Inside she waited and listened, receiving a welcome impression of emptiness which slowly calmed her thudding heart. Tiptoeing to the door of the kitchen, she peered inside and was reassured by the sight of that morning’s Guardian lying on the table, her breakfast plate and the teapot on the draining-board exactly where she’d left them.
In the drawing-room the answering-machine was flashing but Loretta was too preoccupied to play back her messages. She checked that nothing had been taken – the stereo system was intact, and a valuable Turkish rug was in its usual place in front of the fire. Her fears gradually subsiding, she went back into the hall and was about to go upstairs when she heard the pounding of paws behind her. Bertie shot past into the kitchen, performed a skidding turn round the legs of the table and disappeared through the front door before she had a chance to stop him. Loretta had relaxed enough to smile at these antics, but she was still uneasy as she made her way upstairs, peering into the bathroom, utility room and bedroom in turn. Nothing seemed to be missing; her one valuable piece of jewellery, a pair of amethyst ear-rings which had been a birthday present from John Tracey years before, was lying on the dressing-table where any half-competent thief would have seen it. Loretta felt almost dizzy with relief, and was on the verge of leaving the room when she noticed a hollow in the otherwise flat surface of the quilt. She moved to straighten it, putting out a hand without conscious thought, and then froze in mid-air. Her mind went back several hours to the moment of getting out of bed, and she pictured herself grasping the quilt with both hands, as she did every morning, and giving it a good shake. Then she’d had a bath, returning to the room to take her red corduroy skirt from the wardrobe. . . She remembered slipping it over her head, sitting down to fasten her black ankle boots, standing up and smoothing out the indentation in the cover –
Someone had been in the room. Loretta breathed in sharply, realizing she had begun to shake. She felt an urge to run, to get out of the flat as fast as she could, and she was at the door before she got a grip on herself. She stopped, forcing herself to look back, and tried to think logically. Could she have been mistaken? She stared at the hollow in the quilt, the rounded shape of a human bottom – it was so slight a clue to hang a theory on. The she remembered the cat’s escape from the flat – either event meant nothing on its own, but together. . .
She took the stairs two a time, coming to a halt in the hall as she realized the pointlessness of her flight. The intruder was gone, she’d checked the entire flat – her eyes came to rest on the front door, on the untouched lock which had provided no protection at all. It was a Yale – child’s play to a professional, she’d heard, and she’d been meaning to change it since the recent spate of burglaries in the area. . . Loretta started as she heard a throaty sound from the stairwell, pushing her hair back from her face as she belatedly recognized Bertie’s voice. She peered into the shadows, failing to spot him until a second noise gave him away, crouched three steps down and hard against the right-hand wall.
‘Here, Bertie,’ she called in a small voice. The cat gathered himself into a tense ball, as though they were playing some kind of game, and raced past her into the flat. Loretta saw how the intruder, or intruders, had overlooked him; the grey animal was almost invisible in poor light. But what had they been after in the flat? Nothing had been taken –
Loretta wheeled round and hurried into the drawing-room. She pulled open the door of the pine cupboard, reaching inside to the shelf on which she’d placed the letters she’d collected from Sandra’s flat in Notting Hill. They weren’t there. She straightened up, the blood rushing to her face. She recalled the ease with which Bob Fleming had accepted her denial of any knowledge of the missing cash, her sense when he left the café that she hadn’t heard the last of him, and realized she’d been tricked. Fleming had never intended to come to the flat, his phone call the previous evening had been carefully staged to frighten her into meeting him elsewhere, giving his associates time to get in and search – no wonder he’d scowled when he thought she’d failed to keep the ap
pointment, Loretta thought grimly. She folded her arms tightly across her chest, not knowing whether she was more frightened or angry: what if she’d changed her mind, had been alone in the building when the intruder slipped inside?
She shut the cupboard door, harder than she intended so it rocked against the wall, and hurried to the phone. So agitated was she that her first attempt at dialling produced a wrong number, a grumpy man who asked her why she didn’t ring 999 if she was so anxious to speak to the police. Loretta got him off the line and tried again, taking more care this time. A tired male voice answered the CID phone, and Loretta demanded to speak to Derek Ghilardi.
‘Speaking.’
‘Oh!’ The reply brought her up short; she hadn’t expected to get hold of him so easily. ‘I – it’s Loretta Lawson. You were supposed to ring –’
‘You didn’t get my message? Your answering-machine must be on the blink.’
‘I haven’t had a chance to – I’ve been burgled!’
‘Burgled?’
‘Well – searched. I’ve just come home and the cat was in the hall, and when I looked for Sandra’s letters they’ve been taken –’
‘Hang on. What letters?’
‘The ones from her flat,’ Loretta said without thinking. ‘He got me out of here and someone got in and looked for the money – they didn’t find it, so maybe he took them out of spite, or maybe he didn’t have time to read them, he couldn’t know how soon I’d come back –’
‘Sorry, Loretta, I’ve been up all night – can you go a bit slower?’
Loretta raised her eyes to the ceiling, taking in nothing except the fact that Ghilardi didn’t seem to be listening properly. It didn’t even occur to her to wonder why he hadn’t had any sleep.
‘Fleming, that’s who I’m talking about,’ she pressed on. ‘Bob Fleming.’
‘This is the bloke who says your friend worked for him, right? The one who turned up here the other day?’
‘Yes! So you do know –’
‘Only at second-hand. I was going to tell you – I know I said I’d phone last night but all hell broke loose. . .’ He paused, sounding utterly weary. ‘You’ve only just caught me, I’m going off duty any minute.’ There was a noise as though he was stifling a yawn.
‘Sorry, Loretta. The thing is, it’s not my case any more. I was out seeing someone when this bloke Fleming turned up. Steve Farr talked to him – you know who I mean. He was coming in as you went out.’
Ghilardi sounded slightly embarrassed. Loretta had been listening impatiently, on the verge of interrupting him, but this last sentence brought her up short. She recalled the tall, sandy-haired man who had passed her in the corridor at Lymington police station, the sly look on his face.
‘Him!’ she exclaimed, wondering why she hadn’t made the connection before.
‘Yes –’ Ghilardi was taken aback.
‘Do you realize what he did? It’s him who gave Fleming my name – this is all his fault, my flat being –’
‘He did what?’ Ghilardi was suddenly alert.
‘He gave Fleming my name!’ Loretta repeated angrily. She took a deep breath and explained.
‘Well, well, well,’ Ghilardi remarked when she’d finished. He sounded almost pleased.
‘Is that all you can say?’
‘No, wait a minute – this might come in very handy. It wouldn’t be the first time –’
‘Oh, you do believe me, then?’
‘I don’t say he wrote your name on a bit of paper and handed it over. He did have the file out, though. . . You’re obviously upset – are you thinking about making a formal complaint?’
‘A complaint?’ It hadn’t occurred to her, and she was astonished that Ghilardi, of all people, should suggest it.
‘I don’t mean you should go through with it,’ he added hastily, lowering his voice. ‘But it’d give me a lever. . . He’s always pulling tricks like this, it’s bloody annoying.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow –’
‘Muscling in on other people’s cases,’ Ghilardi explained. ‘After he talked to this Fleming bloke he got all excited. . . Had a word with the boss – “Derek’s pretty tied up with the Owen murder, hasn’t got the time, blah blah blah.” If I can put the wind up him, say you want to make a complaint but I think I can talk you out of it – you with me?’
‘Yes,’ Loretta said eagerly. ‘You’d be back on the case – you could find out where Fleming was on New Year’s Eve?’
‘Steve may have done that already – I don’t know without looking at the file.’
‘Tell him what you like,’ Loretta said recklessly. ‘He was pretty rude on the phone yesterday – he very nearly accused me of being a thief.’
‘Take no notice. He’s a bit of a – a chauvinist, actually. Likes giving women a hard time.’
‘Oh –’ Loretta was momentarily taken aback by Ghilardi’s analysis of his colleague’s behaviour. ‘But you see what I’m getting at – if Fleming’s going to all this trouble to find his money –’
‘I’ll have to get the file,’ Ghilardi said again. He sounded exhausted. ‘Look, there’s nothing I can do at the moment – Steve’s not in today, and the boss is tied up. Your flat in much of a mess?’
‘No, they seem to have picked the locks or something. I’ll have to get them changed.’
‘Sounds like a good idea. You said something about some letters –’
‘Oh yes.’ Loretta blushed. ‘I went to Sandra’s flat – the one in Notting Hill. She rented it out ages ago, when she went to work for Fleming. I was going to tell you all this but you were so hard to get hold of. . . The woman there gave me some letters, I didn’t know what to do –’ She swallowed. ‘They weren’t all that interesting, to be honest, mostly Christmas cards. But there was one from her bank, about her overdraft, she was definitely in financial trouble – I suppose the manager could give you a copy. And a Christmas card from – well, I got the impression he was a – a boyfriend.’ She had been about to say lover, but changed her mind at the last moment. ‘Someone called Paul. But I don’t suppose it matters much, now we know about Fleming. . .’ She had the impression Ghilardi was no longer paying attention, and thought she ought to bide her time, wait until he was less tired. ‘Shall I ring you on Monday?’
‘Yeah, or I’ll ring you. Have you been on to the local boys?’
‘Who?’
‘The police.’
‘No, I didn’t think –’
‘You’d better give them a ring. Give them my name if they want the background.’
‘Oh – all right.’ The idea of the Islington police tramping through her flat, of telling the story all over again, was not very welcome to Loretta.
‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ Ghilardi told her. ‘You’re probably pretty safe – whoever it was is unlikely to come back again. D’you think the money was in your flat, by the way? Hidden somewhere, I mean?’
‘Of cour – I doubt it,’ Loretta amended.
‘Right. Bye, Loretta – Oh, I’ve got your book.’ His voice was suddenly perkier.
‘My book?’
‘Yeah, you left it behind. By some bloke called Blake. I’ll have to get it back to you.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’ Loretta had been vaguely aware that the Nicholas Blake novel was missing, but assumed she’d dropped it in her car or left it at the office. Now she remembered Ghilardi picking it up in the interview room.
‘Maybe I could drop it by, next time I’m in London?’ she heard him say.
‘Don’t go to any trouble, I can always get another copy –’
‘No trouble. Islington, you live, don’t you? Know any good Italian restaurants?’
‘Well, yes –’ Loretta couldn’t help sounding surprised.
‘Maybe I could buy you dinner some time. Unless you’re coming down this way – then I could take you to my dad’s place. You did say you liked Italian food?’
‘Yes. . .’
‘It’s
a date. Don’t forget to call the police. Bye, Loretta.’
‘Bye.’
She put down the phone, in a state of some confusion. Ghilardi seemed as interested in her as he was in finding out what had happened to Sandra. Her doubts multiplied: was that why he’d spent so long talking to her after the inquest? She remembered the way he’d approached her in court, her initial assumption that he was trying to chat her up. Loretta suddenly felt tired; she let her head fall back and flexed her shoulders. Was it important? She wanted to know the truth about Sandra’s death, and she’d much rather Ghilardi was in charge of the inquiry than Steve Farr. Just thinking about the sergeant made her cross.
Her gaze fell on the answering-machine and she realized she still hadn’t played back her messages. She activated it and waited.
‘Hi, Derek Ghilardi calling. It’s – yeah, it’s half past eleven on Saturday morning. I’ll call back.’ His voice was casual, more like that of a friend than a policeman, and Loretta’s impression that he had a personal interest in her was reinforced. She shook her head, unable to cope with this unexpected development, and waited to see if there was another message.
‘Hello –’ She was startled to hear Robert’s voice issuing from the machine. ‘Loretta – I was just wondering how you are. . .’ His voice was hesitant, quite unlike him. ‘I’ll call again.’
There were no more messages and the tape began to rewind. Loretta pulled a face, suddenly reminded of the nightmare from which she’d woken in panic on Wednesday night. It was as she feared, Robert was trying to revive the relationship. His promise to ring back was sufficiently alarming for her to reach out and turn on the answering-machine. Thus protected against further calls, she considered Ghilardi’s advice to phone the local police. What was the point? No doubt the intruder had worn gloves, and they might well be sceptical about her claim that a search had taken place at all: there were no splintered locks, just the cat’s presence on the stairs, the hollow in the quilt, the missing letters – and the latter would take some explaining. Loretta decided to leave things as they were, and reached for the Yellow Pages to look for a locksmith.