‘I can’t think of one,’ Bianca answered. ‘Could you find her for me?’
‘I’m only a chauffeur.’ Jack said quietly.
Bianca stared at him, her face mottled by the cold air. ‘No, you’re not.’
Jack was impressed by her intuition, but frightened by what she was asking him to do. Go to places he didn’t want to go. Feel emotions he didn’t want to feel. Bianca’s grief was too raw for him. She stood shivering, waiting for his answer. Then suddenly she was pleading. ‘Please…I need someone to help me. I feel as if I’m drowning.’
How could he refuse? ‘Okay. I’ll ring someone,’ he said.
Bianca touched his arm, tears in her eyes. ‘Thank you.’ She suddenly shivered. ‘Jesus – I hate English winters. Have you ever been to Malta?’
‘No.’
‘I remember having dinner with my parents and my gran in the garden. We had plum and orange and lemon trees there. My gran used to make me fresh drinks all summer. Funny how it always seems like summer when you’re a small kid, doesn’t it?’
Jack blinked rapidly against the sudden stinging in his eyes, wishing he could reverse time and be sitting on the golden sands of his favourite beach in Wales, building dream castles and the future was a million years away.
‘Come to hear me sing sometime,’ Bianca said, giving him a small card. ‘The Blue Notes nightclub. Everyone knows it. Bye.’
Jack watched Bianca walk away from him with the same sensuality Marilyn Monroe showed in Some Like It Hot and wondered how often Paolo Cellini had enjoyed her body. The Red Lion pub was almost empty when Jack arrived. He saw Jamila sitting near the 16th -century inglenook fireplace in front of a blazing log fire; its ruddy light coloring her face. She glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner as he hurried up to her.
‘Sorry, I’m late. The traffic’s terrible. Shall I get you something to drink?’
‘Just a coffee. I’ve got to go back to work soon. What’s so urgent?’
He looked out of the pub window. The somber aspect of the sky heralded rain. So what was so urgent? When he’d rung Jamila he’d made it sound as if the diary was of national importance.
‘Have a look at that.’ He gave her Cellini’s diary while he ordered a coffee and a lemonade at the bar. He couldn’t face any more coffee.
He watched Jamila flicking idly through the diary while he paid for the drinks.
‘So the guy was interested in a woman called Stella,’ she said when he sat down with his lemonade.
Jack took the diary off her. ‘You haven’t looked at it properly.’
‘The coroner’s verdict stated Paolo Cellini died from a heart attack, Jack. Alan’s closed the case. All that diary shows was that the dead guy was seeing a woman called Stella – so he was sleeping around – that’s not a crime – lots of men do it – remember my ex-husband?’
Jack’s face tightened.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Jamila said. ‘What do you want me to do?
“Find out who this Stella is – that’s all I’m asking.’
‘And then what?’
Jack flicked through the diary to illustrate what she obviously couldn’t or won’t see.
‘Stella…Stella…Stella…Her name’s almost on every page. No mention of the girlfriend he’d been seeing for over two years. Don’t you think that’s odd?’
‘Odd, maybe, but it doesn’t warrant opening the case again, you know that.’
A young girl brought Jamila’s coffee and put it down onto the rough wooden table. Jack and Jamila drank in silence.
‘I thought you always wanted to know the truth. What’s happened to you since you’ve been working with Alan?’
Jamila flushed. ‘Nothing. It’s just that I’ve got more important things to do than chase ghosts.’
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ The ice in Jack’s voice made Jamila flinch.
‘I don’t mean…’ She stopped and sipped her coffee. ‘Look, we’re covering a big case at the moment, Jack, that’s all. I’m very busy.’
Jack got up to go, wondering why he felt so deflated. ‘Okay – sorry to have wasted your time, DS Soyinka.’
Jamila put her hand on his arm. ‘Hey, you’re not talking to a stranger.’
Jack sat down again and stared at the familiar brasses and bric-a-brac littering the walls and felt his chest tightening. He shouldn’t have suggested they meet here. Jamila followed his gaze, knowing what he was thinking. She wanted him to look at her. He didn’t.
‘I remember the first time you bought me a drink here,’ she said. ‘I was a newbie and you were the big boss and suddenly, in walked this important forensic scientist who just happened to be—’
Jack’s expression froze Jamila mid-sentence. She took a deep breath, knowing she was going to regret what she’d about to say.
‘Okay – give me the diary. I’ll see what I can do.’
Jack smiled at her, ‘Thanks, Jamila.’ His face was transformed into the boss who’d welcomed her into the Met and taught her so much. She leaned over to touch his hand.
‘Why did you resign, Jack?’
Jack’s smile faded as he got up from his seat. ‘I’ve got to go back to work. If you find out something about this Stella woman will you ring me?’
Jamila nodded.
Jack strolled out of the pub, his hands deep in his pockets and his mind on Stella.
The police stores were in the basement of the building. Jamila hated going down there; it was damp and dingy, but she’d promised Jack. Perhaps searching for this woman was helping him in some way.
P.C. Green looked up in surprise as she walked into the outer office.
‘Morning, ma’am. Don’t see you down here often.’
‘Morning, Barry. Just got to check something. What happened to all the items that were taken from that wealthy art dealer’s apartment – Paolo Cellini?’
P.C. Green frowned. ‘They’re still here, ma’am.’
Jamila was surprised. ‘Nobody came to collect anything?’
‘We couldn’t trace any family. Bit odd, him being so wealthy. You’d had thought they’d be crawling out of the woodwork.’
The phone rang as Jamila walked past him into the store room.
‘You get the phone. Won’t be a moment.’
Barry didn’t know what to do. This was against regulations, but the sergeant was his superior. He answered the phone.
Jamila walked into the dingy room, her nose wrinkling against the marshy smell. She was glad P.C. Green was in charge of stores. Everything would be labeled exactly as it should be. She searched down the rows of Cs until she came to Cellini. On opening the polythene bags, she discovered very little for a man who was supposedly surrounded by women and wealth: cufflinks, numerous receipts, monogrammed handkerchiefs with expensively embroidered initials: A.C. As she moved the handkerchiefs, she discovered more handkerchiefs at the bottom of the pile with the initials A.M. on them. Who was A.M.? She wondered. She heard P.C. Green in the outer office trying to get off the phone. If Alan found out she was snooping about in Stores she’d be in trouble. So what was she doing down here? She searched through the pile of clothing. Nothing about Stella at all. Then just as the P.C. called out to her she saw a DVD. On the side of it, written in large black letters was the word Stella. Her heart thumped as she pocketed the DVD quickly as the P.C. walked in.
‘Found what you wanted, ma’am?’ he asked.
Jamila smiled as she walked past him. ‘Unfortunately not, but I’ve never seen the stores organized so well before. Well done, Barry.’
Barry beamed as Jamila ran up the stairs.
Fortunately, the office was empty when she entered. She rang Jack to arrange to meet him later and give him the DVD. It was burning a hole in her pocket. It was going to be a quick call, but when Jack asked her how her daughter was, she couldn’t resist telling him.
‘She’s rehearsing for the school pantomime at the moment which means I’ve somehow got
to find the time—’
‘Is that a personal call, DS Soyinka?
Jamila jumped. Alan was glaring at her from across the room. She carried on talking into the phone, raising her hand in a gesture designed to stop interruption.
‘Well, I hope you and your wife could still find the time to take your son to the pantomime, sir, I’m sure it will take his mind off the damage to your shop,’ she smiled at Alan as she spoke. ‘Perhaps you could come into reception this afternoon and I’ll get a police officer to take a statement from you.’ She listened for a few moments, then said, ‘Yes, we certainly do want to catch the vandals who damaged your shop. We’re heavy on crime and heavy on the people who commit crime in the Met. Goodbye, sir.’
She put the phone down and sighed, ‘I thought talking about the pantomime might help him, sir. His son has been very upset by the vandalism in his father’s shop.’
‘Get one of the DCs to answer such calls in future,’ Alan said. ‘I need you to concentrate on the drug smuggling. It’s vital we catch these people before the problem escalates.’
‘I’m following up a number of leads at the moment, sir. Actually, I’m meeting someone who knows a great deal about drugs later today.’
Alan’s face relaxed. ‘Good – I’ll see you at the briefing tomorrow.’
Jamila hugged herself as Alan walked out; he actually looked pleased for once.
A coppery light slanted across the crystallized pavements as Jack crossed Trafalgar Square, walking towards the Sainsbury Wing. He stared at it, still uncertain whether the American architect’s idea of harmonizing the neo-classical façade of the National Gallery with the asymmetrical façade of the Wing worked. As he passed the recessed glass wall he was even more uncertain, but how else was he going to see Leonardo da Vinci if he didn’t venture through the Sainsbury’s portals? He ran up the stairs towards his favourite room.
Jack Bradley was renowned for three things while he worked in the Met: his love of paintings, his ‘nose’ for uncovering the truth and his lack of interest in clothes. When Jamila entered the room, she saw him staring at a large drawing and smiled; he was wearing a shapeless overcoat that could never have been fashionable in any era. He didn’t notice Jamila at all; he was too intent on studying The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and John the Baptist.
‘Hallo, Jack,’ she said when she reached him.
Jack didn’t take his eyes off the cartoon. ‘You see how delicate da Vinci’s treatment of the Madonna’s hair was. And look at the way he created one form gliding imperceptibly into another – it’s breathtaking, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, hallo, Jamila and how are you?’ Jamila said, expecting him to smile at her, but Jack still didn’t take his eyes off the Madonna. She stared in fascination at the transformation in Jack’s face. How could one painting affect such a change? Four shadowy figures was all she saw, but that’s obviously not what Jack was seeing. She didn’t know anything about art; there hadn’t been time for it when she was growing up. Her parents were too busy working day and night to feed them all, but there’d always been music and laughter inside her home, even if there wasn’t much outside. Her experience of art, when growing up on a tough council estate in Hounslow, was the graffiti covering the walls of the buildings as she walked to school. She’d fought her way out of the tough estate through sheer determination and hard work. But she’d been lucky too; Jack had been the one to recommend her for promotion. She’d never have got it working for a self-promoter like Alan Saunders.
‘How did he make them look so…’ Jamila searched around the room for a word that Jack would like. It came at last from all the long hours of studying, ‘…ethereal?’
Jack smiled at the painting. ‘He used different glazes to create subtle transitions between tones and shapes.’ He pointed to the light in the Madonna’s face. ‘Imagine being able to create that. I always wanted to be a painter, but I didn’t have the talent.’
‘So you just had to make do with being a brilliant DCI. Must have been tough.’ Jamila’s laughter made Jack smile at her.
‘Thanks for coming. Did you find out anything about Stella?’
Jamila looked around the room before reaching into her pocket and handing the DVD she’d found to Jack. ‘Alan would demote me if he found out what I’ve done. I don’t know what’s on it, but I must have it back by Monday morning. You know what happens if something goes missing.’
‘Thanks.’ Jack put the DVD in his pocket. ‘Let me show you The Virgin on the Rocks.’
‘If I didn’t know better, Jack, I’d think you were religious.’
‘You don’t have to be religious to enjoy religious paintings. Come and look at this face.’ He guided Jamila out of the room into another and stood her in front of a painting. ‘Now look at that Madonna’s face – can you see the wisdom there – not only interior, but artistic?’
‘Are you giving me a lecture?’
‘Sorry.’ He smiled at her. ‘I become a zealot when I talk about painting.’
‘I wish you hadn’t left the Met, Jack.’
Jack’s smile faded; he moved off to another room, but Jamila wouldn’t be deflected. She hurried after him.
‘It’s not the same without you. The chief’s on his way to a second ulcer and Alan Saunders – well, you’ll know what he’s doing.’
‘Climbing faster than ivy, I imagine.’
Jamila nodded and Jack suddenly stopped walking.
‘I don’t want to go back into the force, Jamila – not after…’ he suddenly studied The Last Supper in the distance. ‘That part of my life’s over.’
‘Then why have you got that DVD in your pocket, Jack?’
He looked at her, but didn’t know the answer.
CHAPTER 12
12th December 2012
The candles flickered in rhythm with Jack’s movements up and down Lucy’s legs as his fingers dimpled her wasted muscles. Over the last year, he’d become an expert masseur through weeks of watching the physiotherapist massage Lucy. This was their last retreat; both he and Lucy knew it wasn’t going to improve her circulation or her muscle tone, but they both pretended it was. Meditative music played in the background. Jack hated it, but Lucy looked relaxed as she lay on their bed, her laptop near her fingers. He smiled at her, trying to suppress the immense anger he felt when he looked at her wasted body.
She stared at him questioningly.
‘I couldn’t get through to him, Luc. Do you think we should get a child psychologist to talk to him?’
He moved to massage her skeletal arms; wondering how they all managed to endure such pain.
‘Perhaps I should talk to Tom’s headmaster and ask his advice. What do you think?’ Jack’s tone was light.
Lucy blinked once: her code for yes.
‘All right. I’ll ring him later…all done, Luc. I think I’m getting better at massage, don’t you?’
Jack wiped the oil off his hands on a towel as Lucy started to type laboriously.
‘You’re supposed to relax after my superb massages, remember?’
Lucy carried on typing. Suddenly, she stopped to look at him. Jack’s hands tightened. She waited while he wasted time, folding the towel into a neat rectangle.
‘Ac!’ His name sounded harsh on Lucy’s distorted lips.
He walked towards her lap-top. Below him were words he didn’t want to see.
dont let me die slowly
They had talked incessantly about euthanasia before Lucy had become paralyzed. She had argued passionately that it was immoral to leave someone with no hope of recovery to die without dignity. She had asked him to promise to take her to the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland where they would give her voluntary euthanasia. And, of course, Jack had; the thought of his intelligent, vibrant wife being reduced to a vegetable filled him with horror. But they had forgotten Tom in their intellectual arguments. When he had discovered his mother’s research about euthanasia on the Internet, he’d become hysterical. She couldn’t go abroad t
o be killed, he’d screamed at his father. Of course not, Jack had agreed; he’d told Tom that she would stay with them. Now he had to face his wife every day, knowing he’d betrayed her.
Lucy and Jack stared at each other for a long time until he lay down beside her and rocked her in his arms, repeating over and over again. ‘I can’t do it, Luc, I can’t do it.’
He waited until she fell into a deep sleep before going into the study to watch the DVD. He hoped it would take his mind off Lucy’s words. It certainly did. A caption popped up which read: The Nurse and The Patient. Paolo Cellini was standing in his large bedroom wearing a small black leather thong, staring at someone in the distance. A brassy blonde, wearing a skimpy nurse’s uniform walked into view, her back to the camera. Stella, Jack thought. She told Cellini that she had to take all her clothes off before she could treat him as it was so hot. Jack smiled at the banal absurdity of the scene. The camera panned slowly down her long legs as she bent over to discard black fishnet stockings, then it moved up her body as she unbuttoned her uniform to reveal a peep-hole red bra covering small firm breasts. The camera panned in onto rosy nipples, then moved down to a tiny leather thong, designed to reveal, not conceal. Cellini walked towards her and removed the bra and thong with one movement. Jack wondered how he did it; he could never do that with Lucy’s underwear. Stella told him she had to remove his thong before she could take his pulse. Jack laughed as she ripped it off with the same fluid movement as Cellini’s. They were both experts at removing clothes. She took Cellini’s pulse and gasped with simulated shock as he rubbed his penis against her. Jack found his own stiffening, in spite of the clichéd scene being acted out in front of him. The camera played over the woman’s red, painted nipples as Cellini bent his head and folded his lips around each one in turn to suck them. Both nipples stood out like luscious cherries. Stella threw back her blonde hair in a semblance of ecstasy. Jack snorted. Lucy had never been that easily pleased. Cellini picked her up as if she was a bird and threw her onto a bed. She held up her hands to cover her body in mock terror but he grabbed each hand in turn and tied her to the headboard with the silk cords. Then he rubbed his penis slowly up and down her body before thrusting it deep into her vagina; she pretended to struggle and Jack found himself becoming more and more aroused thinking how exciting Lucy and his love-making had always been. His face contorted; their old intimacy was now a mere memory. Suddenly, the woman’s face appeared on the screen and Jack was shocked; her make-up was so elaborate that he was reminded of the performers in Kathakali, a dance drama he and Lucy at seen on their honeymoon in India. The performers wore intricate make-up to define the character they were playing: Stella was playing a whore. His arousal instantly disappeared as he registered the charade being acted out in front of him. He switched the DVD off and sat back in his chair, wondering why Cellini would go with prostitutes when he was surrounded by beautiful women. Just as he was going to put the DVD back into its box, he saw that Cellini had written a link to a chat-line on it. Jack typed in the link on his computer and entered a chat-line. The first name that he saw was Stella. What would he achieve by contacting her? He glanced around the room, musing on the incredible challenges life threw at people. Three years ago he was a respected DCI at Met with a witty, brilliant wife and loving son, now he was contemplating meeting a prostitute and he didn’t know if it was simply for research. He typed quickly before he changed his mind and sent her a clichéd message that he hoped would get her attention.
A Fatal Façade Page 6