‘Sergeant. Yes. I’d like a word.’
He caught the coolness in her voice and looked at her again. ‘Sure.’ He gave her a big smile and led her through into the dining-room.
‘Want a drink?’
‘A coffee would be good.’
‘Sure. What you want?’
‘Short black.’
Kathy watched him as he went to the machine in the corner of the bar and made the coffee. He brought over two tiny gold-rimmed cups and sat down opposite her. ‘So, what’s new?’
‘Have you heard from Sammy Starling recently?’
‘Mr Starling? No. Why?’
Kathy said nothing for a moment, then spoke more quietly, so that he had to lean forward to catch it. ‘I’m not interested in what Eva put up her nose, Tomaso, except in so far as it leads to her killer. Understand?’
He met her gaze with a poker face, then gave a brief nod.
‘She got her stuff here, didn’t she?’
‘No.’ He shook his head decisively.
‘But you knew about it.’
He waved a hand. ‘I could make an informed guess, sure.’
‘Tell me about it.’
He brought out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one. She refused and he lit up, considered her for a while as he smoked. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. ‘OK. She needed cash. She didn’t say what for, but I could guess. When she asked us, we would put extra on to her meal account, and give her the cash.’ He spread his hands. ‘It’s no big deal. A customer needs some cash, no problem. Nothing wrong with that.’
‘But you knew there was something funny about it.’
‘Only because she asked us not to tell her husband. She said he was worried about her not eating, that she was anorexic, so she would come in and order maybe a salad, sometimes nothing at all, and we would make up a bill with the most expensive dishes on the menu, and she would take the difference in cash.’
‘Why didn’t you believe the anorexia story?’
He laughed. ‘Because it was always the most expensive dishes that went on the bill, not the most nutritious. And wine, too, always the best. I don’t know what gave her away.’
‘Sammy found out?’
Tomaso raised the little cup to his lips. ‘Sure. One lunch-time he came in here, by himself, and asked for me to serve him. He ordered a plate of pasta, then told me to stop playing games with his wife’s account, or he would close us down. I didn’t argue.’
‘What did Eva make of that?’
‘She must have made other arrangements, I don’t know. She still came in here for a salad and a glass of wine.’
‘Where did she get her drugs?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes, you do.’
He looked sulky, then smiled. ‘I don’t know, but I can guess. Sometimes she will come in here, and she’s high, and I will say, “You’re in a good mood tonight, Princess.” Then she says, “Yes, I’ve been to the movies,” or sometimes, “Yes, I’ve been to Hollywood.” And I say, “Do you have a friend in Hollywood, then, Princess?” And she says, “Sure, I have a very good friend in Hollywood.”’
Tomaso paused to finish his coffee. ‘There’s a little cinema over in Camden Town shows foreign movies. Called Cinema Hollywood. I think that’s where she met her friend.’
Kathy got to her feet.
‘Satisfied?’ Tomaso said.
‘Yes. If you hear any word of Sammy, let me know, will you? He’s dropped out of sight, and we’re anxious to make contact with him. He may be trying to find Eva’s murderer himself.’
A shadow of worry passed across Tomaso’s face.
‘There’s nothing else I should know is there, Tomaso?’ Kathy said.
‘No, no. Say, you’d better give me your home phone number, just in case I need to reach you, eh?’
‘I’m not often at home. This is my office number. There’ll be someone there twenty-four hours. If I’m not there one of the other detectives will help you.’
He looked disappointed. ‘Why don’t you stay for a meal?’
She laughed. ‘I couldn’t even afford one of your salads, Tomaso.’
All the same, La Fortuna had put Kathy in the mood for Italian, and she stopped on the way home for some takeaway lasagne at La Casa Romana, a little place not far from where she lived, and considerably closer to her budget.
After her meal and a bath, Kathy sat by the window of her small flat, looking at the street lights coming on below, sections at a time, across the hazy twilit city landscape. She had reconstructed several unexpected corners of the story— Eva’s imprisonment and flight, her way of cheating Sammy and Toby, her source of drugs—but how much closer had she really got to the heart of it all?
Sammy must surely now be the prime suspect for Eva’s murder. He had discovered Eva’s escape at around eleven that night, and the fact that he had phoned Ronnie Wilkes soon after made it likely that he thought she was heading for Canonbury. He must have driven there after an abortive search along the woodland lanes around the Crow’s Nest, and may well have been watching the flat when Fitzpatrick and Eva had arrived. He would have waited for the man to leave, then gone in and confronted his wife. Had she told him how she had been cheating him? The irony must have struck him very hard, that she had used the same thing, his beloved stamps, to cheat him that he had used to win her from her father. And if he then became enraged and killed her, how natural and appropriate to use them again in the story he concocted of a kidnapping revolving around the forthcoming stamp auction he would certainly have known all about. He would have needed help, a male, to telephone the instructions to Heathrow, and send the final message.
She turned these ideas round in her head, and felt they had a certain thematic consistency. But what had they to do with Raphael and the murder of Mary Martin? How would Eva have become involved with the stamp dealer and the forgery scheme in the first place? Through her drugs? And why had someone—Sammy presumably—framed Brock over the disappearance of the Canada Cover?
To Kathy, this was the most worrying and puzzling thing. The meeting with him in Battle had been unsettling. It struck her how much she would miss him if he didn’t come back. Not that she was dependent on him, but the thought that his disgrace might be irredeemable, that she would never be able to refer to him again, was like a death, the death of someone close.
She had been over those hours at Cabot’s on the morning and afternoon of the auction again and again in her head, trying to fathom how it had been done. Now her mind began to replay it once again. At some point, when the sun finally dropped below the horizon and a green-orange glow in the sky was all that was left of the day, a thought began to form.
She made a call to the Fitzpatricks’ cottage, and spoke for several minutes to Toby Fitzpatrick. He found her the information she wanted, and she rang off. The doodles on the writing pad in front of her formed a network of names, some linked and others, frustratingly, unconnected. She started again on a fresh sheet, then another and another until she gave up and went to bed.
16
The Moving Finger Writes
When the phone rang Kathy was in a deep sleep. As she fumbled for the light switch she registered the time on her bedside alarm as 1.16 a.m. She didn’t immediately recognise the voice.
‘Hewitt. Message from Superintendent McLarren for you. He says that you might care to join him at a crime scene.’
‘Oh . . . right, fine. Where is it?’
‘Shoreditch,’ he said unenthusiastically. ‘Eighteen Shepherd’s Row.’
She dressed hurriedly and left. By the time she reached her car she was wide awake.
The area was mixed, commercial offices and warehouses spilling northwards from the City into areas of working-class housing spiked with larger Victorian institutional buildings. It had been a long time since this Shepherd’s Row had seen any live sheep. It wriggled for just over a hundred yards in the general direction of Shepherdess Walk before coming to an e
nd at an overscaled Edwardian pub, and it now housed a motley collection of low-cost service outlets—launderette, shoe repairs, shelving supplies, second-hand furniture, a pawn shop—as well as a street market three days a week. Tuesday had been one of those days, and the metal frameworks of the stalls stood deserted down the middle of the curving alley, sour smells of vegetable waste and burnt cardboard tainting the warm summer night.
Walter Pickering, dealer in stamps, banknotes and maps, occupied a small shop unit half-way along the alley, which was now the focus of attention. An ambulance had backed up the laneway left between market stalls and shop-fronts, and was standing by the open door of the shop. As Kathy arrived at the end of Shepherd’s Row, its lights began flashing and it moved slowly forward. She drove on to the next corner, parked down a side-street and walked back.
A couple of uniformed men guarded the front shop area, with its counter, its shelves of old albums and reference books, and its displays of the products in which Walter Pickering traded. These looked, with their wrinkled plastic pouches and faded labels, remarkably drab and unappealing. The action had taken place in the office and store-room behind, now crammed with police, among whom she recognised Tony Hewitt and Leon Desai, who gave her a barely perceptible nod. This room was lined with industrial shelving on three sides, filled with cardboard boxes. The fourth side was a bare wall. A naked fluorescent strip-light was suspended over the centre of the room, directly above a single wooden chair with arms. This chair, a sturdy, blackened object, managed to convey, rather as electric chairs do, a strong sense of its recent occupant, for strips of electrical tape were still wrapped round each of its arms and bottom front legs, where he had been restrained, and his blood was splashed in spectacular patterns of splatters and spurts all round its focus. The bloody marks continued on to the bare wall facing the seat where, as if on a blackboard facing a single recalcitrant pupil, large letters of blood formed the single word, RAPHAEL.
‘Jesus McTavish!’ a voice murmured at Kathy’s shoulder, as she stood taking this in. She turned to Superintendent McLarren in the doorway, newly arrived.
‘Good evening, all,’ he said briskly. ‘Sorry I was delayed. Tony, fill us in, will you?’
‘Sir. Local division alerted by neighbour’s triple niner at 0018 reporting screams from the premises of Walter Pickering. Patrol officers discovered Mr Pickering here, alone, tied to this chair. He was semi-conscious. They called for medical assistance, and division called us on the strength of our recent warning regarding stamp dealers.’
‘Good laddie.’ McLarren said approvingly.
‘I got here in time to interview Mr Pickering before the ambulance officers insisted on removing him to hospital. He was in very bad shape. He had been cut in a number of places by what he described as an old-fashioned, cut-throat razor. In particular, three of his fingers had been removed, and used by his assailant like marker pens, to write that name on the wall over there. Mr Pickering identified his assailant as “Sammy China”.
‘Indeed. Our missing Mr Starling, I take it.’
‘It was a nickname of his,’ Kathy said.
McLarren nodded. Did you get out of Pickering what happened, Tony?’
‘He lives above here, alone. He said that this Sammy called on him at about midnight, and insisted on seeing him in the shop. Sammy was a regular customer, and Pickering, of course, didn’t know that he was on the run, though he had read about his wife’s murder. Pickering is an old man, not very strong, and Sammy had no difficulty in overpowering him and taping him to the chair, where he proceeded to torture him in order to get information about forged stamps Pickering had been selling him.’
‘Pickering admitted that to you, Tony?’
‘Yes. He said that Sammy knew he had supplied them, and he was very angry about it. He wanted to know who else was involved, and eventually, with some persuasion, Pickering told him that his wife Eva had been a party from the beginning, and had taken a share of all proceeds.’
‘How did Sammy take that, I wonder?’
‘Not well, although Pickering said he thought Sammy already suspected, or half knew. Then Sammy wanted to know where the forgeries came from, and who had been behind it all. He demanded a name, but Pickering said he didn’t know—he told me he was too scared to tell Sammy. So Sammy said they would discover the name one letter at a time. He cut off one of Pickering’s fingers, and Pickering gave him the first letter, R. Sammy wrote it up, threw the finger away, and cut off another one. He said if the name was very long he’d have to go on and use other body parts, but if Pickering told him quickly, before the blood in the fingers dried up, he might get more than one letter out of each. I gather Pickering gave him the name pretty fast after that, sir.’
‘Aye, no doubt,’ McLarren said indifferently. ‘What about an address, Tony? Did he tell him where he could find Raphael?’ He leaned forward eagerly.
‘’Fraid not, sir. He said he passed out at that point, and I can believe it. He’d lost a bit of blood, apart from the shock. I’m surprised his ticker stood up to it.’
‘Och, laddie!’ McLarren said in disgust. ‘You should have cut off a few more of his fingers yourself for it!’
‘Yes, sir. I think the ambulance blokes might have objected.’
McLarren paced over to the wall and glared balefully at the large letters. ‘Are you sure, Tony? Are you sure he didn’t tell him?’
‘Can’t be certain. He was confused and pretty incoherent. But that was my impression. One thing I thought he did say was that Raphael and Eva were lovers.’
‘Indeed!’ McLarren’s face lit up. ‘How long before we can get to work on Mr Pickering ourselves, would you say?’
‘Couldn’t say. Days, most likely.’
‘What about the house, upstairs?’
‘Yeah. I haven’t been up there yet, but the lads say it looks as if Sammy went upstairs after he’d done Pickering over down here—there’s signs of bloody footprints on the landing, and some disturbance to drawers and things.’
‘I wonder if he found it . . . Well, we must hope he did not, and that we shall! Full-scale alert for Mr Starling.’
‘Done, sir.’
‘And a complete search of this building, every floorboard and every inch of pipe it contains. We must have Raphael’s location, ladies and gentlemen, before Sammy does, and before Raphael hears what’s happened to his retail outlet.’
He turned to Kathy and added, ‘Some people, you know, still doubt the very existence of Raphael. What will they make of this, I wonder?’
‘It’s a strong message, sir,’ she said, unable to think of anything else to say.
‘Aye, a strong message,’ he repeated. ‘A strong message.’ And then, in a melodramatic voice, with heightened rolling of his Rs, he intoned,
‘The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half-a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
‘Is that not very much the case, Kathy? The literal case.’
The house was not large, but its rooms were so crowded with years’ accumulations of junk that they were extremely difficult to search. It was impossible for more than one or two people to get into each room at a time, and all of this slowed down the hunt for any secret records, correspondence or diaries that the dealer may have kept. A similar search was going on downstairs in the shop and storerooms, but after several hours no reference had been turned up that could be linked to the name Raphael. New faces arrived, and McLarren, disappointed but even more determined, nominated a number of people to go home and get some sleep, Kathy and Desai among them.
They walked together down Shepherd’s Row, and Desai said, ‘I feel filthy after that.’
He did look crumpled, and weary, and not at all his usual smooth self. He looked as if he needed someone to say, ‘Come on, I’ll take you home with me and give you a nice bath and then we’ll see . . .’ She examined
him out of the corner of her eye, his dark features shadowed in the light of the street lamps, and allowed herself a moment of fantasising. But something, the smell of burnt cardboard hanging in the air, perhaps, made it impossible to rid her mind of Pickering’s store-room, so that the two thoughts— having her way with Desai, and Starling’s handiwork with a razor—became unpleasantly mixed.
They stopped at the end of the lane, his car one way, hers the other.
‘Well, take care, then,’ he said gravely. ‘I mean it.’
She smiled. ‘You too, Leon,’ and turned away.
It was only when she had reached the next block, and found herself quite alone, that the thought of walking up the dark side-street to her car made her hesitate. Somehow she had never quite believed that Starling had been capable of cutting off his wife’s head, until tonight. She still found it difficult to reconcile the mental picture of someone deliberately removing an old man’s fingers, one by one, and the chubby smiling face of Sammy Starling.
Desai had had similar misgivings. He slammed the car door shut, put the keys in the ignition and started up. Then he thought he would turn and drive back to check that Kathy had reached her car safely when some movement in his rearview mirror caught his eye. He glanced at the wing mirror to get a better view back down the street, not realising that the movement had been inside the car. Then the glistening blade of an old-fashioned cut-throat razor passed in front of his eyes and he felt it come to a rest, cool, against his throat.
A voice close against his ear whispered. ‘No sudden moves, copper, or I’ll have your head off.’
Brock returned to his home in London early the following morning. Shortly after ten he took a call from McLarren.
‘My dear chap,’ the Scotsman declared jovially, as if the two of them were old golf-club pals. ‘I wondered if we might meet?’
Brock mentally checked the immediate possessions he might need for a spell in interrogation. ‘What had you in mind, Jock? Dinner at your club?’
McLarren chuckled. ‘Something more immediate, I fear. You are at home?’
The Chalon Heads Page 29