by Frank Lean
‘My assistant is trying to trace her through employment agencies. Did Angelina have any kind of qualifications or special interests? Is she a nurse or a nanny or something?’
He shook his head. ‘What’s the use of tracing her? She obviously doesn’t want anything to do with me.’
‘You don’t know that. Anyway, if you’re going to separate you’ll need to know where she is so you can serve whatever legal papers may be required.’
‘That’s a bit direct, Mr Cunane, but you’re right. You think I’ve been a complete fool, don’t you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Oh, come. Young men think old men are fools. Old men know that young men are.’
I was getting slightly tired of this. Levy had more wise sayings than a box of Christmas crackers. I decided to bring things to a head.
‘Can I search Angelina’s room, her cupboards and so on?’
He nodded.
In my experience this is always the crucial moment, a fork in the road. The deserted party can refuse. He or she can cling to illusions . . . the lover, friend, wife, husband is going to be back at any moment. Or they don’t do that. They avail themselves of my services. They trace the missing person and settle for whatever they can get.
Now we were down to business the tears dried up. Levy’s round little face became hard. All the self-pity had melted away like snow in spring sunshine.
‘There’s no easy way to put this, Mr Levy, but has she ripped you off for much money?’
‘Only a few thousand. This isn’t about money, Mr Cunane.’
‘No, I didn’t think it was.’
‘I stopped her credit cards when she disappeared in Ireland. Now don’t say anything, Mr Cunane. It wasn’t meanness. I thought if someone had taken her – against her will, say – well, they’d have to let her go if she had no cash.’
‘Makes sense,’ I said, trying to wipe any surprise off my face. I pinched myself. Was this the same man whose recklessness had worried me? ‘Where is her room then?’
‘Our bedroom . . . Top of the stairs on the right,’ he said without further explanation.
I walked up the stairs past the full-length portrait and into the master bedroom.
But for one feature it could have been a display in the Victoria and Albert museum. The solitary jarring note was a modern king-sized four-poster bed. It was one of those high-tech Swedish affairs with all kinds of gadgets for raising and lowering.
For the rest, a beautiful plaster ceiling, superb period drapes, a chaise longue, armchairs, more C. R. Mackintosh upright seats, Art Nouveau lamp stands, a Tiffany shade on the main room light, many rare-looking pieces of porcelain, all created the illusion of a room at the turn of the century.
Larger pieces of furniture were in the same shade of light oak as the stairwell, as was the floor where it wasn’t covered by oriental rugs. It was like looking at a shiny page in an auctioneer’s catalogue. I wasn’t qualified to say if it was all genuine but it looked more authentic than I felt. The right-hand bedside table was cluttered – books, glasses, indigestion pills – but the other table was bare. I knelt down and checked under the bed. There was nothing there to suggest that the bride from Manila had ever lived here, not a shoe or a casually discarded bra or anything.
I checked all the drawers and they were equally unrewarding. On the dressing table there was a heavy silver Art Nouveau picture frame. It didn’t contain a picture of Angelina, though. The same pearl-bedecked woman who hung in the hall and the kitchen peered out narrowly across old Levy’s nuptial couch. It was creepy really. Levy must be fixated on her. I turned to the massive wardrobes. These were to scale with the room, each big enough to provide emergency housing for a family of five. The right-hand one was crammed with Levy’s suits and jackets and shoes. In the left the sole garment was a long white jacket and dress. A faded spray of flowers was still pinned to the jacket lapel.
I stood in the middle of the room trying to emote. Nothing came. A woman had lived here for two months, packed up everything and cleared off leaving no more trace than a casual visitor stopping overnight in a hotel. For a moment I was gripped by suspicion. Was I going to make a grisly discovery at the bottom of the garden? No, that was impossible. I knew Angelina was alive. If this was some cunning deception and Levy had done away with his mail order bride, would he draw attention by involving me?
I walked back to the kitchen.
‘Come through,’ Levy invited, opening a side door. It led to a dining room with place settings for twelve and then into a large drawing room dominated by a pair of French windows opening onto a lawn. There were more pictures and more expensive furniture. The walls were masterpieces of decorative art in themselves. I don’t know how much repro Edwardian hand-blocked wallpaper costs but there was surely enough on these walls to pay my office rent for a year. As my eyes tracked round the room I spotted two more pictures of the lady with the pearls. This time she was in pole position over the fireplace and on one of the walls.
Levy walked over to the elaborate carved mantel and took down a photo of Angelina in the white costume with the spray of flowers that hung in the wardrobe upstairs.
‘Lovely, isn’t she?’ he asked but my eye was taken by something else. As he removed the photo another was revealed behind it, of Marti King and Charlie Carlyle. Marti was in a wedding dress and Carlyle in a grey morning suit. I felt hot and cold at the same time. Wonderful! An associate of the Carlyles is slotted, practically on my doorstep, and the very next day this weird geezer who just happens to have one of Marti and Charlie’s wedding snaps on his mantelpiece drops by and tries to persuade me to take a two- or three-week break in the Philippines. What was going on?
I turned towards Levy suddenly, violence not very far from my mind.
‘I wanted that for my Angelina,’ Levy commented before I could speak, mistaking my interest in the wedding photo.
‘Oh, what?’ I snarled. I could hardly pull my eyes away from the picture of a young, smiling Marti.
‘The wedding dress. Elizabeth Emanuel. Cost old Brandon a bomb but he wanted the best of everything for his son’s wedding. I would have done the same for Angelina, but we got married in the registry office and she preferred a suit.’
‘Oh, right,’ I muttered. His comment flummoxed me. Levy was making no effort to disguise his knowledge of the Carlyle family. Either the man was a superbly gifted actor or his connection with the clan was fortuitous. I was still deeply suspicious.
‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she, my Angelina?’ Levy asked. He mistook my preoccupation for interest in his bride.
‘Very, very,’ I assured him.
‘I’ll get you a copy of this photo, yes? It’s better than the one you had before. You can fax it to your office.’
Levy busied himself for a moment with extracting a copy of the photo from a large album and then he went to a fax machine in the corner of the room.
‘I keep in touch with my broker on this,’ he explained.
I gave him the number of my own fax machine and he despatched the picture of Angelina to Celeste.
‘So you know Brandon Carlyle,’ I said eventually when he’d finished fussing with the machine.
‘You say you know the Carlyle family? I only mentioned Brandon’s first name,’ he retorted sharply.
‘No, it’s just that Marti Carlyle is a sort of client and I met Charlie last night.’
‘Hmmm,’ Levy murmured, looking at me speculatively. He lifted the heavy black spectacles off his nose and looked at me again. ‘The Carlyle family don’t encourage their acquaintances to indulge in loose talk about them.’
Whether it was the Queen Mother’s preferred malt whisky or just simple bad temper I don’t know, but I felt a surge of anger at his reproof. My face was burning.
‘Funny you should say that, Mr Levy,’ I rapped back coldly. ‘A copper told me practically the same thing just the other day but Charlie is all in favour of me talking about him – to the right peopl
e, of course.’
Levy replaced his specs and exclaimed, ‘What is this? I have annoyed you?’
‘Sorry, it’s not your fault. I’ll leave before I say something I’ll regret and get started on tracking down Angelina.’
‘No,’ Levy said firmly. ‘Sit down, Mr Cunane. I have few enough visitors that I can afford to send one of them off in a temper. Something is going on involving my old business partner Brandon Carlyle and his family and I want to know what it is.’
Determination more than made up for Mr Levy’s small size and age. He backed me towards a large armchair and almost before I knew it I was sitting opposite him with another glass of malt in my hand.
‘Look, you must know I can’t tell you anything confidential,’ I muttered. ‘Would you like me to go blabbing the details about Angelina all over Manchester?’
‘If it brought her back to me I might not mind.’
I sipped the whisky and said nothing.
He stared down at the misty liquid in his own glass. ‘Marti is a troubled spirit. I like her and I wouldn’t want any harm to come to her,’ he said cautiously.
‘Harm!’ I exploded. ‘What harm? Not like Lou Olley, I hope?’
‘So, you are mixed up in that?’ he said with a triumphant smile. ‘I read that the killing occurred in the same street your business is in.’
‘Pure coincidence,’ I snapped, and then felt bitterly annoyed that he’d somehow turned the tables on me. He was the one who should have been explaining his connection with the Carlyle family.
‘Don’t tell a bookmaker about coincidence. I’ve lived by the laws of chance all my life. I’m only alive thanks to a lucky chance.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I was one of the last Jewish children to get out of Berlin before the war broke out in 1939. My parents were not so lucky.’
‘Oh.’
‘My sister and I were fostered with a family in Cheetham Hill. She was all the family I had.’ He gestured towards the portrait over the mantelpiece that dominated the room. The woman’s eyes seemed to be staring right through me. ‘She was all in all to me, was my Leah.’ He took his handkerchief out again and wiped a tear from his eye. ‘But you don’t want to hear about a boring old fool like me, do you?’
‘That’s your sister?’
‘Of course. The pearl necklaces are in every painting. The only things from our family that we were able to bring with us from Germany were some pearls. Leah sold them to get me the money to start in business. I promised her that I’d replace them and every time I bought her some pearls we had her picture painted, or her photograph taken.’
‘Her presence is rather dominating.’
Levy looked at me shrewdly. ‘You are a wise young man. You are going to ask me what Angelina made of all this.’
I wasn’t but he was going to tell me.
‘I owe everything to Leah. She died nearly three years ago . . . liver cancer. I was so lonely when she’d gone. This house was her idea really. She was older than me and she remembered our grandparents’ home back in Berlin. Leah hoped that by making everything as real as it was back in those days she could live in her happy memories. You must understand I couldn’t change anything. That would be treachery to Leah.’
It did cross my mind to wonder how his Filipino bride had enjoyed living in a house so obviously full of ghosts but I held my tongue. Mr Levy took a strong pull of his whisky and then held the glass out for me to fill.
‘So you know all about Lou Olley?’ he asked slyly.
‘I know nothing.’
‘That was a bad business. I told Brandon that the man had no restraint but he brought him into the firm just to tease Charlie. Brandon is always trying to make his sons into tough men, but what’s to gain? They are what they are. I’ve told him to leave them alone but he won’t. Brandon thinks he’s like Abraham in the Bible – founding a tribe. Pshaw! What a mensch! What that man’s got in his trousers, he’d have populated Cheshire with his offspring by now if his wife could have stuck it, poor woman.’
‘Look, I’d better be going now,’ I interjected.
‘Stay. I’ve told you. You charge me double time for today,’ he ordered with a rather twisted smile on his face. ‘Here, you’re not drinking with me. I take offence.’ He snatched the bottle and filled my glass practically to the brim.
‘I was the numbers man for Brandon. In his business you couldn’t keep books. I kept it all in my head for years. He’d say, “Sam, I want you to get this down.” He’d hand me a sheet of paper with some figures on and I’d remember them. It’s a trick I have but it’s made me a wealthy man, and for what? You like the house?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘It’s a prison to me. You find my Angelina and I’ll tell you more than anyone else knows about Brandon Carlyle. In fact, I know more about Brandon than he knows himself.’
‘Listen, Mr Levy, have you ever heard of a solicitor called Morton V. E. Devereaux-Almond?’ I asked. I don’t know what prompted me to ask the question but it was connected with seeing that photo of Marti and Charlie nestling at the back of Levy’s mantel.
Levy shook his head. ‘This is about Vince King, no?’ he said.
‘Devereaux-Almond,’ I insisted. The drink made my voice sound harsh.
‘There are some things that are too ugly to know about. You don’t want them in your mind. That’s what plagued my poor Leah all her life, thinking about what happened to our parents. Hatred eats you up worse than cancer,’ he said with a sigh.
‘I see,’ I snapped, surprised by my own vehemence. ‘So we should forget all the bad things that happen and let the people who did them get away with it. Is that it?’
‘You are a young man, yes, Mr Cunane, but you’ll need to be a brave one, and brave though you may be I don’t think you’ll want to pay the price that may be demanded for prying into the affairs of Brandon Carlyle.’
‘What price? This was all a set-up, wasn’t it? Finding Angelina? You wanted me in the Philippines because something’s going down here in Manchester.’
‘So suspicious even! You remind me of Leah. Nothing’s going down. Believe me. I would be the first to know. Brandon was as upset about the murder of this Olley creature as Olley’s own mother was.’
As he said this Levy gave a chuckle. It sounded sinister.
‘I say “mother” but then I wonder?’ he continued. He laced his fingers across his chest and tucked his thumbs under his shirt collar. ‘Do creatures like Lou Olley have mothers or are they specially bred for crime in some dark cellar?’
‘You might know the answer to that,’ I muttered.
Levy gave me a very odd look. Fatalistic you could call it, or perhaps sorrowful.
‘Ah, Mr Cunane, I see you already know too much or maybe not enough,’ he said enigmatically. ‘Find my Angelina.’
20
IT WAS THREE in the afternoon before a taxi deposited me at the end of the little street where the pulsating headquarters of Pimpernel Investigations stands. My head was still spinning from Mr Levy’s whisky when I lurched up to the front door.
‘Long liquid lunch, Dave?’ Clyde Harrow asked with a knowing smile. He was wearing a plaid jacket that was a strain on the eyes.
‘Breakfast, as well as lunch,’ Celeste commented saucily from behind her desk.
Clyde gave her a wolfish look as if she was news on the hoof.
‘What are you here for?’ I asked nastily.
‘You, Dave,’ he said cheekily. ‘You’re the man in the news at the moment. I came for an interview.’
‘I don’t do interviews for less than three hundred pounds.’ I might have asked for a million for all the effect this ploy produced.
I noted the ominous way Clyde was waving his mobile like a loaded gun. No doubt he was hinting that he could have a camera crew with us in minutes. I gloomily recalled previous ‘No comment’ interviews. With Clyde’s ilk, a denial is as good as an admission of guilt.
‘I know n
othing about the Olley killing,’ I pleaded desperately.
‘I know that, Dave,’ he agreed.
I dared to snatch a breath. Harrow flourished his mobile with a condescending gesture. ‘I’m sure you’re an expert on the local gangland scene, but the Old Bill have got the Olley case sewn up tighter than a nun’s knickers. The whole shebang’s on tape apparently.’ He walked over to the window and pointed to a video camera mounted high above the back entrance to a jeweller’s shop. ‘Yes, dear lad, they’re talking about an early arrest, and these street killings are stale news in any case.’
‘I don’t expect Lou Olley was quite so blasé about it.’
‘The public have seen enough of them. Olley was no one in particular. A small-time club bouncer. No, what’s sexy at the moment is animals, and from what I hear you’re involved in them right up to the top of your fancy red braces.’
‘I don’t wear red braces.’
The taste of Sam Levy’s Islay malt hung in the back of my throat like a bad dream. Another minute of this and the office would start going round and round in front of me.
‘Shame on you!’ Harrow scoffed. ‘I should have thought that they’re obligatory for a rising businessman like you.’
‘What are you on about?’ I growled. The man was like a nasty, snapping little dog and he needed to be put back in his kennel.
‘Pigeons, you fool. Pigeons.’
I looked at Harrow and then at Celeste. They grinned at my bewilderment and exchanged glances. I could feel the ground shift under my feet. Who was running Pimpernel Investigations these days?
‘You’d better come into the private office then,’ I mumbled.
‘Not for three hundred,’ Harrow said with a smile.
‘Count this one as a freebie,’ I told him. ‘Celeste, bring us some coffee,’ I ordered. She needed to be reminded of her status.
‘I’ve found out where you-know-who is,’ she said proudly.
‘Later.’
‘Yes, boss. Black and beautiful, is that what you want, eh? Like me?’