Tansil nods his head. He acquiesces, but I can tell he’s pissed. ‘I’ll give Sharpe a bell, my lord,’ he says. ‘He’ll probably know what she’s doing and where she’ll be.’
Chudwell is pleased, but tight-lipped and quivering. ‘Wherever she is, get Mark to go and fetch her and bring her over here. I don’t trust Sharpe anymore. It’s basically because of that gullible nitwit Sharpe that we’ve got this clown snooping around. And don’t forget, Larry: you’re partly responsible for this state of affairs as well. You’re too old to have fallen for such a trick. Much too old.’
Tansil gets his mobile out and leaves the room, tail between his legs. What now? I have to admit I’m confused. Whatever’s going on, I don’t like the sound of this. What did Paige say she was doing today? Some book launch with another burlesque artiste? Started lunchtime and finished at six? She said she was going home by cab after it had finished. Mark must be Mark Gable. I don’t like the idea of that guy manhandling Paige, particularly if she’s spaced.
Chudwell sits across from me again. He looks angry. He’s waiting for Tansil to return from making his telephone calls. I decide to needle him while we’re waiting, as part of my excellent plan.
‘Your daughter’s a very attractive woman.’
‘Never mind my bloody daughter.’
‘She’s a little messed up – no surprise there – but in a way that makes her interesting, vulnerable and sexy. I’d like your permission to call on her, sir.’
He gets up, walks over to me and slaps me across the face, right on the cut. It’s a stinger.
‘Or can I call you Dad?’ I continue, my eyes watering.
He starts to tremble. Before he can think of a pertinent bon mot, Tansil reappears.
‘Sharpe says she’ll be at home,’ says Tansil gently. ‘I’ve given Mark a call. He’ll be going round there post-haste.’
‘Good. Now let’s get this chap sorted out. Find out what he knows and who’s employing him. Then we can take decisive action.’
So now Slim Jim is taking over. Tansil walks past me and pats me twice on my bad cheek. Ouch. He then stands right behind me, ready to whack my head wound if I don’t cough up the right answers. He places both hands on my shoulders and squeezes. He’s a friendly guy. I continue with my deep breathing.
Chudwell smiles at me as if he’s some suave interrogator in a spy film. ‘Make no mistake, Mr Beckett, you are out of your league here. I don’t know what sort of work you usually occupy yourself with, probably divorce cases and the like, but this is something different. You’ve inadvertently got yourself involved with the big boys here, understand?’
‘I understand fully, my liege.’
This morsel of flippancy has an unexpectedly devastating effect. His face goes purple. His eyes bulge. His chins vibrate. He stands up. He points a trembling finger at my face and shouts.
‘I will have your respect! You will not insult me and you will certainly not disrespect my title.’
I can’t help laughing. He tips Tansil the wink and he whacks me across the back of the head. It takes about thirty seconds for the pain to subside into something manageable. My eyeballs feel too big for my skull and my sinuses are on fire. Chudwell sits down again. He’s trying to look composed, but he’s still shaking. Even Tansil would be an improvement on this; Chudwell just doesn’t have the temperament. They’re faffing around so much that I’m getting annoyed and bored.
‘Our guess is that you’re working for Baldwin, the boxer,’ he says. ‘He’d have the money and he’d have the motivation, misguided and idiotic as it may be. What is he trying to do? Is he trying to get revenge on us? What is it?’
‘Well, that’s a pretty good guess as guesses go,’ I say. ‘Totally incorrect, but don’t let that dampen your spirits. I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re a little worried. I think you’re worried about what might happen if all this gets out. You’re pretty good at damage limitation; at least, you have been so far. But now you’ve got people like me sniffing around and you don’t quite understand how it happened.’
Chudwell frowns. He glances at Tansil and raises an eyebrow.
‘You’re guessing I work for Paige McBride, you’re guessing I work for Jamie Baldwin, but you’re really pretty clueless and you’re getting panicky. Your family’s getting involved. Your gang of thugs are showing themselves to be careless and inept. You’re considering making me disappear – and I’m sure you can do it – but you have no idea who I’ve spoken to about all of this; how many other people know what’s been going on here.
‘Jamie Baldwin doesn’t know which stone you and your goons crawled out from under, but I do. I know exactly what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been doing it, and it’s all going to come crashing down very soon; you just don’t realise it yet. You’re just a bunch of punks.’
Chudwell smiles and nods at Tansil, who whacks me across the back of the head once more. I get a moment of sudden dizziness that makes me wonder if I’m going to crap out, but it passes and I’m just left with the pain.
‘Lovely little speech, Mr Beckett. Lots of words. Well done,’ says Chudwell. ‘All nonsense, of course. But you were right about one thing. The bit about us making you disappear. That was the only thing you said that rang true. What do you think, Larry?’
I hear Tansil sniggering like a schoolboy. Chudwell’s expression changes from smarmy to grim.
‘You seem to have it all worked out. What else have you come up with? Come on, old boy. Don’t be shy. We could all do with a laugh.’
‘Someone – and I think it’s you – is obsessed with Paige McBride,’ I say. ‘It started when you saw her at the Café Royal on the eleventh of March. You wanted to see her again and again, but you didn’t feel comfortable visiting her usual haunts. So you got your daughter’s charity to organise more gigs at the Royal. I think you subsidise Fly a Kite financially, so your daughter maybe had no choice. Then you prevented Paige McBride from having any sort of love life. She’s plainly out of your league and you couldn’t stand it. It was a clear case of if I can’t have her, no one can. You sent her gifts, champagne and…’
Suddenly the fog clears. It was staring me in the face as soon as I got here. We’re both wrong. Chudwell thought I was working for Baldwin, I thought he was the one with the Véronique D’Erotique infatuation.
‘It’s your wife.’
All her odd behaviour. Asking if I’d brought a gift from Paige. Attacking me with a poker for no apparent reason. But the reason was the mention of Paige McBride. The screaming in the bedroom; the whispered plans. She’s the one with the obsession. Lady Ombersley is Mr X. Charitably, I blame this atrocious lack of perception on my head injury and its side effects.
‘Ah,’ says Chudwell, nodding sagely. ‘The penny drops. Perhaps you’re not as stupid as we thought you were. Give him a little dose of medicine, Larry. I don’t like him.’
Tansil slaps the back of my head once more. It’s not as bad as last time, but I can think of more pleasant experiences. I think my nose is bleeding. I test this theory out with the back of one of my cuffed hands. The theory was correct. The cuffs hurt.
‘My wife is a very sick woman, Mr Beckett. She has been for some time. But I adore her, you see. I worship her. I’d do absolutely anything to make her happy. Anything to stop her from being distressed. Anything to try and salvage what’s left of the girl I married, and believe you me there isn’t much. She’s the mother of my heirs. She’s an Ombersley, and that’s more important than anything else. Of course, I couldn’t expect someone like you to comprehend that.’
‘Sorry – could you say all that again? I wasn’t listening.’
Footitt strolls in, looking pleased with himself. ‘I managed to calm her down, my lord. She’s fallen asleep. Hopefully, the medication will keep her under for a short while. But when she wakes up…’
‘Don’t worry, Barnaby. The girl will be here fairly soon. Larry has kindly arranged it.’ He snorts with amusement. ‘Mr Be
ckett here has worked out that Debs is obsessed with Miss McBride!’
This gets a brusque bark of a laugh from Footitt, who looks at me contemptuously. ‘What a buffoon. If only it were that simple, eh?’ he says to Chudwell, with a sympathetic doctor’s grin.
‘Have you ever heard of de Clérambault’s syndrome, Mr Beckett?’ asks Chudwell, dying to let me know how stupid I am.
It sounds familiar, but I can’t think from where. I shake my head. I feel my brain move. Why was my nose bleeding?
‘It’s a delusional disorder,’ says Footitt, happy to have something to contribute. ‘Also called erotomania. It’s when a person believes that someone is in love with them. Sometimes it can be a celebrity, sometimes a complete stranger. The person suffering from this disorder often thinks that a secret admirer, in this case the estimable Veronique D’Erotique, is subtly declaring their affection by certain glances, signals or other means.’
‘It’s happened before,’ says Chudwell. ‘With Debs, I mean. But this time it was more intense. As far as my wife is concerned, this is a perverse, forbidden relationship. It is the reason that Miss McBride does not respond to any of the gifts that my wife has sent her, and there have been plenty, believe me. Champagne, chocolates, perfume and even a fur coat. It is an expensive business. It has been an expensive business for me for a long time.’
Champagne, chocolates, perfume and a genuine Weguelin that’s probably worth a small fortune, but he’s not mentioning that. The gap on the wall in the reception room here was the same size as the painting of Rodantha. As a gift that almost makes sense. The nymph who was turned into a rose to avoid unwanted attention from male suitors. Instead of supernatural metamorphosis, we have a sadistic blow on the arm with an iron bar from a bent ex-cop. Did they try to get it back? Was that what the scratch on Paige’s front door was? Did they get inside? Did they not think to look behind the sofa? Come on, guys – keep spilling the beans. I haven’t got all day.
‘The fact that Miss McBride does not acknowledge the gifts is proof to Lady Ombersley that she wants to keep their forbidden love a secret; evidence that her obsession really exists,’ says Footitt, as if he’s giving a lecture to some medical students. ‘That it is a real love. A deep, all-consuming love that Miss McBride wants to nurture and cherish despite her deep shame.’
Shouldn’t it be Paige who’s sending Lady O the gifts? God knows. I’m not really up to discussing complex and unusual psychiatric disorders at the moment, but I have to keep talking to play for time. ‘But the real reason she doesn’t respond is because she has absolutely no idea who the gifts are from,’ I say. ‘Is that right?’
I’m suddenly getting a slightly worse headache just from thinking about all of this. Handling divorce cases suddenly seems like a big fun option.
‘You have to understand, Mr Beckett,’ says Chudwell, smiling. ‘There would have been no doubt in my wife’s mind that Miss McBride knew that the gifts were from her. She would have known by dint of the telepathic communication that she believes they have.’
‘Telepathy,’ I say. ‘The missing piece of the jigsaw.’
‘It was that first night at the Café Royal. Miss McBride’s act was erotically charged to say the least. She mimed to a French song while she stripped. My wife understands French. She speaks it fluently. It seemed as if the song was a direct message to her. After that it was hopeless. We were up until the early hours that night.’
Anouk told me that burlesque is the art of making you think you’re the only one who’s being seduced. That was certainly true of Paige’s show. I felt it myself. Add to that the provocative lyrics of Chaque Bouton Lâche: all that undress me, despoil me stuff. What a mess.
‘So she began to follow Paige on social media…’ I say.
Chudwell pouts and nods. ‘When she announced she was in a relationship with the boxer chappie, my wife attempted suicide. Barnaby here attempted to solve the problem with intensive therapy and pharmaceuticals, but – and this is no slight on his skills – it backfired and the drugs triggered a seizure. We have to be very careful what we give her now. We’re monitoring her bloods all of the time. As I said, this had happened before and we had a tried and trusted method to deal with it.’
‘Why don’t you try getting her competent medical help? Footitt’s a useless quack.’
He ignores this. ‘Debs know that Miss McBride is in pain from these relationships. Her heart belongs to my wife, but she’s forced to torture herself, punish herself, by having unacceptable liaisons with unsuitable and uncouth men from the lower orders.’
The lower orders? What century is this again?
‘Did she know you were discouraging Paige’s boyfriends in such an aggressive manner?’ I ask.
‘Know?’ Chudwell shakes his head and laughs. ‘She demanded it, Mr Beckett. Demanded it. And what Debs wants she always gets. It’s very simple, Mr Beckett. Paige McBride has a lover; my wife is unhappy. Paige McBride has no lover; my wife is happy. We keep an eye on things and make the necessary adjustments. Is that too difficult for you to understand?’
‘She’s been on milder pharmaceutical therapy for some months now,’ explains Footitt, as if I give a fuck. ‘It’s getting results, I think.’
‘Not only does the very thought of Miss McBride having a sexual relationship cause my wife to be physically sick, but she also has intense seizures and screaming fits,’ says Chudwell. ‘Once, she attempted to pull two of her molar teeth out with pliers. I was afraid we were going to have to have her sectioned. Drastic action had to be taken with the boxer. We gave him a chance, but he was too stupid to take it.’
‘There’s only one kind of language that his sort understand,’ says Tansil. I’m shocked to hear his voice coming from behind me. I’d almost forgotten about him. ‘He was a stupid boy and he made a stupid decision.’
‘So where does filming him and Paige having sex come into all of this? I must admit you had me stumped there.’
I look straight into Chudwell’s eyes for a reaction. Does he know about this? I’m getting close now. Hang on, Rikki. Don’t get impatient. Put the machete away. Tansil kneads my shoulders again. I think this is his way of letting me know he’s there, rather than gratis stress relief. Chudwell gives a bashful little shrug.
‘It’s something that had worked before. There was an actress. Same problem that we have now. Debs saw her in the theatre. Got the idea that this woman’s lines were coded messages to her. Unlike Baldwin, this woman’s boyfriend went along with it after Larry had paid him a visit.
‘He was a property developer or some such. A worm of a man. We set up all the gear. Temple Security gave us access to all of that. They have everything. All the top-notch surveillance gizmos. We filmed them under the pretext of letting all the other threats fall away. It was good to watch. Very good. The woman was exciting, lusty and beautiful.’
He flashes me a cheesy pervert’s grin, as if I’m an admiring accomplice.
‘We told the boyfriend what to do,’ he continues. ‘What to do to the actress. It was good. He performed the precise acts that we demanded. That I demanded. I demanded acts that I personally found exciting.’
I can see that he’s shaking slightly, just thinking about this.
‘In this case we would have told Baldwin what to do. What to do to McBride. Anything we wanted to see, really. Anything that came to mind. You know what she looks like. McBride, I mean. She’s an alluring little thing. A very pretty face. Good pair of charlies. And then when we had a copy of it, we’d show it to her. Tell her what her boyfriend had allowed us to do. Then that would be the end of them. Kills two birds with one stone. That’s what we did with the actress.’
Chudwell looks pleased with himself. What was the name of that actress Caroline and I saw linked to Lady Ombersley? Gail Mozelle? Was it her he was referring to? Or were there others? I’d love to arrange it so that Jamie Baldwin could spend a couple of quality hours in a soundproofed basement with this fuck, even with his right arm s
crewed. Then when he’d finished, I’d take over.
‘Gets us some free gentleman’s entertainment,’ chuckles Tansil. ‘Something we can watch at our…’
‘Lodge meetings?’ I say.
There’s a sharp intake of breath from Footitt. He looks in Tansil’s direction then looks at Chudwell for a comment, reassurance, advice, plane tickets, anything.
‘We have been doing our homework, haven’t we, Mr Beckett.’
‘It pays to be thorough, Hugo. I’m still waiting for that coffee, by the way.’
Chudwell holds on to his smug smile, but only just. Things are getting worse and worse. Tansil takes his hands off my shoulders. I’m waiting for another head blow, but it doesn’t come.
‘Are you really that intent upon digging your own grave, Mr Beckett?’ says Chudwell. He’s trying to conceal it, but his voice sounds brittle and unsure.
Oh well. Spade at the ready. ‘The Yeoman’s Row lodge is the key to the whole thing. I’d suspected that it might have been your links to Temple Security, but it isn’t. Not really. That’s just where you got a few of your trustworthy foot soldiers from. Your tame incompetent psychiatrist here is the chink in the armour. He was careless. Let himself be ID’d by Jamie Baldwin. I followed him to Knightsbridge the other night. Then I broke into the lodge and hacked your computer. You have an intriguing membership list.’
‘Bullshit,’ says Tansil. ‘It would take a team of experts a month to hack into our system.’
‘Oh, really?’
I must pass that on to Doug if I survive this evening. Chudwell gives me a patronising smirk, but I fear he’s gone a little pale.
‘There’s a tangled web here involving Temple Security, Fly a Kite and your masonic lodge,’ I say. ‘Footitt’s a member, it goes without saying. Tansil’s a member, so is his old mate Martyn Ricketts.’ I turn around to face Tansil. ‘You remember Martyn Ricketts, don’t you Larry? Is it OK if I call you Larry?’ He’s not hitting me, so I continue. ‘The Martyn Ricketts who slung you all that money to slow down the investigations into his armed robberies? Dear me, people’s worst suspicions about these little gentlemen’s clubs are not unfounded after all.’
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