Dirty Weekend
Page 19
Again he had a strong feeling that something had happened in the flat, that it was trying to tell him something if he only had the eyes to see it.
He went from room to room but was drawn back to the bathroom. Suddenly he knew what was bothering him, what had bothered him from the start. It was the bathroom itself. It was out of character. Out of character? He could just imagine Macrae’s contempt. Only girls talk like that, laddie.
But it was out of character. With its oversize bath and its mirrors and mock-gold fittings it did not fit in with the severity of the other rooms.
He looked up at the shower bracket again. It didn’t seem possible for a shower to be aimed into the bath from that position. Maybe Foster had had the bathroom redecorated and refitted and decided just to leave the old shower fitting where it was.
And maybe he didn’t. That wouldn’t fit his character either.
The closer he looked the more the bracket didn’t seem to have anything to do with a shower. He went out into the sitting-room to get a chair to stand on to examine it more closely.
‘Not much for a famous TV person,’ the Rat said. He was standing in the middle of the sitting-room.
‘I told you not to come in here!’
‘Jesus, look at all those videos. They all of him?’
‘Never mind. Get going.’
‘You stealin’ chairs now?’
Silver turned to place the chair in the bathroom. The Rat pressed the play button on the video recorder.
‘Is that him?’
The picture showed the final seconds of one of Foster’s shows, the one Silver had already watched.
‘Christ, you stupid nit!’ Silver called over his shoulder. ‘Don’t touch anything!’
‘He’d look better without glasses.’
Silver placed the chair in the right position. Then he heard the Rat swear. He went back into the sitting-room. ‘I told you not to . . .’
They were looking at a home-made black and white video. It was a high shot of a boy in a bath.
The bath in this apartment.
The boy was about fourteen and his skin was the colour of milky coffee. He lay back in the soapy water and another figure knelt by the side of the bath. He was gently rubbing the boy’s body with soap and then sponging it.
Both Silver and the Rat looked on in fascinated silence.
The kneeling figure rose and they saw it was Henry Foster. He was wearing only a towel. He moved out of shot but in a moment he entered it again. Now he was naked. He said something to the boy and laughed. Then he too got into the bath. He began to stroke the boy’s face. But the boy turned away and Foster playfully splashed a handful of water at him. The boy splashed back. There was a splashing contest for a few moments.
Foster was obviously enjoying himself, but the boy’s expression was angry. Then suddenly Foster grabbed him and tried to kiss him. There was a struggle. The boy, still soapy, slipped out of Foster’s hands and out of shot. Foster climbed out of the bath and he too moved out of shot. The camera played on the bathwater as it gradually became still. Finally, all they saw was a shot of the bath and the taps.
Silver pressed the fast-forward button. The tape whirred on, but the picture did not change.
They waited in silence until the tape ran out. ‘Is that him?’
‘Yeah. That’s him. That’s Huntsman.’ Then suddenly the Rat said, ‘I’m off!’
‘Wait!’
But he slipped out of the back door and Silver heard his feet racing down the stairs. For a moment he thought of running after him, but he’d never catch him and anyway what more could he add?
He went back into the bathroom and looked at the bracket. He knew now it was used to hold a video camera. He wondered if all the other videos on the shelves would show similar scenes. He thought it highly likely. Put your own show on first then hide personalised porn on what was left of the tape. Clever Henry Foster.
He went down in the lift and fetched Macrae.
*
Dark clouds had come up during the afternoon and turned the day to dusk. Benson sat in the living-room of the mews house and chain-smoked, lighting one cigarette from another.
His thoughts reflected the sky; they were ominous, portentous and confused. One second scenes from Hong Kong flashed into his mind, the next he was seeing again the dead, staring eyes of the Chinese man he had drowned.
Killed a man! God, he never thought that would happen. Never ever. He’d never seen himself in a role like that. Nor in the reverse. He’d never . . . well, not until he’d played golf with Mr Shao, he’d never seen himself in the role of victim.
He was a businessman, nothing more, nothing less. Businessmen were known to have their ups and downs. Christ, if every businessman who owed money was murdered, the place would be littered with bodies!
Did they know about the money in the food cupboard, the money that had come from his safe? They couldn’t have. Not even Mrs Feniman knew. So this was pure revenge. Not that they would see it that way. Rather pour encourager. Not good business to have people get away with owing money. Spoils your reputation.
And she wouldn’t have been able to tell them where he’d gone either because he didn’t know himself until he started. But they had ways. There was the American Express payment and the passenger lists. It wouldn’t have taken them long.
He began to pace up and down the room.
Where the hell was liebchen?
Even as the thought went through his mind he heard a discreet knocking at the door. He strode to it and flung it open.
‘Liebchen!’ he said, his eyes alight with relief.
But it wasn’t liebchen, it was another Chinese man. He was young and slender but dressed, like Benson, in a suit. He was wearing a trilby on his head.
Before Benson could react, the man pushed the door and Benson backwards and had come into the room. Now he slammed it shut. But Benson was already running. He ran up the stairs and into the bedroom. His knowledge of the layout gave him just the smallest start.
He closed the door and locked it, sprang across the bed and grabbed the phone on the bedside table. Nine . . . nine . . . nine . . .
‘Hello! Hello!’ he shouted.
But even before the phone could be answered at the emergency services, the line went dead. He sat on the bed with the useless receiver in his hand. His eyes sought the telephone wire. It was stapled into the bedroom wall just above the skirting board and disappeared under the door.
He threw down the phone and ran to the window and began to wrestle with the catch. It had recently been painted and had stuck. At that moment the door burst open.
‘You want money?’ Benson said, shrilly. ‘I give you money!’
He heard his voice but hardly recognised it. He was speaking as though to a primitive savage.
‘Plenty money!’
He began to move towards the bed. Then he saw the pistol in the man’s hand. The barrel was elongated and thickened by the silencer that had been screwed into it.
‘You don’t want to do this, old chap,’ Benson said, holding out his hands. ‘Be reasonable. I’ll give you everyth—’
The man shot him in the chest.
‘Oh!’ Benson said, as he half fell. He looked down at his chest. ‘For Christ’s sake don’t do that! Can’t you understand English? Me give to you—’
The man shot him in the head. Benson’s last view of the world was the counterpane on the bed. He reached for it. His fingers gripped it. Then slowly he toppled sideways and pulled the counterpane on top of him.
Had he survived for another few seconds he might have lived to be a grandfather for, as the Chinese put away his gun, a voice called to him in Cantonese from below.
He ran swiftly and quietly down the stairs. Another Chinese man was waiting for him. He nodded in the direction of a car outside the stables. It was parked with its rear to them. They could see someone at the wheel and they could also see a blue police light on the roof, now switched off.
*
In the stables Macrae and Silver were questioning the owner. His name was the Hon. Evelyn Biggs-Stratton. He was a slender man wearing a long tweed hacking-jacket, white pin-cord riding breeches, long highly polished riding boots and a monocle. He smoked a cigarette in an amber holder. He was old and grizzled and Silver had never seen anyone like him.
‘Fit?’ said the Hon. Biggs-Stratton, who was deaf and had misheard one of Macrae’s questions. ‘’Course I’m fit. Eighty-six next year and I can still ride to hounds twice a week. Try that when you’re my age and then you can come and ask impertinent questions. What the hell’s it got to do with you anyway?’ His bloodshot eye glared at them through his monocle.
Macrae decided to let it pass. He pointed to a window high up on the wall. ‘Is that window kept locked?’
‘Kept what?’
‘Locked.’
‘How the hell should I know? You want to ask Veronica that.’
The horses had turned their heads towards the three men as though fascinated by the encounter.
‘Who’s Veronica?’ Silver said, facing the owner of the stables and speaking loudly and clearly.
‘Stable girl. She’s the one who’s supposed to know things like that. How the hell do I know if a window’s left open or not?’
Silver stood on one of the boxes underneath the window and was just able to see that the catch was not closed. He tried it and said, ‘It’s stiff and hasn’t been used for years.’
‘As the bishop said to the actress.’
The Hon. Biggs-Stratton gave a rasping laugh. Then he said, ‘I don’t know what you fellows think you’re after, but you’re not going to find it here. There’s never been the slightest hint of impropriety about these stables. Clean as a whistle except for one sod who lived down the mews. Said he couldn’t stand the smell of the manure and got the health inspectors. I said the stables had been here since 1831 and been owned by my family for most of that time and if he didn’t like the smells he should bugger off and live somewhere else. Bloody sight better for him than exhaust fumes.’
‘We’re looking for someone who might have slept here last night,’ Macrae repeated loudly. ‘A young boy. We think he may have got through that window and slept in the straw.’
‘In the straw? If you ask me it’s the best place. Better than a bed. Oh, much better. More comfortable. Healthier too. Better for the back. Nothing like it. I’ve slept up there many a night. Had my first stable girl up there. First of many. There’s something about horses that does something to women, thank God. Otherwise I’d have packed it in after the war. Not sex. Horses.’
‘Do you mind if we look around?’
‘Do what you like. Only don’t ever say I’m not fit. What about a point-to-point in the morning, a three-mile slog in the afternoon and a couple of sets of racquets in the evening? Think you could manage that? Fit? Christ, you don’t know what it means.’
Macrae and Silver had climbed the stairs into the hayloft. Several bales had recently been moved nearer to the top of the ladder and others had been pushed back against the wall. There was no evidence of anyone using the place as a refuge.
Silver picked up the stalks of a bunch of grapes. ‘Yours?’ he said to Biggs-Stratton.
‘Grapes?’ The eye swivelled in the monocle like a red beam. ‘I’m not a bloody invalid. That’s the sort of stuff Veronica eats. Yoghurt . . . bananas . . . dried fruit . . . Horrible.’
He fitted another cigarette into his holder and lit it. He caught Silver’s glance. ‘You think it’s unhealthy, do you? You come along and tell me that when you’re eighty-six.’
They went outside. Macrae stood on the tub of dead geraniums. He saw several small marks on the window-sill that might have come from hands or feet or both – or they might not. If it was Terry Collins he was miles away by now.
‘He was conning you,’ Macrae said angrily to Silver.
‘Who?’
‘That bloody layabout Rattray. But I’ll watch for him. You’ll have that money back or he’ll go inside.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Maria parked her car in the mews directly in front of her house and went in. The long walk in Hampstead had cleared her mind. She knew now that she was not going to have an affair with Jack, but it still left her with the problem of what to do about him. She knew him well enough to know that he hadn’t invited her to London just to play pat-a-cake. He knew and she knew what the arrangements were. They were the same arrangements that had pertained in Berlin when he would fly in from London and phone her from Tegel airport.
‘Feel like a dirty weekend?’ he would say.
And she would ham it up in her thickest German accent, ‘Please, I do not understand. What is that?’
And he would say, ‘An old English custom. Like morris dancing lying down.’
It had amused and excited her. Just as his phone call coming out of the blue had excited her this time. Now she was no longer excited in that way. She was brittle and febrile and wished it was all over and that she was safely back in Hampshire listening to the rain dripping off the eaves. Already she had begun to look forward to getting home, to preparing for Richard’s arrival. She’d get in something special to welcome him back; and make herself look as attractive as she could.
She would erase any thoughts of what he had been doing that weekend. She would go after him with everything she knew. She’d be a mistress to him as well as a wife.
But in the meantime there was Jack. She had thought of telephoning him at his hotel to say she had broken down, developed ’flu, picked up a stomach bug, anything. But then she thought: what if he came down to look for her? What would Richard think of that? And in any case it was pure cowardice.
No, the best way was to face it. Go out to dinner and a movie and pretend that was all she had ever had in mind.
‘Good God, Jack, that was all over a long time ago,’ she would say.
And Jack would shrug and say, ‘OK, liebchen, just testing.’
Would he?
Or would he become drunk and unpleasant and make a scene?
This is what worried her.
She lit a cigarette and dropped the match in the ashtray and noticed there were several butts in it already. Richard must have failed to tidy up before he left. At least none of the butts had lipstick on it.
She carried the ashtray to the kitchen and emptied it into the pedal bin. Frowning, she looked more closely. There were several empty tins in it. This was unlike Richard. Anyway, who would eat baked beans and apricot jam and pineapple slices? You’d only eat a mixture like that if there was nothing else. But there were lots of other things. She knew because she kept an eye on the food cupboard. She opened it to check and the first thing she saw was a plastic bag with ‘Duty-Free Shop’ printed on it in large letters.
Then she knew what had happened. Jack had been here. Those had been his cigarette butts. But had he eaten two tins of baked beans, one of pineapple slices and a pot of apricot jam? Not unless the Far East had dramatically changed his habits.
The bag had been pushed into the cupboard squashing some of the packets on the shelf and now she pulled it out to replace it more tidily. As she did so she looked inside it and found herself staring at three pieces of French bread and wads of various currencies kept together with rubber bands.
She couldn’t believe it. She thought it must be Monopoly money. Then she looked more closely, taking out several bundles and riffling through them. They were real enough.
She felt her stomach clench with tension and a kind of nameless, free-floating apprehension. Why? Why would Jack carry all this money around in a plastic bag? And why would he hide it here?
She pushed the ba
g back into the cupboard and closed the door. Her mouth was dry with fear. She took down a glass and filled it at the tap and was raising it to her mouth when there was a tiny plop and she found herself looking at what appeared to be red smoke gradually staining the water.
She looked up but all she could see was a dark spot on the ceiling. Someone had been in the bedroom above, she thought. Someone had spilled red wine.
A scenario formed in her mind. Jack had come early. He had brought a bottle of wine, drunk some of it, and knocked over the glass or the bottle.
And the money? That was typical of Jack, he had always skated on the edge of the law.
Was he still there, she wondered? Had he gone to sleep?
‘Jack?’ she called up the stairs. ‘Jack, are you there?’
She went up and looked into the bedroom. It was something of a mess. The bed was empty, but clearly Jack had been there. The counterpane had been flung on to the floor on the far side. He must have had a sleep and gone out again. She straightened the pillows and then pulled up the counterpane. It seemed to be caught. She pulled harder. A white hand, the fingers crooked into the material, slowly rose on to the bed as she pulled.
‘Jack, are you—’
She saw him. His face was covered in blood and there was more blood on his shirt.
She was horror-struck. Frozen.
‘Jack!’ It was just a whisper.
She forced herself to go to the other side of the bed.
‘Oh, Jack!’
She stood looking down at him, willing him to answer, to get up and tell her it was really raspberry jam and that it was his little coming-home joke.
But there was something about the way he was lying, with one arm caught in the counterpane, that was not a natural position for any living person to take. And then there was his skin. The parts not covered by blood were strangely white, almost phosphorescent. She knew she was looking at a corpse.
Every instinct in her body made her want to scream and run. But she told herself that would be impossible. This was a friend and sometime lover, a partner of her husband. He had been killed in their house. She could not run. She must do something. She must telephone the police. She picked up the bedside phone and hit 999. Nothing happened. She turned away from Jack’s body and stared hard at the wall as she tried once more for the dialling tone. She did not get it.