‘Not much help, then.’
‘No.’
Alan looked defeated. I remembered I was supposed to be bolstering his ego and cheering him up, and that maybe reading a series of letters from a married woman to her lover weren’t exactly the best therapy in the circumstances. I couldn’t remember if his wife had had a lover before their break-up, but the chances were she had. People did, even the mumsy Janey.
‘Thanks for the info about the poem, anyway. It’s been very helpful. Give me your notes. I’ll mull over them tomorrow.’ He passed them over with the letters and I put them, with mine, back in the envelope. ‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Let’s watch a video.’
I fished out one of his documentaries from the dusty pile (when would I have time to clean properly?) at the bottom of my main bookcase, and put it on. ‘One of your best,’ I said as the opening credits rolled.
He didn’t even look at his name on the screen. He got up and walked about. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to clear up, Alex – you may have thought, earlier in the evening, that I was – a little drunk?’
I nodded.
‘I had lunch with Janey, and a drink or two. The alcohol must have reacted with the antihistamines I’m currently taking – and I was upset, of course.’
‘Of course,’ I said, and ran the video back. ‘Look, Alan, I do think the credits on this are particularly effective.’
He sat on the sofa close beside me. After a few seconds I realized he was pressing his thigh against mine. I moved away, gently. He took off his glasses, gave a muted yelp, and leapt on top of me, aiming kisses at my mouth, groping to undo my jeans. ‘You know you want it as much as I do,’ he grunted into my ear.
I knew I shouldn’t laugh, so I didn’t. I lay still, saying, ‘Al-an’ (downward inflection)‘Al-an’ (rising inflection) and finally shouting, ‘ALAN! STOP IT!’
He didn’t stop, and I didn’t feel amused any more because he was much stronger than I was and his eyes were fixed and staring. He slapped me, hard, across the face. I gasped, as much from surprise as from pain, though there was enough pain.
I didn’t know what to do. I could fight but I might not win, and I didn’t want a broken nose. I could respond, but I didn’t want to.
I went limp under him and started to cry.
‘Bitch,’ he said.
‘I’m not a bitch,’ I snuffled. ‘I gave you supper. You’re my friend, Alan. Stop this.’
His fingers were grappling with the fly-buttons of my 517s: I didn’t reckon his chances. I stroked his hair and kissed the side of his face soothingly. Gradually, his fingers stopped scrabbling at me. I hugged him. ‘Let’s watch the video, eh?’ I said.
He shifted off me, smoothed his hair back, replaced his glasses, and watched the credits roll. His name would help. It always had.
I drove him home and got back to my flat just before midnight. I was tired but not shattered, and lay down on the sofa with the phone. But first, before making any calls, I thought about Alan.
I’d miscalculated somewhere, writing him off as weak and negligible. Although he was weak, he wasn’t negligible. I’d been a whisker from being raped.
Wrong again, I thought. He’d been dangerous – briefly, but seriously – precisely because he felt weak and negligible, and couldn’t bear it.
Anyhow, for the moment the mess was smoothed over. Neither of us had mentioned it again; we’d both talked resolutely first about the documentary we were watching and, while I drove him back, about the documentary he was working on. Then he’d kissed me on the cheek in his usual unthreatening and noncommittal way. Before he’d closed the door he’d hesitated and I’d thought he was going to offer an explanation – perhaps that the antihistamines he was taking had reacted badly with the cocoa – but he’d said nothing.
I hoped it was the last I’d hear of it. His work was useful, maybe 20 per cent of my research earnings last year. And he was such a long-standing fixture in my life, I’d miss him, foolishness and all.
There was nothing to be gained by thinking of it any more, so I got to work and tried Nick on the mobile. No luck. I left another ring-me message on the office call-minder, then stared at the ceiling and thought. I could ask the Golden Kid, the estate agent who sublet us our office, but not until the morning. At this time of night he’d be out, either clubbing or with any of his innumerable relations.
There was always Laverne, Nick’s recent love-object. She’s fifteen, into body-piercing, open-mouthed gum-chewing and escort work. Nick claims Laverne dislikes me more than I dislike her, but I don’t think that’s possible. I had no reservations about waking Laverne up, because she wouldn’t be asleep, though she might well not be in.
She answered after eight rings and her voice was chilly when I identified myself, though no chillier than mine. ‘Nah, she isn’t here.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘She’s not around. I need to speak to her.’
‘So?’
‘So when did you last see her?’ Heavy sigh, gum-chewing sounds. ‘Did you two fight?’
‘I don’t have to talk to you.’
‘If you don’t I’ll keep ringing back.’
‘I’ll leave the phone off.’
‘Fine. Pity if you lose work, though. If the agency can’t get in touch.’
‘Much you care.’
‘Plus I’ll tell the Social.’
‘Tell the Social what?’
‘That your mum’s taken your baby home to Tower Hamlets. Then they’ll take your flat away.’
‘Nah, you wouldn’t.’
‘Try me.’
‘They wouldn’t.’
‘Try them. Just answer the question. Did you fight?’
Heavy sigh, then the economic motive won through. ‘Yeah, well. I s’pose. I mean, I didn’t but she did. She was pissed off with me.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘She stamped and shouted a lot because I had a friend with me, know what I mean?’
‘She walked in when you were in bed?’
‘Yeah. Sort of. More in the shower.’
‘Did she say where she was going?’
‘Nah. She just screamed, like, general abuse. Bit out of order, if you ask me.’
‘When was this?’
‘Last night. Six, seven?’
‘Thanks, Laverne.’
‘Fuck off,’ she said.
After the call I was less anxious about Nick. She’d been upset and angry last night; she must have tamped away somewhere to lick her wounds, specially since she knew that the most she’d get in the way of sympathy she’d get from me was told you so and good riddance.
I locked the DESTROY UNOPENED envelope in the top drawer; I’d get back to it if I drew a blank at Bartlett Close, Rillington Place as was.
I cleaned the bathroom before I went to bed. It didn’t look as if I’d have much time tomorrow.
Friday 4 November
Chapter Nine
By nine o’clock I’d run three miles, showered, and was in the office with my third cup of coffee, trying to decide if the fog was actually thicker than yesterday or just more irritating because it had gone on too long. Both, probably.
There was still no sign of Nick. If she didn’t turn up soon I’d have to sort through her active investigations and deal with anything urgent, but first I had to send someone pretending to be interested in buying a flat in Bartlett Close. If I was lucky, there’d only be one young male tenant in the block. If I was very lucky, he’d be the one selling his flat.
I went through the photograph files, located one of the misper Samantha Eyre, made another mug of instant coffee, picked up my own, and took the lot to see the Golden Kid.
It wasn’t far. Out of my door, with its sign carefully hand-painted by Nick, and into the next door with its professional but battered gold lettering: Poneybeat and Unstruther, Estate Agent Est. 1958.
They’d been crooked since 1958
, so at least they were consistent. Set up back when Notting Hill was the most notorious area for extortionate landlords who crammed poor, mostly black, tenants into the crumbling decaying terrace houses, Poneybeat and Unstruther had served the landlords. Then they had served the yuppies. Now, they serve themselves and us.
There’s no Poneybeat, no Unstruther. There’s a Brown, the owner, who is currently serving three years in an open prison for embezzlement, and his assistant, Dermot Molloy, known as the Golden Kid because he likes gold jewellery so much he clanks when he walks.
There was no sign of the Kid in the front office but tendrils of tobacco smoke oozed from the back room, looking like a minor outcrop of the fog. I went straight through. He was squeezing his spots at an ancient mirror, his perpetual Camel in an ashtray by his side.
‘Hi, Alex,’ he said. ‘Be with you a minute. Gissa bit of privacy, right?’
‘Get a move on,’ I said, retreating to the front office.
‘I got a message for you,’ he called to me. ‘From Nick. She’s gone away for a while. Back Sat’day.’
‘Where’s she gone?’ I called.
‘To visit an old professor, she said. She wanted to get out of London.’
That made sense. As far as I know the only non-London friend or even acquaintance Nick has is a retired mathematics professor who lives in Oxford.
When did she tell you this?’
‘Last night. Or maybe the night before. Yeah, the night before.’
He came through to join me, his pale redhead’s skin now blotched with Clearasil. He’s in his early twenties, about six foot and skinny with close-cropped ginger hair. He was wearing his usual suit, dark, very wide at the shoulder, double-breasted and fiercely pinstriped. Under it was a white T-shirt, like the undershirts American servicemen wear in old movies. He had one neck chain, three bracelets, fifteen studs in his ears and two in his nose, all gold. He was also wearing his biker boots.
‘Ta for the coffee,’ he said, sitting down at one of the four desks the office contained. I was in one of the eight client chairs, which I’ve never seen occupied. He has no genuine estate agency business – according to Nick, who knows him well, he has only three flats on his books and they’re all used for benefit fraud: the taxpayer is paying some twelve non-existent people to live in them. Passing trade very seldom progressed beyond the window with its flyblown sheets of property details, all marked UNDER OFFER. If prospective clients look in they’re put off by the Kid’s huge Harley-Davidson Electraglide bike parked in the middle of the office.
The Kid earns some of his money from us: apart from our office rent, Nick uses him for casual work. How he earns the rest, I don’t ask, but he never seems to be short.
‘Seen Lil this morning?’ I asked.
‘Nah. Bit early for her, int it? Midday she comes over this way, more like.’
I thought back. He was right, I’d never seen her about before lunchtime. But now I knew where Nick was. I didn’t need to see her urgently, anyway. ‘How’re you fixed today?’ I said.
‘You got some work for me?’
I nodded.
‘Sorry, I’ve a problem with that. I’m going down south, to visit me brother Sean. He’s in a tad of bother, Nick may have told you, and I’m popping down with some readies.’
‘Bail?’
‘Nah.’
He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask. The Kid has several brothers. Most of them are in jail some of the time, but never for long.
‘I can help out tomorrow,’ he offered.
‘I’ll get back to you,’ I said, but I probably wouldn’t. I had to get the Rillington Place job done today if at all possible. If I had to, I’d go myself, but I didn’t want to because if any follow-up needed to be done I hoped to go in under cover of a residential enquiry.
I showed him the photograph of the Eyre girl. ‘Recognize her?’
‘Yeah. It’s the misper Nick was after I seen her a few times. She came in once.’
‘Why?’
‘To look at the bike close up. She liked the Harley.’
I looked at the gleaming blue and silver monster. It was certainly eye-catching. ‘Did you talk to her?’
‘Bit. She said she’d moved into the area a few weeks ago, was living on the estate down the road.’
‘Did she say where on the estate?’
‘Nah.’
‘Or who with?’
‘Nah.’ ‘When did you last see her?’ ‘Sat’day. Sat’day morning.’ ‘Anything else you can remember?’ I took down his description of what Sam Eyre had been wearing – very tight washed-out Levis, a ribbed blue sweater over a great pair, and a leather jacket. ‘Fashion leather,’ he added scornfully. ‘Not leathers, leather.’ Then I helped him manoeuvre his bike out of the office, locked up after him, and stood, at a loss, watching his accelerating, swooping progress up the road until even the rumble-roar of the bike’s enormous engine was swallowed by the fog.
I felt bereft, which annoyed me. OK, so the Kid couldn’t help, so Nick had dropped out of sight, so Barty was in Zaire. So what? I usually like working alone. Only one person to blame, that way.
Doubt was unsettling me. Samantha Eyre was Killer bait. Nick had undertaken to find her, then ducked out. Perhaps that case should be followed up first. But if the unknown letter-writer’s son was the Killer, he should be my top priority.
And who could I send to look at the Bartlett Close flat?
A taxi was coming towards me, up the Grove. It slowed down when it approached the cul-de-sac where my flat was, then accelerated and finally pulled up beside me.
My friend Polly tumbled out, talking. ‘Oh Alex it’s me, it’s you, isn’t it wonderful, isn’t it foggy? Kiss kiss kiss.’
She bent over (she’s tall), waved her head ceremonially backwards and forwards beside my ears, swooped back inside the taxi to grab two large leather holdalls, and paid the cabbie, who drove away. ‘We’re together again! I’ve got a whole day! Are you busy? Say you’re not! What shall we do?’
I looked at her. She’s my age, but there the physical similarities stop. She used to be a model. She’s very tall, dark, beautiful, expensively dressed. She works as an accountant with a top firm in Hong Kong. Her annual Christmas bonus is more than my entire pension fund. Most of all, she looks like someone who could buy a flat in Bartlett Close with a cheque from her current account. And who might be daffy enough to pay over the odds for a whim.
‘You’re going to buy a flat,’ I said. ‘And I’ll give you a hand home with your bags.’
Chapter Ten
After she left for the estate agent’s, I buzzed around frenetically. I checked through Nick’s current work at the office – nothing urgent – sent out some outstanding invoices, put a sign on the door saying NO OFFICE HOURS TODAY, popped over to the library, took a photocopy of the Robert Browning poem, bought some lemons and Perrier water for Polly who’s recently been recruited by the caffeine police, cleared my action board, pinned the poem up plus the very short list of facts I had so far about Robbie Lucas’s mistress, dusted round Polly’s flat to make it look more welcoming, and then got stuck in to washing the woodwork in my living-room.
I wasn’t worried about sending her to Bartlett Close, mostly because I didn’t believe the flats had any connection with the Killer, but partly because, even if it had, she was absolutely not his type: too tall, too old, wrong colouring. I had given her a brief summary of the background and she’d brushed aside any suggestion of risk, ‘With an estate agent? In broad daylight? Get real.’
At eleven thirty, she was back. ‘Good news and bad news. The estate agent took me round – none of the tenants were there – and it’s either the whole house that’s for sale or the flats individually, and two of the flats are under offer, but I said I was interested in the whole house – which isn’t a house at all, it’s basically workshops and offices converted to flats, but of course you know that . . .’
‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Coffee?’
‘I don’t drink coffee any more, remember I told you. Look look look how it’s improved my skin. Mineral water if you have any – fizzy with a slice of lemon.’
‘Coming up.’
‘And the good news is I’ve put in an offer for the whole house, so you can go and do my residential enquiry. But the bad news is that the house is owned by a man in his early twenties, who also lives in one of the flats—’
‘That’s good news, surely?’
‘No, because the two tenants are his mates, also men in their early twenties.’
I looked at her. ‘Three of them,’ I said.
‘Yep. Three of them. The owner’s Richard Fairfax, the tenants are Russell Jacobs and James Hobbs. All the flats have two bedrooms and in Hobbs’s flat it looked as if a woman was living in the second bedroom, or staying there anyway. Hobbs’s flat is also really neat and clean, getting on for obsessive I’d say if he does the cleaning but more or less normal if it’s the woman who does, and the other two are what you would expect. Messy. But I didn’t see into the garages, which are seriously big – designed for vans, some are used as workshops now. They were all locked and the agent didn’t have the keys.’ She paused for breath and sipped her Perrier. ‘How’m I doing so far?’ she said.
‘Great. Keep talking.’
‘I didn’t try to pump the agent much. I stuck to asking practical questions about the property, because I wanted to convince him I was a serious prospect.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes. He thinks I’m a cash buyer and he said he welcomed any investigation that would lead to a quick exchange of contracts.’
‘Hang on a minute. Have you offered to pay more for the whole house than he’d get for shifting the flats separately?’
‘Yes. Not much more, but some. Because if I take the whole thing, then there are development possibilities, because the yard and the garages cover quite a bit of space and you could knock them down and put up three little town houses, and of course re-jig the accommodation in the three flats. I reckon you could get six units out of that.’
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