‘We got to talking, that’s all. I told him a bit about the agency and he mentioned the line of surveillance equipment.’
‘Angelo says he spoke well of you. “Lovely”, “charming”, “intelligent”, and “very attractive”.’
‘Stop it!’
At that moment Angelo returned. The women fell silent and Angelo said, ‘Salvatore said he could hardly turn down a paid pub-crawl.’
‘He’s not seeing Muffin tonight, then?’ Gina asked.
‘He didn’t say,’ Angelo considered. ‘It didn’t sound as if he had to alter any arrangements.’
‘Mama will be disappointed,’ Gina said.
‘Maybe he’ll take Muffin with him,’ Rosetta said. ‘She certainly sounded interested when we were talking business at dinner.’
Angelo said, ‘I met your friend, the salesman, today, Rose.’
‘He’s not my “friend”,’ Rosetta said.
‘Forceful guy,’ Angelo said.
‘When I talked to him,’ Rosetta said, ‘he made points about the business that made sense. That’s why I thought it would be good for him to talk to you.’
‘What points?’
‘That we should capitalize on our position in the market.’
‘What does that mean?’ Angelo said.
‘Because Papa bought the buildings outright when he did, we have low overheads and a good location. It makes us perfectly placed to expand.’
‘Do we want to expand?’ Angelo asked.
‘Not so far,’ Rosetta conceded. ‘But we have to think of the next generation. There’s David and Marie. And their children. Salvatore might get married. And I haven’t exactly given up the idea of having children myself yet.’
Salvatore’s first stop was the Rose and Crown, a small, friendly local in Larkhall, itself virtually a village within the city. At the bar Salvatore asked for Kit Bridges’ friend, Cheryl, but the man behind the bar said Cheryl wasn’t on.
Salvatore ordered a pint and then bought one for the barman, whose name was Vlad. Vlad remembered the man who’d shown the photograph and described him as sallow-complexioned, and in his late twenties. As well, the man had worn a long black raincoat and was maybe five-nine. Vlad didn’t remember hair colour or other features. ‘Except,’ he said, ‘now you mention it, the bugger had knobbly hands.’
‘Knobbly?’ Salvatore asked.
‘His fingers weren’t straight. When I served him he had trouble getting a grip on the sleever, even though he’d asked for it.’
‘Did he show you the picture?’
‘Not the picture,’ Vlad said. ‘He had a stack of them, all the same.’
‘Was he passing them out, or what?’
‘Not that I saw,’ Vlad said. ‘But he did show one to Cheryl. I remember that.’
‘And what did Cheryl tell him?’
‘She asked what it were about. He said it were a hush-hush thing and he couldn’t tell her details. He made it sound right mysterious.’
‘But he didn’t show the picture to you?’
‘Not to me special,’ Vlad said. ‘He saw I were looking like, over Cheryl’s shoulder. But he never talked to me and he never asked me direct.’
‘Why not?’
‘Couldn’t tell you, mate,’ Vlad said.
‘Did you recognize the woman in the picture?’
‘No,’ Vlad said. ‘But I wouldn’t say no if Cheryl wants to introduce me.’
‘I’m wondering why he showed the picture to Cheryl but not to you,’ Salvatore said. ‘Do you think he already knew that Cheryl was a friend?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ Vlad said. ‘Maybe he thought a girl was more likely to know another girl. Or at least more likely to admit to it.’ He winked.
After Salvatore finished his drink he gave Vlad a business card and asked for a call should the knobbly-handed detective return to the Rose and Crown. Then Salvatore left and headed toward town. He stopped in several pubs along the way, but he had no joy. It was possible, of course, that the blank response he met was the same disinclination to talk to question-asking strangers that Cheryl had shown. Where they would take one, Salvatore left a card.
He made a more concerted effort at the Anchor on the edge of Kingsmead Square in town, but there too no one admitted to remembering the mysterious detective. Salvatore tried other pubs in the city centre, without success, and then he headed back toward home and the Star. At the Star he expected a more helpful reception.
And in the pokey, panelled bar he got it. Three of the men sitting at a table remembered the black-mac detective. He had been to the pub in the middle of the previous week, though there was some disagreement about whether it was on the Tuesday or the Wednesday. No one knew the man but all agreed that he had behaved in a self-important and secretive manner.
The Star, with its warren of little rooms and easy atmosphere, was the one pub in town where patrons were experienced in mixing socially with private detectives. All the adult Lunghis had drunk there over the years. ‘I knew straight off he wasn’t one of yours,’ a Star patron told Salvatore. ‘This geezer was right slimy.’
Given the sparseness of the information obtained over the earlier part of the evening Salvatore felt the ‘slimy’ description was worth buying his informant a pint. This largesse was rewarded because the recipient then said that, as he remembered it, the detective in the black mac had shown his picture only to women.
The Old Man had had one of his tired days. He spent the evening watching television while Mama knitted quietly across the room. One of the Old Man’s favourite games was picking holes in the plots of TV mysteries. Sometimes it was just too easy and no fun, even though at other times that very ease provided the amusement. But the Old Man had other things on his mind. Namely his will. He was contemplating an alteration that would cut Salvatore out of it. He hadn’t told his wife. She would be furious.
It wasn’t that he wanted to deny his eldest child. But the boy was a wastrel. Nearly forty years old and no regular life. If he removed Salvatore from the will, and made his action public, maybe it would shock the wastrel into pulling himself together.
It was a new idea, this. The Old Man didn’t quite remember when it had come to him, and it was not that he had actually done anything about it yet. His visit to the solicitor had been to explore the implications of this new plan.
But the solicitor had not proved helpful. He was only young and full of ‘if that’s what you want’ but empty of understanding. No opinion about whether it would work, no stories of similar situations and similar experiences from other clients.
The Old Man’s own solicitor—Harris, the one he’d had in mind when he made the appointment—was the man he’d dealt with ever since he started the detective business in 1947. When he couldn’t join the police—an Italian so soon after the war, even though he’d spent all of it in Britain and some interned—he’d become a detective anyway. Picked Harris from a telephone directory with a pin and had been lucky. Never had a moment’s complaint about Harris.
It was unfortunate for the Old Man’s new intentions that Harris was dead. The Old Man now remembered going to the funeral. Five years ago? Waste of time, this youngster.
The Old Man couldn’t even remember his surname. Certainly wasn’t another ‘Harris’. A young Harris might have been all right. But this one, no. Irritating, having to change solicitors, after all these years. In mid-stream.
But wasn’t there another solicitor chap about? The Old Man couldn’t remember at first. But then he did. Wasn’t that chap of Rosetta’s a solicitor? Seems a nice enough boy. Young, of course. Maybe not up to it himself, but he could recommend someone. Someone sensible. Someone you could talk to. What was his name, Rosetta’s young man? It would come back.
‘What’s the name of that solicitor chap of Rosetta’s?’ the Old Man asked his wife.
‘Walter,’ Mama said without missing a knit or a purl.
Mama didn’t need to ask why the Old Man wanted to know. He had spoken about enough of
the pieces for her to put together the puzzle. But she did not challenge him on his ridiculous notion. She would bide her time. She would pick her moment. She said, ‘How do you like this detective?’
The Old Man looked at the television screen and saw the detective, a young woman in an absurdly short skirt, show her matching knickers as she bent to get into a car. He didn’t have a clue what the story was. ‘Boring,’ he said.
Before they went to bed Gina and Angelo talked about getting up early to follow Jack Shayler on his route to work.
‘It’s got to be me,’ Gina said.
‘Why?’
‘Because tomorrow is Thursday.’
Angelo yawned. He couldn’t remember the significance of Thursday. ‘What am I forgetting?’ he said.
‘Your new computers are being delivered,’ Gina said.
Mrs Shayler went to bed on Tuesday night at her normal time. But, what with all the turmoil, as she lay in bed she simply couldn’t get into her book. So she waited, straining to hear the activities taking place in the rest of the house.
By the time her husband finally came to bed Mrs Shayler was reasonably sure that he had not opened the back door. And all the plumbing sounds, including the running of water in the kitchen, had occurred in their normal sequence.
However, even though Mrs Shayler had already marked the level on the Horlicks container and would therefore be able to tell in the morning whether further Horlicks had been used, she yielded to impatience. When Jack Shayler came to bed with his ‘hot drink’ Eileen Shayler had tried to contrive an incidental look into—or at least sniff of—her husband’s mug. She had done it clumsily and he noticed.
‘What are you playing at?’ Jack Shayler had said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Thrashing about.’
‘I’m not thrashing.’
‘And you never lie this close.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Not on a Tuesday you don’t. Now move back to your side.’
Mrs Shayler had moved. But now she would not need to check the Horlicks box in the morning. She had established conclusively that her husband had come to bed carrying a mug of water.
Getting such dramatic information and then trying to sleep as if it were a normal night was impossible. While Mrs Shayler lay awake she could remain motionless and affect the breathing of sleep. But before dawn she finally drifted off and, thus freed, her tension and distress expressed themselves. She tossed and turned and woke her husband up.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked sleepily.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Go back to sleep.’
He had done exactly that. But then, in the morning, as Jack Shayler lay in bed gathering his thoughts, Eileen Shayler discovered that when her husband had retired the night before he had left his slippers in the bathroom. And, in depositing Tuesday’s underpants in the wicker hamper, he had left them hanging on the hamper lip, and he hadn’t put the hamper lid on properly.
Mrs Shayler could barely continue with her morning routine. It was almost an anti-climax when she found the washing-up liquid bottle standing proud on the work surface exactly where she had left it the night before.
CHAPTER SIX
When she arrived in the office on Thursday morning, the first thing Gina did was check her tray. In it she found Angelo’s note about Charlie’s phone-call saying that the police had no information about either Jack Shayler or the firm of accountants, Whitfield, Hare and O’Shea.
Once she read the note Gina did not file it. This was because in one of the many empty moments at the Crown Court the previous day she had asked the solicitors she was appearing for if they knew anything about Shayler or his employers. The response from the solicitors, too, was negative but Gina added this information to the original note and dropped it in Angelo’s tray. You could never tell what detail might be important later so it was the Lunghis’ policy to err on the side of thoroughness.
However, Gina mused, once the new computers were installed these memos would—or at least could—be contained inside electronic ‘mail boxes’. She didn’t quite know what she felt about the prospect. Might be fun, might be a nuisance. Might be both.
In her own tray Gina also found the material Adrian Boiling had left with Angelo. Gina thumbed the catalogue and leaflets. The array of gadgets was awesome, all ostensibly designed to assist surveillance work. The fun and nuisance that these implied were dark.
With the catalogue Gina found a sheet of calculations headed, ‘I’ll pay for myself in no time!’ There was also a sheet headed, ‘Have a seven-day trial, on me!’
What, indeed, had Rosetta got them into?
A few minutes past ten Salvatore arrived. ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ he said. ‘Show us yer tits.’
Gina made tea for herself and coffee for Salvatore as he reported on his search for the slimy detective. ‘There’s a lot about this guy that seems odd. He’s got copies of the woman’s photograph, but he doesn’t distribute them. And he seems to think he only needs to show her picture to other women.’
‘She is a model,’ Gina said. ‘Models spend time with other women.’
‘But why go to pubs? Why not model agencies?’
‘We didn’t ask this Kit Bridges if she has an agency,’ Gina said. ‘We spent most of the time calming her down. But maybe he doesn’t know she’s a model.’
‘He’s showing a fashion picture,’ Salvatore said.
Gina wrinkled her face. ‘Something’s wrong about this. Something’s wrong. We’re missing something.’
‘You want me to go and see this model?’ Salvatore said. ‘I could force myself.’
‘Angelo’s out already and he’ll probably go.’
‘What’s he on?’
‘You remember the washing-up liquid?’
‘The case of the century? Of course,’ Salvatore said.
‘He’s following the husband to work. Then he’s got a bank stop but assuming the washing-up doesn’t throw anything up he’ll have plenty of time to see the model,’ Gina said. ‘Unless you want to see her.’
‘Just trying to help,’ Salvatore said easily.
‘So what’s with Muffin?’ Gina asked.
‘What about her?’
‘We thought you might take her along last night. She seemed interested in the business.’
‘She had something else to do.’
‘What?’ Gina asked.
‘What do you mean, “what?”,’ Salvatore said.
‘I thought she was here on holiday.’
‘So?’
‘So what else could she have to do?’
Not long after Salvatore left, the telephone rang. ‘Gina Lunghi.’
‘Have those computers been delivered yet?’ Angelo said.
‘By a sweet little old man,’ Gina said. ‘It only took him ten minutes to hook everything up and explain how it works. He’s only just left.’
‘Wives shouldn’t tell lies to their husbands.’
‘We’d starve if they didn’t.’
‘I’ve done the bank. I thought I’d have a word with this Kit Bridges. Has Sally been in yet?’
Gina went through what Salvatore reported.
‘I agree with you,’ Angelo said. ‘Something’s missing. I’ll see what the Bridges woman has to say. Then I’ll try to find her friend from the pub.’
Gina said, ‘How was Jack Shayler?’
‘There’s something wrong there, too,’ Angelo said. ‘He left the house at 7.40 and he went to work. That much is like the wife said. But the route was different.’
‘She said he always goes the same way.’
‘Not today. From Bartlett Street he was supposed to turn at Bennett Street. But he turned at St Andrews Terrace, along the raised pavement.’
‘What’s there?’
‘Antiques and pizza on one side. A drop to a row of garages on the other.’
‘And does St Andrews Terrace lead to The Circus?’
‘At the end you turn ri
ght, up a passage, and you get to The Circus by carrying on across the forecourt of the Assembly Rooms and turning left on Bennett Street. It’s about the same distance. But something else happened,’ Angelo said. ‘In front of the Assembly Rooms.’
‘Isn’t that where the Costume Museum is?’
‘In the basement, yes.’
‘So what happened,’ Gina asked. ‘He tried on a dress?’
‘He sat down on a bench. There’s a phone box and a bench. As he walked past the phone box he looked at his watch. Then he sat down on the bench. He stayed there for two minutes. 7.49 to 7.51.’
‘And?’
‘He got up again and walked to his office. He went through the door there at 7.54. Apart from two minutes on the bench he didn’t stop, or talk to anyone, or nod or look into a window or wave at a girl. He didn’t pick up any packages or drop off any envelopes or shoot anybody.’
‘How curious,’ Gina said. ‘What do you think?’
‘Why tell his wife that he needs to go the same way every day but then go a different route today? What’s the point of lying about things like that? It can’t be important, can it?’
‘You mean if a man lies to his wife it should only be about important things?’
‘That’s my policy,’ Angelo lied.
Kit Bridges lived in a basement flat in one of the crescent terraces which ranged up the city’s hillsides like an audience of toothy grins. She was home when Angelo arrived but she was about to leave. She was wearing faded denims and a black singlet and she looked stunning. Angelo was stunned.
‘Are you all right?’ Kit Bridges asked.
Angelo nodded. Then he said, ‘We’ve put together a description of the detective who’s looking for you.’ Angelo repeated the details Salvatore had given Gina, down to the knobbly hands. ‘Does it sound like anyone you know?’
‘No,’ Kit Bridges said. ‘Cheryl described him too, but I can’t think of anyone who looks like that.’
Cheryl, the friend who worked part-time behind the bar at the Rose and Crown, had a home address in the East Twerton part of the city. Kit Bridges also supplied Cheryl’s phone number and the name of her own modelling agency. Then Angelo walked her to her car.
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