Die-Cast (A Peter Marklin Mystery)

by Neville Steed

  ‘Dare I ask what?’

  ‘It’s a full Thanksgiving dinner, American style. I know it’s premature for Americans, but not for Adam’s release. And we’ve made a special dessert, cholesterol-filled cake in the shape of his Rutan aircraft.’

  ‘That’s nice. He’ll love that. So will we,’ I said, though I groaned inwardly at the thought of having two rich meals in one day, for we had Blake’s dinner in the evening.

  ‘I hope so. And Tara-Lee put the candles on it this morning, didn’t you, darling?’

  I looked around to where Tara-Lee had been only a few minutes before. There was no one to be seen.

  ‘Where is that child? She’s always wandering off. I think it’s because she was always cooped up when we lived in Hollywood for fear of kidnapping. It’s not much fun being the child of someone well known over there...’ Lana-Lee broke off, as both she and I realised the inference of what she had been saying. We both feverishly scanned Longhurst’s field in every direction, but there was no sign of Tara-Lee.

  ‘Perhaps she has wandered back to Adam’s house,’ I said in order to prevent Lana-Lee panicking. ‘You go back there. I’ll search these fields.’ I pointed beyond the hedgerows that bordered the landing strip.

  ‘You don’t think...?’ Lana-Lee began, as she started running back towards the house.

  ‘No,’ I shouted, lying through my teeth and cursing myself for having exorcised ghosts from my mind after Lavinia’s confession to Maxwell’s murder. As I stood alone on that landing strip, I felt as small as I must have looked to Arabella from the soaring Rutan.

  *

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t try to confuse the issue, Marklin,’ Digby Whetstone sweatily observed, ‘with these apparitions of yours.’

  I moved away from looking out at the moonless night from the huge French windows and returned to the centre of Lana-Lee’s drawing-room.

  ‘Look, Inspector, I’m not trying to give you a hard time. I’m just trying to help, that’s all. Exactly as I was doing over Maxwell’s murder, although you wouldn’t believe it then.’

  ‘Calm down. I’m grateful for what you did to bring Mrs Saunders to a confession, Marklin.’

  ‘Not as much as I am,’ Adam Longhurst muttered from the fireplace, where he was standing with his arm protectively around Lana-Lee, whilst Arabella held her hand.

  Whetstone forced a flabby smile, and then continued, ‘But even if these ghosts of yours actually existed — and nobody can be sure they did, can they? — I don’t believe they have any bearing on Tara-Lee’s disappearance.’

  ‘Why bloody not?’ I came right up to Whetstone’s chair.

  ‘Because, Mr Marklin, we know quite a bit about this fellow who has been terrorising children over the past few months, and in none of the other reported incidents has the question of ghosts, white sheets or whatever, arisen. From the few sightings, he seems to be a Caucasian male, of around thirty-five, of medium height with what seems to be a cockney accent, certainly not a local one...’

  ‘So, supposing there are two different people involved. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, is it?’

  Whetstone rose, with a sigh, from his chair.

  ‘Possibility, no. But what about probability?’ He came up to me, and put his arm on my shoulder. ‘Look,’ he whispered, ‘I don’t think we should distress Miss Claudell any further by discussing the affair in front of her.’

  ‘So where do you suggest?’

  ‘My office in the morning.’

  With a glance at Lana-Lee, I moved with Whetstone out into the hall.

  ‘Well, the speed with which you work, she could be...’

  ‘I’ve got men searching the area with a fine tooth-comb, Mr Marklin. I’ve ordered them to continue into the night wherever possible, with torches and mobile floodlights. I’ve ordered detectives to carry out house-to-house calls in the vicinity right now. They’ll continue until ten or so, then resume first thing in the morning. I’ve circulated Tara-Lee’s description to every police force in the country. We’re not just sitting on our jacks, as you...’

  ‘Okay, okay. But don’t dismiss this ghost thing out of hand, Inspector. I have a funny feeling they’re real. Too many people have seen them now — me, Tara-Lee and Maxwell.’

  ‘The Maxwell affair is over, as you know. This unfortunate disappearance of Miss Claudell’s daughter is a quite separate issue, a most tragic coincidence. Calamities often come in twos and threes. If we don’t treat them as separate issues, we may even delay the discovery of the little girl’s whereabouts.’

  ‘So Tara-Lee is locked tight in the child molesting computer, right, and can’t escape to mingle with all the facts in the murder computer, the drug peddling computer, the Interpol computer...’

  Whetstone’s tiny moustache trembled with annoyance. ‘Everything is being done, Mr Marklin, that can be done. Now I must get back to headquarters, if you don’t mind, after I’ve said goodbye to Miss Claudell. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.’ He moved back towards the sitting-room door.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning sharp at nine. Okay?’ I said.

  ‘If we haven’t by then located Miss Claudell’s daughter, by all means. I’ll be happy to see you. But, as I say, I don’t just want to talk apparition talk.’

  ‘I’ll say what I bloody think, Inspector. I can’t help it. I’m made that way.’

  He disappeared into the sitting-room, leaving me in the magnificent hall, with its two suits of mediaeval armour flanking a wonderful Elizabethan refectory table. I went up to one of them and tapped it, but it rang back hollow as a drum.

  ‘Welcome to the club,’ I said, and then looked at my watch. It was half past eight. I suddenly realised it was the time we should have been meeting Blake for dinner. I went to the other end of the hall and picked up the phone.

  By the time I had finished my call (Blake had apparently been ringing the Toy Emporium constantly ever since he had heard about Tara-Lee’s disappearance), Whetstone had left, and Arabella and I had a chance to be alone with Lana-Lee and Adam for the first time.

  I decided to plunge in head first, even though Lana-Lee looked as if she was very near total collapse. Whilst Adam Longhurst poured a drink, I took Arabella aside and ran through what Blake and I had discussed on the phone.

  ‘We have to eliminate it from our enquiries, to use Blake’s words, just in case it has a bearing on Tara-Lee.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Arabella conceded and sighed. ‘But let me ask her. You keep Adam busy somehow.’

  I indicated I would like to speak to him at the other end of the vast room. So we repaired, as they say, but quite unnecessarily as it turned out. For the moment after we had moved over to the door, Arabella and Lana-Lee exited from it, and we heard their footfalls ascending the staircase.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ Adam asked in his usual boyish directness of manner.

  ‘Checking on a loose end,’ I replied. ‘There are one or two still in the Maxwell affair, you know.’

  ‘Such as?’ he asked with some surprise, then double took. ‘Oh, you mean the ghosts?’

  ‘No.’ I hunted for a substitute for the subject Arabella was actually raising upstairs. For I wasn’t sure Lana-Lee would like Adam knowing.

  ‘No, there are one or two others.’ I sipped my scotch to try to stimulate my little grey cells. But to no avail. Longhurst was just about subtle enough not to probe further, and changed the subject.

  ‘It’s ghastly, this whole bloody mess following on the other. What poor Lana-Lee must be going through.’ He too drained his scotch, then looked at me. ‘Do you think they are connected?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. If it hadn’t been for those ghosts, I wouldn’t have, I guess. Maybe Whetstone’s right.’

  ‘For once,’ Longhurst added, and went to freshen my drink.

  *

  ‘Gosh, we’re lucky.’ Arabella clung to me, and her naked body moulded itself to mine, contour by beautiful contour. But we cl
ung, not through libido, but for comfort and refuge, I suppose, from the harsh world outside.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ I whispered back. ‘It’s not quite fair, is it? With all our troubles, we’ve led charmed lives, compared to hers.’ Her cropped hair tickled my chin as she shook her head. ‘I just hope, when all this is over, Adam will be good enough for her.’ She continued, ‘She deserves some peace in the world now, somebody strong on whom she can rely, really for the first time in her life.’

  ‘You’re talking as if Tara-Lee won’t ever be found.’

  She sat up in bed suddenly, and turned on the bedside light. I blinked.

  ‘No I’m not. She has to be found alive. No woman should be asked to suffer like Lana-Lee has over her life. Some of the things she told me, I just can’t begin to tell you. At the time, I wished I’d never asked.’

  ‘You had to. We had to know why she let Ben Maxwell back into her life — just in case it was connected with Tara-Lee’s disappearance. Blake said we would only find out if we hit her whilst she was still shattered about Tara-Lee. He was right.’

  Arabella snuggled down beside me once more. She looked even more wonderful in the light.

  ‘She never found the videotape, you know.’

  ‘Lord knows if Ben even actually had one. But imagine his reaction to the possibility of its existence. A lever like that almost guaranteed that Lana-Lee would accept him back into her financial fold. It would have been altogether too damning. Imagine — her foster-father forces her to appear in a pornographic film when she was only fourteen. Ben knew she would do anything to prevent such a film’s release on the hard-core circuit, revealing its existence to the public via the press, so just the possibility of his having transferred the six-teen-millimetre film to videotape would have been enough. Poor Lana-Lee. She’d managed to keep it a secret all these years and then suddenly, out of the blue, returns her hated husband with the news he has unearthed a copy. No wonder she took him back. Everything was put at risk: not only her personal career and reputation, and the Reinhardt contract, but, above all, her relationship with Tara-Lee. Maxwell was sick.’

  ‘Not only Maxwell. What about her foster-father? He didn’t only force her to do the film, he apparently raped her as well. Early struggle for stardom in Hollywood is apparently carried out more on your back than on your feet.’

  ‘As Marilyn Monroe is reputed to have said. And I gather she made a hard-core movie as well, or so they say.’

  ‘But at an older age than fourteen.’

  ‘Sixteen or seventeen, I think it was.’

  ‘And nobody forced her.’

  ‘Just ambition.’

  Neither of us spoke for quite some time. Then Arabella rose on one elbow and asked softly. ‘What are you thinking of?’

  ‘All the other loose ends, since that one proved abortive.’

  ‘Ghosts?’

  ‘Yes. Those, and that anonymous phone call Lavinia claims she received, and Maxwell’s facial injuries. I can see Lavinia losing her temper enough to crash a rock on his head, but I can’t see her mangling his face.’

  ‘His mouth mainly, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Mouth — face; I still can’t see her doing it.’

  ‘So someone, or something else, must have caused it.’

  ‘Blake says it must have been only a minute or two after the fatal blow, according to the post-mortem findings.’

  ‘So someone followed her?’

  ‘Or him. Or both. Or something.’ I sat up straight. ‘You know, whatever Whetstone says, I can’t help thinking that all those factors must be linked in some way. I have no evidence whatsoever. It’s just this nagging feeling that Tara-Lee’s disappearance is not just a tragic coincidence, or the work of a thirty-five-year-old Caucasian of medium height.’

  ‘Because of the ghosts?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘What’s the other “partly”?’

  ‘Well, whilst I was as happy as a sandboy that in the end we got Lavinia to confess to Maxwell’s murder, I sort of felt, on reflection, that there were just too many loose ends for the whole thing to be wrapped up that neatly, but I kept all my fears to myself and forced them to the back of my mind. After all, my work was done. I had freed Adam Longhurst.’

  ‘Okay. Stop trying to expiate your feelings of guilt.’ She smiled at me, then snuggled her head in my lap. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘You’re right. I do feel guilty. The instant I looked round on that landing strip and found Tara-Lee gone, those fears came flooding back — enough to drown me.’

  I looked down at Arabella, and stroked her face gently. ‘I’ve got to find Tara-Lee, my darling. I’ve got to find her. If I had spoken out earlier, I might have been able to...’

  ‘You couldn’t have prevented it.’ She sat up once more.

  ‘I could, maybe, if I hadn’t kept my fear to myself.’

  ‘It was by keeping it to yourself that you got around to Lavinia.’

  ‘I had time then,’ I said. ‘It’s all different now.’

  *

  I woke so many times in the night that in the end, I called it a day, got up quietly and dressed. It was still only 5.45; Bing couldn’t believe his luck in getting Whiskas that early.

  I went into my dining-room and sat at the table, glassy-eyed, looking at the ranks of tinplate toys I’d bought in Weymouth. With all the celebrations marking Longhurst’s release, I still hadn’t got round to sorting out the ones I had to sell to make the ones I wanted to keep affordable. After a while, I realised staring at them was becoming the opposite of a placebo, as even they began reminding me of the terrible Maxwell via his motoring past.

  I went into the sitting-room, and stared at the mantelshelf on which I had placed the beautiful brass model of my Flamingo albeit without propellers and wheels, and it reminded me that, at some point, I had to go and see Muir again to glean some advice on casting methods. I wondered when that would be now. Restless, I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee — three, in fact — but they didn’t help. I looked into Bing’s blue eyes, but they just blinked.

  I sat at that kitchen table for ages, until Arabella came down and kissed her way into my consciousness. The kiss revived me somewhat, and we shared a little early breakfast together, then she went up again to dress. To fill in time before I went to see Whetstone, I opened the post I had been neglecting for the last few days. There were four bills and a letter from Poole. I left the former and opened the latter. I should have done the opposite, I felt at the time, for it was from a D. E. Weatherspoon of Poole, postmarked four days before, who happily informed me that he had heard from a friend of his who worked at a local box manufacturers, that I was producing a model Flamingo to 1/200th scale just as Dinky had planned to do. (So much for all my attempts at secrecy.) He went on to say he might be able to help me, as he had worked at Binns Road, Liverpool, in the late thirties on the aeroplane lines and remembered the wooden prototype of the Flamingo being prepared. Would I ring him, but before Sunday midday, as he would be away for a month for a bit of a break after that.

  Normally, despite the blowing of my cover, I would have been pleased to receive a letter of that sort as all knowledge is useful in the old toy game, but that Sunday was hardly a normal time. I was going to ignore it, when Arabella suggested I might like to pop in on him on my way back from banging my head against Whetstone’s in Bournemouth.

  ‘It’s not out of your way. You practically pass his door, and it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, should it? You’ll kick yourself when all this is over if you don’t. Who knows, he might have some information that could influence that brass master of yours before you commit it to production.’

  In the end, I submitted to her advice. Lucky I did — and not just to cheer me up after Sunday morning’s completely unproductive meeting with Digger Whetstone.

  15

  Mr D. E. Weatherspoon proved to have some very vital information — but none of it was about my beloved Flamingo.
And surprisingly, I found myself on my way to the village of Jordans. It was nestling in that executive belt in Bucks which has Gerrards Cross at its rather anonymous buckle. I cursed the distance, and looked at my fuel gauge. It was only a quarter full. I swung out of Poole and made for Ringwood to get onto the A31 going east. There I filled the tank up to the brim (or rather a surly youth did) and used the public phone opposite the garage to ring Arabella. She wanted to come with me, but I said every second counted, and it would take her too long to get to Ringwood. She reluctantly agreed, and suggested a simultaneous plan of action of her own. I told her to forget it with a capital F until I got back in four hours or so. She wished me good luck. I said, ‘Thanks. I’ll need it, but not as much as Tara-Lee.’

  Thereafter, I don’t think I’ve ever been so indebted to the genius of Dr Ferdinand Porsche, for that Beetle of mine almost literally flew up the M3, and via the M25, across the M4 to the Slough turn-off. From there on, curse it, I had to proceed at Sunday-driver snail’s pace until I pulled into the village of Jordans. It was lunchtime, and the place seemed uncannily deserted, church services over, and roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, no doubt, keeping the inhabitants off the streets. I decided my only hope was to knock on a door and interrupt somebody in mid Yorkshire.

  I pulled up beside a large thirties house pretending to be tudor, and knocked at the door. It was eventually opened by a military-style gentleman, whose gruff and clipped delivery matched his appearance. I apologised for intruding and asked where the local vicar lived. He gave me the directions as if he was still commanding a battalion on D-Day, and as I walked away, I felt I really should have saluted.

  The vicar’s house was Victorian and looked like a giant ivy bush with holes in it for windows. My flesh creeped at the thought of all the tiny examples of God’s creatures that must be crawling through its rooms. The vicar himself came to the door, a gravy-stained napkin in his hand. I went through my apologies (standard version) and then explained why I had called. After a moment’s hesitation (he licked his lips at this point, no doubt thinking of his favourite joint getting cold), he invited me into the darkest study I’ve ever seen in daylight. What’s more, he was obviously not the local electricity board’s biggest customer, with the result that my interview with him was like a scene from those mindless modern movies, where lack of content is hidden by shooting in almost total darkness. However, I digress. At least I could hear what the vicar said.