Kiss Me When I'm Dead

by Dominic Piper

  ‘How long ago was this taken?’ I ask him.

  ‘That was when she was twenty-two, I think. Maybe earlier. She had a series of photographs taken of herself by some photographer. I don’t know why. They weren’t for me, that’s for sure. I just came across this when I was going through her things. There were more, but I don’t know what happened to them.’

  ‘So two years old. Have you got anything more recent?’

  ‘No, but there’s this one.’ He nods at Fisher who pushes a smaller, slightly blurred, full body photograph of a much younger looking Viola. Some sort of holiday snap taken on a white sand beach. Not the UK, judging by the sky and sea colour. Her hair is shorter and is being blown over her face by the wind, but it’s definitely the same girl. She’s in a swimsuit. Nice figure. Slim and busty. Great legs. Drug problem or not, a girl who looked like this would probably exist at the upper end of prostitution; high-end escort stuff, definitely not street corner.

  ‘That was taken when she was seventeen. Just to give you an idea of her body shape.’

  It certainly does.

  ‘She was a very attractive young girl, Mr Raleigh,’ says Fisher.

  ‘Yes,’ agrees Raleigh. ‘She was.’

  I suddenly feel like I’m part of a cabal of perverts, ogling private photographs of teenage girls. Fisher hands me an A4 sheet with all of her vital statistics on it. Height, weight, eye colour, hair colour, clothing sizes (including bra size) distinguishing features; everything I could want is there. This is all very well if I’m going to accidentally walk past her on the street, but I’m going to need a little more. I need somewhere to start. Luckily, Fisher is able to oblige.

  ‘We don’t have a great deal of information about her friends from the last few years, if indeed she had any,’ he says, smiling apologetically. ‘But I’ve typed out a list of names on this sheet that may help you get started.’

  At the top of the sheet is the name and telephone number of the police officer that contacted Raleigh. Detective Sergeant Olivia Bream, Metropolitan Police, Seymour Street W1. I know it. Nearest tube station is Marble Arch.

  ‘Would it be OK with you if I contacted this officer?’

  Raleigh shifts in his seat. He looks a tad uncomfortable with this suggestion. ‘I’m not sure. As I said, I wasn’t very polite to this woman on the telephone and I’m not sure if – it’s just that I don’t think this is a very high priority for the police and I’m not sure if them knowing that I’d hired someone from the private sector would make things worse.’

  ‘You feel that my presence would be insulting to them and they might make your daughter a lower priority than she is already?’

  ‘Well, if you put it that way – yes.’

  ‘And you’re afraid that they might do nothing, as opposed to not very much.’

  Police attitudes may have changed for all I know, but I can’t imagine that searching for absentee call girls is a big deal for them. These are not the sorts of missing persons that make the newspapers or require elaborate press conferences, no matter how rich and powerful their father may be. Fisher glances at his boss as if he’s asking for permission to speak. Raleigh nods at him.

  ‘The way I see it, Mr Beckett, is I don’t think the police are going to share any information from their file on Viola with a civilian, which, with all due respect, is what you would be to them.’

  ‘And they might view it,’ adds Raleigh, ‘as some rich old man interfering with an ongoing police investigation, if that’s how whatever they’re doing can be described.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have a word with them anyway. I can be very persuasive.’

  ‘As you wish,’ says Raleigh, without enthusiasm.

  Underneath the police details is the name of a hotel, The Bolton Mayfair, Bolton Street, London W1. A fairly new luxury hotel that’s just off Piccadilly and a short walk from the Hard Rock Café. This is real call-girl territory; top clubs, top bars, top restaurants, top hotels, top businesses, top shops and top prostitutes.

  ‘So what’s this hotel?’

  ‘That is the name of the hotel where Viola was staying before she was reported missing,’ says Raleigh, with a bit of a choke in his voice.

  ‘I see. And that information was given to the police by whoever it was that reported her missing three weeks ago.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they give you the room number?’

  ‘No. No room number. But the person who telephoned the police did say that she was staying there, apparently.’

  And we don’t know who made that call; though I’ll bet any money it was Viola’s pimp. Viola goes to the hotel to meet a client and disappears. This isn’t looking good.

  On the other hand, why would Viola have booked a room there if she was entertaining a client? Is that how it works now? I thought it was the client who booked the room and the call girl just turned up. I could be wrong, of course.

  Without looking up from the sheet of paper, I can see that Fisher is eyeballing me intently. Perhaps he’s wondering why his boss won’t let him deal with this. Perhaps there’s little bit of manly jealousy going on here; hurt pride, that sort of thing.

  There’s another name and telephone number underneath the hotel details.

  ‘Who’s Taylor Conway?’

  Raleigh purses his lips and looks pissed. Fisher looks away, his eyes resting on Mrs Raleigh’s portrait.

  ‘I don’t know if that name will be of any use to you, Mr Beckett,’ says Raleigh, his eyes looking pained. ‘That’s one of Viola’s friends from quite a while back. One can never know these things for sure, but I suspect he’s the one who got her started on drugs. He was the kingpin of the crowd that she hung around with about three or four years ago. It could actually be longer ago than that. I don’t know if he could be called a boyfriend, but she did mention his name from time to time, usually when she was trying to make me angry. I never met him, so I don’t really know what he’s like, but I can imagine. That telephone number was in her address book, but I don’t know whether it’s still in use.’

  It’s a landline number, not a mobile, so I might get lucky if I have to speak to him.

  ‘You don’t have his address, by any chance?’

  ‘No. Her address book was a rather Spartan affair. Just names and telephone numbers. Most of them were friends of hers from long ago. School, that sort of thing. She’d had that address book since she was about fifteen, I think. She mainly used it as a kind of notebook. It was covered in scribbles and sketches. She was very good at art. I thought she might actually study art in university, but it was not to be.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  He suddenly looks a little shifty. ‘I don’t have it anymore. I don’t know what happened to it. I remember writing down that boy’s number in my own address book in case I ever had cause to call him, but that was well over a year ago. I must have mislaid it.’

  What a shame. I’d have like to have seen those scribbles and sketches. And those other numbers. Never mind. So all I have to go on is the name of a police sergeant, a hotel and some old boyfriend/dealer.

  Raleigh and Fisher are both breathing heavily and staring at me. I think I should say something.

  ‘OK. I’ll do the best that I can to find her – or at least find out what’s happened to her – and I’ll do it as fast as I can. But you have to prepare yourself for the worst. I can’t promise you good news, as I’m sure you understand.’

  Raleigh leans forwards and looks straight into my eyes. ‘How long do you think it will take?’

  I wave my hand at the photographs and the sheet of paper in front of me. ‘This is not much to go on, to be honest, but I should have something for you in less than a week.’

  He visibly brightens at this news. ‘Less than a week! But that’s marvellous! I thought you were going to say a couple of months. I knew I’d made the right decision with you. The police will take forever with this, I just know it.’ He nods his head, mentally congratulating himself. ‘There is
another thing that I have to tell you, and I don’t want you to think I’m callous. I mean, life goes on and all of that.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I can’t go into details, as I’m sure you understand, but I’m in the middle of brokering an extremely lucrative deal with the Sultanate of Oman. I presume you know that I deal in weaponry.’

  ‘I had heard. Well done.’

  ‘In ten days, I have a meeting with two of their security ministers. I’m sure it will go well, but this Viola business has been really getting to me and…’

  ‘I think Mr Raleigh just wants to make sure he has a clear head during the negotiations,’ interjects Fisher. ‘And it would be nice if this matter was cleared up one way or the other.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘And as you have said less than a week, that’s – that’s a huge weight off my shoulders,’ says Raleigh.

  Hence the doubling of my rate and the twenty thousand bonus if I find her. Well, it sounds like a lot of money to me, but it’s probably chicken feed to him. Knowing what Oman usually spends on defence he’s probably looking at a billion or so, if all goes well. Maybe more. I wonder idly how you actually get to be an arms dealer. I don’t recall it being mentioned in my school’s career evenings.

  ‘OK. I’ll be in touch with you as soon as there are any significant breakthroughs.’

  I catch Fisher giving Raleigh a small portion of eye contact.

  ‘Ah. I take it, then, that you won’t be letting us know how you are doing on a daily basis,’ Raleigh says.

  ‘No point. Information you glean one day may not have any relevance until the day after. It may turn out to have no relevance at all. I’d just be wasting your time, or worse still, giving you hope when there was none.’

  There’s another tiny little visual exchange between the two men. What is all this about? I wonder.

  ‘I didn’t think of that,’ says Raleigh. ‘And I quite understand what you mean. I have complete faith in you, Mr Beckett. Athos Baresi is always a good judge of men.’

  ‘He was a real character,’ I say, smiling. Actually, he was totally bent and corrupt, but knew how to have a good time, which is why I liked him.

  ‘I understand he was also a good judge of women!’ says Raleigh, now cheered up slightly. ‘From what I’ve heard, anyway.’

  We all laugh, stand up and shake hands like men. Fisher doesn’t attempt another bone-crusher. Before I go, I’ve got to know about the stuffed dog. I think the atmosphere is light enough now for me to mention it. I look in its direction and point. ‘Is that, um…’

  ‘That’s Lincoln. You probably surmised that he’s mainly Doberman, but he has a touch of Beauceron in there, too. They’re fantastic dogs, but prone to various diseases. Lincoln died of congestive heart failure, but he wasn’t going to get away from me that easily.’

  ‘Attractive markings,’ is all I can say to that.

  ‘Indeed.’

  Fisher hands me the folder and Raleigh accompanies me to the front door. As we pass through Anjukka’s office, I stop and turn to face her.

  ‘Thanks once again for the coffee.’

  ‘My pleasure, Mr Beckett.’ She gives me a quick, innocent smile that tells me things aren’t quite over between us yet.

  Raleigh and I stand on the steps and look out into leafy Holland Park. It’s starting to get cold and the leaves are beginning to turn yellow. This is the sort of street that would have once been entirely residential, but is now home to anonymous operations like Raleigh’s, with discreet brass plaques being the only clues to what may or may not go on inside.

  ‘Did you bring a car?’

  ‘No. I took the tube.’

  ‘Wise man. You – you don’t think I’m being too cynical about the police, do you? I want to do everything I can to find Viola. I don’t want to annoy them in any way.’

  ‘I think you’re right to assume that this will be low priority for them Look at it from their point of view. A young woman is reported missing two years ago and three weeks ago she’s reported missing again. That means that she was back on the radar, albeit for a short time. I think that’s the sort of thing they’ll put on the back burner.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure you’re right.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch. Nice to meet you.’

  We shake hands once again and I go down the steps, out of the gate and onto the pavement. Several cabs go by, but I decide to walk down to Holland Park Avenue and pick one up when I start to get tired. I’m aware that Raleigh is still standing there, watching me.

  I probably won’t start work on this today as it’s far too late, but I want to let the facts float around in my mind and see if anything clever pops up, like a smart solution to the whole thing so I can pick up the rest of my payment tomorrow afternoon. I stuff the Jiffy Bag with the cash inside the green folder.

  In an ideal world, the first person I would want to speak to would be whoever called her in as a missing person. Probably her pimp, assuming she was still working as a call girl of some sort, which I think she was.

  Of course, there’s a slim chance that she may no longer be in that line of work. It might have been a real friend. But would a real friend report you missing while you were staying in a hotel? Unlikely. It all sounds a bit strange, particularly as it’s usually the client who’s the one with the room.

  I let my mind wander and start thinking about what was probably an original Monet in Raleigh’s office. Does Raleigh live in that house or is it purely for work? My suspicion is he lives there some of the time and also has premises elsewhere. Is Fisher a live-in head of security? Anjukka probably knocks off at five and goes home. The two goons who failed to frisk me probably don’t live there and are bussed over when a stranger comes to call or when Raleigh needs to impress. Does Rosabel Raleigh live there? How many rooms in that place are devoted to business? Is there a garden out the back? If I had a real Monet, I’d probably get someone to paint a convincing forgery of it and put the real one in a bank vault. Maybe it wasn’t a Monet at all.

  I noticed that both of the ground floor front windows had a species of Berberis growing under them; thick bushes with big, vicious-looking thorns. That would not have been an accidental choice. It’s an old-fashioned form of security but would still do the job as a deterrent for some opportunistic and stupid burglar who didn’t realise he was about to get his hands cut to ribbons. I ball both of my hands into fists imagining what that would feel like.

  Then there was the portrait of Rosabel. How much would that be worth? Sentimental value only, I suspect. I can still see that mouth, those eyes. I took the fact that her breasts were exposed on face value, if that’s the right term, just like I would when looking at any nude or semi-nude portrait before a business meeting. But if I was commissioning an artist to paint my wife, would I have had her pose in quite that way? No reason not to, of course. It’s his choice. But then to display it in your office where all your staff and visitors can see it is another thing altogether.

  Can you imagine, if you were Rosabel Raleigh, walking past some slime-ball like Fisher, knowing that he knew what your breasts looked like? Perhaps she couldn’t give a damn. Perhaps she likes it. Perhaps the pose was her choice and I’m just being prudish or conservative. But prudery or not, if I was deciding where to put a portrait like that, my first choice would not be in my office. Raleigh, of course, might be so insecure that he wants everyone to know what a beautiful, sexy wife he’s got. Again, nothing wrong with that, but it still seems a little peculiar to me. She did have great breasts, though. Perhaps I’ll tell her that if I ever meet her. I’d like to meet her. I’d like to know what she’s like, with her contemptuous mouth and hot cleavage.

  I start thinking about Anjukka, for some reason. I’ll bet you anything that being in close proximity to a woman who looks like that must drive Fisher and his goons mad and I’ll bet they’ve all tried hitting on her to no avail. She’s probably very good at her job, but it’s probably another bit of eg
o wank for Raleigh, just like Rosabel’s portrait. All that power, all that money. It’s never enough, is it? They have to keep proving and proving, showing off and showing off until they die and no one gives a shit about them anymore.

  Which brings me to Viola. God Almighty – what happened to her? Did she become a junkie and a prostitute to piss off her father in some way? To piss off her mother? To piss off both of them? It’s like an archetypical poor little rich girl scenario and I can’t really feel much sympathy.

  OK – I could see how the prostitution could be a direct result of the junkie thing, but even so. If I was teetering on the edge of prostitution and had rich parents, I think I’d swallow my pride and ask for money, unless, of course, I had no pride. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps she was messed up in ways that would be hard for me to fathom.

  Perhaps she wasn’t able to think straight because of the junk. It’s easy to see a photograph like the one Fisher gave me and think, ‘What a beautiful girl. Why didn’t she find some nice guy to cherish her and love her? What happened? But you can’t know the ins and outs of someone else’s mind or of their circumstances. It’s all relative. You can only make guesses and they’re rarely the right ones.

  Maybe her circle didn’t contain many ‘nice guys’. Maybe her circle was full of people like Taylor Conway, not that I have any reason to judge him. Not yet, anyway. Maybe being a rich man’s daughter put her in the path of the biggest tossers and users in the country and they used her and sucked her dry like a bunch of over-privileged vampires. Maybe she was possessed of a degree of self-hatred that I couldn’t begin to imagine and each day that went by twisted her a little more. I didn’t ask if she had any siblings, but I get the feeling she didn’t.

  It’s difficult for me to look through her eyes because it’s difficult to imagine being a young person in a world where you can have virtually anything you want. I can’t imagine Viola sifting through the change in her pocket, seeing if she’s got enough money to buy another round of lager for her friends in the local pub.