‘I can’t wait for him to make a mistake. I’m old.’
‘What do you want to do, then?’
‘Head back to the PCU,’ Bryant said. ‘There’s something I need to check.’ May was glad they had brought the car. The iced-over pavements had become bobsled runs, and his partner was unstable at the best of times.
As the hours passed, May worked on with the rest of the PCU team while Bryant remained holed up in his office with the door firmly closed to visitors. Finally, when he could no longer bear the suspense of not knowing what his partner was doing, May went to check on him.
‘You should put a brighter light on in here,’ he said. ‘You’ll strain your eyes.’
‘She’s here,’ Bryant said, looking up sadly. He had printed out everything he could find on Marsha Kastopolis, and had stacked it all in the centre of his desk. His hands were placed over the file, as if trying to conjure her presence. ‘I can sense her.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked May.
‘She was a bright girl. Then she was abused by her new step-father. Her mother did nothing. The social services failed to protect her. She became withdrawn and lost. Her school grades dropped away. She was made pregnant by a junkie, came to London and started again. By this time she had grown a tough hide, and was determined to make something of herself. She must have been able to see through her husband, so why did she put up with him? What did she get from the relationship? Stability? Money? No, something else. That’s the key to this.’
‘Funny,’ said May.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I thought you’d be in here trying to work out how he did it. You know, the mechanics. The nuts and bolts. More up your street than people.’
‘Don’t be so rude. I hate to see promising lives ruined. As it happens, I know how it was done.’
‘You do?’
‘Most certainly. And I think I want to handle the last part by myself.’
‘I don’t understand you, Arthur.’
‘I want to do the right thing for her. You can see that, can’t you? I don’t anticipate a problem, but it might be better if you stayed within reach of your mobile. I’m not going very far.’ With that he rose stiffly, jammed on his squashed trilby and burrowed into his overcoat. May watched him go, flummoxed.
‘What’s up with the old man?’ asked Banbury as he passed.
‘You know how possessive some people are with their books?’ said May. ‘Arthur’s like that with crimes. Sometimes I think I hardly know him at all.’
Bryant pushed open the wire-glass door of the Rajasthan Palace and seated himself by the window. An impossibly thin, hollow-eyed waiter who looked like he’d not slept since 1931 approached and placed a red plastic menu before him.
‘I’ll just have a hot, very sweet chai,’ said Bryant. ‘But you can send Mr Bhatnagar out to me. I know he’s there, I just saw him peep through the curtain.’
Moments later the portly little manager appeared from behind the counter and made his way over to the table, bouncing on the balls of his feet. ‘Mr Bryant,’ he said, ‘what a pleasure to see you again, so soon.’
‘You may not think so in a minute.’ Bryant gestured at the seat opposite. Mr Bhatnagar’s smile showed sudden strain, and he remained standing. ‘Mrs Kastopolis,’ said Bryant. ‘She ate at the Bhaji Fort last night. Your boy Raj saw her, didn’t he? More to the point, he overheard her. Who did he tell you she was with?’
‘Raj is a good boy,’ said Mr Bhatnagar anxiously. ‘Mrs Kastopolis was with another lady, a friend, that’s all, not somebody my boy knew.’
‘Then why did he bother to call you?’ asked Bryant. ‘I’ll tell you why.’ And he proceeded to do so. By the time he had finished, Mr Bhatnagar had visibly diminished. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Finally, he sat and dropped his head in his hands, not caring about his staff, who were nervously peering out at him from their counter. Mr Bhatnagar realised that his eagerness to please had finally been the undoing of him, and wept.
‘I thought you didn’t like the fresh air,’ said May, slapping his leather-clad hands together in an effort to keep warm. His breath condensed in dragon-clouds as he looked down from the pinnacle of Primrose Hill over the frost-sheened rooftops of London.
‘I don’t,’ said Bryant, dislodging the snow from his trilby by violently beating it. ‘I just wanted you to see this. How it was done.’
He pointed to the far edge of the hill, where several young Indian men were standing. May followed his partner’s extended index finger up to the burnished winter sky. ‘Can you see them now?’ he asked.
Overhead, half a dozen diamonds of indigo and maroon silk soared and swooped around each other like exotic fish fighting for food. ‘Kite flying is a very popular pastime in Rajasthan. But it’s far from a gentle sport. It’s a matter of kill or be killed, and sometimes huge bets ride on the outcome. The idea is to destroy your enemies by bringing them down. The only way to do that is by severing their strings. So the kite-warriors coat their cords with a paste of boiled rice mixed with glass dust. It makes them as sharp as any cut-throat razor. And they can control the lines to go exactly where they want. Our assassin only had to bring it down from the sky and touch it across her throat.’
May was incredulous. ‘You’re saying Mrs Kastopolis was killed by a kite?’
‘By the cord of a kite flown by an expert, yes,’ said Bryant. ‘Mr Bhatnagar looked out for his friend and protector, the landlord of all his properties. He made sure his waiters kept their eyes and ears open. When one of them overheard Marsha Kastopolis telling her friend that she was going to talk to the police about her husband, he stepped in to help. He called the man who had repeatedly asked him to stay vigilant.
‘Obviously, if anything bad happened to Marsha on her husband’s home turf suspicions would have been aroused. So one of the waiters was paid to draw her away. Mr Bhatnagar called her pretending to be an ally, and said he had important information for her. He lured her to the meeting on Primrose Hill. He thought he could get rid of her in a quiet place, and made his waiter, Raj, do the dirty work, using the one special skill he possessed. I don’t suppose the lack of footprints in the snow even crossed anyone’s mind. But it made the case unique enough to attract our attention.’
‘Why would this Raj agree to do such a thing?’
‘He had no choice. He was in debt to Mr Bhatnagar.’
‘Have you sent someone around to arrest Kastopolis?’
‘No, you’ve misunderstood,’ said Bryant. ‘Kastopolis didn’t ask Mr Bhatnagar to keep an eye out for problems. It was the liaison officer, Anderson. Your first instinct was right; Kastopolis had bought someone on the committee. That was how he got away with breaking the law for so many years. Anderson got kickbacks and watched out for his client in return. Ultimately, it was Anderson who forced the waiter, Raj, to commit murder.’
May was mystified. ‘But how did you know it was him?’
‘Anderson vehemently denied ever consorting with his client, remember? But when I rummaged about on his desk I saw a receipt for the Rajasthan Palace. He’d eaten there the night before. He was slipping the dinner through on his expenses.’
‘All these people, working to protect one corrupt man,’ said May, ‘and they’re the ones who’ll go down for him while Kastopolis walks away again. It’s not fair.’
‘You’re forgetting one thing,’ said Bryant. ‘The notebook is still out there somewhere. We just have to find it before he does.’
The elderly detective turned back to watch a shimmering turquoise kite as it looped down and slashed the string of its nearest rival. The other kite, a fluttering box of emerald satin, was caught in a violent spin and plunged into a dive, shattering on the frozen earth.
‘Alluring and dangerous,’ said Bryant. ‘The winners are raised up on the sacrifices of the fallen. That’s how it has always been in this city.’ He smiled ruefully at his partner and turned to watch the turquoise diamond weaving back
and forth across the clouds, savouring its brief moment of glory.
FEDORA
John Harvey
Ever since he was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for Sustained Excellence in Crime Writing in 2007, John Harvey has been trying, unsuccessfully, to shrug off the implication that everything, henceforth, is downhill. No matter how hard he struggles, the label ‘veteran crime writer’ clings to him like a shroud. His latest effort to disprove the onset of senility is the novel, Darkness, Darkness, to be published by William Heinemann in 2014.
When they had first met, amused by his occupation, Kate had sent him copies of Hammett and Chandler, two neat piles of paperbacks, bubble-wrapped, courier-delivered. A note: If you’re going to do, do it right. Fedora follows. He hadn’t been certain exactly what a fedora was.
Jack Kiley, private investigator. Security work of all kinds undertaken. Ex-Metropolitan Police.
Most of his assignments came from bigger security firms, PR agencies with clients in need of babysitting, steering clear of trouble; solicitors after witness confirmation, a little dirt. If it didn’t make him rich, most months it paid the rent: a second-floor flat above a charity shop in north London, Tufnell Park. He still didn’t have a hat.
Till now.
One of the volunteers in the shop had taken it in. ‘An admirer, Jack, is that what it is?’
There was a card attached to the outside of the box: Chris Ruocco of London, Bespoke Tailoring. It hadn’t come far. A quarter mile, at most. Kiley had paused often enough outside the shop, coveting suits in the window he could ill afford.
But this was a broad-brimmed felt hat, not quite black. Midnight blue? He tried it on for size. More or less a perfect fit.
There was a note sticking up from the band: on one side, a quote from Chandler; on the other a message: Ozone, tomorrow. 11am? Both in Kate Keenan’s hand.
He took the hat back off and placed it on the table alongside his mobile phone. Had half a mind to call her and decline. Thanks, but no thanks. Make some excuse. Drop the fedora back at Ruocco’s next time he caught the overground from Kentish Town.
It had been six months now since he and Kate had last met, the premiere of a new Turkish-Albanian film to which she’d been invited, Kiley leaving halfway through and consoling himself with several large whiskies in the cinema bar. When Kate had finally emerged, preoccupied by the piece she was going to write for her column in the Independent, something praising the film’s mysterious grandeur, it’s uncompromising pessimism – the phrases already forming inside her head – Kiley’s sarcastic ‘Got better, did it?’ precipitated a row which ended on the street outside with her calling him a hopeless philistine and Kiley suggesting she take whatever pretentious arty crap she was going to write for her bloody newspaper and shove it.
Since then, silence.
Now what was this? A peace offering? Something more?
Kiley shook his head. Was he really going to put himself through all that again? Kate’s companion. Cramped evenings in some tiny theatre upstairs, less room for his knees than the North End at Leyton Orient; standing for what seemed like hours, watching others genuflect before the banality of some Turner Prize winner; another mind-numbing lecture at the British Library; brilliant meals at Moro or the River Café on Kate’s expense account; great sex.
Well, thought Kiley, nothing was perfect.
Ozone, or to give it its proper title, Ozone Coffee Roasters, was on a side street close by Old Street station. In full view in the basement, industrial-size roasting machines had their way with carefully harvested beans from the best single-estate coffee farms in the world – Kiley had Googled the place before leaving – while upstairs smart young people sat either side of a long counter or at heavy wooden tables, most of them busy at their laptops as their flat whites or espressos grew cold around them. Not that Kiley had anything against a good flat white – twenty-first-century man, or so he sometimes liked to think, he could navigate his way round the coffee houses in London with the best of them.
Chalked on a slate at the front of one of the tables was Kate Keenan’s name and a time, 11.00, but no Kate to be seen.
Just time to reassess, change his mind.
Kiley slid along the bench seat and gave his order to a waitress who seemed to be wearing mostly tattoos. Five minutes later, Kate arrived.
She was wearing a long, loose crepe coat that swayed around her as she walked; black trousers, a white shirt, soft leather bag slung over one shoulder. Her dark hair was cut short, shorter than he remembered, taking an extra shine from the lighting overhead. As she approached the table her face broke into a smile. She looked, Kiley thought, allowing himself the odd ageist indiscretion, lovelier that any forty-four-year-old woman had the right.
‘Jack, you could at least have worn the hat.’
‘Saving it for a special occasion.’
‘You mean this isn’t one?’
‘We’ll see.’
She kissed him on the mouth.
‘I’m famished,’ she said. ‘You going to eat?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The food’s good. Very good.’
There was an omelette on the menu, the cost, Kiley reckoned, of a meal at McDonald’s or Subway for a family of five. When it came it was fat and delicious, stuffed with spinach, shallots and red pepper and bright with the taste of fresh chillis. Kate had poached eggs on sourdough toast with portobello mushrooms. She’d scarcely punctured the first egg when she got down to it.
‘Jack, a favour.’
He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.
‘Graeme Fisher, mean anything to you?’
‘Vaguely.’ He didn’t know how or in what connection.
‘Photographer, big in the sixties. Bailey, Duffy, Fisher. The big three, according to some. Fashion, that was his thing. Everyone’s thing. Biba. Vogue. You couldn’t open a magazine, look at a hoarding without one of his pictures staring back at you.’ She took a sip from her espresso. ‘He disappeared for a while in the eighties – early seventies, eighties. Australia, maybe, I’m not sure. Resurfaced with a show at Victoria Miro, new work, quite a bit different. Cooler, more detached: buildings, interiors, mostly empty. Very few people.’
Skip the art history, Kiley thought, this is leading where?
‘I did a profile of him for the Independent on Sunday,’ Kate said. ‘Liked him. Self-deprecating, almost humble. Genuine.’
‘What’s he done?’ Kiley asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘But he is in some kind of trouble?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Shenanigans.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Someone else’s wife; someone else’s son, daughter. What used to be called indiscretions. Now it’s something more serious.’
Following the high-profile arrests of several prominent media personalities, accused of a variety of sexual offences dating back up to forty years, reports to the police of historic rape and serious sexual abuse had increased fourfold. Men – it was mostly men – who had enjoyed both the spotlight and the supposed sexual liberation of the Sixties and later were contacting their lawyers, setting up damage limitation exercises, quaking in their shoes.
‘You’ve still got contacts in the Met, haven’t you, Jack?’
‘A few.’
‘I thought if there was anyone you knew – Operation Yewtree, is that what it’s called? – I thought you might be able to have a word on the quiet, find out if Fisher was one of the people they were taking an interest in.’
‘Should they be?’
‘No. No.’
‘Because if they’re not, the minute I mention his name, they’re going to be all over him like flies.’
Kate cut away a small piece of toast, added mushroom, a smidgeon of egg. ‘Maybe there’s another way.’
Kiley said nothing.
As if forgetting she’d changed the style, Kate smoothed a hand across her forehead to brush away a strand of hair. ‘When he
was what? Twenty-nine? Thirty? He had this relationship with a girl, a model.’
Kiley nodded, sensing where this was going.
‘She was young,’ Kate said. ‘Fifteen. Fifteen when it started.’
‘Fifteen,’ Kiley said quietly.
‘It wasn’t aggressive, wasn’t in any sense against her will, it was … like I say, it was a relationship, a proper relationship. It wasn’t even secret. People knew.’
‘People?’
‘In the business. Friends. They were an item.’
‘And that made it OK? An item?’
‘Jack …’
‘What?’
‘Don’t prejudge. And stop repeating everything I say.’
Kiley chased a last mouthful of spinach around his plate. The waitress with the tattoos stopped by their table to ask if there was anything else they wanted and Kate sent her on her way.
‘He’s afraid of her,’ Kate said. ‘Afraid she’ll go to the police herself.’
‘Why now?’
‘It’s in the air, Jack. You read the papers, watch the news. Cleaning out the Augean stables doesn’t come into it.’
Kiley was tempted to look at his watch: ten minutes without Kate making a reference he failed to understand. Maybe fifteen. ‘A proper relationship, isn’t that what you said?’
‘It ended badly. She didn’t want to accept things had run their course. Made it difficult. When it became clear he wasn’t going to change his mind, she attempted suicide.’
‘Pills?’
Kate nodded. ‘It was all hushed up at the time. Back then, that was still possible.’
‘And now he’s terrified it’ll all come out …’
‘Go and talk to him, Jack. Do that at least. I think you’ll like him.’
Liking him, Kiley knew, would be neither here nor there, a hindrance at best.
There was a bookshop specialising in fashion and photography on Charing Cross Road. Claire de Rouen. Kiley had walked past there a hundred times without ever going in. Two narrow flights of stairs and then an interior slightly larger than the average bathroom. Books floor to ceiling, wall to wall. There was a catalogue from Fisher’s show at Victoria Miro, alongside a fat retrospective, several inches thick. Most of the photographs, the early ones, were in glossy black and white. Beautiful young women slumming in fashionable clothes: standing, arms aloft, in a bomb site, dripping with costume jewellery and furs; laughing outside Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eel Stall at Spitalfields; stretched out along a coster’s barrow, legs kicking high in the air. One picture that Kiley kept flicking back to, a thin-hipped, almost waif-like girl standing, marooned, in an empty swimming pool, naked save for a pair of skimpy pants and gold bangles snaking up both arms, a gold necklace hanging down between her breasts. Lisa Arnold. Kate had told him her name. Lisa. He wondered if this were her.
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