‘What does she know?’ The detective superintendent wasn’t sure he would get a response.
‘You’re putting me on the spot. I’m going to claim that it’s privileged information, on a need-to-know basis and frankly, you don’t need to know.’
‘Sir, I can understand the dilemma, but is it that serious?’
‘Political dynamite! Hits at the highest levels of the government. It could cause a major electoral defeat.’
‘Who she’s been screwing recently or in the past, that sort of thing?’
‘In the past, and yes, there’s plenty of what you just intimated, plus some more.’
‘We’ll keep looking. I’ll tell my people that it’s important. They’ll just have to trust me on this one.’
‘Will they?’ MacTavish asked.
‘If I give my word, they’ll accept it. It won’t stop then fishing around.’
‘It’s your job to keep them from dangling the bait. If they get too close, let me know.’
***
On the face of it, Fiona Avers had all the right ingredients: celebrity mother, acting ability. There were, however, two elements, apparently vital in the acting profession that the daughter of Marjorie Frobisher did not have, the most obvious being that she was not attractive. In fact, the less generous would have said she was plain, verging on ugly. The less obvious of her two main failings, a violent temper, coupled with an incredibly short fuse. Unattractive women have reached the pinnacle of acting success, but invariably they came with a winning personality, a willingness to understand their shortcomings - in fact, to embrace them.
Fiona Avers was a tall woman with what could only be described as masculine features. Her arms were bulbous and appeared a little short considering her height: substantially taller than her mother, a good head and shoulders above her father. Her legs were also on the fat side, her calf muscles tended to bulge as a body builder. Attempts at rectification through exercises ‒ her parents had paid plenty to help ‒ had come to nought.
Her face, some would say showed character, but they were generous in their comments and the only one who said that with any conviction was her friend, literally her only friend, Molly Waters. They had met at school, experimented with lesbianism, even at their most precocious, most promiscuous and most willing to screw any male they could lay their hands on. Unfortunately for both, there was a surfeit of young and attractive females, also at their most precocious, most promiscuous and invariably both Fiona and Molly were left with each other to satisfy their carnal lusts. Molly did not find the experience unpleasant, Fiona did, although she endured, eventually embraced the experience.
Molly was fat at school, although she had a pleasant face and a personality to match. The fatness of youth had passed over into adulthood, and now she was severely in need of a healthy diet and a good makeover. The pleasant personality remained, and it served her well in life. She had tried men for a while, even found a man who treated her well, moved in with him for a few months, but realised from her early intimate encounters that it was females that satisfied her sexually, especially a female by the name of Fiona Avers.
Fiona Avers, however, felt no such allure for the female body except for hers when a man was labouring on top of her, and that was rare. The world, the society that she moved in was awash with attractive females, and she was invariably left the wallflower at any social gathering. ‘The girl least likely to get laid’ had become a catchphrase among those she regarded as friends, although they were fair-weather friends lured by her easy spending and her tenuous clutch at celebrity.
Her face ‒ only Molly Waters saw any innate beauty ‒ was large with a pronounced forehead. Her eyes were sullen with overhanging eyelids. Her ears were small with a distinctive lobe which she concealed by growing her hair long which did not help as her hair was curly and harsh. Her nose also gave concern. Cosmetic surgery had dealt with that problem, although it had done little to help with her overall appearance.
Her mother had elegantly balanced features and could only be described as beautiful; her father had a rugged look about him with strong masculine characteristics. Not a handsome man but an interesting man - women felt comfortable in his presence.
Everyone in her close family, Uncles and Aunts mainly, always said that she reminded them of Great Granny Maud, but the only photo that Fiona had seen of the family stalwart was old and grainy - she could see no resemblance.
Her father had shown her great love, made her feel special; her mother had ridiculed her, kept her out of the limelight and had belittled her too often. How often she had seen her mother telling her friends that her daughter’s looks came from Robert’s side of the family? How many times when there was a function to attend, or an event where the cameras would be clicking, had she been denied the chance to attend? She well remembered her brother Sam attending, but then her mother had always said, ‘he’s much older than you. You’re too young to attend such events. People get drunk, make fools of themselves. At your impressionable age, I want to protect you from such influences until you’re older.’
Fiona remembered well enough. As the years rolled by in her childhood and formative teenage years, the non-attendance continued, although the reasons varied.
Her father ensured that her mother’s rejection was countered by his love and generosity. As a child, she looked for a mother’s love. As a teenager experiencing her first period and then her first schoolyard crush on a boy, rejected with scathing insults, she looked for a mother’s support, a shoulder to cry on. As an adult, she no longer needed her mother, only her hatred for her.
Her father she adored. She knew full well her mother’s promiscuous behaviour caused him great concern, although he never admitted it, at least to her. He always said that was the way she was, and we should accept her for her flaws. She could see the hurt in her father’s eyes and the look on his face when he thought no one was looking.
Her temper had been an inconvenience as a child, just a tantrum, but with the transformation to a teenager and then to an adult it had become an embarrassment, even to her. A failure to obtain an acting part, an un-attentive shop assistant, a hairdresser who had failed to achieve a satisfactory result ‒ not difficult given the poor material that he had to work with ‒ and she would see red and blow off steam in an uncontrolled manner.
She knew it was wrong and non-helpful. She had even taken counselling in anger management but to no avail. There had been a production at a theatre in the centre of London, and she had managed to obtain a decent part. Mainly because it required a name to pull in the paying public and the daughter of Marjorie Frobisher was better than no name, but only just. Secondly, and less important was that the part of an embittered plain woman aligned with Fiona Avers. The casting agent saw that little makeup would be required.
There had been a lesser reason although to Fiona it had been significant. The director of the play, one of the lesser known Russian classics, had a perversion for unattractive women which he made clear that first night of rehearsals in his office at the back of the theatre. Everyone had gone home; she had stayed for some additional coaching at his insistence and encouragement. He had plied her with alcohol, vodka mainly, which had little effect as she had a substantial capacity for drink, having drunk regularly too much since her teens. He saw it as a seduction, although it did not require alcohol. There, sitting close in his office, the touching, the compliments and it was not long before they were both naked on the floor. The carpet was old and dirty, although both beyond caring and it was her that was underneath, her substantial breasts feeling the heaviness of his body and the scratching of his chest hair. It was soon over. Once he had expended his lust, she had quickly been hustled out of the door.
The next day he was cool, maybe as a result of guilt, perhaps to show a neutral approach to the cast in his praise and criticism of them all. At least, she wanted to believe that until she saw him approaching Mary O’Donnell, the lead actress and his request for her to stay back
for some extra coaching. Fiona knew that yet again, a man had used her for his base needs and had left her high and dry, emotionally and sexually.
The weeks passed by, she kept her emotions in check, until he had criticised her once too often, and the cow, Mary O’Donnell had offered some choice comment about Fiona’s acting plus the fact that she was an easy lay. It was clear that the director had told Mary about his night-time encounter with her and the office floor.
Unrestrained, Fiona slapped the woman hard across the face with such force that the woman fell back and banged her head against a box in the corner of the stage. They took her off to the hospital and evicted Fiona from the theatre.
Since then the parts had been few, and she saw her career at an end. She blamed her mother for her life and the few times they had met in the last few years, her mother had been unapologetic, ‘It was my career, darling. I had to do what was right, what was necessary to look after the family and you always had the best.’
Fiona knew she had had the best that money could buy, but not what she longed for, the love of a mother for a daughter. She hated her mother, the one emotion that was not subject to scathing comments from talentless actresses, critical seducing directors, and schoolyard arbiters on her lack of good looks. That one emotion, hatred for a person that she should love, could only hate, remained constant.
Chapter 6
Detective Inspector Farhan Ahmed had to admit Rosemary Fairweather was a good-looking woman when he met her. With Isaac out looking for Marjorie Frobisher, he had taken the responsibility to try and ascertain why she was so important. So far, he had only come up with blanks, but he and Isaac had decided it was integral to the case to know, although they had been told to focus on finding the woman.
Their boss, Detective Superintendent Goddard should have known better than to ask an investigating detective to look in one place, avoid another. A good detective looks everywhere, no matter how insignificant and supposedly irrelevant. A jigsaw puzzle is meaningless without all the pieces, even if it’s the smallest piece in the blandest area of white cloud or blue sky. A criminal investigation is the same principle. Lay out all the facts on a whiteboard, put all the names and the faces and the motives and the reasons there. One question mark and it’s not possible to bring the investigation to a conclusion.
It had been Isaac who had suggested Rosemary Fairweather, Marjorie Frobisher’s agent the previous night, late as usual. They had been going through the case, so far. The fact that it was a disappearance, not a murder with a blood-soaked body or a skeleton, no more than bones after a year in a shallow grave, annoyed them. The best they could do was to get on with it, find the damn woman and then get back to some serious policing instead of tramping around the country looking for a no doubt vain and silly woman.
Farhan could not help noticing some recognisable faces framed and up on the wall in Rosemary Fairweather’s reception area as he waited to be invited into the inner sanctum, Barbara Reid’s words, not his.
Barbara Reid, Rosemary Fairweather’s personal assistant, was a talkative woman, smartly dressed, designer clothes. Farhan assumed they were expensive. She was in her late forties, tending to middle age plumpness, but the face maintained the look of youth or, at least, expensive cosmetics.
‘I’ve been Rosemary’s right-hand person for the last eighteen years,’ she said.
‘Good boss, then,’ Farhan replied. He found her remarkably agreeable with a mellow, soothing voice. His wife was a decent woman, but she was covered as befitted a conservative Muslim female. He could feel loyalty to her as his faith and his family required, but certainly not love and rarely lust. She had provided him with two healthy children, a boy and a girl, another on the way. His attraction to the woman in the office was not unknown to him, but he saw his religion and his beliefs as important, and he would not stray from the marital bed. Isaac, he realised would stray, although he was unmarried and in a culture that recognised straying, or, at least, the occasional dalliance as an acceptable pastime. As he spent time in the reception area, Farhan hoped that Rosemary William would not summon him into the inner sanctum too soon.
‘The best,’ Barbara Reid continued. ‘When I came here there was only one client, Marjorie Frobisher, but now…’
‘The photos on the wall.’ Farhan had interrupted the personal assistant mid-sentence.
‘Yes, they’ve all been in here, plus there are more that Rosemary had rejected, some big names even.’
‘She’s very selective?’ He was enjoying his conversation. It was not often that he chatted with an attractive woman in a pleasant environment. It was certainly more agreeable than where he and Isaac worked. There it was clean and functional, freshly painted with everything in its place. Here it was bright, the walls in the reception area painted in a pale blue. The chairs where he sat were in leather and comfortable. The coffee table was glass-topped, obviously expensive and on the top rested some magazines, recent and related to the acting profession. Barbara Reid sat at a functional table, not overly large with a laptop in the centre. The computer mouse was to the right, the additional monitor sat at the far right of the table. Apart from that, her desk was totally clean. The building outside, no more than two hundred metres from the Strand in Central London showed Victoriana in its construction and style, although once inside the interior had been gutted and rebuilt to the very best modern style. It was a large building. Rosemary William’s office occupied the third floor.
Drinking his second cup of coffee, the PA had been insistent that he try the freshly brewed coffee and unable to resist such a pleasant invite, he had agreed. To him, it was too strong, but he could only say, ‘It’s great, thanks very much.’
The inner sanctum summoned, all too soon for Farhan. He carried the coffee in with him.
‘What can I do for you?’ Rosemary Fairweather asked. The reception area was tastefully decorated, the office more so and expensive. The carpet on the floor, fitted and plush, the walls adorned with original artworks, some seemed expensive. The desk unlike the PA’s was cluttered with files and photos.
‘Apologies for the mess. There’s a major film going into production in three months’ time. I’m trying to get some of my people onto the set.’
‘You have many?’
‘Too many. The photos on the walls are the primary clients. I suppose you recognised some of them.’
‘Most, especially Marjorie Frobisher.’
‘Marjorie, dear Marjorie.’ Farhan could not be sure if Rosemary Fairweather’s response were a sign of affection or sarcasm.
‘I’m told that she was your first client.’
Expensively dressed, hair immaculate and with an absolute assuredness of her own importance, she sat in a leather chair behind a glass-topped table, her knees and legs clearly visible. In her fifties with few lines on her face to show the fact, she had a preponderance for aiming to lower her age by a combination of clothes too tight, too short, and makeup which would have suited a younger person. As she sat behind the desk, her skirt tended to ride up her legs, perilously high, almost showing a glimpse of underwear. She would pull it down every so often. Farhan could not be sure as to whether the act was intentional. He gave the reason little concern, although he did appreciate the show.
‘My first client, my best client financially,’ she replied.
‘I saw some more famous faces out there. Some major movie stars.’ Farhan had noticed one face, a movie actor successful in America.
‘Marjorie has been around longer than most, always employed in one programme or another. My commission adds up. The big star you saw outside; he’s only come onto the scene in the last year or so. He’s bringing in plenty of money now, but for how long, who knows?’
‘Tough business?’ Farhan said, realising that he needed to bring the interview back to the questions he wanted to ask.
‘It’s tough for the actors, tougher for the agents, the poor suckers who have to keep them occupied, deal with their neuroses, their d
oubts and then still try to find work for them.’
‘Marjorie Frobisher?’
‘She’s fine. She can be a bitch, but I’ve not had any trouble with her. Mind you, I’m a bitch as well. You have to be in this business.’
‘So, any ideas where she’s gone?’
‘You know about her lifestyle?’
‘Her sleeping arrangements?’ It seemed the subtlest way for Farhan to mention the subject without giving too much detail.
‘Discreetly put,’ she replied.
‘Is it relevant to her current disappearance?’
‘Unlikely, and I don’t know of anyone recently.’
‘Has there been someone in the past?’
‘It’s none of my business, but sometimes she feels like talking.’
‘Anyone she could be with now?’
‘She’s taken off in the past, but there’s never been a man. I don’t believe she would be with anyone. She was always open with her husband when something was going on, poor man.’
‘Why do you say, poor man?’
‘Robert, he’s a good man. He went along with the agreement, but I don’t believe he often strayed; no more than any normal heterosexual male, but Marjorie…’
‘She was more likely to stray?’
‘She was rampant in her younger years, but now...’
‘Now?’
‘She’s in her fifties, menopausal. The fire doesn’t burn as strong. It’s part of the ageing process, unfortunately.’
‘Are you saying she doesn’t stray anymore?’ It was apparent that Rosemary Fairweather was a talker. Probably necessary in her line of work, he thought.
‘Stray, not too often and there are tales I could tell you, who and where.’
‘Such as?’
‘I’ve said too much, client confidentiality.’
Murder is a Tricky Business (DCI Cook Thriller Series Book 1) Page 5