Strange Affair

by Peter Robinson

  “Still screwing the lovely DI Cabbot, are you, or have you moved on to pastures new?”

  Banks ignored him. Burgess was always looking for buttons to push. Usually he succeeded, but not this time. “Tell me,” Banks said, “honestly, do you think Roy could have got involved in something crooked with Lambert again?”

  “Anything’s possible. But what I’m telling you is that I, we, have no knowledge of it. If they were into something together, it’s a smooth operation. You’re dealing with pros here. At least Lambert’s a pro.”

  “And you’d know if there was something?”

  “Maybe. If it was big enough and nasty enough. We spend a lot of time just watching and thinking, but we’re not omniscient. We don’t know everything, just most things. Besides, it’s not my problem anymore. And Lambert hasn’t been back here very long. Only a couple of months if my sources are right, which they usually are. So if there is anything, it’s either new or it’s something international and he was working it from Spain, too. Let me ask around. I’ve still got a few contacts. There’s a bloke from Interpol, Dieter Ganz, I know is interested, if I can get in touch with him. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I want to know where Lambert lives.”

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to asking me that.”

  “I’d have got around to it a lot sooner if I hadn’t had my parents to cope with. Are you going to tell me?”

  “Can’t see why not.” Burgess gave him an address in Chelsea. “You’d only find out some other way. He’s got a place out in the country somewhere, too, where he keeps his wife, but this flat’s his pied-à-terre when he’s in town. He still travels a fair bit. And he runs his business out of an office above a dry-cleaning shop on Edgeware Road, the Marble Arch end. But watch him, Banks. He’s slippery. Remember Harry Lime.”

  Banks finished his orange juice. “Tell me something,” he said. “You always put up a show of resistance, but in the end you usually tell me what I want to know. Why?”

  “Entertainment value,” said Burgess. “Besides, I like you. I like to watch you work. It interests me. I see you getting more and more like I used to be. You want something, you go after it, and bugger the consequences. Bugger the law, if necessary.”

  “Used to be?”

  Burgess sipped some beer. “I’ve mellowed, Banksy. Grown up.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “It’s true. Anyway, let’s just say that DI Brooke’s interests and mine don’t always coincide. Brooke’s a plodder. I know the type. No imagination. No breadth of vision. He’s only interested in short-term results, another tick on his report card for his next promotion.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m more interested in the big picture, the long-term view. And I like to know what’s going on. Information’s my stock-in-trade these days, after all. I don’t get out on the street much.”

  “Miss it?”

  Burgess looked away. “Sometimes.” He laughed and raised his glass. “Now bugger off. And good luck with Lambert.”

  It had started raining again and Banks had to fight against the influx of people trying to get back inside. He found a sheltered doorway and dialed Annie’s number on his mobile. She answered on the fourth ring.

  “Annie, it’s me, Alan.”

  “Where are you? I’ve been wanting to speak to you ever since I heard. I’m really sorry about what happened to your brother.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it. I’m back in London. Where are you?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Annie said, “I’m in Selfridge’s at the moment, in one of the changing rooms. You might not have heard, but they’ve closed King’s Cross. Bomb threat. Anyway, it means I’m stuck here for another night. I need something to wear. I’m just about to head back to the hotel. Look, Alan, we have to talk again. A lot’s happened.”

  “I know, but it’ll have to wait. Couple of quick questions. Have Brooke’s blokes talked to Gareth Lambert yet?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Annie. “Last time I talked to him Dave didn’t seem all that interested. They’re concentrating on a couple of local lowlifes called Oliver Drummond and William Gilmore. Their names came up in your brother’s business correspondence and phone records.” Banks remembered the names, but they didn’t mean anything to him.

  Then Annie told him about her visit to Alf Seaton’s that morning, the description of the man with the ponytail and what had become of the Mondeo. Banks knew immediately that it was one of the men who had followed him from Peterborough, the one who had made the gesture.

  “Another thing you might as well know,” Annie said. “It looks as if your brother’s girlfriend had an abortion, arranged through the Berger-Lennox Centre. That’s when he met Jennifer Clewes.”

  “Jesus,” said Banks. “That’ll be Corinne you’re talking about?”

  “Are there any others?”

  “Probably,” said Banks, “but I think she was the most recent model, the one before Jennifer. Thanks for telling me.”

  “Can we meet up? We really should talk about all this.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” said Banks. “Breakfast? I’ve still got a couple of people to talk to tonight. How about I give you a bell when I’m finished?” Banks rang off before she could protest.

  The rain was really pelting down now and all Banks had for protection was his light raincoat. He stood in the doorway of the closed shoe shop looking at the people drifting back and forth between the curtains of rain, then stepped out and headed as fast as he could for Tottenham Court Road tube station.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “How did you get my address?” Dr. Alex Lukas asked Annie as she stood under her umbrella on the front step of the Belsize Park house shortly after seven o’clock that evening. “I’m not in the telephone directory.”

  “We have our sources,” said Annie, who had taken a peek at the personnel records when she made a quick, and otherwise fruitless, search of Jennifer Clewes’s office at the Berger-Lennox.

  “Can I come in?” “What do you want? It’s not a police state yet, is it?”

  “Not the last time I checked,” said Annie with a smile. “But it is raining fast.”

  Dr. Lukas took the chain off the door and stepped back. Annie folded up her umbrella, took off her raincoat and hung it on the coat stand. She followed Dr. Lukas down the thick carpet into a cozy and comfortable living room. The curtains were still open and rain streaked across the windowpanes. The radio was playing quietly, an orchestral concert of some sort. Dr. Lukas excused herself for a moment and went upstairs. While she waited, Annie looked around the room.

  What looked to Annie like original works of art hung on the wall, mostly abstract expressionist and cubist pieces, and various knickknacks and framed photographs stood on most available surfaces. The crowded dark-wood bookcase boasted a colorful array of spines, none of them medical. There were novels, mostly Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, poetry by Mandelstam, Akhnatova, Yevtushenko, Tsvetayeva, and a few biographies, Shostakovich, Gorbachev, Pasternak. Annie could see by the lettering that some of the books were in Russian. Taking into account the matryoshka doll on the mantelpiece, and remembering the hint of an accent, it didn’t take much to surmise that Dr. Lukas hailed from Russia, or somewhere in the former Soviet Republic.

  Beside the doll stood a black-and-white photograph of a family group in a wooded area: parents and three children. Annie walked over to have a closer look at it. They were all wearing overcoats and no one was smiling; they had that hard, pinched look you get when there isn’t enough food on the table or coal on the fire. Beside it stood another photo of what Annie took to be the parents, more recent and in color. This time they were smiling into the camera, standing beside a large lake in the sunshine.

  “On holiday,” said Dr. Lukas, behind her.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy,” said Annie. “Is that your parents?”

  “Yes. It was taken two years ago.”

  “So you come
from Russia?”

  “Ukraine. A city called L’viv, in the west, not far from the Polish border. Do you know it?”

  “Sorry,” said Annie, whose geography was terrible.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Annie gestured to the photograph again. “Do they still live there?”

  Dr. Lukas paused before answering with a tentative “Yes.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Thirteen years. I was twenty-five when the Soviet Union broke up. I was lucky. I got into medical school in Edinburgh. I’d had some training in L’viv, of course, but this country didn’t recognize my qualifications. Do you know how many foreigntrained doctors there are over here driving minicabs and working in restaurants and hotels?”

  “No,” said Annie.

  “It’s a shame, a terrible waste,” said Dr. Lukas, with a hint of tragic fatalism in her voice.

  “You don’t have a very strong accent,” Annie said.

  “I worked hard to get rid of it. Foreign accents don’t work in your favor here. But all this is beside the point. What have you come to see me about?”

  Dr. Lukas was perching uncomfortably at the edge of an armchair, Annie noticed, body hunched forward and tense, hands clasped in her lap. She was wearing faded jeans and a man’s white casual shirt, no makeup. She looked tired and drawn, as she had in her office.

  “You’re right,” said Annie. “It’s not a social call.” She paused and searched for the right way to begin. “Look, in a murder investigation, people sometimes hide things, mask the truth. Not because they’re guilty, but because they’ve maybe committed some minor crime and they’re afraid we’ll uncover it and prosecute them. Do you understand?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “When that happens, it makes a difficult job even harder. We don’t know what’s important and what isn’t, so how can we know where to focus our line of inquiry?”

  “All jobs have their difficulties,” said Dr. Lukas. “Mine included. I don’t see what point there is in you telling me how hard yours is.”

  “I thought if you understood, then you’d see reason and tell me the truth.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I think you heard me.”

  “But I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Are you suggesting I lied?”

  “I’m saying that you might be hiding something because you think it reflects badly on you. I don’t think you’re lying so much as you’re obscuring the truth. Now it may or may not be important, or it may not seem important to you, but I’d like to know what it is, and I think you’d like to tell me.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You get to know people in this job. I think you’re a decent person and I think you’re under a tremendous amount of pressure. Now that could simply be a matter of your work, or it could be due to personal problems which are nothing at all to do with this investigation. But the feeling I get is that there’s something else, and that it is connected.”

  “I see.” Dr. Lukas stood up and walked to the cocktail cabinet. “I think I need a drink,” she said, and took out a tumbler and a bottle of Southern Comfort. “What about you?”

  “Nothing, thanks,” said Annie.

  “As you wish.” She poured herself a large measure and sat down again. This time she relaxed a little more into the armchair and the strain that etched the lines on her forehead and around her eyes and mouth eased. The concert ended and Annie heard the radio audience applaud before the announcer’s voice cut in. Dr. Lukas switched it off, took a sip of Southern Comfort and regarded Annie closely with her serious brown eyes. Annie got the sense that she was trying to come to some sort of decision and realized that she might well end up with a partial truth, if anything, as was so often the case.

  The clock ticked and rain tapped against the window. Still Dr. Lukas thought and sipped. Finally, when Annie could almost bear it no longer, she said, “You’re right.”

  “About what?”

  “About people withholding the truth. Do you think it doesn’t happen in my profession, too? People lie to me all the time. How much they drink. Whether they smoke. What drugs they take. How often they exercise. As if by lying they’d make themselves healthy. But I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Sometimes people use a different standard to measure themselves by,” said Annie. “You might not think you have done anything morally or ethically wrong, but you might have broken the law. Or vice versa.”

  Dr. Lukas managed a flicker of a smile. “A fine distinction.”

  “I’m not after getting you struck off.”

  “I’m happy to hear it.”

  “But I do want the truth. What are late girls?”

  Dr. Lukas sipped some more Southern Comfort before answering, then she ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “It’s really very simple,” she said. “They are girls who come late to the center.”

  “In what sense? Late in their pregnancies?”

  “No. There you are quite wrong.”

  “Well, I’ve hardly been steered in the right direction. This isn’t supposed to be a guessing game.”

  “Now I am telling you. There have been no surgical procedures performed on girls beyond the twenty-four-week legal limit.”

  “Okay,” said Annie, “so what is it all about?”

  “Girl who come late to the center, after regular hours. In the evening.”

  “When you’re working late?”

  “I have a lot of paperwork. You wouldn’t believe it, even a doctor…but I do.”

  “So why do these girls come after hours?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “They want to bypass the system for some reason, and you help them to do it?”

  “These girls are prostitutes, for the most part, and many of them are illegal immigrants or asylum seekers. They can’t go through the National Health and they can’t afford our fees.”

  “Pro-bono work, then?”

  “You could say that.”

  “What exactly do you do for them?”

  “I handle the forms, the papers necessary to secure an abortion, if that’s what they want. If another doctor’s signature is needed, I get that too from someone at one of the clinics. They don’t ask me too many questions. It’s very easy and it harms no one.”

  “Do you perform the abortions?”

  “No. They are done elsewhere, at one of the clinics.”

  “What do you do, then?”

  “I examine them, make sure they are in good general health. There’s venereal disease to worry about. And AIDS, of course. Some girls have drug and alcohol problems. Many of the fetuses would be born with severe handicaps if they lived.”

  “Do you supply drugs?”

  Dr. Lukas looked directly at Annie. “No,” she said. “I understand why they might want to take drugs, the life they are living, but I won’t supply them. They seem to have no problem getting drugs elsewhere, though.”

  “So if we were to check the drugs at the center against records, they would match?”

  “If they don’t, it’s not me who’s been taking them. But, yes, I think they would. Besides, we have no need for the kind of drugs you’re talking about at the center.”

  “How often does this happen?”

  “Not very often. Maybe once, sometimes twice a month.”

  “Why do these girls come to you? How do they know about you?”

  “Many of them are from eastern Europe,” Dr. Lukas said with a shrug. “I’m known in the community.”

  That sounded a bit vague, Annie thought—eastern Europe covered a large area—but she let it go. Now Dr. Lukas was on a roll it was better to get as much as possible out of her rather than belabor one point. “What about Jennifer Clewes? Did she know about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did she find out?”

  “She’s known for a month or two. I didn’t realize she worked late sometimes, too. I thought I was alone there. You’
ve seen how isolated my office is. The girls usually buzz the front door and I let them in myself. This time Jennifer got there first. She didn’t say anything, but later she asked me what was going on.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “What I’m telling you.”

  “And what was her reaction?”

  “She became interested.” Dr. Lukas swirled the remains of her drink in her glass. “Jennifer was a truly decent human being,” she said. “When I explained to her about the girls and the situation they were in, nowhere to turn to for help, she understood.”

  “It didn’t disturb her, upset her?”

  “No. She was a bit uncomfortable about it at first, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Well, she was the administrator. She helped to protect me. Paperwork got lost, that sort of thing. I told her it would be best if she didn’t tell anyone, that not everyone would understand.”

  “We think she must have told her boyfriend.”

  Dr. Lukas shrugged. “That was for her judgment alone.”

  “So Jennifer became involved in it with you?”

  “Yes. We were both trying to help unfortunate girls. It’s not that this happened often, you understand. It wasn’t a regular thing. These girls would not have been able to come if they’d had to pay. And remember, they couldn’t just walk into the nearest NHS clinic. What do you think would happen to them? Do you think there are no longer back-street abortionists using rusty coat hangers?”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “Nothing went wrong.”

  “Jennifer Clewes is dead.”

  “I know nothing about that. I’ve told you what I was keeping from you, who the late girls are and how and why I helped them. I’ve told you Jennifer’s part in all this. There is nothing more. Once in a while a girl who needed help would come to me and I provided it. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Did anyone else know? Georgina, for example?”

  “No. At first it was only me, then Jennifer. She was the only other person who ever stayed late.”