by Ann Granger
‘Jackson’s not been back?’ I asked.
Sister Helen shook her head.
‘Look,’ I told her, ‘I don’t want to upset my mother, but there’s something I’ve got to mention to her. Things might be getting a little sticky. You see, the police might come back, and next time they could insist on seeing her. I know you’ve kept them at bay until now and I’m really grateful. But I know the cops, and they’re not sensitive souls.’
She was listening to this, head tilted, eyes thoughtful. ‘Has all this anything to do with Mr Duke’s death?’
‘Tangentially,’ I admitted. ‘I may have to tell her he’s dead, if I can find a way. It’s better she hears it from me than from the police. But that’s not what I’ve come to talk to her about. It’s a – a family matter.’
‘If you feel you must mention it to her, whatever it is,’ Sister Helen said in her calm way, ‘then you will. It’s for you to decide. However, she has a choice too. Her choice might be not to discuss it. If that is what she decides, then you must accept it. We can always ask questions. We don’t always get answers. It’s a fact of life. Eva mustn’t be harassed. After all, that’s what we’re both trying to stop the police doing to her, isn’t it?’
I told her once more that I understood the rules. As I set off towards my mother’s room, I heard Sister Helen speak again.
‘Fran? You know, nobody’s perfect, and no one becomes perfect because he or she happens to be dying. We love people in life as we love them in death, with all their imperfections. That is what love is about. Without sacrifice, love is nothing.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I do love her, and I have to believe that in her own way she loves me, no matter what happened years ago. I can’t tell you I’m completely happy in my own mind about it, but I’m getting there.’
My mother put out her hand to me in greeting. I took it and she gave my fingers a weak squeeze. Her bed was still by the window but today the clerk of the weather was supplying drizzle and the panes were streaked, obscuring the view.
‘Mum,’ I said, ‘I want to do what’s right. You want to do what’s right, don’t you?’
‘I am,’ she replied. ‘I’m putting things right.’
‘No, you’re not.’ I tried to keep my voice gentle and not to let the frustration show. ‘You’re stirring things up.’
She answered in the slow, considered, confident way which I had learned meant she wouldn’t budge. ‘I’m making them right for me.’
Sister Helen’s voice seemed to echo in my ears. This was what she’d been trying to tell me. My mother was one of those people who are incapable of seeing anything in any way other than from their own internal viewpoint. Everything, for such people, is judged by how it affects them, never how it will affect anyone else. Even love is judged by this benchmark. My mother took comfort in the fact that by doing her bidding in searching for Nicola, I was showing love for her. She couldn’t see how desperate I was for some token from her. It didn’t mean she didn’t care about me. It was just that there was a pattern to her thinking and she was in the middle of it. Me, Dad, Grandma, the Wildes, Nicola, everyone else in her life, had always turned slowly round her like a model of planets circling the sun.
I knew now what she wanted of Nicola. Not to know what she looked like. Not to know what sort of things she did or liked. What she wanted was Nicola’s love. She was asking me to get it for her, and I couldn’t do that. No one could.
I’d never get her to see it the way I did, and there was no point in trying. However, for all the weakness of her body, I was confident that my mother’s mind was tough. I had to tell her about the police’s discovery, and that meant mentioning the subject I had spent all my time with her trying to avoid.
‘Rennie Duke,’ I began awkwardly.
She blinked, and I noticed her eyelids were lashless. The look in her eyes was furtive. ‘What about him?’
‘I think he may have been asking around about you – about the time, years ago, before you knew him, after you left Dad.’
She drew her knees up beneath the coverlet and wrapped her arms round them in a curiously foetal gesture. ‘Then you’ve got to stop him, Fran.’
Me again. But as it happened, this time someone had already done the job. I omitted that detail and went on, ‘It’s like this. Duke’s stirred things up a bit. He’s found Mrs Marks.’
Now she looked frightened. ‘Impossible! She’s old. She can’t still be around. You’ve got it all wrong, Fran. Mrs Marks? Even if he has found her, she wouldn’t remember me.’
‘I don’t know about that. All I know is, others may be getting interested in baby Miranda Varady.’
‘Why?’ She was bewildered. ‘Who?’
‘Duke may have tipped off the police somehow. They may come here, wanting to know what happened to your baby.’
I thought she’d panic. I was even ready to ring for help. But oddly, at the word ‘police’ she looked more relaxed. ‘Oh, the police,’ she said. ‘I’m not worried about them.’
‘You’re not?’ I asked in surprise.
‘Bless you, darling. Of course not. What can they do to me? They can’t make me answer any questions. They can’t arrest me. They can’t haul me off to gaol.’ She gave a little gurgling laugh. ‘They can’t do anything to me, Fran.’
I had no answer to that. I sat silent. She stopped looking amused and frowned.
‘But Rennie’s different. Rennie’s got to be stopped.’
‘He won’t do any more harm now,’ I said, unthinking.
Her eyes were suddenly bright with intelligence. ‘Rennie’s dead, isn’t he? Something’s happened to him.’
So, in the end, I’d let the cat out of the bag myself, clumsily. But there wouldn’t have been a kind way to break the news. She must have counted him as some sort of friend. ‘He had an accident,’ I told her.
I wondered if she’d ask what kind, and was ready to plump for traffic. But she didn’t ask. She didn’t seem particularly surprised. She had known him and his little ways, after all.
She just leaned back on the pillows, her fingers picking absently at the front of her nightgown. ‘Poor Rennie,’ she said. ‘I knew I couldn’t trust him. But he can’t hurt me now.’ And she smiled.
It chilled my blood.
When I got back from Egham it was one thirty and I had two hours to go before my meeting with Mrs Marks. I could, if I put my best foot forward (wonky boot allowing), get over to Soho and try for an interview with Mickey Allerton. Susie had said he was at his club over lunchtime. I might just catch him.
The Silver Circle was in a narrow side street, jostled on one side by a restaurant and on the other by a sex shop. The club’s façade was tastefully picked out in black and silver and bore the legend Members Only. A gentleman with a flattened nose and a suit too tight for him stood in the doorway, moodily watching a couple of pigeons pick at something spilled on the pavement.
I drew a deep breath and walked up to him. He said nothing, only looked down at me as if I was another pigeon. I explained politely that I’d like a word with Mr Allerton if he was in his office.
‘We’re not hiring any new girls,’ said the doorkeeper.
‘I’m not after a job,’ I explained.
He studied me dispassionately, top to toe. ‘Just as well, you ain’t got the figure for it.’
‘Never mind the personal remarks,’ I told him. ‘Can I see Mr Allerton?’
‘What about?’
‘I’m making some enquiries. I’m a sort of private detective.’
‘What, you?’ He seemed mightily amused by this.
‘Yes, me!’ I extricated Rennie’s by now well-worn business card. ‘We’ve done work for Mr Allerton in the past.’
He glanced at it. ‘Cor blimey, what’s the world coming to? Don’t make no difference. He ain’t here.’
‘Can I leave a message, then?’
‘No. I don’t take no messages. Not part of my job.’
I might have g
iven up at that point, but just then a taxi drew up. The doorman’s manner changed in an instant, alert as a perishing gun dog. He dived forward, scattering the pigeons, to open the cab door. A beefy, well-dressed guy in a camel overcoat, with thinning fair hair expensively styled, got out and paid off the cabbie.
‘All right, Harry?’ he enquired of the doorman.
‘All right, Mr Allerton,’ Harry assured him, albeit with an uneasy glance at me.
I nipped forward smartly. ‘Mr Allerton? My name is Fran Varady and I’d be really grateful if you could spare me five minutes.’
‘You haven’t got the figure for it, love,’ he said kindly.
At this rate I’d end up with a really poor self-image. ‘I’m not after a job,’ I said.
‘Sing? Do a novelty act?’
‘No! Mr Allerton, I’m a sort of private investigator.’
‘Gawd,’ he said. ‘They say when the coppers start to look younger it’s a sign of old age. I don’t like to think what it means when kids like you turn up and claim to be private eyes.’
‘Five minutes!’ I said loudly and clearly, holding up the fingers of my right hand.
‘Hop it!’ growled Harry, seizing my upper arm painfully.
But Allerton was grinning. He must have had a good lunch somewhere. ‘You’ve got bottle, I’ll say that. What are you investigating, then? Oi, don’t tell me a missing girl. I don’t employ anyone under age, and if they’re old enough, then it’s up to them if they don’t want their families knowing what they do.’ He jabbed his finger at me.
‘Rennie Duke’s death,’ I gasped, wincing from the pain in my arm.
He stopped grinning. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come in and tell me why you’re so interested. Not that I’ve got anything to tell you. But call me curious.’
He walked past the incredulous doorman, who let me go reluctantly. I trotted after his boss.
The vestibule was gloomy and the entry into the clubroom itself was covered with heavy velvet drapes. From the far side of them oozed a fug of smoke, booze fumes and perfume. Someone was playing the piano. From high in one corner, the CCTV camera kept an accusing eye on new arrivals. A very pretty Oriental girl leaned on the reception desk. From the look of her, I wondered how honest Allerton had been about not employing anyone under age. Behind her, coats hung on hooks, and in front of her was a stack of printed forms, I guessed membership applications. I wondered what they cost. She also snapped to attention when she saw Allerton. He gave her a brief nod of acknowledgement, then turned left down a narrow corridor, me at his heels.
We fetched up in a tiny office. It contained a desk with a swivel chair and another chair for visitors. Three screens flickered silently, showing three different scenes: the foyer, the bar and stage, and another area I guessed was the rear of the place. In the bar, half a dozen slumped male figures watched a girl in thigh boots and a handful of sequins do a kind of gymnastic dance on the stage. Her heavily painted face expressed nothing, her eyes fixed on some place far off, another world. It looked as beautiful and dead as the face on an Egyptian mummy case. She wasn’t dancing for them, she was dancing for herself and some unseen and quite different audience.
‘It’s art,’ said Allerton, following my gaze.
‘No it’s not,’ I retorted. I hadn’t meant to argue with him and set him against me, but I take the performing arts seriously.
Allerton’s eyes had narrowed. ‘You’re not one of those feminist birds, are you? They turn up every so often, stick posters on my windows and pour instant glue in the locks.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I was a drama student once.’
‘Nice,’ he returned without the slightest interest. He shrugged off his coat and sat at the desk. I wasn’t invited to take the visitor’s chair and remained standing awkwardly before him. I put his age at around fifty. As a younger man, he must have been handsome in a flashy way. Now he had the kind of striking looks, well-worn and battle-hardened, I’d seen on antique busts of Roman bigwigs. His very pale grey eyes were pouched in bags of soft skin. All his skin was as clear and supple as a baby’s and I guessed at regular facial sessions. He probably detoxed regularly at health spas. But the eyes, in their paleness, were unsettling and reminded me of silvery fish-eyes. His nose was a good classical one, though, long and straight, his lips were thin, and a once square jaw had begun to acquire jowls, as yet no more than a sagginess spoiling the chin line. He looked like a man who was used to giving orders, who lived well, was careful in his choice of friends and in his business dealings. The sort of man even his enemies treated with respect. The sort, in fact, in whose presence I needed to tread very warily. I told myself to be extra polite. Grovel, if necessary.
‘Rennie done one or two little jobs for me,’ he said. ‘His old lady keeping the business going?’
‘For the time being,’ I said carefully. ‘She’s not had a chance to make up her mind yet.’
He grunted. ‘Right, let’s hear it. I’m a busy man. Make it quick.’
I explained that my mother had left home when I was a kid, and later hired Rennie to find me. Rennie had subsequently turned up dead outside my abode (which I didn’t tell him was a garage).
‘So,’ I said, ‘the police keep bothering me. What I want to know is, has his death got anything to do with me or my mother, and if so, am I next on some killer’s shopping list? Because if I am, I’d really like to know.’
‘Doesn’t explain why you’re here,’ he said.
‘Look,’ I urged, ‘Rennie was a bit of a creep. We all know that. Maybe he upset someone? I just thought you might have heard something like that. It’d let me know if I’m worrying over nothing.’
‘If I might have heard something?’ He was looking amused. ‘You’re a funny little tart, you are.’ The smile left his eyes. ‘You’d better be on the level, darling, or I might get very cross.’
‘You can check me out,’ I said.
‘You got my name from the widow, I suppose?’
I didn’t want to get Susie into more trouble. ‘She’s very upset, she loved him.’ I made it good, heart-breaking even. It bounced off Allerton.
‘That’s her problem. I paid Rennie well for the jobs he did for me. That’s the end of it as far as I’m concerned. Sure, I knew he was dodgy, but he was never so stupid as to try anything clever with me. People don’t.’ The fish-eyes were at their most expressionless. ‘So if Susie Duke has got any ideas about getting more money from me now, tell her to forget it. I’m not a charity nor an insurance company. Give her my regrets. I’m sorry he’s gone. He was good, and it inconveniences me.’ He was being honest about his feelings, at least.
‘It’s nothing to do with money, nothing like that. I’m not here on Susie’s behalf, just my own. I’m worried about my neck,’ I assured him.
‘You’d protect your neck, darling, a lot better if you didn’t go marching into places like this and bothering blokes like me. Didn’t your mother tell you these things? Oh no, she didn’t. You were saying she lit out when you were a nipper.’
He tapped his fingers on the desk and made a decision to revise his earlier statement. ‘Perhaps I am interested to know who killed Rennie Duke. Very careless of ’em, whoever it was. So if I hear anything, I’ll let you know. And if you get a lead, you’ll let me know, right? Fair exchange, no robbery.’
I wasn’t too happy with this arrangement, but promised I would do so if I could. He asked for a phone number and I had to give him that of the shop, explaining that they took messages and mail for me there, but were not in any other way connected. He scribbled down the number.
‘We could get you a decent wig and an outfit, say leather, and make a hostess of you,’ he said without looking up. ‘Some of the members like something a bit different. You’re different.’
‘I’m an actor,’ I said with dignity.
‘Right, you said. Shouldn’t that be actress?’
‘We don’t say that now.’
‘Oh, don’t we?’ h
e mimicked. ‘Don’t they know the difference between fellers and girls in the theatre? We do in my business.’ He gave me a sly look. ‘Not a detective, then?’
‘Both. I’m resting. I’ve got to do something while I’m resting.’
‘I’ve employed lots of resting actresses,’ he told me, probably truthfully.
‘Not this one,’ I said, but added politely, ‘thank you all the same,’ because I didn’t want to offend him.
‘Don’t thank me,’ he said. ‘Just scram.’