A Few Little Lies

by Sue Welfare

  No-one was helping.

  Next, she tapped in Lillian’s number, half hoping, half expecting that she would be out.

  ‘Hello,’ said Lillian in her toffee-brown voice. ‘Who is this speaking?’

  ‘It’s me,’ said Dora. ‘I think I’ve found out why we are being burgled.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good,’ said Lillian cheerfully. ‘What is it?’

  Dora looked up at the ceiling and sighed. ‘Do you remember you told me you went to a Christmas party at Ben Frierman’s house? You and Carol met a man called Tom Fielding there?’

  There was a little squeak of comprehension from the phone. ‘Oh yes, he was lovely. Do you know him too?’

  Dora decided to press on. ‘While you were there Carol took some photos of you and Tom in bed together. Well, that’s what all this has been about. Someone has been trying to find them, but I’ve got them now. I’ve arranged with Tom to give them back. Is that all right?’

  Lillian was quiet for what seemed like a long time. ‘It was after my dad had gone home. Lots of the people had already left, Calvin and them. The ones who stayed had had a lot to drink – and Tom was so nice to me. I really didn’t think about the pictures. Carol’s photo mad, you know? I suppose I’d sort of forgotten about them. I thought maybe Carol had still got them at her place,’ she said. ‘Why would anyone want a few photos? You know he took us both out to his house the next day. Cooked us a big breakfast and everything. Not like Calvin, I’ve been thinking about Calvin a lot – Tom was so nice to me and Carol –’

  Dora shook her head. How did she explain to someone like Lillian that the photographs of Tom Fielding were political dynamite?

  ‘The thing is, Lillian, technically, I suppose the photographs are yours. I’m ringing up to ask if you mind me giving them to Tom Fielding.’

  Lillian giggled. ‘You mean like a souvenir? No, no, if he wants them, he can have them.’

  Finally, Dora rang Jon. She had saved him up until last. In some ways it was going to be the most difficult call to make.

  The receptionist said, ‘I’m really sorry, ma’am, but he isn’t in the station at the moment. Can I take a message?’ Dora politely declined. Truth by proxy was not what she had in mind.

  Oscar jumped up onto her lap and purred. For him, truth was an open can of tuna.

  Spar waited until early evening before he loped down to Gunners Terrace to pick up the tape from the car outside Dora’s flat. Milo had arranged with a friend who ran a garage to swap the motors round a bit, so Spar had to check the key under the street light to make sure he had the right one. This private eye business was beginning to lose its edge. The money was good but he could do without all the hanging about and the fiddly stuff.

  He’d left Milo in his garage, developing the photos they had taken that morning when they had searched Lillian’s flat.

  Spar was a bit of an atheist, which was a good thing. He’d read a notice once, in the electronics factory where he’d worked when he come out of nick. It had said, ‘God is in the details’, and he knew then that he hadn’t got the time or the inclination to go looking for Him. Same with all this private investigating lark. There was just too much hanging around, too much waiting for something to happen.

  He glanced up at the windows of Dora Hall’s flat. The lights were on in the sitting room; intermittent flashes of light through the curtains told him she was watching TV.

  Probably watching ‘Coronation Street’ and then ‘The Bill’, although she looked more like a BBC2 documentary sort of woman. He adjusted his jacket and headed towards the maroon Citroën parked up against the old chemist’s shop.

  At least he could get the tape and then go home, maybe listen to it in front of the fire with a can of beer. He had considered inviting Milo back to share a bevy or two but, on balance, he’d decided his girlfriend would make for better company.

  He slid into the driver’s seat, took a new tape from his jacket pocket and popped the old one out. In the gloom he could just pick out the spools. It didn’t look as if she’d been talking to that many people. Maybe it wasn’t worth swapping the tapes after all. He thought it over for a few seconds. Milo had pointed out to him that listening to the tape in the car looked a bit suspicious.

  He stared at the dark tape spools. Maybe his partner was right, but it had worked pretty well up until Milo had told him it wasn’t kosher. Besides, new tapes cost him a quid a pop. He weighed the recorded tape in his hands for a few seconds and then slapped it back into the machine. He’d listen to what was on it, and then, if there wasn’t anything interesting, he’d rewind and record over it. He picked up the earpiece and pressed ‘play’.

  When Spar heard Dora’s call to Tom Fielding he felt a nasty little shiver of what might have been. Bloody hell, he’d very nearly decided not to listen to it at all, just rewind and set it to re-record.

  Swallowing down the unpleasant sensation in his stomach, he clicked the machine off and sat back. He’d have to go and find Milo now. He slipped the cassette into its case and then his pocket. His girlfriend would be most dischuffed.

  Alicia Markham listened to Spar’s telephone call with a sense of relief. Finally. She smiled. They’d got Tom Fielding pinned to the canvas – or at least, as near as damn it. It wasn’t until she put down the phone that she began to feel a little uneasy. With Tom Fielding out of the running, Guy Phelps’ victory was almost certainly assured. She sat back and stared at the phone.

  Lawrence Rawlings had suggested she might consider whether she actually wanted to help Phelps into power. His voice filled her head like a bad migraine. If Guy Phelps was in office, without her there to monitor every action, every word, every thought – she grimaced. The sense of triumph quietly faded and died. She had put herself out on a limb for Guy Phelps and for what? His election would be a disaster for Fairbeach. Without her to sheepdog him every step of the way, he would sink, and if she wasn’t careful he would take her down with him. After all, everyone knew she had hand-picked him. Rawlings was right, Guy Phelps had to go. It had been Phelps who had told her about Tom Fielding in the first place, almost in passing.

  ‘Tom’s not the kind of man we want for Fairbeach,’ he had said, in his marvellous, modulated voice, when she had been talking to him about the opposition after one of their first strategy meetings.

  ‘Morally unsound,’ he’d said. His tone had been self-righteous, verging on the pompous. ‘I could tell you a thing or two about Mr Fielding,’ he had said, his face composed into the archetypal expression of the school sneak. And he had told her, carefully edited of course, but with sufficient weighty pauses and knowing looks to make her aware of the whole scenario. She wondered again how he knew so much.

  Lillian Bliss’ television performances had been a gift from the gods. Alicia had fantasised about the headlines splashed across the tabloids. ‘Politician in bed with porn queen. Pictures inside.’

  She sighed.

  Stacked under the table in her office were the handbills and posters for Guy’s election campaign. She picked up the phone and tapped in Lawrence Rawlings’ number.

  He didn’t sound at all surprised to hear from her.

  ‘They’ve found what I’m looking for, presumably your man’s already let you know,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m going to pick it up tomorrow night after the ball. Under the clock tower, at the college, at midnight, unless I can have my man sniff it out beforehand.’

  She heard Lawrence’s discomfort. ‘A little theatrical for my tastes, Alicia. Did you think about what I said?’

  Alicia nodded, even though she knew he couldn’t see her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, without emotion. ‘I’ve thought about it a great deal. And you’re right. Will you be there tomorrow to pick up the material?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lawrence. ‘If you want me there. We agreed to form an alliance, didn’t we?’

  Alicia sighed. ‘Indeed we did. Until tomorrow then, Lawrence.’

  19

  Dora woke
up on the morning of the ball with a peculiar sense of anticipation – in the uneasy no-man’s-land between excitement and apprehension.

  Outside her bedroom window, the sky was overcast and grey. Ominous twists of black cloud hung against a stormy sky like dead crows on a fence. She’d always thought God did a nice line in melodramatic touches. It matched her mood perfectly. She felt like a condemned man.

  After breakfast, just when she had almost decided to go out, the doorbell rang. As she went into the office, Dora made up her mind that if it was the cat muggers they could have the photos, have the car, anything.

  ‘Hello?’ said Sheila, sounding unnaturally subdued. ‘I thought I’d pop round and see how you were. After you made the effort to phone –’

  ‘Come up,’ said Dora. ‘I could do with the company.’ She could hardly believe she’d said it.

  Sheila peered round as she came in.

  ‘You don’t look very well at all. What, no policeman? Packed you in, has he? I –’ She stopped, seeing Dora’s eyes flare. ‘I just came to see if you’re coming round to lunch tomorrow? I thought you might like a change of scenery.’

  Dora snorted. ‘I don’t know.’ It crossed her mind that an awful lot of things might happen between now and lunch time tomorrow.

  Sheila sniffed. ‘Got something else planned, have you?’

  ‘I’m going to the Spring Ball tonight …’ Dora began.

  Sheila’s expression squashed the rest of the sentence up in the back of Dora’s throat.

  ‘You’re going to the college ball?’ Sheila repeated incredulously.

  Dora resented the suggestion that she wasn’t ball material. ‘I was invited,’ she said waspishly. ‘I’m going with Jon Melrose.’

  Sheila nodded. ‘I suppose, being a chief inspector, he moves in those sort of circles. Balls, dinner parties, choral recitals up at St Faith’s. Bit of a turn-up for you, though, isn’t it? What are you going to wear? Are you having your hair done?’

  Dora didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved that some things in life never change.

  Sheila was hovering in the hallway.

  ‘I’ve bought myself a new dress. Would you like to see it?’

  Sheila nodded. ‘I hope you bought something sensible that you can wear again. Such a lot of money, clothes these days, and you don’t get out a lot, really, do you?’

  Dora pulled the wrapping over the blue evening dress and held it up against herself for Sheila’s inspection. Her sister’s X-ray vision spotted the torn lining in the jacket in an instant.

  ‘It’s damaged,’ Sheila pointed out indignantly. ‘Someone’s already worn this. I’d take it back if I were you. You’ve been done. How much did you pay for it?’

  Dora sighed. ‘It’s secondhand. I was going to clean my car out, have my hair done, and then I thought I’d just stitch it up. It won’t take much to put right.’

  Sheila nodded. ‘I could do it for you if you like. Nice colour. Where did you get it? One of the charity places? I always pop into the Barnardos shop myself, they have a lot of nice things in there.’

  Tonight would be the denouement, the grand finale, Lawrence Rawlings thought reflectively, as he stood at his office window, watching the magpies playing in the orchard below. He couldn’t help wondering exactly what it was that this woman, Dora Hall, had found.

  His imagination shifted the discovery from a cabin trunk, to a box, to a single black-and-white photograph. How much more would anyone know after tonight? How much truth could anyone stand in a single lifetime?

  Calvin would be at the ball with Sarah, Lillian Bliss would be there to accept her award – all acting, all lying. Lawrence sighed and turned away as the magpies careered through the virgin blossom like missiles.

  Perhaps what he was looking for, the shreds of hard evidence he wanted, wouldn’t be there. Ironic that truth could not be substantiated, while lies could and went on to a life of their own. Perhaps he ought to trust his instincts more. Could the truth be subjective? Could belief alone make something true?

  Dora came back from the hairdressers to find Calvin pacing up and down outside her door, puffing angrily on a small cigar.

  ‘Come in, come up, what on earth is the matter with you?’

  Calvin chomped miserably on the butt end.

  ‘Bloody Lillian Bliss, that’s what’s the matter. She’s dumped me, worse than that, she’s terminated our contract. Just like that.’ He snapped his fingers for added emphasis. ‘Tonight is her last appearance as far as she’s concerned. She told me first thing this morning. One more night and then she’s not doing any more work for the Catiana Moran contract.’

  Dora stared at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Exactly. She said she wanted to go out on a high and the ball and the awards, apparently, are it. She said I didn’t treat her properly. She said she’d been talking to you. What exactly did you say to her?’

  Dora shook her head. ‘Nothing, nothing at all.’

  Calvin stamped his way up into the kitchen. ‘She said there was nothing to keep her in Fairbeach now, asked me if I’d put the flat on the market for her. What a bloody cheek. The paint’s barely dry on the walls. Jesus!’ He threw himself onto one of the chairs. ‘Ungrateful little bitch, after all I’ve done for her.’

  Dora was about to say something soothing when Calvin began again. ‘She said our relationship was over. Over! I just don’t believe it. I said to her, “Relationship, what relationship?” and she just laughed and said, “Exactly.” She said I treated her like a cheap tart. A cheap tart! And then she laughed, for God’s sake! Where does this leave me? High and bloody dry, that’s where. I’d got big plans for her, another month and I –’ He stopped as if suddenly aware of who he was talking to. ‘What I meant to say was –’

  Dora held a hand up to silence him, her imagination filling in the blanks.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m ahead of you, Calvin. What you meant was, another month, a few more breaks, and Lillian would be all over the nationals. That’s what you were hoping for, wasn’t it? You’d have a nice big slice of a national celebrity? All that talk to me about doing that list, another month, it was pure hogwash, wasn’t it? Did you think if you frightened her with the threat of the sack, she’d be so grateful when you changed your mind, she’d sign up for less money? Or were you hoping it would be me who asked you to get her back, when sales dropped off? You make me sick. Come on, Calvin, why not tell the truth and shame the devil?’

  Calvin Roberts reddened visibly. ‘I –’

  Dora stared him down. ‘The truth?’

  ‘Yes, all right. Let’s face it, Lillian’s hot property at the moment. I’ve had a guy on the phone from one of the girlie mags, he wants her to do a centrefold. There’s interest from satellite TV, a radio phone-in, even a record company, for God’s sake. She could make us all a small fortune. What can I do to persuade her to come back?’

  Dora shrugged. ‘You could try telling her the truth?’

  Calvin snorted. ‘Are you totally mad? What’s the truth got to do with anything?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘This is all your fault – it was you who wanted to get rid of her in the first place.’

  Dora sighed and opened the door onto the stairs.

  ‘Are you going to the ball tonight?’ she asked, trying hard not to let his aggression feed the little fluttering fears in her stomach.

  Calvin’s expression relaxed, as if he was relieved to change tack. ‘Yes, what about you? Did Lillian give you the tickets I got for her?’

  Dora nodded. ‘I’ve got a lot to do between then and now. Why don’t you go home and have a nap or whatever it is you do to relax, before you explode.’

  In the back bedroom of his terraced house. Spar carefully buttoned up the waistcoat under the dinner jacket Milo had hired for him. He grinned at the reflection in the mirror on his wardrobe door, and slicked his hair down with a comb.

  ‘What about that, then? What do you reckon?’ he said, executing a faultless pirouette. �
�Not bad, eh?’

  Milo snorted. ‘It’ll look better when you’ve got your trousers on. This bleeding tie is driving me nuts. We should’ve got them ones that were on elastic’

  They were round at Spar’s house down by the docks. Outside the dusty windows the sky was already darkening. Spar had a growing sense of expectation – this was more like it. This was the proper stuff, exciting stuff.

  Milo adjusted his tie and then leant across Spar’s dressing table.

  ‘All right if I use a bit of your aftershave?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Spar. ‘Help yourself. That Rampant is good stuff. A bloke on the market gets it for me. What’s the plan for tonight?’

  Milo winced as the alcohol hit his newly shaved chin. He blew for a few seconds until the stinging passed.

  ‘Right, Dora Hall’s going to bring the photos with her, so as soon as she’s inside the hall I’ll go over and have a shufty in her car. Which reminds me, make sure the torch has got new batteries in it. Long life, none of your bargain basement crap. When she goes inside, you make sure you find out her cloakroom ticket number. Give it a minute or two, and then go back and tell the girl behind the desk she’s forgotten something, fags, hankie – use your imagination – and then you go through her pockets.’

  Spar pulled a face. ‘How come I get to do her coat? I wanted to help do the car with you.’

  Milo puffed out his cheeks. ‘All right then, but you can only come if you come as look-out. Right?’

  Spar grinned triumphantly. ‘Right.’ He could hardly wait.

  Dora couldn’t quite believe the mirror in her bedroom. She turned around again just to check that she wasn’t mistaken. The new blue dress was perfect, as were the shoes, the tiny evening bag and, remarkably enough, the woman who was wearing them. She grinned at the elegantly coiffured figure, and the woman in the mirror grinned back. She glanced across at the bedroom clock. A few more minutes and she would have to leave. There was just enough time to put on her jacket and add a spray of perfume before leaving.