‘How do you know?’
‘The doorman told us,’ said Mousy Hair. ‘It’s Pat today. He’s nice. Not like Alan.’
‘No, Alan’s horrible,’ said the other girl. ‘He called us silly little girls the other day.’
‘What a cheek,’ said Meg. ‘Well, he can’t call me little.’ She thought she’d better get the height thing out of the way early on. She was bending her knees slightly but she still towered over the other girls.
‘No,’ said Blondie. ‘How old are you anyway?’
‘Eighteen,’ said Meg promptly. ‘Same as Bobby.’
‘I read somewhere that he’s twenty-five,’ said Mouse.
‘That’s a bloody lie,’ said Blondie. She looked rather defiantly at Meg, perhaps expecting her to be shocked at such language.
Two other girls came over; they looked older and more confident, wearing leather jackets and capri pants.
‘Who’s she?’ said one of them, who had short dark hair and panda eyes.
‘I’m Meg. What’s your name?’
Panda looked shocked at such affrontery but eventually said, ‘I’m Jean. Why are you here?’
‘I’m a Bobby Soxer.’
‘Oh yeah? When’s his birthday?’
‘Second of April. He’s an Aries.’
‘What’s his favourite colour?’
‘Blue.’
‘What are his sisters’ names?’
‘Erin and Kelly-Ann.’ Meg blessed the hour she had spent with Aisling’s copy of Film Frolics which had included a Q and A with Bobby Hambro.
Jean looked at her appraisingly. Mousy seemed to think that she had passed the test though because she vouchsafed that she was Veronica and her friend was Isabel.
‘Why haven’t we seen you here before?’ said Jean.
‘I work in an office,’ said Meg. ‘I haven’t had any time off. I’ve come all the way from Brighton.’
This seemed to gain her some Brownie points. Veronica told her that she and Isabel were skiving off school. Jean said that she’d left school and that office work was for dummies.
‘Have you ever met my friend from Brighton?’ asked Meg. ‘She’s called Rhonda. Got red hair in a bob.’
‘What’s your game?’ said Jean. ‘We had a policeman asking about Rhonda the other day.’
Damn. She hadn’t expected this to come up so quickly.
‘Her dad’s really square and overprotective,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t like her coming here. He set the police on her.’
‘Rhonda was here a few weeks ago,’ said Veronica, ‘but we haven’t seen her since.’
‘And we wouldn’t tell the pigs if we had,’ said Jean. ‘We hate the police.’
‘Too right,’ said Meg.
*
In his underground office Edgar was reading about the first abduction of Rhonda Miles. It had happened six years ago, when Rhonda was ten. She was walking home alone from her ballet lesson when a car stopped and apparently offered her a lift. Ignoring all her parents’ warnings about such an eventuality, Rhonda had got into the car whereupon the driver, Ernest Coggins, had driven her five miles to his caravan near Esher Common. He had locked Rhonda in the van and telephoned her parents demanding the almost pathetically small sum of a thousand pounds. Crispian Miles (this was before his elevation to the peerage) had asked his location and promptly driven there accompanied by three burly policemen. Coggins had been arrested and subsequently found guilty of abduction and extortion. He was sentenced to ten years which he was currently serving, Edgar was interested to see, at Ford Open Prison in West Sussex. The papers at the time were full of Crispian’s coolness under pressure and Rhonda’s recklessness at getting into the car. She was not even meant to be walking home alone but had quarrelled with her friend and taken a different, less salubrious, route.
It was a sad little story, thought Edgar, but interesting nonetheless. It showed that, even at ten, Rhonda was capable of deceiving her parents and gullible enough to believe a stranger offering her a lift. Would she be fooled again, especially considering this childhood trauma? Ernest Coggins was described in court as a fantasist who believed himself to be a master criminal. There was some suggestion that he had also had some political animus against Crispian Miles and that ‘communist literature’ had been found in his caravan. One paper reported that Rhonda had cried on being discovered because she didn’t want to be parted from Coggins’ terrier, Lenin. This too was interesting.
All things considered, Edgar was not surprised, at two o’clock, to be told that Sir Crispian Miles was in reception and demanding to see him.
‘What are you doing about my daughter?’ were the politician’s first words. ‘It’s been four days now and, as far as I can see, you and your men have done precisely nothing to find her.’
‘I know this is very hard for you and Lady Miles,’ said Edgar, ‘but I promise you that we are doing all we can to find Rhonda. There’s been a small development, in fact. Rhonda’s school hat was found in a tunnel leading from Roedean to the undercliff walk.’
‘Tunnel?’ Sir Crispian’s eyes started to bulge alarmingly. ‘What tunnel?’
‘There’s a tunnel from the school to the sea,’ said Edgar. ‘It’s usually kept locked but my men . . . my officers . . . investigated and found that it was open. Rhonda’s hat was found by the door.’
‘What are you waiting for, then?’ said Sir Crispian. ‘That must have been the way he took her, the abductor.’
‘We’ve been making enquiries along the length of the undercliff walk,’ said Edgar, ‘but no one recalls seeing a girl of Rhonda’s description. We’re also continuing to watch the Ritz in London. I’ve got an undercover officer, a WPC, there now.’
‘I don’t know why you keep harping on about this Bobby Hambro business,’ said Sir Crispian. ‘Rhonda isn’t the kind of girl to hang around outside hotels waiting to see some tinpot film star.’
‘We spoke to her friends at Roedean,’ said Edgar, ‘and they all agreed that Rhonda is a big fan of Mr Hambro. As indeed they all are.’
‘Don’t know what the world’s coming to,’ said Sir Crispian. ‘Teenagers. We didn’t have teenagers when I was growing up. You were a child and then you were an adult. That was it.’
Edgar didn’t say that, at sixteen, Rhonda would be considered by many to be an adult.
‘I’ve been reading about the Ernest Coggins case,’ he said. ‘That must have been very traumatic for your family.’
‘Yes,’ said Sir Crispian, his voice lowering in volume for the first time. ‘Edith, m’wife, she was never really the same again. Rhonda’s our only child, you see.’
He got out a large handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. For the first time he didn’t seem like a bullying politician. Edgar felt his heart twist in sympathy.
‘Was Rhonda affected by the kidnapping?’ he said. ‘It must have been an awful experience for her.’
‘Rhonda just kept going on about Coggins’ stupid dog. The one with a commie name. She kept on at me to get her a dog. That’s why we sent her to Roedean. We thought it would stop all that nonsense.’
Getting a dog wasn’t exactly nonsense, thought Edgar. His daughters were also carrying on a campaign for a dog. Unlike Sir Crispian, Edgar thought that he’d probably capitulate soon.
‘Have you heard from Coggins since he’s been in prison?’ he asked.
‘He wrote once to say that he was sorry,’ said Sir Crispian. ‘Damn cheek. I burnt it.’
‘You say that you think Rhonda’s been abducted,’ said Edgar. ‘Do you think it might be linked to Ernest Coggins?’
‘Don’t see how it can be,’ said Sir Crispian. ‘Fellow’s in prison. Police said he was acting alone. It’ll be some other commie.’
But communist kidnappers were few and far between, thought Edgar. He didn’t put this thought to Sir Crispian.
*
At twelve o’clock precisely, Bobby Hambro emerged from the front door of the Ritz, accompanied by a burly
bodyguard and a slight, dark man in a pinstriped suit. As one, the girls screamed and ran forward. Meg ran with them, feeling extremely foolish. She couldn’t bring herself to scream but she put her fingers in her mouth and whistled. This was a great success. Even Jean looked at her with admiration and Bobby actually turned his head and waved. Over the heads of the swooning fans, Meg waved back.
Bobby and his entourage got into the waiting Rolls and it purred away. The girls looked at each other, slightly breathless with excitement.
‘He waved at us!’ said Veronica. ‘He actually waved.’
‘That was Meg and her whistle,’ said Isabel. ‘Can you teach me how to do that?’
‘Sure,’ said Meg, who had learnt from her older brothers. But it proved impossible for the Bobby Soxers to reproduce the whistle. Perhaps middle-class people had softer lips? In the end they gave up and drifted away towards a nearby Wimpy bar. Meg went with them but they offered no more interesting confidences about Rhonda. The conversation was mainly about Golden Heart, and whether there would be any romance in it. The girls had a complicated attitude towards Bobby’s love life. They were insanely jealous of any woman who was seen with him but they obviously approved of some consorts more than others. An actress called Vanessa Lee almost met with their approval for the simple reason that she was blonde like Bobby and ‘looked nice’. But Maria Garcia, a Mexican-born singer, was cordially disliked. ‘They don’t look right together,’ said a girl called Sadie. Meg thought that she was the sort of person who would have disapproved of British girls going out with black American GIs in the war.
They spent ages in the café over milkshakes and sticky buns but eventually the girls got up to leave. There was no point staying at the Ritz, they explained, because Bobby wouldn’t be back until the evening. ‘I’ll be back later,’ boasted Jean but Veronica and Isabel said they should be getting home. Meg walked with them to the bus stop. As they waited for the number 247, Veronica said suddenly, ‘You know your friend, Rhonda?’
‘Yes?’ said Meg.
‘She said something funny once, didn’t she, Izzy?’
‘Yes,’ said Isabel, who was turning herself back into a schoolgirl by putting on a tie and placing a crumpled beret on her head. ‘She said that she was going to be a model.’
‘A model?’
‘She said that she’d met this agent,’ said Veronica, who was unrolling her skirt so that it reached almost to her knees. ‘And that he was going to make her famous. Izzy and I thought it was mad. I mean, Rhonda, a model.’
‘It does seem odd,’ said Meg. She caught sight of the girls’ faces and added, with a burst of inspiration, ‘You two are much more the type.’
It was the right thing to say. Veronica and Isabel both tossed their hair complacently. ‘Well, yes,’ said Isabel. ‘I mean, even you, you’re tall like a model.’
‘I’m not thin enough though,’ said Meg.
‘No,’ agreed Isabel. ‘But Rhonda . . . she’s all-right-looking but she’s got red hair and freckles. When did you last see a model with red hair and freckles?’
‘Never,’ said Meg. ‘Did Rhonda say anything more about this agent?’
‘She got talking to him here, outside the Ritz,’ said Veronica. ‘We saw her with a man once but we never thought anything about it, did we, Iz?’
‘Can you remember what he looked like?’
‘No,’ said Isabel. ‘He was just a man.’
Their bus arrived and the two girls got on, waving cheerfully at Meg from the upper deck. She set off towards the tube station, deep in thought.
*
Emma didn’t like to admit, even to herself, how excited she was to be going out to dinner at the Grand. She had even bought a new dress, a green shift with embroidery around the neck and cuffs. She brushed her hair until it shone. It was too long, really, but she hoped that it made her look younger and less like a mother of three. Should she put on some make-up? She never usually bothered but girls wore so much these days. Her mascara was dry so she spat on the brush and started to apply it rather gingerly.
She became aware of the fact that she was being watched from the doorway. Marianne and Sophie, already in pyjamas and matching pink dressing gowns.
‘You look nicer than usual,’ said Marianne.
‘Gosh, thanks, Mari.’
‘You look like a princess,’ said Sophie, coming to give her a hug that made her drop the mascara wand.
‘Thank you, Soph.’ Emma hugged her back. ‘You two girls be good for Mavis now. I’ve told her that you can watch Top of the Pops before bed.’
The girls squealed. Top of the Pops, the new music programme, was the highlight of their week, and often of Emma’s too. Edgar said that it gave him a headache but Emma loved seeing the Disc Girl putting a record on the turntable and the studio filling with music. The singers mimed, which was often unintentionally hilarious, but there was something thrilling about the countdown at the end and the announcement of ‘the nation’s number one’. This week it was sure to be the Beatles singing ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’. They had had the top slot with various records since February.
Two floors down she heard the door open and Edgar’s voice in the hall.
‘Daddy!’ Marianne and Sophie ran to greet him. Emma often envied the way that Edgar’s homecoming was like the return of Odysseus. When she went out (which was rare enough) she was usually greeted with, ‘Where have you been?’ and Jonathan being sick on her.
Emma finished applying her mascara, added some lipstick, brushed her hair and looked critically at her face in the mirror. Not bad but not exactly Ruby Magic or Lydia Lamont. When she got downstairs, Edgar was sitting on the sofa with Jonathan on his lap and a daughter on either side. Mavis, her ever-present knitting on her lap, watched them indulgently.
Edgar whistled when he saw her. ‘You look beautiful, Em.’
‘Thank you.’ She was rather pleased with the compliment, though. Ed was always nice about her appearance but it was usually along the lines of ‘I think you’re gorgeous’ as if this was a strange and unusual preference. And he rarely used the word ‘beautiful’.
‘Do I look pretty?’ asked Marianne. She was now wearing a ballet tutu over her pyjamas.
‘Exquisite,’ said Edgar. ‘A truly original ensemble.’
‘You look the spit of your mum,’ said Mavis. Emma could see Marianne trying to work out if this was a compliment.
‘Should I change?’ Edgar asked. He was wearing one of the suits he always wore for work, dark grey and anonymous.
‘No. You look fine,’ said Emma.
‘Max will probably be wearing a dinner jacket.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Emma. ‘Everything’s casual now. He might be wearing jeans and a Stetson.’
‘Is Max a cowboy?’ asked Marianne, wide-eyed.
‘No, he’s a magician,’ said Emma.
*
When Max stood up to greet them, Emma saw that he was wearing a dark-grey velvet smoking jacket, so much more elegant than anything she could have imagined.
‘Mrs Stephens,’ he said. ‘You look absolutely stunning.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But do drop the Mrs thing. After all, you knew me when I was Emma.’
‘You’re still Emma,’ said Edgar, sounding rather hurt.
‘People in LA sometimes call me Mr Lamont,’ said Max. ‘Now that is insulting.’
‘You’re as big a star as her,’ said Emma, accepting a martini with an olive floating in it. It was a new thought that Max, too, had moments when he felt like the invisible partner in his marriage.
‘Not in LA,’ said Max. ‘To most people I’m still the odd British magician who married Lydia Lamont.’
‘Not here,’ said Emma. She was conscious of a strange desire to protect Max. Not an emotion she had ever felt before, in relation to him at least. ‘In England you’re the famous one. You’re Max Mephisto.’
‘Max Mephisto is old hat,’ said Max. ‘Come on, let’s eat. I’m starving.
’
They went through into the dining room with its view over the sea. Lights shone on the piers and on the fishing boats, far out towards the horizon. Sometimes, Emma thought, Brighton seemed like an enchanted place. She had lived in the town all her life – except for a brief period when she’d been evacuated during the war – and, on evenings like this, she couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be. But in the winter, when the sea and sky were the same cold grey, or in the height of summer when the streets were full of tourists and young men on motorbikes, then she did dream of escape. But where would she go? Edgar’s job was in Brighton, her parents were nearby, the girls were happy at school. She wasn’t Max Mephisto. She couldn’t just run away to Hollywood.
Max told them about the film he had agreed to make, a remake of Little Lord Fauntleroy.
‘You’re far too young to play the grandfather,’ said Emma.
‘Thank you but they’ve worked out that it’s possible. Bobby is meant to be eighteen so, if his father was in his early twenties when he was born, then I could be a grandfather at fifty-four. After all, I’ve got a daughter of thirty-four. I could be a grandfather already.’
‘I can’t believe Ruby is thirty-four,’ said Emma. ‘I’m only a year older and I feel middle-aged. She still looks twenty to me.’
‘I saw her last night,’ said Max. ‘And she does look well. She’s got a nice flat in Kensington where she cooked me a truly inedible meal.’
Edgar looked uncomfortable, as he often did when Ruby was mentioned, but Emma was interested. ‘Does she live on her own?’
‘Yes, with a very superior cat called Cleopatra.’
‘How lovely.’
‘What’s Bobby Hambro like?’ asked Edgar. ‘I spoke to him on the telephone about this missing girl. I thought he sounded quite vacant.’
‘He’s sharp enough,’ said Max. ‘After all, he’s made a lot of money from acting the part of a simple country boy. He’s not much of an actor but he’s going to capitalise on his looks while he still has them. He’s producing the film as well as starring in it.’
‘Has he got a girlfriend?’ asked Emma. She was rather ashamed of herself for such a Film Frolics question.
Now You See Them: The Brighton Mysteries 5 Page 7