“Oh Lord,” Kent rolled his eyes, “What’s up now?”
“My locket’s missing,” Monica clarified, for those who were deaf or stupid. “I had it a moment ago, I know I did.”
“Well it can’t have gone far,” Kent said as, the last of Jane’s homeopathic remedies stowed back in the box, attention shifted to the new search. “Where have you been since you arrived?”
“Here,” Monica wailed, gesturing wildly at the studio, the paintings, the table, and the entire vast and almost empty space. “Just here.”
“Well then, it has to be somewhere here,” I said, eyeing the space, as the others split up and began checking the studio.
“The catch has been gammy for a while,” Monica fretted. “I need to get it fixed, but I can’t bear to part with the locket, even for a minute.”
“O.K.” I dropped to my knees and scanned the floor from where I stood.
The immediate realisation was that Monica’s cleaner was very through: Not so much as a dust ball was visible for the entire length of the studio. Which made the glint of something metallic from beneath the cocktail cabinet standing against the wall immediately visible.
I slid my hand under the cupboard and pulled out a cheap locket on an equally cheap chain. I couldn’t help flipping the locket open.
Inside was a tiny colour picture of two teenaged girls, their arms wrapped around each other as they smiled at the camera. They were both almost identical, blonde and with beaming smiles and only the gap toothed smile of one differentiating them from each other.
One of the girls was, clearly, Monica Vale. But I’d seen the other – older, but still smiling that gap toothed grin – somewhere else recently. She’d been sitting – along with a group of somewhat mismatched characters – on Anthony Taylor’s sideboard.
“Is this it?” I asked, standing up and holding the item out.
Monica, spotting the item in my hand, fell on me with kisses and promises of undying gratitude, and I was finally rescued by Kent, who took me firmly to one side.
“Any news on the poison penner?” he asked, looking over his shoulder to ensure we were unheard.
“Well,” I glanced over my shoulder at Jane Barton, and dropped my voice. “I think I’ve found a viable suspect, but I promised them that, provided the game stopped, I wouldn’t disclose their identity.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That wasn’t, strictly speaking, the deal, was it?”
I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t. But if I can stop these letters and give you – and Olivia – some peace, I figure that’s got to be better than vengeance, surely.”
He considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “It might be best just dropped. I mean, it’s upsetting for everyone, but, well, really…”
“What are you boys doing here?” Olivia came over, and Kent was, suddenly, all coy.
“Nothing, Livvy. Thought you were going shopping.”
“Have you told Danny about our latest?”
“Latest?”
“They’ve written again.”
I glanced at Kent, who sighed, and rolled his eyes.
“Look,” he said, “This is getting silly. Once we start paying people to hunt this person down, we’re just giving them credence. We’re feeding their sense of importance.”
Long words from someone who, a minute before, had been trying to get me to drop the whole investigation.
The new letter was produced, and I read it.
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED YET STILL YOU WANT TO MARRY HIM.
BENSON IS A MURDERER AND WANTS ONLY ONE THING: ££££S.
LEAVE HIM NOW BEFORE YOU BECOME VICTIM NUMBER THREE
I glanced at Jane Barton, who glared back at me as if daring me to speak.
“Number three?” I noted.
Olivia looked puzzled. “Kent? Who could victim number two be?”
“Maybe our letter writer assumes you had something to do with Dave Walker’s murder,” I offered.
“Ridiculous,” Kent fumed.
“Ridiculous,” Olivia agreed. “When the waiter was killed, Kent was with you and I in your office talking about these.”
“Yes,” I agreed, both gratified that Livvy had referred to my back parlour as an office, and confused as to why – if he was entirely innocent of the charges – Benson had been so keen to avoid mentioning the latest letter, or having me continue my work.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“Not being funny,” Ali announced, as though humour and yuks were her stock in trade, "But if I wanted to be a cleaner, I'd have become one."
She held up a messenger bag. "I've cleared up the pile in the corner of the kitchen, and apart from The Duchess's stack of Lewis Vutton carrier bags, a couple of gym kits that the ASBO twins left here and never use, and my shit, this was all that was left, so I assume it's yours. Be good if you could keep the place tidier in future."
I was grateful that Ali had, without my even needing to prompt, cleared up the mess that the Health and Safety officer had kicked off about, but the bag she was proffering wasn't mine, and I was about to advise her so when a thought struck me.
"Cheers Ali," I took the proffered item, and headed towards the kitchen table, "And thanks for tidying. I'll get a few quid more into your packet this week."
"Damn straight you will," she grumbled back, "That Flamenco frock weighed a fucking ton. Royally screwed up me back. And the shoes have destroyed me bunions."
"You wore the shoes?" I asked in disbelief, and was greeted by the sort of look I imagine Dustin Hoffman gave Larry Olivier when the latter suggested he act rather than truly sweat his way through a scene in Marathon Man.
"The shoes," Ali instructed me, "are the point of the bloody outfit. You ever seen anyone do Flamenco in Flip Flops?"
I decided against pointing out that at no time had my erstwhile bar manager danced the afore mentioned dance, chose to smile gratefully (I hoped) and thank her again, and settled down to rifle through the bag.
“To be honest,” Ali said as she left the room, “Much as it pains me to mention it, if you want to put a few quid for extra effort into someone's packet this week, it should probably go to the Little Madam.”
“Whoa!” I looked up from the bag. “Did you just say you want me to reward Elaine?”
Ali nodded, a look on her face that suggested even she didn’t believe she was doing this.
“Elaine?” I was still incredulous.
“I know,” she said, “But she’s been really knuckling down this morning. She’s even putting the bins out. Might be a phase,” she sniffed, “But if it continues, we should maybe, y’know, recognise it.”
I sat open mouthed, wondering when Ali had gotten round to reading a management textbook, as she shuffled off up the hallway, already grumbling at the team (“Why are them tonics there? That’s the bitter lemons’ place.”) Then, I turned back to the bag.
My hunch had been right. The bag contained a large paperback version of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, which had been read so many times it was dog eared, the cover bent and torn, and many of the pages bearing notes, circlings, asterisks and other marks. A flier for an upcoming show at The National was stuffed into Hamlet Act2, Scene 2, and a circle drawn around the quatrain.
Doubt that the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move his aides,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
I put the book to one side, and poked back into the rest of the contents.
I pulled out a travel card, the photo attached bearing the requisite "Mugshot" look, and a cassette Walkman with a pair of over the head earphones that looked as though they'd been made some time in the seventies.
I pressed play and listened to a few bars of Sly and The Family Stone before I dived back into the bag, extracting, this time, a small velvet drawstring bag.
This had promise. Whatever was inside was weighty, but small, and I suppose I already knew what i
t would contain when I tipped it into my palm.
Even in the dim light of the kitchen, the simple gold ring glistened brightly. It was old, that much was obvious, as, even though it looked like it had recently been professionally polished, the scratches and chips of a past life were visible to the naked eye. But it was a weighty, expensive piece, and had clearly held some special meaning to Dave Walker, else why would he have been carrying it around.
I checked inside the ring itself, and found the traces of an inscription: George & Margaret 27.12.1965. Was Margaret the Maggie Wright at whose funeral Dave Walker had met his end? And if she was, who was George? And why was a waiter carrying around what looked like a wedding band with their inscription on it?
I put the ring back into the pouch, realising, as I did so, that I should probably have just delivered the entire package to the police the minute I realised it belonged to Dave, but deciding that I'd do so once I'd extracted all its secrets, and pulled out a small zippered coin purse. Inside were a twenty pound note, a ten pound note, and a couple of coins.
The final treasure, apart from a copy of the Metro from the morning of the funeral, opened at an article on a recent spate of burglaries in Islington, was the phone.
The phone that Walker had been struggling to use that morning, and on which he had had an argument with someone.
Or was it an argument? It might have been an attempt to calm down someone hysterical. Someone who was either angry with or hugely concerned by, Dave.
It was an iPhone, and a recent one by the looks of it: Compared to everything else in the bag, it was in pristine condition, with not a scratch or a mark on it. I opened the phone, and went straight to the last number dialled.
It had been dialled at 2100 the night before his death, and, I discovered on hitting 'Redial,' had been to a Pizza Hut.
Next, I went to the last call received, and saw a mobile number to which no contact name had been added. I checked the log on the phone, and found the same number popping up - either as calls received or made - several times a day, for as far back as the phone had been in use.
I hit redial, and listened as the iPhone dialled through, the other end rang, and rang, and rang, and, after six rings, went to voicemail.
Only, the voicemail was an electronic voice which did little more than tell me that the person at the number I had dialled could not answer right now, and invited me to leave a message so that they could get back to me later...
I hesitated. Did I really want to let whoever was at the end of this line know that I had the phone, that I had something which connected them - however tenuously - with Dave Walker? Had I not already done so by ringing them: I mean, they'd see the missed call number and know that someone had called on Walker’s phone?
In the end, the machine at the other end made up my mind for me by timing out, saying Thank You in that disconcerting electronic voice, and terminating the connection as abruptly and definitively as Dave Walker had been terminated.
The second most frequently called number had a name next to it. I hesitated a moment, then pushed dial.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The phone rang three times before it was answered by a man, a note of caution and confusion in his voice.
“Hi,” I said in response to his confused hello. “Is Liza there?”
There was a moment of silence, then the sound of a cigarette being slowly inhaled, held, exhaled, and a throaty chuckle came down the line.
“Oh, child, Liza hasn’t been at this number since Thatcher was in power. Now suppose you tell me what you’re doing with my sister’s phone?”
Suddenly, one of Naimee Campbell’s comments about Dave Walker having a sister – a sister who neither of the ASBO twins had been able to locate – made sense. Dave’s sister was the camp kind, and this man on the end of the line was her.
I ran through the story of why I had the bag, and Liza was silent for much of it.
At the end of my story, Liza dragged, again, on the cigarette, held the smoke, exhaled, and, at length, spoke: “Davina could be a total pain in the arse. You got that, I suppose? No idea that this wasn’t the 1890’s anymore; a total inability to deal with the fact that everything is half-arsed these days?”
I acknowledged the behavioural ticks.
“But you know what? That was just her. There was never – absolutely never – any malice in it. If anything, she was just the most simple, childlike creature around. She could be a pain in the arse, but she didn’t deserve to end like this.”
I agreed totally with the comment. “Listen, Liza,” I said.
“Oh, love, Liza’s a name I haven’t used for years. I’ve been Sue Narmee, Virginia LeThrush and – let me think – oh, yes, Phyllis à Glass since then. Nowadays, I’m Mangelina Jolly, but you should probably call me Lionel till we get to know each other. Then I’ll let you know what you can call me.”
On the table before me, my mobile vibrated and lit up with an incoming text. I glanced at it, and saw that the text was from an unknown number.
“Well, Lionel, I think we should probably meet. When would be good for you?”
He named a time next day, gave me his address, and we rang off.
I picked up my mobile, and opened the text.
So ashamed, it read. You were right. I can’t go on. Tell Kent and Olivia I’m sorry. It was signed with a single initial – J – and, as I looked at the text, a shiver ran up my spine.
This was not good.
I shoved Dave’s stuff back into his bag, hid it in a cupboard, called Caz, and, having gotten through, once again, to voice mail, left a message before I slipped my phone into the pocket of my cargo shorts, and headed out of the pub, ignoring Ali’s requests re the dinner service, ran up the street to Mike Green’s place, and shoved my head through the door.
The builders had built an impressive oak and granite counter at the other end of the space, and were in the process of adding more paraphernalia. None of them could tell me where Mike was, so I decided I’d have to deal with this without either him or Caz.
In the taxi en route, I called Nick, got through to his voicemail, and told him what was happening.
I could imagine him advising caution, and in fact instructing me to turn the taxi round, head back to The Marq and await his return call.
Well, he was a police man. What else would he say? Smash the door in, dude; and fill your boots? I wasn’t of course, about to turn the taxi round, partly because the text had been sent to me, and partly because, as, in my head, he was telling me not to go to Jane Barton’s clinic, I was pulling up outside it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The plate outside the clinic gave the opening hours as 0900 – 1700 Monday to Friday. My watch showed a quarter past seven, so I knew that the front door should not have been unlocked.
But it was.
I knew, further, that I should not have pushed the door open and stepped into the reception room, but that's exactly what I did.
The reception was – as it had been the first time I’d been here – empty, and – again, just as before – a voice was coming from the treatment room.
I called out, but no answer came. The connecting door, this time, was firmly closed, so I stepped up, knocked on it, and, getting no answer, turned the handle slowly, and pushed the door open.
The voice I’d heard was suddenly clearer, and was a local news reader discussing the fact that police had made an arrest as a result of the ongoing investigation into a series of burglaries in North London.
On the desk to the left of the room was a half empty bottle of Jim Beam, a single glass beside it, and to the right was the massage table, the trolley beside it laid out with oils and potions.
The news ended, and the radio switched to a weather forecaster whose voice told of their boredom at the fact that, for the twenty-fifth day running, they could predict nothing but record high temperatures, no rain, no fog sleet or hail. Not even a thunderstorm. Just more of the same.
“En
joy the heatwave, folks” he said, with no obvious pleasure in his voice. “I know I shall.”
The chair from behind the desk – a standard wheeled swivel affair - was lying overturned in the middle of the floor.
And above it, hanging from a length of bright orange nylon washing line, was Jane Barton. One look at her – at the glassily bulging eyes, and the dark face, frozen in a look of anguish and shock – told me all that I needed to know, and, as if to confirm my diagnosis, the news ended, and the DJ on ClassikHits, his voice full of a bouncing smiling sunniness that merely added to the surreality of the scene before me, thanked the weather man, and announced that “Up next is a classic from Jean-Jacques and the boys: The Stranglers, with Hanging around!”
CHAPTER FORTY
“Well, at least you’re talking to Nick again,” Caz announced, slamming a triple G&T down in front of me, and waving the bottle at Mike Greene. “Sure I can’t tempt you?”
“No thanks,” Mike said, “I’ve a lot to do later. So what happened next?” He prompted me.
“The police came,” I answered him, “And took a statement from me. And that, sadly,” I addressed Caz, “Was the only time I talked to Nick. It was hardly a gushing reunion.”
“It’s a start,” she answered. “Better than the studied silence you’ve both been practicing these past few days. “How did he seem?”
“I dunno,” I shrugged, “Like someone who was taking a statement from a barman who’d just discovered a massage therapist hanging from the roof of her own treatment room. Y’know: chatty.”
Caz turned from the freezer in the corner, chunks of ice in her fist. She threw half of them into her glass, crossed to me, dropped the rest into mine, topped my gin back to the brim, and poured herself a new gin with a splash of tonic. That done, she sat, and shook her head at me.
“Firstly, you are a landlord, not a barman, secondly, Jane was a New Age Jacqueline of all trades, not just a masseuse, and thirdly, Nick’s known you long enough to know that asking you to stay away from a crime scene is like asking Kim Kardashian to step away from the cellphone, and expecting you not to poke around a mystery is like expecting her not to post a selfie every ten minutes. You’re talking again, and that can only be good.”
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