‘Do you all do that? Is it some kind of teenage male thing you never grow out of?’
Miranda, from the flat upstairs, was shouting at me and I was having a heart attack.
I had done a runner on Lisabeth’s dinner party at least an hour before. You can take just so much lentil fondue and, anyway, it had all the signs of a girls’ night in with Miranda invited too and Veronica getting all excited because she was introduced as a journalist and everybody knows that private eyes always have a contact in the media with better sources of information than the Anti-Terrorist Squad. I never understood that, as in my experience, journos fell into two camps. The well-informed but highly secretive, who did it for the kick of knowing something no-one else did; or the breathtakingly ill-informed, lazy and ignorant brigade who were in it for the free drinks. All the ones I knew were in the latter category and, on the whole, were good company, but I’d never had a straight steer on anything from any of them.
Veronica had been beside herself at meeting a journalist, and Miranda was, at least initially, intrigued to meet a female private eye, envisaging a women’s page feature maybe. At least it would make a change from covering aerobic marathons; and, give her credit, she has as much empathy with the stretch-and-retch crowd as I have.
Miranda was free only because her husband, Inverness Doogie, was working nights as a chef (and a good one, I’m told) at one of the Hyde Park hotels. A month or so back they had been on the point of packing in life in the big city and moving to the Highlands of Doogie’s native Scotland, where he had the offer of a job in a castle or something with its own salmon fishing. She still harbours the suspicion that I talked her out of it, though I can’t think why. Fortunately, Doogie accepted her change of mind in the interest of domestic harmony and doesn’t suspect me at all. At least, I hope not. His only interest in life after Miranda and cooking (and the order changes) is street fighting, and for physical recreation he’s a soccer hooligan.
I had sneaked back upstairs on the pretext of taping a movie, part of the O J Simpson retrospective season, but none of them paid much attention when I left and I doubted they missed me much. I had plugged in a new set of headphones I had treated myself to and applied my ears to some classic Hendrix, much remixed and cleaned for CD release recently. Naturally, I’d helped myself to two or three of the French lagers I had in the fridge, just to get in the groove. (Actually, it was just as well we had eaten at Lisabeth’s as the fridge had over 90 French lagers in it, leaving precious little room for anything except cat food. A man across the street goes to Calais twice a day, where the tax is so low it’s embarrassing to collect, and sells it on at prices the local off-licence haven’t charged since the war. I’m not sure its legal, but he delivers to the door. A bit like room service, really.)
So I was total1y engrossed in my beer and those historic riffs when Miranda came in. Maybe I had been trying to copy one or two of the old master’s lefty fingerings, and possibly I had been humming along as well. I still think it was uncalled for of her to suddenly materialise in front of me, scaring the hell out of me, and grabbing at the headphones.
‘What? What?’ I yelled over ‘Watchtower’, which was still pretty loud even though Miranda was holding the headphones. I rolled over from where I had been lying on the floor and snuffed the volume on the player.
‘You big kid,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Lying there, playing the air guitar. At your age.’
‘I’m a musician. I’m allowed.’
‘You’re a man, that’s all, and they all do it. And just because you can’t hear yourself singing, it doesn’t mean other people can’t, you know.’
‘You’ve been there, huh?’
‘Haven’t we all? I thought you were in pain when I was outside the door.’
‘Funnily enough, I felt fine when you were outside the door,’ I snapped, but Miranda has a tough hide. She’s Welsh and it’s something to do with slate quarries and lots of rain.
She fixed her dark, Celtic eyes on the bottle of beer in my hand. According to Doogie, she had a glare that could melt rune stones on a bad day.
‘Got another one of them?’ she asked, surprising me.
‘I think there may be one left in the fridge.’ I went to the kitchen and popped one for her. ‘You were in luck,’ I said, handing it over.
She downed half of it in one go, by the neck.
‘Veronica would have asked for a glass,’ I said as an opener.
‘But only if it wasn’t too much trouble.’ Then she narrowed her eyes. ‘How did you know I wanted to talk about her?’
‘You can’t bitch about her in front of her new soul mates downstairs, and Doogie’s never met her, so he wouldn’t believe it anyway.’
‘You got that in one, that’s for sure.’ She drank more beer. ‘But you’ve gotta help her, Angel.’
‘I am helping her. She’s not sleeping in a cardboard box, is she? She’s not had to queue for a night bus. She’s not gone hungry, has she? Although I could murder a steak sandwich myself.’
‘You know what I mean, smartarse – with her case, as she calls it, out there in the big bad world. Angel, she hasn’t got a clue.’
‘About the case?’
‘Don’t get chopsy with me, I live with an expert.’ I gave her that one; she did. ‘I mean about how to survive out there mixing with ... with ... the sort of people you mix with. Well, you know what I mean. She couldn’t refold a jumper in Benetton without help. The woman’s completely naive. For Christ’s sake, she can’t even handle being a woman.’
‘Oh come on, that’s genetic. I know, we’re working on the code.’
‘I’m not kidding. Look, do you know what she said tonight when you weren’t there? She said she found being a private eye the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, but she was only going to do it until Mr Right came along. Do you believe that? What do you do with a woman her age who thinks like that?’
‘Tell her she should get out more?’ I offered.
Springsteen was waiting for her as she came up the stairs, giggling and whispering with Miranda. I heard her say, ‘This ought to work,’ and then she pushed open the door, which I’d left on the latch, and said loudly:
‘Is everybody decent in here? I’m coming in.’
For that, she deserved everything she got.
‘Ah-ha, there you are, Mr Springscat. I’m ready for you tonight, and you’re going to get a stroking from me whether you ...’
I couldn’t stop a smile.
‘Aaaaaaagh! Christmas! There’s blood! He’s gone right through Fenella’s gardening gloves!’
That’s my boy.
In the morning we made a plan, and Veronica listened to it and agreed totally.
At first, though, she had been in a sulk, because we were not up in time to make it to Wimpole Street for when Stella Rudgard arrived at work. I pointed out that we knew where she worked and we could easily check by phone that she was there.
Veronica wanted to know how we could possibly do that. I told her: (a) she could ring the consulting rooms and say she was a new supervisor from the agency and was just checking Stella’s first day had gone all right; or (b) I could call to make a phoney appointment and come on with a line about her not being Mr Linscott’s usual ‘gal’, and when was he free for golf?; or (c) I could call round with a delivery for him; or (d) I could ring the agency and say …
‘So basically tell a lot of lies?’
She was catching on.
What was important, I told her, was to get a firm fix on where this Stella Rudgard lived. That was what she was being paid for. And putting in a surveillance report saying she lived in some sort of communal hippy squat thing in Sloane Square wasn’t exactly the height of professionalism, was it?
Report? She would have to do a report? Another challenge and the pubs not yet open.
I told her to worry about that later. Our first stop was Sloane Square to check out the address she’d found yesterday. Ah. Yes. The address she’d forgotten to write down, but fortunately she could take me there, once she got her bearings from the underground station.
And once I’d driven her across town at my expense, I thought. But at least whilst doing that, she could fill me in on the bits of the case –- I estimated around 90 per cent – that she’d so far shared with Lisabeth, Fenella, Miranda and the milkman for all I knew, but not me.
‘Speaking of milk,’ she said, looking into her coffee mug, ‘is there any?’
‘Sorry. There wasn’t room for any in the fridge. Anyway, it’s time we hit the road.’
‘What about breakfast?’ she pouted.
‘When did Philip Marlowe ever eat breakfast?’ I snarled through a Bogart sneer.
‘Philip who?’
Of course, it turned out to be not Sloane Square itself, but a small, dead-end mews called John Brome Street, behind Sloane Square. Still, on a clear day you could probably smell when they were having a barbecue in the grounds of Buckingham Palace; and, of course, it gave them a Belgravia address. Not that that meant much these days. I know a former Household Cavalryman who lives in two Hotpoint washing machine boxes behind Victoria Coach Station who always gives his address as Belgravia.
It took me ages to get parked, which was unusual as most London traffic does the sensible thing and gets out of the way when a black cab puts its nose down and heads for the kerb. Around there, though, it was a question of finding the space between the seemingly endless stream of trucks delivering to the restaurants and wine bars, the gas company guys drilling the street where the electricity boys had drilled last week, and the total indifference to on-street parking laws by the local population. It was interesting to see so many Volkswagen Golfs still around after all the jokes about Sloane Rangers back in the ‘80s. The cars were still running – after all, they were VWs – but they now had beaded back comforters on the drivers’ seals and ‘Baby On Board’ stickers in the rear windows.
I eventually found enough space, with half a metre to spare, between some double yellow lines and a Residents Only parking spot in one of the other side streets. I had already told Veronica that I wanted to suss the house alone. Now I told her to get out of Armstrong and go shopping for an hour.
‘Why can’t I come with you and help with the observation?’ she asked, emphasising her point by polishing her glasses with a square centimetre of tissue.
‘Because you may have been seen last night, and if somebody spots you, it could jeopardise the whole surveillance operation.’
That seemed to satisfy her, and I was pleased that one of us knew what I was talking about.
‘Can’t I stay here and wait for you?’
‘No, you can’t. A black cab parked illegally usually gets away with it. A black cab parked illegally with the driver in is totally anonymous; he’s obviously waiting for a fare. But a black cab parked illegally with no driver and a passenger in the back – hey, something wrong there, and people start asking questions. Maybe even tell the local Plod.’
She pushed her glasses back onto her face with one finger and then looked at me with her head cocked on one side.
‘They said you noticed things like that.’
‘Who did?’
‘Lisabeth and Fenella. And Miranda said that her Douglas–’
‘Doogie,’ I corrected her.
‘Well, her Doogie says you’ve got more road cred than Firestone tyres. That’s a compliment, isn’t it?’
‘Almost.’
Veronica had identified the door of 8 John Brome Street. That was where she had tailed Stella Rudgard to.
On the way there, I had made her tell me more about the pitch the father had made to Albert and her. According to Veronica, Mr Rudgard had been sick with worry over 19-year-old Estelle, and wasn’t it a crime to shorten such a lovely name to Stella? She had been the perfect daughter until the previous summer, her last summer before going to university (and Veronica confided that like she was talking about an AIDS victim). And guess what? She’d fallen in love with a young gypsy boy hired to help out with the horses on Mr Rudgard’s farm or estate or whatever, and wasn’t it just like a fairy story? Well, no, of course it wasn’t, because it was a totally unsuitable match. So Mr Rudgard had given the stable boy – Estelle called him ‘Heathcliff’ – some money to go away and work somewhere else.
Naturally, Estelle’s heart broke when she found out that her Heathcliff had been sent away, and she refused to stay at university. She heard from somebody, maybe a friend, that her Heathcliff was in London and had dedicated her life to finding him, even if it meant tramping the mean streets until she was old and haggard, or about 25. And it really was like a romantic novel, wasn’t it? (I told her it wasn’t like any I’d ever read; but admittedly most of those had ‘Swedish’ in the title somewhere.)
Worried sick, Mr Rudgard had suddenly had a piece of luck. Stella, as she now called herself, had registered for work with the temping agency Office Cavalry. Somebody from there had rung him just to check on Stella’s National Insurance number. They wouldn’t tell him where she was living or working, of course, but at least he had an address where she would be reporting for a job assignment sometime or other. So he had hired Block and Blugden to do the business and report back. He had left a photograph of Stella and instructions not to approach her or let her know she was being followed. That was all there was to it.
Except why Stella had given a real name, home address and phone number to the agency. That didn’t sound to me like somebody running away, and I know about these things.
I have road cred.
The door of number 8 looked just like any other front door. Just the sort you would find in any substantial terraced house. Nothing unusual, even a milk bottle on the doorstep.
And then you noticed that the door was painted light blue, and that the letter box had been nailed shut; and if you looked closely, you could see that still showing through the light blue paint was the shape of a crucifix about three feet high, as if it had been painted on and then painted over.
Even so, nothing terribly suspicious. I had seen much worse – I’d lived in places where any sort of door was a luxury.
I walked on without stopping, conscious that this was a cul-de-sac and I couldn’t loiter too long. There was a sign saying that a top-floor flat was for sale three doors away, so I pretended to be taking in the frontage and hoped I looked like a prospective buyer to the local nosy Neighbourhood Watch.
Actually, the Neighbourhood Watch were probably just the people I ought to be talking to about the inhabitants of number 8. But were they around when you needed them? Of course not. They come out only after dark, when you’re getting back from the pub late and the streetlights jump out and attack you as you’re trying to park the car. Can’t move for them then.
I tried to think who a real private eye would approach.
The local milkman? Forget it. If you have one in London these days, they’re up so early to beat the traffic they never see anything, and if you approach one, they assume you’re going to mug them for their low-fat yoghurts. The postman? They wouldn’t tell you anything; more than their job’s worth. And face it, what sort of person is it who gets up so early in the morning and whistles a happy tune while delivering the bills from the credit card companies or the income tax? Sick people. They need help.
But so did I at this rate, with no sign of a resident dog-walker to gossip with; not even a passing tourist seeking directions; not even a cat. I began to stroll back, at least planning on getting a second look at the door of number 8, and then Rule of Life No. 1 (It’s better to be lucky than good) kicked in and the door of the house opened and all I had to do was slow down a pace so I didn’t actually trip over them.
There were three of them, all male and all wearing Cotton Traders turtleneck shirts, though in different shades, and jeans. So what had I expected? Saffron robes and bells?
The tallest, a slim dude about six foot tall with a lion’s mane of red hair, was the head honcho, of that there was no doubt. All the body language pointed to him being the leader, the disciple or the teacher, or whatever title this particular cult adopted.
I had been in no doubt that it was some form of religious grouping right from when Veronica had tried to describe the place. I had dismissed the idea of squatters immediately. Not in this area, that would be asking for trouble, and anyway, most of the old-school semi-professional squatters were now running housing associations. Nobody squatted in a single flat anymore. You took over a high-rise office block and usually found some property company was glad that you did, because you were free and security guards cost money.
And there were no hippy communes anymore. Face it, most hippies were old enough to be my father. Come to think of it, one of them had been.
Sure, there were crackhouses and derelict sites for the drunks and assorted druggies too zonked (or just unwilling) to find a place in one of the night shelters. But those weren’t the sort of places from which a girl like Stella left for work every morning and returned every evening to be greeted with hugs and kisses by her house-mates.
From the way Veronica had described that – not to mention the cross painted on the door – I had guessed we were talking religion. It didn’t surprise me. Who else would a runaway, love-lost girl turn to in the big city? After drugs, religious sects offering all the safety valves of a family without the hassle of relatives, were London’s most successful growth industry.
The only question really was, what was their particular angle? What did they offer? What were their aims? How much did it cost to join, apart from a mail-order account with Cotton Traders?
That didn’t take much detective work either. The smallest and youngest of the three, wearing the ‘buttermilk’ shirt, handed me a printed sheet with a cheery greeting of: ‘Hello, neighbour.’
I wondered if he’d seen me looking at the For Sale sign, but then I realised that he probably said that to all complete strangers.
‘Thank you,’ I said, taking the sheet from him. I half expected a sermon, or at least a come-on scam for money. Maybe I wasn’t his type of likely cult material, as he smiled and turned to follow the other two shirts – one tangerine, the tall guy’s an eggshell shade – down the street.
They didn’t give me a second look, and I concentrated on the paper I had been given, so they could get ahead of me. And as I stood there outside number 8, I distinctly heard the sound of bolts being scraped home behind the door. At least four of them.
I glanced at the flyer I had been handed. It had been printed from a word-processor by someone trying to use all the available typefaces and then duplicated on bleached, unrecycled paper. Whoever these guys were, they were not eco-warriors. The key message came under the title:
The Church of the Shining Doorway
‘Give me your young people that I might
lead them to the shining doorway of
Jesus and all his understanding.’
Constantine
That was all it said, but below it was a hand-drawn logo of a door with a large cross as if painted on. I thought about the sound of the bolts being fastened behind the door of number 8, just a few feet away from me, and wondered why that particular doorway, shining or tarnished, needed so much security.
I folded the flyer carefully and put it in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. The three of them were at the end of the street now, the tall one half a pace in front of the other two, slipping on the linen jacket he had been carrying. Even from where I was, I could see it had all the creases in the right places.
I wondered whether to follow them or try my luck with whoever was in the house. I decided to keep to the street. I would need a good line in blag to get into the house, and for what? Stella should be at work, and I certainly didn’t want Veronica coming looking for me if I did manage to get in.
As they turned the corner of the street I opted to tail them. It went like a dream. Dead easy, this tailing stuff. They never suspected they were being followed, and I stuck to them like glue all the way to where they were going. About a hundred yards round the corner into Sloane Square.
They stood and conferred for a moment outside the entrance to the underground station. Then the tall one in the linen jacket flapped a hand in dismissal and walked off, but only as far as a brasserie ten feet away. He took a seat in the window, and a waiter in a striped apron the size of a beach towel offered him a menu. He ordered without consulting it and, while waiting, produced a small, flip-up mobile phone and began dialling.
His two foot soldiers took up position straddling the entrance to the tube station and began to hand out flyers. I watched from across the square, noting that they targeted white Anglo-Saxons under the age of 20, occasionally getting a pull and a conversation developing. The one who had leafleted me made two contacts while I watched, in both cases taking out a pen and adding something – a phone number? – to the flyer.
Linen Jacket in the brasserie would check them with a glance every ten minutes, otherwise he concentrated on his phone calls and his coffee and what looked like a real brioche with apricot jam.
I remembered Veronica and wondered if she would be hanging around Armstrong waiting for me. Or maybe she had picked the wrong taxi in a different street. No such luck.
‘Did you find out anything?’ she steamed, all excited.
‘I think I met some of her house-mates. Or perhaps I should say fellow churchgoers.’ I produced the flyer and she read it like it contained the answers to the ‘How to pick up more men’ quiz in her favourite magazine.
‘I don’t get it,’ she said, looking at me dead straight.
I bit my tongue. ‘The house, back there, it’s the Church of the Shining Doorway. I admit it could do with another coat of gloss, but it’s the best they can do at the moment.’
‘But what sort of people go to a church like that?’
‘I dunno, but I’ll show you some.’
She followed me puppy-like back to the square, and she had to screw up her eyes and polish her glasses again to get a good look at the two disciples handing out flyers. I checked the window seat of the brasserie, but Linen Jacket had gone.
‘That one, on the left,’ Veronica said, ‘he was waiting for Stella last night when she came home. There was another one, too, seemed very friendly indeed.’
‘Tall, red-haired? Handsome?’
‘Why, yes,’ she said, open-mouthed.
‘You just missed him,’ I said smugly. ‘Hang on, something’s going down.’
‘Going down where?’ she asked, but I ignored her.
Of all things, a real live vicar, dog collar and all, had emerged from the underground station and taken what appeared to be an instant dislike to the two Shining Doorway salesmen. He started on the one in the tangerine turtleneck, and then the one who had given me the flyer stepped over and joined in. We couldn’t hear what was being said, but from the startled looks they were getting from innocent passers-by, they probably weren’t comparing notes on the latest Church of England Synod.
The vicar character wasn’t letting them off easy, wagging a finger to begin with, shaking a fist within a minute. The two disciples kept their cool, and when the scene began to attract an audience, and as if at a given signal between them, they backed off into the station, the vicar following them.
By this time, I had Veronica’s arm and was leading her across the road. The vicar emerged into the square again, wiping the palms of his hands down his jacket as if to clean himself.
‘What are we doing?’ gasped Veronica.
‘You wanted to know what sort of people go to a church like the Shining Doorway. Well, he seems to know. Let’s ask him.’ I nodded towards the vicar we were on collision course with.
‘What makes you think he’ll talk to us?’
‘I’ve made a Leap of Faith, dear, a Leap of Faith.’
‘Is that from the Scriptures?’
‘No, it’s a Springsteen track; and no, not that Springsteen. The one we call the Boss.’
His name was the Reverend Rickwell, his parish was in Catford and for the price of a cappuccino in a steamy sandwich bar just down the King’s Road, he was willing to talk. For a doughnut he would probably have run through next Sunday’s sermon for us.
‘I just can’t help myself,’ said the Rev (‘Call me Roger’) Rickwell. ‘It’s like a red rag to a bull with me as soon as I see them out on the street. They look as if they’re hunting, if you know what I mean. And, yes, that is a most unchristian thought, I know.’
He put two sachets of brown sugar in his cappuccino and stirred it until the froth had disappeared. What a waste, but I didn’t interrupt him.
‘Religious belief should be personal commitment not peer group pressure, and believe me, some of these cults – that’s what they are, cults – really do know how to exert pressure. It’s so easy in London. Young people living alone, away from home …’
‘Running away from home, perhaps?’ Veronica chipped in.
‘That too. They are easy prey. They’re offered all the security of a new family with none of the responsibilities, not even the need to think for themselves. Some of these groups have codes of discipline that make the Gestapo look like weak-kneed liberals. I ... I don’t know. I just find it very hard to tolerate the intolerant. When I see them on the street, I just find myself arguing with them.’
‘You’ve had a run-in with this lot before?’ I asked.
‘The Shining Doorway? Oh yes. And the Shining Fulcrum and the Furlong of Light and half a dozen others with equally meaningless names. But only when I find them out on the street acting like some moral press gang. And you saw this morning that it’s impossible to argue with them. They just turn and walk away.’
‘Think they’ve been told to do that?’
‘Trained to do that, I’d say. The leaders of these cults inspire tremendous loyalty.’
‘And how do they do that?’ Veronica was hypnotised by now. This was almost certainly better than her current library book.
‘Sometimes it’s sex or drugs – no, I’m sorry, but it’s true.’
I wasn’t sure whether he was reacting to Veronica’s look of horror or mine of cynicism. ‘But mostly it boils down to psychological dominance. You’ve got to remember that the majority of cult members fall into one of two groups. There are those who have had a bad experience with an organised or established religion. They feel that religion has failed them …’
This time he definitely caught the look on my face.
‘Yes, okay, sometimes we do fail people and badly. But it’s not just my lot, you know. There are disaffected Catholics, Jews, even Muslims attracted to these sects.
‘The other type are the young – average age 16 – and they’re looking for – who knows? Parents, family, security, rebellion, a moral framework? You name it. So lost, so young. Sixteen is no age to be giving your mind away.’
He stirred his coffee some more but made no attempt to drink it.
‘The law says you can do a lot of things at 16,’ said Veronica seriously, and I wondered what she had in mind.
‘You can get a job,’ said Rev Rickwell. ‘The cults don’t like scroungers, they like young people with jobs who are willing to give their earnings to the cause.’
‘A sort of ten per cent tithe?’ I threw in.
‘More like 50 per cent. In some cases more. I had a parishioner once who woke up one morning to find her husband had left her for a spiritual retreat on the Isle of Skye, having signed the house and car over to the sect. No warning, no hints. She thought he’d been spending his evenings at a carpentry class.’
‘The poor woman,’ gasped Veronica. ‘What did she do?’
‘Took a hammer to his bookshelves,’ I said before I could stop myself.
The Rev Rickwell let his jaw drop. I couldn’t tell whether he was being genuine or mugging it. ‘You know her?’
‘No. Just a good guess. It wasn’t the Shining Doorway, was it?’
He looked confused for a moment.
‘No, they’re relatively new on the scene, and they specialise in young runaways, mostly girls.’
‘But if they’re 16, they’re perfectly entitled to leave an unhappy home, aren’t they?’ said Veronica quietly, and we both looked at her.
‘These sects aren’t selling happiness. At best, they could be classed as harmless, at worst, I’d say they were evil.’
He left his coffee alone for a minute and ran a finger round the inside of his dog collar as if he was sweating. I nodded at the gesture.
‘You would say that, though, wouldn’t you?’ I said.
‘Yes, I suppose I would, but I think I would even if I wasn’t wearing this,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘It seemed to frighten them off,’ said Veronica, not taking her eyes off his face.
‘It doesn’t frighten them at all,’ the vicar said despairingly. ‘They adopt a tactic of passive resistance. They just nod or smile – and it’s really hurtful when they smile – and back away; go and find another hunting ground. They move around; they don’t seem to be very territorial.’
‘You’ve made a study of them, have you?’ I asked. It certainly sounded as if he had.
He looked at me before answering.
‘What do you do, Mr ... ? I mean, what’s your job?’
‘Musician,’ I said quickly, before Veronica could jump in.
‘Well, okay,’ said the vicar, slightly thrown, ‘musician. Don’t tell me you never listen to other musicians in the same field or other types of music.’
‘You mean keeping up with the competition?’
‘If you like. I’ve heard it called identifying our market share.’
‘Are you winning?’
‘I think we’re now officially a minority. More people in this country go through some form of weekly worship or witness outside the established Church of England than do inside it.’ He allowed himself a faint smile. ‘Maybe we should have started our market research earlier. What’s the reason for your research? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.’
‘We’re investigating …’ Veronica started.
‘… the possibility that one of our cousins has joined one of these cults,’ I interrupted. ‘She fits the picture you’ve painted; she’s young for her age, very easily led, could never come to terms with life in London. And, yes, if I’m being honest, her home life could have been happier.’
‘She’s joined the Shining Doorway?’
‘It’s possible; I can’t say more than that.’
‘Can you give me her name, or a photograph? I can try and keep an eye out or an ear to the ground ... and I could tell some others that I know who …’
I held up my hand.
‘The family have asked us to see what we can discover before we go any further. I am sure you can understand why.’
‘Of course I can.’
I was glad one of us could.
‘But you could help us by telling us everything you know about the Shining Doorway.’
Veronica was giving me what passed for a killer look from behind her glasses. Killer hungry puppy, that is.
‘I think I already have. They’re no different from dozens of other sects. Relatively new on the scene, like I said. I first heard of them up in Islington about a year ago. I didn’t know they were trawling their nets round here until I got off the tube this morning.’
‘Do they have any distinguishing marks? Any secret codes or anything?’
For the first time he looked at me as if he didn’t believe my motives were other than pearly white.
‘You’re not even contemplating trying to infiltrate them, are you? I don’t think they’d give you house room. They rely on people they can dominate psychologically.’
His eyes flicked towards Veronica, but his ‘On the other hand …’ remained unsaid.
‘What’s their obsession with the Emperor Constantine?’ I asked quickly before Veronica caught on.
‘Their what?’
I produced the flyer I had been given and showed him the text.
‘The quote about leading young people to the shining doorway of Jesus, it says it’s from Constantine.’ Veronica looked at both of us in turn, as if spectating at Wimbledon. I tried to put her out of her misery. ‘The Roman Emperor Constantine, supposedly the first one to convert to Christianity. Start of the fourth century.’
The Rev Rickwell looked both surprised and impressed. Veronica, just surprised.
‘I suppose it’s an easy assumption to make,’ he said, and I saw Veronica brighten up at that. ‘But it has nothing to do with early Christianity. That will be from the Thoughts of Chairman Constantine, their self-appointed leader, or guru, or whatever you’d like to call him. Tall chap, long ginger hair. Very PC.’
‘PC?’ I had to ask, just to avoid confusion. I mean, there are still some people about who think that the small ads advertising ‘CDs for hire’ for parties are referring to music and not Cross-Dressers.
‘Professionally Charismatic. If he wasn’t in the religion business, he’d be ... oh, I don’t know ... the president of a students’ union, or someone who did management training videos. I’ve heard it said he’s American originally, though he’s lived here for some time. He seems to be able to inspire tremendous loyalty among certain followers.’
‘The female ones?’
‘Yes. I’ve met one girl who did Breakaway and is …’
‘Breakaway?’
‘What used to be called de-programming. That got almost as bad a reputation as the cults themselves.’ He turned to Veronica, as if apologising. ‘It could so easily go so badly wrong, you see. And it did when left to the amateurs. It could cause more harm than good. Sometimes permanent damage. You … you’re not thinking of anything like that, are you ... Mr …?’
‘No, no,’ I reassured him. ‘It won’t come to that. But you said you knew a girl who had done this Breakaway business. What is it? Some sort of therapy?’
‘I would not like to think so, as “therapy” means healing. But it is not a single course of action, just a way of re-establishing a person’s worth, their self-belief. Allow them time and space to discover that they can exist, do things – sometimes very basic things – without the support of the sect.’
‘You mean put them back into their families?’ Veronica asked quietly.
‘Not necessarily. In fact, usually not, as the family seems to be the root cause of many of the problems. That’s why they seek security in the sect. It’s an alternative family, but a false one.’
I thought Veronica was going to argue, so I cut in.
‘This girl, though, the one who did the Breakaway ... ?’
‘Oh yes, she came through all right. In the end, she regarded Connie – that’s what she called him – in the same way as I suppose you would look back on an old boyfriend.’ He looked at Veronica for inspiration and got none. ‘Sort of ... it was nice while it lasted, but why was I ever taken in to thinking it could have been more?’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Knowing that something is going to end in tears before bedtime before it happens is one of the great skills of life.’
‘But rare,’ he said, and I nodded.
‘I wish you luck in your search. I must be going. He stood up and didn’t offer to shake hands. ‘Are you sure I can’t put the word out on my network for you? I come into contact with the Salvation Army, the Samaritans, the night shelter people. You never know.’
‘Thanks, but we’ll give it a shot ourselves,’ I said, wondering how to let him down lightly. ‘But thank you for all your advice and your concern.’
He snorted slightly at that.
‘Concern? Of course I’m concerned. I’ve got a 16-year-old daughter.’
We watched him cross the road through the steamed-up café window, then Veronica said: ‘Nice man.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were very evasive about giving him our names,’ she said as if she genuinely wanted to know why.
‘What? Tell a vicar he’s just been bought a cappuccino by an Angel? That would have made his day, wouldn’t it?’
‘So, what now?’ she asked from the back of Armstrong.
‘You’re the detective.’
Pause.
‘I was always taught that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit.’
‘And the learning curve goes up from here on.’
Pause.
‘Sometimes I don’t understand anything you say.’
‘That’s a relief. I thought I might be losing my touch.’
‘More sarcasm?’
‘If you have to ask ...’
‘Am I going to get an answer?’
‘Why ask me? Like I said, you’re supposed to be the detective.’
‘But you seem to have muscled your way in quite effectively.’
‘What?’
‘You took over the last interview without so much as … a …’
‘Whatever. All right, you do the next one then. On your own.’
‘I will. You can bet money on that.’
There was a blessed silence for two minutes.
‘Where is our next interview, exactly?’
‘I thought you wanted to go and see Stella’s father and report in. Plus, you need to get him to change that cheque he sent to Albert. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes. Yes.’
But first we had to visit Veronica’s old office. She insisted on it. There might have been post waiting on the mat. Albert might have changed his mind and be back at his desk. Clients might have been forming a queue, clogging up the highway. And anyway, she needed a few ‘personal’ things from her bedroom.
I didn’t ask about those, but I did ask if there was a file on the Rudgard girl, and she said probably, as Albert was very efficient at opening files. So I agreed to the visit. After all, it was broad daylight and surely safe enough.
On the way, I pointed out that Albert was still likely to be in hospital and, anyway, he couldn’t get in as the new door Dod had fitted had a new lock and I still had the keys. (I handed one over, keeping the spare in my pocket when she didn’t ask for it.)
Veronica told me not to worry about Albert as he had keys to the back door into the alley at the rear.
I tried not to register too much surprise. First, surprise at Veronica’s cavalier – for her – attitude to Albert, but thinking about it, she’d hardly mentioned him for about an hour. Secondly, it got me thinking about the break-in by the two trainee gangsters who had paid me a visit. If there was a back way in, why risk a full-frontal assault in daylight? It only made sense if it was a warning raid, an elaborate message for Albert, rather than a burglary. And Albert seemed to have got the message. But what on earth had he done to upset the local infant mafia?
The place looked the same as when I had left it the previous day, and the street seemed clear of undesirables. Veronica was chattering about whether she should really let me see client confidential files and whether she shouldn’t really be on observation duty back in Wimpole Street, but I wasn’t listening. I kept my eyes peeled for anyone taking an interest in us and let her unlock the door and start up the stairs. I felt marginally better when I dropped the latch on the door behind us and when she reached Albert’s office without being jumped.
‘Oh, fish-hooks!’ she said loudly; so loudly, I jumped.
‘What now?’ I peered around the corner of the office door. She was holding the shell of the camera one of my tormentors had smashed with his hammer.
‘Put it on the insurance,’ I sighed, relieved.
‘But I’m supposed to have a camera when I go on surveillance,’ she pouted, having just remembered the fact. ‘What if the client wants photographs?’
‘I’ve got a camera you can … rent … for a few days. Put it on expenses.’
‘And the tripod looks bent as well,’ she sulked.
‘Done during the break-in,’ I said helpfully. ‘Why don’t you just show me where the files are and then get what you need. We’ve a lot to do today.’
She continued to stare at the camera, like a kid finding its first dead crab on the seashore.
‘I’ll have to get the film,’ she muttered.
‘Don’t worry about that. I’ve got film in my camera.’ Though I couldn’t for the life of me remember what was on the first hall-dozen shots. Probably things you shouldn’t ask a chemist to develop.
‘No, I mean the photographs.’ I looked blank. It wasn’t hard. ‘That Albert took of me the other night. I dropped the film off to be developed. It’ll be ready by now.’
‘Er ... do I really need to know what sort of photographs these were?’
‘Passport pictures, you know, I told you – for an identity card Albert was going to have made for me.’
‘Oh,’ I said vaguely.
As she collected her things from her bedroom, I sat in Albert’s office chair and read the slim file that had the single word RUDGARD in felt-tip pen on the cover. It contained three things: a head-and-shoulders studio photograph of Estelle Rudgard taken about two years earlier, I guessed; a typed transcript of the meeting between her father and Albert, which told me nothing I had not now gleaned from Veronica; and two pages torn from a shorthand notebook.
The notepaper contained a mixture of words, doodles and T-line shorthand outlines. I knew T-line, having once lived across the road from a secretarial college, or at least the basics like don’t bother to look for vowels, they’re the first thing to go. But Albert’s scrawl wasn’t an attempt to take dictation, just an aid to jog his memory later.
There were no coherent sentences, just phrases. Albert’s thoughts as he listened to Estelle’s father. And it didn’t take a genius to work out the basic sense.
Father – argument? Where mother? (Dead.) Never run before.
School? Girlfriends? £150 p.d. Boy? Sir? Keep quiet.
Buck??? £200 p.d. Office Cavalry. Reference?
Not hiding? 4 days retnr.
Most of the rest of the pages contained doodles down their right hand side. A psychiatrist would have told you that Albert was either designing a landscaped garden or was a very sick man indeed.
What I could read made sense. He questioned the father’s motive, asked, or meant to ask, about family and friends and suspected Estelle’s motives of giving her home address to the temp agency if she really wanted to stay hidden. I liked the way he had upped his per-day fee along the way and settled on a four-day minimum retainer. One thing still foxed me: the reference to ‘Buck???’. That was in script, not shorthand, so I couldn’t be getting the wrong phonetic. In T-line, the same outline could have been ‘book’ or ‘back’. If it was rhyming slang, it could mean anything.
The underlined ‘Sir?’ note would have fooled me had I not already guessed the identity of Estelle/Stella’s father. Albert had taken a full note of his address at the bottom of the second page, so he knew where to send the bill. As Veronica hadn’t mentioned this little titbit, I presumed it had been done while she was not present. He had even added a phone number.
Veronica reappeared in the office doorway. She had changed into a hound’s-tooth suit far too heavy for the weather, and more sensible, black, low heels than the ones she had been wearing. She held an overnight bag that bulged at the sides.
‘Apart from the kitchen stuff, I seem to travelling with all my worldly possessions about me,’ she announced.
‘Let’s leave the kitchen sink for now, eh? You’ve got a phone call to make.’
‘I have? To whom?’
‘To your client, Sir Drummond Rudgard. See if he’s home and ask if you can visit him this afternoon.’ I looked at my SeaStar. ‘Give us an hour and half to get there.’
‘Get where? Did you find an address?’
‘Didn’t you know?’ I said smugly. ‘I saw the franking mark on the envelope with the cheque in. Sir Drummond runs the famous Classic Car Centre from his ancestral pile.’ I consulted Albert’s note, then gave her the page with the phone number. ‘Sandpit Lodge, Great Pardoe, Hertfordshire. It’s classic car buff heaven there, so I’m told.’
She pushed her glasses back onto her face.
‘Did you say “Sir”?’ And when I nodded: ‘Well, he never said, though you could tell he was a gentleman.’
Then she looked me up and down.
‘You’re going dressed like that?’
I decided life was too short to argue, and anyway, my T-shirt was clean and, for once, discreet, and surely even the minor English aristocracy had heard of Coors Beer by now?
Veronica dialled the number twice then said: ‘The line’s dead.’
‘Give it here.’ I took the receiver from her. ‘I think Albert’s started to move out and had the phone cut off.’
Either that or the local vandals were getting inventive. But I dismissed that. They’d keep the phone on just to make obscene calls, and so many people have mobiles these days, it means nothing to cut a land-line.
‘There’s a phone box out on Shepherd’s Bush Green,’ she said cheerfully, masking the urge to swear at Albert. ‘I shan’t be a minute. Oh yes, I will, though. I can pick up those photos on the way back.’
‘Missing you already,’ I muttered as I followed her downstairs.
She dropped her bag on the floor as she opened the door. On the doorstep, she turned and asked me if I had change for the phone. I gave her two 50-pence pieces and a phonecard with about two quid’s worth of credit and told her not to stint herself as it would give a bad impression if the pips went in the middle of a business call.
As I did this, I scanned the street and saw what I least wanted to see coming towards us.
‘You hurry along,’ I said, pushing her gently on the arm. ‘And I’ll put your bag in the car.’
‘Okay,’ she agreed, noticing nothing amiss, and strode off.
I went back inside, but kept the door open about six inches. The black kid in the Raiders T-shirt had two other black kids with him today, though neither was the Arsenal fan I had clouted with the tripod. Maybe Raider had been so spaced out he couldn’t remember anything.
Fat chance. The three of them drew level with Armstrong and, knowing I could see them, casually walked around him trying the door handles. When that got them nowhere, Raider hopped up and sat on the bonnet. One of the others, a tall skinny piece of work, stood on the rear bumper and bounced up and down to see if there was any suspension there.
Unless they had a blowtorch or a sledgehammer between them, I didn’t think they would do much physical damage to Armstrong. Then again, these boys probably had access to ground-to-air missiles. I closed the door and slipped the latch, then charged upstairs and into Veronica’s kitchen.
It took about 30 seconds to realise that short of arming myself with a tin-opener (and I didn’t think they’d stay still long enough), there was nothing there to help. Albert’s office was equally devoid of suitable weapons, and I kicked myself for letting Dod walk off with the knife and the hammer from Round One. Then I tried Albert’s kitchenette. Sure, there were knives, but carrying knives gets you into trouble, let alone using them. Rolling pins, on the other hand ...
I made a menial note to thank Albert if I saw him again. It’s nice to see a man take an interest in pastry, especially at his age. And feeling the weight of the wooden pin in my hand and the comfort as I slipped it up the sleeve of my jacket so it could drop into my grip if needed, I wasn’t surprised that most violence in this country was domestic.
I picked up Veronica’s bag and checked the street before moving out. They were still leaning or sitting on Armstrong. I took a deep breath as I stepped out, and then another as I heard the door click shut behind me,
‘Yo here again,’ said Raider when I was five feet from the driver’s door.
‘Just passing through.’ I held up Veronica’s bag, which I was carrying in my left hand, my right arm stiff by my side. ‘Like I said, we’re moving out.’
‘Yo taking yo time about it.’ He didn’t move from Armstrong’s bonnet, but the other two managed to put themselves between me and the door in the split second I had taken my eyes off them,
Keep it calm. They don’t want a punch-up in the street in the middle of the day, not with people about. And there were people about. I could sense somebody walking down the street even as I tried to think the situation through. The trouble was, I didn’t know if they had thought it through.
‘We’ve taken the hint, we’re moving out, okay? I can’t say fairer than that.’
Raider looked aimlessly into the air, enjoying himself. ‘Oh, I don’t think yo is trying nearly hard enough.’
‘I expect you hear that a lot,’ I said, determined to get one dig in somehow.
‘What you mean by that, eh?’
I started to relax my arm and felt the rolling pin slide down my sleeve.
‘Hey, what you doin’ in that man’s car?’ came a female voice from behind my back. ‘You shouldn’t be sitting up ... Hey, hey, hey. Don’t I know you? I know yo mother, don’t I ... ?’
That was all it took. The three of them, Raider in the lead, were off down the street without even a glance or a swivel-finger gesture in their wake. I turned and smiled.
‘Why, hello, Mrs Delacourt,’ I beamed.
Her expression told me she was in no mood to be blagged, and that she was well aware of what she had just done for me.
‘Are you gonna play in the street all day?’ she snapped. ‘Or are you going to tear yourself away and get to work on my Crimson’s case?’
‘I’m on the job, Mrs D, on the job.’
On the way through north London, somewhere around Hendon, I stopped at a newsagent’s shop and spent nearly ten quid buying the first four classic car magazines I could put my hands on. I could have spent much more; there were more car magazines on the second shelf down than there were girlie magazines on the top one.
I gave them to Veronica to read and brief herself and while away the journey. And, hopefully, to shut her up for an hour or so. She said she couldn’t read as it made her car sick. So I told her to look at the pictures instead. That worked for a while, but nowhere near long enough, and then she was asking questions about what sort of person was it who went in for classic cars, and what was a classic car anyway?
Both were interesting questions, mainly because I couldn’t answer either of them. What was a ‘classic car’ – one that was too young and too common (and too cheap) to be a vintage car? Or one that was of a ‘classic’ design?
Now that I would accept if you were talking of something like a British Mini of the late 1950s, or a Volkswagen Beetle, or even a Fiat 500 or a Citroen 2CV. All classic design shapes. Not necessarily good design – though they all lasted well – but certainly distinctive. But a 1957 Wolseley, which even the fanzines said was ‘better viewed from a distance’? Or a 35-year-old Rover 100, nicknamed ‘the Aunty’, designed especially for people not in a hurry? Or, believe it or not, just about any Ford Cortina ever made that didn’t end up being used for ram raids or for giving driving lessons to apprentice drug barons in Brixton?
I didn’t hold with the theory that classic cars were bought, restored (lovingly) and admired for their design. All the feminist theories of penis envy or penis substitute simply wilt away when you look at the outline of a 1963 Riley Elf, and no-one in their right mind could describe a Morris Marina as phallic. Anyone who drove some of the acclaimed ‘classic cars’ as a means of expressing their sexual prowess was in serious need of treatment, and I don’t mean in the service bay of your friendly Quick Fit fitter. But if there was a connection, and I drove an old, square, dynamic-as-a-brick black London cab, what did that say about me?
Modern cars are so boring, the classic car nut would say. For effect, you need a car with outstanding looks, they would claim. Why? To pull the birds? I don’t think so. In my experience, women are far more sensible, and sensitive to their creature comforts. I’ve known none who actually got turned on by the cramped, bony seats and the overwhelming smell of faded leather, Brylcreem, wet dog and dust.
No, that wasn’t the attraction. A better explanation could be found in the columns of the magazines Veronica was flipping through. The interviews with, and features on, the enthusiasts were full of statements such as: ‘Scraping off the underseal alone look the best part of a year ...’ Or, ‘It needed new kingpins so I reamed them out myself …’ And each statement would be made to glow with an almost erotic pride, if, that is, you found red oxide primer, semi-elliptic leaf springs, bushes or shackle pins, erotic. This wasn’t about appealing to women, this was escaping from them, an excuse for men to behave badly in the garage, restoring rusted piles of metal whilst up to their wrists in oil and grease.
And the magazines even had the classic car equivalent of the soft-porn magazines’ ‘Readers’ Wives’ column. Almost invariably, these were letters, with grainy black-and-white photographs of wrecked or abandoned cars found by the fan whilst on holiday. Check out this little beauty, say the accompanying letters. What a fender; look at the hubcaps on her!
And invariably the photograph shows a barely-recognisable piece of squashed metal. Fancy finding a Peugeot 304 after 20 years in a field in Kenya, gushes the text. Or the Standard Ensign in the drainage ditch in Cornwall, or the World War II Kubelwagen on Crete? (Personally, I’d be more impressed if they had found the Ensign on Crete and the Kubelwagen in a lay-by on the Penzance ring road.) To judge from the holiday snaps sent in, virtually every British car of the 1950s and 1960s ended up somewhere in Greece, so why waste film on all those old ruins?
I had never understood the fascination. Vehicles were there to get you from A to B or, preferably, back from B in one piece, with as few people as possible knowing where A was. The only useful thing I had ever learned from any of the car magazines was from a story about a newish Porsche 911 found in a million-gallon lagoon of pig slurry. It had floated to the top even though the windows had been opened and the petrol cap removed before it was pushed in. Lesson to be learned: next time you want to scam the insurance company, open the front boot as well. The damn things are so well made, the boot traps enough air to raise it. (Another tip: don’t push it in, drive it in so the engine is running when it goes under. That really buggers things up, and it’s a write-off even if it reappears.)
‘What’s the attraction?’ Veronica asked from the back, tossing the last of the magazines on to the seat at her side. ‘For men, I mean?’
‘What? The attraction of cars?’
‘No, of collecting.’
‘Eh?’
‘You know, they’re always collecting something. Cars, stamps, beer bottle labels. Bird-watching and train-spotting, they’re like collecting as well.’
‘And women don’t collect things?’ I asked. I knew one who had an unrivalled collection of worn-once boxer shorts from airline pilots, but I didn’t think that was what she meant.
‘Not like men. Not obsessively. That’s something peculiar to men.’
‘Well, I always believe in travelling light.’
‘Is that one of your Rules of Life?’
‘Yes,’ I said, looking at her in Armstrong’s mirror, and thinking maybe I should listen to myself more.
Sandpit Lodge was an impressive pile. Once.
If only one architect had been responsible, then with the best will in the world, he must have been on drugs. More likely, the place had been built piecemeal over the decades and at the whim of whatever retrospective fashion was in vogue, with a series of architects each determined not so much to outdo the previous one, as settle a score with him. Consequently, there was a turret here, a square tower of the type found in 19th Century breweries there, the odd splash of mock-Tudor stud work, and a Victorian west wing that probably had mad spinster aunts on a waiting list for rooms.
If it had had a sign saying ‘Not Used in the Filming Brideshead Revisited’ I wouldn’t have been surprised. Instead, it had one giving prices of admission for visitors, families, cars and coach parties. Then another, advertising cream teas available (summer only). And one advertising – for a modest extra charge – the availability of guided tours of the house. Having seen it from the outside, I had to admire their nerve. How much did they charge to let you out?
Because the house was such a mish-mash of styles (and I suspected that few of them were actually authentic), I doubted if the owner had run into trouble getting planning permission for the huge aircraft hangar of a building that loomed up out of the lawns to the left. The planner must have thought that as the house itself was so ghastly, a few thousand square feet of glass and aluminium couldn’t make matters worse.
Above the sliding doors of the hangar was a cut-out sign about ten feet high saying CLASSIC CAR CENTRE. The graphic designer had done each letter without using the same typeface twice. Whatever he’d been drinking at the time, I fancied a double.
Between the hangar and the house was a gravel drive bulging into a semi-circle, bounded by a low, curved wall that I knew was called a ha-ha. I knew this because there was another sign saying: ‘Please Park ‘Em Pretty Against the Ha-Ha’. Someone had added, underneath in black fell-tip pen, ‘This is not a joke’, and nobody had bothered to clean it off.
There was a gap in the ha-ha dead centre (actually, slightly off dead centre, to the right) and by it stood a wooden sentry box construction. On top of it, pointing down, was a handpainted sign in the shape of an arm and hand with extended forefinger, saying PAY HERE. It looked as if it had been stolen from a fun fair.
I parked Armstrong as instructed, but unlike the other dozen or so cars there, I reversed up to the ha-ha so I was pointing towards the exit and the B road we had taken after leaving Hatfield. (Rule of Life No. 277: Always park facing the way you’d make a quick exit.)
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ said Veronica, climbing regally from the back of the cab.
‘Distinctive,’ I conceded. Then I checked my watch. ‘We’re early. Fancy a look around the car museum?’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Would you go to Longleat and not see the lions?’
She shrugged and followed me towards the pay box. At least she didn’t ask if they had a lion museum at Longleat.
A small, skinny youth with dark curly hair bobbed out of the wooden kiosk like a jack-in-the-box as we approached. He had two old-fashioned ticket machines slung across his chest, bandoleero style, the sort bus conductors used to use – or so I’ve seen in old movies. One dispensed orange tickets, the other, blue. His hands poised over them like a gunfighter.
‘Classic Car Centre, or the unguided tour of the Lodge, sir? Or can I do you for both?’ he chirped.
‘We’re here to see Sir Drummond Rudgard,’ I said.
He smiled at me.
‘The owner,’ said Veronica unhelpfully. ‘On business.’
‘You’ll save two pounds if you buy both tickets now,’ he said, still smiling.
‘We’re here to see Sir Drummond,’ Veronica started indignantly. ‘And I don’t think …’
The kid still smiled.
‘You’ve heard all this before, haven’t you?’ I eyeballed him.
‘Twice a day, three times Saturday and Sunday. And I’ve only worked here a month. You’d be amazed how many punters try and get in for free. They’re here on business or delivering something or are personal friends of the management. The worst are the National Trust members. They try it on, then when they have to pay, ask for discount by producing their membership card.’
‘And I don’t suppose this place is in the National Trust?’
‘Hey, come on. The Trust ain’t that desperate. So what’ll it be?’
‘Two tickets for the museum,’ I conceded. ‘But we really do have business with Sir Drummond, in about half an hour.’
He cranked out two orange tickets, and I had to pay as Veronica made no move to.
‘Half an hour will just about do you, sir,’ he said as he counted out my change. ‘If you walk slowly.’
‘How slowly?’ I asked.
‘Try limping.’
We had crunched halfway across the gravel before Veronica said: ‘What a rude youth. Do you think we should report him to Sir Drummond?’
‘Only for a pay rise. He’s doing a good job. And I don’t get the impression that there’s a queue to take his place.’
As we approached the sliding doors of the museum hangar, it was obvious there was no-one to take our orange tickets. Nor were there any attendants or guides. The Classic Car Centre was very much a do-it-yourself operation.
Even the notices describing the cars on show were home-made, typed and then enlarged on a photocopier and covered with what looked like plastic kitchen film. But to be fair, the cars themselves looked to be in immaculate condition and clean enough to cook pizza on, though even thinking such a thing would probably induce hysteria in the true classic car fan.
Two-thirds of the way down the hangar was a sign saying ‘Commercial Vehicles’, with the larger exhibits – old trucks with company names and slogans on the side. But the main display was of saloon cars, mostly British, though with odd foreigners, in two lines, each car at a slight diagonal. I counted 32 different models down one phalanx, and there were about the same down the other side of the hangar. Some crude guesswork and some shaky mental arithmetic gave me a net value of about £400,000-worth of cars under the one roof, and I had no idea what the commercial vehicles were worth. Sir Drummond may not believe in spending money on staff or graphic designers, but he certainly put his cash where his cars were.
There was no logic – to me anyway – to the order of display. As we walked down the central aisle, to our left were: a metallic silver blue Alvis (1961), a white Austin Healey ‘Frogeye’ Sprite (1959), a Wolseley Hornet in racing green (1964), and a dark tan Vauxhall FD Victor, which the blurb on the sign in front of it told me had been voted Car of the 1967 Motor Show.
To our right, the first car was a 1962 Ford Zephyr, the Mark II mind you, and the blurb told us to note the two-tone blue paint job, the alloy wheels and the external metal sun visor. It didn’t tell us why. Then came an American import, a 30-year-old Lincoln Continental with black and tan upholstery and a seven-litre engine. We learned it had been voted the seventh most luxurious car in the world in 1964, and so now we could sleep nights. Then came a bright red Triumph Herald 12/50 from 1965 and a black Austin A40 from 1963, the car that if invented 20 years later would have been marketed as a hot hatchback. Well, tepid hatchback anyway.
Beyond that lot stretched a proud line-up of Rileys, Austins, Fords, the odd Fiat and Citroen, even a Bentley or two. Okay, so there were a couple of classic designs there, but the majority of cars were the sort that, if you were behind them in a traffic jam, you’d ask yourself how the thing managed to stay on the road, then you’d drop a gear and overtake and forget it before it had gone from your mirror.
There were only two other visitors, a father and son way up the other end of the hangar. Their voices echoed in the spaces, and though I couldn’t hear the words, the kid was bored. So was Veronica.
‘Is that it, then? You just look at them? Cars.’
‘What did you expect? Practical displays of ram raiding? An interactive display of hotwiring skills?’
‘Well, there’s nothing here for the kids, is there? I mean …’ She paused, then looked at me. ‘Did you just say hotwiring?’
I made a dance of looking around just to emphasise that there was no-one else within 50 yards. ‘Must have been me.’
‘You know how to hotwire a car?’ Her eyes gleamed. Or it could have been the strip lights reflecting in her glasses. ‘Yes,’ I said, knowing I’d regret it. ‘And I can hotwire aeroplanes too.’
‘Now you’re having me on.’ She all but wagged a finger at me.
‘No, seriously. They’re actually easier than cars. Light aircraft, that is; you know, with a propeller at the front. Not a jumbo or anything.’
‘Could you teach me? To do a car, I mean?’
It was time to change the subject.
‘I think it’s time to see Sir Drummond. You can tell him he’s got a fascinating collection.’
‘But can you?’
‘Why do you need to know stuff like that?’ I said as I turned to go.
‘Albert said he would teach me about the hardware.’
‘What hardware?’
‘Detective work these days is all hardware. Electronic listening devices, alarm systems, video surveillance, planting bugs, sweeping for bugs, all that stuff. I don’t even know about cars. Or picking locks,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘These are the tools of my trade and I need to learn about them.’
I bit back a retort about going equipped for burglary when I saw she was serious and also embarrassed about having to ask for help.
‘You don’t need those things,’ I said carefully. ‘Play to your strengths, don’t get hooked on gadgets. If you can’t drive, you don’t need to know how to hotwire. If you can’t talk your way through a door, why do you want to enter an empty room? And if nobody’s home, smash the frigging door in, find what you want and get out. You’d be no good at a secret search. And what do you need videos and listening devices for when you’ve got eyes? People will always tell you things, if you ask them right.’
‘Like that vicar this morning?’
‘Exactly. And maybe sometimes its what they don’t tell you that’s important. But those are the only work skills you need that I can see. Keep Detection Simple. Campaign For Real Detectives. Talk to people and to hell with the electronic devices.’
‘You mean forget all the hardware?’
‘Absolutely. Detective Unplugged. There’s a title for you.’
If we had been expecting a liveried flunky or even a butler to greet us as we entered Sandpit Lodge, then we were about 20 years too late. Unlike in the Classic Car Centre, however, there was someone here to take our tickets and sell us a range of souvenir brochures that sat in a wooden stand, yellowing from the sunlight through the open door. She put down her knitting as we entered. She looked like a retired headmistress from the local village school.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘Would you like to wander round yourself or can I give you a tour? I don’t mind doing it in the slightest, but to be honest, I don’t know too much about the house. This isn’t my normal job. I used to be the headmistress at the village school and I just do this to help out.’
‘Actually, we’re here on business, to see the owner,’ Veronica said, warming to the old dear instantly. She produced one of her business cards and held it out like a wizard would point a wand.
‘Well … Miss ... Blugden ... I suppose I’d better find Sir Drummond. He didn’t tell me he was expecting visitors, well, apart from Mr Buck, who knows the way anyway. And I don’t like leaving the desk unattended for too long …’
Veronica took the initiative. ‘Please don’t worry about that. I’ll keep an eye on things. I think you can see from my card that we have a reputation for trust and discretion, or Sir Drummond wouldn’t be employing me, would he?’
‘Of course he wouldn’t, you’re quite right,’ said the sweet old thing as she peered at the card. ‘My, my, private and confidential. Well, of course. I won’t be a minute.’
She tottered off into the gloomy recesses of the hallway and through a dark oak door marked ‘Private – Staff Only’.
‘How was that?’ Veronica beamed at me.
‘Exactly right,’ I said, just thankful she’d shown the right card. ‘Just remember what we rehearsed when we get to see the main man.’
‘And I get to take the lead.’
‘Sure.’
She turned on her heels to have a better look at the hall and the impressive oak staircase that did three right-angle turns up to the first floor. I leaned over the old lady’s desk to check out the contents of her cash drawer and deduced that business was not exactly booming.
‘Oh, I hate that,’ said Veronica suddenly.
‘What?’ I snapped. I hadn’t really been thinking about claiming our admission fee to the car museum back in cash. Well, maybe just thinking about it.
‘Signs like that.’ She pointed to one of three that said that photography was not allowed inside the house. ‘They really annoy me. They don’t let you lake photographs so you have to buy their rotten postcards. It’s the same in all the big country houses. It’s a swiz.’
Oh dear, she did have a lot to learn.
‘There were some in the car museum, but it’s nothing to do with postcards.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘‘Fraid not. It’s a favourite trick of robbers to come round as visitors and photograph the alarm systems so they can work out how to disable them. So, no photography, please. It’s probably written into the insurance policy.’
Though I hadn’t seen anything worth stealing in the house yet.
‘That’s useful to know,’ she said slowly, then looked at me with an awful sincerity. ‘Do you think I should start making notes?’
You should have started about ten years ago, I thought, but I didn’t say it as the headmistress was holding the door at the end of the hall open.
‘Sir Drummond will see you now,’ she announced, just like I could have guessed she would.
‘Thank you,’ said Veronica, nodding graciously.
‘He’s asked Mr Buck to stay for the meeting,’ the headmistress confided as we passed her and moved into a short corridor.
‘Who’s Mr Buck?’ hissed Veronica out of the corner of her mouth.
‘I’ve no idea,’ I hissed back. But he’d rated three question marks in Albert’s notebook. ‘Let’s keep an open mind. I’ve found it’s the best policy.’
‘Open mind,’ she said to herself. ‘Open mind.’
The door at the other end of the corridor was half open, then fully open as a tweed-jacketed arm pushed it back. ‘Miss Blugden, come in. I’m glad you found the place.’ Then he saw me.
He was about my height, which isn’t saying much, about 60, and he had the roundest face I’d ever seen. Almost a perfect circle, ruddy-complexioned and iced with a receding crop of white hair and a snowy white, clipped moustache.
He held out a hand for Veronica to shake, which she did with a muffled and very respectful ‘Sir Drummond …’ under her breath. I could tell that the tweed jacket had seen better days, but it went with the scuffed brown shoes and the shirt with the slightly frayed collar that you hope nobody will notice.
‘And this is ... ?’ He looked at me like he had a master’s degree in eye contact.
‘Mr Maclean,’ said Veronica, as we’d rehearsed. ‘He’s an associate and also one of our regular drivers. Junior associate,’ she added vindictively.
I shook Sir Drummond’s hand, and I felt Veronica scowl at me because I didn’t bow.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said with mock bonhomie. ‘The library is usually the only place one can find sanctuary when the house is open to the public.’
I smiled as if I had these problems all the time and didn’t mention that I hadn’t noticed him having to beat off the visitors with a stick.
The library was a library in the sense that it had maybe as many books as the average Oxfam shop. No leather-bound editions here, just popular paperback fiction. There was a fireplace but no fire, and no more than half a dozen pieces of furniture, including a moth-eaten set of armchairs.
From one of these arose a tall, angular man wearing a pinstripe suit and the sort of black-framed glasses Michael Caine hasn’t worn since 1966.
He didn’t seem to be the type you could warm to instantly.
But, as I’d said to Veronica, we should adopt an open mind.
‘This is Simon Buck,’ said Sir Drummond. ‘I’ve asked him to join us. He’s my solicitor.’
I decided to save time and hate him on sight.
‘I understand that you may have something positive to tell Sir Drummond,’ said Buck precisely.
I hadn’t counted on anyone else being present, and certainly not some legal Doberman, so I could only hope that it didn’t throw Veronica.
‘Well, we have some news,’ she said, sticking to the script, ‘but first there is a small administrative matter to do with your cheque.’
She produced a purse from her shoulder bag. It was a brightly-coloured, velcro-fastened wallet with illustrations campaigning for the protection of endangered species, and pretty embarrassing. But if she had produced a gun or said, ‘The murderer is in this room …’ (after all, we were in the library), she could not have got their attention more fully.
Sir Drummond went red – bright, circular red – in the face.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘It’s made out to Mr Block.’ Veronica held the offending rectangle out towards him.
Sir Drummond didn’t seem to want to touch it, and made no move towards her. Buck stepped closer and leaned over so he could point his glasses at it.
‘That seems to be correct. And the date is accurate, and you obviously haven’t tried to cash it.’ At that point, Sir Drummond exhaled. ‘So I don’t quite see ... ?’
‘The problem is at our end, I’m afraid,’ she said confidently. I was impressed. ‘Albert – Mr Block – has been taken ill rather suddenly, and is unlikely to return to work.’
‘Good heavens, nothing too serious, I hope?’ This from Buck, who seemed genuinely concerned, certainly more so than Sir Drummond, who just concentrated on breathing more easily.
‘A mild heart attack,’ I said. ‘He’ll survive, but he’s not up to coming back into the team. He’s thinking of early retirement, once he’s out of hospital.’
‘So it would be very helpful if we could have another retainer, in my name.’
Very businesslike, I thought. Well done, Veronica.
‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ she added, and I despaired.
‘So you just want another cheque, made out to ... ?’
‘V Blugden, please. Miss.’ She handed Buck a card, and he slipped it into the breast pocket of his jacket.
‘And this was paid against an invoice?’ Buck asked, taking the cheque from her.
‘Invoices are not normally issued on retainers but I am sure I could let you have a VAT receipt.’ Good girl.
‘That won’t be necessary.’ Buck turned to Sir Drummond. ‘Shall I take care of this, Drum? I have my cheque book here.’
Sir Drummond cleared his throat.
‘Thank you, Simon, that would be ... convenient.’
Buck sat down, produced a cheque book and balanced it on his knee. He wrote it out, consulting Veronica’s card once in a prissy sort of way, and then detached it from the book, scribbled something on the counterfoil and handed it over. He swapped it for Sir Drummond’s, and while Veronica checked the details, I noticed that he folded the cheque made out to Albert and put that in his breast pocket along with Veronica’s card.
‘And now may we have your report?’ asked Buck.
‘And please sit down,’ said Sir Drummond, relegated to the role of housekeeper.
Veronica made herself comfortable in one of the armchairs, pulled the hem of her skirt down with both hands, then turned to me.
‘I think I will let my associate outline our findings to date,’ she said with a regal nod of her head.
I realised she meant me, but tried not to show my surprise.
‘Your daughter started work this week as fill-in receptionist in a medical practice in Wimpole Street. She got the job through the agency you told Mr Block about.’
Buck shot a glance at Sir Drummond, who was leaning forward in his chair, his hands clasped between his knees. Buck produced a pen and a small black notebook or diary.
‘Name?’
‘The senior consultant is called Linscott. Full details will be in our written report.’
‘I see.’ He wrote something. ‘Proceed.’
‘The job may last a week or perhaps two, or more. The important thing for your peace of mind, Sir Drummond, is that she seems fit and well and is actually working, earning a living, so she’s one up on most runaways.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he burbled. ‘That’s something, isn’t it?’
‘Have you spoken to her?’ asked Buck.
‘No, no verbal contact as yet. We have maintained covert long-range optical surveillance only,’ I said, as if I knew what it meant.
‘And you have found out where she is living?’ This, again, from Buck, not the father.
‘We have traced her to Belgravia, but we have not been able to narrow it down as yet,’ I lied.
‘Good God, she’s not camping out in Victoria Coach Station, is she?’ At last, a reaction from the desolate dad.
‘Oh no,’ said Veronica, ‘she’s staying with some friends.’
If she had been in range, I would have kicked her.
‘Who?’ asked Sir Drummond quickly.
‘And where?’ asked Buck, pen poised.
‘We are simply not sure,’ I said quickly. ‘There is a chance, however, that she has joined a religious group.’
I checked their faces for reaction to that, and got the distinct impression that they were not expecting us to hold the front page on this one.
‘Has Stella, sorry, Estelle, done anything like this before?’ I tried, when they failed to register shock, horror or disbelief.
‘Like what? Run away? No, never,’ said Sir Drummond, almost distractedly. ‘All teenage girls think about it, or so I’m told. And when her mother died four – no, five years ago, I was very worried about her then. But she seems to have her head screwed on.’
‘What about religion? Any interest before?’
‘None whatsoever. Always got the impression she would rather slope off for a cigarette behind the bicycle sheds than go on church parade, or whatever it was they did at her boarding school.’
‘Do you have a name for this religious group?’ Buck tapped the nib of his pen against his notebook.
‘The Shining Doorway,’ said Veronica before I could flash her a warning look, or alternatively heave half a brick at her.
‘But no address?’ He stared at her.
‘No, not as yet,’ I said before she cracked and came over all honest. The game plan had been to keep some aces in the hole. Now we were down to one.
Buck began to fold his notebook away.
‘Sir Drummond, I believe you told Mr Block that Estelle was upset about a boyfriend?’ I fished.
Buck started: ‘Drum, there’s no need to …’ but Sir Drummond held up the palm of a hand to stop him.
‘Yes, she was sweet on a young fellow called Lee, Carrick Lee. As you might guess from a name like that, he was a bit of gypsy. A real one. A Romany, a Pikey. Wandered in here last summer after there’d been a fun fair in the village. Knew about cars, so I let him work in the museum. He came and went as it pleased him; it was far from what you’d call regular employment. About two months ago, he just disappeared; dropped totally out of sight. Not heard a word since. I thought it was rather bad form. Ungrateful. Estelle, on the other hand, thought I’d driven him out because I disapproved of their relationship.’
‘Did you?’ asked Veronica, then blushed.
‘Damn right I did,’ blustered Sir Drummond, ‘and I would have got rid of him if I’d thought for one minute it was getting too serious. But Estelle is far too sensible to let it get out of hand. A quick tumble or two in the bushes, that’s natural. Isn’t it?’
We all realised from Veronica’s expression that it might be natural, but it wasn’t compulsory.
‘As your solicitor, Drum, I have to say this is not germane to anything we need to discuss here,’ pronounced Buck haughtily.
‘But that’s my point, Simon. I was just going to say to … I’m sorry, what was your name?’
‘Maclean. I’m a junior associate.’
‘Does that mean junior partner in the business?’ asked Buck, sharp as – well, sharp as a solicitor.
‘No, I’m a freelance. I help out on an ad hoc basis.’ I thought he might like the ‘ad hoc’, but he didn’t seem overly impressed. ‘You were saying, Sir Drummond?’
‘Oh, yes. It was just that Estelle came home from university and we had an almighty row and she stormed out vowing to find this Lee chappy and live happily ever after.’
‘And you think that’s what she has done in London?’
‘Obviously not. She’s cooled off, got herself a job. Probably forgotten all about him. She’ll soon get bored with having a job.’
‘So you’re happy with our report?’ I think Veronica had meant that to sound sarcastic, but she wasn’t very good at it.
‘Why should I not be? You have told me she is well, has a job, and presumably we can contact her there, can’t we, Simon?’
Buck nodded and almost smiled.
‘I believe the retainer was for four days?’ This to Veronica, who nodded. ‘Then I think the books are clear, so to speak.’
‘There’ll be expenses,’ I said quickly.
‘And a written report,’ Veronica chipped in.
‘Send them both to my office.’ Buck reached into his wallet. ‘Let me give you one of my cards.’
Veronica took the card but looked at Sir Drummond.
‘So you don’t wish us to follow up the investigation?’
‘But you’ve done a splendid job. And I am sorry to hear about Mr Block. He was so sympathetic.’
‘But what about Estelle? Aren’t you worried about the people she’s living with?’
Sir Drummond looked as if she’d slipped into Hungarian, and Buck took the opportunity to answer for him.
‘But, Miss Bludgeon’ – I noted the old legal trick of getting people’s names wrong to rattle them, but Veronica missed it – ‘you haven’t told us anything about them. Should we be worried? Who are they? Can you say Estelle is in some sort of danger? I have known her since she was a child and she has always known her own mind. I, like Sir Drummond, am very relaxed about the situation now. If, on the other hand, you are holding something back from us, then your report is far from satisfactory. Or perhaps you are suggesting that we spin this investigation out unnecessarily?’
Veronica stood up in the fastest move I’d seen her make.
‘Not at all. I think that concludes our business then. We’ll be leaving you now.’
I almost cracked up at that one. She sounded like a hotel porter trawling for a tip.
‘Good,’ said Sir Drummond, too quickly for really good manners. ‘I hope you’ll have a chance to look round the Centre.’
‘We had a quick look before we saw you,’ I said, noting that the invitation (maybe to buy a ticket) hadn’t been extended to Veronica.
‘See anything you fancy?’ he grinned. It looked like someone had drawn the Tropic of Capricorn across his globe of a face.
‘‘Fraid not. They’re either too expensive or too distinctive for me. I go for the purely practical and preferably unmemorable.’
‘I take that as a compliment,’ he said, though it hadn’t been meant as one. ‘I have put a lot of thought into the collection and ... I say, yours isn’t the black Austin cab, is it?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I saw it out in the park. Is it a Fairway?’
‘Please.’ I tried to look hurt, like he would expect. ‘It’s an FX4S.’
‘I’m not too up on cabs, but there aren’t many of them left, are there?’ He all but put his arm round me. Veronica made for the door, ignored but dignified.
‘More than you’d think.’
‘A classic design,’ he said dreamily. ‘I would love to have one in the collection.’
‘One day, Drum, perhaps,’ Buck butted in. ‘At the moment, I suspect it’s a working vehicle, isn’t it, Mr ... Maclean?’
‘Quite right. He works hard for his diesel.’
‘“He”, eh? All my cars are “she”s – quite definitely feminine.’
‘Drive a taxi in London for a day and tell me you’d treat a woman like that,’ I smiled back. I’ve found a smile helps when you’re talking gibberish.
‘Quite, quite.’
He grinned some more and slapped me lightly on the shoulder.
‘Forgive me if I don’t show you out, but I need to chat some more with Simon here. Just follow the signs, the exits are clearly marked.’ And then louder, to Veronica’s retreating figure: ‘And thank you for everything, Miss Blugden. You’ve put my mind at ease.’
We were in the small corridor before the door to the hallway, and I caught up with her before she opened it.
‘Okay, so you had a job and now you don’t. Life’s like that, but at least you got paid,’ I said in a rush. ‘And maybe it was a good thing that Buck guy was there, because I don’t think his cheque will bounce.’
She turned her glasses on me. I may have been wrong, but they could have started to mist up.
‘It’s nothing to do with that. It’s that he didn’t care – care enough – about Estelle. He never asked if she had her health, did she seem happy, and nothing about those terrible people she’s living with.’
‘He cared £800 worth,’ I argued.
‘He paid for one fact: where she worked. Didn’t it strike you as odd that he never once asked about how she was? He’s her father, but he wasn’t asking any of the right questions.’
She was right, and I was annoyed. I had missed it.
‘Come on, let’s talk about Plan B on the road.’
‘What’s Plan B?’
I did a double-take. ‘Oh shit, you don’t know either?’
She sniffed. It was the best I was going to get. There was no doubt about it, the audiences were getting tougher these days.
Compared to when we arrived, the reception desk was doing a humming trade, in that it had one customer. Then I realised that it wasn’t a customer. The person talking to the schoolmistress was the kid from the sentry box in the car park.
We smiled at the headmistress, who looked hopefully at her rack of souvenir brochures, knowing deep down she wasn’t going to make a sale today, and walked out into the afternoon sunlight. The car park kid followed at our heels.
‘Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you really had business with the old man.’ He pronounced it ‘bizyness’.
‘Would you have let us in free?’ I asked as he drew level.
‘Nope. Times is hard, we need the cash.’
‘You on commission then?’
Veronica was giving him what I classed as her ‘Are you talking to us?’ look. I suspected she had several versions.
‘No,’ said the kid. ‘I look a flat wage, index-linked to that of an Albanian road sweeper just to be on the safe side.’
‘The place isn’t doing the biz then?’
‘You’ve seen it. What do you think?’
We had reached his sentry box, but he seemed in no hurry to even pretend to go back to work.
‘Look on the bright side: no queues.’
‘I suppose so. Not much of a marketing line, though, is it? I mean, No Queues Because It’s Crap isn’t going to pack ‘em in, is it?’
‘Your problem, mate, not mine. Good luck.’
We walked across the grass to Armstrong and he shouted after us.
‘Hey, maybe I’ll see you in London if I save up enough to ride a cab.’
I raised an arm in farewell without looking back.
‘What was all that about?’ Veronica whispered.
‘I dunno. But he was fishing for something.’
I stopped in Hatfield and we found a branch of Veronica’s bank so she could deposit Buck’s cheque. I also suggested she withdrew some cash, but if she did, I didn’t get to see it.
While I was waiting for her – and keeping an eye out for traffic wardens, as I didn’t know if the natives were as friendly towards taxis as they were in town – I had an idea. As soon as Veronica was back in Armstrong, I asked her what the name of Buck’s firm was from his card. She read out: ‘Kay, Morgan and Williams.’
Before she could state the obvious, I said: ‘Funny how common it is these days to have a firm of solicitors where none of the partners are actually the names of the firm, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes,’ she agreed vaguely. ‘What are you after?’
‘Just wondering. I bet you a pint that Buck is the senior bod, top dog, in the practice.’
‘Is it important?’
‘Probably not. It’s just that he seemed to have a powerful influence over Sir Drummond back there.’
She thought this through. ‘Yes, I see what you mean. Pint of what?’
‘Never mind. Lend me ten pence.’
I pulled up at a phone box and took the coin and the card from her. The box had a residential phone directory intact and, once I had got over my surprise, just for the hell of it, I looked up Buck, S. There were four of them, but only one with an address in Great Pardoe. It was worth a shot.
I rang the number for Kay, Morgan and Williams, and a female voice answered at the fifth ring. I have this theory with solicitors that it takes them four rings to set their meters running.
‘Kay, Morgan and Williams, good afternoon.’
‘Oh, good afternoon. Could I speak to your senior partner, please.’ I made my voice sound like I was wearing a suit.
‘I’m sorry, to whom exactly did you wish to speak?’
She was good. Worth her salary.
‘Your senior partner. It is Simon Buck nowadays, isn’t it?’
‘Mr Buck is not available this afternoon.’
Not an admission, but not a denial. Worth every penny.
‘Can I ring him out at Great Pardoe later?’
‘Well, I …’
‘It’s okay, I have his home number. It’s just I was in the area and thought I’d look him up.’
‘Well, he won’t be back in the office today and I do know that his wife is expecting him home this evening.’
Then one of those weird things happened. I wasn’t taking the conversation much further and, feeling I had established a bit of rapport, if not trust, I added a throwaway line: ‘Been checking up on him, has she?’ All innocent, I thought, just chit-chat.
‘As usual,’ said the woman down the line. ‘Five times today. So far.’
‘Keeps him on a tight leash, does she?’ I answered, almost automatically.
‘You could say that, Mr …’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll catch him later,’ I hurried, and hung up.
I didn’t realise until much later that I had just made the understatement of the year.
So far.
Veronica contained herself until we were approaching the M25 orbital before she asked why I had been sniffing after Buck.
‘Just curious,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘If you’re going to continue with this case, you might come up against Mr Buck. He seems to be paying the bills, because I don’t think Sir Drummond can cut the mustard on that front. He looked as if he didn’t have two pennies to rub together.’
‘But there is no case. Not now,’ she said slowly, willing me to disagree.
‘So you feel as if you’ve earned all that money?’
‘You made me bank it. I was going to talk to Albert.’
‘And you’re quite happy to leave Stella in the clutches of a weird religious cult, just because her father doesn’t give a damn?’
She came over all indignant. ‘You really thought I’d do that?’
‘Sure seemed that way.’
‘Then you don’t know me, Mr Angel.’
I wish.
‘So you’ll at least make contact with Stella?’
‘I think it’s the least I should do. Somebody should give a damn.’ Then I saw her looking at her watch in the mirror. ‘Do you think we could catch her coming out of work tonight?’
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough. I’m going to drop you off in Hackney with the girls, then I’m going out. I have some stuff to do.’
We hit the M25 at the start of rush hour, and headed east to the junction that would drop me down into Tottenham and then Stoke Newington. I should have charged her extra for going the scenic route.
‘You didn’t like that Mr Buck, did you?’ she said after worrying about it.
‘Not a lot.’
‘Neither did I. He couldn’t even get my name right.’
So she had noticed.
‘It’s just an old lawyer’s trick to throw you off balance,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just remember, when you find yourself really needing a solicitor, it’s usually too late.’
‘You mean you just dislike them all? On principle?’
‘Sort of. Let me tell you my solicitor story.’
She moved her bulk onto the rumble seat behind me so she could hear better. She was getting really confident about being in Armstrong now; she’d tried nearly all the seats.
‘Okay, so picture this. You’re in heaven, well, actually looking at the edge of heaven, right on the boundary between heaven and hell. On the one side, clouds, blue sky, beauty and bliss unbound. On the other, red light from the darkest flames of hell, molten lava, bare rock, etc. The only sound, the howling of souls.
‘And right down the middle, on the boundary, is a white picket fence running off into eternity. Except for this one point, where about a 20-foot stretch of the fence has fallen over and is just lying on the ground on hell’s side.
‘So, one afternoon, God is out walking the boundary, as he does from time to time, and he sees this break in the fence and the fallen fence just lying there.
‘So he leans over the gap in the fence and shouts down: “Oi, Nick, get up here, sharpish.” And gradually, the Devil stirs himself and comes up to the fence and says: “Hey, God, how ya doing?”, or somesuch, trying to look cool.
‘“Look at this broken fence,” says God. “What are you going to do about it?”
‘“Hey,” says Nick. “I didn’t do it.”
‘“Well, aren’t you going to fix it?” says God.
‘“Why should I?” says the Devil.
‘“Because this fence is the only thing that keeps your demons of hell away from my innocent angels,” says God, getting annoyed now.
‘“So you fix it, if it bugs you,” says Old Nick, real cheeky.
‘“It fell down on your side, so it’s your responsibility to rebuild it,” says God.
‘“How you gonna make me?” asks the Devil.
‘“If you don’t,” says God, “I’ll get my solicitor on to you.”
‘And that’s when the Devil smiles and says: “Where are you going to find a solicitor?”‘
So I wasn’t expecting applause.
All I got was: ‘That wasn’t a story, that was a joke.’
‘Yes,’ I conceded. ‘It was. Once.’
By the lime I got Veronica back to Hackney, it was too late to ring Zoe at her lab at the university. She and the switchboard would have finished for the day by then, and she knew me too well to trust me with her home (married) phone number. I did check with Lisabeth to see if there had been any messages, but got the standard lecture in response.
‘Some of us have jobs, you know. I’ve only just got in and I’ve had to send Fenella out for muesli because she was supposed to do the shopping this week. And I haven’t time to run up and downstairs to answer that thing.’
Now she’d mentioned it, I tried to think of the last time I had seen Lisabeth using the communal phone by the door, and I couldn’t remember a single instance. Come to think of it, I’d never seen her in a room with mirrors either.
‘Well excuse me, but I only asked because Veronica’s expecting a rather important call concerning …’
‘Oh, is Vonnie here again?’ she asked, brightening. She ran a hand through her short, cropped hair. For her that was the equivalent of a complete make-over.
‘Yes, and look,’ I said conspiratorially, ‘I’d really appreciate a favour. I have to go out tonight. Do you think you could keep her entertained?’
She almost smiled.
‘Why, of course. We can’t have her sitting up there all alone …’
There was a scream from my flat above.
‘Oh, shit. I thought Springsteen was out.’
By the time Lisabeth and I got there, he’d disappeared, leaving Veronica dabbing at her neck with a piece of kitchen roll.
‘I told you not to try and make friends,’ I said, once I had seen that there wasn’t that much blood really.
‘Make friends?’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t even see him. He must have been on top of the fridge. I wasn’t doing anything.’
‘When he’s in one of his moods …’
‘Moods? He attacked me.’
‘And you didn’t expect him to. That’s where you’re going wrong.’
‘Going wrong? I didn’t do anything.’
‘Listen, Veronica, how can I put this? We have here a cat who chases cars. Anything less than four-wheel drive is counted as wounded prey. Got that?’
‘He’s a man, that’s the trouble,’ said Lisabeth coldly.
‘Lisabeth, he’s a dumb animal.’ I said in his defence.
‘I rest my case,’ said Lisabeth smugly.
When Mrs Delacourt had appeared earlier and rescued me from the Lost Boys of Shepherd’s Bush, she had been quite explicit in her thoughts on how I should be conducting her investigation. Her son Crimson was meeting his dubious friend Chase that night, in a pub called The Palmerston over in Cricklewood, and, assuming I knew what was good for me, it might be an idea if I was there too.
Quite what I was supposed to do was anybody’s guess. I had no idea what the mysterious white powder was, so I would just have to assume the worst until proven naïve. I didn’t know Crimson’s new friend Chase, or whether he was a friend or mentor, good influence or bad, though there was no doubt in Mrs D’s mind on that score. I didn’t know what they were up to, if they were up to anything. I didn’t know their motivation or their moral stance on whatever it was they were doing. I didn’t even know how big Chase was.
Still, according to Veronica’s business card, I was now in the business of Private and Confidential Enquiries. Mrs Delacourt had asked me, privately, to follow her son, and I was keeping it very confidential, at least as far as Veronica was concerned. Therefore, I reckoned, I was in line with the two key planks of the Detectives’ Charter, if there was such a thing.
So I hacked it back up west and out towards Hendon for the second time that day, turning off the Finchley Road where Crimson’s mum had indicated, just after the big Mercedes dealership. The garage itself was dead easy to find and famous for having a dance exercise school on the floor above it. The sight of the early-morning, multi-coloured-leotard jazz tap class strutting their stuff to a Beiderbecke version of ‘Goose Pimples’, through those large picture windows, had calmed down many a fuming driver stuck in the rush-hour traffic jam between there and Swiss Cottage. I’d seen them, and I didn’t know what they did for the art of tap dancing, but by God they terrified me.
The Palmerston had all the advantages of a late-Victorian urban pub. The problem was it had run out of late-Victorian customers who would have been impressed. If it wasn’t haunted, it deserved to be.
As close as it was to a main road, it had no car park, but the side-streets were quiet enough. If Crimson was here already, I couldn’t see his motorbike, but that didn’t mean much. There weren’t any lorries parked nearby with ‘Drugs ‘R Us’ on the side either.
The pub was a one-long-bar affair, with beer dispensed from three multi-tap chrome fountains that would not have looked out of place on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. From the smell of the carpet, and its tackiness underfoot, most of the beer dispensed had missed.
I played safe and ordered a bottle of Beck’s, getting a filthy look as well as change from the barman when I asked for a glass as well. As I poured, I scanned the bar, which was about half full.
It was no different from a thousand backstreet London boozers that early in the evening. Two or three groups having a drink after work, several pairs of couples at various points on the chat-up graph, and a few solitary drinkers who could have been there since lunchtime or, in one case, February. I reasoned that this Chase character would be one of the solitary drinkers, hopefully one of the ones minding their own business and reading the Evening Standard, and not the one who had probably outstayed his welcome and who was the only one willing to make misty-eyed conversation with a stranger.
Fortunately, I didn’t need to test the theory. Crimson entered the pub, wearing his biker leathers and carrying a crash helmet, and raised a gauntlet towards one of the groups sitting at a table across the bar from me. He didn’t see me until he had walked over, nodded greetings all round and checked if anyone wanted a drink. The group moved around to make room for him and he put his helmet under a chair, checked who wanted what and approached the bar. Then he clocked me, and surprise registered on his face just before the smile.
‘Yo, Angel-man, what you doing here? This is way off your usual turf, ain’t it?’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said with mock anger. ‘I’ve been stood up before and will be again, but not by someone who works at Brent Cross Shopping Centre.’
‘O-oh. Babe trouble, huh?’ He pointed a long black finger at my glass, and I pushed it towards him with a nod. ‘How are the pearlies?’.
I flashed him a smile, but he wasn’t impressed. He saw better every morning in the mirror. But the last time he’d seen me I’d been in a hospital and couldn’t talk properly.
‘They look expensive.’
‘They were. You still dispatch riding?’
‘Naw, got myself a regular job in a factory, out at Elstree.’ He concentrated on paying for his round of drinks for a moment. ‘It’s boring but it’s regular.’
‘I thought that was marriage,’ I said, and he laughed.
‘You still drivin’ that pile of junk of a taxi?’
‘Yeah, and unlike your flash and very phallic BMW two-wheeler, it’s paid for. Meeting somebody, or just thirsty?’
I gestured at the round of drinks.
‘Oh, yeah, just a few mates from work.’
‘Need a hand?’ I reached for two of the pints of lager, but he beat me to them.
‘No, that’s okay. Hey, Chase, come here!’ he called out.
A short, stocky black guy, as square as a box of cornflakes, stood up from one of the groups at the table and started to come over towards us. I normally distrust anyone who wears a beard but no moustache – they’re either sociologists or religious fanatics – but I always make an exception if they are twice as wide as me and have hands that could juggle engine blocks.
Chase smiled at me and two pint glasses disappeared into his hands.
‘See you around, Angel,’ said Crimson.
‘Yeah, sure,’ I said.
So I wasn’t going to be asked to join the party. That meant I could either hang around the pub and force myself on Crimson’s party or hang around outside until the party broke up. I chose the latter, partly because Crimson was a sociable guy and if he’d wanted me in he would have said, and partly because the seats in Armstrong were more comfortable than those in the pub.
In fact, they were so comfortable, I almost fell asleep. I’d been there the best part of an hour when they emerged. As cars had come and gone, I had manoeuvred Armstrong into a better position so I could see the door of the pub in the mirror. I had spotted Crimson’s big BMW bike and put as much distance as I could between it and me. I had tucked Armstrong into the kerb in front of a small Ford van. Unless he was looking for me, he ought not to notice me at the other end of the street.
When they did show, it went like a scene from a movie. A movie directed by Buster Keaton, that is.
Crimson and Chase appeared on the street together, and in best film noir tradition, I caught their act through Armstrong’s nearside wing mirror. They stood there for a moment, back-lit with yellow light from the pub’s window, both hunched into their jackets, both scanning the street to make sure it was empty, whispering to each other out of the corners of their mouths. If it had been raining, or a cat had disturbed them, or Orson Welles had stepped out of the shadows asking if the pub sold sherry, then the picture would have been complete.
Chase, the short one, took something from his back pocket and handed it to Crimson. Crimson took a white envelope from his jacket and handed it to Chase. Chase put a finger to a point between his eyes and flicked a salute. Crimson put his crash helmet on and walked away, out of view of my mirror.
If I’d been a real detective, I thought to myself, I would have had a camera with really fast film that would have caught all that. And then I could casually drop some glossy ten-by-eights on the desk in front of Mrs Delacourt. But what would she do with them? Frame them? Then again, one of today’s super-discreet surveillance experts would probably be a quarter of a mile away with a laser microphone or similar, taping their conversation. And, of course, a really smart private eye wouldn’t have parked six inches in front of Chase’s small Ford van.
I flipped the dashboard mirror down in an attempt to see something, then I squeezed down as far as I could go in Armstrong’s driving seat. Unless he actually walked up and looked in, Chase wouldn’t see me, but then again, I hadn’t left his van much room for an exit, and if he was worried about clipping a corner as he pulled out, he might just come and take a closer look.
He didn’t give it a second thought. As his lights came on full beam, flooding Armstrong’s interior, I breathed a sigh of relief. It probably was a company van and he was not responsible for minor cuts and bruises to it. Thank heavens for the code of irresponsibility that all company van drivers have to sign before they’re given the keys.
He reversed about a foot then swung out into the street. From my position I couldn’t tell, but I was willing to bet you couldn’t have got a cigarette paper between the nearside wing of his van and Armstrong’s rear offside wheel arch. No respect for paintwork, some people.
I let him get to the end of the street before I started my engine, and he had turned right into Finchley Road before I put my lights on. That was something else they did in the movies, though God knew why I bothered, as the streetlights were more than adequate if he was going to spot me. I was banking on the fact that he wasn’t expecting to be followed, and that seemed to me to be a good enough reason to follow him. I didn’t have many other reasons. It is almost impossible to follow a motorbike rider, especially one as good as Crimson, in London unless you are on a bike yourself, added to which, Crimson had seen me in the pub and knew about Armstrong, so that ruled him out. And although the detective’s credo was always to ‘follow the money’, I had a good idea where the money was going – straight back to Crimson’s gaff. What I didn’t know was where the white envelope, which I guessed contained more of the white powder Crimson’s mother had given me, was going. So that was my logic: follow the white powder.
The van turned off into Golders Green Road and picked up speed along one of the longest residential streets without a pub in London. (That’s not strictly true, it just feels like it.) Then it suddenly turned left without indicating and I slowed as I drove by the side street, deciding to risk it and swinging in after him.
There was no other traffic here, so I let him get eight or nine car lengths ahead. He did a left then a right, finally slowing and parking in among the Volvos and small Peugeots that seemed to be obligatory for the area.
All the houses had front gardens, with walls, hedges and sooty trees forming the first line of defence in keeping the street out. Such considerations didn’t seem to worry Chase with the house he chose; he just got out of the van and walked in through the gateway of a short gravel drive.
I had parked on the opposite side of the street, way down from him, and killed Armstrong’s engine and lights. I wasn’t going to see much from where I was, so I climbed out, easing the door shut as quietly as I could. Maybe this wasn’t what I thought it was, but then, with the best will in the world, Chase didn’t look like your average resident of this part of Golders Green.
Come to think of it, a house on a street like this in an area like this, didn’t exactly strike me as Drug Central, west London, but these days you never knew. Maybe somebody’s parents were away and the kids were having a party and had decided to send out for something more interesting than pizza.
I was crouching behind one of the new Volvo 850s when I heard a doorbell ring across the street. Funny, though, there was no sound of a party in progress. I eased round the bonnet to get a look up the driveway and saw Chase walking towards me. I registered that there were no lights on in the house before ducking down and, crablike, scuttling back behind the bulk of the car.
My big worry was someone emerging on my side of the street to walk the dog or something. There are some parts of town where if you saw someone almost on their knees in the gutter, you would quietly walk around them. There are other parts where you would get down and join them. This parish was neither of those.
I sneaked a look around the rear of the Volvo, not wanting to touch it in case it was alarmed, as some alarms go off in a stiff breeze.
Chase had gone to the rear doors of his van. He looked up and down the street once, then at his watch. Then he opened the doors and reached in to pick up what I at first thought was a large toolbox. It was light from the way even he hefted it, and it was blue with a white lid. He put it down to close the van doors quietly, and when he reached for it again, he snapped the carrying handle secure with a plastic click. Only then did I realise it was a cool box, the sort you take on picnics that are supposed to keep your beer chilled. He picked it up and entered the driveway again.
I switched positions, running across the road in a crouch and hiding behind a Renault Espace parked 50 feet behind Chase’s van. I was convinced that if anyone had seen me, they would have called the cops by now. I was acting far more furtively than Chase was.
He emerged from the driveway again, opened the van doors and carefully placed the cool box inside. Then he got in and drove away.
I walked down to the house and took a clear look. It was a detached, 1920s suburban house, in total darkness. It had a garden mostly laid to lawn, with a fish pond and, down the side, a little summerhouse. No sign of a rave party, no suspicious characters hanging around except me. No sign of a break-in, no burglar alarms going off – and I could see they had one.
I did what any self-respecting detective would do. I said sod it and went home.
At home, I found the self-respecting detectives had been holding a seminar – or maybe that should be coven – to decide what to do next. I found this out from Inverness Doogie from upstairs, who came banging on my flat door before I’d managed to prise the top from my first beer.
I let him in and thrust the beer into his hand, going back to the fridge to get myself another, even as he spoke.
‘Angel, just what the fookin’ hell are yer doing wi’ ma wife?’
I looked around, astonished, then opened the fridge and pretended to look in there. Doogie caught sight of the massed ranks of bottled beer.
‘Miranda!’ I yelled into the fridge. ‘It’s all over between us. He’s found out. You might as well take your anorak off and come out. It was never meant to be.’
‘Stop pissing about, Angel, you know what I mean.’ He took a swig of his beer. ‘Are these duty-frees?’
‘I don’t know what you mean at all, Doogie. And yes, they’re sort of duty-free. Fancy a case?’
‘This detective business, that’s what I mean. Yeah, put me down for two cases, so long as it works out no more than 14 pence a bottle.’
‘What do you mean, this detective business? What’s your problem?’
‘She’s obsessed wi’ it; canna talk of nothing else.’
I had noticed before that Doogie’s accent thickened like porridge whenever he was worked up about something or drunk. I had long since learned that the best way to deal with it was to give up trying to understand the words and try and judge the sense. It was the old stand-by: just keep smiling and don’t turn your back.
‘Obsessed with what, Doogie?’ I said to show him I was with him thus far.
‘With this Stella bint and how you and Ronnie and–’
‘Hang on, Doogie, who’s Ronnie?’
‘Veronica, or whatever you call her. The fat tart. Sorry, the kilogrammatically challenged, I should say.’
‘The what?’
‘They use kilos and grammes now at Weight Watchers, so I’m told. Anyway, her. Ma Miranda is spending an awful lot of time downstairs with her and her two soul mates.’ He used a finger as if pointing the way to hell to a curious Jesuit. ‘And they’re plotting, Angel, plotting how they should handle things, because they don’t think you can do it on your own.’
‘Do what?’ I handed him the bottle-opener as he helped himself to another beer.
‘Look after Ronnie – watch her back – while she rescues this Stella bird from the Addams Family or whoever it is who’s holding her against her will and twisting her mind.’
‘Steady on, Doogie. I don’t think things are that bad …’
‘Well, all I know for sure is that my wife is spending a lot of time down there with them two, and she’s never done that before. It’s not ... it’s not … natural.’
‘Oh no, Doogie, you’re not telling me you think Miranda’s on the turn?’
‘It’s been known before. In marriages, I mean. In happy marriages.’
‘Get real, Doogie, she’s just in it for the gossip. All girls together proving they can do better than a man. Novelty value, that’s all. They’ll get bored, just you wail and see. And don’t you worry about Miranda. You two are a couple. One of the most coupled couples I’ve ever come across. You two go together like … er ... like …’
‘A horse and carriage?’ he said with a sneer.
‘I was thinking more along the lines of Smith and Wesson,’ I said cheerfully.
Doogie took an armful of beer back to his flat with him, I took my emergency bottle of Tequila Gold out of the salad crisper compartment of the fridge (the only use I’d ever found for it) and rummaged around in my bedroom until I found a half-empty packet of Sweet Afton cigarettes and a disposable lighter that actually worked.
The tequila was because I knew I was going to need a drink. Nothing was more certain in my mind. The cigarettes were because I was almost certain I was going to need one, but more because it would give me an edge in a room full of non-smokers.
Thus armed, and ready as I ever would be, I strode down the stairs and knocked on Lisabeth’s door.
‘Ooooh, that’s good. Try it, Fenella, go on, take a pull.’
Miranda put an elbow on Veronica’s shoulder and they began to lean dangerously to starboard. They giggled.
‘Let me try, Binky,’ said Lisabeth, resorting to her pet name for Fenella Binkworthy, for that really was her surname. ‘And try not to cough so much.’
‘C’mon, Angel, tell us what’s in them,’ drawled Miranda.
‘I want another tequila smasher,’ announced Veronica.
‘It’s just tobacco,’ I said. ‘They’re just plain cigarettes. Irish, actually, but just cigarettes. I’ll show you the packet.’
‘Packet of three, by any chance? Not enough!’ Miranda cracked up at this one and made a strange throaty sound I’d never heard before. She was laughing.
‘Why’s that funny?’ Fenella asked Lisabeth, handing over the cigarette like it was a Roman candle and the blue touch paper was fizzing.
‘You’ve made the end all wet,’ moaned Lisabeth. ‘Find the lemonade and make Ronnie a smasher.’
‘Slammer,’ said Veronica, sitting upright. ‘Tequila slammer, that’s what I want.’
‘I bet you dip them in something,’ said Miranda. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know, some drug or other.’
‘We’re out of tequila,’ wailed Veronica.
‘And there’s no beer left either,’ said Fenella, depressed. Then added: ‘Again.’
‘I am not going upstairs again,’ I said, ‘or if I do, it’s to stay there.’
‘Meany.’
‘Party-pooper.’
‘Come on, Angel. We’re all angels now, we’re a team.’
I might have been tempted to take Miranda more seriously if she had not reached out to put an arm around Veronica’s shoulders and missed by a good six inches. As we were all sitting on the floor, she didn’t have far to fall.
‘Let’s think things over again in the morning,’ I said, trying to salvage some sanity from the evening.
‘It already is the morning,’ slurred Fenella, waving from side to side as if caught in a thermal.
‘That’s not very helpful,’ I snarled.
‘Don’t you talk to her like that,’ growled Lisabeth softly. ‘I talk to her like that.’
‘Order, order!’ Veronica shouted. ‘I thought we agreed to stick together to help each other.’
‘Help you, actually,’ I pointed out.
‘And I need all the help I can get,’ she spluttered, and the other three burst out at that too.
I tried to calm the hilarity.
‘Listen up, you guys, what you’re suggesting is probably illegal, certainly impractical and possibly, just possibly, psychologically dangerous, not to mention physically dangerous.’
‘Oh pooh!’ scoffed Lisabeth. ‘There will be four of us.’
‘Five if you count Angel,’ Fenella chipped in.
‘Five angels on the case! How does that grab you, Ronnie?’ Miranda tried nudging Veronica in the ribs with an elbow. Despite the size of the target, she missed.
‘Hope you don’t all want paying,’ Veronica giggled, and they all laughed at that. Face it, by that stage they would have laughed at a Jerry Lewis film.
‘Well, I think it’s crazy and I’m against it,’ I said, knowing it was pointless to argue any more.
‘You’re outvoted.’
‘Majority rule!’
‘Women rule!’
‘We’ll see. In the morning.’
I uncrossed my legs and stood up.
‘I’m going up the little wooden hill to Bedfordshire.’ I looked down at Miranda. ‘Going your way?’
‘What a gentleman,’ she said, raising her eyebrows to the others and offering a hand so I could pull her up.
‘There’s no such thing as a gentle man,’ said Lisabeth, but it was lost on the assembled crew. ‘And Ronnie can stay the night here and help us clear up.’
She looked around at the debris of beer bottles and empty glasses and finally noticed that someone (not me) had burnt a hole through one of the leaves of her rubber plant.
‘F’nella and Lissy don’t mind bunking up together,’ slurred Veronica.
I was still holding Miranda’s hand and she squeezed it lightly, whispering: ‘Don’t you dare.’ I put on one of my ‘Who, me?’ expressions and guided her to the door.
‘If you insist, we’ll rendezvous at 6.30, and we’ll see how we feel then, okay?’
There were a lot of goodbyes and hugs, though none for me. Then I followed Miranda up the two flights to her flat, my right hand poised a centimetre from the small of her back to catch her if she fell backwards.
At her door, she fumbled in the pockets of her jeans for a key. I decided it was better if I didn’t offer to join the search.
‘You didn’t have to come to the …’ she started softly, then I realised she wasn’t moving. She was standing there, both hands in pockets, her forehead against the door, the only thing holding her upright. She began to snore softly.
I put my arm around her waist and knocked quietly. The door opened two seconds later and I put a finger to my lips to quieten Doogie, tactfully refraining from mentioning the Flintstone boxer shorts – the only thing he was wearing.
‘Her last words,’ I whispered, were “Get Doogie to put me to bed and make sure I have a fried breakfast at six o’clock”. Got that?’
Doogie grinned, then held up the thumb and forefinger of his right hand in an O shape, followed by the thumbs-up sign.
I took my arm away and she fell into Doogie’s chest. He swung her off the floor and carried her inside, kicking the door shut with his heel.
Back in my flat, I found Springsteen waiting in ambush behind the bathroom door.
‘She’s not coming, old son,’ I said, grateful for some decent conversation. ‘They’ve had a pow-wow and do you know what half-baked, toss-pot idea they’ve come up with? Of course you don’t. You’re not a detective. But we are, it seems, me and the Mild Bunch downstairs. And tomorrow, we’re all going out in broad daylight and we’re going to kidnap this Stella Rudgard off the street and bring her back here for deprogramming. That’s a beauty, isn’t it? Get the Guinness Book of Fucking Daft Ideas on the phone, will you?’
Springsteen cocked his head and stared at me for nearly a minute, then stalked off into the kitchen.
For a split second there I had seen something in his eyes that I had never seen before. Pity.