I dropped Bobby off in the village. He said he had lodgings with a local family, and so far they hadn’t pressed him for the rent because he was young and poor. Turning up on the doorstep in a black cab might not be good for his image.
‘What do I tell Da when he calls?’ he asked me.
‘Tell him we’ll not get anything out of Buck. He’s slippery, that one. I think we could push Mrs Buck to the edge, but I don’t think she knows anything. Same with the old boy, Sir Drummond. He’s guilty of something, but I’m not sure it’s connected to Carrick.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘You stay here and keep an ear open and an eye to the ground.’
‘Shouldn’t that be the other way round?’
‘Whatever. I’m going back to town to see if the other piece of the puzzle can be shaped to fit. To fit anything.’
‘You mean this religious sect guy, Smith?’
‘Yeah, him. Connie. I think it’s time someone had a word with friend Connie.’
But I was already too late. They’d started without me.
‘So Veronica went looking for Stella?’ I asked Lisabeth.
‘We hadn’t heard from her all morning and she’d promised to ring, so we rang her office and they said she’d called in sick.’
‘You sure they weren’t thinking of yesterday when we did that?’ It was ridiculous, I know, but stranger things have happened. Mostly to me.
‘No. The lady said she was sick again. She’d phoned in herself.’
Lisabeth was uncomfortable with this. There was sweat on her pudgy upper lip.
‘And so you sent Fenella along to look after Veronica?’ I put plenty of sarcastic spin on my voice. I could make her squirm so rarely I didn’t want to waste a minute.
‘Somebody had to help her. You said yourself, Ronnie is very innocent in the ways of the big city.’
‘So when did Fenella join the Rolling Stones?’
‘Well, at least she’s lived in a city,’ Lisabeth clutched at straws.
‘So did Mother Teresa. Come to think of it, she’d be more use in a fist fight.’
‘It’s not going to come to that,’ said Miranda, throwing in her two pence worth. ‘Is it?’
‘And what were you doing, letting her go? I thought you had more sense. No, correction; some sense.’
‘Don’t get all high and mighty with me, Angel. I was at work. Some of us have jobs to go to, you know,’ she said haughtily.
‘Hey, don’t come looking for sympathy on that one. Did you find anything out?’
She looked puzzled for a moment.
‘Oh, you mean about the cult? Yeah, I did look them up in our cuttings files, but there wasn’t much.’
‘You surprise me,’ I said drily.
‘Now don’t start. Two seconds ago you were on at me because I hadn’t stayed at home and stopped Vonnie and Fenella joining them. Now you don’t even …’
‘What?’
Neither of them would look at me .
‘Just fly that last bit by me again, Miranda? The bit about joining something, I think you said.’
‘They thought if they hung around the tube station at Sloane Square they might run into one of the members of Shining Doorway and they could get themselves recruited,’ Miranda said sheepishly.
‘They had bags with them, as if they’d just arrived in London,’ said Lisabeth desperately.
‘Those two needed props? They’re one of the reasons white slavery disappeared; it was getting too easy.’
‘Well, it seemed like a good idea,’ snapped Lisabeth, recovering ground. ‘And anyway, you weren’t here.’
‘Oh, great. I just knew it would be my fault.’
‘Look,’ mediated Miranda, ‘neither was I, but what’s done is done. What if they didn’t make contact and weren’t recruited?’
I looked at my watch. It was just after 7.00 pm.
‘Yeah, they probably hung around for a bit then got bored and went to a pub or the cinema or something.’ I paused. ‘No, I don’t believe that either. I’ll bet that if they were not approached by one of the disciples or whatever they are, then one of them – the one with the biggest mouth and least brains, but I admit that doesn’t narrow it down – would have done something really priceless. Like going up to where they hang out and knocking on the Shining Doorway demanding to be let in. Am I right, or am I sucking lemons on this one, ladies?’
Lisabeth looked at her shoes and muttered: ‘They were going to ask for Carrick Lee.’
‘Oh, brilliant.’
‘They thought it might provoke a response. Stella couldn’t get anything out of them, so two strangers might. And they would pretend not to know Stella, to protect her,’ she ended lamely.
‘I need a drink,’ I said to myself.
‘It might work, Angel,’ said Miranda. ‘Or they may never have got in. They might be on their way back or stuck in the underground or waiting for a bus …’
‘I need a cigarette,’ I added to myself.
‘They said to wait until midnight before we did anything,’ said Lisabeth, ‘to give their plan time to work.’
‘Plan? That’s a plan? Are there any controlled substances in the house?’ Besides fish anaesthetic, that was.
‘Now that’s enough, Angel.’ Miranda was moving into headmistress mode. ‘I’ve had enough of this. If its not your plan, it’s like it doesn’t exist. Just because we women thought it up doesn’t mean it’s not going to work.’
‘Yes, that’s right. Absolutely right,’ said Lisabeth, and as she did, an image of guillotines and knitting needles flashed across my eyes.
‘Okay, okay, ease down.’ I needed time to think. ‘Why don’t we wait and see? Just leave me alone for a while and we’ll see what happens. How about that?’
‘This is my flat,’ said Lisabeth pedantically.
‘All right, so you got me there. I wondered why I didn’t have a drink.’ They didn’t laugh. Not even a smile.
Here I was, home from a hard day’s detecting, and I wasn’t even given a chance to get my coat off before I was hauled into Lisabeth’s flat to be told first the bad, then the even worse, news.
‘Let’s call a time out here. See what develops. They said midnight?’
‘Uh-huh.’ The two of them nodded together.
‘Then why don’t we reconvene this meeting of the amateur detectives’ collective in the morning?’
‘What if Binky … Fenella ... rings?’ asked Lisabeth, coming close to blushing for a microsecond.
‘That’s why you are in charge of telephones,’ I said forcefully, and she sighed with relief and responsibility.
‘I’ve got to go to work tomorrow,’ said Miranda, almost shamefaced. ‘And Doogie’s not keen on me taking extra days off …’
‘That’s okay,’ I said, getting confident at this decision-making business. ‘We know where we can reach you, don’t we?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said enthusiastically, which was good, because I hadn’t the faintest idea.
‘Then let’s all relax. There’s nothing we can do until tomorrow now, so let’s get some rest and think about it again. Take each day as it comes. That’s my motto.’
‘Do you need to know what I found out at the paper?’ Miranda asked lightly, as if taking orders for cocoa.
‘I’m sorry, I was probably out of order earlier. What did you find out today?’
I felt as if I was asking her for her homework.
‘Nothing much, really, except that the Shining Doorway’s last known address was 23 Lennard Street, Islington. It’s just off …’
‘The Balls Pond Road,’ I completed.
‘Does that mean anything? Is it important?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Well, I can’t think why it should be.’
‘It’s not far from here, is it?’
Now I was avoiding her eyes.
‘Oh, it’s over in Islington somewhere,’ I said airily, like you needed visas.
‘So it’s not worth checking out?’
‘What for? They’ve moved. We know that.’
She looked at Lisabeth then at me.
‘Okay. It was just a thought. I suppose you know best.’
I looked at her in surprise.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Lisabeth glared at her.
‘What a thing to say. Especially to a man,’ she snarled.
‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘You know what men are like, give them an inch and ...’
‘They’ll claim it’s eight,’ Miranda said before she could stop herself, then giggled furiously.
‘Enough of this. I’m going to get something to eat and then hit the sack. I need my beauty sleep. There’s nothing more we can do tonight.’
I was lying on three out of four counts.
There still wasn’t any food in the fridge, so I had a bottle of French beer and promised myself I would do some shopping sometime. Somebody once said that forgetting to eat was the first sign of a drink problem. I forget who.
At least I could remember that I kept my metal toolbox under the sink in the kitchen. I chose two long screwdrivers, both with large bulbous plastic handles, and a claw hammer. Holding them inside my jacket, I sneaked downstairs, tiptoeing by Lisabeth’s door, which she had left open so she could hear the phone.
Out on the street like this, I could be arrested and charged with going equipped for burglary. On the staircase, I could get nobbled by Lisabeth demanding to know where I was going. I knew which option I preferred and, out on the street, it would be a fair cop.
After all, I was going housebreaking.
Number 23 Lennard Street was boarded up and deserted. So were number 21 and number 25. Apart from the fact that there was no obvious access to the back of the property, it was a burglar’s dream. If, that is, you knew a burglar whose dream target was an empty slum terrace in Islington.
I parked Armstrong at the end of the street and did a walk-by. It was dark now and I had my torch with me, hanging down from my right hand, my left clutching my jacket to hold the hammer and screwdrivers in place against my chest.
You didn’t normally need any more sophisticated gear for a smash job, as long as you didn’t mind anyone knowing you’d done the house. I knew one housebreaker, from Woolwich, who had his most productive spell after he’d broken his arm in a car crash. He used the arm and his plaster cast to crack windows. It was perfect, he said, because he could carry it around without causing suspicion and it was always handy for opportunist jobs. I suppose he got his comeuppance when he got blood poisoning after cutting his arse on the glass of a window he’d just smashed.
I look a long look at number 23 as I walked by slowly. The front door and downstairs window both had sheets of plywood nailed over them. The front garden, a small rectangle of scrubland, was littered with food cartons, plastic bottles, empty paint cans and unidentifiable pieces of rusted metal. There was even an old estate agent’s For Sale board; so old it advertised an 01 telephone number.
At the end of the street, I scoped the other side with the even-numbered houses. There were cars outside some of them, all old and probably second-hand. All had steering-wheel locks and small windscreen stickers saying they were alarmed. I didn’t believe any of them. You could buy the stickers separately these days, and most of the cars were worth less than a decent alarm or ignition-lock system. Still, it showed the street was not exactly crime unaware, and I doubted if I would spark off a vigilante patrol if I was spotted.
If I did, I had a cover story ready. What was there worth nicking at number 23? I was just looking for a place to kip, mate. Yeah, sure, some other squatters told me about the place. I had left all forms of identification behind, and I wasn’t even carrying a key to Armstrong, having used the one I keep stuck on the magnetic pad behind the rear nearside wheel. So maybe I could be charged with going equipped for squatting?
By the time I had walked back to outside number 23, I had convinced myself I was fireproof. There was nobody on the street. Why should there be? It was a grotty residential street with no pub, store or eatery of ethnic origin. Its few residents would be settling in behind their curtained windows to watch primetime television.
There was no gate on the short path up to the house, so I just swung off the pavement and quickened my pace. Now was the time to work fast and ignore everything else. Make a way in; get in; get out.
I used the torch as I approached the door, flashing its beam around the edges of the plywood sheet nailed over the door frame. It had not been cut to size, so there was a lip down the right side where I could get the screwdrivers in.
As soon as I had seen it, I had known the door was the best bet. Sure, I had to get the plywood off and then the door open, making two operations, but the sound of a screwdriver being tapped into place and then levering out the nails would sound just like a distant thumping. With windows, the sound of breaking glass is, unfortunately, just like the sound of breaking glass, and is one of those noises that seem irresistible to the curious human ear.
Either the nails were too thin or the plywood was cheap and weather-rotted, because the thing came off much easier than I ever expected. I put one screwdriver in at about head height, tapping it home with the hammer, then the other about knee height. The strain from those two loosened the board enough for me to use the claw of the hammer as a third lever about midway between the screwdrivers. All I had to do was push on the three of them twice each and the wood sheet plopped away from the door frame.
I took a pair of screwed-up leather gloves from the pockets of my jacket and put them on, not to hide fingerprints but just to get a grip and no splinters. Holding the right-hand edges of the board, I just bent it towards me until it pinged off the remaining nails one at a time. I wouldn’t have thought anyone ten feet away in the street would have heard that, even if they had been watching.
I picked up the torch from where I had placed it, lens down, on the doorstep and flashed it up to suss out the door’s lock. The thing I noticed first, though, was the paint job.
It was the same light blue as the house used by the Shining Doorway in John Brome Street over in Sloane country. And it had the same, almost deliberately amateur and slapdash, three-foot high cross showing through the blue paint job; and now I could see why. I had seen the John Brome Street house only in daylight. In the dark, under torchlight, or presumably even streetlight, the cross shape glowed luminously. It was spookily effective.
At least I had the right house, although anyone in the street would see the cross as long as I was shining the torch. But there was nobody there. Don’t worry, just get on; get in.
There was a hole where a Yale lock had been knocked out, and no other sign of a lock, but the door was firmly shut. I reckoned it had a bolt or a wooden batten nailed somewhere down the door jamb from the inside. Putting the torch right up against the hole where the lock had been, I shone its light inside, then pushed down the right-hand side of the door. It gave under pressure, so I could see a faint line of light – everywhere except about nine inches from the top. Whatever was holding it was there.
I turned off the torch and selected the screwdriver with the widest head, pushing it between the door and the frame where the resistance was the greatest. The wood gave easily, and one tap was enough to push it home. Using the claw of the hammer over the stem of the screwdriver, I levered on the pressure until there was a satisfying crack from the other side and the door swung open.
Still working in darkness, I stepped in and pulled the plywood board back over the doorway so that little would appear different if anyone did walk by. Only then did I click on the torch and beam it around the dank hallway.
Now I was in, my priority was getting out, so the first thing I did was check out the back of the house for an escape route. The hallway led straight into a kitchen, or what had been a kitchen before someone had ripped out everything not nailed down, and no doubt stuff that had been too. There was a back door with an old mortice lock but no key. It took me no more than ten seconds to unscrew the metal plate that held the tongue of the lock, and I caught it before it could hit the floor. There was another sheet of plywood over this door frame, but from the inside it was an easy enough job to push it over the nails that held it in place.
I risked a quick scan with the torch and saw a rubble-filled, rubbish-strewn back garden with little sign of plant life. No more than 15 feet away was a crumbling wall that seemed to lead to the back garden of another house, which also seemed unlit and deserted.
At a pinch, it would have to do. I had been inside the house for less than two minutes. As there were about 170,000 reported burglaries in London each year, and goodness knew how many unreported ones, that made about one every three minutes. So I was on schedule.
There was nothing of interest in the kitchen or the hallway, although the hallway wallpaper had been painted over with white emulsion and then some artistic soul had scratched the flaking paint away in the shape of a crucifix in several places.
I put the beam of the torch on the staircase, which seemed sound enough and even had a threadbare carpet. There was a small landing at the top and three doors leading off it. I creaked my way upwards, trying to identify the various smells of mustiness, damp, dust and finally of toilets.
The bathroom had been trashed good and proper. If there had been a bath, it had gone, as had the lavatory, seemingly sledge-hammered judging by the pieces still on the floor around the open stench pipe that lead to the drainpipe on the wall.
The two bedrooms were just empty. Both had luminous crosses painted on the walls that picked up the light from my torch. In one, there was the impression on one wall where a bookshelf arrangement had been ripped away, brackets and all. Apart from that, nothing.
I hadn’t known what I would find. Finding nothing was both a disappointment and a relief.
Time to go. I was nervous enough. I always knew I never had the bottle to be a burglar. But then I wasn’t really burglarising anyone, was I? I rationalised it as I started down the stairs. I was detecting, I told myself. Looking for clues. It wasn’t my fault that there weren’t any.
Halfway down the stairs, I flashed the torch along the hall, and the beam picked up another luminous cross. This wasn’t on the wall, though. Those were scratched in the paint on the wall. This one was on wood and had been covered with blue paint, just as on the front door. At the bottom of the stairs, I shone the torch around it and realised it was a small door leading off under the staircase. I had missed it on my way into the kitchen and it had been behind me when I had gone upstairs.
It was obviously the door to a cellar, and I didn’t like cellars. They usually didn’t have other exits, and I had once been sorely hurt in one. But I had to look. This was the only room marked with a luminous cross. Was this what Stella had said they called the Contemplation Room? If so, I had every intention of contemplating it rather than going down into it.
There were two bolts on the door but neither was slotted home. I held one to pull the door open and shone the torch in.
The first thing I saw were the treads of the underside of the staircase, guaranteed to clout the unwary on the forehead. I turned the beam downwards, following the short flight of stone steps. The cellar was ten feet square at the most, and the floor area was at least two feet deep in rubbish. I could identify the fittings from the bathroom, including the smashed lavatory, and the metal-framed bookshelves from the bedroom wall. The rest seemed to be old carpets, empty paint cans, builders’ rubble, a set of curtains complete with curtain rail, a kitchen cabinet, sacking and old, stained mattresses. The smells coming out of there were: damp, paint and animal.
Definitely animal, which almost certainly meant rats. I didn’t like rats much either. What was it the environment people said about London these days: you were never more than five feet away from a rat? Tell me about it.
There seemed to be nothing of interest down there. It was just junk, the sort of pile of detritus you would find thrown out front of a house being demolished, just waiting for the wrecker gang to cart it away to the local dump or landfill site.
So why was it inside the house? Why rip out the fittings and then carefully pile them in the cellar? They would only have to be hauled up the steps and out again if the place was sold, and it wasn’t the sort of sight to appeal to potential buyers, however buoyant the market.
Unless it was advancing the depreciation, as Carrick Lee Senior had called it; running the place down before demolition or conversion. No, that didn’t make sense either. To lower the value, just wreck the joint. Don’t wreck the joint then sweep everything neatly into the cellar. That’s just hiding the wreckage away.
But hide something under the pile of junk and then demolish the house on top of it, and what have you got?
A very good hiding place indeed.
I was grateful I had brought gloves, but I still used one of the long screwdrivers to move things aside, kicking them first to see if they moved.
I did most of it one-handed, as I didn’t want to let go of the torch, and I tried to keep one foot on the bottom step all the time, though I almost overbalanced more than once. I was also straining to listen, just in case somebody had found the door tampered with. It was unlikely, but I was conscious of having outstayed my welcome, and I was running on pure luck now.
Under what looked like the remains of an old bean bag, the fabric holed as if bitten in several places with the polymer ball filling spewing out, I discovered a pile of damp and shredded paper sacks. They too looked as if they had been gnawed. I speared one with my screwdriver and pulled. A paint can rolled over with a clatter, and I swear something scurried up the wall of the far side of the cellar, but my torchlight didn’t catch it, thankfully.
I had to put the screwdriver down to move the formica door from a kitchen cupboard and then a length of heavy, wet and stagnant carpet.
I had now cleared about a quarter of the floor area, the rubbish piled in the far end of the cellar where I had slung it. Still nothing, just plain, concrete floor.
I went up two steps and sat down, shining the torch beam around the cellar. I was hot and dirty and jumpy, and all I had done was rearrange the crap. Nothing, just house builders’ rubbish. It was obvious that the builders had been in at some point. The wet paper sacks I had moved were marked with a blue circle and carried the legend ‘Sand and Cement Mix’.
And suddenly that plain old concrete floor didn’t look so plain any more. In fact, bits of it looked quite new.
I stepped off the steps and onto the patch I had cleared, testing it as if it would tell me something through the soles of my old Travel Fox trainers. I crouched down and looked at it closely.
The cement had been mixed badly, or in a hurry, and was already powdering in places. In other parts, where there had been more sand than cement, there were deep scratch marks and small holes the size of a coin where the rats had tried to eat their way through while it was still wet.
I keep a half bottle of vodka in Armstrong’s glove compartment for emergencies. When I got home to Stuart Street, I took it with me.
Lisabeth was waiting for me on the stairs.
‘They haven’t rung,’ she said. Then: ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Shopping,’ I said, showing her the vodka.
‘Humph.’
I looked at my watch. It was still not yet 9.00 pm.
‘Try and get some sleep,’ I said, passing her on the stairs without stopping. ‘If they don’t ring, we’ll need an early start in the morning.’
‘Where are we going?’ she asked the back of my head.
‘To the rescue.’
I peeled off my clothes and ran the shower until it was hot.
Springsteen appeared just to howl at me, then he began to sniff at the pile of clothes on the floor, especially the jeans and my trainers, and he did it with his mouth open as if panting. Then he turned up his nose and left the bathroom without me having to hustle him out.
I twisted the top off the vodka and drank from the bottle as the hot spray opened up the pores the alcohol couldn’t reach.
I stayed in there for some time, thinking about how, from the dimensions of the patch of new concrete in that cellar, Carrick Lee had probably been just about exactly my height.
The stake out of the Church of the Shining Doorway began at 0652 hours, but Lisabeth wasn’t making notes. She was in the back of Armstrong, peering out of the rear window. From a distance she could have passed for one of those hideous nodding dogs that you used to see everywhere but have now been replaced by air fresheners in the shape of a fir tree.
She looked as if she had slept in her clothes, but I secretly believed she hadn’t slept at all. When she’d thumped on my flat door at 5.30 to tell me it would soon be dawn, I hadn’t argued. It was a relief to be able to stop dreaming about rats.
I had parked Armstrong so we could see the blue door of the house in John Brome Street. I could see it in the wing mirror, and by squirming her bulk around and kneeling on the back seat, Lisabeth could see it through the window. So far, the rescue plan was working perfectly. The only trouble was, that was all there was of the rescue plan.
‘Why don’t we just go and smash the door down?’ she asked after managing to keep quiet for all of five minutes.
‘What with?’ I asked, turning to look at her.
‘There’s a hammer and some tools on the floor here,’ she said deadpan.
‘Oh yeah, well ... let’s just wait, shall we? See if some of them come out. After all, we don’t even know how many people are in there. Stella said Connie likes them to go to work. Let some of them go.’
An hour went by and, to be fair, she hardly breathed a word. She just knelt there, clutching a hessian shoulder bag. I hadn’t asked what was in it. Suggesting she had brought along some lentil sandwiches or similar seemed frivolous, and she hadn’t moaned once that she was hungry. Perhaps it was clean underwear for Fenella, in which case she wouldn’t talk about it anyway.
‘There’s two of them,’ she said suddenly. ‘Girls.’
She was right. Two teenage girls, and they were hurrying as if late for the bus.
‘Shall I go and talk to them?’ Lisabeth said, without taking her eyes off them. ‘Ask them if they’ve seen Binky?’
‘No, leave it. We don’t want them running back into church, do we?’ I advised, and she accepted it, for now, but I wondered what length of fuse she was on.
I stared some more at the blue door with the cross I knew was there but couldn’t see at this distance. I felt like the Mexicans outside the Alamo, wondering just how many defenders there were in there. Stella had mentioned two males by name, Paul and Julian, and said there were up to seven women. I didn’t quite believe the last bit. The house here was bigger than the Islington one, but not big enough for those numbers. Maybe they took it in shifts.
At 8.15, two more girls and one of the young guys – the one who had given me a pamphlet – emerged. As they walked down towards Sloane Square, without giving us a second glance, they said something among themselves and started laughing.
I could almost hear Lisabeth bristling from the back. ‘Are they laughing about Fenella?’ she hissed.
‘We’re not even sure she’s in there. Relax, will you?’ I was beginning to wish I’d brought Springsteen along.
Then at 8.35 she just said: ‘It’s him. It’s him, isn’t it?’
Stella must have described him to her, as it was Connie. Tall, rangy, long, swept-back red hair, linen jacket, jeans and cowboy boots. He was holding a mobile phone and he was alone. He was just a tad too old to pass for a student but he could have been mistaken for a graphic designer down on his luck.
‘Now what?’ Lisabeth whispered loudly in my ear. She had moved on to the rumble seat behind me to follow Connie’s walk down the road. She was still clutching the hessian shoulder bag to her chest.
‘We follow him,’ I said decisively. ‘I think he’s going for breakfast. Americans eat out a lot, you know. If he is, it’ll be just around the comer. If he’s not, at least he’s out of the way and we can come back and tackle the house.’
‘You want to have breakfast with him? I don’t believe it.’
But she followed me out of Armstrong and into the brasserie on Sloane Square like a faithful Labrador.
Connie was sitting at the table in the window. There was no-one else in the restaurant and only one waiter on duty. He had just placed a basket of croissants and a bowl of white butter in front of Connie when he saw us.
‘Just two cappuccinos,’ I said politely.
He nodded and waved a hand, saying ‘Sit anywhere’, and went behind the bar counter to nurse a steaming Gaggia machine. Connie never looked up. He put his mobile phone on the table and picked out a croissant and began to nibble the end.
I took hold of Lisabeth’s arm and guided her towards his table. She was still clutching her bag.
He looked at us just as we got to the table. He had blonde eyebrows, as many natural redheads do, and big, light blue eyes so bright I suspected coloured contact lenses. I felt Lisabeth stiffen under my grip.
‘Mind if we join you, Mr Smith?’ I asked.
He flicked his head so that his hair seemed to ripple back.
I knew women who did that to great effect.
‘It is Connie Smith, isn’t it? We’ve heard so much about you.’
He bit into his croissant, crumbs falling on to the white paper tablecloth.
I pulled out a chair for Lisabeth and then the other for myself. Lisabeth was opposite him, but he seemed more intent on me.
‘So what have you heard? And from whom?’
The voice was deep and slow, maybe Midwest, and softer than I had expected. Maybe I had been expecting a Deep South evangelist. Maybe someone who passed around snakes in a bag. What was a Messiah supposed to sound like in the 1990s?
‘Lots of people,’ I said. ‘Carrick Lee for one.’
He didn’t move a muscle except the ones he was chewing with.
‘Don’t know anyone by that name,’ he said. ‘Hope they said kind things about me.’
‘It was more about your work,’ I tried.
‘My work is helping people. I hope I was of help.’
He flicked a crumb from the lapel of his linen jacket. Underneath it he was wearing a plain white T-shirt. He had long, tapering fingers and the nails were long and shaped at the ends. A guitar player when he wasn’t converting followers, I guessed.
‘Carrick Lee came to you via Simon Buck, about two months ago,’ I said, then broke off as the waiter placed a large, steaming cappuccino in front of me, then one in front of Lisabeth. She hadn’t twitched since we’d sat down.
‘Go on,’ Connie said after the waiter had disappeared. ‘Does this get to a point?’
‘Buck sent Carrick to work with you on one of his little property scams. How’s that for a guess?’
‘It’s a guess, that’s all.’
I put my hands on the table and reached for my coffee. The cup was so hot it burned my fingertips and I left it where it was rather than let him see my hands shake.
‘Carrick came looking for you when you were at the house in Islington. He hasn’t been seen since.’
‘Sorry, means nothing to me.’
He stuffed the last of the croissant into his mouth and chewed.
‘I’ve been to the house in Lennard Street,’ I said, looking hard for a reaction.
‘I haven’t,’ he said, swallowing. ‘At least, not for a while.’
He switched his stare to Lisabeth as he reached for another croissant from the basket.
I didn’t know what else to say. If I mentioned Stella, it might make life difficult for her, depending on what had happened in the house. And we still didn’t know if Veronica and Fenella had actually got inside. And Lisabeth was being no help, just sitting there nursing her coffee but not drinking it.
‘This has not been as interesting as I thought it would be,’ Connie said coolly. ‘You’re Angel, aren’t you.’
It wasn’t a question and he wasn’t looking at me. He and Lisabeth were eyeballing each other.
He selected a croissant and delicately held it over Lisabeth’s cup.
‘I’m on a caffeine-free day today,’ he said conversationally, then dipped the end of the pastry into her coffee. ‘But just a taste, huh?’
He held it up above his face, his eyes on Lisabeth all the time, then he stuck out his tongue and let a drop of coffee fall from the sodden end. Then he brought it closer and licked it twice, using his tongue like the lead singer of a Heavy Metal band performing to an audience of pimply youths.
‘You must be Angel from all I’ve heard,’ he said in my direction rather than to me. ‘Your two dykey girlfriends told me all about you, after a little persuasion, that is.’
He looked at me when he said that, and smiled. Two mistakes in one, stranger.
Lisabeth moved like a blur. She scooped up cup and saucer and flung them at his chest. He howled and flapped with his hands, either from the sting of the hot coffee or over the mess it made of his T-shirt and jacket.
I didn’t get a chance to ask which it was, because Lisabeth was on her feet, reaching for the lapels of his linen jacket. She pulled him up and off his seat and bent forward herself, smashing her forehead into the bridge of his nose. He sank back, almost as stunned as I was, and emitted a low moan of pain, his hands over his face.
I stared at Lisabeth as she sat down again and placed her hands on the table, linking her fingers.
‘Did that hurt?’ I asked.
‘I think I’ve broken his nose,’ she said, not even breathing hard.
‘Not him, you pudding. You.’
She just shrugged her shoulders.
I took some paper napkins from the metal dispenser on the table and laid them in front of Connie.
‘There was one other thing, Connie,’ I said confidently. ‘We did rather want to see our friends this morning. Just to make sure they’re all right.’
He looked at me over a noseful of paper napkins. The blood was starting to show through them.
‘Dey ... dey’re in de house,’ he stammered, then shook his head as if to clear it, but he stopped doing that when he realised it hurt too much.
‘Are they all right?’ Lisabeth growled.
Connie reacted like she’d hit him again, his chair scraping the floor as he tried to back off.
‘Is everything okay?’ came a voice. The waiter, from behind the coffee machine.
I didn’t know whether he’d seen anything or not. Outside, in the square, two young girls in school uniform were looking through the window in open-mouthed amazement. I decided to get Lisabeth out of there before they formed a fan club.
‘Slight accident. Our friend here was told to avoid caffeine and now he’s gone and got a nose bleed. How much do we owe you?’
‘One continental breakfast, two cappuccinos, that’ll be ten quid,’ he said, but he stayed behind his bar.
‘That’s outrageous,’ whispered Lisabeth.
‘Leave the money on the table, Connie,’ I told him. ‘Then get up slowly. You’re taking us to church, okay? And we’d better find our friends in one piece. Do I make myself clear?’
He nodded, then grabbed for some more napkins as droplets of blood splashed on his T-shirt. He reached into his jeans pocket and produced a £10 note, throwing it onto the table.
Lisabeth picked up her shoulder bag. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to me.
‘But I haven’t finished my coffee,’ I said, aggrieved. Her expression told me not to push it. ‘Okay, okay. Grab his phone.’
She snapped it up and plopped it into her bag, where it clanked against something heavy.
‘Now let’s walk out of here slowly and together.’
I went through the door first, blocking it so that Connie had to stay real close. If I had been him, that was where I would have done a runner, so I worked on the principle that while Lisabeth probably frightened him more, I stood a better chance of catching him.
But he didn’t even try to run. We walked him into John Brome Street, me on his right, Lisabeth on his left. To the passers-by, we were two good friends helping another after an accident. That was the scenario had anyone said anything to us. But this was London. No-one said anything to us.
‘Hey, I was bullshitting back there,’ Connie said to me through a wad of bloody paper. It came out as ‘dullshitting’. ‘Your girls, they’re all right really. It was just some of the women, they roughed them up a little. Nothing serious.’
‘Sure,’ I said, not trusting him as far as Lisabeth could throw him. ‘Let them tell it. How do we get in?’
We were almost at the blue door.
‘There’s a knock. I have to do it.’
He tried to ease in front of us, but gently, like he was trying to help.
‘Watch him,’ I said to Lisabeth. ‘Who’s in there with them?’
‘Just Julian,’ he said.
I looked the door over. It was solid enough but there was no lock, something I should have noticed before.
‘Keys? What do you do for keys?’
‘No keys, man,’ he sniffed, looking at a handful of red napkins. His nose looked awful. ‘Bolts. Only opens from inside. Got to have someone here all the time. Only opens on the secret knock.’
I moved in close to him, so he was almost up against the door, and motioned Lisabeth to stand next to me.
‘Go ahead.’
He put the napkins to his nose with his left hand and rapped with his right; three long, four short, two long knocks.
I heard a bolt draw back, then another and then the door swung open. The other disciple I had seen handing out tracts at the tube station was standing there. He was wearing a vest top and jogging pants.
‘Julian’ – Connie gasped, swaying to one side into the doorway – ‘I need protecting. Beat the crap out of him.’
Julian reacted before I could. He stepped forward, nudging Connie inside with his right elbow, while making fists of his hands.
I grabbed Lisabeth and took a pace backwards. I had it in mind to take more than one, for Julian looked like he knew what he was about. He put up his fists, but not like an amateur would, apeing a 19th Century prize-fighter pose. His fists were close and at an angle in front of his jaw. He flexed his shoulders and I saw more muscles than I wanted to. He was positioned as if about to perform a demonstration left-right-left combination on a punch bag. As none of us had a punch bag, the next thing in reach – exactly his reach – was me.
‘What have they done to you, Connie?’ he said out of the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes off me and moving his feet for better balance.
‘They’ve hurt me, Julian. Now you hurt them. Do it.’
For a second, his expression to me said ‘Sorry, nothing personal’, but it didn’t distract him from the business in hand.
I took another step back, tugging Lisabeth with me. She was fumbling in her shoulder bag. Going for the phone to call the cops, I thought. By the time she’d worked out how to use it, she might as well make it an ambulance. And, if I was lucky enough to live, an orthodontist. Again.
‘Now, hold on, Julian,’ I said. I didn’t put my hands up. Most professionally-trained boxers don’t go for undefended targets. It tends to throw them. Obviously Julian had been to the wrong sort of boxing gym. He just took another step and tensed himself.
It was all happening very fast, but then fights do.
Suddenly, Lisabeth seemed to be leaning into me, and as I still had a good grip on her with my left hand, I pulled so she was in between me and Julian. Surely, he wouldn’t hit a woman?
He didn’t get the option.
Lisabeth finally stopped fumbling in her bag and produced something that she swung at Julian’s head. I saw it glint in the morning light, which was more than he did.
Whatever it was thwacked into the side of his head and his eyes glazed and his knees buckled and he just sort of deflated in front of us. Lisabeth’s arm was still extended as he fell, and I could see it was some sort of bottle she was holding.
Julian didn’t stop on his knees. He kept going, face-first on to the pavement.
I reacted just as Connie did. I was pushing Lisabeth out of the way and stepping on and then over Julian to get to him as he tried to swing the door shut. I put my shoulder down and jumped the last three feet, cannoning into the door and smashing it and him back into the house. I stayed on my feet and pushed hard to keep the door fully open. Connie was howling again. I had trapped his right hand between the door and the hallway wall.
I eased off and he fell away, still yelling, his right hand tucked in his left armpit, his left hand to his still-bloody nose. I reckoned he’d had a bad enough start to his day to remove any further resistance.
‘What about this one?’ Lisabeth said from the doorstep. She was still holding her weapon, and though I looked hard, she still hadn’t broken sweat.
‘Is he out cold?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Then I’ll take care of him. You keep an eye on the live one. You’re much better at this than me.’
She came into the house and I eased by her, then grabbed Julian by his ankles and dragged him, face-down, back into the house.
As I did so, I wondered who was going to tell him that he’d been laid out by a half-litre bottle of Virgin Olive Oil. Extra Fine quality, of course.
The Contemplation Room where the girls had been imprisoned was a windowless pantry smaller than a Victorian jail cell, off the kitchen. There was no cellar in this house.
To make it lightproof, somebody had fitted black foam rubber around the inside of the door, masking even the door frame just to increase the sense of isolation. Bastards.
Connie stood against the wall in the kitchen where we’d pushed him and just motioned with his head. Lisabeth drew the bolts and opened the door which, like the cellar door in Lennard Street, had a cross crudely painted on it.
‘Binky?’ she said, and for the first time, there was a tremor in her voice.
Three female voices responded, all frightened.
‘You can come out of there,’ she said. ‘It’s safe now. You’ve been rescued.’
And who were they to argue?
Veronica came out first, blinking, then taking her glasses off and rubbing her eyes. Stella followed, her hair matted, one shoe missing, and dirtier than Veronica. Finally, Fenella, rumpled and falling into Lisabeth’s arms.
Veronica came over to me where I was standing guarding Connie, though Connie was going nowhere.
‘I think I’m glad to see you for once,’ she said, pulling at her clothes as if to straighten her dignity. ‘If you did this to him.’ She pointed a grimy finger towards Connie’s face.
‘Not me, I’m afraid,’ I said, not wanting to take the credit in case charges were laid at a later date. ‘It was Lisabeth.’
‘Right on, sister,’ said Stella, turning on the taps in the kitchen sink and splashing water on her face.
Lisabeth pulled her head from Fenella’s shoulder and smiled sheepishly.
‘Are you all right, Ronnie?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Veronica, glaring at Connie. ‘It was Fenella who put up the fight.’
Lisabeth’s brow creased. Then she put her hands to the sides of Fenella’s face and tilted it gently. Fenella was sporting a three-tone black eye. Lisabeth began to move her carefully to one side.
‘No, Lisabeth,’ Veronica said forcefully. ‘You’ve done enough.’
Veronica was still looking straight at Connie, but he wasn’t meeting her eyes, he was trying to nurse his nose and his hand at the same time.
Veronica shook her head slightly, then took off her glasses again and held them out so I could hold them. Then she stomped as hard as she could on Connie’s left foot. He screamed and doubled up, and as he did so. Veronica ducked in under him and brought the top of her head up into his face.
His head jerked back and hit the wall, and there was a spray of blood from his nose this time. Then he yelled again and, in mid-yell, fainted, slumping to the floor.
‘Way to go,’ breathed Stella softly.
‘Thank you. Ronnie,’ said Lisabeth and Fenella together.
‘How about I make a nice pot of tea?’ I volunteered.
We dragged Julian into the Contemplation Room and bolted the door.
‘Is he all right?’ Fenella asked, ever the worrier.
‘He’s breathing,’ said Lisabeth in a voice designed to close the subject.
Connie we manhandled into the downstairs room Stella described as ‘The Chapel’. It had no furniture, just scatter cushions covering the floor. Connie, who had been out for only about a minute, seemed grateful for the lie down.
‘Time to talk,’ I said, and he groaned. ‘Or shall I leave you to the ladies?’
‘It was Buck, man, it was Buck.’ He spoke through a broken nose, and a split lip from where Veronica had butted him. His face was a mess, but he seemed keen to chat.
‘Buck set you up in properties, didn’t he? So you could – what? – bring down the value, frighten tenants off? Which was it?’
‘Either/or, man. Sometimes both. He’s done it before using what he called gyppos, even hobos; you known, man, winos, drunks off the street. That man is into property in a big way and that’s not clever, man, not these days.’
He was right. The property market had slumped. People had paid big prices two years earlier and now found themselves owing the bank more than the bricks and mortar were worth.
‘And Carrick Lee? What was he?’
‘Nothing, man, nothing to me.’ Connie waved a hand weakly. ‘You gotta believe me on this one. He worked for Buck, just delivered orders, money … Shit, I only met the guy twice. Whatever there was between those two was between those two, not me, man.’
‘What do you mean, between those two?’
‘Buck and this guy Lee. There was something there, but I don’t know what. Hey, look, it had something to do with her old man, that’s all I know.’
‘My father?’ shouted Stella. ‘I knew it.’
‘What did it have to do with Stella’s father?’ I had seen the way he had flinched at Stella’s voice.
‘It was something ... I don’t know …’ He shook his head. It still hurt. ‘… But it wasn’t the property thing, man. Believe me. He knew all about that.’
‘What?’ from Stella, louder.
‘Shit, your old man owns this place and the fucking house next door, and that’s got sitting tenants. He knows, I tell you. But this thing with Lee was something else. Buck wanted him out of the way.’
‘So, what happened at the house in Islington, Connie?’ I asked quietly. ‘And remember, I’ve been there.’
‘What ...?’ Veronica started, but I signalled quiet.
Connie tried to lick a swollen lip and failed.
‘Buck told us we were moving again, quick, like that night. To this place here. He told us he was having trouble with Lee and we had to get him into the Contemplation Room, and leave him there. Hey, look, I don’t know what happened. We packed up and moved here.’
‘But you can guess, can’t you?’ I said softly.
‘There’s nothing to connect me, man. No physical evidence, whatever happened.’ He lowered his voice so the women would have trouble hearing. ‘I travel light, man. You won’t find anything.’
I was almost willing to agree with him.
‘You’re right, Connie. You do travel light. Just your mobile phone. I’ve seen you with that twice now. What’s the number?’
He said nothing. He didn’t have to. His eyes gave him away.
‘You don’t know, do you? But you don’t have to, because you never receive calls on it, just make them. Right?’ He nodded. I turned to Lisabeth. ‘Give me his phone. They reckon you can get away with making calls on a stolen phone for about three months, don’t they, Connie?’
I took the phone from Lisabeth and flipped it open and punched it on. From the card in my wallet, I dialled Bobby Lee’s number. He answered after two rings.
‘Bobby? It’s Angel. Do me a favour. Ring Carrick’s mobile and let it ring four times, then hang up. Don’t ask. Just do it, and don’t try and ring again. I’ll be in touch.’
I closed the phone and held it out so everyone could see it.
‘Did you steal it from Carrick?’ I asked him,
‘No, swear to God. It was in Buck’s car, on the back seat of his Beamer. I thought it was his. Honest to Christ.’
The phone began to ring. Connie began to cry.
I switched the phone off without answering it.
‘You got a passport?’ I asked him, and he nodded.
‘Use it.’ I said.
‘So, how long was it before they rumbled you?’ I asked no-one in particular as they twittered and chattered and congratulated each other in the back of Armstrong on the way back to Hackney.
Piecing it together from what they said, the answer ranged from ten seconds to ten minutes, with my vote going to the ten seconds. Veronica and Fenella had failed to find a disciple to recruit them, so they had indeed marched up to the Shining Doorway itself and demanded to be let in. Once in, and probably before she’d got her coat off, Veronica started dropping the name Carrick Lee, but got no response at all. What did get them noticed – and thrown into the Contemplation Room where they found Stella – was when Fenella used Veronica’s name.
‘Connie knew about Veronica,’ Stella said, ‘and he knew her name and that she was a detective. He’d been warned to look out for the two of you. That’s why I got the Contemplation Room. He wanted to know why Veronica was looking for me.’
‘Who told him my name? The only people who could have tipped him off were Buck or your father, and I didn’t tell them my real name.’ I was sure I hadn’t.
‘That was me, I’m afraid,’ said Fenella. ‘Still, no harm done in the end.’
In the mirror, I saw Lisabeth giving her a hug.
‘Thanks, Binky,’ I said wearily. ‘What was Connie up to?’
‘I think he was just holding us until someone decided what to do with us,’ said Veronica.
‘Trying to figure out an angle,’ said Stella. She leaned forward so that her head was almost on my shoulder. ‘You know what happened to Carrick, don’t you? When you were talking to him, you both knew.’
‘He suspected. I guessed.’
The others had gone quiet now.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Stella asked, her voice as flat as ink.
I really didn’t want to tell her; not here, not like this, preferably not ever.
‘I don’t think he ever left the house in Islington,’ I said carefully. ‘But I don’t think Connie knew any more than he told us.’
‘Is that why you let him go?’
‘No. If Connie was ever pulled, he wouldn’t think twice about implicating everyone he can think of, starting with Simon Buck and your father. Do you want to know if your father was involved? It’s up to you. You’re the only one who could get it out of him.’
‘I doubt that. You’d have to tie him down and torture him before he’d admit to anything.’
‘That can be arranged,’ I said.
Arriving back at Stuart Street, Fenella offered to cook us all a victory lunch, but only after she’d got over her initial disappointment that they hadn’t exactly put flags out or organised a street party for us.
Veronica egged her on with bluff cheerfulness, saying she could eat a horse, before realising she was talking to two card-carrying members of the Vegetarian Action Front. She backtracked rapidly and succeeded in breaking the atmosphere and getting the subject off Carrick Lee’s concreted corpse. Though at one point she almost said she was ‘dying’ for a bath, changing it just in time to ‘desperate’.
Fenella offered her the use of her bathroom, not to mention some new nettle-and-oatmeal soap she had acquired. I could almost feel a vibration of disapproval from Lisabeth. Not only was she ultra-protective about her bathroom, I think she had given Fenella the soap.
Stella leaned forward.
‘You got a shower I could use, Angel? I’m stagnant.’
‘Sure,’ I said, glad to see she was taking things so well and trying to remember where my one and only bar of soap had landed after I had flung it at Springsteen.
I did find it and even a clean towel, and I started to make coffee while she got on with it. And what with the kettle boiling and me trying to cue music on the CD player with Springsteen twining himself around my arms and knees, I didn’t hear the water shut off.
I was on my knees in from of the CD, fumbling with the graphic equaliser, when she said: ‘There’s an empty bottle of vodka in there. Why do you drink in the shower?’
‘I spill a lot,’ I said without looking round.
‘That’s nice,’ she said, nearer. ‘Who is it?’
‘The Dirty Dozen Brass Band,’ I answered, leaning back on my haunches.
‘They’re good,’ she said, so close I could smell soap.
Springsteen mewed, then lay down on his side as if to roll over. Danger signal. Be afraid.
I turned my head slowly. She was using my towel to dry her hair. That was as far as she had got in dressing.
‘Forgotten anything?’ I asked casually.
‘He doesn’t think so,’ she said, and she was right. The black furry traitor was on his back now, purring and looking up at her in admiration.
I hadn’t the heart to hold it against him. On the CD, the Dirty Dozen swung into the second chorus of ‘Milenberg Joys’.
‘Don’t you fancy a shag, then?’ She towelled furiously behind her left ear.
I looked at my watch. It was 11.30 am.
‘Well, we could have a long day in from of us,’ I reasoned.
‘That’s what I figured,’ she said. ‘Got any condoms?’
Before I had a chance to reply, she said: ‘Hey, I might be easy, but I’m not fucking stupid.’
I stood up.
‘Let’s see about that, shall we?’
‘Whatever we do, we ought to leave Stella out of it,’ whispered Veronica. ‘She’s been through a lot.’
‘I think she’s handling it well,’ I whispered back. ‘And, anyway, it’s up to her. It depends how much she wants to find out, and only she can do it. She’s the key.’
‘More garlic bread?’ chirped Fenella. ‘What a pity Randa had to go to work. We could have been the Magnificent Six.’
‘I thought we were supposed to be the Six Angels?’ Stella said, levering the tops off a pair of beers.
‘Whatever it’s called, you seem to have your own private army,’ I said, taking one from her.
‘And I’m grateful for the help,’ she said, ‘though I didn’t come looking for it. Still, God knows what Connie would have done if you hadn’t burst in.’
‘And what wouldn’t he have done to us if Lisabeth hadn’t burst in and rescued us?’ added Fenella.
It was nice to know I had been forgotten and the Five Angels were now down to Four.
‘Oh, once you and Ronnie were in there with me, I was sure I was safe. In fact, I think Connie was secretly relieved that there were witnesses, so he couldn’t do anything really awful.’
‘He was a truly awful man,’ said Veronica, balancing a plate of pulse salad on her knee. ‘Even in the short time we were there, we saw him ... use ... those girls who live there.’
‘Some of them are lucky if they get their coats off,’ Stella sniped. ‘He found shock tactics worked more times than not. Most of them were on the rebound from something. Or someone. And Connie always preached that you couldn’t be saved until you’d sinned. Preferably with him.’
‘So did Rasputin,’ I chipped in, and Fenella mouthed ‘Who?’ to Lisabeth, who just looked blank.
‘Did he force you?’ Veronica asked Stella. I couldn’t have imagined her asking that, even so quaintly, a few days ago.
‘Not exactly force,’ she said after a pause, ‘but I’m a pretty good actress. He soon lost interest.’ She looked at me and smirked. ‘And it could have been much worse.’
‘God! How?’ breathed Lisabeth gruffly.
‘Think how many real cultists have ended up cutting their own throats recently, or setting fire to each other. Some of these people are seriously sad. Connie was just a conman. A crook. He loved the Shining Doorway front because it gave him power over his disciples, especially the women, but mainly because they stole for him. But it was all fairly small-scale stuff.’
‘Until it came to Carrick,’ said Veronica softly, but firmly claiming the moral high ground she obviously thought Stella had abandoned.
‘Ah yes, poor Carrick,’ Stella said in a matter-of-fact way that silenced everyone more effectively than if she’d done a tap dance about it.
‘So, what are you looking at me like that for? He’s gone, hasn’t he, Angel? You think so. Connie thought so.’
‘Your Heathcliff …’ breathed Veronica.
‘His father thinks so,’ I said.
‘His father? You’ve met his father? What’s he like?’ She seemed genuinely interested.
‘Nice enough guy. Head screwed on. Taking it all very calmly.’
If she thought I was getting at her with that, she let it pass. ‘He’s not likely to do anything rash, is he?’ she asked me.
‘Such as what?’ interrupted Veronica.
‘Such as paying a visit to Sir Drummond or to Simon Buck,’ I told her, ‘before Stella can.’
‘But, why–?’
When I answered her I was looking at Stella.
‘Because he’ll know by now, because Bobby will have told him, that we’ve found Carrick’s phone.’
We all, except Stella, looked at the mobile that lay on the window sill. None of us had felt like touching it since we got back.
‘You knew as soon as you saw Connie with the phone, didn’t you?’ I asked Stella.
Stella nodded.
‘How terrible for you,’ said Veronica, missing the point. She reached out and patted Stella on the knee. ‘What can we do to help?’
‘Nothing, really,’ said Stella, as if thinking it through. ‘I must go and see Daddy and make him tell me what was going on with Simon and Carrick. Whatever it was, I can’t believe Daddy would have hurt anyone.’
‘What about Buck?’ I asked.
She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ve never trusted him, never liked him, but I can’t see him as a murderer.’
It was the first time any of us had said it. Fenella’s sharp intake of breath was audible through the room. Stella herself broke the spell.
‘His wife, Caroline, on the other hand, I wouldn’t let anywhere near the cutlery drawer. She’s a total psycho, the most insanely jealous woman on the face of the Earth. He keeps her more or less locked up, but she should be locked up permanently.’
Veronica patted her knee some more. ‘I’ll come with you. For support.’
‘So will I,’ squeaked Fenella.
Lisabeth glared at her.
‘No, you won’t,’ I told her. ‘You’ve done your bit, you two. This is a job for the Three Angels, no more.’
Lisabeth flashed me a grateful look. If she’d known how to, she might have winked at me.
‘Three?’ Stella was smiling. ‘Why you?’
‘You need a driver,’ I said lamely.
Veronica just had to go via Shepherd’s Bush to pick up some clean clothes. Even as she said it, she noticed that Stella was wearing a T-shirt advertising Samuel Adams’ Boston Lager, the best beer in America. (It must be true; that was their trademark.) Stella had just looked sheepish, and Veronica had probably suspected, but said nothing.
I cut through the City to go up west. At that time in the afternoon the traffic flow would be with me and, as a cab, Armstrong had no problem negotiating the ‘ring of steel’ the cops had thrown up to stop terrorists getting near enough to bomb the City financial houses. It wasn’t a ring and it wasn’t steel, just an annoying series of chicanes of plastic traffic cones that slowed traffic down enough so the bored City Police (they’re taller than the uniformed officers of the Metropolitan Police) could stop and search you. Naturally, they never searched taxis. All you had to do was slow down so they could see your passenger in the back. I’d never seen a taxi pulled over.
I had another reason for going that way.
‘Is your father going to tell us anything?’ I asked Stella.
‘Not unless you tie him down and torture him, like I said. He’s way past guilt and he never had any shame. It’s not going to be easy.’
‘Okay, then I’ve got an idea, but I’ve got to stop to buy something.’
Near Centre Point I doubled round into Tottenham Court Road and parked illegally on double yellow lines near the shop I wanted.
‘Back in a minute,’ I said to them and climbed out, taking the keys with me.
The shop had its windows painted out, but was open for business. I made two purchases, paid cash and left, saying no, I didn’t want to browse.
Back inside Armstrong, I pushed my purchases and their white plastic bag under my seat.
‘What on earth were you buying in an Ann Summers shop?’ Stella asked me, giggling, as I started the engine.
‘I’ll show you later,’ I answered.
‘That’s what they all say,’ she laughed.
‘What does an Ann Summers shop sell?’ Veronica asked her.
‘You really should get out more,’ Stella answered.
I felt more confident visiting Albert’s office than I had before. Veronica showed Stella in, using her key to the new door for the first time, and when she commented on this, I pointed out that she still owed me money for it. Stella reminded me I owed her for a pair of shoes left on Wimpole Street.
As we clumped up the stairs, I noticed Veronica was clutching the files Bobby Lee and I had taken from Albert’s office. I offered to put them back, and Stella followed me while Veronica went to change.
The first thing I did was go to the window and look down into the alley. It was deserted, so I breathed a sigh of relief and then began to slot the files back into the cabinet.
‘What were you looking for?’ Stella asked me.
‘Nothing, just checking the coast was clear. There was some trouble here with Albert, Veronica’s boss.’
‘She told me. Do you find trouble naturally or did you have to stay on at school?’
I gave her my killer look, but she didn’t flinch.
‘I’m just an acting, apprentice detective trying to do what real detectives do.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Be a catalyst, I suppose. Private detectives don’t actually do any detecting, they just stir things – and people – up. Then if they’ve any sense, they stand back and let things sort themselves out.’
‘Whatever the consequences?’
‘Oh, especially if there are consequences.’
‘I bet you’re good at it,’ she said, laying a hand on my arm.
‘Almost as good as you,’ I said, and the hand withdrew as if stung.
‘What do you mean?’ There was a touch of steel in her voice, behind the coyness.
‘You knew Carrick was dead when you saw Connie had his phone.’
‘Yes, I’ve told you that.’ She put on a fair imitation of a puzzled expression.
‘When was that?’ I asked.
She turned her back on me and walked over to the window as I had done. I closed the filing cabinet drawer, and the noise made her shoulders jump.
‘First day I was at the Shining Doorway,’ she said.
‘So, it never really was about Carrick, was it? You would have split there and then if it had been.’
She put the palm of her right hand on the window pane and gently tapped the glass with the nail of her index finger.
‘I needed to find out what my father was up to. Oh, Carrick was sweet, but he was just a summer fling. There was nothing there that would last.’
‘And your father would just love the thought of his daughter running off with some gypsy, wouldn’t he?’ I said to needle her, but it didn’t work.
‘Not at first. No, I didn’t think that at first, but then, later, yes, I knew it would bug him. I needed Carrick as a weapon against him. I used him. There, I’ve said it. Happy now?’
‘Like you’re using us? Me and Veronica. We’re your edge, aren’t we? The outsiders who know things, and we can’t be closed down by family ties. You want us there as witnesses until you get what you want. Thing is, I don’t think you know what you want, Stella.’
‘You knew what I wanted a couple of hours ago,’ she said, not sure whether to step closer or not.
‘That was exercise.’
That got a reaction, but not much more than a brief flare of colour in her cheeks.
‘Then thanks for the work-out, if that’s all it was. But you’re still here, driving us. Why? What’s in it for you?’
‘Estelle? Ready to go?’ Veronica yelled from her room.
‘Someone’s got to watch over her,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t get out much.’
‘That’s a crap reason,’ Stella hissed as Veronica approached.
‘It’s the best you’re gonna get,’ I hissed back.
I didn’t want to tell her that the phone call I hadn’t made might just result in even more trouble for us.
Veronica had changed into jeans, a padded anorak and sensible flat shoes. A week ago she probably wouldn’t have dressed down so much to go gardening.
Outside the office, Stella and I climbed into Armstrong while Veronica locked up. She had trouble getting the key out of the new lock, and by the time she started towards Armstrong, I had the engine running, so I only faintly heard someone shouting: ‘Hey, Miss!’
In the wing mirror, I saw Veronica stop as if to talk to someone, and I turned my head to see that she had been hailed by Crimson’s mum, Mrs Delacourt.
I decided to leave them to it, and they chatted for a minute or so, then Mrs Delacourt pointed at Armstrong, saw me looking at her and waved. I waved back. Then she dug in her handbag and brought something out, which she gave to Veronica.
‘What’s going on?’ Stella asked, turning to look herself and blocking my view.
‘A satisfied customer, I hope,’ I said.
Veronica waved a cheery goodbye to Mrs Delacourt and climbed into Armstrong, holding out a while envelope for me.
‘That Mrs Crimson is a really nice lady,’ she said chattily. ‘I didn’t know you knew anyone round here. She said to give you this and to say she could start cleaning on Monday. I told her I didn’t know what she meant and that I wouldn’t be here long, but she said she’d fixed it all up with you. Were you planning a bit of a surprise, Angel? Was that it?’
‘Something like that,’ I said, pocketing the envelope.
‘She told me I should be careful, as well.’
‘That’s always good advice,’ I said.
‘She said it was a really, really rough area and I had to watch out for myself. She said three young black kids were beaten up last night, just in the next street somewhere. One of them got a broken arm and had to go into hospital. But her son told her they were up to no good and were selling drugs to the local school kids. So I suppose we shouldn’t feel sorry for them, but isn’t that just a terrible state of affairs?’
‘Terrible,’ I agreed.
Thanks, Crimson. Thanks, Chase.
The traffic heading out of London up the motorway was weekend heavy and it took longer than I had expected to reach the intersection that would lead to Great Pardoe. At least that gave me some thinking time, and about four miles short of the village, I pulled over and took Carrick Lee’s mobile phone from under my seat, flipping it open and punching the power button.
‘What are you doing?’ they asked together.
‘Checking the lie of the land,’ I said, hitting numbers. Bobby Lee answered on the second ring.
‘Angel? Jesus Christ, I’ve been ringing you every 20 minutes since this morning. Where are you? What’s happening? Did you switch the phone off?’
‘Yes, I did, and I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, it’s been one of those days.’ And it wasn’t over yet. ‘Where are you?’
‘At the Lodge, on car park duty at the antiques roadkill show here.’
‘Is Sir Drummond around?’ As I asked that, Stella moved onto the rumble seat behind me, close enough for me to smell my shampoo on her hair.
‘He’s in the Lodge. Buck was here earlier. He left burning rubber, but he didn’t go home. I thought I’d better stay here.’
‘You did right.’
Stella was screwing up her face, trying to hear what Bobby was saying. That’s why people hate mobile phones. It’s not because they disturb you in restaurants or on the train; it’s because you can hear only one side of a conversation and you’re dying to hear the other half. If someone was in a phone box and you couldn’t hear anything, you wouldn’t mind.
‘What time do you close up?’ I asked him.
‘Seven o’clock, but we haven’t had a punter for over two hours.’
‘Can you keep it that way? Not let anyone else in?’
‘Sure, won’t be a problem. What are you up to? How did you get Carrick’s phone?’
‘We’re on our way to see Sir Drummond. We need a word with him, but don’t jump to any conclusions, Bobby. Okay?’
‘I won’t,’ he said curtly.
‘You’ve told him, haven’t you?’
‘Just that you had Carrick’s phone,’ he said, and when I said nothing, he added: ‘He’s coming down. On his way. I had to.’
‘Yeah, that’s okay, Bobby. ‘Course you had to. See you soon.’
I closed the phone, then opened it again and dialled the same number but changing the last digit to 0 from 2. The card Carrick Senior had given me had three consecutive numbers on it. Job lot, he’d said.
The phone bleeped four times then connected, and a voice said ‘Hello?’ then, ‘Bobby?’ through an awful lot of static and the distinct throb of the sound of heavy traffic.
I closed the phone on him without a word.
‘I think we ought to hurry,’ I said.
Armstrong complained almost as much as the two women in the back as I drove across the lawn to the Classic Car Centre, keeping its aircraft-hangar proportions between us and Sandpit Lodge itself. I didn’t know if it would give us much of an advantage, but every little helped.
As I parked alongside the Centre, Bobby Lee saw us from his sentry box in the car park near the house and began to walk towards us. There was no sign of Carrick Senior, nor a Land Rover Discovery in sight. In fact, the car park was deserted.
‘Come on.’ I led them into the car museum, clutching my Ann Summers carrier bag and Carrick’s phone.
Bobby caught up with us inside the sliding doors and nodded to Veronica. I introduced him to Stella.
‘You’re the daughter …’ he said.
‘And you’re the brother,’ she answered. I looked, but there was nothing in her eyes.
‘We may not have much time.’ I took command. ‘Will your father come here?’
‘Or straight to Buck’s place,’ said Bobby, not taking his eyes off Stella.
‘Right then, you take Veronica and stake the place out like we did. Do nothing, just keep your eyes open and keep in touch on the phone.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Veronica blustered, ‘what are we supposed to be doing?’
‘Keeping his father away from her father’s solicitor.’
‘And what will you be doing?’ She was bracing her feet to make a stand of it.
‘Stella and I will be asking her father some questions.’
‘And just how do we get him to answer them?’ Stella drawled.
‘You told me how,’ I said, holding up the carrier bag. ‘We’re going to tie him up and torture him.’
Stella really was a natural actress. I did a run-through, explaining what I had in mind, and she just went ahead and did it.
Using Carrick’s phone, she rang the house. She was perfect.
‘Daddy, it’s Estelle. Yes, it is me. I’m here. I’m coming home, Daddy. I’m in your museum. Your sanctum. Remember when you used to call it that and I had to go away and look it up? No. No, come and get me, Daddy. I don’t want to come up to the house by myself. No, not until I’ve had a chance to explain. Come down here, Daddy. I’m all alone. The visitors have gone. The gawpers, we used to call them – no, it was grockles, wasn’t it. Hurry, Daddy. I’ve missed you.’
She snapped the phone shut and handed it to me.
‘Two minutes. Tops.’
‘That was very good. Now stand over here.’
I made her stand leaning against the driver’s door of the first of the classic car exhibits on the left, a metallic-blue Alvis tourer. Then I took two pairs of handcuffs out of my carrier bag and slipped one pair into my jacket pocket. The others I opened with the key, then pocketed that. I slipped one cuff through the door handle of the Alvis and snapped it shut, leaving the other cuff dangling at the end of a six-inch steel chain.
Stella moved so that her buttocks and legs covered them from sight, reaching behind her to make sure she could grab the open bracelet.
‘Okay? Think you can handle it?’
‘Sure. Hey, these things are suede-lined!’ she exclaimed, feeling the inside of the cuff.
‘So as not to leave bruises,’ I said. ‘Some people think of everything.’
I was crouched down behind the Alvis in case she needed help, but she didn’t.
Sir Drummond came puffing into the hangar, his circular face bright red, his lips and cheeks pushing out his white moustache as if he was trying to blow it away from under his nose.
‘Estelle!’
‘Daddy!’
She held out her arms for him as I had seen her do for me only that morning, and as he embraced and tried to kiss her, she turned into him and I heard the handcuff ratchet shut. It seemed a fitting sort of sound.
‘What the–? Estelle, what the devil ...?’
By that time, she had spun away from him and skipped out of his reach. She stopped, kissed the end of her right index finger and leaned forward to touch it to his cheek. Now that, I thought, was unnecessary.
‘We have to talk, Daddy,’ she said, smiling.
He yanked at the handcuffs, bemused. Then he tried the Alvis’s door handle and it opened, but it didn’t do him much good. Stella took two steps further backwards.
‘Is this some sick joke, Estelle? I really ... You?’
He saw me as I walked around the front of the Alvis.
‘What do you want? What’s going on? You work for Block, don’t you?’
‘Strictly freelance, Sir Drummond. At the moment, if I’m working for anyone, it’s for Carrick Lee.’
‘Remember him, Daddy?’ taunted Stella.
‘I’ve been through all this with him.’ He pointed with his right hand, his left gave the cuffs a tug. All they did was rattle. ‘I don’t know where your gypsy vagrant boyfriend is.’
‘I do,’ I said, watching his face. ‘He’s in the cellar of 23 Lennard Street, Islington.’
The colour began to fade from his checks.
‘That means nothing to me,’ he snapped, but he wouldn’t meet Stella’s gaze.
‘Don’t you own it, Daddy? Connie – Constantine Smith, ring a bell? – well, Connie seemed to think you owned lots of places in London.’
He jerked the cuffs, causing the door of the Alvis to creak on its hinges.
‘Dammit, Estelle, release me. I refuse point blank to discuss family business in front of him’ – he pointed an accusing finger at me again – ‘and with you when you’re in this mood. Have you been taking something again? Is it like last time?’
‘No, it’s not like last time,’ she said, and she twisted her upper body at him like a child would, as she said it. ‘Last time was when Mummy died. I had an excuse.’
‘There’s no excuse for this!’ he bellowed.
He was wearing a clean white shirt and black trousers, as if he had been changing when she’d phoned. The shirt was already beginning to show sweat stains around the armpits.
‘Estelle!’ he yelled at her. ‘I demand you stop this at once!’
She looked at me.
‘Told you we wouldn’t get anything out of him.’
‘Okay, Phase Two,’ I said as I walked by her. ‘Stand clear.’
‘Where’s he going, Estelle? Estelle!’
I didn’t turn around. I went out through the hangar doors and round to the side of the museum where I had parked Armstrong. I started him up and took a look around the grounds to make sure there were no late tourists. Over the fields, the light was beginning to fade. I dropped into first gear and swung out in a semi-circle and into the hangar, heading straight at the straining figure of Sir Drummond.
Of course, I stopped long before I got to him. Well, a couple of feet anyway. Then I got out and walked behind Armstrong and slid the hangar doors closed.
As I did so, he yelled: ‘What are you doing? Estelle, what’s going on?’
‘That’s for you to tell us, Daddy.’
She walked towards me, and I thought she was going to help pull the doors closed, but she let me do that, then leaned her back against them and crossed her legs at the ankle. She put her arms behind her back, and her breasts swelled out to fill my T-shirt. Her tongue flicked out and she moistened her lips.
‘Go to it,’ she said to me, staring at her father.
I made to get back into Armstrong, the throb of his diesel louder than usual in the confined, echoing metal hall.
‘We want to know what happened to Carrick Lee,’ I said to him. ‘We want to know how he fitted in whatever you and Simon Buck were doing.’
He ignored me, straining at the cuff chain, holding out his free hand as if begging, and looking over my shoulder. ‘Estelle …’
I climbed into Armstrong and strapped on the safety belt. The first car on show in the column to my right was a two-tone 1962 Zephyr Mark II. I hit its offside corner dead square with the middle of Armstrong’s radiator. The Zephyr’s headlight smashed and the wing began to crumple. I put Armstrong into reverse and took a run at it.
The second impact jarred my good new teeth, but the Zephyr moved this time, sideways and into the next exhibit, a black Lincoln Continental.
I reversed again, dropped into first and hit the gas. This time, I swung to the left, missing Sir Drummond and the Alvis, but clouting the Austin Healey ‘Frogeye’ next to it a beauty, head on. With Armstrong’s extra height and weight, it didn’t stand a chance. In my mirror was the Lincoln, with the Zephyr piled into its side. I didn’t fancy even Armstrong’s chances against a big old born-in-the-USA gas guzzler, but next to it, third in line, was a red Triumph Herald. I’d always disliked them.
I put Armstrong into reverse and floored it. The Triumph was the most satisfying crunch so far, and my teeth hardly felt a tremor.
Then Stella was in my windscreen, waving frantically, and behind her I saw Sir Drummond was leaning on the door of the Alvis like a drunk whose legs had gone.
I eased forward a yard and turned off my engine. Typical. Just when I was really getting into it. As I stepped out, glass from the Triumph continued to tinkle onto the stone floor.
‘Stop, stop …’ Sir Drummond was saying, and when he saw that I had, he began to stand up straight and recover his composure.
I walked in front of Armstrong and checked for damage. There were two or three dents that would have to be hammered out, but that was all. To my right, one of the Austin Healey’s doors suddenly fell off with a satisfying crash. I let Sir Drummond see me smile, and for the hell of it I made like I was measuring the distance between Armstrong and the next car in line, a Wolseley Hornet.
‘Are you going to tell us what we want to know, Daddy?’ Stella was back, temptingly just out of range for him.
He shook his head slightly. His ears were probably ringing from the collision noises. He nursed his cuffed wrist with his free hand and looked up at the steel girder rafters.
‘Estelle …’ he started, then took a resigned, deep breath. ‘I took some bad advice some time ago and bought a lot of property that is now not worth what I paid for it. There were ways, people said, whereby I could get some of my money back if ... circumstances changed. Planning permissions, changes of use, that sort of thing.’
‘But there were people in the way sometimes,’ I said. ‘Sitting tenants, people like that.’
I think he was relieved that I knew most of it.
‘Yes, and sometimes building restrictions to get round. It wasn’t just throwing people out onto the street.’
‘That makes me feel so much better, Daddy. Go on.’
‘Simon said he knew ways of doing things, getting things moving. He knew people he could use to change the value of things, to level the playing field in our favour.’
‘People like Connie and his churchgoers?’ I asked.
‘And people like her sweetheart, Lee. He was involved, Estelle. He knew what was going on. He worked for Simon, arranging things, getting families of gypsies to move into an area …’
‘And lowering the whole tone of the neighbourhood,’ I said, and for the first time I think he was frightened of me. I looked again at the Wolseley Hornet, sizing up the distance.
‘Look, I’m not proud of what was done,’ he said hurriedly, ‘but I was in debt, deep debt. Simon offered a way out, but it didn’t work. This place is a drain, a sinkhole.’
He swung his free hand in the air. It was the most expansive gesture he could make under the circumstances.
‘I was at my wits’ end.’
He was trying to appeal to me now. I could see where Stella got the acting talent from.
‘Simon must have got careless, because Carrick found out, and we knew he had been close to you, Estelle. It could have ruined everything. Simon said he would pay him off, make him go away. I don’t know what exactly happened. I …’ His voice faltered. ‘… I never asked. I didn’t want to know.’
‘He killed him, Daddy, didn’t he? Simon killed him.’
‘And buried him in the cellar of one of your houses,’ I added.
He seemed to crumple then, right in front of us. It wasn’t as if he was going to fall or anything, he just shrank within his skin.
‘It could have been an accident, or something. I don’t believe Simon meant to harm him, but he was desperate too. He was in dire straits, just as I was, and when Carrick found out about us, that could have tipped him over the edge.’
‘When Carrick found out what?’ I asked, later than I should have.
‘I don’t know how he did,’ the old man said reasonably. ‘Perhaps Simon was careless …’
‘What?’ I shouted.
‘About Estelle’s trust fund. We’d had to use it to finance the original property deals. Simon said we could replace the money after we had sold …’
‘How much of it?’ I said loudly. ‘How much of it did you use?’
‘All of it,’ he said, puzzled. ‘I thought that was what this was all about.’
Estelle and I eyeballed each other. ‘I think you’re right,’ I said.
‘You didn’t have to come, you know,’ she said in my ear as I bounced Armstrong over the grass. ‘But I’m glad you did. He wouldn’t have told me – admitted it – if you hadn’t threatened to destroy his toys back there. I’ll pay for any damage.’
‘What with?’ I asked nastily.
‘Oh, I’ll get it out of him, don’t worry.’
We hit the driveway and I swung towards the road. It was getting dark and I put the lights on more to check them than because I needed them. Everything seemed to be in working order. Montgomery could have done with a few like Armstrong at Alamein.
She had demanded to come with me as soon as I had turned on my heel towards Armstrong. I had flipped her the key to the handcuffs and she had released the old boy, who had opened his arms to her. She had told him to go to the Lodge and wait for her. She would be back soon; to stay and look after him.
He took it like a sentence.
‘Will he be all right?’
‘He’s tough as old boots,’ she said. ‘In fact, he’s probably on to the insurance company right now.’ She paused. ‘Seriously, he’s probably phoning Simon Buck right now.’
‘I’m banking on it,’ I said.
‘You are?’
‘Yes, so the bastard can run before the gypsies move into his neighbourhood.’
We raced through the village until I saw the hedge surrounding Old Mill Cottage and I killed the lights and drifted to a stop. I found the mobile phone and dialled Bobby, hoping he had the volume control turned down if he was anywhere near the house. There was no connection; he had turned his off.
‘Damn! What’s he playing at?’ I said aloud.
‘What’s the problem?’ asked Stella. ‘Let’s just go up to the front door and confront the bastard.’
‘There are other people involved,’ I said, gritting my teeth to keep my temper. ‘Buck is a lawyer. You think he’ll go down for this one alone? He’ll drag your father into it for sure. Think you’ll see any of your trust fund after that?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said quietly.
‘Well, neither had I until just now. But I’m more worried about Carrick’s father, who might just be on his way here to do something stupid. And Buck isn’t worth it.’
‘So what? So you want us to warn Buck? Then what happens?’
‘I don’t know,’ I snapped. ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.’
In fact, I was way behind, because Carrick Lee was already there.
Stella followed me through the gap in the hedge and held my hand as we stumbled across the garden, me hoping that Bobby was where we had been to see Mrs Buck’s command performance.
I was aware that lights were on all over the house, but I was concentrating on making my eyes accept the gloom of the shrubbery until I was sure I could see the rose bushes Bobby and I had hidden behind.
There was no sign of Bobby, but Veronica was there, facedown on the ground. Kneeling next to her, with one knee in the small of her back, was Carrick’s father. His left hand pressed down on the back of Veronica’s head. His right hand held a sawn-off shotgun.
‘Shit,’ breathed Stella a half-second before I could.
He took his hand away from Veronica’s head and used it to wave us closer, indicating that we should keep low. Veronica looked up at us. Her glasses were at an angle across her face, but I think she recognised us.
‘Do as he says,’ I whispered, pulling Stella along with me.
‘Mr Lee, it’s okay,’ I said softly. ‘She’s with me.’
He eased off Veronica, and pointed the gun at the ground. ‘I’ve sent Bobby to the car,’ he said to me, but his eyes wandered to Stella, who had knelt to help Veronica up. ‘You’d best go yourselves.’
‘He’s going to shoot him,’ Veronica said breathlessly. ‘He’s just waiting for him to come out.’
‘Mr Lee,’ I pleaded, ‘you don’t know for sure …’
‘You tell me he didn’t do it.’
‘Whether he did or not, don’t you do this. You want to go to prison?’
‘Last thing I want. No Romany …’
‘Look.’ Veronica had straightened her glasses and was staring at the house.
It was the same view Bobby and I had had, through the French windows, only this time, with the room lights spilling out, it had an even more bizarre theatrical quality.
Buck was on one side of the room yelling. His wife was on the other. You didn’t need a volume control to know they were yelling at each other, and for punctuation, Caroline Buck was throwing anything that came to hand. A cushion, an ashtray, a CD. Not at Buck, just throwing at random.
‘What’s happened?’ I sank to my knees between Lee and the women. His shotgun had no butt, just a home-carved pistol grip. I wished I didn’t notice things like that.
‘Buck came home about ten minutes ago,’ Veronica said, almost enthusiastically now she had an audience. ‘They started to fight then but he got a phone call, and then things really hotted up. He’s trying to pack his bags, and I think she’s trying to stop him.’
As if to demonstrate her point, Buck suddenly charged across the room. pushing his wife out of the way. He was almost at the top of the stairs before his wife had completed a somersault over an armchair and landed on the floor.
We couldn’t see her for a minute, then she appeared from behind a chair, crawling on all fours, round and round, aimless.
‘Watch, he’s coming back,’ Veronica said.
I took my eyes away from the giant TV screen that was the Buck house and glanced down at Lee and the gun.
‘Don’t even think it,’ he whispered, and I flashed my eyes back to the house.
Buck came down the stairs two at a time. He was carrying a big leather shoulder bag, and as his wife stopped her crawling and reached up for him, he swung it at her. She jerked backwards and fell out of our sight again. Buck didn’t break his stride but continued out of the room.
Buck’s wife clawed herself upright using the back of a chair. She was screaming, but we couldn’t hear her. But Buck did. He ran into the room, the bag over his shoulder this time. As he did so, he undid the belt of his trousers and pulled it loose. He hit her two, maybe three times, almost without stopping. Then he was through the room and pounding upstairs again.
I felt Veronica stiffen next to me on the damp grass.
‘Why don’t we leave now?’ she said. ‘Me, you and Stella, that is.’
Not for the first time, but for new reasons, I was lost for words at her.
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Stella. ‘Give me that phone.’
I stared at her then, but before Carrick Lee could think of a reason to shoot me, I handed it over.
‘They don’t have a phone upstairs,’ Stella was saying as she worked the mobile. ‘They never had. He kept them downstairs ... It’s ringing.’ We all looked towards the house. ‘Pick up, Caroline, come on, pick up.’
We saw Mrs Buck stand up from behind the furniture line. She was a sad, battered puppet framed in the theatre of those windows.
We saw Buck appear at the top of the stairs, shouting. Caroline Buck picked up the phone in the living room.
‘Hello?’ said Stella nervously. ‘Can I speak to Simon, please?’
We could see only her shoulder; the phone must have been behind the hallway door, and she had her back to us, so we couldn’t see her face.
‘It’s Estelle, Caroline, Estelle Rudgard. I expect Simon’s told you by now ... That we’re going away together ... I’m sorry, Caroline, but I’m also glad it’s out in the open now … The deceit was bad for us too ... Now we have my trust fund, we can go away and we won’t be a bother to you, Caroline … Caroline? … Can I …?’
She closed the phone and I wished there was more light so I could see her face. But then again I didn’t.
‘She hung up,’ said Stella.
We knew. We could see.
Simon Buck had gone back into a bedroom. His wife had put the phone down and walked like an automaton across the room and out towards the kitchen or another room we couldn’t see.
Then Buck had emerged, coming down the stairs, zipping up a long windcheater. He was shouting again, questions, as if expecting an answer.
‘You were brilliant,’ Veronica squeaked, grabbing Stella’s arm. ‘She’s left him.’
But she was back.
As Buck entered the living room from the hallway, his wife came in from the other side. He didn’t look up, just concentrated on the zip of his jacket, his bag over his shoulder.
‘You won’t need that,’ I said to Carrick Lee, pointing at his gun.
Caroline Buck had one of her own. That was a shotgun too, full size.
When Buck was halfway across the room, and still hadn’t seen her, she fired a single shot.
Even through the windows and out in the garden, we heard it quite clearly.
We ran for the gap in the hedge.
Veronica stumbled once and almost lost her glasses. Carrick Lee unloaded his sawn-off and hid it inside his jacket as he ran.
I found the gap and pushed Veronica through. Then, as Stella brushed by me, I grabbed her by the shoulder.
‘Tell me you didn’t know that was going to happen,’ I hissed in her face.
‘I didn’t. Honest. I knew she’d get mad, but I didn’t even know they had a gun.’
I had to believe her. There wasn’t time to argue.
I certainly believed that she hadn’t expected the second shot that came across the lawn from the house.
I don’t think any of us had expected that.
‘Walk, don’t run,’ said Carrick Lee, and then proceeded to walk off up the road, fumbling with a mobile phone, the twin of the one Stella was still clutching.
I hustled the women in the opposite direction, to where I had left Armstrong, and we piled in, none of us wanting to be the first to speak.
By the time I had Armstrong turned full circle, the headlights of Lee’s Discovery were coming down the road. He slowed behind me and flashed his lights but made no effort to pass me. I pulled away and he followed us back through the village.
We saw two or three cars, mostly people coming home from work, turning into driveways. No pedestrians. No sirens.
I turned into the driveway of Sandpit Lodge and stopped, and the Discovery pulled up behind me.
‘Give me the phone,’ I said to Stella, and she handed it over without a word. ‘And stay here. Both of you.’
‘Why? It is man’s talk or something?’ Veronica snapped chopsily.
‘What you don’t know, the police can’t extract forcibly,’ I said as I climbed out.
Carrick Lee got out of the Discovery’s passenger side. Bobby Lee waved to me from behind the steering wheel.
‘I didn’t think he was old enough to drive,’ I said to his father. He had buttoned up his poacher’s jacket. I couldn’t tell if the sawn-off was still in there.
‘If he can reach the pedals, he can drive,’ said Lee.
‘Yeah, ‘course.’ I shuffled my feet.
‘Best not hang about,’ he said, his hands in his pockets. ‘I need to know where he is.’
‘In the cellar of 23 Lennard Street, Islington. You’ll need drills and digging gear and a coroner. Sorry, there was no easy way to put it.’
He nodded his head sadly.
‘Do you know what happened?’
‘No, not for sure. Carrick somehow found out that Buck had been helping Stella’s old man to fiddle her trust fund. He got him alone in the house and ... who knows? Fight or accident? There’s no way of knowing now. There were no witnesses. Buck trashed the house, and I guess he had plans to have it demolished. I don’t know if he’d have got away with it.’
‘Oh, he wouldn’t have done that.’
‘Would you really have done him?’ I had to ask.
‘Not in front of his wife.’ He snorted slightly. ‘Funny that, as it turned out. She’s a hard bitch, that one.’
But he was looking at Stella in the back of the cab, not thinking about Mrs Buck.
‘That other one, the plump one …’
‘Veronica.’
‘Yes, well, she’s got guts, that one. She went for me like a tiger.’
‘She would. Not a brain in her head. Look, Mr Lee, I don’t know what you want to do now, but we’re out of it if we can be.’
‘That’s fair,’ he said reasonably. ‘You’ve done your bit.’
‘I’ve done very little. I can’t tell you what happened. I don’t know the how or the when or …’
‘Oh, I’m pretty sure of the “when”,’ he said.
‘On his grandmothers birthday?’ I guessed.
‘Yeah. She knew. She could probably tell you to the exact minute.’
‘I believe you,’ I said, and I did.
‘She said I could trust you.’
‘But I never met her, never even saw her.’
‘She saw you.’
I didn’t know whether that was supposed to spook me or not.
‘Then I wouldn’t want to upset her by saying anything she might disapprove of,’ I said carefully, ‘would I? Assuming I had ever met her, or indeed knew who we were talking about in the first place.’
‘I’m glad we understand each other,’ he said, to my great relief. ‘If anything has to be done, I’ll do the right thing.’
‘That’s fine by me.’
‘And them?’ He gestured towards Armstrong.
‘They’ll see reason. Trust me.’
‘I don’t,’ he said, and reached inside his coat.
I was half a second from hitting the ground when I saw what he was holding in his hand. It was a cheque. And he was offering it to me.
I was shaking as I took it and read it. The payee line was blank but it was dated and signed and drawn on an account called ‘Lee & Sons Business A/C No 2’ from a bank in Leicester. The cheque was made out for £500.
‘There’ll be another in six months if you keep everyone quiet and happy. What’s the matter?’
‘I didn’t expect this,’ I said without a word of a lie.
‘What did you expect? Gold sovereigns? Gypsy silver?’
‘No, nothing like that. I just didn’t ... I don’t think I’ve earned it.’
‘You haven’t. Yet.’
I held out my hand and he shook it.
‘You’ve got a deal, Mr Lee.’ I kept on shaking his hand. As long as I was holding it he couldn’t reach for his gun. ‘But you’ve got to tell me that you’ve finished with this business. And tell me now.’
‘I’m done, as long as you tell me that her father had nothing to do with the death of my son.’
I squared up to him.
‘And if I said he had, what could you do to him that’s worse than what she’s going to do now she’s back home?’
He gave my hand an extra shake.
I drove Armstrong up to the Lodge. There were lights on everywhere but no cars, no police. The doors to the Classic Car Museum were closed.
‘I’d better go in alone,’ said Stella.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ asked Veronica when I didn’t.
‘I can handle him. Now. Don’t worry, he loves me really.’
‘He’s waiting for you,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said without looking.
I had been watching the door. It had opened, and silhouetted there was Sir Drummond, the light from the hallway playing around his domed head like a halo.
‘You’ll ring? Keep in touch?’ Veronica pleading.
‘Tomorrow. Bet on it. Thanks for everything.’
Stella grabbed her and kissed her on the cheek. I couldn’t see, but I felt Veronica blushing.
Stella put a hand on the door handle.
‘Estelle?’
We all heard him; a lonely cry in the dark.
‘I’m coming, Daddy!’ she yelled.
She was out of Armstrong and closing the door when she froze and then pushed her head back inside.
‘Why did you need two pairs of handcuffs?’ she asked me.
I just looked at her.
‘See you around, kid.’
We had done only about three miles on the motorway back to town when Veronica asked me to pull over so she could throw up. I breathed a sigh of relief, as anyone who had ever driven a cab would, that at least she asked first.
I gave her a few minutes of privacy to stagger around the hard shoulder, bent double. Even with the traffic thundering by, I could hear her retching. Then I turned off Armstrong’s engine and went to find her.
She was sitting on the grass, halfway up the embankment, her face in her hands, elbows on her knees. I sat down next to her, and for a while we watched the cars hiss by Armstrong on their way to London.
‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ she said, taking off her glasses and trying to drag a tissue from the pocket of her jeans so she could wipe her mouth. ‘I never dreamed I would see anything like that. Ever.’
‘You’ve got to try and forget it,’ I said, thinking, as she was, of the way Simon Buck had been thrown backwards across the room by the blast from his wife’s shotgun. The way the blood had spattered the inside of the French windows as if some mad artist was flicking paint from a brush. ‘You will, in time.’
‘And his poor wife … What …? Do you think …?’
I was tempted to put an arm around her, but the thought didn’t linger, and the consequences might have.
‘We don’t know for sure; we were too busy running away. But sometimes it’s safer to assume the worst.’
At least Veronica hadn’t seen, and neither had Carrick Lee, though he’d known instantly.
And Stella couldn’t have seen, because I had been holding her by the shoulders and shaking her, so she had her back to the house.
So all that was left was for me to convince myself that I hadn’t really seen, just out of the corner of one eye over Stella’s shoulder, Mrs Buck place the shotgun butt on the floor and then lean forward, her mouth open.
‘Couldn’t we have done anything?’ Veronica asked, though I was far from sure she wanted an answer.
‘There was nothing we could have done,’ I lied. ‘The woman was totally unstable. We couldn’t have known how she would react.’
Veronica reached down and pulled a handful of grass, then threw it towards the motorway. Most of it fluttered over my legs.
‘It’s so unfair, you know. I started this to help somebody and to get some answers. I can’t see that I’ve helped anyone and there are lots of questions unanswered.’
‘That’s life, kid. You really should … just accept it and make the best job of it if you can.’
‘Job?’ she snorted, concentrating on the traffic. ‘I haven’t got a job now you’ve more or less solved the case.’
‘I knew it would be my fault,’ I said, trying to lift her spirits. ‘What are you going to do? What do you want to do?’
She slapped the palms of her hands on her knees.
‘I’m going home, well, back to Shepherd’s Bush, anyway. Then I’m going to sleep all day tomorrow, then I’m going to pack up everything I own and find a new flat.’ She paused, then looked at me. ‘And then, I’m going to set myself up in business.’
‘As a detective?’ I said carefully.
‘Yes. I might even make Albert an offer for the business. You never know, he might feel guilty about just going off like he did. Maybe I can use that to my advantage.’
‘You’re learning, kid. And that’s a good idea about Albert. He might just feel guilty. Have you got a number for him?’
‘Back at the office, yeah. He’s staying with his daughter in Exeter.’
‘Give it to me, let me ring him. I’ll tell him what a great job you did. It’s always better coming from a third party.’
‘You think so?’
‘Positive. And one other thing, a word of advice, if you’ll take one.’
‘You’re the one with the wheels; you’re driving. Go ahead.’
She was learning.
‘Think of a new name – if you stay in the detecting business. I’m sorry, but “Block and Blugden” just doesn’t cut it. Think of something neutral and conservative, or something catchy.’
‘You mean like “Veronica’s Angels”?’
‘No, definitely not. What about your name? Do something with that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, like the Americans do. Use your middle initial or – I’ve got it – do like that female private eye in the books, she just uses initials. You know, V I Warshawski.’
‘Who?’
‘Never mind. Have you got a middle name?’
‘Yes, Daphne.’
‘Forget it.’
She gave me Albert’s number when I dropped her off, and I rang him the next day. His daughter eventually got him to the phone, and it took two or three goes before he finally remembered me visiting him in hospital.
‘So what’s it to me?’ he said tetchily.
‘I’ve got some news for you,’ I said, trying to keep calm. ‘Simon Buck is dead. His wife killed him.’
He was silent, but I could hear his breath rasp down the line.
‘There’s been nothing on the news,’ he said eventually, in a dull monotone.
‘If you’re lucky, Albert, there won’t be.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ he came back quickly.
‘I reckon there’s enough circumstantial evidence in your filing cabinets to link you with Buck’s little property scams, maybe even to a house on Lennard Street in Islington. Serve papers on anyone there, Albert?’
‘Hey, that’s all I did. Just doing my job. There were lots of places. I can’t be expected to remember every one.’
‘You might have to remember this one.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because it’s where they’ll find Carrick Lee if they look.’
‘I didn’t know anything about that,’ he whispered nervously. ‘I never saw the kid. It was nothing to do with me.’
I actually believed him, in part. If he had known how deep Buck had got himself into things, he would never have let Veronica near the case. He was an ex-copper, he knew how dangerous amateurs were.
‘Mud sticks, Albert.’
He was an ex-copper. He knew how to do deals.
‘Unless what?’
I told him what he had to do.
The deaths of Simon and Caroline Buck only made a paragraph in two of the quality Sunday papers. The bodies had been discovered by the postman the following morning, and the local police had been quick to issue a ‘no suspicious circumstances’ statement. But then, what did they know?
In the following weeks, however, most of the tabloids ran picture stories about the vandalism at the Classic Car Museum. Sir Drummond was pictured holding a steering wheel, standing in what was made to look like the middle of a scrapyard.
Vandals had broken into the museum, it seemed, and wrecked 11 classic cars, including a rare Lincoln Continental. What was the country coming to? This was the Yob Society in all its horror, and hanging was too good for them.
Never mind the arithmetic, think of the publicity. And sure enough, about two months later, when he auctioned off his entire collection including the wrecks, Sir Drummond did very well out of it.
He made far more that way than the insurance company would have given him.
Of course, it took me days to explain everything to Lisabeth and Fenella, and even then I didn’t tell them everything. In fact, I told them as little as possible.
All they really wanted was reassuring that Veronica was safe and Stella was happy. No matter how many times I said they were, it took a phone call from Veronica promising to come and visit before they were satisfied.
I was actually in their flat when she rang. Fenella had gone to answer the communal phone and had yelled excitedly up the stairs for Lisabeth, who had gone lumbering to join her. Fenella insisted on giving me the gist of the conversation as it happened, repeating or paraphrasing everything and shouting up the stairs.
‘It’s Veronica, Angel. She says the phone’s been reconnected.’
I let that one go as a lesson in the blindingly obvious.
‘Angel! She says she’s going to stay on as a detective. Isn’t that exciting?’
‘Brilliant!’ I shouted back. ‘Tell her that is absolutely brill.’
Out of boredom, I wandered into their kitchen.
‘She says Albert has offered to sell her the business and the lease on the office,’ shouted Fenella. ‘That’s nice of him, isn’t it?’
‘A most pleasant surprise,’ I said drily, though not so she could hear. ‘He’ll be giving her his files next.’
‘And he’s handed over all his case files.’
‘My, my. Good old Albert.’
I was playing with the wall-mounted scales they had fixed near their cooker. A half-litre, square glass bottle of Virgin Olive Oil weighed in at just over two pounds.
I hefted it like Lisabeth had hefted it against Connie’s boxing disciple Julian, and made a mental note never to be left alone in a kitchen with her.
Then I had to go over everything again for Miranda’s benefit, but at least she and Doogie had the good grace to invite me to dinner to do it.
I took along a couple of bottles of New Zealand Chardonnay to break the ice, which turned out to be a good choice as Doogie had liberated half a salmon from the hotel where he worked and had poached it with a lemon and dill sauce.
‘So what happens now?’ Miranda asked after I had sung for my supper.
‘Nothing,’ I said, pouring the last of the wine.
‘Nothing? What about Carrick’s body?’
‘That’s up to his father.’
‘It’s for the best that he decides,’ said Doogie. ‘It’s up to him what he can live with.’
‘And what about Stella’s father? He ripped her off.’
‘And I suppose he’s paying for it,’ I said, looking to Doogie for support.
‘Aye, that one can look after herself,’ nodded Doogie.
‘I just knew you’d say that.’ She slammed plates together in a pile. ‘I’ll get the dessert. Do you like white chocolate mousse, Angel?’
‘Love it.’
‘I thought it was supposed to be a bit naff these days.’
She flounced out without looking at Doogie.
‘Sorry about that,’ I hissed at him.
‘Ach, man, never mind her. Listen, I want to ask you something. That stuff you got from Crimson’s mum ... The fish drug.’
‘The anaesthetic?’
‘That’s the substance. Still got it?’
‘Yeah, as a matter of fact I have.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Why?’
‘Well, you see, I’ve got this cousin back home in Scotland who lives right next door to this salmon farm and ...’
About two months later I found myself up west near Shepherd’s Bush Green. In fact, I had just been for a lunchtime drink with Crimson, who had unfortunately left behind a packet of white powder in the pub. All I had done was put it into a large envelope and post it to just west of Inverness.
‘I don’t want to know,’ Crimson had said.
Which was fine by me. Keep it confidential, that was the way. I didn’t even tell him that Springsteen really appreciated the end product.
Just for the hell of it, I drove round by Albert’s office. The door Dod had put in was still there, but there was a sign on it, a printed sign, about a foot square.
I pulled over and parked, then strolled back to take a look. It read:
RUDGARD and BLUGDEN
Confidential Enquiries
R & B Investigations, eh? Not bad, I thought, not bad. There was a push button intercom on the door frame. I pressed and held, and when a disembodied voice said ‘Hello?’, I said: ‘It’s Angel. Just a social call.’
The door lock buzzed and I pushed it and looked up the stairs. The stairwell had been painted bright white. It looked bare, but at least it was light and clean.
‘Estelle is out at a meeting and our new operative is out on a job. Will I do?’
It was Veronica’s voice, but I wasn’t sure that the figure at the top of the stairs was Veronica.
She had lost about 15 or 16 pounds and looked well on it. She had had her hair cut short and back off her face and had new glasses, with round, black Armani frames. She was wearing a black suit, the skirt knee-length, with a silky black scoop-neck top, black stockings and black patent shoes with an inch heel. She wore a single piece of jewellery, a sliver brooch in the shape of a sprig of flowers, on the lapel of her jacket.
‘I was just passing,’ I said. ‘Saw the sign on the door and rang the bell. Throw me out if you’re busy.’
She made a play of looking at her watch.
‘No, that’s okay. Come into the office.’
I followed her in and she walked around a new, black tubular steel desk and sat down. The office had been painted white too, and the furniture and chairs were black.
‘You seem to be doing well,’ I said chattily. ‘Business good?’
‘We can’t complain. Did you want to see Estelle?’
‘No, no, really,’ I protested, ‘I was just passing your door, that’s all. Thought I’d drop in.’
‘Ah yes, the door,’ she said businesslike. ‘We still owe you for that.’
‘That wasn’t …’
‘It’s not a problem,’ she said, reaching into the top drawer of the desk. She produced a cheque drawn on a joint account and signed by both of them. There was no payee name and no date on it. The sum payable was £40.
‘We didn’t know what name you used for the bank. Do you have a bank?’ she asked calmly.
‘The door cost £120, I seem to remember,’ I said.
‘Yes, but you lost a pair of Estelle’s shoes, remember? They were very expensive to replace.’
‘I’ll bet they were.’
I decided not to argue and folded the cheque into the breast pocket of my shirt.
‘So things are working out?’ I tried.
‘We are on course for our first six-month business plan, yes. We’re small but we can grow.’
‘And you have a new operative, did you say?’
‘That’s right. A Mrs Delacourt. She knows you.’
‘What? Crimson’s mum? A detective? Get out of here.’
She gave me a glassy stare.
‘And why not? We’ve placed her in an office, in charge of the cleaning staff. She’s uncovered two petty-cash fiddles and a software theft in the first week. She’s perfect in that situation.’
‘But she’s so ... so ... she’s not, with the best will in the world, she’s not …’
‘What? Streetwise? Like you? That’s your trouble, Angel,’ she said, gazing out of the window. ‘You can’t envisage people in jobs, in offices, on buses, stealing stamps, embezzling their employers, lying and cheating on a daily basis. That’s the world we’re going to get our business from. That’s where crime is; that’s where we’re needed.’
She finished her pitch. For a moment, I thought she was going to ask me to invest in the business.
‘But you don’t know that world, Angel. That’s your trouble. You really should get out less.’