6

The street was a street in North London like any other. Two storey villa houses with small front gardens and stubby privet hedges. At intervals along the pavement there were plane trees, their broad, angular leaves spreading over your head as you walked. Outside number forty-seven was parked a black Humber Hawk, beside which a small girl was standing with a bucket almost as big as herself. She was about to wash down the car and it must have seemed to her like scaling Everest. Except that she was probably used to it.

Inside the windscreen a small card poked up with the same printing as the one I had found in bum-freezer’s pocket. Now I knew his name I should get out of the habit of calling him that. Not that it mattered any more.

A woman who could have been any age between twenty-five and fifty came to the door in carpet slippers and with a tatty print dressing gown pulled round her. I guessed that under that she was dressed all right, but I didn’t like to think about it for too long in case she wasn’t. Her hair looked as if the closest it had got to a hairdresser’s lately was on the other side of the road, walking fast and trying not to notice. I told her my name and she remembered it from my phone call. She asked me in and I walked past her into the hallway.

It was littered with children’s toys and old pieces of newspaper. I followed the trail into the small living room at the end of the hallway. Pushed open a door and found myself staring at four kids, all younger than the one who was washing the damned car. The youngest of all was sitting strapped into a push chair, head forward, asleep with a grubby dummy clutched in his mouth. Two curly-headed little girls who looked as if they were twins were intent upon covering each other with jam from fingers of bread which were on a piece of old newspaper on the table. A boy sat on the floor, doing nothing but whimper.

The woman knocked a couple of magazines off of a chair and asked me to sit down.

She lit a cigarette, looked glad when I refused one, offered me a cup of tea and when I said no to that also, poured herself one from a brown china pot on the table. The tea looked strong and stewed and it was probably the only thing which kept her going. That and waiting for her old man to come home with some money.

‘You said on the phone that you wanted to hire a car for a few days?’ The voice was wheedling, servile.

‘Yes, that’s right, Mrs Cook. Three, maybe four days. Would that be all right?’

She coughed and sipped at the tea. ‘Well, I suppose so. My husband’s still not been back, you see. Not since you phoned, like. But there’s nothing else down in the book.’

She opened a small red note book and put it back down again. Then another drink of tea, another drag at the cigarette.

‘Your husband’s out on a job, is he, Mrs Cook? A driving job, I suppose?’

‘No, not driving. We’ve only got the one car, you see. No, he went up West early this morning. I don’t know what for. Just said he had a job to do.’

‘You don’t know who gave him the job, Mrs Cook?’

‘No, I … here, you’re asking me a lot of questions. What do you want to know all that for? You said you wanted to hire a car.’ She stood up and went to the door. ‘I don’t believe you want to hire our car at all. You’re from the finance company, that’s what you are. Always sending people round to check up they are. Well, Jimmy told them last time—they’ll get all the payments that are owing at the end of the week. The man agreed, too. Now what are you here for? They can’t change their mind like that.’

She was holding on to the door now and was on the verge of breaking into tears. She clung to that wood as though it was the only thing that would support her. At any moment I was afraid she would be in hysterics and what I needed I needed fast before the police found out who that battered head had belonged to.

I got up and moved towards her; she backed up against the wall. I knew that if I didn’t move now I would get nothing from her at all. She would just close jam tight.

I caught hold of her by the shoulder. It was like catching hold of loosely covered bones. I felt her jump with fear and cower back even further.

‘Look, Mrs Cook, I’m not from the finance company. That I promise you. I want a little help and I’m prepared to pay for it.’ I let go of her shoulder and reached inside my coat for my wallet. At the sight of the notes I offered her she calmed and I went on.

‘This job your husband is out on—did someone come round here or was it a phone call?’

She spoke quietly but definitely. ‘Oh, no, no one came round. They phoned him up, whoever it was; course I don’t know who it was. Jimmy doesn’t bother me with the business side of things; I have the home and kids to look after, see.’

She looked past me round the little room as though all that justified her statement.

‘But think, Mrs Cook, have you any idea where the call came from? Any name? Would your husband have written it down anywhere?’

For an instant I saw the eyes go past me again, then flicker back to my face quickly. I looked round to where she had been staring. There on the table lay the red book. She must have realised how much I wanted the information and thought she could bargain for more cash. I didn’t have the time. I jumped for the table ahead of her bird-like hand.

There it was, entered neatly and carefully. Two-eighteen a.m. Nottingham. Howard. What could be more precise than that?

‘You’d remember this, Mrs Cook. A phone call in the middle of the night. That’s hardly normal for a car hire business, is it? Or were there often calls at that time about other kinds of business?’

I had hold of her arm again and this time I applied pressure; not too much, but just enough. I don’t enjoy hurting people, especially skinny women whose eyes are already full of tears. But I often don’t have the choice.

My fingers went harder into the edges of the bone.

‘He … he said “Bloody Nottingham again”, that was all. I don’t know who it is, but I think it’s someone Jimmy met when he was driving vans for some jazz band or other. That’s all I know, honest.’

Her weight went out of her arm. She slumped back into her chair and the tears coursed down her lined cheeks. I took out another two notes and put them on the top of her dressing gown, near her hand.

‘That’s for keeping quiet about me being here and asking questions.’

I didn’t know if it would buy her silence and I suppose that I didn’t much care. I stood in the doorway and looked round the room: the two girls had given up smearing themselves with jam and were sucking on the fingers of bread; the baby was still asleep; the boy on the floor had started to whimper more loudly and was trying to catch hold of the bottom of his mother’s dressing gown. I closed the door quietly and went out into the street.

The girl was wiping away at the side of the car nearest to the traffic, oblivious to any dangers. I gave her a quick smile and turned up the road: she didn’t appear to notice and if she did she didn’t smile back. Why should she?

I surfaced from the underground at Leicester Square and walked through into Wardour Street. I thought maybe I’d call in at the arcade and see if Maxie had anything for me yet. But he had said tomorrow, so I didn’t bother.

The building I was looking for was encased in smoked glass for the first two floors and this was centred by a large embossed coloured dragon. The entrance was to one side. A uniformed commissionaire sat behind a desk in the foyer reading a newspaper. He didn’t look up as I came in. To the left there was a smoked glass door, with a smaller dragon. I pushed it open and went through into a large carpeted room. Marooned in the middle of this, a blonde in a bright red dress was seated behind a white desk looking as though she were waiting for someone to throw her a lifebelt. I waded across the carpet.

‘I’d like to see Candi’s recording manager.’ I paused, looked her full in her pretty blue eyes and smiled. ‘Please.’

‘You’d like to see Candi’s recording manager?’

Why was it that everyone repeated my questions at me as though I asked the stupidest questions in the world? Perhaps it was because I asked the stupidest questions in the world. Perhaps I needed to go for diction lessons.

I smiled once again and said please. Once again.

This time she smiled back. It was a nice smile, showing nice white, even teeth and causing a dimple to appear beside her mouth at the right hand side. It said that she was really a nice young girl who came in to work every day from the suburbs; a girl who once upon a time had thought that being a receptionist for a record company was a big deal, but who now knew that it was not. But while they were paying her dress bills she would pretend it still was. Sort of. That was what her smile said to me, anyhow. I supposed it said different things to different people in different places. I was wondering what things it might say to me somewhere different.

‘You’re sure you don’t want to see someone else?’

The smile was slightly coquettish now. I wished I had time, but I didn’t.

‘You have read the paper I suppose?’

I told her that I had but that I supposed Candi’s manager would still exist. Someone had to push all that posthumous product on to the market.

‘Then you want Patrick Gordon-Brown. I’ll buzz him for you.’

She smiled again and crossed her legs underneath her red dress. I heard the slight swish of material as she did so. She followed my stare and grinned.

‘That is Gordon-Brown with a hyphen?’

I didn’t care if he spelt it with a semi-quaver in the middle but I felt that I needed to say something and right at that moment that was all I could think of. Well, almost all and the rest didn’t bear saying. Not right there, anyway.

She went on looking efficient and happy: which I suppose she was. Someone had to be.

‘There’s no answer, I’m afraid. Perhaps he’s not back from lunch yet.’

‘Not back from lunch?’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’s almost time for dinner.’

‘Well, he did have a business lunch, I know, and sometimes these things just seem to go on and on.’ She almost giggled. ‘I don’t know what they find to talk about.’

The giggle did it. There was something about a lovely blonde who spent her days giggling from the splendid isolation of a marooned desk that I could not resist.

‘What time do you have lunch? That is if you don’t mind having lunch with old men.’

‘You’re not old and I wonder why it took you so long to ask and usually from one to two but you’d better phone first. The number’s here on the card.’

And she handed me a small orange card with a dragon logo and an address and phone number. I made my way towards the door.

‘What’s your name, by the way. I’d hate to get hold of the wrong person.’

‘It’s Jane. Look: its printed here on this badge on my dress. You’ll never make a detective, that’s for sure. As a matter of interest, what do you do?’

I let the door swing to behind me. Keep-’em-guessing-Mitchell, that’s what they call me. Sometimes.

It was too late to go to the office and I didn’t want to face the mess anyway. I went home instead.

I hadn’t opened the bottle when the phone rang. It was Vonnie. She wanted to know what I’d been doing. I told her I had been having a lovely time being hit on the head. She asked if I had found out about her sister’s murder. I told her that I hadn’t. She said good-bye and rang off. Ten pounds down her particular drain.

No sooner had I put some scotch into the tumbler than the phone rang again. I let it ring and drank the whisky down. That was the way I was feeling.

It was a voice I didn’t know; quiet and cultured and with a distinct sound of breeding and money. Not the kind of voice that I conferred with often.

‘Mr Mitchell?’

I told him it was, indeed, Mr Mitchell’s residence and that Mr Mitchell himself was speaking.

‘I’m so glad. I telephoned your office and there was no reply. I did call several times actually, but there was no reply on any occasion. So I took the liberty of trying your home number. I hope that you don’t consider, that to be an awful impertinence?’

His tone suggested that of course I would not. Well, I did. I didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. At least not a stinking rich old Etonian who could buy me for the price of one of his pet dog’s dinners. But I didn’t say so. I didn’t say anything. So he went on.

‘I have a problem, Mr Mitchell. A personal problem and one which I believe you may be able to assist me to solve.’

‘I’m not a social worker, or a psychologist, you know, I’m …’

‘I know just what you are, Mr Mitchell. You are a private detective. And by repute a reliable one or I should not be calling you. Now do you think you can help me? You see, my daughter is missing.’

I thought for a moment.

‘Well,’ I hesitated, ‘ordinarily that sounds the kind of case I like, but as of now, I’m rather busy.’

‘Mr Mitchell, I will pay you two hundred pounds in advance, twenty pounds a day plus expenses and a bonus of another three hundred pounds when my daughter is found. Now I am sure that those fees are in excess of what you would normally expect and I am equally positive that you would be foolish to pass them by.’

I thought for another moment.

‘Will you come into my office tomorrow, Mr … ?’

‘It is Mr Thurley, with an “ey” at the end, and I would much rather that you came out tonight to see me. I’m frightfully tied up tomorrow and besides I would so much rather arrange the whole business as soon as possible.’

There was room for a slight questioning at the end of the phrase, but it was only slight. I asked for the address and got it. I said I would be there at nine. He said he would be delighted to see me. I was about to say ‘Super!’ when I heard the phone click.

The house was deep into the stockbroker belt and the cab drove slowly and almost reverentially over the semi-circular gravel drive. I paid him off and looked around. The house itself was bursting with black wooden beams which stood away from white plaster. Fake Tudor but expensively so. The windows were latticed and in several of them lights showed. The door was studded with the occasional knuckle of brass and sported a massive knocker in the shape of a dog’s head.

On either side of the house there were bushes and shrubs which seemed to go back some way into the darkness. The space in front of the drive was grassed over with the casual precision of a billiard table. At its centre was a bird bath which would have housed a family of Orientals with comfort.

I knocked on the door with the dog’s head. Melted down it would have fetched a good price at two or three scrap dealers I knew. I’d bear it in mind for leaner times.

The guy who answered the door wasn’t in full butler rig-out which came as a terrible shock and surprise. I mean, what are things coming to?

Instead it was a young man wearing a check sports jacket, an open-neck white shirt which had a scarf loosely knotted inside it, beige trousers and tan desert boots. He had longish hair which sprayed out behind his head and the centre of his face was dominated by a thick moustache. Either hired help was even more difficult to come by than I had been led to believe in my chats with my neighbours in the local launderette, or Mr Thurley was keeping strange company.

On the way through the doorway I handed the young man my coat and contrived to push my hand against the outside of his jacket. What was Mr Thurley doing with a companion who sported a pistol in a shoulder holster?

‘Mr Thurley said would you like to wait in the library? He’ll be down in a minute.’

I said yes and followed him into the spacious tomb-like room across the polished wooden hallway. He closed the door silently behind him—very quiet and well-mannered, I thought, not your average, run-of-the-mill punk—and left me surrounded by shelves and shelves of books. From floor to ceiling they rose up all around me. Leather-bound for the most part, leather-bound and unread. Just part of the decor. Probably bought as a job-lot and by the shelf-length rather than the title.

I was browsing along the nearest line and being uncertain why they rang little bells deep inside my head when the door opened and the proud owner came in.

He was taller than I had imagined from his voice, taller and altogether stronger. Forty-five to fifty, six foot and pretty fit by the stance and the suggestion of muscles underneath his clothes.

‘Mr Mitchell.’ He stepped forward, hand outstretched. I took it and met his grasp. It was strong and firm, yet the hand itself was oddly smooth. He clapped me on the shoulder and offered me a drink.

A push into a section of the shelving sent back a number of false-fronted volumes and revealed a small but well-stocked bar. I chose a Bells and ice and we adjourned to the leather reading chairs in the centre of the room. They had the air of being little used and the leather seemed to sigh a slight cry of surprise and complaint when I slid down into it. I sipped at my large whisky and waited.

Thurley drank some of his gin and tonic then took a photograph from his pocket and passed it across to me. It was a polaroid picture of a girl of sixteen or seventeen: short dark hair, oval face with high cheekbones and rather strange, staring eyes which seemed to belong in another face. Perhaps when that photo was taken they did.

‘That’s my daughter. Buffy.’

I nodded. ‘Is this the only photograph you have?’

‘The only one that is in any way recent. That was taken a month or so ago at a party we had here for her sixteenth birthday. No, wait, it must have been longer than that. It was before she went back to school—she’s at boarding school, you know. That is, she should be. I have no idea where she is. Except that I presume she’s somewhere in London. That’s where they usually go, isn’t it?’

Again I nodded my head. The nice thing about people like Thurley was that they assumed no one else had the brains to hold a conversation except themselves. It made for a restful time.

‘I got a letter from the school late in September saying that she had gone missing. Absconded. They wanted to know if she had come back here. Well, of course she hadn’t. Not even to collect her clothes, though she would have had some with her at the school, naturally.’

Naturally. Unless it was a school for incipient nudists.

‘Have you not heard from her at all, Mr Thurley?’

He shook his head.

‘And you have no idea where she might be?’

‘None at all.’

You have reported it to the police?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that was the first thing I did. But they had little to go on and apparently if nothing turns up in the first week or so then it’s pretty hopeless. It appears they haven’t got the chaps to look. Well, stands to reason, I suppose.’

‘Who did you talk to?’

‘The Inspector at the local station, I know him personally of course, and some fellow in town. Gilmour, I think it was. He was the chappie who referred me to yourself, actually.’

Good old Tom. I wonder if he would do the same thing right now?

Thurley looked across at me in what I assumed was meant to be his most earnest manner.

‘I want Buffy found, Mr Mitchell. As you know I am prepared to pay well. I think she is merely being silly and rebellious and that she will see the error of her ways and return. But there are some pretty unpleasant people about nowadays, so I believe, and I would hate for her to come into contact with any of them.’

There were more questions I wanted to ask, but he was standing up and offering me a large brown envelope.

‘In there you will find names and addresses of her closest friends, though they all appear to be as mystified by it all as I am myself. We have never quarrelled in our lives, my daughter and I, never since the day her mother left us.’ He flicked at a non-existent speck on his immaculate cuff. ‘There is also a cheque for three hundred pounds made out to yourself: that is your retainer and a week’s payment in advance. You will let me know about your expenses in due course. Thank you, Mr Mitchell, for being so prompt. I wish you every success in your enquiries, for both our sakes.’

I wondered if that was meant to sound as threatening as it did.

‘I believe you came by taxi. If you wish, John will drive you to the station or else he will ring for a cab for you.’

I thanked him and accepted the offer of a taxi. Chauffeurs who toted .38s I could do without.