Curtain Call (30 page)

AT THE POLICE
station on Marylebone Road they kept her waiting longer than they had the first time. The wooden bench was hardly comfortable, so Nina stood and smoked, monitoring the door behind the staff sergeant's desk as it opened and closed. Impassive constables would stroll through the waiting hall, her presence seemingly invisible to them. To pass the time she gazed at notices of missing persons, describing what this or that one was wearing at the time they disappeared. The more she read about these people, the more convinced she was they weren't coming back. They didn't really sound like requests for information. They sounded like obituaries.

Nearly an hour had gone by when she saw him appear round the door, the gaunt-faced police officer who had interviewed her that morning, weeks ago. He had the grey pallor of a man who spent a lot of time in cramped, smoke-kippered rooms.

He reintroduced himself as Detective Inspector Cullis. ‘Please come through.' It was just as well she hadn't been expecting an apology.

They settled in a narrow room of institutional grey-green brick. The door clanged shut behind them. A weak light spilled through the high window, striped with three bars.

‘Are we in a cell?' Nina asked, not quite joking.

Cullis's mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile. ‘Interview room. The heating's packed up, I'm afraid,' he said, glancing at the dusty ancient radiator. On the table between them he had put down a packet of Player's and a buff-coloured file. A pewter ashtray squatted at the edge. ‘Smoke?' he said, offering her one, with a light.

‘I suppose you're curious to know why I've come back,' she began.

There was nothing in Cullis's expression to suggest he had been harbouring any curiosity about her at all. She took his silence as an invitation to continue. ‘I was wondering – about the Tiepin Killer – are you any closer to, um, cracking the case?' The slang phrase didn't sound quite right to her ears, or to Cullis's, to judge from the little pause he left before speaking.

‘The investigation is continuing. We're pursuing various lines of inquiry.'

‘I see,' said Nina, giving her best grave nod. ‘You still have my sketch of the man's face?'

The detective inspector looked at her. Then he opened the file and removed Stephen's drawing, placing it between them on the table. The way he turned the picture around to face her felt unsettling, as though it were somehow a piece of evidence that incriminated her. Nina glanced at it, then took a deep breath.

‘Inspector, there's something I should tell you, something I didn't know about when I gave my original statement. The man I saw in the hotel room – this man – I think I've given a mistaken impression of him.'

Cullis narrowed his eyes. ‘Mistaken – in what way?'

She had his interest now at least. ‘I think the man wears a wig.'

‘You
think
he wears one . . . So you saw a wig in the room?'

‘No, I didn't. But I know someone who did – the woman he was there with, that afternoon. It so happened our paths crossed again. Of course we talked about –'

‘Wait a minute. By “the woman he was there with”, you mean the woman he tried to strangle?'

‘Yes. And she said that the whole time they were together he was wearing the wig. It must have slipped while they were struggling, because by the time I came in he'd taken it off.'

‘Who is this woman? Why has she not come forward?'

‘Well, for one thing, she hadn't seen the sketch of his face in the paper. And for another, she doesn't like dealing with the police. She's . . . on the streets.'

Cullis lifted his chin, unsurprised. ‘So when you happened to meet again . . .'

‘I showed her this sketch. And she said that he'd – that I'd got it wrong. By drawing a bald-headed man.'

The policeman's expression suddenly changed, and Nina held her breath. She'd slipped up, and hoped he hadn't noticed.

‘Why did you just say “he'd”? Just then, when you mentioned the sketch, you were going to say “
he'd
got it wrong”. Why?'

Nina tried to look nonchalant. ‘A slip of the tongue. I meant to say “I'd got it wrong”. A mistake.'

But Cullis was on the scent. ‘It
was
a mistake. You meant to hide something but ended up telling – or nearly telling – the truth.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘Ah but you do, Miss Land. The moment I saw you holding that pencil in your right hand I knew the sketch wasn't yours. The artist –
he
– is evidently left-handed. Now why don't you tell me who he is.'

Nina, inwardly panicking, shook her head. ‘You're barking up the wrong tree, Inspector. The sketch is mine. Why should I pretend otherwise?'

‘Because you want to protect his identity.'

‘You're quite wrong.'

Cullis's expression had become almost pitying. ‘Very well. I didn't want to embarrass you, but you force me to prove a point.' He opened the file again and took out a fresh sheet of paper. From his pocket he produced a pencil, and pushed them both across the desk to Nina. ‘There are your materials. Let's see what you can do.'

Nina felt a hollowing in her stomach. ‘What's this?'

He splayed his palms. ‘You claim to be able to draw. Sketch
my
face.'

‘You're not serious?'

‘On the contrary. I need to verify the authenticity of this drawing, as part of a murder investigation. So I could hardly be more serious.'

Nina stared at him. She picked up the pencil and tapped it on the piece of paper, as blank and formidable as Everest. Why prolong the charade? He had rumbled her, and she must face a horrible humiliation. After a long pause she set it down again, without comment, her gaze averted.

Cullis allowed a moment for her mute admission to settle. Then he said, ‘Just to be clear – did you see this man's face at all?'

‘Yes, I did.'

‘So who made this sketch?'

‘A friend. He doesn't want to be named.'

‘He was there with you?'

‘Yes, but he didn't see the man. It was later, two days later, when my – my friend – suggested I describe the man's face to him, and he drew it.' She nodded at the sketch of the Tiepin Killer. ‘We were trying to be helpful.'

‘By that you mean giving the police an unreliable picture of a man you thought might be a killer – drawn by someone who wasn't even there.'

‘It didn't seem –'

‘And now you've decided that your portrait was mistaken, that the man in question may be wearing a wig.' His coldly sceptical tone made her wince.

‘I'm sorry,' she said quietly. She couldn't meet his eye.

‘We need to bring the girl in, the prostitute. Who is she?'

‘I don't know. I've met her twice.'

‘You have a name – an address?'

Nina swallowed hard. ‘Madeleine. That's all I know of her. I've no idea where she lives.'

‘Miss Land. If you're withholding information you could be in trouble. You've heard of obstructing the course of justice?'

Now she did look at him. ‘I'd tell you if I knew. But I don't.'

An eternity seemed to pass before Cullis turned his gaze from her. Cigarette smoke hung like a pall between them. With a dissatisfied air he replaced the sketch in the file. ‘I hope for your sake this hasn't backfired. If flawed evidence has allowed a killer to remain at large, well, you would have it on your conscience.'

He stood up and went to open the door. The interview was over.

Stephen loved the view from the upper window of Simpson's-in-the-Strand. You were so near to the street you could see right into the top decks of buses heaving along towards Trafalgar Square. He had just been watching, as in a silent comedy, a man on the number 9 sneeze into his handkerchief and then examine the contents with a satisfied air. Charming! He had not been in the restaurant for many a year, and was amused to discover that it hadn't changed a jot. They still wheeled in huge sides of mutton and beef on a gleaming silver trolley, and they still didn't admit women to the panelled dining room downstairs. He felt pretty sure that even the wizened waiter who had brought him his Martini was the same fellow he had tipped back in 1921, or whenever it was.
Change and decay in all around I see
. . . – all except at Simpson's.

Of course he wouldn't have been here in normal circumstances, he would have had lunch at the Nines, as he did most days. But circumstances were very far from normal. Ever since Ludo had warned him about his association with Gerald Carmody he had conceived an aura of guilt around himself. The photograph of him shaking hands with Carmody was like a leper's bell, warning people of his contagion. He couldn't be certain, but he sensed himself being talked about at the club; voices suddenly lowered, glances averted. He had worried over it last night with Nina, who insisted he was imagining things. ‘And anyway, it's not like you're a paid-up member of the blackshirts,' she said. ‘You happened to get caught with him in a photograph, that's all – it'll be forgotten by next week.'

Stephen appeared to have finished his Martini. He was about to order another when he spotted his guest looking about the room for him. Holding up his napkin he waved it in greeting.

‘Hullo, Dad,' he said, impressed and somewhat mystified by the old man's sprightly bearing. His father, at sixty-eight, showed every sign of intending to live forever.

‘Is that a flag of surrender?' said Mr Wyley drily, with a glance at Stephen's napkin. His tone was deep and uncracked.

Stephen smiled, returning the linen to his lap, and considered his father as he settled into his chair. He was dressed in one of the plain worsted suits he used to wear during his time as a chartered surveyor in the City, and anyone looking at him might have assumed he had just trotted along from the office. His air of beady detachment had been refined through army service, first in South Africa, later as a decorated officer in Belgium, where ‘Old Fox' had become his inevitable epithet. Stephen's respect for him was intensified by an awareness of his own paltry record in comparison – two years in the Cadets. Closer in temperament and sympathy to his artistic mother, he had for many years felt remote from a man already in middle age when he was a boy. More recently he had made an effort to know his father a little better, wondering if he might absorb a strain of natural shrewdness from the Old Fox.

Mr Wyley was surveying the room with a bemused tolerance. ‘Haven't been in this place for years. That waiter looks old enough to have fought at Rorke's Drift.'

‘He was prompt with my drink, all the same.'

‘Good man . . . What was wrong with the club, by the way?'

‘Mm, I've – I'm in there all the time. Fancied a change.'

‘Still pegging away at the mural, I gather.'

Stephen nodded, wondering. ‘Who told you?'

‘Oh. Prob'ly someone at the Turf, I forget . . .' His voice trailed off in apology, and Stephen breathed silent relief. So his recent brush with notoriety was still contained. Not everyone read
The Times
. ‘But I haven't forgotten this,' continued Mr Wyley, producing from his breast pocket a folded piece of paper and handing it to Stephen. ‘Happy birthday, old chap.'

It was a cheque for £50, the same thing he gave him every year.

‘Oh, Dad,' said Stephen, in the half-grateful, half-reproving tone he adopted on being given anything. It was his mother who used to organise proper gifts – his gregarious, dark-eyed, life-loving mother. One year they had given him an antique easel, his first. It was still doing duty at the studio. She had died when he was in his final year at university, a time he would always recall as an incessant toing and froing on trains from Oxford to Paddington, thence by bus to his parents' home in Holland Park, each time his mother paler against the pillow, and thinner from the ravages within. By the end she looked like she was dying of starvation. He had met his father on the stairs one day carrying up to her a sandwich so dainty and meagre he must have looked stunned. ‘It's all she wants,' his father had explained, and Stephen had to hurry on lest he broke down right there. Even now he found himself saying things out-loud to her, as though she might be in the room with him.

‘It just occurs to me,' he said, ‘that Mum would have been sixty this year.'

His father nodded sadly. ‘I know. She should have died hereafter.'

It haunted Stephen to think that memory of her might vanish altogether. Like him, Ella Wyley was an only child, and her parents had died before Stephen was born. Once his father was gone he would be her last surviving relative. It was a terrible regret to him that he had never drawn her, or even photographed her. Apart from a picture taken on their wedding day, his father had barely anything to remind him of her face. And there was nothing at all from her childhood.

A waiter came to take their order, cutting short his melancholy rumination.

‘How's Cora?' asked his father.

‘Well. Very well. She sends love.'

‘And the children . . . Getting on at the
school
?'

It amused Stephen to hear Tipton referred to as if it were some notorious asylum. ‘I think Rowan is fine – he likes working with his hands. Freya wrote to me again the other week asking if she could be taken away.'

‘Ah.'

‘She sounded quite reasonable about it. Apparently it's not because she hates school but because she misses home.'

‘You should take it as a compliment. Maybe she thrives in your company.'

Stephen smiled gloomily. ‘I wouldn't mind, but Cora won't hear of it. She thinks that Tipton is going to draw out their creative genius.'

‘That's an optimistic idea of schooling.'