Fatal Quest (26 page)

‘She
didn't
help me out,' Woodend protested. ‘There wasn't a single thing she told me that I didn't already know.'

‘Can you shut up, Charlie?' Joan asked. ‘Can you possibly bring yourself to keep that lip of yours buttoned for just a
few
minutes?'

‘I'll try,' Woodend promised.

‘So there I was, lyin' in bed, tryin' to think of some way that
I
could help you with the case,' Joan said. ‘An' then it came to me.'

‘
What
came to you?'

‘You've no idea where Pearl Jones was prior to the murder, have you?' Joan asked, answering his question with one of her own.

‘That's true,' Woodend admitted.

‘An' you've no idea why she was wearin' the dress she died in, which – by all accounts – was far too grown-up for her?'

‘No, I haven't. An' that dress is one of the things that's been really puzzlin' me,' Woodend agreed.

‘So why don't you simply find out who Pearl's best friend at school was, an' ask
her
about it?'

‘But is her best friend likely to know?' Woodend wondered.

Joan gave him a look of astonishment – a look which said she was truly amazed at the depths of his ignorance.

‘Will she know?' she repeated. ‘
Of course
she'll know. Girls don't keep secrets from their best friends. They tell them
everything
.'

The girl was walking towards the former Georgian palace which was now an expensive private school. She had pale blonde hair, blue eyes, and light freckles scattered liberally across her cheeks and nose. She carried a leather satchel in her right hand and a hockey stick in her left, and her legs, protruding from below the modest hemline of her navy blue skirt, were almost hockey-stick thin themselves.

She did not look like a particularly adventurous or forceful girl, but she did seem to be a nice one – and she was undoubtedly the
same
girl as the one in the photograph which had been given pride of place on Victoria Jones's sideboard.

When the big man in the hairy sports coat suddenly stepped into the centre of the pavement, effectively blocking her way, she did not show any signs of alarm. Instead, she smiled politely, yet distantly – as she'd probably been taught to – and said, ‘Can I help you, sir? Are you lost?'

Woodend held out his warrant card for her to inspect.

‘No, I'm not lost,' he said. ‘An' yes, I think you can help me.'

The smile froze on the girl's face, but her eyes began to dart around wildly. For a moment, it seemed as if she was about to do a runner, but then she took a deep breath and calmed down a little.

‘I can't think of anything that
I
could possibly have to say which might be of use to a policeman,' she told Woodend, in a voice which was relatively steady.

‘What's your name?' the sergeant asked.

‘My … my name?'

‘Yes.'

It's Rachael. Rachael Tompkinson.'

It would have to be something like that, Woodend thought. Just looking at her, it was obvious that she had not been born into a family which named its kids Maisie or Lil – or even Pearl.

‘You were Pearl Jones's best friend, weren't you, Rachael?' he asked.

The girl had clearly been expecting the question since the moment Woodend had shown her his warrant card, but even so, when he actually put it into words, it still succeeded in confusing her.

‘No, I …' she began. ‘We weren't exactly … what I mean to say is, we knew each other, of course …'

Yes?'

‘… but not
that
well.'

Woodend shook his head sadly. ‘You were her best friend – an' she was yours,' he said emphatically. ‘An' I'm sure that when she was alive, you promised each other that you'd stick together always, through thick an' thin. But now she's dead, an' since
she
can't do anythin' for
you
any more, you're perfectly willin' to betray her without a second's thought. Isn't that right?'

Rachael Tompkinson looked down at the pavement. ‘It's not as simple as that,' she muttered.

‘What are you afraid of?' Woodend wondered.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.'

‘You helped her to do somethin' that you both knew was wrong, didn't you? And now that she's dead, you're the only one who's left to be punished for it. So you've decided you'll do
whatever it takes
to avoid that punishment?'

‘You don't understand,' Rachael said. ‘I am being punished. I'm
constantly
being punished.'

‘How?'

‘I can't study. I can't eat. When I switch off the light at night, all I can see is her face – so I can't sleep, either.'

‘You feel guilty,' Woodend guessed.

‘Well,
of course
I feel guilty!'

‘Why?'

‘Because it's partly my fault. I should have tried to stop her – but instead I
encouraged
her.'

‘Tell me all about it,' Woodend said softly. ‘I promise you, you'll feel a lot better when you have.'

Behind them there was the sound of a bell ringing, and all the other girls who were heading in the same direction as Rachael immediately began to speed up.

‘I have to go now,' Rachael said.

‘We'll need to talk again – an' soon.'

The girl thought about it for a moment. ‘I've got a free period at ten o'clock. There's a cafe on the corner over there. If you want to … if you could …'

‘I'll be there,' Woodend promised.

In many other parts of the city, the cafes had simple names like Joe's or – if the owner was a little more fanciful – The Drop Inn. A large tea urn was considered the only essential piece of equipment in these places. It was kept in plain view behind the counter, where it hissed and spluttered incessantly, and when the tea was delivered to the table – and placed on the inevitable plastic tablecloth – it was in a thick brown mug.

Such an establishment would never have thrived in an area like this one. To be a success here, a cafe need pretensions – and the one that Woodend found himself in at ten o'clock that morning had them by the fistful.

It was called – for reasons of its own – The Longchamps, and a trellis, covered with artificial ivy, separated and masked the kitchen area from the part of the cafe used by customers.

Except that in this place they probably weren't even
called
customers, Woodend thought. In the Longchamps, they were probably referred to as
guests
or
patrons
.

Tea was served in a delicate china pot, by a lady who, though dressed up like an Edwardian maid, had probably never had to scrub a pan in her entire life. She did not smile at Woodend, as she had at her other customers – at her other
guests
– which he took to be a clear indication that while his business would be tolerated, it was not exactly welcome.

At five past ten, Rachael Tompkinson walked through the door. Though she was clearly concerned about the nature of the meeting she had arranged, she seemed perfectly at home in the location where it was about to take place.

This was her natural stamping ground, Woodend thought. She did not feel even the least bit awkward, though he most certainly did, and though – he was sure – her best friend Pearl would have done.

The smile on her face, as she sat down opposite him, managed somehow to combine uncertainty with resolution. She was a good kid caught up in a difficult situation but determined to do what was right, Woodend decided.

‘Tell me about Pearl,' he said.

‘She was the sweetest girl I ever met in my whole life,' Rachael replied. ‘I felt so drab and colourless next to her, but
she
certainly never tried to make me feel that way.'

‘That's not what I'm askin',' Woodend said softly.

‘I know it isn't,' Rachael admitted. ‘You want to know what happened to her that night, don't you?'

‘Yes.'

Rachael took hold of her left index finger with her right hand, and bent it back so far that she winced with the pain.

‘Steady, lass,' Woodend said.

The girl smiled again, grateful for his concern, then said, ‘Would you mind if I started at the beginning? It would be so much easier for me if I could do that.'

‘Start wherever you want to,' Woodend told her.

‘There was a lot of mystery in Pearl's life,' Rachael said. ‘In fact, it was absolutely
full
of it. She didn't know who her father was, she didn't know where her mum got her money from, and she didn't know who was paying her scholarship. But she
wanted
to know those things. It was
important
to her to find out!'

‘I'm sure it was,' Woodend said sympathetically.

‘She started searching around her house for clues that might help to answer her questions, but there weren't any.'

No, Woodend thought, there wouldn't have been. Mrs Jones had struck him as far too careful to leave clues like that lying around.

‘She was getting pretty desperate by that point,' Rachael continued, ‘so she decided that when her mum was talking to her friends from the church, she'd secretly listen in. I know that sounds awful, but …'

‘It doesn't sound awful at all,' Woodend assured her. ‘In fact, given the circumstances, it's perfectly understandable.'

‘That's what I told her,' Rachael said. ‘I wasn't sure I believed it myself, but I told her anyway, because she was my best friend.'

‘So she started eavesdroppin' on her mum,' Woodend said. ‘Did she
learn
anythin' from listenin' in to these conversations?'

‘Bits and pieces, here and there. None of the things she heard made much sense on its own, so then she tried to put them all together – it was a bit like doing a very complicated jigsaw puzzle.'

‘An' when she'd finished it, what did the picture look like?'

‘It didn't look like
anything
very much, because there were so many pieces still missing. But she was sure of a few things.'

‘An' what were they?'

‘That her father was still alive, that he lived somewhere in London, and that he … that he wasn't quite respectable.'

‘What exactly do you mean when you say he was not
quite respectable
? That he was some kind of crook?'

‘Yes, I suppose that
is
what I mean.'

‘Go on,' Woodend encouraged.

‘She wanted to meet him, even if he was a criminal, because he was still her father.'

‘Of course he was,' Woodend agreed.

‘So
I
said that if she really
did
want to find him, the best place to look would probably be in a nightclub.'

‘In a
what
?'

‘In a nightclub. That
is
where criminals hang out, isn't it?'

The words ‘hang out' did not come easily to her lips, Woodend thought. They were alien words, describing an alien environment about which she knew so very, very little.

‘But before she could go to a nightclub, she had to have the right kind of dress,' Rachael continued. ‘We both saved up our pocket money like fury, and in the end, we had enough to buy the dress. It was a very nice dress – a very
grown-up
dress. I would have looked so silly in it. But Pearl didn't. It made
her
look much older than she really was.'

They'd been
kids
, playing a
kids
' game which was just one step up from dolls and dolls' houses.

The only problem was that they'd chosen to play it in a rather unpleasant part of the
adult
world.

‘So how did it work, this search of yours?' Woodend asked.

‘We'd drawn up a list of the nightclubs which looked promising, and Pearl was visiting them, one by one.'

‘An' they let her in, did they?'

‘Oh yes! Remember, in that dress, she looked a lot older than she really was. Besides, she was a pretty girl – and you can never have
too many
pretty girls in a nightclub.' For the first time, Rachael looked questioningly at Woodend. ‘I'm surprised that as a policeman you didn't already know that.'

She had no concept of what a nightclub was actually like, Woodend thought – of the prostitutes and the pimps and the drug-peddlers who made up at least a third of the customers. She had seen a more glamorous version of what went on in the Hollywood films – a version in which even the gangsters were sanitized – and she had taken that as real.

‘What did Pearl do, once she was inside the club?' he asked.

‘She looked for her father, of course.'

‘An' how would she have known him, if she'd found him?'

‘He'd look a little like her, don't you think?' Rachael asked, as if that was obvious to her, and she was amazed it wasn't obvious to him.

‘Possibly,' Woodend said.

‘And she wasn't just doing it on her own, you know. She did have my help.'

‘You went in there with her?'

‘Gosh, no! They'd never have let me in. And anyway, I would have been far too frightened to
go
in, even if they had. But she had the camera with her, you see.'

‘Which camera?'

‘My father's. It's a very expensive one, actually.' Rachael looked down at the table. ‘I “borrowed” it.'

‘So she took pictures of all the men she thought might possibly be her dad. Didn't they object?'

‘No, because they didn't even know she was taking pictures of them. That's where she was clever.'

‘Clever? How?'

‘When she saw a man she thought might be her father, she'd go to the people at the table next to his and ask them if
they'd
mind if she took their photo.'