Murdering Ministers (8 page)

But on colder, wetter days, Oliver would creep moodily from room to room of the Edwardes Square townhouse he shared with Geoffrey, Ben Motley, and Susie Beamish, looking for distractions. Ben, the owner of the house, had converted the top floor into his photographic studio, and had taken to pretending he had a client whenever he heard Oliver's footsteps on the landing. Since his subjects all wanted to be photographed at the height of sexual ecstasy, Ben had learned to be creative with his vocalizations, and Oliver had often gone back down the stairs wondering why so many of Ben's clients sounded like Darth Vader sucking helium when they got aroused. Sex mystified him, as he had once said to Effie, who didn't seem surprised by the comment. Although she had never complained either.

That Friday afternoon, Oliver was camped in the shared kitchen at Edwardes Square when the oven timer rang to tell him it was time to leave for Theydon Bois. He shut down his laptop with his new Railway Mice story (
The Railway Mice and the Vertically Challenged Vole
) barely started and his solitaire winnings at minus £3,000, grabbed the slice of frozen pizza that he had slid into the oven ten minutes earlier, and headed downstairs to his bedroom.

He was only dimly aware that something was wrong when he noticed that his door was standing wide open. It was normally his habit to close it while he was out. The room beyond looked odd too, misty and slightly out of focus, as if seen reflected in a dusty mirror. Oliver made a mental note to get his eyesight tested again, stepped through the doorway, and collided with nothingness.

Well, obviously not nothingness. It must have been something that brought him almost to a halt, squashing the pizza into his face and causing cheese and tomato sauce to cascade down his clean shirt. But he couldn't see it. It was almost as if the room had been filled with water and then deprived of gravity, so that he had walked into a vertical wall of something clear and slightly yielding.

Oliver dropped the pizza slice and snatched at the film that was now wrapping itself around his face and chest. Plastic wrap! Somebody had taken lengths of plastic kitchen wrap and stretched it tautly across the doorway, leaving Oliver to bounce off the transparent barrier like a sponge hitting a drum.

“Gotcha,” said a voice behind him, with a giggle.

“Geoffrey!” cried Oliver, trying to disentangle himself from the skeins of wrap, which were now bandaging his limbs so that he looked like an exhibitionist mummy. Geoffrey Angelwine's birdlike face emerged from the shadows, his beady eyes bright with amusement.

“You blithering moron!” Oliver exclaimed. “Look at my shirt! What do you think you're doing?”

“It was a practical joke.”

“What? This is no time for practical jokes!”

“When is?” Geoffrey asked innocently, pulling the wrap off his friend. “Did you know some people will pay good money to have this done to them?”

“Have you totally lost your mind?” muttered Oliver. “This is just—”

“—like something Finsbury would do,” Geoffrey interrupted. Oliver was not going to say that, but he knew that Geoffrey's habit of finishing other people's sentences was often a way of taking over a conversation, and he hoped it would lead to an explanation. Not that he had time for one.

“Exactly,” Geoffrey went on. “Finsbury would do that. Do you remember when we were at University, it was a good party joke to stretch kitchen wrap over the toilets and wait for someone to take a pee?”

“Yes, bloody hilarious.” Oliver screwed up the last of the wrap into a large, noisy ball and flung it at his friend. It stuck to his hand.

“So I simply applied the method to the whole body. You'll thank me for it.”

Oliver exhaled noisily. “Geoff, I'm startled, I'm stained, I nearly dropped my computer, and I'm going to be late now to see—”

“Your Uncle Tim's Bottom?” Geoffrey butted in, grinning. “I never get tired of that one.”

“To see Effie,” Oliver stated emphatically. “So I sincerely doubt I'm going to thank you for anything right now, unless you spontaneously combust. Now, I'm going to get cleaned up as quickly as possible. And if I find that you've cut the buttons off all my shirts and put that kind of soap in the bathroom that blackens your face, you are a deader man than you are already.”

“Just listen to my idea,” Geoffrey pleaded, trotting after Oliver. “We need to find spin-off ideas for Finsbury the Ferret, right? Hence my concept:
Finsbury the Ferret's Guide to Being Absolutely Beastly
. One hundred and one original and innovative ways to annoy your friends. I've just given you one, and I have lots of other suggestions.”

Oliver, who also had lots of suggestions at that moment, paused on the stairs up to the bathroom he shared with Geoffrey and Susie.

“Just a minute,” he said, turning angrily on his friend. “Now I see it all. It was you who turned off my computer screen yesterday. And you were the one who smeared shoe polish on the hallway telephone.”

Geoffrey smirked. “Good one, huh?”

“Good one?” Oliver exploded. “I've a good mind to—” He checked his watch and himself. “Geoffrey,” he continued firmly, “forget it. The answer is no. No, no, no! I'm sick of that bloody ferret. I only write the Railway Mice books because I'm contractually obligated. And I'm certainly not interested in thinking of ways to be absolutely beastly. Although if I were, trust me, you'd be the first to know about it.”

He disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door in Geoffrey's face.

“I'll take that as a ‘maybe,' then,” said Geoffrey, as he slunk down the stairs again to short-sheet Oliver's bed.

***

One of the advantages of having Effie Strongitharm as his girlfriend, Oliver reflected, is that she is instantly recognizable, even from the back and in a dim light. He had finally reached the Theydon Bois Underground station just one minute before curtain time for the opening night of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, but finding no minicabs in the station car park, he had to make a five-minute sprint across the frosty Green to the Theydon Bois Thespians' theater. The theater was one-quarter full for the opening night, which was a groundbreaking turn-out by the company's standards, but Oliver's Aunt Phoebe had elected to go to a later performance—assuming there would be one—since her aikido class was on Friday evening. This meant Effie would be sitting alone, and Oliver had no trouble making out her distinctive, bushy mass of curly hair, silhouetted against the stage lights in the front row. He had always been an enthusiastic ten minutes early for every meeting so far, and so he didn't know how she responded to being kept waiting. Knowing her reputation for imperiousness among her colleagues at Scotland Yard, he feared the worst. Perhaps, since the play had already started, she would have to hold her tongue until the interval. If he was unlucky, she'd hold his.

He waited until the stage cleared of goose-stepping fairies in storm-trooper uniforms, performing an unscripted entr'acte to a recording of Wagner, before he scurried down the aisle.

“I'm so sorry,” he whispered, sliding into the seat beside Effie.

“Are you all right?” she replied, her blue eyes showing concern. “I was just starting to get anxious.”

“Not cross?”

“Of course not.” She leaned over and kissed him beneath his ear. “Ollie, I know you wouldn't be late if you could help it. I was worried that something might have happened to you.”

Oliver sighed with relief. “That's what I love about you, Effie. You don't see this relationship as an opportunity to score points.”

“
That's
what you love about me?”

“Well, there's the hair, too.”

“I should think so.”

She patted down the springy coils while Oliver started to explain why he had been held up, but he broke off when the stage lights came up again and the Athenian mechanicals made their way onto the stage. They were all dressed in contemporary clothes, including Mallard as Bottom in a corduroy jacket with patched elbows, jeans, Reeboks, and, incongruously, a paisley ascot tucked into a gray silk shirt. He had removed his glasses, and makeup made him look younger. The actors pulled chairs into a semicircle at the front of the stage.

“Is all our company here?” began the actor playing Peter Quince. Mallard/Bottom lay back casually in his chair and flicked a disdainful finger at Quince.

“You were best to call them generally, man by man,” he said languidly, stifling a yawn, “according to the scrip.” Then he began to examine his fingernails.

Oliver was puzzled, and his puzzlement grew as the scene progressed. He was all prepared for a traditional bombastic Bottom, the coarse amateur actor who tried to grab every role for himself with little subtlety, pompously overacting his heart out. But Mallard was avoiding the humor, treating the lines as if they were perfectly serious, in contrast to the other performers, whose antics seemed merely to exasperate him. Bottom did not interrupt Quince because he wanted to play every part in “Pyramus and Thisbe.” His comments were the machinations of a world-weary, somewhat pretentious actor who really wanted to direct.

And yet, it was funny. At first the audience seemed as baffled as Oliver. But gradually they accepted the interpretation, starting with Bottom's demonstration of tyrannical acting, which was not emoted with the full force of Mallard's lungs but mumbled like a latter-day Marlon Brando. Titters were heard, followed by more sustained laughter. At the end of the scene, with Bottom's exhortation to “hold, or cut bowstrings,” followed by hugs all around, the audience was roaring. They clapped loudly as the scene ended, and by the interval, they were applauding Mallard's every entrance.

“So how's the Plumley Plod Squad?” Oliver asked Effie, while they drank stale, overpriced coffee from an urn at the back of the theater. “Did they welcome you with open arms and an honor guard of raised truncheons?”

Effie sniggered. “Something like that,” she said. “Detective Inspector Welkin now reminds me of Ozzy Osbourne.”

“Talking of resemblances, don't you think Uncle Tim's Bottom seems vaguely familiar?”

“It's a good job I know what you're talking about,” she remarked wryly. “However, while we have a moment, I'd actually like to pick your brains on a case.”

Oliver glowed inwardly. Six months earlier, she would have been eaten with resentment if Mallard had approached him for help. It's amazing how love can alter your perspective.

“Pick anything you like,” he caroled, instantly regretting the phrase. “What is it, a nice juicy murder?”

“No, it's a missing persons case. A thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.”

“Not guilty.”

“Nobody's guilty. Everything points to her being a runaway, not an abductee. But I think you may know her. When you were in Plumley last weekend, did you encounter a couple called the Quarterboys? They said they went to your friend's church, so I put two and two together.”

“Sam and Joan. Yes, I met them. Why?”

“It's their daughter, Christina, who's done a bunk. Did you meet her, too?”

“Yes…look, are you sure Tina's run away?”

“Well, her parents were convinced at first that she'd been kidnapped by Mormons, but it's clear she went off of her own free will. A bag is missing, some of her clothes, some food items from the kitchen. And she left a note to her mother, saying not to worry, although Joan was positive that it was written at gunpoint. But why were you doubtful?”

Oliver brushed his hair out of his eyes and tried to revisit his time with the Quarterboys the previous Sunday.

“Sam and Joan seemed to be remarkably strict in controlling what Tina could and couldn't do, Sam especially,” he told her. “I think young Tina has been brought up to believe that her number-one priority in life is to please her parents, never mind what she wants for herself.”

“Sounds like the perfect recipe for creating a runaway daughter.”

“I agree, but I didn't think Tina was quite mature enough for a teenage rebellion. Of course, all this is based on seeing her only for an hour or so. What have you been doing to find her?”

“I've been steeped in gore so long, thanks to Tim, that I'm a bit rusty on the standard procedure. Fortunately, my new partner, Tish Belfry, is fresh out of Police College and knows the drill. We've circulated the girl's description around the manor, checked the hospitals and shelters and bus stations, that sort of thing. I spent the day at her school, talking to teachers and school friends. Just in time—they broke up today for the Christmas holiday. The evening shift's taken over now, but I have to be back early tomorrow, so I'm afraid I'll have to drop you off at your flat tonight and then go home to Richmond. I may need to work the whole weekend. Sorry.”

Oliver nodded glumly. At least the Christmas break was nearly here. He would have to go to his parents' home in the country for the day itself, but surely he'd be able to snatch some time with Effie?

“Tell me a bit more about the church,” Effie said quickly.

Oliver briefed her on his two evenings with the Plumley Diaconalists, including the tension over Nigel Tapster's arrival. “And tonight is their big night,” he concluded. “The church meeting. Will the Exorcist of Plumley get a seat on the diaconate?”

“Do you think Tina might have run away to join Tapster's fledgling cult?”

“I doubt it. I recall her mother saying she'd been to a couple of the meetings, but Daddy Quarterboy put an end to those excursions when he heard about the weirder stuff. Tina seemed to have accepted her father's authority.”

“What about your friend, the eligible Reverend Paul Piltdown? Could he be eloping with the Lolitas of the parish?”

“Hardly. Officially, he's celibate, although it's not a job requirement. Between you and me, he's gay. He had to learn
something
at Cambridge. But I think Tina's very fond of him. Perhaps he may have some insight into what she's going through, if it's not betraying the confidence of the confessional or whatever they have in the Diaconalist Church. But didn't you meet him?”