The Bad Samaritan (19 page)

“I see. And next day you heard of the murder?”

Yussef looked at him challengingly.

“'E is not a murderer. Is not possible. 'E is a
gentle
boy. But Signor Gabrielli, 'e think: better if neither of us is there, in case the police come, so 'e arrange a swap for me.”

“With someone who has got his papers? Right. Stanko had already taken off, I suppose. Was there anything else—anything you know about Stanko?”

The young man shook his head.

“His surname?”

“We didn't ask. It was better.”

“So you've nothing else to tell me?”

The boy came up close, wiping the tomato from his lips.

“Stanko is gentle. A good, gentle, peace-loving boy.”

“A gentle boy with skills in martial arts?”

“
Yes
. That is the point of martial hearts. They protect you. Like they are taught to women who 'ave not great strength so they can protect themselves.”

“And do you think Stanko was protecting himself last night?”

The boy looked down.

“I do not know. But if 'e attacked, 'e 'ad good cause. Terrible good cause.”

“F
ascinating evening?” Charlie asked Mike Oddie when they came in to work next morning.

“Wonderful,” said his boss. “Now I know what it's like to be drowned in paper.”

“So you know all about his cash flow, his assets and liabilities, his business plan and whatever.”

“I have an idea,” said Oddie cautiously. “That is if his papers are an honest record. It all seems above board, it all seems like a genuine service which fills a real need. Letters testify that he had expertise and contacts, used them intelligently . . .”

“But?”

“But why do I get the idea that I know everything about his business except the most important thing?” He paused to sort his ideas out. “The only obvious ‘but' is that I can't see from the records that it would have been all that profitable. Of course we
don't know that Mills had a lavish life style, his wife probably has plenty of money, and yet—”

“And yet what we know of Mills doesn't suggest he'd be content with a modestly successful business.”

“No, it doesn't,” agreed Oddie enthusiastically. “That's not my picture, anyway.”

“Was there anything to suggest other activities—any other source of income?”

“Well, only something very small, something I very nearly didn't pick up: there were a couple of references in business letters to ‘number 94.' ” He frowned, trying to be as exact as possible. “Quoting from memory they were: ‘This is straying in the direction of number 94 matters' and ‘I'll leave the unfinished number 94 business until I see you at Rotary.' Not a lot to go on.”

“You don't want to ask the people who wrote the letters?”

“Certainly not now. I may have to as a last resort. If we assume it's an address, and if we start on the idea that it's in the Abbingley area of Leeds, there aren't a great many roads that go up as high as number 94.”

“You could try a camera shop called Snaps,” said Charlie reaching across the desk for the telephone directory.

“Why there?”

“It's to a flat above that he took Janet Sheffield. She saw it as a love nest, but it could have had a business side as well. Yes—here we are: Snaps, 94 Ilkley Road.”

Oddie rubbed his hands.

“Right! Got it in one! Let's hear about your evening before we do anything more.”

When he had heard Charlie's account of the two interviews, Oddie said: “What do you make of Stanko coming down at half past five in a foul mood?”

“I'm kicking myself I didn't ask Yussef what there was
upstairs,” Charlie admitted. “Was there a telephone? A television? Somehow or other he'd heard something that enraged him. That's how I read it, anyway.”

“Why not ring Gabrielli at Pizza Pronto?”

Charlie leafed through the book and did just that. Luckily he found him in, taking in supplies. He also found him terribly and earnestly anxious to help the police. Charlie managed the conversation without even mentioning Stanko, and when he put the phone down he said: “Television but not telephone. If they needed to ring anyone they had to use the phone in the takeaway.”

“So this ‘Yussef' had been downstairs preparing for the evening trade, while Stanko was upstairs. It's a fair bet he wasn't watching
Neighbours
or
Home and Away
.”

“It was Saturday, remember. The likely thing is the BBC news, which is generally just after five.”

Oddie nodded.

“In his situation, coming from Yugoslavia, watching the news would be pretty obsessive, I'd guess. Get on to BBC North and see if you can get a video, and if not get on to Television Centre in London. I'll see about getting a warrant to search the flat above Snaps. Do you want to come along with me? Or have you got things to do on your own?”

As Oddie knew he would, Charlie said he had one or two things he'd like to do on his own, follow-up things. Charlie believed in hunting solo whenever possible. His first port of call was a shop called Flowers First. It was on University Road, and the name meant (as its proprietor Florrie Harridance would explain when asked or if unasked) that if couples had had a tiff they should buy flowers first and have the explanations afterwards. This certainly made commercial sense, and perhaps psychological sense as well. Whether the university people who
largely lived in the Abbingley area were particularly liable to tiffs and makeups she did not say, but there were no signs of the shop being other than a viable financial concern when he dropped in there, other than the fact that there were no customers, which on a Monday morning was hardly surprising.

“We've not met, but we've spoken on the telephone,” said Mrs Harridance, coming weightily forward like an aircraft carrier doing a manoeuvre in shallow water. “And I've caught a loook at you as you've gone past in the police car.”

“I stand out,” agreed Charlie.

“You do. Footballers you expect, and pop stars and newsreaders and drug traffickers, but black policemen you notice, and you're the first that's come my way. Not that I have a lot to do with the police, though I've supplied flowers to funerals you've had an interest in, that's for sure.”

Charlie murmured his interest.

“Well, it's the Mills murder you'll be wanting to talk about, won't you? Well, like I say, I'm not one to get involved with the police, and at St Saviour's—”

“Questions,” said Charlie forcefully. “And answers.”

“I beg your pardon, young man?”

“Questions and answers. I don't want to
talk about
anything. I want to ask questions, and get answers from you. Short and direct answers, please. Right?”

Florrie looked daggers, but nodded.

“Why was there all this fuss about Mrs Sheffield and the Mothers' Union?”

Florrie swallowed. Her answer, when it came, was more a protest against his demand for brevity than compliance with it.

“She lost her faith. The Mothers' Union is a church organisation. Everyone felt it wasn't right her holding office.”

“I see,” said Charlie carefully. “I can see that loss of faith
would be fatal for a clergyman, but for his wife? You say ‘everyone,' but I haven't come across a great deal of opposition to Mrs Sheffield as yet.”

“Well of course it's not
personal
. It's a matter of principle. I mean we're all sorry for her (though I think she could make an
effort
to get it back) but when she's one of the officials of the organisation, and it's the main women's group in the parish—”

“Short,” said Charlie. “Short answers. I get your point. But I'm not convinced it hasn't been a question of other people wanting to take over her job.”

“You're trying to make it sound unpleasant, young man, but you'll not rile me. I'm made of sterner stuff. People who do jobs like chairing the Mothers' Union get no thanks for it, and no financial rewards either—not like the Masons and Rotarians. All you get is hard work from morning to night. So just because some people in the parish desperately wanted me to take over the chair, I'll not have you saying—”

“Right, well let's change the subject a bit. I gather that at some stage the matter developed into gossip about Mrs Sheffield's private life. Were you responsible for that?”

“I was
not
. Quite the reverse, young man, if you did but know. Not that I need to justify myself to you, but when Selena came to me with what she'd heard people saying in that guesthouse in Scarborough, I said ‘Hold on,' I said. ‘It's all very flimsy,' I said, ‘and the last thing we'd want people saying about us is that we'd been spreading malicious gossip, and it could rebound on us,' I said—”

“Us?”

“Well—” She was caught up short. Charlie was sorry he had tried to insist on short answers, because she obviously gave more away when given her rein. “Well, I meant those of us who thought it was time for a change, and time for those who'd been
occupying all these positions for years to step aside and let others have the chance.”

Charlie was a mite puzzled by this, because there was a ring of truth about what she said, and an atom of shrewdness. There had always been, he suspected, a good chance that sexual scandal about the vicar's wife, if ill-substantiated, would rebound on the scandalmonger. Apparently Mrs Harridance had recognised this.

“And yet the scandal did get around,” he pointed out.

“Well eventually it did, yes. Don't ask me how. People only started gossiping later, more than a week after Selena got home from Scarborough, and it wasn't with my agreement, because I'd told her right away I thought it was wrong and silly. But then maybe she'd been talking to someone else, getting other advice—”

“Such as?”

A cunning look came into her bulging eyes.

“You'd better ask her that. I wouldn't know anything about Selena's private life. We're different generations. Manners are different these days, to say nothing of morals. Any road, she found she had to go round afterwards and take it all back, so it rebounded on us, like I said it would. I'm disappointed in Selena. Whoever gave her the advice, you couldn't say it was
good
advice, could you? Now what you'd best do, young man, and I'm sure you don't want my advice but you could do worse than take it, is go round to Selena's and ask her what and who—”

“That's exactly what I'll do,” said Charlie and turned and got out of the shop.

As he drove to Selena Meadowes's house he was turning over in his mind two thoughts: if Florrie Harridance was to be believed, she and Selena had rejected using the Rosemary-Stanko story against her, believing it might do them harm rather than good. But later something had changed Selena's mind and she had gone ahead and used it. Secondly, Florrie knew, or had a good idea, what
or who that was, but she wanted it to come from her lieutenant, especially since she felt let down by her. If these propositions were correct, they could be useful.

Selena Meadowes's reception of him was very different from Florrie Harridance's. The moment she opened the door to him her manner was winsomely welcoming to the point of flirtatiousness. She made no bones about the fact that she knew who he was, though Charlie had no idea which of his various activities of the day before she had watched him at. Perhaps the mere fact that he was black made her land on the right assumption. In any case she led him through to the sitting room and prepared—or so it seemed, and Charlie reserved judgment on that—almost enthusiastically to be grilled.

“Though to be honest I can't tell you much,” she said, turning her full face and and smiling a Doris Day smile, “because I wasn't that close to the Encounter.”

“Encounter?”

“Between the boy from the pizza place and Stephen Mills of course!” she said, as if talking to a child. “That's what everyone is talking about, isn't it? I could see there was
some
thing—I mean, I could feel the tension, almost
see
the electricity in the air—but I was too far away to know what was going on. Luckily Derek was near.”

“Is that your husband? I'll have to talk to him.”

“Oh, he'll be
thrilled
. He says the moment Silvio saw Mills—he was on his way round to help dish out the pizzas—he was thunderstruck. Flabbergasted. Obviously there was
some
thing in that boy's past—something criminal Derek thought—that he had thought was hidden forever, and there was Stephen Mills who knew all about it.”

“That's how it struck him, did it?”

“Oh, I think it struck everyone like that.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows.

“Because it could be exactly the other way round, couldn't it? Something criminal or disgraceful in Mills's past that the boy knew about.”

She screwed up her English rose forehead.

“But why would he be thunderstruck?”

“Because he, or people close to him, had been affected by whatever criminal or disgraceful thing it was.”

“Oh, I don't think that's very convincing. I don't want to teach you your job, but I mean, we've known Stephen at St Saviour's for
yonks
. And the boy is quite young.”

“What about something disgraceful in his
present
life?”

“I don't think so,” she said obstinately. “We know him.”

She tried to give it a Lady Bracknell-like imprimatur of respectability.

“So what does your husband say happened then?”

“Silvio—if that is his name—turned, muttered something, some lame excuse or other, and fled. End of episode.”