The Black Cat (17 page)

Mungo wanted to know why Harry had brought out the cat carrier-or dog, he supposed, but forget that; he wasn’t going anywhere. The carrier was sitting on the piano bench. He eyed it with suspicion. He realized Harry knew there were two cats in the house; he’d put the blue collar on one of them. And that, Mungo supposed, was to tell the cats apart. All of this puzzled him.

He pulled Elf out of the bottom drawer and carried him around the living room, looking for a drop-off. Maybe he could lift up the top of the window seat bench and drop him in, except Morris was lying on it, like a loaf.

Why are you doing that? said Morris.

It helps me think, Mungo said. It didn’t. Mungo was doing it just for the laugh. Elf was hissing and flailing his tiny paws. He’d just started this only in the last week or two.

This isn’t getting me back home, Morris said.

Mungo stared at the cat and shook his head (and Elf with it). Nothing but complain, complain since last night at the Old Wine Shades. He gave up trying to find a new place and just dropped Elf in the coal scuttle. The kitten was as black as the lumps around him. That was funny. He said, I don’t get it. The Spotter should have sorted it out. He’s smart; at least, he once was.

If you think about it, it would take a mind reader to work out what we were doing. Stare, stare, stare, you said. How could the Spotter tell from that? Morris put her head down on her outstretched paws (a posture she’d picked up from Mungo). I just want to go home.

Whine. Whine. Mungo paced, nails clicking on the hardwood floor, stopping when he heard a scuffle in the kitchen and Mrs. Tobias’s raised voice. Probably Schrödinger jumping up on the counter and nicking food. More noise.

Quick! he said to Morris. Hide!

Morris jumped from the window seat and slid slick as a whistle beneath the desk. That’s the way with cats, thought Mungo, quicker than time; they made time shrink and clocks run backward.

His bit of philosophizing was broken by Shoe erupting through the kitchen door with a kipper like a knife in her mouth.

Mrs. Tobias was fast on the cat’s trail and waving a skillet.

Schrödinger streaked through the living room and then into the great nowhere.

Mungo enjoyed the little chase; it was such a cliché. He’d seen it over and over again in The Beano.

“Where’s that cat?” came from the hallway. “I’ll kill that cat one day.” Mrs. Tobias shouted up the stairs: “You’ll be out of house and home faster’n you can pinch a kipper, my girl!” She stormed back into the living room, saw Mungo sitting by the kitchen door (to which he’d rushed in order to distance himself and, thus, Mrs. Tobias from the desk). She waved the pan. “Took one of my kippers, Shoe did, stole your master’s dinner!”

Master? Who did she think she was kidding?

“And where is he, I’d like to know? It’s gone half-seven and him not here yet when he said he wanted to eat then?” Back to the kitchen she marched, muttering.

Mungo knew something was up with that cat carrier, something unpleasant for someone. Oh, not him. Although he wondered sometimes how he’d lasted so long around Harry without getting cuffed or kicked or worse, then told himself not to be modest. But the point was that Harry would no more take a cat to the cat hospital than he’d adopt a disabled orangutan. And much less would he transport Schrödinger himself. So what was going on?

Mungo looked up and saw Shoe coming down the stairs, looking pleased as punch, then giving Mungo an evil look and going into the music room to inspect the kittens. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. One missing. She dashed into the living room, went from one hiding spot to another, found Elfin the coal scuttle, and dragged him out. She then carried him into the music room, dropped him in the drawer, and swayed over to her favorite spot beneath the little sofa near the bureau, where she promptly went into one of her comas.

Mungo stared from Schrödinger back to the carrier, back and forth, back and forth, working it out. Then he loped back to the desk and told Morris to come out.

Something’s going on.

What? said Morris.

I think-He looked at Morris’s blue collar, and the penny dropped. Take that off! Morris looked puzzled, so Mungo hit at it, then bit the end and pulled it free from the Velcro tab. Then he rushed into the music room, stealthily made his way to the sofa, stopped to see that Schrödinger was indeed asleep, and dropped the collar near the cat’s head. Schrödinger wouldn’t wake if it were a hand grenade, pin pulled. Mungo turned and hurried to the bureau, grabbed up Elf again, and trotted across the hall and into the living room just as the door opened.

Mrs. Tobias apparently heard Harry’s approach too and came like a little warhorse from the kitchen, talking all the while. “So there you are, Mr. Johnson, just let me tell you what that cat…” Her voice dropped to a quieter wrangle out in the hall.

Mungo dropped Elf. Act really mad, he whispered to Morris. Why?

Just do it, just do it!

As Elf ran off, passing Harry and Mrs. Tobias, Morris hissed and clawed at the air around Mungo’s head.

Mungo could hear him telling Mrs. Tobias he’d be having dinner out anyway, so it hardly mattered. Here was Harry saying to Morris, “So you ate my dinner, did you?” He said to Mungo, “For God’s sakes, can’t you leave that damned kitten alone?”

But he didn’t seem really bothered by it all. He grinned wolfishly.

Oh, how Mungo longed to grin back. Wolfishly.

Mrs. Tobias, in her brown wool coat-too hot for this weather, but she wore it year in and year out-sailed through the living room. She didn’t glance at Morris, not minding and not knowing there was another black cat sprawled beneath the sofa in the music room.

“I’ll be off, then, Mr. Johnson.”

Oh, do be, thought Mungo. All he was waiting for was the next act.

When that act came, it involved a good bit of effing and blinding. Harry was having a hard time of it.

Eventually Harry left, cat carrier in tow. Mungo hopped up to the window seat beside Morris. They watched Harry in the arc of light cast by the sconce beside the door as he descended the stair, and then in the blurry light of the streetlamp. He opened the car door and stowed the carrier before getting in the car himself.

They watched.

Then, pleased, they looked at each other with what would have been smiles had God seen fit to give them to dogs and cats.

Never mind, their minds hummed along as one.

The glossy-haired, raven-haired young woman in short skirt and high heels stood outside the Snow Hill police station (almost just around the corner from the spot where Kate Banks was murdered, and didn’t that ever give a chill!). She was chewing gum (which she would toss out before she met her client, who hated chewing gum) and wondered why she should volunteer her information to police. What had the Bill ever done for her or her friends, except as good as call them whores? Looking up at the black word “Police” painted on the soft lantern light, she debated the wisdom of going in.

She wouldn’t even have thought of coming except it had been Kate, and she’d quite liked Kate. She was a good person, always ready to do you a lunch or a loan or whatever help you needed. Yes, you could count on Kate.

At first it hadn’t made sense, and then it had. There was nobody that would’ve taken a blind bit of notice, except herself. And the sodding cops were of course on the completely wrong end of the stick, barking up the wrong tree, hadn’t a clue that just because it was an escort service, that didn’t mean it had to be sex and nothing but.

She turned away as two of these police came out of the door and gave her a look. God, she thought, a girl can’t even stop a bit before she’s accosted.

“Hello, sunshine,” said one, cuter than the other.

The other said, “Time to move it along, love.”

Fuck you. That’s what she wanted to say. Just fuck you and the horse you came in on. You want to keep running around this murder with your pants down, go ahead, arseholes.

Standing there, leering, they quite put her off. But not being one to back away immediately from any uncomfortable situation, she reached into a slim shoulder bag made of silvery disks that lapped over each other like fish scales. She removed her compact and opened it. She didn’t need to study herself, her eyes or lips or stylish haircut that cost a fortune; she just wanted to assert her right to stand on a city street.

The two uniforms stood there with their big bland smiles and looked at her as if no matter how good she looked, she’d never get invited to the party.

If only they knew. If only they knew that with what she knew, well, she could be a career changer for them, move them right up to captain or inspector or something. If they knew what she knew, she’d be at that party pronto; she’d be ushered in, sat down, and served a glass of Champs straightaway.

She checked her watch-small, platinum, a face circled by some kind of stone she didn’t know, except to know they weren’t diamonds. A gift from one of her clients.

She couldn’t stop here, nor did she want to, with these two buffoons with their truncheons and guns and grins and City of London police insignia on their uniforms, thinking they were special or better than the Met.

Yet there was something-a conscience?-a little brightness in her she couldn’t put out that had her taking a step toward the station door before the two seemed to form a wall against her entry. But she thought of Kate, the best among them she knew, who worked days as a stenotypist and was happy doing just that. Kate hadn’t liked being with King’s Road Companions, but she’d wanted the money to put aside for the future and to take care of an old lady, not even family but a godmother or someone. Whoever paid any attention to godparents, anyway? Well, that was Kate. Kate had loved the very ordinariness of her steno job, liked having to catch the tube every morning, liked being jolted and crushed before erupting into the “antic air” (as she called it) of Piccadilly. Kate had loved almost the dullness of the job. Who could love the dullness of things? she wondered. But if you liked it, did the dullness then shine? She stopped at that thought, thinking she must have a little philosophy in her.

The two coppers still stood there, leering.

So she turned and walked away into the night. The days of the Smoke were long gone, and she wasn’t old enough to have seen it anyway, but there was still the heavy mist that slid in from the river, which wasn’t far off.

A lot of the girls had stopped temporarily when police said they might be in harm’s way, given the two recent murders, that a killer was targeting escorts, and they’d brought up Jack the Ripper-or, more likely, the newspapers had done that.

She stopped in Newgate Street to adjust one of the straps of her sandals. They weren’t what you’d choose for walking, but she hadn’t far to go, only to St. Paul’s. She wondered if her guy’d got religion or something. That was a laugh.

They were to meet round the west side of the cathedral, and he’d said that if she got there before he did, just to wait on a bench in the churchyard, wait by the Becket statue. He was always late, but what did she care? He had to pay for the missed time anyway.

She had started walking again, shoes now under control: beautiful shoes, awful walking. St. Paul’s loomed before her. Made her shudder, almost. Someday she would really have to go up to the Whispering Gallery. She’d lived in London all her life, in Camden Town and Cricklewood, and not done a tenth of the things tourists did.

He wasn’t there, no surprise. She wandered into the churchyard, found the statue-whoever Becket was, they didn’t keep him in very good condition, as he looked to be falling apart in these bushes. As she looked at the statue, there came the bells. The reverberation shocked her and she clamped her hands over her ears. Nine o’clock. Five more strikes.

Into the din, or rather through it, came a voice: “DeeDee.”

Deirdre turned and got another shock.

There was a gun. There was her scream. There were the bells.

The unflappable DI Dennis Jenkins from Snow Hill station said to Jury, “We pulled her up straightaway only because she had form-soliciting four years ago in Shepherd Market. Name’s Deirdre Small. ID in the bag-” Jenkins gestured toward a clutch of silver scales now with one of the technicians. There were several others scouring the walk on their knees.

Deirdre Small lay in the center of them on the walk, a small ship adrift in her own wake.

“So here’s another pro working for an escort service.”

“Same agency?”

Jenkins shook his head. “This one’s called Smart Set. Has the ring of upmarket sophistication, no? Anyway, I guess it is a leg up-pardon the pun-from the street. Although Shepherd Market… well, if you’re going to trawl the curb, might as well choose Mayfair, no?”

Jury’s smile was slight, almost apologetic, as if Deirdre Small had opened her eyes and caught him at it.

“Same MO, it looks like. Close range, chest. Whether the same weapon, we won’t know till later. It must have happened at nine.”

Jury frowned. “Then you got here fast. It’s only nine-forty.” The bell marking the half hour had rung ten minutes ago.

“That’s because the person who found her got to us fast. He’s over there-tall guy, balding. He was her boyfriend, or client, I should say; he said he was to meet her here at nine and he was seven or eight minutes late. So he found her at nine-oh-seven or -eight. He must have been breathing down the shooter’s neck, assuming Deirdre Small was on time. He says she always was. Now, my guess is the killer took advantage of the bells”-Jenkins looked upward toward St. Paul’s bell tower-“to muffle the shot.”

At this point, one of the SOCO team put something in Jenkins’s hand and walked off.

Jury frowned. “But the client could have walked right in on the shooting.” He paused. “Unless, of course, he was the one.”

“My instinct says…” Jenkins squinted at the tall man with the half-bald head. “No. He was pretty quick off the mark calling emergency. He could simply have walked away, left the body to be found by one of these good people.” He nodded toward the ring of onlookers being discouraged from coming closer by the crime scene tape and the half-dozen uniforms in front of it. “But, then, on the other hand, he might have thought his name was down on the books and he’d be picked up later and in much hotter water. Still, I think, no, it wasn’t him.”

“If someone else, whoever it was had to be pretty nervy. That is, unless he knew.”

“Knew what?”

“The boyfriend’s habitual lateness.”

Jenkins turned to look at Jury. “That would mean someone who knew them.”

“Friend of hers? Friend of his?”

“He’s married. Unsurprisingly.”

“Jealous wife?”

Jenkins shrugged. “It’s possible. Possible he was followed, too. Or she was.”

A metal gurney was being loaded onto an ambulance.

“I think I’ll have a word with the boyfriend if you don’t mind.”

DI Jenkins spread his hands in a don’t-mind gesture. “Nicholas Maze is his name.”

Jury thanked him and walked over to the bench past the ambulance whose horn was now being brought into play. It wailed out.

“Nicholas Maze? I’m Superintendent Jury, New Scotland Yard CID.”

“Look, is there any way to keep this business from getting into the papers?”

Always the first concern. Keep my name out of it. “It’s hard to say. But I’m sorry about your friend. How long had you known her?”

Nicholas Maze looked uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than sad. Collar unbuttoned and tie pulled off to one side, but still constricting his neck, he looked like a man who’d just tried to throttle himself. “Over a year,” he muttered.

“Then you’d met her often before this?”

A nod that was more a nervous tic came from Maze. “A dozen times, well, more like two dozen times. It was, you know, a convenience.”

Maybe for you, thought Jury. “You’re married?”

Again, that puppetlike nod, a jerk of the head, as if the movement cost him.

“Does your wife know about the escort service?”

“You mean about DeeDee? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not.”

“You’re sure of that? That she had no suspicion?”

“Yes. She didn’t know-” Quickly, Nicholas Maze looked at Jury. “Ann? You’re thinking my wife-?” The man gestured around the courtyard. “Could have done this?” His laugh was short. “She’d be the last woman in London to shoot somebody in a jealous rage.”

“What did Deirdre Small tell you about herself?”

“DeeDee? More than I cared to know.”

This chilly response made Jury wonder.

“She was a chatterbox, DeeDee was.”

Jury waited for more, but it didn’t come. “If you could be more specific, Mr. Maze. What did she chatterbox about?”

“Well, she was born in London. Lived all her life here, she was fond of telling me. Cricklewood, I think she said. Not much education; she left school around sixth form.”

“Anything about her friends?”

“Look. Dee was a talker. Nonstop sometimes. I didn’t listen to most of it, frankly.”

“The thing is, you see, information about people she knew could be vital-”

Maze interrupted, surprised. “You’re saying you don’t think this was just an opportunistic killing? I mean, some crazy just murdered her because she was here?”

“That’s what suggests it was planned. Someone knew she’d be here. St. Paul’s isn’t the most obvious venue for a spontaneous shooting, is it?” Jury said nothing about the other murders in Bidwell Street and Chesham.

Nicholas Maze shook his head. “Can I go now? You’re the second one I’ve told all this to.”

“You’ll try to think back on what she said, won’t you?” Did they ever? Try to forget it as quick as possible, was more likely. “I’ll have to check with Detective Inspector Jenkins about your leaving.”

“Who’s he?”

The man really didn’t have the attention span of a flea.

SOCO had gone or was going, and only Jenkins and his young WPC and the uniforms keeping order remained. Most of the onlookers had dispersed. The crime scene tape remained. It would require police presence here tomorrow; St. Paul’s was a tourist draw. St. Paul’s and a murder even more.

“Cut him loose, Ruthie,” said Jenkins to the woman constable. “Tell him we’ll probably have to talk to him again and for him to stay close.”

“Guv.” She nodded and left. Pretty. Jenkins thought so, too, Jury guessed, from the way he watched her go.

He said, “Right now, I know sod-all.” He stashed a notebook in his coat pocket. “I’m sending my men round to this Smart Set place tomorrow. You’d say this was done by the same shooter, right?”

“I don’t know. The same as Bidwell, yes, but Chesham? If I could only work Chesham into the mix.”

“They all worked for escort agencies.”

“Yes, but it’s location that doesn’t make sense. Mariah Cox was in London nearly half the time. Why not kill her in London like the others? Then we’d get the serial killer syndrome.”

“I hope the newspapers don’t get hold of that angle. I can just see the dailies-” Jenkins drew a banner in the air: “‘Escorted to Death.’ That kind of thing. ‘Death Has an Escort.”’

Jury smiled. “You’re probably right. Did you notice her shoes?”

Jenkins frowned. “Shoes? That again?”

“Strappy sandals.” Jury checked his watch, although he didn’t need to, as the bells were hammering away at the hour of ten. Jury was thinking of the Old Wine Shades. It wasn’t far from here. It wasn’t far from Bidwell Street, either. He thought he would stop in for a drink. “You know a pub called the Old Wine Shades?”

“Hm. Yes. Martin’s Lane, near King William Street. The river?”

“That’s the one. Care to stop for a drink? I’d like you to meet a friend of mine.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got to get home. Take you up on that later, may I?”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to meet your friend.”

“I think you really would. Good night.”

Jenkins gave him a small salute and they parted.

“Supposed to be here around nine. I mean, he usually is on a Monday night, but not tonight.” Trevor said this as he poured out a measure of wine into Jury’s glass. “On the house, Mr. Jury.” Trevor watched carefully to see how Jury’s mouth would receive this Haut-Médoc.

Jury definitely responded to “on the house,” considering what this glass would cost him if it were on him instead. “That’s very generous of you, Trevor.” He raised the glass. “Here’s to you.” He tasted the wine. “Wonderful.”

“One of Mr. Johnson’s favorites.”

“You’ve known him a long time, have you?”

Trevor had pulled out another bottle and was wiping it down, giving it a good rub. There were few customers tonight in the Old Wine Shades, two couples at tables and three men down at the end of the bar. He took Jury’s question to be rhetorical, it seemed. He said, “Knows his wine, Mr. Johnson does. He once rattled off the names of every premier cru vineyard in Bordeaux.”

The cork was now out of the bottle he’d just rubbed down, and he was taking it down the bar with two glasses he picked up along the way.

For the one millionth time, Jury would have given an ear for a cigarette. He could really understand van Gogh if the man had quit smoking.

Think. Three women. Three escort agencies. If the paper tried to make the case for a serial killer, if someone pulled in the Chesham murder to make three, the police would be faced with panic. The two women in London looked to have been done by the same person, but he wasn’t at all sure that this person had killed Mariah Cox in Chesham.

Trevor was back, refilling Jury’s glass.

“I can’t afford this, Trevor.”

“Oh, not to worry. Mr. Johnson told me to have this out for him tonight. Though he should have been in before now-and speak of the devil,” said Trevor, and Jury looked around. “You’re quite late, Mr. Johnson. What’ve you been up to?”

Harry slid into the tall chair beside Jury, smiling. “Nothing I wouldn’t want to run in the Times tomorrow, Trev.” He turned the bottle round. “Good. The St. Seurin. I see he’s had half the bottle.”

“Two glasses, Harry.”

“Set me up a glass, Trevor.” To Jury, he said, “God, but you’re looking less than lively.”

Jury thought Harry appeared to be the exact opposite. “Death does that to me. How about yourself?”

Harry had taken out his cigarette case and extracted a cigarette, which Trevor lit for him with a match from an “Olde Wine Shades” matchbook. Jury had never noticed the “e” on the end of that fussy “Olde” before. The pub was, however, very “olde.” It dated back to the Great Fire. Not many buildings standing in London could claim that antiquity.

Harry blew smoke away from Jury and said, “Yes, I’d say death puts a damper on things. But it’s cheering to know you’re on the case.”

“What case is that?”

“Whatever case you’re on.” Harry lifted his glass, sniffed, and tasted it.

“I’ve just come from St. Paul’s,” Jury said, then asked himself, annoyed, why he had told him that. Hoping for some reaction. If Jury had said he’d just come down from the space shuttle or the Pleiades, it would make no difference. It was impossible to surprise a response out of Harry Johnson.

Harry looked at his watch. “They still hearing confessions at this late hour? Maybe I should go.” He smiled at Jury. “But I won’t. So what happened at St. Paul’s?”

“You’ll find out soon enough from the tabloids.” Jury twirled his wineglass, asked, “Where were you an hour ago, Harry?”

Harry shook his head. “Let’s see. An hour ago I was just going through Watford, I think.”

“Why were you in Watford?”

Harry said, “No reason, except I was out for a drive. I like to get beyond the Ring Road. Clears my mind.”

“Talk to anybody? Anybody see you?”

Harry signaled to Trevor, who came down the bar with a bottle wrapped in a napkin. He presented it as if it were a baby in a blanket. “Very pleasant Chassagne-Montrachet.”

That’s right, give yourself time.

Harry nodded, and Trevor set about uncorking it. He said to Jury, “Now. Did I talk to anyone? No. Next question: Do I have an alibi for the designated time? Alibi for what? There was a murder in the Lady Chapel? Was this another woman? Another tart-pardon me, escort?”

Jury didn’t answer. He shook his head when Trevor set a clean glass before him. “No, I’ve got to be going.” Trevor poured Harry’s.

Harry said, “So now it’s a serial killer. Superintendent Jury: do you honestly think I’d murder three women just like that?”

Jury smiled and slid off his chair. “I wouldn’t put it past you, Harry. Night.”

He headed for the door.