The Chalon Heads (36 page)
Kathy looked from one to the other of the dejected pair. There was no doubt in her mind that they had told her the truth. ‘I’m going to need a statement about Eva’s visit that night,’ she said, ‘and all about the forged stamps, the dealer, and so on. You don’t have the stamps any more, then?’
Fitzpatrick shook his head sadly. ‘I can remember exactly what they were, though, and give you a full description.’
‘What about the box?’ Kathy asked. ‘How did the killer get hold of that?’
‘Helen put Eva’s things in a paper carrier bag to take to London with her,’ he explained. ‘When we got there, the bag fell apart from the damp clothes, and I put them in the box which was on the back seat.’ He looked at his wife. ‘I used it to take your raspberry jam to the church fair the other week, do you remember?’
She nodded.
‘I left the box in the flat.’
Kathy got to her feet.
‘If you find the dealer,’ Helen said, ‘do you think there’s any possibility that you could make him refund our money?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kathy said. ‘There’s several people with that idea in their heads at present, I should think. Let’s just hope we find him.’
McLarren’s reaction, when Kathy reported to him later that afternoon, was much as she had anticipated. He was wearing a pair of vivid scarlet braces, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and his mood was irritated, impatient and sarcastic. Hewitt was with him, and after she told them Marianna’s story, McLarren looked pointedly at his assistant.
‘Sergeant, I thought I had made it quite plain that, in my most
humble
opinion, the key to this case lies not in the marital problems of the Starlings, nor in Mrs Starling’s penchant for prohibited substances, but in the forgeries. Those other matters are only likely to confuse our investigation and cause other branches of our fine service to interfere with its smooth progress, and I have to say that I do take a dim view of you gallivanting about the countryside while the rest of us have been fruitlessly attempting to track down Raphael’s other victims in the great metropolis.’ He brandished his eyebrows at her in his most intimidating manner, and Hewitt suppressed a smirk.
‘That’s what I’m coming to, sir. I’ve found another victim.’
‘What? Explain yourself, lassie!’
Kathy did so, and McLarren’s mood lifted. ‘Well, now! That’s splendid, Kathy, splendid!’
She made her escape before he changed his mind.
The front door of La Fortuna was locked—it was too early to be open for evening customers. The lights were off, and no one responded to Kathy’s knock. She went round the corner and found a laneway that gave access to the back door. She could just faintly hear the sound of music from inside. She rapped on the door several times, and eventually it was opened by a young man wiping his hands on a white apron.
‘Yeah?’
‘Tomaso in?’
‘Maybe. Who wants him?’
She showed her warrant card and followed him inside, through the kitchen to the dry store where Tomaso was checking cans of olive oil against a list on a clipboard.
‘Hi, Inspector.’ He looked at her briefly and went on with his task. ‘Any developments?’
‘Sergeant. Yes. I’d like a word.’
He caught the coolness in her voice and looked at her again. ‘Sure.’ He gave her a big smile and led her through into the dining-room.
‘Want a drink?’
‘A coffee would be good.’
‘Sure. What you want?’
‘Short black.’
Kathy watched him as he went to the machine in the corner of the bar and made the coffee. He brought over two tiny gold-rimmed cups and sat down opposite her. ‘So, what’s new?’
‘Have you heard from Sammy Starling recently?’
‘Mr Starling? No. Why?’
Kathy said nothing for a moment, then spoke more quietly, so that he had to lean forward to catch it. ‘I’m not interested in what Eva put up her nose, Tomaso, except in so far as it leads to her killer. Understand?’
He met her gaze with a poker face, then gave a brief nod.
‘She got her stuff here, didn’t she?’
‘No.’ He shook his head decisively.
‘But you knew about it.’
He waved a hand. ‘I could make an informed guess, sure.’
‘Tell me about it.’
He brought out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one. She refused and he lit up, considered her for a while as he smoked. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. ‘OK. She needed cash. She didn’t say what for, but I could guess. When she asked us, we would put extra on to her meal account, and give her the cash.’ He spread his hands. ‘It’s no big deal. A customer needs some cash, no problem. Nothing wrong with that.’
‘But you knew there was something funny about it.’
‘Only because she asked us not to tell her husband. She said he was worried about her not eating, that she was anorexic, so she would come in and order maybe a salad, sometimes nothing at all, and we would make up a bill with the most expensive dishes on the menu, and she would take the difference in cash.’
‘Why didn’t you believe the anorexia story?’
He laughed. ‘Because it was always the most expensive dishes that went on the bill, not the most nutritious. And wine, too, always the best. I don’t know what gave her away.’
‘Sammy found out?’
Tomaso raised the little cup to his lips. ‘Sure. One lunch-time he came in here, by himself, and asked for me to serve him. He ordered a plate of pasta, then told me to stop playing games with his wife’s account, or he would close us down. I didn’t argue.’
‘What did Eva make of that?’
‘She must have made other arrangements, I don’t know. She still came in here for a salad and a glass of wine.’
‘Where did she get her drugs?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes, you do.’
He looked sulky, then smiled. ‘I don’t
know
, but I can guess. Sometimes she will come in here, and she’s high, and I will say, “You’re in a good mood tonight, Princess.” Then she says, “Yes, I’ve been to the movies,” or sometimes, “Yes, I’ve been to Hollywood.” And I say, “Do you have a friend in Hollywood, then, Princess?” And she says, “Sure, I have a very good friend in Hollywood.”’
Tomaso paused to finish his coffee. ‘There’s a little cinema over in Camden Town shows foreign movies. Called Cinema Hollywood. I think that’s where she met her friend.’
Kathy got to her feet.
‘Satisfied?’ Tomaso said.
‘Yes. If you hear any word of Sammy, let me know, will you? He’s dropped out of sight, and we’re anxious to make contact with him. He may be trying to find Eva’s murderer himself.’
A shadow of worry passed across Tomaso’s face.
‘There’s nothing else I should know is there, Tomaso?’ Kathy said.
‘No, no. Say, you’d better give me your home phone number, just in case I need to reach you, eh?’
‘I’m not often at home. This is my office number. There’ll be someone there twenty-four hours. If I’m not there one of the other detectives will help you.’
He looked disappointed. ‘Why don’t you stay for a meal?’
She laughed. ‘I couldn’t even afford one of your salads, Tomaso.’
All the same, La Fortuna had put Kathy in the mood for Italian, and she stopped on the way home for some takeaway lasagne at La Casa Romana, a little place not far from where she lived, and considerably closer to her budget.
After her meal and a bath, Kathy sat by the window of her small flat, looking at the street lights coming on below, sections at a time, across the hazy twilit city landscape. She had reconstructed several unexpected corners of the story— Eva’s imprisonment and flight, her way of cheating Sammy and Toby, her source of drugs—but how much closer had she really got to the heart of it all?
Sammy must surely now be the prime suspect for Eva’s murder. He had discovered Eva’s escape at around eleven that night, and the fact that he had phoned Ronnie Wilkes soon after made it likely that he thought she was heading for Canonbury. He must have driven there after an abortive search along the woodland lanes around the Crow’s Nest, and may well have been watching the flat when Fitzpatrick and Eva had arrived. He would have waited for the man to leave, then gone in and confronted his wife. Had she told him how she had been cheating him? The irony must have struck him very hard, that she had used the same thing, his beloved stamps, to cheat him that he had used to win her from her father. And if he then became enraged and killed her, how natural and appropriate to use them again in the story he concocted of a kidnapping revolving around the forthcoming stamp auction he would certainly have known all about. He would have needed help, a male, to telephone the instructions to Heathrow, and send the final message.
She turned these ideas round in her head, and felt they had a certain thematic consistency. But what had they to do with Raphael and the murder of Mary Martin? How would Eva have become involved with the stamp dealer and the forgery scheme in the first place? Through her drugs? And why had someone—Sammy presumably—framed Brock over the disappearance of the Canada Cover?
To Kathy, this was the most worrying and puzzling thing. The meeting with him in Battle had been unsettling. It struck her how much she would miss him if he didn’t come back. Not that she was dependent on him, but the thought that his disgrace might be irredeemable, that she would never be able to refer to him again, was like a death, the death of someone close.
She had been over those hours at Cabot’s on the morning and afternoon of the auction again and again in her head, trying to fathom how it had been done. Now her mind began to replay it once again. At some point, when the sun finally dropped below the horizon and a green-orange glow in the sky was all that was left of the day, a thought began to form.
She made a call to the Fitzpatricks’ cottage, and spoke for several minutes to Toby Fitzpatrick. He found her the information she wanted, and she rang off. The doodles on the writing pad in front of her formed a network of names, some linked and others, frustratingly, unconnected. She started again on a fresh sheet, then another and another until she gave up and went to bed.
W
hen the phone rang Kathy was in a deep sleep. As she fumbled for the light switch she registered the time on her bedside alarm as 1.16 a.m. She didn’t immediately recognise the voice.
‘Hewitt. Message from Superintendent McLarren for you. He says that you might care to join him at a crime scene.’
‘Oh . . . right, fine. Where is it?’
‘Shoreditch,’ he said unenthusiastically. ‘Eighteen Shepherd’s Row.’
She dressed hurriedly and left. By the time she reached her car she was wide awake.
The area was mixed, commercial offices and warehouses spilling northwards from the City into areas of working-class housing spiked with larger Victorian institutional buildings. It had been a long time since this Shepherd’s Row had seen any live sheep. It wriggled for just over a hundred yards in the general direction of Shepherdess Walk before coming to an end at an overscaled Edwardian pub, and it now housed a motley collection of low-cost service outlets—launderette, shoe repairs, shelving supplies, second-hand furniture, a pawn shop—as well as a street market three days a week. Tuesday had been one of those days, and the metal frameworks of the stalls stood deserted down the middle of the curving alley, sour smells of vegetable waste and burnt cardboard tainting the warm summer night.
Walter Pickering, dealer in stamps, banknotes and maps, occupied a small shop unit half-way along the alley, which was now the focus of attention. An ambulance had backed up the laneway left between market stalls and shop-fronts, and was standing by the open door of the shop. As Kathy arrived at the end of Shepherd’s Row, its lights began flashing and it moved slowly forward. She drove on to the next corner, parked down a side-street and walked back.
A couple of uniformed men guarded the front shop area, with its counter, its shelves of old albums and reference books, and its displays of the products in which Walter Pickering traded. These looked, with their wrinkled plastic pouches and faded labels, remarkably drab and unappealing. The action had taken place in the office and store-room behind, now crammed with police, among whom she recognised Tony Hewitt and Leon Desai, who gave her a barely perceptible nod. This room was lined with industrial shelving on three sides, filled with cardboard boxes. The fourth side was a bare wall. A naked fluorescent strip-light was suspended over the centre of the room, directly above a single wooden chair with arms. This chair, a sturdy, blackened object, managed to convey, rather as electric chairs do, a strong sense of its recent occupant, for strips of electrical tape were still wrapped round each of its arms and bottom front legs, where he had been restrained, and his blood was splashed in spectacular patterns of splatters and spurts all round its focus. The bloody marks continued on to the bare wall facing the seat where, as if on a blackboard facing a single recalcitrant pupil, large letters of blood formed the single word, RAPHAEL.
‘Jesus McTavish!’ a voice murmured at Kathy’s shoulder, as she stood taking this in. She turned to Superintendent McLarren in the doorway, newly arrived.
‘Good evening, all,’ he said briskly. ‘Sorry I was delayed. Tony, fill us in, will you?’
‘Sir. Local division alerted by neighbour’s triple niner at 0018 reporting screams from the premises of Walter Pickering. Patrol officers discovered Mr Pickering here, alone, tied to this chair. He was semi-conscious. They called for medical assistance, and division called us on the strength of our recent warning regarding stamp dealers.’
‘Good laddie.’ McLarren said approvingly.
‘I got here in time to interview Mr Pickering before the ambulance officers insisted on removing him to hospital. He was in very bad shape. He had been cut in a number of places by what he described as an old-fashioned, cut-throat razor. In particular, three of his fingers had been removed, and used by his assailant like marker pens, to write that name on the wall over there. Mr Pickering identified his assailant as “Sammy China”.
‘Indeed. Our missing Mr Starling, I take it.’