The Circle (26 page)

'Be serious.'

'She was in a state.'

'DI Cherry had asked her for the video, guv,' Stella said.

'So you went to the house,' Hen prompted Bob.

'And I could tell it wasn't just the video she was worried about. She told me about this call she'd had setting up the meeting in the boat house.'

'What was the pretext?'

'He was claiming - this was a man's voice, she said - to have the proof that Maurice McDade was innocent and he was willing to hand it over the next morning at eight.'

'She didn't know the voice?'

'It was indistinct, she told me.'

'But definitely male?'

'That was what she said.'

'You understand the importance of this?' Hen said. 'We believe this was the arsonist. He tried to set up the meeting in the boat house with Miss Snow and he meant to kill her there.'

'He nearly did for me instead.'

Yes, and we don't know whether he knew it was you in there when he torched the place. You were lucky to escape.'

'Tell me about it!'

'But Miss Snow was still the real target, and he set light to her house at the next opportunity. The key to all this is the reason why these women - Miss Snow and Mrs Warmington-Smith - were targeted. Their homes went up in flames, so any personal documents, pictures, other evidence that could be of interest, were destroyed. That's why your memory of the interior of the Tower Street house is important to us. We didn't know about her theatrical experience.'

'Does that link up, then?'

'Now you're asking. It may tie in with the other victims in some way.'

Bob smiled. He was more relaxed now. 'I can't picture Jessie Warmington-Smith as a show girl.'

'Like you say, you find out surprising things when you dig a bit. Have you any theatrical experience, Bob?'

He pulled a face. 'Christ, no. I couldn't go on a stage to save my life.'

'Amateur theatricals?'

It was obvious he didn't like being pressed. The petulance returned. 'I said no.'

'Why not?' Stella said. 'You're an outgoing guy. You seem to get on with people. Women obviously feel comfortable with you.'

'Where's this leading?' he asked, tight-lipped.

'Let's get back to Miss Snow,' Hen said quickly. 'Did you notice anything else that might tell us more about her?'

'No.'

'More pictures?'

'Some family photos.'

'Books?'

He sighed, making it clear that all this was an imposition.

'A dictionary. Some books of quotations. Set of
Who Was
who:

'Nothing out of the ordinary?'

'I did see a fitness mag with some muscleman on the cover.' He couldn't resist a gag. 'I guess his name was Snow.'

'What was it called?'

'Now you're asking.'

'Try.'

'The Bodybuilder,
I think.'

'I can't picture Miss Snow pumping iron,' Hen said. 'Why did she have a magazine like that?'

'For the pictures?'

She gave a chesty laugh. 'Maybe. Maybe.' She turned to Stella. 'There could be a link with Lord Chalybeate here. Does he still publish magazines? We'd better get hold of one.'

'Lord who?' Bob asked.

'Doesn't matter,' Hen said, sensing as she spoke that she'd closed him down too quickly. She didn't want him digging any more than he had. 'Anyway, thanks to you we've learned a thing or two about Miss Snow. What about Mrs Warmington-Smith?'

'What about her?'

'Did you visit her at home?'

'Do you mind? She was old enough to be my gran.'

She repeated the question.

He said, 'I don't think anyone was invited there. She put up the shutters if you tried to get near. A very private person.'

'She can't have been all that private if she came to the circle and read out her work.'

'None of it was personal. It was how to make pickled onions.'

'Didn't any of them know her well?'

'I doubt it.'

'She wasn't timid,' Hen said, trying to get a better response. 'She didn't mind going for late-night walks.'

'I wouldn't know about that.'

'She seems to have fancied herself as a psychic as well.'

'Sidekick?'

'Psychic. Like Joan of Arc'

He shook his head. 'That's news to me.'

'She didn't hear voices. She saw things, apparently'

'And ended up as toast, just like Joan of Arc'

In the car, Hen said to Stella, 'What was that line of his about Miss Snow doing her secretary bit? "... she sits beside the Chair . . ."'

'. . . taking minutes of the meeting with single-minded care.

Hen pondered this for a while. 'He's a bloody good observer. Remember the video of Blacker's visit? She had her head down right through the meeting. Even when he discussed her book she didn't speak. As I recall it, other people spoke on her behalf as if she wasn't there. Maurice McDade. Anton Gulliver. And when Blacker delivered his verdict on the script she still didn't say anything.'

'Is that important, guv?'

'Might be.' She went silent, alone with her thoughts again. The car travelled to the next traffic lights before she started up again. 'There could be something in this, Stell. Why was she so quiet? A secretary taking minutes isn't like a shorthand typist. They're not trying to catch every word. They're summarising. They have a chance to chip in with a comment here and there. You'd think she'd want to speak when her book was being discussed. Not a word.'

'I expect she saw him after the meeting.'

'No. She avoided him. Dagmar picked up the script for her. Miss Snow was supposedly too busy handing round competition forms. She asked Dagmar to collect her script.'

'Why?'

Hen's thoughts were slotting into place. She sensed she was on the brink of something significant. 'The moment Blacker walked into that room, Amelia Snow wanted the floor to swallow her up. She recognised him from way back.'

'An ex-boyfriend?'

'Worse than that.'

'Someone she'd dumped?'

'Much worse.'

'A rapist? He raped her when she was a young girl?'

'If he did, he got away with it. He's got a clean record. No, Stell, I'm wondering if it has to do with his time as editor of those men's magazines. Amelia Snow was a chorus girl. What year did
Cats
open?'

'Must have been in the early eighties.'

'You sure of that?'

'I was taken to see the original show as a birthday treat, round about my seventh birthday. That would have been January, eighty-two. It had been running some months already.'

'Let's say eighty-one, then. The timing is spot on. Eighty-two was the date of the "Innocents" photo. We're dealing in coincidences here, but when you get enough of them it adds up to something bigger. Do you see what I'm getting at?'

'Not really.'

'She had a nice figure. Did you hear that?'

Stella's mouth shaped as if to whistle as she grasped what Hen was saying. 'Blacker got her to pose for one of his porn magazines?'

'Chatted her up, got her drunk, talked her into stripping off for the camera. That's the way they got their dirty pictures according to Lord Chalybeate. After it, she'd feel used, abused, mortified. She'd do her best to forget it. Then, twenty years later, the guy who seduced her walks into the New Park Centre to lecture the circle on publishing. No wonder she kept her head down. Does that sound possible?'

Stella weighed it before answering. 'Up to a point.'

'What's wrong with it?'

Hen waited for Stell's answer. They'd worked together long enough to be frank.

'They're both dead, Blacker and Miss Snow. Who would have wanted to kill them both, and why? The theory is all right, guv, but it doesn't seem to fit what happened.'

'It does,' Hen said, feeling and sounding more confident than she had at any stage. 'Someone else had a reputation to protect, a big reputation.'

27

But where are the snows of yesteryear'?

Frangois Villon,
Le Grand Testament
(1461), trans. D. G. Rossetti

A
ndy Humphreys shook his head and said, 'No way, guv.'

'I ask myself what's in it for you,' Hen said. 'Did I cut you up so badly when we first met? Is that why you did this - to get revenge?'

'I've done nothing wrong.'

'Come on. You're the one Naomi talked to. To her you're the face of the Chichester police.'

'But I wouldn't disclose information.'

'She told you about this website. You must have known it would all go on the internet if you blabbed.'

'Exactly. So I didn't.'

'She's clever enough to tease out the information indirectly.'

He shook his head. 'I swear, guv. I gave her nothing. Our meetings weren't mentioned once.'

'Have you had any contact with her apart from the interview?'

'Not a word.'

'Someone has.' She brandished the sheaf of paper that was Naomi's e-book. 'Someone talked at regular intervals. These are peppered with inside information. Yesterday's meeting - when we discussed the theory of two suspects working together - is already on the bloody website.'

'Not because of me.'

'All right, then. If it isn't you, who else has been mouthing off?'

'I wish I knew.'

In the face of his steady denials, she was beginning to lose confidence. He
had
to be the snitch, didn't he? 'I'd think more of you if you put your hand up to this.'

'It's untrue.'

'I'm going to find out, you know. If the truth doesn't come from you, I'll get it from Naomi herself. And if she gives me your name, it's the end of your career.'

Bob met Thomasine at Woody's, in St Pancras, at the end of East Street. As there was a noisy crowd in the bar, he suggested they move into the eating area, and it happened with no fuss that he took her for a meal for the first time. She'd eaten already, so she toyed with a salad starter, but he was hungry and ordered the sirloin. They shared a carafe of red wine.

He asked if she'd heard of Lord Chalybeate.

'Not the sort of company I keep,' she said, adding, after a pause, 'I'm more comfortable with van drivers.'

'Any old van drivers?'

'Only those who write funny verse.'

'But you've heard of Chalybeate?'

'Isn't he the bloke who made a fortune out of the fitness craze? He's always in the papers.'

He told her about the visit from Hen Mallin and the police interest in Miss Snow's spell as a dancer in
Cats.
Thomasine said she knew nothing of this. 'You didn't tell me.'

'I thought everyone knew.'

'I don't think any of us did.
Cats}
Amazing. She must have been a top-class dancer and she never mentioned it. Isn't that strange? Come to think of it, she said very little about herself at meetings. She'd talk about the famous Snows she was writing about, and that was it. I just took it she was so careful what she said because of her accountancy work-client confidentiality. She did the books for some people in business.'

'She was quiet by nature, wasn't she?'

'But in a different way from Jessie, who was a bit of a snob, if that isn't speaking unkindly of the dead. Amelia -Miss Snow - was guarded about what she said, but I don't think she had delusions of grandeur. Anyway, you were telling me how Lord Chalybeate's name came up.'

Bob nodded. 'The police asked me to try and remember anything at all about the inside of Miss Snow's house in Tower Street. All they'd seen of it was after the fire. One rather surprising thing I noticed at the time was a magazine called
The Bodybuilder.'

'Get away!'

'Straight up. Some clone of Arnie Schwarzenegger flexing his pecs on the cover. Not the sort of reading you expect a single lady to have on her table, but there you are - it's all about what turns you on. As soon as I mentioned this, Inspector Mallin said there could be a link with Lord Chalybeate, and it was obvious that was a name that had come up before.'

'Not in the circle, it hasn't,' Thomasine said. 'I'm intrigued.'

'He doesn't live round here, does he?'

'We can look him up.'

'In the library tomorrow?'

'Can't wait for that. Let's check him out on the internet. Tonight.' She smiled. 'Okay, it sounds like I'm trying to get you round to my place again. It wasn't meant that way'

'But I'll come,' Bob said.

* * *

Hen, also, was talking about Lord Chalybeate. 'Well, the motive isn't hard to find. He's got an interest in seeing off Blacker and Miss Snow.'

'To save his reputation, you mean?' Stella said.

'He's been polishing up his image for years, putting all the murky stuff behind him. He was plain Mark Kiddlewick at one time. Changed his name by deed poll to Marcus Chalybeate, and now he's a life peer in line for a government job.'

'Definitely wouldn't want it known that he published porn.'

'He was giving money to Blacker just to keep him quiet. That much we know for sure. Then I believe Miss Snow recognised Blacker and it began to look as if the whole sleazy story would come out.'

'If it's true,' Stella said.

'What?'

'About Miss Snow posing for pictures.'

'Fair enough. It's just a theory at this stage. And there are two big problems with it.'

'What are they?'

'Chalybeate claims to have an alibi,' Hen said. 'He was in America at the time of the murders.'

'Can he prove it?'

'Simple to check.'

'Want me to do it?'

'No, Stell. I've got another job for you.'

'You said there are two problems, guv. What's the other one?'

The edges of Hen's mouth twitched into a smile. 'As you know, I listen to my Agatha Christie tapes when I get the chance. There are rules to a good whodunnit. Dame Agatha would never introduce the killer this late in the story. So I'm hoping it doesn't turn out to be Chalybeate. I want it to be one of the other buggers we've been tracking all the time.'

'Is that what this is to you - a whodunnit?'

'I do enjoy a good mystery, Stell. And a whopping surprise at the end.'

'But
we
shouldn't be surprised. We've got to work it out.'

Hen gave her smoker's laugh. 'You're so right.'

'You mentioned a job you want me to do.'

'It could take some time.'

'What is it?'

'You've got a good idea what Miss Snow looked like, haven't you?'

'I've watched the video.'

'An earlier picture would help. I'll see if we can get some stills from the original production of
Cats.'

'Aren't you going to tell me?'

Hen said with deliberate obtuseness, 'Let's go there first.'

'Eleven thousand results,' Thomasine was saying in the room she used as a study. 'This could be a long night.'

Bob watched over her shoulder in awe. Young Sue had her computer, but he'd never taken much interest in the thing. Sue had used it mainly for games until texting on the mobile phone became the big thing in her life.

Thomasine explained that she was using a search engine called Google to access every reference to Lord Chalybeate on websites across the world.

'This will be his official website,' she said as a stylised logo of two figures came up on the screen, a woman on a treadmill and a weightlifter. 'Don't suppose it will tell us what we want to know. That would be too simple. Wow, he's a major player, though. Look at this list of gyms.'

From the speed with which she moved through websites, dismissing the 'duds', as she called them, she was well used to surfing the net. Even so, the process was taking time.

Ten minutes later she gave a squeak of excitement. 'This is more like it, from some political agitator's site: "Marcus Chalybeate's friends in the House of Lords might be surprised to learn that he was once plain Mark Kiddlewick. He changed his name officially in 1987." Kiddlewick. I think I'd change that if I was stuck with it. Now we'll make a search and see if anything comes up.'

She went back to Google and keyed in
Kiddlewick.

'Not so impressive. A mere twenty-seven.'

Most of the twenty-seven were horseracing sites. There had once been a steeplechaser called Kiddlewick. 'No pun intended,' she said, 'but you get all kinds of horseshit you don't want. You have to be patient, and I'm not.'

She'd almost exhausted the list when a Mark Kiddlewick came up in a directory of publishers. '"Magazines, various, adult. Lanarkshire Press, Tilbury, Essex." I wonder how adult magazines come into this.'

Bob looked at his watch. This search had been going on for some time. Sue would be alone at home. She didn't like going to bed until he was in.

Thomasine was intent on her surfing. 'Tallyho. Now we see if Lanarkshire Press yields anything.'

She could keep working that search engine for hours.

'I'd better be off,' Bob said.

She turned to look at him. 'So soon?'

'It's after eleven. Early start tomorrow. Can't fall asleep at the wheel.'

She came downstairs to see him out. Thanked him for the meal.

'Just a couple of lettuce leaves?' he said.

'Next time, the twelve-ounce porterhouse steak.' At the door, she reached for his hand. 'That's not the real reason, is it, about falling asleep at the wheel? You don't have to go, Bob.'

'But I do.'

She mouthed the word
why
and didn't speak it.

This was a defining moment and he had to be honest. It was high time he told her he had a teenage daughter.

So he did. And when he'd finished, he did his best to ease the tension by adding, 'It's funny when you think about it. I'm the one who has to be in by eleven.'

'And are you divorced?'

'Maggie died three years ago. Leukaemia.'

She closed her eyes. 'Sorry - shouldn't have asked.'

'Should have told.'

'What's your daughter's name?'

'Sue.'

'And she's fourteen, you said? The kids I teach are that age.'

'Different school, though.'

'Right. I'd know her if she was in one of my classes. If she takes after you she gives her teachers a hard time.'

'She's sharper than me.'

'Sounds awesome. I'd love to meet her some time. Oh God, why am I making all the running?'

He made some of the running himself. He put his arm round her and kissed her, a real kiss, and it felt good.

After Bob had left, Thomasine made herself a coffee and then went back to the computer. A pulse was beating in her head. She wasn't ready for sleep and didn't want to spend the next few hours in an emotional state like one of her teenage students. So she gave her full attention to the computer, surfing the net for references to Lanarkshire Press, clicking on anything that came up. It took her into some sites she wouldn't normally have gone near. She was used to 'spam', the unwanted e-mail, much of it obscene, that she had to delete each time she opened her inbox, but visiting dubious websites was unavoidable if she was to find out more about Kiddlewick, Chalybeate, or whoever he was. If it had to be so-called erotica, she was going there. Good thing her classes didn't know she was accessing stuff like this, she thought.

She found the all-important link at about one fifteen in the morning. A site was offering secondhand magazines for sale and you could click for more information - obsessively copious information that listed the entire contents of every issue, together with the names of publishers, editors, writers and photographers. No pictures, mercifully. Here, in a monthly called
Innocents,
published by Lanarkshire Press, was the name Edgar Blacker, editor.

This, she was certain, was why the police had been so interested in Chalybeate, the one-time publisher of porn trying to shake off his past and pursue a political career. They'd found the link with Blacker, and when Bob had mentioned the fitness magazine at Miss Snow's, they'd seized on the possibility of a second link, to the arsonist's next victim. Was Miss Snow into physical culture? Unlikely. Thomasine thought it more likely that she'd bought the magazine because of its Chalybeate connection. Maybe she'd done some digging herself when Blacker was first invited to the circle. She was secretary, so she'd have discussed it with Maurice at an early stage.

Satisfied, she turned off the computer and went to bed.

In the morning Hen drove out with Stella Gregson to the Sussex police evidence depository. Every police force has to provide storage for the millions of items and tons of paper used in investigations. Even after a case has gone to court and a conviction is secured, all the main materials, including items not produced in the trial, are retained, kept in plastic boxes in case of an appeal or a reinvestigation.

These buildings were the size of warehouses, strictly functional, boxlike and secure. The one unlocked for them was the second largest on the site and contained thousands of magazines and books seized in raids authorised by the obscene publications legislation.

'Welcome to wankers' world,' Hen said.

'You've made my day, guv.'

'There's a lot of hardcore stuff here, but luckily we're not looking for that. When a raid takes place they don't have time to sift through everything, so they clear the shelves and bring it all back here, the mild as well as the really gross.' She turned to the custodian, a veteran with a face like a blocked sink. The porn had long ago lost all appeal for him. 'Where can we find nineteen eighty-two?'

'They'll be dusty.' He escorted them around the metal stacking system and pointed to a row of boxes reaching up to the roof beams. 'The ladder's over there, in eighty-six.'

'Fine.' To Stella, she said, 'Lanarkshire Press publications, remember. From memory, that would include
Innocents,
Headlights
and
Hot Buns.'

Stella groaned. 'Couldn't you have asked one of the men, guv?'

'They'd be useless at spotting a face. Think about it.'

'Yes, but—'

'You don't have to look at the squidgy bits.' From her bag she produced a photo of a young woman in a top hat, tailed jacket and tights. 'This should help. I did some phoning late yesterday. Amelia Snow,
circa
nineteen-eighty, courtesy of the Megastar Theatrical Agency'