The Convenience of Lies (13 page)

Twenty-One

The faint scent of flowers puzzled Hoare on entering his bedsit. Even his fags and booze-impaired faculties picked up an alien waft of the countryside within the staleness of the room where he crashed most nights. It wasn’t important.

Of
flowers, Hoare knew little - not those growing in gardens or arranged in bouquets to placate a wife. He could recognise the sickly reek of privet but what came through the dank of his flat was more like a fragrance remembered from a meadow - wild but subtle, hard to define.

Wherever
it had originated - the other bedsit on his landing or those on the two floors below - he’d more tangible matters to attend to.

It’d
been a more than satisfactory day. Teddy Lamb coughed up a few secrets to give him a line on the trade union eavesdropper at Rules. He’d also made up his mind to quit the police for Inglis’s much higher profile PR job in politics. With this new life in prospect, he’d seen a Greek tailor in Soho to be measured for a three-piece suit in charcoal grey. He would look the knees of a bee during TV appearances yet to come.

Despite
his lunchtime jolly with Teddy, Hoare’s low alcohol warning light was flashing. He poured a Scotch, lit the last cigarette from his third pack of twenty that day and began drafting a letter of resignation in readiness for Inglis firming up his offer.

Next,
he wrote a detailed note of all the compromising trade union naughtiness Teddy let slip in his cups. As insurance policies went, it was cheap at the price. Hoare then switched on his portable television and lay fully clothed on the unmade bed to watch the early evening news.

But
he nodded off and woke an hour later, crumpled and hungry. It was time for another all-day breakfast at the greasy spoon round the corner where his face was becoming known.

Before
he went, he needed to hide the gold dust he’d winkled out of Teddy. It could go with all the paperwork and photographs he’d already liberated from the Ruby Ross investigation. This was in a large folder slipped into the narrow space between his wardrobe drawer and the floor beneath.

As
he took hold of the file, it felt different - thinner, lighter. Then he saw why. All the Ruby material was missing. But the bedsit door hadn’t been forced. His one window remained bolted from the inside. The intruder must have had a key. If this was Benwick’s idea of a funny, it wasn’t Hoare’s.

But
the wider implications of this little robbery sank in. Someone, whoever it was, now knew he’d been stealing confidential police documents.

People
were sacked or even jailed for that. Nick the Greek might yet be stitching hubristic arrows on Hoare’s new suit. He told himself not to panic.

Another
Scotch would help but his mobile rang. A woman, well spoken and sure of herself, asked if he was Malky Hoare, the police press officer.

‘I
might be. Who is this?’

‘No-one
important.’

‘So
why are you ringing me?’

‘Just
checking you’re at home, that’s all.’

‘Who
the hell are you?’

‘Sorry,
Mr Hoare. I’ve got to go. Good bye.’

He
knew then he’d been rumbled. The apartment took on a cell-like feel. He moved the shirts drying on hangers above the sink and stuck his head under the tap. The cold water ran over his face and onto the unwashed plates in the bowl below. It wasn’t flowers he’d smelt. It was perfume.

But
the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the bare wooden stairs to his landing quickly drove this irrelevance from his mind.

*

However mildly she was coaxed by the police inspector, Ruby refused to answer any questions about who’d taken her or what’d happened afterwards. But she did allow herself to be examined by the doctor.

‘There’s
no physical sign of sexual assault,’ she said. ‘We should hope she undergoes what’s called dissociative amnesia, in other words, she blanks out what happened.’

Ruby
was bathed and dressed in clean clothes. It was felt best to leave her drawing in her bedroom and despite everything, humming one of her made-up songs. She needed time to adjust - a luxury Lexie no longer had.

‘What
are we going to do, McCall? Just tell me.’

‘Well,
you can’t stay here but wherever Ruby’s going to live, a move to somewhere new isn’t going to be easy, not for her or anyone else.’

‘I’d
take her to Bristol but my flat isn’t big enough and I’ve got the business to run and I still get offered parts and I can’t afford to turn them down.’

‘So
you’d be for putting put her into a council home, then?’

‘Don’t
say it like that, it sounds as if I don’t care.’

‘And
do you?’

‘You
know full well I do but my whole life is being turned upside down.’

‘What
about Ruby’s life? Hasn’t that been turned upside down?’

‘Of
course it has but I’ve never had the responsibility of a child before, let alone one with all Ruby’s problems.’

‘Like
the doctor just said, she needs calm and stability to give her any chance of coping with everything that’s gone on.’

‘Don’t
we all.’

‘Yes,
and that’s why we need to get help.’

‘But
where from, sweetie? I can hardly sleep from worrying about it.’

‘I
was thinking that maybe we should ask Hester.’

‘Your
charlady?’

‘Housekeeper,
Lexie. You mustn’t underestimate her.’

‘I’m
not but she doesn’t look like she’s moved on since Woodstock.’

‘Maybe,
but for all Hester’s kooky ideas, she’s a woman of real humanity.’

‘So
you’re saying Ruby might move up to Garth and live there?’

‘She’d
be with family and friends in a stable environment so I wouldn’t see the welfare authorities objecting.’

It
took a moment before a look of relief began to cross Lexie’s face. And through the door of Ruby’s bedroom came her endlessly repeated dirge…
and all will be well and all will be well and all will be well, well, well.

*

Hoare was taken from his flat by two men with unreadable faces who could have doubled as funeral mutes. It wasn’t a police car waiting outside for them but a black London taxi. Special Branch used them on surveillance jobs - but how come he warranted one?

His
captors sat on the fold-down seats opposite so he couldn’t see the driver. They pulled out into heavy traffic. All his demands to know who was taking him where were ignored. He felt breathless, unable to see outside the tinted windows and seized by claustrophobic stress.

Within
ten minutes, they’d turned left down a ramp between two tall buildings. A metal portcullis rolled up to admit them to an empty underground car park.

The
mutes led him through the semi-darkness to a metal gate in a far wall. They locked it behind them and descended a concrete stairwell.

*

The battery on McCall’s mobile was dead. He left Lexie and Ruby and went to look for a working phone box. He dialled Hoare’s bedsit to tell him they were decamping to the Welsh borders. But there was no reply or to his mobile. McCall tried his direct line at the Yard and heard the click of his call being diverted automatically. A man said Hoare wasn’t there and asked who was calling.

‘Just
a friend. We’re working on something together.’

‘And
what might that be, Sir?’

‘Doesn’t
matter. I’ll catch up with him later.’

McCall
then rang Hester to tell her about Ruby - her talent as an artist, the suicide of her mother, of going missing then being found in the very place where she pretended to be a princess with a pet unicorn.

‘It’s
all down to this condition she’s got, Asperger’s syndrome.’

‘I
knew a boy in the States with it. They can be extraordinarily talented kids.’

‘Trouble
is she doesn’t like change but we need to leave the flat tomorrow.’

‘And
then what?’

‘Well,
if she doesn’t throw a massive wobbly, we’ll bring her up to live at Garth.’

‘OK,
I’ve understood everything,’ Hester said. ‘I’ve an idea how I help. Give me an address and I’ll be with you around breakfast time.’

*

Lexie wasn’t the jittery type. But Etta’s occult junk made her nervy, despite being boxed up ready for the weekly rubbish collection. Even the exaggerated shadows of people passing the frosted glass of the door to the communal yard scared her that night. She wished McCall hadn’t gone out.

It
was still hard to believe he’d stay to help her care for Ruby. Most men would jump ship if a kid as difficult as her became part of the arrangement.

Lexie
was too on edge to sleep. She needed a drink. There was ice and tonic in the fridge and the remains of a bottle of gin in the living room. She poured a decent measure and went to play one of Etta’s videos to take her mind off the uncertain future.

On
the shelf above the TV was something of Lexie’s past - a VHS of Blow-Up, the ultimate time capsule of style and paranoid intrigue from London in the swinging sixties. Its packaging was scuffed as if Etta had watched it a lot though whether with sisterly pride or jealousy, Lexie couldn’t know.

But
Blow-Up was the first movie in which she’d appeared, if only briefly. That didn’t matter. There she would be - forever young, dancing at a Yardbirds gig as the film’s beautiful, boyish lead, David Hemmings, ran off with bits of a guitar Jeff Beck smashed against an amp. Such days did she remember.

McCall
had idolised Jeff Beck once. He would’ve loved to have been on that shoot. But they’d split up by then and he’d taken it badly. She could still remember a line from one of his tortured letters… when all of life turns into winter, heroin is a fur coat and a kiss on the darkest of nights. She felt guilty at that. But she was meant to. Then Evan sorted him out. Evan sorted out everyone eventually.

Lexie
took a sip of her gin and tonic. As she did, something within the ice cube which shouldn’t have been there, caught her eye. It looked for all the world like a tiny frozen teardrop. She put the cube on the palm of her hand. Her skin felt on fire. The ice turned to water and slowly gave up its secret – a tight little twist of cling film.

She
peeled it open with care. Inside was the narrowest curl of paper, barely an inch long. On it was written the name Mr Ginger in blue Biro.

She’d
heard of this New Age fad - sealing the name of some feared or hated person in an ice cube to freeze out whatever threat they posed. But she’d never seen it done. This was Etta’s doing without a doubt.

But
who was Mr Ginger… and why had she been afraid of him? Was this another clue from beyond the grave about Etta’s puzzling life and disturbing death? Lexie believed the tarot cards under the bedroom poster had been just that.

Yet
if she told McCall about the ice cube find, he might think Lexie had written the name herself to create a drama. If not that, he’d just sneer and say it was only more proof of Etta’s foolish ways.

Mr
Ginger was best kept wrapped up for now.

Twenty-Two

‘Sit down, Hoare.’

‘Why
have I been brought here?’

‘Because
you’re in a damned big hole.’

‘Would
that be the one you’ve just thrown me in?’

‘It’s
not us who’ve been stealing documents from a police investigation.’

‘But
what gives you the right to break into my flat?’

‘I
do the questions and you do the answers. We find it works best like that.’

It
would’ve been a gross misjudgement to think the interrogator’s weary insouciance hid any lack of resolve. Hoare couldn’t fail to note the hard, grey eyes of a man approaching a pension but who’d clearly given orders under all manner of fire.

‘I
still want to know who you are,’ Hoare said.

‘Let
me see… I’m someone who could make or break you. Now, can we get on?’

Hoare’s
interrogator read from a file of typed notes. They sat either side of a desk in a windowless cinder block office lit by a neon tube humming above them.

‘Says
here you’re overdrawn at your bank and behind with the maintenance and mortgage payments to your ex-wife.’

‘Can’t
deny that but isn’t debt the curse of the age?’

‘Giving
you every reason to make money on the side… like betraying the trust of the police who employ you and selling inside information to some rubbishy tabloid.’

‘There’s
not a word of truth in what you’ve just said.’

‘Wasn’t
truth whatever your newspaper decided at morning conference and all you had to do was go out and prove it, irrespective of whatever really was the truth?’

‘Look,
where’s all this leading?’

‘For
you, probably to prison for perverting the course of justice and for theft.’

Three
pictures were slid across the desk towards him - black and white ten by eights, shot with a long tom lens and showing Hoare leaving Etta’s funeral with Lexie and McCall.

‘Tell
me more about the man you’re with here.’

‘Are
you spying on him or me?’

‘Being
smart doesn’t help you. Just answer my questions.’

‘He’s
a journalist, Francis McCall - but I’d say you knew that already.’

‘What
sort of things have you told him that you shouldn’t?’

‘I’ve
told him nothing which hadn’t been authorised by DI Benwick.’

‘Is
that a fact? Well, let’s listen to this.’

He
pressed the play button on a small tape recorder.

Sitting
in a tree? Even we couldn’t make it up, Mac.

No,
but as with much else in this affair, it doesn’t make sense.

Like
I’ve been trying to tell you all along, it’s a hell of a tale. The papers will love it.

‘This
is scandalous,’ Hoare said. ‘You’ve been bugging my mobile phone.’

‘And
you’ve been leaking confidential police files to a journalist.’

‘No,
absolutely not.’

‘McCall’s
the good pal you’d trust to pay you on the quiet for the story.’

‘So
when you snatch him off the streets, you can ask him.’

‘We
will and that’s for sure. Now, tell me about Benwick.’

‘Tell
you what about him?’

‘About
his private life, where he spends time, girlfriends he’s got. That sort of thing.’

‘I
know nothing about any of this.’

‘You
work closely together yet you know nothing about him out of office hours?’

‘DI
Benwick doesn’t socialise, doesn’t talk about himself.’

‘So
you haven’t seen him drunk?’

Hoare
shook his head. The interrogator switched on the tape again.

For
Christ’s sake! You’re half cut and running round London with a gun.

No,
that’s just my new portable phone.

‘So
you bastards have put a spike mic in my flat, too?’

‘You
didn’t report this drunken incident to your line manager. Why not?’

‘Because
I only thought I saw a weapon. I couldn’t be sure.’

‘All
right, tell me where is Benwick at the moment.’

‘He’s
on leave but he didn’t confide his holiday plans to me.’

‘And
he’s not been in touch with you in any way since you last saw him?’

‘No,
why should he?’

‘If
you don’t know where he is, what about the child who disappeared?’

‘Little
Ruby Ross?’

‘Yes,
the girl… where has she been taken and who is she with?’

Hoare
held the man’s wintry gaze. Only then did he realise something was a mite more suspect than he’d first thought. If he was being questioned by a police officer, they already knew Ruby was being cared for by Lexie and McCall.

‘I’ve
no idea,’ Hoare said. ‘It’s not something I’d be told about.’

‘Really?
I think you’re a bloody liar. But we’re through for the moment.’

‘So
I can go?’

‘We’ll
drive you home shortly,’ he said. ‘But you’re not out of the woods yet.’

‘You’ve
no damn right to treat me like this.’

‘It’s
for a greater good, Hoare, for the benefit of our green and pleasant land.’

‘You
mean Benwick’s some sort of risk to national security?’

‘You
can work it out for yourself. But if you want this nastiness to stop, resume your job and use every means to find out where Benwick is then tell me.’

‘Aren’t
there official channels you could use rather than put my feet to the fire?’

‘That’s
our business. Just you remember you’ve blundered into a drama bigger than your own. If you’ve any sense, you’ll play ball because if you don’t, you’ll find the alternative will do your dicky heart no good at all.’