The Victim in Victoria Station (15 page)

If I'd been younger, I think she might have said no, but I was in her age bracket and a dependable type. Besides, it was the kind of request that was hard for anyone with a spark of humanity to deny, and she was, after all, the one who had failed to tell me about the Friday office hours.

She bit her lip, and I waited anxiously.

“Very well. Just this once, mind. It's my responsibility to make sure everything is locked up, and I'd be called on the carpet if it wasn't.”

“You can trust me. I'll be very careful.”

She smiled and seemed to relax. “I'm sure you will. Actually it'll be a bit of a blessing for me. If you're to do the locking up, I can leave a trifle early myself. My daughter and grandson are coming for a little visit, and the flat needs a wash and a brushup before I meet them at Euston.”

“Oh, my, there's never quite enough time to get ready for company, is there?”

“There never seems to be. Well, enjoy your evening. You'll like
Cats
; I've seen it twice. Oh, and you'd best remind Mr. Grey and Mr. Upton to lock their doors. I'll mention it, myself, but they often forget.”

“I'll check their doors myself before I leave.” I certainly would.

Brian Upton was out the door thirty seconds after Evelyn left, and Terry Hammond shortly after that. “What, the gorgon gone and you still here, Mrs. Wren?” said Terry as he passed my desk.

“I'm waiting for someone. I didn't know about Friday hours. Do you really find her a gorgon? I think she's pleasant.”

“Only if you toe the mark like a good child. She rules with an iron hand, believe me. Reminds me of an old-style nanny. The only one who isn't afraid of her is old Spragge, and I wonder sometimes about him. He's always sweet as honey when she's around. Well, ta-ta! Hope your date doesn't keep you waiting!”

“It's a woman friend,” I said, but the door had closed behind him.

That left only Mr. Grey, but before I could check on him, the phone rang.

“Multilinks International.”

“Um—Louise Wren, please.”

“Hello, Nigel,” I said in a low tone. “The coast is clear, or nearly. We've gotten lucky.” I explained the situation. “If you'll hang on a minute, I'll find out when Mr. Grey is leaving.”

He was working at his computer when I tapped on his open door. “I'm sorry, Mr. Grey, but as I'll be here until six, I thought I'd ask if you want any calls put through to you after five.”

“Oh. No, I'm leaving in a moment, I just want to …” He was absorbed again. I stopped at the marketing director's door just to make sure he'd forgotten to lock it before reporting back to Nigel.

“Well, he
says
he's leaving any minute, but he's pretty wrapped up in what he's doing. Everyone else is gone, though, and I've been able to arrange for some unlocked doors.”

“I hope you weren't obvious about it!”

“I hope so, too. Nigel, give me credit for a little sense, will you? Not always a lot, maybe, but a little, now and then. Mrs. Forbes accepted my explanation, and nobody else cares.

“Now, listen. I think you'd better wait until about eight or so, just to make sure everyone is well out of the way. Oh, and bring a flashlight—a torch, I mean. It'll still be daylight then, but if it keeps on raining, it'll be pretty gloomy in here, and we shouldn't turn on the lights.”

“What will you do, meanwhile?”

“There's a very nice couch in the main office. I intend to lock myself in, as soon as Mr. Grey goes, and take a nap. I'm exhausted. There's a doorbell; ring three times when you come.”

“What about your dinner?”

“I have a candy bar in my purse. I'll see you later, Nigel.”

“Eight o'clock, sharp.”

He hung up, and I busied myself with filing. All of my files were in the hallway, so none of the work took me legitimately into the main office. I managed several trips to Evelyn's files, anyway, partly to snoop a little and see how her office was organized, and partly to keep an eye on Mr. Grey.

It was nearly six, and I was beginning to get nervous, when he finally finished whatever it was he'd been doing and shut down his computer. I was sitting at my own desk, demurely powdering my nose, when he came through.

“Ah, Mrs.—er. Still here? I thought you left some time ago.”

“I'm waiting for a friend. I'm leaving soon. Have a nice weekend, Mr. Grey.”

I counted to twenty after he closed the front door behind him, and then checked his office door. Not only had he forgotten to lock it, it was standing wide open with the light on. Absent-mindedness is an underrated virtue.

It is also, I reflected, not usually the hallmark of a criminal. At any rate, not of a successful one.

The first thing I did when I was alone was to call the Andersons.

“Lynn, I'm terribly sorry, but I'm going to be home late. I couldn't let you know before; Nigel and I didn't work things out until about an hour ago, and then I didn't dare call you until the last person left the office. He's coming over at eight, and goodness knows how long it'll take us to find anything. If we
can
find anything. I hope you hadn't planned anything elaborate for dinner.”

She laughed. “No, I knew your plans were—flexible, shall we say? We're eating out. There's a new Indian place we've been
dying
to try.”

“Meanie. You know I love Indian food. I'll be thinking about you gorging yourselves on curry while I dine on a Milky Way. Look, I'm really not at all sure when I might be able to get there. Should I plan to put up at a hotel for the night? I don't want to—”

“Don't worry about it. We'll probably be up till midnight at
least
, and if you're later than that, I'll put the key under the third geranium in the right-hand window box. Have fun, and don't get into any unnecessary trouble.”

At six o'clock precisely I locked the beautiful, paneled front door of the building, which had begun life as an elegant Georgian house. Fortunately, Multilinks was at present the only tenant; the three upper stories were vacant, so I was the lone occupant. I turned out all the lights just in case anybody was interested in whether I was still there, went into the main office, and settled down on the couch for my lonely vigil.

The rain showed no signs of letting up. It was no longer pouring down, and the wind and thunder had gone, but a steady, depressing drizzle had settled in, the sort that London specializes in. The traffic noises that came through the open windows were all wet noises. One of the rain gutters on the building was evidently clogged, for I could hear a loud, rapid drip-drip-drip somewhere just outside one of the windows. It annoyed me, and I found it hard to sit still.

Would it hurt anything if I did some exploring on my own while waiting for Nigel? The house was dim, late on a rainy afternoon, but this was June. It wasn't really dark. I could easily see.

The floor plan of the house had originally been very simple. A single-fronted house (that is, one with the front door and staircase to one side, rather than in the middle) of generous proportions, it had been planned with a gracious front hall, very possibly a curved staircase, and two large rooms on the entrance floor, one facing the quiet street, one the back garden—probably drawing room and library. Fireplaces giving on a single central chimney had warmed both rooms, which were connected by two doors, one on either side of the fireplace.

The intervening years, however, had brought ill fortune to the house. Like so very many London houses, it was eventually sold to business concerns, and in the twentieth century (I was guessing) the house had been converted entirely to commercial interests. The large front hall had been partitioned into a narrow entryway leading to a steep, narrow stair. The other half of the hall, on the main floor, anyway, had been converted into a kind of anteroom, at the back of which sat the receptionist's (now my) desk and filing cabinets. The front room was now three small rooms, with Evelyn's desk in the outer office and Mr. Grey and Mr. Upton holding forth in the two cubicles, which had a connecting door. A small corridor parallel to the original wall extended to a minute bathroom—loo, lavatory, call it what you will—adjacent to the door to Mr. Spragge's office, a still-attractive room that occupied half the original library and had retained its lovely paneling, though not, sadly, its fireplace. The other half of the back room was again divided in two: Mr. Hammond's windowless and rather airless hole opening off, and really a wing of, the main office, and opening off that in turn, the office nominally occupied by Mr. Fortier. Since he was virtually never in it, however, it was actually used as a catchall office/file room by the three salespeople.

This was the labyrinth Nigel and I proposed to explore when it would be a good deal darker, and by flashlight. The prospect was daunting.

I might as well leave Mr. Hammond until Nigel got there. With no windows, his room was the darkest of the lot, though some light entered from the big front window of the outer office. Very well. That left four other offices, five if one counted Evelyn's domain. Where to start?

Do the easy part first. Mr. Grey's office was small and contained virtually nothing but his desk, his computer, and a couple of chairs for customers. Furthermore it had a big window, curtained only by white nylon. I thought about closing it. I ought to, of course. All the windows ought to have been closed before I turned out the lights, so the place would look buttoned up for the weekend. But there was so little air stirring, and it was so warm inside, I felt I just couldn't. No one would see me through the curtains.

Of course, I didn't know what I was looking for, which hampered my search considerably. There was no point in my even turning on the computer. That was Nigel's area of expertise; it would wait until he was here. I was looking, I told myself, for something, anything, that would point to questionable activities.

I almost decided at that point to skip Mr. Grey. I have a lively imagination, but even I could not conceive of that anonymous little man getting up to nefarious deeds. He was just so drab, so colorless, so
nothing
.

And what better mask to hide behind?
said one of the busy voices in my head.
There is no better disguise than invisibility
.

Well, Peter Grey was the most invisible man I'd ever met, but the inner voice had a point, and the man was, after all, a Canadian. I searched his desk.

He was also the neatest man I'd ever encountered. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Four pencils sharpened to the same length. Three ballpoint pens, black. A drawer full of sticky-note pads, arranged by size and color. A drawer full of computer-generated orders, arranged by date, most recent on top. Those aroused my interest at first, but I leafed through them and found no customers outside the European Community, few in fact outside England.

There wasn't even any eraser dust in his drawers. No dried-up candy, no chewing gum. Nothing.

The thought of candy, I realized, was prompted by my own hunger. I sat down in Peter's chair and bent over to rummage through my purse, which I had set on the floor.

There was a small noise outside, and the curtains at the window stirred. I could see nothing in my hunched-up position, but I froze, not daring to move a muscle, not even breathing. A touch of breeze at last, or—something else?

T
ime is relative. I stayed in that hunched-over position for a thousand years, too scared to breathe deeply, but only a minute or two had elapsed on the clock before my cramped, screaming muscles had to move. I had heard nothing more, seen no further movement. Slowly, slowly, I raised my head, a millimeter at a time. The creaking of my bones sounded so loud in my ears, I was sure it could be heard in the street.

When at last I dared slew my eyes around to the window, I took one look and then sat up abruptly straight, bumping my head on the bottom of Mr. Grey's computer desk. I was limp with relief.

“Well, sir, or madam as the case may be, I hope you know you scared me out of at least three or four of
my
lives, and I don't have as many to spare as you do.”

“Mrrrp,” responded my visitor briefly, in a raspy soprano. It was a sorry specimen, its once-white fur damp and matted, one ear torn, one eye swollen shut. Its ribs showed, and the tip of its tail was missing. It sat on the wide windowsill and studied me for a moment and then, finding me of no interest, licked a paw and began to wash its face.

I sat back in the chair. “Now what am I going to do with you? Poor thing, I wish I could feed you, but there's nothing you'd like here. You also need a bath, and some love, and a visit to the vet, and I can't provide any of those things right now. In fact, puss, I have things to do, and one of them is to shut this window. Could I persuade you to continue your ablutions elsewhere?”

I made a move toward the cat. It swore at me, neatly avoided my reaching hands, and jumped back down into the street. I'd learned my lesson; I closed that window and then made a tour of the office, closing them all. Better to swelter than to risk any more such heart-stopping surprises.

I now needed that candy bar I'd started to hunt for back in that other lifetime, needed it badly. When adrenaline dissipates, it leaves me starved. I pawed through my purse, found the candy, ate it, wished I had another, and sat down on the couch in the main office to think what to do next.

Whoever my “doctor” had been, he had certainly been working with somebody. Presumably that somebody was as deep into the pirating operation as the spurious doctor. Now who was the most likely person in the organization to be stealing the product?

Why, as Nigel had wondered, would anyone take the risk of stealing it at all? Oh, for money, of course—but when people turn to crime, it's usually for a pressing reason. They need money very badly for some special purpose—big debts, especially gambling debts, or big expenses ahead. Given the kind of fiction I prefer, my mind of course leaped to blackmail.