Under My Skin (24 page)

Interesting how the mind wanders when left to its own devices. Visual clues—the subconscious’s way of letting you know it’s still there.

On past experience I reckoned the portable had life in it for one more phone call. I was about to pick it up when Carol Waverley beat me to it, a woman desperately trying to keep abreast of the plot. “Where did you go? I expected to see you afterward.”

“Sorry, Carol. I had an appointment.”

“What happened with the police? What did Olivia say?”

I gave her a potted summary of the story so far, leaving out the infidelity. Its absence put more emphasis on that eleven o’clock phone call that Olivia never answered. It had obviously been causing her grief, too.

“I tried to tell you about it this morning, but we got cut off. I told the police that she had been exhausted and was obviously asleep, but I knew they’d twist it around.”

“It’s their job, Carol,” I said. “It’s called detecting. Listen, you know the best thing you can do?” I added, acutely aware of the state of my battery.

“What?”

“Keep an eye on her and let me know if you learn anything that might help. OK?”

“No, don’t hang up. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I have found something.”

“What?”

“Well, you remember how before Maurice’s death you asked us to check out which of our clients had been referred from Castle Dean to his clinic? To see if any of the names matched?”

I remember that I had asked Olivia to do it, yes. But then obviously computer filing was beneath her dignity, and she had passed it on to someone of worthier status. “Yes?” The line crackled ominously.

“Well, after I’d done it, Olivia suggested that I hold on to the malpractice list, just in case any of the names should come up again. Anyway, this afternoon I did some work, just to take my mind off things. We send out a mailing every two months or so. You know—special offers, discounts, new treatments, that kind of thing. It was already overdue and Olivia had asked me to see to it. The mailing list is on computer. It includes all previous guests, of course, but also anyone who’s written in for a brochure or made an
inquiry over the last six months. It’s just a way of following them up really.”

“And?” Even intimately cradled between my shoulder and my ear, she was fast beginning to sound like an early Marconi recording. If she didn’t get there soon, she never would.

“Anyway, I was going through the addresses to check if there was anyone I could discard when I saw the name. I was sure I’d seen it before, so I checked the other list. So I told Olivia, and she said I should call you.”

“Who was it?” God, a girl (and a battery) could die waiting for the punch line.

“Belinda Balliol?”

Some people call it coincidence, some people call it zeitgeist, some people even call it morphic resonance. Me, I don’t have a name for it, I just know that when it happens I get this little shiver up and down my spine. “Let me get this right. You’re saying that someone called Belinda Balliol rang in with a request for a brochure and details of the health farm?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“When exactly.”

“April twenty-fourth. It’s on the file.”

A little over a month ago. Just before all the trouble started. “Great. But as far as you know she never came there?”

“Well, if she did, she didn’t leave her real name, or she’d be on the other file. But I’ve been thinking about that. I mean we do these special one-day visits. Most people pay by cash for those and she could always have filled the form in wrongly if she hadn’t wanted us to know who she’d been. What’s more they include a facial and a face massage. I checked the back rotation lists. On most of the day visits Lola Marsh was doing those.”

See what happens when you let a private eye loose on a
profession. Everybody gets the bug. “It’s certainly possible, yes. Listen, d’you want to give me the address that you sent that brochure to?”

“I’ve got it here. Care of the Majestic Casino, London. Does that help?”

“Yes and no,” I answered. “Thanks, anyway.”

“Hannah?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it important? I mean—should I tell the police, too?”

“Are they still there?”

“They’ve just left. Olivia said I should tell you first.” I looked at my watch. After 3:00. Given their resources, if she told them today I wouldn’t stand a chance. Well, they’d already had two early mornings this week. They’d probably appreciate an evening off. I told her no just as the line went down. I think she heard me.

This time I didn’t bother with cover stories. Just showed the guy at the desk my card. My other card, that is. He wasn’t that impressed. Maybe it was just part of the culture: private eyes in private clubs. I asked for the manager, but he hadn’t arrived. The owner was around, though. But then for him business was obviously its own kind of pleasure. Though he was a good deal less Confucian second time around.

“Mr. Aziakis. What a surprise.”

“For you maybe, not for me.” The handshake was firm; old bones but still capable of putting on the squeeze. “I hear you’re looking for Belinda Balliol? What happened? Have you spent the money already?”

“No,” I said. “It’s under my mattress. Why? Is that a problem?”

“Not at all. The only ‘problem’ was you following her into the staff area afterward.”

My, my, the all-knowing eye. And I had tried so hard to be discreet. “How did you know?”

He shrugged.

“She didn’t do anything wrong,” I said firmly.

“Yes, that’s what she said.”

“What else did she say?”

“Nothing. She refused to discuss the incident.”

“But you didn’t sack her? I mean the man at the desk said she was on holiday.”

“Miss Wolfe, I don’t like private detectives. In my experience they only ever come into my business when there is trouble. You want to tell me one good reason why you should be any different?”

Maybe it was the accent that made him sound wise. Take that away and he was probably just an old thug. I sighed. “Because I didn’t cheat you out of any money,” I said. “And because trouble is what you’ve got with or without me.”

So I told him. Version one, that is: the unhappy client with a grudge to bear. Interestingly he didn’t think much of it.

“You want my opinion?”

“Very much.”

“I don’t think Belinda Balliol was unhappy with her body …” He left a pause. Timing. It can in some circumstances be mistaken for wisdom. “Though she used to be.”

“What does that mean?”

“When she first came here nine, maybe ten months ago. She was unhappy about herself then. Very unsure. But gradually she became different.”

“Physically, you mean?”

“Physically, mentally. In all kinds of ways. It was most interesting to watch. The breasts, the face—the nose and cheekbones in particular, I think. All this changed.”

“You notice a lot,” I said.

“Yes. I like women.” He smiled. “I’m just a little too old for them to like me.”

Oh, I don’t know, I thought. I bet you score higher than any woman of your age. Power—stuck on top of a pair of testicles it’s worth a dozen face-lifts. Maurice Marchant used to be living proof of that.

So Belinda had not stopped at the chest. Nose and cheekbones as well, eh? Maybe that had been Maurice’s way of compensating for the hard silicone. Or maybe he’d just found in her another Olivia: someone ripe for the changing. And the bedding. Until he decided to get out, leaving her looking great but feeling bad.

“And when did all this take place?” I asked.

“Last year. Not long after she came. The summer, I think. She was very happy then. Lots of smiles and charm.”

“And then?”

“Then I don’t know. Something changed. She was more attractive but also more difficult.”

“How ‘difficult’?”

“More above it all. Withdrawn. As if we all owed her a living. It caused some resentment among the other girls.”

Boy, this guy really knew his staff. What do you bet he put the make on all of them, just in case? “So why didn’t you get rid of her?”

“Because in this profession you don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. The Majestic customers liked her. There was something about her looks and her rather cold confidence that made them want to play at her table. Each casino has a honeypot. For a while she was ours.”

“For a while?” He nodded but said nothing. “So what happened the night I came?”

“Perhaps you should tell me. She was quite angry, that much I know. When I called her in and asked her what had happened, she wouldn’t say a word. She told me to mind my own business. I pointed out that nine hundred pounds
was
my business, but she still wouldn’t speak. I made it clear that if she refused to tell me, I’d have to ask her to leave. I
gave her a day to think about it. As it happened, she had two weeks’ leave due, anyway.”

“Mexico,” I said.

He frowned. “Maybe. I don’t remember. Anyway, I asked her to call me before she went.”

“And?”

“And she never did. I haven’t heard from her since.”

He turned out to be so helpful that I felt guilty about not offering him his money back. He gave me the key to her locker and, as I was leaving, pressed into my hand a slip of paper with Belinda’s address and telephone number. Sometimes there’s a lot to be said for being a woman—even if his fingers did linger a little too long in mine.

The locker was a severe disappointment. Just a spare purple chiffon dress, a carton of Tampax, a copy of
Time Out
and of
Vogue
, and a paperback of
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
. Unfortunately she wasn’t the kind of girl to write her name in the flyleaf. I turned to the cosmetic ads in
Vogue
.

She hadn’t been interested enough to mark any of them. A cursory flick through the
Time Out
revealed an article on the dangers of cosmetic surgery. I checked the cover. It was dated four weeks ago.

Aziakis was standing behind me. I rolled up the magazine and slid it deep into my bag, keeping my back between him and the locker. If I had stopped to think, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Well, whichever way you cut it, the magazine was evidence. But what Grant and Rawlings never saw, they could never miss.

The telephone number Aziakis had given me turned out to be the same as the one I found in the file on her. I called from the casino. I didn’t expect her to be in, but it was worth checking. The answering machine clicked on. Sorry, can’t take your call. The same jaunty voice. The same jaunty message. Good. That left the address.

It was a small street a stone’s throw away from West End Lane, lined with little thirties-style semis, some neater and more cared for than others. No. 22 was one of the better ones. There was a red Labour sticker in the top window for an election that was already over. Funny. I didn’t have her down as a political animal. I rang the doorbell just to make doubly sure she wasn’t there. She wasn’t.

But somebody else was. He looked much more the Labour-sticker type, and he’d never heard of Belinda Balliol. He was subletting the house from a mate who’d gone to Saudi on a job. As far as he knew, the mate had been living there for about six months. He didn’t know who’d been there before or where I might find them. In the car I looked at Belinda’s phone number again. As she had kept it after moving, I assumed she must still be living in the area, but I couldn’t tell much else until I had had a look at my trusty British Telecom code book. It was time to go home.

The light on my machine was blinking welcome. I whirled back the tape and listened as a gruff male voice told me his name was Patrick Rankin, that he was still in Majorca, and could be reached at the following number. I wrote it down, but couldn’t get excited about it. I’d long since crossed him off my list.

I made myself a cup of coffee and ate a packet of custard creams. The sugar rush was better than the caffeine. From my bag I dug out the
Time Out
article, just in case. But I’d seen it all before: exploding tits, sucked thighs, overstretched faces. It read like the synopsis of a David Cronenberg film.

I was turning the page as I caught sight of my face in the mirror above the table. For a second it shocked me. Caught in repose I looked older than I remembered, the skin around my eyes a little worn, a definite droop to the corners of the mouth. Intimate moments of a private eye. How much would it worry me, no longer being young? I pulled
back my cheeks to see what kind of drop we were talking about and my face jumped up a couple of centimeters. I batted my eyelashes and tried to smile. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I let gravity reestablish control.

From above my right eye the scar winked at me, its glossy stretch of skin catching the light. I gave a big grin back. Little lines exploded everywhere. Behind every last one of them there was a history—a recurring gesture, a joke, a story, a moment of pleasure or even pain. Take the lines away and who would I be? Not someone younger, that’s for sure. I picked up the phone and went back to work.

W
ith the
A—Z
open at page 43 I closed my eyes and divebombed my pen onto a square. J7. I picked out one of its streets. The British Telecom code book, which comes free to every happy subscriber, had already helped me locate the 328 prefix as an area where West Hampstead meets Kilburn. Now I had an address to go with it. I was about to dial the operator when a call came in. It was the other crime in my life. The domestic one. As soon as I heard her voice, I felt bad. But that could have been my guilt at managing so many hours without thinking about her. “Hi, Kate. How’s it going?”

“You remember home. Nothing much changes here.”

“Yeah, I gather the video recorder hasn’t made it to Kent yet. Amy left a message on my machine, asking me to collect yours and drive it down for her.”

“Did she? The little monkey. Well, you know Mum. She still thinks television makes your eyes go square if you watch too much of it. She’s trying to interest them in jigsaws.”

There was a pause. The engineers on the 328 exchange would be busy going home. I needed to be about my business. But then so did she.