‘Yes, now!’ said Ned.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I asked him, ‘making teeth.’
His flush deepened to brick red. ‘Actually I do high-precision work—’
‘Ned,’ I interrupted. ‘I just don’t care, right? It’s all the same to me if you’re in work or out of work, do the most fascinating job in the world or the most boring. You could be a - a trapeze artist or a polar explorer, I still wouldn’t be interested.’
‘I don’t suppose you are,’ he answered unexpectedly. ‘I wouldn’t be interested in you in any other circumstances. But I’m interested in Lisa Stallard and so are you and that gives us a common area of discussion, all right? So we do need to talk. If you want to know, I’m taking a late lunch. Our meeting seems sort of meant, doesn’t it?’
‘Spare me,’ I begged. ‘You’ll be talking about glances across a crowded room next. All right, talk. I believe in freedom of speech. But is this really the best place?’
If I couldn’t get rid of him any other way, then I’d have to give in on this point and let him say whatever he’d got prepared. I was sure it would amount to a sharp request to clear off out of Oxford and not come back. So if I had to let him say it, I would. It wouldn’t make any difference. I was staying until I’d achieved what I’d come to do.
‘I often come here,’ he informed me. ‘I work not far from here. I’m interested in bones and in teeth.’
He would be. ‘I’m just doing the sights,’ I said. ‘I’m a visitor in the city.’
‘I know what you’re doing here in Oxford,’ he retorted. ‘And you’re not a tourist. You’re here from Allerton to make a nuisance of yourself.’
We were forced apart by a group of Japanese tourists at this point. When they had passed by, I took up our conversation.
‘I wish you’d keep out of this,’ I said. ‘And so does Lisa.’
‘I know Lisa better than you do!’ he said angrily, a new red flush rising to the roots of his tousled hair.
A group of children in the charge of a capable-looking woman appeared and obliged us to step apart again.
‘Look here,’ said Ned. ‘Like I said, I wanted a chance to talk to you. Let’s go upstairs where it’s quieter.’
I followed him up a wide flight of stairs in one corner and we found ourselves on a balcony running around three sides of the room.
‘This is interesting,’ said Ned, momentarily sidetracked. He indicated a glass box.
I went to look in it and, wouldn’t you know, another skeleton, a human one lying rather crumpled on its side on a bed of sand. The legs were bent, the ribs partly collapsed and the head twisted to one side. I was reminded of the grass snake coiled up in a loose knot in the Stallards’ garden.
‘It’s Romano-British,’ said Ned with a note of enthusiasm. ‘Look, you can see the teeth really well.’
‘Some of them have fallen out,’ I remarked, looking at a couple of molars lying beside the jaw on the sand.
‘Excellent view of the roots,’ said Ned. ‘This is a young person, of course. The teeth are in excellent condition. ’
‘I suppose there were Romano-British dentists,’ I said.
‘Their teeth wore down,’ Ned informed me. ‘Due to the coarsely ground bread they ate.’
I turned my back to the display. ‘Just tell me what it is you want to say. My name is Fran, by the way.’
‘And you know mine is Ned, so that means you’ve spoken to Lisa today,’ he returned. He wasn’t as dumb as he acted.
‘All right, but I’m not discussing that with you.’
He looked away from me and at the skeleton in its glass box as if in some way he was happier addressing that. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘what kind of work Lisa did in London.’
‘It wasn’t so bad.’ I found myself defending her. ‘There’s worse. It wasn’t illegal.’
‘I saw the place, the Silver Circle.’
That took me aback. ‘When?’ I asked.
‘Soon after she started work there. I was going to London on business. I asked Jennifer for Lisa’s address so that I could look her up. I found her living in a horrible grubby room in a run-down council block in Rotherhithe.’
‘And was Lisa pleased to see you?’ I was ready to bet she hadn’t been.
‘No,’ he said honestly. ‘Not at first, anyway. I think she was embarrassed and afraid I’d tell her parents how she was living. But when she realised I wouldn’t do that, she became quite pleased to see a friendly face. She was feeling really low. She hadn’t been able to get proper work as a dancer. She wasn’t eating enough. She told me that she’d just started work at a club, the Silver Circle, but it was temporary. She needed the money to pay her rent. She didn’t have the whole flat to herself, just a room in it, but the rent was still pretty steep.’
‘I bet the council didn’t know the tenant was subletting, ’ I said.
‘I tried to persuade her to come back to Oxford with me,’ Ned said. ‘But she still believed she could get real work. So I had to leave her there. But I made a point of finding out where the club was. I didn’t go inside it. There was a bouncer at the door.’
‘A square-built bloke with thinning hair?’ I asked him, wondering if he’d encountered Harry.
‘No, a tall, blond, mean-looking guy.’
Ivo, I thought. ‘Did you visit Lisa again in London?’
He shook his head. ‘I kept getting glowing reports from Jennifer about how well Lisa was doing, working in the chorus of all the big musical shows. So I thought things were all right, and she had found work and wasn’t at the club any longer. Then, the other day, she came back unexpectedly to Oxford. She was in a bit of a state. She came round to my flat and told me that it was all a lie, everything she’d told her parents. She’d been working at the club all the time for an audience of boozy businessmen and perverts, but she’d had enough and left. Only the chap who runs the place, Allerton, took a dim view of that and he’d be sure to try and get her to come back if he found out where she was. She was terrified he would find out and when we looked out of my window yesterday in the evening and saw you talking on a mobile across the road, well, Lisa was suspicious at once. I told her not to worry, you were just someone lost and phoning for directions. But then later, after Jennifer and Paul left their house, we saw you come back and ring their doorbell so we knew then, you must be from Allerton.’
‘Ned,’ I told him, ‘I know you mean well, but there’s nothing you can do. I’m glad Lisa’s got a friend to tell her troubles to. But that’s as far as it goes. I don’t like this situation either, but I’ve got a job to do. Think of it this way: it’s better Lisa deals with me than with one of Allerton’s musclemen.’
‘I don’t want her going back there!’ he said desperately. For a moment he looked as if he was going to burst into tears.
‘I’m not forcing her to go back. I just want her to make contact with Allerton. Leave it to me, right?’
‘I don’t know if I can trust you,’ he said.
I told him brutally that if he trusted me or not was irrelevant as far as I was concerned. He seemed depressed but not surprised by my reply.
‘I have to trust you, don’t I?’ he said dolefully.
‘Ned,’ I begged. ‘Go back to work and fix some teeth, will you? I’m leaving here now, anyway.’
I walked off and left him at the Romano-British display. I had a feeling, as I ran down the wide stone steps to the ground floor, that swelling music ought to issue from behind the pillars, but there was only the chatter of children’s voices and the click of Japanese cameras.
I found a post office and posted my cards and by the time I got back to the guest house it was late afternoon, I was hot and tired; I took a shower and collapsed on my bed for a rest before getting ready to go out and eat. I hoped that at least my encounter with Ned at the museum would have persuaded him to step back and let Lisa and me sort things out our way. But unfortunately this wasn’t so, as I found out sooner than I could have anticipated.
I left the house around six thirty and there he was, lurking just down the road, leaning against a garage wall and looking so obvious I wondered someone hadn’t rung the police to report a suspicious character.
‘Now what?’ I groaned.
He fixed me with a belligerent glare and folded his muscular arms across his chest. ‘I’ve just called at the Stallards’. I knew you must have seen Lisa but I hadn’t realised you’d talked your way into the place and met Paul and Jennifer too. They chattered about your visit as if it was the best thing that had happened in weeks, well, since Lisa came home, anyway. After what you said at the museum, I was prepared to give you a chance. But I was right the first time about you.’
‘Ned,’ I said. ‘I can’t stop you ranting on like this. But I’m pretty fed up with falling over you every time I go anywhere. Right now, I’m going to eat. You can come along and talk while I do, if you want. It won’t get you anywhere. But I’m hungry and I don’t see why I should stay hungry hanging about on a street corner arguing with you.’
He looked less belligerent and just a tad pleased with himself. He thought he’d won an important point. No, he’d won a minor one. He’d find out. We went to the wine bar where I’d eaten the previous evening. I had the Greek salad again and he had some pasta. Eating together has the effect of making people relax in one another’s company, hence all those romantic dinners for two or business lunches. On both occasions people agree to things they might not in other circumstances.
I had agreed to listen to Ned but I hadn’t agreed to do any talking. So I set about my Greek salad in silence and, after he’d pushed his pasta spirals around the dish for a while, he realised I wasn’t about to speak and started himself.
‘I’m going to be frank with you,’ he began pompously. ‘I want you to know that I think you and your employer Allerton are both slimy creeps.’
‘He isn’t my employer,’ I said. ‘I don’t care what you call him. But I don’t like being called slimy and, if you don’t take it back, I will pick up that plate of pasta and tip it over your head.’
He believed me. ‘OK,’ he said hastily. ‘I meant Allerton. It’s probably not your fault you’re involved in this. Lisa said Allerton has some hold over you.’
‘He has but it’s none of your business.’
‘Right. I don’t care what it is, anyway. I told you, I’m not interested in you. But if you won’t leave Lisa alone and Allerton won’t either, I’ll go to London and tell him myself to back off.’ He glowered. He meant it, the mutton-headed chump.
‘Believe me, Ned,’ I said earnestly. ‘That wouldn’t be a good idea. In the first place, you’d find it difficult to get anywhere near him. In the second place, one of his heavies would throw you out if you tried. They might just break your arm or your leg doing it.’
‘He exploited Lisa!’ Ned declared in ringing tones, gaining us some interested looks from a nearby table.
‘She’s a grown woman,’ I said wearily. ‘It was her decision to take the job.’
‘She took it because she was broke and she couldn’t get work in the legitimate theatre. I don’t know why. She’s a great dancer and she has a super singing voice.’
‘So do dozens of others,’ I said.
‘The Stallards mustn’t know. They wouldn’t understand. It would destroy them. They’re so proud of her. She’s all they have to be happy about. You’ve seen how Paul is. He’s an intelligent man who’s a prisoner in that chair. Jennifer’s life is spent looking after him. They mustn’t find out.’
‘They are not,’ I said, ‘going to find out from me. So relax.’
He’d been getting steamed up and turning red again. He did relax marginally at my words. ‘I know it was her decision to take the job,’ he said. ‘But it’s her decision now to give it up. She got sick of it. Allerton must accept that.’
‘Ned,’ I said. ‘I understand how you feel but, frankly, your feelings don’t come into this. Lisa can tell you what she likes about her job at the Silver Circle and how she feels about it and Allerton. But I’ve already spent more time discussing this with you than I needed to or Allerton would like. From now on, this is strictly a business matter between Allerton, Lisa and me. Got that?’
‘What’s Allerton told you to tell her?’ he demanded, jabbing the fork in my direction and splattering tomato sauce on the table top. ‘What’s he threatening to do?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘My conversation with Mickey Allerton is privileged information.’
‘What the hell does that mean? How can it be privileged? You’re not a doctor or a priest.’
‘No,’ I said unwisely, but he’d been getting to me. I was fed up with listening to him lecture me and I wanted to shut him up. ‘I’m a private detective - of sorts.’