It was the usual dingy sort of place familiar to me from London police stations. The paint was scratched and a brand new coat was badly needed. The walls were divided into bottle-green lower halves and what had been cream upper halves. The bottle-green paint had darkened to almost black and the cream to brown. The air smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke and I thought someone had vomited in there in the recent past.
Pereira sat across a table from me, looking quite at home even though her neat personal appearance was in striking contrast to her surroundings. But then, in a manner of speaking, this was home for her, or at least her place of work. Lying on the table between us was a folder and Lisa’s passport, which I’d handed over to Pereira. Now she tapped the passport.
‘You have made a claim that Miss Stallard was intending to leave the country to avoid being questioned in relation to the death of Ivo Simić.’ Her voice was brisk and impersonal. But the meaning was clear. I had to back up what I said or be accused of wasting Pereira’s time.
‘Yes, she was, she is. She will do, if you give her back her passport. Don’t believe any story she tells you about a cruise ship. Check it out. There won’t be any ship. Don’t believe
anything
she tells you. She’s an ace liar.’
If I sounded bitter it wasn’t surprising. I’d been on the receiving end of Lisa’s lies as well as her fist. I still couldn’t get over my first view of her in the flesh, standing in the doorway of her family’s home in Summertown. She’d looked such a
nice
girl. I should have concentrated on the promotional photo Mickey had given me of Lisa in her rhinestone cowboy outfit. I wondered what her birth sign was and whether it might not be Gemini. She was two people in one, all right. Little Miss Jekyll and Hyde, I thought, a dutiful daughter whose only mistake was to be stage-struck and yet also a murderer.
Pereira looked at me like a dowager who’s just seen someone eat peas off a knife. ‘You’ve made some other statements with regard to Lisa Stallard. You’ve accused her of murdering Ivo Simić. She denies this, of course.’
‘She would, wouldn’t she?’ I snapped.
‘I must say I find it an extraordinary and very serious accusation, Fran. How did she manage to do it? Also, why? There seems to be a singular lack of motive in all this.’
‘I can explain it,’ I said.
‘I was rather hoping you would. I am also hoping you’ll explain your own actions which have hardly been those of a respectable law-abiding citizen.’
‘Oi!’ I said indignantly. ‘I haven’t broken any law.’
‘You knew the identity of the drowned man and you said nothing. That’s called withholding information and, what’s more, the rest of your actions constitute interference with an investigation.’ Pereira had worked up a gear and was getting into inquisitorial mode.
‘I answered all the questions you asked me and I answered them honestly,’ I argued. A heretic arguing with Torquemada would have had as little luck.
She leaned forward, jaw jutting, to hold my gaze. Her own was what I believe is usually described as ‘steelyeyed’. ‘You didn’t tell me the drowned man’s identity.’
‘You didn’t ask that one,’ I mumbled unwisely.
‘Don’t play silly games with me!’ she snapped back. ‘You should have volunteered it.’
‘Sorry.’ It was time to eat humble pie. She was right. I had withheld information and there really wasn’t any way I could get out of it. It was up to Pereira whether she decided to charge me with obstructing inquiries. I needed her on my side. Perhaps, I thought, a touch of pathos would help.
‘I was scared,’ I whimpered pretty convincingly.
‘You? Of what?’ was the brutal retort.
‘Mickey Allerton,’ I said. ‘He’s the one who sent me to Oxford. He can be a very scary man and he was holding my dog hostage. That is, until she ran away from the person looking after her.’
‘That’s a new one on me,’ said Pereira silkily. ‘Holding a dog as hostage? But it ran away, you say. An enterprising sort of dog, then. And has this remarkable animal turned up yet?’
I shook my head and must have looked genuinely miserable because she went on more kindly, ‘If what you say is true and the dog is loose in a familiar part of town it will probably find its way home eventually.’
I nodded. I was hoping the same. But it reminded me that I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be back in London tracking Bonnie down. There was a large wasp trapped against a window-pane high up on the wall of the interview room. I wondered how it had got in here since the stale air suggested the window was never opened. From time to time the insect buzzed, at first angrily and then in frustration. Now it was beginning to sound desolate. I felt a certain empathy with it. Anyone would want to be out of here. It ought not to give up. I certainly wasn’t going to.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘you found Lisa without me.’
‘Did I?’ Pereira wasn’t going to help me out.
‘You were at her house, you’d come to ask her questions. How did you get there, anyway?’ My curiosity overcame me.
She lifted one eyebrow. That’s a neat trick and I’ve never been able to do it satisfactorily. ‘I am a professional, Fran, you seem to to forget. Anyway, you led her to to me yourself. You told a Croatian girl called Vera Krejcmar to go to the police and identify Ivo Simić.’
‘Yes, I did!’ I burst out unwisely. ‘So I didn’t withhold his identity. Vera wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t insisted.’
Pereira pursed her lips. Even her lipstick hadn’t smudged. I supposed she’d had time to repair it after the fracas at the Stallard house.
‘It’s a fine point, Fran. You made me very curious about that guest house. Not only did you live there, and the young Americans who reported the finding of the body, but Vera works there and apparently the dead man, Simić, had stayed there, although the owner didn’t know about it.
‘So I went and had a long talk with the owner. It turned out that, although she’d been unaware Simić had stayed in her place hidden by Vera in her room, she wasn’t unacquainted with Simić’s employer, one Mickey Allerton.’
Pereira hesitated. ‘I then ran Simić’s fingerprints through records. I should have done that earlier, perhaps, but originally I’d no reason to think the drowned runner would be known to us. But he had form of a minor kind.’
Ivo had been in trouble with the law. I, too, should have thought of that possibility sooner.
Pereira was speaking again. ‘So then I got in touch with the Met and asked them to give me the low-down on a club owner called Mickey or Michael Allerton. So I do know whom you’re talking about and yes, I agree with you, he would be a man to take very seriously. Armed with my new information, I went back to the guest house and interviewed both women there. They told me a story about Simić coming to Oxford to seek out a dancer called Lisa Stallard who had been working for Allerton. The common factor in all of this appeared to be Allerton and his relationship with Lisa Stallard. So I tracked down Miss Stallard.’
Pereira leaned back in her chair. ‘As you know, I’ve just been talking to Lisa. She admits she met with the deceased, Ivo Simić, early on the morning of his death. She does not admit any part in that death.’
‘She killed him!’ I interrupted.
Pereira didn’t turn a hair. ‘That’s a wild statement, Fran. There’s no evidence of foul play. The body has no obvious injury. She’s only a young girl and to inflict any injury on Simić . . .’
‘She’s just given me a black eye!’ I interrupted. ‘Look!’ I pointed at it. ‘She attacked me! Don’t tell me she’s a weakling who couldn’t inflict any injury.’
‘Do you want to see a doctor?’ Pereira wasn’t interested in my black eye as such, but if I walked out of there and collapsed from some unsuspected head injury then there would be an internal inquiry at the very least and she didn’t want that.
‘No, I want a chance to explain my theory.’
We had reached a temporary impasse. Pereira conceded a point. ‘All right, she’s a dancer and dancers are athletes, very fit. But although she might handle herself very well in a scrap with you, she’d be no match for Simić. To suggest she killed him is fanciful.’
‘So why did he drown?’ I demanded. ‘He was over six foot tall. The river’s probably only about that depth, if that, by the bank.’
‘Perhaps he hit his head?’ Pereira suggested. ‘Unconscious, he might have drowned.’
‘You just told me there was no obvious sign of injury on the body. If he hit his head there would be an abrasion, some sign. Does the forensic report refer to anything?’
Pereira glanced at the folder on the desk. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Perhaps he just couldn’t swim?’
‘I don’t believe it. Look, let me explain it my way,’ I begged.
‘I’d love to hear your theory,’ said Pereira, sarcastic again. ‘I’d be interested also to know at what point before this morning you were planning to confide it to me.’
‘Before this morning, I couldn’t have. It was only this morning and last night that I got it sorted out in my own head.’ I paused but she said nothing. The wasp made a sad, small fizzing noise.
‘Dancers are like actors and there are always more of them than there are dancing jobs,’ I began. ‘I should have asked myself at once what was so special about this one that Mickey Allerton sent me after her. But I didn’t. Mickey was holding my dog as surety against my carrying out his little commission, right? I didn’t do it for the money. I want you to know that. I didn’t like the job. But I did want my dog!’
Pereira nodded. The wasp was silent now, crawling slowing around the perimeter of the window-pane.
‘So I came here. I contacted Lisa and arranged to meet her. How do you think I felt when I got there and found Ivo floating in the river? I didn’t want to get mixed up with murder. Who would?’
‘You thought it was murder? You had some reason for that?’ she asked.
‘Oh, come on. How could it be an accident? Ivo? You said yourself just now what a big strapping bloke he was. He just tripped and fell in the river? Someone mugged him? Come off it.’
‘Accidents happen. People don’t automatically think of murder,’ she objected.
‘Where I come from, if an accident like that happens to someone like Ivo, they do,’ I countered.
‘But you attempted, you told me, to drag him ashore. That was how you fell in yourself, so you said. You thought he might be alive.’
‘Trying to grab him wasn’t the brightest idea,’ I agreed. ‘But I wanted to do the good citizen bit. I’d have thought twice about touching the body if I had known at once who it was. When I saw his face, bobbing in the water next to mine, it was horrible,’ I reminded her. ‘I still think about it.’
Pereira made a sympathetic murmur but it sounded perfunctory.
‘So,’ I went on, ‘you know what happened next. I saw Lisa arrive. I didn’t know it then, but it was her second arrival on the scene. I signalled her to scram, because I knew Allerton wouldn’t want her involved.
‘Later when I told her the dead man was Ivo she freaked out or made like she did. I’ve studied acting and believe me, she’s good. She said he must have come to Oxford searching for her with the idea that if he returned her to Allerton, he’d be in Allerton’s good books. Jasna, another Croatian and a dancer at the club, looked likely to lose her job. Ivo, according to Lisa, wanted to help her. I learned later, not from Lisa, that Ivo was also worried about his own job. At the time Lisa’s explanation made good sense to me and when I talked to Vera she seemed to back it up.’
Pereira spoke at this point. ‘My impression so far is that you have an extraordinarily active imagination, Fran. Even so, I’ve yet to hear a motive for Lisa Stallard killing the man, let alone how she is supposed to have done it. But I’m sure you’ve got one.’
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I’m getting to that. Up to this point I’d believed everything Lisa, Allerton and Vera had told me. Why shouldn’t I? But then I went to Lisa’s flat in London to fetch her passport. The moment I set foot in the place I realised the relationship between Lisa and Allerton was a lot more than just that of a dancer and guy who’d been employing her. You should see that place! You should see the clothes in the dressing room—’
I paused at the memory of Julie and the carving knife. ‘Then Julie Allerton turned up and I learned that Mickey had walked out on a twenty-four-year marriage because of Lisa.
‘I gave that a lot of thought. Allerton had had flings with girls who worked for him before. That he’d ditch his wife for this one and go through a messy divorce actually to marry Lisa, well, that makes things different, doesn’t it? Either the man was totally infatuated, or suffering a midlife crisis, or—’