Neon Madman (4 page)

The handle of the door was almost too hot to touch and I wafted air through the open windows for a few minutes before I climbed inside and set off to drive across London.

It was going to be one hell of a journey and I just hoped that it was worth it.

Apart from an argument with a taxi driver going round Hyde Park Corner and a near collision with an ice cream van at the entry to Putney Bridge, it was a pretty uneventful trip. I only lost around five pounds in weight and it didn't take more than two minutes for me to scrape myself off the driving seat and pour what was left out into the scent of red roses that hung over the front of the Murdoch house.

I left the car in the drive and went up to the front door. The bell push was one of those discreet affairs that resembled the Kalahari diamond on a bright day. I wiped my fingers on my handkerchief and pressed it. I could hear bells echoing from the other side of the panelled wood door and then foot steps.

It was a little oriental guy wearing a short white jacket and a slant-eyed smile that he pasted on each morning right after cleaning his teeth. I told him who I was and offered him my card, but he just kept on smiling and opened the door wide enough for me to get in. It was real nice inside and cool enough for there to have been some kind of air conditioning at work.

The Chinaman disappeared and I was left in the hallway with nothing to do but admire the quality of the rug and count the Hockney prints on the walls.

He came back and opened another door and gestured for me to go through. There wasn't anyone else in that room either and it didn't look the kind of room that took too kindly to people.

When I looked round for laughing boy he'd gone again, but not for long. He came back with a silver tray and a couple of bone china cups and saucers. He set this down on a table and walked back out again. There were two cups, so I guessed that someone might be joining me. I looked at the tea and wondered if I should wait.

Hell! I was thirsty enough to let my usual good manners slide a little.

The saucer was lime green with gold leaf edging and a yellow daffodil painted on a black background at its centre. The outside of the cup was white, except for the obligatory gold leaf. The entire inside of the cup was another hand-painted daffodil, along with green leaves and blotches of white and black. The china tea was translucent and there was a jasmine petal floating on the top. I looked at the second cup; there was a petal there as well.

I was tasting the tea and wondering if you got a petal every time when the door opened and she came in.

‘Don't get up, Mr Mitchell,' she said coolly as I sat transfixed.

She reached down and took her tea and walked away so that I could get a better look at her. Either that or my deodorant hadn't worked at all.

Whatever her reason she was worth looking at and it didn't matter a damn that she knew it.

There's a late forties movie called ‘Out of the Past' that's supposed to star Mitchum and Douglas. It doesn't. There's this smooth, beautiful woman in it played by Jane Greer and every time she's on the screen there's no looking at anyone else.

Maybe she doesn't have Lauren Bacall's wit and she misses the ice coolness of Veronica Lake, but there's something that's all her own. The waved hair that clung to one side of the face; the face made up to look like satin sheets; eyes that were brown pools you wanted to dive right into. That was what she had.

It was what Murdoch's wife had, too. It was to her advantage that forties dresses were back in style for they suited her figure as well as the rest of her. I looked her up and down and then down and up but each time I came back to those eyes.

I didn't understand a whole lot of things but right now most of all I didn't understand what her old man was doing hitting the sack with other women when she was around. But perhaps that was the trouble. Perhaps she wasn't around as far as he was concerned.

In which case
…

I tried a wry smile and turned my head to one side as though asking her a question. I didn't think I needed to spell it out and I was right.

‘I thought you came to talk business,' she said without so much as a flutter of her eyelashes.

‘That depends what you mean by business.'

‘I mean my husband's business.'

I gave her a long look. ‘That might be exactly the kind that I'm interested in.'

‘Do you think you can handle it?' The right eyebrow rose a questioning quarter inch.

‘I'm not sure, but I'd like to give it a try.'

‘We'll have to see what we can do later.'

‘Why leave it tighter?'

‘Because right now your tea's getting cold, your mouth's hanging open like a dog on heat and there are things that are more important.'

There was nothing I could say. Jane Greer had someone else write her words for her, but this one, she just took them off the top as she went along. I kept my mouth open and tried pouring some tea down it. She was right. It had started to get cold.

Mrs Murdoch came over and put down her cup and saucer; she was close enough for me to reach up and touch her through the silky material of her dress; close enough for me to know that her perfume was as expensive as I had thought it would be; close enough for me to forget what I had gone there for.

What had I gone there for?

‘You phoned me yesterday and asked some questions about my husband. You wanted to see him. Why?'

I looked back at her and then moved my gaze away. With eyes like that I was going to tell her too much too soon.

‘Don't get coy, Mr Mitchell. It doesn't suit you.'

‘All right,' I said, ‘maybe we should level with each other. You let me in on what you know and I'll do the same.' I wasn't looking directly at her when I made the promise. ‘Only call me Scott, all this formality is making me feel important.'

She made a few gestures in the direction of a smile. ‘My name is Caroline.' She turned her back and walked towards a shelf where she started toying with a small black statuette.

I wondered why she was suddenly so jumpy. I didn't figure it was just because we were getting down to first name terms at last. It had to be what she was going to say next. It was.

She said: ‘I think my husband may have been murdered.' The words came out very quickly. Quickly for her anyway. All the time she never stopped running her fingers over the smooth surface of the statuette.

‘You've got to have a reason for that.'

She faced me and fixed me with those brown eyes. ‘Why? I'm a woman. I have feelings about these things. When some thing dreadful happens to someone you're close, to, well
…
you know. Somewhere inside you.'

Suddenly she wasn't saying her own lines any more and the eyes ceased to matter. I stood up and went towards her.

‘Don't give me that crap! Last night you didn't know or care what your husband was up to. You gave me the impression that you lived separate lives and I believed you. Now you're making like some kind of romantic mystic who can tell if he farts fifty miles away. There might be a few things about you that are soft but your heart isn't one of them. If you really think he's dead then it's because you've got good solid reasons for suspecting it and not because of some story book intuition. If you want me to stay and listen to what's on your mind you'd better start levelling with me and do it fast or I'll be out of the door before your Chinese house boy can start quoting the thoughts of Chairman Mao.'

I thought I'd said enough. She seemed to have wilted a good few inches and she was clinging to that damned statuette as though it was saving her life.

‘Come on,' I said, ‘let's sit down and talk.'

I went over and took hold of her arm. The dress felt the way I had known it would and underneath it her flesh was both firm and yielding against my fingers. We made it to the settee without too much difficulty—considering.

She began talking straight away. ‘You're right, of course, there is something definite, though not in the way that perhaps you mean. What you implied about James and I leading separate lives is also true. But we did hold on to at least the vestiges of a normal relationship.'

‘You mean in front of mutual friends?' I interrupted.

‘Yes, but to ourselves as well. I'm not sure why. Possibly it made us feel more civilised. One thing was that if James was not coming home he would phone and let me know. He wouldn't tell me where he was really going to be, but he would make some kind of excuse. Then, in the morning, he would telephone again, usually when he got into work.'

‘Sounds cosy,' I said, ‘did you work the same thing?'

She froze more than a few degrees even in all that heat. If she'd been any closer the beads of sweat along my hair line would have turned to tiny balls of ice.

‘Don't get too presumptuous! I assure you I am not in the habit of behaving like an alley cat!'

‘But your old man was—or whatever the male equivalent is?'

‘Does that matter?'

‘It might, but for now we'll let it pass. I guess you were going to tell me that you didn't get your phone calls.'

‘Exactly. Neither of them.'

‘Maybe he's out on a blitz. Perhaps he got drunk, fell asleep, was having so much fun getting laid that he forgot all about it. I guess he's only human like the rest of us.'

She was shaking her head and I wasn't too clear what to.

‘He'd always phoned you before?'

‘Yes, always.'

‘So you figured something had happened to him and you called me. Why me and not the police?'

‘That's obvious. The police would say that twenty-four hours wasn't long enough to start worrying without any more facts and
…
'

‘And you thought that a few shots of those brown eyes of yours would divert me from asking the same question?'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘You didn't have to. You also didn't have to say that if the cops did get involved then they might start probing around in the wrong places. And you wouldn't like that, would you, Mrs Murdoch?' I paused and looked at her. ‘Caroline.'

Her hand reached out for mine and hovered over it like a butterfly about to land; then it thought better of it and returned to rest on the white silk of her thigh.

‘What do you want me to do?' I asked.

‘Find James.' She blinked her eyes shut. ‘Or find out what has happened to him.'

‘Is that all?'

She looked at me uncomprehendingly. Or she did her best to. She wasn't the kind of woman to whom looking dumb came easily.

‘You left out the bit about saving the family's good name and fortune.'

I thought she was going to go into her ice maiden routine again, but she decided against it. She said, ‘I'll be honest with you, Scott, I'm not awfully worried about the former, but the money is important to me. Perhaps I shouldn't say that
…
'

She let the sentence trail off into visions of hard-earned luxury that made my heart break into a hundred pieces, each of them gilt-edged.

‘You're hiring me?' I wanted to be sure she didn't think I was going to find her old man for a favour.

‘Of course.'

‘All right. I shall want a nice cheque for a retainer and something to cover expenses. Then you'd better give me a list of places your husband might be, as far as you know them. I can't promise to turn up too much, but I'll try. And one other thing
…
'

‘Yes?' She hadn't really believed I was going to let her off that easily.

‘I had a friend asking questions about your husband's business interests. For reasons of my own. When he came across the Mancor connection he also came across a line in brick walls that makes the Great Wall of China look like something you might have at the bottom of your garden. Come to think of it, you probably have. Then when I mentioned the name to you on the phone this morning it was as though I'd suddenly said a very dirty word in the nursery.'

‘So?' The ice was back with a vengeance. It hadn't done anything about the line of sweat that was chasing down my back and threatening to stick me to the settee. It hadn't done anything about that but it was wreaking havoc with what little composure I might have had left.

‘So,' I managed, ‘before I'll agree to act for you I want you to know something about what Mancor is and how your old man came to be mixed up in it. Remember, you didn't say disappeared, you said murdered.'

She closed her eyes and allowed me to stare at the perfection of her face. For a sickening instant I was gazing at a mask, a death mask. Whoever she had been, whatever living, breathing woman had once existed beneath that exterior didn't seem to exist any more.

Then she sighed and stood up; walked over towards the door and pressed a discreet bell alongside the frame. Almost immediately the little Chinaman appeared like a character out of pantomime.

‘I want a drink. What would you like?'

I realised she was talking to me and said a Scotch and ice would be fine. She relayed the order and asked for a Campari soda for herself. We both filled in the time before the drinks appeared by pretending we were characters in a play who had suddenly found ourselves between acts and with the curtain down. Only it was between us.

When she'd finally downed half of the contents of the glass, she went back to her black statuette. It seemed to be some kind of a familiar and I didn't like what that suggested about her.

I took a swig at the Scotch. It was good. I said, ‘You were going to tell me about Mancor.'

She gave that beautiful sigh again and began. ‘Before he took over his present position, James worked abroad. He got involved in the wrong company—he loves gambling you know, with cards as well as women. Somehow, some rather unscrupulous characters got their hooks into him. At first they were content to bleed him for money. But when he returned to this country and became a comparatively big name in the city, they realised that there was something more they could take from him. His name. They were anxious to set themselves up a legitimate business front and James' name on their board of directors would give them a respectability they could not hope to achieve otherwise.'