She Died Young (16 page)

chapter
19

B
LACKSTONE KNEW HE OUGHT
to get back to the office to sort out a few final details of the Bodkin Adams interview. The lawyers had been through it with a fine-tooth comb. There must be nothing remotely libellous. He was proud of the interview. He was tempted to return to the noise and comfort of the great news machine that was the
Chronicle
, but he knew he must no longer put off a visit to the California Club and so he wandered down the streets of Fitzrovia in the general direction of Leicester Square.

It was just the sort of place he’d expected: a seedy little basement bar, customers sparse at this hour of the early evening when the pubs were open and tourists were enjoying an early meal in the restaurants of the district, or else queueing up for the cinema or en route to the theatre. Two slightly bedraggled hostesses sat on high stools at the bar. He took a seat in a corner and the darker of the two girls approached him.

It took him a while to turn the conversation in the direction he wanted. The requisite bottle of fizz had to be consumed. He had to flatter the girl – she said her name was Lauren – and gain her confidence. Girls like Lauren were careful not to drink too much; the idea was to loosen up the punter. And he was happy to appear to linger, ordering several brandies as well, and feeding her little sips as she sat on his knee.

If she knew of Valerie’s fate, she didn’t let on – but then she’d only started working at the California Club quite recently. Yes, there had been a girl of that name who’d worked at the club, but then she’d left to go to the new place up the road, ever so posh it was, the boss took a shine to her. Toni on the door probably knew more. He’d been working here quite a while.

Toni on the door swept his glistening black locks off his forehead. ‘She’s dead. You know that, don’t you?’

Blackstone nodded.

‘We was friendly, like. She went off to work at the big new place, the Ambassadors. Then she met some geezer. She was going to go off with him, she told me. Thought he was going to solve all her problems. Starry-eyed she was, an’ all that. Couldn’t see it myself. Anyway, it didn’t go down well with the boss, that didn’t. She hadn’t worked off her contract. Well – there was more to it …’

‘You met him, then? The boyfriend?’

‘Nah. To be honest I thought she might’ve made it all up. Except it caused trouble with the boss. Perhaps she made that up, too. Could have been some other reason. Ta.’ Toni accepted Blackstone’s offered cigarette.

Blackstone’s throat tightened. He inhaled some smoke the wrong way and started to cough uncontrollably.

‘You okay, mate?’ Blackstone’s cough could be alarming.

Blackstone nodded speechlessly. When he’d finally caught his breath, he wheezed: ‘Know where I could get hold of him – the boyfriend? What was his name again?’

Toni eyed him warily. ‘Don’t remember the name. Why d’you want to get hold of him anyway? She’s dead, ain’t she?’

Blackstone produced a banknote. ‘Purely personal. I’d just like to meet him. I was fond of the girl.’

‘Ta.’ Toni trousered the note. ‘Well, it’s up to you, mate. Lives down Bethnal Green way, I believe. She used to meet ’im at the Italian caff. That’s all I know.’

Blackstone was almost sure it wasn’t, but he thanked the boy.

‘Don’t go letting on I talked to you, mind. Boss doesn’t like it when strangers come round asking questions.’

‘The boss?’

‘Vince Mallory. You’ve heard of him, I should think.’

‘I do indeed know Mallory,’ said Blackstone smoothly. ‘Met him when I was working the East End. Decent bloke.’

Toni gave him a very straight look. ‘You can say that again, mate.’

Blackstone took a taxi to Fleet Street. He added some final finishing touches to the Bodkin Adams interview – he was a perfectionist when it came to writing, even if the subject bored him. He then decided to walk up to Holborn and take the tube to Marble Arch. However, as he plodded along the street, quiet at this time of mid-evening, he sensed he was being followed and hailed a taxi to take him back to his flat. He looked round as he paid off the driver and another taxi chugged past.

In the morning he found a letter on the doormat. Hand delivered; there wasn’t a stamp – or a name or an address on the envelope for that matter. The message on the single sheet inside had been constructed from letters cut out from newsprint. It was quite artistic, with its different fonts.

Next Time it won’t be a Letter

He didn’t think there’d be any fingerprints.

chapter
20

M
CGOVERN STOOD IN QUINAULT’S
hall, digesting the encounter with the two youths. Their agitation had taken him by surprise. He hadn’t dealt with it well. Yet now he looked round with a surge of anticipation. Because what an opportunity this was! He had the place to himself and while he had no good reason to search the house and certainly no search warrant, he was accustomed to such situations. Should Quinault or the wife come home unexpectedly he’d have some explaining to do, so he needed to act. Perhaps Gyorgy Meszarov
had
been billeted with the Professor for some special reason. The Hungarian had certainly been anxious to get away, so perhaps he had something to hide.

It was the words of the young man who badly needed a haircut, however, that propelled McGregor down the passage to the library. What an extraordinary thing to have said. The careless, deadpan way he’d spoken – with a flash of malice, McGovern felt. He was up to no good, McGovern was sure. A strange young man. He might even have interrupted a plan by the two of them to steal the money – if it existed.

Whatever their motive, the young man’s words acted as a shot of adrenalin. The first thing McGovern did in the library was to examine the French windows and unlock them, in case he needed to make a rapid departure unseen. He wore gloves as he began to search the room, beginning with the desk. It was not long before he had opened the drawers of the desk and discovered the money the long-haired one had spoken of.

He hadn’t definitely expected to find it. The mischief-maker might have been lying – presumably for the hell of it – or at least exaggerating. But now here were three thousand pounds – he counted – stacked in an unlocked drawer. He contemplated it.

He opened the next drawer down to find household bills and bank statements. Everything was in place. There were no big bills. The Professor’s bank account was in the black and he appeared not to have withdrawn any large sums from it.

McGovern turned to the papers on the table. Quinault seemed to be doing some research of his own on the Hungarians. A list of names had some notes scribbled in the margins; but the notes were in an unfamiliar script. After a moment, McGovern recognised it as classical Greek. Frustrated, he turned over the material relating to the new road scheme.

He looked round the room and gazed at the objects behind glass along one wall. He was about to look more closely when he heard the unmistakeable sound of the front door being opened. He slipped out by the window into the garden and waited.

If he leaned forward he could see into the room, but it would be risky. He could hear noises, but not well enough to guess what the old man was doing. However, then he heard his voice. He must be on the telephone. The voice ceased. McGovern decided to take the risk. He peered through the window. He could just make out that the Professor was removing the money and placing it in a bag or case of some kind.

There was no knowing how long Quinault would remain in the house, but McGovern decided to wait and then to follow him. He needed to know where the old man was taking the money. He stepped carefully towards the corner of the house. Fortunately his footsteps made no sound on the path, which was simply damp, beaten-down earth. He eased his way along the side of the house. The shrubs and the ivy that tumbled over the partition fence protected him, he hoped, from the sight of any neighbours who might be looking out of a side window.

He reached the front of the house and waited. When he heard the front door open and then bang shut he flattened himself against the wall. Quinault walked slowly away. He was carrying a small attaché case. He stopped to examine an object by the gate and then walked on.

McGovern followed him at a distance. The Professor crossed the road and made for a bus stop on the other side of the road. McGovern hung back. He had no cover. Then a bus bore down towards the stop and Quinault hailed it. So that was the end of that.

Except that the object that had caught Quinault’s attention by the gate was a bike. McGovern seized it as the bus moved off and soon was sailing along in its wake.

The bus deposited Quinault at the railway station. By now McGovern was committed to his impulse. It had become an intuition. Quinault made for the London platform. McGovern hastily bought a ticket and followed him. He knew that his target might leave the train at some intermediate station and all he could do was peer out of his window each time the train stopped at a station. The train stopped at Didcot, then at Reading. Quinault remained on the train.

As McGovern left Paddington station, he felt confident that his quarry had not seen him, was unaware of his cat-like presence. Often, when you followed a suspect, they knew all along that you were there. Because they were expecting you, were on the look-out, knew they were suspect. Quinault, though, had no reason to think he would be followed.

McGovern followed Quinault onto a bus and unexpectedly the old man climbed the stairs to the upper deck. He disembarked just before Edgware Road and made for an area of residential side streets where forbidding yet expensive-looking terraces and mansion blocks suggested faceless wealth. The area was more than respectable, but less than fashionable. Above all it was anonymous. Quinault disappeared into a blank-fronted block of flats.

The lobby was empty. The modern lift indicator showed it was stationed on the second floor. McGovern climbed the stairs. The carpeted corridor gave access to two flats.

McGovern looked round, then walked back downstairs. Outside, he looked for an inconspicuous position from which to wait and watch. The only convenient point was a bench placed at one side of the small formal garden in front of the building. He sat down and opened his newspaper. The cold bit into him, but he didn’t have to wait long. Less than fifteen minutes later, Quinault appeared on the shallow steps. He paused and looked around before walking off.

Once again, McGovern followed him onto a bus. After a short ride this one deposited them both near Bond Street. Quinault walked past fashionable dress shops, then the auctioneers Sotheby’s, before disappearing into a side alley. By the time McGovern reached the turning, Quinault was nowhere to be seen. McGovern stepped into the icy shade of the narrow passageway. There were buildings with entrances on one side, a high wall on the other. He walked the length of the dead end and back, but the entrances were anonymous. Rows of bells had, in some cases, names beside them. They might be jewellers, or antique or fine arts dealers. Quinault must have disappeared into one of them, because otherwise McGovern would have seen him emerging from the passage again, but there was no way of knowing which one.

McGovern looked up and down Bond Street with a sense of anti-climax. The chase had excited him, but now he was brought up short. He had an intuition that Quinault had reached his destination, whatever it was, and he felt disinclined to hang about in the street indefinitely awaiting his re-emergence. So now he was at a loose end. He was in London, when he should have been in Oxford, and he had nothing to do for the rest of the day. He walked slowly towards Marble Arch. The impulsive chase began to seem a little crazy.

It was the sight of the money that had impelled him. Such a large sum was suspicious. And that block of flats; just the sort of anonymous place where a spy would feel secure. Russian or Hungarian, a spy would blend in with the tourists and the cosmopolitan birds of passage living in the dull, expensive rented apartments all around that part of London.

The buildings off Bond Street were equally anonymous and might house any kind of enterprise, legal or illegal. At one time there’d been an East German spy who’d lived in a flat above one of the most expensive boutiques in the area.

Now he was in London there must be someone he could talk to. Not Moules, for a start. McGovern felt sure his unorthodox behaviour would horrify Moules, even if it could be finessed into a shot in the dark, a brilliant hunch. A contact at MI5? No: he was on bad enough terms with them already. Jarrell? No: he had other fish to fry.

Blackstone. Blackstone knew about crime. Blackstone knew about the Met. Blackstone was a wily bird. Blackstone had given him his home number. It’s hopeless trying me at the office, he’d said, you’ll never reach me there.

‘You’re in luck. Last week I was in Eastbourne. You couldn’t have got hold of me at all.’ The journalist seemed rather proud of the fact. ‘Now I’m having a well-earned rest. My day off. Matter of fact I was asleep when you rang. This is my breakfast. I come here most mornings – when I’m at home, that is.’

McGovern looked round the familiar interior of Maison Lyons, a bit like a cinema with art deco zigzags and an abstract design on the carpet. He ordered a lamb cutlet – his lunch – while Blackstone was putting away eggs and bacon. While they ate, McGovern told the journalist all that had happened at Quinault’s house.

‘I wouldn’t have picked you as an impulsive sort of bloke,’ commented Blackstone, on hearing McGovern’s account.

‘It was the cash. And all in a drawer that wasn’t even locked.’

‘Might have forgotten to lock it. Might have remembered he’d forgotten to lock it or come back to make sure.’

‘No. He came in to remove it. But the money itself. Three thousand pounds is a large sum.’

Blackstone drank some coffee. ‘What couldn’t a man do with three thousand pounds, indeed? Buy a house.’

‘He’s got a house.’

‘Perhaps he’s, you know, keeping it under the mattress. He doesn’t trust the bank. Or the wife.’

‘Men like Quinault don’t keep money under the mattress. And he has a bank account.’

‘Paying off spies? Something like that? Is that what you’re thinking? Then why come to me? That’s not my speciality.’

‘I thought you might know of other reasons a man might have so much cash. You could give me a new angle on it. Although I’m not ruling out espionage. I followed him to a block of flats. Balmoral Mansions. Impersonal. The sort of place you find all kinds of people who want to keep quiet about their activities.’

Blackstone set down his knife and fork. ‘Balmoral Mansions? I know someone who lives there. And you’re right about keeping quiet. I don’t suppose you know the number? Of the flat, I mean. And which entrance? There’s more than one.’

‘It was the entrance at the front. And I don’t know the number, but he took the lift to the second floor.’

McGovern offered Blackstone a cigarette, which he accepted. ‘I’ll make some enquiries,’ he said finally.