She Died Young (28 page)

chapter
39

T
HE BAR AT PADDINGTON STATION
was as anonymous as the Queen’s Head, but for the opposite reason: it was always crowded with transient travellers. The only problem was you had to shout to get yourself heard. However, Jarrell and Blackstone managed to find a secluded corner.

‘Isn’t McGovern coming?’

‘Yes. That’s why we’re here. He said he’d be late. Off the Oxford train.’

‘I’d forgotten. I’ll forget my own name next.’

‘You do look a bit rough.’

‘I’m fine. Just a bit tired, that’s all.’ Blackstone passed his hand over his face. He felt all of his forty-two years today. ‘I got another threatening letter,’ he said. ‘At least they’re still stuck at square one. No shit through the letter box. Or bombs. Just another anonymous message with stuck-on letters. How worried should I be?’

‘You should take it seriously.’

‘How do I do that? Leave home? Call the whole thing off?’ Blackstone looked round him. In this crowded bar the two of them were as if sealed off septically in their separate conspiratorial capsule from the rowdy talk, the yellow lighting, the whole scene as brown-varnished as some fake old master. It all seemed unreal, he remembered Le Saux, he felt giddy, the lights pulsed and danced …

‘Are you okay?’ Jarrell’s gaunt face loomed over him.

‘Felt a bit faint – all right now.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Get me another, would you, old man? Same again, Bell’s. Be right as rain then.’ His fag had smouldered to nothing in the ash tray. He lit a fresh one. Whisky in hand, he felt better, and catching sight of McGovern’s tall figure, he waved. ‘Here he is.’

McGovern looked oddly diabolical this evening. He was wearing a different hat, more of a fedora. And the Black Watch scarf round his neck was quite dashing. He carried a beer to their table. The three men, so like all the others in the crowded saloon, might have been chatting about the races or football through the smoke and noise. They might have stopped off for a pint after work, missed their usual train, or stayed on in the hope of chatting up the secretary. But they were different. They worked in secret.

‘It was just girls’ gossip,’ said Blackstone, reporting on his encounter with Dawn. ‘But I caught up with the boyfriend. He’s in a bad way. My guess is drugs. Anyway, he more than hinted that Mallory was behind it all.’

‘You’re suggesting Mallory
killed
her? What was the motive, then? Jealousy? Was he smitten? I thought he was supposed to be – perhaps he fancied the boyfriend.’

Blackstone shook his head. ‘Anything like that, I think the boyfriend would have told me.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Jarrell. ‘More likely something to do with whatever was going on with Mallory and Le Saux. The uncle, that is.’ Blackstone shifted in his seat. ‘I’d forgotten those two had a history. Completely forgotten. It went back a long way, of course.’

Jarrell’s beaky nose looked longer than ever. ‘The Super’s disappointed. He was hoping for some dirt on CID. That’s why he okayed reopening the case in the first place.’

Blackstone wiped his sweaty brow with his handkerchief. ‘Sonia really pulled the wool over my eyes with that story about Sonny Marsden. How did it take us so long to get almost nowhere?’

‘Moules called me in today. He wants a result. He says we should question Camenzuli again. We’ve got to break him, he said. He thinks the first confession was real. Or even if it wasn’t, it’ll do.’

McGovern frowned. ‘I thought he was against all that sort of thing. Phoney confessions.’

‘He didn’t actually
say
it’d do. Not in so many words. But he’s lost interest now there’s no corruption angle. He just wants it out of the way. I said I’d interview the Maltese tomorrow.’

‘Sonia tried to send me in the wrong direction,’ said Blackstone. ‘That suggests it does have something to do with Mallory. She’s covering up for him in some way.’

‘It was sheer luck I followed Quinault to her flat. I didn’t know it was her flat then, of course. Just chance that was where he was going.’

chapter
40

J
ARRELL STRODE BEHIND THE
warder along the prison corridors. He’d had a brainwave.

Camenzuli was waiting for them, seated behind the little table in the interview room. He’d grown a thin moustache now. It drew attention to his crooked mouth and made him look angrier than ever.

‘Your wife hasn’t been to see you lately, or so we hear. Any idea why?’

The prisoner scowled.

‘Mallory’s wife knew your wife, isn’t that right?’ continued Jarrell. ‘I think it was Mrs Mallory who talked to your wife and told her to get you to confess to something you didn’t do. A false confession – that’s a serious matter.’ He paused to let it sink in. Then he coaxed: ‘But you can put things right now and we’ll see what we can do for you. Get you a lawyer who’ll apply for bail. Get you out of here. So I’d like you to tell me what she told you. And then you’ll retract your confession – your second confession – and tell me what actually happened at the hotel.’

‘You better ask my wife.’

Jarrell grinned. ‘I’m asking you.’

‘I tell you what happened already.’

‘Well, in that case why should I ask your wife? To corroborate?’

‘She not been to see me.’

‘Disappeared, has she?’ Jarrell smirked at his victim. ‘Just as I predicted. Someone’s paid her off and she’s done a runner.’

Camenzuli’s face reddened dangerously. ‘What you mean?’

‘Gone off with the money. The payment.’

‘You find her. Then I talk.’

‘It has to be the other way round, I’m afraid. You tell me what happened and then I’ll track down your wife.’

Camenzuli spat out the story in gobs of venom. His fury extended to the whole world, or at least to his whole world, as he described the visit from his wife and what Mrs Mallory had told her he should say. Camenzuli hissed with spiteful eagerness. She’d promised to get him off if he confessed.

‘It was Mrs Mallory who told your wife to come here with the message that you were to confess?’

‘She say it all be all right later on.’

‘So what’s the real story? Let’s hear it.’ Jarrell leaned back in his chair. ‘Was the girl dead when she arrived?’

Camenzuli shook his head.

‘Then why did the doctor say that?’

‘I don’t know nothing. Perhaps he just mean as good as. The man she came with was in a rage. It was him said they had to call the doctor pronto.’

‘What man? Who was the man with her?’

The stuffy interview room seethed with the impotent rage of the prisoner. Camenzuli could contain himself no longer. ‘I’m not talking no more,’ he shouted and shook with fury as he leaned towards Jarrell. ‘You find my wife,’ he shouted. ‘You find what she done with the money.’ As if it had only just dawned on him that he wasn’t going to get the reward.

‘Who was this man?’

Camenzuli stood up and glared at the screw. ‘Want to leave now.’

Jarrell scraped his chair back. Another warder escorted him back through the long passages and locked metal doors. He was relieved to be out in the open air again. The air was foggy and yellow in the Caledonian Road, but it was better than the stale prison atmosphere. He leapt on a bus as it drew away from the stop and it swung him down to King’s Cross.

He walked up Argyle Street again and stopped in front of the Camenzulis’ hotel. The sign on the door still said No Vacancies. The curtains were still drawn across the ground-floor windows.

He rang the bell, but there was no answer. He rattled the door handle and tried to open the door, but it was locked. This time he didn’t bother to force the lock because he was almost certain the hotel was empty.

He stepped back and looked up at the house on the right. The bells studding the door frame suggested multi-occupation. Curtains limp with dirt languished against grimy windows. The basement area was clogged with overflowing dustbins. Jarrell pressed a bell at random. At first, nothing happened. Then he heard shuffling footsteps.

‘Yes?’ A young woman in a flowered cotton overall stared at him listlessly.

Jarrell lifted his hat. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but I wondered if you’d seen the lady next door recently, the lady who runs the hotel?’

He marvelled that a young woman could already seem so weary of life. Her wan, pretty face was almost expressionless. However, she roused herself sufficiently to say: ‘You looking for a room? There’s another hotel further up.’

‘I’m looking for Mrs Camenzuli. Have you seen her lately?’

The girl shook her head, as if surprised Jarrell didn’t know. ‘She’s gone away. Closed the hotel. I ’eard she was going back to Malta.’

A child started to howl from within the house. The young woman turned away. ‘Shut up, Eddy,’ she shouted, but without conviction.

‘Who told you that?’

‘
Eddy!
’ The girl was distracted. ‘Dunno – just ’eard – at the shop. And then I saw her. She left with a lady. In a taxi.’

‘What did the lady look like?’

‘I dunno … dressed smart, she was.’ The child was still howling. ‘Look, I have to go.’

Jarrell turned away. The door rattled shut behind him.

If the presence of the police in his office annoyed Mallory, he concealed it, was geniality itself. As on Jarrell’s previous visit, whisky, cigars and coffee were offered. This time Jarrell declined all three.

‘We’re continuing our enquiries into the case of Valerie Jarvis.’

Mallory’s smile was fixed to his face as usual. ‘Surprised to hear that. I thought someone had been charged.’

‘So you haven’t heard he’s retracted his confession?’

‘No, I hadn’t heard that.’ Impossible to tell if it was true.

Jarrell smiled pleasantly. ‘I’m afraid it may be rather serious, in the sense that it now appears as though it was your wife who persuaded Camenzuli to confess in the first place.’ He watched Mallory, whose expression never changed.

‘I’m surprised to hear that. Frankly, I think it’s unlikely.’

‘However, that’s what the suspect says.’

‘Changes his story rather a lot, don’t he?’

‘Indeed, sir, he does. In this case, though, there’s corroboration of a sort as your wife seems to have helped Mrs Camenzuli return to Malta.’

‘Can’t say I see how that corroborates anything.’

‘A man was present when Valerie died. Another man. Not Maltese Mike. Not the doctor. Do you have any idea who that man might have been?’

‘Of course not. I wasn’t there.’

‘Weren’t you? I rather thought you might have been.’

Mallory’s eyes were chips of iceberg. ‘I could take exception to that remark.’

‘Okay. But you were angry at the way things had turned out with Miss Jarvis.’

‘Of course I was angry. Would you want to see your best dancer take up with a louse like Archie Le Saux?’

Jarrell leaned forward a little. ‘What’s wrong with Archie Le Saux?’

‘What’s wrong with him? He should be inside and you know it. But you all cover up for each other, dontcha?’

Jarrell scrutinised Mallory’s face, wide, pale, granite-like.

‘I don’t know quite what you mean, Mr Mallory.’

‘And I don’t quite understand the reason for this visit,’ said Mallory, ‘but it’s obvious you think I had something to do with Valerie’s death. And you’re making allegations about my wife that I don’t like.’

‘It’s only fair to tell you that a number of individuals have suggested your involvement in some way.’

Mallory’s smile made his eyes even colder. ‘Is that so?’

‘It’s suggested your wife was covering up for you and that in pursuance of that she persuaded Camenzuli to confess to having killed the girl.’

‘My wife gets some funny ideas sometimes, but that’s a new one on me.’ He stood up. ‘She and I go our own ways. In the sense that she doesn’t interfere in my business and I don’t interfere in hers. The idea that she might have done as you said – well, it just don’t wash. I can look after myself and she knows that. And now, look, I don’t want to seem inhospitable, but I’m a busy man. And I’m not the sort of man to do coppers’ work for them. But you want to think a bit more careful about Archie Le Saux. You know who ’is uncle is. You know what they’re like. Archie’s a vicious piece of work and you know it. You’ve been looking in the wrong direction, Sergeant.’

‘Are you suggesting Archie Le Saux murdered his girlfriend?’

‘Even Archie wouldn’t do a thing like that. Well – not when it was Valerie. You’ve heard about love, Sergeant? He went crazy when he found out what had happened. Went around snivelling all over the show. Hadn’t the guts to do what he shoulda done – which is strange, when you come to think about it. But the agony was – it saved his bacon, didn’t it? The irony of it – enough to make a corpse laugh. You’ve all been a bit slow on this one, ain’t you? Haven’t put two and two together. Sad to say it, but you’re the last to know.’