Solo (3 page)

Bond sat down at a pavement table outside the Café Picasso, his mind active and distracted. He looked at the menu and forced himself to concentrate and ordered a portion of lasagne and a glass of Valpolicella from the waitress. Calm down, he said to himself, this all happened a quarter of a century ago – in another life. But the images he was summoning up were as fresh as if they had taken place last week. The fat glossy cherries, Dave Tozer’s grimacing face, the drifting scent of woodsmoke and the sound of conversing German voices – all coming back to him with the clarity of total recall.

He forced himself to look around, glad of the diversion afforded by the Café Picasso’s eccentric clientele – the dark-eyed girls in their tiny short dresses; the long-haired young men in their crushed velvet and their shaggy Afghan coats. He ate his impromptu late lunch and kept his gaze on the move, easily distracted by the comings and goings. He ordered another glass of wine and an espresso and admired the small-nippled breasts of the girl on the next table, clearly visible through the transparent gauze of her blouse. There was something to be said for modern fashion after all, Bond considered, cheered by the unselfconscious sexuality of the scene. The girl with the see-through blouse was now kissing her boyfriend with patent enthusiasm, his hand resting easily on her upper thigh.

Bond lit a cigarette and found his thoughts turning to the woman in the Dorchester – Bryce Fitzjohn – and their series of encounters over the last twelve hours or so. Was there anything to be suspicious about? He played with various explanations and found the improbabilities too compelling. How could she have known he was staying at the Dorchester? How could she have contrived to be in the lift when he decided to go to the dining room for breakfast? Impossible. Well, not impossible but highly unlikely. True, she could have waited in the lobby for him to check out, he supposed . . . But it didn’t add up. He took her card out of his pocket. She lived in Richmond, he saw. A cocktail party at six o’clock with some ‘amusing and interesting’ friends . . .

Bond stubbed out his cigarette and called for his bill. He found he was thinking about her and her rangy, alluring body. He felt a little animalistic quiver of desire low in his gut and his loins. Lust, more like. The prehistoric instinct –
this is the one for me
. He hadn’t felt this sensation in a long time, he had to acknowledge. She was a very attractive woman, he told himself, and, more to the point, she clearly found him attractive also. Perhaps he should check her out further – it would be correct procedure after all – and perhaps the gods of luck were conspiring to send him a birthday present. He threw down a pound note and some coins to cover his bill and a tip, stepped out into the King’s Road and hailed a taxi.

‘Back again, Mr Bond, nice to see you,’ the salesman said with a wide sincere smile as Bond circled the chocolate-brown Jensen Interceptor I. It was parked on the forecourt of a showroom just off Park Lane, in Mayfair. Bond had visited it three times already, checking out the Interceptor, hence the salesman’s welcoming smile. What was his name? Brian, that was it, Brian Richards. Bond’s Bentley was out of action, having its gearbox replaced. The old car, much loved, and lovingly customised over the years, was showing signs of its age and its rambunctious history and was beginning to cost him serious money just to keep it roadworthy. It was like an old thoroughbred racehorse – its time had come to be put out to grass. But what to replace the Bentley with? He wasn’t particularly enamoured of modern cars – he’d test-driven an E-type Jaguar and an MGB GT but they didn’t trigger any pulse of pleasure in him, didn’t make his heart beat. But the Interceptor was different – big and beautiful – and this was what kept bringing him back to Park Lane.

Brian, the salesman, sidled up and lowered his voice.

‘I’ll have the Interceptor II in a few weeks, Mr Bond, after the Motor Show. And I can do you a very fair price – so buying the One wouldn’t be that clever, what with the Two coming out, know what I mean? But . . .’ He looked around as if he was about to divulge a dark secret. ‘In the meantime, come through the back and have a look at this.’ Bond followed Brian across the showroom and through a door to a small mews courtyard at the rear. Here were the workshops and extra space for cars to be waxed and polished before they went to the forecourt on display. Brian gestured to what looked like another Interceptor, painted a dull gunmetal silver. Bond walked around it. An Interceptor but somehow longer, he thought, and with two air vents set behind the front wheels.

‘The Jensen FF,’ Brian said softly in veneration, almost with a catch in his voice. ‘Four-wheel drive.’ He opened the door. ‘Step in, Mr Bond. Try her for size.’

Bond slipped into the driving seat and rested his hands on the wooden rim of the steering wheel, his eyes taking in the grouped dials on the fascia, his nostrils filled with the smell of new leather. It worked on him like an aphrodisiac.

‘Take her out for a spin,’ Brian suggested.

‘I just might,’ he said.

‘Be my guest, Mr Bond. Take her out on the motorway, give her some gas. You’ll be amazed. Take all the time you need, sir.’

Bond was thinking. ‘Right. When do you close? I may be a couple of hours.’

‘I’m working late tonight. I’ll be here till ten. Just bring her round the back and ring the bell on the gate.’

‘Perfect,’ Bond said and switched on the engine.

Bond felt he was in a low-flying plane rather than an automobile as he accelerated the Jensen down the A316 towards Twickenham. The wide curved sweep of the windscreen filled the car with light and the powerful rumble of the engine sounded like the roar of jet propulsion. The four-wheel drive meant the tightest corner could be negotiated with hardly any diminution of speed. When he stopped at traffic lights pedestrians openly gaped at the car as it idled throatily, heads turning, fingers pointing. If you needed a car to boost your ego, Bond thought, then the Jensen FF would do the job admirably. Not that he needed an ego boost, Bond reminded himself as he accelerated away, the speed forcing him back in the seat, cutting up and leaving a Series V Sunbeam Alpine for dead, its driver gesticulating in frustration.

Bond turned left before Richmond Bridge. He went into a post office to ask directions to Chapel Close, where Bryce Fitzjohn lived. He motored down Petersham Road, along the river’s edge, found the narrow lane, turned the corner and parked. It was just before six o’clock and he rather liked the idea of being the first to arrive at her little party. A few minutes alone would negate or confirm any lingering doubts he had about her.

Bryce Fitzjohn’s home turned out to be a pretty Georgian ‘cottage’ with a walled garden, the grand houses of Richmond Hill rising behind and beyond. Bond surveyed the driveway and the house’s facade from across the lane. Worn, patinated red stock-brick, a slate roof, a moulded half-shell pediment over the front door, three big sash windows on the ground floor and three above – a restrained and elegant design. They weren’t cheap, these refined houses on the river – so she wasn’t short of money. However bitter her divorce had been, perhaps it had proved lucrative, Bond wondered as he crossed the road, noting that there were no cars parked outside. He was the first to arrive – excellent. He rang the doorbell.

There was no response. Bond listened, then rang again. And again. Now new intimations of alarm began to cluster. What kind of invitation was this? Bond was unarmed and felt suddenly vulnerable, wondering if he was being watched from some vantage point. He looked around him and stepped back out on to the road. A mother pushing her pram. A boy walking his dog. Nothing out of the ordinary. He returned to the house and slipped through the ornate iron gate at the side that led to the walled garden. Bond saw well-tended herbaceous borders edging a neatly mown lawn with a large stone birdbath set on a carved plinth in the centre. At the bottom of the garden, under a gnarled and ancient fig tree, was a wrought-iron bench and table. All very ordered and civilised. Bond followed paving stones set in the turf round to a conservatory at the rear. Beside it was a door that led into the kitchen.

Bond peered through the window. Here, laid out on a scrubbed pine kitchen table were trays of canapés, ranked glasses of various sorts and bowls of nuts, cheese balls and olives. So, there
was
going to be a party . . . But where was the hostess? Bond thought about returning home to Chelsea, but his curiosity was piqued and he felt it was his professional duty to find out if there was anything more clandestine going on here. He just had to gain access to this house. Needs must, he thought to himself, and reached down and removed one of his loafers. He twisted off the heel, revealing the two-inch, dirk-like stabbing blade that projected from it, sheathed by the specially constructed sole. He slipped the blade into the gap by the Yale lock, probed, eased and then turned it, feeling the tongue of the lock spring back and the door yield. He pushed it open. It was all too easy, this breaking and entering.

Bond replaced the heel and slipped his shoe back on. He allowed himself a couple of seconds’ reflection – he could close the door and return home, no one would be the wiser – but he felt that having achieved ingress, as it were, it would be wrong not to explore further. Who knew what he might discover? So he stepped in and wandered around the kitchen, listening intently, and, hearing no sound of anyone stirring, he helped himself to a chicken vol-au-vent and then a triangle of smoked salmon. Delicious. There was a drinks trolley with an impressive display of alcohol set upon it. Bond contemplated the array of bottles (some serious drinkers were expected, clearly) and was tempted to have a dram of the Scotch on offer as it was Dimple Haig, one of his favourites – but decided this wasn’t the moment. Then he decided it was, so he poured three fingers into a tumbler and left the kitchen to investigate the house.

The rooms were high-ceilinged and generously sized on the ground floor: there was a dining room and a drawing room with fine cornicing and French windows that gave on to the lawn. To the other side of the entrance hall was a cloakroom-bathroom and a small study. He spent some time in the study, one wall of which was lined with bookshelves – mainly biographies and non-fiction, he saw, with a distinct showbiz slant. He opened the bottom drawer of the small partners’ desk that sat in a corner (always start with the bottom drawer) and was surprised to find a cache of large glossy professional photographs of Bryce Fitzjohn nearly and provocatively naked. In some she was wearing a tiny leather bikini; in others she was topless, her arm held demurely across her breasts; and there were others of her in full make-up, hair blown awry by a wind machine, her cleavage plungingly on display. There was one set of her sitting up in a rumpled bed, naked, her back to the camera, the cleft of her buttocks visible, her hair tousled, her eyes half closed and invitingly come-hither. The name at the foot of each photograph was ‘Astrid Ostergard’. So, Bryce Fitzjohn was Astrid Ostergard in another life. The name seemed familiar to Bond – where had he seen it before? He leafed through the photos – an actress, a dancer, a model? A high-class prostitute? Bond was tempted to take a photo as a souvenir.

He quickly went through the other drawers of the desk and found nothing out of the ordinary. Her passport confirmed her name was indeed Bryce Connor Fitzjohn (aged thirty-seven) born in Kilkenny, Ireland. It was time to go upstairs. Bond drained his glass of Haig and left it on the desk.

On the first floor there were two bedrooms, one with a bathroom en suite and clearly Bryce’s. Bond opened cupboards and drawers and the medicine cabinet in the bathroom – he noticed there seemed no trace of a male presence anywhere. In the guest bedroom the bottom drawer of the bedside table revealed an ancient, desiccated half-pack of Gauloises cigarettes and a well-thumbed copy of Frank Harris’s
My Life and Loves
. Scant evidence of a man in her life. No, there was really nothing to go on apart from the pseudonymous photographs—

The sound of a motor – diesel – and a tyre-scatter of gravel made Bond freeze for a second before he strode to the window, peering out cautiously. A breakdown van towing a Triumph Herald 13/60 convertible pulled up outside. Bryce Fitzjohn stepped out of the cab of the van and, from the other door, an overalled mechanic emerged, who unhitched the Herald. Bond watched Bryce write a cheque for the driver and see him and his van off with a cursory wave, and then Bond drew back as she unlocked the front door to her house.

Bond moved quickly to the top of the stairs, the better to overhear the series of calls she proceeded to make from the telephone on the small table in the hallway. ‘Yes,’ he heard her say, ‘me again. Nightmare . . . After the breakdown in Kingston . . . It got worse – completely dead . . .’, ‘Hello, darling,
so
sorry . . . No we’ll do it another time . . .’, ‘I might have been in Siberia, nobody offered to help . . . Took me three hours after I called you to find a garage . . .’, ‘And then the man said the car was fixed but it still wouldn’t fucking start . . . Exactly, so I had to find another garage . . . Day from hell . . . Yes, I’m going to have a hot bath and an enormous gin and tonic . . .’, ‘Bye, my dear . . . Yes, it is a shame . . . everything was ready . . . No, we’ll do it again. Promise . . .’ and so on for another few minutes as she rang around apologising to the friends who were meant to have come to her party, Bond assumed.

As he stood there listening he began to wonder what his best course of action would be. Reveal himself? Or try to slip out unnoticed? He heard her go into the kitchen and then a minute later head back across the hall for the stairs. He ducked into the spare bedroom. He heard her kick off her shoes on the landing and the chime of ice in a glass, then, moments after, the sound of water tumbling into a bath. Bond peered out, carefully. She had left the door to her bedroom open and he was able to watch her undress, partially, in a kind of jump-cut striptease, as she crossed and recrossed her room, shedding clothes. He moved cautiously out into the corridor and saw her reflected in the mirror of her dressing table. She was wearing a red brassiere and red panties, and her skin was very white. He noted the furrow of her spine deepen as she arched her arms back to unclip the fastener of her brassiere. And then she slipped out of vision.