‘Fuck,’ said Edie. ‘All down me jumper.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’ll dry.’
She drew away and, once more, her face came into focus. Mango lips, damp now with gleaming wine, huge violet-shadowed eyes, the lashes so thickly mascara’d they stuck out like tiny thorns. Her wonderful marmalade hair had been pinned up carelessly and several frondy, twisting curls escaped. She sat facing him, cross-legged, swallowing deeply and with languid relish.
Brian, bemooned, gazed back. He strove to come up with an innocuous remark, one that would neutralise the conversation and steer it firmly into strictly platonic channels. The only one that occurred (and recurred) was hopelessly inappropriate and much more likely to inflame than douse the situation. Tension clicking in his mind like a turnstile he delivered it anyway.
‘I’d have thought someone like you would have a boyfriend to come round and hear your lines.’
‘Him?’ Edie jeered. Brian felt a stab of disappointment that he had been proved right, tempered by a certain satisfaction at the scorn in her voice. ‘He’s useless.’
‘In what way?’
‘Every sodding way. He’s the original non-fattening centre. Know what I mean?’
Brian stared, uncomprehending. He was beginning to feel slightly zonked, what with the Thunderbirds, a surfeit of body warmth and the rampant excitement in his underwear. Certainly his brain must be addled because, for the life of him, he could not spot any causal link between an unsatisfactory suitor and a box of Maltesers. Unless she meant he never brought her any.
‘I bet your wife don’t have no problems in that department.’
Edie winked, but Brian missed it for his glance, having roamed across the curve of her belly and climbed that unbearably sexy ladder, had now come to rest on the thin, wraparound top, the damp sections of which were clinging very closely indeed.
‘That can’t be very comfortable.’ He spoke through stiff lips and, although nothing in her expression changed, he knew that some invisible barrier had been crossed. That he would no longer be able to get up and walk away. Even so he was completely unprepared for the speed of the next development.
‘You’re right,’ murmured Edie. ‘I’ll catch me death.’
Without taking her eyes off his face she pulled at the securing ties behind her back. The garment fell apart, revealing beautiful, blue veined, pearly-white breasts with raspberry tips. Brian stared, dumbstruck with exhilaration and fear. Then she leaned forward, uncoiled a tongue like a humming bird’s and slid it into his ear.
Brian panted and groaned. He felt so dizzy he thought he might lose consciousness.
‘Touch me Bri . . . come on . . .
quick
. . .’
‘Ohhh . . . Edie . . .’
‘Give us your hand . . .’
‘They’re so beautiful.’
‘Harder . . . between your fingertips . . . rub . . .’
‘I’ve dreamed of this.’
‘Yeah. Me an all.’
‘I picture you, Edie, every time I’m having it.’
‘Naughty.’
‘Makes me . . . you know . . .’
‘He’s all wired up - arncha, Brian?’
‘Yes,’ cried Brian, not knowing what it meant but knowing that he was.
‘Fancy moving down a bit?’
‘Mmm.’
‘I saw you. Looking at my legs.’
‘Such pretty legs.’
‘Want to climb my little ladder, don’t you?’
‘Yes,
yes
. . .’
‘Go on then.’
‘Eeny, meeny, miny . . .’
‘You’re ever so good with your hands, aren’t you, Brian?’
‘No complaints so far.’
‘Shelves and that.’
‘Nnnnggghhh!’
‘Got to Mo have you?’
‘Ohh Edie.’ Suddenly her tights were round her ankles and her fingers were tugging at his shirt. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Taking this off. Fair’s fair.’
‘I’m . . . a bit thin. Never had time to work out.’
‘Not thin down here though, are you, Brian?’
‘Yipes!’
‘Not thin where it matters.’
‘That hurt, actually.’
‘Now your jeans.’
‘Are you sure the door’s—’
‘Can’t screw with your jeans on.’ Edie canted up her skirt, then reached out and tickled his beard.
‘Don’t do that.’
‘What are all them bumps?’
‘Could we have the light off?’
‘More fun with it on.’
‘Nuff said.’
‘I don’t half want it, Brian.’
‘Um . . . I’ve never been—I’ve never done—’
‘Well, now’s the time to start. That’s it. Oooh - lovely. Off you go then.’
And off Brian went but not, alas, for long. In what Denzil would have called a hare’s breath it was all over. They uncoupled with a sad squelch. Edie swung her legs sideways and rested on the edge of the settee. Brian hovered apologetically. On the wall the light carved out their silhouettes. Brian said, ‘Sorry. I’m afraid it was the excitement.’
‘What excitement?’
Then, as quickly as she had slithered out of her tights, she was dressed again and walking away. Brian sat gloomily down on the gummy vinyl and watched as Edie lifted up the egg-streaked plate in the armchair and retrieved a shiny packet of Rothman’s King Size together with a match folder. She put a cigarette in her mouth and flicked a match against her thumbnail.
‘Wanna fag?’
‘I don’t, thank you, Edie.’
Brian became uncomfortably aware of a broken spring sticking into his bottom. One side of him, closely adjacent to the fiercely glowing bars of the electric fire, was crackling nicely. The other goose-pimpled fast. Surreptitiously he watched Edie. Her cheeks were sucked into hollows by vigorous inhalation. Smoke poured from her nostrils. She was as totally and utterly separate from him as if their conjoining had never been. He had a terrible headache from the wine and was wondering if he might ask for a cup of tea. About to speak he realised that she was, in fact, speaking to him.
‘Sorry - I didn’t get that.’
‘I said me mum’ll be back any minute.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Brian nearly fell off the settee. He scrambled up, seizing his clothes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I am telling you.’
‘Come on . . .
come on
. . .’ He started swearing at his shirt, punching the flapping folds with his fist, searching for the armholes, finding them, ramming his arms in.
‘That’s inside out.’
‘Shit.’
‘More haste less speed, eh, Bri?’
He tore at the sleeves with fingers like huge, sweating sausages, pulled them through to the right side and buttoned the shirt up, skew-whiff.
‘You’ve got the wrong—’
‘Yes, I am aware of that. Thank you.’
She shrugged and, picking up a pair of tights from the pile on the armchair, went over to the settee and started mopping up the traces.
‘Where are my underpants?’ shouted Brian, only half to himself.
‘How should I know?’ She threw the tights over the back of the settee.
Brian gave up looking. He pulled on the He Man jeans, stuffing his slippery genitals inside. He got them safely past the zip only to catch them on the semi-upright prongs of a row of copper rivets. Tears sprang to his eyes and he howled in fury and distress.
‘Not your night, is it?’
Somehow he got into his windcheater. By now his mind had become swamped by images of gigantism. He saw Mrs Carter, muscles engorged with newly pumped blood, bestriding the threshold like a colossus, preventing his escape. Tossing him about the room like a shuttlecock. Eating him alive.
Edie was holding the door open. Drowning in appalled anticipation, Brian shot through and out into the freezing cold.
By twenty-two hundred hours the outside team had all returned to the station and debriefing began. Like many a Christmas morning it held quite a few unwelcome surprises as various items of information were offered that no one had expected to find in their stocking and did not quite know what to make of now they had.
Extensive and thorough questioning of prostitutes on the streets and around the clubs of Uxbridge had, so far, produced no lead on the blonde in the taxi. However, many of the girls did not show themselves until late evening, so enquiries would continue throughout the night and into the next day if necessary.
No luck either in finding the driver who had picked her up at Plover’s Rest and taken her wherever she wished to go. All freelance cabbies within a twelve-mile radius of the village had been followed up, as well as every one in Causton. Luck though, of a sort, with Hadleigh’s removal van.
‘Came across an old biddy,’ said Inspector Meredith, ‘who actually recalls not only the day itself but the name of the firm.’ He ruffled his pages and continued, abandoning his natural drawl for what he appeared to regard as a South Bucks working-class accent.
‘Oi remember thaat corz thaat was Beech Hams and moy maam used to give uz Beech Hams pills.’ He chortled, no doubt at the quaintness of old peasant biddydom in general and this crusty old example in particular.
Nobody joined in. Barnaby watched the inspector sourly. He was closing his notebook now, no doubt after memorising the fragment of folklore to entertain his chums. They’d be pissing themselves at the Athenaeum over that one.
‘Her name I believe,’ concluded Meredith, ‘was Mrs Staggles.’
‘Well, whatever her name is,’ replied the chief inspector, ‘she’s certainly a long way from her native Norfolk. I trust,’ he carried on quickly over the laughter, which he perceived to derive as much from pleasure at Meredith’s displacement as at his own wit, ‘you didn’t leave the matter there?’
‘Naturally not.’ Skin extremely tight around the eyes. ‘The firm, it appears, was taken over a year ago by a much larger company. Cox’s of Slough. They didn’t keep any of the staff - there were only half a dozen - but did take their names and addresses in case there were vacancies sometime in the future. I plan to talk to any who are still living locally, tomorrow.’
‘I shall be interested to hear the result,’ said Barnaby. ‘I think you may well find that they did not move Hadleigh’s stuff from Kent, as we’ve been led to believe, after all.’
‘Really, sir? What makes you say that?’
Barnaby briefly described his visit to the solicitor’s and the reading of the will, which filled the room with some surprise and quite a few whistles of envy.
‘The more we seem to discover about Hadleigh,’ continued the chief inspector, ‘the more we find ourselves on shifting sands. We’ve been unable to find any record of his marriage in the year that he implied it had taken place. We’re trying to trace an insurance number but the name is not all that uncommon and we have no date of birth to go on. The Department of Agriculture at Whitehall are checking their records but, quite frankly, I’ve little hope in that direction either. It’s becoming plain, I’m afraid, that Hadleigh was a man bent on concealment. At this stage we can only guess at whether what he took such pains to conceal was connected with his death.’
Barnaby sat back, watching his team take all this in. Personally he found these conclusions totally depressing. He was not a man to relish complication for the sake of complication, as Nicholas had discovered while trying to teach his father-in-law to play chess.
Policewoman Audrey Brierley started smoothing her neat cap of shining hair, a nervous habit she indulged when speaking in front of a group. ‘But why would anyone make up a whole set of lies about themselves, sir?’
‘A good question.’
‘Have we checked if he’s got form?’ asked Inspector Meredith.
‘Yes, we have,’ said Barnaby crisply. ‘And no, he hasn’t.’
‘Not under that name,’ said Audrey.
‘Precisely. The fact that it’s proving so difficult to pin him down suggests that the name is false. And it may not be the only alias.’
‘Maybe he’s a cut and runner,’ said Troy. ‘Wife and kids all too much - buggers off. Or a bigamist.’
‘I wonder if you’ve considered the possibility . . .’ Inspector Meredith, who had not waited for the previous speaker to finish, leaned back in his chair. He crossed one elegant tweed leg over the other and lowered his narrow head as if thanking his muse for this, the latest in a long line of inspiration. If he puts the tips of his fingers together, thought Barnaby, and rests his chin on them, I will personally go over there and bash his head on the floor till his brains rattle.
‘The possibility,’ reprised the inspector, ‘that what we may have here is an official make-over. If Hadleigh had been some kind of supergrass a complete change of location, totally new background and identity could have been part of a deal. I have a connection in the Home Office and would be glad—’
‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
Barnaby, having a rough idea what such transformations could cost, suspected they were very rare indeed. He also knew how close the Home Office played such matters to its chest. Still, the suggestion could not be entirely discounted. He only wished someone else had made it.
‘Maybe Jennings will be able to fill in some of the blanks, sir,’ said Detective Constable Willoughby. ‘Are you going to be putting out a press release about him soon?’
‘I thought we’d give it another twenty-four hours, but if there’s no trace by then of the man or his car, I’m afraid we’ll have to.’ Barnaby rose to his feet, saying, ‘Right. If that’s it . . . ?’
Glancing about he noticed Inspector Meredith’s sudden frown and look of increased concentration, as if some perception or other had occurred. The man looked alert within himself. Barnaby said, ‘Well, inspector?’
‘Sir?’
‘The little grey cells working overtime again?’ There were a few toadying snickers and Barnaby chided himself for such petty spite. It was hardly Meredith’s fault that the system upgraded graduates to inspector in four years whilst making hard-working, foot-slogging, intelligent constables hang around for fifteen. He drained the acid from his voice before continuing.