The anti cyclone re-established itself over the Bay of Biscay, pushing the threat of unsettled weather back over Russia, where it belonged.
Dave finished his painting, the M62 was closed for two hours by grass fires, and I mowed my lawn. A judicious grass fire would have saved me the bother. Once again the bright tables and umbrellas sprang up all over the precinct, like toadstools in a book of fairy stories, and commerce slowed to a standstill. Crime didn't. Lust is mercury-filled; it rises and falls with temperature. Hot afternoons, scant clothing, walks in the meadows; it's a potent mixture. Add lunchtime drinking outside the pub with the new girl from Telesales and you have all the ingredients for rape, and we had several. Not by the inadequate loner, waiting for a victim, any victim, and striking violently. These were between semi-consenting couples who were carried away by the moment. Two of them were mothers complaining about the boys next door and their daughters, and one housewife thought that inviting the builder in for a beer was normal behaviour, even if she was wearing a bikini and had spent all morning sunbathing topless. We had a rubber stamp made that said: "She was asking for it," to speed up the statements.
The druggies changed their modus operandi, too. Open windows facilitated the taking of tellies and videos, but demand was down.
Garden tools, barbecue furniture and big chimney pots, plants for growing in, became the new currency. It added some variety to the job and the wooden tops had to learn how to spell some new words.
"Ta-da!" Dave fan fared as he came into my office on Wednesday morning, his smile broader than a seaside comedian's lapels.
"What?" I said, lifting the pile of papers in my in-tray and sliding the request for next year's budget underneath.
He sat down and grinned at me.
"Go on," I invited, 'or is that it?"
"That Piers Forrester is a really nice bloke," he told me.
"He's a supercilious twat," I replied.
"He's been very helpful."
"He wears a dickie bow."
"Oh, so he's a supercilious twat because he wears a dickie bow, is he?"
"Yes."
"And Graham's OK, too."
"He's all right, I suppose."
"Because he doesn't wear a dickie bow?"
"He wears Yves St. Laurent short-sleeved shirts. That must say something about him."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. You're the detective, I'm just the office boy. What have you found out?"
"Right," he replied, eagerly. "We've cracked it."
"Go on."
"Melissa went to grammar school in Beverley, didn't she?"
"Yep."
"And then on to Essex University."
"Mmm."
"So Graham has paid them a visit to have a look at her classmates there, like I did for Duncan in Leeds. And guess what?"
"I'm all ears."
"There was another girl enrolled there at the same time, from the same school in Beverley. She was called Janet Wilson. She's bound to have been in the same class as MeliSSa, don't you think? She must know her."
I let my glum look slip, but only briefly. "What do you mean by was called Janet Wilson?" I asked.
"She's married, that's all. She's now called Janet Holmes, and lives at the Coppice, Bishop's Court, York. We could be there in an hour."
You can learn a lot about a person from the pictures they have on their wall. This one was a tinted drawing, larger than average, of a circular construction. It looked Moorish at first glance, and I expected it to be called something like jn the Courtyard of the Alhambra, but when I looked closer I realised it was biological. What I'd taken as tiles or pieces of mosaic were individual cells.
"Do you like it?" Mrs. Holmes asked as she came into the room, carrying a tray.
"It's not what it seems," I replied, 'and that intrigues me. It's also very attractive."
"Your sergeant's call certainly intrigued me," she replied. "Please, sit down."
"Constable," Dave corrected.
There was a caption and a signature under the picture. They read:
Ascaris lumbricoides and J. Holmes. I said: "Did you do this, Mrs.
Holmes?" sounding impressed.
"It's what I do for a living," she answered. "I'm a technical illustrator. I took a few liberties with the colour on that one, but it's not great art."
"The inspector's into painting," Dave told her. "Went to art college.
He does all our wanted posters."
"Really?" she replied.
"He jests," I told her. "So what exactly is an ascaris what sit "It's a nasty little parasite that lives in pigs and occasionally in humans."
"You mean, like a tapeworm?"
"Very similar, but they only grow to about a foot in length."
"Only a foot!" Dave exclaimed. "Blimey! So how long does a tapeworm grow?"
"Oh, the common tapeworm can reach twenty feet," she told him.
"Urgh!" he responded. "I'll never have another bacon sandwich."
Mrs. Holmes poured the tea and suggested we help ourselves to milk and sugar. "Now, what is it you want to know about Essex University in the early seventies?" she asked. "I'm totally fascinated."
She was a good-looking woman, easier to imagine addressing a class or opening a fete than looking through a microscope. I sat down and took a sip of tea from the china cup. She'd also supplied scones which looked homemade and more in character with her appearance.
"Do you work from home?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied. "My husband left me two years ago, as soon as the children were off our hands. Traded me in for a younger model; and more streamlined." She patted her hips, which looked perfectly reasonable to me. "I'd always been an illustrator, which was considered something of a cop-out for someone with a degree, but now there's a bigger than ever demand for my services. I do lots of computer animation, too, of course, but a good animator can name her own price, almost."
It explained a lot. The house was a four-bed roomed detached on a swish estate just down-river from the bishop's palace. We knew she'd lived there for nine years, so it must have been the marital home, but she'd managed to keep it. Working alone, in her studio, explained the hospitality, which was above that we normally received. Two handsome detectives were visiting and she probably hadn't spoken to anyone livelier than a checkout girl all week. Get out the decent cups and some buns.
"So," she said, 'what's this all about?"
I reached for a plate and a scone and settled back in my easy chair, gesturing towards Dave. "DC Sparkington will tell you," I said, adding: "The scones look good."
"They're from Betty's," she told me.
"And I thought they looked homemade," I replied.
"No. I'm afraid I'm the world's worst cook." Ah, well, I can't be right all the time.
Dave took a drink of tea and placed the cup and saucer back on the low table that was between us. "You went to the Cathedral Grammar School at Beverley, I believe, Mrs. Holmes?"
"Yes, that's right." She leaned forward, interested, and interlinked her fingers around her knee.
"And from there?"
"From there I went to Essex University for four years, as you know."
"Reading…"
"Biology."
"Was anyone else from Beverley accepted for Essex?" Dave asked. I had to smile. A week ago he'd have said: "What were you taking?" and:
"Did anyone else go to Essex?"
"Yes, there was one other girl," she replied.
"Called…" Dave prompted.
"Melissa. Melissa Youngman."
"How well did you know her?"
"Quite well. We weren't friends, but we were in the same classes at Beverley for seven years, plus a year at Essex."
"Were you on the same course?" Dave asked, puzzled.
"No. Melissa read palaeontology, but some of our courses were combined for the first year. And we shared a house."
"You shared a house? How did that come about?"
"Melissa's parents bought a little semi for her, and I had a room in it. It was normal for freshers to stay in a hall of residence, so we had to have a special dispensation, but it only lasted a year. I moved out and Melissa moved on."
"Where to?"
"Melissa? I don't know."
"Tell me about her," Dave invited.
I put my empty plate back on the table and settled back to listen.
"Tell you about Melissa?" she queried.
"Yes please."
Mrs. Holmes's face looked mystified for a few seconds, then broke into a smile of realisation. "It's Melissa you want to know about, isn't it?" she demanded, unable to contain her delight. "What has she done now?"
"Her name has cropped up in an investigation," Dave told her. "We don't know if she is involved but we'd be grateful for anything you can tell us about her."
"About poor Melissa? Good grief."
"Yes please."
"Well, let me see…" Mrs. Holmes hadn't spoken to a soul for a fortnight, and now she was being given the invitation to gossip about her best schoolfriend, who she hated, by two people who were trained listeners with no intention of interrupting. It was a moment to savour. She gathered her thoughts, smoothed her flowered skirt and began.
Melissa was head girl, which we knew, and a brilliant scholar.
Annoyingly, she was also good at games, and not considered a swot by anyone. She had long hair, down to her waist, and her parents doted on her. They were always in the front row at speech days and school plays, applauding their daughter long after everyone else had stopped.
But something happened to her in that first week at university, and Mrs. Holmes didn't know what it was.
"All sorts of societies organised meetings and parties for the new students, partly to entertain us and break the ice, partly to recruit new members. We went to one, I remember, about the rain forests, which weren't quite the cause celebre in 1969 that they are now. Oh! The high life! Those were the days," she laughed, and I noticed that she still had a girlishly happy face. Betrayal and disappointment hadn't left their mark. "On the Friday," she continued," and this is still the first week Melissa announced that we were going to a lecture about a man called Aleister Crowley. Have you ever heard of him?"
Dave said: "No," and I left it at that, although I had.
"He was the self-styled wicked est man in the world, apparently, although it all sounded harmlessly bonkers to me. He was a witch, a warlock, I suppose, who climbed Everest without oxygen or warm clothing and performed other fiendish deeds like that. He probably did spells and things, but the Everest bit is all that I can remember. Melissa was fascinated. Or maybe it was the lecturer who captivated her. He was a bit of a dish, if you like that sort of thing, but far too smooth for me. Afterwards she trapped him in a corner and wouldn't let him go. I waited for ages, sipping a half of beer and wondering why people drank the stuff," she laughed again, 'until Melissa came over and told me that it was all right, Nick would see her home later."
"Nick?" I asked.
"Nick Kingston, the lecturer. Apparently he also taught psychology at the university, although we didn't know that at the time. So I walked home all by myself and Melissa stayed out all night. I was shocked, but that was only the beginning."
"Why? What happened next?"
"I didn't see her until she came in, late Saturday afternoon. She' dhad all her hair chopped off and it looked a dreadful mess. I asked her why and she just said she was sick of it. The following week she had it dyed and she had her nose pierced. She was a different person."
"What colour did she dye it?" we both asked.
"Bright red." Ah, well, she still had six years to go purple.
"Was there anything else?" I wondered.
"Not really," Mrs. Holmes replied. "We drifted apart after that. I knew I had to work hard, and I didn't want to let my parents down. I know it's corny, but they made sacrifices to send me to university, and I wasn't as gifted as Melissa. I thought she wasted her talents, and to be honest, I grew to dislike her."
"Did she and this Kingston become a couple?" Dave asked.
"For a while," Mrs. Holmes answered, 'and then…" She covered her face with her hands and began to laugh uncontrollably. "Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed as she recovered. "I don't know if I should tell you…"
Her laughter was infectious. "If you don't," I said, smiling, 'we'll just have to arrest you and take you to the station to make a statement."
She blew her nose on a tissue and concealed it somewhere in the folds of her skirt. "It was awful," she declared, but her expression said otherwise.
"What happened?" I asked.
"We went to a party at Nick Kingston's flat. It must have been after Christmas, because I'd taken my father's car back down there after the holiday. It was a Morris Minor, and he said I'd have more use for it than him. After that, I was invited to a lot more parties, because I was good for a lift. I remember! It was to watch a moon landing, that was it! Apollo 13, the one that had problems. We were all interested, history was being made, but Kingston knew everything about it. He was a complete show-off. Would you like some more tea?"
We would. She refilled our cups and I invited her to continue.
"Kingston was awful to Melissa. They'd seen a lot of each other up to then, but I could see he was deliberately ignoring her and chasing another girl. Melissa took her revenge by latching on to poor Mo."
"Mo?"
That smile came back, but wistful this time. "That's right, short for Mobo Dlamini. He was from Swaziland, that's in South Africa, and a lovely person. His father or grandfather was the king, and he came over here to study law."
"Could you spell it, please?" Dave asked, and noted it down.
"I went home just as it was breaking dawn," Mrs. Holmes continued, 'but Melissa didn't come with me. I heard her and Mo arrive much later. Their giggles and antics woke me up. About lunchtime I had my revenge. There was a knock at the door and who should I find there but Melissa's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Youngman. They pushed past me and marched up to her room. Can you imagine their reactions? Not only was their darling daughter in bed with a man, but he was a black man. It was awful. I heard most of it and Mo told me the rest. They stormed out and drove away, and I don't think she saw them again. I gave Mo some aspirin and some breakfast and took him home."
"This was early 1970?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Melissa's mother died of an overdose in August of that year," I said.
"Oh no," Janet Holmes sighed. "The poor woman."
"Melissa sounds a right little charmer," Dave declared. "I'm not surprised you disliked her."
"What happened to them all?" I asked.
She took a deep breath and thought for a few seconds. "That was the end of our friendship, if you could call it that. I moved out and concentrated on my studies. Melissa didn't do the second year and I haven't heard a whisper of her until now. Mo joined a firm of solicitors in London and married an English girl. We kept in touch until I left university, but I don't know what happened to him."
"And Kingston?" I prompted.
She hesitated before shaking her head and saying: "I don't know."
My tea was cold but I finished it off. Putting the cup down I said:
"You wouldn't happen to have any photographs, would you?"
Our lucky streak stayed with us. She sat upright, stretching her spine to its full extent, and said: "Why didn't I think of that? Of course I have, somewhere."
"We'd be grateful if you could find them."
She said it would take a few minutes, but she knew where they should be if we didn't mind waiting. We passed the time by having another scone each and I studied the cross-section of the beastie above the fireplace. Seeing one of them down the pan would ruin your morning.
It took a little longer than we expected, and she had a smudge of dust on her nose when she returned, explaining that they were in the loft and she rarely went up there. "Here we are," she said, laying an album on the table. It said "Essex' on the cover in ornate lettering.
There were only four that were relevant to our inquiry. Melissa, Mo and Mrs. Holmes, or Miss Wilson as she was then, were in self-conscious poses with several other young people in the various stages of inebriation. "Which one is you?" I'd asked after she'd pointed to Melissa on three of them.
"There," she said, 'and there," indicating a slim girl with long straight hair.
"You look like Julie Felix," I said.
She blushed and said: "I did a reasonable impersonation of her with the guitar, when pressed."
"And that must be Mo."
"A brilliant deduction, my dear Watson," she replied. He was the only black person in the photographs.
"Elementary, Holmes," I said, on cue, and she gave me a wistful smile, as if I'd stumbled into a private joke that she hadn't heard for a long time.
The pictures weren't the great breakthrough we'd hoped they might be.
They were small, two and a quarter inches square at a guess, and black and white. The quality was excellent, but the poses were informal and not much use for identification purposes.
"Can we borrow these?" I asked.
"Yes, of course."
"Is Kingston in any?" Dave wondered.
"No. He took them, but would never let anybody else handle his precious camera. It was the same as the first men on the moon used, he claimed. Another of his boasts. He did us all a set of contact prints, but would charge us for enlargements, if we wanted them. He wasn't famous for his generosity, just the opposite. Photography was one of his hobbies."
"Along with witchcraft," Dave suggested.
"Yes, and keep-fit and rock climbing. He was into everything. He was an interesting person, in a way, but weird with it. And slimy. I didn't like him, either." She laughed again and said: "I'm awful, aren't I?"
I assured her she wasn't and thanked her for everything. We placed our cups on the tray and I held the door for her as we walked through into the kitchen. Outside, there was a table on the lawn, with one chair against it, and the grass had been half-cut and then abandoned. "Do you know where Melissa is?" Mrs. Holmes asked.
"We believe she's in the United States," I replied.
"I've always thought I'd read about her one day," she said. "She was a remarkable girl, but after that episode with her parents I decided she was heartless, capable of anything. Nothing Melissa did would surprise me."
"You've dust on your nose," I said, smiling.
"A talented lady," Dave commented as we rejoined the Al.
"Mmm. And capable of anything, it would appear."
"Who?"
"Melissa."
"I meant Mrs. Holmes."
"Yes, she's a clever woman."
"And nice, too."
"What are you getting at?" I asked.
"Nothing, but you could do worse."
"She can't cook," I replied.
"I suspect she was being modest, and that's what takeaways are for."
"She's not my type."
"No? I bet that when we've had these photos enlarged you just happen to return the originals personally."
"I might. The camera was a Hasselblad, by the way," I said.
"I know. And the moon men left theirs at the Sea of Tranquillity.
Shall we go fetch it tomorrow?"
"Good idea."
We went to London instead. I'd wanted Dave to have a day down there to meet Graham and the team and compare notes. Our loose agreement was that we'd concentrate on the fire and they would resurrect the files on the other deaths that had accumulated on J.J. Fox's path to fortune.
When we'd arrived back at the office I'd rung the SFO and Graham had quickly discovered that Mo Dlamini lived in Southwark, south London, and had carved himself a reputation as a worker for civil liberties.
Nicholas Kingston was harder to pin down. I decided we'd both go; meet them mob-handed. Dave could drive us there while I snoozed.
Taking the car into town was a mistake. I'd timed it so we'd arrive about ten o'clock, but every hour is rush hour in London, and people were killing for parking places. We eventually muscled into a space and I took Dave into the hallowed halls of the Serious Fraud Office. A quick phone call told me that Mo Dlamini would be in his office most of the day and I left Dave discussing tactics with his new friends, Graham and Piers.
There was a tube train waiting at the platform, but I didn't know which way it was heading. I jumped on and risked it. At the next station I got off and looked for the down line. I'm just a country bumpkin at heart. Southwark is just across the river, according to the map, but it still took me nearly an hour to find his office. It was in a purpose-built Community and Resources centre, with graffiti on the walls next to posters about needle sharing and benefit cheats. Thursday was basketball, and two teams of youths were charging about in a huge gymnasium and getting nowhere, in spite of all having the proper gear.
Looking the part is all. Their shouts and the shrieks of rubber against wooden floor were deafening. I watched them for a few seconds with the door ajar and decided he wouldn't be in there. A woman with two toddlers asked me where the toilets were. I'd noticed them when I came in, so I pointed and said: "At the end." If in doubt, ask a policeman. There were several other doors off the corridor, some padlocked, some open. One led to a kitchen where a youth with a shaved head and a bolt through his neck was mopping the floor. "Where's Mr.
Dlamini's office?" I asked.
"Who?" he replied.
"Mo Dlamini."
"Dunno."
"Thanks."
Fortunately for me a human being came round the corner, wearing a dog collar, and he told me that Mo's office was the last on the left. I knocked and a voice shouted:
"Come in!"
Everybody in this case is older than I expected. Not old, exactly, but more mature. In their prime. About my age. I imagined everybody as if frozen at the age they were in the seventies, before twenty-three years of striving to earn a living had taken their toll. Mo Dlamini's hair was seriously greying, but he was as big as he'd looked on the photos and the expression was just as open and confident. He was a lighter colour than I thought he'd be, and his features were soft, almost European. He shook my hand vigorously and introduced me to his son, Ainsley.
Ainsley was leaning on the wall because it was easier for him than contorting his frame into one of the little stacking chairs.
Including his hair he must have been nearly seven feet tall and was built like a clothes prop. "Hi, Ainsley," I said, peering at the discreet logo on the left breast of his dazzling white T-shirt as we exchanged handshakes. It said calvin bolloCKs, and I warmed to him immediately.
"Sit down, Inspector Priest," Dlamini invited, 'and tell us what we can do for you. You're a long way from Yorkshire so it must be important."
"Thanks." I coiled myself into the chair he gestured towards and took a quick glance at my surroundings. It wasn't exactly the office of a hot-shot lawyer, with its transport cafe Formica table, bare walls and tiled floor. I decided that this was where he held his surgeries. The heavyweight bookcases, VDUs, coffee percolator and secretarial staff were elsewhere. I looked at Ainsley then back at Dlamini and said:
"Some of the stuff I want to discuss is of a confidential nature…"
I left it hanging and they both took the hint.
"I'll see how the basketball's going," Ainsley said, launching himself towards the door. "Pleasure to meet you, Inspector."
"Likewise, Ainsley," I replied. "Nothing personal."
"Ring your mum," his father shouted after him, followed by, "Kids, who'd have 'em?"
"He's a big lad," I observed.
"Big? I work the first three days of the week just to feed him. So what's this all about?"
I dived straight in. "I'd like you to cast your mind back to 1970 if you can, Mr. Dlamini. Can you remember where you were then?" '1970? Jesus," he replied. "First of all, it's Mo. Everybody calls me Mo."
"And I'm Charlie." I told him.
"Right. Let me see… in 1970 I was gaining work experience on company law with a firm of solicitors in Colchester, Essex. Do you need any more than that?"
"No, that's fine. Do you remember going to a party in April of that year? It might be helpful if I tell you that the party coincided with the Apollo 13 moon mission, which was the one that nearly ended in disaster."
The corner of his mouth twitched, but I couldn't tell if it was a stifled smile or embarrassment or something else. He tried to speak, hesitated, and tried again. "Party?" he mumbled, his thoughts miles and years away.
"Apollo 13," I prompted.
"Yes, I remember," he admitted, struggling to appear impassive.
"Can you remember anybody else who was there?"
He thought about it, but all he could remember was that he was a lawyer. "No," he replied, shaking his head.
"Maybe I can jog your memory. Did you meet a young lady called Melissa Youngman there? She was quite distinctive-looking. Had dyed red hair."
The description was unnecessary because he was already holding his head in his hands. He pulled at his hair in a parody of despair and cried:
"A lawyer! My kingdom for a lawyer!" When he recovered from the shock he said: "What's she doing? Kiss 'n' telling?"
"Not that I know of," I replied. "Her name keeps cropping up in our investigations and they brought us to you. What can you tell us about her?"
"God!" he croaked, grinning at the memories. "If this gets out I'm finished. What can I tell you about her? Nothing, Charlie. Nothing at all."
"Didn't you have an affair with her?"
"An affair! We had one night of rampant lust and that was it.
She left me gasping for release, trying to beat the door down to escape. I never went out with her or anything because I stayed well away. That's all."
"I believe you were interrupted," I said.
He suddenly looked grave. "You know about that?" he replied. "God, that was awful. Her parents came marching in. It was very unpleasant.
I tried to be reasonable, said I loved her, we were engaged and stuff like that, but she didn't give a toss. She called them names. And her language… it was fucking this and fucking that… to her parents. Not a night or a young lady I choose to remember, Charlie. Thanks a bunch for reminding me."
"It had to be done. So how did you meet her? Were you introduced?"
"Yeah. This so-called friend introduced me to her. I think she had been his girlfriend and he wanted rid of her. She looked interesting and she was bright, very bright. We both had a bit — a lot too much to drink, and that was that."
"What was this friend called?"
After a long pause he said: "No. I've told you enough for the moment.
You tell me a bit more about the reason for all this."
"Fair enough," I replied. I told him about the fire five years later, and the girl with purple hair that we thought was Melissa Youngman. If she'd put Duncan Roberts up to the fire, who was she working for? It was enough to convince him.
"OK," he replied. "The person who introduced us was called Kingston.
Nick Kingston. He lectured in psychology."
Kingston rides again, I thought. "How did you meet him?"
Mo sat back in the chair, which was invisible under his bulk, and folded his arms. He raised a knee and pressed it against the table, which moved away from him so he had to put his foot back on the floor.
"Let me tell you about my background," he began. "You have, here before you, a member of the royal family of Swaziland. Now, before you are overwhelmed with respect and deference let me tell you that my grandfather, the king, had two hundred wives, of whom my grandmother was about number one hundred and seventy. He died in 1983 after ruling for fifty-two years, which made him the longest-serving monarch ever. I was a bright child, so I was sent to England for my education and was expected to take up a position in government after I'd qualified." He held his arms wide and proclaimed: "I could have been Prime Minister by now!"
"What happened?" I asked.
"Usual story. I fell in love with a white girl in the office. Couldn't really see her baring her breasts at the annual Reed Dance, so we settled here. She was a bit of a radical; espoused what our enemies call left-wing causes, as if that were an insult, and here we are." He waved a hand at the walls. "Business is good, as you can see."
"That's interesting," I told him, because it was. "You have a colourful background."
"But what's it got to do with Kingston? I'll tell you. King Sobhuza, my grandpa, was a very wise man. He embraced modern technology, where possible, but strove to maintain traditional values. Witch doctors the ones who cast spells on people and dabbled in the black arts were outlawed, but the more benign ones are still tolerated and even encouraged. For instance the iNyanga are herbalists, and the iSangona are foreseers of the future. I wanted to explore the psychology of traditional medicine and started attending Kingston's lectures. I'd approached him and he said it was OK, which I thought was very kind of him. Unfortunately, as I got to know him better, I changed my mind. He was more interested in the witch doctors than I was. He was forever asking me about their powers and the type of things they could do. He believed in astral travel and all sorts of oddball stuff, and thought they had the key to it and the knowledge would be lost forever if someone, namely him, didn't write it down. He saw me as his key to that knowledge."
"Was this after the party?" I asked.
"Yeah, I suppose so. I was starting to have doubts about him by then, though."
"In what way?"
"I realised he was strange. He was into keep-fit and martial arts, things like that. Yoga. He didn't feel pain. He could snuff out a candle with his fingers, very slowly. It was his party trick. And the same with cold. Christmas Day he used to join the swimmers in the sea at Southend or somewhere. I tell you, Charlie, Nick Kingston is a weird cookie."
"It sounds like it. You don't know where he is now?"
"No, 'fraid not."
"Did you fall out or just drift apart?"
"It was a fairly gradual process. I saw him one evening and Melissa was with him again. We fell into conversation, naturally, but it was obvious that she'd told him all about that night. They were laughing at me behind their hands, so to speak. I decided he'd been patronising me; I was just another backward nigger to him. They weren't my kind of people, so I split."
"They sound a lovely couple."
"Made in heaven, Charlie. I'll tell you who might be able to help you.
A girl called Janet… Wilson, I think it was. She had been to school with Melissa. They shared a house. She was a lovely person, just the opposite of Melissa. I have an address somewhere, but it'll be twenty years out of date. God, she'll probably have a grown-up family by now."
"I've met Miss Wilson," I told him, unable to hide my grin.
"You've met Janet?"
"Mmm."
"Did she…" A broad smile spread across his face, like the sun breaking through and illuminating the savannah. "Was it Janet who put you on to me?"
I nodded.
"Hey, that's great," he declared. "How is she?"
"She's fine. Family grown up and her husband's left her, but she's doing nicely."
"Fantastic! She was a lovely girl; a real sweet. Not like Melissa.
Will you give her my number, please?"
"Sure. No problem."
I thanked him for his help and left. Outside, I rang Dave on my mobile and told him that Kingston had dominated the conversation once again.
He said he'd put his new friends on to it and agreed to meet me at the car.
He was waiting when I arrived, eating an ice-cream while sitting on someone's garden wall with his jacket over his shoulder, hooked on a thumb.
"Sorry I'm late," I said.
"That's OK. Graham had a quick look at the Nicholas Kingstons; there's only a handful of them. Going by approximate DOB, making him in his fifties, the most likely one is a Nicholas James William Kingston who lives in Kendal. They're having a closer look at him right now.
Anything else?"
I told him about Kingston's fascination with the witch doctors, and his indifference to pain. It was stop-start motoring along the Marylebone Road and no better along the Edgware Road, except that we were now heading north. Every junction was controlled by traffic lights and the bits in between were clogged with buses trying to get past parked vehicles, for mile after mile. It was nearly as bad as Heckley High Street when the school turns out.
I was hungry, and Dave can eat anything, any time. He's what they call a greedy so-and-so, unless he has a twenty-foot tapeworm eating away inside him. I said: "They're paying, so which do you fancy; the Savoy Grill or the Little Chef?"
"If it's on the SFO," he replied, 'we might as well splash out. Bugger the expense."
"Right," I agreed, 'so Little Chef here we come."
All the postman had brought me was a credit card statement and there were no messages on the ansa phone Dave's wife, Shirley, had invited me in for some supper when I dropped him off, but I'd declined.
Sometimes they're just being polite. The all-day breakfast had been over two hours ago and I was peckish again, so I had a banana sandwich with honey and a sprinkling of cocoa. "Condensed milk," I muttered to myself. "Why can't you find condensed milk these days?" The cut-and-thrust of the M1, plus three hours of near-total concentration, had left me on edge. I was stiff and tired, but knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. Jacquie's number was still on the telephone pad, and I thought about ringing it. For a friendly chat, that's all. Make sure she was all right.
But it would have been self-indulgent and inconsiderate of her feelings, so the phone stayed where it was. Part of me wished I'd gone in for that coffee at Elspeth's. It would have ended in tears, probably, but would that matter? Is ending in tears worse than never happening? I doubt it. In fact, I'm sure of it. I wondered if she'd finished her painting.
Dave was right. I'd make an excuse to see Mrs. Holmes again. Time it so we could repair to the riverside pub for a ham sandwich, with salad and a glass of orange juice; unless she had eventually developed a taste for beer. Then, perhaps, she'd show me some more of her drawings.
Things were moving on all fronts, which is how I like it. I found my box of oil paints in the back bedroom and a stretched canvas, about two by two, which hadn't been used. All this talk of pictures had inspired me. I under painted the canvas with a big red circle and then divided it into segments. It was going to be an abstract inspired by a cross-section of a tapeworm. I edged the segments in blue, didn't like it and tried orange. That was better. By one o'clock it was mapped out and I knew exactly how it would look. The circle had become broken and scattered, a jumble of interlocking triangles and rectangles. All it needed now was the colour piling on, thicker than jam. It was a happy and optimistic me that fell into bed, still smelling of natural turpentine, to dream of girls and art galleries and long student days.
Sparky was rapidly becoming the bringer of good news. I was having my morning coffee with Mr. Wood when he knocked and came in, looking pleased with himself. "Pour yourself a cup, David," Gilbert invited.
"Not often we see you up here."
"No thanks, boss," Dave replied. "I prefer it from the machine. It has this pleasant… under taste of oxtail soup."
"Don't know how you drink the damn stuff," Gilbert declared.
"He doesn't drink it," I said. "He drinks mine. What is it, Dave? You came in grinning like a dog with two bollocks, so you've obviously something to tell us."
He tilted his head to one side, thought about it for a few seconds and stated: "Generally speaking, dogs do have two bollocks."
"Not on the Sylvan Fields estate," I snarled.
"Oh, right. Nobody has two of anything there. Nicholas Kingston. The one with a Kendal address, that is. Our little friends at the Serious Fraud Office have done the homework that I set them yesterday and scored ten out of ten. They've got better contacts than we have, that's for certain."
"Go on," I invited.
"Well, first of all, this Nick Kingston earns a respectable income as a university lecturer, which is what we had hoped for. Bit more than you take home, Charlie, but not quite as much as Mr. Wood. The interesting bit is the university. He's at Lancaster."
"Lancaster!" I exclaimed.
"Yep."
"Struth!"
"What's special about Lancaster?" Gilbert asked.
"On Monday," I replied, 'or perhaps Tuesday, we had a phone call from Duncan Roberts junior, known as DJ. He's the teenage son of Andrew Roberts, brother of Duncan senior who topped himself after putting his hand up for the fire in Leeds."
Gilbert nodded, pretending he understood.
"He wanted to talk about his Uncle Duncan, see if we could tell him anything. His parents live in Welwyn Garden City," I continued, 'but when we checked, young DJ was ringing from Lancaster." I turned to Dave. "Can you see if he's at university there, please?" I asked.
"Dunnit. He is, reading mechanical engineering."
"Blimey!" I exclaimed. "That's interesting. I don't know what it means, but it's interesting."
"Could be a coincidence," Gilbert warned. It's his job to remind us of the mundane possibilities.
It's mine to go off on wild flights of fancy; to soar with the eagles and wage war on the forces of evil. That's how I see it. I turned to Dave. "Well done, Pissquick," I said. "You'd better take a day off this weekend."
He pulled a glum face and said: "But… don't you want to know what I came to tell you?"
"You mean there's more?" I queried.
"Just a bit. University lecturer is only one of his jobs."
"Where did you say this info came from?" Gilbert interrupted.
"The SFO," Dave answered.
"No, where did they get it from?"
"No askee," he replied with a shrug, implying ask no questions, be told no lies.
"The Inland bloody Revenue, I bet," Gilbert stated.
"Like I said," Dave told him, 'they have better contacts than us." The Inland Revenue's principal task is collecting taxes. They're not a reservoir of essential information for the law enforcement agencies. If it were common knowledge that they supplied us with details of their clients' finances it would hamper their tax-collecting abilities, so they don't do it. Anything an individual employee of theirs might pass on is strictly off the record.
"So what else did they say?" I demanded, impatiently.
"Apparently," Dave continued, "Mr. Kingston also earns a healthy salary working as a freelance consultant. His main customer for this work in fact, his only customer for the last few years is… wait for it… something known as the Reynard Organisation."
"The Reynard Organisation?" I whispered.
Dave nodded. "Yep!"
"Reynard the Fox. Holy mother of Jesus!" That was it. We had the link. Duncan senior started the fire, Melissa put him up to it, Kingston was pulling her strings. Crosby owned the house and he was Fox's sworn enemy. And Kingston worked for Fox. QED, quod erat demonstrandum. "Which was to be proved." All we had to do now was the demonstrandum bit.