Silvermeadow (22 page)

She stretched, feeling the tension in her back from crouching over the phone, when it rang.

‘Kathy! Hi, it’s me.’

She smiled, hearing his voice. ‘Hi, Leon,’ she said softly. ‘Where are you?’

‘Your place. And I’m cooking, and if you’re not home in an hour you’ll regret it.’

She laughed. She’d given him a key, and introduced him to Mrs P. ‘Well, I don’t want to have any regrets. So I’d better come home.’

But she did detour by way of the food court, not with any intention of approaching Verdi yet, but just to get another look at him. Only he wasn’t there, the place was being run by the old gondolier and a youth. Kathy watched them for a while from the upper level, then went down on the escalator and spoke to the man in the striped T-shirt and scarlet bandanna.

‘Mr Verdi about?’

‘Not tonight,’ the gondolier said, with an incongruous cockney accent. ‘Mondays and Tuesdays he leaves early.’

‘Every Monday and Tuesday?’

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘I wanted to ask him something. He’ll be at home, will he?’

The man took off his boater and scratched his head. ‘Don’t reckon so. He visits his mother, I think. In a hospital or something.’

‘Ah. Doesn’t matter. I’ll get him another time. Thanks.’

Kathy walked away. She recalled the file entry about Stefan Vlasich, and how he now lived in Hamburg with his mother.

Leon had prepared veal escalopes in a cream and mushroom sauce, with boiled potatoes and broccoli, and was immensely pleased with himself.

‘This is wonderful,’ Kathy said, as he poured her a glass of wine and sat down.

‘I really enjoyed doing it,’ he beamed. ‘It was so nice to be able to cook for someone else. So therapeutic. I forgot about everything else.’

Kathy laughed, then yawned.

‘You’re tired.’

‘No, just relaxed, coming back to this. Thanks.’ She took his hand.

‘Tough day?’

‘Not really. I had a word with Speedy over that tape. He claimed it was just his mischievous sense of humour. Wheelchair or not, I reckon he’s pretty good at making people feel uncomfortable. Anyway, looks like we’ve got a prime suspect. You remember the lifeguard in the pool that Gavin Lowry questioned earlier? We’ve got a witness that saw him and Kerri together on the evening of the sixth.’

‘So she really was there. I’m glad of that, Kathy, because the forensic evidence has been pretty useless so far.’

‘Not your fault.’

‘Maybe you won’t need Alex Nicholson then.’

Kathy looked up from her veal. ‘What?’

‘You remember her? From the Hannaford case?’

‘Of course. The forensic psychologist.’

‘Yeah. Well, she’s in London, and Brock’s arranged for her to come down to Silvermeadow to talk to us. Didn’t he mention it?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ You know damn well so, she thought. Dr Nicholson was young and attractive and on that last occasion had seemed, to Kathy’s way of thinking, to have had her eye on Leon Desai. She would certainly have remembered if Brock had mentioned it.

‘Do you keep in touch with her, then?’ she asked, toying with her broccoli.

‘Alex? Yes, now and then. She went to Liverpool soon after the Hannaford case to join the forensic psychology unit at the university. She phoned me last week to say she’d be in London. I told Brock, and he got in touch with her.’

Stop it, Kathy thought. Tell him what you think.

‘I thought you fancied her,’ she said. ‘On the Hannaford case.’

‘Did you? Why did you think that?’ He grinned, and the way he grinned told her that maybe it was true.

She smiled back. ‘I don’t know. I just thought that. Anyway, she’s going to give us her thoughts, is she?’

‘She told Brock she’d be interested to have a look, because of the setting. That interested her, apparently. So I’m glad at least that we’ve established that Kerri really was there, otherwise it might have been a waste of time.’

Kathy wiped the last sauce from her plate and put down her knife and fork. ‘Well, that was wonderful. If you ever decide to run off with someone else—Alex Nicholson, say—promise you’ll leave me your recipes.’ She thought she got the tone about right—light-hearted banter.

‘Kathy,’ he said seriously, reaching forward and taking her hands, ‘I’ve still got lots of recipes to try out on you. You’ve no idea.’

8

T
he hunt for Eddie Testor resumed the following day. It was spurred on by information given by another employee at the leisure pool, a young man whose shifts ran from Monday to Friday, so he hadn’t previously been interviewed. He recalled that he had seen Testor on the afternoon of the sixth. They were both rostered from midday to nine p.m. that day, and Testor had been due for a one-hour meal break from four to five p.m., and this was confirmed by his supervisor. But Testor had wanted his break later for some reason, and had arranged with the other lifeguard to cover for him between 5.30 and 6.30 p.m. The man remembered it particularly because it had messed up his previous arrangements to meet a girlfriend during his break. He also suggested that, although Testor had never confided in him, he thought he might have had a close friend at the Silvermeadow Sports Club and Fitness Salon, where he seemed to spend much of his free time.

‘Fitness salon?’ Kathy said, taking the note from Phil. ‘What’s a fitness salon?’

‘It’s where they make you
look
fit, as opposed to actually being fit, Kathy,’ Phil explained patiently. ‘Sun lamps and stuff. Liposuction too, for all I know.’

‘That figures,’ Gavin Lowry growled at Kathy’s shoulder. ‘That wanker Testor would go for that. I’ll come with you.’

On the way down to the lower level, Kathy said, ‘Haven’t seen much of you recently, Gavin. How’s it going?’

He blew his nose loudly, looking out of sorts. ‘Bit hung over, actually. Me and a few of the lads went down the pub last night, after it became obvious we weren’t going to find that bastard. Drown our sorrows.’ In any ordinary town street on a wet December morning his scowling discontent would have seemed entirely normal, but here, in Silvermeadow’s perpetual Indian summer, he looked menacing and out of place, and people glanced at him uncertainly as they passed.

‘How’s your campaign against Forbes going?’

He shot her a mistrustful look out of the corner of a bleary eye. ‘Don’t know what you mean, Kathy. The chief super has implicit trust. Asked my advice this morning, as it happens.’

‘About?’

‘About Testor. We decided that it might be a good idea to work up a bit of a media storm about Testor
before
we catch him, so that the result will seem more “meritorious”. His word, not mine. He called another press briefing straight away. Rigorous detective work has identified a man the police are anxious to interview, blah, blah, blah. The public are warned not to approach this man who has a record of violent assault, blah, blah, blah.’

Kathy said nothing for a while, then, ‘What if he didn’t do it?’

‘Yeah, well, that’s the risk, isn’t it? Go public too soon and get egg on your face, too late and miss out.’

‘What did you advise?’

‘Boldness, grasp the nettle, seize the moment. Christ, I feel terrible. Can you slow down a bit?’

A girl in a tracksuit behind the front counter of the sports club pointed out the tinted glass entrance door of the Primavera Fitness Salon on the far side of the atrium, and they wove towards it through a stream of bustling volleyballers.

A redhead looked up from the schedules she was discussing with the receptionist as they walked in, and gave them a big smile. ‘Good morning. Haven’t seen you two here before.’ Her voice was deep and throaty. ‘Kim Hislop, manager. What can we do for you?’ The smile faded when Kathy showed her warrant card. ‘Oh yes. What now?’

‘We’d like some information about one of your customers, Ms Hislop. Is it all right to talk here?’ Kathy asked, looking around at the furniture in the reception area, something between a hotel foyer and a clinic.

The manager set her head back on her surprisingly broad shoulders, studying them before she said anything. ‘This way,’ she murmured finally, and led them into a second waiting room behind the first.

A glass door on the far wall carried the name PRIMAVERA above the stylised figure of Botticelli’s Venus wearing a sash that said FITNESS SALON. She indicated for them to sit, herself perching in her tracksuit pants on the very edge of a seat, projecting herself forward at them.

‘Well?’

‘We’re interested in anything you can tell us about Eddie Testor. Do you know him?’ Kathy showed her the computer image.

Hislop glanced at it. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ She smiled and handed it back. ‘We’re on performance contracts here. The last thing I need is a reputation for shopping our best clients to the filth, know what I mean?’

‘We’re anxious to contact him, that’s all.’

She shrugged and swept her red hair back from her forehead, her biceps swelling impressively under the brilliant white T-shirt. Then she got to her feet and took a book from a shelf and turned the pages. It was an album of photographs, Kathy saw, of men and women bodybuilders in studio poses. She found the one she was looking for and passed it over to Kathy and Lowry. In it, Testor was wearing almost nothing, his body oiled and gleaming. She traced the outline of the hairless torso with a fingertip. ‘This is my work,’ she said.

Kathy’s reply was drowned by a muffled scream from beyond the Primavera door. Ms Hislop ignored it. ‘I wax him,’ she said. ‘I do most of the regulars myself.’

There was a second scream, a male voice in agony, followed by a string of curses. Ms Hislop shook her head resignedly and rose to her feet in one smooth aerobic movement. ‘’Scuse me one moment.’ She disappeared through the door.

After several minutes she returned and sat down in the same perching position, as if in the middle of a knees-bend exercise. ‘Where were we?’

‘What was that all about?’ Lowry asked.

‘God, they’re babies,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘Men.’ She raised an eyebrow knowingly at Kathy. ‘It’s just so bloody embarrassing when they start to cry. Don’t you find that?’

‘What are they doing to him?’ Lowry asked cautiously.

The Primavera door opened again and a girl in a white tracksuit came out and knelt by Ms Hislop’s side, whispered in her ear.

‘All right,’ she nodded. ‘But there’s no refund. He knows that.’

She turned back to Lowry. ‘Body wax. First time.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘The women come in here, pop up on the couch and get it over with without a murmur.

But the men . . . God! They want a full consultation first, before they decide. Then they get so worked up thinking about it they’re in a panic before we even begin. You can see why God gave the job of having babies to women—if the men had to do it, there wouldn’t be any.’

‘They’re stripping his body hair off with wax?’ Lowry looked at her in horror.

‘That’s right.’

‘But . . . why?’

She looked at him as if he was even more stupid than she’d supposed. ‘It’s the look, isn’t it?’

‘The look?’

‘Yes. Don’t you read your wife’s magazines?’

‘I don’t think she has any.’

‘Course she does! You take a gander. All the male models have got totally hairless bods. Nobody would touch a hairy model these days. It’s the look. Movie stars are the same. When did you see a hair on Arnie Schwarzenegger’s pecs? And sportsmen, too, your swimmers and runners and that. Body hair is definitely out.’

‘Christ . . .’ Lowry’s imagination was still coping with the vision of the hair being ripped from his back. ‘But still, why bother?’

‘Well, it’s ecological, isn’t it?’

‘Ecological?’

‘Yeah, you know, clean and green. And anyway, a lot of them, their wives and girlfriends make them do it. They ask why they should be the only ones to have to do it. They expect their men to take equal waxing responsibility.’

This reduced Lowry to stunned silence.

Kathy said, ‘How much is it? I might treat him.’ She nodded at her fellow DS.

‘Men’s chest wax is the same as ladies’ half leg wax. Nineteen ninety-nine, unless he’s very hairy.’ She looked at Lowry appraisingly. ‘I’ll give you a half-price introductory offer.’

‘Thanks. Think I’ll give it a miss, all the same.’

‘So you do Eddie Testor regularly?’

‘Yes. He comes in once a month. Has the works. I give him a special deal, as a regular.’

‘What, head, body, legs . . .’

‘Everything, yes.’

‘Everything?’ Lowry echoed.

She nodded.

‘What’s he like?’ Kathy asked.

‘He never complains. Seems to like it. Ideal client.’

‘I meant, as a person.’

‘Quiet. Keeps to himself. He comes to the gym regularly, too. To work out, you know.’

‘Does he have a friend here? Someone he meets regularly?’

‘Not that I know of. He’s a solitary sort of bloke.’

‘What does he talk to you about?’

‘Movies. He just talks about the movies he’s been to see. At the multiplex, usually. He goes to everything that’s on: children’s films, horror films, comedies, thrillers, everything. That’s why the others don’t like to do him, because he spoils it for them, tells them what happens, can’t help himself. I don’t care, cos I never go to the pics. He never mentions friends, or family.’

‘What address do you have for him?’

She looked it up on the computer, but it was the same one they had.

‘He doesn’t seem to be there at the moment,’ Kathy said, and then had another thought. ‘You didn’t see him on the sixth of this month, did you? Week ago Monday?’

‘That’s the day that girl disappeared, isn’t it? Blimey! You think Eddie . . . ?’ It hadn’t struck her before that this might be why they were there, and she seemed startled by the idea.

‘We think he could have been a witness to something,’ Kathy told her soothingly. ‘That’s why we need to talk to him.’

‘Ah, well . . .’ She checked her computer again. ‘No, not the sixth. He was booked in for his monthly the following day, the seventh, four till five p.m.’

As Kathy and Lowry thanked her and got up to leave, she suddenly added, ‘Oh, hang on! I just thought of something. Have you been to Carmen’s?’