The Bullet Trick (34 page)

Sheila nodded her permission and I picked it up.

'She was a beautiful-looking woman.'

'Not just to look at, she was beautiful inside too.' She gave me the smile that was like Gloria’s. 'It sounds silly, but sometimes I imagine that she’s on a long journey around the world. I can picture her in Egypt or Turkey… Marrakech; always somewhere exotic, somewhere sunny.' She took the photograph from me and for the first time since we’d met I thought that she might cry, but instead she gave a short laugh. 'You know, if she came back now and said she’d just been on an extended holiday I might kill her myself.'

I watch Sheila’s slim hands replace Gloria’s portrait on the dresser and a second framed photograph caught my eye. I reached over and lifted it, keeping my voice as casual as I could.

'A family friend?'

'What made you say that?' Sheila’s smile was warm. 'That’s my husband, Jim.'

'Mr Bowen?'

'Bowen was my first husband’s name. He died two years before Gloria vanished.' She shook her head. 'Myeloid leukaemia, he lasted six months after the diagnosis. Gloria going would have hit me hard whatever happened but after Frank’s death…’ She shook her head, remembering. 'Well you can imagine, I thought that was going to be the end for me too. Then along came Jim.' She smiled again. 'He was part of the investigation team. I think deep down the rest of them just thought Gloria was an immoral woman who’d left her husband. Those were different times. But Jim never believed that. He kept on pushing and that was when I fell in love with him.' She smiled. 'I kept the name Bowen over the shop, Frank’s grandfather was the founder and it would have been wrong to change it.' She smiled. 'That was how I knew that you were phoning about Gloria. No one calls me Bowen any more. I’ve been Sheila Montgomery since I married Jim.'

My mind was full of what might have happened had James Montgomery come home early and found me in his front room interrogating his wife. Part of me wished he had. What could he do with her there? But a larger part was relieved to escape.

I walked as swiftly as I could away from the Montgomery house, cursing suburbia’s open streets, not daring to catch a train back in case I passed him en route to his home. Eventually I found a parade of shops and managed to catch a bus that would take me out of the district.

Back in central London I used a public email telephone to check my VeritableCrime inbox. Technology might have moved on but people were still pissing in phone boxes. I held my breath and tried to work out how to use the machine. The connection was painfully slow and I had time to read the details of a dozen women eager to dance, massage or generally entertain me. I wondered if they knew the risk they were taking.

The Viagra people had got back in touch and so had Drew Manson. He was keen to meet and had left a mobile number.

He answered on the third ring. I explained that I was heading off to a publishing conference tomorrow but would love to see him before I went, was he free for a late lunch? Mr Manson was free. He suggested a gastropub somewhere near Farringdon. I’d taken a dancer there once. The food had been expensive and she’d gone home for an early night saying she had to keep fresh for the next day’s show. I hoped I’d have better luck with Mr Manson.

Drew Manson’s author photograph showed a man in his thirties wearing spectacles of the kind favoured by David Hockney and an intense stare under a shock of dark hair styled in a manner popular with young intellectuals in the sixties. Manson looked up from the typewriter on his desk with a mixture of surprise and intellectual rigour on his blunt face, his right hand frozen above the keys in mid-strike as if he’d been surprised in the act of writing a very big word.

The clues were there in the sixties styling, the lack of computer and the publication date on the inside cover of the library book in my bag. But I wasn’t prepared for the balding man in his sixties who walked into the pub, even though he was wearing the same glasses, or a close relative of them. I let him stand in the doorway for a second, looking around the pub with the controlled anxiety of a man who has attended many disappointments, but still harbours some hope, and then I stood up and went to meet him.

'Mr Manson?'

'Yes.'

His accent was how I imagined old-school Cambridge would sound and I was glad I’d decided to try for an intellectual look by wearing my own specs.

'William Wilson, thanks for agreeing to see me at such short notice.'

Manson looked self-consciously writerly. His trousers were a deep chocolate jumbo cord, his tie bore a monogram I didn’t recognise, but would probably signal something to the initiated, and his tweed jacket was patched at the elbows. I wondered if he was the real thing or an old fraud. I started to go through the spiel about the new line in crime books that my very small, very newly established publishing house was hoping to reprint with updates on any developments since the original publication.

'I’m interested in the Gloria Noon case because of the recent murder of her son Bill.'

Manson nodded and made a hissing noise, sucking the air between his teeth like a man giving something serious thought.

The waitress came with our menus and Manson began studying his with the intensity of a shortsighted don assessing a borderline exam script. When the waitress returned he ordered, 'Steak, rare, with a green salad and a bottle of Barolo. I’ll have a glass of Pouilly Fumé while we’re waiting.' He watched as the girl bobbed off to the kitchen then turned to me, smiling patiently.

'Mr Wilson, I’ve listened to this with great interest but it’s patently clear even to one of my failing abilities, that you’ve nothing whatsoever to do with publishing.' He gave me a mild look over his glasses, offering me the chance to contradict him. I sat silent and he smiled as if he approved of my lack of protest. 'Perhaps now lunch is safely ordered you’ll do me the courtesy of telling me who you really are and what it is that you’re after.'

I grinned.

'No flies on you, eh, Mr Manson?'

He gave me his donnish smile and I gave him my backup story. It involved schooldays and Bill and I don’t think he believed it any better, but he was satisfied that I wasn’t writing a book, and perhaps there were enough contradic tions in my pose to spark his curiosity.

Manson reached into his jacket.

'Right, as you’ve dragged me here on false pretences I think I’m entitled to claim some expenses from you.'

He laid his train ticket in front of me. I fished awkwardly in my pocket for the money to cover it then opened my wallet and added an extra tenner.

'Get a taxi from the station at the other end.'

He slid the note back across the bar-room table.

'The fare is sufficient thank you, and …’ He took a sip of the Pouilly Fumé and nodded his head. '… Very good. I’m happy to discuss the Gloria Noon case with you, in return for one simple promise.'

'What?'

Manson’s bookish aspect slipped slightly; there was a tinge of estuary to his accent now.

'That you share any new material you find with me.'

I hesitated, as if carefully considering his proposal.

'There’s no guarantees I’ll uncover anything new, but if I do I’ll be happy to tell you all about it.'

'Good,' Manson took another sip of his drink. 'So we understand each other?'

I nodded and we sat in a silence that wasn’t quite companionable, drinking our wine and tearing at the bread until the food arrived.

The waitress set Manson’s steak down first then slid my ravioli in front of me and sprinkled it with Parmesan over its top. Manson looked at my lunch with distaste then lifted his knife and sliced into his steak. Blood seeped across the white plate, resisting mixing with the dark-brown gravy that pooled around the meat. Manson put the piece of steak in his mouth and started to chew, then he started to talk.

'Cases where the body remains unfound are always intriguing. In an instance like the unfortunate Mrs Noon’s we know that she’s probably deceased, and yet a scintilla of doubt remains. Maybe she simply walked away from an unsatisfactory marriage.'

'And her child?'

'It does happen.'

Manson speared a piece of broccoli, added a small roast potato to the fork and smiled tenderly at the arrangement before putting it in his mouth.

'I suppose it does, not often though.'

'More often than you might think, anyway,' he put a small piece of steak in his mouth and kept on talking. 'I wasn’t saying that was what had happened, just that it’s a possibility. No body, no certainty of death.'

'Like Lord Lucan.'

'Exactly.'

Manson’s strong jaws set to work and I glanced away to avoid seeing the food churning between his teeth.

'What do you think happened in Gloria’s case?'

'You read my book?'

'Yes.' I’d read it on the train down from Glasgow, half-disgusted by the ease with which I was drawn into the minutiae of Gloria’s disappearance. It had told me nothing that the press reports hadn’t. 'It was fascinating, but though the evidence pointed in certain directions you didn’t come to any definite conclusions. I wondered what you thought had happened.'

'Off the record?'

'Sure.'

'Off the record I think Bill Noon killed his wife.'

Manson slugged back the last of the wine. He smiled, savouring the vintage, or maybe the crime. I nodded to the waitress for a second bottle.

'How can you be sure?'

'Ah,' he held up his fork. 'I didn’t say I was sure, I said that was what I thought had probably happened. There’s a difference.'

'I take your point.'

'A crime boils down to three classic things — means, motive and opportunity. Bill Noon had all of these.'

'What about her lover?'

'The mysterious lover.' Manson pushed aside his empty plate and smiled as the waitress placed the second bottle on our table. 'Maybe he’s on a beach in Acapulco drinking mai-tais with Gloria Noon, maybe he was a figment of her imagination, maybe he killed her or maybe Bill did him too.' I topped up his glass and he grinned. 'Of course that would assume that there was no one except Gloria who cared for him, because no one who fitted the bill was reported missing.'

'But he could have murdered her, disposed of the body and disappeared back to where he came from.'

'In theory, yes.'

'But unlikely?'

He shrugged.

'If you really were a publisher I’d spin you a line about the chapter I’d write about the possible lovers of Gloria Noon, all completely within the libel laws you understand, but no I don’t think so.'

'So where’s Bill Noon’s motive if there’s no lover?'

Manson knocked back more wine and levelled his stare at me.

'Doesn’t every husband have a motive?'

'I don’t know. I’ve never been married.'

'No,' he grinned. 'Me neither, but if I were…'

'You’d be divorced?'

'I was going to say I imagine I’d have a motive for murder.'

He laughed, serving himself more wine and I asked the question that had been in my mind ever since I’d seen the picture of the two men standing beside the loch’s edge.