The Chalon Heads (4 page)
‘No.’
‘And he followed Keller, and what did that produce?’
Starling shook his head gloomily. ‘He works eight or nine hours a day on his brother’s jobs, stops on the way home for a pint of beer with the other lads, buys a takeaway and goes back to his room. The light goes out at ten o’clock, regular. At the weekend he goes to the football with his brother and his brother’s kid—Chelsea supporters. On Sunday he goes to their house for a roast dinner. He sleeps a lot.’
‘All very innocent, then.’
‘It’s not natural. His room is like his prison cell. Worse than that—no radio, no TV, no pictures on the wall, no letters, no mates. He doesn’t go anywhere on his own. As far as Ronnie can tell, he’s made no contact with anyone he knew in the Met. He shows no interest in women. It’s as if, in his head, he’s still inside. Or on a mission.’
‘Let’s not get carried away, Sammy. Anything else?’
‘He has a mobile phone, so his brother can keep in touch with him on the jobs,’ Starling said cautiously. ‘Ronnie came by a record of his calls.’
‘Did he indeed? Very cost effective. Anything interesting?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘How long did Ronnie watch him?’
‘Over three weeks, then I called him off. Since then, I get him to do a random tail from time to time, and check Keller’s phone calls. There’s never been anything.’
‘Well, I don’t get it then, Sammy. What makes you so convinced . . . ?’
‘Men don’t behave like that when they get out of prison, Mr Brock. He must have arranged everything while he was inside. He has friends, people he met inside, and before that coppers who thought he got a raw deal. He fixed everything up before he was released, and now he’s behaving like a man who assumes he’s being watched. He’s so well behaved it isn’t human. You can see that, can’t you?’
Starling was leaning forward stiffly, trying to infect them with his conviction, but all he saw in their faces was scepticism.
‘All right,’ Brock said, after a moment. ‘Tell us about Eva’s disappearance. Was there anything, looking back now, to warn you? Any strange cars in your street? Unfamiliar faces in the neighbourhood?’
Starling shook his head. ‘They’d have stood out. It’s a very quiet spot, where we live.’
‘Are you and Eva alone in the house?’
‘Marianna lives with us. She was Eva’s nanny when she was a girl, and Eva brought her with her when we got married, as her maid.’
‘From where?’
‘Portugal. They’re Portuguese. Marianna doesn’t speak much English. Hardly a word, although she’s been here over three years now.’
‘I see. So when did you last see Eva?’
‘Last Thursday, Eva said she was going to go to the flat for the weekend. We had breakfast on the Friday morning, then I took her down to Farnham station and she caught the ten eighteen up to town. I haven’t seen or heard from her since.’
Brock looked at him with surprise. ‘You let her come up here on her own?’
Starling lowered his eyes. He tried to say something, but the sound came out as a croak. He coughed, clearing his throat, and managed, ‘Any chance of a glass of water, Mr Brock?’
Bren nodded and left the room.
‘Since I started getting worried about Keller, I hadn’t let Eva out of my sight,’ Starling said hoarsely. ‘I wouldn’t let her leave the house to go down to Farnham, or take a walk in the woods round where we live. And it was driving her crazy.’
Bren returned with a glass of water, which Starling gulped awkwardly, almost choking. He brought out his handkerchief again and wiped his mouth and eyes.
‘Eva is a fanatic about movies, Mr Brock,’ he went on. ‘Especially Spanish and South American movies—Brazil, Argentina, Mexico . . . There are certain cinemas in London she’s found that show the stuff she likes. At first I used to go with her. Only I couldn’t make much sense of it. My Spanish and Portuguese aren’t much better than Marianna’s English. I’d lose my place with the subtitles, and fall asleep, and Eva would have to wake me up, to stop me snoring.’
He took another sip of water, more cautiously this time.
‘So, once she knew her way around, I let her go up to the flat on her own. I opened an account at an Italian restaurant round the corner where she could eat, and she’d have two, three days at a time, doing a bit of shopping, and pigging out on foreign movies. Seriously, she could spend whole days, from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, sitting in the dark in some movie house, weeping and laughing . . .’
‘On her own? No Marianna, or friends?’
‘Marianna doesn’t like the city, and there’s only one bedroom in the flat. Eva’s got no friends in town apart from my friends, people my age. I’ve phoned round them all— none of them have heard from her.’
‘What about the phone, Sammy? Don’t you keep in touch with her?’
‘Yes, of course, normally. But sometimes she gets so wrapped up in the films, and just forgets to answer messages. She’s not good with answering-machines, things like that. She doesn’t even have a mobile—says she can never remember the buttons to press to turn it on or recover messages. And I never like to make her feel I’m checking on her.
‘It wasn’t until after the weekend that I started to worry. By Tuesday evening, when I still couldn’t raise her, I decided to go up to the flat myself the next day. Then, Wednesday morning, the first letter arrived. Those words, “
Where is she,
Sammy?
”’ He rubbed his fingers across his mouth. ‘It was an accusation. She was missing, and I hadn’t known . . . How long had she been gone?’
‘The first letter was postmarked Tuesday morning,’ Brock said. ‘Show them to Bren, will you, Sammy?’
He passed them over to Bren, who took the two letters out of their envelopes, the same questions forming in his mind that Kathy had asked. ‘These are old stamps, aren’t they?’ he began.
Brock said, ‘Yes, tell us about the stamps, Sammy. It didn’t seem to make much sense earlier.’
‘It’s quite simple really. I’m a philatelist.’
Kathy saw Bren’s face go blank with disbelief.
Starling shrugged. ‘I collect postage stamps for a hobby. In my own way, I suppose I’m as fanatical about old stamps as Eva is about movies.’
The others received this with a heavy silence.
‘How long have you had this particular hobby, Sammy?’ Brock asked finally.
‘I started when I was a kid, then I forgot about it for a long time. I suppose I got into it again about the time Brenda died. It gave me something to take my mind off that and other things.’
‘It’s a tax dodge, is that it?’ Bren suggested, a light dawning on his face. ‘Some way of investing dodgy cash. Is that right?’
‘No.’ Starling looked offended. ‘It’s not a dodge. I suppose you could call it a form of investment.’
‘You deal in stamps?’ Brock asked.
‘I buy, and occasionally I sell, always through reputable dealers, Mr Brock. All above board.’
‘You haven’t been cheating one of these reputable dealers, have you?’
‘No!’ Starling said firmly, his hands formed into fists, the thin scars on the fingers of the left hand gleaming pale. ‘It’s nothing like that.’
‘Then what on earth is the point of sending you those stamps?’ Brock said, waving a hand at the two notes.
‘It’s personal, isn’t it?’ Starling replied. ‘It’s telling me that whoever sent those notes knows me, knows everything about me—my habits, my interests, my private life. And it’s telling me that, whatever they want, the stakes are going to be high, right?’
Brock looked doubtful. ‘Who knows about this interest of yours, then? It’s not in your police file, as far as I recall.’
‘It’s not a secret exactly. The dealers, a few friends . . .’
‘Not public knowledge, though.’
‘Not public, no.’
‘All right, now we’re going to need to make up a list of all of the people you and Eva come in contact with in the normal run of things. Who does your garden, who services your car, who cleans your windows, everyone. Then we’ll start checking them all.’
‘Discreetly, please, Mr Brock,’ Sammy begged. ‘What if one of them is involved, and takes fright?’
‘Of course, Sammy. Very discreetly. None of them will know, I promise you.’
Kathy, who had said nothing until this point, spoke. ‘Eva knows all about your stamps, of course, Mr Starling. Just as you know about her private interests.’
Starling didn’t respond to this, not even looking at Kathy, as if her words had floated by his head without registering.
‘Could they be your own stamps?’ she went on. ‘From your own collection?’
He frowned, as if hearing her for the first time. ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘No, they’re not mine.’
‘Mr Melville said that you specialise in that particular type—what were they called?’
‘Chalon Heads, yes.’
‘So you have many Chalon Heads in your collection?’
‘Yes.’
‘These ones?’
‘I have my own versions of them, yes.’
‘But these aren’t them? You checked that?’
Starling wiped his face again with his handkerchief. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I did check that.’
T
he men were framed in the grid of scaffolding like counters on a snakes-and-ladders board, each working on a different square, transforming the gable of the building from faded green to deep red. Bren gazed at them each in turn through the binoculars. Keller was the one with the shaved head and the least splattered white overalls. He was older than the others, and making slower progress, less fluid in his movements. More single-minded in his labour, too, ignoring them when they shouted comments to each other, or whistled at a girl walking past along the street.
‘They’ve been on this job now for four days,’ Ronnie Wilkes said. ‘Sammy gave me a bell Wednesday afternoon, but I couldn’t get on to it till this morning. I asked at the corner shop over there, and they told me they set the scaffolding up Monday. They had to do a bit of patching first.’
He picked his nose and lit a cigarette. As an afterthought he offered one to Bren, who declined, thinking about what his wife would say about the stink of smoke in his clothes. He wound the window down another inch and blue fumes drifted past his eyes and out into the hot afternoon air. At least it smothered the sour smell of Wilkes’s sweat, which had been filling the car. Bren wondered if the other man wasn’t getting a bit too old, a bit too flabby for this game.
‘Have you got a written record of the times you were watching Keller?’ Bren asked.
‘Nah,’ Wilkes shook his head dismissively. ‘I’d just phone up Sammy at the end of each day and give him a verbal report. That’s all he needed.’
‘Did he give any particular reason for wanting you to watch Keller on Wednesday?’
‘Nothing special. But he’s been doing that for the last couple of months. He thinks Keller’s got it in for him. Is that why you’re here?’
‘You’ve seen nothing?’
‘Not a bloody thing. It’s been the most boring job I’ve ever had.’
Towards five the painters packed it in. Bren watched them come down the ladders loaded up with their cans and brushes, which they locked away with their overalls in a small shed at the base of the wall. The other three lit up cigarettes, but not Keller, and they all piled into a battered old Capri, Keller folding himself awkwardly into the back.
Bren tailed them to the Red Lion, a utilitarian corner pub half a mile away. They went in at the door facing one street, he through the other, and he watched them between the racks and bottles of the bar. They sat at a table together but, as on the site, Keller seemed detached from them. While they chatted and laughed, he read an
Evening
Standard
, less out of interest, it seemed, than as a way of avoiding involvement in their conversations. It was exactly as Starling had told them, except that Keller was drinking fruit juice rather than beer. Bren wondered why he bothered to come to the pub with the others. Starling would say that they were there as background, a camouflage of normality while Keller plotted mayhem. Or perhaps it was the only way he could get a lift home.
From the pub Bren tailed them to the address that Wilkes had told him was Keller’s lodging, a large Victorian house with a dozen buzzer buttons at the front door. Keller unwound himself from the back of the Capri with barely a nod to the others and made his way up the front steps of the house. As he reached the door, it opened suddenly and a young woman appeared. She checked herself, startled to see him standing there, then gave a brief smile as she recognised him. He stepped back to let her past, head lowered, then disappeared inside. To Bren it seemed a well-established manoeuvre, two tenants who met occasionally on the stairs and who had tacitly agreed to take no interest in each other.
Kathy wondered at the task she had been given. When Starling left the interview room with Bren and Brock, Dot had given her a sheet from a memo pad with an address and phone number on it.
‘This is Peter White’s address, Kathy,’ she said, as if Kathy should be expecting it. ‘I’ve told him you’ll get there about five.’
‘Brock wants me to go there now?’
‘That’s what he told me.’ She began to gather up her own and Brock’s papers.
‘Do you know this White?’
‘I met him a few times.’
‘Brock said they fell out over something. Do you know the story?’
‘Best ask him,’ Dot said.
Brock’s loyal Dot, Kathy thought.
‘Sammy Starling’s rather eerie, don’t you think?’ Dot said. ‘Like a big porcelain doll. I’m sure Peter White will be interested to hear what he’s up to these days.’
Kathy slowed as she spotted a front garden filled with roses in spectacular bloom. Dot had warned her about the roses. She parked at the kerb opposite and as she made for the front gate a man straightened upright from among the bushes and stared at her. She was immediately struck by how he was dressed, in a crisp white shirt, dark trousers and polished shoes, as if he’d just stepped out from the office, rather than as a retired man pottering in his garden.
‘DCI White?’
He stiffened and eyed her darkly. ‘Not any more. Come in.’
He had a moustache, as carefully clipped and groomed as his hair, and a healthy, ruddy complexion. In one gloved hand he was holding a magnifying glass, and in the other a pair of secateurs and a stem of leaves.