The Evil that Men Do (15 page)

‘You don't think she's  . . . dead, do you? I can't think of any reason why someone would want to kill her.'

‘Nobody can think of any reason to kill William Symonds, either,' Alan reminded me.

I negotiated a complicated stile, with Alan's help, and tried to pet a lamb on the other side. Of course it ran away, and its mother told me what she thought of me. ‘It all goes back to that, doesn't it?' I said, watching my footing as we strolled across the pasture. ‘The death of William Symonds, blameless farmer. And Paul knows who did it.'

‘We think Paul knows who did it. That's conjecture on our part, don't forget.'

‘Well, either he does or he doesn't, and there's one way to find out. He shouldn't be hard to find, now that he's famous.'

‘If he knows something dangerous, he's going to be very cautious about making his whereabouts known,' Alan objected.

‘He can't hide completely. His publicity people would never allow it. His safety right now lies in the fact that what he saw, if he saw anything, was in the persona of Paul Jones. Why should anyone connect that person with Peter James, rock star?'

‘Dorothy, you're not thinking. Everyone at the Holly Tree knows. He told Pam about his big surprise, remember? And now everyone at the shelter knows, even though Mrs Bryant is trying to keep it quiet. He's a sitting duck!'

‘But  . . . but then he wasn't worried about anyone knowing  . . . Alan, we're missing something somewhere.'

‘Careful, love, this stuff is loose underfoot. You could take a nasty slide. I agree we don't understand everything. Hardly anything, in fact. But I'd like to find young Paul, myself. When we get back, let's see what we can find on the Internet.'

SIXTEEN

I
enjoyed Sezincote. I really did. It isn't quite as over the top as Brighton Pavilion, which it is said to have inspired, but there is an exuberance about it that reminds one of the glamorous days of the Raj, and allows one, for a time, anyway, to forget the darker side of that period of history. It lifted my spirits. I especially enjoyed the two stone baby elephants, nearly life-size, that graced the gardens. And I enjoyed the walk there and back. But Paul Jones was never far from my thoughts. As we strolled the gardens, a bored teenager following his parents jogged to the tune playing in his ears, and I wondered if he was listening to the latest sensation. As we ate a snack lunch, I remembered our lunch with Paul. When Alan caught my arm to keep me from falling at a hill that was slightly steeper than expected, I thought about the quarry.

The first thing I did when we got back to the cottage was to put the kettle on for tea. The second was to boot up the laptop we'd left in the car.

There was a time when I was pretty helpless in front of a computer, but our young friend, Nigel Evans, is a technology wizard, a ‘geek' in the very best sense of the word. He taught me the basics, Alan expanded my knowledge, and now I flatter myself I'm as good at finding things on the Internet as many people half my age.

The trouble with searching for someone well-known is that entirely too much information is available. I had little patience for sorting through the millions (literally) of sites mentioning the name of Peter James. Some of them were obviously referring to other people by that far from uncommon name, some indeed to saints and apostles, or churches. Many were repetitive. I was offered the opportunity to buy recordings of his music in various forms, some of which were completely unfamiliar. I could hear excerpts of his work online. (I passed on that, with a shudder.)

‘Try that one,' said Alan, who had been leaning over my shoulder. He sometimes has flashes of insight about these things that I will never have. He was a policeman for over forty years, after all, and knows something about seeking information.

I clicked where he pointed, and reached a website that showed, joy of joys, a complete calendar of performances for Peter James, from last week's TV show through the end of June.

‘Oh, that was in Birmingham,' I said in surprise. ‘I had thought, London. Would that mean he's still in Birmingham, do you think?'

But Alan's mind was following another track. He took the mouse from my hand and clicked on the ‘contact' icon.

There was no phone number for Paul/Peter. I hadn't expected that there would be. But there were numbers and email addresses for agents and managers, for media contacts, for ‘contract negotiations', for anything under the sun.

‘Wow,' I said in a whisper. ‘He really is big business. I hadn't quite realized  . . .'

‘Yes.' said Alan. His voice was hard.

‘What?'

‘Don't you see, love? All this makes him that much more vulnerable.'

‘And,' I said, thinking aloud, ‘makes it that much more surprising that he spent more than a week in Broadway, just before his big night. His handlers must have been tearing their hair out.'

‘He had to have had a compelling reason. And I'll wager anything you like to name that Ms Carter could tell us what it was.'

‘If we could find her. Alan, we must!'

‘Well, someone must, anyway, we or the police. And our best lead, our only lead, actually, is Paul Jones.'

‘Yes. Alan, is your email address still “ccnesbitt at belleconstab”, or whatever it is?'

He looked a little surprised. ‘Yes, it is. They offered me the option of keeping it, and somehow I never got around to getting a new one.'

‘So if you sent emails to these people, sounding official as all get-out, and they got the impression you were still a senior police official  . . .'

‘Impersonating a police officer is a serious offence, my dear.'

‘I know, but you wouldn't be actually lying, just  . . . allowing them to make an inference.'

‘You should have been a Jesuit, Dorothy,' he said with a sigh. ‘Am I to call them, as well, allowing the same inference?'

‘No, I'll do the phone calls.'

‘And what story will you spin for them?'

‘I don't know yet. Did it never occur to you that I might simply use the truth, that we befriended him and want to see him?'

‘Never,' he said with finality, and moved me aside so he could use the computer.

I made more tea and sat sipping it while I thought about my next move. I would obviously have to make up a story that would get me through to someone trusted with making decisions, someone who could actually get me to Paul.

I thought about masquerading as someone else, but I rejected that idea almost immediately. Changing identity these days is almost impossible. If I used my own mobile phone, they could easily trace it to me. If I used the landline at the cottage, they could not only find out who made the call, but where I was at the time. At least mobiles don't suffer from that hazard, or at least I don't think so. Good grief, though, considering that some of them are equipped with GPS systems, maybe  . . . I shivered. Spying, as a profession, may soon die out, because anyone can do it these days. Privacy no longer exists.

I looked around at our peaceful cottage, out in the lovely countryside, and thought about how absolutely anyone could find us here  . . . and decided not to think about it. Paranoia is paralysing.

Very well, I would have to be myself, Dorothy Martin. Anyone could of course find out quite a lot about Dorothy Martin: who I was married to, where I lived, probably my bank balance and which brand of underwear I prefer. That would take time, though, and somehow I couldn't see anyone in Paul/Peter's entourage being interested. So probably I could alter the facts just a little. I couldn't disguise my American accent, so I would exaggerate it. I couldn't hide my lack of knowledge of the current music scene, so I could pretend to even less understanding than I had.

I would be  . . . I would be an American grandmother, desperate to take something home  . . . no, it was too easy for anyone to find out I lived in England. Something to give to a visiting teenage grandson, something he would really like. And I'd heard that Peter James was the newest music sensation (yes, I could lay that on really thick), and I wanted to give grandson Robert all his records  . . . CDs  . . . no, records, I'd use that term. It would reinforce my image as a sweet old lady who didn't know anything about anything.

In which image there was, as my mother used to say, more truth than poetry.

Oh, well, it was a start. I'd play it by ear. I have a fertile imagination; surely I could supply any necessary embroidery as I went along.

I took my mobile into the bedroom and shut the door. I couldn't do this in front of Alan.

It took five calls, to five different numbers, before I was able to talk to an actual human being. My loathing of phone trees grows at every encounter with them. I know no one who doesn't hate them. Why, then, do they continue to spread?

I went into my act. For some reason, when I try to produce an extremely American accent, it ends up sounding as if I grew up in Alabama, y'all. Oh, well. I know many people in America to whom all English accents sound alike, and they include Australian and South African in that group. Maybe all Americans sound alike to most Brits. I hoped so.

‘Is this Mr Peter James? Oh, his publicist! Oh, honey, I'm just so excited. I never thought I'd get to talk to someone as important as you. What? Oh, sorry, my name's Dorothy Martin, that's Mrs Frank Martin, and my grandson Robert's comin' to see me in two days, all the way from Mobile, and he's just your biggest fan, oh, I mean Peter's biggest fan  . . . oh, you'll have to excuse me, just babblin' away  . . . what? No, I live in England now, but he's never been here before, and his birthday's comin' up, he'll be sixteen  . . . this trip is his birthday present from his folks, they can't come, him bein' the mayor of Mobile an' all  . . . no, Robert's
daddy's
the mayor  . . . I'm not makin' a lot o' sense, am I, honey? Anyway, I wanted to give him somethin' really special, and the very best thing I could think of is a whole set of Peter James's records  . . . what? Oh, sorry, what? CDs? Oh, how silly of me! I guess they haven't called them records for a long time, have they, I'm gettin' old and out o' date.' I giggled sickeningly. ‘So I thought, if I could buy him the set, and get Peter to sign his autograph on 'em, it'd be so special, you know? So I went out and got 'em yesterday, I hope I got 'em all, they were all they had at the store, anyway, and I'm just prayin' I can come tomorrow and get Peter to sign  . . . oh, dear me, that
would'
ve been easier, wouldn't it? I never thought of you goin' to all that trouble of mailin' 'em to me. But, y'see, I've got 'em now, and I couldn't send a package to you and get it back in time for his birthday, and  . . . oh, dear! I was so hopin'  . . .' I allowed my voice to crack a trifle, and sniffled. ‘Oh, I do hate to tell his daddy  . . .'

I allowed that to trail off artistically, and sniffed a little more. My fingers were crossed so hard my hands were beginning to cramp.

I had allowed the poor fellow at the other end very few opportunities to get a word in edgewise, but now I let the silence lengthen. His voice finally came across the line. ‘Madam, are you still there?'

I had an insane impulse to quote the wonderful line from
The Producers
: ‘I ain't the madam, I'm the con-see-urge.' I restrained myself. ‘Yes, I'm here.' Sniff.

‘Are you anywhere near Birmingham?'

‘Why, yes, honey, I'm in  . . . I'm not far away at all.' I remembered in time that locations could possibly be checked. And ‘not far' means something quite different to an American, accustomed to vast distances.

‘I can't promise, you understand, but if you could be at my office tomorrow morning at ten, I think we could accommodate you.'

I didn't have to fake my excitement. ‘Oh, honey, that's just so wonderful, my grandson will be over the moon, this is just so nice of you, oh, I'm so excited!'

He gave me an address, said again, somewhat wearily, that he couldn't make a firm promise, and rang off.

I dropped the phone on the bed, turned for a tissue to wipe my brow, and saw Alan standing in the door.

He clapped. ‘Outstanding performance, love! I take it back, Mrs Bernhardt. You shouldn't have been a Jesuit. You should have been on the stage.'

I fell back on to the pillows. ‘Not if one five-minute performance wipes me out. Do we still have any bourbon?'

SEVENTEEN

‘
I
told him we could be in Birmingham by ten tomorrow morning,' I said over a glass of wine, as we did not in fact have any bourbon. ‘Can we?'

‘Do you have the slightest idea where Birmingham is?' Alan replied, smiling.

‘No, only that it's north of here.'

‘Up the M5. Right now we could probably do it in an hour. At that time of day, what with rush hour traffic, we'd best allow three. Here, let me have the address.'

He went to the computer and found the best route. The all-knowing oracle inside the box routed him by lesser roads than the motorway, and predicted a travel time of just under an hour. I took one look at the directions, with what looked like at least fifty roundabouts to navigate, and offered profound thanks that I wasn't going to be the one driving.

‘Right,' said Alan. ‘We'll leave at seven, then. If we're very lucky indeed with the traffic, and don't get lost or encounter roadworks, we may have time for breakfast when we arrive. And exactly how are you going to handle this interview, my dear?'

‘Oh.' I hadn't thought about that. I was still euphoric about my getting this far. ‘Well. I guess I'll have to go out and buy the wretched CDs first. Or will I have time to do that?'

‘O, what a tangled web we weave  . . . I suppose you might, if we have all the luck I mentioned, and if we can find a shop open at that hour. WHSmith might have them.'