The Herring Seller's Apprentice (16 page)

So what, I asked myself, was that all about? Emsworth? Beach? The Hon. Galahad Threepwood? (Did I say Threep-wood? Oh yes, I didn’t need to be told who this cast of characters belonged to.) Of course, Elsie was right: I had written it, not Fairfax. But what did it all
mean?
What had happened to the crime that was supposed to be a parallel storyline? And what
was
the unexplained problem that Fairfax was wrestling with? How come Fairfax knew and I still didn’t? There was only one thing to be done.

Edit.

Select All.

Delete.

I went to make myself a cup of coffee.

I must have met Dennis Rainbird for the first time shortly before his wedding to Elizabeth. Elizabeth had told me a little about him beforehand and I suppose that I was expecting some sort of cross between an old-world spiv and a nightclub bouncer: a pony-tail probably, a jacket slightly too long, a gold chain almost certainly and a scar or two gained in the line of duty.

He had none of these things. To begin with he proved to be a good ten years older than I, and looked just like the large, prosperous, middle-aged businessman that, in a sense, he actually was. His suits, he explained to me very early in our acquaintance, invariably came from Gieves & Hawkes, his shirts were from Turnbull & Asser, and his brogues were Church’s. His aftershave (perhaps a little too much in evidence) was some obscure, but eminently respectable, English brand. His hair was neither too short nor too long and at the sides it was flicked back into two little wings in the accepted upper-middle-class manner. He had an Oxford accent in a way that I (who had actually been to Oxford University) did not. He had a habit of opening doors for ladies that my generation had either forgotten or that our mothers had never taught us. Indeed, he gave the impression that, at some point in his life, he had been stuck on a slow train with nothing but a book on old-world courtesy and had consequently memorized it down to the last semicolon. Perhaps the key to picturing Dennis was to understand that he could dress and behave in this impeccable manner without disguising for a moment that he was basically just a jumped-up East End villain.

A further key may be this: While he was always perfectly happy to tell me what he had paid for his tie or which minor celebrity he had dined with the week before, I never learned anything about where he had come from, who his family were or what he had done with his life prior to the age of, say, thirty-five. I am not suggesting that there were dark secrets, but you were left with the feeling that there might be relatively little to boast of. And if Dennis could not boast of a thing, then it tended to get left out of the conversation altogether.

Dennis’s office proved to be in Wardour Street – a location that somehow manages to feel both expensive and slightly down at heel, the buildings just a little too tall for the width of the roadway. The street was still in shadow, though the morning was well advanced.

The building itself was thirties art deco, recalling a time when this had been a rather glamorous part of town and the hub of a British film industry that thought it had a real chance of rivalling Hollywood. The decor of Dennis’s office made no concessions at all however to the elegant and now fashionable chrome-work and graceful curves. He clearly had his own idea of faded grandeur based on a house that he had possibly visited or (for all I know) burgled many years before.

From the moment we entered the room, I could see that Elsie was determined to be impressed by nothing that Dennis had to show her – not the large mahogany-and-leather partner’s desk, not the massive leather sofas, not the shapeless pieces of modern statuary, not even the richness of the carpet (the impossibly deep pile of which made the long walk from the door to Dennis’s desk an entirely silent one). Elsie had elected to wear on this occasion a very tight short skirt and matching jacket, which might have looked good on a number of people. There was undoubtedly, somewhere inside Elsie, a thin fashionable woman trying to get out, and you could only admire her tenacity.

Dennis extended his hand to me. ‘Sorry to hear about Geraldine, old man. Very tough on you.’

I shrugged. ‘There’s a lot to sort out,’ I said.

‘Of course. And I’ll be delighted to help in any way that I can. But first, would you both like coffee or something stronger?’

It was ten o’clock in the morning, so it must have been a safe bet that neither of us would opt for a whisky. But perhaps other morning visitors to this office did.

‘Coffee, please,’ I said.

‘Me too,’ said Elsie. She had not taken her eyes off Dennis since entering the room and was now fixing him with a stare. If it was intended to intimidate him, however, it was not working.

Dennis spoke into an old-fashioned microphone beside his desk, and coffee and biscuits appeared almost immediately.

‘So tell me,’ he said, ‘what exactly is it that I can do for you both?’ He smiled an expensive gold smile.

‘There are one or two things that it would help me to know,’ I said.

‘Fire away. Anything at all.’

‘Very well. You had some contact with Geraldine before she disappeared?’

‘A bit.’ The smile remained but his manner became guarded. ‘I didn’t know exactly who she was when she first contacted me. She was just somebody who had a proposition for me – I get lots of those in my line of business.’

‘Which is … ?’ said Elsie.

‘This and that,’ he replied blandly. ‘As I say, I get a lot of propositions, but this one seemed sound enough and to involve no risks – for me at least. Geraldine wanted to invest in some property in the East End, do it up, sell it on to the gentry – such as our good selves.’ He smiled again. ‘She wanted me on the board as an adviser. I was most happy to help her. She didn’t ask me to put money into the scheme – not that I would have, of course. I expect my capital to earn twenty-five, thirty per cent a year. At the best she was going to make fifteen with the market as it was. Maybe twenty with my advice and a following wind. Of course, she found a way to make a hundred per cent, but I didn’t know then that she was going to split with the whole bundle.’ Dennis chuckled approvingly and took a sip of his coffee. ‘Good coffee this. I have a little man who imports it directly from Costa Rica for me. None of your Fair Trade nonsense – he rips the Costa Rican peasants off a treat. I’ll get you some if you like. At cost, obviously.’

‘When did you find out who Geraldine was?’ I asked.

‘When she chose to tell me, I would imagine.’

‘The name meant nothing to you before that? Elizabeth hadn’t mentioned it?’

‘Possibly – I really don’t remember. Look … the fact that Geraldine had run off with Elizabeth’s ex might have been significant to the memsahib, but for me this was strictly business, old man. Strictly business.’

It occurred to me then that the only two people who called me ‘old man’ were Dennis and Rupert. There were patterns everywhere. Rupert dropping one blonde to go for another. Elizabeth moving effortlessly from one poseur to another (admittedly very different). You could not avoid the conclusion that Dennis had at some stage in his life invented himself from scratch every bit as much as Rupert had. What were the patterns in my own life? Whom did I resemble? I preferred not to think about it.

‘There must have been a risk that Elizabeth would find out,’ observed Elsie. Her need to make herself heard had finally overcome her desire to put Dennis in his place.

Dennis gave a half-grin. I guessed that, like Geraldine, he thrived on risk. As such, it would have been a mutual bond and attraction. But Dennis, unlike Geraldine, would have wanted the risk to be defined and controlled.

‘Does Elizabeth know?’ I asked. ‘What would she do if she found out, I wonder? What if somebody who knew were to tell her?’

‘Who’s going to do that?’ he smiled.

‘I might.’

‘Now hang on, old man …’ Dennis started to say. This was clearly one direction that he had not expected the conversation to take. He was becoming irritated, but he was becoming worried too. I didn’t look like a blackmailer, but then he didn’t look like a crook (or so he imagined anyway).

‘Yes,’ I went on. ‘I
could
tell Elizabeth. Why not? She’s a good friend of mine. You’ve already said that you knew she wouldn’t have approved. You could say that it would be my duty to tell her.’

‘But you wouldn’t?’

‘Maybe,’ I said, aware that Elsie had switched her gaze to me, and was now staring at me as though I had started to do a strip-tease while humming ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. But I pressed on. I knew what I was doing. (At least I hoped that I did.) ‘The police haven’t included you in their investigations, either. After all, nobody has told them about your connection with Geraldine. You never can tell.’

‘Don’t try to blackmail me, Ethelred. Others have tried before. I’d get you to have a word with them so they could give you a bit of advice, but you might have some difficulty tracking them down.’

‘This isn’t blackmail.’

‘Well, what do you want then?’

‘All I want is for you to answer three questions for me. If you answer them truthfully then neither Elizabeth nor the police will hear a word from my lips. But if I ever find out that you have lied – ever – I will make two short phone calls. Do you understand me?’

‘Sure.’ Dennis was less certain than ever what to make of me, but had decided that, for the moment at least, the best policy was to play along. Unlike Elsie he was not looking at me as though I was crazy.

‘First question. Do you know what happened to Geraldine the day she disappeared?’

‘No, of course not. I was in …’ Dennis consulted a diary (leather-bound, obviously). ‘Strasbourg. Yes, I had a whole series of meetings there. Elizabeth came too. But she told you, surely? I know that I hadn’t seen Geraldine for weeks before that. She was losing interest in actually buying property. Well, we all know why now, don’t we? But even at the time it didn’t strike me as odd that she hadn’t phoned or anything. The project was making no progress. Mentally, I’d already written it off.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Well, if that was your first question, it was hardly worth blackmailing me for. You could have had that for nothing.’

‘I wanted the answer to come with a cast-iron guarantee. Second question. Did you ever sleep with Geraldine?’

‘What?’

‘Did you ever sleep with her?’

‘No.’

‘Did you want to?’

‘Is that the third question?’

‘No, still the second.’

‘The answer is still no. Oh, she was attractive. Of course she was. And I don’t doubt … well, you of all people would know what she was like. But that would have been one risk too many. I suppose that Elizabeth has already told you about Cathy – our last nanny? I thought so. Well, I’ve no intention of putting myself in that position again. Elizabeth would take the kids and take me for every penny I’ve got. I’m getting too old to throw everything away for a quick leg-over. Satisfied?’

‘Yes.’

‘Third question?’

‘I don’t need to ask the third question,’ I said. ‘I already know that you don’t have the answer.’

‘Can I ask what the third question was?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Then can I ask you one?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Who do you think killed Geraldine?’

I paused for thought. ‘I think the police have got it right – they are looking at a serial killing.’

‘So, she was about to do a runner and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time?’

‘I don’t know anything about the details,’ I said.

‘So, who took the money out of the account, then?’ interjected Elsie.

‘What account?’ asked Dennis, suddenly interested.

I silently cursed Elsie’s scatter-gun approach to questioning, but this was an aspect of the case that we were going to have to explore with him. I therefore explained about the Swiss account, the whole time carefully watching Dennis’s face to try to tell whether he possibly knew even more.

Dennis nodded approvingly at the efficiency of the operation and then leaned back in his chair and took out a cigar. He cut the end carefully. ‘I don’t see any problem there. From what I’ve heard, no papers were found with the body – no passport, no driving licence, no cheque-book, no credit cards?’

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘There you are then. She must have had details of the Swiss account on her too. If there were passwords, she probably had them written down somewhere – most of you mugs do. The chappie who does her in goes through her papers and realizes that he has all he needs to collect the cash, if he moves quickly. He hides the body well enough, and removes anything that might help identify it, to slow things down if it is discovered. He heads off for Switzerland, passport and bank details in hand. Bingo!’

‘He,’ said Elsie.
‘He.
There’s going to be a problem when he presents the passport at the bank and claims to be Geraldine.’

‘How much was in the account?’ asked Dennis.

‘Six hundred thousand,’ I said.

‘Francs?’

‘Pounds.’

‘No problem,’ said Dennis. ‘That would split very nicely two ways. Plenty of blonde girls in Switzerland to choose from.’

‘Geraldine had an accomplice in England,’ said Elsie. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Who is doubtless keeping very quiet at the moment,’ said Dennis. He lit the cigar and blew out several large puffs of smoke. ‘Case solved.’

‘Could be,’ I said. That at least was something that Dennis and I could agree on. Dennis had his reasons for wanting the world to lose interest in the murder of Geraldine Tressider, just as I had mine.

‘Funny blokes, serial killers. I knew one in Chelmsford,’ said Dennis, watching his cigar smoke curl up into the air and slowly drift away.

‘Chelmsford?’ asked Elsie.

‘He was in Chelmsford nick,’ said Dennis thoughtfully. Both his accent and vocabulary had relaxed a little during his discussion of the murder. Now, just for a moment, a heavy curtain blanketing the past seemed to have been twitched aside. But just as quickly its folds swung back again. The light that had gleamed briefly was extinguished. The old manner and accent reasserted themselves. ‘You meet some odd coves in my line of work, of course.’