The Herring Seller's Apprentice (8 page)

‘So, what have you come up with?’ she demanded.

‘Only papers on Geraldine’s finances.’

‘Skint?’

‘In a manner of speaking. A small positive balance on her current account.’

‘Building societies? Shares?’

‘Building society account closed. No shares that I can find. Large mortgage, recently increased, but the sale of the flat should cover that. Unpaid creditors from her previous exploits, who will never see their money now. Ditto credit cards, I fear.’

‘Pretty much as expected then.’

‘Pretty much,’ I conceded.

‘So, you’ve discovered nothing. Typical. Come and see what I’ve found,’ she said, smirking.

She led me into the bedroom and threw open a wardrobe door.

‘There!’ she said. ‘That is not a woman’s wardrobe.’

I looked at the row of dresses and skirts hanging neatly from the rail.

‘You don’t see what I mean, do you?’ she said. She waved an empty coat hanger at me. ‘What’s this then?’

‘An empty coat hanger?’ I hazarded.

‘Exactly!’ she exclaimed.

‘I don’t follow.’

‘You’re a man,’ she reminded me for the second time that morning.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘A woman’s wardrobe,’ she said, very slowly and carefully, ‘does not have empty hangers. A woman’s wardrobe is crammed full, because it contains the clothes you actually wear and it also contains all sorts of other things that you have bought over the years and kept because you never know when you might wake up one morning as a perfect size ten again. OK? This wardrobe is only two-thirds full, which means that half of the clothes have gone.’

Ignoring for a moment the strange mathematics of women’s wardrobes, I surveyed the contents and admitted that it was less full than I remembered it.

‘So, she had time to pack,’ said Elsie. ‘That’s two or three suitcases. Where are they now? They weren’t in the car. And come and look at this.’

She led me back to the sitting room and stood me in front of the bookcase. ‘What do you see? And don’t say “books” or I’ll have to cut your dick off with a rusty hacksaw.’

I stayed silent. It seemed like the safest option.

‘See those little yellow dots?’

I nodded. I had in fact noticed them earlier, but had said nothing to Elsie. They were small, removable sticky-backed paper circles, attached quite inconspicuously to the spines of some of the books and to the photo albums. ‘So?’ I enquired.

‘Well,’ said Elsie, ‘they’re what you put on things when you move house, so that the removal men will know where to take them. You know: blue dots for the sitting room, green triangles for the dining room, white squares for the main bedroom, pink stars for the kitchen, yellow dots—’

‘I get the picture,’ I said.

‘So, why the yellow dots?’ Elsie persisted. ‘She was doing a runner. She wasn’t going to get the removal men to come in and crate things up for her.’

‘Maybe they had some other purpose entirely.’

‘Hang on,’ Elsie announced suddenly. ‘Look – there’s one on that watercolour too.’ She started prowling round the room on a serious dot-hunt. ‘And on this vase. And on this photo frame.’

‘Red herring,’ I said. ‘They’re probably from when she and Rupert split up. Maybe she was marking things that were hers and that Rupert was not to take. Somewhere in Rupert’s new flat there are probably rows of books with green pentagons on them.’

‘That’s possible,’ said Elsie, crestfallen.

‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ I said.

‘Still, it does at least confirm that she had been planning her departure. You don’t pack three cases for a suicide. She had definite plans to go somewhere and to look smart when she got there. And where are the cases now, eh?’ demanded Elsie.

‘Where indeed?’ I asked.

‘So, what next?’ Elsie asked briskly.

‘Next I have to visit the bank,’ I said. ‘And you are on your way back to Hampstead.

‘No buts, Elsie. Thanks for bringing the contract down – I’m grateful. For the next couple of hours however I have to look like an executor, and an apprentice detective at my heels will not be required.’

Elsie haggled a bit and, as a concession, I agreed in my capacity as executor that she could raid the kitchen for any chocolate that Geraldine might have left behind.

‘Well, she won’t be needing it wherever she is,’ said Elsie.

‘Where she is, it would probably melt,’ I said.

It is rarely necessary to lie to one’s agent, but in this case I had been a little economical with the truth. I had for example not one but a number of visits that I wanted to pay without Elsie’s running commentary in the background. The first was only a few hundred yards away, and required the keys that I had located in the ex-chocolate box.

Standing in the pigeon droppings and old newspapers at street level, I was able to confirm that I had reached my destination by means of a small sign attached to the wall of a nondescript fifties industrial building: ‘Geraldine Tressider (Property Division) 3 rd Floor’. It was unclear, as with so much that she did, why occupying part of this grimy con-crete-and-plate-glass eyesore on a noisy main road had appealed to Geraldine as part of her business strategy. The other identifiable occupants were a casting agency and a firm classifying itself as ‘import-export’, though what it imported and what it exported was not specified. The street door proved to be unlocked and, since there was no lift, I climbed the three flights of unswept stairs to Geraldine’s Corporate Headquarters.

Once inside the office, it was evident that what Geraldine had been saving on rent, she had allocated to furnishings. In the larger, starkly white, outer office, there were comfortable modern chairs upholstered in black leather, and a large curving desk with a new computer on it. Suspiciously pristine, almost certainly empty, bright red box files and some reference books were carefully spaced on well-polished wood-and-steel shelving. On an oval coffee table rested the current editions of two or three glossy magazines. The leaves of the obligatory office plant gleamed as though they had been oiled. Post lay neatly stacked in an in-tray. Only the lack of any human activity spoiled the air of quiet efficiency. The inner office – Geraldine’s sanctum – was a repeat of this on a smaller scale, with cherry-wood blinds to hide the uninspiring view of the buildings across the road and a small green Buddha sitting Elsie-like, fat and self-satisfied, on a low corner table.

I knew what I needed and, as had happened at the flat, it took only a short time to locate what passed for Geraldine’s financial records. They confirmed what was becoming a consistent story: the company had no assets to speak of. I was just trying to decide whether to undertake a more thorough search of the office when I heard a key in the lock. Just for a moment I had a vision of Geraldine waltzing through the door as if nothing had happened, then the improbability of this struck me and I sprang to my feet.

I emerged from the inner office just in time to see a pimply young man, hands occupied with a carton of milk and cheap plastic document case, in the process of trying to close the front door with his elbow. He turned, saw me, gasped, let go of the milk, grabbed it again as it reached waist height, juggled with it for a couple of seconds and dropped the document holder.

‘Shit!’ he said. Then he yielded to the inevitable and dropped the milk too.

‘Who the hell are you?’ I asked.

He ignored my enquiry. ‘What are you doing here?’

I ignored his. ‘I asked you first.’

He paused. This pattern of questioning was likely to occupy us for most of the day unless one of us changed tack. ‘I’m Darren. Darren Oxtoby. I work for Mrs Tressider – worked, I mean. I’m her assistant. Was.’

‘Ethelred Tressider,’ I said. ‘My ex-wife’s executor.’

‘Right,’ he said uncertainly. He picked up the milk carton, which fortunately had not burst on impact.

He was recovering from the shock of finding somebody in what should have been an empty office. I, of course, should not have been shocked to see him: the carefully piled post in the tray, the new magazines, the watered plants should all have told me that the office was continuing to operate after a fashion – quite possibly more efficiently than when Geraldine had been present in person. Perhaps it should always have occurred to me that Geraldine would have employed staff of some sort – half-witted charity cases, almost certainly. After all, it would not have been possible to achieve the sort of losses she usually sustained single-handed. But for some reason I had not pictured this gangly young man with a spotty face and a tendency to perform vaudeville acts with milk cartons. If I was ignorant of his existence, then in all likelihood the police also were. But did he know anything of value?

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Where is she?’

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. For a moment I thought that he was about to do the milk trick again, and I was not sure that the carton would survive a second drop.

‘But …’ he said. ‘But … she’s
dead.’

If he had not had the desk behind him, I think he would have tried to back away from me as a dangerous lunatic.

‘Not Geraldine,’ I said with some show of justifiable irritation. ‘For God’s sake – I am scarcely expecting to see Geraldine here, am I? Where is Charlotte?’

‘Who?’

‘Charlotte Turner. Geraldine’s sister. Isn’t she supposed to be a partner here?’

‘Miss Turner? She doesn’t come here. She’s a – what do you call it? – sleeping partner. I’ve spoken to her on the phone, but I’ve never met her.’

‘Has she phoned since Geraldine disappeared?’

‘Once. I just said that I didn’t know where Mrs Tressider was. It was what I was always supposed to say to people.’ The spotty one shrugged his bony shoulders.

‘So Geraldine – Mrs Tressider – didn’t tell Miss Turner where she was planning to go?’

‘She can’t have done, can she? Or why would Miss Turner have asked me?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I suppose not. And what did Mrs Tressider tell you?’

‘Nothing. Not really. She just said that she wouldn’t be in for a while and to tell people she would get in touch with them when she got back.’

‘So she didn’t say where she was going?’

‘Switzerland. I think she had some sort of deal lined up there.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Come to think of it she didn’t actually
tell
me where she was going but I overheard her making the booking. I’d said I could do it, but she said, no, I should get on with my other work. I don’t remember the tickets arriving though – maybe she picked them up herself.’

‘And what is the other work that Mrs Tressider said you should get on with?’

‘I do some filing. I make coffee sometimes. I answer the phone.’

‘I suppose that’s what they call “multi-tasking” in the job adverts.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing. So did Mrs Tressider keep you busy?’

He laughed. ‘No, not really. I spend a lot of time working on my book.’ He pointed to the cheap plastic wallet. ‘I’m going to be a writer.’ He smiled diffidently.

‘Really? That’s a coincidence. I’ve just spent most of the morning with a literary agent,’ I said.

His eyes opened wide. ‘A literary agent. Gosh!’ he said. ‘Do you know an
agent?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very well, unfortunately.’

‘Do you think you could introduce me to her?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I certainly could, but I am afraid I’m not going to. Sorry about that. Now, how long have you been here?’

‘I’ve just arrived. You saw me come in.’

‘I mean when did you start working here?’

‘Oh, I see. About three months ago.’

‘I didn’t see any mention of you in the books.’

‘Books?’

‘The accounts,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to say that any staff are being employed. No salary. No National Insurance. No tax. Mrs Tressider was paying you?’

‘Oh yes, every week. Cash.’

And no questions asked. That would have been Geraldine all right. But why? He was clearly superfluous to the non-business that she was running.

‘So why are you still coming in?’

He shrugged. ‘I use the computer to type my novel.’

‘Well, not any more, you don’t. As of today this office is closed. If you leave a note of your name and address, I’ll see you get sent a week’s pay in lieu of notice – if the company has any assets to pay you from. I’ll have your key back too, before you go.’

He looked thoroughly miserable.

‘Couldn’t I just come in to use the computer? Nobody else needs it.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Oh, and one other thing. Have the police contacted you?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well, I’d stay out of their way. You know that you’ve been working here illegally without tax and National Insurance? I think that it would be best if they did not know about that, don’t you?’

He looked even more miserable. I’ve never beaten a puppy – in that respect I had a rather deprived childhood – but he looked rather as I imagine a beaten puppy might look.

‘I’ll leave the key then,’ he said.

‘Just pull the door to when you go. I’ve got work to do.’

And I returned to the inner office to contemplate what passed for Geraldine’s accounts.

I knew perfectly well that I had treated Darren badly, and I was not especially proud of the way I had behaved. But why had I taken such an instant and profound dislike to him? He was, after all, a harmless, if rather awkward, young man. He merely wished to get on with his novel and not disturb anyone in the process. If he had a slightly exalted idea of the status of a novelist (and a very much exalted idea of the status of a literary agent), I could scarcely hold that against him. Then it occurred to me. Of course – bright-eyed, eager, shy, gangly and with an almost pathetic desire to please – he precisely resembled me at the same age.

So, that was OK then. He had deserved all that he got.

There is an important difference between fiction and real life. Fiction has to be believable.

The novelist is obliged to have his small cast act in character, ignoring the fact that we are all a mass of exceptions and contradictions. In real life no sooner have we categorized somebody as miserly, than they disappoint us with some totally unnecessary act of generosity. In real life the most unlikely people become heroes, and people that you would walk past in the street without a second glance may have a murdered grandmother buried beneath the concrete floor of the new conservatory.