A Place Of Safety

Chapter Eight

It was nearly ten the following morning when Ann Lawrence regained consciousness. No way could you call it simply ‘waking up’. The Hoover on the landing outside her room buzzed faintly at first, no louder than a bee. Gradually the level of the sound increased. There was knocking as the machine banged against the skirting board.

Ann felt as if she was swimming up from the depths of the ocean. On and on she swam, struggling through dark layers of muddy mind swamp until finally somehow heaving back her swollen eyelids. She found herself in semi-darkness. For a moment, lying on the pillow, she stared at the uncertain outlines of heavy furniture. It all looked completely unfamiliar. Then she made the mistake of trying to lift her head.

‘Ahhh ...’ A searing pain flared behind her eyes. Gasping from the shock of it, she closed her eyes and waited for the agony to pass. Then, keeping her head very steady and pressing down weakly on the mattress, Ann levered herself up the bed until she was leaning against the headboard and rested there, absolutely still.

The vacuum cleaner had been switched off. There was a very gentle tap at the door. Hetty Leathers put her head round then came cautiously into the room.

‘Thank goodness. I thought you was never waking up.’ She crossed over to the window and drew the curtains. A grey dullness crept into the room.

‘Don’t put the light on!’

‘I wasn’t going to.’ She sat on the side of the bed and took Ann’s hand. ‘My goodness, Mrs Lawrence, what on earth happened to you?’

‘I ... don’t know.’

‘I said you should never have had two of them tablets. I told him.’

‘What?’

‘Last night. When you went to bed.’

‘But ... you’re not here ...’ Ann sighed deeply, made another effort to complete the sentence but failed.

‘In the evening? That’s right. But he rang nine o’clock yesterday wanting to know what to do about his supper.’ Hetty’s voice still quivered with an echo of the irritation she had felt. As if the man couldn’t have opened a tin of soup and made himself a sandwich. ‘So I thought I’d better come back this morning or you wouldn’t have a bite all day.’

‘Who rang?’

‘Who?’ Hetty stared in amazement. ‘Why, Mr Lawrence, of course.’

‘Ah.’

‘Had to ask my neighbour to sit with Candy. I wouldn’t of come only he said you were ill.’

‘Yes.’ Ann’s cheeks became hot as certain vivid scenes, disjointed and seemingly quite disconnected, started jerkily running through her mind. A distraught woman being seized and bundled, struggling, into a car. The same woman, weeping, pushing a man away as he tried to calm her, fighting a woman in a nurse’s uniform who was trying to hold her arm. Then the whole set-up becoming stable but distant, as if being viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. Finally the woman seated in surroundings which seemed vaguely familiar but also intangible like a room in a dream. The place was crammed with bulky but strangely insubstantial furniture. She was slopping tea against her lips and tipping it everywhere.

‘I can’t stay here!’ A sudden movement and nausea possessed her. Ann clapped a hand to her mouth.

‘What do you mean, Mrs Lawrence? Where would you go?’

‘I ... don’t know.’

‘You try and rest. There’s nothing downstairs to worry about.’ Hetty got up from the bed. ‘Everything’s running smoothly. Now, what if I make you a nice hot drink?’

‘Feel sick.’

‘Listen.’ Hetty hesitated. ‘It may be none of my business but them trankerlisers don’t suit everybody. If I were you I’d chuck the lot out the window.’

Ann eased her way back down the bed and rested on the pillow. She lay flat on her back staring at a single spot on the ceiling and gradually the sickness passed. She began to feel better. A little bit stronger. But only in her body.

Her mind was still a rag bag of jumbled sounds, pictures and impressions that seemed quite meaningless. Then a single spear of light pierced the tangled mess and Ann understood that she was the woman in the strange, dreamlike sequence.

If this recognition was alarming - she really had made a public exhibition of herself, been forced into her husband’s car and made to submit to treatment in a doctor’s surgery - it was also consoling. Memory had played her true and there was nothing seriously wrong with her mind.

But how had she got into this state in the first place? Ann tried to concentrate. Before being found and made to get into the car, she had met someone - Louise Fainlight! And there had been some unpleasantness - no, she had been unpleasant. Louise had been simply friendly in a perfectly normal way. Yet Ann had seen her as some sort of threat. Why?

Ann gently agitated a head packed with scrunched-up barbed wire. Struck her forehead with the heel of her hand and grunted with frustration. Causton. The market. Louise at a cash point. Herself leaving a building. The bank. What had she been doing in—

Oh God. It all returned, like a noxious stream of water flooding her consciousness. She sat up quickly, the swimming in her head hardly noticed. She breathed quickly, almost panting with emotion and fear, swung her legs out of bed, reached for her handbag. The envelope was still there. She scrabbled at the flap of the brown envelope, pulled out the rubber-banded wads of notes and stared at them. Five grand this time murderer same place same time tomorrow.

At midnight the ‘same time’ she had been lying unconscious in a drugged sleep. But he wouldn’t know that. He would think she was defying him. What would he do? Send another note? Ring up and threaten? Should she perhaps take the money to Carter’s Wood tonight and leave it in the litter bin anyway?

But what if he did not return? Anyone might find it. Or the bin might be emptied and the money lost. Ann recalled her humiliating interview with the bank manager. She couldn’t bear to go through that again.

On the other side of the room on an old walnut chest of drawers was a large photograph of her father in a silver frame. She wished with all her heart that he was still alive. He would have had no truck with blackmailers. She could just see him sailing out to confront whoever it was, flailing around with his heavy ash stick and cursing fluently in the full glory of his rage.

That this would have been foolish, Ann had to admit. Here was no passing tramp or layabout to be subdued by bullish authority. What they were dealing with contained a dark authority of its own that would not be easily overcome. And she could do nothing.

It was as this knowledge of her own helplessness slowly took hold that Ann felt in herself the first beginnings of resentment quickly followed by a warming flicker of anger.

Was this her lot then? To just sit, meek and trembling, awaiting instructions like some pathetic Victorian skivvy. Running to obey these the minute they were issued. Selling more and more of her precious possessions to satisfy the outrageous greed of an unknown persecutor. She could not bear it. She wouldn’t bear it.

Yet what was the alternative? For the first time she sat and considered, not unthinkingly in a panic-stricken rush but with calm seriousness, what would happen if she did not pay.

He would tell the police. An anonymous tip-off at no risk to himself. They would come and ask questions. She could not lie or brazen it out. It was against her nature and everything she had been taught to believe in. So she would tell them the truth.

How terrible would the consequences be? Would she be arrested? Perhaps. Questioned? Certainly. Lionel would be devastated and the village would have something really exciting to gossip about. But this would pass and Ann was surprised to realise that she was not all that concerned about Lionel’s possible devastation. After all, he had spent years running around after people in trouble, so he should be able to cope with a spot of his own.

As if she was already being interviewed, Ann started to go through the dreadful course of events once more. The missing earrings, Carlotta’s wild response and flight, the struggle on the bridge. The terrible moment when the girl fell in. Her own frantic running and searching along the river bank. The 999 call.

Surely the police would see that she was not the sort of person to deliberately harm someone. And Carlotta’s ... Ann flinched from the word. Carlotta had not been found. She may have scrambled ashore even while Ann was urgently calling her name. Though the moon had been bright, there were dark patches that would have given cover.

It was an accident. That was the truth of it and they would have to believe her. She would return the money to the bank and her unknown persecutor could do his worst.

Louise, heavy-hearted and dull from lack of sleep, was getting dressed. She had not seen her brother since their row on Friday evening. He had left before she got up the next day, leaving a note saying simply that he had gone to London. Lying wide awake at nearly 3 a.m., she had heard him come in. Usually she would have waited up, wanting to know how his day had gone, but last night she had hesitated, afraid it would make him angry.

Louise, tying the belt of the first dress she laid hands on, stood suddenly still, jolted by the sheer novelty of such an observation. She had never been afraid of Valentine in her life. Bewilderment was slowly transformed into a quiet rage. She got up and strode over to the wall facing the village street. Pressing her hands flat against the glass, she stared across at the Old Rectory garden, at the giant cedar and the flat over the garage and felt her rage harden into hatred.

Why couldn’t it have been Jax instead of Charlie Leathers? A miserable, not very pleasant old man would have lived and a foul young one, at the very beginning of his havoc-dealing life, would have been destroyed. I could have done it myself, thought Louise, truly believing at that moment that she was capable of murder. Not hand-to-hand, of course, she could not have borne to touch him. But say there had been a remote control - a button to be simply pressed. Well, that might have been a different matter.

She lifted her hands, studied the blurred imprint of her palms and finger span then wiped her forearm quickly across the glass, obliterating all trace. If she could do it like that, with no more concern than squashing a greenfly on the roses ...

‘What are you thinking?’

‘Ah!’ Louise jumped away from the window then moved quickly back. She stood in front of the smeared handprint as if it was readable, making her malevolence plain. ‘You made me ... I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I’m just going for a shower.’ Val was wearing his cycling gear. Black Lycra knee shorts and yellow top, both dripping wet, plastered to his powerful shoulders and muscular thighs. He looked at her without expression. ‘Put some coffee on, Lou.’

In the kitchen, waiting for him to come down, Louise breathed evenly and deeply. She was determined not to be drawn into an argument; she would remain uncritical and calm. It was his life. Only, prayed Louise silently, let me not be driven from it.

There was coffee on the table and brioche with pale butter and Swiss black cherry jam. When Valentine came in he sat straight down and poured the coffee without looking at her and Louise knew what was coming.

‘I’m sorry about yesterday.’

‘That’s all right. Everyone has—’

‘I was very unfair. You’ve always more than paid your way here.’

‘That’s all right, Val. We were both upset.’

‘But,’ Valentine put his cup down, ‘we do need to talk.’

‘Yes,’ said Louise, as the floor fell away beneath her chair. ‘I do see that.’

‘I spoke in anger, suggesting you move out. But I’ve thought about it and, you know, I still think it might be a good idea.’

‘Yes,’ said Louise again through stiff lips. ‘I ... er ... I’ve been thinking pretty much the same thing, actually. After all, I only came here temporarily, to lick my wounds, so to speak. And I’m feeling so much better now. Time I dived back into real life - or is it dove - before I ossify. I thought I’d rent somewhere between here and London while I look round for a place more permanent. It might take me a few days to get my things sorted. Is that OK?’

‘Oh, Lou.’ And Valentine put down his cup, reached out and took his sister’s hand. ‘Don’t cry.’

‘I remember when you first started calling me Lou.’ She had been twelve and head over heels entranced by a beautiful youth who was staying in their parents’ house. In her innocence Louise had believed him to be simply her brother’s friend. ‘It was when Carey Foster—’

‘Please. Not the “do you remember” game.’

‘Sorry. Below the belt?’

‘A bit.’

‘I can come and see you?’ Louise’s voice sounded strained and childish, even to herself. ‘And ring?’

‘Of course you can ring, idiot. And we’ll meet in town, like we always used to. Have lunch, go to the theatre.’

‘In town.’ She was being banished then. Louise sipped nearly cold coffee, sour on her tongue, and already the pain of separation began to make itself felt. Every cell in her body ached. ‘Yes. That would be lovely.’

After a quiet Sunday spent in the garden lifting and storing tulip and lily bulbs, splitting and replanting hardy perennials and cutting back summer-flowering shrubs, Barnaby prepared for his 8.30 a.m. briefing the next morning feeling physically relaxed and in a positive frame of mind. He made a note that a ten o’clock appointment with the Caritas Trust was listed in his desk diary.

Troy, who was waiting by the door trying to appear cool and alert, was chewing on a Twix. He had taken them up as a substitute for cigarettes and it was working pretty well except he was still smoking.

As Barnaby tapped his papers neatly end to end and slipped them into an envelope file, he frowned at the sight of his sergeant’s chomping jaws.

‘Don’t you ever stop eating?’ It was a sore point. No matter what Troy ate or how much of it, he never put on an ounce.

‘Certainly I do.’ Troy was aggrieved. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. First thing in the morning too. What was the old bugger going to be like by six o’clock?

‘I can’t imagine when.’

‘When I’m asleep. And also when I’m—’

‘Spare me the grisly details of your sex life, Sergeant.’

Troy maintained a dignified silence. He had been going to say, ‘When I’m reading to Talisa Leanne.’ He rolled the chocolate wrapper into a pellet and flicked it into the waste basket.

Thinking of his daughter reminded him of ‘chortling’. He had indeed looked the word up in her dictionary and found it to be a cross between chuckling and snorting. Pretty stupid, Troy decided. Why not the other way round? Hey, let’s hear it for the snucklers.

Everyone in Room 419 was sitting up and looking alert, notebooks open, print-outs everywhere. Only Inspector Carter appeared crumpled as if he hadn’t been to bed and rather depressed. Perversely, Barnaby decided to start with him.

‘Piss all, actually, sir,’ responded Carter, having been asked what he’d got. ‘We did a very thorough house-to-house in all three villages, going back in the evening to catch anyone at work during the day.’

‘And those who were in the pub?’

‘Oh, yes. No one seems to have heard any disturbance last Sunday night. All inside, curtains drawn, watching the telly. One person, a Mr ... um ... Gerry Lovatt was out walking his greyhound, Constanza, just yards from the weir at quarter to eleven and he heard nothing either.’

‘That is surprising,’ said Barnaby.

‘There was that lady—’

‘Yes, I’m coming to you, Phillips. Thanks very much.’

‘Sorry, Inspector.’

‘Carry on then.’

Constable Phillips’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously. He blushed and Sergeant Brierley gave him a kindly, encouraging smile. Troy, entranced simply by being in the same room with the girl he fancied rotten, sent his own smile winging across the desk tops. He had named his daughter’s kitten Audrey merely for the pleasure of constantly repeating her name. That ignored him as well. Maybe he should rechristen it Constanza.

‘A Miss Pleat,’ began Constable Phillips.

‘I’ve met Miss Pleat,’ said Barnaby. ‘You’re not telling me I’m going to meet her again, are you?’

‘Not necessarily, sir.’

‘Thank God for that.’

There was a certain amount of nervous laughter in which Constable Phillips laggardly joined.

‘Only I think she might have something. Not facts, I’m afraid, just ideas.’

‘Don’t tell me, the ebb and flow of the human heart?’

‘Something like that, sir. Well, she seems to think that Valentine Fainlight, the man in that amazing—’

‘I know who Fainlight is.’

‘Sorry. That he’s in love with the girl who ran away, Carlotta.’

‘Valentine Fainlight is a homosexual, Constable Phillips.’

‘Oh. I didn’t realise. Sor—’

‘On what does Miss Pleat base this remarkable assumption?’

‘He goes over to the Old Rectory night after night and stands looking up at her window.’

The room exchanged amused but slightly wary glances, holding back any vocal expression of mirth. Watching the chief, waiting to see which way the wind blew.

After a few moments during which he appeared lost in thought, Barnaby said, ‘Is that all?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Constable Phillips, praying that it was.

‘Right. What’s next?’

Print-outs were consulted. Barnaby was informed that according to hospital and police information no person matching Carlotta Ryan’s description had been found dead, in or out of water, accidentally or on purpose, during the past seven days.

The search of the river bank was hardly fruitful. On the whole it was pristine but a rough patch of scrub and thorn bushes owned up to a few crisp packets and Cola cans, an old motor tyre once used as a swing and the frame of a baby’s pushchair. A retired brigadier, chairman of the Ferne Basset Conservation Society, presented himself at the search and began explaining that the ‘cess pit’ under observation was used as a dumping ground by council house tenants. It was cleared every week by a member of the Society and was promptly fouled again. Courteous requests to refrain from this habit had been ignored. He insisted that a note to this effect be added to the police report. Village pride was at stake.

Responses to the station’s television appeal were still being followed up. The usual attention seekers were being weeded out and what was left was not encouraging.

Sergeant Jimmy Agnew and WPC Muldoon, checking up on the background of Lionel Lawrence, had come up with what was surely the dullest CV on record. Born in 1941 in Uttoxeter, grammar school education with O levels in five subjects, including Religious Education. Dip. Theology at the Open University. Not even a suspicious passion for scouting.

DS Harris, detailed to lay his hands on the recording of the anonymous telephone call the night Carlotta disappeared, explained that Kidlington had a backlog, always being short-staffed on Sunday, but it would be over for sure later in the day.

As the DCI had feared, SOCO’s print check in the phone box at Ferne Basset proved that the whole procedure had been a pointless waste of their valuable time.

Barnaby was looking forward to meeting Ms Vivienne Calthrop of the Caritas Trust for the Resettlement of Young Offenders. He was about to talk not only to someone who had known Carlotta but who, with a bit of luck, might describe the girl from a reasonably disinterested viewpoint.

Lionel Lawrence, squinting and blinking behind his rose-tinted glasses, was worse than useless. Jax was full of spite because Carlotta had rejected him. Mrs Leathers resented the girl’s presence on behalf of her employer and Ann Lawrence had, so far, been unavailable.

They arrived ten minutes early and Troy took advantage of this by getting out of the car and striking up. He did so in a mood of bitter resentfulness both against himself and the bloody fags. So far Maureen still didn’t know he’d started again. Somehow or other he had managed not to do it in the house. A brisk walk before bedtime accounted for three saturating smokes and he just about held on till leaving the house the next morning. Gargling with mouthwash, ferociously brushing his teeth and chewing on a bag of parsley from Sainsbury’s seemed to have disguised this underhand activity so far. The fact that his clothes still reeked of nicotine was easily explained by their daily exposure to the tasteful ambience in the station toilets.

‘Come on!’

Troy stubbed out his cigarette and hurried after the chief. ‘Is it kosher, this place?’

They were mounting some heavily stained concrete steps then pushing through metal swing doors painted khaki. The paint was badly chipped and the right door caved in at the bottom as if someone had given it a good kicking.

‘Oh, yes. We checked it out. On their headed paper there’s a circuit judge noted for his interest in rehabilitation plus two members of the Howard League, as well as our Lionel. The funding’s from several impeccable philanthropic sources and a small amount comes from the government.’

At the end of a dreary corridor a large white notice announced Reception. The letters were very carefully written with a curly flourish here and there and bordered with brightly coloured flowers. The pinned-up card was enclosed in a transparent freezer bag.

A tiny, thin little girl was inside. She hardly looked old enough to go out to play, never mind run a switchboard. She had hair like canary feathers, silver rings through her eyebrows and a chirrupy little Cockney voice.

‘’Ello.’

‘Hello,’ said Barnaby, wondering what it signified when receptionists seemed to be getting younger all the time. ‘We’re—’

‘Miss Calthrop’s ten o’clock, right?’

‘That’s it,’ said Sergeant Troy. He was wondering if she had made the card on the door. ‘And you are?’

‘Cheryl. I’ll take you over.’

She ignored the phone which had just started to ring and led them out of the building and across the tarmac parking lot towards a rackety old Portacabin lifted from the ground on breeze blocks.

‘You don’t look much like a copper,’ said Cheryl, tripping along in absurd little boots with leopardskin cuffs and four-inch heels. She gave Sergeant Troy a friendly nudge.

‘What’re we supposed to look like then?’

‘Him.’ She jerked her soft, lemon-coloured curls towards the chief inspector lumbering along behind.

‘Catch me in twenty years,’ said Troy.

‘Nah,’ said Cheryl. ‘You ain’t never going to weigh that much. You ain’t the sort.’

They climbed three wobbly wooden steps. Cheryl rapped on an ill-fitting door. Immediately a wonderful humming sound, like the rich vibration of a viol, rippled under the door and ebbed and shimmered around their heads.

‘What was that?’ asked Barnaby.

‘She’s just saying come in.’ Cheryl skipped away, adding over her shoulder, ‘Deep breath and ’old your nose.’

The two policemen went inside.

Oh boy, thought Troy, inhaling deeply a one hundred per cent genuine gold-carat bred-in-the-bone fug. The wonderfully stale and putrid atmosphere, the concentrated essence of fag that tells an addict he has come home. Except home could never smell this good. Behind him Troy noted a muted moan of protest.

Barnaby, wishing he had indeed taken a deep breath, looked about him. There had been no attempt to disguise or decorate the walls. Metal frames and screws held together panels of hammered grey flat stuff which looked suspiciously like asbestos. There were old-fashioned metal filing cabinets though a dusty computer was just visible behind stacks of files on an extremely cluttered desk. An electric extractor fan let into one of the panels stuttered and coughed. Behind the desk, in a neat reversal of the usual no-smoking sign, a handmade effort had a glowing cigarette with a large, black tick drawn through it.

Someone had attempted to make the foul ambience less offensive by liberal squirtings with a sickly sweet freshener. This further clashed with the fragrance of monosodium glutamate from some takeaway empties in the waste basket and the bold, sultry perfume the woman behind the desk was wearing.

Vivienne Calthrop made no attempt to rise as the police presented their credentials, just glanced at the warrant cards and waved them away. Rising in any case would not have been easy for she was hugely overweight. She was, in fact, one of the largest women Barnaby had ever seen.

‘If you’d like coffee the gubbins is over there.’ She jerked a thumb first towards a white, rather dirty Formica table then at a couple of battered armchairs.

‘No ... um ... really ...’ If Barnaby was thrown it was not because of the woman’s appearance but her truly remarkable voice. Very husky, extremely melodious, luxuriant and warm, it crackled with vitality. My God, thought the chief inspector, sinking into one of the armchairs, what my daughter wouldn’t give to sound like that.

‘Feel free to indulge,’ said Miss Calthrop, shaking a Gitane out of a cellophane-wrapped packet and lighting up.

‘Thank you,’ said Sergeant Troy, reaching inside his jacket before catching the chief’s eye and thinking better of it.

‘So, what’s all this about Carlotta?’

‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, Miss Calthrop—’

‘Next to nothing. Just that the police wanted some information on her background. What’s she done now?’

‘Run away,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘Oh, come on. The CID fronting the show and she’s “run away”?’

‘Obviously there’s slightly more to it than that.’

‘Bet your Aunt Fanny,’ said Miss Calthrop.

‘There was an argument where she was staying—’

‘Old Rectory, Ferne Basset.’ She tapped a file on her desk with a huge white sausagey finger in which were embedded several beautiful rings. ‘One of dear Lionel’s many benisons.’

‘She was accused of taking a pair of diamond earrings,’ Barnaby took up the story. ‘In some distress apparently, she ran away. Very soon after this we received anonymous information saying someone had fallen into the river.’

‘Or jumped,’ said Troy.

‘She would never have jumped,’ said Miss Calthrop. ‘She was far too fond of herself.’

This was so like what Jackson had said that Barnaby was both surprised and impressed. Surprised because he had assumed the man had been offering a Carlotta of his own making to fit in with whatever story he had in mind.

‘Tell me about her,’ said the chief inspector, relaxing in his chair and looking forward to the next few minutes provided he could only surface breathe. He always enjoyed the process of trawling for new information.

Troy dug out his notebook while also trying to relax in his chair. As he had a spring sticking in his bottom this was not so easy. Still sulking over the lack of a ciggie, he produced his biro and started clicking it on and off, much to Barnaby’s annoyance.

‘Some of the young people that have sat where you’re sitting now, Inspector ...’ began Miss Calthrop, ‘the wonder is not that they have grown up delinquent but that they have managed to grow up at all. To read their files, to understand the poverty, cruelty and total lack of love which has been their lot since the day they were born is to despair of human nature.’

Barnaby did not doubt Miss Calthrop for a minute. He, too, had listened to some appalling stories as the background of the accused had been read out in court. But, although not unsympathetic, he was compelled to keep an emotional distance. It was not part of his job to try and help or heal a fragmented personality. That was for the social services, probation officers and prison psychiatrists. And he did not envy them.

‘But Carlotta Ryan,’ continued Vivienne Calthrop, ‘had no such excuse. Her background was comfortably middle class and I understand her childhood to have been reasonably happy until her parents broke up when she was thirteen. Her mother remarried and Carlotta lived with them for a while but she was very unhappy and ran away more than once. Naturally one wonders if the husband was abusing her ...’

Naturally? thought Barnaby. God, what a world we live in.

Troy was easier now he had something to do and scribbled happily. He had also noticed an Amaretti biscuit tin on the filing cabinet and wondered if he could persuade a few to walk his way.

‘But Carlotta assured me this was not the case. Her father was working in Beirut - not the safest of places to take a child - but she decided she wanted to be with him. Her mother agreed and off she went. She was very rebellious and, as I expect you know, the Lebanon is not a country where women, even foreigners, can behave as they do here.’ She tugged at some frizzy fronds of hair like ruby-coloured seaweed on her forehead. ‘Her father was very concerned she might end up in serious trouble and both parents decided the solution might be to send her to boarding school.’

‘How old would she be then?’ asked Barnaby.

‘About fourteen. Carlotta asked to go to somewhere that concentrated on drama training but her parents were afraid the educational standards might not be too high so they put her in a place near Ambleside.’ Miss Calthrop paused for an inhalation so cavernously deep and powerful that her eyes almost crossed themselves with surprise and pleasure at the shock of it. The fat cheeks didn’t even dimple.

‘Why a stage school?’ asked Troy, breathing deeply alongside. ‘Did she want to be an actress or something?’

‘Yes, she was very keen. I got the impression that if they’d let her go, she wouldn’t have veered quite so wildly off the rails.’

Always an excuse. Sergeant Troy swiftly transcribed all these details. As he did so he tried to think as he knew the boss would be thinking. Bring the girl alive in his mind, picture her flouncing, arguing, determined to get her own way. What his gran would have called ‘a right young madam’.

Actually, he was wrong. Despite his good intentions, Barnaby was having quite a struggle keeping his mind on the meaning of what Vivienne Calthrop was saying. Seduced by the remarkable beauty of her voice and the extraordinary and exotic grandeur of her appearance, his curiosity was given over to speculating by what circuitous route she could possibly have arrived in this sordid den.

He watched her stub her cigarette into an ashtray already brimming with crimsoned dog ends and rearrange the marquee of rose and turquoise silk draped around her person. All this jelly wobbling made her earrings dance. They were very long, reaching almost to her shoulders, delicate chandeliers of sequinned discs, enamelled flowers and tiny moonstones all trembling on a fan of golden wire.

Barnaby became aware that he was being severely looked at. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m not going through all this for nothing, I hope, Chief Inspector?’

‘Of course not, Miss Calthrop. I was just engrossed in that last point you made. It raises interesting ...’

Vivienne Calthrop sniffed. ‘You’re with us now, I trust?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then she ran away for the third time and on this occasion they didn’t get her back.’

Troy’s arm ached. He was dying for a cuppa and some of that interestingly named confectionery. All right for some, with nothing to do but loll back in an armchair with no broken springs and stare out of the window. Nice to see him ticked off for once though.

‘Our file,’ she picked a folder from the tottering pile on her desk, ‘covers the time from when she first came to the attention of the social services until her stay with the Lawrences. There are solid facts here and there are statements from Carlotta which could be truth or fantasy or a mixture of both.’

‘What do you think, Miss Calthrop?’ asked Barnaby.

‘It’s difficult to say. She enjoyed ... how can I put this ... presenting herself. She would never just come into a room, sit down and simply talk. Every time there had to be a different Carlotta. Wronged, unhappy daughter. Talented girl denied her chance of fame. Once she appeared with a tale about being stopped in Bond Street by a scout for a model agency. Gave her a card, asked to see a portfolio of photographs. All nonsense. She was nowhere near tall enough, for a start.’

‘And what about her record?’

‘Persistent shoplifting. I don’t know how long she’d been at it when she was caught. She swore that was the first time. Don’t they all? She was cautioned then caught again a few weeks later with a shopping bag full of Armani tights and T-shirts. Shortly after this she was spotted on camera taking a Ghost evening dress from Liberty’s. A woman had been in the day before, trying it on, taking ages over the business, attempting to get them to reduce the price, and it was thought Carlotta might be stealing to order. A much more serious business than the odd impulse snatch. When the police took her home they found a roomful of stuff, all very classy. Molton Brown, Donna Karan, Butler and Wilson jewellery.’

Troy gave his pen a rest. He saw no point in writing down all these names which, in any case, were Greek to him. No wonder Mrs Lawrence had suspected the girl when her earrings had disappeared. She was lucky to have a rag left on her back.

‘Would that be the last address you have for her?’

‘Yes. Close to Stepney Green.’ She was already writing. ‘I hope you find her. Alive, I mean.’

‘So do I,’ said Barnaby. As Miss Calthrop handed the slip of paper over, a concentrated whoosh of a perfume that dare not speak its name zoomed up the inspector’s nostrils. Bordello Nights, thought Barnaby, or some copywriter’s missed his vocation. On recovering, he asked if they might take Carlotta’s file away and extract any information that could be of help to them.

‘Certainly not,’ replied Miss Calthrop. ‘I have told you everything relevant to your inquiries. Our clients may be on the lowest rung of society, Chief Inspector, but they’re still entitled to some privacy.’

Barnaby did not pursue the matter. He could always make a special application should he feel it necessary. He smiled across at Miss Calthrop as warmly as if she had been fully cooperative and changed tack.

‘Have you sent many ... clients to the Old Rectory, Miss Calthrop?’

‘Over the past ten years or so, yes. Regrettably, not all have benefited. Several have even betrayed the Lawrences’ trust.’

‘No,’ said Sergeant Troy on a drawn-in breath. He thought he might run with this line in mock amazement for a bit then remembered the chief’s nagging about alienating interviewees.

‘Hard to understand, I know,’ said Vivienne Calthrop. ‘You would expect them to be so grateful that they would seize any opportunity to transform their lives. But I’m afraid it rarely seems to work like that.’

‘That’s very sad,’ said Barnaby. And meant it.

‘They’re like animals, you see, who have never known anything but cruelty and neglect. Sudden kindness is often viewed either with suspicion or disbelief. Even contempt. Of course,’ she smiled, ‘we do have our successes.’

‘Young Cheryl, perhaps?’ asked Barnaby. Then in the pause that followed. ‘Sorry. Confidential?’

‘Just so, Chief Inspector.’

‘What about Terry Jackson?’

‘Not one of ours.’

Barnaby looked surprised.

‘Lionel sits on at least two rehab. boards. The young man may have become known to him that way.’

‘They’re all young, are they?’ asked Sergeant Troy. ‘These people Mr L takes on.’

Miss Calthrop turned and stared at him. ‘What is the implication behind that remark?’

‘Just a question.’ Troy remembered the chief putting the same one, to himself as it were, a couple of days ago. ‘No offence.’

‘Lionel Lawrence is a saint among men.’ Miss Calthrop’s bulk started to agitate itself, heaving and trembling like a mountain on the move. Her magnificent voice developed a volcanic rumble. ‘His wife’s inability to have children is a tragedy. Do you wonder he is paternalistically inclined?’

‘Yes. Well, I think that’s—’ Barnaby, rising, was cut off.

‘And now they are old—’

‘Old?’ said Sergeant Troy. ‘Mrs Lawrence isn’t old. Thirty-five if she’s a day.’

‘Thirty—’

‘Nice looking, too.’ On their way to the door Troy stopped at the tacky white table and peered into the Amaretti tin. It was full of rubber bands. ‘Slim, blonde. Lovely—’

‘Open the door, Sergeant.’

Miss Calthrop was still vibrating at full throttle as the DCI thanked her and the two men left.

As they got into the car Troy said, ‘Talk about well built. I bet one of her legs weighs more than our garden shed.’ Then, when there was no reply, ‘We’re really meeting them today.’

‘We meet them all the time, Sergeant. The trouble with you is, you’ve no relish for eccentrics.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

Relish, huh. What’s to relish? As far as Sergeant Troy was concerned, eccentrics was just a poncy word for weirdos. He liked people who ran along predictable lines. The others just tossed a spanner in the works and screwed up life for everybody else. He put the keys in the ignition, revved hard with showy and quite unnecessary vigour and asked if they would be going straight to the address they had just been given for Carlotta Ryan.

‘May as well.’

‘Good. I like driving in London. It’s a real challenge.’

Barnaby winced. Then, as they drove away, his thoughts turned again to Vivienne Calthrop. Her pretty face: blue eyes, perfect small nose and soft, rosy lips lost in a surrounding sea of wobbly fat and double chins. The wonderful hennaed hair tumbling over her shoulders, and eyebrows dyed exactly to match. It was the eyebrows, Barnaby decided, that got to him. There was something touching about the trouble taken.

‘I’d love to hear her sing.’

‘Yeah, great.’ Troy spoke absently. He was watching the mirror, signalling, pulling out. ‘Who?’

‘Who? Didn’t you hear that woman’s voice? It was practically operatic.’

‘Me and opera, chief.’ Troy sighed then shook his head, feigning regret at this mutual lack of enchantment.

‘You don’t know what the word Philistine means, do you, Troy?’

‘Certainly I do,’ Sergeant Troy responded quickly, on solid ground for once. ‘My Auntie Doll takes it for her blood pressure.’

Lomax Road was a turning to the left halfway down Whitechapel just past the London Hospital. A tall narrow house which looked to be as grotty inside as it was out. A blanket was pinned up at the ground-floor window, grimy nets at the one upstairs.

‘Be a laugh if she’s in there, won’t it? Feet up, watching the box, having a bevvy.’

‘Nothing would please me more.’ Barnaby studied the various bells. The wooden backing was half hanging off the wall, the wires rusty. Benson. Ducane (Chas). Walker. Ryan. He pressed them all. A few minutes later a small sash window was pushed up and a young girl looked out.

‘Whaddya want?’

‘Police,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘No police in here. Sorry.’

‘We’re looking for Carlotta Ryan.’

‘She’s gone.’

‘Could you perhaps spare a minute?’ asked DCI Barnaby.

‘’Ang about.’ The window slammed shut.

Troy muttered, ‘What a dump. Just look at that.’ The concrete front garden was full of splitting bin bags, festering rubbish and dog mess. ‘I bet the rats queue up to have it away on that lot.’

They could hear her clattering downstairs, clopetty clop, clopetty clop, like a little pony. Which meant stone steps or old lino, about what you’d expect in a dump like this.

A tall, slim girl stood facing them. She wore sprayed-on leather hipsters and a once-white jumper, well short of her waist. Her hair was apricot with bronze tips, in a rough poodle cut. Glitter dust bloomed and sparkled on her cheeks and eyelids. Her navel was pierced with a ring from which depended a very large, shiny stone. Her hands were grubby with bitten nails. Barnaby thought she looked like a shop-soiled angel.

He introduced himself and Troy then asked if they might come in for a minute. She looked up and down the road, for all the world like a suburban housewife embarrassed at having the police on the doorstep. A comparison dispelled by her first words.

‘You gotta be sharp round ’ere.’ She closed the door behind them. ‘They see you co-operating with the old Bill ...’

The stairs were stone and the walls covered with dirty anaglypta. They had been painted so often that the original pattern of swirling feathers had been almost obliterated, at the moment by an unpleasant brownish yellow gloss.

It was not a large house - there were two doors on the ground floor and two on the top - but it was tall and the stairs were very steep. As they climbed after the girl, Barnaby, holding the banister, huffed and puffed. Troy enjoyed his rear view of the leather trousers. Halfway up they passed what looked like a very grotty bathroom and toilet. The window which the girl had looked through was still open.

‘Which ... which flat is Miss Ryan’s?’ wheezed the chief inspector.

‘You all right?’

‘Huhh ... huhh ...’

‘I should come and sit down before you fall down.’

‘I’m fine. Thank you.’ Barnaby hated to reveal any physical weakness and he made a point of wandering round the girl’s room for several moments before he actually did find a seat on a zebra-striped Dralon settee, splitting its sides with fair wear and tear.

‘Carlotta lived next door.’

‘Could you give me your name, please?’ Sergeant Troy lowered himself carefully onto a pink furry stool with purple leatherette trim and a little sequin fringe. He felt like a poser in a clip joint showered by sardonic abuse along the lines of ‘get your kit off, sailor’ or ‘ooh, look - a chipolata’.

‘Tanya.’

‘Very exotic.’ He smiled across at her. ‘Russian.’

‘Yeah. If me mum could’ve said no to the Smirnoff, I wouldn’t be here today.’

Barnaby laughed and Troy turned his head, surprised and resentful. He had lost count of the little witticisms he had polished up and delivered to the chief to ease the boredom of the daily grind. If he got a half-smile he reckoned he’d won the jackpot. Now he couldn’t even console himself with the thought that the DCI had no sense of humour.

‘Surname?’

‘Walker.’ She stared at them both. ‘What’s she done now then, Carlotta?’

‘How well did you know her?’ asked Barnaby, leaning forward in his usual friendly fashion.

‘We got on OK, considering.’

‘Considering what?’

‘Different backgrounds and that. I were at Bethnal Green Comprehensive, she went to some posh school in the Lake District. Way she described it, you’d’ve been better off slagging round the Pentonville Road.’

‘Did you ever think she might be making it all up?’

‘Oh, yeah. She were a dreadful liar, except she called it imagination. “You can imagine yourself anybody, Tarn,” she used to say. And I’d say, like, “Get real, Lottie.” ’Cause when you’ve finished imagining, it’s the real world you’re stuck with, right?’

‘Right,’ said Sergeant Troy and smiled again. He couldn’t help it. In spite of the screwy gunge decorating her face and the stridently sexy clothes, there was something almost innocent about her. Her gelled hair stuck up in little points all over her head, like the soft spines of a baby porcupine.

‘We’ve been given some background from the Caritas office.’

‘You what?’

‘An organisation that helps young offenders.’ Barnaby read over the main points of his notes. ‘Could you add anything to that?’

‘Not really. I know she’d been thieving for ages before she were caught. And then she goes straight back to it. Seemed to think she were invisible. Like I said, living in a dream.’

‘Did Carlotta talk much about the theatre?’ Barnaby waved his hands in a vaguely all-inclusive gesture. ‘Acting, that sort of thing.’

‘She were dead keen. Had this paper with jobs in—’

‘The Stage?’

‘Mind reader, ain’tcha?’

‘My daughter’s in the business.’

‘She’d follow the ads up but never get anywhere. Reckoned you had to have this special card.’

‘Equity.’ Barnaby remembered the excitement and delight on the day Cully got hers.

‘Spent all her money on classes. Dancing, working on her voice. I mean, who needs it these days? That lot in EastEnders sound like they was dragged up in Limehouse.’

‘Do you have any idea where she went for lessons?’

‘Somewhere up West. Look, you still ain’t told me what this is about. Is she OK, Lottie?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Troy. ‘She’s disappeared.’

‘I ain’t surprised. She were bored rigid down in Fern whatsit. Bugger all to do. The old man always jawin’ and his wife treating her like dirt.’

Barnaby thought that didn’t sound like Ann Lawrence. ‘You talked to her, then?’

‘She’d ring up sometimes.’

Barnaby glanced around the cluttered little room.

‘There’s a pay phone in the ’all.’

‘And she didn’t come back here?’

Tanya shook her head. ‘I’d’ve heard her moving about.’

‘Maybe you were at work.’

‘I only work nights. Lap dancing in a club off Wardour Street.’ Tanya noticed Troy’s expression change and added, with affecting dignity, ‘It’s nothin’ like that. They’re not even allowed to touch you.’

‘How about visitors? Did Carlotta have any?’

‘Men, I suppose you mean.’

‘Not necessarily. We’re looking to contact anyone who knew her.’

‘Well, the answer’s no. She went out a lot but nobody came to the flat.’

‘Who has the place now?’

‘Nobody. You have to pay three months in advance so it ain’t run out yet.’

‘Do you have a spare key?’

Another head shake. ‘I can give you the landlord’s number if you want.’

As Troy wrote it down, Barnaby wandered over to the window. The back view was only slightly less depressing than the front. Tiny concrete yards or squares of hard-packed earth almost invisible under abandoned domestic detritus. There was a rusty fire escape that he wouldn’t have liked to trust his life to. He turned back into the room and asked Tanya about the people in the downstairs flat.

‘Benson’s a Rasta, spends most of his time over at Peckham with his girl friend and the baby. Charlie’s a porter at Seven Dials. But they both moved in after Carlotta left so they won’t know nothing.’

‘I believe she received several airmail letters at the Rectory.’

‘They’d be from her dad. In Bahrain.’

‘We heard,’ said Sergeant Troy, ‘she threw them away unopened. ’

‘Blimey.’ Tanya’s face became pinched and wistful. ‘Catch me chucking letters from my dad away. Always assuming I could find out who he was.’

‘If you can think of anything else, Tanya, give me a call.’ Barnaby gave her his card. ‘And, of course, if Carlotta turns up. Day or night - there’s an answering machine.’

On their way out Troy took down the number of the pay phone. Barnaby opened the front door and the two policemen were once more exposed to the weak autumn sunshine.

Sergeant Troy thought of his family: parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles. Although at any given moment at least half of these assorted relatives would be driving him up the wall he couldn’t imagine life without them.

‘Poor kid. Not much of a start, is it? Not even knowing who your dad is.’

‘You’re not going soft on me, are you, Sergeant?’

Tanya stood at the window watching them walk away. She let the curtain fall and heard a soft click as the wardrobe door was opened in the bedroom. Then someone moving about.

‘It’s all right,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘You can come out now. They’ve gone.’

As Barnaby and Troy were driving along the City Road on their way to Camden Town, Ann Lawrence was in the kitchen of the Old Rectory brushing a leg of lamb with branches of rosemary soaked in olive oil. Hetty Leathers sat next to her at the table shelling peas. Candy had twisted and rolled off her cushion and was now hobbling and hopping towards them.

‘She can smell the meat.’ Ann smiled down at the little dog. ‘We’re a bit dot and carry one today, I’m afraid,’ said Hetty and produced a biscuit from the pocket of her flowered overall. While Candy snapped it up, she looked at Ann with some concern. ‘Are you sure you’re up to things, Mrs Lawrence? You look ever so flushed.’

‘I’m all right,’ said Ann. ‘I feel much better, honestly.’

She meant this and for more than one reason. First, her vow to tell the truth and shame the devil had not faltered throughout yesterday and when she woke up this morning the resolve was as strong as ever. Secondly, although she could never have admitted this to Hetty the flush was actually one of emotional intoxication following an argument with her husband.

‘It was ever so good of the Reverend to agree to take Charlie’s funeral,’ said Hetty, uncannily picking up her train of thought. ‘Him being retired and everything.’

‘He was only too pleased.’

This was not quite true. Lionel had been really put out when Ann had made the suggestion. Had argued that to appear publicly in his vestments when for the last ten years he had been regarded by the village as a lay person would confuse everyone. She told him not to be ridiculous and a free and frank exchange of views occurred, to Lionel’s alarm and Ann’s surprise and increasing exhilaration.

‘This man worked at the Old Rectory for years.’

‘I’m aware of that, my dear.’

‘It would mean a great deal to Hetty. The day will be painful enough without a complete stranger holding forth from the altar steps. And it’s not as if you’ve pulled much weight on the pastoral front so far.’

‘What do you mean, Ann?’

‘I mean the counselling, Lionel. The tender loving care, the patient listening and ongoing support - I thought that was your speciality.’

‘I fear little will be gained by continuing this conversation.’

‘No doubt if she was eighteen and pretty and accused of selling drugs Hetty’d have had all that plus pocket money, a nice little flat and a new ironing board.’

‘You’re shouting.’

‘If you think I’m shouting now just keep walking towards the door.’

‘I can’t think what has got into you.’

Ann stood very still and a feeling of tremendous caution possessed her. She realised it was not so much something getting into her but something that was already in her about to get out. Was that what she really wanted? But after a moment her mind, so recently tumultuous and chaotic, clarified. Resentments and desires that she had not even known she possessed came into focus.

How grey and sterile her gentle, orderly life suddenly seemed. How spineless her behaviour. For years she had struggled to accommodate her husband’s way of life. Had seen him, if not as a good person, at least as a better human being than herself. Now this self-imposed martyrdom was coming to an end.

Lionel had stopped walking. Perched on the edge of the nearest chair, he had started patting the arm in a soothing manner as if the very furniture might be the next thing to turn against him.

Ann watched with a lack of emotion which quite disturbed her. Lionel had gone his own way without let or hindrance for so long that she had forgotten how he reacted when crossed. The mouth had become petulant, the lower lip, soft and rather wet, pouted in a sulk that might have been appealing in a tiny child. In a 58-year-old man it was simply pathetic.

‘We can’t go on like this, Lionel.’

‘Like what?’ Genuinely puzzled, he gaped at her. ‘What’s wrong with you, Ann?’

‘I’m not blaming you—’

‘I should hope not.’ Lionel was righteously indignant. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘If anyone’s to blame it’s myself. I’ve let things drift partly out of laziness but also because I wanted us to be happy—’

‘We are happy.’

‘I haven’t been happy for years,’ said Ann.

Lionel gulped and said, ‘Then I think it’s high time you started counting your blessings, my dear.’ He levered himself upright, his eyes sliding anxiously towards the door. ‘Perhaps you should take one of your tranquillisers.’

‘I’ve thrown them down the lavatory.’

‘Was that altogether wise?’ When his wife did not reply, Lionel took a cautious step sideways. ‘And now I really must go. I’m due at the juvenile court by ten thirty.’

‘Why are other people’s troubles always more important to you than our own?’

‘This is a special case.’

‘I’m a special case.’

‘I shouldn’t be late back.’

‘Ring them up. Tell them you’ve got a crisis in the family.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘I will, then.’

‘No.’

Lionel had spoken so quickly and so quickly sat down again that Ann knew the court appointment was a lie. She felt the first flicker of pity yet never considered for a moment letting things go. There was too much at stake. She took a deep breath to calm herself. Though her heart was full, she found herself wondering if the words to clearly express her feelings could be found. The main thing to remember was there was to be no going back. Or forward either, if that meant treading the old, well-worn, soul-crushing path.

‘Lionel, I came to a decision a little while ago. There are various things I need to say and I hope you’ll hear me out.’

Lionel had decided to take a leaf out of the book of Job. Long-suffering, patient, eyes glazed with inattention, fingers drumming an awkward rhythm on bony knees.

‘First, I can no longer agree to have strangers staying here.’

‘Well, that’s no surprise.’ The tone was condescending and would-be jovial. Plainly he planned to humour her. ‘The way you treat—’

‘In any case, maintaining a nine-roomed house and a very large garden is beyond my means.’

‘Help costs nothing in the country—’

‘The place is falling to bits. I can’t afford to keep it on.’ She was determined not to use the royal pronoun. Lionel had contributed nothing financially to their marriage since he had surrendered his stipend and she would not pretend that he had. ‘And there’s no reason why I should.’

‘We have a position in the village—’

‘What do you know of the village?’ Ann looked through the window at the cedar tree, part of her existence since the day she was born, and her courage faltered. But there were other trees and freedom never came without a price. ‘The Rectory will have to be sold.’

‘You can’t do that!’

‘Why not? It belongs to me.’ Thank God. And thank God I never let him near my trust fund, such as it is. How awful, thought Ann. Here’s the only life I’ve ever known breaking up in huge chunks around me and all I can think about is whether I’ll have any money. But then - she experienced a sad instant of comprehension - it’s not as if there’s any love involved.

‘And where are we going to live? Or haven’t you given that trivial little matter any thought?’

‘I hope to get a job. Perhaps train for something.’

‘At your age?’

‘I’m only thirty-eight.’

‘People are retired at forty these days.’ He gave a bitter, sarcastic laugh. ‘Easy to see you’ve never had to cope with the real world.’

Ann sensed genuine spite behind the words. Understandable. It was not only her world that was being shaken up today. But it was still a shock to realise that the person to whom she had given almost half her life didn’t even like her.

‘Anyway,’ Lionel continued sulkily, ‘you haven’t answered my question. And I can tell you right now we won’t be moving far from this area. My work must and will continue even though I may no longer be able to offer a refuge to those in need.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ replied Ann, driven to bluntness by this blithe assumption that they would still be rolling merrily along in double harness. ‘You’ll just have to find somewhere with enough space.’

‘Find ... enough ...’

‘With a spare room.’

‘What?’ Lionel’s face showed utter bewilderment which gradually dissolved into an alarmed understanding. ‘You can’t mean.’

‘You don’t listen, do you, Lionel? It’s been all of two minutes since I told you I haven’t been happy for years.’

A long pause.

‘Well, we’ll just have to do something about that, won’t we?’ said Lionel, adding an awkward and tentative, ‘dear’.

Faced with this grating sycophancy, Ann winced. ‘It’s too late.’

‘I see.’ At this Lionel gradually became so puffed up with outrage it seemed he might rise naturally into the air and float to the ceiling. ‘So this is the reward I get for a lifetime of devoted service?’

Unfortunately at this moment Ann’s eye alighted on the ebony ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. She saw herself crossing the room, picking it up and handing it to Lionel with every good wish for a happy retirement. Her mouth twitched and she had to bite hard on her bottom lip. Covering her face with her hand she turned away.

‘I’m glad to see you still have some decent feelings, Ann.’ Lionel, now safely grounded, moved with hunted dignity towards the door.

‘One more thing,’ said Ann as she heard the handle turn. ‘I want that man out of the garage flat.’

‘I can’t get anywhere without Jax,’ said Lionel firmly. Then, with a little stab of triumph, ‘You’ll have to drive the car.’

‘There won’t be any car, Lionel.’

Kemel Mahoud, contacted on Barnaby’s mobile, gave his office address as 14a Kelly Street, just off Kentish Town Road.

He was a wiry little man with a smooth, fawn skin, almost bald but flashing a huge brigand moustache, two silky blue-black swags of hair waxed up at the ends into curly commas. He was obsequiously anxious to be helpful - suspiciously so, in Troy’s opinion.

‘A first-class tenant, Miss Ryan. First rate. No troubles. Rent paid. Spot on.’

‘She was a thief, Mr Mahoud,’ said Troy. ‘When the police followed her home, they found the place full of stolen goods.’

‘Ah!’ He gasped in what appeared to be real amazement. ‘I can’t believe. Such a nice girl.’

‘You knew her?’

‘No, my God. Just saw her one time. She gives deposit, three months’ rent, I give key. Two minutes - done.’

‘Well, now I’d like you to give me the key,’ said Barnaby. ‘We need to gain entrance to the flat.’

‘Won’t she let you in?’

‘Miss Ryan has disappeared,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘But rent is due, two weeks.’

‘That’s not our concern. You’ll get the key back, don’t worry.’

‘No problem.’ He crossed to the far wall, three-quarters covered by a huge peg board on which hung masses of neatly labelled keys. ‘Always I wish to help.’

‘Slimy toerag,’ said Sergeant Troy, climbing into the Astra and ramming the key into the ignition. ‘Foreigners. They’re practically running the place.’

‘Watch that florist’s van.’

Crawling back down Whitechapel past the Bangladeshi stalls of wild-looking vegetables and ripe mangoes and glittering saris and cooking pots, Barnaby started to keep his eye out for a place to lunch.

‘Oh, look, chief! What about there?’

‘Keep your eye on the road.’

‘It’s the Blind Beggar. Where it all happened.’

‘Nearly thirty years ago.’

‘Couldn’t we, though? Please?’

Troy’s enthusiasm was great and his disappointment commensurate. A comfy, bright, clean pub with a nice thick carpet and all the expected furnishings. There was even a paved garden with white furniture and a dark green awning tacked onto one side. It being a pleasant day, this was where they took their hefty beef sandwiches and halves of Ruddles.

‘Your face.’ Barnaby was laughing.

‘What?’

‘Like a kid on Christmas morning with an empty sock. What did you expect, blood on the floor?’

‘Sawdust, maybe.’

‘Look, one Kray’s snuffed it, the other’s in for life and Frankie Fraser’s making a bomb on the celebrity circuit. It’s a different world.’

Troy smeared horseradish onto his sandwich and looked out at the crowded pavements and roaring traffic. This was life and no mistake. He started to relax and enjoy himself.

‘Actually, chief, I’ve been thinking about putting in for a transfer to the Met.’

‘You’ve been what?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they’ll chew you up in two minutes flat then spit out the fur and gristle, that’s why not.’

‘It can’t be that bad.’

‘Can’t it?’ Barnaby laughed. ‘What put such a daft idea into your head in the first place?’

‘They get to drive a Porsche 968 Club Sport on patrol.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘It’s true. Inspector Carter told me in the canteen.’

‘Take out a second mortgage and buy your own.’

‘Maureen’d kill me.’

‘It’s still a safer option.’

When they returned at three o’clock to 17 Lomax Road, it seemed deserted. Before letting themselves in, Barnaby had tried the bell for Benson and Ducane (Chas) with no success. Troy rapped on Tanya Walker’s door and got the same result.

The chief inspector hesitated a few seconds before entering Carlotta’s room. Over the years he had come to savour moments like this for their sheer unpredictability. You turn the key, you open the box and you find ... what? Good news that could unexpectedly turn a deadlocked, impenetrable case inside out; bad news that could make all the work that had gone before a waste of time. Or nothing at all.

‘Blimey,’ said Sergeant Troy who entered first. ‘The locusts have landed.’

‘They certainly have,’ agreed Barnaby.

The rooms were empty except for the furniture. A wooden table with extending leaves and two hard-backed chairs, a shabby armchair and a scarred chest of drawers with two knobs missing. In the corner of the room was a sink, a Baby Belling and a tiny fridge. On the metal draining board were a few chipped cups and saucers and a battered frying pan. Behind a greasy-looking bead curtain was a second very small room with a single bed, the sort of dressing table that had become obsolete sometime in the swinging sixties and a narrow wardrobe.

‘I wonder how much that oily tosser screwed her for this dump.’

Barnaby shrugged. ‘A hundred. One twenty.’

‘Daylight robbery.’ Troy moved over to the chest of drawers and made to open one.

‘Use your handkerchief!’

‘Right, chief.’ Troy wrapped it round his fingers and pulled. ‘You think we’ve got a suspicious here, then?’

‘I don’t know what I think.’ Barnaby walked around, staring at the walls. Lumps of Blu-Tack were plentiful, posters were not.

Troy called out from the smaller room, ‘Drawers in here empty. And the wardrobe.’

‘Why would someone strip a place when they haven’t permanently moved out and there’s still some rent left?’

‘Search me.’

‘Even the bedding’s disappeared.’

‘Maybe Tanya’s borrowed it.’

‘No key, remember?’

Troy sat in the armchair. It made the one with the broken spring in Vivienne Calthrop’s office feel like cloud nine.

‘Maybe she thought she was permanently moving out,’ suggested Troy.

‘Yes,’ said Barnaby. ‘Maybe she did. And there’s something else.’ Barnaby sniffed then breathed more deeply as he came to a halt by the window. ‘How long did Lawrence say Carlotta had been at the Rectory?’

‘Couple of months.’

‘There’s no way this place has been shut up for two months. The air’s fresh. This window’s been opened within the last day or so.’

‘Crikey,’ said Sergeant Troy.

‘We’ll drive over to Bethnal Green nick. See if they’ll do us a favour and get any prints lifted. And seal that door.’

‘Pity the horse has bolted,’ said Troy.

By the time his team had assembled for their early evening briefing, Barnaby had discovered that the Met’s forensics could not be of assistance in the matter of Carlotta’s flat.

‘I asked if they’d dust the place but they’ve already got a backlog processing prints so we’ll have to get our lot out there a.s.a.p. Then we’ll be able to match what they get against the landlord and anyone else with access to the keys. Plus, of course, the three other residents in the house.’

‘Do we have the girl’s own prints, sir?’ asked Sergeant Brierley.

‘We should have by this time tomorrow.’

Barnaby was looking forward to telling Lionel Lawrence that a couple of forensic officers would be entering the Rectory, with or without his permission, within the next twenty-four hours and smothering all resistable surfaces in his attic bedsit with aluminium powder.

As soon as the briefing was concluded, he retired to his office and did just that. When the agitated burble about police states and the harassment of innocent citizens was in full flow, Barnaby interrupted somewhat forcefully.

‘I’m surprised to hear you taking this attitude, Mr Lawrence. I thought you would be a hundred per cent behind anything that helped establish the possible whereabouts and wellbeing of Miss Ryan.’

There was a longish pause during which Barnaby smiled quietly to himself. Wrong-footing the pompous was a small pleasure but some days a man needed all the small pleasures he could gather.

Lionel made a strange noise which sounded as if he was gargling with an extremely unpleasant substance.

‘Well, naturally ...’

‘That’s all right then.’ Barnaby drew a cheerful line under the subject.

‘Will they clean everything up before they go?’

‘No.’

‘Ah.’

‘I also need to speak to your wife. I hope she’s now fully recovered.’

‘She certainly is.’

Barnaby absorbed this quick, unconsidered response, shot through with bad-tempered resentment, and wondered what had brought it about. Perhaps he’d find out tomorrow. With a bit of luck it might be conflict over Jackson. A lever to prise the lid off that particular can of worms.

‘So perhaps we might fix a time tomorrow when Mrs Lawrence is sure to be in.’

‘Well, the Mothers’ Union meet at five thirty. She’ll be here five at the latest to sort out the crockery and stuff. Never misses. Otherwise she’s in Causton most of the day on business.’

A lot of ‘she’s’ there, thought the chief inspector. You’d think the poor woman didn’t have a name to call her own. ‘If you’d kindly tell her—’

‘Tell her yourself. She’s just coming.’

A moment later Ann Lawrence picked up the phone, agreed in a calm voice that 5 p.m. would be a good time and that she was looking forward to talking to him.

Barnaby hung up, shrugged into his overcoat, peered through the dusty cream slats on his Venetian blind and discovered a slight drizzle misting the evening air. It did nothing to damp his spirits. In half an hour he would be home and sitting in his favourite chair in front of the fire with a glass of wine and the daily paper while the wife of his bosom cooked up a storm in the kitchen. Yes, well, maybe in that case, two glasses of wine.

It had been a good day on the whole. He had found out quite a lot about Carlotta. He had met two people who knew her, he had seen where she lived. And tomorrow he would be talking to the one person who knew exactly what had happened on the night she disappeared.