Strange Affair

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“How did you get my address?” Dr. Alex Lukas asked Annie as she stood under her umbrella on the front step of the Belsize Park house shortly after seven o’clock that evening. “I’m not in the telephone directory.”

“We have our sources,” said Annie, who had taken a peek at the personnel records when she made a quick, and otherwise fruitless, search of Jennifer Clewes’s office at the Berger-Lennox.

“Can I come in?” “What do you want? It’s not a police state yet, is it?”

“Not the last time I checked,” said Annie with a smile. “But it is raining fast.”

Dr. Lukas took the chain off the door and stepped back. Annie folded up her umbrella, took off her raincoat and hung it on the coat stand. She followed Dr. Lukas down the thick carpet into a cozy and comfortable living room. The curtains were still open and rain streaked across the windowpanes. The radio was playing quietly, an orchestral concert of some sort. Dr. Lukas excused herself for a moment and went upstairs. While she waited, Annie looked around the room.

What looked to Annie like original works of art hung on the wall, mostly abstract expressionist and cubist pieces, and various knickknacks and framed photographs stood on most available surfaces. The crowded dark-wood bookcase boasted a colorful array of spines, none of them medical. There were novels, mostly Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, poetry by Mandelstam, Akhnatova, Yevtushenko, Tsvetayeva, and a few biographies, Shostakovich, Gorbachev, Pasternak. Annie could see by the lettering that some of the books were in Russian. Taking into account the matryoshka doll on the mantelpiece, and remembering the hint of an accent, it didn’t take much to surmise that Dr. Lukas hailed from Russia, or somewhere in the former Soviet Republic.

Beside the doll stood a black-and-white photograph of a family group in a wooded area: parents and three children. Annie walked over to have a closer look at it. They were all wearing overcoats and no one was smiling; they had that hard, pinched look you get when there isn’t enough food on the table or coal on the fire. Beside it stood another photo of what Annie took to be the parents, more recent and in color. This time they were smiling into the camera, standing beside a large lake in the sunshine.

“On holiday,” said Dr. Lukas, behind her.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy,” said Annie. “Is that your parents?”

“Yes. It was taken two years ago.”

“So you come from Russia?”

“Ukraine. A city called L’viv, in the west, not far from the Polish border. Do you know it?”

“Sorry,” said Annie, whose geography was terrible.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Annie gestured to the photograph again. “Do they still live there?”

Dr. Lukas paused before answering with a tentative “Yes.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Thirteen years. I was twenty-five when the Soviet Union broke up. I was lucky. I got into medical school in Edinburgh. I’d had some training in L’viv, of course, but this country didn’t recognize my qualifications. Do you know how many foreigntrained doctors there are over here driving minicabs and working in restaurants and hotels?”

“No,” said Annie.

“It’s a shame, a terrible waste,” said Dr. Lukas, with a hint of tragic fatalism in her voice.

“You don’t have a very strong accent,” Annie said.

“I worked hard to get rid of it. Foreign accents don’t work in your favor here. But all this is beside the point. What have you come to see me about?”

Dr. Lukas was perching uncomfortably at the edge of an armchair, Annie noticed, body hunched forward and tense, hands clasped in her lap. She was wearing faded jeans and a man’s white casual shirt, no makeup. She looked tired and drawn, as she had in her office.

“You’re right,” said Annie. “It’s not a social call.” She paused and searched for the right way to begin. “Look, in a murder investigation, people sometimes hide things, mask the truth. Not because they’re guilty, but because they’ve maybe committed some minor crime and they’re afraid we’ll uncover it and prosecute them. Do you understand?”

“I’m listening.”

“When that happens, it makes a difficult job even harder. We don’t know what’s important and what isn’t, so how can we know where to focus our line of inquiry?”

“All jobs have their difficulties,” said Dr. Lukas. “Mine included. I don’t see what point there is in you telling me how hard yours is.”

“I thought if you understood, then you’d see reason and tell me the truth.”

“Pardon?”

“I think you heard me.”

“But I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Are you suggesting I lied?”

“I’m saying that you might be hiding something because you think it reflects badly on you. I don’t think you’re lying so much as you’re obscuring the truth. Now it may or may not be important, or it may not seem important to you, but I’d like to know what it is, and I think you’d like to tell me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You get to know people in this job. I think you’re a decent person and I think you’re under a tremendous amount of pressure. Now that could simply be a matter of your work, or it could be due to personal problems which are nothing at all to do with this investigation. But the feeling I get is that there’s something else, and that it is connected.”

“I see.” Dr. Lukas stood up and walked to the cocktail cabinet. “I think I need a drink,” she said, and took out a tumbler and a bottle of Southern Comfort. “What about you?”

“Nothing, thanks,” said Annie.

“As you wish.” She poured herself a large measure and sat down again. This time she relaxed a little more into the armchair and the strain that etched the lines on her forehead and around her eyes and mouth eased. The concert ended and Annie heard the radio audience applaud before the announcer’s voice cut in. Dr. Lukas switched it off, took a sip of Southern Comfort and regarded Annie closely with her serious brown eyes. Annie got the sense that she was trying to come to some sort of decision and realized that she might well end up with a partial truth, if anything, as was so often the case.

The clock ticked and rain tapped against the window. Still Dr. Lukas thought and sipped. Finally, when Annie could almost bear it no longer, she said, “You’re right.”

“About what?”

“About people withholding the truth. Do you think it doesn’t happen in my profession, too? People lie to me all the time. How much they drink. Whether they smoke. What drugs they take. How often they exercise. As if by lying they’d make themselves healthy. But I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Sometimes people use a different standard to measure themselves by,” said Annie. “You might not think you have done anything morally or ethically wrong, but you might have broken the law. Or vice versa.”

Dr. Lukas managed a flicker of a smile. “A fine distinction.”

“I’m not after getting you struck off.”

“I’m happy to hear it.”

“But I do want the truth. What are late girls?”

Dr. Lukas sipped some more Southern Comfort before answering, then she ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “It’s really very simple,” she said. “They are girls who come late to the center.”

“In what sense? Late in their pregnancies?”

“No. There you are quite wrong.”

“Well, I’ve hardly been steered in the right direction. This isn’t supposed to be a guessing game.”

“Now I am telling you. There have been no surgical procedures performed on girls beyond the twenty-four-week legal limit.”

“Okay,” said Annie, “so what is it all about?”

“Girl who come late to the center, after regular hours. In the evening.”

“When you’re working late?”

“I have a lot of paperwork. You wouldn’t believe it, even a doctor… but I do.”

“So why do these girls come after hours?”

“Why do you think?”

“They want to bypass the system for some reason, and you help them to do it?”

“These girls are prostitutes, for the most part, and many of them are illegal immigrants or asylum seekers. They can’t go through the National Health and they can’t afford our fees.”

“Pro-bono work, then?”

“You could say that.”

“What exactly do you do for them?”

“I handle the forms, the papers necessary to secure an abortion, if that’s what they want. If another doctor’s signature is needed, I get that too from someone at one of the clinics. They don’t ask me too many questions. It’s very easy and it harms no one.”

“Do you perform the abortions?”

“No. They are done elsewhere, at one of the clinics.”

“What do you do, then?”

“I examine them, make sure they are in good general health. There’s venereal disease to worry about. And AIDS, of course. Some girls have drug and alcohol problems. Many of the fetuses would be born with severe handicaps if they lived.”

“Do you supply drugs?”

Dr. Lukas looked directly at Annie. “No,” she said. “I understand why they might want to take drugs, the life they are living, but I won’t supply them. They seem to have no problem getting drugs elsewhere, though.”

“So if we were to check the drugs at the center against records, they would match?”

“If they don’t, it’s not me who’s been taking them. But, yes, I think they would. Besides, we have no need for the kind of drugs you’re talking about at the center.”

“How often does this happen?”

“Not very often. Maybe once, sometimes twice a month.”

“Why do these girls come to you? How do they know about you?”

“Many of them are from eastern Europe,” Dr. Lukas said with a shrug. “I’m known in the community.”

That sounded a bit vague, Annie thought – eastern Europe covered a large area – but she let it go. Now Dr. Lukas was on a roll it was better to get as much as possible out of her rather than belabor one point. “What about Jennifer Clewes? Did she know about this?”

“Yes.”

“When did she find out?”

“She’s known for a month or two. I didn’t realize she worked late sometimes, too. I thought I was alone there. You’ve seen how isolated my office is. The girls usually buzz the front door and I let them in myself. This time Jennifer got there first. She didn’t say anything, but later she asked me what was going on.”

“What did you tell her?”

“What I’m telling you.”

“And what was her reaction?”

“She became interested.” Dr. Lukas swirled the remains of her drink in her glass. “Jennifer was a truly decent human being,” she said. “When I explained to her about the girls and the situation they were in, nowhere to turn to for help, she understood.”

“It didn’t disturb her, upset her?”

“No. She was a bit uncomfortable about it at first, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, she was the administrator. She helped to protect me. Paperwork got lost, that sort of thing. I told her it would be best if she didn’t tell anyone, that not everyone would understand.”

“We think she must have told her boyfriend.”

Dr. Lukas shrugged. “That was for her judgment alone.”

“So Jennifer became involved in it with you?”

“Yes. We were both trying to help unfortunate girls. It’s not that this happened often, you understand. It wasn’t a regular thing. These girls would not have been able to come if they’d had to pay. And remember, they couldn’t just walk into the nearest NHS clinic. What do you think would happen to them? Do you think there are no longer back-street abortionists using rusty coat hangers?”

“So what went wrong?”

“Nothing went wrong.”

“Jennifer Clewes is dead.”

“I know nothing about that. I’ve told you what I was keeping from you, who the late girls are and how and why I helped them. I’ve told you Jennifer’s part in all this. There is nothing more. Once in a while a girl who needed help would come to me and I provided it. That’s all there is to it.”

“Did anyone else know? Georgina, for example?”

“No. At first it was only me, then Jennifer. She was the only other person who ever stayed late.”

Somehow it didn’t all add up, Annie thought. There were too many pieces missing and the ones she had didn’t fit together properly. “What about Carmen Petri? Was she one of the late girls? What was so special about her?”

Dr. Lukas seemed to tense up again, the lines on her forehead deepening, her posture stiffening. “I don’t know the name.”

“She was one of the late girls, wasn’t she? What happened to her?”

“I told you I’ve never heard of her.”

“Did something go wrong? Is that it?”

“I’ve told you, I don’t know anyone called Carmen.”

Annie took out the sketch that Brooke’s police artist had coaxed from Alf Seaton. “Do you recognize this man?” she asked.

“No,” said Dr. Lukas. Annie couldn’t be certain that she was telling the truth.

“About a week ago, Jennifer was seen leaving this building with a young girl. The person who saw them said that the girl looked pregnant. They were talking, then a man who looked very much like this one came over and the girl went away with him in a car. Do you know what that was about?”

Annie could have sworn that Dr. Lukas turned a shade paler. “No,” she said. “I told you, Jennifer sometimes worked late, too, saw the girls. Sometimes she talked to them. She was a very caring person and it’s a tragedy what happened to her.”

“It is,” said Annie, standing up to leave. “And I’m going to find out what was behind it, with or without your help.”

“Please, you don’t know…”

“Don’t know what?”

Dr. Lukas paused, rubbing her hands together. “Please. I’m telling you the truth.”

“I think you’re telling me part of the truth,” Annie said, “and I’m going to leave you to think over your position. When you’ve made your mind up you can call me at this number.” Annie scribbled her mobile number on the back of her card and left it on the coffee table. “I’ll show myself out.”

Well, you can’t win them all, Banks thought, after a wasted trip to Chelsea. One of the problems with paying surprise visits was that sometimes the object of your visit wasn’t at home, and such was the case with Gareth Lambert that wet Tuesday evening, though Banks had even hung around in a shop doorway over the street for about an hour waiting. Burgess had said that Lambert was elusive.

The humidity and damp clothing made the crowded underground carriage smell like a wet dog, and Banks was glad to get off at Green Park for the Piccadilly Line. The second carriage was half empty and he passed the short trip reading the adverts and trying to suss out the language of the newspaper that the person opposite him was reading. The letters were Roman, but it definitely wasn’t anything he recognized. Sometimes the depths of his own ignorance appalled him.

When he got to Corinne’s flat he was soaked and she gave him a towel for his hair, made him take off his raincoat and his jacket and hung them up in the bathroom under an electric fire to dry them out. His trousers were stuck to his thighs and shins and he thought of asking her to dry those, too, but she might get the wrong idea. Besides, it would be rather undignified carrying out an interview, albeit a friendly one, sitting around in his underpants.

“Warm drink?”

“Tea, if you’ve got any. No milk or sugar for me.”

“I think I can manage that.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, the rain, it was a close, muggy evening. Sweat filmed Corinne’s upper lip and forehead, and she looked as if she hadn’t been sleeping well. Her hair was tangled and her eyes had dark circles under them. So Roy had the power to make a woman feel this way, no matter what he’d done to her. What the hell was it about him? Sandra wouldn’t give Banks the time of day, and even Annie couldn’t get away quick enough if he talked about anything other than the case at hand. Banks also thought of Penny Cartwright again and her revulsion at the idea of dinner with him. She would probably have jumped at the chance if Roy had asked her.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get here sooner,” Banks said, when he had a warm cup of tea in his hand. “You can imagine what it’s been like.”

“Have you seen your parents? How are they? Your mother was very nice to me. Not that your father wasn’t… but you know what I mean.”

Banks remembered that last October, much to his surprise, his mother had taken Corinne into the kitchen to help her prepare the anniversary spread and in no time they had been chatting away to each other like old friends.

Thinking of his parents, he also remembered the message that the thug in the red Vectra had given him. We know where your parents live. How did they know? From Roy? When it came right down to it, though, it wasn’t that difficult to find out such things. Most likely they had followed Banks to Peterborough the day before and he hadn’t spotted them. He would ring his father before it got too late and make sure everything was all right there. He would also ring the Peterborough police again to make sure they had someone watching the house at all times. If this man with the ponytail had killed Jennifer Clewes, as Annie seemed to think he had, then he and his friends didn’t make idle threats. Banks wished he could arrange for his parents to go away for a while, but they would never agree to it. Not at a time like this.

“They’re coping,” Banks said finally. “My mother took it rather hard, as you can imagine. Dad’s trying to be a rock, but the strain’s beginning to show.”

“I hope they get through it. Do you think I should give them a ring?”

“It wouldn’t do any harm,” Banks said. “Maybe in a couple of days.” He sipped some tea – a pleasant, scented Earl Grey – then leaned forward and set the cup and saucer down on the low table. “Look, Corinne, this probably isn’t anything to do with what happened to Roy, but in a murder investigation you have to follow up all the loose ends.”

“I understand.”

“A couple of months ago, in April, you went with Roy to the Berger-Lennox Centre.”

Corinne looked away. “That’s right. It was a private matter.”

“I’m not here to judge you, either of you. Whose idea was it?”

“Was what?”

“To go to the Berger-Lennox.”

“Oh, Roy’s. He’d invested in it. He’d also visited the center before, checked it out. He said it was a good place.”

So Roy had probably already met, or at least seen, Jennifer Clewes on a previous visit. “And was it?”

“They treated me well enough.”

“The woman on reception thought you were Roy’s daughter.”

“Well, I used my own name. I wasn’t trying to pretend or anything.”

“There’s plenty of reasons these days for a girl having a different name from her father.”

“I suppose so.”

“So you went through with the procedure?”

Now she looked directly at him. “Yes. I had an abortion. Okay?”

“I assume you’re sure it was Roy’s baby?”

“Yes, of course. What do you think I am?”

“Why didn’t you want to keep it?”

“I… I didn’t feel ready.”

“What about Roy?”

“He’d already made it clear he wasn’t interested. He wasn’t much interested in me, either. He thinks I didn’t see him chatting up that redhead in the reception area, but I did.”

“Jennifer Clewes?”

Corinne put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God. Is that who it was? The girl who got shot? I’ve read about her in the papers. What happened?”

“That’s where he met her, the center. Perhaps you can see now why I’m asking all these questions. There are too many connections and similarities here, but I’m missing something.”

“I don’t think I can help you. I mean, I saw him talking to her, but he’s always like that, flirting with girls. And I knew there was someone. I just didn’t put two and two together. Story of my life.”

“No reason you should. So you and Roy were splitting up when you found out you were pregnant?”

“It happened at the worst possible time.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Like these things always do.”

“And you discussed it and you both agreed abortion was the way to go?”

“Yes. Look, it’s nothing to do with what happened. It can’t be. It was a private matter. You’re not trying to say I killed him because I had an abortion and he found a new girlfriend, are you?”

“Of course not,” said Banks, though the thought had crossed his mind. Rejection and jealousy, coupled with the emotional trauma of abortion, could be a lethal mix. She hadn’t done it herself, Banks knew, but maybe she had enough money to hire someone, and maybe she even knew how to find someone to hire. After all, she was an accountant to the entertainment world, and that was full of villains, or celebrities who liked to rub shoulders with them. But Banks had dismissed the idea as quickly as it had come into his head. Wronged lovers usually go for a more direct method, as any cop who has responded to a domestic will tell you. “Roy was chatting up his new girlfriend while you were in the doctor’s office,” Banks said. “How does that make you feel?”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. “How do you think it makes me feel?” she said. “He always was a bastard. I knew that. But I loved him.”

And this time there was no stopping her. The dam burst and the flood was unloosed. Banks went over and sat beside Corinne on the sofa, putting his arms around her. She didn’t resist. She just melted against him, buried her head in his already wet shoulder and let it all pour out. Banks held her and stroked her hair. After a few minutes the tears subsided and she gently extricated herself from his arms. Banks went back to the armchair and picked up his tea. It was lukewarm now but it was something to hide behind in the awkward moments that follow an emotional outburst. The cup rattled against the saucer as he picked it up.

Corinne went and fetched some tissues. “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “It’s the first time… I was just bottling it all up. It feels better.”

“I’m glad,” said Banks, “and I’m sorry if I sounded abrupt or rude.”

“It must be very frustrating for you,” Corinne said. “And I know you and Roy weren’t very close, but you must… I mean, he was you brother, after all.”

“This might sound an odd question,” said Banks, “but did Roy ever tell you he’d witnessed the attacks on the World Trade Center?”

“Yes,” said Corinne. “I didn’t know him back then, of course, but he told me it devastated him. He had nightmares for months. I could only imagine what it must have been like.”

“Did he ever talk to you about religion, about spiritual matters?”

“Not really, no. I mean, I knew he went to church on Sundays, and he said he liked his local vicar, but it didn’t really interfere with our life.”

“You’re not interested in spiritual matters yourself?”

“Spiritual matters, as far as I can understand them, yes. But not in organized religion. Look at the misery and bloodshed it’s caused throughout history. Still causes.”

“Did the two of you ever argue about this?”

“Yes, but we always reached an impasse, the way you do when you talk about such things. He said that was just an excuse and that it was mankind who caused the bloodshed and misery, and I said his must be a pretty rotten God if he was so all-powerful and he let it all happen anyway. We learned to stay away from the subject in the end. I mean, where do you go from there?”

Where, indeed? wondered Banks, who had been involved in one or two similar arguments himself over the years.

“He didn’t push religion on me, or on anyone else, for that matter, if that’s what you’re getting at. It was a very private thing with him. And he obviously didn’t use it to try to talk me out of having an abortion.”

“I just wondered how big a role it played in his life, that’s all.”

“Like I said, he went to church on Sunday and had a philosophical chat with the vicar every now and then.”

“Okay. Fair enough. Did he ever mention someone called Gareth Lambert, an old friend?”

“Yes, I remember him mentioning the name.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose. It looked raw when she’d finished. “No,” she said. “But I heard his name.”

“Do you remember the context?”

“Roy was just talking about an old friend of his who was back in the country. They hadn’t seen each other in a long time.”

“When was this?”

“A couple of months ago. Around the time of the abortion. He said he was going to meet him for a drink at some club or other they belonged to on The Strand, talk about old times and see if there were any business opportunities. He was always on the lookout for a new angle. I’m afraid I suspected something else. I asked him who he was going out with and that’s what he told me. I didn’t believe him, though.”

“Did Roy go for that drink?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the name of the club?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Well, it it’s any consolation, he was probably telling the truth. Did he say anything about it afterward?”

“No, not really. He was vague, as usual, and a little tipsy. He just said that he’d had an interesting time. He seemed excited about more business possibilities.”

“Did he say what?”

“No,” she said. “He was very vague.”

Something dodgy, then, Banks thought. Not arms, in all likelihood, but something crooked if Lambert was involved. He had nothing more to ask Corinne but thought he would stay for a while, anyway, just to keep her company, talk about Roy. It was after nine o’clock; it had been a long day and he was feeling pleasantly tired. He could ring his parents and the Peterborough police, then ring Annie and ask her to meet him in the morning, if that was okay with her.

As if she were reading his mind, Corinne said, “Look, I’ve got a nice bottle of white wine in the fridge. I’ve got red, if you want it, too. I don’t want to drink by myself. I don’t want to be alone just now. Would you care to keep me company for a while longer? I mean, if there isn’t anywhere you have to go. Where are you staying?”

Banks realized that he had completely forgotten about finding somewhere to stay. He had driven to London without making any arrangements and the incident on the motorway had pushed all such practical thoughts from his mind. There was always Roy’s – he still had a key – but there was a chance the police hadn’t finished there yet.

“Don’t know,” he said. “I thought I’d just check into a hotel.”

She looked away and reddened a little. “You can stay here if you like. I mean, there’s a spare room, all made up and everything.”

The idea made Banks nervous. He knew the offer was entirely innocent. The poor girl was alone and devastated by the murder of her lover, and Banks would no more think of letting anything sexual happen between them than he would with his own sister, if he had one. Then again, she was a very attractive young woman and he was just a man, after all. What if she cried out in the night? What if Banks went to comfort her and she was naked under the sheet? What would they do then?

What really made up his mind, though, was that right at the moment he was so weary he could hardly lift himself out of the armchair, let alone hit the wet streets looking for a cheap hotel, so he said, “Thanks, that’s very good of you. That’ll be great. And I prefer red, if that’s okay?”