Suspicious Minds

Chapter Nine

“Long time no see.”

Brenda Rixton beamed as Harry walked down the corridor towards his flat. She lived next door and she was standing in front of the outside store cupboard, putting away her vacuum cleaner.

Harry said hi and rifled through his limited stock of neighbourly small talk for a follow-up remark. Something pleasant so she would not feel hurt, something bland so there was no risk that either of them would be embarrassed. Their affair hadn’t lasted long, but he’d never felt comfortable about ending it and although she had accepted rejection without making a scene, the very decency of her behaviour added to his sense of guilt.

She saved him the trouble by saying amiably, “Busy as ever, I suppose. Been into the office this morning?”

“At least the telephone doesn’t keep ringing on a Saturday.” He gestured at the cupboard. “Having a last tidy round? When do you move out?”

“Monday, God willing. Though how all the packing will get done in time, I simply don’t know.”

“I hope Colin’s going to give you a hand.”

She smiled. “Yes, he’s very good about things like that. Extremely methodical.”

Harry could believe it. Colin Redpath was a pleasant enough man but he had an accountant’s fondness for order and his conversation was crammed with sentiments like “a place for everything and everything in its place.” How would Brenda take to married life with someone like that?

Very well, he realised as he murmured some platitude in reply. She would be well looked after. No money worries, no creeping doubts. Protected by the safety blanket of a shared faith from the casual cruelties of the everyday world. A little boredom was a small price to pay. He ought to envy her. And perhaps, at times, he did.

“And the new house?”

“It’s fine. Lots to be done naturally, but Colin’s getting various tradesmen round in the next few weeks. And he’ll be coming over for a couple of hours himself each evening. He’s keen on do-it-yourself.”

Although Harry found the appeal of D-I-Y unfathomable, he could well believe that Colin would dutifully return each night to his own semi in Sefton until the wedding night gave him the right to enter Brenda’s bedroom. Rather than pursue that line of conversation, he considered Brenda herself. The hairdresser’s art concealed the grey in her blonde hair. For a woman who had celebrated her forty-fifth birthday only a few weeks before, she had kept her figure well. He knew her body to be soft and warm. Colin might be dull, but he was luckier than he yet realised.

“I’ll miss you, Brenda.”

“I doubt it.”

Another smile. Gentle, but not easily deceived. She didn’t speak with bitterness, but with realism. For the hundred^th time he wondered why she had got involved with the Fellowship of Believers, an evangelical crowd who specialised in poster slogans saying things like: seven days without prayer makes one weak. Colin led a Bible class in a meeting room above a burger bar in Sir Thomas Street; that was where she had met him. During the weeks when she and Harry had been sleeping together, she had never mentioned religion once. Not long after their low-key parting, however, he’d met her in the lift and she’d told him about becoming a born-again Christian. Something had been absent from her life and faith, she had found, could fill the void. Harry hadn’t understood, but he saw that she was brighter than before, more confident. Having something — and, before long, someone — to believe in had strengthened her.

He tried without success to imagine having the assurance of salvation. A few years ago he’d have mocked the smugness of a Colin Redpath. Still today he could not bring himself to envy it. It was escapism, like identifying with a story about James Bond. All the same, every now and then, he wondered what it would be like to share such a faith.

“I think a friend of yours is here.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Harry saw Valerie walking down the corridor. No dreary barrister’s garb today, but a blue mini dress which displayed more brown skin than it concealed. With a slight sense of shame Harry realised that he wouldn’t find it difficult to put Brenda out of his mind.

“Found you at last! Quite a warren, this place.”

“Brenda Rixton, this is Valerie Kaiwar. Valerie’s a barrister.”

Harry watched the two women weigh each other up under cover of exchanging inanities about the hot weather and how long it would be before the heavens opened up. Harry was glad when Brenda said that she would have to tear herself away, as she was going to watch Colin umpire in a cricket match this afternoon. She made it sound like a treat rather than a chore.

“Your old flame?” asked Valerie when they were inside Harry’s living room.

Harry had told her a little about his affair with Brenda. He’d wanted to build the trust between them. No secrets. And she’d mentioned a few young men she’d been involved with, at university and during the Bar finals course. Nothing serious by the sound of it. But she’d said not a word about Julian Hamer.

“Wasted on Colin,” said Harry. “Though he’s a decent enough feller.”

“Sometimes women have to take what they can get.”

“Men, too.”

She raised her eyebrows but instead of pursuing the point walked over to the window and gazed up the Mersey.

“You’re lucky to have this place, Harry. So peaceful.”

“You should hear the gales howl down the river on dark February nights.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Sounds bloody noisy. Anyway, never mind that. Did you enjoy seeing your parents?”

It wasn’t an idle enquiry. She’d told him she would be staying overnight at the family home. Although he hated himself for doubting, he wanted to be reassured she’d been telling the truth.

“So-so. My father’s got things on his mind. The business is ruling his life at the moment.”

“In a company like Saviour Money? Surely he’s reached the stage where he can delegate.”

Harry never looked at the City pages in the Press; they might have been written in Sanskrit for all he knew or cared about stocks and shares. But everyone reckoned that the old Liverpool supermarket business which had been on the brink of insolvency when Bharat Kaiwar bought it was now one of the most profitable in the North.

“It’s not an ordinary kind of problem.” She hesitated. “Look. I’ll tell you about it. But this is strictly between you and me. All right?”

“Sure.” His reply was matter of fact, but he couldn’t help feeling flattered by her willingness to confide in him.

She picked up from a chair a battered green and white Penguin edition of Tragedy at Law which Harry had been reading the previous night. She flicked idly through the pages, as if reluctant to embark on her promised disclosure.

“Mystery stories appeal to you, don’t they? But crime has changed since books like this were written. It’s less ingenious, more frightening.”

“Cyril Hare might not have agreed. And he was a barrister too.”

“Really?” She scrutinised the book again for a moment, then tossed it aside. “Anyway, I was about to tell you. Daddy’s worried sick. He’s being blackmailed.”

“What?”

“Or rather, Saviour Money is. It comes to much the same thing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Someone is trying to hold the business to ransom. Threatening to poison products on the shelves unless they are paid a hundred thousand pounds.”

Harry whistled. “Do the police know?”

“Yes, of course. Daddy didn’t take kindly to the first threats. Made by phone to one of the stores, as you might expect. Apparently it’s not uncommon in the food and drink business these days. Cranks mostly. The police are informed routinely. Nine times out of ten, nothing more is ever heard.”

“And this time?”

“First the caller asked for a payment of twenty-five thousand. No response was made. Then another warning call received by the shop in Birkenhead. The manager was told to check the yoghurt. He soon found a couple of strawberry surprise pots had been tampered with. Lab tests were carried out. The yoghurt contained finely ground glass. Possibly not enough to kill, but anyone who ate it would have suffered serious injury.”

“The wrong kind of surprise.”

“Yes. Within twenty-four hours he’d rung again. The price had gone up fourfold, he said. That was yesterday morning.”

“Presumably your father has store detectives out in force in the shops?”

“Yes, but it’s like searching for a twig in a forest. I gather the usual modus operandi in this sort of case is that the poisoner tampers at home with goods which he may have bought quite legitimately in the shop. Then he brings them back into the store and puts them back on the shelves when no one is looking. Done well, it’s almost impossible to spot.”

“Is your father going to pay?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell even me. I assume the plan will be to play along with the crooks and try to pick them up when they come to collect the money, but of course they’ll be alert for that. They’re bound to insist on hand-over arrangements which give them maximum safety. Daddy’s in despair. He’s caught between the devil and deep blue sea.”

She stared moodily out of the window. The picture Valerie had previously painted of her father was of a shy man who worked round the clock and shunned the limelight. He regarded the Saviour Money chain, she’d once said only half-jokingly, as his second child, the son he’d never had. Harry imagined that Kaiwar would feel any attempt to ruin the business he had spent twenty years building up almost as keenly as an attack on Valerie herself.

He went to stand by her side and put his arm on her shoulder.

“What would you like to do this afternoon? Something to take your mind off your father’s woes would be a good idea.”

“What do you recommend?”

He was acutely aware of her perfume, a subtle and delicious fragrance, and of the closeness of her. This is an important moment, he thought. I mustn’t blow it by being too eager. But nor must I miss the chance.

“Well…”

The telephone rang, shredding the silence like a knife through satin.

Shit, thought Harry. One of my regulars got himself locked up after supping too much at lunch time. Ignore it.

The phone kept ringing.

“Aren’t you going to answer?”

“I wasn’t intending to.”

“You should,” Valerie said. “It might be something important.”

“A wrong number, depend upon it.”

But he found himself walking across the room and snatching up the receiver as if it were the hand of a naughty child.

“Yes?”

“Harry? I need to see you right away.”

Jack Stirrup’s never-take-no-for-an-answer Brummie tone prompted Harry into mutiny.

“Sorry, Jack, it’ll have to wait. If…”

“Listen, this is a matter of life and death.”

Something in Stirrup’s inflection stopped Harry from putting down the phone.

“Tell me.”

“It’s Claire. She’s disappeared.”