Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer (8 page)

The song spiralled away in a little tinkling of notes.

“Did you write that, Wally?”

“Of course. And Mim sang it. A minor hit. I don’t think it would get far now on
Pop Idol
.”

“It’s a beautiful tune.”

“Oh yes, of course. All my tunes are beautiful.”

“And sad.”

“All my tunes are sad.” He was silent for a moment, then firmly closed the lid of the white piano and came back to sit opposite her. “So, what do you really want to know about Jiri Bartos?” He looked at his large old gold wristwatch. “We must be quick. I am about to lose my…” he smiled, “…window of opportunity.”

“I really want to know about his relationship with his daughter. Someone suggested that he was quite a difficult father.”

“Difficult…? Strong…?” The old man opened out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Perhaps they are different words for the same thing. Jiri, like most of my generation who come from Czechoslovakia, has quite a long history. He is an old man, older even than me. He was married when he lived in Czechoslovakia, with children I think. Then the war came and I do not know what happened. He never talks about such things, but when he came to England, he was alone. His first family…” Wally gave an expressively hopeless shrug. “So he was old, seventy perhaps, when he married again. To an English girl…well, I say ‘girl’, but she was no chicken either…Young enough, though, to give him a child. A little girl, Krystina.”

“So ‘Kyra’ was…?”

“Yes. The young always want to reinvent themselves, don’t they? New names, new clothes, new body-piercings…”

He sounded contemptuous, so Jude said, in mitigation, “They’re only trying to find their own identities.”

“Of course. And that is something that people like Jiri and me understand all too well. ‘Grenston’—do you think that is my real name? I think ‘Grunstein’ might be closer to the mark. But who cares? What is a change of name if you feel happier with the result, if you fit in better because of the result? We all find our own ways of survival.” He looked thoughtful, but a glimpse at his watch brought him out of introspection. “Anyway, ‘Krystina’ is a good Czech name. ‘Kyra’…I don’t know where ‘Kyra’ comes from. The girl only changed her name to annoy her father.”

“It was an adversarial relationship, was it then?”

“It was not an easy relationship. But for reasons that came from outside, the pressure of events. Krystina’s mother died when the girl was only twelve. Breast cancer. Not an easy time for a child to lose a parent. So she was left with Jiri, who was…not the most natural person to look after a teenage girl.”

“Was he cruel to her?”

“Not deliberately. He did the best he could, did what was right according to his view of things. But his view of things was…I suppose you would say old-fashioned. Children, he felt, should always be on their best behaviour, always respectful to their parents. He didn’t encourage his daughter to make friends. I don’t think she ever invited anyone from school back to the house. And, of course, Jiri had no domestic skills, so after his wife died, Krystina was expected to do everything about the house. He did not want her to leave him. He could not manage without her.”

“Are you saying that in the emotional sense?”

“Jiri would deny it. He would say he only needed the girl to act as housekeeper for him. But Jiri was never one to wear his heart on his sleeve. To show his emotions costs him more than he is prepared to pay.”

“So presumably…a man like that…he would not have found it easy when his daughter started to lead a life of her own…when she got a job…when she got a boyfriend…?”

Wally Grenston shrugged. “I would not have thought so, but I don’t know for sure. Jiri Bartos is an acquaintance, not a close friend. He doesn’t unburden his feelings to me. Mind you, I don’t imagine he unburdens his feelings to anyone.”

“Do you think he’d agree to talk to me?”

The old musician’s mouth narrowed doubtfully. “It depends what you were offering him. Maybe, if you had some information that would tell him how his daughter came to die…? I don’t know. I cannot speak for him.”

“But do you have his phone number?”

“It is in the local phone book. There is no secrecy about where he lives.”

“No.”

Wally Grenston looked uneasily at his watch. Jude realized her window of opportunity was closing. She thanked him for talking to her, and said she must leave.

“Yes. I am sorry it cannot be for longer. I would like to play you some other tunes. I always like playing tunes for a beautiful lady.” But even as he spoke the words of flirtation, he looked worried. From seeing the two of them in Connie’s Clip Joint, Jude had got the impression that Wally wasn’t genuinely henpecked, that his subservient behaviour to Mim was part of a public double act. But his current anxiety made her question that assumption. Maybe he really was afraid of his wife.

Still he kept up his facade of roguish gallantry. “It is a pity that you do not wear make-up, that you could not have left the tell-tale trace on the coffee cup…”

Jude grinned at him and, reaching down into the bottom of her capacious African straw basket, produced a battered lipstick. She painted her lips, and then deliberately picked up her cup and pretended to drink. A very satisfactory smudge of pink appeared on the gold rim of the china.

Wally smiled, absolutely delighted. “Oh, that is good, very good.” But his eyes could not stay long away from his watch. “I think perhaps though, the time has come…”

“Of course.”

“Would you mind,” he asked nervously, “going down the back way, through the garden? There is a gate at the end that only opens from this side. It leads directly on to the beach path.”

“No, that’s fine. It’s a nicer walk back.”

So that was the route by which she left, clandestinely, like a spy or a lover. When she reached the gate to the beach, Jude looked back. She could see the huge wide window of the sitting room. Next to it was a smaller one, clearly belonging to the kitchen. In front of this, Wally Grenston, unaware of her scrutiny, was carefully washing both coffee cups.

J
ude looked up Jiri Bartos’s number as soon as she got back to Woodside Cottage. She rang it straight away and he answered. But before she had finished saying, “Mr Bartos, I wanted to talk to you about your daughter,” he had put the phone down.

§

Carole and Jude had agreed to meet for lunch in the Crown and Anchor that Thursday. They both ordered Ted Crisp’s recommendation of Local Pork and Leek Sausages with Mash and Onion Gravy and, while they waited for them to appear, sipped their Chilean Chardonnays and brought each other up to date on their investigations.

What Jude had found out from Wally Grenston seemed pathetically little in the retelling. “Couldn’t be more contrast between the two families,” Carole observed when her friend had finished. “Joe Bartos is very closed in, just him and his daughter…though now of course just him…and it doesn’t sound as though Kyra had many friends…whereas the Lockes seem to do everything as a pack.”

“Did you find out how many children there were there?”

“The way they talked there seemed to be hundreds. Nathan’s certainly got at least one brother, and Dorcas has an identical twin sister. Mind you, it’s doubly confusing because they’ve all got nicknames. And they have that quality close families often have, of assuming that everyone knows all about them, so it wasn’t easy to work out who was who.”

“Did you discover whether the Lockes had actually met Kyra Bartos?”

“Eithne had, but only by accident. And, given how his parents kept going on about how liberal they are, and how they wouldn’t mind him having a girlfriend in his room…well, that might suggest the boy deliberately kept them apart.”

“He wouldn’t have been the first young man to have done that,” Jude mused. “A new relationship being seen as a new beginning…particularly if it represented getting away from a family where he wasn’t happy.”

“The Lockes would have denied stoutly that Nathan wasn’t happy. They seemed to have this…I’m not quite sure how to explain it…pride, I suppose. Pride in themselves as a family unit…as if being a Locke was the highest achievement anyone could hope for. And they were at pains to give the impression Nathan subscribed to that view too.”

“And yet from something you’ve said, Carole…or something someone’s said…I get the feeling Nathan felt differently…that he found all that family stuff a bit claustrophobic…suffocating even.”

“It’s funny. I get that impression very strongly as well.”

They were interrupted by the arrival of their Local Pork and Leek Sausages with Mash and Onion Gravy, which were delicious, Ted Crisp’s recommendations always were. Carole looked across to the bar where he stood, a bearded scruff in a colourless T-shirt, regaling late holidaymakers with more of his dreadful jokes. She still felt shock at the knowledge that they had for a time been lovers. But it was not a wholly unpleasant feeling.

The Local Pork and Leek Sausages kept them quiet for some time, and it was only when they were mopping up the last of the Mash and Onion Gravy that Jude returned to the subject of Nathan Locke. “And you say they didn’t seem at all worried about where he was? Or that he might have committed suicide?”

“No, that was really the strangest thing about the whole morning.”

“Well, it would suggest one of two things.”

“Which are?”

“Either they have no imagination at all…”

“Unlikely. I got the impression that all of the Lockes lived quite vividly in their imaginations.”

“Then it must mean that they’ve heard from Nathan since he disappeared. They know where he is.”

§

Her neighbour wouldn’t have done what Jude did that afternoon on her way home from the Crown and Anchor, but Carole had had to hurry back to take Gulliver out for a walk, so Jude was alone when she found herself passing Connie’s Clip Joint. And since she could see through the window that there were no clients, she dropped in to talk to the owner.

Connie was sitting at the small desk, going through a pile of correspondence, but she seemed to welcome the distraction.

“I came in about that massage idea you talked about the other day,” said Jude, offering her hastily prepared cover story.

“Oh yes. Nice to see you.”

“Not stopping you from doing something you should be…?”

“No, just going through some application letters. Like I said, I must appoint another junior soon, but somehow it seems, I don’t know, with Kyra only just…” Connie shook herself and stood up. “Would you like a coffee?”

“Lovely, if you’re sure it’s no—”

“I was just about to have one.” And Connie crossed to the machine in the back room, leaving the door open so that they could continue their conversation.

“You given Theo the afternoon off?”

“He’s given himself the afternoon off. He’s not an employee.”

“Oh?”

“No, he just works out of here as a freelance. Rents a chair from me. He hasn’t got any appointments this afternoon, so he’s off home.”

“Ah.” Theo’s independent status was perhaps another indication that business at Connie’s Clip Joint was not exactly booming.

Jude wondered whether she should begin by saying something more about her therapies, but since the girl’s name had just been mentioned, there did seem to be a natural cue…“Must be strange for you, Connie, being here without Kyra…”

“It is. And sort of stranger as time goes on. You know, at the beginning there was the shock, and then I was busy with the police and everyone was talking about it, but now, as things have settled down…well, I’m more aware she’s not here.”

“How long had she been working with you?”

“Oh, only about four months. And we hadn’t always seen eye to eye. I’d had to put her right about a few things. Youngsters starting out at work have often got attitude problems, but Kyra wasn’t a bad kid…She certainly didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

“I don’t think anyone would have deserved that.”

“No.” Connie was silent for a moment, then brought her mind back to the coffee. “Milk or sugar?”

“Just black, please.”

“You know, I think my insides must be totally coffee-coloured,” the hairdresser said as she brought the cups across. “I hate to think how many cups I get through in a day. Live on the stuff.”

“Do you have lunch?”

“No. If I’m busy, there’s no time. And if I’m not busy…well, I forget about it.” Connie sat cosily beside Jude in one of the leather armchairs for waiting clients.

“Was here Kyra’s first job?”

“No, it wasn’t actually.” The hairdresser’s face clouded. “She’d started at a salon in Worthing. A Martin & Martina.”

“Ah.” Jude was fully aware of the subtext of those words.

“But it only lasted a few weeks.”

“Why?”

“She hadn’t got on with the management.” Jude stayed silent, hoping she was going to get more. And she did. “Well, not the management of the salon, the management of the chain.”

“Are you talking about your ex-husband and his new wife?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t think he’s got anything to do with her death, do you?”

“What?” Connie looked totally incredulous. “Martin? But why on earth…?”

“Don’t know.”

“Look, he may have done me wrong, but there’s no evil in him. He’s basically a good man.”

“Are you defending him now?”

“No, no, I—”

“You sound a bit as if you are. Do you still see each other?”

“Only when we can’t possibly avoid it,” Connie replied fervently. She looked confused for a moment. Then she seemed to reach some decision and said, “Martin never comes over this way. The Worthing branch is his base, really. That’s where he has his office.” Her bright brown eyes were thoughtful for a moment, assessing how much she should confide. Fortunately, Jude’s presence worked its usual magic and Connie decided she could tell everything she wanted to. Her words came out like a prepared speech. “The fact is, Martin has never behaved very responsibly with the junior staff. I don’t think he ever did, even when we were working together. Shows how naive I was, didn’t even notice how he was chatting up the girls—and touching them up too. He seemed to think, because he was their boss, it gave him some sort of right to…I don’t know…”