Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer (9 page)

“
Droit de seigneur…
”. Jude suggested.

“I’ve never heard of that, but if it means a boss thinking he’s got a God-given right to come on to any of his female staff…”

“That’s exactly what it means.”

“Well, I must remember the expression.” Suddenly Connie felt the need to defend herself. “Look, I’m not just saying this to badmouth Martin. It is true.”

“I believe you.”

“Well, good, ‘cause I know women talking about their ex-husbands aren’t always the most reliable witnesses…And when I first suspected what he was doing, I thought I must have got it wrong, must be making things up in my mind, but the more it went on…and on more than one occasion the girls would complain to me, you know, when Martin wasn’t there…”

“You mean he used to do it when you were working together in this salon?”

“Oh yes. As I say, at first I didn’t believe it, made excuses for him. Amazing what you’ll do when you’re in love, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jude agreed. She’d done some pretty stupid things in her time too. “But I thought when you two split up, Martin remarried…?”

“To Martina, yes.”

“Well, do you think she’d put up with him coming on to the staff?”

“Martina…how can I put this…?” Connie’s mouth screwed up with the effort of finding the right words. “Martina is a businesswoman. The success of the Martin & Martina chain is all down to her. Martin’s got a lot of surface charm, he’s good front-of-house, but he’s got no commercial sense. All that comes from Martina. I think when she took him on, from her point of view, it was purely as a business venture. I don’t think there was much love involved there.”

Jude grinned knowingly. “Now what was it you said…? ‘Women talking about their ex-husbands aren’t always the most reliable witnesses’?”

“Yes, all right. I’m probably not being fair. I certainly don’t want to be bloody fair to either of them. Maybe there was some wonderful magical moment of connection between the two of them…one day their eyes met across a crowded salon, and in an instant Martin and Martina knew it was the real thing, they were in
lurve
…Maybe that’s what happened. As you say, I’m probably not the best person to comment on that. From the way it seemed to me, Martina looked at Martin and saw a first-class ticket to a very nice lifestyle, thank you very much. From then on she devoted herself’single-mindedly to getting hold of that ticket.”

“And succeeded.”

“Yes.” Connie sighed. Though some years had passed since then, the defeat and humiliation were still with her. She took a savage sip of her coffee.

“And what about Martin coming on to the juniors in all the salons? Are you saying that Martina doesn’t know about that?”

“She can’t not know about it. She’s not as young and naive as I was. She’s a tough, hard-bitten foreigner.”

“Oh. Where from?”

“I don’t know. Hungary? One of those places like that. Martina’s just a gold-digger.”

“But a hard-working gold-digger.”

“Oh yes. Even I—who have great difficulty saying anything nice about the bloody woman—cannot deny that she’s a hard worker.”

“So, going back to her husband groping the staff—”

“How charmingly you put it, Jude.”

“You say she must know it goes on…?”

“Must.”

“…but is prepared to turn a blind eye?”

“I guess so.”

“I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“Well, because it’s quite a risky thing for a man to do these days. There’s so much more legislation about sexual harassment and stuff. And young girls know all about it. Martin could be putting himself at risk of a court case if he goes on behaving like that.”

“Yes.” Connie’s agreement contained a degree of satisfaction.

“What? Are you saying someone has registered a complaint about him?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“Sorry?”

“Look, when Kyra approached me about getting a job here…”

“Yes?”

“She was very upset. She’d just been unceremoniously asked to leave the Worthing Martin & Martina.”

“Because she’d objected to Martin coming on to her?”

“Basically, yes. He’d denied it obviously, and found some other reason to have her sacked. That was always his strength, you see—will always be the strength of men with power who behave like that. “You tell anyone about what I did to you and you’ll lose your job.” And who’s going to believe the word of a teenager against the boss’s? It usually worked for Martin, anyway.”

“And was it just chatting them up, giving them the odd grope…or was he trying to get them to go to bed with him?”

“No. It was just the groping.” Disgust twisted Connie’s face. Jude couldn’t lose the feeling that the hairdresser was somehow play acting…or maybe just enjoying her dramatic revelations. “I think I’d almost feel better about it if it was full sex he was after. Somehow that makes it more acceptable, just good old-fashioned lust. But no, he just liked touching them. And he even used that as a defence when I finally realized what was happening and challenged him about it. “What’s your problem,” he said. “I’m not being unfaithful to you. I don’t go to bed with any of them.” As if that somehow justified his behaviour. Yeugh, from my point of view, it seemed to make it worse.”

“Perhaps that argument works for Martina?”

“Maybe it does. I think she just closes her mind to it, concentrates on the business and the lavish lifestyle it’s brought her.” Connie could not keep the naked envy out of her voice.

For a moment there was silence. Then Jude pressed on. “You said someone was going to register a complaint about him. Are you talking about Kyra?”

“Yes. When she came to see me, she was so upset about what had happened—”

“Was that why you took her on?”

“One of the reasons, yes. And also because I thought that shouldn’t be allowed to happen to a kid her age. I thought she was in a perfect position to make a complaint against Martin.”

“On the grounds of sexual harassment?”

“Yes.”

“And did Martin know that this was about to happen?”

“Oh yes.” There was no disguising the satisfaction in Connie’s reply.

When she’d heard Kyra’s story, she’d seen the perfect way of getting some kind of revenge on the man who’d humiliated her.

But that wasn’t the dominant thought in Jude’s mind. She now knew of another person for whom Kyra Bartos’s continuing existence had represented a considerable threat.

C
arole had just got back with Gulliver from their walk and was towelling the sand off his paws, when Jude dropped by to share what she’d heard at the salon.

At the end, Carole asked, “Do you think Connie’s likely to have told the police about the threat to Martin…you know, over the sexual harassment charge?”

“I didn’t actually ask, but she must have done, mustn’t she?”

“Yes, from what you say about their relationship, she would have volunteered it at the first opportunity. Putting the police on to him as a murder suspect might be a very good form of revenge on an ex-husband.”

“Maybe.”

“Still, even if Connie didn’t tell them, the police might have got the information from another source. You don’t know whether Kyra had got as far as consulting a solicitor about what happened?”

Jude shook her head, and Carole sighed with exasperation. “It is frustrating, isn’t it, not having a clue what’s happening in the official investigation?”

“Not an unusual position for us, though, Carole.”

“You’re right. Do we have any means of contacting Martin Rutherford?”

“Well, Connie said the Worthing branch is his headquarters.” Jude ran her fingers through the knot of her recently trimmed tresses. “But I guess there’s a limit to the number of times one can book in for a haircut. And, also, I doubt whether Martin himself does much of the actual cutting these days. Mind you, it might be worth trying. Get a bit of background…”

“Maybe.” Carole wasn’t really listening any more; she was tense and restless. “I do wish there was something else we could do. Somewhere else where we could get more relevant information.”

“Apart from Martin Rutherford, the other person we really need to talk to is Joe Bartos.”

“Who, from what you say, clearly doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

“No.” Jude tapped her teeth thoughtfully. “I wonder if we can approach him through some different route. I might have another word with Wally Grenston. And maybe you can follow up with the Lockes.”

“How?”

“Come on, Carole. I thought Rowley Locke asked you to keep him up to date with any new information you got on the case…”

“Yes.”

“Well, would you say that Kyra Bartos’s threat to bring a charge of sexual harassment against Martin Rutherford constituted new information?”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose I would.”

The Lockes liked working on their home ground. In some families that might have been from a sense of insecurity, but in their case it was the opposite impulse, a desire to impress visitors with their united-front solidity. That was the impression Carole got as Dorcas Locke led her into her parents’ house in Chichester on the Saturday morning. The day before Rowley had said on the phone that meeting at their house would be simplest, ‘if you’re likely to be in the Chichester area’. Carole had immediately remembered the half-truth that she needed to buy some dog food in bulk for Gulliver, and replied that by chance she did have some shopping to do in the city’s Salisbury’s the following morning. Though making no claims to aura-detecting antennae like Jude’s, Carole still recognized the value of the information that an environment could impart.

The Lockes’ lack of insecurity was emphasized by the fact that Rowley and his wife were not at home when Carole arrived at the agreed hour of eleven-thirty on the Saturday morning. The house was a substantial one—probably five bedrooms—out in Summersdale, beyond the Festival Theatre to the north of the city. It was one of the most sought-after suburbs of Chichester, with house prices to match, so there was money somewhere in the Locke family. Or at least there had been money at one time. The weeds poking up through the gravel of the drive, the blistered paint on the fascia boards and sagging window frames suggested that no routine maintenance had been done for some years. Or maybe the priorities of an artistic family like the Lockes lay elsewhere.

“Mummy and Daddy won’t be long,” said Dorcas. She was dressed in a long skirt and top of pale coral cotton, which again emphasized the red-gold of her outward-spiralling hair. Although she recognized Carole, her manner was distant, her patent lack of interest just the right side of bad manners. “Come through.”

The room into which Carole was led was larger and less cluttered than Arnold and Eithne Lockes’, but its bookshelves, piano and artlessly abandoned guitar put across the same message: “You are in the home of cultured people.” Like the exterior of the house, the decor could have done with a bit of attention, and the sofa and armchairs were worn and frayed. Here too the walls were adorned with photographs of the massed Locke family, siblings and cousins mixed together in a variety of settings. Fancy dress featured a lot, and there was more
Swallows and Amazons
-style posturing in boats. Again the background scenery looked Cornish. Mementos of more family holidays at Treboddick.

By a low table on the floor sat two girls, probably about fourteen and twelve. They had the same hair as Dorcas and their clothes, in pale tones of respectively raspberry and blue-grey, made them look as though they had been cloned from her. Had they not been so thin, the three diminishing sizes of sisters could have emerged from the same Russian doll.

The younger girls hardly looked up at the visitor’s arrival. They were engrossed with some game laid out on the table. But it was not a commercially manufactured game. The map, which acted as a board, was hand-drawn and painted in coloured inks. The manikins were two-dimensional, cardboard cut-outs on cardboard stands: knights, heraldic beasts, dwarves and goblins. Open exercise books beside the map were covered with densely handwritten text, which swirled around embedded hand-drawn illustrations.

But everything was worn and faded. The map was criss-crossed with parallel lines from much folding. The paint on the figures was smudged and dull, and it was impossible to tell the original colour of the now-beige exercise book covers. On the map the words ‘Kingdom of Verendia’ and ‘Forest of Black Fangdar’ could be read. Oh no, thought Carole, we’re not into Tolkien country, are we? (Such things did not appeal to her. She was of the view that coping with a single universe was quite enough of a challenge, without creating any parallel ones.)

Indicating an armchair for Carole, Dorcas had made no attempt to introduce her sisters, but instead joined them on the floor and continued with the game, as if there was no one else in the room. When they spoke, the younger girls had a lisp just like hers. Carole wondered idly whether it was caused by a genetic physical abnormality, or had been learned. Maybe the as-yet-unmet Bridget Locke would turn out to have the mother of all lisps, which had been passed down to her daughters…?

Though incomprehensible to an outsider, the rules of the game the girls were playing made sense to them and there was a high level of excitement in their playing. For a few minutes Carole tried to follow what was happening, but soon gave up. After a time she almost got used to cries from the floor of ‘I challenge thee to the Ordeal of Furminal, vile Tritchbacker’, “Your Eagrant magic has not power in the Vales of Aspihglad’ or ‘Let not the valiant offspring of Leomon cross swords with one of the blood of Merkerin.”

She was just sneaking a look at her watch to discover that the Locke parents were nearly a quarter of an hour late, when Dorcas clapped her hands and said, “One last sortie, girls. Then you must do your music practice.”

Though deeply engrossed in the game, her sisters did not complain. They each had a ‘sortie’, which so far as Carole could tell was like a roll of the dice in any other game. But there was nothing looking like a dice in evidence and she had no idea what force dictated where on the map one of the figures should move next. When their ‘sortie’ was finished, both girls obediently rose to their feet. “Will you leave it out, so’s we can have another Grail-search tonight?” asked the younger one.