Keeping Bad Company (21 page)

Parry sat down uninvited on the sofa. ‘So he did turn up, did he? I wondered if he would. He didn’t lose time. What did he say to you?’

‘Private conversation,’ I told him. ‘None of your business. But if you want to put something in your report, put down that I don’t like being used.’

‘Don’t come the injured party with me. You’re always keen to stick your nose in. What did Szabo have to say?’

I sat down too. It was, after all, my flat. ‘He told me his stepdaughter has been snatched. He’s not happy with the lack of progress being made by the police. If I heard anything, I was to tell him. So I told him more or less everything I told you.’

He chewed at the end of the mangy moustache. ‘Why did you go to the refuge?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I confessed. ‘Probably because when I asked Vinnie if she was likely to have been walking back from there when she was picked up, his tame gorilla tossed me out of the car.’

‘She helped out there,’ said Parry. ‘She’s one of them wealthy girls with nothing else to do, so they go round doing good works. No need to earn any money. Daddy makes ’em an allowance.’

‘Why shouldn’t he want me to know that?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘He disapproved. She was doing it behind his back, the voluntary work there. The impression I got of him, he’s on the overprotective side. On the other hand, he might’ve feared something would happen to her, mixing with the wrong sort. Perhaps he was afraid she’d fall for some sandal-wearing social worker with long hair and granny glasses. You know, fortune-hunter. How do I know? He’s rich, for Gawd’s sake. Rich people have to worry about things like that. The kid’s the apple of his eye. His wife’s dead. She’s all he’s got left. He’s a worried man.’

I reflected that we’d come a long way since Parry had sat on that sofa, pretending there was no snatch and poor old Albie hadn’t seen anything. I said as much.

Parry had the grace to look sheepish. ‘Yes, well, that was when I still hoped you’d keep your nose outa things. I should’ve known better. Stay quiet about all this, right?’

‘You told them at the refuge to call you if anyone came asking about Lauren Szabo. Were you thinking of me?’

‘Routine,’ said Parry, which is what they always say when they don’t want to answer.

‘Or were you expecting someone else to be asking after her? Has she got a boyfriend?’ That was a new idea to strike me. ‘You said Vinnie was afraid she’d meet someone unsuitable. Did she?’

‘We’ve followed that line up and got nowhere,’ Parry said, tugging at the sleeve of his jacket with a frown. ‘She’s been dating some Hooray Henry what works in his own family’s firm. Suppose they had to give him a job. Strictly between you and me, he hasn’t got the brains to organise a teddy bears’ tea-party. Anyway, he’s got an alibi for the night she was snatched.’

‘Of course he has,’ I said patiently. ‘He would, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t do it himself. What’s his name and where can I find him?’

‘Forget it!’ Parry snapped.

‘All right,’ I said, to keep him happy. ‘Have you tried looking for Merv? He can’t be that difficult to find.’

‘We’ve got your description of him,’ he said. ‘Give us time. We’ll pick him up. But we won’t necessarily be able to link him with the old man.’

‘Of course you can! Ganesh and I saw Merv and his mate try to snatch Albie!’

‘So you say, but that’s not good enough,’ Parry retorted aggravatingly. ‘It was late at night. Poor streetlighting. All over in a few seconds. Can you describe the second man?’

Unfortunately I couldn’t. Merv I’d recognised, but in the circumstances all I’d noticed about his pal was that he was shorter, broader and either dark-haired or wearing a dark woolly hat. I told Parry this.

‘There you are then,’ he said. ‘I can’t haul anyone in on the basis of a description like that. Adds up to mistaken identity, doesn’t it?’ He shrugged. ‘Your word and Patel’s against his. Not good enough, like I said.’ He crouched aggressively on the edge of the sofa, flexing his mitts, which were sprinkled with long red hair like an orangutan’s.

A thought had occurred to me. ‘If you want to know what Szabo and I talked about, ask Szabo himself. Or doesn’t he talk to you? What was the big idea sending him along to me?’

Parry scratched his chin. The shaving rash was clearing up, but if he carried on rubbing it like that, it’d come back. Serve him right. I hoped he came out in boils like those people in the Bible.

‘You’re near enough his daughter’s age. He knew your dad. He might’ve said something to you he – he overlooked when talking to us.’

‘I’m two years older than his daughter and I don’t think Szabo would draw any comparison between me and his Lauren. Szabo’s gone out of his way to protect her from life’s nastiness until now, whereas he sees me as someone who can be bundled into a strange car by a minder and asked a lot of nosy questions.’ A new idea leapt into my head. ‘Have you got a picture of her, of Lauren?’

‘The girl? Sure.’ He fumbled in a wallet and produced a couple of snapshots. One showed a young girl with long fair hair, apparently sitting at a pavement café table. The background looked continental and big city, probably Paris. The labels on the bottles of soft drink were French. The girl in the photo leaned on her elbows and stared at the camera with a cool challenge in her eyes. She was a good-looker.

The other picture was a studio portrait, one of those little polyphotos, all varying poses, which the photographer gives the client for him to make his choice. Her hair was tidier and she wore a lot more make-up for this one but I was more taken by the difference in her expression. In the café picture she looked as if she were in charge. In the polyphoto she looked trapped and angry. She hadn’t wanted that picture taken. I wondered who had taken the informal snap. Looking at Lauren’s picture made me uneasy. Before, she’d been a name, and a vague description by Albie. Now she was a real person, a prisoner somewhere, frightened and in danger. I handed them both back to Parry who put them away.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what else you got to tell me, Fran? Now’s your chance. Withholding evidence is a criminal offence.’

I got up and fetched the empty Bell’s bottle and put it down on the coffee table in front of him.

‘What’s all this?’ His eyes began to turn pink again.

I told him. ‘I was going to bring it to you, right? You know as well as I do that Albie saw Lauren snatched and this –’ I pointed at the bottle – ‘this shows he didn’t just fall in the canal unaided.’

‘It doesn’t show anything of the sort,’ he retorted.

I hadn’t expected thanks, but this annoyed me. ‘No wonder Szabo’s fed up with the slow progress you’re making!’ I snapped. ‘You lose your one witness and now you’ve got tangible evidence you don’t know what to do with it. Can’t you fingerprint it or something?’

‘I told you before,’ he said, ‘that you’re a mouthy little madam. I remember when you lived in that squat with all those other dropouts. You were a right bossy little piece then, issuing orders right, left and centre. Don’t try it with me. You’re sailing close to the wind, Miss Varady. You say you were going to hand over the bottle to us, but you did your damnedest to stop me coming down here.’

‘That wasn’t because of the bottle,’ I began. ‘It was because – ’

But I couldn’t tell him it was because Ganesh reckoned Parry lusted after me. I didn’t know where Gan had got that idea from. If the sergeant here fancied me, he’d got a funny way of showing it. I finished lamely, quoting Szabo, ‘I like my privacy. This is my home. I don’t want you marching in and out just as you like.’

‘Actually,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it. Think I’ve got nothing better to do? I’m a busy man investigating a serious crime. Don’t mess me about, Fran. If you do, I’ll get you on a charge, right?’

‘Oh, will you?’ I challenged. ‘I could make a formal complaint against you for sending Szabo to me.’

He treated me to a wintry smile. ‘You overlook that, Fran, and I’ll overlook the fact that you didn’t hand the bottle over at once, also that you went to the refuge, causing trouble – ’

I opened my mouth to protest because he’d caused the trouble there, not me.

He overrode my objection. ‘So keep out from under my feet, right? That way we can stay friends.’

‘We are not friends,’ I told him coldly.

I was treated to another of those gargoyle grimaces. ‘Oh, come on, Fran. I think you and I could get along rather well!’

‘In your dreams!’ I corrected him icily.

‘Please yourself. I’m taking the whisky bottle, right? Got a paper bag?’

I gave him Ben’s plastic bag. He stood up. ‘So find yourself something else to do. leave the sleuthing to the professionals. Weekend coming up. Go away somewhere nice. Go to Margate and get some sea air.’

‘As it happens,’ I informed him, ‘I have a job this weekend as an artist’s model.’

His ginger eyebrows shot up to meet his hairline. ‘What? In the buff?’

Simple soul that he was, I hastened to disappoint him.

‘No! In costume.’

‘What sort of costume?’ he asked with interest, his limited mind running on bare-breasted bimbos hiding the essentials behind a pair of unzipped jeans lodged at crotch level.

‘A tree,’ I told him. ‘I shall be dressed to symbolise the threatened Amazonian rainforest.’

He burst out laughing and made a pretty good exit of his own, warbling about talking to the trees in a surprisingly good baritone.

I was fed up so I ran myself a bath to wash away all contact with the law. The hot water steamed up the bathroom mirror. I wrote I HATE PARRY on it so that I could meditate on it as I lay in the bath. But the moisture on the mirror began to trickle and changed my slogan to I HAVE HAPPY. Sometimes nothing works.

Chapter Eleven

The long soak in the tub, a grilled cheese sandwich and three cups of coffee succeeded in erasing the tainted air of Parry’s presence from the flat. A single ray of sun, angled down through the basement window, told me it was after two o’clock and encouraged me to go out and try something else. My brain was working again, If at first you don’t succeed and all the rest of it. Thanks to Parry, I now knew Lauren had a steady boyfriend. The first thing to do was to find out if Szabo had known about this and what he’d felt about it.

Dressed in clean jeans and my best silk shirt and quilted waistcoat, I ran up the steps to Daphne’s front door and rang the bell.

She must have seen me coming and the door was opened almost at once. ‘You are all right, aren’t you, dear? What is going on?’ she demanded breathlessly.

‘Sorry about the bit of bother earlier,’ I said.

‘There was no need to come up and apologise for that!’ she returned, and fixed me with a reproachful gaze. ‘If that was the same police officer who came to see me the other day, I thought him uncouth.’

‘He is uncouth,’ I said. ‘But he can’t help it. May I use the phone?’

‘Help yourself!’ She waved at the instrument and trotted back to her ever-growing pile of manuscript. I was momentarily distracted enough to wonder again what it represented, but it seemed rude to ask.

I punched the number Szabo had given me and after a moment, his high-pitched, nervy voice asked, ‘Hullo? Yes?’

‘Mr Szabo?’ I said. ‘It’s Francesca Varady.’

‘You’ve seen the tattooed man again?’ He quavered with eagerness and I imagined him standing there, the mobile phone pressed to his ear.

There was a sound of movement in the background and Szabo, his voice fading slightly as he turned his head, snapped, ‘Yes, yes, just leave it there!’

I deduced he was sitting in a probably expensive hotel room and the room service had just delivered something. I had felt sorry for the man, because after all, there was nothing he could do but sit there all a-jitter and wait. But my sympathy was tempered by the thought that at least he was doing it in comfort.

I had to disappoint him. ‘Sorry, no, I haven’t seen the man again. But I’ve been thinking and I wondered whether anyone has talked to Lauren’s friends.’

‘Why?’ He sounded edgy and a little annoyed that I’d falsely raised his hopes for a moment.

Trying not to antagonise him further, I began, ‘Suppose she’d noticed that someone appeared to be watching or following her – ’

He broke in with a terse, ‘She’d have reported a stalker.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of anyone so obvious as a stalker. Just a face which seemed to be turning up more often than coincidentally, but not often enough or aggressively enough to make her report it to the police. If no one made an actual approach or spoke to her, what could she have reported? She might not have told you either, not wanting to worry you, or thinking she might sound neurotic. But she might have mentioned it to a friend.’