Staging Death (28 page)

‘I’ll come and talk about that in the next day or so. You see,’ I continued, aware of Greg’s flapping ears, ‘the price you suggested might be a little high for this financial climate, and you may
want to consider what offer might tempt you. Now, I understand you need a lift home. I’m sure my brother would be happy to oblige.’ I doubted if they’d ever driven in a civilian Merc before, and it was one way of getting rid of Greg, who was inclined to yap over the effects the drama this afternoon might have on his business. Claire ventured a wink over his shoulder as they all ebbed away, escorted by Sandra.

In the silence that followed, I permitted myself to droop against a handy door-frame. ‘You really want a statement now, Martin?’ I asked. ‘Because I tell you, it’ll come at a price.’

He raised a surprisingly formal eyebrow. I quailed. I might be about to blow everything.

‘I can only do it if I’m fortified by the prospect of dinner afterwards.
A deux
.’

‘You’re seeing that country plod!’ Toby exclaimed, his voice carrying around the natural amphitheatre now filled with ugly lumps of metal and designated Aldred House’s sculpture park. I’d managed to drag him out well before his usual breakfast hour. The weather was back to sunny, but hadn’t managed warm yet. ‘For God’s sake, Vee, you can do better than that.’

‘You, for instance?’ I demanded, arms akimbo. I dropped them quickly. Anything that put the shoulder at an unnatural angle hurt twice, once inside where I’d yanked the tissue out of place and again outside where the skin and the strapping fought it out. Rather than wrestle with an unfamiliar car, I’d taken a cab out here.

‘Why not?’ he asked, his voice, his face, his whole body painfully sincere. ‘We’re made for each other. You know that. You always have
known. From the minute we first set eyes on each other, we’ve known.’

I’d waited for this moment all my life, it seemed. This was when I should step into his arms, accept his kiss and ride off into the sunset with him. Half of me still wanted to. But it was the other half that responded. ‘And what do you propose? That you have a highly publicised divorce from Allyn, which would ruin her career? Not to mention doing the lives of the twins immeasurable harm? And probably result in your losing Aldred House as part of the settlement? Or…?’

He had the grace to blush.

I hit my stride. ‘What did you offer Greta, for instance? It was she who wanted me off the premises, wasn’t it? She threatened to expose your relationship with her.’ Of course, I was guessing, but it was a guess that struck home.

Even such a consummate actor as he couldn’t hide the faintest wince. ‘I never had sex with that woman!’

Surely he was aware he was echoing someone else’s words. But he spoke without so much as a tremor.

‘Not even involving a cigar and a blue dress?’ I asked ironically. ‘Come off it, Toby, I’ve known and – yes! – loved you the best part of forty years. I know you better than most. If ever there was a man for having his cake and eating it, it’s you.
The real question is why Greta wanted to get rid of me. It wasn’t because she thought I might harm Allyn by my presence. She’d seen enough of me and your wife together to know we were well on the way to becoming friends, and you know all too well I wouldn’t break friendships, or especially marriages, just to have sex with you.’ There was another minute flinch when I used the word
just
. Perhaps it was time to segue into flattery. ‘So why did she want to get rid of me? Come on, Toby. You’re such a wonderful actor because you’ve got a brilliant brain.’ It was a pity he usually thought with another part of his anatomy. ‘I really need your help. There’s no one else I can turn to. We’ve never been lovers but we’ve always been friends. Dear friends. Haven’t we?’

‘We have.’ He touched my face in some sort of farewell and turned away. ‘You think you constitute some sort of threat to her, and that as long as you’re around, she’ll want to get rid of you?’ he mused, putting his hands in his pockets and facing me again. ‘And perhaps on a more permanent basis?’

‘Exactly. And it’s got to be more than straight sexual jealousy. A woman as young and lovely as she is wouldn’t imagine me as a sexual threat. In her eyes I’m far too old, Toby. I doubt if she can even imagine you making love with Allyn, who
must be twenty years younger than me.’

‘Seventeen, actually,’ he grimaced. ‘At least, that’s what she admits to. So say fifteen. OK, Vee, point taken. It’s got to be something to do with this mysterious Frederick, hasn’t it? And what’s puzzling is that he’s slipped beneath Ted’s radar.’ He shivered, despite the sun. ‘It’s a bit nippy out here. Shall we go back to the house?’

‘Not a good idea. I’m supposed to be advising on the layout of these here statues, aren’t I? And I’d have thought it harder to bug a statue than a room.’

‘Bug?’ His eyes popped.

‘You never know. Talk statues.’

He nodded. ‘The last couple of items are coming by low-loader this afternoon. Tell you what, there’ll be a full moon tonight. If I get you and your plod a couple of comps for the show, we could all have a glass of champagne down here. Just to show there’s no ill feelings, Vee?’ He gave a smile that would have had ducks abandoning their pond and kissed my cheek. ‘A few folk from the theatre, too.’ He listed his fellow stars. ‘And I believe Allyn’s cousin will be dropping by. You know, Vee, Johann Rusch, the casting director. You never know…’

My heart did a double somersault. And then I thought of Martin.

‘Post-theatre shampoo would be lovely,’ I
said, though what Martin would say about one of Toby’s typically over-the-top, not to mention well-after-hours celebrations, I couldn’t imagine. ‘Thank you.’

‘Oh, God, if I sack Greta what will we do about food?’

‘I’ll go to Marks and Sparks for you,’ I declared. ‘On the right china, no one will know. You could get the kids to act as waiters. They’d love it. After bedtime? Flitting round in the dark? Earning pocket money?’

‘Brilliant! Vee, you really are too good for him, you know.’ He took my hands, and looked into my eyes, very seriously, before kissing me on the forehead. ‘And for me. Much too good. Be happy, darling.’

‘I will, Toby. And work on your marriage, eh? Now, darling,’ I said, ‘we simply must get back to business. Let’s do what we did in Stratford the other day – do one thing and talk about another. OK? So we walk round and look serious. A few hand gestures framing the sculpture, that sort of thing.’

Another reason Toby was so much in demand as an actor was that he took direction remarkably well. He practically donned a hard hat and flourished tape measures. All he needed was a theodolite and he’d have been a perfect surveyor.

I responded, to a distant observer deep
in discussion with him about the angle of a particularly ugly specimen.

‘Is this Frederick still on the premises?’ I asked.

‘Ted’s people and cameras haven’t seen him leaving. But they didn’t see him come in, which is worrying. But if I report this to the police I shall have a herd of policemen swarming over the place. Sorry. I mixed my metaphors.’

‘You did. And the police would be accompanied, or at least followed, by the media. That might not be the best publicity for you. It would be better if your security people could run him to earth, wouldn’t it?’

He looked at me sideways. ‘Do I gather you’ve put pressure on this plod of yours to buy me some time?’

‘If you persist in calling him a plod, I shall suggest he has the whole of the anti-terrorist squad descend on you and slap you into
twenty-eight
days’ detention without charge. He hasn’t given you long,’ I added. Martin had said over breakfast that if Ted and his colleagues hadn’t run Frederick to earth by noon, he’d make an official move. ‘He’ll have to come in soon and mob-handed. Think of the number of rooms you’ve got in this place, not to mention the attics and the cellars.’

‘And the outbuildings too,’ he added glumly.
‘I’d best get Ted on to it straight away, hadn’t I? If, of course, I can trust Ted,’ he added.

Impressed by that doubt, I screwed my eyes up to check the angle of something that might have been nicked from Stonehenge, were it not in bronze. ‘Did you double-check his references? You know a lot of these so-called security firms are little better than protection rackets run by criminals.’

‘You didn’t get that from
University
Challenge
.’

‘No,
The Bill
. So did you?’

‘I got him on the recommendation of someone who looks after some National Trust places. His
fides
looked pretty
bona
to me. Ex-army, ex-police. What more could I have done, bar demand a blood test?’

I nodded vigorously at another lump, my hand suggesting it needed a couple of metres to the left. It would have taken a crane or an earthmover to do it, of course. ‘Nothing, I suppose. But it might be worth simply asking him. He seems a decent man. If he’s been forced into something he might like to get it off his chest. But I think we should start that search now. I know ten in the morning’s pretty well daybreak for you, but other people have been up and about some time, you know.’

Ted looked ten years older than when I’d last seen him. Toby and I had drifted to his office, as if discussing a possible fugitive’s whereabouts was the last thing on our mind. We’d found him staring at the bank of screens, moving in and out in a bird’s-eye game of cat and mouse.

‘I can’t make it out, Mr Toby,’ he said, almost in tears. ‘I’ve been through all the disks and there’s no sign of him coming or going. And if he’s anywhere on the estate he’s got his invisible suit on.’

‘So what do you advise?’ Toby asked gently.

‘Well, that you accept my resignation for a start, letting you down like this.’

‘Nonsense. I trust you absolutely,’ Toby’s mouth said confidently. But he looked under his brows like a kind but firm father confessor. He waited.

Ted didn’t contradict him.

‘Very well, what’s your second piece of advice?’

‘Get the professionals in, Mr Toby. A lot of them. If you want him caught quick, that is. Or…’

‘Yes?’

‘You might just get it out of Greta.’ There was the very slightest emphasis on the pronoun.

Toby blushed. Twice in one morning! He must be developing a conscience.

‘A job for a professional, Ted. You try it.’

‘You don’t think I haven’t? All I’ve had was a load of lip and how I… Well, she implied she’d got protection in high places.’

‘She hasn’t,’ Toby said crisply. ‘OK, Vena, make the call.’

‘Not me,’ I said. ‘You want him and his team on your property, you make the call. DCI Martin Humpage. This is his direct line. Then you’re on your own.’

For obvious reasons, Martin had told me virtually nothing about the results of the previous day’s activities. As a witness and a victim, not to mention a grass, I must not know what others were saying. In any case, we’d found other matters more important than news of the interrogation of Frankie, who had after all saved my life, and the hospitalisation of Mr Nasty, which seemed to be as genuine a name as either of his other aliases.

I didn’t expect Martin to greet me with a kiss when he turned up at Aldred House, nor did he. He merely pointed Sandra in my direction, and told her to keep an eye on me before walking off with a group of other officers.

‘I think we should offer Allyn some comfort,’ I said. ‘I need to talk to her for one thing.’

I didn’t think Toby was in earshot, but he said, ‘Spa day. Down in Barnsley. The kids are
with their new tutor in Birmingham. I’m due at the theatre for a costume fitting in half an hour.’

‘We might as well get off the premises too, Connie,’ Sandra announced. ‘Martin tells me you need a new bike. Shall we go and buy one?’

‘I think I’d be more use here,’ I said slowly. ‘If anyone knows the ins and outs of the house I do. I know which stairs link with which corridors. However good this team, they could get themselves totally lost in it.’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Why not consult the DCI?’ I asked.

‘You’re not messing Martin about, are you?’

‘Tell me,’ I said, changing the subject with a deliberate clunk, ‘did anyone ever work out what those numbers on the cocaine wrapping meant? And have there been any others on other packaging?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because I told you, Sandra, anything about Martin and me is strictly off limits. And because I want to know. I wouldn’t even mind knowing what the numbers are.’

‘Why?’

No three o’clock in the morning jokes with her, that was for sure. ‘Because sometimes if you stick something at the back of your mind you come up with an answer. Maybe
the
answer. Meanwhile, ask the DCI if I can be of assistance. Tell him I
promise there’ll be no heroics. Just information he might not otherwise get.’ To give every sign that I was implacable, I folded my arms, which was stupid given the amount of pain it involved. And also because, truth to tell, if Martin did insist I leave the premises I’d have been nothing short of relieved.

Eventually Sandra stomped off, returning a few minutes later with Martin in tow.

‘My plans of the building were lost in the fire, I should imagine,’ I said without preamble. ‘But I’m sure I gave Allyn a set, which Miss Fairford, her PA, should be able to run to earth. But because I’m not an architect, I used a sort of personal shorthand to show how the floors and the different wings related to each other.’

Martin nodded, dismissing a uniformed constable to search for Miss Fairford and the plan. ‘Where were you planning to set up your base?’ he asked, with just a hint of mockery.

‘Wherever I’m least in the way and least nuisance. But I need to be in radio contact with the people exploring. If they see Frederick running down a staircase, for instance, I can tell them what his options are.’

‘Good idea.’ For a moment the smile I’d seen and loved last night softened his face. I hoped no one else saw it, for he completely revealed his feelings, just as I did when I returned it. ‘I’m sure
we’ve got spare body armour – just in case.’

I put my head on one side. ‘You and your colleagues wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think that his disappearance was a serious matter. And the most serious crime on your books at the moment must be the cocaine business. You must be throwing all your resources into tracing the people pulling the strings of Mr Nasty and his friends. Yes? So would I be right in thinking that you think that Frederick is connected with them? Or are you after him for a minor visa transgression?’

‘The Serious and Organised Crime people have muscled in. They’ve got information and contacts and manpower I can’t match. So I have no option but to leave them to trace all Burford’s so-called clients, which I’m sure they’ll do very fast. As for Frederick, I don’t like foreign nationals to disappear on my watch. Especially foreign nationals with aliases: we’ve no record at all of a Frederick with a surname like an eye chart coming into the country legally. The home address Greta’s given us is spurious. Oh, hers is OK; his isn’t. So did he lie to her or is she lying to us?’