The Black Cat (12 page)

“You were right, guv; she worked as an escort.”

Jury had just walked into his office and was taking off his coat. “Tell me it’s the same agency.”

“No. Chelsea. King’s Road Companions, it’s called. Kind of sedate name for an escort place, isn’t it? Her name’s Kate Banks, and according to the manager, ‘Kate’s the best we had on offer.’ ”

Like a plate of cockles, thought Jury. “More or less what Blanche Vann said about Stacy Storm.”

Wiggins nodded. “This Kate was the most popular, always busy, could get five, six hundred an hour if she wanted. In one week, Kate brought in five thousand quid.”

“Do I hear a ‘poor Kate’ in there anywhere from this person? Did she spare a thought for Kate herself?” Jury creaked back in his chair and watched Wiggins stirring his tea. For once he was using a spoon, not a twig or a stick.

“No, Una was thinking more along the lines of‘poor Una.’ That’s the owner, Una Upshur.”

“A name nobody was born with.” He thought of Joey. Wiggins snorted.

“Did you squeeze anything else out of her besides Kate’s earning power?”

“Not an awful lot. Kate’s from Slough. There’s reason enough to go on the game.” Wiggins laughed into his tea.

“Why have people got it in for Slough? I like Slough. It’s a good place.”

Wiggins rolled his eyes. “Kate’s been in London since she was in her early twenties, according to Una. Well-educated, she was. Started at King’s Road a few years later.” He thumbed up pages in his notebook, looked at it. “Una says she’s been with her for about three years. But it’s not her regular job; she’s a steno typist days.”

“Who was last night’s client?”

“According to Una, there was no one on the books for Kate.”

“That must have been unusual, given she was the agency’s star. So she either wasn’t with a client or was doing a bit on the side. Given the clothes and given the money, I’d certainly subscribe to the second idea. Like Stacy. And I’ll bet Ms. Upshur wasn’t giving out any names, either.”

Wiggins stirred his tea. “‘Clients have my assurance of absolute confidentiality.’”

“Until such future time as Una might want to try a spot of blackmail. Get a warrant, Wiggins.”

“That might not be all that easy; there’s not much probable cause.”

“The hell there’s not. She was with one of the agency’s clients. Even if Kate was seeing this guy on the sly, he would still have been on the King’s Road whatever books.”

“Companions. Incidentally, Una made it clear that her setup wasn’t about sex.”

Jury made a blubbery noise of amused disbelief. “Then what, may I venture to ask, is it about?”

“Like it says: companionship.”

“Sure.”

“It’s just possible; I mean, it could be some blokes want just that, boss.”

Boss. Wiggins had started this more edgy mode of address. He was also rendering more opinions than was usual. He frowned more. He contemplated more. “I hope you’re not losing your common touch, Wiggins.”

There it was. Wiggins frowned. “What do you mean?”

“That you’re sounding more coplike. More Prime Suspect.”

“She’s a woman. Helen Mirren.”

“I’m aware Helen Mirren is a woman. Her team still calls her ‘guv’ and ‘boss.’”

“But that’s what we do, guv. There something wrong with that?”

“No. Not at all. Except you’re sounding more like you’re on our side.”

Wiggins’s frown deepened. “But… whose side would I be on if not ours?”

“The other side. The poor bloody public’s that’s got to put up with us. As I said, you could be losing the common touch.”

Now Wiggins was contemplating. “Losing the common touch? You’ve lost me.” He shook his head as if a child had been speaking. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Jury smiled. “I know. That’s why you have it. Come on.” He was up and unhitching his coat from the wooden rack. “We’ll go and see what else we can drag out of the good Una.”

King’s Road Companions was housed in a sedate terraced house just off the King’s Road in Chelsea. The reception area was equally sedate and well-appointed-Italian leather, silk-and-damask curtains, the walls lined with fairly stunning photographs of, presumably, the agency’s girls.

“It’s a terrible thing, a great tragedy,” said Una Upshur, leaning forward over her desk. The wood was so fine that it looked warm, almost soft, as if it would have some give to it if you pressed down with your fingers. More give, thought Jury, than Mrs. Upshur had. She looked hard as rock, as if her frontage were not a well-spun gray wool but armor plate.

She kept flicking looks at Sergeant Wiggins, who was out of his assigned chair and moving about the room, taking in the wall of photos.

“You told my sergeant, Ms. Upshur, that Kate Banks wasn’t with one of the agency’s clients last night.”

“That’s quite right. Here, you can see for yourself-” She turned an appointment book, open to the day-or night-toward Jury.

Who glanced and glanced away, since Wiggins had already covered this territory. “You’re selling sex.”

As if this assessment astounded her, she fell back in her cushy leather chair. “We most certainly are not! These young women act as escorts to different events in London. It might be a society party, or an art gallery, or the opening of a play, or simply as a dinner companion or to go with a gentleman to a club.”

“What you told Sergeant Wiggins was that Kate Banks could bring in upwards of five hundred quid an hour. That’s one hell of a lot to pay for an arm to lean on as you wander through the Van Goghs and Sargents.”

Her small mouth grew smaller, tightening. Then she rethought her situation and said: “There are many wealthy, lonely men out there for whom five hundred pounds is, well, nothing.”

“Chump change.” Jury smiled. “Come on, Ms. Upshur. No man’s going to pay out that kind of money for simple presence.”

“You’d have to have known Kate.”

“I wish I had. But that’s not in the cards, is it?”

Wiggins was back and sitting down, apparently having made his selection.

Not caring for where Jury was going, she switched to Wiggins. “Charming, aren’t they? The most beautiful in London, I’d say.”

“I don’t see Kate Banks”-he hitched his thumb over his shoulder-“back there.”

“Oh. That’s because she’d had a new photograph taken and it’s not up yet.” Una Upshur was not meeting anybody’s eyes.

Jury said, “Then why take down the old one?” No answer, so he said, “She quit, didn’t she?”

“Certainly not!”

“She thought the kickback was excessive, especially given her remarkable earning power.”

“That’s absolutely untrue.”

Wiggins deflected the anger. “She lived in Crouch End, didn’t she?”

“Yes, she did.”

“That’s a long way from the West.”

“It is. But it suited her, I expect. She’d lived there years.”

“Did she also have a place in ECI in the City? Near St. Bart’s Hospital?”

Una shook her head, frowning. “No. At least not that I know of.” She looked at both of them. “That’s where she was found, wasn’t it?”

Jury nodded. “Getting back to your clients. Could it be that one of them was displeased with Kate? I mean, could any of the men she went with have reason to do this?”

“Oh, my, no. I never heard a bit of a complaint. No, I can’t imagine any of them wanting to hurt Kate.” At this point, a tissue was produced from a drawer. It went with a tearless series of sniffs. That was apparently the best Una Upshur could do in the grieving department.

“What about your other girls? Escorts?”

“They were all fond of Kate.”

“I seriously doubt that. Considering she was the high roller.”

Una Upshur said nothing, looking glum.

Wiggins said, “Well, maybe you avoided trouble because there’s not much occasion for the girls to meet, is there? They don’t work out of this office, do they? I mean, they don’t have to physically come in here.” His tone was nice and conversational, Wigginsy.

Her smile wasn’t sunny, but it was more smile than Jury had gotten. “Yes, you’re quite right. They do come in here, but not on a regular basis. I just call them with the information.”

Jury rose. They were getting sod-all from this woman. “We’ll need a photo of Kate Banks, if you don’t mind.”

“Very well. I keep pictures on file.” She turned and went through to another room.

He heard metal drawers opening and closing, then she was back and holding out a five-by-seven photo. “This is one she had taken a year ago.”

She was beautiful, for certain. She didn’t look hard, used, or unhappy. He pocketed the photo. “Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”

Wiggins rose and they left.

“A little impatient, weren’t you, guv? A bit dyspeptic, maybe.”

“More than a little.” When he found Wiggins looking at him speculatively, evaluating, no doubt, the state of Jury’s liver, he said, “No, I don’t want one of your bloody homeopathic medications, shoots, roots, vines, biscuits, powders, or gums from the sacred bolla-wolla tree.” Jury gestured toward the car. “Drop me off at the Snow Hill station, will you?”

“Two shots, one to the stomach and one to the chest.” Dennis Jenkins held up two casings in a plastic sleeve. “Recovered from the victim. A twenty-two snubnose. Tiny little gun, would fit in a rolled-down sock or a tiny little purse.” He held up the clutch that had been lying by the body of Kate Banks. “It doesn’t have much power, but at close range aimed at soft tissue, it’ll certainly do the job. As we saw.”

Jury frowned. “You think it was Kate Banks’s?”

Jenkins shook his head. “We haven’t traced it yet. But if she was on the game, it wouldn’t be surprising that she’d carry a weapon for defense. Which is how one of these snubbies is ordinarily used. The thing is, it’s very easy to conceal.”

Jury thought about this, shook his head. “Not in Kate Banks’s purse. Not with that wad of money in it.”

Jenkins nodded.

“Mariah Cox was shot with a thirty-eight. But I still think it’s the same shooter.” Jury smiled briefly.

“The escort-cum-librarian. That fascinates me.”

At first Jury thought Jenkins was being sarcastic. But he looked at Jenkins’s small smile and decided, no, he really was fascinated.

Jenkins continued: “A double life. Was that it? Was that the rush? Not the sex, not the money?”

“I don’t know. I certainly get a different picture from her boyfriend, I mean the one back in Chesham. He was pretty much blindsided by this. Not just her death, her life. Lives.”

Jenkins creaked back in his chair. “Remember Kim Novak? Vertigo?”

“You brought that up last night. You think Kate Banks was thrown off a bell tower?”

Jenkins frowned but not at Jury. “There was something really sick about that film.”

“You mean the Jimmy Stewart character?”

“The whole film. Her, too. She fell in with it.” Jenkins was rolling a pencil over his knuckles, back and forth. “You ever study obsession?”

“Aside from my own? No.”

“Yeah. Cops tend to be. It doesn’t have much to do with love or any other feeling. It has to do with the idea of it. Obsession has to do with itself.”

“You’ve lost me.”

Jenkins sighed. “Yeah. Me, too.” He tossed up the pencil and caught it like a baton twirler. “No… wait. I did have a thought there.” He paused. “Hitchcock was way off base with Vertigo. That character just wasn’t set up right. Now, take Norman Bates. Norman was completely mad-”

“Psycho?”

Jenkins nodded. “But the guy in Strangers on a Train, Bruno. Now, there was a characterization. Bruno was only half-mad. Both of those characters were more believable than the James Stewart character.”

A WPC rapped on the door frame-the door itself was open-came in, and handed Jenkins a folder. On her way out, she smiled at Jury.

Jenkins slapped the folder open. “Okay.” He muttered a few hmm’s.

“Is that Kate’s?” Jury thought he was picking up Wiggins’s habit of speaking of victims on a first-name basis.

Jenkins nodded. “No surprises. No cartridges found at the scene. Two recovered from the victim. There’s not really much to link these shootings other than the escort service angle.”

“And that nothing happened.”

Jenkins frowned, puzzled. “What?”

“Nothing happened aside from the two women being shot: there was no rape and, what was more curious, considering the seven hundred and fifty pounds-no robbery. They were both dressed up, as if for a party.”

“Yet where they happened, those places are completely different. It wasn’t as if they’d both occurred in a certain part of London. One in London, one outside of it. That’s what distances them. That would make you think this isn’t a serial killer; it makes you think the two killings aren’t related.”

“But you don’t think that?” said Jury.

“No. I think they’re related.” Jenkins sat brooding on something. Obsession, Jury guessed, and asked, “What did you mean when you said obsession ‘has to do with itself’?”

Jenkins chewed at the corner of his mouth. “Look at lago.”

Jury liked that trip from Hitchcock to Shakespeare.

“There’s nothing to explain Iago. The reasons given are absurd. No, it’s like Hamlet: nothing in the plays explains their actions. Iago didn’t act out of jealousy or rage or revenge. He was just being lago-you know what I mean.”

Jury smiled. “This is good, but can we get back to our own little drama? Can we talk about our two dead women?”

Jenkins looked genuinely puzzled. “I thought we were.”

“Meaning, you think our killer was obsessed with sex, or prostitutes, or…?”

But Jenkins was shaking his head. “I don’t think he knew what his reasons were.”

Jury gave a brief laugh. “This is getting away from me.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s lunchtime. I’m off to a pub to have a word with my own Iago. ’Bye, Dennis.”

“Where were you last night, Harry?”

In the Old Wine Shades, Harry Johnson was languidly smoking a small, thin cigar. Jury hadn’t bothered with a greeting, at least not for Harry Johnson. He did say hello to Mungo.

“Where did you want me to be, and at what time?” Harry blew a smoke ring. “There’s been another murder, I take it.”

“Just a hop, skip, and a jump from here.”

“A hop, skip, and a jump from here lies the part of inner London with the highest crime rate in the city. Could that perhaps explain your murder? Or do you have it in mind to tie the one in the City together with the one in Chesham?”

Mungo lurched up and froze like a pointer, as if Chesham had fallen somewhere out there in the fields.

“Something wrong?” asked Jury.

“Yes,” said Harry. “Stop trying to-”

“I’m talking to Mungo.”

“Mungo’s nerves seem to be in a state. God knows why.”

Mungo had defrosted but still sat up alert, all ears.

As if something spooked him, thought Jury. “You still haven’t answered me. Where were you last night?”

Harry sighed. “I was here.” He tipped his head in the direction of Trevor, who was serving a couple at the end of the bar. “Ask Trev.”

“I will. Were you here all night?”

“Did I doss down here? No.”

“You know what I mean. You came when and left when?”

“Came at nine; left at ten or eleven. Does that fit the killer’s schedule?”

“Close.” Jury smiled. “That ten or eleven’s a bit vague.”

Harry shrugged. “I can always change it. Have some wine. It’s a great Bordeaux.” Trevor had come along and placed a glass before Jury.

“You’re pretty cavalier about a double murder.”

“I can afford to be, given I didn’t do them.” Harry tapped ash from his cigar with his little finger, looked at the cigar, scrubbed it out.

“You were in Chesham. You’ve been to the Black Cat-”

Again, Mungo stood up between the two bar chairs and froze like a pointer.

Harry looked down. Ineffectively he gave a command: “Sit, Mungo.”

As if.

“You’re giving Mungo commands?”

“I like to see if it has any effect.”

“It doesn’t.”

“No.”

“The Black Cat, Harry?”

Mungo quivered.

“It’s interesting to me that there’s a black cat gone missing from the pub. I’m wondering if there’s a relationship.”

“Wonder away,” said Harry.

Mungo started turning in circles.

“Is Mungo trying to say something?” He reached down to the dog. “What’s up, boy?”

What’s up, boy? Mungo cringed.

Jury looked at him and then went on. “The little girl who lives at the pub thinks the cat was either murdered or kidnapped. Like the woman found outside. She claims that the black cat there now isn’t her cat, that it’s been put in the real cat’s place-” Jury frowned at Mungo, who was clawing at his leg, something he never did. Jury reached down to pet his head, and Mungo flopped onto the floor.

Harry looked at Mungo, shook his head, and set another cigar on fire. A tiny flame leapt up when he put his gold lighter to it. “You’ve read E. A. Poe, I expect. Have you read ‘The Black Cat’?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Interesting tale, and a very sick one, but it’s Poe, after all. Narrator has a black cat. They’re inseparable. Cat follows him around all the time. The fellow starts drinking and is soon deep into an alcoholic mind-set. He does something horrible to the cat and eventually hangs the animal. The story’s pretty ghoulish.”

“Why does he do it?”

“The narrator’s idea is that one does things just because they’re perverse. No motive other than that.”

What came to Jury’s mind was the conversation he’d just had with Jenkins. Vertigo.

Harry continued, “I think it has more to do with the man’s psychological state, not his spiritual one. Perversion for the sake of perversion. Interesting. The black cat, of course, comes back to haunt him in particularly nasty ways. The only thing I don’t like about Poe is the payback. There’s always a payback, a punishment. I find that unconvincing.” He mused. “This little girl at the pub you mentioned, she could be making it up about the kidnapped cat.”

Mungo was off the floor and turning in circles again.

“It’s just too strange a story,” Harry went on. “Why would someone kidnap a cat? It’s ludicrous. Like the other one.”

Jury turned full face to stare at him. “Oh, you mean the one you told me about Mungo disappearing and magically coming back? That story you stuffed into me over drinks and dinners, and me, idiot that I am, believing it? That story?”

Harry blew another smoke ring and said, “Get over it, will you? It’s going on your tombstone, ‘The dog came back.’”

On the floor, Mungo seemed literally to have his paw over his eyes.

With an energetic shake of his head, Jury said, “No, it’s going on your tombstone, Harry. I’ll carve it out myself.”

Harry sighed. “You just won’t let that go, will you? Did it ever occur to you that your memory might be equally faulty? Like that child’s memory? That incredible story might never have happened.”

Jury looked at Harry Johnson, holding his glass of wine in the path of light cast by the pendant above their heads. “You’ve got so many versions of stories, it’s hard to tell which one you’re referring to, which story, and which of its dozen lives. If you’re talking about the Tilda version, surely you’re not resorting to that old cliché: the witness’s memory is faulty.”

Harry turned the glass as if it were prismatic, a diamond. “Why not? Proust did.”

“Oh, please. First Poe, now Proust?” Jury took a long drink of his wine.

Harry set down his glass and turned to him with a faint, ironic smile. “You’ve read him, have you?”

“Of course, the same as most people have. Swann’s Way. I stopped around page thirty, where he’s dipping the cake in the tea.”

“It was a bit of a madeleine in a spoon that was dipped in tea. And from that taste, an entire world blossomed in his mind. That’s all you read, is it? Too bad. At least you ought to read Time Regained. You can hardly grasp his purpose on the basis of thirty pages. And all along the way, there are episodes similar to the madeleine bit. In one of these, he’s in a salon at a piano recital and he hears a phrase-only that, two notes-and he has a similar experience. The ‘little phrase,’ he calls it. Then in Time Regained he’s about to enter the home of the Guermantes when his toe hits one of the stones in the walk, and that calls up a memory. When he’s seated inside, waiting, a starched napkin is the next trigger. It’s fascinating.”

“But that’s the exact opposite of what you’re saying-that memory can be faulty. Proust is talking about lost memory, not fabricated memory.”

“My word, Richard, you got a hell of a lot out of your thirty pages! But that’s only part of it, you see. There must be some action that precipitates memory-the madeleine, the little phrase of music, the napkin-the buried memory-”

Jury interrupted. “This isn’t buried memory, damn it, you’re talking about faulty memory. And on the basis of this you’re deconstructing the girl Tilda’s entire account of that afternoon!” He was going to hit him in a moment. Sourly, Jury contemplated his glass.

“Then look at this other little girl’s story-what’s her name? So I can keep them straight?”

“Dora. Keep them straight? That’s all it is to you, a story, two stories.”

Harry ignored that. “Look at Tilda’s story from another point of view.” He was again moving his glass around until light sparked it. “On this one afternoon, a child is playing in the grounds of a large, untenanted country house, playing with dolls or stuffed animals, and she looks up and across this desolate and untended garden-”

“Oh, stop editorializing. You weren’t-” Jury stopped. He wanted to cut out his tongue.

Harry laughed. “You nearly said ‘weren’t there.’ That’s good. Especially since it should be obvious that the so-called editorializing would show that I was there.”

“You were.” Jury tried not to break his wineglass over Harry’s head. “Don’t try and pull this again, Harry. Don’t try dazzling me with your agile arguments. I’m not falling for it a second time.”

“I wasn’t. Let me finish, will you? The little girl looks over these silent gardens toward the terrace, where she sees a man-no, there were two children. I forgot the boy-”

“Timmy.”

“Yes. Two of them. This is beginning to sound like The Turn of the Screw. With me as the sinister Peter Quint.”

“You’d make a poor Quint. He hadn’t your personality. And he was dead.” Jury finished off his wine.

Harry laughed and signaled to Trevor. “Then the girl claims that this man chased the two of them, caught them, and kidnapped them. Now, does this Jamesian spin really sound like an accounting of events free of fantasy?”

“You’re leaving out the blindfolding and keeping them captive in his cellar.”

“Oh, yes! How could I have forgotten? That lends such a note of realism to the story.”

Trevor had come down the bar with a bottle. He winked at Jury. “Mr. Johnson telling you another tall tale, Mr. Jury?”

“That’s just what I’m doing,” said Harry. “Only it’s not my tale. It’s someone else’s.” He turned from Trevor to Jury. “That’s all you have: the testimony of a couple of kids who can’t even describe their captor.”

“They do have names: Timmy and Tilda.”

“Hansel and Gretel, more likely.” Harry shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t know, would I?” He smiled. “Never having met them.”