The Zig Zag Girl (12 page)

‘What do you think?’ asked Edgar as the Bentley eased away from the street of little houses. Bill and Jean, standing waving on the doorstep, were growing smaller too. Soon they were lost to view.

‘What do I think?’ asked Max. ‘That is one hell of a big baby.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Max was silent as he edged into the traffic on the main road. Edgar almost missed the days when there were hardly any cars on the road. Now it seemed that every Tom, Dick or Harry had a car. Except him.

‘He was hiding something,’ Max said at last. ‘But I don’t know what.’

‘Maybe he just didn’t want to talk about the Magic Men in front of Jean.’

‘That could be it. She looked the jealous type.’

‘Jealous of Charis, you mean?’ It still hurt to say her name, Edgar realised.

‘Jealous of all of us. Of something she didn’t share.
She’s got him now. House, baby, respectable job. She doesn’t want us dragging him back into the mire.’

The mire. The Magic Men had certainly enjoyed an unsavoury reputation at Inverness. There were rumours of black magic, of WAAFs who went into the Caledonian for a quick drink and were never seen again. Even Max, the WAAF’s pin-up, was not immune to these rumours; indeed he might even have been said to encourage them, wafting around the town in top hat and cape like the phantom of the opera. Tony, who liked to imply that he had supernatural – possibly devilish – powers of deduction, did not help matters. Even Diablo, amiable drunk that he was, gave off a faint whiff of necromancy, of dusty potions and forgotten incantations, of a different, darker world. Edgar liked to think that he was the only normal one amongst them (except Bill, of course, Bill was the epitome of normal). Then, one day, he had heard two WAAFs talking about him. ‘There’s something odd about that Edgar Stephens,’ said one, ‘he just goes around trying to be so
nice
all the time.’ ‘Gives me the creeps,’ agreed the other.

Now he said, ‘Do you remember Jean from Inverness?’

Max shrugged, taking both hands off the wheel. ‘How could I? They all looked the same.’

‘You sound like Major Gormley.’

‘A sterling character.’

‘But all the same,’ said Edgar, glad that Max was holding the wheel again (even if he was lighting a cigarette at the same time), ‘there was something odd about her. Why go on about Charis like that?’

Jean’s comments on Charis’s character had not stopped at her initial outburst. They had continued as a steady counterpoint to the whole afternoon. A remark that Edgar should find police work easy after the army had elicited, ‘I tell you who was easy …’ A reminiscence about the Norwegian sailors stationed at Inverness had caused her to wonder how many of them Charis had slept with. By the end, Edgar was white with anger, and even Bill seemed embarrassed. It had been left to Max to smooth things over, complimenting Jean on the house and Barney on his immense size. ‘He’s got the build of an athlete. He could play cricket for England.’

‘She was jealous, like I said. Charis was a beautiful woman. I bet a lot of people were jealous of her.’

‘You didn’t like her, did you?’ said Edgar.

Max was silent for a few minutes. The ash on his cigarette lengthened until it reached his finger. Cursing, he threw the stub out of the window.

‘No, I didn’t like her,’ he said at last. ‘She was a woman who enjoyed the power she had over men. I didn’t like that.’

‘But you were devastated when she died,’ said Edgar. They had never spoken about this before and it was easier like this, in the car, both of them staring straight ahead.

‘Because it was my fault,’ said Max simply.

*

Major Gormley had got tired of the tanks and wanted them to build a battleship. ‘We need them to think we’ve got a ship permanently stationed off this coast,’ the Major
had explained. ‘Jerry’s doing a lot of reconnaissance these days. Planes going over all the time. He’s interested in us and we want to keep it that way. If he’s looking at us, he’s not looking towards France.’ The Major always talked about the German army in the singular, as if it were a personal acquaintance.

‘Build a boat?’ Bill had said. ‘From what?’

Even though, by this time, Edgar had barely been able to look at Bill, he had to acknowledge that he had a point. All available timber had been used for beach defences. The coastguard vessels were in constant use. Anything else seaworthy had been requisitioned years ago.

‘It’s hard to make a battleship appear out of nowhere,’ said Max.

‘Hard but not impossible,’ said Diablo. ‘Trust in your powers, dear boy.’

And it was Max who found the boat in the end. Taking a girl on a day-trip to a nearby loch (‘Day-trip,’ sneered Tony, ‘that’s a new name for it.’), he had discovered an old cruiser gently rotting away in the shallows. The gallant old ship was towed to Inverness where she was painted battleship-grey and fitted with guns made from beer barrels. She was named HMS
Ptolemy
. Max created a scale model of a real battleship and the men had laboured to make
Ptolemy
’s dimensions match. They added extensions to the bow and stern, lengthening the boat by over two hundred feet. They took down the masts and added gun towers. The main problem was making the ship look as if it could hold aircraft. Eventually, Max and Diablo painted
them flat on a vast canvas. ‘The Germans will be looking down on them,’ Max explained to a sceptical Gormley. ‘It’ll be fine as long as we get the shadows right.’

Eventually, one September evening, the fake battleship was towed down the Ness towards the Moray Firth. It rode a little high in the water and the canvas flapped in the wind but, in the fading light, the
Ptolemy
was an impressive sight. The WAAFs crowded on the quay to cheer as the grey hulk passed by. Max looked at it through narrowed eyes.

‘It’ll be better with the right lighting. I’ll fix up some arc lights on the beach. Then we can let some flares off from the boat itself. That’ll give Jerry something to think about.’

The first attempt to stage the light show went badly wrong. Max, Edgar and Diablo took out a rowing boat one night, intending to let off flares when they were near the
Ptolemy
. But as soon as they reached the Firth, the waters boiled into a sudden storm. Before long, Edgar had lost the oars and the three men were crouched in the bows as the waves broke over their heads. Edgar remembers thinking: so this is it, this is the way I’m going to die, drowned off the coast of Scotland with two magicians in a dinghy. At least it’ll make a good obituary. Then, without warning, the seas had calmed and they had found themselves floating in what appeared to be a vast, flat ocean. Dawn was breaking and there was not another living soul to be seen.

‘Perhaps we have died after all,’ said Diablo. ‘And this is the afterlife.’

‘It’s a bit wide for the River Styx,’ said Max. ‘Christ, I wish I had a cigarette.’

They were picked up ten hours later by a fishing boat. But, as far as Edgar was concerned, they could have been drifting for weeks, years. He didn’t think he would ever forget that time: Diablo singing music hall songs and Max reciting ‘The Lady of Shalott’ (‘I had to learn it at school’), the sun beating down and the uncaring sea as blue as heaven.

‘I’m Burlington Bertie. I rise at ten-thirty.’

‘By the margin, willow-veiled, Slide the heavy barges trailed …’

‘I’m Bert, Bert. I haven’t a shirt …’

‘She has no loyal knight and true …’

‘I stand by the awning while Lord Derby’s yawning. And he bids ten thousand and I bid good morning.’

‘Who is this and what is here? And in the lighted place near. Died the sound of royal cheer …’

They survived with nothing worse than severe sunburn. But Major Gormley wouldn’t hear of another attempt. ‘Next time, we’ll get a plane to drop someone on board. They can let off the flares and we can airlift them off again.’ But the problem was that the
Ptolemy
was massively unstable. The original planking was rotten and, underneath the painted canvas, there were gaping holes fore and aft. ‘Any of the men will go right through,’ said the Major. ‘Captain Parsons will have to do it.’

‘Delighted,’ said Charis, her eyes glittering.

The story was told at the inquest and again at the
inquiry. The flare wedged itself in the decking and the canvas went up in a single sheet of flame. Max and Tony, standing on the shore, screamed and shouted, but to no avail. The plane swooped as low as it dared, but was unable to locate Charis in the burning wreck. Diablo, showing unexpected gentleness, broke the news to Bill, but Edgar, who had a weekend’s leave, didn’t hear until two days later.

When he was told, by a wide-eyed WAAF, that Charis Parsons was dead, Edgar thought of the poem that he had heard whilst drifting in the open sea.

And at the closing of the day

She loosed the chain and down she lay;

The broad stream bore her far away,

The Lady of Shalott.

Max had known that Tony’s funeral wouldn’t be a barrel of laughs, and he was right. Minutes after entering the sooty church near Shepherd’s Bush, he regretted letting his better nature get the upper hand, something that, in fairness, hardly ever happened. He remembered Edgar saying, that day in the church with the rain battering against the roof and the Virgin Mary stretching out her arms to them, ‘Tony’s father wanted one of his friends to be there.’ He had looked so stoical that Max’s heart had been wrung. He couldn’t let Edgar face the funeral on his own. Neither of them had been Tony’s friend, exactly, but they had shared a past with him. It was only right that they should go together and, if that gave Tony’s parents the entirely erroneous impression that their son had had two friends, so much the better.

But Tony’s parents didn’t seem to be noticing anything very much. They sat side by side in the front row, two small figures in black, his mother wearing a hat with a veil that looked as if it were a relic of a happier
occasion. Next to them sat a solid man and a defeated-looking woman. Otherwise, the church was empty.

Max and Edgar sat near the back. Tony’s mother turned and gave them a timid smile. Edgar raised his hand. Max suddenly felt that his clothes were wrong. His suit was too smart, his tie was too narrow and his shoes were too shiny. He wished he could smoke.

A wheezy breath of organ music and the pall-bearers entered, carrying the coffin. Max averted his eyes. He felt a morbid desire to cross himself. The pall-bearers rested the coffin onto a kind of trestle table in front of the vicar and then filed into one of the pews. Max wondered if they had done this to increase the numbers in the church. It was a nice touch, if so.

The vicar eyed his small congregation with a kind of weary distaste.

‘Dearly beloved,’ he began, surveying the pews and wincing slightly. ‘We are here to mourn the passing of a young man, taken from us in the most brutal way.’

He paused, as if to indicate that none of this tastelessness was
his
fault.

‘Anthony was not a churchgoer,’ the vicar continued, ‘but his mother tells me that he was a boy with a strong sense of right and wrong.’

This was probably true, thought Max. Tony certainly knew the difference between Right and Wrong, which was why he almost inevitably chose Wrong.

‘He lived an unconventional life.’ The vicar sounded positively disgusted by now. And, was it Max’s imagination
or did his eyes flicker towards him and Edgar when he said this? ‘Some might call it glamorous. Travelling all over the country, even to America. His name in lights. But, in the end, we are all equal before God. His judgement is all that matters.’

What an unpleasant idea, thought Max. He imagined that God would be rather a stern critic, worse even than the
Glasgow Herald
. It was back to the sheep and goats again. He wondered what Tony would have made of the occasion. Granted, he had star billing, but it wasn’t much of a venue. And as for the warm-up act … He let his attention wander. Words floated towards him, carried by the dust motes.

‘I am the resurrection and the life … whoever believes in me … Man that is born of woman has but a short time to live …’

Tony’s life had certainly been short. He had been barely thirty when he died, the same age as Ethel. Her funeral had been grim too, just him and Edgar and the undertaker’s men. They really had to stop this before it became a habit.

The pall-bearers were shouldering the coffin again. Tony’s parents followed it out, his mother holding a handkerchief to her eyes. The solid man and his wife followed. The man looked like a larger version of Tony, and Max guessed he was his older brother. The wife cast them a scared glance as she passed. Max smiled encouragingly.

They drove from the church to Kensal Green Cemetery, a sprawling city of tombs that reminded Max of Père
Lachaise in Paris. He was pretty sure that the comparison wouldn’t have occurred to Tony’s parents or to the brother.

The coffin was lowered into the grave. Tony’s mother threw in a small posy of flowers. One of the undertaker’s men then offered around a tray full of soil, like a grisly tray of canapés. Max let his handful trickle through his fingers onto the mahogany lid with its brass name-plate. (Why did it need a name-plate? Who the hell would be asking who was inside?) In an escapology act, this was where the music would swell and the wooden box would shake and the magician would rise, holding the severed handcuffs triumphantly over his head. But, as this wasn’t Saturday night at the Palladium, all that happened was that two birds flew overhead, cawing loudly, and the pall-bearers withdrew, leaving Tony’s family facing the horrible gaping hole.

Tony’s mother turned to Max. ‘It was so kind of you to come. Were you a friend of Anthony’s?’

‘Yes,’ said Max. ‘We served in the army together.’

‘Was that in Scotland?’ asked his father. ‘We were surprised when Tony volunteered for that. He had a reserved occupation, you know. Journalist.’

Max had often wondered how Tony had managed to avoid military service. Well, now he knew. Tony had been a journalist though, to Max’s knowledge, he had never reported on anything other than his own brilliance. Ironic, really, that he had been able to get through the war unscathed, only to die a brutal and violent death.

‘You’re that magician,’ the brother cut in. ‘Max Mephisto.’

Max admitted that he was. Incredibly, this news seemed to impress Mrs Mulholland. ‘Max Mephisto! Well I never. Think of Max Mephisto coming to Anthony’s funeral. He was ever such a fan of yours, wasn’t he, Dad?’

‘He was,’ admitted Mr Mulholland.

‘Won’t you come back to the house, Mr Mephisto? Have a cup of tea? And you too, Inspector Stephens.’

Max could think of nothing he’d like less, but he couldn’t think how to refuse. Edgar was no help at all. He stood staring glumly at a neighbouring gravestone (angel, arms outstretched, lichened hair streaming down stone back) and seemed incapable of speech.

*

Edgar had thought that nothing could be more depressing that Ethel’s funeral, but this was worse. At least with Ethel nothing had been expected of him, but here the Mulhollands seemed to expect him to play the role of Tony’s grieving friend. It had been bad enough in church, with the vicar looking down his nose at them and the sister-in-law acting as though they were about to assault her. And the cemetery had been ghastly, rows and rows of graves, like some terrible housing estate, like Esher in fact. But then, just when he thought they might be able to escape, Max had accepted an invitation back to the house.

‘What were you thinking?’ he asked, as the Bentley followed the Mulhollands’ gleaming Morris with Tony’s brother at the wheel.

‘I felt sorry for them,’ said Max. ‘Your son dies in a horrible way and then only two people turn up at his funeral. Was I going to say that we couldn’t even bring ourselves to have a cup of tea with them?’

‘I feel sorry for them too,’ said Edgar. ‘I had to take them to see Tony’s body, for God’s sake. I was the one who volunteered to come to the funeral in the first place. But it’s hypocritical to pretend that we were all best pals. Besides, I’m in the middle of an investigation, I oughtn’t to get too friendly with them.’

Max’s lips twitched as if he recognised the poorness of this excuse. ‘Think about it as a chance to pick up some clues,’ he said.

Clues may have been thin on the ground, but there was no shortage of childhood anecdotes back at the Mulhollands’ neat terraced house. Before they had sat down, Edgar had been shown a picture of Tony at school (‘he was ever so bright, but the masters didn’t seem to like him’) and at Scouts (‘he was asked to leave just after this picture was taken’) and as a young man on the stage (‘he was going to be on television, you know’). Edgar looked at the young Tony, grinning cockily at the camera, and wondered how this timid couple had ever produced such a son. All the same, he was glad they had come. Mrs Mulholland had produced quite a spread: scones, sponge cake and cucumber sandwiches. It would have been too pathetic if there had been no one to eat it.

They sat in what Mrs Mulholland called the ‘front room’ and tried to balance teacups and dainty plates on their
laps. Mr Mulholland sat in what was obviously his chair and made little contribution to the conversation. The brother, whose name was Brian, sat beside them on the sofa and proceeded to hold forth. He had the pompous manner of someone who is used to being listened to. His eyes were bulbous versions of Tony’s famous mesmerist orbs. Pauline, Brian’s wife, sat opposite and watched him with what could have been either awe or resentment. ‘Of course,’ said Brian, demolishing a sandwich in one bite, ‘Tony should never have got involved with those showbiz types. It wasn’t how we were brought up, you know. We used to go to Sunday school and everything.’ Max smiled sardonically into his tea and Edgar wondered where Brian Mulholland thought showbusiness people sprang from. He thought of the performers in Brighton last week. Presumably Geronimo and the ‘Cherry Ripe’ singer and the chorus girls all had parents who had sent them to school and to church on Sundays without knowing that they would one day dress up in sequins in front of a paying audience.

‘Of course, you’re not one of them, are you?’ Brian was saying.

‘No,’ said Edgar. ‘I haven’t got enough talent to be on the stage.’

‘Talent!’ said Brian. ‘If you can call it talent. Tony was a clever enough kid. Very quick at arithmetic and things like that. He could have had an office job like me. But, no, he had to become a magician of all things …’ His voice trailed off as he seemed to register Max’s presence for the first time.

‘Of course, I don’t mean you,’ he said, after a slightly awkward pause, ‘I mean, you’re famous.’

‘Oh, I agree,’ said Max. ‘Performing magic tricks is no job for a grown man.’

‘Tony was always so quick with his hands,’ said Mrs Mulholland. ‘I remember him making a ten-shilling note disappear, just like that. He was only a schoolboy when he did that trick.’ She smiled. Edgar wanted to ask if Tony had been able to make the money appear again. He had been notoriously stingy. He thought of Ruby performing card tricks for her mother. Where was Ruby now, the girl who wanted to be a magician in her own right? Max said that he didn’t know whether she had another job. Was he really going to let her disappear from his life so easily?

‘Tony was clever,’ said his father. ‘That’s why he was picked for that special mission in the war. Top-secret, it was. Very important stuff.’ He turned to Max. ‘Did you say you served with Tony up in Scotland?’

‘Yes,’ said Max. ‘Excellent cakes, Mrs Mulholland.’

‘Thank you.’ Tony’s mother looked overwhelmed by this praise. Edgar had noticed how she watched Max carefully as he ate, perhaps expecting a rabbit to burst out of his hat and start sharing the cucumber sandwiches.

But Mr Mulholland’s mind was still on the war. ‘Are you in touch with anyone else from that unit, what did he call it, the Magic Men? The old chap, what was his name? The Great Dynamo?’

‘Why do you ask, Mr Mulholland?’ asked Edgar curiously.

‘It’s just, the last time Anthony came to see us, just before he went down to Brighton, he told us that he’d seen him, the old magician.’

‘Really?’ Edgar and Max exchanged glances.

‘Yes. He’d run into him in some godforsaken place, out east somewhere. Said he was on the skids, in a pretty bad way.’

‘Can you remember where?’ asked Edgar. ‘It’s just that we’re quite anxious to trace Diablo.’

‘Diablo. That was his name. I saw him at the Empire before the war and he was on the way out, even then.’

‘Can you remember where Tony saw Diablo?’ Edgar persisted.

But Mr Mulholland had lapsed back into silence. It was his wife who leant forward, in the act of pressing another home-made cake upon Max, and said, ‘It was Great Yarmouth. I remember because we went to Yarmouth for our honeymoon.’

‘Yarmouth,’ Brian laughed nastily. ‘It’s a wonder you weren’t divorced years ago.’