Читать книгу The Honey Trap - Vivien Armstrong - Страница 9

CHAPTER 4

The sudden downpour seemed to penetrate Simon Alington’s mood, settling in a gloomy puddle in his brain. Removing his wet raincoat, he sat in the departure lounge at Heathrow dismally contemplating the wrangle ahead of him in Amsterdam. The printers often took a stolid, obdurate stance and Simon, ever wishing to sidestep a disagreement, knew he must stand firm on this one. He lit a small cigar and hunched over his flight bag, staring at the floor, trying to assemble a tactful line of attack.

‘Hello. It is Simon Alington, isn’t it?’

Simon’s head shot up and he found himself the focus of a tall man wearing a dark, double-breasted suit and an immaculate shirt which only the devoted attentions of a whole team of body slaves could have produced. Simon stood, fumbling for the key to this obviously familiar face now level with his own. The man held out his hand.

‘Oxford. Then Paris on that post-degree shindig. We briefly shared that awful apartment in Pantin, remember? La Nécropole!’

‘Laurence, Laurence—er …’

‘Erskine.’

They shook hands, now neatly tabbed, half-remembered disagreements swirling awkwardly between two grown men on business trips.

They conferred on flights and agreed on a quick drink in the bar.

‘So we’re both going to be in Amsterdam?’

‘I’m at the Lely for a couple of nights,’ Simon replied, ‘probably longer. I’m not sure. And you?’

‘Interpol conference. Three days. I’m waiting for an American colleague. We’re taking an afternoon flight. Get our act together before Amsterdam.’

‘I have always said conferences were a waste of time. All the talking done in quiet corners, anything useful that is,’ Simon joked. He checked his watch. ‘And Laurence Erskine’s Chief Commissioner by now, I imagine,’ he added, amused by the divergence of their paths since Paris.

‘Inspector. But upwardly mobile, you might say.’

Simon was intrigued by the emergence of such a sleek creature from the rather ordinary chrysalis of scruffy fellow-student he remembered. They had both changed since La Nécropole. Erskine was certainly attractive, he would grant him that: his glance direct, his smile genuinely humorous. But the easygoing air seemed merely the velvet glove, an innate intelligence sheathed in social acceptability. Affable yet somehow dangerous.

‘Amazed you joining the police.’

‘Amazed you becoming a fancy decorator. Saw your picture in Interiors last month. Knew it rang a bell.’

‘Didn’t know flatfeet trod the glossies.’

The years stripped away with the well-worn lashes of undergraduate banter and by the time they had filled in the more obvious blanks, Simon’s flight was called. He swallowed his drink, gathered his raincoat and they shook hands. He became serious.

‘Funny bumping into each other like this. I feel rather guilty about something I should have reported before I left. This urgent trip somewhat threw me and—’ he shrugged apologetically—‘no one’s keen to get involved with the police. I couldn’t chance being held over in London just now. But I would value your advice.’

‘Fire away.’ Laurence Erskine’s jocularity was replaced by a steely professionalism, mentally filing Simon’s elusive, sliding glance.

Nervously running his fingers through slightly overlong hair, he answered, ‘No time now, Laurence. How about a drink at my hotel this evening.’

‘Have to be early. We convene at seven-thirty. How does six o’clock in the Orange Bar suit you?’

‘Perfect.’

They parted on an uncomfortable footing, drawing away like two acquaintances passing on moving escalators.

Erskine watched Simon disappear through the barrier, then settled back to wait for Chuck Gombrich. It was uncharacteristic to have sought out an old chum but the Limboland of a departure lounge seemed to invite unlikely behaviour. Perhaps some underlying apprehension about setting out on any journey? The police inspector in him laughed at the notion, deliberately erasing the psychological ramble his mind enticed him to follow.

Erskine withdrew some notes from his briefcase in preparation for the international cooperation which at last seemed to be bearing fruit.

In Tite Street the taxi-meter ticked expensively outside Aran Hunter’s apartment building, the two passengers anxiously contemplating the complications of their vanishing Girl Friday.

‘Here she is!’ Frederick squeaked with relief as the Volvo drew alongside.

She wound down the window.

‘Sorry, folks. Got held up in the square. Filming in one of the houses on the east side, floodlighting, road closed, the lot.’

‘Some Agatha Christie TV job,’ the taxi-driver confirmed. ‘Been at it all week. As if the effing traffic ain’t bad enough as it is.’

Frederick paid the taxi and the driver helped Aran back into the folding wheelchair. Rowan slid the Volvo into the kerbside and the three conferred in front of the wide shallow steps which led to the foyer. Aran took command.

‘Ask the porter to come out, will you?’

Rowan glanced through the glass doors.

‘Hunter, wasn’t it? Flat twenty-two?’

He nodded, giving her a little push.

Frederick gripped the wheelchair and watched the girl run through the entrance, exhausted already by the attenuated departure. He wanted to be home. Also, he could do with another pee …

The porter emerged, greeting Aran with deferential ethusiasm, warily eyeing the Scottish kilt from which the plastered leg protruded like an Awful Warning.

‘Been in a pile-up, Mr Hunter?’

Aran shrugged irritably.

‘I’m going to the country for a few days, Ted.’ He opened his wallet. Notes were discreetly handed over. ‘You haven’t seen me, have you?’ Aran transfixed the doorkeeper with 500 volts of steely eyeball. ‘That young lady—’ he indicated Rowan sheltering from the rain inside the vestibule—‘is going to pack a bag for me. No one else,’ he emphasized, ‘is to enter my flat.’

‘Not even Dolly to clean?’

‘Not even Dolly to clean.’

‘Suppose I get a message for you?’ This Hunter bloke was starting to get up his nose, Ted decided.

‘I shall be staying with Mr Flowers here.’ He turned to Frederick and, taking a business card from his wallet, asked him to add the Mayerton phone number. The old man scribbled on the back, glancing into the brightly-lit foyer where Rowan was clearly visible flicking through the porter’s copy of the Sun.

Ted pocketed the card, tapping the side of his nose in an oddly mysterious gesture which only seemed to increase Aran’s irritation. As the porter turned to go, he grabbed his sleeve. ‘She’s also taking my van from the garage. While we’re waiting, would you push this bloody contraption round to the parking exit at the back to save her doing the full circuit on the one-way system to pick us up?’

‘Well, sir,’ the porter demurred, ‘as you well know, I’m not permitted to leave the front desk.’

‘Absolute codswallop!’ Aran exploded. ‘Five minutes at the outside. You don’t do an eight-hour shift without a leak, surely?’

Frederick looked on, visibly agonized at the very idea.

‘And while we’re on the subject,’ Aran grunted as Ted painfully jerked the wheelchair up the steps, ‘this gentleman would like to avail himself of the facilities.’

The porter pushed Aran through the wrought-iron gate which linked the foyer with the parking area at the rear of the building and carefully relocked it before ushering Frederick before him to join Rowan at the reception desk. Rowan disappeared to the fourth floor while Frederick gratefully gained the sanctuary of the staff cloakroom.

Rowan let herself into the flat, closing the door quietly. The climb had left her slightly breathless and she leaned against the door contemplating Aran Hunter’s home ground. The corridor had been dark but once inside the flat its clarity was almost blinding.

All the walls were white, the entire flat seemingly on view at a glance. The minute hall area was half partitioned with a filigree metal trellis supporting some sort of ivy through which a matt black dining table could be glimpsed in the short leg of an enormous L-shaped living-room.

A spiral staircase led to a wide gallery, presumably bedroom and bathroom. Moving forward, Rowan discovered two mirrored doors revealed a small cloakroom and study-cum-workroom.

A short passage led to a kitchenette, ranged with chrome and black fitments and a window overlooking the street. Parting the slats of the venetian blind, Rowan looked down on to Simon’s Volvo parked beside the wide empty pavement. No sign of Aran or Frederick. The rain had stopped.

She explored further, her espadrilles silent on the parquet floor, a prevailing sensation of being watched totally at odds with the clearly unoccupied apartment illuminated by an enormous studio window from floor to ceiling which bathed both the living area and the galleried sleeping quarters in a cold north light.

‘Stunning,’ she breathed, her normal ebullience strangely muted by the Immaculate Conception of Aran Hunter’s den. She padded round, lifting lids, checking drawers, opening cupboards. Utterly fascinated.

The scream of a patrol car siren in the street jerked her from this awed contemplation and she hustled, confident that the man whose home resembled a filing cabinet had described the exact disposition of his socks and pants.

Swiftly filling a suitcase, she added her own little extras: some after-shave, a sketch pad, Valentino sunglasses, a framed photograph of a girl in a strapless ballgown. Rowan snarled at the simpering face held up to the camera lens and hoped his plastered leg was sexually inordinately inconvenient.

Placing the suitcase near the door, she selected another key and opened the rolltop desk, the only item in the entire flat which had seen better days. Its battered, scarred surface was reassuring, the lock flimsy and really not worthy of a key at all. Presumably, confident of the mortice locks, entryphones, unopenable windows and the televisual surveillance of Ted the doorman, the ultimate pushover of an antique desk was a sop to fatalism.

A small rectangular parcel propped against the pigeonholes was taped and secured as Aran had described. Rowan guessed she had already outstayed her welcome and the shrill summons of the entryphone came as no shock. Leaving the desk gaping, she lifted the wall-mounted receiver. ‘Yes?’

‘This is Ted, miss. Mr Hunter asked me to tell you he’s waiting.’

An edited version Rowan guessed, cheerfully assuring the porter she was on her way. She placed the brown paper parcel with the suitcase, relocked the desk and had a final look round.

Unable to resist the kitchen in any house, Rowan hurried through to see what sort of catering arrangements an art restorer felt necessary. Stuffed quails? Caviare? Moules au beurre d’escargot?

The fridge was a let-down. Butter, the mildewed remains of some Stilton, a large carton of yoghourt and some Parma ham. The freezer was worse: almost totally empty, the biggest item a party pack of ice cubes. The wine rack looked promising but, she discovered, apart from one bottle of Bollinger, contained only numerous flagons of distilled water, white spirit and industrial meths. A serious alcoholic?

Purloining the champagne, she tossed the ham and cheese into the rubbish chute, hearing it bounce noisily down to the basement. Remembering the yoghourt, she turned back to the fridge, removing the carton to throw after the odorous Stilton. Its peculiar lightness seemed odd. Expecting a foul watery curd, she opened the lid. Surprise, surprise. Inside, carefully rolled and rubber-banded, were several hundred large denomination banknotes. With reverence she mentally calculated the value of Aran’s little nest egg and let out a low whistle. And it had been within an ace of the waste chute!

Firmly reining in her imagination, Rowan pocketed the roll of notes and remonitored the flat. The sky pinned up within the frame of the huge studio window gleamed theatrically mauve after the rain, a pair of geese winging rapidly to the edge of the picture lending a lively signature. Two shiny yellow sofas upholstered in a shade she could only describe as canary in aspic confronted the cloudy sky in a largely empty room. Rowan suspected panelled wall cupboards decorously hid such ruderies as TV, stereo and ashtrays.

Turning aside, she shivered, struck by the sterile luxury of a minimalist interior. In her haste to depart she almost spun into the bottom step of the staircase, stumbled and found herself facing a french window leading on to a minuscule balcony. She peered through the glass, dismissing the balcony as a useless sitting-out area, it being barely large enough for two chairs. It overlooked the parking spaces on the ground floor. A fire escape? Only if one had a parachute. Not daring to spend more time exploring, she hurried out, snatched up the suitcase and, cradling Aran’s precious parcel and the champagne to her wonderful chest, slammed the door, relocking it top and bottom before flinging herself back down four flights of stairs.

The garage area extended along the back of the building, marked spaces numbered and mostly vacant mid-afternoon. A few BMWs, a Mercedes and one Rolls-Royce were stabled like expensive bloodstock, rendering Aran’s van incongruous as a carthorse. The van was as minimally decorated as the flat, its beige paintwork elegantly enlivened by classic black lettering which announced Aran Hunter, Fine Art Restorations, 22 Raphael Studios and the telephone number. She stowed Aran’s gear on the passenger seat and carefully backed out, using the remote control to escape through the double steel electronic gates which opened to a one-way street behind Cheyne Walk. Aran had warned her about this and she mentally plotted the arrows to arrive back at the front of the building. But they were waiting just outside in the quiet backstreet; Aran tense, Frederick exhausted, both men touchingly forlorn like luggage left at the side of the road.

Frederick brightened visibly as she jumped out of the van and between them they lifted the wheelchair in the back, clamping the wheels to a steel runner on the floor of the fitted interior before bundling the impatient patient to sit cushioned on the floor beside it. As Frederick made as if to join her in the front, Rowan explained he would have to drive the Volvo back to the riverside. Dismayed, the old man reluctantly accepted Simon’s keys and at last the Volvo lurched into convoy behind the van.

With a real sense of achievement Frederick smoothly proceeded along the Embankment and parked within fifty yards of the Christabel. Rowan applauded from the parked van, Aran invisible in the back.

Locking up, Frederick confidently approached the office, recognizing the spotty youth who disposed of the rubbish and dealt with general maintenance. He greeted the gimlet eyes, all that was visible between a thick muffler pulled up to his ears and the sharp peak of a baseball cap.

‘Wayne, isn’t it?’

The gimlet eyes bored on but, sure of his ground, Frederick pushed the car keys through the cubbyhole. These ‘punky boys’ he regarded with even less favour than the lager louts who had invaded the village most weekends that summer.

‘Mr Alington from the Christabel asked me to leave these in your safekeeping, young man.’ Frederick’s fruity Edwardian tones would have offended the sensitivities of Wayne, always alert to piss-takers, had he not been subjected to the old man’s rich phraseology on previous visits.

He nodded, shoving the keys in a drawer, mumbling some sort of response, but the words, entangled in the muffler, refused to emerge.

‘I say, what?’

Wayne lowered the grubby scarf to disclose a bruised and swollen lip. ‘I said Si told me the girl’d bring the keys back tonight,’ he repeated.

‘We changed our plans,’ Frederick answered airily, moving off.

Wayne rapped on his window. ‘Hang about, mate!’

Frederick half turned.

Wayne pointed to Simon’s berth. ‘Si’s winder-box. Found it at low tide. Right old state it’s in. Done me best but you know how he goes on about them flowers of ’is. I put it back on deck but everyfink’s broke. How’d it get shoved overboard?’

Frederick shrugged, at a loss for words. At last he murmured something about ‘A bit of a party …’ Warming to his theme, he winked. ‘High jinks, you understand. Got a bit out of hand.’

Wayne replaced the muffler and stared balefully at the over-ripe plum driving the van, now leaning on the car horn, laughingly urging the old codger to get a move on. Looked just like Sharon, she did. Fat bum … Big tits … Fuzzy bush down there, shouldn’t wonder …

He snorted. Silly bugger. Wayne knew all about old farts like Frederick. Money talks, he sourly concluded, watching the old man’s hurrying steps back to the van. As it drove away Wayne jotted down the details painted on the side. Might come in handy. Never know. Fine Art Restorations?

‘Need a bloody lot of restoring before that poor old sod could do anything for a girl like that.’