The Blurred Man (2 page)

“It’s certainly strange that it happened in the middle of the night,” Tim agreed. “Why wasn’t he in bed?”

“I don’t know why he wasn’t in bed – but I’ll tell you this: I think he was murdered. A man doesn’t walk in front of a steamroller. But maybe he’s pushed. Maybe this has got something to do with money … my money. Maybe somebody didn’t want us to meet! I know that if I was writing this as a novel, that’s the way it would turn out. Anyway, there are plenty of private detectives in London. If you’re not interested, I can find someone who is. So are you going to look into this for me or not?”

Tim glanced at the traveller’s cheques. He scooped them up. “Don’t worry, Mr Carpark,” he said. “I’ll find the truth. The only question is – where do I find you?”

“I’m still at the Ritz,” Carter said. “Ask for Room 8.”

“I’ll ask for you,” Tim said. “But if you’re out, I suppose the room-mate will have to do.”

We changed the traveller’s cheques into cash and blew some of it on the first decent meal we’d had in a week. Tim was in a good mood. He even let me have a pudding.

“I can’t believe it!” he exclaimed, as the waitress served us two ice-cream sundaes. The service in the restaurant was so slow that they were more like Mondays by the time they arrived. “Three hundred and fifty pounds! That’s more money than I’ve earned in a month.”

“It’s more money than you’ve earned in a year,” I reminded him.

“And all because some crazy American thinks his pen pal was murdered.”

“How do you know he wasn’t?”

“Intuition.” Tim tapped the side of his nose. “I can’t explain it to you, kid. I’ve just got a feeling.”

“You’ve also got ice-cream on your nose,” I said.

After lunch we took the bus over to Fulham. I don’t know why Tim decided to start in Brompton Cemetery. Maybe he wanted to visit it for old times’ sake. It had been more than a year since we’d last been there, but the place hadn’t changed. And why should it have? I doubted any of the residents had complained. None of them would have had the energy to redecorate. The gravestones were as weird as ever, some of them like Victorian telephone boxes, others like miniature castles with doors fastened by rusting chains and padlocks. You’d have needed a skeleton key to open them. The place was divided into separate areas: some old, some more modern. There must have been thousands of people there but of course none of them offered to show us the way to Smile’s grave. We had to find it on our own.

It took us about an hour. It was on the edge of the cemetery, overshadowed by the football stadium next door. We might never have found it except that the grave had been recently dug. That was one clue. And there were fresh flowers. That was another. Smile had been given a lot of flowers. In fact, if he hadn’t been dead he could have opened a florist’s. I read the gravestone:

LENNY SMILE
A
PRIL
31
^st
1955 – N
OVEMBER
11
^th
2001
A W
ONDERFUL
M
AN
, C
ALLED TO
R
EST.

We stood in silence for a moment. It seemed too bad that someone who had done so much for children all over the world hadn’t even made it to fifty. I glanced at the biggest bunch of flowers on the grave. There was a card attached. It was signed in green ink,
With love, from Rodney Hoover and Fiona Lee
.

There was a movement on the other side of the cemetery. I had thought we were alone when we arrived, but now I realized that there was a man, watching us. He was a long way away, standing behind one of the taller gravestones, but even at that distance I thought there was something familiar about him, and I found myself shivering without quite knowing why. He was wearing a full-length coat with gloves and a hat. I couldn’t make out his face. From this distance, it was just a blur. And that was when I realized. I knew exactly where I’d seen him before. I started forward, running towards him. At that moment he turned round and hurried off, moving away from me.

“Nick!” Tim called out.

I ignored him and ran through the cemetery. There was a gravestone in the way and I jumped over it. Maybe that wasn’t a respectful thing to do but I wasn’t feeling exactly religious. I reached the main path and sprinted forward. I didn’t know if Tim was following me or not. I didn’t care.

The northern gates of the cemetery opened onto Old Brompton Road. I burst out and stood there, catching my breath. It came as a shock, coming from the land of the dead into that of the living, with buses and cabs roaring past. An old woman, wrapped in three cardigans, was selling flowers right next to the gate. Business can’t have been good. Half the flowers were as dead as the people they were meant for. I went over to her.

“Excuse me…” I said. “Did someone just come out through this gate?”

The old woman shook her head. “No, dear. I didn’t see anyone.”

“Are you sure? A man in a long coat. He was wearing a hat…”

“People don’t come out of the cemetery,” the old woman said. “When they get there, they stay there.”

A moment later, Tim proved her wrong by appearing at the gate. “What is it, Nick?” he asked.

I looked up and down the pavement. There was nobody in sight. Had I imagined it? No. I was certain. The man I had seen in Joe Carter’s photograph had been in the cemetery less than a minute ago. Once I’d spotted him, he had run away.

But that was impossible, wasn’t it?

If it was Lenny Smile that I had just seen, then who was buried in the grave?

We began our search for Lenny Smile the next day – at the Battersea offices of the charity he had created.

I knew the building, of course, from the photograph Carter had shown us. Dream Time’s headquarters were above the Café Debussy, which was in the middle of a row of half-derelict shops a few minutes’ walk from the River Thames. It was hard to believe that a charity worth millions of pounds could operate from such a small, shabby place. But maybe that was the point. Maybe they didn’t want to spend the money they raised on plush offices in the West End. It’s the same reason why Oxfam shops always look so run down. That way they can afford another ox.

But the inside of Dream Time was something else. The walls had been knocked through to create an open-plan area with carpets that reached up to your ankles and leather furniture you couldn’t believe had started life as a cow. The light fittings looked Italian. Low lighting at high prices. There were framed pictures on the walls, of smiling children from around the world: Asia, Africa, Europe and so on. The receptionist was smiling too. We already knew that the place was being shut down, and I could see that she didn’t have a lot to do. She’d just finished polishing her nails when we walked in. While we were waiting she started polishing her teeth.

At last a door opened and Fiona Lee walked in. At least, I guessed it must be her. We’d rung that morning and made an appointment. She was tall and slim, with her dark hair tied back in such a vicious bun that you’d expect it to explode at any moment. She had the looks of a model, but I’m talking the Airfix variety. All plastic. Her make-up was perfect. Her clothes were perfect. Everything about her was perfect, down to the last detail. Either she spent hours getting ready every morning, or she slept hanging in the wardrobe so that she didn’t rumple her skin.

“Good morning,” she said. Joe Carter had been right about her. She had such a posh accent that when she spoke you heard every letter. “My name is Fiona Lee.”

We introduced ourselves.

She looked from Tim to me and back again. She didn’t seem impressed. “Do come in,” she said. She spun round on her heel. With heels like hers I was surprised she didn’t drill a hole in the floor.

We followed her down a corridor lined with more smiling kids. At the end was a door that led to an office on a corner, with views of Battersea Park one way and the Thames the other. Rodney Hoover was sitting behind a desk cluttered with papers and half-dead potted plants, talking on the telephone. An ugly desk for a very ugly man. Both of them looked like they were made of wood. He was running to fat and might have been a little less fat if he’d taken up running. He had drooping shoulders and jet black hair that oozed oil. He was wearing an old-fashioned suit that was too small for him and glasses that were too big. As he finished his call, I noticed that he had horrible teeth. In fact the last time I’d seen teeth like that, they’d been in a dog. Mrs Lee signalled and we sat down. Hoover hung up. He had been speaking with a strong accent that could have been Russian or German. I noticed he had bad breath. No wonder the potted plants on his desk were wilting.

“Good morning,” he said.

“This is Tim Diamond, Mr Hoover,” Mrs Lee said. She pronounced his name
Teem Daymond
. “He telephoned this morning.”

“Oh yes. Yes!” Hoover turned to Tim. “I am being sorry that I cannot help you, Mr Diamond.” His English was terrible, although his breath was worse. “Right now, you see, Mrs Lee and I are closing down Dream Time, so if you have come about your little brother…”

“I don’t need charity,” I said.

“We helped a boy like you just a month ago,” Fiona Lee said. She blinked, and her eyelashes seemed to wave goodbye. “He had always wanted to climb mountains, but he was afraid of heights.”

“So did you buy him a small mountain?” Tim asked.

“No. We got him help from a psychiatrist. Then we paid for him to fly to Mount Everest. That little boy went all the way to the top! And although he unfortunately fell off, he was happy. That is the point of our work, Mr Diamond. We use the money that we raise to make children happy.”

“And take the case of Billy!” Hoover added. He pointed at yet another photograph on the wall. If Dream Time had helped many more kids, they’d have run out of wall. “Billy was a boy who wanted to be a dancer. He was being bullied at school. So we hired some bullies to bully the bullies for Billy and now, you see, Billy is in the ballet!”

“Bully for Billy,” I muttered.

“So how can we be of helping to you, Mr Diamond?” Hoover asked.

“I have some questions,” Tim said. “About a friend of yours called Lenny Smile.”

Both Rodney Hoover and Fiona Lee froze. Hoover licked his teeth, which can’t have been a lot of fun. Fiona had gone pale. Even her make-up seemed to have lost some of its colour. “Why are you asking questions about Lenny?” she asked.

“Because that way people give me answers,” Tim replied. “It’s what I do. I’m a private detective.”

There was an ugly silence. I had to say that it suited Rodney Hoover.

“Lenny is dead,” he said. “You know very well that he’s lying there in Brompton Cemetery. Yes? What could you possibly want to know about him?”

“I know he’s dead,” Tim said. “But I’d be interested to know exactly how he died. I understand you were there.”

“We were there,” Fiona said. A single tear had appeared in the corner of her eye and began to trickle down her cheek. “Poor, poor Lenny! It was the most ghastly, horrible moment in my life, Mr Diamond.”

“I don’t suppose it was a terrific moment for him either,” I muttered.

She ignored me. “It was about eleven o’clock. Mr Hoover and myself had gone to see him. He didn’t like to come out of his flat, so we often went round there to tell him how much money we had raised and how the charity was progressing. We talked. We had a glass of wine. And then we left.”

“Lenny said he would come down with us to the car,” Hoover continued. “It was a very beautiful night. He wanted to have some of the fresh air … you know? And so, we left the flat together.”

“Lenny was a little bit ahead of us,” Fiona Lee explained. “He was a fast walker. Mr Hoover stopped to tie his shoelaces and I waited for him. Lenny stepped into the road. And then…”

“The steamroller was going too fast.” He swore quietly in a foreign language. Fiona sighed. “But the driver was on his way home. He was in the hurry. And he ran over Lenny!” He shook his head. “There was nothing, nothing we could do!”

“Do you know the driver’s name?” Tim asked.

“I believe it is Krishner. Barry Krishner.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“He is in a hospital for the hopelessly insane in north London … in Harrow,” Fiona said. “You can imagine that it was a dreadful experience for him, running over a man with a steamroller. But it was his fault! And because he was speeding, he killed one of the most wonderful men who ever lived. Lenny Smile! I had worked for him for twenty years. Mr Hoover too.”

“You’d only worked for him for two years?” Tim asked.

“No. I worked with him also for twenty years,” Hoover said. “But are you telling me, please, Mr Diamond. Who hired you to ask these questions about Lenny Smile?”

“I never reveal the names of my clients,” Tim replied. “Joe Carter wants to remain anonymous.”

“Carter!” Hoover muttered. He gave Tim an ugly look. It wasn’t difficult. “I could have guessed this. Yes! He came here, asking all his questions as if Fiona and me…” He stopped himself. “There was not one thing suspicious about his death, Mr Diamond. It was an accident. We know. Why? Because we were there! You think someone killed him? Poppycock! Who would wish to kill him?”