Creed (27 page)

‘I want to know about my son.’

‘We’ll discuss your son when you’re seated.’

What the hell could she do? She was only a woman. But was she alone? He inspected the office, grim daylight at least throwing some relief. Just him and her, although across the room there was another door which obviously led to an adjoining office. Could the two freaks be lurking in there?

‘The couch,’ the woman said.

Creed shrugged. No big deal. Anyway, the couch was close to the open door if he wanted to get out fast. It smelled of age rather than leather when he lowered himself on to it, rising dust spoiling the air, the material itself creaking dryly. It finally dawned on him that the building and its offices were not really in use at all; the whole place was probably waiting its turn for the demolition squad.

‘What’ve you done with Sammy – with my son?’ he asked mildly enough. Inside he was scared, he was seething, he was distraught.

‘The boy is unharmed.’

A sudden flare and her countenance was lit up. The end of her cigarette glowed and the lighter flicked off. Smoke caught the light as it rose from the shadow of her face.

Creed continued to stare as though he could still see that face.

It was beautiful.

Full, blood-coloured lips; a nose that was strong but not dominant; sweeping hair that framed her cheeks to curl against the jawline. The eyes had been downcast, eyelashes thick and long, but before she had snuffed the flame they had looked up at him; they must have been a deep brown, but they seemed softly black. Her glance was languidly sexual. Then the light was gone.

Creed cleared his throat.

‘Don’t you like the darkness, Joe?’ The tone was as sexual as the glance she’d given him. ‘Don’t you find it . . . restful? It veils so much ugliness, while light only serves to shatter illusions.’

‘I want my son back.’

Although he couldn’t see her eyes now, he underwent a similar sensation to the one in the cemetery when his own eyes had met the crazyman’s, a feeling that his skull was being invaded. This time, though, it was a softer exploration, a delicate probing of his thoughts rather than a scouring. He shivered suddenly, and even that was not unpleasant. The skin of his back seemed to be dilating, stretching, causing an agreeable crawling tingling that almost made him squirm. And . . .
oh Judas Christ, not that, not now
. . . a muscle twitched between his legs.

Her cigarette glowed again and she appeared to be smiling.

‘Of course you want the boy back,’ she agreed soothingly. ‘But you’ve been very troublesome to us, Joe. That isn’t easy to forgive.’

He saw her shoulders rise, watched her as she came round to his side of the desk. Oh boy, she was tall, five-ten at least. She made Sigourney Weaver look frail and positively dowdy. She leaned back against the desk, one arm folded across her stomach and holding the elbow of the other, cigarette poised inches away from her face.

‘I’ve got the negs, the prints – everything you want. Just give me Sammy.’ He was tempted to go over and grab her by the shoulders, maybe shake her some to let her know she shouldn’t mess with him. The temptation wasn’t very strong.

‘I’m not sure if it isn’t too late,’ she said.

‘What?’ For a moment he was stunned. ‘You haven’t—’

‘I told you the boy is safe. No, I didn’t mean anything like that, although . . .’ She let the sentence hang. ‘You see, you’ve already stirred up interest in something that would best have been left alone.’

‘That isn’t true. I’m the only one that knows about the connection with this character Nicholas Mallik and even I don’t understand what it is.’

He thought he heard her sigh, although she might merely have been exhaling cigarette smoke.

‘You know about Nicholas.’ She said it as a wife admitting she had a lover might.

‘I, well, I . . . no.’

‘A pity.’

A pity he
did
know, was the implication.

‘But then, perhaps not.’

He wondered at that.

‘Would you mind . . .’ he said, ever so politely. ‘. . . would you mind telling me who you are?’

‘Do you really want to get in deeper?’

‘Uh, no, it’s not important. Look, I’ve got what you want right here.’ He drew out a large envelope from inside his buttoned coat. ‘It’s all there, everything you – he – wanted.’ He proffered it towards her.

‘You can call me Laura, Joe. Yes, I’d like you to call me that.’

She came towards him and he thought it was to take the envelope. She ignored it.

He could see her more clearly now and at any other time he’d have approved. She was not quite slim, but her body looked firm and her curves were gentle. Her perfume was odd, a musk of some kind, a fragrance that had an underlying bitterness; it was strangely erotic. Her face really was beautiful in that half-light.

The envelope slipped through his fingers when she kneeled before him and said, ‘Let me breathe you, Joe.’

It wasn’t a proper reception desk; nor was it a proper reception hall. It was an old and somewhat tired-looking oak table with ornately carved legs situated in a marble-floored hallway opposite the home’s main doors. The woman seated there – a very rotund lady with the puckered yet dainty face of a gorged twelve-year-old – looked up at Antony Blythe in surprise. She put down her copy of
Elle
.

‘Can I help you?’ Her voice was somehow distant, as though having lost much of its strength in the struggle through all those layers of flesh.

In her pale blue uniform, over which she wore a fluffy pale pink cardigan, she reminded Blythe of a pastel blimp. ‘My name’s Wingate,’ he told her. ‘From Birchenough, Mibbs and Burroughs,’ he added, as if confident that would explain everything.

She blinked at him with eyes narrowed by the fat around them.

‘My secretary rang yesterday to make the appointment.’

The woman, who could have been aged anywhere between mid-twenties and early-forties so heavily did her weight disguise her, blinked again. ‘I’m afraid she didn’t, Mr . . .’

‘Wingate. Well someone here accepted the appointment,’ Blythe blithely lied. ‘I’m here to see Ms Buchanan – Grace Buchanan. It concerns her late mother’s estate.’

‘Her mother . . . ?’

Blythe showed only a little of his usual impatience. ‘Lily Neverless. The actress. You might recall she died very recently. I’ve come a long way and my time is short . . .’

‘I’m sorry but Grace isn’t allowed visitors.’

‘And I’m sorry but you really can’t deny me access. This is a matter of importance.’

‘I’m afraid she isn’t well enough . . .’

‘That’s as may be, but not altogether relevant,’ the diarist prattled. ‘It’s a point of law that I see her whether she understands what I say or not. In some ways it’s like serving a writ, only in this circumstance it’s entirely beneficial to the recipient. Will you please make the arrangements as quickly as possible so that I’m not further delayed.’

Those piggy little eyes stared at him blankly. ‘Would you wait for a moment?’ She rose from the table like a mountain from the sea and moved surprisingly swiftly and lightly down the hallway to disappear with one last glance back at him through a door at the far end.

Blythe considered what to do should whoever was in charge of this high-class institution refuse his request to see Lily Neverless’ mad daughter. Insist? What if they demanded to see some form of identification? Beat a hasty retreat, that was what he would do. It was a reasonable ploy, pretending to be an executor of Lily’s will, but one that would be impossible to brazen out.

He glanced around, curious about this place called the Mountjoy Retreat. It didn’t look like a lunatic asylum, despite the walled grounds, nor was it billed as one. A retreat for the elderly, the infirm, or the emotionally exhausted? he wondered. He hadn’t seen any yet. The only person he’d met so far was the fat receptionist. How old would Lily’s daughter be now? Late-fifties/sixties? Had to be something like that. She’d been incarcerated for thirty years or so, poor imbecile.

Blythe’s original aim had been to discover the connection between the Beast of Belgravia and Lily Neverless (there
had
to be a reason for Mallik’s offspring to visit her grave), but the few calls he’d made to some of Lily’s friends had yielded nothing initially (older Thespians these, in the main, who would trade a confidence without conscience for a mention in the tabloids). No, they couldn’t recall Lily associating with someone called Nicholas Mallik – ‘
Wasn’t he a notorious spy during the war, dear?
’ one not-quite senile actress enquired of Blythe – but then she’d ‘associated’ with so many men in her life, hadn’t she? Possibly the one person who would know, advised a financier who had indeed had an ‘association’ with Lily some time in the long-gone past, was Lily’s daughter, but then she was probably too loopy to give him a sensible answer. Where was she now? God knows, old boy. The fact that her one and only child was twopence short of a shilling wasn’t something the old ham wished to be generally known. Never heard her talk about the lassie, let alone where she was kept locked up.

Naturally that had merely increased Blythe’s curiosity, for the public, hence journalists, loved skeletons in cupboards. They loved those old bones to be dragged out and cast to the ground where they could be read like runes. A madness in the family was wonderful stuff, if the family was famous (a madness in the Royal Family was even better, but virtually impossible to get into print).

So who would know where Lily’s dippy daughter was being kept?

Simple, really. Lily Neverless’ solicitors would know. He checked with the newspaper’s own legal office, who provided the answer within ten minutes (the actress had had occasion to sue the
Dispatch
some years ago for publishing a ‘malicious and untrue’ story about herself; apologies and money had passed hands and the litigation had been dropped). Blythe rang the company of Birchenough, Mibbs and Burroughs and enquired if Lily Neverless’ will had been read yet and, making no pretence as to his own identity (solicitors are well-used to such enquiries from journalists), who were the main beneficiaries? The solicitor, who had every right to withhold the information, even though it would eventually be a matter of public record, was surprisingly helpful and informed him that the
sole
beneficiary of Lily Neverless’ last will and testament was the Mountjoy Retreat, an arrangement made years before and swiftly expedited on her death. But did she leave her daughter nothing? Blythe had asked. Grace Buchanan had been well provided for, came the reply, and the insinuation was plain to see. So the old girl had left everything to the home or asylum or retreat or whatever tasteful term they used to describe the funny farm that cared for her daughter. She must have had a lot of faith in the people who ran the place.

Tracing the Mountjoy Retreat had been relatively easy; locating it on the map had been difficult.

But eventually, by travelling to the area and searching country backroads, he managed to find the place. He wondered why it was not even listed in the telephone directory. He also wondered if they would allow him to see Grace Buchanan.

The pale blue dumpling appeared at the end of the corridor and swept back towards him, her pudgy face expressionless.

‘That will be fine,’ she squeaked.

‘I can see her?’

‘Yes, not for long though. Would you like to follow me?’

He did, lengthening his stride to keep up with her (how
did
she manage to glide like that?). Up one flight of stairs, along a bright, white corridor, then up another flight. My God, where do they keep her? In the loft? He wrinkled his nose at the sickly stale smell that pervaded the air, an unpleasant sweetness that was not unakin to baby’s vomit or old people’s body vapours. A door on his right opened an inch or so as he passed by and he caught a glimpse of a solitary eye that was so yellow-stained and damp, the skin around it so sagging and cracked, that it could have belonged to some leprous creature locked away because of its own hideousness. Allow me to die before I get old, Blythe silently pleaded. His obese guide stopped dead in her tracks, perhaps alerted by the worse stench that had filled the corridor like a jet of polluted steam. She turned back and yanked shut the door from where the offending smell came. The diarist thought he heard a feeble moan from the other side.