Keeping Bad Company (18 page)

‘Gunners’ supporter,’ I said. ‘Arsenal Football Team, that is. Got it tattooed on one arm.’

‘You’ve told the police?’

‘Of course I have,’ I said sharply. ‘I don’t keep things like that from the coppers!’

I might do if I thought it advisable, but I wanted Szabo to think I was a law-abiding type. I didn’t want him to get the idea he could use me in some way with Parry none the wiser.

My companion was searching in his inner breast pocket and took out a little silver case and a silver pen. From the case he took a business card and with the pen wrote a phone number on the back. He handed it to me.

‘I can always be reached on this number,’ he said. ‘If you see this man again, I want you to get in touch with me immediately, do you understand? Whether or not you tell the police, I want you to tell me directly. Or if you come across anything else, or remember anything, however insignificant it might be, which the old man said, you understand? Get in touch with me!’

‘I understand,’ I said, pocketing the card. I hadn’t said I’d do it, but he took that as read. His mistake.

He’d put away the card case and pen and brought out his wallet. ‘Look, my dear, I hope you won’t take this wrongly. Obviously things have been difficult for you since your father died. I know if the situations had been reversed, Bondi would have tried to look after any daughter of mine who was in need. I’d like to help. If I’d known about you, I’d have offered my help before this.’

‘It’s not necessary,’ I said sharply. ‘I can manage.’

‘Please!’ he urged. ‘I’m not offering charity! I understand you’re proud, like your dad, but look at it this way. Let me pay you for your time this evening. You’ve been more than patient and I do appreciate it. I apologise again for any alarm you may have felt. Matson, my driver, lacks, er, tact. Call it compensation?’

He took out several twenty-pound notes and fanned them out like a magician, inviting me to pick a card, any one. The notes were all crisp and new. I nearly asked him, jokingly, if he’d printed them himself, but he was probably deficient in a sense of humour right now, and if they were duds, he wouldn’t be passing them himself.

There were five of them. ‘One hundred pounds,’ he emphasised, peering at me in the poor light. ‘Do you feel that’s adequate?’

There are moralists among you reading this who would feel I should have refused the money. But I took it because, fair’s fair, he
had
taken up my time and originally given me a heck of a fright. Nor would he have liked being refused. Besides, I was broke, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t known Dad.

‘And you won’t forget what we agreed?’ he asked.

As I recalled it, we hadn’t actually agreed anything, but there was only one answer. ‘No, Mr Szabo,’ I said meekly, pocketing the readies.

He smiled and nodded and almost patted my hand again, but remembered just in time. ‘You know, I feel as though I’ve managed to do something to help Lauren at last. It’s been so frustrating with the police, they always reckon to know best – though I’ve begun to doubt it. Just talking to you, telling you, it’s been such a help. I want to thank you. You’re a good girl. You’re like your father. I knew I couldn’t go wrong seeking out Bondi’s daughter.’

I’d been going to give him a nice bright smile back, but it faded. The last person to call me a good girl had been poor old Albie.

‘Can I go now?’ I asked.

‘Of course!’ He looked stricken and tapped on the smoky window. ‘I’ve held you up, such a long time, I’m so sorry . . .’

The door beside me opened and the chauffeur waited outside on the pavement, hand outstretched to help the little lady out.

Halfway out, I made a mistake. Curiosity got the better of me. I turned back and asked, ‘Why was Lauren walking around at night on her own, near St Agatha’s church?’

I don’t know if Szabo heard the question or not. The chauffeur’s deferential touch turned to an ungentle grip. I was hoicked smartly out of the motor and deposited on the pavement. The car sped away, leaving me rubbing my upper arm.

Bruise on my shoulder from Merv and bruises on my arm from Szabo’s minder. I was keeping the wrong sort of company.

Chapter Nine

Ganesh came over in the evening with a bag of takeaway food and a bottle of wine. I was glad we hadn’t to go out to eat, not least because I wanted to avoid Jimmie’s until the art show was over. It was already Thursday, which meant I’d only one clear day left before my debut as a living work of art. I still hadn’t told Gan about it and wasn’t keen to.

So when he asked, ‘What’s been happening?’ I concentrated on telling him about Albie, St Agatha’s and an edited account of my meeting with Szabo.

‘I’m sorry about the old fellow,’ Ganesh said, ‘even if he was a disgusting old drunk. I’d like for the two thugs to get caught. But it’s a job for the police, Fran. You should hand that whisky bottle over to Parry at once. I remember it. I mean, I remember that Albie definitely had a half-bottle of Bell’s.’

‘That’s handy,’ I said. ‘You can tell Parry, back my story.’

But Ganesh was frowning, his mind running on something else. ‘This Szabo, you reckon he really knew your family?’

‘Yes, I do. I don’t think he’d claim he had if he didn’t and he seemed to know all about them. I know my dad never mentioned him, but why should he? Vinnie was sitting up there in Manchester turning out the quality loose covers and making a fortune out of the chintz and cretonne business generally. Dad was down here making one bad business decision after the other, probably regretting he hadn’t joined Vinnie when he had the chance. But then, I don’t know what capacity Szabo had in mind when he asked Dad up to Manchester to join the business. I don’t somehow think he was intending to make him a partner. Dad might’ve ended up driving his old footballing pal around town, wearing a chauffeur’s suit like Matson. Perhaps that’s why he declined the offer!’

‘He sounds a bit dodgy,’ said Ganesh, who said that about pretty well everybody.

‘Szabo? He’s a funny little guy. Lots of brains and a dab hand at business, that’s for sure. Thought the world of his wife and of course, the kid, Lauren. I don’t know, but it’s occurred to me . . .’

‘Go on,’ Ganesh urged when I stopped, embarrassed.

I put into words something I’d been mulling over. ‘All right. It’s occurred to me that perhaps Vinnie married a widow with a child because it seemed a good deal businesswise. I don’t mean he wasn’t nuts about them both – but it took some of the uncertainty out of getting married. She’d been married before. She already had a kid. He didn’t mention any other children so I don’t think they had any together. It was like, well, buying a package holiday. You know exactly what you’re getting.’

‘Hah!’ said Ganesh with feeling. ‘Usha and Jay bought a package holiday and got food poisoning.’

‘So there’s always a risk in any business! I’m just saying, Vinnie took the best option. I don’t imagine he’s ever been the type to sweep women off their feet! There was this young woman with a child, looking for a nice home and there was Vinnie, looking for a family. It worked out well. Everyone got what they wanted.’

Ganesh was looking dissatisfied. Chewing and waving a piece of naan bread at me to emphasise his words, he said indistinctly, ‘I still don’t see why he had to turn up like that and nab you. I understand the man’s desperate, but – don’t get me wrong – talking to you was really grabbing at straws.’

‘I think he only came to find me when he realised whose daughter I was. Szabo’s getting tired of waiting about for the police to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. He wants Lauren found, fair enough, and found quickly. And he’s used to doing things himself, his way, calling all the shots. More than that, he’s isolated. He’s come down from Manchester. London’s a place he left as a kid. He doesn’t know people here. This isn’t a situation where he can call in business favours and get things done. Suddenly, there I am, Bondi’s daughter. I’m almost family!’

‘I understand how he feels, but he could screw up the whole investigation,’ Ganesh said, still disapproving and scraping the rest of the chicken korma out of the foil tray on to my plate. It was kind of him to think of bringing meat for me. He’s vegetarian himself. ‘And
how
did he learn that you were a friend’s daughter? I mean, what made Parry send Szabo to you?’

‘Hah!’ I said darkly. ‘Wouldn’t we all like to know what Sergeant Parry’s up to? He’s got a nerve, setting Szabo on me! What did Parry expect me to tell Vinnie I haven’t already told the police? Does Parry think I’m holding out on him? I’ve already told them all I know and a fat lot they’ve done with the information.’

We sat in silence eating. Ganesh was deep in thought and I didn’t disturb the process because generally he’s good at figuring things out and exceptionally good at finding weak links in arguments, especially my arguments.

‘It seems to me,’ he said at last, ‘that you’re looking at this from the wrong point of view. That’s to say, from your point of view when you ought to be looking at it from Parry’s. What I mean is, I don’t think Parry thinks you’re not telling all you know. I think he thinks
Szabo
isn’t telling all he knows. I’m not saying Szabo is a crook. He probably just sails a little close to the wind sometimes and it’s not in his interest to tell the coppers all his business, right? At the very least, he’s probably got money offshore and the tax people are sniffing round.’

‘He likes privacy, he told me so,’ I informed him.

‘Exactly. Normally he’d probably go a hundred miles out of his way to keep the police or any other official authority out of his hair. Who’s to blame him? Look what happened to Hari. But now this girl, Lauren, has been kidnapped. Szabo’s had to open up and let the cops put their big feet over his threshold. But no more than he’s got to. He’s not letting them into the front room and offering them cups of tea. The police would like to know more about Szabo and just how it’s come about that his daughter’s locked in a cupboard somewhere while a couple of thugs put the squeeze on her family. Perhaps there’s a lead or a connection which is slipping by Parry because Szabo’s trying to be clever. The man wants his daughter found, but he’s a businessman, and he’s trying to cut a sort of deal with the police. He wants Lauren back but to give away as little as possible in return. Parry’s not using Szabo to shake you loose. He’s using
you
to shake up Szabo.’

‘Poor kid,’ I said. ‘As if she’s not in enough trouble, Szabo and Parry are playing silly games instead of getting together. I hope she’s not having too rough a time. She must be scared out of her wits.’

We sat in silence for a while, both of us aware of the brutal reality of Lauren’s situation. Some kidnappers, according to press reports of past cases I’d read, kept their victims prisoner in Dark Age squalor, locked in airless cupboards as Ganesh had just suggested, or even worse, boxed in coffin-like horror, possibly underground. No wonder Szabo was half out of his mind with worry. Even if they got her back in one piece, what sort of mental state would she be in?

I pushed all this gruesome speculation from my mind. It didn’t help Lauren and rescuing her was what we all ought to be concentrating on, that and nothing else.

What Gan had said made sense to me. I ought to know enough about Parry to realise he hadn’t sent Vinnie along to me without some dastardly plan behind it all. Never mind if I get the fright of my life, abducted by a goon into a motor with tinted windows, to be faced with someone I never saw before but who knows all about me.

Just you wait, Sergeant Parry, I promised myself. I can be very awkward about this. You weren’t told to do things this way at Hendon Police College. Or perhaps you were. Come to think of it, Parry had been rather clever for once. He couldn’t bully Szabo in the way he liked to bully people, so he had to manipulate the situation. Neat, Sergeant P., but, from my point of view, nasty. The boys in blue are a devious bunch.

‘God, Parry’s a creep,’ I said fervently.

‘Sure he is,’ said Ganesh. ‘But he fancies you something rotten.’

That startled me so much I dropped my plastic fork. ‘You’re barmy!’ I yelped.

‘No, I’m a bloke and I can read the signs. He gets that gleam in his eye when he sees you. Now he knows where you are, he’ll be back.’

‘Thanks for nothing,’ I said.

‘Let me know if you want me to rush round and defend your honour.’ He started chortling away happily to himself.

to have you know I can look after myself!’ I snapped. ‘Parry?
Parry?
Parry waltzing round my bedroom reeking of aftershave and lust? I’d sooner face a firing squad!’

‘Well, they used to call it a fate worse than death!’ said Ganesh. He laughed so much he choked on a cashew. I had to thump his back until he yelled out for me to stop before I fractured his spine.