The Bad Samaritan (20 page)

“I see,” said Charlie neutrally. “Well, as I say, I'll have to talk to your husband if that episode does turn out to be significant. But that wasn't what I came to ask you about.”

“Oh?” Slight access of tension, Charlie thought.

“It's the matter of Rosemary Sheffield I wanted to talk about.”

She smiled forgivingly.

“Rosemary? Oh, the whole parish knows about that. Rosemary lost her faith—quite suddenly, like mislaying your spectacles, or so it seems. Odd, isn't it? Everyone thought it so sad in a vicar's wife.
Aw
fully embarrassing for both of them of course. But I can't see why you'd want to talk to me about
that
.”

“Can't you? Well, let's just go through what happened after she lost her faith, can we? There was some trouble over the positions she holds, wasn't there?”

She bridled, very prettily.

“Well, where they were
church
positions there was bound to be, wasn't there? I mean, in a way she had signed herself
out
of the Church. So naturally people felt she shouldn't go on holding the positions she had had.”

Charlie nodded, still very friendly. Those who knew him could have told Selena to beware.

“As I understand it, someone was retiring as chair of the Mothers' Union, and people—or rather
some
people, some parish members—didn't want Mrs Sheffield to move up from vice-chair and didn't want her to stay in that position. Is that a fair summary?”

“I suppose so, though you make it sound so nasty.”

“I'm sorry. And Mrs Harridance would have liked to take over, is that right? And perhaps have you as her deputy?”

“Certainly there were some that wanted that—quite a
lot
, actually. But there was no row. I remember talking it over quite happily with Rosemary in the train when she was on her way back from Scarborough.”

“Ah—I hadn't heard about that. Was that when you decided to go to Scarborough yourself?”

A shade came over her vapid prettiness.

“Well, no . . . No, I think that was later. I remember meeting Rosemary by chance in the street and asking her where she'd stayed, and thinking that was just the place to take my old mum, who needed a tonic.”

“She must have recommended it powerfully. And while you were there, you met the boy who later came to work at Pizza Pronto and who confronted Stephen Mills at the church party?”

She pouted, not very prettily.

“You say ‘met,' as if it was a social thing. Actually he was the waiter there.”

“I know he was. And while you were there you heard a juicy
story: that he had been seen coming out of Mrs Sheffield's bedroom at night.”

“Of course I never imagined—”

“And the day you left you heard he'd been sacked.”

“We met the boy at the station, checking ticket prices, and that's what he told us. We were so sad.”

“Right. Now we get to the interesting bit. You didn't use any of this when you got back to Leeds because you and Mrs Harridance thought that it might boomerang.”

“That's most unfair!” said Selena, getting hot and flustered. “I would
never
have hurt Rosemary, who's the
sweetest
person. Who have you been talking to?”

“That's neither here nor there.”

“I'll never speak to Florrie again!”

“What interests me is that something changed your mind. When you'd been home a week or so, the rumours started getting around. What was it made you switch tactics?”

“Nothing! I never spread those stories. If Florrie has told you so, she's lying.”

Charlie leaned forward so his face was close to hers.

“I'm not sure you should try to pin blame on Mrs Harridance. I think you changed tactic because of someone else—someone you told the story to.” Suddenly he saw a purple blush spreading up from her neck, and he added softly, just as speculation: “Pillow talk, perhaps?”

She broke down at once, taking out a delicate little hankie and a bundle of paper tissues and sobbing into the clumsy, absorbent ball, murmuring things like “You won't tell?” and “Derek would never forgive me.” Charlie wished he could rid himself of the idea that he was being watched out of the corner of her eye and his reactions estimated. He congratulated himself on the success
of his long shot, but he was in no mood to let Selena Meadowes off the hook. He said briskly:

“There's no reason why anyone should know if you are totally honest. How did Stephen Mills get to hear about this?”

“Well, I don't
know
—because we haven't talked about it, how could we?—but I gave my husband some little . . . well,
hints
about Rosemary and the waiter, and that evening he was going to Rotary, and I think—”

“I get the message. Coy little jokes about the vicar's wife having been a naughty girl. I was once told that men make the best gossips, and my experience is that it's true. What makes you think that was how it was?”

“The next day we met—Stephen happened to be around when I dropped the children at school. He'd never been there at that time before. And he was very . . . par
tic
ular. Very warm. And he'd never done more than freeze me before, or sneer, even though I'd . . . well, sort of . . .”

“You'd sent out signals and he hadn't responded?”

“That's a horrible way of putting it,” she protested. “You . . . people are so crude.”

Charlie grinned, his teeth glinting terrifyingly.

“Well then, you'd sent out tiny, ever-so-subtle hints indicating interest, and he pretended he hadn't registered them.”

“No. He indicated he had registered them but wasn't interested. I've known him do that to others too.”

“Whereas now, suddenly, he was all over you.
Where
was he all over you?”

“Oh really—you are so . . . He rang that evening, when he knew Derek would be watching the European Cup. Said he'd be at the Quality Inn in Leeds all day the next day, under the name of Cameron Winchell. If I'd care to come along to do secretarial
work I'd be very welcome. I could use the name Beryl Bates . . . . I should have been outraged, or pretended to be, but . . .”

“You went along.”

Her voice took on a whining tone.

“I was flattered, and . . . it's a terribly expensive hotel. Way outside our range. I told the receptionist I was there for secretarial work, like he'd said . . . . We were there from half past ten to when I had to pick the kiddies up from school. He gave me a wonderful time. He had a suite, and we ate lunch there, and we . . . But after lunch he started asking about Rosemary Sheffield.”

“And you told him all you'd learnt at Scarborough?”

“Yes. It didn't seem to matter, somehow, him being a man. And we were in bed, and it was just—well, like you said, pillow talk. But then, when he'd got it all out of me, I was about to swear him to silence—”

“A bit late, though I don't suppose earlier would have made any difference.”

There was silence, then she said in a tiny voice:

“I don't think it would. Because before I could say anything, he lay there and said, ‘Very interesting. I owe Rosemary one.' And I got panicky and said, ‘What do you mean? You're not to say anything,' and I went on a bit, and he turned to me and smiled and said, ‘I never let a debt go unpaid. You should remember that. If someone's done me an injury, I do them one back. That's nature's law.' Then he got up and dressed and told me to do the same.”

“End of perfect romance.”

The unlovely pout returned to her lips.

“You're horrible . . . but so was
it
, really. The experience. He made it so clear that he'd got what he wanted, which wasn't even
me
, and that was the end of it. He really liked turning the knife, you know. As we were leaving the hotel, in the foyer and before
we got to the door, he said, ‘Good-bye Selena, see you around,' and waved—he did it then so the receptionist would hear. I felt about two feet tall.”

“If he liked turning the knife,” said Charlie, getting up, “and we've other evidence that he did, maybe it's not surprising that someone took a knife to him.”

“It wasn't me!” said Selena eagerly. “I wouldn't have—I mean it was just an episode. But I was terrified Derek would find out. He would have—”

She stopped, a horrified expression on her face.

“Don't worry,” said Charlie. “Regularly in a murder investigation we hear someone say that someone else would have killed if they'd known. It's just an expression.”

Selena nodded. Encouraged, she made a last attempt to make a better impression.

“I wish you'd understand about . . . what happened—my side of it, anyway. I
did
find him terribly attractive, had done for ages. I knew I was being unfaithful to Derek, of
course
I did, but somehow his showing interest was like a fairy tale, an Audrey Hepburn film come true, and it didn't seem sordid, or mean, but somehow . . . beautiful. I wish I could make you see that.”

“I'll try,” said Charlie. “But we blacks are so crude.”

“Y
ou've got a nice new room for your little business,” said the desk sergeant when Charlie arrived back at headquarters. “Very cosy—I think you'll like it. It's a sort of miniature United Nations in there.”

Charlie saw what he meant when he'd been told where the room was and opened the door. Oddie had managed to get six small desks into a medium-sized room, and at them sat six people of various ages and types dictating translations of documents on to tape recorders in a variety of accents.

“And even so we've got two languages we haven't found translators for yet,” said Oddie. “Azeri and Albanian. I'm not too worried. I'm getting the general picture.”

“I'm glad about that,” said Charlie, sitting on the edge of a desk. “And what is the general picture?”

“Settle down and I'll give it to you . . . . Number 94 was the centre of the other side of Mills's European activities—as well as a love nest, as we know. It's a two-bedroom flat, and most of this stuff was tucked away in filing cabinets in the second bedroom. He was good and methodical, thank heavens, so that's made the
job easier. It's clear that the whole business grew into illegality, so to speak—left the track gradually before taking off into rough country. What started as a perfectly legitimate part of European Opportunities Ltd. began wobbling over during the eighties into something slightly off-colour, first, and then to something absolutely out of order.”

“During the eighties . . . Was this because of some of the Balkan countries breaking free of the Soviet Union?” Charlie asked.

“Partly. But the biggest single factor was the rise of gangsterism in the Soviet Union itself. This started with bootlegging when Gorbachev tried to curb vodka consumption—a pretty futile endeavour, by the sound of it. Really it was very much like America during prohibition. Soon the bootlegging snowballed into large-scale crime and profiteering, with rival gangs, hit squads, politicians in the pay of the different groups, and so on. By all accounts that's the situation today. The gangs have more power than the politicians in some parts of the old Soviet Union.”

“I was reading somewhere the other day that Cyprus is the place they all want to go to,” said Charlie thoughtfully. “Sun and sand and unlimited vodka.”

“And no questions asked. Yes, I read that too. Apparently they tip better than the Brits too, which is a bit humiliating. But they've been interested in London as well. They've been cut off for so long that they probably imagine it's still swinging—upbeat instead of deadbeat like it actually is. Quite clearly Mills was going way over the line in providing false documentation for them, setting up connections with all sorts of people in organised crime and specialised crime in this country. By the time he died this was one of the main planks in his business, presumably bringing in most of his money. But I don't think that's what we're interested in.”

“What I'm interested in is: who was Stephen Mills?” said Charlie.

Oddie mimed a conjuror drawing a rabbit from a hat.

“And here is your answer: Stojan Milosevic.”

“That's a surname you hear rather a lot of these days.”

“Yes—I don't think they're related. I don't have a lot of details yet, but what I have says that he had an English mother, who came back to this country when her marriage to a Yugoslav broke down sometime in the early seventies, and he came with her—then in his late teens.”

“Hence the perfect but rather precise English,” said Charlie.

“Exactly. And the impression we've been getting that he's risen without trace.”

“If we're not interested in the Russian Mafia side of his operations—”

“Not just Russian: Polish, Bulgarian, you name it.”

“Then what are we interested in?”

“The business of arranging the illegal entry of anyone from Eastern Europe who could afford the hefty sums involved.”

Charlie nodded. The thought that that was the connection with Stanko had crossed his mind.

“Ah . . . Does that mean that Stanko, Silvio—oh, I've just thought: we never had a surname for him—”

“Nor a Christian name either. I think I've found an identity for him. If I'm right he's Milan Vico, a Bosnian Serb, who was a student at Zagreb but was desperate to get out to avoid being drawn into the civil war. His family had Moslem connections, but he had—sorry, has—an uncle who is prominent in the struggle on the Serb side: a fearsome fanatic, by the sound of it. Somehow or other his family scraped together the money to get him out. Naturally a lot of Mills's business was done with Yugoslavia, and his name was known in an underground sort of way—particularly in
business and student circles. Contact was made, and he managed to get Vico into this country in late ninety-two.”