The Killings at Badger's Drift (18 page)

‘Oh yes - of course I do. How silly of me . . .’ Sweat beaded his forehead and started to roll, like transparent little glass beads, down his nose. His eyes flickered around the room seeking inspiration from the instrument cabinet, the chrome, rubber-covered examination trolley, the big wooden cupboard. ‘I don’t see the point of this, you know. I mean we all know the old lady died in the evening.’

‘I can assure you our inquiries are very relevant. We don’t waste our own and the public’s time unnecessarily.’

Trevor Lessiter still did not reply. Barnaby was anxious not to give him too much leeway. Already he could see the doctor rolling with the punch of his broken alibi, trying to dredge up a suitable alternative. Time for the frighteners.

‘You would not deny that you have the knowledge and equipment here to prepare an infusion of hemlock?’

‘What! But that’s ludicrous . . . you don’t need special equipment. Anyone could—’

‘Not anyone could sign a death certificate.’

‘I’ve never heard such an outrageous . . . I was here all evening.’

‘We only have your word for that, sir.’

‘My wife and daughter—’

‘Went out, if you recall.’

‘I swear to you—’

‘You swore to us about your whereabouts that afternoon, Doctor Lessiter. You were lying then. Why should you not be lying now?’

‘How dare you.’ He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple rode furiously up and down as if seeking an escape from his throat. ‘I’ve never heard such—’

‘Can you explain why, when you were the last person to use Miss Simpson’s telephone, no prints were found on it?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What reason did you have for wiping that receiver clean?’

‘Me! I didn’t touch it . . . I didn’t.’ Some more nervous gulping. ‘Look . . . all right . . . I wasn’t here in the afternoon. Now, Barnaby . . . will what I’m going to tell you now remain absolutely confidential?’

‘I can’t guarantee that, I’m afraid. Of course if it doesn’t relate to the case there’s no reason why it should ever be made public.’

‘But it will go on record, won’t it?’

‘We shall take a further statement, certainly.’ Right on cue Troy produced his notebook.

‘I’d have to give up the practice if this became public. Leave the area.’ Trevor Lessiter slumped in his smart leather chair. His chipmunk cheeks, now quite deflated, were tuckered grey bags. Then the grey flushed red with panic. ‘You won’t tell my wife?’

‘We don’t “tell” anyone anything, sir. That’s not how we work. Alibis are checked to eliminate the innocent as much as to discover the guilty.’

‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

The range of people who thought lying to the police wasn’t doing anything wrong, reflected Barnaby, was widening all the time. He waited.

‘You’ve . . . er . . . met my wife, Chief Inspector. I’m envied, I know, by many people . . . men that is . . .’ Here, in spite of his intense anxiety, a shimmer of satisfaction flitted across his features. Barnaby was reminded briefly of Henry Trace. ‘. . . but Barbara is . . . oh dear, I don’t know how to put this without sounding disloyal. She’s a wonderful companion . . . great fun to be with but not very . . .’ His face looked smaller, shrunk with embarrassment. He forced a laugh. ‘I’d better be John Blunt here, I can see. She’s not too interested in the physical side of marriage.’

So much for the fancy wrapping, thought Barnaby, recalling the painted eyes and heavy scent and the twin peaks that might have caused stout Cortez himself a stagger of disbelief.

‘So,’ continued the doctor, ‘obviously wanting her to be happy, I don’t press my attentions.’ He dropped his gaze, but not before Barnaby had seen a flash of spite and sour resentment in his eyes. The look of a man who has kept his side of the bargain and been sold down the river. ‘However’ - a light-hearted shrug - ‘I have needs . . .’ Here his left lid trembled on the edge of a collusive wink, ‘. . . as we all do, and I . . . er . . . occasionally,
very
occasionally, visit an establishment that . . . um . . . caters for them.’

‘You mean a brothel?’

‘Ohhh!’ No longer John Blunt, he looked almost disgusted at Barnaby’s lack of finesse. ‘I wouldn’t say that. Not at all. It’s very . . . refined, really. There’s a little shop which sells all sorts of jolly things. And they put on a little show. And a get-together with one of the young ladies afterwards if one is so inclined. And one usually is inclined. The performances are quite stimulating. Tasteful but stimulating.’ ‘And that is where you were on the afternoon of the seventeenth?’ The doctor nodded. ‘And the name and address of this establishment?’

Lessiter rootled about in his wallet and produced a card. ‘Perhaps you know of the . . . er . . . club . . . ?’

Barnaby glanced at the card. ‘I believe I do, yes.’ He then asked for a photograph.

‘
A photograph!
’ The doctor gave a horrified squeak.

‘Purely for identification purposes. It will be returned, I assure you. Or perhaps you would like to accompany me . . . ?’

‘Good God no.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’ve just had some passport pictures done. They’re in the study.’ He left the room, returning a few minutes later with four neat black and white squares. He handed over two of them. ‘I think this one . . . look . . . where I’m smiling is the most—’

‘I just need the one, thank you.’ As Barnaby turned away the doctor added, ‘You must ask for Krystal. She’s my special friend.’

The Casa Nova was not easily visible to the casual eye. It lurked in a grubby, unpoetic alley, Tennyson Mews, flanked by a stationery warehouse and a handbag factory. The windows of the latter were wide open, inviting the hot July sun into the already stifling workrooms. The smell of baking leather wafted out together with the jungle drumming of machinery. Troy parked near a peeling magenta door half garlanded with sickly lightbulbs offering ‘10 BEAUTIFUL GIRLS 10’ and, eyes alight with anticipation, undid his seat belt.

‘Casanova eh?’ he sniggered. ‘Naughty.’

‘New house to you,’ replied Barnaby. ‘Although I’ve no doubt the tricks’ll be as old as the hills.’

‘Looks promising though. Ten beautiful girls.’

‘A vulture’s egg is promising, son,’ replied Barnaby, getting out of the car. ‘You can wait here.’ He smiled as he pressed the buzzer, feeling the lance of Troy’s resentment between his shoulder blades. Barnaby said, ‘Krystal please,’ to a squawking voice box.

‘Mind how you go on the steps, dear.’

The flight of stairs was dimly lit. At the bottom one of the ten beautiful girls - ten - stepped forward. She could have been any age between thirty and sixty. The only certain thing was she hadn’t been a girl since he’d been a boy scout. Her hair had the colour and dusty bloom of black grapes. She wore lipstick like vermilion Vaseline and thick makeup journeyed over the eruptions and into the craters of her complexion. You could join all those dots up till the cows came home, thought Barnaby, and never reach the hidden treasure. She wore leopard-patterned shorts, a matching open-ended bra and heels so high that she seemed to be balancing on patent-leather stilts. She teetered forward, held his arm with an expert touch and smiled, showing teeth like pearls from a polluted oyster.

‘I expect you want to be a naughty boy, don’t you, dear?’

‘Not really,’ said Barnaby, disengaging himself and producing his warrant card.

‘Jeezuseffchrist. What the hell do you want? We’re all legal here, you know.’

‘I’m sure.’ He produced the passport snap. ‘Do you know this man?’

A quick glance. ‘Course I do. That’s Mr Lovejoy.’

‘Was he here last Friday afternoon? The seventeenth?’

‘He bloody lives here, mate.’

‘I need to know precisely.’

‘You’d better talk to Krystal then.’

‘Would you ask her to come here, please.’

‘She’ll come anywhere will that one - for a price.’ She gave him a nudge. ‘You look a well-set-up bloke. Why don’t you pop back when you’re off duty? Loosen up a bit. Treat yourself.’ She gave his blank stare a minute to change its mind and then said, ‘Oh well - be miserable then. Krystal’s doing the art class. She’ll be ten minutes yet. Second door on the right.’

Barnaby lifted a velvet curtain and found himself in a cold stone corridor. There were doors on both sides. He opened the second on the right and found himself facing another very musty curtain. He pushed this aside and passed through with unnecessary caution. Not a head turned. They were all watching the stage.

On a brightly lit dais a well-developed girl stood registering alarm in the commedia dell’arte manner: eyes wide, hands splayed out to ward off danger, half turning to flee. She wore a schoolgirl’s pleated skirt, white shirt and blazer. A felt hat with a striped band perched insecurely on her head. She had waist-length blond hair. A young man in tight trousers, velvet jacket and matching beret was painting the air in front of an easel. A harsh male voice, underpinned by a lot of martial bump and grind music, blasted out of two wall speakers.

‘And so the lovely Bridgeat, desperate to purchase medicines for her dying father, was tricked by the notorious artist Fouquet into leaving the convent and posing in his attic studio. Despite his fervid assurances to the contrary the lecherous Fouquet revealed, once she was securely in his lair, that the money would be paid only for a nude study!’

Here the young man mimed rather graphically what he wanted the lovely Brigitte to do. She wept and wailed and wrung her hands, then, tremblingly, affectingly, started to undress. First the blazer, then the little white schoolgirl blouse that she was bursting out of, then the tiny pleated skirt. She cowered realistically, folding slender arms across an extravagantly ample bosom. The voice crackled on.

‘“If you wish to save your beloved father’s life you know what you must do,” cried the evil Fouquet.’

Weeping, the girl removed her lace-up shoes, knee socks and bra. The evil Fouquet, not to be outdone, slipped out of his velvet smock, revealing a hairless dark brown chest. Brigitte was now left in the sort of briefs any self-respecting Mother Superior would have consigned to the flames with tongs.

‘But as the lascivious artiste attempted to position the lovely virgin he was swept away on a tide of desire.’

Surprise, surprise, thought Barnaby, yawning. He slipped back through the curtain and waited in the Colditz corridor. The dreary posturings in the art class gave him a sudden sharp perspective on his home life and the clean sweet embraces he shared with Joyce. So her Bakewell Surprise could double as a manhole cover. So his daughter looked like the wreck of the
Hesperus
and had a Swiftian line in put-downs. He compared her with Doctor Lessiter’s special friend and counted his blessings.

Released at last by a fake orgasmic cry, the punters shuffled out. Young, middle-aged, elderly. No one, it seemed, had come with a mate. They emerged solitarily, blinking in the hard light, like melancholy moles. He gave it a few moments then re-entered the room.

‘Brigitte’ was perched on the artist’s stool, smoking and wearing a wrapper. Her flesh shimmered through the gauzy stuff. The pearly flesh, long silver-white curls and butter-milky complexion gave her an appearance of wholesomeness totally at variance with her surroundings. She looked as if she would be more at home on a farm milking something. She spoke.

‘Give us a bleeding chance, lover. Next show’s half an hour. Pay outside.’ He produced his wallet. ‘Fuckin ’ell.’ She stubbed out her cigarette but not before he had recognized the smell. ‘I don’t take the hard stuff, you know. You’d be on something, believe you me, if you had this bloody job.’

‘I’m making one or two inquiries—’

‘I’m not talking to you without witnesses.’ She disappeared through a door behind the stage. It opened directly on to a tiny dressing room. Barnaby just managed to squeeze in. The room stank of cheap scent, hair lacquer, sweat and cigarette smoke. It was occupied by two girls, their rear ends shoe-horned on to a couple of plastic chairs. They wore bright bedraggled feathers and nipple stars. They sussed him straight away, giving him hard aggrieved stares.

‘What you done then, Kris?’

‘Bugger all. And he can’t say I have.’

Barnaby showed her the photograph of Trevor Lessiter. ‘Do you know this man?’

‘Yeah - that’s poor old Loveless. Or Lovejoy as he calls himself. Dunno what ’is real name is.’

‘Was he here last Friday afternoon?’

‘He’s here every Friday afternoon. And Monday and Wednesday. He’s no trouble. A bit of bondage. The daffodil routine. But mostly straight. His wife won’t let him ’ave any, you know.’

‘Yeah.’ This interjection from the red feathers had the force of a bunched fist. ‘’E gave her a mink coat for Christmas an’ all.’

‘I worked it out,’ said Krystal, ‘and I told him. I’d have to do it five hundred times to buy a mink. A decent one, I mean - not one that scarpered back to the zoo the minute the whistle went.’

‘You’d be too shagged out to wear it, Kris.’

‘You bloody reckon?’ She gave a mirthless shriek.

‘They stink an’ all if you’re out in the rain,’ said the red nipple stars. ‘Them that fall off the back of the bunny wagon.’ More mirthless shrieks. Barnaby cut in firmly.

‘Can you tell me what time Mr Lovejoy left last Friday?’

‘Half-past five. I remember ’cause that’s when I knock off for an hour. He asked me to go and have some tea with him. He was always asking me out. You have to pretend . . . you know . . . that you like them, and then, some of them - the simple ones - they really believe you. Try to get you to meet them outside. It’s pathetic, really.’

She raised both hands and lifted the heavy mass of silver curls. Underneath lay dirty red hair chopped savagely and clumsily short. She grinned at the chief inspector’s involuntary start of surprise.