The Lady Vanished (17 page)

‘Have you got the police with you?’ she asked.

‘Not for now. I was wondering if you would look at a photograph for me, see if you recognise the woman.’

‘The one I saw going into Mrs Langborne’s?

‘That’s right. Take a look.’

She held the photo, turning it this way and that. ‘I only saw the back of her but the hair’s right, the colour and shape and she was tall like this, broad-shouldered. It could be her.’

‘Okay, thank you.’

Sam came over, full of beans. ‘So, any progress with your investigation, Mr Private Eye?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Have you been at a wedding?’ She brushed his collar and some blossom floated to the floor.

‘Nothing so exciting; standing under a tree.’

‘Did a villain do that?’ She pointed at his bruise.

‘Yes; crept up behind me and bashed me.’

‘Oooh!’ both women said, staring at him.

He couldn’t help smiling at the double act. Sam presented another collection tin to him. ‘As we’ve been helpful again . . .’

‘What is it this time?’ He read the label, with the name of a children’s charity and put some coins in. He looked at them both, thinking Tweedledum and Tweedledee. ‘Are you related?’

They sniggered and Sam said, ‘Same mum, different dads! My dad was better-looking.’

‘No, mine was!’ Lauren elbowed her half-sister and they sniggered again. Then another customer entered and Sam was immediately all business and formality.

* * *

He was feeling famished; he found an Italian café and ordered a toasted sandwich and coffee. While he was waiting for the food he drank a glass of tap water and searched the name Liam Farley on the web. He found several Liam Farleys on LinkedIn, a number with Twitter and Facebook accounts and an American basketball player, then saw a link to an article in a local paper, the
Westbourne Gazette
. He clicked into the page and started reading the brief report as his food arrived.

A verdict of suicide was recorded at West London Coroner’s court yesterday for Liam Farley of Carlisle Court, W10. Mr Farley was found hanging in the bathroom of their home by his mother. Mr Farley had been having treatment for depression. The court expressed condolences to Mr Farley’s mother.

He checked the date of the paper; June 1998. The sausage and mushroom toastie was delicious but he added extra mustard for a kick. His jaw had started clicking when he ate and he wondered if it was to do with when he hit the ground. He typed
Farley Langborne
into various search engines but drew a blank. He was annoyed with himself for not having checked Ronnie out more carefully at the beginning. He started on his coffee and rang Nora Morrow who sounded even angrier than when he had last talked to her.

‘I hear you’ve been pestering Langborne again, going to his flat. I don’t need this shit, Swift, haven’t time for it.’

‘I don’t work for the Met, or has no one noticed? I don’t have to follow orders.’

‘You will if he takes an injunction out on you.’

‘As if. But listen, just for you, I won’t go near him again, for now anyway. His sister has ended my contract.’

‘Goody.’

‘I’ve found something new. Someone saw Ronnie Farley, the housekeeper, going into Carmen Langborne’s house on the evening of the thirty-first around four thirty.’

‘So? Maybe she’d forgotten something.’

‘Oh come on; why did she not mention it? Did you run any checks on her or where she was that day?’

‘Doing chores for other posh people. And you’ve no reason to keep on asking questions; you’re not being paid to. I have to go and interview a real criminal now. I actually have a body and a sound basis for questioning him. Bye.’

He paid his bill and walked the streets in frustration. When he reached home his mood wasn’t improved by the letter waiting in the hall. It was franked
St John Beauchamp and Polegate, Solicitors.
There were four wordy paragraphs, informing him that he was causing distress and nuisance to their client, Mr Rupert Langborne, and that unless he stopped they would have to
consider actions open to them
. He tore it up and threw it in the bin and emailed Florence a final bill, reaching for his phone as it rang.

‘Hi, thanks for the information you emailed me.’ It was Rachel Breen, sounding chirpy.

‘A pleasure. Have you heard anything further?’

‘It’s amazing; all hell’s broken loose. My solicitor contacted me earlier. She’d been in touch with the police. They raided the flat in Tooting early this morning. Carmichael was arrested and they said they’ll be talking to Ed.’

‘Do you know what happened to the men living there with Carmichael?’

Her voice grew solemn. ‘Only that they’re being looked after, whatever that means. What an awful thing, keeping people in those conditions; seems medieval. What do you think can be done for them?’

‘It will depend on what their personal situations are.’ He knew that if they had come from the streets, it was possible that they would end up there again.

‘Well, Ed rang me a while ago, sounding stunned and meek. He said he’ll let me have my stuff back tomorrow and sort out the money with me. It’s a good outcome for me although obviously, I wouldn’t have wanted this awful thing to have been at the bottom of it all.’

‘No. But on the other hand, it has led to those men being freed from that kind of servitude.’

‘That’s true. You don’t think Ed will get into real trouble, do you? I’m sure he didn’t know what his tenant was doing. I mean, he’s a bastard, but not bad in that way.’

‘I’d imagine a heavy fine and the council might choose to prosecute him. His life will be unpleasant for a while. I wouldn’t feel sorry for him; what he was doing was illegal in the first place and he can’t have checked his tenant out too carefully.’

‘I suppose. . . Well, thanks again. I’ll be able to get myself back on track at last.’

He was considering what to eat when Cedric texted to say that he had made chicken-and-mushroom pie and there was a spare one if he wanted it. When he collected it, Cedric invited him to come out for an evening walk with him and Bertie and Swift decided to forget about urban servitude and the irritating conundrum that was Carmen Langborne. He strolled the Thames path with Cedric and the dog, stopping to sit outside a pub for a gin and tonic and a dish of water for Bertie.

‘It’s good to relax and people watch, one of my favourite occupations,’ Cedric said. ‘You feeling much better now, dear boy? Any news of your attacker?’

Swift told Cedric that he knew who had hit him and explained his reasons for not telling the police.

‘Ah,
maiora bona
, for the greater good,’ Cedric said. ‘I can see your reasoning. I would probably make the same decision in the circumstances.’

‘People live such impossible lives, Cedric. They put up with so much, trying to get through the days.’

‘We all have our share of difficulties. You’ve had a portion of troubles yourself.’

They sat for an hour in the glow of the sun, most of the time in companionable silence, while Bertie snoozed at Cedric’s feet. Later, Swift ate the pie Cedric had made and opened a bottle of red wine. He sat out in the garden for a long time, listening to the noises of the night, recalling the tune Ronnie had sung. It occurred to him that Langborne and Ronnie might be mixed up in this together somehow but he couldn’t figure out why, and finally ditched the idea. By midnight he was pleasantly intoxicated. He decided that his strength was back and he would spend the next day focusing on Ronnie’s activities.

CHAPTER 12

The river was fast flowing with a westerly breeze. Swift pulled in near Putney Bridge, donned an extra body warmer and ate a banana. His energy levels were low but at least his headache had gone and his bruise no longer throbbed. He’d had the dream again last night, the same women in a murky room and Ruth there among them, looking up, pleading for something but he had stared down at her, not knowing what she wanted, feeling panic rising in his chest. He had woken from it and lain awake for hours, rehearsing how he would sit opposite her over lunch in the Evergreen, Krystyna neatening cutlery in the background, and tell her he couldn’t see her again. The sun slid in and out of fast-moving clouds, which were thickening, promising rain later. He took up the oars and turned the boat.

After a quick shower he dressed in black jeans and a sweatshirt with a roomy hood that he hadn’t worn for months. He looked in the mirror, satisfied that he resembled scores of other men on the London streets. By eight a.m. he had stationed himself at the side of Ronnie Farley’s block of flats, hood pulled up. There was a low section of wall dividing the building from the health clinic next door and he propped himself on it. The curtains at the front of her living room were still drawn closed. He watched as children were taken to school and women in slippers popped down to the shop for milk and bread. The air had warmed and was still fresh in this early part of the day, at least until the refuse lorry arrived and the bins were emptied with much clattering, releasing a sweet, pungent smell of decay. At nine the curtains were still drawn and Swift sipped water, hoping that Ronnie wasn’t on a bender that was going to last for days. After a while he bought a coffee in the shop and as he crossed back to his position he saw the curtains being pulled back and Ronnie stepping on to the balcony with a watering can in hand.

Swift moved further along the wall, into the shadows. Ronnie was in her cream mac, a cigarette in her free hand. She smoked as she watered each tub and her lips seemed to be moving; perhaps she talked to her plants. When she had finished the watering, she readjusted a couple of tubs and picked up some leaves and a crisp packet, shaking her head in annoyance. She glanced at her watch and stepped back into the living room. Swift took a drink of coffee, guessing that she was about to emerge and head to one of her remaining clients.

She appeared within five minutes, walking with her stately, heavy tread, her bag with its long handles over one shoulder. She had another cigarette on the go and waved to a woman who called a greeting as she took a toddler into the play area. Swift allowed her a few minutes head start, then followed her on the opposite side of the road down to Ladbroke Grove and past the tube station where she turned right into a residential street. Swift crossed over and continued after her, keeping his distance. She walked on for ten minutes; the houses grew grander and larger, with big front gardens. Stopping outside one, she finished her cigarette and dropped the butt in the hedge. Then she stepped up the front path, rang the bell and was admitted after a short pause.

Swift finished his coffee and shrugged his hood back, reckoning that she would be in the house at least an hour and possibly longer. This wasn’t an area to be seen loitering, especially in a hoodie. He walked the streets for a while, thinking of Ruth; they had considered buying a tiny flat in Notting Hill when they got engaged and had looked at several in the area but in the end, judged it too expensive. He imagined the life they might now be having and then stopped himself, applying hard pressure with his right thumb to the base of his left. It was a trick a friend had taught him, a way of distracting the mind from unwanted thoughts. He doubled back, bought a newspaper and a bar of chocolate and found a bus stop at a junction from where the house Ronnie was visiting was just in sight.

He was bored and hungry by the time Ronnie appeared, just over two hours later. He hoped that she wasn’t heading for another job. He tailed her back to the main road where she went into a supermarket, emerging after five minutes with a carrier bag. She walked to a bus stop, read the digital timetable overhead and lit up a cigarette. Within a minute she had started chatting to a woman who was sitting on the slim, uncomfortable plastic bench by the stop, hugging several shopping bags. Swift crossed the road and walked to the door of the supermarket. Ronnie and the woman were deep in conversation and comparing plastic cards, which Swift assumed were bus passes. Various buses came and went; each time, both women looked up, shook their heads and continued talking. After ten minutes a 452 appeared and Ronnie moved towards the stop, signalling the driver and waving goodbye to her friend. Swift walked forwards; it would be tricky, boarding the same bus without Ronnie seeing him. Luckily, in the time honoured tradition of London Transport, another 452 had appeared on the horizon, making sure the first wasn’t a lonely traveller. Swift checked that the destination was the same and boarded the second as Ronnie’s moved off.

He positioned himself by the exit doors, negotiating several suitcases and shopping trolleys sticking into the aisle, and bent forwards so that he could watch the bus in front. If his driver decided to idle or got caught at lights, his frustrating morning might bear no fruit. Luckily, the driver seemed keen to keep his colleague company and stayed on his tail down towards Kensington, jumping an amber light in the process. Both buses swept into Kensington High Street and Swift saw Ronnie alighting at the first stop, just before Kensington Palace. He allowed other passengers to get off before him and saw that she had turned in the direction of the tube station.

She took a left turn and headed through a leafy square, past a convent, then turned right into a wide street with tall Georgian houses called Tavistock Avenue. She had lit another cigarette and when she stopped outside one of the houses at the end of a terrace she didn’t extinguish it. She fished in her bag and took out a set of keys with which she opened the front door of number forty-one and vanished inside. Swift stood by a tall plane tree and considered; the lit cigarette and the keys indicated that the owner of the house was not at home. He decided to stay put for at least half an hour but had only just finished checking his emails when Ronnie exited the house, no longer holding the carrier bag. Swift followed her again; she retraced her route back to a bus stop and she broke into a lumbering run as a 452 approached, going towards Ladbroke Grove. There was a large group of people waiting to board; Swift tucked himself at the back and got on last, watching as Ronnie went upstairs. She got off at Westway and returned to her flat.

Swift adjourned to a café on the main road and ordered coffee and a bacon panini. He ate without interest, barely noticing the taste of his food, thinking over Ronnie’s movements. Weighing up the morning’s activities, he decided to return to Kensington and take a look at the house she had access to. The digital timetable at the bus stop promised a 452 within six minutes but when he glanced up again, this had changed to ten, then fifteen minutes. He was about to seek out a taxi when the digital display shivered and vanished and a 452 appeared. Back on Kensington High Street, Swift walked back to Tavistock Avenue where he rang the bell at number 41 and waited, taking in the three door locks and looking down into the basement which had no entry door and iron railings at the window. There was no obvious burglar alarm. He rang the bell again, glancing around; the street was empty, no sign of neighbours. He walked around the side of the house, into the narrow alley that divided it from the next terrace. There was a brick wall, about six feet high, bordering the garden. Swift looked around again and could see no evidence of activity. He gripped the top of the wall and pulled himself up, easing down by a laurel hedge on the other side.

The garden was low maintenance, mainly gravel with narrow borders and some planters containing shrubs. A yellow rose bush scented the afternoon air and apart from the occasional bird trill, the place was silent. Blinds were down at the windows on the first and second floors. Five steps led down to the rear of the basement; this was often the most vulnerable part of a house and was the reason why Swift had high-quality locks on his office. He descended the steps; the window facing him had obscured glass and iron railings similar to those at the front. Despite that security, he saw that the back door had only a cylinder lock and wondered at the lack of logic in many people’s home protection; unless there were also interior bolts, he would gain entry without too much trouble. In his youth, he had been an inveterate loser of keys and had taught himself to pick locks rather than regularly pay locksmith charges. He took his slimline lock-pick set from his pocket and set to work, manoeuvring the tension wrench, then inserting the slimmest pick into the upper part of the keyhole for a few minutes until he felt that all the pins had been set. The lock turned and free of bolts, the door opened.

Swift closed the door softly behind him and saw that he was in a dimly lit corridor with a quarry-tiled floor. He stood, listening, and heard no sound. He opened a pine door on his left and glanced in at a shower room with a toilet. To his right, the door was open onto a laundry room. The washing machine and tumble dryer stood silent; the cream mosaic floor, like that in the shower, was dry. Along the corridor at the front of the house he opened another pine door and saw a bedroom with a single bed, wardrobe and bookcase. The place felt dormant and unused.

The ground floor had two large separate rooms; at the front a sitting room, furnished simply and expensively with leather chairs, deep-pile cream carpet and beige walls, at the back a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls, an oak desk and photographs of old sailing ships on the fourth wall. Keys hung from a rack in the hallway and he examined them, sure that they were for the front door. He carried on down the hall into a rectangular kitchen with a butcher’s block workstation in the middle and an alcove at the far end with a door on the right. He could smell cigarette smoke. There was no sign of any recent domestic activity but when he touched the kettle it was warm; Ronnie had made a brew. He stood, looking out of the window on to the garden, considering that Ronnie must be looking after the house for its absent owner, hence her fleeting visit. Perhaps her carrier bag had contained cleaning materials.

He flinched, as suddenly he heard a woman’s voice counting in a high, quavering tone. Turning, he looked around but there was no one there. He followed the sound to the alcove and stood, listening as she counted to twenty, paused, and then started again. The door in front of him had a substantial bolt under the handle and it was pushed across. He bent to look at it; it was new and untarnished. The counting stopped, then started again, this time as far as ten, then repeated. Swift breathed in, then slid the bolt across as quietly as he could; it moved smoothly. He opened the door slowly and looked in at a small utility room, lit only by a narrow double-glazed window of opaque glass high on the outer wall. There was a thin, elderly woman in blue silk pyjamas lying on a mattress on the floor with her knees hugged to her chest. He knocked on the door and coughed.

‘Mrs Langborne?’

She sat up, alarmed, scrambling to her feet.

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Tyrone Swift. Please, don’t worry. I’m a private detective. Your family asked me to find you and I followed Mrs Farley here this morning.’ He stayed in the doorway. The air in the room was stale and smelled of cleaning fluids.

Carmen Langborne stood, gazing at him. Her dark eyes moistened but she quickly regained control, running her tongue across her lips. The coiffured woman of the photos was looking a little dishevelled and weary, the lines on her face more deeply scored. The roots of her hair had grown out so that she had a cap of salt-and-pepper strands on top of the black, and it now reached almost to her shoulders.

‘You are here on your own?’ she asked, clearing her throat.

‘Yes. I had reason to suspect Mrs Farley so after she had gone home I broke in through the basement door. I heard you doing your exercises; counting. Have you been locked in here since January?’

She turned away, not replying, smoothed her hair and took a dress and jacket from the back of a wooden chair.

‘I must go home immediately.’

‘Are you all right? Do you need a drink, or maybe a doctor?’

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘I want to dress.’ She opened a sliding door in the far wall; Swift glimpsed a washbasin before she closed it.

The room she had been confined in had a tiled floor and metal shelves with cleaning materials, light bulbs, packets of toilet tissue and tins of food. A mop, bucket and vacuum cleaner stood in a corner. There was a mattress, duvet and pillow, a tray with a plate and mug beside it and a couple of books. On the seat of the chair was a piece of knitting, the needles stuck in a ball of multicoloured wool. The high window had a lock in the centre. Swift marvelled at Carmen’s resilience and self-containment; many people would have been reduced to a wreck after several months in such confinement.

She reappeared quickly, dressed in her creased clothing. She picked up her handbag and walked past him into the kitchen.

‘Please call a taxi for me,’ she said, crossing to the window and looking out. He could see the rise and fall of her chest as she took deep breaths. She smoothed at her jacket, touching the brooch on a lapel.

He made the call, then drew two glasses of tap water and offered her one. She took it and sipped.

‘Would you like to use my phone to ring your family?’

‘Thank you. I will do that when I get home.’

‘The police will need to be told as well.’