This Body of Death (22 page)

“Where would that be?” Barbara asked.

“Not there, let me tell you. I see danger there. I’ve even offered her a place with my mister and me at a bargain rate. We’ve got two spare rooms
and
they’ve both been purified, but she hasn’t wanted to leave McHaggis. I admit I
might
have been a bit persistent about the matter. I
might
have stopped in to speak to her about it now and then. But that was only because she needs to get
out
of that place and what am I meant to do about that? Say nothing? Let the chips fall? Wait until whatever is going to happen happens?”

It came to Barbara that Yolanda had not caught on that Jemima was dead, which was rather curious since she was supposedly a psychic and here were the rozzers asking questions about one of her clients. On the one hand, Jemima’s name had not been released to the media since they’d not yet tracked down her family. On the other hand, if Yolanda was in conversation with Barbara’s own father, wouldn’t Jemima’s spirit be doing some serious shouting from the netherworld as well?

Barbara shot Nkata a look upon the consideration of her father. Had the louse actually tracked down Yolanda and phoned her in advance with pertinent details of Barbara’s life? She wouldn’t have put it past him. He
would
have his joke.

She said, “Yolanda, before we go on, I think I need to clarify something: Jemima Hastings is dead. She was murdered four days ago in Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington.”

Silence. And then, as if her bum were on fire, Yolanda shot up from her throne. It toppled backwards. She cast her cigarette to the carpet and ground it out—at least Barbara hoped she ground it out as she didn’t fancy a fire—and she flung out her arms. She cried out as if in extremis, saying, “I knew! I knew! Oh forgive me, Immortals!” And then she fell straight across the table, arms still extended. One hand reached towards Nkata and the other towards Barbara. When they didn’t twig what she wanted, she slapped her palms against the tabletop and then turned her hands towards them. They were meant to clasp hers.

“She’s here among us!” Yolanda cried. “Oh tell me, beloved one. Who?
Who?”
She began to moan.

“Jesus on white bread.” Barbara looked at Winston, aghast. Were they meant to ring for help? Nine, nine, nine or whatever? Should they dash her with water? Was there sage anywhere handy?

“Dark as the night,” Yolanda whispered, her voice hoarser than before. “He is dark as the night.”

Well, he would be, Barbara thought, if for no other reason than they
always
were.

“Attended by his partner the sun, he comes upon her.
Together
they do it. He was
not
alone. I see him. I
see
him. Oh my beloved!” And then she screamed. And then she fainted. Or she seemed to faint.

“Bloody hell.” Nkata whispered the words. He looked to Barbara for direction.

She wanted to tell him that
he
was the one with the brilliant aura, so he should damn well be able to sort out what to do. But instead, she got to her feet and he did likewise and together they righted Yolanda’s throne, seated her, and got her head down between her knees.

When she came to, which happened with an alacrity suggesting she’d not actually fainted in the first place, she moaned about McHaggis, the house, Jemima, Jemima’s questions about him and does he love me, Yolanda, is he the one, Yolanda, should I give in and do what he asks, Yolanda. But aside from moaning “dark as the night that covers me,” which to Barbara sounded suspiciously like a line from verse, Yolanda was able to relay nothing else. She did say that Abbott Langer was likely to know more because Jemima had been quite regular about her skating lessons and he’d been impressed with her devotion to the ice.

“It’s that house,” Yolanda said in summation. “I tried to warn her about that house.”

F
INDING
A
BBOTT
L
ANGER
was a simple matter. The Queen’s Ice and Bowl was just up the street, as the psychic herself had said. As its name suggested, it combined the pleasures of ten-pin bowling and ice skating. It also offered a video arcade, a food bar, and a noise level guaranteed to coax migraines from individuals previously immune to them. This came from all directions and comprised an utter cacophony of sounds: rock ’n’ roll from the bowling area; shrieks, bleeps, bangs, buzzers, and bells from the video arcade; dance music from the skating rink; shouts and screams from the skaters on the ice. Because of the time of year, the place was aswarm with children and their parents and with young teenagers in need of a location in which to hang round, send text messages, and otherwise look cool. Also, due to the ice, it was quite pleasant in the building itself, and this brought in more people off the street, if only to lower their body temperature.

Perhaps four dozen people were on the ice, most of them clinging to the handrails at the side. The music—what could be heard of it above the din—seemed designed to encourage smooth strokes of the feet, but it wasn’t working very well. No one, Barbara noted, save the skating instructors, was keeping time. And there were three of these, obvious by the yellow waistcoats they were wearing, obvious by the fact that they were the only ones who seemed able to skate backwards, which looked to Barbara like an admirable feat.

She and Winston stood against the rail, watching the action for a moment. Several children among the skaters appeared to be taking lessons in an area in the middle of the ice reserved for them. They were being coached by a largish man with a helmet of hair that made him look like an Elvis impersonator. He was far bigger than one associated with ice skaters, well over six feet tall and built like a refrigerator: not at all fat, but solid. He was difficult not to notice, not only because of the hair but also because he was—despite his bulk—remarkably light on his feet. He turned out to be Abbott Langer, and he joined them briefly at the side of the rink when one of the other instructors went out to fetch him.

He had to complete the lesson he was giving, he said. They could wait for him here—“Watch that little girl in pink …She’s heading for the gold.”—or they could wait for him in the food bar.

They chose the food bar. Since it was past teatime and she’d not even had lunch, Barbara selected a ham salad sandwich, salt-and-vinegar crisps, a flapjack, and a Kit Kat bar for herself, as well as a Coke to chase everything down. Winston—how could she possibly be surprised by this?—chose an orange juice.

She scowled at him. “Anyone
ever
comment on your revolting personal habits?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Only on my aura,” he replied. “That your dinner, is it, Barb?”

“Are you out of your mind? I’ve not yet had my lunch.”

Abbott Langer joined them as Barbara was finishing up her meal. He’d put protective covers on the blades of his ice skates. He had another lesson in half an hour, he said. What could he do for them?

Barbara said, “We’ve come from Yolanda.”

“She’s completely legitimate,” he said at once. “Is this a reference? D’you mean to use her? Like on the telly?”

“Ah …no,” Barbara said.

“She sent us to have a word with you ’bout Jemima Hastings,” Winston said. “She’s dead, Mr. Langer.”

“
Dead
? What happened? When did she die?”

“Few days ago. In Abney—”

His eyes widened. “She’s the woman in the cemetery? I saw it in the papers but there’s been no name.”

“Won’t be till we find her family,” Nkata said.

“Well, I can’t help you with that. I don’t know who they are.” He looked away from them, in the direction of the ice rink where a pileup had occurred at the far end. Instructors were hurrying over to assist. “God, but that’s bad, isn’t it?” He looked back to them. “Murdered in a cemetery.”

“It is,” Barbara said.

“C’n you tell me how … ?”

Sorry. They could not. Regulations, police work, the rules of investigation. They’d come to the ice rink to gather information about Jemima. How long had he known her? How well did he know her? How did they meet?

Abbott thought about this. “Valentine’s Day. I remember because she brought balloons in for Frazer.” He watched Nkata writing in his notebook and added, “He’s the bloke who hands out the rental skates. Over by the lockers. Frazer Chaplin. I thought at first that she was a delivery girl. You know? Making a delivery of Valentine balloons from Frazer’s girlfriend? But turned out she was the
new
girlfriend—or at least she was trying to be—and she’d dropped in to surprise him. We got introduced and we chatted a bit. She was quite keen on having lessons, so we made arrangements to meet. We had to work around her schedule, but that wasn’t difficult. Well, I was happy to accommodate, wasn’t I? I’ve got three ex-wives with four children among them, so I don’t turn away paying customers.”

“You would have, otherwise?” Barbara asked.

“Turned her away? No, no. Well, I mean I
might
have done ultimately if my own circumstances had been different—what with the wives and the kids—but as she showed up regularly and right on time and as she always paid, I couldn’t really quibble if her mind seemed on other things when she was here, could I?”

“What sorts of things? Do you know?”

He looked like a man about to say that he hated to speak ill of the dead, but then he eschewed that comment for, “I expect it had to do with Frazer. I think the lessons were really an excuse to be near him, and that’s why she couldn’t actually keep her mind on what she was doing. See, Frazer’s got something that attracts the ladies, and when they’re attracted, he doesn’t exactly fight them off, if you know what I mean.”

“We don’t, as it happens,” Barbara said. A lie, naturally, but they needed as many details as they could amass at this point.

“He makes the odd arrangement?” Abbott said delicately. “Now and then? Don’t misunderstand, it’s always on the up-and-up as far as the ladies’
ages
go: no underage girls or anything. They turn in their skates and have a word with him, they slip him a card or a note or something, and …well, you know. He goes off for a bit with one or the other. Sometimes he phones in late to his night employment—he’s a bartender at some posh hotel—and he takes a few hours with one of them. He’s not a bad bloke, mind you. It’s just how he is.”

“And Jemima had an idea this was going on?”

“A suspicion. Women aren’t stupid, are they. But the trouble for Jemima was that Frazer’s here for the earliest shift and she could only come in the evening or on her own days off work. So that leaves him free to be more or less available to ladies who want to flirt or to ladies who want more.”

“What was your own relationship with Jemima?” Barbara asked, for she realised that Yolanda’s mutterings—as much as she wanted to discount them—could well apply to this man with his helmet of black hair, “dark as the night.”

“Mine?” he asked, fingertips to his chest. “Oh, I never get involved with my skating students. That would be unethical. And anyway, I’ve three ex-wives and—”

“Four kids, yes,” Barbara said. “But I expect a poke on the side wouldn’t go amiss. If one was on offer and there were no strings.”

The ice skater flushed. “I won’t say I didn’t notice she was attractive. She
was
,” he said. “Unconventional, you know, with those eyes of hers. Bit on the small side, not much meat on her. But she had a real friendliness about her, not like the typical Londoner. I suspect a bloke could have taken that wrong if he wanted to.”

“You didn’t, however?”

“As three times were
not
the charm for me, I wasn’t about to go for a fourth. I’ve not had luck in marriage. Celibacy, I find, keeps me safe from involvement.”

“But groundwork laid, you could have had her, I expect,” Barbara pointed out. “After all, a poke isn’t marriage these days.”

“Groundwork or not, I wouldn’t have tried it. A poke may not lead to marriage these days, but I had the feeling that wasn’t the case for Jemima.”

“Are you saying she was after this Frazer for marriage?”

“I’m saying she wanted marriage, full stop. I got the impression it could have been Frazer, but it could have been anyone else as well.”

T
HE TIME OF
day was such that Frazer Chaplin was no longer at the Queen’s Ice and Bowl, but this was not a problem. The name was an unusual one, and Barbara reckoned there couldn’t be two Frazer Chaplins running round town. This had to be the same bloke who lived in Bella McHaggis’s house, Barbara informed Nkata. They needed a word with him.

On their way across town, she put Winston in the picture with regard to Bella McHaggis’s rules about fraternisation among her lodgers. If Jemima Hastings and Frazer Chaplin
had
been involved, their landlady either had not known it or had turned a blind eye for reasons of her own, which Barbara seriously doubted.

In Putney, they found Bella McHaggis just entering her property with a shopping trolley half filled with newspapers. As Nkata parked the car, Mrs. McHaggis began unloading this trolley into one of the large plastic bins in her front garden. She was doing her bit for the environment, she informed them when they came through the gate. Bloody neighbours wouldn’t recycle a damn thing if she didn’t make an issue of it.

Barbara made an appropriate murmur of sympathy and then asked was Frazer Chaplin at home. “This is DS Nkata,” she added by way of introduction.

“What d’you lot want with Frazer?” Bella said. “It’s Paolo you ought to be talking to. What I found I found in
his
cupboard, not Frazer’s.”

“Beg your pardon?” Barbara asked. “Look, could we go inside, Mrs. McHaggis?”