Felix in the Underworld (23 page)

That day seemed decades ago, years, he thought. Great stretches of helpless, tedious and useless time extended the gap. He was doing time and it demanded his full attention.

There had only been one diversion since Brenda's visit. He had asked to make a further statement to the police and, when he was taken to the interview room, he told Detective Sergeant Wathen, who had arrived with his Detective Constable, all that Brenda had discovered about Terry, the rep, and the number of his car. Wathen promised to bring the matter to the attention of his Detective Chief Inspector but clearly thought little of Brenda's ideas or her suggested line of inquiry. ‘I very much doubt,' he said, ‘if I shall be able to persuade Her Majesty to spend more police time and money on further inquiries. We're satisfied we've got the right answer on this one.'

‘Oh yes?' Felix asked. ‘And what's the answer then?'

‘You.'

Felix was taken back to his cell, where, after more seemingly endless days had passed, he took to lying on his bunk and thinking about ‘The Engineer's Thumb'.

The bundle of prosecution statements lay on his table. He no longer read them. He no longer read anything. Even his last Sandra Tantamount was unfinished. He had been excited by something he remembered at the time of Brenda's last visit apart from the colour of her hair, her thin wrists and pale fingers, the slight pucker of her lips as she examined his case with a shrewdness apparently beyond the reach of Septimus Roache or Chipless, QC. What was the thought which had struck him and seemed so important at the time? He tried to recapture it but it was sucked down into the swamp of lethargy into which he was slowly sinking.

For the thousandth time he gazed round his cell and, for the thousandth time, he found nothing much to look at. There was one change, however. Over the wash-basin and the in-cell lavatory a photograph of a solemn child, wearing spectacles and a school blazer, was Blu-tacked to the wall.

When the cell doors opened, the screw told Felix he had a visitor. For a moment he wondered if it was Brenda back, or was he being taken out for trial? Such hopes faded when he faced the lofty clergyman who had come to lend him a book called
Faith without Miracles.

‘After all,' his visitor told him, ‘we don't need to see a woman sawn in half to know that the conjuror exists.' Then he noticed the photograph on the wall and went to examine it with approval. ‘I'm glad to see you're a family man,' he said.

Felix thought it would take too long to explain who Mirry was, and that she had sent him a note saying ‘Sorry you got yourself into such a pickle. I thought you'd like to see Ian's latest school photo. I know who he reminds me of.' Felix couldn't explain why he had promoted Ian to a place on his wall. Now he got off his bunk and went over to the table. He was waking up and remembered something that might be just as important as the blue suit.

‘This is yours, isn't it?' the chaplain asked, still looking at the boy's face.

‘Oh, yes.' Felix didn't bother to ask if he meant the photograph or the child. He was searching through a list of exhibits but in a little while he forgot what he was looking for.

‘He looks –' The chaplain was searching for a word and finally settled for ‘dependable'. Then he left Felix to get on as best he could without the miraculous.

‘I've got a pimple. A really disgusting spot! It's appeared on the side of my nose and it's a sign of the stress I've been put to during this book tour. I've been pressurized and it's given me a pimple!' Sandra Tantamount's usually imperious voice had acquired a querulous note, a threatening sign that all might end in tears. Brenda heard it on her mobile phone as she crawled along with the traffic in the outer reaches of the Fulham Road. ‘You've got an interview at four thirty,' she told Sandra.

‘Then I must rest. I must rest in peaceful and sympathetic surroundings. I know me. It's only complete relaxation that cures my spots. Get me a suite at the Galaxy Hotel. Mention my name and they'll give you the best. What's the time now?'

‘Ten thirty. But I don't know if they've got a suite.'

‘I told you, girl. Mention my name. Complete rest or the interview's off'

‘But, Sandra, does it really matter about the spot?'

‘Does it matter? Of course it matters! What do you mean, does it matter?' In Sandra Tantamount's voice grief had given way to astonished anger.

‘I mean it is a
radio
interview. I think they want to talk to you about your shopping habits.'

‘Get the suite!' Brenda held the screaming mobile away from her ear. ‘Or the jig's off!'

Somewhere near the Fulham football ground Brenda rang the receptionist at the Galaxy, who, being a dedicated admirer of García Márquez, knew nothing of Sandra Tantamount but was ready to reserve the suite for Llama Books. Then she dropped her phone into her handbag and lit a cigarette. She was on her way to her first meeting of the day in a block of flats near the World's End.

Brenda had tried ringing the flat for days but wasn't satisfied by a phone that didn't answer. She went to the address Felix had given her and found the lift gaping open and motionless. She climbed the stairs, past the scrawled threats to Pakis and Nig-nogs, and found a door with the screwed-on number hanging loose. She rang, knocked, and was rewarded by the sound of movement, a door closing, a light, perhaps, switched off. She put her mouth to the letter-flap and shouted, ‘I've got to talk to you. I'm a friend of Felix's!' Miriam opened the door almost at once and let her in. When Brenda had seen her at the Bath Millstream's, she had thought of Mirry as a kind of joke. If she had noticed Felix taking her up, she'd have told him to put her down at once. Now she thought she could understand that he might, ten years ago, have fancied the pale-faced, darkly dressed woman who had risen, quite neatly, from the garish and crumpled confusion of her room.

Brenda introduced herself with unusual formality. She was a representative of Felix Morsom's publishers she said, and naturally they wanted to help their author in distress if they could. There were some questions they felt only Miriam Bowker could answer but Mirry, talking rapidly, was anxious to be off. ‘I'm sorry. It's not convenient. I'm going out to lunch. I've got a date, actually. Someone's invited me.'

‘You see, you seem to be the only person who knew them both.'

‘Both?'

‘Both Felix and the dead man Gavin Piercey.'

‘I'm off to Puccini's in the King's Road. A friend of mine invited me. You know Puccini's, do you? It's awfully nice there

Mirry was making for the door but Brenda stood firmly blocking her path. ‘You see, we can't find anyone else who really knew Gavin.'

‘My friend always chooses the risotto with mushrooms there. I don't know if you've ever had the risotto with mushrooms. It's really delicious.'

‘You knew Gavin?'

‘Not all that well actually . . .'

‘Well enough to say he was the father of your child?'

‘Ian's at school,' Mirry said as though it were a final answer to the question. ‘He keeps on with his schooling through it all. He's doing well. That's his report I've got pinned up there. It says “Works well but does not participate in group discussions.” '

‘Then you changed your mind and decided Felix was his father.'

Mirry looked at Brenda and came to a conclusion. ‘Are you Felix's girlfriend?' Asking the question seemed to give her momentary confidence.

‘Not his girlfriend. His friend.'

‘Oh.' Mirry was back in confusion. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Nothing for you to be sorry about. Why did you fix on Felix for Ian's father?'

‘We worked it out and went into all the details. It had to be Felix.'

‘By we, you mean you and Gavin?'

‘Are you trying to trap me?' Mirry did her best to sound outraged but only seemed shrill and frightened.

‘Why should I want to do that?'

‘I don't know. Coming here. Worse than the policemen. Asking questions.'

‘Did they ask if you knew Terry?'

‘No. No, they didn't!' The two women stood looking at each other, both suspicious and silent. ‘Who's Terry, anyway?'

‘You must know.'

‘Why must I? I don't know any Terrys. Terry's not the sort of name my friends would have.' Brenda said nothing and, as though afraid of the silence, Mirry added, ‘The bloke meeting me round Puccini's is called Magnus.'

‘Terry Whitlock. He's a rep like Gavin was.'

‘Gavin knew lots of reps. He was on the Committee. They trusted him to arrange the meetings of the Book Reps Association or whatever.'

‘Did Gavin go to a meeting the night he died? Was he at some sort of a piss-up at the Jane Shaw in Ludgate Circus?'

‘I'm not sure. I'm not sure where he went.'

‘But you said he'd asked you to meet him late that night. You said that's why you went round to his place.'

‘Did I? Did I say that?'

‘That's what you told the police.'

‘I can't be sure what I told them.' Mirry was looking round the room, retreating into vagueness and uncertainty.

‘That's when you found Gavin dead.'

‘Dead,' Mirry repeated, as though hearing the word for the first time.

‘So you could identify the body. It must've been terrible for you.'

‘Yes. It was terrible . . .' Mirry said it like a frightened child, repeating a lesson she hadn't learned properly. ‘Now, I really can't keep Magnus waiting. He's ever so impatient. Being in management, he's used to punctuality. He likes people,' she said, unaware of any ambiguity in the phrase, ‘to be dead on time.'

‘But you say you never heard him speak of Terry?' Brenda was searching in her shoulder-bag. After she found a cigarette and stuck it in her mouth, she continued to burrow for her lighter.

‘Terry? No. Never that I remember.'

‘Terry and Gavin had been arrested. They were in a cell together.'

‘He never told me about that. Gavin never spoke about it at all.'

‘He only put the whole story on tape.'

‘Tape? I don't know anything about a tape.'

Brenda, who knew she was getting nowhere, saw a big box of kitchen matches among a litter of scarves, tissues, candles, mugs of cooling tea and cold coffee, Tampax boxes and a half-eaten doughnut on a paper bag. She moved to strike a match, lit her cigarette and blew out smoke. ‘Only one other thing. Felix wanted an answer to this question.'

‘What?'

‘Did Gavin own two blue suits? And a maroon anorak?' She looked at Mirry's face, which had betrayed nervousness, uncertainty, vagueness and some resentment. Now what she saw was pure terror. The path to the door was clear and Mirry, in a few steps, was out and it banged shut. Brenda was left staring after her. She had seen Mirry's hand on the door knob and, for the first time, had noticed what was on her third finger – a heavy, silvery ring with the face of a sleeping sphinx on it, something that might be brought into use as a knuckleduster.

Left alone in the chaos of the World's End flat, Brenda smoked her cigarette and stood awhile in thought. Then she took a look at Ian's report and discovered that he was good at English, desultory in his attempts at Science and Mathematics, and seemed to have a deep-seated dislike of physical exercise. That, she thought, figured. Over the sink she saw a photograph pinned to the wall. It was a booksigning, she thought probably in a Millstream's shop. The author signing was undoubtedly Felix. The proud signee was, wasn't he?, someone like the Gothic companion she had noticed in the company of Miriam, colourfully clad in Bath. Feeling that it might come in useful, she detached the picture from the wall and put it in her handbag. She had become a woman with a mission; the mission being to spring Felix from gaol by discovering the truth about Gavin Piercey's death.

She now wondered, particularly when in the company of the Aussie Paul, if she loved Felix or, more particularly, if she were in love with him. She couldn't mention his name to Paul without bringing on a burst of contempt, mainly, it seemed, caused by the fact that Felix had never slept with her and yet their relationship, however described, born in signing sessions and literary lunches, had survived imprisonment and a grave criminal charge. To Paul, Felix was a wimp for not having seduced Brenda. If he had ever been permitted to try, Paul was sure, Felix would have shown himself hopeless in bed with as much knowledge of the niceties of oral sex as a Benedictine monk. Probably considerably less, the way monks carried on these days, particularly in Brisbane. And yet Brenda doubted Paul would have put up with prison with the stoicism, almost the gallantry, which Felix had shown on her visits.

She had picked Paul up at a publisher's cocktail party, where she behaved as ruthlessly as Don Giovanni in Accounts, who roved among the temps and made his selection, and now, like the moustached lover on the second floor, she was preparing to ditch her conquest. The business of getting Felix out of prison was going to demand her full attention. It was that task and not the progress of her author's pimple, which filled her mind as she stood by the sofa on which Sandra Tantamount lay stretched in the darkened sitting-room of her Galaxy suite and said, ‘We've got a hired car to take you to West London Radio. It's waiting by the side entrance.'

‘It's not
only
the spot,' Sandra Tantamount said, very near to tears. ‘It's the sex.'

‘Perhaps you need a new husband? A lover? Something of that sort?' Brenda managed to sound as detached as a nurse suggesting a different brand of laxative.

‘Not for
me,
girl!' Sandra Tantamount coldly rejected such palliatives. ‘For my golf novel I need some entirely new ideas. I can't do the melon bit again.'