The Killing of Katie Steelstock (28 page)

“What are you going to do now?”

“We’re pulling in Billy. No difficulty there. He’ll tell us all about it. We shan’t even have to ask him.”

“You can’t help feeling sorry for the stupid bastard,” said Shilling. He looked at the bundle on the bed. “I suppose this is an occupational risk with an old poof.”

“That’s right,” said Forster. “He lets the boyfriend tie him up. Master and slave scene. Then the boyfriend gets a bit too excited and finishes him off. It’s happening all the time.”

“It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I badly needed to ask some questions and he was the only one who could give me the answers.”

“There
is
a tie-up with Charlie’s business, then?”

“There could be,” said Shilling. “But God knows whether we shall ever find out now what it was.”

“I’ll tell you something,” said Sergeant Lillee. “You weren’t the only people who were interested in this outfit.”

Shilling and Forster stared at him.

He said, “When I was watching the place on Friday night – I was using a room opposite – I saw a man hanging about. I thought I recognised him, so I said to myself, I’ll go down and take a closer look. Might have a word with him.”

“For God’s sake,” said Forster. “This isn’t a six-part serial. W
ho was he?”

“Chap called Blaine. Works for Captain Smedley’s outfit. Used to be in X Division.”

“Captain Smedley?” said Shilling.

“Private inquiry agency,” said Forster. “Only uses ex-policemen. Very hot stuff.”

“Bloody hell,” said Shilling.

“It’s not going to please Charlie, is it?”

“That’s the understatement of the year,” said Shilling. “This is going to be apple pie for the defence. Their tactics are obviously going to be to muddy the water, and here’s a dirty great stick to do the muddying with. What we must do now, no way out, is find out what the tie-up really was. We can’t ask Rod, but there is another possibility. We go through his papers.”

Forster thought about it

He said, “I don’t see why not. As long as we do it together. The technical whiz kids will be here any moment now. They’ll want to take over this room, and the pathologist will want the body. You and I could start working on his papers.”

“There’s a sort of office upstairs in the studio,” said Parrish. “Lot of books and papers there. Photographs, too.”

“Then let’s get started,” said Forster. “Take us all night, I wouldn’t wonder.”

“I
had
got other plans for tonight,” said Shilling. “I’ll have to do some telephoning. She’ll be bloody furious.”

“Tell her you’re saving it up for next time,” said Forster.

The second telephone call which Shilling made was at seven o’clock the next morning. It caught Knott as he was shaving. He washed the soap off his face and sat on the edge of the bed swinging his stubby legs and listening to what Shilling had to say.

“Tell me again about those names,” he said.

Shilling told him, reading them off a list he had in one hand.

“He seems to have been in touch with half the celebrities in London. Not all stage and screen people, either.”

“He was a well-known photographer,” said Shilling. “They meet all sorts.”

“And the only names which connect up in any way with this business are Katie herself and George Mariner. We already knew he was a customer.”

“And Venetia Loftus, as was.”

“Yes,” said Knott thoughtfully. “And Venetia Loftus. Who is she now?”

“Venetia Arkinshaw. Married to an artist. Lives in Putney.”

“Yes,” said Knott. He was in no hurry about that one. He was turning over the possible ramifications of involving, even indirectly, the daughter of the Assistant Commissioner in a case which was, God knows, messy and complex enough already.

He said, “She was a particular friend of Katie’s, wasn’t she?”

“They were at school together. And kept up afterwards.”

“And Katie was lunching with her on the day she was killed.”

“That’s correct,” said Shilling, and added, to himself, Not my decision, thank God.

“All right,” said Knott at last. “Go and have a word with her. I needn’t tell you to go carefully. Don’t lean on the fact that Venetia was one of Ruoff’s clients. There could be dozens of innocent reasons for that. Keep it general. Anything she can tell us that might help.”

“Right.”

“And one other thing.
Tell her father what you’re planning to do.
If he objects, don’t do it”

The door of the house in Putney was opened by a young man wearing a beard and a smock.

He said, “I gather you’ve come to grill Venny. Her old man’s been on the telephone to her for hours. Has she done something frightful?”

“She hasn’t done anything at all,” said Shilling with elaborate cheerfulness. “It’s just that we think she may, indirectly, be able to help us with some information that she may have picked up at second hand.”

“When you wrap it up like that,” said the young man, who was Philip Arkinshaw, “it sounds absolutely terrible. However, I gather her father’s told her she’s got to spill whatever beans there are. Come on up.”

He led the way to the first-floor drawing room and left Shilling with Venetia, a pleasant-looking person, of Katie’s age and type, but with more than a hint of the maturity that marriage and housekeeping seem to bring.

She said, “Dad’s been on the phone. I gather you want to know about Rodney Ruoff.”

“Anything you can tell me.”

“Is it right he’s been killed?”

“Yes.”

“Who did it? One of his boyfriends?”

“The local police seem to think so.”

“He had it coming to him. He really was a sod.”

“In the original sense of the word,” said Shilling with a smile.

“That’s right. In the original sense of the word. He’s no loss to anyone. How does he fit into your business? What was his connection with Katie’s death?”

“That’s where we hoped you could help us, Mrs. Arkinshaw.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can. It was, let me think, three or four years ago. I can’t remember the exact date. It was when Rodney was starting to promote Katie. Show her photographs around and talk to people who could be useful. And in case you’re thinking anything else, Sergeant, so far as Katie was concerned, that was all it was. He hadn’t got any other ideas about her. To start with, he hadn’t much use for girls as girls. Only as models.”

“Strictly for show and not for use.”

“Right. And it
was
a sort of safety factor when you went to one of his parties.”

“Wild parties, I imagine.”

“Orgies, Sergeant. No other word for it. Fun though, in a creepy sort of way. You met all sorts. Upper crust and lower crust. You were always encouraged to bring guests. As long as they were young and beautiful. Going to them was the thing to have done among the young of our set at that time. It was a sort of dare, if you understand me.”

She spoke of it, thought Shilling, as though it was thirty years ago, not three.

“Katie and I reckoned that if we brought our own drink with us and kept together we’d get away more or less intact.”

“Your own drink?”

“That was the important thing. If Rod had his eye on anyone he used to fix their drink. God knows what he put into it. Some sort of drug, I imagine. So what we used to do was take a medicine bottle full of something fairly harmless in our evening bags – outsize evening bags being rather the fashion at that time. Then, if the drink looked suspicious, we’d tip it quietly into a vase and refill from our own supply.”

“You could do that?”

“When Rod’s parties got under way you could do anything. Even if someone had noticed you, they wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.”

“And what was Ruoff’s idea?”

When Venetia hesitated, Shilling said with his most candid smile, “It’s all right, Mrs. Arkinshaw. I’m older than I look. And I did spend a year at West End Central.”

Venetia said, “You sound like an S.S. boy saying, ‘I did my year at Buchenwald.’”

“It wasn’t quite as bad as that. But we did have to deal with some fairly incredible perversions.”

“This wasn’t incredible. You might call it commercial. He’d get some boy or girl hooched up to the eyebrows and take them off into one of the bedrooms. Maybe a boy on his own, or two boys, or two girls. He’d get them to take off their clothes and pose for him.”

“The commercial angle being?”

“Certainly not blackmail. I don’t think that was ever the idea. What he wanted was photographs he could sell to the porn merchants here and abroad. A lot of the really way-out pictures went to Denmark and Sweden. Another thing, if the person concerned
was
at all well-known – I don’t mean a celebrity, but someone who might have friends who’d kick up a fuss – he usually managed the picture so that the face was unrecognisable. He was a good enough photographer to do that. He couldn’t always manage it. It was when he slipped up on that, once, that he got into trouble, I believe.”

“That’s right,” said Shilling. “And got off with a fine. Which no doubt the sale of the photographs paid for ten times over.”

While he was saying this, he was thinking that a lot of what he was hearing he knew before. Some of it was new. But none of it really took them much further. Venetia was offering information readily enough. But his instinct told him that she was keeping something back. There was one locked room in the house. One secret cupboard that hadn’t been opened. And the tantalising thought was that if he could see into it he would see the whole truth.

He said cautiously, “When I was talking to Katie’s agent, Mark Holbeck – I expect you know him?”

“Yes. I know Mark. I thought Katie rather went for him at one time, actually.”

“Not reciprocated?”

“I gather not.”

“Well, Holbeck mentioned some occasion when he’d met Ruoff at a party. This was fairly recently, I gather. When he mentioned Katie’s name, Ruoff blew up. He said she’d stolen some of his property and refused to give it back. The implication was that he couldn’t take any steps to get it back either. I don’t suppose you’d have any idea what it was?”

“No,” said Venetia slowly. “But I could guess.”

“Yes?”

“It’s what I was telling you. About the photographs Rod took. If the face was recognisable, particularly if it was someone . . . well . . . someone who was normally rather respectable, Rod couldn’t flog it to a porno magazine. But the chances are he’d keep it. Suppose Katie was at the studio one day on business and was left alone for a moment. It would have been just like her to open drawers and cupboards and poke about to see what she could find. She was noted at school for being light-fingered where other people’s property was concerned.”

“Yes,” said Shilling. “Yes.”

The door of the secret cupboard was half open.

“If it happened to be someone she knew. Someone at Hannington, say. Someone respectable. Naturally she’d have kept it. And as like as not she’d have let the person concerned know she’d got it. Not to make money out of him. Just to feel that he was in her power and had to dance when she pulled the strings.”

“Yes,” said Shilling again.

“But I’m afraid that’s only guesswork. I don’t really think there’s anything more I can tell. It was a long time ago and in retrospect rather silly, I’m afraid. I’m a sober married woman now.”

A gesture indicated the nicely furnished drawing room, the photograph of the infant on the mantelpiece, the carapace of respectability.

Shilling accepted that he was being dismissed. He said, “Thank you very much, Mrs. Arkinshaw. What you’ve told me could be very valuable. If you do think of anything else, telephone Hannington 343. Direct dialling. You’ll be put straight through to Superintendent Knott or myself, or if we both happened to be out, Inspector Dandridge, or one of the sergeants, Esdaile or McCourt. Don’t bother to show me out, please. I can find my own way.”

Venetia held the door of the drawing room open and watched him make his way down the narrow but elegant stairs toward the front door.

It was as well for Sergeant Shilling’s peace of mind that he was unable to see the expression on her face.

“It’s plausible,” said Knott. “But it needn’t necessarily have been Mariner. Lot of respectable people in Hannington.”

“Although we already know there
was
a connection between Mariner and the Ruoff crowd,” said Mavor.

“I know, I know,” said Knott. He sounded both angry and obstinate. Shilling recognised the tone of voice. He had heard it before in other cases.

“But it doesn’t
prove
anything. Suppose everything we think is true. Suppose he’s a dirty old man and Katie found a picture of him with his clothes off. Suppose she used it to tweak him. Suppose she even used it to get him to lean on Inspector Ray about the hit-and-run case. Suppose all of that. It still doesn’t make him a murderer. He’s not the murdering type. Limbery is.”

“There’s only one objection to that,” said Knott. “I can’t imagine why Mariner would agree to take his clothes off, or even more why anyone would want to take a photograph of him when he had.”

“You can’t tell with men of that age,” said Mavor. “One of our high court judges—well, no, I’d better not tell you about that.”

There was a knock on the door and McCourt came in. His face was whiter than usual. He had a slip of paper in his hand. He said, “A message has come through from Central. They’ve had a report from the Forensic Science people who’ve been working on those prints we sent them. The ones from the door of the cupboard above Katie’s desk.”

“Well?” said Knott impassively.

‘They’re sending you a written report. I jotted down the gist of it. They’ve managed to bring up two prints, a thumb and an index finger, sharp enough for identification. Neither of them corresponds to Limbery’s prints.”

“I see. Anything more?”

“They tried them on the main computer. No record.”

“Well, that’s that. Thank you, Ian.”

McCourt placed the paper quietly on the table and went out. Mavor had been watching him. He said, “I’ve got two pieces of advice for you about that young man. The first is that Dandridge ought to find him something to do. Something quite unconnected with this case, I mean. There must be plenty of routine work piling up. The second is, don’t call him as a witness.”