AM02 - The End of the Wasp Season (22 page)

The Walnut was on a curved, tall street in the City of London that had no shopfronts, just offices. The exclusive club barely declared itself on the street: a small plaque on the wall with an etching of a walnut on it and a buzzer. They went up a flight of inauspicious stairs and through a door manned by a bodybuilder in a sharp black suit. His accent was posh, his manner firm but courteous at the same time.

He checked their credentials, buzzed in to check that Howard Fredrick was expecting them, and then let them through the velvet studded door with a dramatic sweep.

It was tiny, very small for a public space, just a small room really. Three semicircular black velvet benches were set against the wall, joined to one another in a continuous wave. All the free walls were smoked glass, making the virtually empty area seem busy and warm. A small man with a ponderous belly was sitting on the furthest bench, his arm around the back, listening, bored, to a very pretty young woman chatting happily between sips of white wine. In front of each bench sat a small, low table with an opaque glass top, light radiating from inside and a cut-out in the center for a champagne bucket. Facing the tables was a short, well-stocked bar, again in glass, again up-lit, giving the woman serving a radiant glow.

She was dressed primly, in a white shirt and black bar apron, and her blonde hair pulled up in a high ponytail. Morrow thought she looked a little bit like Sarah: long faced, slim, little make-up. She smiled up at them, surprised at the sight of Morrow and Wilder in their bad suits and provincial haircuts but hiding it as she moved to the bar to greet them, her mouth open in readiness to smile, hands flat on the bar top, open to them.

Howard Fredrick swooped in from the back office and intercepted them. He pumped both their hands, looking them in the eye pointedly, tipping his head as if committing their names to memory, as though he’d been waiting to meet them for ages. He waved them to a door at the side of the bar, inviting them into his office.

It was a nice office. Almost the same size as the bar itself, this room had two long windows onto the street, a beautiful walnut desk and matching chair, a small safe, and filing cabinets. He’d been expecting them: Sarah Erroll’s employment file sat on his desk, next to a glass of water.

He didn’t offer them a drink, or tea, or anything, but directed them to the chairs in front of his desk while he sat behind it.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, possibly out of habit. “You’re interested in Sarah Erroll?”

“Aye,” said Morrow, feeling herself on the back foot, unclear how to take charge and not certain she needed to. “She worked here?”

“I have her file here.” He flipped it open. “She worked here for seven months, and left to move back to Scotland because her mother was ill—”

“How many hours a week did she do?”

He looked at the file. “Five shifts a week, about seven or eight hours each.”

“What shifts was she doing?”

“Eight till two.” He looked at Wilder. “Our license is until four but we rarely stay open that long.”

Wilder nodded, as if that was what they had come here to ask and he was satisfied.

“You here much?” asked Morrow.

“Every minute of every day.” He smiled at that, a hollow smile. Morrow didn’t feel she was getting past a pre-prepared statement.

“Were you fucking her?”

“No.” It didn’t throw him at all. “I don’t fuck my staff.”

“Who was she fucking?”

Fredrick sat back, crossed his hands over his stomach and looked at her. Morrow looked back. His hair was dyed dark, possibly covering gray, but it sort of suited him. His skin was quite olive but he was most definitely London, his accent just working class enough to be genuine, not so working class that he’d adopted it. He was fit for a man in his forties, not smoker-lean, not cocaine-thin, but muscled and fit. She guessed he spent a good bit of his time at the gym.

His lip curled with disdain as he reached forward and touched the manila file. “I don’t keep notes of that sort of thing.”

“Could you tell us off the top of your head?”

“No,” he said, and she felt he was telling the truth. “I’ve had this bar for nine years, we always employ girls who look pretty much alike and, being honest with you, they blur into one after a while. I don’t remember her much.”

He left it at that. Crossed his hands over his flat stomach, raised his eyebrows for the next question.

“You got a national insurance number for her?”

“She said she was a student.” He pushed a number scribbled on a sheet of paper across to her. “This is the student number she gave us. UCL. Check it.”

She heard what he was telling her. “It’s phony?”

“Yeah, phoned the uni this morning, turns out it was someone else’s.”

“She friends with any of the other girls?”

He shrugged and looked at the file. “She got the job through her friend Maggie, they knew each other from school.”

“Where could we get hold of Maggie?”

“That’s her behind the bar now.”

“She’s still here?”

“Not
still,
she’s back.”

“Where’s she been?”

He stuck his tongue into his cheek, eyes amused. “Married. Bloke she met in here. Turns out he’s a twat. She’s come back. Briefly.”

“How do you know it’s briefly?”

Fredrick looked at her, seeing her for the first time. He paused, considering, she felt, the wisdom of being honest with her. “Being honest with you, I don’t like the girls to stay too long.” He waved his hand vaguely. “Makes the bar…stale.”

“They get bored? Their work suffers?”

“No, the clients get bored. You know, girls in a room, day after day, they can shut up at first but after a while, they get to talking, becomes all about them, doesn’t it?”

“What do they talk about?”

“Their problems, their boyfriends, their family, who gives a shit.” Fredrick clearly didn’t. He sounded bored even listing the things that bored him. “The men here want to drink and escape their work, a lot of them have got wives at home, they don’t want to have to listen to that shit here, do they?”

“What do they want here?”

“Drink, bit of glamour, everything taken care of.” He puffed his chest out. “We’re a private members’ club more than a bar; you have to be recommended to get in here.”

“Lars Anderson drank here, didn’t he?”

The question stopped him dead. He considered Morrow and Wilder again, looked at their clothes, at her shoes, at her red-rimmed eyes. He glanced at the door. “Rocco checked your ID, did he?”

“The doorman?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“He did, aye.”

He reached forward, flipped his fingers at them. “Can I see them again?”

They showed him their warrant cards and he checked the photos, asked them to take the card out of the wallets and looked at the back, tried to bend Wilder’s to see if it was made of sturdy plastic. He gave it back, seemed pleased with himself. “D’you know how I actually know you’re not journalists?”

And he waited until they answered. “No, Mr. Fredrick,” said Morrow, burning eyed, getting annoyed, “how is it that you know we are not journalists?”

“’Cause you’re in charge.” He smiled. “You know, a woman. Pregnant. A pregnant woman.”

He sat back, very pleased with his deduction, whether it was that she was a woman, or a pregnant woman that made her not a journalist, she didn’t give a flying fuck. Fredrick owned a club people wanted to get into and he spent a lot of time in drinking company. Those twin factors seemed to have prompted him into mistakenly thinking himself interesting.

“Lars Anderson drank here, didn’t he?” she said, echoing her intonation from earlier to show she was getting impatient.

“Yes.”

Morrow looked at him. He looked at her. She would have launched into the details of her day so far, getting up at five for the six-thirty flight, feeling sick, Wilder almost missing the plane because he’d gone to the toilet, the heat on the underground into town, the noise and confusion of rush hour in London, all to get here and be treated as if she’d come from the cleansing department. She could have told Fredrick why he should tell her what he knew, what the consequences would be if he didn’t, but she felt bored even contemplating a rant. So she sat back.

“Fuck’s sake,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Cough it up.”

Fredrick liked that, smiled at that. “Him and Sarah?”

Morrow nodded heavily. “Him and Sarah.”

“Got on well. Saw his car pick her up from work a couple of times.”

“She ever say anything about it?”

“No. She wouldn’t. Discreet. Nice girl.” He nodded approvingly.

“See her getting picked up by anyone else’s car, ever?”

He pursed his lips, thought about it. “No. She wasn’t escorting when she worked here.” He read Morrow. “You knew she was an escort?”

“Aye.”

“She left here once she started all that.”

“How did you know that?”

He slapped the manila file shut. “That’s why she left here. She was in with a girl, Nadia. I knew what she was thinking. I said to her, not here, Sarah, can’t have it. If you’re gonna do that you can fuck off. So she did.”

“Who’s Nadia?”

He looked past them to the door, pursed his lips again. “I’ll get her in if you like.”

“Why would you do that?” asked Morrow, just because she wanted to know.

Fredrick shrugged. “I’ll always help the police if I can,” he said, but he couldn’t look at her.

Maggie Back-briefly-behind-the-bar was not upset particularly about Sarah Erroll’s death. Morrow wondered if she’d understood that she’d been murdered, maybe she hadn’t read the papers, but after quizzing her for a bit it became clear that she had. She said the things people say: it’s awful, how terrible, but her expression remained blank and apathetic.

Maggie had left the job to get married to a businessman she’d met here through the bar. A party had been organized on a boat and all the Walnut girls were invited. He was younger than her by two years and already a millionaire. She really thought he was going to make it. But then the crash came and he handled it badly, didn’t get out and now he had nothing, minus nothing because he was trading with their own money. She was glad to have her job back; Howard was a good friend. She didn’t seem to know it was temporary.

Morrow asked her how she met Sarah.

“We were at school together, I was a few years older than her. I met her at my sister’s and she needed a job, looked the part, I knew Howard was looking. I brought her in and got her an interview. She started that night.”

“What sort of person was she?”

Maggie looked blank. “Nice, quiet person, worked hard, helpful…”

“What was she like at school?”

“Quiet.” She corrected herself. “Actually, I didn’t know her, you’d have to talk to my sister.”

“Can you give me her number?”

Maggie had to fish her mobile out of her pocket to find it. After Morrow had jotted the number in her notebook she glanced back up and saw Maggie looking at the back wall of the office—her cheekbone was lit from the side. She had laughter lines, wrinkles on her forehead but they looked stale, unused, traces of facial expressions she seemed unlikely ever to make. It hit Morrow suddenly: Maggie’s face was paralyzed. She wasn’t a cold bitch: she’d had her face pumped full of Botox.

“How old are you?” she asked.

Very slowly, Maggie’s shoulders rose to her ears. “Twenty-seven.”

“Very young still,” she said flatly, wondering why she felt such a strong urge to save Maggie from herself.

Deep in Maggie’s eyes, Morrow thought she saw a twinge of disdain. “Not really,” she said.

Fredrick was angry with Nadia, very angry. He let her into the office in front of him, jostling her with a prod in her back, curling his lip as he pointed at his desk chair, telling her to sit down. Nadia let him boss her as though it were a sexy game. She looked as if she could buy and sell him. Her coat was blonde mohair, ankle length, her jewelry was spare: matching necklace and earrings in a textured zigzag yellow gold. Her swarthy skin was flawless and her hair was black and chocolate, not cheap-looking or wig-like in the way Jackie Hunter’s hair had been, but thick and rich.

As she sat down her coat slid open across perfect brown knees, revealing a red woolen dress and perfect legs. She gave Fredrick a reproachful smile.

“Are you Nadia?” asked Morrow, feeling that they must look very plain to her.

Nadia turned to her with a practiced smile. “I am Nadia, yes. Howard tells me that you would like to talk about Sarah and her business?”

“Hmm, did you know Sarah?”

Nadia looked to Fredrick for direction and he scowled at her. “No, I’m afraid there has been a mistake on Howard’s part, unfortunate, but I didn’t know Sarah.” Her accent sounded Middle Eastern, or Brazilian, Morrow couldn’t tell for sure.

“He said you did.”

Nadia looked at him, a smile playing behind her eyes.

“Fucking stop it,” he said. “She’s only fucking dead. They don’t want you.”

Nadia conceded flirtatiously. “OK, Howard, I tell it the truth: I knew her, she was a friend of mine, OK?”

“How did you meet her?”

She waved a hand over her shoulder. “At a party. She was serving the drinks, Howard, he sometimes give them extra work…”

They looked at him for confirmation but he was glaring at Nadia. “So we meet, we talk, she pretty and short of money and I say to her, you can set up a business, legal, on the internet, no one know your business, all private dealings.
Just for fun
.” She emphasized the last part as if it was an absolute legal defense. “Yes? For
fun
.”

“How did she react to that suggestion?”

Nadia glanced at Fredrick. “Very happy about it—”

“No, she wasn’t,” said Fredrick flatly. “She was in bits.”

“She talk to you about it?” asked Morrow.

But Fredrick wasn’t even looking at Morrow. “Nadia has a problem telling truth from fantasy. It’s a big problem.” Nadia smiled sweetly at the desk top. “She don’t know if she’s fucking lying or not, do ya?”

She gave him a look, so old and knowing that Morrow knew that Nadia had played Fredrick and won.