Birth Marks (5 page)

Only now did she allow herself to grin. ‘I know you don't believe me, Hannah, but it isn't as bad as it seems.'

It's an extraordinary thing about motherhood. Like drug addiction. Once you're hooked you want to see others in the same state.

‘Don't tell me, you're completely used to living alone amid a wall of noise and constant lack of sleep.'

She pretended to think about it. ‘The noise I can live with, the lack of sleep's not so great. Colin says we ought to let him scream, but I can't do it.'

‘So let Colin get up.'

There was a small pause. ‘Well, he has to go to work. At least I can grab a nap in the day.'

‘And do you?'

‘Yes…sometimes.'

‘My God, don't you ever want to kill him?'

She laughed. ‘Who? Colin or Benjamin?'

I shrugged. ‘Either. Both.'

‘Sure. But it passes.'

‘So much for the pluses. What about the minuses?'

‘How about a stomach like an empty potato sack and a brain like a sieve? You should be grateful to me, Hannah. I've taken the pressure off you, remember. Carried on the family tree leaving you to go for the career.'

Big deal. Aren't I just what every parent wanted for a daughter—an over-educated private eye who could be earning better money teaching juvenile delinquents how to spell the word ‘crime'? Certainly not what I had planned for myself as I burst out of academic training, all shiny with energy and idealism. But then we all get our edges rubbed off sooner or later. Even so I had never intended to stay with Frank. It had just been a temporary job in between the career I had left and the one I had yet to decide on. At the time it was what I thought I needed, thinking about other people's problems rather than my own. Except here I was, two years down the line, still looking for shoplifters and missing persons: power without responsibility, or maybe it was the other way around. No wonder my mother had turned grey. For Kate it ought to have been a tougher decision. She'd spent thirteen years in public relations with a large management consultancy: a good, well-paid job and she'd enjoyed it. They even offered to keep the job open for her. But it was always this that she'd wanted: the man, the home and the patter of tiny feet.

‘How's Joshua, by the way?' Good old Kate. Just a little research for the monthly letter home. ‘Do you ever see him?'

‘Occasionally. He's OK.'

Joshua—otherwise known as the great white hope of Hannah's love life: dependable, solvent and tolerant of unsociable working hours. To be honest I can hardly remember what he looks like. We were, as the saying goes, just good friends who made the mistake of sleeping together and let it become a habit. When it ended it was not so much with a bang as a slow freeze-out: familiarity causing a gradual hardening of the emotional arteries. Almost as soon as he walked out it felt like a long time ago. Once in a while we still see each other, go to the occasional movie together, for old director's sake. And my mother still sends him birthday cards, but then that's hardly my fault. His disappearance completed her vision of daughter Hannah as a surrogate man—a few wild oats and a lady at the laundromat to do her washing. Since it keeps her off my back I have done nothing to disillusion her. And as for the patter of tiny feet…of course I think about it. Doesn't everyone? But the older I get the more I realize I'm too young for it. I don't trust my ego. I'm afraid I'd come home one day and find that it, like the cat, out of a mixture of jealousy and the need for more room, had smothered the baby. Kate says I probably just haven't found the right man yet. But then she would, wouldn't she?

After their meal while Benjamin slept I took Amy for a walk in the park and we fed the ducks. She chattered away with all the fervour of a three-year-old for whom conversation is the newest and best toy, and I listened to some of it while the rest of me re-read Carolyn Hamilton's postcards in my mind and thought about how a mother would feel about giving up her child to a dancing teacher, or how the child might feel about being given. And how none of them seemed to know each other well enough to stop eight thousand pounds coming between them. Then I took Amy back in time for tea and when portions of premasticated bread started to catapult around the kitchen I went home and made a list for Monday.

It didn't take me long to get through it. The City Ballet were somewhere in Europe on tour. If I wanted to talk to them I'd have to wait until they got back. The woman who answered the phone at Left Feet First told me that Carolyn Hamilton had left because of a disagreement with the management and that was all she was willing to say. When I told her I was a private investigator looking into Carolyn's disappearance she softened up a bit, but still couldn't help much. Carolyn had been with them for only six months or so. She was a talented dancer who probably could have carved out a successful career in contemporary dance except she just didn't seem to have the motivation. A shame, but there it was. I thought again of those slender little ankles buckling under the pressure of Miss Patrick's unfulfilled dreams. Obviously becoming a female Wayne Sleep wouldn't have sufficed. Or maybe she just got tired of trying. I moved on to her finances, but her building society and the credit-card companies would say nothing at all.

By early afternoon I was reduced to the Polish landlord again, but however much I tweaked he still didn't have a name that directory enquiries recognized. Hardly an encouraging sign, having to go back to pushing doorbells, but then somebody somewhere in that house must have a contact number for the man they paid rent to. And who knows, maybe fate would really smile on me. Maybe this time she'd be there herself, home on a flying visit to pick up the mail and unable to resist the temptation of answering the doorbell just this once. Bingo, case solved thanks to Hannah Wolfe, private investigator extraordinaire.

As fantasies go it didn't last long. I knew it was a police car even before I spotted the other one parked on the opposite side of the road with its Dayglo go-faster stripe. Two police cars in a sleepy residential street on a Monday afternoon? Too bad to be true. I drove past them and parked about fifty yards further down. Then I walked back. The front door was open. And the girl from the basement was standing talking on the step to a patrolman. I walked on, not willing to risk being recognized, then doubled back along the other side of the road. I sat for a while in my car, but the police showed no sign of moving.

Whatever it was it didn't make the news that day. I was beginning to think I had over-reacted and that maybe someone had just complained about the reggae rousers upstairs when Tuesday morning's breakfast TV went local. A young man, well scrubbed and radiating ambition, sat in a studio by a miniature model of Big Ben and told of a threatened strike on London underground, a fire in a children's home in Uxbridge and a body found in the Thames. Then the picture came up. Even then I didn't know her. The blurred smile and bright eyes squinting through from a curtain of hair were still the features of a stranger. I was so busy looking at her that I missed the first few words.

‘…near Barnes bridge early yesterday morning. She was named by police today as Carolyn Hamilton, a 23-year-old dancer who had studied at the Royal Ballet School and performed with the City Ballet and the modern company Left Feet First. She lived in North London. Police do not suspect foul play.'

I sat for a while watching the weather man count the clouds on his sweater. I thought about the colour of the water in the park where Amy and I had thrown the bread. And the cold. And doctors. I've always had this recurring thought about doctors—how they must feel when they lose a patient, and how you'd have to be a truly arrogant bastard to believe that it really wasn't your fault. It's probably good I didn't go into medicine. From the mantelpiece where I had stuck the pictures, a dead girl grinned out at me, all past and no future. I felt like talking to someone who'd known her. But Miss Patrick wasn't answering the phone. Some cases just never get off the ground.

E
ventually the client gets in touch. If only to tie up loose ends. I could see how she wouldn't much want to talk to me, so it was nice of her to let me off the hook.

‘…understand there was nothing you could have done.'

She was probably right. The river police had been called out on Monday morning just after 10.00 a.m. when a man walking his dog had seen something caught up in the weeds. That meant, at the very earliest, that Carolyn Hamilton must have entered the river some time on Sunday night. Even Charlie Chan would have been hard pushed to follow a trail from Cherubim to the river in two days. But honourable failure didn't make me feel any better. Sunday night. I kept putting pictures to the words: a split screen with me scouring grease from the kitchen sink while she floated with the current downstream. Maybe I should have spent Sunday at her place instead of Kate's. Who knows, she might have gone home to pick up her ballet pumps, just to end it gracefully. Either way she must have been carrying some sort of ID for them to track her down so quickly. And the reason Miss Patrick hadn't been answering the phone was because by then she had been in a hotel room in London, recovering from a short car ride to the morgue.

I offered her my condolences. It sounded tawdry even though I meant it. I didn't mention the word ‘suicide' and she didn't offer it. She said nothing to explain the death; no talk of motive or even where her surrogate daughter might have been for the last seven months. For all she knew I might even have found out. Though with precious little help from her. Still, this was not the time to bitch about the things I hadn't been told. If it hadn't been for the fact that I owed her, I would have left any talk of money until another day, but I didn't want her to think of me slyly rejoicing in three hundred pounds unearned. As it was she didn't seem to care.

‘As far as I'm concerned it's irrelevant, Miss Wolfe. I employed you for the week and we had a business arrangement. I insist you keep the money. You were doing a job. Neither of us were to know you would be too late.'

For a woman who had just lost the thing she loved most in the world she was handling it very well. I could see her, sitting by the telephone, her backbone straight as a die, allowing no curves or hollows for the sorrow to dwell in. If it was a veneer I wasn't going to be the one to crack it. In certain respects private detectives are just like policemen, they're supposed to be tough, but in fact they're just frightened of emotion. It's a form of inadequacy really, though there is method in it. After all, when you get down to it, it's just a job. Employed by someone you didn't know to find someone you'd never met. What's he to her or her to Hecuba, that I should cry for any of them. I'd do better to save my tears for friends and relatives. Since there was nothing more to say I didn't prolong the agony. She sounded relieved when I said goodbye.

But, of course, it wasn't that easy. Inside my head the mouse was already on the treadmill and the faster he went the worse it got. When I had started the case she had been alive. And what had I done? Seen a couple of people, snooped around an empty flat, written a lousy report and watched an even lousier movie. While those who weren't busy being born were busy dying. Bob Dylan should have been a private eye. The mouse began to hyperventilate and fell off the wheel. Let it rest, Hannah, this doesn't help anyone. Carolyn Hamilton went AWOL from life and when it all got too much for her she threw herself off a bridge into black water. I had been chasing a shadow and someone else had found the body. Case closed. If I still felt guilty at the end of the week I could always send the money back in the form of memorial flowers.

I used the morning for loose ends. I would, I had promised Miss Patrick, send back her file with the postcards and photographs, but when it came to putting them into their registered package I found myself taking copies of all of them, just in case. And since it seemed rather callous, just shoving the photos away in a drawer somewhere, I put them back on the mantelpiece, alongside the watercolour view of Venice and sandstone cat from India.

The envelope I had filched from her flat was more troublesome. Technically it now belonged to her next of kin, although more technically it ought at this moment to have been in the possession of the police who were, presumably, busy working out past movements and motives. What if the electricity, gas and telephone had been the only debts she could afford to pay and it was the credit cards that had hounded her to a watery grave? That left Hannah Wolfe guilty of suppression of evidence. On the other hand if I gave it back to them I risked an additional charge of breaking and entering. I decided not to decide yet. It wouldn't take them long to find me anyway, even if Miss Patrick had chosen to keep her own counsel.

Two days to be exact: one to track down the Pink Cherubim, and the other to read the words on my card. When I opened the door there were two of them, but then there always are. Frank used to say that one was the eyes while the other was the ears. And I used to say that left a problem with the brain which explained a lot. In this case all the eyes picked up was a load of dirty washing and a living-room that hadn't been cleaned in an age, while the ears heard everything I had to tell them, except for the bits that broke the law. As far as I remember I didn't actually lie, it was just when it came down to it their condescension and more-knowledgeable-than-thou attitude got right up my nose. If they were as good at their job as they claimed, let them find out about the bank statements and the court orders. Frankly they didn't seem interested. No doubt to them Carolyn Hamilton was just another girl from the north who'd discovered that the London streets weren't paved with gold. All they really seemed to want to know was about boyfriends. Or maybe that was all they thought female private detectives were good for. Anyway I gave them Eyelashes and wished them luck. In return they told me the body had been in water since early on Saturday night. That made me feel better about how I'd spent my Sunday. I tried them with a few other queries but they got shy and said I'd have to wait until the inquest. They promised to phone me with the date. In the end they didn't. Untrustworthy buggers. But then, I suppose, they thought the same about me.

But if I didn't go to the inquest somebody did. And somebody told someone else. I would have heard it from the papers anyway, but it was better to hear it from Frank. Ears to the ground, these ex-coppers. Bless his Mr Plod boots.

‘Just thought you'd like to know. The missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, eh?'

‘I don't believe it.'

‘Come on, Hannah, even given your warped vision of the police they could hardly fabricate that kind of evidence.'

‘So why didn't they say so when they found the body.'

‘Maybe they were waiting for the PM.'

‘Frank, you don't need a post mortem to tell a woman is eight months pregnant.'

‘Well, you know these guys on the river. It's dark and they want to get home for the mug of cocoa. She's just another floater. They probably thought she was fat.'

Frank tells Irish jokes too, usually when there are Irishmen in the room. But credit where credit is due. He notices, eventually.

‘Don't give yourself a hard time. Some things you can't do anything about. Obviously the kid got herself knocked up and didn't know how to tell her fairy godmother. It happens all the time. The person who needs to feel bad is the old lady. Maybe if she'd brought you in a week earlier you might have stood a chance. As it is no one likes to hear the truth from a suicide note.'

And such a pathetic one at that, although having read the postcards I of all people should not have expected poetry. Even so…I got him to recite it twice so I could write it down. ‘By the time you read this you will know the truth. I am sorry for all the deceit and the trouble I have caused. Also for all the money which I cannot repay. It seems the only thing I can do is to go. Please, if you can, forgive me.'

So I was right. It had been at least partly to do with money. Somehow she must have scraped together enough to pay off the most pressing bills, then dodged the debt collectors for the rest. But with a baby and therefore no job…As sad stories go this was one of the saddest. Frank was right. If I were Miss Patrick I would prefer not to have received it. No doubt that was why she hadn't told me about it on the phone. Or maybe it was even worse. Maybe she hadn't got it then. Maybe it was waiting for her when she returned home to take the photos down off the piano. The last postcard.

‘Uh uh. According to the police they found it in her flat. No envelope, no nothing. It wasn't even addressed to anyone. Just tucked under the vase on the table, waiting for someone to find it.'

I reran the film of Saturday night in my head. I walked into the living-room, switched on the light and saw the bare floor, the three chairs and the old dining-table, all flashing on to my retina before the bulb went. Surely if there'd been something under the vase I would have noticed it? Or would I? I made another tour of the room this time in slow motion with the torch beam. Still nothing. But had I really checked the whole table? Then I went into the kitchen and looked around the surfaces. Empty. And the bathroom, just in case. Same conclusion. Yet according to the pathologist her body had been in the water for between thirty-eight and forty hours. Which meant that she'd gone into the river between 4.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. on Saturday evening. And since nobody kills themselves until after they've written the suicide note, it must have been there by the time I entered the flat. Shit. I had been so busy with my precious archaeological dig in the cupboards that I'd missed what was right under my nose. For a moment I began to see female private investigators from the police's point of view. But the table? Were they sure?

‘Listen, what's the big deal? That's where people usually leave suicide notes. Either there or on the mantelpiece, although I did once come across one in the oven. But that was a demented housewife. Couldn't cope with her husband's affairs because they meant he was always late for dinner.'

I've got this theory about Frank. That he was probably a great detective when it came to clues, but he always forgot to stop talking, so he missed the confessions. Like now. Given half a chance I think I would have told him. But as it was, by the time he was ready to listen, I'd thought better of it.

But it didn't go away. No sir. It played like a cold shiver up and down the spine. I had been there by 9.45 p.m. She had thrown herself in by 6.30 p.m. at the latest. So while I was waltzing round Covent Garden people-watching she had been waddling down some towpath towards the river, the words of the note already becoming fact. Maybe if I had gone straight from Eyelashes to Kilburn…Yeah, and maybe if the moon was made of green cheese. It wasn't, I didn't, and she killed herself. And not just herself either. Images of Amy came into my mind, all fat cheeks and self-importance, important enough for Kate to put up with sleep deprivation and a husband who didn't have a clue. And images of Kate, eight months pregnant with the fish inside her butting up against the walls of the tank impatiently. A woman's right to choose. But what could be bad enough to kill two of you? Shame and a stack of credit cards? It just didn't seem right. Just like it didn't seem right that I had been in Covent Garden when I should have been in Kilburn. And I had to stop thinking about that one.

Frank realized it quicker than I did. Just to prove there's an exception to every rule, when it comes to ex-coppers he isn't bad on emotion. But he's a great believer in the healing power of work. I did what I was told—which was four days at the Edgemore shopping mall where their own store detective seemed to have developed a case of myopia. Or chronic boredom, more like. I coped by making it a question of professional pride. After missing the suicide note I needed a little observation practice. On the first day I bust a middle-aged man stealing woman's underwear and two teenagers out for a lark. The next day I struck lucky and found the pros, a group moving anything they could fit under their coats, from VCRs to wristwatches. None of it made me feel any better. At the end of the week I left with tumultuous praise ringing in my ears. I went home, got drunk and sat and re-read her folder. But the postcards were still monosyllabic emissaries from the dead, and she was still just a young woman with good legs, no character and a great gaping hole where the last eight months of her life should have been. Eight months which had led, apparently inexorably, to a riverside bank at Kew or Hampton Court. But why there? Why so far from home? What was wrong with Waterloo bridge, or Westminster? According to Frank, Westminster was the favourite—a little Wordsworth and the odd intimation of mortality. Why hadn't she gone there? Too many questions. I was starting not to sleep for the asking of them. Except in a funny way it was probably what I had been waiting for: the need to know more.

Looking back on it I think I had made up my mind even before Stanhope and Peters, Solicitors, called me. But there is nothing like coincidence to convince one. Not that I realized immediately. At first it just sounded like another job, except that it came direct to me and not through Frank.

‘Our client had your name from an earlier assignment.'

‘And you don't want to go into details on the phone?'

‘Correct.'

Just so long as it isn't Van de Bilt, I thought, as I made my way down the Farringdon Road in the direction of Blackfriars. He said his name was Terence Greville and that he'd be sitting at one of the window tables in a café at the city end of Fleet Street, a place called Chez Roberto. You can never tell with solicitors. Sometimes they like to impress with the padded leather, other times they just want to be one of the boys. In which case he was too old for the job.