Gone to Ground (19 page)

"And someone did call?"

"No. Not at all. What happened was, in the end I had to nip out myself. It was well into the afternoon by then, and I thought whoever's meant to come they're not going to now. But then as I was going past the end of Stephen's road I happened to glance down and saw this man just going in through his gate. So naturally I went along and asked him if he was from the water company? And he said no, in no uncertain terms. Quite belligerent, in fact. I won't repeat the exact words he used, but it was to the effect that I should mind my own business and what he was doing there was no concern of mine."

"And then what happened?"

Fenwick shifted awkwardly in his chair. "I said there was no need for him to speak in that way and he told me—well, you can imagine what he told me—the kind of language that he used—so I went back up the street and carried on with what I had to do."

"And the man?"

"I looked back several times. Just quickly. These days you can never tell. People take offense so easily, road rage and everything, and I didn't want to provoke him any further."

Provocation, Helen thought? Give me patience. "What did you see?" she asked.

"He stayed in the garden for a short while after I'd gone. Just looking up at the house. And then he went and stood across the street, still looking. Stood there for a few moments, no more, and then he started to walk away."

"In which direction?"

"The opposite way, thank heavens. I watched him go round the corner and out of sight and that was that. I assumed he was going back to his car, I suppose."

"But you didn't see a car?"

"Not that day, no."

Helen took a deep breath. "Go on."

"It was two days later," Fenwiek said, "the day before I went off on holiday, in fact. I'd been into town to buy a new Thermos for the journey and just as I was crossing the road—the junction where Stephen's and my streets join—this vehicle came out of Stephen's road right at me. Far too fast for a built-up area. One of those huge things so many people drive nowadays. Quite unsuitable for town."

"An SUV?"

"Is that what they're called?"

"A big, four-wheel drive?"

"Yes. Range Rover, that sort of thing. And there he was, behind the wheel."

"You're sure it was the same man?"

"Positive."

"And did he recognize you?"

"I don't know. It's impossible to say. If he did, he gave no sign. Just braked and swerved. I jumped back and then he was gone."

"And you can't remember anything more about the vehicle?"

Fenwiek shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Never been very interested in cars. Trains, they're more my thing."

"How about the colour? Can you remember the colour?"

Fenwiek considered. "Dark, certainly. Sort of khaki, perhaps? Muddy green?" He smiled. "I'm not being a great deal of use, am I?"

Helen smiled back, reassuringly. "Not at all. Why don't we concentrate on the man?"

"A description, you mean?"

Helen nodded.

"Well, he was quite a big man, as I say. Not six foot, exactly, but not so far short. And well built. Easily, I would have thought, twelve or thirteen stone. I'm afraid I don't know what that is in kilograms."

"Never mind."

Fenwick hesitated. "I'm finding it difficult to put an age on him. Late-forties? Fifty?"

"Was he white, black, Asian?"

"Oh, white. Definitely."

"And his hair?"

Fenwick hesitated again, not wishing to give the wrong information. "No, it's no good. I can't remember."

"Never mind," Helen said, not letting her frustration show. "How about what was he wearing, can you remember that?"

Fenwick could. "Some kind of overcoat, I think. But short. You know, just down to the hips. And gray. What else, I don't know. Trousers of some kind, obviously. They could have been gray, too."

"How about on the second occasion?"

"In the car? It was all too quick to see."

"And since that time, when he came close to running you down, you haven't seen him again?"

"As I told you, the next day I went away."

Helen rose smartly to her feet. "Mr. Fenwick, you've been a great help. We may want you to look at some photographs. Help a sketch artist, even. You wouldn't have any objection?"

"Of course not."

"Good. I'm sure we'll be in touch."

With less alacrity than Helen, Fenwick eased himself out of the chair. "This man, you don't think ... Stephen's murder, you think he could have been involved?"

Helen brushed him off with a quick smile. "It's really impossible to say. But it might be someone we'd like to talk to." She held open the door and Fenwick hesitated, as if wanting her to go through first. Chivalry dies hard.

"We're grateful for your help," Helen said. "I'll go down with you, see if we can't arrange for someone to give you a lift home. No sirens, mind. No flashing blue lights."

He had to look at her twice to see if she were joking.

***

After three and a half hours sitting in a stuffy meeting room, while the arguments ebbed and flowed around him, Will was in sore need of fresh air. The chance to stretch his legs. The way he strode onto the slice of open land directly across from the police station, Helen was having to hurry to keep up with him. Off the paths, the ground was even but slippery and her low heels failed to grip on the grass.

"Slow down for God's sake."

"I thought you were fit?"

"Don't start."

"If you didn't..."

"And don't say anything about me smoking."

"If you didn't clog up your lungs with all that gunk..."

"I said don't."

"Okay. Okay." Will stopped and looked at her and grinned. "Stubborn," he said, "is that the word?"

Helen made a face and reached into her bag for her cigarettes.

"How about contrary?" she said. "Willful? That'd suit." Snapping her lighter with her thumb, she inclined her head toward the flame. "Self-destructive, even?"

"That's two words."

"Joined at the hip." Arching her neck she released a coil of smoke that mixed with her breath in the air. It was perhaps a degree or two warmer than the previous day but no more.

"This stranger outside Bryan's house," Will said, "he could have been there for half a hundred reasons. Anything from persuading him to change his gas supplier to talking him into having his drive Tarmaced or his roof retiled."

"There isn't a drive."

"You know what I mean."

Helen tapped ash toward the ground. "If he's got legitimate reasons for being there, why react to Fenwick so aggressively?"

"I don't know. Maybe he thought he was an interfering old busybody. Perhaps he was just having a bad day."

"And you don't think it's a bit of odd coincidence he's driving around the same area just a couple of days later?"

"Not if he's canvassing or touting for work—it's what you'd expect."

"That shouldn't be too difficult to check."

"There is always the possibility," Will said, "he was casing the street. Seeing who was home and who wasn't."

"Looking for somewhere to break into?"

"It's been known."

"In which case, we might have him on our books."

"We might."

"I could get Fenwick back in to look at some pictures."

"Can't do any harm." Will pushed up his coat sleeve to look at his watch. "We ought to be getting back."

"It's tempting to want to join up the dots, isn't it," Helen said, as they started walking.

"How d'you mean?"

"You know, Bryan gets a threatening phone call to which he doesn't respond. So what does our caller do? He goes round, intent on seeing Bryan in person. The harder it is to get to talk to him, the angrier he becomes." She shook her head. "It's too simple, isn't it? Too straightforward?"

"That's the problem with dots," Will said. "But it's something. A break of a kind. And we've not had many."

They were back at the road, facing the ugly cement and brick building where they spent so much of their lives.

"Let's find the man first, if we can," Will said. "Then take it from there."

"And we keep digging at McKusick just the same?"

"Just the same."

THE HOUSE WAS FLAT-FRONTED, THREE STORIES TALL, paint beginning to flake here and there from the facing wall. Iron railings and a high hedge separated it from the street. It was a part of London Lesley scarcely knew, Notting Hill, save through some conglomeration of old images culled from television: affluent upper classes side by side with slum landlords—Rachmanism, is that what it had been called?—West Indians tramping from door to door with cardboard suitcases, looking for lodgings; Mick Jagger wearing makeup, doing drugs, luxuriating naked with beautiful women—a movie that had been, she couldn't remember the name.

A black and white cat with a stubby tail peered at Lesley from the low window ledge alongside the door, jumped down, and ran off in the direction of the adjoining garden. Lesley set her thumb against the ivory lozenge of a bell.

The woman who answered the door was olive-skinned with a swath of fair hair in artful disarray, strands dangling haphazardly across her perfect face and neck. Seventeen, Lesley wondered? Eighteen?

"Lesley Scarman. I'm here to see Orlando Rocca. Three o'clock?"

The young woman spun away and walked back into the house, leaving Lesley to follow or not as she pleased.

Stepping inside, Lesley closed the heavy door behind herself and moved in along the high-ceilinged hallway, past framed posters for what she presumed were some of Rocca's films.
Last Target, Nick's Blues, Truth,
and
Black Bullet,
this last featuring an airbrushed Natalie leaning back against a rough-hewn wall in torn top and short skirt, legs spread, smoking a cigarette.

Glassy, Lesley thought.

She set the flat of her hand against a partly opened door at the end of the hall and entered a vast room—two rooms, long since knocked into one—with virulent abstract paintings hanging on green walls and little furniture save for two low settees and a large mahogany table at which a man in a black T-shirt and black jeans was making notes in a small sketchbook. He was completely bald.

"Orlando Rocca?"

He looked up in his own time, sliding his spectacles forward on his nose. His eyes were a darker green than that of the walls, shading toward black. His teeth when he smiled were even and white and, Lesley guessed, expensively capped. If she hadn't already known him to be forty-nine, she would have found it near impossible to tell his age.

"You are a friend of Natalie." He took her hand in both of his. "You wish to talk about Stella Leonard." His voice was low, quite heavily accented. Italian, Lesley thought, without being sure that was correct.

"Come," he said. "First we will have a drink."

"I'm fine, thanks," Lesley said, with a shake of her head.

Rocca took a step back and looked her up and down. "You are pregnant, perhaps?"

Lesley blushed and shook her head.

"You do not have to drive?"

"No."

"Then join me, please, in a glass of wine. Vermentino. From Sicily. It helps the long hours of the afternoon." He gestured toward the paired settees. "Please sit."

The creased leather of the cushions gave beneath her weight, and she felt herself sinking further back than was comfortable. By the time Rocca returned with two tulip-shaped glasses, she had repositioned herself on the front edge of the settee, legs angled to one side.

He touched his glass to hers. "You are a journalist, Natalie said."

"Yes. For radio."

"And you are wanting to make what? A feature about Stella?"

"No, not exactly. My brother, he was writing her biography when he died."

"I am sorry about your brother." With quick, economical movements, Rocca crossed himself. "But you will finish his work? In his memory?"

Lesley half-smiled. "Perhaps. Something like that, yes."

"That is good."

Music started playing somewhere in the house. Loudly at first, and then more restrained. Samba? Bossa nova? Lesley wasn't sure.

"My daughter, Savia. She is living with me until the summer. While she learns English." Rocca raised his eyes toward the ceiling, as if to signal the implausibility. "All she does is sit in her room and play this music. Text her friends back home." He shook his head in dismay. "I ask her the other night, come with me to this movie premiere, Leicester Square. Brad Pitt. Angelina. Many stars. But no. She does not want to go. I ask her why and she says it is boring. The only word aside from fuck you and Big Brother she has learned in English. Boring." He shook his head again. "She does not know she is born."

Leaning back, one arm thrust out along the top of the settee, he enjoyed a few moments of despair.

Lesley sipped some wine and set down the glass.

"I met her only once," Rocca said, "Stella Leonard. A festival in Dinard. They were making a retrospective of her work. Most of it..." He gestured with his hands outspread, "...was poor, without distinction, without..." He shrugged. "...fire in the belly. Po-faced, you understand? Uptight. When they kiss, these people on the screen, they kiss with their mouths closed. When they fuck, they fuck with their clothes on. Except, of course, they do not fuck. This is this country, what? Nineteen fifty-five. The actors, characters, they are like Barbie and Ken. They have nothing here." He cupped himself generously between his legs. "No cock, no balls, no cunt. Only Stella. In
Shattered Glass
especially. She was a woman, you know? A real woman. You can smell her from the screen. She sweats, she bleeds. You believe this. She makes you believe. You can see it in her face, her eyes."

Rocca's own eyes were so bright, so wide, Lesley had to look away. Leaning forward, he touched her leg just above the knee, and, involuntarily, she jumped.

Rocca laughed.

"I was only young," he said. "Twenty-something. A boy. I had made one or two short films. Written screenplays that had not been produced. There was one about a woman of a certain age who knows she is dying, but is still beautiful. She becomes obsessed with a young man who lives nearby, a pianist. With his hands, she loves his hands. She wants to make love to him before she dies. Wants him to make love to her. Wants to feel those hands on her body. I ask Stella if she will read it, this script, as a favour to me. So, she takes pity on me I think. Or perhaps she, too, is bored. That word again. Either way, she tells me to bring the script to her room at the hotel. When I arrive she is sitting there, dressed very properly, demure, no longer young. She is sitting on the chaise-longue with a blanket over her knees because somehow, despite the heat in the room, she feels the cold. And so she begins to read. As if I am no longer in the room.