Gone to Ground (17 page)

"You think it's worth pushing this a little further?" Helen said.

"Talk to Prince himself, you mean?"

"Can't hurt."

Will smiled. "The man who knows no fear."

"So they say."

Helen drained her glass of juice and started to break the muffin into pieces with her fingers. When she offered some to Will, he declined.

"Let's just not get our hopes up, okay?"

LESLEY TOOK AN EARLY TRAIN FROM NOTTINGHAM down to London, the sun slanting low across the fields and so bright at times, through the window, she had to shield her eyes. Cattle lazily grazing; two ponies standing side by side, close by a gap in the hedge; lapwings lifting off from the ground as a tractor churned past. The morning paper was full of Islam: riots in Somalia and Afghanistan; a radical cleric sentenced to seven years for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred in his Fins-bury Park mosque. In the sports section there was a report on the vile chants some Spurs fans had unleashed at a former player, on the supposition that he was gay. Not just gay, but black and gay. Racist and homophobic both. Just reading them made Lesley sick to her stomach.

On the inside pages there was a review of a play being performed in Nottingham,
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning,
adapted for the stage. Arthur Seaton, Alan Sillitoe's working class hero, crude and loud, on the lookout for a quick leg over and a pint of Shippo's.
Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not.
Then as now, Lesley thought, lads out on the town to get pissed, meet a lass by the left lion, throw up later in the Old Market Square. Only now it was lasses, too, and it was a phenomenon, had a name: binge drinking. Why was that? Maybe there are more of them now than back in 1958, she thought. Maybe we pay more attention.

She glanced down the carriage as a young Asian man got up and walked toward the automatic doors, leaving his rucksack on the seat next to where he'd been sitting. He was going to the toilet, most likely, or the buffet, maybe out to the space between the carriages to use his mobile phone. Of course he'd leave his rucksack behind. It didn't stop her replaying the CCTV images from the previous July in her mind: three young Asian men with rucksacks preparing to board the train to London. The bombings hours later. Bus and tube. Flesh and bone. She would most likely take the tube herself once she arrived, King's Gross to Chalk Farm, the easiest way.

The young Asian came back into the carriage and seeing Lesley looking at him, he smiled and she smiled back.

Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not.

When she'd asked Alan Pike if, despite the short notice, she could take a few days holiday that were still owing, he'd come out with something sarcastic about it being better than calling in sick and said fine. All else aside, she thought, he was pleased not to have her pestering him about Crawford.

"Special Branch doing break-ins? Intimidation? Where's your proof? That's an episode of
Spooks,
not news. No, a lad in Bulwell, robbed in his own flat, stripped stark naked and urinated on. That's news. That's a story. Or an eighty-five-year-old granny out in Netherfield, moved by social services into a care home fourteen miles away and her cat takes it into its head to follow her. That's a story."

"Thanks, Alan," she had said, "for pointing it out."

A break would do them both a bit of good.

Lesley turned right out of the tube station and then left across the graffitied railway bridge; there was real warmth in the sun. Somewhere between finishing her post-grad diploma in Cardiff and getting established in the East Midlands, she'd gone out with a trainee print journalist who'd shared a flat in Ainger Road, not so far from where she was now. Saturday afternoons spent scouring the crowded stalls at Camden Lock; long, late Sunday lunches in The Engineer and sunbathing on Primrose Hill: it came back to her now through the haze of a remembered dream.

Natalie Prince was where she said she'd be: sitting at a window table in the first of several cafés on Regent's Park Road.

Today she was wearing mostly yellow: a yellow tube top beneath a brown crocheted cardigan that hung loose from her shoulders, skin-tight yellow jeans; she had a paperback book propped up in front of her, a glass of orange juice close by, a pair of oversize sunglasses that seemed to cover half her face.

"Incognito?" Lesley said, at her shoulder.

"Too fucking bright."

Lesley laughed and slid into the seat opposite.

"Stupid bloody weather," Natalie said. "Yesterday I was fucking freezing."

"Me too."

"You read this?" Natalie said, holding up the book.

Lesley scanned the title—
Runaway
—and shook her head.

"Fuckin' brilliant."

Lesley thought the last book she'd tried to read was
The Da Vinci Code.
Before she'd slung it across the room.

She ordered a latté and Natalie asked for another orange juice, even though the one she had was still unfinished. When she removed her glasses her face was so cleverly made up, she scarcely seemed to be wearing makeup at all. Perhaps she wasn't, Lesley thought. Frightening, that she could be that beautiful without assistance.

"You shouldn't drink too much of that you know," Natalie said. "Coffee. Bad for you. Tea, either. Too much caffeine." She reached for her glass of juice. "Me, I've been on a real health kick this last week. Those little probiotic yoghurt things, you know. Broccoli, soya milk. Broccoli's got this stuff in it, yeah? I3C, helps stop you getting cancer. Some kinds, anyway. Omega-3 capsules, been eating those like Smarties. And all organic meat and veg. Eggs. What is it Alicia Silverstone says in that film? I never put anything in my mouth unless I know where it's been?" Natalie laughed. "Didn't say anything about up her nose. Me, what I'm waiting for them to come out with is one hundred percent organic cocaine." She laughed again. "Just see it, can't you, this guy on the bridge down by the Lock, trading these bags of coke out the back of his hand, got these little green stickers on, this bag must only be used for foods produced to the strictly controlled standards of the Soil Association."

Now Natalie's laughter was almost out of control, so much so that it brought on a fit of coughing and she half-stumbled out of her chair, holding her side.

"You okay?" Lesley said, half out of her seat.

A smart young waiter was hovering anxiously nearby, an extra in a movie of his own making.

"Fine, yeah. Nearly pissed myself, that's all." Pulling a tissue from one of the pockets of her cardigan, Natalie dabbed her eyes. "God, that's better."

Sitting back down, she practically drained her second glass of juice. "So, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

"This business my brother came to see you about, the book he wanted to write about your Aunt Stella..."

"Great-aunt."

"Great-aunt. I've been though all his stuff and there's hardly anything there."

Natalie lightly shrugged her shoulders, a lazy gesture she somehow seemed to imbue with grace. "Maybe he gave up on it? Never started? Just, you know, talked about it? People do that all the time."

"Not Stephen."

"Well ... then I dunno." Natalie sipped some orange juice and waited.

"I thought," Lesley said, picking her words carefully, "what I'd like to do, was try and find out some more about her, Stella. Maybe then I'd find out why it was so important to him." She didn't want to say it might, just might, have some connection to his murder. Even to her, it didn't sound convincing.

"You're going to write the book yourself?" Natalie said.

"No, nothing like that."

"Why not? You're a journalist, aren't you?"

Lesley shook her head. "This is just for me." She paused and looked directly at Natalie. "I wondered if you might help?"

Natalie slipped her sunglasses back into place. "Like I said before, I don't know much about her."

"You must know somebody who does, though."

"Not really."

"Your father..."

"Stop. Don't even go there."

"Somebody else in the family?"

Natalie shook her head. "Not really. There's my mum—but, like I said, she's a little out of it most of the time. It's no use trying to talk to her. Even if my dad would allow it. Which he won't."

"There's nobody else?"

Natalie grinned. "There's crazy old Irene."

"Who?"

"My gran. Irene. Lives up in Scotland somewhere. Some island. I haven't seen her in ages. Not since I was a kid. Twelve, thirteen. I was still at school." Natalie laughed. "Frightened the hell out of me. Like something out of Roald Dahl.
The Witches,
you know? All dressed in black from head to toe and paint all over her fingers. That's what she does. Paint. She's an artist. Least she was. No idea what she does now. If anything."

"And she's Stella's sister?"

"Older sister, yes."

"But she's still alive?"

"As far as I know."

"You think she might to talk to me?"

"I don't know. I don't think she talks to anyone."

Lesley could see there was nothing to be gained from pushing it any further.

"Is there anyone else then you can think of?" she asked. "Someone who might help to get me started, if nothing else."

At the far side of the room, a toddler continued to wreak havoc between the tables, despite her mother's languid protests, while two slightly older children, who appeared to be called Tamsin and India, shrieked loudly as they played chase between the café entrance and the counter. It was enough to dispel any lingering thoughts Lesley might have had about children of her own. Even her mother had just about given up hope of that.

"There was this one guy," Natalie said. "He came round when I was having dinner with Orlando..."

"Orlando?"

"Orlando Rocca, the director. He's got this place in Lad-broke Grove, had it for years. In a real state when he got it, apparently. Been squatted in for ages, bailiffs came in with the police in the end and chucked them out. That's when Orlando stepped in. Must be worth a fucking fortune now."

"You met someone there," Lesley prompted.

"Yeah. Gordon something-or-other. Gordon ... Gordon ... Gordon Hedden. That's it. Orlando had invited him. We were going to talk about
Shattered Glass.
This was a couple of years ago."

"Why him? Hedden? What was his connection?"

"He'd worked on it. The movie. He was the cameraman."

"And that was when? Nineteen fifty-five? Fifty-six?"

"Fifty-five, I think. I'm not sure."

"He must be getting on by now, then?"

"Eighty or so? All his marbles about him, just the same. Walked with a stick, yeah, but he wore this really cool beret and could rattle on about lenses and exposures and process shots and fuck knows what else. After a while I just switched off, him and Orlando going at it like a couple of real techies, you know? Amazing."

"What about Stella? Did he have a lot to say about her?"

"Not really. But then that wasn't what Orlando was interested in."

"He might, though?"

Natalie angled her head to one side. "He might."

"I don't suppose you've any idea how I could get in touch with him?"

"No. But Orlando probably would."

"You've got a number for him?"

Natalie was already fishing in her bag.

When they were out on the street, Lesley saw that Natalie's yellow jeans finished at mid-calf and that she was wearing what appeared to be pink ballet pumps on her feet. She found herself feeling frumpy and old.

"Come on," Natalie said, moving away.

"Where to?"

"Just a bit of exercise." She grinned. "Goes with all that healthy eating."

From the top of Primrose Hill they could see the steel and wire mesh aviary and the reddish-brown terraces of the London Zoo, the cylinder of the Post Office Tower at the far side of Regent's Park. More distant, away to the east, there were glimpses of the Shell building on the Embankment and the slow-moving wheel of the London Eye.

Natalie called Orlando Rocca herself on her mobile phone. "No answer. I'll call him again. Don't worry, you can trust me. He'll see you if I ask him nicely." A mischievous smile crossed her face. "Just watch out, that's all."

"What d'you mean?"

Natalie laughed. "I read this biography once. Some Hollywood actress, I can't remember who. Movie directors, she said, they either want to fuck you out of your dress or take it off and wear it themselves."

"Which is Orlando?"

"Given the chance, I'd say both."

ANSTRUTHER GOT BACK TO WILL MORE SPEEDILY THAN he had expected. Howard Prince would be at the solicitor's office at eleven the following morning and any matters requiring clarification could be dealt with then.

Will decided to dress accordingly and asked Lorraine to iron one of his new blue cotton shirts, but, with one thing and another, time got away from her, and he ended up doing it himself; a quick run over the collar, front and sleeves—no one was going to see the back.

Then Jake clambered all over him in muddy trainers just as Will was leaving; he had to use the clothes brush and a damp cloth to clean it off.

"Nice suit," Helen said, when she saw him. "Shame about the tie."

"What's wrong with the tie?"

"Come here," she said, "let me fix it. Nobody has knots that size anymore. Apart from second division soccer players out on the pull."

Will grinned. "You'd know I suppose."

"I wish."

Helen loosened the tie and refastened it in a smaller, smarter knot, adjusting the collar of his shirt and stepping back to judge the effect.

"There. Much better."

"You tagging along this morning?"

Helen gave him an arch look. "That what I do? Tag along?"

"When you aren't attending to my wardrobe."

"In which case, oh master, it will be my pleasure. Just in case one of your shoelaces needs retying or you're having trouble with your zip."

"Actually, it's buttons."

"You sweet old-fashioned thing." Helen parted her lips and gave him a quick glimpse of tongue.