Pix (Volume Book 24) (Harpur & Iles Mysteries) (7 page)

‘No,' Meryl said.

Harpur would have bet on it.

‘And then silence,' Kate said.

‘It's a worry,' Meryl Goss said.

‘Meryl works in a big London office but she's taken some days off because of this search,' Jill said.

‘We'd better have a name and description,' Harpur said. ‘And pictures?'

‘Graham Trove,' Meryl said. ‘Thirty-five, middle height, dark, short hair.'

‘They live together in Camden Town,' Hazel said.

‘He nearly always wears a suit,' Jill said.

Harpur would have bet on it.

Meryl was sitting in an armchair, a cup of tea provided by the girls on the carpet near her and alongside her handbag. She bent down to the bag and produced two photographs. Harpur, who'd remained standing near the door, crossed the room and took them from her.

‘And Meryl left one with Reception at headquarters,' Kate said.

‘Have you got one, Kate?' Harpur asked.

‘No.'

‘I didn't want that,' Meryl said. ‘I'd rather not have anything in the Press at this stage.'

‘Right,' Harpur said.

‘We probably couldn't publish yet, anyway,' Kate said. ‘It's not really a story so far.'

But Harpur saw she sensed that soon it might be – how good reporters got to be good. He looked at the pix. In one Graham Trove stood alone smiling outside what appeared to be a front door, perhaps the entrance to the Camden Town house. He wore a suit and collar and tie. Harpur tried to stop a vision of him with his throat cut supplanting the actual snapshot. The other picture showed Meryl and Trove conducting a comic kiss in a garden, perhaps at the rear of their house. They stood far apart, both bent over from the waist and stretched forward, like a couple of doves billing.

Hazel said: ‘Graham has phoned her several times, saying he'd arrived and so on and that things were going well. If he used a mobile these would be traceable, wouldn't they, dad?'

‘Not all. Depends on the phone and how he pays. But then they stopped?' Harpur said. ‘So, what happens when
you
ring
him
?'

‘Nothing or voicemail.'

‘We thought this might trouble you, dad,' Jill said.

Yes, it troubled Harpur. In the morning he went up to Iles's suite and put a photograph of Trove in front of him. ‘Yes, I've seen that,' the ACC said.

‘How?'

‘A routine missing person inquiry came to us.'

‘Do you always look at routine missing person material, sir?'

‘I looked at
this
routine missing person material.'

‘Is that because you think you might have seen a missing person dead?'

‘Am I being interrogated? You must be a detective, Col. So, how do
you
come to have the photograph?'

‘I like to keep you up with what I'm doing, sir.'

‘That right?'

Now and then, of course, Manse Shale had wondered about installing closed circuit television in and around the rectory. So far, wondering about it was as far as he'd gone. He did not really like the idea of cameras. Chilly things, staring, reporting back. Although CCTV might be fine at a bank or petrol station or jail, it did not seem to Manse suitable for his and the children's home – and Patricia or Carmel or Lowri's home, during their joyful, allocated spells as residents. And to Mansel it did not seem suitable for an ex-rectory, either. He prized this religious connection and wanted nothing to taint it. A rectory, when it was still a working rectory, would not have had CCTV. God watched over it, not fucking cameras. People visiting the rector might of felt snooped on, might even of got put off coming here, if cameras tracked them. This would be the wrong kind of treatment for church members, like they was enemies, whereas they might want to discuss raging soul problems or hand in decent garden produce for the harvest festival.

It's true that if he'd had CCTV filming, Manse would of known straight off who lifted the pictures and what went on at the top of the stairs. But he
had
known by brain power, anyway, who ran the raid and who, like ultimately, was responsible for the corpse in the great suit near the first landing.

But with CCTV he might of had a security camera at the front door to check callers and show them on a monitor. Someone rang the bell now, giving it heavy pressure, it seemed to Manse – a true let's-be-having-you-Shale blurt.
He was in his den-study, maybe Manse's favourite room, although it had Dutch portrait paintings here, not Pre-Raphaelites. He hated narrowness, and art certainly existed before and after the Pre-Raphaelites, he knew that – well, so obvious, think of them cave drawings or David Hockney with swimming pools. Manse sat at what was known as a ‘partner's desk', made of mahogany and with a leather top, going through some bank statements. You had to watch them sods in the banks.

These days, a partner at the head of a company would not have a big desk like this, most probably, but a ‘work station' for his computer, surrounded by comfortable furniture, such as what were called now, sofas, not settees, where discussions on company policy would take place in a relaxed mode, also ‘brain-storming' sessions, meaning where they tried to think of ideas a bit new. Manse's study needed something different from a work station, though. The great size of the desk and the red leather top and the magnificence of the wood suited so well this big, square, high-ceilinged room. The bell continued to call and harass. To Manse it sounded like the police – non-stop, bossy. Lacking CCTV he could not tell who it really was, but he got some greasiness and kow-tow smiles and sharp thinking ready in case it did turn out to be police. You could never be sure what them fuckers knew or thought they knew or had made up. As Ralphy Ember said once: ‘Always try civility first, Mansel, but never count on it.'

When he went to open the door he saw it was Sybil. ‘My damn key doesn't damn well work,' she said. She waved it at him like a little spear. This must be what started the anger.

‘I've had the locks changed,' Manse said.

‘Why? To keep me out?'

Yes, it was anger, but also fear, sadness. He decided he still did not want her to know why he'd ordered new locks. If the children seemed at risk here, she might insist on taking them to live with her and lover boy. Such a decision by Syb was not likely, but possible. She definitely felt some connection at times with Laurent and Matilda,
he'd noticed that. She did know about motherliness and fell into it now and then. Manse said: ‘A girl who stayed here a while grew rather clingy and wouldn't leave. I'm not one to get violent over something like that, am I, Syb, so best just quietly keep her out? She'll find another place, most likely.'

‘But why did you open the door, then? It could have been her.'

‘I had the idea it might be you.'

‘How?'

‘I don't know. Like sixth sense?' Shale said. ‘Maybe the special way you rang the bell.'

‘Special how?'

‘Like a personal message. Like saying, “It's Syb, please answer.” '

She moved into the hall and he shut the door. ‘Did you
want
it to be me?' she said. ‘Is that why you thought the ring of the bell might be
my
ring of the bell? The thing is, you never knew until now how I do ring a bell because I didn't need to, having a key.'

‘It's something mysterious, yes,' Mansel said.

‘I've heard of these girls – Patricia, Carmel, Lowri – from the children, damn it,' Sybil said. ‘Which one grew clingy? Had you said something to her that would make her get clingy? Promises? Implications? What about the others? You give them all a key to our . . . to your home?'

‘It was a lovely surprise, Syb, when I opened the front door,' Shale replied.

‘But you said you could tell it was me.'

‘Still great to find I had it right.'

‘Suddenly, I wanted to see the old place – and you, naturally, although it's not long since Severalponds. I jumped in the car. Impulse. An hour, maybe two, and I'm on my way back. Perhaps I'll wait for the kids to get in from school. Has Laurent chucked out that crap thing Ivor bought for him?'

‘You've always had impulses, Syb. They made you wonderfully unpredictable and exciting.'

‘Yes, well . . . history. What's going on, Manse?' Decorators were preparing to paper the stairwell walls, and the stair carpet had been removed.

‘I thought the place could do with some freshening up,' Shale said. They went into the drawing room.

‘Ah, the Arthur Hughes and the Edward Prentises,' she said. ‘You're very faithful.'

‘They deserve it,' he said.

‘Yes, they do, they do,' she replied. ‘But you could sell and restock on the profits. If you're into freshening up the house.'

‘I'd miss them. These particular ones.' Syb did not understand about collectors, their love for certain special items. She thought deals. ‘Tea or a drink?' he asked.

‘A drink.'

‘Good.' He mixed a couple of gin and tonics and went into the kitchen for ice and sliced a lemon.. ‘
Our
home.' He'd noticed that. And then the jealousy and suspicion about the locks. It all meant something? She wanted to come back permanently to the rectory and him, did she? This visit was her way of testing how she might feel if that happened. She had boldness, or call it cheek. What if her key
had
worked and he was here with Carmel or Lowri or Patricia? Lowri would do it anywhere. They might of been on the rug in front of the Arthur Hughes. That had happened with her occasionally. Manse did not regard it as disrespect to art. This was a totally natural act and many great paintings focused on Nature. Think of Van Gogh and the cornfield.

Manse still could not be sure how he would feel if she proposed coming back for keeps. Would he like to settle for someone permanent again? Did he still love her enough? Definitely it hit him very, very bad when she left. He would say wounded. Plus it had to be wrong for a rectory wife to go scampering off with another man to a place like Wales. Perhaps he owed it to the children to give them a returned mother, who would bring a more settled flow to their lives. Yes, he did owe it. Any of them marriage counsellors etcetera would tell him that. Her nice
words about the paintings seemed meant to woo him. She didn't call the girl models his ‘wank women' no longer and stand in front of the pictures and look like she was going to spit. Manse enjoyed getting wooed, and enjoyed feeling the Pre-Raphaelites had won her over, even if it was only a bloody ploy. She said ‘damn' a lot but that would be show.

He returned with the ice. Sybil had remained standing near the bigger Edward Prentis, though not looking at it but staring around the room. ‘I don't know where to sit,' she said.

‘You mean for the best view of the pictures? It
is
a dilemma,' Manse replied considerately.

‘No, I don't damn well want to sit where one of
them
has sat.'

Manse thought this rectory was like full of people from the past. He himself wondered about how it would of been when clergymen lived here, mulling over the Old Testament and making a list of church wardens. And, not so far back in the past, he remembered that body on the stairs. Now, Sybil could imagine Lowri or Patricia or Carmel in one of the drawing-room chairs and wanted to shun that, whichever it might be. This would not be a hygiene thing. A pride thing, a wife thing. She had to be different from them, even if she did live with someone else now.

Probably she guessed that if she sat in the big armchair near the Hughes, for example, Manse would be eyeing her and thinking,
Last time I looked over at that big armchair when a woman was in it, it was Patricia, or Carmel or Lowri. Today, it's Syb. Well, swings and roundabouts
. Maybe she'd wonder if he was comparing her legs with Lowri's or Patricia's or Carmel's, or all three's. Women had their worries. Often they did not add up to much at all, but Manse tried to regard them seriously.

‘Here's one
I
always sit in,' he said, pointing to another of the chairs. ‘Take that, will you, Syb?' On the whole, Manse considered this not a bad solution to a pretty tough problem. Tact – he always felt he had quite a bucketful of
that. Offering this chair was like putting her in the main seat, the master seat. Although she came back unexpected and cool out of nowhere from closeness with some other man she still got this spot. Quite a few these days supported equality of the sexes, yes, but he'd bet not many men would be willing to listen without no violence at all to a woman bleating on about not putting her damn arse on some cushion because another woman's, or other women's, damn arse or arses had been there, and then offer her instead the room's best perch, his own. He spooned ice and a lemon slice gently into her drink. She sat in his chair. He did not mind. For some men it would be like having their balls cut off to see a woman in the chief place. But Manse would regard that as ignorant. Women certainly had a right to a reasonable chair, this being the new millennium, for God's sake.

‘The stair carpet wasn't old, was it?' she said.

‘It had become very 1990s, I thought.'

‘What's that mean?'

‘Yes, very 1990s,' he said, the new millennium being in his mind and probably good, although, of course, 9/11 was in the new millennium, so you never knew what might come.

‘Where is it?'

‘The stuff that was taken up?' he said.

‘Yes, what did you do with it?'

‘Burned.'

‘Oh, Manse! Many people would be glad of a carpet of that quality, even a bit worn. Hotel standard.'

‘I don't like the idea.'

‘What?' Sybil replied.

‘Other people walking over carpet that used to be in my family's home. Does that sound sentimental? I'm sorry.'