Staying Power (14 page)

A middle-aged man was just opening a bottle of red. Balding, thickening round the waist. A very expensive signet ring. Her host. Had she ever known his name?

‘It's a good job this doesn't need to breathe too long. There's some white chilled if you'd rather?'

‘The red will be fine. I'm Kate, by the way. I came with Patrick. I'm sorry – I don't know—'

‘John.'

They shook hands. He seemed quite happy to lean against the working surface and talk. ‘It's not very good, I'm afraid.' He smelt his glass. ‘But it's from our own vineyard and I have a sentimental attachment to it. The wine and the vineyard. There!' He passed her a glass and pointed to a large framed colour photo of terraced hillsides.

‘Cheers.' She gave an appreciative smile. ‘Apart from growing vines, what do you do, John?'

‘I'm a health service manager,' he whispered. ‘The sort that's loathed by the media.'

No wonder he was loathed if he earned the sort of salary needed to support this place! She touched the side of her nose: ‘Your secret's safe with me. I've been playing with Mark: he's a lovely little boy. He lacks only a tree house to be perfectly happy, he tells me.'

‘Ah, he's been talking about the Sandersons', has he? They're so patient with him. Well, Isobel.'

Yes!
‘She seems a very nice woman. Very quiet.'

‘Too quiet. I like a woman – I don't know. This is going to be misinterpreted, I can see by the gleam in your eye! But a woman with a bit of spirit. I work with high-powered professional women all the time, Kate. They can look you in the eye and say their say. Not Isobel. She worries me. God, how much of this have I drunk?'

‘Oh, I like it when people are indiscreet,' she said, cosily, sitting on a stool beside him as if to make her point. ‘Now, what does – what's his name? Howard? – do? Is he a manager too?'

‘Runs his own business. He was an engineer – had his own factory in the Black Country but when the recession struck he branched out. Doing very well, by all accounts. They've got a bit of trouble with their son. You know what teenage lads are: full of it, aren't they? Anyway, they've got him on a tighter rein, now – he stays at home studying more than he goes out, by all accounts. Look, if I'm being this indiscreet, I'd better give you another, so you can be indiscreet too. And then – you look as if you're the sort of woman who likes dancing.'

If the price of these nuggets was a cheek to cheek with him, then so be it. She released her dimples in a beatific smile. What she wanted to do was drag herself into conversation with Isobel: not to confirm the voice on the phone was hers – in this crowd she'd never be able to, not with this persistent foggy hearing – but because she seemed the sort of woman who'd spend a long time at parties listening with downcast eyes to her husband snubbing her.

Once she had a purpose, she started to enjoy the party much more. She ran into Patrick as she and John were heading for the room where John had promised music. She disentangled herself from her host, acquiring Patrick's arm with the skill of a Russian vine. Kittenish wasn't her usual style, but it looked as if he was too pissed to notice. John kissed her hand extravagantly as he surrendered her.

‘John was taking me to dance,' she said.

‘Well he can't, can he? I'm taking you to dance. Sorry, John, but you know how it is!' He didn't take her hand, but propelled her forwards with pressure in the small of her back.

What she wanted to do was see the Sandersons again, together or singly. The odds were heavily on the former, of course. She was sure she could re-insert herself into conversation somehow. But at the moment they were nowhere to be seen. She hoped that the music would be restrained and that Patrick was a good dancer.

It was. He was.

And damn it if she didn't find herself getting aroused.

Which was a pity: he didn't seem to be.

They agreed, after several numbers, that they needed another drink, and, this time with him holding her hand, moved back through the hall. Something was up. People were moving ultracasually away, or, more honestly, peering over other shoulders to see what was happening. Should she squeeze Patrick's hand to bring him to a standstill or disengage hers?

A fellow-guest – a man in a DJ, no less – seemed to be the source of the trouble: loud and thrashing away the hands of people brave enough to try to steady him. She'd better do something. That's what the police were for. Except someone else was doing something. Howard Sanderson was fishing fivers from his wallet.

By now the front door was open, and a young Asian man, the cab driver, she supposed, was standing looking in, bemused. Howard stepped forward, thrusting the money at him, muttering confidentially so no one could quite hear what he said, particularly as his fellow guest was still giving voice – though this had now sunk to an aggrieved whine. Any moment now he would start to cry.

‘And you'll come straight back here to collect us,' Kate picked up as she inched forward.

The driver did no more than look at the wad of notes before Howard added some more.

‘See you later, then, mate. Sir,' he corrected himself when he fingered the extra notes. He turned to the drunk. ‘OK, guv?' He linked arms easily with him and headed off down the drive. Presumably he'd been given enough to cope with swabbing vomit from his cab if necessary.

Howard shut the door. Kate felt she should congratulate him, but waited. What next?

As if he'd simply tipped a carol singer fifty pence he turned and picked up his glass. Catching Patrick's eye, he lifted an ironic eyebrow. ‘Christmas spirits,' he said, dismissively.

Patrick gestured him towards the kitchen. Kate made as if to follow and then pulled Patrick back. ‘I was afraid I was going to have risk my dress in a bit of crowd control,' she said.

‘That would have been a great pity. You know, seeing you in mufti, no one would guess you were a cop.'

‘The same could be said of you,' she said, dimpling.

He looked round, almost furtively. ‘I tend not to talk about my work. Any more than you seem to,' he added, looking at her shrewdly.

For answer she smiled. ‘Maybe we both remember that old
Punch
cartoon with these two men at a party. And one of them was stripping off his shoe and sock—'

‘—saying, “So you're a chiropodist, are you?” Oh yes! The weird thing is—' he dropped his voice to an almost inaudible level ‘—some women seem to find it a real turn on.'

‘Something to do with stiffness,' Kate suggested, raising an eyebrow. ‘Whereas no one would find my job a turn on, and they're quite likely to ask me why their burglar hasn't been caught. Tell you what, I won't split if you don't.'

For answer, he kissed her lightly on the lips.

Both the Sandersons were in the kitchen so it was natural to join them in the knot waiting for wine. She'd have liked to congratulate him on a job well done, but judicious praise might have sounded as if she knew what she was doing. Neither could she coo, as Daphne was cooing. So she smiled and nodded as the others chorused.

Howard shrugged, almost with irritation, but certainly with the sort of gesture she made when people rabbited on about things she'd rather brush off.

‘Look,' he said at last, ‘it's over now. I just wish I'd stepped in earlier, before he spoilt the evening. Now why don't you come round for drinks tomorrow evening.' He gestured round the small group. ‘You and a few others. Just a few nibbles – would that be OK, Isobel?'

She nodded at her feet, but managed to sweep a smile around the circle.

‘Oh, but it's such short notice! You can't expect her to conjure even nibbles out of thin air!' Daphne expostulated.

Kate nodded in sympathy.

‘Thin air! She'll despatch me off to Sainsbury's the moment morning service is over. And I'll come back to find her feet sticking out of the deep-freeze.' He smiled at his wife with apparent affection. ‘The pity of it is that at this time of year you won't be able to see the garden.'

‘I gather from young Mark that it's well worth seeing,' Kate said.

Isobel shook her head at her feet.

‘Indeed it is!' Daphne insisted. ‘It puts us all to shame.'

‘Sometimes I think she lives out there,' Howard smiled, putting an arm round her shoulders.

His wife shot him an extraordinary look: it lasted the briefest of nano-seconds, but Kate was sure she saw it. Within a blink, however, her smile was much in evidence, if still self-deprecating. She hadn't, of course, spoken during the whole of the exchange.

‘Why don't we bring some of our left-overs? There are still several trays of canapés hiding in the pantry,' Daphne said.

‘What? Deprive me of my chase round Sainsbury's?' It was impossible to tell what Howard felt about Daphne's intervention.

‘If Patrick promises to haul me out of my deep-freeze, I'd love to contribute some cheese-straws,' Kate heard herself say. She couldn't retract the offer, even though she and Robin had made them together the weekend before he was killed. What had she meant to do, she asked herself, preserve them till the anniversary of his death? No, she must not give way to nausea, not here, not now.

She gulped at her wine.

‘That would be so kind—' Isobel began.

‘It really isn't necessary—' Howard said at the same time.

Before Isobel could add ‘but', Daphne jumped in. ‘That's settled, then. What time, Howard? Tell you what, since you've been deprived of your dash round Sainsbury's, why don't you take John out for a game of golf? It's such a long time since he played, poor dear, and I know I can rely on you to be patient with him.'

The Sandersons' taxi arrived at the same time as Patrick's. During the short journey home, Kate wondered how she could deal with the coffee issue. Why not with the truth?

‘Any day now,' she said, ‘I shall have carpets on my floors. Friday, to be precise.'

‘In that case,' he said, kissing her lightly on the cheek, ‘I shall have to wait till then for a cup of coffee.'

It might be Sunday morning but the office, as Colin would have put it, called. Loudly enough for even her bunged up ears to hear. Loudly enough to get her out of bed, despite the late – and solitary – night.

Fatima had obviously been busy, despite Graham's instructions that they were all to have the weekend off, which everybody else seemed to be obeying. Even the pair rostered for the weekend were nowhere to be seen.

Three files, neatly marked in Fatima's handwriting, occupied pride of place on Kate's desk.

CARPET-LAYERS

SANDERSON

PHARMACY BREAK-INS

Kate picked up the one she didn't want to have anything in it. CARPET-LAYERS. Of the unsolved breaking and enterings in the whole of the West Midlands area, only four households had had carpets laid recently. None by the firm that had done Kate's. She wanted to dance with relief. But, the note continued, Fatima and Selby were going to follow up the incidents on Monday. Fine, she wrote on the note she clipped to it.

PHARMACY BREAK-INS. There had been a couple more. On one occasion the intruders had been disturbed: they'd taken only unimportant items.

Unimportant? Let her be the judge of that! Resisting the urge to scrawl, she wrote a note in extremely clear block capitals and stapled it – twice – to the folder: EXACTLY WHAT DID THEY TAKE?

Right. Now to the interesting one.

Sanderson. Three Howard Sandersons in Birmingham itself. Fatima seemed to have covered the whole area in which the
Local Crime Watchers
programme could be picked up: there were four more there.

She sat down to leaf through the sheets. One on each Howard Sanderson. There was a potted biography of each. One was black, two under eighteen, one in a gay partnership. Not that any of them was to be ruled out entirely, Selby's scrawl informed her. Colin would no doubt enjoy that. The others included a man in a geriatric hospital and one in HMP Winson Green, both of whom probably could. And a Howard Sanderson of Oxford Road, Moseley. M. to Isobel. One s., Nigel. There was a list of his business activities – he seemed to be involved in some nine firms, what with directorships and joint ownerships.

If this was indeed Graham's Howard Sanderson, Graham and she needed to talk. Whatever Mrs Harvey might say. And preferably before the drinks party at the Sandersons' tonight.

She flicked a look at her watch. Eleven-thirty. No use phoning him yet. No one knew quite which sect he was attached to but probably he'd still be in whatever church it was. As she ought to be. It was one thing shedding the job of organist, another to drift away from the chapel altogether, especially after the parson and his wife had been so kind to her.

Enough of that. What she'd do was compare the firms on Sanderson's list with the firms in Alan Grafton's files. And check them all out at Companies House. Tomorrow's job. As soon as the Central Ref, which housed Companies House, opened its doors. Meanwhile, she'd better return the folders. She'd keep the one on Sanderson herself, to refer to when she spoke to Graham. She couldn't snub Selby by not acknowledging his part of the work, so she dropped the carpet layers folder on his desk. She'd leave the one needing specific attention on Fatima's. Except she wouldn't. It would be much better to leave it somewhere less obvious to the squad file-nicker like Fatima's filing trays or even her chair. Maybe the stacking filing system. …

And here was a memo from Graham. To Fatima? Graham? He was a man for conversations or notes. Rarely anything as official as a memo. Almost agaisnt her will, certainly against her conscience, her fingers reached for it, slid it forward till it was within reading range but still in the tray. And pulled back, as if bitten.