The Best of British Crime omnibus (47 page)

Mr Popinov used some electric ray equipment for part of the treatment, but Alison was sure it was his massaging that was working the miracle. He had fingers like steel when they needed to be, but a velvet touch for the rest of the time, so soothing and gentle – and other things too that she didn't care to admit to herself. He was quite young and very good-looking, or more distinguished than just good-looking perhaps, with his high forehead and pointed black beard – he reminded Alison a little of pictures of the last Tsar. The white medical jacket he wore, buttoned at one shoulder, was cut like the summer uniforms officers wore in those days. He was Russian of course, but from one of those Baltic states. He had told her about his background on the first visit, but Alison had been nervous at the time and forgotten the details. She hadn't liked to ask again. She did recall he had aristocratic connections.

She crossed to the other side of the road to be out of the sun.

Of course Mr Popinov's conduct was absolutely proper. There was a receptionist, a pleasant young woman, and quite pretty. She came into the consulting room, when called, to help with the equipment, but went back to her desk in the waiting room at the massage stage. But she was there all the time, on the premises as it were, so there couldn't be any suggestion of impropriety.

Alison McFee's still stout little body experienced a tremble of pleasure at the thought of impropriety with Ivan Popinov, though she quickly suppressed it.

She was especially glad the assistant wasn't present during the manipulative part of the treatment. It was then that the patient had first felt a spiritual as well as physical rapport with Mr Popinov. She had never experienced faith healing, but she could imagine now what it must be like.

Mr Popinov had a healer's touch all right. It was why the treatment worked so well. Faith was better than dieting: he was spiriting away her excess pounds – she was convinced of it. But it involved a very delicate relationship (she hesitated to use the word intimate), and one that could easily be shattered by the presence of a third person. Alison was much too modest to give herself over to such a spiritual experience if there had been anyone other than Mr Popinov in the room – especially when he took away the towels. That was prior to his moving his magic, searching hands slowly down her body, from her brow to her feet, while he exhorted her in an urgent whisper to relax and allow the unwanted tissue to dissolve and drain away through the very ends of her tiny toes.

These body sweeps, as Mr Popinov called them, were the key to the treatment. Alison could quite see that now. The sweating they induced was incredible. They made her feel utterly exhausted. It was prudish of her to have been so obviously embarrassed over her nakedness the first time. She blushed at her past inhibition. What a goose Mr Popinov must have thought her. That was if he noticed, and he probably hadn't. The concentration and effort he put into the sweep sequence would obliterate trivia from his mind.

She quickened her step, then restrained it again after a sobering glance at her watch.

Since the second visit she had tried always to be just on time. On that occasion she had been nearly forty minutes early. She had found it embarrassing to be sitting waiting with the patient who had the appointment ahead of hers. Treatments lasted half an hour. Then the patient before the other one had come out of the consulting room, joking with Mr Popinov in a show of familiarity that Alison found very nearly irreverent. This patient had then turned out to be the first one's friend. The two had come together and were returning together, so Alison had had to wait the next thirty minutes in the company of the second.

Both the other patients had been glamorous, younger than Alison, and hardly at all overweight: they had also had a great deal more in common with the pretty receptionist than with her. They had treated Alison with what seemed at worst cynical disdain and at best the kind of humouring she sometimes applied to her aged mother. It had made her very uncomfortable, as though she was somewhere where she shouldn't have been, up to something unworthy or even immoral. That this had been her guilt complex asserting itself and not because of any intended slight by the others was neither here nor there. She came to Chiswick partly because she didn't care to attend for similar treatment any nearer her home where she might run into people she knew. Now she found the presence of sophisticated strangers equally irksome.

She was nearly at the entrance to the flats now.

She hesitated before crossing a side road because of the white VW Golf. It was approaching from the other side of the flats, but slowing, and with its flashing indicator suggesting that it was going to turn into the road she was about to cross. But the car turned earlier than that – into the entrance to the basement carpark of the flats.

Alison's heart gave a leap as she identified the single occupant of the Golf. It was Jane Larden.

It was a substantial block of flats, but Alison had a horrifying premonition that Jane was heading for the same destination as herself. Oh the mortification of it! – for lumpy, fifty year old Alison to find herself in that waiting room with the gorgeous Jane of the perfect body profile. Jane would be coming for treatment to keep her natural shape. Alison was just hoping to alter the ravages of time and overindulgence – and if she was totally honest with herself, it was a pretty forlorn hope at that.

Despite the cheek kissing and the affected greetings when they met, Alison was sure Jane would be inwardly laughing at her. It would be the same as with the two pretty young patients on the second visit – only worse. And Jane was bound to tell her husband.

Alison stood at the kerb edge desperately wondering what to do. Thank God she had been wearing the dark glasses. She was sure Jane hadn't seen her – not yet. Seconds later a plan formed in her mind. She would allow just time enough for Jane to park her car and take the lift, then follow her into the basement. There were indicators above the lift doors in the building, and if Alison was quick enough, and if no one else had used the lift meantime, it should be possible to tell which floor Jane had gone to. If it was Mr Popinov's floor then Alison would find a telephone and cancel her appointment.

Surprised at her own ingenuity, Alison scampered across to the basement ramp, then down into the building. She soon found the empty white Golf because of its colour. It was parked in a bay on the left. Alison looked around feverishly for the lift. It was some distance to the right. Before she reached the door she could read the indicator above it. The light was steady on the figure 3. Mr Popinov's flat was on the fourth floor.

Alison was breathless but satisfied. Whatever reason Jane Larden had for being here, it was now almost certain that it wasn't to see Mr Popinov. It was the end of the afternoon. Jane had driven in less than a minute before. No one else had entered or left the building. There was no one else in the basement. If the lift had gone to the fourth floor it would almost certainly still be there, because if anyone had used it since Jane, it surely wouldn't have been just to go down one floor? It had taken a moment for Alison to work out the last conclusion.

She felt she could stop worrying. Then, for the first time, she wondered what authority if any Jane had for parking down here. It was probably the usual thing – that people like Jane always got away with breaking rules that people like Alison never dared to challenge. The notice at the entrance said RESIDENTS PARKING ONLY – TRESPASSERS REPORTED TO THE POLICE. Jane certainly wasn't a resident. Perhaps she had a resident's permission?

Out of curiosity, Alison walked back over to the white car. It was parked in a bay marked 3/14. That had to mean the bay belonged to flat 14 on the third floor. Thankfully it fitted the hypothesis that Jane was visiting someone on that floor. The next bay had exactly the same marking. So flats were allocated two bays. The second bay was also occupied – by a car larger than Jane's, but enveloped by a lightweight car cover. It was the same kind of cover that Hughie had for his company Mercedes and never used – well, there was never any reason with their big garage at home.

On her way back to the lift, Alison did a small detour looking for the bays marked 4/ 23. That was the floor and number of Mr Popinov's flat. She found the bays. They were both occupied – one by an expensive red Porsche, the other by a dilapidated Mini. She wondered who the smaller car belonged to – Mr Popinov's receptionist, or his wife (if he had a wife), or a favoured patient perhaps? Alison thought the first idea the most likely: Mr Popinov's patients were expensive, like his prices – no doubt a wife would be the same.

While she was on her way up in the lift, Alison came to a decision. When Hughie got home this evening she would tell him about the treatment. Then they could decide together whether she should go on with it – whether it was worth it, worth the price. She was tired of deceiving him. ‘Deceiving' was too strong a word, of course, but she had always hated to do anything or to be anywhere that she couldn't tell him about, and that would diminish her if someone else told him. Nearly running into Jane Larden had been a stern reminder.

By the time Alison rang the bell to Mr Popinov's flat, she was feeling a whole lot easier. Already she couldn't wait to get home ready to tell Hughie what had been happening. It was then that the other thought struck her, the one that prompted her to return to the basement after her treatment – just to make sure of something.

Of course, it was just one of those silly compulsions, probably. But she needed to be certain in her mind that it was just the cover that was similar.

‘Exactly what have you been doing?' asked Molly Treasure as her husband got into the back of the Rolls again beside her.

The car was parked in front of the ponderous main door to the Closter Drug factory. Molly had been waiting in it with Henry Pink, the chauffeur while Treasure and Giles Closter-Bennet had gone inside the deserted building. That had been a quarter of an hour earlier, at just before 8 p.m., which accounted for the impatience in Molly's voice. The two men had promised they would be only a minute or two.

‘We've been testing a theory of Mark's. He was right, as usual,' said the perspiring Closter-Bennet, getting into the front passenger seat.

‘We'll go to that address in Chiswick now please, Henry,' Treasure instructed. ‘You know where it is?'

‘Yes, sir. Miss Gaunt explained.'

‘What theory?' demanded Molly.

‘It's a bit complicated to explain, darling,' said her husband leaning back in the seat.

‘You mean I'll have to listen extra carefully?'

‘Sorry, I meant tortuous. The door into the research laboratories works on a voice lock. There's a recording of Dermot Hackle's voice that we knew worked the lock. Giles got the tape out so we could demonstrate it.'

‘Trouble is, there's another voice on the tape that also sprang the lock. It shouldn't have,' Closter-Bennet put in, turning round, with a bit of a strain, to look at them both. ‘Mark knew it would.'

‘No. Only guessed it might,' Treasure corrected.

‘We couldn't be sure after that that anyone's voice wouldn't do the same thing,' said Closter-Bennet.

‘Yours or Mark's for instance?'

Closter-Bennet shook his head. ‘Mine would because it's in the … the authorised voice bank.'

‘That sounds very grand,' Molly said.

‘Not really.' Closter-Bennet wasn't sure whether she was being serious. ‘All the directors' voices are on it.' He faced front again because twisting his neck around was making him dizzy.

‘But not Mark's voice?'

‘Only the full-time directors,' said Treasure. ‘Anyway, my live voice didn't do the trick. Then we figured that maybe all recorded voices might.'

‘So you had to make a tape?'

‘Yes. Which is why it all took so long.'

‘And a lot of dashing about,' added Closter-Bennet breathily, and still warm from the exertion.

‘What are we going to do in Chiswick? More conjuring tricks?' asked Molly.

‘We're looking up an address Miss Gaunt got for me from directory enquiries,' her husband answered.

‘They don't give addresses.'

‘They do if you're Miss Gaunt,' Treasure said flatly. His secretary had a cousin who was married to a manager in the right part of British Telecom. ‘Giles, you really don't have to come with us, you know. It's out of your way.'

‘I'd like to come. I can easily pick up my car at Heathrow later.'

Molly frowned. It was out of her way too – well, metaphorically if not directionally. She had gone to the airport with Pink on impulse, and in the hope that her husband would take her to dinner on the way back. She hadn't known then that Treasure had telephoned Closter-Bennet from Zürich airport asking him to meet the flight.

‘Who lives at this Chiswick address?'

‘Nobody. Not permanently. But it's a possible link with the SAE,' answered the banker. ‘Miss Gaunt's found out it's a furnished flat. One of six in the same ownership, in a new block. Available for short or medium lets. She got on to the letting agents through the owners of the building.' Miss Gaunt was nothing if not thorough. ‘The telephone number was in Helga Greet's diary under last Sunday's date.'

‘Helga Greet, or Kirsty Welling that was?'

‘Mmm. Incidentally, we called Zürich from Giles's office. The operation was successful, but she's still in a coma.'

‘But at least she's alive?'

‘Yes.'

‘You started to tell us about the basement flat in Zürich.'

‘Nothing more to tell really. I went there. Opened the door with Miss Greet's keys. It was a very ordinary furnished flat. No sign of recent occupation.'

‘Tidy, you mean?'

‘Yes. Beds made. No dirty dishes. No garbage. A lot of junk mail in the letterbox, and a month-old magazine in the living room. Nothing really personal anywhere. No clothes. No papers.'