Wildcard (12 page)

‘I see. Did you know her well?’

‘She was extremely good at her job.’

‘That isn’t quite what I asked.’

‘We had the occasional after-work drink together, a pizza once in a while, that sort of thing, colleagues rather than friends.’

Steven nodded and asked, ‘How would you describe her?’

Hilary Black sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. ‘Pleasant, responsible, reliable, intelligent, discreet …’

‘Lonely?’

‘Lonely? No, I don’t think so. Ann wasn’t lonely. Loneliness suggests a state that’s forced on one. That wasn’t the case with Ann. People liked her. She kept them at a distance through her own choice.’

‘What did you think when you heard that she’d taken her own life?’

‘I was shocked. We all were.’

‘How about surprised?’

‘Yes … that too,’ agreed Hilary but less surely.

‘You hesitated.’

‘Ann had something on her mind, something that had been getting her down for at least a month before she died. She hid it from most people, simply because she was used to hiding most things from people, but working together I could tell that she was worried or depressed about something, though she wouldn’t say what.’

‘You asked her?’

‘Yes. I wanted to help but she wouldn’t let me. That was Ann, I’m afraid. But now I come to think of it, I remember thinking at one point that she had got over it. It was one day during the week before she died because she came in that day and was all smiles again. But it only lasted the one day.’

‘You can’t remember what day that was, can you?’ asked Steven.

‘Give me a moment.’ Hilary opened her desk diary and flicked through the pages before tracing her forefinger slowly down one of them. ‘It would have been a Thursday,’ she said. ‘Thursday the eighteenth of November.’

‘Thank you,’ said Steven. Thursday, 18 November, was the day that had been marked in Ann’s appointments diary as the day she was due to meet V – for the last time, as it turned out.

‘Mean anything?’ asked Hilary.

‘Not on its own.’ Steven smiled. ‘But the pieces are building. Did Ann have a boyfriend?’

‘Not that she ever admitted to.’

‘That’s an odd reply.’

‘All right, no, she didn’t have a boyfriend,’ said Hilary.

‘But she did?’ ventured Steven.

Hilary conceded with a smile. ‘Maybe she did. I had my suspicions. I think he was probably married.’

‘I don’t suppose she ever let slip a name?’

‘I thought she did once but then she covered it up so well that I sort of dismissed it as my imagination.’

‘Go on.’

‘I was telling her about an interview I’d seen on television with Michael Heseltine. John Humphrys was asking him about the Millennium Dome and she said something like, “Wotsisname says that’s a load of rubbish about urban regeneration,” and I said, “Who’s Wotsisname?” She sort of blushed and said, “Oh just someone I was talking to.” I know what you’re going to ask now but I don’t think I can remember the name. It was just a passing moment.’

‘If I were to tell you that his name begins with V?’ said Steven.

‘Yes,’ agreed Hilary, her eyes lighting up. ‘I remember now. It was Victor.’

EIGHT

‘You haven’t said why you want to build up a picture of Ann,’ said Hilary. ‘I take it it’s her illness rather than her suicide that you’re interested in?’

Steven agreed that it was.

‘It’s incredible, the papers are saying it was Ebola.’

‘It’s not that.’

‘But something just as bad?’

Steven nodded. ‘Could be.’

‘But how would someone like Ann get something like that? She wasn’t exactly a jet-setter. I only knew her to go abroad once, and that was a few years ago.’

‘That’s what I have to find out,’ said Steven.

‘And you think that this man, Victor, might have something to do with it?’

‘I have to explore every avenue, as they say,’ said Steven. ‘Tell me, were you aware that Ann went hill-walking?’

Hilary looked blank. ‘No, did she? That’s news to me. She didn’t strike me as the sort.’

Steven felt that he’d just made progress. If the hill-walking had been kept secret, it was probably something that Ann had done with Victor. ‘Do you think I could see where she worked?’ he asked.

‘Of course. I decided not to move in there, so you’re in luck. Her office hasn’t been touched.’

Steven was shown into an office three doors along the corridor. It felt cold and unwelcoming, like a disused cellar.

‘Brrr, the janitor’s turned the heating off in here,’ said Hilary as she clicked on the lights. ‘Maybe I should just leave you to it?’

Steven was left standing alone in the office that had been Ann Danby’s. It was large, square and high-ceilinged, like all the other rooms. It reminded him of a primary school classroom of yesteryear. It had two tall windows that looked out on to a brick wall less than twenty feet away. Steven walked over and looked down at the cobbled lane below, and saw litter blowing about in the breeze and the lights of the early-evening traffic on the main road at the end providing intermittent illumination. He sighed at the thought of working in such a place, sat down at the desk and switched on Ann’s desk lamp. The yellow pool of light was a welcome island in a sea of gloom.

Steven found the same meticulous attention to detail in Ann’s office as he had found in her flat. Each project she had worked on had its own box file on the shelves above her computer, and the first page in each gave details of where on the computer the master files were stored and where back-up files could be found. She had recently been working on the design of a new payroll system for the company, and the amount of detail listed suggested that Hilary Black would have little trouble in carrying on where Ann had left off. A second project had been concerned with providing computer-generated graphics for the illustrations for a book on Italian Renaissance architecture, which was due to be published by the firm in the late spring.

There was very little in the way of personal effects: no letters or cards that were not concerned with work, and the desk diary had been used exclusively for work-related appointments and meetings, with one exception. Ann had entered details of an appointment to have her hair done on Wednesday, 17 November, at 5.30 at a salon called Marie Claire. The date was interesting; it was the day before she had been due to meet Victor.

There were a number of prints on the walls which Steven presumed were Ann’s own: they were mainly of popular Canaletto and Monet paintings but there was a less well known Rory McEwan watercolour of African violets that he paused to admire. The attention to detail was awe-inspiring. He could understand why Ann had liked it. On a bookcase there were a couple of framed photographs featuring Ann herself at company functions. One of them he’d seen at her flat. It was the one where she was wearing a pink suit and shaking hands with a man wearing a chain of office while a number of other men in suits looked on with fixed smiles. In the other she was in a group of people watching a lady with a large hat cutting a ribbon to declare something or other open, although it wasn’t clear what.

‘A very private lady,’ murmured Steven when he had finished. He put out the lights and went along to Hilary Black’s office to return the key.

‘Find anything?’ she asked.

Steven shook his head. ‘Not really. She didn’t exactly put her personal stamp on things. There are a couple of photographs …’

‘Our centenary celebrations last year,’ said Hilary. ‘We put on an exhibition of our published work in the big room on the ground floor. You know the sort of thing, a celebration of all the titles we’d published. Local dignitaries came along and it was opened by the countess of something or other.’

Steven smiled at the irreverence.

‘Hardly anyone came, apart from university types. I guess they’re about the only ones who understood the titles, anyway,’ said Hilary.

‘I don’t see many of your books on the shelves at WH Smith,’ agreed Steven.

Hilary held up a book that had been lying on her desk. ‘
The Weaponry of Ancient Rome
. It’s not exactly the heart-warming story of a boy and his dog, is it?’

Steven smiled and thanked her for her help.

‘Any time.’

‘One more thing. Can you tell me where I’ll find a hairdresser called Marie Claire?’

‘Not your kind of place, I would have thought, but it’s not too far from here. Turn left when you go out the front door then take the second on the right.’

Steven left the building to find cold, wet drizzle falling. It was putting a fuzzy halo round the streetlights and changing the sound of the car tyres as the evening rush hour got under way. He decided to leave the car where it was and find the salon on foot, which he succeeded in doing without much trouble. He welcomed the blast of heat that hit him when he entered, if not the smell of setting lotion and hair lacquer. He brushed the rain from his hair and turned down his jacket collar as he closed the door behind him.

‘I’m afraid we’re closing shortly,’ said the woman at a semicircular reception bar. ‘Would you like to make an appointment?’

Steven stated his business, showed his ID and was introduced to the owner, a busty blonde woman who was fighting a losing battle with the years by hiding behind an excess of make-up. She invited him through to the back. ‘How can I help exactly?’ she asked in a hoarse voice that suggested she smoked a lot.

‘Does the name Ann Danby mean anything to you?’ said Steven.

‘We’ve been talking about nothing else all day!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘There was a story in the papers this morning saying that she was the cause of the outbreak at the hospital. She was in here having her hair done only a couple of weeks ago. I just hope to God
we’re
going to be all right. They’re saying it’s that African thing. My God, I was the one who did her hair.’

‘I’m sure you have nothing to worry about,’ said Steven. ‘Can you remember anything at all about her visit?’

‘What sort of thing do you mean?’

Steven went for broke. ‘She didn’t happen to say why she was having her hair done, did she?’

The woman thought for a moment before replying. ‘She didn’t say much at all as I remember. Very reserved, she was, or anally retentive, depending on how you look at it. I found it difficult to get a word out of her, but I think she did say in the end that she was going out for dinner. Yes, because I automatically asked her if it was somewhere special and she said, yes … the … Magnolia, that was it, the Magnolia.’

Steven said, ‘I’m a stranger in town.’

‘It’s a posh place up near the Bridgewater Concert Hall – costs the earth but the food’s good. I just wish someone would take
me
there.’

Steven saw the none-too-subtle invitation in her eyes. ‘I’m sure they will,’ he said diplomatically. He thanked her for her help, and left. He found the concert hall easily enough, but had to spend some time searching for a parking place.

When he eventually got to the Magnolia it had not yet opened its doors to the public; it had just turned six thirty. The lights inside said that there were people about, so Steven knocked on the door. He had to repeat the exercise twice before the slats of the blinds on the door were parted and a hand pointed to the card listing opening times. Steven showed his ID and pointed to the door lock with an opening gesture.

‘This really is most inconvenient,’ said the man who opened up. ‘We’ve got a full house tonight and we’re very busy. Can’t whatever it is wait?’ He was a stout man with an olive complexion that suggested Mediterranean origins, although he spoke English well enough.

‘Sorry, no. It shouldn’t take long,’ said Steven and stepped inside. The door was locked again behind him and the slats closed. ‘I just need to ask you a few questions. You are?’

‘Anthony Pelota. I’m the owner. Make it quick please.’

‘Did you know a woman called Ann Danby?’

‘Never heard of her.’

‘She had dinner here on the evening of November the eighteenth.’

‘Lots of people have dinner here, but I don’t know them personally,’ snapped Pelota.

Steven described Ann, and Pelota gave a patronising little smile. ‘That would apply to eighty per cent of the women who walk through my door,’ he said.

Steven had to concede that the gravitational pull of a place like the Magnolia on executive women in their thirties and their partners would be considerable. ‘Can I see your bookings for November the eighteenth?’ he asked.

Pelota shook his head. ‘No, you can’t,’ he said. ‘That’s confidential.’

Steven felt irked. ‘Am I missing something? Are you a doctor or a priest?’ he asked.

Pelota’s smile faded. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but we are known for our discretion here at the Magnolia. Our clientele expects no less.’

‘I’m very discreet,’ said Steven, ‘and I have no interest at all in who’s screwing who in Manchester but I would like to see the reservations for November the eighteenth, please.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘You’ll be obstructing me in the course of my duty.’

‘Then what?’

‘Proceedings may be taken against you.’

‘It strikes me that that kind of publicity might do me no harm at all.’ Pelota smiled.

‘Your choice,’ said Steven, keeping a poker face.

Pelota blinked first. He shrugged and fetched the reservation book from the corner of the cocktail bar and flicked through the pages. Steven watched his expression change as he found the page for the 18th. Something akin to alarm flickered across his face and he frowned as if he had just realised something worrying or unpleasant. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t help you.’

Steven sensed that further pressure was not going to work – Pelota had obviously made his mind up – so he simply said, ‘Then you must take the consequences, Mr Pelota.’ He turned to leave but as he got to the door he turned in response to a tearing sound and was in time to see Pelota remove the page from the book.

‘Taking discretion a little far, aren’t you, Mr Pelota?’ he said calmly. ‘Just makes me wonder all the more what you have to hide.’