Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

“But I explained.”

“Yes.” He nodded patiently. “You were visiting an old school friend, a Mrs Martin, on her honeymoon, in your hired mink, of course-”

“Who says it’s hired?” I asked indignantly.

“Lois, you rent a ground-floor flat on Albert Street, which is not a prime location, where you live with your daughter and no husband, and you also pay the rent on these offices, which are in a prime location but which are far too large for you, in order to sustain the fiction that this is a much bigger business than it is. Does a woman in that position really splash out on furs?”

“I wanted to impress my friend.” It sounded weak, even to me.

“I’m sure bursting in unannounced with a blank camera would have been very impressive indeed. Had Mrs Martin ever heard of you. Had you not asked the housekeeper to open room two-two-three with her master key. Had-”

“All right, that was a lie.” What else could I do, but admit it? “But I’m going to claim client confidentiality here, Sullivan, and you’ll just have to take my word that it has nothing to do with Stanley Hall’s murder.”

That grunt sounded unconvinced, but he didn’t follow up.

“As for the film,” I said, “There were a dozen witnesses who can swear I never touched that camera, including the Belle Vue’s director, his security manager, and that stuffy little desk clerk.”

“I know.” There it was again. That wolf-from-Little-Red-Riding-Hood smile. “Which is why I’m asking you directly.”

“Then trust me.” I’m also very good at lying directly. “There was no film in the camera and no photograph of Mr Hall sprawled with his neck at right angles on that bed.”

“Right angles, eh.” He looked at his watch. Looked at the clock on my wall. Checked with the church clock over the street. They all read eight minutes to one. “Get your coat, Lois.”

My heart sank. This meant police stations, formal questioning, warrants to search my offices and home and, even as he held the door open for me, I was frantically working on ways to weasel out of the lie.

“I don’t know why you women wear high heels, if walking in them makes you limp,” he said, in the street.

“It’s not the shoes. I dropped a chicken on my foot.”

“Hm,” he said, and I’m not sure at what point he linked my arm through his, but the support certainly made walking easier. “Right, then. Here we go.”

I thought he meant the car, although I wouldn’t normally have associated beige sports models with police cars. Instead, he meant the restaurant, decked out in red, white and green stripes.

“Surprised?”

“You could say that.” Italian, too. “You struck me as the sort who only eats at the police canteen.”

“You struck me as the sort who doesn’t eat at all,” he said, looking me up and down as if I were a racehorse, and I must admit I do lose track of time when I’m working, but was I honestly that bony? I looked at my wrists and thought, damn.

“How did you get into the PI business?” he asked, over antipasti of sardines and tomatoes.

It seemed an innocuous enough question, so I explained how I’d been temping as a shorthand typist in a solicitor’s (no one offers unmarried mothers permanent employment), and how, during the course of my assignment, I was privy to various telephone conversations between the partners and firms of private eyes. It didn’t need Einstein to calculate the difference between shorthand typing and the amount of money that could be made from divorce. Strangely, it took me right through the saltimbocca and halfway into my tiramisu to explain all this, though I omitted to mention that this was the first time I’d ever told anyone my history.

“You never wanted to get married?”

“To the father of my child? Of course I did!” What kind of strumpet did he take me for? “Unfortunately, he never had any intention of leaving his wife and at the first sniff of the word pregnancy, he dropped me like a brick.”

No offer of child support. In fact, no support of any kind. And he knew I was far too sweet to go blabbing to his wife.

“Dammit, Sullivan, he even denied the baby was his!”

“I, er, meant afterwards. The last few years.”

Oh. “Too busy,” I said, and then, in another burst of unaccustomed frankness (I blame the Chianti), I admitted that no one had ever asked me. “Men aren’t exactly tripping over themselves to put a ring on an unmarried mother’s finger.”

Instead they think of us as easy, which is why I took up judo and why I make Susan go to classes every Tuesday.

“What about you?” I asked, calming down over the coffee. “Are you married?”

“Nope.” He shrugged. “Engaged once, but she didn’t like the hours I kept and married a nine-to-five accountant. Then again.” He grinned. “It might have been because I’m so damned ugly.”

Not handsome, that’s for sure. Craggy/rugged/lived-in, call it what you will, that face was never going to end up on an advertising poster. But ugly…?

“We’d better go,” he said. “The restaurant is closing.”

Was it? I hadn’t realized we’d been sitting there so long, and though I can’t remember how we ended up going from trattoria to cinema, I have vague recollections of someone saying something about Cary Grant, which led to the fact that North by Northwest was playing at the Odeon, which in turn led to there being just enough time to catch the matinee before I met my daughter after tap class.

I knew full well what Sullivan was playing at. Softening me up, winning me over, drawing me into his confidence. It wouldn’t work, I didn’t care. It was the first time I’d been to the pictures in a decade. I’d forgotten what popcorn tasted like. It tasted bloody good.

October turned to November. Sunshine turned to rain. The nights began to draw in really fast. From time to time, like twice a week, Sullivan would drop by my office to discuss the Belle Vue murder – or at least vent his frustration at the lack of leads and progress – and invariably we’d end up having lunch or taking in a film. Ben-Hur. Rio Bravo. Some Like It Hot with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.

“I just wish I could find a motive,” he would say, spiking his fingers through that dark, unruly mop. “The door was locked, there was no key on the inside, and commercial reps in motor oil can’t break their own necks, that’s for sure.”

“Not and lock the door afterwards,” I’d agree, and trust me, I did feel sympathy. Needless to say, had I believed that holding back that photograph prevented him from bringing the perpetrator to justice, I’d have mailed it to him – anonymously, of course. Okay, he’d know it was me (even though I’d have denied it with my dying breath), but there was still the possibility, however remote, that someone else had snapped the dead man in that hotel bedroom. But I’d studied that picture over and over. It was just a dead man in a hotel bedroom, end of story.

“He’d stayed at the Belle Vue several times, that’s the silly part.”

The first time Sullivan kissed me was during the chariot race in Ben-Hur, and if anyone ever tells you that’s exciting, believe you me, it was nothing compared to the thrill of that kiss. I decided there and then that I liked being softened up, won over, drawn into a policeman’s confidence. Torture me all you like, Officer, I still won’t tell.

“I guess he made enemies in Brighton -”

“Motor oil is a dangerous business,” I grinned.

“But legitimate,” he said. “I checked, and he had genuine appointments in Brighton on every occasion that he stayed at the Belle Vue, even though the company he worked for didn’t spring for their uncompromising rates.”