Simon Brett - So Much Blood

Charles’ approach had brought some light into her eyes. Anything was more interesting than the pile of magazines, thrillers and ragged-edged French novels.

‘I’m Charles Paris.’

‘Oh. You’ve taken over my lunch time show.’

‘Yes. It’s an ill wind.’

She laughed wryly. ‘How’s it going?’

‘O.K.’

‘It’s about Thomas Hood, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ He did not want to elaborate, though the girl’s intelligent eyes indicated sensible opinions on the subject. ‘I’m really here for a purpose.’

‘Of course.’ She was disappointed, but philosophical. ‘Though I can’t think what purpose of yours could involve me.’

‘No. Maybe it doesn’t involve you.’ He tried to think of a way to phrase his questions. ‘I… there’s… I don’t know, your group

… D.U.D.S., there’s something strange going on there.’

‘It must seem strange to an outsider coming in.’

‘No, I expect that, as a middle-aged man with a bunch of whizz-kids. I mean strange in… well, there’s Willy Mariello’s death.’

A shutter of caution flicked across her eyes. ‘Yes. That was terrible.’

‘And, of course, your accident.’

‘Yes.’ She seemed anxious to move the dialogue into a more flippant direction. ‘Somebody must have whistled in the dressing-room or quoted Macbeth or had real flowers onstage or broken another of the show business taboos.’

Charles laughed. He was also relieved at the postponement of his questions. ‘You know it all. Do you want to go into the theatre?’

‘Yes, I did. But… I don’t know how good I am as an actress. Oh, I’d done bits all right, but the thing I’m really good at is dancing: She looked down the bed at the grotesque suspended limb.

‘It’ll heal all right.’

She patently did not believe his diagnosis, though she said ‘Oh yes’ as if there were no question.

Charles retreated to safer ground. ‘Anyway, I’m sure you must be a good actress. I mean, you were playing Mary and doing the revue and..’

‘I got the parts, yes. I don’t know how I’d have done them, whether I’d have got good press or…’

‘Well…’ He could not think of anything suitable. ‘Anna got a very good notice for the revue.’ It was just a statement, without malice or jealousy.

‘Yes, I gather she did.’ Charles instinctively and defensively made it sound as if he hardly knew who was being referred to.

‘And I think she’ll be better than I would have been in Mary.’

‘Who knows.’ He found himself blushing. ‘As I said, it’s an ill wind.’

‘Yes.’

There was a slight pause. A bell sounded, muffled, from an adjacent ward and he blurted out his question. ‘Lesley, did Willy Mariello push you down those steps?’

She looked at him in amazement and opened her mouth to reply. But she swallowed the instinctive answer and said in a controlled voice, ‘No. No. Why should he?’

It was too controlled. Charles was not convinced. ‘Are you sure he didn’t? I heard a rumour to the contrary.’

‘People shouldn’t spread rumours,’ she said sharply. There was confusion in her face. ‘Listen, Willy’s dead. My leg’s broken, there’s nothing can be done about that. Does it matter?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Well, I don’t know. To be quite honest I don’t.’ She was floundering, an essentially nice girl unable to come to terms with something unpalatable. ‘I was confused when it happened and I suppose I turned on the nearest person. I… I don’t know. I mean, would Willy do something like that? What had he possibly got to gain from doing it?’

Charles restricted himself to answering the first question. ‘Willy was capable of that sort of thing; he was a lout.’

She looked shocked at this speaking ill of the dead. A bell was rung loudly in the corridor outside the ward. There was a rustle of parcels and final messages from the other visitors. Lesley looked at Charles pleadingly. ‘If he did it, I’m sure it was only high spirits, or horseplay or…’

‘You mean he did do it?’

‘I don’t know. I…’

‘Did he push you?’

‘Yes, he did.’

Charles left her with assurances that he would try to visit again. And he meant to. Poor kid, stuck in hospital in a strange city where all her friends were too busy to remember her.

The brown eyes were troubled when he left. And it was not just loneliness. She had managed to convince herself since the accident that it really had been a mistake, an unfortunate overflow of youthful exuberance. Now she had been forced to destroy that illusion and her kind nature was finding it difficult to believe that anyone could be so evil.

Charles had no difficulty in believing it. To him the human capacity for evil suddenly seemed infinite.

Two things were clear. One, a confrontation with Anna was now unavoidable. And two, he could not face that confrontation himself. He still treasured a hope that everything would be all right, that there was an innocent explanation for the disturbing chain of events that his logic was joining up. And, if his suspicions proved unfounded, he did not want to let them blight his budding relationship with the girl. There was too much at risk. She was the first woman to touch his emotions for years.

He considered the possibilities of disguise, but rejected them. As an actor, he was capable of convincing physical transformations, and he had used disguise before to gain information. But then he had not been trying to hide his identity from people he knew; here he would be trying to fool a girl he had been sleeping with. No disguise would work at close quarters under those circumstances. Even the varied wardrobe of Edinburgh’s many old clothes shops and the wizardry of film make-up with foam rubber padding, latex masks and coloured contact lenses would not stand close scrutiny.

He regretted that he could not use the excitement of dressing up to take his mind off the depressing tracks it was moving along. And, like most actors, he found it easier to perform difficult tasks in character than as himself. He visualised appearing to Anna in a total disguise, confirming her innocence by a few well-placed questions, then unmasking and making a joke of it.

But it was just a fantasy. He was being influenced by Martin Warburton and the strong attraction of channelling unpleasant parts of himself into another identity. The fact remained that dressing up would not work.

He contemplated interrogation by telephone. A disembodied voice could be convincingly disguised. But that introduced the problem of an identity. Who would Anna be likely to give information to in a telephone conversation? There were only two answers-someone she knew or a policeman. The first was out and Charles did not feel inclined to risk the second. On a previous occasion he had had it pointed out to him that impersonation of a policeman is a serious offence. And if Anna did have something criminal to hide, the last person she would tell about it was an investigating officer of the law. What was needed was an interrogator who had some other justifiable reason for meeting her and who could introduce relevant questions into the conversation with some pretence at casual enquiry.

Which meant an accomplice. It was Wednesday. Gerald Venables should be back from his weekend in Cannes. Charles rang his Grosvenor Street office from a call-box in the Royal Mile.

Gerald was back. ‘How’s the sleuth-work going, Charles?’

‘I don’t know really. I might be on to something.’