Quintin Jardine - Alarm Call

That seemed sound to me, so we asked our waiter for two large steaks, medium, broccoli with mine and fries with his, plus a bottle of claret, told him to bring them in fifteen minutes then headed for the lift.

Up on the roof we weren’t quite eyeball to eyeball with Nelson, but the view was pretty impressive nonetheless.

There were plenty of people up there too, but we were able to find a quiet corner. Someone in the crowd spotted me and headed towards us, possibly with autograph in mind, but I’ve developed a warning-off look that works every time. . unless I’m in Los Angeles: autograph-hunting is one of its biggest industries.

‘What’s brought you down here?’ Mark asked straight away. ‘You never said you were coming.’

I told him, then filled him in on what we had found in Prim’s flat. ‘Interesting,’ he said, when I was finished.

‘What do you make of it?’

‘I can’t say, as yet. Does she know if Wallinger had any friends in London?’

‘As it turns out she doesn’t know anything about him, nothing that’s turned out to be the truth, apart from his real name, and the fact that he has a normal sperm count.’

‘Has any mail come for him since he left? Or has anyone been asking after him?’

‘The first, I couldn’t tell you, but she did mention a couple of phone calls, from a bloke looking for him.’

‘Recently?’

‘Within the last fortnight. She told him that Wallinger had gone.’

‘Then I’d guess he must have watched the place, and when Prim left, sent people in.’

‘Could this be the reason why he disappeared so suddenly?’

‘Possibly, or at least it could have made him go earlier than planned.’

‘With the baby?’

‘That’s the puzzler.’

‘Can you find out who these guys are, or who’s behind them? I don’t really fancy the boys from Sun Hill to get a result.’

‘I can try. Want to hear what I’ve come up with so far?’

I nodded. ‘If you’re ready to tell me.’

‘Yes, I’ve got something for you. First of all, our assumption was right: Paul Wallinger is his real name. He’s thirty-eight years old, and he was born in St Paul. . maybe that’s where the Christian name came from. . Minnesota, to John and Martha Wallinger, the oldest of their three children. Pop was a line manager with a firm of mechanical engineers in the city, till he snuffed it five years ago. They seem to have been a respectable middle-class family. Originally, Mr Wallinger was career military. He fought with the Rangers in Vietnam, was decorated several times, and was eventually invalided out with a chest wound that ultimately contributed to his death. Mom worked for a firm of asset managers in Minneapolis, across the river, and had done for over twenty years. While John was in Vietnam, she was a campaign worker for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, when he ran for President for the Democrats against Nixon in 1968. I believe she’s still alive, but she’ll be sixty-three now, and may be retired.’

‘How do you know so much about them?’

‘I read John’s obituary in the Minneapolis Star Tribune . I did a search for Mom’s name in the death listings, but I couldn’t find it. There are half a dozen Wallingers listed in the twin cities’ telephone directories. Three of them have the first initial M; of those two are in St Paul and one’s in Minneapolis. I looked for J also, in case she didn’t change the listing after her husband died. There’s one, but it’s in Minneapolis, not St Paul.’

He handed me a sheet of paper; I glanced at it and saw all six Wallingers, with phone numbers and addresses. There was also a business listing, a firm called HHH Asset, in Marquette Avenue. ‘That’s the company Mother worked for; maybe she still does.’

‘Easily checked,’ I said. ‘What did the obituary say about Paul?’

‘Not much, but there were other references to him on the website; he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1988 with a BA. .’

‘Same year as I did from Edinburgh,’ I remarked. ‘What was his degree?’

‘Theatre Arts, with distinction in vocal production and design and technical. He did an elective in play-writing.’

‘Bloody hell, he’s a qualified actor.’

‘I suppose you could call him that, but when he left university he joined a local theatre as a stage manager rather than a performer. He did become a US Equity and a Screen Actors’ Guild member, though, under the professional name of Paul Patrick Walls. Run a trace on that and you’ll find him moving around the US through the nineties from theatre company to theatre company as a performer and occasionally as writer-director. He has some film credits too, some bit parts, some as a member of the screen-writing team but none of them in any movies that made serious money, apart from one, a Miles Grayson production called Kidnapped .’

‘Son-of-a-bitch! Dawn was in that movie. It’s where she and Miles met up.’

‘I know; I did logistics and security for him on that job.’

‘And after that?’

‘After that, little or nothing. You might remember that when Miles and Dawn got involved he took some liberties with the storyline and had the script altered to make her role bigger. That led to some changes elsewhere. Wallinger’s part was a minor one, and in the shake-up, most of his scenes wound up on the cutting-room floor. Miles never cast him again. He was never unemployed, though; according to the CV I found, he carried on doing theatre work, and had a few television parts. It looks as if his career was going steadily downhill, though, until about three years ago, when it seems to have come to a full stop.’

‘The time-frame fits. Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get back downstairs; those steaks must be on the way by now.’ I headed for the lift.

‘What else do you want me to do?’ Mark asked.

‘See if you can find out who’s behind Prim’s visitors; apart from that, nothing. You’ve done a great job as it is. Send me a bill as soon as you’ve worked out your time and expenses.’

‘I could find you someone in the States to follow up for you.’

‘No. I don’t want to scare the guy. Who knows how he might behave if he was panicked?’

‘So he gets away with it?’

‘Shit, no. I’ve got plans.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, for a start, I’m going to pay a call on Granny Wallinger.’

As I had guessed, the forensics people didn’t find a thing. When I got back to the flat they printed me with an electronic reader, but only to confirm that the second prints on the cabinet and the door handles were mine.

They took the two wine glasses, muttering something about DNA comparisons, but I knew that was just a bit of flash nonsense to impress the punters.

In my absence, a senior CID officer had turned up, a woman called DCI Grace. Lacy seemed to have been sent back to his kennel, for she and Garrett took formal statements from us, and promised to get in touch with Prim, should their investigation lead anywhere. . not that she held out any hope that it would. She was so sympathetic that for a second I thought that maybe we should make the fraud complaint to her, until I remembered what Harvey had said about the Met’s scale of priorities, and held my tongue.

I hadn’t planned to tell Primavera at that point about my meeting with Kravitz, and what it had turned up, but I should have known better. She let me sit in silence all the way back to Heathrow, through a coffee in the Executive Lounge, and through the buffet service on the plane. . I gave her my rubber sandwich, since she’d gone without lunch. . before she began the interrogation.

‘So?’ she said, as the last crumb was cleared.