Vivien Armstrong - The Honey Trap

‘Fire away.’ Laurence Erskine’s jocularity was replaced by a steely professionalism, mentally filing Simon’s elusive, sliding glance.

Nervously running his fingers through slightly overlong hair, he answered, ‘No time now, Laurence. How about a drink at my hotel this evening.’

‘Have to be early. We convene at seven-thirty. How does six o’clock in the Orange Bar suit you?’

‘Perfect.’

They parted on an uncomfortable footing, drawing away like two acquaintances passing on moving escalators.

Erskine watched Simon disappear through the barrier, then settled back to wait for Chuck Gombrich. It was uncharacteristic to have sought out an old chum but the Limboland of a departure lounge seemed to invite unlikely behaviour. Perhaps some underlying apprehension about setting out on any journey? The police inspector in him laughed at the notion, deliberately erasing the psychological ramble his mind enticed him to follow.

Erskine withdrew some notes from his briefcase in preparation for the international cooperation which at last seemed to be bearing fruit.

In Tite Street the taxi-meter ticked expensively outside Aran Hunter’s apartment building, the two passengers anxiously contemplating the complications of their vanishing Girl Friday.

‘Here she is!’ Frederick squeaked with relief as the Volvo drew alongside.

She wound down the window.

‘Sorry, folks. Got held up in the square. Filming in one of the houses on the east side, floodlighting, road closed, the lot.’

‘Some Agatha Christie TV job,’ the taxi-driver confirmed. ‘Been at it all week. As if the effing traffic ain’t bad enough as it is.’

Frederick paid the taxi and the driver helped Aran back into the folding wheelchair. Rowan slid the Volvo into the kerbside and the three conferred in front of the wide shallow steps which led to the foyer. Aran took command.

‘Ask the porter to come out, will you?’

Rowan glanced through the glass doors.

‘Hunter, wasn’t it? Flat twenty-two?’

He nodded, giving her a little push.

Frederick gripped the wheelchair and watched the girl run through the entrance, exhausted already by the attenuated departure. He wanted to be home. Also, he could do with another pee …

The porter emerged, greeting Aran with deferential ethusiasm, warily eyeing the Scottish kilt from which the plastered leg protruded like an Awful Warning.

‘Been in a pile-up, Mr Hunter?’

Aran shrugged irritably.

‘I’m going to the country for a few days, Ted.’ He opened his wallet. Notes were discreetly handed over. ‘You haven’t seen me, have you?’ Aran transfixed the doorkeeper with 500 volts of steely eyeball. ‘That young lady—’ he indicated Rowan sheltering from the rain inside the vestibule—‘is going to pack a bag for me. No one else,’ he emphasized, ‘is to enter my flat.’

‘Not even Dolly to clean?’

‘Not even Dolly to clean.’

‘Suppose I get a message for you?’ This Hunter bloke was starting to get up his nose, Ted decided.

‘I shall be staying with Mr Flowers here.’ He turned to Frederick and, taking a business card from his wallet, asked him to add the Mayerton phone number. The old man scribbled on the back, glancing into the brightly-lit foyer where Rowan was clearly visible flicking through the porter’s copy of the Sun .

Ted pocketed the card, tapping the side of his nose in an oddly mysterious gesture which only seemed to increase Aran’s irritation. As the porter turned to go, he grabbed his sleeve. ‘She’s also taking my van from the garage. While we’re waiting, would you push this bloody contraption round to the parking exit at the back to save her doing the full circuit on the one-way system to pick us up?’

‘Well, sir,’ the porter demurred, ‘as you well know, I’m not permitted to leave the front desk.’

‘Absolute codswallop!’ Aran exploded. ‘Five minutes at the outside. You don’t do an eight-hour shift without a leak, surely?’

Frederick looked on, visibly agonized at the very idea.

‘And while we’re on the subject,’ Aran grunted as Ted painfully jerked the wheelchair up the steps, ‘this gentleman would like to avail himself of the facilities.’

The porter pushed Aran through the wrought-iron gate which linked the foyer with the parking area at the rear of the building and carefully relocked it before ushering Frederick before him to join Rowan at the reception desk. Rowan disappeared to the fourth floor while Frederick gratefully gained the sanctuary of the staff cloakroom.

Rowan let herself into the flat, closing the door quietly. The climb had left her slightly breathless and she leaned against the door contemplating Aran Hunter’s home ground. The corridor had been dark but once inside the flat its clarity was almost blinding.

All the walls were white, the entire flat seemingly on view at a glance. The minute hall area was half partitioned with a filigree metal trellis supporting some sort of ivy through which a matt black dining table could be glimpsed in the short leg of an enormous L-shaped living-room.

A spiral staircase led to a wide gallery, presumably bedroom and bathroom. Moving forward, Rowan discovered two mirrored doors revealed a small cloakroom and study-cum-workroom.

A short passage led to a kitchenette, ranged with chrome and black fitments and a window overlooking the street. Parting the slats of the venetian blind, Rowan looked down on to Simon’s Volvo parked beside the wide empty pavement. No sign of Aran or Frederick. The rain had stopped.

She explored further, her espadrilles silent on the parquet floor, a prevailing sensation of being watched totally at odds with the clearly unoccupied apartment illuminated by an enormous studio window from floor to ceiling which bathed both the living area and the galleried sleeping quarters in a cold north light.

‘Stunning,’ she breathed, her normal ebullience strangely muted by the Immaculate Conception of Aran Hunter’s den. She padded round, lifting lids, checking drawers, opening cupboards. Utterly fascinated.

The scream of a patrol car siren in the street jerked her from this awed contemplation and she hustled, confident that the man whose home resembled a filing cabinet had described the exact disposition of his socks and pants.

Swiftly filling a suitcase, she added her own little extras: some after-shave, a sketch pad, Valentino sunglasses, a framed photograph of a girl in a strapless ballgown. Rowan snarled at the simpering face held up to the camera lens and hoped his plastered leg was sexually inordinately inconvenient.

Placing the suitcase near the door, she selected another key and opened the rolltop desk, the only item in the entire flat which had seen better days. Its battered, scarred surface was reassuring, the lock flimsy and really not worthy of a key at all. Presumably, confident of the mortice locks, entryphones, unopenable windows and the televisual surveillance of Ted the doorman, the ultimate pushover of an antique desk was a sop to fatalism.

A small rectangular parcel propped against the pigeonholes was taped and secured as Aran had described. Rowan guessed she had already outstayed her welcome and the shrill summons of the entryphone came as no shock. Leaving the desk gaping, she lifted the wall-mounted receiver. ‘Yes?’

‘This is Ted, miss. Mr Hunter asked me to tell you he’s waiting.’

An edited version Rowan guessed, cheerfully assuring the porter she was on her way. She placed the brown paper parcel with the suitcase, relocked the desk and had a final look round.

Unable to resist the kitchen in any house, Rowan hurried through to see what sort of catering arrangements an art restorer felt necessary. Stuffed quails? Caviare? Moules au beurre d’escargot ?