Miranda Emmerson - Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars

Anna made an apologetic face but Leonard was now in full flow.

‘It’s like the bloody countryside. Benji’s English, of course. Went to the right school. Carries the right blood. And we’re all meant to love the countryside. Wellingtons, dogs; all that bollocks. Of course we never get invited anywhere. Too queer for country houses. Too faggoty for gaudies or hunts. We have to do it ourselves. Discreetly. He makes me go on driving holidays to Wiltshire and Somerset. And I sit there, with my sunglasses on, blocking out the scenery, reading Barthes just to piss him off. “Look at that view!” he cries. But no, I will not look at the bloody view. It’s all the same anyway. Vulgar, garish greenery. Ancient oaks. God, I hate it. It’s so small. So unimportant. So fucking parochial. I hate it and it hates me back.’

Anna looked at him. There was a manic grief in his expression, alongside the annoyance and humour. She realised suddenly that she didn’t know Leonard very well at all. At work he was professional and friendly and precise but there was so much messiness to this other Leonard, this angry Leonard who lived in a half-bare flat with his city-suited lover and his odd neuroses. Anna knew the kind thing would be to hug him; to tell him to be any way he wanted. But even that little outpouring of intimacy seemed too great a leap. For a little outpouring of intimacy could easily become something more, something familiar, something desired, essential, habitual.

‘I’ve made you uncomfortable, haven’t I?’ Leonard said.

‘No. No!’ Anna assured him.

‘Shall we be English again?’ Leonard asked with a small, watery smile.

And Anna smiled back. ‘Let’s.’

Wednesday, 10 November

The wind blew fiercely down Regent Street and the secretaries and shop girls in their black and white winter coats squealed and skittered, handbags swinging wildly, hands reaching out and grabbing for a friendly arm. Hayes watched them all bowling towards the tube stations as the lights in the department stores went dark. Then he crossed the street and headed into Soho. It was half past five and he’d soon be off shift but he’d been warned that the clubs didn’t open until early evening. He wanted to have an informal chat with Charlie Brown or anyone else he could find before the evening rush started.

He was frustrated by the lack of urgency in the office. Inspector Knight seemed convinced that Iolanthe had left of her own accord. He had gone to speak to his boss that morning, to ask for backing in investigating the multiple bank accounts, but Knight had dismissed him without thought.

‘Dead end, Hayes. Not worth your time. She’ll be off her head or knocked up. That’s why women run. She was seen at Roaring Twenties, which says to me she didn’t care much what happened to her. Older woman. Single. Lonely. Probably sleeping around. She’ll have been buying dope or worse and getting herself felt up by the lower classes. We’ll get a call, sometime, you mark my words … She’ll be found dead. Overdose. Heroin. Suicide. In the stained sheets of some coloured’s bed.’

‘But how can we be certain, sir, that it wasn’t about money? She was earning well. It could be robbery or extortion or kidnap.’

‘Trust me, she’s just another low-rent Monroe. Childless. Looks going. Nothing to live for. Waste of our bloody time.’

Two hours later, as Brennan pored over the meagre round of witness statements for the fifteenth time, he was called to the phone.

‘Detective Sergeant Hayes? It’s Anna Treadway. You interviewed me yesterday.’

‘I remember it well, Miss Treadway. How can I help?’

‘Well, I was talking with someone last night and it sparked in me a realisation … silly, really … and you probably know this. But Yolanda and Iolanthe are the same name.’

‘Oh …’ And then there was silence on DS Hayes’ end of the line.

‘I know … I felt very silly when I realised. And since you hadn’t said anything about this in interview …’

‘No. Of course. From violet. And flower. I even did Greek at school.’

‘And there’s something else. The last day, the Saturday, she got a phone message from an American man by the name of Cassidy. Second name I’m guessing.’

‘What was the message?’

‘Well, nothing really. Just to say he’d called. And the boy on the stage door said that it wasn’t the first time he’d rung the theatre.’

‘Do you know who Cassidy is?’

‘No idea. Sorry. Someone from back home, I guess. If I can be of any more help, Sergeant Hayes, please let me know.’

‘Of course, Miss Treadway. Thank you for calling.’

And now Hayes stood on Carnaby Street in a light drizzle and watched a young coloured man unloading equipment in front of the door of number 50. An older man in a rumpled suit was scooping up wires and helping him through the doors. Brennan drew himself up to his full height of Barnabyness and approached the suited man.

‘Good evening, I was wondering if you were Charlie Brown?’

The suited man gazed quizzically at Brennan. He nodded, a little noncommittally. ‘I’m Charlie.’

Brennan held out his hand. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Barnaby Hayes. I’m with the Metropolitan Police and I’m working on a missing persons case. I’m looking for Iolanthe Green. Do you know who that is?’

Charlie nodded. ‘Actress. She came in here a few times.’

‘Was she with anyone?’

‘I don’t think so. I think she came on her own. Couldn’t swear to it though.’

‘Did she leave alone too?’

‘Couldn’t say. I’m watching them coming in more than going out. They pass me by, I say goodnight, that’s all.’

‘Was there any gossip about her, do you know? Was she seeing anyone? Was she drinking a lot? Was she behaving wildly, perhaps?’

‘So many people, Sergeant. They come, they dance. We get musicians and actors in here sometimes. Not such a strange thing. Mostly it’s just very chilled. You know, the whole place is just quite chilled. We don’t go in for violence.’ Charlie smiled broadly and Brennan found himself smiling back though he didn’t know quite why. He had a momentary impulse to ask Brown about John Christie but Barnaby stamped on that quite firmly.

‘Thank you, Mr Brown,’ Hayes said.

‘My pleasure.’ Charlie nodded him away. Hayes walked slowly through the rain, back towards Regent Street, then he turned north towards Oxford Circus and started to walk as swiftly as he could into the wind. All along Oxford Street commuters were waiting for their buses and women in expensive coats with fur collars were hailing cabs. Hayes wondered at this great sea of the oblivious. He wondered at so many people tripping gaily through life when so much in the world was wrong. And then he wondered, as he often did, which of them was out of step. Was he the freak? Choosing to know, to actively seek out the unpleasant and the animal and the cruel. He stopped to pull on gloves and button his coat by the window of John Lewis. His reflection was half visible, laid over the headless form of a man in an argyle golfing jumper. He tidied his hair and watched in the reflection how men in mackintoshes queued to get on their bus. How foolish of him to assume that they were all happy. Of course they felt pain. Each one of them might well be spilling over with grief or self-loathing. But, still, their misery was all their own. The misery he dealt with was other people’s; which can often seem more terrible than the kind you know.

The tall figure of Barnaby Hayes, with its neat, short hair and clean-shaven face gazed back at him. He liked Barnaby more than he liked Brennan. Brennan was good but Barnaby was admirable. Brennan was idealistic but Barnaby was effective. Barnaby looked like the men in the adverts for cigarettes; he was an English gentleman: beautiful, polished, refined.