‘Yeah, OK, Marty was on a job for us,’ said Paolo eventually. ‘A straight escort job, you understand. We’re a respectable agency.’
‘Spare me the commercial,’ snapped the women inspector whom Paolo, rendered unusually observant by a combination of native cunning, grim realism and long experience, thought might be inclined to sometimes over-compensate for her extremely feminine appearance.
‘I want to know exactly where Marty was supposed to be going,’ she continued relentlessly. ‘I want the time of everything. I want every detail. I need to know whether he reached his destination before he was killed and who he was going to meet.’
So Paolo told her. Everything he knew. He didn’t have any choice.
‘Marty was booked for Mrs Pattinson...’ he began.
‘Yes, I am absolutely sure,’ said the manager of the Crescent Hotel an hour or so later. ‘Mrs Pattinson didn’t check in here yesterday. It would be on the records and anyway Janet, the receptionist, knew her well by sight.’
Rose did not like the man. Henry Bannerman was plump with greasy skin, his bald head shining almost unnaturally, and exuded a smug self-confidence which his appearance certainly did nothing to merit. His face was fleshy and his somewhat beady eyes blinked incessantly within deeply folded layers of skin.
Rose thought she wouldn’t trust him as far as you could roll his unpleasantly rotund form downhill. Nonetheless, she was fairly sure that he was telling the truth.
And it was somehow no surprise also to learn from Henry Bannerman how thoroughly Mrs Pattinson had protected her anonymity.
‘Didn’t you think it was strange in this day and age that this Mrs Pattinson always paid in cash?’ Rose asked the hotel manager, with only a slight edge to her voice.
Bannerman shrugged. ‘We do still take real money here,’ he said.
His voice had a patronising whine to it. Rose made a mental note to pay more attention to the supercilious bastard at a later date. However, Janet the receptionist indeed confirmed the Chief Inspector’s belief that the man had not been lying to her — not so far, at any rate.
‘Oh no, I haven’t seen Mrs Pattinson at the motel for more than two weeks now,’ Janet sleepily assured the two detective constables, sent around at once by Rose, who unceremoniously raised her from her bed just before 4.00 a.m.
The girl — her plump cheeks which coloured so easily glowing increasingly redder as she became more awake and more aware of what was happening — also confirmed that Mrs Pattinson paid cash in advance. Always.
It was about an hour later, at around 5.00 a.m., that Rose decided she could continue no longer without sleep. She had already appointed an office manager she was sure she could work well with, a woman inspector, Phyllis Jordan — whom she had known for many years and considered to be a first-rate organizer. Fortuitously Phyllis had come on night duty just as the murder investigation had been swinging into operation, and, yes, she had assured Rose, she would stay at her post until the Chief Inspector returned to the station as soon as possible after grabbing a few hours sleep.
A police driver took Rose home to the spacious bungalow, 1970s’ vintage, which had been home for her and Simon for almost five years now. She wasn’t quite sure how she had ended up in a bungalow. She hated bungalows. But this one, on the outskirts of Bristol, did have spectacular views to the southwest out over the Mendip hills.
Simon seemed to be sound asleep, but had somehow contrived to be sprawled across almost the entire breadth of the double bed. That was going to make it very difficult to creep into bed without waking him. And she didn’t want to do that unless she had to. It had been planned that the party last night would be very special indeed. Toni, the manager of San Carlo, had produced a customised menu for the occasion and festivities had been expected to continue into the early hours.
Rose had left Simon surrounded by his closest friends, but she knew that the whole thing would have ceased to be special at all for him once she had gone. Although so little had been said she was well aware of how upset he must have been, and how angry. And she didn’t want to have to deal with all that now. She was too tired.
She undressed quietly without putting on the bedroom light, draping the prized orange suit carefully over a chair, and then tried to find a corner of the bed into which she could slot herself without disturbing him. It was a lost cause. As she gently attempted to move one of his arms, just a few inches, he woke up with a start, peering at her through the half-darkness. The curtains were open and the street-lamp a few yards down the road outside gave the room a certain pale illumination.
Simon’s silky brown hair had fallen across his eyes. He brushed it away in one of those gestures that had been part of his attraction for her when they had met nine years earlier. Simon had just left college after deciding relatively late in life that he wanted a career change. He had been a school teacher. Now he was a social worker. And he was dedicated. She liked that in him. Although she was pretty sure he didn’t much like her dedication to her chosen career. In fact she suspected that he would prefer her to be almost anything other than a police officer — mercifully the only thing he had in common with her mother with whom Rose had a distinctly strained relationship — although he had yet to tell her so. Indeed, often she thought he did not want her to be dedicated to any career. Simon badly wanted children, had done for some time. He was seven years older than her, he reminded her frequently, and he didn’t want his kids to have the oldest father in town. Rose was still not ready, and sometimes wondered if she ever would be, although she did not admit that to her husband.
Simon had known, of course, both what her job was and her attitude to it, from the start. She had been a keen and newly promoted sergeant at the beginning of their love affair. But nothing would have made any difference then. When Rose met Simon the world had, for a time, stopped revolving for both of them.
They had fallen in love swiftly, deeply and irrevocably, after bumping into each other — literally — on a train from the West Country to London. As Rose, somewhat precariously clutching a plastic beaker of coffee, had been manoeuvring her way back from the buffet car to her seat at the rear of the train, Simon had been manoeuvring his way towards it. And just as they were attempting to squeeze past each other in the middle of a carriage the train had lurched dramatically. Both were sideways on in the passageway between the rows of seats, trying to give each other as much room as possible, and not, at that point, looking at each other at all. The sudden movement of the train propelled Rose forwards, pushing Simon backwards on to the table behind him, their two alarmed faces suddenly pressed close together. Then Simon had smiled — he still had such a wonderful gentle smile — and Rose had melted. It had been difficult for her to find her feet again because her legs had felt like jelly. Simon had started to laugh. He told her later it was because she was gaping at him, as if in some kind of shock, her mouth wide open.
It had been shock. A shock wave. Amazement that it was possible to feel whatever was coursing through her whole being — just like that. She had become aware that the coffee, squeezed out of the plastic beaker past the lid when her grip on it had involuntarily tightened as she fell, was dripping down one of his trouser legs on to his shoe. She had started muttering apologies. He had continued to laugh, he hadn’t been able to stop, and it had been the laughter of great joy, he had explained many times when they had relived the encounter. Without meaning to she had started to laugh with him, and it seemed perfectly natural that when they eventually managed to disentangle themselves, he had escorted her back to her seat, forgetting whatever it was that he had been going to the buffet car to buy.