Happily Flossie came to his rescue herself. ‘It was the year Fergie’s divorce came through,’ she said, with another chesty laugh. ‘That lass. You can’t help liking her in spite of everything. I remember talking to Miss Bowman about it over a cup of tea. She was the lady in number 8 and she and I got on fine, but she liked to be known as Miss Bowman. Fur coat and no knickers, I called her. You know what I’m saying?’
He knew and he was practically twitching with anticipation. In the pause for mirth, he managed to say, ‘This was the tenant in 1996? Miss Bowman? Was she there right through the year?’
‘Oh yes. She was there a long time. She arrived just after Windsor Castle went up in flames. Which year was that?’
Gilbert didn’t know. ‘Did she live alone?’
The question brought a tsunami of laughter. ‘Now you’re asking. She was the sole tenant as far as the benefits people was concerned, but she took in lodgers. My gentlemen, she called them. Gentlemen — in Moon Street. Mind you, I don’t think there was any how’s-your-father going on. They had their own room and she did a bit of cooking for them.’
Gilbert’s hopes had plunged at the words ‘sole tenant’ and now they soared again. ‘Was one of the lodgers a Mr. Mason, by any chance?’
‘I wouldn’t know, dear.’
‘About seventy, with a missing finger?’
‘That wasn’t Mr. Mason. That was Mr. Fortnum.’
‘Mr. Fortnum?’ Gilbert got it at once. Fortnum and Mason. The posh shop in Piccadilly. There was a pattern to this conman’s false identities. From Harrods to Fortnum and Mason. Names picked to impress. ‘So you remember him?’
‘Him and his little white van. Proper rogue, he was, always with a twinkle in his eye and some saucy remark. I used to tell him to act his age and he didn’t like that.’
‘A white van?’
‘Miss Bowman let him use her garage and added some extra on the rent but most times he left the van outside, the lazy blighter. We all have garages round the back and can’t afford cars. Mine’s full of junk. Don’t ask me what he needed a van for. Something naughty, I expect.’
‘Did Miss Bowman have anything to say about him?’
‘Not much. She was a bit hoity-toity, like I said. But she nearly burst a blood vessel when he upped and left without paying his rent. She told me he owed six months and she couldn’t do anything about it because she was claiming the housing benefit and hadn’t told them she had a lodger.’
‘When you say “left,” was it sudden?’
‘He did a moonlight, didn’t he? Buzzed off in his van without a word and she never saw him again. She used a few words of her own, I can tell you.’
‘Do you know when this was?’
‘When did we say Fergie got divorced?’
‘1996.’
‘Mr. Fortnum did his bunk the year after, in the summer.’
‘1997, then?’
‘Terrible year, that was. Are you old enough to remember, dear? All them flowers in front of Kensington Palace. Heartbreaking. I went up to London specially to see them.’
‘Did Mr. Fortnum leave anything behind in his room?’
‘After he left? Funnily enough, he did. A few clothes and some bits and bobs. It was like he decided to get out fast. She thought he was coming back, so she left them in the room for a couple of weeks. Then she put them in a plastic sack in her garage. In the end she got rid of them. I don’t think she got anything for them.’
‘“Bits and bobs,” you said. Was there anything personal — like photos or letters?’
‘You’ve got some hopes,’ Flossie said. ‘How would I know?’
‘You seem to be well informed.’
‘Miss Bowman used to say he was her mystery man. Well, she did find a stack of magazines, but she knew about them already. She’d been nosing round his room a few times when he was out, but she never found nothing personal. She reckoned he kept any private stuff locked up in his van.’
‘What sort of magazines?’
‘It wasn’t Homes and Gardens, I can tell you.’ Pause for another outbreak of mirth. ‘Men’s magazines, they call them, don’t they? Tits and bums and other parts I won’t mention to a young gentleman like you. I don’t hold that against him. I know what you men are like. Well, we both knew what Mr. Fortnum was like.’
‘Really?’
‘You know the one about the landlady who thought babies came from God? “It weren’t the Almighty that lifted her nightie, it was Roger the lodger, the sod.”’ Yet another bout of chesty laughter followed this.
‘What happened to Miss Bowman?’
‘A bit of slap and tickle when they passed on the stairs. It never came to more than that. She wasn’t the sort, even if he was.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I was asking if she’s still about.’
‘Miss Bowman? No, she’s pushing up the daisies. She was gone before the Queen Mum went.’
There might have been more a young man like Paul Gilbert could have learned from Flossie, but not of relevance to the case. Outside, he took a long look at number 8 and decided against knocking on the door. If it was indeed a crack house, the drug squad would know about it and the residents might not welcome a visitor from the police.
He had enough new information already to make Peter Diamond’s day.
25
‘All this?’ Diamond said.
‘That’s why it took so long,’ Ingeborg told him. Knowing he was more comfortable working with paper than seeing it on a screen, she had handed him a printout of the contents of Perry Morgan’s phone running to several hundred sheets. ‘Have you looked at his contacts? He’s hit the upper limit of the app. That’s ten thousand.’
‘How does anybody know that many people?’
‘He was a professional schmoozer, guv. That was his business.’
‘He couldn’t have known them all.’
‘But he had the means to reach them. He will have paid some marketing firm to get most of these.’
‘Talk about a needle in a haystack.’
‘You have to come at it from the opposite direction. Think of a name and see if it’s there. The ACC is in it.’
‘Georgina? You’re kidding.’
‘I can show you.’
‘Well, he did contact her, it’s true.’
‘He doesn’t have your number.’
‘He wouldn’t. He was interested in the high and mighty.’ He paused as a new thought crossed his mind. ‘Makes me wonder what Beau Nash’s contact list would have looked like. Pretty impressive, I reckon. Some of the royal family and a lot of the peerage. All the high command in Bath and Tunbridge Wells. I keep thinking these two had things in common.’
‘Except Beau Nash wasn’t murdered.’
That was still an open wound. Diamond continued leafing through the sheets. ‘Is anything here going to help us?’
‘Loads of recent texts and emails connected with the fireworks. He worked hard to make a success of it.’
‘I know that. What about his drug habit? Any leads?’
‘If there are, I haven’t found them yet.’
‘His bank account might be instructive.’
‘Thought of that,’ Ingeborg said. ‘He banked with Santander. That much is easy, but of course getting into the account isn’t.’
‘Apply for a production order.’
‘It’s been done — on the grounds that he was involved in the drug trade.’
‘Shaky. He was a user, not a dealer.’
‘The magistrate gave it the nod. We should get access today.’
He dropped the printed paper on his desk with a thump that seemed to say he wouldn’t pick it up again in a hurry. ‘Thanks for this.’
She eyed him with suspicion. ‘But...?’
‘I have a feeling this case is going to be solved by old-fashioned methods.’