“What are you talking about?”
With irritable brevity, I explained why I was soon likely to find myself queueing up with the wives and girlfriends outside Albany Prison. I hadn’t expected any sympathy, of course. It was more likely Bella would welcome the opportunity this gave us to quiz the man she still preferred to believe had murdered Louise Paxton. Strangely however, that wasn’t her reaction.
“There’s nothing to be gained by seeing Naylor,” she said, much of the sharpness gone from her voice, along with all the pleasure she’d derived from my discomfiture. “Call the visit off.”
“Why?” I was suspicious now, my mind casting back to our lunch in Midhurst and the niggling dissatisfaction I’d felt since then about her motives.
“Because it’s a waste of time and effort. Concentrate on Paul.”
“I have done. To no effect.”
“He must have had friends at Cambridge besides Peter Rossington. We need to-”
“I need to convince the police I’m not obstructing their inquiries. And Naylor may be able to help me do so.”
“That’s your problem, not mine. I don’t care who tipped off Cassidy. I only care about-”
“Why don’t you want to know?” I wasn’t ready to let her off the hook yet. There was something almost desperate about her eagerness to ignore Cassidy. “In fact, why aren’t you encouraging me to go looking for him in case he was telling the truth about Naylor’s confession? With Bledlow dead, he’s the only one who can-”
“Forget Cassidy!”
“Why?”
“Because he’s irrelevant.”
“All right, all right.” It wasn’t all right, of course. My contrary nature was urging me to do what Bella had forbidden me to do precisely for that reason. But I knew it would be as pointless to confront her with my suspicions as it would be disastrous to inform her of my intentions. She was always at her least dangerous when she believed she was getting her own way. So I decided to say what she wanted to hear-while meaning none of it. “Let’s cross Cassidy off the list. And Naylor too. Let’s go back to Paul. What exactly would you like me to try next?”
Bella’s tactics sounded like barrel-scraping to me. I was to contact the best man at Paul and Rowena’s wedding-Martin Hill, a colleague of Paul’s from Metropolitan Mutual-and see what he knew. I was to question Sarah-without telling her why-about Paul’s friendships at Cambridge. Then I was to go to Cambridge and speak to his old tutor, along with any students who might remember him. I assured Bella I’d make a start that weekend.
Which I duly did, travelling up to Bristol on Saturday for lunch with Martin Hill and tea with Sarah. Hill was an amiable and talkative fellow, but he could only tell me what he’d already told the police. He’d shared an office with Paul, but no secrets. The invitation to act as his best man had come as a surprise. “To be perfectly frank, I don’t think he had any real friends he could ask. I was a last resort.” This picture of a friendless and withdrawn individual tallied with Cheryl Bryant’s account of her brother’s childhood. And so did Sarah’s description of his years at Cambridge. “You know what Paul’s like, Robin. Easy to get on with. Hard to fathom. He was no different at Cambridge. I suppose that’s why he and I drifted apart. Nobody ever got close to Paul… except Rowena. I can tell you who his tutor was. She was mine as well. Doctor Olive Meyer. See her by all means. I’ll even phone her and arrange an appointment if you like. But I don’t think you’ll get anything out of her. Not what Bella’s hoping for, anyway. I’m afraid she has you looking for something that simply doesn’t exist.”
Sarah was right, of course. With the board meeting less than three weeks away, it was a fact Bella and I would soon have to face. But there was still time to jump through a few more hoops in the hope of persuading her to honour our bargain. And there was definitely time to start down the one path she’d tried to stop me following, working on the basis that what she didn’t know couldn’t harm her-even if what I might find out could.
On Sunday morning, I drove up to London. It was a pluperfect autumn day, the sky a flawless blue, the fallen leaves gleaming in golden patches along the pavements and across the parks. But the beauties of nature couldn’t do much for Jamaica Road, Bermondsey. Or for the vomit-stained frontage of the Greyhound Inn, most of whose customers looked as if they’d have difficulty remembering how much they’d drunk the previous night, let alone when Vincent Cassidy last pulled a pint for them.
Not so the stern tattooed landlord, however. His memories of Cassidy were clear. But he had no intention of sharing them with me. “Vince Cassidy hasn’t worked here in over a year. But I make a point of respecting the privacy of my employees-past and present.”
“He has nothing to fear from me.”
“Maybe not. But how do I know that?”
“I’m only asking if you might know his present where-abouts.”
“Last I heard, he was working for Dave Gormley. He runs a tyre-and-exhaust place down Raymouth Road.”
With that, he moved off to serve another customer. Freeing a paunchy greasy-haired man on the bar-stool next to me to snigger at my expense. “Syd’s short-changing you,” he muttered. “Don’t take it personal. He does it to his regulars as well.”
“You mean Vince doesn’t work for Dave Gormley?”
“Not any more. Done a runner about a fortnight ago. Dropped out of sight like a rabbit down his burrow. Only in Vince’s case even his burrow’s empty. The Old Bill have been after him. Don’t know what for. Wouldn’t be the same reason you’re looking for him, would it?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“Makes no difference either way. Vince has turned into the Invisible Man.”
“Doesn’t anybody know where he is?”
“I didn’t say that, did I?” He winked, swallowed the last of his beer and frowned at the empty glass. Subtlety wasn’t his stock-in-trade. But a fresh pint and a double whisky chaser revealed that information was. Vince Cassidy had a sister. And my thirsty acquaintance knew her address.
Sharon Peters, née Cassidy, lived in one of the crumbling yellow-brick tenement blocks wedged between Jamaica Road and the main railway line out of Charing Cross. To the east, the Canary Wharf tower shimmered in the sunshine, a perpetual reminder to the residents of how worthwhile the economies were that deprived them of adequately lit stairways and an occasional dab of fresh paint. They were the slums of a future that was very nearly the present, as unnerving a place for somebody like me to visit as it was no doubt depressing for somebody like Sharon Peters to inhabit.
She was a busty bottle-blonde in her late twenties, dressed in grubby grey leggings and an orange T-shirt, cleaning away the remnants of a junk-food lunch left behind by her children. They might have been among the jeering group that had jostled past me on the stairs and I couldn’t help wondering if they were even now opening my car door with a bent coat-hanger prior to a Sunday afternoon joy-ride round the estate. Either way, there was no sign of them. Nor of their father, assuming he still lived with them. Sharon Peters was alone. And she looked as if she preferred it that way. The omnibus edition of East-Enders was playing on the television, though not loudly enough to blot out the beat of the reggae music from a neighbouring flat. The door had been ajar and she’d shouted for me to enter when I’d rung the bell, assuming I was somebody else, I suppose. Now she stared at me across her toy-strewn lounge as if I were an alien from another planet. Which in a sense I was.
“Christ! Who are you?”
“Robin Timariot, Mrs. Peters. I believe you’re Vince Cassidy’s sister.”
“So what?”