For the second time the eyes in their lurid sockets seemed to betray some interest.
“When was that?”
“Twenty-odd years ago.”
“Christ! She must be a bloody granny by now!”
“Dunno. She had a child, though, I know that — a daughter...”
A surprisingly tall, smartly suited Japanese man had been drawn into the magnetic field of Le Club Sexy.
“Come in! Come down and—”
“How much is charge?”
“Only three pound. It’s a private club, see — and you gotta be a member.”
With a strangely trusting, wonderfully polite smile, the man took a crisp ten-pound note from his large wallet and handed it to the hostess, bowing graciously as she reached a hand behind her and parted the multicolored vertical strips which masked from public view the threadbare carpeting on the narrow stairs leading down to the secret delights.
“You give me change, please? I give you ten pound.”
“Just tell ’em downstairs, okay?”
“Why you not give me seven pound?”
“It’ll be okay— okay?”
“Okay.”
Halfway down the stairs, the newly initiated member made a little note in a little black book, smiling (we may say) scrutably. He was a member of a Home Office Committee licensing all “entertainment premises” in the district of Soho.
His expenses were generous: needed to be.
Sometimes he enjoyed his job.
“Don’t you ever feel bad about that sort of thing?”
“What d’you mean?”
“He’ll never get his change, will he?”
“Like I said, why don’t you just fuck off!”
“Gloria used to feel bad sometimes — quite a civilized streak in that woman somewhere. You’d have liked her... Anyway, if you do come across her, just say you met me, Geoff Owens, will you? She’ll remember me — certain to. Just tell her I’ve got a little proposition for her. She may be a bit down on her luck. You never know these days, and I wouldn’t want to think she was on her uppers... or her daughter was, for that matter.”
“What’s her daughter got to do with it?” The voice was sharp.
Owens smiled, confidently now, lightly rubbing the back of his right wrist across her blouse.
“Quite a lot, perhaps. You may have quite a lot to do with it, sweetheart!”
She made no attempt to contradict him. “In the pub,” she pointed across the street, “half an hour, okay?”
She watched him go, the man with a five o’clock shadow who said his name was Owens. She’d never seen him before; but she’d recognize him again immediately, the dark hair drawn back above his ears, and tied in a ponytail about eight or nine inches long.
Apart from the midnight “milk float,” which gave passengers the impression that it called at almost every hamlet along the line, the 11:20 P.M. was the last train from Paddington. And a panting Owens jumped into its rear coach as the Turbo Express suddenly juddered and began to move forward. The train was only half-full, and he found a seat immediately.
He felt pleased with himself. The assignation in the pub had proved to be even more interesting than he’d dared to expect; and he leaned back and closed his eyes contentedly as he pondered the possible implications of what he had just learned...
He jolted awake at Didcot, wondering where he was — realizing that he had missed the Reading stop completely. Determined to stay awake for the last twelve minutes of the journey, he picked up an Evening Standard someone had left on the seat opposite, and was reading the sports page when over the top of the newspaper he saw a man walking back down the carriage — almost to where he himself was sitting — before taking his place next to a woman. And Owens recognized him.
Recognized Mr. Julian Storrs of Lonsdale.
Well! Well! Well!
At Oxford, his head still stuck behind the Evening Standard, Owens waited until everyone else had left the rear carriage. Then, himself alighting, he observed Storrs arm-in-arm with his companion as they climbed the steps of the footbridge which led over the tracks to Platform One. And suddenly, for the second time that evening, Owens felt a shiver of excitement — for he immediately recognized the woman, too.
How could he fail to recognize her?
She was his next-door neighbor.
Chapter six
Monday, February 19
Many is the gracious form that is covered with a veil; but on withdrawing this thou discoverest a grandmother.
Painstakingly, in block capitals, the Chief Inspector wrote his name, E. MORSE; and was beginning to write his address when Lewis came into the office at 8:35 A.M. on Monday, February 19.
“What’s that, sir?”
Morse looked down at a full page torn from one of the previous day’s color supplements.
“Special offer: two free CDs when you apply to join the Music Club Library.”
Lewis looked dubious. “Don’t forget you have to buy a book every month with that sort of thing. Life’s not all freebies, you know.”
“Well, it is in this case. You’ve just got to have a look at the first thing they send you, that’s all — then send it back if you don’t like it. I think they even refund the postage.”
Lewis watched as Morse completed and snipped out the application form.
“Wouldn’t it be fairer if you agreed to have some of the books?”
“You think so?”
“At least one of them.”
Intense blue eyes, slightly pained, looked innocently across the desk at Sergeant Lewis.
“But I’ve already got this month’s book — I bought it for myself for Christmas.”
He inserted the form into an envelope, on which he now wrote the Club’s address. Then he took from his wallet a sheaf of plastic cards: Bodleian Library ticket; Lloyds payment card; RAC Breakdown Service; blood donor card; Blackwell’s Bookshops; Oxford City Library ticket; phone card... but there appeared to be no booklet of first-class stamps there. Or of second-class.
“You don’t, by any chance, happen to have a stamp on you, Lewis?”
“What CDs are you going for?”
“I’ve ordered Janáček, the Glagolitic Mass — you may not know it. Splendid work — beautifully recorded by Simon Rattle. And Richard Strauss, Four Last Songs — Jessye Norman. I’ve got several recordings by other sopranos, of course.”
Of course...
Lewis nodded and looked for a stamp.
It was not infrequent for Lewis to be reminded of what he had lost in life; or rather, what he’d never had in the first place. The one Strauss he knew was the “Blue Danube” man. And he’d only recently learned there were two of those, as well — Senior and Junior; and which was which he’d no idea.
“Perhaps you’ll be in for a bit of a letdown, sir. Some of these offers — they’re not exactly up to what they promise.”
“You’re an expert on these things?”
“No... but... take Sergeant—” Lewis stopped himself in time. Just as well to leave a colleague’s weakness cloaked in anonymity. “Take this chap I know. He read this advert in one of the tabloids about a free video — sex video — sent in a brown envelope with no address to say where it had come from. You know, in case the wife...”
“No, I don’t know, Lewis. But please continue.”