“D’you still have any contact with Jimmy, or any of his family?”
“Christ, no. Good riddance. The only one of his family I ever met was little Billy, his brother.”
She softened a little as she said the name.
“He wasn’t right. He stayed with us for a bit at one point. He was a sweetheart, really, but not right. Jimmy said it was their father. Violent alkie. Raised them on his own and knocked the shit out of them, from what the boys said, used the belt and everything. Jimmy got away to London, and poor little Billy was left alone with him. No surprise he was how he was.”
“What d’you mean?”
“He ’ad a—a tic, do they call it?”
She mimicked with perfect accuracy the nose to chest tapping Strike had witnessed in his office.
“He was put on drugs, I know that. Then he left us, went to share a flat with some other lads for a bit. I never saw him again after Jimmy and I split. He was a sweet boy, yeah, but he annoyed Jimmy.”
“In what way?” Strike asked.
“Jimmy didn’t like him talking about their childhood. I dunno, I think Jimmy felt guilty he’d left Billy in the house alone. There was something funny about that whole business…”
Strike could tell she hadn’t thought about these things for a while.
“Funny?” he prompted.
“A couple of times, when he’d had a few, Jimmy went on about how his dad would burn for how he made his living.”
“I thought he was an odd-job man?”
“Was he? They told me he was a joiner. He worked for that politician’s family, what’s his name? The one with the hair.”
She mimed stiff bristles coming out of her head.
“Jasper Chiswell?” Strike suggested, pronouncing the name the way it was spelled.
“Him, yeah. Old Mr. Knight had a rent-free cottage in the family grounds. The boys grew up there.”
“And he said his father would go to hell for what he did for a living?” repeated Strike.
“Yeah. It’s probably just because he was working for Tories. It was all about politics with Jimmy. I don’t get it,” said Dawn restlessly. “You’ve got to live. Imagine me asking my clients how they vote before I’ll—
“Bloody hell,” she gasped suddenly, grinding out her cigarette and jumping to her feet, “Sian had better’ve taken out Mrs. Horridge’s rollers or she’ll be bald.”
17
I see he is altogether incorrigible.
Watching for an opportunity to plant the bug in Winn’s office, Robin spent most of the afternoon hanging around the quiet corridor on which both his and Izzy’s offices lay, but her efforts were fruitless. Even though Winn had left for a lunchtime meeting, Aamir remained inside. Robin paced up and down, box file in her arms, waiting for the moment when Aamir might go to the bathroom and returning to Izzy’s office whenever any passerby tried to engage her in conversation.
Finally, at ten past four, her luck changed. Geraint Winn swaggered around the corner, rather tipsy after what seemed to have been a prolonged lunch, and in sharp contrast to his wife, he seemed delighted to meet her as she set off towards him.
“There she is!” he said, over-loudly. “I wanted a word with you! Come in here, come in!”
He pushed open the door of his office. Puzzled, but only too eager to see the interior of the room she was hoping to bug, Robin followed him.
Aamir was working in shirtsleeves at his desk, which formed a tiny oasis of order in the general clutter. Stacks of folders lay around Winn’s desk. Robin noticed the orange logo of the Level Playing Field on a pile of letters in front of him. There was a power point directly under Geraint’s desk that would be an ideal position for the listening device.
“Have you two met?” Geraint asked jovially. “Venetia, Aamir.”
He sat down and invited Robin to take the armchair on which a sliding pile of card folders lay.
“Did Redgrave call back?” Winn asked Aamir, struggling out of his suit jacket.
“Who?” said the latter.
“Sir Steve Redgrave!” said Winn, with the suspicion of an eye roll in Robin’s direction. She felt embarrassed for him, especially as Aamir’s muttered “no” was cold.
“Level Playing Field,” Winn told Robin.
He had managed to get his jacket off. With an attempted flourish, he threw it onto the back of his chair. It slid limply onto the floor, but Geraint appeared not to notice, and instead tapped the orange logo on the topmost letter in front of him. “Our cha—” he belched. “Pardon me—our charity. Disadvantaged and disabled athletes, you know. Lots of high profile supporters. Sir Steve keen to—” he belched again, “—pardon—help. Well, now. I wanted to apologize. For my poor wife.”
He seemed to be enjoying himself hugely. Out of the corner of her eye, Robin saw Aamir fling Geraint a sharp look, like the flash of a claw, swiftly retracted.
“I don’t understand,” said Robin.
“Gets names wrong. Does it all the time. If I didn’t keep an eye on her, we’d have all sorts going on, wrong letters going out to the wrong people… she thought you were someone else. I had her on the phone over lunch, insisting you were somebody our daughter ran across years ago. Verity Pulham. ’Nother of your godfather’s godchildren. Told her straight away it wasn’t you, said I’d pass on her apologies. Silly girl, she is. Very stubborn when she thinks she’s right, but,” he rolled his eyes again and tapped his forehead, the long-suffering husband of an infuriating wife, “I managed to penetrate in the end.”
“Well,” said Robin carefully, “I’m glad she knows she was mistaken, because she didn’t seem to like Verity very much.”
“Truth to tell, Verity was a little bitch,” said Winn, still beaming. Robin could tell he enjoyed using the word. “Nasty to our daughter, you see.”
“Oh dear,” said Robin, with a thud of dread beneath her ribs as she remembered that Rhiannon Winn had killed herself. “I’m sorry. How awful.”
“You know,” said Winn, sitting down and tipping back his chair against the wall, hands behind his head, “you seem far too sweet a girl to be associated with the Chiswell family.” He was definitely a little drunk. Robin could smell faint wine dregs on his breath and Aamir threw him another of those sharp, scathing looks. “What were you doing before this, Venetia?”
“PR,” said Robin, “but I’d like to do something more worthwhile. Politics, or maybe a charity. I was reading about the Level Playing Field,” she said truthfully. “It seems wonderful. You do a lot with veterans, too, don’t you? I saw an interview with Terry Byrne yesterday. The Paralympian cyclist?”
Her attention had been caught by the fact that Byrne had the same below the knee amputation as Strike.
“You’ll have a personal interest in veterans, of course,” said Winn.
Robin’s stomach swooped and fell again.
“Sorry?”
“Freddie Chiswell?” Winn prompted.
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Robin. “Although I didn’t know Freddie very well. He was a bit older than me. Obviously, it was dreadful when he—when he was killed.”
“Oh, yes, awful,” said Winn, though he sounded indifferent. “Della was very much against the Iraq war. Very much against it. Your Uncle Jasper was all for it, mind you.”
For a moment, the air seemed to thrum with Winn’s unexpressed implication that Chiswell had been well served for his enthusiasm.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Robin carefully. “Uncle Jasper thought military action justified on the evidence we had at the time. Anyway,” she said bravely, “nobody can accuse him of acting out of self-interest, can they, when his son had to go and fight?”