“The wrong kind of surprise.”
“Yes. Within twenty-four hours he’d rung again. The price had gone up fourfold, he said. That was yesterday morning.”
“Presumably your father has store detectives out in force in the shops?”
“Yes, but it’s like searching for a twig in a forest. I gather the usual modus operandi in this sort of case is that the poisoner tampers at home with goods which he may have bought quite legitimately in the shop. Then he brings them back into the store and puts them back on the shelves when no one is looking. Done well, it’s almost impossible to spot.”
“Is your father going to pay?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell even me. I assume the plan will be to play along with the crooks and try to pick them up when they come to collect the money, but of course they’ll be alert for that. They’re bound to insist on hand-over arrangements which give them maximum safety. Daddy’s in despair. He’s caught between the devil and deep blue sea.”
She stared moodily out of the window. The picture Valerie had previously painted of her father was of a shy man who worked round the clock and shunned the limelight. He regarded the Saviour Money chain, she’d once said only half-jokingly, as his second child, the son he’d never had. Harry imagined that Kaiwar would feel any attempt to ruin the business he had spent twenty years building up almost as keenly as an attack on Valerie herself.
He went to stand by her side and put his arm on her shoulder.
“What would you like to do this afternoon? Something to take your mind off your father’s woes would be a good idea.”
“What do you recommend?”
He was acutely aware of her perfume, a subtle and delicious fragrance, and of the closeness of her. This is an important moment, he thought. I mustn’t blow it by being too eager. But nor must I miss the chance.
“Well…”
The telephone rang, shredding the silence like a knife through satin.
Shit, thought Harry. One of my regulars got himself locked up after supping too much at lunch time. Ignore it.
The phone kept ringing.
“Aren’t you going to answer?”
“I wasn’t intending to.”
“You should,” Valerie said. “It might be something important.”
“A wrong number, depend upon it.”
But he found himself walking across the room and snatching up the receiver as if it were the hand of a naughty child.
“Yes?”
“Harry? I need to see you right away.”
Jack Stirrup’s never-take-no-for-an-answer Brummie tone prompted Harry into mutiny.
“Sorry, Jack, it’ll have to wait. If…”
“Listen, this is a matter of life and death.”
Something in Stirrup’s inflection stopped Harry from putting down the phone.
“Tell me.”
“It’s Claire. She’s disappeared.”
Chapter Ten
“Call the police,” said Harry for the twentieth time. “It’s the only way.”
“What kind of advice is that?” Stirrup banged his fist on the pine table. “So they can lock me up?”
Frustration enveloped Harry like a pre-war London fog. How easy it would be to lose sight of what mattered, when all that was clear was Stirrup’s stubbornness. He fought an urge to take hold of the man and try to knock some sense into him. Brawling with a client was bad for business. And it would not bring Claire back home.
“Don’t be paranoid. They’re not going to lock you up because your daughter has disappeared.”
“Paranoid, you say?” Stirrup laughed scornfully. “You’d be bloody paranoid if you were in my shoes. Fat lot of help you are. My own bloody solicitor advising me to turn myself in. You’ll really make it to Lord Chief Justice, you will, with a legal brain like that.”
They were in the kitchen at Prospect House. The room was smart and clean, elegant and lifeless as a picture in an ideal home magazine. The silence was broken only by the sullen burbling of the coffee machine in the corner.
“Jack, there’s no question of your turning yourself in. Be realistic, you have no choice but to report Claire as missing. How long has she been gone now? Four hours? Five? Every minute you delay could make matters worse.”
“Worse?” Again the harsh laugh. “And will they be better if I’m charged with killing her as well as bloody Alison?”
“Nobody’s going to charge you. No way. Any fool could tell you’d never harm a hair on her head.”
“No more I would.”
Stirrup shut his eyes. He looked like a sick, sleeping old man who had no wish to wake again. Harry wanted to sympathise, to assure him that everything would turn out right in the end. But it was a promise no one could make.
After receiving his client’s telephone message, Harry had driven straight over from Liverpool. To abandon Valerie as soon as she had arrived dismayed and embarrassed him. If only they had left the flat before the call came. At least she understood at once that he could not let his client down. His apologies she waved away with a philosophic smile.
“There’ll be other times.”
The promise cheered him on the journey, but he forgot everything when he arrived at the house. Stirrup was pacing up and down outside the front door, kicking at the gravel. As he explained what had happened, he wheezed as if on the verge of a coronary.
Claire had left the house at nine-thirty, saying that she was going down into West Kirby to change her library books. She often did that on a Saturday morning, according to her father, catching the bus which stopped on the main road, a short walk away, at twenty to ten. She had mentioned that she would make lunch for twelve because Peter Kuiper was coming round to see her later that afternoon and she had wanted to blow-dry her hair before he arrived.
Noon came and went and Stirrup began to worry. At half past, he got out the car and drove slowly down the road to West Kirby to see if he could spot her if she had decided to stroll back on foot. No sign at the library. People he spoke to couldn’t recall having seen a girl matching her description.
Increasingly frantic, he tried one shop after another. Nothing. Walking the length of the promenade, he scanned every inch of yellow sand but saw no Claire. Convinced that he must have missed her in coming down the hill from Caldy, he raced back along the winding road to Prospect House. It remained as he had left it, locked and undisturbed. At that point, in desperation, he rang Harry.
“Any problems with her lately, Jack? Was she worried, depressed, sulky? Had you quarrelled?”
“Course not. All right, she acted a bit off colour Thursday afternoon and evening. Time of the month, for all I know. Or maybe she was mooning over that feller at — whatsit? — Balliol Chambers. Anyway, she went out to see some schoolfriend that evening and yesterday she was as right as rain. That young turd Kuiper came to see her, but he didn’t stop more than a couple hours. She and I watched the late night movie on the box. Then she kissed me as usual and went up to bed.”
“And this morning?”
“No different. She pulled my leg as I was reading the paper. You know, I still read the Mirror, though it’s a Labour rag. Force of habit, my old man used to take it when I was a kid. Claire said when she came into money, she’d insist on having quality newspapers. Nothing but the best for her. And that was it. Next thing I knew, she was sauntering down the drive without a care in the world. Matter of fact…”
“Yes?”
Stirrup frowned. “No, it’s gone. Something odd struck me a moment ago, but I’ve lost it.”
“Have you rung her friends? She may have bumped into one of them unexpectedly in the town. They could have wandered off together without giving their parents a second thought.”
“Claire wouldn’t do that. She’s an only child. I know it sounds corny, but there’s a special bond between us.”