A Place Of Safety Page 16

  The search of the river bank was hardly fruitful. On the whole it was pristine but a rough patch of scrub and thorn bushes owned up to a few crisp packets and Cola cans, an old motor tyre once used as a swing and the frame of a baby’s pushchair. A retired brigadier, chairman of the Ferne Basset Conservation Society, presented himself at the search and began explaining that the ‘cess pit’ under observation was used as a dumping ground by council house tenants. It was cleared every week by a member of the Society and was promptly fouled again. Courteous requests to refrain from this habit had been ignored. He insisted that a note to this effect be added to the police report. Village pride was at stake.

  Responses to the station’s television appeal were still being followed up. The usual attention seekers were being weeded out and what was left was not encouraging.

  Sergeant Jimmy Agnew and WPC Muldoon, checking up on the background of Lionel Lawrence, had come up with what was surely the dullest CV on record. Born in 1941 in Uttoxeter, grammar school education with O levels in five subjects, including Religious Education. Dip. Theology at the Open University. Not even a suspicious passion for scouting.

  DS Harris, detailed to lay his hands on the recording of the anonymous telephone call the night Carlotta disappeared, explained that Kidlington had a backlog, always being short-staffed on Sunday, but it would be over for sure later in the day.

  As the DCI had feared, SOCO’s print check in the phone box at Ferne Basset proved that the whole procedure had been a pointless waste of their valuable time.

  Barnaby was looking forward to meeting Ms Vivienne Calthrop of the Caritas Trust for the Resettlement of Young Offenders. He was about to talk not only to someone who had known Carlotta but who, with a bit of luck, might describe the girl from a reasonably disinterested viewpoint.

  Lionel Lawrence, squinting and blinking behind his rose-tinted glasses, was worse than useless. Jax was full of spite because Carlotta had rejected him. Mrs Leathers resented the girl’s presence on behalf of her employer and Ann Lawrence had, so far, been unavailable.

  They arrived ten minutes early and Troy took advantage of this by getting out of the car and striking up. He did so in a mood of bitter resentfulness both against himself and the bloody fags. So far Maureen still didn’t know he’d started again. Somehow or other he had managed not to do it in the house. A brisk walk before bedtime accounted for three saturating smokes and he just about held on till leaving the house the next morning. Gargling with mouthwash, ferociously brushing his teeth and chewing on a bag of parsley from Sainsbury’s seemed to have disguised this underhand activity so far. The fact that his clothes still reeked of nicotine was easily explained by their daily exposure to the tasteful ambience in the station toilets.

  ‘Come on!’

  Troy stubbed out his cigarette and hurried after the chief. ‘Is it kosher, this place?’

  They were mounting some heavily stained concrete steps then pushing through metal swing doors painted khaki. The paint was badly chipped and the right door caved in at the bottom as if someone had given it a good kicking.

  ‘Oh, yes. We checked it out. On their headed paper there’s a circuit judge noted for his interest in rehabilitation plus two members of the Howard League, as well as our Lionel. The funding’s from several impeccable philanthropic sources and a small amount comes from the government.’

  At the end of a dreary corridor a large white notice announced Reception. The letters were very carefully written with a curly flourish here and there and bordered with brightly coloured flowers. The pinned-up card was enclosed in a transparent freezer bag.

  A tiny, thin little girl was inside. She hardly looked old enough to go out to play, never mind run a switchboard. She had hair like canary feathers, silver rings through her eyebrows and a chirrupy little Cockney voice.

  ‘’Ello.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Barnaby, wondering what it signified when receptionists seemed to be getting younger all the time. ‘We’re—’

  ‘Miss Calthrop’s ten o’clock, right?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Sergeant Troy. He was wondering if she had made the card on the door. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Cheryl. I’ll take you over.’

  She ignored the phone which had just started to ring and led them out of the building and across the tarmac parking lot towards a rackety old Portacabin lifted from the ground on breeze blocks.

  ‘You don’t look much like a copper,’ said Cheryl, tripping along in absurd little boots with leopardskin cuffs and four-inch heels. She gave Sergeant Troy a friendly nudge.

  ‘What’re we supposed to look like then?’

  ‘Him.’ She jerked her soft, lemon-coloured curls towards the chief inspector lumbering along behind.

  ‘Catch me in twenty years,’ said Troy.

  ‘Nah,’ said Cheryl. ‘You ain’t never going to weigh that much. You ain’t the sort.’

  They climbed three wobbly wooden steps. Cheryl rapped on an ill-fitting door. Immediately a wonderful humming sound, like the rich vibration of a viol, rippled under the door and ebbed and shimmered around their heads.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘She’s just saying come in.’ Cheryl skipped away, adding over her shoulder, ‘Deep breath and ’old your nose.’

  The two policemen went inside.

  Oh boy, thought Troy, inhaling deeply a one hundred per cent genuine gold-carat bred-in-the-bone fug. The wonderfully stale and putrid atmosphere, the concentrated essence of fag that tells an addict he has come home. Except home could never smell this good. Behind him Troy noted a muted moan of protest.

  Barnaby, wishing he had indeed taken a deep breath, looked about him. There had been no attempt to disguise or decorate the walls. Metal frames and screws held together panels of hammered grey flat stuff which looked suspiciously like asbestos. There were old-fashioned metal filing cabinets though a dusty computer was just visible behind stacks of files on an extremely cluttered desk. An electric extractor fan let into one of the panels stuttered and coughed. Behind the desk, in a neat reversal of the usual no-smoking sign, a handmade effort had a glowing cigarette with a large, black tick drawn through it.

  Someone had attempted to make the foul ambience less offensive by liberal squirtings with a sickly sweet freshener. This further clashed with the fragrance of monosodium glutamate from some takeaway empties in the waste basket and the bold, sultry perfume the woman behind the desk was wearing.

  Vivienne Calthrop made no attempt to rise as the police presented their credentials, just glanced at the warrant cards and waved them away. Rising in any case would not have been easy for she was hugely overweight. She was, in fact, one of the largest women Barnaby had ever seen.

  ‘If you’d like coffee the gubbins is over there.’ She jerked a thumb first towards a white, rather dirty Formica table then at a couple of battered armchairs.

  ‘No . . . um . . . really . . .’ If Barnaby was thrown it was not because of the woman’s appearance but her truly remarkable voice. Very husky, extremely melodious, luxuriant and warm, it crackled with vitality. My God, thought the chief inspector, sinking into one of the armchairs, what my daughter wouldn’t give to sound like that.

  ‘Feel free to indulge,’ said Miss Calthrop, shaking a Gitane out of a cellophane-wrapped packet and lighting up.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sergeant Troy, reaching inside his jacket before catching the chief’s eye and thinking better of it.

  ‘So, what’s all this about Carlotta?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, Miss Calthrop—’

  ‘Next to nothing. Just that the police wanted some information on her background. What’s she done now?’

  ‘Run away,’ said Sergeant Troy.

  ‘Oh, come on. The CID fronting the show and she’s “run away”?’

  ‘Obviously there’s slightly more to it than that.’

  ‘Bet your Aunt Fanny,’ said Miss Calthrop.

  ‘There was an
argument where she was staying—’

  ‘Old Rectory, Ferne Basset.’ She tapped a file on her desk with a huge white sausagey finger in which were embedded several beautiful rings. ‘One of dear Lionel’s many benisons.’

  ‘She was accused of taking a pair of diamond earrings,’ Barnaby took up the story. ‘In some distress apparently, she ran away. Very soon after this we received anonymous information saying someone had fallen into the river.’

  ‘Or jumped,’ said Troy.

  ‘She would never have jumped,’ said Miss Calthrop. ‘She was far too fond of herself.’

  This was so like what Jackson had said that Barnaby was both surprised and impressed. Surprised because he had assumed the man had been offering a Carlotta of his own making to fit in with whatever story he had in mind.

  ‘Tell me about her,’ said the chief inspector, relaxing in his chair and looking forward to the next few minutes provided he could only surface breathe. He always enjoyed the process of trawling for new information.

  Troy dug out his notebook while also trying to relax in his chair. As he had a spring sticking in his bottom this was not so easy. Still sulking over the lack of a ciggie, he produced his biro and started clicking it on and off, much to Barnaby’s annoyance.

  ‘Some of the young people that have sat where you’re sitting now, Inspector . . .’ began Miss Calthrop, ‘the wonder is not that they have grown up delinquent but that they have managed to grow up at all. To read their files, to understand the poverty, cruelty and total lack of love which has been their lot since the day they were born is to despair of human nature.’

  Barnaby did not doubt Miss Calthrop for a minute. He, too, had listened to some appalling stories as the background of the accused had been read out in court. But, although not unsympathetic, he was compelled to keep an emotional distance. It was not part of his job to try and help or heal a fragmented personality. That was for the social services, probation officers and prison psychiatrists. And he did not envy them.

  ‘But Carlotta Ryan,’ continued Vivienne Calthrop, ‘had no such excuse. Her background was comfortably middle class and I understand her childhood to have been reasonably happy until her parents broke up when she was thirteen. Her mother remarried and Carlotta lived with them for a while but she was very unhappy and ran away more than once. Naturally one wonders if the husband was abusing her . . .’

  Naturally? thought Barnaby. God, what a world we live in.

  Troy was easier now he had something to do and scribbled happily. He had also noticed an Amaretti biscuit tin on the filing cabinet and wondered if he could persuade a few to walk his way.

  ‘But Carlotta assured me this was not the case. Her father was working in Beirut - not the safest of places to take a child - but she decided she wanted to be with him. Her mother agreed and off she went. She was very rebellious and, as I expect you know, the Lebanon is not a country where women, even foreigners, can behave as they do here.’ She tugged at some frizzy fronds of hair like ruby-coloured seaweed on her forehead. ‘Her father was very concerned she might end up in serious trouble and both parents decided the solution might be to send her to boarding school.’

  ‘How old would she be then?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘About fourteen. Carlotta asked to go to somewhere that concentrated on drama training but her parents were afraid the educational standards might not be too high so they put her in a place near Ambleside.’ Miss Calthrop paused for an inhalation so cavernously deep and powerful that her eyes almost crossed themselves with surprise and pleasure at the shock of it. The fat cheeks didn’t even dimple.

  ‘Why a stage school?’ asked Troy, breathing deeply alongside. ‘Did she want to be an actress or something?’

  ‘Yes, she was very keen. I got the impression that if they’d let her go, she wouldn’t have veered quite so wildly off the rails.’

  Always an excuse. Sergeant Troy swiftly transcribed all these details. As he did so he tried to think as he knew the boss would be thinking. Bring the girl alive in his mind, picture her flouncing, arguing, determined to get her own way. What his gran would have called ‘a right young madam’.

  Actually, he was wrong. Despite his good intentions, Barnaby was having quite a struggle keeping his mind on the meaning of what Vivienne Calthrop was saying. Seduced by the remarkable beauty of her voice and the extraordinary and exotic grandeur of her appearance, his curiosity was given over to speculating by what circuitous route she could possibly have arrived in this sordid den.

  He watched her stub her cigarette into an ashtray already brimming with crimsoned dog ends and rearrange the marquee of rose and turquoise silk draped around her person. All this jelly wobbling made her earrings dance. They were very long, reaching almost to her shoulders, delicate chandeliers of sequinned discs, enamelled flowers and tiny moonstones all trembling on a fan of golden wire.

  Barnaby became aware that he was being severely looked at. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m not going through all this for nothing, I hope, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Of course not, Miss Calthrop. I was just engrossed in that last point you made. It raises interesting . . .’

  Vivienne Calthrop sniffed. ‘You’re with us now, I trust?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then she ran away for the third time and on this occasion they didn’t get her back.’

  Troy’s arm ached. He was dying for a cuppa and some of that interestingly named confectionery. All right for some, with nothing to do but loll back in an armchair with no broken springs and stare out of the window. Nice to see him ticked off for once though.

  ‘Our file,’ she picked a folder from the tottering pile on her desk, ‘covers the time from when she first came to the attention of the social services until her stay with the Lawrences. There are solid facts here and there are statements from Carlotta which could be truth or fantasy or a mixture of both.’

  ‘What do you think, Miss Calthrop?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘It’s difficult to say. She enjoyed . . . how can I put this . . . presenting herself. She would never just come into a room, sit down and simply talk. Every time there had to be a different Carlotta. Wronged, unhappy daughter. Talented girl denied her chance of fame. Once she appeared with a tale about being stopped in Bond Street by a scout for a model agency. Gave her a card, asked to see a portfolio of photographs. All nonsense. She was nowhere near tall enough, for a start.’

  ‘And what about her record?’

  ‘Persistent shoplifting. I don’t know how long she’d been at it when she was caught. She swore that was the first time. Don’t they all? She was cautioned then caught again a few weeks later with a shopping bag full of Armani tights and T-shirts. Shortly after this she was spotted on camera taking a Ghost evening dress from Liberty’s. A woman had been in the day before, trying it on, taking ages over the business, attempting to get them to reduce the price, and it was thought Carlotta might be stealing to order. A much more serious business than the odd impulse snatch. When the police took her home they found a roomful of stuff, all very classy. Molton Brown, Donna Karan, Butler and Wilson jewellery.’

  Troy gave his pen a rest. He saw no point in writing down all these names which, in any case, were Greek to him. No wonder Mrs Lawrence had suspected the girl when her earrings had disappeared. She was lucky to have a rag left on her back.

  ‘Would that be the last address you have for her?’

  ‘Yes. Close to Stepney Green.’ She was already writing. ‘I hope you find her. Alive, I mean.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Barnaby. As Miss Calthrop handed the slip of paper over, a concentrated whoosh of a perfume that dare not speak its name zoomed up the inspector’s nostrils. Bordello Nights, thought Barnaby, or some copywriter’s missed his vocation. On recovering, he asked if they might take Carlotta’s file away and extract any information that could be of help to them.

  ‘Certainly not,’ replied Miss Calthrop. ‘I have told you everything relevant to your
inquiries. Our clients may be on the lowest rung of society, Chief Inspector, but they’re still entitled to some privacy.’

  Barnaby did not pursue the matter. He could always make a special application should he feel it necessary. He smiled across at Miss Calthrop as warmly as if she had been fully cooperative and changed tack.

  ‘Have you sent many . . . clients to the Old Rectory, Miss Calthrop?’

  ‘Over the past ten years or so, yes. Regrettably, not all have benefited. Several have even betrayed the Lawrences’ trust.’

  ‘No,’ said Sergeant Troy on a drawn-in breath. He thought he might run with this line in mock amazement for a bit then remembered the chief’s nagging about alienating interviewees.

  ‘Hard to understand, I know,’ said Vivienne Calthrop. ‘You would expect them to be so grateful that they would seize any opportunity to transform their lives. But I’m afraid it rarely seems to work like that.’

  ‘That’s very sad,’ said Barnaby. And meant it.

  ‘They’re like animals, you see, who have never known anything but cruelty and neglect. Sudden kindness is often viewed either with suspicion or disbelief. Even contempt. Of course,’ she smiled, ‘we do have our successes.’

  ‘Young Cheryl, perhaps?’ asked Barnaby. Then in the pause that followed. ‘Sorry. Confidential?’

  ‘Just so, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘What about Terry Jackson?’

  ‘Not one of ours.’

  Barnaby looked surprised.

  ‘Lionel sits on at least two rehab. boards. The young man may have become known to him that way.’

  ‘They’re all young, are they?’ asked Sergeant Troy. ‘These people Mr L takes on.’

  Miss Calthrop turned and stared at him. ‘What is the implication behind that remark?’

  ‘Just a question.’ Troy remembered the chief putting the same one, to himself as it were, a couple of days ago. ‘No offence.’

  ‘Lionel Lawrence is a saint among men.’ Miss Calthrop’s bulk started to agitate itself, heaving and trembling like a mountain on the move. Her magnificent voice developed a volcanic rumble. ‘His wife’s inability to have children is a tragedy. Do you wonder he is paternalistically inclined?’