The Cold Calling

you leave it in the dressing room? Nobody’ll mess with it.’

‘That’s what they said in Blackpool, and next morning I’m dangling off the end of a flagpole with a pair of knickers in my beak.’

‘What are you moaning about? Got your picture in the Daily Mirror.’

‘It was humiliating.’

‘No publicity is humiliating. Come on … off we go, back to the digs.’

With no ceremony but perhaps the dregs of affection, Cindy dumped Kelvyn in his imitation-crocodile suitcase, the bird still rambling on in his muffled way as Cindy lugged the case to. the dressing room door. ‘Don’t know why we can’t get decent digs any more. I remember, I do, when we had a three-room suite in …’

‘Oh,’ Cindy said. ‘Good evening, ladies.’

The two cleaners giggled. Margot and Sarah. Been outside the door listening for a good five minutes. Cindy gave them a free show after the matinee every Friday. On a long summer season, it was important, for your general health, to keep the cleaners on your side.

‘He’s a card, isn’t he, Mr Mars?’

‘Irrepressible.’

‘Does he sleep in your bedroom?’

‘Perches on the curtain rail, he does,’ said Cindy. ‘Course, he’s awake at first light, the bugger. Chatting up this little gull, he was, at six-thirty this morning. Six-thirty!’

‘Gotta get what you can these days, lovely. In Bournemouth, a red kite’s worth ten points among your common seagulls, did you know that? Quite sexy, she was, this one, mind, so you never know how it might turn out. All together now, The bells are ringing, for me and my gull … haw, haw, haw.’

‘Shut up, or you won’t get any of Mrs Capaldi’s lasagne.’

‘Call that a threat?’

‘Oh,’ said the younger cleaner, Sarah, paling.

‘Oh God,’ said the older cleaner, Margot.

They weren’t laughing any more.

Sarah fiddled with her duster. ‘I didn’t know you were staying with Mrs Capaldi, Mr Mars.’

‘We always stay with Mrs Capaldi in Bournemouth. Forget all that posh hotel stuff, Kelvyn lies through his beak.’

‘You haven’t seen tonight’s Echo, then?’

‘It’s just awful,’ said Margot. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about. She was a difficult enough girl, heaven knows, but nobody on this earth deserves that. Nobody.’

Dear God.

By the time he reached the Bella Vista Guesthouse, Cindy had read the Echo story twice.

Maria Capaldi? Maria?

Maria it was who had first called him Cindy, when she was quite small and couldn’t get her lips around Sydney. Uncle Cindy.

The Echo had a photograph of her, from the days before she’d had her hair cut short, before the nose-rings. The photo from Mrs Capaldi’s mantelpiece, taken on the girl’s eighteenth birthday, when she was due to go to university — from which she would drop out a year later. Mrs Capaldi would have handed it willingly to the press, a beautiful memorial, the last picture of an unsullied, unembittered Maria.

Cindy had bewildered tears in his eyes as he turned the corner and saw — as if the report needed confirmation — a police car outside Bella Vista and another car behind it, both on the double yellows.

The VACANCIES sign had been replaced by an ominously crooked NO VACANCIES. The little, square lobby was deserted, the picture postcards hanging limply from their rack alongside the pink and blue poster announcing KELVYN KITE (with Cindy Mars) with a picture of both of them wearing mocking smiles.

‘I’m sorry, sir, it’s closed.’ A policewoman had pushed through the bead curtain.

‘I … er … I’m staying here.’

‘What name is it?’

‘Mars-Lewis. Sydney Mars-Lewis.’

The policewoman vanished into the chinking curtain. When she came back, she said, ‘Sorry, Mr Lewis, but you might have been a reporter.’ Lowered her voice. ‘Know what’s happened, do you?’

Cindy nodded, as there came a wail from within. ‘Let ‘im in! Let ‘im in!’ The policewoman shrugged and held back the beads for him, and Cindy went through into the artificial darkness and the real despair.

The curtains were drawn tight in the residents’ lounge, a table lamp shone under a picture of Jesus. Mrs Capaldi was a tiny creature in a corner of the four-seater sofa. A teacup shivered in its saucer on her aproned knees. Her greying black hair was in stiff peaks. Fresh make-up plastered over tearstains.

‘Cindy …’ She held out both hands, like a drowning woman, and Cindy took one, kneeling on the carpet at the side of the sofa. ‘What I do? What I ever do to anybody to deserve this ‘appen to me?’

All the times he’d heard her ask this about Maria, alive.

‘Mr Lewis.’ A youngish man with thinning hair arose from a deep armchair. ‘Peter Hatch, Detective Chief Inspector. I, er, brought my children to see your show a couple of years ago. Very, er …’

Cindy moved to shake hands, but Mrs Capaldi held on to him. The detective nodded, smiled briefly, sat down again. He spoke quietly.

‘You have much to do with Maria, Mr Lewis?’

‘Less lately than at one time,’ Cindy said. ‘Although we did have our discussions about blood sports. Which both of us deplored.’

‘So you knew what she was doing in that wood?’

‘Shamed me into going with them once, she did.’

‘Oh God,’ cried Mrs Capaldi. ‘Oh, Cindy, why couldn’t it be you with her today, instead of that stupid Martin?’

‘Alas,’ Cindy explained to the detective. ‘Always been a little queasy about open confrontation, I have. Maria was braver than me.’ He sighed. ‘Poor dab. Poor dab. Have you … you know …?’

We’re talking to a few people,’ DCI Hatch said. ‘I don’t anticipate a long investigation. What I’m trying to find out from Mrs Capaldi is if it was well known that Maria was a hunt saboteur. If she’d ever received any personal abuse or threats as a result.’

‘An’ I say to ‘im, even if she ‘ad a threat to kill ‘er, the last person she ever tell about it is ‘er own mother.’

Cindy squeezed Mrs Capaldi’s hand as the tears spurted. Yes, he’d known where Maria was going today. Even wishing her luck last night. Yeah, she’d said, with a limp good-night wave of the hand. Tally ho, Cindy. It wasn’t something she enjoyed any more; it was something she had to do, like hospital visiting or donating blood.

He shivered. Shot. Shot dead in a clearing in the forest, the paper said. The cleaner was right; it didn’t bear thinking about.

‘Like she was lying in a bed,’ Mrs Capaldi said faintly. ‘A sheet tucked up around her chin.’

Cindy looked at Hatch.

‘Mortuary,’ Hatch mumbled. There was an uncomfortable silence. Hatch made eye contact with the policewoman. ‘More tea, I think, Alison.’

Cindy said, ‘What … kind of person are you looking for?’

‘This stage, we have to examine all the options. My money’s on some sixteen-year-old yobbo who, at this moment, is a very frightened kid.’

‘Or a hunt supporter?’

Hatch smiled thinly. ‘Now you’re being controversial, Mr Lewis.’

‘Pah!’ said Mrs Capaldi. ‘’Unters! Big family, lotsa money. You never gonna pin it on a ‘unters.’

‘Mrs Capaldi, I can assure you that, at this stage, nobody has been ruled out.’

‘Pah.’ Mrs Capaldi’s tear-glazed eyes rising to a lurid Pre-Raphaelite madonna over the fireplace. ‘She was a good girl, a lovely girl when she wanted. She got principles. More than me. Her father, ‘e ‘ad principles. Me, I like