‘We could call in a medium,’ Grayle said.
‘Or we could simply call her agent,’ Maiden said. ‘She was talking to her yesterday from this pub we called at on the way over here. Whatever it was about, she didn’t want me to know. She took the phone into the loo. Afterwards she started saying there’d be no point in coming to St Mary’s, and that she had to be somewhere tomorrow — that’s today.’
‘She didn’t want us to know where she was going,’ Grayle said. ‘Why?’
‘Do we have the number of the agency?’
Grayle smiled. ‘I guess Marcus does.’
Marcus called from his study. He was quivering with the kind of adrenalin charge he’d thought he’d never experience again. ‘Want to speak to Nancy Rich,’ he told some lofty bitch.
‘Ms Rich is in a meeting. Perhaps you could call back later.’
‘Just get her,’ Marcus rasped.
‘I don’t know whether you heard what I-’
‘Well get her
‘And you are?’
‘Marcus Bacton, my name. Tell her-’
‘Does she know you?’
‘Tell her it’s about Persephone Callard.’
‘Are you a journalist?’
‘What I am’, said Marcus, ‘is a man with very little time to fart about, so you can tell Rich that if she doesn’t want to lose her principal meal ticket, she’d better get off her complacent arse and drag herself to the fucking phone. Am I making myself clear?’
‘Explicitly,’ the woman said coldly. ‘Hold the line, please.’
Marcus waited. The agency’s phone played Mozart to suggest you were connected to people of taste and intelligence. Marcus drummed his fingers on the desk. Outside, the wind was still battering the castle walls.
Nancy Rich came on the line.
‘You have one minute, Mr Baxter.’
‘I’m her agent.’
‘It’s imperative I speak to her. Without delay.’
‘Mr Bacton, have you any idea how many callers say precisely that?’
‘And half of them are dead, no doubt. Madam, I don’t care how many bloody crank calls you get, this is not one of them.’
‘Had to play the Winterstone card, in the end,’ he told them. ‘That’s the school. Which, inexplicably, is still in existence. Says she’ll call me back. Wants to check me out, I suppose. I think she’s still afraid I’m a bloody journalist.’
‘You are a bloody journalist,’ Grayle said.
‘Hmm. Yes. One forgets.’
Grayle smiled. The only good thing about this weird, uncomfortable situation was that Marcus had been galvanized.
The rest of the morning they drank coffee, nibbled toast, tossed around wild theories. Cindy tried, in vain, to call his producer. Grayle stashed all the dailies out of sight because of the way he kept going back to stare in distress at those big headlines. In the end Cindy said he’d walk up to the Knoll, give himself a retune.
Around two, a call came through.
Bobby’s mobile.
Foxworth. Maiden took the phone outside.
‘Information for you, Bobby. Show you what a helpful fellow I am.’
‘I always knew that, Ron,’ Maiden said warily.
‘Sir Richard Barber, Bobby. Still interested?’
‘Sure.’
‘Barber and Seward. It’s a yes. Barber retired at the last election, yeah? Afterwards, gets divorced from his missus. Papers are thinking, hello, what’s been going on there? But it’s too late now, he’s nobody special any more, so they never tried too hard to find out what he’d been up to in his nice new flat. Which, as it turns out, he’d been renting from Seward for quite a while before he bought it. Only for girls, mind, nothing sordid — Gary hates perverts. Just nice, clean, grown-up girlies.’
‘So, Gary’s flat and Gary’s girls? Where’d you get this, Ron?’
‘I’m a member of the Conservative Club. For the cheap beer. Always a comfort after the kind of day I’ve had.’
‘No developments, then.’
‘Oh yeah. Just the kind of development you need with my budget. Another one. Even nastier.’
‘No!’ Maiden wedged himself into the doorway, out of the wind.
‘Woman gets round to reporting her boyfriend missing after the other side of the bed’s been cold the best part of a week. Local bobby makes a routine visit to his place of work — he has a garage — finds somebody’s dropped a bloody car on the poor sod.’
‘Like from a crane?’
Ron explained.
‘What are the Cotswolds coming to?’ Maiden said neutrally. ‘No leads?’
‘How many d’you want? For starters we’ve got about half a dozen blokes whose wives this lad reckoned he was stuffing, so the regular girlfriend’s also worth a glance. Oh, yeah, lots of angles and about two spare bodies in CID for the legwork. I was
Maiden said, ‘You talk to the late Mr Crewe’s employer yet?’
A chuckle.
‘I was waiting for that. Yes, I have indeed. In person. Lovely office in Worcester. Charming view of the Severn.
‘He offer you a job when you retire?’
‘Blimey, son, that’s positively uncanny. Must be with poking the psychic.’
‘What else he have to say?’
‘Crewe? According to Mr Riggs, Forcefield is such a big organization nowadays that it’s appallingly difficult to keep tabs on all the staff. However, he’s done some checks and this does seem to be a regular lad, absolutely no reason to suspect, etcetera, etcetera.’
‘You believe that?’
‘What difference does it make? Where are you at present, Bobby?’
‘Staying with friends, out past Hereford.’
‘You and the lady?’
‘Just me. She had some business.’ Maiden decided there wasn’t going to be a better time to pump Ron on the subject of Clarence Judge. ‘Leaving me with lots of free time to read Gary’s book. Oh … I take it you know about the new paperback — the reward for a name on Judge?’
‘You what?’
He had Ron’s full attention. He took the phone into Marcus’s study, found the book, read out the relevant part of the Preface.
‘I may be wrong here, Ron, but do you think maybe he doesn’t trust you to investigate it properly?’
‘I don’t doubt that would be true, if it was my case, Bobby, but Clarence was found on a building site down near Abingdon. Where he was done, that’s another matter, but Abingdon was where they found him, so it’s Kiddlington’s migraine. Especially now. Well, the cheeky cunt.’
‘Still a big shortlist, is there?’
