The Circle

She repeated the question.

He said, 'I don't think anyone was invited there. She put up the shutters if you tried to get near. A very private person.'

'She can't have been all that private if she came to the circle and read out her work.'

'None of it was personal. It was how to make pickled onions.'

'Didn't any of them know her well?'

'I doubt it.'

'She wasn't timid,' Hen said, trying to get a better response. 'She didn't mind going for late-night walks.'

'I wouldn't know about that.'

'She seems to have fancied herself as a psychic as well.'

'Sidekick?'

'Psychic. Like Joan of Arc'

He shook his head. 'That's news to me.'

'She didn't hear voices. She saw things, apparently'

'And ended up as toast, just like Joan of Arc'

In the car, Hen said to Stella, 'What was that line of his about Miss Snow doing her secretary bit? '… she sits beside the Chair. .''

'. . taking minutes of the meeting with single-minded care.

Hen pondered this for a while. 'He's a bloody good observer. Remember the video of Blacker's visit? She had her head down right through the meeting. Even when he discussed her book she didn't speak. As I recall it, other people spoke on her behalf as if she wasn't there. Maurice McDade. Anton Gulliver. And when Blacker delivered his verdict on the script she still didn't say anything.'

'Is that important, guv?'

'Might be.' She went silent, alone with her thoughts again. The car travelled to the next traffic lights before she started up again. 'There could be something in this, Stell. Why was she so quiet? A secretary taking minutes isn't like a shorthand typist. They're not trying to catch every word. They're summarising. They have a chance to chip in with a comment here and there. You'd think she'd want to speak when her book was being discussed. Not a word.'

'I expect she saw him after the meeting.'

'No. She avoided him. Dagmar picked up the script for her. Miss Snow was supposedly too busy handing round competition forms. She asked Dagmar to collect her script.'

'Why?'

Hen's thoughts were slotting into place. She sensed she was on the brink of something significant. 'The moment Blacker walked into that room, Amelia Snow wanted the floor to swallow her up. She recognised him from way back.'

'An ex-boyfriend?'

'Worse than that.'

'Someone she'd dumped?'

'Much worse.'

'A rapist? He raped her when she was a young girl?'

'If he did, he got away with it. He's got a clean record. No, Stell, I'm wondering if it has to do with his time as editor of those men's magazines. Amelia Snow was a chorus girl. What year did Cats open?'

'Must have been in the early eighties.'

'You sure of that?'

'I was taken to see the original show as a birthday treat, round about my seventh birthday. That would have been January, eighty-two. It had been running some months already.'

'Let's say eighty-one, then. The timing is spot on. Eighty-two was the date of the 'Innocents' photo. We're dealing in coincidences here, but when you get enough of them it adds up to something bigger. Do you see what I'm getting at?'

'Not really.'

'She had a nice figure. Did you hear that?'

Stella's mouth shaped as if to whistle as she grasped what Hen was saying. 'Blacker got her to pose for one of his porn magazines?'

'Chatted her up, got her drunk, talked her into stripping off for the camera. That's the way they got their dirty pictures according to Lord Chalybeate. After it, she'd feel used, abused, mortified. She'd do her best to forget it. Then, twenty years later, the guy who seduced her walks into the New Park Centre to lecture the circle on publishing. No wonder she kept her head down. Does that sound possible?'

Stella weighed it before answering. 'Up to a point.'

'What's wrong with it?'

Hen waited for Stell's answer. They'd worked together long enough to be frank.

'They're both dead, Blacker and Miss Snow. Who would have wanted to kill them both, and why? The theory is all right, guv, but it doesn't seem to fit what happened.'

'It does,' Hen said, feeling and sounding more confident than she had at any stage. 'Someone else had a reputation to protect, a big reputation.'

27

But where are the snows of yesteryear'?

Frangois Villon, Le Grand Testament (1461), trans. D. G. Rossetti

Andy Humphreys shook his head and said, 'No way, guv.'

'I ask myself what's in it for you,' Hen said. 'Did I cut you up so badly when we first met? Is that why you did this — to get revenge?'

'I've done nothing wrong.'

'Come on. You're the one Naomi talked to. To her you're the face of the Chichester police.'

'But I wouldn't disclose information.'

'She told you about this website. You must have known it would all go on the internet if you blabbed.'

'Exactly. So I didn't.'

'She's clever enough to tease out the information indirectly.'

He shook his head. 'I swear, guv. I gave her nothing. Our meetings weren't mentioned once.'

'Have you had any contact with her apart from the interview?'

'Not a word.'

'Someone has.' She brandished the sheaf of paper that was Naomi's e-book. 'Someone talked at regular intervals. These are peppered with inside information. Yesterday's meeting — when we discussed the theory of two suspects working together — is already on the bloody website.'

'Not because of me.'

'All right, then. If it isn't you, who else has been mouthing off?'

'I wish I knew.'

In the face of his steady denials, she was beginning to lose confidence. He had to be the snitch, didn't he? 'I'd think more of you if you put your hand up to this.'

'It's untrue.'

'I'm going to find out, you know. If the truth doesn't come from you, I'll get it from Naomi herself. And if she gives me your name, it's the end of your career.'

Bob met Thomasine at Woody's, in St Pancras, at the end of East Street. As there was a noisy crowd in the bar, he suggested they move into the eating area, and it happened with no fuss that he took her for a meal for the