She dropped the envelope on to the table as if it were a red-hot coal.
'He's an honest trader and pays an honest price, so he requests proof of identity and ownership in order to be sure that the goods aren't stolen. He also records the type of proof that's offered. In the case of Ann Butts, it was a bank card and supporting statement, and a Sotheby's valuation of a list of items, including the jewelery, which were viewed on site at 30 Graham Road, Richmond. I presume you don't still have it?' I said with a lift of my eyebrows. 'You wouldn't have been that stupid, would you?'
She reached for another cigarette but I took the packet away from her and flattened it under my heel as I stood up.
'The really interesting fact,' I finished, leaning my hands on the table, 'is that the first item wasn't sold until June '79, and my jeweler friend is positive that the Ann Butts he dealt with was a small white woman with a Brummy accent.'
She had a quick mind for a Prozac junkie and a drinker. 'Just like half a million others then,' she said.
'My phone number's on the envelope,' I reminded her. 'Call me if you want to trade. If you don't, I'll give the affidavit to the police.'
'Trade what?'
'Information. I want to know who murdered Annie, Maureen ... not who stole from her.'
Sharon Percy refused to open her door beyond the burglar chain. 'I'm not going to talk to you,' she said. 'You thought I wouldn't recognize you, but I watched you go into Maureen's so it didn't take much guessing.'
A tortoise head loomed behind her in the hallway. 'First you pester us with bloody letters,' Geoffrey spat at me, 'now you turn up in the flesh. Why don't you just bugger off and leave us alone?'
'I would have done if you'd written back,' I said.
'What's to say?' he growled. 'We don't know anything. Never did.'
'Then why did you lie in your statements to the police?'
There was a look of panic on both their faces before the door was slammed against me. As I hadn't expected anything else, I set off on the two-mile walk to Jock Williams's house.
Windrush
Henchard Lane
Melton Mowbray
Leicestershire
June 19, 1997
M'dear,
Written in haste before I start cooking supper for the hungry horde. Would you believe Jock's moved yet another bimbo into that mansion of his! He seems to replace them every few months, yet he's hardly sex on wheels, for God's sake! How on earth does he attract them? I know he makes money from time to time but it's not as if he holds on to it for very long.
His new project, 'Systel'-something to do with mobile phones-looks optimistic, but if it goes the way of the others he'll be looking for a huge injection of cash within a year or so. Word has it (the new bimbo) he has such a lousy reputation with venture capitalists he's now looking at loans secured against the house. He needs his head examined if he does because he'll end up without a roof over his head if he overreaches himself. Heh! Heh!
God, I'm a bitch! And why am I still doing this? Perhaps I'm a
All love,
Libby
X X X
PS: Jim keeps complaining about the amount of time I spend at teachers' conferences. Did I tell you I'm now a union rep? Next stop Parliament! And this from a man who expects me to entertain his major account-holders every weekend with cordon bleu cookery! Men, eh? Who needs 'em?
*16*
Jock kept me standing on the step for several minutes before he opened the door, and I took the time to catch my breath after my hike from Graham Road to the rather grander street between Queen's Road and Richmond Hill where he was now living. The area had been developed in the wake of rail travel when the middle classes first began to exploit the benefits of living at a distance from their workplaces in noisy city centers; and the houses, though still in terraces, were more substantial than their humbler counterparts in Mortlake, with a third story to accommodate servants. A hundred years ago, each house would have had a walled front garden with trees and shrubs for privacy, but since the advent of the two-car family the gardens had been opened and paved to provide off-street parking.
To one side of Jock's frontage was an elderly black Mercedes with worn leather seats, and I was peering through the windscreen wondering if it was his when the door to the house snapped open and he appeared at my side. 'You're half an hour early,' he said irritably. 'I thought we agreed two o'clock.'
I had expected age, divorce and thwarted ambition to have mellowed him a little, but attack, I saw, was still his favored form of defense. I was surprised by the sense of pleasurable recognition I felt, as of an old friend, and offered my cheek for a kiss. 'Hello, Jock,' I said. 'How are you?'
