‘Thank you,’ said Steven. Thursday, 18 November, was the day that had been marked in Ann’s appointments diary as the day she was due to meet V — for the last time, as it turned out.
‘Mean anything?’ asked Hilary.
‘Not on its own.’ Steven smiled. ‘But the pieces are building. Did Ann have a boyfriend?’
‘Not that she ever admitted to.’
‘That’s an odd reply.’
‘All right, no, she didn’t have a boyfriend,’ said Hilary.
‘But she did?’ ventured Steven.
Hilary conceded with a smile. ‘Maybe she did. I had my suspicions. I think he was probably married.’
‘I don’t suppose she ever let slip a name?’
‘I thought she did once but then she covered it up so well that I sort of dismissed it as my imagination.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was telling her about an interview I’d seen on television with Michael Heseltine. John Humphrys was asking him about the Millennium Dome and she said something like, “Wotsisname says that’s a load of rubbish about urban regeneration,” and I said, “Who’s Wotsisname?” She sort of blushed and said, “Oh just someone I was talking to.” I know what you’re going to ask now but I don’t think I can remember the name. It was just a passing moment.’
‘If I were to tell you that his name begins with V?’ said Steven.
‘Yes,’ agreed Hilary, her eyes lighting up. ‘I remember now. It was Victor.’
EIGHT
‘You haven’t said why you want to build up a picture of Ann,’ said Hilary. ‘I take it it’s her illness rather than her suicide that you’re interested in?’
Steven agreed that it was.
‘It’s incredible, the papers are saying it was Ebola.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘But something just as bad?’
Steven nodded. ‘Could be.’
‘But how would someone like Ann get something like that? She wasn’t exactly a jet-setter. I only knew her to go abroad once, and that was a few years ago.’
‘That’s what I have to find out,’ said Steven.
‘And you think that this man, Victor, might have something to do with it?’
‘I have to explore every avenue, as they say,’ said Steven. ‘Tell me, were you aware that Ann went hill- walking?’
Hilary looked blank. ‘No, did she? That’s news to me. She didn’t strike me as the sort.’
Steven felt that he’d just made progress. If the hill-walking had been kept secret, it was probably something that Ann had done with Victor. ‘Do you think I could see where she worked?’ he asked.
‘Of course. I decided not to move in there, so you’re in luck. Her office hasn’t been touched.’
Steven was shown into an office three doors along the corridor. It felt cold and unwelcoming, like a disused cellar.
‘Brrr, the janitor’s turned the heating off in here,’ said Hilary as she clicked on the lights. ‘Maybe I should just leave you to it?’
Steven was left standing alone in the office that had been Ann Danby’s. It was large, square and high- ceilinged, like all the other rooms. It reminded him of a primary school classroom of yesteryear. It had two tall windows that looked out on to a brick wall less than twenty feet away. Steven walked over and looked down at the cobbled lane below, and saw litter blowing about in the breeze and the lights of the early-evening traffic on the main road at the end providing intermittent illumination. He sighed at the thought of working in such a place, sat down at the desk and switched on Ann’s desk lamp. The yellow pool of light was a welcome island in a sea of gloom.
Steven found the same meticulous attention to detail in Ann’s office as he had found in her flat. Each project she had worked on had its own box file on the shelves above her computer, and the first page in each gave details of where on the computer the master files were stored and where back-up files could be found. She had recently been working on the design of a new payroll system for the company, and the amount of detail listed suggested that Hilary Black would have little trouble in carrying on where Ann had left off. A second project had been concerned with providing computer-generated graphics for the illustrations for a book on Italian Renaissance architecture, which was due to be published by the firm in the late spring.
There was very little in the way of personal effects: no letters or cards that were not concerned with work, and the desk diary had been used exclusively for work-related appointments and meetings, with one exception. Ann had entered details of an appointment to have her hair done on Wednesday, 17 November, at 5.30 at a salon called Marie Claire. The date was interesting; it was the day before she had been due to meet Victor.
There were a number of prints on the walls which Steven presumed were Ann’s own: they were mainly of popular Canaletto and Monet paintings but there was a less well known Rory McEwan watercolour of African violets that he paused to admire. The attention to detail was awe-inspiring. He could understand why Ann had liked it. On a bookcase there were a couple of framed photographs featuring Ann herself at company functions. One of them he’d seen at her flat. It was the one where she was wearing a pink suit and shaking hands with a man wearing a chain of office while a number of other men in suits looked on with fixed smiles. In the other she was in a group of people watching a lady with a large hat cutting a ribbon to declare something or other open, although it wasn’t clear what.
‘A very private lady,’ murmured Steven when he had finished. He put out the lights and went along to Hilary Black’s office to return the key.
‘Find anything?’ she asked.
Steven shook his head. ‘Not really. She didn’t exactly put her personal stamp on things. There are a couple of photographs…’
‘Our centenary celebrations last year,’ said Hilary. ‘We put on an exhibition of our published work in the big room on the ground floor. You know the sort of thing, a celebration of all the titles we’d published. Local dignitaries came along and it was opened by the countess of something or other.’
Steven smiled at the irreverence.
‘Hardly anyone came, apart from university types. I guess they’re about the only ones who understood the titles, anyway,’ said Hilary.
‘I don’t see many of your books on the shelves at WH Smith,’ agreed Steven.
Hilary held up a book that had been lying on her desk. ‘ The Weaponry of Ancient Rome. It’s not exactly the heart-warming story of a boy and his dog, is it?’
Steven smiled and thanked her for her help.
‘Any time.’
‘One more thing. Can you tell me where I’ll find a hairdresser called Marie Claire?’
‘Not your kind of place, I would have thought, but it’s not too far from here. Turn left when you go out the front door then take the second on the right.’
Steven left the building to find cold, wet drizzle falling. It was putting a fuzzy halo round the streetlights and changing the sound of the car tyres as the evening rush hour got under way. He decided to leave the car where it was and find the salon on foot, which he succeeded in doing without much trouble. He welcomed the blast of heat that hit him when he entered, if not the smell of setting lotion and hair lacquer. He brushed the rain from his hair and turned down his jacket collar as he closed the door behind him.
‘I’m afraid we’re closing shortly,’ said the woman at a semicircular reception bar. ‘Would you like to make an appointment?’
Steven stated his business, showed his ID and was introduced to the owner, a busty blonde woman who was fighting a losing battle with the years by hiding behind an excess of make-up. She invited him through to the back.
