“I probably got that wrong as well but, yes, I thought there was a mutual regard between us. You wouldn’t expect it, given our differing situations. but we did get to know each other pretty well. The hours we spent sitting around in dressing rooms waiting for the light of our lives to come and shine on us for a while! Julia’s sharp and she’s funny and she’s well-informed. If you have an hour to kill I can’t think of a better companion.”
“She may well have wondered where her own future lay when, or if, her mistress decided to throw in her lot with you?”
“Never occurred to me. If it had, I’d have thought—she’d be taken care of. I would have welcomed her into our lives. Or paid her handsomely to start afresh.” He sighed, frowned for a moment and then confided: “But, with Natalia dead, things change for Julia. She’ll be devastated, of course, but she’ll also be independent. I’ll give you the address of Natalia’s lawyer in London. You’ll be needing that. She had no close family. They all got caught on the wrong side in that Russian business. I’m pretty sure she would have been planning to leave all she had to Julia.”
“Thank you. I’ll follow that up. I did wonder about the placing of the chocolate box. It’s possible, you know. Even probable. The two were in contact. I had Julia followed. Natalia was doing her directing from the wings, did you know? Not far away. From a house in Harley Street. The annexe of a hospital for women. An establishment that offers rather special care and repair for the female body. They have facilities dancers are often grateful for—at a price. She was clearly at home there.”
Kingstone, he was sure, had not been aware. “Lord! She would be! She told me she’d invested her money in a medical establishment for women. Branches in every continent, she said. For rest and recuperation … massage and treatment … The coming thing, the modern thing, and a way to help out her own sex and profession.” He swallowed and muttered, “I gave her some funding for it—she would never accept diamonds or gold. ‘Jewels? Too last-century for words, my darling,’ she said. The proceeds from the business would sustain her when she gave up her career—that was the idea. Better than money in the bank. It was already bearing fruit, she told me. In my ignorance I was seeing twisted ankles, broken limbs, bad backs … You’re implying abortion clinic, aren’t you?”
Joe nodded. “And the girl whose body you saw at the Yard—I don’t have her name yet—died in just such a place. An ‘intrauterine haemorrhage suffered in the course of a surgical termination of pregnancy,’ according to Doctor Rippon. I think she died on Tuesday evening and her body must have been stored on the premises awaiting burial. Perhaps she had no immediate family to claim the body and ask awkward questions? They would, at all events, be looking for a discreet disposal that wouldn’t call for the regulation two signatures by registered physicians.”
“And they used her body? For spare parts? That drama with the burial in the mud?” Kingstone frowned. “They meant her to be found. Right there. To pole axe me?”
“As a flaunting of power and evil intent, it seemed to work. Whatever this business you’ve been press-ganged for, it must be fearfully important, Cornelius.”
“I thought I’d made that clear. It’s world-changing. Believe me, the body of one little dancer would worry them as much as that squashed beetle they mentioned. The men at the top, that is.”
“But someone in the lower echelons felt otherwise. What was it Lydia said about closing Natalia’s eyes? Ritual? A sign of respect? Our first dead girl so carefully interred a foot deep in the mud had her eyes closed and was given a parting gift in the classical manner. An extravagant gesture. What was this saying?”
“I’ll tell you what it was saying!” Kingstone was growing angry and aggressive. “ ‘I do apologise for this, my dear. Accept this as my penance … I can well afford it. And I’m an absolute asshole.’ Who on earth, Joe?”
“Lydia has decided the man behind this is a sadistic choreographer.”
“There’s no other kind. But that’s not who we’re looking for.” Kingstone eyed him with speculation warmed by a gleam of boyish mischief. “What do you say to taking them on at their own game, Joe? You know what’s called for? A three-man mill! Three strong men, standing shoulder to shoulder, knowing the game and with the guts to put their heads down and keep shoving, can wipe the board clean.”
“Um … whom do you have in mind, senator? I doubt Marcus would …”
Kingstone shook his head. “The game board has been laid out in London and that’s where we’re going to take them on. Me, you and William Armiger.”
“Bill?” Joe could not disguise his alarm. “Sir … before you go any further with this … there’s something you ought to know about the sergeant.”
The good humour was now in the open as Kingstone replied, “I wasn’t expecting you’d have gotten there yet, Joe! I know what I need to know. He’s a ruthless, but not a conscienceless, killer. He once saved your life and now I can say he’s just added another grateful soul to his tally: mine. We both owe him. Well, what do you say? How do you like the odds? Shall we three give the Nine Men a bloody nose?”
CHAPTER 22
“I’m ready! I’ve been ready for some while!”
The swaggering words, instantly regretted, slipped out in spite of the chorus of warning voices resounding in Joe’s skull. There was no time to examine his motives, to refer to the years of careful Metropolitan police training, to question allegiances, to test himself for unthinking patriotism. He’d never thought to hear the sound of the bugle again but here he was, every inch of him tensing, his senses alert, sniffing the air like a pensioned-off warhorse.
There was one indigestible fact to examine and deal with before he could continue to enjoy this mad rush into the unknown. He slapped it down baldly in front of Kingstone.
“William Armiger shot Natalia dead.”
“Agreed. I just suggested as much. That’s what my head and my heart have been telling me.”
“Not good enough. An inspection of entrails to arrive at a conclusion won’t swing it with the Force. I offer you—not a silent exchange between conscience and corpse but a conclusion based on sound police work.”
“You’re over-revving! You haven’t had the time,” Kingstone challenged.
“No. But the Surrey force have. That local P.C. you showed into the hall before I went off to Guildford—Brightwell his name is—had come to hand me a car registration number. Sent along to close off the bridge, he’d exceeded his orders and lingered on in the lane, where he was able to confront the Maybach boys and reinforce the instructions regarding closure personally. He didn’t like the look of them. He didn’t trust them not to sneak back so he cycled off a way after them and hid himself in the bushes, preparing to spring out and be unkind to them.
“Figure his astonishment when he saw the driver of a grey car he’d already clocked skulking in a lay-by, firmly heave the carefully positioned diversion sign out of the way and drive over the bridge in cavalier fashion. He took its number and eventually made his way over here with a description. Old Riley. Grey. Male driver in tweeds and a flat cap. Togged out like the Prince of Wales on his way to spend a weekend at Sandringam. No passengers. ‘Townie. Up to no good,’ was Brightwell’s verdict. A cigarette smoker, the constable says. He produced a paper bag with a partly smoked Woodbine he’d found freshly abandoned and still smouldering at the lay-by he’d thought to examine.
“I asked the desk sergeant at Guildford to get on the phone and follow this up for me while I was interviewing Cummings. The description was answered by the car belonging to a silk stocking manufacturer from Liverpool. A further check with the motoring boys at the Yard told us that it had been reported stolen early this morning from a hotel in London. A hotel just around the corner from Harley Street.