“London in microcosm,” McKell comments, “without the fun and glamor, such as there is. Oh yes, and the one-way traffic system was a nightmare, parking unspeakable. Made it very difficult to go shopping in Longdown without getting a ticket.” (Since McKell tends to have reasons for the smallest of talk, I ought to have tucked parking problems away for reference — it would have saved me getting left behind, later on.)
“I suppose,” he muses, “the layout of the place displeased me. There was no there to Long-down, if you get my drift. Travelers tell me Los Angeles has the same quality. Everything is mixed up: the nick I worked out of, Central, was on Castle Hill. The main fire station was next door to us, with some posh department stores over the road.
“So you’d think that was the center of town or at least the administrative and snobby quarter. Except that the council offices were a mile the other side of town, alongside the glitziest boutiques. But most of the cinemas were in another spot, while clubs and discos were in six other directions.
“So it went, little islands with endless houses and workshops and so forth in between. Pig of a manor to get a handle on. Longdown was prosperous but only half awake. Yet as soon as you needed to go anywhere in a hurry, a traffic jam developed. Only good thing about it was that, in one respect, Longdown was exactly like the village where I started the Job. Those little islands made it far smaller than its physical size — everybody knew who I was and what I did. And some of them weren’t backward in coming forward...”
Inspector McKell had fallen into the habit of letting his wife drive him to work and take their car to her own workplace. He had the use of official vehicles while on duty, but lunch hours left him between the devil of Central’s dreary canteen and the deep blue sea of sinfully expensive restaurants where only the bill would be presented in English. Unless he patronized a midget sandwich bar — the premises, not the sandwiches — where no crowd-disliker could bear to linger during nourishment.
Being well organized, Tom McKell picked up a sandwich on the way to work and, weather permitting, lunched in Castle Hill Park. “I’m not antisocial, but you need a minute or two’s fresh air and peace and quiet. I do, leastways.”
One lunchtime he was absorbed in his paperback Pickwick Papers when a shadow fell across the page. “Fancy bumping into you,” Tania Wark trilled. “My, that bench looks inviting, so cosy and secluded.” She sat close enough for a shiny nylon knee to graze his thigh. “I hope Mrs. McKell doesn’t hear about this and get the wrong idea.” He was mildly surprised that his book’s pages stayed dormant while her false eyelashes fanned so vigorously.
McKell had been interested in Tania Wark for a month or more. Many men found her eminently fanciable. While bold-eyed blondes with good bodies never lack for admirers, the inspector’s interest was professional. He felt that Mrs. Wark had something on her mind, like a deal. Now he was sure of it.
Tania Wark had not happened to encounter him during a lunch-hour stroll. Tall, she chose to look taller, and her backless, needle-heeled shoes were not made for the shaggy turf and gravel paths of Castle Hill Park. Someone had told her that he might well be found there, inspiring Mrs. Wark to drive a mile and a half in order to meet him by accident. Not just a pretty face, she was a qualified pharmacist and ran a chemist shop at Appleyard, one of the town’s better suburbs. McKell knew her from Long-down’s after-hours drinking clubs. Mr. Wark — he owned the chemist shop — was a homebody who permitted his wife to behave like a single. Possibly he welcomed her nights on the town as a respite.
Smiling politely, McKell closed his book and studied her. “Penny for your thoughts!” she cried, when silence grew long enough to embarrass her, though not him.
“I never think off duty,” McKell lied, still smiling.
Tania Wark shifted away, jawline firming. But along with that went an aura of new respect. Pretending to sunbathe, she spoke dreamily. “Being a copp — policeman, you must be a good judge of character. Me, people are always surprising me. I’m a t’riffic people-watcher, you see. Well, stuck behind a shop counter, it’s either that or go crazy from boredom.”
He was unmoved by her level gaze, lips slightly parted, eyebrows slightly raised in implicit cue for him to suggest other cures for boredom. He’d dealt with many a Tania Wark in his time, learning that flirtation was their reflex to male company.
Tom McKell made a vaguely impatient noise. Mrs. Wark continued, overtly rambling still, “I usually get them wrong, that’s the funny part. Executives turn out to be hooligans and vice versa. Angel-faced kids are the worst shoplifters. Even customers I know pretty well, or thought I did, are full of surprises.
“Case in point, Ivy Challis — I only mention her because you know Ivy, too. By sight, anyway, she’s often been in the Rocket Room or Captain Hook’s when you were there. Redhead, terribly attractive, could have been a model. She’s a great friend of Ivor Grange... rest his soul.”
Inspector McKell’s fisherman’s instinct tingled, but he made no comment on her mixing of tenses in referring to Grange. Two could play at sunbathing. Eyes slitted, he sensed Tania Wark’s stare. “Hope I’m not talking out of turn, saying that. Rest his soul, I mean. Ivor hasn’t been around for days and days, and there are horrible rumors he might... have had an accident?”
“I keep hearing that, too. Small world.”
Mrs. Wark laughed angrily, a breathy yelp. “You’d be a dead loss on a talk show, making me do all the work.”
“But,” he countered blandly, “I’m a grand listener.”
She contrived to keep her temper and started over. “Ivy is ever so elegant. I mean, you’d expect her to be into champagne and caviar, coming on so classy. But would you believe it, I’ve sold her, oh, pounds’ and pounds’ worth of baby food recently. The slop in those little jars?” After a longish wait, Tania Wark finished lamely, “It just goes to show, eh?”
“Maybe she’s pregnant. Don’t women get odd cravings then?”
“Ivy lumber herself with a baby? I don’t think so. Apart from anything else, she’s a teeny bit mature to get broody.” Mrs. Wark hesitated, and he picked up the sharp indrawal of breath before her next, hurried speech. “Actually, I’m a bit worried about Ivy. She seems a bit stressed. Wanted me to sell her painkillers, powerful stuff you can’t get without a prescription. I was unable to oblige, of course.” For an instant Tania sounded schoolgirl-virtuous, in comical contrast to her heavy perfume and strident makeup.
“Of course not,” Inspector McKell echoed solemnly.
“Good,” she said briskly, as if they had struck a bargain. Her smile was almost natural. “Nice to chat like this. Maybe we can do it again. When I think of anything to interest you. And I’m sure there will be.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He hoped that Tania perceived the silent subtext as, “There better had be.” He was sure that she had. Not an admirable woman; by the same token, not a stupid one. Tom McKell scribbled on a scrap of paper and passed it to her. “Home number, and the other is my direct line. Phones have ears, remember, so just fix up a meet whenever you feel like a nice chat.”
At this early stage of the narrative (balder and more factual in McKell’s mouth, but my version is accurate) I called time out, on grounds of bafflement. “This is supposed to be about a grass. The way you tell it, the Wark woman told you nothing in particular and no money changed hands.”