‘There’s my car. Let’s talk there.’
The Bentley was silver grey with all the extras; when you shut the door it sounded like you’d walked through the entrance of a very exclusive gentlemen’s club. It smelled like one, too; all leather and cigars and thick pile carpets.
‘I didn’t know that Mrs Zarco wasn’t aware of my arrangement with her husband,’ said Lambton. ‘I felt really awful about it afterwards. But I thought, widowed or not, the best thing for her now would be to complete the building project as quickly as possible so she can flog the place and get on with her life. Which does seem to be what she wants to do. Frankly the whole job has been a bloody nightmare from start to finish.’
‘That’s certainly the impression I got. But what was your arrangement with Mr Zarco?’
‘The Zarcos have been getting a lot of complaints about the building work from the neighbours. In particular the people at number thirteen, next door — as you can imagine. Which means that I’ve been under a lot of pressure from the Zarcos to get this building finished as soon as possible. And the only way I can get the lads to work the overtime I’m asking them to do in order to make that happen is to pay them double time, in cash. Money really does talk to these boys. That was my arrangement with Mr Zarco. He’d pay the double time himself. The weekends, too. On Saturday he was supposed to stump up the twenty k that would help me to get things finished before the end of March, which is ahead of schedule, I might add. But you know what happened. It’s really too bad. I liked him a lot. Now I’ve no idea what I’ll do. I mean, that’s the end of the double overtime and working on a Sunday.’
‘Not necessarily.’
I’d anticipated this moment. In Toyah’s lavatory I’d separated the bung money into two amounts: twenty grand and thirty grand. The twenty grand was still in the Jiffy bag, the rest was in a compartment in my backpack.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘The twenty grand he was planning to give you.’
‘That’s brilliant. I know it sounds a lot, but these Romanian boys are hard workers and worth every penny. I mean they really do want to bloody work, unlike some of our own. But don’t get me started on that.’ He laughed. ‘Now if you can just sort out Mr and Mrs Van de Merwe at number thirteen, everything will be perfect.’
‘What would you suggest?’
‘Seriously?’
41
Pimlico is like Belgravia without rich people. The folks in Pimlico aren’t exactly poor, it’s just that much of their wealth is tied up in the value of their flats and houses.
Number twelve was an end-of-terrace property; the house next door was a six-storey white stucco mansion from the early nineteenth century with a fine Doric portico and a black door that was as polished as a guardsman’s boots; or at least it would have been if it hadn’t been covered with a fine layer of builders’ dust. There was a blue plaque on the wall but it was too dark for me to identify the famous person who had once lived there. But I knew the area quite well; Gianluca Vialli had lived around the corner when he’d been player-manager of Chelsea until 2001, and if anyone deserved a blue plaque it was him: the four goals he’d scored against Barnsley were among the best I’d ever seen in the Premier League.
I pulled the old-fashioned doorbell and heard it ring behind the door, but I think I might have heard it ring in Manresa Road.
At least a minute passed and I was about to give up and go away when a light went on in the portico; then I heard several bolts being drawn and a largish key being turned in a probably Victorian lock. The door opened to reveal an old man in a brown corduroy suit. He had a sort of Dutch painter’s beard and moustache that was white but stained with nicotine, and wild grey hair that seemed to be growing in several different directions at once so that it looked like the Maggi Hambling seascape on my wall. On his nose was a pair of half-moon glasses and around his neck was a loosely tied beige silk scarf. He had one of the weariest faces I think I’d ever seen — not so much lined as cracked; you wouldn’t have been surprised to see a face like that shatter into a dozen pieces.
‘Mr Van de Merwe?’
‘Yes?’
‘Forgive me for interrupting you,’ I said. ‘My name is Scott Manson. I wonder if I might come inside and talk to you for a moment?’
‘About what?’
‘About Mr Zarco.’
‘Who are you? The police?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not the police.’
‘Who is it, dear?’ said a voice.
‘Someone about Mr Zarco,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘He says he’s not the police.’
His voice, no less weary than his face, sounded a bit like someone looking for a channel on a shortwave radio. And his accent sounded vaguely South African.
A woman as anxious-looking as a stolen Munch scream came into the hall; she was old and small with a mountain of fairish hair and wore a thick white sweater with a South African flag on a breast that was as large as my backpack.
‘You’d better come in,’ said the man and shuffled to one side, which was when I noticed he had a crutch to help him walk.
The hall was dominated by a film poster for a creaky old movie called Passport to Pimlico, an Ealing comedy from a few years after the war. The old couple looked as if they’d been in it. On a table was a blue glass figurine, possibly Lalique, of a semi-naked woman; some opened mail for a Mr John Cruikshank MA lay next to it. There was a strong smell of furniture polish in the air and a large pile of newly washed yellow dusters on the stairs.
They ushered me into a large sitting room full of furniture that had seen better days but possibly a couple of world wars, too. There were books and paintings and everything looked like it had been there for a very long time; a thin layer of more recently acquired dust covered the back of long leather sofa they invited me to sit on. A younger woman, quite good-looking, wearing jeans and a fleece, was seated at the opposite end. She noticed me wiping my fingers on my hand and, immediately producing another yellow duster, angrily set about wiping the sofa.
‘This is my daughter, Mariella,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘Mariella, this is Mr Manson. He wants to ask us some questions about poor Mr Zarco.’
Mariella grunted, irritably.
‘Not exactly questions,’ I said. ‘Is it just the three of you here?’
‘That sounds exactly like a question,’ said Mariella.
‘It was just small talk,’ I said. ‘Maybe a bit too small for some.’
‘My son-in-law John lives here too,’ said Mr Van de Merwe. ‘He’s away at the moment.’
‘Would you like a drink, Mr Manson?’ asked his wife. ‘A sherry, perhaps?’
‘Yes, please.’
All three of them went out of the room, leaving me to stare at the ceiling for several minutes. Through the wall I could hear the sound of one of Lambton’s Romanian workmen hammering nails, and then someone started with a drill. It was easy to see why the Van de Merwes had felt moved to complain about the noise; listening to that for twelve hours a day would have driven me mad. All the same it was hard to imagine them harassing a tardy postman, let alone a gang of Romanian builders, as Lambton had alleged.
They arrived back as a little trio — Mr Van de Merwe bearing a single glass on a silver tray, his wife carrying a bottle of sherry, and their daughter holding a plate of sliced ham.
‘Is that a Stanley Spencer?’ I asked, pointing at a painting on the wall.
‘Yes,’ said the old man.
‘It’s nice,’ I said, with considerable understatement; Spencer was one of my favourites.