The Cuckoo's Calling - Страница 78

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“Tony wanted me to.”

Strike noted the pleasurable self-consciousness with which she pronounced her boss’s name.

“Why?”

“To keep an eye on John.”

“Tony thinks John needs watching, does he?”

She did not answer.

“They share you, John and Tony, don’t they?”

“What?” she said sharply.

He was glad to have discomposed her.

“They share your services? As a secretary?”

“Oh—oh, no. I work for Tony and Cyprian; I’m the senior partners’ secretary.”

“Ah. I wonder why I thought you were John’s too?”

“I work on a completely different level,” said Alison. “John uses the typing pool. I have nothing to do with him at work.”

“Yet romance blossomed across secretarial rank and floors?”

She met his facetiousness with more disdainful silence. She seemed to see Strike as intrinsically offensive, somebody undeserving of manners, beyond the pale.

The hostel worker stood alone in a corner, helping himself to sandwiches, palpably killing time until he could decently leave. Robin emerged from the Ladies, and was instantly suborned by Bristow, who seemed eager for assistance in coping with Aunt Winifred.

“So, how long have you and John been together?” asked Strike.

“A few months.”

“You got together before Lula died, did you?”

“He asked me out not long afterwards,” she said.

“He must have been in a pretty bad way, was he?”

“He was a complete mess.”

She did not sound sympathetic, but slightly contemptuous.

“Had he been flirting for a while?”

He expected her to refuse to answer; but he was wrong. Though she tried to pretend otherwise, there was unmistakable self-satisfaction and pride in her answer.

“He came upstairs to see Tony. Tony was busy, so John came to wait in my office. He started talking about his sister, and he got emotional. I gave him tissues, and he ended up asking me out to dinner.”

In spite of what seemed to be lukewarm feelings for Bristow, he thought that she was proud of his overtures; they were a kind of trophy. Strike wondered whether Alison had ever, before desperate John Bristow came along, been asked out to dinner. It had been the collision of two people with an unhealthy need: I gave him tissues, and he asked me out to dinner.

The hostel worker was buttoning up his jacket. Catching Strike’s eye, he gave a farewell wave, and departed without speaking to anyone.

“So how does the big boss feel about his secretary dating his nephew?”

“It’s not up to Tony what I do in my private life,” she said.

“True enough,” said Strike. “Anyway, he can’t talk about mixing business with pleasure, can he? Sleeping with Cyprian May’s wife as he is.”

Momentarily fooled by his casual tone, Alison opened her mouth to respond; then the meaning of his words hit her, and her self-assurance shattered.

“That’s not true!” she said fiercely, her face burning. “Who said that to you? It’s a lie. It’s a complete lie. It’s not true. It isn’t.”

He heard a terrified child behind the woman’s protest.

“Really? Why did Cyprian May send you to Oxford to find Tony on the seventh of January then?”

“That—it was only—he’d forgotten to get Tony to sign some documents, that’s all.”

“And he didn’t use a fax machine or a courier because…?”

“They were sensitive documents.”

“Alison,” said Strike, enjoying her agitation, “we both know that’s balls. Cyprian thought Tony had sloped off somewhere with Ursula for the day, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t! He hadn’t!”

Up at the bar, Aunt Winifred was waving her arms, windmill-like, at Bristow and Robin, who were wearing frozen smiles.

“You found him in Oxford, did you?”

“No, because—”

“What time did you get there?”

“About eleven, but he’d—”

“Cyprian must’ve sent you out the moment you got to work, did he?”

“The documents were urgent.”

“But you didn’t find Tony at his hotel or in the conference center?”

“I missed him,” she said, in furious desperation, “because he’d gone back to London to visit Lady Bristow.”

“Ah,” said Strike. “Right. Bit odd that he didn’t let you or Cyprian know that he was going back to London, isn’t it?”

“No,” she said, with a valiant attempt at regaining her vanished superiority. “He was contactable. He was still on his mobile. It didn’t matter.”

“Did you call his mobile?”

She did not answer.

“Did you call it, and not get an answer?”

She sipped her port in simmering silence.

“In fairness, it would break the mood, taking a call from your secretary while you’re on the job.”

He thought that she would find this offensive, and was not disappointed.

“You’re disgusting. You’re really disgusting,” she said thickly, her cheeks a dull dark red with the prudishness she tried to disguise under a show of superiority.

“Do you live alone?” he asked her.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” she asked, completely off-balance now.

“Just wondered. So you don’t see anything odd in Tony booking into an Oxford hotel for the night, driving back to London the following morning, then returning to Oxford again, in time to check out of his hotel the next day?”

“He went back to Oxford so that he could attend the conference in the afternoon,” she said doggedly.

“Oh, really? Did you hang around and meet him there?”

“He was there,” she said evasively.

“You’ve got proof, have you?”

She said nothing.

“Tell me,” said Strike, “would you rather think that Tony was in bed with Ursula May all day, or having some kind of confrontation with his niece?”

Over at the bar, Aunt Winifred was straightening her knitted hat and retying her belt. She seemed to be preparing to leave.

For several seconds Alison fought herself, and then, with an air of unleashing something long suppressed, she said in a ferocious whisper:

“They aren’t having an affair. I know they aren’t. It wouldn’t happen. Ursula only cares about money; it’s all that matters to her, and Tony’s got less than Cyprian. Ursula wouldn’t want Tony. She wouldn’t.”

“Oh, you never know. Physical passion might have overpowered her mercenary tendencies,” said Strike, watching Alison closely. “It can happen. It’s hard for another man to judge, but he’s not bad-looking, Tony, is he?”

He saw the rawness of her pain, her fury, and her voice was choked as she said:

“Tony’s right—you’re taking advantage—in it for all you can get—John’s gone funny—Lula jumped. She jumped. She was always unbalanced. John’s like his mother, he’s hysterical, he imagines things. Lula took drugs, she was one of those sort of people, out of control, always causing trouble and trying to get attention. Spoiled. Throwing money around. She could have anything she liked, anyone she wanted, but nothing was enough for her.”

“I didn’t realize you knew her.”

“I—Tony’s told me about her.”

“He really didn’t like her, did he?”

“He just saw her for what she was. She was no good. Some women,” she said, her chest heaving beneath the shapeless raincoat, “aren’t.”

A chill breeze cut through the musty air of the lounge as the door swung shut behind Rochelle’s aunt. Bristow and Robin kept smiling weakly until the door had closed completely, then exchanged looks of relief.

The barman had disappeared. Only four of them were left in the little lounge now. Strike became aware, for the first time, of the eighties ballad playing in the background: Jennifer Rush, “The Power of Love.” Bristow and Robin approached their table.

“I thought you wanted to speak to Rochelle’s aunt?” asked Bristow, looking aggrieved, as though he had been through an ordeal for nothing.

“Not enough to chase after her,” replied Strike cheerfully. “You can fill me in.”

Strike could tell, by the expressions on Robin’s and Bristow’s faces, that both thought this attitude strangely lackadaisical. Alison was fumbling for something in her bag, her own face hidden.

The rain had stopped, the pavements were slippery and the sky was gloomy, threatening a fresh downpour. The two women walked ahead in silence, while Bristow earnestly related to Strike all that he could remember of Aunt Winifred’s conversation. Strike, however, was not listening. He was watching the backs of the two women, both in black—almost, to the careless observer, alike, interchangeable. He remembered the sculptures on either side of the Queen’s Gate; not identical at all, in spite of the assumptions made by lazy eyes; one male, one female, the same species, yes, but profoundly different.

When he saw Robin and Alison come to a halt beside a BMW he assumed must be Bristow’s, he too slowed up, and cut across Bristow’s rambling recital of Rochelle’s stormy relations with her family.

“John, I need to check something with you.”

“Fire away.”

“You say you heard your uncle come into your mother’s flat on the morning before Lula died?”

“Yep, that’s right.”

“Are you absolutely sure that the man you heard was Tony?”