A Taste for Death Read online

  “The man was a shit!”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Aren’t you being a bit hard?”

  “It’s the same old story. He basks in his success; she’s tucked away in the equivalent of a Victorian love-nest to serve his purpose when he has an odd moment to spare for her. We could be back in the nineteenth century.”

  “But we aren’t. It’s her choice. Come off it, Kate! She has a good job, her own flat, a good salary, a career with a pension. She could have chucked him any day she chose. He wasn’t coercing her.”

  “Not physically, perhaps.”

  “Don’t start singing a variation of the old song ‘It’s the Man What Gets the Pleasure, It’s the Girl What Gets the Blame.’ Recent history is against you, anyway. There was nothing to stop her having it out with him. She could have given him an ultimatum. ‘You’ve got to choose, it’s her or me.’”

  “Knowing what his choice would be?”

  “Well, that’s the risk, isn’t it? She might have struck lucky. This isn’t the nineteenth century. And he’s not Parnell. Divorce wouldn’t have harmed his career, not for long, not much.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped it.”

  “OK. Take your chap, whoever he is. Or any chap you might fancy. If you had to choose between him and your job, would that be so easy? When you’re feeling censorious, better ask yourself which you’d choose.”

  The question disconcerted her. He probably either knew or had guessed about Alan. You didn’t keep many secrets in the CID, and her very reticence about her private life would have stimulated curiosity. But she hadn’t expected such perception from him or such frankness, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. She said:

  “Well, it hasn’t made me respect him.”

  “We don’t have to respect him. We’re not asked to respect him or like him or admire his politics, his ties or his taste in women. Our job is to catch his murderer.”

  She sat down opposite him, suddenly weary, and let her shoulder bag slip to the floor, then watched him as he began putting his papers together. She liked his office, intrigued by the difference between its sparse masculinity and the murder squad room down the corridor. There the atmosphere was heavily masculine, reminiscent, she thought, of an officers’ mess, but as she had once overheard Massingham say to Dalgliesh with the sly malice which his subordinates found offensive and which reminded them of his old nickname of the Honjohn, “Not altogether a first-class regiment, would you say, sir?” The squad were called in to investigate crime at sea and were usually rewarded with a framed photograph of the ship concerned. These were mounted in regular lines along the walls, together with signed portraits of chiefs of police from Commonwealth countries, emblems and badges, signed testimonials, even the occasional photograph of a celebratory dinner. Massingham’s walls were decorated only with colour prints of early cricket matches, borrowed, she guessed, from his home. These gentle evocations of long-dead summers—the oddly shaped bats, the top hats of the players, the familiar cathedral spires piercing an English sky, the shadowed grass and the crinolined ladies with their parasols—had at first been a source of mild interest to his colleagues but were now hardly noticed. Kate thought his choice showed a nice compromise between masculine conformity and personal taste. And he could hardly have mounted his school photographs. Eton wasn’t exactly unacceptable to the Met, but it wasn’t a school to boast about. She asked:

  “How is the house-to-house going?”

  “As you’d expect. No one saw or heard anything. They were all sitting glued to the box, down at the Dog and Duck, or at bingo. No big fish, but we’ve netted the usual minnows. Pity we can’t throw them back. Still, it’ll keep division busy.”

  “And the cab drivers?”

  “No luck. One chap remembered driving a middle-aged gent to within forty yards of the church at the relevant time. We traced the fare. He was visiting his lady friend.”

  “What? In a love-nest off the Harrow Road?”

  “He had somewhat specific requirements. Remember Fatima?”

  “Good God, is she still on the job?”

  “Very much so. She’s also taken to doing a little snouting for Chalkey White. The lady’s none too pleased with us at present. And neither is Chalkey.”

  “And the fare?”

  “Well, he’s putting in an official complaint. Harassment, interference with personal liberty, the usual. And we’ve had six confessions to the murder.”

  “Six. So soon?”

  “Three of them we’ve met before. All certifiable. One did it to protest against Tory policy on immigration, one because Berowne had seduced his granddaughter, and one because the Archangel Gabriel told him to. They’ve all got the time wrong. They all used a knife, not a razor, and you won’t be surprised to hear that none of them can produce it. With a singular lack of originality, they all claim to have chucked it in the canal.”

  She said:

  “Do you ever wonder how much of our job is really cost effective?”

  “From time to time. What do you expect us to do about it?”

  “Waste less time on the minnows to begin with.”

  “Come off it, Kate. We can’t pick and choose. Only within strict limits, anyway. And it’s no different with a doctor. He can’t make the whole society healthy, he can’t heal the world. He’d go crazy if he tried. He just treats what comes his way. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses.”

  She said:

  “But he doesn’t spend all his time cauterizing warts while the cancers go untreated.”

  He said:

  “Hell, if bloody murder isn’t a cancer, what is? Actually, it’s probably a murder investigation, not common crime, which isn’t cost effective. Think what it cost to put the Yorkshire Ripper behind bars. Think what this killer will cost the taxpayer before we get him.”

  “If we get him.” And for the first time she was tempted to add: “And if he exists.”

  Massingham got up from the desk.

  “You need a drink. I’ll buy you one.”

  Suddenly she almost liked him.

  “OK,” she said, “thanks.” She picked up her shoulder bag and they went out together to the senior officers’ mess.

  six

  Mrs. Iris Minns lived in a council flat on the second floor of a block off the Portobello Road. To park anywhere close on a Saturday, the day of the street market, was impossible, so Massingham and Kate left the car at the Notting Hill police station and walked. The Saturday market was, as always, a carnival—a cosmopolitan, peaceable, if noisy, celebration of human gregariousness, curiosity, gullibility and greed. It brought back to Kate memories of her early days in the division. She always walked through the cluttered street with pleasure, although she seldom bought; she had never shared the popular obsession with the trivia of the past. And for all its air of cheerful camaraderie, the market was, she knew, less innocent than it looked. Not all the bundles of notes in various currencies changing hands would find their way into tax returns. Not all the trading was in the harmless artifacts of the past; the usual number of unwary visitors would be relieved of their wallets or purses before they reached the bottom of the road. But few London markets were as gentle, as entertaining or as good-humoured. This morning, as always, she entered the narrow, raucous thoroughfare with a lifting of the spirits.

  Iris Minns lived in flat twenty-six of Block Two, a building separated from the main block and from the road by a wide courtway. As they crossed it, watched by several pairs of carefully incurious but wary eyes, Massingham said:

  “I’ll do the talking.” She felt the familiar spurt of resentment but said nothing.

  The appointment had been made by telephone for nine thirty, and from the speed with which the front door was opened to their ring, Mrs. Minns must have been among those watching their arrival from behind their curtains. They found themselves facing a small compact figure with a square face, a round determined chin, a long mouth that twitched into a brief smile which seemed less one of welcom
e than of satisfaction that they were on time, and a pair of dark, almost black, eyes which gave them a quick, appraising glance as if inspecting them for dust. She took the trouble to examine Massingham’s warrant card with some care, then stood aside and motioned them in, saying:

  “Well, you’re on time, I’ll say that for you. There’s tea or coffee if you fancy it.”

  Massingham quickly refused it for both of them. Kate’s first instinct was to say quickly that she would like coffee, but she resisted the temptation. This could be an important interview; there was no point in jeopardizing its success out of personal pique. And Mrs. Minns wouldn’t miss any overt antagonism between them. She couldn’t have been mistaken in the flash of intelligence in those dark eyes.

  The sitting room into which they were shown was so remarkable that she hoped her surprise didn’t show too clearly on her face. Provided by local bureaucracy with an oblong box fifteen feet by ten, a single window and a door opening to a balcony too small for any purpose but giving air to a few pot plants, Mrs. Minns had created a small Victorian sitting room, dark, cluttered, claustrophobic. The wallpaper was a dark olive-green patterned with ivy and lilies, the carpet a faded but serviceable Wilton, while occupying almost the whole of the middle of the room was an oblong table of polished mahogany with curved legs, its surface mirror-bright, and four high-backed carved chairs. A smaller octagonal table was set against one wall holding an aspidistra in a brass pot, while the walls were hung with sentimental prints in maple frames: the Sailor’s Farewell and the Sailor’s Return, a child reaching for a flower above a brook, its heedless steps protected by a winged angel wearing an expression of pious imbecility. In front of the window stood a long plant holder of wrought iron painted white, filled with pots of geraniums, and outside on the balcony they could glimpse terra-cotta pots holding ivy and climbing plants whose variegated leaves were entwined with the railings.

  The focus of the room was a seventeen-inch television set, but this was less of an anachronism than might first appear, since it was placed against a background of green ferns whose fronds curled against the screen like an ornate but living frame. The window ledge was covered with small tubs of African violets, deep purple and a freckled paler mauve. Kate thought that they were planted in yoghurt tubs, but it was difficult to be sure since each was decorated with a plaited paper doily. A sideboard with an elaborately carved back was covered with china animals, dogs discordant in size and breed, a spotted fawn, and half a dozen china cats in unconvincing feline attitudes, each one on a starched linen mat, presumably to protect the polished mahogany.

  The whole room was spotlessly clean, the pungent smell of polish overwhelming. When in winter the heavy red velvet curtains were drawn it would be possible to believe oneself in another setting, another age. And Mrs. Minns could have been part of it. She was wearing a black skirt and a white blouse buttoned to the neck and fastened with a cameo brooch, and with her greying hair dressed high at the front and coiled in a small bun at the nape of the neck, she looked, thought Kate, like an ageing actress dressed for the part of a Victorian housekeeper. The only criticism one could make was that the rouge and eye shadow had been over-lavishly applied. She seated herself in the right-hand armchair and motioned Kate to the other, leaving Massingham to seat himself by turning round one of the dining chairs. In it he looked uncomfortably high and, thought Kate, somewhat at a disadvantage, a male intruder into comfortable female domesticity. In the autumn light, filtered through lace curtains and the green of the balcony plants, his face under the thatch of red hair looked almost sickly, the freckles over the forehead standing out like a splutter of pale blood. He said:

  “Can’t we have the door closed? I can’t hear myself speak.”

  The door onto the balcony was ajar. Kate got up and went over to close it. To the right she could glimpse the huge blue and white teapot hanging outside the Portobello Pottery and the painted wall panel of the porcelain market. The noise of the street came up to her like the clatter of shingle on a seashore. Then she closed the door and the sound was deadened. Mrs. Minns said:

  “It’s only on a Saturday. Mr. Smith and I don’t much mind it. You get used to it. I always say it’s a bit of life.” She turned to Kate:

  “You live in these parts, don’t you? I’m sure I’ve seen you shopping up at the Gate.”

  “Very possibly, Mrs. Minns. I’m not far away.”

  “Oh well, it’s a village, isn’t it? You see everyone up at the Gate sooner or later.”

  Massingham said impatiently:

  “You mentioned a Mr. Smith.”

  “He lives here, but you can’t see him. Not that he’d be able to tell you anything. But he’s off roamin’.”

  “Roaming? Where?”

  “How do I know? On his bicycle. His folk used to live in Hillgate Village in the old days. Proper little slum it was, when his granddad was alive. A hundred and sixty thousand they’re asking for the houses now. I reckon he’s got gypsy blood, has Mr. Smith. There was a lot of gypsies settled round here after they pulled down the Hippodrome racecourse. He’s always roamin’. It’s easier for him now that British Rail let his bike go free. Lucky for you he isn’t here. He’s not too keen on the police. Too many of your chaps pick him up for nothing, only sleeping under a hedge. That’s what’s wrong with this country, too much pickin’ on decent people. And other things I could mention what we’re not allowed to say.”

  Kate could sense Massingham’s anxiety to get on with the matter in hand. As if she too had sensed it, Mrs. Minns said:

  “It was a proper shock for me, I don’t mind telling you. Lady Ursula rang me up just before nine o’clock that night. She told me you’d be sure to be along sooner or later.”

  “So that was the first you’d heard of Sir Paul’s death, when his mother rang to warn you?”

  “Warn me? No call to warn me. I didn’t slit his throat for him, poor gentleman, nor I don’t know who did. You’d have thought Miss Matlock might have taken the trouble to phone earlier. That would have been better for me than hearing it on the six o’clock news. I wondered whether to ring the house, find out if there was anything I could do, but I reckoned they’d be bothered with enough calls without me on the line. Better wait, I thought, until someone rings.”

  Massingham said:

  “And that was Lady Ursula, just before nine?”

  “That’s right. Nice of her to trouble. But then we’ve always got on well, me and Lady Ursula. You call her Lady Ursula Berowne because she’s the daughter of an earl. Lady Berowne is only the wife of a baronet.”

  Massingham said impatiently:

  “Yes, we know that.”

  “Oh you do, do you. Millions don’t, nor don’t care neither. Still, it’s as well to get it right, if you’re thinking of hanging about Campden Hill Square.”

  Massingham asked:

  “How did she sound when she rang you?”

  “Lady Ursula? How do you expect? She wasn’t laughing, was she? Wasn’t crying neither. That’s not her way. She was calm, like she always is. Couldn’t tell me much, though. What happened? Suicide was it?”

  “We can’t be sure, Mrs. Minns, until we know more, get the results of some tests. We have to treat this as a suspicious death. When did you last see Sir Paul?”

  “Just before he went out on Tuesday, about half past ten that would be. We was in the library. I’d gone in to polish the desk and there he was, sitting there. So I said I’d come back later, and he said, ‘No, come in, Mrs. Minns, I won’t be long.’”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Like I said, he was sitting at the desk. He had his diary open.”

  Massingham said sharply:

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. He had it open in front of him and he was looking through it.”

  “How can you be certain that it was his diary?”

  “Look, it was open in front of him and I could see it was a diary. It had different days on the p
age, it had dates in it and he’d written in it. Think I don’t know a diary when I see one? Afterwards he closed it up and put it in the top right-hand drawer where it’s usually kept.”

  Massingham asked:

  “How do you know where it’s usually kept?”

  “Look, I’ve worked in that house nine years. I was taken on by her ladyship when Sir Hugo was baronet. You get to know things.”

  “What else happened between you?”

  “Nothing much. I asked him if I could borrow one of his books.”

  “Borrow one of his books?” Massingham frowned his surprise.

  “That’s right. I’d seen it on the bottom shelf when I’d been dusting and I fancied reading it. It’s there, under the television set, if you’re interested. A Rose by Twilight, by Millicent Gentle. I haven’t seen a book by her for years.”

  She reached for it and handed it to Massingham. It was a slim book still in its dust cover, a picture of an egregiously handsome dark-haired hero holding a blond girl half-swooning in his arms against a background riot of roses. Massingham flicked through it and said with a note of amused contempt:

  “Hardly his kind of reading, I should have thought. Sent to him, I imagine, by one of his constituents. It’s signed by the author. I wonder why he bothered to keep it.”

  Mrs. Minns said sharply:

  “Why shouldn’t he keep it? She’s a good writer is Millicent Gentle. Not that she’s been doing much lately. I’m very partial to a good romantic novel. Better than all those horrible murders. I can’t be doing with them. So I asked if I could borrow it and he said I could.”

  Kate took the book and opened it. On the flyleaf was written: “To Paul Berowne, with every good wish from the author.” Underneath was the signature, Millicent Gentle, and the date, the seventh of August. It was the date of Diana Travers’s drowning, but apparently Massingham hadn’t noticed. She closed the book and said: