Keeping Bad Company (22 page)

A pause. ‘The police have already followed up this line of enquiry,’ he said discouragingly. ‘Naturally they’ve spoken to all her close friends.’

‘Oh, the police . . .’ I let my voice tail away.

He thawed. ‘Well, yes, I do see that a casual approach might turn up some little, overlooked fact, something which appeared too trivial to be mentioned to the police.’

‘Or too embarrassing,’ I pursued. ‘A situation like that can be awkward for a woman.’

‘I take your word for that,’ he said, terse again. Perhaps he’d made the connection between this and his own cautious fencing with the police. I had to be careful not to tip Parry’s hand.

Silently cursing the sergeant, I asked, ‘I wondered whether your daughter had a particular boyfriend, someone in London?’

‘I fail to see the relevance,’ Szabo’s voice had grown icy. ‘You mean, I take it, that she might have confided her fears to Jeremy. But Jeremy would have reported anything like that to me at once. He’d know I’d want to be informed of anyone annoying my daughter!’

‘She might have asked him not to.’

‘Jeremy is a thoroughly reliable young man,’ he replied, apparently unaware that the word might mean something different to him than it did to Lauren. ‘I’ve no reason to doubt his judgement. He’s extremely fond of Lauren and would have insisted she went to the police immediately if there were the hint of any threat.’

I said nothing, letting him think it over.

‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll call him and tell him to expect you. I’m willing to try any avenue which might get my daughter back safely and soon.’ His voice broke and trembled. ‘You can’t imagine what the uncertainty is doing to us, to me and to Jeremy, what it’s like . . . I’ll ring him at once.’

The last thing I wanted was to appear to Jeremy as Szabo’s stooge. ‘No!’ I said hastily. ‘Don’t do that. Far better if I drop by and tell him I’ve been trying to get in touch with Lauren. That we had a lunch date or something and she didn’t show. As you said, we want to keep it casual.’

It was important to make him think this was basically his idea. It worked. Though I still expected him to put up more argument, he folded almost at once, went along with the plan without any fuss, and told me Jeremy’s full name and where to find his business. Really, handling him was a doddle.

I replaced the receiver, put a fifty-pence piece by the phone, called my thanks to Daphne, and set out.

Thais Fine Arts was located in a narrow blind alley in the New Bond Street area. The alley looked as if its original purpose had been to provide a back entrance to the block, for removal of garbage, that sort of thing. It had been spruced up since those days and the dustbins taken away. But it wasn’t the sort of place you’d ever find if you didn’t know it was there, which meant the business wouldn’t attract the casual passer-by. Perhaps it dealt with recommended customers only. There were places like that. Or perhaps it dealt in export and import.

Further investigation confirmed my suspicions. This was by no stretch of imagination a shop, gallery, showroom, call it what you like. The premises consisted of offices at the top of a narrow flight of stairs. The name appeared on a discreet but well-polished plate on the outer door by a bell. I pressed. It buzzed and the door uttered a disgruntled click as the locking mechanism was released. I pushed it open, thinking that the person within hadn’t bothered to check who rang.

Then, as I went through, my eye caught the tiny camera up in the corner of the stairwell, trained on the door. The person inside knew exactly who was out here and had watched me climb the last stairs, peer at the doorplate and fidget about making up my mind to ring. I didn’t like that and marched in belligerently.

I found myself in a reception area, a large square room decorated predominantly white like a hospital ward. White walls, white leather chairs, oatmeal carpet. The only splashes of colour were provided by a tall green plant in a white pot and the dark blue of the business suit worn by the receptionist. Above her head flickered the screen on which she’d seen me arrive and on her stainless-steel and glass desk stood a dinky little wooden nameplate with the gold-painted legend ‘Jane Stratton’. This was a nice place to work, all right. It must be really neat to have your name in gold, stuck there in front of you for all to see. Ms Stratton rose to intercept me. Greet was not the word.

‘Yes?’ she asked.

She was a human version of an Afghan hound, long, lean, thoroughbred. Her narrow face was perfectly made up and her long blonde hair sculpted and lacquered into rigid waves and curls. The overall effect was intended to be glamorous but failed for lack of warmth or personality. She had eyes like twin lasers.

I ignored the permafrost welcome and asked cheerfully if I might see Mr Copperfield.

‘You have an appointment?’ she enquired, faintly incredulous.

‘No, it’s personal. I’m a friend of Lauren Szabo.’

She hesitated then pressed a switch on the intercom and relayed the information. It squawked a distorted reply.

‘Do take a seat,’ she said to me, marginally more gracious. ‘Mr Copperfield will be out to see you shortly.’

I sat on one of the white leather chairs and studied my surrounds, wondering what constituted fine art. I also wondered whether I was to be interviewed by Copperfield out here, or whether I’d be admitted to some inner sanctum. It depended how much he wanted the chilly receptionist to overhear, although she could overhear whatever she wanted through the intercom system.

There were two doors in the walls facing the reception desk but neither carried a nameplate. The only example of a fine art object stood near me atop a plinth perched on a glass-topped table. It was a marble bust of a cherub and would, to my mind, have been more suited to a monumental mason’s showroom than an art dealer’s. It was an extraordinary ugly thing. Its fat cheeks bulged and rosebud lips were pursed as if it ought to be blowing a trumpet, but someone had taken away the musical instrument. This meant the overall effect was that it blew a raucous raspberry towards the entrance door.

I wouldn’t have fancied it around the home, but then it was unlikely I could ever have afforded it so the problem didn’t arise. It didn’t carry anything so vulgar as a price tag.

I caught the Ice Queen’s eye, nodded towards the cherub and asked, ‘How much?’

‘Fifteen hundred,’ she said, and allowed herself a smirk of satisfaction when she saw my mouth fall open.

She returned to her work, rattling a keyboard with scarlet talons. At her elbow, a red light suddenly glowed on the telephone. She ignored it. After a few moments, the light went out. I wondered if it signified an outside line was in use.

Without warning, one of the twin inner doors opened and a bulky figure filled the aperture.

‘Miss Varady?’ He moved solidly towards me, spectacle lenses glinting, hand outstretched. ‘Jeremy Copperfield. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Do come through. Would you like some tea or coffee?’

The receptionist paused in her work and raised a forbidding eye.

‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I won’t take up much of your time.’

I followed Copperfield to his office, which closely resembled the outer room in colour scheme and general furnishings. He invited me to sit on one of the ubiquitous white leather chairs, and eased himself into a beige leather executive chair with stainless-steel arms. He placed his fingertips together and swivelled gently to and fro before me, all the while watching my face over the top of his specs.

Fighting the impression that I’d strayed into some private sanatorium and was facing an expensive medical consultant, I forced myself to relax on my chair, and studied him back. There was silence while we eyed one another in polite antagonism.

Lauren’s boyfriend was about twenty-eight and had a weight problem which, if he hadn’t got to grips with it by now, he never would. His belly bulged over his waistband. His jawline was lost in the cushion of double chins, which in turn made his mouth, with its pink pouty lips like those of the cherub, look too small. It struck me that he showed little sign of the distress he ought to be suffering. But perhaps he was good at hiding his feelings.

‘I don’t recall,’ he broke our silence to say, ‘that Lauren ever mentioned your name to me.’ He stopped swivelling the chair and rested his hand on the steel arms, raising his head so that his eyes were still fixed on me but this time through, not over, his glasses. The lenses were thick and made his eyes appear piggy. He wasn’t my cup of tea, but then I wasn’t Lauren, and the choice was hers.

I’d already decided to use the story that had worked well at the refuge until I’d mentioned Lauren’s name.

‘We hadn’t seen each other for a while when we bumped into one another. We fixed up a reunion lunch but she didn’t show. I did think she seemed worried about something, so that made me concerned. I’ve been trying to get in touch with her.’

Behind the jam-jar-bottom lenses, his eyes blinked at me. As if I hadn’t spoken, his voice flowed on, ‘So I took the precaution of phoning her father. He says it’s in order to talk to you. You know there is a possibility she’s being held somewhere against her will and the police are involved. You understand all this is highly sensitive and mustn’t become public knowledge.’

So it
had
been an outside line. So much for the approach I thought I’d agreed with Szabo. Now I was left looking foolish. But I had to admit that without Szabo’s go-ahead, Copperfield wouldn’t be talking to me.

‘That’s fine,’ I said, abandoning that line. ‘I understand the circumstances and believe me, I’m very sorry. You’re all under a terrible strain.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we are.’

But he still didn’t look it, not to me. Curiously, I asked, ‘Have you been dating Lauren very long?’

Blink. ‘We’ve known each other several years,’ he said, pursing his fat little lips and suddenly looking so like the marble head out there in reception that I had a job not to grin.

‘Is Mr Szabo also involved in the art market?’ I asked, ‘I thought he was in loose covers.’

Copperfield ignored the question and his stare informed me that he considered it improper. Worse, he suspected me of mockery. His opinion of me wasn’t high. But there again, neither was my opinion of him. It was clear to me already that far from being the love of Lauren’s life, this man was her Malcolm Tring.

I should explain. Obviously, Jeremy here was Szabo’s choice for Lauren, a man who saw things his way and could be relied upon to report back to her stepfather at the first sign of trouble. Szabo himself would deny this was the reason for his selecting Copperfield. He’d roll out a whole list of Jeremy’s virtues. Personal charisma wouldn’t figure among them, but neither would Szabo see it as a disadvantage. If anything, he’d see it as an irrelevance.

That’s the way it goes. Families judge by a whole different set of criteria to that favoured by their offspring. Which is where Malcolm Tring comes in.

Malcolm figured briefly in my life when I’d just turned fourteen, and all because Grandma Varady liked a game of cards. She belonged to a whist club and there she met a fellow fanatic called Mrs Emma Tring, a well-to-do widow. Mrs Tring, it soon turned out, had a grandson, one Malcolm.

‘A really nice boy,’ enthused Grandma V. to me, as she ladled out the goulash soup one evening. ‘Just a year older than you, fifteen, and doing very well at school. He escorts his grandmother to the whist club regularly, such a kind boy. Not many his age would give up the time! He’s always polite and so well spoken, and the family has a pine furniture business in the High Street. I understand from Emma it’s doing very well, and my goodness, she has some beautiful pearls.’

Grandma paused for dramatic effect and chinked the ladle on the soup tureen. ‘And he’s an only child!’ she whispered.

‘I want to be an actress,’ I said, correctly divining the drift of all this. ‘I don’t want to spend my life selling pine furniture.’

‘Actors starve,’ she said, correctly as it happens. ‘A business is handy to fall back on.’

‘Especially if it’s furniture!’ I quipped, and was rapped on the knuckles with the ladle for not taking the matter seriously. But how could I take seriously anyone connected with a business that advertised itself as selling ‘FURNITURE TO MAKE YOUR HEART TRING’?

Grandma did take it seriously and needless to say, I was eventually dragooned into accompanying her to the whist club, there to meet Malcolm Tring. Also needless to say, he was awful, and I’d have had to be out of my skull to want to fall back on him. Nor did I think his grandmother’s pearls all that great. They looked fake to me. I was already something of an expert on stage props by then.