The little smile, the nod of farewell (or agreement?) and Aldermann had left, keen as always (Elgood guessed) to get back to his precious bloody roses, apparently quite unmarked by an interview whose memory continued to shoot little electric arrows of rage into Elgood’s chest for hours after.
Well, that had been last Friday and a very great deal had happened since then. For a time it had seemed as if things were getting out of control, rising to the climax of his visit to the police. That had been an error, but cathartic, and in the twenty-four hours since he had spoken to Pascoe, he had returned to something like full control and true perspectives. The real issue was his own control of the business at all levels. Currently there was an incipient crisis caused by proposals aimed at meeting the falling level of demand for Perfecta products in the present period of recession. To deal with this with minimum fuss would confirm his standing both with the waverers on the Board and with I.C.E. head office.
He pressed a button on his intercom. A moment later his secretary came into the office. She was a woman of nearly forty, rather square of feature with short cropped dark brown hair beginning to be flecked with grey. She kept herself to herself and the office buzz was that she was lesbian. Her name was Bridget Dominic, but no one called her anything but Miss Dominic, including Elgood, who had chosen her deliberately some years earlier, having learned the hard way that a mix of sex and secretaries leads to deadly dole.
‘Miss Dominic,’ he said. ‘Would you pop along to Personnel and check when Mr Aldermann’s taking time off this summer. Discreetly. And put an outside line through as you go.’
The woman nodded and left. She would be discreet, Elgood was sure. And discreet enough too to give him a good ten minutes in which to make his phone call. But for once she’d have been mistaken about its content.
He dialled a London number. As it rang, he examined the course of action he was contemplating and found nothing wrong with it. The phone was lifted at the other end.
‘Mr Easey?’ said Elgood. ‘Mr Raymond Easey? My name is Richard Elgood.’
At the same time on the floor below, Patrick Aldermann was opening the mail he had brought from home. A bank statement and the contents of several buff envelopes were put aside after the lightest glance, but one letter caught and held his attention.
He picked up his telephone and dialled. As with Elgood above, it was a London number. The conversation lasted several minutes. When it was finished he replaced the receiver and buzzed his secretary.
When she came in he was removing the wrapper from a packet. It seemed to contain some kind of book. Her eye took in the office mail which she had carefully opened and sorted. The piles stood untouched.
‘Mrs Jones,’ he said, ‘I’ll be away on Friday at the end of next week. Could you make a note of that? No, come to think of it, better make it Thursday and Friday.’
He had begun to peruse the printed sheets of the loosely bound volume, making quick little marks with a red pen.
Mrs Jones, not yet thirty but already maternal, said, ‘You do remember you’re taking the following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off, don’t you? Something about your little boy’s school.’
‘Of course. So I am.’
He smiled at her and she basked in his smile which she admitted freely to her intimates made parts of her she didn’t care to name feel tremulous.
‘I dare say they can get by without me here for another couple of days, wouldn’t you say, Mrs Jones?’ he said. ‘I dare say they can just about manage that.’
(Floribunda. Free-flowering, lilac-mauve blooms, rippled petals, abundant foliage, susceptible to mildew in the fall.)
When Aldermann got home that evening, he found Daphne’s Polo occupying her side of the double garage. He examined the bright new paintwork on the bonnet and then went into the house.
Diana came running to meet him and he swung her on to his shoulders.
‘Mummy’s outside,’ she told him.
‘It’s the only place to be,’ said Aldermann seriously.
The rain had stopped earlier and the clouds had continued eastward, leaving in their wake a perfect June evening. He went through the french doors of the lounge on to the balustraded terrace where Daphne was relaxing on a garden lounger.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘They seem to have done a good job on the car.’
‘They should do for the money. And they make you pay on the spot nowadays. No cash, no car. It’s very uncivilized.’
He frowned slightly, lifted Diana to the ground and said, ‘The rain’s brought off one or two petals, I see.’
‘Well, let them lie for a while,’ Daphne said firmly. ‘I’ll get us a drink and you can unwind from your hard day at the office.’
She went into the house and he removed his jacket, draped it over the back of a wrought-iron garden chair and sat down. Distantly the front doorbell sounded. A couple of minutes later, Daphne returned bearing a martini’d tray and accompanied by two men, or rather a man and a boy. The boy was in uniform, the man in a dark suit. Other claims to distinction were the boy’s Indian beauty and the man’s Caucasian ugliness.
‘Darling,’ said Daphne setting the tray down on the iron table which matched the chairs, ‘these gentlemen are from the police.’
Aldermann rose courteously.
‘How can I help you?’ he asked.
‘Actually, it’s me they want to see,’ said Daphne. ‘It’s about the car being vandalized. We needn’t disturb you, darling. Would you like to come back into the house, Sergeant? You did say sergeant?’
‘That’s right, ma’am. Detective-Sergeant Wield. And this is Police Cadet Singh,’ replied Wield without much enthusiasm.
Singh flashed them a white-toothed smile. Daphne had already recognized him as the boy she had seen in the market café but he had shown no sign of recognizing her. Perhaps whites all look alike to Asians, she thought.
Wield who didn’t want to be separated from Aldermann after so short an encounter was about to spin his prepared line of perhaps your husband might be able to corroborate one or two points when the man saved him the trouble by saying, ‘You won’t disturb me, darling. And I’d be interested to hear what the police are doing, and to help if possible.’
‘Very kind, sir,’ said Wield, pulling a garden chair towards him and posing his buttocks over it while he looked enquiringly at Daphne.
She let out a small sigh and sat down.
Wield followed suit. Singh remained standing till Wield nodded significantly at him, when he sat a little distance from the other three and emulated the sergeant by producing a notebook.
‘I hadn’t realized this would be a CID matter,’ said Aldermann. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘Thank you, no, sir,’ said Wield. ‘To tell the truth, sir, CID wouldn’t normally be involved with a bit of one-off car bashing, but this is threatening to become an epidemic. Also we like an experienced officer to show our cadets the ropes in all departments of police work.’
Patrick Aldermann smiled faintly and Wield wondered if he were explaining too much. He put on his most serious dedicated look which could usually make children weep and strong men avert their gaze, but Aldermann’s cool brown eyes never flickered and the smile remained.
Wield returned his attention to the wife and said ponderously, ‘Now, ma’am. Your car is a VW Polo,