felt better after it was packed away. She offered to shove it into her outhouse, for which I was grateful. We felt better still after I’d asked her out to lunch. We got really quite cheerful over lunch. And in Regent’s Park afterwards. Our acquaintanceship, I would have said, really began to prosper. At least she was calling me ‘Jeff’, not ‘Morgan’.
I rang Crittenden the following morning, early. He’d just come on duty, I think. He kept breaking off to make sarcastic remarks to his subordinates, as they clocked in.
I started by discussing the vandalism round the site, which had got much less. The kids seemed to be losing interest in us; we had been the usual nine day’s wonder. And then, as he made the noises that indicated he was a busy man, and had other things to do with his life, I mentioned the baby from the Pond.
‘I just wondered,’ I said casually, ‘whether you ought to look up Belgian girls in the Missing Persons’ file?’
‘We did that days ago.’
‘Any luck?’
‘There were seventeen, over the three years we covered.’
‘Oh!’ I said glumly.
‘Mind you, thirteen of those turned up alive, eventually. And one dead. Strangled. But we got the bloke who did it.’
‘Three left, then?’
‘That’s what my arithmetic makes it.’
‘What were their names?’
He paused, probably to consult his notebook. ‘Helene Rigaude, last heard of in Bromley, Kent. Michelle Janvier, reported to have gone with a dance troupe to the Middle East, God help her. And one Annette le Feuvre, complete with baby. The kid was the right age . . . but she last lived over in Golders Green.’
I swallowed hard. ‘That one sounds more likely.’
‘Why do you say that, Mr Morgan?’ There was a sudden sharkish snatching tone in his voice. Policemen can seem like anybody else, for a long time, and then suddenly you get that sharkish tone.
‘Well . . . the kid.’
‘Yeah, the kid.’ His tone returned to its ordinary disillusionment. ‘Well, anything turns up, let me know, won’t you? Meanwhile, if you will excuse me, London crime is like the busy noise of London traffic. It never stops, day or night.’
I heard James’s car pull into the yard soon after that, and knew it was time to get downstairs for the working day. Instead I went to the window and watched James and Sam get out, their hands full of sandwich-boxes, and copies of the tabloids. Sam went in for the Sun; James for the more righteous Mail. They got into the workshop quickly, because it was beginning to rain, under a dark grey sky. There wouldn’t be much activity at the Pond today, if this weather kept up. And not much in my shop, either. Bad selling weather. Best selling weather is a cold sunny day. People are lured out for a walk, then feel the chill and come into the shop for a warm. I keep a good coal fire; it makes people want to linger. I offer coffee to anybody I know; loosens up their buying-spirit.
I had never felt more reluctant to go and face the world. I’d had another night of nightmares; again about raping Hermione. How can you spend a happy day with a woman, and then dream of raping and murdering her? I wondered whether, while I was with her, she dominated me, turned me into a good little boy behaving himself for the nice lady . . . and then, after we had parted, the resentment welled back up to the surface, so I dreamt of rape. It seemed as good an explanation as any.
And the Belgian girl was also making me broody . . . and the grey sky. Anyway, I got hold of myself, and went downstairs.
James and Sam were dismantling a grandfather clock I’d sold the previous Friday, to a woman in Hampstead. Sam was going up with it in the van, to set it up for her. If I knew the uneven walls and floors of Hampstead, that would take the whole morning. Sam’s a good worker, but he likes to chat the rich ladies up.
‘What you on, James?’ I asked
‘That German box-clock’s stopped again. I gave it a squirt of WD40 on Friday, but it hasn’t done the trick. Only went about four hours, I reckon. I’ll give it an hour in the paraffin bucket and go on from there. And that Dutch chandelier could do with a clean. I like doing brass on a rotten day. Cheers me up.’ He looked at