Missing Joseph Part 47

"Tommy," she said, fumbling for the clock and turning it to face the wall, "I don't think it's even dawn yet. Truly, darling. You need to get more sleep. What time did we finally get to bed? Was it two?"

"d.a.m.n," he said quietly. "I know it. I know it."

"Good. Then lie down."

"The rest of the answer's right here, Helen. Somewhere."

She frowned and rolled over to see that he was sitting against the headboard with his spectacles perched on the end of his nose, letting his eyes travel over piles of paper sc.r.a.ps, handouts, tickets, programmes, and other miscellanea that he'd spread across her bed. She yawned and simultaneously recognised the piles. They'd pawed through Robin Sage's odd bits carton three times before giving it up and going to bed last night. But Tommy wasn't done with it, it seemed. He leaned forward, riffled through one of the piles, and rested against the headboard once more, as if awaiting inspiration to strike.

"The answer's here," he said. "I know it."

Helen stretched out an arm beneath the covers and rested her hand on his thigh. "Sherlock Holmes would have solved it by now," she noted.

"Please don't remind me."

"Hmmm. You're warm."

"Helen, I'm making an attempt at deductive thought."

"Am I getting in the way?"

"What do you think?"

She chuckled, reached for her dressing gown, draped it round her shoulders, and joined him against the headboard. She picked up one of the piles at random and leafed through it. "I thought you had the answer last night. If Susanna knew she was pregnant, and if the baby wasn't his, and if there was no way she could pa.s.s it off as his because they'd stopped having s.e.x, which according to her sister appears to have been the case...What more do you want?"

"I want a reason she'd kill him. What we have right now is a reason he'd kill her."

"Perhaps he wanted her back and she didn't want to go."

"He could hardly force her."

"But if he decided to claim the child was his? To force her hand through Maggie?"

"A genetic test would take the wind out of that plan."

"Then perhaps Maggie was his after all. Perhaps he was responsible for Joseph's death. Or perhaps Susanna thought he was, so when she discovered she was pregnant again, she wasn't about to let him have a go with another child."

Lynley made a noise of dismissal and reached for Robin Sage's engagement diary. Helen noticed that, while she slept, he'd also rummaged round the flat for the telephone directory, which was lying open at the foot of the bed.

"Then...Let me see." She flipped through her small stack of papers and wondered why on earth anyone would have kept these grimy handouts, the sort that were continually thrust at pedestrians on the street. She would have dropped them into the nearest dustbin. She hated to refuse to take them altogether when the people pa.s.sing them out always looked so earnest. But to save them...

She yawned. "It's rather like a reverse trail of bread crumbs, isn't it?"

He was flipping to the back of the telephone directory and running his finger down the page. "Six," he said. "Thank G.o.d it wasn't Smith." He glanced at his pocket watch, which lay open on the table next to his side of the bed, and threw back the covers. The odd bits went flying like debris in the wind.

"Was it Hansel and Gretel who left a trail of crumbs or Little Red Riding Hood?" Helen asked.

He was rooting through his suitcase, which gaped open on the floor and spilled out clothing in a fashion that Denton would have found teeth-jarring. "What are you talking about, Helen?"

"These papers. They're like a trail of crumbs. Except he didn't drop them. He picked them up."

Tying the belt of his dressing gown, Lynley rejoined her at the bed, sitting on her side of it and reading the handouts once again. She read them along with him: the first for a concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields; the second for a car dealership in Lambeth; the third for a meeting at Camden Town Hall; the fourth for a hairdresser in Clapham High Street.

"He came by train," Lynley said thoughtfully and began to rearrange the handouts. He said, "Give me that underground map, Helen."

With the map in one hand, he continued to rearrange the handouts until he had the Cam-den Town Hall meeting first, the concert second, the car dealership third, and the hairdresser fourth. "He would have picked up the first at Euston Station," he noted.

"And if he was going to Lambeth, he'd have got on the Northern Line and changed at Charing Cross," Helen said.

"Which is where he'd have got the second, for the concert. But where does that leave Clapham High Street?"

"Perhaps he went there last, after Lambeth. Does it say in his diary?"

"On his last day in London, it says only Yanapapoulis."

"Yanapapoulis," she said with a sigh. "Greek." She felt a tugging of sadness with the saying of the name. "I spoiled this week for us. We could have been there. On Corfu. Right this moment."

He put his arm round her and kissed the side of her head. "It doesn't matter. We'd be doing the same thing there as we are right now."

"Talking about Clapham High Street? I doubt it."

He smiled and lay his spectacles on the table. He brushed her hair back and kissed her neck. "Not exactly," he murmured. "We'll talk about Clapham High Street in a while..."

Which is what they did, a little more than an hour later.

Lynley agreed to Helen's making the coffee, but after her presentation of lunch yesterday, he wasn't willing to endure whatever she might bring forth from cupboards and refrigerator to serve as their breakfast. He scrambled the six eggs he found in the refrigerator and threw in cream cheese, stoned black olives, and mushrooms for good measure. He opened a tin of grapefruit wedges, dished them out, topped them with a maraschino cherry, and set about making toast.

In the meantime, Helen manned the telephone. By the time he had the breakfast ready, she'd gone through five of the six entries for the name Yanapapoulis, made a list of four Greek restaurants she'd not yet tried, received one recipe for a poppy-seed cake soaked in ouzo-"Goodness, that sounds rather terrifyingly inflammable, my dear"-promised to pa.s.s along to her "superiors" a complaint about police mishandling of a burglary near Notting Hill Gate, and defended her honour against the accusations of a shrieking woman who a.s.sumed she was the mistress of her errant husband.

Lynley was setting their plates on the table and pouring coffee and orange juice when Helen struck gold with her final call. She had asked to speak to Mummy or Daddy. The reply went on at some length. Lynley was spooning orange marmalade onto his plate when Helen said, "I am sorry to hear that, my dear. What about Mummy? Is she there?...But you aren't home alone, are you? Shouldn't you be in school?... Oh. Well, of course, someone must see to Linus' headcold.... Do you have Meggezones? They work awfully well for a sore throat."

"Helen, what in G.o.d's name-"

She held up a hand to stop him. "She's where?...I see. Can you give me the name, dear?" Lynley saw her eyes widen, saw the smile begin to curve her lips. "Lovely," she said. "That's wonderful, Philip. You've been such a help. Thank you so much...Yes, dear, you give him the chicken soup." She hung up the phone and left the kitchen.

"Helen, I've got breakfast-"

"Just a moment, darling."

He grumbled and forked up a portion of eggs. They weren't half-bad. It wasn't a combination of flavours that Denton would have either served or approved of, but then Denton had always possessed tunnel vision when it came to food.

"Here. Look." With her dressing gown flying round in a whirl of burgundy silk, Helen clattered back into the kitchen-she was the only woman Lynley knew who actually wore high-heeled slippers with s...o...b..ll tufts dyed to match the rest of her nightly ensembles- and presented him with one of the handouts they'd been looking at earlier.

"What?"

"The Hair Apparent," she said. "Clapham High Street. Lord, what a ghastly name for a hairdresser. I always hate these puns: Shear Ecstasy, The Mane Attraction. Who comes up with them?"

He spread some marmalade on a wedge of toast as Helen slid into her seat and spooned up three pieces of grapefruit with "Tommy, darling, you can actually cook. I might think about keeping you."

"That warms my heart." He squinted at the paper in his hand. "'Unis.e.x styling,'" he read. "'Discount prices. Ask for Sheelah.'"

"Yanapapoulis," Helen said. "What've you put in these eggs? They're wonderful."

"Sheelah Yanapapoulis?"

"The very same. And she must be the Yanapapoulis we're looking for, Tommy. It's too much of a coincidence otherwise that Robin Sage would have gone to see one Yanapapoulis and just happened to have in his possession a handout with the place of employment of an entirely different Yanapapoulis printed upon it. Don't you agree?" She didn't wait, merely went on, saying, "That was her son I was speaking to on the phone, by the way. He said to ring her at work. He said to ask for Sheelah."

Lynley smiled. "You're a marvel."

"And you're a fine cook. If you'd only been here to do Daddy's breakfast yesterday morning..."

He set the handout to one side and went back to his eggs. "That can always be remedied," he said casually.

"I suppose." She added milk to her coffee and spooned in sugar. "Do you vacuum carpets and wash windows, as well?"

"If put to the test."

"Heavens, I might actually be getting the better part of the bargain."

"Is it, then?"

"What?"

"A bargain."

"Tommy, you're absolutely ruthless."

and less inspired buildings of the nineteenth century.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

LTHOUGH THE SON OF SHEELAH Yanapapoulis had recommended a telephone call to The Hair Apparent, Lynley decided upon a personal visit. He found the hairdresser's on the ground floor of a narrow soot-stained Victorian building that was shoe-horned between an Indian take-away and an appliance repair shop on Clapham High Street. He'd driven across the river on Albert Bridge and skirted Clapham Common upon whose north side Samuel Pepys had come to be lovingly tended in his declining years. The area had been referred to as "Paradisian Clapham" during Pepys' time, but it had been a country village then, with its buildings and cottages spread out in a curve from the northeast corner of the common, and with fields and market gardens in place of the closely packed streets that had accompanied the arrival of the railway. The common remained, essentially inviolate, but many of the pleasant villas that once looked upon it had long since been demolished and replaced by the smaller The rain that had begun on the previous day was continuing to fall as Lynley drove along the high street. It rendered the usual kerbside collection of wrappers, sacks, newspapers, and a.s.sorted rubbish into sodden lumps that seemed bled of all colour. It also had the effect of eliminating virtually all pedestrian traffic. Aside from an unshaven man in a threadbare tweed coat who shuffled along, talking to himself and holding a newspaper spread over his head, the only other creature on the pavement at the moment was a mongrel dog sniffing at a shoe that lay on top of an upended wooden crate.

Lynley found a place to park on St. Luke's Avenue, grabbed his coat and umbrella, and walked back to the hairdresser's where he discovered that the rain had evidently put a damper on the hair business as well. He opened the door, was a.s.sailed by the eye-smarting odour that accompanies someone inflicting a perm upon another's innocent head of hair, and saw that this malodorous operation of beauty was being performed on the hairdresser's single customer. She was a plump woman perhaps fifty years old who clutched a copy of Royalty Monthly in her fists and said, "Cor, lookit this, will you, Stace? That dress she wore to the Royal Ballet must of cost four hundred quid."

"Gloriamus on toast," was Stace's reply, delivered somewhere between polite enthusiasm and heavy ennui. She squirted a chemical onto one of the tiny pink rolls on her client's head and gazed at her own reflection in the mirror. She smoothed her eyebrows, which came to curious points on her forehead and exactly matched the colour of her ramrod, coal hair. Doing this allowed her to catch sight of Lynley, who stood behind the gla.s.s counter dividing the tiny waiting area from the rest of the shop.

"We don't do men, luv." She tossed her head in the direction of the next work station, a movement that clicked her long jet earrings like small castanets. "I know it says unis.e.x in all the adverts, but that's Mondays and Wednesdays when our Rog is here. Which he isn't, as you can see. Today, I mean. It's just me and Sheel. Sorry."

"Actually, I'm looking for Sheelah Yanapapoulis," Lynley said.

"Are you? She doesn't do men either. I mean"-with a wink-"she doesn't do them that way. As for the other...well, she's always been lucky, that girl, hasn't she?" She called towards the rear of the shop: "Sheelah! Get out here. This is your lucky day."

"Stace, I tol' you I was heading out, din't I? Linus's got a bad throat and I was up all night. I got no one on the book coming in this afternoon so there's no point to me staying." Movement in a back room accompanied the voice, which sounded plaintive and tired. A handbag clicked closed with a metallic snick; a garment snapped as it was shaken out; galoshes slapped against the floor.

"He's good-looking, Sheel," Stace said with another wink. "You wouldn't want to miss him. Trust me, luv."

"Is that my Harold, then, having a bit of fun with you? 'Cause if it is..."

She came out of the room, drawing a black scarf across hair that was short, artfully cut, and coloured a white blonde that came only from bleaching or being born an albino. She hesitated when she saw Lynley. Her blue eyes flicked over him, taking in and evaluating the coat, the umbrella, and the cut of his hair. Her face became immediately wary; the birdlike features of her nose and chin seemed to recede. But only for a moment before she lifted her head sharply, saying, "I'm Sheelah Yanapapoulis. Who is it exactly wants to make my acquaintance?"

Lynley produced his warrant card. "Scotland Yard CID."

She'd been in the process of b.u.t.toning a green mackintosh, and although she slowed when Lynley identified himself, she did not stop. She said, "Police, then?"

"Yes."

"I got nothing to say to you lot about anything." She adjusted her handbag on her arm.

"It won't take long," said Lynley. "And I'm afraid it's essential."

The other hairdresser had turned from her client. She said with some alarm, "Sheel, want me to ring Harold for you?"

Sheelah ignored her, saying, "Essential to what? Did one of my boys get up to something this morning? I've kept them home today if that's supposed to be a crime. The whole lot of them got colds. Did they get up to mischief?"

"Not that I know."

"They're always playing with the phone, that lot. Gino dialed 999 and yelled fire last month. Got thrashed for it, he did. But he's nothing so much as pig-headed, like his dad. I wouldn't put it by him to do it again for a giggle."

"I'm not here about your children, Mrs. Yanapapoulis, although Philip did tell me where to find you."

She was fastening the galoshes round her ankles. She straightened with a grunt and drove her fists into the small of her back. In that position, Lynley saw what he had not noticed before. She was pregnant.

He said, "May we go somewhere to talk?"

"About what?"

"About a man called Robin Sage."

Her hands flew to her stomach.

"You do know him," he said.

"And what if I do?"

"Sheel, I'm ringing Harold," Stace said. "He won't want you talking to the coppers and you know it."

Lynley said to Sheelah, "If you're going home anyway, let me drive you there. We can talk on the way."

"You listen. I'm a good mother, Mister. No one says different. You just ask anyone around. You c'n ask Stace here."

"She's a bleeding saint," Stace said. "How many times you gone without shoes so those kids of yours could have the trainers they wanted? How many times, Sheel? And when was the last time you had a meal out? And who does the ironing if it isn't you? And how many new frocks d'you buy last year?" Stace drew a breath. Lynley seized the moment.