The Merchant's House Part 7

'Well, there are girls who've been in the business years but sometimes the punters like a new face someone different.' He paused, waiting for a reaction. He got none. 'Karen was a friend of a friend. She needed the money.'

'Drug habit?' Even though no traces had been found in the body, it was worth asking.

'No way. She wanted to go on a modelling course. I was offering her some experience.'

I bet you were, thought Wesley.

'Look, I was helping the girl out, giving her some modelling experience, and she was getting paid for it. What's wrong with that?'

Heffernan a.s.sumed the question was rhetorical. 'What can you tell us about her?'

'I've told you. I hardly knew her.'

'Anything you can tell us ... anything at all.'

Keffer sat in silence for a few seconds, gathering his thoughts and his dressing gown round him. 'I didn't know her well, mind, only professionally. I just arrange the models and take the pictures.'

'So who introduced you?'

'One of my usual girls.'

'Name?'

'Sandra.'

'Sandra what?'

'Don't know ... forgotten. Something ordinary. Smith or something.'

'Where can I find her?'

'Dunno. Haven't seen her in eighteen months. They come and go.'

'This Karen. Where did she live?'

'With her mum.' The policemen exchanged glances. Now they were getting somewhere.

'Got an address?'

'No.'

'Surname?'

'Something foreign. She said her dad was American, killed in a car crash. Dunno if it was true. Sometimes they make things up to make themselves more ... you know ... glamorous.'

'Who do?' The man's att.i.tude was beginning to needle Wesley.

"The girls. They all see themselves on the front cover of Vogue, poor cows.' He paused for a second, lighting a cigarette. 'Gordino, that was her name. Something like Gordino.'

'Would you have such a thing as a phone book, sir?' Heffernan enquired with measured politeness.

The phone book produced no Gordinos but one Giordino. Wesley wrote down the address.

'What do you think of our photographer friend?'

Wesley looked disdainful. 'The word sleazy springs to mind.' He decided on a direct approach as hints seemed to have no visible effect. 'Look, sir, I'm going to have to make a phone call. I've got that appointment this afternoon and...'

'Don't worry, Wes, I've not forgotten. We'll call on this Mrs Giordino then we'll be straight off. If she's the girl's mum we'll be taking her back with us anyway. We'll be back in time. Trust me.' He grinned and slapped the sergeant on the back in an avuncular manner.

After consulting the A to Z, they found themselves on a small council estate. The redbrick semis, of 1920s vintage with front gardens, had once achieved the pinnacle of munic.i.p.al respectability; the lawns cut, paths swept and net curtains snowy white. But now, although most looked well kept, some were letting the side down, and a few overgrown gardens displayed broken toys and rusting cars mounted on bricks.

Wesley opened the wooden gate to a neat garden path. The house beyond, although the curtains were beige rather than white, gave the impression of being well cared for. Their knock at the recently painted front door was answered by a woman in her fifties who stared at them suspiciously from behind a door chain. The beige cardigan and cheap brown skirt she wore gave an impression of unrelieved dowdiness.

Wesley was struck by the gentle way in which his boss spoke to the woman, the sympathy with which he broke the news. As she sat on the beige Dralon sofa, surrounded by cheap-framed photographs of her dead daughter as a schoolgirl, sipping tea from a chipped flowered mug the first one Wesley had been able to lay his hands on Heffernan continued speaking softly to her, asking questions with a delicate tact, gauging the woman's feelings. Wesley, not hearing clearly most of what was said, looked at his notebook in despair.

Mrs Giordino silently packed a small suitcase then went next door to leave her key with a neighbour.

'I didn't get most of that, sir. What's going on?' Wesley looked down at the notebook's virgin pages.

'Plenty of time for getting things on paper when we're back on home ground. Time and a place for everything.'

Heffernan sat in the back of the car with Mrs Giordino and Wesley drove an arrangement that filled him with relief. Like most of his generation who had never encountered death and grief in their personal lives, he felt awkward with the bereaved: it wasn't that he didn't sympathise, he just didn't know what to say. He ran through a mental calculation: the journey would take four and a half hours, five at the outside he wasn't a reckless driver. It was ten to ten. They would be in Tradmouth by three. The appointment was at four thirty. It wouldn't be a problem.

The carpets at the Morbay Clinic were thicker than those Pam had been able to afford for her new home. She sank her toes into the pile, feeling its depth, as she sipped freshly percolated coffee and scanned an interior design magazine.

Her palms felt clammy and she needed the toilet again. Nerves. They always affected her like this: interviews, exams, her wedding day. Where was Wesley? He should be here. He should be going through this with her.

The receptionist was still giggling furtively into the phone. She was dressed in what appeared to be a nurse's uniform, although her heavy make-up and blond curls hinted that she was employed more for her appearance than her professional qualifications.

Pam's opinion of private medicine had been the same as Wesley's, but when she had discovered the NHS waiting time for even an initial investigation, she had decided that political principles could be overridden and savings broken into.

It was two years now since she had come off the Pill: two years of waiting to see what each month would bring; two years of disappointment. It had hardly mattered at first, but then, month by month, as every street seemed to throng with pregnant women and babies and every advert, every magazine, every TV programme showed babies in abundance, it had started to matter a great deal. The mothers of the children she taught seemed to leave rabbits in the shade when it came to breeding as they routinely provided new fodder for the education system. For a year now Pan had felt empty; a freak of nature.

The receptionist spoke with a soft Devon accent. 'Mrs Peterson, Dr Downey will see you now. Did you say your husband was coming too? Dr Downey does like to see couples together,' she added disapprovingly.

Where was Wesley? Pamela, fl.u.s.tered, dying for the toilet, opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.

Chapter 8.

Elizabeth's sister Anne doth stay with us and she hath taken on the running of the household. Elizabeth prevails upon me to find Anne a husband from amongst our acquaintances but she is not young and well favoured so the task may not be easy.

The raising of the church roof hath commenced and the builders are about their task. The carpenters have used fine carved timber for the new gallery, from the Spanish galleon captured by the Roebuck some forty years past. It doth look exceeding well and hath saved the cost of new timber and carving.

The Reverend Wilkins did ask last night for more money from the town for the new windows. Mayor Rawlins hath promised two new windows. He is ever trying to buy a good reputation with his wife's wealth.

I have seen little of Jennet now that Anne hath the household well in hand.

Extract from the journal of John Banized,

10 April 1623

When lorries overturn on motorways the effects are usually spectacular. The M5, being heavily burdened with traffic that Friday lunch-time, ground to a complete stop. Wesley Peterson, his hands tensed on the steering wheel, experienced the worst seven-hour car journey of his life.

But Gerry Heffernan reckoned he'd learned more about Karen Giordino in the back of their stationary car than he ever would have learned in an interview room. Mrs Giordino's grief poured out as a non-stop monologue about her daughter. At the end of the journey he felt he knew everything about the girl and her mother, beginning with their abandonment by the council clerk father for a siren of the corporation typing pool when Karen was four years old. There was no American connection; the surname came from a long-forgotten Italian great-grandfather. Karen had opted for a more glamorous version of her history.

Of Karen's recent past, her mother knew very little. In the last few years there had been long silences, the longest lasting over a year. Heffernan ascertained, by tactful questioning, that Mrs Giordino knew nothing of her daughter's brush with the seamier end of the modelling industry she had been told office work. This had been followed by Karen's decampment to Blackpool 'to do some seasonal work', the nature of which was vague. Mrs Giordino seemed to have displayed a remarkable lack of curiosity about her daughter's career.

'She met this boyfriend of hers there. He was up on business you know how they have these conference things.'

Heffernan leaned forward, willing her to continue.

'Sorry, sir. I'm going to have to make a phone call.' Wesley picked up the car phone.

'Okay, okay,' Heffernan snapped impatiently. The sergeant had broken the atmosphere of quiet confidence. Mrs Giordino stiffened. The moment was lost.

They sat in silence in the stationary traffic while Wesley tried to get through to his home number. There was no reply. He spent the next ten minutes ringing directory enquiries for the clinic number, then another ten trying to leave a coherent message with a dizzy receptionist. He had done all he could.

Heffernan decided to try again, gently. 'This boyfriend? Did you ever meet him?'

'Oh, no.' She spoke as if this were obvious.

'And as far as you know they're still together?'

'Far as I know. Living together down south somewhere.'

'Do you have their address?'

'She said she'd send it once she'd settled but....' Heffernan nodded sympathetically. 'I never had a card last Christmas. She's got her life to lead, I suppose.' She looked at her clenched fingers. 'Had her life.'

'She'll have told you his name?'

'John ... it was John.'

'Surname?'

'She never said. I mean, you don't, do you.'

'Did she say where he was from?'

'Down in the south-west somewhere. Cornwall?'

Heffernan looked up sharply. 'Could it have been Devon?'

'Could have been.'

'What about the baby? Did she let you know when it was born?'

Mrs Giordino's eyes widened. 'What baby? I never heard she had a baby.' The woman looked at him, her face full of the pain of neglected motherhood. 'No. She never had a baby. She would have told me. She would.'

Heffernan nodded and continued. 'Is there anything else? Please think hard, Mrs Giordino. Anything she might have told you about her boyfriend ... anything at all?'

'I think he was married when she met him. Left his wife.'

'Did she tell you that?"

'Don't know. Must have done.'

'Did you have a phone number where you could contact her?'

She shook her head as if nothing really mattered now: Karen was dead, gone.

Wesley picked up the phone and dialled again.

Armed with an authentic picture of the murdered woman, Rachel had drawn a complete blank at the travellers' site at Neston. She had seen Sludge and Donna, who backed up Dave and Julie's story, but they made it clear by their monosyllabic answers that they didn't know anything else about the matter and didn't particularly care.

She had then resumed her crusade among the hairdressers of Tradmouth with more gusto than before. Snippers and Curls was her last port of call. It was always best to double-check and she had a feeling ... just a feeling.

Mr Carl was putting the finishing touches to a scrunch-dry when he spotted Rachel walking with determination down St Margaret's Street. He signalled to Damien, the junior, to take over the hairdryer and, with a word and a charming smile to his client, hurried into the back. When he heard the front door of the salon open he let himself out into the alleyway at the back of the shop and disappeared in the direction of the b.u.t.terwalk.

It was no use going to the clinic. Pam would already have left. Wesley sat in front of the television screen which might just as well have been blank for all the notice he was taking of it. She should have been home by now. She must have driven to Plymouth, to her mother's: the traditional refuge for disgruntled wives.

He picked up the phone and began to dial his mother-in-law's number. He got on well with Delia, a recently widowed and formidable sociology lecturer. He hoped she would help her daughter to see things in perspective.

Wesley was halfway through dialling when he changed his mind. He'd let Pam cool off.

The sound of the key in the front door brought him to his feet, his heart racing. He grabbed the remote control and angrily silenced the television, then he stood still, waiting. He heard her put her keys away, take her coat off. This was how a suspect must feel before being questioned. She walked in. He rushed to her and tried to take her in his arms, but she turned away.

'We got stuck on the M5. A lorry overturned. How did you get on? What did they say?'

She pulled away from him. 'I don't want to talk about it. I've just spent the last few hours with my private parts on full display. I felt like a lump of meat on a b.l.o.o.d.y butcher's block, and you weren't even there. I don't think you care at all.'

She slammed the door behind her to make the point.