The Honey Trap

She wound down the window.

‘Sorry, folks. Got held up in the square. Filming in one of the houses on the east side, floodlighting, road closed, the lot.’

‘Some Agatha Christie TV job,’ the taxi-driver confirmed. ‘Been at it all week. As if the effing traffic ain’t bad enough as it is.’

Frederick paid the taxi and the driver helped Aran back into the folding wheelchair. Rowan slid the Volvo into the kerbside and the three conferred in front of the wide shallow steps which led to the foyer. Aran took command.

‘Ask the porter to come out, will you?’

Rowan glanced through the glass doors.

‘Hunter, wasn’t it? Flat twenty-two?’

He nodded, giving her a little push.

Frederick gripped the wheelchair and watched the girl run through the entrance, exhausted already by the attenuated departure. He wanted to be home. Also, he could do with another pee …

The porter emerged, greeting Aran with deferential ethusiasm, warily eyeing the Scottish kilt from which the plastered leg protruded like an Awful Warning.

‘Been in a pile-up, Mr Hunter?’

Aran shrugged irritably.

‘I’m going to the country for a few days, Ted.’ He opened his wallet. Notes were discreetly handed over. ‘You haven’t seen me, have you?’ Aran transfixed the doorkeeper with 500 volts of steely eyeball. ‘That young lady—’ he indicated Rowan sheltering from the rain inside the vestibule—‘is going to pack a bag for me. No one else,’ he emphasized, ‘is to enter my flat.’

‘Not even Dolly to clean?’

‘Not even Dolly to clean.’

‘Suppose I get a message for you?’ This Hunter bloke was starting to get up his nose, Ted decided.

‘I shall be staying with Mr Flowers here.’ He turned to Frederick and, taking a business card from his wallet, asked him to add the Mayerton phone number. The old man scribbled on the back, glancing into the brightly-lit foyer where Rowan was clearly visible flicking through the porter’s copy of the Sun.

Ted pocketed the card, tapping the side of his nose in an oddly mysterious gesture which only seemed to increase Aran’s irritation. As the porter turned to go, he grabbed his sleeve. ‘She’s also taking my van from the garage. While we’re waiting, would you push this bloody contraption round to the parking exit at the back to save her doing the full circuit on the one-way system to pick us up?’

‘Well, sir,’ the porter demurred, ‘as you well know, I’m not permitted to leave the front desk.’

‘Absolute codswallop!’ Aran exploded. ‘Five minutes at the outside. You don’t do an eight-hour shift without a leak, surely?’

Frederick looked on, visibly agonized at the very idea.

‘And while we’re on the subject,’ Aran grunted as Ted painfully jerked the wheelchair up the steps, ‘this gentleman would like to avail himself of the facilities.’

The porter pushed Aran through the wrought-iron gate which linked the foyer with the parking area at the rear of the building and carefully relocked it before ushering Frederick before him to join Rowan at the reception desk. Rowan disappeared to the fourth floor while Frederick gratefully gained the sanctuary of the staff cloakroom.

Rowan let herself into the flat, closing the door quietly. The climb had left her slightly breathless and she leaned against the door contemplating Aran Hunter’s home ground. The corridor had been dark but once inside the flat its clarity was almost blinding.

All the walls were white, the entire flat seemingly on view at a glance. The minute hall area was half partitioned with a filigree metal trellis supporting some sort of ivy through which a matt black dining table could be glimpsed in the short leg of an enormous L-shaped living-room.

A spiral staircase led to a wide gallery, presumably bedroom and bathroom. Moving forward, Rowan discovered two mirrored doors revealed a small cloakroom and study-cum-workroom.

A short passage led to a kitchenette, ranged with chrome and black fitments and a window overlooking the street. Parting the slats of the venetian blind, Rowan looked down on to Simon’s Volvo parked beside the wide empty pavement. No sign of Aran or Frederick. The rain had stopped.

She explored further, her espadrilles silent on the parquet floor, a prevailing sensation of being watched totally at odds with the clearly unoccupied apartment illuminated by an enormous studio window from floor to ceiling which bathed both the living area and the galleried sleeping quarters in a cold north light.

‘Stunning,’ she breathed, her normal ebullience strangely muted by the Immaculate Conception of Aran Hunter’s den. She padded round, lifting lids, checking drawers, opening cupboards. Utterly fascinated.

The scream of a patrol car siren in the street jerked her from this awed contemplation and she hustled, confident that the man whose home resembled a filing cabinet had described the exact disposition of his socks and pants.

Swiftly filling a suitcase, she added her own little extras: some after-shave, a sketch pad, Valentino sunglasses, a framed photograph of a girl in a strapless ballgown. Rowan snarled at the simpering face held up to the camera lens and hoped his plastered leg was sexually inordinately inconvenient.

Placing the suitcase near the door, she selected another key and opened the rolltop desk, the only item in the entire flat which had seen better days. Its battered, scarred surface was reassuring, the lock flimsy and really not worthy of a key at all. Presumably, confident of the mortice locks, entryphones, unopenable windows and the televisual surveillance of Ted the doorman, the ultimate pushover of an antique desk was a sop to fatalism.

A small rectangular parcel propped against the pigeonholes was taped and secured as Aran had described. Rowan guessed she had already outstayed her welcome and the shrill summons of the entryphone came as no shock. Leaving the desk gaping, she lifted the wall-mounted receiver. ‘Yes?’

‘This is Ted, miss. Mr Hunter asked me to tell you he’s waiting.’

An edited version Rowan guessed, cheerfully assuring the porter she was on her way. She placed the brown paper parcel with the suitcase, relocked the desk and had a final look round.

Unable to resist the kitchen in any house, Rowan hurried through to see what sort of catering arrangements an art restorer felt necessary. Stuffed quails? Caviare? Moules au beurre d’escargot?

The fridge was a let-down. Butter, the mildewed remains of some Stilton, a large carton of yoghourt and some Parma ham. The freezer was worse: almost totally empty, the biggest item a party pack of ice cubes. The wine rack looked promising but, she discovered, apart from one bottle of Bollinger, contained only numerous flagons of distilled water, white spirit and industrial meths. A serious alcoholic?

Purloining the champagne, she tossed the ham and cheese into the rubbish chute, hearing it bounce noisily down to the basement. Remembering the yoghourt, she turned back to the fridge, removing the carton to throw after the odorous Stilton. Its peculiar lightness seemed odd. Expecting a foul watery curd, she opened the lid. Surprise, surprise. Inside, carefully rolled and rubber-banded, were several hundred large denomination banknotes. With reverence she mentally calculated the value of Aran’s little nest egg and let out a low whistle. And it had been within an ace of the waste chute!

Firmly reining in her imagination, Rowan pocketed the roll of notes and remonitored the flat. The sky pinned up within the frame of the huge studio window gleamed theatrically mauve after the rain, a pair of geese winging rapidly to the edge of the picture lending a lively signature. Two shiny yellow sofas upholstered in a shade she could only describe as canary in aspic confronted the cloudy sky in a largely empty room. Rowan suspected panelled wall cupboards decorously hid such ruderies as TV, stereo and ashtrays.

Turning aside, she shivered, struck by the sterile luxury of a minimalist interior. In her haste to depart she almost spun into the bottom step of the staircase, stumbled and found herself facing a french window leading on to a minuscule balcony. She peered through the glass, dismissing the balcony as a useless sitting-out area, it being barely large enough for two chairs. It overlooked the parking spaces on the ground floor. A fire escape? Only if one had a parachute. Not daring to spend more time exploring, she hurried out, snatched up the suitcase and, cradling Aran’s precious parcel and the champagne to her wonderful chest, slammed the door, relocking it top and bottom before flinging herself back down four flights of stairs.

The garage area extended along the back of the building, marked spaces numbered and mostly vacant mid-afternoon. A few BMWs, a Mercedes and one Rolls-Royce were stabled like expensive bloodstock, rendering Aran’s van incongruous as a carthorse. The van was as minimally decorated as the flat, its beige paintwork elegantly enlivened by classic black lettering which announced Aran Hunter, Fine Art Restorations, 22 Raphael Studios and the telephone number. She stowed Aran’s gear on the passenger seat and carefully backed out, using the remote control to escape through the double steel electronic gates which opened to a one-way street behind Cheyne Walk. Aran had warned her about this and she mentally plotted the arrows to arrive back at the front of the building. But they were waiting just outside in the quiet backstreet; Aran tense, Frederick exhausted, both men touchingly forlorn like luggage left at the side of the road.

Frederick brightened visibly as she jumped out of the van and between them they lifted the wheelchair in the back, clamping the wheels to a steel runner on the floor of the fitted interior before bundling the impatient patient to sit cushioned on the floor beside it. As Frederick made as if to join her in the front, Rowan explained he would have to drive the Volvo back to the riverside. Dismayed, the old man reluctantly accepted Simon’s keys and at last the Volvo lurched into convoy behind the van.

With a real sense of achievement Frederick smoothly proceeded along the Embankment and parked within fifty yards of the Christabel. Rowan applauded from the parked van, Aran invisible in the back.

Locking up, Frederick confidently approached the office, recognizing the spotty youth who disposed of the rubbish and dealt with general maintenance. He greeted the gimlet eyes, all that was visible between a thick muffler pulled up to his ears and the sharp peak of a baseball cap.

‘Wayne, isn’t it?’

The gimlet eyes bored on but, sure of his ground, Frederick pushed the car keys through the cubbyhole. These ‘punky boys’ he regarded with even less favour than the lager louts who had invaded the village most weekends that summer.

‘Mr Alington from the Christabel asked me to leave these in your safekeeping, young man.’ Frederick’s fruity Edwardian tones would have offended the sensitivities of Wayne, always alert to piss-takers, had he not been subjected to the old man’s rich phraseology on previous visits.

He nodded, shoving the keys in a drawer, mumbling some sort of response, but the words, entangled in the muffler, refused to emerge.

‘I say, what?’

Wayne lowered the grubby scarf to disclose a bruised and swollen lip. ‘I said Si told me the girl’d bring the keys back tonight,’ he repeated.

‘We changed our plans,’ Frederick answered airily, moving off.

Wayne rapped on his window. ‘Hang about, mate!’

Frederick half turned.

Wayne pointed to Simon’s berth. ‘Si’s winder-box. Found it at low tide. Right old state it’s in. Done me best but you know how he goes on about them flowers of ’is. I put it back on deck but everyfink’s broke. How’d it get shoved overboard?’

Frederick shrugged, at a loss for words. At last he murmured something about ‘A bit of a party …’ Warming to his theme, he winked. ‘High jinks, you understand. Got a bit out of hand.’

Wayne replaced the muffler and stared balefully at the over-ripe plum driving the van, now leaning on the car horn, laughingly urging the old codger to get a move on. Looked just like Sharon, she did. Fat bum … Big tits … Fuzzy bush down there, shouldn’t wonder …

He snorted. Silly bugger. Wayne knew all about old farts like Frederick. Money talks, he sourly concluded, watching the old man’s hurrying steps back to the van. As it drove away Wayne jotted down the details painted on the side. Might come in handy. Never know. Fine Art Restorations?

‘Need a bloody lot of restoring before that poor old sod could do anything for a girl like that.’

CHAPTER 5

Simon felt comfortable in Amsterdam and relaxed in his hotel room, putting aside the problems that had brought him there. He made several phone calls, sitting near the window, enjoying the slant of afternoon light silhouetting the gables of houses across the canal. It reminded him of Cheyne Walk seen from the riverside promenade in Battersea Park. The brick façades unified in their confident Protestant affluence presented a slab of bourgeois urbanity.

He briefly concluded his conversations, arranging meetings for the next day, completing notes in the margin of his schedule, underlining the matters for compromise, doubly underlining the matters on which he must stand firm.

Glancing at his watch, he decided to slip out for a brisk walk along the canals before his appointment with Erskine. He left the hotel with alacrity, eager for a breath of air. A clear lemon sky gilded rooftops reflected in the smooth water. It was a static version of his view from the Christabel, there the Thames turbulent, tidal, busy with river traffic: barbaric by comparison.

He stepped out under the lime trees eager to reach the houseboats moored, if he remembered rightly, in the next canal. He wished he had brought his camera, wished he could pretend to be just another tourist with nothing more on his mind than choosing a delicious Indonesian rijstafel.

He found the houseboats: a motley selection, not as self-conscious as the Chelsea lot but looking more seaworthy, more ‘boat’ and less ‘house’, he admitted to himself with a smile. The curtains were mostly drawn, the decks empty, no old man and his nephew sipping brandy at dusk, watching the tide churning deep water. He shrugged off this line of thought, unwilling to relive the ghastly rescue of that vast female. It was only in recollection that fear had set in. Simon now realized with an icy twist in his gut that both he and the girl were very lucky indeed to escape drowning. He found himself staring at the barely rippling surface of the canal and flung aside this morbid certainty which the sheer banality a swim here would present. Lifesaving in a Dutch canal would have been a Mickey Mouse affair by contrast.

Back in the hotel, he showered and changed and tried to ring Frederick again. At first the engaged signal was heartening—at least the old boy was safely back in residence—but the continued blocking of the line was very strange. With mounting anxiety Simon called the boatyard office and recognized the nasal growl of the dreadful Wayne.

‘I am a little concerned about the gentleman who stayed on board last night, Wayne. My uncle, Mr Flowers, you remember? Is the car back yet?’

‘The Volvo’s ’ere, in full view, Si. I got the keys from ’im just after me dinner.’

Simon glanced at the time. ‘You mean early this afternoon?’

‘’Sright. He came back driving your motor and ’opped off with that plump new bird of yours what stayed last night,’ he said, the innuendo strongly underlined.

Simon frowned. ‘You say Mr Flowers drove the car himself?’

Wayne sniggered. ‘Parked it an’ all. Not so much as a scratch. I give it the once over jest in case. Thought he didn’t drive?’

‘Not for years.’ Simon’s confusion grew. ‘Then the girl didn’t drive him home, after all?’

‘’e went off with ‘er all right. She had this van, see, and he ’opped off with her like I said, right as ninepence. Can’t say where they went, though.’

‘I’ve tried telephoning his house but the line’s engaged. I expect he’s there all right but I told the girl to drive him home. At least,’ he added, ‘the Volvo’s back. Wayne, don’t give the keys to her if she comes back for the car. I’ll be home myself in a few days.’

After he had put the phone down, Wayne fingered his jottings of the van’s particulars on the grubby page of the log-book. He hadn’t shared this morsel yet, maybe he would follow it up himself. Or find a buyer … Wayne Denny, aged twenty-two, greasy collar-length hair and sallow complexion, was old for his years. Being taken into care on his eighth birthday had made an indelible impression, and streetwise intelligence—honed by two short custodial sentences for petty theft—had completed his education, preparing him for a variety of jobs and a lifetime of living on his wits.

He liked this present lark looking after the houseboats. It left him free to poke about, gave him a degree of power over the naïve—by his standards—tenants. It also placed him at the trendy end of Kings Road. Wayne had many contacts and no friends, his innate cunning armour in the war of survival. He missed Sharon since she disappeared up west with Fletcher but there were plenty more fat chicks scratching round this back yard. That one on Si’s boat, for instance.

Wayne wiped his nose on the ragged cuff of a nasty maroon jumper and tore out the sheet of the log-book where he had scribbled the address of the girl’s van.

The Orange Bar at Simon’s hotel was already filling with businessmen and tourists relaxing after a footslogging day on the Dutch cobblestones. Simon caught sight of Erskine already seated at a corner table, his back to the wall. Simon guessed this to be a precaution acquired since the Pantin days. Erskine made a languid signal indicating the bottle already ordered. They shook hands, as continental as true Europeans, chameleons under the skin.

‘OK with you?’ Erskine poured a glass of wine for Simon and they settled back, covering a polite hurdle of general commentary regarding their flight out, their familiarity with downtown Amsterdam, their assessment of the local restaurants. To the casual onlooker, two attractive Englishmen, thirty-something, already confidently on the way up.

‘About this little problem of yours,’ Erskine prompted, his mind shuffling the possibilities, not altogether approving of the more fanciful hairstyling Simon now affected.

After a moment’s silence, Simon plunged into his version of Rowan’s rescue. Erskine, visibly startled, butted in.

‘You mean to say you leapt off your boat, swam out and brought this crazy woman back on board?’

Simon nodded.

‘You’re bloody mad!’ Erskine raised his glass and sardonically added, ‘Congratulations. The Press will be pounding on your door any minute now. Sir Galahad is not dead! I can see the headlines.’

Simon looked uncomfortable but pressed on with the strange story.

‘I sincerely hope not. That’s the funny thing, Larry. I didn’t report it, it was all so confusing last night, I was only too relieved she wasn’t dead, not to mention myself,’ he said with a grin. ‘I am pretty sure Frederick let it go at that and this mysterious female insists we misinterpreted the whole incident and that she actually jumped overboard.’

‘Suicide?’

‘Not at all. If you met this great Juno you would realize she’s the very last person to take her own life. Irrepressible,’ he said with feeling. ‘No, the weird thing is, both Frederick and I are convinced she was shoved overboard deliberately by these two men. You remember my uncle from the old days, don’t you? The jolly old cove who used to come to Oxford and treat us to the odd case of wine at Christmas. He’s not as clear-headed as he was but we are both absolutely sure of what we saw, and even if we were wrong surely the police are looking for a missing person who disappeared from a disco boat in the course of a party?’

‘Can you say exactly when this incident took place?’

Simon winced, recognizing the stiffened phrases of an official request.

‘Oh, heavens, let’s think … I know! It must have been almost exactly eight-fifteen. I had switched on the radio to hear a concert and it had just started as Frederick was watching the boat through my binoculars.’

‘Do you want me to make a report?’

‘Christ, no!’ Simon leaned across the table, lowering his voice. ‘Look here, Larry, I know this puts you in a difficult position but as an old friend,’ he appealed, ‘could you just pass on the word informally that this girl’s safe? They’ll be sending down divers next, presumably, if they’ve already started searching.’

‘Her name and address?’ Erskine’s attention wandered, his interest in Simon’s story waning, more important problems on his mind.

‘Rowan something or other. Frederick may know it, I’ll give you his number. She was supposed to drive him back to Mayerton, to his cottage near Oxford, but that’s another peculiar thing. She didn’t take my car. Frederick parked it and left the keys at the boat company’s office with a boy called Wayne Denny and I’m told the old boy went off in this girl’s scruffy van. Why should he do that? She said nothing about preferring to drive her own vehicle and Frederick’s telephone has been engaged all afternoon so I can’t check up to see what’s happening.’

Erskine’s attention wavered like a man with an appointment elsewhere but he politely closed his notebook on the fragmentary facts Simon had been able to supply and promised to have a word with the river police and leave a message at hotel reception next day.

Simon ordered another round and said, ‘Frederick’s retired now. Nice old buffer but a real pushover when it comes to a pretty face. He took up painting in his old age and this girl’s just the sort to bowl him over. I wouldn’t like to think she’s taking advantage of the old boy.’

‘Having the time of his life, no doubt.’ Erskine rose, his drink untouched. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Simon. Duty calls.’

They formally shook hands again and parted with assurances on both sides that they would not lose touch.

Simon sat alone after Erskine had left, finishing his wine, mulling over the perplexing permutations of the whereabouts of the missing girl, not to mention his uncle. Did she jump or was she pushed? The old chestnut struck a sour note. Had she charmed Frederick into some new escapade? Where were they?

Only one thing was certain. A woman with an androgynous name, wearing men’s clothing, had disappeared as dramatically as she had entered Simon Allington’s ordered existence.

And he didn’t like it one little bit.

CHAPTER 6

Bowling along the M40, Rowan led a rowdy sing-song. Bar ballads, rousing hymns of the Salvation Army sort, a smattering of Victorian music hall songs and Cole Porter, of all of which by some time-warp she seemed to know most of the verses. She said her stepfather had taught her.

‘My first stepfather, that is. Before Mumsy discovered younger men. He collected old records. We used to play them on a wind-up gramophone in the garden. If you didn’t keep cranking the handle the songs got slower and sadder and even Jessie Mathews developed a growl.’

Frederick was enchanted. He hadn’t had so much fun in years. Aran started off well but by the time they had turned off at Junction 7, sitting on rolled-up dust sheets in the back of the van had made its mark. He grew silent, wondering if this was really such a good idea. By the time they pulled into Mayerton even Frederick’s spirits had dampened, home truths such as clean sheets and milk for the morning raising admonitory fingers. Luckily it was still daylight.

Rowan, however, seemed unquenchable, her delight in the village green set about with its half-dozen dwellings and a thatched pub spilling over in praises the British Tourist Board paid their advertising agency to invent. She insisted on driving round the village, getting her bearings—one of the compulsions evolved from a lifetime in strange places. She asked Frederick how Mayerton had remained so compact, complete in itself as if a thick line had been drawn round the houses in 1914 and nothing ever added.