The ring of his mobile phone startled him. He pulled the Nokia from his pocket and answered it.
‘John? It’s me, Alma. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘Me? No, how are you?’
‘My legs are wicked, no change there, just getting old. Janice said you were back, and I was worried because someone’s been in Mr Bryant’s flat.’ She called him John; she always referred to Arthur as Mr Bryant.
‘How do you know someone’s been in there?’
‘There was some stuff left out and now it’s gone. I know because I did the dusting. I told you I didn’t like to throw anything away. I don’t want to let the rooms out no more.’
‘Was the door forced?’ asked May. ‘Did they break in?’
‘No, nothing’s damaged, the front lock’s in one piece. They must have got them skeleton keys.’
‘I don’t think that’s very likely, Alma. But it’s a standard lock, it isn’t too hard to open. I’ve done it before now. What did they take?’
‘Just some pieces of paper from the table.’
‘You don’t happen to remember what they were, do you?’
‘I know because I typed them out for him myself,’ explained Alma. ‘They were Mr Bryant’s dental records.’
May walked down Charing Cross Road and cut through to the back of the National Portrait Gallery, carefully avoiding the junk-food swill of Leicester Square. He detested the swirling scrum of the pedestrianized zone, the latent danger, the shoving, dislocated crowds that filled a once-beautiful space. It was hard to imagine, but the area had been pleasanter to stroll through when traffic had traversed it. Now, the tourist hot spots of the city were the very parts that made it like everywhere else. Was it possible to imagine those buildings without inhaling the animal-fat stink of McDonald’s or KFC? He never thought London would cease to appeal to him, but the little faded glory it still possessed was being scuffed away by the dead hand of globalization. On his down days he saw London as a crumbling ancient house, slowly collapsing under the weight of its own past.
As he pushed his way through a herd of name-tagged visitors in matching baseball caps, he wondered if he had left it too late to retire to the continent. France seemed a good bet, more at ease with its history. Crucially, he had never visited the place with his old partner. Perhaps he could be freed from memories there. He thought of his embittered son, recovering from years of addiction in a French commune, of his wife and daughter, and how he had survived them both, but even then he remembered Nathalie, how Bryant had loved her and lost her . . .
Damn you, Arthur, he thought, let me go.
He knew there was only one way he could stop himself from subsiding into the silent past: he needed to settle the murder of his alter ego. Without the truth, there would be no rest. Not now, not ever.
22
BLOCKING
‘I’m offended that you should even ask,’ Benjamin Woolf bristled. He never looked more suspicious than when he was trying to appear injured. ‘I represent a great many artists.’
‘I’m not saying you had anything to do with their deaths, even though no one actually saw you at the time of Senechal’s impalement,’ Bryant snapped. ‘You’re very touchy for an agent.’
‘We don’t all have hides like rhinos, Mr Bryant.’
‘How many other performers in the company do you represent?’
‘Oh, quite a few.’
‘Exactly how many?’
Woolf made an effort to look innocent and failed. ‘I’d have to work that out and get back to you.’ The detectives had set up a base in the company office, and were seeing everyone who had been present in the auditorium when Charles Senechal had met his death.
‘Do you have some kind of special deal going on with the cast members you represent?’ asked Bryant.
‘Something like that.’ Woolf ran a finger along his thin moustache.
‘Are you on friendly terms with them all? How close were you to Miss Capistrania and Mr Senechal, for instance?’
‘I keep a respectable distance from all my clients. I’m there when they need me. I give them advice and support, I listen to their problems, nothing more.’
‘But it’s a twenty-four-hour job, isn’t it? You take their calls when they come off stage at night, cope with their insecurities, assuage their doubts?’
‘Of course. All theatrical agents worth their salt do.’
‘Do you know much about their personal lives? Who they were closest to, who they were amorously involved with?’
‘Some are forthcoming, others aren’t. I don’t pry, if that’s what you mean. They have to tell you some things, obviously.’