‘We’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘Was it you?’ Sometimes the occasional direct question produces an unexpected admission. But not this time.
‘Christ, no! As I said, I didn’t even know she was married.’
‘I presume you met on a flight when she was on duty?’ said Dave.
‘That’s right. That must’ve been about a year or so ago, I suppose. Nine hours is quite a long time to get to know someone, and she made a point of giving me the address of the stopover hotel where she’d be staying with the crew. Three times! And finished up by jotting it down on one of those little paper mats they put the drinks on. I guessed I was on a promise, so I changed my hotel reservation and spent a pleasant couple of nights in the sack with her.’
‘Has she been in touch with you recently, say, in the last twenty-four hours?’ I was hoping that Sharon had contacted him and told him where she was. But again I was disappointed.
‘No. I gave her my mobile number ages ago so she could tell me when she’d next be going to Miami, but I haven’t heard from her since the last time we were there. I suppose we must’ve arranged meetings at her hotel in Miami at least four or five times over the past year. I even thought about getting serious over her, though I guessed she was seeing other guys. But now you tell me she’s married.’
‘Not any more she isn’t,’ said Dave.
‘I might call her, then,’ said Harrison.
‘If you do find her, perhaps you’d let me know,’ I said, as we rose to leave. I handed Harrison one of my cards. ‘We’re rather anxious to have a word with her. Just to tidy up a few loose ends.’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Harrison tucked the card into a pocket of his shorts, and escorted us to the front door.
‘Who was that, darling?’ A coffee-skinned Jamaican girl wearing only a pair of denim shorts entered the living room once she was satisfied that the front door was closed.
‘The police, Shona, my love,’ said Harrison.
‘The police! What did they want?’
‘It was something to do with the car, but they got the wrong car and the wrong Gordon Harrison.’
‘That’s all right, then. I thought for one horrible moment it might’ve been your wife. Or worse still that they were on to you about your other business.’
‘No chance of that, sweetie. And as for Krisztina, she’s in Botoşani visiting her parents.’ Harrison told the lie smoothly; it didn’t do for the two women in his enterprise to know too much about each other.
‘Good.’ Shona moved closer and put her arms around Harrison’s neck. ‘Now, where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?’
‘One down and five to go,’ I said, as we drove away from Fulham.
‘And two of those are in the States,’ said Dave hopefully. ‘D’you think …?’
‘No, Dave. Don’t get too excited,’ I said. ‘The commander would have a blue fit if I suggested we flew there in pursuit of our enquiries.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Drop me at Waterloo Station and then go home.’
I caught the train to Surbiton with minutes to spare and immediately called Gail on my mobile, resisting the temptation to use that hackneyed phrase that one hears so often: ‘I’m on a train.’
‘Hello, stranger,’ said Gail. ‘Is there any danger of my seeing you in the near future?’ In the course of our relationship, Gail Sutton had become somewhat blasé about my job and the antisocial hours that went with it.
‘I’m on my way, darling,’ I said. ‘I should be with you in about half an hour. And I’m hungry.’
‘Hungry for what?’ asked Gail.
I’d met Gail some years ago while investigating the murder of her friend Patricia Hunter. They had both been appearing in the chorus line of a second-rate revue called Scatterbrain at London’s Granville Theatre.
There is a story behind Gail’s demotion from actress to chorus girl. A year or so prior to that, she’d been appearing in the lead female role of Amanda Prynne in a revival of Sir Noël Coward’s Private Lives at the Richmond Theatre. Feeling unwell, she’d handed over the part to her understudy and returned home unexpectedly to find her husband, Gerald Andrews, in the marital bed with a nude dancer who, according to Gail, was still performing in character. That was the final indignity to be visited upon Gail by her philandering husband and signalled the end of a marriage that had fast been unravelling anyway. After the divorce Gail had reverted to using her maiden name of Sutton.
However, in a chauvinistically unreasonable act of spite, Andrews, a theatrical director, had done his best to prevent Gail from getting any decent parts thereafter. Hence her appearance in the chorus line at the Granville. Or as she described it: ‘Kicking the air for a living.’