The Honey Trap

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 (#ulink_6b6e0121-2081-579a-8e3a-37f5c52aec3f)

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.

It was a chocolate-box place, its single street winding like a snail’s shell, turning inwards to the Norman church. Frederick explained.

‘Until the early ’fifties the village was almost entirely owned by the Edens, surrounded by the Eden Court fields and pastures, dominated by a single family. Inheritance tax and a diminution of the vigour of the Eden bloodline resulted in the sale of the estate, the remnants of a dynasty now being represented by the two remaining Misses Eden.’

Rowan was intrigued. ‘What happened to them?’

‘Cressy and Blanche? Still living in the village, of course. At the Lodge opposite my cottage across the Green. They must be seventyish now. Blanche, the younger one, is a bit peculiar. She doesn’t get out and about much but Cressida still runs Mayerton. She’s a JP, churchwarden, school governor: the lot!’ he chortled. ‘To be fair, though, Cressida keeps the wheels turning. If it hadn’t been for the Edens, the developers would have mopped up Mayerton long ago. The local planning officer goes in fear and trembling of Cressida Eden.’

At Frederick’s direction the van stopped on the Green and he stiffly climbed out. Rowan joined him, standing at the edge of the circle of houses, lost in contemplation, for once her energy stalled. Aran shouted from the van, feeling like a hostage, chained by the blasted plaster cast. Rowan, jerked back to reality, waved Frederick ahead to open up and laughingly set about releasing their prisoner.

In fact, it was no laughing matter. Aran complained loud and long, a tirade falling on deaf ears, Rowan seemingly immune to the vituperation which had reduced even the male nurses at the Darwin to despair.

Frederick quickly recovered, the comfort of his own things about him renewing the joy of having friends to stay. A bachelor life was all very well but lonely, sometimes a little lonely.

Melrose Cottage was very old, thatched and with low beams—dark as pickled walnuts—spanning the sitting-room, drawing the eye to an inglenook in which the fire stood ready laid with logs and screws of paper. He applied a match, the magical transformation of flames leaping in the hearth enlivening the walls with dancing shadows, greeting the grotesque figure of Aran in his kilt, his arm looped round Rowan’s shoulder, framed in the doorway like a Victorian oleograph of a wounded Highlander home from the wars. In the confined space, the combined struggles of Rowan and Frederick to manœuvre him on to the sofa dislodged the phone. It slipped off the hook. Aran was the only one to notice and kept mum. Telephones as far as he was concerned only brought bad news.

Rowan unloaded the van, parked it at the back and, closing the door on the dusk, found herself enfolded in the overblown roses of Frederick’s enormous couch, toasting her toes. She patted his arm, saying, ‘Frederick, this is just marvellous. How long have you lived here?’

‘Oh, years on and off. Only permanently since I retired. Before that it was my weekend place, an escape from the Ministry.’

‘A bolthole like this only an hour or so from London. You clever old sod.’ Aran was impressed, his glimpse of the tiny hamlet a reminder of so much he had forgotten jetting between London and Rome, Rome and Venice, Florence and New York. Were there really hideaways like this huddled all over England, just waiting for the B roads to be swept aside like coy draperies?

‘How about some tea?’

Frederick, all consternation, offered to dash over to Ron’s. ‘The village sub-post-office,’ he explained. ‘It stays open till seven. You can get anything at Ron’s—videos, weedkiller, stamps, not to mention the off licence, of course.’