Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars. Miranda Emmerson

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СКАЧАТЬ Rillington Place?’ Anna asked.

      ‘London’s much smaller than you think. Everyone is somehow connected to everyone else. Even if they do all hate each other.’

      There were no curtains at the windows, only offices overlooked the room and Anna searched the sky for signs of light. She hated winter mornings, that irresistible pull back to bed. ‘Do you really think we all hate each other, Leonard?’

      ‘D’you know what I think?’ Leonard plonked himself down on the sofa next to her. ‘I think it’s all about money. I think we all come for the same reason and we call it jobs or houses or culture but what we really mean is money. Money makes places shiny. It makes them glitter. The rich come flooding in because they have things to do with their money. They can spend, show it off, make more of it. The poor come flooding in because poverty is terrifying and they gravitate to the place where there’s the most work. The immigrants come here because if you don’t head for where the money is you’re going to be going back on the next boat. My parents came here because the pogroms laid waste to their town and there were Jewish boarding houses and Jewish companies. Why’s Ottmar here? Why are you? We all come looking for the shiny and then we find that there isn’t very much to go around. And if all that’s binding you together is a search for shininess … well … those are very dangerous ropes to bind any group of people together.’

      Anna stared, perhaps a little too intently, at Leonard’s face. ‘You never said you were Jewish.’

      Leonard looked taken aback. ‘I assumed you knew.’

      ‘I think I thought you must be but then you never mentioned it.’

      ‘I don’t practise.’

      ‘There just … there weren’t any Jewish kids at my school. I think sometimes I just assume everyone who seems English is English.’

      ‘I am English,’ said Leonard. Pointedly.

      ‘I know … but I meant Anglo-Saxon Protestant English. Fruit scones; Book of Common Prayer; Henry-the-Eighth-had-six-wives English. You know. English English.’

      ‘You’re eating a bloody teacake; what more d’you want?’ Leonard worked a currant out from between his teeth. ‘Nothing can ever be too English, can it? Nothing can ever be too pure. It’s like there’s an entry test for Englishness and only twenty people pass it every year. Are you clever? Are you virtuous? Are you kind? It doesn’t fucking matter. All that matters is that you’re English.’

      Anna made an apologetic face but Leonard was now in full flow.

      ‘It’s like the bloody countryside. Benji’s English, of course. Went to the right school. Carries the right blood. And we’re all meant to love the countryside. Wellingtons, dogs; all that bollocks. Of course we never get invited anywhere. Too queer for country houses. Too faggoty for gaudies or hunts. We have to do it ourselves. Discreetly. He makes me go on driving holidays to Wiltshire and Somerset. And I sit there, with my sunglasses on, blocking out the scenery, reading Barthes just to piss him off. “Look at that view!” he cries. But no, I will not look at the bloody view. It’s all the same anyway. Vulgar, garish greenery. Ancient oaks. God, I hate it. It’s so small. So unimportant. So fucking parochial. I hate it and it hates me back.’

      Anna looked at him. There was a manic grief in his expression, alongside the annoyance and humour. She realised suddenly that she didn’t know Leonard very well at all. At work he was professional and friendly and precise but there was so much messiness to this other Leonard, this angry Leonard who lived in a half-bare flat with his city-suited lover and his odd neuroses. Anna knew the kind thing would be to hug him; to tell him to be any way he wanted. But even that little outpouring of intimacy seemed too great a leap. For a little outpouring of intimacy could easily become something more, something familiar, something desired, essential, habitual.

      ‘I’ve made you uncomfortable, haven’t I?’ Leonard said.

      ‘No. No!’ Anna assured him.

      ‘Shall we be English again?’ Leonard asked with a small, watery smile.

      And Anna smiled back. ‘Let’s.’

       Going Out

      Wednesday, 10 November

      The wind blew fiercely down Regent Street and the secretaries and shop girls in their black and white winter coats squealed and skittered, handbags swinging wildly, hands reaching out and grabbing for a friendly arm. Hayes watched them all bowling towards the tube stations as the lights in the department stores went dark. Then he crossed the street and headed into Soho. It was half past five and he’d soon be off shift but he’d been warned that the clubs didn’t open until early evening. He wanted to have an informal chat with Charlie Brown or anyone else he could find before the evening rush started.

      He was frustrated by the lack of urgency in the office. Inspector Knight seemed convinced that Iolanthe had left of her own accord. He had gone to speak to his boss that morning, to ask for backing in investigating the multiple bank accounts, but Knight had dismissed him without thought.

      ‘Dead end, Hayes. Not worth your time. She’ll be off her head or knocked up. That’s why women run. She was seen at Roaring Twenties, which says to me she didn’t care much what happened to her. Older woman. Single. Lonely. Probably sleeping around. She’ll have been buying dope or worse and getting herself felt up by the lower classes. We’ll get a call, sometime, you mark my words … She’ll be found dead. Overdose. Heroin. Suicide. In the stained sheets of some coloured’s bed.’

      ‘But how can we be certain, sir, that it wasn’t about money? She was earning well. It could be robbery or extortion or kidnap.’

      ‘Trust me, she’s just another low-rent Monroe. Childless. Looks going. Nothing to live for. Waste of our bloody time.’

      Two hours later, as Brennan pored over the meagre round of witness statements for the fifteenth time, he was called to the phone.

      ‘Detective Sergeant Hayes? It’s Anna Treadway. You interviewed me yesterday.’

      ‘I remember it well, Miss Treadway. How can I help?’

      ‘Well, I was talking with someone last night and it sparked in me a realisation … silly, really … and you probably know this. But Yolanda and Iolanthe are the same name.’

      ‘Oh …’ And then there was silence on DS Hayes’ end of the line.

      ‘I know … I felt very silly when I realised. And since you hadn’t said anything about this in interview …’

      ‘No. Of course. From violet. And flower. I even did Greek at school.’

      ‘And there’s something else. The last day, the Saturday, she got a phone message from an American man by the name of Cassidy. Second name I’m guessing.’

      ‘What was the message?’

      ‘Well, nothing really. Just to say he’d called. And the boy on the stage door said that it wasn’t the first time he’d rung the theatre.’

      ‘Do you know who Cassidy is?’

      ‘No СКАЧАТЬ