And it would be done. No. Better. He would be done. So he had to firm up his story.
On the one hand, he could muscle a lie from someone who already knew firsthand what could come from refusing his request. On the other hand, he could demand the truth from someone else who might take an appeal for common veracity as a sign of weakness. Go the first way, and he ended up owing a favour, which handed the reins of his life to someone else. Go the second way, and he looked like a pantywaist who could be dissed without fear of reprisal.
So the situation was a basic no-winner: Caught between a rock and a hard place, Martin wanted to find enough dynamite to blast a passageway while keeping the damage from falling stones to a minimum.
He went to Fulham. All his current troubles had their genesis there, and it was there that he was determined to find the solutions as well.
He got into the building on Rostrevor Road the easy way: He rang each bell in rapid succession and waited for the fool who would buzz him inside without asking him to identify himself over the intercom.
He dashed up the stairs, but at the landing he paused. A sign was affixed to the maisonette's door, and even from where he stood, he could read it. Crime Scene, it announced. Do Not Enter.
“Shit,” Martin said.
And he heard the cop's low, terse voice once again, as clearly as if he were on the landing as well. “Tell me about Vi Nevin.”
“Fuck,” Martin said. Was she dead?
He dug up the answer by descending the stairs and knocking up the residents of the flat directly beneath Vi Nevin's front door. They'd been giving a party on the night before, but they hadn't been too occupied with their guests—or too smashed—to take note of the arrival of an ambulance. Much had been done by the paramedics to shield the shrouded form they carried out of the building, but the haste with which they removed her and the subsequent appearance of what had seemed like a score of policemen who began asking questions throughout the building suggested that she'd been the victim of a crime.
“Dead?” Martin grabbed onto the young man's arm when he would have turned back into his flat to catch up on more of the sleep of which Martin's appearance at his door had robbed him. “Wait. Damn it. Was she dead?”
“She wasn't in a body bag” was the indifferent reply. “But she might've popped her clogs in hospital during the night.”
Martin cursed his luck and, back in his car, got out his London Streetfinder. The nearest hospital was the Chelsea and Westminster on the Fulham Road, and he drove there directly If she was dead, he was done for.
The nurse in casualty informed him that Miss Nevin had been moved. Was he a relative?
An old friend, Martin told her. He'd been to her home and discovered there'd been an accident … some sort of trouble … ? If he could see Vi and set his mind at rest that she was all right … So that he in turn could let their mutual friends and her relatives know … ? He should have shaved, he thought. He should have worn the Armani jacket. He should have prepared for an eventuality beyond the simple knocking on a door, gaining admittance, and coercing cooperation.
Miss Schubert—for such was the name on her identification badge—eyed him with the open animosity of the overworked and the underpaid. She consulted a clipboard and gave him a room number. He didn't miss the fact that when he thanked her and headed towards the elevators, she reached for a phone.
Thus, he wasn't entirely unprepared for the sight of a uniformed constable seated outside the closed door of Vi Nevin's room. He was, however, completely unprepared for the appearance of the orange-haired harpy in a crumpled pantsuit who was sitting next to the cop. She leapt to her feet and came hurtling in Martin's direction the moment she saw him.
She shrieked, “It's 'im, it's 'im, it's 'im!” She flew at Martin like a starving hawk with a rabbit in sight, and she sank her talons into the front of his shirt and screeched, “I'll kill you. Bastard. Bastard!”
She shoved him into the wall and butted him with her head. His own head flew back and smacked against the edge of a notice board. His jaw clamped shut. Teeth sinking into his tongue, he tasted blood. She'd ripped the buttons from his shirt and gone for his neck when the constable finally managed to pull her off. Whereupon she began screaming, “Arrest him! He's the one! Arrest him! Arrest him!” and the constable asked for Martin's ID. He somehow dispersed a small crowd that had gathered at the end of the corridor to watch the unfolding scene, a minor kindness for which Martin was grateful.
The woman held at arm's length from him, Martin was able to recognise her at last. It was the hair colour that had thrown him off. When they'd met—when she'd come for her first and only interview at MKR—she'd been black-haired. Otherwise, she was little changed. Still skeletal, still sallow-skinned, with very bad teeth, even worse breath, and the body odour of three-day-old halibut.
“Shelly Platt,” he said.