A Portmeirion vase of freesias gave off a pleasant scent but failed to mask the smell of cigarette smoke. In several of Taylor’s pictures, I recalled seeing Jasmine with a fag in her hand. Evidently she’d never kicked the habit. She re-appeared, bearing a small tray with immense care and concentration. As I helped to pour the drinks, I noticed a tremor in her movements.

  “Parkinson’s,” she said briefly. “It’s competing with rotten lungs to speed me to the grave. But it’s not in my nature to give in, Mr …”

  “Morgan.”

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I wanted to see a bereavement counsellor.”

  “Actually, I’m …”

  “Tell you the truth, I’m not sure myself. My husband became a stranger the last year of his life. Dementia is a cruel disease, Mr Morgan. I had plenty of time to prepare for being left on my own, but I do miss having someone to talk to.”

  I tried to speak, but again she interrupted. “I thought I was being selfish, that’s why I cancelled your appointment. I suppose you think I’m a silly old woman.”

  She started to cough and I seized my chance. “It’s an honour to meet you,” I said, raising my voice. “The legendary Jasmine Jones.”

  The hazel eyes stared at me. How must Ulick Taylor have felt, I wondered, as he painted this beautiful woman in her prime?

  “You know who I am?”

  I nodded. “I work in the book world. I’ve seen those covers you modelled.”

  She made a dismissive gesture but I thought she was pleased. “The world was very different, then.”

  “I don’t suppose you care to be reminded of the past.”

  She glared. “I’m not ashamed of those pictures. In those days I was an attractive girl and I made the most of it. I liked to be admired.”

  “I’m afraid we’ve been at cross-purposes. I’m not a bereavement counsellor.”

  “Thank goodness for that. I’d hate to think I was losing my marbles. It was bad enough watching poor Robbie go to pieces.”

  “As I said, I love books. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you about the old days and your time as a model for Ulick Taylor.”

  “Ulick?” She closed her eyes briefly. “I’ve spent most of my life trying to forget him.”

  “I’m sorry if it’s painful …”

  “It was,” she said. “Not so much now. Robbie’s dead and gone and I shan’t be long following him. Things that mattered a great deal once upon a time don’t seem important anymore.”

  “Thank you.” I drank some coffee. “You were close to Ulick once.”

  “He and I lived together,” she said. “We met at a party someone threw for a group of artists. I was hoping to make it as a model, the next Jean Shrimpton, you know? That was the reason why I was there. Problem was, quite a few of the artists were more interested in boys than girls. I got talking to Ulick and we hit it off. He wasn’t as vain as most of them. Quite intense, introverted.”

  “I suppose he lived for his art.”

  “Pretty much. He did love to get out and explore the countryside. At one point, he even tried to get me interested in orienteering, but it wasn’t for me. Anyway, his work became all-consuming. Along with the booze. He drank to get over his natural shyness, or so he said. Within a week, I’d moved in with him.”

  “Your likeness appears on the cover of a book called The Agent.”

  She stretched in her chair. Her legs were still long and slim. “You know about that?”

  “I’m curious. The book was a big hit. I wondered why Ulick wasn’t commissioned to illustrate the jacket for the second Simon Verity.”

  “The Traitor,” she breathed. A faraway look came into her eyes.

  “Yes.”

  A small, humourless smile played on her dry lips. “The fact is, Mr Morgan, Ulick did get the job.”

  I caught my breath.

  “Really? What happened?”

  There was a long pause. I could almost see her brain working. She picked up a silver cigarette case from a table by the side of her chair and offered it to me. I shook my head. Hand shaking, she lit one for herself.

  “I hope you don’t mind the smoke, Mr Morgan, but if you do, too bad. My doctor is very cross with me. But it won’t make any difference. It’s not as if I can save myself, so I might as well take some pleasure in life, even if it kills me.”

  I gave her an encouraging smile and tried not to breathe in the fumes.

  “All right,” she said, coming to a decision. “I’ve never told anyone this before. Not even poor Robbie. It was too horrible. But now … perhaps it’s right for the truth to come out. Although it’s far too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  She sighed. “To get some kind of justice for poor Molly Kruger.”

  Taylor, she told me, made some preliminary sketches for The Traitor’s jacket as soon as Verity delivered the manuscript to Carberry. The story concerned the attempt of a secret service man to identify a double agent working in MI5 while trying to choose between his posh wife and his sensual lover, who happened to work as secretary to his senior officer. The publisher wanted the jacket image to feature the protagonist and the secretary.

  “The girl was supposed to be like Miss Moneypenny, but ten times sexier,” Jasmine said with a glimmer of a smile. “The hero was to hold a revolver, all very phallic. That was Ulick’s brief. Naturally, he thought of me.”

  “Naturally.”

  “The trouble was, there was an emotional tussle in our own lives, just like the book.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “Simon Verity was a bad influence on Ulick. I never liked Verity. He had his demons, and whatever caused them, it was obvious that drink didn’t drive them away. On the contrary. Yes, he could be clever and charming when it suited him, but in the time we knew each other he became ever more aggressive and irrational. Ulick wasn’t strong. He often sank into despair when his work wasn’t going well. Egged on by Verity, he took refuge in the bottle. He didn’t simply enjoy Verity’s company, he admired the man. Hero-worshipped him. Despite the fact that Verity was constantly trying to get me into bed.”

  “Really?”

  Again that faint smile. “Believe it or not, I was quite something in those days.”

  “I believe it,” I said.

  “At first I was flattered by the attention. I was just a kid from the back streets of Bangor, but soon the pestering became tedious and unpleasant. When I finally plucked up the courage to tell Verity he’d never get inside my knickers, he flew into a rage. Called me a whore and a dyke, and all the rest of it. After that, we never spoke again.”

  “How did Ulick react to this quarrel?”

  “He always made excuses for his friend. Pathetic, really.” She startled me by mimicking a reedy voice. “It’s just Simon being Simon.”

  A misty look came into her eyes, and she lapsed into silence.

  “About The Traitor,” I said.

  She exhaled. “I told Ulick he could forget it. I didn’t want anything to do with Verity and I certainly didn’t want to see myself draped across the front of his new spy story.”

  “How did he take that?”

  “We were going through a rough patch. Ulick was drinking far too much and thanks to Verity, he’d got hooked on amphetamines. Verity had loads of murky contacts, including in the drug trade. Ulick felt torn between me and his friend.” She puffed some smoke into the atmosphere. I tried not to inhale. “It sounds paranoid, but I’m sure Verity was trying to poison Ulick’s mind. To control him, and turn him against me.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Verity liked to control people. He used them and abused them. There were plenty of girlfriends, but none of them stuck around for long. Most of the characters in his books were thinly-disguised versions of people he’d worked with in the security services? He was thrown out because he was such a loose cannon. And he used prostitutes. One in particular, a girl called Molly Kruger. She’d come over from South Africa when her parents fell foul of the Verwoerd regime, and she drifted into modelling. That eventually became a euphemism for sex work. Not in my case, I hasten to add, but a lot of the girls weren’t so lucky. Molly liked the good life and she was willing to do whatever it took to get a piece of it. She had no boundaries.”

  “You knew her?”

  “We met several times. At parties, in night clubs, once or twice at Verity’s penthouse flat on the King’s Road. She was blonde, with a fantastic figure. Verity encouraged Ulick to paint her instead of me. I see now, he was grooming them both, so they would begin an affair. It amused him, and it was a way of spiting me.”

  “Taylor slept with Molly?”

  “With Verity’s blessing.” She blew out more smoke. “The trouble was, Ulick had an addictive personality. He became dependent on people, as well as on booze and pills. He’d been obsessed with me, and he became obsessed with Molly, too. It was too much for me. I moved out of Ulick’s place, though he begged me to stay. I told him he didn’t need a girlfriend, he needed a shrink. Not that he listened to me. Only to Simon Verity.”

  “What happened to the artwork for The Traitor?”

  “After I refused to pose, Ulick was struggling for inspiration. The publishers were waiting, he was under a lot of time pressure. Molly volunteered to model for him. Verity offered them the use of his flat. It was light and spacious and made an ideal studio. And he insisted on posing as the hero in the picture. A nice touch, having the author on the cover of his next bestseller. He said he’d supply the gun, the same type as the one in the book. He knew the right people.”

  “How did Taylor react?”

  “His moods kept swinging. He wanted Molly for himself. To make an honest woman of her, believe it or not. There was always something of the desperate romantic about him. Molly led him on, but I think that secretly she was sick of Verity and wanted to escape his clutches. Verity used to beat her and when Ulick saw the marks on her body, he was horrified.”

  “How do you know this, if you’d split up?”

  “All in good time, Mr Morgan.” She stubbed her cigarette out in ash tray and lit another. In her way, she was as much an addict as Taylor and de Lisle. And me. “One night, after they’d all had far too much to drink, Verity told Ulick to get on with his work. Time was running out. Molly said she just wanted to go to sleep and it ended up in an almighty row. Verity was even more aggressive than usual. For the first and only time in his life, Ulick stood up to him. Told him to stop abusing Molly, said he was going to take her away. Verity hated being crossed. He turned on Molly, called her a traitor.”

  “Just like the woman in the story,” I murmured.

  Jasmine grunted. “I never read it.”

  “In the book, she turns out to be the villain.”

  “Ah. Typical Verity. He saw himself as a hero. When things went wrong, someone else was always to blame.”

  “What happened?”

  Jasmine bit her lip. “Verity had loaded the revolver with live ammunition. His idea of fun. Lending realism to the scene. As the row became heated, he waved the gun in the air. Molly said something provocative. So he shot her.”

  I stared at her. “Verity murdered the girl?”

  She nodded. For perhaps a full minute, neither of us spoke. Perhaps we were both picturing the scene.

  “Ulick came to see me a week later. At first I didn’t want to let him into my flat, but he begged me to hear what he had to say. He was in a terrible state. Practically incoherent. It took me an age to make sense of his story, but in the end he told me everything. When he realised Molly was dead, Ulick wanted to call the police. Verity wouldn’t hear of it. Told him it wouldn’t bring Molly back. They’d both be ruined. Long years in prison for the pair of them. Instead, he made a call to one of his dodgy associates. At dead of night, three thugs turned up with a van. The body was taken away and buried in boggy ground in a remote stretch of Epping Forest. Verity forced Ulick to go along with them, and help to dig the grave, to make sure he couldn’t deny complicity.”

  “Was the body ever found?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  There was a long silence before she spoke again.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I kept my mouth shut. Rather dishonourable, isn’t it? To be told about a terrible crime and not say a word?”

  “I’m sure you had your reasons.”

  “At the time, yes. Verity frightened me, and so did the people he knew in the underworld. I didn’t want to have my face slashed or finish up like Molly in an unmarked grave. When Ulick poured his heart out, he asked me what he should do. I said he couldn’t expect me to take responsibility for his life. He needed to look into his conscience and make up his own mind. That was the last time we ever met.”

  “Subsequently he took an overdose.”

  “Forty-eight hours later.” She coughed. “He was always one for the easy way out.”

  “He never shared his guilty secret with anyone else?”

  “Just as I never shared my guilty secret,” she said. “That I’d moved on, that I didn’t give him more support. Or let the authorities know where Molly was buried.”

  “You can’t blame yourself. You were innocent.”

  A single tear trickled down her cheek. “I only remember one line from The Agent. When the hero talks about an innocent person who got caught in the cross-fire at some European check-point. And his boss replies: nobody is ever innocent. The truest words Verity ever wrote.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “By the way,” she said. “He did share his secret with someone else.”

  I stared at her. “Who?”

  “Carberry. The man who published The Traitor.”

  “What did he tell Carberry?”

  “He didn’t use words. Ulick was an artist, so he painted the truth. He told me that after he’d got back home and sobered up, he worked in a frenzy. The cover image he sent to Carberry showed Verity shooting Molly. Blowing her face off.”

  My stomach churned. At last the publisher’s horror made sense. Vile was no exaggeration. No wonder he’d rejected the artwork. Presumably he’d talked to Verity and been told Taylor was losing his mind. The suicide confirmed it. Another jacket was commissioned in a frantic rush. The show must go on, the book must come out. Verity might not have had a conscience to torment him, but by then his health was failing, the drink and drugs taking their toll. He’d probably been too sick to undertake much promotion. Before long his liver finally gave out.

  “Carberry sent the artwork straight back,” Jasmine said. “Ulick said he’d hoped to provoke him into finding out the truth about Molly. The artwork gave him the all the clues, even if they weren’t immediately obvious. Typically naïve. He got nowhere. Carberry was a publisher to his bootstraps, only interested in cashing in on another bestseller. Ulick heard from him on the day of his death.”

  “Do you know what Carberry said?”

  “There was just a curt note of rejection, along with a cheque for a kill fee.” She coughed. “Kill fee! Ironic, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose that tipped Taylor over the edge?”

  She shrugged. “Ulick had been killing himself for a long time. Verity too. So have I, come to that.”

  “How do you know Ulick got Carberry’s message the day he died?”

  “The note was dated the previous day. And Ulick had opened the package containing the artwork, note, and cheque. I reckon he looked at them, then parcelled them all up again and put them away in a drawer before having a few drinks and swallowing a bottle-full of his pills. After his body was discovered, the caretaker called me. Ulick left his will out on his desk. Everything was bequeathed to me. Not that I wanted it.”

  “So you discovered the artwork?”

  “Not at first. I was far too upset to go through his things. I had them put in store for a few months. When I decided to leave London and come back to the north, I went through all the stuff. That’s when I opened the parcel.”

  I leaned forward. “What did you do with the artwork?”

  “I couldn’t destroy it. It was a record of Molly’s murder. She’d been obliterated from history, a call girl nobody cared about. I couldn’t let the picture suffer the same fate. But I was feeble. I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone about it, either.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  I ground my fingernails into my palms as I waited for her reply.

  “How could I not keep it?” She looked me in the eye. “I haven’t much time left. I’ve been so worried about what to do. Your coming here is providential, Mr Morgan. A miracle, really. You must succeed where I failed so miserably.”

  I swallowed.

  “Swear to me,” she said, “that you’ll put right the wrongs of the past.”

  An hour later, I was back in my flat. Trembling, I opened the parcel Jasmine Cromack had entrusted to me. She’d been insistent and refused to take anything in return, saying she’d spent most of her life weighed down by the knowledge of Molly Kruger’s murder. She hadn’t dared to do anything about it, even after Verity’s death, but this was the right time. Nobody had ever finished up in court over the killing, but Taylor and Verity had paid a price and now her doctor had pronounced a death sentence. She had six months to live if she was lucky. Or, she added with a wry smile, perhaps the right word was unlucky.

  I put the painting down on my desk. The vivid use of colour was typical of Taylor, but Carberry had been right. The way he’d captured the bloody moment of murder was brutal, graphic, disgusting. Just looking at it made me feel like a grubby voyeur. The publisher’s note was still in the parcel, together with the uncashed cheque.

 

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