Where There's Smoke

“How can he do this?” she protested to Collins. “He’s supposed to be wanted for murder! How can he just go around sticking posters wherever he likes?”

Even over the phone the Inspector sounded tired as he answered. “Thousands of illegal posters go up in this city every night. We don’t see any of those being put up, either. And as for Ellis being a murder suspect, so far no one’s made the connection between Alex Turner’s killing and the pornographic posters that have been popping up in odd places. Personally, unless I can see some advantage in changing that, I’d like to keep it quiet. I imagine you would too.”

“But you must be able to do something!”

“We’re doing everything we can. London’s a big place to find one man in, Miss Powell, and there’s no way we can simply predict when or where Ellis is going to surface next. It only takes a matter of seconds to put a poster up. A quick slap of paste, and he’s away.”

A headache was forming in Kate’s temples. She massaged one of them. “Where’s he getting the money from? How’s he paying for all this?”

“Good question. He’s obviously producing the posters himself, putting them together on something like an AppleMac and then running them off on a colour copier. Ellis used computers at work, so that wouldn’t be a problem for him. As for money, he was apparently left a bit by his grandmother. Not a fortune, though, and it looks like he’s been drawing on it fairly heavily since he met you. We found his savings book at his bedsit, and the account’s almost empty now. But that isn’t to say he doesn’t have savings we don’t know about. Or he could just have stolen the money. You can buy second-hand hardware cheaply enough, and all he’d need then would be somewhere with a plug socket to hole up in. We’re checking small hotels and boarding houses, but it’s a long business.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No, Miss Powell, it’s supposed to show you what the difficulty is.” There was an uncharacteristic bite to Collins’s voice. “Believe me, I don’t enjoy having a murder suspect running around like this, and if I could do any more to get my hands on Timothy Ellis I would. But with the information we have at the moment, there’s nothing more we can do, and if you can offer any constructive suggestions, I’d be very happy to hear them.”

Immediately, he seemed to regret his loss of composure. His tone became conciliatory. “Look, I know it’s distressing. We will catch him, I promise you that. But you’ll have to accept that there’s only so much we can do. He’s obviously targeting areas where he knows you go, but that still covers most of West and Central London. It’s a big city and we can’t just guess where he’s going to turn up.”

Afterwards, Kate berated herself that she didn’t have to guess, that she should have known what Ellis was going to do next. But it wasn’t until the call from the Parker Trust the following morning that she saw the inevitability of it.

“Hello, Mr Redwood,” she said, wondering what petty complaint the Trust’s chairman had now. “How are you?”

There was no reciprocal pleasantry. “You know why I’m calling, I expect?”

Kate hastily tried to think if there was something she’d forgotten. “No. Should I?”

“It’s about the poster.”

Oh, God. “Oh?” Kate heard herself say.

“I presume you know what I’m talking about?”

She tried to sound indifferent. “Perhaps you should just tell me, Mr Redwood, and then we can both be certain.”

“Very well. I’m talking about a highly offensive poster concerning you that’s been brought to my attention. Is that plain enough?”

The receiver felt heavy in her hand. She’d known there was a chance that some of her clients might see them, but she had told herself it was a slim one.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“So are we. Miss Powell. This is hardly the sort of profiling we anticipated when we hired your agency.”

“I’m not happy about it myself.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s small consolation. I presume you knew about the poster’s existence already?”

“Yes, but—”

“And yet you didn’t inform us?”

“I didn’t think it was any of the Trust’s business.”

“I disagree. I made it clear at the outset that anything which affects the Trust is very much our business.”

“The posters are aimed at me, not the Trust. I’m sorry that you’ve been involved, but I can’t see that you’ve any cause to be concerned about them.”

“Miss Powell, your agency currently represents the Trust, and as long as it continues to do so any adverse publicity you receive reflects on us by association. As a publicist I would expect you to know that. I also would expect you to realise that we cannot continue a relationship with a company whose head is involved in some kind of sordid smear campaign. And I might add that we have no intention of doing so. Under the circumstances—”