by Andrew Hill
Viola didn’t stay long and after she’d left Carol decided to broach the subject with Josh.
“How long have you known Viola?”
Josh informed his mother that Violet is new to the school and is a border there. Carol expressed some surprise at her being allowed to dress so eccentrically.
“They don’t during the day or in class but it’s all right afterwards. She’s very good on the viola.”
“Yes, I heard.”
“I do hope you don’t decide to have your hair cut like hers.”
Josh said that it was a bet.
“Did you bet her?”
He shook his head and looked despondent. The last thing Carol wanted to do was say anything that might suggest to Josh that perhaps there are alternatives to being a professional musician; he may be better than he thinks perhaps it’s just one piece of music giving him difficulties that makes him feel so negative. Equally she doesn’t want to push him into something he may not be capable of.
A short silence was broken when Carol said, “You’ll only ever be good enough to be a professional musician if you believe in yourself.” Was that the right thing to say? Who knows? But it was the only thing she could come think of.
Over the coming weeks the French horn could be heard from Josh’s room occasionally playing duets with a viola. As more weeks came and went there was less music when Viola was around.
The week’s progressed into months. Viola’s dress seemed to be a little less eccentric, no that’s not quite right, it was a lot less eccentric. When last seen with Josh she wore trainers, denim jeans, a blouse, just one earring still in the right ear and, although her hair was still very short, it was one length all over; perhaps half an inch or so. Already she seems to have lasted longer than any other girlfriend, at least as far as Carol was aware, maybe that was just wishful thinking. The privilege of meeting her parents had still not been accorded her though they were busy musicians.
Carol took the opportunity one day of driving down to Poole where the Bournemouth Philharmonic Orchestra were giving a concert; ‘Fingal’s Cave’, ‘Beethoven’s fifth’ and ‘The Planets’ were on offer, a conventional enough classical concert with nothing very ambitious. Most audience members didn’t hear live symphony orchestras that often and this included Carol so they like to hear their favourites, it’s so much better than records or radio broadcasts.
Carol was very impressed with it all but wondered; this orchestra tours the South of England and doesn’t share the same status as the large London orchestras or European ones but Carol could not tell the difference. If the same pieces had been played by the Berlin Philharmonic would it have seemed better to her? It’s as if there is a certain level of orchestral craftsmanship which, when reached, Carol, like most of us, can’t really tell if it’s better.
Let’s move on.
* * *
There was little evidence of the cherry red car of late or of its driver at the bus stop or library or anywhere else, though the car with a man at the wheel was occasionally seen it was never in circumstances where Carol could invoke the resolution to challenge him. Until, that is, one Friday afternoon. Carol had been in Oxford to look for a new pair of trousers for Josh and was now sitting at a small round table in her favourite Oxford café, the one we’ve been to before. Unnoticed by her, a man came in and approached the counter and on acquiring a tea and a muffin occupied the seat behind her.
About ten minutes passed. Carol heard a male voice:
“Excuse me.”
Carol looked up and there he was as bold as brass. Carol, taken a little by surprise at this unexpected visit said nothing, she had been expecting to challenge him not be challenged by him! He went on:
“I’ve seen you around from time to time but I’ve never been quite sure. Have we met before?”
Carol made no comment and the man continued:
“Some years ago I did a part-time creative writing course and I think you were on it as well.”
He said his name was Peter Arnold but he couldn’t for the life of him remember hers. Carol was on that course but couldn’t place him.
“It was at the North London College around twenty or more years ago.
“You have a good memory.”
“But not for names.”
Although Carol didn’t remember him she confirmed her name. Any lingering doubts were soon resolved as Peter Arnold remembered things that only someone who was there could and was greatly relieved the mystery was solved.
A brief update between the two filled in the missing years. Peter Arnold bid his farewells; he was moving away from Oxford to return to his native Edinburgh to take a post as a teacher of English so it was unlikely that he and Carol would ever meet again.
Carol watched him as he left the café and walked up the road but had two outstanding matters in her mind that disturbed her. During the conversation with the so-called ‘Peter Arnold’, who she genuinely couldn’t remember, Carol gave away certain information: her name, for example, that she was a published novelist and one of her novels is likely to become a TV film, and her pseudonym. All of this would be useful to someone with sinister reasons to track her down in the future.
“If he wasn’t sure of his information before speaking to me he certainly is now,” thought Carol. The second disturbing thought was, although Peter Arnold must have been a student on that course, she felt that the apparent recognition of him was not because in the depths of her subconscious she did recognise him, but was due to something else.
“But what?”
Was it that he reminded her of someone else she’d once known or at least met. With these thoughts in mind Carol left the café and made her way home with Josh’s new trousers.
He wasn’t at home when Carol arrived but that wasn’t unexpected it was quite early and as far as she knew he’d likely be hanging around somewhere with Viola.
The ‘ping’ of an e-mail arriving in her inbox drew her attention; it was from Quinton and contained some good news. He had heard from the producers that his final script had been accepted and the film of Dead Letter Perfect was definitely going ahead.
The phone rang almost immediately, it was Quinton to ask Carol out for a celebration dinner the following night which she, of course, accepted.
Josh didn’t seem over enthusiastic about his new trousers nor for that matter about anything else and Carol soon realised it wasn’t the fault of the trousers. He was clearly upset about something but was not about to volunteer anything further. When his mother asked what the matter was he murmured. “nothing,” in the way that people do when they mean ‘something’.
Carol thought:
“It’ll be Viola, she’s found another boy you bet.” Carol thought hard about asking him but in the end said nothing. Would it be sensible to tell him her good news from Quinton?
She didn’t think so, and for the moment she left it at that.
Carol had written little for several weeks which was unusual for her but being a single mother of a teenage boy has its worries. Is his current bout of depression down to losing a girlfriend or genuine doubts about his ability with the French horn? There are more worrying possibilities; does he secretly use drugs? Is he being bullied at school? When he was much younger he was bullied because of his red hair, maybe now he thinks that’s why it’s harder to find and keep girlfriends. Worse than any of these is the possibility of him being ‘groomed’ by an older man. Does Josh have homosexual feelings as well as heterosexual ones? The list of worries seems endless and are constantly on her mind. If you can think of more, then Carol probably has too.
The following evening arrived with Carol no closer to discovering what was ailing her son. As promised she went over to Quinton’s and from there they took a taxi to a favoured Oxford restaurant. Carol’s mood of melancholy did not escape Quinton who asked:
“Are
you all right?”
“Yes.” was her single word response, which would convince no one who heard it.
“You seem a little remote.” Quinton wondered whether Carol really wanted to come at all. He was to some extent right but completely wrong when he speculated to himself that perhaps there was another man she’d prefer to be with. Carol didn’t want to talk in the taxi, it wasn’t any concern of the driver’s, and waited until they were in the restaurant.
“There’s a table booked for three,” said Quinton to the woman at the door.
“Three?” pondered Carol.
Quinton explained that a third person would be joining them. Once the first two have settled in their seats Quinton said:
“Something’s wrong isn’t it? You can’t fool me. We’re here to celebrate making a lot of money you know.”
Carol listed her worries about Josh. After a few moments of thought Quinton offered up his advice, which was the least devastating, that he had lost Violet to another:
“And there’s probably no more to it than that,” he said, finishing with, “he’ll soon get over it.”
Another slight hiatus was broken by Quinton:
“As for his horn playing, why not speak to his tutor about it?”
Carol agreed that would be sensible and she’d go and see him as soon as reasonably possible. Quinton didn’t think she needed to worry too much about the other things and that was pretty much it for the evening as regards talk of Josh.
Only a few more minutes passed before number three arrived at the table. This was the very woman Carol had seen with Quinton, and was in for a surprise.
“You haven’t met my sister, have you?”
He introduced her as Christine, who has spent the last fifteen years in New Zealand and was here on an extended vacation after her husband’s sudden death from a heart attack. Her two children, a teenage boy and a younger girl, were staying with their aunt in Wellington while Christine was over here.
“I wouldn’t go back there,” she explained, “but I can’t abandon the kids and I don’t know what they’d think about being brought over here to live.” She spoke with the same accent as Quinton though some of her vowels betrayed her many years living on the other side of the planet.
It seemed to Carol that Christine never really wanted to go to New Zealand in the first place and was only following the New Zealander she had fallen in love with.
Carol didn’t enlighten Quinton and Christine about her misinterpretation of their relationship. For Carol it had been a moderately enjoyable evening, as for the other two she didn’t know. Carol’s thoughts never really let go of her.
Would the discovery of the truth about Quinton and the mystery woman change things between them?
At around nine thirty the waiter came up and enquired:
“Are you Mr McDade?”
Quinton confirmed he was.
“There’s a taxi for you sir.”
Quinton thanked him and all three rose and left the restaurant where they found a dark blue Toyota being driven by a young Asian who was standing alongside his vehicle. On the journey home Carol’s only words were to give the driver her address. When they arrived, Carol said the usual parting pleasantries and the taxi pulled away with Carol watching and fully aware that she was a bit of a damp squib all evening and what, if anything, where they saying about her.
She turned towards the door and could see the hall light was on and was certain she had switched it off which meant Josh was home, confirmed by his coat hanging over the banister.
3
There he was, a fair haired man going grey and in his early forties sitting at his computer looking at the search engine interface. ‘Johnson Books’ appeared in the search box as he keyed it in. Fifteen pages of twenty sites per page came before his eyes, so where do you start. None of them was the site of the publishing company which had once rejected the efforts of an aspiring young novelist. He tries again, keying in ‘fiction publishers’ and once again is confronted by a daunting list of sites but there was no listing for ‘Johnson Books’.
“It’s beginning to look as though this outfit no longer exists,” the man thought to himself as he typed in the name ‘Philip Johnson’ along with ‘Phil’ and ‘Phill’. Although there were many, none could be conclusively the Philip Johnson he was seeking. In fact none were even worth investigating. Our net surfing friend could find no reference to Johnson or his company.
This man is, of course, Grant Webster of whom we have heard little lately. Not for fifteen years to be approximate when he began a lengthy prison sentence for dealing in class A drugs. Although he was in a poor mental state, he managed to play the prison game sensibly. Grant was ‘The Quiet Man’, who always kept his own company more successfully than the others. Guards and other inmates regarded him as intelligent but never quite in the same world as they were. Grant’s clean sheet coupled with an early release resulted in him having been out and about among the general public around seven years before Carol was having her worries about her teenage son.
* * *
I shall now reverse the clock and take you back to soon after Grant’s release. He’d made a lot of money during his days before prison and most of it was never traced by the authorities. It was a dark night with no moon shining. Grant had returned to a flat he formerly lived in, the ground floor of a Georgian house in Clerkenwell. Grant made his way into the rear garden and began digging with a small trowel he had purchased earlier in the day for this precise purpose. He dug down for twenty-four inches and to his relief he found a small metal box which he retrieved. The box wasn’t locked and inside undisturbed for some years were three keys. These were the keys to three separate safe deposit boxes in three separate banks.
Grant knew that none of the paper money or coins, each issued by the Bank of England, had changed since he deposited half a million in these and other boxes with keys hidden elsewhere.
Not only did Grant have all this cash but had purchased a house which was divided into three flats, the bottom two were rented out but he always kept the top flat for his own use though didn’t live there regularly; he didn’t want the authorities to find out about it. The house was owned by a non-existent landlord in one of the Channel Islands and the rent he paid and was largely filtered back to him. If the authorities found him it would seem as though he’s paying rent to the same landlords as the other tenants were.
Now settled in a relatively secure position with money and a place to live, Grant could get on with the interrupted project of finding the woman who stole his work. Grant knew that the book had long since been published under the authorship of Verity Green. The scant biographical details contained inside his copy of the published work were no help in tracing her.
It was time for Grant once more to take to the Internet. He keyed in ‘Verity Green’ + ‘novelist’ but still little came up. Dear reader, we have gone back to the mid-1990s when the internet was in its infancy. There can be little doubt this institution has provided genuine researchers a great opportunity that was not previously available. Regrettably it has also given criminals an extra tool to ‘research’ information about people for the sole purpose of furthering their criminal enterprises. Here we have a clear cut example. However, in these early days it wasn’t so easy but one site did say that Verity Green lived in Oxford with her husband and son.
Oxford is a large place to search looking for one person you know so little about.
“How many people with the name ‘Green’ live in Oxford?” Grant pondered this question and the only realistic answer that came to his mind was: “Far too many to go there and check them all out.” Notwithstanding that daunting task, Grant packed a bag, caught the next train to Oxford and booked into a modest hotel for a few days before managing to rent a small flat, he knew his search would be long. There were other options, such as trying to discover her address from her a
gent or current publisher but, quite correctly, they would not give it but would only forward a letter on to her which is definitely not what he wanted to do. But why didn’t he if all he wanted to do was challenge her over the copyright ownership?
His search began, ironically, by surfing the net, which he could have done from London.
“There must,” he thought, “be an image of this damned female somewhere on the Internet.” He kept reminding himself of this. But Carol was not really a publicity seeker and rarely attended events that authors are invited to. Images of her are equally rare and Grant was having no luck.
He examined the phone book and started checking out the addresses even though he knew she was probably ex-directory. Certain addresses, quite a lot in fact, could be ruled out because the ‘Verity woman’, as Grant thought of her, would hardly be living in a working class area. Even so, this left a tidy number living where she could credibly be living.
After around three months or so Grant was thinking it was time to change his tack, he was getting nowhere. It was a Thursday morning and Grant, after examining the contents of his fridge, took the short walk to the nearest supermarket. He didn’t want a trolley load he just picked up a basket and went into the main part of the store behind a mother with a trolley accompanying a seven-year-old ginger-haired boy. Grant turned to the right towards the prepared meals while the mother and child went straight on to the fruit and vegetable section.
There were no more sightings of the mother and child until he reached the checkouts and there he saw the same red headed boy. His mother was behind him but the boy had walked through the checkout.
“Josh, come here, don’t go running off like that.” The boy reluctantly returned to his mother’s coat tails and Grant made the error of not looking back.
Saturday morning came and Grant arrived outside the bookshop shortly before the appointed opening hour of eleven o’clock and took his place among other hopefuls in the queue of nineteen people, Grant, who is now number twenty in the queue, will be far more sinister. Carol, accompanied by Rob and Josh, was already in the store and pacing around nervously. On the first floor towards the rear of the shop was another display with a large photograph of Carol and the artist’s impression of scenes from her latest novel in the Genevieve series.