The Jewel

by Neil Hegarty

  So did Martin – but the new Julia was, it seemed, a match for him.

  Martin had brooded and fulminated over his coffee.

  Daddy had liked his coffee instant: Maxwell House, powdered, mild blend.

  Ward read Charlotte’s message again. A Sandborne. And an assault. Ireland. Request you call the office at your convenience. The famous Dublin Sandborne then, it must be. In the early hours: well, at least she hadn’t actually phoned. Charlotte was an awful bitch, but she did at least know when to call and when to text, did have some basic sense of boundaries and manners. A theft accomplished was a theft accomplished, and waking up Martin as well as Ward, and forcing Ward out of bed and into an actual conversation in the middle of the night: none of this would magic back a stolen painting. At least Charlotte knew this.

  It was time to ring in.

  But shower and dress first.

  14

  Ward was – they both were, he and Martin – tall and lean. They could have swapped clothes, had either been inclined to do so. Many of Ward’s gay friends were ill matched in this respect – little with large, willow with gym-and-steroid-pumped beefcake – and Ward was aware of the assumption that he and Martin were in this respect a blessed couple: the stars smiled on them, in that they could go off shopping together, whirling through the West End picking out clothes, selecting for one another in congratulatory unison. Such perfect amity. ‘The unbearable smugness of being,’ one of the boys had called it. This was – the assumption continued – a win-win situation.

  So Ward picked up.

  And of course he and Martin did, sometimes, go shopping together; and did, from time to time, wear each other’s clothes. Many’s the morning (not this morning) Martin had vanished along Despard Road wearing Ward’s straight, dark jeans – smart, perhaps looking smarter on Martin than they did on Ward. So Martin had said, once – though he denied it, later. ‘Nonsense, you said it yourself. Or implied it, anyway. Negative body image, is what this says to me.’

  Sometimes in the past, when Ward felt he needed a touch of gravity, he had worn some item belonging to Martin. Maybe I should wear black today, he thought as he stood dripping from the shower: and he stood in front of Martin’s half of the wardrobe, the doors of which Martin had left open. Martin’s clothes. Black and charcoal and steel-grey: but his fingers hovered only for a moment before he selected a soft cotton shirt, his own nice heather-green fine-gauge merino sweater. ‘Smug gits,’ his friends liked to say, automatically, without noticing that Ward’s taste in clothes differed from Martin’s taste, as day differed from night; and Ward would smile back, and say nothing.

  Mrs Sandborne.

  All these jobs and heists were big deals, of course, by their very nature: but Emily Sandborne was especially big just now, and the media would take an interest. This was never good: the only thing worse would be a murder, which had happened only once, and tastelessly. ‘Murder, murder on the wall,’ Martin had lisped, falsetto, when the news came through of that incident, ‘whoth the deadetht of them all?’ Ward had left the room, then: murder didn’t lend itself to raised voices, far away. Now he pulled the green sweater over his head, went back down to the kitchen, sat down and at last dialled Charlotte.

  ‘A robbery gone wrong, it looks like,’ Charlotte said. No preambles from Charlotte, no hello, no good morning, how are you? ‘A young man, throat cut.’ No softening of the facts.

  ‘Throat cut?’ This was almost Neapolitan. In the only other case, a man had been coshed on the back of the head, which seemed, somehow, preferable. And what about the art? ‘Oh dear.’ Ward liked to play up the campness, sometimes, because he knew Charlotte didn’t like any sense of Kenneth Williams in their serious job. ‘Who is this young man?’

  Also. He didn’t want to go to Dublin. He wanted this job to go to someone else; he knew that his fate in this regard was already signed and sealed.

  ‘Nobody – nobody in particular. It was at the National Gallery – not the actual one, I mean, the one you apparently have over in Ireland,’ said Charlotte. ‘They came in to steal a Sandborne, they tell me. The Sandborne: that famous one, hang on.’ Here she paused, and there was an audible rustling of Post-It notes. ‘Here it is.’

  ‘The Jewel,’ Ward said.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Charlotte said briskly. ‘The one with the story.’

  ‘So, they came to—’

  ‘Yes, take this Sandborne – and this chap, I mean this man was there with a woman, both gallery members of staff, of course, and—’

  He allowed Charlotte to quack on for a moment or so, and then said, ‘I’ll come in. I’ll be with you in an hour.’

  ‘If you could, Ward, that would be wonderful.’ This was Charlotte’s one and only concession to that incontrovertible fact that Ward had booked today, and the rest of the week, off. He was off – and now suddenly he was on again. No Southwold: now, this was clear. ‘See you in a while, then.’ The line cut.

  Also. Charlotte had voted Leave, and had been brazen about the fact. And Ward had to work with her.

  Ward cleared the table, cleaned the kitchen, stacked the dishwasher, filled Felicity’s space-age range of timed-opening dishes with kibbles, and treats, and fresh water. Martin would, and frequently did, leave jars and spoons and dirty dishes right there on the table, but Ward had a horror of food left out. It attracted the dead, as well as flies and microbes; and life had enough hassles.

  Daddy might feel he was being encouraged to come back. It was better to put everything away.

  He went upstairs, and bundled the usual items into the overnight bag which stood ready and open – Felicity liked to sit in it, and its insides were sometimes infested with cat hair – in the bottom of the wardrobe, brought it downstairs, said goodbye to Felicity, who was still settled in the sunny kitchen. ‘You’re in charge,’ he said, and placed his forefinger on her soft head. She closed her eyes momentarily, opened them, looked up at him.

  It was time to go, and he went. But still not fully engaged. A near-murder, and he should be: but his mind was on other matters. On the past and the present. On The Jewel. On the dead, and on the living.

  *

  He followed Martin’s path along Despard Road, down the hill, down the steps, skirting the homeless people, into the tube. Not quite skirting: fatally, he caught the eye of one of the homeless people. Young, dark, a scant beard. Too young. Not that it was ever right, but it was less possible, somehow, to blank the very youngest of these people, the ones aged seventeen or nineteen, the ones kicked out of the house, most likely, for some reason or other. Ward stepped onto the escalator and descended to the platform, where a train had just departed. He stood by the curving tiled wall, closing his eyes against the dirty air that churned in the train’s wake.

  On one occasion, some years ago now, entering the station at Tufnell Park with Martin, he had caught the eye of another such homeless man, also unacceptably young, a scanty beard, a sleeping bag, the usual accessories. No dog. A moment’s meeting of eyes. He had sidestepped, and they had jumped into the antique lift as its doors slid closed, descended to the platform, had made their way to its end to await the train, and then—

  ‘Wait, where’re you going?’

  ‘Just wait a second. I’ll be back in a second, OK?’ In too much of a rush even to look over his shoulder at Martin, Ward had retraced his steps, threading the crowds, issuing apologies in the face of glares, gained street level once more.

  Pushed a tenner into the young guy’s hand, his heart beating like a hammer.

  He’d heard no mutter of thanks, for which he was grateful. He wasn’t waiting about to nod or to smile or to receive a nod or smile from this poor guy, whatever his miserable story was.

  Just take the tenner, and do something with it.

  The lift descended once again. Martin was standing in the same spot, the very same, and he seemed determined to if possible outstrip the rush and churn of foul air generated by a just-departed train. Ward closed his eyes aga
inst the gale.

  They had been together for six months, meaning that the time for niceties and manners had passed.

  ‘What the hell was that about? What, did you have diarrhoea?’

  Ward flinched at the coarseness. He tried to explain: the homeless man, practically a boy, the lock of eyes for a second, the personal history that would remain unknown but that could be guessed well enough. Martin’s expression barely changed.

  ‘And you think a tenner will set him up for life, do you?’

  No.

  ‘Because it won’t. I get enough bloody drama at work, day in and day out, without things like this happening in my time off.’

  This was the first time Ward had experienced in its totality how Martin could hold and nurture a grievance, and how he could weaponise silence.

  How he could require space, and walk away into the London evening, and return to the flat very late in the night, with the smell of another man on his dark clothes.

  ‘I just walked,’ he told Ward. ‘And I’m tired now. Go to sleep.’

  Ward had phoned: three, four times. Each time the call had clicked to voicemail.

  Another gale of warm, foul air on the platform. Martin had avoided the worst of the rush, but Ward hit it, as he opened his eyes and shook himself a little, and moistened his mouth with his tongue, and elbowed his way onto the train: armpit city, as the train rattled south towards Camden Town and Euston amid a whirl of morning fragrances. But he knew his commute, too, was easy. He emerged from the underworld at Warren Street, went around a corner from the station, and he was there.

  His building – put up in the nineties, all occluded glass and bright metal, six storeys of it – was, he thought, delightfully anonymous. It could have housed anything from one of Her Majesty’s spy cells to a firm of quantity surveyors, and no passer-by would have been any the wiser. It in fact housed – as a discreet menu in the lobby proclaimed – several smallish legal firms, and a medical-something company drawn to the area, it was to be supposed, by the magnetic allure of University College Hospital across the way.

  And Ward and his friends, who did whatever they did from their offices on the top floor.

  ‘What do you do?’ a young man, an intern or student of some kind at the clinic, had asked him plaintively one evening, in a Fitzrovia bar. ‘I couldn’t quite make it out last time we met.’ Ward had been waiting for Martin, examining his nails against the marble-effect tabletop, when this young man, this boy, appeared at his elbow. They had met before, he claimed, at a seminar, several months ago now, had Ward forgotten? A seminar? – but no matter: the young man introduced himself again; told him that Martin was running late, was in a meeting, could not fish out his phone in front of board members – ‘you know how it is,’ the young man said, and Ward blinked with dislike at the cod-intimacy – and had ordered the intern to trot around the corner and offer his apologies.

  And of course to keep Ward company, to join him in a drink, to flirt a little – because Ward knew he was nice-looking, what with his height and his nice clothes, and no paunch (yet), and sallow skin and white teeth and a full head of glossy, well-conditioned, not-yet-receding hair; what a lucky couple he and Martin were – until repelled by Ward’s refusal to flirt back. Ward would have preferred to be left alone: to drink a nice glass of white, to look at the talent swirling around him; plenty to look at – but no.

  ‘What do you do?’

  Ward explained, in as few words as possible. He lost the young man’s interest and attention very rapidly: that was all too evident, from the way in which his companion began looking over his shoulder at the hairstyles and shaped eyebrows drifting past their table; and it was satisfactory too. Ward preferred to close down discussions of exactly what it was he did; there were various methods of doing so, and he was a dab hand at them all.

  ‘I’m a sort of civil servant,’ was one of his special methods. That was usually enough to head off any further questions, because nobody ever wanted to talk about what civil servants did and did not do. ‘I work on Warren Street,’ he might add, so as to seal the deal. Sometimes, if Martin was there and listening in to these conversations, he might – depending on his mood – collaborate, turning the chat into another channel. Or – in order to stir things up a little – he might interject, hard. ‘He fights crime, he catches criminals, is in fact what he does. Warren Street isn’t much of an explanation, Ward, is it?’

  It was not always easy to tell how Martin would respond.

  But it was true: he could not accuse Martin of telling lies. Ward did fight crime, though he would not have quite put it this way himself. He fought crime, and so did Charlotte (who had voted Leave); and so did everyone else, in their own way, and all part of their generously funded, well resourced, well regarded unit. They all did their best. Ward disliked talking about what he did, but that was just him – and the fact was that he was proud of his job, and of his results. It was an anchor in his life.

  A necessary anchor, now that the other anchor was dragging along the seabed.

  *

  And even Warren Street, anonymous though it essentially was, had come on in the last few years. There was a craft beer place in situ now – where the doctors from the hospital went at the end of their shift, to, Ward supposed, pick over the day’s salvations and medical misadventures, and conspire about how best to cover up the needless and accidental deaths – and a nice Italian bakery place on the corner, where Ward liked to stop to pick up his second coffee of the day and josh with Giorgio, the handsome owner.

  It was bakery time, now.

  Giorgio knew his usual order, and this was gratifying: it made Ward feel as though he were part of an actual community, improbably on Warren Street.

  They would talk politics as the machine ground and hissed behind him: Giorgio had lived in England for twenty years, he knew all the idioms, but he had never taken citizenship. ‘Will they give me the boot, the old heave-ho?’ he had said, once the initial shock of Brexit had, not faded, but rather developed into an even greater shock. ‘After all my taxes? Will they do that?’

  ‘They won’t do that, Giorgio,’ Ward told him, thinking at the time that they would, that Giorgio would be told to sling his hook and take his foreign coffee machine with him, that instant would be fine from now on. ‘They wouldn’t be so stupid.’

  Today, Giorgio seemed perky: perhaps cheered by the clear sunshine, London’s bustle, the queue going back to the door, the jingle of money and the soundscape of electronic transactions filling the air. So perky that he slipped a couple of zaleti into one of his green-white-and-red Giorgio’s paper bags and handed the bag over with Ward’s espresso and a wink. ‘We need to enjoy life, my friend,’ said Giorgio. ‘Have a good day.’

  Ward said, ‘I will,’ and for a moment he meant it. ‘Thank you, Giorgio.’ He stepped around the corner and into the glassy, bright atrium of his office building, said hello to Security – always wise to keep in with these guys – touched his fob, passed the barriers, entered the lift. There was more security, now, on the sixth floor too: this was something new, a sort of beefing up suggested by Charlotte and nodded through elsewhere, a precaution to deter a passing opportunistic terrorist. This security person sat at his newly installed desk: burly, muscly, but here it was, not even nine in the morning, and already he looked bored out of his tree, because it would take a determined terrorist to get as far as the sixth floor, and this guy knew it. However.

  ‘Morning,’ Ward said, and received a curt nod in response. He touched his fob again, and now he was in.

  Ward had worked here for five years now, and the place seemed never to change all that much. Except for the art, of course: this was changed on a regular, virtuous three-month rota. In the waiting area now, a block of red on the wall that might have owed something to tapestry, except that it consisted of a sheet of hard shiny plastic – grooved and notched for maximum tactile effect, might have been the idea, though it was art, and thus not to be touched. It had cos
t – ‘a fucking fortune, I mean for God’s sake,’ Charlotte had said when it first appeared, a week or so back, ‘we’re supposed to be concerned about art, could we not have got ourselves something a bit better than that?’

  Ward knew, everyone knew, that this – this swirl of pieces from the four corners of the world – was one of Charlotte’s grievances. And in the shocking aftermath of the referendum, she had become increasingly vocal in her objections. What a waste of money, what a fuss, what was wrong, in an English office, with English art?

  ‘British,’ Ward said once: and for a moment feared she would deck him.

  ‘British, then,’ she spat. ‘What’s wrong with British art?’

  Because they weren’t a British organisation – but he knew better than to take on Charlotte.

  This expanse of red plastic was Portuguese. By a ‘plastics artist’, the little information note unnecessarily said, who was based in Porto. Ward liked its boldness, its pillar-box redness. True, he thought, I wouldn’t have it on the wall at Despard Road. Also, he had to admit that it didn’t add much by way of calm to the waiting area here in Warren Street; it reminded him a bit of blood.

  But sure look, you couldn’t have everything.

  Charlotte could be glimpsed through a window in the wall of her lair, her corner office at the end of the corridor to the left. A few more private offices, a few larger meeting rooms, a kitchen, loos – but most of the sixth floor was open-plan: white desks and walls, and already vibrating with the hum of activity. Floor-to-ceiling windows that looked west and north, glimpses of the trees in Regent’s Park, the Telecom Tower, the roofs and satellite dishes of Fitzrovia. It was good enough.

  ‘Ward catches criminals,’ Martin had said recently. ‘Imagine.’

  Martin called him Ward, the same as everyone else.

  ‘Does he?’ said the person on this occasion – the woman, someone long since messed up by psychoanalysis, Ward surmised, from the way she was focused completely on Martin, from the way she didn’t so much as glance at Ward, in spite of the fact that the exchange was supposed to be about him. ‘Fight crime?’ They were talking about him as though he wasn’t there. Does he take sugar?