Napalm Hearts

by Seamus Heffernan

  Claymore nodded, glumly pressing his lips. “Do I have to talk to them?” he asked after a moment.

  “I would. But you don’t have to tell them everything. They might try to jack you with the missing person thing, saying you should have called them. Just tell them she’d gone missing before, and you hardly considered it a police matter.”

  Claymore was quiet. I’d been doing this long enough to know he wanted further reassurance—he just didn’t want to ask for it.

  “They might know something about the recording,” I said. “All depends on what Lisa told Lotte before she jumped. Of course, they might not know anything. Keep it to yourself, and there’s a very good chance no one will ever know what was on that disc.”

  “Except you, of course,” he said, standing. He rustled through some papers on the table and picked up an envelope.

  “It’s not going to end up in the papers,” I said.

  He handed me the envelope. I opened it. Inside was money, and a lot of it.

  “You’ll be invoiced soon enough,” I said, handing it back. “And that’s more than the bill, anyways.”

  Claymore waved my hand away, declining the envelope, as he sat again. “Keep it. Discretion and professionalism was what I wanted, and I have received ample of both from you, Mr. Grayle.” He looped his fingers around the bone-frail teacup. “Whatever extra is there you can treat as a bonus.”

  We sat quietly, as I considered this. Claymore’s shoulders were slumped slightly, and the skin under his eyes was so purple as to be almost black. I tapped the envelope against my leg and finally slid it into my overcoat’s inside pocket.

  “How’s the tea?” he asked.

  “Pretty good, thanks.”

  We sat like that for a few moments. He poured me another cup. “Are you married?” he asked.

  “No. Not anymore.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “Yes,” I said. “A daughter.”

  He considered that. “I think I would’ve liked to be a father.”

  “It brings its own complications.”

  Claymore smiled, very slightly, his eyes downward. He rummaged in his pocket a bit and produced a bright red piece of card stock and handed it to me. “It’s a Christmas party,” he said. “It’s on the night of the 22nd. I know it’s late notice, but still.”

  “Oh,” I said, a bit surprised. “Well, um, thank you.”

  “There will be drinks and… appetisers. A friend of mine is an editor at The Telegraph. It’s their event.”

  “Thank you,” I repeated. I was sincere. “Might be fun.”

  Claymore shrugged.

  It wasn’t awkward, but there was a silence and I felt it was mine to break. “I’m sorry about your wife,” I said. “And I am sorry we didn’t find her before this happened.”

  He considered that too for a moment. “Thank you,” he said.

  “I’ll show myself out,” I said, standing.

  Claymore stood, too, intent to follow. Manners first and all that. We shook hands. I headed towards the house’s entrance in silence, my host close behind. There was, after all, nothing left to say. I heard the teak door close firmly behind me before I was off the front steps.

  25

  About a week later, pushing mid-afternoon on a Friday. I was leaning back in my desk chair hooking crumpled paper balls towards my wastebasket when Charlie poked her head in.

  “You OK?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said, lining up my next shot.

  “How was your last meeting?”

  “Grand,” I murmured. I watched my paper ball ping off the lip of the bin and fall limply to the floor. “Damn. Rimmed out.”

  “So what did she have to say?”

  “Married for sixteen years.” I had switched to today’s Guardian, tearing away a page from the sports section, crumpling it tightly. “Husband has started working out a lot. And wearing hair product.”

  She nodded, leaning against the doorframe.

  “She gave me his office address. He works late most Wednesdays.” I launched the next shot and drained it. “Swish.”

  “Nice one, Lebron,” she said. “Want me to call Ruddick, set up the surveillance?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  She dipped her head towards the wastebasket, where seven or eight crumpled paper spheres littered the floor nearby. “I’m not cleaning those up.”

  “No one is asking you to,” I said, mock-defensively.

  “You might want to move on that, then. Your next appointment will be here in fifteen.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “A guy from the agency. They’ve found a few potential replacements for me and are sending over a couple to meet you. First one is today.”

  “Sure. Send him in whenever.” I rocked back and forth in my chair a bit. She waited a moment.

  “Was there something else?” I asked, pointedly.

  Charlie’s stare hardened then, just for a split-second. You’d have to know her to spot it, but there it was. “No, that’s everything,” she said, walking back to her desk. “If you’ve got that under control, I’m going to take off.”

  “What are you up to tonight?” I asked, attempting to make peace.

  “I’m having dinner tonight and wanted to go home and maybe change first,” she said, from beyond my door. “If that’s OK.”

  “Sure.” I fussed with my just-sharpened pencils, lining them up nice and straight on the edge of my desk. “Where you going? Anywhere nice?”

  “Probably just a curry,” she said. I could hear her packing her stuff. “It’s not too fancy.” She paused, presumably shouldering her knapsack. “But it’s nice and quiet.”

  “Have fun,” I called out.

  “We will,” she said, and I heard the front door open and close. I took one of the pencils, making wide, looping circles on the pad that I made smaller and smaller. After a minute, I tested its still-sharp point against the yellow paper. It snapped away, cleanly.

  26

  Later that night. I was sat at a slightly-upscale bar in the West End, nursing a club soda and doing my best to evade the stares from the growing number of patrons eyeing the empty stool next to me, upon which I had carefully draped my coat.

  “Good evening, Mr. Grayle,” I heard a voice behind me. I turned and came face to face with the former Mrs. Claymore, Angela Kendall. She waved to get the bartender’s attention and was polite enough to give me a warmish, if brief, smile. A tight-fitting dress hugged her close, a cocktail number that hit just the right tone between friendly and flirty.

  “Evening,” I said. “Meeting someone?”

  “I like to keep a healthy social schedule,” she replied. She picked up her newly-arrived gin and tonic from the bar. “But I’m a little early. Is that seat taken?”

  “I’m afraid so,” I said. “I’m meeting someone, too.”

  “Very good,” she said. She took a sip. “Dreadful bit of business about Lisa, isn’t it?”

  I couldn’t tell if she was trying to avoid dead air or give me a bit of a kick. I sipped my own drink, deeply, draining the glass and trying to catch the barman’s eye.

  “Yep. Guess you saw it in the papers.”

  She nodded. “I have sent my condolences. Andrew seems to be holding up all right, in spite of it all.”

  “Well, that’s the thing about people like that,” I said. “Sometimes they’re a bit tougher than you give them credit for.”

  We looked at each other for a second.

  “Another one, mate?” the barman said to me, looking from the pint he was pouring to my empty glass. I nodded.

  “Very nice to see you again, Mr. Grayle,” she said, slipping her straw between two full, well-lacquered lips. “I had wondered how you had got on. I only wish I could have been more help.”

  “You were helpful, actually. But I ran out of time.”

  “Perhaps infidelity investigation is less deadline-intensive.”

  “It is. Bit boring, though.�
� I had just spotted my guest working her way to the bar. I gave her a quick wave and she slid through. Kendall smiled sparsely, saying good night with a short nod of her head.

  Lotte Guyanpala said hello and pulled the empty stool from the bar.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. “Drink?”

  “Yes, please,” she said, sliding her coat off. Her bare shoulders were dark and toned, more than enough for the straps bracing her dress. “Vodka and soda.”

  I ordered and let her enjoy the drink for a moment, content to sit in silence. We didn’t really have a lot of small talk to make.

  After two deep drags from her straw, she said, “So why’d you call me?”

  “Well, I had called you before, if you recall, but you never got back to me.”

  “I don’t really check my voicemails. My friends text, my mum e-mails, and the only people who call are the ones with bills they want me to pay.”

  “My assistant e-mailed you, too.”

  She shrugged.

  “Your friend, maybe your best friend, goes missing, and you don’t want to talk to the one person who tells you he is looking for her?”

  “I already talked to the cops about all this.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “That’s right.” She held up her now-empty glass. “So you can buy me one more of these and then I’m leaving.”

  I ordered for her, making it a double. She rolled her eyes, but not too dramatically.

  “What did you tell the police?” I asked.

  She sighed. “That we drove up there, that we got a little high? Lisa got upset, she flipped out and then… she jumped.”

  “Right. Where was Lisa before she got into your car? Who was she with?”

  “I don’t know. She called me, so I met her and picked her up. I didn’t even know she was missing.”

  I studied her face. She had the straw in her mouth again, fixing me with wide eyes that you could imagine someone else finding cute. “Do you know what this is?” I asked, and flattened my well-creased photocopy of the Napalm Hearts logo on the bar.

  “No,” she said, but I caught her eyes flick leftward, towards it.

  “Look again,” I said.

  She stared at it.

  I leaned in closer to her. “Listen to me,” I said, quiet but firm into her ear. “If you know something about any of this, I need you to tell me.”

  She was still looking at the paper. I could feel my pulse quickening, its beat steady against the back of my watchstrap.

  “You were the last one to be with her,” I said.

  She reached for her drink. I pulled it slightly towards me, just out of her easy reach. She looked up at me. Those eyes were not playing cute anymore. “I don’t want to get into any trouble,” she said.

  “You won’t. I’m not a cop, remember?”

  “These guys… they make videos. Homemade stuff. Sometimes the girls in them get high, sometimes stuff gets a little rough.”

  “I thought this was all consensual. Friends and couples getting off filming for other couples. Some kind of upscale sex-tape swap.”

  She shook her head. “That might be how it started, but that’s not how it is.”

  I waited.

  “I was on camera a few times,” she said, finally. “There was a guy—he’d call me. Us. We’d show up, party with whoever was there, and then sometimes we’d get taped.”

  “You and Lisa?” I asked.

  She nodded. “We got paid, but it was getting scary. Lisa wanted out, she wanted to stop. They said no.”

  “Who said?” I asked.

  “These two guys. They were running the thing now.”

  “What did they look like? Did one of them have tattoos on his shoulders, like military insignia?”

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Their names are Dmitri and Karl. Karl’s the one with the tattoos. He’s in charge. I haven’t seen Dmitri in ages. Someone said he had moved to Berlin.”

  I took out my notebook. “Last names?”

  “No idea. That’s all we were ever told.”

  I scribbled this all down, and quickly re-read it. “Wait—you said you got paid. Why’d Lisa need the money? Her husband’s loaded.”

  Lotte shrugged. “He wasn’t the super-generous type, I guess. Lisa was on an allowance, and she would burn through it pretty quickly.”

  I worked my thumbnail into the pencil’s pink eraser, mulling all this over. “You know where these guys are now?”

  “No, and I don’t want to, either. I’m out.”

  “What, just like that? Why couldn’t they just find you if they wanted to?”

  “I’m leaving London. In two days. That’s why I answered your call tonight, detective man. I’m out of here and had nothing to lose by talking.”

  “Who would call you to set up the parties?”

  “A guy named Bryce. Can I have another vodka?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, waving at the barman and pointing two fingers at her. It arrived swiftly. Old habits: I had tipped well after the last one. Bartenders remember. “This guy, Bryce. Short guy, bit fat, ran a dirty bookshop down in Soho?”

  “That’s him. But he’s disappeared. No one knows where. Been about two weeks now.” She slid the straw aside and drank from the glass, squeezing lime juice over the ice when she put it down. “So I’m taking this window of opportunity to get out of town.”

  “These guys—they’re bad news?”

  “How many pornographers do you know who are good news?”

  “Well, until recently I didn’t know any actual pornographers,” I said, only mildly sarcastic. “So this has all been a real learning experience for me.”

  We sat quietly for a moment, she working on her vodka and me waiting for all the pinwheels in my brain to stop spinning long enough for me to figure out the next move.

  “Are you going to have a drink with me?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Thank you, but no.” I reached into my coat pocket, feeling Claymore’s envelope, still thick with bills pressed carefully inside. I slid my thumb in, counting off two bills I knew to be hundred-pound notes. I quickly folded them and slid them into her hand. “Thank you. Good luck with wherever you’re going.”

  “You never asked where I was headed,” she said, putting the bills into her purse.

  “If I need anything, I’ll call,” I said. “I’m hoping that money will go a ways to you checking your voicemail.”

  She smiled. Her face was strong, her eyes only a little sad. “I have family in America. California. It’s supposed to be sunny all the time there.”

  I nodded. I stood, pushing my arms through my coat’s sleeves.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  I cocked my head. “How’s that?”

  “You’re asking a lot of questions. They know who you are now.”

  An icy whip shimmied down my spine to my stomach, where it mixed easily with something resembling anticipation. “I’m just trying to make sense of all this,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Are you going to find Bryce?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Are you going to tell Claymore everything I told you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But the short answer is ‘not yet.’ I still have to figure something out first.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whether or not Lisa Claymore was actually in that car with you last week.” I checked my tie knot in the mirror behind the bar. She met my eyes one last time in the reflection. They were flat, impassive. Giving nothing. I turned on my heel and left.

  27

  A light snow fell outside, quickening the pace for many of the Friday-nighters out for a pint or more. I tried to hail a cab while working my phone with my free hand.

  “Hey, boss,” Charlie said, answering on the third ring. I could hear cutlery scraping and the static of background chatter.

  “Hey. I need you to get to the office ASAP,” I said, waving impotently at a
string of already occupied cabs. I began walking towards old Soho.

  “Right now?” she asked. I could hear a voice, male, in the background. She covered the phone with her hand, and I couldn’t hear the muffled exchange.

  “Yes. Now. It’s important.”

  “It’s just, well, I’m out and have had a pretty biiiig glass of wine—” Here someone laughed, and she shushed him. “Can’t it wait until Monday—?”

  “Listen to me,” I said. I spotted a black cab, miraculously empty. I stepped into the street, and caught his eye with my raised arm as another car weaved around me.

  “It’s Friday, Thad. Come on—”

  “LISTEN TO ME,” I said, my voice louder than she has ever heard it, a notch or two below shouting. I yanked open the cab door, and lowered the volume, but my tone was hard and clear. “I need you to stop whatever it is you’re doing, right now, and get to the office. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

  There was a heartbeat of silence, where I gave the driver the address to a now-closed pornographic bookshop in Soho. With a nod we darted into the pulsing arteries of the night’s traffic.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I need you to get to the office and pull the Claymore file and everything in it. All the physical stuff. I need you to get it out of there. And then I need you to go home and store them somewhere safe. If you’re with someone, get him to drive. If anything looks off, if the building’s door has been rumbled or if you see a light on in the office from outside, walk away, keep driving and text me.”

  “OK.” The mirth was gone. Her voice was flat and calm. She again shushed her dinner companion. I could still hear the clink of glassware and other night-out noise from whatever restaurant she was currently in.

  “My laptop’s password is ‘First Avenue South,’ all one word, all lowercase. There’s a flash drive in my top left drawer. Transfer the Claymore folder onto it and then delete it from the hard drive.”

  I heard a pen scratching on the other end of the line.

  “Got it?” I asked.

  “Yes. Are you OK?”

  “I’ll call you in a bit.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Trying my best.” I watched the city stream by the cab’s windows. People out and about, enjoying their evenings. Office parties. Christmas shopping. Smokers outside, arms around shoulders. I could hear music from somewhere, festive music. A lot of laughing was ringing through the streets as the snow continued to fall.