Had she seen him? Coming out of Fanelli’s with her little girl holding her hand? No wonder she’d looked the way she did, white as a sheet. And very frightened. His arm was half round her now, hovering, not presuming to touch her and she looked up at him. A bit of colour coming back into her cheeks.
‘My friend Holly,’ she said, ‘last week, she was the one—’
‘I know who Holly is,’ he said and after a second’s surprise she went on.
‘We were supposed to be meeting her here.’ Her voice almost a whisper.
The little girl had been staring at him and he’d tried to give her the right kind of smile, reassuring her. Dark eyes almost like she might have had some foreign in her, a cloud of hair. But her mother’s mouth and then she smiled back at him and awkward: suddenly he’d patted her shoulder and had bounced up, away from them. ‘Well, she does look like she’s always on the run somewhere,’ he said, ‘Holly does.’
When they came out through the door the entrance was empty: Frank looked quickly up and down the street but he was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t wanted to take any chances, though. ‘I’m getting you a cab,’ he said. She’d begun to protest but his hand was already up and a black cab sliding in to the kerb. ‘You don’t want to keel over on the tube, do you?’ he said and the little girl was already peering through the glass at the leather and the flip down seats. ‘Your husband wouldn’t want that either, I’m sure.’ Frank wished he hadn’t said it because then she’d gone white, all over again.
The cab had hardly moved off when Frank spotted him again. He must have just moved up the street to a new doorway and he stepped out of it as the cab came past him, towards it, as if he wanted to be seen. And when the cab turned off he moved fast, away from Frank. Raincoat, hands in the pockets, collar turned up to hide his face but it was him.
Frank had followed him all the same, just to see. Not sure what, just to see. Waited till they were in a lane off Tottenham Court Road – and who said London wasn’t a village any more? There were lanes, still, there were alleys and Frank knew most of them. The man went past, sauntering, hands in his pockets, Frank pressed back against a doorway that stank of piss. Frank called after him, hey, and he stopped.
Relaxed, his face quite open. Just standing there with his hands in his pockets, curious, not moving. Who did he look like? Joseph Cotten, only taller. High forehead.
‘Do I know you?’ the man said and he sounded like he found it funny now.
‘You know me all right,’ said Frank, and he had stepped out of the doorway, the smell of urine in his nostrils propelling him. ‘What were you doing there? What are you after?’ He didn’t know where it came from but he was on full alert, all of a sudden. The man’s stillness, like an animal waiting to run. ‘It’s against the law you know,’ he said. ‘You were following her. You were watching her. Stalking, it’s against the law.’
He’d gone too far with it, he thought then: the man just looked amused. Too far to go back, though. ‘She’s married,’ said Frank, and took another step so he was square on to the man. At the end of the alley behind him people were passing down Oxford Street, Saturday shoppers in the last of the light. He was watching Frank steadily, not afraid but calculating. Joseph Cotten. Or someone else? ‘Didn’t you see the kid?’ said Frank, moving so his face was in the guy’s. ‘The wedding ring?’
He was disturbed by how much this stirred him up. He could see Eddie’s face, Matteo’s, Lucy’s – see them shrugging, Why do you even give a shit? Because she was Georgie, from Brockley Rise. Because she was frightened. Because she’d said, I’m in trouble. And because – he just didn’t like this fucker.
And then at last the man had moved, only shifting his weight from one foot to the other but light fell on him from overhead somewhere. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ he said easily. In the yellow light Frank knew him from somewhere closer to home, it wasn’t just old movies. Maybe from a while back? The guy was uneasy now, shifting again and the light was gone – but the face was still there, imprinted, the cheekbones, deep set eyes. The sense that Frank had seen him somewhere, grinning, didn’t go away.
He took a step back and Frank took a step forwards. The next thing the man could do was run, but he wasn’t at that point yet. ‘You went off with them, the three birds,’ said Frank. ‘Last Friday night.’ And the certainty gripped him that there was something off, here. Something wrong. Women got picked up, men too, people did things they shouldn’t on a Friday night in Soho, even married women with kids, it had been known, but something was wrong.
‘What are you up to?’ said Frank and it was his turn to sound curious. The man shook his head then and began to turn away: galvanised by the movement, Frank grabbed his arm. Stopped him. ‘You knew she was going to be there,’ he said, working it out, at last, or some of it. ‘How did you know she was going to be there?’
The man had looked down at Frank’s hand on his arm, then back into his face, weighing something up. Frank persisted. ‘How did you know?’
Behind the bar now, Frank heard himself sigh. There was something wrong with all this. Something very wrong. And it had happened here, in his club.
What was it with Frank? He wanted to protect them. If anyone asked him he wouldn’t know why. It was stupid, in this day and age, wasn’t it? Except if someone needs help maybe it isn’t stupid.
The man standing in a doorway opposite Fanelli’s, watching the woman called Georgie and her kid. Joseph Cotten only taller, grinning down, a lecherous look in his deep set eyes.
How had he known she was going to be there? Georgie. Well, he’d had his explanation.
In the alley off Oxford Street the bloke had just looked him up and down like he was nothing: Frank had felt the bicep under his hand but he reckoned he could take him. If he had to.
‘How did I know?’ And he’d leaned forward to Frank. Sour breath. ‘She told me herself,’ he’d said softly. ‘That’s how.’
Now behind the bar Dom had decided to come in from the yard, sidling up to him before he’d even taken his coat off, and he was talking about the dead woman straight out of the blocks, in that wondering way he had, sing-song, like he was talking about something not real, some movie or three-part series or bloody Teletubbies.
‘They’re saying she was on the game.’ Adjusting his bow tie, looking in the mirror behind the bottles. ‘Strangled then raped.’ Incurious, with no sense of the word meaning something.
‘You ever seen anyone dead, Francis?’ Turning back to Frank to smile because Francis was his joke and spoken so cheerfully Frank had had to resist the urge to punch him.
‘Shut up, Dom,’ he said instead, keeping his voice steady but Dom’s eyes widened.
He had. Heroin overdose in the toilets, four years back, the guy sprawled half under the door. Frank had tried mouth to mouth, all that, the body sluggish as a sandbag under him but he’d known it had been no use. It had taken a long time for the club to recover from that. Eddie pacing around, shouting. And Frank, come to that. When his granddad had died his mum wouldn’t let him see the body.
He thought about where the dead woman was found: Airbnb. A house on a dark corner, let yourself in and out again. Close circuit easy to dodge in Soho, if you know what you’re doing. Go in one door, come out another. The old loading yards and alleys.
‘Keep your hair on,’ said Dom, as uncomfortable suddenly as Frank had ever seen him, affronted even. Frank just turned away, unaccountably depressed, he should be used to the bloke’s idiocy by now. He heard Dom move off, hang up his coat, start again on a subject with a customer. Adjusting his tone to serious and high-minded, with an effort.
More than depressed: it came to Frank that what he was feeling was disgusted; had been feeling since this afternoon, and the feel of the lanky bastard’s bicep under his hand. The customer having moved off Dom had opened his laptop now. Frank didn’t move, a hand still on the counter of the cloakroom.
The man had shaken him off, a quick easy movem
ent, shit on his shoe, and gone. That woman, Georgie from out of town (where? Out east if she was going for Liverpool Street). Georgie with her kid and her soft anxious little face. Would she have? Would she have? Women, though. You thought you knew them.
Lucy came in at nine on Eddie’s arm and they walked past the bar without a word. Frank heard murmuring down the corridor but when he turned his head the curtain was pulled sharply, a rattle and a shush of velvet, and the voices disappeared.
‘Raped her after.’ Joe the electrician had said the same thing.
They hadn’t said yet who she was.
Chapter Seventeen
Sunday
The sound was the sound of emergencies and it would rouse her out of any sleep. Even this one, a soup of alleys and dark brickwork and pale faces, hurrying down crowded streets where someone had a knife. Holly. Had Holly got the knife?
Georgie started upright: she hadn’t drawn the curtains and the room was flooded with light. The sun was high in the sky, bright clear crystalline blue. The house was quiet except for the ringing telephone. The landline, used now by almost none of their friends, only the elderly, or the authorities.
Something had happened to Tim.
Her heart thundering. Something had happened to someone, Georgie knew that with absolute certainty and Tabs – where? Georgie rolled across the bed to Tim’s side where the phone sat and grabbed up the receiver. As she spoke into it, breathless, there was Tabs in the doorway in her pyjamas, a tuft of hair sticking up.
‘Hello? Hello?’
They’d both slept in. That was all. That was all.
Not all, something had happened, last night—
‘Georgina.’ Georgie felt things unravel, should never have taken her to London, should never have— The voice was querulous, she recognised it straight away. ‘Have I woken you up, Georgina?’
The voice was her mother-in-law’s. ‘Jennifer,’ she said, trying to inject enthusiasm into her own voice.
Hesitating, Tabs crossed the threshold, began to wander the room. Pulling open drawers. Helpless, Georgie followed her with her eyes then thought, Sod it. Tim wasn’t here. Let her. It’s her house. Her parents’ bedroom.
Tim’s parents lived on the other side of London. Surrey, in a big house with many ornaments and an immaculate drive: an old-school version of the house Tim had built. They’d stayed once, early on in the relationship, and Georgie had felt Jennifer’s disapproving eye on her wherever she sat, whatever she said. They’d been given separate bedrooms.
‘How nice to hear from you, Jennifer,’ she said politely. ‘How are you?’
Tim was their only child. His room with model aeroplanes displayed on shelves was as he’d left it. A filing cabinet: he had a filing cabinet in his room. Jennifer had told her with pride that he’d asked for it for his twelfth birthday.
‘How am I?’ Jennifer sounded impatient, almost affronted. She played tennis, went to health farms. Of course she was all right. ‘Look, Georgina, I’d like to speak with Timothy, please. If that’s not too much trouble.’
‘He’s not here,’ said Georgie, feeling a surge of rebellious satisfaction. ‘I’m sorry, Jennifer. He’s away at a conference.’ She knew Jennifer never called him on the mobile because she thought it was expensive: Tim hadn’t disabused her. She wasn’t sure if even he liked his mother, or his father, either, but he wouldn’t hear a word against them.
They didn’t call often, anyway, they were great believers in children standing on their own two feet – unlike her own father, who anxiously believed she would always need him. Tim’s parents had a lot of money from his father’s time as an oil executive, but they didn’t like spending it. When Tabs had been born Jennifer had sent a Marks and Spencer’s voucher for fifteen pounds.
‘Oh! Oh, really.’ Irritably, as if it was Georgie’s fault. ‘I thought – he – oh. I received an email from him last week.’ Hesitating. Evasive. ‘Well, perhaps I shall – when does he return?’ Jennifer’s telephone mode was personal assistant, with a rod up her backside. If Tim had been here, Georgie wouldn’t even have dared have that thought. He’d have seen it in her face.
‘Tonight,’ said Georgie, trying to sound bright. Feeling anything but, suddenly: there was so much to do. Dinner, cleaning. Maybe the flowers – maybe she should – then she saw Tabs was at the bedside table, Tim’s side, pulling out the drawer. Georgie half stood to attract her attention, shaking her head, and Tabs skipped away, to the dressing table where Tim kept cufflinks and collar studs.
A disgruntled silence. Not even the sound of a radio on behind her. Georgie wondered where Tim’s father was, on a bright cold Sunday morning. He was called Jonathan. Playing golf perhaps, or maybe he had a girlfriend somewhere. He had goosed Georgie once, while drunk, at a long-ago Christmas drinks and she’d shoved him off, glaring. She’d never said anything to Tim.
‘How’s – how’s the child?’ Jennifer couldn’t bring herself to call her anything but that.
‘Tabs?’ Georgie’s head cleared, abruptly. ‘She’s absolutely lovely.’ Defiant. Tabs’ head flipping up from the dressing table, beaming, and then she was on the chair beside Georgie, nudging into her, reaching for the phone to talk to whoever it was had expressed an interest. ‘Doing so well at school, she—’
‘Very good,’ said Jennifer, interrupting her. ‘Timothy does keep me up to date with all that, she may not be – he’d do anything for – for her, you are aware of that?’
‘Yes,’ said Georgie, uncertain. Anxious, suddenly, at the thought of the conversations Tim had been having with his mother about them. About Tabs. But Jennifer wasn’t listening. ‘Anyway. Tell Timothy I’ll telephone – well. Perhaps it would be better if I called him at the office. Tell him I’ll call him in the morning, if you would.’
One thing Tim would have told his mother about, she realised with a small shock, was her night out in London. She would have disapproved: there’d certainly been plenty unspoken in their exchange. Tim would have told her in order to incite her disapproval, somehow. He’d probably told her about the earring, too. Jennifer’s idea of Georgie amplified: a slattern and a slut. Both.
Really? She told herself to stop it.
‘Yes,’ said Georgie, but she spoke into thin air. Jennifer had hung up. The air around her swirled in the silence. Tabs had gone, she didn’t know where, but Georgie didn’t get up to call her, she sat very still.
This happened. This happened.
Holly. Last night.
Georgie put a hand to her forehead and felt a sudden sweat. They’d got home, gone straight to bed, asleep by nine. But then there’d been a phone call. Not a dream after all, not a nightmare: a phone call. That call. Groping for the mobile plugged in and charging on the bedside table, squinting at the time. Eleven fifteen.
Her stomach turned to water.
Why was it that things that happened in the night had a different shape? The room had been quite dark, the nearest street light a long way off, the only light the phone pressed to her ear. She remembered listening to the words without understanding, her heart thumping in her throat.
Now she walked back to the bed and picked up the phone: call history, and there it was. She hadn’t dreamed it. A call from Cat that had lasted ten minutes. Before it, her call to Holly that had gone unanswered, at five fifteen. At the head of the stairs, listening for Tabs downstairs, Georgie called Cat’s number: she answered on the first ring.
She still sounded frightened, breathless. From the kitchen came the sound of Tabs pulling a chair across the floor so she could stand on it to reach the cereal.
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ said Georgie. ‘I thought – last night, it was so late – I thought—’
Holly’s face. Her morning-after face, tired and human in the bathroom of that dodgy hotel, her hand lifting Georgie’s hair out of the way as she raised her head from the toilet bowl.
‘It’s true,’ said Cat, dully. A shaky sigh. ‘It’s true. They found her yesterday morning. Som
e rented place.’
Holly’s dead.
‘Look—’ Cat began.
‘I’m coming over,’ said Georgie.
Cat hadn’t been in much of a state to give directions, but that was what mobiles were for. Tabs in the back, headphones on. For a moment or two as she opened the door for Tabs Georgie had registered the dent, again, but vaguely, because it couldn’t matter, any more. Lost earrings, a dent in the car, a face in a doorway – but she shied from that thought. None of it. None of it. Next to Holly being dead.
She had to make herself drive slowly. All of it churning in her head: she had thought, the first time she drove over to Cat’s it would be for fun, it would be her best mate finally just around the corner and all the chat and the gin and tonics and kids playing in the garden. But this. Not this.
The house was in a terrace, small as Cat had said but nice, homely. A few roses in a crowded front garden.
Pale in the doorway, Cat stepped back to let her in. ‘The boys are out with Harry,’ she said. ‘Football.’ She stood motionless as Georgie hugged her, finally patting her on the back. The tiny back garden had a rusting climbing frame in it and Tabs went straight for it.
They drank instant coffee in the kitchen: Georgie made it while Cat paced. The hamper sat on the counter, ridiculously big, an embarrassment. It looked like it had already been raided, at least: a packet of expensive chocolate biscuits half empty on the top. Pushing aside a stack of school folders on the table they sat, Cat staring down into her mug.
‘Her mum called me,’ she said. ‘Holly’s mum, I haven’t spoken to her in years but she must have found my number somewhere. I never thought I’d have counted as one of Holly’s best friends.’ She sighed. ‘It sounds like they found her yesterday morning, in some Airbnb in Soho. They’re not saying anything. I called the police again this morning but they won’t say.’
Georgie felt like her head was made of wood. Why wouldn’t it sink in? ‘Was it – did she – it wasn’t an overdose or anything? She didn’t—’
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