by Paul Hoffman
‘He’s difficult to make out. He’s certainly not . . .’ he hesitated, ‘. . . one’s conventional idea of a policeman.’
‘I take it that by conventional you mean not very bright. It’s quite all right, Charley,’ said the Governor, enjoying his end-of-the-day cup of tea, nothing fancy, British Rail tea as he called it. ‘No one feels it necessary to be politically correct when it comes to policemen.’
Varadi smiled. ‘At any rate, Winnicott is an able man.’
‘So, will he fit into your grand plan?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see. The important thing is that he’s meticulous and thoughtful. He wrote a document for the Met in the early 1980s . . . what was it? Principles of Policing. It was good stuff. And you have to hand it to him, until a few weeks ago the IRA had gone very quiet. It was a shambles when he began, a shambles.’
‘I don’t call what they did to the Baltic Exchange going quiet – four hundred million pounds’ worth of damage caused by one bomb.’
‘Yes, fine, but how did he react? That’s the key thing. The IRA put their finger on a real weakness – the City is a small place and one bomb can do immense economic damage. What if it had been the Stock Exchange, or they’d hit the top six merchant banks on the same day? That’s what they should have done. Then what? You have to say Winnicott’s solution was spot on.’
The Governor put down his cup and poured himself another. ‘Come on, Charley, it was hardly that impressive. He just put roadblocks on every road into the city. Effective but hardly as brilliant as you suggest.’
‘I’m sorry, Governor, I disagree. It seems obvious once it’s done, granted. So does the solution to the Gordian knot. But before Alexander the Great solved the problem of how to unravel it by just cutting it open with his sword, great minds had puzzled over it for centuries.’
‘And Sally Brett?’
Varadi hesitated for a moment. ‘Smart as she is, if Sally makes it to Christmas without an invitation from Lafferty to retire to the snooker room with a loaded revolver, I’ll eat a weasel, as my old dad used to say. If Winnicott is any good, and if he’s lucky, he could be running the FS before long.’ The Governor finished his tea, both of them comfortable with the silence. ‘So, Charley,’ he said at last, ‘if Winnicott is the coming man, do you really think that this is the way we should go? You know my reservations. I was never happy about handing over the power to regulate the City to the Financial Services Authority. The Bank has always regulated the City. Nobody should ever give up power.’
‘What power would that be, Governor? Have you been in a supermarket recently? I went to get my grandson a packet of cornflakes the other day. You could have landed a jumbo jet in the aisle just given over to boxes of cereal. What’s all that about? I don’t understand. And that’s just a shop for God’s sake. All the forces there are in the world, all the lunatic energy that means people can choose between eighty different kinds of cornflakes, it’s all flowing through the City, and any attempt to regulate it is going to be a mug’s game. Heartache and grief, that’s all there is to be had there. We were right to get out.’
The Governor looked at his deputy who was distractedly staring out of the window. After a long pause, he said, ‘Is there something else on your mind, Charley?’
Varadi started to speak, stopped, and then began again. ‘This afternoon when Winnicott regained consciousness, he said he had a terrible secret he needed to tell. He said he knew the meaning of life.’
‘Goodness me,’ said the Governor of the Bank of England, his eyes widening with surprise. ‘But then people say all kinds of odd things after they’ve taken a blow to the head.’ He laughed, teasing. ‘Still I’m not sure you should be considering handing over the job of regulating the City to someone who thinks they know the meaning of life.’
Varadi smiled. ‘On the contrary, Governor, it should be a minimum requirement. And, in any case, I was only giving him the once-over.’ He stopped smiling. Clearly something else was on his mind. ‘But it wasn’t just what Winnicott said that was so strange. It was the way he said it. It sounded like somebody else entirely.’ He paused. ‘It was a woman’s voice.’
Geoffrey Healey His Early Life
men start out female in the womb and are simplified. This is why they are so obsessed with sex – always trying to return to the uterus so that they can recapture the peace of mind that was once theirs.
Louis Bris, The Wisdom of Crocodiles
Inspector Geoff Healey answered the phone. It was his wife, from whom he had been separated for two months. The term must have been coined, he thought, by some great poet of disintegration since it described exactly how he felt: separated. He had always assumed that the word straightforwardly summarised the business of being in the first stages of divorce, of being apart from someone you were still married to. But he now realised that this was not what the word referred to at all. He now spent all his time being separate from himself. He had left her only a month ago, but there had been plenty of time to feel just how impressive the word was. Whatever the opposite of quality time was – efficiency and purity – he had it in abundance: shady time, shabby time, shoddy time, base time, mean time. That was what he had, mean time, and lots of it. When you left someone you loved that was what happened to you: you were separated. It was as if his body and personality had been replicated in some way, but badly, and the smudged facsimile had gone into exile to manage its replica world, its poor photocopy of an existence, as best it could. Bits of his story were now missing. Important bits. He was rubbed out. He was missing stuff. All the humiliation had come with him, though, all the grief. In the incomplete transmission to his new life, none of the shame had failed to be duplicated with digital clarity.
This was the first time his wife had called him at the new flat since he’d moved in. At first he was alarmed, but there was nothing wrong with either of their two children; he could go back to feeling miserably ashamed.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘Yes. Fine. You?’
‘Yes.’
This uneasy exchange went on for a minute or so. Then there was silence.
‘Are you busy?’ she said at last.
‘I’m stuck with some office politics. Someone who used to be big in the Met has pulled in a favour from Myers, so I’m on a goose-chase trying to find a missing woman relative of his.’
‘I can’t see why someone like you should be put on a missing persons case.’ Did he detect a tone of irritation on his behalf? That would be a good sign.
‘Well, there is one odd thing. She had a history of mental problems, anorexia, even a suicide attempt. But by all accounts, in the last nine months she’d changed completely. She’d put on two stone, had a boyfriend and was as happy as Larry, according to all the reports. There’s probably a simple explanation, but it’s odd all the same.’
There was another awkward pause. The past seeped back.
‘I’ve got a problem at work. I wanted your opinion, if you wouldn’t mind,’ she said at last.
‘Anything I can do, you only have to ask.’
There was a moment’s silence for which the word painful was entirely inadequate and then she began. ‘I’m doing a big audit for a company. I have to sign the accounts as being true and fair. But I don’t think they are. I think they might be up to something. A fraud. Perhaps a big one.’
‘Do you have any proof, I mean, is there solid evidence?’
‘This is not a murder case, Geoff, there isn’t a body and a blunt instrument hidden in the coal scuttle.’ There was another silence. ‘I’m sorry. ‘I’m worried.’ But they both knew that she was angry too.
‘If there’s no solid evidence why do you have to do anything?’
‘Because I’ve got enough to warrant an investigation. At least I think so. The problem is that I’m damned if I report them – because they can sue me for breaking client confidentiality or for defamation – but if I say nothing and it all comes out I could face the end o
f my career. That’s to say nothing of the possibility that the police might accuse me of being involved.’
‘What do the lawyers at work say?’
She gasped with irritation. ‘Wexler’s a nasty little oik. They want me to keep my mouth shut.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘They don’t want to get a reputation in the City as a copper’s nark. They think I can sign the accounts in a strictly legal sense as being true and fair, but they don’t give a damn about whether they’re true and fair in the would-you-allow-your-blind-granny-to-invest-in-this-company sense.’ She paused. ‘I want to do the right thing, but I don’t want to ruin my life. Any suggestions?’
He was silent for a moment. He was worried about her but he was also anxious to help for another reason. If he could come to her aid in an important way, if he could rescue her, then perhaps there would be a way back, of being less humiliated and exposed in her presence. ‘Can you give me any details?’
‘I can give you as much as I know, but the company is important in the City. It would be too easy to identify if you start asking questions.’
Ten minutes later he put down the phone and at almost the same time he heard the clatter of the letter box. He walked into the hall and was surprised, given that he had been in the flat for only two weeks, that the letter was addressed to him personally. It was a begging letter. It was from Barclays Bank, begging him to take out a loan.
‘We’re police officers. We’re looking for Mr . . .’ Roache looked down irritably at the piece of paper on which was written an address and the name Steven Grlscz. ‘Grillesk,’ he hazarded.
Even through the tinny crackle of the intercom Healey could hear the tired good humour in the correction. ‘It’s pronounced Grilsh.’
Roache looked at the intercom with total loathing. ‘However it’s pronounced, we’re still looking for him.’
There was a pause, then a buzz. The front door of the apartment block clicked open.
‘Third floor, number nine. It’s the second on the left after you come out of the lift.’
The foyer was impressive, a carefully restored and maintained art-deco marble vault, like the mausoleum of a megalomaniac with good taste. The lift was an elegant construction of the period, but it was faded and rather grubby. When they came out on to the third-floor landing, it seemed as though they were entering yet another level of neglect. The floor was covered in brown lino, cracked in places, the lighting was dim and there was the faint odour of old cabbage water. Healey and Roache reached flat number six and found the door half open. Healey looked at Roache, who hesitated and then pushed the door further open, calling, ‘Mr . . .’ He had already forgotten the pronunciation. ‘Hello?’
Steven Grlscz was standing at the far end of a long, simply furnished room. Both Healey and Roache were impressed. There was an absence of clutter about the place and yet no sense of an attempt to present the room as some kind of minimalist exhibition. It was as if a discreet person lived there who had tidied up perhaps too carefully, as if in doing so they were providing a distraction for themselves.
They came in, feeling – unaccountably – that this was an intrusion. The atmosphere of unhappiness was unforced but clear. The man was just under six feet tall and in his mid-thirties. There was a warmth that made him attractive, thought Healey. Without being obviously charismatic, this was a person to whom you were drawn. It was not charm and it was not, he felt, deliberate. He seemed likeable, that was it. Roache felt this, too, but it only irritated him further. He began with an even greater degree of insolence in his voice than usual. ‘We’re investigating the disappearance of Maria Vaughan, sir. Thank you for contacting us.’
Grlscz nodded.
‘We understand you were having a relationship with Miss Vaughan.’
‘Yes,’ said Grlscz softly.
‘Can I ask why you didn’t report her missing before? After all, her parents reported her missing three weeks ago.’
There was a brief pause before he replied. ‘The last time I saw her we had an argument.’
He clearly realised the risk of saying this, but Healey could see that he was ashamed of having taken it into account before replying.
Roache’s predatory instincts were alerted. It must have been quite a row if you’ve made no attempt to see her since then. What was it about?’
‘She wanted to get married.’
‘To you or to someone else?’
‘To me,’ said Grlscz, so softly he could barely be heard.
‘Was it a violent argument?’
Grlscz looked at the young policeman and Healey saw something pass across his face: a kind of judgement, an evaluation. It was without aggression or defensiveness. Roache had been weighed in the balance.
‘You mean, did I hit her? No.’
Roache grew more irritable. ‘Was it a heated argument?’
‘She was heated. Very. I was not heated.’
‘That’s interesting, sir.’
‘Is it?’
Healey found it hard not to smile at the tone of annoyance in Grlscz’s voice; it let Roache know what he thought of him. And it was pretty much exactly what he thought of Roache himself.
‘Yes, it is interesting, sir,’ continued Roache, ‘because we’ve talked to a fair number of people about Miss Vaughan, and she didn’t seem the type of person who became heated. Rather the contrary.’
Grlscz sat down, motioning for the two men to do likewise. Roache did. Healey did not.
‘When I first knew Maria, I would have said the same.’ He considered carefully, as if trying to explain something he hadn’t yet put his finger on. He smiled sadly. ‘It wasn’t love at first sight, believe me. She seemed completely washed out as a person. I remember someone saying that about her at the time. But we were both as wrong as it’s possible to be. She was passionate . . . I mean in the sense that she felt things with an incredible intensity. Inside she was . . .’ His voice trailed away, partly because he couldn’t seem to say precisely what he meant and partly, thought Healey, because talking about her in this way to strangers seemed like a betrayal. ‘Inside she was a whirl of emotions. She could be funny – no one realised that about her. But she was an angry person. But she kept it hidden – so well hidden she couldn’t see it herself.’ He laughed, and Healey could see the affection he had for the missing woman, not only in his expression but also in his tone. ‘If you said she was angry she would become absolutely furious at the idea.’
‘And she was furious on the last occasion you saw her because you refused to marry her?’
‘Not exactly. It started because she became angry when I told her I’d had lunch with an old colleague of mine – a woman.’
‘An old girlfriend colleague?’
‘No. Just someone I used to work with.’
‘And this lunch was entirely innocent?’
‘This colleague was not someone I even liked. Maria knew this perfectly well. She’d met her several times. It made no difference. She worked herself up into a real fury. She said either we should marry or finish it.’
‘And what was your reply, sir?’
Grlscz looked at Roache but his expression was impossible to read.
‘I said that threats like that were hardly the basis for marriage. Something stupid like that anyway.’
‘But you weren’t angry?’
‘I was very angry.’ Roache was at a loss. ‘I said I wasn’t heated. I didn’t shout or express any strong emotions. But I felt them. It had been a bad week. Six months’ hard labour had just gone down the drain at work and I was in no mood for Maria’s nonsense. This was the third outburst in a couple of months and I’d had enough. What she wanted was reassurance and she would have been fine given a couple of hours of intense effort. For once I didn’t feel like making that effort. I was seriously pissed off, if you must know. So . . .’ He stared out of the window. ‘I knew she thought it meant that I didn’t love her and I let her go.’
Roache paused, trying to create the impression he was wei
ghing up what he had heard carefully. ‘Still,’ he said, casually, ‘three weeks before you attempted to find her. I have to say I find that strange. Weren’t you worried at all?’
‘I told you, I was furious. Twice before when she became jealous over nothing she vanished.’
Both Roache and Healey reacted to this.
‘For how long?’ said Healey sharply.
‘Once for a week. The second time for ten days.’
‘And she just turned up?’
‘Not exactly. I left messages on her machine and she’d eventually answer when she got back.’
‘And where did she go?’
‘I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. That’s why I wasn’t surprised by such a long absence this time. It was a much bigger row.’
‘What made you change your mind?’
Grlscz sighed. ‘I began to get worried. The idea crossed my mind . . . but I told you, I was angry . . . pride . . . all the usual things. But, given her past, I suppose worry overcame my basic feeling that she was punishing me and trying to control me by using the fact that I knew about her problems in the past and could always be relied on to back down. I didn’t feel like being controlled in that way. Who would?’
Neither of the policemen reacted to his question, and Healey could see Grlscz felt shabby for trying to win their sympathy. ‘I still think she’ll turn up. I think she is punishing me. I’m just not sure any more.’
Healey looked at Roache, who leant back to signal he’d taken the point. ‘I’m sorry to ask you this but do you think it’s possible she took your argument more seriously than that? Is she capable of committing suicide?’
Grlscz seemed to shrink slightly. His sense of misery, guilt and loss was almost strong enough to touch. Healey had felt it when he’d entered the flat. ‘Of course, I’ve thought about that.’ A troubled look crossed his face. ‘It’s possible . . . but I don’t think so, not now. I know what I’ve told you makes Maria seem just awkward and difficult. And I know what other people will have told you, that she was colourless . . . but she was a strong woman too, much stronger than people thought, and she was happy enough most of the time. She’d changed a great deal.’ He looked at them both. ‘Not enough, perhaps. I think she’s – I don’t know what the term would be – gone into hiding.’