by David Thorne
Gabe nods slowly. Frowns. ‘Anything to do with the military?’
‘Military? No, nothing like that. Something… It’s complicated.’
Gabe holds up his drink, looks at me through the glass. ‘That was a military manoeuvre. The way they took us off the road. Couldn’t have been anyone else.’
‘Gabe, this thing I’m involved in… It’s serious.’
‘Not saying it isn’t. Just saying. They were military. Or ex-military. One of the two.’
I shrug, take a drink. ‘Maybe they’re hiring out. I don’t know. Listen, Gabe, I’m sorry.’
Gabe puts his glass down on the table, rests on his elbows, fixes me with his eyes. ‘Danny, you’re not the only one with troubles. I’ll give you a hundred to one those jokers were after me.’
I am about to take a drink, stop, frown. ‘Yeah? Why?’
‘Seems we’ve both got problems.’
‘It’d have to be a pretty fucking big one for them to do that. I mean, shit, Gabe, those guns.’
Gabe nods seriously, looks down at the table, back at me. ‘Pretty fucking big.’
‘So what is it?’
Gabe shakes his head, smiles, takes a drink. ‘No, go on, Dan. You first. From the beginning.’
2
AT ONE STAGE in my life Victoria Lowrie had been a vision of beauty so rare that it was as if she possessed magical powers. Often, men would not even dare to look at her, and everything came so easily to her that she treated life like a game that she could never lose at. I remembered once she told me that she had spent a week in Marbella and had never bought a single drink; that she could not remember the last time anybody had said no to her. Back then, I imagined that she was charmed, that there were perhaps only a handful of women like her in the world. But we believe many things when we are young, when we have not yet learned that there is nothing inviolate, nothing which life cannot beat down and destroy.
As I looked at her across my desk and wished that I kept a box of tissues on it, it was hard to imagine she could be the same person. I had no claims on beauty or elegance; people, friends of mine, said that in a suit I looked like I belonged outside the door of a nightclub. But compared to Vick I was not doing badly. She looked ten years older than her true age: her face puffed and mottled and strained and, if I was to be honest, unlovely; her once sumptuous blonde hair dirty and limp. But given what had just happened to her, I could not be surprised. She had had a difficult life but nothing, I suspected, that approached this.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Okay, listen, take it easy. Start at the beginning. Slowly.’
She looked at me, her face collapsed in absolute despair, her misshapen mouth moist and sagging and trembling, and nodded and sobbed again. I sat there trying not to look uncomfortable and waited for her to finish. These moments were what boxes of tissues were for.
‘It’s… Oh, Danny, it’s going to sound so stupid.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘From the beginning.’
‘I don’t even know… Oh, Jesus, you’ll think I’m mental.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘You know how I used to be… But I ain’t like that any more, I ain’t. Really. So whatever you think of me, of what I was like…’ She leaned forward, made sure that I was looking directly at her, into her eyes. ‘I ain’t like that any more.’
Vick was, if not my first girlfriend, then the first girlfriend I had who gave me such an intensity of feeling that I believed I was in love. In truth, that feeling may just as well have been jealousy to the point of insanity. I never for one second thought that I was in her league, and spent our entire relationship waiting for her to realise this, find someone better. I did not truly know what kept us going for the year or so we survived; there was nothing good going on between us.
It is said that the ideal relationship is one in which both people complement each other and bring out their positive qualities. With Vick, she brought out nothing in me but jealousy and anger. For her part, she treated me like a lunatic plaything, winding me up and pointing me in any direction she chose, generally with regrettable consequences. Vick was a heavy drinker; understandably, I supposed, given that she never had to pay for them. But when she drank she also became spiteful, like a bored child who wants to know how far she can push things. Talking to other men, inventing outrages, bringing them to me. Me, drunk and as insecure as any twenty-year-old out with a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman would be.
We split up after she claimed a man had offered her two hundred pounds and a gram of coke for a blowjob in a nightclub toilet. After I had been pulled off him, it turned out that he was a flight attendant so camp that for the first few minutes of talking to him I thought he was putting me on. Vick thought it was hilarious, shrieking with laughter as the poor man dabbed aggrievedly at his split lip, asking what the fuck I’d hit him for. Even the barman handing out the napkins could not help but snigger. The guy I’d hit, though, did not see the funny side and threatened to call the police. I’d had to spend all the money I had buying him cocktails before he was mollified. That was enough for me, for us.
But that was then, and I could see no trace of the spoilt, carefree girl of twenty years ago in Vick today. None at all.
‘It started with little things,’ she said. ‘Things that weren’t right. Silly things, really.’
‘Like?’
‘Like…’ She took a deep breath, dabbed at her eyes with what was left of her tissue, a sodden ball peeping out of her fist. ‘Like furniture moving about.’
‘Furniture.’
‘Yeah, probably only a couple of times.’
‘Like what? How had it moved?’
‘Like the sofa’s on the other side of the room, that was one time. I’ve come downstairs…’ She paused. ‘Come downstairs, and the sofa’s…’ Her voice rose, a keening wail. ‘It’s on the other side of the room.’
‘All right, okay. Calm. What else?’
She took a couple of shaky breaths, composed herself, shut her eyes. ‘The other time, the dining room table…’ But it was too much and she broke into a sob. ‘It’s upside down.’ Now she sobbed uncontrollably. ‘Why’s it upside down?’
I tried to look concerned, leaned forward, picked up a pen, made a note. This was not what I trained as a lawyer for.
‘Not the kids?’
‘They’re three and five. Lifting a table?’
‘And nobody had broken in?’
‘No.’ She sniffed, exhaled deeply. ‘See, that’s the thing. I’m one of them people – you’ll laugh ’cos I never was, but nowadays, it’s the chain on the door, double-check all the locks. And nothing was unlocked, damaged, nothing like that. And…’ She stopped and closed her eyes, thinking back to something she did not want to say.
‘What? Vick?’
‘On my bedroom floor, in the morning, was this bird. A crow. I stepped on it. When I got out of bed.’
‘A crow?’
‘On its back. I stepped on it, Danny. How’d it get there?’
I imagined its stiff claws, dull gleaming eyes; imagined its sleek brittle feel as it gave underfoot, its broken-backed untidy posture. Could not help but feel a cold echo of the terror Vick must have felt.
‘You tell the police?’
‘Course I did. They come over, had a poke round. You know what they’re like, couldn’t have given a toss. One of them’s trying not to laugh, little wanker.’
‘What do you think it was?’
Vick’s eyes widened and she shrugged. ‘I dunno. How do things move around on their own? How do birds get in my bedroom? You tell me.’
‘I’m a lawyer,’ I said. ‘It’s not really my thing.’
‘I didn’t imagine it.’ Her voice was rising; she was close to losing it, at the ragged edge of what she could stand.
I held my hands up. ‘Hey, Vick. It’s okay. Listen, take five, yes? I’ll get you a coffee.’
My office was one room and a corridor, on a busy street between a betting shop and an
estate agents specialising in renting shitholes out to people who could not afford any better; just another shabby street in the ugly, tawdry brick and concrete sprawl of Essex commuter towns. Coffee was made in the corridor, on a small table. I filled the kettle up with mineral water of a strange brand that I bought from the Turkish shop opposite. This was where I made my living; where I had landed.
Four years ago I had an office in a leading law firm, my own secretary who made me coffee, and I could drink it looking out over the City. My last big case had been a piece of dispute resolution worth upwards of forty million pounds, on behalf of one of the country’s biggest construction firms; a West End hotel had been built using materials that would have been outlawed in Honduras, never mind Knightsbridge, and it had been my job to mitigate the losses. Now I was making coffee for a ghost from my past who was asking me to look into a case that not only was worth no money, but was not even within my remit. Furniture that moved by itself, dead birds materialising out of nowhere: it was no business of mine. But for the fact that we had history, I would have shown her the door already. I wondered how I could let her down gently.
‘What’s Ryan have to say about it?’ I asked her. ‘Doesn’t have a clue.’
‘He still got keys to the house?’
‘No. He weren’t even around second time it happened, was away.’
‘Might be trying to get at you.’ Her ex-husband was the obvious culprit for something like this, still harbouring pain and anger, looking for ways to get her back. He knew her. Knew how to push her buttons.
But Vick shook her head. ‘He ain’t like that. And he weren’t there. Even if he was, he ain’t got a key.’
‘Okay. So.’ I breathed in. What was I getting involved in? ‘Your furniture’s moving around. This dead bird. What happens next?’
Vick picked up her mug, took a trial sip. Hot. ‘Next, might be a week later, I’m getting ready to go upstairs for bed, kids are already sleeping, and that’s the last thing I remember. I wake up next day on the lawn. Outside. How’d I get there?’
‘On the lawn?’
‘Had to get little Ollie to let me in. Danny, the chain was still on the door. How’d I get out the house?’
‘Can’t remember anything?’
‘Nothing.’
For the first time I saw fear in her eyes, as well as despair.
‘And you weren’t…?’
‘No, Danny, fucking hell, no. I weren’t. Honest.’
Perhaps it was a consequence of all of those free drinks that Vick had enjoyed, but by her early twenties she had become a full-blown alcoholic, with a reputation around town and a bitter hardness developed to counteract the whispers. Her father was also an alcoholic who had long ago lost everything and lived on the charity of his friends or, if not, rough on the streets. So perhaps, too, she had a genetic predisposition to alcohol addiction. Whatever, drink was her downfall. After we split up she had become a model, at first with a promising future but later, as the drink took hold, she moved into the glamour side of the industry, sub-Page Three top-shelf titillation, before she became effectively unemployable.
But I had to give Vick credit: unlike her father, she’d managed to turn things around. She left modelling, married a soldier in the Royal Engineers and now, single again, was working as a teacher’s assistant at a local college. She had been sober for years, eking out an unglamorous living a million miles away from where she had once been, the golden girl with the world at her feet. She smiled frailly at me from across the desk, huddled with two hands over her coffee, and I felt a sudden wave of affection for her. We were not so dissimilar, she and I.
One day in my blue-chip, gilt-edged City law firm, I had threatened to break the spine of a senior partner after he had humiliated my secretary, had meted out sexual abuse simply because he could because he was the one in the eight-hundred-pound suit and not her. I believed at the time that I was justified, still believe it now; but word soon got around that I was more thug than gentleman, not the right kind of person for a profession as respectable as the law. My days at the top table were over.
Now we were both in my office, drinking coffee from chipped mugs, two hard-luck stories with only ourselves to blame. Vick sighed, took another swallow of my dreadful coffee, and continued.
‘So anyway, that’s happened and I’m thinking… I dunno what I’m thinking. I’m thinking something ain’t right.’
She was telling me. Furniture moving, now she’s teleporting through walls. ‘Vick, this just sounds…’
‘I know. I told you. Mental.’
‘Strange.’
‘Yeah, but then, Danny, what happened this week…’
This was what Vick’s story had been leading up to, what had caused her to sob without shame or control for so long. It was hard to watch a woman who had lost everything that meant anything to her, hard to witness her grief and confusion.
‘My kids, Ollie and little Gwynn, my kids, Danny… I get up in the morning and they’ve got these bruises, these fucking bruises, all over them. My babies. On their arms, their legs, Ollie’s eye. Bruises all over them, and like, I dunno, like marks, like lines, like they’ve been tied up or something.’ She put her head in her hands, shook her head into them.
‘You didn’t hear anything?’
‘No,’ she said, muffled through her palms.
‘All night.’
She looked up, defiant. ‘I’m a mother, Danny. I hear everything. Everything. And I didn’t hear nothing.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Didn’t say nothing. I asked them, they didn’t know. Just… Come out of nowhere.’
My expression must have given away my scepticism because I saw a spark of anger in her eyes briefly get the better of her grief. ‘What?’
‘Vick. They didn’t say anything? How does that work?’
‘Not you and all, Danny.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay, Vick. So then what?’
‘Then I take them to the doctor and he phones up social services and they fucking take them away.’
Despite Vick’s history, despite all that I knew about her, I believed what she told me; believed that she had nothing to do with what happened to her children. Nobody was that good an actor. But this did not change the fact that there was very little I could do for her. I was a lawyer but I had no experience in family cases; I would not know where to begin.
Then I looked over at her, her eyes fixed on me like a child’s after they have asked their parents for a Christmas present they know is beyond their means. I thought back on our years, our shared history, and I knew that I could not simply walk away from her. Besides, it was not as if I was weighed down by my caseload. I had time on my hands.
‘Listen, Vick, I’ll do what I can.’
‘I just want to see them, Danny. They won’t let me see them. Four days I ain’t seen them. Imagine…’ She choked back a sob. ‘Imagine what they’re thinking. Wondering where I am. Who’s looking after them?’ This last said with a sharp desperation.
‘I know it must be hard.’
Vick shook her head at the floor, shoulders slumped. ‘I didn’t do anything, Danny. I didn’t do anything.’ And then, quietly, heartbreakingly, a despairing murmur, ‘What are they having to eat?’
I stepped from around my desk, squatted next to her, put a hand on her shoulder and felt her warmth for the first time in decades. Took a deep breath, wondering what I was getting myself into.
Said: ‘I’ll do what I can.’
3
MARIA WAS SITTING looking at me with a satisfied expression on her face; she had just leaned across my kitchen table and hit me on the top of my head with the spoon from her coffee, hard, and it was more painful than I would have imagined, although I tried not to show it. Her expression proved her intent: she had meant to hurt me. This was a new experience for me. I was not used to being hit without retaliating.
‘Hell was that for?’
‘Everybody celebrates the
ir birthday, you big ape. Unless they’re psychopaths.’
‘I don’t.’
Maria looked at me critically, head to one side. She crossed her eyes stupidly, though it made her no less beautiful. ‘Psycho.’
‘Childish.’
She got up from the table, picked up her mug, went to the sink. ‘Come on, Daniel Connell. I’ve booked.’
‘I don’t do birthdays.’
Maria had her back to me and she put both hands on the edge of the sink and sighed. I felt bad but it was true: I could not remember the last time I had done something to celebrate. When I was eight or nine my father left me alone for the weekend of my birthday, went to Brighton or Blackpool or some other garish coastal town for forty-eight hours of drinking and fighting, putting the fear of God into the locals. I remembered eating cold beans in the blue light thrown out by the TV, wondering what lay beyond its weak illumination, certain that some malign presence lurked in the corner of the living room. I did not leave the relative safety of the sofa for hours, shivering because I would not dare fetch a blanket. When my father returned in the early hours of Monday I was still there. He claimed that he had asked a friend to stop in, check on me. He never mentioned my birthday. And I had never paid it any heed since.
Maria, though, was not a lady who willingly took no for an answer.
‘If you don’t come,’ she said, turning from the sink, a vegetable knife in her hand, ‘I’ll cut your throat as you sleep.’
I could not think of a decent answer to that.
Earlier, Maria had given me a card and a watch, looked on with trepidation as I unwrapped the paper, opened the padded leather box, tried it on. I had not expected anything, was for a moment stuck for anything to say. What do people say?
‘Thanks,’ said Maria, breaking the silence, eyebrows raised, nodding encouragement. ‘That’s traditional.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Like it?’
‘I love it,’ I said, and although it sounded simple and trite it was true. This was enough, just this, to be here with Maria right now.
‘How’d you know it was my birthday?’