“Ok, I can do that. Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“You just sound a bit strange, that’s all.”
“I’ve got a humdinger of a headache. I’m on my way to meet Freya for lunch. I’m hoping some food might help to get rid of it.”
“A glass of red wine’s good for knocking out a headache. Unless it’s hair of the dog.” Tim could hear Juliet’s smile.
“Don’t you start!” he said.
“What do you mean..?”
“Here we are, mate,” said the driver. “Seven pounds, please.”
“Sorry, Juliet, I’ve got to go. If you could do that work for me, I’d be grateful.”
“Sure. When do you want it by?”
“I don’t want to push you, but if you can make a bit of headway before I see Derry tomorrow, that would be brilliant.”
“What time is your meeting?”
“We’re going to have breakfast together at 8 a.m.”
Juliet laughed. “No pressure, then.”
Tim was fiddling with his wallet and trying to think of a witty quip in reply when the hammering in his head increased. He felt the vomit rise in his throat. Precipitately cutting his call with Juliet and flinging open the cab door, he retched copiously into the gutter.
When it was over, he climbed out of the taxi, his eyes still watering, a foul taste in his mouth. He took ten pounds from the wallet and passed it through the passenger window to the driver, who took it gingerly by one corner with a moue of intense disgust.
“Keep the change,” said Tim.
“Thanks, I will. Listen, mate, if my cab had copped it with that lot, it would’ve cost you a lot more than three quid. You want to get a grip, you do. Shut the door, will you?”
Tim slammed shut the rear cab door and the taxi driver roared away, leaving him overcome with a guilt that, deep down, he knew he didn’t deserve to feel.
Chapter 3
The lunch with Freya was pleasant enough. After she had gone back to work, Tim debated briefly whether to take a look at an exhibition about the Raj while he was at the museum. His headache had almost gone and he was reluctant to pass up the opportunity, but he still felt very fragile and decided that the wisest course of action would be to leave straight away for his sister’s house. He skirted the huge ceramic elephant standing sentry at the entrance to the exhibition and emerged once more into the sunlight.
Under normal circumstances, he’d have enjoyed the walk to Waterloo, but today it was out of the question. He knew his legs wouldn’t carry him that far; he didn’t think they’d even get him to the Underground. As he’d noted more than once, the BM was quite a distance from its nearest tube station and he didn’t fancy trudging to either Russell Square or Tottenham Court Road. London buses were a mystery to him: apart from not understanding their timetables, he was chary of being unable to recognise the landmarks near his destination and mistakenly remaining on board until he ended up in some God-forsaken place like Gunnersbury or West Ruislip. Despite the bad experience of a couple of hours earlier, he decided to hail a taxi. They always circled the BM like sharks and he spotted one immediately. Thankfully it was black and anonymous.
Tim hauled himself into the cab. The driver was a Sikh who sported a magnificent red turban.
“Where to, mate?” he asked, using the classless lingo that Derry Hacker called ‘London multicultural English’.
“King’s Cross, please,” Tim replied. The cab shot off towards Southampton Row. It took Tim a minute or so to realise that he’d meant to say Waterloo. He met the cabbie’s eye and decided to live with his mistake. He could get to Waterloo from King’s Cross quite easily on the Tube.
His driver had decided that making eye contact indicated a desire to chat.
“Had a right wasterman in here this morning. One of them immigrants.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t gonna pay until I told ’im a few ’ome trufes.”
“Oh,” said Tim again. He had no energy for arguing the toss with the guy, much less having to admonish him for issuing threats if it transpired that was what he’d been doing.
Taking the hint, the driver flashed him a withering look and fell silent. Tim usually enjoyed friendly banter with cabbies, but he was getting nowhere with them today. The taxi bumped along sullenly until Tim was deposited outside the sliding glass doors of the station. He paid the cabbie and dawdled along until he reached the Underground. He remembered looking at a tube map and feeling bewildered by the choices.
Somehow, he lost the next thirty minutes. When he became aware of his surroundings again, he was getting off the train at Stratford. As if he’d been doing it all his life, he boarded another train and stayed on it for fifteen minutes before leaving it at Ilford. He walked briskly out of Ilford station and took a short walk unerringly, as if it was his daily routine, to a residential street called Belgrave Road. His malaise had vanished completely, as had the depressed, defeated feeling that had accompanied it. Now he was on a high, ebullient and ready for anything.
He marched along the street, a pleasant road of double-fronted terraced houses, until he’d covered a third of its length. Then he stopped outside a yellow-clad brick house with a gable and two bay windows and waited.
He didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he stood there for some time. The street was fairly deserted, but eventually a man came along and eyed him suspiciously. The man walked past Tim, turned round to look at him, changed his mind and walked back again.
“You looking for someone?” he asked.
Tim snapped out of his reverie.
“I’m . . . not sure,” he said.
“Well, if I was you, friend, I’d piss off back to where I came from. We don’t like loiterers round here. We’ve got a good neighbourhood watch outfit. I belong to it and we don’t miss much. Believe me, if you try anything on, you’ll wish you hadn’t of.”
Another threat, Tim thought dimly, though he couldn’t quite remember what the first one had been. He felt confused and lost. He had no idea what he was doing in this alien place.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a bit disorientated. Can you tell me where I am, please?”
“Don’t try to pull that stunt. It’s obvious you was casing Number Forty-One. Now clear off, before I call the cops.”
Tim turned to head back up the street. He glanced once more at the house as he went and thought he saw something reflected in the windows, swinging heavily. He couldn’t quite make it out, but it looked like the hanging body of a woman. He stared again, more intently, but the image had evaporated.
“I said ’op it,” said the man pugnaciously.
Tim hopped it. He couldn’t remember the way to Ilford station – could barely remember that he had arrived in Belgrave Road via the station – and had to ask the way of a postman further up the street. He pointed Tim in the right direction, but as grudgingly and laconically as possible.
“What is it with these people?” Tim thought to himself. He had the strange sensation of having stepped through the looking glass or finding himself, against his will, in a parallel universe.
Once at the station, he decided not to ask for more help. He didn’t like the look of the clerk in the booking office and thought that he’d likely get short shrift there once again. He spent some time working out how to get to Surbiton from Ilford, as much to reassure himself that he still had command of all his faculties as because he disliked the clerk.
By the time he reached Surbiton station his physical strength was completely restored. It was not yet 5 p.m. and the rush hour crowds had still to come sweeping through. He decided to walk to Freya’s house, only stopping en route to enter one of the several off-licences on Ewell Road to buy a bottle of wine.
When he arrived at Freya’s, the door was flung open. Freya was stand
ing there, hands on hips, her frown of worry morphing instantly to one of exasperation.
“Where on earth have you been?”
“I decided to walk from the station. I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d be back so early.”
“I told you there’d been a change of plan and I wasn’t going to work all afternoon. I said I’d just got a few things to clear up at work and then I’d come straight here to meet you. Don’t you remember?”
“No. But you could have called the mobile.”
“I have been calling the mobile. Constantly. So has Katrin. You must have switched it off.”
“Well, come off it, Freya, it’s not such a big deal, is it? It’s not as if I’ve turned up at midnight or been missing for days.”
“No. But you were so strange at lunch that I’ve been really worried. Where have you been, anyway? It hasn’t taken you all this time just to walk here from the station.”
“I’ve been to Ilford,” said Tim, in a voice that sounded as surprised as his sister looked.
“Ilford? But why?”
“I don’t have the faintest idea.”
Chapter 4
“I despair of you, Tim, really I do,” said Freya. It was fifteen minutes after he’d turned up on her doorstep and he was now seated on one of her comfortable but elegant sofas, sipping green tea. He pulled a face.
“You may well look like that . . .”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s this tea. Bit of an acquired taste, isn’t it?”
“You’d do well to drink it. I think you must have swallowed something toxic and it’s made you hallucinate. It’s probably those malaria tablets you’re taking. The tea will help to cleanse your system.”
“If you say so,” said Tim, grimacing again.
“Have you called Katrin?”
“No. I thought I’d do it later. When Sophia’s in bed.”
“Don’t you think you’d better do it now? She’s worried about you.”
“She wouldn’t be if you hadn’t alarmed her for no reason,” Tim grumbled, getting to his feet. He wandered off into the kitchen to gain some privacy. Freya and Katrin were always very civil and sometimes, as on this occasion, presented a united front of sisterly solidarity, but he knew that they didn’t really hit it off. He wasn’t sure why, because to him they seemed to have many qualities in common. He took the opportunity to pour away the rest of the green tea, holding the cup as close to the plug-hole in the sink as he could so that Freya wouldn’t hear. He had just completed this manoeuvre when the phone started ringing in the other room. He almost jumped out of his skin.
“Hello?” Freya’s carefully-modulated, cut-glass voice carried well, though she rarely raised it. “Oh, hello, Katrin. Yes, he’s here. I’m sorry, I thought he’d called you when he went upstairs. I’ve just reminded him. No, I don’t know what he’s doing now. He was supposed to have gone into the kitchen to phone you.”
Tim could hear Freya’s voice coming closer. Swiftly he moved towards the patio doors at the end of her kitchen and stood gazing nonchalantly out at her small, pretty garden and the high fence beyond it.
“Tim? It’s Katrin. I thought you were supposed to be ringing her.” Freya advanced towards him, holding the phone in her outstretched hand.
“Sorry, I got sidetracked,” he said, wondering why his sister so frequently made him feel like an erring schoolboy. She raised one eyebrow as he took the phone from her.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it. I need to buy some milk from the convenience shop. I won’t be gone more than a few minutes.”
“Katrin, I’m sorry. I’ve had a weird sort of day. I did mean to call you earlier.”
“Freya said. But where have you been? And what happened earlier? Freya said you were quite ill when she met you for lunch.”
“I’d just had some kind of dizzy spell. And I was sick, but that was before I saw Freya. I didn’t think she’d noticed I was under the weather and I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Probably something to do with the malaria tablets.”
“If they’re having that sort of effect on you, perhaps you should stop taking them. There must be some alternative the doctor could prescribe.”
“I’m halfway through the course now. Besides, I don’t have time to start the treatment again. I’ll be leaving for India any day now.”
“Do you know when, exactly?”
“No. I’m seeing Derry Hacker tomorrow. I’ll probably have a better idea then.”
“You’ll come home first, won’t you?”
“Yes, of course I will. What on earth makes you ask that?”
“No particular reason. It’s just that your behaviour has been a bit . . . well, impulsive, recently.”
“Honestly, between you, you and Freya’ll be giving me a complex. I’m not aware that I’m behaving any differently from usual, but if I am, it’s because I’m a bit preoccupied with this case. Anyway, let’s just drop it, shall we? How are you? How’s Sophia? Did she have a good day?”
“I think so. She did go to Mrs Sims’ for her settling-in session, so she’s tired now. She’ll be there for her first full day tomorrow, so probably better if we Skype you late afternoon.”
“Did you see Thornton?”
“Yes, we had a good meeting. He’s quite happy with my suggestion. I’m going to start working three days a week from now on.”
Chapter 5
The next morning Tim rose early and left the house before Freya was up. He’d agreed to meet Derry Hacker for breakfast at a café near Victoria Station before they headed for Hacker’s office, which Hacker described as ‘like a bear garden at the moment’, as he and colleagues prepared to move to their new location. Tim was feeling weak and washed-out. Although he was no longer suffering from nausea or giddiness, he hadn’t slept well, having been woken on several occasions by vivid and violent dreams of intense cruelty. The details were already slipping away from him, but still he could recollect scenes of physical torture and sadomasochistic human vivisection that, as products of his imagination, appalled him. He had no direct experience of such perversions and was alarmed at how proficient his subconscious seemed to be at inventing them. The hazy image of the hanging woman was a constant that continued to haunt his waking hours.
Groggily he retraced the route to the station that he’d taken the day before, on the look-out for taxis as he went, but seeing none. He failed to get a seat on the Surbiton to Waterloo train and had to stand the whole distance, unable to divert himself with reading the paper because he’d discovered to his chagrin that the news-stand at Surbiton had closed. Arrived at Waterloo Station, he was searching his pocket for his Oyster card and bracing himself for the double descent to the Jubilee line when some sixth sense made him look up. He was just in time to see a dapper little man with a bald pate fringed by snow white hair darting across the concourse in the direction of the cab rank. Tim ran after him, having no time to try to conceal himself. The little man didn’t look round, but, once outside, sprinted smartly across the road and hailed a cab as it was about to enter the station. Once his fare was aboard, the driver turned the vehicle round and headed in the direction of Waterloo Bridge. Tim debated briefly whether to jump into a cab himself and try to follow, but one glance at the taxi rank told him this would be hopeless: at least twenty people were waiting there. If the little man had indeed spotted him, he’d outwitted him very smartly.
Wearily, Tim turned back into the station and headed for the Jubilee line. He changed at Westminster to the District line and arrived at the café at Victoria at 7.40 a.m., a good twenty minutes before he was expecting Derry Hacker to appear. He wondered if it was too early to phone Juliet, and decided to risk it. She could always ignore the call if she found it inconvenient.
She answered almost immediately.
“Hello, Tim. I would have called you a bit later. You said you were seeing D
erry at eight?”
“Yes, but it might be difficult to speak after he’s got here. I’m not breathing down your neck. If you’d prefer to call me a bit later, that’s fine.”
“No, no, it’s ok. I don’t have much to tell you, so it won’t take long. As you know, Peter Prance’s description was passed on to the Fraud Squad. They’ve had a number of reported sightings of him, all over the place, and followed them up, but either he’s very good at making himself scarce or their informants have been mistaken. There’s a reward being offered by one of the banks for information leading to his arrest, but I’m inclined to agree with you about rewards. They can be more of a hindrance than a help.”
“Quite. But when you say ‘all over the place’, where do you mean, exactly?”
“Well, apparently he’s been seen in Hull, Truro and Carmarthen. The most recent sighting was the Welsh one.”
“What about Liverpool, where he comes from, or London?”
“Not in Liverpool. The Fraud Squad have been to see his sister twice and she swears she hasn’t seen him since his disappearance. She’s probably telling the truth. She’s a professional woman – a dentist – and struck me as being quite straight when we met her. And not very enamoured of Prance, either.”
“Yes, I remember her. Had her head screwed on, hadn’t she? Didn’t want the family inheritance to slip through Prance’s fingers. What about London?”
“Nothing on record. Though he does know London: it’s where he committed the fraud that he served time for. A financial services scam. I’ve read the trial report. It was complicated: something to do with price fixing.”
“Yes, I read it when we were after him, too. But that was a long time ago: must be getting on for ten years. Where was he living when he was caught? Does it say?”
“Yes. It was a Wimbledon address: 15 Rosemount Gardens. He didn’t own the house. It belonged to one of his cronies – actually, William Jennings, the banker who helped him set up the scam. Jennings got a much longer sentence – seven years to Prance’s three – because he abused a position of trust.”
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