The Concrete Ceiling

by Peter Rowlands

  I said, “What garage is this?”

  “It belongs to a house just outside the town. Apparently there’s an ongoing dispute over the ownership – a probate problem or something. Nick’s company has been looking after it long-term, so he had a hiding place no one would ever think of.”

  I asked, “Do you know how he pulled off the burglary?”

  “Another little stunt by that unbelievable man. It happened on a night when the flat was empty. Sam was at her dad’s, and I was visiting my gran in Ipswich. But Nick had a key, so he could come and go as he pleased. We think he must have loaded our stuff into his car, then damaged the locks to make it look like a break-in.”

  “Didn’t any witnesses notice his car?”

  “Believe it or not, someone did. But Nick just said he was in London on business, and he’d called in at the flat to pick up something he needed.”

  “He certainly did that.”

  Ronnie chuckled grimly. “The police accepted his story because they already thought the culprits were a bunch of young lads.

  “But that was a false lead all along?”

  “Precisely.”

  I was still taking in the implications. I said, “You’re telling me Nick faked this burglary in a deliberate attempt to put your business at risk – so that he could jump in and play the role of your saviour?”

  “Don’t even talk to me about it.”

  “What a mean-spirited, scheming prick! All that anxiety, all the extra work of replacing your stock – and all just to give Nick a hold over Sam.”

  Ronnie shivered and rubbed her hands together. “I don’t know if anybody ever told you, but working on a market stall is the quickest way to catch a cold. It’s an occupational hazard every winter.”

  “So is Sam off sick?”

  “No, she’s just getting warm in one of the shops over there. It’s a trick of the trade. My turn next.”

  As if on cue, Sam materialised among the afternoon shoppers browsing the stalls. “What brings you here?” she said with a smile.

  “Just passing through.”

  “Oh yes? Seems to be a habit with you.”

  Ronnie said, “I was just telling Mike how Nick faked the robbery so that he could bail us out and get us into his debt.”

  “I should have realised.” Sam sounded bitter. “It’s what he did all the time – he pretended to help people so that they would owe him.”

  I said, “That’s certainly what he did to me. As soon as I turned up on the scene he started plotting against me – all the while making himself out to be sweetness and light. He offered to help me when he found I was following up a news story in his area, yet in reality he fed me false leads. He rolled out a solicitor when I was suspected of Rob Openshaw’s murder, yet at the same time he actually tried to implicate me in the murder by faking those emails. He was always ready with the next trick.”

  Sam picked up a necklace from the stall and let the silver chain trickle back and forth between her fingers. She said reflectively, “I was wondering about those emails. I don’t understand how Nick managed to set them up. They must have been pretty convincing if even the police thought they were genuine at first.”

  I said, “Presumably he learned the basics on that computer course he went on. He must have kept up a hands-on interest in IT.”

  “What computer course?”

  I rummaged back in my memory. “Did he never tell you about it?”

  “Not that I can remember. And considering that I studied information technology myself, you’d think he would have.”

  “A college in Kenilworth – that’s where it was. Does that strike a chord? Somebody mentioned it at your party in the summer.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you serious? Kenilworth? But I did a course there! It was before I went to uni. I wanted to get the flavour of the subject – to see if IT was for me.”

  We stared at each other in amazement. I said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes I bloody well am. He must have seen me there.” She shook her head. “For fuck’s sake! This is unbelievable.”

  “Do you remember seeing him?”

  She closed her eyes. “No, I don’t have the faintest recollection of him. But there were various different classes. He may not have been in mine. And he probably looked different back then. I think he had longer hair, and he didn’t have a beard.”

  Ronnie said, “We don’t actually know this is true.”

  “Oh yes we do! It all makes sense, don’t you see? Nick spots me on an IT course and gets an obsession about me, but he’s too shy to approach me, so nothing happens. Years pass, and he becomes a lot more confident, more worldly. Then one day he sees my photo in a news report, and bingo! He remembers how he felt all those years ago, and decides that this time he’s going to get me, come what may.”

  Chapter 84

  North Greenwich lies to the east of London, where the Thames weaves between the Isle of Dogs peninsula on the north side and the Greenwich peninsula on the south. I took the Jubilee line, emerging into a gleaming modern station building. Behind me, the squat white dome of the O2 Arena rose against a blue sky, its tall yellow masts sprouting jauntily through the canopy. The diagonal wire stays gave the whole thing a faintly nautical look.

  The surrounding area was an awkward mix of the future and the past: adventurous buildings in steel and glass among vacant lots being readied for development. I struck out on foot along one of the more mature-looking roads.

  The TopBookReads web site, unlike some in its field, had provided me with a street address, along with a phone number and an email address. I’d considered calling Simon Curtis, then decided I would go to his office in person. If I needed a cover story, I could always claim I wanted to order a book promotion. Perhaps.

  My decision to make the trip had formed itself gradually. Since talking to DI Evans I’d become increasingly frustrated by his attitude. He clearly had doubts about Graham Bulwell’s part in the assault on Rob Openshaw, yet the way I read it, he had no firm plan to look for an alternative explanation. Admittedly, Simon Curtis’s involvement was tenuous at best, yet I felt it had to mean something. I just couldn’t put my finger on what.

  TopBookReads occupied a unit in a modest two-storey office development – plain, flat-roofed and painted white. The building was set back from the road beyond an expanse of grass.

  A slightly overweight auburn-haired woman opened the front door when I buzzed. Her loose-fitting jeans and casual red top suggested she was not accustomed to welcoming visitors, and her hair was gathered in a makeshift bunch. Frowning, she said, “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Simon Curtis.”

  “Ah. He’s out. Can I do anything? I’m the office manager – and I’m his wife.”

  Cautiously I said, “I’m a self-published author, and I’m planning a promotion.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you serious? I don’t think we’ve ever had a personal caller coming to the office to place a booking – not in all the years we’ve been in business. And you choose to turn up now.”

  “First time for everything?”

  “First and last, I’m afraid. We’re closing down at the end of the week.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  I glanced behind me towards the street, hoping to convey a sense that I’d travelled a long way to get there. It seemed to work; she smiled faintly for the first time. “I can offer you a cup of tea if you’d like.”

  She led me through to their ground-floor suite. There were three or four desks in the small open-plan office, but they were all empty. The place was cluttered with paperwork. She waved me to a chair and switched on a kettle.

  Her manner was downbeat but not unfriendly. I had a sense that she was relieved by the distraction I represented. She asked me, “How many books have you published?”

  “Just the one up to now.”

  “Got to start somewhere. How’s it doing so far?”

  �
�Could do better.”

  She made two mugs of tea and handed me one. I said, “Why are you closing down, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  She heaved a deep sigh. “We can’t afford to keep going – that’s the long and the short of it. There’s too much competition. And we made a wrong decision. We were doing OK, so we hiked up our prices and moved in here. We thought we’d hit the big time.” She shook her head. “Big mistake. That price rise lost us a load of business. We dropped our rates again, but somehow we never recovered. Now we can’t even afford the rent on this place.”

  “That seems crazy.”

  She shrugged. “Also the technology is more and more demanding. In this game you need to be on top of Twitter, Instagram, all of that. You need to be an ace with search engine optimisation. You need clean mailing lists that won’t upset the spam sentries. You need integration with people like Amazon and Endpaper. Then there’s cookie law and data protection law to contend with. It’s a minefield.” She lifted her hands in despair. “You need to be an IT genius just to keep up with all this – and that’s before you even start on the literary aspects.”

  “It sounds terrifying.”

  “You can get round a lot of this if you know what you’re doing. There are dozens of book promotion sites out there. Hundreds, probably. A lot of them are thriving. But technology and red tape are a continual challenge.” She gave a sigh. “It was fun in the early days. Life was simpler, and there weren’t so many boxes to tick. We built up a good reader database, and that’s always been one of our strengths.”

  I said nothing, and after a moment she added, “It didn’t help that we upset the tax man.” She gave me a chagrined look. “Not a good idea.”

  I said, “So you won’t be running my promotion any time soon?”

  “Chance would be a fine thing.” She sat down in one of the office chairs. “We’re in shut-down mode, I’m afraid.” She gave a regretful smile. “We nearly saved the business. A white knight was going to buy us out.”

  “What happened?”

  “He pulled the plug at the last minute. The day before we were going to get our money he told us the deal was off.”

  Now I was really interested. This sounded like a significant breakthrough. If the white knight was Rob Openshaw, here was a possible source of conflict. Curtis could have gone up to Islington to demand his money from Openshaw, and a fight could have broken out between them.

  I said, “Do you know why your investor pulled the plug?”

  “I think he had some problem with his own financing. It was all a bit hand to mouth.” She shook her head. “You’d never think a single phone call is going to change the course of your life, but that one did as far as we were concerned. Simon is out talking to another possible buyer, but we’re not very optimistic.”

  “Optimistic about what?” It was a man’s voice.

  “About selling.” She looked up. “Any luck?”

  The newcomer shook his head. “Waste of bloody time.” He turned to me. “Sorry, who are you?”

  She gestured towards me. “Simon, behold a real live customer – one of those mythical beings we’re constantly stalking in the cyberworld. I told him he’d turned up too late.”

  I stood up and held out my hand. “It’s Mike.”

  He continued to stare at me without responding. He was somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five, though he had a youthful look – an effect accentuated by his Beatle-style haircut. He said, “I know you. You’re that writer who got caught up in Rob Openshaw’s death. I saw your picture in the press reports. What do you think you’re you doing here?”

  * * *

  Before I had a chance to answer, Curtis turned to his wife. “Can I have a quick word, Sarah?” He ushered her urgently through a doorway into another room and closed the door behind him.

  Immediately I heard raised voices: reproachful on his part, indignant on hers. I couldn’t pick out what they were saying, but his closing remark was audible enough: “You stupid, stupid woman!”

  The door burst open and Curtis strode out. His wife was nowhere to be seen. He said to me, “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you didn’t come to promote some book of yours, did you?”

  Measuring my words, I said, “You’re right. I’m trying to establish exactly what happened to Rob Openshaw.”

  “Well I’m sure my dear wife must have given you plenty of food for thought about that.”

  I shrugged. In a way he was right, but I didn’t know how to reply.

  He stared at me for a moment, then said, “Fuck this! Fuck everything!” He turned on his heel, strode out into the hallway and slammed the front door behind him.

  His wife came back tentatively into the room. She said, “I’m sorry about this. He’s been under a lot of stress. You came at a really bad time.”

  “I didn’t mean to make things worse for you.”

  “Was he right in what he was saying? Did you come here with an ulterior motive? Was that stuff about your book a load of bullshit?”

  “No, I really have written a book. If you could have promoted it, I would have been delighted. But it’s true – I knew Rob Openshaw. After he died, the police tried to pin the killing on me. Ever since then I’ve been trying to work out what really happened.”

  “They accused you?” She was looking at me with fresh eyes. “Why?”

  “I turned up at his house on the day he died. I was the obvious suspect. Since then they’ve ruled me out, but a friend of mine is still under investigation. I’ve been trying to find out more about Rob Openshaw’s life, to see if I can point the police in another direction.”

  “But what made you come here today?”

  “Well, I heard that Rob was in talks with your firm about a possible takeover, and your husband visited him the day before the murder. I wondered if maybe he saw or heard something while he was there, or Rob mentioned something to him that would be a clue about what actually happened.” I was editing out the bit about the raised voices and the sound of furniture falling over; the idea of mentioning it here seemed less than prudent.

  “You realise the police have been to see him? He’s told them all he knows.” She frowned at me sceptically. “I don’t see how you could find out anything they didn’t.”

  “I just thought maybe I would spot an angle they hadn’t thought of.”

  She said nothing, and merely continued looking at me dubiously.

  I said, “Do you think he’ll be out very long? I could wait here for him, if that’s all right – or I could come back another day.”

  “You’d better not leave it beyond the end of this week. We’re shutting up shop for the last time on Friday.”

  “Right, of course.” I held my ground and looked at her expectantly.

  “I don’t know.” She hesitated. “Simon’s always been highly-strung, but this situation has made things far worse. He’s taken it very badly. This business was his baby, and he hates the idea of failing. You can understand it if he gets a bit het up.”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s been living on his nerves for weeks. We both have. Losing that rescue offer at the last minute made everything worse, somehow. It really knocked Simon off his feet.”

  “I honestly don’t want to stir things up. I’m just keen to find out if he knows something that everyone else has missed.”

  She seemed to come to a decision. “Look, he hasn’t actually gone out anywhere. He’ll just be cooling off round the corner. If you want to go and ask him more about all this, I know where he is.”

  “But will he speak to me, do you think?”

  “Oh, he should do. He’ll have calmed down by now. He’ll probably tell you whatever he can.”

  She beckoned me to a window. “You see that building over there? He’ll be at the top. He goes there when he’s stressed out.”

  The building in question was a part-finished tower block a dozen storeys high. Green tarpaulin was stretched over parts of it, but the res
t was bare concrete. I said, “How do I get in?”

  Chapter 85

  There was a timber fence round the building site. I followed Sarah’s directions to a break in the planking and squeezed through, then made my way across to the building itself. I kept a wary eye out for caretakers and security guards, but there was no one in sight. In spite of the bright sun I felt a chill in the air. I shivered slightly.

  The building was little more than a shell. It had no glass in the windows and no doors in the doorways. However, the concrete staircase was complete, so I made my way up. I kept a cautious eye out for squatters and vagrants, but in fact the place seemed eerily empty.

  It took me a while to reach the twelfth floor. It felt cold, and the breeze became more brisk with each floor. As I approached the top I called out Simon’s name. I wanted to avoid alarming him by materialising unexpectedly in front of him. There was no reply.

  Like the other floors I’d passed, this one was more or less empty. The space was merely broken up by rectangular columns. I peered around and spotted Simon over to one side – a slim figure in a dark fleece jacket. He was leaning against the parapet wall.

  “Fantastic view, isn’t it?” he commented as I approached.

  I leaned over the wall beside him. Below us, the blue-grey Thames curved past, surprisingly wide at this point and sparkling in the sun. Off to the right I could see the silver pods of the Thames Barrier dotted across the river, and to the left, the white dome of the O2 Arena. New developments were springing up everywhere alongside the old.

  “The developers of this building went bust,” Simon commented. “It’s been in this state for more than a year. It’s my bolt hole.”

  “An impressive one.”

  Simon’s wife had been right; his anger seemed to have passed, and he appeared to be in a more reflective mood. However, he was clearly still tense, and was tapping a spasmodic rhythm with his hands on the parapet.

  Finally he turned to me. “So Sarah told you Rob pulled the plug on our financing, did she?” He might have calmed down, but he still sounded edgy.