by Monica Ali
The door was half open. The room was a standard double, the conversion not yet begun. It had the tinned-flower smell of polish and a lamp that had been left on. Gabe opened the wardrobe. He pulled out a drawer. There was nothing, no sign of life. The bed was made, the blinds pulled, the wastebasket empty, the sanitary tape was over the toilet, the toilet paper left with a folded end. Should he look under the bed? Perhaps he should hide under there and eavesdrop for a day or two. What did he expect? Contraband stacked in the shower? A corpse in the wardrobe?
He was about to leave when he noticed an envelope on the desk. It was the standard Imperial Hotel stationery left in every bedroom. But it was out of place, in the centre on its own. He carried on walking to the door but as he reached it he turned again. Come on, Sherlock, investigate. He picked up the envelope casually – too casually – and a waterfall of photographs cascaded to the floor.
Crouching, he gathered them quickly and at once his heart began to race. There was Charlie in her silver flapper dress, standing at the mike. Maggie, the Penguin Club waitress, staring dough-faced into the lens. Shots of tables, of punters, the backs of people’s heads. A street shot showing the door. And here he was, with Ivan and Victor, Suleiman in the background, the night he took them all out. Somebody had taken a camera, couldn’t remember who; it was innocent, completely innocuous, not evidence of some crime. He shuffled the pictures back into the envelope with clammy hands. Placing it carefully on the desk as he had found it, he headed back towards the exit, tiptoeing this time.
‘Chef,’ said Gleeson, hanging in the doorway fizzing, like a light bulb about to blow, ‘what an unexpected pleasure this is.’
Gabe’s arm shot up to the back of his head. ‘Oh, hello, Stanley. Just passing, saw the lamp on …’
‘Of course,’ said Gleeson quickly. ‘Me too, saw the light, naughty, naughty, wasteful, must pop in and switch it off.’
Gabriel checked his watch. ‘Well.’
‘Well, indeed. Will you do the honours or should I?’
‘What’s that?’
‘The light,’ said Gleeson. ‘The light.’
‘It’s five o’clock in the morning,’ said Gabe, ‘I think we both know …’
Gleeson adjusted his cuffs. He cocked his head. ‘Know?’
‘Know …’ said Gabe, ‘that …’ Hell. What did he know? ‘It’s the best time of day for catching up. No one else around.’
‘Two of a kind,’ said Gleeson, with a glutinous smile. His eyes flicked to the desk.
Branka, the housekeeping supervisor, snaked her head round the door. ‘She’s ready.’
Branka had all the right qualities for keeping her girls in order. When she passed down a corridor, checking up on them, she moved as if under sniper fire. She could probably catch bullets between those teeth.
‘She’s ready,’ Branka repeated. ‘Shall I bring her in?’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE OFFICE DOOR BOUNCED OFF ERNIE’S NOSE AND BACK INTO Gabriel’s hand. Ernie had been standing there in the dark. The night porter had switched off the lights and the breakfast crew had yet to arrive.
‘Ernie,’ said Gabe, ‘sorry, if I’d thought there might be someone in here I’d have taken a bit more care.’
Ernie stood back to let Gabe through.
‘Did it hurt?’ said Gabe. He sat down while Ernie stayed standing.
‘Ah’m OK,’ said Ernie. He’d put a comb through his hair. His overalls looked as if they might have had contact with an iron. His socks were pulled up tight. He stood with a sheaf of goods-in dockets in his hands, twisting them around like a doffed cloth cap.
‘Good,’ said Gabriel, yawning. He waited. ‘Is there something you wanted? I was about to go home.’
‘You told me to come,’ said Ernie, ‘first thing in the morning, you said.’
‘Oh,’ said Gabe. ‘Yes.’ He’d meant his own ‘first thing’ which would be nine, or more like ten, not Ernie’s which began at six, or even earlier today.
‘Discuss something, you said.’ Ernie, as usual, stared just past Gabe’s right ear. Gabe had assumed this was because of some defect, a slight boss-eye, but as he looked at Ernie now, wondering if he should do the deed, he saw that he had been mistaken. Nor did it seem that Ernie was simply avoiding all eye contact. Rather it struck Gabriel that the porter was looking directly at another person, another Gabe who stood at his shoulder, another version of himself.
He was so tired he’d started imagining things. He was in no state to deal with the Ernie issue. The physical stock and the computer records never tallied and Ernie should probably be let go, but now wasn’t the time to do it, the ‘discussion’ would have to wait.
‘Thing is, Ernie,’ said Gabe. ‘The thing is, I’ve forgotten what it was that I wanted to talk about. Sorry.’
Ernie extended his neck. ‘Can’t have been important, then. You’ll think Ah’m daft. For a moment there Ah thought Ah was for the chop.’
When Ernie had gone Gabe decided to call Charlie. He had to warn her. He picked up the phone. Warn her about what? He hung up. Gleeson, wielding his deadly civility, had practically pushed him out of the room. ‘Allow me, if you would, to undertake what needs to be done here.’ Gabe hadn’t put up a fight. And Branka, perhaps sensing landmines, had executed a quick and tactical retreat. There was nothing to tell Charlie. He’d found some photos. He’d got the creeps.
Who was ready? Why would Branka be bringing one of her girls to see Gleeson? Whatever Gleeson and Ivan and the housekeeping supervisor were up to was their business. Why should Gabriel do anything about it? It had nothing to do with him. Let Mr Maddox find another spy.
Unless it related in some way to Charlie. How could it? Perhaps if he told her, that would be sufficient. He wanted to speak to her anyway, didn’t he? He’d better do it now or he would have it hanging over him, another item, another duty, another thing he hadn’t done. He wrote ‘Call Charlie’ on the list he kept on his desk pad. He picked up the phone with his left hand and ticked off ‘Call Charlie’ with his right.
She answered on the third ring, heavy with sleep.
‘It’s Gabe. Look, I know it’s early, sorry, but I have to tell you something.’
He heard her breathe.
‘It may be nothing … you know, it might be best if I come round.’
‘Gabriel,’ said Charlie.
‘Yes?’ said Gabe, a chasm suddenly opening inside.
‘Don’t ring me again.’
The day clambered out of the trenches in its grey greatcoat. Gabe, in the back of a taxi, watched the flickering reel of buildings through half-closed eyes. The city at this hour belonged in an old war film. He opened his eyes properly and looked up at the few streaks of yellow, like mustard gas across the sky.
When he got home Lena was in the bath. She did not speak or move. He had, some time ago, stopped expecting any kind of acknowledgement when he returned.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘about last night. I should have rung.’ Some time in the early hours of the morning he had been cursed, condemned to keep apologizing to everyone for everything.
Lena shrugged, a mere ripple.
‘I’m going to catch a few hours,’ said Gabriel. He lowered the lid and sat on the toilet. ‘Then I’ll have to go back in.’
‘I had dream,’ said Lena. ‘It was my town, Mazyr. And I walk through street naked and everyone look at me.’
‘Tell me about your house, the house you grew up in.’
‘After dream,’ said Lena, ‘no sleep.’
Her skin was nearly as clear as the water. If Gabe put his hand in the bath and stirred she would dissolve.
‘Did it have a garden? How many bedrooms? What was the kitchen like?’ Sometimes she’d feed him a bit of information. A phrase or two about a school, a friend, a pet. It brought them closer together, even if he had to suck it out of her, and it was a way of distracting Lena when she seemed likely to upset herself.
‘How many bedrooms it have, y
our parents’ house?’ said Lena. She frequently picked up questions and flung them back like insults.
‘When I was very young we had two. Those houses, they’ve demolished a lot of them, they’re known as two-up two-down. They weren’t so bad, really. Suppose you don’t notice, anyway, when you’re a child.’ He groped his pockets for a cigarette. ‘I’ll smoke at the window,’ he said, but stayed smoking on the toilet seat. If they could just talk, if she would just talk to him. Asking her questions, it wasn’t productive; it was like trying to milk a cat.
‘There was a toilet out in the yard,’ said Gabriel. ‘We had another one indoors, but the one outside we still used it sometimes and me and Jen we’d play tricks on each other.’ He told her about the time his sister had caught a frog and left it in the lavatory bowl, the way you could climb up on the roof and dangle your face or (if you were careful) your arse over the small high glassless window, how he’d locked Jenny in once until after dark. Lena lay in the water carefully stroking her arm. ‘She’s great, Jenny, you should come and meet her. You’d like her. How about Pavel? Would we get on OK?’
Gabe passed lightly across the floor and sat on the edge of the bath. ‘He’s older than you, isn’t he? What does he do? I mean, did he have a job?’
She looked at him sideways and looked down again. She wanted to talk about her brother, her lover, whoever he was, but Gabe saw she was afraid. If she began to speak perhaps she would give away too much.
‘Tell me anything,’ he said. ‘Not about him. About you. Something you did at school, a little story, anything, what posters you had on your bedroom wall.’
She rested her cheek on her knees and looked through him. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Please,’ he said, pushing a strand of hair off her face. His hand hovered over her. He removed it.
‘Is stupid,’ said Lena. ‘You – you are stupid.’
‘Yes,’ said Gabe. ‘Maybe.’
He wanted to know her. But information was not the same as knowing. He could not enter her like data on a damn spreadsheet.
‘What you have done to find Pasha?’ said Lena. And then, answering her own question, ‘Nothing.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Gabriel. ‘What do you think I was doing all night?’
That got her. She curled her toes.
‘I went to Victoria, to the coach station, to that club you told me about …’
She actually looked in his eyes.
He shook his head. It was horrible, what she did to him. When he went home from school one time with Michael Harrison they rescued a bird from Michael’s old tabby, prised it from between the cat’s jaws, and it had only lost a couple of feathers, no blood or anything. Gabriel held the bird in his hands. The way its heart beat made him panic. He wanted to save it. He wanted it to die. They put it in a cardboard box in the airing cupboard and when they opened the box the next day the thing was dead. That shocked them. Besides being dead it looked healthy enough, it didn’t look damaged at all.
‘No,’ said Lena. ‘I don’t believe.’
‘It’s no use,’ said Gabe, ‘I tried. It’s not a little village, where you can just go ask around and find someone. It’s London, for God’s sake.’
She turned her face to the wall.
‘Lena …’ He brushed her shoulder with his fingertips. ‘Lena, I think I know a way. What we’ll do, we’ll get a private investigator, I’ll hire someone to find him.’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean, no? I will. A private investigator, a private eye – do you know what that is?’
‘No.’
‘A bit like a policeman … no, it’s OK, not the police, a private eye won’t tell the police anything, they only do what you pay them to do. And they find people. They know how.’
She ran the hot water. ‘My Pasha, he want to see …’ she paused to get her mouth around the words, ‘… Wembley Stadium. He say is home of football.’
‘Good,’ said Gabe. ‘That’s good. It could be useful. What you should do is write everything down. Anything that could be a clue. Places he might visit, his interests, that sort of thing. Start with the basics and then give all the information you can.’ It would keep her busy. She needed something to do. ‘I’ll keep on looking in the meantime, then when we’ve got everything down on a sheet of paper I’ll find a private eye, a good one, I’ll pay for the best. We could probably get someone to start after Christmas, start straight away in the new year, it’s not long until Christmas and then we’ll crack it, we’ll get the job done.’
She took a breath and slid under the water, the disturbance at the surface momentarily disjointing her limbs. Gabe held his breath too. If he could keep her until Christmas, that should be time enough. By then she might feel something. If Gabe could fall in love with Lena, it seemed only reasonable that she could fall in love with him too.
‘OK,’ said Lena, emerging. The hot water had put a red flush on her chest. ‘You want have sex now. I come.’ She made to get up.
‘No,’ said Gabe, pressing down on her shoulder. ‘No, that’s not what I want.’ He was shaking with tiredness. ‘It’s not right. I don’t want to. I need a few hours’ sleep.’
He smiled at her and Lena nearly smiled back at him. Gabriel picked up the bar of soap. Gently, he lifted her foot and soaped it, massaged it, rubbing the suds between her toes. He knelt on the floor to get a better angle on her other foot. He worked in circular motions, half hypnotized by the slip-slide of his thumb. He took a sponge and, resting her foot by the tap, began to journey up her shin.
Lying in bed, he asked her about the client she had told him she wanted to kill. What he really wanted to know was why she did not hate the others. But that he could not ask.
‘What did he do to you?’
Lena gnawed a ragged cuticle. It bled.
‘Did he beat you, Lena? Did he?’
‘Oh,’ said Lena, wiping the blood on her arm. ‘You like to hear about it? This is thing you like?’
‘Of course not.’ At other times she forced him to listen to stuff nobody wanted to hear and now this accusation. He could not win with her. ‘I thought it might help you to talk things through. Not if you don’t want to. I’m here, that’s all I’m saying, if you want …’
‘I don’t want talk,’ hissed Lena. She rolled on her side.
He shifted himself so slowly towards her it felt as if he had not moved but grown. He put down roots that twined around her, binding her to him. When he was almost asleep she said, ‘One day he is coming and when he come to my room I see he is play with wedding ring and I say, “Oh, you are marry? You have wife?” Like this, I say, because I think maybe if wife come to his mind he will be better, he will not do this things to me. You see how stupid? You see how stupid I am?’
In his dream he wanders the catacombs, wafting through viscous violet light. He thinks he will never find the place. There is no point going on.
When he discovers the corpse he is so grateful that he falls to his knees. The food begins to pile up all around. He breaks a piece of cake. It is at his lips before he smells how bad it is. He picks up a pastry from a glazed gargantuan stack. A fat white maggot wags out at him. But here, over here, is his favourite chicken and it is fragrant, crisp, perfect. He tears off a drumstick and examines it closely, the lovely bubbled skin, the scent of garlic and herbs. He takes a bite and spits it out. When he looks again at the chicken he sees it is black with flies. He crawls back to the corpse and grabs the feet. A toe comes away in his fingers and he tosses it next to the drumstick on the ground.
* * *
In the two days since he found the photographs, Gabriel had rung Charlie five times. Once at home that same morning and four times on her mobile – calls that she did not answer, messages to which she did not respond. He would try one more time now, on his way to work, and leave it at that. While he was waiting to cross at Lollard Street a Mercedes pulled on to Kennington Road and a cyclist went flying over the bonnet, the
bike still between his legs, twisting full circle before smacking down on the tarmac.
‘Hello,’ said Charlie.
The whole world stopped for a moment, poised, it seemed, to applaud this aerial ballet.
I saw someone killed, thought Gabriel. I saw someone killed on my way to work.
‘Gabriel,’ said Charlie.
People ran towards the cyclist. The driver got out of the Mercedes. In the queue of traffic that had built within seconds other drivers began to honk their horns.
The cyclist stood up. Three people led him to the kerb and sat him down.
‘Charlie,’ said Gabriel. ‘Charlie, are you still there?’
He called again a couple of times standing at the bus stop. She didn’t pick up.
When he got to the office he sat with his mobile, opened the contacts list, scrolled to Charlie and pressed the call button. The message service again. He repeated the process. He did it a third time. And a fourth. He kept going, working faster, cutting the line and redialling before the message service kicked in. Jumping up he opened the filing cabinet, threw in his phone and locked the drawer. He scratched his bald patch. He rubbed it. He scratched again. He put the cabinet key in the back pocket of his jeans. Good. All done. Then he turned round and looked straight at the phone that sat on his desk.
Grabbing a random file from his in-tray he decided to go and work in a quiet corner of the dining room. The trouble was it was too hot in his office. He could get heatstroke in here.
In the mornings Jacques served breakfast until eleven when the set-up for lunch began. It was around ten and the place was largely deserted, a few businessmen lingering over coffees and PDAs. So Gabe saw Fairweather immediately, pushing up his fringe like a schoolgirl, leaning over to his companion as if he were about to flirt with him. Fairweather, clearly endowed with acute peripheral vision, broke off and said, ‘Ah, Chef!’
‘Won’t disturb you,’ said Gabe.