by Kate Vane
The garden they visited didn’t look much like a garden at all to Paolo. There was a lot of grass, beyond the stone cottage and the patio, but it sloped steeply down from the house. There was a tree surrounded by clumps of snowdrops and a pond and a huge, random-shaped bed which had more snowdrops growing through dried flower heads on tall stems that swayed in the wind.
The woman was friendly. Posh but nice. She offered them drinks but Mark said no before Paolo could ask for a beer. Paolo asked if he could take pictures. Mark looked at him with a frown but she said she didn’t mind. He tried to get one of the stunning view of the valley from the patio but it was hard to do it justice. Instead he focused in on details. He liked the juxtaposition of the dead and living plants in the bed, the fresh green leaves next to the dessicated stalks and papery seed heads. He might ask Isabel if she would take him to the darkroom, as long as Claire wasn’t around to smirk.
Mark’s voice held its usual intensity as he spoke to the woman about perennial beds and staking and pollinators. It gave Paolo a chance to see Mark as the world saw him. He was calm and confident, agreeing fees, talking tools and hours and planting combinations. It was funny seeing him in the straight world. Almost like a different person.
When they were back in the van, Paolo said, ‘She was alright.’
‘Yeah. She’s a solicitor. Wants a cottage garden but doesn’t have time to do the work.’
‘Always good to know a solicitor.’
‘I don’t think she deals with crime,’ said Mark.
There was an atlas between them on the seat but Mark never stopped to look at it. He seemed to know where he was going. It was getting dark. It was quiet in the van – there was no radio or cassette player – but the silence felt okay. The engine noise and the countryside moving past them filled the space.
In years to come, when he was in the Middle East where dark fell like a knife, he would think of that night. It had lodged in his memory in the way seemingly insignificant details often did, perhaps because in the silence he noticed for the first time how the grazing land with its dry-stone walls and blue-green grass was different from the countryside near his home, which seemed too bright now with its lush grass and green hedges. And the blue and grey grew bluer and greyer as dusk slowly bled the day of warmth until, by the time Mark stopped the van, it was dark.
They were parked in a narrow lane. There were no streetlights and Mark had turned off the headlights. For a while Paolo couldn’t see much of anything but then he made out a barn ahead, tucked a little back from the road, behind padlocked gates.
‘That’s where they keep the hounds,’ said Mark.
Paolo’s pulse started to race. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Nothing. Just watch.’
Paolo felt for the bag at his feet with Isabel’s camera in it. ‘Shall I take pictures?’
‘Not yet. Let’s make sure there’s no one around.’
Paolo thought how cool the photos would look, dark and full of foreboding. Although he didn’t know too much about taking photos at night so maybe they’d just look black. He was going to hope for the best and ask Isabel how to develop them.
He was about to jump out of the van when Mark stopped him.
‘No. Do it from here.’
Paolo had seen private investigators in movies take pictures from inside cars but he didn’t know if it actually worked. He didn’t want to waste film. He’d got it for Christmas from his parents and it would be a while before he could afford any more. He took a couple just in case.
‘So we are going to do this. After the department store.’
Mark said, ‘If we can. If we don’t get arrested first.’
‘We won’t. We’ve got a plan, haven’t we?’
The plan was that Paolo and Claire would go into the department store, dressed as straight as possible, as if they were a couple looking to buy a sofa for their first home. Claire had stopped colouring her hair and was growing out the shaved bits. (He tried to picture what it looked like now but drew a blank.) Claire would distract the staff if necessary (they hadn’t yet worked out how) and Paolo would slip the device under it.
Mark had originally said he would go with Claire (they’d ruled out Ratman because his appearance attracted attention even when he wasn’t accommodating a rat). Paolo had persuaded Mark to let him do it instead.
Ratman said he would call the local press because he had a knack for accents. He did a fake Glaswegian which he’d picked up from some protesters he had met when he went on a demo at Faslane. It wasn’t as funny as the posh Berkshire which parodied his old school mates but that was too close to home.
Paolo felt a kind of tenderness for his fellow conspirators when he considered what they were about to do. Even Ratman.
‘I still think we need publicity. If not an article then pictures.’
‘We don’t want to do anything that could lead back to us. I mean, are you ready to go to jail?’
Paolo thought about it but it was so abstract and unimaginable that he had trouble. He thought of Porridge and Prisoner: Cell Block H, he thought of political prisoners he’d read about who were put in solitary confinement. He thought of the golden boy of the sixth form at his school, two years above him, who had got done for dealing dope to his mates and sent to jail. He’d said the other prisoners accepted him because he helped them with letters and wrote bad poetry for their girlfriends. But he didn’t meet your eye when he said it.
‘I’d probably come out with a First,’ he said. He laughed but Mark was silent.
There were still no signs of activity. They sat staring into the darkness. The quality of the silence inside the van had changed. It wasn’t two people together, sharing a sense of purpose. There was an edge.
Then he had a thought. ‘How do you feel about jail?’ he said.
He thought Mark wasn’t going to answer, but then he spoke slowly. ‘I’ve spent my whole life in institutions. First my dad was in the army. We lived on base. My primary school was behind barbed wire and I thought it was normal. Then I joined up. I had to lie in a dorm at night listening to other lads breathing. If they weren’t fighting or crying or getting fucked.’ Paolo started. He had never heard Mark swear. ‘Your life is entirely tied up with theirs. If one kicks off, you all suffer. If you don’t fit, they can make life hell. This is the first time I’ve been free. So no, I don’t want to go to jail.’
Paolo felt a great honour. He felt he had been chosen. He had never heard Mark speak like this before, with honesty. But another part of him thought, Mark’s scared. Scared in a way that Paolo wasn’t.
That was what he thought about a couple of weeks later, when Mark told him the action at the department store was on hold.
39
Paolo was back in London and in the office early.
When he took a break he thought he should give Freddie a call, even if his contacts weren’t what they used to be. He might know something about what Sid had been working on.
‘I have to thank you,’ said Freddie. ‘After we met Mrs Coe, I got commissioned to write a piece on scammers. Can’t use the Sid stuff though,’ he said regretfully. ‘Would have made a good story but the lawyers have warned against running it while the criminal case is outstanding. I’ve drafted it anyway, ready to go if and when there’s a conviction. You said it wasn’t your patch, didn’t you?’
‘Of course.’ He was glad Freddie had got something out of it. ‘Did you ever hear about Sid being connected to fracking? Maybe involved with private security?’
‘Fracking?’ Freddie sounded surprised. ‘No, what are you thinking?’
‘Just casting around. Because Mark was involved in anti-fracking protests.’
He reminded him of Mark’s connection to Threapton and made the obligatory shame-faced reference to his own involvement in the demo.
It turned out Freddie hadn’t seen the story. Like many journalists he paid little attention to news outside his field. Who could blame him? Paolo offered
to send him a link to the video but Freddie sounded non-committal. ‘Video’ to Freddie probably meant a brick-sized cassette that you fed into a machine. Paolo could imagine him sitting at an old-school typewriter, wearing a trilby, a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
‘It sounds like his kind of gig, doesn’t it?’ said Freddie thoughtfully. ‘Security for large events and demos. I don’t think the police are going down that route, though.’
‘What’s their focus?’
Freddie chuckled. ‘From what I hear, they haven’t got one. The investigating officer initially liked the theory that Mark was the intended victim, but that made the list of potential perpetrators so long that the budget wouldn’t allow it so they switched their focus back to Sid.’
‘Magical thinking,’ said Paolo.
‘Aye,’ said Freddie. He sounded thoughtful. ‘Normally, an ex-copper, your first thought would be the people he put away. But he was far from his home ground. What are the chances a disgruntled ex-con would happen upon Sid Jenkins in disguise, two hundred miles from his home?’
‘It would be a bizarre coincidence,’ he said.
‘And then,’ said Freddie, ‘there’s the way he was killed. Looks unplanned, messy.’
He asked him the question he’d asked Mark. ‘Could it be a clever hit, made to look random?’
‘Well, they’ve pretty much ruled out all the obvious suspects. Partner, family, former work colleagues, and he didn’t really have any close friends.’
‘Mark?’
‘Of course they’ll be looking at Mark,’ said Freddie.
‘Even with the disappearing alibi?’
‘They’re circulating the usual places. Hostels, shelters. Appeals to the public don’t usually help much in these cases because most people don’t pay attention to the homeless.’
Paolo acknowledged that was true of him as much as anyone.
‘So you think Sid might be connected with fracking,’ said Freddie.
‘It’s a possible lead. It may be that scamming old ladies was just a lucrative sideline to his work investigating the anti-asbestos campaigners for a company.’
Freddie chuckled. ‘From what Mrs Coe said, it might have been the other way round.’
‘Yes. But he could have had another corporate client who was interested in the anti-fracking groups.’
‘They could both be represented by the same agency,’ said Freddie.
‘Maybe you can mention fracking to your source,’ Paolo said. ‘You might get something in return. If you do, will you let me know?’
‘Course I will, mate.’ Freddie sounded suddenly upbeat, as if this was the opportunity he’d been waiting for. And grateful. It pained Paolo to see just how grateful.
Before he went for lunch, Paolo got a call from the BBC call centre. People who knew him called direct, and most of the calls to the general enquiry number were either fans or haters and were screened out. Occasionally there was something useful and he preferred the staff to call him if in doubt.
‘I wasn’t sure about this one. A Graham Lewis. Said he knew you in Leeds. I would have dismissed it but because he mentioned Leeds I thought I’d better run it by you.’
He thanked her for her initiative as he put the number in his phone.
And then promptly forgot about it. After all, he had tracked down Ratman.
40
It had taken him a while to even remember Ratman’s real name. But then it came to him. Andrew Beauchamp. There had been some lame jokes about his name in the beginning, or perhaps they weren’t jokes, perhaps some of them were just covering for the fact that they didn’t know it was pronounced Beecham (like the cold remedy). No doubt Master Beauchamp had been enduring jokes on this theme since prep school, which was perhaps why he’d adopted Ratman so readily.
Once he had the name he still struggled to track him down. He wasn’t on any social media. He wasn’t in the online equivalent of the phone book but who was these days? Finally, a search of Companies House found him listed as sole director of Beauchamp Ratman Ltd, which sounded like a Dickensian odd-couple investment firm. He could picture them, Mr Beauchamp investing in stocks on behalf of dowagers and minor nobility, Ratman prowling dark alleys, collecting debts from starving mothers clutching babies wrapped in rags.
Beauchamp Ratman Ltd had a very low public profile which made him wonder if it was an active company at all. But on the fourth page of a Google search he found a single page website with a contact form and sent a message.
Within a day Ratman had called back, and now he was on his way to meet him in a bar in Dulwich. It was only when he got there he realised it wasn’t that kind of bar. It was all beech and stainless steel and sold non-alcoholic cocktails for a price approximating the GDP of a small African nation. He’d been expecting somewhere dingy, where the bar stank of piss and the toilet floors were slick with spilt beer.
Ridiculous, but didn’t everyone do that? While their lives moved on they imagined the old crowd were somehow still back there, living the same life, waiting for their triumphant return. Perhaps it was the experience of going to university – going home to find the friends who didn’t were in exactly that position, stuck in tedious jobs, drinking in the same pub, waiting for a girlfriend to tell them it was time to ‘get engaged’ so they could turn into their parents.
He sat sipping his Safe Sex on the Beach and wondered what Ratman was thinking about as he made his way here (he was already late). It was hard to imagine that Ratman thought at all. If there was a voice in his head it wasn’t reflective, it was pushing him to ever more dramatic action. He imagined it as a wordless imperative, like a toddler on speed.
He looked around at the clientele. Effortlessly unconventional. Some expensively dressed, others less so. He supposed most people could afford to buy one drink here and savour it, cheaper in the long run than ten pints of Tetley which would end up in the toilet, one way or the other.
Ratman walked in, dressed all in linen. He had a full head of hair and not much grey, or were they highlights? He looked incredibly well, like a Californian yoga teacher who coached celebrities at his own exclusive retreat. By rights he should have been long dead. He smiled and it was like he’d appropriated the mouth of Cliff Richard. What happened to those speed-damaged stumps?
‘You’re dazzling me!’
‘Fucking great, aren’t they? They showed me a chart and I said just give me the brownest ones you’ve got, but they persuaded me to go halfway. Didn’t want the full gleaming white, like my grandad’s dentures.’
He laughed. He still had that scary laugh, the one where you weren’t quite sure what he’d do next, and the voice was the same, only slightly less gravelly.
‘This your kind of place now?’ asked Paolo as Ratman’s drink arrived, summoned by the merest hint of a raised eyebrow.
‘Total straightedge. Got off everything when I turned thirty. It was too fucking good man! I thought, either I do this and die now, or have a long sober life and die of boredom.’ That laugh again, as if he’d taken the less entertaining option just to be perverse. ‘So, you want to talk about the old days?’
‘I want to ask you about the fire on campus.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Ratman didn’t seem daunted by that. ‘It was bound to come out, now that Mark’s been unmasked. Like the ghost on Scooby-Doo.’ He laughed and the debris from inhalations past rattled in his lungs. ‘You think the pigs will follow up on it?’
‘I can’t say,’ said Paolo.
‘But you didn’t do it.’ There was no question there, and Paolo found himself resenting it a little.
‘No, I didn’t do it.’
‘So what’s your angle? I thought you were more of an international man of mystery.’
‘I was with Mark when Sid’s body was discovered. Sid was –’
‘Yeah, I know, I’ve been following the story. I’m still active. Well, I use the term loosely.’
‘The fire was just after he called off the department store action,’
said Paolo.
‘He told us he thought you were an informant. What a fucker!’
Paolo was stung. ‘He did? And did you believe him?’
Ratman shrugged. ‘I didn’t think you were an undercover cop. But there are other kinds. You know, a kid gets busted for weed, they tell him it will fuck up his career prospects or he just doesn’t want his proud parents to know he’d been a bad boy. The police say, they’ll let it go this time, if he helps them out. That happened to a mate of mine. I didn’t blame you for it.’
‘Big of you,’ said Paolo, wondering, did Claire believe him? ‘He told me he’d been drinking in the Horse and Trumpet with some of the workers from the department store, and he’d heard the sprinkler system was faulty. He said we were only planning criminal damage, not arson. We didn’t want anyone to get hurt.’
Paolo thought of the little speech Mark had given about prison. He had thought it was Mark opening up to him. Now he saw that Mark was reflecting back what he’d seen in Paolo. He had known Paolo would never hack prison. He was protecting him from himself. The thought made him furious.
‘When I heard about the fire,’ said Ratman, ‘straightaway I thought it was Claire. Claire or Mark. Or Claire and Mark. They were always pretty close, weren’t they? Cos there was one night, I don’t know if you were there, when Claire was pissed and going on about the security guard coming to the Union bar when she was working. She said how much she hated him. He was joking about how he worked in that building where the animal torturer had his office. He told her he liked animal rights protesters cos they got extra shifts for a while, when there were threats against the professor. And he boasted that it was easy money cos he used to take a blanket in and sleep on the job, all thanks to people like her! You know how easy it was to wind Claire up. She hated him!’
‘Who else was there?’