Brand New Friend

by Kate Vane

  With hindsight, it was obvious. He’d been easing himself out for some time, with his stories of trips to Faslane and his (almost certainly fictitious) ex-girlfriend and her mum. But Paolo somehow couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d had for years – that his recalcitrant sperm had been the seed of Mark’s departure.

  They were meeting in Mark’s flat. Claire would arrive around six. That way, she said, she could come straight from supervising an after-school book group. She was quick to clarify that she would be marking and doing lesson prep all evening after she got home, as if teachers were permanently on the defensive.

  Mark could be at home because he was still on suspension so Paolo got there early. Paolo wondered how he filled his days, if he was haunted by what had happened, staring at his four walls. But as he stood in the not-quite dark on Mark’s doorstep and rang the bell, Mark came up behind him, a small backpack on his shoulder, face red and bright with the cold, eyes shining.

  ‘I’ve been at the allotment,’ he said.

  He let them in the front door and bounded up the stairs ahead of Paolo to unlock the door to his bedsit. When Paolo walked in, the kettle was already on. Paolo sat in the armchair, trying to stay calm, not to show impatience.

  Finally, Mark sat on the other chair and met his eyes.

  Paolo opened his mouth to speak. There was a knock on the door. It was Claire. Someone must have let her in the front door. She was early.

  Mark opened the door without using the chain or the spyhole, which Paolo thought incautious of him given everything that was going on. Claire lunged at him. Paolo stood up, alarmed by the violence of her movement, but she was in Mark’s arms, or rather he was in hers, trapped in a fierce, unyielding hug.

  Eventually they pulled apart. They looked at each other, and Paolo sat down, feeling he was intruding on an intimate moment. Then he wondered if he should offer Claire the only comfortable chair (although it wasn’t that comfortable), but meanwhile Mark had pointed her towards his and said he would sit on the bed, so he and Claire rearranged their chairs to face it, while Mark put Claire’s tea on the table and once he was perched, looked expectantly at Paolo.

  ‘Do you want me to say this in front of Claire?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Paolo told her what he knew. Mark had admitted speaking to Sid shortly before his death, something he’d initially denied. He had said that Sid wanted him to spy on an anti-asbestos campaign group. He waited for her to react to that but she just nodded, encouraging him to go on, open-faced and attentive.

  ‘I think he went on to spy on the fracking campaign under pressure from Sid. I think he did this because Sid knows that the device from your room was found at the site of the fire on campus. The one where a man you knew died. He thinks that you are in danger of being arrested for murder.’

  Claire’s face was unreadable as he spoke, but she didn’t once look at Mark as Paolo spoke.

  He continued, ‘And I think the ultimate client for both Sid’s undercover work and Mark’s is Dhanesh Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of ZKI Industries.’

  He had said it. The words sat in the air, growing ever more incongruous as the silence extended. Like a fart at a garden party. He squirmed inwardly and wished he could take them back. That speculative leap had undermined his previous solid argument.

  Then he saw Mark and Claire were smiling. A smile of complicity. What was going on?

  ‘You did it!’ said Mark. ‘You worked it out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Claire began to speak. ‘I used to see Mark around, after he came back to Leeds. I never spoke to him. I think I felt betrayed.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘No. Because of the fire. I felt I had to deal with what happened on my own. Then one day a couple of years ago I was coming out of White Stuff, laden with bags, not paying attention. And we walked right into each other.’

  ‘I’d just been to the market,’ said Mark.

  ‘So we said hello, and then we went for coffee at –’

  This back and forth, the shared glances, it was like a couple on their golden wedding anniversary telling the story, once again, of how they first met.

  ‘We swapped phone numbers and agreed to keep in touch, but we never really did until Mark called a few months ago. Said we had to talk.’

  ‘You told me a different story in the restaurant.’

  She shrugged and Mark continued. ‘Sid had been in touch. Just as you said. He needed me to work for him. To go undercover at the fracking site.’

  ‘And you agreed?’ asked Paolo.

  ‘Of course not. Until he said that if I didn’t, he’d go public with what he knew about the fire. He knew I’d given a device to Claire, and that it was missing afterwards. And of course my cover would be exposed.’

  ‘Would there be enough to get Claire arrested?’ Paolo was thinking out loud.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Mark. ‘We didn’t feel we could take the chance.’

  ‘I’d be suspended. My career would probably be over. And I love my job,’ said Claire, but her voice was oddly toneless as she said it.

  Paolo looked at her meaningfully. ‘But you didn’t do it.’

  It wasn’t quite a question but nor was it a ringing endorsement. She looked at him, didn’t answer.

  ‘So we discussed what to do,’ said Mark. ‘I agreed I’d go along with Sid. I got involved in the anti-fracking campaign. Actually, I enjoyed it. I believe in what they’re doing and the people are good and I’ve been able to use my skills.’

  Paolo shook his head in mock confusion. ‘Have you forgotten you’re spying on them?’ Déjà vu all over again, he thought.

  ‘I hoped I could fob them off. Give them information that didn’t matter. Like I pointed out someone who I thought was working undercover, and not doing a particularly good job.’

  ‘And were they?’

  ‘Yes. And he was one of theirs.’

  ‘Did he spot you?’

  ‘No.’ He grinned, a rare moment of lightness from Mark. And professional pride.

  ‘So what happened? It wasn’t enough?’

  ‘Sid had somehow got wind of the planned mass trespass. I was a trusted member of the protest group by then and I was one of the few people who knew the date and the logistics. He didn’t know I knew, but he said he needed more. He needed details and it was up to me how I got them. Otherwise –’

  ‘Classic blackmail,’ said Claire. ‘They get what they want once, they just come back for more. We knew we’d never be free as long as Sid was on the case.’

  ‘So you killed him.’ Paolo had said it, what had been in his mind all along.

  They both laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Claire. ‘We decided we couldn’t live under this cloud. I would take my chance.’

  Tilda had been right. He looked at Mark. ‘You outed yourself.’

  ‘No! I told Sid I couldn’t help him any more. I didn’t think they’d do it.’

  ‘But they did,’ said Paolo.

  ‘And then I called you.’

  ‘That’s what I don’t understand. Why did you call me?’

  ‘Because of Dhanesh,’ said Claire.

  So Paolo was right. All roads did lead to Dudley.

  Mark took up the story. ‘Back when we were friends –’

  ‘You mean back when you were spying on us.’

  Mark continued, smoothly, as if Paolo hadn’t spoken. ‘Sid wanted to know everything as part of my debrief. All the arguments, the nights out, who was sleeping with who, who was worried about money.’

  ‘He was looking for vulnerabilities. Seeing who you could exploit.’ Paolo perhaps put more emphasis on the ‘you’ than was necessary.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Mark, ‘but I think he enjoyed it too. He wished he was still out there, part of it.’

  ‘He liked the soap opera,’ said Claire.

  ‘When he retired he got a job with an agency doing security for VIPs. He somehow ended up on a contract working for D
udley’s firm. That was sheer coincidence. But Sid had a phenomenal memory for names and he recognised Dudley’s.’

  ‘He also had an acute understanding of character,’ said Claire drily. ‘He managed to blag a meeting with Dhanesh when he was in London, said he had information that would be useful. He’d put together a brief, the kind of corporate surveillance that would interest a business like ZKI but with the added sweetener that he would bring in Mark.’

  Why would Dudley care about Mark? he wondered. Perhaps he saw the business case for using Mark. Or was it more than that? That night, Isabel’s Last Supper, Mark had taken Dudley’s attempt to humiliate Graham and turned it back on him. Reinforced that he was the one who was isolated in the house.

  It seemed unlikely that he would be that petty, but in a world where Trump had run for president because Obama mocked him in an after-dinner speech you couldn’t rule it out.

  ‘Sid told you all this?’ he asked Mark.

  ‘He didn’t phrase it like that.’

  ‘But that’s our interpretation,’ said Claire.

  Mark took up the story. ‘Sid liked having power over people. He even investigated his own clients, looking for leverage. He found out something about Dudley, something that he thought could have a big impact.’

  ‘What?’

  Mark ignored him, continuing with his own train of thought. ‘Sid always had schemes. First he was going to blackmail Dudley, then he was going to sell the story to a journalist. But he didn’t have enough. That’s why he came to me. He wanted us to work together on it.’

  ‘And now you want to sell me this information of yours?’

  ‘No. We want you to be noble,’ said Claire.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Refrain from using the story but let Dhanesh Gupta think you might.’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘That if he keeps quiet about our embarrassing history we’ll keep quiet about his. Sort-of mutually assured destruction.’

  ‘We don’t believe in that remember? We went on CND marches. We took food parcels to peace camps.’

  ‘This isn’t nuclear war, silly.’ Claire seemed to be enjoying this.

  ‘He was blackmailing you, now you want to blackmail him back.’

  ‘Except we need you to help us. He has to believe you might go through with it.’

  ‘How do you know I won’t? Steal your story.’

  ‘Oh, Paolo,’ said Claire.

  ‘So what is this story?’

  He thought of what Vera had told him about the deaths in Russia. If they had corroboration, this could be massive.

  ‘It’s about a patent,’ said Mark.

  ‘A patent?’ said Paolo and his heart sank.

  55

  After they’d told him their story, Claire said, ‘Isn’t it just your sort of thing? Corruption with a Middle Eastern connection?’

  They both looked at Paolo expectantly.

  ‘You said Sid needed more information. I’ll have to do my own investigation. See if the allegations stand up.’

  ‘We’ve done it,’ said Mark.

  ‘We think we’ve got enough,’ said Claire.

  ‘And where did you get your evidence?’

  Mark looked at him blankly. ‘The internet.’

  Paolo looked around the room that didn’t even have a TV.

  ‘We didn’t do it here.’

  ‘We used my laptop,’ said Claire. ‘But we know what we’re doing.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘We’ve covered our tracks. VPNs and all that.’

  The ‘all that’ didn’t exactly fill Paolo with confidence.

  ‘Here,’ she said, handing over a memory stick. ‘So you’re up for it?’

  ‘I need to review the evidence. I need time to think.’ He looked at Mark. ‘I wish you’d told me all this from the beginning.’

  Mark shrugged. ‘Sid’s murder kind of got in the way.’

  ‘It was my idea,’ said Claire. She had that over-excited look she got when she was drunk. ‘We had to get you invested. I knew if we just told you all this you’d say you couldn’t do anything and walk away. But now, you’ve done all this work. You can’t just let it go, can you?’

  Paolo looked at Claire and all his old irritation bubbled up. It really was like old times. Where had she got this cod psychology from? An online course? A pop-science podcast?

  The most infuriating thing was, she was right.

  ‘We need to confront Dudley,’ said Mark.

  ‘Get him on Skype?’

  ‘No. Go and see him.’

  ‘Dudley lives in Dubai.’

  ‘I’ve got money,’ said Mark.

  ‘You’ve got money? How?’

  ‘Fargold were paying me,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t want that money. I’ve got my police pension and my salary and I’ve cleared the mortgage on this place.’

  Paolo was about to say, You bought this place? But instead he said, ‘You own this place?’

  Mark nodded. ‘Claire?’

  ‘I can’t come,’ she said. ‘I’ve got mock exams for Year Eleven.’

  ‘I can’t either,’ said Paolo, then, less emphatically, ‘He might not even see us.’

  ‘Set it up. Don’t tell him I’m coming.’

  It could be fun, thought Paolo. He thought of the people he could see, the contacts that helped him do his job, the friends that he missed. But Dubai? How would he tell Salma?

  ‘Get me a date and I’ll buy the tickets,’ said Mark.

  ‘It might be expensive. Especially at short notice.’

  ‘Oh, Paolo,’ said Claire. ‘Look at him. What else is he going to spend the money on?’

  56

  Before Graham’s birthday party, they’d planned to get someone in to Isabel’s room. There were always people looking to move mid-year for whatever reason. There was a woman on Claire’s course who had been sharing with her boyfriend but now wanted more space. That was all they needed, thought Paolo, a make-up, break-up situation. But it would do.

  A couple of days after the party, Graham came home and told Paolo a group of lads he knew had said he could move in with them. One of the housemates was a finalist and would be revising at his parents’ in Manchester, just travelling to Leeds for his exams. When he was there, Graham would sleep on the sofa. The rest of the time, the room was his.

  Dudley said that there was a spare room in his friend-from-home’s place because her boyfriend was studying Italian and doing a term abroad. He would go into halls next year, he said, so he could concentrate on his studies.

  ‘Just leaves us,’ said Claire, smiling timidly at Paolo. Paolo was due to spend the summer in Antibes with Dan the Man, working in a hotel to improve his French and spending as much time as possible on the beach. In his third year he was studying in Cairo.

  ‘Sure,’ said Paolo, not paying attention. Then she said she had found a two-bed back-to-back in Woodhouse for them to look at and it became all too real. Living with Claire, just Claire? Not even in Hyde Park? There had to be a better way.

  He felt strangely nervous when the time came to tell her. She was alone in the living room practising chords on Kev’s keyboard which he had left there for some reason (probably because he spent more time at their place than he did in his own home).

  ‘Actually, something came up,’ he said. ‘After Easter I’m doing a term’s study in Marrakesh.’

  ‘Marrakesh?’

  It was a fantastic opportunity. He could improve both his French and Arabic. In Morocco! He didn’t tell her he had scoured the departmental boards and the careers library for opportunities, applying himself to research with a driven singlemindedness he had been unable to find for his essay on pan-Arabism and socialism. He wouldn’t even have considered missing a term in Leeds until a few weeks ago, but now everything had changed.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. She had been counting on him, he could tell. ‘I suppose I’ll have to try the university. I haven’t been able to find anywhere else.’ He kn
ew what was going through her mind. She faced the prospect of going into halls or a bedsit on her own. An admission that she had no friends. Even Graham had friends who wanted to live with him!

  Isabel would rather live alone than be with her, Paolo was prepared to move to another continent. It was stupid, of course she had friends, they were just all committed elsewhere, but for Claire this had become an issue of likeability.

  He was suddenly furious at Claire for her downheartedness. The spiky fragility which somehow wounded him. He was supposed to be the superficial one. He didn’t want to be sensitive to her pain.

  It wasn’t him who started this. It was fucking Isabel. Isabel who wanted to bury herself in the back of beyond. And what about Mark? Why had he taken off? Claire was not his responsibility. He was tired of the big dramas of their small world. Paolo was looking towards a bigger life.

  57

  As he turned on his phone and scrolled through his messages he noticed a voicemail from Tilda.

  She sounded subdued. Contrite? Afraid he wouldn’t listen? Why did the moral high ground feel so uncomfortable to him?

  He called her back. She was talking too fast, all business, but he sensed she was covering the awkwardness between them. It was about Mark’s alibi.

  ‘I went to the clinic to see if those guys from Acorn Community Garden really did go for an appointment.’

  ‘They won’t tell you that.’

  ‘Of course not. Patient confidentiality.’

  Paolo wondered where this was going. ‘So –’

  ‘I spoke to the receptionist and said I wanted to interview whoever confirmed the alibi of Mark Benson and she said, “It wasn’t me.” Then she realised what she’d said.’

  ‘That if it wasn’t her it must be someone else.’

  ‘So I said, I wouldn’t use her name, she wasn’t in trouble, and then she got defensive and said she hadn’t told me anything because Mark wouldn’t have been the patient, would he? It turns out he has brought clients in before so she recognised him when his picture was on the TV. There was a bit more back and forth and then I said maybe I’d just ring up and speak to the office manager and eventually she told me that Mark had come in with a patient around half-two. It’s a drop-in clinic so they’d had to wait. Mark stayed in the waiting-room while the guy went to see the doctor and it was about half-three by the time they left.’