Nocturne

by Hurley, Graham

  Every morning, we got up even earlier than usual, driving the five miles up to Tottenham Green for me to attend to the cats. Ideally, of course, the cats should have come with me - just like my cardboard boxes full of CDs and favourite paperbacks - but Brendan turned out to be allergic to cats so a change of address for Pinot and Noir was out of the question. Instead, I fed them every morning and evening, leaving them out during the day. As the weeks went by, I became aware that they were growing more and more wild but we were still months away from Nikki’s return and when I thought about the question at all, I told myself that there was plenty of time to coax them back to domesticity.

  Quite when that would happen, I didn’t know. Despite Sandra’s dire warnings, life with Brendan was undeniably sweet. The manic, gaunt- faced forty-year-old I’d met back in January quickly faded from view. In his place, I found myself living with a warm, funny, surprisingly practical man who had a rare talent for finding the middle ground between domestic routine and the wild, off-the-wall pantomime that was life at Doubleact.

  Often, during the week, we stayed in, hopelessly content, endlessly talking, forever comparing professional notes. Simply by listening, I learned a great deal about the hard practicalities of what I really wanted to do, about how difficult it was to resist the contagion of the marketplace, though the more I learned, the steadier became my resolve to give documentaries a try. This, in turn, caught Brendan’s interest and he became, I think, genuinely fascinated by what he called my blind eye.

  It was all of a piece, he said, with the other bits of me that he loved. My energy. My gutsiness. My crude belief in the benefits of physical exercise. The latter had taken us to a nearby park at weekends. I’d bought Brendan a tracksuit for his birthday, and a decent pair of Reeboks, and after a month of regular outings we were up to six miles at a reasonable pace with no stops. It was the first time for years that Brendan had risked serious exercise and the flood of endorphines afterwards entranced him. It was, he confided, infinitely better than cocaine, and infinitely cheaper, too.

  It was after these outings that the sex was best of all and after a leisurely shower we’d bury the rest of the afternoon beneath the duvet. He was a brilliant lover and the times we shared slowly pulled me clear of Gilbert’s shadow. I thought about him less and less. Emotionally, and in real life, he became practically invisible, a person of no account. Mornings and evenings, in our trips to Napier Road, we never saw him, or even heard him. The only sign that he was still in residence was the occasional movement in the window upstairs as fingers plucked at the ever-closed curtains.

  After a while, as the weeks went by, I began to think of selling Napier Road. So far I’d held off, not quite believing how good things could be with Brendan, but the closer we became the more obvious it was that neither of us would have any need for my little cul-de-sac. Brendan really was the person who’d rescued me. Not just once - out on the coast - but again now, by listening, and understanding, and finally taking me away from a situation - Gilbert - that had got totally out of control. Even better, he’d managed to work this magic without once giving me the feeling that I’d become any less independent. I was still Julie Emerson. I was still my own person. And I still had a great career ahead of me.

  Members Only, by now, was nearly at the end of its transmission run but Brendan had made it clear that there was work for me at Doubleact for as long as I wanted it, a decision which - curiously - Sandra hadn’t questioned. After the confrontation in her office, she’d never raised the issue of Brendan again and both of us were extremely careful to fence off our working relationship from the wreckage of her private life. At the time I can remember thinking that this restraint of hers was truly remarkable though I suspect I put it down to my own professionalism. I was, without doubt, bloody good at my job, and even my lover’s estranged wife had to admit it.

  I phoned the estate agent in late May. Because I was lazy, I simply chose the people I’d bought the place from in the first place. The woman I’d dealt with had left but I made an appointment to meet a young guy called Mark.

  We walked round the flat together, Mark taking notes. I’d done my best to hoover through and I’d even bought some flowers but it smelled damp and neglected and a dull, cloudy day did less than justice to my beautifully sanded floorboards. I hadn’t done anything to the kitchen ceiling, either, though I’m not sure Mark noticed. At the end of the inspection, we agreed to try it at £55,000, a price which would net me a tidy profit. Mark said he had a couple of prospects already lined up and he’d be round with the first lot tomorrow. I said that sounded fine and gave him the spare key.

  I got the call from Mark the following afternoon. I was at the office, tackling the paperwork after the last recording of Members Only. Brendan had pushed out the boat for the end-of-series party and I felt terrible.

  ‘There’s a problem,’ Mark said. ‘I don’t really want to talk about it on the phone. Can you come over?’

  We met outside the flat. Mark was looking, if anything, embarrassed. He was a local lad, extremely efficient, but I’m not sure that his three months on the job had prepared him for the news he was about to break.

  ‘It’s them cats,’ he said. ‘Or one of them, anyway.’

  I followed him inside. I’d last seen both cats a couple of days earlier. Since then Pinot had disappeared but I hadn’t been unduly concerned because he’d always been the wanderer. Wherever he got to, he always came back. Until now.

  Mark led me through to the kitchen. Noir, the other cat, was waiting beside the door. Mark opened the fridge. The fridge of course, was empty. Or had been. Now, curled on the middle shelf, was Pinot. I stared at him. He seemed to be asleep. I looked at Mark.

  ‘He’s thawing,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t think of any other place to put him.’

  Mark had arrived earlier in the day with the first lot of prospective buyers, a young Australian couple. He’d let them into the shared hall, only to find the cat lying on the carpet outside my front door. The cat hadn’t moved. The woman had touched him first. Pinot had been frozen solid. He was very dead.

  ‘Shit.’ I was thinking of Nikki. ‘Shit, shit.’

  ‘They went.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The people I was showing round. Didn’t want to know. Especially the woman. She was spooked.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  I took a step back and risked a little look at the ceiling. For a moment, I swear I saw the glint of a watching eye, though I may have imagined it.

  ‘How come?’ Mark was asking. ‘I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  He looked at me, unconvinced. What hadn’t I told him? What was going on here?

  ‘It was like a message,’ he said. ‘People don’t put cats in freezers, just leave them there, then plonk them outside someone else’s front door.’ He paused. ‘It is your cat, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a friend’s,’ I said. ‘She’s away for a while. She’ll be mortified.’

  ‘But why…’ he gestured at the fridge, ‘…would anyone want to do that? It’s mad, isn’t it? Crazy?’

  I mustered a weak smile and agreed with him. It had to be Gilbert, had to be. There was no other suspect half as crazy as he was. I shivered. The shadow had fallen over me again. And it had taken less than three minutes.

  ‘Have you had any other interest?’ I was still looking at Mark.

  ‘Yeah, two or three calls. It’s a competitive price.’

  ‘And you’ll bring these people round?’

  ‘Yeah, just as long as…’ he turned away, closing the fridge door, ‘… there’s nothing funny going on.’

  With the greatest reluctance, that afternoon, I phoned Tottenham Green police station. The news that PC Dave Hegarty had gone on leave was a huge relief. I asked, instead, for Gaynor. When she came to the phone, she said she’d never heard of me.r />
  We met that night at half past six. We’d had a long chat on the phone and by the time she got to Napier Road, she’d had time to get her thoughts in some kind of order. Face to face, she turned out to be a slim, pretty woman a couple of years older than me. She had watchful eyes and a flat North London accent. She could easily have been the estate agent’s sister.

  We sat in the kitchen over a pot of tea. I’d shown her the cat in the fridge, and the hole in the ceiling, and I’d filled in one or two of the bits I hadn’t mentioned on the phone. When she asked me why it had taken me so long to get in touch again after reporting Gilbert in the first place, I told her a little about Brendan. I’d been living with him, I said, and that had sorted things for a while. But now Gilbert was back in my life. With a vengeance.

  ‘The law’s all changed,’ she said. ‘You probably realise that.’

  I nodded. Back at the end of last year, there’d been a lot of publicity about a reform of the law with regard to stalking. According to Gaynor, there were two new criminal offences. The first involved violence, but to commit the lesser offence, in the words of the legislation, it was enough to cause harassment. I thought of the night Gilbert appeared at my bedside, the shape in the darkness looking down at me. Harassment seemed a pretty weak word to describe the moment when I turned on the light and saw him standing there.

  Gaynor was studying her notes. Unlike Dave Hegarty, she appeared to believe me. She was also, to my immense relief, extremely straightforward. No dramas. No funny games. Just a ready grasp of the practicalities of the situation.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked at last. ‘Frighten him?’

  ‘Warn him off.’

  ‘Same thing, isn’t it? He’s not actually pursuing you, not following you, not from what you say.’ Her eyes returned to the notepad. ‘Apart from that night you came to the station.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So it’s not like you’re under physical threat.’

  ‘No, not any more.’

  ‘An irritation then? Is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gaynor nodded and I sensed at once that I’d made a mistake, permitting her to play it down like this.

  ‘He can still be pretty scary,’ I said, ‘Breaking into my flat the way he did.’

  ‘He didn’t break in. Not technically.’

  ‘But he did. He did when he came into the bedroom, and again when he took the cats, and again that time he stole the film from the camera. That makes him a burglar, doesn’t it?’

  Gaynor poured herself another cup of tea.

  ‘To get him for breaking and entering, we have to prove intent. Because you lent him the keys, we can’t do that.’

  ‘But I’d got the keys back. He must have taken copies.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You’ve given him access to the flat. His fingerprints will be everywhere. As evidence, they’d mean nothing.’

  ‘What about the film?’

  ‘You told me he got the stuff developed.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘And then gave you the prints.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So where’s the offence?’

  I had no answer. Gaynor was infinitely nicer than her uniformed chum but the message seemed to be the same. By lending Gilbert the keys, I’d effectively destroyed any case I might later want to bring against him, regardless of what he’d done. I went back to the new stalking laws. Surely they might stand between me and the lunatic upstairs?

  ‘You need two specific incidents. We have to prove harassment on two separate occasions.’

  ‘I can do that. I’ve told you.’

  ‘And will he admit it?’

  ‘God knows. But say he does? What then?’

  Gaynor asked whether I minded her smoking. I fetched an ashtray, still waiting for an answer. She produced a packet of Silk Cut.

  ‘We can arrest him.’ She lit the cigarette. ‘We can haul him off down the nick. He’ll be interviewed. The allegation will be put to him. And if he admits it, shows remorse…’ she tilted her head towards the ceiling, ‘… the paperwork goes off upstairs and a couple of weeks later he’ll be down the nick again.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘A caution. That means a bollocking from the uniformed inspector.’

  ‘And that’s it? No court case? No fine? Nothing?’

  ‘Not unless he’s got any previous.’

  ‘You think he might have?’

  ‘No. I looked this afternoon. After you gave me his name on the phone.’

  I sat back, deflated. Then I remembered a line of Hegarty’s.

  ‘It might be a fake name,’ I pointed out, ‘Phillips.’

  ‘Of course,’ Gaynor smiled at me. ‘Do you have another one?’

  ‘No, but…’ I shrugged, feeling more than usually stupid. How come I hadn’t thought this thing through? How come I had such primitive faith in the forces of law and order?

  Gaynor was looking at the ceiling again.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ She indicated the jagged hole beside the light fitting. ‘We could be looking at criminal damage.’

  ‘We could?’

  ‘Yes, and criminal damage is an arrestable offence. Once I’ve nicked him I can go in and look for whatever he’s used to make the hole in the first place.’

  ‘You mean search his flat?’

  ‘Yes. And finding what we’re after might take a while. If you know what I mean.’

  I didn’t, and minutes later, beside the front door, I said so. Gaynor was pocketing her Silk Cut. She put a hand on my arm.

  ‘We need to frighten him,’ she reminded me quietly. ‘We need to warn him off. We could try other ways but this one’s best, believe you me.’

  ‘But how do we do that?’

  ‘We’ve just done it.’

  ‘We have?’.;

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled, and stepped into the evening sunshine. ‘You’re telling me he wasn’t up there listening ?’

  Brendan, as usual, was on the phone when I got back to his flat. I slipped a frozen pitta bread into the microwave and dug out the bowl of hummus I’d made at the weekend. I was ladling the stuff over a little nest of lettuce leaves inside the pitta bread when I felt Brendan’s hands encircling my breasts. Brendan had very distinctive ways of saying hello. This was one of them.

  I offered him half the pitta, wondering where to start with Gaynor, but Brendan was already off on a gig of his own.

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ he asked me.

  I thought of my desk at Doubleact. What nobody ever tells you about television is the mountain of paperwork. The series might be over but the truly boring bit was yet to come.

  ‘Clearing up,’ I said, ‘and then more clearing up.’

  ‘Fancy a trip?’

  ‘Where to?’

  I looked round at him, waiting for an answer, but half my pitta bread had already disappeared and it was pretty obvious that we were in for another of Brendan’s gourmet nights. No chance of getting fat, I thought, following him towards the bedroom.

  We were over at Napier Road by half past six next morning. It took me a couple of minutes to find my passport, and then we were off to Heathrow. I was still none the wiser about where we were going but Terminal Four was a bloody good start. The first seven destinations on the Departures board were all in other continents.

  Brendan picked up a couple of BA tickets at a desk near the door. When he put them on the counter while he hunted for his credit card I had a chance to sneak a look. I’d never been to New York before and the grin on my face must have told him so.

  ‘It’s a thank you,’ he said as we joined the queue at gate seventeen, ‘for changing my life.’

  That line was typical of Brendan, completely over the top, and it does me no fav
ours to say that I loved it. By the time we’d left the west coast of Ireland behind, I’d forgotten entirely about Gilbert, and Napier Road, and poor Mark’s attempts to sell the place, preferring to wallow in the comforts of Club World. We were onto our fourth glass of champagne. Sunshine was pouring through the window beside me. Best of all, I was heading for the city of my dreams, cocooned in a little bubble of mid-Atlantic luxury, and there was - it seemed - a yet bigger treat awaiting me on the other side. Quite what it might be, Brendan wouldn’t say but I was certain that it had something to do with work. One of Brendan’s many gifts was the ability to marry pleasure with more or less every other aspect of his busy, busy life. He very seldom did anything without at least half a dozen ulterior motives.

  And I was right, of course. We touched down at JFK in the early afternoon and took a yellow cab downtown. The Triboro Bridge gave me my first grandstand view of Manhattan and I was still on mental overload when we booked into the Sherry Netherlands Hotel. Our suite was way up on the sixteenth floor. From the window, I could see right along Central Park West towards the gothic battlements of the Dakota Building. The Dakota Building was where John Lennon had met his death. For little me, the video-queen from the Bournemouth (Hons) Media production course, this was truly the biz.

  Brendan had ordered coffee and club sandwiches. When the guy from room service arrived, there were four cups on the tray. Brendan was on the phone, talking to the office back in London. God knows who was still there.

  ‘Due any minute,’ I heard him say. ‘Can’t wait.’

  Can’t wait for what? I was still trying to prise the odd clue from Brendan when there was another knock on the door. Brendan was across the room in seconds. When our visitor came in, something told me that he and Brendan hadn’t met before. Not, at least, in person.

  ‘Meet Everett,’ he gestured grandly at his new chum. ‘Everett, meet Jules.’

  Everett was a tall, fit-looking American in his early thirties. He had a strong handshake and a big smile that never quite got as far as his eyes. His eyes were the lightest blue.