by Anne Brooke
‘And are you okay?’ I ask.
‘We tick along. How is London?’
‘Dark and dreary. Have you been up at all? For a show or anything?’
‘No, not recently. I think Jonathan may be planning something soon, perhaps for Christmas? Of course he has his work commitments.’
Yes, of course he does. All those times when he has to be up in London without her, and he won’t be thinking of me at all. Not that I blame him. Not after what I did.
We lapse into silence. After a while, as we watch five sparrows and a blackbird hop along the patio and peck at the shrubs, she gets up, nods, takes my empty sherry glass, and trots into the kitchen. For lack of anything else to do, I follow her and wonder if it will always be the same. When I enter the kitchen, she’s leaning over the oven from which a great grey gust of steam and salt-sea spices fills the air.
‘Baked salmon,’ I say. ‘Summer food.’
She jumps at the sound of my voice, and I take two steps away, but she turns ’round and shakes her head. ‘I know you like it, Paul.’
‘Yes, and there’ll be plenty left for...later. Can I help?’
A second’s tension then she seems to decide to ignore my gaffe, instead flapping her wrinkled hands as if to flap away the steam. ‘No. Thank you. I’m happy here, pottering about. You go back to the living room, there are papers to read. If you like, you can help me wash up afterwards.’
Given my dismissal, I wander back and pat the Staffordshire dogs on the mantelpiece, nearly the twins of mine, before sitting down and rifling through the enormous pile of papers.
I’ve no idea why they always order all the Sundays; there can’t be enough hours in the week to read them before the next supply come in. Still, it fills my time so for the next forty-two minutes, I skim-read. It’s only when I’m two pages ahead of the phrase I’ve seen that I realise I’ve recognised it and have to turn back. The headline of the article, and the links it makes between something I know and something I don’t, causes my stomach to lurch in excitement mixed with fear. Eighth rule of PI work: Always know which of these two is stronger. This time, I don’t.
Sod’s Law clicks in, and I can’t find what I think I’ve seen. Is it this article? Or perhaps it’s one I was reading earlier on, about crime figures in the country or the one about the falling numbers of policemen. Or were they the same? Feeling my skin prickle, I start flicking back and forth in ever-increasing numbers of pages. From the kitchen the sound of the pressure cooker being allowed its moment of release whistles a time warning.
Where did I see that phrase, that word? Where?
‘Paul! It’s ready. Can you open the wine?’
Damn. No time for more searching now; it’ll just have to wait. Grabbing the whole of the Sunday Telegraph, I lay it on the arm of my chair and make my way into the kitchen, where I struggle with the cork on the Rapel Valley 2003 Sauvignon Blanc. The wine tastes like honeyed spice.
As we sit at the kitchen table, the salmon, new potatoes, and assorted greens creating an elegant concept on the Wedgwood, there’s only one question on my lips.
‘May I take one of the papers home? The Telegraph?’
‘Today’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I don’t think your...I mean I don’t think it’s been read yet.’
I say nothing but start to cut into my food, releasing that salmon-spice pink scent in a fuller wave into the room. She must take pity on me, as her next words come full circle.
‘All right, dear. If you’re sure you need it?’
‘Yes, I do. Thank you.’ On impulse I lean over and kiss her paper-thin cheek. Physical contact isn’t a journey we’ve taken in a long time, too long to count, and I can’t imagine it will happen again for a while as she doesn’t reciprocate. The knowledge of this burns me, and for the rest of the meal we remain almost silent.
Afterwards I wash up and gaze at the old clock near the sink as its hands march on to a kind of freedom, however temporary. Then we drink coffee, strong and black enough to cover over the gap between us. We comment on the weather, the situation in Iraq, the forthcoming American election, and I smile again at the differences between today and the day spent with Jade’s parents.
The conversation runs out a full thirty-nine minutes before I judge it appropriate to leave, and I watch as she dozes, the afternoon light flooding through the window and creating a halo of her hair. I think about searching through the newspaper again but don’t want to wake her. I’ll have to buy it later if I can’t take it now without a conversation about...him. The house around me huddles closer, bringing with it little flashes of what I’ve been and what I choose not to remember. When it’s time to go, I nudge her arm.
‘What? Is everything all right? Is—’
‘Yes, it’s fine,’ I interrupt before she can say what can’t be said. ‘Everything’s fine. It’s just time for me to go.’
‘Oh. Oh, I see.’
She uncurls herself from her chair. Limbs creak and stretch, and skin patterns itself into place, a new shape, a new idea of age. With half a smile, she sees me to the door, but then turns back for the paper.
‘Here,’ she says, taking the Sunday Telegraph from where I’d left it on the arm of the chair and waving it in my direction. ‘Don’t forget this.’
‘Thanks. I won’t.’
When I wave goodbye and steer the Vauxhall out of the gravelled driveway, the visit isn’t quite over; there’s still one stop left before I can return home.
The church of St. Peter’s glistens in the sunlight, and I notice the weathervane has vanished. Another accident during the course of the year, I imagine, and I wonder if it will ever be replaced.
The churchyard is free of people, and it looks as if the grass has been cut recently. Its fresh green smell wafts the summer along into the approach of autumn. Time passing and the loss of it has been a weight over my head stronger than any sword since that day, though sometimes, if I’m relaxed enough, I can almost remember back to a place in my life when I was free of it. It doesn’t matter. It’s beyond me now. If I’d been there, maybe she wouldn’t have gone. If I hadn’t been intent on my own six-year-old interests, sneaking into my father’s shed and playing with the child’s toolbox he kept for me there, then maybe I would have been in time for her to be safe.
‘Come on, Paul, meet you up the woods in five minutes. See if you can find me!’
I should have gone with her when she called. That day more
than any other. But I didn’t. By the time I began to look for her, as she’d asked me to, she was gone. My contribution to my sister’s kidnapping and assumed murder is something I’ve never told anyone, not even Jade. It’s something I never will. Since then, each beat of the clock has been a small accusation. Each day, each moment I live takes me and all of us away from that moment twenty-four years, ten months and two days ago when our lives changed in a way that could never be un-changed. It’s always a part of me.
As is the knowledge I was not the one taken.
Now there’s a breeze that lifts my hair a little off my scalp, as I walk around two sides of the small, stone church and into the silence of the memorial area. Not quite a garden as there are no hedges or trees to mark any kind of boundary, but not quite part of the main graveyard either. It’s out of the way of the road.
When I’m ready, I brush aside the strands of ivy curving across one edge of the bronze plaque and read the words again:
Teresa Anne Maloney, 14 April 1970 to 27 October 1979: lost but always loved
Not much to show for a life, however short, and I pray that one day there might be justice, in a place where no mercy was shown. And, as I always do, I think about what her vanishing, the lack of any actual body to grieve over, has meant for all of us, for me. Maybe, without that, I wouldn’t be in the business I am today or maybe, without that, I would have already dropped this case. But for Teresa’s sake, and for Bluesky’s, I want to know the truth.
This time,
I stay a little longer than usual; in two months-less-two-days’ time it will be a quarter-century since my sister vanished in the yellow and red and green-striped dress she loved so much and that, like her, was never found. If I knew the way to do it, I’d mark my own private anniversary with something more lasting than the twelve minutes I stay here, but I don’t know how.
I wonder instead how my parents will make their peace with it and if they have ever wished aloud to each other, or in the secrecy of their own hearts, that it might have been me and not her who was lost.
Back at the car, I lock myself in and run my hands over my face for a long moment. Before setting out from the church, I take the paper my mother gave me and slowly turn the pages, running my eye up and down the columns as I go. That phrase, that word. Where is it? Where is it? Maybe it was only ever something in my head, maybe... But when I least expect it, when I’ve almost given up hope and marked the incident down to my own imagination, there it is, leaping up from the black print like a message for me alone.
Bluesky. The name on Blake’s mysterious file. The woman. I read the article. Then I read it again.
As I drive back home, instead of mulling over the information I’ve gathered from this unexpected source, I think about the difference between Jade’s family and mine. I try to convince myself once again that my father’s deliberate absence today doesn’t hurt me.
As I ease the car into the only remaining space on the street near my flat, a black BMW, deadly as dark fire, swerves at me from the opposite direction. The next second, it’s rammed me at the offside front. As I’m jerked forward with the force of the crash, banging my nose on the steering wheel, the car screeches backwards, rubber on tarmac, and takes off with an angry roar.
‘Jesus. Jesus Christ.’
When I jump out of the driver seat, the BMW is swinging ’round the corner, and I can see there aren’t any licence plates. I leg it to the end of the street, but it’s already disappeared.
By the time I get back to my car, my nose has started to bleed.
Another warning, and this time they haven’t kept it verbal.
Chapter Eight
‘Paul? What on earth did you do to your face?’
‘Car accident,’ I grunt. ‘Gave me a nose-bleed.’
‘That’s not all it’s given you, by the look of it.’ Jade gets up, taps her way over to me in her impossibly high-heeled shoes, red this time I notice, to go with her suit and her matching garnet and diamante earrings. She peers at me as if I’m a difficult client whose case might be unsolvable. She may well be right. PI Rule Number Nine: Sometimes your assistant is not wrong. Not a rule I’ve discussed with Jade much.
‘Is that a purple eye, or have you been overdoing the mascara?’ she continues, taking a step back and frowning.
‘Do you think I’d use something that looks this cheap?’
‘Transvestites, so I’m told, spend a fortune to get that effect.’
‘This comes naturally, or as naturally as one crazed London driver and one dopey PI can make it. Any chance of an ice pack to hold over my fevered brow?’
As I settle into my chair, Jade stops frowning and sashays over to the kitchen. She disappears for a moment and comes back with a small pack of frozen peas I didn’t know we possessed, and a teatowel.
‘Where did the peas come from?’
‘Sainsbury’s.’
‘I didn’t know our kitchen could be so useful.’
‘You never know when an angry client will come in and beat you up. I’ve been keeping them just in case.’
‘If an angry client did take a swing at me, I’m sure those earrings would dazzle him into submission.’
Jade wraps the pack of peas in the teatowel and presses it against my left eye. ‘Shut up talking and hold this there for five minutes, would you? It may be the most useful thing we do all day.’
In spite of the fact that her breasts are pushing against my face and making me gulp, I obey. Rule Ten in the PI book: Sometimes simple obedience is best, especially when handling someone in high heels.
I watch as Jade goes back to her desk, focuses on her screen, and then answers two calls, one from a client I don’t want to talk to. I glance at my watch. There are things I need Jade to do. And it has to be this morning.
Because this evening, although she doesn’t know it, I plan to see Dominic.
Sliding the ice pack onto the desk, I take the photocopied papers out of my case and glance at them again. ‘Jade?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Any chance of you looking something up for me?’
‘Go on then, let’s have it.’
I show her the papers and, together, we take in the strange connection. As I speak my thoughts aloud, I watch her brush back her hair, fastening it with a clip, and cup her chin on her hand as she listens.
‘This changes everything, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t we go to the police?’
‘With what?’ I ask. ‘All we’ve got at the moment could be just an over-imaginative journalist, some unprovable suppositions, and a leap of faith. Not to mention the fact that some of the information we’ve come by hasn’t been gained by strictly legal means.’
‘Still, if it’s true, it means it’s more than just one dead woman. This is serious, Paul.’
She’s right. It’s more serious than anything I’ve been involved in before. I want to make sure Dominic’s in the clear. He has to be. More than that, I need to know the truth.
‘I know,’ I say as Jade continues to take me in with her big sapphire eyes. ‘But I need to find out answers. To do that, I first need all the police records you can find. On Bluesky, and the rest.’
She nods, ‘Sure, but it’ll take time. Are you certain this is what you want? Isn’t there another way?’
‘You mean the legal one? The one that involves walking into the Met, telling the reception officer what I know, and then waiting for them to shine a light in my eyes?’
‘The police have more advanced interview techniques these days.’
‘Nothing like a bright light and a thumbscrew to get the vocal cords working.’
‘I’ll have to try it one day,’ she says, deadpan. ‘It might get you telling the real truth to your staff. This is about protecting Dominic, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t be silly. Why should it be?’ I turn my back on her, stride over to my desk, and leaf through some papers. ‘I’m just doing the job I’m paid to do and the one I want to do: giving Dominic the report he asked for and finding my way to the truth.’
‘I can see that. But you’re involved, and not in a professional way either. That’s what’s worrying me.’
There’s a pause and I drop the papers down. ‘I’ll be fine; don’t worry about me. Let’s just worry about getting the answers and getting out.’
When I look at her, she simply nods. ‘Okay.’
‘Thanks.’
For the rest of the morning, I work on the client accounts I’ve neglected up until today. I make three phone calls, arrange one initial meeting and a reporting session, and type up a schedule of surveillance for an adultery case. Whenever I glance at Jade, she’s either frowning at her screen or tapping away at the keys and juggling with CDs, in and out of the computer, in and out. The action of playing catch-up makes me realise how much Jade is right in what she hasn’t said. I have to raise my game to where it should be in terms of client handling or Maloney Investigations is going to be history. We can’t survive on Dominic’s fee alone, and there’s not just me to consider. There’s Jade, too; my failures aren’t going to help her.
It’s this realisation that propels me to my feet and out the door just after Jade and I have split a bacon and avocado ciabatta and a J2O from the corner deli.
‘See you later on,’ I say, wiping the crumbs from my mouth, ‘by 5.30pm for sure, as usual. Do you think you’ll have got something by then?’
‘I don’t know. It’s not going well at the moment. Maybe I’m losing my touch?’
S
he looks so despondent that I can’t help but give her a quick but heartfelt hug. Beneath my grip, her shoulders seem small and tense, and I hunker down next to her chair, taking her face between my hands.
‘Jade?’
Her eyelashes flutter upwards and those earrings glitter in the strip-light.
‘Now listen. You’re the best there is, and if you can’t do it, then what the hell, it can’t be done and we’ll find another way. You’re not losing your touch. I couldn’t do this job if it wasn’t for you, so please don’t say things about yourself that aren’t true. Okay?’
She nods, but I’m not convinced she means it.
‘Good,’ I say, ‘so repeat after me: “I’m the best”.’
‘You’re the best, Paul.’
‘No, no,’ I groan. ‘Why don’t women ever listen? Say you’re the best.’
‘You’re...sorry, I’m the best.’
‘Good. Well done.’ I kiss her on the forehead and get up. ‘I’m off on surveillance now to try to earn our keep. If you need me, the mobile will be on vibrate.’
‘Okay.’ Her sudden smile transforms her face in a moment. ‘Careful where you put it.’
‘Watch it.’ At the door, I give her a wink. ‘You’re getting way too cheeky.’
Cheekiness is a good sign, though. I’d hate Jade to be unhappy; I couldn’t do without her.
I settle down in the Vauxhall on the corner of one of the notquite-so-posh Islington roads. The house I’ve got in my view is a solid, modern red-brick construction with a Classical look and two white mock-pillars framing a small porch. Even from this distance, I can tell the pillars could do with a fresh coat of paint. I can’t decide if it and its owner, whom I’ve only met once, are on their way up or on their way down. These days it’s not always easy to tell.
Today, I’m watching his wife while he slaves away at his medium-level City job. I don’t have any doubts she’s unfaithful — all I need is the evidence — and I don’t have any doubts that I’m happier by far doing what I do and simply being me. No way would I want to be him, for the job or the wife. She lunches, belongs to a tennis club, a reading group, and a Pilates class, gardens and does good deeds. Not enough to fill anyone’s week, and as there aren’t any children, I can only assume her spare time is spent cheating on her loved one. It shouldn’t be too hard to nail her.