Grief Encounters

by Stuart Pawson

  Strange thing was, I always got on well with him. He might be a nasty bastard, but he’d done several years with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and earned himself the Queen’s Police Medal. If you worked your butt off and kept your nose clean, he’d tolerate you. I shot somebody not long ago. An hour later I was sitting in an interview room, waiting for the sky to come crashing down, when he hustled in through the door. He leant over me, gripping the edges of the table, his face inches from mine, and said: ‘Just keep your mouth shut until someone’s had a talk to you. Understand?’

  I nodded, and he was gone.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. I closed my pad and sat back to listen. He looked pale and grave, like I’d never seen him before. ‘I won’t keep you long, but this is important to me. On Monday I suspect I will be asked by the chief constable to hand in my resignation.’ Chairs squeaked around the table as we realised this wasn’t the usual retirement speech. ‘He wants to see me at nine o’clock, which is always a bad sign.’ He tried to smile, make light of what he was saying, but it didn’t work. ‘First of all,’ he went on, ‘I’d like to take this final opportunity to thank every one of you for the loyal service and hard work you have all given. You are as fine a body of officers as I have ever worked with. So what’s it all about? I’m not going to go into details, but certain allegations have been made against me. Allegations which I totally refute. But mud sticks, as we all know, and my position in the force would be untenable if I tried to defend myself, and, if the truth is known, I don’t have sufficient fight left in me to take on a long litigation. I will be asked to go quietly, which is what I will do. I admit to being foolish, but no more than that. I have done nothing illegal or anything I am ashamed of. You will hear rumours, of course. Accusations have been made against me, but I assure you that they are all totally unfounded. When you hear the rumours, I’ll be grateful if you would tell your informant that I totally refute every one of them. That is all I ask of you.’

  The poor bloke was close to tears. With one last effort he looked at us all and said: ‘I wish you all the best of luck with your careers. Thank you,’ and gathered up his papers and left.

  We all sat dumbfounded until someone said: ‘What was all that about?’ but none of us knew.

  ‘So is the meeting over?’ I asked, standing up. I had half a mind to chase after Mr Swainby, see what I could do for him.

  ‘We haven’t discussed any other business,’ one of the sticklers for protocol reminded us. Stickling for protocol can take you a long way in the police force. Sometimes I feel as if I’m submerged by sticklers.

  ‘Is there any other business?’ I asked. I certainly didn’t have any.

  The detective chief inspector in charge of administration and policy decided that this was one of those situations that fell into his field of expertise. He half rose to his feet and rapped his knuckles on the table. ‘Do we have any other business?’ he repeated.

  ‘Um, well, I have something,’ my opposite number from Halifax said, and I sat down again.

  ‘Right,’ the detective chief inspector (administration and policy) said. ‘Let’s resume the meeting with any other business.’

  The DI from Halifax produced a pile of ten by eight photographs from his briefcase and passed half of them to the people sitting at each side of him. ‘I’d like you to look at these,’ he said. ‘This lady’s body was found in parkland just outside town last week. No doubt you’ve heard all about it. Unfortunately we’re having difficulty identifying her. I just want to bring it to the attention of the other divisions to see if their field intelligence people might recognise her. It’s a long shot: she was clean of drugs so she might not be known to us.’

  The pictures reached me. I took the top one off the pile and passed them on. The woman was at the wrong end of middle aged, at a guess, with waist-length hair in a ponytail, but apart from that there was little that could be used for identification purposes. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises, completely closing her eyes; her nose was flat and her lips swollen and split like barbecued sausages. ‘How did she die?’ I asked, without taking my eyes off her photograph.

  ‘She was beaten to death,’ I heard him say.

  Another pile of photographs arrived. This one showed her back view, covered in bruises again. Someone had really gone to town on her. ‘The mark on her left buttock is a rather distinctive tattoo,’ the DI told us. ‘The final photo shows it in more detail.’

  I waited for the next pile to arrive and took one. It was a close-up of her bum, and the tattoo was clearly visible. It said:

  PROPERTY OF THE POPE

  ‘Property of the Pope,’ somebody read out.

  ‘Yes,’ the DI said, ‘but I don’t think we should take it too literally.’

  My head was spinning. I stared at the picture and in an instant was in another, more carefree world. A long-forgotten smell stung my nostrils and my ears were filled with music. I was sitting on the bare floor, back against the wall with a bottle of Newcastle Brown in my hand, and Joan Baez was singing about the colour of her true love’s hair.

  ‘I know her,’ I said. ‘I know her.’ I looked up and saw eighteen mouths hanging open, eighteen pairs of eyes boring into me like gimlets.

  ‘Um, she’s called Magdalena,’ I told them. ‘I know her. She’s Magdalena.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Saturday 13th August 2005

  They almost collided in the doorway in their rush to meet their visitors, he yanking the door open before the chimes had died away.

  ‘Hello! Hello!’ they all gushed as the new couple crossed the threshold.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ the female visitor shrieked, waving that night’s newspaper at them. ‘Isn’t it wonderful!’

  Her jacket was taken from her, the men shook hands, the women air-kissed each other and the two men then kissed the opposite partners, this time with more passion.

  ‘We saw it on Look North just now,’ the woman of the house stated, her face bright with excitement. ‘Didn’t you do well?’

  ‘Teach the bastards a lesson, eh?’ her husband said. ‘That puts you in the lead, Teri. Well in the lead.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was a competition,’ she replied.

  ‘It isn’t. But maybe we should make it one. Give the game an edge. What do you think, Richard?’

  ‘Um, no, I think not,’ he replied. ‘We might get careless. Leave things as they are and nobody can touch us. We aren’t breaking the law. Well, not that anyone can prove.’

  ‘You could be right.’ He turned to the woman again and slipped his hand around her waist. ‘But you did well, Teri. You did brilliant.’

  The hosts for the evening were Tristan and Fiona Foyle. Tristan was old money, left a fortune by a father who despaired of his only son, but not sufficiently to disinherit him. He had been expelled by two of the best schools in the country and then amassed a further fortune of his own by cashing in early in the IT boom. In the early Eighties he developed a programme for investing in the stock market, based on following the big-name company chairmen rather than the individual companies themselves. He invested as only a teenager with a rich dad can, made lots of money for himself and other people, and sold the business for twenty-two million just before the boom ended and the markets nosedived.

  Fiona was a model that he met in Bahrain, where she had gone to work on her tan. She liked what she saw there and stayed on to work behind the counter in the beauty salon of one of the new hotels, where oil millionaires came to buy presents for their wives and mistresses. She was very discreet. If she accepted an invitation to dinner she always wore the same perfume that her host had bought for his wife, earlier in the day. Tristan did not know this, of course. He met her by chance, he thought, as he came ashore from the hired yacht he was sharing with some male friends. She was a genuine ash blonde, with a figure like molten honey, and she played him like he played the marlin and yellowfin tuna he and his friends were trying to catch.

  �
��So what is it tonight?’ Richard Wentbridge, Teri’s husband, asked. ‘I’m absolutely starving.’ They were in the art deco sitting room, with dim lights and an invisible sound system that was working its way through several hours of golden classics.

  ‘Have you brought anything?’ Fiona wondered, facing up to him.

  ‘Ooh, I might have something for afterwards,’ he replied, pulling her closer.

  ‘We’re having a takeaway,’ Fiona said, Richard’s arm around her waist. ‘They should be here anytime.’ She gave an involuntary shudder as his fingers traced a circle on the small of her back.

  ‘Clifford and Pepe?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good show.’

  ‘Come on,’ Fiona said, taking Richard’s arm and pulling him towards the door. ‘Help me finish laying the table.’

  ‘And make sure that’s the only thing you lay,’ Tristan called after them. As soon as they were alone he took his best friend’s wife in his arms and kissed her, long and deep. When he came up for air he said: ‘God, why do we have to go through all this rigmarole? Why can’t we just get on with it like grown-ups?’

  Teri laughed. ‘It’s more romantic this way,’ she told him. ‘And man cannot live on sex alone.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ he argued, ‘but we could have the sex first and eat afterwards.’

  ‘You’re insatiable.’

  ‘And what about you, on Wednesday?’

  She smiled and rubbed her nose against his. ‘It was rather good, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Did you tell Richard?’

  ‘I told him I met you, yes. I presume he guessed the rest.’

  ‘Same again, this Wednesday?’

  She shook her head, slowly and solemnly. ‘No-o. I think not.’

  ‘Why not, Teri? You know what I feel about you.’

  ‘Because it would spoil things, don’t you see?’

  ‘It wouldn’t spoil things for me. I want you all to myself.’

  ‘No you don’t, Tristan. If you and I were an item, you’d be having this same conversation with Fiona and I’d be in the dining room with Richard’s podgy fingers feeling all my twiddly bits. Don’t you see that?’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, breaking free from her. ‘You might be right.’

  ‘And then there’s the game,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget the game.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he replied. ‘Mustn’t forget the bloody game.’

  The doorbell interrupted any further argument. ‘Here comes the takeaway,’ he said. ‘I’d better get that.’

  Calling a meal by Clifford and Pepe a takeaway is a bit like saying that NASA occasionally sends up a firecracker. They started with oyster ravioli with foie gras and rhubarb vinaigrette, served by Clifford in his athletics shorts and striped apron; then wantons with ceps and porcini in sauce mère; followed by sea bass with a velouté of butter beans, truffle shavings and vermicelli; venison in jalousie with celeriac and carpaccio of broccoli in jus natural; and finished with cassata of summer fruits with mango and papaya custard. Only Richard tried the ice cream with beetroot and anchovy, and found it not to his liking. Pepe had recommended a simple Macon-Villages white burgundy, and they took four bottles.

  ‘Pepe! Clifford!’ Tristan shouted, slumped in the captain’s chair at the head of the table. ‘Get yourselves in here.’

  The two chefs joined them, wiping their hands on their aprons. Tristan poured two extra glasses of wine and gestured for the two men to take them. ‘Your good health, boys,’ he said. ‘You’re bloody fantastic. Another culinary masterpiece.’ The others mumbled their agreement and raised their glasses.

  Clifford said: ‘The dishwasher’s on, Mrs Foyle, and we’ll come back in the morning to clear all this up. Will about ten be OK?’

  ‘That’ll be fine, Clifford,’ she told him.

  Clifford took a long envelope from the pocket of his apron, saying: ‘And this is for you, Mr Foyle.’ He delicately placed it on the table, leaning against a candleholder. Tristan gravely nodded an acknowledgement to the presentation of the bill and half raised his empty glass.

  When the two chefs had gone Richard Wentbridge said: ‘Right, so who’s for a dab of sherbet to finish with? Do we have a mirror?’

  If Foyle was old money, Wentbridge was new. His father was a carpet salesman who made a decent living when the fashion for fitted carpets started to blossom. But a decent living isn’t enough for men like him, and soon he was selling inferior imports from a disused cinema, while all around him the local carpet industry was curling up and dying. Young Richard was put in boarding school while he and his wife wintered in Tenerife and that’s where he came across the timeshare industry, with all its traps, temptations and opportunities. He started with a thirty-bedroomed hotel and grossly oversold it. That gave him cash to expand and soon he had a complex network of businesses all down the Costas and throughout the Canary Islands, all paid for from the life savings of countless, trusting holidaymakers. The sun was shining, he was such a nice man and it would be theirs forever. ‘Where do I sign?’ they asked.

  In 1977, whilst under investigation by the British and Spanish fraud squads, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He began to systematically convert everything he had into cash. Two years later he died and left almost everything to his fourteen-year-old son.

  That son, Richard, was now enjoying cashing in on his father’s enterprise and other people’s thrift and hard work. He’d met Tristan Foyle at public school, and had narrowly escaped expulsion for the same misdemeanour that had ended Tristan’s formal education. He did a year at university before working briefly in his mother’s fashionware business, modelling and sweeping up, and the two sons met again at the 1998 International Motor Show at Birmingham NEC, drooling over the latest Ferrari. They were both with their new wives and the attraction all round was mutual and intense. Since then they had done most things together.

  ‘I’ll fetch one,’ Fiona said, and dashed out of the room. Seconds later she returned holding a hand mirror with a mother-of-pearl back, and a double-edged razor blade. She handed both items to Richard. He tipped the contents of a small zip-lock bag onto the mirror and used the blade to gather the powder into a pile. The other three leant forward, watching intently. With an unnecessary flourish he divided the line into two and then into quarters.

  ‘Who’s first?’ he asked.

  ‘Me,’ Tristan said. His wife handed him a bendy straw. ‘Is this from your courier friend?’ he wondered as he fitted one end of the straw into his nose and directed the other end towards the line of cocaine.

  ‘Mmm,’ Richard replied. ‘But this could be the last he can do. He reckons it’s not as easy to get hold of as the papers would have you believe, unless he’s just kite-flying to put the price up.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And too much isn’t good for you,’ Fiona added. ‘It can make your nostrils join up into one, like it did that stupid actress woman.’

  Tristan pressed a finger against his spare nostril and inhaled slowly and deeply. The coke vanished up the straw.

  ‘Ziggy-zaggy wowee-wonker!’ he exclaimed. ‘Struth! That’s good stuff.’ He shook his head to clear it and the others laughed. Richard snorted the next line, and then it was Fiona’s turn.

  Teri shook her head when offered a straw for her line. ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘It makes me sneeze. And I don’t want one big nose-hole. Besides,’ she went on, ‘we know a different way of applying it, don’t we, Tristan?’ She put her arm around his neck and pulled him closer. Tristan looked momentarily embarrassed but nodded his agreement.

  Her husband said: ‘Well, it can do the same damage down there, you know.’

  Teri looked puzzled, not sure what he meant, then exclaimed: ‘Richard! That’s grotesque!’

  Tristan stood up and pulled Teri to her feet. ‘I say, old man,’ he began, ‘do you mind if I take your wife upstairs? We’ve had the decorators in and I’d like to show her the magnificent job they’ve made of the master bedro
om ceiling.’

  ‘A touch of the Sistine Chapel, is it?’ Richard enquired.

  ‘No. Just a rather fine shade of magnolia emulsion.’

  ‘Ooh! I can hardly wait,’ Teri enthused.

  ‘Oh, go on then,’ Richard replied. ‘Fiona and I will finish the washing up – again.’

  Tristan gathered up two glasses and a half-full bottle of wine, and followed Teri out of the dining room. ‘Be nice to each other,’ were his parting words.

  As soon as they were alone Richard and Fiona embraced. ‘God, I thought they’d never go,’ Fiona said, breaking away. ‘Upstairs or the other room?’

  ‘The other room,’ Richard decided, without hesitation. ‘It’s warm, the lights are dim, soft music is playing, and there are no stairs to climb. What more do we need?’

  ‘The settee’s not very comfortable.’

  ‘No, but the fireside rug is deep and soft.’

  ‘You’ve convinced me. Come on.’

  The settee in question was in the style of the room, all wrought iron and black leather, with infills of real zebra skin. The newspaper that Teri had brought with her hung over one arm, where she had discarded it. ‘Did you manage to get some?’ Fiona asked.

  ‘Yes, here.’ They sat on the settee and Richard produced a twist of silver paper from a pocket. There were three small blue pills in it. ‘Two for me, one for you,’ he said. He’d carried a glass of wine in with him and they washed them down with it.

  ‘Have you done this with Teri?’

  ‘No. She has to be careful, what with the other medication she takes.’

  ‘Of course. I’d forgotten that. How long does it take to work?’

  ‘The Viagra? About an hour. I’ll probably be needing it by then.’

  They embraced hungrily and started undressing each other. She threw his shirt over the chair arm, knocking the newspaper onto the floor. In seconds they were naked and he was pulling her towards the fireside rug. The newspaper had landed with the front page facing upwards. The lead story was the one that had created so much delight when they all met at the front door. There was a photograph of a man with an avuncular face, hair neatly combed, smiling modestly as he gazed into the distance above the photographer’s head. The headline above the picture, in bold black print, read: