Grief Encounters

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘I had to be ruthless. Well, hard-headed. I wouldn’t have said I was ruthless. I left home when I was sixteen and bought a half-share in a hairdressing business. Everybody was out to screw me, in more ways than one. I had to learn fast.’

  ‘I bet you did. Dare I ask where the money came from?’

  ‘Nothing illegal or embarrassing. My father left £25,000 in trust for me until I was sixteen.’ Torl was about to ask about her father but Teri went on: ‘He was a sea captain, but he died when I was about one year old. Mum told me about him. I made good use of the money. Five years later I sold up for £300,000.’

  Torl turned off the main road and negotiated a roundabout with pointers labelled with unit numbers and drove slowly past a huge sign listing various companies. The buildings were glass-walled and the road illuminated as brightly as an aircraft carrier’s deck.

  ‘What about your mother?’ he asked.

  Teri took her time answering, then said: ‘I’ve never seen her since I left. All I can remember is that she had a string of fellows. I never knew where home was, she changed so often. Sometimes I went home from school in the wrong direction. And then…’

  Torl waited, but it didn’t come. ‘And then…’ he prompted.

  ‘She was going with this bloke,’ she began. ‘A suave sod, he was. We hadn’t moved in with him completely. It was just for a few days, as a trial, I believe. Mum was out at work – she worked afternoons down at the art college. I don’t know what she did. It was a warm day, like we’ve just had. It was games afternoon at school and we’d been playing rounders, so I came home all hot and bothered. I went upstairs and he…he…’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He followed me upstairs and raped me. I was twelve years old.’

  ‘That’s terrible. Did you report it?’

  ‘No. I told Mum. She said I’d imagined it, persuaded me to forget the whole thing. A week or two later she fell in with another bloke and we went to live with him. He was just the opposite, but it didn’t work out. Not for me. I was a trouble causer, I’m afraid. I ran with the wrong crowd, but I soon realised it. Living on a university campus is a strange way of life, with lots of temptations, especially for a young girl. Mum stayed but I split as soon as I had the money.’

  ‘You’ve never tried to find her?’

  ‘No. As far as I’m concerned, she’s dead. When he was, you know, doing it to me, he kept saying: “Don’t pretend you don’t like it – like mother, like daughter”. When she persuaded me to keep quiet it was like giving him a licence to rape me. I’ll never forgive her for that. He didn’t, but only because I slept with a kitchen knife under my pillow. I told him I’d stab him if he ever touched me again.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it must have been dreadful,’ Torl said, then: ‘C’mon, let’s go in.’

  He pushed a button below the security keypad and a voice said: ‘Hello.’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘One moment.’

  They waited, and in a few seconds a man appeared. ‘Evening, sir,’ he said. ‘Working late?’

  ‘No. I just want to collect my briefcase. We won’t be a minute.’ He led Teri up a flight of stairs and along a corridor illuminated only by security lighting, through a door marked EPP Marketing into a large, open-plan office. Every desk had a computer and the air bristled with static from them as they chugged away on standby, helping burn a hole in the ozone layer. Lights on printers blinked, others stayed steady, some cast little coloured pools of light on piles of paper. Torl headed directly for another door in a corner and pulled it open to allow Teri in first, but not before she’d read the sign on it. The computer-printed notice, held on with Sellotape, said: D. Storey, Director.

  ‘Here we are,’ Torl said, lifting a briefcase aloft. ‘This is what I want. Let’s go before I find a job that needs doing.’ The caretaker let them out and soon they were driving round the bypass, towards the road that led over the tops.

  ‘Drink somewhere?’ Torl asked. ‘We might just make it.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Can we just stop somewhere quiet?’

  He drove to the place where they’d seen the gibbous moon, before Teri had the epileptic fit, and parked in the same spot, overlooking the valley. The moon had progressed through its cycle and was now on the wane, high behind them.

  Teri said: ‘So who are EPP Marketing?’

  ‘Ah!’ Torl said. ‘I wondered if you’d ask that. It’s our nom de plume. We don’t advertise our presence because we’d probably be overcome with applications. Also, we have been accused by some we’ve turned away of giving an unfair advantage to their competitors. We have to be discreet.’

  ‘And who’s D Storey?’ she demanded.

  ‘Ah ah! You’ve got me there. Guilty as charged, your honour. Torl’s my nickname. At school my elder brother was called Short Storey, because he was six feet tall. When I went along, even taller, they christened me Tall Storey. At the speed dating the madam suggested that I might not want to use my proper name, so I said I was called Torl. I changed the spelling.’

  ‘And your Norwegian mother?’

  ‘Um, I lied about her. She’s from Stoke-on-Trent.’

  ‘So what does the D stand for?’

  ‘David. David Storey. That’s me.’

  ‘Tristan said you were lying.’

  ‘Your friend with the boat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why would I lie?’

  ‘He said, to get inside my pants.’

  ‘That’s a very compelling reason. Did you believe him?’

  ‘A little bit.’

  ‘Do you still?’

  She laughed and smiled at him. ‘Put your arm around me.’ He did as he was told, and pulled her close. ‘But you don’t want to, do you? Your religion won’t let you.’

  ‘What? Get inside your pants?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘It would be a sin.’

  ‘But would you like to?’

  ‘That’s a sin, too.’

  ‘Just wanting to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So are you a sinner?’

  ‘Up to my armpits.’

  She laughed and kissed him on the cheek. He instinctively turned towards her, to return the kiss on her lips, but misjudged and kissed her nose. She stayed facing him, waiting for him to try again, but he gazed stoically through the windscreen, slowly counting to ten while imagining he was mowing the pitch at Wembley, in a downpour, with a very small lawnmower.

  ‘Am I forgiven?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ she replied. After a long silence she said: ‘Torl? I mean, David…’

  ‘Torl will be fine.’

  ‘OK. Torl. When I split from my husband there’ll be a heck of a row over money. He won’t want to give me a penny. I’ll need a job, or a little business. Would I be eligible for one of your angel loans?’

  ‘Hairdressing and beauty?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘I would imagine so.’ His arm was across her back, his fingers gently kneading her shoulder. Periodically a vehicle would pass on the road, its headlights briefly sweeping the lay-by and illuminating the interior of the car, but leaving it darker than before. A hatchback with a noisy exhaust came in with a rattle of gravel, saw Torl’s car and drove off again.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I can’t promise,’ he said, ‘but put it like this: you’re a deserving cause and I’m incredibly weak-willed.’ His fingertips traced circles on the back of her neck. ‘I can’t imagine anybody having a better chance of persuading me to hand over someone else’s money. Can you?’

  He turned his face towards hers and this time he didn’t misjudge it. ‘No,’ she said when she needed to breathe. ‘I can’t.’

  On the way back Torl said: ‘This man. The one who raped you. Have you considered making a complaint against him?’

  ‘No. And he’s probably dead by now.’

  ‘Can you remember his name?’

  ‘He was called Julian. That�
��s all I remember.’

  ‘Julian. Right.’

  They drove the rest of the way in silence, his hand lightly resting on her thigh, her fingers interlaced with his. Torl was wondering how much of what she’d told him was the truth; how much was lies and fantasy; and whether losing his job was too high a price to pay for what he was being drawn into. He remembered her saying that she wanted to be one of his elves and imagined her in a little costume, sitting on a toadstool, looking up at him with those doe’s eyes, and nearly drove off the road.

  Teri was thinking about the game and looking forward to going to bed with Freddie, but most of all she was wondering how much to take this latest sucker for.

  Gareth Adey was taken off the danger list and put in a ward with that week’s quota of heart attack survivors. We took turns to visit him during the day, and left the evenings to his family. I sat talking to him about the job, how we were managing, but it was a struggle, and asked his advice about my clematis. He’s a keen gardener. I’d a feeling that he’d be doing a lot more gardening in the future.

  ‘What sort is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Um, a white one.’

  ‘When did it flower and how big were they?’

  ‘It didn’t flower, so I don’t know how big they’d be, but they were white on the little picture.’

  ‘When did you plant it?’

  ‘Just after Christmas. It was a present.’

  ‘Has it any leaves on it?’

  ‘No. They fell off.’

  ‘I suspect it’s what we technically term as dead, Charlie.’

  ‘Is that bad?’

  ‘As bad as it gets. It’s probably an armandii. They sell lots of them in garden centres but they’re not hardy.’

  And so on. Yorkshire had lost again and the football season had started, but I’m not into cricket and Gareth can’t stand footy, so those subjects were soon exhausted. When I asked him about the food for the second time I decided it was time to flee from the place. Hospitals depress me. My parents died in hospital and I’ve spent some time there in my own right, after being shot. I’ve only to look at a cellular blanket to break out in a rash.

  ‘It’s madness.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  The Wentbridges were sitting on the patio at the back of the house, sipping red plonk from Riedel handmade glasses as the afternoon sun dropped behind the fells. He was wearing calf-length pants and a polo shirt; she was in shorts and a skimpy top, with a Hermes scarf over her shoulders.

  ‘Well I think it is,’ Teri protested. ‘He lives next door, for God’s sake.’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ her husband retorted. ‘We live in a global society. Burglars travel hundreds of miles to do jobs. If anything, living next door takes the heat off us. People like Zed Boogey are a target for the professionals – everybody knows that. He’s stinking rich, and no doubt he creams off thousands from his concerts that he doesn’t declare. He can afford to give us a million.’

  ‘To replace the million you threw away to impress her,’ she retorted.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ he replied. ‘To replace the 700,000 pounds that I lost due to a cruel spin of the wheel, when I just happened to be in the company of your friend Fiona. This is a way for me to get something back; to make amends; to regain your affection.’ He reached across and stroked her arm until she pulled it away.

  They sat in silence for a while, until she said: ‘Why can’t you just download the images onto his computer from ours, like Tristan does?’

  ‘For one simple reason, darling: I don’t know how to. I’m not bad on them, but no expert. I need to be at his computer.’ He picked up the wine bottle and shared the last few drops between their glasses.

  ‘Have you forgotten that he has the most sophisticated burglar alarm that money can buy?’

  ‘No, darling. Have you forgotten that we have a key and the code number? You water his plants every day, remember?’

  ‘I water them twice a week.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So won’t he know it’s us?’

  ‘No. There’ll be nothing to see.’

  ‘And then we blackmail him?’

  ‘Not necessarily straight away. We could afford to wait a year or more. It’ll be like money in the bank. And even if we don’t take any money from him, we can always bring him down, call it part of the game.’

  Teri drained her glass. ‘The game’s good fun,’ she said, ‘but I think I prefer the idea of taking him for a million.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘There’s just one thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘If you download the images but hide them on his hard disk where he can’t find them, when you threaten to expose him what’s to stop him taking his computer to the dump and scrapping it?’ She sat back with a triumphant smile, confident that she’d scuppered the plan.

  ‘You’re thinking well,’ Richard replied. ‘That’s what I like to hear. It makes us a team. But work on it. His computer will have all his accounts on it, plus his showbiz contacts, his address book, all stuff for the Inland Revenue, not to mention his music and lyrics. His world depends on it and he’d be lost without it. He can’t afford to throw it away. We bury the stuff in several places, maybe tell him where a couple of them are. Even if he buys a new one he’ll have to transfer all the stuff from his hard disk to it, including the stuff we put there. He’ll be shitting bricks for the rest of his life.’

  ‘Richard!’

  ‘Sorry, but he will.’

  ‘What about fingerprints and DNA and all that?’

  ‘We wear gloves, but we’ve a perfect right to be there. We’ve been in before, and you do the plants, so it’s no problem.’

  ‘It sounds as if you’ve thought of everything.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘So when do we do it?’

  ‘You said “We”. Are you coming in with me?’

  ‘Of course. It sounds fun.’

  ‘It will have to be tonight. He comes home tomorrow.’ He reached out to touch her again, and this time she didn’t pull away.

  Teri went in as normal to water the plants. She used her key and entered the code number into the burglar alarm to disable it. There was a CCTV camera watching the entrance, but she walked nonchalantly past it without an upward glance. In the kitchen she switched off two switches on the wall which Richard told her must be for the outside security lights, as per their house. She found a tea towel and draped it over the CCTV camera, sneaking up behind it as if it might suddenly whirl round to accost her. She didn’t reset the alarm as she left.

  They dressed like aristocratic burglars in an amateur theatrical production of something by EW Hornung: black silk polo necks; double-dyed black Farah jeans; leather gloves. The outside security lights didn’t come on as they tiptoed round the back of their famous neighbour’s house, just after midnight, when the street was at its quietest. After Teri had watered the plants they’d discussed the job over and over again, then watched a video of The League of Gentlemen.

  They both carried tiny torches, Chinese copies of Maglites that Richard had bought at the local filling station. Teri unlocked the door and saw that the towel was still over the camera lens. Richard nodded approvingly. They knew that the office was upstairs, on their side of the house, because they’d seen Zed Boogey up there occasionally, working. All the houses in the square were individual, but they’d been designed by the same architect and were similar enough for them to find their way around. In seconds they were upstairs, in the computer room.

  Richard closed the door and extinguished his torch. ‘Pull the curtains together,’ he said, placing three Maxell re-writable CDs on the desk next to the keyboard, ‘and turn the light on.’

  Teri did as she was told. ‘Isn’t it exciting?’ she said, her voice low but expressive.

  ‘Too exciting. Keep quiet.’ After a few seconds with the familiar displays following each other on the screen, he said: ‘No password, just as
I’d hoped. That makes it easier,’ and started exploring Zed Boogey’s My Documents files.

  It took nearly an hour, with Teri sitting on the floor in the corner while he transferred the images of abused children to obscure corners of the rap artist’s hard disk.

  ‘That should do it,’ he said, eventually. ‘He’ll never find that lot in a month of Sundays. Let’s go.’

  They retraced their steps. In the kitchen Teri closed the switches for the outside lights. Richard went out through the door and Teri pulled the towel off the camera and hung it where she’d found it. She went out as if she’d been in to water the plants again. She wasn’t worried about the discrepancy: Zed Boogey didn’t go through the video films every time he returned home.

  Richard was waiting for her. ‘Quick,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a car coming up the main road. It’s turning into the square!’

  He dragged her by the hand round the back of the house and the security lights came on, bright as daylight. They ducked into a pool of shadow behind a yew tree and held their breath.

  ‘Jesus, it’s him,’ Richard hissed as the Porsche Cayenne’s xenon headlights swung into the driveway, blazing like anti-aircraft searchlights. The Wentbridges, cowering behind the tree, felt like two moths caught in a projectionist’s beam.

  They heard the automatic garage door rumble open, the car door slam and the garage door close behind the Porsche. ‘C’mon,’ ordered Richard pulling at his wife again, and they slipped across the garden into the safety of their own territory.

  Inside, they flopped on the settee, after Richard had poured them two stiff brandies. ‘Phew! That was close,’ he admitted. ‘We nearly blew it. I was going to suggest that…you know…’

  ‘That we made love on his bed?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I was thinking the same.’

  ‘Let’s go over it. Did you lock the door?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Put the towel back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Switched the security lights back on?’

  ‘You saw them working.’

  ‘True. Switch the alarm back on?’