by Guy Ware
“I am with the police.”
It was not strictly a lie. If ever I wound up in court, they would not have been able to add a charge of impersonating a police officer to those of aggravated robbery, possession of a firearm and whatever else I would have had to plead guilty to. I said, “My name is Pitt,” which was a lie: Pitt was the first name that came to me, the name of my predecessor. The one after Eddie Likker, but before me. A harmless alias, but it seemed to mean something to the young man.
“Ah. Perhaps I can help. My name is Meersow; I am the Deputy Branch Manager. Please, follow me.”
He led me through the locked door and into a small interview room in which the table had been pushed close up towards the rear wall. He indicated a chair, but warned me to be careful: the wall behind it had recently been painted: if I leaned too far back I might stain my clothes. He took a second chair and sat facing me, on the same side of the table. Our knees almost touched. On the wall behind him, I could see a large framed poster advertising a savings bond for which the application deadline had recently passed.
He smiled but said nothing, as if, now that we were settled, he was waiting for me to begin. He rubbed his hands along the tops of his thighs, then lifted the creases in his trousers and folded his hands in his lap, but still he said nothing. It occurred to me that he had not demanded any identification. You might think that a bank so recently robbed would have been more cautious.
I said, “Thank you for your help, but I would prefer to see Mr Wenlock, if I may.”
“I am afraid that is not possible. You will understand that Mr Wenlock has experienced considerable stress within the past twenty-four hours. He went home shortly after lunch today; I believe the investigating detective was informed of his intention to do so.”
This was a question, and an implied criticism; the young man was evidently sharper than I had supposed. I said something about messages not always being passed on in large organisations. I was sure a man such as he would understand?
Meersow nodded and smiled again, but did not commit himself either way.
I said, “I – we – need to trace all of the witnesses.”
“Naturally.”
I felt clumsy, like a child on new skates. It was hard to believe I was convincing the Deputy Manager that I was a real policeman. “Of course we have taken statements from the employees and customers who were present when our officers arrived . . .”
“Indeed.”
“. . . but we understand that . . . one customer . . . left? While the robbery was taking place?”
Meersow looked directly at me and raised his eyebrows. “That is our understanding, also.”
“I understand he withdrew cash during the raid. Or attempted to. So you should be able to identify him from your records.”
Meersow stroked his fingertips along his thighs again. “Of course. I cannot recall the name, but I know that we passed this information to your . . . colleagues earlier this afternoon.”
That was all I needed to know to get what I had come for. In my excitement I failed to appreciate Meersow’s slight hesitation before the word “colleagues”, or what it might mean.
I muttered something more about poor communications and apologised for taking up his time. I stood and expected Meersow to do the same. But he remained in his chair. He looked up at me and said: “There was a second witness you may not be aware of. A young woman who left shortly after the gang, before the police arrived.”
I was not much interested in the woman, but knew I should pretend to be. I sat back down. “Can you tell me what she looks like?” I should probably have pulled out a notebook and a stubby pencil, but I had neither.
“I can do better. I can tell you her name.” He paused for effect. “It is Rada Kalenkova.”
It meant nothing to me. “Russian?”
“Possibly.”
We sat in silence for a moment before it occurred to me to ask: “How do you know?”
Meersow passed a hand airily in front of his face, as if shooing a lazy fly. “She is a regular customer.”
I had come for the old man, and had him in my grasp. I did not understand what this young man was trying to give me now, and whether it mattered. I said, “And you did not pass this information to the . . . to my colleagues?”
Meersow said smoothly, “It has only just come to light.”
And he winked – I was almost certain of it.
Outside on the pavement I was buffeted by home-bound crowds. I watched trains pass overhead, into the station or out towards the suburbs and the country. I wondered which way the old man had walked from here the day before. Towards the station? That was the way the bulk of the impatient crowd was heading now. But I suspected the old man would not have followed the herd. The cathedral, perhaps? Here since 606.
I wondered about the Russian woman. She must have been the one behind the old man in the queue, the one who had tried to warn him and had called out when he trod inadvertently on her fingers. The first customer he had asked to stand up with him. The first to refuse. But did she matter? If she had followed us out of the bank she would have seen us drive away. But that was of no importance. We had parked the van right outside the bank because we could afford to have it seen. The woman was irrelevant. It was the old man I needed and now I could find out who he was, and where he lived. His mother’s maiden name. Digital security’s the thing.
Meersow said the bank had passed the information to the police that morning. It would be easy to find out which detective was leading the investigation, but I couldn’t ask him, of course. Not without prompting awkward questions. Luckily, I didn’t need to. I pulled out my mobile phone, scrolled through my contacts, tapped one. A voice said: “Gerald Pryor.”
“Gerald. Is this a good moment?”
8
BY THE TIME I turn my bike to the right and feel the stretch of the steep hill in my calves, I know I have wasted the first day of my suspension and am no further forward. I also know that this is not what I will say when I get in, a little early, and Gary asks how my day has been with no more than the usual care and concern and trepidation even in his eyes about the nature of the response he is about to receive. He is always wary because I have told him about my job and what it can present me with and he doesn’t always want to know. I come through the door and carry my bike down to the cellar before Gary knows that I am home. It is humid outside, and the rain that should have happened hasn’t happened and I am hot and sticky from the ride home, which has been longer than usual. I take off my helmet, which is round and black and devoid of those aerodynamic grooves and fins most helmets have, and which, Alex says, makes me look more like a riot cop than a cyclist. I run my fingers through my hair, which is wet; a bead of sweat trickles down into my left eye and I wipe it away with the back of my right hand. It is cool in the cellar and I lean my forehead against the bricks of a pillar where the paintwork has not flaked too badly. I breathe slowly and deeply, trying to reduce my heart rate and to think what answer I will give to Gary when I go up from the cellar into the kitchen and he hands me a glass of chilled water from the fridge. Gary will want to know what I have been doing and I am not keen to answer this question, because I have not yet told him that I have been suspended, even though it happened yesterday and I might reasonably have been expected to have mentioned such an important fact before now. A truthful and honest account of my day would therefore come as something of a surprise. I know he will be sympathetic and will do whatever he can to help me, but I sometimes feel that Gary does not respond altogether well to negativity and there is no upbeat or positive or even, let’s face it, neutral way to explain that I was suspended yesterday and today has been a total washout in a particular way related to my complete and utter failure to find any trace of the old man in the bank who refused to lie down when an armed robber pointed a gun at his head and told him clearly to, that I have toda
y achieved nothing and, in fact, simply by returning to the bank at all and asking questions I have no right or professional duty or locus to ask, I have made things measurably worse for myself, and thus for Gary and Matthew, whose welfare is entirely dependent on my gainful employment.
It is at least true that I have not spent the day in a funk of precipitously lowered self-esteem, at home in bed, perhaps, as I have once or twice been known to do at moments of extreme stress or crisis, allowing Gary to bring me nourishment and nameless green infusions I cannot actually drink and have to surreptitiously empty into the toilet, all day.
Today, by contrast, I rose at my usual hour and made tea for Gary and helped Matthew dress for school, remembering to sign the slip and to put it in the tiny envelope provided along with four coins, so that my son could visit a museum with his class and draw pictures of stuffed animals he will later show to me and explain are badgers or tapirs or possibly weasels. I left before he went to school, as I usually do; Gary would have made his packed lunch and walked him down the road. Matthew will be eight on Saturday and he will unwrap the biggest box of Lego bricks he or I have ever seen, and several other things besides, and will go with five friends from school, not all boys, to the cinema to see an animated film about a chameleon which, for all its knowing cynicism, will underline a genuinely unobjectionable moral truth such as the importance of friendship or the courage to be found within oneself at moments of extreme stress, and I will be glad of this and may even find a tear in the corner of my eye.
D was also up and dressed at his usual time and we had breakfast together: muesli for me and something you put straight from the freezer into the toaster for D. If I remember correctly (remembering being one of the things I did for a living every day, until today) D said that I should not take it too hard, it was not the end of the world. To my relief, neither Gary nor Matthew overheard this trite and possibly well-intentioned suggestion and therefore did not ask what it was that I should not take too hard, so I did not have either to explain or to lie.
D and I left together. I clipped a pannier to my bike and swung my leg over the saddle as I usually do and D, as he usually does, climbed into his car. He looked at me with a puzzled expression but then shook his head and did not ask why I was getting on my bike at all because, let’s face it, I hadn’t got a job to go to, had I? D’s car is a rich subtle grey I’m surprised D likes; it makes a noise that reminds me of a holiday we had when our father was still alive and drove us up to the coast. It was not our father’s car that D’s car reminds me of, but, on the way, we passed a military airfield and pulled over onto a verge full of cow parsley and watched a huge silver aeroplane, bigger than an airliner, bigger than anything I have ever seen, come in to land. It flew so low over our heads that there was nothing we could do but watch, there was nothing else to see or hear and I thought my heart might stop from the sheer nameless overwhelming pressure, but it didn’t. I remember that D’s mother, my stepmother, was not with us, but I can’t remember why.
D must source his processed breakfast supplies himself because they are not sold in the shops Gary uses and he would not buy them if they were, it would offend the very core of his being, he says, smiling and inviting D and Alex and I to take this as a joke, although it is entirely true. I am uncertain and perhaps conflicted about having my younger brother and my oldest friend living in the house that Gary and I bought to be our family house but have never lived in together on our own. Gary has not once complained or even shown that he thinks the situation undesirable or unusual, even. Alex is here because he always is, because that’s who Alex is. D sometimes says he is a leech, a parasite, but at least he says it to Alex directly, and in a way that, although he means it, cannot be taken too seriously, either. Alex never takes offence. Alex is a little like a dog that attaches itself to you in the park or out on the street, for no obvious reason, but is friendly and insanely loyal even though its loyalty is wholly misplaced and every time you turn around it’s there even though you tell it to stay or go back to whoever owns it, or go indoors and shut your door, but the next day there it is, sitting happily in your garden, just looking up at you with bright eyes and a wet nose and its head cocked on one side waiting for you to throw a stick or just walk or even just sit in your own doorway and scratch its head or whatever, it won’t mind and will be happy: that’s who Alex is. At university, even people who knew us assumed that we were lovers, but we weren’t.
In the kitchen Gary has already poured a glass of water and is holding it out to me as I walk through the door. He is wearing a heavy cotton apron on which enlarged reproductions of two heads of artichoke, originally engraved in the eighteenth century, sit roughly where his breasts would be if he were a woman. He hands me the glass and says, How was your day? at the exact same time that I say, Where’s Matthew? He explains that Matthew is still at his friend Ivo’s house, where he went to play after school, and that he, Gary, will go and fetch him in a minute, but, really, first, he says, how was my day? I say, Oh, you know, and drink some of the water. I say, I need a shower, and carry the glass out of the kitchen and up the stairs before Gary can ask me any more.
In the bathroom I peel off my things and drop them into a basket separate from the basket where Gary and I place our ordinary dirty laundry because my cycling clothes are soaked with sweat and cannot be left mixed in with other dirty, but not actually disgusting, garments and I step into the shower. I know that it is not practicable to keep the fact of my suspension secret from Gary much longer, even if it were desirable and not likely to cause a breach of trust and perhaps undermine the strength of our relationship when it comes out in the end, which of course it will, if it has not already, because of Alex and D both living in the house and being certain to say something, if only to me, and not necessarily to Gary, not deliberately to expose me, but just something, expressing concern even, that would be bound to give the game away. The only reason they probably haven’t already was that last night, Monday night, was Gary’s Tai Chi class and Men’s Group night which, as it happens, both fall on the same evening and so, unusually, keep him out of the house until after eleven o’clock, so he wasn’t surprised when I came home a little early yesterday, it is what I always do on a Monday, to take over looking after Matthew while Gary goes out, and when he came home, Alex was already in his room, D was reading a book about delegation and I suggested that we get an early night and Gary, after shaping and setting two loaves of dough to prove overnight, agreed.
Before he came to live with us and to work at the Office of Assessment, D always said we lacked ambition, that there had to be more to life than worrying about what happens to people when they die.
I dry myself and push the wet hair out of my face. In the mirror I see a face that is still young: my father’s face, mostly. I will tell Gary now, I think, before the others return and say something that will make it so much harder.
When I return to the kitchen, however, Gary is not there. I have put on a thin sleeveless cotton dress and sandals and, where I haven’t properly dried myself from the shower, such as the small of my back just where the spine begins to curve outwards again, the material of my dress has soaked up the water and there are damp patches. The dress is pale blue, which I like and which Alex says goes well with my skin colour and my eyes, which are also blue, although darker than the dress, and the damp patches show up dark and clear like old bruises on pale skin. Gary has gone to collect Matthew and before he returns D comes in full of the exciting (to him, but for me difficult, potentially dangerous and hard to explain to Gary) news that somebody, at least one person – without blood-type and/or DNA tests it is not possible to say positively whether it is more than one, but it certainly looks that way to D – was definitely hit in the interview room at the bank; that a person or persons unknown to D were injured badly enough to bleed on the carpet and not only to bleed but to spray blood up the wall opposite that which the bullet initially penetrated. D has come straight i
nto the kitchen and is still wearing his suit when he tells me this. He goes to the refrigerator and tries to tug a can of lager out of the plastic cuff that chains it to three others. It would be easier to take all the cans out of the fridge to start with, but D does not do this. Trying to pull out just one of the cans is awkward and, in the effort, D knocks out a plastic tub of houmous, which lands sideways-on, popping off the lid and spilling a small amount of its contents, about a dessertspoonful, onto the hardwood kitchen floor. With the extra room to manoeuvre thus created D manages to extract a can of lager and puts it on the counter beside the fridge. He is tall, like our mothers, and when he bends down to pick up the houmous tub the jacket of his suit, which is cut slim and waisted in a way that Theo would not approve, rides up his back and he has to shrug his shoulders to free the jacket where it catches under his armpits. D picks up the tub with one hand and, with the forefinger of the other scoops the spilled houmous from the floor and puts it into his mouth. He straightens up and says, Who the fuck makes their own houmous, anyway? and I know that this is not actually a question and that the answer – Gary – is too obvious to both of us to need articulating, so I say nothing and D says, I prefer the stuff from the supermarket.
Because I know from experience that there is no point whatever in debating D’s culinary preferences or notions of hygiene or civility, and because I need to know what D knows and want to get the conversation over with before Gary and Matthew return, I say, The bank manager told me nobody was shot.
D carries his lager over to the kitchen table. He takes off his jacket and hangs it on the back of a chair. He sits in another chair and puts his feet up on a third. He takes a swig and smiles up at me. He says, Is that right, Sis?
Nobody was seriously injured, the manager said.
D smiles again. That’s right, he says. He did say that. But it isn’t true.
D does not say how he knows this. Instead he says, How come you were there anyway?