by Neil Rowland
“Then would you have a stab at answering it?”
“It didn’t occur to me that you could be violent. It’s true that you didn’t treat me that way. Even though we had our disagreements, as you may remember... mostly tension under pressure. Not until this evening,” Pixie reminded him. “Sadly I didn’t have a clear idea about you.”
“You need to trust your instincts. Obviously you find these allegations hard to believe. You don’t think it’s in my nature. What more do you need?”
“I don’t have a privileged view into your impulses.”
“Let me assure you, I don’t have these impulses.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I didn’t attack Emmy Winchurch. I don’t know who did, but it certainly wasn’t me,” he insisted, staring at the ground. “Why would I risk everything?”
“You honestly believe someone else did this?” Pixie demanded.
“Obviously, I do.”
“Can you name this other guy?”
“Not yet,” he admitted.
“Are you going to prove that?” Pixie asked.
“Why ruin our investigation? You said so,” he recalled. “Why disgrace myself and get myself fired...from what was the job of my dreams?”
“Clive, you got fired for opposing the deal...for threatening to send evidence to the authorities. They terminated your contract before that crime.”
“They did?” Clive said. “Just for doing my job well?”
“As you put it before, you were the death ray in the room, capable of wrecking massive investments and they had to remove that danger,” Pixie recalled.
15
They walked around a knot garden, so as to talk further. There were bowling squares and an evening baseball match was going on. Clive felt it was safer like this. They were making progress. He had to account for an entire year of his life.
When he touched on the subject of an affair, she didn’t contradict him. Pixie hadn’t expected to see him; while to him she was a mysterious figure. Their closeness was like a rumour, a mere fancy or innuendo. He was at the mercy of her memory, perhaps even of her imagination. The past was a fabrication, he realised, in the retelling; even as she was careful with the details of her account.
She wouldn’t have considered he was capable of rape. How could you say that any man is so predictable? Did Clive know what he was capable of in a given situation? This was uncomfortable for her to think about, but it had to be done. How did his synapses react in extreme circumstances? He had been under severe pressure both at home and at work. He had set himself against the deal and his boss. All his beliefs and assumptions had been shaken. He had been pushed into dark crevasses of his psyche.
She didn’t hate or even fear him (due to their former intimacy) but she was very hurt by his betrayal, after their collaboration on dangerous work. What exactly did they find together? They gathered detailed evidence of fraud, corrupt governance, illegal share activity, huge unexplained revenues. The latter funds were paid to Winchurch personally; including commissions, kickbacks. These were large enough to draw the company out of receivership. These were transactions paid secretly by a leading member of the ZNT hedge fund. This was a guy called Viktor, who had deep pockets and, it was widely rumoured, a hidden former communist party slush fund. A ZNT delegation regularly flew into London to meet with Sep, Clive, Pixie and the rest of their team, to discuss the deal and to develop a new portfolio of UK assets.
“We lost the old geezer millions, but that’s what they employed us for,” Abrams used to joke, during the crash. “I’m already doing a trade on big boxes from the supermarket.”
Via the ZNT brokerage Winchurch gained extra revenues, even drawing on future natural resources at the Arctic, if anyone cared to inspect the small print. Winchurch negotiated a cut of that float, as an investment for the future; as a gift to his grandchildren, some rainy day. Although he was required to place ZNT people on his board in return.
Septimus got wise when Clive turned rogue. Pitt had expressed doubts, objections, to his face, but there was no immediate hint of whistle blowing, treachery and betrayal. Pitt had managed to hack into encrypted files known as “deep space”. This turned violent, because Clive sought personal revenge, by attacking his family, his precious daughter. This brutal action had wrecked his case against Septimus and associates. No wonder that Pixie had been disillusioned with Clive.
Pitt heard her account; listened to the drama of his professional life. He was amazed at the conspiracy, as he was aghast at breaking a lover’s pledge. Maybe he’d been out in the wild for too long, he couldn’t say. The way she lowered her gaze, brushed the tops of her arms; broken inflections in her voice, nuances in her gaze. This was suggestive and oddly recognisable, as if recorded in his nervous system.
“You fall in love with a man thinking he is one person,” she declared, “only to find out that he is another.”
“I am the same man,” he insisted. “Honest, I’m being up front with you. But I remember as little about us, as I do about Emily Winchurch!”
“Whoever you are, I was entirely deceived by you,” Pixie insisted.
“You are so different to my wife,” he declared. “Why would I carry on with another girl?”
“Do you expect me to answer that?” she told him.
But he knew that men don’t have an affair with a woman who resembles their wife. It is, typically, because the particular girl is different to the wife that the man is tempted. He believes she’s a lost opportunity freshly presented. Noreen had a similar experience with that guy in the village, didn’t she? He was supposedly a good friend who turned into something more. He didn’t much resemble Clive, but she decided to make off to Seattle with him. In his current predicament these irrational impulses of life began to prey on his mind.
“How could we have liked each other, slept in the same bed for months, been intimate, you know, while now you can’t remember anything?” she puzzled.
“I wish I had the answer,” he told her.
On one level Clive’s claim of memory loss was not unfamiliar. Wasn’t it a common strategy of men when they dump you, she considered: when (in the pathetic secrecy and obscurity of their own heads) they decide to drop the relationship and move on? Even at her age she’d known a few guys who had forgotten all about her, starting with her first great love in Switzerland. These amnesiac males wouldn’t be able to relate their experiences either. Men claimed to suffer this deep process of mental and emotional laundry. They forget everything so that relationships vanish into a black hole.
“My idea about losing a year is an illusion. In truth I didn’t vanish,” Clive stressed. “Even if my head was elsewhere, I was there in body, if you get me.”
“I’ll certainly need some time to adjust,” she replied.
A baseball tumbled over the straw field to his feet; which he scooped up and tossed back, to a grateful waiting crowd.
“It feels almost mad to come back again,” he remarked, mopping his face.
“Where do you think you were?” she asked.
“I can’t rightly say,” he admitted.
“There are rumours about where you went...what they did to you.”
“Then there was my encounter with that crazy devil character... yes I met him at the end of that dark period. When do they claim I attacked Emily Winchurch?”
“At the end of May, it must have been... if I can remember exactly,” she puzzled.
“It’s like they tried to take over my thoughts and actions. They tried but didn’t quite succeed. What were they trying to achieve?” Clive despaired.
After the park they hid inside a vandalised bus shelter, to allow a heavy shower to pass. A group of youths hustled at the next corner, self-consciously threatening, furtively offering packages to passers-by. They shot confrontational gazes towar
ds the couple. Yet in the present situation these fears dwindled to nothing. The two financiers were aware of a greater menace. Their energy was focused elsewhere. They were looking back into a past closeness. Oddly the youths understood this distraction (almost otherworldly) and chose to ignore them instead; as if the couple and they were lost in different zones.
Through precise information, that only Pitt might have recalled (except that he failed to) Pixie began to be convinced by his story of amnesia. She was unnerved at her credulity; she almost kicked herself; but could not avoid making such a conclusion. There was a period of vagueness in his mind, during which catastrophic events had occurred. Either he was cunningly or foolishly candid, but she didn’t recognise such character traits in him.
He knew nothing about sensitive events and times - until she explained. Had a metaphorical apple fallen on his head?
Pitt realised that she was beginning to believe his account. If only he could explain his memory loss, rather than pretending it was an act of God (as she put it). He described again, in more detail, his encounter with a satanic figure in the back of a stretch limo. There was a risk of scaring her with the story, but it sounded no less bizarre than his other impressions.
Not that she believed he’d faced the devil. She was a rationalist and a talented mathematician and economic analyst. She understood that they were playing mind games with him. Certainly his memory had been interfered with and they had disorientated him. On that score he couldn’t have invented the whole story. There was a fantastic element to his version, but she didn’t think he was a fantasist.
They kept these personal, contradictory views, as buses came along and they waited for passengers to disembark. They sat on the plastic bench, leaning forward in anxious postures.
“There were no witnesses to this attack on Emily,” he said. “It is just my word against hers isn’t it ...and the rest of them.”
This argument didn’t impress her. “You think she’s invented this?”
“Was I even aware of what I was doing?”
“That doesn’t prove your innocence,” she argued.
“To be honest, I have no more awareness of innocence than I do of guilt,” he told her.
“Maybe they brainwashed you,” Pixie suggested.
“If I was brain washed then my mind would be empty and my thinking patterns disturbed.”
“Aren’t your thoughts disturbed?” she argued.
“I seem able to reason effectively. Don’t I? My recall of life before this year is hazy... yet my mind hasn’t been wiped. My long term memories are clear and absolutely normal. Well, at least as clear and normal as most people’s. Until I stepped into that limousine and talked to that guy,” he mused.
“It’s disturbing and frightening,” Pixie admitted. “They picked you up and wiped your mind, under the power of suggestion.”
“Who knows, maybe you hit it on the head. It would be simpler to believe that I had encountered the Devil.”
“Don’t be absurd, darling. There is no devil figure. Not that I can believe in.”
“Maybe I really was acting in a destructive and evil way, Pix, even though we thought we were doing some good,” Clive said, confusedly. “Maybe we were completely out of our depth. Where did it get us?”
“Don’t let them get to you. It entirely suits them, to transform you from a principled guy into a criminal. I watched you going with Emily that evening. But something could have happened. Someone may have been there too, and intervened. You may not have been alone in there with her.”
“You may be right, Pix. I appreciate your input... I was confident you would have faith in my true nature,” Clive told her.
Again those young guys, trying to sell drugs to passers-by, hanging about on the corner, chose to evade Pitt’s glances.
“How would you respond if I didn’t?” she asked. “Let’s go home, as I’m getting chilly out here.” She clutched the tissue fabric of her jacket.
“Fair enough,” he said, relieved.
“Let’s go home then, shall we?”
“Does that imply that we were an item?” he asked.
“It was another concluded deal. I don’t mind telling you,” she replied.
16
Pixie’s apartment was in a1930s art deco styled blocked, that overlooked the park. The city was rich with architectural treats, yet these were also bricks and mortar ghosts, observing the great city’s changes; like petrified ancestors forced to exist among us in the “here and now”.
Pitt was surprised that she trusted him enough to invite him back. This was not a light invitation, given the allegations against him and his besmirched reputation.
When they arrived he noticed that her apartment had undergone recent renovation and redecoration. The interior ran along minimalist lines, in a colour scheme varying between gauze white and battleship grey. There were many vases of flowers in French art nouveau vases; camellias, lilies and pots of orchids; yet while the place was chic, it also gave a blank echoing feeling that amplified Pitt’s sense of isolation and unease. There were none of the friendly homely touches he expected.
“Don’t you like the re-design? You can relax because my boyfriend is away, working in Paris.”
“You ditched me three months ago. Then you meet another guy?”
She offered her bubbly pure laugh. “You’re the only man in my life, are you?”
“I’ve lost my wife, my child, our home. Did you understand that?” Pitt wondered, seeking her eyes.
“Are you sure I’m exactly the girl you should be telling?” Pixie suggested, plucking off her shoes and going about the smooth floor in stocking feet.
“You didn’t waste time forgetting all about me,” he remarked.
Pixie gazed at him curiously, to test his seriousness. “Bertie and I have known each other for several years now. Why do I have to justify seeing another man, to you?” she wondered, tossing her lamentably soiled jacket.
“Did you introduce me to him, y’know, when we were..?”
“Yes you were introduced to him...a couple of times. Bertie and I became friends during a skiing holiday. A romance developed soon after that on business in Frankfurt. After all the recent upset, you know, we kind of fell into each other’s arms.”
“Right, but I don’t remember this bloke either!” Pitt objected.
“Why should you?” she told him.
“What does he do for a living then?”
“Bertie’s collaborating with the electronic composers Air... they’re working on a government commissioned project... he’s over in France now at their studio. He’s trying to persuade Bjork to sing over the space opera sections.”
“You live with this bloke?” Clive asked. “When he’s not gone off somewhere?”
“We have a busy schedule, between us,” she admitted.
“Definitely sounds like that,” Clive observed.
“Is that too much of a scandal for you?” she retorted.
She slinked on her soft feet over a hard polished, chequerboard floor, as she covered her considerable living space.
“But I don’t want a threesome,” he objected.
“Are you crazy? No danger of any threesomes. He isn’t returning to London over the winter. Creatively he’s in a different universe. Although he literally calls me every morning and evening, to see how I am...to say that he loves me.”
“Then take your calls, just as normal,” he told her.
There was no use showing lack of trust by trying to restrict her. She had the power to betray him at any moment, he knew that; assuming that he hadn’t betrayed her - consciously or not - by simply getting back in touch.
“Make yourself at home,” she invited. “Why don’t you..? Sit down and relax, okay? You look all done in, to be honest,” she said, look
ing him up and down again.
She noticed that his eyes were sore and troubled. He kept wiping his face anxiously, and there was a coat of perspiration over his features, like shellac, sticking strands of hair.
Pitt followed her instructions and selected an Art Nouveau armchair.
She moved about the apartment room to room, tidying and rearranging. After this she disappeared into her high-tech kitchen for a while. She brought out a pot of coffee and a plate of chocolate brioche.
“Presumably I’ve been here before,” Clive suggested. “I’ve spent time in your apartment.”
“No, Clive,” she replied. She placed all the objects on her smoked glass table, and settled on a white leather sofa unit. “I moved into here with Bertie, actually. Hard to believe I am the same girl really. No, we - you and I - lived in a small flat in Hampstead. Don’t you remember? Literally above that little antiques shop... don’t you even remember where we lived? We always felt vulnerable there. It caused a lot of tension between us.”
“Certainly sounds unlikely, because I hate antiques as much as the minimalist style,” he confessed, grumpily.
“You prefer a rustic farmer’s cottage, I suppose. The time we had together in Hampstead has vanished from your thoughts? How weird all this is, Clive... whatever has happened to you!” She rubbed the top of her arm, as if freezing in the A/C.
He grimly tore brioche between his teeth. “Not a thing, Pixie. I keep telling you. Not even you,” Clive admitted again.
She took a few moments to pour.
“That’s a really charming thing to say... even if it’s true. You guys know what to say to a girl,” she told him. She elegantly poured him fresh steaming coffee, from a long pot with a curlicue design. She brushed a few crumbs from her lap into the palm of her hand and poured them back on to the plate.
“Did we really have a flat in Hampstead? About a lot of old furniture?” he asked. “Next you’ll be saying I restored an old Morris Minor and rode about town in a tweedy suit.”
“Oh yes, Clive, you definitely lived the role,” she replied, mischievously.