Yes, but not you. And not Suzie either; I’d run to Luke. Old bonds grip most tightly. But Deverill actually sounded disappointed in me, let down that I hadn’t chosen him. I almost wanted to say sorry. Maybe I was being manipulated here—again, my most private voice murmured—but I thought this was genuine. There was something of a frustrated paterfamilias in him, that sought the trust as well as the respect of those he let into his circle. Big on loyalty, I thought he’d be; murder on betrayal.
“I needed time to think,” I said, grabbing a catch-all defence, weak in the face of hurt. “If I’d told you straight out, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Deverill, I can’t remember you or the job I’m doing for you,’ you’d have given me no time at all, would you? You’d have told me to keep it that way, and found someone else to do the work. I just had to stall you for a while, until I could find out what was going on.”
He grunted. “So why did you run out on me, then? Why the vanishing-act?”
If his ego was that big, that he saw my disappearance only in terms of himself, I had no problem with pandering to it. “You’d have come back next day, I figured, and I couldn’t have fooled you twice. You’d have talked to the doctors by then, you’d know about the amnesia. And I don’t like hospitals anyway, I wanted to be up and doing, trying to make sense of things. Besides, someone had told me by then that you were paying for the room, and I really didn’t want to be beholden to you any more than I was already.”
“My man saved your life,” he said neutrally.
“I know. I’ve not forgotten that.”
“Glad there’s something, then. How much else is there?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What do you know, about my business?”
I glanced at his other guest, the woman who sat listening, absorbing everything, I thought, and giving nothing at all; and he said, “Don’t be coy, boy. No secrets between us.”
“Fair enough, if you say so; but may I know who we’re sharing your secrets with?”
“What? Don’t be... Oh.” His head turned between us, his gaze went to her and back to me; and he said, “You don’t remember?”
“I’m sorry. No.”
“Well, then. For the second time of asking, this is my ex-wife, Dorothy.”
Typical of him, I thought fleetingly, that definition: he’d see everyone only in relation to himself. Or in ex-relation.
And it seemed that her mind tracked mine, because she rose to her feet, held her hand out, and said, “Dorothy Tuck. I use my own name now.”
She would, I thought. Her handshake was firm and determined, and so was her voice, and I thought neither one was deceptive. The only surprise was that Deverill could or would still deal with her on this basis, one-to-one and no secrets between them. He was a man I would have expected to cut himself off from his failures.
She sat again, and looked at me expectantly. Fair enough, I thought. In the circumstances, it was up to me to open.
“All I know,” I said, “is that you hired me to do a job for you, which is something to do with finding out why Lindsey Nolan pinched all that money and ran off to Spain.”
“He didn’t,” Deverill said. “He was set up. He’s too damn clever to be that clumsy.”
“Okay, whatever. The other thing I know,” being brutally, dangerously honest here, the only way to play it, “is that you’ve been paying me far too much, whatever the job entails. And you’re not famous for your open-handedness or for being an easy mark to rip off, so there’s some hidden agenda here that I don’t understand. I also don’t understand why you picked me for the job, whatever the job actually is; and I certainly don’t understand why I ever said yes, why I quit my old firm to work for you.”
“You offered,” he said. “All this was your idea, none of it came from me.”
Oh, God. That meant we really were in the shit. “Tell me about it?” I suggested.
“Sit down, first. Have a drink,” and a gesture of his fingers, abracadabra, turned Dean from bodyguard to waiter. A minute later I had a heavy gin in my hand—no consultation there, no what would you like, Jonty?; Deverill drank gin at lunchtime, and therefore so did his guests—and I was sitting, he was standing, starting to pace.
“You approached me,” he said. “Right out of the blue, I’d never heard of you. You phoned my people, said you needed to talk to me about matters that should be of concern to me. I thought that sounded like some kind of blackmail threat, but I had you checked out, and everyone said you were just this dead straight lawyer; so I said I’d meet you. Are you sure you don’t—?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Truly. Means nothing to me.”
“All right. But it feels...”
“I know,” I said. “Believe me, it’s pretty weird from my side too.”
He grunted, getting his head—with an effort, I thought—briefly around someone else’s point of view. Then, moving swiftly on, “So we met, and you told me what I was sure of anyway, that Lindsey had been set up. But you knew it for a fact, you said, though you couldn’t prove it yet; and you thought you could get the proof, proof positive, you said, only to do that you needed my help. You had to look corrupt, you said, or you’d never get near them.”
“Hence the money?”
He nodded. “Hence the money. And you gave up your job, and spent a lot of time just being seen with me. That’s what convinced me, I suppose, more than anything: that you did set out to wreck your own career, very publicly. You had to be serious then, unless you had a very fancy con job in your head.”
o0o
He was not wrong there. Very serious indeed, I must have been. But why, about what? To save my mother’s life was the only possible answer. I’d told her she was in danger; presumably I was trying to protect her in some way I couldn’t currently fathom.
Would I do that? Would I lay down everything I had, everything I’d worked for and everything I valued in my own life, because that way I might just manage to preserve Ellie’s?
Well, yes. Put it like that, I would; and apparently I had, though it felt very strange to think it.
I must have been looking pretty strange also, the minute or so that I sat there, that the silence lasted. At any rate they were both watching me by the time I dragged my eyeballs back into focus again, and both seeming pretty amused.
“Have a drink,” he said. “Might help.”
“Uh, I’ve got one...”
“I know, but you’re not using it. Drink,” and he demonstrated, taking a swig of his own; and yes, I did that too, I imitated him. And yes, it did help, briefly. Fizz and tang, gin and lemon achingly cold from the clinking ice; and a lump of ice slid into my mouth as I drank again, and I sucked on that until it was nothing, and that helped too.
“So how much more did I tell you, Mr Deverill?”
“Bugger all,” he said.
“But if I was spending all that time with you, and you were giving me all that money...”
He shrugged. “You said I had to trust you. You wouldn’t tell me anything, not until you could prove it. Dot said you were taking me for a ride, but...”
“Not necessarily that,” she said. “I was right, though, wasn’t I? You should have insisted on being told. You’ve lost it now, both of you. Unless that’s one thing you can remember, Jonty? Who you were stalking?”
I shook my head, slowly. “Sorry,” I said, shifting from truth to deception, not quite lying in my teeth but as near as dammit. “That’s all gone, too.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Deverill snapped his fingers for another drink, handed his glass to Dean without looking round, too busy he was glowering at me. “You must have been keeping notes, though, something, you must have something to tell us who? Or you told young Sue, maybe, she’d know?”
“I don’t think so. If there are any notes, I haven’t found them. And Suzie hasn’t said anything, except how secretive I was,” and still was now, juggling too many secrets in my head and already finding it hard to remember who knew what. If t
here were notes, I knew where they’d be; but I wasn’t going to say in this company, any more than I was going to mention SUSI. Lots more I wanted to find out first, before I’d even consider laying any cards on the table. Many people I wanted to speak to; and among them Lindsey Nolan, only that he was in a Spanish jail and likely to remain there a while longer.
Right now, I thought I’d better speak to someone else.
“Can I phone the flat? Just to let Suzie know where I am?” And my mother, but I wasn’t sure if they’d clicked that she’d been the other passenger in the Mini, and if not I certainly wasn’t going to tell them. I’d apparently told her to keep her head down; I’d bloody sit on it if I had to, if there was no other way to be certain that she would.
“Yes, of course.” Another click of the fingers, and Dean appeared at my side with a cordless phone in his hand, the suspicion of a wink trembling around his right eye.
“How did you find me this morning, anyway,” I asked casually, “have you been watching the flat or what?”
Deverill laughed. “Not since last night. I called them off, once you turned up. If you’d been doing a runner, you wouldn’t have come back, would you? I was sending Dean to fetch you over tonight, no hurry; but we saw your wife’s car in the street, and it seemed like a good time to get things straight. Nothing but coincidence, that’s all.”
Which he’d acted on instantly: a warning there, I thought.
And then I gazed at the phone in my hand, and thought again; and finally had to say, “Um, I’m sorry, but does anyone know my number?”
o0o
Suzie took some calming down, even after I told her who’d been trailing us. She’d developed a major antipathy to the man already; she’d been frightened on the road and bitterly resented that now; and though she certainly wouldn’t admit it to me I thought she was uneasy in the flat today, with those scratch-marks around the lock as reminders and only my mother for company.
“Come home, Jonty.” Three or four times she said that, with different emphasis in response to my different excuses. And at last, “If you’ve done your business, come on home. What do you want to eat with them for? Come and eat with us. You don’t even remember my cooking.”
True, I didn’t; but, “Better not,” I said.
“God, you’re such a wimp! Just tell ’em: say, ‘Look, I don’t like you. Maybe I work for you but that doesn’t mean I have to have lunch with you, and my wife and my mother are waiting at home, so take me back, please.’ That’s all, it’s easy. Or call a cab, you’ve got the phone in your hand. Harry Wong’ll come get you, I’ll give you his number. Can you remember it long enough to dial?”
“No, stop,” I said, laughing now. “I don’t,” careful, they’re listening, “I can’t see me doing that, somehow, can you? Truly? You would, maybe. Not me. You look after, look after Elle-même,” hoping that neither of my auditors would quite catch that, or work it out if they did, “and I’ll be along soon. Is the club open?”
“It will be by now, yes. Lee’s looking after it. Why?”
“If you’re worried, lock the fire door and ask him to watch out for anyone trying to come up.”
“I’m not scared,” she said fiercely, as I’d been sure she would; untruthfully, I thought. “I’m not locking myself in like some cowering bloody rabbit in a hutch.”
“Okay,” I said equably. “It’s your choice. But I’ll tell you this much, I’m scared for you. So take care, yes? Don’t answer the door without the chain on.”
“Yes sir, no sir. Don’t give me orders.”
“Hey,” I said.
“What?”
“Did you promise to obey me? When we got married, I mean? I bet you did. Church wedding and all. To keep your parents happy. I bet you didn’t change a word of the service, did you...?”
By then, I was talking into empty space; she’d blown a loud raspberry down the phone, and hung up on me.
Dean was at my elbow again. I swapped the phone for a replenished glass of gin, and did it grinning.
“One more question, Mr Deverill. This may sound foolish, but I do have a reason. What kind of bacon do you eat for breakfast?”
“Woodall’s,” he said instantly. “Best in the country. Why?”
“Just narrowing things down a bit,” I said vaguely. Actually, just checking on the score: it didn’t after all tell me anything I didn’t know already, but that was one for Suzie, she’d called it exactly.
o0o
Two for Suzie, because she was right, I didn’t want to eat with these people. I thought I ought to stay for lunch, regardless. I might learn something.
No doubt they were thinking the same, thinking me vulnerable where in fact I was only ignorant. There was so little they could learn from me that they might possibly want to know, I felt smugly safe and unconcerned.
Until, through in the dining-room and following my host’s example, picking up the cutlet bones in my fingers to suck off the last shreds of meat, I happened to glance out of the window into the stable yard.
Happened to see a four-square van roll slowly past and out of sight.
White it was, with a logo writ large across the side.
SCIMITAR SECURITY, it said.
Nine: Still Life, with Raven
There must, I suppose, have been a pudding. Add that to the list, the many lists of things I can’t remember.
There must I suppose have been conversation, ditto; I may even have made a contribution to it, ditto ditto.
Perhaps I was overdoing the shocked-and-stunned effect. Perhaps I should have been better prepared. I knew, after all, that Deverill worked with SUSI, that Scimitar was his security of choice; and I’d seen earlier that he worked largely from home, that the heart of his organisation was here. No surprise, then, or it shouldn’t have been, to see a Scimitar van making a collection or a delivery or both. Important papers, money—anyone working as close as he did to the fringes of the law would work significantly in cash, and need significant amounts of it—anything crucial to the running of his various businesses might have been carried to and fro under professional guard, and quite reasonably so. No need for this touch of chill under my collar, the hand of Fate exhibiting its exceedingly poor circulation. No need even to react, let alone overreact the way I undoubtedly was. I knew that, I told myself that even as I did it.
But it was only a couple of hours since my mother and Suzie between them had named the bad guys in this story, since I’d found that name threaded deeper and further through the weave than even they knew. And now here they were, or some troops of theirs, right outside the house and probably inside by now, just a corridor’s length away from me. It was no great wonder if my cutlery skittered on the china, as my mind skittered from blind fear, this is a trap and they’ve come for me, to wannabe detective, I must find out who’s driving that van and what they’re doing here.
And back, and to and fro like a hot potato tossed from hand to hand, and each hand blistering.
Uncertain and afraid, of course I did nothing, neither started asking questions nor made a desperate bid for freedom; and so happened neither was necessary, because Dean—my good friend Dean, who winked at me and saved my life and so forth—came in and did good work again, gave me an answer and an opportunity.
Came in and went to Deverill, spoke to him but didn’t whisper, didn’t bother to hide what was happening.
“They’ve brought that girl,” he said. “The one who was so fancy with the bulldozer?”
Deverill glanced at his watch, and nodded: a man whose empire ticked its heartbeat on his wrist, and clearly kept excellent time.
“I’ll come now,” he said. Touched his napkin to his lips and rose from the table, with a gesture to me, stay there, as I shifted uneasily. “Finish your coffee, Jonty. More in the pot, if you want it. Talk to Dot, keep her company. I’ve some business to see to, but I’ll be back.”
I didn’t much want to talk to Dot, I wanted to go with him; but lacking the chance of that,
at least there was one question I could ask, anyone would ask in the circumstances.
“What bulldozer, Mrs—uh, Ms Tuck? Do you know what they’re talking about?”
“Mrs Tuck,” she said comfortably. “I’m too old to go Msing,” with the air of someone who had made the same pun many times before, and still enjoyed the opportunity. I gave her the smile she was looking for, she chuckled, and then she said, “Yes, of course I know. No secrets from me, Vernon told you that. And this was no secret anyway, it was particularly public and embarrassing.”
“What was it?”
“Do you know—I’m sorry, do you remember—about the Leavenhall Bypass, all the fuss there was?”
I nodded. That had begun before Christmas, long before the first rip in my sense of continuity, and had been very much in my bailiwick. I’d defended a couple of students charged under the Criminal Justice Act, landed lucky with some sympathetic magistrates, and got them off in defiance of the evidence. That was early days in the protest, but Luke had been involved later; so yes, I was well up to speed there. Or thought I was.
Didn’t know about the bulldozer, though. That must have come later, after the first trees were felled, falling itself into the pit of my absent memory and not the sort of detail Luke would have thought to share.
“There was excellent security on site, of course,” Mrs Tuck told me. “The protestors had been encamped there for months, everyone knew the dangers of sabotage. There was a double fence topped with razor wire, there were dogs, there were guards on constant patrol twenty-four hours a day. All the vehicles, all the plant was immobilised every night as a matter of routine.
“What no one thought of, what no one recognised as a danger was that the protestors might import plant of their own. One night, this girl drove up in a bulldozer she’d stolen from council roadworks five miles away. She’d locked herself into the cab, and the men on duty simply had no way to get at her, without taking considerable risks with their own lives. They couldn’t even power up the plant that was there, and drive it to safety; as a matter of course, the keys and various internal components were not kept on-site. For security, you understand?”
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