by Will Smith
He had been instantly disabused of this notion. The strident histrionics were gone, but they had been replaced by a simple certitude that disconcerted him even more. He prided himself on knowing how to dance around what he saw as a woman’s desires and contradictions, staying ahead of where the demands would land; he dealt in below-the-surface signals. But what Louise presented to him wasn’t surface: it was as solid as a sea wall. Although he was not a stranger to this negotiating tactic in business, he was unable to soften the defences of his adversary over drinks, dinner or golf.
‘Here we are again.’
‘Ten grand, or I ring your wife.’
‘Look, let’s talk about this as adults.’
‘Two nine one seven four. That’s your home number. Is your wife at home?’
‘Let’s leave her out of this.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I saw you had an answering machine.’
‘Listen, I apologise, but what happened, it’s kind of a compliment. For me to risk my marriage by sleeping with you, doesn’t that tell you how special you are?’
‘Jesus. You’re actually going with that? I was going to walk to the phone, be all cold and purposeful. But, fuck it, I really want to hear what you’re going to say next.’
Rob had loaded his silver bullet, and had no option but to fire. He adapted a go-to line for when his mark was wavering over the morality of a one-night stand or the existence of a boyfriend or husband. ‘Do I regret the deception? Yes. Do I regret that we’re sitting here arguing, and reducing an amazing night to something as tawdry as money? Yes. But it’s nothing compared to the regret I would have felt on my deathbed if I’d passed up the chance to wake in the arms of a woman as beautiful as you.’
‘But you didn’t wake up with me. You fucked off as soon as you could. Supposedly to sell yachts in the Caribbean.’
Bollocks. His silver bullet was made of tinfoil.
‘Last chance, Romeo.’
‘My wife and I have an understanding.’
‘Really? Then why didn’t you invite me in on Saturday? We could have fucked in the spare room. Or in your bed, if she’s so understanding.’
When Rob was seven he had fallen off his father’s yacht after disobeying his command not to lark about hanging off the side as they sailed out to the Écréhous. His father had come around but refused to extend a hand to help him up the stern ladder. In the roll and pitch of the sea he’d found it hard to swing his legs on to the bottom rung, and he lacked the strength in his arms to pull himself up. His panic had brought him to the edge of tears, which flooded out when his father pretended he’d spotted a shark to give him the impetus to shimmy up. He felt like that now. Helpless against the buffeting of a larger force, but this time without his mother to intervene and pull him up blubbing into her arms. He had nothing. The honeyed words refused to pour out of his mouth and get the woman in front of him to do what he wanted. All he had was a weak counter that he didn’t believe. ‘It’s your word against mine.’
‘True, and if that’s all it was, you might be safe. All your mates will back you up.’
Absolutely they would, steel traps to a man. They’d all gone by the time he and Louise were getting down to it, but even if they’d been in the room watching he could rely on them to say he’d left with them for midnight mass and a stint at the homeless shelter. ‘But will Emma cover for you? ’Cause I’m going to tell your wife about that snog you had with her, as well as the fuck you had with me. Time’s up.’
With that Louise had got up and strode towards the payphone on the wall in the corridor that led to the toilets.
Rob had stayed sitting, stunned. If Louise made that call, what she revealed would feed the beast of Island gossip indefinitely. There would be nowhere to hide from the unravelling of a marriage whose tentacles were wound round relatives, friends, business associates. There would be no place to show his face in comfort. His shining surface would be ripped off, his shell cracked and the dark meat within pecked at and flung by the carrion gulls over whom he had long lorded his golden life. This was his Island, the garden in which he had created himself in his own image, and it wasn’t going to be fouled. Terror outweighed pride and he sprang up to follow Louise, affecting a nonchalant saunter that he knew was more of a speed walk.
When he caught up she was at the phone, the receiver lifted, 10p lined up in the slot, and had started to dial, her thumb poised to push in the coin as soon as Sally answered or the machine clicked in.
‘Stop. Okay, I’ll pay.’
He could hear his thin recorded voice down the speaker. ‘This is the de la Hayes, leave a message for Rob or Sally after the …’
Sally picked up. ‘Hello?’ He felt like he was looking over the edge of the world, where the oceans drained into space.
Louise replaced the handset and took back the uninserted coin.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s sit down again and, as you said, resolve this like adults.’
They settled back in the booth. Rob abandoned charm in favour of assertion.
‘I need to know that if I give you this you’re not going to come asking for more. This is the end of it.’
‘It will be. You got my word.’
‘That’s not good enough.’
‘You judging me by your standards? How telling.’
‘I’m not going to pay only to have you ruin my life anyway.’
‘Maybe I went in too low at ten.’
‘We had a deal.’
‘Good. You’re treating this like a proper business exchange.’
‘Is it enough for you to leave the Island?’
‘No. I like it here.’
‘Then if we meet again, it’s as strangers.’
‘Are you quoting Bob Dylan?’
‘What? No, fucking hate him.’
‘Another reason we can’t be together.’ This was bizarre. Now he’d agreed to pay her off, she was flirting with him.
‘I’m going to say it again. If we meet, we pretend we’ve never met.’
‘Suits me.’
‘How do you want it?’
‘Cash. I don’t think either of us wants to risk a bouncing cheque.’
‘I’ll need a few days.’
‘Friday lunchtime. Here.’
‘End of the breakwater. Actually, there are steps over it, which get you on to a little bay. There.’
‘Midday. On the dot. Or I head to your house.’
‘See you then.’
He had driven round after that, to give truth to the lie that he’d been called into the hotel for something substantial, which he’d decided would be a bill dispute with an irksome and untraceable Mainlander. He’d pulled into the car park at La Corbière lighthouse, then driven straight out again on spotting Pippa La Motte’s Lotus Elise. She was one of Sally’s myriad cousins and a grade-A blabbermouth. In the end he spent longer driving round than he anticipated and Sally had been asleep when he returned, so in the morning he added being pressed into general hosting duties to the lie of his previous night’s whereabouts.
That morning, ten grand hadn’t seemed too big a deal, given the hassle he’d saved himself. He was used to it as a figure he could fling around, move from column to column, take from one part of his business and put into another. Now here he was, in front of a dirty window for which he paid twenty-five pounds a day to be cleaned, having been told that even an extra tenner in the red could seize the whole thing up.
‘Okay,’ said Christophe, authoritatively, after a pause. Rob was used to him stepping in with solutions: the older man filled a father-shaped void in his life – he would always offer a hand when Rob had fallen overboard. Still, he doubted he could save him this time.
‘You need this money by Friday? No extensions?’
‘No. She’s not going to believe I don’t have it. She’s a fucking maniac. I want her off my back.’
‘It is possible.’
‘What is possible?’
‘For me to get you that money.�
��
‘Ten grand? Where from?’
‘You pay me well, I have free board and lodging here at the hotel. I am not a big spender.’
‘Christ, you’d do that?’
‘Monsieur de la Haye, you have given me everything. I was a waiter and now I am manager of the finest hotel in the Channel Islands, which I have no desire to see closed.’
‘Well, your ten grand will save me, but it won’t save the hotel. I mean, Jesus, I don’t even know when I can pay you back.’
‘If you’ll put me in charge of your business affairs, you’ll be able to pay me back by this time next year.’
‘You want to run the hotel proper?’
‘It strikes me that your strength is your vision, your commitment, your business relationships and the capital you put into projects. You are not so concerned with minutiae, and why should you be?’
‘Yeah, I guess I’m a big-picture kind of guy.’
‘Yes, you are macro. I am micro.’
‘Absolutely. Wait, which one’s which? I get confused.’
‘Macro big, micro small.’
‘Of course. Sorry, I’m very tired.’
‘I would also want to assist regulation of your personal finances.’
‘So you’d be, what? My business manager?’
‘Exactly.’
‘In return for what?’
‘I would like a five per cent stake in the hotel, and a rise commensurate with my new duties, to come into effect only if I deliver what I have promised, that I can turn things round in a year.’
The two men shook hands, then at Rob’s instigation, hugged.
Christophe locked the door of his suite behind him and opened his wardrobe. He tapped in the code for the room safe and grabbed the half-empty bottle of his favourite cognac, Forgeron 1974, from beside it as the lock sprang open. He fetched a tumbler from the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bed. A smile flitted across his usually impassive face as he poured himself a measure, which he couldn’t stop turning into a grin. His natural sombreness then reasserted itself as he raised a silent toast to the skimmed notes bulging out of the safe.
8
COLIN
Tuesday, 13 October 1987
Colin looked at the dashboard clock – 7:15. He was sitting in his car outside the Labeys’ house. He’d pulled up at six thirty, told himself he’d give them time to finish supper and knock on the door at seven, then crashed through his deadline in a paralysing fog of doubt. A light rain was falling. The scattered drops were backlit by a lone streetlight, turning the windscreen into a mini-constellation that he occasionally cleared with the wipers to pass the time. The ignition key was in its first position, to allow for heating and music.
Mark Knopfler’s guitar was delicately cascading around his gruff voice, like a mountain stream tinkling through rocks. Colin imagined the protagonist was singing about him in the chorus, which also gave the song its title, ‘The Man’s Too Strong’. After today’s battering he felt a rising resilience, which he would need to ford the Rubicon that lay before him: Duncan’s front door.
Following the boy’s continued absence that morning, he had power-walked out of school in the lunch-hour to the police station at Rouge Bouillon, favouring a face-to-face over a fobbing-off on the phone.
In the event it had been a fobbing-off. The desk officer had told him that since no crime was being reported, there was nothing he could do. Colin insisted on speaking to the detective who dealt with missing-person reports.
There was no such person. ‘We don’t have missing people in Jersey.’
He then requested any available detective, adding that he had only twenty minutes, and was told, ‘Policemen have to have lunch, you know.’ He refrained from retorting that he wasn’t aware of having advanced a contrary position and instead stated calmly that he would wait before settling into an orange moulded-plastic chair with one leg marginally lower than the others. He spent his time being incensed at the askew angle of the poster on the wall opposite him, the unnecessary apostrophe in its exhortation to ‘Think twice before leaving valuable’s in your car!’ and finally his own anal tendencies, which prevented him relaxing.
Five minutes before he had to leave, an officer had emerged from a door behind the desk, crisps shards dusting his sandy moustache, and ignored Colin to banter with his colleague.
‘You all right there, Ted? You’re sweating like a Guernseyman doing his times tables.’
‘It’s too hot in here – it’s like my wife’s in charge of the thermostat.’
‘Tell me about it. I risk losing a hand if I go near mine when Eileen’s in the house.’
‘I thought my heating bills would go down when my old girl got the hot flushes. Not a bit of it.’
‘So, who’s pulled me off my pasty?’
The desk officer had nodded at Colin, who had stood up and offered his hand across the desk.
‘Colin Bygate.’
‘Detective Sergeant Vautier.’
There was the usual flicker at the oddity of Colin’s surname, then his own twitch at the strength of Vautier’s grip. The man’s stomach was large enough to render the buttons of his jacket redundant, and those on his shirt were surrounded by tiny fault-lines from the strain of holding things together when he sat. Colin quickly reattributed his physique as muscle gone to seed rather than out-and-out fat. A weightlifter who’d lost his drive.
‘How can I help you?’
‘Well, as I explained to your colleague, I’m a teacher at Normandy College, and we have a pupil who hasn’t turned up.’
The man snorted. ‘You’ve given me indigestion over a registration issue?’
‘He’s not at home.’
‘So why aren’t his parents here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ve taken it upon yourself to report this?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when was he last at school?’
Colin hesitated, then answered. ‘Thursday,’ he said, omitting the Grosnez encounter.
‘Domestic issue. He’s not been gone long enough to raise concern.’
The desk officer coughed himself into the conversation. ‘I did point this out, Barney.’
‘I thought it was two days. On the mainland I’m pretty sure it’s two days. Before people can be considered missing,’ said Colin, with an accusatory tone he instantly regretted.
Another look between the two behind the desk. ‘We’re not on the mainland, though, are we?’ said Vautier, any warmth in his smile negated by the sudden hardness behind his dull eyes.
‘No, I know that. I didn’t mean—’
‘We’re on an island. Know what that means? Surrounded by water. No way off it. So he’s not really missing. He’s just not where he’s supposed to be.’
‘Shouldn’t we try to find him?’
‘He’ll turn up. Kids run away from home occasionally. They can’t go anywhere, they come home.’
And that had been that. He’d walked back up to school, too agitated to eat. Twenty minutes into his first class of the afternoon Le Brocq’s face had loomed at the door’s window and he’d found himself in the corridor getting a hushed dressing-down.
‘I’ve just had a call from an officer at Rouge Bouillon police station.’
‘Really? Is he reporting me for reporting a possible crime?’
‘The only crime here is that you have wilfully disobeyed my instructions. The situation will be dealt with internally.’
‘The “situation” involves a missing child.’
‘He’s not a child, he’s a young adult, and I’m sure he’s perfectly all right.’
‘I’m sorry, I find it hard to square the fact that you show more concern about my liberal attitude to homework deadlines than you do a pupil going AWOL.’
‘Bandying about over-the-top phrases like AWOL serves only to heighten your sanctimoniousness.You don’t seem to understand the ramifications of creating a song and dance about nothing.’
‘No, I don’t. Say we look for him, and he turns up anyway, what exactly is the problem?’
‘Do I need to spell it out? This kind of unpleasantness could cast a pall over Her Majesty’s visit, maybe even cause her to abandon it.’
‘But you said he’s fine. What unpleasantness are you imagining?’
Le Brocq’s index finger rose, like a baton. ‘This is the last time we shall speak of it. Do I make myself clear? Those are the wishes of myself, and the wishes of his parents. Nobody but you wants to draw attention to this matter, which will resolve itself.’
Colin flinched at the tone and gesture. ‘I am a teacher here, not a pupil.’
‘And if you are unhappy with the way I run my school I am sure there are plenty of establishments back on the mainland that would welcome you. Although on current form you would be unwise to expect me to provide the most glowing reference.’
When the bell rang at the end of the day he had walked home in a drizzle that was not discomforting enough for him to bother opening his umbrella. He preferred to grasp it in the manner of a weapon, ready to strike out at anyone who crossed him. He just wanted to go home, shut the door and scream.
As he approached the entrance to the block, he saw Ian Mourant, from one of the upstairs flats, caught in the tractor beam of Mrs Le Boutillier’s conversation. Colin took an immediate right and two lefts to work his way through the back-streets and come up behind the entrance, near his car. He knew from experience that if he passed them, Ian would slip away, leaving him stuck in an exchange for which he did not have the energy. He would sit in the car and wait till he could get home unimpeded. Ten minutes or so would do it. The damp of the drizzle had begun to chill him so he started the ignition to get some warm air going, and before he knew it he was pulling out, passing the entrance where Ian was still nodding blankly, and heading out west round the curve of St Aubin’s Bay. As he had neared Grosnez, he was gripped by a defiant determination to do things right and headed for St Martin, retracing his journey of the previous week.