by Neil Cross
But he knew he didn’t remember correctly. An absence had gone undetected. Because one day, fourteen years after they married, she told him she was leaving him for Dan Weatherell, a married man, and he punched her face and fractured the orbit of her eye. Then he took a breadknife and sliced open his forearms.
Kate moved Caroline into a house that belonged to Penny, a close friend, herself newly divorced.
Upon being discharged from Leeds General Infirmary, Holloway made a legal undertaking not to contact or come within a fixed distance of her. In exchange, she agreed not to press a charge of GBH with intent.
In the end, Kate didn’t go to New Zealand with Dan Weatherell.
She understood the relationship to have reached a natural and amicable end. She never learned that Holloway had driven Weatherell round the back of a darkened trading estate, that he punched Weatherell in the throat and beat him across the head and shoulders and ribs and kidneys with a rubber cosh; that he put a knife to Weatherell’s throat until he wept and begged to live.
Weatherell went back to his wife. But there remained no question of Kate’s returning to Will.
Holloway grew familiar with the geography of the bedroom ceiling, with each of its minor whoops and undulations. After six weeks, then two months, then three, the Prozac had yet to take effect, had not even diminished his sex drive, for which he secretly had prayed. He was exhausted by the daily exertion of rising from bed and washing and shaving. Paperwork shimmied like heat haze before his eyes. His short-term memory faltered and he had blackouts. He would start and look about himself, and for a moment he would not recall where he was, or to whom he had spoken, or why.
He continued to be tormented by images of Kate’s nudity and passion. Jealousy and longing had long ago merged until one could not be distinguished from the other. He fetishized the memory of her body, as he had fetishized the fact of it. He could not become aroused except by the thought of her. He pictured her fucking and being fucked.
It was for this reason that he contracted Derek Bliss.
It was Bliss who tenderly put the tape in the VCR and turned on the television, it was Bliss who showed him the film. The boy’s exposed cock, shining like Vaseline. Kate on her back, muttering something as the boy arches his spine and the cheeks of his ass tighten like a fist.
And Bliss knew what Holloway had done.
Shortly after completing a brief treatment in a psychiatric hospital, Holloway drove to Aberdeen and broke into David Bishop’s flat. Bishop and his flatmates were at work, so Holloway spent much of the day watching television: This Morning with Richard and Judy, Countdown, Fifteen to One. At 5 p.m., before the first of the housemates returned home from work, he concealed himself in David Bishop’s wardrobe. He waited there until everyone had come back, eaten, watched TV and eventually gone to sleep. Then he crept from the wardrobe and, in the half-light, he crawled on his hands and knees along the grubby carpet to the edge of Bishop’s bed. He pressed a hand down on Bishop’s mouth and kneeled on his chest. He rammed a screwdriver through each of Bishop’s eyes. Then he wiped his hands on a corner of bedding, let himself out and drove home.
II
Robert pulled up outside the address Holloway had given him: a recessed doorway abutted by souvenir shops.
Holloway kneaded his eyes. He felt shabby and damp.
‘Right,’ he said.
He slid from the rear driver’s side door and stood in cloudless sunlight. Shoals of pensioners parted for him on the narrow pavement. He clapped his hands twice.
‘Right,’ he said. Once for each clap.
He brushed at the crumpled suit, tucked in the tail of his shirt and straightened the knot of his tie in the wing mirror. He kneeled at the window and told Robert to park the car and wait for him on the corner. Robert pulled away.
The firm announced itself with a modest brass plaque. William Gull Associates Ltd. Private Investigations. Holloway pressed the button on the faux-brass intercom. Waiting for an answer, he checked over the high nooks and corners for CCTV or digital security cameras. Locating none, he wondered if he had looked well enough.
He was admitted by an irritated buzz. The hallway smelled of dust and paint.
He paused at the foot of the stairwell to collect his thoughts. ‘Right,’ he said, before turning the corner of the first landing. Before him was a door with the company name etched on glass in italic.
Holloway was composed and ready.
He stepped into a reception about the size of a double bedroom. The sash windows, which overlooked the slowly milling street, admitted two diffuse beams of light. A row of modular chairs faced a reception desk, upon which were arranged a telephone and answerphone, a desk diary and a beige PC. Behind the desk sat a neatly comported receptionist in ladies’ golf wear, large spectacles on a chain and a fearsome permanent wave.
He asked if Mr Gull was available for immediate consultation. She invited him to wait for one moment, put her head round the corner of an office door, and returned to inform Holloway that Mr Gull would see him shortly.
He supposed the ten minutes he waited symbolized the passive aggression of the struggling small businessman.
When eventually he was invited to go through, he found that Gull’s office was bedecked like a psychiatrist’s: dark wood panelling, worn leather upholstery. An antique desk, varnish worn pale on the edges and corners. At the windows hung white Venetian blinds, edged with dust, through which the light shone opalescent. Three walls furnished with books. It was an interior conceived to promote confidence in a certain clientele.
Gull sat at the desk, his outline softened by the scattered light. On first estimation, with the window behind him, he seemed younger than his sixty-odd years. His hair seemed blond and discrepantly abundant. On second glance, it resolved into a nicotine-yellow thatch, heavily shot with grey. Beneath it, Gull’s face had collapsed into gloomy repose. Loose wattles and a drinker’s nose. Ex-copper. Broad in the beam. Twenty-five years’ service. Pensioned off for some misdemeanour, probably borderline criminal.
He half stood and shook Holloway’s hand, invited him to sit. His suit was good enough but greasy at cuff and seat.
‘Mr Holloway.’ He wrote the name.
‘Two l’s.’
‘Of course.’ He laced his hands and said: ‘What can I do for you?’ But before Holloway could reply, Gull interjected: ‘Have we met?’
Holloway lied. ‘I don’t think so.’ He couldn’t remember the occasion, but had a brief sense memory of a long-distant summer and cricket whites. The taste of warm Tetley in a plastic glass. A different life.
Gull rolled his tongue along the crenelated roof of his mouth.
‘Cricket?’ he said. ‘Do you play?’
‘No,’ said Holloway.
Gull was solemn with disbelief. Then, with a papal gesture, he invited confession.
Holloway leaned forward and lifted a spherical glass paperweight from the desk. It was a York Minster snow scene. He sat back and crossed his legs, tossing the paperweight in his palm like a cricket ball. It was about the same weight.
After a measured pause, he said: ‘I’m looking for Derek Bliss.’
He indexed the parameters of Gull’s hesitation.
‘Could you spell that?’
‘You know how it’s spelled.’
Gull took the nib from the paper and regarded Holloway from beneath a heavily ridged brow.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ said Holloway.
Gull’s eyes were level and did not leave Holloway’s.
‘Perhaps we should start again. I’m afraid the conversation’s gone over my head so far.’
‘Five grand,’ said Holloway. ‘Cash. In your hand. As soon as you tell me where I can find him.’
‘So it’s a missing person,’ said Gull, and prete
nded to make a note on his pad.
Holloway grinned. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
Gull sat back in the leather chair. ‘Then I’m not sure I can help you.’
‘I see,’ said Holloway. He stood and said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Gull shrugged, amicably.
Holloway put his balance on his back foot, drew back his hand and bowled the paperweight into Gull’s head. There was a wet crack. The impact smashed Gull from the chair.
Holloway slid across the desk, reaching into his pocket.
Robert had parked outside a nearby newsagent. At Holloway’s approach, Caroline unwound the passenger window.
‘What’s that?’
‘What’s what?’
‘In the bags.’
‘Papers.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘What’s what?’
‘The wet stuff on your shirt.’
‘Nothing,’ he said, and got into the car.
As they drove back to Leeds, Holloway flicked through the paperwork Gull had eventually surrendered into his custody. Invoices, receipts, expenses claim forms, affidavits. Photocopied sheets of A4 lifted from hanging files. He scanned pages of text quickly and mechanically, hoping his eyes might settle on a name, an address, anything he recognized. But there was nothing; just the looped reiteration of Gull’s too elaborate signature. None of the files predated the sale of Executive Solutions to Gull’s firm.
Back at Caroline’s house, he made a game of it. He handed a sheaf of paper to Caroline, Robert, Steve and Camilla and instructed them to look for certain key words and addresses. His name, his wife’s. Dan Weatherell’s. Joanne Grayling.
Given the official-looking but salacious content of the documents, it proved easy to convince everyone that they were about covert police business. Holloway rather implied he was the kind of maverick copper they all liked to watch on television, which seemed explanation enough. But after several hours they had come across nothing.
Holloway could believe that Derek Bliss had come back to get him. But he couldn’t believe that he’d come alone. Bliss was a parading little bantam. (He recalled with horror the contemptuous beads of semen left on the toilet seat.) But nevertheless, Holloway thought of him as an effect. Behind him there was a cause, some grave corruption: somebody who wished to punish and humiliate both Kate and Holloway. It seemed clear to him who that must be.
Bliss had run to Australia. Dan Weatherell lived in Wellington, New Zealand.
It was close enough. Somehow, the two of them had met.
It was not impossible. It wasn’t even unlikely. Bliss was an experienced private investigator. The most cursory investigation into Holloway’s private life would unearth Weatherell’s name. Tracking him down would be elementary.
He imagined them. Hating him. Planning. Concocting.
Close to midnight, he strode wordlessly from the house.
The night was pleasantly warm. He walked towards a phone box he had noticed outside a pizza takeaway on Hyde Park Corner. He pumped a series of pound coins into the slot and from memory dialled a New Zealand number.
It rang for perhaps half a minute. It was answered by a man with a slow voice.
‘Hello.’
Holloway bit down on his lower lip.
‘Who is this?’
‘You know who this is.’
The line crackled.
‘I’m sorry?’
Holloway waited.
‘It’s Will,’ he said.
‘Will. Is that you? Will Holloway? Will, Jesus Christ almighty. What’s up?’
Holloway sniffed back a tear.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’
‘Hold on. One moment please.’ There followed a series of thumps and crackles. Perhaps the speaker had moved to another room. ‘Run that by me again.’
‘Why are you doing this to me?’
Pause. ‘Will? Is that Will? You’re going to have to help me out here, mate.’
‘Don’t mate me, you fucker. You know what I’m talking about. You fucking know. You fucker. You unbelievable fucker.’
‘Now. Slow down. You’re raving. You sound like a madman. Slow down. What are you talking about?’
‘You know what I’m fucking talking about. Was it Bliss?’
‘Was it what?’
‘Bliss.’
‘Was what bliss? Jesus God, what are we talking about here?’
‘Was it his idea? Or was it yours?’
‘Slow down, mate. Slow down. I’m lost. You lost me way back.’
‘I won’t go down,’ said Holloway. ‘No matter what you do to me. I won’t go down.’
‘Will, has something happened? Has something happened I should know about?’
‘You’re not that clever. You’re not that fucking clever. You think you know about cutting people open? I’ll tell you what—before I let them send me down, I’ll come and find you, you fucking cunt, and I’ll show you all about cutting someone open. I’ll show you what cutting someone open is all about.’
He slammed the receiver down, then lifted it again and smashed the handpiece to pieces against the body of the telephone. He walked back to Caroline’s house the long way, his head down.
Back at the flat, he seemed calm.
He was too tired to drive, but he had to be back in Bristol that night. He’d taken a risk by calling in sick.
He’d worry about the car another day. He said: ‘What time is the last train?’
She looked at her watch and told him it had probably left an hour before.
Diffidently, Robert offered to drive him overnight and Holloway gladly accepted. Robert and Caroline sat up front in the Micra, listening to muted late-night radio. Holloway wrapped himself in a musty blanket and closed his eyes to the soporific hiss of tyres on empty motorway. His head nodded on his chest. Something wise rested peacefully on his heart and lungs.
Half asleep, he saw his life as a sequence of nodes, moments that broke the mirror pool of memory. Viewed suddenly from a new perspective, they linked in an unexpected sequence and revealed a new pattern.
The pattern was projected inside his daisy-pale lids. Its peripheral codes were expressed by the ebb and flow of traffic, the alternating bands of yellow light that passed over him. As they entered the city limits, its chaotic, non-repeating sequence was expressed in random knots of people and aimless henges of refuse. It was in neon signs that flashed in takeaway windows and in the dispersal pattern of the half-seen homeless.
He understood that he was an agent of this pattern although he could not guess at its meaning or intent.
Waking, he saw the present bend back and pleat around the past.
They pulled up to his door shortly before dawn. Hollow-eyed, he led them inside. Cool dusty smell of rented hallways. The dawn chorus.
Robert moaned, sat in the armchair and put his head in his hands. Caroline put the kettle on. Holloway went to the bathroom and ran cold water over his neck and head. He emerged with a towel wrapped round his shoulders like a boxer. Robert was asleep in the armchair. His head lolled back on his shoulders and he snored softly.
Holloway nodded at him.
‘Nice lad.’
Caroline knuckled her eyes. She had stayed awake to keep Robert company.
She said: ‘How long since you slept properly?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Two days? I slept in the car.’
‘I’m worried about you.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not fine. Have you spoken to mum?’
He nodded.
‘And what does she say?’
‘About what?’
‘About the state you’re in.’
‘I’m fine.’
She lifted the receiver.
‘I’m calling her.’
‘What—now?’
‘Right now.’
‘It’s quarter to five.’
She glanced at her watch.
‘Then tell me what’s happening.’
‘Nothing.’
‘We’ve been through this,’ she said.
‘Through what?’
‘You know through what.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I’m calling her right now. Look at me. I’m calling.’
‘Caroline,’ he said. ‘Look. I’m under a lot of pressure.’
‘I can see that. What pressure?’
‘Just pressure.’
‘I’ll stay,’ she said.
‘You can’t. You’ve got exams.’
‘Not for months. It’s the vacation.’
‘Caroline,’ he said. ‘Please.’
But she would have none of it.
He kicked off his shoes and lay otherwise fully clothed on the bed. Caroline woke him at 8.45. He had been dreaming about Derek Bliss. He sat up with a start. It took some time to work out where he was and how Caroline came to be there. He thought he might have dreamed Leeds until he saw the dry brown splatter pattern on his blue shirt.
The station had called. ‘You have to go in right now,’ she said. ‘It’s urgent.’
Before he had time to clean his teeth, a police car was waiting outside, its blue light silently spinning. He made them wait until he was at least presentable and kissed Caroline goodbye. He knew the driver well and bid a grim hello. They stopped off on the way to the station and he bought breakfast, American Hard Gums, a KitKat and two cans of Coke.
11
That morning the station had received a ransom demand, a laser-printed sheet of A5, postmarked Cardiff and addressed to James Ireland, the chief investigating officer. Among other things, the letter specified that Detective Sergeant William Holloway should deliver the ransom.