by Neil Cross
Shepherd doubted it would work.
Lenny insisted he have some confidence in him.
‘And lack confidence in the probity of others,’ said Shepherd.
‘Come on,’ said Lenny. ‘We’re talking about students.’
Inside the Hyde Park, Shepherd got them drinks while Lenny set them up at a pool table. Lenny suggested they order drinks they didn’t like, thus regulating their intake. So Shepherd ordered himself a Bacardi and Coke and got Lenny an American Budweiser, a beer to which he was ideologically opposed.
Lenny gripped the bottle by the neck and said: ‘Ha ha.’
They set a proprietorial pile of £1 coins on the edge of a pool table. The blue baize was pilled like an old sweater. As the afternoon passed, the pub began to fill. Young men and women took their places at the other pool tables. Lenny offered a game of doubles to anyone who hung round, watching, or who looked on resentfully at the pile of cash that secured the table for many games to come. Some joined them, others chose not to. Either way, Lenny made little overt effort to ingratiate himself. He had a faintly menacing presence and was edgy and irritable while playing; but he played impressively. He ran jerky, quickfire rings round the more ponderous and less skilled Shepherd.
Judging the moment, Lenny would line up a shot and ask his opponent if they knew Caroline Holloway. Most simply said no, supped from their pints and played on. One or two leaned on their cue and told him to fuck off. Lenny never pressed the issue, and he never lost a game.
Although they continued to nurse their drinks, Lenny moved on to Guinness and Shepherd whiskey at about 7 p.m. Thus, when they left the Hyde Park some time after 10 p.m., they were tottering and befuddled. They queued in the takeaway, then found a bench on the underlit fringes of the park, sat down and ate their doner kebabs. Shepherd got chilli sauce and shreds of lettuce in his beard. To shake off the pub fug, they agreed to walk back to the hotel. Rain was intermittent and the streets of Leeds 6 were quiet. Buses passed them. Fiercely illuminated from within, they carried no passengers.
Shepherd, who was not much of a drinker, woke late with a hangover. He rolled around the narrow bed for a while, not long enough, then crawled to the bathroom and hunkered under the wretched, rusty discharge from the showerhead. He sat in the tub, hugging his knees and let tepid water trickle intermittently over his scalp and down his spine. His beard was odorous with lamb fat, stale cigarette smoke and chilli sauce. He could smell his own breath. He soaped his beard with complimentary shampoo that had the look and consistency of semen.
He dressed and banged on Lenny’s door. They went to find a café. Lenny was trembling. He had puffy, violet rings round his eyes.
In the café, Lenny broke the snotty meniscus of egg yolk with a triangle of fried, white bread. ‘Fuck,’ he said, and put his head in his hands. He removed a strip of Nurofen Plus from his jacket pocket and popped six pills into his mouth. He dry-swallowed and offered the strip to Shepherd, who chastely declined, sipping from his orange juice.
By the time they got to the Hyde Park, their heads were clearing and they were resolved, if not actually ready, to start again. This time they took a break early in the evening, eating pizza from the box on the park bench they’d occupied the previous night.
Towards closing time, Lenny asked a hulking rugby boy who’d just lost four frames if he knew Caroline. The boy was built to Shepherd’s approximate dimensions, with a quiff of curly blond hair. He wore chinos and a checked shirt. His face was flushed cherry-red. He set his pint glass on the baize and took a lowering step towards Lenny.
Lenny leaned on his cue. From his pocket he took a small aerosol of mace. He showed it to the boy, who examined it minutely. He called Lenny a cunt and blundered off to join his exclusively male companions in the farthest corner of the pub, where he began publicly to exaggerate what had just happened. Within a week or two, it would become a gun that Lenny showed him.
Someone tapped Lenny on the shoulder.
He turned. A casually dressed, elegantly balding young man squared up to him. The young man asked Lenny who the fuck he was.
Lenny collected what dignity he was able.
‘My name is Lenny,’ he said.
‘Why are you looking for Caroline Holloway?’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Nobody here has a story to sell.’
‘Oh, mate,’ said Lenny. ‘I’m not a journalist. Do I look like a journalist?’
‘What does a journalist look like?’
‘Fair point. Well, I’m not.’
‘Whatever. Fuck off.’
‘Look—’ said Lenny.
The boy punched him.
Lenny fell over.
Silence descended upon a section of the crowd.
Lenny got to his feet. He rubbed at his jaw.
‘What the fuck was that for?’
The young man punched him again.
He didn’t fall over this time, but he stumbled back several steps, spilling the head from a number of pints. A circle of onlookers formed.
‘Fucking stop that,’ said Lenny. His shoulder and thigh were wet with spilled lager.
The young man raised his fist.
Shepherd was aware of the disturbance. Long familiar with the dynamics of playground fights, he pressed through the cluster of onlookers and put himself between Lenny and the young man. He asked what was going on.
The young man craned his neck to look Shepherd in the eye. Some of his righteous defiance melted away. His fist fell to his side. He gauged Shepherd’s dimensions: the fierce-looking beard, the shaved head; the wire-rimmed spectacles.
‘Fucking hell,’ he said.
Lenny pointed at the young man.
‘He hit me.’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘Nothing!’
‘You must have said something? Shepherd looked at the young man. ‘What did he say?’
The young man took a step back.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Well, OK,’ said Shepherd. ‘If you say so.’
‘I think he broke my nose,’ said Lenny.
‘No he didn’t.’
Shepherd didn’t take his eyes off the boy.
The boy jammed his hands in the pockets of his windcheater. He looked downcast and apprehensive.
Lenny let go his nose and glowered at Shepherd.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘You sound like my headmaster.’
‘Oh, sod this,’ said the young man. ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’m off.’
As a final gesture, he pointed a theatrically indignant finger at Shepherd’s nose.
‘Just stop it. Go away and leave us alone.’
Shepherd took the risk.
‘I’m the man who phoned Caroline’s dad,’ he said.
The boy stopped. Before he could formulate an answer—Shepherd could almost see his mind working—the landlord arrived. Bow-legged and fruitily enraged, he threw them out.
Outside, the boy made no attempt to disengage from them. They huddled under a streetlamp. Lenny sniffed back blood and scuffed his feet on the pavement.
Shepherd gave the boy a version of why they were in Leeds. He told him what happened at the police station in Bristol. He told him what kind of idiot he felt like.
The boy cupped his mouth and listened with his head hung low. When Shepherd was finished, the boy hugged himself and turned to face the park. Cars passed; a bus. People entered the pub; people left. Currents of takeaway scent eddied on the cold night air.
The boy looked at the sky. The city was encased in a bubble of water vapour and electric light pollution. Rucked, low clouds like dirty bedlinen.
He said: ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘I don’t know what to say either,’ said Shepherd.
He extended a hesita
nt hand and left it hanging in the damp air. He introduced himself again.
The boy searched his expression, shrugged. They shook hands. The boy’s name was Robert.
Robert turned to Lenny. He buried his hands deep in his pockets and kicked a crippled can of Coke along the pavement.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
Lenny threw Shepherd a look; a twist of the upper lip and a glimmer of derision.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said.
They followed Robert to a balti house a short way down the hill. It stood at the corner of a long, red-brick terrace whose end walls were plastered with faded and ripped flyposters advertising night clubs and gigs by exotically named student bands. They were the only patrons; the restaurant wouldn’t begin to fill until closing time. They were attended by two Indian waiters in white shirts and embroidered waistcoats. Each of them was handed a large, laminated menu and they were seated at a corner table wrapped in a floral, plastic covering.
They ordered three steins of cold Tiger beer. Despite the earlier pizza, the booze had made Shepherd and Lenny hungry. They dipped shards of poppadom into mango pickle while Robert talked.
Robert was a close friend of Caroline. They assumed this to be contemporary student-speak for boyfriend. By midnight the previous evening, news had reached him that two more journalists were in the Hyde Park, asking about her. Within moments of his entrance this evening, someone had pointed Lenny out to him.
Lenny smiled at Shepherd. ‘Told you,’ he said. There was a chitinous black crust of blood rimming one nostril.
‘What?’ said Robert.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Shepherd. He asked about Caroline.
Robert shook his head. He jutted out his lower lip and shrugged expansively.
‘What can I say? She’s having a nervous breakdown, practically.’
‘Have you talked about it?’
‘What do you think we’ve talked about? Everyone thinks her dad cut off a girl’s head. What do you think we talked about? It’s all there is to talk about. It’s all anyone wants to talk about.’
Shepherd put his elbows on the table. He balanced his spectacles on his brow and massaged his eyes.
‘She doesn’t think he did it?’
‘Of course she doesn’t think he did it. He’s her dad.’
Shepherd looked left and right.
‘We don’t think he did it, either,’ he said.
Robert snapped a poppadom and dipped it in mango pickle. He mumbled something.
They stayed for nearly three hours. By the time Robert stood to leave, the restaurant had filled, become raucous, then emptied again and fallen silent. They had shouted themselves hoarse; now they murmured conspiratorially. The waiters hung about impatiently at the bar.
Robert told them about Holloway’s trip to Leeds. How Caroline had told him that Derek Bliss’s company had been bought out by William Gull Associates Ltd, whose principal offices were in York. How, exhausted, Holloway had asked Robert to drive him there. Holloway was inside Gull’s office for less than twenty minutes, and emerged with blood on his shirt and reams of old paperwork stuffed into several distended carrier bags. How that night, he asked Caroline and Robert and two of their friends to examine this paperwork, searching out references to himself or his wife. How they had found nothing. How Robert had driven him back to Bristol the same night, because he was off work on the sick, claiming to have the flu.
‘He looked like he had the flu,’ said Robert. ‘That’s the thing.’
The next day, Joanne Grayling was murdered and Holloway disappeared with the ransom money.
Caroline and Robert gave full statements, after which two detectives from the Avon and Somerset Constabulary visited the York offices of William Gull Associates, Ltd. Gull told them that a complete stranger arrived one afternoon and started talking about someone called Bliss, of whom Gull had no knowledge. He seemed genuinely surprised when the detective informed him that Derek Bliss had been a partner in Executive Solutions, the company Gull acquired from Henry Lincoln.
Gull stated that Holloway assaulted and threatened to kill him, and removed a great deal of important paperwork from the premises. When asked why he hadn’t reported the assault or the theft, Gull laughed and told the officer: ‘Come off it. I was a copper, too, lad. Once upon a time.’
Gull’s story was verified when the stolen files were identified among the belongings in Holloway’s bedroom. They were kept back as evidence. The police searched the rest of Holloway’s flat; they went through the hard drive of his computer, looking for deleted files and emails. Nothing was found that pertained in any way to the murder of Joanne Grayling.
They discovered that Derek Bliss had died several years previously, apparently of a fatal cardio-vascular accident while vacationing in Australia. His ex-business partner, Henry Lincoln, was now a travelling representative for a trade book publisher. He had a substantial mortgage on a mock-Tudor house outside Basingstoke, a company Ford Mondeo and two Representative of the Year awards framed in his hallway. He was mystified by the police’s visit. Lincoln had been a sleeping partner of Bliss. He knew nothing about the mechanics of running such an operation. The police thanked him. That line of investigation was suspended. At best, it would probably prove to be only peripherally connected to the Chapman murder. Perhaps Holloway had panicked, had second thoughts. Tried to call in some old debts.
Under further questioning, Caroline claimed no knowledge of Gull, or Derek Bliss; nor had Holloway’s ex-wife, Kate. Neither was able to suggest what Holloway’s connection to them might be.
‘I don’t know what he was doing up here,’ said Lenny. ‘But something’s not right with that picture, is it?’
Robert said he would try to arrange a meeting with Caroline.
The next evening, he met them in the narrow lobby of their bed-and-breakfast hotel. He told them that Caroline did not wish to be contacted. He would not tell them where she was or give them her phone number. But he promised to ask her one more time. He would contact Shepherd in a few days. Shepherd wrote down their home number for him. He and Lenny checked out of the hotel and caught a night train home. They watched their hollow-eyed reflections in the windows of the empty carriage as the train clattered and swayed towards London.
Three days later, Robert called.
Finally, she had agreed to meet them, on the condition that Robert take them to her. That way, they wouldn’t know her location until they arrived. They were to bring no cameras or other recording equipment. They might be gone for some days and would need several hundred pounds per head to cover expenses. Shepherd agreed to cover the costs—including Robert’s—and the two hung up cordially enough. Then Shepherd went to the box in the bottom of the wardrobe and counted his money again.
II
The evening prior to their agreed meeting at King’s Cross station, Robert knocked on the door.
He told Eloise from the doorstep that he wanted to verify everything Shepherd and Lenny had told him about themselves. He set his jaw firm and said he was sorry if it seemed rude, but that included where they lived.
Eloise nodded heartily.
‘Very wise,’ she said.
Robert was handsome. His olive skin was unblemished and though his woolly hair was thinning he looked small and young and vulnerable out there on the doorstep with his big brown eyes and shabby undergraduate chic. Eloise asked him inside. Entering, he ducked his head unnecessarily. He paused to investigate the framed prints in the hallway. Hitler as Grail Knight. Poussin’s strange pastoral Et in Arcadia Ego. Leonardo’s John the Baptist, with his cryptically elevated index finger and artful smile.
In the lounge, she invited him to sit. Shepherd was watching the news. A big toe protruded from a hole in his sock. She told him to make Robert a cup of tea. He got to his feet and hurried off to join Lenny, who was cooking.
<
br /> Eloise yelled out to Lenny that one more would be joining them for supper.
Lenny’s voice reverberated down the hall. ‘I hope he’s not a fucking vegetarian.’
‘Are you?’ said Eloise.
‘No.’
Eloise cupped a hand to her mouth. ‘He’s not.’
‘Well,’ Lenny yelled. ‘Good,’ and made angry cluttering and crashing noises.
Eloise insisted that Robert sleep in the spare room. When finally he agreed, she went to the downstairs airing cupboard and gathered an armful of clean white bedding.
‘So,’ she said. ‘You’re the one who punched Lenny’
Robert shifted in his seat.
‘Yes,’ he said, eventually.
‘Nice one,’ said Eloise. ‘I expect he deserved it.’
Before breakfast the next morning, Shepherd went out to pick up the hired MPV.
Lenny waited outside, hugging himself on the pavement, especially so he could laugh at Shepherd when he put the cumbersome vehicle to the kerb. Then he slapped his upper arms, opened the boot and began to throw in the luggage.
‘We look like people with special needs,’ he said. ‘On a fucking day trip.’
For reasons she had not chosen to disclose, Eloise went with them. Shepherd suspected she wanted to keep a tempering eye on Lenny. She wore an old, three-quarter-length leather coat that smelled like an Oxfam shop, and tatty Dr Martens with mismatched laces.
She closed the door of the house, double-locked it, and joined them in the back of the MPV. At first, the three of them sat in a line, but Shepherd was too big. He shifted up a row and spread himself out. Robert took the wheel and Lenny closed the sliding door.
While Lenny, Eloise and Shepherd bickered about what radio station to listen to, then what CD, Robert drove them to the south coast. He drove without speaking, his little bald spot turning left and right as he read the road. His eyes flitted occasionally to the rear-view mirror.
They reached Folkestone. On the Eurostar, they crossed to France beneath the cold, brown Channel. Turning on to French roads, Robert spread a map across his lap. Flattening the map in order to refer to it, he several times swerved into oncoming traffic.