She was in a small hallway with a staircase rising from it. No sign of a lift. This had been a conversion with no economy spared. A notice headed LISTON DEVELOPMENTS with a logo resembling the Sidney Opera House confirmed what she’d guessed: the flats in the thirties were on the second floor.
She headed quickly up the stairs. The faster she moved the less chance there was of meeting somebody. Ahead she could hear the young Asian’s footsteps. He was making for the second floor too. She stepped out into the corridor just in time to see him entering a flat, calling, ‘Devi, what are you doing? Ma’s expecting us at one,’ to which a woman’s voice replied, ‘In a minute, in a minute, your ma’s not going anywhere, worse luck!’
The door closed as Fleur approached. Number 38.
She passed on to number 39, which was the last along the corridor. So, neighbours on one side only and they sounded as if they were on their way out.
Beyond the door she could hear the sound of a television cop-show or movie, the kind that involved screaming women and screeching cars. There was a bell push. She leaned into it, then stood back. No security cameras, but the doors did have peepholes. She composed her face to smiling housewife mode. It didn’t come easy and wouldn’t stand close examination, but it should do for a one-eyed squinter.
The peephole darkened. After a moment it lightened again. Thirty seconds passed. Adjusting his dress, or didn’t like the look of her? She was starting to fear the second when the door opened.
She made a rapid assessment of the man who stood there.
He had an unruly mop of hair whose blackness was of an intensity you rarely met outside of a priest’s socks. But his eyebrows she noticed were light brown. And surely he’d had a moustache when she glimpsed him leaving the car park?
His build was right, just under six foot tall, quite muscular, no evidence of any middle-age spread around the belt of his jeans. Age hard to say, though his skin tone looked like that of a young man. Too young? Maybe he used male moisturizer.
He said, ‘Yes?’
She said, ‘Mr Watkins?’
He said, ‘Who’s asking?’
She said, ‘I’m glad to find someone at home. I was beginning to think the whole block was empty. I’m Jenny Smith, Mr Watkins. From Liston Developments. It’s about the proposed improvements. We will have to ask you to vacate your apartment for a couple of days, I’m afraid. I’m here to discuss timings and alternative accommodation with you. Do you have a few moments?’
As she spoke she moved forward with an assurance it would have taken a tank trap to deny. The man retreated before her. Her gaze took in the tiny room. She got no impression of permanency. Furnishing was minimal: television set with a lousy picture and distorted sound, one balding armchair next to a rickety coffee table on which stood a telephone, no pictures on the wall, no curtains on the window.
After seven weeks this would have looked good. After seven years it was puzzling.
He said, ‘Look, I’m a bit busy, couldn’t you do this some other time…?’
He had a bit of an accent. She wasn’t too good at accents. Bit up and down, like that nosey cop who used to get up Goldie’s nose. But accents were easy to put on if you had the gift for it. Vince did a great Arnie Schwarzenegger.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Health and Safety–they need everything yesterday. God, they’re the bane of my life these days. How long have you been here, by the way?’
‘Why? Isn’t that on your records?’
‘Of course it is.’
He was sounding edgy. The furnishings apart, it was looking good. But between looking good and absolute certainty there was a gap a rash jump to conclusions could easily tumble you in.
He said, ‘Look, just for the record, could I see some identification?’
Real edgy!
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘No problem. You’re quite right to ask. In fact, you asking reminds me I should have asked too. So I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, all right?’
A bit of jocular innuendo was always distracting, especially when accompanied by a menacing leer. She rarely had difficulty facing down guys who liked to talk big.
He said, ‘No, I’m sure you’re who you say you are. But listen, I’ve really got things to do…’
Her phone rang.
‘Mind if I answer this?’ she said, opening her shoulder bag.
She took the phone out. As she pressed the receive button the room swayed and this time didn’t level off immediately.
‘Oh God,’ she said.
The phone fell to the floor and she followed it down, cracking her forehead against the TV set which, as if in sympathy, let out a blood-curdling shriek. The warm trickle oozing over her left eye suggested it hadn’t curdled hers.
‘Oh fuck!’ he said, kneeling beside her. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, sure, that’s why I’m lying here bleeding,’ she grated.
‘You look bad. Shall I call an ambulance?’
Her wig had come askew. No wonder he was worried about the way she looked!
‘No, I’m fine,’ she insisted. ‘A glass of water maybe.’
He rose and went out of the room.
She needed to be out of here too. She scrabbled for the phone to confirm what she suspected, but there was no one at the other end. Which meant…
She didn’t like to think what it might mean.
She really needed to be out of here. Strength was returning to her legs, but not enough yet.
The man came back with a cupful of water.
She took it from him, squeezed a tablet from the bubble pack and washed it down.
She saw him looking at her and she said, ‘Aspirin.’
There was a tap at the door.
‘Don’t answer…’ she started to say, but he wasn’t taking any notice of her. Why should he?
She got on all fours to try and push herself upright as he opened the door.
Then for about two and a half seconds, everything happened in single-frame audio-visual flashes.
The young female cop in the doorway wearing the kind of phoney smile Fleur had tried for earlier.
Vince behind her swinging a short metal cylinder against the side of her head.
The girl falling into the room.
The man taking two steps back and standing on Fleur’s hand.
Fleur hearing herself scream.
Vince raising the cylinder that was the sawn-off barrel of a shotgun.
The flash.
The bang.
The man falling backwards.
‘For God’s sake, shut that door!’ grated Fleur.
One thing she’d trained Vince up for was instant obedience. He kicked the door shut. Still on her knees, she swung round to the TV set and turned the volume up.
Then she sat and waited, counting up to twenty.
Nothing happened.
The TV set was showing a night scene. She studied herself in the darkened glass. The streak of blood down her face was dramatic but its source was a lesion the size of a peanut.
She adjusted her wig, turned the TV sound up higher, and got to her feet. Vince opened his mouth and she quietened him with a look.
She went to the door and listened.
She heard a door opening, a male voice saying, ‘Don’t be silly, it’s the television. Come on, we’re half an hour late already. Ma will be furious.’ To which the shrill female replied, ‘So what? Can’t we be an hour late, or better still two hours? In my condition, how can I hurry?’
The voices faded away down the corridor.
Now Fleur turned and took in the room.
The man who might be Wolfe was gone beyond recall. The shotgun blast had all but removed his face. There was no way they were going to identify him by comparing him to a photo.
The female cop had fallen on her left side. Blood oozed from a long contusion on the right temple where Vince had struck her. A shallow bubble of saliva formed at her lips, sank, then formed again very slowly, so for the time b
eing at least she was still alive.
Vince stood there, weapon in hand, regarding her with an expression she was all too familiar with, the look of a small boy who suspects he has done wrong but isn’t yet sure if his actions merit mild reproof, stern reproach, or severe punishment. She had to bite back the angry invective forming in her throat.
Then he said, ‘I thought he was hurting you, sis,’ and her anger dissolved.
He is what he is, she thought, and for better or worse she loved him. In fact he was the only person on the face of the earth that she had any positive feeling for, and his need to be protected was matched by her need to protect him. These two, the dead man and the probably dying woman, were so much collateral damage, the high but necessary price that had to be paid for the love between her and her brother. Everything came second to that. Love was a harder taskmaster than even The Man, promising small reward at the end of the day. But you knew when you entered his service that you signed all your rights away.
She said wearily, ‘We’ll talk about it later, Vince. For now, let’s get things sorted in here then be on our way.’
THREE
misterioso
PRELUDE
She says I’m pregnant.
The words bring such an explosion of joy that it shatters the barriers his mind had built against pain.
She sees only the pain and turns away.
But he turns with her, and now she sees the joy, and it’s so great that in a moment she thinks she must have imagined the pain.
He knows once more who he is…no, not is…he knows who he was, for now the nowhere existence in which he had felt himself shadowy, insubstantial, has sent out roots and will grow like the seed in her belly, while that other existence in that other world of pain proves to be the world of shades, inhabited by ghosts, himself nothing more than ghost when he visits it.
He knows he has to visit it, for that ghost of himself needs to be laid. So he descends into the shadowland to seek his old love, and when he sees her there, safe and secure in another shade’s arms, he turns away and climbs back to the light, not fearing to look over his shoulder because he knows she will not be following.
His new love waits for him, radiant to see him return, not questioning where he has been for no doubt lies between them, and he tells her no lies for how can a man lie about a world that no longer exists?
He feels the new world of her ripening belly under his hands.
Lucinda, he says.
What did you say?
Lucinda. That’s her name.
But we don’t even know that we’ll have a girl!
Yes we do, he says with the smiling certainty of one who knows that that other existence had been but a dress rehearsal whose disasters were a necessary prelude to a triumphant and lengthy run. And her name will be Lucinda. And from the moment she is born, she shall have nothing but the best.
So easily in joy and love a man plots his own betrayal.
13.45–14.50
Gwyn Jones left the community centre without troubling the buffet. When he had the scent of a story in his nose, he lost all other appetite. Also his unexpected presence had aroused unwelcome curiosity from some other journalists. Bumping Gem Huntley off the assignment hadn’t been a problem. Not long up from the provinces, she was still eager to please. Very eager. He’d taken advantage of her eagerness in the traditional style only last week when Beanie was out of town for a couple of nights. She wasn’t bad looking, in a peasant kind of way; carrying a bit too much flesh perhaps, but it was young flesh, and while a man might grow tired of such a plain diet every night, she was touchingly eager to learn. It had made a pleasant change from the Bitch’s cordon bleu menu. So a squeeze of her buttock and a promise that he would meet up with her later to explain everything had been enough to get her out of the way.
The others were more of a problem, the trouble being that his antipathy for Gidman was so well known that his presence at such a bland public relations affair was bound to spark interest.
The groundwork for his dislike had been laid on his first arrival in London six years before. His mother, the one person from whom he’d hidden his delight at leaving Llufwwadog, had been worried that her eldest son might not survive the inevitable pangs of homesickness he must feel alone in a great foreign city. So before parting she extracted a solemn oath from him that, as soon as he settled in, he would make contact with her cousin (twice removed) Owen Mathias. Owen, she averred, being a recently retired policeman, would be able to provide good sound advice as well as a reminder of his beloved home country.
When, after much maternal cajoling, Jones finally travelled out to Ealing to pay his respects, he saw at a glance why the man had taken early retirement. Mathias, in his mid-fifties, could easily have been taken for eighty. The upside was that he showed no sign of wanting to wallow in Celtic nostalgia and proved an entertaining and generous host, so Jones was happy to accept his invitation to come back soon, much to the delight of his mother.
His reward for this filial piety was that on subsequent visits he was introduced to many of Owen’s former colleagues, young and old. True, several of them shrank away as if from a wandering leper when they heard he was a journalist, but a few showed signs of sociability which he hoped to cultivate into a mutually beneficent relationship. One thing they all did was wince and look for excuses to leave whenever the subject of Goldie Gidman came up. This man, of whom Jones had never heard, was evidently Owen’s King Charles’s head.
‘I could never lay hands on him,’ the ‘old’ man complained after they’d got to know each other better. ‘But you’re an investigative journalist, you can sort him out, boyo. You can make those blind bastards at the CPS see what’s plain to all honest men. He’s a bad job, a crook through and through.’
Scenting a possible early scoop, Jones had listened closely to the ex-policeman and mentioned Gidman in the office. There he had been warned in no uncertain terms that Gidman was off limits unless you had an absolutely water-tight story to tell.
Then within a year of their first meeting, Owen Mathias died. On learning that he had been mentioned in the will, Jones for a while had pleasant hopes of a modest legacy. What he got in the event was a box of CD-roms on to which had been downloaded so far as he could see everything in the Met’s records about Goldie Gidman and his associates.
Recognizing that possession of these probably constituted an offence under several Acts, he stashed them away behind his wardrobe. And there they remained till the famous bye-election that signalled the eruption of David Gidman the Third on the political scene.
Warned of a possible upset, Jones in company of many other journalists had been on the spot. It wasn’t till well into the victory celebration that he’d managed to get close enough to the Golden Boy to ask his questions. When he introduced himself, Gidman, not yet a finished product of the Millbank School of Charm and flushed with success and champagne, cried, ‘Jones? Why is everybody in Wales called Jones? Only way they can sort the buggers out is by calling them Dai Grocer and Nye the Nutter and so on. From the Messenger, you say? I shall think of you as Jones the Mess!’
A feeble joke in doubtful taste, but certainly more of a bird-bolt than a cannon bullet. He had smiled with the rest and carried on with his questioning. And afterwards, it had seemed to him that he was doing no more than his job when he joined the journalistic pack in digging around to see what murky secrets might lie in the new boy’s past.
When their combined efforts failed to turn up any drug convictions, dodgy dealings with right-wing extremists, or documented instances of sexual deviancy, most of his fellows gave up the chase.
But Jones found he couldn’t let it alone. Eventually he tried a bit of self-analysis. It had to be more than the initial slur. He wasn’t a professional Welshman, for God’s sake, no super-sensitive Celt eager to take umbrage at the merest sniff of an Anglo-Saxon attitude. No, there had to be something more, something chemical as much as political. Perhaps it was in the b
lood, perhaps he had inherited it from the same source as cousin Owen.
Whatever the cause, he came to recognize that the young MP was his Dr Fell, his heart’s abhorrence. And so began his anti-Gidman campaign.
Unable to find a weakness in the MP’s defences, he turned his attention to Goldie Gidman, and now Owen Mathias’s downloads became useful. He managed to get in a few sneers about the dubious nature of Goldie’s early financial dealings, but it was soon made very clear to him by the Messenger’s lawyers that there was a line he wasn’t going to be allowed to cross. His only success had been an article suggesting that the late David Gidman the First would have been outraged to know that his son was making substantial contributions to the Conservative Party and devastated to learn that his grandson was a Tory MP. Goldie’s briefs had huffed and puffed, but there was nothing they could do. You can’t libel the dead.
But it was the living he wanted to get in his sights.
And then the rumour reached him that Gidman MP was banging his PA. She, it was reported, had dreams of what would have been a very lucrative marriage, but when Dave the Turd got wind of this, he made it brutally clear it wasn’t going to happen. So perhaps she might be in the market for an alternative offer…
Jones had masterminded her subornation. Not that what she had to tell was necessarily a career breaker. Since Clinton, the fact that a politician had a big dong and liked to exercise it in unusual venues was at most a peccadillo, might in some instances even be a vote-catcher. But the Messenger’s spinners and weavers had been hopeful that with a little embroidery they might be able to hint at S&M tendencies, Nazi sympathies, and even the possibility of security risks.
Then, on the day the deal was due to be signed, the woman’s agent announced she’d changed her mind and had no story to tell. No prizes for guessing why. The woman had got the message that, whatever the paper could offer, Goldie would top it. When Jones argued for getting into an auction, his editor ordered him to back off, adding cynically, ‘One thing we can’t offer the tart is guaranteed health insurance. Goldie can. But I never said that.’
Midnight Fugue Page 14