by Adam Baron
‘Yes, boss.’ Still the grin. He got a clip round the back of his head.
‘Lightning you reckon you are, lad? Let’s hope you’re not fucking well struck by it, eh?’
I walked back to my car. When I got there the Jag I’d parked next to was turning round. The man in the back was looking out of it, a pad in his hand. He was writing something. As I dug out my keys he looked at me and our eyes met for a second. His eyes were dark and deep, with no expression at all. I held his look until the Jag swept round and pulled away.
* * *
I got out of the wind and drove through East London, slower going back, listening to a local news station to see if they had anything on a murder in Hoxton. They didn’t, yet. I listened to a long piece on football, focusing on the fact that attendances were dropping all over the country. Has the bubble burst? the announcer asked. All the while I was thinking about Draper, the things he’d tried to tell me in Fred’s. That bollocks about not wanting the police in on it because he cared about his wife and his child, he just wanted to protect his Big Move. It was crap, all of it. He just didn’t want anyone around him who might let the papers know he was playing away, as he would have put it. He didn’t want anyone finding out about Alison. He’d wanted me because he either thought I wouldn’t discover anything or else, being Nicky’s friend, I’d keep schtum. All he cared about was that it didn’t come out, and then it did.
I was pretty sure Draper hadn’t known he’d be in next day’s papers when he’d found me in Fred’s. Coming to see me then would have been the last thing on his mind. I saw him leaving the bar again and went through what must have happened next. He’d gone home and he did find out, somehow, and he’d either told his wife or she’d found out some other way. Either way. She’d left him, taking their baby. And then he flipped. He went round and put a knife in Alison for doing it to him. Or else he went round just to yell at her, call her bitch, and then he’d lost it. Whichever, he’d been so angry he hadn’t been able to control himself, he hadn’t been able to stop until she was dead three times over.
I got to Stepney Green in about twenty minutes. I didn’t know if Draper would be home, but I didn’t have any intention of stopping to find out. I just wanted to see the state of play. Once again I drove down slowly past the damp, green gardens. There were a lot of cars parked opposite Draper’s house as well as a couple of powerful, plastic-looking motorbikes. As I’d expected, a group of men with long lenses were slouched on the railings outside looking bored. Draper either wasn’t in or else he wasn’t coming out, but the gang looked like they had all the time in the world. I moved on, looking away from the ‘journalists’ to the road. No patrol cars, no unmarked vehicles that I could see. They can’t have made the connection yet or if they had, they hadn’t told the press. But it wouldn’t be long before some copper made himself a ton or so by tipping off a friend. I wondered how many lenses would be pointing at the door of number fourteen then.
Chapter Eight
Forty minutes later I was in my office. I’d gone back to check the post and my machine, see if I had any more work. The trip out of Wanstead Flats hadn’t made anything any clearer to me. The last twelve hours still seemed like some sort of sick joke someone had played on me. I gazed out of the window, remembering the conversation I’d had with Nicky, how unaware I’d been as to what it was going to lead to. I heard his voice again; choked, false. I still couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen him. He must have got the messages I’d left him, why the hell wasn’t he getting back to me?
The branches of the chestnut weren’t empty but it was only a sparrow that was perched on the branch nearest the window and I was a little disappointed. I wondered if common birds knew they weren’t special, that no one wanted to look at them. I stared at the little creature, the wind tearing into its breast feathers. How did I know it was common? It could have been a rare Botswanan eagle sparrow I was looking at, it could have been the spot of the century. I saw myself, on the front cover of Bird Spotters’ World, signing autographs for bearded men, getting a lot of action from girls in windcheaters.
The small red light in the top corner told me that there was only one message on my machine. I’d hoped it would be Nicky but when I hit play a female voice rang round the room, the volume a little too loud. I didn’t recognize the voice. I was bending down to the radiator dial but when I realized who the voice belonged to I straightened right up again. She wasn’t the last person I’d expected to call me. I hadn’t expected her to call me at all.
‘Hello. Mr Rucker?’ Silence. ‘My name…My name is Louise Draper. I believe my husband spoke to you. I…I’d like you to call me. My number is 7790 8022. Can you call me, please?’
Her voice was as taut as an electric fence. Unlike her husband’s there was no north in it that I could hear; no accent, just stress. I stood, looking down at the phone. The first thing I wondered was how she’d got my number. Her husband? Nicky? I picked up the receiver and put it down. I had an instant and jarring hunch that I should walk down the hall, get a pastry from the cafe and chat for an hour with my friends Mike and Ally who run the place. Then go to a museum, or for a swim maybe at Ironmonger Row. Catch a matinee at the Screen on the Green. The receiver looked at me. No. Leave the phone where it is. I picked it up again and dialled. I was relieved when a machine kicked in but when I started to speak the line clicked open.
‘Hello. Hello. Mr Rucker?’
I owned up to that.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just the newspapers, they’ve been calling all morning.’ If her voice on the message had sounded strained, now it was ready to snap. ‘They just keep calling back, calling and calling. Jesus. Anyway. I’ve left the machine on. Thank you for returning my call.’
‘That’s okay.’ I didn’t tell her I nearly hadn’t. I didn’t tell her that the last thing I wanted to do was spend any more time chasing around after her husband. She didn’t know where that had led me.
‘You spoke to Jack, didn’t you? Yesterday.’
‘We spoke,’ I agreed. ‘He asked me for some help but we didn’t sort anything out.’
‘I know. I know.’ I could hear her thinking. ‘You were right. I told him. He should have gone to the police. Listen,’ she said, ‘can you come and see me?’
In the background I heard a doorbell ringing. I heard someone calling her name. I held the phone from my face and tried to picture Louise Draper, standing in her living room, the pack I’d seen outside. Did she know? Did she know yet? I couldn’t tell by her voice. She sounded terrible but so would any wife whose husband’s picture was next to that of his mistress, centre page in the Sun. Did she know that Alison had suffered a whole lot more than she had?
‘Can you tell me what it’s about?’ I said. ‘I should say that I don’t do divorce work, anything like that…’
‘It’s not that. I wouldn’t need you to watch him, would I, to catch him at it? A bit late for that. Something. I can’t talk over the phone. Something has happened.’ She did know. I could tell she did. She just didn’t know I knew too. ‘Listen. It’s not about what’s in the papers today. Oh, Christ.’ Her voice started to dissolve but she didn’t let it. ‘Can you just come…?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Really.’
‘Please, Mr Rucker. You know Nicky, don’t you? Please.’ The doorbell rang again. I thought I could hear the clatter of the letter box. ‘Oh shit. Shit.’ She paused again and I heard her taking three deep breaths. ‘You’ll see something on the news. I can’t tell you. Today or tomorrow. After that, can you come and see me? I’m not going to waste your time, not like Jack did. Please.’
Behind her voice was another, obviously coming through the letter box. Caring, patient. ‘Mrs Drapa? Mrs Drapa. Please. Do you have any reaction? Do you have a message for your husband? Is there anything you want to say to the giwl, Mrs Drapa?’ I heard the creak of the receiver, shifting in her hand.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘You’ll know what I mean. Please.�
��
She put the phone down.
* * *
I sat back in my chair and stretched, feeling slightly nauseous due to a dramatic imbalance between sleep and coffee. I thought about trying to steal some kip on the sofabed but there was too much going on in my head, a rave was being held in there without me having issued a licence. So. There would be something on the news. Mrs Draper was right there. I figured that Alison would have been found by now. It would only be a matter of time before someone would realize who she was. It may even have already happened. I imagined the operation that would be in progress, the wheels that would be turning. Alison was probably on her way to the morgue even now. Hoxton Square would be full of squad cars. People just curious would be hanging around, looking up at the building that was cordoned off with yellow tape, wondering what had happened, whether they’d get a glimpse. The papers would get onto it soon. The neighbours would be getting knocked up by serious-faced noddies. The search for Draper would begin. Alison’s flat would be crawling with forensics officers, photographers, detectives hoping that this would be the one to put them on the map.
I leaned forward on my desk, looking at the framed print of my brother that was propped up in front of me, and put myself in their carefully covered shoes. I was there, my first murder, nine, ten years ago, looking down at the body of an old Chinese woman, clubbed to death for her pension, we’d thought, until we’d seen the swastikas on the bathroom mirror. I was back with the tension, the hyper-reality. I’d had that urge, that electric urge to get in there, to find out, to detect. I shook my head. I didn’t have it now. All I wanted was to fade into the background, to close my eyes and go to sleep. Hopefully I wouldn’t even have to put Draper there, the police would do that. I was well out of it. I heard Louise Draper, pleading with me to go to see her. I saw myself standing up in Alison Everly’s vacant eye. I thought of the reason I’d joined the police force, why I’d wanted to be one of those men hovering round her corpse. Not to nick single mothers for shoplifting in supermarkets. For people like Alison. But no. I wasn’t a policeman any more. I’d stumbled in on her, that was all. I could still see Alison looking at me. I shook my head, stood up and walked out into the hall.
The cafe that serves the building is four doors away from me, made up of a compact unit with a tiny kitchen attached. It’s a pleasant, light space with four small tables covered in bright laminated tablecloths, an overabundance of pot ferns giving it a rainforest feel. The people who run it are even more pleasant; a young couple called Mike and Ally who had got married a couple of months ago, and I’d only recently shaken the hangover. Ally’s family had come over from Milan and Mike’s family had come over from West London and it had been the warmest and most riotous wedding I’d ever been to. Ally had looked so beautiful that Mike had hardly been able to speak when he saw her. He’d blubbed through his speech like a TV evangelist outside a cheap motel.
I’d been very happy for Mike and Ally, especially because I knew that in the six months prior to getting engaged they’d had quite a few problems. They’d spent five years living together in one small space and working together in another and I knew it was getting to them, largely because of the strain they sometimes showed on their faces or the sounds of raised voices that occasionally rang out into the hall once they’d shut up for the day. But they’d worked through their difficulties, and it had made me see that it was actually possible to do this. Sharon and I, the girl I’d been seeing for the two years prior to their wedding, hadn’t been able to. Our problems had grown into a wall until we’d lost sight of each other. But Ally and Mike showed that you can come out the other side, if you want to bad enough. I often wondered whether knowing this would be any help to Shulpa and me.
Ally was behind the small counter on the left, opening a box of Kit Kats, using long red nails instead of scissors. A stack of sandwiches sat next to her. Ally is a very pretty olive-skinned Milanese who met Mike when she was looking for a studio in the building for the jewellery she never got time to make any more. She took a place somewhere else, but kept coming back to look at spaces there, pretending she was interested. Every time, she stopped into Mike’s for a coffee.
‘On your own?’
Ally looked up and smiled. ‘Hi, Billy! How are you?’ Ally’s voice is like rich, expensive chocolate. She leaned forward and I kissed both of her cheeks. ‘No, Mike’s in the back.’
‘Doing the bleeding washing up as usual, mate!’ I could hear Mike, splashing around behind his wife. ‘Love, honour and obey. Why did I have to go and bloody say that? Why couldn’t I have just stopped after the first two, eh?’
I called out hi while Ally smiled and shook her head. She pushed a crinkle of shiny black hair behind a silver earring I knew she’d designed herself. I smiled too and lowered my voice.
‘And how is he?’ I said to her, nodding towards the kitchen. ‘Still not speaking to you?’
Mike came and stood beside his wife, wiping his hands with a tea towel. He’d heard what I’d said. Ally didn’t look at him.
‘Barely,’ she said. ‘But what can I do?’
‘Nothing,’ I told her. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’
Ally suddenly turned to Mike, dismissively. He folded his arms and raised both eyebrows.
‘See? Look at him. He blames me. Me!?! I don’t think he’ll ever stop blaming me.’ She put out her bottom lip, like a child. Mike’s expression didn’t change.
‘Don’t let it worry you,’ I said. ‘He knows that it wasn’t your fault. Deep down, he knows that.’
She shook her head. ‘I hope you’re right, Billy. I hope you’re right.’
Mike said, ‘Never. It was down to you. It had to be.’
Ally’s hands shot towards the ceiling. Then she set about arranging the Kit Kats.
‘What I tell you? I don’t even like the game. I don’t really care about Inter! Not really. But when he asks me who I was supporting I couldn’t lie to him, could I?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Of course I want Inter. I don’t even know why he took me. And why shouldn’t I cheer when we scored?’
‘Why? Because we were at Stamford Bridge, in the home end, that’s bleeding why! We were surrounded by the faithful. You even had a blue scarf on!’
‘It was cold! Sitting outside for hours. What do I care which colour it is. Milan is my home town! Of course I wanted them to win – even if it was against his beloved Chelsea.’
‘And he couldn’t accept that?’
‘Before, yes. He was okay – because he thought Chelsea would win. But when we won, and they were knocked out of this stupid European League thing, he says it was because of me! He says he goes to the match now and his friends give him a hard time for marrying a Milanese woman. And I say to him, you should have married that nice little girl from Acton who came to the wedding and cried every time she looked at you. Anyway.’ She turned to Mike. ‘Why you care, huh? Tell me. Why do you care about this? It was all Italians playing in the game anyway, and both of the managers. What does it matter which team of Italians wins?’
Mike had his wife’s slim neck in his hands when I left them.
‘You’re a witness! You’re a witness!’ Ally called out as I walked down the hall.
The rest of the day was spent like many others before it, on the concourse of King’s Cross Station, leaning against pillars, standing at food concessions or in W.H. Smith’s, my camera in my bag. It wasn’t long before the two girls I was looking for made their appearance; they came and stood exactly where Joe Nineteen had told me they would. They were a touch more sassy than the two who had been there yesterday, both a little older. They looked like any kids would have done and I had to check the pictures I had of them pretty carefully. No, it was them. Just standing there you would have thought they were waiting for some mates or something. Normal teenagers would probably not have started talking to a German businessman, though, fresh off the train. And they wouldn’t have gone off in a cab with
him.
I took the girls’ pictures before they disappeared and even managed to speak to them, asking them for a light, handing out some fags I’d bought for the purpose, telling them I was just waiting for my girlfriend who was coming down from Edinburgh. The girls seemed okay to me, they didn’t have that dead, grey cast to them. I looked but couldn’t see any needle tracks. They had a toughness to them, which seemed to say, ‘This isn’t getting to me, I’m in charge of this.’ They appeared to be feeding themselves well enough. It was only when I asked them where they came from that hesitation entered their eyes. One of them looked especially knocked by the question. Like a child learning to ride a bike, who suddenly realizes she isn’t being held onto any more.
I left the film I’d taken with Carl at the repro shop I use, and stayed chatting for a while. I asked after his boyfriend and he said he was fine and asked after Shulpa and I said she was fine too. I knew I was glossing over a lot and I expected he was too, but though we were friendly, it seldom went much beyond a casual chat. I enjoyed seeing him, though. I was glad that my normal life seemed to be retaking some sort of hold of me. I’d successfully put all thoughts of Alison Everly to one side, just as I had my tax form, until leaping out of bed to tackle it the day before.
But back at my flat, I couldn’t ignore her any more. It was a little after six. I tried Nicky’s mobile one more time but again it was off. I wanted to tell him the decision that had been making itself in my head while I was at King’s Cross. That when the police had picked Draper up, and they came looking for me, I was going to tell them I’d seen Draper going into Alison’s building. If the police didn’t come calling I’d leave it a bit and see what I could dig up – out of pure curiosity, and because whether I liked it or not, seeing Alison had connected me to what had happened to her. But I wouldn’t leave it for ever. If it looked like Draper was going to walk away from it, because no one had seen him there, then I was going to finger him. Not that I thought I’d have to. Suddenly, I realized: the two coppers who’d stopped me were bound to have noticed his car. They may even have spotted him. I didn’t think they’d need me to make a case against Jack Draper.