SuperJack

by Adam Baron

  SUPER JACK WANTED OVER

  STRIPPER SLAYING

  References were made to Jack’s past, to his frustrating injuries, to his ‘powder keg’ personality on the pitch. There was an interview with Draper’s sports agent, who had no comment to make other than that he had not seen his client, nor heard from him, in weeks.

  Before putting the tabloids aside I read a reworking of Alison’s story in the Mail, which supplanted lurid headlines with a very motherly ‘caring’ tone, obviously trying to point up the horrors of infidelity. Alison’s was a tale of sex and seduction, both of which Draper was, apparently, good at; and deceit, which he also managed pretty well. It told of hours of snatched happiness, long nights of loneliness, of dates and promises broken. ‘He said he loved me and I believed him,’ Alison was quoted as saying. ‘But he just wanted my body.’ She ended with the line: ‘It’s not me I’m sorry for really, I’ll find someone else. It’s his wife.’

  There was a picture of Draper’s wife in the centre of the page, struggling out of her house with her child. I finished the story, and then just looked at Alison. Her eyes. I thought I saw fear in them, or guilt, but it was probably just because I knew what had happened to her. Again it was overlaid with another face. A little girl, in a nurse’s outfit, smiling with pure glee.

  Once more, however, it was the Evening Standard that was pushing the story on and I could see why Draper wanted me to read it. The piece made both back and front pages and was written by none other than the editor. Like the rest of the tabloids, the Standard also noted that Draper was still nowhere. But they had, the editor claimed, come into the possession of notes that Draper had been making for an autobiography. It was another thing he hadn’t said anything to me about. The paper didn’t print any extracts, knowing that what they had was juice enough for now and they could always use the extracts later.

  The Standard claimed that the extracts they had made reference to some very sharp practices Draper had been witness to during his career. They told of bungs and bribes, match-fixing and gambling syndicates, of players feigning injury to get their price lowered, having been promised a pay-off by the teams coming in to buy them. The Standard went on about the Bosman ruling, which allowed any player to own his own contract. Draper was alleging that after it came into effect big clubs often bribed players in smaller outfits to see their contracts out to the end, so they wouldn’t have to pay a fee to sign them. The alleged offences had happened right up until the end of Draper’s career, not just at the beginning, and would shock people who believed the game had cleaned up its act. What the paper was really excited about, however, was that in the extracts they had got their hands on Draper did one very important thing. He named names.

  I read the article twice, and thought about what Draper had actually tried to find me for. The photographs posted to him, even the cat’s head. Had the person responsible gone even further? Draper had said he had a list of names, and then I’d got him so worked up he’d done one before he’d gone through them with me. And now he’d been scared off before I could ask him about it. By the sound of it the list was pretty long. If the Standard was to be believed there would hardly be a single person, player or coach, involved in football who wouldn’t want to get him into trouble. Had someone from his past really killed Alison, to land him in it? Had he been stitched up? Why not just kill Jack himself? Had he been stitched up or did he just want the world to think that?

  I sat back, downed my coffee, and looked at the note Draper had given me. Did I want to get involved in this? Sally had asked me the same thing about Nicky but I’d had no doubts there. I shook my head. I didn’t really have a choice here either. The police were polite enough this time but it wouldn’t be long before someone linked me to Draper, through Nicky or someone who’d seen us in Fred’s. They’d want some answers as to what I’d really been doing there. I stood up and walked through what was now sleet, to my car.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There were still quite a few photographers outside number fourteen when I got to Stepney Green. I knew there would also be a police officer or two sitting in one of the seemingly innocent cars opposite the house, in case Jack ran out of socks and came back for some more. A no-win job that, one I’d always hated. There was never any way a missing suspect was going to return home once he knew he was wanted, no way at all, but if he did, and you missed him, you’d be back in a silly blue hat before the day was out. I drove past the house and looked for a place to park.

  I’d binned the note Draper had given me but brought the envelope along, stuffed with old carrier bags. I pulled into a quiet cul-de-sac where I was less likely to get a ticket and looked at my watch. Midday. Driving down the street took me straight back to the night before last and yet again I couldn’t get the image of Alison Everly out of my head. I felt like a landlord with a tenant he can’t evict. She was lying on her sofa, but already I couldn’t be sure if I was seeing her as she was, or as she had become inside me, her image from the newspaper lying alongside the body I’d seen. I saw my picture in her eye, as if it would stay there once I had gone. I felt bound to her, bound in a similar way that I am to the kids I look for. As soon as I have their photograph in my hand it’s as if there’s an instant covenant between us, they’re part of me, until I make contact. Some, I never do make contact with. Some just go back home and their parents sometimes remember to tell me. Some just vanish, and I take their pictures out of their files sometimes, just to look at them. They always look back. The thread is still there and there’s only one way to cut it. And that’s what I was doing on Stepney Green. While I knew that I’d drop everything to get Nicky out of the jam he was in, it didn’t really affect the way I felt about Alison.

  She was, as the man said, looking at me.

  I locked up and walked out of the cul-de-sac and back up the street. Stepney Green is a wide road with a series of gardens running down the middle, guarded by tall black railings. To the right of the gardens a very narrow, cobbled lane separated them from a series of surprisingly beautiful Georgian and Victorian houses, one particularly impressive example of which, four storeys high with a rather grandiose entranceway, was undergoing renovation. It was a strange area to look at, the skyline a mixture of pleasant old brick housing and tatty grey tower blocks where the V2s had landed. I walked on the left of the road, past a row of cheap, 60s shoeboxes, up to the red-brick dwellings I’d noticed on my last visit there. They were put up in 1899 by the East End Building Company. I knew this because of the architectural qualities of the building, the shape and style, as well as the research I had done into the area as part of my detailed and methodical investigative procedures. Not because of the plaque on the wall.

  The curtains of number fourteen were closed, both upstairs and down. The house looked empty but I knew it wasn’t. I received a little attention as I walked towards the photographers, an even bigger group today, all dressed in the sort of coat I was wearing myself. The attention waned as I made my way through them, up to the door of number sixteen, but it didn’t disappear completely. I leaned on the bell.

  ‘Special delivery,’ I said, when I heard footsteps on the other side of the newly painted blue door. I turned the package in my hand over. ‘For Dr Flowers.’

  The door opened and there was Dr Flowers, or at least a man who claimed to be him. He was tall and blond, good-looking in a withdrawn, nervous kind of way. He took the package from me and squinted at it through a pair of tortoiseshells, pretending to read the address.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Thanks. Do I need to sign?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I have to get a pen. Do come in, it’s freezing out there.’

  The doctor held the door open for me and I took a step forward, glancing at the men gathering on the street next door. None of them was paying any attention to me. I walked into the hallway and the doctor closed the door behind me.

  He told me that he was indeed Richard Flowers and we shook hands. ‘Good performance?’ he
asked.

  ‘You should contact the RSC.’

  The doctor looked ever so slightly pleased with himself.

  ‘Anything exciting?’ He held the package up.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well, never mind. But I’m glad you’re here, I have to leave soon.’ He looked worried for a second. ‘It is Mr Rucker, yes?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Right. Come through,’ the doctor said. ‘I know Louise is waiting.’

  I followed the doctor down the hall and into the kitchen, which looked out onto a surprisingly large garden. He unlocked the door and peered out, down towards a high wall at the bottom, topped with broken glass.

  ‘Journalists,’ he explained. ‘They’ve tried getting over there. The police warned them off but you never know. Coast is clear now, though. Follow me.’

  He led me out of the back door, across the top of the garden, past a herb bed made up mostly of rosemary, strong enough to give off a mild scent even at that time of the year. There was a short wall separating the property from its neighbour, which gave way to a high fence. Set in the wall was a door, which the doctor pushed open. He put his head through and I could see him looking down towards the end of next door’s garden too.

  ‘This way,’ he said, after a second.

  * * *

  Louise Draper met us in the small conservatory that had been added on to the kitchen of her own house. I’d looked for traces of blood on the back door, but hadn’t been able to see any. Louise was washing some dishes. She looked up with a bright, forced smile, her eyes somewhere completely else, and thanked Richard Flowers for his help. He gave her a quiet smile back, while she stripped the gloves from her hands and untied the apron she was wearing.

  ‘Michael not giving you any trouble?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘No,’ she assured him. ‘You know he never does. I’ll send him round. He’s upstairs.’

  ‘Right,’ the doctor said.

  Louise and the doctor chatted for a while, making mutual babysitting arrangements. Her voice was a slight surprise. It was a lot softer than it had sounded over the phone. I stood, vaguely listening, my hands crossed in front of me, looking at Louise, occasionally glancing out of the window at some garden birds, jockeying for position around a small net of nuts hanging from a bird table. I had a brief flash of the bird I’d seen, outside my office window. Then the doctor left, shutting the door behind him quietly, and Louise walked towards me, giving me a slim, long hand to shake. It was a firm hand, which she left in mine a little longer than usual the way some people do. I smiled at her, wondering what she must be thinking after the week she’d had, and took my hand back. She thanked me for calling, for coming round. Then we stood for a second, neither of us speaking.

  Louise Draper was a petite, attractive woman, with an awkward, doe-like quality that softened her brittle, doll-like figure. She moved with nervous, skittish gestures, as though there were foxes on the wind, and I didn’t know whether to put this down to her character or her situation. I saw her stomping out into the night the way she had, careless of the rain, and could hardly believe it was the same woman. But that was only after receiving strange mail and a rather gruesome delivery.

  She was yet to be a wronged wife with a wanted husband and a pack of baying photographers outside.

  Louise was dressed in a pair of tight black pedal pushers and a turquoise halter top, a ribbon of taught stomach visible where the two just failed to meet. Her thin, muscular arms looked very naked against the cold, broad windows. Louise had full, deep black hair, the kind you see in slow motion on shampoo ads, setting off the flawless skin that was given a light, amber sheen from what looked like the discreet use of a sunbed, but could easily have been her natural skin tone.

  Louise had looked relaxed enough when the doctor was there, but soon began to tense up. The atmosphere stiffened, became more and more brittle. It affected me too. I felt clumsy, bigger than her, and I didn’t quite know where to put myself. Louise’s eyes flickered constantly, looking at me then moving away before I could get a hold on her. Her eyes were small, light brown with bright blue flecks. Rimmed with red. The face surrounding them was small and just slightly squashed in on itself, as if she’d just woken up. She looked shaky, uncertain, the girlish face that on another day would have put her at college age now making it impossible to say how old she was.

  It was a slight relief when Louise walked out into the living room and called out ‘Michael!’ up the stairs. When she came back into the kitchen she smiled faster than a subliminal advert and asked me if I wanted tea or coffee. I said I was easy, whatever she was having. I watched as she bent down for a cafetiere, then as she reached on tiptoes for some cups. She still moved very awkwardly and I was again relieved when she said why don’t I wait next door. I gave her a closed-mouth smile and walked into the darkened living room, the curtains closed, where I sat on a long, maroon-coloured sofa. My eyes moved round a well-kept room, the furniture new, the fittings modern Laura Ashley, but still Laura Ashley. The curtains were closed. I’d seen a riding crop protruding from a pair of boots by the back door and on the coffee table in front of me was a copy of Horse and Rider.

  The doctor’s son walked down the stairs and after we’d spoken he went out through the kitchen. Through the door I saw Louise giving him a Kit Kat to take with him, then tousling his hair, making him blush. She walked through with a tray in her hands and I glanced away as she leaned over in front of me to set it on a coffee table, before hitting the switch on an uplighter near the sofa.

  ‘It’s decaf I’m afraid,’ Louise said, her eyes never leaving me. ‘Jack drinks it, he says it’s a special brand, but I still hate it. I haven’t been able to get any fresh. I’m sorry but I’ve been a bit of a mess these last few days.’

  ‘That’s okay. I drink too much anyway. And I understand.’

  Louise sat down on the other end of the sofa, her delicate frame making little impression on the deep cushions. She looked at me, feeling it necessary to try to sustain a smile, as if it were the vicar who’d called. She looked like a child, pretending to be grown up. I gave her a reassuring grin and reached into my bag for my notebook.

  There was a baby monitor on the tray and Louise checked the volume before setting it down on top of the magazine. She pressed the plunger on the glass jug and carefully poured beef-smelling coffee into two cups, asking me if I wanted milk. She was affecting an air of nonchalance that wouldn’t have got her into drama school. I tried to match it, probably doing just as well.

  ‘A little please, Mrs Draper,’ I said, not really caring. ‘But no sugar.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, her hand going to a small, gold earring. ‘That’s how I have it too. And it’s Louise, okay? Mrs Draper. It’s what the police called me.’

  I nodded, and promised to call her by her Christian name from now on. We sat along the sofa from each other, Louise side-on to me, her legs pressed tight together, resting her cup on her knees. The sofa was expensive but she didn’t look comfortable. She drank her coffee like a child, holding the cup with both hands. There were no goosebumps on her arms but they still looked cold. I wished she’d pull a jumper on. I had the impulse to take them in my hands and rub them for her.

  ‘Before you ask me anything, I should say that I spoke to my, to Jack last night. He called when I was at a friend’s. He wouldn’t say where he was. He told me to ask you to help him. He said I should give you a thousand pounds if you agreed, but more if you wanted. He didn’t tell me how much more.’

  I took a sip and nodded, trying not to wince, before putting my cup down on the low table. Should I tell her I’d just seen Jack? I didn’t know. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ I said. ‘Your husband is a friend of a friend, so if I help it’ll be for a favour, not for cash. I don’t know what use I’ll be, though.’ I thought of the things I could tell the police. They may have clocked his car like I told Draper, or they may not. Either way, they wouldn’t help him. ‘You see
, what I find might do him more harm than good. I don’t want his money, because I don’t want to hide anything. Do you understand?’

  Mrs Draper thought about it then nodded, slowly. She looked down at an impressive rock on her left hand and turned the band that was next to it. ‘You mean that you might prove Jack did kill that girl. Just as easily as you might prove he didn’t?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. And if he did, then I’m not going to help him. If he did do what it seems he’s being accused of, I hope they catch him for it. So I don’t want to take his money, only then to do more harm to him than good.’

  Louise pursed her lips and nodded slowly. Suddenly, she looked completely lost, tiny on the oversized sofa, like Alice in a nightmare Wonderland. When she saw me looking at her she pulled herself together and set her cup down next to mine. She reached into her purse and pulled out a chequebook.

  ‘Really,’ I said. I held up my hands. ‘I don’t want Jack to pay me. In fact, I won’t take his money…’

  ‘This is mine,’ Louise said quickly. Her voice was struggling for authority like a salmon fighting upstream. ‘And though I know Jack wants you to clear his name, so that he can come out of wherever it is he’s hiding, that’s not what I want. That’s not why I called you. Not at all. I want to know the truth. I want to know whether I’m married to a murderer or not. A murderer as well as a bastard. You can understand that, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said quickly, ‘that makes sense to me.’

  ‘So it’s me who’s employing you, not him. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good,’ Louise said.

  I took a deep breath and waited patiently while Louise wrote the cheque. I still didn’t know whether to tell her that I’d seen her husband. She handed the cheque to me and I left it on the coffee table. I was about to start asking her some questions, most of them pretty difficult, when she beat me to it.