by Mark Burnell
Jan 06 Smith called. Watching and watched.
Watching and watched? Stephanie travelled through time, scrolling up and down the pages of the diary. She traced Smith’s first entry into the journal.
Jul 22 Spoke to Beth Marriot, widow of NE027 captain—turned down request for an interview. Contacted by ‘friend’ who wants to help. Will deliver information.
Jul 25 Contact of 22nd left package this morning. Incredible—clearly a crank! Signed Smith. Question—how did he find me? How did he know?
Stephanie proceeded slowly, assembling the bare bones of Proctor’s information. From the abbreviated notes in the diary, she saw how his initial opinion of Smith was gradually undermined. Each entry seemed to nudge him a little further along Smith’s path. The other contacts—the relatives and friends of the dead—made fewer and fewer appearances in the log until, on November 30, they ceased altogether, apart from Proctor’s first contact with Stephanie in mid-December. In passing, she saw two familiar names—Bradfield and Qadiq—which brought her back to the central questions: who killed Proctor? Why? And what about her? If Proctor’s flat had been under surveillance, the killer would have known that she was living there. Perhaps his murder had been more impulsive than that.
One of the disks had ‘Smith’ scrawled across the label in green felt-tip. Stephanie placed it into the computer. There were only three files on the disk. One of them detailed Smith’s version of the story, as told to Proctor.
Smith had become aware of Caesar—the name he, or maybe someone else, had ascribed to the alleged bomber of NE027—when he had access to knowledge of an MI5 surveillance operation. It wasn’t clear whether Smith was actually part of the surveillance team detailed to watch Caesar, or whether he was running the operation, or whether he had no part in it but had, one way or the other, learned of its existence. Stephanie supposed the obfuscation was deliberate. It was clear that Smith had questioned the suitability of such an operation, only to be rebuffed by a higher authority. He claimed that SIS were aware of Caesar’s presence in London, as were factions within Scotland Yard. He also claimed that Caesar was currently masquerading as a student at Imperial College at the University of London, and he had even noted the course he was taking: a Postgraduate Study in Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology.
Smith’s outrage, Proctor noted, had felt genuine. And justified. Here was a man who had placed a bomb on an aircraft full of innocents—who had murdered them all—and who was now walking around London, as a free man, in the full knowledge of those agencies whose job it was to hunt such people and bring them to justice. Worse still, he was passing himself off as a student, living off government-funded grants paid for by the British taxpayer. Proctor, it seemed, had been persuaded of Smith’s integrity simply by the tone of his voice, since the two men never actually met.
During another conversation, Smith had warned Proctor to be careful about those with whom he spoke. Questions to the police, for instance, would inevitably be referred upwards and, sooner or later, someone on the inside would see his name. A direct approach to MI5 or SIS would obviously be swatted aside, in the first instance, and who could say what the longer-term consequences of such an action might be? The inference was clear. Tread cautiously, stay in the shadows, whisper it softly.
* * *
I am lying in bed, fully-clothed beneath the sheets, blankets and orange bedspread. The wall-mounted heater is on and radiating a pathetic amount of warmth. I am shivering but it has nothing to do with the fact that I am cold.
It is ten-to-midnight. There is a prostitute in the room to my left. She’s been intermittently busy since half-past-eight this evening. The headboard of her bed smacks the wall between us when she’s earning. I’m surprised she doesn’t break it since the partition is so thin I can hear nearly everything that is said between her and her clients. Those sad exchanges; the insincere teases and the lies. The whispers and moans of encouragement, the grunts and groans of faked release, I know her vocabulary in all its depressing entirety. I am her.
As for my shaking frame, who can say? It’s shock, certainly, and it was only a matter of time before I succumbed to it. Frankly, I’m surprised I lasted this long. But is there also something else?
Every time I close my eyes, I see Proctor, twisted and torn, drained, quite literally, of life. Or I see him as a kind man, someone who didn’t deserve to die, someone quite unlike me. All day, I was ruled by reason and protected from emotion. But now I am too tired to resist. An overwhelming sadness rises up within me and threatens to drown me. I think of his injuries and the sickening process that created them. And the fact that but for a cruel coincidence of timing—a coincidence born of my brutal behaviour—I would have been there when Proctor’s killer called. And either the two of us, as a team, would have survived, which is a jewel to add to my treasure-chest of guilt, or I would have gone the same way as him.
So, what of me now? Proctor’s kindness gave me a chance. Six weeks ago, my fate was sealed, as it had been for the last two years. A gradual slide towards an inevitable end, perhaps as a consequence of an overdose, perhaps at the hands of a psychopathic client, perhaps as a suicide. But he changed that and offered me an alternative. The way he treated me acted as a buffer between who I used to be and who I’d become. He showed me there was a choice. He was dependable and honest, and it seems that I’d come to rely upon him more than I ever realized because now that he’s dead, I already feel as though I’m losing control again.
It is only now that it’s really starting to sink in. He’s never coming back. The rock is gone. I’m by myself. Shock aside, I’m petrified, that’s why I’m shaking. I’m terrified of myself because I know what I can do to myself and there’s no longer anyone around to stop me. I am my own enemy.
Despite the fear, however, there is something else I feel. It is lurking in a small, dark corner deep within my soul. It is festering, feeding on itself, waiting.
It is anger.
9
A new morning, a new mood. Stephanie wasn’t sure what time it was when she finally fell asleep but it was after four. In the end, sheer exhaustion conquered shock. Now, three hours later, she was awake again. The fear was still with her, just beneath the surface, but for the first time since Proctor’s catastrophic kiss, Stephanie felt she was in control of herself again.
She spent three hours checking the remains of the contents of the floppy-disks. Then she packed her two bags, left the Sherburn House Hotel and ate slices of toast and drank coffee in a nearby café. Afterwards, she found the nearest ATM and drew another two hundred pounds against Proctor’s Visa card. She bought a pack of floppy-disks so that she could make copies of the originals for her own protection. She needed somewhere safe to hide Proctor’s information and that was a problem since anywhere that required her to provide proof of her identity was out of the question. There was one place that came to mind, but there were other, more serious risks associated with it. In the end, however, she saw little alternative. So she bought a small torch.
She checked into another hotel, close to Waterloo Station. It was no smarter than the Sherburn House Hotel and was equally anonymous. For most of the rest of the day she went through Proctor’s disks again, selecting the files she wanted to copy, filling two new disks in the process. Late in the afternoon, she was ready to conceal the lap-top and the original seven disks.
She thought a hot bath might have a calming effect. For half an hour, she let the water work its way into her body, turning her skin pink. When the temperature cooled, she added more hot water. Steam rose from the surface, shrouding her head, drawing beads of sweat to her face. When she climbed out of the bath, she wiped the condensation from the mirror and examined herself. Although hardly voluptuous, there was more flesh on her than at any time in the past two years. Her breasts had grown, her thighs had assumed some muscle, her ribs were less prominent. As for her face, much of the gauntness had gone. So had the dark smudges beneath the eyes and her skin looked i
ncomparably healthier. By any standard, the changes of the past six weeks were extraordinary. But they were not enough. She was still Stephanie. Or rather, she was still Lisa.
The prospect of returning to Brewer Street made her extremely nervous.
* * *
Waiting for darkness had been a good idea; there was less chance of her being recognized. To make it yet harder, she had bought a black baseball cap with Newcastle United written across the front in silver letters from a pavement trader on New Coventry Street. She’d pulled it low, creating a greater shadow across her face. Wearing Proctor’s Aran jersey, not her customary sweatshirt, as well as his blue silk scarf, she’d also tried to alter her gait a little. With her heart hammering, she had walked through the familiar streets, homing in on the one place she had sworn to avoid for the rest of her life.
Now, however, the darkness was a handicap. She was on the fire-escape at the rear of the building next to the one in which she used to work. She thought it safer not to use the torch she had bought that morning; she didn’t relish drawing any attention to herself. The only source of light came from cracks in curtains and the gaps left by badly-fitted blinds.
The fire-escape was steep and narrow. It felt unsafe and seemed to sway under her weight, threatening to tear free from the crumbling bricks. She didn’t remember it being so frail. She reached the top, a small square landing leading to a door with a padlocked bolt. Except that the bolt had nowhere to slide to; the frame was rotten. It took three heaves with the shoulder to force it open, the bottom scraping against naked floorboards.
Only when she was inside and had closed the door behind her did she dare use the torch. The attic was identical in basic design to the attic in the next building. Originally, the buildings had been one. When they were sold separately, the new owners of the building next door had converted their attic into a small apartment, whereas the owners of the attic in which she now stood had left it empty. There was a door set in the wall between the two. She shone her torch at the door. The fact that no one in the other building knew about it was not a surprise. It was stuck behind a wardrobe that hadn’t been moved in years. Besides, men like Dean West were not renowned for their interest in the structural developments of the buildings they owned; they were only concerned with the money-making enterprises that occurred within them. Stephanie had discovered the door by accident when trying to recover a lost earring that had rolled beneath the wardrobe. Later, from Brewer Street, she had seen that the next-door building’s attic windows were boarded up. When she investigated the building from the alley behind, she’d climbed the fire-escape and learned that the door at the top of it was not secured, as it appeared, but open to anyone prepared to give it a good push.
Inside, it was lightless, musty and mostly empty. Just like it always had been. Stephanie suspected that she was the only person to have been in the place for at least a decade. There was an old water-tank that was no longer in use, some discarded packing cases and several tightly-bound piles of newspapers and magazines dating back to the Seventies. Stephanie had learned that on the floor below there was a private pornographic screening-room and that when the room was being sound-proofed the builders had sealed and concealed the access to the attic.
Having originally discovered the attic, she’d begun to treat it as an occasional bolt-hole, always taking care to make sure she was not seen entering or leaving. Quite frequently, it had served as her bedroom for the night, which was a less than pleasant experience. It was draughty and cold, and a home to rats. But when nowhere else could be found, it was better than sleeping in the rain. Now, having served as a part-time hideaway, the attic was to serve as a safe deposit box.
She placed the computer inside the empty, rusted water-tank. Then she removed one of the many loose floorboards and taped the plastic pouch containing the seven disks to the underside of one of its secure neighbours. Finally, she replaced the floorboard and then counted the wooden planks back to the door that opened on to the fire-escape, noting how far left she had moved.
* * *
I remember the Christmas when my father broke his ankle. He slipped on ice and fell awkwardly. I remember the crutches he used and the cheap lights on our Christmas tree. I remember the snow that fell that year and that our Swiss grandparents came to stay with us in Falstone. These things are my first memories. At least, I think they are. But maybe this is a cosy invention of the imagination; I would not be the first person to rewrite history.
Now, at a moment when I am at my most lonely, the memory is unleashed. These are the things that rise up and overwhelm me: chewing-gum stuck beneath my school desk; me picking on David and then feeling guilty, and that guilt eventually fermenting into an anger which was directed at him since he was the source of it; the winter night that Jimmy Craig—a local farmer who sold us lamb and beef—drowned in the North Tyne; our first family holiday abroad in Switzerland; Sarah biting me because I’d been teasing her about her acne; ‘Transformer’ by Lou Reed—the first album I bought; ‘Perfect Day’—the first song to send a shiver through me; my parents arguing in the kitchen over whether Christopher, aged sixteen, should be allowed to spend a weekend in London with a friend of his; my first suspension from school for drinking alcohol; the death of Matilda, our first brindled Boxer—I cried myself to sleep for a week; chicken pox—we all had it; me sipping red wine for the first time and finding it filthy; Christopher’s first girlfriend—Laura, a chubby blonde with metal girders restraining her buck teeth; being car-sick on a hot afternoon on the way back from Seahouses; shopping at Fenwick’s in Newcastle—my mother’s temper was never shorter than when she was in a crowded store; my first cigarette, a Benson & Hedges, given to me by Michael Carter, a thirteen-year-old classmate, in exchange for a kiss—his was the first tongue to touch mine; the smell of Sunday lunch wafting from the kitchen to every part of our house; standing outside on Midsummer’s Eve beneath a sapphire night sky; my first driving lesson in a Ford Fiesta with an instructor whose eyes spent more time on my breasts than on the road; Polly’s christening—I found it hard to believe that Christopher had become a father and that I had become an aunt; the blow-job that was my first paid act of sex—I got twenty pounds for it.
It is four in the morning, the hour at which we are at our most vulnerable, the hour at which we most want to rewrite our history and secure our future.
* * *
In the morning, Stephanie changed hotels again. She took the Underground to Queensway. She drew another two hundred pounds from a Barclays ATM on the junction of Queensway and Moscow Road, before finding a hotel in Inverness Terrace. A long, black TV aerial cable hung from the roof of the King’s Court Hotel. It fell to within fifteen feet of the ground and swayed in the stiff wind. The first-floor French windows opened on to crumbling balconies. Weeds sprouted miraculously from flaking plaster. There was a handwritten sign taped to the patterned glass of the front door’s window. It said: ‘No Jobs, No Dogs’.
Later, Stephanie took the Central Line to Tottenham Court Road, and then walked down to Shaftesbury Avenue, near its junction with Wardour Street, where Barry Green’s ticketing agency was located. The agency was on the first floor, its ground-floor entrance sandwiched between a newsagent and a restaurant.
The previous evening, Stephanie had been scared to return to this part of the West End. Now, with determination outweighing anxiety, she was cold to the risk.
The agency was familiar territory. This was where Green sold drugs to customers he knew well, although he never kept any product on the premises; the agency was too useful a cover to place in such obvious jeopardy. Stephanie knew the routine only too well. One entered the office and placed an order with Green, who then made a phone call to establish where and when it could be picked up. But the cash had to be in Green’s hand before one left the room. There were no exceptions to this rule. Those who preferred a direct exchange were invited to conduct their business elsewhere.
Stephanie climbed the stairs to the fir
st floor, aware of the tightness in her stomach. She entered the office, its windows sporting gold painted letters in reverse so that from Shaftesbury Avenue one saw: BARRY GREEN—LONDON’S PREMIER TICKET AGENCY. On the walls, there were promotional posters for Chicago and every other West End hit. There was a board on an aluminum easel that listed a string of pop and rock acts, beside their dates, venues and prices. A sign by the tan leather sofa claimed to guarantee seats for any home fixture for Arsenal, Spurs or Chelsea.
Behind a pair of matt-black desks sat a pair of bottle-bleached blondes. They wore too much make-up, powdered peach cheeks clashing violently with rose-red lips. Stephanie suddenly felt acutely uncomfortable rushing to such a quick and damning judgement.
Sitting in the far corner, apparently minding his own business—he was reading a copy of The Sun—was a man who might have been a customer waiting for tickets. He wore a pale grey suit, a khaki shirt and a thin, purple tie. Stephanie recognized him as a man paid to prevent undesirables from reaching Green’s private office, or to eject those who had already sneaked in. She couldn’t remember his name. His head snapped up from his tabloid when Stephanie marched past the receptionists and headed for the door behind them. Normally, he would have intercepted her before her fingers touched the handle but recognition, followed by astonishment, dulled his reaction.
Green was standing by a window overlooking Shaftesbury Avenue. He was on his mobile, laughing coarsely, sharing a joke. ‘Nice one!’ he chortled several times.
He was short and stout with a fat face, a collection of chins and thinning black hair. What remained was combed tightly back over the ears. He had bushy black eyebrows, a broad nose, thick lips and a swollen tongue. He was wearing black slacks, fake Gucci slip-ons and a Nike sweatshirt with JVC across the back. Five of his fat fingers sported rings, three on the left, two on the right. A thick gold identity bracelet circled his left wrist and clinked against an Omega watch designed for deep-sea divers.