by Ann Granger
‘No,’ I agreed, because she was appealing to me for support. I’ve never met an overweight person yet who didn’t have a good reason why he/she can’t slim. But something Cheryl had said caused an idea to pop into my head. It was a startling one but, before I could explore it, Cheryl returned to the matter of Allerton’s extra-marital romps.
‘But generally none of those little slips mean anything. They’re just by way of human nature. A man is a man, isn’t he? He’s not the angel Gabriel. The boss was a good husband. That girl, Lisa, she’s broken up a good marriage. I bet she don’t care one bit!’ Cheryl nodded. ‘It’s like all these celebrities you read about in the papers. Some girl writes a kiss-and-tell book, and half the time there’s nothing to tell. But the damage is done.’
‘Cheryl,’ I said carefully, ‘the impression I’ve got talking to Lisa is that she didn’t want to break up any marriage. I don’t think she wants Mickey Allerton, not in that way, you know. Not to be married to him.’
Cheryl leaned forward. ‘That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want her, does it? It’s the way it goes. If you can’t have something, you want it all the more. Anyway, who knows what that girl wants? She’s deep, that one. I never trusted her, nor did my husband. He remembers when she first came to the club. Someone had told her the boss was asking about, wanting to take on new dancers. She just turned up one morning looking all sweet and innocent and “oh, I’d love to work here, Mr Allerton!” The boss fell for it and he fell for her, just like that!’ Cheryl clicked her fingers. ‘You could see his eyes glaze over, my husband said. So he took her on and mark you, she was a good little dancer and she had that stuff what the French talk about.’
I ran this through my brain a few times and gave up. ‘What stuff the French talk about, Cheryl?’
‘I’m not good with foreign words,’ Cheryl confided. ‘Gee nee sez koi.’
‘Je ne sais quoi?’ I ventured.
‘That’s it, that’s what she had. But then what? She runs off.’ Cheryl paused. ‘A man like Mr Allerton,’ she said, ‘he can deal with most situations. But he’s never known how to deal with that one, not from the beginning.’
This I had already realised. It was why he’d called me in.
Cheryl was looking as if she was regretting discussing Allerton so freely. She pulled herself up from the chair. ‘I’ll be going, dear. I’m glad I’ve seen you and been able to explain. I’ll keep looking for Bonnie and again, I’m so sorry. You’ve been really nice about it. It makes me feel worse.’
I reassured her and saw her out. She’d given me a lot to think about.
I sat puzzling it out for a while and made a decision. I looked at my watch. It was gone eleven. People who weren’t out enjoying themselves or doing night work would now be going to bed. But there was another category of person who sat up half the night: the Internet surfers.
I climbed the stairs to the top flat in the house. Malcolm lived there. We never saw much of him because he slept all day and came out at night, like Dracula. That was because during the night hours the rest of the world was on the Web and he could communicate with all the chatrooms and weird websites he frequented without leaving his room. On the rare occasions he did emerge he had a pale, unhealthy look like a plant that lacks sunlight. Ganesh suspected him of being a hacker busy finding his way into government records, banking accounts and any kind of place he shouldn’t be. But I argued there was no reason to believe that. Malcolm was harmless, just odd and lacking a proper life. The only exercise he got was playing computer games. There are hundreds if not thousands like him.
I knocked at his door and, when he didn’t answer, knocked again more loudly. I kept it up because I knew he was at home until eventually I heard sounds of movement. The door opened a crack. Like Hari, Malcolm economised on electric lighting. He didn’t need it. His world was bathed in an eerie bluish colour emanating from the monitor of his computer. It gave his skin a strange white fluorescent tinge and ringed his eyes with dark shadows.
He blinked at me. ‘Hello, Fran.’
‘Sorry to disturb you, Mal,’ I said. ‘I hope you’re not busy.’
Faint signs of animation crossed his countenance. ‘I found this really cool new website belonging to—’
I didn’t let him finish. I had a horrible feeling it would prove to be devoted to something I’d rather not know about. In the meantime there was something I did want to know about.
‘Mal,’ I said. ‘I need your help. That is, I need your help to look up something on the Internet.’
He brightened and stood back, gesturing me past him. ‘Right, come on in.’
I went in and he closed the door behind us. At such moments I do wonder why I don’t tell someone else what I intend to do before I do it, just as Ganesh says I should. Too late to worry about it now. The flat smelled stuffy, of fast food represented by empty foil trays abandoned around the place, of cannabis smoked not recently but recently enough, and of overheated plastic. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mal’s computer didn’t spontaneously combust.
Mal hovered over me, tall, thin, gangling and bearing an uncanny resemblance to an alien in one of those very old Doctor Who episodes. He didn’t smell too fresh, either. He had holes in his jeans which might have been a fashion statement in anyone else but in Malcolm simply meant they were old and worn out. His cotton T-shirt was also washed to a faded grey; it had probably started out black. The logo of a heavy metal band printed on it had almost disappeared, only ghostly outlines of their hirsute faces left.
‘Coffee?’ he suggested.
‘Just had some, thanks.’ Mal’s coffee was even more of an unknown quantity than he was.
He dragged a chair towards the screen. ‘OK, then. Sit down,’ he invited.
We settled down cosily and Malcolm demonstrated for me the wonders of the World Wide Web.
Chapter Eleven
It rained overnight. I lay awake listening to the steady patter of the drops against the window. When I was a kid I always felt safe, lying in bed and hearing the rain outside. But tonight I was wondering where Bonnie was and if she had managed to find shelter. I pictured her wet and hungry. Ganesh had told me he’d informed the police and the RSPCA about her. I would check with the dog pound and the rescue centre before I left for Oxford.
I was ashamed now that, when I knew Ivo was dead, I’d taken some comfort in knowing Bonnie couldn’t any longer fall into his hands. My feeling had been instinctive but nonetheless selfish. In the end his death was causing me endless problems and now came Bonnie’s loss on top of everything else, almost as if I were being punished for my satisfaction that a man had lost his life. I debated whether to delay my trip. But Ganesh had now arranged with Hari to take time off and he’d be at my door first thing in the morning expecting us to head for Paddington Station. Besides, Lisa needed the passport as soon as possible if she was to get her cheap flight to Amsterdam. But what did I owe Lisa? And should I help her duck out from the mess she had created?
This led my thoughts in the direction of the information gleaned from the Internet with the help of Malcolm. I was working out a whole new theory regarding events in Oxford. The trouble was, theories are fine but I needed something to convince me I was on the right lines and not just letting my imagination run away with me.
Eventually I got up and switched on the television, made a cup of tea and settled down to watch an ancient horror movie. At some point I fell asleep because I was still there when awoken by the peal of the doorbell. I sat up with a start. Outside it was already daylight and a glance at my watch showed the time to be eight thirty. I scrambled from the sofa, yelping as my stiffened joints protested, and made a crab-like scuttle to open the door and admit Ganesh.
‘You look as if you’ve just woken up,’ he said accusingly.
‘I fell asleep watching TV,’ I explained as he followed me into the flat. ‘Put the kettle on while I shower, will you?’
When I got back fully dressed, Ganesh had made breakfast. ‘
There wasn’t enough milk for cereal,’ he said. ‘I made toast. But there isn’t any butter, either. Don’t you keep any basic necessities in that fridge? I found some of this.’ He produced a jar half filled with scabby-looking marmalade.
‘I don’t need anything,’ I said. ‘Thanks all the same.’
Ganesh pointed at the toast. ‘Eat it. I’ve had breakfast with Hari. You shouldn’t start for Oxford on an empty stomach.’
I sat down and managed to find enough of the marmalade without odd-looking foreign objects in it to spread on the toast. ‘Have you got that mobile of Usha’s?’ I mumbled between bites. ‘Can you ring the police and RSPCA to see if Bonnie’s come in overnight?’
‘Done it,’ said Ganesh. ‘I phoned before I left the shop. No luck, I’m afraid. Not yet. She’ll turn up, Fran. She’s not like a lot of pet dogs who couldn’t fend for themselves. Bonnie lived with her previous owner on the street before you took her in. A lot of people know her by sight. Someone will see her and even catch her.’
He was saying all the things I wanted to hear. I just hoped they were true. In the meantime, I had another matter to deal with.
‘Ganesh,’ I said. ‘I’ve been having a long think about things. Also I went to see Malcolm up in the attic last night.’ I pointed up at the ceiling with my knife. Immediately a distant ghostly voice in my brain, an echo of Grandma Varady, reproved me for bad table manners. I lowered the knife.
‘Malcolm? He’s nuts, not to mention seriously weird. Stay clear of him. What did you want to see him for?’ Ganesh sipped tea from his mug and eyed me curiously.
‘It’s rather complicated. You see, I think I’ve been looking at this the wrong way all along.’
‘Oh?’ said Ganesh.
‘I’ve been assuming that Lisa was running away from Mickey Allerton.’
‘Well, she is, isn’t she? Or that’s what Allerton himself thinks and everything so far has backed it up.’
I nodded. ‘But what if Allerton has got it wrong? I’ve been taking Mickey’s version of events as being basically right because it’s all I’ve had to go on. Even when I found out he hadn’t been frank with me and Lisa is more than just another dancer to him, I still stuck with the basic idea.’
‘And now?’ Ganesh asked sceptically.
‘Now? Ganesh, did you ever have a kaleidoscope when you were a kid?’
‘No,’ said Ganesh.
‘We had one at home. It was really old. It had belonged to my dad when he was young. It’s a tube lined with mirrors and containing lots of scraps of coloured paper. You peer in at one end and tap it. Every time you tap it you get another pattern as the paper shapes move and are reflected in the mirrors, see?’
‘I know what a kaleidoscope is,’ said Ganesh patiently. ‘Because I didn’t own one doesn’t mean I don’t know such things exist. I’m not ignorant, you know.’
‘Sorry, I got carried away. Well, think of this whole case as a lot of coloured bits of paper in a tube lined with mirrors.’
‘And?’ Ganesh raised his eyebrows.
‘And I just shook up the tube and I’ve got a whole new pattern out of it.’
Ganesh glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Tell me on the train.’
As it turned out, I didn’t have the opportunity to discuss things in detail with Ganesh on the train. It was crowded, and although we got adjacent seats they were on either side of the aisle and that didn’t make for easy conversation. I didn’t fancy shouting the details of Lisa’s affair with Mickey Allerton across the gap with other passengers walking past. After a while I saw that Ganesh had dozed off. He must have got up extra early to get all his jobs done before coming to my place. I had a pang of conscience at involving him in all this. But then I reasoned it was his decision. After that, I dozed off too. I’d had a poor night’s sleep, several disturbed nights as it happened, and sooner or later these things catch up on you.
It must have rained a little in Oxford overnight. The pavements were still damp although the early sun was already drying them out fast. I was wearing a denim jacket and I’d pushed Lisa’s passport into the breast pocket and buttoned it down securely. I didn’t want to lose it. But I was in no rush to go to Summertown and seek her out.
‘Perhaps,’ I said to Ganesh, ‘I ought to go and see Beryl first and explain why I didn’t stay at the guest house last night. She may be thinking something’s happened to me and contact Filigrew or, worse, Mickey Allerton.’
Ganesh had been gazing about him at the open area before the station and a large statue of a bull, or I suppose it was an ox. Taxis and buses pulled in and out passing us and he seemed fascinated by those, too. He didn’t get out of London much and I think it surprised him that anywhere else in the country functioned at all.
He pulled himself together and turned his attention to me. ‘This guest house,’ he asked, ‘is it anywhere near the spot where you arranged to meet Lisa and found Ivo?’
‘We pass it. That is, we pass by Christ Church Meadow. It’s a short walk across that to the place by the river where, you know . . .’
I still didn’t like talking about finding Ivo. Someone told me once that the human brain is programmed to blot out unpleasant events. That’s how we cope with them and go on with our lives. It doesn’t always work. I remember in every detail Grandma Varady’s last days and how confused I was, not knowing what to do. She didn’t recognise me any longer. She got out of bed in the middle of the night convinced it was morning and we had to get up. I had to wash her because she had forgotten how to turn a tap on and off. Before it happened, I’d have said it was impossible, that it’s a thing you couldn’t forget. But she did. She stood in front of the washbasin staring in perplexity at the taps.
‘What do I do now, Eva?’ she would ask, because she had got it into her head I was my mother.
I gave up telling her I wasn’t Eva and trying to explain about taps. I just got on and washed her. It was like looking after a small baby. Sometimes she would sit and cry quietly because she was frightened and depressed and I couldn’t help.
On the other hand, when my mother left us when I was seven, I blotted that out quite quickly. She wasn’t there any more so I didn’t look for her and I stopped thinking about her. It was only much later as a teenager I decided she was dead. But she wasn’t dead, that was the problem, and I did meet her again. She’s dead now and I’m sorry that we didn’t have time to make up for the lost years. I think she regretted it too.
Life is a little like the kaleidoscope. Once the pieces have been shaken up and a new pattern formed, you can’t get the old one back again. That’s to say, I suppose theoretically it might be possible. I’m not a mathematician. I don’t know how many permutations of design there are. It’s like that idea of a monkey and a typewriter, tapping away randomly. Sooner or later, as an assemblage of letters, the monkey writes Hamlet. I believe some scientists tried that out once but the monkey didn’t oblige them and wrote drivel before it got bored and smashed up the machine. I like to think the chimp was smarter than the guys in the white lab coats.
‘I’d like to see it,’ said Ganesh with suspicious enthusiasm.
I didn’t fancy revisiting the spot where I’d found Ivo bobbing about in the river but if Ganesh wanted to be put in the picture I couldn’t refuse. Even so I did wonder if his motives were founded more in tourism than detection.
‘I’ll take you there. It’s on the way to Beryl’s place,’ I said to him.
The warm sun on the grass was causing the overnight rain to evaporate quickly and rise in a vapour so that it looked as if the whole of Christ Church Meadow was steaming gently. Soon my trainers were covered in little bits of grass like a green fur.
‘It’s nice here,’ observed Ganesh. ‘I should have brought my camera.’
‘You’re not on holiday,’ I grumbled.
‘All right, keep your hair on. Which way to the river?’
‘Down here,’ I said, leading him to the left.
He strode out briskl
y alongside me still muttering about photographic opportunities missed and having to get a souvenir somewhere to take back to Hari.
It was quiet and very peaceful. Only a few waterbirds busied themselves about their business in the bankside reeds. I was beginning to feel easier in my own mind about being here. Perhaps it was having Ganesh with me. Then he touched my arm and asked, ‘What’s going on over there?’
We stopped beneath the spreading branches of a big old tree and I looked in the direction he’d indicated. Two human forms were moving about slowly, bent double and poking around in the undergrowth.
‘Police?’ asked Ganesh doubtfully in a low voice. He sounded depressed as if suddenly recalled to the true nature of our visit.
‘No,’ I whispered, grabbing his arm to stop him progressing any further. I dragged him aside under the shelter of the nearest tree. ‘That’s Lisa Stallard and the guy with her is Ned, her friend. I told you about him.’