by Tim Lebbon
She brought out her phone and clicked it on, and even before placing it on the table it started pinging as several text messages came in. They were all from Lucy.
Where the fucking fuck? the last one read, and she guessed the earlier ones were similar. She smiled, and felt a rush of love for her friend. Lucy, who had always kept her grounded.
“Got your work cut out this time, honey,” she muttered as she sent her friend a reply.
I’m fine. Still fancy that drink? Your place, 7pm? She sent it, drank some coffee, and moments later a response landed.
Affirmative.
Lucy must have been sitting with her phone in her hand.
Angela finished her coffee and tried to think around what had happened, what she had seen. But it was too large. Too unbelievable. Looking at her hand, remembering how it had touched the cold dead angel and what she had felt, she believed. Totally.
“Vince, you’re going to owe me big time,” she said. The young man glanced up, and this time Angela threw him a smile. She coveted his ignorance.
* * *
Stepping outside to the curb, waiting for a taxi, she felt someone’s attention on her.
They weren’t trying to hide. Harry was across the street standing outside a comic shop. Claudette emerged from a Chinese takeaway and handed him a carton of food. Neither of them looked her way.
Remembering Fat Frederick’s indecipherable reaction when she’d mentioned these two, Angela jumped in a cab and told the driver to just drive, fast.
“Always wanted someone to say that to me,” he said, but he must have looked in his rearview mirror and seen her face, because he shut up.
* * *
“So you still don’t have a clue where the twat is?”
Angela shrugged, raised her eyebrows, and couldn’t help admitting the truth. With everything she had seen and heard today, everything she’d discovered about Vince’s secret life and the secret lives of London, she still had no idea where to look next.
They were sitting in Lucy and Max’s dining room, at a table around which they’d spent many drunken evenings as a foursome, but now it was just the two of them and a bottle of rosé. Max would be home soon from his game of squash, but by then Angela would be gone. She couldn’t face another barrage of questions.
Lucy stood and came to her, hugging Angela to her chest.
“He’ll turn up. He’s probably just… I dunno.” There was nothing reassuring to be said, so Angela tried taking comfort from her friend’s intent. It was difficult. There was so little she could tell her, and what she could convey didn’t look very good. He worked freelance for one of London’s most notorious crime bosses, rented a secret pad that was way above their means, and now he’d disappeared.
Beyond that…
The gangster was a little insane, driven by his desire to collect relics of mythological creatures which should have never existed but which, she was now certain, once had. Back in “The Time” angels and unicorns and cyclops had walked the land, and now they were withered dead things subject to a secret trade.
“It’s all so weird,” Angela said.
“That bastard doesn’t deserve you.”
“He’s not a bastard,” she said. “He might be in trouble.”
“He’ll be in fucking trouble next time I see him!”
“That I believe.” Angela chuckled. That I believe. She wished she could tell, but Fat Frederick’s promise hung heavy in her memory.
“Will you go to the police?” Lucy asked tentatively, her tone already providing the answer.
“And tell them my boyfriend’s—?”
“A gangster.”
“No, he’s not that,” she said, shaking her head.
“No?” Lucy asked. She took a drink. She knew so little.
“No,” Angela said.
An idea was already forming.
“We need crisps,” Lucy said with some gravitas. “And nuts.” She started to stand and turn.
“And chocolate,” Angela said. “Lots of your wonderful British chocolate.”
Lucy froze and glanced back. “Fucking hell. It’s more serious than I thought.”
While she went into the kitchen to fetch their comfort supplies, Angela stood and looked into the big mirror hanging over the fireplace. Max had once told them they’d hung it there to make their small room look larger, but looking into it now, Angela saw a woman staring back whom she hadn’t really seen before, and the reflection of a new world that she knew she must embrace.
Bigger than you thought, Max, she thought, smiling. There was no time to balance belief and disbelief. No time for doubt. An urgency bore down upon her—she had to accept everything she had seen, and open her mind to even stranger things she might yet see.
It was time to move forward.
“You look better,” Lucy said when she returned. “Maybe the wine’s working.”
“Maybe,” Angela said. “Let’s have another.”
As they drank more rosé together, and Lucy spoke inconsequentialities because she had no idea what to say, Angela quietly formulated a plan. She had always been told that she had a good brain—logical, ordered, and able to compartmentalise. She worked with that now. The outer her remained in the dining room, nodding and smiling and accepting her friend’s well-intentioned spiel.
But inside she was filing away what she knew, separating it from speculation and guesswork, opening whole new folders waiting to be filled.
One of these she called contacts, and it was peopled with names and numbers she became more than eager to call.
* * *
Around nine o’clock, she made her excuses. She knew Max would be home imminently, and knew also that Lucy was trying to keep her there. Angela didn’t want to face Max. She didn’t want to face anyone, apart from her own reflection in the phone screen.
“Stay with us tonight,” Lucy begged. “Really. I don’t like the thought—”
“I feel much better already,” Angela said. “Just from chatting with you, and there are a couple of people I’ve thought I can try. Maybe they’ll know something about Vince.”
“Who’s that?”
“Work friends,” she lied. She was disturbed to discover that she was a good liar.
“Then I’ll walk you home. Or wait ’til Max gets here, and he can drop you off.”
“He won’t get out of second gear,” Angela said, laughing. I need to get out of here, she thought.
“You shouldn’t be on your own,” Lucy said.
Angela smiled uncertainly, not knowing what to say.
“I mean…” her friend said. She shrugged. They hugged.
A few moments more and they were standing at the front door. By nine fifteen Angela was walking toward the junction at the end of the street, ten minutes from her own place, glancing back and waving at her friend’s motionless shadow.
* * *
The Bear was exactly halfway between their homes. The streets around were mainly residential but usually quite busy, with shops, takeaways, pubs, parking areas, and a small police station interspersed with the rows of terraced housing. One street held more salubrious homes, mostly detached and some with front gardens large enough to park in—fancy for this part of London. As she walked along the pavement, Angela was already on the phone.
Professor Joslin was the lecturer assigned to oversee her doctorate, and he had quickly become a friend. Past retirement age, he looked ten years younger and had one of the sharpest minds she knew. He’d been in the police force until his mid-forties, after which he hit university to catch up on the education that he claimed had been denied him. He’d never told her who had done the denying, but Joslin had certainly made up for it, becoming one of the most highly respected criminology intellects in England. He was still in the same university, and as an old-age pensioner he delighted in telling her how university life agreed with him.
He was also a prolific boozer and consummate letch.
She rang him shortly before ten.
“Angela, my darling, changed your mind?” It was the way he always greeted her, ever since he’d suggested they run away together. He treated it as a joke, but she wasn’t sure what he’d actually say if she went with it.
“Of course,” she said. “Any day, Tony, but right now I need your help.”
“Right, well, it’s…” He trailed off.
“I know it’s late. And it’s personal. It has to stay personal, and private, but I want… need to pick your brain.”
“Of course,” he said. She could hear him taking a drink, swallowing, clinking his glass against the phone.
“I need to know how to track down someone who’s missing, and who doesn’t want to be found. Who to call to trace debit and credit card withdrawals. Who to speak to about CCTV footage in certain areas, at certain times. Britain’s the most watched country on the planet, and I need to be able to access that.”
“Who’s missing?”
“Friend of a friend.”
“And the police are looking for them?”
“Just me.” For a moment she thought he was going to decline, and she held her breath.
“I can text you some names,” he said.
“No, no, just tell me. Hang on, I’ll write them down.”
She sat on a wall and dug one of Vince’s notes from her back pocket. From her jacket she took the small pen she always carried.
A shadow drifted along the street, on the other side and a hundred yards away. She caught it from the corner of her eye and held her breath, watching, trying to spot where it had come to rest. She couldn’t quite see. It was dusk, street lamps flickering on and warming up, and perhaps it had been a shape thrown by moving vehicle lights.
Getting twitchy, she thought. She wrote down two names and phone numbers, thanked Professor Joslin, and hung up.
At the end of the street she turned right, past a fast-food joint which always had a gang of kids hanging around outside. She dodged spatters of food speckling the pavement like bloody splashes and walked past the teens. There were fewer than usual, and they paid her no attention. Or if they did, it was silent, and directed at her as she walked away.
Angela glanced back. The kids were in their own world, bathed in the greasy light from the takeaway, laughing, joshing, and all was as it should be. No shadows slunk after her along the street.
The road was busy at this time of night and she was soon wending her way along the pavement, phone to her ear. She knew that this call was hit and miss, because the woman she was ringing might see her caller ID and not want to pick up. They hadn’t spoken in years. The last time had been civil enough, but no one really needed to speak to their ex’s new girlfriend.
“Hello.” Maria’s voice was flat and cool.
“Maria, hi, it’s Angela Gough.”
“Yeah, I see that. Never deleted your number. What’s up? Is it Vince?”
“He’s fine, fine,” she lied. A group of young women approached, skimpily dressed and chirping like a flock of migrating birds. A couple of them carried bottles, and one was already staggering.
“So?” Maria asked. “It’s… almost ten. Bit weird calling me after so long, and so late.”
“Yeah, I know, but I wondered if I could ask you a couple of things.”
“About what?”
“Well… his job. His other job, the one he never talks about.”
“Oh, so you found out,” Maria said, her voice lightening. “Took you long enough.”
Angela stopped dead and leaned back against a wall. Beside her was the window of a bric-a-brac shop, and she stared at a display of brass ornaments, Lord of the Rings statuettes, and old kitchen implements.
“Found out what?” she asked, raising her voice as a lorry trundled past nearby. Did she know? Did Maria know what he did, and it took me two years to find out, and what does that say about me and him?
“Vince, and his secret life.” Maria sounded doubtful now, and Angela could almost hear the awkwardness. She imagined Vince’s old fiancée closing her eyes, silently cursing herself, biting her lip. There had never been any real antagonism between them, and on the few times they’d met they had actually shared a smile and got along well. Maria would have revealed any secrets long before now if she wished to do so out of spite, and perhaps she believed she’d let something slip she shouldn’t have.
“It’s only now and then,” Maria said. “From what I understand. And he never told me much about it at all, not even who he worked for. Only that it wasn’t exactly aboveboard, and the properties he sourced might be sold to people I wouldn’t really want to meet.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Angela said.
“How did you find out?”
Angela thought quickly. Maria thought she knew more than her, but in reality Vince’s ex knew far, far less. Yet there was still information she might be able to provide.
“Hang on,” Angela said. “Let me get off the street for a minute, it’s really noisy and…”
She glanced back the way she’d come, and let her words trail off. Someone was standing there, on the other side. It wasn’t Harry or Claudette, she was pretty certain of that, but she was also sure that the person’s focus was entirely on her. Vehicles passed by, blurring her vision. The figure remained standing, watching.
“Hello?”
“Yeah, a minute,” she muttered.
A bus passed, anonymous faces turned her way, bathed in stark light that made clones out of the passengers, downturned mouths and distant eyes. Angela hurried past the shop and paused outside a pub, and when the bus had passed and she looked again, the person had gone. A For Sale sign was stuck on a wooden stake in a house’s small front yard, a lamp post rose above a parked truck, the vehicle’s wing mirror protruding. Together, shadowed by the weak streetlight, perhaps they had given the image of a watcher.
“Angela?”
“I’m here. Sorry, just a bit distracted. Maria, I’m really sorry to call you, but it’s shaken me a bit, that’s all.”
“That he didn’t tell you, you mean?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Shook me, too, but the extra lump of money he earned now and then always came in handy. And I was just relieved it wasn’t what I thought it was.”
“What was that?”
“Well, when he disappeared for a night sometimes, I got it in my head he was fucking Franca. I even tracked her down, scoped out her flat.”
“His university friend?”
“Ridiculous, huh?”
“Where does she live?” Angela held her breath, worried that she’d asked too soon, blurted the question instead of being subtle about it. But after a pause, Maria replied.
“Down in Collier’s Wood. I spent a couple of nights walking the street outside, until she asked me in for coffee.” She laughed, and sounded sad.
“Franca’s lovely,” Angela said, thinking quickly, wondering how she could find the actual address of her flat. She’d never actually met her. “You do mean Franca White, right?”
“Franca Palmer.”
“Oh yeah, yeah. She’s cool, a really good friend. But with Vince, it’s just… I don’t know who he works for, and I’m worried it’s someone unsavory.”
“Unsavory, but not dangerous. That’s what he told me.”
“Right.” Angela nodded to herself, thinking, She knows nothing. I’m wasting my time.
“So how are you two?” Maria asked. The phone line crackled. Angela didn’t know what Maria hoped to hear, but she could only give her honest answer.
“I really don’t know.”
“Well…” She paused, as if searching for words. “Say hi from me.”
“Sure.”
Maria hung up first.
Collier’s Wood. Maybe, just maybe, but first I’ve got to—
The figure was there again. Across the street, standing beside a parked van, peering around the back and just visible as traffic splashed it with headlights. She blinked and it was gone.
It had
been there. Hadn’t it?
Angela started to run. She tried to appear calm, jogging rather than fleeing, but people still moved out of her way with raised eyebrows, holding an arm across a child’s chest, or squeezing each other’s hands and probably wondering, What’s her sad story?
She passed The Bear without seeing if anyone she knew was outside, and by the time she entered the quieter street that led to home, she was breathless and angry. She paused on the pavement and turned to face the person following her. Fuck them. Fuck them! They had no right to scare her like this.
There was no one there.
When she turned again and headed along the street toward her house, she saw him.
Vince.
He was crouched behind a parked car, looking at her through its windows, and as soon as she saw him he dropped down out of sight.
In the distance, something screeched.
11
Of all the stupid things he’d done, this had to be the stupidest.
Vince had spent the last thirty minutes trying to persuade himself that he was safe. Coming home was so fucking stupid that, surely, no one would believe he’d ever do it.
Night had fallen, but it was never truly night on the streets of London. There were always streetlights, vehicle headlamps, the splashed neon of shop displays, illumination sweeping down from high-rise flats or display signs high above the city, and the glow of pubs, clubs, and restaurants that rarely slept. As well as the cloying exhaust fumes that settled into the city’s streets during the busy days, light pollution also smeared its skies at night, less harmful but just as unavoidable.
But night wasn’t only an absence of light, as he had grown to understand over the past few years working for Fat Frederick Meloy. Sometimes, night was when the normal went to sleep and the supernatural came awake.
Lately, night was a wilderness.
He’d seen Angela leaving Lucy’s place, confidence and purpose in her step. His heart had jumped. It was only a little more than a day since he’d seen her, kissed her, and two days since they had last made love. In that time his world had changed more than he had believed possible, and he knew that hers had changed, too.