The Loop

by Anabel Donald

  ‘It must have. Otherwise he would have been in touch with me. And with Emily Treliving.’

  ‘He told you about her?’

  Pause. ‘Yes.’ Pause. ‘I must speak directly to her, before I pursue this matter with you.’

  ‘She’s very upset.’

  ‘Understandably. I would try not to upset her further.’

  ‘I’m her agent.’

  ‘I need to hear that from her.’

  He wouldn’t be budged. I rang off, rang Jams, soothed her, gave her Wood’s number, and waited for his return call, jittering about, dusting. Nick watched me impassively.

  As the minutes stretched into the quarter-hour, she said ‘What is it now?’

  ‘Sandra,’ I said. ‘We’ve had nothing from Sandra for a while. I don’t trust her, and it’s making me itchy. I want to get the loop sorted and get back to her, actually knowing what I’m talking about.’

  ‘You can always vacuum,’ suggested Nick. Unhelpfully.

  I did.

  I didn’t catch the phone over the hoover noise. Nick heard, answered and put it on speaker.

  ‘Jimmy Wood here.’

  ‘Alex Tanner. Just a moment.’ I scribbled down the questions I needed to ask. ‘OK, go ahead.’

  ‘Jacob left a package in my keeping, for Emily Treliving, or for return to him, if he asked for it. I’ve now checked with Emily that she wants it handed over to you, so it’s ready for you to pick up at my office.’ He gave me a name and address of a bank in the City. ‘Go to Reception, ask for Peter Quill, and produce some identification, preferably a passport and a business card. Clear?’

  ‘Very clear. Very directed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. Do you know what’s in the package?’

  ‘Yes. A video cassette and a letter for Emily.’

  ‘Have you seen the video?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When did Jacob give it to you?’

  ‘In early November last year. He’d been staying at my flat, and he gave it to me when he left for the States.’

  ‘Was he going directly to the airport?’

  ‘No. He had a meeting first.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘What did he say to you about what he was doing?’

  ‘That he was sorting out some matters in connection with his mother’s estate.’

  ‘And as far as you know he intended to go back to Chicago, to his graduate work?’

  ‘Absolutely. He was enjoying it, and looking forward to his career and his marriage. I wish—’ His voice tailed off.

  ‘So do I,’ I said. ‘But it’s not likely he’s all right, is it? He’s not the sort of person who would change his plans without notifying the university, for instance.’

  ‘Quite.’ Pause. ‘Anything else I can help you with?’

  ‘Tell me what you know about the videotape.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Well . . . he called me towards the end of September, last year. He came to my flat to watch the tape, as he had no other access to a video machine. He asked to watch it alone. He watched it for a few minutes, then joined me in the kitchen. He didn’t comment, but he seemed . . .’

  Pause.

  ‘What did he seem?’

  ‘Very hard to describe. Jacob was reticent. Self-contained. Is it important?’

  ‘Could be, very.’

  ‘Well then.’ Pause. ‘He seemed – illuminated. As if he had the solution to a puzzle. And also, slightly, amused. Not laughing amused. More like sardonic.’

  ‘Cynical?’

  ‘Not exactly. Satisfied, a bit superior. Mind you he was arrogant, always.’

  ‘What next?’ said Nick, after Wood rang off.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You go and fetch the package. With your passport and all. What’ll I do?’

  I told her.

  As I’d expected, Jacob’s letter to Jams was virtually useless to me, especially as she wouldn’t let me read it. It was very useful to her, though. She read it again and again, tears trickling down her pudding face. ‘He really loved me,’ she said eventually, sipping the camomile tea I’d made for her when I’d finally stopped trying to read his tiny writing upside-down. ‘I knew it. We knew it. We felt the hand of God touch us.’

  I didn’t say – I tried not to even think – that the hand of God should have kept its eye on the ball and followed through to deliver Jacob safe.

  I looked at the sealed envelope containing the video tape, sitting demurely on the beautifully polished little table in the little house that had been so lovingly chosen for a man who had never seen it. I looked out at the twee window-boxes, where the sweetpeas trembled in the breeze and drank in the light drizzle. ‘D’you want me to finish the job?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes. He says I can use the tape if I want, to get the name of his mother. Because of his faith—’

  ‘To take to the throne of the Lord?’

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Abraham Master told me.’

  ‘But Jacob says it would be better if I didn’t watch the tape myself.’

  ‘Because it’s pornographic?’

  ‘He just says, not suitable. And he doesn’t want me involved. He says I should ask Jimmy Wood. But he’s in Singapore, isn’t he? Should I wait for him to come back?’

  ‘We can’t afford to wait.’

  ‘OK, you do it, Alex? And then just give me the name, nothing else?’

  ‘Sure. Can I make a telephone call?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I rang Nick. ‘Everybody’s here. More than everybody. Sort of waiting,’ she said uneasily. She didn’t like social situations.

  ‘Good. Make them all coffee, get some biscuits.’

  ‘We’re out of coffee. No money in petty cash.’

  ‘Borrow from – Barty.’

  ‘OK. How long will you be?’

  ‘Twenty minutes. Hang in there.’

  Jams was still reading the letter with the air of one who would be reading it many more times until she died, which could be sixty years. If I did my job properly.

  She rubbed her baby-bump as she read.

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing to help me in there?’ I said.

  She looked up dreamily. ‘Nothing at all. Apart from the bit about his mother’s name, it’s all about us.’

  ‘No mention of anyone else? Or anything that he’s done, or going to do?’

  ‘No, I’ve told you,’ she said, sounding as near to cross as I’ve ever heard her.

  ‘Do you still want me to go on with this?’

  ‘Do you think I should?’

  ‘I think the more we know the safer you’ll be.’

  ‘Up to you. Decide for me. Please, can I be alone?’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  My flat isn’t designed for entertaining more than three people. It was well overcrowded when I got back with the video cassette: Nick had done all I’d asked her, and more.

  I’d guessed that Jacob’s letter wouldn’t give me his mother’s name and I’d have to use the tape. From what Jimmy Wood’d said, I knew Jacob had identified her in minutes.

  It could just have been because she was very famous, and so I’d know her immediately. But time was pressing and I wouldn’t count on it. So I wanted people from Jacob’s worlds: Doncaster, Oxford and London merchant banks. There was nothing I could do, at such short notice, about Doncaster, although if I drew a blank with this audience I’d take the tape up north to Maggie Whittaker and Master, if I could get him near a machine. For Oxford, I had Grace Macarthy. For the City, Archie Lawson-Smith. For general knowledge and a good eye, Barty.

  Those three were there. But so was Polly, who’d dropped in to see me and wanted to join in, and Magnus, who’d come to pick her up.

  The sofa and chairs had been re-arranged in a semi-circle round the television and the group were drinking coffee out of ill-a
ssorted mugs, eating shortbread and chatting. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Archie Lawson-Smith was about my age, tall and thin, with receding slicked-back blond hair, a long narrow nose and pale-blue quick eyes. He was the most formally dressed, in an expensive, rather sharp dark suit, lightly striped shirt and bright Italian designer tie.

  He and Magnus had obviously hit it off and were talking derivatives, with Polly listening politely.

  Grace had probably come straight from bed. Her slightly frizzy dyed brown hair was piled casually on top of her head, and she was wearing a long shapeless black t-shirt over black leggings. She looked contentedly forty-five, and experienced, and amused. She nearly always looked amused.

  No sign of Nick. I assumed she was in the kitchen, hiding.

  I said ‘Hi!’ to my coffee-klatsch, smiled at Barty who half-smiled back and went right on talking to Grace, picked up some paper from the desk and went straight through to Nick. ‘Well done,’ I said.

  ‘Magnus knows banking too,’ said Nick. ‘Pompous git, but he could be useful.’

  ‘Could be. Come on, let’s get this show on the road.’

  ‘Too many people,’ she said.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said tearing the paper into strips. ‘Give them one of these and a pencil each. And take one yourself.’

  I put the tape in the video machine and turned to face the audience, who were now clutching paper and pencils. I felt like Poirot in the last scene of a lumbering Christie film.

  ‘What you’re going to watch is a very short pornographic film from the late sixties. I need to know if you recognize any of the performers. There are three: Sexy Sandra, Sweet Sally and Big Dick Tracy. If you think you know anyone, please write their names down. Don’t say them, I don’t want you influencing each other. Remember this was over twenty-five years ago.’

  ‘Can we give them marks out of ten?’ said Magnus.

  Polly smiled. Grace didn’t. I got the impression she’d taken an immediate dislike to Magnus, who she was sharing the sofa with. ‘Whatever you like,’ I said, and started the tape.

  My Doncaster ex-cameraman had done a good, clean transfer and the original film techs must have been good. The lighting was flattering, the sound sharp, and the cameraman used five angles.

  There the professionalism ended. The set was somebody’s bedroom and the script was dire.

  Not as bad as the performers, however Sandra Balmer was easily the best and she was as wooden as a chest of drawers. The film opened with her lying on the bed, fully dressed. ‘Oh, it’s hot in here,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘I’ll make myself more comfortable.’ She undressed, slowly, down to a push-up pink bra, pink frilly knickers, a white suspender-belt and white stockings. ‘I feel really hot,’ she said, rubbing her bouncy breasts.

  The door opened and an adolescent girl came in. Sixteen at the most, and out of her head on downers, judging by her dead eyes. She was lovely, film-star lovely, with thick dark hair, a small nose, full promising lips and slender well-shaped limbs. She was in a very short school uniform, with black stockings and visible black suspenders. ‘Oh! Auntie Sandra! What are you doing! That’s naughty!’ she said, with all the emotion of British Rail announcing a train delay due to leaves on the line. She had a thin, wellbrought-up little voice.

  ‘Hello, Sally, dear, back from school already, isn’t it hot, let’s be naughty together,’ said Sandra, robustly Yorkshire.

  Then they were naughty together, for a bit.

  So far only one of my audience had written anything.

  Grace. And she wasn’t smiling as she wrote, so she didn’t find it funny.

  On the screen, Sandra and Sally had run out of naughty and looked as if they were waiting for an interruption.

  No retakes, sloppy cutting.

  The camera-angle shifted to the door.

  A man, thirtyish, tall, in tight white shorts and a blue sweater, carrying a tool-bag.

  There was a flurry of writing from my audience. Grace. Barty. Magnus, Polly. Lawson-Smith, who’d gone pale. And, surprisingly, Nick.

  ‘I’m Richard Tracy. They call me Big Dick,’ said the man on the screen. The camera focus-pulled to a close-up of his crotch. Either it was augmented with clingfilm or they were right.‘I’m the plumber. I hear you’re having trouble with your plumbing.’

  He was no plumber. He was posh. He was no actor either, but he was enjoying himself, and he said his lines with an amateur’s pride in having learnt them and in delivering them loudly. ‘Oh, you saucy girls, what are you up to?’

  The girls weren’t up to anything; they were lying side by side like stockinged fish on a slab. The cameraman cut to a low angle, up Sally’s bum, which was as delicious as the rest of her. I glanced at Barty, who was watching impassively. I didn’t know if he liked porn. All men did, probably. Did he like Sally?

  ‘Seen enough?’ I said, pausing it.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lawson-Smith. ‘I have to get back to the office.’

  ‘Let it run, come on,’ said Magnus.

  I let it run and showed Lawson-Smith out. ‘Are you going to give me your piece of paper?’ I said, when we reached the street-door.

  ‘You won’t need it,’ he said.

  ‘Please?’

  He folded it tightly and gave it to me.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said. ‘You’ve been terrific.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. Just don’t tell Malise,’ he said.

  I opened his piece of paper as he hurried away. One line of writing. Big Dick Tracy: Malise Douglas, it read.

  I stood in the hall, and thought. That could be the money, then, and the power, behind Sandra and Brownlow. Big Dick Douglas. Jacob’s father?

  I needed Grace’s piece of paper, badly. She was the only one who seemed to have got Sweet Sally.

  I went up the stairs, two at a time.

  The film had finished: Nick was running it back.

  ‘Not bad at all,’ said Magnus. ‘Ten out of ten for Sweet Sally,’ and he made a locker-room ‘wer-wer’ noise. Polly looked slightly miffed; Grace made a dismissive face and folded her paper as tightly as Lawson-Smith had. ‘For your eyes only, Alex,’ she said. ‘We must talk about it.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, collecting hers and then the rest. ‘Thanks very much, everyone.’

  ‘We’d best be off,’ said Magnus. ‘Things to do, houses to see, eh, Polly?’ He took her elbow possessively.

  Polly smiled.

  ‘I assume you want us to keep quiet about this,’ Magnus said to me. ‘You have my word on that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  They left, and the atmosphere relaxed several notches.

  ‘Frightful man,’ said Grace.

  ‘Yuck,’ said Nick. ‘I don’t know why he pretends not to be gay.’

  ‘Gay?’ I said. It was unexpected but not surprising. ‘Why do you think so?’

  ‘You weren’t here for the rest of the film,’ said Barty.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Guess what he looked at?’ said Nick. ‘The whole time?’

  Barty and Grace were nodding.

  ‘The design fault?’ I said.

  ‘The big design fault,’ said Nick.

  ‘D’you want me out?’ said Barty, getting up.

  ‘Not for me,’ said Grace.

  ‘No, please stay,’ I said, as eagerly as I meant but more eagerly than I had meant to sound. I was reading the pieces of paper. Everyone except Nick had written Malise Douglas for Tracy. Nick had written a punter who likes corsets, presumably information gleaned from her mother’s friends working the streets of Paddington.

  Grace had also written: Sweet Sally – Lady Douglas, née Sally Newcomb.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, looking at her. ‘Ah indeed.’ ‘Council of war?’ she said. ‘I need to be put in the picture first.’ ‘Nick can do that,’ I said. ‘I’m going to have a bath.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I always enjoy a bath, but this one was a device to be alone and decide exactl
y what I thought about the case and what I wanted to do before discussing it with a heavy roller like Grace.

  It took ten minutes and even then I wasn’t sure I’d covered all the bases, but I didn’t think more time would help. I’d got to the stage where what I needed was the information that only she could give.

  So I dressed and went downstairs.

  ‘Sorted it out?’ said Barty. Not sneering: affectionate.

  I smiled at him. I did love him, really I did, if love was liking plus desire. But what if it was more, and I’d missed it so far?

  ‘Come on,’ said Grace impatiently. ‘What are you going to do next?’

  ‘Listen to you telling me about Sir Malise and Lady Douglas.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘Nothing at all, other than what Nick told me you’d told her, and what I saw in the loop. He’s very rich, and powerful in the City. He’s vain. He likes sex. That’s it.’

  ‘Right. There isn’t much more, except he’s very bright and a good friend of mine.’

  ‘And a lover,’ said Barty.

  ‘Oh, well, that’s nothing special. His little black book would fill a CD-rom. Apart from casual affairs and one-nighters—’

  ‘—and working girls,’ interjected Nick contemptuously.

  ‘—he has three households. With his wife Sally in Buckinghamshire. With Marie-Louise and two children near Nice. With Campanita and three children near Seville.’

  ‘Sally has no children?’

  ‘Not unless Jacob was hers.’

  ‘What’s Sally like?’

  ‘Beautiful to look at, as you saw. Very fragile. Has nervous breakdowns all the time. Doesn’t go out much. Spends all her energies on the garden.’

  ‘Where is she treated?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but when Nick told me about Brownlow, I wondered, too. He’s exactly the kind of shrink Malise’d choose, and the Caritas the kind of clinic. Very discreet.’

  ‘What’s their relationship like?’

  ‘Malise loves her. Best, I think. But he’s not a man to devote himself destructively to a batty wife and he’s got a thing about children, and he always told me she couldn’t have any. I’ve often thought that he kept two other families rather than one so that she’d be less jealous.’

  ‘She knows about them, then?’