The man’s eyes were pleading with me. I knew I had to act, get him out of there, do whatever I could to free him. But I didn’t do anything. I broke his look, turning my head away, and as I did he bucked again, weakly this time, before beginning to cry, his chest shaking. I wanted to leap at Charlie, wrestle the keys that bound the man off him. I didn’t do it. If I did, I’d never get the address. I wondered: could I get it out of Charlie? Beat it out of him? I doubted it. Was there anything more important to me than getting it? This man, was he? No, he wasn’t. He just didn’t matter enough. I told myself that. And if that was so? I couldn’t help him. I found myself taking a step forward, and then another, sickness growing in me with every second that passed.
I still couldn’t look at the chained figure, instead turning to Charlie, wondering if there was any way, any other way through this. I knew there wasn’t. No. Because this man was the real thing all right, in spite of the veneer. He didn’t get the look on his face from the movies. It was distilled, clear evil drawn from a well deep inside himself. His eyes had stopped dancing. They were burning like coals. I tried to focus not on them but on Ally, on Denise and Jo and Jen. On the other women, the ones to come. Sharon. Possibly saving her. I knew then. I didn’t have any choice.
Charlie turned from me, pushing the guy’s head up. He wound himself round his body, pressing against his cut flesh, pushing his tongue into the guy’s left ear. I wanted to retch. Charlie stepped back and Sally’s words came back again: ask Pete what Charlie made him do. He was laughing.
I thought he was going to tell me to get on with it. He didn’t. Instead he pulled hurriedly at his fly.
‘Sorry. I’m going to have to punish Steven myself I’ve waited too long and he’s been too bad. I don’t think you’ll be rigorous enough. Come back when I’m finished, if you like. That’ll be a week or so. Well, you some kind of pervert?’
Charlie pulled a plain white envelope out of his back pocket and tossed it to me along with the key chained to his belt. I should have been relieved. I had it, I had what I came for.
‘You can go. Leave that in the lock. And remember what I told you. Don’t even think about helping Steven here. You’ll never leave this apartment if you do. And if the police arrive here later, in the next month even, I’ll know who sent them. You’ll end up like this and we’ll also plan something for lovely Sally for putting you onto us. You won’t do anything rash, anything at all. And in the meantime do you have any condoms? No? Me neither. Oh well, too late for me, anyway. Far too late. Oh, Steven, calm down. My advice would be to relax. You never know, you just might be lucky.’
The eyes above the tape leapt out at mine again, a last plea for help coming from the depths of one human being, trying to find those depths in another. Their owner was trying to kick his taped feet, struggling to shake himself free. Charlie was wrestling with him, trying to get hold of his body, like a line fisher with a live marlin. All the time he was looking at me. Asking. You going to stop me? My blood was iced water, the muscles in my legs coiled tense, trying to make me spring forward, to drag Charlie off his captive.
Charlie knew I wouldn’t. And I knew it too.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The air outside was laced with scooter fumes and the stink of a half-eaten kebab left on the pavement. It smelled as sweet as any air I’d ever breathed. But I didn’t take long to savour it. Instead I pivoted round in both directions, chose one and began to run. Not just because I wanted desperately to be away from there. But because of Helen. The sentence was carved into my mind.
Don’t bother looking for her.
I sprinted down the street and put my head in the first cafe I came to. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t in any of the other six or seven I tried either. I ran around Soho for fifteen, twenty minutes, asking waiters, passers-by, women standing in the doorways of peep shows, if they’d seen a girl, a junky girl, carrying a postman’s bag, probably with someone else. No one had, or if they had they weren’t saying. I turned around. Where would she have gone? Not home, not straight away. Her eyes had been too desperate. I ran down a side street but stopped. I could hear a siren, close by, and when I turned I saw an ambulance pushing through the traffic on Great Marlborough Street.
I caught up with the ambulance and overtook it as it swung a right. Up ahead, a man was waving outside some public toilets, the old kind with steps leading down. I beat the ambulance to the man and didn’t stop but ran past him. Down into the ladies, where a woman pointed to the last cubicle. She must have thought I was a doctor. The woman’s face was ashen, her other hand clenched over her stomach. The door she was pointing to was half open and I pushed it the rest of the way.
Ten grand. That was what her life was worth. Charlie hadn’t needed to kill her to get it but he did know that the police would pick her up sooner or later. And they’d ask her all sorts of questions. Maybe, if it had been another girl, he’d have let her live, scared her into keeping quiet. But Helen wasn’t worth anything to Charlie any more. She was probably costing him money.
Helen was lying on the floor between the toilet bowl and the partition wall. The needle was dangling from her thigh. Foam and blood covered her mouth and her face, some still spreading down to her sunken chest. There was, of course, no postman’s bag. When I heard footsteps behind me I moved back to let the medics rush in. After a second they stopped rushing. I backed away and pulled myself up the stairs before drifting off through the small crowd that had gathered there.
* * *
I needed to think but I couldn’t sit in my car, not where it was parked. I’d left it on a meter opposite the digital processing company. The girl with the Uzi was still running straight at me. People walked past, some glancing up at her. Above her and them, behind the covered windows, a man was being tortured, possibly murdered if Charlie wasn’t bluffing. Charlie had found a way to hurt me, just as Sally had said. He’d let me look into his life. He’d made me look into myself. I wondered which he thought would get to me more, the death of the girl I’d asked him to find or the fact that he’d turned me into someone who could walk out on something like that, who could let it happen. Thinking about it, I didn’t know myself. I just told myself again that I’d got what I wanted. Nothing came close to that. I just hoped, with everything I had, that it was worth it.
I pulled away and drove round to Charlotte Street, where I stopped at another meter.
I closed my eyes and sat for maybe ten minutes, until a traffic warden tapped on the window. I got out and fed the meter then got back in the car. The envelope was on my dashboard. I looked at it for a long time before I picked it up and opened it. The address was written on the inside flap. A few words. The key. At last. It had to be the key. I folded the envelope and slid it into my jacket pocket. I sat for another ten minutes, knowing that I needed to be calm. I had to push on. I had to see it through. I saw the man’s eyes again and thought, if I called Andy, how long would it be before he could get a team round there? I knew I wasn’t going to do it. And it wasn’t because I was afraid, for me or for Sally. I’d come too far. I’d made too many compromises to back out now. I was swimming through a nightmare and if I stopped for a second I’d sink. Forget him, I told myself. Just think about what you have to do. This is your chance, probably your only chance. Think.
I read the address again and looked it up in my A-Z, running my finger along the street. I closed the book and decided. I wasn’t going to wait around. What would be the point? The only thing I did wonder was whether to drive there or not. Having the car would be useful but what if she spotted it? I’d park a good way away but even so it was possible. I didn’t want to lose my advantage. I hadn’t been in the game long and I’d had a lot of catching up to do but, finally, I was a step ahead of her, Cherie, this person who had swept into my life from the past. I had her. If the address was right, I knew where she was staying. And she didn’t know that I knew. Remembering a place where I could park safely, I drove down past Leicester Square and then al
ong the Strand, hitting the Embankment at Temple.
I drove east beside the river, picking a way through the City as thin streams of suited pedestrians ignored the pelican crossings and flooded through the stationary traffic. I made it up to Whitechapel, edging along Whitechapel Road past the still-crowded market stalls, sari-clad women gathered in circles to chat. A great pulsing throb sounded above me and I looked up to see the red bulk of the Virgin chopper manoeuvring to land on the roof of the Royal London hospital. The traffic was worse here, traders’ vans blocking one of the lanes as they began to pack up for the day. It freed a bit once the stalls ended, though, and I moved on past the Blind Beggar, where a group of American tourists was peering in the door, being told what had happened there. I wondered if they’d go inside. I carried on up the Mile End Road until I came to the huge car park of a new, box-built electrical superstore.
There was no barrier or gate. I wouldn’t get locked in and it was only about twenty minutes from there down to Limehouse, if I walked quickly. Far enough away, but near enough too. I parked close to the exit. I locked the car and crossed over the busy carriageway, choked with commuters trying to get back to Essex and Kent. People the City sucked in every morning and grudgingly released at night, on the proviso that they return. People who didn’t live in London but hadn’t managed to get as far away as Chester. With mobiles pressed to pale, drawn faces, they looked as desperate as I was, every single one of them.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I hit the river at Narrow Street. A path ran at the foot of some executive apartments with windows looking out across the broad mass of pewter in front of me. I walked along it. A tourist cruiser out in the centre of the river ran with the tide, back towards Charing Cross. The guide’s amplified monotone made its way towards me across the sluggish, shifting expanse.
I stopped for a second to think what to do. The idea of calling Andy came to me again but only to give me something to discard. The part of me who saw the little girl in Chester wanted to, it told me that she needed a second chance. I had to remind myself that she didn’t exist any more. Cherie did. And she wasn’t getting away with this, she wasn’t going to get involved in weeks, months, maybe even years of argument. No matter what had happened in the past, I knew how this had to end. I just had to play it right. I walked on. It was getting dark now, the river seeming to draw the remaining light down into it. I passed a pub called the Barley Mow, busy with crumpled-looking workers from Canary Wharf, sucking at their beer as if it was mother’s milk. Another Standard front page leapt out at me from one of the pub’s wooden A-frame tables. This one told of the death of Jennifer Tyler. I wondered how many people inside the pub were talking about it. It was the story. How strange then that I, one man, should be walking towards Cherie, one woman, to end it all. I remembered the people reading the Metro on the tube when Sharon and I were coming back from Heathrow, the kids making sick jokes. The difference between them, outside looking in, and me. Those people had been able to move on, to either laugh or read about something else. Was I, finally, going to be able to turn the page? Ahead of me a bank of cloud was sneaking up fast behind Canary Wharf. The light atop the impossible bulk blinked as if it was showing me the way.
Narrow Street carries on along the river at Victoria Wharf. I took a left and came to a square, mostly made up of modern apartment blocks, all blond brick and chrome, already looking a bit dated. Victoria Place was over the other side to my left and the houses there, just one row left, were older: late Georgian, perhaps, or early Victorian. Semi-detached in blocks of two, pathways leading round to the rear. I walked along, noting that most had been turned into office spaces, on the ground floor at least. An architects’ practice, a couple of e-businesses, a consulting firm. I felt my heartbeat increase as I approached Number 14. It was the only house. I walked past quickly but could still be sure that no lights burned within. I crossed back over the square to another pub, where I stood near the window until a seat became free. I sat there for an hour before walking back out again.
‘Yes, hello? Can I help you?’
The woman had been carrying a shopping bag in each hand, with a leather purse slung over her shoulder. She’d opened the door to Number 14 with a key and closed it behind her. Lights had come on shortly after. It had been hard to tell the woman’s exact age from the distance I was at but it definitely wasn’t Cherie. The woman was sixty, at least. I left it five minutes, hoping that Cherie wouldn’t arrive back too in the meantime. I made my way across the square towards the front door, to Number 14 Victoria Place.
‘Listen, if you’re another estate agent I can tell you now to forget it. I’ve got all your leaflets.’
The woman standing in front of me had hair that was a luminous grey, brushed back into something of a pompadour. Her clothes were colourful swathes of flowing silk. She gave off unstudied elegance but it was a Seventies elegance or even earlier. Her face was kindly but troubled, a pair of overlarge glasses magnifying her eyes so that she looked almost constantly startled. I gave her a nervous smile.
‘I’m not an estate agent.’
‘No? You don’t look like one actually. I’m sorry, it’s just they keep hassling me. But what can I do for you, love?’
I shifted from one foot to the next, then back again.
‘You have a young girl living here,’ I said. As if it was nothing.
‘Yes. Cherie. What…? You’re not a policeman, are you?’
‘No,’ I laughed. ‘Why did you say that?’
‘I don’t know. No reason. It was just the way you said it. “You have a young girl living here.” But you’re not a friend of Cherie’s, are you?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘No, she doesn’t have many friends to visit. But if you’re not a friend or a policeman or, thank goodness, an estate agent, what are you?’
‘It’s a little hard to explain. Are you related to Cherie?’
‘Me? No. She just rents my loft. It’s converted, of course. I wouldn’t just rent someone a loft.’
‘No.’
‘But why do you want to know if I’m related to her? I’m sorry but I have to ask you who you are.’
‘I think I might be Cherie’s brother,’ I said.
’Think?’
‘Yes. She doesn’t know about me. It’s a bit complicated, I’m afraid.’
‘I see,’ the woman said. ‘I see.’
We were in her sitting room. It was a pleasant room, though the majority of the furniture was fairly old. It was mostly heavy stuff, mahogany tables, uncomfortable-looking sofas with huge, carved wooden claws for feet. A lot of it could have done with upholstering but nevertheless the room had charm. The frayed silk lampshades were a change from the uplighters everyone seemed to go for these days and the faded William Morris on the walls was more interesting to look at than white paint. Mrs Minter, as she’d introduced herself, had offered me tea, which I’d declined.
‘I’m sorry about the estate agent thing but one of them actually did come round the other day, not satisfied with littering my doormat with their fliers. They tell me I could make a killing on this place, enough to buy one of those ghastly oversized shoeboxes I’m surrounded by. But I was born here, you see, and with my job and the rent from upstairs I’m all right. They can go and screw themselves, if you’ll pardon my French. But now then. It seems like you have a bit of a story to tell me.’
Mrs Minter had already told me that she was a local government officer, working for Hackney in the housing department. I told her that my name was Jonathan Howells and that I was a teacher, PE and English, in Islington. I explained that I’d always known I was adopted but had only recently tracked down my biological parents after my adoptive parents had passed away. Mrs Minter asked me what it was like to meet them but I shook my head.
‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘Once I found out who they were I realized that I didn’t want any more than that. From them. They had a choice and they gave me away and I have to accept that. But Cher
ie never had a choice as to whether or not she wanted a brother. Cherie, that’s my sister. I’m sure she is. It took me ages to find her. Months more to pluck up enough courage to get in touch. I thought about writing but didn’t know what to say and a phone call would have been worse. So I just thought: hell, I’ll knock on the door. And she’s out!’ I laughed. ‘Do you know when she’ll be back, Mrs Minter?’
The woman sitting opposite had no idea when Cherie would return. Her lodger tended to come back most nights, but not always. She had her own keys, of course, but still had to use the front door. I asked what kind of girl Cherie was, eager to know more about my sister, but Mrs Minter was noncommittal. I got the feeling that she didn’t approve of her, but it wasn’t because of noise or men or anything like that.
‘She’s very quiet,’ Mrs Minter explained. ‘She just comes in and goes straight upstairs. By the time I can get out into the hall to say hello she’s already in her flat. My last tenants were art students. We used to have a real laugh. I like young people. But no, Cherie is nice and polite but she plays her cards close to her chest, shall we say. You know what? I have the feeling that you taking an interest in her, it just might be what she needs to draw her out of herself.’
Mrs Minter and I chatted on for another five minutes, my ears straining for the sound of footsteps, or a key turning in the front door. The street was quiet. After a while I gave a pained expression and asked Mrs Minter if I could use her toilet.
It Was You Page 26