The Vanishing Point

by Val McDermid

  ‘Joshu Patel.’

  ‘Actually, it’s Jishnu, that’s his given name. He left that behind when he became a DJ.’

  ‘OK. Jishnu Patel, then. Do you have an address for him? Date of birth? Family details? Anything that would help us track him down?’

  ‘I can tell you exactly where Joshu is right now,’ Stephanie said wearily. ‘Believe me, this is nothing to do with him.’

  6

  When I think back to that first encounter with Joshu, I can’t help seeing the final act foreshadowed in every aspect. That need always to look like a big man. The way he filled the gap between his reality and his fantasy with drugs. His failure ever to step up to the plate and be a man.

  But I’m running ahead of myself. Once I’d realised Scarlett was telling the truth and I didn’t need to be scared witless of the pillock with the pistol, I could see Joshu for what he was. As far as I was concerned, right then he was nothing more than an irritating distraction. I’d started to build a rapport with Scarlett then he’d slouched in and broken the mood. I knew I couldn’t creep any further into Scarlett’s confidence with him there. It was obvious even in those few moments. She only had eyes for him and he only had eyes for himself. My sole function in this triangle was to big Joshu up, and I didn’t need to bother with that just yet. I wanted to hear from him, but not before I had a clearer idea of how he might be useful to making Scarlett’s story work. The only thing I could do now was lay down a timetable.

  ‘Let’s sort out when we can meet,’ I said, setting off for the changing room. Scarlett followed and so, disconcertingly, did Joshu. I closed the curtain on the cubicle firmly and tried to ignore his attempts to turn the situation into a sexual encounter. ‘Not now, babe,’ Scarlett kept saying amid the scuffles and moans.

  When I emerged he had her against the wall, his hand between her legs. ‘Have you got your diary handy?’ I said briskly.

  He cast a dirty look over his shoulder. ‘Listen to you. “Have you got your diary handy?”’

  ‘You need to work on your impressions, innit,’ I said, dropping into his patois.

  Scarlett giggled and ducked out from under his arm. ‘I got it in the kitchen,’ she said, grabbing a luxurious towelling robe from a hook on the wall as she passed Joshu, flirting a little wave at him. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs? I’ll be there in a minute.’

  Joshu’s scowl lifted and he slouched after her, turning back to target me with a self-satisfied sneer. As I followed Scarlett down the hall, he peeled off and disappeared up a shallow flight of stairs.

  We settled on three blocks of three days’ interviewing time, built around Scarlett’s schedule of public appearances, product promotions and meetings with TV executives and brand managers. She’d certainly learned how to turn racism and homophobia to her advantage.

  ‘Before we meet again, there’s one thing I need you to think about,’ I said.

  ‘What’s that, then?’

  ‘How do you want to be presented? What do you want them to think of you? What impression of you should they take away? You need to be clear about that before we start, so I can focus the direction of our conversations.’

  ‘You mean, like, I want them to think I’m an ordinary Northern lass? Or, like, I’m lucky and it could be them next? That sort of thing?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes. Because although I’m just presenting what you tell me, the way I present it can make a huge difference. In a way, I have to think of you like a character in a book. So I need to make the feel of the book consistent. As if it was a novel. That’s why I need to know how you want the world to feel about you after they’ve read it.’

  She grinned. ‘You’re a very smart lady, Stephanie. What are we going to call this book, then?’

  We. I liked that. In spite of Joshu, we’d made real progress. Scarlett considered me on her side, in her camp. That was half the battle. ‘Did you have any ideas?’

  I wasn’t expecting much. ‘What about “Scarlett: My Story”,’ she said. I’d been right.

  Time for a touch of tact and diplomacy. ‘Well, it’s not going to breach the Trade Descriptions Act. But I think we can do a bit better than that. “Scarlett: My Story” will attract your fans. No doubt about it. But I want to get people picking it up who really don’t know much about you. So we need to intrigue them. I was thinking, maybe something like “Fishing for Gold”? How does that sound?’

  She looked dubious. ‘But how will they know it’s about me?’

  I grinned. ‘Your face’ll be all over the cover, love. There won’t be any room for doubt whose story it is.’

  Scarlett still wasn’t convinced. ‘I’m gonna have to sleep on it.’

  ‘No problem. So, are we solid, you and me? You think you can stand having me around long enough to get this done? There’s no going back once we’ve started, you know. We’ll be tied by a contract.’

  ‘I think so.’ She laid a hand over her stomach, as if she was swearing on her baby’s life, then cocked her head to one side. ‘You won’t let me down, will you, Steph?’

  If I’d had any inkling of what I was committing myself to, I would never have said what I did. ‘The people I write about become my friends, Scarlett. And I don’t let my friends down.’

  7

  There was no sign of Joshu when I pitched up at the hacienda four days later. Maggie and George had nailed each other to the wall over the contracts, Biba from Stellar Books was shouting about the deal all over the trade press and the tabloids were already sniffing around the serialisation. In my world, it doesn’t get much better than that.

  This time, I drove myself to darkest Essex. Clearly my car was low status; the duty paps didn’t even stir as I pulled up to the gate. Scarlett buzzed me in and I parked in the same garage slot we’d used on my first visit. The red Mazda convertible I’d noticed before was still sitting in the far bay. It didn’t look as though it had moved. Scarlett was riding high; she only had to drive herself if she wanted to.

  I found Scarlett in the kitchen, leaning on the range with a mug cradled against the top of her belly. This time, the joggers were black, the muscle T-shirt white. When I walked in, she was yawning luxuriously, unselfconsciously revealing the glitter of gold-crowned molars. Clearly she’d always lived in a world where nobody ever covered their mouth. ‘Hiya,’ she said through the end of her yawn. ‘Fuck, I stayed up so late last night.’

  ‘Were you partying with Joshu?’ I said. Not that I was interested. But part of my job is making conversation, bridging the gaps between me and the clients.

  She snorted scornfully. ‘He’s up in Birmingham. Some new club opening. Needed the king of cool to scratch and scribble and stutter for them.’ She giggled. ‘It sounds like somebody’s granddad, doesn’t it? Like some old fart that’s lost his marbles. Scratching and stuttering. No, there was a Wife Swap marathon on and I got sucked in, watching all them hopeless pillocks trying to fit into somebody else’s life.’

  ‘It’s the bitching and the niggling we watch for.’ I have to admit, I’ve got a soft spot for Wife Swap too. ‘It’s car-crash telly. I’m holding out for the night somebody’s kid slaps the invader.’

  Scarlett giggled again. I could imagine how much that was going to irritate me over nine days of interviews. Sometimes the clients have incredibly irritating verbal tics or physical twitches that drive me crazy. The only way I can deal with it is to keep an hourly tally and set little mental bets with myself.

  ‘If it was me, I’d totally turn them on their heads,’ she said, pushing off from the cooker and heading for the kettle. ‘Brew?’

  ‘I’d love a coffee. What do you mean, you’d turn them on their heads?’

  ‘I’d wait till they were all out at work or at school. Then I’d hire in a cleaning service and caterers. They’d come back home and think I was amazing. And they’d be totally pissed off with their real wife.’

  ‘I take it you’re not much of a housewife, then?’

  She pulled a face. ‘I can
clean if I have to, but these days I don’t have to. As for cooking – beans on toast, scrambled eggs on toast. Toast on toast. And that’s your lot. That’s what takeaways are for, right? So we don’t have to waste our time in the kitchen. You’re not one of them Nigellas are you? Domestic fucking goddesses?’ She couldn’t have got much more scathing contempt into three words.

  ‘I don’t do any of that fancy shit, but I like to make a proper roast dinner at the weekend.’ More Nigel Slater than Nigella Lawson in the kitchen, that’s me.

  ‘That’s cool, a proper roast,’ she conceded. ‘But I bet you’re one of them that likes proper coffee.’

  I grinned. ‘You got me bang to rights. Have you got some?’

  ‘Yeah, that Carla turned up with a box of them metal pods for the coffee machine when she drove Georgie up the other day.’ The cupboard she opened contained a giant box of teabags and a plastic bag filled with a mixture of coloured metal capsules. ‘We only drink tea,’ she said. ‘We’re total plebs, me and Joshu. Well, he pretends to be. He’s not really. His dad teaches at a university and his mum’s a doctor. He’s a big disappointment to them, is Joshu.’ She dumped the bag by a coffee machine that looked like it’d had more design input than the space shuttle. ‘I hope you know how to work it.’ She turned and gave me that hundred-watt smile again, the one that made her whole face come to life. ‘Or I’ll have to give Carla a bell and tell her to get her arse out here to show us what to do.’

  ‘How hard can it be? George Clooney seems to manage it, and he’s a bloke.’ It didn’t take much figuring out, but Scarlett was impressed when I managed to fix myself a decent coffee in a matter of minutes.

  ‘You want to work in here?’ Scarlett asked, eyeing my shoulder bag. ‘ ’Cos there’s a table so you can take notes easily.’

  ‘I don’t need a table. I’ll be taping our conversation. I make the occasional note, but I just lean my notebook on my knee. We’re going to be sitting around for hours. It’s better if we’re somewhere comfortable. What about the living room, with the sofas?’

  ‘You don’t think that’s too much like, just hanging out?’

  ‘Trust me, just hanging out is good. The more you relax, the more natural you’re going to sound.’ She still looked dubious, but she led the way through. ‘Did you get a chance to sort out those photos?’ I asked before she settled in.

  ‘I had a look,’ she said. ‘There’s not much. Hang on a minute.’ Scarlett disappeared down the hall, and I heard the soft shuffle of her feet on the stairs. I’d asked her to show me her life in photographs, going all the way back to childhood. I’d found that photos often jogged memories. But they also made the clients drop their barriers as they were drawn back by the image into a sense of place and time, a vivid recapturing of smells and sights and sounds that could often unlock a whole stream of recollection.

  As Scarlett handed over the meagre bundle, I knew this wasn’t exactly going to be a fertile field for us. Like most people, I spent my teens thinking my parents were pretty useless – out of touch, out of time, out of ideas. But at least they understood that when you have a kid, you’re supposed to pay attention to them. My life in pictures would have been a thick bundle of holiday snaps, school photos, moments of pride captured by the camera and a record of family celebrations. My cousin’s wedding, my grandparents’ golden wedding, my nephew’s christening. All faithfully preserved for posterity.

  It hadn’t been like that for Scarlett. Whatever her parents had been doing, it hadn’t included demonstrating their pride in their offspring by capturing her every endearing moment. ‘Like I said, there’s not much.’ She shrugged and fell backwards into the sofa, her lips turned down in a pout.

  Top of the pile was, predictably, the hospital shot. The new mum propped on pillows, holding the new baby close to her chest and giving the camera an exhausted smile. Chrissie Higgins looked more raddled than radiant. She must have been about the same age her daughter was now, but you wouldn’t have guessed it. Her face was puffy, her skin looked rough and there were dark smudges under her eyes. It could have been the toll of a hard labour, but more likely it had been a hard life. Nevertheless, I could see the resemblance to her daughter.

  ‘I wasn’t much to look at,’ Scarlett said without glancing at the photo. ‘I look like a hundred-year-old monkey.’

  She wasn’t far wrong. ‘All babies look like that,’ I said. ‘But we’re programmed to love our own so we don’t notice.’

  Scarlett snorted. ‘Programmed to love our own? I don’t fucking think so! My mum couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital and have a drink. She was down the pub before I was a week old.’

  ‘Did she take you with her?’

  ‘Sometimes. Mostly she left me with her mum. She was already an alcoholic. And my dad was in between stretches and she didn’t want to lose him, which meant she had to go out on the town with him. She didn’t want some other slapper catching his eye and snagging him.’ That blistering contempt again. ‘Like anyone would think he was a catch, for fuck’s sake.’ She folded her arms tight against her chest and sighed. ‘Is this what we’re going to do, then? Look at old photos so I can have a good bitch about how crap my life’s been?’

  I smiled. I had to defuse her defensiveness. ‘Well, the readers have to learn how crap it was. That’s the only way they’ll understand the scale of the journey you’ve made,’ I said mildly. ‘We’ll come back to the pictures another time, once I have a clearer sense of where they fit in. What I want to talk about today is when you were a kid. We can’t just ignore it, pretend it never happened. Not if you’re going to explain your life properly to your own child. I can see it wasn’t a great time for you, which is all the more reason to get it out of the way. Then it’s not hanging over you.’

  She considered what I’d said, then nodded. ‘You’re right. OK. What do you want to know?’

  Standard procedure, step one. ‘What’s your earliest memory?’

  Like they all do, she thought for a moment. ‘At the funfair,’ she said slowly. ‘With my dad.’

  I softened and lowered my voice. ‘What I want you to do now is close your eyes and picture that memory. I want you to sink back into it, like you were sinking into the most comfortable bed. Let everything go and picture that little girl at the funfair. Let the years float away and flow backwards in time to that trip to the funfair.’

  Scarlett burst out laughing. ‘What is this? You trying to hypnotise me, or what?’

  ‘Not exactly. I’m trying to get you to relax, that’s all. A strong memory’s a good place to start.’

  ‘You’re not going to get me under the influence and make me do all sorts?’

  From what I’d seen of Scarlett on TV, it didn’t take much to achieve that. But it wouldn’t have been helpful to point that out. ‘No. I’m just trying to get the ball rolling. If you don’t want to start with that memory, we’ll move on to something else. But I’m warning you now, I’ll want to come back here. So we might as well deal with it now.’

  ‘Why not? It’s not like there’s a problem with it or owt. It was only a trip to the fair.’ She rolled her eyes then leaned back, resting her head against a cowhide-covered cushion and closing her eyes. I waited and, after a pause, her breathing slowed. When she spoke again, her voice was slower and more measured. ‘I’m at the funfair. It tastes of hot dogs and onions and diesel and candy floss. The air smells hot. I’m up in the sky . . . ’

  ‘Are you on a ride?’ I spoke softly, not wanting to break the moment.

  ‘I’m on my dad’s shoulders. I’m up above everybody’s heads. It’s dark, ’cos it’s night time. There’s coloured lights everywhere, it’s like I’m inside a rainbow or summat. My hand’s in my dad’s hair, it’s really thick and wiry and if I grab on too tight he shouts at me to leave off.’

  ‘Is your mum there too?’

  ‘I can see the top of her head if I look down. They’ve both got cans, I can smell they’re drinking beer. But they’re laughing an
d joking and it’s like we’re just like everybody else.’ She opened her eyes and sat up abruptly. ‘That’s why I remember it. For once, I didn’t feel scummy. Like everybody was looking down on us.’ She shook her head with a grim smile. ‘We were the neighbours from hell. Nobody wanted us living next door.’

  ‘But you still managed to have a good time together. At the fair.’

  ‘Why do you think I remember it?’ Scarlett leans forward, apparently animated by genuine curiosity.

  ‘Because it was fun, I suppose?’

  ‘Because it was a complete bloody one-off,’ she said bitterly. ‘I hardly have any memories of my dad. I was only six when he died and he spent most of those six years inside. Apart from the fair, all I remember is him and my mum drunk and fighting. Shouting and slapping each other. The kind of thing that makes you want to hide under the bed and lie in your own piss when you’re little.’

  There wasn’t much I could say that didn’t sound patronising or dismissive. ‘Do you ask people about him? People who knew him?’

  ‘Of course I do. You want to know shit like that, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course you do. And you want to pass that knowledge on to your kid. So tell me what you know about him. What other people have told you.’

  It was a depressing tale. Alan Higgins was one of seven kids who had run wild from childhood thanks to an alcoholic father and a tranked-up mother. His older brothers had introduced him to burglary, car theft and a wide range of scams at an early age and he’d taken to crime with gusto. Unfor tunately his enthusiasm wasn’t matched by his skill, his intelligence or his luck. By the time he’d met Chrissie, he’d been in detention twice as a juvenile and once as an adult. Last time, he’d discovered the delights of heroin and from then on, his life became a tired treadmill of stealing to feed his habit, getting caught, going to jail and coming out to start the cycle all over again. He managed to stay out long enough to impregnate Chrissie with Scarlett and Jade, her older sister, but he was seldom around for the day-to-day.