by John Harvey
That damp June and July she had been a minor sensation at the Wimbledon Championships, the first British woman to reach the semi-finals since Boadicea, or so it seemed, and ranked currently twenty-three in the world. And she had sprung from nowhere, or somewhere near the Essex end of the Central line at best; a council flat she had shared growing up with her sister, stepdad and mum. And like the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, in the States, she had learned to play on public courts, enjoying none of the privilege that usually attended the luckless Amandas and Betinas of the English tennis world. Nor did it end there. Her face, which freckled slightly in the sun, was beautiful in a Kate Moss kind of a way, her legs slender and long; the quality of the sports photographer’s long lens and of television video ensured that not one salted bead of sweat that languished on her neck then slowly disappeared into the decolletage of the thin cotton tops she liked to wear was spared from public view.
Before the tournament was over, Costain had the contracts signed, the company’s ad campaign agreed. Less than a fortnight later, the first of the advertisements appeared: Clarke crouching on the baseline, racket in hand, lips slightly parted, waiting to receive. In another she is watching the high toss of the ball, back arched, about to serve, white cotton top stretched tight across her breasts. For these and others, the strapline is the same: ‘A Little Honest Sweat!’ Just that and a discreet Union Jack, the deodorant pictured lower right, close by the product’s name.
Unreconstructed feminists protested and sprayed slogans late at night; students tore them down as trophies for their rooms; Kate devoted her column in the Independent to the insistent eroticising of the everyday. One giant billboard near an intersection on the Al north was removed after advice from the Department of Transport.
In the Observer Sport Monthly’s annual list of ‘Britain’s Top 20 Sportswomen’, Victoria Clarke was number seven with a bullet, the only tennis player to appear at all.
‘Forgot your racket,’ the cabbie joked, glancing at Kiley, empty-handed, waiting outside Queen’s Club for his change and his receipt.
Kiley half-grinned and shook his head. ‘Different game.’
Costain was in the bar: tousled hair, rimless glasses, Paul Smith suit and large gin. He bought Kiley a small Scotch and water and they moved to a pair of low leather chairs by the far wall. Good living, Kiley noticed, had brought Costain the beginnings of a belly the loose cut of his suit just failed to disguise.
‘So how is it really?’ Costain asked with a smile.
‘You know.’
‘Still with Kate?’
Kiley nodded.
‘How long’s that now?’ And then, quickly, ‘I know, I know, who’s counting?’
In a week’s time it would be two years since they’d started seeing one another; nine months, almost to the day, since he’d moved into Kate’s house in Highbury Fields. Kate, Kiley knew, had gone out with Costain a few times some few years back; kissing him, she said, was like being force-fed marinated eel.
‘Victoria Clarke,’ Kiley said, ‘what’s the problem? There is a problem, I suppose.’
Costain drank a little more gin. ‘She’s being blackmailed.’
‘Don’t tell me she was a Page Three Girl for the Sun.’
For an answer, Costain took an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit coat and passed it across. Inside, a black-and-white copy of a photograph had been pasted to a single sheet of paper: a young woman in a park, holding a small girl, a toddler, high above her head; in the background, another woman, beside an empty buggy, looks on. The first woman, and the girl, are smiling, more than smiling, laughing; the second woman is not. The quality of the copy was such, it took a keen eye to identify the former as Victoria Clarke. Even then, there was room for doubt.
‘Is this all there is?’ Kiley asked.
‘It arrived this morning, first post. A phone call some forty minutes later, man’s voice, disguised.’ He nodded towards the paper in Kiley’s hand. I imagine the original’s a lot clearer, wouldn’t you?’
‘And the child?’
‘Hers. Victoria’s.’
Kiley looked at the picture again; the relationship between the two women was there, but it wasn’t yet defined. ‘Whoever sent this, what do they want?’
‘A quarter of a million.’
‘For what?’
‘The negative, all originals, copies. We’ve got two days before they sell it to the highest bidder. The tabloids’d go ape shit.’
Kiley tasted his Scotch. ‘Why now?’ he asked.
‘We’re in the middle of renegotiating Victoria’s advertising contract. Very hush-hush. Big, big money involved. If nothing slips out of sync, everything should be finalised by the end of the week.’
‘Then, hush-hush or not, somebody knows.’
‘What?’ Costain said, mouth twisting in a wry grin. ‘You don’t believe in blind luck?’ And, because Victoria Clarke was now walking through the bar towards them, he rose to his feet and smiled a reassuring smile.
She was tall, taller even than Kiley, who knew the stats, had thought, and wore a dark blue warm-up suit, name monogrammed neatly along the sleeve with something close to style. Sports bag slung over one shoulder, hair still damp from the shower and tied back, the only signs of distress were in the hollows of her eyes, the suggestion of a tremor when she shook Kiley’s hand.
‘You want something?’ Costain asked. ‘Mineral water? Juice?’
She shook her head. Standing there devoid of make-up, she almost looked what she was: nineteen.
The envelope lay on the table between two unfinished drinks. ‘I don’t want to talk about this here,’ Victoria said.
‘I thought just-’ Costain began.
‘Not here.’ The voice wasn’t petulant, but firm.
Costain shrugged and, with a glance at Kiley, downed his gin and led the way towards the door.
Costain owned a flat in a mansion block close to the Thames — in fact, he owned several between there and the Cromwell Road — and for the past several months it had been Victoria’s home. Near enough to Queen’s for her to hit every day.
‘You’ll have to excuse the mess,’ she said.
Kiley moved an armful of discarded clothing and a paperback copy of Navratilova’s life story. The room resembled a cross between a Conran window and the left luggage department at Euston station.
Victoria left them to each other’s company and re-emerged some minutes later in a pale cotton top and faded jeans, hair brushed out and a little make-up around the eyes.
Sitting in an easy chair opposite Kiley, she tucked as much of her long legs beneath her as she could. ‘Can you help?’ She had a way of looking directly at you when she spoke.
‘It depends.’
‘On what?’
Kiley shook his head. ‘Timing. Luck. You. The truth.’
Only for an instant did she lower her eyes, fingers of one hand sliding between those of the other then out again. ‘Adrian,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Get me some water, would you? There’s some in the fridge in…’ But Costain had already gone to do her bidding.
‘I had Alicia — Alicia, that’s her name — when I was fifteen. Fifteen years and ten months. The year before I’d been runner-up in the National Under-Sixteens at Hove. I was on the fringes of the county team. I thought if I can get through to the last eight of the Junior Championships this next Wimbledon, I’m on my way. And then there was this lump that wouldn’t go away.’
She paused to judge the effect of what she’d just said.
Costain placed a tumbler of still mineral water in her hand and then retreated back across the room.
‘Why didn’t you have an abortion?’ Kiley asked.
She looked back at him evenly. ‘I’d already made one bad mistake.’
‘So you asked your sister — that is your sister, isn’t it? In the photo?’ Victoria bobbed her head. ‘You asked your sister to look after her… No, more than that. To say Alicia was hers; bring
her up as her own.’
‘Yes.’ In the wide, high-ceilinged room, Victoria’s voice was suddenly very small.
‘And she didn’t mind?’
A shadow passed across Victoria’s eyes. ‘You have to understand. Cathy, that’s my sister, I mean, she’s wonderful, she’s lovely with Alicia, really, but she just isn’t… Well, we’re different, chalk and cheese, she isn’t like me at all, she doesn’t…’ Victoria drank from her glass and went back to balancing it on her knee. ‘All she’s ever wanted was to settle down, have kids, a place of her own. She didn’t want to…’ Victoria sighed. ‘… do anything. She and Trevor, they’d been going steady since she was fifteen; they were saving up to get married anyway. Mum chipped in, help them get started. Trevor, he was bringing in good money by then, Ford’s at Dagenham. Of course, now I can pay towards whatever Alicia needs, I do.’
‘A good percentage of her disposable income,’ Costain interrupted. ‘First-class holiday in Florida last year for the three of them, four weeks.’
‘Cathy and Trevor,’ Kiley said, ‘they haven’t had children of their own?’
Victoria lifted her gaze from Kiley’s face towards the window, where a fly was buzzing haphazardly against the glass. ‘She can’t. I mean, I suppose she could try IVF. But, no, she can’t have children of her own.’
Kiley let the moment settle. ‘And Alicia?’
Victoria’s lower lip slid over the upper and the water glass tipped from hand and knee onto the floor. ‘She thinks I’m her auntie, of course. What else?’
Adrian reached out for her as she ran but she swerved around him and slammed the bedroom door.
‘What do you think?’ he said.
‘I think,’ said Kiley, ‘I need a drink.’
Victoria had been seeing Paul Broughton ever since her fifteenth birthday. Broughton, twenty-three years old, a butcher boy in Leytonstone by day, by night the drummer in a band which might have been the Verve if the Verve hadn’t already existed. A nice East London line on post-Industrial grime and angst. With heavily amplified guitars. After a gig at Walthamstow Assembly Rooms, he and Victoria got careless — either that, or Broughton’s timing was off.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he said when Victoria told him. ‘What d’you think you’re gonna do? Get rid of it, of course.’
She didn’t waste words on him again. She talked to her mum and her mum, who had some experience in these things, told her not to worry, they’d find a way. Which of them first had the idea about asking Cathy, they could never be sure. Nor how Cathy persuaded Trevor. But there was big sister, half nine to half five in the greetings-card shop and hating every minute. Victoria wore looser clothes, avoided public showers; her sister padded herself out, chucked in her job, practised walking with splayed legs and pain in the lower back. They chose the name together from a book. After the birth — like shelling peas, the midwife said — Victoria held the baby, kissed her close, and handed her across, a smear of blood and mucus on her cheek. Still, sometimes when she woke, she felt a baby’s breath pass warm across her face.
As a Wimbledon junior, she reached the semi-finals before dropping a set, strode out to take the final, as she thought, by right, and went down two and love to the LTA’s new white hope in thirty minutes flat. Costain, who had been monitoring Victoria’s progress, waited till the hurt had eased and offered her a contract, sole representation, which her mother, of course, had to sign on her behalf. Costain’s play: retreat, lie low, for now leave domestic competition alone; he financed winters in Australia, the United States. Wait till they’ve forgotten who you are then hit them smack between the eyes.
So far it had worked.
‘I assume you don’t want to pay?’ Kiley said to Costain. Victoria was still in the bedroom, door locked.
‘Quarter of a million? No, thanks!’
‘But you’d pay something?’
Costain shrugged and pursed his lips; of course he would.
‘Sooner or later, you know it’ll come out.’
‘Of course. I just want to be able to manage it, that’s all. And now… the timing… you can imagine what this company’s going to be saying about their precious image. If they don’t walk away completely, and I think they might, they’ll strip what they’re offering back down to what we’re getting now. Or worse.’
‘You couldn’t live with that?’
‘I don’t want to live with that.’
‘All right, all right. When are they getting in touch again?’
‘Five this evening.’
Kiley looked at his watch. One hour fifteen to go. ‘Try and stall them, buy another twenty-four hours.’
‘They’ll never wear it.’
‘Tell them if they want payment in full, they don’t have any choice.’
‘And if they still say no?’
Kiley rose to his feet. ‘In the event the shit does hit the fan, I assume you’ve damage limitation planned.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you should make sure your plan’s in place.’
‘So what did you think of her?’ Kate asked. ‘Ms Teen Sensation.’
‘I liked her.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
They were lying, half-undressed, across the bed, Kate picking her way through an article by Naomi Klein, seeking something with which to disagree in print. Kiley had been reading one of the Chandlers Kate had bought him for his birthday — give you some idea of how a private eye’s supposed to think — and liking it well enough. Although it was still a book. Before that, they had been making love.
‘You fancied her, that’s what you mean?’
‘No. I liked her.’
‘You didn’t fancy her?’
‘Kate…’
‘What?’ But she was laughing and Kiley grinned back and shook his head and she shifted so that one of her legs rested high across his and he began to stroke her shoulder and her back.
‘You got your extra twenty-four hours,’ Kate said.
‘Apparently.’
‘Is that going to be enough?’
‘If it’s someone close, someone obvious, then, yes. But if it’s somebody outside the loop, there’s no real chance.’
‘And he knows that, Costain?’
Kiley nodded. ‘I’m sure he does.’
‘In which case, why not involve the police?’
‘Because the minute he does, someone inside the force will sell him out to the media before tomorrow’s first edition. You should know that better than me.’
‘Jack,’ she said, smiling, ‘you’ll do what you can.’ And rolled from her side on to her back.
Victoria’s mum, Lesley, was a dead ringer for Christine McVie. The singer from Fleetwood Mac. Remember? Not the skinny young one with the Minnie Mouse voice, but the other one, older, more mature. Dyed blonde hair and lived-in face and a voice that spoke of sex and forty cigarettes a day; the kind of woman you might fancy rotten if you were fifteen, which was what Kiley had been at the time, and you spotted her or someone like her behind the counter in the local chemist or driving past in one of those white vans delivering auto parts, nicotine at her finger ends and oil on her overalls. Rumours. Kiley alone upstairs in his room, listening to the record again and again. Rolling from side to side on the bed, trying to keep his hands to himself.
‘Won’t you come in?’ Lesley Clarke said. She was wearing a leisure suit in pale mauve, gold slippers with a small heel. Dark red fingernails. She didn’t have a cigarette in her hand, but had stubbed it out, Kiley thought, when the doorbell rang; the smell of it warm and acrid on her as he squeezed past into the small lobby and she closed the double-glazed Tudor-style external door and ushered him into the living room with its white leather-look chairs and neat little nest of tables and framed photographs of her granddaughter, Alicia, on the walls.
‘I made coffee.’
‘Great.’
Kiley sat and held out his cup while Lesley poured. Photogr
aphs he had expected, but of a triumphant Victoria holding trophies aloft. And there were photos of her, of course, a few, perched around the TV and along the redundant mantelpiece; Cathy, too, Cathy and Trevor on their wedding day. But little Alicia was everywhere and Lesley, following Kiley’s gaze, smiled a smile of satisfaction. ‘Lovely, isn’t she. A sweetheart. A real sweetheart. Bright, too. Like a button.’
Either way, Kiley thought, Victoria or Cathy, Lesley had got what she wanted. Her first grandchild.
‘Vicky bought me this house, did you know that? It’s not a palace, of course, but it suits me fine. Cosy, I suppose that’s what it is. And there’s plenty of room for Alicia when she comes to stay.’ She smiled and leaned back against white vinyl. I always did have a hankering after Buckhurst Hill.’ Unable to resist any longer, she reached for her Benson amp; Hedges, king size. ‘Coffee okay?’
‘Lovely.’ The small lies, the little social ones, Kiley had found came with surprising ease.
They talked about Victoria then, Victoria and her sister, whatever jealousies had grown up between them, festered maybe, been smoothed away. Trevor, was he resentful, did he ever treat Alicia as if she weren’t really his? But Trevor was the perfect dad and as far as money was concerned, since his move to Luton, to Vauxhall, some deal they’d done with the German owners, the unions that is, and Trevor had got himself off the shop floor — well, it wasn’t as if they were actually throwing it around, but, no, cash was something they weren’t short of, Lesley was sure of that.
‘What about Victoria’s father?’ Kiley asked.
Lesley threw back her head and laughed. ‘The bastard, as he’s affectionately known.’
‘Is he still around? Is there any chance he might be involved?’
Lesley shook her head. ‘The bastard, bless him, would’ve had difficulties getting the right stamp on to the envelope, never mind the rest. Fifteen years, the last time I laid eyes on him; working on the oil rigs he’d been, up around Aberdeen. Took a blow to the head from some piece of equipment in a storm and had to be stretchered off. Knocked the last bit of sense out of him. The drink had seen to the rest long since.’ She drew hard on her cigarette. ‘If he’s still alive, which I doubt, it’s in some hostel somewhere.’ And shivered. ‘I just hope the poor bastard isn’t sleeping rough.’