by M. H. Baylis
When they were alone, he broke the news to Sybille. For a moment it seemed as if she hadn’t heard. And then she sighed and said, ‘It worked for her. It didn’t work for me.’
What worked? The timing? Was Sybille saying that Aurelie was happy with the arrangement, but she wasn’t? He didn’t know what she meant. Ineffectually, he wrapped a couple of her favourite ornaments in newspaper: a china frog she’d had since she was a girl; a Murano owl he’d bought her on a trip to Venice; a slim bottle, seemingly made of bone, with Chinese writing on it. He didn’t remember that. He glanced back at his wife, propped up on the bed, unsightly woolly green socks on over her tights. She was clutching something in her left hand.
‘What’s in your hand, Syb?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, transparent as a caught-out child. She kept her hand round it, but she let him gently open her fingers. He wondered if she, like him, felt any pulsar echo of desire when their hands touched, a memory of what those fingers had once felt like, elsewhere.
‘Christ, Syb. Where did you get it?’
‘Sister Anna-Claire smokes,’ she said, in her child’s voice again, telling tales with barely concealed delight. ‘Hid it down the side of the chair I sat in.’
‘So you set fire to the curtains with her lighter, Syb? Why?’
‘When Aurelie came home…’ she said hoarsely, a woman again, ‘When she got sent home from the convent, that was because she’d set light to the music room. She made a fire. She came home to her room. She got to stay where she wanted.’
He stayed longer than he’d stayed in months, lying there with her, on the bed, his head on her shoulder, his hand in hers, breathing in the smell of her, hoping she couldn’t feel his tears. From the way she patted him, occasionally, though, he knew she could. He hoped she understood, at least, or sensed, that in amongst his grieving there was relief. His life might still be in danger, but hers was not.
There was a certain look in Sister Florence’s eye as she showed him out, a glint that spoke of expectation, anticipation: she knew he knew something, and assumed he would share it. She seemed deflated when he just asked where Peter was.
‘Away once more. Into the trees,’ she said, bluntly.
‘But you gave him my message? You told him I wanted to talk to him.’
Sister Florence nodded vaguely, then suddenly gripped his arm. ‘You will be here, on Thursday?’
‘Of course. And before.’ There was a silence between them as she opened the main door, which had now been festooned with extra bolts and locks. He assumed the nun was thinking of the same things as himself – of all the nights they’d stood here, the tiny, truncated intimacies these two, entirely different people had shared at the edges of a great sorrow, without ever wading in deeper. Would he ever see Sister Florence again after this week?
‘I can’t believe it’s really happening,’ he said.
‘I cannot believe that it will,’ she replied, or rather recited, as if her words were the second half of some elaborate, foreign greeting. Like a prayer, Rex thought, as he walked through the trees. Trying to make something true by saying it.
Maybe that was what he needed to do with Peter, he thought, after twenty minutes of fruitless looking for the man among the trees. There was a kilometre of parkland around the palace, and the mysterious, pale hermit could have chosen any bush or hollow of it to shelter in. If he was even there at all. He needed to find the man, needed to know for certain if his suspicions about him were true. But maybe the nuns were right – trying to find Peter, or to make him appear, was like trying to make it rain. One could only really trust. And he knew he’d be back before long.
As he stood on the hill waiting for a bus to take him back down, he went to the brink of ringing Aurelie. Sure, he could tell her there was no threat. But if he told her why, told her what his wife had done, what would it achieve? The one consistent part of Sybille’s sister, from the wild child to the dypso-Sloane to the current clean and serene version, was stubbornness. Aurelie wouldn’t change her mind. She’d change everything else to fit it. She’d still cart Sybille back with her and install her under 24-hour supervision in some flame-retardant, match-free annexe; persuade the priests at St. Eustache to celebrate a special, candle-free Mass. He wanted to ring, he knew, because he wanted to feel as if he was doing something. But what was there to do?
A phone call shook him out of his worries. Brenard, following protocol, had rung Ellie rather than Rex with an update on the Borough Command meeting. Ellie was now marshalling her troops for the afternoon of news-scooping ahead. She was excited, and he quickly got caught up in it, as the 144 carried him down to battle on the plains.
* * *
It was a long afternoon – his only breaks buying cartons of mango juice from newsagents, so that he could swallow pills as he went along. He exchanged a couple of texts with Helena, but apart from that, he belonged to the story, and he was everywhere with it. In its high, historic moments it seemed like a wall frieze or a tapestry: outside the Town Hall as the bagged-up computers and the box-files were carried silently into custody. Watching the Stetson-less Tex Ochuba filling out the back of a tiny police car, the fat Greek lady from the labour agency feigning some sort of hysterical collapse. By tea-time he was sharing pavements with faces he recognised: The Times, the Evening Standard, the BBC, there was even a UK-based Polish TV station with someone on the case. But s: Haringey and The Sentinel had got there first. He had broken the story. When the glamorous lady from ITN asked him for an interview, and he felt himself tempted, he realised it was time to leave the scene.
He had a lot to do in the office, of course, and he wanted a wash and brush-up before he met Helena, so he barely paid any attention to the small, blonde family yawning in Reception as he went up. It was nothing unusual to see motley people in the building’s foyer: the call centre spat out employees like a saw-mill.
Seconds after he’d arranged himself at his desk, Brenda rang him to come back down. He swore. He was still swearing as he came down the stairs to find a mum, a dad and their earnest twin daughters with neon rucksacks.
‘If you’ve quite finished with that talk,’ Brenda said coldly. ‘The Lund family are over here on holiday.’
Apologising, Rex shook hands with them all, not at all clear why the Lund family should be over here on holiday in his office.
‘I wrote to you about my plans to come and visit, Mr Tracey, connected to the work of the UNWCAGRC,’ Dr Kristian Lund said, with the rising-falling, slightly irritated intonation of the Nordic peoples. ‘My family and myself are having a short holiday here in London beforehand, and as I had not heard back from you, and my daughter here was interested to see the palace named after herself, we decided to come.’
The young Alexandra Lund was nudged forward, teeth, freckles and all, polite jokes were made, grins exchanged, international accord repaired. At any rate, Rex seemed to have been forgiven for shouting ‘Who the pissing bloody fuck is it?’ down the stairs. But Dr Lund’s eyes, behind the exquisitely minimal Danish frames, preserved a chilly look, and he soon asked Rex if they could speak privately.
Brenda cracked open the cake-tin for mother and children, while Ellie let Rex and Lund have her office. ‘After I wrote to you, I researched, Mr Tracey, and I saw your name on an article about the work of our unit in Nicosia, and the programme of awareness-raising going on here. Apparently being undertaken by Dr Helena Georgiou.’
‘She’s been here a week or so. I did see your email, but I thought it was a mistake.’
Lund looked affronted. ‘Why?’
‘Because Hel – Dr Georgiou told me it was. She said there’d been a mix-up, and she would talk to you.’ Even as he spoke, Rex began to hear the dawn chorus of panic, those first, tiny, almost innocent cheeps of impending trouble. ‘She does work with you, doesn’t she?’
‘She did,’ said Dr Kristian Lund. ‘But she was fired. She hacked into my email account in order to make contact with you.’
* *
*
He slept on Terry’s floor, rat-faced on raki, Okocim and, eventually, some appalling chestnut liqueur the photographer’s sister had brought back from a holiday in Corsica. The mate from Consett was there, too, in and out with joints and powders and some impenetrable business of his own. Rex never quite learned his name. The mate from Consett never quite learned his. It seemed not to get in the way.
One of the benefits of being friends with a real bloke’s bloke like Terry, Rex thought – in those early stages when thought was still possible – was that no one needed to talk that much. In very few words it had been communicated that Rex had a problem with a woman. In just as few the message came back that it was no problem, he could stay here, listen to Led Zeppelin, find oblivion unpestered.
He was not unpestered, though, because he could see the texts and the voice messages hitting his phone like rockets, shoals of desperation, bewilderment and anger surging through the troubled sea that was Dr Helena Georgiou. Rex could have switched the phone off. He did turn the volume down. But he could still see it. And he kept it in sight, because he wanted to see it.
It was a sad tale, told without anger or pleasure by Dr Lund, a colleague who until recently had obviously had professional respect for Helena, as well as personal sympathy for her problems. Now he was approaching those problems like the scientist he was.
‘She was an able member of the team until around six months ago, when she got some news. It wasn’t news intended for her, I gather, but a report from a nurse, who lived in Nicosia but had been working in the UK, looking after old people. I don’t know what the report was, but I believe it was some information concerning Dr Georgiou’s father, whom she did not know. It had a dramatic effect on Dr Georgiou. She became depressed. She asked for time off and, of course, our organisation recognises the stresses people in this field are under, so that was no problem. She returned to work after six weeks’ break. But it was clear that Dr Georgiou wasn’t better, only in fact worse. Very erratic, argumentative, emotional – quite different from the way she had been. It had been indicated to her, before she became unwell, that this job – coming here to the UK – would be hers. Afterwards, of course, there was no way we could permit someone in her state to represent our work so we told Dr Georgiou that there had been a change of plan. At this point, she crashed into the ceiling.’
‘Hit the roof,’ Rex said absently.
‘Exactly. She refused to accept that decision and became difficult. She insisted there was nobody else who could do this job. We offered her a year’s sabbatical, but she refused. Then she said she would take it, actually, provided we let her come to the UK to do the job first. She was fixated upon this. In the end we had to terminate her contract. It was very sad.’
‘I’m supposed to be seeing her for dinner,’ Rex said, ridiculously. Dr Lund looked embarrassed.
‘Today I see from my researches on the internet that she has now travelled all over the country – claiming to be representative of the UNWCAGR. I haven’t reported it to my superiors yet, but I will have to. And I will need to talk to your police.’
Rex had begged Dr Lund for a stay of execution – 24 hours, so he could speak to Helena himself. Lund, who had promised his family a day-trip to Brighton, had agreed, and given him until 7 pm tomorrow.
But the more he drank in the evening that ensued, the less Rex knew what he could say to Helena. The night, a night that should have been spent in celebration, became a race to get to the point where no words, or thoughts, or memories were possible. And he hit the finishing line fast.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Even a bloke’s bloke like Terry couldn’t help being curious, and as they stepped out, queasy and raw-eyed into the cool morning, he asked, ‘What happened then? She got a hubby and four kids back in Larnaca?’
People, smart, hurried, businessy people were charging past all around them towards the Tube, a breed who slept in the area but had little to do with it. Rex, bleary and confused, almost collided with a cross man in navy before he could reply.
‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘But not that.’
It was enough for Terry. They parted where the road split, and Rex headed home for a change of clothes before work. In the enclosed courtyard that served as a garden, there was a petrol can. It wasn’t his – he’d never run a lawn mower engine or lit a barbecue in his life. Someone had put it there. Someone with another message for him.
In his exhausted brain, the connections fizzed. In all the victories and the defeats of yesterday, he’d overlooked something. Eric Miles had named Sajadi in his confession – purchaser of the nightclub license, owner of a legion of falsely-rented flats. Those details hadn’t been published of course, they would compromise the investigation, but the police, surely, would now have the Kurdish businessman in their sights, would possibly have hauled him in already. Was that the reason behind this, latest, nasty symbol? A sign, direct from the man to him: You know. And I know you know.
He moved the can warily, and found it to be empty. There was no smell of petrol around, or inside the house, which he checked, inch by inch, in sort of fever. Carefully, with a rubber glove he used for clearing the drains, he stowed the petrol can in a couple of Lidl bags, doubting this would satisfy anyone’s evidence-preservation criteria, but feeling marginally better for doing something. He rang Brenard, told him about the can, trying to sound casual, popped the question.
‘Rostam Sajadi?’ A dry laugh. ‘The flats, the nightclub – all owned by a shell company that’s owned by another shell company that’s owned by a fishing tackle shop in the Caymans. Never dealt with Miles or the council, he says, except to donate the stuff for the zoo.’
‘And you believe that?’
‘Not about that, is it? Given the set-up he’s got, given the sort of lawyers he can afford, he’s safe as houses. Why? You think he’s the one doing all this stuff to you? I don’t reckon he’d go near it, to be honest.’
‘He wouldn’t have to, would he?’ Rex said, looking at the can. ‘Someone else would do it for him.’
‘Why though? He’s teflon and he knows it.’
He showered and changed, shivering, and not from cold. Brenard could be right. Threats, in general, were the stuff of street-hoods. The only real power they had was intimidation, so they used it, inefficiently, risking detection and capture, in the hope that it would work. Big league villains didn’t bother with threats. If you were in their way, they just wiped you out. But if Sajadi wasn’t behind it, who was?
* * *
On his office desk, crisp and still warm from the printer, was a new contract. He was back on board, exonerated, rehired by Sentinel Group News and Media, on a full-time basis, with a raise that amounted to an extra twenty quid a month, after tax. Or 21 cans of Okocim, he thought, if he went for one of the 7 for 5 deals on Philip Lane.
He understood, from the way Ellie was hovering in the doorway to her office, that he was meant to say something grateful and humble about the contract. But the petrol can had got to him. So, too, had the sight of Helena, on a 144 bus, just as he’d been approaching the Turnpike Lane crossroad. She was standing by the doors, waiting with the others to get off, and he’d dived into the nasty newsagents to avoid her. Under the glare of the aged proprietor – who specialised in giving short change and accusing everyone of stealing from her – he had a word with himself. This was crazy. He had enough people to hide from – he couldn’t do it to her. He’d asked her colleague, Dr Lund, for time to sort it out. And whatever deceits she’d wrought, she was a person in need of help. A person he’d grown to like.
The messages had stopped around one am, and there’d been no more since. He wondered what she was planning to do with her day. Would she carry on going through the motions of being Dr Helena Georgiou from the UN unit with the ridiculous acronym? Or had his silence made her realise it was all over? He had to talk to her.
In the office, he signed the contract, half-heartedly murmured his thanks, tried Helena�
�s phone. It was switched off. Ellie continued to hover.
‘Had a call from the editor. He’s had a call from Millbank – they’re wondering why Eve Reilly hasn’t been asked for a view on all this. I know, I know…’ She went on, as Rex began to show signs of rumbling. ‘It sounds like they’re trying to use it to get some extra PR for their candidate, it absolutely stinks. On the other hand, it’s an angle. And the Big Boss agrees.’
‘I wouldn’t want to lose my twenty quid bonus,’ Rex said, standing up and gathering his things. ‘I had such big plans for it.’
* * *
Reilly’s office was in the local Labour Party HQ, a flat shack of a place formerly a Minicab Office in Crouch End. It was the one seedy note in an area dominated by wide-aisled, mum-friendly coffee shops and places with tiny, expensive wellies in the windows. Crouch End had become a temple to child-rearing, Rex thought. People here seemed to have children, not in the way humans had been having them for 65,000 years, but in a loud, self-conscious, zealous way, like teenagers in a pub who thought they were the first people to discover booze. Rex used to look at them askance, all these lifestyle-parents and their wittily-named kids. These days, he just looked. He wondered what it was like to have a hall filled with small wellington boots. He knew what an empty hall looked like, after all.
Even though she was only the party’s candidate in the forthcoming bye-election – the incumbent MP, the heavy-drinking, depressive Gil Agnew, had three full months left to serve – the party office was already Eve’s office. There were berry-bearing twigs in glass vases, personal photos amongst the party posters, soft, breathy songs playing through the computer speakers.
Eve wore a purple, wide collared blouse and grey trousers, and a garnet on a silver chain around her neck, which she fingered as she spoke. Or recited. ‘I’m confident the police and the relevant agencies will get to the bottom of what has been going on, and I’m confident that, when the time comes, Harringay and Tottenham’s hard-working people will choose how best to go forward.’