by Joel Hames
He was walking towards me now, slowly, and I had a sense again of danger. Of unpredictability.
“What was her name? Ended up out of the window with a hole in her head. Serena something, right? Has Lizzy got a hole in her head too, Sam?”
He’d reached me as he finished speaking and I acted without thinking, the files dropping to the ground and drawing his gaze downwards, my left hand pulling back and then flying forward in a hook to the side of his face, my right following with an uppercut that he managed to lean away from and ended up scraping along his cheek. He grabbed onto my coat as he took a step back, stumbled, released the coat, reached down and steadied himself with one hand on the slick dark pavement. He looked up at me. I couldn’t read him. Couldn’t see what he was saying, what he was thinking.
I picked up the files and shook the rain off them, and then I turned and strolled away to the taxi rank.
When I walked through the front door and into the living room half an hour later Claire didn’t even seem to notice. She had the television on, volume turned right down, a three-quarter gone bottle of red on the table and an empty glass beside it. I closed the door behind me, louder than usual, and she turned slowly towards me.
“Hi,” she said. It’s not easy to slur a single syllable, but she managed it.
“Hi you,” I replied, and sat down beside her. She smiled. First smile she’d given me in a while, and sure, she was drunk, but I wasn’t complaining. I wasn’t thinking about Rich Hanover, either.
“So how was the evening?”
“Shit,” I said, and her smile got a little broader. “It started awkward and went downhill from there. If I never see Lizzy Maurier again it’ll be too soon.”
The smile was still there, but her attention had drifted back to the television. Another news broadcast. She’d switched the subtitles on, sitting there alone with her bottle of wine and roomful of silence. More boats. The words flashing along the bottom of the screen counted dead in the hundreds, day by day, month by mounting month. Claire had been watching the news more and more lately, not just the refugees and the wars but the accidents and arguments and the petty domestic murders. She just sat there and watched, usually without the wine and with the sound on, but she never spoke about it. I wondered if it was becoming another obsession. I stood and shrugged off my coat, and she turned and frowned at me.
“What happened to your coat?” she asked.
“What?”
“Look.” She pointed to one of the pockets. It was torn almost away from the coat, hanging there in space, a sad, stray bit of cloth.
“Must have been Hanover,” I replied. She frowned again. “The journalist, the one from Real World News. He was waiting for me outside Lizzy’s place. And I saw him earlier, too. In a café. It’s like he’s stalking me.”
“What happened, though? Why would he tear off your pocket?”
It wasn’t until I’d explained what had happened that I remembered this wouldn’t sound as straightforward as it really was. Claire was a journalist. She believed in the rights of journalists to ask questions. To piss people off. I tailed off and waited for her to say something.
“So you hit him?”
I nodded. “He had it coming. You heard what he said.”
“Maybe. He does sound like a prick.” I nodded. At least she wasn’t on his side. “But you could get into all sorts of trouble, you know.”
I laughed. “Doubt it. He’s the one who’s been stalking me. He’s not going to get much sympathy if he complains.”
“You need to take this a bit more seriously.”
I laughed again. “Come on. He’s not even a proper journalist. Just some dick with a phone and a moped. He’s not going to win the Pulitzer Prize following me about, anyway.”
“For fuck’s sake, Sam. It’s not funny.”
She stood and faced me. She was glaring at me, now, and any sense that there was anything funny at all in the situation was gone, sucked from the room by that thin set mouth and those angry eyes. She needed careful handling, I could see it, I should have seen it, it would have been obvious to anyone with eyes of their own.
But I was still drunk, and angry. It wasn’t Claire I was angry with, but she was there and Hanover wasn’t.
“Why don’t you slap a fucking smile on your face for once, Claire? Forgotten how?”
She took a step back, and I saw Rich Hanover in her place, reaching forward and down, something on his face I couldn’t read. And then it was Claire, again, and she was smiling after all, and all that anger I’d been feeling had evaporated so fast it was like it had never been there at all. If I’d been drunker than I was I might have thought everything was just fine.
But I wasn’t that drunk.
“Did she smile for you, Sam?” she asked.
“Who? Lizzy?”
She shook her head. Still smiling.
“Your lawyer. Your pretty lawyer. In Manchester. Shame you can’t piss off back there and see the fucking smile on her fucking face, Sam. Not so pretty now, I’d imagine.”
I stared at her. My mouth had fallen open, my face blank, idiotic, not that it mattered. I saw her above me and realised I’d sat back down. There was a ringing in my ears, as if it had been me that had been hit, not Hanover, as if Claire had thrown a punch or two alongside the words.
Neither of us spoke.
After a minute she sat down beside me. I’d managed to close my mouth by then, but little else. She reached out to touch my face. I thought about backing away, pushing her hand away, but I thought too slow, and before I could do anything her fingers were on my cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and like that, the ringing was gone. I shook my head.
“It’s OK.”
“No it isn’t. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t even think that. I’ve never thought that. I shouldn’t have wanted to hurt you.”
I’d asked what felt like a million times in the last few days, but this seemed a better opportunity than any.
“What’s wrong, Claire?” I said, and she took her hand from my face and sighed, looked down at the hand, turned it one way then the other. I waited.
“It’s the case,” she began, and corrected herself. “The story.” She stopped and raised her eyes to meet mine.
“Go on.”
“I’m – I suppose I’m stressed.” She laughed, a short, bitter laugh. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s not like I’ve got anything to be stressed about. It’s not like I can bring them back to life.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” I said. “It’s important.”
She shrugged. “Thank you. I used to think it was important. I don’t know any more. I can’t get anywhere. I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Tell me.”
She fixed me with a look I couldn’t quite figure out. Appraisal, in part. And something else. She did nothing for a moment except breathe, deep and loud. Deciding.
“Wolf,” she said, finally. “Jonas bloody Wolf. He did it. We know he did it, right?”
“Well, the evidence – ” I began, but she stopped me with one hand in the air and a shake of the head.
“Forget the evidence. We’re not in court now. We know he was involved, right?”
I nodded. I had the sense that she needed to be doing the talking now, not the listening. She continued.
“And no one’s interested. The police won’t take it on.” She paused, and I wanted to ask her why they wouldn’t take it on, if she’d stopped pushing them and why, what they’d said to her about it, but I let the silence grow instead, and waited for her to go on. “As for Thorwell – he’s useless. He won’t let me print. I know I don’t have enough to print yet anyway, but he wants me to look at other things. I said to him I do that, I write his shitty little articles about hats and exam results and whatever crap they want me to look at, I can carry on doing that, that’s what he’s paying me for. But at the same time I want him to guarantee that when I’ve got enough, he’ll make the s
pace for me. And he won’t. It’s all maybe and depends what you’ve got. I’ve told him what I’ve got. I’ve told him what I might get, if he gives me the time and the confidence to get it. Says he can’t guarantee anything. Says he can’t take any risks.”
She paused. There was an opportunity here, to ask her what Thorwell was talking about, what risk he was running, and to remind her she wasn’t just talking to herself. But there was a more important opportunity, too: to let her say more, say everything she needed to say and hadn’t said in all those days of staring at the television and snarling at me. This was it. The heart of it all. The story. The fucking story. I waited.
“He’s my editor. He’s supposed to have my back. He said he’d have my back, our backs, all of our backs, when he took over. Like fuck he’s got my back. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do, Sam? What would you do?”
She paused again, but this time she’d said my name. She’d asked me a question.
“Sit tight,” I said, and saw her face fall and realised that was nonsense. Sit tight. Useless. “I mean,” I continued, “look. Just carry on. The police might not be helping now, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. Thorwell won’t print now, but that doesn’t mean he won’t, eventually, when you’ve got more to give him. It’ll crack – and you know, maybe it won’t. Maybe it won’t crack. I’ll tell you what I’d do.” I was warming to it, now. “I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. What I learned from Manchester. Don’t get too close. Keep some distance. Don’t make it personal. Treat it like a job, and when you win it’ll be a job well done, and if you don’t it’s just a job. Either way, you don’t give up on it. You’re a professional, Claire. You’re a bloody good one. Keep working.”
She nodded as I spoke, quiet, thoughtful. She waited for a moment, after I’d finished, and then muttered something so softly I couldn’t make it out.
“Sorry?”
“Not too personal. That’s what you’re saying, right? Don’t make it too personal.”
“Yes.” I had to tread carefully, I knew that, because all that time working on one thing made it personal, even if you didn’t want it to be. “Yes. Exactly. I know it means a lot. It’s two years’ work. It’s all those hours travelling all over the country and talking to prosecutors and police, tracking down witnesses, poring over papers and pictures, I get it. It’s part of you. Just make it a small part.”
She nodded again, and took another deep breath. I waited, because it looked like she had something else to say, but after a while she looked up at me, a weak smile on her lips, and said “So tell me, how was Lizzy Maurier? How was Brooks-Powell? Still evil?”
“Not evil,” I replied, slightly taken aback by the change of topic but prepared to go with it. “Just absent.”
“What?”
“He never showed up. Just me and Lizzy Maurier and her dainty little quail eggs and runny stew. Not really my cup of tea.”
I felt a little guilty as I spoke; the stew had been decent enough, after all, probably the best part of the evening. But Claire didn’t need to know that. I pushed on. If she wanted to know, I might as well tell her. Maybe we were back to bouncing things off one another.
“And the woman’s mad, Claire. I mean, granted, she’s been through a tough time. But she has this grief circle, this bunch of people sitting at their computers typing out the same clichés a thousand times over and congratulating one another like no one’s ever said this stuff before.”
Claire was back to looking at her hands. I tried to read some expression into the chunk of head and fraction of face I could see, but there was nothing. On I went.
“And she’s determined to make it all about herself. She knows her mother kept her down, she doesn’t make any secret of that, but she won’t admit that’s a bad thing. She’s determined to make a hero of Elizabeth. I think she wants to convince herself she’s led the life she was supposed to lead and everything’s OK. And then there’s the obsession with the tongue thing. You know, her mother’s tongue. She’s going on about Greek myths and Shakespeare tragedies like there’s some kind of hidden meaning in the fact some sick bastard cut out Elizabeth’s tongue. I’ve forgotten the names. Terry and Pylon, something like that.”
I was lying; even drunk I’d remember a pair of odd Greek names from an hour earlier. But I figured Claire would have heard of them; would find my mistake amusing; would let it lift her, suddenly and magically, back to life. It almost worked.
“Terry and Pylon?” she laughed. “What’s that, War of the Worlds meets eighties sitcom? Tereus and Philomel, that was what she said, right?”
I nodded; she was looking at me again now, the smile back on her face, and for a moment I thought I’d broken through. An argument, a long, painful monologue, some counsel, a joke. It wasn’t as much work as I’d thought it would be. I imagined us in bed in five, ten minutes’ time, I imagined my hands on her body, I imagined myself inside her – for the first time in nearly a fortnight, I realised with a start, which was the driest of dry spells for us.
“Yeah,” she continued. “You’re right. She sounds like a fucking idiot.”
And with that, she turned back to the television. I’d almost forgotten the television was on, silent, running sad pictures of the real world and the horrible things that had happened to the people in it. I wasn’t having it all end there.
“That’s what I thought. I mean, what kind of person turns their mother’s murder into a fucking Greek myth?”
The back of her head moved. A nod, I hoped.
“And she’s got boxes full of poetry, shit she wrote years ago that Elizabeth made her give up.” I was getting desperate now, jumping on anything that would just keep the conversation moving without falling into a hole I couldn’t drag it out of. “She says she hates the stuff and she loves her job but why’s she kept it all, why’s the flat full of it?”
Claire sighed, and turned back to me, and I had a sense that even though I had her attention again, it might have been better if I hadn’t.
“Look,” she said, “I get it. The devil didn’t turn up. Elizabeth Maurier’s daughter’s a nut job. You’ve walked into an Agatha Christie story and everyone’s trying to turn it into something else.”
Again, she turned away. Again, I persisted.
“An Agatha Christie story?”
“Family murders, wills, crazy people, books, obsessions,” she replied, still facing the television. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a fat guy with a big moustache turns up and cracks the case. And the thing about the tongue.”
She stopped. I fought back an urge to ask her what the hell she was talking about, and waited for her to continue.
“A Pocket Full of Rye. That’s it. Maid gets killed, peg on her nose, to match the nursery rhyme. Reminds me of that. Don’t know why. I’m off to bed. Don’t wake me.”
She stood, with surprising grace and balance, switched off the television, and disappeared into the bedroom. I watched her go and realised there was still some breaking through to be done.
9: Small Steps
I WOKE AT seven, head surprisingly clear, full of a curious and unaccountable optimism. I’d slipped into bed after an hour of sitting on the sofa trying and failing to make sense of my day. Claire was sound asleep on her side, lying on the edge of the bed with her back turned towards the middle. She’d pulled the duvet around her like a shield, not that she needed one with those thick winceyette pyjamas. I lay there listening to her breathing and imagined life without her, without the sudden freezes and rages of the last week or so, but I couldn’t. Even at her worst, Claire was something I needed.
Still, I wouldn’t have minded her out of those pyjamas.
When I opened my eyes hours later she hadn’t moved, lying there and breathing gently, as far as she could get from me without falling out of bed. I carefully picked myself from under the duvet and crept to the kitchen, where I made myself as strong a coffee as I dared and sat down with Lizzy Maurier’s files.
They were ar
ranged chronologically. I started with the most recent, figuring there might be some clue there as to why I was really involved in this. I’d gone along with Lizzy’s line the previous night, she liked you, she admired you, but I hadn’t bought it any more than I bought her line on herself. If Elizabeth had reasons for dragging me into her posthumous cheer squad, for reuniting me with a man she knew I hated and her own freak of a daughter, maybe they’d be in the files.
They weren’t. I skimmed back from the latest item, a few days before she died. Press cuttings about art exhibitions. She’d been a patron of some gallery or other, I remembered. One of her many noble causes. There were notes stapled together which on inspection turned out to be shopping lists; there were receipts and invoices, short paragraphs describing dreams, a scribbled draft of a note asking a contact for help finding work for the son of a friend. There were no emails, but the woman I remembered had stuck rigidly to pen and ink whenever she could. Elizabeth Maurier, it seemed, had kept everything, and the police had been through it all, and as I journeyed back through the final months of her life, through the weeks in which she’d tried incessantly to get hold of me, I found myself conspicuous by my absence. Not a single mention.
Which meant that for all it seemed these files were her life in full, they weren’t. There was something else.
There was the diary, of course, but I hadn’t heard a thing from Colman since our chat at the café and I wasn’t sure I’d be getting anything useful out of her. I scanned again, the same notes, the same few months. No Sam Williams, and no Connor, either. It wasn’t like she’d shied away from the personal. I found a short note written to the memory of her husband, on the anniversary of his death three months before her own. She spoke of her worries about Lizzy, of whether she’d done the right thing by their daughter, thoughts that still gnawed at her years after they’d first drawn blood, doubts that the Elizabeth Maurier I’d known would never have revealed in public. As vague as it was, there was a nakedness and candour that startled me. Emotional honesty wasn’t something I’d associated with her.