The Hollow Man

by Oliver Harris

  He checked the road from the front window and when he was sure no one was passing he stepped out, skipping down the front steps. He walked to the north end of The Bishops Avenue, where its grandeur dissipated into the suburbs. East Finchley. The tanning salons and charity shops were waking up. The cafes had started to open. He tried the first one he got to.

  “Could I have a coffee?” he said. “I don’t have any money but I’d like a coffee.”

  The woman laughed. “You want a coffee?”

  “A small one, thank you.”

  “No,” she said, and laughed again.

  He went into a Costa Coffee on the high road. “Someone cleared my coffee,” he said, and pointed to an empty table.

  “Sorry about that, sir.” They made him a fresh one. Belsey sat down and dealt out the contents of Devereux’s wallet. There were a lot of cards for expensive hotels: Mandarin Oriental Geneva; Ritz Carlton Moscow; Florida Marriott. Devereux was a man who collected hotels as if these places were the significant acquaintances of his life. He was a member of a club called Les Ambassadeurs with an address in Mayfair. He used a Barclaycard, black Amex, silver Visa and Diners Club. There was a receipt for a meal at Villa Bianca in Hampstead four days ago; Devereux paid for two glasses of wine, salmon tortellini and a mozzarella salad. There was a loyalty card for a coffee shop on the high street. Finally Belsey pulled out a clump of business cards. On these he was Alexei Devereux, Director, AD Development. The company had a Paris office on Rue de Castiglione, an NYC operation on Fifth Avenue and a London address in EC4.

  Belsey returned to Devereux’s house, blocked caller ID on the kitchen telephone and dialled the London office.

  “AD Development,” a woman answered.

  “Can I speak to Mr. Devereux?” Belsey said.

  “I’m afraid he’s not in the office. Can I take a message?”

  “No,” Belsey said. “Thank you.”

  He hung up and called the Paris number.

  “Bonjour,” a woman said. He hung up.

  Every bank has a police liaison team. Belsey called the dedicated CID hotline for Barclays, gave his code, and was put through to the head of external investigation.

  “External,” a man said.

  “Is that Josh Sanders? It’s Detective Constable Belsey, at Hampstead.”

  “Nick, how’s business?”

  “Slow. I’m waiting on a warrant for an account of yours. I was wondering if you could speed things up. Can I read you the number?”

  “Go for it.”

  Belsey read off Devereux’s account number. Sanders typed it in.

  “Mr. A. Devereux?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not one of our most active customers.”

  “When was the account last used?”

  “Four days ago: withdrawal of sixty pounds, Hampstead High Street.”

  “How much does he have?”

  “He’s two hundred overdrawn.”

  “He’s overdrawn?”

  “Went over a week back.”

  Belsey thought about this. “Any debits set up?” he said.

  “None. He’s only had the account a couple of months.”

  “Payments?”

  “There’s a purchase on it last week: Man’s Best Friends.”

  “Man’s Best Friends?”

  “Sounds like a pet shop. Customer present transaction, Golders Green. Would that make sense?”

  “Not much is making sense right now,” Belsey said. “Do you have his PIN number there?”

  “You know I can’t give you that, Nick.”

  “I know, Josh. Just a joke. Thanks for your help.”

  Belsey put the phone down. An idea, humorous at first, had persisted until the humour faded and the core of possibility remained. He wanted a plane ticket. He wondered if Devereux could help him raise the cash for that. He sat down with one of the cards and a sheet of Devereux’s paper and practised Devereux’s signature. It wasn’t easy. Alexei Devereux had an ornate hand. It seemed to belong to another age—the signature a brand might use when selling you overpriced grooming products. After ten minutes Belsey had it good enough to pass. He found car keys on a Porsche fob in the cutlery drawer and after some searching made his way through a small door at the back of the kitchen into the garage.

  A Porsche Cayenne SUV sat alone beneath strip lights, fat and mean as a tank, with blacked windows and glinting hubcaps. It was the only car in a garage big enough for five. Belsey climbed in. You could get comfortable in a Porsche Cayenne. The dashboard carried a DVD player with touch-screen monitor and GPS. There was almost ninety thousand on the clock, which seemed a lot. Belsey switched on the satnav and scrolled through recent journeys stored. Most started or ended at Heathrow. A lot involved central London hotels. Belsey read it as a rental vehicle but couldn’t think why Devereux would be driving a rental. He checked the glove compartment and found a manual, a dust cloth and some Prada shades.

  A button on the wall lifted the garage door. The front gates opened a second later. Belsey eased up the ramp into the city.

  It took Belsey a moment to get used to sitting above the early-morning traffic in the SUV. He expected resentment from those navigating the narrow roads of Hampstead but people pulled aside for him, respectfully. It was like being police. Belsey drove to Camden, parked behind the Buck Street market and walked to a twenty-four-hour convenience store with a jumble of souvenirs and cheap hardware at the back. The staff were sleepy and careless. He knew the store let you sign for card payments—they were always calling Hampstead trying to report fraudulent transactions. For the same reason, he also knew their CCTV was permanently broken. After a minute’s browsing Belsey selected a bottle opener, a Zippo lighter and a penknife that said “London.” Start small. He found the silver Visa and slid it out of Devereux’s wallet, moving his fingers over the raised letters of the name.

  “Do you have a gift-wrapping service?” he asked the girl on the till.

  “No.”

  “OK.”

  She looked at the credit card, turned it in her hands, swiped it and stared at the machine.

  “It says I should contact the card issuer.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would that be?” Belsey watched her eyes slide to the phone and back. He knew why it would be: something had been flagged on the system. Maybe it was a new card, or Devereux had changed addresses, or had been travelling abroad. He should just choose another credit card. He watched the shop floor and couldn’t see any security. A door in one corner led to fire stairs; a back exit would lead to Camden High Street and there was an alley from there to the crowded market.

  She shrugged. “Sometimes it says that.”

  “OK.”

  “Do you have any ID?”

  Belsey showed Devereux’s business cards and his club membership.

  “I’ll have to make a call,” the girl said. She had a memo stuck to the till with the relevant phone numbers, called Visa and read out the security code and Devereux’s name. Belsey counted his breaths. “Yes,” she said. “He’s here now. Yes. OK,” and to Belsey, “It’s OK.”

  “Can you ask them how much credit is left?” Belsey said.

  “How much credit is there?” she said. “Fifty? Thank you.” She hung up. “Fifty thousand,” she said.

  “Fifty?”

  “That’s right.”

  Belsey chose a greetings card that said “Good-bye” and bought that as well.

  He drove through the Square Mile, parked on Tower Hill and checked Devereux’s business card: AD Development, St. Clement’s Court, EC4. He wanted to know a little more about the man before he borrowed his money. He wanted to know if he was dead or alive.

  A colder wind blew through the City these days, but Belsey still felt a thrill when he ente
red the place: the sense of grind, the sheets of glass and bone-coloured stone; austere, baroque, loaded. He loved the churches stranded among all the finance like ships run aground. He used to do some church sitting in the City, a few years ago. There was an organisation that sat in churches to keep them open. He’d got the idea off a heroin addict he’d decided not to arrest, and it had appealed to him for a while—he had just started at Hampstead and was trying to clear his head. Until then, he had barely spent two minutes in a place of worship, had never received a moment’s religious instruction. He thought he’d start with the real estate. It had been a phase, the same distinct period in his life when he started stealing books from the pubs they were meant to decorate; dusty hardbacks on history and philosophy. He’d even read the Bible, and it was better than he expected. So much was about dissatisfaction, leaving places, being lost. He saw these books now as props with which he’d tried to construct something: a life that was more than a job, perhaps. It hadn’t worked. But the churches, at least, had been peaceful. Each carried its own flavour—some bright and serene, others unspeakably lonely, like being in a cell.

  Belsey walked around the back of the City, through the tail end of the morning rush hour in its winter uniform of dark coats and scarves. Basement windows looked down onto rows of unmanned terminals. Every building advertised offices to let. But the crowd had not thinned. It took him a while to find St. Clement’s Court, moving from the main roads onto progressively smaller and more crooked side streets. He found the plain front of St. Clement’s Church, then realised that a slender gap between the churchyard and an anonymous office block beside it was in fact the entrance to an alleyway. On one side of the entrance a plaque said “Here lived in 1784 Desiley Obradovich, Eminent Serbian Man of Letters.” On the opposite wall was an equally weather-worn notice, engraved in metal, with a disembodied hand pointing into the permanent dusk of the alley: “Entrance to 37–41 St. Clement’s Court.”

  The passageway was one of those chaotic formations that made the City feel like it had been eroded through limestone. Belsey went down it. By some quirk of the medieval warrens, numbers 37–41 turned out to be a single black door in a narrow, brown-brick facade at the end of the cul-de-sac. Belsey wondered if it had once been attached to the church; a parsonage, maybe. AD Development had the property to itself. It presented one leaded window to the world, the lower half quaintly curtained off like a French restaurant. There was a single brass bell with a brass plaque polished that morning, carrying the firm’s name.

  Belsey climbed onto the churchyard wall and peered over the curtain. The glass was fogged but he could make out a young woman at a desk in an office. There was no one else. She looked cold, in a cardigan and heels, writing something. Belsey climbed down before she noticed him. He realised he was wearing Devereux’s clothes. He removed the tie and jacket, reasoning that these were the most conspicuous items, and left them folded at the side of the building. Then he rang the bell.

  The door buzzed. He entered a hallway with gold fittings, a large framed mirror and flowers on a table. The side door into the office was already open.

  “Come in,” the young woman said, through the doorway.

  The office was well worn, oozing old-money charm and suggesting a comfortable few centuries of clever business. It had furniture for four or five, but only the girl was present. She was a brunette, in heavy makeup that failed to disguise how young she was. An old electric heater blew at her ankles. One woman’s coat hung on a hat stand beside three dented bottle-green filing cabinets. There was a large mahogany table at the back with an upholstered armchair that might have been antique. Dusty green curtains filled the wall behind it. Someone had arranged a decorative stack of pine cones in the fireplace. The carpet was worn.

  The girl watched him expectantly. She looked like an intern.

  “Is Mr. Devereux about?” he said.

  “No.” Her face faltered. “I’m his assistant. Can I help?” It was a strange face, he thought; not plain but not quite pretty, with liquid eyes and incredibly pale skin.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No.” She twisted a Kleenex in her hand.

  “OK. When was he last in?”

  “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t think so. Is this his office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does AD Development have offices upstairs?”

  “No. This is the office. Who should I say called?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  He was on his way out when she said: “Excuse me.” He turned. She’d let a little more anxiety reach her face.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know Mr. Devereux?” she asked.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’m a little concerned. I should have seen him. I haven’t seen him for a while, in fact.”

  Belsey considered his options.

  “When did you last see him?” he said.

  “A couple of days ago.”

  Belsey walked back in, closing the office door and pulling up a chair from the side.

  “I’m an old business partner,” he said. “Perhaps he mentioned me. Jack Steel.” He shook her hand.

  “Oh. Yes, maybe.”

  “You must be . . .”

  “Sophie.”

  “Sophie, I’m also concerned, to be honest. I got a call last week and he said . . . well, he sounded upset. He wanted to say good-bye. I didn’t really understand what he meant at the time.”

  “Good-bye?”

  “Farewell. Was he meant to be in today?”

  “He always is. At least once a day. I don’t know . . .” She trailed off.

  “What about the other offices—Paris, New York? Have they heard from him?”

  “No.”

  Belsey got up, walked to the desk at the back and sat down again. He slid the bin out from beneath Devereux’s desk and removed the foil wrap of a cigar, an empty shopping bag and a receipt from a local coffee shop.

  “When did you last see him?” he asked.

  “Friday.”

  Belsey opened the desk drawers. The girl made a noise.

  “I don’t know if you should—”

  “I know what I’m doing.”

  The drawers were filled with cardboard wallet files in an assortment of colours. He emptied the files onto the desk and searched for bank details. She watched him, slightly horrified.

  “How did he seem?” Belsey asked.

  “On Friday? Distracted, I guess.”

  Distraction: That was the danger. Do not become distracted. The paperwork didn’t give much away.

  “What do you think was distracting him?”

  “He said something about being down to his last million.” Belsey tried not to smile. “I think he was joking. I mean, I don’t know if he was joking. I didn’t think too much about it at the time.”

  He stood up, turned to the green curtains, pulled them aside. They were covering bare bricks. He let them fall.

  “Is the business going all right?” he said.

  “As far as I can tell.”

  “Hard times.”

  “What’s going on? Is he OK?”

  “Are you able to access the company accounts?” Belsey asked.

  “No.”

  “How much do you know about operational workings?”

  “Nothing. I mean, I pay in cheques. Mr. D handles all the big transactions personally. Mr. Devereux, that is.”

  “Mr. D?”

  “Mr. Devereux.”

  “Were you sleeping with him?”

  “Was I what?”

  “Sleeping with him. Having sex.”

  “No.”

  Belsey opened the lower desk drawer.

  “Those are his private papers,” she said.

  “We need t
o find out what’s going on.”

  Belsey took out a file and emptied it. It contained a desktop diary. Belsey flicked through it: a suicide’s diary could look distinct. There was a lot of scrawl over the previous month—names and times, sometimes three or four days blocked out—“NY,” “Madrid.” Then it thinned out. Then it became blank. No plans for summer, no plans for spring. Only one incongruous entry, tomorrow night: “Dinner.”

  “He was having dinner tomorrow.”

  “Oh, he was always meeting people.”

  “After that it looks like he was winding down.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked like she might start to cry. Belsey took the empty shopping bag from the bin and filled it with an assortment of papers while she blew her nose.

  “What should I do?” the girl asked.

  “Hold tight,” Belsey said. “If I know Alexei he’ll be lying low, waiting to surprise us all.”

  8

  Belsey returned to Hampstead police station. He slid the “Good-bye” card into his drawer, then placed his new Zippo and the penknife on his desk and admired them. He pocketed the lighter. He glanced through the stolen AD Development paperwork and decided to study it in detail later, when he had time to concentrate. For the moment, at least, he still had a job. Work while it is day. The night is coming when no man shall work. There were messages for him: from the hotel where he’d been staying, a loans company, an ex, a second cousin he hadn’t seen since a wedding in 2004. People wanted to know why he wasn’t answering his phone.

  He called the ex from the office line.

  “I am. I just don’t have it.”