Requiem

by Clare Francis

  She pulled open the top drawer to drop in some clean clothes and the smell rose up in a wave. At the same time her eyes were drawn to a series of yellow stains and black dots scattered over her underwear.

  ‘What the hell – ?’

  She reached into the drawer. As her hand closed over her one and only pair of silk panties, the clothes at the back of the drawer gave a distinct twitch. She stared, immobilized. She looked into the shadows at the back of the drawer and was met by a single shining dot. Yellow, glistening. An eye.

  She jerked back, and in the same instant her clothes burst into movement; there was a violent scuttling and scrabbling, and a missile thundered wildly round the drawer. She gave a shriek that sounded unnaturally loud in her ears. The missile, brown and trailing a low tail, leaped at the side of the drawer, propelled itself over the edge, landed on the ground and, its claws skittering furiously on the floorboards, shot past the red chair, across the hearth and disappeared under the bed.

  She stared mutely at the bed then back at the ruins of her underwear. Suddenly and without warning, something folded inside her, the tears leapt hotly against the back of her eyes.

  ‘Shit,’ she murmured. ‘Shit.’

  It was a moment before she realized the door bell was buzzing.

  The route to the window – her normal vantage point for the inspection of callers – would take her too near the bed and other dark places. She backed towards the door and pressed the entry. Opening the flat door she heard the street door open and close, she heard footfalls in the hall.

  Then, inexplicably, the footsteps ceased. A second later the stair lights clicked off. Darkness and silence.

  Something rose up in her, something close to panic. She roared: ‘Who is it?’

  There was the heavy sound of someone stumbling, and a muffled oath.

  ‘Who is it?’ she yelled, her throat raw.

  ‘Daisy? Where are the lights, for God’s sake?’

  That voice. That voice.

  She reached out onto the landing for the push button and the lights came on. She went to the stairs and peered over the banister.

  ‘God!’ she cried.

  Nick, climbing the stairs, began to speak but, looking up, the words died on his lips. ‘Jesus …’ He came to an abrupt halt. ‘What the – ?’ His expression was so astonished that she slapped a hand over her black eye to cover it.

  Coming up the last few stairs, he said: ‘Daisy … What have you been up to?’

  He laid a hand against her bruised cheek and murmured a sympathetic: ‘Ouch, ouch!’

  The lights clicked off and for a moment Daisy thought she’d landed in heaven.

  She found him a rolling pin, part of a set of kitchen implements she’d bought off a stall in Camden Lock. Clearing the furniture away from the bed he advanced slowly.

  ‘Careful. It’s enormous,’ she warned.

  ‘Not nearly as big as I am,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not so sure.’

  He looked back over his shoulder. ‘Whose side are you on?’

  ‘The winner’s.’

  ‘I’d better not let him get away then.’

  He slid the bed slowly away from the wall, one end at a time, then crept round behind it. He poked the rolling pin into the assortment of luggage, scrolled paper and plastic-wrapped bundles that made up the subterranean clutter under the bed, then moved with sudden speed as the creature scuttled between a suitcase and a roll of paper. He took a swipe at it, missed by a tail, and chased it to the other side of the room, tripping and almost sprawling over the rug as he scrabbled round the end of the bed in hot pursuit.

  The creature was fast, but he finally cornered it by the bathroom and dealt it a blow. Finishing it off quickly, he wrapped the carcass in newspaper and took the parcel down to the dustbins. While he was away Daisy hastily sponged her face and daubed some makeup over her bruise.

  She came out of the bathroom to meet him. He was still catching his breath. They stared at each other for a moment.

  ‘I’m not too practised at rat-catching,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you’ll do,’ she said. ‘Believe me.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He smiled but distractedly.

  ‘Please – sit down.’ She straightening the red chair and brushed a hand over it. ‘Coffee?’ she said brightly.

  He stopped just in front of her and said: ‘How did you get that face?’

  ‘Ah! That’s another story.’

  He raised his eyebrows slightly and she could almost see him thinking: If this was a boyfriend, he must be something else.

  ‘I’ll make the coffee,’ she said and turned quickly towards the kitchen.

  His voice drifted in from the living room. ‘What happened to the ceiling?’

  Tapping the coffee gently into a mug, she went and stood in the doorway. ‘I was wondering about that too.’

  He was looking mystified, trying unsuccessfully to fit this into the boyfriend scenario.

  ‘I think they did it on purpose, when they came to install the bug – ’ Her hand flew over her mouth. ‘Hell,’ she breathed and, going back into the kitchen, found a screwdriver. Putting a finger to her lips, throwing him a significant look, she stabbed a finger towards the instrument. Kneeling, she unscrewed the handset and pulled it apart. Her heart skidding, she peered inside, held it up to the light, ran two fingers along the casing and sank slowly back on her haunches. ‘It’s gone,’ she gasped.

  He slid forward onto his knees beside her and peered at the handset. ‘What’s gone?’

  ‘The bug. The microphone. The thing they were listening with.’ Her voice was flying high, sawing all over the place.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘They were bugging this place. Listening to everything.’

  He hesitated as if he needed to understand it correctly. ‘Listening?’

  ‘Yes! It was a bug all right, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of removing it, would they?’

  He nodded uncertainly.

  ‘They must have realized I’d found it, you see,’ she argued. ‘They must have been frightened that I’d use it as evidence.’

  ‘You’re shivering,’ he said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m okay.’ But she wasn’t, not quite yet, and he seemed to realize it, because he got up and went into the kitchen and came back with the coffee.

  He sat hunched forward in the chair above her, watching over her as she drank. ‘All right?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

  He smiled, and the tiredness seemed to go out of his eyes for a moment.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said, sitting back in the chair. ‘The rat, the ceiling, the bug.’

  ‘Not overlooking the eye,’ she said.

  ‘Not overlooking the eye,’ he said gravely.

  She sat on a cushion at his feet, her profile outlined against the fire, her bruised cheek turned away from him. Her hair was untied and swelled out in a cloud from her neck. It was the sort of curly pre-Raphaelite style much favoured by models, but which in Daisy’s case was almost certainly achieved without a hairdresser. She had a fine profile, with a straight nose and arched brows, and he noticed the outline of her lips.

  When she began to speak her voice was hesitant and low-pitched.

  The Greeks’ water tank was the first real clue, she said, the first thing that should have made her stop and think. But she had too much on her plate, too many things to organize; it simply never occurred to her that it might have been intentional. Why should it? But looking back she could see that they must have been desperate to locate the laboratory, and that the tank was the only sure way of getting her back to the flat. If anyone had tried to tell her people would go to those sort of lengths, she wouldn’t have believed them. But now …

  She gave him a quick sideways glance. He smiled briefly by way of encouragement. She looked back to the fire.

  She told him about the succession of things that had started to go wrong, small t
hings, not-so-small things, and her feeling that she was constantly being outmanoeuvred, that however hard she tried, someone was always there ahead of her. The problems with the licence, Peasedale being warned off by his boss, Adrian getting made a ward of court, the disintegration of Alice Knowles’ case … Always something. Looking back she couldn’t be sure what was inevitable, what might have been prevented. All of those things perhaps, or none of them; it was impossible to know.

  The fire, though, that was something else. She arched her head back and gave a laugh of disbelief. He noticed the long smoothness of her neck, and remembered having noticed it once before. Animal rights! she scoffed. You had to hand it to them. The slogans, the freeing of the rats and mice – well planned. And they did a brilliant job at destruction, nothing left intact. And the burglar alarm: disconnecting the thing, then setting it to go off when they left and it was too late to save anything.

  She was silent for a moment, then shifted on her cushion. For an instant her leg came against his, but she moved it quickly away.

  Then there was you, she said, her voice calm now. Only three people knew about your involvement, she said. You yourself – she ticked him off with a solemn gesture in his direction – and me – she pressed a splayed hand against her chest – and your accountant. Until the night of the fire, that was. Then – yes, she had to admit there had been someone else – Simon Calthrop of the Sunday Times. But he wouldn’t have told, she added; she was certain of that. And even if by some wild chance he’d gone against everything he believed in and told someone, it certainly wouldn’t have been another newspaper, not in a thousand years. No, no, the point wasn’t that she’d told Simon; the point was that she’d made the call from here, from this phone. She looked back to him to make sure he’d grasped the significance of what she was saying.

  Then she gave an exclamation of disgust, directed at herself. She should have guessed then. Why she hadn’t, she couldn’t imagine. So stupid, so stupid. She said it over and over again, screwing her eyes down and shaking her head.

  ‘But why should you have guessed?’ he said.

  She began again: Friday night, the night after the fire, the night she had come to see him in Kensington … She faltered uneasily, as if this was a part of the story she’d rather not relive.

  ‘Sorry I got mad,’ he volunteered.

  She spun round. ‘No, no. I don’t blame you!’ she said. ‘Really. Really.’

  Then, looking back to the fire, she continued, speaking in a pedantic un-Daisyish fashion, all bare bones and no emotion, running briskly through facts like so many on a file: how after she’d left him in Kensington she’d gone home and drunk too much and left the wild overblown message on Simon’s machine, how next evening she’d spotted Maynard leaving her flat and followed him into the dead-end trap of the north London estate. She skimmed over the attack itself with a cartoon-strip ‘Then, pow! That was it!’ and was on to the discovery of the bug in the phone before he could pull her back to the mugging.

  ‘It must have been one hell of a clout!’

  ‘Don’t remember much. Just that he wore this unlikely raincoat. More like a flasher.’

  He leaned forward and turned her face towards him, tracing the bruise across her cheek and into her hair, feeling the lump above her ear.

  ‘God,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be too sympathetic.’ She laughed feebly. ‘Might feel sorry for myself.’ She spoke lightly, but not so lightly that there wasn’t a trace of emotion in her voice.

  ‘Can you hear all right?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Ha, ha. He could have killed you, you know.’ He dropped his hand. ‘And the rat?’

  ‘A charming little thought of Maynard’s, I’d guess. Probably one of the ones from our own lab!’

  He thought suddenly: And I killed it. And with no compunction at all. Daisy had obviously appreciated the irony of the situation already, because she turned and gave him an oddly flustered look.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked.

  ‘Not quite.’ She twisted around until she was facing him and, laying an elbow over the chair-arm, told him all about the man known as Alan Breck and how she needed to get him over to Britain.

  ‘Can I help?’ he said.

  She looked questioningly at him.

  ‘I mean, money?’

  ‘Amazing.’ She was laughing with disbelief.

  ‘Well, it’s about the only thing I’m good for, isn’t it? Money.’

  ‘Not true!’ Impulsively, she knelt forward and, reaching an arm round his neck, pulled his cheek against hers. He felt the softness of her, felt her warmth. But after a reciprocal squeeze he disengaged himself. He was in too uncertain a state of mind to be embracing someone like Daisy; he might cling to her, a piece of buoyancy in the wreckage.

  Sitting back on her heels, she regarded him gravely. ‘Why did you come? Was it …?’

  ‘Something happened.’

  She said quickly: ‘I read about it.’

  He murmured: ‘And that was only the half of it.’ He thought of Susan and felt a lurch of bitterness, but he didn’t want to talk about that, and certainly not to Daisy. ‘My manager’s having hysterics,’ he said instead. ‘Our European tour starts in two weeks and with this drugs thing the insurance people are threatening to withdraw cover, which means if anything goes wrong I could get wiped out financially.’ He snorted with an amusement he didn’t feel, then added: ‘I won’t put up a defence, you see. They’d want to know where I got the stuff. They’d want to rake over old ground.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  He said: ‘No, why I came was … I talked to Campbell.’

  ‘You did what!’

  ‘He dropped in on me. Unexpectedly. He told me about Adrian.’ And all about you, he almost added.

  ‘Adrian,’ she echoed.

  ‘I realized … Well, anyway – I’ve come to offer my help. Again. If you want it.’

  ‘Even after everything?’

  ‘Especially after everything.’ He thought: Oh, you have no idea!

  ‘You won’t regret it.’

  ‘I don’t expect you’ll let me.’

  She grinned, her bruise like a carbuncle on the side of her face.

  ‘Your Mr Breck, you said he’s calling? Shall I wait?’

  ‘Would you? Would you?’

  He went down to his driver and sent him for a pizza, which they ate sitting on the floor in front of the fire.

  They talked. He stretched out in the big red chair with the creaky arm. After a while he felt drowsy; he hadn’t slept the previous night. Without meaning to, he dozed.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, waking suddenly.

  She couldn’t resist it. ‘Like old times.’

  ‘Ha, ha.’ He smiled.

  When he woke next it was midnight and the phone was ringing.

  Chapter 35

  A BRILLIANT SUNDAY morning. Daisy stood waiting by the window. It had stormed and blown for three solid days, the media had talked about a repeat of the ’eighty-seven hurricane, but by now the air was still, the last few leaves hung exhausted in the plane trees and a strong yellow light was touching the chimneys of Augustus Road.

  Seven twenty. She made her calculations again, working backwards from the time Simon would need to leave for Heathrow to the latest he could reasonably get up. It was possible he’d got up early to work on the novel of course, but as she knew from many a gruff encounter it was safer to interrupt his work than his sleep.

  Finally, worried that she might have miscalculated and missed him altogether, she dialled his number fifteen minutes early. The telephone was answered at the first ring: she could almost see him snatching it up.

  ‘Yup?’ His brisk tone.

  ‘I checked with the airport,’ she said. ‘The flight may be early.’

  She could imagine him pursing his lips, putting on a look of forbearance. ‘I’ll be there in good time,’ he grunted.

  ‘Terminal 3. Jenny’ll
be waiting from nine thirty – ’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He was openly impatient now. Stress was not kind to Simon.

  She asked: ‘The US agreement, it got signed?’

  ‘There were problems, they wanted one of their own people to take over the story. In the end we agreed to split it.’

  Of course you did, she thought, because this story will make your name and the US deal will make your newspaper some money. ‘Well done,’ she said.

  But he wasn’t to be deflected from his bad temper. ‘This secrecy’s ludicrous, Daisy. I cannot go away without leaving a number. The office have got to be able to get in touch with me.’

  ‘I told you – it’s not possible, not at the moment anyway.’

  A sigh of exasperation. ‘Really. You’ve been seeing too many films, Daisy. Life isn’t like this.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I promised.’

  ‘Jesus … Anyone would think I was going to broadcast it from the rooftops!’

  But Simon had lost the power to intimidate her. ‘Jenny’ll tell you at the airport,’ she said mildly. ‘Like we discussed.’

  Another sigh, some more huffing and puffing, but he rang off without further argument.

  She drove down to Hammersmith by a circuitous route, stopping several times just past tight bends, taking detours through drowsy streets. By the time she was onto the Great West Road she was sure she was quite alone.

  At eight thirty only a few dedicated Sunday travellers had ventured onto the roads and the M4 seemed unnaturally wide and empty, like a runway. Soon she was turning off and running along the road skirting Heathrow’s northern perimeter, with fifteen minutes to spare. She decided to use the time on a last check, a final look for fellow travellers. She circled a roundabout, turned into a cul-de-sac, parked for a few minutes outside a garage. She watched, but the scene, like the morning, was fresh, clear and innocent.

  After that it would have been tempting to take a few shortcuts, but she stuck to her plan and, avoiding the Airport Inn and its car park, left the car at the next hotel along and walked back, taking a couple of rearward glances as she went. These precautions, which would have seemed ludicrous a couple of weeks ago, were now a bare and reasonable minimum, and never mind the scorn that Simon would pour on them if he knew.