by Denise Mina
He found number eight.
A low stone wall separated it from the street. In the front garden he could see a discarded skateboard sticking out of a bush. It made him double check the street number: they were never allowed to leave their belongings in view, he and Ella.
But it was number eight. The house was semi-detached, tall, yellow brick with white plaster trim, like all the other houses in the street. It was nice that they were all the same, like a uniform. The curtains in the front window were open, the lining draped perfectly uniformly. She hadn’t done that herself. She still had house staff.
Thomas saw a car coming a block away and hurried to open the gate and walk up to the stairs, jogging to the privacy of the top step before the car came past.
A black door with serious brass fittings: a post box and a spy hole and a heavy lion’s head knocker. He couldn’t hear anything from inside. He lifted the brass knocker and banged twice on the door.
Steps shuffled, and the light changed on the spy hole. He had assumed she had staff but it wasn’t a maid who opened the door.
She was younger than he expected. Slim with suspiciously round breasts. She wore white jeans and a pale gray sweater. Her brown hair was pulled up in a high ponytail and she had no make-up on. He couldn’t imagine Lars with this woman: she didn’t look formal enough, or old enough. She looked like Sarah Erroll, except very tall and pretty.
“Hello?” She didn’t recognize him, put her hand on her hip and sighed, annoyed, when he didn’t answer. “Look, can I help you?”
Thomas saw behind her, into the hall. It was tall, grand, with a high bookcase running the length of it, but it was messy: kids’ and grown-up jackets were thrown on chairs and over banisters, a telephone lay off the cradle, lying on the stairs as if she’d just been speaking to someone and had dropped it and walked away. A used mug with a dried dribble of brown tea down the side had been left next to it on the stairs.
Thomas couldn’t believe it was the right house. All of these tiny infractions were crimes to Lars, dreadful crimes, behaviors that had caused blazing rows. He was a stickler for form and formality. Thomas and Ella were never allowed to play in the public rooms. Even in their own areas of the house, the moment they had finished playing with anything they had to get the maid to tidy up. Thomas had once been screamed out of a room by Lars because he cut a slice of Brie de Meaux across the nose and they didn’t even have company. If Lars was a different man here, he wanted to know that man.
He looked up the wide stairs and suddenly, from nowhere, he saw blood splattered on white jeans and her scalp hanging off, Sarah Erroll afterwards, but only in details, split skin, hair stuck in open cuts. He felt sick and frightened.
The woman was looking at him and rapidly losing interest. He looked back at the hall, certain he had the wrong house.
“OK.” She began to shut the door but Thomas suddenly saw that the mug was a Chelsea mug and the bookcases were poplar burr, like Lars’s study at home. He stuck his foot out, catching the door, jamming it open.
The woman looked at his shoe and then at him. He could see that she was angry but she didn’t shout.
“Sorry,” she said lightly, looking him in the eye while she reached behind the door with her right arm. “What’s your name?”
“You called me last night,” he said.
She seemed to frown at him. Her skin was amazingly smooth, like paper. He couldn’t work out how old she was—she looked young but was dressed older, moved like an older person.
“No, darling,” she drawled slowly, “I think you’re at the wrong door.”
“But I’m Thomas Anderson.”
“Oh. My. God. Thomas!” She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the hall. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t recognize you. You’re taller than your father. And handsome.”
He saw then what she had reached behind the door for: she had a baseball bat in her hand.
She propped it up behind the door again. “How did you get here? Does your mother know you’re here?”
Thomas was standing quite still. The hallway was dark now that the door was shut. He stood still and listened and heard no one else in the house, no shifts of air or radios anywhere. They were completely alone.
She touched her chest, pressing her hand into the cushion of her strangely spherical tits. “I’m Theresa.”
He looked past her, nodding, taking his time before muttering, “Fucking Catholic.”
She leaned in. “Sorry?”
He didn’t want to say it again so he said nothing at all.
“Did you ask whether I was RC?” She smiled tentatively, a little twitchy smile, as if she was hoping it was a quip or a joke or something.
He didn’t answer.
“Well, I am—Catholic, if that’s what you’re asking.” She made a silly sad face and crossed her eyes. “Failed.”
Thomas didn’t want to look at her. He kept his eyes down but she reached out and took his chin in her hand as if she was holding a dog’s paw and looked at him, at his eyes and mouth and nose, at his build. “You don’t look a bit like your father.”
He liked her for that, because he did look like Lars, he knew he did. He had a lot of the bad bits of Lars, his thin mouth and bushy eyebrows.
“I do a bit.”
She screwed up her eyes. “Maybe a titchy bit…”
“Kids not in?”
“No.” She lurched across the hall and picked up a photo: a boy and girl, both with Aryan white hair and sun-kissed skin. The boy was about Thomas’s age but taller and better-looking. He didn’t smile but he looked confident, he had every reason to be. He probably knew girls his own age and kept up with music and saw bands and things like that.
The girl was older than Ella, not as pretty but less awkward and not nuts. They were standing on a white beach with a crystal blue sea behind them, shoulders pressed tight together, friends.
“Is this South Africa?”
“Plett, yes.” She stepped away, wary. “Yes. The house…”
“Oh,” Thomas looked at the picture again, “I never went there…was in school.”
“It’s pretty but I prefer France.”
“I like France.” He sounded almost normal.
She smiled at him. “Look, I’m sorry about the telephone call. I must have sounded very…unfriendly.”
He thought back to it and shrugged. “It’s OK.” He looked into the house.
“I didn’t think you’d come…I thought you were at school.”
He cringed. “Got yanked out and sent home…”
“Because…?”
“Yeah.”
She sighed. “Why did he do it, Thomas?”
Thomas didn’t answer. He really thought Lars did it to upset everyone, particularly the businessmen who’d conspired to have him removed from office. That was his style. He’d even use his own death to win a point. But he didn’t think Theresa wanted to hear that.
He hesitated for so long that Theresa filled in for him, “He just couldn’t take the pressure anymore.”
It was a very kind interpretation. He thought that she might not see much of Lars, really. He chewed his cheeks, glaring down into the house.
“Poor, poor man.” She nodded and followed his eye down into the house herself. “Thomas, I know you’ve been away at school for a long time and it makes you grow up terribly fast but tell me this…,” she said seriously. “Are you much too mature to be a fan of pancakes?”
It was a pretend Dutch pancake house, wooden tables strewn with clogs and tulips. Everything was orange. She ordered three black coffees for herself and waffles with syrup for him. She didn’t want to eat, she said, but she’d have a corner of his if she got hungry. The way she watched the plates of food moving around the room made him think that she was already hungry but dieting.
His waffles came on a plate with a picture of a windmill on it, but they were delicious and it was a long time since breakfast. He kept his cap low as he ate and she drank the mugs of
coffee in quick succession.
She did the talking. She’d met Lars at a party a long time ago. She didn’t like him at first. He kept correcting people and talking loud and she thought he was ill-mannered and boorish. She was leaving, looking for a taxi when his car stopped and he offered her a lift. She never thought she’d see him again so she told him to sod off, that she’d rather walk home than get into his car. He sent her flowers the next day and every day for ages. It got dull, actually, she said and Thomas sneered at that, no, it did! She didn’t have anywhere to put them! She was living with her sister and the whole house was full of dying roses. They were melting onto the carpets and staining them. She phoned to tell him to stop and one thing led to another. She looked ashamed then. She didn’t even know he was married for a long time, not until she was pregnant. He might understand a little better when he was older but sometimes you did things that looked really wrong from outside but she’d never meant to hurt anyone.
He nodded at that, felt tearful and she held his chin again and made him look at her. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t pull his chin away either.
“Sometimes,” she said gently, “it’s nice to talk to someone outside your immediate circle.” Then she flattened her hand to his cheek, stroked it and let go. Her hand was warm and soft and he wanted to grab it as it retreated across the table, tell her about Sarah Erroll, ask her what the fuck he should do about it.
But he didn’t. Instead he asked her how she felt after, when she realized Lars was married and already had kids. Theresa said well, he didn’t have kids, Moira was pregnant just like her. She said she had to accept that it happened and move on. But, Thomas asked, weren’t you angry with him for putting you in that position? She shrugged; some people make you complicit, she said, it’s a mistake to think they do it deliberately. It’s not even about you, it’s just who they are.
Thomas finished eating and she’d had enough coffee. He paid the bill with money from Lars’s wallet, saw her looking at the wad of crisp notes, her eyes as fixed on them as they had been on the plates of pancakes.
They went for a walk. She took him for a wander around a furniture shop she liked and then they went into an antiques shop and decided what they liked and hated.
She took him across the road to a garden center, talked about gardening and smelled the plants. Her parents were keen gardeners. They had an ornamental garden that was open to the public for many years. Theresa said that she was so bad at gardening she could kill mint. He didn’t really know what that meant but he laughed along anyway because she was laughing. It was nice, like they were friends. If she had been his mother things might have been different. He might have been calm and cool and done skateboarding. He might have had hobbies and been confident with girls.
He began to think he was wearing thin on her. They had been together for almost an hour and a half when he saw her checking her watch behind the bonsai trees.
Anxious not to outstay his welcome, he went over and said he’d have to go soon, could he walk her home, and she said yes, she’d like that, and it was charming of him to ask her.
She slipped her arm through his as they walked back.
THIRTY
The Walnut was on a curved, tall street in the City of London that had no shopfronts, just offices. The exclusive club barely declared itself on the street: a small plaque on the wall with an etching of a walnut on it and a buzzer. They went up a flight of inauspicious stairs and through a door manned by a bodybuilder in a sharp black suit. His accent was posh, his manner firm but courteous at the same time.
He checked their credentials, buzzed in to check that Howard Fredrick was expecting them, and then let them through the velvet studded door with a dramatic sweep.
It was tiny, very small for a public space, just a small room really. Three semicircular black velvet benches were set against the wall, joined to one another in a continuous wave. All the free walls were smoked glass, making the virtually empty area seem busy and warm. A small man with a ponderous belly was sitting on the furthest bench, his arm around the back, listening, bored, to a very pretty young woman chatting happily between sips of white wine. In front of each bench sat a small, low table with an opaque glass top, light radiating from inside and a cut-out in the center for a champagne bucket. Facing the tables was a short, well-stocked bar, again in glass, again up-lit, giving the woman serving a radiant glow.
She was dressed primly, in a white shirt and black bar apron, and her blonde hair pulled up in a high ponytail. Morrow thought she looked a little bit like Sarah: long faced, slim, little make-up. She smiled up at them, surprised at the sight of Morrow and Wilder in their bad suits and provincial haircuts but hiding it as she moved to the bar to greet them, her mouth open in readiness to smile, hands flat on the bar top, open to them.
Howard Fredrick swooped in from the back office and intercepted them. He pumped both their hands, looking them in the eye pointedly, tipping his head as if committing their names to memory, as though he’d been waiting to meet them for ages. He waved them to a door at the side of the bar, inviting them into his office.
It was a nice office. Almost the same size as the bar itself, this room had two long windows onto the street, a beautiful walnut desk and matching chair, a small safe, and filing cabinets. He’d been expecting them: Sarah Erroll’s employment file sat on his desk, next to a glass of water.
He didn’t offer them a drink, or tea, or anything, but directed them to the chairs in front of his desk while he sat behind it.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, possibly out of habit. “You’re interested in Sarah Erroll?”
“Aye,” said Morrow, feeling herself on the back foot, unclear how to take charge and not certain she needed to. “She worked here?”
“I have her file here.” He flipped it open. “She worked here for seven months, and left to move back to Scotland because her mother was ill—”
“How many hours a week did she do?”
He looked at the file. “Five shifts a week, about seven or eight hours each.”
“What shifts was she doing?”
“Eight till two.” He looked at Wilder. “Our license is until four but we rarely stay open that long.”
Wilder nodded, as if that was what they had come here to ask and he was satisfied.
“You here much?” asked Morrow.
“Every minute of every day.” He smiled at that, a hollow smile. Morrow didn’t feel she was getting past a pre-prepared statement.
“Were you fucking her?”
“No.” It didn’t throw him at all. “I don’t fuck my staff.”
“Who was she fucking?”
Fredrick sat back, crossed his hands over his stomach and looked at her. Morrow looked back. His hair was dyed dark, possibly covering gray, but it sort of suited him. His skin was quite olive but he was most definitely London, his accent just working class enough to be genuine, not so working class that he’d adopted it. He was fit for a man in his forties, not smoker-lean, not cocaine-thin, but muscled and fit. She guessed he spent a good bit of his time at the gym.
His lip curled with disdain as he reached forward and touched the manila file. “I don’t keep notes of that sort of thing.”
“Could you tell us off the top of your head?”
“No,” he said, and she felt he was telling the truth. “I’ve had this bar for nine years, we always employ girls who look pretty much alike and, being honest with you, they blur into one after a while. I don’t remember her much.”
He left it at that. Crossed his hands over his flat stomach, raised his eyebrows for the next question.
“You got a national insurance number for her?”
“She said she was a student.” He pushed a number scribbled on a sheet of paper across to her. “This is the student number she gave us. UCL. Check it.”
She heard what he was telling her. “It’s phony?”
“Yeah, phoned
the uni this morning, turns out it was someone else’s.”
“She friends with any of the other girls?”
He shrugged and looked at the file. “She got the job through her friend Maggie, they knew each other from school.”
“Where could we get hold of Maggie?”
“That’s her behind the bar now.”
“She’s still here?”
“Not still, she’s back.”
“Where’s she been?”
He stuck his tongue into his cheek, eyes amused. “Married. Bloke she met in here. Turns out he’s a twat. She’s come back. Briefly.”
“How do you know it’s briefly?”
Fredrick looked at her, seeing her for the first time. He paused, considering, she felt, the wisdom of being honest with her. “Being honest with you, I don’t like the girls to stay too long.” He waved his hand vaguely. “Makes the bar…stale.”
“They get bored? Their work suffers?”
“No, the clients get bored. You know, girls in a room, day after day, they can shut up at first but after a while, they get to talking, becomes all about them, doesn’t it?”
“What do they talk about?”
“Their problems, their boyfriends, their family, who gives a shit.” Fredrick clearly didn’t. He sounded bored even listing the things that bored him. “The men here want to drink and escape their work, a lot of them have got wives at home, they don’t want to have to listen to that shit here, do they?”
“What do they want here?”
“Drink, bit of glamour, everything taken care of.” He puffed his chest out. “We’re a private members’ club more than a bar; you have to be recommended to get in here.”
“Lars Anderson drank here, didn’t he?”
The question stopped him dead. He considered Morrow and Wilder again, looked at their clothes, at her shoes, at her red-rimmed eyes. He glanced at the door. “Rocco checked your ID, did he?”
“The doorman?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“He did, aye.”
He reached forward, flipped his fingers at them. “Can I see them again?”