by Joan Smith
‘Bellevue,’ she said. ‘Bellevue is on First Avenue.’
Tracey started to laugh, incredulous. ‘You mean — the mental hospital?’
‘Exactly.’
He saw her expression. ‘I suppose it is pretty sick. Let’s get this straight, you think all these people, Michael, Donelly, whatever the other cop’s called — they’re all the same bloke?’
She nodded. ‘I said this morning I was going to be out all day except between five and six. And when did I get all these calls? Just after five, as soon as I finished talking to you.’
‘This number he gave you,’ Tracey said thoughtfully, ‘you say it’s always engaged?’
‘Every time I’ve tried it. That’s why I wondered if — well, you know more about these things than I do.’
‘Got it with you?’
‘Of course.’ Loretta reached into her bag, took out her notebook and found the right page. She copied the number on to a clean sheet, tore it out and handed it to Tracey.
He glanced at it and put it away. ‘The obvious possibilities are — one, it’s his own and he leaves it off the hook when he thinks you might call, which seems a bit unlikely unless for some reason he’s got two numbers. Two, it belongs to someone else and he knows it’s out of order. Maybe he works for the phone company, have you thought of that?’
‘I’ve thought of all sorts of things,’ said Loretta, ‘including that he might be a friend of Toni’s, but she — I haven’t been able to get hold of her.’
‘Some friend,’ said Tracey. ‘Go back a minute. Say you’re right, how did this bloke Michael know you’d reported him to the cops in the first place?’
Loretta frowned. ‘I’m trying to remember what he said, Lieutenant Donelly, the first time he rang. I think he just asked if I’d reported an obscene call the night before and it all came pouring out. As I said, I was so grateful.’ Looking over Tracey’s shoulder she added: ‘I think this is our food.’
They ate in near-silence, Tracey wolfing down his fish as though he hadn’t eaten all day and not leaving a single pod of mange-tout on his side-plate. ‘That was good,’ he said, finishing before Loretta. ‘How’s the lamb?’
‘Great,’ she said, swallowing a mouthful of vegetables. She was tired, not wanting to think any more about Michael and his probable aliases, and she asked: ‘How much longer are you going to be in Washington?’
Tracey looked evasive. ‘The Whitewater hearings are about to start so it could be a while. Three, maybe four weeks.’ He turned the wine bottle round and studied the label, even though Loretta knew he didn’t understand Italian. ‘Actually, they’ve asked me if I’m interested in the job. Making it permanent.’
‘What job?’
‘Washington correspondent. Chris Calder’s gone back to London to be political editor, he’s an old mate of Tony Blair so they’re keen to have him at Westminster. I’m not sure he realises yet how right-wing this new regime is, but that’s his problem.’
Startled and dismayed, Loretta said: ‘I thought — last night you were saying how much you disliked it, having to write stories about Bill Clinton.’
‘Was I? I’d have to cover the ’96 election of course but it’s not just domestic politics. The Middle East peace talks, Ireland, I was thinking about it before you arrived and there are some advantages. Not being in the office for a start, you know what’s it’s been like since that bloody woman bought the paper.’
‘It seems a bit... sudden. I had an idea you wanted to spend more time in London, especially since you got back from Sarajevo.’
‘I did,’ Tracey said gloomily. Loretta watched him while the waiter cleared their plates and left dessert menus; aware of her scrutiny, he lifted a hand and made a brushing motion in the air. ‘Sorry, Loretta, I didn’t mean to bother you with my problems. I got a phone call as I was leaving the hotel and it’s been on my mind ever since.’
‘From the office?’ She remembered the time difference and added: ‘Of course not, silly question.’
‘From a ... friend. From Hampshire to be exact. Actually, Loretta, I’ve got myself into a bit of a situation.’ He had started to look embarrassed, fiddling with things on the table and avoiding her eye.
‘You know how it is,’ he went on, ‘you go out with someone a few times, concerts and the occasional dinner, and the next thing you know... I didn’t think she had my number in New York but apparently she got on to the newsdesk and said it was urgent so they gave it to her. I mean, Christ, by the time she phoned it must’ve been one o’clock in the morning in Basingstoke.’
Feeling acutely uncomfortable, Loretta repeated: ‘Basing stoke?’
‘Yeah, she — Mo, Maureen — lives in a village on the road from Basingstoke to Reading. I met her just after I got back from Sarajevo, remember I had that kidney infection? I was a bit low, I may have phoned her more often than I should, a shoulder to cry on and all that.’ With a flash of anger he added: ‘But how was I to know she’d be so bloody persistent?’
Loretta picked up the empty water bottle. ‘Shall we get another one of these?’
‘If you like.’ There was a moment’s silence and then Tracey said unexpectedly: ‘She offered to make you a jumper. She wanted to know your bust size and what colours you like.’
‘A jumper?’
‘Yeah, she has her own shop, Mohair, it’s called. Get it? Mohair. She breeds rabbits and makes these fluffy jumpers –’
‘I’m allergic,’ Loretta said quickly. ‘And mohair comes from goats.’
‘Whatever. You having a pudding?’
The waiter was back and Loretta hadn’t even looked at the menu. ‘No,’ she said distractedly, picking it up. ‘I mean yes.’ She ordered a confection of bananas with dark and white chocolate sauce and Tracey asked for coffee and more mineral water. Sounding more cheerful after the interruption, he said: ‘Never mind all that, I don’t know how we got on to it. How’s Bridget?’
Loretta blinked, knowing he wasn’t fond of her best friend. ‘Much better, thanks. Her mother takes Elizabeth to see her every month, they don’t allow children in prison after eighteen months. She’s been given a date for her appeal and her barrister thinks she’s got a very good chance of getting off, especially now we’ve got this new evidence.’
‘Which is what?’
Loretta explained that she’d hired a private detective to look into the events three years before which had led to Bridget Bennett’s conviction for manslaughter.
‘That must’ve cost a bit,’ Tracey observed.
Loretta rolled her eyes upwards. The detective, she went on as though Tracey hadn’t spoken, had cast doubt on the alibi produced by Bridget’s husband, Sam Becker. The only other plausible suspect — he admitted having had a brief affair with the dead woman — Becker claimed during Bridget’s trial at Oxford Crown Court that he’d been in his office on the afternoon she was killed, discussing a complex computer problem with a female colleague. But the private detective had established that the witness, Brenda Perfect, was actually at her dentist’s surgery during the crucial period.
‘It’s a stupid thing,’ said Loretta, ‘but we were all so convinced Bridget would get off we didn’t actually check Brenda Perfect’s story. The dentist was Anthea’s idea, she’s the detective, and as soon as she spoke to his nurse ... The surgery’s in Bicester and Brenda was having a crown fitted, so she must’ve been out of the office for at least two hours.’
‘Was she lying? At the trial?’
‘Who knows? Anthea, that’s the detective, she thinks Brenda had a crush on Sam, she certainly hasn’t been very cooperative. But we’ve got an affidavit from the dentist, so it doesn’t really matter.’
Tracey said: ‘When’s the appeal?’
Loretta’s pudding arrived along with Tracey’s espresso doppio and she waited a moment before replying. ‘October. Term won’t have started so I’ll be able to go every day, in fact I was hoping you’d be in London.’ Her brow clouded. ‘You’re not really goin
g to stay in Washington?’
‘I haven’t had time to think.’ He looked straight at her. ‘Why, would you miss me?’
Loretta recognised the glint in his eye and sat back in her chair. ‘Of course,’ she said lightly, her mind jumping treacherously to Dale Martineau. ‘Who else would I go to concerts with? You know how ignorant I am about classical music’
‘That isn’t what I meant.’
‘John–’
‘I’ve been thinking about yesterday, spending the whole night with you and nothing happened. I mean, we’re miles from Riverside Drive, you could come back to my hotel, they’ve given me a double room.’ Guessing what she was about to say, he added: ‘You know, I don’t mean anything heavy. Just for old times’ sake.’
Loretta looked at him coolly, thinking nostalgia was one of the worst reasons she’d ever heard for going to bed with someone. Whatever she had felt for Tracey was too far in the past to be revived now, especially when she’d just had an unexpected reminder of the electrifying effect of sudden sexual attraction. Faking a yawn, she said: ‘It’s been a nice evening but I’m tired and I want an early night.’
‘What d’you mean, nice’? he said, and promptly changed tack. ‘At least you’d be safe with me. You seem to have spent most of your time in New York fending off sex maniacs.’
‘One obscene caller? You were just saying how many murders and rapes there are in New York, there was a woman on the news who got AIDS when she was raped.’
‘OK, forget it.’ He grasped the edge of the table and pushed his chair back, glancing down at the floor as though he’d dropped something. Apparently he’d lost his napkin, which he retrieved and smoothed over his knees even though he’d finished eating. He looked up, saw she was still watching him and said gruffly: ‘Sorry.’
Loretta shrugged and picked up her spoon, looking down at the mélange of bananas and chocolate on her plate. It resembled an illustration from an upmarket cookery book, lightly dusted with icing sugar and with a single sliced strawberry reclining in the chocolate sauce.
‘Look, we can — er — share a taxi,’ Tracey said, obviously feeling bad about his ill-judged remark. ‘I mean, I can get it on expenses, just about.’
Loretta smiled rather wanly.
‘Eat up,’ she heard Tracey say, ‘they’re going to want the table in ten minutes. I ought to get the bill.’
Loretta slid her spoon across the plate from the edge to the centre, scooping up sauce and bananas, releasing a rich, chocolatey perfume which made her mouth water. She lifted the first spoonful to her lips, lingering over it and allowing the pulpy sweetness to melt on her tongue. It tasted even better than its description on the menu had promised and she began to eat more quickly, hardly aware of John Tracey talking irritably to the waiter, waving his hands and querying something on the bill.
She was in the small bathroom of Toni’s flat, removing her make-up, when Tracey rang. She picked up the phone as soon as she heard his voice on the answering-machine, breaking into his surprised monologue, ‘It’s OK, I’m here.’
‘Christ, you gave me a fright. I didn’t like the look of that taxi driver, you should have let me drop you off first.’
‘It’s miles out of your way. Anyway, he never said a word, not even when I told him where to stop. I forgot about your change and by the time I remembered he was driving off. Are you sure you can put it on expenses? I mean, I didn’t get a receipt.’ Tracey had insisted on giving the driver $20 when he got out at the Gramercy Park Hotel, more than enough to cover the fare.
He said vaguely: ‘Don’t worry about it. Why didn’t you answer the phone?’
Loretta exhaled noisily. ‘He left another message while I was out, Donelly, Michael, whatever his name is. I thought it might be him.’ She lifted her hand to her face, wiping away a smear of cleansing lotion below her left eye.
Tracey began to talk fast, exuding a febrile excitement as though he was in pursuit of a hot story. ‘I know it’s late, I nearly didn’t ring you but I thought you’d want to know, I mean, is this bloke sick or what?’ Belatedly realising what Loretta had said, he stopped and added: ‘You say he’s phoned again? While you were out?’
‘Yes, and there were a couple of hang-ups — you know, when someone doesn’t put the phone down straight after the tone. What is it? What have you found out?’
Tracey hesitated. ‘That number,’ he said, prolonging the suspense, ‘the one you gave me in the restaurant?’
‘Yes. What about it?’ She glanced at her wrist, forgetting she’d taken her watch off in the bathroom. He had worked fast, it could only be half an hour, forty minutes at the most, since she’d dropped him off at his hotel.
‘You’re not going to believe this.’
Doing her best to be patient, Loretta said: ‘Try me.’
‘Not only is there no Lieutenant Donelly, it’s nothing to do with the cops.’
‘It isn’t?’ She sat down on the bed, unsurprised by this confirmation but not liking it. ‘John, please. Tell me.’
Tracey said triumphantly: ‘He’s only picked one of the most popular numbers in the city, you have to hand it to him –’
‘What?’
‘It’s a helpline,’ he said soberly, ‘a number for women who’ve been raped or sexually abused..’
She gasped.
‘Loretta? Are you all right? I told you it was sick.’
She leapt to her feet and began to pace up and down, dragging the base of the telephone across the floor behind her. Honey, who had been asleep on the floor, looked up in alarm and tried to crawl under the television.
‘Rape?’ she spluttered, almost incoherent. ‘What kind of, pervert... Oh shit. John, don’t hang up.’ She knelt and fumbled with the telephone cord, which had somehow wound itself round her left ankle. ‘Hello, are you there?’
He was and she said: ‘How did you find out so quickly? I mean, I wouldn’t even know where to start. God, your contacts are amazing.’
‘Oh, it was nothing. Hang on while I light a fag.’ She heard the hiss of a cigarette lighter, followed by a long intake of air as he inhaled.
‘Go on,’ she said eagerly, ‘how did you do it? The phone company? Or was it the police?’
‘Actually,’ he said, sounding mildly embarrassed, ‘I just kept dialling the number. It took 22 attempts, I counted, and when I finally got through this woman said’ — he tried, with a spectacular lack of success, to sound like an American –’Candice speaking. I must say she wasn’t exactly helpful at first, I don’t know why. Men get raped as well as women, not so often I know but they do. Anyway, when she finally shut up long enough for me to explain she said it’s always hard to get through, they only have two numbers and they’re trying to raise the cash for another one. I said I’d send her a donation — I thought you’d be proud of me.’
Loretta chewed absently at a flaky piece of skin on her index finger, not really listening to him. ‘It’s the planning, that’s what I can’t get over,’ she said. ‘Choosing a number that’s likely to be engaged, pretending to be a policeman — two policemen. All that stuff about ANEMONE, I wonder if it really exists ...’
It was Tracey’s turn to sound blank. ‘What’re you talking about?’
‘Oh, never mind. Thanks, John,’ she added, not wanting to sound ungrateful, ‘I mean, there’s not much I can do but at least I know I was right. What a — a bastard.’
‘You could report it to the cops. The real cops, I mean.’
She shuddered. ‘I’m not going through all that again. And it’s not as if I know his number, his real number.’
‘You mean you’re going to let him get away with it? This isn’t like you, Loretta.’
She said tiredly: ‘It’s midnight, I’m in a strange city, I’ll be on a plane in less than 24 hours. I haven’t exactly got a lot of options open to me, have I? Of course I’ll tell Toni, don’t worry about that.’
‘When’s your flight?’
‘Nine. Well, just after.
I have to be at the airport at six.’
‘Ring me when you get home.’
‘All right. Will you be in Washington?’
‘Yeah, I’m going back tomorrow.’
‘John–’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Just — don’t rush into anything, OK?’
‘I’m not going to join a cult, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘I didn’t mean –’
‘I know. Listen, it’s late, and you wanted an early night. You won’t get much sleep on the plane.’
‘OK. Bye then.’
‘Bye.’
Loretta gazed round the room, unable to recall what she was doing when Tracey rang. The dog, sensing that the threatened crisis had been averted, crept out from her hiding place, flopped on to her side and breathed windily through her nose.
‘Make-up,’ Loretta said aloud, and returned to the bathroom.
She was cleaning her teeth when the thought came back to her: what if Michael, instead of calling numbers at random, really was one of Toni’s friends? Had some connection with her, at least? The red address book she had asked Loretta to consult, when she wanted her gynaecologist’s office number, contained dozens of names which, judging by the variety of inks and styles in which they were written, looked as if they had been accumulated over a period of years. The only Michael Toni had admitted to knowing was a colleague at Columbia but she had been distracted when Loretta put the question and there might well be others. Rapidly overcoming her qualms about intruding into Toni’s private life, she turned off the cold tap, returned her toothbrush to her toilet bag and went to get the red book. Opening it at the As, she checked the page-and-a-half of entries, finding five male names and one which could have belonged to a man or a woman, but not a single Michael. Disappointed, she moved on to the Bs and almost immediately spotted Mike Bompiani. He had two telephone numbers, home and work, but her excitement ebbed away when she saw that the three-figure code was unfamiliar, and the address below it in Aspen, Colorado. Convinced that the Michael who had planned the elaborate hoax was local, Loretta realised that she needed to be more systematic, dividing the names she found into more and less likely candidates. Seizing her notebook, she divided a clean page into two columns, the first headed by the initials ‘NY’ and the second by the single word ‘other’. She wrote Mike Bompiani’s name and home number in the second column and moved on to the Cs, where she drew a blank, although she couldn’t help being struck by the extent of Toni’s acquaintance. She seemed to know people all over the States, some of them in towns so small Loretta had never heard of them.