by Annie Dalton
‘You went on a date with Kit Tulliver!’ Tansy sounded scandalized.
‘Not intentionally,’ Anna said.
‘How can you accidentally go on a date?’
‘It’s hard to explain,’ Anna said.
‘Sounds a bit suss to me,’ Tansy teased.
‘You know what’s weird? I’d been kind of hoping he’d kiss me, but when he did—’ Anna let her sentence hang.
‘No chemistry?’
‘Until he kissed me I’d have said there was tons. But then—’
‘But then bleargh!’ Tansy said with a sympathetic shudder. ‘It’s such a let-down when that happens. Though I wouldn’t have thought you’d need to go looking for extra chemistry, having seen you and Jake the other day.’ She pretended to fan herself.
‘There isn’t a “me and Jake”,’ Anna told her.
‘If you say so, sweetie.’ Tansy jumped up from her perch and poured out straw-coloured chamomile tea into two mugs, handing one to Anna. ‘So tell me about your weird day that ended in an accidental date with Mr No Chemistry.’
Anna told Tansy about being waylaid by Eve. Tansy listened wide-eyed, pulling on a straying curl and occasionally interrupting with comments like, ‘Shit! No WAY!’ or, ‘Oh my God, the homophobic bitch!’ But when Anna reached the part where Eve claimed to have given Owen her love poems to him, so that he could publish them as his own, she said uncertainly, ‘That can’t be true! Can it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Anna said. ‘I get the feeling Eve Bloomfield has spent a lot of her life feeling disparaged, most of all by the man she loved. By giving away her poems to Owen, I think it was like she’d ridden in on her white horse to save him, but also surpassed him at the same time.’
‘She sounds like a bloody scary woman,’ Tansy said with a shiver. ‘So is that why you contacted Kit?’
‘I wanted to know if he’d heard any rumours.’
‘But he hadn’t?’
Anna took a sip of her hot tea. ‘No. And he had no idea that Eve had made threats to Naomi and Laurie. He was really shocked, in fact. He said he’s going to talk to her, try to get to the bottom of it.’
Tansy looked alarmed. ‘You didn’t tell him everything, did you? I mean, about the autopsy reports.’
‘Of course not,’ Anna said. ‘And I didn’t tell him about Laurie and Owen, or about Laurie’s papers. Kit really can’t stand Eve,’ she added. ‘He thinks she’s a compulsive attention seeker.’
‘Do you think that’s true?’
Anna put down her cup. ‘I can’t help thinking there’s a grain of truth in there somewhere.’
‘Maybe we should go and talk to her?’ Tansy suggested.
Anna felt a rush of something like relief. ‘Seriously?’
Tansy shrugged. ‘She’s obviously got a story she needs to tell, and no one else seems to want to listen. We could go right now. It’s better if there’s two of us,’ she added, ‘in case she goes postal again and tries to pull a knife.’
‘At least we don’t have to worry about being rude turning up unannounced,’ Tansy said as Anna drove them to Eve’s house in Blackbird Leys. ‘Seeing as Eve accosted you in the first place. Seriously though,’ she added anxiously, ‘what shall we say when she asks why we’ve come?’
‘I think we should say what you said,’ Anna said. ‘That we want to hear her side of things.’
They arrived outside the small town-house that Tansy had staked out a couple of days previously. Anna thought of Owen Traherne and his beautiful houses. After all her years of devotion, Eve had ended up living in this cramped little house with neighbours who held screaming matches outside her door. Someone had abandoned a rusty fridge and an old sofa in one of Eve’s neighbour’s gardens. A group of youths hurried by, their faces obscured by their hoods. Anna could smell the familiar sweet stink of dope.
They walked up the path, and Anna pressed the buzzer, but no one answered.
‘I can’t see a light, can you?’ Tansy tried to peer through the grubby sitting room window.
‘She might have just passed out,’ Anna said. ‘She reeked of alcohol this afternoon.’ She kept her finger on the buzzer for longer this time, then she rapped on the front door.
A woman came out of the neighbouring house. ‘She’s not here.’ Her voice had a strong Oxfordshire twang. ‘Someone came to pick her up in a car about an hour ago.’
‘Oh, OK, thanks,’ Tansy said, just as Anna said:
‘Did you see who came to fetch her?’
‘A big bloke I’ve never seen before,’ the woman said.
Anna and Tansy exchanged glances.
‘What kind of big bloke?’ Tansy asked.
The woman wrinkled her nose. ‘The kind you don’t want to get too close to. I didn’t get a good look, but he sounded Eastern European. I work with some at the factory. He sounded like them, like he’d got fistfuls of nails in his mouth. Sly buggers the lot of them. I don’t know why this government—’
‘Thanks for your help,’ Anna said, cutting her off before she could get into a rant about immigrants.
They hurried back to the car. Neither of them spoke until they were inside with the doors closed, then Tansy turned to Anna with an incredulous expression. ‘Do you think he was Albanian?’
‘I don’t know.’ Anna felt thoroughly confused.
‘Shit – you don’t think she’s been kidnapped?’
Anna shook her head. ‘No, it’s got to be a coincidence. He was probably just a friend.’
‘He didn’t sound like a very pleasant friend,’ Tansy pointed out.
‘They’ll suit each other then!’ Anna said, hoping to make her laugh. She felt Tansy was blowing things completely out of proportion. ‘Maybe she found him on a special website?’
Tansy immediately covered her ears. ‘Euw! One of those disgusting fuck buddy websites for old people!’ But after her burst of hilarity, she went quiet again.
They drove back to Jericho in silence. Once, Anna glanced across at Tansy and saw her staring straight ahead, lips pressed together as if her thoughts were too complicated or unhappy to share.
Anna was welcomed home by a rapturous Bonnie. ‘I know, I know,’ Anna soothed her, feeling pangs of guilt. ‘I am a rubbish dog owner. Let me just grab your lead and we’ll go for a quick walk before bed.’
The streets of Park Town were wet and shining after the heavy rain. The high winds had brought lower temperatures, and the air was chill but fresh. Anna felt herself starting to unwind as she walked along with Bonnie, letting her sniff at every lamp post and wheelie bin in compensation for being left alone for so long.
Somehow she found herself outside the gates of the Dragon School, where Laurie and Huw had both been pupils. Anna’s brothers, Dan and Will, had also been pupils there. The familiar sign, with its golden dragon, gave her a bitter-sweet pang. Under the seated dragon was the school’s Latin motto in letters of gold. Arduus Ad Solem; striving towards the sun.
Anna’s younger brother, Will, a natural rebel, had instantly distrusted that motto. ‘Someone should tell them about Icarus,’ he’d protested to their father. ‘Icarus strove towards the sun, and he crashed to earth in flames!’ She closed her eyes and saw Will’s brown eyes glinting with mischievous delight at having found a way to challenge the world of adults, if only for a moment; her funny, bright, maddening little brother, who never had a chance to strive for the sun, or to become the wonderful man he was born to be.
Next morning Kirsty came into work bubbling over with excitement. Her visit to Paul’s home had been a big success. She told Anna that she’d been inwardly bracing herself for a possibly gruesome apartment where a dying woman had spent her last days. Instead she’d found herself walking around a light, spacious dwelling. ‘And you know the strange thing – it felt so happy, Anna!’ Kirsty had accepted Paul’s offer to let her rent it for an initial six months and was now searching the Internet for an affordable man with a van to help her and Charlie move their belongings.
<
br /> Anna worked on till her lunch break, when a text from Tansy popped up on her phone: Couldn’t stop thinking about this Eve thing. Going to London tonight, hoping for some answers.
‘Whatever that means,’ Anna said under her breath.
She left Kirsty talking to a possible van man and went out to pick up some groceries. She was just walking into the covered market when she got a call from Isadora. ‘Darling, I really think this business is driving us all mad. Did you know Tansy’s shooting off to London to question someone who might know more about this – I think rather far-fetched – Albanian connection? Have you any idea what she might be up to?’
‘Absolutely none,’ Anna said, making her usual queasy detour around the butcher’s shop where dead partridges and hares hung limp and bloodstained from steel hooks. She heard Isadora take a breath.
‘Anna, I am faced with something of a dilemma. The other day when you were dead to the world, I heard Tansy on the phone talking about something I wasn’t supposed to overhear. I believe there’s someone in her past who at one time posed a real danger, someone she’s made strenuous efforts to cut out of her life.’
‘And you’re worried that’s who she’s going to see?’ Shocked by Isadora’s words, Anna had come to a halt, forcing annoyed shoppers to weave around her. She had sensed something was wrong last night, but she couldn’t imagine why Eve’s unknown Eastern European male had sent Tansy hurtling off to London to meet some dangerous man – Anna assumed it was a man – from her past. Why was she risking herself on this mad mission, which as far as Anna was concerned was pure fantasy? You never really knew what was going on in another person’s mind, she thought. Even someone as sweet and innocent as Tansy Lavelle.
‘I’d gladly go with her to make sure she’s not getting herself into hot water, but I have to attend a dinner at my old college. Do you think you could go along and keep an eye on her?’
‘Of course I’ll go.’ Anna suppressed a sigh. ‘I’ll drive her.’
She texted Tansy as she joined the queue at Ben’s Cookies. I’ll pick you up after work. I’ll drive. You get to choose the tunes.
Inevitably, there had been an accident. A lorry had overturned, and the London-bound carriageway of the M40 was gridlocked for miles. Anna was forced to creep along in the slow lane. Beside her Tansy sat huddled inside her leopard-print coat, picking agitatedly at her nail polish. Apart from commenting, ‘Does Bonnie like travelling in cars? Buster always gets sick,’ she’d hardly said a word since Anna had picked her up. Mindful of what Isadora had told her, Anna just let her be. She knew better than to try to talk Tansy out of whatever hare-brained scheme she was hatching. She would just let it play out and hope she could help to pick up the pieces afterwards.
Unlike Buster, Bonnie was a seasoned traveller, and she was over the moon to be included on Anna and Tansy’s road trip. Anna caught glimpses of her each time she glanced in her rear-view mirror, snowy ears pricked, dark-rimmed eyes shining.
Eventually, the traffic eased and Anna was able to put her foot down. Tansy took out her mobile phone. Hooking it up to Anna’s car stereo she selected a playlist. The chilled sounds of Big Calm filled the car. ‘I thought you’d be more, like, old school.’ She flashed a wan smile.
‘You were right,’ Anna said, though it was hard for her to think of Morcheeba as ‘old school’.
Tansy went back to picking at her nail polish, and Anna concentrated on driving, wondering how it was that music could comfort and sadden you at the same time. She’d been so ridiculously young when she bought that CD.
‘There are some cookies,’ she said, ‘if you’re hungry.’
Tansy shook her head. The playlist ended, and Tansy didn’t move to select a new one.
They were approaching London’s outer edges, and Anna was starting to feel nervous. ‘You’ll have to tell me which part of London I’m heading for,’ she said, just as Tansy said, in a voice sharp with tension:
‘Have you heard of someone called Frankie McVeigh?’
Anna gave a surprised laugh. ‘I might be old school, but I wasn’t born under a rock! You’d have to be brought up on a desert island not to have heard of Frankie McVeigh.’ He was right up there with the Kray twins and Ronnie Biggs the Great Train Robber; except, unlike Ronnie Biggs, Frankie McVeigh had never been formally charged. The tabloids hinted at evidence going missing, crucial witnesses being mysteriously spirited away; whatever the reason, nothing ever finally stuck to Frankie.
‘You want to go west,’ Tansy said abruptly. ‘Follow the signs to Ladbroke Grove.’ She was sitting forward in her seat now as she issued directions, ash-pale with tension. ‘Park here,’ she ordered at last.
Anna parked, cracking open a rear window for Bonnie. ‘Guard the car, OK?’ she told her dog.
After Oxford, London seemed scruffy and grim: bins overflowing with fast food detritus, bits of rubbish blowing down the middle of the road. People on the street walked fast, avoiding eye contact.
‘Where are we going?’ Anna asked Tansy.
‘Not far.’ Tansy set off at a fast clip.
Anna had forgotten the constant exhausting rumble of London’s traffic, the way the air already felt used up before it reached her lungs. They crossed over a couple of streets, passing Asian- and Caribbean-owned off-licences and grocery stores.
Tansy came to a standstill outside a Chinese restaurant sandwiched between a betting shop and an Afro-Caribbean barbers. The name of the restaurant was The Jade Pagoda. A glance through the window between dangling Peking ducks, violently red and complete with heads, told Anna that this was the kind of authentic Chinese eating place patronized mainly by other Chinese. There was one European customer sitting alone, shovelling in rice Chinese-style from a bowl held up to his mouth. When she saw him, Anna felt all the tiny hairs stand up on her neck. She knew this man. Not from real life, from TV news bulletins. She pulled Tansy away from the window before he could see them. ‘Jesus, that’s him!’ she hissed. ‘That’s Frankie McVeigh!’ She had a sudden appalling thought. ‘Tansy, please tell me we haven’t come to see this terrifying man? I was willing to go along with this, but—’
‘He’s my dad,’ Tansy interrupted in a flat voice.
‘Frankie McVeigh is your dad? Jesus Christ, Tansy!’ Anna saw Tansy freeze. ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘You just took me by surprise.’
So this was the dangerous somebody that Isadora was so worried about Tansy letting back into her life. Not some abusive lover, as Anna had anxiously assumed, but her own father, who also happened to be the head of an infamous criminal dynasty. Drug trafficking, bribery, gambling, arms dealing, assault, extortion, fraud, prostitution, murder; Frankie had done it all. In his time, Frankie had been known to associate with Yardies and Colombian drug cartels, as well as the Russian and Albanian Mafia and, it was rumoured, the Triad. Then a big robbery had gone wrong, after which Frankie McVeigh’s nefarious dealings seemed to come to a halt, though various body parts belonging to the gang member who’d informed on him were later found floating in the canal.
‘Listen to me, Anna,’ Tansy said urgently. ‘Let me do the talking, OK? Whatever he says to you, if he offers you the moon and the stars and your own private nightingale to sing you to sleep, don’t let yourself get sucked in. He’s a clever bastard, my dad, so we’ll just go in and out. No friendly chit-chat. We go in, we get the info, and then we’re gone.’
‘What info?’ Anna said. ‘You do realize I haven’t a clue what’s going on!’
‘About Eve and the Albanians,’ Tansy said, as if this was obvious. ‘Promise me you won’t listen to him, Anna,’ she begged, and Anna could hear real panic behind her words.
Anna had never been a big hugger, but just at that moment Tansy looked so scared that she might have risked it if she hadn’t been afraid that would totally finish Tansy off, so she just said firmly, ‘I promise.’
‘Just in and out, remember?’ Tansy’s face had gone taut with stress.
Anna nodded.
Tansy pushed open the door.
Frankie McVeigh saw them the minute they walked in. He looked in better shape than he’d looked in the news photos, Anna thought. He set his rice bowl down. ‘Maxine!’
‘Hello, Frankie,’ Tansy said coldly.
Anna followed her past Formica-topped tables, over to Frankie’s solitary corner. The restaurant was strictly canteen-style, no ornamental dragons or smiling Buddhas. More of the start-lingly red Peking ducks hung from hooks above the counter. Stainless steel trays filled with noodles and vegetables in sauce were keeping warm. The smells wafting from the kitchen made Anna’s mouth water. No one looked up to watch as they walked past, but she seemed to feel eyes boring into the back of her head. It was ironic, she thought, remembering all the social situations she’d avoided over the years, that she had actually invited herself along to this awkward, possibly dangerous father-daughter reunion.
Tansy’s father stood up, smiling, opening his arms wide. Tansy immediately folded hers.
‘Come on, sweetheart, don’t be like that! Give your old man a hug.’ Frankie’s accent was pure London filtered through a smoker’s rasp. Tough and stocky with a strong Irish jaw that was faintly stippled with designer stubble, he looked good in his flawless white shirt, well-cut charcoal grey jacket and jeans. He was surprisingly youthful-looking for a man who must be in his sixties.
Tansy pulled out a seat for Anna and sat down next to her. ‘You do know I didn’t come here to play happy families with you, Frankie? You actually remember the reason I’m here? One woman has been murdered, and another woman might be missing. For all we know she’s dead now too.’
Anna was slightly alarmed to notice that their fantasy of Eve’s blind date had escalated to kidnapping and possibly murder. But now that she knew Tansy’s father was Frankie McVeigh, her friend’s irrational fears were suddenly given a more credible context. In Tansy’s past life, unexplained disappearances probably hadn’t ended too well.
Frankie McVeigh abandoned the pose of exuberant dad reuniting with his long lost daughter. Letting his arms drop to his sides he returned to his seat. He gave a curt nod to Anna. ‘Who’s this?’