Where There's Smoke (1997)

by Simon Beckett

  There was a crack. Kate looked with surprise at the broken pencil in her hand. She couldn't remember picking it up. She dropped the two halves into the bin, then went to the window. A little further down the street, on the opposite side of the road, was an alleyway. The photograph could have been taken from there. Or from one of the deep doorways.

  She turned away as Clive knocked and entered.

  "It's in, then?"

  Kate nodded, waving him to the newspaper still lying open on her desk. He read the article, then closed and folded the paper.

  "Well. He can't write for shit, anyway."

  She had to smile. But not for very long.

  The story wasn't in any of the other newspapers, but now it had appeared in one, the rest picked up on it.

  The telephone rang repeatedly with requests for interviews, information. Kate didn't take any of them. Caroline, Josefina or Clive would politely say that no, she had no comment to make. Several journalists actually called at the office, where they were told the same thing. When she went to her window she could see a group of photographers idling on the other side of the road, looking cold but patient. Kate moved away before they saw her.

  Collins was phlegmatic when she phoned him. He had already seen the article. "It was bound to come out, the longer all this went on," he said. "We've been lucky to keep it quiet as long as we did."

  "What should I do?"

  She heard him sigh. "That's up to you. You could always go public. Tell them you're still pregnant, and hope that Ellis sees it and believes you."

  Kate thought about the mocking grin of the journalist who had started all this. "I don't think I can."

  "There's your answer, then. Just keep your head down and keep saying, 'No comment.' The murder's old news, now. They'll get bored if you don't give them anything new to write."

  The Inspector was right, but sooner than he could have expected. In the afternoon Clive came up to tell her that the waiting photographers and journalists had gone. "They just all took off at once," he said. "Something else must have happened."

  The incident was in the evening news, a block of flats that had collapsed, providing scenes of carnage and death for the eager press. Kate was all but forgotten. Some of the papers ran small pieces on her the following day, but they were little more than recaps of the first and completely overshadowed by coverage of the more dramatic story.

  The damage had been done, though. When she arrived at work next morning, the post had already been delivered.

  There was no sign of Clive, and Kate huddled under her umbrella as she opened the mailbox and took out the selection of envelopes. She recognised the Parker Trust's expensive stationery straight away. Unlocking the office, she left her umbrella to drip onto the floor and sat down behind a desk without taking off her coat or switching on the lights.

  The other envelopes were ignored as she slit open the thick white one with a plastic paper-knife. Rain rattled against the window like hail as she withdrew the letter.

  It was brief and to the point. The Trust regretted that, in view of the recent negative publicity received by herself and her agency, they were withdrawing their account. Such publicity was contrary to the Trust's interests, as had already been made clear to her. While not wanting to appear in any way judgemental, it was nevertheless felt that there was no option but to terminate the Trust's relationship with Powell PR & Marketing.

  Kate could hear Redwood's desiccated voice as she read it. She reached for the phone, then stopped. Her umbrella dripped onto the floor with the slow insistence of a clock.

  The window rattled as a gust of wind struck it. She lowered the letter.

  The door opened and Clive came in. He closed it quickly against the blast of cold air and rain. Kate drew herself up, preparing to tell him, when she saw his travel bag. Then she noticed his face.

  "Clive? What's wrong?"

  He had made no attempt to take off his wet coat. He stood awkwardly, not looking at her.

  "I've got to go up to Newcastle." His voice was raw. "My mum phoned last night. My brother's been in a car crash. He's, uh…he's been killed."

  Kate just stared at him. The inadequate I'm sorry went unsaid.

  His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "The thing is, I don't know how long it'll be. The funeral's got to be fixed, and -"

  He broke off, covering his eyes. Kate saw his shoulders spasm. She quickly put the letter back in the envelope before he could see it.

  He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. "I know it's come at a bad time. I'll get back as soon as I can."

  "Don't worry about that. Just take as long as you need." She didn't know what to say to him. "You didn't have to come here to tell me. You could have just phoned."

  He adjusted his grip on the travel bag. "The train's from King's Cross, anyway. There's one in half an hour that'll get me there for dinnertime."

  "Have you got a ticket?"

  "No. Not yet."

  "You'd better go. I don't want you to miss it."

  Clive nodded but didn't move. Kate came out from behind the desk, slipping the envelope into her pocket as she went over and gave him a hug. He returned it, then they broke apart.

  "I'll phone you."

  He went out. The umbrella still dripped onto the carpet, but more slowly now. Kate switched on the lights and started the coffee filter, then went down to the kitchen and stood her umbrella in the sink before going back upstairs to her office.

  The letter from the Parker Trust crinkled in her pocket. She took it out and looked at the envelope without removing the letter. Abruptly, she tore it in half, ripping it into smaller and smaller pieces that she flung from her. They fluttered to the floor like dead moths as she snatched up her handbag and began pawing through it.

  She pulled out the old packet of Camels. Her hands were unsteady as she put a cigarette between her lips and tried to get a flame from the lighter. It clicked, drily.

  "Shit! Come on!" She banged it on the desk and shook it. The next flick produced a yellow smudge. She held it up to the cigarette, poised for a moment, and then with a sudden dip of her head put the tip into the flame.

  It glowed brightly. A thin ring of fire chased towards her, leaving behind a fragile cylinder of pale ash as she drew the smoke down into her lungs. The cigarette was stale, but there was an instant nicotine hit. Her head swam, and for the space of a heartbeat she held her breath, letting the feeling soak through her. Then she was gagging. The smoke burned the back of her throat and nose as she choked and coughed. Eyes streaming, she stubbed out the cigarette in a half-empty teacup.

  It died with a swift hiss. Kate pushed away the sludge of cold tea and ash and sank into her chair. Her mouth tasted foul. She dug in her bag until she found a screwed-up tube of mints. The peppermint sweetened her mouth, but didn't take away the lung-deep feeling of pollution, or the fear that the single drag was already poisoning the foetus she carried.

  Kate stared at the phone, then picked it up and dialled a number. It rang several times at the other end before she heard Lucy answer.

  "Lucy, it's Kate, look, I'm sorry -" she said in a rush, then broke off.

  Lucy's voice continued. Kate listened to the recorded message for a few seconds longer, then hung up.

  Caroline and Josefina arrived downstairs. She heard them moving around, talking. Some time later the intercom beeped. Kate watched the light flashing on it, but didn't move. Eventually it stopped.

  Later still she took the tea cup with the cigarette in it and washed it out in the kitchen.

  CHAPTER 21

  They lost several more clients in the wake of the newspaper story. One was a company that made maternity outfits. Kate almost smiled at the irony of that.

  She was aware that the agency was approaching the stage where it was becoming more a matter of survival than of making a profit. She knew she should be taking a more aggressive approach, actively seeking out new clients as well as reassuring the remaining ones. But knowing that
was one thing. Bringing herself to do it was something else.

  Caroline and Josefina tiptoed around her at the office, hushed and deferential as nurses at a sick bed. They needn't have bothered. Nothing touched her. Even when one or two clients phoned to congratulate her on being pregnant, her pleasure was a surface feeling, short-lived and shallow. It seemed barely conceivable that it was only a week since the first posters had appeared on the agency walls. Her world had contracted to the journey between her flat and the office. She no longer went to the health club. The one time she went to the supermarket, driven by an empty fridge and cupboards bare even of cat food, she had faltered outside the harsh arena of stacked shelves and fluorescent strip lights. When she had gone in, the brightness and colour was like a migraine. She pushed the trolley down the aisles, avoiding meeting anyone's eye as she worked her way through the maze. Confronted with the profusion of cans and boxes her mind went blank. She stacked the trolley without any clear notion of what she was buying, walking faster and faster away from the faces that seemed to glance at her with recognition, and whispered conversations that became innocent as soon as she was close enough to hear. Once she heard someone behind her say, "Kate," and she jerked the trolley into a display of tinned fruit. It teetered without falling, and she turned to see a little girl, laughing as she ran to her father with a bar of chocolate. While the child's laughter turned to protests, Kate unsteadily steered her trolley from the tins and pushed it away. The nape of her neck was clammy with sweat as she bypassed the rest of the shelves and went straight to the checkout. She took a cab home. Sitting with the carrier bags at her feet, it occurred to her that taxis were a luxury she couldn't afford now that the prop of the Parker Trust account had gone. She stared out of the window as the taxi pulled up at traffic lights near her home. A tramp entered the illuminated aura of a street lamp. Muffled by a bulky coat and scarf, his head was buried in his turned-up collar, so that only matted tufts of hair were visible. He clutched two carrier bags, and Kate had time to think that one looked as though it had porridge in it, before he passed from under the lamp's glow. The taxi pulled forward with a brief scrape of gears as the lights changed to green. It came to a halt again almost immediately as a lorry up ahead tried to turn, blocking both lanes. The cab driver barged his steering wheel in annoyance. Kate looked at the ticking meter, then back out of the window. They had stopped by a building site, shielded from the street by a high plywood fence. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw the dark squares that ran along its length. The cab shunted forward a little, and some of the squares caught the light from the next lamp post. The words, KATE POWELL KILLED HER UNBORN CHILD seemed black in the yellow sodium glare. Kate saw how the paper glistened, wetly, and how the wood around each poster was dark with fresh paste. She twisted to look back through the rear window, trying to catch sight of the solitary tramp with his carrier bags. But the street was empty.

  "It's a threat, isn't it?"

  Kate stood over her desk. The smell of petrol filled the office. She had wiped her hands, but they still felt greasy. The telephone handset was slippery in her palm. Collins sounded unperturbed. "Just try to calm down."

  "Calm down!"

  "He's trying to rattle you, that's all."

  "Well, he bloody well is doing!"

  She stared down at the open Jiffy-bag on her desk as though it would ignite by itself. It had arrived with the post. The effect of seeing the poster the night before had faded a little in the daylight. As soon as she arrived back at her flat Kate had phoned the police incident room to tell Collins about the tramp. But the Inspector couldn't be reached, and the policeman who had taken her message sounded uninterested and patronising. She had slammed down the phone before she shouted at him. Trying to put the incident from her mind, she had gone into work that morning and occupied herself with opening the post. There were no more large brown envelopes, and Kate had begun to relax. Until she had opened the Jiffy-bag. Collins was still unruffled. "He wants to scare you, that's why he's doing all this. You've hurt him, and now he's trying to hurt you back by frightening you. If he was serious, he'd have done something by now."

  "He's already tried to set fire to where I live, for Christ's sake!"

  "If Ellis had been serious about trying to burn down your flat, he's had enough experience to make a better job of it than that. If he'd used more petrol, perhaps pushed a few rags through as well, then waited for the fumes to build up, that little entrance hall would have gone up like a bomb. There are all sorts of different ways he could have done real damage. If he'd wanted to."

  "So you're saying I've got nothing to worry about?"

  "No, what I'm saying is—sorry, just a second." There was a hollow whisper of a hand being put over the receiver. Kate could hear distant, muffled voices. The cloying smell of petrol oozed into her pores. She looked again down at the Jiffy-bag. Its mouth gaped, and the self-sealing polythene bag that had been inside was draped half out of it like a pale tongue. The oily black ashes that had spilled out when she had dropped it lay wetly on the desk. Kate knew she should clean them up before the surface was stained, but she couldn't bring herself to touch them. Only one part of the poster had been left unburnt. She could imagine Ellis carefully turning the burning paper, until everything except her face had been consumed. Then he had soaked the ashes in petrol and sent them to her. There was a rattle as Collins took his hand away from the receiver. Then his voice was back. "Sorry about that. Where was I?"

  "You were telling me why I'd nothing to worry about."

  Collins overlooked her sarcasm, which made her feel worse. "Try and look at things in perspective. The posters are upsetting and I know they've damaged your business. But they can't hurt you."

  Kate wanted to believe him. "Can't they? What about this?"

  She waved her hand at the burnt remains of the poster, as though the Inspector could see it. "It's like he's telling me what he's going to do! He's psyching himself up for it!"

  "Look, Kate." The policeman spoke with weary patience. The unexpected use of her Christian name was somehow comforting. "I'm not trying to kid you that Ellis isn't dangerous. But you're taking every reasonable precaution that you can, and he's made himself too conspicuous to get away with what he was doing earlier. He's got to be more careful where he puts the posters because he knows we're watching for him, and he's going to find it more and more difficult to go out in public at all. He's probably getting frustrated, so he's looking for different ways to get at you."

  "But if he's frustrated mightn't that make him do something?"

  Collins took a moment to answer. "I wasn't going to tell you this. I didn't want you to get your hopes up, but we've had a sighting of Ellis. It was last night, at Piccadilly Underground. A transport police officer spotted him. He was carrying a couple of plastic bags, and when the officer went to challenge him, he dropped them and vaulted over the barriers and ran out. There was a roll of posters in one and paste in the other."

  Kate remembered the bags the tramp had been carrying. "He got away?"

  She felt a strange mix of adrenaline and disappointment, as though the outcome were still in doubt.

  "Unfortunately, but it proves my point. Every time he pokes his nose out now, he increases the risk of being caught, and it won't be long now before he is."

  That thought buoyed her up for the rest of the day. It was a fragile optimism, but better than the feeling of being buried alive. A uniformed police constable called around later that morning for the Jiffy-bag and burnt poster, and once that had gone Kate felt encouraged enough to venture out.

  It was the first time since Clive had gone home that she had left the office without getting straight into a taxi. It had only been days, but it seemed much longer. The street seemed wider and longer than usual under the grey and agoraphobic plain of the sky. She walked out by the pavement edge, away from doorways and alleys, checking behind her every few minutes. When she reached King's Cross she felt the uneasy relief that comes with a
fading of tension.

  She caught the tube for the three stops to Oxford Circus.

  By the time she emerged from the Underground, a watery sun was shining through the cloud. Kate turned her face to it gratefully. People thronged past, intent on their own business. The rest of the world was still there, unchanged.

  She called in at a cafe and had a cup of hot chocolate. After drinking it she decided she was hungry and ordered a mozzarella and tomato sandwich. The taste of olive oil made her think of summer. It would soon be spring, she realised, with surprise. The thought gave her a further boost.

  Kate left the cafe and browsed outside shop windows. She stared into a display of baby clothes. There were tiny sweaters and jackets, miniature jeans and boots. She caught sight of her reflection in the glass and saw that she was smiling. Everything passes, she told herself.

  She wasn't confident enough to walk to the station that evening, though, or not to take a taxi back to her flat at the other end. As the light fell, some of her earlier fears revived. Kate asked the taxi driver to wait until she had unlocked the front door. Dougal was waiting outside by the step. He yowled irritably when he saw her. Even though he had rarely used it, he seemed to have taken the disappearance of the cat flap as a personal slight.

  The tom cat ran upstairs ahead of her. There was always a moment of anxiety as she went from room to room, quickly drawing the heavy curtains before turning on the lights. But, as usual, the flat was empty.

  She fed Dougal, and grilled herself a piece of plaice. She baked a potato in the microwave, putting it in the oven to crisp while she chopped carrots into strips, then blanched them quickly in boiling water and drained them out onto a plate. Dougal showed more interest in her fish than his own food, and eventually she gave in and flaked a small piece into his dish so he would leave her alone.

  She took her plate through into the lounge. She had developed the habit of taking the fire extinguisher with her from room to room, but tonight she resolutely left it in the kitchen. Curling her legs under her, she ate with a fork while she read the brochures she had picked up at lunch-time. They showed push-chairs and prams, cots and cradles. Kate felt almost intoxicated as she looked at them. This was the future, this was what she should be focused on, not the petrol fantasies of a disturbed mind.