‘Who was that?’
Mr Ashani reached into his cream slacks and produced a crisp business card, which he handed to me.
Mann and Bryce
Architectural Project Management
There was a telephone number on it. Nothing more.
‘You may keep the card.’
Mr Ashani went into his house. I stood for a while, blinking into the sunlight and the dust, then went back into mine. Then a thought occurred to me. I went outside and rang Mr Ashani’s bell.
‘Emmanuel,’ I said when he answered, ‘Emmanuel, have the police told you you can sell that house?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘but they have yet to tell me that I may not.’
By early afternoon I was sitting in the office of Ravinder S. Mann, architect. He was having, he said, a new sign delivered. The old one was still on the door; the old one still said Mann and Bryce.
The table in the boardroom was white. Everything was streamlined; everything looked new. There were eight white chairs, two red chairs; two purple chairs. I sat in one of the red chairs. Ravinder Mann (‘Call me Ravi, Alex’) sat in one of the white chairs in his cool grey woollen suit, looking detached and handsome, fingertips pressed lightly together. There were five books in the large bookshelf. One was grey; one was pink; three were black.
He seemed at first to think I was there on business. An assistant brought pastries and an assortment of teas. Out of the window was a garden of raked white gravel. I thought of Bryce’s house, and wondered whether it was Bryce who had designed the office.
‘So,’ he said, ‘personal recommendation, right?’
Expensively educated, I thought. Something about his bearing, his manner, his diction. That thing Oxford people often do: trying to convince you that they’re less posh than they are.
‘I lived next door to Bryce,’ I said. ‘I mean, I still live there.’
A look of intense grief passed across his face, and immediately I felt like an idiot for judging him.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I said.
‘Not a personal recommendation, then,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘You’re Alex.’ It wasn’t a question. He knew who I was.
‘I’m Alex. Yeah.’
‘I wish I knew what to say. I’m so sorry …’ he said.
That your friend seduced my wife.
‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ I said.
He made to pour the tea. His hand shook, and he spilled quite a lot of it over the surface of the boardroom table. We sat looking at the puddle as it spread slowly outwards, enveloping the bottoms of the cups. Perfectly level, I thought. Architects.
‘Alex,’ he said, ‘shall we go to the pub instead?’
I looked back at the pooling tea as it inched towards the edge of the table.
‘What about this?’
‘Screw it,’ he said. ‘It’s all screwed, anyway.’
We spent the first pint talking about football. We both had our reasons for hating it. He had been an overweight child. At school he had worn glasses and an eye patch; his mother had written notes to his teachers excusing him from gym. Hard to imagine now that no one wanted him on their team.
At my school, I told him, football was Hibs or Hearts, Fenian or Protestant, knife fights down the Grassmarket on a Friday night.
‘Scourge of religion,’ he said with a wry smile, rubbing his beard.
‘You’re …’
‘A Sikh,’ he said.
‘Practising?’
‘Ish.’
He told me again how sorry he was about what Bryce had done. It wasn’t like him, he wanted me to know. He was a good man at heart. The old Bryce would have been appalled at what the new Bryce had done. He was sure of it.
‘You don’t have to apologise for your friend.’
‘You think you know someone,’ he said. ‘But you don’t. You don’t know them at all.’
He said nothing when I handed him his second beer. I asked him if he was OK.
‘He was clever,’ he said. ‘He didn’t empty the client account, so I didn’t know. Everything else, though. Everything else he screwed.’
I took a long swig of beer, waited for him to continue.
He looked up, and the edges of his mouth tightened. ‘I don’t even know how much is missing. He dismissed the bookkeeper. All I know is, we’re effing screwed. Well, he’s dead. I’m screwed. Cheers.’
He tapped his glass against mine, a little too hard.
‘Cheers,’ I said, reflexively.
‘What am I going to do, Alex?’
In other circumstances I would have liked the man. In other circumstances we could have been friends, I thought.
‘Do you want me to tell you what he was doing, Alex?’
‘OK.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘that’s just my way of telling you I’m going to tell you what he was doing. Because I have to tell you; because I’m scared to tell my wife, and I have to tell someone. You look like a good guy.’
‘OK …’
‘Three of our clients have now told me he asked for payment in cash. The wonder is that any of them would do it because they’re none of them fools, but yes, they paid him in cash, because he was a persuasive little beggar, and they did.’
I thought sadly about Millicent; he had certainly persuaded her. ‘A scaffolder came to our door,’ I said. ‘Bryce gave him our address.’
‘Oh, Lord, no,’ he said.
‘He was trading from our address,’ I said. ‘Although I don’t think he was ever in our house. Sorry. I’m not trying to make things worse.’
‘No, I need to know,’ he said. ‘How much this time?’
‘Twenty-three thousand? Twenty-four?’
‘Do you have any idea how long it takes before a creditor comes knocking at your door, Alex?’ I made to speak, but he carried on. ‘Again, I’m going to tell you. In my line of work, four or five months. Minimum. They know how long it takes to get paid, and they trust us, because they know it takes us time to get paid by our creditors, and because this business is founded on trust. And now we’ve effed that trust, haven’t we? Or at least, Bryce has. I’m finished.’
There was despair in him now.
‘I heard you outside Bryce’s house,’ I said. ‘Saw you.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yes. Yes, I shouldn’t have shouted at her. Not her fault. Not her fault at all.’ He looked at me pleadingly, pulled at my sleeve, as if there was something I could do to help him. ‘I thought at least I might have some sort of claim against the estate. That was my last hope. And I’m ashamed of it, but I thought he owed me that, at least. And then I find out there’s no effing house to sell, and I am completely – not to say utterly – effed.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I offered to go to the bar again.
‘I’ll send the girl some flowers,’ he said, ‘while I still have a bank account.’
‘Have you told the police?’ I asked.
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Do you think I should? I mean, I know I should. I will, I promise. I will.’
‘That sounds like a good idea,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Do you know the weird thing?’ he said. ‘Do you know what the absolute weirdest thing is? Do you, Alex? The weirdest thing is, is that … is that … is that everything’s still how it was. It’s like, there’s this massive cliff of ice at the end of a glacier. I mean, I’m standing here in a boat on the ocean just in front of it and it’s got to fall, yes, but nothing has come crashing down yet, and it all still looks perfect. I know it will start to break up. It has to. But it hasn’t yet. Everything still looks as if it could remain intact.’
I looked towards the door of the pub.
It was then that I saw Rose. She was sitting, reading a book, at a table by the front door. In front of her was a small glass of white wine. Had she followed me here, I wondered, or had she been there all along?
Ravi smiled bitterly. ‘What are you thinkin
g right now, Alex?’
I smiled defensively back and he carried on talking. ‘You’re thinking that we don’t even make buildings, Alex, that really we offer a kind of management service, and that I’m being pretentious and architecty. You’re thinking that I’m overworking the metaphor of the ice wall, and that I should shut the eff up and play the hand I’ve been dealt.’
Rose was looking at me now, and for a moment my gaze met hers.
Stay away.
‘No,’ I said. ‘That is not what I’m thinking.’
‘You are,’ he said. He drained the rest of the beer in his glass. ‘I would.’
I went to the bar again, wondered whether the pub had another way out, wondered how soon I could decently leave. Perhaps the easiest thing would be to walk straight past Rose. Send a clear message.
Did Ravi know Rose? He gave no sign of having seen her, but he was lost in his own misery. I was certain he was about to tell me that the ice wall above him would break apart, that it would fall into the sea, that a wall of water would sink his boat.
‘Alex, the bank still loves us, you know,’ he said as I gave him his third pint. ‘We still have seventy grand in the client account; we still have a reputation. I mean, it’s beginning to get a bit frayed around the edges, but on paper we’re a legitimate operation. We are standing in a beautiful new boat with a group of high-value individuals watching a pristine cliff of unbroken ice. That is where we are. We are in the great Antarctic Ocean, and it’s a glorious day. And no one can see the fissures and the cracks, no one. But I can hear the ice moving on itself, and I know that cliff is going to fall, and when it does the wave will sink our boat. And I’m the captain of the boat, and I will be the last man off and it will take me down with it. That’s why it’s a good metaphor.’
He drank down half of the new pint. I looked at the ceiling.
‘You know, Alex, I still go to work as if nothing has happened, knowing I can’t rescue this, but still sort of believing I can. Do you know what I spent the rest of the morning doing, Alex? After I’d humiliated myself by shouting outside your house? Pitching for new work. And do you know why? Because you called and asked to meet me. Your telephone call gave me hope. It got me thinking about new clients. New possibilities. First time in weeks. And then you come into the office, and I can see that you’re not a new client, and that everything is going down.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I thought of the business he and Bryce had built up. I thought of the tea he had spilled, and wondered whether it was still pooled there on the level surface of his perfect white table.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, and meant it. The man was ruined, and he knew it. Friends in another life, perhaps, but in this life there was nothing I could do to save him. It would be as much as I could do to rescue what was left of my own family.
I did not see Rose slip from the pub as I left, but I heard footsteps in the street behind me, and turned to find her there at my side.
‘You know Ravinder,’ she said.
‘You followed me here.’
‘He’s a good guy.’
‘I love my wife, Rose,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and I need to speak to you about that. Please listen to what I have to tell you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I really need to be at home. Please don’t follow me.’
She followed me. Five minutes of my time she wanted. She had to speak to me. No, I said, and walked on. She wasn’t going to take no for an answer, she said, not on this. It was too important. I needed to know, she said. Millicent needed to know. For the sake of our future happiness. This is insane, I said. No, she said, this is not insane, Alex. If there is one thing this is not, it’s insane.
‘This is insane,’ I said.
‘Hear me out,’ she said.
I walked on. The streets grew dirty and the air grew bad. She matched me step for step.
She didn’t look insane. She looked determined.
I relented.
Coffee.
I took her to The Cheeseria! The Cheeseria! smelled of other people’s babies, of soured milks, of some nameless rot, topped by a shrill note of ammonia. The Cheeseria!, with its capital T and its exclamation mark; with its two tiny tables, and its unpasteurised cheeses. Essence of fucking cheese.
I ordered double espressos. The last thing The Cheeseria! made you want was milk in any form.
‘I need to clear something up with you, Alex. And Millicent won’t speak to me.’
At the other table a girl of twenty-five sat talking loudly at a mobile phone, held six inches from the side of her head. ‘He’s an obligate carnivore, Mum. Yeah, so no brown rice.’
‘What do you want to clear up with me, Rose?’
She was looking levelly back at me. She didn’t look insane or predatory. She wasn’t holding my gaze for longer than she should, or touching my hand by accident, or arranging her body to draw my gaze. There was nothing aggressive or frightening about her.
‘Alex,’ she said at last, ‘Alex, what did my brother tell Millicent about Lana?’
‘That she was his little girl. That she died when she was one. That his marriage fell apart after that.’
‘That’s what I thought you said. Christ.’
I could see the pain in her, though she tried to blink it away. Then she frowned and made a point of looking at the girl at the other table.
‘Mum, we love him too,’ the girl was saying, ‘but he’s a cat. Yeah. So no brown rice.’ She must have realised that we were staring at her then because she gave a silent ‘oops’ and went outside to finish her call.
‘Lana was my daughter,’ said Rose at last.
The stain of incest. That most ancient of crimes. It made a horrible kind of sense.
Rose must have caught the look that crossed my face.
‘No, she was my daughter. Not Bryce’s. God, the thought.’ She smiled for a moment, then pain erased the smile from her face. She rested her elbows on the table, pressed the tips of her fingers into her forehead.
‘He told Millicent she died when she was a year old,’ I said. ‘Viral meningitis.’
‘She was less than a year old. Ten months. And they call it meningitis. Just meningitis. But otherwise he got it about right.’ She bent over, dug into her bag, and produced a photograph of herself sitting in a blue plastic chair, breastfeeding a baby in the middle of a hospital ward.
‘I debated whether to show you this. Long and hard. Forgive me if this is the wrong decision.’
In the middle of the baby’s forehead was a colourless plastic tube with a red screw valve, held neatly in place by surgical tape. A thinner tube ran directly under the baby’s translucent skin.
‘I’m not a fan of melodrama, Alex,’ she said, ‘despite what you think of me.’
‘God, Rose.’
There was nothing insane about Rose – I could see that now – though she looked tired and disarrayed.
‘Towards the end they started running out of veins. Hence the cannula on the forehead.’ She gave a little laugh, making light of her suffering. How alike she and Millicent were in that. As if it embarrassed them that their grief showed.
The photograph had been taken by Lana’s father. Yes, they had been married. He was a good man but they were no longer together. The strain of losing Lana had pushed them in different directions. Suffering had coldly worked its fingers between them and drawn them apart. And no, Bryce had never been married. And no, Bryce had never come close to losing a child.
Rose had coped: barely at first, then increasingly well. Lana’s father had not. Rose had left, had found a new career in a new town, but it had taken her some years to get back on her feet.
‘If I’ve behaved in any way inappropriately, Alex, it has never been intentional.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘I should be apologising to you. I misread you. I should have listened.’
That attraction, that sense of a secret shared: it was Rose’s secret, and we did not
share it. She had done what neither Millicent nor I could.
How do you move on? If there was a part of Rose that I wanted, it was her answer to that question.
‘What, Alex?’
I was staring at her. ‘I feel terrible, Rose.’ I should stop staring at her. I forced myself to look away. ‘What happened to you was worse than what happened to us,’ I said. ‘Worse than I can imagine. And you dealt with it so much better. I feel ashamed that I misread you.’
‘It isn’t a competition, Alex.’
‘You did though. You coped.’
And then Bryce took her story and told it to Millicent as his own. How did it feel, I wondered, to be used in that way by your brother? To have your pain repackaged and sold on to someone else?
She must have guessed at my thought. ‘He wasn’t a sociopath, Alex,’ she said. ‘He was a lonely man who envied what other people had, and never understood how they had got to where they had got. Anyway, I thought you should know.’
‘He told Millicent your story,’ I said. ‘He pretended it was his.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, he did.’
Bryce used Millicent’s grief over Sarah as the means of her seduction. He lied to and humiliated her.
Of course she killed him.
Millicent wasn’t home in time for supper. I ate with Arla and Max. Arla and Max talked to each other; I didn’t say very much. Then Max looked meaningfully at Arla, and Arla looked meaningfully at Max, and Max nodded, and Arla nodded. Then Arla asked if she could take Max to the cinema to celebrate his last day of primary school. Some kind of sci-fi all-nighter. ‘Planet of the Apes’, or something. The good ones, said Max, not the crap ones. Sure, I said. If she could get him in, why not? It really was kind of an all-nighter, said Arla. OK, I said. Really? said Max, was I sure? Yes, I said, I was sure.
I gave Arla £80. ‘Too much,’ she said.
‘Take it,’ I said.
I sat in the front room waiting for Millicent. After a time I realised that the sun had gone down and that I was sitting there in the dark. The streetlight shone orange through the window. Most of the time, nothing happened. Cars passed; silhouetted figures slouched home from the pub.
A Line of Blood Page 67