by Tim Adler
Her first instinct was to put everything right, to restore order. She began gathering clothes off the floor but her hands felt like stumps. She sat back and slid down the wall, her legs shaking uncontrollably. It was all too much for her to cope with.
Two police constables eventually arrived after an hour. The three of them stood in her sitting room while the older one questioned her.
Had she noticed anything unusual when she went out this morning? the policeman asked.
No, she hadn't, but she'd had a lot on her mind.
Apart from her laptop, had anything else of value been taken?
She didn't think so. A pair of diamond studs Paul had given Kate for her birthday were still in the box on her dressing table.
The younger PC stood by the sitting room window, looking up at the nearby tower block. There'd been a spate of break-ins recently, addicts from the estate looking for stuff to nick.
"If you wait a few days, your laptop will probably turn up at a pawnshop on the High Street," he said. He jerked his head towards the window. "Either that or online. There's a fence on the estate who flogs stuff that way."
"What are the chances I'll get it back?"
The constable shook his head. "Negligible, I'd say. They'll get about fifty quid for it. Look, here's your crime reference number. You'll need it when you're making a claim on the insurance."
His colleague called out that he'd finished dusting for prints in the kitchen.
They stood on the doorstep and the older policeman said he'd be in touch. Kate stood in the hallway watching the PC write up his notes once the men were back in their car. Suddenly she couldn't bear to be alone. She needed to be with people, but who? Her mum was down in Somerset, and anyway, she would see her this weekend. Her best friend Estelle was away at a trade show – she'd seen her Facebook update this morning. When she'd married Paul, she had let her old friends drop: only now did she realise how completely she had bound her life to his.
Priest, the man from the victim support group, lived only round the corner. Perhaps he could help her get everything straight. It was after six, so he might be back from work already. Kate rummaged in her bag for Priest's business card. Found it. Priest answered on the fourth ring.
"Hello?" He sounded cautious, as if he was unused to people calling him on his mobile.
"John, it's Kate. Kate Julia."
"Oh, hello, how are you doing?"
"Something bad has happened. I've been burgled." Kate sighed. "It never rains but it pours, right?"
Priest offered to help her clear up once she'd told him what had happened.
Twenty minutes later he buzzed the doorbell. He tutted when he saw the mess. "They really did you over, didn't they?" She felt weak. Less than four days ago, she had been happily cocooned from the harsher side of life in her supposedly perfect marriage; the worst that had happened was the occasional parking ticket. Those comforting veils had been ripped away, and now she saw things as they really were. A line of classroom Shakespeare came back to her: "He that dies this year is quit for the next." Paul had taken the easy way out.
It took a couple of hours to put the flat right. Priest duct-taped the slashed cushions ("Working in the trade, you realise everything can be fixed with either duct tape or WD40") while Kate rehung her clothes. Picking up an armful of Paul's crumpled suits, she couldn't resist inhaling deeply.
Her new friend came out of the kitchen drying his hands on a tea towel. "Don't go in there. The floor's wet," he said. Her Good Samaritan had cleaned everything up; you wouldn't have known there had been a break-in apart from the cardboard patched on the kitchen door. Kate felt drained, her head thick with exhaustion. All she wanted to do was have a drink and go to bed. As if reading her mind, Priest asked if there was any booze in the house. "I think there's a bottle of wine on the shelf," Kate said, remembering a dusty bottle they'd been saving for a special occasion.
"Why don't you sit down? Is there anything to eat in the fridge?" Priest asked.
"I don't know. I haven't been to the shops since I got back. To be honest, I'm not hungry."
"You must eat something."
"There's some pasta sauce in the cupboard. I think we've got some spaghetti."
"We can do better than that."
There was the comforting pop of a cork, and Priest poured out wine for them both. Kate took a sip. The wine tasted dry and rich, like being licked by a cat's tongue. Priest rattled the salad drawer in the fridge and pulled out some tomatoes and a half-destroyed garlic. It would never have occurred to Kate to use up what was in there rather than pop out and get something ready-made. Squeezing the tomatoes and nodding, Priest banged pans about. Watching him bend over, Kate noticed how strong his back was beneath his grey marl tee-shirt. For God's sake, she thought, you've only just scattered your husband's ashes. She felt guilty and cross with herself for even thinking of Priest that way.
It was a pleasure to watch him cooking, though. Soon a rich tomato sauce was bubbling on the stove while the spaghetti boiled.
"Comfort food," he said, setting her plate down. It certainly smelled delicious.
"Where did you learn to cook like this?"
"I had to learn. Me mum worked in a factory shop during the day and as an office cleaner at night. She would get in late."
"What about your dad? Where was he?"
"I never knew me dad. He fucked off when I was small. Mum says he could have charmed the birds from the trees. He was in the motor trade, like. It must run in the family." Priest grinned and ate a mouthful of pasta.
Kate felt herself being restored with each mouthful. "Christ, what an awful day. By the way–" She giggled nervously. "I found out my husband had been seeing a prostitute."
"Blimey, how did you find that out, then?"
"Remember that photo I told you about? The text that Paul was sent? It was taken at the Savile, the big hotel on Park Lane. The manager told me that Paul met a Vietnamese prostitute there. They were filmed going upstairs."
Priest put down his fork. "Was that something you knew about?"
"Of course not, no, but then again, it turns out I never really knew the man I married."
"How did you find the hotel?"
"Wait, it gets worse: the police are treating the death as suspicious. The prostitute was found dead in the hotel room. She'd taken an overdose."
Priest considered what she had just said. "Bloody hell. You're a regular Miss Marple, aren't you? What do the police say?"
"Wait, I haven't finished yet. It turns out this girl was pregnant." Priest's mouth fell open at this. "This prostitute – really, she was just a girl, a teenager, for God's sake – worked in a nail bar in Streatham." Kate paused. "I thought I'd go and visit, see if I could find out anything."
Priest shook his head. "You don't want to do that. Listen, these are not nice people. Leave it to the police."
"Okay, okay, you're right," Kate lied. "It's just that … can you imagine what it's like to not know the man you were married to, to realise he had this double life?"
"I'm no expert, but lots of men go outside their marriage. If there's something they're not getting, I mean."
"What are you saying? That Paul wanted to be tied up and spanked? God, I'm no prude. Why didn't he just talk to me?"
Priest placed his hand over hers. The touch of somebody else's skin felt so good. Kate realised it was the first time anybody had touched her since Paul's death. "You're gonna drive yourself mad asking all these questions. There's got to be a point where you start letting go."
Kate giggled again. Her laughter was tinged with a note of hysteria. "No, wait, there's more. There's something else I need to tell you. Remember I said I went to see the old boy who lives downstairs? The one visiting his brother's war grave in Albania?" Priest nodded. "He did see Paul fall from the balcony, except he says Paul didn't fall from the penthouse but from the floor below."
Priest's eyes widened. "I don't understand."
"He's saying that P
aul didn't jump from our balcony but from the one below ours."
"That doesn't make any sense. Anyway, how can he be so sure? It must have been over so quick, like."
"He's adamant." Kate drained her glass. "In the end, it doesn't matter, does it? I have the post-mortem. Paul died when he hit the pavement."
The conversation reached a natural pause and Priest got up to clear the plates. Kate offered to help but Priest told her to stay seated. He loaded the dishwasher, dried his hands and swallowed his last mouthful of wine. Kate felt pleasantly boozed and stuffed.
"Right. I'd better get going. I'm driving to a showroom in Clacton tomorrow. Are you sure you're gonna be all right?"
She knew now that she didn't want him to leave. The thought of being left alone in the flat scared her. What if whoever had burgled the flat came back? She imagined her bedroom door being thrust open and a man in black entering the room, his torch light crazily swinging about as he held her down on the bed while the knife bit into her neck, preparing–
"Please, John, don't go. I don't think I can be alone tonight."
Priest stood over Kate and held her by her shoulders. She looked up into his warm brown eyes. "You're going to be fine. Whoever it was isn't coming back."
"John, you can sleep on the sofa. It's not safe for me here."
"I've got to get up really early."
"Please, John. I wouldn't ask–"
"All right," he said reluctantly. "I'll stay. I have to be up early, mind."
There was a spare duvet and a pillow on top of the wardrobe. Kate changed into pyjama bottoms and a pretty tee-shirt. She caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth. There were dark smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes.
She called out goodnight and shut the bedroom door. She didn't think she'd ever been so grateful to crawl into bed. Christ, what a day. The faces of the hotel manager and the detective at the police station came back to her, then the CCTV photo of Paul meeting the prostitute. It was like a ghastly merry-go-round she wanted to get off. Still, she couldn't sleep. Her mind was too wound up with what had happened. Remembering the touch of Priest's skin, she felt the need for human contact. Anything to stop the pain of being alone.
Would he still be awake? What she needed was to be held, to be told that everything was going to be okay.
Edging down the hall, Kate began to have second thoughts. Priest would think she was a slut. Her husband was barely in the ground and here she was, creeping into another man's bed. Kate stopped. A floorboard they'd never got around to fixing creaked. "Kate, everything all right?" Priest called out. Too late now. She pushed the sitting room door open. Acid orange light from the street lamp spilled from behind the curtain. He was lying there still awake, with his arms behind his head.
Kate stood in the doorway. Priest sat up in bed and again asked if anything was the matter. Instead of replying, Kate crossed the room and slipped in beside him. The warmth in her heart dropped down to her loins, and she bent down to kiss his shoulder and then his nipple. "Kate, stop. This isn't a good idea," he said. Instead, she pulled the duvet down, wanting to see his naked body. She smoothed her hand over his hard chest. That's when she saw the faded tattoo on his upper arm, a yin-yang that had almost gone grey. Flashback. The mortuary attendant raising Paul's wrist in the hospital in Tirana, showing off his homemade Z. She choked on the memory. Suddenly she couldn't do this anymore. Her throat felt tight and she let out a sob. "Hey, it's all right," Priest said gently, touching her hair. It was as if he'd given her permission to let go, and they lay there in the dark as great convulsive sobs swept over her. She felt as if she was never going to get all of it out. Priest just lay there, touching her hair and reassuring her that everything was going to be okay, nothing bad was going to happen to her. But of course, nothing would ever be all right again.
Wednesday
Chapter Eighteen
Liverpool Street station was disorienting when you emerged onto the concourse. Men and women barged past Kate as an announcement about the late arrival of the Stansted Express ping-ponged over the station tannoy. She stood looking for an exit, not sure which way she was facing.
She could see that it was a bright, clear morning, one of those crisp, perfect days you get before winter properly sets in. Paul's office was further north up Bishopsgate, in a cobbled street off Spitalfields. His office block was due for demolition, with another high rise set to take its place. They would have to find somewhere cheaper. If the company stayed in business, that is. A year ago Paul might have sold it as a going concern, the accountant had told her over the phone that morning. Right now, all we're looking at is a muddy hole in the ground, he had said dryly. Nobody was going to buy the company today.
The goods lift gate rattled shut and the lift jerked upwards.
The East London Hosting Company was almost a cliché: about twenty, mostly young staff were tapping away at Macs. The bearded men wore tight, dark blue jeans and neat gingham shirts, while the few women had a hippie-ish look, with peasant skirts and strands of dreadlocks. Designer light-bulbs hung down above the exposed brickwork. The whole thing was making a statement. We're creatives! Working in Shoreditch! Well, not for much longer, Kate thought grimly. Soon this would be an empty dusty space with outlines where the furniture had once been.
Colin swung round when he saw her. Kate noticed that he'd put on some weight, one of the problems when you were pretty much paralysed from the neck down. They'd met when Colin was trying to put his life back together after the skiing accident. Paul was doing a degree in marketing while Colin had studied computing. They'd talked about what would become known as the cloud and how, in the future, everything would be stored on the internet and not on PCs. At the time, Kate hadn't really understood what they were talking about. They set up a company building and hosting high-end websites. At first business boomed: their clients included several government organisations and public campaigns. Then the recession hit in 2008 – the government made what it called a bonfire of the quangos, scrapping their key clients. Then it decided to take everything in-house. The new edict was that Whitehall would build its own websites. Business dried up.
"Hello, Kate."
"It's good to see you, Colin." She felt a rush of comfort at seeing an old friend.
"You look a lot better than I thought you would. How are you feeling?"
"Pretty banged about. It comes in waves. Sometimes there are moments when I almost feel normal."
"You know how devastated we all are. He was my best friend, you know."
Kate touched his hand, which was resting on the wheelchair joystick, curled up like a reptilian balled fist. "I know that. Thank you for the flowers."
"Do you have any better idea of what happened? How he fell, I mean?"
Yes, she thought, he jumped because the police wanted to charge him with murder. He went behind my back with a teenage Vietnamese prostitute and got her pregnant. He killed himself because he couldn't face what he had done. She said: "I honestly think it was an accident. He lost his balance and toppled over."
"You seem to be holding up."
I don't know how. Everything I thought about my husband has turned out to be a lie. "You know what they say, one day at a time."
"I've told everybody to assemble in the meeting room at eleven. Are you sure you want to go through with this?"
They'd spoken on the phone early that morning, rehearsing what Kate was going to say. Unless they found a buyer, everybody would be made redundant. There wasn't enough money in the bank to keep the business going indefinitely.
Somebody touched Kate on the shoulder and she turned to see her friend Jackie, the bookkeeper. Jackie was a warm, older woman who'd been widowed herself after her husband died of cancer, leaving her with two young children to support. She had a wry sense of humour and, best of all, the quality that Kate prized most in another woman: she was intensely practical.
"If you want to talk," Jackie said simply.
"Thanks. Perhaps we could grab a sandwich after this meeting."
"Sure thing, babe. You know where to find me."
"Yes, I'd like that very much."
"Kate, we really should get going," Colin interrupted.
Colin's wheelchair jerked backward before he wheeled around and trundled across the office floor. A couple of employees looked up from their computers. Their grim expressions told her they expected the worst. Somewhere deep below a Tube train rumbled.
A sea of mostly young faces looked expectantly at Kate. Some had moved down to London for this, their first job. Others had just bought their first flat or had celebrated the arrival of a baby. Paul liked to think of them as his family, and he'd pledged to keep going through thick and thin. But there was hardly any petrol left in the tank, and the East London Hosting Company was running on fumes. Now his widow was switching off the engine.
"Thank you all for being here this morning. As you know, Paul died last week when we were in Albania for a family funeral." There were sympathetic murmurs round the table. "He fell from the balcony of the hotel we were staying in. It was a tragic accident. You know how much he loved this company he created with Colin, and how much he loved all of you. When they started, the cloud was something that rain came out of." Laughter. "Colin persuaded Paul that servers and hosting were the future. It was Paul's job to persuade others of this vision. That was a tough sell when you're dealing with governments and organisations that want to hang on to their data. And this was the first company to do it, which gave us first-mover advantage. We won some big accounts – the Department for Work and Pensions, the Welsh tourist board – then the big boys caught on, the Accentures and the PricewaterhouseCoopers of this world. That's the problem with first-mover advantage."