On the phone, the officer from Financial Liaison Services had been gently efficient and sensitive to her situation as he’d talked her through the process. It was the worst part of his job, he’d told her. When it was over she’d thanked him, then rushed to the bathroom to throw up.
Now, after a few pieces of toast and a shower, she walked across to the desk, to the deep drawer that was as close as she and Paul had come to any sort of filing system. She flicked past files that contained mortgage details, car documents and mobile phone bills, and drew out the clip folder that held Paul’s bank statements.
She turned on the radio and carried the folder across to the sofa.
Maybe she should try to deal with all the other stuff, too. A distraction - a nice, dull, safe one - would have been welcome. She would surely have been better off spending her days talking to building societies and insurance companies, wallowing in the sympathy of call-centre workers, than behaving as she had. Dashing around like a mad bitch and digging up enough dirt to bury Paul three times over.
On the radio, a woman was talking about how she’d coped with a severely disabled son. The presenter said she was amazing. Helen got up and retuned to Radio One.
Paul had held current and savings accounts with HSBC; did most transactions over the phone or online. Helen took out a sheaf of statements going back six months and flicked through them. It was odd that such a dry and ordered series of names and numbers could be so telling, could provide an instant snapshot of a person.
Payments made to Virgin, HMV and Game; the local Indian restaurant; the branch of Woodhouse in Covent Garden that sold the easy-iron shirts he was fond of wearing with jeans. Direct debits to Sky and Orange. A small standing order paid to a charity for deaf children ever since Paul’s niece had been diagnosed a few years before.
She found the payment for the watch he had bought for her birthday two months earlier. He’d said that he’d hung on to the receipt in case she wanted to change it, but she’d told him it was fine. She’d meant to pop in and check the price the next time she was passing the jeweller’s, but had forgotten. She saw now that it had cost thirty quid less than he’d told her it did.
‘You sodding cheapskate, Hopwood.’
There were plenty of payments that she did not recognise: card transactions that she could check with the bank if she wanted to, but none for any large amount; and besides, it was payments into the accounts that she needed to look hardest at.
Salary, a few cheques from Helen herself, the tiny dividends on some shares he’d been given by his mother. Nothing that looked significant. If he had received payments from the likes of Shepherd and Linnell, they must have been made into another account.
There was no sense of relief as Helen clipped the statements back into the folder. She knew that there was something she was not meant to find. And whatever else Paul had been, he had not been stupid.
She was the one who couldn’t keep secrets.
Helen walked into the bedroom to get dressed, pulled out a T-shirt and wondered if what she’d been looking for might be tucked away at the back of the wardrobe, behind Paul’s guitar. With limited technical ability that was about as frustrating as a dead-end could get. She’d run into brick walls plenty of times at work, of course, but there was usually somebody on the team who had the expertise to find a way around them.
This time she was on her own.
In the next room, a DJ they had both always hated droned on about some gig he’d attended, confident as ever that his own C-list social life was of more interest to listeners than any music he might play.
A memory: Paul, snarling at the radio as he fetched milk from the fridge, ‘Pointless, fat bastard.’
You could try to find a way around a brick wall, or you could just stand and stare at the bloody thing. If all else failed, you could just keep throwing yourself at it, because the pain felt good.
Felt better.
It was just a look. No more than a glance up from his cue as he leaned across the table, and something like a smirk passing across his face, but it was enough to bring up the hairs on Theo’s neck, to tell him something bad had happened.
Something else.
They had gone into the Cue Up for a bit of lunch: a sausage sandwich and something to drink; a frame or two of pool and an hour away from the stash house and the heat of the afternoon. Easy was in a good mood. He had suggested twenty quid a frame, but Theo had seen Javine’s face again, heard that tone in her voice, and agreed on a tenner for best of three.
The place was no busier than usual. The same faces talking low across the snooker tables or hanging around near the bar. The same old guy muttering over his tea and toast and boring the arse off the woman behind the counter.
Easy won the first frame and was well ahead in the second; would probably have walked it anyway, even if Theo’s mind had been on the game.
‘Can’t pot shit today,’ Theo said.
‘Outclassed, Star Boy, simple as that.’
‘You’re right.’
Easy had on a new chain, thick as rope. It swung against his cue when he leaned down to take a shot. ‘You’re not concentrating, man.’ He smacked in a stripe. ‘Not for days.’
‘There’s a lot going on.’
‘Maybe.’
Theo nodded towards the window, the street outside. ‘You got a problem with your eyes, man?’
Easy grinned, shrugged. ‘That’s when you need to focus most, you get me. Other people taking their eye off the ball, dodging the Five-O, grieving, all that. That’s exactly when you need to be sharp. Someone got to keep this crew slick.’
‘Wave not doing that?’
Another stripe went down. ‘Wave doing what he does.’
Theo hadn’t seen a great deal of Wave since it had all kicked off. Hadn’t seen too many of the crew hanging out in threes and fours like they usually did. It was all down to Mikey and SnapZ, he knew that; but still, there were faces he’d not spotted on the usual corners for two or three days, maybe more.
‘As If keeping his head down, is he?’
‘If he knows what’s good for him,’ Easy said.
‘Hanging out with Wave?’
‘Hanging out of his arse, more like.’
‘Not seen Ollie around for a bit either,’ Theo said.
Then that look up, like a punch, and a dreadful certainty that began to take hold as Theo waited for Easy to turn away and leaned a hand down on the edge of the table to steady himself.
He thought back to a Saturday night, two days after Mikey had been killed, when the crew had gathered in the Dirty South. To drink and smoke themselves stupid. To regroup.
He had listened to a band playing in the back room, then wandered back to join the crew when he’d had enough. Easy had been loud and full of himself, moving from one member of the crew to the next; geeing them up like a football coach trying to talk a losing team back into it at half time.
Ollie had been nursing a bottle at a table in the corner, and Theo remembered Wave and Gospel deep in conversation a few feet away on a sofa near the door. He’d noticed the cuts and bruises on Gospel’s face as she’d leaned in close to whisper; seen Wave put fingers on the back of her neck as she talked, clearly already getting a piece of what Ollie wanted.
Theo had seen the look on Wave’s face when Gospel had finished talking, and the look on Ollie’s when he saw Wave turning to stare him out. He saw it all again as he thought back, and heard Dennis Brown’s voice, high above the ragged, remembered thump of the band in the back room. Words from the song he’d been listening to a few days before.
‘Wolves and Leopards,
Are trying to kill the sheep and the shepherds.
Too much informers,
Too much tale-bearers . . .’
He knew, when Easy looked up from the pool table, that he wouldn’t be seeing Ollie again. He could only hope, for the kid’s sake, that Easy hadn’t been the one to get hold of him. He knew about his friend’s capacity fo
r violence. As If had a foot on Easy at least, but Theo knew who his money would be on if it ever came down to it.
Easy left a ball rattling in the jaws, cursed and stood up. ‘You’re on, T.’
Theo’s mind was racing. If Wave knew that Ollie had been talking to somebody out of turn, perhaps he also knew who that person was. Perhaps he was already taking steps to stop what was happening. Maybe Easy would be dispatched to deal with that situation too . . .
‘T . . .’
Theo leaned down and swiped the black ball into a pocket with his hand.
‘Fuck you doing, man?’ Easy said.
Theo put down a ten-pound note and said, ‘I’m going home.’
Helen had wandered down to the Turkish grocer’s as soon as the lunchtime news had finished. The owner’s wife had given her some freshly made baklava stuffed with pistachios. Helen had bought some bread and cheese too, and had taken the lot into the small park opposite to eat.
When she got home there were three messages on the machine. The first two were hang-ups. There had been a few in the last week or so, and on each occasion the caller had withheld their number had waited ten or fifteen seconds before putting down the phone. As if he’d been content not to speak, or too afraid to say anything.
Helen felt fairly sure the caller was a man. And that it was not a wrong number.
The third message was from a woman, a civilian administrative assistant at the Area West Murder Squad.
The senior investigating officer was apparently satisfied with the way the investigation had been proceeding. He had conferred with the coroner, who was happy to authorise burial and issue a temporary death certificate. In light of this, the SIO would himself be happy to release Sergeant Hopwood’s body the next day.
Happy.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The pub wasn’t far from being ready, and Clive said that he was sorting out things in SE3, so Frank went in early to the office he rented behind Christ’s College School and spent the morning catching up with several of his other business interests.
There was a pile of planning-permission documents to go through and searches on three new commercial properties he was in the process of purchasing. He agreed weekend rates with a new Polish contractor and organised ‘gifts’ for two different councillors, whose goodwill would come in handy for a new development he was contemplating in Battersea. He made a few calls and arranged for several cases of decent wine and ‘his and hers’ watches to be delivered.
It was all part of the game. Legitimate expenditure. His accountant would write off those purchases as ‘corporate hospitality’ when the time came to do the books.
Then he drove out to see Laura’s mother. He was alone in the car, driving himself for a change. He didn’t want to give any of his employees, not even Clive, access to this aspect of his private life.
She lived in a maisonette, which Frank had bought for her a few years before in the nicer part of Eltham. He’d given her a little car too, just something she could run around in; but Frank got the impression that she didn’t leave the house much these days. Though the business was up and running by then, Frank had started visiting as often as he could once he’d found out that he had a sister, and he always came away feeling like he’d done a good thing.
She was thrilled to see him, same as usual. She told him how grateful she was that he’d come to see her, how grateful she was for everything, and her eyes were brimming before he was even inside. He could smell the drink on her as she pulled him into an embrace.
They talked about Laura, as always, while Frank drank orange juice and she opened another bottle of wine. She asked him about his business and he told her about the pub. She said it sounded wonderful, that she used to enjoy an evening out, when pubs weren’t full of loud music and people watching football.
‘Laura would sit outside, good as gold. We’d bring her out a bottle of Coke and some crisps.’
‘My mum did that with me,’ Frank said.
‘There you go then.’
‘He liked a drink, didn’t he?’
As soon as ‘he’ was mentioned, the tone of the conversation shifted. Frank’s old man had walked out on him and his mum, then done exactly the same thing many years later, when Laura was about the age that Frank had been. Laura’s mother would often produce a picture of a thin-faced man who looked horribly like Frank. Then she would invariably say, ‘You’re more of a dad to her than that useless twat ever was.’
Frank had been looking for his old man for years, handing over good money to private detectives and getting nowhere. He still lived in hope that one day he’d catch up with him.
Show the useless twat exactly how he’d turned out . . .
‘He liked a drink, but the drink didn’t like him.’ There were not too many happy memories for either of them where Frank’s father was concerned, and the voice of the man’s second ex-wife was laced with booze and bitterness as she spoke. ‘Amazing when you think about it, that you and Laura both turned out so well.’
‘Down to you and my mother,’ Frank said.
‘Genes are powerful things, though.’ She poured herself another glass. ‘You ever worried about what you might have inherited from him?’
‘Never thought about it.’
‘That why you never had your own kids, Frank?’
‘No . . .’
‘It’s not too late, you know.’
Frank shook his head. ‘I don’t believe all that.’
‘Never too late.’
‘It’s up to you how you turn out. There’s never any excuse. It’s never anyone else’s fault if you mess it up.’
‘You didn’t mess it up, though, love. You’ve done so well for yourself. ’
‘Right. And nobody can take credit for that but me.’
Half the glass of wine had already gone, and another gulp took care of the rest. ‘You’d make a good dad, Frank.’
Frank stood up and walked across to the mirror above the gas fire. He straightened the chain around his neck and sorted out his hair while she talked about how his father would get sometimes when he’d had a few too many; about how he couldn’t keep his hands to himself . . . or his fists. Somewhere beneath the disgust, though, Frank could hear the sadness in her voice. His old man had been a good-looking sod, there was no getting away from that, and Frank knew that there hadn’t been anyone important in this woman’s life since he’d walked out.
He guessed that, deep down, she still felt something other than contempt for the miserable bastard who had so royally fucked her over.
‘Why did you ever shack up with him in the first place?’ he asked.
She pressed the empty glass against her cheek. ‘Rotten taste in blokes, simple as that.’
‘Same as Laura,’ Frank said.
An hour later, heading home, he thought about driving into Lewisham. It was only another ten minutes on from his place, after all.
A couple of miles and a world away.
Thinking about Laura had led, naturally, to thinking about Paul, and Frank thought it might be interesting to drive around the streets where some of those responsible for his death still lived, for the time being. Get a feel for the people who had dreamed it up. For the stick men . . .
Besides which, there might be more than a few people looking to get out of the area quickly, things being what they were. Property-wise, there might be some bargains to be had.
Jenny picked Helen up just after six. As they pulled onto the main road, Helen looked back, thinking that she’d noticed a black Jeep four or five cars behind them. Jenny asked her what she was looking at and, unable to see the car any more, Helen gave up. It was difficult to crane her neck round, and for all she knew it could have been any four-by-four.
She felt scared and stupid and told herself to calm down. Tried to enjoy the view, lit up and laid out to one side of them as they drove south to Crystal Palace: the Eye, St Paul’s, Canary Wharf.
Jenny had booked a table in a gastropub she
had seen reviewed in Time Out. Wooden floors, weird paintings and something jazzy from the speakers. It was earlier than Helen preferred to eat dinner, and she guessed that she’d be raiding the fridge again before bedtime, but she knew that Jenny had to get home to sort out her kids, that Tim was not great at looking after them, or himself.
‘It’ll look like a war zone by the time I get back,’ Jenny said.
Helen ordered grilled squid followed by lamb chops while her sister went for pâté and a chicken Caesar salad. They shared a bottle of sparkling water and talked easily enough.
The argument they’d had the previous weekend had not been forgotten, and Helen had been expecting the atmosphere to be a little tense, so she was amazed when Jenny apologised. Helen was usually the one who made the first move, unwilling to live with the guilt that her sister was so good at generating after any disagreement.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Helen said. If anything, being on the receiving end of an apology only increased the guilt. It was as though she had a bottomless reservoir of it.
‘I’ve been feeling terrible about it.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Jenny took Helen’s hand and squeezed, and it was done and dusted. This was how it had always been between them. Cat and dog, or best mates.
‘It’s fine, honestly,’ Helen said. ‘I was just all over the place.’
‘It’s understandable—’
‘I am all over the place.’
Jenny nodded. ‘Of course you are.’
On the way from Tulse Hill, Helen had told her that Paul’s body was being released to the undertaker’s, that the funeral would be in a few days. They’d talked about whether Jenny should bring the kids and eventually decided against it. They’d all be travelling over to Paul’s parents’ place in Reading for the ceremony and a few drinks afterwards, and they discussed whether Helen should stay over; how much more she might alienate Paul’s mother if she decided to travel back.
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