Plastic

by Christopher Fowler

  It was worse than I’d thought. First, I have a dust allergy. Second, Azymuth wasn’t alone; I could hear two men talking. One voice was public school, the other had the sealed-throat glottal stops of Essex English. I peered out through the door grille, but it was possible to recognise Dr. Azymuth from his photograph, even in the half-light of his upturned torch. Dressed in a rain-spattered anorak, tall and angular, he was as awkward as an ostrich. His companion wore a blue nylon jacket, his face muddled in darkness. One of them was wearing Vanilla Tobacco by Tom Ford, at a hundred quid a bottle. I watched them stop in the shadows of the kitchen entrance and held my breath, praying that the dust wouldn’t make me sneeze.

  ‘Can I offer you a drink?’ asked Azymuth.

  ‘Nah, I got to get back.’ The companion had his back to me, walking toward the door. ‘He’s cancelled your last two appointments.’

  ‘But I’ve already booked them in. They only need to be ten days apart.’

  ‘You’ll have to take it up with Mr. Rennie. I’m just telling you what he told me.’

  As soon as they had moved from my sightline I placed my ear against the door and listened, then stepped out into the kitchen.

  Silence.

  A scuff in the hall, past the closed door of the main bedroom.

  Now they seemed to be standing outside the flat. I looked and saw their backs through the gap in the front door. It’s other people’s business, I told myself, nothing to do with me. My fear had been overcome by my determination to see the matter through. Even my mother grudgingly admitted that tenacity was one of my few virtues.

  With the closing of the front door, I crept out into the hall.

  Azymuth was standing inside with his arms folded over his torch, watching me. ‘Would you mind telling me what on earth you’re doing in my apartment?’

  ‘This is so embarrassing,’ I began, attempting to brazen out the situation by adopting the voice I used for returning clothes. ‘I’m in the wrong place. There was a mix-up with my key. Madame Funes gave me yours by mistake.’

  ‘You were hiding in a cupboard. Anyway, the concierge isn’t here today.’

  ‘I know that. I only just found out it was the wrong key.’

  ‘Surely you could tell you weren’t in the right flat. Or even the right cupboard.’

  ‘That’s just it, I’m minding a place for a friend –’

  ‘What friend?’

  The last thing I wanted was to get Malcolm into trouble. ‘More a friend of a friend. I agreed to flatsit for him. Here’s your key and I’m really awfully sorry.’ My subservience to professional men could be nothing short of pathetic. I’m surprised I didn’t offer to do his ironing. I extracted the 701 Yale and dropped it onto the hall console. Azymuth was walking from room to room, prissily checking everything. Any second now I knew he would see the mess in the bedroom.

  I kept talking, trying to distract him, but the doctor would not be turned from his purpose. When he pushed open the door to the master bedroom, he stopped dead in his shiny Oxford-shod tracks. ‘Come here. Did you do this?’

  My confidence flatlined. ‘No... uh, I just –’ I shifted away from him, aiming toward the front door. ‘Some other people were... listen, what goes on here is your business, I’m nothing –’

  ‘Have you been going through the confidential files of my patients?’ He lowered the torch so that it flared in my eyes.

  ‘I have to go,’ I insisted.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not until I get some kind of an explanation.’

  Looking into his angry brown eyes, I felt for a moment that he didn’t have any idea what had been going on. But the girl had been a patient of his, left to die in his apartment. Surely Azymuth shared some guilt of her death? There was no point in trying to lie my way out; I just wanted to know if he was somehow responsible. I needed something to make sense in this impregnable, pristine world, even if it was something unbearably cruel. I mean, for years I’d believed Jeffrey Archer was honest, but it all made sense when he went to jail. It was embarrassing for him, but closure for me.

  ‘I saw a girl attacked here. Right where we’re standing.’

  ‘Attacked? What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘She was strangled with a plastic parcel tag, and she was one of your patients. I can show you.’ Before he had a chance to answer, I dropped to my knees and scrabbled through the sheets on the floor, finding the girl’s photograph. ‘This one, Petra Valenski.’

  He barely glanced at the picture. He didn’t need to. It was obvious that he recognised the name. ‘What would she be doing here?’

  ‘I don’t know. What did you do to her?’

  ‘It’s no business of yours. You have no right to ask anything, you’re in my apartment with some cock-and-bull story about mixed-up keys, threatening me, who the hell do you think you are? I’m the one who should be calling the police.’

  ‘The girl was on your property. Any forensic team would find evidence in seconds.’ I had no way of knowing if this was true, but it sounded good.

  ‘You’re mad. Who are you?’

  ‘Nobody, just a housewife.’

  ‘I can see that,’ he said, rather insultingly I thought.

  ‘But I’m the type who makes a convincing witness.’

  Perhaps he decided to humour me then, because he suddenly changed his tone. ‘I don’t understand. What exactly do you expect me to do?’

  ‘It would help if you could explain who she was.’ I was pushing my luck, but couldn’t seem to stop myself. ‘These files all belong to your patients?’

  ‘No, they’re... well, I have a client. He sends them to me.’

  ‘You mean like a broker.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said irritably.

  ‘And they’re all for surgery.’

  ‘Yes, it’s just minor stuff, enhancements mostly, noses, lips, eyes, wrinkles, spot and mole removal, nothing structural beyond the odd bit of jaw realignment.’

  ‘What did you do to her, Petra Valenski?’

  ‘Hardly anything, as it happens. She was almost perfect. I made her a little fuller in the face, nothing that a few months of good eating wouldn’t have done. Just a couple of local injections in her cheeks. Oh, and I pinned back her ears.’ Professional pride crept into his voice. ‘It’s was a very neat piece of work.’

  ‘That’s all you did?’

  ‘In my opinion she didn’t need any cosmetic work at all, and she had no opinions of her own that I could understand because she spoke no English. She’d only been in the country a few weeks. When I took the booking I was told how much to spend, but I decide how much surgery to perform, and in this case I chose to keep it minimal.’

  ‘And the broker paid you?’

  ‘You really saw the girl in here?’ he asked.

  ‘As clearly as I see you now. She was rolling about on your rather attractive hardwood floor, choking to death.’

  ‘All right, I’ll deal with this.’ He waved at me dismissively. ‘You have nothing to worry about. Just go back to your own apartment.’

  ‘What about the police?’

  ‘It’s not a matter for them. I can easily find out what’s been going on. I promise you, I’ll take the appropriate steps.’

  ‘All right. I’m in apartment 603 But I won’t go anywhere until you tell me what happened.’ I warned.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be the first to know.’

  I returned to Malcolm’s flat shaken but relieved, happy to have passed the buck so easily. I suppose I thought I was providing Petra with some kind of closure. In hindsight it seems absurd that I had expected to be told the truth and allowed to leave, but you have to put it down to my misplaced faith in authority figures.

  I honestly didn’t imagine that my life was at risk too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Dirty Hands

  I TRIED READING for a while, but descending black clouds had turned the room dark, and after attempting to follow the same sentence a dozen times
by candlelight, I gave up. Never read Dickens when you’re in a state of alarm, it doesn’t go in.

  Having glimpsed something of a city I’d ignored for so long, I now felt restless indoors and wanted to see more, but I could tell by the unnatural flatness of the river that it had started to rain. From the window at the end of the sixth floor corridor, the car park and the dug-up green in front of the lobby were visible. The reduced height meant that I could now see through the plane trees to the roads facing away from the river. Stefan’s yellow steel container was the brightest thing on the ground, but his door was closed.

  While I waited for Azymuth to report back, I tried to imagine what everyone else was doing on a wet Saturday afternoon in September.

  No-one was simply out for a walk; they all had destinations and looked as if they were running late. I thought of the taxi driver on his break; London seemed to be filled with pockets of the past, crossroads and alleyways truncated by postwar road layouts that had sealed them into history. You could still see where the bombs had fallen. Planners had left their territorial marks by wedging predatory offices into sedate terraces, superseding the unfashionable comfort of Christian conformity with something more devious and aggressive. These replacement buildings were locked into specific eras; brutal seventies concrete, plastic eighties toy-boxes, anonymous nineties towers that revealed their interiors like dolls’ houses.

  From this height the Victorian and Edwardian redbricks still carried an identity of understatement and scruffy utility. Looking down on the grey mess of railway lines, torn-up arterials and dingy backwaters, I wondered if the area could offer someone like me a fresh start.

  As I made a sandwich, I began to wonder if the doctor really intended to visit me with news. I had no plans for the evening, but the cash Lou had left would provide me with anything I needed. I was listening to the rain hitting the lounge windows when there was a knock at the door. Pushing my plate back from the edge of the kitchen counter, I wriggled down from one of Malcolm’s awkward swivel-stools and called into the darkened hall.

  ‘It’s me, Mrs... I don’t remember your name.’ It took me a moment to recognise Azymuth’s voice. I opened the door six inches, keeping my foot against the base, then relented when I saw the distraught look on his face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Can you let me in for a moment?’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘I don’t think I should stay out here. Just let me in, will you?’

  I opened the door a fraction wider, and he barged inside.

  ‘Listen, I think I may have done something rather impetuous. I telephoned my client. I’m not supposed to contact him directly, we usually use e-mail, or a colleague of his comes around.’

  ‘The man who came to your apartment with you?’

  ‘Oh, I forgot you heard us. I just wanted to get this business about you seeing the girl sorted out.’

  ‘Did you tell someone I was a witness?’

  Azymuth looked flummoxed and embarrassed. ‘Not in so many words. I wanted to find out what’s been going on. Mr. Rennie – my client – thought I was still away. He asked how I was sure the girl had been in my flat, and I had to explain about the mix-up with your key.’

  I shifted uncomfortably. ‘You’ve not been doing anything illegal, so why are you worried?’ Tell me you’re not involved in something bad, I thought.

  ‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ he said, confirming my fears. ‘Technically I’ve broken the law. I’m required to practice according to BMA guidelines, there are all sorts of rules. I’ll be honest with you. May I have a drink?’

  I led him to the lounge and borrowed his torch to hunt through Malcolm’s cabinet. He accepted the tumbler of warm vodka from me and downed it in one swallow.

  ‘I’m in the middle of a rather messy divorce, and it’s proving expensive. This is a good sideline, just a few minor cosmetic procedures a month and I get a healthy retainer paid up-front in cash. It’s not hurting anyone, you understand, quite the reverse. Do you have any idea how many professionals accept work on the side in this city, picking up a few tax-free dividends? Councillors, dentists, lawyers, it’s part of the invisible economy. If you’re in banking, you’re contributing to the third world debt. If you’re working in insurance, you might as well go and join the Mafia. Everyone’s hands are soiled to some extent.’

  ‘Yes, I get it,’ I said, a little dismissively. ‘I’m not criticising you.’ I began to get a very bad feeling about the doctor’s contact. ‘What’s this broker of yours like?’

  ‘We’ve only met face to face a couple of times. I was introduced to Mr. Rennie through a mutual friend at Henley Regatta. To be honest, he made me feel rather uncomfortable. I’m not being snobbish, you understand, but he’s one of those school-of-life opportunists, given to the most frightful cod-philosophising, and the other people in his office, well, they all look like taxi drivers.’

  ‘Why is Mr. Rennie helping your patients to get treatment?’

  ‘I have no idea. Obviously he’s making a profit somewhere in the transaction, but it’s none of my business. He says they’re all personal friends, which is patent nonsense, and pays me to improve their looks. Says he wants to do something to help them, to make them feel good about themselves, but he isn’t the sort to display an altruistic temperament.’

  ‘Petra wasn’t feeling very good about herself when I tried to save her life.’ Azymuth’s keenness to distance himself from anything sordid annoyed me.

  ‘I can only think that she got into some kind of trouble. Before I operate I always ask patients if they’re on medication. Just an aspirin can interfere with the healing process. Petra looked to me as if she might be on drugs, and that meant the possibility of compromised immunity. I didn’t want to carry out surgery on someone who might not heal. Luckily, I only had to perform very minor work.’

  I thought of what Elliot had told me, and things started fitting together. ‘She stayed in the flat next door to you while her surgery was healing, didn’t she?’

  ‘How did you know that?’ asked Azymuth.

  ‘That’s why she came to your apartment when she needed help. You had operated on her, and you were her neighbour, someone she trusted.’ Or she came because she saw me, and wanted my help, I realised.

  ‘Listen, I think you ought to get out of here, just in case there are any problems.’

  ‘What kind of problems?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mr. Rennie doesn’t work alone. If his partners know what happened to her, maybe they won’t want anyone else to find out. I would go home if I were you. There are some unsavoury deals going around – nothing involving me, you understand – but the less you know, the better. You shouldn’t have got involved, and you don’t have to be any more. Just forget it ever happened.’

  I wanted to explain that I had never been scared of anything until this weekend. That something had awoken inside me, and would not easily be settled again.

  ‘Someone hung around to remove her from the apartment. Someone who might still have been in your flat while I was there.’

  Azymuth glanced nervously from the window before turning back to me and clapping his hands. ‘Look, pack your bags and I’ll see you out of the front door and into a taxi. Then that’s the end of your involvement.’

  I had no option. I went to the bedroom and stuffed my toiletry bag back into my case. An overwhelming sense of failure settled on me as I lifted it from the bed and headed toward the front door. Azymuth peered nervously out into the corridor. ‘I think I’m going to head back to the country for a few days, you know? Just until things sort themselves out. I’ve got a nice little place in Norfolk. A bit on the damp side, but a change of pace from London. I just came from there.’

  ‘I thought you were in China.’

  ‘No, just outside Norwich. Who told you that – Mrs. Funes? She gets everything wrong.’

  We reached the gloom of the stairwell. In the distance an ambulance siren whooped and faded. Better to hear i
t, I remembered reading somewhere; they were turned off when the patient was dead. ‘You really don’t have to come down with me,’ I told him, ‘I’m fine.’ The doctor’s discomfort was starting to infect me. Clearly, he wasn’t telling me everything. Azymuth might not have known the girl well, but I began to suspect that he knew what she had done.

  ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ said Azymuth nervously. ‘Mr. Rennie has absolutely no idea who you are. I just explained that someone was staying with me, I didn’t tell him your name.’

  ‘Fine, but perhaps you should let me know a bit more about him. Just so I know who to avoid.’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything. You know how these people are, they’re so secretive. He’s some kind of entrepreneur. He said the girl was supposed to pay back some money he’d lent her, only she didn’t bring it.’

  ‘So he saw her?’

  ‘Sorry, didn’t I mention that? He told me they had a drink in Soho and the girl went home to get the money. She didn’t return. She must have come here.’

  ‘And that’s all? Where does this Mr. Rennie live?’

  ‘I’ve really no idea, and if I had I wouldn’t tell you, for everyone’s sake. I don’t even know if that’s his real name.’

  It was then that I recalled the little key. At the time it had looked too small to be important. I made a mental search of my clothes, trying to remember where it was. On Azymuth’s bedside table, along with some old bills I had weeded out of my shoulder-bag.

  ‘I’m sorry, I have to go back up to your apartment. I’ve forgotten something.’

  ‘I’m really not sure that’s such a good idea.’ Azymuth was sweating. We’d reached the corner of the stairwell. ‘Tell me what it is and I’ll get it for you.’

  ‘No, it’s okay.’ For some reason I found myself wanting to hide knowledge from the doctor. If he had informed this Mr. Rennie about me so easily, he couldn’t be trusted to stay silent with anyone else. I reached the seventh floor with the doctor coming up fast behind me. Azymuth darted ahead and pushed open the unlocked door.