Shut Eye

by Adam Baron

  ‘Yes. I think. Isn’t that what you think?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it isn’t. Like you said, the police are sure that your brother’s murder was part of a series of gay killings. For them, this will just confirm the pattern. Of course she was getting it somewhere else, she wasn’t getting it at home, was she? But they will make trouble – just to do it – and somebody will almost certainly use his desk phone to call one of the tabloids and make himself a few quid. Nothing would be gained by that.’

  ‘It disgusts me, you know, that police officers do that kind of thing.’

  ‘You should have got Mr Howard to pay them more then.’

  ‘It would happen anyway.’

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘it probably would. I don’t think telling the police would do much good in terms of finding out who killed your brother. Even if it was his wife and her lover.’

  ‘So, what, we just leave it?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can come up with,’ I said. ‘If I do find anything more concrete, then we’ll give it to the police. In the meantime, we can spare a few blushes.’

  Sir Peter seemed relieved, either at retaining the services of yours truly or avoiding further conversations with the police. I asked him if he liked his sister-in-law and he said that yes, actually, he did. He said he would find it very difficult to believe that Charlotte had anything to do with Edward’s death.

  I handed Sir Peter a copy of the picture, knowing that Andy Gold had already shown it to him, and that he hadn’t been able to tell him anything. Sir Peter gazed at the picture ruefully and then put it down on his desk, with a look which said that finding the man in it wouldn’t actually do much for him. He wanted the man caught but it wouldn’t make him happier. He sucked on his teeth, picked the photograph up again, and slid it into a drawer.

  I stood up and shook Sir Peter’s hand. As he walked me across his office I had a thought and I stopped at the door.

  ’What’s Graham Lloyd like, by the way?’ I asked.

  Sir Peter stood holding the door handle and he looked me straight in the eye. His expression was measured and still, that very strange mixture of the deadly serious, and a wry smile, which I have only ever seen on upper-class Englishmen.

  ’Oh, Graham’s a bastard,’ Sir Peter said.

  * * *

  On the way back to my car I remembered that I wanted to speak to the barman at the airport so I stopped at a phone box. I called the number and a harassed woman told me that Alex hadn’t come in today and no she didn’t know when he would be there because he hadn’t phoned her to tell her he wasn’t coming, which was most unlike him and was that all because she had a bar full of customers? I smiled at the thought of the assistant manager with her polished nails cranking out cappuccinos and swearing under her breath at her errant subordinate. Thank you, I told her, that’s all. It wasn’t really that important. I hung up and walked around the corner to my car, beating a traffic warden to it by seconds.

  Charlotte Morgan hadn’t gone back to work that day. She might have nipped out after I’d seen her because she was no longer in her dressing gown when I got to the flat on Leinster Mews that she had either rented or was borrowing and she opened the door to me. As well as the clothes I had seen her in earlier she wore a look of not very pleasant surprise.

  ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

  “To talk a little more,’ I replied quietly.

  ‘How did you get my address?’ she demanded, one hand going to her hip.

  ‘I followed you here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Earlier. I followed you here.’

  I let Charlotte Morgan think about that for a second. Then I held up a roll of film. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘are you going to let me in or should I just take this straight round to my friend Giles at the News of the World?’

  She looked at me with horror, and at the small plastic case in my hand. I could almost see the pieces falling together in her mind and I tapped my feet until they were all in place. After a second or two Charlotte Morgan bit her bottom lip, took a step backward and opened the door.

  It was a very nice place. Far too polished and expensively cluttered for my taste but then I’m the sort of person who never could see the point of buying over-priced generic articles from the Conran Shop that you don’t exactly need. Charlotte Morgan, quite obviously, could see the point of that.

  She was sat stiffly on the edge of a small Chesterfield while I had turned a high-backed French dining chair around and was straddling that facing her. She looked defensive, tense like a cornered cat. I looked at her and a rush of contempt filled me as I saw Lloyd again, kissing her the way he had. I calmed it down with the knowledge that I didn’t have all the facts yet. I handed her the role of film which she took hesitantly, surprised to be given it.

  ‘I’m not a sleaze hunter,’ I told her. ‘I want to find out who killed your husband. I’m not going to tell anyone about the affair that you’re having unless I think that it reflects upon that. The only way I can assess that is if you tell me about it. All about it. If you refuse then I’ll assume you’re hiding something and I’ll go to the police. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said eventually.

  ‘And if I go to the police, which believe me I should, then the newspapers are sure to get on to it. So. Once again, did you enjoy a happy sex life with your husband?’

  She paused for a second until I let out a sigh of irritation.

  ‘No,’ she said, looking down at her lap.

  ‘And you didn’t tell anyone this because you didn’t want people looking into your private life?’

  ‘I suppose. We hadn’t made love for some time but I couldn’t see how that fact was in any way relevant to my husband’s murder.’

  ‘All right. Why weren’t you and your husband making love?’

  She looked up again. ‘Because I didn’t want to. It wasn’t really a big thing for me. I still loved Edward. I think that I realized that it had never really been a sex thing for me. Edward was just such a lovely person so I said yes when he asked me to marry him.’

  ‘When did you realize this?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and hesitated. ‘When… when I met…’

  ‘When you met Graham Lloyd.’

  Mrs Morgan’s mouth opened in surprise.

  ‘Did you tell Edward about him?’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean, I was going to. Graham and I were both going to. He was going to tell his wife and we were going to divorce and get married. If you know what I mean. We still are.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s difficult now. Graham, he doesn’t need this kind of publicity, Christ knows what people might think. And Edward, he hasn’t been dead long, I mean, it wouldn’t be right, I…’

  Mrs Morgan stopped speaking and began to cry. She put her head in her hands very neatly and cried quietly for a long time. She cried like she was doing something, a chore perhaps, which she had to get over before she could talk to me again. I watched her crying, the top of her head moving ever so slightly, and the animosity between us seemed to dissolve into the air. I felt sorry for her. When she stopped it was very suddenly and she sat up straight like she had before, and smiled a smile which said I’m drowning but I don’t much care, and I’ll do what I can before I disappear. I returned her smile and looked her in the eye.

  ’How did he take it? Edward? This lack of desire for him?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she replied, thinking about it and pushing aside the remnants of a tear. ‘He never said anything. Everything else between us seemed so normal. It seemed normal for me to be with Edward and living and sleeping next to him, but making love to another man. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to be with him, but my sex was somewhere else. This didn’t seem too strange because it had never really been there with him.’

  I nodded.

  ‘But did he try to have sex with you?’

  ’A few times. He held me in that way, you know
? In bed? But I didn’t respond and he never pressed me.’

  ‘Did he have a strong sex drive? For you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I kept thinking about that when everyone asked me if I thought he was gay. He certainly wanted to make love to me often enough but it was never like…’ Charlotte took a breath. ‘It was never like fucking. Not just that. It was more of a way to be together and communicate our affection.’ She turned to the side, thinking of something, and I thought she was going to cry again.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I still loved him. All that I ever had. But I didn’t tell him, and I didn’t show him, because the way that I had shown him before suddenly meant something different to me. I didn’t want to fuck him. I never had and I couldn’t. I wanted to find some other way to show him but it was too late then, it was too late because he was… He probably died thinking I didn’t love him.’

  Mrs Morgan looked down at her lap, where her rust-coloured fingernails were picking at the gold ring on her left hand. Her voice became small and hopeless.

  ‘That’s all I can think about,’ she said. ‘That’s the only thing I can think about, that and what it must have been like for Teddy. When…’

  Mrs Morgan tried very hard to stop them but her words broke up into sobs again. She pressed her fists into her face and her elbows into her sides to stop her grief shaking its way out of her. The sound she made wasn’t loud, but the pain coming out of her seared the air like something tearing apart along a seam which didn’t exist. I had never seen anyone cry from such a central place as Charlotte Morgan was crying. I saw my hand move up from my knee towards her, and I watched it hover for a second above the Alice band which held her hair in place.

  I drew it back towards me and let it rest on the top of the chair.

  I watched Charlotte Morgan crying for a long time, and I knew that I had a lot of questions that I should ask her. About Graham Lloyd. And jealousy. And her finances. And about what Edward would have done had she told him. And had she actually told him already. I knew that I should wait until she had finished her crying and ask her these things. That is what Andy Gold would have done and he would have been right to. This woman had lied to the police, she was a recently bereaved widow who, it transpired, had a secret lover. Andy would have waited and that is what I would have done too, if I was still bound by an oath which said I had to be dispassionate and clinical while exercising my duties in the pay of the public and in the public’s interest.

  Instead I stood up, set the chair gently aside and walked through the kitchen, and then out on to the street, with the sound of Charlotte Morgan’s bewildered grief following me like a lost bird. I turned and closed the door quietly.

  Chapter Nine

  I drove home and changed into jeans and a work jacket which I bought years ago but which now makes me look fashionable, especially since it’s faded to cream from a dark brown. As I dressed I thought about Charlotte and her lover as possibles for Edward Morgan’s murder. I saw the way Charlotte had held on to Lloyd outside her cottage. I didn’t let Charlotte’s tears put me off; they were genuine but that didn’t mean anything. Grief can be huge, but when it’s joined by remorse it gets even bigger.

  I pulled my boots on and checked the medicine cabinet for Advil. None. I put my camera into a bag and went downstairs to the chemist to get some.

  The chemist was actually a pharmacy and one day someone will tell me what the difference is. Like optician and optometrist. Alberto saw me coming out of the pharmacy and walked out of Fred’s towards me. We said hello and then he told me that someone had been asking after me.

  ‘A young kid,’ Alberto said. ’He asked if Billy Rucker ever came in here.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ I asked, thinking it might have been Dominic Lewes come to tell me to leave him alone.

  ‘Oh,’ Alberto said, ‘he was black, only about fourteen. All nerves and attitude. Said he needed to see you. I told him to call you but he said he had.’

  ‘Well, I dare say he’ll catch up with me. Thanks though, Alberto.’

  ‘Hey,’ he shrugged, ‘it’s nothing.’

  He lit up a cigarette and I left him and walked to the car.

  * * *

  Another dirty table and another coffee that was surprisingly good in the cafe at the bottom of Calshot Street. This time it was daytime though and I was determined not to miss Dominic Lewes again. I wanted to get him out of the way so I could concentrate on Edward Morgan. I bought a copy of the Standard and read the back pages, my mind drifting away to gay MPs and their murdered brothers, young boys lying dead in damp basements and a woman who was tied up in intricate knots of pure misery, knots she may have tied for herself. And how unlikely it was that I’d be able to do anything about any of it. I was glad I had Dominic; something simple and easy to occupy me, nothing to do but wait and watch, and press a button.

  Dominic walked up after forty minutes and stood on the other side of the street joining another lad of about the same age. I framed him and got full body shots and then close-ups of his face. He was wearing his MA1 and he looked cold, the zip right up to his chin. He leant against the window of a derelict kebab shop and then sat down on the window ledge and rubbed his hands together, before taking out a pack of cigarettes and lighting one. It seemed ironic that he was still too young to smoke. What would his mother say? I left one pound fifty on the table for the waitress who was looking my way but not indicating that she had any plans to come to the table.

  Dominic didn’t see me as I walked past King’s Cross station and crossed the road up by St Pancras. I cut back down towards him and turned right into his road where my car was parked again. I put the bag in the boot, hoping that my camera would be safe in there for a few minutes. For some reason though, I had the feeling, which I get once in a while, that someone was watching me. I’d go back in half an hour and find either no Mazda, or a Mazda with no contents of any value inside and a broken quarter-light. I looked around, up and down the street. I didn’t see anyone but the feeling wouldn’t go away. I knew I was being irrational, that boots seldom got broken into in broad daylight, but I couldn’t help it. I turned the key in the lock again, took out my bag and slung it back over my shoulder. I walked down the street towards the Cross, glancing over my shoulder once or twice, feeling like an idiot.

  * * *

  ‘Have you got the time, mate?’

  I’d stopped in front of Dominic Lewes and the other lad. I was speaking to Dominic.

  ‘Yeah,’ Dominic replied, pushing up the sleeve of his jacket. ‘It’s ten to six.’ He showed me his watch at the same time as telling me what the time was and I wondered why people did that. Did he think I wouldn’t believe him?

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, turning to go. But then I stopped. ‘Hey. Haven’t I met you before?’

  Dominic put both hands on the windowsill beneath him and looked at me, squinting for a second. I could tell he thought he recognized me. He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so, mate.’

  ‘Yes, we have.’ I put my bag down on the pavement. ‘It was right here!’ I sounded pleased with myself for remembering. ‘I bought you a sandwich, you didn’t have any money, remember?’

  ‘I’m not sure, mate, maybe.’ Dominic laughed.

  ‘It was a while ago. I’m really good with faces, though I can’t even remember names the next day.’ I smiled.

  ‘It’s Mikey.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ I pointed at him and shook my head. ‘You look different but I don’t know why.’

  At this point a car drew up and the other boy walked over to it and got in without saying anything to the driver. The driver was looking the other way as if nothing was happening. A regular. The car – a big, shapeless Ford saloon – drew off and headed up the Pentonville Road towards the Angel.

  Dominic looked me in the eyes and stood up from the ledge. His lips pursed very slightly. He opened his mouth and his tongue ran over his teeth, as he to
ok a small step towards me.

  ‘I’ll suck you for twenty,’ he told me.

  ‘God,’ I said laughing, ‘no. Thanks. No. But I’ll buy you a sandwich and a cup of tea if you like, if you’re hungry?’

  ‘That’s all right, mate.’ Dominic paused. ‘No johnny. Just my mouth and your cock.’

  Dominic’s eyes ran over my body and he stood even closer to me.

  ‘No, no. Really.’ I took a step back. ‘Thanks all the same. But what about that tea, hey? You look freezing.’

  I rubbed my hands together briskly. I wanted Dominic to come with me because I wanted to persuade him to call his mother. I had last time and he’d done it, and she’d told me what it meant to her. He didn’t bother answering me this time though, he just turned his head to the side and sucked his cheeks in, letting out a mocking hmm as he did so. The conversation was over. He obviously didn’t need cups of tea any more, he was in control of his life now. He kept staring towards King’s Cross as though something incredible had just captured his attention, thereby telling me to get lost. Oh well, I thought, I’ve got the pictures. I looked at the side of Dominic’s face and neck and at his cropped hair, the colour of vanilla ice cream on a summer holiday.

  ‘Your roots need doing,’ I told him, picking up my bag. Then, ‘Call your mother.’

  Dominic’s face changed for a second but he still didn’t look at me. I moved off.

  I had been walking away from my car when I stopped to talk to Dominic, and I kept on going that way so as not to make him think I was looking for him. I was a little pissed off. I’d done my job and would get my money, but I hadn’t done everything I could have. I knew what a phone call would mean to Mrs Lewes. Maybe Bob Hoskins wasn’t such a prick after all.

  There was an alley on the right which I could duck down, saving me from walking all the way round the block to my car. I turned into it, stepping over a comatose drunk with an empty bottle of Imperial sherry clasped to his chest like a baby. It was beginning to get dark now and the high walls either side of me intensified the gloom, as though a dimmer switch had been turned down a notch. I walked up the alley, inhaling a wave of stale piss, kicking aside a couple of old needles and an uneaten chocolate bar. In huge red letters on the wall somebody had spray painted the words ‘FUCK PIGS’. I had a sudden image of a disaffected youth committing bestiality with a Gloucester Old Spot. I smiled to myself and stuck my hands into my coat pockets.