Shut Eye

by Adam Baron

  ‘But then I realized that it couldn’t go on.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t fair on her as much as anything. She was beginning to need me, I was a crutch to her. I knew I couldn’t keep it up for ever so I broke it sooner rather than later. Before she couldn’t do without it. I don’t blame Charlotte if she’s feeling bad. She really is having a very awful time.’

  Without asking me if I wanted one, Lloyd poured me out a good measure of Scotch, and pushed the glass along the table towards me. He then filled the other glass but didn’t pick it up. He sat back in his chair, still holding the bottle, stroking the body of it as though it were a big, fluffy cat, and he was Donald Pleasance. His hands looked like two, independent creatures, and for a second I was almost mesmerized by them. Reluctantly, I took my eyes from his hands, and the bottle they were lovingly caressing, and rested them on the MP’s face.

  Lloyd was trying the reasonable approach. His bullying sarcasm hadn’t worked on me before so he thought he’d try to get me on-side with a bit of discreet male ‘you know how it is’ bandinage. I picked up the tumbler and took a sip.

  ‘Scotch OK for you?’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, looking up, ‘I’d prefer wine. If you have any.’

  Lloyd looked mildly irritated but went to stand up. ‘Of course. Red or white?’

  ‘Either,’ I replied. ‘As long as it’s English.’

  Lloyd stopped, and sat back down. He bit into the side of his cheek and looked at me. He nodded to himself, as though he’d just worked something out.

  ‘You don’t care about infidelity, do you?’ he stated.

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think so. When you first approached Charlotte I thought you worked for a newspaper. I thought I’d have to write you a little cheque in the end. But then you told me you didn’t have any evidence.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘No. And now you do, but you don’t care about our affair. It’s not a cheque you want, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even if it were a rather large cheque?’

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference. It isn’t me who has the evidence, it’s Mrs Morgan.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s not going to expose herself, is she?’

  ‘Maybe not. I don’t care either way. As you say, I’m not really interested in infidelity. I just want to know who killed an MP’s brother. Oh, that and who left a boy prostitute on my bed, with his cock cut off, gutted like a trout at Billingsgate Market. And made it look like it was me who did it. I really am interested in finding out who did that.’

  Lloyd put the bottle down on the table and picked up his glass without drinking from it. He certainly was a man who liked to build up to things.

  ‘In that case, why are you here?’

  I laughed.

  ‘You want me to explain? You were having an affair with a rich woman whose husband was murdered. The company you own is up shit creek and as soon as the woman decides not to give you any money you dump her. Tell me, where the hell else should I be?’

  ‘Looking for a killer. Do I look like one?’

  I thought about what a worried gay guy had told me, sitting in a Soho coffee house.

  ‘As much as any killer I’ve ever met,’ I told him.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I dispute the facts you have given me. My company is not up shit creek, and neither did I either begin or end my relationship with Charlotte Morgan because of money. But if that is what you think I can understand your interest in me. Tell me what I can do to assure you of my innocence.’

  ‘Show me your diary,’ I said.

  Lloyd reached into his pocket for his electronic organizer.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘the one on the desk.’

  Lloyd stood up and walked over to the heavy oak desk where the fax machine sat next to some loose papers and a large black book with 1998 written on it in gold letters. I stood up too and took the book off him when he turned round. I walked over to the photocopier.

  ‘Now wait a minute.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, dropping the lid of the machine back down. ‘Then I’ll take it with me.’

  ‘You have no right…’

  ‘None at all,’ I agreed. ‘All I’ve got is pictures.’

  Lloyd let me take copies of his diary. I thought about asking him for his company records but I was pretty sure that Charlotte Morgan’s accountant would be able to tell me everything I wanted to know about them. As I used the machine I could feel Lloyd bridling next to me. He was finding it hard to stick to the tack he had chosen. He wanted to get rid of me, to stamp on me like a cockroach on the floor of a Cibar kitchen.

  ‘Is that all?’ Lloyd said, when I had finished collating the pages and handed him back his diary.

  ‘For now. Unless you can think of anything else you can do to show me how innocent you are.’

  ‘Shouldn’t it be the other way round?’

  ‘Usually,’ I replied, ‘but not in this case. The more you can tell me, the less you’ll have to tell the police.’

  ‘There’s nothing more,’ he said. ‘Really.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I told him. ‘Because if I don’t find anything else to either put you away or keep your nose out of it, then not even Mother Teresa will be able to keep your name out of the papers.’

  ‘Mother Teresa?’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said.

  There wasn’t any more I could ask him. I walked over to the door and opened it. Lloyd followed me to the front door and got to the handle before me.

  ‘Don’t you want these?’ he asked, handing me the photographs. The sarcasm had crept back into his voice, making him sound no older than his son.

  ‘They’re only copies,’ I said.

  ‘Nevertheless.’ He handed them to me like they were hard-core porn snaps and I was trying to sell them to him. ‘I don’t want them lying around.’

  ‘No. I don’t imagine that you do.’

  He held the door open and at that moment his son flew down the stairs, crying ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ and holding his arms out to Lloyd. The child grabbed hold of Lloyd’s trouser leg but the MP ignored him.

  ‘For God’s sake, Kristen! How many times must I tell you? Keep Thomas upstairs during the day! How many times?’

  I walked through the door and down the steps. I didn’t wait for Lloyd to finish reprimanding his domestic staff to say goodbye to him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The taxi was already on the Clerkenwell Road before I realized where it was that I was going. Back to my flat. I hadn’t been there for three days and I didn’t know what I would find there. The cab got snarled up in traffic on the Farringdon Road so I got out and walked up past Carl’s Repro shop, with a feeling of trepidation which I couldn’t explain. It wasn’t as if I was likely to find any more mutilated bodies lying on my bed. I could not, however, dispel a certain edginess as I walked into the small road and fished my spare keys out of my pocket.

  The outside door had been mended, but this didn’t surprise me because I shared it with another flat. There were only small signs that it had recently been broken into. The key turned in the lock quite normally and the door opened.

  I stepped into the hallway and turned on the light even though I could see well enough. I walked up the stairs. When I got to the top of the first flight I could see that my door had not been mended. Nor was there any no-entry tape or police-aware stickers to indicate a police presence. The door was slightly ajar and I thought great, why don’t you let the whole fucking world into my flat. I not only wondered if I’d still have the cash I had, I wondered if I’d still possess a stereo and a TV. I walked up the stairs into my living room.

  Only the futon was gone. The space where it would have been yawned with its absence. The wine stain on the rug next to the space was larger than I remembered it, and more distinct now that it was in the daylight. Why the hell had he chosen my Grange, the finest wine ever made in Oz, one of the top ten ma
de anywhere? What was wrong with the Sainsbury’s Côtes-Du-Rhône? I wondered why the police hadn’t taken the rug. They should have, they might have found something in it, a fingernail or a small piece of dirt from a shoe. I knew then that Ken Clay hadn’t visited the scene; he would not have overlooked it. I folded the rug carefully and found a bag from the deli to put it in. I’d call Clay and tell him, and then enjoy the thought of what he would then say to the two alleged detectives who had been in charge of searching the place.

  I spent about an hour in the bath, refilling with hot when the water started to go cold. I let stress and pain seep out of my body, and I let thoughts and questions seep into my mind. I tried to let them in slowly, one at a time, so that they wouldn’t merge into one another.

  There wasn’t anything else Lloyd could have told me, except that he was the perp and he was hardly likely to do that. Was he desperate enough to be involved in this? It seemed, from what Charlotte Morgan had told me, that he was very good at hiding his real reasons, painting a coat of veneer over what he really wanted. If I was the police what could I do which would help me get to him? I could talk to his colleagues in the Commons, see if they remembered any changes of mood in him, if he had ever mentioned his financial troubles. I could talk to his partner in the Buckner Group. Both those things would probably only reveal motive, which I already had. Money. Someone might however have seen Lloyd with an unusual person, someone not dressed in a suit. Wearing a baseball hat maybe. It wasn’t likely, I didn’t peg Lloyd for being that stupid, but if he was a first-time employer of contract muscle then he just might have been careless.

  Other thoughts came to me, which I processed and mainly discarded. Then some other thoughts came which could not be separated, but whirled around in no sort of order. They concerned Sharon, and what we had done in her flat, the significance of it and what markers and signs we had set for the future. What, if anything, it had determined. I wondered if what we had done meant what I had not even dared think it would mean, when I was so caught up in the painfully brilliant moment of her that there was no way I could think. Simply, I wondered if what we had done was right or wrong, if it was the future or something to be shocked at, appalled, something to be buried in the dark bog that we call experience. A scary place, full of sprites and foul gases, never to be returned to. I lay in the bath, staring at the ceiling, lying still, not even moving my eyelids.

  I got out of the bath and dried myself gingerly. I pulled on some jeans, a T-shirt and sweatshirt. I sat at the table and made a few calls. The first was to Ken Clay and I got his machine. I told him that it might be worth sending some men round to the Commons with the picture, to do a discreet bit of canvassing. I said that it was unlikely but that someone there may have seen the man. I called a futon shop that I’d seen on Calthorpe Street and asked them for some prices and whether they delivered. I couldn’t be bothered hunting around for anywhere cheaper so I asked them to send me one in the middle of their range. To my surprise they said they could do it before six, if I was at home. I told them to go ahead. I gave them my credit card number and wondered if I could charge the whole thing to Sir Peter Morgan, claiming it on expenses.

  I put the phone down and took another look at my flat. Apart from the futon there was something else wrong with it, something else changed or missing. I looked around but all the major things were still there: my TV, my stereo, the four bottles of wine in my rack. My Salgado print. I even checked my loose cash and bank cards and was surprised to find that they were all where and as I had left them. I sat back down at the table. Maybe I was imagining it. I brushed my doubt aside and went to put the kettle on. Then I realized. I went back to the table again but the blue folder containing my brother’s poems was not there.

  I’d gone to open it when I was waiting for the cavalry, and the WPC had told me to leave it. They must have thought it was important and taken it in. That would have been on her suggestion; if the two idiots who’d been round earlier hadn’t thought fit to remove a rug stained in the course of the crime they were hardly likely to seize on a collection of verse the suspect had casually turned to. I wanted the folder back, and was suddenly panicked. Was it the only copy or did Sharon have another? I hadn’t even looked inside it. What if they’d lost it, or thrown it out? I dialled Clay’s number again. I expected his machine but this time I got the man himself.

  ‘Only if you give me what you have,’ he said, after I’d told him what I wanted. ‘Otherwise I’ll keep them here and use them to bring a little culture to the place.’

  I hesitated a second. A little bit couldn’t hurt.

  ‘Graham Lloyd,’ I said. ‘I sort of like him for it. Or, rather, I like him more than anyone else.’

  ‘The one Mother Teresa …’

  ‘A maybe maybe,’ I said. ‘But only for Edward Morgan. Maybe Dominic Lewes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And that’s it. That’s all I have. Really. That’s why I suggested you take that picture to the Commons.’

  ‘On what grounds do you suggest? Your say-so?’

  ‘Make some up,’ I said. ‘Tell them he’s been mugging MPs on their way home. That’ll make them remember if they’ve seen him or not.’

  Clay paused. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Right. What about the folder?’

  ‘Oh, that. I had DC Milson go through that with as fine a toothed comb as his mind can supply. I don’t think he got much out of the experience. I didn’t know you were so creative, Rucker.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘Are you going to let me have them? They’re not important, I promise you. You can take copies if you’re not sure and give me those.’

  Clay thought for a second.

  ‘OK, Rucker, they’ll be on the front desk.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Oh, and Ken, don’t be too hard on Milson and the other chap.’

  ‘Clarke.’

  ‘Yeah, Clarke, that’s it.’

  ‘Not hard on them for what?’ Clay asked.

  ‘You’ll see.’ I put the phone down.

  I was relieved. I thought about the folder and wondered how come I had never got round to looking in it. Didn’t I want to read Luke’s poems? Of course I did. Didn’t I? I’d have got round to them sooner or later if events hadn’t got in the way first.

  I spent the next hour going through Lloyd’s diary. I looked at the dates on and around the day Teddy Morgan had been murdered. They didn’t tell me much. There was an appointment with a man called Harvey, although whether that was a Christian or surname it didn’t say. I wrote the name down and made a note to check it. I wrote down a few more names as well, knowing that Lloyd wasn’t the type to write ‘Contract killer, 11 a.m.’ in his desk diary. I’d get him to tell me who the names referred to, check up on them, and then if there was a name that didn’t match – who knows.

  The futon came. Two guys carried it up the stairs and to my surprise it was fully constructed. When I remarked on this I was told that it was a showroom model, the only one they had in stock. I was glad. The two men wanted to know where they should put it and I told them to set it down where the other one had been. They did so and I thanked them and they left.

  The futon was pretty much the same as the old one, with a black cover and an easy-fold mechanism. The actual mattress seemed to be thicker but I put this down to lack of use. I stared at it for a second and then tried out the mechanism to see how smooth it was. It was fine, and the sofa-shaped object changed easily into a bed. I stared down at it. Dominic Lewes stared back at me. I changed it into a sofa again.

  I looked round my flat. The futon had always been where the futon was and the table had always been where the table was and the wardrobe where I keep most of my clothes had always been where that was. Was there any reason for it? Maybe if I moved the table to where the cupboard was, and I moved the cupboard to where my old futon had been, I could put the new futon where the table was now. There was a small enclave that fitted the table quite well but it would f
it the futon even better. And having the wardrobe over there made sense because where it was now seemed to dominate the room and who wants to look at a wardrobe? If I moved the table there it would get more light and that way I could use the plug socket to the left of the wardrobe and it would also mean I wouldn’t need the extension lead to the phone which stretched right across the middle of the floor.

  And I wouldn’t have to share my bed with the ghost of Dominic Lewes. His blood soaking down into me, his face saying that he wasn’t at all surprised that he had been strangled and torn open, not after the life he had had, not after some of the other things which various people had done to him.

  I changed the flat round. By the time I had finished it was dark. I kicked myself for forgetting to phone a locksmith. I turned the stereo on, quite loud, and turned most of the lights in my flat on too. I left and walked down to my car and was amazed to find it without a clamp even though it was still in the delivery bay where I had left it three nights ago. I’d have to remember that. It started nonchalantly, as though I’d only been out of it five minutes to buy a newspaper, and it took me to the station where I had recently been incarcerated. I picked up the folder, left Clay the rug with a note, and got back in. I pulled off and swung the car round the one-way system, intending to go back to my round of the pubs. Old Compton Street, where the man had recognized the picture.

  Instead I thought of something else. The one-way system took me closer to King’s Cross. I parked on one of the streets behind it. Elm Drive. I parked outside number 23. There were no lights on. I got out of the car and locked it. I walked up to the door and knocked. There was no answer. I pushed open the letter box and looked through it but I couldn’t see anything.

  I walked up to the top of the street and then back down a small alley, counting off the houses. When I got to number 23 I had a quick look round and then hopped over the fence and into the back garden. The garden was a small yard, with an overflowing dustbin which, by the smell of it, had been there some time. I walked up to the back door.

  The door pushed open beneath my hand. I found a switch and was surprised when light came out of a single bulb dangling from the ceiling. I listened, but couldn’t hear anything other than a leaking tap. I walked around the house. It was obvious that no one was living there. The whole house was miserable and cold with huge blotches of damp in the corners of the bedroom walls like sweat-stained nylon. Strange smells brushed past me like malignant ghosts. In one bedroom I found, lying on the floor next to an old mattress, a train timetable. Apart from the mattress it was all that was left in the room. His clothes and his other effects must already have been bagged and sent to his parents. They wouldn’t have wanted a train timetable. I picked it up and saw that it showed times from London King’s Cross to Newark North Gate and then connections from there to, among other places, Grimsby Town. A young man thinking about going home. He hadn’t been thinking it for some time though; the timetable was out of date.