“Do you know where the Wi-Fi adaptor is?” Henry asks.
“I think it’s over there on the other side of the sofa,” she says.
Henry looks and there is the Wi-Fi adaptor, going into the same port as the phone. Right above it at head height is a square mirror with the words “reality is overrated” in red cartoon italics at the bottom. To his left is another door, slightly open, to the small shower and toilet.
“Yeah, this is it, I’ve just got to replace the adaptor.” He bends down and keeps talking over his shoulder. “It looks like the whole building might need attention. Hopefully it’s just you and your neighbours.”
“Okay,” she says, and wanders back into the kitchen.
Henry takes the adaptor out of the wall and plugs it back in again. He flicks the switch on his signal blocker. He takes out a bug from his tool bag and undoes the adhesive from the back. He holds it in his hand as he sees she has her back to him, then straightens up and in one quick movement sticks the listening bug to the back of the mirror. He turns around.
“All done,” he says.
“Wow, that was quick.” She turns to her laptop and peers at the screen. “It seems fine now. Thanks.”
“You shouldn’t have any more problems,” Henry says as he walks to the door.
She walks him out, saying thanks again before closing the door. Henry walks a few steps before taking his earpiece from his pocket and fitting it in his right ear. He puts the receiver in his pocket and presses the call button. He can hear a tap running, someone filling something.
“Who was that?” It’s not Kayleigh’s voice. It’s the blonde. She must have been in the bedroom. Her accent is thick, Eastern European
“Just some guy to fix the Wi-Fi.”
“Oh. Have you heard from Spike?”
“No, do you want some coffee?”
“Oh yes, thanks.”
Henry starts to walk down the corridor, the two voices in his head.
“It’s an Italian roast. I’ll do some steamed milk, too. My mum got me this coffee maker and it’s been the most used thing since I moved in. It’s amazing.”
“I know, I know, good coffee is so important. Have you tried the flavoured range? The vanilla is addictive.”
“Oh, I know. I did have it, but I’m out. I went through it so quickly. I do have the hazelnut in here somewhere.” There is the sound of cupboards opening and things being moved about.
Henry wonders if last night was their first time meeting. If so, then they really have hit it off, the conversation is comfortable and familiar. He flicks the off switch and takes his ear piece out. It’s time to find Scorpion.
* * *
Maya sounds like she’s woken up from a deep sleep. Her voice is cracked and the words are coming out slow.
“She’s studying history and modern politics. But she hates him. What has she got to do with anything?”
Henry put a cigarette to his lips and lights it as he says, “Most likely nothing, I just need to know as much as I can about everyone, it makes it easier that way. Has he been home?”
“He was, but not for long.”
“Did he sleep?”
“I think so. He had been in bed.”
“Do you sleep in the same bed?”
“Yes, but I was asleep when he came in and then when I woke up he was gone, but I think I remember him being there in the middle of the night. I don’t know.”
“You’re a heavy sleeper. Do you take anything to help you sleep?”
“Mr. Bloomburg, you are in my employ to investigate my husband. I’m paying you to find out what I don’t know. I already know all about me.”
She’s talking like she’s leaning over. Her words are falling upon each other. Henry has reached his car. He stands next to it, smoking.
“Are you drunk now?”
“No, I’m not, but it’s a good idea.”
Her voice fluctuates in volume, like she’s swaying in and out of focus. Henry thinks, maybe benzodiazepine. If she’s got something like that, she would’ve had to get it on prescription at some stage. Anxiety or a panic disorder. He can imagine her spending money on seeing a counsellor, weekly outpourings of memories she’s not happy with, hoping that talking about them will change them. Picking apart memories, reliving them again and again, hoping for different outcomes, encounters and episodes that she just can’t let go of and have been forgotten by everyone else.
He reaches the end of his cigarette, the red tip burnt right down to the filter. He flicks it on to the road. Maybe Maya is paranoid and there’s no affair. Scorpion is just a dumb errand boy for some rich crime family, and Maya is a paranoid addict.
“Oh wait, no, he was in bed last night, for a while anyway I remember now. Or was that …”
“Okay, well I’ll let you know.” Henry hangs up, gets in the car, takes off his glasses, and unclips his ID card, putting it back in the glove compartment.
He turns on the tracker. Scorpion’s car is in the centre of the city. It’s stationary. By the time he gets to it, an hour later, it still hasn’t moved. It’s in a car park near the business sector, and the crowd of tall curved banking buildings looking in on each other in a conspiratorial cluster. Henry drives around and around up and down and back up the levels until a space appears on the same level as Scorpion’s car. From where he is he has a clean line of sight to the car. He leans his seat back and adjusts the rear view mirror so that he can see the pay station. He waits.
***
Chapter Twenty-Five
Since the opera, Alison was at home less and less. Her working hours stretched into the evening and she would often go for a dinner with Andre and clients.
Martin’s time at the house was more and more undisturbed. When he got up in the morning she would be gone, and he would take his time with breakfast, listening to the radio and taking the clothes from the washer and hanging them on radiators or outside, cleaning the dishes left over from the previous evening, before he would get changed and go for his run.
When Martin was running around the estate his thoughts travelled through his head with an ease he was not used to. It was as if his body was a machine, and the cogs and pistons were working together to pump out thoughts on a production line, and he didn’t have time to inspect each one, just glance at each as they just passed him on a conveyor belt, odd misshapen products of his body and mind. As he got faster and stronger and started running the circuit twice every time, he gradually stopped being surprised at the shape of his thoughts. Whatever he was thinking by the time he got to Foster Road for the second time would be cast aside as the struggle of the hill rose up in front of him.
He was writing more. The story had a momentum which he was trying to keep up with. At this rate his book would be finished in a month. He looked forward to the day when he could send it away. When he could press send and get rid of Gregor for good. No more redrafts, he’d say, either take it or not. That’s that. He could always go back to writing short stories for Noire again. Those stories felt like they were written a lifetime ago.
It was Saturday and Martin was running past the big houses on Wyatt Way. He saw a scaffold being erected on the side of one of the houses and he stopped for a moment, running on the spot, to try to see what was going on. A voice came from behind him.
“Martin? It is Martin, isn’t it?”
He turned to see a worker in a fluorescent hard hat with an open folder standing next to an overweight guy in a white shirt and braces who was squinting at him, scrunching up his face. Martin recognised him, but couldn’t place from where.
Then the man said, “It is Martin! I wasn’t sure. It’s Ted, Ted from the club.” He walked across the road, extending his hand. Martin stopped running on the spot. The first person that Martin thought of was the small fellow he met in the Sugar Club, the guy with the ski lift company, but this wasn’t him. That guy was Ashley. This Ted must be from the club he went to with Alison. He recalled the group he was talking to before he
left, remembered Alison trying to make it sound like he was a successful writer.
Ted, Ted.
He remembered the dark suits and red faces, the iridescent purple of one of the women’s dresses, ringed fingers clutching glass stems, a bulging neck and sweaty rolls of fat above the collar of one of the men as he laughed. Was that this guy? Martin scanned his face and tried to imagine him laughing.
Ted. Ted.
Then Martin saw the couple sitting on the couch in the shadows of the Sugar Club with Ashley’s wife, saw Ted’s red face over Ashley’s wife’s shoulder as he tugged at the strap of her bra through her top and pushed his thick tongue against her neck, leaving a sticky trail as Ashley handed him a business card and told him how great his friends were. For a second Martin smelled the thick sweaty air of the Sugar Club.
“You don’t remember me do you?” he said to Martin, shaking his hand.
“Yes, yes I do, it’s just I was introduced to a lot of people that night, I’m just trying to remember what it is you do.”
“Printing. At the Crown Estate. And you’re the writer.” They moved onto the pavement together as a car passed. The guy on the other side was taking a pencil from behind his ear and making notes on his folder.
“Of course! You and your wife were there, em it was …”
“Rosie.”
“Yes, Rosie, I’m sorry I’m so bad with names. Yes, Andre was trying to get you to reveal the secret of your success. I remember. What has you out this way, this isn’t your place is it?”
“No, no, I just bought this place for my daughter, but she hasn’t moved in yet, and she’s got me surveying for an extension already. She’s got me under her pretty little thumb. But how about you, where do you live?”
“Just up the road on Paxton Drive.”
“Oh, near the top. Tell me, how’s the writing going?”
“Well, you know, it keeps me out of trouble.”
“And we all need something that does that.”
“Ha, ha, indeed. How’s the printing?”
“Busier than I can handle at the moment.”
“Is it just the free papers you print?”
“Oh, no, but they are the big contracts we landed. We’ve been building lots of smaller contracts, too. There’s a lot of small publishing houses who do special interest stuff, as well as travel agents and property brokers putting together brochures.”
“Interesting stuff. I guess there’s a big market there.”
“It’s huge. I mean anyone can post on the net but that’s actually made the market for us bigger because everyone can self-publish if they want. We are the final link in the chain to make it look classy. We just keep getting bigger.”
“Wow, that’s great.”
“Well, if Andre is taking notice then we must be going the right way, and the bigger we get the more competitive we can be. The programmes for the theatres, we do them. You know all the fliers for the clubs in town? Well we’ve started on those too.”
“That’s a lot of clients to manage.”
“Tell me about it, but I knew it would be big. We can do it all, see, from the handouts for the strip clubs to the metaphysical poetry magazines. We can cover it all.”
“The final link in the chain.”
“You bet. Hey, listen, if you ever want a job, just let me know. At the moment I’m advertising, but seeing as you’re a friend of Andre’s we could skip the formal interview.”
“Well, I don’t know if we’re friends really, my wife works for him.”
“Oh, yes, you’re friends all right.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes, don’t look surprised. Look, I know what it’s like, trying to judge where you stand with someone like Andre. He’s so successful, he knows everyone worth knowing, he moves in the right circles, and he’s got this big persona, so when you first meet him it’s hard, you know … you’re thinking, well does he really like me or is he just networking, you know, working it? But the way he was talking about you and Alison I’d say you’re friends with the guy. Let me put it this way, he’d take your call.”
“Okay, well you guys seemed all pretty close.” The sweat had started to dry inside Martin’s top and on his legs and he felt a chill run through him. He started running gently on the spot again.
“It’s different when there’s money involved. It’s like someone’s always got their eye on your missus.” The worker with the fluorescent hat now had his folder tucked under his arm and was walking across the road to them.
“Something to consider though,” Ted said, “if you want to get your head out of the book? I’m at the Crown Estate.”
“That’s very good of you. I’ll keep it in mind. I’ll let you get back to it. I’m going to keep going.”
“You go right ahead. It’s good to bump into you, Martin. Say hello to Alison for me.”
“I will,” said Martin, and he started to run. Just before the road curved around he crossed over and glanced back. Ted was pointing at the house, talking to the worker, who was scratching his head again.
When he reached his door, he realised he didn’t have his key. The driveway was empty and he sat on the doorstep for a moment. The house across the street had a window open and there was the sound of a vacuum cleaner and music, some sixties pop tune which was being sung along to tunelessly by whoever was cleaning. Martin stood up and started to jog gently again.
He found himself back on Wyatt Way, approaching the house with the scaffolding again. Ted was there, in the driveway, now leaning against a car that wasn’t there before, talking to someone on the phone. He saw Martin and saluted as he got closer. Martin slowed down and walked to the house. Ted finished on the phone, putting it back in his pocket, and resting his back against the car.
“Around again?” he said.
“Not on purpose. I forgot my keys.”
“Ha, ha! Well my daughter has turned up,” he slapped the roof of the car, “and is inside now measuring up the rooms. When she comes out she’ll have a list of furniture for Daddy that’ll be as long as my arm.”
“Oh, the joys.”
“Yup, she’s got me, all right.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said and I think I’ll pop into the Crown Estate to see you soon, you know, about a job.”
“Great! That didn’t take long! Well, I’m going to be going there in a minute myself if you want to come take a look.”
“I’m not exactly dressed for—”
“Don’t worry, hey it’s fine, like I said we can skip the formal interview. Just come down and take a look at the place, yeah?”
Ted’s daughter emerged from the front door. She slid big sunglasses down from perched high on her head to over her eyes and put her hand on her hip. She had keys in the other hand and her bulging handbag hung down from her elbow. “That’s it, Daddy,” she said, “I’m going to have to stay at Stacey’s until the walls are done anyway. I’m going to get some hangings for the landing and some lamps. I’ve got a lunch at one, so I’ll go now and I’ll call you later, and you can sort the painter out.” She walked over and Ted opened the car door for her. She climbed in and the engine started. Ted and Martin stepped back and the car reversed out of the drive and took off up Paxton Drive.
“Come on,” said Ted, “let’s go,” and they walked to Ted’s big black car.
Martin sat in and closed the door. His bare thighs stuck to the leather seat. He felt small in this car. Instinctively he felt his pockets for his phone to send a message to Alison, but his phone was in the house. The central locking clicked into place as the engine started and they were on their way.
They went south of the city, around the ring road, and on to a huge straight road with rows and rows of industrial complexes on either side. This area was totally flat as if it had been levelled by a giant roller, all of its bumps and textures flattened and pushed to the edges.
Ted explained how long he had been in business and what the growth predictions were for ne
xt year.
Martin gazed at the size of the complexes as they passed. At the entrance of each estate there was a massive billboard with a long list of the companies within it. They were lettered and numbered, so each estate had a different letter. Martin caught some as they passed. C32 Brunsteen Electrical Wholesale. E09 Arches Holdings. E61 Cooltech Ltd. J12 Albatross Fabrics.
The long straight road seemed endless. It went on for as far as Martin could see. Right off in the distance, somewhere at the end of the road, the silhouettes of high rise buildings rose into the sky. Big trucks and thick vans moved quickly along the flat straight road, and underneath them Martin could see the shadows of the fast moving clouds on the ground, rushing toward the car like the ghosts of huge mythic creatures fleeing the city. Then they turned left and they were onto Avenue M.
Martin said, “Ted, I have to admit that I’ve never worked anywhere like this before, and before you mentioned it, I had never thought of working somewhere like this.”
“No-one does. It’s actually a good place to be. There’s not much beauty around here, but there is an awful lot of money. We only moved into these premises a year and a half ago, and our agreement was based upon the assumption that we’d grow. And we have. By the end of the next half-year term we expect to be filling half of this building. I’m putting different teams together for the various types of contracts we want to get. Let me show you around, tell you what I’m looking for. If it’s not for you then we’ll leave it there, no harm done. But I think I could use someone like you around.”
“Someone like me?”
“Someone, you know, creative. Someone who can deal with the special interest side of things. Someone with experience in publishing fiction and poetry and the like. You know, arty stuff.”
The Fly Guy Page 18