That’s what I’d like to know. I need to be one hundred per cent sure I’m talking to the man.’
Joe wasn’t sure what went through his head just then, whether the tangle of anxiety that always attached itself to thoughts ofjenna tipped his judgement, whether he had simply reached his limits at the end of a long week, but he felt a sudden heat, a leap of impatience.
‘I assure you that this man here has been doing his best for you, Mr Ritch, but since you’re obviously having a problem about that I suggest we call it a day.’
Ritch cocked an ear. ‘How’s that?’
‘You will not be charged for this meeting, Mr Ritch.’
‘Now, hang on there—’
‘We will contact you on Monday morning with four entire people in place. In the meantime—’
‘You end this meetin’, Mr McGrath, and that’s the end—’
‘I wish you a good evening, Mr Ritch. And a fine weekend.’
Moving rapidly, Joe went to the monitor and threw the switch.
The relief was transitory, the nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach longer lasting. He needed no reminding that, only a couple of months before, a colleague in Litigation had been fired for losing an important client, nor that the guy had been senior to Joe by three years, with the dubious protection of a partnership. Someone with a stronger sense of self-preservation might have called Ritch back right away, but, in the absence of a gun to his head, Joe was damned if he was going to grovel.
This didn’t ‘stop the cold jittery feeling from flitting around his stomach as he set off in the pouring rain for the restaurant.
It wasn’t until he came out of the Underground that he remembered he’d forgotten to tell Sarah he was on his way.
She would still be at her flat, waiting for his call. He would have phoned there and then from the shelter of a doorway, but the restaurant was less than fifty yards away. It was one of those places with floor-length windows along the whole of one side which provides an unrestricted view of the diners, like something on reality TV. Crossing the road towards it, Joe almost bumped into the traffic island as he spotted a familiar head of ash-blonde hair, a half profile, a pair of long slim legs, and realised Sarah was already there, sitting at the bar. He felt confused again, pleasantly this time. Perhaps he’d got the arrangements wrong, perhaps they’d fixed a time after all; perhaps - and remembering her scrupulous practicality it seemed likely - she’d decided to come on ahead to be sure of arriving in good time. If so, he was touched and a little flattered, and a flattery never did anyone any harm at the end of a long week.
By some sixth sense - or a mirror he couldn’t see - she lifted her head from her newspaper and looked round as he came up behind her.
‘I forgot to phone,’ he confessed as he kissed her. ‘But you’re here anyway.’
‘You got away all right then?’
‘I got away. Though I could be minus a job.’
She examined his face. ‘What happened?’
‘I think I told the client where to get off.’
‘But not in so many words.’
‘Oh, I suspect it was plain enough.’
She regarded him solemnly. ‘He must have given you good reason then. Have a drink. You must need one.’
Despite everything, he began to feel calmer. Sarah had that effect on him. When his drink arrived she passed it over to him and closed his hand around the glass as if to imbue it with special restorative powers.
‘So,’ she said, ‘tell me what happened.’
While he described the meeting, she listened closely, her grey-green eyes fixed on him with grave attention, and he had 11
the sense that she was weighing the evidence, missing nothing, but fully intending to find for his side.
‘Don’t forget he’s on strange ground,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘He’s new to litigation. He’s feeling insecure. There’s a lot of money at stake. Though having said all that, he sounds like an up-front sort of person to me. He might respect you for speaking your mind.’
‘What? When he’s paying my fees?’
‘I think you underestimate yourself, Joe. I think you carry more weight than you realise.’
He was glad she should think so; he would have liked to believe her. ‘But not enough to save my skin.’
Sarah considered this idea gravely. ‘I really can’t believe it’ll come to that, Joe. No, I can’t believe the situation isn’t salvageable. Especially if you get a letter to Ritch first thing on Monday morning. By fax, rather than e-mail. Strike a forceful note, restate your strategy in the most glowing terms, butter him up a little, talk about the big picture. Don’t on any account apologise, of course. Just make him feel it would be unreasonable to dwell on such a minor difficulty when everything else is set fair—’ She broke off with a small flush of embarrassment.
‘But what am I saying? You’ll know how best to play it, Joe.
Once you start drafting it - you’ll know.’
He wasn’t sure he shared her faith in his judgement, but he was glad of her optimism all the same; he liked to think it was rubbing off on him. The champagne was beginning to do its magic too, but he resisted the temptation to drown his sorrows.
Sarah didn’t drink very much, and he didn’t like to get too far out of step.
He asked brightly, ‘And how was your day?’
She tried to shrug the question off - she rarely volunteered information about her work - but he pressed her.
‘Oh, like always,’ she said at last. ‘The usual progression of no-show witnesses, hold-overs, failures to answer bail. Much work and no convictions.’
When they’d first met, Joe had wondered how she stuck the Crown Prosecution Service, which was going through one of its periodic spells of low staffing and poor morale. Sarah was clever and in her understated way extremely determined; she could easily have carved out a successful career as a defence lawyer at twice the salary. But as he’d got to know her better he’d come to see another side of her. She might bemoan the inadequacies of the justice system, she might grumble at the bureaucracy of the GPS, yet she got enormous fulfilment from her work. Behind her offhand attitude lay a strong morality and a dogged belief in the pursuit of justice which made her perfectly suited to this branch of the law.
He said, ‘What, nobody put away at all?’
She pretended to scour her memory. ‘One mugging, one breaking and entering.’
‘Don’t they count?’
‘Not when I failed to get the one I really wanted.’
‘And what was that?’
‘A crack-head who enjoys burgling and terrorising old ladies.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘Principal witness failed to show. And who can blame her?
A sixty-five-year-old widow living alone, terrified out of her wits.’
‘Can’t the police protect her?’
Sarah gazed at him with a blend of pity and wonder. ‘Joe, when did you last visit a sink estate in Stoke Newington?’
He conceded rapidly. ‘Perhaps you’ll get him next time round.’
‘Sure.’ Draining her drink, she attempted a smile. ‘Sorry.
By this stage in the week I’ve rather lost my sense of humour.’
‘You’re not alone. Want to risk dinner?’
‘You bet - I’ve been looking forward to it all week.’
Instantly, her eyes shaded and she glanced away, as if this show of enthusiasm had been in danger of saying too much.
They had met in a bar, introduced by a former Merrow lawyer who knew Sarah from law school. Joe’s first impression had been of a Valkyrie: slim and tall, with grey-green eyes, long legs, and ash-coloured hair worn straight and long. The next thing he noticed was her gaze, which fixed on him with quiet curiosity, and her mouth, which was extraordinarily full and expressive. A boisterous party was going on around them - someone’s birthday, he wasn’t sure whose - and they soon gravitated towards a corner where they talked for the re
st of the evening. She was a good listener, those thoughtful eyes missed nothing, and she had a way of giving all her attention to the conversation, as though it was the most important thing in the world. If in the weeks since then she’d revealed an emotional caution that bordered on self-sufficiency then he could go along with that; he too had become wary of relationships that went too far, too fast. This caution did not, anyway, reach into the bedroom, where she showed a tender enthusiasm.
Now, taking their seats at the restaurant table, they drew their chairs closer, the better to talk.
Joe wasn’t sure how long he stared at the wine list before Sarah said, ‘What about that Chablis we had last time?’
Leaning over, her head almost touching his, she pointed rapidly at the card with a long index finger, which she just as rapidly curled back into her palm. She bit her nails badly and she didn’t like anyone to see.
He took the opportunity to kiss her. She gave a flicker of a smile, but in the fraction of a second before her gaze swung away Joe saw the familiar wariness drop over her eyes like a shutter, and wondered not for the first time what made her retreat from even the smallest gesture of affection. On their second date she’d told him she’d been married but it hadn’t worked out. They’d been too young, it hadn’t lasted long, they’d parted on reasonable terms, she hadn’t seen him since.
Her tone had been matter-of-fact, yet he couldn’t help thinking that the damage had gone a lot deeper than she pretended.
The restaurant was a barn of a place with notorious acoustics. Their table was hard against the window but the 14
noise seemed to come at them from all sides. Stupefied by the roar or the day, or both, Joe took an age to decide what to eat, only to realise too late that he’d ordered something he didn’t terribly like.
Sarah eyed him speculatively. ‘Mr Ritch still on your mind?’
‘And whether I want to stay in Litigation.’ Now he’d voiced it, the idea quickly gathered momentum in his mind. ‘Whether I want to stay in the law, come to that.’
Sarah winced. ‘Help, Joe. What else would you do?’
‘Exactly. Fit for nothing.’
‘What brought this on?’
‘Oh, the usual. Working my socks off, feeding the inflated egos of overpaid executives who can’t bring themselves to settle their disputes out of court. Knowing that none of it’s that important at the end of the day.’
‘Major, thoughts, Joe.’ Her eyes were fierce and bright. He had the feeling she was proud of him. ‘So what is important at the end of the day?’
‘God only knows. I think I came to a few idealistic conclusions when I was a student.’
‘Which were?’
‘Oh, you know.’
‘Yes?’ She really wanted to hear.
‘Getting fulfilment from one’s work. Friends. Family.’
She nodded, urging him on.
‘That’s about it,’ he said.
‘What - no changing the world?’ Her quick smile did little to conceal the seriousness beneath.
‘I wasn’t that brave. Or that certain.’ Immediately, Joe thought of Chetwood, who had taken on the world wholesale.
And from Chetwood it was of course just a tiny step to Jenna.
‘Something else came up today.’
If Sarah was disappointed by the change of subject, she hid it well. ‘Oh?’
He hesitated, not because he didn’t want to tell her, but because even after all this time he wasn’t sure where to start.
‘It’s some old friends from home - Alan and Helena Laskey.
Alan was our doctor. Still looks after my father. God bless him, for which he deserves a peace prize. But then Alan’s a bit of a saint, old-style. Helena too. They sort of took me in when I was a kid. Fed me, helped me with my homework, generally kept me out of trouble after my mother died. Like family.
Anyway …’ He slowed up, he hesitated a little over the words.
‘They’ve a daughter called Jenna. And she… disappeared four years ago. And this evening, out of the blue, they’ve asked me to try and find her. Why, I don’t know. Why now, I mean.
And maybe, why me.’
‘They’ve looked before presumably?’
‘Yes. Salvation Army. Missing Persons Helpline. Not a sign.’
‘How old was she?’
‘Twenty-six? No, twenty-seven.’
Sarah’s eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘Ah. I’d imagined a teenage runaway. That’s the usual scenario, statistically speaking. A lost soul of sixteen or so, homeless, alienated, desperate. Looking for anyone who’ll take them in.’
He barely nodded, and she moved swiftly on.
‘So this daughter would be - what? - thirty-one by now. In fact… your exact contemporary.’
After a while, she dipped her head a little to catch his eye.
‘We’re the same age, yes.’
‘And you were friends, the two of you?’
‘Yes. The Laskeys lived in the next street. We spent a lot of time together as kids.’
‘So what happened? Did she just vanish overnight? Could she .have been abducted?’
‘No. She didn’t vanish so much as’ - he searched for a way to explain the inexplicable - ‘fail to stay in contact.’
‘Ah. Her choice then?’
‘That’s the thing - she was extremely close to her family.
They can’t believe she would have chosen to stay out of touch for so long.’
‘Well, if not her choice, then…?’
Joe had recycled the alternatives so often, he knew them by heart. She was abroad. 111. Suffering a breakdown. She was living in fear of someone from her old life or - painful to imagine - someone in her present existence. At night, when he was half asleep and immune to logic, he added the bizarre and fantastical. She had lost her mind. She had become a dropout.
She was lying in some faraway hospital in a vegetative state.
Around dawn, when nothing seems impossible, he’d imagined her getting religion, and one particular morning, when his dreams had got hopelessly entangled with memories of Chetwood’s spiritual quests, he’d even pictured her among buddhas, gurus and saffron-robed priests.
‘Could she be dead?’ Sarah asked.
‘We don’t think so.’
‘Because?’
‘We would have heard, one way or the other. She’s not alone, you See. There’s a husband.’
‘And they’ve both disappeared?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ahhh.’ Sarah managed to imbue the sound with a wealth of meaning. ‘So … his choice then?’
‘Possibly.’
‘And the reason?’
Joe had to struggle for an answer. ‘We don’t know. He was… unusual.’ He pulled the word out of the air, yet even as he said it he realised it was probably the only adjective that began to describe Chetwood with any accuracy.
‘Unusual mad, or unusual bad?’
A barrage of laughter assaulted them from an adjacent table, and Joe raised his voice. ‘I would say he was born out of his time.’
‘Ah. Someone difficult. Isn’t that what people usually mean when they say that?’
‘Not difficult so much as - complicated.’
She considered this idea doubtfully, with a small frown.
‘But he’s probably responsible for this vanishing act?’
The fusillade of shrieks showed no sign of abating, and they were watching each other’s lips with the concentration of lip-readers. ‘That’s what the family think.’
‘What about you, Joe? What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I only know that Jenna changed after they married. I only saw them twice, but Jenna had lost her spark, her energy.’
‘She was unhappy, then. Depressed.’
‘But she loved him. There’s no doubt of that.’ His words emerged in a shout as the noise from the next-door table subsided abruptly.
‘Heavens, Joe, you can love someone and still be unhappy.
‘It’s just that I can’t believe—’ But he hadn’t managed to work out what he believed, either then or now. He could only repeat, ‘She’d just changed, that’s all.’
‘Do people change that much?’ Sarah argued mildly. ‘Don’t they just show an unfamiliar side of themselves? Frustration, or suppressed anger, or guilt, or whatever?’ She let this thought pass with a small lift of one shoulder. ‘But what’s your theory, Joe? You must have a theory.’
‘I have no theory.’
‘You knew him, though, this husband - what was his name?’
‘Chetwood. Yes, we were at university together. For a while anyway. He only stayed a year.’
‘And was he unusual even then?’
For some reason the image of Chetwood that came into Joe’s mind was the one most likely to cause him pain. He saw Chetwood in the scruffy overgrown garden of a student house during a post-finals barbecue. Chetwood had been on one of his sporadic trips back to Bristol, dipping briefly into student life again. He had parked his tall frame in a rickety chair, his feet propped on a low wall. He was silent, looking up when spoken to, smiling vaguely, but answering no one, not under the influence of course - he never touched anything in those days - but deeply preoccupied, remote, distracted. Joe had congratulated himself on recognising the signs: such periods of intense soul-searching generally heralded a fullblown philosophical crisis, one of the regular intellectual upheavals that in the space of two years had taken Chetwood to India to attend the Kumbh Mela, to Bosnia to work in an orphanage, and to the Peaks to climb alone without ropes.
Even after Joe twice caught Chetwood watching him surreptitiously and twice drop his eyes with a frown, he hadn’t doubted the nature of Chetwood’s self-absorption. It simply never occurred to him that Chetwood could have done anything so utterly prosaic, so utterly unimaginative as to have stolen Jenna from him.
Joe answered, ‘He found ordinary life difficult.’
‘A nonconformist.’
‘A seeker.’
‘A drifter, you mean.’
Not for the first time, Joe found himself defending Chetwood.
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