Mirror Mirror: A shatteringly powerful page-turner

by Nick Louth

  ‘A month ago I might have said no. But now, the more I think about it, he’s been making fools of us all. So I’m going to oppose it.’

  * * *

  TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS

  Virgil had arranged to meet Kelly outside the theatre, and while he waited had picked up a copy of London’s free paper,the Metro. The main story was about some baroness from the Lords who had stripped off to let a murderous psychopath paint her. The moment he saw the picture, he knew. This must by the man who had been writing to Mira. Virgil read and re-read the article, but the only identification of the artist was the name Wōdan.

  ‘Hey Virgil!’ Kelly bounced up to him, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You look a bit engrossed.’ She looked gorgeous, with her corkscrew red hair cascading onto the shoulders of a cornflower blue dress, and matching high heels.

  Virgil showed her the newspaper. ‘It’s the same artist. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Time to knock-off, Virgil,’ Kelly said. ‘I spend enough unpaid time working in the day, and I won’t let it intrude into Saturday night playtime.’ She poked him in the ribs. Virgil apologised, and complimented her on the way she looked.

  Throughout the play, Virgil’s thoughts were elsewhere. How could he connect Wōdan with the sender of the cards? His complaint to the West London Mental Health Trust had disappeared into some bureaucratic labyrinth, and his calls asking for more information were returned by administrative assistants who, while unfailingly polite, didn’t themselves have any information they could share.

  During the interval, when they were squashed into a corner of the crowded theatre bar, Kelly suddenly seized his arm. ‘Are you not listening to me at all?’

  ‘What? Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘I said I’ve broken up with Mike.’ Seeing his mystified expression she looked heavenwards. ‘Mike. My boyfriend? Hello, anyone at home?’ She knocked on Virgil’s skull with her knuckles.

  ‘Right. Um.’ Virgil searched for the right tack to take on this conversational nugget.

  ‘I mean, well try not to get too excited.’

  ‘Excited?’

  ‘It means, dimwit, that I’m fully available for you. Oh God, give me a kiss for Christ’s sake.’

  Virgil took Kelly in his arms, lifted her off the ground, and pretended to be excited. What was wrong with him? This beautiful, lively woman, wanted to be his girlfriend, and all he felt was a hard lump of anxiety in his stomach. Fear of caring, fear of connection, fear of pain. And a premonition. The burning troop carrier, the heat of the doors, the charnel house view within. The images swept through his head, and he inhaled hard, his head buried in Kelly’s hair, hoping her scent, her skin, her proximity would drive out the cordite, the smoke and the taint of burning flesh.

  The anxiety began to coalesce until he was aware of his phone buzzing in his pocket. With a nod of contrition to Kelly, he answered it.

  ‘Virgil it’s me,’ Mira breathed. ‘There’s someone on the roof of my flat. I can hear them moving about. It could be Lawrence.’

  ‘Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes. I had some friends here earlier, but they went an hour ago. I’m frightened.’

  Virgil sighed. So much for an evening with Kelly. And the second half of the play. ‘Okay. Lock the doors and windows,’ he said. ‘Keep your phone to hand, make sure some lights are on, but don’t move around in a way that could easily be seen from outside. Call the cops. I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  * * *

  Virgil was there long before the police. He arrived at the lobby where the building duty manager was awaiting him. Virgil had already run his mind over the possibilities. Sneaking about didn’t seem like Lawrence Wall’s style. It was much more likely to be a besotted fan, perhaps some unusually determined Qaeggan. The duty manager, a nervous-looking Eastern European called Stefan Kados, came up with him in the lift, apologising profusely for the disturbance that Mira reported. ‘I’ve had a good look around but I didn’t see anyone.’

  ‘So what’s on the floor above?’

  ‘Air conditioning and ventilation units, a water tank, lift maintenance points, a telecoms cabinet and mast, a utilities control room, a few metal walkways. They are all accessed from a multi-purpose maintenance chamber.’

  ‘What about her neighbours?’

  ‘There’s only one other apartment on her floor, and that is currently unoccupied.’

  ‘Can we get into it?’

  ‘The owner is abroad, but I’ve already taken a look. There’s no one there.’

  Virgil buzzed on Mira’s door. She opened the door wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with a glass of wine in hand. She led them into the apartment and pointed out where she had been sitting when she heard footsteps on the metal walkway above. ‘I think someone’s been on my patio too,’ she said. ‘I had some sunglasses and a sunhat out there in a weatherproof locker which have disappeared.’

  Kados led Virgil up the fire escape to the maintenance floor. The concrete lobby had a single door leading to the maintenance chamber, with a security keypad, but it wasn’t set. Anyone could get in. ‘Why don’t you set the code?’ Virgil asked.

  ‘We did, originally. But the number of different contractors and companies who needed access made it a nightmare. They never sent the same person twice or remembered to bring the latest code, so in the end we gave up.’

  The chamber beyond was a seventy-foot high metallic and glass cap at the centre of the building, and was so crammed with pipes, pumps, crawlways and cable ducts that it resembled a hall in the Science Museum. At the far points were four rumbling air conditioning units, each the size of a van, and next to them glass emergency doors led to walkways which crossed the downward-sloping metallic roof, towards the divots and cradles for external maintenance. The manager led Virgil to a higher walkway, which gave terrific views to the south over nighttime Wandsworth. ‘What’s this?’ Virgil spotted an empty box of jaffa cakes on a broad window ledge between walkway levels.

  ‘Surely no one could get right down there,’ Kados said.

  ‘Agreed. And we’d see footprints on that white sill if they had.’ He looked at a walkway above. ‘I reckon they were up there and chucked the box away when they were finished,’ he said. ‘If they’d got a whole packet, they would probably be around for a while.’ Virgil hauled himself up the hatchway and onto a small platform at the apex of the dome, which had a cabinet labelled ‘Vodafone engineer only’. He squatted to examine a piece of fluff that had caught on a bolt shaft, and saw two other things that made him nod.

  ‘So what do you think?’ said Kados, who was still below.

  ‘Someone has been sleeping here,’ he said. ‘There are crumbs, a couple of feathers and some red quilting from a sleeping bag, and a couple of smallish grubby footprints. Plus this,’ he said, passing down a long brown hair in front of Kados’s eyes. ‘I think our intruder is female, and she’s really been making herself at home.’

  * * *

  Broadmoor, Boxhill Ward, 3am. Psychiatric nursing assistant Dawn Evans was alone, naked on her knees in the room of a multiple murderer. She could not breathe, she could not speak, only the unhelpful sound: ‘Mnnff.’

  ‘I may be a psychopath, but I’m not going to choke you to death, I promise.’ William Mordant, naked too but standing, looked down at her. He had both his hands wound in her hair, pulling her onto him. ‘You have to breathe through your nose, Puss, then you can take it past the gag reflex. Yes, that’s better.’

  She had already come on well since yesterday’s visit. It had actually been her idea. She was on night shifts for a whole week on his ward, the first time in four months. The fact she was prepared to risk instant dismissal for the opportunity to spend an uninterrupted half hour with him each of those nights spoke volumes about how far he had brought her on in just a few months. Grooming. The technical term, as if it was as innocent as a treatment in a hairdressing salon.

  Perhaps it was the scent of competition? Certainly, Dawn’s suspicion of Bar
oness Earl’s interest in him had spurred her on to even greater efforts to please him. So that she could spend more time with him she had applied for a postgraduate art therapy certificate too.

  Dawn didn’t yet know about his tribunal request. She wasn’t his primary nurse, so there would be no reason for her to be officially informed, but there was always gossip. He had telephoned Baroness Earl, who was definitely on his side, and spoken to Bishop Fielding, who was now the lay member on Broadmoor’s tribunal panel. Despite this, everything would come down to the reports of the two consultant psychiatrists, and in the end to the director. Dr Kasovas seemed to be quite sanguine about his prognosis. But Dr Erin Pridmore, a sour-faced septuagenarian from London University, was vigorously opposed despite the Bishop of Uxbridge’s attempts at persuasion. Lamb himself was the hardest one to call. William knew that if there was one intellect that might match his, Lamb was in possession of it. If he was successful, he knew that Dawn would be heartbroken. But by then she might already have been fired because of her own recklessness. If not, he would make it happen. He was tiring of having to imagine Mira.

  He wanted the real thing.

  And he was much closer now to getting her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  TWENTY-ONE DAYS

  London’s Charing Cross looked at its worst late on a rainy Thursday evening in March. Umbrellaed and raincoat-clad commuters were swarming down into the underpasses towards the station, or along Villiers Street to Embankment. Mira had arranged to meet Tasha at the South Bank Centre at six, but roadworks in the Strand and a broken down bus on Waterloo Bridge had paralysed the traffic, so the taxi driver had dropped her off by the station and suggested she cross Hungerford Bridge on foot. Mira was toasty warm in fur-lined charcoal-grey ankle boats, black leggings and a bottle-green overcoat that she had found in a charity shop and for which she had paid just four pounds. Virgil had exacted concessions from her for a public foray alone: her hair was carefully hidden and dry under an oversize flat tweed cap, another charity shop find, pulled low over her forehead, and she had on her most hideous pair of incognito spectacles. As she climbed the Embankment stairs to bridge level she enjoyed the feeling of being part of an anonymous but purposeful crowd, most of them immersed in a common mission to get to Waterloo Station without mishap or delay. The darkling Thames was laid out before her, its sludgy bulk split by quicksilver wakes where half-empty pleasure boats chuntered their way under the bridge. At the far side the lights of the South Bank twinkled, and the giant Ferris wheel of the London Eye opposite the Houses of Parliament, could be seen gently turning. It was soon lost to view when a squealing and rhythmic thrumming through the entrails of the bridge heralded the departure of a train from Charing Cross station. About halfway across the bridge, a gust caught her red folding umbrella, effortlessly turning it inside out. She stumbled into the path of the man behind her as she fought for control, until his hand shot out and grasped the shaft to steady it.

  ‘Got it,’ he shouted over the wind.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mira said, eyeing the fragile struts now twisted and trembling in the gust.

  ‘Is it one to keep and mend, or should we let it fly away?’ he asked.

  ‘Give it its freedom,’ Mira replied. She pushed up her peak to look at the smartly-attired Asian in the herringbone overcoat, whose crisp white cuffs were already getting wet. He let go, and the umbrella soared for a moment, a roiling crimson flag, before cartwheeling down into the treacle-black depths of the Thames.

  ‘Well, that’s four ninety-nine wasted,’ Mira laughed, starting to walk again.

  ‘So much?’ said the man, whose accent was both Indian and Surrey. He turned to her and smiled broadly. ‘Do you think all the lost and broken umbrella souls eventually find their way to some parasol paradise?’ The man held his own large umbrella over them both.

  She looked up at his face. Deep-set brown eyes, strong jaw, white perfect teeth. Nice. Something profound was called for, surely? But profound wasn’t her thing. ‘Umbrella heaven must be packed. I’ve lost five this year.’ It was the best she could do for now. She gazed out into the distance, beyond Waterloo Bridge where the City’s many new glass skyscrapers thrust themselves like splinters into a bruised sky. ‘Hey,’ she rested her hand on his arm. ‘What if there is one of those multi-armed goddesses there, one for each arm of the brolly?’

  ‘Ganesh, or maybe Kali,’ the man said, as they started to descend the steps. ‘I like that. Now without my brolly I think you will get wet. Are you going to be able to get somewhere dry soon?’

  That was a clever way of finding out where she was going. She didn’t mind. ‘I’m just off to the Festival Hall. I’m meeting a friend.’

  ‘Oh. A friend.’ He smiled a slightly disappointed smile. ‘I had been wondering whether I could buy you a coffee some time.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘But not now. Unfortunately I have a meeting.’ He looked at his watch.

  ‘Always be late for meetings, it makes you seem important,’ Mira said. The man’s expression showed he didn’t approve of that philosophy. ‘I’m always late,’ she persisted. ‘I can be five minutes late for my friend. It’s what she would expect anyway.’ The man’s face softened at the word she.’

  ‘My name is Ram. What is yours?’

  Mira’s hesitation seemed to unnerve him ‘Am I perhaps being too forward?’ he asked.

  ‘Probably,’ she laughed, and a tendril of hair whipped across her face. She couldn’t risk letting him know her public name. The poor bloke would be terrified. Besides, the sheer purity of this chance encounter was already as precious as a raindrop. ‘Call me Lydia.’ It was, after all, her real birth name.

  ‘Lydia, it’s been a pleasure to meet you and your misbehaving umbrella.’ With the slightest of nods, he turned and walked away. Mira was suddenly paralysed. She didn’t have his phone number. He just walked away! Aren’t you going to do anything woman? Are you just going to grin like an idiot? He climbed the steps back towards the overpass towards Waterloo Station. She watched his broad, receding back. Just then he turned to give her a wave. She just waved back, as this charming man walked out of her life.

  * * *

  Cursing herself as a fool, she walked into the reception area of the Royal Festival Hall, and immediately saw Natasha. ‘Blimey you’re early!’ Tasha exclaimed, flicking her damp blonde hair over the collar of her white raincoat.

  ‘Really?’ Mira looked at her watch, puzzled. She was actually five minutes late.

  ‘You’re always at least fifteen minutes late, usually half an hour,’ Tasha laughed. ‘Shite weather innit?’ she said, reverting to the broad Brummie accent she had worked so hard to lose. Natasha had come down to London three months ago, to work as a publicity agent for a West End publisher.

  ‘It’s reet crap,’ Mira answered in her own northern tones, which she too had shed over her chameleon life. ‘Tasha, I’ve done something really stupid,’ Mira said. ‘I’ve just bumped into this gorgeous chivalrous man, and I let him walk away without getting his phone number.’

  ‘What?’ Tasha pulled a face of imbecilic incomprehension, and then began to laugh uproariously. ‘You’re the woman on the front page of bloody Vogue, and this berk didn’t actually beg for your number?’

  ‘He doesn’t have a clue who I am under this hat and coat.’ Mira recounted the brief conversation on Hungerford Bridge. ‘He was quite gallant though, I have to say.’

  Tasha’s expression initially expressed wonderment, but then hardened to what looked like resentment. ‘Mira, that’s not fair. You’re supposed to meet people at glitzy parties that I’m not invited to. On catwalks and photoshoots, at fancy restaurants that I can’t afford. But instead you’ve just pinched one of the few romantic encounters that poor sods like me can aspire to. Why can’t you stay in your own territory? I could have walked across that bridge and met him, or someone like him.’ For a moment, she seemed genuinely upset.

  ‘Tasha, don’t be like th
at.’

  ‘It’s very romantic and I’m envious, that’s all. I need sauvignon blanc and I need it now.’ They moved into the bar, took a table and Mira bought two big glasses of New Zealand white. Mira always paid. That was the way now, with all her friends.

  ‘Right. What did you say his name was?’ Tasha whipped out her phone, as she always did at the slightest excuse. ‘We’ll Google him.’

  ‘Ram. I didn’t get his second name.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Tasha said. She typed it in and hit ‘images’. She showed Mira her screen and they both roared with laughter. ‘Looks like we got a cross between male goats and microchips. Horny and brainy.’

  ‘There are worse combinations!’ Mira retorted.

  ‘What else did you notice about him? Was he carrying a book, a newspaper, anything?’

  ‘An umbrella.’

  ‘Hardly rare, Mira, in the rain. You numpty.’ Tasha rested her chin in her hand. ‘Well, if you were me, you’d come to the bridge next Friday at the same time and wait until he passed. Then pounce. But I expect you’re a bit too grand for that. You’ll be hoping that he puts a personal in Time Out: “Delightful green-eyed creature met on Hungerford Bridge, please meet me at the Dorchester for tea”.’

  Mira laughed, then tapped her finger on the table. ‘His umbrella had a logo on it. Quotidian something,’

  ‘It might not be where he worked, but let’s add it to the search.’ They scrolled down the seemingly random collection of pictures.

  ‘Alright, let’s try some lateral and perhaps wishful thinking.’ Tasha typed in ‘Ram + millionaire’. There were plenty of pictures, mostly of a character from the film Slumdog Millionaire, but by the second page the pictures were of a wider variety.

  ‘Let’s raise our game,’ Mira said. ‘Type in “Ram + billionaire”.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Tasha said, rolling her eyes. ‘When’s the last time a billionaire walked across Hungerford Bridge in the rain?’ She typed it in anyway, and showed Mira the phone. And there he was, on the third page.