by Morag Joss
CHAPTER 24
THE MAN KEPT his eyes closed. Opening them seemed to hurt more, and there was nothing to see anyway, just the roof of the van. Still he couldn’t stop shivering. It was bad, very bad. And he had no idea where he was or for how long they’d been travelling now, since he’d been picked up at the specified point, handed over the cash and seen it counted, and been told roughly to lie down and keep out of sight. In the dark, Le Fournisseur had not noticed that he was ill, nor was he the type to care, unless it was going to stop him getting his money. The van had stopped maybe half an hour ago, and the man had said only, ‘Don’t move’, and then climbed out, banging back the door so hard that the pounding in his head had got even worse. Then silence, except for birds. This was not a city. He could not be in a city. Even if he was near a park he would be able to hear people and traffic. He knew even without ever having been in London that this could not be where he was now, and that the man had lied to him.
The man was back. He must be standing just outside next to the van, just on the other side of this thin metal wall. There was someone with him, another man, also French. They were talking in French. He was supposed to be in London, that was what he had paid the money for. He might not even be in England. Panic hit him somewhere in the stomach with a hot, gripping rush of pain. He wanted to cry out, but only a groan came. He felt his lips. He was so thirsty. Outside, they were talking about him.
‘He’s ill. He can’t go tonight, he’d collapse on the road and get caught. How should I know if he was ill when we left? What’s it to me?’
‘He can’t stay here. If he can’t go tonight, he’ll just have to stay in the van, there’s nothing else for it. Look, you know I don’t like this anyway. It’s got to stop, this part of it.’
‘Don’t start, for God’s sake. Look, he can’t stay in the van. What if he throws up or something? I’ve got valuable stuff in there. Come on, we can get him into your place, can’t we? It’s only for one night. Tomorrow I’ll dump him in Bristol and that’ll be the end of it. Come on, Paul.’
‘My place? Oh, no. Absolutely not. Not my place. You must be mad. It’s far too dangerous. Anyway, what about my girlfriend? She’s always coming round, even when I’m not there. What am I supposed to say to her?’
‘Paul, it’s one night. You can say something, tell her you’re ill, say you’ve got an upset stomach. Something. Look, if we try to keep him in the van and he gets worse someone will hear him. Or he’ll bang on the door to be let out. He’s a difficult bastard anyway. He stowed away on a cargo ship to Bordeaux, been in Paris about two months. Immigration got on to him. Okay, so he’s ill but it’s only flu. He’s still tough, and I don’t want trouble.’
‘Bernard, I swear this is the last time, you hear me? Try this again and I’m out of the whole thing. Forget the money, forget the whole bloody thing, it’s too dangerous. I’m not interested, okay? Are you listening to me?’
‘Yeah, okay, okay. It is, you’re right. Last time. We’ll just do the antiques. Look, I’m agreeing, okay? But we’ve got this bastard on our hands until tomorrow, and we’ve got to keep him hidden somewhere. It’ll have to be your room. There’s nowhere else, is there?’
There was a short silence.
‘Fuck you, Bernard, and fuck him. Okay, because he’s ill, that’s all. Not to help you. It’ll have to be my room. We’ll come and get him later, in a couple of hours, after the salon’s closed. And you’d better be ready to give me extra for this, you bastard.’
The voices faded, the men were walking away. So his name was Bernard, Le Fournisseur, the man with the fat yellow fingers. The other one sounded younger. So he was going to have to wait at least another two hours with his thirst, his aching face, his pounding head, his numb limbs. He was in the wrong place, too ill to move, and they hated him. They would soon realise, if they had not already, that it would be easier to kill him. That was what Bernard would want, and Bernard carried a gun. Maybe the younger one would want him dead, too. He stirred and felt the rough canvas of his bag against his thigh. They would get all that, too. He had been a fool to let Bernard see it. They would be talking about him now, deciding where to do it, what to do with his body, sharing out his money. He whimpered into his hands and tears ran from the corners of his tight-shut eyes and rolled into his hair.
When he heard the wrenching screech of the van door opening he realised that he had no strength to defend himself but still enough energy to feel terror. He opened his eyes and raised his head, sobbing. But it was not Bernard, it was the other one, Paul. Paul leaned forward into the van and stared at him over the stacked chairs, the tea chests and boxes, then turned round and hauled in a big soft-looking bundle. So he was going to be suffocated. Then he would be stuffed into a bag and dumped somewhere to rot or be eaten by dogs. He shrank back into the corner where the floor met the cold metal wall of the van and stared helplessly, his breathing short and wheezing. He was too weak to sit up or to scream.
‘Here. These will help.’
They were blankets. Three soft, wool blankets, and there was also a pillow for his head. He must have brought them from his own bed. He must have put himself at risk to bring him blankets and a pillow. The man was crouching beside him, spreading them over him like a mother. Now he was ashamed of his tears and the incoherent thanks which came painfully from his thick, dry throat.
‘I’ve brought you some water,’ Paul said, placing a full plastic bottle beside him. ‘I’ll come and get you later, then you can eat, if you want to. You’ll be able to rest properly. You’ll be all right. I’m sorry.’
And then the man Paul was gone. And left in the dark of the van, he first drank some of the water. Then, wrapped in the blankets, he found that his shivering stopped long enough to let him fall asleep.
CHAPTER 25
AS THE TAXI drove off, Derek let himself in through Cecily’s front door. She came into the narrow hall to greet him, and not kindly. It was too dark to see his creased and exhausted face properly.
‘You’re exactly’ – she peered at her watch – ‘seven hours and eighteen minutes late.’
‘Don’t,’ he said faintly, leaning against the wall with his briefcase in one hand, holding up the other in submission. ‘Please, Cec. I’ll explain. I’ve only just got away. I’ve been with the police. About the Sawyer murder. They grilled me, then they made me stay while they checked everything I told them. Took hours. Chief Inspector Poole says I’m lucky there’s an insomniac in Camden Crescent who saw my car being ransacked. It wasn’t my fault. Don’t start. Please.’
To his surprise she did not, not straightaway. She turned away.
‘I had a takeaway,’ she said, ‘and now I’m going to bed.’ At the foot of the stairs she said, ‘I don’t know if you’re hungry. There’s nothing in the fridge. You said you were cooking. I don’t know where you were, I don’t know why you were late, I don’t know why you didn’t phone. I don’t know why I don’t throw you out. In the morning I would like an explanation. And some decisions. About us. Don’t wake me when you come up.’ She turned and went upstairs.
Derek’s aching heartburn had subsided and a headache pulsed in its place. Although he was starving, going out again for something to eat was unthinkable; he felt too exhausted even to stay upright much longer. Dumping his briefcase on the sofa, he wandered into the kitchen, collected a glass, a corkscrew and a bottle of Chianti and took them back to the sitting room, opened the bottle and swigged heavily from it before filling his glass. He prised off his shoes, returned to the kitchen and opened the fridge. She had been inaccurate. There was not quite nothing in the fridge. There was low-fat spread, oil-free salad cream, two tomatoes, half a lettuce and a soft cucumber end. Derek’s personal view of salads was that about five times a year, and only when in Italy or France, a few choice leaves served as useful little boats for a good oil and garlic dressing. In all other circumstances his contempt for salads extended to the people who ate them. In the door of the fridge he found a pla
stic tub containing the curdled watery remains of reduced-fat cottage cheese with (which only added to his disgust) pineapple. Cottage cheese he did not even regard as a foodstuff. Deep inside him his annoyance, thick, hairy and foul-smelling, yawned, got up, stretched, turned round and lay back down like a dog before a roaring fire. He shut the fridge and went back to the sitting room to damp down the flames with Chianti.
Stretched out on the sofa he sipped his wine and thought hungrily and wistfully of the fridge at home. Pauline always kept their fridge well stocked. There would always be good cheese, probably pâté or decent ham, olives, butter. Eggs. Bacon. Bread. Tins of anchovies in the cupboards. Chocolate biscuits in their tins. Chocolate. Suddenly, he remembered. Oh, may blessings rain upon Sharlene Hanrahan and Darren Harper, whose two boxes of Quality Street were in his briefcase. With trembling hands he whipped round the numbers of the combination lock and the catches snapped open. Taking a box in each hand he tipped their contents onto the carpet in front of him and spent a relaxing minute or two hunched over his hoard, picking out the ones he did not much like and then, with the toffees, coconut fudges and coffee creams safely de-selected, he set to.
Later he carried the empty bottle, his wineglass and about three dozen sweetie wrappers out to the kitchen. His headache was no better, but his blood-sugar level and consequently his temper had improved. He felt just about communicative enough to tell Cecily all about his terrible afternoon and even worse evening as a murder suspect, in at least as much detail as it would take to arouse sufficient sympathy for her to countenance the advance of his slightly chocolaty fingers between her thighs. She might even want a Quality Street, he thought wildly, picking up the leftover sweeties and dropping them in one of the boxes on his way upstairs. He clicked on the bedside light and sat down heavily on the bed. He undressed as noisily as possible. She could not be asleep now.
‘Fancy a toffee, Cec?’ he said, shaking the box. No answer. Obviously she did not like the toffee ones either. ‘Coffee cream?’ He waited. She did not stir. ‘Coconut fudge?’ he sniggered. Oh, she was so picky. He climbed clumsily in beside her motionless form, which remained quite still as he rubbed himself perfunctorily against her wrinkly bottom. She clearly intended to keep up the pretence of being asleep, and she was wearing seersucker pyjamas. Damn her, he thought, popping the last four toffees into his mouth and chewing lasciviously before dropping the wrappers on the floor and turning out the light.
IT WAS still dark, and he was at once aware that what had woken him up was pain. Pain in, or near, his chest, where he could feel his heart hammering. Turning slightly he felt it again; the tearing, raw sensation in his left side, near his armpit. Oh, God, a heart attack. Please, not a heart attack. He stirred and he felt it again. Pain. Blood was thumping through his temples and banging in his throat. He tried to move his left arm and the pain came again and left him panting. His arm was pinned to his side, and now he was not sure if it was really dark, or if he simply couldn’t see. He knew that even if the pain allowed him to sit up he would drown in a giddy, sick and swimming whirlpool. He cried out with what felt like his last breath, which was now coming in frightened gasps. Oddly, even while Cecily’s white and tousled face was staring over him, during her agitated talking into the phone and as she was struggling into clothes, there was a detached and unsurprised part of him watching, knowing that he’d been heading for this. And all day he’d thought it was indigestion. He tried to turn and raise his head and the pain swept round him again. No mistaking it now. How long would it take? He couldn’t move his arm. As he lay, the faintness in his head came in waves and his fifty-year-old heart clamoured beneath its flesh cloak of seven surplus stones. Oh, God, is this dying? Keep breathing. Don’t try to talk. Oh, God, a heart attack. No wonder, no bloody wonder, right at the end of the year, and after a day like today. He would not be able to keep on breathing. He shifted his weight and the pain in his left side tore at him again before he lost consciousness.
CHAPTER 26
BEING SUE’S LISTENING ear had begun to feel like a heavy responsibility. Really, the proper and only substance of telephone calls around midnight, unless between lovers, should be hospital admissions, stranded travellers, and breakdowns. Automobile, not nervous, unless absolutely in extremis. Calling at ten to midnight with an invitation to meet for coffee in town next morning had not fallen into even the last of these categories, however brave the sentiment and brittle the voice.
‘I’ll tell you all about it when we meet,’ Sue had said last night, and then proceeded to tell Sara most of it there and then. ‘You weren’t in bed, were you? Oh look, I really hope you weren’t having an early night. I had to talk to someone. I’m here at Aunt Livy’s, but she’s not here, not down here with me, I mean. I think she must have gone to bed. Well, look, I’ll just tell you briefly. I went round to Paul’s when I’d finished work tonight. I was going to wait for him. But he was there, there was a light on, and the curtains were all shut. He never shuts the curtains. So I went up to the French windows and he’d locked them. And he never locks them. So then I banged on the door and he came, and he said he was ill. Well, he was trying to look ill, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t ill earlier on. He wasn’t ill at all. And you won’t believe this, but he wouldn’t let me in. He actually refused to let me in. He’d got someone there.’
She had paused to give Sara room to absorb this and produce the appropriate outraged response.
‘No. Oh, Sue, I am sorry.’ Sara was thinking, the bastard.
‘He’d got someone there, I’m sure of it. So that’s it, Sara. I mean it. That’s it. And do you know what? I’m not even angry. I’m calm. I’m really, really calm. And that’s it. He’s had it.’ She took a deep breath.
‘And so I came here, and I’ve had a proper think now, and I thought what I’ll do is, tomorrow I’ll go shopping in town and do Something for Myself. I’m going to get a new tracksuit and I’m going to get it tomorrow and get really fit and take proper care of myself and sod him. I’ve got this book my landlady lent me, how to treat your inner celebrity. You just decide what your type is and then you do all these things it tells you. Makes tons of sense when you read this book. So I’m going to make tomorrow the day I drink eight glasses of water, to clear the body of toxins. And I thought it’d be really nice to see you and have coffee – well, water probably – and just have a nice day and not think about him at all. Do you know, I’m practically over it already. I’ve decided, Sara, I’ve really decided. And I’m really calm. Stuff him.’
A slight screech had come into her voice and Sara heard her start breathing slowly in through her nose and out through her mouth, the way therapists tell you to.
‘Well done. You have a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow. Pump Room at eleven,’ she had said.
AND SO now here she was, pleased to have secured a table in the Pump Room, albeit one rather too close to the trio pounding out a reduction for piano, violin and cello of the Trout Quintet, and waiting for Sue. She had walked down through Northend before it got too hot, caught the Badger-line bus into town, browsed in the music shop and bought a rereleased CD of one of Edwin’s early recordings with a hilarious early photo of him, lugubrious and slick-haired, on the front, which she was looking forward to teasing him about. She had strolled round a watercolour exhibition in the Victoria Art Gallery. It was pleasant to feel unencumbered by the car-parking deadline, a little like being on holiday in a foreign city. She pushed the sudden thought of Paris from her mind as she saw Sue coming towards her, laden with the spoils of a morning’s fearless shopping. She was beautiful, aglow with the triumph of acquisition. Sara thought benignly that she looked so great striding across the Pump Room in her expensive sunglasses that she could be forgiven for not taking them off before she got to the table.
‘Hiya! Mmwaw! Mmwaw!’ she exclaimed, leaning over and bestowing extravagant air kisses on either side of Sara’s face, before landing theatrically in the chair opposite.
‘
Whoof! Sorry I’m late. Look at this.’ She stretched into one of her bags and pulled out a fistful of pale grey fleecy cotton. ‘New tracksuit. Maroon piping,’ she said. ‘I got fed up without one. I had another grey one, but I lost it somewhere. I thought it was at Aunt Livy’s, but anyway, it wasn’t. I lose track, I’ve got stuff all over the place. I should get it sorted out. Maybe I will now. I may have left it at Fortune Park. Anyway, it’s not there now. It could have been nicked, only you don’t like to think of stuff getting nicked from there, do you? Meant to be a bit classier than that, really, isn’t it?’
She burbled on as Sara ordered coffee. ‘You see, the Paul thing, and the tracksuit. They’re kind of related. I mean, I’ve just gone along wondering if any of it’ll turn out. I’ve done everything Paul wanted. Didn’t matter what he wanted, I did it. Anything. I just believed whatever he said.’
She reflected. ‘I can see now how wrong I was. He’s just strung me along, you know? And suddenly I’ve got fed up, see? Just so fed up I’m thinking, right, enough. If he wants to get someone else to do everything he wants, I’m thinking, well, Paul, you just sod off and I’ll just go and buy myself another tracksuit. And I just wish I’d done it earlier. Seen it. It’s all to do with self-esteem. Empowerment. Celebrating You. Know what I mean?’
The newfound power within her was making her babble. Coffee arrived.
‘I’ll pour, shall I? Are you having anything to eat? I’m starving. Screw Paul, I’m going to get fat.’
She craned round looking for a waiter, but instead her eyes rested on some point of interest near the door. She turned back to Sara confidentially.
‘There’s a bloke in the queue,’ she said in a quiet, puzzled voice, her chin inches from the tablecloth. ‘No, don’t look now, I’ll tell you when. I recognise him from a photograph. I’m sure it’s him. Remember Cecily, my landlady? He’s the boyfriend, only he’s married. He’s supposed to be spending the weekend with her, that’s why I went to Livy’s. Only he’s here with someone else. Him in the shirt and suit trousers and brand-new trainers. He does look strange.’