by Sam Baker
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Oh, I said she’d been in. He asked if she was a regular and I said not really. She’d come in once that I could remember.’
‘Did you say where she was living?’ Gil’s fist was clenched tight around his pint glass.
‘He didn’t ask.’
Wind howled through the trees and stripped rain from the leaves on to his head and into his face as if it knew he was coming. The sky was dusk dark, although it was not yet four. He should have brought a torch. Anyone with any sense would have brought a torch, but then people would have been seen him coming up the lane from the village to the house and Gil didn’t want to be seen in case somebody was watching.
And for once he wasn’t worrying about the village gossips. He only wished he was.
Stopping at the rusty gates to the house, he unzipped and pissed the pint he’d just drunk against a red-brick pillar, keeping one eye on the road that led past the gates and turned off towards an abandoned sheep farm further up. Follow the road beyond that and it would deliver you to a village on the far side of the saddle where the houses were mostly weekend cottages, incomers or holiday homes.
The rain slowed enough for him to check the road was deserted; and then stopped entirely, just as he opened the small gate in the big wrought-iron one, and prepared to take himself somewhere dry. A sliver of light behind a curtained upstairs window went out the moment he leaned on the bell push. Gil waited for another light to appear, one on the landing or on the stairs or in the hall. It didn’t. All he got was darkness inside the house, and gloom without. Rain pattered from the trees mimicking the way it had fallen from the sky until moments before.
A gargoyle high on a corner of the oldest part poured water in a steady stream on to gravel. There should have been a butt below. There undoubtedly was back in the day when the house had gardeners and servants, and probably an old butler so infirm it was all he could do to manage the door. Gil had picked apples in Wildfell’s orchards when he was barely a teenager for a pittance an hour. Picked apples and tried to get his hand up a girl’s skirt. The skirt was washed-out denim, short enough to be barely there. It had still been enough to keep him out, no matter how he wrestled or pleaded.
‘Who is it?’
Helen’s voice was hoarse, almost disguised. Loud enough for Gil to realise she was standing on the other side of the locked door.
‘It’s me. Gil.’
‘Is anybody with you?’
He looked round stupidly at the wet gravel and sodden trees. He wasn’t sure which would be the right reply but answered truthfully. ‘No. I came alone.’
A bolt shot back and the door slipped open a little, with Helen out of sight behind it. ‘Come in then,’ she said. She sounded cross, or maybe just tired.
In her hand was a pencil torch she used to light her way, only turning it off when they reached the upper sitting room. She shut the curtains before turning on the light. Her laptop was on. A picture of a ruined street filling the screen. Ruined street hardly did the picture justice. There was a desolation to the photograph that made it almost painful. ‘I started going through my USBs,’ she says. ‘Seeing if I’ve still got the picture files to put the Paris exhibition together. Not that it’s much use to me now. It’s more the principle.’
‘This was one of them?’
‘No, this is Syria. The picture I told you about …’
‘Are you all right?’
She glanced up, her face lit from the side by a table lamp placed low, and given an unhealthy glow by her screen. She looked like a different woman from the day before, hollow-eyed and haunted.
‘Helen …’
‘I feel watched,’ she said. ‘I thought it was you. I thought it was this bloody village. It’s not. Ever since I came back from London I’ve felt watched. Art would have said it was paranoia. That I needed to get a grip on myself. Stop being hysterical. I shouldn’t have gone to London, but I needed the pills. It was stupid of me. And then, that birdwatcher … standing there, with his binoculars, just staring …’
Gil started to speak but she put up a hand to silence him.
‘Don’t tell me it’s nothing, a coincidence. Someone’s out there. I can feel it. Even the bloody cat’s freaked out.’
‘Where is Ghost anyway?’ Gil looked around.
‘This is the point you’re meant to say I’m being stupid. That, obviously, there’s no one out there watching me. I’m imagining it. Not start me worrying about the missing cat too.’
Gil took a deep breath. Best just to come out with it. ‘Someone is looking for you, Helen. I only just heard about it. That’s why I’m here.’
Helen clapped a hand to her mouth and, for a moment, Gil thought she was going to vomit. It obviously took an effort to force her hand away.
Removing his suit jacket, he shook it on to the floor, then sat in the armchair without thinking to ask. He watched Helen clock the over-familiarity and decide to let it go.
‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ he said. ‘On the walk here. It’s not the police. If they’d found you, they’d be outside with their sirens on. And if they were looking very hard, believe me, they would have found you by now. So they’re not. It’s someone in a hire car. My money’s on another journalist, or a private detective. Neither of which is great, obviously.’
‘What if it’s Mark Ridley?’ Helen said suddenly.
‘Who?’
‘Art’s friend. You know, from the Admiral Duncan.’
‘Ah,’ Gil nodded. ‘Why would it be him, after all this time?’
Helen looked slightly sheepish.
Was he going to lose the story to someone else? Gil raised his eyebrows. ‘Something you want to tell me?’
‘He’s been in touch,’ Helen said. ‘With my sister, by email. And he called my doctor, Caroline, trying to find out where I was.’
‘You didn’t think to tell me that?’ Gil didn’t bother to conceal his irritation. ‘Anything else, while we’re on the subject?’
Helen swallowed, and Gil leaned forward. He was a tolerant man – laid-back enough to be horizontal, Jan always said – but Helen was testing his patience.
‘I forget what I’ve said and what I haven’t …’ she started. ‘But yes. You should probably know about Tom.’
‘Tom?’ That name rang a bell. ‘Ex-boyfriend Tom?’
Helen nodded.
‘Been in touch with him too?’
‘No!’ Helen looked indignant. ‘Well, yes, actually, but not how it sounds.’
‘How is it then?’ Gil patted his pocket for his B&H and cursed himself for not buying a packet. All because he had to make a point.
‘I called him, apparently. And no, I don’t know why and I don’t remember doing it, but he told my sister I called him after the fire, and … he emailed me.’
‘He emailed you?!’
‘Don’t worry, I didn’t reply. I’m not entirely stupid.’
Gil turned away. He hadn’t felt this riled up since the last days of Jan.
They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the drip, drip, drip of the guttering straight on to gravel outside while Helen gnawed at her cuticle. Gil had to resist the urge to slap her hand away.
‘So, that’s two suspects: Mark Ridley and Tom … Anyone else I need to know about?’
Helen shook her head and then stopped, colour draining from her face.
‘Art.’
‘What about Art?’
‘What if it’s Art?’
Gil sighed. ‘He’s dead, Helen. You said so yourself.’
‘But what if he’s not?’
‘They’ve got his bloody body. Or what’s left of it. You saw it yourself …’
‘I saw a body.’
Gil looked at her.
‘I can’t remember anything,’ she said furiously. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd? There’s a whole day missing. At least a day, if not more.’
‘What are you trying to say?’ He wasn’t irr
itated any longer. Either she was a bloody good actress, or she believed it.
‘I don’t know.’ She scanned the room wildly, as if expecting to see a face staring in the first-floor window behind her. ‘I thought I saw Art’s body. But what if it wasn’t Art? He could still be out there, watching me.’
Gil tried not to sigh. She was yanking his chain, playing the hysteric to throw him off the scent. But her body language … the way she hunched up, knees clutched to her chest like a child … What had she said before about trying to make herself as small as possible?
‘Helen, think about it … Why would he hide? And who was in Art’s flat if not Art?’
‘I don’t know. But you don’t know Art. You don’t know what he’s capable of.’
‘Helen, you told me.’
‘I told you a fraction of it,’ she said fiercely. ‘There were other things.’
‘Worse things?’ asked Gil, remembering how hard it had been to listen to her describe what happened in Syria.
‘Similar things,’ she said. ‘Lots of similar things. It’s possible to forget, you know. In between. You can fool yourself it’s not that bad. That it was your fault. That it won’t happen again.’
She stared at him bleakly.
‘It’s like war. It always happens again. Only, if you’re going to accept that, why would you want to stay alive?’
30
Gil’s phone bleeped, breaking the silence that hung over them, and he glanced down. A Google alert in French filled his screen. The words Arthur Huntingdon leapt out at him.
‘Everything all right?’
Gil glanced up, startled. ‘Uh yes, yes,’ he said. ‘All fine. Just a, uh, text. From my daughter. But I need to speak to her. I should go.’
Helen’s face lost a little of its weariness. ‘You called her? Great, Gil, that’s really great. Call her now if you want.’
But Gil was already on his feet, shrugging his way back into his soggy jacket. ‘I should go,’ he repeated. ‘Really.’
‘But everything’s …?’
‘Yes, yes. All fine. I just need to—’
‘Of course,’ Helen sounded confused, but he could hear her feet on the treads behind him as he took the stairs two at a time. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, overtaking him at the bottom to unlock the door. ‘You know how I am with locks.’
‘I’ll be back,’ Gil promised. The only truthful thing he’d said in the last two minutes. ‘Lock up safely in the meantime.’
Helen forced a smile, and Gil felt a pang of guilt as the door swung shut, locks clicking into place one after another behind it.
He knew it looked odd, leaving like that. But he had to get away.
As he approached the outskirts of the village, Gil passed the old bus shelter. Pulling over, he covered the phone’s screen with his jacket, slid the link open and pasted the first line into Google Translate:
Place des Vosges fire body no longer believed to be that of journalist Arthur Huntingdon. Paris police now urgently seek a man and woman to assist with their enquiries …
He read it again and then a third time. Had she been playing him all along? Setting herself up as Huntingdon’s victim when really she was his accomplice?
A twig snapped somewhere to his left and Gil spun round. For the first time it occurred to him that he might be the one in danger. Behind and ahead stretched the empty road, the shadow of hedgerow looming on either side. Dusk had fallen fast. Anything could be out there. Anyone.
There was an alternative view, of course.
That Helen was telling the truth. That her fear of Art was genuine, the look on her face in the glow of her laptop screen when she’d asked ‘What if the body wasn’t Art’s?’ looked real enough. If everything she’d told him about Huntingdon was true and her husband was alive, she was in real danger.
‘Fuck,’ Gil shouted into the night. He wasn’t a big curser, but swearing seemed the only sane response. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ His words were swallowed by sodden hills and vanished into the night. If the body wasn’t Art, whose was it?
The high street was dark except for an occasional streetlight. Not that that meant anything when it came to curtain twitchers. Still, he shut the door quietly, stepping out of his sopping suit on the landing and threw himself into a shower in the hope of steaming his brain to life. Drying himself roughly, Gil shrugged on the ancient towelling robe that hung on the bathroom door and went to make coffee.
The milk was off. Again. Black, then.
This was becoming a pattern, he thought, as he started skimming news sites. It was early days for the new story. So far only a couple of French sites carried the news. But it would be only a matter of time, hours even, before the man and the woman sought by French police were named. Then there would be nothing Gil could do to protect her. Gil caught himself. Why the hell did he still think she needed protecting? The things she’d seen, the things she’d done … She was tougher than she looked, tougher than him by a long chalk.
The only thing protecting her was living here, in the middle of nowhere, using another name – but at least one person had managed to find her.
The aspirin packet in the bathroom cupboard was eighteen months out of date but Gil washed a couple down with coffee anyway, then grabbed his notepad and added two names to the list he’d begun earlier in the week. There were four now, not including the scratched out Hélène Graham.
Caroline – PTSD
Tom – ex-boyfriend
Mark Ridley – journalist
Carl – German photographer, Syria
‘Caroline PTSD’ typed into the search engine brought him a host of names, when he narrowed it down by searching UK pages only. There were several leads, most based in London. The medical qualifications meant so little to Gil, he hardly knew where to start. He noted down a few likely names, numbers and websites to revisit later and moved on. Opening another tab he typed in ‘Mark Ridley’ and journalist and found himself back on more familiar turf. Like Huntingdon, Ridley had Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn …
In his late forties, Ridley was still a journalist and running a news agency in the south-west. No call to be chasing down a story in the north then, Gil thought. Unless there was a south-western connection to make it viable, and to his knowledge neither Helen nor Huntingdon had history down there. More likely the interest was personal. He was Art’s friend, after all. Hadn’t Helen said something about Ridley getting involved when she left Art the first time? Reaching for his recorder to play it back, Gil realised that was pointless. The recording stopped long before she reached that point in the conversation.
The pictures of Ridley didn’t tell Gil much. The description of the man asking after Helen could fit him, but then it could fit half the men Gil knew between thirty-five and fifty. Gil circled his name twice in black Biro to indicate further research was needed. He could contact the man on Facebook, but that would take time. Twitter was too public. And he hadn’t got the hang of LinkedIn for anything other than snooping.
Unless, of course, unlike Karen’s, the man’s Facebook account wasn’t locked? Quickly, Gil set up a different Facebook account using a variation of his Gmail address, drumming his fingers impatiently on the coffee table as he waited for a confirmation email so he could prove he wasn’t a bot. Once his new account was live he sent Ridley a friend request. On a whim, he added a private message. It was risky, but what the hell?
I hear you’ve been looking for Helen Lawrence? I may have information.
Although he wasn’t sure the message would go, it uploaded the second Gil clicked send. Clearly Ridley hadn’t reset his privacy settings in quite some time.
Gil loved this bit of the job and hated it too. The frustration of getting nowhere fast made his brain bleed; but the adrenalin rush of knowing he was on to a lead was what had kept him going for the last forty years. He still preferred the old methods, door-knocking and legwork. But he couldn’t deny the Internet was handy. Even if it had made journalists into desk jockeys.
Turning his attention to the last two names on his list, Gil groaned. Two first names to choose between; he didn’t hold out much hope. Why hadn’t he thought to ask Helen for Tom’s surname?
Carl or Tom? Tom or Carl? Might as well just toss a coin.
Next to Carl he’d written ‘German photographer, Syria’. Next to Tom it said simply ‘ex-boyfriend’. So Carl it was.
It turned out to be the work of ten minutes to find Carl Ackerman, German photographer. His website was at the bottom of the second page, at the top of the third was a link for his agency. Like Helen, he specialised in reportage. So, Gil assumed, it followed that they’d know each other. The link below this was for a German news story. One word leapt out: Syrian.
Opening the link, Gil put it through Google Translate.
According to a German newswire, Ackerman was missing. He hadn’t been seen since he boarded a flight from Damascus to Paris. Gil skimmed the appalling translation, adjusting words for sense as he went, his blood racing, his head pounding. Neither had anything to do with his headache.
This was Helen’s Carl. It had to be. Gil knew Carl was a common name, but no way were there two German photojournalists in Syria this summer called Carl. Except … Gil re-read the article. The dates didn’t add up. Carl had been reported missing less than two weeks ago. Gil’s heart sank. It was a duff lead. A coincidence. A huge one, but a coincidence all the same.
Gil groaned and threw himself back in his chair.
There had to be more to go on. Leaning forward, he cleared the search box and typed in ‘Carl Ackerman’ photographer Paris instead. Several more snippets scrolled up; two in French, about a war photography exhibition; two more in German. The first German one was in purple, to show he’d read it. Gil clicked on the second.
Again those incongruous dates.
‘Got you!’ Gil slammed his palm on the coffee table, his half-full mug slopping cold coffee on to his notes. Ackerman hadn’t been reported missing by his agency until 18 September because before that he was on annual leave. But records showed he’d been booked on to a flight from Paris to Berlin on Saturday 1st. The day after the fire.