Her mood did not improve when she realised that the rich terra cotta walls that had seemed so atmospheric for suppers with wine and candlelight were going to look saturnine and claustrophobic in the cold light of morning, and if worse were needed Alice’s voice suddenly rang through from the sitting room, each word audible, and she realised that the double doors were going to provide almost no barrier to sound.
In the hall Ben was calling her name. Sweeping in, he cried, “There you are! Well, what do you think?” Stationing himself in front of the fireplace he surveyed the room as an estate agent might inspect a property that with just a little more attention might yet come up to scratch. “Not too bad, is it? What do you think about the walls? Could do with a different colour perhaps.” He cast her a hasty smile, which to Catherine in her new mood seemed evasive. “What do you think? Cream? White? Or maybe some sort of wallpaper? God, I’m hopeless on these things,” he added with the perverse masculine pride that men take in their deficiencies at renovations. “What do you think, Moggy?”
In the instant before she answered, it occurred to her that she could do this gently, with tact, she could put it in such a way that he would come to understand her slowly and with less chance of taking offence; it occurred to her that only moments ago everything had been mending between them and this might set them back; but it was too late, her anger was too fierce, it carried her forward in a red-hot sea and she said bitterly, “I hate it!”
“Well, that’s what I’m saying it can be changed ‘
“No,” she cut in sharply, ‘the room. I hate the entire room! Everything about it. Everything! I don’t want to stay here I don’t want to be in here at all! I want to sleep upstairs.”
Ben’s eyes darkened, his mouth curved downwards. “But Moggy .. .” He gestured helplessness. “How?”
“You could carry me!”
“You mean, just for tonight?” The lightness in his voice betrayed a premature relief.
“No, I mean, always,” she snapped, trembling.
He took a long laboured breath.
“Why not?” she cried, hating the petulance in her voice.
“Well, I could carry you up sometimes, of course I could.” Appearing to realise how grudging this must sound, he repeated with more enthusiasm, “Of course I could! But what if I wasn’t here? You’d be stuck.”
“What about a st airlift I don’t see why there can’t be a st airlift
“I told you, Moggy,” he explained in a tone of great patience, ‘it’d be a complicated business. All the bends, the landings .. . And if we decide to move well!” He threw up a hand as if the argument were self-evident.
Her heart gave a tight thump. “But we’re not moving. We decided.” She heard her voice rise. “I thought we’d decided. Hadn’t we?” When he still didn’t answer, she demanded unsteadily, “Hadn’t we, Ben?”
He muttered testily, “Sure.”
“Well, then.” She forced a note of reason into her voice. “You do see, darling, don’t you, it’ll be hopeless if I can’t get upstairs.”
“Stairlifts are expensive, Cath.”
“Well, how expensive?”
“A lot.”
“But how much exactly?”
He dropped his gaze and his jaw tightened.
As the silence drew out, her throat seized, her eyes burnt hotly. “You said you were getting a quote.”
He didn’t like being caught out. His gaze sharpened, his lips compressed. “There was no point. It was going to be something like six or seven thousand, and the fact is, Cath’ he tipped her an unhappy glance “I can’t manage that sort of money right now.”
She stared at him. “You mean .. . that’s the reason?”
“Yup.”
“Money?” she asked stupidly, as if he hadn’t made the situation perfectly clear.
“If I’d had anything to spare, Moggy, anything.. .” He gestured the whole world.
“But I thought.. . Simon said you’d managed to claw back the money, to
pay off the overdrafts. He said you were back to where you were before
this thing in Poland ‘
Ben’s anger was very sudden. He held up a splayed hand that trembled visibly, he said in a furious voice, “This is nothing to do with Simon! How dare he try and interfere! Christ!”
“He didn’t. I mean, he just told me that RNP was back on its feet.
That’s all. Nothing else.”
“He knows nothing about anything!” Ben cut a swathe through the air.
“Nothing!”
She slumped a little in her seat. “Okay, okay .. .”
For a moment he stood still, locked into his anger. She called his name. When he didn’t reply she called a second time and held out a conciliatory hand.
He turned at last and, seeing her hand, came and crouched beside the wheelchair. Wrapping his hand around hers, he smiled with a touch of the old tenderness. “The thing is, Moggy.. .” He sighed as if he hardly knew how to go on. “I would have preferred to talk about all this later when we’ve got more time but since it’s come up ... You don’t mind?”
“Don’t mind?”
“Talking about this now?”
“No, no,” she said eagerly.
The thing is,” he said, “I’m not just a bit short.”
“You mean .. .?”
He hated having to spell it out. He said sharply, “I’m broke!”
She felt a pull of dread. “When you say broke .. .?”
“Spectacularly. Incredibly. Completely.”
She gripped his hand more tightly. “Tell me. How much?”
He gave an odd snort and muttered under his breath something that could have been, “Bled dry.”
Her bad ear seemed to ring with the effort of trying to hear him. “Did you say bled dry?”
He held up a hand as if to withdraw the remark, then, rising from his haunches, swung round and sat down on the bed, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. Behind the faint smile that was his mask against all eventualities, his face was pitted with anxiety.
“Got into this agreement,” he said at last. “Can’t get out of it. Got to pay. No choice.” He shook his head slowly from side to side as if he still couldn’t believe he had got himself into such a mess.
“How much do you owe?”
“Ah, there we are. It’s a nice round two hundred thousand.” He gave a broken laugh. “No half measures, Moggy!”
There was a long silence broken only by the sound of Emma calling to Alice in the next room, asking about a bowl for the olives.
Catherine was very still, as if this might help her to absorb what he was saying. She must have been holding her breath because she had to exhale suddenly and take a gulp of air. “God.” And still she couldn’t take it in. “God,” she gasped again. Eventually she managed to say, “It can’t be put off, this debt?”
“No.”
“It can’t be renegotiated?”
He gave a small shake of his head, and there was a glint of brilliance in his eyes.
“But the overdraft the one you paid off after the Poland thing can’t
you go back and rearrange it? Can’t you ‘
His fury reared up as rapidly as before. The blood rushed into his face, he shook slightly. “I told you Simon doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Overdrafts! For God’s sake! Stupid bloody idiot!”
“Can’t it I don’t know be paid in instalments?” She hadn’t spoken particularly loudly but Ben flicked his eyes towards the double doors and shot her a furious warning. Catherine closed her eyes for a moment. “What about instalments?” she repeated in a whisper.
Still in the grip of his indignation, he said tightly, “No.”
The front door banged, a phone started ringing, voices sounded dimly in the hall. Catherine thought she recognised her father’s laugh.
She said, “But surely they’d agree to ‘
“No,” he insisted with a small shu
dder. Then, almost by way of apology, he said bleakly, “It’s already in instalments, you see.”
She felt the blankness come over her that was her protection against bad news. “You mean .. . there’s more to pay?”
“Been paid.”
She went on asking questions mechanically, unemotionally, like an investigator who must collect the facts. There’ve been other instalments?”
He made another attempt at black humour. “Ah just a few! Three, actually.”
“Three,” she echoed dully. “And this one ...?”
“Is the last.”
“The earlier payments, were they .. .?” Seeing the answer in his face, she turned it into a statement. “They were for the same amount.”
He held her gaze: it wasn’t a denial.
Out in the street a child gave a sudden wail and a father’s voice called out wearily.
Some part of her was in free fall, she had to hold herself steady. The money so far, how did you raise it? Where did it come from?”
“Oh, here and there.”
“Here and !” She pulled herself up short. Tell me where?”
“I don’t know. Cash. Loans. Overdrafts. Anything I could get my hands on.”
Her calmness finally deserted her. “But so much, Ben! Six hundred thousand! How was it possible to borrow so much?
“Never mind how I borrowed it,” he said ominously. The point is, I did it. I’ve managed to pay off three quarters of the bloody debt. Something to be congratulated on, I would have thought!”
There was a pause like darkness.
“But it’ll have to be repaid, won’t it? How will we ever repay it, Ben? So much.”
“Oh, it’ll only take a couple of years, maybe less,” he said dismissively. “I’ve turned over far more than that before now. I can do it again.”
She was finally reduced to a bewildered silence. He’d never mentioned this sort of money before. He’d always told her that cash was tight.
“In the meantime, I’ve got to find this last bloody payment,” he said.
“And that’s the problem, you see. Run out of people to lend it to me.” He gave a grim chuckle. “Not much to be said at the end of the day, is there, Moggy? I’ve really fucked up this time.”
Knowing how proud he was, realising how much this admission must have cost him, she avoided anything that might be taken as a reproach and said carefully, “There must be something. What about going bankrupt? All sorts of people go bankrupt. In fact, rich people seem to do it all the time.”
“Not an option.”
“But it’s not such a dreadful thing nowadays,” she argued lightly.
“It’s almost ‘
“Just can’t.”
She left this alone for the moment. “All right. So what happens if
you don’t pay? They can only sue you, surely. And in the time it
takes to get to court we might have found some money ‘
“No.”
“I don’t see why you can’t stall them. There must be a way.”
He reverted to a flippant tone. “Ah, well, you see they’re threatening to tell. Have me locked up.”
“Locked up? How do you mean locked up?” She laughed nervously.
He threw her an irritated glance, as if she were being exceptionally dense.
There was a rap on the door. Even as her father called her name, she cried, “Later!” in a fierce voice. She heard his steps shuffle a little before moving away.
She turned back to Ben. “You mean that they could get you into trouble?”
“They think so.”
“Who are these people? How can they threaten you like this?”
He gave a defiant shrug. “Just people who have come across something that how shall I put it? could be misinterpreted. They reckon I owe them some money and now they want it back. And if I don’t give it to them, they’ll drop me into what you might describe as deep shit.” He spread both hands, he tilted his head to one side: the storyteller reaching the end of his tale.
She stared at him blankly.
“For God’s sake, don’t get all disapproving on me, Moggy. I didn’t do anything very terrible. Really! Lots of people have done the same. It’s just that well, technically speaking, it wasn’t quite .. .” He sucked in his breath.
“Legal?”
He rolled his eyes a little roguishly, like a schoolboy who has been caught out in a misdemeanour but, given half a chance, would commit the same offence all over again.
“What you’re saying is that these people are blackmailing you?”
He turned this idea over in his mind and agreed without rancour, “If you like.”
“But who are they, for God’s sake? What sort of people?”
“Oh .. .” He brushed this aside. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” she whispered incredulously.
In one of his rapid switches of mood, he shot her a look of sudden resentment. “It’s complicated!” he snapped. Scrambling to his feet, he paced restlessly off across the room.
She bit back her thoughts with difficulty. “So what’s to be done?” she said.
He came and stood before her, his arms hanging limply at his sides, back in the role of the lost boy. He made a show of hunting through the possibilities, but she knew what was coming, she knew there was only one option.
In the end it was easier to say it for him. “The house,” she murmured.
His gaze, the small regretful outward turn of his hands, gave her his answer.
A knock at the door again. Alice’s voice said, “Catherine? Ben? The police are here to see you.”
Ben’s head jerked up. He muttered, “Christ.” Meeting Catherine’s eyes, he gave a nervy laugh. “Thought we’d seen the last of them.”
Chapter Eight
“I HAVE to notify you,” Denise began formally, ‘that last night we charged a man in relation to your case. The charges are aggravated burglary and grievous bodily harm.”
There was a moment of complete stillness. At some level, far removed from this news, Catherine took in the changes to the living room, the way the sofas had been pressed back against the walls, the arrival of a table lamp she’d never seen before and didn’t like, with a tall entwined-metal base and a Japanese crushed-paper shade.
Ben, perched on a chair arm beside her, broke the silence with a sharp explosive hiss, a sound of disgust or dismay. “Christ!” he muttered weakly.
Catherine was simply lost. “I thought it was just my brooch. You’d found someone with the brooch.”
Denise’s reply was deflected by Ben’s insistent: “Who is this guy?”
“His name is Jan Pavlik, commonly known as Johnny Pavlik.”
“Pavlik?” Seemingly unaware that this had sounded like a trumpet of recognition, it was a moment before Ben answered Catherine’s searching gaze with a brusque indignant shrug. “Strange sort of name,” he argued irritably.
Denise said, “He came from the Czech Republic originally.”
“Don’t tell me,” Ben scoffed, ‘an illegal immigrant down on his luck.”
“He’s an illegal immigrant, yes.”
“Ha!” Ben exclaimed, half surprised at the accuracy of his own prediction. “How did I guess? And what else can we surmise?” he demanded sarcastically. “Seeking asylum? Fiddling the welfare system?”
Quietly ignoring this outburst, Denise looked to Catherine for questions. But Catherine had no questions and no curiosity. The impulse to keep her distance was very strong. It was a matter of self-preservation born out of fear, not of Pavlik directly, but of her own feelings towards him: the fear that she might grow to feel something as exhausting and worthless as hate. Even allowing his name to imprint on her memory was like a small descent.
She would have left Ben to talk to Denise then, but something held her back and she realised she had a question after all.
“Has he done this sort of thing before?” she asked.
“Not as far as
we know.”
“He’s never attacked anyone?”
“Not that we’re aware of.”
“No stalking or anything like that?”
“No.”
Ben interrupted in a tone of aggrievement, “You never said you’d got a suspect.”
“We thought we just had someone for receiving. Then our investigations led us to realise that we had our man.”
“When did you realise?”
“Two days ago.”
“Two days,”I he echoed accusingly.
“There was no point in saying anything until we were sure.”
Ben let this go with a sharp frown before asking in a more reasonable tone, “How long’s this Pavlik been over here then?”
“He’s lived in London for approximately five years.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Drifter?”
“No. He had regular work.”
“What sort of work?”
“As a waiter.”
“A waiter! Where?”
“Various places,” Denise said, clearly not wanting to be drawn.
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