Subpoena Colada

by Mark Dawson

  Then, in the space of three minutes, my telephone rings twice (I ignore it). Then my mobile, stowed in my briefcase, starts up. I try to ignore the merry ringing tone, and check my mail instead. As I stare dumbly at the screen, trying to shut out the mobile and the telephone, both of which are coalescing in a jarring symphony, a new email lands in my inbox. I crawl the cursor across and double-click:

  From: dolan.scott@extravaganza.co.uk

  To: daniel.tate@whitehunter.com

  Subject: Answer your phone

  You might as well answer your phones. I’m not going to go away. I just want to talk. We can make it worth your while.

  Scott Dolan

  Before I can make a decision, a piercing sensation lances up from my chest. My vision dims, as if someone were lowering a muslin drape over my head. I slap a hand onto my forehead; my temperature has gone through the roof. My heart is jack hammering. The shock leaves me breathless. I regulate my breathing until things return to something like normal and then glug down rancid mineral water from a bottle of Evian that has stood on my shelf for a month.

  I’m sweating.

  I go to the toilet and dunk my head in a basin of cold water.

  I didn’t bother booking that return appointment with the doctor. Maybe I should.

  COLD SHOULDERED

  Still no mail from Hannah. All I want to do is talk to her. I call home to see if Brian is there, in case the girl who called me earlier has called again. There’s no reply. Maybe he’s moved into a hotel.

  Then I have an idea. If Hannah is trying to contact me, maybe I should get proactive and try to find her.

  EMPATHOGEN

  This past summer, three months before she left, Hannah persuaded me that we should go to Ibiza ‘before we both get too old’. I was never one for dance music but I let her talk me into it. We flew to the island, splashed out on a gorgeous hotel room in San Antonio, and had the time of our lives. We did the clubs, got drunk, splashed through the Mediterranean surf, half out of our heads.

  At her prompting I scored some Ecstasy from a dealer outside Manumission. Hannah had never popped an E before and I was out of practice; both of us were keen to try.

  We draped towels over the lights to soften them, poured a pitcher of iced mineral water, placed a tube of Vicks inhalant and a tray of ice cubes near to hand, lay back, relaxed, swallowed.

  An hour passed. Waiting for the rush, talking, her talking just to keep the nerves at bay. The pills kicked in and the world billowed open, as if I’d never seen it like this before. Guilt and worry were instantly obliterated. The office, always at the fringe of my awareness, was atomized. We locked eyes; I could see the virgin rapture in her face and, for a moment, I was jealous. But then the drug softened my own hard edges, unraveled tight knots of tension I had ignored for months, slackened my muscles, loosened my tongue.

  I talked on for hours: talking about us, talking about where we’d been and where we were going, what we wanted. She listened, nodding and smiling sadly.

  And then, for three hours, we made love. She smelt of apple blossom and tasted of peaches.

  We slowly came down together. Hannah lay on the bed, her back to me. I pressed myself tight against her skin, clasped my hands around her waist and fitted my knees into the space behind hers. The neon of Calle San Vicente rose and fell, sparking against the glass and colouring the ceiling. As I stroked her red hair, full of that smell of lemons that still conjures her today, I noticed a single tear roll down her cheek.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Just emotional, that’s all.’

  CHASING FAME

  Thirty minutes later and I’m standing opposite the main entrance to the Sanderson. I’m guessing Hannah is staying here with Haines. Maybe she was out when I came by on Monday. It won’t take long to check.

  As I’m summoning the courage to make an entrance, not quite knowing what I’m going to say, Haines comes out of the hotel lobby. I freeze. He’s wearing a leather jacket with combat trousers and shades and has a backpack slung over one shoulder. He’s already too far away from the entrance to retrace his steps by the time he spots me. Terror chills his face and he starts into a sprint. Perplexed, I give pursuit.

  ‘Stop,’ I call out. ‘I just want a word with you.’

  He speeds up, dodging pedestrians as he powers up the road.

  Why are we running? I only want to talk to him.

  A delivery man pushes a trolley of boxes through the door of a shop. Haines swerves to avoid him, skidding on an icy patch. He almost falls flat, one hand touching the ground, to keep him from sprawling.

  ‘Haines,’ I holler. ‘I just want to talk.’

  He continues running. We pass a tinted window and for a moment I catch my reflection speeding across the glass: hair blown back against my crown, sweat washing down my forehead into fanatical eyes, lips pulled back to bare my clenched teeth.

  ‘Vinny,’ I shout.

  He cuts across a slow-moving queue of traffic, horns honking, and clambers over a fence into a park. I follow, but fifteen metres behind, my legs sinking up to the ankle in the drifts of snow. We continue like this for several minutes, both struggling through the heaped-up snow. Haines is athletic and much faster than me - his legs pump like pistons in and out of the snowdrift – and now he’s reached a path dosed with grit. I’m starting to lose ground.

  As we approach a statue he risks a glance over his shoulder. I’m gasping for air, stumbling like a drunk, just about ready to give up now. His attention distracted, he doesn’t see the tiny dog scampering onto the path to fetch a stick thrown by its owner. He trips over it and hits the ground hard. When I reach him, wheezing from the exertion of the chase, his bloody knees are showing through his ripped trousers. He raises his hands to ward me off; his palms are bleeding too, some of the skin scraped away, and studded with tiny stones and rock salt from the path.

  I wipe sweat out of my eyes. My heart feels ready to explode. The freezing air throbs as I draw it down into my lungs in hungry gulps.

  ‘What are you running for?’ I pant at him.

  ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ he whimpers.

  ‘What are you talking about? I just want to talk to you.’

  ‘I’m really sorry about Hannah,’ he garbles. ‘I didn’t know anything about you - she said it was finished I would’ve never done anything if I’d known.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Filming.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘I’m not in any of the scenes they’re shooting today.’

  ‘Where’s she living? With you at that hotel?’

  ‘No - her own place.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think she’s living with a friend.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know, man - I swear it - I’ve never been there and she hasn’t told me - she just moved in last week - she’s renting with a friend - she was in a hotel for a couple of months before that - that’s God’s own truth.’

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘That’s it?’ he asks. ‘That’s all you wanted?’

  I turn to leave him sprawled out on the path.

  He scrabbles to his feet. Now that I’m leaving, he finds some chutzpah.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ he calls out after me. ‘I’m going to call your boss about this. You’re a frigging lunatic. I’m gonna get you fired.’

  The emptiest of empty threats.

  I ignore him and head for the road.

  THE REASON BRIAN WAS LATE LAST SUNDAY

  Back at the office, the air outside is cold and my breath is steaming damply in front of my face. I take a stroll around the Square; I need time to think. I’m still agitated after that chase with Haines. As I’m completing my slow circuit, my attention is drawn to a familiar bald dome: Dawkins, walking in close file with Fulton towards the office. Both of them are carrying cardboard cups from Starbucks. I press myself back against the
dark-glass windows at the side of the lobby and watch as they stroll in together, the picture of easy comradeship, joshing together like old friends.

  I imagine the things - all violent, all illegal, all very cathartic - I would like to do to the Dork right now.

  I’m still thinking dark thoughts when Scott Dolan takes my elbow in his right hand. His grip is firm and insistent and he has a determination in his eyes that wasn’t there before. He’s holding an envelope in his spare hand.

  ‘Hello again,’ he says. ‘You’re a hard man to get hold of.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

  ‘I’m going to show you something and then I’m going to go away. And I won’t bother you again.’

  ‘Why do I find that impossible to believe?’

  He hands me the envelope. ‘Just take a look at the pictures in there and tell me what you think. That’s all. Go on - open it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it.’

  I undo the envelope and pull out several glossy 10 by 8s, long shots taken by someone with a telephoto lens. The photos show Brian Fey standing outside John French’s house. I recognize his fire-engine red front door from the newspapers. Brian is standing at the foot of the steps leading up to the door in one shot, and at the top of the steps in another. He looks agitated, his face turned to the camera, cigarette in hand. Another photo shows him with his arm cocked, apparently while knocking on the door. In another shot the door is open and the inside of the hallway is visible. Brian has a look of surprise on his face, maybe because French has finally succumbed to his siege. In the final picture Brian is mid-step, halfway across the threshold. I turn the prints over. On the back of each, someone has inscribed the date and the time: they’re all labeled last Sunday, each falling between 5.28 and 5.30. This is around the time - give or take 20 minutes - that the pathologist suggests John French died.

  ‘What are these?’ I ask superfluously. I know exactly what they are.

  ‘That’s Brian Fey - ex-rockstar, your client and soon to be chief suspect in what’s about to become a rather notorious murder inquiry - stood outside the door of the victim right around the time the police think he was killed. One of our freelance snappers was tailing Fey last week. We got these back from him. Interesting, aren’t they? You see the date and the time on the back? Just before French died. Listen, no bullshit, these are going to the police first thing on Monday. I can’t hold on to these. Withholding evidence, you know - I’d get into all sorts of trouble. Then we’re going to run them on our front page on Tuesday. I just wondered whether you wanted to make a comment before we do? It’s a chance - a last chance - to save your own reputation. Brian’s in the shit, for sure, but it’s not going to look good for you to be seen to have been working for a convicted murderer, is it? Professionally, I mean – career-wise. All kinds of stuff could rub off on you. Onto your firm.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘Course not. We’re just giving you a chance to fire off a pre-emptive strike.’

  ‘Why would I wanna do that? Brian didn’t kill him.’

  ‘You don’t sound so sure now.’

  ‘I still haven’t got anything to say.’

  ‘Sure? No second chances this time.’

  I articulate each word slowly and distinctly: ‘No comment.’

  ‘All right. I’m just gonna say this: my editor’s killed the piece I was doing on John French. Not the right atmosphere for the story I had in mind, he says. And I’ve been doing the fucking Guest List for three fucking years, Danny, three years of my life wasted peddling that toxic shit. The John French expose was my ticket to proper journalism. So if I can’t get him, I’m fucking well gonna nail Fey instead. And anyone else who’s caught up in it. Just so you know.’

  I walk back into the office. ‘Last chance, Danny.’

  I keep walking. This time Dolan doesn’t try to follow me.

  REVIEWING THE EVIDENCE

  I spend the rest of the afternoon playing the answerphone tape back, again and again, trying to work myself into Brian’s mind, trying to figure out whether he’d be capable of killing John French. Through the booze, the drunken sobbing, his voice has a hollow note of despondency about it - of finality, a quality I hadn’t noticed before in him. The thought begins to coalesce in my mind that maybe he could have done this. I hardly know him, after all, so how can I say what he’s capable of?

  Who sent that tape to me? I call the mailroom in case it was delivered by one of the courier firms that bike our stuff around the City. But they’ve got no record of receiving the package. I call reception to see if someone brought it in by hand; no one recalls accepting it. I’m at a complete loss.

  Whoever it was, he or she obviously had access to French’s house before the police got there, although these messages could have been recorded weeks ago.

  Dolan’s pictures, though, were timed just before the pathologist said French was hanged. Maybe Dolan faked the dates and times to reel me in, but something tells me that’s not the case.

  This I do know: whoever sent those tapes to me is someone who bears a grudge against Brian.

  What should I do? Confront him? Set out the evidence against him and demand an explanation? Go to the police and tell them everything, confessing to my own unwitting complicity?

  A thought suddenly dawns on me: perhaps Brian has duped me with the story of his insolvency, winning my pity and trust, my co-operation in a scheme for him to hide out from the police. I mean, how realistic is it to believe that he - Brian Fey, for fuck’s sake - didn’t have enough money to check into a hotel, or that he didn’t have somewhere else to stay?

  Impossible.

  Now I’m actually thinking about this, subjecting it to some rational analysis rather than letting the current carry me along in its wake, little epiphanies start exploding in my head. Brian might have a bank account hidden somewhere that he hasn’t told us about.

  Perhaps he’s been readying himself to make a break for it. Perhaps I’ve committed a crime, albeit an inadvertent one, in abetting him in his escape. I was too star struck to recognize what was going on. I was too stupid. And now I’ve been involved in a criminal conspiracy.

  I wish Cohen was here. Between us, we’d know what to do.

  And then I remember: Brian had a bruise and a cut on his head the night French’s body was found. Evidence of a struggle? A fight?

  I rest my hand on the receiver, framing what I should say now to the police. But I can’t pick it up.

  WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE

  Then, without warning, I feel sick again. Another wave of nausea. I rush to the toilet and kneel on the wet floor of a cubicle, my mouth aimed over the bowl and my hands braced against the cistern, waiting to see if I’m going to throw up. I’m breathing deeply, trying to calm my head, and half-listening to the sounds of someone zipping up in the cubicle next-door to mine, and someone else pissing against the china of one of the urinals. The air is freighted with the fragrance of lemon disinfectant, with deeper, more primal odours lurking beneath it. The smell of other people’s business.

  A toilet flushes and a cubicle door opens. I hold my breath.

  ‘Cohen,’ says a voice from the direction of the urinals.

  ‘Dawkins,’ Cohen replies.

  ‘How are you? Haven’t seen you for a while.’

  Cohen: ‘Not bad.’

  Dawkins: ‘Busy?’

  Cohen: ‘Always. You know how it is. Everything has to be done yesterday.’

  The Dork, much too friendly for my liking: ‘Tell me about it. Listen, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Is Tate all right? I mean, is he well? He isn’t looking that healthy at the moment, know what I mean?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘I’m not butting in, I was just wondering. He looks so - I don’t know - so pasty, washed-out.’

  ‘I haven’t noticed anything.’

  ‘You heard about that nonsense yesterday? Bringing the partners up to search my of
fice. I mean, please what does he take me for?’

  ‘I heard about that.’

  ‘He’ll never make partner here. Not after yesterday.’

  ‘Come on, that was just a one-off. He made a mistake, that’s all.’

  ‘He accused me of theft, David.’

  Cohen says nothing.

  ‘And his work’s been going down the pan.’

  I’m straining my ears and not even breathing.

  ‘Listen, Oliver - I don’t think we should be sticking our noses into his problems. It’s best if we just leave things alone, don’t you think?’

  ‘So he has got problems - you admit it.’

  ‘He’s under pressure. The Fey case really took it out of him in the run-up to the trial. He was working all hours for a couple of months putting it all together. I thought he did brilliantly with the shitty material he had to work with. You know he’s a genius. But it was always going to be a no-win case. But that’s it: it’s just pressure of work. And we all have that.’

  ‘Well, his workload got lighter yesterday. The Fey case isn’t something he’s going to have to worry about any more. He’s been taken off it.’

  ‘Really?’

  I don’t like Cohen’s tone - too scandalized - and I don’t like the fact he’s still talking to Dawkins. A real friend would have finished the conversation as soon as the Dork tried to start it. He wouldn’t have anything further to do with him. And Cohen is supposed to hate Dawkins as much as I do.

  But still they carry on.

  Dawkins: ‘It’s my case now.’

  ‘What do you mean? I haven’t heard anything. Daniel hasn’t mentioned anything like that to me, although I suppose I haven’t seen him yet today.’

  ‘It’s true. He got the hook this morning. The client complained to Hunter and he was completely furious. Hunter called Fulton in a rage, according to him - I was just talking to him about that on the way into the office. If you believe what Hunter says, the client was threatening to sue us for negligence. Can you believe that? The partners took evasive action - they’re not going to charge the client anything for the work Tate’s done. They’re taking a massive hit on it. Tens of thousands of pounds. I’ve been asked to see if I can salvage anything from the mess he’s made, although I have to say, on first impressions, it doesn’t look good.’