The house was between Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill, not so far from the Portobello Road. Flat fronted, once grand, paint beginning to flake away round the windows on the upper floors. Slabs of York stone leading, uneven, to the front door. Three bells. Graeme Fisher lived on the ground floor.
He took his time responding.
White hair fell in wisps around his ears; several days since he’d shaved. Corduroy trousers, collarless shirt, cardigan wrongly buttoned, slippers on his feet.
‘You’ll be Kate’s friend.’
Kiley nodded and held out his hand.
The grip was firm enough, though when he walked it was slow, more of a shuffle, with a pronounced tilt to one side.
‘Better come through here.’
Here was a large room towards the back of the house, now dining room and kitchen combined. A short line of servants’ bells, polished brass, was still attached to the wall close by the door.
Fisher sat at the scrubbed oak table and waited for Kiley to do the same.
‘Bought this place for a song in ’64. All divided up since then, rented out. Investment banker and his lady friend on the top floor – when they’re not down at his place in Dorset. Bloke above us, something in the social media.’ He said it as if it were a particularly nasty disease. ‘Keeps the bailiffs from the sodding door.’
There were photographs, framed, on the far wall. A street scene, deserted, muted colours, late afternoon light. An open-top truck, its sides bright red, driving away up a dusty road, fields to either side. Café tables in bright sunshine, crowded, lively, in the corner of a square; then the same tables, towards evening, empty save for an old man, head down, sleeping. Set a little to one side, two near-abstracts, sharp angles, flat planes.
‘Costa Rica,’ Fisher said, ‘’72. On assignment. Never bloody used. Too fucking arty by half.’
He made tea, brought it to the table in plain white mugs, added two sugars to his own and then, after a moment’s thought, a third.
‘Tell me about Lisa,’ Kiley said.
Fisher laughed, no shred of humour. ‘You don’t have the time.’
‘It ended badly, Kate said.’
‘It always ends fucking badly.’ He coughed, a rasp low in the throat, turning his head aside.
‘And you think she might be harbouring a grudge?’
‘Harbouring? Who knows? Life of her own. Kids. Grandkids by now, most like. Doubt she gives me a second thought, one year’s end to the next.’
‘Then why …?’
‘This woman a couple of days back, right? Lisa’s age. There she is on TV, evening news. Some bloke, some third-rate comedian, French-kissed her in the back of a taxi when she was fifteen, copped a feel. Now she’s reckoning sexual assault. Poor bastard’s picture all over the papers. Paedophile. That’s not a fucking paedophile.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d sooner bloody die.’
Kiley cushioned his mug in both hands. ‘Why don’t you talk to her? Make sure?’
Fisher smiled. ‘A while back, round the time I met Kate, I was going to have this show, Victoria Miro, first one in ages, and I thought, Lisa, I’ll give her a bell. See if she might, you know, come along. Last minute, I couldn’t, couldn’t do it. I sent her a note instead, invitation to the private view. Never replied, never came.’
He wiped a hand across his mouth, finished his tea.
‘You’ll go see her? Kate said you would. Just help me rest easy.’ He laughed. ‘Too much tension, not good for the heart.’
Google Map said the London Borough of Haringey, estate agents called it Muswell Hill. A street of Arts and Crafts houses, nestled together, white louvred shutters at the windows, prettily painted doors. She was tall, taller than Kiley had expected, hair pulled back off her face, little make-up; tunic top, skinny jeans. He could still see the girl who’d stood in the empty pool through the lines that ran from the corners of her mouth and eyes.
‘Lisa Arnold?’
‘Not for thirty years.’
‘Jack Kiley.’ He held out a hand. ‘An old friend of yours asked me to stop by.’
‘An old friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he should have told you it’s Collins. Lisa Collins.’ She still didn’t take his hand and Kiley let it fall back by his side.
‘This old friend, he have a name?’ But, of course, she knew. ‘You better come in,’ she said. ‘Just mind the mess in the hall.’
Kiley stepped around a miniature pram, various dolls, a wooden puzzle, skittles, soft toys.
‘Grandkids,’ she explained, ‘two of them, Tuesdays and Thursday mornings, Wednesday afternoons. Run me ragged.’
Two small rooms had been knocked through to give a view of the garden: flowering shrubs, a small fruit tree, more toys on the lawn.
Lisa Collins sat in a wing-backed chair, motioning Kiley to the settee. There were paintings on the wall, watercolours; no photographs other than a cluster of family pictures above the fireplace. Two narrow bookcases; rugs on polished boards; dried flowers. It was difficult to believe she was over sixty years old.
‘How is Graeme?’
Kiley shrugged. ‘He seemed OK. Not brilliant, maybe, but OK.’
‘You’re not really a friend, are you?’
‘No?’
‘Graeme doesn’t do friends.’
‘Maybe he’s changed.’
She looked beyond Kiley towards the window, distracted by the shadow of someone passing along the street outside.
‘You don’t smoke, I suppose?’
‘Afraid not.’
‘No. Well, in that case, you’ll have to join me in a glass of wine. And don’t say no.’
‘I wasn’t about to.’
‘White OK?’
‘White’s fine.’
She left the room and he heard the fridge door open and close; the glasses were tissue-thin, tinged with green; the wine grassy, cold.
‘All this hoo-ha going on,’ she said. ‘People digging up the past, I’d been half-expecting someone doorstepping me on the way to Budgens.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Me and my shopping trolley. Some reporter or other. Expecting me to dig up the dirt, spill the beans.’
Kiley said nothing.
‘That’s what he’s worried about, isn’t it? After all this time, the big exposé, shit hitting the fan.’
‘Yes.’
‘That invitation he sent me, the private view. I should have gone.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘I was afraid.’
‘What of?’
‘Seeing him again. After all this time. Afraid what it would do to all this.’ She gestured round the room, the two rooms. ‘Afraid it could blow it all apart.’
‘It could do that?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She drank some wine and set the glass carefully back down. ‘People said it was just a phase. Too young, you know, like in the song? Too young to know. You’ll snap out of it, they said, the other girls. Get away, move on, get a life of your own. Cradle-snatcher, they’d say to Graeme, and laugh.’
Shaking her head, she smiled.
‘Four years we were together. Four years. Say it like that, it doesn’t seem so long.’ She shook her head again. ‘A lifetime, that’s what it was. When it started I was just a kid and then …’
She was seeing something Kiley couldn’t see; as if, for a moment, he were no longer there.
‘I knew – I wasn’t stupid – I knew it wasn’t going to last forever, I even forced it a bit myself, looking back, but then, when it happened, I don’t know, I suppose I sort of fell apart.’
She reached for her glass.
‘What’s that they say? Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you strong. Having your stomach pumped out, that helps, too. Didn’t want to do that again in a hurry, I can tell you. And thanks to Graeme, I had contacts, a portfolio, I could work. David Bailey round knocking at the door. Brian bloody Duffy. Harper’s Bazaar. I had a life. A good one. Still have.’
Still holding the w
ine glass, she got to her feet.
‘You can tell Graeme, I don’t regret a thing. Tell him I love him, the old bastard. But now …’ A glance at her watch. ‘Mr Collins – that’s that I call him – Mr Collins will be home soon. Golf widow, that’s me. Stops him getting under my feet, I suppose.’
She walked Kiley to the door.
‘There was someone sniffing round. Oh, a good month ago now. More. Some journalist or other. That piece by Kate Moss had just been in the news. How when she was getting started she used to feel awkward, posing, you know, half-naked. Nude. Not feeling able to say no. Wanted to know, the reporter, had I ever felt exploited? Back then. Fifteen, she said, it’s very young after all. I told her I’d felt fine. Asked her to leave, hello and goodbye. Might have been the Telegraph, I’m not sure.’
She shook Kiley’s hand.
When he was crossing the street she called after him. ‘Don’t forget, give Graeme my love.’
The article appeared a week later, eight pages stripped across the Sunday magazine, accompanied by a hefty news item in the main paper. ‘Art or Exploitation?’ Ballet dancers and fashion models, a few gymnasts and tennis players thrown in for good measure. Unhealthy relationships between fathers and daughters, young girls and their coaches or mentors. The swimming pool shot of Lisa was there, along with several others. Snatched from somewhere, a recent picture of Graeme Fisher, looking old, startled.
‘The bastards,’ Kate said, vehemently. ‘The bastards.’
Your profession, Kiley thought, biting back the words.
They were on their way to Amsterdam, Kate there to cover the reopening of the Stedelijk Museum after nine years of renovations, Kiley invited along as his reward for services rendered. ‘Three days in Amsterdam, Jack. What’s not to like?’
At her insistence, he’d worn the hat.
They were staying at a small but smart hotel on the Prinsengracht Canal, their’s one of the quiet rooms at the back, looking out onto a small square. For old times sake, she insisted on taking him for breakfast, the first morning, to the art deco Café Americain in the Amsterdam American Hotel.
‘First time I ever came here, Jack, to Amsterdam, this is where we stayed.’
He didn’t ask.
The news from England, a bright 12 point on her iPad, erased the smile from her face. As a result of recent revelations in the media, officers from Operation Yewtree yesterday made two arrests; others were expected.
‘Fisher?’ Kiley asked.
She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’ When she tried to reach him on her mobile, there was no reply.
‘Maybe he’ll be OK,’ Kiley said.
‘Let’s hope,’ Kate said, and pushed back her chair, signalling it was time to go. Whatever was happening back in England, there was nothing they could do.
From the outside, Kiley thought, the new extension to the Stedelijk looked like a giant bathtub on stilts; inside didn’t get much better. Kate seemed to be enthralled.
Kiley found the café, pulled out the copy of The Glass Key he’d taken the precaution of stuffing into his pocket, and read. Instead of getting better, as the story progressed things went from bad to worse, the hero chasing round in ever-widening circles, only pausing, every now and then, to get punched in the face.
‘Fantastic!’ Kate said, a good couple of hours later. ‘Just amazing.’
There was a restaurant some friends had suggested they try for dinner, Le Hollandais; Kate wanted to go back to the hotel first, write up her notes, rest a little, change.
In the room, she switched on the TV to catch the news. Over her shoulder, Kiley thought he recognised the street in Ladbroke Grove. Officers from the Metropolitan Police arriving at the residence of former photographer, Graeme Fisher, wishing to question him with regard to allegations of historic sexual abuse, found Fisher hanging from a light flex at the rear of the house. Despite efforts by paramedics and ambulance staff to revive him, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
A sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, broke from Kate’s throat and when Kiley went across to comfort her, she shrugged him off.
There would be no dinner, Le Hollandais or elsewhere.
When she came out of the bathroom, Kate used her laptop to book the next available flight, ordered a taxi, rang down to reception to explain.
Kiley walked to the window and stood there, looking out across the square. Already the light was starting to change. Two runners loped by in breathless conversation, then an elderly woman walking her dog, then no one. The tables outside the café at right angles to the hotel were empty, save for an old man, head down, sleeping. Behind him, Kate moved, businesslike, around the room, readying their departure, her reflection picked out, ghostlike, in the glass. When Kiley looked back towards the tables, the old man had gone.
Last Exit to Fuengirola
David Hewson
David Hewson is a former journalist with The Sunday Times whose series featuring Italian detective Nic Costa opened with A Season for the Dead in 2003. In addition, he has written a number of stand-alones, as well as novels based on the acclaimed Danish TV series, The Killing.
When he finally got out of the Scrubs, Eileen had taken matters into her own hands. The terraced house in Plaistow, the place he’d grown up, was gone, she told him as they stood on the prison steps, Alf with his duffel bag in hand, blinking at the bright July sun. Then she mumbled something that sounded like ‘Sleazyjet’ and pushed him into a minicab to Gatwick where they flew down to Spain in what appeared to be an orange bus with wings.
Her mum had died not long before his twelve years were up. She’d owned a decrepit pile near the waterfront in Whitstable. While Alf was in jail, trying to teach his cellmate Norm the Chisel there were better ways to spell ‘ink-arse-erashun’, it seemed the place had turned from Hoxton-by-Sea to Islington-sur-Mer. Eileen had sold the dump to a TV producer with funny glasses and a stupid haircut. Best part of a quarter of a million for dry rot, fungal damp and four squawky cats.
Now that was robbery, Alf observed mid-flight only to get a whack round the chops in return.
Their new home, a place that ‘would keep him out of any more of that trouble he liked so much’, was a tiny villa not far from the last motorway turnoff for Fuengirola. Two and a half bedrooms, a patio with a weedy palm tree, a table for drinkies with their new-found friends. Who weren’t really friends, not to his way of thinking, and tended to show that after a couple of glasses of industrial strength Larios and tonic. Especially after he put a sign outside the front door that read ‘Dunblagging’.
Irony, he said when she started kicking up a fuss. There’d been a lot of it about ever since the men from the Yard came a-knocking in the night.
He was sixty-three now, a big bloke, still muscular, all his own teeth, good for something better than hanging round the Costa del Sol and listening to Radio 2 off this weird iPad thing she’d bought. Bald as a coot, he’d turned walnut after two weeks of Spanish sun. That was the first time he’d looked at himself and thought: you’re getting old. Time’s running out. And there’s still a nasty black mark on your life you never deserved.
Eileen reckoned retirement was nature’s way of telling you it was time to ‘adjust your lifestyle’. Not that she’d much idea what counted as lifestyle in B Wing of Wormwood Scrubs. Or that he was minded to tell her.
The truth was, she said, they could retire with a little peace for a change, away from his old scallywag mates and the reporters she now referred to as ‘the meejah’. He could play golf whenever he liked and once a week she’d drive him into Fuengi town so’s he could go boozing with the blokes she called ‘your fellow East End villains’.
The most popular watering hole was called the Wonky Donkey. Every other Tuesday from 6.45 p.m. on Alf could be found there nursing one of the two bottles of San Miguel that would see him through the evening, listening to tales of what the old East End was like before the immigrants and the Olympics came along. Never once saying that he was, like
most of them, an immigrant himself, his old dad coming over from Poland after falling out with Hitler. Or that, from what he saw on the Scrubs telly, the Olympics looked pretty good really.
They were a decent enough bunch in the Donkey even if the chatter had a distinctly circular nature to it. By week three he’d lost count of how many times he’d heard it said things were better when the Krays were around. Weren’t no hoodlums robbing you in the street then. You could leave your door unlocked without some toe rag kid sneaking in to nick your valuables. And when people did get hurt … well, they asked for it usually. What harm was done was done inside as it were, kept within the criminal fraternity. For the average honest East End citizen, life was safe and calm and happy when the brothers walked the streets.
Alf listened. Sipped his San Mig. Kept quiet. Was almost glad Eileen had taken a fifty per cent share in a struggling cake shop in Benalmadena to keep her busy. Because if all he had was this lot and her trying to redecorate Dunblagging in traditional Andalucian style, all bright tiles and plates on the walls along with strings of plastic peppers and tomatoes, he’d be wishing himself back in B Wing before long.
The drinking club was called the Gentleman’s Estuarial English Zoological Association. GEEZA for short. Strangers to a man, with not the least interest in animals except the eponymous donkey. Everyone appeared to have congregated there on the basis of accent alone. As Eileen put it, ‘All you’ve got to do is open yer trap, Alfred Hawkins, and everyone knows where you’s coming from.’
Deadly Pleasures Page 11