Safe from Harm

by RJ Bailey

  ‘Can you get me in?’ I asked Jack.

  ‘Last year, no problem. This year, they’ve changed the software. Best I can do is drill out the key barrel. Make sure I don’t set off the trembler, mind.’

  ‘Even Mrs Sharif might notice her car hasn’t got a lock.’

  ‘I can replace it. Thing is, her key won’t work. But how many people use keys these days? How many people even know there is an emergency key in their electronic fob?’

  It was a good point. ‘OK, let’s do it.’

  ‘How long have I got?’

  ‘Till Friday. That’s when they get home.’

  ‘I think I’ll have it cracked before then,’ he said, kneeling down with much huffing.

  I walked out from behind the van, trying to look like the distressed woman whose BMW had stranded her. A steady stream of other cars, mostly high-end, came and went from the car park, nearly all carrying women dressed for the gym, most of them too preoccupied to even notice an RAC van. Quite where Jack had sourced that particular cover, I had no idea. I knew it was better not to ask, because the reply would always be gnomic, involving some ‘mate’ somewhere. I heard the drill begin to whine.

  I hadn’t taken the job with Asparov. I had told him that when I had more time, I would consider advising, especially on the female aspect. He had seemed satisfied with that. He had apologised once more for Bojan and Mitval and their vile behaviour. And he had said that, now I had returned the money, he was very much in my debt. If I needed any help, any time, I was to ask him and he was duty-bound to offer his services.

  I felt like I was in a scene from The Godfather. Yes, Paul did persuade me to watch that one.

  ‘Excuse me, are you from around here?’

  The expectant mother with the double buggy holding two toddlers looked like she’d been dipped in bleach she was so pale. Her blonde hair was hanging in rats’ tails and she had the dark smudges under her eyes of sleepless nights.

  ‘No. But can I help?’ While I said it my instincts made me look over her shoulder and then do a casual 360 of the area. Harassed pregnant mums make for good cover.

  ‘I’m looking for the deer.’

  ‘Bambis!’ one of the boys shouted.

  ‘Bambi,’ echoed the other.

  I hated to disappoint them, so I whispered it. ‘They’ve gone,’ I said. ‘Re-located. Apparently the herd wasn’t doing too well in such an urban environment.’

  I only knew this because I’d read the notices pinned to the park railings while I was spying on Mrs Sharif.

  ‘Oh what a shame. Anything serious?’ she asked.

  ‘With the deer?’

  She indicated the RAC van. ‘Your car.’

  The whining of the drill had stopped. ‘Nothing they can’t fix.’

  I watched her head for the park and the empty deer enclosure, looking for any sign that this wasn’t just a casual encounter. But the boys’ squeals of dismay when she told them the Bambis had departed seemed genuine enough. I went back to where Jack was kneeling, having plugged a laptop into a diagnostics socket on the BMW’s doorframe.

  ‘What are you doing? I just need to switch on the bloody sat nav,’ I admonished him.

  ‘Nah, quicker doing it this way. I’m downloading the driver profile. It’ll tell you how she drives, if she’s got a heavy foot on the brake, if she regularly busts the speed limit, her mix of urban and non-urban driving. When she last had a drive-through . . .’

  ‘Can you code me a key from that download if need be?’

  ‘Yup. Jordan’ll do it.’

  ‘And tell me where she goes most Saturday afternoons?’

  Satisfied, Jack pulled the plug from the housing.

  ‘Yeah, that too.’

  Afterwards we went for coffee at a place in Friern Barnet, opposite the grand sweep of what was once a massive mental hospital. It was now flats, complete with a Virgin Active gym, which sold for a million or more each. Who’s crazy now?

  I stuck with the coffee plan, but Jack went for something called a brandizo, with eggs, avocado, chorizo and chillies. It was on me, so he ordered a large portion. Next to him he had the laptop open and was scrolling through what looked like machine code to me.

  ‘Here we are. Every time she goes, she punches up “favourite destinations” and the same postcode.’ He tapped it into his phone and sent it to me. ‘N4. You know where that is?’

  ‘Not far from here, I think. What’s the rest?’

  I put the entire postcode into Google maps on my phone and the familiar blob of a pointer came up with a name next to it. My face must have betrayed something, because Jack asked: ‘What is it?’

  ‘The Bounds Green Fatih Mosque.’

  ‘Fatih? What’s that?’

  I knew, because I had been to the site of the same name in Istanbul, which I suspected was rather grander than its namesake just off the North Circular. ‘It means, “The Conqueror’s Mosque”.’

  What I really needed that night was some downtime to try and assimilate everything that had happened, or was about to happen. But Jess decided she was going to play the dutiful daughter and instead of retreating to her room, she insisted we sit down together and watch some TV. So we did, but my mind wasn’t really on the antics of a bunch of genetically deficient West Londoners, although she seemed to find the whole thing riveting. She gushed about some of the girls’ clothes, telling me where you could get affordable copies of the designer labels. She also explained the interpersonal relationships between the characters, but it would have needed a particularly complicated flowchart for me to sort out who was straight, confused, gender fluid and who was in transition. Or just a twat.

  In the ad breaks I broached the idea of spending a few hours with Matt every other week or so ‘just to get to know him again’, as if she’d ever known him in the first place, to see if she would like him back in her life. I stressed it was all up to her. If at any time she thought it was a bad idea, we would go back to zero access.

  ‘If you like,’ she said, thus kind of agreeing but shifting the responsibility back to me. I took it as a maybe.

  That was enough for one evening. There was still the question of therapy, but I would leave that to Laura for the time being.

  At about eight the doorbell rang. I checked the built-in camera in the door on my phone. It was Freddie.

  I acted surprised, as if I hadn’t texted her and told her to come over if she could. I needn’t have worried. Jess was pleased to see her, because she had a legitimate excuse to abandon playing happy family and scurry off to her room to continue watching the programme. I was happy because I could now stop feeling like I wanted to put my foot through the television (although I suspected you could no longer put your foot ‘through’ a modern flatscreen).

  Freddie always reminded me of an impish version of Audrey Hepburn, with her pointed chin and short, bobbed hair. Freddie wasn’t actually her real name. Her surname was Flint, so it was inevitable what the army would do with that – ‘Flintoff’, which evolved into ‘Freddie’. She claimed she preferred it to Judith, her given name, and, in truth, she didn’t look like a Judith.

  While I fetched the glasses, she shrugged off a very expensive biker jacket – worn over a floral dress I recognised from Jigsaw – and sat on the sofa in the spot recently vacated by Jess. I took up position next to her and we made polite conversation for a while. I asked her about her love life.

  ‘Love life? That’s very Mills and Boon, isn’t it? No more love life for me. Just sex. I have a gaggle of young men who like the idea they can fuck an older woman. No strings attached. And you know, they’re great. Twenty-year-olds, I mean. Their dicks stay hard forever and they’ve got six-packs and they shave all over. I mean all over. Very smooth.’

  ‘Must be like having sex with a dolphin,’ I offered.

  ‘You’re just jealous. What about you? Anyone?’

  ‘Yes. He’s skinny, bronzed, beautifully put together.’ She looked interested until I held my hands s
ix inches apart. ‘And about this long.’

  ‘Ah. Well, what else?’

  ‘Some interesting developments in the work department.’

  ‘Out with it then, I haven’t got all night.’

  I must have babbled, because by the time I drew breath, she had drained her glass and mine was still full. ‘Fuckin’ hell.’

  ‘Yes. Fucking hell.’

  Freddie laughed. ‘You still put a “g” on the end, you posh bitch. Come on, I’m empty.’

  I topped her up. ‘So can you help me?’

  ‘What with? The secret squirrel bit? The mad Muslims? I’m not sure I’m up to speed for all that.’

  ‘No, not the mad Muslims.’ Although that remained to be seen. If they were mad, bad or dangerous, that is.

  ‘Is that mosque in Bounds Green one of the bad apples? Like Finsbury Park was?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t find anything on the web. There’s no Abu Hamza figure if that’s what you mean. I’ll ask Nina to do some digging.’

  Freddie made a sour face. She and Nina had met a couple of times. It wasn’t a meeting of minds. ‘This mosque thing on Saturdays. Isn’t Friday the day of worship?’

  ‘Maybe she’s not going to worship.’

  Freddie put a hand on my knee. ‘You have to be careful. I mean, what happened to Paul when he took up with that shit.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m going to hand everything over to the spooks and stand back. It’s Matt I need your help with. I think I am going to agree in principle to the idea of him meeting Jess at a Contact Centre.’

  ‘Really?’ She didn’t like Matt much, either, which was ideal for my purposes.

  ‘It’s no good hiding my head in the sand. This isn’t going to go away. The next step is he goes to the Family Court. I don’t want that to happen.’

  ‘Nope, stay out of court if you can.’ Freddie had endured a long legal battle with her 80 per cent gay ex, who had managed to hide most of his assets. She did OK in the end – I could see from the label that the biker jacket was a Roland Mouret – but not as well as she might have done. Still, she had a nice house in Dartmouth Park and, apparently, a pack of fuck-dolphins, so I didn’t feel too much pity for her.

  ‘He says he is clean and out of the drugs game. But he either owns or is renting a fancy place on City Road. Has he got a job? A wife? I need whatever ammunition you can get me, so that if it all goes tits up I can blow him out of the water. And I’ll pay, of course.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Nah. Don’t really need the money. Be fun.’

  ‘I’ll pay,’ I insisted. ‘Give it to the Save The Dolphin fund.’

  ‘Meow. Don’t be catty. It doesn’t become you.’ She drank some more wine and her forehead furrowed in thought. ‘Can you give me some basic details? Like his old National Insurance number. Maybe his passport number if he still has the same one?’

  ‘They might be on some old paperwork somewhere, I suppose. Why? What are you planning?’

  ‘Nothing illegal. Well, nothing too illegal . . .’

  ‘Freddie . . .’

  ‘Don’t Freddie me. Look, the thing is,’ she said forcefully, ‘what little I know of Matt . . .’

  I didn’t like that tone. ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you’re going to go down and dirty on this.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Then so’s he.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And he might be ahead of the game.’

  I felt a jitter of fear dance around my abdomen. ‘That’s also true.’

  I didn’t realise at that point just how far Matt was in front of me: on the home straight, while I was barely out of the starting blocks.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I needed to run the next day to clear my head. One bottle with Freddie had become two and neither of them were the best vintages. In fact, I’m not sure either of them actually had a year on the label.

  The Sharifs had one more day away, so I didn’t have to be over there at the usual seven, so I waited till Laura came before setting off. She arrived with a slightly more listless attitude than usual. While Jess packed her bag I took her aside.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The smile looked forced.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Well, a little boyfriend trouble.’

  ‘From Queenstown? Has he met someone else?’ Long-distance love affairs were tricky within the UK. I would imagine they were fraught with difficulties when it involved the other side of the world.

  ‘No, he’s just being . . . it’s all right. We did some FaceTime and, what with the time difference, he was drunk, I was sober, my period had started, my sister is getting a divorce. Not a great time.’

  Having said all that she seemed to visibly lift. ‘You mind if I have some Weetabix?’

  ‘No, go ahead. Did you get any further along with Jess about, you know . . .’ I drew a finger across at my upper arm, unable to speak the words.

  ‘I think it’s still under control.’ She paused. ‘You know, if you are worried, you could always get a doctor to put her on some medication.’

  ‘No.’ I hoped that was firm enough.

  ‘It’s not the stigma it once was, you know. Most of my friends have been on it. I was, for a while.’

  ‘Last resort,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think we’re there yet.’

  ‘Nowhere near.’ She opened the cupboard that held the cereals and took out three biscuits of the cereal, then doused them with milk. I felt a pang of hunger, but suppressed it. Women burn more calories on an empty stomach, apparently.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ I said.

  ‘Have a good run,’ Laura offered through hamster-like cheeks.

  I did my usual loop down to Broadway Market and on the way back I saw an electric-blue narrow boat reversing into a space, the frenzied churning of the water loud against the morning quiet. As I came level, Tom Buchan looked up and raised a hand, as if he’d just gone to get a newspaper rather than disappearing for days on end.

  ‘You in a hurry?’ he shouted over the engine.

  I bent over, grasped my knees and panted till I could speak without a wobble in the voice. ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Come on. I got something for you.’

  Twice. Twice I’ve met him and both times I’ve had scarlet cheeks and . . .

  I catch myself. As if he cares what I look like. He’s only got me a replacement sweatshirt. Calm yourself, girl.

  I climb on board the Slim Pickens. He ducks inside so I follow. ‘Hot?’ he asks.

  I really must be glowing. ‘Warm,’ I admit.

  ‘Hold on.’

  He fills and then hands me a glass of water and I take the opportunity to get my breath back. His hand touches mine as I take the drink. His skin is warm and a little scratchy from the calluses but I experience a small fizz in the pit of my stomach. I quickly look away, as if I am really interested in his bloody coffee machine.

  ‘Want one?’ he asks.

  ‘Maybe later.’

  I slide past him and walk into the living area, examining the pile of books he has on his coffee table. They are a strange mix of pulp thrillers and classics. Jane Austen? What sort of man reads Jane Austen? Maybe there is a woman in his life after all.

  I am about to turn and ask him about Northanger Abbey when I’m aware that he’s standing behind me, close enough that I can feel the mass of his body. I stiffen slightly, a professional instinct when a man moves into my personal space. I force myself to relax, pretending to be absorbed in his Henning Mankell hardbacks and after a moment I feel a hand on the small of my back. When I turn, his hand remains there and he spins me in a half-circle so that we’re facing. I start to speak but a finger brushes my lips. I’m not sure he could hear my voice over my booming heart anyway.

  I take a deep breath, feeling more in control now. He has made the first move. It is mine to reject or accept.

  I reach behind me and pull off my hairband
to release my hair, still damp from the morning shower. The fresh shampoo smell drifts between us. His hands are resting lightly on my hips now and we are at the tipping point. The point at which I either jump or freeze. I am aware I don’t own this space, it’s on his turf, his terms, his boat. On the other hand, it’s refreshingly neutral for me – I’m not a mum, not a PPO, just . . .

  I slant my face to his, waiting for his lips. He moves in but drops his head to make contact with my neck, a feather-light brush of skin on skin. It’s my turn to smell his hair, surprisingly clean and fresh.

  The flutters start now, moving down from my chest, through my abdomen, settling between my legs. God, I’ve missed this.

  ‘You OK?’ he asks softly.

  It’s the final option to step back from the brink. I don’t take the cue. I just nod. He takes my hand and leads me down the corridor. There’s a compact, wood-lined room containing a bed at the end. It’s small, but neat and white, with surely too many pillows for one man. My head sinks into them as I roll onto the mattress and feel a base that is hard and unforgiving.

  Deftly, he sits astride me without putting any weight on me. A slight sideways dip of his head, another ‘are you sure?’ question with his eyes. Jesus, how many green signals does this man need? I lift up a little to remove my T-shirt, revealing my oldest sports bra. But at least it is front fastening. As if I’d been planning on easy access. I see his eyes flick to the clasp. He dips his head again to kiss my clavicle, my throat and my breasts through the bra.

  I unsnap the clasp, all shyness forgotten. I barely recognise myself. I start humming a tune in my head, because I feel certain that any minute I will hear Freddie’s voice in there telling me exactly what I am behaving like. She has the good sense to keep it zipped.

  He kisses me on the lips now and I press back. I wriggle out of the Lycra leggings. No pants, mainly because I didn’t want a VPL, but now . . . well, that’s easy access, too.

  He sits up straight to observe me fully. My back is arching upwards in an attempt to keep contact. He rolls off me and onto the floor, takes his shirt off, unbuckles the belt and undoes the button-fly on his jeans. I put my hand out to stop him taking the jeans off. Half-dressed sex always did have a certain frisson for me.