by Marcia Woolf
“Lucy’s very professional.”
He looked down, smiling again. Then he leaned towards me and looked me straight in the eye.
“Yes,” he said, “Like you, Miss Bronski. Or may I call you Charlotte?”
Despite myself, I was blushing.
“Charlotte, yes, of course.”
“And, please, call me Lars. Except in front of investors, that is.”
He turned to go, but paused and looked back.
“I’m glad we’ve sorted that out.”
I was still standing there when Lucy walked in. She gave me a puzzled look and checked her watch against the wall clock.
“You’re bright and early.”
“Over-estimated the journey time.”
“I see you’ve put the coffee on.”
“I hope you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. Is Lars in yet?”
“In his office.”
She took off her coat, watching me all the time. I was starting to find Lucy’s watchfulness a bit unnerving, partly because I couldn’t work out why she was doing it. It was plain she didn’t like me much, and the feeling was entirely mutual, but that didn’t account for it. Maybe she thought I was a rival, although if she had her sights on Nilsson she was welcome to him. I had more than enough man action to handle, what with Jack and Ollie and now Simon Leach checking up on me every five minutes.
I went back to my desk and investigated the contents of the drawers: the usual stuff, staples, post-its, a ruler with the markings worn off, a few rubber bands and a week-old copy of The Guardian. I was going to throw the Guardian in the bin but the late lamented Susie had made a start on the crossword and it occurred to me that if she had time to do that then I might want it myself later on.
After that, I began to go through the stack of filing that Susie had also left behind. Fortunately, my new boss had a habit of writing the file destination in the top right hand of the document, so it was a matter of matching up the scrawl with the folder. More strange project names: Sacred Heart, Domino, Carlos. I’d asked Leach about it the day before, and he’d shown me a list of names which he said Susie had created using some sort of random word generator. Every time the bank initiated a new project, it got the next name on the list. Next up would be project Mandolin. When I got to the bottom of the filing tray, there was a slip of paper torn from an exercise book with a few notes on it. Leach hadn’t tagged it, and I wondered if he had even seen it. The writing wasn’t his. On the reverse, in what I was starting to recognise as Susie’s looping script, was the word Alpha. Project Alphabet? I pulled open the drawer and found the place where the file should have been, but it was missing. That wasn’t odd in itself: some of the other files were gone too. I guessed they would reappear eventually, so I put the remaining filing back in the tray and, for some reason that I really couldn’t explain, tucked the torn scrap of exercise book back into its place underneath the rest, out of sight.
After lunch, Lucinda called me over. She had some forms to be filled in.
“Charlotte, do you have a P45?”
“P45?”
“From your previous employer.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, not having had a previous – or any – employer, but I guessed this was something to do with tax and that it was a piece of paper I should be able to provide. I’d have to ask Donna.
“Not yet. Is it a problem?”
“Did you not get a P45?”
She was looking at me like she’d pulled me over for a traffic violation and I couldn’t produce a driver's licence.
“No. I think it might be in the post.”
She wrote something on the form.
“Fine. But you do know that you’ll pay emergency tax? A higher rate?”
“Oh, okay.”
I was about to go back to my desk, but there was more.
“Do you have a national insurance number?”
“Yes, somewhere. “
“Well, I need that too. Do you have it on you?”
I was starting to think Lucy was doing this deliberately. She seemed very pleased to have cornered me and it was a relief when I heard Simon Leach call out to me from his office.
“Sorry, Lucy. I’ll bring it in tomorrow morning. Is that okay?”
She pushed the forms to the back of her desk and sighed theatrically as I walked away.
“It’ll have to be, won’t it? But don’t forget.”
That evening, I rang Donna on her mobile. It was about eight o’clock and I could tell she was in a restaurant or wine-bar. She was having trouble hearing me.
“Don’t worry, just give her your NI number. You’re not planning on staying there, are you?”
“No, but—”
“Well then. By the time they get suspicious, you’ll have left.”
“What if they want to do a security check?”
“Then you’ve got a problem. With your recent address.”
She meant Holloway. I heard a man’s voice in the background and realised she was with Clive.
“Sorry, Donna. Didn’t mean to spoil your evening. I’ll call you tomorrow, if that’s better?”
“Fine, anytime. Don’t worry.”
I hung up. I was warming to Donna. Probably I shouldn’t have, what with her being Clive’s mistress and everything, but she was okay. They were making the most of a bad situation.
I hunted around and found my NI number. It was strange, having a number. Like a prison number. Something to mark you out, to identify you as an individual but also make you part of a system, one in a sequence, a fragment of a pattern that constituted the whole. I am not a number. But apparently I am, and here it is. I wondered what would happen if I gave Lucy a different number, a wrong number, a random sequence? Or someone else’s number. Someone legitimate, someone straight up. Like Donna, for instance.
Chapter Five
Saturday 15th November
Carrying on Regardless
On the Saturday I got up early and went to the supermarket. I had toyed with the idea of shopping for groceries online but Jack would be furious if he found out. He had this thing about checking every item himself, looking at every piece of fruit, every vegetable, to make sure it wasn’t bruised or blemished; checking every packet (not that we bought many packets) to make sure the seals were intact and the contents untouched. He would feel every tin (not that we bought many tins, either) to examine for dents; he inspected every egg for cracks, every list of ingredients, every sell-by date. You can imagine how long it took to fill the trolley. On this particular Saturday, I trotted round the aisles with a basket, picking up the essentials of a lunch to share with Sullivan. He’d phoned to say he was being discharged after the morning ward-round, so by midday I expected a ring on the bell.
I was arranging the smoked salmon on plates when he arrived. He looked pale, unshaven. I was worried about the stitches but he clearly didn’t give them much thought: he grabbed hold of me and pressed my face into his coat, which smelt unpleasantly of hospital. He made a little whimpering noise that might have been pain, but I deduced fairly quickly was something else entirely. He was hard as a rock.
“Wait! My hands need washing. I’ve been getting lunch ready.”
He kissed me. I tried not to smear salmon on his clothes but he was pawing at my jumper, and what felt like four sets of hands were all over me at once, squeezing, caressing, fondling. He groaned.
“Ollie! Let me at least shut the door!”
He undid my bra with one hand and kicked the door closed behind us.
“I’ve missed you.”
“So I see. Calm down. You’ll hurt yourself.”
He started to remove his coat, and I took the opportunity to go back into the kitchen. I ran the tap.
He followed, and pressed himself firmly against me so that I was stuck between the worktop and his groin.
“Now.”
“Now?”
He undid my jeans and slid his hand inside. All the time
he was nuzzling and kissing my neck and making soft grunting sounds that were certainly getting the message across. He smiled and stroked my hair.
“Now, please.”
“That’s better. Bedroom?”
I think he’d have picked me up and carried me if it hadn’t been for the bandages. Once the shirt was off I could see the bruising above them, yellowing purple clouds billowing up above the white horizon of the strapping.
“Are you sure this won’t hurt you?”
He looked at me like I was insane and gave another groan. I pointed at the bed.
“Lie down.”
He did as he was told, and watched, wide-eyed, as I lowered myself onto him. I needn’t have worried: there wasn’t time to cause any damage. Within a couple of minutes, we were lying out of breath, side-by-side, still half-dressed. Ollie was grinning like a lunatic.
“Again.”
“Again? So soon, already?”
He started to laugh.
“Stop that. Doesn’t it hurt still?”
We lay looking into each others’ eyes. I knew what he was going to say. Or at least, I thought I did.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“What have you been doing?”
I reached out and ran my palm over his chest, then walked my fingers teasingly down to his cock, thinking I’d distract him from this unwelcome line of questioning, but he prised my hand away and gripped it tight.
“No, no, no. Tell me what you’re up to.”
It was difficult to tell exactly what he knew and what was guesswork.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do. Nilsson.”
Ah.
“I thought you were going to stay out of it.”
I wiggled my hand free from his grasp and sat up. He was giving me his inscrutable expression. I didn’t speak.
“Claus Berthold Investment Bank is under observation. You’ve been seen going in there. More than once.”
“Right.”
I climbed off the bed and put my jumper back on.
“Cookie. You are really going to fuck up this investigation. What’s the deal?”
“You’ve got a cheek. I like the way you turn up, screw me first and then start playing policeman.”
He had the decency to look embarrassed.
“It’s not like that.”
“Oh, isn’t it? It certainly felt like that.”
He got up carefully and checked the bandages, then started to get dressed. It was getting on for two o’clock and sex always makes me hungry, so I went into the kitchen and carried on preparing lunch. Ollie came and stood in the doorway.
“Tell me.”
I ignored him and continued chopping cucumber.
“You didn’t really think I wouldn’t find out?”
He followed me over to the dining table and sat down.
“Looks nice. Thank you.”
“Wine?”
“Yes, please.”
I poured it with as much sarcastic servitude as I could muster, and sat opposite. We ate in silence for a while. I don’t know what he was doing, but I was playing for time while I thought of the best angle of approach.
“First, why don’t you tell me why Nilsson is under investigation?”
“I can’t tell you that. It’s a live case.”
“Who’s this Lucinda Fleming woman? She’s not being very nice to me. One of yours, is she?”
“She works there. Even if she was one of ours – and I’m not saying she is…”
“Oh. Shall we play a little guessing game, then?”
He rolled his eyes.
“I’m not telling you a thing, Cookie, other than it’s a matter of financial irregularity subject to a police investigation and therefore you should not be involved in it.”
“Financial irregularity that involves shooting at people?”
He looked uncomfortable. I waited. Still silence.
“So you think it was Nilsson who arranged the shooting?”
Ollie put down his glass, scraping his chair back as he stood.
“I’m going.”
“Fine.”
He came round to my side of the table and put his hand under my chin, pulling my head up so that I couldn’t rise to face him. I tried to get away but he held me firm.
“Listen to me. This is for your own good, Cookie. Stay away from Nilsson, stay away from the Bank and keep out of this, okay? I don’t know what you’ve been doing or why you’ve been going there, but please get out and stay out. End of discussion.”
He released his grip and headed for the door. I called after him.
“What if I don’t do as you say?”
Ollie pulled on his coat with difficulty and turned to face me.
“Then there may be consequences. For both of us.”
I stayed sitting at the table as the door closed. Sullivan’s half-eaten lunch remained like a sentence ended in the middle. I poured myself another drink and sat thinking. Maybe I had got myself in over my head. Ollie was right: I should quit before things got messy. It was puzzling, though. I wondered who had been watching the bank and whether they’d recognised me, or if it was only Sullivan who’d seen me and – ah! Dawn Sayler. That must be it. While Ollie was laid up in a ward in the Whitechapel, Sayler must have been doing the reconnaissance. I bet she’d spotted me and warned Ollie. She wouldn’t have reported it to the team: that would have really dropped him in it. So only those two knew who I was, and that I was there. Interesting.
After a while I started to wonder why Ollie’s team hadn’t managed to get a phone tap. Surely that’s the first thing they would do? After all, if they’d had a tap then the calls between Lucy and me would have been traced and a uniform would have been knocking on my door long before Ollie had turned up. There could only be two explanations: either there was a tap, and the fraud lot had traced me but had decided just to keep a watching brief, or, and I was quite pleased with this idea, Lucy had been using her own phone to call me. Which meant, logically, that she knew the bank was under observation. Even more interesting.
I went into the bedroom and wandered into the dressing room. After a while I selected an outfit and hung it neatly on the back of the door, ready for Monday morning.
Chapter Six
Sunday 16th November
Two Women
What do people do on Sundays when they live alone? There’s a self-help book in there somewhere. When Jack was around I had no choice: we did what Jack wanted to do. Actually, we did what Jack wanted to on every other day as well, but that’s a technicality. Sundays are different, though. I had to plan around being home, by the phone, at about 4pm when he got his once-a-week call. There was no reason for being at home, other than it was easier than explaining why I was out and about, what I was doing and who was doing it with me. Plus, Jack doesn’t like change. It did make me think that maybe he was enjoying the routine of prison life, if not the company, the lack of privacy and the one-star hospitality. Anyway, that was four o’clock. Until then I was at liberty to do my own thing, even more so today since Ollie had other stuff on his plate, notably a visit home to his parents for a bit of home-cooked hero worship. After our little contretemps on Saturday, he’d called me to apologise and make his excuses for the rest of the weekend. We’d had another brief conversation about Jack’s parole, which didn’t exactly improve the atmosphere between us, but I wasn’t about to give him the Dear John treatment over the phone while he still had stitches in. So, all things being possible, I had a lie-in, followed by a lazy soak in the tub, then made my way over to the South Bank where there was an exhibition on colour theory in early 20th century painting. It was the coldest day of the year so far, the kind of cold that put me in mind of a meat store. Even the air seemed white. I was glad to get inside the gallery. Half of London had had the same idea, and I cursed myself for my lack of imagination. The loathsome spectre of middle-class intelligentsia loomed be
fore me and all I could do was join the queue for tickets. I was doing the enforced shuffle around the exhibits when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Hello, Miss Bronski. Are you enjoying the exhibition?”
It was a woman I’d never set eyes on before. I felt a shove from behind as a bearded, academic-looking fatso harrumphed loudly, and we moved forward obligingly.
“Do I know you?”
She smiled and nudged me forward in the queue, in a well-meaning but purposeful manner that made me feel I’d just been hijacked by a long-lost cousin.
“Not yet.”
My alarm bells were sounding.
“Allow me to buy you a coffee,” she said.
I hustled a little further along.
“I’ve not seen the Robert Delaunays yet.”
She smiled, her short dark curls bobbing in agreement.
“Oh, I know. But when you’ve seen Sonia’s, you’ve seen the good stuff. She was by far the better painter.”
I relaxed a little. If I was going to be accosted by a complete stranger, then at least it was by one with an understanding of chromatic dissonance. I let her manoeuvre me towards the exit. When we made it into the relative calm of the long corridor she stopped and pulled me towards her. For a split second I thought she was going to kiss me, which was an interesting prospect. Instead, she learned forward and whispered in my ear.
“Project Alphabet.”
“What about it?”
“Keep away.”
“Who are you?”
She stepped back and brushed some imaginary dirt off her immaculate black lapel.
“Never mind. Just get out of the bank and keep out. Keep away from Nilsson, if you don’t want to get yourself into a lot of trouble. You or your boyfriend.”
She turned to go, but I grabbed her sleeve and yanked her back towards me.
“What?”
I thought I detected a sneer, but she finessed it into a thin smile. I let go of her arm, and she took the chance to to extricate herself, backing away towards the revolving doors. As she disappeared, she mouthed one word at me; silent but unmistakable. “Sullivan.”