Cut Out

by Marcia Woolf

  “I went to the funeral.”

  “Right.”

  “You’d have been amazed at how many people turned up. It was like she was a celebrity or something.”

  “Right.”

  “Father Hennessey told everyone you’d been unavoidably detained in London.”

  Even Jack had to smile at that. I always found a way to break the ice with him. He relaxed a little.

  “He wasn’t wrong. So, who else showed?”

  “Oh, Dirk of course, Dora, all the staff from the house, uncle Mort, Rudy Bannerman...”

  “Bannerman!”

  “Yeah, and he went to Pinckney’s office for the reading of the will.”

  Jack looked incredulous.

  “Don’t tell me she left him anything?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  I told him how much and Jack rolled his eyes.

  “What’s happening with the house?”

  “You won the star prize.”

  “What about the staff?”

  “Still all in situ, still collecting their paychecks. I need you to tell me what to do about it. Dirk said he’d handle the legals.”

  Jack ran a hand through his hair and stared at the table like he’d not had time to think about the house; like it was all really sudden. As if it had been unexpected.

  “Look,” I said, conscious that we didn’t have much time, “if you want to sell up, I don’t mind. We can...”

  Jack looked up sharply, annoyed.

  “I’m not selling The Belltower. It’s our home.”

  Jack fixed his pale blue eyes on mine, and I knew there was no discussion to be had.

  “I’m surprised you want to keep it. After all that happened there.”

  He continued to look at me, unwavering. I tried to play it cool.

  “It’s up to you, of course. It’s your house now. I’ll arrange for Dick to let some of the staff go, just keep things ticking over.”

  “Good. Make sure he keeps Dora on full pay. She can stay as long as she likes.”

  I nodded.

  “The New Mexico place went to Mort.”

  Jack chuckled.

  “He’s welcome to it. It’s falling down. What about you? What did you get? All the sparklers?”

  Usually I’d put up with the sarcasm, the glib one-liners. He’s my baby brother, after all. But sparklers? When he’d just been handed a piece of real estate the size of the Waldorf and enough money to start a private bank?

  “She wrote me a little note.”

  He laughed, then realised I was serious.

  “A note? What kind of note?”

  “Let's say it was a message from beyond the grave. There was nothing in the will for me, of course: no surprise there. But the postscript was a humdinger.”

  He seemed perplexed, and I guessed he genuinely had no idea what I was talking about. It was touch and go whether I told him, but sooner or later he’d find out and it was better coming from me, now, than later on from Dirk or Pinckney or – even worse – from Bannerman.

  “You might like to apply to get your sentence reduced.”

  “What?”

  “On the grounds you’ve only committed incest with your half-sister.”

  Jack stared at me, working it out, but as usual he was putting himself first in the equation.

  “You mean Dad’s not my real father?”

  I patted his hand.

  “No, stupid. He’s not mine.”

  We sat looking at each other across the table. Somewhere on the other side of the room a baby was crying, hungry, insistent. All around us husbands and wives, girlfriends and boyfriends, sisters, brothers, mothers, sons – all doing whatever it was they did in their allotted half-hour to express love, remorse, grief and despair in the thick emotional atmosphere of testosterone and wasted time. I wanted to lean across and kiss him, but it wasn’t allowed. I felt we should have been able to get up and walk away, out of the door and into the street, unimpeded, because this wasn’t who we were or where we belonged, not people like us. But here we were.

  After a while, Jack recovered enough to ask me if the note had said anything about who my father might be, and I shook my head.

  “We might need to arrange a DNA test. Just to make sure, you know? That we’re not… Well, it’s possible Shirley was lying. Mistaken.”

  He seemed stunned. I glanced at my watch: only a few minutes left.

  “Jack, don’t worry. It’s okay. It kind of makes things better, doesn’t it? But it won’t make any difference to us. We’re still together.”

  He was staring at the table.

  “Jack? I have to go soon. Speak to me, please.”

  The old guy at the next table and the man opposite him stopped what they were saying and turned to look at us. It gave me a shock to see they were near-identical twins. One on the inside, one on the outside. I gave them a what are you staring at? look but they just carried on, like they were watching TV or something: like we were the entertainment. I reached over and shook Jack’s arm.

  “Jack? Are you okay?”

  A bell sounded: the end of visiting time. Chairs scraping back, crying, children calling out Daddy, Daddy, and being dragged away, not understanding. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a warden approaching.

  “Jack? We can speak on the phone tomorrow. I’m sorry: I just thought you had to know.”

  The warden was at my elbow. I stood up. As I started to move away, Jack raised his head.

  “This changes everything,” he said.

  The warden began to steer me away towards the exit, but I resisted.

  “What do you mean? What’s changed?”

  Jack said nothing. His face gave nothing away either, but he was shaking his head.

  I went into the waiting room with the other visitors to go through the checking and counting process again. By the time I got there, the only seat left was next to the Outside Twin. I perched on the edge of the chair, as far away from him as I could get. He smiled at me, and I scowled back. After a few moments of smiling and scowling he leaned towards me.

  “Your brother,” he said.

  “What about him?”

  He looked me up and down, and then let out a low, filthy laugh that made my flesh crawl.

  On the way back to the flat I picked up some groceries. It was dark and cold when I put my key in the lock. I’d been hoping – fantasising – that Ollie would have changed his mind and that he’d be there when I got home, with the wine open and the pretend fire flickering in the glow of a few candles. Some hope. I drew the curtains and sat down. This wasn’t the way it was meant to happen.

  I must have been sitting there for half an hour, staring at the dead-eyed fireplace and the shopping still in its plastic bag, when the doorbell rang. Stupidly, I thought it must be Ollie. I leapt up, turned on a couple of lamps and flung open the door, expecting God knows what, but in any event flowers and champagne and sex. That’s the speed a woman’s mind can move, and the direction it goes in, but no: standing there in the half-light of the hallway was DI Dawn Sayler. She must have seen the disappointment flick across my face because she broke into a broad grin.

  “Thought you might want company.”

  She came in unasked and headed straight for the kitchen, where she started rummaging in the fridge.

  “Dawn? What are you doing here? Did Ollie send you?”

  She stood, a pot of something or other in her hand, illuminated by the fridge light. If I hadn’t known it was Dawn I’d have thought it was a still from Terminator.

  “’Course not. I heard you two’d had a bust up.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Do you still have a job?”

  She popped something into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully.

  “Yep.”

  “What about Ollie?”

  “Yeah, he’s still there.”

  She didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, so I started unpacking the shopping and putting it away, although as fast as I could do it Da
wn was stuffing her face with this and that.

  “Did you come here for anything specific, Dawn, or just for dinner?”

  I pushed a bottle of Rioja towards her but she ignored it.

  “Got any Diet Coke? Orange juice?”

  “Diet Coke?”

  “Yeah, or lemonade. I’m off the booze. Water’s fine.”

  I handed her a carton of orange juice.

  “And the purpose of your visit is…?”

  “Ah, yes. Those documents you gave to Ollie on Thursday. Turns out they were very useful.”

  “Oh, good. Always glad to be of assistance to the police.”

  She glared at me.

  “You really can be a very stroppy cow at times, can’t you? Bloody hell, Garrity. You have no idea what a hassle you are. Anyway, before you say anything else, you might be a sarky madam but it looks like we’ve actually got something on Nilsson. Did you go into work yesterday?”

  “You mean, you weren’t watching me?”

  She looked uncomfortable, as well she might, given how tight her waistband was getting lately, and mostly at my expense.

  “Yes, I went into the bank. I don’t know what else you think I was going to do. Nilsson’s getting suspicious enough already. I suppose you want to know if I brought any more work home with me?”

  Her eyes lit up.

  “Did you?”

  I went over to the dresser and pulled out two more sheets of photocopies.

  “Here. That’s all I can find, without going through the stuff Nilsson keeps in his own office, and that’s too risky. Besides, he keeps the cupboards locked. I checked.”

  She flicked her eyes over the pages.

  “Thanks.”

  I poured myself a drink and started to make an omelette.

  “You want one of these?”

  Dawn hesitated.

  “Yeah, that would be good. You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not. No. Go and sit down: I’ll bring it through in a minute.”

  To be honest, I was quite glad Dawn had turned up. Not as glad as I’d have been if Ollie had come over, but at least Dawn was on the level and didn’t have some weird hidden agenda. And she was just about the only person I could talk to about Jack without getting the high court judge treatment. Well, maybe Dirk, although even he got a bit edgy. It’s funny, but in all the time Jack and I had been doing our thing together, that night, standing there in the kitchen was the first occasion I’d realised just how much other people didn’t approve of us: just how much they thought it was offensive and depraved, as well as criminal. I suppose it’s hard to see yourself like that, let alone to see the person you love most in the whole world as having something fundamentally wrong with them. As I stood there breaking eggs, I had to accept that there was, indeed, something essentially wrong with both of us.

  When we’d finished eating (although with Dawn I could never be sure), we sat on either side of the fake fire like two stand-ins for an old married couple. The lights started flicking on and off again.

  “You ought to get that sorted. Get an electrician in to check the wiring.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  Dawn sighed.

  “Half these modern developments are built like shit.”

  “So what next, officer? You want me to carry on playing secretary?”

  “Yes and no. Case has shifted. We have information that might be significant. On the other hand, it might not.”

  “Oh, good. Insignificant information.”

  Dawn leaned over with some difficulty and started to unlace her shoes, which suggested I might be in for a whole evening’s entertainment.

  “CBIB uses an archive company called ColdStore Solutions, based in Bermondsey. You know anything about that?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Well, apparently, a couple of days ago one of your colleagues needed to retrieve something from the archive and when she—”

  “You mean Lucy? She’s the only other woman in the office.”

  “Okay, when Lucy called ColdStore to get them to return the box, they couldn’t find it. They had it listed on their collection schedule, so it should have been picked up, but when they checked against the actual boxes in store, it’s not there.”

  “Could have been mislabelled. It’s probably just in the wrong place.”

  “Not so. When they checked against the driver’s collection list, the box number had been crossed out and RBC had been written next to it: retained by customer. In other words, it should have been picked up, but it wasn’t.”

  Dawn wiggled out of the second shoe and leaned back with a sigh.

  “Any chance of a coffee?”

  I went into the kitchen and fired up the Gaggia. It occurred to me that in my next life I’d maybe try running a café. When I got back, Dawn had fallen asleep. She must have been putting in the hours. I sat down and started thinking about the archive box. Well, not so much about the box, but how Dawn’s lot knew about Lucy not being able to find it. They must have put a microphone or a camera in position near her desk, probably when the place was still being checked over after Leach’s suicide. What did they think was in the box? I decided that if you were going to hide documents, an archive facility would be a pretty good option: especially if they offered a disposal service as well. Just phone up, give the order to shred box number x, and it’s gone into the mincer or incinerator or whatever. A contract killing, ha ha. Dawn grunted and opened her eyes.

  “Coffee’s there. It’s probably cold by now.”

  She hoisted herself up and took a slurp, then pulled a face.

  “God. What do you put in that stuff? It’s like paint stripper.”

  “If you must know, two parts Mocha to one part Grand Riserva. We order it especially. And it’s not paint stripper, you heathen. I’m all out of Notcafé.”

  Dawn stretched and yawned, then remembered where we’d got to in the conversation.

  “So? Any thoughts on the archive box?”

  “Yes. Do you know when it got picked up? Originally, I mean.”

  “Friday 31st October, 6pm.”

  “That’s very precise, Officer Dibble. Seems a bit late as well.”

  “Last collection of the day, by special request.”

  “By?”

  “Lucy Fleming. Apparently, Simon Leach said he had some additional stuff to go into one of the boxes, but he wouldn’t have it ready until after five-thirty.”

  “Lucy normally goes home about then. I wonder who let the ColdStore guys in to do the pickup?”

  Dawn reached over and showed me a photo on her mobile phone. It was a bit blurry, all pink and grey, but I could make out that it was a signature on a consignment note.

  “Do you recognise the name?”

  “Yes. It’s a guy called Lorenzo Gallo. Works in the private equity team at CBIB. That makes sense: he’s junior. They make all the juniors work late. So why don’t you ask Lorenzo about the missing box?”

  Dawn frowned and pocketed her phone again.

  “Okay. What do you make of this Lorenzo guy?”

  “I don’t have much to do with him. He’s polite. Tall, good-looking, eager to please.”

  Clearly, there was more to this conversation than Dawn was letting on, but I was quite surprised when she asked what I was doing the next morning and whether I’d go into the station to look at some CCTV footage. I burst out laughing.

  “I seem to recall that the last time I did that I ended up in prison.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “I just want to show you something. Five minutes, that’s all.”

  “It’s Sunday tomorrow. I suppose I’ll do it, so long as I’m back in time for Jack’s phone call. He wasn’t very happy when I saw him earlier.”

  “Oh, blimey. I forgot about that. Did you tell him?”

  “Yes. I mentioned the DNA test as well but I’m not sure he was taking it in. He went all moody and mysterious on me. Said this changes everything. God knows.”

>   “He didn’t mention Ollie, then?”

  “No. Why should he?”

  “No reason.”

  “Dawn, please tell me Ollie’s not been to see Jack again? He really must stop interfering: it’s just making problems for me.”

  “Funny; that’s what he says about you.”

  She grinned, and – well – in the pots and kettles stakes I suppose she had a point. I shook my head.

  Dawn put her shoes back on, had a general stretch and scratch and straightened the creases in her trousers.

  “Time I got going. I’ll pick you up around ten, okay?”

  What could I say? Another day in front of a monitor playing spot the deliberate mistake with Dawn Sayler. Just like old times.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sunday 30th November

  Removal

  Dawn picked me up as arranged and we got to the station just after ten thirty. It was a quiet day in Financial Crime and Dawn led me quickly past a couple of her colleagues busy in their little screened-off work areas. Neither of them even looked up, which didn’t seem very detective-like, but I guessed they were doing investigations of the number-crunching variety.

  We sat down in a tiny booth in the corner. One desk, two chairs, one monitor, no window.

  Dawn navigated us to the right place in the CCTV. It was taken from a camera angled down into an underground car park. I didn’t recognise it. Dawn explained.

  “This is the executive area car park in the basement of your office building. Very expensive to rent a space. The only people from CBIB to keep their cars here are Lars Henning Nilsson and Simon Leach.”

  She pointed at the area to the bottom left of the screen.

  “The empty space marked number thirteen belongs to Nilsson. The car next to it in space number fourteen, the white Audi, belongs to Simon Leach. This vehicle at the bottom right of the screen, with its rear doors open, is a van belonging to ColdStore, the archive company. What you’re going to see was recorded at seven minutes to six on Friday, 31st October.”