An hour to midnight and lonely, Steven wanted to speak to his sister, but whatever else he felt, he could not initiate it. He could not do a single bloody thing, except dream of tomorrow, in between occasional bouts of sheer anxiety about what kind of fool he must be to give Lilian his mobile phone number, like making himself a hostage to fortune, the final insanity, apart from arranging to meet. When his mobile went, his feet left the ground. It was a disappointing relief to hear the voice of his sister, issuing a single, surprising command. Get here.
He was only a street away, unable to do anything but haunt the vicinity where Lilian lived. Lilian, whom he would see again tomorrow. Sitting in a pub, nursing a single malt, and dreaming, when he was not also thinking of his sister and how to prise that painting back without facing her anger, and there she was, obliging him. God was kind and the world was marvellous and everything would work out.
He went to Sarah’s, and was inside in ten minutes, horribly, deliciously conscious that Lilian was upstairs, and he felt a fool for blowing a kiss down the hallway in that direction.
Sarah ushered him into her tiny kitchen.
‘Listen,’ he gabbled, ‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. But I’ve got to have that painting back. I’ve met Lilian, and she wants it, I’ve got to have it.’
So much for diplomacy.
She seemed to understand the whole situation without further explanation and she smiled. She could terrify him when she smiled, and her face, in the harsh light of the kitchen, was hard.
‘Ah, I did rather hope you might say that.’
‘Pardon?’
‘That you really, really wanted it back.’
She pushed him ahead of her into the living room, where Steven found himself opposite a tableau of people sitting on her old sofa, facing the cow. It was a real work of art, he always thought, definitely gave zing, but not now.
‘You want that painting back, darling,’ Sarah said, ‘you have to climb.’
CHAPTER NINE
Do not leave children unattended
Not quite a tableau, but the two of them had spread themselves on the sofa. Steven recognised Fritz, from a nodding acquaintance, and waited for an introduction to the woman who sat next to him. Sarah provided it, doing the rounds like a hostess.
‘Fritz? You’ve met my brother, haven’t you? Steven, this is Fritz. Not his real name, I think, but that doesn’t matter. What’s in a name? Often wonder what fool dreamt up Fortune. And this is Mrs Fritz: Mrs Fritz, my brother, Steven. He’s a thief in his spare time, but not too bad otherwise. Would you all like more coffee?’
There were two sets of nods. Steven sank into the armchair, gazing at Mrs Fritz. She looked like a gypsy, and he was distracted by her face, wondering why he made that assumption, trying to recall the memory of a painting somewhere featuring gypsies. A slightly insulting generic term, he thought, and then he was remembering a Modigliani painting, Gypsy Woman with Child, yes, she was a little like that. Modigliani’s gypsy had bright red cheeks and that was where the resemblance lay, although in Mrs Fritz’s case, there was nothing gypsy-like about her drab clothing, and she would have suited a scarf round her neck to go with the flushed planes of her face. In face, at least, Mr and Mrs were an unlikely couple, he rounded and pale beneath a coffee skin, she squared and rosy. They looked embarrassed as well as determined.
‘Steven, dear, don’t get too comfortable, and drink your coffee soonest. Do you need anything to eat? I do hope not. I know you prefer to climb on an empty stomach, and we do need you to climb.’
Sarah filled the china cup he was nursing in his hands. He could feel the heat of the liquid through his fingers, sipped it. There had been far too much coffee today. He put the cup down on the floor and waited for whatever might happen next, fingering the fabric of the chair in which he sat, disapprovingly. It was something to do with his nerveless hands. He looked at his sister. Her face turned into Lilian’s face.
‘Climb?’
‘Burgle, climb, however you put it. Come on, Fritz, explain.’
Mrs Fritz stirred, restlessly, clasped her fingers and leaned forwards, earnestly.
‘Is Minty,’ she said. ‘Upstairs.’ Then nodded, as if that said it all, and sank back on the sofa. Steven thought he had seen worse, far more obscure films than this. Her accent was indecipherable and he looked at her with greater interest. These days it was impossible to define people by nationality. Modigliani had already proved that.
‘Over to you, Fritz,’ Sarah ordered.
What a silly name. He looked like . . . he looked like . . . They all looked like Lilian, since that was the face imprinted on the inside of his eyes. He had to get that painting back, then he would hear her laugh. Fritz cleared his throat as if for a speech. He spoke peculiarly imperfect English.
‘I know you, Mr Steven, ’cos you come here. And I know you are doing this climbing, maybe burgling business up the back when you lose your keys. I tell her,’ he nudged his wife, who nodded vigorously, ‘and she is saying, OK, what harm, he is being Sarah’s sister. Having jokes. No complaints so what the hell, hey?’
He tried to laugh, but he was far too miserable.
‘I deny it,’ Steven said. Fritz spread his hands.
‘OK, OK, is someone looks like you. Only a coupla times, OK? No worries. You climb, he climbs, who cares? No security at back. Even on top floor. So, you go or that other bloke who looks like you, he goes.’
‘Why and where do you want me to climb?’ Steven asked, mildly.
Sarah took over.
‘Steven, dear, in the top-floor flat, a sort of penthouse, lives a strange Chinese couple, running what is loosely described as an import–export business. For several months they had a servant called Minty. They locked her up most of the time, until they seemed to trust her not to escape, but even so she was more of a slave. They are alternately sloppy about security or paranoid. Haven’t yet established who she is, except she’s probably a Romany from the same part of Kosovo as Mrs Fritz, here. The most stateless persons in the world. I told you about Minty, to your great disinterest, and I must confess I did little enough to assist, figuring people usually find their own way out. Anyway she escaped, with a lot of help from these good people, who put us to shame. Only, it seems, she’s been got back. And now she’s really locked up.’
Steven remembered the girl stumbling upstairs with her captors while he crouched in Sarah’s doorway two nights before, felt guilty, remembered in time to keep quiet, because there was another face he remembered better. Revealing such a sighting and his own failure to do anything about it would put him at a further moral disadvantage and he was feeling thoroughly outclassed as it was. He was struggling to remember the geography of the block, a jumbled map in his mind, jarring alongside the deep feeling of shame for the fact that he had forgotten the girl on the stairs, and the fact that his climbing up and down the well of the building had never been secret. Who thought he was so clever then? Wouldn’t want Lilian knowing that. Shame made him blush. On top of all that, there hovered the sweet sensation of her, one floor away, and how much he needed to retrieve that sodding painting of her husband’s she valued so much, to prove himself. This was bargaining time, and with the scent of her so near he did not give a shit if he was being asked to ascend into heaven without a rope, or descend into an icy hell with crampons. His mind worked overtime. He brushed his hand through his hair. It stood up in short spikes.
The phone rang. Sarah ignored it. Mr and Mrs Fritz sat to attention.
‘Mr and Mrs Fritz believe Minty was brought back the other night,’ Sarah went on, reverting to the voice of the lawyer sent upon earth to clarify things to befuddled fools. ‘Certainly there’s someone up there wanting to get out. And a lot of coming and going in between. But without proof of nefarious activity, slavery or whatever, it all gets a bit difficult. Could be a crying child—’
‘Who turns the door handle,’ Fritz interrupted.
‘Or Minty, or someone else,’ Sarah continued. ‘But we
can’t call the so-called authorities, for obvious reasons. So be a dear, Steven. Just go up there and find out. You don’t even have to start from the bottom. You can start from here.’
‘Doesn’t Fritz have keys? He’s the caretaker.’
The phone rang again. Fritz was shaking his head.
‘No, I don’t have no keys to flats unless people give ’em me when they go away. But if you got a burglar alarm, like the Beaumonts do, and the Chinese do, you gotta post a code with me, so I can turn it off from downstairs if it goes on and on. Security firm comes automatic, but I can make it quiet. Chinese don’t know that. I fix with security firm ’cos it kept going off. And there’s no alarms at back. Too pricey, looks safe at back, not worth it. You know that,’ he added, nodding at Steven. ‘Sorry, man who climbs up and down there, he knows that. He gets in back, comes out front, OK?’
‘I don’t quite understand,’ Steven said. ‘Why not call the police?’
Mrs Fritz exploded into a stream of expletives and gestures. They all listened attentively.
‘Mrs F was saying earlier,’ Sarah translated, ‘that the Chinese would get them the sack if they did that, and the police would take Minty away. And they might mention someone climbing up the walls.’
Steven ignored the latter part.
‘Sounds as if she’d be safer if she was taken away. They wouldn’t get sacked if you called the police,’ Steven said.
‘And if I tell the police, where would I have got my information from? Where else but the caretaker? Oh for Christ’s sake, just get in there, you’re good at it,’ Sarah said impatiently. ‘And if she’s in there, bring her down without disturbing anything.’
‘They’ll know if Fritz overrides the alarm.’
Fritz shook his head, confident about that.
‘I don’t steal people,’ Steven said, helplessly, but still feeling a surge of excitement. ‘What language does she speak, this girl?’
‘Romany,’ said Mrs Fritz. ‘Gypsy to you, bit of English.’
‘Jesus, that’s all I need. Who the hell else speaks Romany?’
‘I do.’
‘Nobody’s asking you to steal her,’ Sarah interrupted. ‘If she doesn’t want to go, leave her. Get on with it, there may not be much time.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, don’t be ridiculous. I can climb up there, probably, but bring her down? I’m not a sodding rescue service. I’d need harnesses, three men and—’
Steven, nobody’s asking you to bring her down the drainpipe.’
‘What are you asking then?’
Sarah sighed in exasperation. He was supposed to be able to read her mind.
‘We’re asking you to get in secretly, see if Minty’s there and what state she’s in. If she’ll go out of the place with you, then you pick the lock on their door from the inside where it won’t show, and bring her down here. In the meantime, you smash a back window or something, make a mess, or whatever, and make it look as if she went out by climbing out and down. See? There’s even ropes up there, over the balcony. A broken washing line, even. Make it look as if she shinned down. Then no one else is implicated.’
‘Why can’t I just pick the lock from the outside with you standing guard? And what makes you think I can pick the lock?’
‘You grew up around me, Steven. You can pick any lock, you did it at school. And if you pick it from the outside, it might show. And if they come back, you’d be stuck on that landing with nowhere to go. Anyway, Fritz says it isn’t a special lock. Like he said, they’re paranoid, antisocial, but cocky. That’s what they are. They’ve got used to no one interfering. Or noticing.’
Steven sat back, arms crossed across chest, hands hidden beneath his armpits, feeling the sweat. Mr and Mrs Fritz leaned forward, simultaneously.
‘These fucking Chinese by way of being out, just now, Mr Steven. Whole bloody lot. Place empty, but for crying Minty. I bin up there. I got no key, no going-in rights, gotta job. But they in’t there this minute. Mrs and Mr Beaumont, they out, too. Son’s birthday. You go and look, please? They got line hanging over back balcony, Sarah’s right. Messy people. They don’t care.’
Despite himself, Steven could feel a terrible tendency to rise to the challenge. He had surplus energy and surplus guilt and other motives he was not willing to discuss. Yes.
‘You can see the way from my back window,’ Sarah said.
He wondered for a minute if she was trying to kill him, or had greater faith in his climbing prowess than he did himself. Still, he had climbed with great ease to the Beaumont floor, so what was another floor?
‘I can do it, but I don’t know how to get in. It usually needs some kind person with a preference for fresh air and open windows.’
Fritz had the answers, as if rehearsed.
‘Window at back broken,’ he chanted. ‘Always was, before they lived there. They don’t fix. They never fix. They don’t let anyone in to fix nothing. They don’t move ropes, neither. Lazy bastards.’
‘Your gear and your climbing suit is in my bedroom,’ Sarah said. The way she said it made it sound like a set of pyjamas.
‘And if I do it, then will you give me the painting?’
She did not answer, but he trusted his sister to keep a bargain. She always did, in her way.
There were terrible flaws in this stupid plan, but he knew he would do it anyway. Those soulful eyes of Fritz, that sensation of being seen as powerful, Sarah needing him, all worked like an aphrodisiac. And Lilian’s face: there was always Lilian’s face. The glamour of a rescue mission. Steven surveyed the terrain as best he could. Then, dressed in his black Lycra with the gear neatly stashed at his waist, he climbed out of the window into the well, feeling this was insane, and also gallant. Someone might praise him for it. He ducked his head back to speak to Sarah.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier if I just gave her a box of chocolates?’
She shook her head and backed away. She could not watch.
Fritz went downstairs to turn off the burglar alarm. Then they sat and waited. The phone rang again. A small carriage clock in Sarah’s living room struck midnight. Fritz leant forward and patted Sarah’s knee.
‘He’s a good boy, he. Very good climber.’
‘Have you watched him, then?’
‘Oh yeah. Very good.’
‘Didn’t you mind that he was getting inside the flats?’
Fritz shrugged. ‘Better the devil you are knowing. I think he is only playing. I am only the porter, why should I care?’
‘What’s your real name, Fritz?’
‘None of your business, Fortune.’
They waited.
Steven chose the drainpipe route up to the next level, glad of its iron solidity, until he reached the balcony and hauled himself on to it. So far so easy. This was the window into the Beaumonts’ flat, his previous point of entry, and his heart, already pounding, pounded harder. The window was firmly shut, with an opaque blind drawn across it, through which an eerie light seeped. It looked as if it was daylight inside, an almost blue light which somehow gave him the feeling that Lilian had left it to guide him. Would Lilian approve of what he did now? Surely. It was crazy, but in his way, he was doing it for her. So that he would survive until tomorrow, when they were going to meet and study zing. So that he could get back that painting, which would make her happy. He stood on the balcony rail, placed his right foot into a space between the girder of the old lift arrangement and the wall, and his left against the drainpipe. There were old brackets in the wall. Rust crunched between his toes. His taped fingers, dusted with chalk, were glad of the friction created by rust. He jammed his fist into a crevice created by broken brick. He never looked down, kept his face level with the brickwork of the wall until he was spreadeagled safely. He tested his toes in his rubber-soled slippers. A heel hook to the ironwork on the side, then he eased his whole body to follow. Then the drainpipe, which held. Another fist jam. He moved to the second pipe and the metal-work left from the old lift. Then he loo
ked up. The rope hanging over the balcony was almost within reach. Now he had to commit, leap for that thing just out of reach. It was dark up there. His hand clutched at the rope, a slippy, plastic-coated line, as strong as wire, which bore his weight as he wrapped it round his knuckles and pulled. He climbed, hand over hand, then pushed himself away from the wall so he swung into space, and as he swung back, caught the balcony with his hands and hung there. Slowly contorted his body until his heel was above his head, holding on.
My next trick is impossible, he told himself. I wish someone was watching.
Someone was.
He saw the face behind the cracked window as he hauled his way on to the balcony. Small and pale with a mouth shaped into an O! before she moved out of sight. There was a pile of old clothes in a basket. He threw them out of the way, down into the well. The window was dirty and cracked. Fritz was right: they were messy. They made it easy. He was beginning to feel contempt for the owners, recognised that as dangerous. Get in, open window, rearrange rope first. Smash glass from inside. Get on with it, you great, soft bastard. It’s the best job you ever did.
Downstairs, they waited. Sarah had begun to pace between the front and the back, and from the back, heard the glass and began a slow gnawing of her fingernails. Then she went and stood by the front door. Then came back. It was better not to know what he was doing. They were both a little mad.
John paced up and down, waiting for daylight. It felt as if it was the darkest hour before the dawn, but midnight was still close behind so there was time to go. He had got it: he had finally cracked the code. Sleep was out of the question, despite the exhaustion. He had slept too much for too long.
There would be regret, too, for the whisky consumed as he paced, but that was not important. Overindulgence was better than going out of doors and hitting people, which he might otherwise have done.
John had consulted his library, that much-loved, often ignored collection of books on plants, gardening, birds, explorers and medicine, excluding a single unreal story or anything frivolous. He had always assumed that most of his knowledge came from the dry pages of books, and that knowledge thus acquired was the most important kind. He had never rated the more instinctive knowledge he had acquired through prolonged contact with sick human animals as anything like as important, and at the moment he wanted to shoot himself in the head for the realisation that the opposite was true. If only he had trusted himself: he was a walking encyclopedia on human behaviour. He had eyes, for God’s sake. It was his eyes and his ears and his daily experience that truly informed him. Another slug of whisky. He was full of useless energy and sleepy at the same time. If he slept, there would be nightmares, and it was disappointing that Sarah did not answer her phone, but what did he expect? Just because he wanted to talk and refine his thoughts, and she was suddenly the only person he could think of. He wanted to say out loud that it was unpleasant to conclude that Edwin was homicidal, that Edwin was a friend he had come to loathe, and then he was angry with himself for being so vulnerable to his new friendships that the isolation he had once enjoyed seemed to have turned against him.
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