There was a rattle of keys and a clatter at the front door which I knew signalled the arrival home of Delroy, stumbling over the front step on his crutch.
“Damn it, something smells tasty! Is it you, Mrs. Llewellyn?”
I saw Winnie’s face break into a huge embarrassed and delighted smile. As she heaved her creaking joints out of her chair and waddled out to meet her husband, I caught a glimpse of the girl Delroy had met on a beach in Jamaica and had followed home and had pestered continuously until she agreed to marry him. Forty-something years later they were still together, still devoted, still sniping and bickering at each other. I wondered if I would ever find someone I could share my life with so completely, and was startled when the image that came to mind was of Zoe in the café in Kew, stirring sugar into her coffee. The girl who’d told me—taught me—never to trust anyone.
“Finn!” barked Delroy. “Sitting there with your gut filling up my kitchen! Fetch some glasses, boy!”
* * *
Delroy finished one bottle of rum and started on another, despite Winnie’s tutting and head-shaking. He barely bothered to dilute it, determined to tie one on, presumably to wipe out the humiliation of having to parade his disability and weakness for some hack government doctor ticking boxes on a form. I was glad to learn he hadn’t demonstrated on the examiner the one physical action he could perform perfectly—a right hook—although if he had I wouldn’t have blamed him. But there’s only so much watery rum I can take, and I took as much as I could before I kissed Winnie’s cheek, clapped Delroy on the shoulder and headed home at a run, my head hazy and my belly sloshing like a water bottle with every step.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or the prospect of another night by myself, or maybe I’d stopped missing Nicky whenever I saw Susan, but when I got home I picked up my mobile and called Susan’s number. Her voice was pleased to hear me, like she’d been waiting for my call, but her words didn’t match.
“I can’t make it this evening, sorry. Can we do it later this week?”
She made it sound like I was her personal fitness trainer, and I realized suddenly she was trying to hide me from whoever she was with. It figured, I thought; I was an illiterate bit of rough about seven years her junior, and she was an educated posh bird whose friends and family had money. She wasn’t likely to be taking me to dinner parties any time soon, unless it was to amuse the other diners by drinking wine out of the bottle or maybe peeling bananas with my feet.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Call me.” I slung down the phone.
She wouldn’t call me. She’d only stuck around to find out what had happened to Nicky, and now she thought she knew, and she didn’t care about the reason why Nicky left, any more than the cops did. I was the only one who gave a toss.
I cleaned my teeth, pulled off my clothes and went to bed.
I woke at five the next morning feeling like a dog turd someone had stepped in, and my mouth was parched and sticky. I wasn’t good at drinking—that had been my dad’s field of expertise—and I never wanted to be. I was about to slip into my old routine and start cleaning the gym, when I realized the gym had closed, and I was effectively unemployed. I decided to go for a run to burn the alcohol out of my system, and managed ten kilometres before I had to spew into the Thames.
It worked, though. Back home, after a shower—that was one expense of refitting the gym that I didn’t regret—I started to feel human again. I climbed the stair back to my room, towelling my head, and my eye fell on the box files still cluttering my table. There was one client of Nicky’s I hadn’t spoken to yet. Maybe there was no point any more, but I had nothing else to do.
The place I was looking for was once a cosy café in a bustling parade of shops until the North Circular ring road had carved its way through the street, slicing it in half like an earthworm. Except earthworms can survive being sliced in half, while the two ends of this high street were slowly writhing in their death throes. The only businesses clinging on were betting shops and grubby grocers selling bruised fruit and dented tins. At this time of the morning the bookies were closed, and the busiest shopfront was the one I was headed for. A succession of shambling, scruffy figures, some of them clutching greasy sleeping bags, some of them without even that, came through the open door into the steamy welcoming warmth.
If anyone noticed me, or thought I didn’t belong in a soup kitchen, they didn’t say so, but then homeless and hungry people come in all shapes and sizes. I spotted Reverend Zeto, the kamikaze motorist, right away although he wore no dog-collar. This morning he was in jeans, a T-shirt and a stained cotton apron, which he was using to lift a stack of heated soup bowls onto a counter near a big vat of watery porridge. Two other volunteers bustled around behind the counter, slight women barely into their twenties with their hair pinned up and discreet golden crosses dangling from chains around their necks. They beamed at the punters lining up for breakfast, as if they were privileged to serve them, and their sincerity was touching. I’d never really intended to join the queue, but as I watched the shuffling customers pick up their plastic cutlery I remembered my own circumstances and wondered if I’d be joining them soon.
“Hi there, what are you having?” Zeto beamed at me. I held back, guilty about taking food meant for the homeless, when I wasn’t—not yet anyway. I grinned inanely, and saw Zeto’s glance flick up and down, and his smile widen. “Haven’t seen you in here before,” he said. “The porridge is better than it looks, believe me.”
“Are you Reverend Zeto?” Zeto’s brilliant smile dried up and crumbled to dust. He was in his mid-thirties, at a guess, with fine cheekbones and a youthful mop of blond hair. He looked fit, if scrawnier than in his photos—but then getting drunk and nearly killing a score of motorists while failing to kill yourself would motivate anyone to lose a few pounds. I was surprised no one had ever tried to sell “Screw Up Your Life” as a weight-loss regimen—some dieters would try anything.
“Do you want any porridge?” he snapped at me, as if I hadn’t addressed him by name.
“Actually, I was hoping to have a chat with you,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said. “This food is for people in need, so if you’re not in need you shouldn’t be here.”
“About Nicky. Nicky Hale,” I said.
Zeto hesitated, as if I’d muttered a codeword, then changed his mind. “Whatever it’s about, I can’t help,” he said. “Next!”
“I can wait,” I said. “It’s not a problem. I was a client of hers too. I’m just trying to find out what happened to her.”
“I don’t know what happened to her,” said Zeto. His voice was distinctly lacking in Christian warmth. “I can’t help you, sorry—you can hang around all day if you want. Next!”
The guy behind me didn’t need to be told again. He walked round me, elbowed his way in front and handed his bowl to Zeto, who slopped a big ladle of grey porridge into it and passed it back. “Sugar’s over there,” he said, and pointed. Then he turned and looked straight through me. “Next please!”
You must be the rudest bloody vicar I’ve ever met, I thought, as I went to sit down at one of the long laminated trestle tables. I was hoping maybe Zeto would relent when the crowds eased off, and maybe come and talk to me, but as the morning wore on he carried on grimly slopping gruel and ignoring my presence. After an hour or so, when the line started to thin, he picked up a rack full of dirty dishes and disappeared into the back room. I kicked myself; I saw now I should have volunteered to help out, instead of marching in and demanding an interview like some arrogant copper. I’d blown it, and Zeto wouldn’t talk to me now if I joined his congregation, served on the altar on Sunday and made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem on my knees. I stood up and got ready to go: it probably didn’t matter anyway—Zeto might be sour and short-tempered, and lethal behind the wheel, but it was hard to imagine a vicar who volunteered in a soup kitchen sending obscene text messages to Nicky or plotting her disappearance.
But as I turned to the door anothe
r man entered and I did a double-take. The new arrival saw me staring and he stared back defiantly, maybe expecting me to look away or gag. He was hard to look at: the left side of his face was a mass of scar tissue and his left eye a sightless white ball twitching under warped and rigid folds of skin. His woollen hat was pulled down low over his head—I guessed that was to hide his missing left ear and wrecked scalp with its mocking wisps of hair.
Deciding to ignore me, he headed over to the counter for breakfast, and I saw the smile falter on the face of the volunteer with the porridge ladle. Then she forced herself to look him in the eye and grin, and I knew he had seen it too, and I imagined how hard it must be to face that mixture of revulsion and pity every day.
Tray in hand he finally made his way to a seat, and I moved to take the chair opposite. I made sure I faced him full on and held my look to his one sighted eye.
“Excuse me, but is your name Leslie?” I said. “Alan Leslie?”
“What do you want?” Leslie grunted, his mouth full.
“My name’s Finn Maguire. I saw your picture in the paper … I wanted to ask you about what happened.”
“What happened when?” he snorted. Some food fell from the left side of his mouth, through his stiff lips. Nerve damage, I guessed, and I wondered how often he bit the inside of his cheek and didn’t know until he spat blood.
“You were sleeping rough in a building that burned down,” I said.
“Got burned down,” he corrected me. “It wasn’t spontaneous bloody combustion.”
“Got burned down,” I said. “I’m sorry about your friend Martin.”
Leslie took another forkful of food. I wondered how many times he’d told this story, and hoped it wasn’t often. If finding someone willing to listen to—and look at—him was rare, there was a better chance he’d open up to me.
“He wasn’t my friend,” Leslie muttered.
“Wasn’t he? The media must have got it wrong.”
“He was my lover. We were together.” He stared at me as if daring me to laugh at the idea that this wreck of a face would ever have been attractive to anyone of any sexual orientation.
“Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry. It must have been a horrible way to lose someone.”
Leslie shook his head and blinked. His one good eye watered, and I wondered if he was trying to weep, but couldn’t any more.
“That bastard of a barrister made out we started it,” he said. “On purpose, to keep warm!”
He seemed to realize he was ranting, the same rant he’d ranted a hundred times before, that nobody ever cared about, and he clammed up.
“What did happen?” I said.
Leslie stared at me, wondering if this was a wind-up. “There was a report, a fire brigade report—they said the fire started at the foot of the stairs—why the fuck would we …” His voice trailed off again.
“Did you tell the court that?”
“I wasn’t at the trial. I was still in the burns unit.”
“Bisham went to jail for it, though, didn’t he?”
“Six to ten for arson? It was murder, he should have got life.”
“But if he didn’t know you were in there …”
“The hell he didn’t know—the bloody door was screwed shut.”
“Screwed shut?”
“Yeah. Bisham drove screws through the door into the frame, that night, before he torched the place. I know—I’d used that door earlier—but they never read my statement out in court. Nobody picked up on it, because we’re street people and nobody gives a damn.”
“How did Bisham start the fire? Petrol through the letter box?”
“Anyone could have done that. It started at the bottom of the stairs, about ten feet from the letter box. The prick had keys, he let himself in.”
“Bit sloppy, for an insurance job. No wonder he got caught.”
“It wasn’t an insurance job. He wanted us to burn. Me and Martin both.”
“But why?”
“To frighten any other homeless people who wanted to try it on, is why.” Leslie dropped his fork and stared down at his plate as if his appetite had vanished. When he started talking again his voice was so soft I could barely hear him. “Martin had no enemies. He was the gentlest guy you’d ever … He died in front of me. Fell through the floor. He was still alive when the fire …”
“Jesus,” I said.
“Unless you’re praying for Martin,” said Leslie, “stop using the Lord’s name. He hears you.” I thought he was being ironic, but his voice had hardened again—he was deadly serious.
“Who does?”
“The Lord hears you!” snapped Leslie.
“Oh, right, sorry,” I said. “Are you one of Zeto’s …?”
“What?” Leslie snapped, a bit defensively, I thought.
“Congregation,” I said.
“Oh.” From what I could read of Leslie’s face he looked a bit sheepish. “I go to his church, yeah.”
“What did you think I meant?”
“Forget it.” He picked up his fork again to chase a scrap of scrambled egg round his plate.
“Thanks. For talking to me.”
Leslie shoved his plate away. “What’s it worth?” he said.
I fished out my wallet and opened it. All I had left was a tenner.
Leslie snatched it. “That’ll do nicely,” he said.
For all his God-bothering, I guessed he’d spend any money I gave him on booze or drugs. But with a face like that, he was welcome to it. He needed all the narcotics he could get.
I had planned to go straight home, but when I emerged from the railway station I found myself heading south towards the river instead. Not for the scenery, but because Nicky’s house was that way.
A cop—Zoe’s father, in fact—once told me that when someone was murdered the prime suspect was always the one who reported finding the body. Nicky wasn’t dead, but her husband, Harry Anderson, was the last person to have seen her, and it was time to visit him again, to find out what else he knew. Talking to Nicky’s clients had been getting me nowhere; maybe I could rattle Anderson somehow, get him angry. I could mention his coke habit, I suppose, to imply I knew more about him than he’d like me to. I knew he’d helped to make Nicky miserable—he’d told me himself they’d argued the night she walked out—and I wondered again if it was Anderson who’d beaten her, and if that had been the final straw. I’d ask him to his face, and hopefully he’d claim that it was loveplay, and that Nicky had liked it rough. It would give me an excuse to show him the same sort of affection.
Running all the way it only took me five minutes to get to Nicky’s house, and when I got there I paused on the other side of the street as if I had a stitch and needed to catch my breath, in case anyone watching thought I was casing the place for a burglary. But there was nobody about except the postman trundling his overloaded trolley towards me, music pumping through his headphones. From his tanned legs I guessed he was one of those posties who wear shorts all year round to show everyone how outdoorsy they are. Nicky’s chocolate-box house looked empty, however—the sleek Beemer was missing from the driveway. I cursed. It was the middle of the day, after all—I should have known Anderson would be at work. It occurred to me that maybe I could case the joint … start by knocking on the door, see if I could spot an open window. Then I remembered the intruder system I’d seen during my short and sour encounter with Anderson, and scratched that idea. As the postie approached, leaned his bike against a gateway two doors down and disappeared up that drive, another approach occurred to me—just as illegal, but much less risky.
I braced my leg against the curb and rubbed my calf as if I was massaging out a cramp, and surreptitiously watched as the postman re-emerged, wheeled his bike up to the gateway next door to Nicky’s house, flicked through the presorted bundles of letters on top of his mailbag, chose one and went to drop it off.
The essence of daylight robbery is timing and decisiveness. There’s an element of performance too�
��to anyone watching you have to make your actions appear unconscious and unremarkable. In two seconds I was by the postie’s bike, in another half-second I had grabbed the next sheaf of letters from his delivery pile, and one second after that I was jogging down the street with Anderson’s correspondence stuffed up my shirt. Luckily I wasn’t really sweating much. I just hoped that the slim bundle I had snatched actually had letters for Anderson and not just spam from pizza joints and dodgy cab firms.
I paused by a post box two streets away and checked through the bundle. It took me a minute or two, but I found three letters for Anderson and one for Nicky. I posted the remainder, stuffed the others back up my hoodie and ran on. North of Kew Bridge the traffic was static as usual; it gave me a lovely smug feeling to run past the drivers sitting fuming in their cars like a thousand sardines, each festering slowly in its own tin.
My mobile buzzed noisily on my table. I checked the name that appeared on the screen, thought about it, then hit “answer.”
“Hey, Finn, it’s me, Susie.”
“I know it’s you, your number’s in my contacts.”
“I wondered if you wanted to meet up.”
“When?”
“Now would be good.”
“Thought you couldn’t make it till later this week?”
“This is later this week.”
“I’m kind of busy right now.”
“I could come to you.” Part of me liked that idea, and it was easy to tell which part.
“OK. I’ll be in all evening.”
“Good, because I’m downstairs. Why don’t you have an entryphone?”
When I opened the door she pushed her way in like a copper on a raid, grabbed my hair and pulled my face down to kiss her. Well, I thought, no long awkward pauses wondering if the other night was a one-off misjudgement. As she climbed the stairs ahead of me, my eyes level with her swaying ass, I felt the scratches tingling on my back in anticipation, and as soon as she made it to the top floor she turned and seized my shirt. It was just as well I hadn’t got round to replacing the broken furniture.
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