by S J Bolton
‘Whatever. In which case, why play games? Why not simply come out and say what’s on her mind, tell us what she wants and call in the favours? Why is she keeping us guessing?’
They edged their way around a tour of grey-haired women. ‘The land you’re standing on was once a Jewish cemetery,’ their guide was saying. ‘Four hundred years after the Jews were expelled from the city, thousands of cartloads of muck and dung were needed to raise the land high enough above the Cherwell to make it suitable for planting. No wonder things grow so well here.’
‘She’s talking about hypnosis,’ Daniel said when they were out of earshot. ‘Will it work, do you think?’
‘If she’s only pretending not to remember, it’s definitely going to work,’ Talitha replied. ‘I just don’t understand why she’s going through the charade.’
‘Because the balance of power has shifted. She has nothing to lose, we have everything. She’s enjoying herself.’
The rain had started and the elderly visitors were heading towards the main glasshouse close to the garden’s entrance. Talitha and Daniel made instead for the smaller greenhouses by the river. Inside, the air was close, the glass opaque with condensation, and their steps were punctuated by a constant, almost musical dripping.
In the waterlily room, tendrils curled like the waiting tongues of predatory insects, and the hanging flowers seemed more like chemical explosions than blooms. The central tank was a patchwork-quilt of leaves the size of saucers, of dinner plates, of manhole covers. They reached a wooden bench, dedicated to the memory of someone in whom they had no interest but took advantage of the generosity of his friends all the same, and sat.
‘It doesn’t sound like Megan,’ Talitha said. ‘She wasn’t underhand or manipulative.’
‘We knew her years ago,’ Daniel replied. ‘Before she spent twenty years in prison. And I’m not sure we even knew her back then. Did she tell anyone she’d screwed up her exams?’
She hadn’t. Looking back, Talitha thought, there had been signs, a subtle withdrawing from the group, as though Megan had known that her place as a member wouldn’t hold out against the revelation that was coming. At the time, though, they’d all been so completely self-absorbed. None of them had given it much thought.
‘We need the proof,’ Daniel went on, and Talitha could hear him trying not to sound accusatory, or impatient, because this was a task that had been entrusted to her.
‘By the end of the day, we should have it,’ Talitha told him.
‘What’s happening?’
‘I wasn’t going to say anything, because I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but I’m going round to Megan’s bedsit after this.’ She looked at her watch. ‘In forty minutes.’
‘How will you get in?’
‘Someone I know will open the doors,’ Talitha replied. ‘He’ll be dressed as a workman, with ID convincing enough for most people. Once he’s inside, he’ll call me and we’ll search the place together.’
Daniel looked around, as though afraid they might be overheard, and lowered his voice. ‘What if you’re seen?’
‘Megan’s at work. Felix has promised to call me if she leaves, but there’s no reason why she would. If anyone else sees me, I can be a supervisor or something. We’re talking about a bedsit in student land, Dan. No one will care.’
Daniel scratched at his head, not for the first time. Talitha had already noticed a fine sprinkling of dandruff on his jacket shoulders. ‘We should have done it before,’ he said. ‘She’s had time to hide it somewhere else.’
‘Well, excuse me, but one doesn’t look on Yell.com for private detectives who have a relaxed approach to breaking the law. These people take time to find.’
‘Can he be trusted?’
‘No, which is why I’m going too.’
‘Be careful, Tal.’
‘Want to take my place?’
She laughed at the expression on his face. ‘Relax. I have another job for you. For whatever reason, you’re the one she’s focusing on right now.’
‘Maybe I’m the only one she can get hold of.’
‘Whatever the reason, she talks to you, feels comfortable with you.’
‘So, what am I supposed to do?’
‘Find out as much as you can. Start with twenty years ago. Something happened back then, something that threw her off course, made her fail her exams. If we find out what it was, we might begin to understand what drove her back then. What’s driving her now.’
23
Parking a car in central Oxford is close to impossible, and Talitha had long since given up trying. A bike, especially a modest, low-powered one, was so much easier. After saying goodbye to Daniel, she retrieved her bike from Rose Lane and steered back up the high street, passing him before the bridge; from The Plain roundabout she turned into Iffley Road. A mile or so up, she turned left again and pulled up six doors down from the house where Megan had a room. Ten minutes early. Checking no one was in earshot, she made a phone call.
‘Hey,’ Felix said after only two rings. ‘What’s up?’
Talitha asked, ‘Is she still with you?’
‘She is. You about to go in?’
‘Few minutes. I need you to call if she leaves the building.’
‘No worries.’
‘How’s she been?’
‘Surprisingly good. Sorted out the backlog in two days. Rearranged several of the systems and everyone agrees it will make a big difference in the long term. People like her.’
Unsure whether Megan’s unexpected success rankled or not, Talitha asked, ‘Anyone know who she is yet?’
‘Not yet. I’m trying to keep Sarah away. She’s bloody livid about the whole idea and I’ve more or less told her I’ve changed my mind, that I’m planning to sack Megan.’
‘You lied to your wife?’
Felix sighed down the phone, ‘Tal, I think we’re all going to be doing a lot worse before this is over.’
It was a fair point; she was about to indulge in a spot of breaking and entering.
Further down the street, a white van pulled up at the side of the road. In the driver’s seat, Talitha could see a man in his forties looking down at a clipboard.
‘I think we’re in business,’ she said. ‘Don’t let her leave.’
She hung up and waited. The man approaching her was wearing the dark blue jacket with turquoise sleeves that was the latest uniform of a British Gas engineer. There was no BG insignia on the jacket, though, partly because they were tricky to get hold of, and partly because impersonating a utility official to gain access to a property was a criminal offence. This way, the two of them would only be breaking the law once they were inside Megan’s room.
They did not introduce themselves.
‘We good?’ he said, when they were close enough to talk.
Nodding, she held open the gate that would lead them to the front door of the three-storey terraced house. A double row of doorbells indicated that at least eight people lived in the building. Her companion took something from his pocket and slid it into the gap between door and frame. Five seconds later, they were inside. It always paid to wait for a professional.
‘Flat seven,’ she said, although she had told him this already.
‘Top floor.’ He led the way up, leaning a little to the right to compensate for the tool kit he was carrying. The blue carpet on the stairs was dusty, worn in places. There were scuff marks on the walls and the lampshade they passed on the first landing was full of a dark substance that she saw, with a shudder, was a heap of dead insects. They heard the sound of a TV from one room, the shouting of a woman from another, the yell of a baby from a third.
There were only two doors on the top floor, where the ceilings sloped at acute angles and the old carpet had finally given up the ghost. The bare boards of the landing floor had been paint
ed, but not recently.
‘New lock,’ Talitha’s companion remarked.
‘Can you open it?’ She kept her voice low, fearful of listening ears behind the other door. The new lock was a good sign. If Megan had seen fit to install a new lock, it could only be because she had something to hide.
Without replying, he dropped to his knees and opened his toolkit. Talitha tiptoed across to the door of number eight and leaned towards it, stopping when she could feel the wood against her hair. She held her breath for several seconds but could hear nothing from inside.
The man in the blue-and-turquoise jacket picked up one tool and then the next. He blocked her view of the lock with his body and she could only wait, biting back the questions that she knew would be useless and annoying. Several times, her phone vibrated, but the callers were work colleagues or clients, never Felix, so she ignored them.
It took twelve minutes before the door swung open. The man packed away his tools and got to his feet. He held the door, she stepped through, and it was closed behind them.
‘She mustn’t know we’ve been here,’ she said.
In response, he pulled from his pocket two pairs of disposable gloves and held one out to her.
‘We’re looking for a piece of paper, A-four size, with handwriting on it,’ she said. ‘Also a film from a camera or possibly developed photographs. They could be in an envelope, or a plastic bag, something for safekeeping.’
‘I’ll start this end.’ He got to work.
The room was small, with sloping ceilings, barely the size of Talitha’s youngest stepchild’s bedroom at home. The plasterwork was a dirty cream, the wood of the window frame was rotting beneath the peeling paintwork and the carpet old and sticky, but the room was neat and the kitchen area clean. There were no dishes in the sink or on the draining board, no discarded clothes on the floor and the single bed was neatly made. Remembering what slobs they’d been as eighteen-year-olds, Talitha thought that prison, if nothing else, had given Megan clean habits.
She could hear the soft chinks of crockery and tinned goods as her companion sorted through kitchen cupboards, but she had yet to join the search. Her attention had been caught by a corkboard pinned above the bed. It was full of photographs and other mementos of the life Megan left behind when she was sentenced. Talitha’s own younger face, and those of all five of her former best friends, stared back at her, with glazed eyes, wild hair and pursed lips: by the river in Port Meadow, dripping wet and shivering; lying drunk in the sunshine in University Parks; dancing like dervishes at Reading Festival; the punt race on the Cherwell, Xav powering one boat with Amber and Megan as passengers, Felix on the other with her and Dan, and suddenly it seemed the most important thing in the world to remember who’d won.
In the centre of the board was a picture of Xav. Taken outdoors, because there was a background of trees, and in summer, because the trees were in full leaf. She knew instinctively that Megan was the photographer. There was a smile on Xav’s face that she hadn’t seen in years. Maybe twenty years.
‘Look on the back of that,’ her companion told her and Talitha realised there were tears in her eyes. She did what she was told though, but there was no manila envelope pinned to the back of the corkboard.
‘Bed,’ she was told next. ‘Strip it.’
There was nothing in or around the bed. The two of them tipped it on its side so that they could see underneath the frame, but nothing. She went through the scant contents of the wardrobe and looked both on top and underneath it. She checked the drawers of the dressing table, lifting each cheap pair of pants, refolding both supermarket bras.
By this time, her partner in crime had finished searching the cooking area and was checking for loose nails in the carpet. When they had been in the room for nearly forty minutes, he shook his head.
‘If it was here, we’d have found it,’ he said.
Talitha couldn’t disagree.
‘Something important, people usually keep it with them,’ he added.
They left the house together. On the first-floor landing, they came across a young woman who was unlocking one of the doors, but after a glance their way, she hurried inside.
‘Still want to set a watch?’ he asked, when they were back on the street. This was something they’d already discussed.
‘She leaves work at five,’ Talitha told him, although he already knew. ‘Watch her till midnight, or until she comes home, whichever is the sooner. I need to know where she goes, and who she meets.’
‘Till when?’
Talitha named a date four days hence, and they parted ways. As he drove away, she phoned Felix again.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘She may have it with her. You need to search her bag.’
‘How the fuck do I do that?’
‘Use your imagination. Wait till she’s in the loo, fake a fire alarm, lock her in a frigging cupboard. I don’t care how you do it, just make sure it isn’t with her.’
Annoyed, he hung up. It made no difference. He’d do it, of course. They were all criminals. Just a bit out of practice.
24
Several days passed before Felix had a chance to search Megan’s handbag; she simply never let it leave her side. But on the Wednesday morning of the following week, needing to speak to her about a client invoice, he peered round the open door of the general office. She wasn’t at her desk; her handbag was, though.
It sat beside her chair, a cheap-looking canvas bag, the sort the girls had taken to festivals when they were younger. Lumpy, a bit grubby, it slumped over on itself, straps trailing across the carpet.
Come on then, it taunted him; I dare you.
The main office wasn’t empty. Three of the sales reps were at their desks and could see his reflection in the window if they looked up. The IT staff had their heads down, but they rarely let him leave his room without a question of some sort.
There was never going to be a perfect opportunity.
He approached Megan’s desk, pulled out her chair and sat.
‘Help you with anything, Felix?’ Cath, his large-account rep – who hated her job title, probably because she was overweight and under no illusions about the jokes cracked behind her back – was watching him from several desks away.
He didn’t look up. ‘Nah, I’m good. Megan gone far, do you know?’
‘Stockroom, I think.’
Nodding, he pulled Megan’s in-tray towards him, pretending to rifle through the papers. Without looking down, he hooked his foot around the bag and pushed it further under the desk, before knocking a felt-tip pen to the floor. Cursing, he pushed his chair back, bent double, and disappeared from sight under Megan’s desk.
Close up, the bag smelled like second-hand shops and had a press-stud fastener. It looked full. He upended it, spilling the contents over the floor, before replacing them one by one: purse, mobile telephone, hairbrush, cosmetic bag, tissues, tampons, several pens and pencils, an A5-size brown envelope, sealed, something small but heavy inside. He pressed it between fore finger and thumb. Something cylindrical, about two and a half inches long.
Felix experienced a burning sensation in his chest that felt a lot like triumph; this had to be it.
In the room above, the outer door closed. He slipped the envelope into the waste bin, pushing it to the bottom, out of sight. As he emerged, Megan was walking towards him and, in his own room, the desk phone started to ring.
‘Came to talk to you,’ he said, in response to her raised eyebrows. ‘Knocked everything off your desk. Sorry. I think it’s sorted.’
She’d look for the envelope now, for sure. He’d blown it.
His desk phone stopped ringing and his mobile took up the summons in its place. His personal device, not the burner Tal had given him.
‘What about?’ Megan couldn’t take her seat while he was in the way. Somehow, though, he couldn’
t move. Moving would feel like running.
‘Sorry?’
‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
‘Oh, right.’ He couldn’t remember. He’d totally forgotten the excuse he’d had planned. Another phone sounded, in the main room this time.
‘This?’ she lifted the invoice off her desk.
‘Ah, that’s it. Not sure what’s—’
‘Felix, reception have been trying to get hold of you,’ Graham in IT called over. ‘Sarah’s on her way up.’
The door opened and Felix’s wife walked in.
‘Morning.’ She gave tight-lipped smiles to the staff as she crossed the carpet; some were returned, not all. Sarah had never gone out of her way to make friends with her husband’s employees. She ignored Megan completely. ‘Need a word,’ she said to Felix.
Grateful for the reprieve, knowing it could only be temporary, he followed his wife into his office. Before the door was closed, she leaned over his desk, picked up his coffee mug and sniffed. He waited. She put the mug down without comment and gestured to the door.
‘What’s she doing here?’ she demanded.
Felix walked around his desk and sat down. He wondered, for a second, whether pouring himself a drink in Sarah’s presence was a good idea and did it anyway. She was smart enough to pick her battles and, right now, he’d rather be accused of being an alcoholic.
‘We discussed this,’ she added.
‘No. You gave me your opinion. I said very little. Not my idea of a discussion.’
Sarah managed to make pulling out a chair and sitting down seem like an act of violence. She leaned towards him across the desk and, fair play, tried to lower her voice. ‘She’s an ex-con,’ she hissed. ‘You cannot allow her anywhere near the company accounts.’
The Scotch tasted like shit with the dregs of coffee contaminating it, but Felix drank all the same and was rewarded with the momentary surge of bravado. He said, ‘She was convicted of murder, not corporate theft.’
‘And that makes it OK? God knows what she learned in a high-security prison the last twenty years, and you’ve given her access to all our money? She could wipe us out, Felix.’