He felt a brief pang of guilt as he opened the file and saw a wad of medical forms. On top, an information pack on applying for Carer’s Allowance. Below it, details of various medications related to long-term MS. Returning the folder to where he found it, Harry walked out of the room and headed for the front door.
Harry
Harry met Meg the day after she returned from Newcastle, at the Captain Kidd in Wapping.
He could tell she was on one from the moment she walked in, several faces in the room looking up and watching her cross towards the crowded bar, the energy coming off her like warning shots.
‘Sambuca or tequila?’ she asked without taking off her jacket, rubbing her hands together in fingerless gloves.
Harry tilted his head. ‘Maybe. You all right?’
‘Fine. Fucking Newcastle, man. Boring as fuck.’
Harry leaned towards the barman and signalled for two tequilas, hesitating before handing her the glass, watching her neck tense as she leaned back and let the liquid run down her throat.
‘Has something happened?’ he asked and Meg frowned.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Harry said. ‘You just seem jumpy.’
‘Jumpy?’ She sneered. ‘I told you, I just don’t like going home. But I’m back now and I’m fine, so get us another one of those shots.’
They moved from pub to bar, making their way back towards Bethnal Green. At the off licence nearest the flat, Meg picked out an armful of gin and tonic in tins. Harry paid and they walked towards the apartment the agency had given him occasional access to, in a handsome Victorian mansion block on a quieter street behind the main road. As soon as they were upstairs, Meg pulled out the wrap of white powder she had been snorting bumps from all night using her house key, and Harry thought, with a flicker of regret, of his time in her flat, the ring binder full of information about carers and medication.
He watched her now as she cut out a series of lines.
‘Haven’t you got any music?’ she asked. She rolled a note and inhaled one line and then a second.
‘I can sing to you, if you like?’ Harry joked, taking the note from her pale fingers and hoovering up the last of it.
‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’ she said, tilting her head back, wiping the remains of powder from the base of her nose and sniffing hard. Her pupils were small and sharp. ‘You can’t trust people who don’t listen to music. Why don’t you have a girlfriend? You’re too old to be single.’
‘Jesus.’ Harry rubbed his temples. ‘Anyway, who says I don’t have a girlfriend?’ He stared back at her and then he shrugged, leaning forward and touching her face. ‘I don’t know why. Maybe because I’m never here.’
She pulled away from his touch, moving around the living room, which was largely bare aside from a few books and a couple of soulless photographs framed on the wall. After a moment, she stopped and turned to him.
‘So where are you?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Is that an existential question?’
‘Anna told me you were fired from the paper. For fucking a teenager. Is that true?’
Harry’s face stilled. Christ. He had assumed from the lack of confrontation before now that Anna hadn’t said anything, or that the gossip-mill at his old paper had long since reached her and she wasn’t bothered.
‘Do you think it’s true?’ He was genuinely intrigued.
Meg started to walk around the room again, picking up one of the cans from the table and cracking it open with a hiss.
Harry was about to speak again but Meg interrupted.
‘Don’t you ever get bored of this shit?’
‘Bored of …?’
‘Life. All of it. It’s so fucking mundane. I had this idea, you know, that I would become a journalist and work at a newspaper and do shit that mattered, that I’d make a difference. But it’s just bullshit, it’s all bullshit, isn’t it? I’m just there making cups of fucking tea for entitled old men who don’t give a shit about me or what I can do, pretending that I don’t mind being their fucking lap dog.’
‘I didn’t know she was fifteen,’ Harry said. He needed her to know that.
‘What’s the difference. Fifteen, sixteen, eighteen. You’re all the fucking same, it’s just what you can get away with.’
She tipped the last of the gin and tonic into her mouth and scrunched up the can. ‘I just want to do something. You know? What am I even saying, of course you don’t.’
‘Yes, I do.’ Harry’s voice was even. ‘Traditional journalism is bullshit. I know it. Why do you think I got out?’
‘’Cause you were fired?’
She looked amused by her own quip.
‘I was fired because my editor wouldn’t back me, even though he knew I was right. My story stood up regardless of the other shit. The story should be what matters, irrespective of the means by which it is obtained. The PCC, advertisers, they’re all calling the shots so that the freedom of the press – or rather the substance of the story in its purest form – is compromised.’
She stopped pacing.
He was on a roll now. ‘There’s always an agenda. The problem with newspapers is that the agenda isn’t always clear. There is always a reason why one story is pursued or ignored at the expense of another. There is no objective truth in journalism. The transactional nature is necessarily polluted – but it’s dressed up as neutral.’
‘Jesus. Remind me never to give you coke again.’ Meg rolled her eyes, moving back to the wrap and racking up another couple of lines with the side of her credit card.
‘You can take the piss if you like, but you know I’m right.’
‘So what’s the answer?’
‘Depends what the question is … If the question is how do you uncover truth and do so in a way that is untainted by false ethics and a hypocritical code of conduct, then the answer is that you make it a purely financial transaction.’
Meg looked up from her task.
‘What the fuck are you on about?’
Harry studied her face for a reaction. ‘There are companies that hire journalists, lawyers, people who are expert at uncovering the truth in all its magnificent, fucked up glory – people like us. Unlike newspapers they pay extremely well, and there is no hidden agenda dressed up as a moral code.’
This was a lie and he knew it. The agenda in this instance would be set by the client who was picking up the tab, whether or not he knew who that person or organisation was.
Meg sat back on her calves, watching him.
Harry paused. ‘If you were interested, I could bring you in.’
‘You know I’m interested,’ she replied without hesitation.
‘Good. The case I’ve been hired to work on at the moment involves a corrupt company. It’s my job – and could be yours, too – to find out information about this company.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because you’re smart. Because you’re dedicated. Because …’ He took a deep breath. ‘Because the company is connected to someone you know. Someone you know well.’
Harry
Harry soon realised the basic mistake he had made.
Meg had gone away ‘to think’ and he hadn’t made plans to see Anna and David that night, the night things became clear. The moment he spotted the two of them moving up the street towards him, unaware of his eyes on them, he finally understood. How had it taken him so long? He had been right about Meg and David, in a way – Meg was indeed in love with David. But what he hadn’t realised until now was that David only had eyes for Anna.
There was something else, too, which was obvious as he walked towards them, smiling by way of hello. Something that explained Meg’s reluctance to go back to her and Anna’s shared flat during their months together, as well as her coolness towards him the night he’d turned up there after the episode at the club. It was only as he found himself face-to-face with Anna and David in the street outside the Crown and Goose that night that he saw it properly.
Meg was sitting at her usual table in the Crown and Goose the next time he saw her, the following week, her back to him as he walked through the door. It was two weeks since he had asked her to spy on her friend. There had been a moment of silence, which seemed to Harry to last several minutes though it was no more than a couple of seconds, before Meg spoke again. When she did her voice was scathing. ‘You want me to help you get information on David?’
She’d moved to the other side of the room, pausing, and then pacing again. ‘You want me to help you spy on my friend? How long have you …’
His voice had remained firm. ‘Meg, sit down. Calm down.’
‘Calm down?’ She’d taken a step towards him. ‘How fucking dare you? Who the fuck do you think you are? Who do you think I am?’
As he approached now, he saw both feet drumming against the wooden floorboards.
‘You didn’t say you were back.’
She jumped at the sound of his voice. Her whole demeanour was twitchy; she looked like she had already stuck half a gram of gak up her nose and it wasn’t even dinner time.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Her eyes moved around the room as he sat in front of her, picking up a bar mat and moving it between his fingers.
‘I thought you were going to call as soon as you were back. Once you’d had time to think properly.’
She flinched as he sat in front of her.
‘But then I didn’t hear from you. Are you meeting someone?’
‘No.’ Her fingers pressed and released against her glass.
‘You’re a shit liar, Meg.’
The door opened and her head turned towards the door.
‘What time are they coming?’
‘I just want you to leave me alone,’ she said, any defiance in her voice fading to a plea. ‘Please, Harry.’
He smiled with genuine regret. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.’
If he was honest, he was almost relieved to see Meg gone. She was a live wire, that one. He hadn’t realised quite how much at first, but it would be simpler without her around. And there was no way she would come back, not after the threats he had made.
Harry
Nigel hadn’t liked the switch when it came, but he had no choice. Besides, he knew how good Harry was. He’d never let him down before and there was no reason to believe he would start now, not with so much at stake. What did it matter whether it was Meg or Anna? They had to be pragmatic. This case was too important – until suddenly it wasn’t.
One minute, Harry was relaying to Nigel that Anna had been approached by MI6, who were asking questions about David and Clive. The next, the whole case was being pulled.
Nigel had been jittery when they met at a bench in Regent’s Park overlooking one of the ponds, tourists milling along the path in front of them, their bodies huddled against the wind.
‘The client was Francisco Nguema. It was he who was paying to have the case investigated, presumably to see how easily he could be implicated in the chemical spillage.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Harry said.
Nigel kept his eyes fixed ahead of him. ‘You don’t need to. All you need to know is that it’s over. You got your money, and you’re safe. There’s one thing outstanding – Anna. Can we trust her to stay quiet? She’s not going to have a sudden burst of remorse once the money stops and feel the need to get things off her chest with David, is she? Because that would not go down well with the client.’
Harry lowered his voice. ‘We can trust Anna. I’ll let her know how important it is for her to keep her lip buttoned. Anyway, they have children together. She has a good job. I imagine if anything she will be relieved.’
Even as he said it, he felt a pang of guilt. He wasn’t so blind that he couldn’t see how deeply Anna had felt about him. But this was the best possible outcome, for all of them. As he walked back across the park later that morning, Harry felt a sense of unravelling, as if casting off layers that had bound him for so long.
‘Well then, it’s over,’ Nigel had said. In that instant, they could both have been forgiven for believing it was.
Harry
It was a month or so after that, once he had resolved to cut all contact with Anna for the final time, that Andrea stepped into his world, in a bar in town.
He’d been at a meeting with Madeleine about a small job connected to her new position at the National Crime Agency. Harry wasn’t CHIS – not officially. No, his role was always off the books, just as he liked it. He was a ‘sole trader’, an expression he felt suited him, only ever paid off the record to do background investigations into persons of interest. Madeleine was a delegator, and he got that. Plus, she had shit-tons of money, Harry could tell just by looking at her. She had the balls of a woman who’d never known poverty, who knew what she wanted, was willing to pay for it and expected to get it. And she usually did.
In the end it was nothing much to get excited about – just a matter of digging into a person of interest in a trafficking case she had been working on in Eastern Europe. Madeleine’s rate was pitiful but it was some cash at a time when Harry had none coming in. And who knew what else it would lead to in the future? There was enough left in the kitty for now, but it wouldn’t do to become complacent. Especially when his usual journalistic revenue streams had dried up permanently.
He had just ordered another whisky when he felt the presence of a woman to his left. Glancing up at her, he took in the dress, nipped in at the waist, the perfectly blow-dried hair. She was more dolled up than his usual type, but when she turned and smiled at him, her fingers clutching a gold Amex card, he felt his jaw clench with desire.
They fucked in the recess of a doorway in the alley outside the bar, her dress hitched up around her waist – and then again back at her flat overlooking the river.
‘Where did you even come from?’ He asked as she dressed in front of the window, and she turned and smiled.
‘That would be telling.’
He woke at Andrea’s the next day, the morning sun stretching above the Thames. It was hard to believe this was an extension of the same canal on which his little boat bobbed. From here, London oozed with money and promise, the possibility reflecting on the surface of every building.
She had kept him up half the night, and he needed coffee. He was pulling on his trousers when she turned in bed to look up at him.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I thought I’d better be off.’
‘Why? It’s still early.’
He stopped. ‘I just assumed—’
‘You know what they say about assumption,’ she said, pulling the sheet away from herself.
They were preoccupied when Harry’s phone rang. It was only afterwards when he pulled it out of his pocket and checked the missed calls that he saw that it was Anna.
‘Who’s Anna?’ Andrea asked, propped up on one elbow.
‘No one.’
‘Good.’
That was the last time he heard from her. He had every reason to think that chapter of his life was over.
When Andrea first mentioned that the firm she worked for was putting on a charity auction the following February, Harry had recoiled. He didn’t know much about her job at the bank, but he knew enough to be confident that it would not be his choice of an evening out, surrounded by stuffy blokes in expensive suits making a show of their generosity for the women hanging from their arms.
But the truth was, more than ever this was exactly the sort of place he should be heading for: an event pulsing with wealth and status, with stories and loose tongues. You never knew who you might meet. And he needed to start thinking about new ventures.
As they moved along the Strand, Andrea spoke to the taxi driver. ‘It’s just here.’
The car stopped in front of great revolving doors.
‘Don’t worry,’ Andrea said, leaning in to kiss him. ‘We don’t have to stay long.
I just need to show my face. You know what it’s like.’
Inside, the atrium lights were too bright, the ballroom pulsating with noise and male sweat. Andrea led Harry to a table laden with bottles of champagne, taking her seat on the opposite side of the table.
‘Let’s go back to mine,’ she said a while later, approaching him from behind as the auctioneer took bids on a Caribbean cruise. He smiled, grateful to be released from a devastatingly dull conversation with the husband of one of the firm’s partners.
‘You head out and get our coats. I’ll say goodbye and meet you out there in a minute,’ Andrea said.
He was almost at the door from the ballroom into the atrium when he heard a sudden swell of noise at odds with the heckling of the crowd. Turning, he saw them, the man’s hand gripping her wrist. From the way she held herself unsteadily on her feet, it was clear that she was drunk.
He watched them for a moment, frozen to the spot by a rush of blood to his head.
‘What are you doing?’
Harry turned towards Andrea’s voice. Did he imagine the sharpening of her gaze as she followed the direction in which he was looking?
‘I thought I saw someone I know … knew. Come on, let’s get our coats.’
‘I’m going to visit the ladies quickly,’ Andrea said, once they had collected their belongings from the cloakroom.
‘Why don’t we just stop somewhere on the way back?’ Harry said and Andrea looked at him, as if gleaning his obvious discomfort.
‘No, I need to go now,’ she said firmly, pressing her coat into his hands. ‘I won’t be long.’
Harry lingered as close to the wall as he could, resisting the temptation to look back through to the dining hall to check Anna and David weren’t coming through here.
The Second Woman Page 12