by Tony Parsons
‘Bastard … whore-loving bastard …’
I got into the BMW. My wheels crunched on gravel as I pulled away and it was the sound of serious money. In my rear-view mirror, I watched some more of Harry Flowers’ favourite things flutter from that first-floor window. Cashmere sweaters. Silk ties. Vinyl records like big black frisbees.
Well, I thought.
Looks like his wife finally found out about his mistress.
10
By the time I got home, Mrs Murphy had taken Scout to school and Stan was watered, walked and fed. The dog snuggled on the sofa and stared at me with his enormous wet eyes. Mrs Murphy was carrying a stack of freshly ironed daisy-yellow school shirts to Scout’s bedroom.
I felt weariness and gratitude wash over me.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
She smiled and shrugged off my thanks.
‘No work today?’
‘Day off.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘You deserve a day off.’
‘Is Scout OK?’
Now there was a touch of sadness in the smile.
‘You know. She was hoping to go on holiday with her mum.’
I nodded.
‘But I’m not going to be one of those parents who takes their kid out of school so they can sit on some beach staring at their phone. And Scout’s not going to be one of those kids.’
‘Our Scout will never be one of those kids. She’s just …’
She looked for the words.
‘I was going to say she wants to know her mum, but it’s something else. It has been a while since she left. Your ex-wife. Anne. Scout’s mum. Years. Scout was how old?’
‘Four,’ I said, and the absurdly low number stuck in my throat.
‘And I think Scout is trying hard to remember what it was like,’ Mrs Murphy said. ‘So she wants to know her mum. Of course she does. But she wants to remember her mum, too. Because I think it’s slipping away, that time they had together.’
Mrs Murphy smiled brightly, as if all these things could be worked out with some goodwill and common sense, and I opened up the laptop that I left on the kitchen table while she went off to finish some last tasks before going home. Making sure we – Scout, Stan and me – were all fine before she left us for her own family.
I always left her money in one of those old-fashioned airmail envelopes, the ones with the red, white and blue borders, because both Mrs Murphy and I felt shy and embarrassed about money. I knew she would have looked after our little family for nothing.
She took her airmail envelope and nodded her thanks. Then she paused when she saw what I was looking at on my laptop.
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‘You poor man,’ Mrs Murphy said, and I felt her hand lightly touch my shoulder as she turned away. ‘Sicily has got nothing to do with it.’
The newly dead do not go far.
Edie Wren came back as I slept the long summer day away, fresh pain creeping into old dreams, and although she did not speak, and she did not reveal herself, I felt her presence in my room, Stan snoring by my side, she was right there as I rose from the deepest part of sleep to that shallow state where it is only your dreams that let you know you are not awake.
She was there, because the newly dead are always there, watching on, before they fade, or go, or whatever the secret of that mystery is.
I can’t explain it, because I hold out no great hope for any kind of afterlife. But I know with total certainty that the recently dead do not leave us immediately. They stay close by, held by the unimaginable sadness of leaving, and the human bonds that were made in this world.
Edie Wren watched me as I healed from that hard night, as I slept the summer day away in the bedroom we had briefly shared. And she was so real, so tangible, so undeniably present but just out of reach, and my throat choked with the knowledge that she would be just out of reach forever. But the newly dead are always with us. And I longed to wake and look and find her there, but of course I was also scared to open my eyes and see her there, those green eyes measuring what we had lost.
Do not be afraid, she seemed to whisper, and the sun moved across the sky while I was sleeping.
This is not a spirit. And this is not a ghost. This is nothing for you to fear.
Sleep now, sleep now, sleep now.
This is an echo of love.
11
The alarm went off at three in the afternoon.
Everything hurt. My eyes, my ribs, the shrapnel in my legs.
Stan sighed, stretched, yawned, scratched and began to clean his paws. He padded after me as I went into the great open area of our loft and it was filled with a heavenly light.
But I was alone. I lived with that thought for a while.
Then Stan and I went to pick up Scout from school.
I had feared that Scout would resent me for denying her Sicily. But when the going-home bell rang, she raced to my arms, then knelt to greet her dog, his tail going like a mad windscreen wiper, ecstatic with love for her.
Perhaps one day she would bear a grudge, I thought. One day – how many years from now? – she would decide that her father didn’t know much, and certainly didn’t know best, and quite possibly knew nothing at all.
But not today.
Today she was eight years old, and Scout put her hand in mine.
‘Do you want to read your book?’
As Scout settled down for the night, The Rough Guide to Italy sat on her bedside table like an invitation to another life. She raised her chin, indicating the book in my hands.
What you got?
‘It’s a poem about a dog,’ I offered. ‘By one of your old favourites – anonymous.’
‘Yes,’ she said, poker-faced. ‘Anonymous has written some good stuff.’
And then we grinned.
Stan hopped on to the bed and settled down right at the bottom, as if nobody would even notice him if he kept very still.
Scout closed her eyes and I thought she was ready for sleep. But then I saw how tightly her eyes were squeezed shut. And then I heard the bells.
We lived with the bells of St Paul’s Cathedral. They were a constant backdrop to our life, and like a family living under a flight path to the airport, we didn’t even notice them. Until now.
‘Scout?’
‘The bells,’ she said. ‘Mia said that if you make a wish when you hear the bells, then it has to come true.’
‘And what do you wish for?’ I said, although I already knew.
She wished for what all the children of all the divorced husbands and wives wish for, at least the very young children, the ones who have not been around long enough to understand how easy it is for a family to fall apart and never, never be put back together again.
She opened her brown eyes and smiled.
‘I wished that things would be the way they were before,’ she said, very softly, as if wishes should be spoken of in hushed tones.
‘But, angel, you understand that’s not going to happen, don’t you?’
I tried to make my voice as soft as hers, but of course it was impossible, and something in my face wiped away her smile.
‘Yes, I know,’ she said.
‘Sometimes we want things to be the way they were before and it’s just not possible,’ I said, aware of how pathetically trite this must sound to an eight-year-old who still missed the family that she spent the first four years of her life with, the family that was slipping even from her memory now.
‘I know,’ she repeated, her voice flat in this rotten world where wishes don’t come true even if you shut your eyes when you hear the sound of the bells.
I sat down on the side of the bed and I began to read.
‘Yes, I went to see the bow-wows and I looked at e
very one,
Proud dogs of each breed and strain that’s underneath the sun.
But not one could compare with – you may hear it with surprise –
A little yellow dog I know that never took a prize.’
Our dog was already snoring.
Scout closed her eyes, her lids suddenly heavy.
‘Suppose he wasn’t trained to hunt and never killed a rat,
And isn’t much on tricks or looks or birth – well what of that?
That might be said of lots of folks whom men call great and wise.
As well as of that yellow dog that never took a prize.’
‘Hmm,’ said Scout thoughtfully, leaning back into the pillow and slipping into sleep. I finished our poem.
‘It isn’t what a dog can do – or what a dog may be.
That hits a man – it’s simply this:
Does he believe in me?’
I kissed her on top of the head and crept from the room, scooping up the sleeping Stan and taking him with me.
Mrs Murphy was watching the news. They had finally put it all together and Jessica Lyle’s face filled the screen.
‘Police sources say that the kidnapping of Jessica Lyle was a case of mistaken identity and the abductors meant to take an associate of this man.’
And then there was Harry Flowers.
Not a mugshot, for Harry Flowers had never been arrested for a thing in his life.
He was smiling at the camera, Charlotte Flowers by his side, towering above him in her heels, each of them holding a champagne flute for the camera. It looked like some charity bash, or possibly Royal Ascot. Charlotte Flowers looked like a woman who would feel at home at both.
‘Harold Flowers – alleged former gangland figure.’
‘Where is the poor girl’s baby?’ Mrs Murphy said.
‘With its grandparents,’ I said.
‘The baby was with her when she was taken?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But the baby’s fine. Baby Michael is fine.’
She hesitated.
She did not like to ask me about my work. But the smiling face of Jessica Lyle was on the news.
‘And do you think you are going to find her?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I hesitated. ‘If we find her soon.’
We left it at that.
The summer night crept in.
I checked that Scout was sleeping.
And then I went to work.
I sat outside the Western World watching the dancers arrive.
Some of them walked briskly through the streets in trainers, others tottered on their massive spike heels. Bouncers lifted a red velvet rope to let them pass, a surprisingly delicate gesture for such large men.
There was no sign of Snezia Jones.
Whitestone and Adams turned into the street in an unmarked squad car. They stopped further down the road, the parking spaces scarce in that corner of Covent Garden. Whitestone slipped into the passenger seat of the BMW X5 beside me and Adams got in the back.
‘The Mahones didn’t take Jessica Lyle,’ Whitestone said. She took off her glasses, breathed on the lenses and began to polish them. ‘The search team are still at the seaside taking apart Janet Mahone’s caravan. We have already been all over the site, but we have no expectation of finding any traces of Jessica there, dead or alive. The Mahones were lifetime losers, Max. They saw the opportunity to even the score with Harry Flowers. And they tried to take it.’
She put on her glasses and nodded at Adams.
‘The Mahones have a history of violence,’ Joy said. ‘Violence inflicted and violence endured. Everything fell apart for their family after that Sunday lunch when Flowers turned up with his petrol can. Both parents became full-blown alcoholics. The kids were all taken into care. Two of them, Peter’s siblings, committed suicide. There’s just the one survivor now, Liam Mahone, the baby of the family. But Liam Mahone is in Broadmoor.’
Broadmoor Hospital is a high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire. It holds just over two hundred men diagnosed with severe mental disorders who either committed serious crimes or who have been declared unfit to stand trial for serious crimes. Back in the nineteenth century, a less caring age, it was known as the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
‘What did Liam Mahone do to get a room in Broadmoor?’ I said.
‘Nothing he has ever been convicted for,’ Joy said. ‘He was arrested for killing a man in a bar fight but was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia before he came to trial.’
‘What did the guy he killed do to him?’
‘Apparently he just looked at him.’ She paused. ‘Liam Mahone would have been four years old when Flowers and his goon came knocking with their petrol can.’
‘Can we talk to Liam?’
‘No,’ Joy said. ‘He’s catatonic.’
‘What do we know about his brother, Peter Mahone?’
‘Peter Mahone had a job on the London Underground but lost it for head-butting an unhappy commuter who was even more unhappy after Peter Mahone head-butted him. Peter inherited his drink problem from his parents. Janet Mahone has been away – she did two years in Holloway for assault after attacking a woman at the school gates. Beat her up quite badly before bystanders could get her off.’ Adams’ dark eyes glistened. ‘The woman she attacked was Charlotte Flowers.’
Harry’s wife.
I saw her again at the window, her face twisted with rage at the discovery of her husband’s mistress, Harry’s beloved stuff flying through the air.
‘I met Charlotte Flowers earlier today,’ I said. ‘Just before she found out about Snezia Jones. Some journalist shared the information.’
‘The wife is always the last to know,’ Whitestone said. ‘What does Harry say about Snezia? Are they going to build a love nest? Was that the plan?’
‘Unlikely. He told me he loves her the way he loves his car. Which I guess means that he finds a new model every few years.’
‘Who said romance is dead?’ Whitestone said.
More dancers were starting to arrive.
And finally, Snezia Jones was among them.
She was flanked by the two minders.
Derek Bumpus and Ruben Shavers.
‘Flowers must be quite keen on her if he has his bodyguards watching her back,’ I said. ‘But I still find it strange that she has never stopped working here. All through the affair, she was still at the Western World.’
‘Maybe Harry is not the jealous kind,’ Whitestone said. ‘Or maybe he thought it kept her occupied. That’s the married man’s big problem when he has a mistress. Most nights, he’s not there. Most nights, he’s with his family.’ A rueful smile. ‘That was the problem for my husband and his mistress. That’s why he ended up marrying her.’
We watched the dancers arriving in silence.
‘Maybe someone just took her,’ Joy said. ‘Jessica Lyle. Maybe some men saw her and they wanted her and so they just took her. The motive wasn’t that they thought they were taking Flowers’ mistress. The motive was that they saw a woman they wanted.’
I knew it could happen. Men could see a woman and take her. And I knew too that the missing are all different. Some run away and some are taken away, and never stop longing for their home. Some are found and some come home and some are never seen again and some don’t want to be found or seen again. Some are glimpsed, years later, on a passing train or a crowded street and some are seen only in dreams. Some die in a ditch or a drain or a skip or are found stuffed into three separate suitcases.
And some suffer a fate far worse than death.
And it was usually the ones who looked like Jessica Lyle.
‘Or Harry Flowers did it himself,’ Whitestone said, as if she was reflecting on my thoughts. ‘But his heavy mob got the wrong girl.’
‘You think Harry tried to kidnap his own mistress?’ I said.
‘I think it’s as likely as a couple of random passing predators,’ she said. ‘Maybe he got tired of her. Maybe she was being a l
ittle too demanding and he wanted her off the payroll. Sometimes – often – a mistress can overplay her hand. Ask for too much, too soon.’ She exhaled, the kind of sigh you let go at the end of a long day, and I smelled the acrid tang of vodka. ‘Maybe she was threatening to go to Harry’s wife with all the gory details. They do that, you know. Sometimes they just threaten it and sometimes they actually do it. But if you’re a mistress, that’s always the nuclear option.’
On the neon hoardings across the way the smiling faces of the women advertising the Western World lit up the dingy street.
I opened the car door. ‘What do you want in there?’ I said.
‘I want a motive for Harry Flowers to have planned this abduction,’ Whitestone said. ‘Find out if the sex had worn off.’
Snezia danced.
She wrapped her long limbs around the fireman’s pole in the centre of the podium and slid slowly down it. And she did it in heels, a string bikini and upside down. I had not seen her in her work clothes before and for the first time I understood why Harry Flowers had gone to all that trouble.
The minders, Shavers and Bumpus, sat at the far end of the bar, watching me at my ringside table. Now that I had a chance to observe them, it was obvious they were not young men. Shavers, the former boxer, still looked as though he spent more hours in the gym than he did in places like this, but his hair was flecked with grey and his face was weathered by the years.
Bumpus, the child prodigy of nightclub bouncers, was almost spectacularly out of shape, with a beer gut proudly hanging over his elastic-waisted tracksuit bottoms like a prize marrow.
They occasionally eyed Snezia with a cool professional detachment, no trace of lust in their eyes.
Snezia danced with a pink floaty shawl thrown over her shoulders, an item of clothing so insubstantial that it was hardly there at all, but she wrapped it around her neck as she came to join me at my table, as if protecting herself from the air conditioning.
