Altered Life

by Keith Dixon

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  AMONG THE OFFERS to loan me more money or give me twenty-five thousand pounds a year for life, there was a brown envelope lying on my doormat.

  Inside it were printouts from a computer-based diary—one week printed on one sheet of A4, with seven boxes for each day of the week. Every box except the occasional Sunday had something written in it.

  There was no covering letter and no sign whose diary it was, but a small footer at the bottom of each page said ‘brandr’ in a small font, followed by the week’s number. The printout listed one appointment after another in a hectic schedule of times and locations, naming clients and now and then adding lists of actions to perform before a meeting took place.

  I spent an hour going through the diary—which covered the last two years of his life—but there was so much information it was almost impossible to take in. There were company names, the names of individuals, initials that presumably stood for one category of meeting or another, and occasional reminders such as birthdays or anniversaries. Nothing seemed to have more importance than anything else—it wasn’t a personal diary in the sense that Rory would even have filled it in himself. It was more likely to have been kept by someone responsible for his schedule and making sure that he wasn’t double-booked or spread too thinly.

  Rory was obviously a busy traveller. He’d had appointments in Singapore, Detroit, Edinburgh and Paris, as well as local ones in Manchester and London. The far eastern appointments seemed to be associated with a multi-national Bank that I’d heard of. The ones in America were related to a car manufacturer. The rest were scattered between numerous smaller and less well-known clients, and usually took place in hotels or conference centres.

  Then I noticed a number of appointments where a hotel was mentioned, but no client. That was so unusual that I trawled through the hundred or so pages for another half hour, until I had a list of fifteen hotels in the Manchester area where there was a stretch of six months of appointments with no name given for the client. Presumably he’d entered these details himself, to avoid being double-booked, but didn’t want to use the name of the person he was meeting.

  I didn’t know what this meant, but I was sure it meant something.

  That afternoon I went to the gym. I worked on my legs and stomach, pushing and curling with a row of sweating men fifteen years younger than me who seemed to take the effort in their stride. Afterwards I swam thirty lengths in a languorous crawl, watching the speed merchants thrash past me in a riot of noise and energy while I coasted slowly from end to end, taking deep breaths and feeling the oxygen course through my bloodstream.

  My mind kept returning to what the Major had told me—I had a son called Daniel who knew nothing about me. There was someone out there who possibly looked like me, who perhaps thought about me, who probably hated me. A boy of about eighteen who had already lived a life and was starting on his adventure into the future.

  I turned on my back and did a couple of lengths in slow backstroke, looking up at the arched ceiling of the swimming pool. I felt older but no wiser. In fact I felt as though I knew nothing at all about what had happened to me in my life.

  I shopped on my way home, then grilled some lamb chops with mint potatoes which I ate at my kitchen table while reading the book on Transactional Analysis. I was intrigued by the ‘games’ that Berne described. They had odd names like ‘Schlemiel’, ‘See What You Made Me Do’ and ‘Now I’ve Got You, You Son of a Bitch’. I particularly liked ‘Cops and Robbers’. In this game, Berne suggested that some criminals were in it for the money; others were in it for the game. This made a lot of sense to me. In C & E we dealt more often than not with hard-faced villains engaged in strictly for-profit activity. But from time to time you came across someone who smiled when you told them who you were—you weren’t their best mate after all, but an undercover officer. These types seemed to shrug and accept the fact that they’d been caught. They’d played a game and lost. Berne said that this type of criminal often wanted to be caught. Like the child who squeals with laughter when found in a game of Hide and Seek, the pay-off was in the finding, not the hiding. Similarly, for a certain kind of criminal, the pay-off was in being caught—the fun was in deferring being caught for as long as possible, to heighten the sensation of the final capture. It was no good to evade being caught forever. That was much too sensible and destroyed the psychological basis for the activity. No—it was far better to include everyone in the game: victim, policeman, perpetrator. These were the criminals who liked to think they were ‘toying’ with the authorities by demonstrating their superiority. Phoning up and taunting the investigators. Sending messages to the press.

  Leaving clues such as cryptic phrases written on computer screens and steamed-up mirrors.

  First thing Monday morning I called Carol-the-receptionist. She seemed surprised to hear from me. ‘Mr Dyke’ she said coolly, ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘We started off badly but I’d like to thank you for your help.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve put one or two people in touch with me.’

  ‘If you’re talking about Melissa Ball, I had no option. She was very determined. The police haven’t been helpful, so I thought of you.’

  I wasn’t going to push it. But an idea occurred to me. ‘I’m beginning to understand how Rory and Tara worked,’ I said. ‘But I need to talk to more of their friends. People who knew them well. Who else is there who’d give me an honest view?’

  She barely gave it a moment’s thought. ‘Dominic Michaels,’ she said.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Someone Rory used to go to the football with. He runs a recruitment company in Manchester. Hold on, I’ll give you his number.’

  She went away and a moment later returned with a telephone number, which I wrote down.

  ‘Thanks, Carol,’ I said. ‘I appreciate your help.’

  ‘My job is to help Rory and Tara.’

  I hung up. Neither of us had mentioned the diary, but we both knew that we’d talked about it.