by Ali Knight
‘Yes. The police haven’t arrested him yet. The wheels of justice grind slow. You’re the one they want at this point, remember, which leaves anyone who’s anybody suddenly desperate to get into CPTV’s charity gig – including me.’
‘Do you think you can get me to him?’
She turns to look at me as she stands, a brilliant smile on her lovely face. ‘I do.’ She takes her phone from her bag. ‘If I can’t get in there, no one can.’
We stand in the porch as Eloide spends the next ten minutes talking to PRs and party planners, getting frustrated at various points. Time ticks by as she hunts for a ticket to what is for the next hour or so the hottest venue in town.
‘It’s not going to work,’ I say.
‘Come on.’ She heads off towards the museum and I follow, pushing Jessie’s bike behind her bouncing hair. ‘I’ve spent my life blagging my way into nightclubs. There’s always chaos around a queue. The front door really is the best way in.’
Even she pauses when we reach the museum. The crowd is even bigger than before. ‘God, this is impossible.’
‘Nothing’s impossible. We’ll try round the corner.’ I keep my eyes on the pavement as we come across a side entrance. ‘Come on!’ she shouts, and we march up to the large glass door only to find it’s locked. She hunts for a bell, peers through the glass to see if anyone’s the other side while I cast nervous glances up and down the street. She swears softly. ‘To the back.’
‘Why are you being so nice to me?’
‘All this effort isn’t going unrewarded, I grant you. If I get you in there this will be the most salacious online posting I’ve done yet.’
‘I give you permission to use any of this however you see fit,’ I tell her as I chain the bike to a railing.
Eloide links her arm through mine. ‘I didn’t think I needed your permission.’
We walk round a traffic barrier at the back of the museum and cross a small car park to a huddle of activity by a large set of doors. Eloide does up the top button on her shirt and ties her hair back with a clip from her handbag. ‘It’s kids, daytime, you know . . .’ She looks me up and down. ‘I’m glad I’m not trying to get you into a nightclub.’
‘Sorry.’ I turn away from a police car parked near the entrance. ‘Can you use your press pass?’
Eloide tosses her hair. ‘That’s exactly what won’t be allowed today after what’s been made public.’ I pull the baseball cap down harder on my head and follow Eloide towards the cluster of people. She pushes towards a bouncer who looks carved from stone and starts explaining loudly about her daughter being inside without her EpiPen. He pulls out a phone and with glacial speed asks the name of the school party her daughter is with. Eloide starts babbling about nut allergies and my heart sinks. This isn’t going to work. I stand aside as a minibus pulls up, the back doors swinging open. The bouncer’s eyes flit between Eloide and around thirty six-year-olds streaming from the bus. He takes one long step forward, holding out his huge arms in a stop gesture. Eloide intensifies her allergy monologue, her hand resting on the bouncer’s chest. The children’s screams of day-trip excitement are overlain by the shouts of a harassed woman in a baseball cap. Two other adults grab small hands and swoosh the children forward as the bouncer examines a large embossed ticket.
‘We’re late!’ the teacher exclaims, cartwheeling her arms at the door. The bouncer nods silently, not giving way. Eloide’s voice rises through the octaves as the teacher remonstrates with someone and a phone trills with a loud rap ringtone and I reach out and clasp a small brown hand that’s moving past me towards those doors ‘Ryan, stop pulling Thomas’s glasses!’ she shouts as I smile down at a little boy in a multicoloured jester’s hat, and together we inch past the bouncer as Eloide lets forth the sob of a loving mother. I have one hand on the glass door, the other behind me holding that small hand.
‘Quiet, children, please, this is a museum!’ a woman calls as I take one step and another and another and Eloide’s panicky voice fades. The light changes and I drop the hand I’m holding. I walk slowly towards a toilet sign, push open the swing door and listen to it thwump shut behind me. I am in.
I wash my filthy face and hands in the sink, slick back my hair with water and try to compose myself before heading off down a corridor surrounded on all sides by stuffed animals and skeletons. It takes only a few minutes to find where CPTV‘s charity event is: it would be hard for it to be more obvious.
CPTV has taken over the grand central hall and around two hundred children are being corralled to sit down in preparation for a speech. The walls of the hall are lined with stalls highlighting the work of the charity and offering up freebies to the kids and the adults alike. I see a paper mountain of brightly coloured hats and a man happy to hand them out; pretty women carrying trays of badges and stickers mingle with the crowd, waiters pass through with trays of champagne glasses for the adults. Raiph stands elevated above the children and staff on a portable dias. He seems to float, Godlike, above a wriggling carpet of hair beads and hats. The children ignore him and giggle and gasp instead at the giant dinosaur skeleton looming over them all. Youth workers in royal-blue T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms bend and kneel, shushing their fingers to their lips. Behind them and in front of me are middle-aged white men in suits and expensively dressed women with big rings who are rapt as Raiph delivers his speech. They’re looking for signs, trying to interpret a reaction to the maelstrom that’s swirling in cyberspace about him. His speech is on message and to the point, he gives nothing away. When he’s finished a PR enthusiastically leads the clapping as Raiph bends down and picks up the dias himself, tucking it under his arm before a woman with blonde dreadlocks wrestles it off him.
The children move off to the dinosaur zone as Raiph shares a joke with the woman with dreadlocks. He is surrounded by too many people, I cannot get near, and as a museum guard moves through the crowd I turn back the way I’ve come. I hadn’t thought that the last twenty feet would be the hardest challenge of all. I stand in the corridor behind a prehistoric shin bone, weighing up whether I’ll have to confront him in the Gents, when I’m ambushed.
‘Give me one good reason why I don’t call the police right now.’ It’s Raiph, and he’s not happy.
‘There’s another tape,’ I say, walking quickly away from the party under an arch.
He follows me, pulling out his phone and dialing 999, a bitter smile on his lips.
‘Unless it’s Lex from the grave saying I killed him, there’s nothing you have.’
‘Your share price has sunk twenty per cent in the last two hours. Are you prepared to take that chance?’
Raiph’s eyes are blue and he stares at me for what I imagine are several seconds of rare indecision, his anger and curiosity fighting each other. He drops the phone to his side. ‘You’re brave. Foolhardy and brave. Trial by media. I suppose you’d call it poetic justice.’
‘When you live by the sword—’
‘Die by the sword.’ He stops walking. ‘When this day ends, whether you’re in police custody or not, I’m taking my revenge, on you personally, on your husband, on what’s left of Forwood, on that producer who posted your video.’
‘How’s it feel to be about to lose your company?’
‘The same as it always does. You think this is the only time? This is the eighth time. This is just how business is.’ We stand next to a stone relief set into the tiling on the wall. A dinosaur’s backbone curves into a semicircle, which reminds me of the antenatal scan of a human foetus. ‘I don’t usually have to fend off accusations of double murder at the same time.’ Raiph pats his breast pocket, picks out an inhaler and takes a short, sharp pull. ‘Why are you here? What do you want from me?’
‘I know what “bloodhound” is.’
It doesn’t register. ‘Think carefully about how you decide to thrash out your final moments in the public eye. A friend of mine in the Met told me this morning that the autopsy shows Lex was killed just over a week ago.�
�� The significance sinks in: eight days ago Lex crashed the car. ‘Which means I don’t have clear alibis for either murder nights. That’s inconvenient, but if you think that means I’m taking the rap for this, then you don’t know me at all. In your desperation to save yourself, you picked the wrong target to slander. I might suffer the greater temporary public embarrassment, but I’m also the one who can crush you most comprehensively.’ He lifts a finger and points at me. ‘Your children are going to be paying off your legal bills long after this is over.’ Raiph’s face is red and blotchy from his anger and his voice rasps. He must use that inhaler a lot.
‘You never told Portia that Lex mentioned “bloodhound”?’
‘Jonah and the Whale. That was quite clever. Did Paul dream that up, get his brother to feed the line to you? It’s so catchy, so right for our soundbite age. And the timing! It puts some real pressure on me when I’m trying to raise the financing to save the company. He plays dirty, your husband.’ Raiph gives a slight nod of his head. ‘It almost makes me respect him the more. But I tell you, I’m going to fight to save CPTV from people who can’t possibly run it as well as the present team.’
‘Portia.’ I say her name aloud, as if trying it out for the first time.
‘I’m glad you mentioned Portia, she’s my safe pair of hands, she never takes risks she doesn’t have to.’ I watch his movements very, very carefully. His jaw is strained, the anger at what has ambushed him plain to see, but there was no recognition. The inhaler. Raiph’s words. She never takes risks she doesn’t have to.
A man in a dark suit waves, trying to get Raiph’s attention. The lawyers are circling. He holds a finger up, a sign that I’ve got only a few moments left. What if Portia had to take a risk? How far would Portia go to protect her interests? Raiph points to a sign on the wall between our heads for the Darwin Centre. ‘Adapt or die, that was Darwin’s great discovery.’ Raiph coughs. ‘And mine.’
I hear a rushing in my ears and I wonder for a minute if I’m going to faint. Anger starts building in me. ‘No, Raiph, the great discovery is you fight or die.’ I pull one of Lex’s unused media cards out of my bag. He reaches for it but I pull my hand away. ‘What do I get in return?’
‘You’re not in a position to ask for anything.’ We lock eyes and a moment later something travels across his face. ‘OK.’ Some of the outrage drains from his features. ‘I’ll give you a sporting chance, I’ll play the Darwinian game. You get five minutes before I call the police.’ I turn to go but he grabs my arm, a new intensity fills him. ‘Not so fast. What’s this “bloodhound”?’
I look at him standing next to fossils millions of years old, testament to their inability to adapt to the times. ‘It’s me.’
I peel away down the corridor, following signs to the exit on a fast walk but not fast enough to warrant attention, acutely aware that Raiph’s five minutes might only be two. For someone who believes in statistics and computer modelling I’ve just made a decision Eloide would be proud of – I’ve gone with my gut. Portia, did your interests align with Paul’s? The alibi, the late-night meeting . . . I break into a run as I turn a corner and see a cloud of multicoloured balloons bobbing down the corridor, Eloide beneath them.
‘Turns out allergies were a dud. Spent a fortune buying these off a guy outside the Tube.’ She sees my expression. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Portia . . .’ My voice fades away.
‘Kate?’ Claustrophobia clamps itself to me. Raiph must be on the phone to the police right now, and I need to be away from here, far away. ‘Kate!’ I run for the door, desperate to be outside. I can see the exit, the small crowd beyond. I slow, pull the cap low, put my hands in my pockets and push my way out.
I feel sick as I unchain my bike and turn on my mobile. It’s time to turn my attentions to Paul. Where this all started is where it will end.
‘You lying bastard!’ I shout into his answerphone. ‘I’ve seen Lex’s video. I know what you did. Answer your phone!’ I don’t care that it might be cradled in a policeman’s hand, that there might be a trace on it as I speak. My need to vent at the man I chose to marry, procreate with and grow old with overrides every saner emotion. I grip the bike handles so hard my palms go numb. I hear the beep of an incoming text.
‘Eggy, please come home. I’m alone.’
Paul Forwood, this is about me, you and our family. Nothing else matters. We’re ending this today. I point my wheels up Exhibition Road and cycle past the grand stucco houses of the merchants who pillaged the world and stuffed all that glory into the museums near here. They had ambitions unbounded, just like Paul. Let’s see you fall to earth, my glorious conquistador.
42
I cycle to the road that leads to the alleyway by the canal as a light rain begins to fall. I want to get to my house via the rowboat but I shrink back from a fresh police cordon. They’ve installed a new police line further back from the canal. In my mind I can see Paul in his pyjamas, gesticulating at the police about the invasion of privacy at the back of the house, demanding they take the gawpers and the scribblers back a hundred feet, our neighbours standing shoulder to shoulder with him. I don’t know if that’s what happened, but I’ll have to retrace my steps from the bridge along the back of the gardens. My trip is much riskier in daylight, but I really have no choice. The rain gets heavier as I heave myself over the fence via the rickety chair and stumble through vegetation, intent on closing in on Paul. Eventually I reach the narrowboat and the garden shed and pause. I’m shielded from the alleyway to the canal on the opposite bank. I’m hoping that Raiph has diverted police attention elsewhere and that Paul really is alone. As I start to walk up the garden to the back door I understand that by now I’m beyond caring. There’s nowhere else I care to go.
I try the handle and the door swings in. He’s opened it for me, he’s waiting for me. I’m taken aback by how comfortable and luxurious my house looks. It is an environment to envy. I tell myself to not be fooled. Nobody’s jumped me, there are no staccato police radios. I move silently through into the corridor. The softness of the light tells me the curtains are closed.
The gap between expectation and reality is elastic: whether a canyon or a hair’s breadth, there’s always a gap. But what I find in the next two steps is something so far removed from what I was imagining my brain can’t process it. Gerry is lying on the living-room carpet with a bloodstain covering most of his car coat. His face is turned to me, frozen in its final expression of startled surprise, as if the world and the way it turns remained until the end a mystery to him. In his hand he holds a coil of white magician’s rope.
I don’t have time to question why he is in my house, dead on my carpet, as a thump from upstairs makes the hairs rise on the back of my neck. There it comes once more from the office above. I step into the corridor and pull the cricket bat from the stand by the door. In the low light every familiar doorway is a menace, every comfortable shadow a potential threat. Now I hear a dragging sound as I take the stairs three at a time, curving round to the first-floor landing. The office door stands ajar, papers are strewn across the floor and the chair is overturned. I step silently into the room and feel my knees losing their lock.
Paul is part suspended from something hooked over the top of the wardrobe door, his hands tied behind his back and tape across his mouth, twisting round and round, a thick white rope with frayed ends around his neck. He’s kicking with his feet against the floor that he can just touch. When his eyes alight on me he starts groaning loudly, the sound rising into a higher and higher panic pitch, his eyes pleading and bulging.
I grab the office chair and balance precariously on it, clawing at the knot around his neck but it’s set tight and doesn’t budge. His hair smells of tar and sweat. It’s the smell of fear. I scan the room, trying to find lethal edges on everyday objects. I grab a framed picture of the children and smash it to the floor, picking up a shard of glass with my sleeve and sawing the hard fibres of the rope above his head. My mind is entir
ely empty at this point as I put every bit of energy into freeing my husband. When the rope is finally cut Paul plummets to the carpet, a streak of blood chasing him down the door. I yank off the duct tape, making him cry out in pain as now a thousand questions compete to get out of my mouth first.
‘How in God’s name—?’
‘Untie me, quick—’
His wrists have swollen welts from his straining and pulling. I cut my hand with the glass trying to saw through the knots that bind his hands. ‘What happened?’
He’s having trouble speaking as he gulps down air and groans. ‘. . . thumped on the head . . .’ He starts hyperventiliating at the memory of what he’s just been through. As I try to calm him I can see a livid lump in his hair and without thinking cradle his head in my arms, telling him over and over that it’s going to be OK. Two hours ago I loathed my husband with a deadly passion, now that he’s hurt and in danger, I would die for him.
‘Who did this? Who did this to you?’
He looks up at me, confused. ‘I thought it was you . . .’ I’m so surprised I can only stare down at him, more questions crowding my mind.
‘Gerry is dead downstairs. Why is he here?’
‘Gerry?’ He looks blank and tries to stand but staggers like a cow with BSE. He looks disorientated and concussed. ‘I don’t remember . . .’
‘Who else was here, Paul? Think! What happened? Was Portia here?’
Paul frowns. ‘I think . . . was that today?’ He doesn’t look well at all.
‘You sent me a text about an hour ago, so think back: this morning you took the kids to school—?’
Paul’s eyes refocus. ‘I was getting the kids ready, Portia came round to talk about Lex and to say she’d seen you, then while she was here someone phoned to tell her about your video. We came straight in here to watch it and she had to firefight for the company. She was very angry. I had to speak to John . . .’ He tails off, his mind cranking back into gear. ‘I didn’t send you a text.’
