by Simon Brett
He screwed up his eyes with the effort of recollection. ‘I don’t know. Week back, couple maybe. She lost interest in me.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean I don’t fool myself that I was attractive to Celeste as anything other than a source of drugs. My dealer got killed in a knife fight a couple of weeks back. Soon as I’d lost my supplier, Celeste was off to find someone new.’
‘New boyfriend or new dealer?’
He shrugged. ‘Both possibly.’
‘You don’t know who she found?’
A shake of the head. ‘No idea.’
‘Have you seen her with him?’
‘No,’ he said firmly.
I knew he was lying, but I also knew I would get nothing more out of him on the subject. Time to move the discussion on. ‘Dodge told me that you know Nate Ogden.’
‘Yes. Spend more than a year banged up in the same nick, you get to know people.’
‘You don’t know where he is now?’
‘Why should I?’ The defensive response was instinctive.
‘Because nobody else seems to.’
‘That’s not much of an answer,’ he said, but he seemed to be assessing my words, deciding what response to give. His manner suggested he might know something.
‘Has Nate got some hideout that you know about?’
He grinned. ‘Good on direct questions, aren’t you?’
‘Well, has he?’
‘If he did have – and I’m not saying he has – I’m afraid I wouldn’t tell you about it. Friend of Dodge’s you may be, but I’m not going to grass up a mate to anyone.’
‘Honour among thieves?’ I suggested.
The idea amused him. ‘You could say that. Thieves, murderers, drug dealers … pretty much comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?’
‘What about the police?’
‘What about the police?’
‘Are you going to tell them where Nate might be hiding?’
‘You are joking, I take it. I’ll tell you exactly what I’ll do when I’m with the police. I will do nothing to antagonize them. I do have some experience of this stuff, you know.’ He grinned again and looked at his watch. ‘I will turn up at the time we have agreed. I will be unfailingly polite. I will answer all their questions to the best of my ability. Sadly, my ability does not stretch as far as knowing such details as where Nate Ogden might lie low.’
‘Right. I see. You know, incidentally, what some people are assuming about him?’
‘I don’t know, but I can guess.’
‘That, because Celeste was found in his mother’s house, and because Nate was in prison for having killed another young woman, and because he’s disappeared since the murder …’
‘Yes. I can join the dots.’
‘And what kind of picture do they make when they’re all joined up?’
‘I’m not into pictures much,’ he grunted.
‘Do you think there’s a possibility that Nate killed Celeste?’
‘You can call her “Kerry” if you like. I do know who she really was.’
‘Right. And do you know of any connection between her and Nate Ogden?’
‘No direct connection, no.’
‘Which suggests you might know an indirect connection …?’
‘I don’t think you’ll think it’s important.’
‘Try me.’
‘Well, one thing you do get a lot of in the nick is time. And time means you talk a lot … and if there’s someone you get on with …’
‘Like you did with Nate?’ I prompted.
‘Yeah, we talked a lot inside Gradewell. It’s fairly relaxed there. We worked on the vegetable garden together, Nate and me. Wouldn’t probably have been bosom buddies in any other kind of situation, but inside … well, you don’t have that much choice. So, we talked a lot.’
‘Did he talk about his crime? You know, the reason he was banged up. Did he mention that girlfriend, you know, the one he—’
‘No, you don’t really do that in the nick. Well, some do, the loudmouths. Boasting about what they done, bigging up the violence, so’s they come across as real hard men. But Nate wasn’t like that. Quiet type, really. He did once mention that the girlfriend had had a son who’d been taken into care before he met her. Otherwise, her name never came up. Nate did talk about his mum, though.’
‘Were they close, do you reckon?’
Les sucked his lower lip. ‘I don’t know. The way he talked about her, she was definitely a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Filled the house full of shit she didn’t need. I think she’d always been heading that way, but apparently it got worse when Nate was banged up for murder.’
I made a mental note of that. A lot of hoarding behaviour seems to be triggered by some personal trauma. But I didn’t tell Les that I knew about Maureen Ogden’s problem from having witnessed the results of it.
‘Apparently, one thing Nate’s mum was very into was coupons.’ I made no response to that either. ‘You know, those things you get in free newspapers, on cereal packets, all over the bloody shop.’
‘I know.’
‘She couldn’t resist them. Forever snipping them out, forever claiming things like free pizzas and samples of washing powder and discounts on every bloody thing under the sun. Mostly useless tat, according to Nate. But she also liked these prize draw things, you know, “your chance to win a hundred grand”, all that stuff. She’d been entering those for years. And, according to Nate – he told me this just before I was released from Gradewell – one day she got lucky.’
‘His mum’s number came up?’
‘Exactly. And, incidentally, Ellen, this is another piece of information that I will not be sharing with our jolly Boys in Blue. If asked about Nate’s mum, I will not divulge everything he said about her. I’ll say he mentioned her hoarding tendencies, but I will not mention her love of coupons. Nor the fact that she got lucky with one of them.’
‘You mean …?’
‘Yes, she had a winner.’
‘Do you know how much?’
Les shook his head. ‘Nate was a bit coy about that. Certainly in the thousands, though.’
‘So, from being a poor little pensioner, Maureen Ogden suddenly became a rather better-heeled little pensioner?’
‘Yes.’
‘With a very healthy bank balance.’
‘You would have thought that, wouldn’t you? Except Maureen Ogden was one of the old brigade. Didn’t believe in banks, according to Nate. Kept any money she had in a shoebox underneath her bed.’
‘Ah.’ I suspected that I knew the answer, but I still asked, ‘And why is this significant?’
‘It’s significant because I told Celeste about Nate’s mother’s win.’
That put a new complexion on things. The scenario was dependent on a high degree of coincidence, but it was possible.
Kerry Tallis, or Celeste, as ever in need of money, remembers Les telling her about Maureen Ogden’s win on a prize draw. And about her distrust of banks, her habit of keeping her money under the bed. Celeste goes to relieve the old woman of the cash, and is surprised in the act by Nate Ogden, who has just witnessed his mother’s death in Queen Alexandra Hospital. In his fury at what the girl is doing, Nate kills her. Realizing how he’s screwed things up, he does a runner.
Hmm … I wasn’t entirely convinced. Some of the details were a bit inconsistent and hazy.
But it was a possibility worth considering.
I had felt the vibration of an arriving text on my phone while I was talking to Les but, not wanting to interrupt our conversation, didn’t look at it until back in the Yeti. I was very relieved to see that it came from Hilary.
It read: ‘I’ve located Nate Ogden. He’s at this address.’ She gave me a postcode. ‘I’m going to see him. I think he’ll talk to me. Should be there about five. If you’re interested, come along. Love, Hilary.’
Interested? I tried ringing to get more information, but there was no
response. I loaded the postcode into the Yeti’s satnav and set off.
As I drove back east, the synapses in my brain were popping like sparklers. The fact that I had only been given a postcode must mean that Nate’s hideout was not in an urban street, but somewhere off the beaten track. And why did I have this feeling that the postcode was somehow familiar? The satnav was taking me inland, to the north of Chichester.
I felt relieved that Hilary was all right. I didn’t think about ringing Philip to set his mind at rest. If she was contacting me, surely she’d have been in touch with him too.
I also felt ridiculously cheered that she had asked if I wanted to join in her investigation. I’d worried over recent years that our relationship was becoming diluted, that we were drifting apart, but this seemed to be a validation of our friendship. And also, she must think there was something I could contribute to helping Nate Ogden. I was excited and intrigued.
Normally, I’m very good about not using the phone while I’m driving. It can ping and blip away at me with new texts and voicemails as much as it wants. Aware how vital a clean driving licence is to my business, I wait until I’m sedately parked before checking them.
But something told me this particular ping was important. One-handed, and illegally, I checked the text. It was from Ben. It just read: ‘I’m not so good, Ma.’
There was only one possible response.
I unplugged the satnav, turned back towards Chichester, and drove in a way that was certainly a threat to my clean licence.
THIRTEEN
There’s something in my life I try not to talk about. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think about it. The memory is with me every day, and most nights too. Everyone close to me knows what happened. Probably a lot of people not close to me at all also know. And I do talk about it sometimes. People in the healing professions – people like Hilary – are constantly telling me I should talk about it more often, telling me that it would help – but my instinct is not to.
It’s the reason for the choking dream, the one I don’t get so often now, thank God.
And it’s the reason I had no choice but to abandon the quest for Nate Ogden and drive straight home after Ben’s text.
Obviously, it’s to do with Jools’s and Ben’s father. My husband. Oliver.
He was a cartoonist. I met him a long time after Philip and I split up. Well, Philip and I didn’t actually split up, we just kind of drifted apart. He was getting increasingly caught up in his medical studies, and I was kind of drifting around in the Chichester area, where I’d been brought up. I had finished school and was contemplating university. I supposed that I would end up doing an English degree somewhere. I’d always liked words and loved reading. Still do, when I get time.
My A levels were good enough, but I didn’t want to go straight back into full-time education. I thought if I took a year out – working locally, serving in shops, behind bars – I might emerge with a clearer idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Or who I was, perhaps? I was still living with Fleur – well, that is to say in Fleur’s house. She wasn’t there much. I couldn’t afford to live anywhere else – and that kind of worked OK, so long as I gave her all my attention when she was there.
I did go up to spend a few weekends with Philip, but neither of us was that interested in extending the relationship. The sex, which had started out very exciting and new, had become a bit predictable. Philip was very in and in-jokey with all his fellow medical students and I … well, I didn’t really know where I was. Not unhappy, just unsure where I wanted to go next. Drifting. Philip and I agreed to part, and I don’t think either of us was too bothered by the decision.
But it did make me restless. There was nothing to keep me in Chichester. Nothing to keep me in England, really.
So, I thought I’d take a kind of gap year. Travel. I started in the USA, worked myself down to South America, ended up in Australia. On the way, I had a sequence of very short and unsatisfactory jobs. Also, shorter and even more unsatisfactory relationships. Then, in Sydney, I met someone who I thought might go the distance. The one gap year became five. I got a regular job in a bar in the Rocks area.
I had very occasional contact with Fleur during that period. Every month or so, I would make a duty phone call, when she would tell me how wonderfully well her career and love life were going. She never asked about mine. Never tried to call me either.
The man in Sydney didn’t go the distance. All I wanted to do with distance then was to put as much between him and me as possible. So, I came back to England. To Chichester.
I could still have applied for university but the moment seemed to have passed.
Fleur made no secret of the fact that my return to her home was inconvenient. She had recently married her second husband and didn’t want anything to disturb their short-lived romantic idyll. I rented a small flat, got various local jobs, working in shops and bars, and wondered what the hell was going to happen next.
I got back in touch with some of my still unattached schoolfriends and drank too much in their company. ‘Ladette culture’ was much spoken of at the time, and I got into a cycle of rather joyless excess. I did not anticipate any more excitements in my life.
I wasn’t depressed, just numb and pissed off, really.
I met Oliver when I was working for a while in Waterstone’s. He’d got a book of cartoons out, called Major Cock-Ups, based on a series he’d done for a daily newspaper about the then prime minister. It was meant to clean up in the Christmas Funnies book market (it didn’t), and the publishers had organized a series of signings. Chichester Waterstone’s was one of the stops on his tour. The city was thick with snow and very few of its well-heeled citizens wanted to leave their central heating for a book signing.
After Oliver had done his well-rehearsed (and very funny) routine and signed a few (very few) books, a bunch of us went out for a drink, and it ended up with just him and me, alone and pretty pissed in the pub. The snow made us feel comfortably isolated, cocooned from the icy world outside.
Oliver was meant to be catching a train back to London round nine o’clock, but he missed that one. He kept looking at his watch and commenting on the other ones he’d missed. And if there was more snow, would the trains even be running? Eventually, the bar staff had to kick us out at closing time. He reckoned there was still a train he could catch. I never did find out whether there was or not.
Outside the pub, he kissed me formally on both cheeks and asked for my phone number. I gave it, never expecting to hear from him again, and Oliver reeled off towards the station.
He left me in a state of precarious ecstasy. Drunk, for a start. And bitterly cold beside the ice-covered Market Cross. But also, warmed by the unshifting focus of Oliver’s brown eyes and mesmerized by his talk. I’m sure they were all practised anecdotes – I came to hear them a good few times over the ensuing years – but I had never been in the company of anyone who’d made me laugh so much.
During the next few days I settled into a kind of rueful resignation and thought of all the reasons why there was no possibility of a relationship between me and Oliver ever happening – or, if it did – ever working.
He was older than me, for a start. Probably at least fifteen years older. And from his talk, it was clear there had been quite a lot of women in his life. At what level of seriousness those relationships had been, I had no means of knowing. Nor did I know whether he was in one of them at that moment. Fewer men wore wedding rings back then, and I thought Oliver was probably the kind of guy who wouldn’t have worn one, anyway.
I reconciled myself to the fact that I was just one in a string of girls working in bookshops, over whom Oliver had spread his minor celebrity charm for an evening. Out of my league.
Then he rang me.
I’m not going to describe what being in love’s like. People who’ve been there know, and I don’t want to make people who haven’t jealous. All I need to say is that Oliver and I worked.
There were pro
blems, of course. My mother was appalled by the age difference, and even more appalled when Oliver was revealed to have two divorces behind him – though what right Fleur Bonnier had to get on a high horse about morality in relationships seemed to me to have a pot-and-kettle element to it. She also told me that his fractured love life was a sign of instability of character. I was initially pretty shocked by the revelations too, but I was in love with him, so for me their importance diminished. For Fleur, who was far from being in love with him, they became more important. Though I think her main objection to my having a successful relationship was the thought of her being upstaged.
The only thing that worried me about Oliver was the frequent occurrence of his dark moods. Suddenly, in the middle of his customary wisecracking, he would go quiet. It was very difficult to talk to him at such moments. The darkness might last for a few hours, a couple of days, then he would suddenly grin, say, ‘Sorry about that’, and be back to the man I had first met in Waterstone’s.
With the glibness of youth, I didn’t worry about this too much. Being in love gave me enormous confidence in the power of that love. So, Oliver had low moods from time to time. What of it? My love was strong enough to heal and protect him.
At first, I continued to work at Waterstone’s in Chichester and spent as much time as I could with Oliver on his Regent’s Canal narrowboat. Over a few months, I gave up the job and moved in. I didn’t need to contribute to the household income.
Those were good years for Oliver. His stock as a cartoonist was high. The Major Cock-Up strip was in a London evening paper every weekday, and was also syndicated to a lot of overseas publications. Though Oliver admitted to being very bad at managing money, there was no doubt there was a lot of it coming in.
With a change of government, obviously the Major cartoons were out. This could have been a disaster for Oliver, but in fact it proved a blessing. Because he thought of something better. He adjusted to the new administration by starting a new strip about a children’s cuddly toy called Teddy Blair. This proved to be even more successful than Major Cock-Ups.
The demands of the strip meant a very stressful start to each day. Oliver would wake at five and walk down to King’s Cross to pick up all the daily newspapers. Then he’d wrestle through them for a couple of hours until he’d got three potential ideas for the day’s sequence. By eight o’clock he’d have rung his editor to spell out the jokes. The editor would pick the one to go with, and Oliver would spend the next couple of hours drawing it up properly, before ringing for a cab to take the finished artwork to the newspaper office (no email back then).
