by Ali Knight
The lobby was filled with the most spectacular bouquet of flowers and someone had done something amazing with the lighting so that by the evening it looked more like a posh hotel than an office suite. The guests arrived in the lobby and walked through the office past the design studio and into the function room.
It was an amazing evening. I felt like such a grown-up! I drank champagne, gobbled the canapés and introduced myself to so many important clients and contacts of Poppa. They were all so friendly and pleased to meet me!
Oblomov and his wife Irina came, some members of the board of Qatar Futures were there, some well-known TV personalities came and I was told some premier league footballers were there but I wouldn’t have recognised them.
I drank a little too much champagne.
I felt sick and hot and left to get some air. I wandered around on my own in the empty offices, trying out different chairs in the design studio for size. One day I would be sitting in one of them for real, I knew. After a while I headed back to the party and as I came out of the design studio, I caught a low laugh from Poppa’s office. I walked along the corridor and was a little shocked to see Peter Fairweather sitting in Poppa’s chair. He was talking to someone who I couldn’t see through the frosted glass, but after a moment the edge of Helene’s floor-length purple dress appeared. Helene must have been sitting on the desk.
The wagu beef canapés didn’t taste so good any more. I threw the little skewer with the frilled paper decoration that was still in my hand to the floor.
A couple of moments later the door opened and Peter appeared, with Helene following behind.
If Helene was surprised to see me there she hid it well. ‘Alice! Have you met Peter Fairweather of Partridger?’
I shook his hand. ‘I’m interning at GWM.’
Peter nodded. ‘They keeping you busy?’
‘Oh yes, I’m learning such a lot, all about the company. I know that Partridger’s bid for the Vauxhall site wasn’t high enough to win. But are you looking at other sites in London?’
Peter looked surprised.
‘This is Alice Moreau, such a talented young individual,’ Helene added, giving Peter a look I couldn’t interpret. Sometimes Helene made me feel like a gauche little kid, and I didn’t like it.
‘Ah, now I see where she gets it from,’ Peter said, smiling at Helene. Helene looked at me indulgently. I had a sensation they were sharing a private joke. I wondered if it was at my expense.
‘But are you looking at other sites?’ I asked Peter again.
‘The feelers are always out,’ he replied, looking at Helene again. I got frustrated; his answer was so vague and non-committal.
‘Come, Alice, the auction is about to start,’ Helene said. She began to walk down the corridor with Peter.
‘Do you think Milo would be here tonight, if he hadn’t been murdered?’ I asked.
They both turned sharply, the bottom of Helene’s gown swishing round to face me last. ‘I sincerely hope so,’ Helene said quickly. ‘There are some members of his community rights group here if you would like to meet them,’ she said in a tone I couldn’t interpret.
Peter said nothing, and neither did I. We were spared the awkwardness that had begun to bloom between us as the door to the auction room opened and we were pulled into a sea of people and noise.
Despite the tension with Helene, the auction was great fun. There was a rousing cheer when Helene took to the stage to declare that we had surpassed our fundraising target by nearly double. Poppa looked at Helene with admiration and pride. Arkady Oblomov was the biggest spender of the night – he ended up in a bidding battle with Poppa for a signed photograph of Mick Jagger.
Soon we were left with one remaining auction item. It was so large that we were told we had to gather in the street below. There was a minimum bid of fifty thousand pounds. The room pulsed with exclamations and astonishment. It was genuinely exciting and completely above board – even I didn’t know what the prize was.
The hundred guests filed downstairs to the pavement on Regent Street and Helene got up on a little makeshift stage and made a short and impassioned speech, full of heavy innuendo – that GWM was ‘driven’ to work with the local community and there were ‘no brakes’ on our ambition for the charity. The crowd roared their approval. The auctioneer took to the stage and two women in shimmering gold dresses held a silk covering over the car.
The auctioneer began the bidding and as the price rose the women began to slowly pull back the covering on the car. With a final flourish, the smiling ladies pulled back the covering to reveal an Audi convertible, its black paint gleaming under the street lights. Everyone roared their approval. The winning bid was eighty-five thousand pounds from an elderly Asian man with white hair who I didn’t know. It was all so exciting, to raise so much money for such a worthwhile cause.
After everyone had clapped and cheered, Helene revealed that the car had been an extraordinarily kind gift from property development company Qatar Futures. There were shouts and demands that we get on the podium, so Poppa, Helene and I ended up in front of the attendees, our arms around each other, smiling back at a sea of iPhones and the official photographer.
I could feel Helene and Poppa’s arms around my waist, and I realised that this was where I had always wanted to be, up high, surrounded by love, adoration and respect.
Poppa, Helene and I were of course the last to leave. We got an Uber home, flushed with success.
It ended abruptly when we drew up outside our house. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ Helene exclaimed. ‘Who has done that?’
On the garden wall of the house, ‘You can’t hide’ was sprayed in capital letters. Even in the dark it was visible, and the spiky lettering felt threatening and menacing.
‘I’ll get someone to deal with that tomorrow,’ Poppa was saying. I couldn’t see his face as he was staring out the window at the wall.
‘Is this connected to us?’ I asked.
He took a long moment to turn round. ‘No. It’s just some vandal.’ His face was hard, set in a way that I hadn’t seen before. And with that he stepped out of the car. I didn’t believe him. I began to follow him out and opened my door, but as I did so I caught a glimpse of Helene’s face. She sat motionless, staring at the lettering. I knew I had had too much to drink, but I fancied at that moment that I saw fear in her eyes. And all the triumph of the night and the money raised for a good cause turned to ashes in a moment.
CHAPTER 35
Maggie
Four weeks before
The night of GWM’s charity auction was something to see. Rory and I ate kebabs and drank beer in the taxi as we watched the line of long black cars spit out London’s great and good: old rich men in penguin suits, women in glittering evening dress, some B-list celebrities, and an Arsenal defender and two Chelsea midfielders and their wives. And three hours later we watched them all file out again and cluster round that Audi.
We saw the little stage erected, and watched the bidding rise higher and higher as the covering was pulled off the bodywork by the models. We listened to the cheers and the laughter from the darkness of our cab. We saw the Moreaus on that stage, their arms around each other, the people clustered below them, the photos being taken, the huge amount they had raised for charity, the applause they received.
They had it all. Most people I knew had little more than nothing. I had never been so close to a family that could tick all the boxes, who could go to bed in financial security and still be smiling at each other when they woke. ‘Is it so bad,’ I said to Rory, ‘to want a little bit of what they’ve got?’
Rory drained the last of his can of beer and rolled up the remains of his cold kebab in its white paper covering. ‘Everybody wants that,’ Rory said, nodding towards the cameras and the crowd. ‘And a lot of people will do anything to get it,’ he added.
We tailed the Moreaus back to their house. We watched as they went inside and the door shut behind them.
‘What do you ma
ke of that writing on their garden wall?’ I asked Rory.
‘His mistress is tired of being given the runaround and wants him to sort this shit out?’
‘I swear, you are even more cynical than I am, Rory.’
‘That’s impossible,’ he retorted.
The letters seemed to shimmer in the darkness of the street. ‘Unlike you, I see two options,’ I replied. ‘It could be that jealousy has got the better of Gabe’s mistress, or it could be something connected to his company, someone who thinks they’re owed financially. If it’s the first, he’s running the risk of destroying his marriage, but if it’s the second, he could be in personal danger.’
Rory scoffed. ‘Don’t you worry on Gabe Moreau’s account. He can take care of himself. As long as Helene keeps paying us, I’m happy.’
CHAPTER 36
Maggie
Three weeks and four days before
At the start of the new week Simona and I were on the Monday afternoon shift and were soon following Gabe as he drove out of town, heading west. He pulled into Kensal Rise cemetery off the Harrow Road. I’d caught three cheats in cemeteries – the dead don’t stop people being passionate, if anything they were an aphrodisiac.
Gabe drove towards a large building in the middle of the cemetery, got out and parked. Simona dropped me off and I moved closer, using trees as cover. I got my zoom ready and looked around, waiting to see if I could see an approaching woman.
He walked around the building to where a row of memorial stones were inset into a side wall and stood before one of the plaques and touched it with splayed fingers, head bowed. The grass made my approach soundless, so I pointed my audio microphone towards him, receiver in my ear.
His voice was a low incantation, which I took to be a prayer, but he was talking in a language I couldn’t understand so his meaning was unclear. What came next shocked me. He was quiet for a moment, staring at the plaque, then he turned his fingers into a fist and ground it slowly into the metal square. A sob rang out in my ear before he walked away.
I was a snooper. A grubby, amoral pryer into people’s darkest recesses and most passionate shames. Most of the time I felt nothing. Served them right, I thought, but sometimes, just occasionally what I did made me feel bad. Grief was not clean, or ordered, it didn’t behave. Here was anguish and rage twisted into a tight helix. It wasn’t my place to witness or intrude.
When he headed back to the cemetery gates I approached the plaque. ‘In loving memory of Clara Belle Moreau. May you live forever in our hearts.’
He was mourning his former wife’s untimely, violent death, but was he cheating? I wondered if he ever revealed to Helene how often he came here, or whether he told her at all.
The more I watched him, the more complicated and fascinating he was becoming.
CHAPTER 37
Maggie
Three weeks and three days before
It’s ironic, I suppose, that the day we finally caught Gabe I wasn’t even tailing him. I was in the office meeting Mrs Gupta, a new client. Her husband ran a chain of Indian restaurants and she was suspicious he was having an affair with her sister, who was part owner in the business. That was going to be a case that wouldn’t end well for anybody, I knew.
I was glad when Rory phoned and distracted me from my dark thoughts. He had tailed Gabe from the office to Connaught Tower and then to Chelsea. Gabe was driving his own car, so he had been easy to follow.
‘Look at this,’ Rory had said, and pinged me a series of photos.
It was Gabe, standing by a door that had been opened by a blonde-haired woman. In the next photo the woman was smiling, her arm on the doorframe, and in the next photo she had her hand on his hair. The subsequent photos showed Gabe step inside the house and the door close behind them.
‘Where are you?’ I barked.
‘It’s in a cul-de-sac off the King’s Road. I’ve checked the door: three bells, no names, can’t work out which one is hers. Blinds are drawn, I can’t see in. I’m going back to the taxi to wait.’
I was out of the office and ordering an Uber to drive me to Chelsea as quick as I could. ‘Finally, we’ve finally nailed him.’ I could hear Rory’s excitement at the realisation that our long operation was drawing to a close.
I arrived at the address Rory had given me in twenty minutes. Rory had moved the taxi out of sight and we took up positions crouched behind a wall about a hundred metres away.
‘He hasn’t come out since I called you,’ Rory said.
‘Any sign of which floor they’re on?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Did you see him use the other phone?’
Rory shook his head. ‘There’s something else. He stopped at a cashpoint on the way over here. He took out a lot of money. A stack, maybe this thick.’ Rory made a little space between his thumb and forefinger. ‘You maybe want to get Helene to check whether he still has it on him this evening.’
‘Fan-fucking-tastic.’ I sat back behind the wall to wait for Gabe, the thrill of the chase pulsing through my veins.
Half an hour after Gabe Moreau had walked into the Chelsea flat, the door opened and he came back out. I photographed them with the long-range lens on my Canon.
The woman he was with was slim and blonde-haired, wearing a fashionable below-the-knee skirt and heels. She had the air of someone who was used to being looked at, who knew male appreciation was never far away. The sun was in her eyes and as she held her hand across her brow the gold bracelets on her wrist glinted. Gabe had his hands in his pockets and was looking at the floor. After a while she patted him fondly on the lapel of his jacket, ran a hand through his hair as a goodbye and turned and walked back into the house.
Gabe got into his car and drove away.
Rory stood up and began to walk back to the taxi. ‘I’ll stay on him,’ he said.
‘I’ll go and ring that doorbell. Find out who we’ve got in there.’
Rory was smiling. ‘I was beginning to think Helene had made it all up, but I guess she was telling the truth.’
I approached the door and spotted the intercom camera. I rang all three doorbells. There was no answer. I rang again and again but got no joy. I checked to see if there was another exit from the row of houses but there didn’t seem to be one. What was it about me that she didn’t like the look of? Why would she hide in there and not answer the door?
I walked away further into the new development, past rows of bland and uninhabited townhouses and large shop windows that were empty, and eventually found a marketing suite with more lifeless flags set up on poles on the pavement outside and went in.
A white man in a grey suit came round to the front of his white reception desk and shook my hand a lot too hard. His name tag said Jonty Belvedere. I told him some nonsense about being a kitchen designer looking to expand into a shop for clients. He showed me a lot of marketing brochures. Why was it so empty round here? I asked him.
I got the usual excuses about a big push coming in early autumn, and dubious numbers relating to occupancy rate. He knew it was bullshit and so did I, but he worked on commission and he would be keen to earn.
‘This development is mixed-use residential and commercial?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I saw a row of houses up round the corner over there. Are they occupied yet?’
‘Oh yes, the first wave of tenants and owners have already moved in. I’ve got viewings every day, a lot of competition and interest.’ He pulled yet another brochure out. I would get high on the print fumes before long. There was a Foxtons estate agent’s logo in the bottom corner. I looked at desperate Jonty trying to sell property duds, and I could almost have felt sorry for him. As Jonty watched another potential sale slip through his grasp, it made me think that property development wasn’t the quick route to mega riches that every normal person thought it to be. At Queen’s Gate, as this area was called, someone was losing millions.
True to form, I didn’t care, I was just glad it wasn’t me
.
CHAPTER 38
Helene
Three weeks and two days before
Maggie showed me a series of photos of the woman who was groping my husband in a Chelsea street. They were long range, slightly grainy, but the mood and intention in them were clear. It was the same woman I’d seen in the cloakroom in the Café Royal, possibly the same woman who had been talking to Alice at the charity run. Maggie showed me photos of her flat, of her closing the door behind Gabe. That door signified the end of my life as I had lived it. Slam. Silence. As final and fast as that.
‘How long were they in there for?’ I asked, my voice disembodied.
‘About half an hour.’
I watched Gabe come out. I could see the woman grinning, a hand reaching out to pull at his lapel. He got into his car and drove away, back to work. I know where he was headed because I was in the office that day. I was in a meeting with him about Connaught Tower Two. I remember now that he was late to arrive. Not by much, maybe five minutes.
I was so angry I couldn’t breathe.
I sat in Maggie’s office, mute. I looked at Maggie and I hated her. I knew that was irrational and pointless, but I am a human being; a twisted mass of dangerous emotion. I wanted to shoot the messenger. I wanted to kill the messenger.
What I loathed, in an all-consuming rush that I had never expected to feel, was Maggie’s success. It felt that it was at my expense. The qualities I first admired in her – the honesty, the brashness, the tell-it-like-it-is shtick – I now found repellent.
‘Is this the woman you saw in the Café Royal?’ Maggie asked.
I nodded. ‘Who is she?’ My voice didn’t sound like my own.
Maggie got up and came and sat on the sofa next to me. Maybe she thought I would fall into her fleshy arms when I saw my husband and that woman together. That made me angrier still. She didn’t know me. When I have been betrayed that is not what I do.
