The Company of Fellows

by Dan Holloway

  Angel took a roll-up out of the top pocket of his pale blue cotton jacket and offered one to Tommy.

  “Still smoking that junk?” said Tommy.

  “Yeah, and I see you’re still working out, and you know what, I look just as good as you.”

  “Put these on, you look like a fucking stockbroker.” Angel threw a pair of shoes onto the floor and smiled, white teeth against his brown skin.

  “Who says I’m dancing?” said Tommy.

  “I don’t care if you’re dancing or not. At least look like you could or I’ll take you to a fucking tourist club.” Jerez was at the heart of flamenco country that stretched across Andalucia. It was full of peñas del flamencas, flamenco clubs. Many of them were laid on for the tourists, with gaudy displays and walls stuffed with photographs, offering classes during the day in English or Spanish. Some were not.

  Night life rarely began before 10 and Tommy and Angel stepped into the middle of the crowds feeding their way up to the plazas at the top of the hill to take their pick of the night’s offerings.

  “How’s Juanita?” Tommy asked.

  “Ah, you know? Will commit, won’t commit. One day maybe. I’m too busy selling tiles to notice most of the time.”

  “And you don’t think they’re connected?” Angel and Juanita had been together since Tommy first knew them. When he went to stay at Angel’s parents in summer they were always engaged. Maria, the matriarch, would be getting excited and making Tommy promise to come and cook for the wedding. When he went to stay in winter they’d be taking a break. Maria would storm through the house, heels banging on the terracotta. “No backbone. You need a woman with a spine, a woman to tell you when to stop. Tell you come home or there’ll be no food on the table.”

  “How do I know?”

  “My point exactly.”

  Before long they were squeezing down a narrow alley and in through a tiny wooden door. As if from nowhere they were engulfed in a tide of shouting and clapping, guitar strings and beers being ordered, all woven together by the relentless, breathless pounding of heels. The room seemed tiny but that was only because the tables were crammed into one end and around the sides, many of them empty as people stood on the edge of the floor. Old men danced hopefully at half the pace of whoever was on show. Young men encroached on the floor, waving their beers at the señoritas. Young women clapped in time as the señors pounded the floor with their feet and threw their arms above their lithe, dark chests.

  A woman who looked to be in her 20s stopped dancing and came to grab Angel. Up close Tommy could see she was nearer 60 but his eyes were sucked in by the sinew and the poise in her limbs. “Angel,” she growled. “Is your friend going to dance for us, tonight?”

  “Maybe later. I think I need to get him a few beers first, eh?”

  “Then I’ll take you,” she said, as though she intended to make love to him against the wall. She pulled him onto the floor and the guitars speeded up. Angel threw Tommy his cotton jacket. His shirt was open to his stomach, already see through with sweat, clinging darkly against the hairs on his chest, sculpted like one of Tommy’s drawings. He eyeballed a lady at the front of the room and held her absolutely fixed as he raised his hands, arched his back like a bullfighter and began to dance.

  Tommy turned to sit and stopped. There were sunglasses he had seen that afternoon, a pose he recognised; a flick of a cigarette pack that came almost from the shoulder. He took the Zippo from the top pocket of Angel’s jacket and squeezed his way to her table, arriving with a flame a foot from her eyes. She didn’t looked up from her Camel, just took a slim Ronson lighter from the pocket of her shorts, lit up and drew. She blew the smoke out into Tommy’s face and, he guessed, if he had been able to see through the glasses, opened her eyes.

  “You’ve got a light,” Tommy said.

  “So it would appear.”

  Tommy sat down at her table. She moved her ashtray an inch away from him.

  “Your friend dances well,” she said.

  “My friend dances flamenco well. That’s not the same thing.”

  “And what do you do well?”

  “I dance Argentine Tango. Very well.”

  “Constant body contact.”

  “Makes it very easy to lead.”

  She put her elbows on the table and leant on the back of a casual wrist. “Tell me about the girl you’re in love with.”

  Tommy stopped trying to look through the glass and looked at the way her skin was folding and creasing in her forehead and her cheeks. He had no idea how old she was, not even from the backs of her hands brown and marked from years of sun and cigarettes. Twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, there was no way to tell. “She’s a policewoman.”

  “So you’re life’s cleaner than clean?”

  “She’s an English policewoman; so in England my life’s cleaner than clean.”

  “And in Spain?”

  “In Spain I hang out with Angel.” They laughed. “Tommy,” he said, reaching to take her hand; but in one movement she had leant back in her chair and was lighting another Camel.

  “Well, Tommy, you’re not local, are you?”

  “No,” he said. “Nor are you.”

  “Yes I am, Tommy, but I spent several years studying in Germany.” She reached out the cigarettes to him.

  “No. Thank you.”

  “I’ve seen you a few times today,” she said. “You’ve been asking about Charles.”

  Now he was even more awake than he was before. The room disappeared and his eyes fixed on her.

  “I lived opposite him from the day he moved here to the day he moved back to Oxford. I’ll bet you’re from Oxford, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Did you know him well?”

  “I knew him better than anyone else here. Tell me why you’re asking all these questions, Tommy? Are you a detective?”

  “No, I’m not a detective, I’m an interior designer.”

  She gave a throaty nicotine laugh, “I wasn’t expecting you to say that.”

  “I’m afraid Charles is dead.” The only flicker he caught across he brow was a twist of surprise.

  “How?”

  “He killed himself.” Without a flicker on either side. “What was he like when he was here?”

  “For the first month he was quiet, friendly but withdrawn. Agitated. Worried about his little girl.”

  “Becky was fine,” he said, trying to stay calm, wondering if he was about to hear the detail he’d come for. “Her mother thought he didn’t give her a second thought.”

  “Not Becky, Carol.”

  “Carol?”

  “He didn’t talk about her after she was taken away.” Her shoulders seemed to slump and she sighed in a way that was less of a sound and more a gesture that she made with her whole body. “What was he going to do, eh? He threw himself into work, into the community, but he was hollow inside.”

  “Who took her?” This was it, he thought. Sansom was right. Carol hadn’t died when she was born. She had lived, and what had happened to her was a hundred times worse than if she had died that first night.

  “I don’t know, but they took her back to her mother. His creepy English friend came round a few times afterwards, but after a month or so that stopped and he lost all contact with England until he went back, and after that it was me who never saw him again.” She drew deeply and took a slug of San Miguel.

  “His English friend?” Tommy made sure he didn’t let anything show. Just leaning back in his chair with a beer.

  “Ellison, Professor Ellison.”

  “Well he’s certainly a creep.”

  “He was a politician. A puppeteer who likes to play people against each other. Like Charles and his wife. He enjoyed the process of people destroying each other. Charles used to say he was like someone from a John Le Carré novel.”

  “How did he play Charles and Haydn against each other?”

  “I think he came here and said one thing, went back home and said another. Carol was th
e pawn in the middle of it.”

  Tommy wanted to press her. This was what he had come for, but before he could ask anything else, Angel was back.

  “Hey, Tommy. You missed my dance. It’s your turn now.” Angel put an arm on Tommy’s shoulder and took his beer with the other. “I’ll keep your friend company.”

  “Maybe another day.” She got up and finished her beer. “I have a bike to ride. Thanks for the light, Tommy. Well, thanks for the thought. Have an Argentine Tango with your policewoman for me.”

  Tommy watched her snaking her hips through the crowd, her long, tanned legs disappearing through the door. He couldn’t help but follow, catching a glimpse as she turned back into the main street and ducking into the next alley.

  Before he could follow, Tommy froze. By now everyone was inside whatever club they were going to. Tommy was alone in a narrow street with lamps playing shadows on the walls, wondering how long he had been followed. She was like a character in a spy story, a John Le Carré novel. A character like George Smiley, he thought, and the moment he thought it he realised the significance of the name.

  ____

  48

  “Tommy.”

  “Eh?”

  “Hey, you’ve been out here for ten minutes. Come back inside. Who’s the girl?” Angel turned him round and started to walk him back to the peña.

  “A friend of a friend.”

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, man.”

  “As good as, Angel. As good as. Look, I’m going back to the hotel. I have to get the first plane tomorrow. I need to ask a favour.”

  “Sure.”

  “An old tutor of mine used to live in the Calle Caballeros about fifteen or so years ago. Professor Charles Shaw. He was here for two years and I think he came into some money during that time. If you’ve got any contacts here or at any of the ports could you make some enquiries, see if you can find out where he might have got it and what he did with it if he didn’t put it under his mattress?”

  “I’ll put some feelers out for you, Tommy. Take care of yourself.”

  “Thank you, Angel. I’ll leave her at the airport for you.”

  “Adios.”

  “Adios.” They embraced each other for almost a minute and Angel returned to the dance.

  Tommy headed back to his hotel room and logged on. He paid over the odds to book a ticket for the first flight back to England in the morning. He decided that it was worth trying to get the four or five hours of sleep that were left for him to take, so he showered quickly and lay down, ordering a wake-up call for 6. It had certainly been a fruitful trip, he thought. Probably he’d had his suspicions all along, but now he couldn’t keep the sickening truth of what had happened to Carol from reaching into his consciousness any longer.

  Who was worse, he wondered? There’s a thought experiment for you, Professor Shaw. The man who gets his ultimate, once in a lifetime pleasure from performing sex acts on a newborn child, or the man who sells him the child to do it on? This was about a convenient medium for pressing the right sensory buttons. A medium that happened to be a baby. And it was about years of planning, which was what made it worst of all.

  He had to console himself that now he knew who had done that planning; and he knew that somehow the smiley he’d drawn in his notes was Shaw’s way of letting him know. He wondered if that was what someone thought worth killing for. It was certainly a stronger motive than many murderers have. The problem was that it could be a motive for almost anyone who knew what it meant.

  What Shaw and Ellison did was to objectify another human being completely. What sickened Tommy to the pit of a stomach that had too much beer and croquettes in it was that that was how he had to treat her too. He had to think about the situation calmly. He had to ask questions of it; questions like who does this give a motive to if they found out? Questions like who did find out? He owed it to the living daughter to find whoever killed her father, whatever kind of a father he had been to Carol. And that meant he couldn’t afford to think about Carol as anything other than a clue. Not yet. He had to promise himself he would do something to make it up to her later. If he walked away from this now, or if he cracked up, Becky’s life would be fucked for sure. If he found her father’s killer it would be fucked to, but there was a one percent chance she’d rebuild something in time. The one percent he had to cling to.

  He stopped fighting the sickness, let himself throw up and at least get something out of himself. That’s all I can do now, Carol. What a pathetic mess. I’m so, so sorry. And within a minute his body had taken enough and shut down to sleep without the quietest whisper of a dream.

  ____

  49

  Emily’s eyes looked for something to fix on in the grey blue dark. The absolute silence of the dark, not even broken by a gentle snore. He doesn’t even snore, she thought. She couldn’t even get mad at him for that. She laughed. Something had turned over in the engine of her soul and she was no longer interested in getting mad at him. She studied his shape, leached of contours in the grey. That was a good place to start, she thought. An outline of David drained of shape and colour, something to fill in and build on. Much of the happiness was still there in the lines, the shapes. Much, but not all. It was better than nothing; a start. No, it was better than that. It was a good solid base camp.

  She stroked his forehead as he slept. He was a deep sleeper. That wouldn’t disturb him. Sometimes she could get up and play with the books on the shelves, make toast, bring it back and eat it and he wouldn’t break the rhythm of his breathing. This was good practice, she thought, as her hand performed the mechanical action. She knew that this was affectionate, the kind of intimacy that makes a marriage work. That she couldn’t feel it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It just needed bringing back to the surface.

  When she woke she found her head nuzzled into his chest and smiled. It was a good fit, she thought. That was something good already.

  “Want pancakes?” she asked as David’s eyes began to twitch.

  “Pancakes on a Thursday, what’s the occasion?”

  “Today,” she said, kissing his smooth, slightly boyish chest, “is I want to make pancakes for my wonderful husband day. Didn’t you see it on the calendar?”

  “I think I must have missed it. So, is it just pancakes you want to make for your husband, or is it pancakes and syrup and Italian coffee?” He messed her hair and smiled.

  “It’s also don’t be cheeky to your lovely wife or you’ll be making your own day.”

  “I’ll settle for pancakes and a kiss then”

  She eased herself up his body, feeling his skin beneath her, and kissed him, her eyes open, taking in his eyelids, closed in enjoyment. He looks comical, almost ridiculous but not in a bad way, she thought. She wondered how many people notice that about their partner. It was a nice detail, a detail to hang onto. Something she knew about him that no-one else did, something else that gave them closeness.

  By the time she had finished beating the batter in the kitchen she was exhausted. This was something she had to do, but it was something that was going to make her very tired, and she would need lots of breaks. She’d probably more than get her money’s worth from her Phoenix membership. It would be worth it, though. It would be worth it. Wouldn’t it?

  THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 13, 2007

  ____

  50

  Tommy had parked in Stansted’s short stay, and he was back in his car almost as soon as he had touched down. It felt good to be back under the cover of the Renault.

  He could already feel his hands starting to shake harder as the distance he had temporarily put between himself and Oxford shrank. There was no time to worry about that now. It was time to turn the phone on and see what was waiting. There was no voicemail, just a couple of texts, one from Rosie, one from Becky. Business first, he thought; leave himself something to look forward to. That sounded like Shaw speaking, he told himself, scrolling down to Rosie’s name. So what, he thought, scrolling back up.
Why should he try and second guess the man in everything he did. He was sick of having his life dictated. He wanted to get Becky’s message out of the way, so he would.

  Hi. Funeral sux. Find wot u need & come back soon. Need my safety valve B

  He wondered if he’d ever see a smiley again without feeling an acid wrench deep in his craw.

  Fortunately she’d been OK about him missing the funeral. Well, as OK as she could make herself be. Which was worse, he wondered? An extra day of pain at the end of the process because he’d gone to the funeral, or an extra day’s pain at the funeral and an extra day of time to begin to recover from the truth? He’d probably made the choice for him more than for her, which didn’t feel great; then again depression forces a certain amount of selfishness onto you, otherwise you simply wouldn’t survive; and then you’d be no use to anyone.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled Becky out of his system for the moment. Then he hit Rosie’s name.

  Miss u b safe xxx R

  He smiled and felt the Spanish heat dissipating from inside him. He hoped she liked the tiles he’d asked Angel to bring and had cradled in his lap all through the flight. He dialled her shortcut on his mobile.

  “Hey, you!” It was great to hear her voice.

  “I’m back on terra firma Britannica,” Tommy said. “Spain was much quicker than I thought it would be.”

  “You just wanted to get back to me.”

  “I have a feeling you’re right. Want dinner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “In or out?”

  “That’s a big fat bastard of a question,” she said, and he could picture her teeth grinning through her dark crimson lipstick. He thought of those lips on his and closed his eyes. He had one reason to be very glad he was nearly home. “If I say in I’m boring and needy. If I say out I’m getting tired of being alone with you.”