Even Stranger

by Marilyn Messik

  “Stella, DI Cornwall deals with missing persons. Cornwall, Stella was the young lady involved in the Hampstead case. Your chaps got to her just in time.”

  “Blimey, never realised she was one of your lot.” Said Cornwall. “Didn’t keep her out of trouble, did it? Thought she’d have seen it coming, wouldn’t you? Right, haven’t got all day, she got something for me or not?” He was talking to Boris, as if I wasn’t there, then was momentarily distracted as his cigarette slipped through his fingers and into his lap. He jumped up, swearing and brushing himself down, there was a small, round, burn hole in the thigh of his trousers. Lucky he was plain clothes, I thought, uniforms were probably more expensive to replace. Boris, amused despite himself, administered a silent rebuke which I chose to ignore. Cornwall sat down again, reached for the pack, thought better of it and looked directly at me for the first time.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well what? Considering nobody’s really told me anything, I’m working a bit in the dark here.” I glanced down at the notebook I’d taken out of my pocket. It held the pathetic few lines I’d jotted down, none of which made much sense, even to me. “All I’ve got are a few vague impressions.”

  “That’s bleedin’ promising,” he was heavy on the sarcasm. “Spit it out then.” I gave him a look, but then thought, what did I have to lose? I suspected (not to mention hoped), that both Ruth and Boris were mistaken about me, I certainly wasn’t convinced I’d have anything worth contributing, however worthy the cause.

  “It’s not so much that I heard anything.” I said. “I’ve been having dreams. I know it sounds peculiar, but I don’t think they’re mine.”

  “Why?” Boris prompted.

  “They’re dark,” I said with distaste, I didn’t want to go into details. “With such a lot of anger and violence.” I shut my eyes to better concentrate, “It’s fierce. There’s anger, frustration and…” I paused to put my finger on it, “… and injustice, a tremendous sense of injustice and feeling hard-done-by. Huge chip on the shoulder. But this isn’t what you told me to listen out for. This isn’t a victim. It’s completely the opposite. What I think I’m getting is the person who’s doing the frightening or at least, if he – it’s definitely a man – hasn’t done it yet, he wants to do it. I don’t know for sure whether he’s actually started yet, but he will.”

  And then Boris was in my head with me, magnifying and intensifying what I was remembering. For a moment I resisted, but realising what he was doing, went with it. As I did, he flashed through some swift questions to which, oddly, I found I had answers. In a very short time, he had all I had to give and I opened my eyes to the murky glare of the DI, staring expectantly at the two of us sitting opposite. He didn’t know quite what had just gone on, but was as fascinated as he was repelled. I could feel that repulsion and in it the fear, the natural fear of anything that’s ‘other’. It was a quite a while since I’d put myself in a position to feel any kind of prejudice from outside, it wasn’t pleasant.

  “She’s right.” Said Boris. “She’s picked up on something, but not a victim. She’s picking up on a perpetrator.” Cornwall, leaned forward, I hoped those shirt buttons were going to hold or someone was going to lose an eye.

  “Well, it’s what he’s frigging well planning, that I need to know, isn’t it?” He wafted, what felt like a chimney-full of stale smoke, over me. I coughed pointedly. “You’ve given me sod all, young woman, we don’t even know if he’s done anything we can nick him for yet. All you’ve told me, is he’s pissed off and angry well – newsflash – that applies to most everybody I see every day.”

  “Hang on,” I was liking this man less and less by the minute. “I’ve told you what I know. There isn’t any more. End of story. Sorry if it’s no use. And it’s my time I’ve wasted, as much as yours.”

  “No, wait.” Boris said quietly. “I think we’ve probably got something here, from what I saw, this is someone who’s a serious risk. If nothing else, you’ve got a connection with him, we can build on that.”

  “I don’t think so.” I said. I knew I shouldn’t have made that phone-call.

  “What’s that smell?” Boris was sifting through what he’d taken from me. For a second, I thought he meant the well-burnt aroma of whatever had been left too long under the café grill, then realised what he was talking about. I pulled back the memory. I didn’t recognise it at first, then came the sharp image of my father decorating my office, brushes left overnight in an empty paint tin to soak. It was turpentine. Boris nodded slowly in agreement,

  “Some kind of painter?” He said.

  “Artist?” Cornwall’s tone clearly indicated, artists weren’t much further up the popularity pole than crazy psychics.

  “Not sure,” I said slowly, “Maybe a decorator?” Boris queried me silently, but whilst I didn’t know why, I knew that made more sense to me. Boris nodded, if that’s what I felt, he trusted me. Cornwall was hauling himself to his feet, not a swift operation, didn’t they have fitness tests in the Met?

  “Not much to frigging go on, is it?” he muttered ungraciously, shrugging into a well-worn mac that had seen better days, a good while back. He looked me up and down again and lifted one bushy eyebrow at Boris.

  “You sure she’s the real deal? We got a darn sight more from the other one, where’s she anyway?”

  “Not well.” Said Boris briefly. Cornwall sniffed,

  “I’ll keep ears and eyes open, see if this fits anything we’ve had in and you, Missy,” he nodded at me. I glared back, I did not like the Missy. “Do the same. Anything else, doesn’t matter whether you think it’s important or not – get back to him.” He jerked a thumb at Boris, “He’ll tell me. He extracted, not without difficulty, a crumpled pound note from his trouser pocket, put it under the plate with the half demolished doughnut and left, weaving a lumbering path through the tables.

  The drive back to my office was far shorter than my list of questions, so we didn’t waste time talking. I learned that the association with the fragrant Cornwall, had begun a couple of years earlier, when Ruth called about a missing child, following an appeal on Police Five. She’d heard something, she was certain she had some information that could help. She was fobbed off politely. As Cornwall later put it, with his habitual charm, after an appeal, along with the might or might not be genuinely helpfuls, they always got their share of raving loonies and Ruth had known full well, it was into that file her name went.

  So she got Boris to call again, with the same information, based on the annoying, but indisputable truth, a man was far more likely to be listened to. And indeed, it so happened that a young, on-the-ball constable realised this caller knew rather more about the case, than he should and didn’t sound like an out and out crazy. Boris was duly passed on up the line and, as luck would have it, although Cornwall had mixed feelings about just how lucky it was, it had landed in his lap. A little like his lit cigarette.

  Cornwall, was not a man with a mind open to a wide range of possibilities, but he wasn’t a fool either. More importantly, he was conscientious and, appearances to the contrary, a stickler for detail. Whilst in his raving loonies file, there was an assortment of those claiming all sorts and yada, yada, yada – they didn’t usually come up with the number of precise details, Boris was able to supply. Cornwall reluctantly agreed to a meeting, although was less than chuffed when Boris turned up with Ruth. She’d dressed down for the occasion, in a more subdued than usual outfit, but still looked, to Cornwall’s apprehensive eye, the epitome of eccentric.

  Their meeting was in the same café we’d just left, chosen by Cornwall on the basis they were unlikely to be seen, because nobody in their right mind would want to go there. After all, as he pointed out on more than one occasion, if anyone ever found out who he was talking to and why, he’d be a bleeding laughing stock and his career screwed from here till kingdom come. But if he wasn’
t a snappy dresser, he was a scrupulous officer. He couldn’t un-hear what they had to say and once heard, his conscience wouldn’t let him not follow up, if only to prove, once and for all, he was dealing with a couple of nut-jobs.

  That first lot of detailed information Ruth had picked up on, led directly to a six year old girl being located and rescued – traumatised but unhurt. It also resulted in the arrest, trial and long-term imprisonment of a man who’d done this before and would have continued doing it in an escalating cycle.

  Over the subsequent period, there were more than a dozen occasions, when Boris called again. By then, he had Cornwall’s direct line and had worked on a number of different cases, in a vaguely unspecified, civilian consultancy role. Cornwall disliked his connection with Boris and even more so with Ruth. He was deeply uneasy about the whole bally business. However he was, above all, a pragmatist, and there could be no denying, there were bastards behind bars today, who might not have been, if it hadn’t been for these two. So far, by the skin of his teeth, he’d managed to get away in reports with ‘… based on information supplied by an anonymous informant’. Additionally, and even he had to concede this, it hadn’t done his career any harm at all, in fact, quite the opposite – so far!

  “But why me, why now?” I said aloud, “Why haven’t I picked up on this sort of thing before?” Boris paused, as he parked, back where we’d started.

  “Probably because we, first me, then Ruth, put it into your head. No,” he stopped my protest, “Nothing underhand, we simply, opened your mind to the possibility.” He smiled gently. “You could say, we planted the elephant. Now, contact us if you hear anything else,” he raised his hand against my reaction, “It’s quite likely you won’t, that this’ll be the end of it, it won’t go any further.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  I could only hope Boris was right. In the meantime, the business was doing well and, within the last month, I’d agreed with Martin that I’d take on some extra office space which, up till now, he’d been using as a storage room for brochures and stationery. He wasn’t keen at first, not that he was ever keen on anything at first. He said, they couldn’t possibly manage without that room, until Hilary roundly told him not to be such an idiot, or she’d offer him an alternative location to stick his brochures. She’d had a soft spot for me, ever since the dubious debt collector, and I’d gone even further up in her estimation, by emerging alive from the Lowbell debacle, unlike so many others.

  With the extra space, into which, by dint of some sweaty but clever manoeuvring, we’d managed to shoe-horn a couple more desks and two chairs, I’d been able to take on a couple more staff. They were working, God help ‘em, under the joint supervision of Kitty and Brenda, who both subscribed to the iron fist in the iron glove school of management, and ran a tight ship.

  Ruby had run her own successful florist’s business for many years, giving up, reluctantly, when the rent on her small shop rose, as she put it, beyond the ridiculous. She herself was always as impeccably arranged, as I imagined her flowers must have been. She wore her pewter hair, cut close to her shapely head and alternated between two smart, black, business suits, both of which she’d gone straight out and bought for herself, the day she decided to give up the shop. It was, she said, a proper treat, to be able to dress up properly, after so many years of being leaf-strewn and soggy. Her other post-shop indulgence was her nails, which she grew to luxurious lengths and took to be twice-weekly, manicured and scarletted.

  At the same time, I’d taken on Trudie. A mother of five, all of them, she told me with grin, of what could only be relief, now off her hands. Quiet and calm – with five kids she’d probably had to cultivate that – she was given to wearing long, peasant style skirts which were always tripping her on the stairs. She also had a collection of exceptionally long, dangly earrings which she loved, but had never been able to wear, through the years of small grabby fingers. Completely unassuming, like Brenda before her, she hadn’t worked for years, not since the children started arriving. But, sitting across from her, when she came in to see me, I saw how very bright she was, how frustrated that intelligence had been and what potential there was now, to give all those ideas, free rein. I didn’t hesitate to offer her the job, although Kitty and Brenda didn’t see eye to eye with me at all and both told me sniffily, on several different occasions, she wouldn’t last, mark their words.

  My social life, for once, was as perky as my professional one, which again came as quite a surprise to me. David and I were still going out and had settled easily into a relationship that, apart from the normal ups and downs of two people, getting to know each other, felt pretty comfortable. As time went on, I was increasingly aware, I needed to address a few things and bring him up to speed, but as I’ve said, it’s not always easy to find the right moment, so that was still in the pending file.

  I was delighted, there seemed to be such demand, for the ever-increasing range of services the agency offered, although that did mean we sometimes veered in directions, I hadn’t imagined we’d go – which was how Katerina came into the picture. She was a somewhat bolshie, Borzoi bitch; deep cream with extravagantly lush, chocolatey markings. She was more elegant than any dog has a right to be and, it has to be said, leaned heavily towards the neurotic. She belonged to an equally highly strung, elderly and eccentric client, Doreen Healing, known in our office as Baby Jane as in, Whatever Happened To.

  Doreen, who was convinced the sun was not her friend, never left the house without an over-sized sun-hat, wrap-around sunglasses and quantities of sky-high factor sunscreen, which gave, what could be seen of her face, a startlingly whiteish hue. A retired girls’ school headmistress, her bungalow and pocket-sized garden were now strangled, smothered and encroached upon by the rumble and dust of the North Circular, and neighboured by compulsorily purchased, boarded up, empty properties. She though maintained, she was going nowhere, and had launched successive appeals to delay the process. Her desk and dining table, groaned under the weight of years of cranky, council correspondence and letters from solicitors, whilst the floor was carpeted with carefully sectioned and paper-clipped press cuttings, of successful and not so successful situations, similar to her own. She and Katarina, who was surprisingly graceful for such a large dog, wove cautious paths through the chaos.

  Every wall of the bungalow, was full of framed photos of her with pupils and staff through the years. She spoke often of how touched she was, so many of them stayed in contact. Every bit of their gossip and news, she said, kept her young, making her feel she was still an important part of their lives. The constant contact I knew, was purely in her head, but it was what kept her going. She’d originally approached us, because she needed to take Katerina to the vet, and had convinced herself, any male taxi driver was more likely than not, to rob, rape and murder her on the way. She felt being driven by a woman, might pose less of a risk. I sent Brenda the first time, as being the epitome of solid and trustworthy and, following this initial experiment, from which both owner and pet emerged unscathed, Doreen became a regular. She used us, whenever she needed to go anywhere that wasn’t within walking distance. She also regularly booked us to go in and work with her, every couple of weeks, for an hour or so, on her ongoing and invariably contentious correspondence.

  Shamefully, when she didn’t call to book her usual slot one week, we just assumed she didn’t have any work to catch up on. When we didn’t hear anything, the following week, I popped round to check on her. I knew what I was going to find, as soon as I rang the doorbell, because I could hear Katerina crying.

  Doreen had died peacefully in her sleep, but that didn’t assuage the guilt felt for not checking sooner. When asked if I knew anyone who’d look after the dog, I simply couldn’t do anything else but take her home, despite the fact I felt she’d always looked down her long, aristocratic nose at me, to find me wanting in every possible way. My parents weren’t delighted at this new addition to
the household, and the new addition to the household, wasn’t over the moon either. But Doreen’s only relative was a nephew who, on being contacted, had immediately made clear his only interest, in an aunt he hadn’t seen since he was a child, was whether there was anything of value in it for him. I didn’t think a nervy, tall and willowy canine qualified.

  I wouldn’t say Katerina became fond of me, but she did seem to view me as a constant, in a scarily changing world and would pant and cry softly, when I wasn’t around. Because of this, I often took her with me to the office, where she’d sashay up the stairs and sigh heavily, before settling herself, elegantly regal in a basket we’d placed for her, in the corner of my room. I thought she added a touch of class to the place, although she did tend to jump convulsively, every time the phone rang, which it did – a lot. David complained that she didn’t like him, but I said I didn’t think she liked anybody very much, so he really shouldn’t feel bad.

  Despite the fact that all was going well, I wasn’t feeling that good. I was constantly and completely exhausted. I hadn’t slept properly for I don’t know how long. The wretched dreams that were plaguing me, were coming almost nightly now, and they were unspeakably unpleasant.

  It’s one thing having your own nightmares, we all have to take responsibility for those, but being invaded by someone else’s, is more than anyone should have to put up with. It did seem though, that once that first connection had been made, it had only grown stronger and no matter how tightly I pulled down my usually effective shutters, alien emotions were getting through, sicker, stronger and more frequently.

  I was, as I’d said I would, dutifully reporting what I remembered of the dreams to Boris, which was all fine and dandy, but I was starting to feel like a dead letter drop, and as I told him often, it wasn’t him who was getting increasingly sleep-deprived and desperate. It also wasn’t as if the information I was giving him, was specific enough for anyone to act on. As Boris agreed, the police generally couldn’t arrest someone for having unpleasantly violent dreams. Said individual, he pointed out, had to commit some kind of offence and offensiveness didn’t count. It was a long game, he said, sometimes the sort of thing I was passing on, came to something, sometimes it didn’t.