Until Death

by Knight, Ali

  Georgie tried to smile. She could never get beyond two dates. After that they tended to want to come back and see where you lived. Meet the in-laws. Be made to squeeze in between the body-building bulks of Karl, Ryan and Matt on the settee, listening as they lionised the Krays, made bad jokes about the police, talked a little too knowledgeably about institutional visiting hours. The men she fancied would – and should – run a mile. She had a flash of seeing Anguish on her couch at home and shuddered.

  ‘OK,’ Georgie said. ‘A couple kissing is a hundred points and an instant win. Hugging doesn’t count.’

  ‘You’re on.’

  They were interrupted by the garage door opening and the nose of a black Audi inching out. They both craned their heads to see who was driving. ‘That’s her,’ Georgie said.

  They followed as Kelly drove east towards the City and then along the A13, turning off towards the river. Ten minutes later she was turning into Casson Street.

  ‘Is she going where I think she’s going?’ Georgie looked at Mo in disbelief.

  They followed Kelly into the parking lot of the children’s play area. They watched her go in with her son.

  Georgie unbuckled her seat belt. ‘You stay here.’

  Mo nodded.

  The play centre was huge, with a café near the entrance and a second storey that catered for children’s parties. In the after-school rush the noise level could compete with a nightclub. A carpeted area ran under a series of nets of varying heights where children dangled and squealed and colourful slides, some twisting, burped children out on the carpet. There was a pit filled with plastic balls, rope swings and distorting plastic mirrors, and high netted walkways that ran above Georgie’s head and disappeared into tunnels.

  Georgie was impressed, wishing she had been taken to something like this when she was a child. Then again, her brothers would have started a fight and they would all have been ordered to leave. She watched Kelly help Yannis off with his shoes and he ran off into a tunnel. The rear of the play centre backed on to the Thames. Through a series of windows Georgie could see the dull flatness of the water and an expanse of dock.

  She watched Kelly queue at the café, buy tea and a packet of crisps and sit at a table near the equipment. Georgie picked up a newspaper that had been discarded and watched her. Kelly didn’t move or pull out a phone or read; she sat staring into space. She finished her tea and started chewing through the polystyrene absent-mindedly, leaving bite marks in the cup. All around her, women jiggled babies on their knees, laughed and gossiped with friends or yakked on mobiles, but she looked all alone. Occasionally Kelly caught sight of Yannis and waved at him. Ten minutes passed.

  Kelly got up, threw away the cup and walked to the toilets. Georgie followed. The toilets were empty apart from the two of them. Georgie wedged her foot against the exit to stop anyone else coming in and waited for Kelly to finish. The cubicle door opened.

  ‘Kelly Malamatos?’

  Kelly whirled round at her name, knees bent, ready to try to fight off an attacker.

  ‘Afraid of something?’

  Kelly didn’t answer; her eyes were two dark pools watching her. She looked like a cornered animal.

  ‘It’s Georgie Bell. Can we have a chat?’

  She looked nervous. ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Yes. You can walk out of here at any time, but I hope you won’t. This way I don’t have to make it official.’

  ‘In here.’ Kelly walked into the disabled toilet and Georgie followed. ‘What do you want?’ She’d calmed down now, was smoothing her hair and adjusting her clothes.

  Georgie leaned against the sink. ‘Tell me where the wood goes.’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’ Kelly didn’t move. ‘It comes here, Kelly, right next door to here. About twenty yards from where you’ve parked your car. Care to say anything?’ She saw Kelly go pale. ‘Why do you use this play area? There are others much nearer your house.’

  ‘I’ve got a studio at the docks near my husband’s offices. I need to pick up something from there after I leave here. I was familiar with this play centre because my husband has organised fundraising events here before. His charity offices are across the street.’

  ‘What’s the charity?’

  ‘The Lost Souls Foundation. It originally helped children of sailors who’d died at sea.’ She wiped a strand of hair from her face. Georgie saw her hand was shaking.

  She was lying. Georgie felt the frustration that Preston was going to be proved right in the end: she was in it with her husband. ‘Someone delivers the wood to that vacant lot over there and someone else picks it up. Who picks it up, Kelly?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  There was a pause. Georgie crossed her arms. ‘You need to think about what’s more important to you, your kids or your husband. If you’re found to be withholding information or lying, you could be looking at jail. You’ll be separated from your kids. It’s your choice.’

  ‘Choice.’ Pinks spots appeared on Kelly’s cheeks. She took a step across the toilet cubicle. ‘You don’t have a husband, do you? Or kids? Of course you don’t. You talk like you can separate them, like eggs. They’re all tied up together, one messy, tight little ball.’ She screwed her fingers together, twisting them over and over each other. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  Of all the defences, that was the one that riled Georgie the most, the ‘I don’t know’ lie. She had heard her own mother use it more than once when their house had been raided by the police. She’d stand in the cramped hallway, shouting as the police marched through, doing their jobs, doing the right thing, Georgie realised now. As her mother lied. As her dad lied. As Karl and Matt gave each other looks, Ryan bundling out the back door and over the fence into the night. The bonds of family made people lose their moral compasses. ‘I looked you up, trying to find out about you. But there’s hardly any information on you at all. That always gets me to wonder. Everyone has a trail, but you, you have nothing at all. Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?’

  ‘What does it matter to you?’

  ‘It’s as if you don’t exist. Who are you, Kelly Malamatos? Come on, throw me a titbit. Tell me something about yourself.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Kelly hissed.

  Georgie smiled, but there was no warmth in it. ‘You’re just a loving wife and mother, right? Kelly, I’m an East End girl. I grew up near these docks where your husband makes all that money that keeps you in a penthouse and your children at fancy private schools. Don’t think we don’t all want a slice of that. I know all about wanting to get out, Kelly. So don’t give me that helpless woman routine. No woman wins the rich man, actually gets the ring on her finger, without a lot of calculation. You’re harder than you look.’

  Kelly took another step towards her so that she was very close in the cubicle. ‘One thing’s for sure, you have no idea how hard I am, to survive what I’ve lived through.’ She pulled herself up tall. ‘Ask his PA about the business, she’s fucking him. Ask her to share the pillow talk. He tells me nothing.’

  ‘So all is not well in the Malamatos marriage?’ Georgie saw something shift in Kelly’s face. She had been trying to goad Kelly into a revelation, but she’d gone too far.

  ‘Stay the fuck away from me and my kids and keep the fuck out of things you know nothing about.’ Kelly was livid, her eyes blazing as she opened the door and it slammed against the wall as she left.

  Georgie swore silently. She had wanted to get Kelly onside, and her big mouth and the problems about her own family had got in the way and made it all worse. She walked back to the car and got in.

  ‘How’d it go?’ Mo asked. ‘I just saw her marching her kid across the car park ahead of you.’

  ‘I’m afraid I really didn’t do that very well.’

  ‘You rubbed her up the wrong way?’ Mo shook his head. ‘That’ll be a first.’

  Georgie caught his sarcasm and sh
ook her head. ‘Shit. I think she’s lying, but I don’t know about what.’ She sighed in defeat. ‘Come on.’ She nodded across the road to a tired Victorian building. ‘Let’s go.’

  Mo began to get out of the car, then pointed across the car park and punched the air. ‘A couple kissing. Instant win!’

  17

  Georgie and Mo crossed the road to number 1, Casson Street, and walked up the three steps to the dusty front door. Bars covered the lower windows and a succession of broken venetian blinds could just be made out behind the thick dust stuck to the dirty windows. A panel with more than ten doorbells on it faced them. One had ‘Lost Souls’ written on it in a neat hand.

  They rang the bell and waited, the door buzzing open after a few moments. The building had probably once been a grand Victorian ballroom but was now cut up with miles of plasterboard into a warren of corridors, with office and fire doors every few metres. They spent the next few moments pulling and pushing and holding open doors that swung hard against shoulders and feet as they battled to the back of the building. They followed a dark corridor round several right angles until Georgie lost her sense of direction completely.

  They eventually found a white door with opaque glass in the top third and a bell that was half hanging out of the plasterboard. It worked, though, and the door was opened by a short, middle-aged woman in a shalwar-kameez and a headscarf who introduced herself as Anila. Georgie asked if she and Mo could come in.

  Anila didn’t smile but she wasn’t unfriendly either. She beckoned them in to a small office. ‘How can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘How many of you work here?’

  ‘There are just three of us. I’m one of the directors along with my colleague Fazhad and our assistant Julie. Julie’s off sick today and Fazhad is out on a visit.’

  ‘What does your foundation do?’ asked Georgie.

  ‘We’re a small charity. We do what we can to improve the lives of families who work the ships or are affected by them.’ She waved an elegant hand out of the window. ‘Ships bring a host of problems, I’m afraid to say – prostitution, drugs and unwanted babies. Part of what we do is adoption. The fathers find the attractions of places like Vietnam and Thailand very compelling. It’s hard to keep them here. We work closely with social services finding families for the unwanted babies of men who’ve “run off”, let’s say. We raise funds locally and through benefactors.’

  Mo was nodding. ‘I hear you, sister.’

  Anila bowed her head towards him.

  ‘The thing is,’ Georgie began, ‘we’ve impounded an illegal shipment of tropical hardwood at the port of London that was going to be delivered opposite the Lost Souls Foundation, to that vacant lot.’ Anila looked blank. ‘It’s a Malamatos shipment.’

  Anila shrugged helplessly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You’ve never seen what comes in to that lot opposite?’

  ‘The lot? We don’t face it.’

  All three of them looked out of the dirty window. The view was uninspiring to say the least: a high brick wall with green stains from a constant stream of water that trickled across it. A lone plant clung to the brickwork. The drilling from the big machines building a new wing to the shopping centre made the floor vibrate.

  ‘Tell me what Mr Malamatos does for the charity.’

  Anila smiled. ‘No charity can survive without money, and Mr Malamatos has been very generous in providing that support to us. We couldn’t continue our work without him. He has a talent for fundraising at charity events.’

  ‘Does his wife get involved?’

  She shook her head. ‘She’s not involved in the day to day running and she’s not a director, but she helps with the Halloween party we have every year because she’s a mask maker.’ Anila changed the subject. ‘It’s not the grandest of HQs by any means, but it’s convenient. We’re in this building because the play centre down the road is a good place to hold fundraising events and to organise days out for the children we’re supporting. And it’s cheap.’

  Georgie began to walk around the small room.

  ‘We’ve been running for forty years now, we’ve helped hundreds of children, placed tens of children with new families.’

  Georgie had come to a shelf that held certificates and photos. She picked one up and turned to Anila. She tapped a finger against one of the faces. ‘This blonde with the short hair. Who’s she?’

  Anila smiled. ‘One of the directors here. She’s been a huge asset over the last two years. She’s been invaluable, has really taken the fundraising to a new level. I asked her once how she was so successful. “I have the balls to ask, and if that doesn’t work, I demand.”’ She smiled. ‘It’s a skill not many have.’

  Georgie put the photo of Sylvie back on the shelf.

  ‘We’re having a fundraiser for Halloween at the play centre on the 31st. It’s nice to bring a bit of joy.’

  Something struck Georgie. ‘How often do you hold charity events there?’

  Anila thought for a moment. ‘About every six months.’

  ‘When was the last one?’

  ‘Just a moment.’ Anila consulted a diary and sat back. ‘May 3rd. They’re quite grand affairs. Guests get a tour of the docks – Christos takes them – so they can see where all the problems stem from, the scale of the business waterside, before they are brought back to the play centre for a party.’ She smiled as if remembering a private joke. ‘Christos said that watching poor children play was the easiest way to get rich women to open their purses. It was more than enough compensation for having to come all the way out here to east London.’

  ‘Have you got a guest list?’ asked Mo.

  She nodded, printed out a few sheets of paper and handed them over.

  ‘Have you ever seen any trucks or vehicles in the lot opposite?’ Georgie asked.

  Anila sighed and shook her head. ‘Never. It’s only ever used when we do the charity events. Then all the catering vans and the set people take it over. It looks like a gypsy encampment then.’

  18

  The next day Kelly sat in the chair by the lawyer’s large desk. The same law books sat on the same shelf, still unopened, but Mr Cauldwell had greeted her with great warmth and had scolded Bethany into bringing coffee straight away. They sat chatting almost as if they were friends.

  ‘You look tired, if you don’t mind me saying. It’s been nearly three weeks now since I saw you, are you ready to move on to the next stage?’

  She changed the subject. ‘How’s business?’

  He screwed up his face. ‘It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it. In a recession as deep as this, people have to stay together, they can’t afford to part. It’s caused some pretty horrendous situations, I can say.’ He looked at her searchingly. ‘So, did you tell your husband about wanting a divorce?’

  ‘No. A divorce isn’t possible, it turns out.’

  He splayed his hands in disappointment. ‘Oh.’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear you made up with your husband.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ She paused and pulled something out of her bag. ‘We haven’t made up, either.’ She handed him two pieces of paper. ‘I wrote this. I want you to keep it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My will. In case something happens to me.’

  He raised his eyebrows and took the papers. ‘Of course. May I ask, are you ill?’

  ‘No. I’m in perfect health – whatever he might say.’ She took a sip of coffee, then stared at her cup, surprised. ‘This is good.’

  He frowned. ‘Why wouldn’t it be? Bethany used to be a barista at Caffè Nero.’ He looked down at the sheets of paper. ‘Let me have a look at this.’

  She watched him as he read through her words. He was calm, methodical. She warmed to him even more.

  After a few moments he put the papers down and gave her a level look. ‘These are quite … extreme allegations.’

  ‘Do I strike you as a hysterical kind
of person?’

  He shook his head. ‘Quite the opposite.’

  ‘Do you believe what I’ve written there?’

  ‘Every word.’

  ‘I think he’s going to kill me. I want to make provisions for my children.’

  ‘So you say.’ He adjusted his bulk on the chair, holding the papers as if they were an unexploded bomb. ‘I strongly urge you to contact the police.’

  She gave a thin smile. ‘They act after the event, as you know.’ He didn’t disagree. ‘I want custody to go to my mother.’

  ‘At a trial, rest assured all your wishes will be taken into consideration.’

  ‘And if there isn’t one?’

  ‘Isn’t what?’

  ‘A trial.’

  He paused and stared at her for a moment, drumming his fingers on his lips. ‘I’m not going to sugarcoat it, he is their legal father, it would be difficult.’ He paused. ‘We need to witness this.’ He pressed the intercom. ‘Bethany, get in here.’

  The door opened and Bethany poked her head in. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Bethany, sign here.’

  She did so, added the date, then left the room. Kelly stood up. She had to get back before she was missed.

  ‘Is there another copy of this?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll keep it safe, then.’

  ‘Do you read the papers, watch the news?’

  ‘I’m addicted. All human nature is there. It makes my job easier, understanding the depths to which people will go to get what they want.’

  ‘I need you to keep an eye on the press. He’s an important person. The death of his wife, so young and healthy, will be news.’

  ‘Again, the police are your best option.’ She didn’t reply, watching him glance out of the window and up at the Gothic spires of St Pancras Station, wondering for a moment at the man who lived there. ‘I liked you from the first moment you walked in here. I’ll keep an eye out for you. You’ve got a lot about you. One day I predict you’ll come through this door and I’ll get you the divorce you want so badly. The freedom you deserve.’ He came round the desk and shook her hand, holding her last will and testament in the other. ‘Good luck, Mrs Malamatos. One more thing.’ He hadn’t let go of her hand, was almost clinging to it. ‘Don’t run. In my experience, that makes it worse. Don’t think running will free you or the children.’