The Red Chairs Mystery
Page 17
Most first-year students took lodgings in town. Holly shared a large house not too far from the university campus with four other women, one of whom – Brenda – became a particular friend. Whereas Holly tended towards reserve, Brenda was outgoing and feisty, a social animal. They complemented each other, and it was Brenda who encouraged Holly to get involved during Fresher’s Week and subsequently with the various activities on offer.
About half-way through the first term, her new friend told Holly she had started seeing someone, and Brenda’s new boyfriend, it turned out, was a rugby player. The team were playing the following Saturday, so Brenda tried to make Holly come and watch the match. There would be a party after, she promised and eventually her persistence paid off. On the day though, Holly was standing on the touchline in a cool wind with rain threatening, wishing she was elsewhere, taking little interest in the game. Suddenly, she became aware of the ball hurtling towards her, chased by a motley mob of mud-spattered men. Out front was a short, lithe fast-running fellow with a halo of tightly curled black hair and a bushy drooping moustache, reminiscent of the young Che Guevara. Ignoring spectators, this figure barrelled right past Holly after the ball, retrieved it effortlessly, tossed it to an opponent and returned to his place, ready to catch the pass should his side happen to win the line-out. When the ball fell to earth, a wild mêlée formed quickly over it, many muscular legs mercurially intertwined such that the ebullient Sussex scrum-half had to work hard. Finally managing to scramble it free, he made a dummy pass to his right, jigged abruptly to the left, ran forward, stopped suddenly as an opposing player flew wide of him, then resumed his run for the try-line, putting on a terrific turn of speed, outpacing all in pursuit, finally running towards the centre of the pitch, deftly placing the ball on the ground directly beneath the goalposts before raising his arms triumphantly in the air.
Holly kept her eye on the try-scorer after that, transfixed by his alacrity and versatility, his sheer energy and inventiveness. It was, of course, Tony Angel, who scored another miraculous solo-effort try again towards the end of the match.
At the party in the evening, Brenda made a big deal of introducing them to each other. Holly felt awkward, but Tony was following his usual plan: to keep buying her drinks and keep talking. He told her he was a third-year student of economics, destined for a career in the City. His family were from Greece originally, from the island of Skiathos. His father and uncles were merchants. The family name had been changed from ‘Angelis’ to ‘Angel’ because this was better for business. He had two older sisters and three younger brothers. They all went to Greece every summer; parents, grand-parents, uncles, aunts, cousins and siblings, a large colourful tribe.
As Tony chatted on, feeling rather shy, Holly still held back. She was intrigued by this gifted, god-like individual, who seemed more self-assured than anyone she had ever met; but she was not going to let him knock her over on their first meeting. She wasn’t just anyone’s bimbo so, after stretching out a couple of weak gin and tonics, she said, ‘No more, thanks. I’ve got to go. I’ve an essay to finish…’ Tony, of course, did not believe her. No-one escaped his charm once he set his mind on seduction; but this time he seemed to have met his match. ‘I’ll give you my phone number, though’, Holly relented. And that had been their first date.
Afterwards, when he phoned and asked her out, and asked her out again, she was unable to resist. They were sleeping partners within a month, but not before Holly extracted from him a kind of proposal. ‘I will only go to bed with you if you promise to marry me one day’, she said as they climbed the stairs to his room after a night out; but she knew it was already too late.
They became a couple. Holly took Tony to meet her father, who liked this sporty young chap right away but still urged caution and patience on his daughter. It was much longer, though, almost nine months, before Tony took her to meet his family, and then only for a fleeting visit to his parents in their big house near Richmond Park. Mr Angel senior, Alexis, was unfailingly cheerful and polite, an older, greyer, less agile version of his son. Tony’s mother, Iphigenia, a large earthy person given to wearing black flowing garments concealing the mounds of her curvaceous, well-covered torso, also received Holly with courtesy, although her hardness of gaze suggested she would prefer her son to be spending his time with a Greek girl. By then though, her young heart fully committed, Holly told her self she did not care what the parents thought. Tony assured her his family would quickly come to accept her totally. Convinced too that she was the only one for him, he agreed to get married late in the following spring. By then, having graduated, he expected to be in work. The new rugby season would also by then be over.
They were happy together throughout the engagement. Tony was offered a good job in London with a firm of stockbrokers, commuting by train from Brighton every day. His father gave him a portion of his inheritance for a substantial down-payment on a new two-bedroom apartment in the fashionable Brighton Marina development, and they completed the purchase by getting a mortgage at a favourable rate.
Holly stayed on in her lodgings temporarily, but spent several nights each week at the flat with Tony. They planned a relatively low-key civil wedding, which went ahead in the May of Holly’s second year, soon after her twentieth birthday. It was attended by Tony’s parents and a big mob of his family, by Holly’s dad, an uncle and aunt, by Brenda and some of the rugby team, including Roger, the scrum forward who was still Brenda’s boyfriend. Holly had not invited her mother, had not even told her about it. After the ceremony, there was a reception at Stanmer Park House, which went smoothly enough. Everyone, even the groom’s mother, seemed joyful. The couple returned to the Marina for the night, and next day took a plane from Heathrow to Toronto, spending the first part of the honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
Entering the fourteenth-floor hotel room, Holly was instantly delighted at the superlative view through the floor to ceiling picture-window. There, immediately below, were the Horseshoe Falls, shimmering majestically in the sunshine. It was like magic, mesmerising. Both of them, drawn magnetically to it, just stood there and gawped. ‘Amazing!’ said one. ‘Beautiful!’ said the other. But they were both basically dumbstruck.
Later on that first afternoon, like any tourists, they walked along holding hands beside the great waterway at the top of the falls, then went into the tunnel underneath the cascade, unable to converse because deafened by the roar of countless tons of water flowing over the precipice every second only a few feet away. In the evening, they dined in the hotel restaurant from where they could see both the Horseshoe and the American falls, the whole scene fantastically lit in a kaleidoscopic display of shifting rainbow colours.
In the morning, as they looked out on the glorious vista once more, Holly pointed to a boat, crammed with people, heading straight up into the steaming vortex directly below the falls. It was one of the ‘Maid of the Mist’ fleet, passengers all in blue plastic capes against the drenching spray, the steamboat encircled by masses of wheeling seagulls flying hither and thither. ‘Let’s go on it, Tony!’ she said. ‘I want to go on that boat.’ So, after breakfast, they did.
Still exhilarated, in the afternoon they took a ride across the bridge to the American side. However, quickly convinced that the Canadians had the better views, they soon returned. Still slightly jet-lagged, they went to their room to rest and do what honeymooners also do at such times, before going downtown to eat ribs in a traditional beer-house and grill. The next day, as planned, they flew on to New York.
When they checked into their hotel downtown, Holly had a question on her mind. ‘Why is this city called the Big Apple?’ she asked. The hotel was a massive edifice, once resplendent but now hanging grimly to only a fading residue of its former glory, catering for low-budget tourists, exchange-students, impoverished long-term residents and the like. ‘I’ve no idea’, Tony replied to her question, equally puzzled. ‘I’ll look it up.’ Later he told her that, altho
ugh the State of New York was indeed a big apple producing part of the country, this was incidental. New York City had first been called the Big Apple by a sportswriter in connection with horse-racing in the 1920’s, and the nickname had been revived deliberately in 1970 for the purpose of promoting tourism. ‘That’s America for you’, he added. ‘It’s all about capitalism, generating money… I love it!’
In the evenings, they went to a Broadway show, to a jazz club, to the movies and to try out different restaurants – Italian, Chinese, Mexican. During the day, they once took a boat ride around Manhattan Island, getting good views of the Statue of Liberty and many other landmarks. Another time, they went up to the observation level of one of the famous twin towers, the tallest buildings in the city. Here, Holly was surprised to find Tony upset by the sway. Although he tried to conceal it, she had not seen him anxious like this before. These monolithic structures were significantly affected by wind forces, and were moving noticeably back and forth in relation to each other. She knew it was perfectly safe, but Tony grew worried enough to want to cut their visit short.
‘Let’s get down, Holl’, he said. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling up here.’
So they left. Holly often thought about that later, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. ‘Did Tony have some kind of premonition?’ she wondered. The catastrophic outrages on both buildings the following year were going, in unforeseen ways, significantly to affect both their lives.
Their plan, the next afternoon, was to take a train from Grand Central Station to New Rochelle, to visit one of Tony’s cousins and her husband. Before that, in the morning, Holly decided to take a brisk run in Central Park. Tony demurred, preferring to stay at the hotel and catch up with emails. It was a pleasantly cool spring day. They had enjoyed a stroll in the park a couple of days earlier, after visiting the famous Frick Collection of artworks. Familiar with the layout, Holly had a route to follow and soon got into her stride, jogging along at a good pace to the invigorating rhythm of the music emanating from the smart-phone, strapped to her upper left arm.
Focused on the sounds in her earphones, almost in a trance, oblivious of her surroundings, coming across a trash can lying in the middle of the narrow path, she was suddenly forced to slow down. The trail at that point threaded through a small copse of trees. Ready to move the obstacle out of the way, Holly had stopped and was stooping to lift it when two young men appeared, menacingly forcing her into the shrubbery, pinning her up against the trunk of a tree. One of them held a short, sharp-looking knife to her throat. The other, with a longer blade, swiftly cut her phone free from its straps, carelessly lacerating her upper-arm as he did so. Then he slit and removed the small belt-bag she used to hold her credit card and small amount of cash. Holly was affronted, but she was also terrified, her eyes full of tears. Later, she could not with certainty recall what her hooded assailants had looked like, or even the colour of their skins. In fear, she automatically obeyed when one of them told her to take off her rings. Then, as quickly as they had appeared, the men vanished.
In the immediate aftermath, Holly sank to the ground, trembling, tears falling freely now. ‘How could this happen?’ She started thinking. ‘It’s daylight. There are people nearby… What shall I do?’
An older couple, walking a pair of ridiculously groomed white poodles, happened upon her soon after the attack, as she was stumbling back onto the pathway, blood trickling down her arm. Concerned, commiserating with her, they immediately took her in hand. ‘Where are you staying?’ they asked. ‘We’ll walk with you… How awful! We feel so sorry for you… This is no way for visitors to our country to be treated… It’s drugs, you know. They’ll take anything from anybody to get money to pay for drugs…’
On and on the couple, taking it in turns, kept up the one-sided conversation until they reached the hotel, handing her over to the concierge who called Tony down to the lobby to retrieve her like a damaged package.
Once up in the room, her husband was quick to show Holly his irritation. ‘Did you report it?’ he wanted to know. ‘We’ll have to report it, Holl! We won’t be able to claim on the insurance without a police statement of some kind. I paid such a lot for that diamond ring too. It was expensive.’
This was what seemed to her to be troubling him most: not the trauma to her, but the financial consequences. Accordingly, while she had a shower and changed her clothes, he was on the phone to cancel the credit card, relieved to discover that it had not yet been used by the thieves. Next, he alerted the mobile phone company, so that the account was blocked. And even then he stayed tense.
‘Come on, Holl’, he urged her, when all she wanted was a reassuring hug. ‘We have to go and report this right now…’
So, when she was dressed, Tony marched her back uptown towards the park and into the nearest police precinct house, where an overbearing desk sergeant instructed them to wait. Twenty minutes later, Holly was still shivering from shock when an unexpectedly kindly policewoman took her into a side-room and recorded the details. In a calm, unhurried, sympathetic way, she drew out from Holly as much as she could remember. She also filled the silences by echoing much of what the couple with the poodles had said.
‘I’m real sorry’, she said finally, when the formalities were over and Holly had the signed report she needed to satisfy Tony. ‘We might catch those guys. They’re sure to try it again, and they’re usually pretty careless, but I very much doubt you’ll get any of your property back. I apologize… I want to apologize on behalf of America. This truly, I know, isn’t right.’ Afterwards, Holly remembered her kindness.
Back at the hotel, Holly refused to leave. She wasn’t hungry. She just wanted to lie in bed and rest, she told Tony. ‘You’re fine, Holl!’ he pleaded. ‘Everything’s fine now… Jasmine and Steve are expecting us…’
But Holly could not be persuaded. ‘You go’, she said. And he did, naively unaware of what a turning point in their relationship this might be. On the train he kept telling himself, ‘She’ll be fine’. But when his cousin heard what had happened, she was quick to admonish him. ‘You should not have left her alone, Tony. It’s a big deal what happened to her. We love to see you, but we would have understood if you had called and said what happened. Have something to eat quickly and go back to her.’
But the damage had already been done. Something had closed off in Holly’s heart. She no longer felt that she could trust Tony enough to look out for her, to care for her, to love her. He was young too, she realized on reflection later, young and out of his depth, especially as far as her powerfully stirred-up emotions were concerned in the aftermath of the mugging. He was probably scared, deep down, himself, feeling ashamed and helpless to comfort her, capable only of insisting on the one thing he was able to control – minimizing their losses. At the time, though, she simply felt betrayed. She was still his wife, she told herself, and she would do what she could to make the marriage work, but he had proved unreliable, and things were never going to be quite the same again.
Back in England, on the surface, their lives resumed as before. Tony went to London on weekdays. Holly went back to class. However, a change had occurred in her here too, regarding her studies. During the first year, Holly had been disappointed to have been taught more about Pavlov and his dogs, laboratory rats running around in artificial mazes and statistics, than she had about people and human psychology. At the start of the second year, these misgivings subsided but, when she returned from New York, her attitude altered again. She felt as if she was drifting along, with no real sense of purpose. What she was doing did not seem important enough. It did not seem relevant to real life. The feeling grew in her that she should be doing something different, something more practical. She spoke to one of her tutors about it, describing how her motivation had dwindled, but all he said was ‘keep going’. She did persevere, but only until the end of the academic year. Soon after that, decided at last, she signed on as a police probationer.
It was a quarter to nine on the East Coast and coming up to two o’clock in the City of London when the first plane hit. The North Tower fell only about an hour and forty minutes later. The Wall Street stock exchange does not open until 9.30 am, but there had been trading up to the minute in London. Alerted immediately, this one hundred minutes was precisely how long London office staff had to download an immense amount of live data from the Manhattan office’s mainframe computer. It was done as a massive dump of encrypted information, which later needed very careful sorting. All the London staff were therefore asked to work around the clock, each one conscious meanwhile of the appalling fate being suffered by their counterparts, friends in many cases, in the stricken sky-scraper across the Atlantic. A kind of feverish numbness prevailed. Some of their transatlantic colleagues would escape – late arrivals at work that day mostly – but there would also be many deaths. The London people stayed, working in shifts round the clock, collecting and collating data for the next five days.