by Jeff Gulvin
He had been here for half an hour now, just sheltering from the rain and watching. People came and went along the street, but the weight of the rain kept their heads to the pavement and not one of them gave him so much as a second glance. The irony hit him: he was in Chelsea, standing across the road from his ex-wife’s house, and if he walked for another five minutes he would come to Lisa’s flat.
He tossed away his cigarette and immediately lit another. Eleven years of silence and half a million pounds worth of house. Was she in? Was she out? Which was her car? He cast his eye along the line of parked vehicles: a BMW with the hood up. A Golf. A Saab. Which of those was her car? Did she work or did Andrew Riley keep her?
The buildings on his right were two-storey mews cottages with garages built underneath. On his left were a kindergarten and nursery. The arch separated them. Turning his eyes from the road, he glanced through the damp vegetation towards the park with its wire bordered paths and its Kensington Council flower beds. A small white sign indicated that there was an antiques fair in the church. He wondered if that was all it was used for. And then he thought of his father. He had married them, him and Jane, at Sandhurst. It was the one and only time he had been glad he was a priest. He could see him now in his robes of white and green and gold. Tall, white-haired, proud of what he was and of who and what his son was. Never once had he judged him; not in Ulster or the Falklands, or last year when he had assaulted Gareth Daniels.
He threw away his cigarette and moving further along the archway, he glanced through the window of the kindergarten. He saw a wooden, gymnasium-style floor and he was reminded of the carpetless solitude of his house. A row of children’s pegs stretched across the far wall with paint capes hanging on them. He perused the name tags above each peg and then he stopped and stared. Jessica Riley. Thomas Riley.
Somebody walked across the cobbles behind him, the clack of a woman’s shoes. Vanner still stared in the window. From the corner of his eye he could see a huge, pottery urn, gripped by hands with crimson-painted nails. He could not see her face but she almost walked into him and he moved smartly aside.
‘Sorry.’ Rain-spattered Burberry and smoothly arcing calves. She walked past him and crossed into the rain. He could see the back of her head: jet black hair, scraped away from her face and tied in a plait over her collar. And eleven years unfurled and her touch on his arm and her voice in his head and sorry.
He leaned against the window, with the names of her children in his eyes and her crossing the road and walking away from him with straight back and fine limbs, clutching the urn that was all but as big as she was. She moved between the BMW and the Golf and stopped outside the door to number 73. She put down the urn, fumbled in her pocket for keys and then she was in and gone and he was alone with the rain and the past and the names of her children on clothes pegs.
He felt the twisted emptiness in his gut; as if he was back on that plane to Belfast with the Green Jackets all around him and the whine of the engine, dulling the voice in his head. Then he saw the keys still dangling from the lock. Crossing between the cars, he looked closer. He looked right and left, then stepped up to the door.
The house was still, save the sound of somebody humming from below the stairs at the end of the hall. Her coat still dripped where it was laid over the banister. Footsteps on the stairs. He stepped through the door on his left. A study. Riley’s things. Riley’s desk. He was filled with a desire to smash them. But he stood very still and cut his breathing to nothing as the front door was opened. He heard the rattle of keys and then it was closed again. She fussed about in the hallway. He could hear every move, the rustle of her skirt across stockings. He could smell her, the same scent she had always worn. It took his mind back to his days in Sandhurst, the only cadet who had witnessed life on the street, with a tour in the Province already under his belt.
In his mind’s eye he could see her, white dress off one shoulder, clutching at full and youthful breasts. Hair drawn back from her face, the high arc of her neck, creamy and taut and smelling of that scent that plagued him now like memory. And the others: who postured and joked and laughed with her, while he stood at the bar in silence. Then her standing next to him and looking in his eyes and him stirring and the way she sipped gin with half a smile on her lips.
She moved along the hall and he could hear her feet on the stairs to the first floor. Her weight above his head as she moved into the room at the front of the house. Bedroom? Sitting room? He stepped out into the hall. Her feet above his head, moving back to the landing.
He stood in silence and looked back to the front door, wondering what he was doing here. Then he heard her cross the landing once more and he went down to the basement. He came out into a white-tiled kitchen that gleamed even in the frail light that dipped through the basement window. The urn stood at the bottom of the stairs. On the other side, a dining room; huge oval table, guarded by eight mahogany chairs.
He heard a bath running as he went back up to the hall. She was humming again, walking across the landing, presumably from the bathroom to her bedroom and back again. Her bedroom—where she slept and made love with Andrew Riley, the best man at their wedding. He placed one hand on the banister and touched the cloth of her coat. Upstairs, she crossed the landing a final time and then a door was closed and taps were turned off and he heard the sound of her sliding her naked body into water.
He stood outside the bathroom, listening to the sound of water moving over her flesh. The door across from him was closed, but the other, at the front of the house was ajar. He moved towards it, paused and then climbed the next flight of stairs. Another closed door. He opened it and children’s beds and clothes and toys seemed to squash against his face. Eleven years of nothing and the stain of red on a sheet. He closed the door quietly, climbed the remainder of the stairs and came out in a spacious attic lounge. Two white couches with a glass-topped coffee table between them. A fireplace with no fire. He went back downstairs.
And now he stood outside her bedroom, listening to the sound of her bathing. Still she hummed. She sounded very happy. He went into her bedroom. Unmade bed full of pillows and soft, down-filled duvet all crumpled and ruffled as if she had only this minute left it. And on the floor at his feet, her skirt and her blouse and her black, silk underwear. He could not help himself. He did not want to do it, but he bent and lifted her blouse. He touched her bra, panties, her stockings; lifted them to his face, closed his eyes and breathed. Then he moved back to the landing. The bathroom door was open: she stood with a towel wrapped round her.
For a long moment they looked at one another. Vanner felt the knots in his flesh. She stared and stared, her eyes growing ever wider. Fear: in her face, in her eyes, the last time he had seen her. He shallowed his gaze and stepped past her. No word between them, only the height of her cheekbones, the unbroken sheen of her skin and the fear that lit up her eyes.
He was on the phone to The Wasp, standing in the dull light that breached the window through the rain. He could see the phone box from here, see The Wasp, only The Wasp did not know he was looking.
‘Done?’
‘He’s floating in the river. Fuck-off hole in his back.’
He nodded, as if to himself, a tingling sensation crisscrossing the palms of his hands.
‘Good. Now we lie low.’
‘The money?’
‘It’ll be delivered to your box. Just wait a few days.’
‘Make sure that it is.’
‘What did you do with the van?’
‘Dumped it.’
‘And your clothes?’
‘What about them?’
‘Any blood on your clothes?’
‘What d’you think we are—fuckin’ amateurs?’
Jane sat on her bed, still wrapped in the towel, and looked down at her clothes. He had touched them. She knew he had touched them. Sudden heat in her bladder. She shook as she felt in the night-table drawer for a cigarette. Andrew hated her smoking. Andrew. She lo
oked across the bed as she lit the cigarette and his smiling face lifted out of the photograph. Tears filled her eyes then. She drew smoke in too deeply and coughed it out again. She picked up the telephone and, with trembling fingers, she dialled.
Vanner walked, hands low in his pockets. Above his head, above a weary city, a tired and cloud-blown sky. Away from her house, across King’s Road and all along Chelsea Manor Street. He took out a cigarette, cupped his hand to the match and tossed it away. He inhaled, exhaled without removing the cigarette from his mouth and stared at the weight of Lisa’s building.
She waited for him in the hall, black skirt; black skintight top. ‘Back so soon, Vanner?’
‘I figured I was in credit.’
The dressing was gone from her face, but she kept her right cheek from him. At this angle her beauty remained intact and the fire was back in her eyes. He stood where he was, coat still buttoned, hands rooted in pockets. She watched him, stiff-eyed, as she had watched him when first he had interviewed her. She did not say anything, just kept her disfigured cheek from his gaze and looked him up and down. And he could do nothing but stand there, desire on his tongue and an overpowering need to bury himself in her flesh.
Then he was moving towards her, pulling away his coat. He took her, lifted her off her feet and pinned her against the wall. She wrapped her legs round his waist, arms about his neck. He forced his face into hers, jarring her head against the wall. The hint of wine on her breath. Fingers under her skirt, probing moist and naked flesh. He felt himself suddenly stiffen, harder and harder and harder. Scrabbling now with his jeans, pressing himself against her, forcing her into the wall. Breath ragged in his throat, seeking and missing, seeking again and still missing. Then her hand, guiding him, flesh entering flesh and pain like heat in his loins.
Seventeen
VANNER WALKED INTO THE incident room and the silence lifted against him. He stared at the faces around him. ‘What?’ he said. Ryan dragged fingers through his hair. ‘Call came in from Norwich, Guv. The Phillips lad’s been murdered.’
Five-thirty: Vanner stood by the river and looked at the area cordoned off by the Norwich SOCO team. Ryan was talking to one of the officers. Vanner stared at the patch of ground where a scuffle had obviously taken place. There were at least three clear footprints, one in particular close to the bridge, cutting deeply into the mud: what looked like the soles of tennis shoes or basketball boots. The rest were a mish-mash, all pushed into one another. A discarded bottle of cheap whisky lay in a bush. They had dragged John Phillips from the water.
Ryan came over to him. Vanner glanced beyond him to where Colin Mason was standing with John Phillips Senior, resting a hand on his shoulder. On the bridge to the right, traffic rolled onward as ever. A few pedestrians walked down from the city and glanced in their direction. ‘Didn’t spot him till this morning, Guv.’ Ryan nodded to the flats across the road. ‘Student went out for a run. She saw him in the water.’ He pointed to the upturned shopping trolley. ‘He was tangled up in that.’
Vanner followed his gaze. Drizzle mottled the flat of the river. He looked to the other bank and the path that carried as far as the second bridge. Then he scanned the height of the car park. His eyes settled on the exit and he cocked his head to one side.
‘Take a look, Sid.’
Ryan glanced at him, then looked where he looked. ‘What?’
‘Security cameras.’
Ryan saw them now, a three headed camera fixed at the height of a pylon.
Vanner lit a cigarette and looked again towards Phillips. Briefly their eyes met and Philips looked away.
‘Poor bastard.’ Ryan shook his head.
Vanner looked beyond the blue and white tape once more. ‘Prints look as though they might give us something.’
Ryan leaned on the fence. ‘Spoke to the SOCO over there. Tuck. Reckons he’ll get a cast from one at least.’
Vanner left him then and walked over to Phillips. Mason moved aside. Phillips crouched against the wall of the clinic and stared down at the ground.
‘I’m sorry,’ Vanner said.
Phillips let air escape from his mouth and slowly he shook his head. His face was beaten, puffy about the eyes, as if all the fight was gone from him.
‘You all right?’
A muscle twitched in his jaw. ‘I told him to stay inside. Why didn’t he stay inside?’
Vanner squatted next to him. He offered his half-smoked cigarette and Phillips drew heavily on it, then looked sharply at him. ‘You told me he wasn’t in danger.’
‘Up here?’ Vanner motioned around them. ‘I didn’t think he was.’ He looked once more to the metal cask of the trolley, protruding from the dark of the water.
Phillips looked suddenly helpless, eyes roving the river as if he half-expected to see his son rise from the depths. He shook his head, lifted his hands. Tears formed in his eyes and for a moment his mouth worked soundlessly. ‘How could it happen? I mean, how the hell could it happen?’
Vanner looked at the mud at his feet. ‘Who knew he was here?’
Phillips moved his shoulders. ‘You. Me. Your father.’
‘Nobody else?’
‘The doctors. People here.’
‘You didn’t tell anyone else?’
Phillips looked up at him then. ‘One of the lads from college. Mark Terry,’ he said.
Andrew Riley sat with his wife: not next to her; not holding her, but across from her on the other couch in their attic lounge in Chelsea. He wanted to comfort her; but all of a sudden he could not remember how. She stared at the emptiness of the fire. ‘I can’t believe he came here,’ she said. ‘I mean—why? It’s been eleven years.’ She looked at her husband and immediately he looked away. ‘Andrew?’
‘He came to see me,’ he sighed. ‘Last month.’
‘Came to see you. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘There was no need to tell you. It was to do with business.’ He paused then. ‘He didn’t say anything to you?’
‘I told you. I just opened the bathroom door and he came out of our bedroom.’
‘But I don’t understand how he could’ve got in?’ he squinted at her then. ‘Are you sure you didn’t invite him?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake. I left the keys in the door. It was only for a moment. I was carrying that urn I brought from the fair.’ Then she remembered. ‘I bumped into him. He was standing under the arch. He must have watched me. Followed me over the road and then let himself in.’
Riley stood up and rested a hand on the mantelpiece.
‘You still haven’t told me why he came to see you,’ she said.
He shifted his weight.
‘Andrew. What aren’t you telling me?’
He sat down again. ‘It’s nothing I’ve done, Jane. It’s nothing to do with me at all really. One of James’ clients. He came to ask about him.’
‘But you said he was in the Drug Squad.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve got a client dealing in drugs?’
Riley paled slightly. The look in her eyes; the fear all at once, distrust. ‘If he is—I don’t know anything about it.’
‘What sort of a client is he?’
‘He imports plant. Dump trucks, that kind of thing. Sells them on again.’
‘So, what’s that got to do with you?’
‘Some of them are insurance write-offs. We deal with loss adjusters. You know that.’
‘Do I? You’ve never really told me what you do.’
He looked at her then with his chin high. ‘Well if I haven’t —it’s only because it wouldn’t interest you.’
‘How d’you know it wouldn’t—if you’ve never bothered to ask me?’
‘I have asked you.’
‘Then why’re we having this conversation?’
‘Jane,’ he said. ‘We’re having this conversation because you’re upset. I’m upset. I didn’t want to see him. I never wanted to see him again. I don’t want him back in our lives.’
>
She looked at the floor. ‘He isn’t back in our lives.’
He left her then and went down to his study. He picked up the telephone and dialled Scotland Yard. A receptionist answered him and he took out the card that Vanner had left him. ‘I want to speak to whoever’s in charge of the North West Area Drug Squad,’ he said.
Vanner and Ryan drove back to London in darkness. They were silent for a long time, the length of the A11 rolling out in front of them, the single carriageway between Thetford and Mildenhall clogging up with lorries. Ryan was driving, looking every now and then for an opportunity to overtake.
‘What about the dealers from the Bull’s Head?’
‘Could be.’ Vanner stared into trees. ‘I don’t think so though. Phillips told Mark Terry that his son was in a rehab clinic in Norwich.’
Ryan stared at him. ‘Why would he want to know?’
‘I don’t know. But it’s something I’d like to ask him.’
Late the following morning, Vanner went down to the incident room. He saw McCleod sitting with Anne. They looked away from him. He peered at them for a moment, and then he saw Morrison, sitting behind his desk. Frank Weir was with him.
Morrison got up, said something to Weir, who came out of the office. Morrison beckoned Vanner. He passed Weir, chewing gum, hands in the pockets of his suit.
‘See you,’ Weir said, and walked up the stairs. Vanner looked again at the others. Still they avoided his eye. He went into his office and closed the door. Morrison sat in his chair.
‘Sit down.’
‘You want to hear about Norwich?’
‘Not from you. Slippery can fill me in.’
Vanner could feel the hairs on the back of his neck. Morrison held his gaze, green eyes, very pale, and full now of contempt. ‘You’re a fool, Vanner. Whenever I think otherwise you go out and prove me wrong.’
