by Anne Brooke
Still, this time it’s different, but if Jade and I find something out, where will it take us?
The bus is crowded, the air inside filled with the scent of flesh and flowers. People who work in the City don’t take the bus; it’s only those passing through who have to do that. I wouldn’t want Dominic’s job, even if I had the talent for it or the will. It strikes me how little I know of his past in all the cuttings I’ve collected of him. He never speaks of it. Even when we were together, it was never a subject for discussion. We never asked about each other’s parents, childhood, any of the vast sea of personal history we all carry in our bones. I know why I didn’t say anything about my past. Why didn’t he? Maybe we both have something to hide. Maybe, when he dumped me, Dominic was right; we never really had the truth of each other.
No, that’s not it either. We were caught in the net of his marriage and my obsession, for yes, that’s what it was, and still in a sense is. His marriage, a given. My obsession? A factor I’ve come to terms with now; all that counselling, all Jade’s nagging concern must have done something for me in the end. I’ve lived a kind of a life since Dominic, haven’t I? The years have moved past and the seasons come and gone.
But inside I’m still the same. All that professional support wasted. When Dominic rings, I’m there, living, breathing, pulsating for him, no matter what he does. Seeing him after so long has been like waking up from a coma and grasping the chance to live again.
Why did he say there was nothing personal to tell Blake about me? Does he think that? Really?
When will I be free of it, this rock-hard certainty that, even when the book between the two of us seems closed, somehow, somewhere there’ll be another chapter not yet written?
Time goes by that even I make no effort to calculate, and when the waves of memory and desire become too strong and rich for me, I get off the bus, even though it’s still several stops away from the one I need. No matter. Any more trips into a history I shouldn’t be revisiting will mean I’ll never get the job done. The fresh air, or what passes for fresh air in London, will make me sharp again.
As I walk, the buildings around me loom tall and dominant, the people bustling around, in and through them just temporary glitches in the permanent mass of stone and brick. The houses of Hackney, more, of London, will be here long after the small history I bring with me is gone. Everything I feel now is a brief dream only, but a powerful one. At least to me.
It starts to rain, a late summer storm, and I hunch deeper into the collar of my jacket, the droplets easing their way through my hair and onto my neck. At least it’s warm, but even so I quicken my pace as the office comes into view, brushing past one or two groups of young men loitering, out of school and out of luck. At the bottom of the steps to the front door, someone pushes into me. I sidestep away and, with all that’s been happening over the last week, raise my hands to defend myself against any fresh attack.
No need, it’s just a tramp. He mutters something that could be an apology or a curse. There’s a glimpse of bleared eyes and shaggy beard and then he’s gone, weaving his way down the wet street, bottle of shop-brand whisky clutched in his fingers.
I smile at my own foolishness, thinking that if the old bloke had waited I would have given him something. Instead I take a breath of warm, muggy air and make my way inside.
Jade is working, blonde head down and staring at her computer screen as if it holds the secret to the world around us. I hope it does.
She looks up as the door clicks shut behind me and nods, ‘Hi there. You look happy. Solved the case yet?’
‘Yeah, I wish. No, I’m just smiling because I thought some tramp was out to get me. Do you think I’m getting paranoid in my old age?’
‘No more than normal,’ she shrugs, still tapping away.
I hang my jacket up, noting how she hasn’t mentioned where I’ve been. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence. How’re you getting on? Any luck?’
‘We-ll,’ she hesitates, and I stride across to lean over her shoulder and peer at the list of dates and numbers on the screen.
‘What’s that? Anything Dominic might want to know?’
‘I’m not sure yet. It all seems normal for a business: information about markets; lists of investments; PR plans; all the usual stuff. There is one thing, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Call me suspicious, but it’s all too perfect. Isn’t that what you thought when you looked at it over the weekend? It’s as if here is a series of files Delta Egypt has had made especially for people who might come along and want to steal their secrets. Every company in the world has secrets, otherwise what’s the point of industrial espionage? Not Delta though. Their files are squeaky-clean. You could put a one-year-old child in the middle of them, and there’d be nothing to give its parents a moment’s worry.’
‘So we can mark Blake Kenzie with a clean bill of health when we report to Dominic. And then we can take the money and run, can we?’
Even as I’m saying it, I know it’s the best way forward for me and maybe for all of us. Drop the report on Dominic’s desk, walk away, and never see him again.
‘No, it’s not that simple,’ she says, fingers clicking on the keyboard and taking us both to a screen I haven’t seen before. ‘I also found this. It wasn’t obvious, as it was hidden, rather cleverly, too, but I wanted to check everything, so here it is.’
I can’t see anything different from the list of words and dates she had on the screen before, except that there are more columns of them. Then I look at the new column names: Starlight, Dancer, Bluesky, Aqua.
Bluesky?
I grab my chair and sit down next to her. ‘Bluesky? The dead woman?’
‘Yes. Unless the coincidence is off the scale.’
‘Unlikely.’ I’m trying to think, but the connections aren’t coming. ‘Blake knows her? Has information on her in some way?’
Jade shakes her head, ‘He must do, but...’
‘But what?’
‘But it’s not just him. I found this spreadsheet linked from the DG Allen Enterprises folder.’
My mouth goes dry. ‘Meaning if Blake knows something about Bluesky, then Dominic might, too. Or Blake thinks he does. Just what the hell is going on?’
‘I don’t know, but there’s more.’
She scrolls down the spreadsheet, half-way down a page with an entry under Aqua; it says: pick-up and.
‘And what?’ I whisper.
‘That’s just it, Paul,’ she begins, her explanation giving me time to catch my breath. ‘And what? I started doing other stuff, but it kept nagging away, and in the end I came back to it. I went through it all again, and something clicked. You see, if you take any of these words or dates, they look just like a jumble of meaningless information: 31 Jan, call; when ready, Mar 20; carry on, Jun 0. But I think they’re more than that. I think they’re half of something else, the end of the date, the beginning of the phrase. I wouldn’t have spotted it if it hadn’t been for that last extra word under Aqua. And then again, maybe I wouldn’t have seen it at all, or even bothered with it if it hadn’t been for knowing about Bluesky. Where the phrases have been placed, they look like a copy of something else that’s been deleted or partially saved in the course of being transferred or downloaded. It can’t be that though, they’re too patterned; a partial transfer would be much more random. Still, we were lucky to spot it. I was just being thorough.’
‘As you always are. Thank you, good work.’
She blushes and gives me half a smile. ‘You’re welcome. But we’re no better off. Without the other half of the file, we still don’t know what it means.’
‘No, but now we know there’s something there, something to find out. No matter what we’ve been told.’
‘That’s what you like best, Paul, isn’t it?’
‘What?’ The sudden switch in subject matter almost leads to a breach of PI Rule Number Six: Never let your staff be more than one step ahead of you, and cer
tainly never show it if they are.
‘It’s what you like best,’ Jade says again. ‘The chance for discovery, bringing a new fact to light. It gets you every time, doesn’t it?’
‘Is that a bad thing for an investigation agency? If we didn’t want to find things out, where would we be?’
‘Sure, but what are we going to do about finding the missing half of the file? Maybe I can go to Egypt this time, get the half you left behind in a more civilised and female way, without having to jump out a window?’
‘Dream on.’ The thought of Jade mixed up with Blake’s mob makes me shudder. ‘Anyway, if Blake’s anything like the man I imagine him to be, and there’s anything else he doesn’t want me to find, it’ll be somewhere I’d never think of in a thousand years, or he’ll have destroyed it.’
‘So what will you do?’
My sigh is ragged and comes from the gut. ‘I’ll think of something. I’ll have to if I’m going to persuade a glimmer of truth out of Dominic, and that seems the only avenue to explore at the moment to get any of the answers. He’s not a murderer, but he might know something to implicate Blake.’
There’s a pause, and Jade folds her arms, skidding her chair back so she all but runs me over.
‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘I forgot to ask, how was your meeting?’
‘I filled him in as best I could. He’s happy to wait for the official report.’
I go back to my desk. The rest of the day is spent catching up on paperwork and keeping my other clients at bay. The main subjects occupying my thoughts are what Jade’s discovery might mean and how I can make best use of it for my next meeting with Dominic.
Five hours and thirteen minutes later, a calculation that includes the seventeen-minute lunch-break I allot myself, we’re out of the office. A quick drink at The Bell and Book, which looks as if it could use the custom tonight, and then I’m waving her off on her bike. As she spins her way ’round the corner, I turn my steps in the opposite direction.
It’s only then that something occurs to me, something I should have picked up on earlier, if only my head hadn’t been full of Dominic and sex. The tramp. When he’d bumped into me at the office, there’d been no smell. And the bottle of whisky he’d been waving was full.
Chapter Seven
At home, there’s no-one lurking in the street or the small scraggly bushes, but my muscles only relax when I’m inside with the door double locked behind me. The wait for my first taste of the Highland Park is a long one.
By the second sip, I’ve checked every room — a mission that doesn’t take long — and shut out the world outside behind the comfort of curtains. By the third sip I’m sprawled on the sofa in the living room staring at the unlit fireplace. I haven’t got Dominic what he says he wants. No complete evidence that Kenzie & Co. are crooked and he shouldn’t be mixed up with them at any level, not even confirmation of shadiness; just half a document.
Is there a way I can get the information I need to clear my ex-lover’s name? And keep myself alive? Haven’t I experienced how quick Blake is to act? One meeting, that’s all it took, and he wants me dead. I didn’t even have anything useful on him when he made that decision. No, I’m wrong. He’d decided what to do about me before I’d even stepped over his threshold. He knew my connection with Dominic, and he wanted me dead.
It’s as simple as that.
Nothing I’ve seen or heard proves it for sure, but it’s Rule Number Seven in the PI book: In a dangerous situation, if there’s a choice between instinct and logic, go with instinct. It won’t fail you.
Add to all that a dead woman, threatening phone calls, and one clean, teetotal tramp and I’m spinning somewhere into depths I can’t recognise and don’t have the skills to handle. I’ve made my living from people committing adultery, fiddling the books, or cheating on their insurance. All the countless acts of disloyalty that taint a character, take who someone is and alter the colour of it so you can’t tell where the white ends and the grey begins, or how one day it may turn to black. Of the three occasions in my life where I’ve struck out beyond my reach, two of them have involved Dominic: once in our affair and now here when he asks for my help.
It’s no good, I can’t back out. Wherever this goes, I have to see it through.
My dreams that night are full of memories, but not the ones I expect when I finally crawl under the duvet, four whiskies and one small bowl of pasta later.
There’s a garden, rich and green, the height of summer. The sound of laughter, a swing hung between two plum trees, the hushed trickle and flow of water. I’m walking, fingers trailing through roses, yellow, pink, deep orange, and the scent of them catches on my skin. I’m a child again, the trees lining my path taller than I will ever be, no matter how much I long to touch their uppermost leaves. Another laugh, this time closer, to my right, and when I turn I see a young girl skipping towards me, nine years old, her hair held into plaits and her dress and shoes all the colours of the rainbow. ‘Dance with me,’ she sings, ‘dance with me,’ but I can’t and already the tears are welling up as the faraway sky darkens. Her eyes are a richer shade of green than mine, and her hair glows ebony against the grass. Behind her stand two figures, their faces obscured, their familiarity a catch in my throat, an accusation. I stumble towards her, and she holds her hand to her mouth as if shutting a secret in a cave. Before I reach her, she turns and runs, her bright dress carving its way through reeds and tall flowers. I chase after her, and branches and leaves cling to my clothes and strike my skin. Behind me, I know the two adults I have seen follow us both. Their presence makes me start to run, but in front of me the girl runs faster. Without forming the words in my head, I know I have to reach her before she can disappear or turn in a direction I can’t see. My skin is cold and my heart is beating, so loud, so loud it drowns out every other want and need I have ever known. I call her name, but the sound of it is dragged away by the wind and vanishes. Now I stand in a clearing, and the trees above me are dark, thin fingers laced against a threatening sky. Even though I swing ’round the full circle of where I stand I can’t see where the girl has gone, I can’t see, and I know the adults who follow me will soon be here and the one to be blamed will be me. I should have kept up with her. I should have...
A glimpse of lemon and green and red dress, a flurry of black hair, rich and strong, at the corner of my eye and once again I’m in pursuit. Blood pulsates through my veins, and my breath comes in harsh gasps. Why doesn’t she stop? Can’t she tell I need her to stop? Please, please, I...
Again we run, through weeds and thistles that snatch and tear at me, though they don’t slow her down, and the distance between us remains the same. All I can do is keep her in sight; I can’t gain on her, not unless she lets me. She runs like someone whose body is water, flowing over and through any obstacle it faces. I am nothing but flesh; I cannot catch her.
Still I keep trying, trying in a way I don’t think I’ve done before, in a dream I know will lead nowhere. This time it might be different, please God, this time. The girl and I keep running, and behind us the crashing noise of the adults grows quieter, drifting away at last into memory. When I try to wake, it’s impossible. I must keep dreaming, keep running.
After a time I can’t count, there’s the sound of water, torrential, unforgiving, to our left. The sky darkens again, my heart pounds harder, and the girl swerves towards the river.
‘No.’ My silent voice echoes only in my head, and she doesn’t hear me. The sound of water beats faster, louder, as if it could break from its thin banks and overwhelm both of us. ‘Please.’
Above me the trees vanish, and I’m left standing on wet grass facing a silver river. Somehow the girl has already crossed the racing flood, I don’t know how. She stands, still as a cat, on the other side, sunlight glistening in her hair, and her dress is as bright as roses. For a long moment she remains there, arms stretched high above her head as if in blessing or a curse. Before I can shout a warning, or try to move to help,
her slim, white body has plunged into the water, a faint glimmer of yellow, red, green, a swirl of dark hair, and then she’s gone.
‘Teresa!’
When I wake, I’m crying.
The place is the same as it always is. A wide courtyard leading to a large Victorian house glowing with the colours of earth. I park the car on the gravel, making sure my exit is clear, and when I get out, the smell of grass and clean air almost overwhelms me. For the price of my conscience, I would slip back into my dirty grey Vauxhall and take the road north and home, but if I did that there would be no way back. Something in me still wants that path to be open.
Because here is somewhere I have never invited Jade. I have never found anyone who could take that journey, not even Dominic. My fault. It’s something I never told him at the beginning, though I wanted to, and then the moment for it passed.
Before I can knock on the freshly-painted blue front door, it is opened and a tall woman, early sixties, white hair, hazel eyes, gazes at me.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘It’s good to see you.’
Always the same greeting, the two times a year I make this visit, once now on August bank holiday and once just before Christmas. Not Christmas itself, as that would entail too much compromise. Christmas, for me, is a time to be alone.
I smile and wonder if my smile reaches my eyes, as hers almost does.
We drink sherry in a room painted in white and silver. Outside, the lawn is striped as far as the eye can see, and the taste of the sherry is nutmeg on my tongue.
‘How is work going?’ she asks, putting down her glass and folding both hands onto her lap as if covering secrets.
‘Oh, you know. How is everything here?’
‘The same as always.’
Always the same. Days of brightness and boredom, the long drift of the countryside, how Surrey is. Similar in some ways to the life Jade’s parents live, but very different, too. Different by means of the parties, the entertaining, the focus on position and appearance, the sense of responsibility and of things being more complex when you dig deeper. I am what I’ve always been to them: an enigma, an embarrassment.
