Hollow Man

by Oliver Harris

  A probationer manned the front desk of Kentish Town police station: rookie-fresh, nineteen, with bleached blond hair. Belsey showed his badge.

  “Nick Belsey. Hampstead station. I heard you had a squad car go AWOL.”

  “That’s right.

  “What time?”

  “Reported 3:17 a.m.”

  “Inspector Gower’s asked for the tapes.”

  The new boy looked uncertain. “Our parking lot tapes?”

  “That’s right. Do you know where they’re kept? The hard disk?”

  “Yes.”

  Then DC Robin Oakley appeared in the background and Belsey’s heart sank. Belsey had been on training courses with Oakley; he drove a Nissan GT-R and collected martial arts weapons. He had a big mouth.

  “Nick,” Oakley said, eyeing Belsey’s cuts. “What happened to your face?”

  “Did anyone hand in a phone or wallet last night?”

  “Why?”

  “I lost mine,” Belsey said.

  Oakley thought this was very funny. “Anyone hand in Nick Belsey’s wallet?” he shouted. “Could be anywhere, Nick. Know what I mean?”

  “No.”

  Oakley grinned. The rookie looked confused. “Should I go see about the parking lot?”

  “That’s fine,” Belsey said. “Leave it.”

  “What’s happening in the parking lot?” Oakley said.

  “Nothing. Have you got a cigarette?”

  They stepped outside. Oakley fished a ten-pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and passed one to Belsey.

  “What are you like, you crazy bastard?” Oakley said.

  “Did you see me last night?”

  “Half of London saw you.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Have you spoken to your boss?”

  “Gower? Not recently.”

  Oakley’s face twitched with the urge to laugh. “Where did you end up?”

  “Why?”

  “Nick, you’ve got to speak to Gower.”

  “OK. What did I do?”

  “At one point you were in Lorenzo’s.”

  “Christ.” Belsey closed his eyes. Lorenzo de Medici’s was a cocaine-fuelled dive behind Tottenham Court Road. By day it was a mediocre spaghetti house, but it served drinks until 5 a.m. and had an alcoholic owner who couldn’t control his own stock. The walls were painted with bad copies of Renaissance masterpieces and the toilet sinks were usually stained with blood.

  “What time was I in Lorenzo’s?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “Did I have my phone?”

  “You were phoning everyone. You were telling them to come to Lorenzo’s. You said it was your birthday, mate.”

  Belsey opened his eyes. Oakley smiled, shaking his head. He tossed his cigarette into the road, patted Belsey on the arm and headed inside.

  Belsey finished his cigarette, then walked back to the car. Memories were cracking through: he knew he had been at Lorenzo’s now, in the very early hours—he remembered trying to sell his jacket to the owner. He had been trying to explain to someone in the bar how he had overleveraged himself and they found this hilarious. “Overleveraged,” they kept saying. They were having to shout over the music.

  “Now I’m going on a retreat,” he said.

  Belsey had a leaflet from a health food shop: Anxious? Uncertain? We are an interfaith community offering healing retreats in Worcestershire. There was a drawing of a cross-legged man glowing with enlightenment, beams radiating from his body. Become like a child whose soul is empty. Peace of mind is already yours.

  “You’re going to rehab?”

  “It’s not rehab. It’s a healing retreat,” Belsey said.

  “A retreat from what?”

  He remembered at some point being in a car with a man who said he worked for the Foreign Office and this man had track marks on the backs of his hands. And now he saw the start of it all, standing in the front hall of a B&B in King’s Cross with his worldly possessions in two garbage bags at his feet. The last of his cards had been declined.

  He had known this moment was coming, but it had been astonishing to be in it. Machines had started spitting back his cards a fortnight ago. The first few times it happened he had gone through the motions of speaking to call centres, chatting to polite young men in Mumbai and Bangalore. He had sat in front of pub napkins with a pen in his hand as if some calculation was demanded of him. Ego is the gambler’s greatest enemy. That was all he could think: one phrase from a book stuck on repeat. What had he done? He had been clever enough to keep the debt moving and not clever enough to sacrifice a lifestyle to pay it off. He had been too brave—that was the simple truth: stupid with a confidence beyond all reason. His gambling acquaintances would say he had gone on tilt—out of control, throwing himself towards his own end. Was that what he’d been doing: trying to find a way out through the bottom of his overdraft?

  His final few days of credit had been the wildest; buying presents for strangers, setting up debits to charities, a last few reckless, euphoric bets on distant rainfall and elections in Central Asian republics. At the time he thought he had broken through to an insight, but he saw now it was a kind of hypothermia. It began when the pain of the cold had passed and you were washed with miscalculated serenity. He had looked away for a few days and when he looked back his finances had begun consuming themselves. Paychecks no longer covered interest payments, let alone such extravagances as accommodation.

  The B&B owner had been apologetic as he moved Belsey out. There was nothing he could do. It was a small business. Belsey’s room had already been occupied by a thin, nervous-looking family—to whom Belsey left the bags of his belongings. He didn’t have the heart to carry them anywhere. He was thrown out along with a young, bright-eyed Afghan—Siddiq Sahar—who was about to get married, cast upon the street.

  “I’ve been refused asylum and you’ve been refused credit,” Siddiq grinned. He seemed OK about it. He said he’d sorted his own paperwork anyway. They stood smoking in front of the Continental Hotel’s flaking facade, Belsey in his detective’s suit and the Afghan in a flight jacket with the Stars and Stripes on the back. Sunlight fell across the scaffolding of St. Pancras Station onto dusty pavement and dirty shop windows. They had got to know each other quite well in the month of Belsey’s residence. Siddiq had come to the UK via Moscow. He said he’d been a tour guide in Moscow and a political prisoner in Afghanistan. He liked to grease his hair and help female tourists.

  “Are you working today?” he asked.

  “I’ve got the day off.”

  “I need a witness,” he said. “A suit and a witness. I will give you fifty pounds.”

  “What kind of witness?”

  “For my wedding.”

  The bride was a Slovak from Edgware, a red-haired girl with a dirty laugh, ten years older than the groom. They exchanged vows in Marylebone Town Hall, married by a woman with a clipboard. Belsey tried to refuse the money afterwards, and when Siddiq insisted on paying, Belsey had bought champagne with it. They were in a tourist pub near Madame Tussauds. He hadn’t intended to drink. After four bottles between the three of them they moved to a bar beneath a Christian Science reading room. That was the wedding reception. They seemed very happy together. Belsey wondered if there was anyone he could bring himself to call, to borrow money from—enough for a night’s sleep at least. The answer was no.

  Memories rushed in now. By 9 p.m. he had found his way to a memorial for a dead policeman, a dog handler who had known his father and who’d died recently in a road accident in France. Men from Dogs Section, some Drugs Squad, crowded the Ten Bells in Waterloo, near where they trained the dogs; old coppers, men with high blood pressure and market-trader voices. It was dark outside. He had broken through to a state in which every moment flowed effortlessly to the next and he could not go wrong. He was having an adventure; everything would be resolved. Belsey made loud greetings to men he barely recognised, men from his childhood, when h
is father was in the Yard. They had aged. For a brief, terrifying moment he saw the future intended for him. Someone bought brandies.

  “Your old man, he was a great murder detective, but he never went home, you know what I mean?” No, no, I don’t. Someone was trying to talk to him about his father. What does that mean? They’d brought a sniffer dog and someone had put a black armband on one of its legs.

  “It’s crying.”

  Everyone laughed. No one was crying. Then Chief Superintendent Northwood arrived, the borough commander, in his parade uniform, with a framed photograph of the dead man. Northwood had his wife in tow: Sandra Northwood wore heels and high, platinum-blonde hair. She was a handsome woman in her fifties, who achieved another layer of brittle glamour with each of her husband’s promotions. Northwood himself towered over her, rigid with self-importance. He had hated Belsey since an incident with a fire extinguisher at Hendon police training college. He made a speech.

  “Dogs are the heart of the police.”

  Someone said: “A man who loved dogs more than he loved life.” Belsey raised a toast. He stood on a chair. Music played.

  “This is what Jim would have wanted,” everyone agreed, getting legless.

  Then Belsey was dancing with Sandra Northwood, her soft body warm in his arms. “Oh,” she breathed into his ear and giggled.

  She said: “I remember your father. I remember when you seemed so young.” And she touched his face as if searching for some way back to that past. Her hands smelt of hairspray. “Nicholas,” she giggled. Her eyes were unfocused. He wondered if she’d been sleeping with his father; wondered who hadn’t.

  “Were you sleeping with my old man?” he asked. “Sandra? Can you hear me?”

  He paid for the cab out of Sandra Northwood’s purse. She was beside him. So this is where the borough commander lives, Belsey thought, looking at a low, detached new-build with shrub borders. Where was the commander? The lights were off. Belsey helped Sandra in. The house was empty. Belsey went inside to see what it was like, the chief ’s home. The furniture looked very new. Some of it had been kept under plastic. Sandra poured them wine from an open bottle on the sideboard.

  “My husband says you’re one of the best.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Handsome, like your father.”

  She fell asleep on the sofa. Belsey went upstairs, looked in the bathroom cabinets, found Northwood’s Masonic regalia in a chest in the bedroom and put it on: apron, gauntlets, collar. He was gloriously wasted. He took the regalia off. He stole twenty pounds from one of Northwood’s jackets, urinated in the bath and backed out.

  5

  You’ve got to speak to Gower, Oakley had suggested, and apparently Inspector Gower felt the same way. Belsey received a summons as soon as he arrived back at the station. They sat in Gower’s office, door shut. It seemed to Belsey as if they had been sitting a long time looking at each other.

  “How was the memorial last night?” Gower began eventually.

  “Fitting.”

  “You know I worked with him once. He was a fine dog handler. A fine policeman.”

  “Yes.”

  Gower had a silver moustache and wore pale linen suits; a solid detective, a manager rather than a maestro. He read Belsey’s injured face. I’ve been going through a bit of a hard time, Belsey should have said. That would have been appropriate. But it was not entirely true, and he had decided honesty was to be his strategy. He wanted to say: I have been going through a good time, which was closer to the truth and always a more dangerous situation.

  “Do you know anything about a squad car that went missing from Kentish Town?”

  “It was on the Heath.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Belsey said. “But I believe I’m responsible. I’d like to request a transfer out of London.”

  Gower stared at the desk now, as if he was the one in trouble, which he may have been, and Belsey felt sorry that such a dedicated officer should be drawn into his own misfortune.

  “You are our best detective,” the inspector said quietly.

  “What I’d like,” Belsey said, “is to transfer out of London. As far away as possible.”

  Gower looked at him. Belsey felt calm, strong even. Books on criminal law lined the inspector’s shelves alongside bound magazines on bird watching. Belsey read the spines. He studied the family photos, some of which were turned to face the guest as if to say: Look, look what we are fighting for. Twenty years ago Tim Gower had been Lance Corporal Gower, patrolling the streets of Northern Ireland. Belsey had tried to get him to talk about it at a Christmas drinks, but Gower refused: “Long time ago now.” Belsey respected Gower but felt he might not have the resources to deal with this particular situation.

  Gower transferred his gaze from Belsey’s face to the window and then back again.

  “What’s happening to you?”

  “I think I may be having a religious experience.”

  The inspector nodded slowly. “What troubles me is that I don’t think you care,” he said.

  “That I’m having a religious experience?”

  “About keeping your job.”

  “I would like to.”

  “Maybe you don’t care enough about yourself.”

  “I’m proud to be a police officer,” Belsey said. But it sounded overzealous. He did not want to be sent to counselling again. He wondered what they would talk about this time. “What I’d like,” he said, “what I think I need, is a change of scenery.”

  Gower shook his head, not like a refusal but as if Belsey had picked up the wrong script.

  “Northwood’s not very happy about something. He’s requested a review—about what exactly I’m not sure, but it concerns yourself. I need to know what you’ve done.”

  What had he done? Irreparably angered the man at the top, Chief Super Northwood—the man using Camden borough as his personal stepping-stone to high office: the man whose pervasive power, in Belsey’s opinion, seemed to be based on a lot of threats and not much efficient thief taking. This was in spite of his recent, much publicised promise to halve crime in the borough over the next three years. He was a politician.

  “With all due respect, sir, fuck Northwood.”

  Gower opened a desk drawer, slid one sheet in and took another out.

  “No, Belsey. We don’t fuck Northwood, or anyone else for that matter. You’re not in the badlands of south London now.”

  “I haven’t been in Borough for six years.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Borough was his first posting as a constable, first years in CID. He fought to keep the memories at bay: all of them, but especially the good ones.

  “I’m going to suggest you take a break for a while,” the inspector said, “regardless of what happens.”

  “I don’t want to take a break.”

  Gower uncapped his pen and started filling in the form. The police had forms for every eventuality. Belsey needed to fill in a form for Mr. Devereux. That had been quite a home to go missing from. What had Devereux felt life was lacking? Maybe he’d just made enough money and was checking out, job done. Belsey let his eyes rest on the photographs of wetland birds on the inspector’s wall. He imagined Gower in military uniform on a roadblock, County Armagh, watching the birds. Eventually Gower capped his pen.

  “I’ve spent ten years dragging this police station out of the depths. I’m not having one man and his crisis drag it back down.”

  “What do you mean by crisis?”

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “I’m just curious what you mean by the word ‘crisis.’ ”

  “No one’s doubting you’re good, Nick. But you’re not as good as you think you are. You’re not worth a whole police station and more.”

  “I’ve never thought that,” Belsey said. Gower studied the form. He asked Belsey to sign it. Belsey signed it without looking.

  “What’s that?” Gower nodded to the book in Belsey’s hand
.

  “The Golden Bough.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “The pagan origins of Christianity, folk culture, myths.”

  “I thought it might be about birds.”

  “There are birds in it. Bird cults.”

  “Bird cults.” The inspector sighed. “The initial review will be tomorrow. They’ll assign a representative. I’m going to ask you to write down what happened in advance of that.”

  “Starting when?”

  “When the trouble started.”

  Belsey laughed. Yes, he thought. Where my honesty ceases, there am I blind. Gower was right, he should record the journey that had brought him here. An extravagant holiday to Cyprus, a bar tab for seven hundred pounds, an awful spread on last year’s League One playoffs. Or the first bailiff’s letter, with its archaic language of goods and chattels, as someone somewhere began to cut their losses. He would write about that: his nobility, taking out one final loan to pay off the woman who was leaving him and ensure no debt collectors came knocking at what had briefly been their home. Perhaps he could start the whole thing with his first night as a constable, looking up at the windows of the Aylesbury Estate, lit against a vast and starless sky. How much of this did Gower want to hear?

  The inspector moved his seat. “That’s all for now.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Belsey said.

  “Go on.”

  “You’re a bird watcher.”

  “Yes,” Gower said warily.

  “What do you do once you’ve seen them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Belsey—”

  “Do you write it down?”

  “You’re out of control, Belsey.”

  “I think I’m in control,” Belsey said.

  6

  “He was injecting in his groin. I kicked the kitchen door and he’s got one foot up on the sink. He said, I saw you coming. I said, why’d you start fixing if you saw us coming? He said he didn’t know when he’d next get the chance.”

  Belsey stepped into the office. His colleagues went silent: Derek Rosen leaning heavily against the edge of Belsey’s desk, Rob Trapping watching with a grin on his clean-shaven face.