Her attractiveness and smartness, he thought, no doubt concealed a strong personality and a practical acumen that made her a very efficient manager of her own affairs. After that they drove more or less in silence. The sun was beginning to set, autumnally and brilliantly. All the time he expected her to say more. She said nothing. He respected her exclamations at other drivers and the state of the roads but said nothing himself. When she reached the station, she handed him a Sainsbury’s bag containing a thermos and sandwiches and patted him on the arm with a kind of sisterly approval.
‘Keep it all safe, please,’ she said. ‘You’ll find out what’s in it, but, please, keep it safe for my sake and Ben’s sake.’ He had no idea what she was talking about. A moment later as an afterthought she asked for his mobile number. ‘Tell me. I know Ben’s suspicious about it. He always is. Please.’
He hesitated, then told her, knowing he was being abjectly disobedient to Leo as well as Ben. She quickly tapped the number into her own mobile. Before he could justify his hesitation, she offered him a brief farewell smile and pointed to the nearside door. He knew what she meant. He jumped out and she drove off.
It surprised him that the thermos only contained one cupful of hot sweet tea, which he drank quickly after eating the sandwiches, putting the bag to one side in puzzlement at the need to keep it safe. The train rolled into Waterloo at the rush hour. He stepped onto a platform packed with tired commuters. He had gone no more than half-a-dozen steps when he heard a man’s voice calling behind him. The Sainsbury bag was being held up. He had forgotten it. After thanking him, he went through the barriers, down to street level and across to his hotel, suddenly and quite unusually aware that Waterloo at such a time would be a field day for watchers anonymous.
Hell, though, what did he have to hide? Rather than be ruled by intuition, he decided to let things take their course. While he was waiting for a lift in the hotel foyer, things took their course in the form of a certain pushing and shoving among others waiting nearby. As soon as the lift doors opened he felt himself being hustled into the cabin. Looking round, he saw a couple of young men with girlfriends, a group of middle-aged women, one of whom protested loudly at being pushed, a pair of grey-suited businessmen, a man in a raincoat rather similar to Joe’s and an elderly man in the uniform of the hotel staff. One of the ladies talked loudly about a dripping tap in her bathroom. Both girls chewed gum and giggled. By the time the lift reached the sixth floor there were only four people left, the elderly man in staff uniform, the man in the raincoat, one of the businessmen and Joe himself. He was the only one who stepped out on the sixth floor. He went to his room and began preparing to leave.
He would go back to Courtier Street, rather than try opening his laptop in the hotel room. That was his intention. He started stuffing pyjamas and shaving kit into his clothes bag when there was a tap on the door.
‘Valet service, sir,’ a voice called.
He drew open the door.
‘Do you require your suit pressing, sir? Cleaning?’
He wasn’t quick enough. The man was inside before he could stop him. He was medium height but strongly built and Joe recognised him at once as the man from the lift, the one in the raincoat. He also recognised the voice. The man pushed him hard back against the wall as he rushed through the door and though Joe gave a yelp of protest it was clear the man had only one thing in mind. He grabbed at the Sainsbury bag.
It seemed there was no rhyme or reason in this. The sheer deliberateness of the action outraged him. Joe flung himself in rugby style at the man and jammed his head into his stomach. The impact was satisfactory and effective. He was thrown back against the door of the built-in wardrobe that split solemnly in a jagged line down the middle, exposing its chipboard composition. The fact that it split cushioned him. He came back almost immediately, using the Sainsbury bag as a flail and struck Joe partly on the side of the face, partly on the arm he raised in self-defence. His greatest fear was that the man might have some weapon concealed on him. So although he was flung sideways by the flailing bag, he stuck out a fist which struck the side of the man’s jaw. In a messy way they exchanged two or three quick blows, one of which split Joe’s lip. Then he landed one on the man’s nose. It was hard and damaging. He saw the narrowed eyes suddenly squeeze themselves shut in a movement that suggested the onset of an uncontrollable sneezing fit. Then the man groaned, raised his hands to his face, spreading his fingers, and blood began to pour between them. He staggered backwards, clutching his face, bent up, and Joe seized the lamp from the bedside table and brought it down with a bludgeoning, felling force against the back of the man’s head. He collapsed face downwards on the carpet between the bed and the window.
Cold with his anger, Joe could not help himself from trembling. His sudden rush of strength seemed to him morally deforming. The prone shape of the man dressed in the kind of light-blue nylon jacket worn by male staff, the head twisted back, the spots of blood on the carpet – the sight was sickeningly alien, as if he, Joe, was not responsible for it and should have nothing to do with it. He wanted to tidy this miserable, bloody object out of the way and forget about it. He knew he couldn’t do that, but he also knew with icy clarity he couldn’t leave things as they were.
He wrenched the flex out of the lamp and the plug from the wall socket. By quickly tying the man’s wrists behind his back, he disabled him at least for a short time. In any case, he felt it was tit for tat: he knew he was one of those who had branded him. Recovering, the man turned sideways, his nose streaming blood down one cheek and on to the carpet. He stared up in fright, his mouth open and a broken whimpering sound, as if he were a child trying to suppress tears, coming from his throat.
Joe lightly massaged the knuckles of his right hand and then leant down. He pushed the inside of his left wrist into the man’s face.
‘Zhulik?’
‘Da, da, da!’
The repeated Russian affirmative was accompanied by a rapid flickering of the light-brown eyes. In his neat blue jacket, despite the crimson flow of blood, he looked exactly like a competent, well-groomed employee of the hotel. But he knew exactly what was meant by Joe’s question. That proved he had been in the Courtier Street flat.
‘Who sent you? Was it Oleg Fiordorovich?’
‘Who?’
‘Staroveery?’
‘Da, da, da!’
So it was as he suspected! The Old Believers suspected he would receive something, suspected him, Joe Richter! No doubt the listening devices when he last met Ben at Scythian Gold would have given more than a hint, even if the supposed pretext for the meeting was Ben’s desire for what he called ‘proof’, whatever that meant. So was he, Joe Richter, being completely naïve? Or was there something inherently dangerous about his identity that no one dared mention? Nonsense! All he could guess at with any certainty was that Ollie Goncharov, the oligarch, the owner of Scythian Gold, may not have known about the assault in Courtier Street, but certainly knew about his laptop and probably also knew about this.
‘Why?’ he asked.
The man merely closed his eyes and attempted to get up, but Joe thrust him down again.
‘Svoloch!’ the man said.
He would get nowhere, Joe thought, exchanging such polite endearments in Russian with this garbage. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and stuffed it in the man’s mouth. Then he straightened up. It was probable the man wasn’t alone. He thought for a moment and decided. He pulled the remainder of his clothes out of the now broken wardrobe and stuffed them in the bag. Then he saw the Sainsbury bag. As he leant down, something fell on it. It was a drop of blood from his mouth. For the first time he felt the sharp, smarting pain. He pushed the Sainsbury bag and its contents into the clothes bag, seized his laptop and left the room. Shutting the door firmly, he glimpsed the man already clambering to his feet. It was with relief, as he turned the key in the lock, that he saw the corridor was empty.
The taste of blood filled his mouth, the side o
f his cheek felt numb and his teeth ached. He probably didn’t look very nice. Drawing up his raincoat’s lapel, he raced down the internal stairs beside the lift shaft. Once outside he was lucky to flag down a taxi. ‘Courtier Street,’ he muttered, holding a handkerchief to his mouth
The ground and first-floor offices were closed, though someone was working late on the first floor. He was told that a new key card panel had been secured to the door of his studio apartment that very afternoon and a Mr Salisbury now held the new card. Relieved to hear it, he still found the time switches worked too soon and was left to grope his way to the top landing. Music identified his neighbour’s door. Perhaps his groping and swearing made a good deal of rival noise because the door opened almost the instant he reached it to reveal Ronald Salisbury standing there in shirt sleeves backlit by his hall light.
‘My dear chap, you are indeed a stranger to us.’ The patrician voice had an oddly camp air of self-caricature. ‘Yes, well, it’s pleasant to welcome you back. I heard the noise you made, you see. It’s those frightful time switches, isn’t it? We should stick to our rights, you know. We should complain to our landlords. Though so far they’ve been deaf to all our pleas.’ Ronald Salisbury talked on luxuriously, as if he were a stage judge addressing a compliant jury. ‘Perhaps if we were to get up a little petition, or speak to our MP, that might have an effect. If we were to do the whole job ourselves, off our own bat, as it were, and then present them with the bill, that might be a way of doing it. What d’you think?’ He was holding a glass of whisky or brandy. ‘Will you have one?’
‘No, thank you, I…’
‘No, well, don’t let me prevail on you against your will. I’m alone this evening, you see. I keep a weather ear open for young Billy. He’s not the best of timekeepers, poor lad. Now there was something else.’ He paused for thought. ‘Ah, yes, I’m getting forgetful. Fellows were busy yesterday afternoon with your door. Yes, I think it was yesterday. Anyhow, they seem to think downstairs that I’m still renting your room, so they’ve left the new key card thing with me. I’ll get it.’
The new card was handed over and Joe unlocked his de luxe studio apartment. It had the same unaired, sickly smell. Outwardly there was no sign anything had been disturbed even if scraps of tape still littered the floor and his bed looked a mess. Then a glance in the mirror showed what had changed. He saw his swollen, split lip and the puffiness in his cheek. The sight angered him so much he wondered what on earth could have been so attractive about the Sainsbury bag that Gloria Billington insisted he should keep safe. And why did the man want it?
He found it among his clothes. The flailing had apparently split the plastic of the thermos and several bits of it lay in the bottom of the bag like so many shards from an excavation. He lifted the remains out carefully, thinking there might be glass inside. To his surprise, there was no interior at all, only a smaller thermos that had obviously supplied the hot drink and was fixed inside by strong adhesive tape.
The tightly wrapped insulation surrounding it was a different matter. It fell off the small thermos to reveal itself as a cylinder of polythene-covered sheets of paper. He quickly undid the cover and found some twenty-five sheets of photocopied material that he carefully smoothed out. As he did so, he noticed a sealed envelope was attached within the top sheets. Handwritten on it was the almost runic lettering:
DO NOT OPEN: DNA sample – J Richter.
What the hell was his own DNA doing here? If that was mysterious, even more mysterious were the sheets of photocopied material. At a quick glance, as he riffled through them, he found they all contained a printed text in Russian, interrupted once or twice by ‘Dear Mr Richter’ headings accompanied by days of the week. One thing was obvious at once. All the first-person endings were feminine. These were letters written by a woman to someone called Mr Richter. Another thing was equally certain: they were not addressed to him, Joe Richter! They were nothing to do with him! He assured himself of that at first glance. It left him doubting whether all Ben’s talk about the material being the equivalent of holy writ made any sense at all. Very likely it would turn out to be as inscrutable and plain daft as the first lot.
The main difference was that it was printed. There were no problems of handwriting or decipherment this time. From the start it was clear that the letters were very personal, as much an intimate confession as a day-to-day account. As soon as he started reading them he felt he was not only intruding into the privacy of another language, always inseparable from the act of translation, but also into the most intimate personal experience of another life.
In the very act of reading, he could not fight down a sense that, though they might not be holy writ, they must relate to him personally in some way. Ben had hinted as much in talking about them. Though it made little sense, there was no ignoring that they seemed to pose a threat almost as palpable as the brand on the inside of his wrist or the blow to his mouth. The urgency demanded for translating them, not to mention the secrecy with which they had been conveyed to him and the apparent value they may have had for the Old Believers or for Ollie Goncharov or, perhaps, for Leo Kamen, let alone Ben himself, implied a very present danger.
There was something else. Just as this de luxe flat could be broken into, the same thing might happen again any time. It was paranoid, maybe, to think like that. But the facts were that he knew Ben and therefore he would know where Ben was and, if he had seen Ben, it would be reasonable to suppose he had more material with him now – or at least that was how Ollie Goncharov or the Old Believers or anyone interested could be expected to think. It was imperative, therefore, to protect the material.
In doing so of course he would have to protect himself. Another hotel would probably be as vulnerable as the one at Waterloo. He didn’t want to impose on Jenny. After all, she didn’t want him to involve himself any more in the whole business. But he would call her and see. As for his Wimbledon home, he would not go back there so long as his grandmother was in occupancy.
The options, then, were limited. Where on earth could he find a place to do the work of translating in reasonable peace and security? How could he protect the material and at the same time protect himself? One thing only was certain: he did not want to remain in this de luxe studio apartment a moment longer than necessary. Firstly, it could be broken into. That had happened once and could easily happen again. Secondly, since being shut up for a couple of days the whiffs of some ultra-sweet, sickly odour, not medicinal so much as chemically scented, had become more prominent. It came and went out of corners of the room like an unwelcome ghost.
9
He gave up thinking about Jenny or ghostly odours and slipped out to Silvester’s across the street. The best item on the menu for a sore lip and bruised cheek seemed to be minestrone. He settled for Silvester’s version of minestrone.
The restaurant, reasonably full as it was, somehow protected him. Strains of ‘Come back to Sorrento’ repeated themselves along with other melodies as an accompaniment to surrounding talk and bathed him, like the flickering of the artificial electric candles in the lines of mirrors, with a soothingly gentle massage of soft sounds, wave-like glitter and the enticement of Italian cookery.
In any case, he liked the idea of being anonymous and eating alone. It gave him time to rid himself of others’ worries. And then suddenly there was Jenny’s text message. The builders had finally done all the work in her mother’s flat, greatly to her surprise, and ‘M’s hoping to move in’ so she would prefer him not to come to Inchbald Terrace tonight. ‘Love you. Do take care.’
Someone laughed loudly at a nearby table and he snapped off the phone. So her mother was arriving home sooner than expected. Right. Maybe it was a sign. It was silly of him to be resentful, even though aggravated by a recall of the slight mutual chill between them. He was exaggerating, sure. This was merely Jenny’s official, diplomatic way of saying ‘I’m going to be busy. Let me have some space. Perhaps we ought to rethink our relationship.’ Or some rubbi
sh like that.
So maybe he ought to rethink, too. Perhaps the wisest thing was to do nothing. He would give up the translation of the new material. He would inform Leo Kamen it was all over, let Ben know he couldn’t help him any more, take the logical course of commercial mendicancy, follow the head-hunter’s advice, put on his best suit, go to interviews, do his best to seem intelligent, keen and employable…
Betrayal, yes. He knew he would be cheating. If ‘secrecy and speed’ mattered so much to Ben, then he knew he should keep faith and respect his friend’s need for urgency. He would do his best to ensure the material was translated secretly and speedily. How, though? How? Jenny’s warning seemed to accentuate all the likely danger he might face if he returned to his de luxe flat. The attack in the hotel room was warning enough that the material was wanted and he could easily be attacked again in his flat even though the key panel had been replaced.
For a moment he entered a daydream. Give it all up! came the prompting. Suddenly the ghostly odour was renewed. There was another voice speaking to him.
‘I got a problem.’
‘So haven’t we all.’
Joe chewed slowly on a roll as his spoon went back into Silvester’s best minestrone soup. Ronald Salisbury’s nephew was standing in front of him.
‘Can I?’
The boy called Billy sat down abruptly at the table and unleashed himself towards Joe in pent-up eagerness as if he had been rehearsing for the moment. He was wearing a red anorak with a hood. His young face, scrubbed free of paint, had a glossy freshness made almost pure china bright by the enlargement that clean spectacles now brought to very dark brown eyes. ‘I was wondering if…’
The strange perfume odour was no longer at all ghostly. It was emanating directly from Billy as he asked through well-shaped, almost pouting lips if he could, you know, ask for a favour.
Mr Frankenstein Page 11
