by Cerys du Lys
Just how paranoid was she being?
She keyed the remote for the garage door and pulled out onto the driveway.
When she had driven a short way from the house she pulled into the mouth of a field gateway and killed the engine and lights.
Minutes passed and there was no sign of any other vehicles.
She felt stupid. She felt paranoid. She felt really, really scared.
She started up again and drove for ten minutes, pulling up outside a row of thatched cottages.
It was late, she knew, but she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.
She knocked on the front door of one of the cottages and a dog started to yap from inside. Seconds later, the door opened a little and halted, restrained by a security chain.
“Lydia?”
“Eleanor?”
The door pushed shut so the chain could be released, and then opened wide. Eleanor’s aunt stood there in striped pyjamas, holding back a Westie that glowed white like a ghost in the gloom of the cottage’s interior.
“What’s wrong, Eleanor? Is something the matter?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know what’s the matter, but I just need to stay somewhere tonight.”
“What’s he done? It’s Jeremy, isn’t it? If he’s hit you, I’ll–”
“No. No. He hasn’t done anything. He’s not at home. I just needed to be somewhere else for tonight. Can I come in?”
3
The place with the roses. That was a private joke. It was a pub out by the river, west of Kingston. They’d stopped there for an impromptu drink one time a couple of years back, before they were married, because Eleanor liked the name: The Marchess. “It’s like the roses,” she’d told him. “Marchessa Boccella.” They’d always been one of her favorites: delicate pink petals crammed into tightly-packed heads, with a real old-fashioned rose scent.
The beer garden stretched right down to the river, where today she could see a line of cruisers and a single, traditional narrowboat moored. The early morning drizzle had cleared, and now it was a beautiful, sunny spring Saturday, and the benches and tables were all occupied by the time Eleanor arrived.
She walked down towards the water. There was something calming about this place, such a very English beer garden. It was a place where nothing bad would ever dare happen.
What wasn’t apparent from the pub was that the beer garden took an ‘L’ shape, one leg hidden from view by a hedge until you were most of the way down to the river. More tables occupied this quieter area and there, at the farthest table, Jeremy sat, looking out across the river.
He had a whisky, not normally a lunchtime drink for him, and by his glass was an untouched white wine spritzer, made with soda, not lemonade, and with a slice of lime wiped round the rim and squeezed into it. Jeremy knew how she liked her drinks, and what she would choose on a day like this.
He saw her as soon as she rounded the corner of the garden, and he stood, always the English gentleman.
For a moment this could have been any other day, but then, when she drew close to him, he put both hands behind her head and drew her in to a hungry, brief kiss.
She could get to like this new Jeremy. She could get to like him a lot if only he would–
“Where in fuck’s name have you been?” she said in a low voice. She almost never swore. He had probably never heard her say that word before. “I was scared. I didn’t know what had happened. You say you want me to trust you, well you have to give me something to trust.”
She sat across from him as she said this, and now he nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “But if I make one mistake, then it will be to protect you too much, Eleanor.”
He reached across, took her hand, and kissed her knuckles, the gentlest of touches.
“Where have you been hiding?” she said softly, and she didn’t mean just for the last few days.
§
Since leaving Eleanor that night, he’d been here at the Marchess. Not in the pub itself, but in one of the boats, a 26 foot cruiser owned by someone Jeremy described as ‘a business associate’.
The main cabin in was in the rear, the foam-topped bed narrower than a normal double. They lay there some time later, hot limbs entwined, breathing hard. It was as if a dam had burst. As if he’d been holding himself back all this time.
“I could never let myself go with you,” he tried to explain, his head buried into the hollow between her neck and shoulder. “That hurt so much, Eleanor, to hold a part of myself back from you. But I always feared... it sounds stupid, I know, but I always feared that if I ever truly let myself go with you then you might see past all of my defenses, and see who I really am.”
“Would that have been so bad?”
Those dark eyes. There was a darkness within him, she saw now. “I’ve been responsible for bad things,” he told her. “I feared you could never have loved me if you were aware of that.”
“But I do love you.”
She couldn’t remember the last time she had said that out loud, and even now it surprised her. It was true, though. The safe veneer of her life was in the process of being stripped away and right now she did not care. She had made her choices, and she was here, lying in the cabin of some stranger’s boat with her husband, naked and exhausted and buzzing with an exhilaration she had never known.
“It can be dangerous loving me,” he said. “This isn’t a game.”
“The police are after you, I know. I don’t know what for, but I can see that you’re scared.”
“It’s more than just the police,” he said. “If it was just the police I’d be laughing.”
He really was scared.
“Who is it? What are you involved in, Jeremy?”
He sat up, shuffling up the bed so he could lean on the headboard. He looked vulnerable like that. Exposed.
“I’ve been involved in all kinds of things,” he said, hesitantly. “It started with a little import and export. Things that may or may not have been illegal. I knew who to pay off in Customs so that it was never something that was tested in court. But one thing leads to another. What had been alcohol and electronics became pharmaceuticals, and then the guy who was financing things from the other side started to get ambitious. Once you’re involved in something like that, though, it’s just not possible to extricate yourself.”
“What have you been doing, Jeremy?”
“Trafficking,” he said simply. “Anything that the man on the other side wanted us to traffic.”
It was only much later that Eleanor would learn the full extent of that. The people. The women living in camps at Sangatte who would do anything to cross into the UK, and anything to stay once they had done so. The women from Eastern Europe and further afield, sold on the promise of a better life, and then just sold.
Now... Jeremy drew the line at what he had already told her: protecting her from the details, she understood, so that she would not have to lie for him. “I’m mixed up with some bad people,” he said. “I need to get out. I have money put aside. A new identity set up, a passport I can use. I’m going to get out, Eleanor, and then I’m going to bring you away from all this, if you’ll come. We can start again. A new start: the real us.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“You have a choice, Eleanor. You can stay here, you can start again without me. But I have to go. If I stay here then I’ll be arrested, or worse. Far worse. I know too much. I know I don’t have long. Will you come with me, Eleanor? Will you take that chance on a future together?”
4
He’d told her she should trust Danny Taylor. No one else. Just Danny.
To do such a thing went against her better judgment, but Danny had already come good, delivering Jeremy’s first message to her. Was she just being a snob? Distrusting him because he was rough around the edges and put on that tough, wide-boy act all the time?
“I know you don’t like him,” Jeremy had told her, shortly before she left him at the boat, “but Danny’s
a good guy. And there’s one thing I know for certain: his loyalty is to me.”
She’d nodded, and agreed to trust Danny. In an odd kind of way that felt reassuring. She’d had nobody she felt she could turn to and now there was, at least, someone. He’d made her memorize Danny’s number, and if she needed to call him she must do so from the village call-box, not her mobile or the landline. It felt good to have something there, in her head, that she could fall back on.
“Are you going to be okay?” she had asked before leaving the boat. “You’re not going to do anything foolish...?”
He shook his head. “I’m too scared,” he said.
For a moment she thought it was a glib joke, but no, he really was. That, more than anything else up to now, impressed on her the seriousness of the situation.
§
She heard nothing the next day, and the time passed slowly, even for a Sunday. She didn’t feel she could go out, she felt so exposed, but staying at home just made everything worse. She worked in the garden, always feeling that there were eyes on her. Every car that went past was going to be the police, or a car full of some kind of gangster, until it went past harmlessly and she could calm her rising panic.
The evening was worse. The house seemed so empty, even though she was accustomed to Jeremy being away. This was her life now: one filled with fear and uncertainty. Her old life, the comfortable one built on deception and self-delusion, seemed so far away.
Monday, she should have had meetings in the city but she rearranged everything. It wouldn’t do any good to mope around at home, but then trying to work when she was so distracted wouldn’t do anyone any good.
By Monday evening, she thought she might be going steadily mad. She trusted nothing, no one. Every shadow contained a potential stalker, every slight noise was the first sign that they – whoever ‘they’ might be – were finally closing in.
She decided to walk into the center of the village and call Danny. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know if she wanted to even do anything more than just hear his voice on the end of the line. Just that moment of normality, of a voice she could trust... suddenly that seemed such a precious thing.
§
So much for memorizing his number. When she opened the front door a silver car was approaching slowly up the drive, Danny at the wheel.
She waited as he pulled up, and then climbed out.
Standing in the driveway, he shrugged, his hands spread wide, eyebrows raised. It was a very open gesture, one that said I don’t know what the Hell’s going on but it’d be good to share it with someone right now.
She stepped back and waved him in. “Come on,” she said to him. “I have wine. Beer. Whatever.”
They sat in the conservatory, a large construction of finely leaded glass at the back of the house, built carefully to catch the best of the evening sun. Danny had opted to join her with a bottle of Marlborough Pinot Noir. She couldn’t tell if it was actually his preference or if he was just trying to make a point; maybe he’d picked up on her snobbery from the start.
“He’s scared,” she said, after a short period filled with small talk about the house and garden, and long silences.
“So you did go to see him,” said Danny. He’d been very careful not to ask questions. Perhaps that was out of respect for her feelings, or maybe because he didn’t want to be told anything that might turn out to be incriminating.
She nodded.
“I don’t know if he’s more scared of the police or whoever else is after him.”
Danny looked away. “I don’t know much,” he said. “I just pick up on a few bits and pieces, you know what I mean?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I wasn’t digging.”
He took another sip of his wine. “I just hope he’s okay, you know? He’s looked out for me in the past. He believed in me when everyone else just treated me like shit.”
“He’s okay. Or at least he was when I saw him on Saturday.”
“They’ll find him,” said Danny. “Nothing will stop them.”
“He’s okay,” she said again. “He’s somewhere only he and I would think of. The only thing is...”
Danny leaned forward. “Is what?” he asked. “What is it?”
“Well, he’s staying on a boat. One that’s owned by a what he described as a ‘business associate’. So this business contact must know he’s there... You think that’s safe? Do you know who that might be?”
Danny shook his head. “Don’t know nobody with a boat,” he said. “Unless it’s... Guy has a motor cruiser out on the Thames, out Twickenham way. If it’s him then it’s not too bad, I guess.”
She felt herself relax, just a fraction. She took another sip of her wine, aware of Danny’s mismatched eyes on her. She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes.
She just had to get through this.
And she just had to hope Jeremy would, too.
§
Danny stayed the night in a spare room. By the time they’d moved onto the second bottle of Pinot he’d have been foolish to try to drive, and Eleanor wasn’t disappointed to have someone else in the house again, particularly someone with a reassuring physical presence like Danny.
She woke late, her head pounding and her mouth and throat fuzzy and raw.
She lay there for some time, thinking she really should move. Suddenly it didn’t seem such a smart move to have someone like Danny stopping over in the house. Whereas last night his presence had been reassuring, now she felt even more vulnerable than when she had been on her own.
She needed to move, get dressed, get him out. She needed to decide how she was going to handle another day of waiting on the end of the phone.
It wasn’t until she heard a car on the drive that she sensed that this would be any different to the previous days spent waiting, in uncertainty. She thought at first it was Danny leaving, but then she heard doors slamming. The car had stopped and someone had got out. More than one person, as she’d heard two doors.
Seconds later she heard the doorbell, and from that point on what remained of her old life, and of the new life she had been in the process of constructing, was irrevocably stolen from her completely.
5
“Mrs Eleanor Dryton?”
The man at her door was fortyish with thinning sandy hair and an awkward, tired manner. He was wearing a slate-gray suit, the tie loosened, the top button of his shirt undone. Standing at his shoulder was a younger man in police uniform.
She nodded, swallowed. They’d come for Jeremy. They were going to ask her where he was and she was going to have to decide right now whether she was going to tell them, whether she was going to dodge the question somehow, or whether she was going to downright lie.
Suddenly she hated Jeremy with all her heart for doing this to her, and then she caught herself, staggered at how her feelings could swing so dramatically.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Bradley. I’m sorry to have to inform you that your husband, Jeremy, has passed away.”
She... what?
His words didn’t make sense.
She wasn’t prepared for this. She didn’t know what to say or do.
She stared at the man, but his eyes wouldn’t leave her. He was studying her for her reaction, she realized.
Her reaction to...
“He’s dead?”
“There was an accident,” said Bradley. “He was driving alone, late last night. We’re still investigating the circumstances.”
Just then Danny appeared on the stairs. “What’s up?” he said, pausing partway down.
Eleanor turned. “It’s Jeremy,” she said. “There’s been an accident.” She hadn’t made all the connections then. She didn’t think back to the evening before when Danny had gently extracted from her the information that Jeremy was hiding out on the boat, and that Danny had worked out whose boat he was on. She didn’t work out that Danny had had plenty of opportunity to make a call last night, to get some kind of message out.
&n
bsp; All that came later, in the long hours and days when she had plenty of time to think and make connections.
Right now: “Oh, Danny!”
He came to her, took her in his arms, and right then, at that moment, his strong embrace was the only thing that stopped her from losing it altogether.
Bradley gave them time, and then, finally, Eleanor pulled away, turned, and the two policemen were still standing there.
“And you are, sir?” Bradley said to Danny.
“Danny Taylor. I’m a friend.”
Bradley nodded, no doubt leaping to all kinds of conclusions.
“I... I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“Were you aware that your husband was being investigated?” asked Bradley.
That was it. The first question. All it required was a ‘yes’, a dodge or a ‘no’. She’d had so much time to anticipate this moment, and yet she still did not know what she should do.
“I... No. No, I wasn’t.”
She wasn’t really thinking. There was no rationale to her choice. A loyalty, perhaps: loyalty to the path they had chosen while Jeremy was still alive.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Dryton.”
For a moment she thought he was still expressing sympathy at her loss, but no...
“I’m sorry, Mrs Dryton, but we’re going to have to take you into custody. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
“You’re what?”
“You’re under arrest, Mrs Dryton, on suspicion of conspiracy on a number of offenses, including aiding and abetting in illegal immigration, trafficking in prostitution, fraud, and assisting an offender. We have evidence that your late husband was preparing to leave the country and that you are at risk of fleeing and so we are taking you into custody.”
All that, and the only words that really cut through her sudden numbness were late husband.
§
The rest was a blur.
The police station. Long hours being questioned by Bradley. Trying to make arrangements following Jeremy’s death, while she was locked up until finally she broke down and her solicitor – Jeremy’s solicitor – took control, said she’d take care of everything.
