by Toby Litt
‘Well,’ he said, hands flying apart like well-choreographed doves. ‘Next time, perhaps.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But this has all been rather traumatic for me. However, I may at some point want to book this particular table for some friends. I have strange friends. Curious people. It would be good to know that you would make it available for them – as a favour to me.’
‘Of course,’ he said, undisconcerted.
‘But there is one thing you could do for me today.’
I could tell that the maître d’ wanted to say Anything but was holding back. If he said that, I could ask for anything: I was a potential madman back from the dead. No-one could predict what obscenity I might want.
‘What can we do for you?’ he asked.
‘Could I please have a look at your reservations book for August last year?’
‘If we had it, Mr Redman, of course. But unfortunately the police have taken it away.’
Interesting.
‘Ah, I don’t suppose you can remember under what name the table for us was booked.’
The maître d’ hesitated. Here was a chance for him to demonstrate his double power: the power of knowledge and the power of knowledge withheld. Both, in different ways, were a temptation – but he settled for disclosure, as it was most likely to send me away quietly and to keep me away once sent.
‘Yes, I was with the Detective Inspector when he examined the reservation book. The name was Alun Grey. When the waiter – Michael – called for the ambulance, he gave that as your name. Some confusion may have resulted.’
I made more of getting to my feet than was absolutely necessary, but not much.
‘Thank you for clearing that up,’ I said.
‘A pleasure, Mr Redman.’
We began to move towards the door, eyes following us.
‘I hope the incident hasn’t affected your business.’
‘On the contrary, Mr Redman. It may be a sad comment upon human nature, but our bookings have actually increased.’
‘Really?’ I asked.
‘By over 10 per cent.’
There – I had discovered the greedy shopkeeper in him. He realized his mistake and was ashamed. A figure should never have been mentioned. Not to a customer, and particularly not to this customer. Attempting to cover up, he babbled.
‘They are constantly asking for that table and they say You know the one I mean. Perhaps you experienced some difficulty in booking?’
‘I would have preferred to come in the evening.’
‘Unfortunately, Mr Redman, the ghouls are particularly fond of the evening.’
I turned to him at the top of the stairs.
‘But you’ll clear the table for me, if I ask.’
Only his eyelids moved, but it still conveyed a nod.
‘Certainly.’
I made him shake hands on this and on our goodbye.
‘Could Michael help me down the stairs again?’ I asked.
The maître d’ retreated – off to fetch him.
33
Half-way down the stairs I turned to Michael and said: ‘Your maître d’ just told me the name under which the table was booked – you know, the night I was shot.’
Michael halted.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Do you remember what it was?’ I asked.
He looked back up the stairs.
‘Alun Grey,’ he said.
‘And did you take the booking?’ I asked.
He nodded, quickly.
I looked at him. Did I really have to ask the next question? It seemed I did.
‘Who made the booking?’
‘The police already know this,’ he said.
‘But I don’t,’ I said. I lifted up one of my crutches – casually, as if I was so used to them they were merely a useful extension of my arms.
‘Mr Grey actually made the booking.’
‘On what day of the week.’
‘Monday or Tuesday.’
He seemed to have something else to say, if only I asked the right question.
‘And?’ I asked.
‘I think it was Monday,’ he said. But that wasn’t the answer he’d been meaning to give.
We turned our attention back to the stairs.
Once outside again on the street, I said to him, ‘Thank you for your help.’
He smiled.
‘Take care of yourself,’ he said.
‘And you,’ I replied.
Really, we had much more in common with each other than either of us had with the maître d’. We were the same kind: strugglers-after-something-we-aren’t-going-to-get.
‘See you again, maybe,’ he said.
He put his hand on my shoulder before jogging back up the stairs.
As I walked away from Le Corbusier I felt exhausted, but I had the name – an unexpected name – and I had my next task: Alun Grey.
34
Alun Grey was an actor. A large man with a resonant voice and eyebrows that grew bushier with each passing season in Stratford. In Sunday-magazine features he was always photographed standing in a greatcoat somewhere desolate – usually the Welsh Valleys, where he (and his resonance) originally hailed from. For years, because of this, he’d had to put up with tag of ‘the new Richard Burton’. He had the requisites: voice, face, thirst, birds. Back in the early 1960s, he’d played lovable rogues – usually Cockney. His film career had really been taking off. There was talk of Hollywood. But something had halted his slide towards an interesting and vastly successful life – and that something had been his wife, the actress Dorothy Pale.
Dorothy had recently reached that age many actresses reach, where a combination of hormonal changes and the exercise of certain professional muscles had rendered her almost completely uncastable. Her throat had widened into a trunk of resonance, capable of rattling dentures in the gods. Her voice was now a blasted-out husk of cracks, creaks and virtuosic but unnatural octave leaps. Her mouth and eyes were so wide that any camera found them painful to look at. Skin aged by make-up and make-up removal, dried by the lights, wrinkled by the repeated-repeated-repeated emotions: again and again, grief. So much so, that her only plausible roles nowadays were grief-stricken or aggrieved. But because she could no longer credibly carry off before-grief as well as after-grief, she rarely got the chance. Dorothy, you see, had ceased to be a believable human being. She was now a monster of the theatre – a creature whose only viable existence was on the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Company, shuddering and gesticulating, whispering and strutting, croaking out the pentameter, leaping into unscripted clutches with any actor that happened to be passing (much in contrast to her famously monogamous off-stage life).
Posters advertising Alun and Dorothy’s modern dress production of Macbeth were all over London.
The whole thing was ridiculous – a last kiss-off by the RSC to a dedicated old stager. Dorothy was far too old to play a convincing Lady Macbeth. ‘Bring forth men children only,’ would be a hoot. (Dorothy was forty-eight and had a fifteen-year-old son, named Laurence after Olivier.) It was a vanity production, and all the critics knew that it was Dorothy’s farewell. (Whether Dorothy knew was another matter.) After this it would be witches all the way.
Lily and Alun had toured together in The Ghost Sonata. But I hadn’t been aware that they’d done anything else after that, other than keep in professional touch the way actors do – just in case they ever have to work with any particular co-actor again, perhaps for many performances, perhaps for many productions.
This secrecy suggested an affair – always assuming that they’d been seeing each other whilst she and I were still living together.
If they hadn’t, then Lily’s frock might still suggest an affair – maybe not in process, but definitely in the offing. Designer, as far as Lily was concerned, had always meant sex.
(During our last episode of fuckings, we’d done it on the floor of the women’s changing rooms at Harvey Nichols – Lily flicking V-signs
at the security camera over my shoulder. Well, it was a lot better than sitting outside with the other partners, exchanging shrugs and grimaces.)
Maybe the Le Corbusier date had been intended as their reunion – finally, we can be together, etc. But Alun wasn’t going to leave his wife. The Dorothy Pale. Not for Lilian Irish. Mere Lilian Irish.
I had met Alun three times. Once when I picked Lily up after a Ghost Sonata rehearsal. Once drunkenly, at that production’s first-night party. And once in the classical music section of the Virgin Megastore – where he apologized for his behaviour during and after the first-night party. On each of the three occasions I’d been impressed by his masculinity, his nostril hair and his aftershave – all of which were pronounced.
In a nearby newsagent I bought a copy of the Standard. Then I sat down at one of the pavement tables outside Bar Italia and looked through the theatre listings. There it was:
Sub Overdale’s
MACBETH
Starring
Alun Grey and Dorothy Pale
Barbican, Main Stage
Perfs 7.00, Thursday Matinee
After finishing my cappuccino, I went to one of the booking offices on Leicester Square. I bought myself a stalls ticket for the following evening. I let them know I’d be coming in a wheelchair.
After all that, I felt I had done enough for one day – I was beginning to get tired. Leg-weary and heart-sore, I let a taxi take me home.
35
On Friday morning, after Anne-Marie had left to go to work, I finally faced the pile of post I’d brought back with me from Lily’s flat.
After being kicked out, I deliberately hadn’t bothered to have my mail redirected – hoping that this would give me an excuse for some minimal contact with Lily. (I could think of her touching my forwarded post.) In fact, she’d been supposed to bring along my letters to our dinner date.
Josephine hadn’t left very much personal stuff. There were letters and postcards from Lily’s friends. I read a few of them. Thailand is still totally wicked… And then he dumped me, just like that… Can’t wait till this fucking shoot’s over… I’d never really liked Lily’s friends.
Most of the envelopes were junk mail, continuing for months after Lily’s death: credit cards, health insurance. There were also bills for her utilities: gas, electricity, water, phone.
A vague idea forming, I looked through the phone bill – it just gave totals. But turning to the bill for her mobile phone, I saw that it was fully itemized.
There were several pages of computer printout detailing the numbers which Lily had called, the length of those calls and how much she’d been charged for them. It covered the month before she died. I became excited. There would be plenty of useful stuff here, surely – Alunwise. But even before I’d started looking through properly, something struck me: I flicked to the last page – knowing that Lily’s last hours would be there. She had made quite a few calls the day she was shot – which was all as expected. But what shocked me was what I saw at the very bottom of the page.
Date
Time
Destination
Duration (hrs:mins:secs)
Cost before discount (£)
30 Aug
21.52
(residential number)
0:02:01
0.042
30 Aug
21.54
(residential number)
0:01:37
0.042
The last two calls had been made after Lily was shot.
Someone had used her mobile, after she died – within an hour of her death.
As no further calls had been made since then, I had no reason for suspecting the phone had been stolen – not unless it had been assigned another number.
Obviously, now, the police would have the mobile somewhere in a plastic evidence bag. But just to check, I dialled Lily’s number – having first shielded my own. All I got was This mobile phone has been disconnected.
I looked at the time of the calls again: 21.52 and 21.54. I remembered what the doctor had told me, back when I’d just come out of my coma. Lily had died in the restaurant. She’d then been taken, like me, to University College Hospital. Whoever it was that had used the phone had probably done so from there. That suggested two groups of people: police and hospital staff. Of the two, I immediately suspected the latter. Somehow the blaséness of using a dead person’s mobile recalled the sick humour of medical students – tales of locking fellow students up in crates full of detached arms or dressing up real corpses and taking them down to the college bar…
Lily always kept her mobile in her handbag – and she’d had her handbag with her when she was shot, hung over the back of the chair.
Assuming that Lily’s stuff had been taken along with her to the hospital, the likeliest maker-of-the-call seemed to be some cash-strapped assistant nurse left alone with the bag for five minutes.
Again, shielding my own, I phoned up the first of the two posthumous numbers.
A young woman answered.
‘Who is that?’ I asked.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘Is that Anne-Marie?’
‘No, you’ve got a wrong number.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Fuck off, creep.’
She put the phone down.
That hadn’t gone very well. Before calling the second number, I formulated a plan. It was only very rough, but as things turned out, I didn’t need anything more elaborate.
‘Hello-yes?’
It was a woman’s voice. Middle-aged.
‘I’m phoning from the hospital.’
‘Asif’s on his way. He left all of fifteen minutes ago.’
Asian.
‘Ah,’ I said, assuming an authority I didn’t have. ‘Well, that’s good.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said.
‘You’re Asif’s mother, I take it.
‘I am.’
‘Can’t you do anything about getting him here on time?’
‘I’m very sorry. And I had promised Doctor Calcutt it wouldn’t happen again.’
‘Asif does have an alarm clock, doesn’t he?’
I was enjoying this.
‘But he falls asleep before he remembers to set it. He’s so tired.’
‘Wonderful.’
‘Do you work in the pathology department, too?’
‘No, I’m just a faceless manager, trying efficiently to deploy very limited resources. Asif’s resources seem more limited than most, I must say.’
‘Please don’t be too hard on him.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’
‘He’s been trying his best, ever since the police spoke to him…’
‘Ah, yes…’
‘He works very hard.’
‘I’m sure he does.’
36
Of course, it was hardly likely that the police hadn’t checked up on Lily’s phonecalls, as well. Asif must have already been in serious trouble for what he’d done.
An approach suggested itself – and I decided to pursue it immediately. Shielded, I phoned University College Hospital. When I got the switchboard, I asked for Pathology. When I got Pathology, I tricked Asif’s surname – Prakash – out of them. (They also told me that he was an Assistant Pathologist.) Then I called up a second time and asked for him by name. He’d just arrived, and came to the phone guilty and out of breath.
‘Yes?’
‘Asif Prakash?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is it standard Hospital Trust procedure for pathologists to use the mobile phones of –’
‘Shit.’
‘– recently deceased persons?’
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a freelance journalist. I work for the tabloids.’
Words he must have been dreading ever since.
‘What do you want?’
‘Do you have any comment?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Do you deny using Lilian
Irish’s mobile phone to make two phonecalls, the first to a young woman, the second to your mother?’
I could hear his breath wheezing across the receiver, although he didn’t speak.
‘Asif?’
‘No comment.’
‘People who say No comment always come across as guilty, Asif. Take my advice – say something. Deny it if you want, but I know you did it. The police have spoken to you about it. You’ve already been disciplined by the hospital. I’ll bet they don’t want the story to get out. It won’t look good for the police or for you. But it’s going to get out – and you’re going to look bad if you don’t help me.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Look, it’s probably not a good time for you, right now. I know you were late again for work today. Talking on the phone too long isn’t a good idea. Let’s say I call in a couple of days, then –’
Then I had a thought.
‘Or maybe I’ll just drop in at the hospital and see you. This story isn’t exactly hot at the moment. But they’ll run it whenever it’s ready. The news desk’s keen. If you want to talk, fine. But I’ve got more than enough already. See you, Asif.’
He spluttered something but the phone went down anyway.
After this obvious breakthrough, I decided to try and see if I could get a copy of Lily’s mobile-phone bill – right from the day she bought it. The joint account for the flat phone – as I already knew – had been paid off and closed by Lily’s parents.
I called the mobile-phone company. I said that I thought Lily had been overcharged for a number of calls. They asked why I hadn’t taken the matter up earlier. I told them the truth: shooting, coma, threat of paralysis, therapy. They fetched their manager. I demanded a fully itemized bill. They promised it by return of post.
~
Next, I decided to go through the bill I already had – starting on the day she died and working back through it.
The best thing, I thought, would be to get really nerdy on it with some colour-coded fluourescent marker-pens: identify as many of the numbers as possible (paying special attention to Alun’s), then trace them all back – in yellow, pink, blue and green.
