by M. H. Baylis
He remembered the note in the university newsletter and hauled it out of the mess on his desk again for a look. In an earlier issue, it seemed, a contributor calling themselves “Hollow Wayne” had dubbed Navitsky a ‘Czech with a chequered past’ and been forced to apologise. Rex wondered what other things “Hollow Wayne” might have said, and flipped through to the back.
Wayne, it seemed, fancied him- or herself as a gossip columnist, and the column was essentially a series of semi-cryptic lines concerning events and people in the goldfish-bowl world of a campus university.
Which buff-lookin’ rapstar beefcake in the Sports Psychology Department swallowed so many ‘study aids’ that his heart-rate broke Olympic Records and he had to leave his lec-cha on a stret-cha?
Underneath that was the reference Maureen had mentioned:
At the Union Committee meeting on Wednesday: the usual sparks flew between a certain toothsome two-some, a.k.a., in the red corner, the girl who’s redder than the Red Flag, and in the white, well, who ordered the White Russian? Who you trying to kid, kids? Travelodge are doing a special. Get. A. Room.
It gave little away, except that, based on two weeks’ worth of references, Jan Navitsky seemed to crop up a lot in the gossip column. But that was because he was the President. For much the same reasons, Eric Miles was always in s: Haringey, despite being as dull as he was decent.
He wondered what else Hollow Wayne might have said about Navitsky, and thought about getting hold of more back editions of the student paper. But there ought to be a more direct way to find out.
Rex rang the number listed for Navitsky on the university directory. Straight to answerphone. He was leaving a message as Lawrence came in.
‘Now then,’ he said meaningfully. ‘I needn’t ask if your day got better towards the evening.’
‘Sorry, Lawrence?’
‘How was your pizza?’ Lawrence asked. Then, before Rex could reply, went on: ‘The Venerable Mrs Berne and myself passed by The Napoli after a talk at Muswell Hill library. You looked very cosy in there. The pair of you.’
A couple of years ago, Rex had had a fling with Lawrence’s niece, Diana, a doctor. It hadn’t worked out – Diana had gone to Cambodia to minister to the sick – but for some reason Lawrence still felt involved in Rex’s private life.
‘I had a good evening, thank you, Lawrence,’ Rex replied stiffly as Terry and Ellie came in with matching coffee cups.
Lawrence put a wad of printed papers down on Rex’s desk, making him feel guilty about his unfriendliness.
‘Mrs B and I worked it all out using The Joys of Yiddish and Google Translate,’ he said. Rex stared down at the papers blankly. They appeared to be from German newspapers in the late 1990s. He spotted words he felt he should know. Schreckliches. Verkehrsunfall. Then some he definitely did know. Küçüktürk. Kurdisch. Alkohol.
‘No suggestion of any of that, what d’you call it, “honour killing”. Mina’s mother, Meda, died in a traffic accident crossing the road. Van heading north towards Hamburg. Didn’t stop. Remains one of the roughly twenty-seven fatal hit and runs that go unprosecuted in Germany every year. Compared to our nineteen, so they’re less efficient than us at something…’
‘Everybody! Circle up! Meeting! Let’s go!’
With another neat impersonation of Susan and a brace of hand-claps, Ellie started the meeting. It was a subdued, business-like affair, with everyone trying so hard not to seem affected by the row of yesterday that it hung around them like a bad curry. Ellie approved of going big on the falling window. She liked the idea of a sideline discussion topic too, about Breakfast Clubs, and whether family life was suffering because of people’s long working hours. She was so supportive of a piece on the video poker machines that Rex suspected she’d gone home last night and taken advice from someone on high. Or just some Prozac.
She was not, however, going to let him forget his promises, and as he headed out to start his research into the poker machines, she called him into her office and shut the door.
‘I shouldn’t have done that yesterday. I don’t mean the story. I mean what I said to you in front of everyone else, about… about your problems and… finding a therapist. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay. A lot of what you said was true.’
She nodded. ‘Based on your response, Rex, and what I’ve seen, I am obliged as your line manager to recommend that you seek some counselling. I don’t know if you know but our main office has a Men’s Group that meets…’
‘I’ve got a therapist,’ he lied quickly. The thought of a Men’s Group at the head office in Shoreditch drove him to it. What would go on down there? Drumming? Hugging?
She looked surprised. ‘You’ve got one? Can you give me the details? It’s not to be nosey. I think I can get you some money towards it if it’s the right sort of…’
Backed into a corner now, he said, ‘Maureen Beddoes. She’s based at Metropolitan University.’
‘And you’re seeing her… when?’
He forced a smile. ‘Today.’
Ellie nodded. ‘Beddoes. Met U. Great. If you get me a letter or an invoice from her, I’ll talk to Finance about the money.’
Rex sighed loudly as he went down the stairs, so loudly that Brenda, on the receptionist desk, pointedly stopped speaking into her telephone and waited until the interruption had passed. The sun was shining on the puddles outside, though, and as he walked down the high road towards his first assignment, he thought that seeing Maureen might have some benefits. If he was clever, he might find out some more about Jan Navitsky’s chequered past, and whether it had involved Mina. Before that, though, it was poker-time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Self-satisfied Crouch End, bookish Highgate, hard Seven Sisters: to ensure an even spread, he’d picked bookmakers all over the borough, and talked to two or three poker-players in each. He was still none the wiser.
He could see why the big companies wanted the machines in their shops, because they were highly addictive, required no manpower and sucked up cash in a way that betting on horses and football never could. He could see, in at least two out of the three cases, that the individual managers were less keen, if not on moral grounds then because they feared being replaced by machines themselves.
As for the sort of punters locked onto the terminals between nine and eleven on a Tuesday morning, Rex admitted to being blinded by his own prejudices. He’d never really got games: the idea of trying to win something for the sake of winning, rather than the reward, was to him as alien as Clapham, or performance art, or sushi. And that seemed to be the real drive for the worst addicts. Not winning cash, because they knew they’d never really win cash in a form they could hang onto, but simply beating a machine. Was it powerlessness, then, the true drive – the simulated thrill of taking on the system?
One of the people he’d talked to, a gaunt, uncertain man in an Argos uniform, described it as a ‘buzz’. Rex wondered if pulling the power lead out of the machine and sticking it in his mouth would have provided something similar.
In a bid to understand more – and to get on with his own, private queries about the Shopping City repairs – he headed to another shop, the one just over the High Road from his office. Track betting had begun now, and the place was full of hi-vis and durable trousers. Poring over the papers with scholarly concentration, there was another man, a huge, wide, leather-black African in a checked shirt and a Stetson, who looked up when Rex asked the counter-lady if Texo had been in.
‘That’s me,’ said the big man. ‘What do you want?’
He stood with his legs apart, a fancy belt buckle glinting in the lights from the poker consoles. Vast, ebony fingers hovered over his jeans pockets, as if itching to draw out six-guns.
‘Texo Chuba?’
People chuckled. The man bristled. ‘Tex. Ochuba.’
The twitching trigger-fingers brought out a council pass from one of the pockets. Most people wore them round their necks. Tex kept his hidden.
>
‘I just wondered,’ Rex said, slipping onto a stool. ‘If you’d seen anything up at Shopping City on Friday? You know, when the girl fell?’
‘I tol’ the police,’ Tex said emphatically, displaying a dazzling set of white and gold teeth. ‘I had the door down at the van. Trying to fix it. I didn’t see anything until I took it back up at about half past one and then there was a policeman there and he said area was shut off.’
‘Is that why you couldn’t put the door back in?’
Tex frowned, repeating Rex’s words to himself silently before saying: ‘The door is back.’
‘The entrance door from Sky City to the shops? It wasn’t yesterday.’
‘What?’
Tex grabbed a diadem of different-shaped keys from the slim formica bar next to him and, without a backward glance, fled. Rex was intending to head after him but a hand stopped him. It was the small man he’d noticed on his last visit. He had a face like a disused car-park: cracked and sprouting.
‘He was in the Coral’s at the bottom from twelve till gone three,’ said the man in a low voice. He smelt of frying oil, loneliness and regret. ‘I was in there, and I lost in all the same races he lost in. Dogs. Wimbledon. Then he was up here, four ’til late, telling everyone how much money he’d won before.’
Rex frowned. ‘Why would he do that?’
The man laughed bitterly. ‘Because he’s a cunt. I used to work with him. At the Council Works. And he’s a cunt.’
Rex made to head off, but the hand shot out again.
‘That’s worth a drink, isn’t it, boss?’
All Rex had on him was a pair of two-pound coins. The man accepted them and fed them, worshipful, into the nearest poker machine.
He hoped Tex and his Stetson might still be visible on the high street, but as he was going through the doorway, he encountered another obstacle. A man who refused to move.
Ashley Pocock kissed his teeth at him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m fond of poker,’ Rex said. ‘Like you.’
The eyes narrowed to vanishing point. ‘You’ve got the wrong idea.’
‘About what? About you taking bungs to feed your love of Texas Hold ’Em?’
Pocock snorted. ‘Yeah. That’ll do for starters.’ He then muttered something rude but indistinct and pushed past Rex into the shop.
There was no sign of a ten-gallon hat on either side of the street. Rex wondered about crossing over, and going through the Market Hall to the entrance to the Sky City flats. Someone would be bound to come in or out, at some point, someone who couldn’t give a flying one about security, and would let him up to see if Tex Ochuba was there, frantically doing something about the mysterious missing door. Then his phone rang. Maureen, returning the call he’d made to her as he left the office. She could see him in an hour’s time. Or not at all for another week.
* * *
‘I’m noticing that there does seem to be a lot of loss around, Rex.’
‘Around?’ he echoed cynically. Rex knew he sounded like a surly teenager. But he couldn’t help himself. He resented the language. The around. The there does seem and the I’m noticing. Resented the studiedly restful counselling room, with its beige linens and its one, tasteful poster advertising a long-gone Kandinsky Exhibition in Bruges. You are in a place of thought, the poster said. While the box of tissues on the hexagonal table said: Go on, cry. He was determined not to. He’d done it before, spilled his guts to order in precise, fifty-minute intervals. And that was over. His therapy was finding things out now, his medicine cold Okocim Mocne, 7.1%.
‘Yes,’ Maureen said, unflapped by his sarcasm. ‘Your mum. Your wife. The – was she Lithuanian – the artist girl who died? Diana, the doctor you were seeing, who left. And now Mina. So many lost girls you’re trying to find.’
An awful image came to his mind. As he’d feared it would. Returning to the flat in Camden, half-crazy, stinking after the accident and a week-long vigil at the bedside of his unseeing, unresponding, destroyed wife. Doing crazy tasks that weren’t important: paying a water bill, emptying the bathroom waste-bin into the big bins by the gateway. Most men think it’s their job to empty the bins – she’d said, more than once. Why do you never do it? But this time, he did. Flies everywhere – in December.
‘What are you thinking about, Rex?’
‘I –’ He swallowed. An odd thought occurred to him. That he could just say it. Jump in. Then his phone rang. ‘I have to take this, I’m sorry.’
Maureen sat in disapproving silence, hands clasped on her lap, as he answered. The voice on the other end reminded Rex of tv commercials. Clear diction, perfect English, vowels copied from Hollywood.
‘I’m sorry for not replying to your messages. I just got back to the Union office today. I’m Jan Navitsky,’ the voice added.
‘Wait there,’ Rex said.
Five minutes later, he was in the scruffy office that smelt of Pot Noodles. Jan Navitsky, his Brasso-blond hair swept back, all gleaming in a white rugby shirt, was not a Pot Noodle man. He had a tropical fruit salad from Waitrose.
‘My step-mom had a small operation in Berlin and my dad was unfortunately at the last minute not able to see her safely back home, so…’ He shrugged. As if he felt under suspicion, Navitsky showed him an image on his iPad – of himself and a very beautiful, Slavic-looking woman not much older than him in a wheelchair.
‘Your stepmother?’
‘My third,’ Navitsky replied, still smiling. His eyes glittered like frost. ‘I got the call from my dad around midday, I cancelled my arrangements for the afternoon, went by my apartment and told my flatmate and then I was on a plane at 3.40 from London City to Tegel. I think I picked up my step-mom at about 7.45.’
‘So your dad calls you, and you drop everything to fly 1,000 miles in an afternoon?’
‘When my dad asks people, they do it,’ Navitsky said, more proud than resentful. ‘Anyway, I have a Lufthansa Platinum Card. I just walk on.’
‘You seem fond of your… stepmother,’ Rex said, nodding towards the image on the iPad.
The smile didn’t move. ‘And?’
‘I heard that wasn’t the case with Mina.’
‘We argued. I never make any secret of my background, you know, we’re a wealthy family, I went to boarding school in the States… Some people here believe that makes me less qualified to do my job.’
‘People like Mina?’
‘And I would say the same thing back to her. You know – why do you know more, Mina, why are you a better person because you went to the rubbish state school and your dad runs a diner? It would go like that a lot. At meetings. In the bar. Everywhere.’ He laughed a little. It seemed almost fond.
‘Leading people to suggest that you two should get a room?’
He shook his head, good-naturedly. ‘Opposites attract? I don’t believe it. But I did respect Mina. And I was very upset to hear the news. I couldn’t believe she’d do something like that.’
‘You couldn’t?’
‘It didn’t make sense. I was here, in this office, when she got the news about next year’s funding. That was only just under a month ago. She was… to me she seemed overjoyed.’ Navitsky frowned. Rex was reminded again of that face on the balcony. A thin, hungry face. Could it have been him? ‘Is that the right word?’
‘I don’t know. Overjoyed about what?’
‘She got a Brady Institute Scholarship to spend next year working in a… I suppose a Refugee Law Centre. For Kurdish refugees. In Turkey. It was like her dream. When the news came, Mina and Kyretia were making so much noise in the office that the psychiatrist lady came in from next door to ask them to be quiet.’
‘So Kyretia was pleased for her.’
‘Pleased for herself. They were both going.’
‘Two women from the same university. They must be a talented pair.’
‘A talented pair together, sure,’ Navitsky said, implying something Rex couldn’t divine. ‘I don’t know if Kyretia wil
l go now. I heard she’d dropped out of the course. She’s not coming back to man – I mean – take charge of our Reception Desk, anyway, I know that.’
He made a face. If Navitksy wasn’t actually sorry for the girl, Rex thought, he did a fairly good version of it. ‘It was a big thing for both of them to go. They were learning Turkish. Going to the gym to get fit, eating a special diet. I think Kyretia grew up on top of a cake-baker’s shop in Tottenham, you know. For her, the east is Chingford.’ Navitsky grinned at his joke.
Rex found he was still thinking about Jan Navitsky’s grin five minutes later as he left the compound through the reception area. As a basically anxious being, he instinctively mistrusted anyone who was that self-assured. And yet, it seemed to him, there had been genuine affection in the man’s clear, grey eyes when he spoke about Mina, genuine bewilderment at what had happened.
The photos on the iPad seemed to back up his story, too. But he’d seemed slightly too eager to display them. And how hard would it be, for a young man with his connections, to hook an alibi together? The whole string of events: the call at midday, the back-up conversation with the flatmate, the plane times, had slipped out like something rehearsed. No, he didn’t believe Jan Navitsky, even if he didn’t know why he’d been lying.
He glanced at the Security Desk on his way out, wondering if he’d see Haluk, but today, a rangy-looking Somali boy with crazy hair was wearing the uniform, lost in the music being piped noisily through vast, baby-blue headphones.
