by Joel Hames
She’d raised her voice a little, that patience stretched to breaking point. She pushed back her chair and got to her feet, and now she was standing there with her hands on her hips waiting for me to say something.
I had nothing to say.
The silence lengthened and I tried to picture myself from her angle. My mouth was shut, my jaw tight. How did I look? Angry? Thoughtful? I couldn’t even figure out how I felt. Maybe knowing what I looked like would give me a clue.
I shook my head and turned to go back to the bedroom.
“You can’t just ignore this,” she called after me. “We need to talk about it. We need to talk about things like this. Adrian says it’s absolutely critical.”
Adrian.
Adrian Chalmers was Claire’s “life coach”. She’d been seeing him for a couple of months, if seeing him was really the right word. They’d met just the once, back at the start, after she’d had a brief but intense crisis of confidence about her story and whether she’d been doing the right thing dedicating herself to it so single-mindedly for so long. She’d told me she needed help, professional help, not the sort of help I could provide, so I’d suggested she get some. “No point delaying,” I’d said. She’d spent an hour or two online and next thing I knew, she’d come up with Adrian Chalmers. The crisis had ended a day or two later, but she’d carried on speaking to him, once a week or so, on the phone or by Skype.
I had no idea what Adrian Chalmers actually did for her, what he told her, whether he was any use at all. I’d tried not to be dismissive when she’d told me she was going to see him, and tried not to seem too surprised when she’d told me she was still speaking to him even after the original reason had faded away. I’d made myself as neutral as I could about Adrian Chalmers.
I wasn’t feeling very neutral at the moment. More than human. That was Chalmers. It certainly wasn’t Claire. So she’d been talking to him about me. I contemplated storming back into the kitchen and confronting her, but I knew what she’d say. Adrian Chalmers was her life coach. I was part of her life. If there was a problem, I was part of that, too.
I decided to call Roarkes instead.
He answered on the seventh ring, just as I was about to give up, with a weary “Hello Sam” that made me think I’d made a mistake calling him before I’d said a word.
“Hello Roarkes,” I said. I didn’t like calling him Detective Inspector and he didn’t like anyone calling him Gideon. So Roarkes it was. “What’s the latest?”
I could almost hear the shrug. I could hear the sigh that went with it.
“Nothing new, Sam. It’s just a matter of time. At least she’s comfortable. Still thrashing me at Scrabble. Still doesn’t realise I’m letting her win. Still telling me I drink too much. We’re working on getting her into a hospice nearby. She won’t be able to measure what’s left in the whisky bottles then.”
I cut through the levity. “Is there anything I can do?”
I knew there was nothing I could do. He hadn’t told me about the diagnosis until I’d left Manchester, but he’d only known himself for a week. In the few days that had followed, Helen had gone from a healthy woman with a persistent headache to a shadow hovering inches from death, and I’d asked him a dozen times whether there was anything I could do. Every time he’d told me no, he could handle it, thanks but no thanks. Claire had told me to leave it alone, that Roarkes would call me if he needed me. I couldn’t leave it alone. He might change his mind.
“No, Sam. Really. I’ll let you know if there’s anything I need.”
“OK,” I replied. “Just remember I can come and see you if you want. Get you out for a beer. Sort out some paperwork. I might even drag myself out to Essex or wherever it is you live.”
He lived in Kent. I knew he lived in Kent. He knew I knew he lived in Kent.
“Fuck off, Sam,” he replied. “And thanks. Speak soon, OK?”
The call hadn’t done much to lift my mood, but at least I was thinking about something other than David Brooks-Powell. I managed an hour on the Hasina Khalil case, and by the time I’d had my fill of her I was feeling calm enough to brave the kitchen again.
Claire smiled as I walked in. She was standing by the hob watching the pot boil. Two cups, I noticed. At least Adrian Chalmers hadn’t taken that away from me.
“I called Roarkes,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about Chalmers. I didn’t want to think about Chalmers.
“And?”
“And nothing. Didn’t have anything to say.”
“I’ve told you to leave the man alone. He’ll call you when he needs you. He trusts you, Sam – more than anyone. You don’t have to keep testing him.”
For all that it had taken time for her to actually like Roarkes, she seemed to have a better sense of the man than I did.
“I just want to help” I said.
“I know you do. I just don’t think you’re doing him any favours calling him up every day when he’s got so much to deal with.”
“It’s not every day,” I muttered, but my heart wasn’t in it. She could have pushed me on that, but instead she just nodded and passed me my coffee, and we sat down on the sofa, in our usual positions, her on the left, me on the right, remote control in the middle. We’d been living together less than eight months but already we were falling into these patterns. I smiled to myself, and noticed Claire doing the same, having the same thoughts, no doubt. It wasn’t all bad.
“Lizzy Maurier didn’t look good,” I said. Claire had turned the television on but the sound was on mute, images flicking from a power station to Westminster and back to a newsroom.
“Hardly surprising, Sam. I mean, she’s just lost her mum. Can’t imagine she’ll get over that in a hurry.”
I nodded. It had been a brutal killing, according to the police. Beaten with a blunt instrument in her own home, and then stabbed in the stomach until she was beyond saving, breathing out her last on the floor of her own bedroom. She’d been found by her cleaner the following day, which was fortunate, in a way, because if the cleaner hadn’t found her it probably would have been Lizzy herself, and whatever state she was in now, seeing the body like that wouldn’t have improved it.
“I suppose so,” I said. “But it’s not just that. She seemed smaller, somehow. Maybe I’ve just remembered her wrong. Less vibrant I can get, after what’s happened. But, I don’t know, it felt like something more than that.”
They’d argued about the poetry, I remembered that. I remembered Lizzy sitting in the pub with me telling me her mother didn’t understand, didn’t see the opportunity, just didn’t get that this wasn’t a childish whim but a serious ambition. I remembered ordering another pint and nodding along with her but secretly agreeing with her mother. Elizabeth had won that fight. Elizabeth had won all the fights that counted, except her final one. If she’d fought at all.
“People change,” said Claire. “It’s been a long time, after all.” She was looking at the television. The Central Criminal Court – the Old Bailey, people still called it. Lots of press, lots of police. A picture of a man with his face blurred out – a notorious defendant, no doubt, or a star witness for the prosecution. Boats in the Mediterranean, so full there was hardly space for the shivering passengers to stand. Back to the studio. Onto the next story. A map of London with a street in Chelsea inset. A house with police tape outside. Claire was still watching, in silence.
I reached for my coffee.
3: You Think You Know Someone
FOR MOST OF the weekend I’d struggled to find a good reason not to do this damned thing, and failed. I’d even tried to get Claire to find one for me. I’d failed there, too. Our relationship for the past two-and-a-half days had been pretty much failure all the way – in fact, looking back, that brief interlude sitting there in silence drinking coffee and watching depressing news stories on the TV had probably been the high point.
Fifteen minutes, that silence had lasted, that false paradise where we sat comfortably and companionably and
drank in other people’s misery. And then Claire had turned to me and announced that her mother might be coming to stay. On the seventeenth. For three nights.
I had no problem with Claire’s mother. I quite liked the woman, as it happened, dull, dyed and dumb on the outside with a sharp bitter filling that only came out when you’d chewed an hour or two. She made me laugh, which was a good thing, because her husband made me want to shut my eyes and drop off the face of the earth, with his bow-ties and bonhomie and in-depth knowledge of every fucking topic there was. He wouldn’t be coming this time round, Claire offered, like a concession that sweetened the deal, and it did, but still. I liked Claire’s mother well enough, but not on home turf. She’d show up and turn all that bitterness on London, which was too expensive and too crowded and too fast and too loud and inferior in every possible way to her beloved Yorkshire. I’d laugh for the first half-hour, and she’d laugh with me, and then we’d both stop laughing but she wouldn’t stop the complaining, and pretty soon I’d be wondering why the hell she didn’t just hop on the train and disappear back up North. If we had to see Claire’s mother, it would surely be better to see her somewhere else. And some other time, too, I thought, because if I was going to trot along to Elizabeth Maurier’s whip, I’d be pretty busy for the next few weeks. And hadn’t we agreed to spend Christmas up there anyway? A whole seven days later?
And then I made the mistake of saying all that out loud.
“What’s your fucking problem?” asked the love of my life, and without waiting for me to tell her she’d picked up her coat and walked out of the flat.
We’d barely exchanged a word since. I tried to talk to her about Elizabeth Maurier, I tried to apologise, I tried to find out precisely which one of the words I’d used had spat so much venom at her. I spent much of those sixty-something hours turning those words over and over looking for an offence I hadn’t intended. I got a handful of nods and shrugs in return, a couple of grunts, no real words and not one cup of coffee. I tried everything I had. I didn’t complain. I let her watch television and ignore me. I made the same bad jokes that had made her laugh just weeks earlier, and she hardly stirred. I asked her about Jonas Wolf and whether the police had shown any interest yet, and she turned away from the television to look at me, but instead of saying anything she just shot me a look of disgust, a look for a fool who didn’t understand the words he was saying and certainly wouldn’t understand the reply. She hadn’t left the flat since she’d returned late on Saturday night with a face colder than the weather. Her moods did swing, but rarely above the line marked angry, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. I didn’t know if there was something wrong, properly, seriously wrong, or if I was imagining most of it and this was what happened to all couples after a while. I knew Claire, though. Whoever this woman was, she wasn’t the Claire I’d hooked up with and fallen in love with and found a flat with and moved into it. And I couldn’t handle many more hours stuck in there with her.
Which was why I found myself outside the front door of a large townhouse in Holland Park on a mercifully dry Monday morning, trying to still the small angry creatures swarming inside my stomach. There were four steps leading up to the front door. Every house on the crescent had the same general shape, but each had its own unique feature, too – an unusual curve to the bow, a stone wall fronting the street, a panel of stained glass on the front door. Some had steps leading down to basement flats, but not this one. Elizabeth Maurier had owned not a flat but a house, a grand, four storey house in one of the most sought-after areas in London.
Lizzy Maurier owned it now.
As I started up the short path a voice called out behind me, and I turned. There was a man standing on the pavement across the road. I recognised the little green motorbike. He hadn’t shaved, and up close there were patches of grey in the hair I hadn’t noticed outside Willoughby’s office, but when he smiled there was a youth and eagerness to him that sat uneasily with the stance and the grey.
“Can I have a word, mate?” he said.
“Who are you?”
“Rich Hanover. Real World News. Can I ask who you are and what you’re doing at Elizabeth Maurier’s house?”
“It’s her daughter’s house now,” I replied, and regretted it immediately. He stepped closer, sensing easy prey.
“What’s your name?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry, Rich. I’d rather not talk to the press.”
“Come on, mate.” He took another step towards me, and I edged back, closer to the front door. There was something else to that look. A mutability, an unpredictability. “How are you involved, eh? What’s your role? Relative? Friend?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I really can’t say.” I turned and rang the bell, and to my relief the door opened seconds later. There was Lizzy, nervous smile on her lips. Rich Hanover had retreated back to his bike, but I saw her eyes widen as she spotted him, saw the smile turn to a scowl. She ushered me in and pushed the door shut behind me.
“I’m so glad you could come, Sam,” said Lizzy. She stood in front of me with her arms out, and I accepted the hug. It wasn’t as awkward as I’d expected. Over her shoulder I could see Brooks-Powell staring at me.
“Williams,” he said, by way of greeting. I nodded. Lizzy turned to him and back to me and shook her head in a manner that suggested she’d been expecting this – I tried to think of the word but all I could come up with was frostiness – between us.
“Follow me,” she said. I waited for Brooks-Powell and stepped into line behind him.
Lizzy led us down a short corridor with a closed door on either side into a clean and spacious kitchen. There was an island in the middle, and to the side a large oak table with eight oak chairs around it. She sat at the head; we took a place either side of her and waited.
“Well,” she began, “I suppose I should have expected this, but I must admit to being a little disappointed.”
I glanced over at Brooks-Powell. He was staring at her with one eyebrow raised. I opened my mouth to ask what she was talking about, but she hit me with a glare – nudged me, really, because it was difficult to take a glare seriously when it was on Lizzy Maurier’s face – and I stopped.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, I’d hoped, given the task we’re undertaking, I wouldn’t have to, but it looks like I was wrong. And I don’t want to get things off on the wrong foot and I absolutely don’t want your problems to get in the way of the work we’re doing. So we need to clear this up now. Right now.”
Brooks-Powell was smiling. I remembered that smile, from many years ago, the smile I’d hated, the expression I’d used to gauge how my day was going to pan out. Brooks-Powell is happy; I’ll be miserable. Brooks-Powell is miserable; I’ll be happy. Lizzy had paused. I decided to jump in.
“I’m not really sure what you’re talking about, Lizzy.”
She sighed.
“Come on, Sam. Don’t mess around. I know you’ve had difficulties. I know you don’t like each other, or you didn’t like each other, but for Christ’s sake, that was more than ten years ago, and to be honest, I don’t really care what issues the two of you had back then. I’m surprised you care yourselves. Isn’t it time you grew up?”
Brooks-Powell chose this moment to interrupt, beating me to it by a split second. I knew what he was going to say, which was why I’d wanted to get in first. He was going to point out that it wasn’t ten years ago that I’d gone for him in court, humiliated him, got him fired. It wasn’t even a year. And sure, I’d been acting for other people, it wasn’t my own case I’d been pressing, I’d been hired by my clients to do my job and I’d done it, but by God I’d enjoyed it. I’d wanted to jump in and say yes, sure, you’re right, bygones, all that meaningless rubbish. He’d beaten me again.
“Lizzy, I think you’re reading a bit much into all this,” he said.
That surprised me. By the look of things, it surprised Lizzy, too, because she frowned and took a moment to collect her though
ts before continuing.
“Excellent,” she said. “I hope that goes for both of you.”
I nodded.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my grief circle,” she continued, “it’s the importance of moving on. Forgiveness. Growth. They’re not just words, you know. They mean something.”
This was even more unexpected than Brooks-Powell’s intervention. Grief circle. It was like Claire’s life coach, I thought, it could have been the same words, only when Claire spoke them she at least had the decency to look slightly embarrassed. There was no embarrassment from Lizzy Maurier. The glare had gone, but she was so serious, so matter-of-fact, she might have been telling us the time of day.
I glanced across the table and caught Brooks-Powell rolling his eyes. Lizzy was still looking at me, so he got away with it, but for a second he turned my way, and we were looking at one another, and I might have imagined it, but there seemed to be some kind of understanding in that look, a shared recognition of the bullshit. You think you know someone, you think you’ve got them pinned down as the bastard you always knew they were, and then they go and act like a person.
I turned back to Lizzy before it got any deeper. I didn’t want to share a moment with Brooks-Powell. It was bad enough sharing the bloody bequest with him.
“Are you on board with this?” she asked.
“Sure,” I replied. “Fine by me. It’s ancient history.”
Brooks-Powell nodded, that smile back in place.
Lizzy took a deep breath and went on.
“Good. I’m glad. This is important work we’re doing here. I don’t want personal matters getting in the way of it.”
I bit back my reply. What was all this if it wasn’t personal matters? It wasn’t like I was getting well paid for it. It wasn’t like it would further my career.
