The Turnaround

by Mark Timlin

  ‘Don’t,’ I said.

  ‘I loved him. I’ve never loved anyone else. He was going to leave her and come and live with me. He loved me too. He called me his baby. He didn’t mind about me being what I am. He liked it. He could do things for me.’

  ‘I know he did,’ I said. ‘I know. Don’t cry, baby.’

  She started to cry harder when I said that. I held her and stroked her hair. I seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

  She pulled away and sniffed. ‘Will you get the tissues?’ she said. ‘Over there.’ There was a box of Kleenex for Men next to the telephone. I got it for her and she took a handful and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  ‘Better?’ I said.

  She smiled.

  ‘So did he pay for all this?’ I asked softly.

  ‘What if he did? It was his money.’

  ‘Not entirely. How long was it going on?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and him.’

  ‘A couple of years.’

  ‘Did anyone else know?’

  ‘No. They all thought like your policeman. People don’t see the disabled as having emotions. They’re just there to be pitied.’

  ‘But not David Kellerman?’

  ‘No, not him. He saw the real me.’

  ‘Where did you do it?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You were moving in here when he was killed. Where did you meet before? Not where you were living with your mother and father, I’ll bet.’

  ‘At work.’

  ‘Nowhere else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to tell any more lies, Natalie. Trust me.’

  ‘I’m not telling lies,’ she said. But she couldn’t lie to me any more.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ I said gently. ‘I don’t believe a man like him, or a woman like you for that matter, did it on the office sofa for two years.’

  She gave in. I actually saw her sag in the chair. ‘You’re right. There was another place.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A cottage. Outside East Grinstead. It was ridiculous. I couldn’t get the chair through the front door. He had to carry me in.’

  ‘Was it rented?’

  ‘No, it belonged to David.’

  ‘So what happened to it when he died?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What? It’s just standing empty?’

  ‘Yes. He kept the ownership secret. He had to. We were going to live there together. But, like I said, it was a ridiculous place. He bought it as a surprise for me. He didn’t think about the logistics of it at all. So he bought this place instead. He made sure it was right for me. Just one floor. Everything designed for someone in a wheelchair. He even put it in my name. It was as if he knew what was going to happen to him.’

  I raised my head and sniffed the air. Perhaps he did, I thought. Perhaps he did.

  ‘I thought he’d sell the cottage right away.’ She went on. ‘But he kept it. He said it was our hedge against inflation. I never really understood what he meant by that. The property market collapsed, you see, soon after. I suppose he was going to sell it when the market improved again.’

  ‘And it’s still there, empty?’

  ‘I’ve already said that.’

  ‘Did he make any other provisions for you when he bought this place?’ I asked.

  She looked away and blushed.

  ‘Did he?’ I asked again. ‘It might be important.’

  ‘Yes. He put some money in a high-interest account. No one knows. The Social Security…’ She didn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘That’s what you live on?’ I said.

  ‘The interest, yes. I won’t have to give it back, will I?’

  ‘I won’t tell them, if that’s what you mean,’ I said. ‘I’m no great fan of the Soche myself.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Do you happen to know where the deeds to the cottage are?’ I asked.

  ‘He kept them there, I’m sure. Why?’

  ‘Because James Webb inherited Kellerman’s estate. And he ended up with not a lot. He never mentioned a cottage, or anything like that. If he knew about it, I’m sure it would be on the market. Perhaps if I can find the deeds and give them to Webb, I won’t have to tell him about the money Kellerman gave you.’

  ‘They must still be there. The place isn’t for sale, I’m quite certain of that.’

  ‘You’ve been there recently?’

  ‘Not inside. I’ve driven down there. Like I go to his other house in Crown Point. It seems to bring him closer somehow, even though those horrible things happened there. But I told you, I couldn’t get into the cottage if I wanted to.’

  ‘Have you got a key?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I’d like to see the place.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Curiosity.’

  She thought about it. ‘Will you take me?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But let me go on my own first.’

  ‘Why?’

  I shrugged. ‘I want to see it just as you left it. No distractions.’

  ‘Would I be a distraction?’ she asked, and there was flirtation in her voice and eyes.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘But you will take me? Promise.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All right.’ She rolled herself over to a bureau against the wall, next to the window, pulled open a drawer and took out a Yale key on a key ring. She came over to me. I took the key from her. Our fingers touched again and I got another tiny charge of static and she looked into my eyes. We were very close in that small room and I felt a sudden surge of desire for her. She knew, and smiled and wheeled herself away. She’d won that small battle. I put the key in my pocket.

  ‘You’ll need the address,’ she said. I took out my notebook and wrote it down as she told me, plus instructions on how to get there from East Grinstead itself. I put my notebook back in my pocket. ‘I’ll be going now,’ I said.

  ‘You will come back and see me again?’

  ‘I said so, didn’t I?’

  ‘I’ll wear something special for you if you do, and show you what I can do with my mouth.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ I said. And knew that I would. ‘I’ll see myself out.’ I leant down and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Natalie.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  I left her my cigarettes on the tray attached to the arm of her wheelchair.

  I could feel her eyes on my back as I went.

  I sat outside in the car for a few minutes. I was getting a headache. That often happened when I’d been questioning people. I sat and thought about Natalie Hooper. I wondered if she’d told me everything she knew. She hadn’t been lying to me, of that I was certain. Not that people couldn’t lie to me – I’d been lied to by the best of them – but she wanted to talk, needed to talk to someone. Only Robber never had a chance with her. He was all wrong for the job. I just wondered if she’d retained some little secret close to her heart to keep her warm at night.

  I took the key to the cottage out of my pocket and looked at it, then my watch. Time had flown. I didn’t feel like driving to East Grinstead and finding some lonely cottage and turning it over. My head hurt, I had a heavy date and hadn’t booked the table yet. And Judith was arriving the next day and I still had things to do.

  I decided I’d go after the weekend. What was the rush after all? I had all the time in the world.

  And on such slight considerations, whole nations have been lost.

  22

  When I got back to the flat, the telephone was ringing. I picked it up. It was James Webb.

  ‘Hello, Jim,’ I said.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  He sounded so miserable I decided to give him the good news.

  ‘Not bad,’ I said.

  ‘Have you found something?’

  ‘I might have. I talked to an old boy w
ho does the gardening at one of the houses on the close. He put me on to something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have patience, Jim. Bear with me. I’m going to check it out on Monday.’

  ‘No sooner?’

  ‘It may be nothing. I told you I’ve got some domestic responsibilities to sort out. It’s only a couple of days. I’ll talk to you Tuesday. OK?’

  ‘It’ll have to be, won’t it?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Jim. I promise you’ll be the first to know. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you next week.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, and hung up.

  I lit a Silk Cut and picked up the phone to call the restaurant.

  I arrived at the address Juanita O’Caine had given to me at 6.59 precisely. I parked on a single yellow line just opposite. It was a fine old Georgian terraced house split into three flats. Hers was in the basement.

  I’d chosen what to wear carefully. A dark grey, almost black suit in a loose, hopsack weave, double breasted, with turn-ups on the pants. A white button-down, Oxford cloth shirt with double cuffs, black elastic-sided boots and a tie that was an explosion of bright primary colours. I looked pretty good.

  I walked down the entry steps to her door and rang the bell. It only took her five minutes to answer. It did occur to me that she’d gone out and just forgotten all about me. Or just gone out.

  When she finally got round to opening the door she looked amazing. She was wearing a black velvet evening dress. Short, tight, and cut so low that the bodice seemed to defy gravity as it hung off the tips of her breasts just above the aureoles of her nipples. Her blonde hair hung straight down her back. She had on what looked suspiciously like a real diamond necklace and matching earrings. If they were real I’d’ve swapped them for my flat there and then, and expected to make a profit on the deal.

  ‘Hello,’ she said with a smile that out-dazzled the ice she was wearing. ‘I wasn’t ready.’

  ‘I nearly went home,’ I said.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’

  She was cooler than ice too. But you know what they say: Life’s a bitch and then you meet one.

  She walked down the short hall of the flat, and I went in and closed the front door behind me and followed her. It was dark inside, and smelled of her perfume. She led me into the living room. It was a garden flat, the garden being a storey lower than the pavement outside. I looked round the room. It was minimally furnished. The floor was polished wood, and bare except for one rug that looked as expensive as it was ancient. There was a sofa and matching armchair upholstered in a dark red slubbed material. The TV was Bang & Olufson. So was the video and CD system. There were about a thousand compact discs on shelves on one wall. About a thousand books on shelves on another. The spotlights were pink and that was about it. Juanita obviously had money and taste. What the fuck did she invite me round for? Mind you, I could learn to live with it.

  Fat chance, I thought.

  She turned on one high heel and looked at me. I didn’t know if she liked what she saw. I did. ‘Drink?’ she asked.

  ‘Am I driving?’ I asked back. Daring again, you see.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘I’ll chance it,’ I said. ‘Got any gin?’

  ‘Is the Pope Catholic?’

  It was a bit like ping-pong.

  ‘Tonic?’ she asked. ‘Lime or vermouth?’ The perfect hostess.

  ‘Tonic will be fine.’

  ‘Put on some music. I won’t be a second.’

  ‘Anything in particular?’

  ‘You choose.’

  She had something for just about everybody. And something by just about everybody. I chose Van Morrison. She had every album he’d done, I think. I went for Into the Music. It’s one of my favourites.

  ‘Good choice,’ she said when she came back with two tumblers that could comfortably have accommodated a family of goldfish each. I almost rolled over on my back and let her tickle my tummy when she said that. Almost, not quite. My willpower was strong. So was the gin and tonic. But unfortunately I’ve discovered that the stronger the gin, the weaker the will becomes.

  We drank two cocktails each. I was starting to get a buzz and she was looking better by the minute. At twenty to eight I said, ‘Want to go?’

  ‘Sure, I’ll get my coat.’ She put her glass on one of the shelves and left the room. She was gone less than a minute. When she came back she was wearing a white mink coat of such an old-fashioned cut that it was bang up-to-date. She saw me looking at it. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘You don’t see coats like that much any more.’

  ‘Are you a conservationist?’

  ‘I keep a cat,’ I replied.

  ‘My grandmother bought this coat on Fifth Avenue in 1948,’ she said. ‘These little suckers would have been dead by now anyway.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But aren’t you worried that someone from the Animal Liberation Front is going to take offence and spray paint on it?’

  ‘If some pink-haired little shit even tries, I’ll Mace the motherfucker,’ she hissed, and opened her handbag. Right on top was a tear gas spray. I stepped back and raised my hands in surrender.

  ‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘I eat meat myself.’

  She grinned. ‘Me too. Let’s go and eat some.’

  We went out into the street together. She spotted my car right away. ‘Is that yours?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I might have guessed,’ she said. ‘Penis substitute.’

  You should know if anyone does, I thought, but said nothing. Just smiled. What the fuck? I was enjoying myself.

  The restaurant was in the King’s Road. It was on three levels. The floors were pink opaque plastic with covered lights actually set in them, like at the bottom of a swimming pool. The stairs were made of polished chrome. The tables were made of more chrome, with pink tablecloths. The front window was huge and gave a clear view in and out to the street. All in all it was like eating on stage.

  We got a table on the top level where we had a great view of the rest of the restaurant and the tops of passing vehicles outside. We had three waiters. It was so crowded round our table I felt as if we were in the middle of a rugby scrum. It was one of those places where only the person who the head waiter thinks is paying the bill gets a menu with prices listed. For what they were asking for a steak sandwich you could buy a whole cow in my local butcher.

  Juanita loved every minute of it and every ounce of attention. I hadn’t been surrounded by so many solicitous people since the last time I was on an operating table, and it made me a bit edgy. We ordered two Bloody Marys. It thinned out the crowd a little and gave us some room to breathe.

  ‘We’ll order when we’ve got our drinks,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ said the head waiter, and stalked off to worry someone else. The last of the trio popped our napkins on to our laps, smiled, then saw another party at the door and headed off in their direction.

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ I said.

  ‘You get used to it,’ said Juanita. ‘When you spend as much money as you’re going to spend tonight, they think you deserve some attention.’

  Just then the Bloody Marys arrived. There was so much foliage in the glasses I was worried about snipers. The drinks waiter stood for a moment until I tasted the aperitif. It was perfect and I told him so. He blushed and backed away, then turned and trotted down the stairs to the bar.

  ‘See,’ said Juanita. ‘Alone at last.’

  ‘What do you want to eat?’ I asked.

  She studied her menu and I studied mine. There was something from every sub-continent listed. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I said. I really didn’t. I was quite content to sit looking at her all evening and chew on a dry crust and drink tap water. Though even that would have cost me twenty-five nicker.

  ‘Avocado salad to start, if the avocado’s edible. Soft-shell crab
to follow, with stir-fried vegetables and angel’s hair noodles.’

  I went for gazpacho, duck with mangetout in oyster sauce and fried rice with lobster. The head waiter was at my shoulder, his notebook at the ready, as I closed the menu. After some discussion on the flavour and ripeness of the avocado pear he took our order. The wine waiter was hovering in the wings and suggested a white Burgundy. I took his advice.

  When we were once more alone, Juanita lit up a Marlboro and sat back in her seat and sipped at her Bloody Mary. ‘Why’d you phone me?’ she asked.

  ‘I wanted to see you again.’

  ‘Why? I wasn’t exactly wonderful to you the last time we met.’

  I shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘My favourite two words in the English language,’ she said. ‘Are we going to be friends?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But we might be.

  ‘Just don’t expect too much from me. I tend to let people down if they do that.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ I said.

  I think you can tell a lot about a person by going out to eat with them. I like people who share their food. Mainly because whatever I order, everything else on the table always looks better. Juanita was a sharer. She wanted to taste my soup and insisted I try her salad. When the main courses arrived we left the dishes in the middle and just dived in where we wanted. Her crab was excellent, although a little messy to eat, and we had to call for another finger bowl.

  We ate everything and didn’t care how greasy we got, and by the time we’d finished I thought that, yes, we were going to end up friends, if not more than that. The food was excellent. The wine was as good as the waiter had said, and the bottles kept coming. For dessert she had lemon sorbet. I passed. By ten-thirty we’d finished our meal and were sitting over wicked little cups of espresso coffee and Sambuca. I was too drunk to drive and wondered where I’d end up resting my head. Juanita was smoking her fifteenth Marlboro of the evening and rabbiting away about some author of hers who was trying to get her into bed. Two minds with but a single thought.