by Peter James
Frannie cleaned her colleague’s face with a damp paper towel and the manager called a taxi. She paid the bill for the two of them and Spode recovered enough to stagger to the taxi, supported by herself and a waiter, and tried to give his address to the driver. ‘Spenrose Pode, Number Sheventy-sheven.’
The taxi stopped outside the Victorian mansion block in Wandsworth where Frannie knew he lived, and she helped him along the corridor to his flat and made sure he was safely in. His flat was as neat and bland as his desk. He looked at her with barely focusing eyes, and made a supreme effort to be coherent, ‘My brother could help you,’ he said, then she had to catch him as he stumbled.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Call him in morning.’
She climbed back into the waiting taxi, her own head swimming from the wine and the exertion, and fell asleep herself. She woke with a start to find she was outside her flat, paid the driver a sum which would normally have grieved her and heaved herself out, walking unsteadily down the steps, clinging to the rail as she went, and bashed noisily into the dustbins at the bottom.
She let herself in, staring at the post scattered on the floor. As she closed the front door, silence enclosed her.
Too silent.
Suddenly as sober as a judge, she stared down the empty hallway with a feeling of apprehension, backed towards the door, put her hand on the Yale latch, listening. Something was not right. Silence except for the hum of the fridge. Took a step forward. Then another. Her bedroom door was open. So was the kitchen door. Darkness spilled out of them into the hall. The sitting-room door was open also. The faint haze of orange from the street lighting shone through.
Through the silence.
She took another step forward. Waited. Heard the voices above her. A man shouting. Then a woman. The couple rowing as they often did. The baby crying. The sounds of other life in the building gave Frannie courage and she stepped forward again. Then pushed the sitting-room door open, reached in her hand and snapped on the light.
Nothing moved. Nothing there. Empty. The curtains hung open, undisturbed. Her Roman vase sat on the coffee table. She walked in slowly, looking around. Something caught her eye in the hallway; a shadow moving; or maybe it was her imagination. She stared at the doorway, watching the emptiness. Her ears popped as if she were going up in an aeroplane and she swallowed to relieve them. Then the phone rang and the stillness was shattered like exploding glass.
She snatched at the receiver, brought it to her ear. ‘Yeshallo?’ she said, talking quietly, as if afraid someone in the flat would overhear her.
‘Frannie?’ It was Oliver’s voice.
‘Frannie? You all right?’
‘Yes.’ Just a whisper again.
‘I’ve been calling you all evening. I’ve been worried out of my wits.’
She watched the hall. The shadow moved again. Stopped. Moved again. ‘Where are you?’
‘Down at Meston.’
Shadows suddenly jumped all around her. She looked up. The light that hung from the ceiling was swaying wildly in the breeze.
Except there was no breeze.
Alarm coursed through her nerves. The light began to swing faster. The cheap fringed shade the colour of parchment; the brown flex. Faster. The wire frame creaked against the bakelite collar. Faster. The shade hit the ceiling and the flex went slack for a moment; then it swung and hit the ceiling on the opposite side; the shade cracked and a piece of dry, papery material fell to the floor.
‘Frannie? Frannie? Are you there?’
The light swung the other way, hit the ceiling even harder, hurled in anger; a huge chunk of the shade fell away. It swung back the opposite way. Hit the ceiling again. Hit it in fury.
She shrieked, putting her hands up as a chunk of the shade and its wire frame fell away, missing her by inches. She jumped to her feet, pulling the phone with her behind the sofa, staring at the lamp in blind terror.
‘Frannie?’
This time the lamp swung even harder. The rest of the shade fell away, leaving the bare bulb and a few spikes of wire.
‘I’m leaving right now, Frannie. I’ll be with you in an hour.’
There was a flash above her head. Then the entire flat was plunged into darkness.
She threw down the phone and ran out into the hall, down to the front door, jerked it open and stumbled up the steps to the pavement, then stood gulping down air, leaning against the railings in a cold sweat.
Without moving and without looking back at the flat, she stayed there for over an hour until the lights of Oliver’s Range Rover shone in her face, and he was cradling her in his arms.
‘I didn’t imagine it, Oliver.’
He had mended the fuses and they were sitting on the sofa in her living-room.
‘I didn’t.’ She noticed for the first time how exhausted he looked. His face was white, with a patina of grease, and his hair was limp. His dark grey pinstriped suit was crumpled, his top shirt-button was undone and his tie hanging loose. His hands were grimy. He stared at the Roman vase. ‘The Bishop rang. He was very helpful. I told him you’re a Catholic – or used to be, but he said it made no difference – he’s referred me to a rector in London who’s the diocesan exorcist for the area. Protocol, I suppose.’ He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘I tried ringing him, but he must have been out. I left a message on his answering machine. Are you free any time tomorrow?’
‘I’m having lunch with Seb Holland.’
‘Perhaps he ought to come too if we go to this clergyman?’
‘If I can persuade him.’
‘Are you going to work in the morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘The message I left the rector – I asked him to call you if he couldn’t get hold of me – I gave him both your numbers.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘It’s – ah –’ He clicked his finger and thumb a couple of times. ‘Rather odd name.’ He pulled out his diary, opened it and turned several pages; then he seemed to have difficulty deciphering his writing. ‘Canon Benedict Spode,’ he read out finally.
‘Spode?’
He nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘S-P-O-D-E?’ she spelled out.
‘Yes.’ He looked at her with surprise. ‘Why? Do you know him?’
She stared back at him. ‘Where do they stop, these coincidences?’
He frowned. ‘I’m not with you.’
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I share an office with his brother. We had dinner together tonight.’
The page of Frannie’s diary said ‘Tue 25th Sept’.
She sat at her desk trying to work, waiting for the phone to ring, running through in her mind what she was going to say to Seb Holland. She was trying hard to hold her sanity together, trying to think of everything that had happened and not think about it at the same time. Not thinking about Tristram. Phoebe’s stump. Max Gabriel being eaten away.
Her head ached fiercely. It was a damp, overcast morning and a strong wind was blowing outside; a chill fear soaked through the whole of her body, mildewing her insides and making her feel sick. She wished she had dressed in warmer clothes than her navy linen two-piece and the cerise blouse which she had put on to look smart for Seb, as well as for seeing the priest.
Penrose Spode did not appear until after eleven o’clock, and when he did he slipped in wordlessly, hung his cycling kit on the hook and walked across the office in a curious, upright manner as if he had just come from a lesson in deportment.
He eased himself into his chair and carefully placed his hands on his desk. His face was a similar shade of white to when Frannie had found him on the washroom floor. He smiled apologetically then winced, as if the act of stretching his lips had hurt his face.
‘Morning,’ she said.
Spode mouthed a silent reply.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Rather fragile.’ He stared around the office as if trying to remember where he was. ‘I think the food must
have been a little rich for me. Thank you for –’ He raised his hands and dropped them, blushing. He sat down, closed his eyes and pinched his forehead tightly between his hands. ‘I’m not very good at drinking.’
‘We had quite a lot.’
He looked as if he was about to stand up again. ‘I think I might get a coffee – would you like one?’
‘You were talking about your brother last night.’
He cradled his forehead in his hand for some moments, then he nodded slowly. ‘I spoke to him already.’
‘You have?’
‘That’s why I’m late in. I went round to him.’
‘Oh?’
‘I wanted to make sure he understood.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, surprised.
‘I’ve arranged for you to see him at half past six this evening. All right?’
‘Yes – yes, thank you.’
‘Good. I –’ He fell silent and his mind seemed to wander. Then he stood up. ‘Black, no sugar?’
‘Yes, thanks. Want me to get them?’
‘No, it’s OK.’ He shuffled across the room like an old man. As he reached the door, he stopped and looked at her for some moments. ‘You will go, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s very important.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘It’s just sometimes I’m never quite sure when you are being serious.’
‘I am serious. Penrose. Really serious. There’s someone else I’d like to take with me if it would be all right.’ She looked at him, but was unable to read his reaction. ‘His name’s Seb Holland.’
He said nothing else, and shuffled out of the door down the corridor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Frannie came out of Bank tube station at a quarter to one, blinking in the sunlight which had broken through the cloud. The autumnal wind was freshening, blowing right through her thin clothes. Her hair thrashed irritatingly around her face, her jacket and skirt flapped and billowed.
She waited for the lights to change before she crossed over. A sightseeing coach chuntered past. A taxi followed, then a BMW, its driver talking on his telephone. A motor-cycle courier weaved by, its engine blasting. A road drill pounded and her own nerves pounded with it.
On the far side, a pretty girl came tripping out of an office and greeted a young man in a suit with a hug and a long kiss. Frannie enviously watched the carefree way they linked arms and walked away. Normal life was going on and she felt excluded from it.
The pavements were crammed with people moving quickly, urgently. Men jostled past her in funereal suits and peacock ties, women in two-pieces, their necks trussed importantly in Hermès and Cornelia James scarves. The traffic stopped and she crossed over.
People were queueing in the sandwich bars, and she heard the usual lunchtime hubbub as she passed a pub, then silence as she walked through the shadow laid across the pavement by the Gothic façade of a church. She glanced up at the windowless wall. Fear pressed to her skin like brass against tracing-paper, rubbing dark lines across her face. A siren wailed. She slowed her pace, her feet weighted with uncertainty. An ambulance flashed across, ahead, its siren a swirling banshee that beat her stomach like an egg whisk.
She passed sights so familiar from childhood that she scarcely noticed them. In the City, things rarely changed; when they did it was brutal: radical surgery; a familiar comfortable sight cut away like a mastectomy; cranes, skeletal girders rising like prosthetic limbs. She passed the Record Album shop, Boots the Chemist, Austin Reed, reassuringly unchanged, then orange lights winked ahead of her. Temporary bollards in the middle of the road. A triangle of barriers; the reflectors of unlit red lanterns. She felt the first prickle of apprehension as she saw the hoarding sticking out into the road, encasing an entire block of empty buildings; as she saw the huge sign on it: MACFAZEDEAN BROTHERS PLC. CITY FIELDS DEVELOPMENT.
MacFazedean Brothers. The name lodged in her gullet. Bastards. The slick young men in their grey striped suits who served the eviction notices, took her father’s ranting with barely a twitch of their facial muscles and had the gall to tell him it was the best thing for everyone.
It was a large development. Seven acres. Two giant cranes rose from its midst, one with a demolition ball suspended from its jib and swinging menacingly in the wind. There was a cacophony to jar the ears and a pall of dust hung in the air above the entire site.
On some of the buildings visible above the tall hoarding the façades had been torn off, leaving rooms that were open to the elements, like a scene from a war movie of the Blitz, and Frannie felt for an instant as if something had been torn from herself, leaving her raw and exposed. Number 14 Poulterers’ Alley was behind that hoarding; somewhere. She crossed over and ran along a boarded walkway where the pavement had once been, past the words GARBUTT MCMILLAN ARCHITECTS on a smart red sign.
Taking her bearings from the shops opposite, she reached what should have been the start of Poulterers’ Alley, but the hoarding went across it, sealing it off. There were small viewing slits cut into the hoarding and she pressed her face to one and found herself looking straight down the alley. It was gloomy and forlorn; the windows were boarded up and all that remained were the names of the shops and offices, and closed doors. She could see the café, and the sadness she felt was tempered by a rising fear.
The whole central core of the site had been disembowelled. She could see right into the cellars. One was filled with water; another was now bare mud, shored up with iron pilings. A hook was sinking down from the jib of the massive crane and she saw the demolition ball swing out of sight. There followed a crash of rubble, the gears of a bulldozer meshing, metal clanging, and then a steady hiss of compressed air.
Dust dried the back of her throat as Frannie walked on and reached the site entrance. She went in through the wide-open gates, on to rubble-strewn mud that was rutted with tyre treads, and was confronted by a hive of activity: bulldozers; dumper trucks; tippers unloading; men in hard hats measuring, digging, drilling. Two men were attaching an iron piling to the hook of the crane. Three others on a rooftop were hauling up tools on a rope. Someone was shouting instructions. Over to her right the demolition ball swung against an unsupported wall belonging to one of the buildings immediately behind Poulterers’ Alley. The wall buckled. The ball swung again. In its wake a bulldozer was clawing at the rubble like a crab scavenging a carcass on the seabed. In one of the deep rectangular pits a yellow JCB digger was pounding a stone floor, tearing great chunks of it out, lifting them up and dumping them in a skip. It looked as though it were ripping out the entrails of the earth itself. She stepped over some cables, then had to move out of the way of another truck. She checked her watch. Five to one.
She turned and left the site, then crossed the road, quickening her pace. As she reached the end of the next street, she could see Seb Holland’s office building ahead. The Winston Churchill Tower, its bronze walls rising sixty storeys high out of the open square in which it sat. Her favourite modern building, which she had watched go up as a child, but which she had never been inside.
She remembered how it had always seemed to absorb the different moods of the weather and now it darkened suddenly as a cloud slid across the narrow corridor of sky like a roof hatch closing. A ferocious gust ripped across the open square, whistling eerily like a mountain wind, bending the conifers in their marble tubs and blowing the spray of the fountains sideways; the spots of water striking Frannie’s cheek gave the illusion for a moment that it was raining. Her jacket thrashed like a loose sail and she had to hold it tight around her chest. One of the local criticisms was that the building created a wind tunnel around it.
Frannie pushed through the revolving door into a vast marble lobby that was strangely quiet. She heard the ping of an elevator, then another. The names of the companies housed in the building were engraved on a tall brass plate like a roll of honour on a cathedral wall. She scanned down it.
The John Bieber Grou
p 58
Adam Hackett International 26–29
Holland Delarue & Partners plc 40–41
The fortieth floor, she remembered Seb Holland had told her.
The centre of the lobby was dominated by a Henry Moore sculpture, and presided over by an elderly commissionaire in black serge, his jacket breast covered in rows of decorations and his shoulders looped with bright white rope. Beyond him the lobby narrowed to an alcove containing two banks of four elevators each. One of them disgorged a group of men who walked across the lobby in silence. Two office girls came out of another and walked past Frannie, snippets of their chatter trailing behind them.
A man and a woman emerged from another, the woman talking emphatically. Frannie stepped into the elevator. It had a deep bronze carpet, black lacquered walls with bronze-tinted mirrors and reeked of a perfume she did not recognize.
She touched the button marked 40 on the panel and it lit up, but for a moment nothing happened. She tidied her hair in the mirror, then pulled a tissue out of her handbag and quickly wiped the mud from the building site off her dark blue shoes. The doors closed, decisively and smoothly. For an instant, again, nothing happened. Then an unseen hand lifted her by the insides of her stomach. The carpet pressed up hard against her feet. She felt a great weight on her knees. There was a rush of air and a faint drumming. Numbers spun on the digital dial above the doors. Her stomach rose up through her body. 15 20 25 30 35.
The pressure eased. The floor shrank away from her feet. Her stomach was lowered gently. The display slowed, 38, 39, then halted. 40. Ping. The doors opened. She walked out, slightly dazed, into a hallway. The four elevator doors opposite faced her, and there were double oak doors to her right and left. The one to her left had a large brass plate which said: HOLLAND DELARUE PLC. RECEPTION.
Frannie went through into a sumptuous oak-panelled room, with deep leather armchairs and sofas on either side of the reception console. Large gold letters on the wall behind her proclaimed the dozen countries around the world in which Holland Delarue plc had offices, and the centre-piece was a large blue and gold ‘Queen’s Award for Export’ emblem.
