Shut Eye

by Adam Baron

  ‘Ah,’ the MP said, raising the pitch of his voice, ‘you want to see if I’m involved in the arms trade. Or if I earn so much you can put your fee up. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you but once you get to be a Minister you have to give up any other jobs you might do, and since our great humbling I haven’t had time to line up any plum directorships. Yet. Come back in six months.’

  There was a lightness to his tone which I hadn’t heard before. I liked it. ‘Sorry to disappoint,’ I said. ‘But it’s not you I’m interested in, I’m afraid.’

  Sir Peter said that it would be easier if he got his assistant at the Commons to photocopy the relevant page for me; I could pick it up from his office there rather than going rooting through the register myself. I also asked if he knew Graham Lloyd’s address and he said he didn’t but that it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out. He would get his assistant to include it with the photocopy I was to pick up. I wondered if that was a good idea, letting his assistant see how much I was interested in Graham Lloyd’s background, but Sir Peter laughed.

  ’No,’ he assured me. ‘It’s all right. Thomasina’s not what you’d call quick on the uptake. No, and to be perfectly frank I’ve never had a parliamentary assistant who was. I get them foisted on me by my constituency association. They tend to be the daughters of the ladies who organize the garden party fund-raisers which keep us afloat, the ladies who can get me thrown out on my ear any time they like. Pretty girls, all MPs’ wives before they’re twenty-five. It’s perfectly all right, I assure you.’ He stopped to think for a second. ‘I’d worry if I was on the other side though. The Labour lot get brilliant assistants, LSE interns on their way to the Guardian or The Economist.’ He laughed. ‘They’re normally a damn sight quicker on the uptake than the idiot MP they’re working for.’

  * * *

  I picked up a sealed brown envelope from Thomasina, who was indeed very pretty and dressed in a Chanel suit which must have cost about twice her monthly salary. Somehow, I didn’t think her current job was her chief source of income. I walked back to my car and sat behind the steering wheel, using my nail to tear the envelope open, and then emptied the contents out on to the passenger seat.

  Under Graham Lloyd’s name was a list of three companies, none of which meant anything to me. They soon would though. At the bottom of the sheet was an address only five minutes’ drive away over Vauxhall Bridge. As Lloyd had a London constituency I assumed that this was his only house but I made a mental note to check. I stuffed the sheet back into the envelope and pulled out into the traffic.

  I actually drove over Westminster not Vauxhall Bridge and then down the Kennington Road. The square Lloyd lived in was on the left and I pulled into it and cruised round looking at the house numbers. The square was a little Georgian oasis in a dismal area of high-rises and big trunk roads wheezing carbon monoxide over small utility shops protected by steel meshes. Planted straight inside it, and ignoring the insistent groan of traffic, you might have thought you were in the middle of a prosperous town in the shires; the square was tree-lined, full of Volvos and Mercedes, and there was a rustic-looking pub in the corner. It seemed an ideal place for an MP to live.

  The houses all had big, smartly painted doors with large brass knobs on, the kind that sit in the middle of the door and which you use to pull the door shut after you. The doors were either red, blue, or in the case of number 12, bright yellow. I stopped the Mazda outside number 12 and looked at the house for a second. Lloyd seemed to be doing all right if he could afford to live there. The house had three floors and wasn’t broken up into flats as far as I could see, and there would be a sizeable garden out the back. I wondered if Lloyd’s wife was in. I wondered what she would say if she knew that the man sitting in the conspicuously old and dirty car in the street outside was investigating the possibility that her husband, who was definitely involved with another woman, was also involved in the brutal murder of a fellow MP’s brother. She’d hold her Marigolds up in horror.

  I decided that it would serve no purpose telling Mrs Lloyd who I was. I’d only come because it was close, and I wanted to see the style to which Lloyd had become accustomed to living in. I pulled away from the house and drove back round to the Kennington Road, which was the only way in or out of the square. As I waited for a gap in the traffic I noticed the street name bolted to a brick wall, and only then appreciated the irony of Lloyd’s address. He lived on Cleaver Square. Close. Close enough.

  I drove back up the Kennington Road but didn’t turn off towards Westminster. I eventually crossed over Southwark Bridge and headed up past Bank. The IRA have made this area virtually impossible to park in but I knew of an extortionate car park near Spitalfields Market where I left the Mazda, very glad I was on expenses. Thinking of the feeling that I’d had the other day at King’s Cross I made sure it was all locked up and then walked up past Liverpool Street station to the City Road.

  Company’s House is a big building but not as impressive as you might think it should be, bearing in mind that within it are details of every business in the land. I had been there several times before and went straight to the reference section where I chose a table. I sat down and pulled the various pieces of paper from the envelope Thomasina had given me, laying the top one down on the table and putting the others back. I pushed the envelope aside and looked at the parliamentary register’s entry for Graham Lloyd MP.

  Carlson Holdings. Consultant. Part time.

  Chalmers and Broge. Parliamentary Consultant. Part time.

  The Buckner Group. Directorship.

  On the table I was sitting at were two terminals. I moved in front of the nearest one to me and gazed at the screen which was displaying a menu of options. I moved the blinking green icon down the list to ‘Company Search’ and pressed ‘Enter’. I then typed in ‘Carlson Holdings’ and hit ‘Enter’ again. The screen changed to one headed by the title ‘Carlson Holdings PLC’, with a list of information underneath.

  Carlson Holdings was a very big company dealing in bonds and derivatives. It had a turnover greater than that of some small countries but only employed a hundred and fifty people. I took down the address and the phone number. I repeated the procedure for Chalmers and Broge and was told that it was basically a lobbyist company. They had only twelve full-time employees and their turnover was infinitesimal compared to that of the holdings company. Then I typed in ‘Buckner Group’. The Buckner Group was also a small company, but it was involved in what the computer very unhelpfully termed ‘Investments’. It didn’t say what sort. The company was less than two years old and no figure was given for its annual turnover. It was based in Maidstone and the computer didn’t tell me how many people worked there. I took the address and phone number down and then packed up my envelope and headed back to the lobby, where there was a public telephone in a conveniently soundproof booth.

  ‘Hello, Personnel.’ The voice, a young woman’s with a bad cold, sounded bored. ‘Juliet speaking.’

  ‘Yes, hi there, Juliet,’ I said, ‘it’s Fulton here from Accounts.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘John Fulton, I’m sure we’ve met.’

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Fulton, sorry, I was a bit confused. The switchboard said it was an external call.’

  ‘Christ, are the phones still doing that? Wondered what that noise was. Anyway, we’re having a problem with some invoices. MP fellow, name of Lloyd. Graham. Wants to know why we haven’t paid him for some work he did, when we think we already have.’

  ‘Bloody cheek!’ Juliet was quite appalled. ‘Should spend more time running the country if you ask me rather than working on the side all the time the way they do.’

  ‘Now then, Juliet. Anyway, can you give me a list of the days he’s worked since this time last year, then we can clear this up.’

  ‘OK, Mr Fulton. I’ll phone you back. It’ll take me a while, I’m not used to this new system yet.’

  ‘I’d rather hold if you don’t mind, Juliet, got to get this sorted.�
��

  ‘Righto.’

  I waited five minutes and I was afraid I was going to run out of change for the phone, but Juliet eventually came back on the line.

  ‘Right,’ she said, sniffing. ‘He worked a total of thirty-six days since November the first last year. OK?’

  ‘Wonderful. Thanks, Juliet.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Fulton.’ She paused a little nervously. ‘See you on the third.’

  ‘The third?’

  ‘At the ball, silly.’ She giggled delightfully.

  ‘Of course! Save the last dance for me.’

  * * *

  I went out for more change.

  * * *

  ‘Accounts. Alan speaking.’

  Alan sounded like he also had a virus. Must be something going round the office.

  ‘Yes, hello, Alan, Fulton here, Personnel. Got put through the switchboard for some reason.’

  ‘Sorry, who?’

  ‘Fulton. Now listen, Alan, Juliet and I are having a spot of bother down here.’

  ‘Oh,’ Alan said, ‘how is Juliet?’

  ‘Fine, Alan, she’s fine. Except the Chiefs in a stink, wants to cut back on freelance expenditure. So, we need to know some wage figures before he can decide which consultants to call in for the budget thing.’

  The budget thing?

  ‘All right, who were you thinking of?’

  ‘Lloyd, Graham. MP I think. Your new system tell you that, can it?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about this piece of shit.’

  ‘Now then, Alan.’

  ‘Just a mo there.’

  Alan was a whiz with the new system whatever his reservations about it. He was back in no more than a minute.

  ‘Seven-fifty the day,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, Al. Most helpful. See you on the third.’

  ‘The third?’

  ‘The ball, stupid.’

  ’Oh God, yes. Yes.’

  He paused for a second and lowered his voice.

  ’Fulton, you wouldn’t happen to know if Juliet was going, would you?’

  * * *

  So, Lloyd was earning twenty-five grand p.a. from Carlson Holdings. I couldn’t get anything out of the secretary I spoke to at Chalmers and Broge who immediately asked me if I was a journalist, and when I tried the Buckner Group all I got was an answerphone. It didn’t matter. The twenty-five from Carlson plus whatever thanks a lobby firm give to a well-placed politician, and however much he made investing through the Buckner Group meant that Graham Lloyd was well enough off. There was also the salary I was helping to pay. He wasn’t quite the Duke of Westminster but he was doing all right. It was disappointing but I hadn’t realistically thought that I’d stumble on a motive as obvious as that. Graham Lloyd certainly didn’t need to kill anyone for their wife’s money. Oh well.

  So he had nothing to do with it. I didn’t totally dismiss the idea, but I could no longer see a reason why Lloyd should kill Teddy Morgan. The affair was just a coincidence which for various reasons neither he nor Charlotte Morgan wanted to let on about. Teddy may have known about the affair but he didn’t sound like the sort of man who would stand in the way if his wife wanted a divorce, and so need removing. Lloyd had no motive and was in the States at the time of the murder. The man outside The Colt must just have been a man outside The Colt. Even if he wasn’t, the fact that Lloyd had hired a man to keep watch on a detective cum blackmailer who was very possibly out to fuck his life up, didn’t make him a murderer.

  The killer had to be the man in the baseball hat but I was still bothered by the idea. I just couldn’t figure why he had let people at the airport see him, let alone stroll in front of a security camera with the victim. It just didn’t seem very clever compared with the other murders. It meant that Sir Peter could still be right about a copycat killer riding the fame of another man, but the cat was not Graham Lloyd.

  I ate lunch at a nearby Prêt à Manger and read the sign which said you could call either of the two bosses any time if you had any complaints. I had none, so I didn’t, but I thought it was good that you could do that if you wanted to. I wondered how many calls they actually got. I wished you could do the same thing with British Telecom. Or British Rail. Phone the Chief Executive when your phone was cut off after you’ve paid the bill, or there was engineering work on the line when you’d been specifically told there wouldn’t be. They’d get a few calls. I also wished you could phone whoever it is that organizes things so that airline pilots get carved up in their own homes, by someone who was looking increasingly likely to get away with it. Or who decides that people should have lovers in comas and not be able to deal with it any more. Or deal with the person who reminded them of it. It would be good to talk to that person. Very good. Or, rather, it would be good to talk to that person and for them to give you some answers.

  I drove home and picked up the pictures of Dominic Lewes from Carl. I sent them off to his mother. I changed out of the suit I was in. I pulled on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and my work jacket, and I spent the rest of the day walking round pubs asking if anyone had seen either of the men in the two photographs I was carrying.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In fact, I spent the rest of the week doing that. It was all there was left to do, and if it weren’t for Graham Lloyd I would have got on to it much earlier. I went from pub to cafe to pub. When you’re working on your own you just have to keep searching in the most likely places, hoping that the right person shows up. You have to leave a trail of messages for someone who may never see them, or want to contact you even if they did. There was a man out there looking for gay men and I had to go to the places he was likely to find them and hope our paths crossed. I could almost feel him out there and I wondered if he could feel me, my presence, searching for him. I hoped he could. I wondered all the time if I had already spoken to someone who knew what was going on. It annoyed me to think that I had very possibly been as close as two feet to the truth, that it resided in the thoughts of someone I had interviewed, right there, locked away behind a mere inch of skin and skull. I thought how far away and inaccessible people can be, even when you’re sitting next to them. I remembered being a child, thinking that everyone must surely be able to see my secrets, the dark things I wanted.

  I made a list and walked up and down various parts of London with the two photographs in my pocket. One was of Edward Morgan and the other was of the man who had probably killed him. I started in Islington, at the Edward VI near the Angel, and The Hart in Canonbury. In each pub I left a copy of the video-still behind the bar. I went to The Moorland Tavern and across Highbury Fields to The Cooper’s Arms off the Blackstock Road. These were the gay pubs nearest to Edward’s house and I tried them to find out if he had popped in any of them recently, either because he was a regular or because he was curious. Much to the chagrin of several of the men I talked to, he hadn’t been seen in any of these places. Neither had the man in the baseball cap.

  This kind of work can be very boring indeed but the fact that it was pubs I had to go and sit in meant it wasn’t so bad. I’d chat to the barman for a while and then ask him if either Edward or the other man ever came in there. Others around the bar would notice the pictures the barman was peering at, and they would often come over to have a look at them themselves. If not, I took the pictures round. Once I had assured them that I was not the Old Bill come to arrest them for kissing in public (yes, it happens) they were usually very co-operative, and happy to help me.

  In every pub I went to, at least some of the people recognized the picture of Edward, but it was only from the newspapers which carried the same one a few months ago. You would normally expect news stories, however lurid, to fade from the memory, but the people I was talking to had a very good reason to remember Edward’s face. There was a respectful, even reverential hush whenever a group of men gathered round to take a look at the pictures. I could see them imagining what it must have been like for Edward, many of them knowing that it could have been a picture
of them that a private detective was showing around the gay pubs and bars of London. One man, sitting in a chrome-filled cafe on Camden High Street, even said it, and seemed to age ten years as he did so: there but for the grace of God go I.

  For the first three days I walked into a lot of pubs, met a lot of people but didn’t get anywhere. It was frustrating, but patience is the primary requisite of my job and I didn’t mind it too much. I know it’s a bit of a cliché but gay bars are almost always a lot more friendly and easy to be in than most of the regular ones. People were polite and helpful and I believed them when they told me, either from behind a bar or in front of it, that they would keep an eye out for the man in the hat and would phone me if they saw him.

  One guy said, ‘He’s like a virus amongst us, something which will kill you if you don’t look out. He preys on loneliness and youth, the need to be with someone, feel another person’s skin next to yours. You need to give love and he’s waiting until you do it so that he can take your life. He’s like AIDS. Except how will I know how to protect myself against him?’

  I gave him a copy of the picture to keep.

  ‘Remember his face,’ I said. ‘That’s how.’

  ‘And you’re sure that’s him?’ the man asked hopefully.

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘No, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Well then,’ the man said. He took the picture anyway. Because I couldn’t think of any other way of exploring the option that Edward had been killed by someone trying to fit it into the pattern of the other murders, I plugged away with the photo. My job had become as simple as it normally is: I had a face to find and all I had to do was look. I went to Clapham, Hampstead, Brixton, Westbourne Park, Notting Hill Gate. I spent hours sipping pints and chatting to people. I got hit on a few times and whenever I did I couldn’t help thinking of Nicky and his American. I revisited places I had already been to and I had to get Carl to run me off some more copies of the picture, I had handed out so many. Some people said that the police had been round already. They laughed amongst themselves, remembering obviously uncomfortable coppers who they could just tell felt like mice in a snake’s nest. They were easy to spot because they couldn’t even bring themselves to pretend they were gay. I found it sad to think that they cared more about being mistaken for a poof than they did about finding a maniac before he could kill someone else.