A Death Divided

by Clare Francis

  Only her head was visible round the door.

  ‘I wanted to ask you something.’

  He beckoned her to sit down again, but she would only come a few inches back into the room, and he got up and joined her by the door.

  ‘It was an idea Alan had. About contacting every church and choral society in the country, to see if Jenna was singing there. Crazy of course - every last church! But I was thinking that it might just be possible with a single county. What do you think? There can’t be that many churches in Herefordshire.’

  Sarah held up a hand. ‘Hold on, Joe. You’re way, way ahead of me. What’s this singing business?’

  ‘Well, that’s what Jenna did. That’s what she trained to be - a classical singer. A mezzo. Well, more of a contralto, really. Shades of Kathleen Ferrier. But there aren’t too many parts for contraltos, so officially she was a mezzo. She could have made soloist, everyone said so, but choral was her real love.’

  ‘I still haven’t got the church connection.’

  ‘That’s the best place to find a choir. In fact, it’s the only place if you live in the country. And she loved to sing. It was her life.’

  Sarah absorbed this idea slowly, as though it was rather alien to her. ‘Okay,’ she said at last. ‘But at the end of the day this is just supposition, right? Just a guess?’

  ‘Well… yes.’

  Sarah’s Nordic eyes wore their most professional gleam. ‘It has to be a non-starter, Joe. I’ve heard of a long shot, but this would be … well, like looking for piss in a pond, as the CID

  guys would say.’

  This time when she started for the hall he didn’t try to stop her.

  He saw her down to the street. Her flatmate’s car was a spanking new Ford, not top of the range, but definitely not the cheap end either.

  ‘Your flatmate on the sweeteners,, is she?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Getting a little encouragement from the defence.’

  ‘Corruption jokes don’t go down a bundle in our office, Joe.’

  ‘No, I can see that.’

  She gave a last frown as she got into the car.

  ‘Oh, about your missing friend,’ she remarked through the window. ‘Why don’t you try something in the Hereford GazetteY

  ‘There’s a Hereford Gazette.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But there’ll be some sort of county rag, won’t there? Every Thursday.’

  ‘A small ad, you mean?’

  ‘Worth a try.’

  There was one Thursday left before Christmas and the two-week close-down. He said, ‘If I scribbled something now, would you be able to phone it in for me?’

  She hesitated, her hand on the ignition, but he could see that she was quite glad to be asked. She dropped her hand.

  ‘Sure.’

  She gave him paper and pen, which he took back to the rickety ring-stained table inside the hall of the apartment block.

  Pushing aside the stacks of circulars and letters addressed to mysterious long-forgotten residents, he stared at the sheet for a full minute before writing: Jenna, ex-Laskey. Anxious for news.

  Please call. Joe. But even as he wrote it he knew it wasn’t right.

  Too categorical. Too demanding. Crossing it out, he wrote on the other side: Jenna? Missing contralto for Messiah. Just call to say you’re singing elsewhere this Xmas. Joe. It was far from ideal. With more time he might have thought of something better.

  Adding his mobile number, he took the paper out to Sarah.

  ‘It’s all I could think of.’

  She glanced at it before storing it in her bag. She offered up her lips for a last kiss. ‘No one can say you haven’t tried.’

  Joe lay awake in the darkness, a long way from sleep. He had finished the Basis of Claim at midnight in the knowledge that it could have been better constructed, and undoubtedly a lot crisper too, then persuaded a reluctant cabbie to deliver it to Merrow at the end of his shift, when there would be someone there to receive it. For some time after that, he’d fretted over the document bundle he’d put together for the trip to Houston, worrying about a couple of papers he’d left behind. When he’d finally made it to bed, it was to hear the sounds of the night magnified: the ticking of the pipes, the low thump of amplified music from the flat of the lovelorn actor above, and, from beyond the windows, the street musak of sirens and car alarms.

  He was certain he wouldn’t be able to sleep, yet when the phone rang it seemed to drag him from a deep and irresistible coma. He seemed to hear in rapid succession the jangle of the dormitory bell from the hated boarding school, the four a.m.

  wake-up call for the airport, though when he managed to focus on the bedside clock it displayed a resolute one forty, and finally, while reaching for the receiver, to presage the brutal words that only ever come in the early hours: his father ill, the house burnt down, a death.

  A male voice said, ‘Joe? How are you?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Well, it’s me, of course.’

  And the crazy thing was that Joe knew straight away. ‘For Christ’s sake …’

  ‘Not a bad moment?’

  Struggling with a brain that was simultaneously wide awake and half asleep, Joe propped himself on one elbow and reached for the light. ‘No, no. What the hell.’

  ‘So, how’s life with you, Joe?’ Chetwood’s voice was perfectly relaxed. It might have been a month since they’d spoken; it might have been a civilised hour of the day.

  Joe heard himself give a short laugh.- The? Oh, for God’s sake, I’m fine, Chetwood! But what about you? What about Jenna?’

  Chetwood hummed a little. ‘Can’t complain. But, look, Joe - a couple of things first, okay?’

  Pulling himself upright, Joe leant forward with his elbows on his knees, wondering how to play this. Friendly? Tough?

  Conciliatory? ‘Sure!’ he said too brightly.

  ‘Just need to establish the rules of engagement.’

  ‘Right!’ Too anxious now. Slow down, slow down.

  ‘Need to ask that this goes no further, Joe. Need to have your word.’

  ‘If that’s what you want. Sure.’

  ‘No one will know we’ve spoken - right?’

  ‘Okay.’

  A snort of amusement. ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds, Joe.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do this if it was anyone else, you know.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Call.’

  ‘Well… you’ve called. So now you can tell me - is she all right, Chetwood? Is Jenna okay?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s okay.’ His voice was unreadable.

  ‘Really okay?’

  ‘Yeah, really.’ He might have been talking about the weather.

  ‘Thank God. It’ll be a huge relief to Alan and Helena.

  They’ve been frantic with worry. Alan especially …’ Joe trailed off, aware that the silence at the far end of the line had taken on a life all its own. ‘You’re not saying I can’t tell them?

  For God’s sake, Chetwood, they’re sick with worry. They’re making themselves ill.’

  Another silence before Chetwood replied, ‘You can tell them. But not yet.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When this legal thing’s out of the way.’

  It was late, one half of Joe’s brain was still way behind, and in a ludicrous moment of confusion he couldn’t think what legal thing Chetwood was talking about. ‘Fine. Sure. How are we going to do it?’

  ‘Listen, if it was up to me…’ But Chetwood didn’t finish this thought, and when he spoke again it was hastily. ‘Here’s a once-and-for-all offer, Joe. Not to be repeated. I’ll meet you tomorrow night at nine—’

  ‘Not tomorrow. I’m going to America.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Joe. Why America?' A sigh. ‘Okay. My final offer - Saturday morning.’

  ‘Saturday’s fine.’

  ‘Ten o’clock at the Watford Gap Services. Only the
most glamorous places, Joe.’

  ‘It’ll have to be a power of attorney,’ Joe said, thinking aloud. ‘There’s nothing else I can prepare in the time.’

  ‘You’re the lawyer.’

  Before he could ring off, Joe said hastily, ‘Chetwood?’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Jenna will be there, will she?’

  ‘No, Joe, she won’t be there.’

  ‘I’d love to see her.’

  ‘She doesn’t travel.’

  ‘Can’t I come to her?’

  ‘No. She doesn’t know about this yet. I haven’t even worked out how I’m going to tell her.’

  This time, when Joe became aware of the silence on the end of the line, it was because there was no one there.

  He dialled last number recall knowing, before the mechanical voice began its chanting, that the number of the last caller would be unavailable.

  Chapter Five

  Even as Joe dropped his bags on the floor, he was scanning his desk for a note from Anna. But there was no note - she’d been too discreet for that: there was a sealed envelope marked ‘Private’. From the size of it, and the bulk, she’d done everything he’d asked for, and he thanked her aloud. ‘Star, Anna.’

  It was three thirty in the afternoon, though it could have been midnight Chinese-time for all Joe knew. He felt as if he’d been travelling for ever, and perhaps he had. Following the normal pattern with Pitch’s team, the last meeting had overrun badly, and he’d missed the direct flight back to London.

  Re-routed, he’d been trapped by a twelve-hour blizzard in Chicago, and at Heathrow his bag was last onto the carousel.

  The Heathrow Express worked well, the Tube badly, and by the time he emerged on to the streets of the City it was already dark. The nine-hour journey had taken more than twenty-four, but Joe wasn’t really counting. He’d got home before Saturday, and that was all that mattered. Through the interminable meetings and snow-bound airports and foreshortened days, Chetwood’s words had whispered hauntingly round his head.

  Sometimes the tone seemed friendly, sometimes cool, now and again the sequence had got completely jumbled, but the final message had never been less than clear. A once-andfor-all deal, Joe. Not to be repeated.

  And now, in what seemed like a concerted effort to disorientate him, Joe had arrived back at Merrow to find the litigation floor deserted. He’d checked his watch, but unless every clock in the entire city had got it wrong, London was still six hours ahead of Chicago. Bomb scare? Fire drill? Strike?

  Though it was a considerable challenge to whistle up grounds for a lawyers’ strike: too much business? too much income?

  The cards plastered over the glass partitions and the token mistletoe finally nudged his memory: it was the day of the Christmas lunch.

  The envelope yielded a two-page power of attorney on heavy legal paper, a duplicate on lighter paper, a computer disk, and a handwritten note. When he’d called Anna from Houston and asked if she could spare some of her own time to draw up the power of attorney - ‘Glad to help, Joe; anything that keeps me out of the shops’ - he’d left her to ring Alan and get the details, and he saw now that she had inserted Marc’s full name and address and the address of the jointly owned property. The only blank was the one immediately after Jenna’s name, the one they would all like to fill. Next to it, Anna had stuck a Post-It note: Last known address - “formerly of”? Or do her solicitors? We need to put something here.

  The scribbled note read: Dear Joe, Well done with the beastly Pitch. You deserve a medal. We’re at the office lunch getting drunk and disorderly. You’d best escape before Tamsin from Accounts gets back and pins you to the desk (for some reason she thinks you’re okay - did you fiddle her expenses?).

  Serious matters: Power of Attorney attached. If you want to make changes it’s on the disk as: Laskey.wps. But, Joe, I should tell you that when I last spoke to Dr Laskey (Thursday 4.00 p.m.) he seemed upset about something. He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) say what it was, but I got the impression it was serious and somehow involved with this. Anna.

  With a sense of foreboding, Joe dialled Alan and Helena’s private number and got no reply. Trying the listed number, he found himself transferred to a central doctors’ pool where a hard-voiced female told him they didn’t pass on messages to the off-duty doctors and to try Alan’s surgery. The surgery was answered by a recorded female voice only marginally less fearsome.

  It recited the surgery hours and referred urgent calls back to the doctors’ pool, adding pointedly that the machine did not take messages.

  Joe thought of asking his father to go round to Alan and Helena’s, and rejected it almost as quickly as the idea of trying Marc.

  There might have been a worse time to try to get out of London by car but the Friday evening before Christmas took some beating. Stopping at the flat only to shower and stuff some clean clothes into an overnight bag, Joe nosed the car out into traffic that was moving by the inch or not at all. The half-mile across the river took twenty minutes, and when he got to the other side all the north-bound routes out of Chelsea were solid.

  Twice he tried Alan and Helena’s numbers, listed and unlisted, and twice he rang off at the click of the automatic transfer. Then, sitting in a three-lane jam south of the Cromwell Road, as he was starting to dial Sarah’s mobile, a figure in a tracksuit with a raised hood jogged past the car, brushing against the wing mirror. The figure wove nimbly through the gridlocked traffic, ducked briefly out of sight, then with a huge burst of speed sprinted away into a side street, A horn blared, long and loud, a woman screamed, and by the time Joe registered the connections it was all too late. He jumped out of the car and ran to the street corner, but the bag-snatcher was long gone and the horns were beginning to blast for him.

  Driving on again, he came alongside the woman leaning against the door of her car, talking tearfully into a mobile phone. He called out, ‘Are you all right?’ and got a raging gesture for his trouble. Closing the window, sealing himself off against the world once again, he thought: So much for the Christmas spirit.

  At West Hampstead the traffic finally began to move, only to bunch up again the other side of Brent Cross. When his mobile rang, he answered it rapidly, hoping for Alan.

  Sarah’s voice said, ‘So you’re back.’

  ‘You got my message okay?’ He’d called from Heathrow.

  ‘Five minutes ago. Where are you?’

  ‘That’s the thing. I’m on my way to see Alan and Helena.

  Very slowly.’

  A pause that seemed to contain reproach. ‘I thought you weren’t going north till Christmas Eve.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m coming back again tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh.’ The difficult moment, if that was what it was, had passed. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But since I have to be up north anyway, I thought I’d better go and find out.’

  ‘I see.’ If she was curious to know the reason for his trip, she didn’t say so. ‘But back tomorrow?’

  ‘Lunchtime. You free later?’

  ‘Sure. Shall I cook?’ Before ringing off, she added, ‘Oh, I caught the deadline at the Hereford Times. The ad appeared yesterday.’ Then, as an afterthought: ‘Could that be the problem with your friends?’

  Joe had forgotten about the ad, or at least relegated it to the future. ‘Go on.’ He was getting there, but slowly.

  ‘Maybe she saw the ad and when she couldn’t reach you she rang her parents instead.’

  The traffic had begun to move again. Keeping one eye on the road, Joe held the phone up to the wheel and scrolled through the list of messages and missed calls. There were no new numbers showing, though this, as he hastily reminded himself, didn’t mean Jenna hadn’t tried, only that she preferred a real person to a tape, a phone that was answered to one that rang and rang. So had she called Alan instead? The more he thought about this, the more likely it seemed, and the greater was his foreboding.

  The glaziers had r
epaired the broken window at Shirley Road, but the builders, whose promises had from the first had a doubtful ring, had failed to fix the drooping fence, which had collapsed into three sections, one twisted on the pavement, one concertinaed into a broken fan, and one flat in the front garden, as if deposited.there by a disgruntled passer-by. A light was showing behind the drawn curtains of the front room, but when Joe knocked there was no sound and no movement. Returning to the car, he scribbled a note saying he’d like to stay the night if that was okay and could his father possibly leave a key on the nail in the shed. Before posting the note he called a bright greeting through the letter-box, and before he turned away he thought he heard the shuffle of a footfall in the hall.

  Alan and Helena’s house was in darkness except for a bare bulb in the porch, which flickered and dipped in the blustery wind. There were no cars on the garage apron and none parked along the front. The curtains were open in the front windows, top and bottom, and in the back ones too, as though the house had been deserted all day. The kitchen door was locked, but when he tried the handle a dark shape came streaking out through the cat flap, frightening him half to death. In the old days the house cat had been a haughty marmalade called Tiggy, but this one was black and brazen, rubbing its back furiously against his leg.

  The surgery was a quarter of a mile down the road, at the end of a narrow tarmacked apron, tucked behind a dingy pub.

  The single-storey building was made of breeze-block and plywood held together by thirty years of white paint. It could have been an engineering shop except for the powerful floodlights and barred windows and the red-eyed blinks of the twin burglar alarms.

  From the road the parking area looked empty, but when Joe drove in he found Alan’s car hidden round the corner formed by the rear of the pub.

  He rang the bell three times before Alan’s voice came cautiously over the intercom.

  ‘It’s Joe.’

  ‘Joe?’ It was a gasp of surprise and agitation.

  The door took a lot of unbolting. When Alan finally appeared, it was to stand uneasily in the darkened doorway, not barring Joe’s way, but not exactly welcoming him in either.