She laughed. ‘I told you, Casper knows nothing about you and me. Just as well. He’s very proprietorial.’
‘Even now, when your marriage is over?’
She sighed. ‘We were more than husband and wife. We’ve been business partners for years. It’s a tax thing, I don’t understand the details. He still needs to keep me sweet. It’s in his financial interest.’
‘And in return, he keeps you in the style to which you’re accustomed?’
‘A sensible business arrangement. A win-win situation.’
‘So where does Jude fit in?’
Her brow clouded. ‘Who knows? He’s away in London for an audition.’
He cleared his throat. ‘I need to clear my desk for the day.’
Again she laughed. ‘You’re special, Harry, do you know that? I never met anyone quite like you.’
Probably she meant it in a good way, but it wasn’t the right time to find out. ‘Good to see you, Juliet.’
As he walked towards the path that led to the Strand and the main entrance to the offices, she called after him.
‘The penthouse is lovely. Views to die for. On a clear day, I kid myself that I can see America. Come up and have a look sometime.’
He glanced back over his shoulder. The glossy, plumped-up lips formed a smile that didn’t seem quite natural. Her eyes followed him, their expression impossible to read.
***
His room was in chaos.
Hands on hips, he surveyed the scene from the doorway. It was as if some demented conceptual artist had created a tableau of bureaucratic disorder as an entry for the Turner Prize. Someone had pulled all the buff folders out of the cabinets, and strewn their contents all over the floor. Court documents, legal aid forms, fliers from recruitment agencies and expert witnesses. And there were business cards, magazines, the framed certificates he kept on the wall. Nothing left untouched.
Jim wandered towards him, heading for the kitchen. He’d forsworn caffeine and kept consuming endless cups of water. Since Carmel had moved in with him, she’d persuaded him of the need to cleanse his colon and lymph glands of all impurities. She’d even lent Harry a book about extreme detox diets, but the first couple of chapters had set his bowels trembling, and he’d decided to remain impure.
***
‘What’s up?’
‘Someone’s trashed my room.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Very witty. Take a look.’
His partner joined him at the door and contemplated the mess.
‘So much for the paperless office, eh? Couldn’t you find something? Did you have to turn the place upside down?’
‘I haven’t laid a finger on it.’
‘This isn’t your secretary’s new filing system?’
‘I know you’re not a member of Grace’s fan club, but…’
‘She’s weird, admit it.’
‘No, she’s…interesting.’
‘You think weird is interesting.’
‘She had nothing to do with this. It’s so pointless. Who would want to wreck my room?’
‘You tell me.’
‘I need to check whether anything has been stolen.’
‘You left your wallet here?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Harry, but why would someone steal anything from you other than cash or credit cards?’
‘Someone may have been searching for something. Rummaging for confidential information in one of the files.’
Jim’s pitying look said it all. ‘You think that’s likely?’
‘Not really.’
‘It’s kids.’
‘Kids?’
‘Some little bastards who were excluded from school, and wanted a break from vandalising phone booths and spraying graffiti on garage doors. Thank your lucky stars they haven’t pissed all over your file notes.’
Harry hadn’t considered that possibility. He sniffed the air cautiously. Nothing.
‘Why choose my office?’
‘Be honest, old son. You set a gold standard in attracting trouble. It’s a wonder we can still get insurance.’
‘This is the fifth floor. It’s not as if you can peer through the window from outside and make sure I’m not around. Breaking into my office makes no sense.’
‘Nobody broke in. You never lock up.’
‘There must be twenty rooms on this floor alone, not counting cupboards. An intruder could have been disturbed at any moment.’
‘It’s quiet at this end of the building. Most of it’s lying empty. Where’s the fun in trashing a vacant office?’
‘Maybe they aren’t far away.’ Harry took a couple of paces down the corridor. ‘Suppose they’re hiding somewhere close by?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To find whoever did this.’
‘Waste of time.’ Jim pointed to the door opposite Harry’s office. ‘That room connects with a couple of others. None of the doors are locked during the day. Fitters wander in and out every five minutes. Plumbers, electricians, you see them all the time. The prankster who messed up your room will be long gone by now.’
‘I’ll nip down to reception and see if Lou spotted anything out of the ordinary.’
‘You’ll be lucky. We could be subject to asteroid attack and Lou wouldn’t bat an eyelid unless it interfered with reception on his portable TV.’
‘Even so.’
Harry raced down the corridor. He gave the lift a miss, wanting to see if an intruder lurked on the stairs. The carpet muffled the sound of his pounding feet as he headed down from floor to floor, but he didn’t see another soul. By the time he reached the ground he was out of breath.
Up on the vast plasma screen, an architect as glossy as one of the Stepford Wives preached the glories of Liverpool redux.
‘Reinvigorated docklands…multi-faith street furniture…a cultural logarithm with conference facilities…’
Behind the welcome desk, Lou was resplendent. Casper May’s company had kitted him out in a smart navy blue uniform with extensive brass trimmings. He might have passed for a rear-admiral, but for the sign on the desk labelled Concierge and his ceaseless gum-chewing. He was conferring about prospects for the next World Cup with an asthmatic crony with a scary wheeze. Like all Lou’s friends, the crony had a characteristic smell. He reeked so strongly of boiled cabbage that, for all the lavish décor of the foyer, Harry was transported back to the school canteens of his youth.
He coughed and Lou glanced up, allowing his grizzled features to fold into an expression of concern.
‘All right, mate? You’re all flushed. Out of condition? You don’t want to overdo it, you know. We’re none of us getting any younger.’
‘Have you seen an intruder in the building?’
Lou’s bushy eyebrows wouldn’t have looked out of place in a border at Croxteth Park. They jiggled slightly, the closest that Lou came to indicating intense reflection.
‘Sorry, mate. What’s the problem?’
‘Someone has turned over my room.’
Lou chewed more slowly as he considered this.
‘Much gone missing?’
‘Not as far as I can tell.’
‘You dropped lucky, then.’ A mournful sigh. ‘It’ll be teenage scallies, bet your bottom dollar. Bring back national service, that’s what I say. Give them some backbone. Discipline.’
The asthmatic friend gave an affirmative gasp, but before he could confirm that the country was going to the dogs, Harry said, ‘So you haven’t seen anyone suspicious?’
‘You get all sorts in here at the moment. Talk about Piccadilly Circus. It’s not possible to keep track.’
‘But surely…’
Lou gave a reproachful shake of the head. ‘I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, Harry, do I now?’
‘I suppose it’s too much to expect that the CCTV…’
‘On the blink, isn’t it? I was telling Victor, they’d have done b
etter to invest in Japanese technology.’
‘You can’t beat the Japanese,’ his aged pal croaked.
‘Not these days, anyhow,’ Lou said. ‘Makes you wonder who won the bloody war, eh?’
Harry gave up and took the lift back to his room, to discover Grace bending to pick up a couple of sheets of paper. When she heard his footfall, she gave a start and a little shriek. Her cheeks were tinted crimson.
‘Sorry. I thought I ought to help. Mr. Crusoe told me what had happened.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll sort it all out before…’
His voice trailed away as he caught sight of the PC monitor on his desk. The screensaver had vanished; presumably Grace had touched the mouse by mistake in her hapless attempts to tidy the room up.
Someone had opened his calendar. Normally he set it so as to view a week at a glance, but the setting had changed so as to show a single day. The whole of it was blocked out.
The date wasn’t today, but 23 June.
And to make sure the point was not missed, someone had typed in two words.
Midsummer’s Eve.
***
Grace offered to stay late to help him clear up, but he shooed her out, promising she could leave it to him to get the room straight. But he didn’t say when.
Through the window he watched the black hands of the clock on the Liver Building. With every minute that ticked by, Midsummer’s Eve drew closer.
‘The Big Clock,’ he muttered to himself. Another film that fascinated him, the story of a man called Stroud, hired in a race against time to find a witness to murder, so that he could be silenced. His boss didn’t realise that Stroud was the witness. He was hunting himself.
Jim was right. He’d fallen victim to a joker with a childish sense of humour and too much time on his hands. He didn’t fret about the cascade of emails from spammers cluttering his inbox, urging him to invest in Viagra or share his bank account details. He’d pay no attention to this, either. Getting on with life was the best retaliation. He deleted Midsummer’s Eve from his calendar, together with an email from the Law Society urging him to be vigilant to detect money laundering.
Or too much time on her hands? The joker could be anyone. You never knew.
Enough. He must stop dwelling on it.
He yanked the Borth file out of his briefcase and started tidying up the loose ends so that the papers could be archived. Better not think about how much time and money he’d written off through agreeing the fixed fee. Wayne Saxelby would be aghast if he knew. He was muttering into his dictaphone when he heard a gentle tap on the door. The timidity of the sound caught him by surprise. Usually people marched straight in without a second thought.
‘Come in.’
The face of the cleaner he’d met the previous evening appeared round the door. Her cheeks still had no colour, but at least they were no longer wet.
‘Can I empty your bin?’
Before he could say yes, she took in the state of his room and exclaimed in dismay.
‘What’s happened?’
He climbed to his feet and spread his arms. ‘Someone decided to reorganise my files.’
‘A burglar?’
‘I don’t think so. No-one in their senses would come here to steal.’
‘But this is a solicitors’ office.’
‘Exactly. Not worth robbing. We don’t keep sacks of cash on the premises. Any thief would only get the slimmest pickings.’
‘Then why…?’
‘I must have upset someone.’
‘You, Mr. Devlin?’
He wasn’t sure why she sounded so astonished. ‘It happens. And do call me Harry.’
She blushed and, as if to cover embarrassment at his familiarity, bent down and picked up a set of documents tied together by a treasury tag. ‘The supervisor asked me to look after this side of the building. Your usual girl is off sick.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’ A meaningless response. He hadn’t yet registered who the usual cleaner was.
‘Don’t be. She probably smoked one joint too many, that’s all.’
‘You needn’t worry about all this.’ He waved at the floor. ‘It’s not your job to clear up after trespassers.’
‘No problem. I like cleaning.’
‘You do?’
When she frowned, he realised his question might have offended her. He hadn’t intended to scoff, all he meant was that he couldn’t imagine anyone enjoying having to clear up after others.
‘Sorry, I didn’t…’
‘It’s all right. Even the supervisor thinks I’m off my head. But it’s true. I get a kick from sorting out. Rearranging stuff, putting things in order, making sure they are all in the right place. Does that sound strange to you?’
Harry cast his mind back to the night cleaners at the old offices, a bunch of cackling harridans whose day job was probably as warders on Walton Jail’s maximum security wing. They had once skived off early and locked him in the building after he’d had the temerity to ask them to mop up a spillage on the kitchen floor.
‘Different, yes. But I’m not complaining. By the way, I don’t know your name.’
‘Gina.’
‘Okay, Gina, let me give you a hand.’
He joined her on hands and knees, scrabbling around on the floor and scooping up the sheets and trying to find the folders where they belonged. She still had a tang of cinnamon. After a couple of minutes they backed into each other and both burst out laughing. He turned to face her.
‘I’m glad you’ve recovered from whatever upset you yesterday.’
She coloured. ‘I wouldn’t say I’m over it. Thanks all the same.’
‘Do you want to talk about it? Whatever was on your mind?’
She pointed to the pile of correspondence they had amassed. ‘You didn’t want to talk about your problem.’
‘This isn’t a problem.’ When she raised her eyebrows, he realised he’d spoken too sharply. ‘I don’t know who did this. It’s a minor inconvenience, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, right. Someone picked on you for no reason?’
‘Why not? Teenagers playing truant, I expect.’
‘This is the fifth floor, Mr. Devlin. Why would any teenagers wanting to cause trouble flog all the way up here?’
‘They didn’t run much risk of being caught. With so many empty offices…’
‘Why bother? It doesn’t add up.’ She pursed her lips. ‘If you ask me, someone did this deliberately to cause grief for you.’
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That’s cheered me up.’
‘Sorry, Mr. Devlin…’
‘Harry.’
‘Sorry, Harry, but it won’t do any good telling lies to yourself, to make you feel better.’
She had located his calendar among the debris. She dusted it off and handed it to him. Today’s message wasn’t encouraging. The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.
He put it back on the desk and gazed down at her. Something impelled him to say, ‘Is that why you were crying last night? Because you refuse to lie to yourself?’
She hauled herself up off the floor and looked him in the eye. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Tell me to mind my own business, if you like.’
She closed her eyes. ‘If you must know, a friend of mine died yesterday.’
Self-loathing stabbed him. Why did he always have to keep prying? ‘Christ, I’m…’
‘You weren’t to know.’ When she opened her eyes again, to his horror he saw that tears were forming. ‘But what happened was terrible. It wasn’t an ordinary death.’
He caught his breath. ‘Is any death ordinary?’
‘Not this one, for sure. She was murdered.’
‘Not the girl they found on the beach at Waterloo? Lee Welch?’
‘How do you know her name?’
‘They printed it in the Echo. Someone has identified her.’
‘Not me, thank God.’ Gina stared at her trainers. ‘I couldn’t hav
e gone to the morgue and seen her there, all waxy and lifeless. It would have broken my heart to see her dead.’
For a while neither of them said anything. At last Harry said, ‘If ever you do want to talk about it…’
‘I wasn’t in the mood yesterday, for sure. But you were kind to me. So, thanks.’
‘Anyone would…’
‘No, you’re wrong. I haven’t been cleaning offices for long, but I soon learned that most people look straight through you. The moment I put on this overall, I become an invisible woman. At least you spoke to me like I was a member of the human race.’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘All right, what have I got to lose? Besides, there’s nobody else I can talk to about Lee. Nobody else who cares.’
***
Forty minutes later, he was trying not to spill his beer or her vodka and lime as he sidled through the crowd on his way to a booth at the back of the Stapledon Bar. After finishing work, Gina had changed out of her overall and poured her boyish figure into a sky blue tee shirt and impossibly tight jeans. She was checking out the mural behind her seat. Doctor Morbius, introducing Robby the Robot to the crew visiting the Forbidden Planet. Above their heads, Tom Cruise raced across the TV screens, this time fleeing from the pre-crime cops in Minority Report. Harry stole another look at Gina as she picked up her glass. Her face was so fresh she might have passed for sixteen. Only that wariness in her eyes was a giveaway, a clue that she’d been hurt before and was determined not to be hurt again. She was as luminous as Agatha in the film, the pre-cog with a terrible gift. Agatha foresaw murders before they were committed.
But, Harry reminded himself, he definitely wasn’t Tom Cruise.
‘Cheers.’
‘Thanks…Harry.’ She took a sip and then giggled. ‘Oh my God, the look on Victor’s face when we walked past him!’
On his way past the desk in the foyer of John Newton House, with Gina at his side, Harry had nodded at Victor. When the building manager glanced up from a chunky paperback, his straggly eyebrows almost hit the ceiling.
‘Don’t worry about it. There’s no rule against a tenant taking one of the contract cleaners for a drink.’
‘I’m not worried about him. He’s a bit of a joke. The girls are always calling him names. Victor Creepy is as nice as it gets.’
‘They don’t like him?’
Waterloo Sunset: A Lake District Mystery #4 (Lake District Mysteries) Page 7
