by Tom Trott
‘Except that I can’t.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘How convenient I can’t speak to any of them: you say the doctor and her wife have disappeared, Mr X you can’t identify, the man from Tessafrak denies it all, and McCready and Alderney are dead.’
‘I’m just trying to give you the facts.’
She almost laughed. ‘The facts?’
‘That’s right. And another fact is that I’m going after this Mr X, and Tessafrak, and all of this, so if you want to catch me you’ll have to go after them too.’
‘That logic might work in an action movie, but if we want to catch you we just go after you.’
I bit my tongue, then leant forward. ‘Do you think I did it?’
‘That’s what you’re really upset about, isn’t it?’ She did laugh this time. ‘...that anyone would suspect you. Well it may be news to you, Grabarz, but when people heard you were suspected for murder nobody was surprised. Everyone thought it was about time.’
I huffed.
‘What did you expect, coming here?’ she asked. Her hands were out of her pockets now, gesticulating wildly. ‘I’m not as gullible as Andy.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means he told us the truth: that you were in his flat. He’s suspended. He deserves to be fired, but that’ll be up to a review board.’
‘You didn’t need to do that.’
‘I didn’t do it, you did: the moment you went to him. You knew it would put him in an impossible position and you didn’t care. Now he’s just another of your victims.’
I seethed.
‘That’s a fact. Here’s another,’ she continued, leaning forward until our faces were centimetres apart. ‘I know you killed Robert Coward.’
It was like an explosion, the power of the words having built up inside her for years. I leant back, letting the debris fall where it may, I didn’t say a word.
‘You don’t have anything to say to that, do you?’ She glared at me.
‘I didn’t kill Clarence,’ I stated calmly, ‘I didn’t kill Ben McCready. But someone wants you to think I did. I thought for your professional pride you might want to know that.’
‘Professional pride?’ The laugher in the words was genuine. ‘That’s funny coming from you.’
I ran my tongue over my teeth, trying not to snap. ‘You know, I’ve spent long, restless nights wondering about why we never got along.’
‘Really? I haven’t thought about it at all,’ she rejoined.
‘Well, like you said, you don’t think.’
She frowned.
‘You may never have liked me, I don’t blame you for that, I don’t like me either; but the first time we met, our first case together, we made one hell of a team. Everyone got justice ’
She tried to interrupt.
‘ or at least everyone got what they deserved. But you didn’t like my methods, even as they got you results. You bent and strayed from the rules as much as every police officer. But in your eyes you can either follow the rules one hundred per cent, or not, in which case what difference does it make how bent you are? That’s why you despise me, because I make that impossible to ignore. We’re both crooked in our own ways, but I’m not a hypocrite because I don’t have rules. There isn’t a rule made that didn’t need breaking, everyone knows that, that’s why we even have a phrase for it: the exception that proves the rule. It’s a paradox but it’s true. Things change, circumstances change all the time, people change, time changes how you look at things. Change is the only constant, how’s that for irony? In a universe of infinite possibilities it’s impossible to write a hard rule that shouldn’t be broken at any time. Because as sure as the sun rises something will come along to test that rule. Nuance, common sense, and logic are the only things we can really trust.’
There was a beat of silence.
‘Thanks for the lecture,’ she drawled, ‘I don’t get enough mansplaining at work.’
‘Well,’ I nodded, ‘now it’s your turn, why do you think we don’t get on?’
‘You’re a murderer.’
I frowned, but there was no sneer of victory in her face, just an overwhelming sadness; a kind of deep regret, projected onto me.
‘I may be a hypocrite,’ she added, ‘but I’m not that. There are some things you can’t walk away from, they change things forever.’
I nodded, smiled to myself in a soulless way. ‘You may be shocked to learn I agree with you.’ I stood up. ‘Whatever you think: whether you think I’m delusional, or psychopathic, you know what those delusions centre on now, so I guess we’re done. Max, Mr X, the farm, Tessafrak; look at it this way: you might solve a case that I can’t, solve it your way, follow the rules, prove to me that they’re worth something. But do me a favour, don’t try and catch me because you hate me. Just follow the facts.’
‘I always do that.’
I smiled, genuinely this time. ‘Then I guess I have nothing to worry about.’
I backed nonchalantly out of the room, staring at her the whole time, watching her stare back at me, and out the front door, closing it gently.
I ran down the corridor. I knew she would be on the phone the instant I was out of sight. I reached the top of the spiral staircase, grabbed the railing, descended as fast as I could, trying not to slip. I made it one flight, then another, it seemed to take forever. Then I was into the flashing blue lobby and out through the double doors.
The fan-shaped car park and front gardens were awash with the blue of police cars streaming toward me from the right. Hands in her pocket! Clever bitch! I didn’t have time to get in the Primera, let alone start it. I didn’t have time for much at all, but I was still going to run. Always run. Always make them work for it.
I abandoned the Primera, the phones, the money, running to my left across the tarmac, toward the car park exit. They had their sirens on now, wailing behind me, getting louder, the roar of engines about to clip my feet. As I reached the road the scream of a motorbike cut through the din. It was a dirt bike. Tidy’s dirt bike! It screeched to a halt on the road in front of me, she was there in her leathers, helmeted-up. I didn’t think, I just jumped on the back, hands around her waist, and even before my hands touched we shot off like a rocket.
24
Into the Other Lioness’s Den
We were rocketing up Longridge Avenue, heading further into Saltdean. She wasn’t from Brighton, she didn’t know there wasn’t a north way out of Saltdean. The seafront was the only way, but I could tell by the blue flickering off the blur of bungalows that police cars were seconds behind us, no time to turn around. Ahead of us, at the top of Longridge Avenue the red lights flickered on the mobile phone mast, rising over the crest of the hill, this was a dead end. Then the road stopped, the tarmac stopped, and we hit gravel, skidding into a metal gate blocking a farm track, almost throwing me from the bike. The wailing sirens grew, they were cresting the hill, metres away, if this was another country they could have shot us.
‘Open the gate!’ she screamed at me.
I jumped off the bike and ran to the wooden footpath gate, unlatching it. Then she revved the bike and I barely had time to jump back on before we were through and onto the farm track. All I could see over her shoulder was rows of crops whipping past our right in the beam of the headlight, then a scarecrow whooshed past. I daren’t look over my shoulder to see if the police were on the track for fear of unbalancing the bike. I looked left; the northern fringes of Saltdean were below us down the sloping hill and there were blues threading their way through the bungalows like cars chasing a train, then all the roads stopped and the blue lights slowed to a trundle as they joined the farm tracks weaving over the hills. We left them behind and I looked ahead where there was nothing but blackness beyond the range of the headlight, and nothing but the occasional spark of an insect in the beam.
We left the track and cut through crops to our right, all below waist height in the winter. We were just cutti
ng a corner and soon joined the track again. A strange white house glowed behind trees to the left of us, in the middle of nowhere like a castle on a cloud. We cut across grass, heading downhill until tarmac suddenly appeared beneath our wheels.
We zipped down what fast became a road, past farm buildings, past ivy-covered cottages to our right. We shot through a tiny crossroads at the centre of a village. Telscombe. I caught glimpses of a flint church, a red telephone box, those white wooden signs luminous in our headlight, more cottages, no lights in any of them, a Jaguar, a Land Rover, this place was a postcard shut away in a dark drawer.
We were on the long road out of the village when the distant rumble of a helicopter could be heard during gear changes. She turned off the headlamp, then we turned off the road down a slope and were skimming across fields, up and down over the rolling hills, up and down again. The sky was clear and as my eyes adjusted to the dark the moon began to light the hills until they became purple waves that we could navigate easily and safely. Over her shoulder I could see she had a compass strapped to the handlebars and we ploughed on north-east. Up and down, up and down.
After what seemed like half an hour, but could have been as little as ten minutes, I could see the lights of Woodingdean, Ovingdean, and Rottingdean to our left whenever we crested a hill, all the way to Roedean school glowing white in the moonlight and the shimmering dark glass sea stretching out beyond. She did not steer us towards Woodingdean but skirted round the top of it, finally turning dead east to cross Falmer road and at last entering the city at the top of Bevendean, winding down to Lewes Road at a gentle cruise. It had certainly been an impressive way to avoid the ANPR cameras.
We continued along Lewes Road, all the way through the gyratory, past St Martin’s, the Level, St Peter’s, the Steine, all the way into the heart of town, turning up Church Street, then along Portland Street to the point where it runs between Sports Direct and Barclays. She stopped the bike and killed the engine, I climbed off and she kicked out the kickstand and climbed off too.
This street was empty, in the shadows between giant retail blocks. A hundred metres away, the endless sluice of late-night clubbers passed back and forth in silhouette where the road opens onto North Street. I looked back at Tidy as she pulled off her helmet, but she was facing away from me, toward a door in the back corner of what I was sure was the same building as Sports Direct and a Sainsbury’s Local, but which I had never noticed in what was nothing but a backstreet. Rising up from the door were glass tiles that ran all five stories up to the roof.
Tidy had unlocked the door and was wheeling her dirt bike through, I assumed I was supposed to follow. She left the bike in a little alcove by the bottom of some stairs and pressed the button to call the lift. I stepped in with her, still not saying a word. I figured it was her prerogative to break the silence. There was only one button to press, which she did, and we rose up to the top floor, the intensity of the silence building with every word unsaid.
The door opened onto a white hallway, with glass tiles running up from the stairwell, and apartment doors. She unlocked one of them and stepped inside. I followed her in and presumed to shut the door.
I entered into the upstairs open-plan living room/dining room/kitchen of a maisonette. I was drawn to the opposite end of the room, to the full-length windows which revealed a back yard (I know that’s an American term but I refuse to call anything a garden that doesn’t have grass, or dirt; and it’s not a courtyard because it’s not surrounded), whilst Tidy turned on lamps and bothered with something in the kitchen. I could see over the yard fence to the top of the Barclays and to the lights of the Steine, and beyond them to the lights of Kemptown as it rose up beyond. Over the side fences I could see other yards. This maisonette was basically one of twelve two-bedroom terraced beach houses built on top of Sports Direct, in the middle of town. Except that if you lost a football here you really lost it, and could probably cause a major traffic incident.
In the glass I saw her reflection approaching mine and turned. She held out one of two cocktail glasses, making eye contact for a first time:
‘Espresso Martini?’
‘Thank you.’
We both sipped, keeping hold of the eye contact now it was there. It tasted great, she had even put a single roasted coffee bean on top. Occasionally she would break eye contact, or turn around, giving me a chance to check her out. She was wearing her leathers and long boots, as ever; and as ever she looked incredible in them. I decided almost dispassionately that she had the best body I had ever seen.
‘You like it?’ she asked.
‘I do.’
I gave her a mischievous smile and began to wander round the room, looking at the pictures on the wall. There were only three, all of a smiling couple in front of a waterfall or other tourist trap. I scrutinised their faces.
She sighed. ‘There’s no point in playing detective, it’s an AirBnB.’
I kept wandering casually. ‘So this is where you’re staying whilst you’re down here.’ I checked inside her fridge, there was nothing but essentials. ‘You’ve already been here for a more than a week, let’s say at least ten days, how long are the owners on holiday for?’
‘They live half the year in Djibouti.’
‘So no one’s going to turf you out any time soon?’
She smiled. ‘No, sweetie.’
‘So, whatever you’re doing down here must be a pretty long job.’
She sat down on a breakfast bar stool, playfully listening to my deductions.
There was a camera on the dining table, an old Pentax, and film canisters. I peered inside the camera bag but didn’t touch. ‘I doubt it’s surveillance.’
‘That’s a hobby, honey.’
I turned back to look at her. ‘Colour or black and white?’
‘Black and white.’
‘I’d love to see some.’
‘When I get them printed I’ll send you something.’
‘Taken any of me?’
‘Not yet,’ she smiled, ‘but I’d love to.’ She came over, picked up the camera, and returned to her stool, viewing me through the lens. ‘The detective at work.’
I stood still, waiting for her to click the shutter, but she didn’t.
‘Keep going,’ she instructed me.
I continued to wander. ‘I doubt it’s protection, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to spend so much time with me. And you wouldn’t have been rooting through Clarence’s files. ‘No...’ I continued.
The shutter clicked. I tried not to be distracted.
‘...long term research. Deep background possibly. Corporate espionage more likely. Collecting evidence, building some kind of dossier.’ I looked at a laptop, also on the dining table. ‘Submitting files and photographs online, possibly getting your instructions that way, you might not even know who you’re working for. Am I close?’
She just smiled, putting the camera down. ‘There are two bedrooms downstairs, you’re welcome to the one without the en suite.’
‘Thank you, this definitely beats freezing to death in my car.’
‘In the morning I’ll get you some new clothes.’
I nodded thanks. ‘Why are you so keen to help me?’
‘Can’t you figure that out?’
‘I wish I could. The more I learn about you, the less I know.’
She smiled, genuinely. ‘I have my reasons.’
I smiled back. That’s what I’m afraid of.
We finished our cocktails and she led me downstairs to the guest bedroom and the bathroom I could use. I was standing in the hallway when she shut the door to her bedroom with what I can only describe as provocative eyes. I undressed and showered and went back to the windowless bedroom that was pitch black once I turned the light off. The door to her bedroom stayed shut the entire time. Occasionally I heard her moving. Knowing she was undressing just through the wall was too much to bear. Then I heard her shower running and I had to cover my ears with my pillow.
I lay a
wake for what seemed like hours. Those provocative eyes had seemed to say that sex was on tonight, but there had been no further opportunity to initiate anything. I could go to her room right now, but it was now the middle of the night and although we had done it before it might seem a little impertinent. Or worse: desperate. She was a powerful woman, did that mean she would come to my room if she wanted it, or did it mean she wanted me to come to her?
I decided I would bite the bullet and go to her. I swang my legs out of the bed, and that’s when I saw her standing in my doorway wearing nothing but a smile.
‘So you made me come to you,’ she said.
I didn’t disillusion her.
I could see she was swinging the strap of something in her hand, she threw it at me. It was the camera.
‘Go ahead.’
I took a portrait. It was all but a silhouette. Then I put the camera on the bedside table.
‘I’ll send you that one,’ she purred.
She came to the bed and climbed on top of me like before. And like before, it was transcendent, unbearable, and bewitching.
Afterwards she climbed off and went back to her room. I slept quite well then.
25
A Message from Max
Some internal clock told me it was late. The only light in the room came from the doorway, and it was definitely natural light. Which in the height of winter meant it was gone eight, maybe even gone nine if the light was as light as it seemed. I reached for my watch. Quarter to eleven.
I swang my legs out of bed and blearily felt for my clothes. They were missing. I checked the drawers in case Tidy had lived up to her name, but they were nowhere to be seen. I poked my head out of the room into the hallway. The door to her bedroom was open, the room empty. I grabbed a towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around my bottom half, then I wandered up the stairs.
The upstairs was empty too. The first thing I saw was a pile of clothes on the breakfast bar. Jeans, polo shirt, hoodie, all practical. Next to it was a drawstring bag, inside was soap and deodorant. On top of the clothes was a hundred pounds bound with a paperclip and a note that said “Sorry, had to work, T x”.
