by Jane Rogers
‘Scientists, husbands, middle-class wankers. Smile.’ She raises her camera and takes his picture.
‘What are you doing?’ Con stands up, blinking. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to annoy you but —’
She gives her fake laugh again. ‘Oh, where shall I start? In Birmingham, you think I’m so stupid I don’t even know where I’m staying and you have to lead me there by the hand.’
‘But you didn’t,’ he starts, vividly recalling leading her across the road.
‘But I did,’ she mocks, ‘only you assumed I was thick.’
‘I was trying to help,’
‘Why do you think I need help? Because I’m not as clever as you?’ She continues to snap him as she talks, and he holds his hand in front of his face, idiotically, as if she were paparazzi and he some kind of criminal celebrity. ‘You have to show me what a big strong male you are by carrying my bag and holding open doors. You tell me what to eat and drink —’ Con recalls offering her wine. He feels nauseated. ‘ —as if I’m too much of a child to have any tastes of my own.’
‘You asked me to carry your bag upstairs,’ he protests. ‘You said you didn’t like lifts.’
‘Does that give you permission to be a sexist wanker?’
‘You just got in a lift,’ he blurts.
She laughs in his face. ‘From the start you’ve been stringing me along with little bits of excuses about your important job, which consists of torturing helpless animals. You tell me I’m looking well when what you mean is, sexually available. When you can see a bit of tit, suddenly you are open to persuasion. When you think you’ll get your end away, you give me the photos you should have given me three months ago.’
Con sits again. Anger is beginning to burn inside him. At himself, of course, as well as at this crazy bitch. ‘Then why aren’t I fucking you right now?’
She shrugs. ‘Because you’re a hypocrite?’
He adjusts his clothes and heads for the door.
‘Or maybe you just can’t get it up,’ she adds. He closes the door on the sound of her sniggering.
Con’s analysis of this encounter changes, depending on his mood. He has been low enough at times to believe everything she says, acknowledging her itemisation of his failings. At other times he recognises that she is insane, because frankly, why would she turn on him when he has actually given her what she wants – assuming the photos are what she wants? Was she offended that he didn’t want sex with her? Surely not. The point is, he might well have done, if she hadn’t been so crass. But doesn’t that prove the accuracy of her analysis? Did he only shy away from sex because she presented it too bluntly as a transaction, offending his delicate sensibilities? He would have liked it perhaps, if sex had been an added extra, with some pretence at her being attracted to him. Is that it – she offended his vanity?
No doubt about it, she has succeeded if her aim was to undermine him and fill him with self-loathing. She has succeeded very well. Beyond all this (which is, he reminds himself, trivial, because it is only about his own feelings, which don’t actually matter to anyone else) there is the larger issue of her malevolence, and the power she has to do harm.
Which is revealed very quickly. In succession, the home of the director of research at CBL is daubed in red paint with ANIMAL KILLER YOUR NEXT; Gus’s car windscreen is smashed with a brick bearing the taped message DEATH TO VIVISECTIONISTS; and two of the colleagues Con named to her receive parcels through the post containing blood-sodden menstrual towels labelled HIV POSITIVE. That’s to say, two colleagues admit this has happened to them. There may be others who don’t care to make the information public.
He goes over what she knows. About El and the children. She knows where he lives. What will she do to his house and car? What will she send him in the post?
He needs to go to the police, and he needs to tell El.
No one is making the connections. No one is connecting him to any of this, not even Gus. His complaints about Carrington Bio-Life seem forgotten. The pictures have gone viral with no reference to him. They are attributed to ‘a mole on the CBL staff’.
Con lies awake at night waiting for Maddy to strike again. But nothing comes, not so much as an email. He tries to tell himself that the red paint and brick and sanitary towels are not her but some more extreme member of her protest group, acting on the information she has delivered. One of the photos makes the Guardian and El points it out to him with distaste. ‘Don’t you and Gus use CBL? This looks a bit horrid.’
‘Yes. I don’t know,’ he says. ‘They must be subject to routine inspections, surely.’
Then El starts badgering him to resign. He comes within a hair’s breadth of telling her. But she makes him furious. With her revulsion and her holier-than-thou and her always knowing better than him. With her great career. He gets angry and says things which should not be said. He defends his research and the animal house to her. Why? Why? Because it is not up to her, it’s up to him. And if she had an ounce of imagination, and real interest in him, wouldn’t she guess that the mole must be him? Wouldn’t she understand immediately how hateful this is to him?
He endures a couple of weeks in which time passes in slow motion, and he patrols El’s car, his car, the children’s movements, the lab car park, as if only his own assiduous attention has the power to protect them.
Then comes an email. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you, wanker. He deletes it instantly then moves it from the deleted folder into a storage folder which he calls MAD. It is evidence. He should go to the police. But it is as much as he can do to drag himself from home to work and back again, and fuel himself with oven-ready pap from the freezer before crawling into bed again. A kind of grey mist is closing in on him.
He has to tell El because there is a threat. But what would he tell her? That he saw abuses at CBL and was too ineffectual to get anyone to take them seriously, so gave his photos to a crazy animal rights woman? That he has given her enough information to track down various players including his entire family, and that she has already attacked people and property on the basis of what he told her?
But this is not the reason for not telling El. It is not because it will make him look bad – though of course it will. The reason for not telling El is her El-ishness; she will briskly consider and then pronounce that the best course of action is X. And X will be a course of action that he doesn’t want. It will probably involve calling the police and escalating the level of danger. Or El may decide to contact Maddy herself and talk some sense into her. Yes, that would be El’s preferred line of attack, and then Maddy would give her version of Con’s behaviour, maybe worse, and show El the picture of him sitting on her hotel bed surrounded by her underwear, and El would be contemptuous of him, and either be at personal risk of violence from Maddy, or (more likely) succeed in reasoning with her and prevent her from causing any further mischief. At this moment Con cannot tell which would be worse – for El to be hurt, or for her to solve the whole situation with calm and reason. Both would be insufferable, and both would prove him spineless and despicable.
A few more emails arrive – they are all short, and all menacing. She is certainly planning something. As day follows day, action becomes less and less possible, because if something needed doing, why hasn’t he already done it? He rings the children in rotation, one per night, calling Megan early before she leaves for the theatre. He’s practised at gleaning their news and movements while implying that the ship of Home sails smoothly on, bearing El and himself towards a happy sunset. ‘There’s no news,’ he repeats. ‘No news is good news, eh.’
Beyond this and the rare functional exchange with El, it is possible not to speak to anyone at all, one day blurs into the next. It is by pure chance that he catches a news item on the radio while driving El’s car to the garage for its service. It is about activists and an animal research facility. A woman and two men have been arres
ted for vandalism and threatening behaviour. Cars have been defaced with red paint and individuals have received written threats. The accused cannot be named…
He knows it is her.
He scours the internet for more information but there isn’t much. Two individuals have been apprehended with cans of red paint on private property, and the third has been identified as a result of questioning. Bail is refused, the trial will take place in December. A month away. She is in prison for at least a month.
The wash of relief does not last. They can’t put her away for long on ‘vandalism’ and ‘threatening behaviour’. She’ll probably have served her time before it comes to trial. And what use is any of it? The protestors are the villains, and the research facility is an innocent victim – no one is doing anything about conditions there. As for what Maddy might tell her lawyer – Con realises that he will almost certainly be named. He might get called as a witness. It will be impossible to keep it secret from El.
Is it around this time that the nightmares begin? It seems as if he has lived with them for years, but that can’t be true, because Maddy figures in them. She is in prison, in a cage, exactly like the cages in the animal house. She is chattering with rage, like the monkey. She is tearing at her own flesh, with razor-sharp nails, tearing, lacerating, screaming in his face, and he stands there splattered with her blood, unable to move a muscle. There is no key to her cage. He wakes slick with her warm blood, but when he wipes his face on the sheet it is nothing but his own oily sweat.
As the trial approaches he remains in suspension, waiting for the email, the phone call, that will drag him in… but nothing. Is it possible she hasn’t named him? Why? Is she saving him for worse punishment? On the day they are found guilty the three are named: John Hogan, Tom Masters, Rebecca Vine. Rebecca Vine? There are no photos. It has to be her, who else could it be? The woman’s sentence is the longest, six weeks in prison and community service. She has already been held for four weeks. She walks free.
Con checks his email obsessively, forty, fifty, a hundred times a day. What punishment is good enough for what you’ve done? I should rip your heart out, he reads. He no longer trusts himself to drive; shapes of other cars seem to rush towards him from the edges of his vision. He has to slow down and pull over to the kerb and people hoot and gesticulate. At roundabouts he waits and hesitates until he can wait and hesitate no longer, and then he plunges out into the path of oncoming vehicles, accelerating wildly. He arrives at work sweating, his heart pounding. Better to take the train. And there is a twenty-minute walk either side of the train journey; exercise is good for sleeplessness, he’s told Cara often enough. It makes no difference, in point of fact. But at least he’s not behind the wheel and about to kill someone. Long distance torture is easy, eh. What the eye doesn’t see. You will see, shitface, trust me.
There is a strand of him, always, who is Con, observing his own behaviour with detachment; assessing him like the subject of an experiment, noting that he is suffering panic attacks and other symptoms of stress; that his sleeplessness is a form of depression; that his appetite and libido are significantly reduced, that he is losing weight, that his hair is now entirely grey, his eyes dull, his skin dry and flaky. If he was an animal, he should be put on a different regime. See you soon, sweetie. Not if he can help it.
He sets off for the conference on automatic pilot. A month earlier, he would not have been able to allow himself to go, because his presence at home, checking, checking, for the safety of El and the children and his colleagues at the lab, was essential. But now time has warped it and he can see that his checking is ineffectual. His presence near those he would like to protect is not only no protection but quite possibly an added risk, since he himself is target number one and proximity to him may cause them to suffer collateral damage – when she strikes.
He is almost demob happy, packing for the conference. He will be leaving her behind along with all his other woes. Different rooms, a different city, decent meals; people who know him, knew him, knew the confident and amiable social being Conrad Evanson. (Was he confident? Was he amiable? He cannot begin to imagine how they saw him. But surely not as this trembling semi-transparent wreck, not as someone incapable of holding it together…)
Everything goes well. He takes the train to the airport, his flight is on time, his hotel room is on the third floor with a view of trees. He is able to perform the conference camaraderie and feels humbled by the commitment of his colleagues to their research. It is a long time since he has been able to imagine that what he is doing is important. On the Sunday evening, the mood after dinner is convivial. He sits with Park, a Korean who did his Ph.D. with Gus and worked in the cubicle next to Con’s lab. Park fell in love with an Irish girl, of whom his family disapprove. The girl doesn’t want to move to Korea, but Park’s career there is really taking off, he’s second in department, it would be crazy to leave now. They want to marry, but what sense does it make if they don’t even live in the same country? As he and Park drain their wine Con listens and advises with keen interest. Afterwards, he realises he has actually forgotten about Maddy. He has spent the whole evening not thinking of her once. But then comes the walk back to his hotel.
It is a short walk from the conference centre in Munich to Conrad’s hotel. Park is staying with friends a tram ride away. Con walks with him to the tram stop then turns the corner towards his own hotel, away from the brightly lit main thoroughfare.
This is a quiet residential street; on the corner there’s a building site enclosed by hoardings, then well-to-do houses, with brass nameplates of dentists and lawyers, shuttered windows, small coiffured shrubs in planters. The streetlamps are heritage, resembling gas lamps and giving as little light. As he moves towards the end of the empty street Conrad hears a lighter step behind him. He glances back. There’s a squat tree between him and the nearest streetlamp, and the shadows of the branches reach across the street. A woman is coming towards him through the shadows. Her.
Chapter 14
Eleanor is lost. If Con was delaying coming home to teach her a lesson, this is too long. If he is with another woman called Maddy, it is implausible that he has not contacted the kids. If he is kidnapped, there’s no ransom. If he’s ill or dead, someone must know. This silence, extending for days, stretches her nerves taut and keeps her awake all night, making her heart flip every time the phone rings. Her work is going to pot; Cara is keeping nocturnal hours and not eating; Paul comes and goes at random, so angry he barely speaks to her; Megan is on stage every night, and Dan is Dan. El has sent Louis an email asking him not to contact her, which he is respecting. She didn’t imagine he would do anything else – what could he do? But still maybe she hoped. It makes her all the more solitary and unreal. She is a ghost. Her urgent vivid life has become a painted backdrop against which she sees herself standing immobile, with no lines and no direction. How will this end? How can she make it end? Sometimes people are missing for years. Then it would be up to her, by main force, to wrestle her life back into some kind of reality. But where will the cut-off point be and what will signal it? What will stop this grey succession of helpless, passive hours? How can she regain control?
She hates it when the phone rings. Some people are avoiding her but others want to offer their support and ask how things are going. She hates rehashing the same worn phrases; no, no news yet, the kids are being very good, thanks; no, there’s nothing you can do but very kind of you to offer. Even the smallest task she sets herself, such as cooking something tempting for Cara, becomes overwhelming. She sits indecisively flicking through recipe books, then has to search cupboards for ingredients and make a shopping list, then worries about leaving Cara alone or missing a vital phone call. Yes, everyone has her mobile, but the home phone is the real one, the one Con would ring. Being in the house for when there is news is the only positive thing she can do, so then it’s back to the recipe books to find something which can be made from ing
redients already in the cupboards, or trying to decide whether to phone Paul and ask him to shop. And she is doing no good staying in with Cara because Cara hides in her room and when El knocks on the door with a drink or a snack, Cara thanks her mechanically but doesn’t talk, answering only monosyllabically when El dredges up something to say to her. She can’t communicate with Cara – not in this state – Con is the only one who can.
El cleans the house automatically. It is distressingly filthy, she has not cleaned it properly for months, and neither, despite the agreement that he should, has Con. Cleaning, washing the grime off the paintwork, polishing the soap residue off the shower cubicle, reaching down all the ceiling cobwebs with a broom, gives her the sense of accomplishing something. But she cannot bear to use the vacuum, because its noise may block out the sound of a phone call. She creeps backwards down the carpeted stairs with a brush and dustpan, brushing each step clean, raising small clouds of dust. She tests herself by trying to set a date when she will return to work, but the tide of matters she is already behind with feels so daunting that she wants to duck and avoid it. And beyond that, she can’t see the point. What is the point of going to work? What is the point of all those things she was so busy busy busy with?
She is cleaning kitchen windows when the phone rings. She reaches it on the third ring. The police. Conrad’s bank card has been used in Bologna, Italy.
‘So he’s in Bologna?’
No, his bank card is. She is reminded that it may have been stolen. There may be difficult circumstances. The bank card was used with a wrong PIN, it may not have been used by Conrad. Eleanor is advised to contact the bank where it was used; she is given the number and the name of someone who speaks English.
Now there’s a blur of activity, now everything shifts. The Italian man she speaks to, having requested Con’s account number and other lengthy verification, tells her the person who used the card was Alberto Carpazo, who has left his name and address, and has explained to a bank clerk that the owner of the card, Conrad Evanson, is at his house and is too ill to use the card himself. Alberto’s address is dictated to El.
