“Let’s stick it in the PC and have a look,” I said.
My old Dell laptop wheezed and clanked into action, and after an age of waiting presented us with a desktop. I clicked on the icon for the SD slot, and we waited another hour or two for the window to open. I wished I’d bought a machine that wasn’t powered by elastic bands while I’d still been able to afford it.
The memory card held only one file, a digital video. I double-clicked on it, aware of Susan hovering at my shoulder. She used the same scented soap as Nicky, I noticed, and deep down I felt a stab of desire.
The video was grainy black and white. The camera was mounted behind a windscreen, recording a journey along an anonymous stretch of night-time motorway. White numbers flickered in the corner—the time and date, I supposed. The viewpoint seemed quite high, which suggested the vehicle was either a coach or a truck, travelling in the middle lane, overtaking vans and caravans on one side and being overtaken on the other by speeding saloons and big four-by-fours. These days a lot of trucks had cameras in the cab, I knew, to act like black-box flight recorders, providing footage that could be used in the case of an accident. The figure in the corner of the picture flickered between 64 and 65—presumably the speed of the truck the camera was mounted in. I kept my eye on the overtaking lane to the right, waiting to see this demon vicar come tearing past, when in the middle of the screen a shifting constellation of brake lights dead ahead burst into life, flashing, weaving, and swerving from side to side.
Zeto’s tinny little hatchback wasn’t overtaking the truck—it was coming straight towards it at top speed down the wrong side of the motorway, in the middle lane. I’d heard God moved in mysterious ways, but how he’d managed to keep Zeto from killing himself and twenty other drivers was sure as hell a mystery to me. The truck with the camera mounted in its cab jammed on its brakes while cars ahead of it lurched and rear-ended and side-swiped each other to get out of Zeto’s way. Finally one white box-van with nowhere to go slammed into Zeto’s car, not quite head-on, piling it into the central barrier and leaving it perched there with one wheel hanging off, while the box-van rocked and wobbled to a halt behind a crowd of dented, crumpled vehicles. The camera truck too had slewed to a halt, and the video showed dazed drivers climbing groggily out their cars before the image froze, crumpled and cut to white noise.
“Jesus,” I said. “This could make us a fortune on YouTube.”
“Finn, this is evidence in a court case,” said Susan. “We shouldn’t even be watching it.”
“Relax,” I said. “I’ll send it back. Once I’ve copied it.” I clicked on the file and dragged it to my desktop. The laptop grunted and wheezed as it started copying the file. It would only take it most of the night, I reckoned. “How much communion wine do you have to neck to pull a stunt like that?” I asked Susan. She was flicking through another printed report.
“About a crateful, I’d imagine,” she said. “But this says his blood-test results are awaiting confirmation.” She stood up and promptly banged her head on the low ceiling.
“Mind the low ceiling,” I said.
“How the hell do you put up with it?” She rubbed her scalp. “You must be what, six foot three?”
“I generally move about on my hands and knees,” I said.
Susan chucked the folder back into its crate. “I can’t see how this stupid vicar can have anything to do with Nicky disappearing.”
“Neither can I, right now,” I said, “but I’d like to find him and ask him.”
“And what about Nicky’s phone?”
“What about it?”
“Do you still have it?”
“Why?” I said.
“Shouldn’t we show it to the police?”
“When I’ve finished with it,” I said.
“But don’t they need to know about these threatening messages?”
“They already do,” I said.
And that was true, because according to Vora, Nicky had told them. Knowing the cops, of course, they’d never make that connection now. They’d have stuffed Nicky’s original complaint down the back of a filing cabinet and forgotten about it. If I wanted to know the truth, that meant finding it out for myself—not passing the buck to a bunch of uniformed jobsworths whose most urgent priority was a cup of tea and a biscuit.
“You liked Nicky, didn’t you?” asked Susan.
“She was a friend,” I said. “Is.”
“I got the impression she was more than that.”
I didn’t want to lie, but I didn’t know what the truth was, so I said nothing.
“Because you’re taking a hell of a risk for her. Interfering with evidence. We could be charged with perverting the course of justice, even.”
“Maybe, if the cops ever find out.” I looked at her. She laughed. She resembled Nicky so much I felt as if I’d known her for months, instead of days; and for a moment I wondered if she was doing it on purpose.
“I’m not going to tell them,” she said. “You need me to help, I’ll help.”
“Could you dig out an address for this arsonist property developer?”
Joan Bisham’s place was in a quiet, prosperous suburb a twenty-minute bus ride away. I had thought a property developer would live in something flash and sleek, maybe designed by an architect, but I was wrong. Hers was a huge rambling, crumbling red-brick house that had been divided into a dozen dingy flats not long ago—one stretch of wall still bore a crudely painted 14A and a wobbly arrow pointing to the basement. There were two front doors to choose from, but I went for the one that looked the cleanest, and heard a bell ring somewhere in the distance. A few minutes later the door was jerked open by a smartly dressed woman in her forties with big brown eyes and shoulder-length chestnut hair that didn’t quite conceal intricate earrings of blue stones on gold wire. We hesitated a moment, surprised to recognize each other, and I realized where I’d seen her before—on one of my visits to Nicky’s office she’d been leaving as I arrived.
I could tell Joan Bisham couldn’t place me, and not knowing seemed to make her anxious and irritable. Or maybe she was like that anyway; last time I’d seen her face it had worn an expression of bitterness and disappointment. It did again now, and I realized bitterness was becoming permanently etched on her features, which was a shame because she was still quite a looker.
“Hello again,” I said, with what I hoped was a charming smile.
She eyed me with distrust, wondering if I was going to produce a religious magazine and start hectoring her about the Apocalypse.
“Do I know you?” Her voice was hard flinty South London.
“Finn Maguire. We met at Nicky Hale’s office. I’m a client of hers. Trying to track her down.”
“She’s not hiding out here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’m trying to get in touch with all her former clients.”
I could see that she took me for an idiot, and would have shut the door except she was enjoying mocking me.
“What, you trying to start some sort of protest group or something, to demand compensation?”
“Not exactly.”
“What, then?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Don’t have time for long stories, sorry.” She stood back to close the door without even the perfunctory smile the middle class give to doorsteppers they wish would drop dead.
“I thought it might have something to do with that squatter,” I said.
She held the door back an inch at the last second, looking alarmed and angry.
“The one who died in that fire at your development,” I went on, though I guessed she’d known what I’d meant. “Or maybe the one who had his face burned off. I thought maybe someone was out for revenge.”
Maybe she thought I was talking bull, but I could see her wondering if it was a good idea to turn me away without finding out what I knew.
“What do you mean, revenge?”
“Like I said, it’s a long story.”
Bisham led me through a dim warren of hard-board partitions and peeling paint to a kitchen decorated with patches of damp and equipped with units so warped they no longer fitted. In her sharp slim business-like trouser suit she looked out of place, and I wondered how she kept up appearances while living in a house no self-respecting crack dealer would cook up his shit in.
“Nice house. Lots of character,” I said, trying not to sound sarcastic, and failing.
“It’s a dump,” said Bisham. “But once it’s been refurbished I should get more than I paid for it.” She lit a cigarette and leaned against the counter with her arms crossed over her bony chest. I was glad she didn’t offer me a drink, because I could see pellets of mouse shit on the corners of the worktop and I guessed there was plenty more in the cupboards, and on the crockery, and in the kettle too by the looks of things. Maybe my place wasn’t so bad after all.
“Yes, I’m sure it has a lot of potential.” I was trying to be polite but I thought I sounded like an estate agent, and Bisham seemed to think so too, and to hate estate agents as much as I did. “What were you saying about this dead squatter?” she demanded.
I didn’t actually know where I was going with that so I didn’t answer it, although I could tell her patience was wearing thin. I nodded instead at a small camera perched on top of a cupboard, a single blue light glowing beside its lens. “I see you have a CCTV camera,” I said. “Is that in case of burglars?”
“You see anything worth burgling?” She took a deep drag of her cigarette.
“The camera?” I joked feebly.
Bisham tapped her ash into the sink, stared coldly at me, and finally deigned to answer. “It’s my son’s. He put it up there so he can see when I’m in, and when his dinner’s ready. His room’s right at the top—saves me climbing five flights of stairs.”
She had a son? “How old is he?” I was hoping small talk might warm Bisham up a bit—I always thought parents loved boasting about their children, or complaining about them, or both at the same time. But this one didn’t seem to.
“I’m still waiting to hear this long story,” she said.
“Did you know Nicky Hale was getting threatening messages?” I said. “Via email and Twitter?”
Bisham’s dangly golden earrings jangled faintly when she shrugged. “She never said nothing to me. Was it something to do with my case?”
“Hard to tell. They were mostly just threats.” Luridly descriptive and obscene threats, but I wasn’t going to go into detail. I had managed to read about fifty messages on Nicky’s phone, and by the time I’d given up I’d felt ready to puke, and not from the effort of squinting at the screen. In youth custody I had met a few inadequate sickos who hated women, but not many with the sheer stamina and command of obscenity this guy had—I was pretty sure it was a guy, judging by his obsession with female anatomy. But he was always careful to omit any details that might identify him, or suggest exactly why he was picking on Nicky.
Bisham just snorted. “Now she knows how it feels.”
“What?”
“I’ve been getting them for years. Threats. Obscenities.”
“How many years?”
“Two or three. Changed my phone number, changed my email address, changed my online name, but whoever it is always finds me again in a few weeks. I thought it was pathetic and kind of funny at first, like those sad old flashers in the park. Now …” She sucked her breath in through her teeth, and I thought I saw her shudder. “It just … it gets to you, you know? Wears you down.”
“Have you reported them?”
She snorted smoke and rolled her eyes at my naivety.
“But Nicky knew about it?”
“Yeah. She tried to track the senders down, got nowhere. Told me I should keep a note of every one I got so we could use them in evidence. Keep a note! I didn’t need to keep notes, I couldn’t get rid of the bloody things.”
“And she never mentioned that she was getting them too?”
“No, and I’m not surprised. They make you feel like a victim, angry and scared and—helpless. Nicky wouldn’t have liked that. And maybe she thought I’d blame myself for getting her involved.”
“You trusted her?” I said. Suddenly I needed to know that I hadn’t been a mug to put my faith in Nicky. I wanted someone to back me up, even if it was an embittered woman I barely knew living in a derelict toilet.
Bisham seemed surprised by the question.
“Nicky? Yeah. I trusted her.”
“And you have no idea who was sending the threatening emails?”
“Oh yeah.” She laughed bitterly. “I know damn well who’s sending them. He’s in Dalston, doing six to ten for arson.”
“Who?”
“My ex-husband. Used to be my business partner, when we had a business. It’s his way of keeping in touch.” She screwed her cigarette out in the sink. “And those stupid insurers still claim we’re working together.”
“How the hell is he sending threatening emails from prison?”
“Christ, it’s easier from the inside than it is out here. They can get anything, that lot. Drugs, women, guns. And get anything done for them.”
What could Nicky have done to infuriate Bisham’s husband? I thought. Would he really have nobbled her just to get at his wife?
Bisham seemed annoyed that I was staring into space. “So what’s all this about a squatter looking for revenge?” she said.
I wondered what she was talking about, until I realized that was the story I’d given her on the doorstep.
“Er—it’s just a theory,” I said. “I thought maybe a mate of the guy who got killed in that fire wanted to get back at you, and went for Nicky instead.”
“You’ve spoken to him?” asked Bisham.
“Not yet,” I said. I must have looked as sheepish as I felt.
Bisham tossed her soggy cigarette stub towards the bin and missed. “So everything you told me earlier was bull, is that it?” she said.
I tried to placate her. “I’m just trying to find out what happened to Nicky.” It didn’t seem to be working.
“How the hell did you get hold of my address?”
I realized too late I should have thought of an answer for that question before I arrived. I could hardly tell her I’d stolen Nicky’s files and Nicky’s phone. “Nicky sent me a letter that was meant to go to you,” I improvised. “I never got round to sending it back. That’s how I got your address.”
“That’s all lies,” she snapped. She straightened up and jabbed her forefinger towards my face, its long fake nail like a razor blade painted crimson. “What are you after?” She must have been two-thirds my height but she was tensed like a rattlesnake and the anger was coming off her in waves. “And who are you anyway?”
“I told you, the name’s Maguire. I can leave you my details if it helps.”
“You can shove your details, and get out of my house.”
“No problem,” I said, raising my hands and circling round her to get to the door. There was a potato peeler on the counter near her right hand and I half expected her to grab it and lunge at me. I made it to the hall, and as I headed for the door with her on my heels I saw a round, pale face behind greasy spectacles peering down the stairs.
“Mum?”
He was a podgy kid of fourteen or so, pale as an albino, with bulging blue eyes under a shapeless black hoodie that was too big for him and oversized headphones draped around his chubby neck.
“Everything all right?” he quavered. It was hard to tell if his voice had broken yet. He seemed frightened to come down the stairs,
“Everything’s fine, Gabe. I’ve got this.”
I admired the kid coming to his mum’s aid, but if things had got rough I doubt he would have been much use, apart from sprinkling dandruff on me. I grabbed the latch and let myself out. “Thanks for everything,” I said, and heard Bisham’s final curse cut off as the door banged shut behind me.
I tried to make sense of what I’d lea
rned, but soon ended up more confused than I’d been when I arrived. I wasn’t a shrink, but I didn’t need to be to know that Joan Bisham was a borderline nutter with a fearsome temper on a hair trigger. I didn’t envy Nicky having had to deal with her. But Nicky was a good lawyer, one who never gave up—why would Joan Bisham have wanted her to vanish only a week or two before the case came to trial? That could result in the trial being delayed for weeks, months even. Is that what Bisham had wanted?
This was all guesswork, I realized with irritation. I didn’t know how much to believe of what Bisham had told me, or whether she really had been another victim of those toxic emails. Then again, if anything would drive you to the brink of insanity, it would be a relentless stream of obscene and threatening messages for months and years on end. I knew from hard experience there were at least two sides to every failed marriage; I might never get to know the whole truth, but maybe I could get another angle on what had happened … if I spoke to Bisham’s husband James.
The bus slowed as it approached my stop, just across the road from the gym, but the doors didn’t open. I heard the bus driver leaning on the horn, and looked forward through the bus windscreen. Someone had parked a big Mercedes saloon right at the bus stop, and three stocky men were climbing out of it, wearing ski masks. Not a good sign—this wasn’t the season for skiing in West London. Two of the men carried lump hammers, and the third, the one with the crowbar, flicked the bus driver the V sign as he and his pals sauntered across the road—towards my gym. I could guess what they were planning to do, and I reached for the button that rang the driver’s bell and stabbed it again and again.
“I can’t open the doors until we’re at the stop!” the driver called back.
I cursed and scanned the panel above the door, spotted the emergency lever and wrenched it down. The doors sighed open, painfully slowly, and ignoring the driver’s shouted health and safety lecture I rammed my body into the gap, squeezed through and burst out, nearly falling onto the tarmac before regaining my balance and belting round to the back of the bus. I had to leap back almost immediately as a skip truck thundered past, followed by an endless stream of speeding traffic. There was nothing I could do but stand and wait and watch, as on the other side of the road two of the winter-sports fans walked around the gym’s car park smashing headlights and windows on my customers’ cars, while the third, a hulk wearing leather gloves, tipped brake fluid over roofs and bonnets, giggling as it trickled down, bubbling and scorching the paintwork and gathering in puddles of chemical goo on the concrete.
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