Incinerator

by Niall Leonard

  An hour later, sweaty, panting and newly bloodied, I lay face down on the rumpled wreck of my bed while she wandered around the room in a shirt of mine that barely covered her finely toned ass.

  “What do you do for a living?” I said.

  “I coach tennis. It doesn’t pay very well, but I have some money saved up, from when I used to play professionally.”

  “That would account for that very fine ass you have.”

  “Thank you. I’m told it’s good, I’ve never seen it myself.”

  She noticed the mail lying opened on my table and reached for them with the easy familiarity of someone I’d just slept with.

  “You have an AmEx card?” she said. She sounded vaguely surprised. Then she clocked the address on the statement. “This is Harry’s,” she said. She looked shocked, and at the same time thrilled—as if I was a cat burglar who had lifted a diamond tiara from a yacht off Monte Carlo, rather than a West London hoodie who had robbed a postman’s bicycle. “What are you doing with it?”

  “Checking him out,” I said. “Did you say he worked for a bank?”

  “Hennessey’s—one of those private banks you never hear of unless you’re loaded. Very classy, very exclusive. He’s always dropping hints about how his latest client is a rock star, or a Premiership footballer. Nicky got fed up telling him to be more discreet. I think he just doesn’t want people to know how boring he really is.”

  “He’s not that boring,” I said. “I mean, for a bank manager. He’s not boring enough.”

  “You talking about the coke?”

  That took me aback. I thought Anderson snorting cocaine would be a big deal, given his position. “It’s practically a rite of passage in his business,” Susie went on. “I mean, all the young fund managers do it. For those guys, not snorting coke is like being a vegan or something.”

  “Actually, it’s not the coke,” I said. I clambered out of bed, wrapping a towel round my waist to stop the draughts from the crooked windows getting to my vitals. Picking up the credit card statement I pointed to three transactions I’d underlined. “See those?” I said.

  “For ten thousand pounds?”

  “Each. Don’t you think that’s odd? That he withdrew exactly ten thousand pounds three times in the space of two weeks?”

  “Yes, but … those could be for anything.” She checked the payee. “Fine Times Ltd?”

  “They’re some sort of financial services company. I Googled them.”

  “Well then, it must have something to do with his work.”

  “Why would he use his credit card to get cash from one of his clients?”

  “I don’t know, Finn, I’m not a City banker, and neither are you.”

  “He went over his credit limit twice last month,” I said. “If you were a Premiership footballer, would you want a coke-addicted spendaholic managing your account?”

  “Harry’s a creep,” said Susie, “but he’s not a coke addict. Nicky would never have put up with it.”

  “Maybe that’s why she left,” I said.

  Susie tossed the statements back on the table. “What are you going to do about it?” She turned back to me and raised her hand to stroke my face.

  “Dunno yet,” I said. “Sleep on it, I suppose.”

  “Not tonight,” she said. I flinched as her fist clenched in my hair.

  seven

  Susie left at dawn, sashaying up the street in a way that would have had me chasing after her if I didn’t feel as if I’d just done ten rounds with a garden shredder. It was a beautiful summer morning, but the air wasn’t as fresh as it could be. Some passer-by had been smoking one of those cheap cigars that smell like burning hair, and the stink was still lingering. I couldn’t understand how anyone could smoke so early in the day, but then I couldn’t understand why anyone had invented smoking in the first place.

  The archive crate holding Zeto’s files was still sitting on the table, and I wished Susie had stuck around to help me plough through the reams of notes and interviews Nicky had collected. Why was there so much material anyway? I knew Nicky was thorough, but it seemed way over the top for a straightforward drink-driving offence. I picked up the psychiatric report. At two pages long, it wouldn’t take me more than fifteen minutes to read it.

  It took me half an hour and at the end I was no wiser. There was a lot of waffle about depression and loss of affect, but nothing specific—it looked as if Zeto hadn’t cooperated with the shrink supposed to be helping him. Did he want to be convicted? If he did, why not just plead guilty?

  I tossed the report back in the crate and lifted out the mugshot of the case officer, DS Lovegrove. Why did Nicky have his photo on file? Her memory for faces can’t have been that bad. I flipped the photo over again and found the phone number.

  “Traffic unit.”

  “Hi, I was looking for Detective Sergeant Lovegrove?”

  “Speaking.” His voice was gravelly, brisk and impatient.

  I should have got my story straight beforehand.

  “I’m, er, a colleague of Nicky Hale,” I said. “Colleague” was vague enough not to get me into trouble, I hoped.

  “Of who, sorry?”

  “Nicky Hale. Acting for Reverend Zeto, the drink-driving charge?”

  “Zeto … OK.” There was a pause and scuffle at the other end as if he was settling into a chair and grabbing a pen. “You say you’re a colleague of Ms. Hale?”

  “That’s right. The name’s Maguire.”

  “I understood Ms. Hale was no longer representing Mr. Zeto. That she’d left the country.”

  “Yes, but we still have some case files here, and there’s something …” How would a lawyer put it? “There are outstanding issues we need to address. Perhaps we could meet up?” That was a crap idea—I’d have to borrow a suit. And an office.

  “How come you have his case files? I thought Zeto was being handled by a different firm.”

  I tried to sound casual. “We just need to sort out these, em, anomalies first.”

  There was a brief silence, broken by a soft snarl. “Who the fuck is this?”

  I hung up.

  I’d known I was winging it, ringing the case officer. I’d expected to be stonewalled or challenged, but even that way I thought I might learn something from their reaction. I had—it felt like I’d poked a pile of straw and felt something huge, vicious and hungry lurking underneath. I wished I’d remembered to withhold my phone number.

  Zeto was working the late shift. I could just about make him out through the steamed-up windows of the old café, his fair hair dank with perspiration as he wrestled an empty pan caked with remnants of lasagne out of the rack under the glass counter. Where else would he go? I thought. Suspended from his parish, separated from his family, what has he got to do but this? I suddenly realized that the same logic applied to me.

  It was a soft cool summer’s evening. The sinking sun made even this dead-end street look picturesque and peaceful, and the semis whistling along the North Circular nearby were already lit up like fairground rides. I could have been down by the river, making a fool of myself chatting up some girl, and instead here I was standing in a disused bus shelter in North London, staring through the windows of a soup kitchen at a washed-up vicar washing up. I didn’t even know what I expected to find—I just knew that there was more to his story than anyone was saying, and that DS Lovegrove was a scary creep. I suspected Nicky had sensed that too. And Nicky had vanished.

  As had Zeto. I suddenly realized I couldn’t see him any more, and that the only figures shifting behind the misty glass were those slight, cheery Christian girls I’d met the other morning. I cursed inwardly—I’d checked the rear entrance when I arrived, and found rubbish piled up against it, so I’d presumed it was disused—but what if that was the wrong back door, and Zeto had sneaked out that way? I had thought of going into the old café, keeping my hoodie pulled up, and tailing him from there, but with my build Zeto would have spotted me easily. Now I wished I’d
taken that risk—I’d slogged all the way up here and lounged around for hours for nothing. I was poised to cross the road, go inside and ask for him—say I was a former parishioner, trying to track him down, maybe. They might think I was some hack journo sniffing around for a story, but what did that matter?

  Then the wooden gate sealing the alleyway next to the café slowly shuddered and scraped open, and Zeto emerged, pushing a bike ahead of him. He still wore his sweaty T-shirt, but he’d changed into knee-length shorts, and the knotted muscles on his calves told me I was in trouble. I’d known he’d lost his licence and couldn’t drive—I’d been counting on it—but I’d presumed he’d walk home, wherever home was now, or maybe catch a bus. Then it would have been simple to follow him. I tried to merge my bulk with the bus shelter as I watched him clip LED lights to his bike, switch them to flash, and strap on his helmet. His bike was old, with deep scratches in its blue paint, but it was light and sleek—a road bike, and it looked fast. He’s a bloody vicar, I thought; he should be riding one of those cast-iron pushbikes with a basket on the front, the sort that can only do two miles an hour.

  Zeto took his phone out of his pocket, unlocked it and checked the screen. I couldn’t tell what he was looking at, a text message or a missed call, but his face registered a sort of sick resignation, like he’d been expecting bad news and had finally received it. He stood there a moment, clearly deciding what to do, then slowly dragged his bike around so it pointed the other way, threw his leg over the saddle, stood on the pedals, and bumped down from the pavement onto the road.

  I’d planned to give him a twenty-metre lead if he’d been walking. By the time I’d decided what to do, and took off after him at a jog, he already had a twenty-five-metre lead and was pulling away. He wasn’t going to be competing professionally any time soon but he was already pedalling nearly as fast as I could run.

  At the end of the street was a four-lane highway with a railing running down the middle to separate the streams of traffic. I turned the corner in time to see Zeto glance over his shoulder, cycle over to a crossing thirty metres away, turn right across the far two lanes and disappear up a leafy avenue. I barely had time to check oncoming traffic as I picked up the pace and tore after him, heading straight across the road and vaulting over the railing in one movement. The car approaching in the near lane was far enough away and I kept running, but the semi overtaking it on the inside was going faster than I’d calculated and the driver punched his horn, nearly deafening me, but barely slowed down. As I leaped for the far curb the stink of diesel filled my lungs and I felt the whirling turbulence of the air the HGV displaced as it roared past, horn still blaring, missing me by inches.

  Still running I turned into the avenue, clocking almost unconsciously the signpost announcing it was a cul-de-sac. I kept looking around as I ran—where the hell was Zeto? Row after row of fat, shiny redbrick houses on either side, with neatly trimmed privet hedges and the occasional plume of pampas grass in their front gardens. Spotless brick driveways leading up to mock-Tudor garages too small for modern cars. No people, no bikes, no vicar. My breath was starting to burn in my lungs, and at the end of the road was a long blank stretch of hedge, but I pushed myself to keep going, and saw as I covered the distance that the hedge concealed a park, and that there was a rickety kissing-gate at one end that Zeto must have gone through. He would have had to dismount, I thought, and that would have slowed him down—just for a minute, but it might be enough.

  Past the gate and through the hedge the park opened up into a wide vista looking south over London, a grimy pile of bricks in a puddle of smog just starting to twinkle as the city switched its lights on. Paths led off in four directions, right and left, with a fork straight in front of me. I saw a cyclist on the right-hand path in the middle distance, and the flashing of his rear light matched Zeto’s, or close enough—he was the only cyclist I could see anyway. I sped after him. He was following the path as it curved around the park, so I sprinted straight across the grass to head him off, but he was cycling downhill on tarmac at full speed, and he vanished round the corner while I was still halfway across the open space.

  I kept going, cutting my speed and steadying my pace so I could maintain it for longer. But when I came to the corner there was no sign of Zeto. Two dog-walkers were enjoying the last of the twilight, and a bike heading in my direction wobbled as the old man riding it pumped his way steadily uphill, panting. My heart sank but I ran on in the direction I had seen Zeto take, rejoining the path that converged now with three others, just inside a park gate opening onto a quiet side road. No sign of Zeto anywhere. Flagging, I staggered to a halt, taking gulps of breath, too exhausted even to curse myself for such a comprehensive waste of time and effort and Tube fare. I stood upright, pondering whether to head back towards the refuge where I’d started, or whether to look for a bus stop nearby that might at least head in the right direction.

  Somehow my wobbly legs found the energy to straighten up and walk towards the gate ahead, and as I approached it I noticed a bike chained to the park railings—a dark blue road bike with deep scratches in its paint. Zeto’s.

  Near the entrance was a stout square redbrick building that had once been a public toilet, and I checked that out first. But it was long since locked up and the windows covered over with metal screens. So where was he? I took shelter behind a tree at the junction of two paths and surveyed the road. There were no parking restrictions along there, from what I could see, so the street was lined with empty parked cars, some of which had been there for months, judging by the layers of bird shit and dust and dead leaves. I scanned each parked car one by one, trying not to be conspicuous, and saw a shiny new saloon just up from the gate, with someone in the front seats. Zeto, in fact. He was in the passenger seat, listening to a bloke behind the wheel—a thickset man whose jowls bulged over the collar of his shirt. I moved closer, keeping the bushes by the park gate in the line of sight so neither of the men in the car would see me approach.

  The guy talking to Zeto was the copper in charge of his case, Lovegrove. Whatever he was saying, Zeto looked utterly miserable—ready to climb out and throw himself under a bus, if there had been any buses passing. The two of them must have been discussing the upcoming trial—what else did they have to talk about?—but a car parked in the street seemed an odd place for a police officer to be interviewing a defendant. Even if I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I could grab some evidence of the meeting, I thought, and slipped my phone out of my pocket. The video footage it took would be grainy and soft, especially in this failing light, but if it registered Zeto and Lovegrove that would be enough to make it useful.

  The lens picked them up OK, although the focus went a bit wonky when leaves of the bush concealing me got into frame. I lifted the phone higher, and suddenly there they were, Lovegrove and Zeto, clear and sharp on my screen. And then Zeto bent over out of sight, with his head in Lovegrove’s lap, and Lovegrove tilted his head back and closed his eyes like he was listening to rapturous music.

  Holy crap.

  I remembered all the blokes in shabby overcoats who used to slip into the toilets at the back of the snooker hall where those scrawny smackhead teenage boys hung out. I never saw what went on in there, but my mates explained it to me. And what they’d described was this.

  “Reverend?”

  Zeto had just finished unlocking his bike, and straightened up in surprise with the bulky chain in his hand. I kept my distance: he didn’t look like the type who would take a swing at me, but then the Reverend Zeto was proving to be full of surprises. I threw back the hood of my sweatshirt so I’d look less threatening, and kept my hands relaxed by my sides. But anger and guilt and fear still fought in Zeto’s face, as he tried to figure out where I’d come from, how long I’d been there and how much I’d seen. Then he recognized me from my visit to his soup kitchen, and relaxed slightly.

  “You again,” he said. “Look, I’ve already told you, I don’t know anything about Nicky
Hale or where she went. I’m sorry, I really can’t help you.” He fumbled with his bike lights, his hands shaking too much to mount them on their clips.

  “That’s too bad. Maybe I should ask DS Lovegrove.” I saw the colour drain from Zeto’s face, and he stopped messing about with his bike lights. I pretended to look for the sleek saloon that had sped off into the dusk a few minutes earlier. “Oops, too late, he’s gone. I’ll have to give him a call at the station.”

  Zeto’s lips moved but no words came out.

  “It’s a pity Nicky’s gone missing,” I said. “If you’re being interviewed by the police, you really should have a lawyer present. Don’t want them putting words in your mouth.” Don’t want them putting anything in your mouth, I was going to add. But Zeto was wilting now like a dried-out plant, and I was starting to feel like a bully, and I hated bullies.

  “You didn’t—I wasn’t—” he started to protest feebly.

  “Look, Reverend,” I said, “I don’t give a crap if you’re gay. It’s nobody’s business but yours—”

  “It’s not like that! I’m not gay!” His voice was choked with fear and anger.

  “OK,” I said. I don’t think I sounded convinced.

  “I’m not. He takes advantage, of my …” He stuttered to a halt, then blurted, “I found myself in an unfortunate situation … it was a simple misunderstanding, that’s all. And he’s exploiting that.”

  “Did you tell Nicky Hale all that?”

  “Of course not! Why should I? The question never arose!”

  But she suspected something, I thought. That’s why she kept digging, gathering evidence. The reaction of the squatter with the burned face, when I asked if he was a member of Zeto’s congregation, made sense now. He thought I was taking the piss, asking if he and Zeto had ever been lovers. He had known the truth about Zeto, even if Zeto himself didn’t want to.

  Now Zeto had grasped that I wasn’t there to hurt him, he let himself get angry, tugging his bike upright and swinging it round. Well, he was going for angry, but it just came across as petulant. I took a few steps forward to stand in his way, and he nearly ran his front mudguard into my crotch.