CHAPTER FIVE I Cain’t Say No
When I woke it was another glorious day. It was also half over. I had slept for twelve hours. Lying beside me, in the curve of my body where a lover should have been, was a piece of paper. It read: ‘Let me guess. You met a job you liked better than me?’ Good old Nick, never one to make a crisis out of a drama. I got up and went into the bathroom. My face looked like my clothes, crumpled and slept in, and my eyes had that closed-up piggy look that comes from too much crying. Which was strange, considering I hadn’t done any. I ran a basinful of cold water and dipped my head into it. Electric shock treatment. While I was fumbling for the towel, I knocked over the next instalment, rolled up in my tooth mug alongside the toothpaste. It read: ‘Or maybe you’ve just grown tired of safe sex?’
In the living room the remnants of the night before had been cleared away, and the Mahler was sitting in its new cover on the coffee table, casually ostentatious. I nodded welcome to it, but it just wasn’t the morning for a requiem. Instead I put on the radio. The World this Weekend was in the Ukraine sizing up the possibility of another nuclear catastrophe from the clapped-out old Soviet reactors. Maybe Mattie had already been news, or maybe the police were keeping it to themselves until they had something to say. I put on the kettle and went in search of breakfast, which, along with the Harrods almond croissant, was the last thing I remembered eating the day before. I wasn’t expecting much, so the fridge came up trumps. Sitting on one of my fancy plates on the top shelf with a neat little cover of cling film over it was breast of chicken in a creamy sauce, ringed by a semicircle of new potatoes and some thoughtfully arranged broccoli spears. And on the top, the final and concluding part of the discourse: ‘Just so long as it isn’t my cooking. Call me on Monday if we’re still lovers. Nick.’ And this time I smiled.
I peeled the cling film off and stuck my finger in the sauce. It tasted better cold than anything I could make hot. I nuked it in the microwave for ninety seconds (last year’s Christmas present from a mother who’s finally given up on my domesticity) and then sat down next to Mahler at the table. What are the most important things in life? Food, sex, death and the movies, not necessarily in that order.
I ate slowly, making every mouthful count. The food helped normalize things a little. I suppose I should have given some thought to Nick, about how pissed off he really was. No doubt you’ve got some questions of your own about him you wouldn’t mind answered. But the fact is it wasn’t the right time, not with Mattie sitting so close on my shoulder. He’ll come up again. And then, I promise, I’ll tell you the whole story, or as much as there is. For now let’s just say that he’s a nice guy with a well-developed sense of humour; that we have a good time in bed (when we manage to get into the same one together) and that I absolutely adore his cooking. Not exactly Abelard and Heloise, but good enough for me right at the moment.
After eating I went into work. I hadn’t really planned it that way, but when it came down to it the flat felt too warm and cosy, and I was too off the wall to be comfortable with its comfort. Of the other places I could go—well, Nick, even if I wanted him, had gone south to be a good enough father, and Kate, good sister Kate, was hurtling down the French side of the Alps with Colin in Michelin men suits and bobbly hats and wouldn’t be back for another fortnight.
I parked on a meter which during weekdays would have cost me 20p for every ten minutes. It gave me short but sweet pleasure to walk away with the clock reading PENALTY.
Before we get there maybe I should prepare you for the office. I mean the street isn’t too bad, as roads around Euston go. A hundred yards farther on and the real estate picks up considerably, but like a high-tide mark you know it’s never going to reach us. The whole area has a feeling of the temporary about it, as if being near two of the biggest railway stations in London had infected it with their sense of transience and movement. Frank says he chose it because it was of town, but not in town (unusually poetic for Frank), but I think it was the only place he could get for the money, and he figured he might pick up some passing trade. The name on the plate reads COMFORT AND SECURITY, the lettering’s really quite nice. We buzz you in via the door phone, which sounds good but means the inside comes as even more of a shock. The hall and stairs are communal, so it’s not all our fault. When Frank moved in towards the end of the eighties, the television industry was still expanding and a couple of puppy-dog independents took the offices on the floor above and tarted the place up, even put down a new carpet. But then the bottom fell out of the market, not to mention the economy, and failure began to stain the carpet and dirty the walls. What with the name on the door and the state of the staircase, I suspect your average punter could mistake us for a coy version of sex and bondage. But then most of Frank’s clients are not average punters. Neither are they glamorous women with skirts slit to the thighs who tell their story through lazy curls of cigarette smoke while the light casts film noir shadows on the wall. In reality most of them are men and most come via insurance firms or Frank’s old friends in the Force. (I’ve often wondered if the boys operate on commission, but even if they do Frank would lie about it, so I’ve never bothered to ask.)
As for the jobs, well, take away the pizazz of the name, and private detecting is a dull business these days, made duller by the demands of the ‘security’ industry. I mean you still get the odd juicy assignment: a factory where the books aren’t balancing because someone (in my case the son of the owner) is walking away with the goods, or the fire-insurance claim which turns out to be petrol for profit rather than God’s little handout to a small business. I’ve even had some pleasure watching people betray each other through lace curtains and fake hotel reservations, but the line between investigation and voyeurism is painfully thin in those kinds of jobs, and Frank usually off-loads them on to contract labour. Instead I get other run-of-the-mill stuff, like looking after rich ladies in town for the day. Or young girls. Because, according to Frank, I’m good with people and so they feel at ease with me. A talent to aspire to, eh?
Sometimes I think I should have just swallowed my political misgivings and joined the opposition. Who knows, by the time I was ready to begin my ascent up the ranks maybe the police would have learned how to spell equal opportunities. Either way I would have had a much bigger computer to play with. Mind you, as I keep telling Frank, if he hadn’t been such a cheapskate and gone for an Amstrad over an IBM, I could probably have hacked my way into their mainframe by now (well, even us girls have our technological wet dreams). As it is, Comfort and Security has to make do with the good will of the boss’s ex-colleagues. On the other hand if I had joined the Force, chances are Frank would have already left it. And I’m a great believer that some people are your destiny.
Upstairs the office door wasn’t locked. He was standing by the coffee table with his back to me, and from the sound of it he was trying to gouge the last scraps of Coffee Mate out of an empty jar. ‘I thought it was your turn to buy this stuff?’ he said, grumpily, without turning, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about us both being in the office in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. I sighed and walked past him to a cupboard at the back, from where I plucked a new jar.
‘Thanks,’ he said with scant gratitude. I took off my coat and put it over the back of my chair which sat in a corner and was a little smaller and a little neater than his. ‘You want some?’
‘Yeah. Please.’
He grunted, and padded off to get another mug from the sink. ‘Did you get my message?’ he called from the alcove we have graciously called a kitchen.
‘No,’ I said. But I had known it was him, the little light flashing the number 1 on the answering machine when I woke up. I hadn’t really wanted to hear it, whatever it was, but now I was here I was glad he was too.
I stood watching his back through the open door of the kitchen. He’s a rumpled kind of man, Frank. I don’t really remember his stomach arriving, but it certainly wasn’t as much of a feature two and half year
s ago. There’s also been a growth in the amount of chin. If you were cruel you could say he looks just what he is, an ex-policeman gone to seed. But in Frank’s case what you get is more than what you see. Because he’s most definitely not stupid. Neither is he corrupt, nor greedy. On the other hand he’s not exactly Chandler’s white knight. He has distinct trouble with some of the isms of life—sex and race in particular. Also I know for a fact he regularly tries to shaft the VAT man. I suspect in his heart of hearts he thinks himself a failure, and it’s that which keeps him modest rather than any innate goodness. But he knows more about private detecting than anybody else I know and he’s not mean with his knowledge. Also, when things get tough, as they most certainly were that afternoon, he’s the one I find it easiest to talk to.
Nevertheless, the etiquette of our intimacy required that I pretend otherwise. He came back and handed me a cup.
‘So what you doing here, Frank? I thought Arsenal was playing Manchester United?’
‘Saturday, Hannah. They play on Saturday. How often do I have to tell you?’ He sat down and put his feet on the desk. ‘Ginny had a Spanish class reunion. There are twenty-three people in my sitting room eating tapas and talking Guernica. I thought I’d get ahead of the accounts.’ He took a swig of the coffee. I probably don’t need to tell you that Frank has never been ahead of the accounts in his whole life, but it was nice of him to have such a good excuse. ‘However, since you’re here, maybe we should do a little work instead. What do you think?’
‘I think it’s better than staying home and crying,’ I said lightly, but it still sounded heavy.
He nodded. ‘Good girl. So—d’you want to start or shall I?’
I had more to say than he did, but that was only proof of how little he’d been told about the job in the first place. It had come in at the last minute. 6.15 on a Friday afternoon. By phone. The man said he was Tom Shepherd and there had seemed no reason to disbelieve him. He was due to pick up his daughter the next morning from her boarding school in the West Country, but some urgent work had intervened. Frank had offered it to me because—well, take your pick. It sounded like girl’s work and he knew I needed the money? Or because a football team he liked had something better to do with his Saturday afternoon?
Then I told him my side. He listened, grunting every now and then. And when the telling got difficult he pushed me through the pain with a few brisk questions. And so we got from the crime to the investigation.
‘Big bloke, yeah? Dark curly hair. Not a great bedside manner?’
‘Yeah, that’s him. I didn’t get his name.’
‘Don Peters. He’s one of the graduate whiz kids that’s going to wipe out the IRA and still have time for breakfast.’
‘So, it was the Anti-Terrorist Squad?’
‘Who else would it be? The way you tell it someone blew up the car.’
‘Yes, but not the IRA.’
‘Hardly, seeing as the ATS have been made redundant in that area. And even if they hadn’t—come on, Hannah, use your brain. You’re not that grief-stricken. What’s the difference between IRA bombs and the one you saw?’
‘Um … IRA bombs … big, sophisticated, usually made with plastic explosives, imported rather than home grown, Semtex mostly.’
He nodded. ‘See. If it had been a bomb like that, you’d switch on the ignition and boom—one big blast to hell, or wherever they think heretics go. But that’s not what you saw, right?’
I tried to think about it without really seeing. ‘No, no … er … there were two blasts. A small one, then a bigger one to follow. The second must have been the petrol tank.’
‘You got it. And the first was probably petrol too. Fire bombs in the trade. Not the cleverest of devices, but they do the job. They’ve done it before.’
‘Bristol, 1990,’ I said quietly. ‘The owner of the car was OK, but it took off the fingertips of a passing baby.’ I remembered it well. Little niece Amy had been pushchair size then, but Kate had insisted on carrying her everywhere in a sling for the next three weeks on the grounds that if they went, at least they’d go together. It had seemed a bit melodramatic to me, but, of course, I couldn’t say it.
Frank, meanwhile, was back in police files. ‘Yep, although in that case, interestingly, they used plastic explosives. First time. But the year before, when they went for the university building, it was definitely a fire bomb. Generally works better against property than people. Used in fur shops or department stores, it sets fire to the stock, then wrecks it further when the sprinkler system goes off. Lot of damage to come out of one little cigarette-packet bomb.’
‘And meanwhile Tom Shepherd was too busy with his rats to find time to celebrate his daughter’s birthday, ’ I said softly, sitting again in a car looking out over sunlit Wiltshire fields.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Just something she said.’ It was funny how neither of us had used the words yet. The love that dares not speak its name. The British obsession with animals gone crazy. ‘You think it’s animal rights?’
He shrugged. ‘Animal rights in the shape of the Animal Liberation Front. Who else?’
‘But—I mean, they don’t kill people.’
‘They do now. You start putting bombs under people’s cars and it’s only a matter of time.’
‘But if it was petrol, it would have been connected to the ignition. Wouldn’t it?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. You’ll have to wait for forensics to tell you for sure. If there’s anything left for them to go on. Why?’
I shook my head. ‘I just don’t remember her going for the switch. I mean she couldn’t drive.’
‘So maybe it was a duff connection. They’re amateurs most of these boys. It did the job, anyway.’
‘But why Shepherd? I know he was working on cancer research, but so are hundreds of others.’
‘Did she tell you that?’
I nodded. I was finding it hard to swallow.
‘And did she tell you who he works for?’ I shook my head. ‘Vandamed. With the biggest independent cancer research department in the country. Shepherd’s head of it. Lot of money, lot of prestige, and a lot of animals. Prime target.’
‘My God.’
‘Not only that. He’s had death threats before.’
‘What! Christ, Frank, why didn’t—’
‘Because I didn’t know.’ And for the first time I realized how angry he must be too. ‘All I knew was what you knew. A guy rings up wanting his daughter chaperoned. Only possible problem is a deranged wife.’
‘So how did you find out?’
He made a face. ‘Well, not from Don Peters, that’s for sure. We never got on, even when I was high enough up the ladder to shit on him.’
He grinned. Only I was too busy to congratulate him. Too busy running it all back, seeing how it ought to have been. How that morning it should have been Tom Shepherd who got up in the dark and walked out to his car, just as I did to mine, with the thought of a two-hundred-mile round trip in front of him. Except his would have proved to be a longer journey. And that way Mattie would have lost a father, but she would still have been alive. And I would not be nursing this gnawing pain at the corner of my soul. I shook my head. I had to remember whose fault all this was, and not blame the wrong person. So he didn’t love his daughter as much as his work. It wasn’t a crime. Jesus, what exactly could he be doing to his rats that would make it worth blowing him off the face of the earth? And if they were out to get him, then why the hell hadn’t he told us? That one seemed worth following up.
‘You tell me. But I betcha he’s been asked the question enough times by now.’
‘Yeah, but not by me.’
We both heard it in my voice. He looked at me for a moment. ‘And what good do you think that would do?’ he asked carefully.
‘It would make me feel better, for a start.’
He shook his head. ‘Hannah, nothing’s going to make you feel better. That’s the point. So he tells you? What do you do t
hen?’
‘Maybe I’ll go look for the guys who did it.’
He smiled. ‘Two years catching shoplifters and she thinks she’s Inspector Morse.’ In other circumstances it’s my role to laugh at Frank’s Jewish mamma impersonation. In other circumstances it can be quite funny. ‘Hannah, she’s dead. The boys don’t like animal rights in the first place. So now they’ve got a stiff on their hands, they’re going to be breaking their balls to bust the guys who did it. There’ll be a hundred coppers out there, all of them better trained and better informed than you are.’
‘So? I’ve got you. What they know you can find out too. It was a Comfort job first. They’ll understand. You’re always telling me about their private codes of justice. If I were animal rights I’d probably prefer to be arrested by me than by them.’
From the way he was looking at me it was clear he thought I was reverting to type. In Frank’s book even the best women let it happen to them. Emotion versus reason. Or for that you could read passion versus indifference. He shook his head slowly. ‘Uh-uh.’
‘Frank—’
‘Hannah, I know what you’re feeling, but it’s too big for you.’ He paused. ‘And, believe me, even if it wasn’t, it’d hurt too much doing it.’
I stared at him. ‘And how much will it hurt not doing it?’ I said quietly.
He sighed and pulled open a drawer. Then he held out an envelope. It was big, brown and fat with soft stuffing. I knew what it was but I asked anyway.
‘It’s the money he owes you.’
I took it and flicked it open. A cushion of notes, and they weren’t fivers. I’m not as fast as Frank, but even I knew there was a good deal more than there should have been. I looked up.