Читать книгу: «Persons Unknown», страница 4

Angel walked to the window in the lounge and lifted the nets, peered out at the street as if she was George Smiley looking for shadowy figures in doorways.

‘Are you on the run from MI6?’ I said, as a joke obviously, trying to change the subject away from latent alcoholism. I didn’t actually think she was on the run. I don’t think anyone is on the run in real life, but she turned, sharply, and said, ‘Why d’you say that?’

‘You’re acting like you think you’re in The Bourne Supremacy instead of sitting in a flat above the Killy High Road.’ I was going to add, ‘wearing too much eyeliner’ but thought better of it.

‘Look,’ she said, still peering out from under the nets, ‘there are people who would like to know where I am, and who I’d rather keep away from. That’s all you need to know. I could do with a place to lie low. I could go, tonight, get a bag of stuff, if you don’t mind me kipping in your box room for a while?’

I thought about saying, ‘How long is a while?’ But instead, I said, ‘I’ll think about it. Now, I’ve got to open up downstairs or my lovely regulars will be wondering where to get their tramp juice.’

Downstairs, turning my keys in the lock to open up, I thought about what it would be like later on, watching telly with someone there to pass the odd comment to, making a plate of carbonara for two and not eating it all myself. Asking if she’d like a bag of Frazzles and popping down to the crisp aisle. The drinking worried me a bit. I don’t like drinkers, much as they are my core fan base. I don’t like the feelings of risk and uncertainty they create. That said, we’ve all got our thing, haven’t we – that zone where we’re not in control? I’m quite safe around a bottle of Chardonnay. I’ve been known to yawn in the face of pornography. Show me a shoe shop and I can walk on by. But salty snacks? I will MOW. YOU. DOWN.

This’ll shock you, but I own Payless. I don’t lease it; it’s not a franchise. About fifteen years ago, when I was in my mid-thirties, this lawyer managed to track me down and told me there was all this money held in trust for me and did I want to collect it, because I’d got to a responsible age when I wouldn’t squander it and he was retiring, so there would be no one left who knew the details of my legacy. I guessed it was money from Mum and Dad’s house, maybe from Nanny Fielding when she died. I didn’t really ask any questions – like why it had taken so long to come to me.

I was working in Payless at the time, just on Saturdays – the rest of the time I was on the till in Primark and doing the odd shift on a street stall which sold lighters and knock-off Dove shower gel and the like, and so the next time I was in I asked Majid, who I worked for, how much he wanted for the shop and he laughed and laughed and laughed. And then he spoke very quickly in Urdu to his wife, and she split her sides laughing as well.

Anyway, once they’d stopped laughing, I bought it off them.

In retrospect, I realise I should’ve bought myself a hairdressers. Firstly, because I’ve always thought I’d make quite a good hairdresser, and second because of all those surveys about professions and rates of happiness. Hairdressers are the happiest people: there’s creativity, but only up to a point (too much, I’ve read, can send you demented; just look at poets). There’s craic – plenty of chat, but not that much intimacy (intimacy being a most overrated aspect of human relationships). And hairdressing also garners a great deal of loyalty. I read that the average woman stays with her stylist for twelve years. The average marriage lasts eleven.

But primarily I should’ve bought myself a hairdressers because it would’ve limited my access to the crisp aisle.

Did you know Britain has been voted the loneliness capital of Europe? The Office for National Statistics found we have fewer friends and that we Britons don’t know our neighbours and it’s killing us. Loneliness is as big a health hazard as smoking fifteen fags a day, and not nearly as enjoyable.

I think it is the English way. We can’t stand too much contact. We don’t know where to look during intimate conversations. The web of connections, which is a comfort to southern nationalities, especially Latin people who love to hug and wail at funerals, pains the Englishman. I remember living with Nanny Fielding and all the kids at school were going on sleepovers or to each other’s houses, but I didn’t. I went home to my gran and we barely exchanged a word. She made baked apple with sultanas and custard and there were lace-edged antimacassars on the arms of her wing chairs. She used to smooth a tea towel across her knees, not sure why, as if she was about to dress a wounded foot or shell some peas. It was just a pointless act of fastidiousness, which annoyed me until I missed it so much. I think this is why I seem so much older than my years – the grannyish house and the solitary ways. I’ve taken in Nanny Fielding and I don’t know any other way to live.

Anyway, without us having a conversation about it as such, Angel fetched a bag of stuff and installed herself in the box room, which started to smell of Chanel Cristalle because she sprayed it about like it was Impulse. Low-level drinking – she wasn’t bladdered, but she was hugging the Lambrini pretty close. She spent a lot of time on the Internet, saving files and copying Wikipedia pages, and the rest of the time she was standing by the window, lifting the nets and watching the Killy High Road. She was furtive. When I said something, she jumped. And when I called her name, she didn’t turn around.

I said, from the kitchen, ‘Angel? Cup of tea?’ But I had to walk into the room before she realised I was talking to her. I took it as proof that Angel was a made-up name. The question was why?

And what was her real name? What was with all the curtain twitching and mystery? And also, if I was going to make up a name for myself, I don’t think I’d pick Angel, d’you know what I’m saying?

But she wasn’t totally self-absorbed. I could see she was trying to make herself a pleasant house guest. A couple of days later, for example, she stood in the doorway, holding aloft two Sainsbury’s bags and smiling. ‘Thought I’d make burgers,’ she said. ‘I’m assuming you’ve got ketchup.’

‘Do I look like the sort of person who wouldn’t have ketchup?’

‘You look like the sort of person who wouldn’t have vinaigrette,’ she said.

We decided to watch The Hotel on telly – one of those documentaries where people act like they’re not aware they’re being filmed, when in fact they’re completely aware but pretending, and the programme’s main aim is the Ring of Truth, as if you’re peeping in unseen. Fixed-rig cameras is how they’re made. Rigged and a fix, I call it. I love those shows. I love watching people without having to spend any time with them.

Angel and I had a recliner chair each, the sofa being too uncomfortable to spend an evening on. I keep it because it was Nanny Fielding’s. I have always had two recliners; I bought them as a pair from DFS. Don’t ask me why – I think it seemed too sad to buy one. But there’s never been anyone to sit in the second one. Talk about hopeful purchase.

In The Hotel, you are shown round the penthouse floor of the Carlton Mayfair, ‘London’s most exclusive establishment’, according to the breathy voiceover. The penthouse floor has three marble bathrooms, including a ‘rainforest showering experience’ which plays the sounds of tropical birds and other wildlife while dappling you in a moving light show so you think you’re in a glade. The penthouse floor has two grand living rooms, each with about six sofas; a cinema; a catering kitchen, should the restaurant not suit, and a treatment room for on-site massages and facials. The penthouse floor is home to Donald Trump when he visits, and the Sultan of Brunei. The King of Saudi Arabia books it for the entire month of August and installs his family, flying over his fleet of cars, which they park all over Knightsbridge and get parking tickets they’ll never pay. They spend the month shopping at Harrods.

Angel and I were watching all this, the smears of ketchup hardening on our discarded plates, our feet up as if our legs were paralysed – which they were, I suppose. There is little in modern life more paralysing than the recliner chair.

‘Been there,’ she said, nodding at the telly.

‘Yeah, right,’ I said. ‘Me too. Stay there all the time.’

‘No, really, I have.’

I looked at her. ‘You what?’

‘I can prove it,’ she said, pushing down with her ankles (you have to use some force, as if the recliner is unwilling to give you up) so that her chair moved into the upright mode. She left the room and came back with a bag full of Carlton Mayfair toiletries. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash. Even a pack of cotton pads and buds, which you’re not supposed to put into your ears. I find it almost impossible not to put them in my ears.

‘How come you’ve been to the Carlton Mayfair?’ I said.

‘On business,’ she said simply.

‘Right, yeah, business. What business would that be? Cleaning the rainforest experience?’

‘No!’ she scoffed, but she’d gone back to watching the telly and when I tried to ask another question, she shushed me.

Couple of days later, Angel went out – for longer this time than just to Sainsbury’s, which is about a hundred yards away – and I was relieved to have the place to myself without her loitering at the windows or jumping out of her skin every time I made a noise.

I’m not sure I’m built to live with anyone. It annoyed me when she was in the bathroom or in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea. The squeaky noise she made when she opened the door to the box room annoyed me, even though it was my door – my squeak. It annoyed me that she was hardly ever out, that she liked Laughing Cow cheese. It annoyed me that I couldn’t trump openly or walk from the bathroom in my pants. Sometimes the sound of her breathing was more than I could stand.

Anyway, I used the opportunity of her being out to go through her stuff.

Lots of things about this girl didn’t add up. Firstly, her holdall was Chanel – with the linked ring symbol. Now, I know a knock-off when I see one, I used to sell enough of them on the market, and this holdall, which was leather, with some animal-hide areas, like a furry cow’s back, was no knock-off.

Second, she had all these creams – Clarins, Crème de la Mer, Kérastase shampoo. Posh bottles and lotions. How did she afford them? So while she was out, I took the opportunity to have a try – washed my hair with the Kérastase, tried the Crème de la Mer. I didn’t use the Carlton Mayfair stuff because the size of the bottles would have made it obvious.

Third thing, I was patting through the pockets of her coat and I found there was something – the shape of a lighter but smaller – sewn into the lining at the hem. I felt around it and it was a neat rectangle. I pushed my fingers around the seam but there was no way in. Perhaps it was just a weight, to keep the fabric hanging nicely. But I doubted it.

Fourth thing (come to think of it, there was precious little about this girl that did add up): she had what can only be described as a stalker’s dossier. It was a brown folder, the type that’s open on two edges, and slipped inside were all these newspaper clippings, lots of them from the FT and the City pages of other papers. Pictures of Chinese blokes circled, names in the text highlighted. Printouts from the Forbes China Rich List.

Davy

‘I just can’t believe it,’ Ellie Bradshaw is saying.

They are in interview room one, Harriet and Davy across the table from Ellie, who is shaking her head, hair swaying. She’s got nice hair – hasn’t got Manon’s ringlets. Instead it is wavy, to her shoulders, in a sort of honey shade. And it looks almost impossibly soft, like advert hair. Davy thinks it probably smells nice, of chamomile or lemon.

‘So you were where, between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. last night?’ he asks.

‘Me? I was home with Solly, my son.’

She’s slim too, lovely dark eyes. Yes, Ellie is attractive; he can’t deny that. Strange to be sitting in an interview room with her because she is so like Manon – the very same voice and mannerisms. Yet at the same time, not similar at all. Like the same pudding in a different flavour – you can enjoy the orange, but find the mint tastes a bit like washing-up liquid.

‘Jon-Oliver was coming to see us – well, coming to see Solly. That’ll be why he was in Huntingdon. He was due to come over today. I guess he was booked into the George Hotel last night. It’s only, I dunno, the fifth or sixth time he’s seen our son.’

He frowns. ‘Can you think of a reason why he walked in the opposite direction to the George, along the Brampton Road towards the hospital?’

Ellie is thinking. Davy can’t take his eyes off her. Maybe she’d be worried about the age gap – Davy being ten years younger – but if it was good enough for Susan Sarandon …

‘Not really,’ she says. ‘I mean, he knows where I work. Knew, I mean. Maybe he was coming to see me?’

‘Did he know someone called Judith Cole?’ Davy asks. ‘Ever mention that name?’

Ellie turns down the corners of her mouth. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells, but Jon-Oliver knew a lot of women.’

‘What about this person?’ Harriet asks, placing a four-by-six photograph on the table in front of Ellie. The picture is of a blonde woman, tanned and manicured. Sunglasses on her head. The sort of person who might frequent Cannes or appear in Hello!

Ellie leans forward to look at the photo without picking it up. ‘No,’ she says.

‘The photo was found on Jon-Oliver’s body,’ Harriet adds.

‘Well it’s probably his current girlfriend then,’ says Ellie simply. ‘She looks like his type.’

‘His type?’ says Harriet.

‘Yes – stunningly beautiful, young, probably very bendy. And keen on cold hard cash by the looks of her.’

Bit bitter, thinks Davy.

‘He didn’t mention any names to you, talk about his personal life?’ asks Harriet.

‘We weren’t really on those sort of terms,’ Ellie says. ‘I hadn’t seen him for two years, then he contacted me out of the blue last summer – July or August, I can’t remember – wanting to see Solly. I was having none of it. It took me ages to get over him, and having a baby on your own … Well, I keep telling Manon, it’s no picnic.’ The reference to Manon is jarring. She is trying to remind them they’re friends, Davy thinks with some irritation – all on the same side. Well, they’re not. ‘I had to agree to give him access. Jon-Oliver gives – gave – me money, you see.’

‘He supported you?’ Davy asks.

‘Well, I work, but nursing doesn’t make me rich. I need his maintenance payments, yes. Anyway, Jon-Oliver’s on the birth certificate, so I had no choice. Since then, he’s visited Solly once a month. The meetings have been awkward – Solly usually ends up crying because he doesn’t know what to do with a stranger in a suit crouching on the floor next to him. Doesn’t know what it means, y’know?’

‘So you disliked him? Your relationship with Jon-Oliver was strained, would you say?’ says Harriet.

Ellie nods. ‘Strained, yes, that’s fair. I didn’t trust him, and I wasn’t too keen on having him back on the scene. I didn’t want too much involvement with him, that’s how I felt – like I wanted to keep my distance. Maybe that’s what made Solly cry. Babies pick up on everything in the room. But,’ she gives a resigned shrug, ‘I’m not the first woman this has happened to and I won’t be the last. You do it for your child, even though every bit of you doesn’t want to. You do it to give them the possibility of having a father. So yes, it was strained but we were trying to make room for him.’

‘So you were at home the whole time, between four and five yesterday?’ Davy asks.

‘More or less,’ she says, distracted by the bleep of her phone. ‘Sorry, I just have to look at this in case it’s the childminder.’ She reads the text message, then punches something into her phone – a reply, presumably. Rude, and rather presumptuous, Davy thinks. She looks up, saying, ‘Sorry. Yes, you can ask Solly if you like. You won’t get much of an answer – he’s 2. Do 2-year-olds count as alibis?’

She is smiling as she says this and Davy struggles with how it might be intended – as a friendly joke?

He says, ‘Did anyone else see you at home, anyone else who can confirm your whereabouts?’

‘No,’ she says quietly. ‘Fly came home from school at about quarter to five, and I asked him to watch Solly so I could pop out. Listen, I’ve got to get back to my son. He’s been at the childminder too long as it is.’

‘Just a minute please – you had to pop out? Where to?’ asks Davy.

‘Oh, just into town. I had to pick up a couple of things.’

At that moment, when Davy wants to ask where and for how long, Gary Stanton enters the room. Davy cannot remember the last time the chief super came in on a key witness interview.

‘How are we getting on?’ Stanton asks.

Harriet’s face is awash with confusion. ‘Yes, all fine,’ she says.

‘I think if we’re all done here,’ Stanton says, ‘we should have a quick departmental review upstairs. Shall we go? Thank you, Miss Bradshaw, for helping us with our inquiries. We will contact you should we need further assistance from you.’

‘Why did he shut that down?’ Davy hisses, so the department can’t hear.

‘I don’t know,’ Harriet says.

‘She’s a key witness and she’s got no alibi. And he says, off you pop, no further questions?’

‘Well, I’m not sure he was saying that exactly.’

‘What was he doing in there? I mean, when was the last time the super came in on an interview? And where is he for this departmental review he was so keen to have?’

Various colleagues have gathered around them for the briefing. Harriet is glancing furtively at them and she says, ‘Let’s talk about this later.’

They perch on desks or at their computers, Harriet and Davy at the front.

‘Right, Derry says we’re not getting the PM results till tomorrow, so let’s press on with other lines until forensics come in,’ says Harriet.

‘I did a bit of digging around at Dunlop & Finch,’ Colin says. ‘Head of the firm is one Markus van der Lupin, then beneath him are the two vice presidents, equally pegged as far as I can tell – Ross and this other chap, Giles Carruthers.’

Hariet nods, saying, ‘So let’s look closely at the structure there – any rivalries, fallings-out, that kind of thing. Very competitive, the City. Davy, you’d best head down there, interview Carruthers and the rest of the staff. Rest of you, priority is still our King’s Cross chap. Who is he, where’s he from and how can we collar him?’

Marie from reception has entered the room, and says, ‘The Ross parents have arrived. I’ve shown them into interview room one.’

‘Let’s not keep them waiting,’ Harriet says to Davy.

‘I’m very sorry,’ Davy says, ‘for your loss. This must be a difficult time.’

They nod, but don’t speak. Both are little; beady. Grey hair in a scribble above faces mottled with sunspots. They have cried, he can see that from the puffiness around their eyes, but he can see their reserve also, making them contain their grief in front of strangers. Not like some he’s done this kind of interview with. Some like to wail and holler as if volume proves how much they feel.

‘When did you last see your son?’ Davy asks.

‘Last Christmas,’ Mr Ross says.

Davy waits. They’re not the sort to elaborate. Rural people, Harriet said.

‘Right, so that’s nearly a year ago.’

‘He always said how busy he was,’ Mrs Ross says. ‘Said he’d like to come and see us more, but he couldn’t get away from work. We live out of the way. Not easy to get to. He was due to come this Christmas again.’

‘Did you know about the cruise?’ Davy asks.

They look at one another. Shake their heads.

‘He had purchased two tickets in your names for a cruise on the Crystal Serenity. Around the Caribbean. For two weeks in January.’

‘Ah, no,’ Mr Ross said, shaking his head sadly. They look down at their hands. After a pause, he continues, ‘It’s not our way. We’re not fancy people. We don’t like restaurants and cruises and all that kind of thing. Jonno was always buying us that kind of thing and—’

‘We didn’t want him to,’ Mrs Ross says.

Davy had looked up the Crystal Serenity online, its £17million refurb complete with retractable roof above the Trident Grill, its seahorse-shaped swimming pool and on-deck golf course, a seemingly endless roster of dining opportunities. Something about it had the ring of battery-chicken coop. He could picture himself pressing his face against the cabin glass and screaming to be let off. ‘Enough with the langoustine fricassee!’ He couldn’t picture these two, who seemed more the cheese-on-toast kind, browsing the on-board diamond emporiums.

Ross’s father sighs. ‘We’re not … comfortable in those situations. It sounds ungrateful now I say it.’

Mrs Ross says, ‘We felt he was always trying to impress us, to shower us with gifts and whatnot. We didn’t know how to say that he was enough in himself. We were so happy to have him.’ She doesn’t gasp or sob, but the tears leak from the edges of her eyes. Her quietness fells Davy. ‘You see, we thought we couldn’t have any children. We were married for twenty years and nothing at all happened. We were devastated by that but we’d come to terms with another sort of life. Then, when I was 42, Jonno came along, out of the blue.’

Davy nods, swallows.

‘But children are only on loan,’ Mrs Ross is saying. ‘You can’t keep them. We hoped he would have his own child one day, so that he might realise what we feel … to love someone not because of what they do but because they are. That they exist is wonderful, they don’t have to do much more to make you proud.’ Mr Ross takes her hand. She is quiet, thinking. Then she says, ‘But somehow – and we don’t know how this happened – it was as if the way we were, the sort of people we are, well … it wasn’t the way he was going to be. And all these gifts, all these luxury things, were his way of saying he wanted us to be different. Oh I’m not making any sense. I’m just trying to describe the place we were in, with Jonno.’

It is not Davy’s place to tell them about Solomon Bradshaw, much as he would like to comfort them with a grandchild they are not yet aware of. That’s Ellie’s job.

Instead, Davy says, ‘Jon-Oliver, as I’m sure you’re aware, was a rich man. He had moved a sum of money, rather a large sum of money, into a company registered offshore. Do you have any idea who the beneficiary of that company might be?’

Mr Ross is shaking his head. ‘I know he had a few bob, but I didn’t understand his work. I don’t understand about wealth management, couldn’t get to grips with what he did. I make furniture for a living. Tables mostly. I take pieces of wood, and I sand them and turn them and create joints, and when they’re made, someone pays me for them, and they take the table away. And that I can understand. I used to ask him again and again, but his work stayed a mystery to me.’