A Woman’s Eye

LOOKING FOR THELMA by Gillian Slovo

Born in South Africa, GILLIAN SLOVO has lived in England since she was twelve, A journalist and television producer, she has written several excellent mystery novels featuring London-based Kate Baeier, including Morbid Symptoms and Death by Analysis.

I was in the middle of doing my accounts when the doorbell rang. Or, to be more accurate, my accounts were in the middle of doing me. The center column was being cooperative: it was the ones either side of it that were making trouble.

The bell sounded again. I ignored it: I didn’t feel like visitors, and besides, I’d just made a momentous decision. I’d decided to compromise-a few pence to the left subtracted from the right would achieve the proper balance. It wasn’t entirely on the level, but if the customs and excise noticed, all they would learn was what they must already know-namely, that I couldn’t add to save my life.

“The door was open,” a timid voice said.

Frowning at the distraction, I looked toward the door. My eyes came to rest not on a face but on a wide patent-leather belt. I shifted my gaze upward.

The man in front of me was huge-nearer to seven than to six feet-with a body to match. He was made to be noticed, and he flaunted the fact. He had shaved his head clean, and his bald pate shone a deep black against the rest of his clothes. It was quite an outfit-his three-piece suit was tailored to fit his broad frame and sewed from all colors of the rainbow, a broad silver tie nestled under the garish waistcoat, and a pair of shining black shoes that seemed to go on forever had silver buckles the size of my hands. I gulped.

“The door was open,” he said again.

The voice was not only small but melodic with it. On the principle that there was no point in antagonizing giants, even ones with ingratiating voices, I threw a smile his way. My neck hurt with the effort of twisting so I stood in an attempt to equalize the distance. He strode toward me.

The man was big, real big, and close up he towered above me. There was no point in competing. I sat.

“Can I help you?” I asked. Good, I thought, my voice sounds normal.

He smiled, and the long gray-brown scar that ran the full length of his left cheek smiled with him. He lowered himself onto the chair in front of me and planted two huge fists on my desk. I backed away and hit the wall with my head. I rubbed it surreptitiously.

“I hope you can help,” he said.

I turned the rub into an encouraging nod and waited. I was ready for anything.

“I want you to find somebody for me,” he said. “Name of Thelma.”

Something clicked in my head, so tangibly that I bet I lost a hundred thousand brain cells making the connection. Got it in one, I thought. Smiling cynically, I leaned my chair against the wall and stretched my legs out so that my feet landed on the desk, right in the middle of my accounts book. My only regret was that I didn’t have a cigarette to hang out of the side of my mouth and complete the impression.

“And what’s your name?” I asked, “Moose, by any chance?”

He looked puzzled. “Moose?” he thought about it a bit. “No, Martin. Martin Malloy.”

I smiled again, and this time the cynicism was not an act. “That figures,” I said.

He leaned across and shifted my feet to the right, uncovering the columns of numbers. His thick index finger pointed at the center row.

“But this doesn’t,” he said. “You’ve inverted one of those numbers, there in the middle. Easily done.”

I returned my legs to the ground and pulled the book nearer to me, meaning to close it. But I couldn’t help looking at where his finger had once been, and I couldn’t help seeing that he was right. I frowned.

He grinned almost by way of apology. “I’m good at figures,” he explained. “Always have been. And I learned to read upside down when I was inside.”

“You’ve been in prison, then,” I stated.

He nodded.

“And this Thelma put you there.”

His brow creased, and I remembered his size and the scar that creased in its redness on his cheek. He was no longer doing an impression of the genial giant: I had angered him. I pulled at the telephone wire, edging the instrument closer to me.

“Thelma didn’t put me there,” he said. “In fact, if anybody got me out, it was Thelma.” He glared at me. “I don’t like people who say bad things about Thelma,” he concluded.

With a supreme effort of will I fixed his eyes with mine, I kept looking at him while I nudged the receiver off the phone and let it drop on my lap. I rested my hand on the headless phone, thanking the heavens that I now had digital dialing. His frown deepened.

“Tell me more,” I said in a voice that was more fear than fake. I hit the first nine on the phone while I tried to work out whether I could manage to make a successful break for the door.

In one effortless motion he reached across the desk and pulled the receiver from my lap. He put it down on the desk. He stretched across again.

He put a finger on one of the buttons and pressed it down.

“That makes two nines,” he said. “You’ve only got to dial one more and you’re connected. Go ahead, I won’t stop you.”

The brain cells were going fast by now. It was a dare, I thought; he’d get me before my first cry for help. He was toying with me, and probably enjoying it. And yet what option did I have? I was isolated and alone, up in my grimy office in the center of London. A cry for help wafting to the street would be cause for a quickening of pace rather than investigation. I had no choice: without the phone, I had no line to the world.

I lifted my hand slowly as the seconds expanded. I could try it, I thought, and maybe I’d succeed. My hand began to shake.

“I’m really a gentle guy,” he said slowly, watching that hand. “My size militates against me, but I wouldn’t harm a fly. Certainly not a woman, that’s for sure.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, using the poised finger to point at his scar. “Shaving accident?”

He shrugged, and I saw how the rocks in his shoulders bulged. “Prison’s a rough place,” he said. “It makes you or it breaks you.”

“And it made you?”

“Thelma made me,” he said. “That’s why I want to find her.”

We were both back in fiction land. I replaced the receiver on the phone and breathed out. I no longer felt scared, only foolish-a foolishness tinged with anger. He was a pro, I thought, a real good actor, and I might as well face the fact that he had me. He and whoever had sent him-and I had a good idea as to who that was. Well, all I had to do was get rid of him, finish my accounts, close the office for perhaps the last time, and then be free to wreak my own kind of revenge.

But I’d do it subtly, I thought. I reached into the top drawer of my desk and pulled out a pad. As a heading I chose the name M. MALLOY. I underlined it: it looked better that way. On the next line I inscribed the name THELMA in block capitals.

“Parsons,” he said. “Thelma Parsons.”

“A dancer?” I asked without looking up.

“A social worker,” he said. He blinked. “But she did like to dance. She showed me pictures of herself when she was a kid. All dressed up in a white tutu, she was.”

Social worker, I wrote, failed ballet dancer.

“Thelma never failed at anything,” he said loudly. It was the first time he had raised his voice.

I smiled placatingly. It took two to tango, I thought, and I was finally in step. I wasn’t going to break my rhythm for any fake display of righteous anger by a giant gullible enough to involve himself in one of Sam’s pranks.

“Why don’t you tell me the whole story?” I suggested.

He leaned back in the chair. It creaked. He frowned and began to toy with the gold watch fob that was attached to his waistcoat. “Thelma liked to visit me in prison,” he began. “She turned me on to books.”

I glanced up and my eyes strayed to my accounts.

He laughed, or at least I think that was what described the creaking that issued from his big mouth. “Not those kind,” he said, “I always had a knack with them. That’s what got me into trouble in the first place. No, Thelma revealed the world of literature to me.”

Social worker reforms con by opening his eyes to the joys of the nineteenth century, I wrote.

“Modern literature,” he said loudly.

I gulped. I kept forgetting that he could read upside down.

“It changed my whole world view,” he continued. “Opened new horizons. I want to be able to thank her, not in the claustrophobia of prison, but in the real world. In the free world.”

Free world, I thought, more like anticommunist modern literature, then.

“So go round to her office and thank her,” I said.

He shook his head unhappily. “She’s left her job,” he said. “She was never happy with it, it cramped her style, she said, and now she’s had the courage to leave. They won’t tell me where she went-they don’t do that on principle in case some ex-con has a grudge against them.”

“And you want me to find her?” I stated.

“That’s it,” he said, delighted that the slow pupil had finally caught on.

“And then you will thank her.”

He nodded. He reached a fist into a pocket of his garish plaid suit. Here comes the punch line, I thought.

He placed a piece of paper in front of me, right side up. On it was written the name Thelma Parsons along with an address in Islington.

“That’s where Thelma used to work?” I asked.

For reply he reached once more into his pocket. Ahaa, I thought, here it comes.

I was wrong again. In front of me, dead in front, he placed a wad of new bank notes. I stared at him, and he smiled. I picked up the notes and felt their crispness.

“Two hundred and fifty pounds,” he said. “Retainer.”

“Is that what they said it would cost?” I asked.

“They?” He frowned, I resolved in future not to aggravate the scar. “It’s a guess,” he continued. “Your retainer plus something toward expenses. Give me a record when you finish, and I’ll settle up with you. I’m good at figures, you know.”

I didn’t say anything, and he had finished as well. I watched as he stood up and began to stride to the door.

“I suppose that you’ll be in touch with me rather than leaving me your address,” I said.

He turned. “That’s right,” he said. “Circumstances have conspired to make me a bit of an itinerant at the moment.” He waved a hand in my direction before turning away again, “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

“One more thing,” I called just as he had bent his head down far enough to fit. “Ever read any Chandler?”

“No, I haven’t,” he replied without bothering to look back. “And my reading days are over. I only want to thank Thelma and then I can get on with my life.”

They were conveniently seated around the kitchen table when I arrived, all three of them, the ones I had decided were guilty. Sam was doing what he liked best-explaining in layperson’s terms a particularly neat solution to the latest space-time continuum problem-while Anna and Daniel were doing what they did best-pretending to understand.

Into this cozy scene I strolled. I took a swig from the half bottle of Bells I’d picked up on the way.

“Bad day?” Sam asked.

I shoved the bottle into my jacket pocket. It bulged in the linen, but you can’t have everything. At least I was suitably crumpled, I thought. I shook my head.

“Great day,” I said, “I was having problems balancing the books, but Moose solved that for me.”

They looked at one another, and the first hint of a doubt insinuated itself into my mind. They were giving a good impression of confusion, I thought, but then I discarded the thought. Anna and Daniel must surely have picked up some tips from the actors they directed, and as for Sam, well, he’d learned impassivity from years of teaching aspirant Nobel winners.

I changed tack, I reached into my bag, pulled out the wad of money, and threw it at them. It landed just where I had wanted it to, plum in Sam’s lap. Both Anna and Daniel stretched across the table to get a better look.

“Nice crisp notes,” Daniel commented. “Did this Moose rob a bank?”

“Maybe Sam did,” I said. “Let’s ask him.”

Sam looked at the notes in that abstracted way he had. “Moose,” he said speculatively. “The Big Sleep?”

“Farewell, My Lovely,” Daniel said impatiently. “I thought mathematicians were literate these days.”

Sam opened his mouth to defend himself. I decided that it was time to stop playing.

“I know you think I should give up the business,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I was coming to the same conclusion myself. But sending a nine-foot Moose to my office is not what I call a subtle hint. Nor is it funny.”

This time there was no mistaking the confusion in their eyes. I knew them well, these three, and they knew me. They wouldn’t, I thought, continue the game this far. Would they?

“Except he said his name was Martin,” I told them in a voice that was no longer so certain. “Martin Malloy. Looking for Thelma,”

They glanced briefly at one another, but they didn’t speak. I saw Anna’s eyes come to rest on my jacket pocket. The concern in her eyes spoke of her innocence, spoke of all their innocence. I gulped, took the whiskey out, walked to them, and deposited it on the table. I pulled myself a chair and sat heavily on it.

“I better start again,” I said.

I told them all about it, each piece of stinted dialogue, and by the time I had finished I was sure they weren’t involved. Which left me with a problem. A big one.

“So who sent him?” I asked.

They had no answer to that, and neither did I. Like most individuals I knew people who didn’t like me, and I knew people I didn’t like, but they could hardly be called enemies. Not the kind who would go to such elaborate lengths to hoax me-never mind produce 250 crisp new ones to aid them.

“Any dissatisfied clients?” Daniel asked.

No disatisfied clients-no clients at all, come to think of it.

“So what are you going to do?” Anna’s voice broke into my reverie.

I drew myself up straight as if I had already made the decision that was only then forming in my brain.

“Investigate,” I answered. “Find Thelma. What else can I do?”

“What if the money’s stolen?”

I shrugged. “I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” I said. I picked up the bottle of Bells and dropped it lightly into the dustbin. “Let’s celebrate with a real whiskey,” I said, “now that I’m no longer filing for a divorce from the lot of you.”

I was nicely oiled by the time I arrived at Tony’s Golders Green office.

Street Times was peopled by hacks like Tony who’d wakened up one day to the realization that their ulcers were never going to get any smaller. A few of them got together and decided that if they were going to start developing bosses’ diseases, they might as well be their own bosses. They’d started a London-based magazine that-now in its middle age-no longer tried to compete for the youth market. In a way, I suppose, they were one of the few remaining relics of the sixties although they had long since grown away from nostalgia or angst and had settled, instead, for what they could do in a world grown increasingly hostile.

Their new offices were, however, not exactly friendly. Workaday would be a better description, sited between a Dorothy Perkins and a grimy solicitor, with a smell courtesy of Grodzinski, the baker, giving the only hint of atmosphere. I made a mental note to pick up a sliced rye and some cheese Danish as I located Tony in his glass cubicle. His shirt sleeves, I observed, were held up by rubber bands.

“Still preserving the image,” I commented.

Tony glanced up from his computer and shot what, for him, approximated a smile.

“Bloody kid bit the buttons off,” he said.

“And how is she?”

This time the smile was definite. “Great,” he gushed. Catching himself, he ran a hand through his mousey brown hair. “For a monster. Want a coffee?”

“If it comes with a Danish,” I said.

Tony frowned. “They make them by machine now,” he said, “in some warehouse out in Bromley. The smell’s bottled to give us the impression that the good old days are still with us.”

“m pass then,” I said. I perched myself on the edge of his desk and peered around in an attempt to read his screen. “Impressive symbols,” I said. “Street Times going postmodernist?”

Tony moved the screen away. “Accounts,” he said curtly. He didn’t need to say more; I knew all about accounts. Which brought me to my business.

“Name of Martin Malloy mean anything to you?” I asked.

Tony yawned. “I’m losing my knack,” he said. “You’re no longer even bothering with the foreplay.” He yawned again. “You used to at least pretend to be giving me something in exchange for my gems of information,” he explained, “but since we’ve been exiled to the Green, I suppose you think I come cheap.”

I shrugged. “Nothing much to offer,” I said. “Business is slow.”

“Slow to get off the ground, or slow to die?”

“The latter.”

“Well, in that case,” Tony said. He hit a cue on his keyboard and the machine began to whir. “Bloody noisy, this new technology,” he said. “Now let’s see if the data base moved with us.” He typed fast with two fingers. “Malloy,” he said out loud. “Martin, Mr.”

I waited while he squinted his eyes at the screen, and then, a few seconds later, he hit a key and the bytes of information stopped rolling. “Thought I remembered him,” Tony said. “An interesting case, Martin Malloy.”

So he actually existed, I thought-interesting indeed.

“Martin, aka ‘Mouse,’ Malloy,” Tony offered.

“Mouse?”

“A reference to his size. Never met him, but apparently he’s on the big side.”

“You could say that.”

“And Mouse as well on account of the fact that he never talked to the cops.” Tony’s eyes scanned rapidly down the screen. “Malloy’s a genius with numbers,” he said. “When his face first hit the front pages, the gutter press got excited and tried to pin an idiot-savant label on him. He wouldn’t play ball, so they dumped him.”

“What was their interest in the first place?” I asked.

“Malloy was associated with some East End hoods,” Tony answered, “part of a crack gang-you know the scene-New York comes to London. The word was that the police picked the Mouse up in an attempt to get him to finger the big men. He didn’t, and someone started to kick up a stink about habeas corpus. The cops eventually got themselves out of trouble by persuading the inland revenue to charge him with tax evasion.”

“Tax evasion?”

Tony grinned. “Modern, innit? The case against him was weak, but all the jury saw was a giant, and a black giant to boot, who refused to talk. They threw the book at him. Sad, really, although by the sounds of his physique, he’d have no trouble in jail.”

I thought about the scar and wondered. “Any woman involved?” I asked.

Tony hit another key. “Not that I can see.” He rolled the screen on again and then, finding nothing, wiped it clear. “Want me to check this out further?”

“If you have the time.”

Tony yawned again. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll be in touch if…” He didn’t finish the sentence: he started up on his computer again. That was it, no good-bye, he had done with me. It wasn’t personal-Tony never was one for social niceties, and I knew he’d contact me if he found anything of interest. And besides, who was I to stand between a man and his collective’s accounts? I left him to them.

Or tried to. I’d forgotten how much Tony liked to hold his conversations in transit. “Kate,” he called when I was almost at the door.

I turned.

“Maybe you should let the business die,” he said.

I shrugged and left.

I spent the evening on my own-alone, that is, so long as you don’t count my alto. I counted it, I’d just had the whole thing resprung, and I spent a few hours rediscovering both its range and my limitations.

I usually played to get away from work, but this time I failed. An image of a man they called the Mouse kept weaving its way through the blues I played. I saw him as he stood there in my office, his bright clothes, contrasting with those sad eyes, a man with no home trapped for tax evasion. I was beginning to feel sorry for him-sorry that I had treated his visit as a hoax, sorry that I hadn’t asked him more. That, I thought, was why I liked the job-and why I would miss it so much when I was forced to close. It wasn’t often that you get the opportunity to meet giants who want to thank their social worker for introducing them to literature. Thelma must be quite a woman, I thought-certainly more trusting than I. I should have been more friendly; I should have tried harder.

I shook my head, moved the beat up tempo to fit with my version of South African township jazz, and put a brake on my regrets. Thelma, if she existed, was the social worker, not me. I would try and find her, that’s all I could do. I had enough troubles of my own, I had the business to worry about.

Without noticing I slipped back into the blues.

It was hot when I got up, the kind of heat that visits London once every thirteen years. I opened the wardrobe in the hall, the one where I stored the clothes I never got a chance to wear, and stared at the uninspiring choices. In the end I decided to go for broke, fitted myself out in a tight black cotton skirt and flimsy pink T-shirt, threw a pair of thonged sandals on my feet, and took a jacket for protection from the vagaries of the English climate.

The flimsy pink number was already showing signs of wilting when I arrived at the address Martin Malloy had given me. What’s more, it clashed with my destination.

The building was plum in the middle of the Arsenal, a cheerful item if ever I saw one. It was round and squat, and red and yellow-a low thing in the middle of a long row of detached gray brick. A kind of eighties version of a sixties domed tent, it was part of the council’s attempt to decentralize its services in order to benefit the community.

The community, consisting mainly of women and children, who were crowded into a big room with narrow slanted windows, did not look impressed. I can’t say I blamed than: the place was hot and, although cheerful, downright uncomfortable. When I asked for the duty social worker, I was told to take a seat. I gingerly lowered myself into a red plastic item that, bolted to the floor, resembled a bucket with large holes.

“Gets to your bum after an hour or two,” said the woman to my left.

“Our Johnny got stuck in one once,” said the woman to my right. “Had to get the fire brigade to cut him out. They blamed me, of course.” She reached over and slapped her Johnny, who seemed to be making a second bid for fire brigade fame.

“Miss Baeier,” a voice called.

I was shown into a small cubicle of a room, airless and lit by fluorescent, in which stood two chairs, a table, and a woman in her early thirties. She smiled at me from her seat and gestured to the second one. When I sat, I could hardly see her for the mound of papers piled in front of her.

She shifted to the right, pulled a manila file from the pile, and opened it. It was, I saw, lined with blank paper. She frowned, turned to her side, dug into a bag that could have doubled as a haversack and that hung on the back of her chair, and pulled out a biro. I saw that it was doing extra work as an advert for sausages. She used the pen to transfer my name from the slip I had filled in onto the first sheet of paper.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I’m trying to find someone,” I said.

The woman glanced up sharply, saw that I wasn’t joking, and shut the file with a bang. “Ms. Baeier,” she said clearly, “we are not all-powerful. We have strict guidelines to which we always adhere. I can tell you, without needing to check, that we draw the line at tracing missing persons. You might care to try the police-we never have much luck with them, but don’t let that stop you.” The lines in her face belied the aggression in her voice: she looked too tired to have only just started work.

I smiled at her. “Bad morning?”

She half returned my smile. “The worst,” she said. “Except for yesterday and tomorrow.”

“I won’t waste your time then,” I said, “I’m looking for a Thelma Parsons.”

A look of alarm crossed the woman’s face, a flash of response quickly concealed as she ducked behind the pile of papers. When she reemerged, she had gone bland again: I wondered whether I’d been imagining the sheer panic that had cut through her fatigue. She raised an eyebrow.

“Thelma was a social worker,” I continued, “based here once. Hated the job as much as you all do and managed to escape. She’s an old friend of mine. I was hoping you could help me find her.”

It was weak and I knew it. Marlowe would have done better. But then I wasn’t Marlowe, was I? I was just a private detective in a land that didn’t like detectives, and a woman, not a man.

But then, I thought brightly, as her face seemed to soften at the mention of my friendship with Thelma, neither was this woman a reluctant witness with something to hide-just an overworked social worker fighting the disillusionment that seemed to come with the job these days. Maybe it would work.

It didn’t. “We never release addresses of former employees,” she said. “Nor, for that matter, of current employees.” She was good at her job, but not good enough. Her eyes were narrowed, beaming hostility, contradicting her seeming unconcern.

I opened my mouth to try again, but she shook her head in the general direction of the door, dismissing me with a determined finality. She discarded the manila file and began her way through the one underneath, I got the message: I left,

My way out was blocked by a woman who thrust a small child toward me,

“Here, do me a favor and watch him for a second,” she said. “Got to change the baby, and those chairs are useless.” She was a pro: she sped down the corridor with yelling infant in arms. I looked down at the abandoned child.

He was a cute enough item if you managed to ignore the effluent issuing from his nose. I couldn’t ignore it, so I took a tissue from my bag and moved it downward. He was out of range before the tissue had even a chance of reaching his face.

I recognized him. “Johnny?” I asked.

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and nodded sullenly. I smiled. A gift from heaven, I thought, snot and all.

“How’d you like to earn fifty pence?” I asked.

Visibly he sized me up. “A pound,” he said.

“Seventy pence?”

“A quid or nuffing,” he said firmly. He folded his small arms together and stood there, facing me, his feet planted stubbornly on the ground.

I knew when I was beaten. I knelt down beside him and explained what I wanted. He nodded. When I had finished, he held out his hand, palm up. Into it I placed a pound coin that rapidly disappeared into his pocket. Then he nodded again.

As agreed, I walked away from him until I had rounded the comer. Then I waited.

Nothing happened. I waited some more-still nothing. I’ve been had I thought. Maybe Tony’s right, I’m no detective. Then suddenly, from around the corner, issued a scream, a bloodcurdling scream, the likes of which I had never before had the privilege of hearing. Once it came, paused, and then once again.

It worked like a dream. I heard a door open and a woman, my woman, call out, “What the hell’s going on?”

She got another scream for a reply and some words this time. “My brovver,” Johnny screamed. “My brovver, he’s stuck.”

“Oh save me,” the woman muttered,

Johnny screamed again.

“All right, all right,” she said. “I’ll get him out. Just do me a favor and stop screaming, will you?”

They rounded the comer at a brisk pace, Johnny leading, the woman following. As they passed me, Johnny let out another yell and the woman quickened her pace, giving him a push as she did so.

I walked fast in the opposite direction, running when I had rounded the corner. I opened the door of her office and stumbled over to her chair. I grabbed her bag and began to rifle through it, one ear on the commotion outside.

It was a bottomless chasm I faced and a messy one at that. I pulled things out at random. The screaming had stopped and I heard the sound of a slap. I had little time left.

The bag was incredible. I dug deep, throwing out old Kleenex, keys, a plethora of credit cards (social workers must be better paid these days, I thought), and the occasional half-eaten nut. None of the contents fitted my preconception of what should be there. I dug again.

I was on the verge of giving up when I found what I’d been looking for-an address book, small and black. Except I was probably too late. I heard footsteps outside.

I opened the book to the P section. No Parsons there. The footsteps were coming closer.

I turned to the T section. And there it was, the name Thelma, no surname, just Thelma. Except it did me no good because underneath the name was a blank piece of paper, stuck on, tight. I know it was tight because I tried to get it off. No luck: I heard a rustling outside the door. So I did what I had to. I pulled the page out, shoved the book along with the rest of the garbage back into the bag, threw the bag over the chair, and ran for the door. I collided with her there.

“Forgot my pen,” I said. “One day I’ll forget my head.” The anger in her face faded. “Tell me about it,” she muttered before closing the door on me.

In a workers’ café across the road I sat over a cup of milky hot water masquerading as tea and stared at the stolen page. There was no way I could remove the covering blankness. I’d tried again and all I’d managed to do was to tear a corner off it.

I turned the paper over. I could see the writing there, faint and inviting, but still indecipherable. I held the page up to the light and it became clearer but still incomprehensible. Well, it would be, I thought. It’s backward.

I left my tea to its own devices and went to the toilet. I held the back of the page up to the scratched mirror above the basin-again the writing appeared, but still illegibly. I got a pen out of my bag and, holding the paper up to the exposed bulb, I slowly started to trace the lines that I could see.

It took a long time, but I managed it in the end. And when I’d finished, I could see, in writing that was not mine, an address, clearly written.

My tea was still waiting for me. I put some coins beside it and left them all to their own devices.

Thelma lived in a small terraced house almost opposite the football ground. Hers was in the middle of a row of look-alikes, all built from dingy gray brick, with lace curtains covering small square windows, low front gardens whose walls could never hold back the tide of litter from the fans, and dark-red-stained front steps that would once, in another age, have been daily scrubbed.

I stood on the steps and rang her bell. I got no response, no sound at all. I rang again but again without luck. I turned to go and it was then that, out of the corner my eye, I saw a portion of the dingy lace twitch. I waited but still nothing happened. I got the message. I turned away and walked back to my car, climbed in, rewed it ostentatiously, and drove off. I drove around the block and then returned to her street, parking a few doors down, away from the lace curtain. I switched off the engine and waited.

It was two hours before anything happened. I concentrated mostly on my business or lack of it. I sat and I boiled and I wondered what I was doing, trapped in my own car on a sunny day, watching the minutes tick by and the money diminish, waiting for a fictional Thelma to make a move so I could report back to the fantastic Mouse. Tony was right, I thought, and Sam as well-it was time to move on, time to reenter the real world.

My hand was on my car keys, ready to switch on and leave, when I heard the footsteps. I ducked down, landing heavily on the floor. I strained my neck as I peered through the side mirror. It was her, all right, the woman from Thelma’s old office, walking briskly down the pavement. She crossed in front of my car, so close that I could almost smell the anxiety emanating from her, and walked purposively up to Thelma’s door.

It was opened almost immediately and kept open. I saw a hint of blue, but otherwise my social worker concealed her protagonist from me. For protagonists they obviously were: I didn’t need to hear their conversation to guess that it was ugly-I could see it in the gestures of the social worker, in the hard set of her back, in the way she reached into her bag and flung something toward the door, in the way she walked away, and in the bang that sounded as the door closed.

I crouched down as she passed by me, but I needn’t have bothered. She walked fast and angrily, lost in a world of her own making, muttering to herself. At one point she stopped and hit herself-quite literally hit herself on the head with the flat of her hand. I heard the sound of the blow from twenty yards away.

She started up again, and only when she had turned the corner did I get out of my car. I ignored the front of the house and instead walked round the block, counting houses until I reached Thelma’s back gate. I pressed against it and it yielded slightly. One long push was enough to break the lock.

I made my way down the narrow path, past the overflowing dustbin and the small outhouse that must once have been the house’s only toilet until I reached the kitchen door. I put my hand on the doorknob, and it opened as if it had been waiting for me. I stepped in.

I found myself in a kitchen that stank of neglect, Dishes were piled on both sides of the sink, unwashed and uncleared. On the floor stood two saucers, one with the dregs of old milk, the other piled high with cat food. Plants wilted on the windowsill, geraniums that instead of enjoying the sun were being finished off by it.

And yet it was not a kitchen that I would ever have described as poor. It was packed with consumer durables, with microwaves, coffee percolators, automatic juicers, stainless steel knives, still wrapped and shining, and a variety of food processors of the latest design. An ideal home gone mad, I thought, as I walked through the room and into the hall.

I was faced with the choice of two doors that opened onto the narrow corridor, and I chose the one at the front, the one from which the lace curtain movement had originated. I found myself in a small room, dirty but tastefully furnished. There was one person in it, a woman in her middle thirties, clad in jeans and a low-slung silk blouse, her thin blond hair hanging weakly down the sides of her long face. She was standing by a small antique maple desk, staring at something on it.

She turned and saw me as soon as I entered, but otherwise she didn’t move. Her face did, but not her body. On that pale face, a gamut of emotions crossed-displays of shock, of fear, and finally of a kind of resignation.

“What are you doing here?” she asked dully.

“The door was open,” I said. “The back door.”

“Have you got a warrant?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I’m not the police,” I said. I watched as the resignation turned to slow anger.

“Well, in that case,” she said, “I’ll call them.” She reached across the desk for the phone and picked up the receiver. But the movement seemed to have exhausted her. She stood still, holding it and staring at me. “What do you want?” she asked. The anger was replaced with despair.

I walked over and looked behind her. On the desk, I saw, were pieces of paper, scrawled with writing. There was some tracing paper there too, askew on one piece of the writing, but when she saw my eyes light on it she brushed against it, catapulting it to the floor. She stared at me defiantly.

“My name’s Kate Baeier,” I said. “I’m a private detective. A man called Martin Malloy hired me to find you.”

“Martin?” Her voice rose and she repeated it. “Martin?”

“You used to visit him in prison,” I said.

Her face cleared as she remembered and then it disintegrated again, not in fear, this time, but rather in hilarity. The laughter came slowly at first, from deep inside her, surfacing as a giggle but soon transformed into near hysteria. I stood and waited as she laughed in my face, laughed and laughed until the tears streamed down her cheeks.

Gradually the laugh subsided. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. She looked at me and giggled again, controlling herself only by looking away.

“A private detective,” she muttered. “You’re not for real.”

I shrugged. “Martin wants to see you,” I said.

“Well, he can’t.” Her words had a final ring to them.

“He just wants to thank you,” I explained.

The look she threw me was one of pure contempt, not for me, I thought, but for Martin.

“Gimme a break,” she said.

“To thank you for opening up the world of fiction to him.”

She looked as if she was going to laugh again, and I didn’t really blame her. Put like that, it sounded ridiculous. If I hadn’t met Martin Malloy, I too would have laughed.

And Thelma had met Martin. She didn’t laugh. She smiled but not in mirth.

“He taught me something too,” she said in a voice that was pure malice. “The dumb bastard.”

I didn’t know until then how much I had cared, how much I wanted to deliver to Martin Malloy what he had requested. I acted without thinking. First, I saw the tracing paper on the floor with new eyes, with eyes that were looking at a mirror, then I took in the writing on the desk, and then I acted. I quickly moved behind her and wrenched open a drawer. She was too surprised to prevent me, and we both watched as it tumbled to the floor, spilling its contents. She flung herself on them, but too late to stop me from confirming what I had already guessed.

“Fraud,” I said. “That’s what it is.”

From the floor she looked up at me, surrounded by small pieces of plastic, her eyes flashing anger. I remembered the social worker’s bag, and the visit that she had just paid, and I remembered the goods in the kitchen. It made sense.

“Credit card fraud,” I said, thinking out loud. “The tracing paper is how you copy the signatures.”

She was down but not out, no longer vulnerable, in a way. She glared up at me. “So what are you going to do about it?” she shot.

I didn’t answer and she didn’t need me to.

“Nothing,” she said, “You’re the do-gooder type, aren’t you? I should know, I’ve tried that game. It gets you nowhere.”

“Except the occasional thanks,” I commented.

“Don’t give me that,” she said. “Thanks never buttered any bread. I’ve met enough Martin Malloys in my time, I don’t need to meet any more. A casualty of the system, that’s all he is, a well-meaning idiot without a chance. He even gave me tips on how to forge signatures, until he realized that my interest was more than academic. Then he had the cheek to lecture me, as if I was the one who had been jailed. Well, I’ve served my own kind of time, I’m free now. I don’t owe anybody anything; I don’t owe Martin Malloy the time of day. I can tell you…”

I knew she was right; she could have told me. She looked set to go on for a good few hours. I didn’t need to listen. I walked out of the room, through the hall, opened the front door, and stepped into the bright sunshine. I left the door open, hoping that some of the air would flow in. I wasn’t optimistic.

Martin Malloy turned up two days later. I was in my office waiting for him. I had nothing else to do but wait, and I couldn’t shake off the feeling of uselessness that had settled on me ever since I’d met Thelma.

I’d left the door open and he didn’t bother to ring the bell this time. He just arrived in my office, a huge man with a surprisingly light tread.

“Did you find her?” he asked.

I nodded.

When he smiled, his face opened up like an exotic flower that the scar did nothing to spoil. “When can we meet?” he asked.

I stood up. “She doesn’t want to see you,” I said.

I don’t know what I expected-fury, sorrow, violence even, but all I got was a vague look of disappointment. He nodded and made as if he were about to go. But then he changed his mind.

“Is Thelma all right?” he asked.

Wrong-footed, I didn’t know how to answer. I looked into those warm brown eyes and I shivered. I remembered the sight of that smile, and I knew that I didn’t want to disappoint it

“She’s fine,” I lied. “Just busy.”

I should have known better: Malloy was no fool.

“Don’t try and kid me,” he said, and his voice was as hard as his body. “Don’t treat me like a child.”

I sat down. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have pretended. Thelma is far from fine. She’s involved in some kind of credit card fiddle,” I paused. “And I’m not sure she’s doing too well.” I finished quickly, feeling somehow that I had betrayed someone. I looked away, out the window and at the faultless blue sky.

“Anything I could do to help?” he asked. “She helped me, you know.” His voice was sad.

I shook my head and looked at him again. “I’m not sure-” I started.

But he was lost in his own thoughts, and he spoke them out loud. “I knew it was something stupid,” he said. “I tried to tell her that people like us just don’t win. I thought if I was no longer behind bars, she would listen to me.”

I remembered what Thelma had said about him, and I couldn’t help myself. “She’s a bitch,” I snapped. “Beyond saving.”

“Don’t say that,” he said. “She’s just confused. Nobody’s beyond saving.”

I nodded in recognition of sentiment rather than in agreement with the meaning. I reached into my desk and pulled out his money, the money that I had not yet touched.

“It didn’t take me long,” I said, “You’re due some back.”

He looked at me and smiled, but his smile was no longer open. “Keep it,” he said airily. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Payment for keeping my trap shut. Guilt money for doing hard time.” His face softened. “I knew Thelma was desperate,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to thank her. I thought if somebody, anybody, told her how much she’d done for them, it might give her hope. I guess I was too late.”

I didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

He hadn’t finished.

“Did you get somebody to look for me?” he asked.

I nodded.

“My landlord chucked me out,” he said. “You should have known nobody wants to house a convict. Especially one who looks like me. Why did you do it?”

I felt I owed him the truth and so I gave it to him. “Because I wasn’t sure you really existed,” I said.

He nodded, to himself rather than me. “I feel sorry for your type, you know,” he said, again almost as if to himself. “I came to literature late, but there’s one thing I can do that you can’t. I can distinguish between fact and fiction.”

I shrugged and I looked at him, at this huge man, dressed this time in gold threads that shimmered when he moved. I smiled. “It’s not always easy,” I said.

He saw my look and he returned my smile. He strode over to me, enfolded one of my hands in his big paws, and clasped it, “Nice to have met you, Kate Baeier,” he said. He let go of my hand. “Can I give you one last piece of advice?”

“How can I refuse?”

“Open the windows,” he said. “Let the sun shine in. Breathe the air.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He shrugged and looked at me, “A balance sheet isn’t everything,” he said. “I should know, I’m good at numbers. Business will pick up. You’re good at your job-you found Thelma, didn’t you?”

He left the room as quietly as he had arrived. I climbed on my chair so I could watch him in the street, but somehow I missed his exit.

I was in the right position, so I took his advice.

I opened the windows.

It was difficult, but I managed.