In the Evil Day

62

…LONDON…

‘She doesn’t live here anymore and I don’t know where she lives,’ said the woman and slammed the door.

Caroline stood in the thin rain and thought about trying again. Then she went back to the car and got the phone book out of the boot. ‘You can never find one when you need one,’ McClatchie once said. ‘I used to keep ’em in the boot. Whole of Britain. You never know.’

There were any number of J. Thomases and a Jess Thomas Architectural Models in Battersea. She tried that on the cellphone.

An answering machine message-a woman with a faint Welsh accent.

Caroline fetched the Yellow Pages. There weren’t many architectural model makers. She rang the first one. A man answered.

‘Hi, this is a really strange thing to ask but I’m trying to get hold of a model maker called Jess who rides a motorbike and…’ ‘Jess Thomas,’ he said. ‘She’s in the book.’

‘Great, thanks, you wouldn’t know anyone who could tell me something about her work, would you?’

‘Her work? Why don’t you ask her to nominate some clients?’

‘I’d really prefer to do it before I approach her.’

‘Well, she’s pretty much in-house for Craig, Zampatti, you could ask them.’

‘I will. Thanks very much.’

It took a long time to get to Battersea and it was wasted. No one answered the bell of Jess Thomas’s place of work and dwelling. There was mail in the box. When she looked up, she saw a man watching her from the other side of the street. Something made her go over.

He was old, ancient, small, lifeless grey hair needing a cut, in a long raincoat, pyjama pants showing above battered brown shoes.

She introduced herself, told the truth.

The man looked at her through glasses smudged and scratched. He dropped his top teeth and moved them sideways. She looked away.

‘I’m looking for Jess Thomas. She lives in the building.’

‘Hasn’t come back since the fire,’ he said. ‘Up on roof. Run away, the boogers.’

‘Who?’

More teeth movements. He looked around, took a hand out of a pocket and waved it vaguely. There were bits of sticking plaster on his hand, dirty strips.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Who ran away?’ Caroline prompted.

‘Before fire brigade come,’ he said. ‘Burned uns. Two of ’em. I seed ’em, put ’em in the van. They come in a van. And a car. Burned.

The two. I seed ’em.’

‘And Jess, the one with the bike?’

‘Bike?’

‘The girl with the bike? Was she at home?’

‘Home?’

‘The girl on the motorbike.’

‘Never in my day. Girls.’

Caroline bent over him. He had a sour dairy smell, like old spilt milk.

‘Was she there, at home. Was the girl there when the fire happened?’

He shook his head with some vigour.

‘Went off before, always hear the motorbike. Bloody racket. Nice girl. Never rode motorbikes, girls, no, never, not my day. On the back, mind you, now that…’

‘Has she come back?’

‘Hey?’

‘The girl?’

‘Nah. Always hear the motorbike, never rode motorbikes in my day, girls…one booger come down the pipe, seen him. Off he goes in the car. Like bloody lightning.’

‘Whose car?’

‘Car?’

‘The one who came down the pipe? Whose car did he go off in?’

He shook his head, as if she’d said something stupid.

‘Well, their bloody car, what else? Come in a van. And a car. Booger come down pipe, he’s off. Bloody lightning. I can tell you. Down there, in that lane. The car.’

She thanked him, gave him a ten-pound note. He looked at her as if she were not quite right in the head.

Someone fleeing? Escaping? Mackie? Had Jess Thomas brought him here and people had tried to kill him again?

She sat in the sluggish traffic, sky leaking, windscreen fogging. She felt weak, tired, scared, a little, perhaps. This is not for me, the inner voice said, this is too serious for me. I’m not responsible for people trying to kill Mackie, villages in Africa, I’m involved by accident, he saw my byline, I owe him nothing. And there’s nothing in this for me. There’s no page one here.

There probably wouldn’t be another page one.

…turning up Brechan’s bumboy, that’s now looking less spectacular.

The woman who rang her. The woman who said she had lived in Birmingham and admired her for uncovering corruption and had a friend who was being harassed, he was really scared, he thought he was in danger, and he needed to talk to someone in the media. A person who could be trusted.

And then being run through the obstacle course. The no-shows, the phone calls, having to sweet-talk Gary’s friend. Finally, finally, after two days, the meeting in the park, in the dark. And, before the handover of the film and the tape, Gary saying, quickly:

On this, there’s just me talkin on this, right? Solo. Only it’s like an interview, know what I mean? Tony asked me the questions, only he’s not on the tape, that’s wiped. Okay? So you can put in the questions. Say you did this interview with me. Anyone asks me, we had an interview, that’s what I’ll say. Cause I don’t have the time to actually do that. So this is the same, know what I mean?

She had gone to the conference late, you had to be late on a day like that. She had waited, so high, so sure that she had it. She had sat there, the pulse felt in her throat, not really hearing what other people said, it didn’t matter. She knew that she was going to be the star, they were just supporting acts before she came on.

Waiting to be the star. And for once she was. She remembered the silence. And Marcia’s mouth frozen open.

The moment went a long way to balancing other memories. The one of running down a path towards her father, her brother behind her. Her father was coming home. They had been waiting all day. He father held out his arms and she held out hers.

She remembered the feeling of complete delight. For the feeling, there was no adequate word. She ran to him and then her father’s arms went over her head and took her brother, lifted him, tossed him into the air, caught him.

And she ran into her father’s legs, was left clutching her father’s legs, his long, thin, muscular legs.

That had come back to her soon after the wonderful moments, the screwing of Marcia, it had come in the midst of the euphoria, not in any distinct form, just a shiver. That night she woke dry-mouthed with the thought that she had done something terribly stupid when she thought she was being lucky because she was deserving. ‘You earn your luck.’ Her father’s words. Things came to those who deserved them.

But why her? What had she done to deserve Gary? Halligan had said: A lot less clever of you. In the light of information received.

It was beginning to dawn on her what that meant. Colley had said something strange too:

…just a pretty vehicle, a conduit. Something people ride on. Or something stuff flows though.

Driving the small car in the electric city, the thought settled on her, dark fingers across a darkening day.

She had been a dupe.

She had been used to bring down Brechan. Someone had the tape and the film. Someone chose her to be the vehicle, the conduit. Not because she was smart. No, because she was dumb. Dumb and eager.

She should have come out with it: said that she never interviewed Gary, only Tony, the youth who said he was Gary’s friend, was acting for him. She should have told Halligan the whole story about the woman whose telephone number suddenly ceased to exist. Along with dark-eyed, quick-talking Tony and his number.

I suppose you’ve heard they found your little Gary. Dead of an overdose. Been dead for days.

How many days? Was he alive when she got the film and tape from the man in the park who said he was Gary? They had been unable to determine the day of Gary’s death, never mind the time.

She rested her forehead on the steering wheel for a second. She had to go on with this. Mackie. She had to find him before her role in the Brechan story was fully revealed.