The intercom crackled into life. 'What is it?'
'Mr Stanley? I was wondering if you could spare a few minutes to talk to me.'
'Who is this?'
'My name's Dave Lewis. I publish a magazine called Anonymous Skeptic. You've probably heard of us.'
Nothing for a second.
Then: 'How did you get this address?'
'Your agent gave it to me.'
'That's funny.'
'I was hoping to talk to you about your performance at the Western on Thursday night. Get a quote for our article?'
He paused again. 'We've got nothing to say to each other.'
'It would be in your best interests. We've got some pretty damaging footage.'
Another silence. But Stanley was a smart man. I expected the word 'footage' had caught his attention. I could imagine him up there now, in his nice flat, stood next to the intercom with a blank expression on his face.
Working back through the things he'd said and done.
'It won't take long,' I lied.
'All right.'
The intercom cut dead. A second later, the door in front hummed to itself, like a struck tuning fork, and then clicked ajar. I went inside.
The floor in the reception area was polished wood, with locked, glass-fronted mailboxes mounted on the pale-cream walls. Beside them, there was a half-empty rack of neatly folded newspapers. I took a gold and mirrored lift to the fourth floor, emerging onto a corridor where a cleaning woman was running a slow, silent vacuum cleaner along the skirting boards. It was a sad state of affairs, really. Rob could probably have done a more convincing cold reading act than Thom Stanley, and we'd often joked about using our powers for evil. Walking into this place, it didn't seem like such a bad idea.
Stanley's door was closed when I reached it, so I knocked and then stood back a little nervously.
I was taking a chance being here, on a number of levels. Depending on what media coverage there'd been, Stanley might know the police were looking for me. He could be calling them right now.
The other risk was more immediate, and the anxiety was fluttering inside me. I'd started worrying about Tori after he'd used her name in his performance in that very specific way, and I didn't believe that was a coincidence. Since I also didn't buy him being psychic, that meant he knew something. I couldn't see him as a killer - drumming up business, maybe - but he'd come out with her name for a reason, and it certainly wasn't because of any fucking spirits.
Again, I was glad I had the knife.
He opened the door.
I was slightly taken aback by his appearance. His hair was messy, his skin a little blotchy and his eyes ringed and bagged, as though he'd not had much sleep last night. Perhaps it was just the shock of seeing him in a dressing-gown, rather than the smart shirt and jeans. Whatever the explanation, the consummate actor persona had clearly been left on the hanger this morning. I was faced by someone who looked ill, like a regular guy off work with a cold.
'You'd better come in, hadn't you?'
He turned his back on me and walked away. I followed him inside, casually putting my hands in my pockets so that the knife was within easy reach.
But Stanley was just walking off, heading for the kitchen.
The flat was open-plan and uniformly lovely. Up here, at least, the sun could reach, and it shone through a glass front that ran the length of the flat, brightening each piece of furniture: the plush settees, the clean, buzz-cut carpets, the mahogany of the fittings. It was like standing inside an Ikea catalogue. Everything I looked at in Stanley's flat, you could probably have filmed a commercial for it right there and then.
The kitchen was large, spot-lit and full of stainless steel cooking equipment. He moved around to the opposite side of a central unit, and we faced each other across the counter. Which suited me just fine.
'I hope you don't expect a drink.'
'I'm okay, thanks.'
He folded his arms. 'Well, then. What's this about footage?'
On the way over I'd been thinking, and I'd decided not to leap straight into talking about Tori. I wanted to play it straight to begin with - judge his reactions a little. It was possible I might even bait him into telling me the truth with the promise of cancelling the article we'd planned.
'Do you remember a couple you spoke to on Thursday?' I said. 'Nathan and Nancy Phillips.'
He frowned. 'No.'
'You spoke to them in the first half about their son, Andrew.'
The frown deepened. He began to tap his index finger against his elbow. I guessed his mind was working quickly, trying to put together where this was going before we got there.
'Oh, yes,' he said. 'Andrew.'
'Who we made up.'
The finger stopped tapping. Just for a second.
'We've got your performance on tape,' I said.
He didn't reply.
'We also have footage of you hiding the necklace when you went to their house. Any comment on that?'
Nothing but the frown. He was beginning to unnerve me.
'No? Maybe you're calculating the damage this will do to your career,' I said. 'From where I'm standing, the maths look pretty straightforward.'
He shook his head. 'As though it matters.'
'So you admit you fabricated the whole episode?'
'Of course.' He snorted it. 'We're both professionals. We know how it works, don't we?'
'I know you're a conman.'
'Jesus Christ.' He leaned on the counter and stared down between his hands, gathering himself together. When he looked up at me, his face was full of revulsion. 'Do you think I care what someone like you thinks? I'm not like you. What I do doesn't hurt anybody. All I've ever done is provide some comfort.'
'You exploit people.'
'I do?' He almost laughed. 'You disgust me. Get out.'
His face was contorted with hate, but I could see deeper emotions there too.
Suddenly, I realised I had no idea what was happening here right now. He hadn't expected the news about Nathan and Nancy, but he was acting as though it was irrelevant.
My hand was still close to the knife. I moved it round to grip the handle. Just in case.
'Mr Stanley--'
'No,' he said. 'No. We both know the real reason you're here. You're very clever, aren't you? But it will make you look just as bad in the end. I'll see to that. Just get out now.'
'What are you talking about?'
'You're scum.'
'I don't--'
'You know exactly what I'm talking about,' he said. 'Her.'
'Tori?'
Immediately, he looked back down at the table.
I took a step back. 'I really don't know what you're talking about.'
'You tricked me into saying her name. Don't pretend you didn't. And then I saw her on the news last night. A nasty, cheap little trick. But very clever.'
Cogs began turning in my head. Things clicking into place.
'It wasn't me that tricked you,' I said.
'Oh right. Who, then?'
After a few seconds, when I didn't answer, he looked up at me. And I recognised at least one of the emotions hiding behind the anger. It was fear.
I said, 'I think you'd better talk to me, Thom.'
*
It started with a plain white envelope. It had been delivered by hand last Thursday and been waiting for Stanley in his pigeonhole downstairs in reception. There was no stamp and no clue as to the identity of the sender, just his name written on the front.
'What was in it?' I said.
'There was money. A lot of money. Five thousand pounds.'
But that was all there was - no note of explanation - and he told me he was bewildered by the delivery. He had no idea who had sent it or what it was for, and no obvious way of finding out. Since his address wasn't public knowledge, he assumed it must have been something from his agent - some overdue payment he'd forgotten about - but she knew nothing about it when he phoned her.
'And then I got a call.'
It came through on his home number, and the caller wouldn't give his name. The caller told Stanley he was a businessman with a business proposition, nothing more, and that there'd be another five thousand pounds delivered to him if he carried out a small favour on his behalf. No questions asked.
'He told me his daughter was going to be in the audience that night, that she was a big believer in what I did,' Stanley said. He laughed, but without humour. 'The way he said it, it was clear that he wasn't. But then, I was listening to him, wasn't I? So I suppose he was justified.'
I didn't comment on that, although the cognitive dissonance in what he'd just said was astonishing.
'What did he want you to do?'
'He said Tori was the name of his wife. His daughter had become estranged over the past year, and his wife was inconsolable. He thought this might be a way of bringing the two of them back together - encouraging his daughter to get back in touch. He said she would believe it, and it was the last thing he could think of. He said he was desperate.'
'I bet that tugged at your fucking heartstrings.'
'Yes. It did.'
'But the money tugged more.'
He ignored me. 'It seemed like such an easy thing to do to help someone. I had a short routine set out for if his daughter put her hand up, but of course, nobody did.'
'And then?'
'The money was supposed to come yesterday.'
'It didn't, though.'
'No. And then I saw her on the news. It's such an unusual name that I noticed it straight away.'
'And you thought we'd tricked you.'
'Yes. Obviously.'
His appearance when I'd arrived - the obvious lack of sleep - made more sense now. Stanley thought he'd been stung into using a name that was already in the public domain. If someone in the audience that night had recognised it and made the connection, it would have looked in very bad taste. Even now, there was a danger someone might recall it. He would either have to explain he'd taken money to fake his performance, or else continue with it and risk the expose being even worse. When I'd rung the buzzer and mentioned 'footage', he must have thought I was coming to confront him about that.
'You didn't think to contact the police?' I said.
'Why would I do that?'
He looked at me with a mixture of horror and self-pity. The power of denial. Maybe he expected sympathy for the dire situation he'd so innocently found himself in.
'You didn't think who else it could have been?'
'No.'
But he said it too quickly, and I knew the thought had at least crossed his mind. How could it not have done? Even if he couldn't possibly have understood why he'd been made to say that name.
The fear wasn't simply of being exposed as a fraud. He was scared because he knew he might have touched the edges of real darkness for the first time in his life.
'Have you still got the envelope the money came in?'
He nodded. 'In here.'
We went back through the living room and he picked it up off the window ledge and held it out to me.
Fingerprints.
'I don't want to touch it. I just want to see the front.'
He showed me. Small, neat, black letters.
The same handwriting.
'What about the phone call?' I said. 'Did you ID it?'
'It was a withheld number.'
'Okay then. What time did the call come through?'
'I don't know. About eleven o'clock, I think.'
After his initial reticence, he now seemed eager to tell me everything. Funny that. As though, by handing me this information, he could hand me responsibility for it too. It was pathetic, but I thought I could use that weakness.
'You know you're in over your head?' I said. 'Don't you?'
He looked miserable. 'I've spent the last twenty-four hours wishing I could take it back. Pretend it never happened.'
'Yeah, but life doesn't work like that, Thom.'
I stared him out. He was silhouetted against the window. It was harsh and bright behind him, but he still looked away first.
I said, 'I'm going to use your phone now.'
Chapter Twenty-seven
Saturday 3rd September
What happened to your hands?
In her more lucid moments, Tori knew she was lying on her left side in an agonisingly small space. It was so compact that her legs were bent double, her knees against her chest, and yet her head and feet were still touching the edges. Everything was numb. Something was tied around her mouth.
Where was she? What--
What happened to your hands?
She didn't know what it meant, but it scared her. What had happened to her hands? They seemed to be trapped behind her back, and she wasn't able to separate them; and when she moved her fingers, they brushed something hard covered with rough fabric. Neither of which was good, but it didn't account for the terror she felt when that question drifted into her mind.
Where was she?
She knew, but she couldn't remember. The air in here was musty and horribly warm, though. A series of small holes in front of her were letting in cigarettes of daylight, but she was unable to move her head and get close to them: just enough so that a hint of fresh air wafted past her nose, brushing against it and moving on.
She was going to die in here.
Tori began to cry - and her body immediately came alive, like a burglar alarm responding to a smashed window. Every nerve ending screamed out in pain. Muscles spasmed, either locking and bolting themselves, or else tutting at her with agonising pinches. Her abdomen burned. She heard herself trying to shout, but her tongue was so swollen and dry that it stuck to the inside of her mouth and she gagged instead, then couldn't swallow because her throat was full of sand and shavings of dry metal.
Breathe . . .
Slow and shallow.
Then everything began shaking and juddering. She heard a whumph and a roar, then a ticking, rolling noise. Petrol fumes slunk in through the air holes, forming silky, purple ribbons in the darkness. She could see them there. No . . . smell them.
The boot of a car. She remembered now.
There was a shrill whining noise, then she lurched back, and the pain intensified.