Happy Days (20 page)

Trude had reappeared at the door. She’d sussed what Misty was up to.

‘That’s evil, Mum. I feel really sorry for the guy.’

‘Men are lazy, pet. They hate making decisions. Baz was always the same. They get so far then all they need is a little push.’

‘There’s nothing little about that.’ Trude nodded at the brimming boxes. ‘Paul’s going to be really pissed off. You can’t just walk into someone’s life like this and help yourself. That’s kidnap.’

‘Nonsense.’

Misty hadn’t finished. At the bottom of Winter’s wardrobe, once she’d emptied it of shoes, she’d found a black briefcase. She carried it through to the big lounge, where the light was better, and settled herself on the sofa. A lot of this stuff would be personal, she knew that, but only a couple of days ago Winter had assured her that he had nothing to hide, that everything he owned was hers to share, that there was no one more important in his life. This little declaration, at the end of a decent bottle of Chablis, had done wonders for Misty’s confidence, and now she couldn’t wait to cement the foundations of their new life together. Misty had never expected a great deal from any of the many relationships in her life. This time she promised herself it was going to be different.

The briefcase was unlocked. Inside, among a litter of assorted photos, she found a large Manila envelope stuffed with legal-looking documents. She took it out and opened it. Winter’s birth certificate. A couple of insurance policies. His wedding certificate. A couple of old driving licences. Agreements relating to the sale of the Bedhampton bungalow he’d shared with his wife. And, last of all, a smaller white envelope stamped
Personal
.

Misty hesitated for less than a second. Inside the envelope were two documents. One was a death certificate. Joan Christine Winter had died on 23 September 2000. Cause of death was recorded as pancreatic carcinoma. Misty looked at it a moment, then turned to the second document. She recognised Winter’s handwriting at once – impatient, difficult to read, much like the man himself. She bent over the script, deciphering it word for word, knowing at once from the layout that it
was a letter. He’d written it to Joannie, and judging by the date on the top he’d done it the day after she’d died.

The letter was confessional, full of regret, a long list of things he said he’d never had the time, nor the decency, nor the bottle to tell her. He said that she’d been brave, braver than he could ever be, and that she’d gone far too early. He said that she’d had more patience than anyone he’d ever met in his life, which was just as well because he knew he’d let her down. He wrote that he’d always loved her, truly loved her, but that he’d never quite got the knack of putting it into words. At the end, for the first time in his life, he realised that they should have had kids. Kids would have left him a tiny bit of her. Instead of now. When he had nothing.

Misty looked up. Trudy, standing with a paintbrush in her hand, was a blur.

‘Mum …?’ She said uncertainly.

Misty shook her head, fumbled for a tissue.

‘That’s so fucking sad.’ She nodded at the letter and blew her nose. ‘I never realised.’

Embarrassed in front of her daughter, Misty fled to the kitchen. She’d make some tea, rustle up some biscuits, whatever. Trudy appeared at the open door. She wanted to know more.

Misty didn’t know what to say. Parts of Winter that had always been a mystery to her – his reticence, the way he ducked certain kinds of questions, his refusal to talk about large tracts of his past – were suddenly a whole lot clearer.

‘He’s a good man, Trude. A good, good man.’

‘Paul?’

‘Yeah, Paul. I’ve always loved him. I’ve always loved his cheekiness, the risks he takes, how he gets away with stuff. Baz is the same. But you know something? I’ve always missed the poetry in him, the
soul
. And you know why? Because deep down I didn’t think he had any. I thought what you saw was what you got. Turns out I’m wrong, thank fuck.’

They shared a pot of tea, nibbled a biscuit or two and talked a whole lot more about Paul Winter. How easily he seemed to have handled the move to the Dark Side. How long it had taken Baz to accept that this guy was for real. And how hard he’d worked, especially recently, to keep the Mackenzie show on the road.

‘Some nights, Trude, he’s just so knackered he can barely talk. I never like to ask because I can be a coward sometimes, but lately I don’t think things are going too well. We rely on Baz, me and you, probably more than we like to admit. But here’s hoping, eh?’

‘Hoping what, Mum?’

‘That Paul sorts it.’

Trudy agreed. She liked Winter a lot, always had. He was a laugh. He made you feel good. Nothing seemed to bother him.

‘Exactly, pet. Which is why I know something’s going on. He’s not the man he can be. Not at the moment, anyway.’

‘Yeah? You think so?’

‘I know it.’

Trude slipped off the kitchen stool and gave her mother a long hug. Then, with a tact that took her mother by surprise, she went next door and began to carry the suits back to Winter’s bedroom. Misty did nothing, just sat on the other stool staring into nowhere. By the time she summoned the energy to find out what her daughter was up to, the suits were back in the wardrobe and the boxes on the bed were empty.

Misty gazed round at the neatness of the bedroom, then blew her nose again.

‘You think that’s for the best?’

‘Yes, Mum. And I think you should check the answerphone.’

‘You what?’

‘The answerphone. Next door. The call came in when I was painting earlier. Maybe you ought to have a listen.’

Misty went back to the lounge. Trude was right. There was a message waiting on the phone console. Misty pressed the
replay button and turned to the window. A woman’s voice, difficult to place. Could have been young. But maybe not.

‘
What’s going on? I’ve been waiting for you to call. Are you still coming? Have you changed your mind? Does it spook you staying at my place? Or are you still in the UK? Just give me a clue, eh, and tell me we’re still on
.’

Misty played the message a second time. She didn’t know whether she wanted to cry or do something a whole lot angrier. Paul had gone abroad to sort out a partner of Bazza’s. Now this. She checked the display window on the answerphone. An eleven-digit number.

‘Mum?’

She spun round to find Trudy behind her. Misty wanted to know about the prefix 00385.

‘You looked it up?’ she asked.

‘Of course I did.’

‘And?’

‘Croatia.’

POREC: THURSDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER 2009

Winter hadn’t seen Maddox for five years. He’d first met her back in the Job when he’d busted a high-class brothel in Old Portsmouth. The place was run by a gay ex-radio DJ called Steve Richardson who’d spotted a niche in the market and persuaded a wealthy Iranian to stake him. He’d bought a brand-new penthouse apartment overlooking the Camber Dock and installed a couple of part-time toms. They were tasty, intelligent and cultured. One was an ex-student, the other a Latvian blonde with a qualification in sports physiotherapy.

Richardson, who was a talented cook, offered candlelit soirées with the best wines and the best food. After you’d feasted on foie gras and lobster, swapping gossip, impressing the girls, you could step next door for the fuck of your dreams. An evening chez Richardson wasn’t cheap but he had no problem attracting customers. City solicitors, executives from Zurich and IBM, even the occasional naval officer, phoned for a discreet booking. When it came to the girls, they always had a choice. And most of them phoned early to reserve Maddox.

She was the ex-student. She had a rich father who lived in Paris. After the frustrations of an unfinished year at RADA, she’d done three years at Bristol studying English literature, earning herself a decent degree along with an enduring passion for a French poet called Arthur Rimbaud. Winter’s first sight of her was on a DVD he’d seized when they busted Richardson.
Maddox, naked apart from a string of beads, was straddling an overweight businessman seconds away from coming. She had a body that reminded Winter of the showgirls Joannie liked to watch on TV, and when her bedmate climaxed she did something startling with a polythene bag full of ice cubes. For weeks afterwards Winter had treated the icebox in his fridge with something approaching reverence. Applied by the right person in the right place at the right time, a bag of ice cubes plainly took you somewhere very special indeed.

Maddox was undoubtedly the right person. In ways that Winter recognised only too well, she hid behind veil after veil of clever deceits, but once he’d managed to strip most of them away it turned out they had a lot to offer each other. In the shape of a punter who’d begun to frighten her, Maddox wanted a little protection. This, Winter was only too happy to provide. In return, when he became inexplicably sick, she had the grace and the patience to look after him.

By now Joannie was dead. The medics arrested Winter’s brain tumour just in time, but he knew then, as he knew now, that he really owed his survival to two people who were a great deal closer. One of them was Jimmy Suttle. The other was Maddox. The fact that she could fuck you witless in three languages was immaterial. She’d become a mate.

An hour out of Rijeka, the coach to Porec was winding through the mountains. Winter was sitting at the back to spare passengers joining the coach the sight of his face. He’d enjoyed a decent night’s sleep in a modest hotel near the bus station and was feeling a great deal better. Not least because of the prospect of being with Maddox again.

Once they’d seen off the brain tumour, he and Maddox had parted. She’d sold her apartment on Southsea seafront and lent Winter most of the profits to enable him to buy his perch in Blake House. On Winter’s insistence, they’d drawn up a legal agreement and she’d thus acquired a 50 per cent share in the property. In the early years in Gunwharf, buoyed by the money
Bazza was paying him, Winter had toyed with buying Maddox out, but she’d disappeared to South America and the occasional postcards she sent never included any contact details. He’d therefore let matters slip, assuming she’d get in touch if and when she needed the money.

This, as it turned out, was exactly what happened. Only last month Winter had taken a call. For a moment or two he hadn’t recognised her voice, but then he was suddenly back in the world of body oils, scented candles and desperate couplings before he got news of the latest CT scan. Now Maddox was selling real estate in Croatia. It was a nice enough life she’d found for herself, but the market was flat on its face and she was running out of money. She didn’t want to make things tough for Winter but might he be able to repay the loan?

Winter, of course, had said yes. Partly because he owed her a great deal more than a simple cheque could ever repay and partly because it gave him an excuse to sell the flat and move on. Quite where his new direction might take him was anyone’s guess, but now, just thirty-four kilometres from Porec, he knew he had a day or two in hand. He’d told both Misty and Baz he’d be back by the end of the week. Plenty of time to see what might be possible.

The bus station at Porec was five minutes from the waterfront. He showed the address Maddox had given him to the girl in the ticket office and she drew him a map. If you ignored the many developments that sprawled along the coast, she said, Porec itself wasn’t a big town. Take the main road to the harbour. Turn right. Follow the road to the square. Carry straight on. Then look for a road on the left. Trgbrodogradilista was a nice address. Her friend happened to live in the same street.

Winter set off, following her directions. Minutes later he was on the waterfront. To the left a newish-looking marina. To the right a long thin promontory that must once have been the heart of the old town. Winter could see a church steeple and a row of hotels. A sleek catamaran advertising day trips to
Venice lay beside a pontoon. A thin scatter of tourists, mostly elderly, walked arm in arm in the afternoon sunshine. The air was still. The temperature was just right. He could smell baking chestnuts from a stall in the tiny waterfront market. The water, astonishingly clear, lapped at the ancient harbour wall. Winter peered down, watching the fish darting among the pebbles on the seabed, wondering if the Romans had got here first, and then he went across to a bench and sat down, determined to savour this moment. He felt unthreatened. He felt he’d finally turned some kind of corner in his life. He felt wonderful.

It was late afternoon before he moved again. Out in the bay a returning fishing boat was towing a cloud of seagulls. He watched until it found a berth beyond the marina, then got to his feet. He knew nothing about the working day in Croatia but guessed that Maddox might be home by now.

Trgbrodogradilista was a quiet residential street running up from the waterfront on the other side of the promontory. Number 8 lay halfway up the hill, a flat-fronted two-storey house in pitted yellow stucco with a narrow alley beside it. Winter paused at the front door and rang the bell. When there was no response, he tried again. Then he stepped back into the street and gazed up. A window on the top floor was open. He called Maddox’s name, listened for a moment or two, then turned to the gate that barred access to the alley. Unlocked, it swung inward at his touch. He followed the path along the side of the property, body-checking around a pile of empty beer crates. At the back was a square of grubby courtyard with a drooping basketball hoop lashed to a spindly tree. The back door to the house was ajar. From deep inside came a buzzing noise, intermittent, distinctive, penetrating. It sounded, thought Winter, like a trapped insect. He knocked on the door and then pushed it fully open. Inside was a kitchen, surprisingly roomy. A tap was dripping onto a pile of dirty plates in the sink and among the clutter on the battered pine table Winter recognised
a carton of aloe vera. Maddox had been mad about aloe vera. Some weeks she’d drink nothing else.

After a brief pause the buzzing started again, much louder this time. Winter crossed the kitchen and found himself in a dimly lit hall. The first of the doors on the right was an inch or two ajar and a light was on inside. The buzzing stopped. Then came the softest giggle, a woman’s giggle, girlish, intimate, before the buzzing resumed. Winter hadn’t a clue what Maddox might be up to, but he knew he owed her a decent entrance. He paused for a moment at the door and then went in.