‘The cheating husband? I’d bet my life that’s total fiction. She strikes me as inauthentic.’
‘What do you mean?’ She felt unaccountably riled.
‘Something about her doesn’t add up. Mr Husband toddles off leaving a pile of clothes behind and lots of clobber. What man does that? He’ll have to go shopping for a load more! It’s like that English MP who faked his suicide. He left his clothes on the beach. My guess is our Lulu’s made it all up, but why?’
‘Whatever, it’s not our business.’ Stella was firm.
‘You’re right. Our job is to keep the lie intact. When the man left, Barry held the door open long enough for two people to walk out and he said goodnight twice. If any of my front-of-house staff had cracked a smile, they’d have been washing up for a week.’
Thrown by Dale’s suggestion that Lulu Carr might not have told her the truth, Stella took a wrong turning at Hammersmith Broadway and drove on to the Great West Road. Ahead of her was Jack’s tower. She had seen it many times, but, never having been asked to clean it, hadn’t given it a thought.
Someone was on the roof. Jack had told her he didn’t have access. Had he lied?
A car cut into her lane; she braked and flashed her lights. When she looked again, Jack wasn’t there.
January 1988
Chiswick Eyot was cut off from the mainland when the tide was in, but, Simon conceded to himself as he scurried along the path, the tingling sensation mounting, it would make a good HQ. At low tide, protected by thick, oozing mud, the advancing enemy would sink and die. It wasn’t as good as the tower. But the tower was out of bounds now.
He arrived in a patch of scrub. At his feet was a circle of white stones with a patch of sunlight. They looked luminous. A small trowel and a fork lay in the soil beside the stones. Simon assumed they were the Captain’s. The soil had been dug recently; lumps of fresh earth lay beside the stones.
Simon indicated the stones. ‘This is brilliant.’ His mouth was dry with mounting dread – the Captain must have a plan. He backed away.
‘Stay where you are!’ The Captain stood with his back to a screen of reeds.
‘Don’t speak to him like that,’ Nicky said. Simon wanted to sing with joy: she still liked him. Despite Nicky being nice, Simon wished he were at the lake with his mum.
His mum had only agreed for him to come out with the unit because she wanted him out of the house.
She was going to look for the Stick Insect.
It gave him no satisfaction to know she wouldn’t find him. Justin had told him that in America stick insects were called ‘ghost insects’. A sign, but of what Simon had no idea.
‘These mark where bodies are buried.’ The Captain pointed at the stones.
The sun had gone in. The stones were still there, but now looked randomly scattered.
‘You don’t know that.’ Nicky shook her head. ‘
Captain!
’
The reeds rattled in the wind, so tall they reached above the children’s heads.
No one could see them from the shore. Simon’s foreboding escalated to terror. The Captain hadn’t brought him here to show him a new HQ. So taken up with his glove, Simon had been ambushed. He drifted closer to Nicky. She wouldn’t let anything happen to him.
‘My mum’s expecting me. We’re going out,’ he blurted.
‘
Mummy
said you could come out and play!’ The Captain gave a short laugh. ‘She likes me.’
‘I should be getting—’
‘I think they mark where there’s buried treasure,’ Nicky said brightly. ‘The way they’re arranged, it’s like a clock.’
She was deciphering a code. Simon was impressed. When he was captain, he would keep her as Official Codebreaker.
‘Anyway, Mummy’s not there.’ The Captain didn’t seem to have heard.
‘What do you mean?’ Simon knew what he meant.
‘Your
Mummy
left after us. Let’s guess where she was going!’
‘She’s going to the park. I’m meant to be there too.’ Simon pulled on his half-finger as if it might magic him away.
‘Oh, I don’t think so. Try again. It begins with a “T”. Where do
prostitutes
go?’ His tone could be mistaken for kind, but Simon, used to his dad talking to his mum, knew better. ‘We understand why you knew all about the tower.’
‘And we know what you did there!’ Simon heard himself retort. The sound of the river rushing through the reeds hurt his ears.
‘Stop it!’ Nicky was looking at the Captain.
She didn’t know what the Captain meant. Simon moved even closer to her, thinking to suggest they left. Before he could speak, he felt a thump on the back and was pushed to the ground. He was on his hands and knees, flailing at the reeds for purchase. The reeds cracked and snapped like gunshots.
The Captain had Simon by the collar of his mac and was dragging him over the earth. He shoved him through the gap in the reeds. Below was the river, fast flowing, grey and green. Simon heard the fabric of his mac tear; it was giving under his weight. Then everything went quiet and he clearly comprehended – a thought devoid of emotion – that he was going to die.
Flecks of foam were spinning on the water. He saw his own face, white and impassive, before it vanished in cloud of scum. Heat ripped across his scalp as the Captain yanked his head back by the hair.
‘Leave him.’
Simon fell on to the ground and, gathering himself, looked across the clearing.
A boy stood in a ragged shape of light inside the ring of white stones. ‘You are trespassing,’ he said to the Captain.
For a split second Simon thought he was dreaming. So entrenched were his fantasies about his friendship with Justin that he had eliminated the two years in which he had not seen him. He discounted the numerous times he had called at the big house with the owl knocker and got no answer. In his mind the friendship had begun in the Pullman carriage of a train. He and Justin were like Guy and Charles in
Strangers on a Train
, his mother’s favourite story. Justin was his friend.
‘This is my land.’ The Captain didn’t sound very sure. ‘We’ve occupied it.’
‘You are trespassing.’ Justin had grown taller since Simon had last seen him. He was taller than the Captain. He wore a black coat which reached to his ankles, the sleeves folded back. His hair was longer, long like a girl’s.
‘I knew you’d be here!’ Simon exclaimed. ‘This is who I meant!’ he shouted to the Captain and gave an involuntary tug on his bad finger.
Justin didn’t reply or look at him.
‘Do you know him?’ the Captain said to Simon.
‘Yes.’ Simon adjusted his belt and smoothed down his hair. ‘He’s my friend.’
‘You are trespassing.’ Justin addressed the Captain as if he hadn’t noticed Simon or heard him.
‘So you’re friends with “Mummy’s Boy”?’ The Captain clearly hoped he had pounced on a weak link.
‘I don’t know him,’ Justin replied calmly.
Above their heads a seagull screeched, long and drawn-out like a baby’s cry.
‘Justin, it’s me, Simon, from that school with the garden. We made the tunnel there, remember? We, we had lunch in the Pullman carriage, steak and chips with ketchup.’ Simon dashed at his eyes with the heels of his palms. ‘Now I’m in a unit. You can be in it too. You can be captain – it will be brilliant!’
‘He doesn’t know you.’ The Captain edged closer to the boy in the coat as if by diminishing the spatial distance between them he might forge an alliance.
‘You are all trespassing!’ Justin didn’t raise his voice. ‘The tide is turning. If you don’t go now, you will be cut off from the mainland and drown.’
‘You’re lying,’ the Captain said. But Simon saw that he believed Justin.
All the children heard a steady trickling and, through the reeds, Simon watched the river rise.
‘Quick march!’ the Captain shouted, and pushing Simon ahead of him, directed him back along the path. Away from Justin.
Simon looked out across the river. Properly dark now, he could just tell that the tide was coming in as Justin had said it would. The river lapped at the bottom of the slipway; the island was cut off. Justin could still be out there.
Simon had given the Captain the slip in the cemetery and had doubled back. He was by the railings on Chiswick Mall. The eyot was a dark crouching hulk, the trees and the land one black mass merging with the night sky.
‘Justin,’ he yelled across the water.
He flung off his mac and hung it on the railings; then he struggled down the ramp and set off across the vanishing causeway of silted gravel to the eyot.
‘Justin!’ His cry, hollow like a seagull’s and lost in gathering wind, went nowhere.
Simon was up to his knees in freezing water. From deep in the river, invisible hands tugged at his legs, trying to drag him off the causeway. There was no causeway: the finger of land was submerged.
The bells of St Nicholas’ church struck five. When the wind blew from the east, the chimes could be heard in Corney Road. Simon’s mother was assuring her husband she had been out for a walk by herself around the lake in Chiswick House grounds with their daughter.
‘Why the fuck does she keep saying “mat”?’ Simon’s father demanded, infuriated by the little girl’s insistently repeated sound.
His wife suddenly understood what the toddler was trying to say. Panicked, she explained how she was leaving the upstairs curtains open for Simon, who was still out with his nice friends, to see the sitting-room lights. But her frequently snatched glances out of the bay window were not for her son.
Friday, 25 October 2013
Jack watched Tallulah Frost’s house. He preferred to visit Hosts at night, but he was on another day shift and later was meeting Stella. She had been busy with Dale yesterday. Stella and Suzie had invited him for a late afternoon tea to Richmond Park, but he had said he was busy sorting out his new home, although the flat in the tower, being small, needed little sorting. Jack was in no hurry to meet the Brand-new Brother.
He had cased her house with his binoculars from the north window of the tower and confirmed the topography on Street View. He had logged ‘alerts’: a repair to asphalt on the camber, cracks in the pavement – stepping on cracks was very bad luck.
That morning Jack had chased up William Frost for his sister-in-law’s address. Frost was still keen they go in as cleaners. Although he privately agreed, something in the man’s tone had made Jack uneasy. He had refrained from telling Frost that his method of entering people’s houses required no disguise.
Leaning on the trunk of a plane tree in the sunlit street, rolling a cigarette, Jack told himself he was reconnoitring for his stakeout with Stella.
Clicking the cursor on Street View, he had swooped and darted around the street with the aerodynamic ease of a bird noting all points of vulnerability, street lamps, sightlines from upstairs windows, frequency of vehicles and pedestrians. There were points of advantage too: trees, parked cars and a wall all offered hiding places from which he could observe unobserved. Jack had established dimension and distance between kerbs, gates and trees. Like any good intruder, he had identified the means of egress. On Google Street View’s fabulous new feature – a timeline bar – he compared the image of the road in 2008 to 2012 when the last shots were taken. In four years the front door had changed from racing green to royal blue. Not keen on green, Jack approved. The bush in the front area had grown; straggling branches poked through the railings, obscuring the downstairs window. A point of advantage – he would not be seen.
The door was opening. Jack sidled back behind the trunk, snapping his newly made cigarette into his case along with the rest. Mrs Frost might only be putting something in the bin. People popped out of their houses with rubbish, leaving their doors open, allowing Jack to slip inside. In Perrers Road the bins were in view of the street, and in broad daylight, it wouldn’t work.
A woman shrouded in a quilted jacket, hood up, was wrestling with an umbrella. It wasn’t raining, but she didn’t seem to have noticed. She pointed it directly at Jack’s tree, opened it and, ducking beneath, stooped to the doormat. Jack nearly shouted with triumph – it could not be. She was leaving a key beneath it. He had been tempted to follow her, but she stopped by a car parked ten or so metres up the street and unlocked it. He moved around the trunk as her car, a blue Renault Clio, swept past him.
Jack nonchanlantly strolled across the road, noting a Neighbourhood Watch sign fixed to the telegraph pole. He opened the gate without hesitation, intending that a neighbour would assume him a friend, and with a carefree spin on his heel confirmed that no one was on the street. He latched the gate after himself – a watching neighbour would disregard a man who took trouble. Jack pressed the bell.
Thirty more seconds went by. Jack noted that weeds thrusting up through the brick path in 2008 and in 2012 had gone. Somewhere a car door slammed. A blackbird chirruped. A dog gave an urgent bark, answered by another further away. Reminded of Stanley, Jack felt a twinge of guilt; Stella wouldn’t approve of what he was doing.
Thirty seconds, then he rang the bell again. After another thirty seconds, he lifted the mat and retrieved the key. This wasn’t breaking and entering, he imagined telling Stella, this was visiting.
He opened the door and replaced the key under the mat. Without looking behind him for fear of rousing suspicion, he stepped inside.
Had Jack looked at the plane tree where he had been standing moments earlier, he would have seen he was wrong in thinking that no one was watching him. Nor did he see a figure stroll across the street, with the same nonchalance as he had exhibited moments earlier and, lifting up the door mat, take the key from underneath it.
Friday, 25 October 2013
‘Have a scone, Stell. See how an Aussie does them!’
Stella had agreed to morning coffee round at her mum’s. Dale slid a plate heaped with bite-size scones dotted with plump sultanas across the coffee table to her. Stella wasn’t hungry, but refusal wasn’t an option. She smelled the warm aroma of cheese.