A Wayward Game (13 page)

Why has James Sallow
never been held to account for what he did? Is it really because
there is not enough evidence, as some people insist? Or is it
because he has friends in high places, a web of contacts, and a
certain amount of leverage? Do you know how powerful Sallow
actually is? His father is a wealthy businessman, a media mogul, an
OBE, a key donor to a major political party. Sallow himself has no
shortage of important friends and acquaintances. Before the scandal
of Diane’s disappearance, he was even considered as a parliamentary
candidate – a rare honour, for a man so young and
inexperienced.

I’m not a conspiracy
theorist. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. I believe that
the Moon Landing was genuine. I believe that Princess Diana was
killed in a simple road accident. I don’t see conspiracies
everywhere. But I also think – and it would be naive not to – that
money and privilege and personal connections can carry a great deal
of weight. Do you think it right that the wealthy and
well-connected should evade justice, while the poor and ordinary
pay dearly for their crimes? Is that fair?

Beneath the bare facts
of Diane’s disappearance it is possible to glimpse a netherworld of
power and privilege. Is this world so truly corrupt? Is the only
choice for those living in it to be corrupted themselves, or to be
destroyed?

Of course, I suppose
that most of us should be grateful that we at least have a choice.
Diane did not. And that, ultimately, is why I don’t want her to be
forgotten.

I copy and
paste my reply, and then send it to Lurker. I sit at my computer
for a while, waiting for a reply, but none is forthcoming. I glance
at the list of visitors currently online, and find that Lurker’s
name is no longer amongst them. I click away from the site with an
inexplicable sense of disappointment, and get on with my work for
the afternoon.

Frieda hates
London; but then, in an increasingly wretched life, there are very
few things that Frieda actually likes. I’m not even convinced that
she likes me; certainly she neither smiles nor waves as she emerges
from the ticket barriers at Paddington Station and sees me waiting
for her on the concourse. She tramps through the crowds, carrying
her twenty-stone body with the same weary resignation with which
she drags her suitcase behind her.

“Bloody
trains,” she grumbles, by way of greeting. Her voice is deep, her
accent unmistakeably Welsh. “Delayed for hours, I was. Spent ages
sitting just outside Bristol. Nobody bothered to even tell us what
the problem was. Bastards! They’re nice enough when they’re after
your money, but once they’ve pocketed it they treat you like
shit.”

“Hello,
Frieda.” I give her a hug, which she doesn’t return. She smells of
travel: of diesel, stale smoke, and sweat.

“Hello
yourself. Let’s have a bite to eat, and then you can take me to my
hotel.”

Food, shelter
and sleep are Frieda’s main priorities when it comes to daily life,
and I suppose that this is understandable. When you have so little
left, the simple demands of survival – the next breath, the next
meal – are of paramount importance, and no doubt provide their own
consolations. The tacit decision to go on living at least gives one
a sense of purpose, and a certain power. One more breath, one more
step, something to eat and a safe place to sleep: all you need, all
any living creature needs. Forget about everything except
surviving.

Frieda’s eating
habits, let it be said, are not conducive to survival. I know from
experience that she eats little that is not deep-fried, and so take
her to a café just around the corner, where the day’s menu is
chalked up on a blackboard behind the counter, and you shout your
order at a rather deaf and perpetually gloomy elderly man. Frieda
chooses a battered sausage, a large portion of chips, onion rings
and a Coke, and then gives a cynical grunt when I ask for
salad.

“You’re as bad
as my doctor,” she grumbles. “Always going on about losing weight
and eating well. Look, I live in one the poorest parts of the
country, in a house that’s about to fall down, and I’ve got no
money to repair it. Every time I set foot outside I risk being
mugged, or worse. I’ve got no family, no friends, I’m terminally
depressed, and you expect me to drink carrot juice and take up
jogging? Fuck off!”

I know by now
that appeals to health and longevity fall on deaf ears with Frieda,
and so avoid them. We sit down at a Formica-topped table in the
corner, and Frieda gives a relieved “Oof!” as she sinks down onto
her chair. Her face is perpetually red, her long brown hair frizzy
and unkempt. She wears no make-up, and dresses in tracksuit bottoms
and loose jumpers. Seeing her in the street, you might mistake her
for a bag lady. She wouldn’t care if you did; life has taught her
that there are far worse things than other people’s opinions.

“How are you?”
I ask while we’re waiting.

“No better than
normal,” she says, cracking open her Coke and taking a ravenous
slurp. “I can’t sleep, I can’t work. All I do is sit and cry and
look at old photos. I’ve brought some more for you to see.” She
rummages around in her handbag, draws out a large manila envelope,
and puts it down on the table. “Nice ones, these. Taken when she
was a bit older, some of them.”

I open the
envelope and draw out a photograph of a chubby baby wearing a white
smock dress and sitting on a sofa, smiling toothlessly at the
camera. Cute, certainly, but indistinguishable from hundreds of
other babies. The next photograph shows a slightly older child, of
perhaps three or four years, standing on a windswept beach in a
coat and wellington boots and grinning impishly, her small hands
holding out some seashells as if for the viewer’s inspection. At
first glance, she too is unremarkable, her pudgy face and
unflattering pudding-bowl haircut the generic stuff of childhood.
Then I look more closely, and see, in embryonic form, the slightly
lopsided mouth and slightly bulbous nose that would consign the
adult woman to simple prettiness rather than beauty, and recognise
Diane.

I leaf through
the other photos. Diane in pigtails and a school uniform; a
prepubescent Diane in a leotard, grinning as she holds up a
gymnastics certificate; a teenaged Diane kneeling in a sunlit
garden with her arms around the neck of a brown-and-white spaniel.
This last photograph surprises me, not least because it also shows
a younger Frieda kneeling beside her, smiling beatifically down at
both dog and child. Twenty years ago, I see, Frieda was gorgeous:
slimmer, prettier, with hair that fell to her shoulders in soft
auburn waves.

“Yeah,” Frieda
says, watching me across the table. “I was a pretty little thing
myself back then. Back when things like that mattered. You wouldn’t
believe it now, would you?”

It would hardly
be politic to answer such a question, and so I shrug noncommittally
as I put the photos back in the envelope. “I haven’t seen those
before,” I say.

“No. I keep
them all in a big tin beneath the bed. Go through them a bit at a
time. Makes it easier. Y’know, I look at her sometimes – at that
face and those bright eyes of hers – and I can’t believe she’s
gone. Can’t believe it, even though I know it’s true.” She takes a
crumpled tissue out of her pocket, and dabs at her eyes. “Where did
we go wrong, eh?”

There were many
points, I know, at which Frieda’s and Diane’s lives twisted in
unexpected and unfortunate ways. Often it was through no fault of
their own. The first calamity to befall them came when Diane was
ten, and her father walked out of the family home, leaving no
provision for his wife and daughter. A younger and more resilient
Frieda struggled on for several years anyway. She took a job in a
supermarket, and somehow managed to feed and clothe her daughter,
and encouraged her to work hard at school, the better to escape
from the slums of South Wales. Then she scraped together the money
to pay for Further and Higher Education, all the while harbouring
hopes that her daughter would achieve things that she herself had
only ever dreamed of, only to find that her timid aspirations were
by that time lagging far behind Diane’s own emerging ambitions, and
that she was being left behind. Even that didn’t shatter Frieda’s
spirit, though. That came later.

A man in greasy
cooks’ whites appears, and puts two plates down on the table
without a word before tramping back into the kitchen. Frieda wipes
away the last trace of tears, picks up a chip, and puts it into her
mouth.

“Oh, fuck it,”
she says. “Feeling sorry for myself won’t do any good, will it? I
need to focus. Any news this end?”

I tell her
about my meeting with Mr Walsh. Her ears prick up when I mention
his seeing Sallow early on the morning of Diane’s disappearance,
and how he didn’t believe Sallow’s explanation for it, but then she
sighs.

“Not enough, is
it?” she asks.

“No, I’m afraid
not. Any progress at your end?”

“Not a bloody
thing. I write to my MP every month, and every month I get the same
reply. I liaise with the Missing Persons Bureau, even though I’m
pretty sure that Diane will never be found. I shame representatives
of the Metropolitan Police into meeting me occasionally, but God
knows why I bother. They never say anything new, just the same old
crap.
We can’t reopen the investigation without any new
evidence
,” Frieda says, mimicking the stiff, officious manner
of the bureaucrat. “Nothing I say makes a blind bit of difference.
Fuck it, Katherine, you and I and everyone with half a brain knows
that bastard Sallow killed Diane. But there isn’t enough evidence
to even get him into court, let alone convict him. Look,” she says,
pointing her knife at me in a rather threatening manner, “there’s
nothing more I can do. The police, politicians – they can’t or
won’t help. But you’re a journalist, Katherine. You can dig a bit
deeper, ask questions. You’ve got contacts.”

“I try, Frieda.
I’ve always tried. I got sacked for it, if you remember.” For a
moment, my mind returns to that dreadful, humiliating day: my
editor apologising even as he told me to clear my desk, saying that
he had to let me go, that the paper was fighting falling
circulation and increased competition and had enough enemies
already and couldn’t afford more. “We’re up against some powerful
forces, Katherine” – his very words, which could conceivably refer
to rival papers or the internet, but spoken in a tone that told me
that this man, whom I had thought fearless, was afraid.

Frieda
harrumphs. “I know. I know what you’ve done, and how much you’ve
given up. But keep on trying, because there’s nothing and no one
else.” She sighs and puts down her knife, and another fat tear
quivers on her bottom eyelid. “I can’t rest, y’know. Not until
there’s some kind of end to this. I’ve got to see this through to
the end. If it wasn’t for that, I couldn’t carry on. I’d just die,
and be glad of it.”

I hand her a
packet of tissues, and she takes one and blows her nose loudly.
Some of the other customers turn and look, and then promptly look
away: in London, your misery is your own business.

“Sorry,” she
says. “Moments of weakness. They keep on happening. At the most
bloody embarrassing times, too.”

“Don’t
apologise. If anyone has reason to cry, it’s you.”

“Tears don’t
help, though, do they? They just waste time and energy.” She wipes
her face again, and turns her attention back to her meal, as if by
concentrating on that she can drive away her grief. Conversation
stops for a while. I pick at my salad, and think of Frieda’s faith
in my ability to drive this case forward. She’s overestimating my
importance, of course. I’m a freelancer these days, unprotected by
editors and cut off from colleagues. My jobs vary, but they tend
toward fluffy pieces about fashion, fitness and celebrity gossip.
My income varies from month to month, and is never entirely secure.
I am living in a kind of limbo, at the outer edges of my own
profession, and have been for quite some time.

It was
different before, of course, when I was working for a national
broadsheet and trying to make my name as a serious investigative
journalist. I’d worked hard, gained the trust and respect of my
editor, and had as a result been awarded a certain amount of
freedom. If I was adamant that something warranted a story, I’d
generally be allowed to run with it. In the aftermath of Diane’s
disappearance, I was allowed to delve into the case, and largely on
my own terms. But all of that came grinding to a halt when I wrote
the article that led to the threat of legal action by Sallow’s
solicitors. The editor backed down and issued an apology, and
shortly afterwards I was made redundant. Officially the two events
were unrelated, but privately my editor as good as admitted that I
was a ritual sacrifice. Even today, this still rankles, and yet I
understand his position. He had been intimidated, not only by
solicitors but by those higher up at the media corporation, and had
been left with very little choice but to let me go. The free press
is less free than people think, or want to believe.

We finish our
meals relatively quickly, and walk the short distance to Frieda’s
hotel, an inexpensive little fleapit on the corner of Gloucester
Terrace and Craven Road. It’s dark by now, and cars and taxis crawl
past in a jerky procession. Fierce lights and harsh sounds split
the night open, and I find it comforting that, no matter what else
happens, things ultimately just carry on as they always have. In
the end, nothing is of much significance. The best you can do,
perhaps, is just not to care about anything. Good advice, but
impossible to follow.

“So what’s the
plan for tomorrow?” I ask Frieda as we walk.