Dying for Millions (25 page)

For once I had an attack of common-sense. There was no way I could work all evening without eating first. And it would give time for the huge traffic tailbacks from Spaghetti Junction to clear from the city centre, which they threatened to gridlock. That nice Italian place called loudly.

The table nearest the bar was occupied by the middle-aged couple I'd seen there before: at least, their coats were draped on their chairs, but they were squatting by the bar. I scanned the menu. Eventually he got up, disappearing into the kitchen, to return with an enormous pair of scissors. She pointed at a weak stem on an anaemic plant; he argued, and pointed to another node. At last, he snipped, she gathered up the foliage, and they both disappeared into the kitchen. I could hear their laughter. Then they returned to their table, arms wrapped round each other, and simply sat, smiling at each other warmly, toasting each other as they sank red wine.

When the chef-cum-waiter asked what I wanted to drink, what could I do? I did what the woman in the movie did: pointed to them, and said, ‘Whatever she's having.'

I arrived at the airport early enough to greet one or two of the regular workers leaving: nothing like being brazen. I also knocked at Mark's door, but a passing woman who might well have been his secretary told me he'd been off all day. What did that mean for me? A clearer run – or a constant fear that he was the sort of person who'd make up for a day's absence by turning up in the evening? I thought it safer to assume the latter.

Gurjit had left all the post ready to go out in a laser printer paper box in the corner. It was no problem to fish out the Wednesday invoices, and reprint them. There must have been three weeks' invoices altogether: why couldn't the airport simply have brought in temps to do the job, rather than using unpaid student labour? Although perhaps it was lucky for me they hadn't. But a temp would certainly have been more efficient, and I'd have thought efficiency in collecting money owed to you was one of the essentials of good management. I'd have gone for self-sealing envelopes, too: it'd take me a week to lick this lot. Then I remembered a delight from my own temping days – the artificial licker. Almost certainly it had a more grown-up name, but that seemed good enough to me for a rubber roller that rotated in a bath of water. The desk I was using presumably didn't belong to anyone, so I rooted through it, eventually emerging triumphant. Mindful of all that business about security even when going to the loo, I filled it from a kettle that stood on the window sill. Whoever owned it had the makings of a penicillin farm to rival ours at William Murdock: I suspected the only safe thing to do with the green furry mugs was to bin the lot.

As the printer sighed out invoices, I folded and stuffed and sealed. The folds were probably nowhere as meticulous as Gurjit's, but the pile in the out-tray was growing splendidly. There was no doubt about it – I was winning.

I'd dressed as if for burglary, in the black trouser suit I'd taken to wearing to visit employers whose Asian sensibilities might have been offended by thick tights and miniskirts, so I could have gone for a prowl on the tarmac without being very noticeable. But there was nothing to take me outside. I ought to speed up my stuffing and sticking, and then I could push off and start my Swiss activities. As my hands found a rhythm, my brain went into neutral: a logical place for it to find Andy, I suppose. At least he'd been safe all day. Now the police knew who they were looking for, protecting Andy might become a higher priority. They might even have picked up Malpass by now, so he could euphemistically assist them with their inquiries. I found it in me to regret the passing of the days when the police could be thoroughly unpleasant to a suspect, and then clapped a
Guardian-
buying hand to my mouth. The desire for simple revenge for what Malpass had done to Andy – and me – shocked me. I saw it all over again: the fall, the dreadful broken body. Pete Hughes, caught up in someone else's obsession, someone else's madness. Society would demand its revenge for that, I hoped.

Then I was too busy fending off the spear of pain from my stomach to be vengeful any more. I grabbed two antacid tablets from my bag, but the pain was so vicious I leaned over the pile of post, bracing myself, willing it to clear.

As I did so, the door opened and the lights went out.

I was too slow. He was on me before I could move, grabbing me from the rear in a bear-hug. There was nothing I could do: I was totally pinioned. And the hands were moving across to my chest. And what the fingers were doing to the nipples confirmed what the pressure lower down suggested: that someone was very pleased to see me. Or, rather, Gurjit.

‘Mark?' I said, my voice muffled by his arm. ‘Please stop that!'

For answer he started to pivot me so he could reach my trousers' zip.

‘
Mark
! Stop this, for goodness' sake.'

For answer he fastened his mouth to mine.

My attempts to push him off made him all the more amorous. Then I realised – I was going to be raped. Was this what he'd planned for Gurjit? A rape? Or did she like her sex like this? My God, what a mess.

At last I got a hand free, trying to push it across his mouth. But it was easier to grab his nose, twisting it at first gently and then quite fiercely. He squealed – and I reached for the light switch.

‘For Christ's sake, Mark – can't you tell us apart?'

‘I thought you'd managed – I thought
she'd
– managed—'

‘And Gurjit likes her sex a bit rough, does she? Hell, Mark, she's little better than a schoolgirl! And she's led a very sheltered life.' Irate-teacher mode seemed appropriate. It distracted me from two quite contradictory personal feelings: understandable outrage and a most unforgivable rush of physical desire.

He put his hands to his face and started to cry.

Scrubbing at those disgusting mugs, I had a chance to work out why. Was it sorrow for her? Shock? Fear for his job? Coffee was called for, whatever the reason. And a hearty implication that I'd forgive and forget, that he need not worry about my gossiping. I smiled at myself ruefully: it seemed my greatest talent lay in keeping
stumm
.

He'd rearranged his professional dignity by the time I got back.

‘Didn't Gurjit tell you she'd asked me to finish off her work? She said she was so embarrassingly far behind she didn't think she could ask you for a reference. She's very conscientious, is Gurjit.'

I plugged in the kettle. It occurred to me, belatedly, that there might be other reasons for the immense backlog than Gurjit's meticulous approach to work. And yet she had stoically – yes, it was more than passively – accepted her parents' decision.

‘I just hoped—'

‘What for?'

‘That they'd change their mind. Or that she'd change hers. You don't think there's any chance, do you?'

‘Do you expect an autocratic father, no matter how much he loves his daughter, to abandon his ambitions for her?'

‘She thought her mother—'

‘She doesn't utter a word of protest. Not in public. And probably not much of one in private.'

‘So—' He shrugged, and came to lean on the window still beside me. ‘D'you suppose – if I waited?'

Would eighteen months at William Murdock and three years at University make Gurjit more independent? Or would she simply change her mind about him, as one did about one's early loves? I must have been silent long enough to give him the answer he didn't want: his head drooped, like Richard's.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. Sorry for everyone. I put my arm round his shoulders.

At last he turned. ‘Sorry – about earlier.'

‘No problem.' Not for him: I wasn't so sure about myself. My heart felt physically heavy, and I realised my shoulders were slumping like his. I straightened. ‘At least all your invoices are done! I seem to work a bit more briskly than Gurjit.'

‘Yes. Well. I mean, thanks, Sophie. Really – thanks.'

I had to tell him, didn't I, about the lapse in his security. About the thefts. Warn him somehow. He was a decent man. He wasn't responsible. But I wanted it to be some unknown individual who found a messy little buck stopping at his or her feet.

Mark watched me stir whitener into the coffee. ‘That looks disgusting! Time for the pub, I should say.'

I had to make sure.

‘I've always wanted to work one of those franking machines. Can I run this lot through first?'

He looked at me in surprise, as well he might, but we turned it into a game – who could put a batch through in the least time – and I had the double pleasure of watching all those nice safe invoices diving into the post bag and seeing his face lighten with laughter.

Neither of us drank enough to risk our licence. We talked about cricket and music – all very low-key – and arranged to meet in the Italian restaurant for a meal one evening the following week. Apart from anything else, I wanted to see if the plant surgery had worked.

Andy was still up when I got back. His face was exceptionally grim.

‘They found him – then they lost him,' he said.

‘Found—?'

‘Malpass. Living and working in Birmingham. And you'll never guess where he was living. Sit down, I'll get you a drink. And some food.'

‘I don't want anything. Just tell me!'

He took my arm and drew me to the window. ‘You see that house over there? With the “For Sale” sign? Well, he's been squatting there. But that's not the whole of it, kid. Not by any means. Guess how they found out … But first of all, you are going to sit down and you are going to eat.'

‘But—'

‘Take your coat off, wash your hands and go to the table like a good girl.'

‘Yes, Mother.'

Smoked salmon, cream cheese, and bagels he'd shoved into the oven to warm. ‘Micro-waving them makes them tough,' he said – anticipating my complaints about keeping an oven on at two hundred degrees for however long he'd been expecting me. ‘There! Eat and enjoy.' He passed me a tray, and produced a promising-looking bottle from the fridge.

I spread cream cheese on the first of the bagels. ‘Right. Pour yourself a glass and tell me.'

‘Do you remember asking why Griff wasn't down here? And I said the fuzz had a close eye on me? Well, I found out just how close this afternoon. Those people opposite – the ones Aggie calls the old dears—'

‘Yes. The Harveys. The ones who've been having a lot of visitors recently.'

‘Not visitors. The fuzz. Surveillance duty. Watching me.'

‘You're joking!'

‘I wish I were. Apparently they were still acting on the tip-off that sparked all the problems at that hotel.'

‘The Mondiale.'

‘So they've had these people shacked up with the – the Harveys? – watching your place night and day all the time I've been here. Not when I wasn't, though. Any road up,' he continued, his lapse into Black Country lingo showing how serious he was, ‘one bright spark notices that there are one or two rats visiting a heap of rubbish in next-door's back garden and thinks it can't be very nice for the old dears to have rats as neighbours—'

‘At last! Half the road's been petitioning the council to do something about that lot!'

‘Quite. Well, now something
has
been done. They call in a rat-catcher or rodent operator or whatever: a shortish roundish man I rather took to on sight—'

‘You've
met
him?'

‘No, I was looking out of the window. Anyway, this van pulls up opposite, so I have a look. And there's this funny little guy looking like an extra from
Wind in the Willows
toddling all business-like round to the back of the Harveys' neighbours' house. And next thing I know he's scuttling hell for leather round to the Harveys' front door, yelling for an ambulance. So out pour half a dozen very tall young men – you should've seen Ratty's face! – all ready to practise their first aid. But, my dear Watson, they were too late, as the subsequent departure of the apparently sick man in a body bag demonstrated.'

‘Hang on – all these histrionics are confusing me. The police smell a rat.
See
one. And the rat-catcher finds – a human body? Is that right?'

‘Absolutely. And –' by now his eyes, which had been gleaming throughout, were positively glittering – ‘and guess who the body belongs to?'

I shook my head. He swept the wine bottle from the table, and returned it to the fridge. Then he fished out a bottle of Moet.

‘The body is – Malpass's!' He prised out the cork. ‘There! So I'm a free man! I don't need to be nannied any more! I can go anywhere I want! I can go – home!'

The following day, I had a reflective journey to work. It would have been pointless to rail at Stephenson and her team for their incompetence, but I wanted to scream with frustration. If I was supposed to be alert and on my toes all the time, why shouldn't other people? How on earth could the police have let Malpass squat under their very eyes? No wonder he'd been able to keep an eye on our activities! All things considered it was fortunate that morning that no one changed lanes selfishly or tried to overtake: he might have found a latter-day Boadicea kicking in his lights.

Perhaps Richard sensed my tension: when I went to report the latest development he produced coffee and chocolate biscuits without even asking. He spoke idly about the roads, a leak in the biology lab ceiling – and then we heard screams.

We nearly collided in the doorway, but I was out first, banging at the lift button. When nothing happened, I yelled, ‘Call Security! Then use the lift. I'm on my way down.'

A security guard soon joined me outside. It didn't take long to see what was happening; a group of yobs had found a patch of relatively virgin snow and also found someone to roll in it. The girl was white and shaking by the time the man had collared one of the ring-leaders, and burst into tears as I helped her to her feet.