East of the City (27 page)

Bent double, she held the photo to her stomach and retched like she was choking.

L
ee’s flat was full of boxes. Wooden ones, cardboard ones, big and small - you name it, she had it. It was only a single-bedroom place, but the amount of clothes she kept in there was just unbelievable.

She shoved an armful of dresses into one box. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘Angela had concussion from when the old guy pushed her.'

Legs stretched out on the floor in front of me, can of beer at my side, I watched Lee pack. ‘That couldn’t have helped,’ I said. ‘But I shouldn’t have dropped it on her like that.'

She dug in a drawer. ‘How old’s Justine? Thirty?’

‘Twenty-seven,’ I said. ‘And Sebastian was pushing sixty. And he was meant to be their friend.’

She got another armful of gear and dropped it in a box. ‘And?’ she said.

‘That isn’t enough? Justine’s her daughter, Lee. Sebastian was poking her daughter.'

‘They were both grown-ups.’

‘Sixty,’ I said, swigging on my beer, ‘is a hell of a lot more grown up than twenty-seven.’

Lee got down on her knees and started shunting the filled box across the room. She was wearing a pair of black draw-string pants, Chinese pyjama style, and a white vest on top. The central heating, as always in her place, was turned way up high. When the box hit the pile of other full boxes, she turned and flopped against it, puffing. Then wiping the sweat out of her eyes, she said, ‘Enjoying the beer?’

I made a token effort to get up, but she waved me back down. She was nearly finished, she said, then she got up and went into the bedroom. She left the door open. After a while there was the sound of another box being packed.

Lee Chan, my sometime girlfriend, was going home. It was real to me now in a way it hadn’t been before, all those boxes addressed to San Francisco and the pile of coat-hangers tossed aside on the floor. In a few days she’d just get on a plane and be gone. No more taking the Tube into the City each morning, no more complaining about the weather, no more dealing with underwriters like me. She was taking the big leap out, just straight up and gone, and I knew there was something I should probably say, but instead of that I just took another swig of my beer.

She’d asked me to come over and collect some clothes I’d left there, and now these were stuffed into a plastic bag by my side. A few T-shirts, that’s all. I wondered why she hadn’t just thrown them out.

‘If Sebastian was bonking Justine,’ I said, raising my voice, ‘what does that mean for the Ottoman deal?’

‘That a question,’ she called back, ‘or you just thinking out loud?’

‘Just say that photo was taken before Justine signed the Ottoman lead?’

‘Uhha.’ She walked across the bedroom with another armful of clothes, passing through my field of view.

I said, ‘I mean if what White told Angela and me was right, if Sebastian tried it on back then, what’s to say he didn’t do the same with Mehmet?’ That was the thought that had been worrying me ever since the trip down to Horley Farm, but I hadn’t been able to say it to Angela. Our drive back to London was pretty grim. I’d tried to apologize for dropping the photo on her like that, but Angela just didn’t want to know. And she’d kept the photo. She’d shoved it in her handbag and pushed the lot down by her feet in the car, I didn’t quite see how I could ask for it back.

Sebastian and Mehmet set up the Ottoman plane theft together, and Sebastian got Justine to sign the Mortlake Group up for the lead insurance line? When we paid out, they split the profits? It was a lulu, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed to fit. ‘Lee?’

She appeared in the bedroom doorway. ‘So what happened to Sebastian Ward, hero and all-round good guy?'

‘Leave it out.’

‘Your words, not mine.’

‘I never said he was a hero.’

‘When you used to take me out, that’s about all I ever got from you. The latest on Sebastian Ward, how shrewd he was, his business going gangbusters.’

‘Give over.’

‘You thought he was just the bee’s knees.' She pointed at me. ‘Am I right?’ Then she flicked her hair back and swaggered off for more clothes.

It wasn’t a great moment. The truth was, Sebastian was a kind of hero to me, and not just because of all he’d done for me. I guess I used to look at him, his success, his house and everything, and I’d see how things might be for me one day. But I hadn’t realized that I’d blabbed about him like that, not to Lee.

‘Sebastian wasn’t my hero,’ I called. ‘He was good at his job, that’s all I said.' Somewhere in there, a door closed. ‘Lee?’

‘Whatever you say, Ian.’

I crushed my empty beer can between my knees, then lobbed the can in the direction of the kitchen bin. The thing missed, so I went over and binned it. The packing hadn’t started in the kitchen, all the cooking gear was hanging on the wall just like I remembered. Lee took cooking lessons for a while, during the six-week course I was her guinea pig. I’d come over to her place, eat, have a romp, sleep, then leave early to go home and change before work. Good times. Fun. Before the fire. Before then, I thought, looking round the pots and pans — before Mum and Dad died — I actually had a life. Things I could look forward to.

‘Remember this?’ Lee stepped into the doorway, holding up a piece of material. It was a deep turquoise colour, the black flowery pattern snaking all over it.

At first I didn’t have a clue what it was. But the way she was holding it now, pressing it against her body, I tried a little harder. And then it came to me.

‘France?’ I said.

‘Ahha.’

‘A break in Normandy?’

Laughing, she held it out in front of her so she could see it better. It was a sarong, about the only thing she ever wore when we took a long weekend by the beach in Normandy over summer. An American-Chinese and me from up Walthamstow way, we had about six words of French between us. We kept to ourselves for three days and lived off baguettes and chocolate and beer. Each morning and evening she’d walk down to the water in that sarong, and I’d watch her from the cottage behind the beach. She’d wade out, swim a few strokes then lie on her back floating, kick her legs through the water and glide. When she came back up to the cottage she’d be shivering, I’d throw her a towel as she ran past on her way to the shower. Sometimes, often, I’d go in and join her. Fun. Way back when. Before the fire.

‘Lee, I need you to dig out some paperwork for me.’

Her smile died. She crumpled the sarong around her arm.

‘At the LCO,’ I said as she disappeared back into the bedroom. When she didn’t answer, I went over to the door and looked in. She was standing on a chair, unhooking some tapestry thing she had on the wall. ‘Lee, there’s this guy—’

‘No.' She hadn’t even turned.

‘You haven’t heard what I’m going to say.’

She said, ‘You want paperwork from the Claims Office.’

‘There’s a good reason.'

‘I don’t wanna hear it.’

‘I need this, Lee. I really do.’ Again she didn’t answer. She finished unhooking the tapestry and started folding it as she got down from the chair. ‘Listen, Lee, there’s this guy—’

‘La-la-la-la—’

‘There’s this guy—’

‘La-la-la-la.’

‘Lee, for Christ’s sake!’

She put her hands over her ears. I grabbed her arms and yanked them down by her sides, shouting, ‘I’ve been set up for Sebastian’s murder, will you listen to me?’

What I’d said seemed to reach her, she stopped struggling. 

‘Lee, I need your help.’

She looked down at my hands, I was squeezing her bare arms very tight. When I released her she pulled back, rubbing at the deep red fingermarks.

‘Set up? You mean like framed?’

I explained that the cop investigating Sebastian’s murder happened to hate my guts. She asked me why, but I brushed the question off.

‘He hates you, so he’s framing you?’ she asked, and to my own surprise I hesitated.

Yes wasn’t exactly the truthful answer. The truthful answer was that Fielding hated me so he was taking extra special care to hit me with the spotlight. But that spotlight seemed to be lighting up stuff that had nothing to do with Fielding, like the tapes, and like me being down the Gallon asking about Eddie Pike. Then the K and R, and now the Ottoman case.

Finally I said, ‘It suits him to believe it was me.’

‘Can he prove it?’

She was actually waiting for an answer.

‘Get real, Lee.'

I followed her into the kitchen where she pulled down some pots and pans. A minute later I found myself standing over the cutting board, slicing vegetables. Lee had two steaks out, she worked them over with a tenderizing hammer, really going at it, she held the hammer with both hands. I watched her from the comer of my eye. That guy in San Fran, her fiancé, I wondered if he knew what he was getting into, and if he had the sense to look after her, appreciate her better than I had. Lee Chan deserved that, at least. But behind this was another thought. I hoped that fiancé of hers got hit by a truck.

With her back turned to me, she pushed the sizzling onions around. ‘The cop that hates you,’ she said. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Fielding.’

She picked up the pan, rolling her wrist. Then she put the pan down and reached over and turned on the fan. There was something on her mind. 

‘Open some wine.' She flicked her hand, shooing me off. ‘Go lay the table.’

Fifteen minutes later, we were eating. Neither of us had said a word on the only subject that mattered and I wasn’t sure if I could hold out much longer. But then she put down. her knife and fork, and studied her glass.

Here we are, I thought.

‘Your friend Fielding called in at the LCO today.’

A cold feeling ran up my spine.

‘You’re not surprised?’ she said.

‘If Fielding’s sniffing around there, maybe it’s got through his fat head that Sebastian had more important things to worry about than me. Was he asking about Mehmet?’

Lee put up a hand. ‘Me first.’ She pushed her glass away, eyes down. ‘Ian, I need to know why you believe this guy Fielding hates you.’

Meaning what? I wondered. Explain, and I might help you? Explain, or I won’t help you? Talk, so I can compare what you tell me with what Fielding told me earlier? I couldn’t figure it out. In the end I gave up figuring and just told her. Me and Fielding. Not just recently but right back to the start, our whole stupid history, incidents I remembered even as I spoke, things stirred up from a stinking swamp. It took me nearly half an hour, finishing with me hauling Katy off him back at the flat, and Fielding walking out with the videotapes.

In the middle of it all, I went over and got us another bottle of wine.

‘And that’s the truth, Lee.’ I’d ended up in the lounge, on my back, telling the last part to the ceiling. Now I rolled over, head propped on my arm, and looked at her. She was still at the table, fingers around the stem of her glass. ‘I don’t know what Fielding told you,’ I said, ‘but that’s the truth. Start to finish.'

She pressed her glass lightly against her lips. ‘But framing you for a murder?’

‘The kidnap and all the rest of it. I don’t know, he just seemed to fit a few things together. He put two and two together and got five.' I looked straight at her. Collecting myself, I mustered every bit of sincerity I could, and I gave it to her just like she wanted. ‘Lee, I had nothing to do with Sebastian’s death.’

Her eyes stayed on mine a few beats, then she looked away. I knew that I’d reached her. She raised her glass to her lips again. Full lips. Red lipstick.

I said, ‘Do I get to ask one now?’

She nodded.

‘Was Fielding chasing up links between Sebastian and Mehmet?

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Partly.’

‘Partly?’

He wanted to know what the connection was between Sebastian and you. If there was any way he could trace the connection through the paperwork.’ She looked at me a moment to make sure I’d got the significance of this. When she’d been taking down the tapestry, when I’d asked her to dig out the LCO paperwork, it was the second time she’d been asked that day. And the bloke that asked her earlier, he was a policeman.

‘I wasn’t asking you to help me cover my tracks, Lee. There are no tracks. I haven’t done anything.’

‘But you want the paperwork.’

‘I don't need the originals. Copies. Whatever you can get.’ I got up and took a turn round the room. ‘You met Fielding. Ask yourself, who would you trust, him or me?’

For a second she actually seemed to think about it. I threw up a hand in disgust, and then Lee said, ‘Okay, okay, so he’s a jerk.’ She poured herself another glass of wine, and said, ‘I put an order through for the paperwork this afternoon.’ To the warehouse out in the sticks, she meant, where truckloads of Lloyd’s paperwork gets stored. ‘I’ll get the stuff tomorrow.’ She was twirling a strand of hair round her finger, just by her ear. She always did that when she was worried. Worried or tipsy.

I said, ‘Am I asking too much?’

‘You know damn well you are.’ Still twirling her hair, she added, ‘Your signature’s going to be on quite a few of the leads.’

She was waiting, I knew, for me to tell her to pull them. Misdirect Fielding. And I was tempted to, but I had a feeling that if I did she might show me the door. So I said, ‘No problem. Give him whatever you like. I’ve got nothing to hide.’

She looked at me hard. At last she said, ‘All right, Ian. I’ll get you some copies.’ She was completely fed up with it all. First Fielding, now me. She cocked her head. ‘Anything else?’

It was pushing my luck, but I tried anyway. I asked if there were copies of any correspondence Justine or Sebastian might have had with the LCO over the Ottoman claim.

Lee thought about it, then she got up and went to her bedroom door. She pointed back to where her briefcase was propped by the stereo. ‘It might be,’ she said, ‘that in an unguarded moment, while my briefcase was out of my sight, someone snuck himself a look without taking anything.’ She looked from the briefcase back to me. ‘Two minutes,’ she said, disappearing into the bedroom.

I went and picked up the briefcase, laid it on the table and flicked open the catches. There were a few loose sheets, a diary, and a cheque book, and one thick folder labelled Ottoman. The top sheet in this folder was the provisional timetable of the trial, a red tick beside the witnesses who’d already appeared. My name hadn’t been ticked, but tomorrow’s date was pencilled in there, a reminder I really didn’t need. I thumbed through a few more pages, it seemed to be laid out in reverse order, the early stuff further back, so I went to the bottom of the pile. There I quickly found what I was after. A couple of faxes, and some e-mail printouts from way back at the start, in the days straight after the Ottoman plane was stolen. The way I figured it, if Justine and Sebastian were in the scam together, they’d have been keen to smooth the path for the claim. I thought I’d find evidence of this in their correspondence with the LCO.