East of the City (45 page)

When I was done, she looked down at the blanket. ‘The cops said the stadium collapsed.’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

'‘The whole thing burnt down?'

‘Just the top floor,’ I said. ‘Last I saw, anyway.'

She lifted her head. ‘The nurse said you pulled me out.’ Her look went right into me. Was she thinking what I was thinking, about Mum and Dad? Eventually I nodded. ‘I could have died,’ she said.

‘Your turn,’ I told her, pointing to her statement. She grabbed my arm and squeezed. The pain went zinging over my shoulder, I let out a loud yelp and pulled back.

‘Sorry, Ian. Jesus.’

I went back to the window ledge. I nodded to her statement. ‘What were you doing up there, Katy?’

‘I can call the nurse, she’ll look at your arm.'

Pointing with my left hand, I repeated very firmly. ‘Your turn.’

She tugged at the blankets, straightening them over her legs. ‘Okay. So I went to the track with Bill.’

‘He didn’t get a mention in your statement.’

‘Why drag anyone else into it? You didn’t get a mention either. I only put Tubs in because Fielding saw him. Anyway, I’m with Bill, and we bumped into Tubs. Tubs told me you and him were there looking for Eddie Pike.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘Why you were looking for Pike?’ She shrugged. ‘About Ward. Tubs said if you could find Pike, Fielding might lay off you.’

‘That was all?’

Her brow wrinkled under the bandage. ‘Yeah. What else?’

I told her to go on with her story.

‘Bill saw some old mate or something, so he went off. Me and Tubs sat down. Then Fielding came along, God, what a dickhead. He goes, "Where’s Collier?" and Tubs puts on that stupid face, and goes, "Collier?” Fielding carries on asking questions. After a while I got sick of him. I started looking around to see where Bill was. That’s when I seen Pike, way back in the stand, heading upstairs. I couldn’t tell Tubs, Fielding was right there. When I got up, Fielding says, "Where you going?" I go, “The loo." Then I whispered to Tubs that I seen Pike. But Tubs had to stay put because of Fielding.'

‘And then you followed Pike.’

Katy nodded. She grabbed a tissue and coughed into it. ‘I went up those stairs to the top floor, you know, with the red carpet? I wasn’t sure which way he went, then I thought I heard something weird down on the right.’

‘Weird like what?’

‘Crackling. Popping? I went along there, thinking it was Pike, in through a couple of rooms — whoosh, there’s the fire.’

‘It was already going?’

‘Not big,’ she said, as if that was a reasonable explanation for not turning and getting straight out. ‘It was like in small patches. What with Ward and all that, the first thing I thought was arson. Then I seen through the door into the next room. There was this desk, all the drawers pulled out on the floor, paper everywhere. The desk was burning. Anyway, I went in there.’

'The place was burning? What the hell were you doing?’

She coughed again. ‘You wanna hear this or not?’

I looked at her, my kid sister. Shaking my head in amazement, I slumped back against the ledge.

‘Tubs'd said something about papers Pike had, that you needed. I guess that’s what I was thinking. These were the papers, and Pike was trying to burn them. I couldn’t see Pike. I thought he’d shot through, at least I could try to save the papers, they might help you.’ She looked at me, defiant. ‘Go on, say I was stupid.’

'You went in and started sorting through the papers? What got into you? Didn’t you hear the alarm?’

She nodded, vague. She said she thought the alarm started wailing sometime about then. Sometime about then? This was the fire that had come within a whisker of killing us both. I put a hand over my eyes.

‘Well, what was I meant to do?’

I looked up. ‘What were you really looking for, Katy?’

Her eyes locked on mine for a second, then the defiance went out of her. Her head fell back into the pillows. ‘Ward’s blue book,’ she said.

At last. Confirmation of what I’d half-known.

‘Tubs told you about that?’

She nodded, resting an arm on the pillow behind her head.

‘There at the track?’ I said. ‘He told you Pike had Ward’s desk, and in the desk might be the blue book where he thought there was proof Dad insured the house.’

After a moment, she nodded again. I clasped the back of my neck with my left hand and squeezed the tightening muscles. I reminded myself that Katy was still a patient in hospital, that this wasn’t the time or place to blow my stack.

'Katy-'

‘And I found it too,’ she said.

I stared at her.

‘There were these papers with Mortlake’s name on. The blue book was right under them. I flicked through it. Dad was there. His name, B. Collier, the address and everything. I had it.’ Her eyes were filmed with tears. She looked at me, willing me to believe in Dad. The tears brimming in her eyes now were tears of frustration. ‘I had it, Ian. I shoved it in my handbag with the other papers. Then this—’ She touched the bandage on her head.

‘You what?’

‘I had it,’ she said brokenly. ‘In my hands.’

I took two steps across to the chair and unzipped the overnight bag that I'd brought. I reached in and pulled out Katy’s handbag. She looked at it, stunned.

I undid the white clasp and opened the thing. A smell of smoke came out, and I looked inside. Then I went and sat down on the bed.

‘Ian?’

I placed the open handbag on the blanket, in her lap. She hesitated, afraid to look I think, but finally her glance went down. Her hand dipped into the bag and came out clutching Sebastian Ward’s little blue book.

She turned the pages. Neither`of us spoke. After maybe a minute, she found it. She turned the book, holding it open for me to see.

B. Collier. Then Mum and Dad’s address, the Insured Property, the Insured Amount, £120,000 and the premium, £400. The word PAID was scrawled across the premium, with Sebastian Ward’s signature beside it.

Katy started to cry.

For her, I know, that moment marked an end. From way back at the start, from when Mum and Dad died, she’d been almost obsessed with the idea of proving to me that Dad hadn’t let us down. And not just to me, either. Katy, I saw now, must have had doubts of her own. She wasn’t a girl any more: I’d had plenty of proof of that this last little while. Even before Mum and Dad died, her ideas about them both must have been changing. 

And now with her sitting in the hospital bed beside me, weeping, it all made sense in a way it just hadn’t done before. Times like way back when Katy first moved in with me, when I’d said Dad was an irresponsible bastard, and she’d gone off the deep end. Now, at last, I knew why. She’d started to look at Dad with the eyes of an adult, not a girl. And she wasn’t sure she liked what she saw.

But now, with that one small page in Ward’s blue book, she had him back again, the father who for most of her life she’d adored. He hadn’t let her down; she still loved him like she’d loved him as a girl. Without doubts now, with a clear heart, she could lean her forehead on my shoulder and let the tears fall.

The nurse put her head in. With a stern look at me, she silently mouthed, Two minutes; and then she withdrew.

‘Shh,’ I said quietly. ‘Hey.’ It went on for another minute before I eased Katy off me.

That’s when I noticed the other sheets of paper sticking out of her handbag. Curious, but not really expecting anything, I pulled them out.

Katy wiped her eyes. ‘I grabbed that stuff from the same drawer,’ she said, sniffing. ‘I saw "Mortlake Group" written on it, so I just grabbed it.’

The pages were badly crumpled, I smoothed them out on my knee. Katy tore open a box of tissues. She blew her nose a few times. I flicked forward through the pages, and back again.

‘Is it important, Ian?’

Lifting my head, I gazed out the window The trees and the clouds stood out at me like pictures, the whole world, for an instant, seemed too bright. Katy, and now this. It was so clear to me that I almost wished for the dark again. The pages she’d saved were important all right. So important I almost longed for someone to reach up and put out the light.

As I was walking out of the hospital, a car suddenly backed out in front of me and stopped. It was Fielding. His window went down; he was without his sidekick for a change.

He said, ‘I’d offer you a lift into work, but there’s nowhere to take you now, is there?'

I bent down to the window and in a few brief words I told him exactly what I thought of him. He didn’t even blink.

‘Don’t push your luck, Collier. I’m still wonderin’ whether I should do you for the assault you committed on me last night.’

I would have walked right on by, but there was something I needed to know. I said, ‘I hear Nigel Chambers solved Sebastian’s murder for you.’

‘Good police work solved the murder. Chambers just happened to be what the good police work turned up.’

I got the feeling he had something more to say. For a moment, ridiculously, I thought he was ashamed of what he’d done the night before. When I stepped away, he said, ‘Collier,’ and I stopped. ‘I don’t wanna see you down the station again. Ever. And I don’t wanna hear about you shootin’ your mouth off down the Gallon or anywhere else. The case is over.’

What was he trying to tell me? It took me a few moments, but that shifty look he had, it finally occurred to me why.

I said, ‘You found Sebastian’s murderer. You solved the case.’

He stuck out his jaw.

‘Fielding,’ I said, shaking my head and smiling in disbelief, ‘They’re not promoting you, are they?’

He pointed. ‘You shoot your mouth off that  I was doin’ this, I was doin’ that, I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks, son.’

‘You’re worried I’ll file some complaint against you. The way you’ve treated me through this whole thing. You think that could stuff up your promotion.'

‘A ton of fuckin’ bricks,’ he said.

I leant in close. There was a smell of whisky in the car.

‘Fielding, you ever come near me or my sister again, I’ll file a complaint that’ll have you on the carpet so fast it’ll make your head spin. You stay out of our lives, I’ll stay out of yours.’

I had to pull my head back fast as the car lurched away. Then I went to my own car and sat there a while thinking of what I was going to do. I decided, in the end, that my first port of call had to be Piers Crossland.

A
s I walked through the Room to the 486 Box, no-one nodded to me. In fact no-one, not even the brokers, acknowledged me at all. Word had obviously gotten around that I’d been fired. Offers of sympathy - I kidded myself there might be some - would have to wait for a more private place than the Room. For the time being, I passed among the boxes like the invisible man, or one of the undead, the newest addition to the market’s list of untouchables.

When I reached the Mortlake boxes my colleagues weren’t sure how to handle me either. There were one or two brief smiles of pity, but I had to sit down at my desk and begin the shameful business of emptying my drawer into my briefcase before anyone actually spoke to me.

‘Bad night at the dogs?’

I lifted my head slowly and looked straight at Frazer Burnett- Adams.

‘Hear about the fire?’ he asked me.

‘I was there,’ I said, ‘with my sister.’

‘Trouble and you, Ian. Like shit to a blanket.’

‘My sister’s in hospital. Care to join her?’

He tried to laugh but the sound died in his throat. ‘Sad,’ he said. ‘Looks like you won’t be here for the big announcement.’

I dug in the drawer and pulled out an old calculator and a birthday card from two years back. Opening the card, I glanced at the half a dozen signatures, one of them Frazer’s. Binning the card, I dropped the calculator into my case.

Frazer perched on the edge of my desk. ‘Not curious?’

I said, ‘Allen’s going to announce the Mortlake Group-Crossland merger. The new company’s going to be called Mortland Insurance. Allen thinks he’ll be running it, and I guess you think you'll be the new big cheese here on Box 486. How’s that?’

‘Allen told you?’

‘No.’ I lifted my briefcase and clicked it shut. ‘Piers Crossland told me.’

‘When?'

‘Two days ago.’

Frazer was completely thrown. He’d thought this was his big opportunity to piss all over me, but it hadn’t gone according to plan. When I started to close my desk drawer, Frazer’s hand shot down and held it open. ‘You haven’t finished emptying it,’ he said.

I made a show of looking in the drawer. It was only junk. ‘Bits and pieces,’ I said. Then I stood and gave him a confident smile and a friendly pat on the shoulder. ‘Just stuff I’ll be needing when I come back.’

I had the satisfaction of seeing the doubt in his eyes before I turned my back and walked away.

Pam buzzed through into Allen’s office. She told him I was there, then she flicked the intercom switch and waited for a reply.

I asked her, ‘Has he got someone with him?’

‘Only Angela,’ she said, ‘and the caterers.’ She started to apologize for calling me with that message the other day.

‘Not your fault,’ I said. She seemed relieved.

Allen’s voice suddenly barked from the intercom, ‘Tell Collier to wait,’ and Pam’s relief turned to blushing embarrassment.

I pointed to Allen’s door. ‘Do you mind?’

Pam rearranged the pencils. She told me to be her guest.

There were flowers all over the place. A giant bunch in the centre of a table that had been rigged up along the side wall, smaller vases along the other wall, and more again on Allen’s cleared desk and on the coffee table. White lilies and God knows what else. It looked like a florist’s.

In one corner the caterers, three men in white shirts and black trousers, were busy arranging food onto trays. They paid no attention to me. Nor did Allen at first, he was down on his knees plugging a lead into a wall socket behind a giant vase. But Angela was on her feet. Her fingers prodding at the flowers on Allen’s desk.

‘Not the ideal moment, Ian,’ she said. ‘Guests expected, and all that.’

Hearing my name, Allen reared up on his knees. His cheeks were flushed. ‘I told you to wait.’