East of the City (5 page)

‘Where are you off to?’

‘Romford,’ she called back through the door. Romford racetrack, the dogs. Again. Apart from the two nights a week she’d picked up pulling beer in a bar, it seemed to be what she did these days. ‘Ian?’ She peeped around the edge of her door. ‘Could you get my face cream? It’s in the brown jar.’

I wandered over to the bathroom. Even before Katy I moved in I never used it, I had my own ensuite; but these days I couldn’t have used it if I’d wanted to. Katy had filled it with stuff. Not just any old stuff. Ecologically friendly stuff. Tubes and jars and bottles, with pictures of green things on the labels. She started on her vegetarian kick back in sixth form; we all thought it was a phase she was going through. Now it seemed to have settled into a way of life. I ran my hand over the ginseng and the herbal extracts, picked up one brown bottle, sleeping pills, then finally located the jar of cream. Black, white, yellow and brown people, all smiling at me from the label.

As Katy reached her hand round her bedroom door to take the jar, the buzzer went. ‘That’ll be Tubs,’ she said. ‘Tell him, two minutes.'

Tubs Laszlo, my father’s penciller and best friend for over thirty years. More like one of the family than a friend really. I went and let him in.

‘She ready or what?’ he said, coming through the door. He followed me into the kitchen and I gave him a can of beer. As he popped it open, I asked him if Jigsaw was running that night. ‘Ran last night at the Stow,’ he said. ‘Katy didn’t tell ya?’

Shaking my head, I went through to the lounge. Tubs fished in his pocket and pulled out last night’s programme. Jigsaw was the four dog in the second-last race. Beside his name was the trainer’s name, and beside that the owner’s name, K. Collier. A few weeks after Mum and Dad died, Tubs bought Jigsaw for Katy as a gift. It couldn’t lift a leg, but it had done what I think Tubs had meant it to do, helped Katy get over things. Tubs was fat — more than twenty stone I guess — and that made some people not take him too seriously. ` But how many people would have thought of this Jigsaw business. Not me, for one. Back when Katy was bawling her eyes out each day, I was hopeless.

Now Tubs gave me a yard-by-yard account of Jigsaw’s race. Bumped out of the traps, cornered wide, and bumped again in the straight. It finished in the usual way, with Jigsaw coming in last.

Tubs went and slapped his hand on Katy’s door.

‘Hang on,’ she called.

‘Hang on, my arse. One minute, I’m gone.’ He came back and sat down, and drank his beer. I flicked off the TV. I asked him if he'd seen much of Eddie Pike lately.

He squinted. ‘Pike?’

‘Ward’s runner. Red hair. Few inches shorter than me.’

Tubs said that he couldn’t remember seeing him lately. ‘But that means sod all.’ He swigged his beer. ‘Not the kinda bloke I look out for. Why?’

‘Ward’s house burnt down.’

Tubs’s head went back.

‘It might be an insurance job,’ I told him, wondering how far I should take this, how much I could say, before I got the all-clear from Allen.

After turning it over, Tubs asked me, ‘Ward sued anyone yet?’

I forced a smile. Sebastian had once threatened to sue the track steward at the Stow after a dog fell during a race, a dog Sebastian had money on. It never got to court, but everyone down there still remembered it. Tubs, like alot of dog people, was no great fan of Sebastian’s.

I said, ‘I went out to see it. His place is a write-off. Burnt to the ground.’

‘Whose place burnt to the ground?’ Katy said. She’d come into the lounge without us noticing. She had her hands up to one ear, fixing an earring.

‘No-one,’ I told her.

She bent and kissed Tubs on the cheek. Then she went to the mirror, still working the earring. ‘I’m not going to go to pieces, you know. What was it, a house?’

Her eyes met mine in the mirror. This one she really wasn’t going to drop. ‘Sebastian Ward’s place,’ I said.

Now her eyes widened in surprise, and she faced me. ‘The insurance guy?’

I nodded. I could almost see the thoughts zinging round in her head.

After Mum and Dad died, we found Dad hadn’t kept up the insurance on the house. It was no big surprise to me, but Katy took it hard, like Dad had let her down somehow, and she didn’t want to believe it. So when Tubs mentioned to her that Sebastian sometimes wrote business with the bookies, she took hold of that with both hands. She was almost obsessed with the idea those first few weeks before Jigsaw came along. I guess it helped her keep her mind off the real tragedy. She even made me go and speak with Sebastian about it. It I was embarrassing and pointless, but I did it, just to keep the peace. He told me what I knew anyway, Dad hadn’t gone to him for insurance. He offered me a couple of grand out of his own wallet. ]ust to tide us over, he said. I turned it down. I never told Katy that.

Now when her thoughts stopped zinging, she nodded to herself. ‘Ha bloody ha.’

I held up a hand. ‘Katy, I might be involved in this at work. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ha-bloody-ha any mates of Ward’s you happen to see at Romford tonight.

Tubs crushed his beer can and heaved himself out of the sofa. ‘You ready?’

Katy wanted to pump me for more details, but Tubs was already halfway out the door. She started to ask me a question, then Tubs called, ‘Katy!’ and she grabbed her handbag, muttering as she went after him.

I called Bill Tyler. No news.

I called him again, the first thing after waking up in the morning, and he told me to get off his back.

In the lounge I found a half-empty wine glass on the coffee table. Katy’s door was ajar, and a radio was playing quietly in her room. When she first moved in it used to annoy me the way she always fell asleep with it on. But now I didn’t mind, the procedure was automatic, I reached around her door, hit the switch, and the radio died.

‘Thanks,’ Katy murmured, her voice drowsy with sleep.

‘Good night?'

‘I dropped ten quid. Wicked.'

Smiling, I closed the door gently, then I went to prime myself with coffee for the day.

S
ince starting in a seventeenth-century coffee shop, Lloyd’s has had quite a few homes in the City. The last three are named after the year the Room moved in, the 28 Building, the 58 Building, and the 86 Building, the shiny new tower where I worked. Arriving early, I found that Allen wasn’t in, so I headed across the road to the 58 Building where the Lloyd’s Claims Office, the LCO, has its home. Angela had asked me to go over there, days before, about the disputed Ottoman Air claim, but I’d put it off. Now, if I got the go-ahead to chase up my idea about Sebastian and the dogs, I wouldn’t have the chance to get over until we were back in court, so it was now or never.

The LCO is a kind of general back-oflice to the market, a clearing house for the river of paperwork that flows from the Lloyd’s syndicates each day. Only a few of the claims officers were at their desks. I couldn’t see Lee Chan, and when I asked for her they directed me to the gym, so I went back out to the marbled hallway and made my way downstairs.

Generally underwriters don’t visit the LCO. They think of it as a pit where all the boring paperwork gets emptied, most Names probably don’t even know it exists. But when I joined the Mortlake Group Angela used to send me over there a lot. Trips to the engine room, she called them — any problem with a claim, she’d send me. It was a habit I’d kept up; I guess that’s how I met Lee Chan.

Pausing outside the gym door now, I gathered myself. The music was pounding away in there, Motown, it was Lee all right. I took a deep breath, lifted my head, then went in.

She was alone. Flat on her back on the Nautilus machine, bench-pressing furiously.

‘Lee,’ I said. She stared at the ceiling, completely focused. I walked across. ‘Lee?’

Her eyes flickered, she took me in, then refocused on the ceiling. Sweat poured out of her. ‘Ten.’ She pressed, then blew. ‘More,’ she said.

She was only pressing forty pounds, but you could see it was hurting. And you could also see that she wasn’t going to give in. When she groaned it sounded too much like something else, and I turned aside and studied the tape-deck.

Just months earlier, Lee Chan and me were an item. A lot more than that actually, we were going out for over a year. At first it was just fun, a movie, dinner, a quick romp and then home, the usual, and I guess I expected it to end in the usual way, with me getting restless and moving on. But somewhere near the end of the fourth month it occurred to me that I’d broken my record. After five months I found myself thinking about her at work, looking forward to whatever we had planned that night, buying her stupid presents. I suppose that’s when I realized I was in trouble. The strange thing was I didn’t care, it was like being dragged out to sea by a racing tide and just letting go, set free. It was new to me that feeling. New, but I would have to have been an idiot not to understand what was happening. But I never really thought much about how it might end.

Now she let go the grips, and moaned. Eyes closed, she lay there on her back, fingers to her wrist, and checked her pulse. I bent down and switched off the tape.

At last she sat up. ‘Hi.’

‘You’ll do yourself an injury.'

‘It’s called taking care of yourself, actually.’ She rolled her head left to right, then back and fore. ‘Maybe you should try it.’

I already had. One morning Lee dragged me out of bed at six to go jogging. Never again.

‘So what’s news with you?’ she said. ‘I guess you heard about Sebastian Ward’s house?’

I ummed and ahhed a bit, saying pretty much nothing. The K and R was under wraps, and I didn’t feel like discussing Eddie Pike’s fried body. Lee knew a little of the history between me and Sebastian, but I didn’t want to start down that road.

But just to be polite before we got down to Ottoman, I said, ‘What about you?’

‘Me?’ She got up and went over to the exercise bike. ‘Not much. I’m going home.’ She bent and fiddled with a bolt; the bike seat dropped a few notches.

Going home. The way she'd said it, she wasn’t talking about her flat in Pimlico.

‘The States?'

‘San Fran,’ she said, climbing onto the bike. She started pedalling. Slowly at first, but gradually picking up speed. I stood there like a dummy for a while. It felt like I’d just taken a nasty rabbit punch.

Finally I said, ‘New job?’

She stared at the wall, still pedalling. ‘Among other things.’

I bit my tongue. I watched her pedal.

After six or seven months of our extended fling we were seeing each other pretty much every day, me spending the night over at her place, or Lee coming back to mine. And most weekends, when I wasn’t out schmoozing with brokers or clients, we generally did something together. She’d drag me off to some gallery and I’d retaliate by taking her to a Chelsea home game, and some nights we’d go out and catch a band, other times we’d get a pizza and a video and stay in, and Sunday mornings we’d lie around in bed, swapping bits of the newspaper, drinking coffee, and spilling toast crumbs on the sheets. I thought everything was just fine. Then one Sunday morning Lee casually dropped it into the conversation that we were coming up to our first anniversary.

Anniversary of what? I'd said.

She rolled her eyes and told me to forget it, so I went back to the newspaper.

In two weeks, she said, it’ll be one year since we had our first date.

Yeah, she said. And don’t you just sound thrilled to bits.

I let it lie. But over the next few days the word ‘commitment’ seemed to come up in her conversation a lot, or maybe it had been there for quite a while but I just hadn’t noticed. Anyway, I got the general idea. At least I thought I did. I told Lee to keep the night of our ‘anniversary’ free, I was taking her out for a special dinner. Special, that’s what I said.

She bought a new dress for the night, white, she wore pearls, and when the waiter showed us to our table she was glowing. She stayed like that right up until I pushed my glass of port aside and took her hand.

It’s been a great year, I said.

For me too.

I mean it, I said. One of the best.

She squeezed my hand. I took a breath.

I’ve been thinking about what you said. You know. Commitment? I’ve been thinking about that, I said. And I think, well, we get on pretty well, don’t we?

She nodded.

I said, Maybe it’s time we took the plunge, Lee. How do you feel about moving in with me?

Her eyes, Jesus, the shock and then the hurt; I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Her hand slipped out of mine.

That’s it?

Lee-

But she was already on her feet, heading for the door, she didn’t even stop for her coat. And I couldn’t kid myself that I didn’t know what I’d done. The proposal I’d put to her wasn’t the one she’d been expecting; without meaning to I’d cut Lee Chan to the heart.

And now Lee was going home. She sat up straight on the exercise bike, rested her hands on her hips and slowed in her pedalling. ‘You didn’t come over here just for a social call, did you, Ian?’

‘Ottoman,’ I said. ‘Angela told me you had some queries.'

‘Just one.’ She concentrated on the wall, thinking, her mind switched on to her work now, she took her job pretty seriously. Her job on Ottoman was to look after the ‘following’ syndicates, those who’d signed on the Ottoman slip after us. The way the thing works is one syndicate signs for a piece of the business first — this is called the lead line — then other syndicates, or underwriters outside Lloyd’s, follow, taking the rest of the risk. Because we’d written the lead on Ottoman, it was now our responsibility to lead the court case against them. They were claiming for a plane of theirs that had been stolen. We were claiming that their security procedures were so lax that they’d breached the terms of their policy. And Lee was the LCO Claims Oflicer on the case. Now she explained to me that she’d just been through the previous week’s trial transcripts. ‘WardSure’s broker dodged every significant question.’

‘Chambers?’

‘That’s the guy.’

‘Get real, Lee, he’s a broker. He has to keep sweet with us and not upset his client.' Dodging difficult questions, I told her, was part of his job.