George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (44 page)

‘You tell me,’ Gus said. ‘You know the place and the people in it much better than I do.’

She was silent for a moment and then jumped to her feet. ‘Let’s look in the Lamark file,’ she said. ‘It’s the only one I’ve got since the others were stolen, and you never know, there may be something I’ve missed and that you’ll spot. Or that I
missed last time I looked and that’ll jump out at me this time.’

She was rummaging at her desk as she spoke, and after a while she took hold of the big pile of
BMJ
s and
Lancets
that lay on the front of it and took them over to Gus. ‘You look through them,’ she instructed, ‘and see if you can find it. A buff folder — you know the sort of thing. I’ll see if it’s in my drawers.’

Ten minutes later, by which time Gus had got to his feet and was hunting round the room too, they had to admit the truth. Lally Lamark’s file, which had been left tucked away in George’s desk, had vanished. Completely and utterly.

When the phone rang, George was too abstracted in her anger and confusion over the disappearance of the file to answer it at once. She stood there, trying to work it out in her head: could she have taken it somewhere else? Could she have mistaken where she put it? But she knew perfectly well she hadn’t forgotten. Her memory was as clear as iced water; she had put it at the back of her bottom drawer after reading it the last time. She had thought for a while when she started looking that she had left it on top of her desk but had then recalled perfectly well where it was. Except of course that it wasn’t. And there were no signs of anyone interfering with the drawer, no indication that anyone had come to the flat to meddle with the desk apart from herself and Gus, neither of whom could for a moment be considered to blame for the file’s disappearance. So, she told herself, staring at Gus with glazed eyes as the phone rang on, someone came in and took it. But how? And who? And how is it I never knew I’d been burgled?

Gus moved across the room towards the phone, and automatically she shook her head at him and reached for it. They had both long ago made a deal not to answer each other’s phones, unless it was unavoidable, not only because inevitably it delayed the caller, who of course wanted the person he or she expected to answer, but also because they saw no
need to put bellows of fact to the flames of surmise about their private lives which flickered and flared constantly around both Old East and Ratcliffe Street nick. When she picked it up it was a second or two before she could clear her mind of her preoccupation with the missing file to take on board what was being said to her. But once she did begin to understand, considerations like unnoticed burglars in her flat vanished like cockroaches when a light is switched on.

‘Dr B.?’ The voice was thin and shrill yet whispery, an odd effect that filled George’s ear with a fear that was almost tangible. ‘Dr B.? Oh, God, thank God you’re there. Please do something. You’ll have to do something — I tried to pretend I didn’t know, that I didn’t understand, but I do. I know now and he’s — Oh, God, Dr B. you’ve got to come. Right away, please, I don’t know what he’ll make me do. He says we have to go out, he has a treat for me, he says, and oh, Dr B., please come —’

‘Who?’ George began, but she knew who it was. The voice was far too familiar, however distorted by anxiety right now. ‘Sheila? What is it? Where are you? What’s the matter?’

‘It’s — I think he blames me for it all, Dr B. I don’t know why it is he’s so — but he means it this time. I know he does. It isn’t just — It isn’t like the last three times. He
means
it. Oh!’ She caught her breath and the sound became muffled, as though Sheila at the other end had put her hand over the mouthpiece. George felt the tension rise in her so quickly she was almost frantic.

‘Sheila!’ she cried. ‘Sheila, for Chrissakes, what is it?’ Gus moved closer to her, alerted by her voice. The muffled sounds stopped and Sheila’s voice came back, bright and artificial now. ‘Oh, yes, Suzy, of course. I’ll do it for you — next Friday? I’ll see if I can get a day off. I’ll have to ask Dr B., but I dare say she won’t mind … Yes, do call me on Thursday to confirm it … Sweetie, I have to go now. I’m so sorry, someone’s waiting for me. I’m on my way out … Bye-eee, sweetie.’ And then, so softly that it was barely a whisper that George
couldn’t be sure she had heard, the sound changed, became a breath. ‘Aldgate East,’ it said, and the phone clicked and the dialling tone buzzed in her ear.

She stood there for a fraction of a second staring at Gus. He reached out and took her shoulder and shook it a little roughly. ‘What was all that about?’

‘It’s Sheila. I can’t … She was in a panic. Talked about a he, said he was taking her out and — Gus, I think she thinks whoever it is is going to try again. And this time succeed.’

‘Is that what she said?’

George had hurled the phone back on the rest and was heading for her jacket and the front-door keys which were in the pocket, together with her bleep. ‘Not in so many words, but she’s terrified. And there was someone there. She covered up the phone and then came back pretending to make a date with a girlfriend, and then she whispered, “Aldgate East.” Oh, come
on
, Gus. We must hurry. There’s something Godawful going on. You should have heard her — you’d understand then.’

Gus was blessedly quick on the uptake. He was shrugging into his own jacket, pulling on his shoes and following her to the door in a fraction of a second. They both went rushing down the stairs to the street as though half a dozen Rottweilers were after them. He opened the car door and had the engine started almost as she scrambled in. He turned the wheels with a loud screech of protesting tyres and headed for Tower Bridge and the tangle of streets going north that would bring them to Aldgate East underground station.

It was quiet in the street, at first, a typical Sunday summer afternoon in London. Children in minimal clothes ran around, but listlessly, because the sun was still relentlessly beating down in what was turning out to be one of the longest and hottest heat waves in London’s records, and mothers sat on doorsteps watching them in a lackadaisical fashion. Once the car left Bermondsey behind and crossed the river, which glinted with eye-piercing brilliance, and reached the City
streets, peace descended; there wasn’t a pedestrian in sight, let alone a car, and they’d get there very quickly now.

And so it was until they reached Whitechapel High Street and Gus took a screaming right turn to bring them up to Aldgate East Station. Then it all changed. The road was suddenly full of cars, very slow-moving cars which had been polished to a gloss so high that every building they crept past was reflected in bonnets and wings and side panels, and each of them packed solid with people, women and children and old men with, generally, one proud younger man driving with infinite care. The pavements too were thronged with people; the glitter and flurry of every possible colour as well as gold and silver and bronze threading and embroidery from sumptuous saris jostled with somewhat tightly fitting but clearly much prized Western-style suits worn by the men who accompanied them. All the people they could see were Asian, and if George and Gus hadn’t been so filled with anxiety, they’d have enjoyed the spectacle of a shabby bit of London pretending to be a smart corner of Calcutta; but the charm of what they could see made no impact at all on them, except to fill them with a desperate frustration.

‘Christ!’ Gus swore. ‘It’s Brick Lane out in force.’

‘Oh, Gus, can’t you push? Shout at them, make them move! Haven’t you a siren? No, don’t — that’s the last thing we want. Oh, hell!’ She leaned out of her window, trying to peer through the hubbub as her belly knotted with impotent rage.

She managed to last another five minutes, no more, during which Gus had at least been able to insert his car into the stream of traffic. He was using his hooter as hard as he could but it made no difference because so was everyone else, responding to his vicious stabs of noise with their own, clearly assuming he was offering a greeting. The resulting cacophony was head ringingly loud. Eventually she could stand it no longer.

‘I’ll get there on foot,’ she shouted, wrenching her door open. ‘Get to me when you can — and maybe see if you can
call up some help too?’ And she almost fell out of the car even as Gus, swearing again, reached to try and pull her back. But he was too late and she hurled the car door shut and dodged across the stream of traffic as the hooters started up again, this time reprovingly, and headed for the pavement.

She had since childhood suffered from nightmares in which she was being forcibly held back from something desperately important, or in which she couldn’t find the place she urgently needed to get to, or couldn’t move her limbs properly so that she felt like a character in a slow-motion advertisement for hair spray, and now, pushing and twisting her way through and past these gloriously clad people it became very dreamlike. Some of them moved aside with reasonable speed as she gasped, ‘Pardon me,’ at them; others took offence — especially, unfortunately, the larger and heavier women — and stood firm, glaring at her and shouting incomprehensibly as the folds of their lovely clothes shimmered and glinted, making impossible barriers. She reached such a stage of fury that she shrieked at full blast directly in the face of one such woman who was being more obstructive than most; the woman stared at her, and then, her face crumpling into frightened tears, stepped aside. At last George could move, because the little altercation seemed to have sent a message rippling out that someone needed to get through fast. A swathe seemed to open in front of her and she went streaking along it in the direction of the station.

And reached it almost in surprise, her breath painful in her chest and her pulses pounding. It was not the most handsome of underground stations, and at this point consisted simply of a pair of staircases plunging downwards. Both staircases were again filled with dawdling saried figures, most of them coming up from the depths, and she thought somewhere deep in her mind, Oh, no, a train must have just come in. Maybe she’s already gone — and gone where? She almost hurled herself bodily into the throng.

Again the crowd parted to let her through, and she
realized, without having to think about it, that they were behaving as London tube passengers always did by making way for someone perceived to be an anxious traveller; and she was able to reach the booking hall below very quickly.

The crowd was less thick here as the recently arrived passengers disappeared to join their friends on the streets overhead. She thought briefly, Wonder what’s going on? A festival day? A religious day? And then dismissed it. It wasn’t important enough except inasmuch as it meant there were too many people about getting in the way.

But as she stopped just at the foot of the stairs, by the big bank of self-operated ticketing machines, she thought again. The crowds were in fact a protection and a help, surely. If Sheila and he — whoever he might be — were here and the place were almost empty, not only would she see them easily, they would see her. Suddenly she remembered vividly Gus’s face and voice talking about evidence. Over and over again he’d said, in case after case, ‘It’s not enough that we think we know who did what and with which and to whom, we have to have hard evidence.’ If she were seen now by whoever
he
was, he’d immediately pull back from whatever it was he planned to do and then where was the evidence?

But if he didn’t know he was observed, then what about Sheila? The thought of Sheila as a tethered lamb acting as bait in the middle of the lion’s clearing was more than George could bear, and she peered around, while staying as close to the wall and ticket machines as possible. She couldn’t exactly melt into them, but at least she wouldn’t be as visible as she would be standing in the middle of the shabby little concourse.

The people in the area were still mainly Asians, but there were a few more who were not. There were Afro-Caribbeans and some whites too, even a couple of Chinese, which made a more anonymous crowd, greatly to George’s relief. She must have stood out like a pimple on a billiard ball in that glorious Asian crowd up above.

There was no sign of Sheila, George saw very quickly. Nor were there any station staff about, and the ticket office was closed. She cursed under her breath. No one she could tip off to watch out for Gus if she moved away from here. She looked across the concourse towards the stairs that led down to the platforms and realized gratefully how well suited Aldgate East station was to her needs. Both platforms, for trains going either east or west, could be observed from the top as though from a minstrel’s gallery. This was one of London’s older tube stations, designed, no doubt, to allow steam to escape from the old engines used before electricity took over. It meant that she could move closer to the stairhead and see who was on the platforms almost certainly without being seen herself.

She moved with great casualness through the people in the concourse. There were more now arriving to catch trains; clearly the traffic of people dressed-up for a Sunday outing was a two-way effort, but now she was grateful for them. Their presence meant she would be less noticeable, she told herself hopefully as she went to lean against the barrier at the top of the stairs that led down to the trains, and looked down.

Below her, two pairs of rails gleamed in the dull electric light; the platforms, with their edging of posters and the familiar circles crossed with a line on which the name of the station was clearly written, made a handsome perspective as they stretched away from her to the mouth of the tunnel at the far end. She couldn’t see the near tunnel mouth because that was virtually under her feet. She could however read the sign on the electronic indicators easily. ‘Next train Ealing Broadway’, she read over the platform that took the trains travelling west and she thought, Ealing Broadway? Why should she want to go to Ealing? She tried to recall the names of the stations on the way; the train would go through the city first: Tower Hill and Monument and Cannon Street, and then … but her usually reliable memory collapsed. She couldn’t see any further, remembering only vaguely that the
train went through fashionable areas like Sloane Square and South Kensington as well as less attractive ones.