In the Evil Day (38 page)
When the picture was taken, in the early 1980s, they belonged to Special Deployment—Sudden Death.
SD, some kind of special unit. Unit of what?
Sudden Death.
Not the Peace Corps.
THEY LAY in their sweat in the cold room, her head on his chest.
She had come to him in the early morning, light behind the curtains. He heard the door and he was moving, one leg off the bed.
‘I dreamt you’d gone,’ she said. ‘I dreamt I came here and found you’d gone.’
He held out his arms. She came to him and he put his arms around her, put his head against the long white nightdress, against her stomach, smelled the clean cotton and her body, rubbed his face against her. She pushed him away gently, crossed her arms and lifted her garment over her head, revealed herself, lean, small breasts.
They made love slowly. He felt the hesitancy in her and he had it in himself, he did not deserve her, he was too crude a creature for her. But when he entered her, she became urgent, squeezed his flesh, made him roll, roll again, she bit him, scratched him, she groaned, and he could not maintain his silence.
Done, she was sleepy, languid, her body was aligned with him, her arm lay across him, a hand on his thigh.
Niemand spoke into her damp hair, softly, ‘I want to say thank you. Better than I said it. I don’t know why you did that for me.’
‘I saw you coming,’ she said. ‘You had this look.’
He felt her words on his skin, the warm brush of her breath.
‘I thought, shit, off his face, he shouldn’t be in the traffic. And then I saw your eyes and I thought, no, not stoned, I didn’t know what but I knew not stoned.’
He remembered the yellow helmet looking at him and the man coming from behind and the weak feeling.
‘My brother died in Cardiff because no one would help him,’ she said. ‘They thought he was drunk but he was diabetic, he was having a hypo and people walked around him, walked away. So. No. Anyway, you looked so straight, your hair, the tan, and you looked hurt, there’s a look you know, you see it in kids. And then I saw this guy coming, he was running. In a suit but not your suit person, like a bouncer, thug face, and I thought, fuck you, boyo, let’s go, catch us if you can.’
She raised a hand, touched his lips, ran a finger along the thin ridge of cartilage on his broken nose.
‘Do you have a job?’ she said. ‘Do something?’
How did you tell someone like this what you did, what you had done, without her rejecting you?
‘A soldier,’ he said. ‘I used to be a soldier.’
‘TEL ME what the fuck you’re doing,’ said Baader. ‘Just tell me.’
‘What I’m doing?’ The response of the guilty. Anselm turned his head to the window.
Baader looked down, tapped the edge of his desk with both sets of knuckles.
‘I talked to O’Malley,’ he said. ‘Don’t mess around with me, John. The boy’s dead because of this. Paul’s dead.’
Through the trees, Anselm could see a glass tourist boat going by, not so much a boat as a coach on water, light glinting on it.
How to tell this story to Baader? To anyone?
He tried. It took a while. Baader listened, head on hand, eyes closed.
When he’d finished, Anselm said, ‘That’s it. I’ll take it to the grave. Sending Stefan.’
He felt relief. He had spoken of the weight on his heart.
There was a long silence. Baader didn’t move, he didn’t open his eyes, he could have died during the telling of the story.
‘Say the word and I’m gone,’ said Anselm. ‘You are fully entitled.’
Baader opened his eyes, blinked several times. ‘I should say it. But what if he’d been on O’Malley’s business? He’d still be dead. And you’ll be dead if you go on with this. I think you’re fucking around with stuff you can’t begin to understand. Leave it alone. It’s got nothing to do with you.’
‘It goes back to Beirut. That’s got something to do with me.’
Baader shook his head. ‘You can’t bring back the dead. You can’t change anything. Be grateful you’re alive.’
‘I’m grateful,’ said Anselm. ‘I’m grateful.’
‘Go away,’ said Baader. ‘You worry me. Go away.’
Anselm was leaving, he stopped when Baader said, ‘If they killed Kaskis for what he knew, you’re alive because you knew fuck all. Then. Now you might just know something. Something you don’t even know you know.’
‘I’ll reflect on that,’ said Anselm.
‘So composed. So fucking composed.’
Anselm stopped, didn’t turn, the desire to be punished fully risen in him. ‘Sack me,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you sack me?’
Nothing. He turned. Baader was looking out of the window and the view gave him no peace. He had tramlines down his forehead, deep between the eyebrows. Anselm had never noticed them.
‘Being sacked is too good for you,’ said Baader. ‘Sack yourself. Stand on your pride and your honour and your fucking dignity.’
Anselm went to his office. I’m like a small dog, he thought, only bark and snarl. The logs were waiting. He was grateful that he had something to do, working out how much to charge people he did not know for spying on other people for reasons he did not want to know.
FROM THE carpark, Caroline rang Craig, Zampatti, the architects who employed Jess Thomas. She explained to the receptionist and was put through to a woman called Sandra Fox.
‘I’m an old friend of Jess Thomas’s, but I’ve been away, I’ve lost touch. I found her work address in the book but she’s not there and the someone told me she did a lot of work for you and…’ ‘She lives there,’ said Fox. ‘Battersea. In that last little pocket of… well, if she’s not there, I really can’t help. The people who could are in Nepal, climbing, I gather you have to, it’s all uphill in Nepal. So that’s not much use.’
‘Who are they, the people in Nepal?’
‘Mark and Natalie. They’re the Craig and the Zampatti, the principals here. Look, leave your number, I’ll ask around. Umm.’
A wait.
‘There is someone you might try called David Nunn. They came to our Christmas party together. An item, I thought, more than just good friends. You could try him. He’s with Musgrove & Wolters, I can give you a number, it’s here somewhere…’ Caroline left her number and rang Musgrove & Wolters. David Nunn was in Singapore. It took almost an hour to reach him, late afternoon there.
Too late to stop lying.
‘Mr Nunn, Detective Sergeant Moody, Battersea police. I’m hoping you might be able to help me locate someone called Jessica Thomas. I understand you know her well.’
‘What’s happened?’ He was alarmed.
‘Possibly nothing. There was some sort of disturbance at her place the other night and she hasn’t been seen since earlier that evening. We’d like to be certain she’s unharmed.’
‘Well, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her for a while, not since January or February.’
‘Close family?’
‘She doesn’t have any.’
‘Friends?’
‘Anne Cerchi, she’s a good friend.’
‘Do you have an address?’
‘Not a number, no, it’s in Ladbroke Grove.’
The old address.
‘We’ve tried her. Anyone else?’
‘Umm, she’s friends with Natalie Zampatti. Natalie and Mark Craig. They’re architects, the firm’s…’ ‘I know the firm.’
‘Right. She goes back a long way with Natalie, with the family, I think.’
‘They can’t be contacted. They’re in Nepal.’
‘Shit.’
‘Anywhere she might go? She might want to get away from everything?’ ‘Not that I know of, no.’
She said her thanks and sat for a long time with her eyes closed, slumped, an ache in her shoulders, in the back of her neck. Then, a man and a woman walked by, the woman laughed, a shrill birdlike sound.
What else to do, to try? Help me, McClatchie, she thought, wherever you are, help me.
NIEMAND GOT up early, left Jess asleep, innocent-faced, and went for a look around. They were high here, the farm buildings on a terrace cut into the hillside. Behind it, the slope was dotted with scrubby wind-whipped trees and then there were conifers, solid, dark.
Below the farm, the road twisted down the hill and crossed a small stone bridge over a stream. He couldn’t see water but the stream’s course was marked by dense vegetation. Low drystone walls flanked the road and all around on the slopes other walls marked out fields, nothing in them, no farm animals, no signs of tillage.
He could see where the road ended at a gate. From behind the barn, a track, deep wheel ruts, went around the side of the hill. There were no other buildings in sight, no power lines.
He went into the dark house and took the map off the corkboard in the kitchen, went outside and sat on an old bench beside the front door. It was large-scale, British Ordnance Survey, a decent map. He knew about maps, he had had maps beaten into him—reading them, memorising them, summoning them up on moonless nights in swampy tropical lowlands and high, hard, broken country.
Someone had marked the position of the farm in ballpoint. He traced the road they’d come on, the village, some long name full of ‘l’s and ‘m’s, the other roads around them. There weren’t many roads and most of them dead-ends. He studied the contours, the elevations, the beacons, the watercourses. A little peace began to fall on him. It would be hard for anyone to surprise them here.
‘You sneaked away.’
Jess, still in her nightdress, arms folded against the cold, no makeup. She looked like a teenager, he thought. Beautiful. He looked away, shy.
‘Nice country,’ Niemand said. ‘Looks like sheep country but no sheep.’
She came up behind the bench and kissed the back of his neck, put both hands on his forehead and pulled his head against her stomach. He felt the soft warmth of her and a lump rose in his throat.
Niemand made breakfast out of cans in the pantry: grilled tomatoes and pork sausages. There was mustard powder and he made some with water and a little dark fragrant vinegar.
‘Useful around the house then,’ she said when she came from the bathroom, shining clean, hair damp.
They ate.
‘Good this,’ she said. ‘Who says you need fresh food? I could live out of cans.’
They were almost finished when he realised that he hadn’t noticed her eating. His feeling about eating with other people seemed to have left him.
‘There are clothes here,’ she said. ‘But you’ll drown in them, he’s big and overweight. Fat, actually.’
Niemand knew he should do what he had said he would do. Go. He had a chance of finding the Irishman and they could get him out of the country. But his fears had abated. How could they find them here, so far from London? He thought he knew how they’d found him at Jess’s place. The motorbike. The registration. It was obvious. The man chasing him had got the number, they could bribe the owner’s address out of some clerk.
But now these people had nothing to go on. Jess had brought him to a remote farm owned by a sister of a friend and the friend was somewhere far away, Nepal, and the sister was in America.
These people didn’t have supernatural powers. They’d had luck, that was all. Just luck.
They washed up, she said, let me do it, she pushed him with a hip, he pushed back, they bumped and jostled, laughing, at the end she rested her head on his arm for a few seconds. He kissed her hair. She turned her head and he was kissing her lips, faintly salty.
He broke away. Something said, she’ll think that’s all you want.
‘Could we stay for a while?’ he said. As he said the word, he thought
, we
, who am I to say
, we
?
Jess nodded. ‘I’ve got nothing urgent.’
He showered and found clothes that hung on him. They went outside, walked down the track around the side of the hill, shoulders touching, hips touching. He found her hand, long fingers.
‘Tell me about your life,’ she said. ‘We’re like people who meet because they crash into each other.’
They walked in the wind, a sky to eternity, torn-tissue clouds. He talked, he told her. He had never told anyone. He couldn’t remember anyone ever asking, but he wouldn’t have told them.
‘When I was a kid, my dad wouldn’t come home for days. An alcoholic. Once my mother was in hospital and he wasn’t there and the welfare took me, put me in this place. The man there tried to make me…do things. He beat me with a belt, I was bleeding. The belt buckle. I remember later I could see the buckle on my legs. Anyway, I ran away, to the railway yards. My pants and my shirt stuck to me, the blood. I was there for weeks, hiding in the old carriages, the black men gave me food, the workers, they had nothing, they owed white people bugger all, they were treated like dirt, but they looked after me. That, I’ve never forgotten that. No. You end up with these pricks, they’d waste any black. Well, this white guard saw me one day, he chased me, he couldn’t catch me, and the police came with a dog and it sniffed me out. They took me home. My dad was sober and my mother came back, so that was okay for a while.’ He stopped. ‘You don’t want to hear this stuff.’