French Nicci Read online

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  It was raining steadily as I drove back; warm summer rain that splashed on my windscreen, and sprayed up in iridescent arcs from the wheels of the trucks that thundered past. The rush-hour traffic was building, and my eyes felt gritty, my throat a bit sore. As I pulled up outside my flat, I saw that a man was standing at the front door. He had on a raincoat, his hands in the pockets, and he was looking up at the house. He heard my car door slam, and turned to me. His blond helmet of hair gleamed in the rain. His thin lips stretched into a smile. I looked at him for a long time and he just looked back at me. "Detective Inspector Guy Furth," I said. I felt myself surveyed and evaluated under his gaze and I tried not to flinch. "You look good, Kit," he said, and smiled, as if we were old mates. "What's this about?" "Can I come in for a moment?" I gave a shrug. It seemed easier just to agree.

  3

  "I've never been here before," he said, looking around. I couldn't help laughing at that. "Why on earth should you have been? We've only met the once. Remember?" "Feels like more," he said, walking around as if he were thinking of buying it. He went across to the back window, which looked out over the expanse of grass. "Nice view," he said. "You don't see that from the front. Nice bit of green." I didn't reply, and he turned 43 round with a smile that was betrayed by his eyes. They flickered warily around the room as if he were an animal that feared being caught from behind. I always felt that my flat changed with each person who entered it. I would see it through their eyes. Or, rather, I would see it the way I imagined the person would see it. This flat would look too bare to Furth, lacking in comfort and decoration. There was a sofa and a rug on a varnished wooden floor. There was an old stereo in the corner and a pile of CD'S stacked next to it. There were bookshelves full of books, and books on the floor. The walls were whitewashed and almost bare. Most pictures irritated me or, worse still, they stopped irritating me. I found it painful the way, after weeks or months, a picture that had unsettled me would become unnoticed, just another part of the decoration. When I stopped noticing a picture, I put it away or got rid of it until I had only two. There was a painting of two bottles on a table that my father had given me when I was twenty-one. It was by a hopeless old friend of his, a distant cousin. I could never walk past it without it stopping me. And there was a photograph of my father's father and his brother and sister in front of a studio backcloth somewhere in what must have been the mid-1920's. My grandfather was wearing a sailor suit. All three of them had a strange suppressed smile on their faces, as if they were holding back a giggle at a joke out of our view, out of our hearing. It was a lovely photograph. One day, maybe in a hundred years' time, someone would have that picture on the wall and they would be amused by it and they would wonder: Who were those children? I looked at Furth and saw that for him, of course, it meant nothing. Maybe there was just a touch of bafflement and scorn. Is this all? This is what Kit Quinn comes back to every night? He stood too close to me and looked into my eyes with an expression of concern that turned my stomach. "How are you now?" he said. "Everything all right with the face?" I stepped back before he could stroke my scar. "I didn't think we'd ever meet again," I said. "We felt bad about you, Kit," Furth said, before adding hurriedly: "Not that it was anybody's fault. He was like a mad animal. It took four of us to lay him out. You should have paid more 45 attention when I told you he was a pervert." "Is that what you've come round to say?" "No." "Then why are you here?" "Chat." "What about?" He looked shifty. "We wanted some advice." "What?" I was so startled by the wild unexpectedness of this that I had to make some effort not to giggle "You're here about a case?" "That's right. We wanted a chat. Have you got anything to drink?" he asked. "Like what?" "A beer or something." I went and found a bottle of something Bavarian-looking in the back of the fridge and brought it to him. "Do you mind if I smoke?" I fetched him a saucer from the kitchen. He pushed the glass I had given him to one side and took a swig from the bottle. Then he lit the cigarette and drew on it several times. "I'm working on the Regent's Canal murder." he said finally. "You've heard about it?" I thought for a moment. "I saw something in the paper a few days ago. Body found by the canal?" "That's the one. What did you think?" "Sounded sad." I grimaced at him. "A little story at the bottom of a page. A young drifter. The only reason there was any story at all was that there were some nasty injuries. They didn't even know her name, did they?" "Still don't. But we've got a suspect." I shook my head. "Well done. Now--was He held up his hand. "Ask me the name of the suspect." "What?" "Go on." He grinned widely and settled back in the chair with his arms folded, waiting. "OK," I said obediently. "What is the name of the suspect?" "His name is Anthony Michael Doll." I stared at him, taking it in. He looked back, cheerily triumphant. "There now, see why you were just the person for the job? Perfect, eh?" "Chance to get my own back," I said. "I missed out on my chance to give him a kicking in the cell, so perhaps I can help to send him 47 down for murder. Is that the idea?" "No, no," he said, in a soothing tone. "My boss was interested in you doing some work for us. Don't worry, you get your fee. And it might be fun. Ask your friend Seb Weller." "Fun," I said. "How could I resist? And we had such a good time before." I went over to the fridge and pulled out an open bottle of white wine. I poured myself a full glass and held it up to the fading light. Then I took a mouthful and felt the icy cold liquid trickle down my throat. I stared out the window, at the red sun low in the turquoise sky. The rain had stopped and it was going to be a beautiful evening. I turned back to Furth. "Why do you think it's Doll?" He looked surprised, and then pleased. "You see? You're interested. He spends his days fishing on the canal. He's there every bloody day. He came forward when we had our appeal for anybody who'd been in the area." Furth looked sharply round at me. "Does it surprise you?" "How?" "A man like that, coming forward." "Not necessarily," I said. "If he's innocent, he's better off identifying himself. And if he's guilty ..." I stopped. I didn't want to be sucked into a consultation based on Furth's thumbnail sketch of a suspect. He winked at me anyway, as if he'd caught me. "If he's guilty," he said, "he might like to get involved in the inquiry, even in a small way. What do you think?" "It's been known," I said. "Of course it's been known. People like that love it. They want to be close to it, to feel how clever they are. A little extra kick. The sick bastards." "So what did he say?" "We haven't interviewed him." "Why not?" "We'll let him stew a bit. But we haven't been lying down. We've got this young officer called Colette Dawes. Nice lady. Clever. She's got to know him. In plain clothes, of course. Got him talking. You know the sort of thing. Bit of a drink, bit of flattery, bit of crossed legs when he's looking, steer the conversation. In the meantime, she's wearing a wire and we've got the tapes. 49 Hours of them." "That's your investigation?" I said, baffled. "Getting a female officer to flirt with him?" Furth leaned forward with an urgent expression on his face. "I'm not going to say anything," he said, in a conspiratorial whisper. "We just want your professional opinion of him. Off the record. It wouldn't take long. Just look at his file and then have a brief talk with him. You know the kind of thing--a preliminary assessment of him." "Talk to him?" "Sure. Have you got a problem with that?" Of course I had a problem with that and now I knew that I couldn't say no. "No problem," I said. "This woman, Colette Dawes, does she know what she's doing?" Furth pulled a face. "She can look after herself. We're always around, anyway. Look, Kit, I can understand you feeling nervous. We thought it might be a way of making you feel better." He took a sip from his beer. And you wanted to make sure I wouldn't sue for compensation, I thought to myself. "Thank you, Doctor," I said. "Maybe it would." "So, what do you say?" I stood up and walked to the window, looking out over that hidden lawn trapped between the backs of office buildings. It was early evening now but it wasn't dark or even twilight. The light was softening from harsh yellow into gold. "It's a plague pit, you know," I said. "What?" "Bodies were tossed in a pit there during the plague. Covered with quicklime. Buried. Forgotten about." "Bit creepy." "No, it isn't," I said, turning back to him. "I'l
l just say one thing now. I don't know anything about your case. I think this woman playing Mata Hari is a crackpot idea. I don't know what authority you're doing this on and I don't want to know. To me it seems irresponsible, it may even be illegal, but then I'm a doctor, not a lawyer." "Will you let me know, though?" "Yes." "When?" "How about a couple of days? There's 51 someone I need to talk to first." "You'll ring?" "Yes." He went and I stayed for many minutes looking out of the window. Not at Furth, not out of that window. I looked out at the grass, watching the green change and fade in the glorious evening. Dead people. Dead people everywhere.

  4

  I phoned Rosa at once, at home. I couldn't wait. "Furth came to see me," I said. "Who?" "The detective. The one who was there when it happened, when I was attacked." I told her the whole story and as I told it the more bizarre and unprofessional it sounded. "And what did you say?" she asked finally. "I was taken aback." "But curious." "Curious? I felt pulled." "What does that mean, Kit?" "I wake in the night. Or sometimes I don't wake in the night. It hardly seems to make a difference. And I go over and over it, as if it is still happening to me. Or as if it is about to happen and I can do something to stop it, wind back the clock. It's like I am back in that room again, and there's red blood everywhere. Mine. His." "So you want to meet Doll again and reduce him to his human size?" "You're a clever woman, aren't you?" "You know, I've never thought being clever was very important. Look, Kit, I'm just going to say two things to you and they're the two things you must have had in mind when you decided to ring me. The first is whether you'll do yourself any good by seeing this man. The second is that it doesn't really matter what good it does you. You're being brought in to do a job. Can you do that?" "Yes. I think so." There was a pause. "It's dangerous to ask for advice, Kit. You might not get the advice you wanted." She gave a sigh. "I'm sorry. In my opinion you shouldn't do this. Now why do I think you're not going to pay any attention to what I 53 say?" "It must be a bad line." "Yes, it must be that." I put down the phone. It was twilight outside. Once more the rain splashed down the window-panes and rattled and slapped in the wet trees outside. Wild July, bashed and drenched by warm gales. I went and stood by the window and looked out at the garden below, the waterlogged lawn. A couple, holding hands, sloshed together across the grass, through the piles of sodden blossom and the shallow puddles. She turned her face toward his, laughing in the half-darkness. I moved away from the window. Love and work, that's what gets you through the days. The phone rang, startling me out of my reverie. "Is that Kit?" The voice sounded very far away. Crackly. Was it abroad? Maybe not. New York can sound closer than South London. It is, in a way. "Yes?" "It's Julie." Dull silence. Julie. Julie. Julie. Couldn't think of anybody. "Julie Wiseman." "Oh, Julie. But I thought you were ..." She'd gone away. Dropped off the face of my earth. "I'm back in London." Back from where? Should I know? I tried to picture her as I'd last seen her. Dark curly hair--pinned up, wasn't it? There was a rush of memory, like a breath of warm air, that made me smile. Cigarettes late at night in cheap restaurants. One night we were all there so late that the cooks came out of the kitchen with a bottle of wine and sat with us. Above all, Julie had done the thing we all said we wanted to do and secretly knew we would never dare to. She had been a math teacher in a secondary school and she handed in her notice and set off around the world or around South America or wherever it was. I felt myself soften. I said that we'd missed her and that it would be great to see her. And she said it would be great to come and see me, and then it quickly emerged that it would be great if she could do even more than that. I remembered now. She'd given up her flat when she left. What had she done with her stuff? Given it all away, knowing 55 her. That was Julie, generous with her own possessions, generous with your possessions. Could she stay for a day or two? I paused for a moment. I couldn't think of a single reason why it wouldn't be better to have somebody else here with me for a bit. She came through the door with a waft of elsewhere about her. A vast rucksack and a brown canvas bag hit the floor so that dust rose off them. She wore brown leather shoes, rough khaki trousers, a blue padded jacket that had a sort of Tibetan look to it. Her face didn't just look tanned. It was beyond tanned. It looked sanded, seasoned, weather-blown, polished. Her hands and wrists were brown as well, and her eyes, bright as semi-precious stones, were grinning at a joke you hadn't seen yet. "Blimey, Kit, what on earth happened to your face?" "Oh, well, as a matter of fact ..." But she was head down, rummaging in a plastic bag. "I've go something for you," she said. I expected her to produce some hand-carved antique Buddha, but it was a bottle of duty-free gin. "I thought you might have some tonic to go with this," she said. "I could pop out and get some." Clearly there was no doubt that this was to be opened and poured straight away. "It's all right," I said. "I've got some." "And could I make myself something? I slept for about thirteen hours on the plane." "Where have you come from?" "I stopped over for a couple of weeks in Hong Kong," she said. "Amazing. Some fried eggs maybe." "And bacon?" "That would be great. And fried bread if you've got some. For the last couple of months I've been having a dream about coming back to England and having a real old fry-up--eggs and bacon and tomatoes and bread all fried up together." "I'll get some tomatoes while I'm at it. There's a twenty-four-hour shop on the corner." "I've got something else for you too." She got out a huge duty-free carton of Marlboro cigarettes. "Actually I don't smoke." "I sort of knew that," Julie said 57 with a smile. "Do you mind if I light up?" "Not at all." Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting opposite Julie at the kitchen table. I was sipping at my gin and tonic. She was alternating sips from her gin with gulps of treetrunk-brown tea and assaults on the great platter of her very, very late breakfast. As she ate she told me bits of stories: treks at altitude, canoes, hitchhikers, campfires, strange foods, a flood, war zones, brief sexual encounters, a full-blown affair in a harborfront apartment in Sydney, crewing on a yacht between Pacific Islands, waitressing jobs in San Francisco and Hawaii and Singapore, or was it S@ao Paulo and Santo Domingo? And all this--it was understood--was like a film trailer advertising coming attractions. The full stories, in all their texture, would be told to me in due course. "I love this flat," she said. "I always did." I was puzzled for a moment. "Was I living here before you left?" "Of course," she said, mopping up a thick pool of yolk with a corner of greasy bread. "I've been here several times. I've been to dinner here." That was right. I remembered now. It felt like a rebuke. She had done so much, seen so many strange sunsets, had so many "experiences," all those sights, and all the time I'd been here in Clerkenwell, going out to work, having a room painted. My work had seemed so important, I hadn't even taken a holiday in the time Julie had been broadening her mind. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked so pale. As if Julie had come back from being in the sun and lifted a stone and found me stuck to the underside, damp and sickly. "But in a way I really envy you," she said, not meaning it at all. "I stepped off the ladder. I mean the career ladder. Now I'm back and I've got to find a way back on. Here I am. Back and totally unemployable." She gave a laugh. She was clearly, and rightly I had to admit, very proud of herself. "And you," she said, in the moment I'd been dreading. "What have you been up to? How did you get that amazingly sexy scar?" 59 "Someone attacked me in a police cell." "God!" She looked suitably impressed. "Why?" "I don't know. Because he was panicking, I suppose." "How awful." She chomped loudly for a few seconds. "Was it really bad?" "Pretty bad. It happened three months ago and I went back to work today." "Today? You don't mind me coming, do you?" Her face creased in an anxious frown. "Landing on you like this." "No, it's fine. As long as it isn't for too--was "What else is happening? Apart from being attacked by a madman and nearly dying, I mean." I searched for a significant event. "Albie and I split up," I said. "Finally." "Yes," Julie said sympathetically. "I remember you talking about having problems." Oh, fuck, I thought to myself. Really? Three years ago? I seemed to be living a life like one of those old-fashioned deep-sea divers, walking along the bottom very, very slow
ly in heavy lead boots. "So it there anybody new?" "No," I said. "It only happened recently." "Oh," she said. "What about work?" "I'm still at the clinic." "Oh," she said. I had to think of something. I just had to. Or else I might as well leave the room and phone the Samaritans. "I've been asked to do some work for the police. Maybe it might even turn into a kind of consultancy." Saying it out loud to an outsider made it seem real. She took a giant slug of gin, swallowed it, then yawned. I could see her white teeth, pink tongue, a glistening tunnel of throat. "Amazing," she said. "Did I tell you about this man who picked me and a friend up when we were going up to the Drakensberg Mountains?" She hadn't but we moved over to the sofa and she did now. The full version, this time. It felt soothing, Julie stretched out like a cat talking with fond pleasure about these faraway dangers while I took a sip of my drink every few 61 minutes, and outside the night came on very slowly, like a game of Grandmother's Footsteps that I could never win. And finally I looked up and Julie was asleep, her drink still in her hand, her brain having told her strong brown body that it was in Thailand or Hong Kong, and that it was actually three in the morning. I slid the glass from her fingers and she murmured something unintelligible. Then I fetched a duvet from the cupboard in my bedroom and covered her with it, right up to her chin. She gave a sigh and wrapped herself up in it like a hamster in its nest. I couldn't help smiling at the sight. This wanderer was already more comfortable in my flat than I was. I went into my bedroom and took off my clothes. It had been the strangest day--frantic with activity after so many weeks of convalescence. My head buzzed with thoughts. My skin felt cold and exposed, like a twig peeled of its bark. I climbed into bed and pulled my own duvet around me. I couldn't seem to get it comfortably over me. I knew that it was square but it felt as if it were lozenge-shaped and there always seemed to be a bit of my body exposed. At last I allowed myself to think of the girl found dead by the canal. Lianne, that was her name, or the name she had called herself. Just Lianne. A lost girl with no real name. I would find out more about her soon; tomorrow, perhaps. I had to sleep, so that my brain would be clear for tomorrow. Tomorrow I had to see Doll. I touched my scar. Closed my eyes. She wasn't by the canal anymore, obviously. Lianne with no last name. She would be in a cold metal cabinet, filed away. I felt, almost physically, the size of London stretching around me in all directions. There were bad things going on in some of those houses. But I tried to convince myself that it didn't matter statistically. Think of all the millions and millions of houses in which good things were happening, or nothing much at all beyond loneliness or neglect. That was the really amazing statistic. All those houses in which no serious harm was being done. It didn't cheer me up but I fell asleep anyway.