Blind Date (28 page)

“I have
given your profile and work phone number to these
delightful
men,” Mrs. Smythe's accompanying letter gushed. “So you should be hearing from both of them! (Unless you phone first!)”

Hazel was not in the mood on this particular morning. It all seemed like so much effort; she could not shift her own depression, but all the same, she saved the envelope until she was halfway over the bridge and, feeling like a spy sent into a dark corner to decipher clandestine instructions, she read carefully.

“John Jones works for a multinational company as an executive and has his own (small) house in North London. He describes himself as shy and loyal …”

Probably keeps a cat and a budgerigar. Which might make for better conversation than the car and the mates. The second profile was intriguing.

“Derek Taylor is in his middle years, divorced with grown-up children. He finds he rattles round in his own, large house and seeks companionship. Interests include music and interior design.”

That was more like it. A sugar daddy with walls. She immediately envisioned someone tall, slim, well-preserved, grey-haired and grey-suited, plays squash once a week. Maybe a dog and a nice, old-fashioned motor, with leather on the inside.

Phone him, but first savour the thought, while Pats was out. So she wouldn't have to tell.

There was something about the shared horror of Angela which was making them wary of each other, as if it contaminated them with shame. Perhaps they had never really been that close.

Autumn was near, sniffing round the corner. She could smell it, drifting off the water.

The early smell of change.

O
K, Joe thought, I'm under control. I'm sitting in a pub, waiting for Owl like I promised I would and now I need to be. What worries me is what
she
might be doing. I read that number on the man's profile, Owl. I read everything. Patsy put the profile in the bin, but I got it out. I recognized that number. I never forget numbers, or faces, and I read everything which is not locked away. Even pieces of paper already torn up.

This is what we
know, Owl, he would say, without specifying who
we
meant, rehearsing the emphasis in his own mind to make it sound like a team, while really meaning this is what I know, which is not a lot. Make himself sound like a private detective with a glamorous, dirty raincoat. Joe had never met one, couldn't imagine what they were like. Not in lovely London, with a nip of cold in the air.

L
ook, Owl
we
need an ally. This is what
we
know.
(We
equals one injured woman whose sister was killed two years ago, plus a not so reformed alcoholic police officer of amoral tendencies and completely powerless any way, and myself. Not an impressive team: between us, we command not an ounce of credibility and we do not pull together.)

We
know these facts.

1. A man accused of killing the sister went to an introduction agency … our agency, Select Friends. He showed signs of a nasty disposition, according to the woman who ran the agency, and that helped cast suspicion upon him. He did not meet Emma Davey through the agency: he knew her already no-one quite knows how and it doesn't matter. This man did not kill Emma, although he knew a lot about how it was done. … Because someone, in the later stages of the whole business, showed him a photograph.

2. The murderer
stabbed once, then covered Emma's head with a black plastic sack and beat her to death. No sexual assault. He may have used some sort of bleach to cover traces.

3. After the failure of a case mounted against the subject, the deceased's sister, (Elisabeth, to you) who had entrapped him into suspicious admissions only, was attacked by a man who burned her with caustic soda. No known connection. This was not in London, but in the place where the sisters had grown up. (You might say what has this to do with anything … well, it might.)

4. Two years after the murder of Emma Davey, Angela Collier is killed (in own home, again) by a man who covers her face. Again, brutal and frenzied. Traces of bleach. Only you and I know, Owl, no-one else, (a lie: Joe saw all lies and evasions in brackets, since Elisabeth knew, and probably Jenkins too) that Angela was a client of Select Friends and the woman in charge of said agency asked
you
to say nothing about it.

5. Last night another client of this agency was attacked by a man with whom she had been on a blind date. He seemed to wish to cover her head with a shawl, but he relented and backed off. This morning he sent flowers, Interflora. She is adamant about not complaining … feels it was her own fault. It is the regime of Select Friends that profiles are sent out by the agency which do not give addresses … only contact numbers for the punters place of business. (Everyone who goes to Select Friends must be employed: it costs too much for the unemployed, who would not be eligible candidates anyway.) The number given by this violent man relates to a mobile phone.

It just so happens
that this is
your
phone, John Jones, old chap. (Could Rob or someone have borrowed it?) Don't worry.
We
know the blind date wasn't you: the man in question was handsome with thick, dark hair. Which is why, Owl, you have to go to the police. Not
we, you
.

“He won't go,” Elisabeth predicted, after they had descended from the bells. “He'll say it's all nonsense and he won't go.”

“Why on earth would he react like that?”

“Because, from all you've said about him, he'll be afraid of looking a fool.”

The Owl would not go. He stood his ground, small, obdurate, frightened. Or at least, he would not go immediately. Where should he go? Who should he contact? Where would they start? What was Joe doing to him?
Please
, Joe, what are you doing to me? There is nothing to connect me to any of this. I know about Emma Davey. I read about that case eighteen months ago, Joe. I know we never talk about Jack, but do you want me to be like bloody Jack? I'm NOT LIKE JACK! Jack was a pervert, a fucking loser. Everyone knows they got the right man and a stupid judge and the bugger killed himself, as he should. And you want me to go to the police? GET LOST, JOE.

It's your mobile phone number, Owl: I recognized it. Rubbish. And so what? It certainly wasn't my call. There are fifteen men in our office, Joe. The phone lies around. Anyone could have used it: Rob's always pinching it. No, I'm not going near a sodding policeman, Joe, I'm not. And if you fucking send them round to me, I'll tell them you're an unemployable bum and a liar.

But he would go, Joe thought, eventually. Once he had thought about it. Strange how they both thought of Rob, with his volatility and aggression. They could both see Rob hitting a woman, even though that was unthinkable in an old mate.

Joe was surprised
by Owl's resistance, but on reflection, he decided he should not have been. Owl would want to think about it. Owl always did. Owl had known Jack, peripherally, as they all had. Apart from Michael. Jack had been Michael's special friend. But it felt like stalemate, the little dribs of knowledge burning holes in his pockets. And the shadow of the man he had seen, outside Patsy's, flitting round his head, like a moth.

I
have never done a wise or courageous thing in my life, have I? Who would deny that?

The tower was silent. Jack's words, replayed in this still holy place, reverberated. I want to fuck a woman from behind when I can't see her face; I want to see her shudder, but I want her masked, mysterious; I don't want to see her eyes.

Oh yes, she had breathed, deceit following deceit like chasing shadows. Oh yes, tell me what you would like, and why: I need to understand you. How can I love you if I don't understand? She had listened to it later on the tape, wanting to gag. His hot face, always glistening with sweat, even in December, the hair, always greasy. The time he had terrified her, while the tape had recorded nothing of the rustling of her coat as he put her hands beneath, round her waist, squeezing her buttocks until, even beneath the thick jeans she wore to each assignation, he hurt. She had always confined provocative clothing to the half-undone shirt, with a touch of Wonderbra cleavage: he liked that, but could not look at it, or her, kept his head buried in her shoulder during an embrace. In retrospect, he was more like a frightened child seeking reassurance.

The tape had not
recorded what she wore. It recorded words. “Don't get close,” Jenkins always said. “We don't want the bugger coming in his pants, we want him talking.” Tell me, she would croon, tell me. Hiding a gasp of pain. Keeping control, because it was easy to keep control when the man who fumbled with his lardy hands was a man she found disgusting. He did not like their eyes. The windows of the soul. Deceit upon deceit. She had known then that Jack had been to an introduction agency, but that was simply a part of his whole pathetic history she never had to investigate in person.

She was the foot soldier, those behind her were the intelligence, and he, the casualty of war. He had never done more than pummel and squeeze. And apologise.

Elisabeth was trying to make herself look beautiful. Presentable, desirable, but it was like trying to make something out of a dishcloth. A silk purse out of a sow's ear, her mother would have said. No-one could make this body beautiful.

She shivered. The memory of Joe's warmth against her back made her flush. Both of them curled against the dark the night before, his softness against the bones protruding from her own skin, all restless angles as she slept those few hours before dawn. It was generous of him to blot out other memories with the warmth of his big body. Kind, that was all: he would cuddle a sick dog and she could not reconcile herself to this quixotic trust of him: it seemed unreal; it was far from complete.

Where was the make-up? A bag full of sticky equipment, in the bathroom; a tan-coloured foundation leaking slightly, crusted round the screw top. Mascara. Cracked eyeshadow, the wrong colour for a sunny day, use sparingly. She could not see her own face without adopting an awkward pose, as if she was sitting on a love seat, twisted so that she could see not the other face, but her own eyes. The friz of hair held back with slides and allowed to expand as if it was a statement rather than an accident. Then the clothes, the armour. A pale-yellow linen blouse, a skirt with matching yellow dots on blue, held up round her waist by a belt of soft stuff which could be knotted tight, the wrong blue. Almost human, a little mismatched perhaps, creased in places where a person once proud of grooming would not be, but passable, without being impressive.

Enough to present
herself as a viable specimen at an introduction agency? Somehow, she doubted it. She had the shell-shocked look of a certain kind of neurotic, but the purpose was only to get inside the door. Without an appointment. On the kitchen table, pasted together with selloptape was the profile of Michael. Patsy had torn it up, she said, in between the time of his departure and Joe and Elisabeth's arrival, thrown it in the kitchen bin and refused to give his name. Elisabeth had retrieved it, and carried it away in her pocket. She studied it again. In one corner there was the clear impression of a set of teeth, sign of Patsy's anger, above a single paragraph on a piece of heavy paper, the name of the agency on the top. No proprietor's name.

This was what she was going to do: She would go to the agency, fling down the reconstructed piece of paper and say, I want to meet
this
man. Not another man, this one: I'll pay you.

Floating down the steps, careful of the dust. Out into the sunlight. How different was the world from this angle. Picking up the post from out of the letterbox on the door. Two letters for Joe, the cheek of him! Anyone would think he lived here! One for her. From her mother, the writing as recognizable as her own hand, stopping her in her tracks. She put them all back in the box. She could not afford distractions.

T
here was still that same, almost sneaky, feeling of joy as she got on the bus. She was purposeful, while still conscious of her own reservations about her own judgement: she was afraid and she was hungry and tired, but never more aware of the colours of life outside the window and the energy in her limbs. She refused to think about Joe, but she could not stop thinking about Joe, with all his questions and all his suspect motives and what the hell did he want; big, warm, nonchalant, bell-kicking Joe? Something. And that was enough of that: this was her stop. Everyone's stop, the bus emptying at Piccadilly with all the noise of a flight of geese, yelling, where is it, where is it, this place, what time, where shall we go.

It was not a place
where the bare necessities of life were acknowledged, except, maybe, by a fruit stall. You could eat cake rather than bread, buy lycra at Lillywhites, purchase gear for the trend of your life, tweed and evening dress, suits in Jermyn Street, popcorn and chocolate and a-pound-a-slice pizza. You could gamble and gawk, see film after film, eat if you had the price of a modest Chinese meal and knew where to go, eat McDonald's, eat fashion and, at this time of day, drink downmarket or upmarket tea, with solid, leftover scones or delicate cakes, again depending on knowledge. You could not buy groceries: you could only acquire ephemera. You came here to be ripped off and entertained, to fight and get drunk, to queue and to watch from narrow pavements with too many cars fighting for space. It was not a place to come without a gang; a place meant for those who liked going out after dark, when the tawdry scenery mattered less and the neon signs looked pretty.

Elisabeth had always found it difficult to be entertained. She was a spoilsport, a nonbeliever, immune to the spells.

She walked away
from the crowds and into the hollows of Jermyn Street. Fantastic shirts with high necks: she craved the one in pink and white stripes, made for a man. Also the same model in green. She felt scruffy, startled to see herself even further distorted in the same shop window and even more surprised to find she had arrived. She was panicked by the stairs.