Paradise City (24 page)

He goes to the window and parts the chiffony curtains with a single finger. The morning sunlight bounces across the cream carpet. As Howard looks out across the green sweep of Kensington Gardens, he imagines himself sitting on the edge of a circular wall, staring into a well of self-pity. He could tip himself over the edge or he could lean back from the brink and get on with things.

He lets the curtain drop and turns round to face the room. He breathes in and exhales to the count of ten. He straightens up, checks his cuffs. He decides he is ready to confess his sins and seek absolution or whatever it is the Catholics do. He thinks of Beatrice Kizza and tries to remember her face. He can’t, of course. All he can remember is a shadowy shape, a smell of cocoa butter, the release of pent-up emotion and sex and energy and grief, all of it in one sudden stream.

The way she smiled afterwards and kissed the bristle on his cheek before bending to straighten the sheets.

Or was it the way she turned and rushed out of the room, tears streaming down her face? Which version?

He can’t remember. But he knows he will make it right with Beatrice (Beatrice now in his head; no need for surname or formality; in his head they have an understanding). He tells himself that this, at least, will be one entirely good thing he will do.

There have been other women, of course. A waitress at the RAC on Pall Mall who allowed him a quick fumble on the staircase. A Filipino housekeeper, working abroad to send money back for her children, who had fingered the collar on her blouse in that certain way he knew was an invitation. A secretary at Paradiso who wore tight skirts and lacquered hair piled high on her head. A few hotel rooms here and there. A few chambermaids. Give and take. He hasn’t forced himself on any of them – he would never do such a thing. It’s just that, with Claudia being so distant, he has had to look elsewhere for his gratification. He has found it not in the brittle society ladies of his acquaintance but with women he thinks of as being on his own level. Women he can relate to. Women he is not intimidated by. Until Beatrice Kizza, he thought everyone understood the deal.

There is a knock. The tiny vein beneath Howard’s left eye begins to twitch. Rupert stands quite still, motioning to Howard not to speak. Then, after a thirty-second interlude, he walks slowly to the door and opens it.

When Beatrice enters the room, Howard’s first thought is how short she is. In his mind, she has assumed enormous proportions, as if to signify the mental space she has been occupying. She is short but compact and seems to exude both strength and sensuousness, her body a combination of tightly packed muscle and smooth, shiny skin. Her face is tense – clenched jaw, tight mouth, darting eyes – and her hair is bluntly cut, tucked behind her ears. She is wearing a navy-blue jacket bobbling at the elbows, an unflattering grey skirt and a loose shirt, the white of it dulled from too many washes.

Although he is trying to keep his mind on higher things, Howard cannot help but try to make out her figure underneath all the shapeless clobber. It’s an old tailor’s habit, after all. She seems to have dressed both as an expression of confidence (why else choose a skirt and jacket, like a cut-price business suit?) and as a way of detracting all attention from her womanliness. He wonders if she has done this on purpose, either because she is scared of his sexual advances or because she wants to underline the fact that she’s gay. Howard is not used to women like this. Claudia always wears clothes designed to suggest her sexual availability when out of them.

‘Sir Howard,’ Rupert says. ‘This is Ms—’ He draws out the ‘z’ sound with unnecessary emphasis, ‘Kizza.’

Beatrice steps forward and gives the slightest hint of a smile. He sees her do it and then, just as quickly, he sees her consciously remind herself there is no need to be polite and the smile disappears. She reaches out to take Howard’s hand and they shake. He tries to maintain eye contact but feels ashamed and drops his head.

‘Thank you for coming, Beatrice,’ he says, talking to an elaborately swirled bass clef printed on the green-gold carpet, presumably an effort by the interior designer to suggest a bygone age of baronial elegance. ‘I appreciate that you didn’t have to do this.’ There is a dry catch in his voice and he clears his throat to get rid of it. ‘Rupert, could you get some water for us? Would you like anything—?’ He looks at her expectantly. Beatrice shakes her head but still doesn’t speak. He gestures for her to sit and she perches gingerly on the edge of the armchair facing Howard and leans forward, propping her elbows on her knees, clasping her hands. Rupert returns with the water and seems to take an age opening the bottle. It fizzes gently as the gas escapes and then Rupert pours it over a mound of ice cubes that chink loudly against the glass. The noise seems intensely brash against the silence of the room.

Once he has finished, Howard signals for him to go. Rupert nods. It has all been arranged: he will leave the room but listen in to the conversation from next door. They have set up a discreet recording device by the potted orchid. It’s best, as Rupert explained, to be prepared.

‘Beatrice,’ Howard starts again. ‘Is it all right if I call you that?’

She nods. ‘It’s my name,’ she says and her voice, when he hears it, is low and flat.

‘First of all, I want to apologise for whatever you thought might have happened that day in the Mayfair Rotunda.’ He has been told by Rupert not to admit any guilt and Howard struggles to remember the exact formulation of the words he is meant to use to ensure his back is covered. Legally speaking, that is.

‘I fear there might have been some sort of misunderstanding which I am keen to put right,’ he continues.

Beatrice looks at him steadily. She does not blink while she stares at him and he finds this discomfiting. He starts to stumble.

‘What I mean to say is . . . I mean . . . it’s just that . . .’

He crumples in his chair, mops his brow with the back of his hand and wonders what the point of it all is. He is lying to Beatrice, to himself, to everyone. He is a fraud.

‘Look,’ he says finally. ‘Let me make this right, Beatrice. What do you want? Anything.’

He can almost sense Rupert bristling in the next room. This is a departure from the agreed script.

Beatrice leans back in her chair.

‘I don’t wish you harm, Sir Howard,’ she says. ‘I have not come to cause you trouble. I do not want your money.’

He is startled by the plain-spoken admission. Howard thought that was what all this had been about: blackmail, extortion, a healthy lump sum and a tight confidentiality agreement.

‘What I would like is quite simple.’ She makes a play of examining her nails. He wonders where she has picked up these gestures, like an actress in a film. He thinks, for the first time, that she must be nervous too.

‘I would like a job.’

‘A job?’

Howard chuckles. He can’t help himself.

‘Why is that funny?’ she asks sharply, anxious that she is being teased, that she is missing some crucial conversational undercurrent.

‘I’m not laughing at you. I’m surprised, that’s all. What kind of job?’

‘Nothing fancy,’ she says. ‘Perhaps in one of your shops. On the tills. Daytime hours, regular pay.’

Howard pauses, just to make sure he has understood her correctly. This is unbelievable. Here he was, expecting to be taken to the cleaner’s, and all this woman wants is a chance to earn a decent living. Plucky, that’s what his mother would have called her.

‘Of course,’ he says and then he waits for her to ask for something else, something more.

Beatrice gives a small smile, revealing narrow, straight white teeth slightly buckled like a fence falling in on itself. He has made her happy. It has been as simple as that. But then she starts talking again.

‘Sir Howard. You are a powerful man in Britain. You have a lot of weight here. I know this. I have done my research.’

He motions for her to go on.

‘I am sure you have done your research on me too. Perhaps you know why I came to the UK from Uganda?’

Howard nods. Beatrice looks down, fiddles with her necklace.

‘I had to leave behind someone who is very important to me.’ She shifts in her seat. ‘I would like your assurance that you will protect me. From the British authorities, I mean. If they try to deport me it would be very bad. Very bad.’

Howard is surprised. A knot loosens within him. He had expected a demand for money. He had been prepared to pay. The fact that Beatrice Kizza hasn’t asked for this makes him look at her differently.

‘Of course,’ he says again. And he thinks: This can be the start of something new and good and right. This can be repentance.

He reaches out across the low coffee table intending to pat Beatrice’s knee. She flinches and moves further into the chair. He nods, accepting the rebuke.

‘Leave it to me, Beatrice,’ he says and when he speaks, another image rises in front of him of Ada, his daughter, running along the beach in a frilly polka-dot swimming costume. Shrieking at the coolness of the water. Giggling when he lifts her high above his head. Scratchiness of sand in his shoe. Warmth of sun on his face. Trickle of melting ice cream down his forearm. A small hand in his.

He looks at the woman sitting in front of him, the contained sadness of her, and, in her eyes, he sees himself.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he says.

Beatrice Kizza allows her interlaced fingers to relax and separate.

Maybe, Howard thinks, just maybe, I can make this work.

Then he hears the click of a door and he knows, without having to look, that Rupert has walked back into the room.

Esme

Esme wants to believe it is the winning combination of her personal charm and professional competence that has coaxed Sir Howard Pink into giving his first full-length interview about his daughter’s disappearance, but she has a sneaking notion that all is not what it seems. Perhaps it’s because she’s become a horribly cynical tabloid hack ever since working at the
Tribune
but she can’t shake the suspicion that Howard Pink has an ulterior motive. Cathy had told her once about a famous pop star who sold a story about his child’s terminal illness to the red-tops in exchange for the discreet dropping of an exclusive about an extra-marital affair. That was pre-Leveson, of course, in the days when the chequebook was king and all you had to do to prove a Cabinet minister was shagging his secretary was dial in four simple digits to access a mobile phone’s voicemail.

Things were tougher nowadays, Esme thought. Tougher and more boring. Last week, Dave had spiked a piece about a celebrity’s honeymoon because the fame-hungry wannabe in question had got her lawyers to email claiming they’d invaded her privacy by taking photographs of her on a ‘secluded’ beach. What the lawyers failed to acknowledge was that the celebrity had tipped off the paparazzi in the first place. And why wouldn’t she, thought Esme, when said celebrity had spent several thousand pounds on cultivating the perfect bikini body with the costly help of a pre-eminent plastic surgeon and needed some free publicity for a new range of false eyelashes she was promoting (‘super-long with diamanté sparkle’ according to the press release)?

Anyway, the Howard Pink thing just seems a bit too easy. Esme was used to pursuing interviews for months on end through a tireless campaign of phone calls and emails and follow-up emails and emails following up the follow-up emails, falsely claiming that there was a problem with the work internet server and could she just check that her last one had got through? But for the first time ever, a potential interviewee had come to her. Or at least to Dave.

‘He asked for you by name,’ Dave had said to her on the Monday that she’d rushed back to the office, leaving her mother waving goodbye from the train platform with an aggrieved expression on her face. ‘Said he’d felt “a connection” with you over lunch.’ Dave winked. ‘A connection, eh, Es? You wanna be careful you don’t end up as the third Lady Pink.’

Esme blushed and looked down at her jeans. She had thought carefully about precisely what clothes to wear for this unanticipated appointment with the object of her irrational affections. It was a tricky sartorial challenge: she wanted to look casually attractive, as though she had made no effort, and yet still manage to convey elegance and sex appeal. In the end, she had opted for skinny jeans, a t-shirt with something French written on the front and ankle boots that made her a few millimetres taller than Dave. He had turned up in awful grey trousers and a navy fleece. It was almost enough to make her stop fancying him. Almost.

‘Why now though?’ she asked, focusing on a point just below his right earlobe so that she didn’t have to look him in the eye.

‘Because he’s got this charitable foundation he wants to announce in memory of his daughter. You know about Ada Pink, I presume?’

Esme nodded. She’d read the cuttings before her lunch at the Dorchester: Howard Pink’s nineteen-year-old daughter. Troubled past. Anorexia. Left her posh public school under something of a cloud. Rumours of drugs, hotly denied by her family. Walked out of her university halls one day eleven years ago never to be seen again. High-profile police search. Appeals on
Crimewatch
. Blurry CCTV footage of a possible abductor’s van. And then – nothing. No trails, no leads, no suspects. The case had dropped from the front pages before disappearing altogether. Howard Pink had never spoken about it publicly. Until now.