The Hollow Man (3 page)

6

“H
e was injecting in his groin. I kicked the kitchen door and he’s got one foot up on the sink. He said, I saw you coming. I said, why’d you start fixing if you saw us coming? He said he didn’t know when he’d next get the chance.”

Belsey stepped into the office. His colleagues went silent: Derek Rosen leaning heavily against the edge of Belsey’s desk, Rob Trapping watching with a grin on his clean-shaven face.

“Then what?” Belsey said.

“He took the needle out and there was blood everywhere,” Rosen said. He flapped a tabloid and began to read.

“How did it go?” Trapping turned to Belsey. He was only twenty-three years old, six-foot-four and still in love with the idea of being a detective.

“Really well.”

“We could have done with you yesterday,” he said. “Knifing outside the job centre.”

“I heard.”

“Turns out it was Niall Cassidy’s boy, Johnny. We haven’t found him yet. Apparently you know him from the good old days.”

“I thought he was in a Spanish prison.”

“Comes back from a two-year stretch in the Balearic Islands and stabs the guy who snitched on him. Straight from the airport. Stabs him in the thigh.”

“What was that about? Jet lag?”

Trapping laughed. His mobile rang.

“Jet lag,” he said. He left the room, laughing, answering his mobile: “Detective Trapping here.” Belsey sat at his desk. Niall Cassidy: another name from his south London days. It felt as if something was slipping; whatever mechanism kept the present and past from leaking into each other had broken.

“The prodigal son,” Rosen said. “I’ve had someone here looking for you. From a company called Millennium Credit Recovery. Mr. Walls.”

“I’ve never met any Mr. Walls.”

“No. Apparently he’s never met you.”

Rosen turned back to his paper. Belsey admired the blue sheen of his jowls, the fine network of red veins starting to cover the skin. Mr. Walls, he thought; which of his creditors had sold on his expired dreams to Millennium Credit Recovery? What could he say when they eventually tracked him down?
Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another; for love of one’s fellow man is the whole of the law.
St. Paul. Patron saint of London.

“Have you heard of an Alex Devereux?” Belsey said.

“Who?”

“He lives on The Bishops Avenue. Devereux.”

Rosen’s face went thoughtful. He looked up from his paper.

“No,” he said. “Why?”

“He’s disappeared.”

“Not a crime last time I looked.” Rosen grinned. His teeth were yellow. He turned to the sports pages and his face went slack again.

Not a crime, no, Belsey thought. Every man and woman’s right. He ran Devereux’s name through the Police National Computer. It came back clean. He picked up the phone and called three morgues, twelve hospitals, River Police and central records but got no hits. Belsey filed Devereux as a Missing Person:
MisPer
, rhyming with whisper. Then he sat at his desk watching the street grow dark. The morning’s tide flowed back: commuters relieved of their day’s duty; children with au pairs, holding new paintings. Belsey stared at a report about an arson attack in Chalk Farm, a thirty-five-year-old man who had set fire to his old school. Then it was six o’clock and Trapping was in the doorway with a coat over his arm and a hopeful expression.

“Drink, Nick?”

“Not tonight, Rob. Loads on.”

Belsey waited until the office was empty. He typed “shame” into his PC and looked at a picture of a dead Nazi officer lying in a stream, a guard from a camp who’d shot himself. Once he was sure he was alone, Belsey printed the picture and locked it in his desk drawer. He rested his head on his arms and closed his eyes and wanted to go home.

T
he Wetherspoons on the Finchley Road could be found on the top floor of a shopping and leisure centre, beyond the gym and interior design store and the eight-screen cinema. The whole place was washed with a comatose serenity. Belsey let an escalator lift him past water features and artificial plants to the pub. It was large, and bathed in a dim blue light as if to stop people finding their veins. Belsey walked to the farthest corner, sat down and listened to a CD get stuck and no one care. He liked the Wetherspoons. It felt like a departure lounge. He liked bars in chain hotels and airports and train stations; places with no smell and no attempt to mean anything. In these places an individual could gather their thoughts.

Belsey checked his companions: several pensioners, meditative at their individual tables, a couple with the hurried intimacy of adulterers, neat staff talking Polish and an office party kicking off. Floor-length windows looked out over six lanes of the Finchley Road, as if any view was worth seeing. Belsey put his hands in his pockets and watched the cars, wondering if this was a crisis. They say no one changes until they hit the bottom. He’d always imagined it like a crash, but perhaps it was like reaching the bottom of the ocean, with everything a little weightless and unreal.

The office workers were drinking hard, encouraging on the weekend oblivion. It was Wednesday. They had their ties low, blouses open, company card behind the bar. Belsey got up, circled the group and walked to the barmaid.

“Can I put three pints of Stella on the tab?” he asked.

“Of course.” The girl poured his drinks and rang it up and put the receipt behind a MasterCard on the back shelf. “Anything else?”

Belsey picked up a menu. “Do you recommend this City Platter?”

“It’s very popular.”

“I’ll get one of those. And a vodka tonic, double, maybe some pork scratchings.”

“OK.”

“Sorry if we’re being a bit rowdy,” he said, as she fixed the vodka.

“Someone leaving?”

“Someone leaving, someone joining. Everyone’s celebrating. It feels like everyone’s moving somewhere. How long have you been working here?”

“Three weeks.”

“How are you finding it?”

“Fine.”

“It’s one of my favourite places.”

Belsey drank the vodka tonic at the bar and took the pints and pork scratchings to his table. He felt, momentarily, a longing for his phone; felt the impossibility of being contacted, like a static charge. Incommunicado, he thought. He would have liked to contact his bank, more than any of his friends and family. It was a morbid longing; he did not know what he would say. At least the bank already knew his shame. He could apply for bankruptcy. Moral bankruptcy too. But he wasn’t convinced he wanted to be saved. His predicament was a force at his back and he wanted to be propelled.
Not a crime last time I looked
. To vanish. To start again. He could sense an extraordinary option growing on the horizon.

Belsey drank the pints in quick succession. While he drank he tested his soul for a sense of failure, pressing gently inwards like a crash victim touching his ribs. But he couldn’t feel it. He needed sleep. Images of bus shelters, railway stations, shopping centre doorways passed through his mind like a sequence learned in childhood: the body-sized surfaces of the city in which a man may lie and not be disturbed. The platter arrived: chicken wings, garlic bread, cocktail sausages, potato wedges, nachos, some sour cream and barbecue sauce. He ate steadily.

There was always Iraq, of course. An old acquaintance from training college had tried to persuade Belsey to go out there. Simon Nickels worked for a private security contractor in Baghdad. Belsey had got a call out of the blue.

“Drinks at the police club. On me. All the old boys.”

Who were the old boys? Belsey wondered. When he got there it was only Simon, standing at the bar. He had grown a moustache. Belsey possessed a vague memory of him passing out in a bath at a party.

“You should come over. Sunny there. Choice of three swimming pools.”

“Three, you say.”

“And we give you weapons training. Beautiful gear they’ve got. Top of the range.”

“That’s not very enticing.”

“There’s a golf course, a cinema. Everything you could want.”

“There’s a golf course and a cinema in Finchley.”

Nickels wiped the froth off his moustache. He had a tan line on his ring finger where a wedding band had been.

“It’s City banker money. You say to yourself: play a bit of squash, stay in shape, don’t hit the bottle too much, in a couple of years you’ve got the mortgage paid off and the kids’ university fees sorted.”

“I don’t have any children.”

“You will.”

“Who else are you seeing while you’re over here?”

“Only you,” he said. “Only you.”

That was three weeks ago.

The barmaid went to clear tables. Belsey stared at the slot machine. Each pub’s small monument to chance. To supposed chance and the machinations behind it. He studied the game and make. He took a pound out of the tips saucer, considered calling the security contractor, then put it in the slot machine instead and lost.

At eight-thirty he was in the North Star, a small, functional pub with flat screens over its Victorian trimmings. He watched the news over the shoulder of one of the local after-work alcoholics who was talking about anal sex and derivatives. The news showed a young dark-skinned man moving in slow motion over a chain-link fence. The businessman was buying drinks for everyone and then he stopped and Belsey moved on to Ye Olde Swiss Cottage.

“Was I in here last night?” he asked.

“You were in, for sure.”

“Did I leave a phone?”

“No.”

The Cottage was built like a Swiss chalet, abandoned in the centre of a bad-tempered traffic junction. Few risked the crossing to enjoy its dour Alpine charm. But the pub had a side room with a good pool table. Belsey played two frames, won both, and when a fight started he moved on. The Adelaide, the Enterprise. At some point he crashed a birthday party in the Camden Holiday Inn. He was happy there. And then he was outside again. Everything was fine. He moved down the ladder gracefully from the Neptune to the Cobden Arms to the Sports Bar, which had karaoke so raw it felt like Greek tragedy.

“Singing, Nick?”

“Not tonight.”

“I want you to meet my friend. Anne, Nick’s a detective.”

“A detective!”

“Not for much longer.”

“I’ve always wanted to meet a detective.”

“I’m not going to be one for much . . .”

But he was OK. Into the back streets of Hampstead, where the world seemed gemmed and out of an advert; the houses themselves fat jewels with rustic tables behind basement windows. And the Heath always beside him, a shadow; and then he was crossing the Heath in primeval mud again, through trees that seemed half familiar like the ghosts of a thousand old friends.

Belsey was halfway to The Bishops Avenue before he realised what he was doing.

T
he road was deserted, fantasy homes unlit behind their gates. It seemed as if part of the fantasy was that you didn’t even have to be there, present in your own life. Guards slept in booths beside the larger houses. Number 37 hung back from the road, shrouded in darkness, mourning. Belsey rang the bell. He felt forms shift, the ghost of Alex Devereux approach the intercom and retreat. The house itself appeared larger in the gloom, heavy with emptiness. Belsey unlocked the front gate and walked into the grounds. He climbed the steps and knocked. After a moment he unlocked the front door and stood on the threshold, waiting. He moved inside and sat on the edge of the hallway’s fountain while his eyes adjusted to the dim interior. Then he got up and familiarised himself with the alarm system, made sure it was all off, and shut the door.

Belsey left the lights off. He felt his way through grey shades of luxury to the second floor and opened the door to the roof. A hazy moonlight caught the undulation of the pool’s surface. It looked like treacle. Belsey let his clothes fall to the floor and dived in.

The water was freezing. Belsey surfaced with a gasp. But it felt good, his body naked in the cold water. It woke him up. He floated on his back, gazing at the light pollution. It felt as if the water itself was a kind of wealth and he was floating in it.

He swam a few lengths and dried off, went down to the kitchen, heated a can of soup and took it with bread and cheese into the living room. He ate, watching his silhouette in the television screen. Then he stood up, unlocked the French windows and walked out. A security light came on. The plants and garden furniture froze as if caught in nocturnal conspiracy. A fox stared back.
Hello, friend
. Belsey lowered himself to his heels and it ran into the undergrowth.

The garden extended to tall wooden fences with cameras at each corner. He wondered where the tapes were kept. There was what looked like a small bandstand and a rock garden with shallow pools of dark water flowing down to a pond. He couldn’t see any fish. He returned inside, locking the door and then—this surprised him—wiping his prints off the handle with a corner of curtain. What was he doing here? He explored the house, testing the silence for an enduring impression Devereux might have made upon it. He found a room with nothing but a card table and two decks of cards in neat piles, facedown. A door in the basement led to a small cinema with three rows of cushioned chairs and a smell of damp. There was a small bathroom in the basement, with its own TV screen in the wall and a lot of colourful glass bottles by the sink.

Belsey returned to the bedroom. A cordless telephone sat on the bedside table, beside a book entitled
Ten Secrets of Effective Time Management
.
Well, you found one secret to time management
, Belsey thought. He smelt Devereux’s sheets. He smelt the clothes in the cupboard and detected cigar smoke and a heavy aftershave he didn’t recognise. There were no photos anywhere. Perhaps he had taken them with him. There were security cameras in the front hall and study but he couldn’t find the control panel or hard drive. A floor-length mirror filled the centre of the right-hand bedroom wall. Belsey spent some time admiring the polished glass, the bedroom reflected in it, trying on Devereux’s clothes: double-cuff shirts; wide, unfashionable ties.