Home. Blue sky and golden light.
I live in a newbuild house in Pentwyn. A modern semi built on an estate of modern semis. Every house has its own bit of paved driveway, its own garage, its own tiny patch of close-board fenced garden behind. Human rabbit hutches.
I let myself in.
The back of the house faces west, and is full of light. I wander outside and have a smoke, a slow one, sitting on a metal garden chair with the sun full in my face. When was the last time it rained? I can’t remember.
Why was I so sure that I was going to go the Mancinis’ funeral? Don’t know.
I sit outside until the sun leaves my face, then go to the shed to check my plants, then lock up and go inside. There’s not a lot in the fridge, and I feel tempted to nip over to my mam and dad’s, just ten minutes and half a world away. When I first moved in here, I did that all the time, so much so that I realized I hadn’t properly left home. These days I work hard to be more independent, so the fridge is all I’ve got. Some lettuce. Some sushi which is a day past its sell-by date, and a bean salad which is turning fizzy three days after its. I decide that fizzy beans won’t kill me, plonk everything onto a plate, and eat it.
After a few minutes of vegetating, doing nothing, I stir myself. Upstairs I have some putty adhesive somewhere and retrieve it, rubbing it around in my hands to warm it up. There’s a mirror over the mantelpiece in the living room. I don’t know what the point of mirrors is. They tell you what you already know.
I take it down and lean it against the fireplace, which—talking of useless—has never been used. I get the Mancini photos out of my bag and spread them over the floor and sofa. A dozen faces staring out at me. Faces I last saw in the mortuary.
I arrange and rearrange the pictures on the floor, trying to make sense of them.
The ones of Janet are good. There’s one which we found inside a bundle of photos at the squat. One of her alive. Face to the camera. Decent lighting. Nice, clear, useful. It’ll be a perfect picture to use when asking people to identify her. But it’s dull. It doesn’t hold my interest. I don’t like it.
I much prefer a shot of her taken at the crime scene. All expression gone. The contingencies of life wiped away. The person herself remaining. That photo I could look at for hours, and might well do except that it’s April who fascinates me. April Mancini, the sweet little dead girl. I’ve got six pictures, all eight-by-tens.
In a sudden burst of decisiveness, I thrust the pictures of Janet back into my bag and tack the pictures of April up over my mantelpiece, in two rows of three. She’s a peaceful presence. No wonder she was a popular child. I like having her in the house. The toffee apple kid.
“What do you have to tell me, little April?” I ask her.
She smiles at me, but tells me nothing.
I work hard for the rest of the evening. Social Services case files, the AAIB report. My Penry case notes, ready for the accountants tomorrow. Names. Numbers. Dates. Questions. Connections. At quarter to one in the morning, I stop, feeling done in and surprised at the time.
April’s face is staring down at me in sextuple. She’s not telling me anything, so I tell her good night and go to bed.
Accountants come in pairs these days. A middle-aged man in a dark suit and a sheen of perspiration, plus his younger accomplice, a woman who looks like her hobbies are arranging things in rows and making right angles.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to persuade Jackson to let me onto Lohan. He said not, but he also bothered to call me over to his office to say so. I can’t help feeling that our session was three-quarters bollocking, one-quarter encouragement, or something like that. In any case, it’s clear I won’t be allowed to work on Lohan properly until I’ve got the Penry case tidied away. I can’t do that until the lads and lasses of the Crown Prosecution Service tell D.C.I. Matthews that they’re as happy as pigs in muck, and that won’t happen until the accountants have produced a report that will give the CPS what they need.
“We’re missing about forty grand, yes? Known expenditures about forty grand greater than incomings, even taking into account the money we know he stole.”
“Forty-three, seven five four,” says the more senior accountant, giving me the precise number, as though I were unable to read it. “Of course, that’s only an estimate. We don’t have receipts for most of the expenditures.”
I stare at him. Don’t have receipts? The man’s an embezzler, for fuck’s sake. You expect him to keep receipts? But I don’t say so. Instead I say, “The question is, When can you get us your report?”
“I believe we’re scheduled to deliver in the second week in June. Karen …?”
The younger accomplice has a name, apparently. She also has a goal now. Find a precise date. Eliminate numerical uncertainty. She dives into her papers to give me the exact date.
I interrupt.
“Sorry. That won’t work. We’ve got a gap of forty thousand pounds to make sense of. We’ll need your report right away, even if it’s only in draft form.”
We squabble for a bit, but I hang tough. I make it sound as though the forty K gap is their fault, which it isn’t. As though D.C.I. Matthews is pissed off, which he isn’t. Just to make my arguments even more effective—and to annoy the female accomplice—I seize the moment to make a mess of the papers in front of me. No right angles anywhere now. No rows of anything. Karen’s feeling twitchy.
Eventually I win. They’ll deliver a draft report to the CPS by the end of the week, and a final version later in June. I’m delighted, but do my best not to show it. To celebrate, as I’m showing the accountants out of the building, I shake hands with the female accomplice very earnestly and for three seconds longer than she is comfortable with. “Thank you so much for your help,” I say, looking into her eyes. “Thank you so much.” As she’s retrieving her hand, I give her upper arm a quick squeeze and fire off a for-your-eyes-only smile at her. She almost runs for the door.
Upstairs again, I arrange things for the day. D.C.s are meant to show initiative, but my experience has been that no one likes it if you show too much, and I’ve got a feeling that D.C.I. Jackson would like it if I showed a whole lot less. On the other hand, D.C.I. Jackson has spent less time than I have with the Weatherbys breed register, and a lead is a lead is a lead.
So I arrange a meeting with the Crown Prosecution Service. I say I’ll come over to their place. I let Matthews know that’s what I’m doing and tell Ken Hughes (because Jackson is out of the office) that he’s going to have to put someone else on Lohan telephone duties.
When I’m done, I take my papers, get into my car, drive out of the car park, and call the CPS people. I tell them that something’s come up and ask is it possible to postpone things? We make a new appointment for four that afternoon. Six clear hours to use as I please.
I drive as fast as speed cameras permit over to Chepstow. A Welsh town, but one that smells English. One of King Edward I’s castles plonked high above the river to remind us all of how it is. There are invaders and the invaded. The English fuckers and the Welsh fucked.
Bettinson’s house is a redbrick 1970s thing, all sliding doors and brown carpets. I don’t get to see it though. His office is in his garage. No natural light, just halogens overhead and on the desks. Two desktops and a laptop. A printer. Camera gear and lighting equipment stashed in a corner.
Bettinson has got that look photographers have. Like a teenage boy has been given stubble, a hangover, and freedom from female interference. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and cargo pants, and a much-pocketed canvas vest hangs over the back of a chair. He is brown-haired and doesn’t use deodorant.
“Coffee?”
0 nhận xét:
Đăng nhận xét