A Cast of Vultures (7 page)

Helena knows about everything. ‘The Home Office compiles figures for arrests, and it’s likely it’s broken down geographically,’ she said, almost absently, as if this were the type of question a mother expected from her child.
Mummy, why is the sky blue? Mummy, where did Fido go when he died? Mummy, how do you find out about drug dealers?
‘That is, if you mean in Britain.’ As if I might be interested in drug dealing in Pretoria, or Novosibirsk.

‘Yes, here. In my neighbourhood.’

One of the blessings of Helena is that, while she knows everything, and everyone, she rarely displays any curiosity.
If she had asked me why I wanted to know, I would have said vaguely that I needed it for a manuscript I was working on. In the face of her lack of follow-up, though, I found myself explaining. ‘A house on Talbot’s Road burnt down at the weekend. They found a man dead in a shed outside, and the assumption from the circumstances is that he was an arsonist, using fires to cover his drug dealing. He worked with a youth group, mentoring boys, and they seem to think that was suspicious too. That he was using the boys as part of his distribution network. So I wanted to know more about the link between the youth groups and gangs, and how drug-distribution systems operated – how he would have been using the boys, if he could have been doing it without some of the other boys knowing.’ Sam believed Harefield was clean, after all.

‘What does the group do?’ asked Helena. ‘Was it a sports group? Did they travel to play matches, perhaps?’

‘No, I could see how that would work. But this sounds much more harmless: they just made T-shirts with skateboard logos on them.’

Helena sounded engaged now. ‘To sell them?’

I had no idea, so I said, smartly, ‘I have no idea.’

‘There’s a starting point, then. Selling is already a distribution network. Who they sold to, and where, might tell you more. However, it’s not my area.’ I’d never heard Helena say she didn’t know something before. If I kept a diary, I’d pull it out now and paste a gold star on the page in commemoration. ‘The police are the people to ask, but you know that.’ By which she meant, if I wasn’t asking Jake, she presumed there was a reason. ‘Otherwise an academic who works in the field? Criminology? I’ll see who I can find.’

And she was gone. One more task in Helena Clair’s ever-expanding, ever-achievable To-Do list: Find my daughter a criminologist.

I was still shaking my head at the phone when I heard voices in the open-plan area outside my office. I leant back to look around the door. Yep, the seething masses had seethed. I picked up my cup and headed to the kitchen.

As had everyone else. There was a group of four inside, which meant the little galley space was at capacity, and then in the hall around it was what looked like an early-morning drinks party, except that everyone was clutching a mug, and the conversation was not superficial. Instead it was ‘Did you hear?’ and ‘What if?’ I joined in. I knew it was pointless, that everyone else knew it was pointless, but it was our livelihood, and no one was going to get any work done before the mystery meeting we’d been summoned to.

We quickly ran through the possible rumours, and moved on to the impossible ones, before settling into more ordinary conversation, some work-related, some social, and even more falling into that fuzzy in-between area. Publishing is relentlessly social, and so a conversation about authors, or agents, or acquisitions can, in the blink of an eye, shift from work – Did you know that XXX agent had sold YYY’s new novel to ZZZ? – to gossip – Did you know that XXX was sleeping with YYY, and that was why the novel wasn’t offered to QQQ, because QQQ had had a relationship with YYY, and it had ended messily?

All good things must come to an end, however, and as it got closer to ten, conversations grew quieter, and then ceased, and we headed down to the meeting.

Our group sidled in as though we’d been caught smoking
behind the bike shed, and had been sent to the headmaster’s office, shuffling silently to the back of the room instead of sitting at the table. Only swots sat at the front, so they could wave their hands in the air, calling, ‘Oh, please, Miss, I know the answer, I know,’ while the cool kids sneered balefully behind them.

And, in a fine example of how school life never leaves you, I stood halfway between the two groups. I knew – I’d always known – that I was a swot, not a cool kid, but I’d so longed to be the latter and evade the former that I’d always ended up on the edges of both. I told myself I wasn’t in between, that I was just standing at the front of the group by the wall because I was short, but I knew in my heart I belonged with the nerds. Screw it. I pushed back into the wall crowd, and watched Olive, who was standing at the end of the room away from the door talking to three people.

One was Evie, her secretary. The other two were strangers, I was pretty sure. I leant towards Miranda, who was behind me – there had never been any doubt she was cool. ‘Do we know them?’

‘Never seen them before. None of us has.’

What the assistants didn’t know wasn’t worth knowing. If no one in the room recognised them, they weren’t publishing people.

As we waited for the rest of the company to arrive, I watched the two strangers. They were both in their twenties, he probably a handful of years older than she. He looked like he thought he was good-looking, and he was, in that he was young, with lots of well-cut brown hair, matched by a well-cut dark suit. Those three things
– youth, good hair and good clothes – get you a long way in your twenties. In a few years he’d be pudgy, but now he was just a little, well, soft was probably the best word. His features were a little too small for his face, and they would grow smaller as he grew bigger. His colleague was the opposite. She was not naturally attractive, having forceful, masculine features that were greatly oversized for her tiny frame: heavy, blue-veined eyelids, big horsey teeth. But while the man assumed his natural advantages would carry him through, she had taken her disadvantages and turned herself into something spectacular. Her hair was blonde and done in an elaborate 1930s style. She wore no make-up, and a pair of thick, black-framed spectacles ensured its lack was noticeable. The push-pull continued with her suit, which was entirely office-appropriate, neither too low-cut nor too short, but so fitted you could count every clavicle on her whip-thin body. She was, basically, every man’s fantasy dominatrix librarian.

I was pulled out of my girly fan-clubbing when Olive cleared her throat. She didn’t have to do more, because no one had been talking since we’d arrived. ‘Thank you for coming.’ She looked up from her notes and grinned. ‘Not that you had a choice.’

That was why we liked Olive.

‘As you know, we’ve had a hard year.’ Smiles vanished. ‘Our investors, however, are behind us. Profits, while they have dropped, are carrying us through. We have plans for new markets’ – she looked over at the digital media team, who, I noted unkindly, were sitting with the nerds – ‘and we have some very promising projects in the pipeline.’

We began to relax, even as we knew that we shouldn’t.
If everything was so perfect, why were we there, and who were these people?

‘However.’ There it was. ‘However, it has been a hard year. To try and forestall more hard years, we have been looking at our structural organisation.’

I looked around the room and nearly laughed. Everyone over the age of thirty-five had clenched their teeth. It is impossible to work in publishing for more than five years without the company that employs you undertaking a restructure. It’s one of those things you just live through, like chickenpox. Or maybe something a little more serious, like shingles. It’s not as bad as the Black Death: it only kills a few. But when times are hard, managers decide to reorganise how the company is run, and who reports to whom.

Normally, within each company, there are a bunch of mini-publishers, called imprints. Timmins & Ross published about half its books with T&R on the spine. For the rest, ten years ago they’d bought out a publisher of craft books that was going bust, and so our craft books were still published under the old name. Then there were our sports books, our literary fiction, our business list – each of them was published under a different imprint. Each imprint had it own editors, its own reporting structures and bosses. Apart from editorial, where an in-depth knowledge of the subject was essential – it doesn’t take a genius to understand that the sports editor shouldn’t acquire books on economics – other departments, like design, marketing and publicity, were pooled. Most companies are organised like this, and departments and reporting lines are, for the most part, a mixture of history, organic development,
company takeovers, and changes in structure to give people you wanted to hire a job they were suited for. And then there was that other ingredient, the pragmatic ‘it works better this way’.

But because it was hard to give one reason why any imprint or department was structured the way it was, it was also the standard jumping-off point for anyone who wanted to ‘fix’ things. If Bob didn’t, or did, report to Accounting, or sales didn’t have oversight of promotional material, all would be well, and we’d make a billion pounds a minute. That was always the standard explanation, and it was the reason, too, that we were clenching our teeth. Another restructure, with the expense, time, energy and upheaval that that entailed, and then in a few months we’d end up just where we’d been before. I’m not being cynical. Before I worked at T&R, after a restructuring at my old company that took months, and cost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, my boss was shocked when I pointed out that the shiny new job he was offering me covered half of what I was already doing, and it came with a higher salary. That was a fun day.

Except that it hadn’t been, and this wasn’t going to be either. I refocused on Olive. She was introducing the two strangers who were – oh joy – management consultants. They would, she assured us brightly, be working their way through the company over the next few weeks, meeting staff, individually and in groups, to discuss what we did, and come up with new and thrilling ways of doing it in half the time for a tenth of the money.

A few people stopped pretending, and as Olive painted this rosy image of our gloriously efficient and financially
prosperous future, sighs could be heard. By the time she’d finished, the gloves were off, and arms were crossing across bodies around the room. Not happy.

Olive knew it. Her smile, normally so sunny, grew tight. ‘I know you’ll welcome Adam Rossiter,’ she said, her tone warning,
You’d better
. He stood and the woman beside him sat back. He smiled at us with flagrantly bored insincerity, and read out a paragraph from a sheet he held. His company (name unintelligible) was so excited to be working with a publisher as well known as – he checked the paper again – as Timmins & Ross. He was looking forward to learning from us as much as we learnt from them, and it was a great opportunity.

So great that he couldn’t be bothered to memorise the four sentences he’d just read. Or the name of the company that was paying his bill. Or look at anyone. Or introduce his colleague.

My arms were folded too. It was either that, or I’d throw something. Once. Just once. Just one sodding time, I wanted to be in a meeting where, if the people doing a presentation were a man and a woman, the woman got to speak. Not even lead. Just speak.

Today was not going to be that day, but at least I was not alone. As we walked out, Sandra, from publicity, said in a whisper intended to be heard in the next county, ‘Since she’s got two X-chromosomes, no one needs to know her name.’

Olive and her little management buddies retreated to a huddle by the window, and the rest of us just retreated.

Miranda trailed me into my office. ‘What’s going to happen?’

I waved my hand in dismissal. ‘A bunch of bullshit. They’ll piss around for a few months, send in a bill for a few hundred thousand pounds, and after they’ve gone we’ll reorganise their reorganisation so that we can get the same work done we were already doing, after we’ve hired new people to replace the ones they made redundant.’

She stiffened. ‘Redundant?’

I was careless. ‘Management consultants never think they’ve done a good job if everyone is happy when they leave.’ Then I looked at her, wide-eyed and terrified. I’d forgotten she was only twenty-two and hadn’t been through this before. And she’d told me a few weeks before that she and a friend had made an offer on their first flat. ‘Try not to worry. I know that sounds impossible, but you’re essential. Your job is essential.’

She didn’t look convinced. And she looked less convinced by late afternoon. I’d come back after our weekly cover meeting, which is when the art department shows the potential designs for the jackets of the upcoming books, to be approved by the editors, marketing, sales and publicity people. Everyone was on edge, and discussions that would normally have been calm, even pleasant, degenerated into playgroup-like squabbling about who had delivered work late, and whose fault it was. Finding a memo from the consultants to the senior editors on my desk was the icing on the cake. They were, they wrote, setting up meetings with each division ‘to map out and explore our journey in the creative enterprise that is Timmins & Ross’. After that group hug, a stark order: block out three hours on Tuesday – that is, in less than three working days, we needed to clear our calendars, whatever we had scheduled. They had
written ‘please’, but it was an order. If our journeys in the creative enterprise were meant to involve doing any work, that was just too damn bad. Then the sign-off: ‘We look forward to learning from you!’ and a smiley face.

Miranda must have heard me reading, because she called through the wall: ‘After the morning with the editors, they’ve summoned the assistants for the afternoon. So no one will do any work the entire day. Isn’t that great?’ I ditched my earlier plan to become a dentist and decided I’d run away and join the circus. I could be a clown. I already had lots of badly fitting clothes.

T
HE GENERAL FEELING
of irritability that pervaded the building was not helped by the weather. It had already been hot on the commute in. It quickly worked its way past that, to hotter, and then to Oh-dear-lord-this-is-unbearable. I frowned at the sky as I headed home. When it was my turn to run the universe, things were going to be very different. But it wasn’t my turn yet, and I waded to the Tube through the lowering, clammy air, air that felt as if a thunderstorm were due. And, until it arrived, the Tube itself was going to be worse. Fancy-pants cities like Paris and New York have air-conditioning on their undergrounds. We Brits pretend we’re too tough to need it, butching it out summer after summer. Today the temperatures underground would have seen you prosecuted for cruelty to animals, had you been transporting cattle.

No cattle in my tube carriage, just lots of smelly, sweaty people. When I was above ground again, I made a quick
stop and then headed out of the station. As I walked past the café, Mo knocked on the window and gestured me in. She was always there: her hours seemed to be ‘From opening until she fell over from tiredness’.

‘Steve hasn’t talked about anything else,’ she began. ‘At least, that’s when he hasn’t been drawing plans of what he can grow with so much extra space.’ As she spoke, she was boxing up a salad. ‘He asked me to say, if I saw you, that he’d like to start clearing the ground as soon as possible. He wanted to check it was OK with you.’

I shrugged. ‘Sure. Whenever he likes.’

She passed me the box, again refusing payment. Between my future harvest from Steve, Mr Rudiger’s contributions, and now salads from Mo, I might end up like Dennis Harefield, never having to cook at all. The thought of Harefield made me say, as I balanced the salad on the top of my bookbag, ‘Can you sit for a few minutes? Do you have time for a cup of tea?’

I don’t know what possessed me. I’d never said more than three sentences to the woman before. I don’t like strangers. I don’t like bland chat. And I don’t like tea.

Mo was as startled as I was, and then she smiled. ‘Thanks. It would be good to have a break.’

She made herself a cup of tea, and me some coffee – she paid attention to her customers. We sat.

I couldn’t exactly say,
So, tell me, why
were
you giving space to a drug dealer?
I went for, ‘Is it always so quiet in here in the evenings? Why do you stay open if it is?’ instead.

‘We used to close after the school run was finished, but once I began the prepared food, even though we still don’t
get customers who sit, the rush-hour takings went up and the owner extended our hours. So it’s really my own fault.’ She slumped, and then straightened. I got the feeling that Mo was used to fighting her own battles, and everyone else’s. ‘On the other hand, it’s because I found him another revenue stream that he’s letting us stay in the flat upstairs while we’re … until we’re …’

She might be used to fighting, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘homeless’, and the ‘until’ made it worse. Until what? Even if the house was rebuilt and made habitable again, there was no guarantee that they’d be allowed to move back into what had been their home for years. If anything, now it was forcibly going to be renovated, it was almost a certainty the owner would make sure they didn’t move back. If he hadn’t known about them before, he did now.

Her voice trembled. ‘We’re still on the council waiting list for housing, but who knows how long that will take? And that was home. We’d been there ten years; there was every chance we’d have been able to stay. Dennis was helping us with that—’ She cut herself off.

This had to be horribly painful: Dennis had deceived them, and used their generosity against them. ‘Had you known him a long time?’

‘Three, maybe four years? More?’ She waved her hand vaguely. ‘He was a regular at the Neighbourhood Association, and we knew him from there. Once the boys began their T-shirt thing—’ She paused, checking I was up to date with ‘the T-shirt thing’. I was. ‘After that, he needed a place for their equipment. The shed was convenient for him, and he was helpful to us – he …’
She took a deep breath and finished off her tea before she went on, her voice steadier. ‘He was also helping the boys with the council, which was planning to sell off the railway arches where they skated. Dennis was helping them work with the Neighbourhood Association to protect the space. That’s what he was good at. He was …’ Her lip trembled again. Then she pulled her shoulders back. This was the Mo who looked after her family, the café, her customers. She was a carer, not someone who was cared for. She stood, pushing her cup and emotion aside. ‘Speaking of which, will you be coming to the Neighbourhood Association meeting this evening?’ She gave me a stern look.

Which I deserved. I had never once, in the twenty-odd years I’d lived there, gone to a Neighbourhood Association meeting. I’m not terrific with groups, I don’t play well with others. In truth, if I could find an anti-joiner club to join, I would. We’d have badges that read ‘Home Alone’, and we would wear them proudly at the hour dedicated to our meetings, as we each sat quietly by ourselves in our own houses.

‘I’ll try,’ I said. That was a translation of,
I will, right after hell freezes over
.

Unfortunately, Mo appeared to be bilingual, and her stare responded to the meaning, not the words. ‘I’ll see you there, then,’ she said, dismissing me with a flick of her grey plait. ‘St Thomas’s church hall. Seven o’clock.’

‘Sir, yes, sir!’ I replied, snapping out a spiffy salute. But only in my head. Out loud, I just repeated, ‘I’ll try.’ Even to myself I sounded meek, not evasive, this time.

Another bossy older woman. Maybe it was like
ducklings. I’d imprinted on Helena at birth, and now I automatically followed the instructions of any imperious-sounding woman a set number of years older than me. Blaming it on biological determinism made me feel a bit better, because otherwise I was just a wimp.

Refusing to entertain that as a possibility, when I got home I dropped my bag by the door and took my purchases upstairs to Mr Rudiger. I knocked, and when he opened the door I didn’t even bother going through the routine of inviting him downstairs so that he could refuse and invite me in.

Instead, I just waved the plastic bag in the air. ‘Pimm’s!’ I carolled, in the tone of a day-care assistant whipping out the SpongeBob SquarePants jigsaw. Only then did I hesitate. When I’d tried out iced coffee on Mr Rudiger, he’d gone all Central European on me. Maybe six decades in Britain wasn’t long enough to appreciate Pimm’s either? But it wasn’t like Marmite, where your mother’s mother’s mother had to have been born here before you didn’t gag when you smelt it. Pimm’s was cool, delicious, and 99.9 per cent gin. What’s not to like?

And Mr Rudiger was smiling, and it wasn’t that rictus smile he’d given me with my iced coffee. ‘We’re on the terrace,’ he said.

We? This was the first time I’d just barged in, and he had company. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’ I began to edge backwards, but he took the bag in one hand, and my elbow in the other. As usual, he looked benevolently amused by me.

Once out on the terrace, I saw the joke too. Helena. Not
that she was a joke, of course, just that I hadn’t expected her. I wasn’t aware she was on visiting terms with Mr Rudiger, and she rarely left her office before six, mostly much later. I looked at my watch: not quite six now, and from the empty glass in front of her, she’d been there for a while. I kissed her, but raised my eyebrows.
What time do you call this, Missy?
the eyebrows said sternly.

Before she had time to reply to them, Mr Rudiger had reappeared with a tray. Glasses, lots of ice, a jug of Pimm’s and a pair of scissors, which he quickly used in his window boxes to cut some mint and – I sniffed – lovage, maybe? I wasn’t certain I knew what lovage smelt, or even looked, like, but it sounded right for Pimm’s. Like most things in life, I’d read about it rather than experienced it.

I had my mind on higher things, like gin, so it took me a moment to notice that Helena was making a space for the tray on the small table, which was otherwise covered with files and documents.

‘Are you two going into business together?’ I asked, sitting down.

Helena laughed. ‘Perhaps we should. There must be money in children’s playgrounds?’ she suggested speculatively to Mr Rudiger.

He didn’t reply, merely looking amused again.

My nose was out of joint. My mother, and
my
friend and neighbour, discussing things
I
knew nothing about. I pretended to myself I was rising above it, and took the glass Mr Rudiger handed me. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do more, take a healthy swallow, or hold the iced glass to my face and neck. So I alternated the two, and felt much better.

Helena took a daintier sip, and deigned to fill me in. ‘Pavel is acting as an unofficial consultant to my women’s shelter,’ she said, gesturing to the files she had now neatly piled on one corner of the table.

I hadn’t known Helena was involved with a women’s shelter, but it didn’t surprise me. In addition to her full-time career as partner in a law firm, and her busy social life, Helena sat on what I conservatively estimated to be 197 committees and charities. I often wondered if she was secretly two people, or possibly even three, because I had no idea how she had time to do half of what she accomplished daily. And if she hadn’t been so damn nice, that would have been aggravating.

But she was nice. And she might be three people, so a new charity wasn’t a surprise. What Mr Rudiger had to do with a women’s shelter, however, I couldn’t imagine, so I put on my best do-go-on face, and waited.

Mr Rudiger waved away the title of consultant. ‘Helena asked me to look at the plans for the building. It’s a terraced house, so it’s not ideal.’

Helena was blunter. ‘It’s hopeless. We need to provide security for women and children who have left abusive homes, and the building just isn’t designed for that. Pavel has been suggesting low-cost ways of adapting the entrances so that visitors can be screened.’

Helena would co-opt the devil himself if his skill set was a good fit for one of her charities – central heating in the devil’s case, or barbecuing. She also disapproved of people who didn’t work. Mr Rudiger was past retirement age, but that wouldn’t slow Helena down. This was a win–win for her: she’d get the help her charity needed, and he’d be working. Now I thought about it, I couldn’t
understand why she hadn’t been around before.

I sat back, half-listening to the conversation about safety grilles and keys that couldn’t be duplicated, but mostly drifting, letting my gaze move gently from the plants – the tomatoes were nearly ripe, I noticed – to the houses and trees beyond. I was happy with my drink, and with company that only required my presence, not my participation.

More than happy. I was nearly asleep when Helena stood up and gathered her papers. I pulled myself back to the present and hastily ran through the contents of my fridge. ‘Would you like to stay for supper?’ I asked. ‘And would you like to come down too?’ I added to Mr Rudiger. While his refusal to go outside was almost absolute, he occasionally made forays down to my flat.

Helena had plans, as she always did, while Mr Rudiger simply shook his head: not tonight.

Which meant that by seven I had no real excuse. Jake had texted that the case he was working would keep him out ‘lateish’. Even if he’d had time to find out what had happened at the inquest, I wouldn’t get any information for hours, if then, while someone, or everyone, at the meeting would most likely have the most up-to-the-minute information. And since Jake was a policeman, even if he’d had time to get the facts, he wouldn’t have heard half the rumours and speculation. Local gossip would be far more extensive, and probably more accurate. I googled the church hall, and found it was two streets away from me. So I went.

I kept my head, though, aiming to arrive just after eight. With luck, I’d miss most of the main business, pick up the gossip and still get points for having attended. I
thanked my cynical stars as I slid into a seat at the rear, because an hour after the start time, the meeting was still going strong, the participants showing no sign of flagging. A group of about thirty sat on folding chairs. I suspected that most had come for the same reason I had. Five people sat facing the rest of us, the committee, or organisers, or whatever they called themselves. Viv was one of the five, and so was Mo.

Meetings are meetings, whatever the subject. This one, too, had a passive-aggressive minute-taker, and they were therefore fighting battles that had already been fought. Instead of being about cover copy, or illustrations, or marketing budgets, however, there was a skirmish about parking zones, a recapitulation of what sounded like a long-running saga of planning permits for change of use from residential to commercial zoning for some houses near the station, and an even longer-running tussle over the little neighbourhood park, which the committee wanted to have legally declared a common, so the council would be unable to sell it. I tranced out. Rather than attempting to follow the intricacies of zoning laws, I havered over whether I should offer a smaller advance for a book I had on submission, and leave the serial rights with the agent, or whether to wade in with a big-money offer and hope that we could sell serial for enough to cover my arse.

By the time I mentally rejoined the meeting I was in, rather than the one I’d be in the following day, things were winding down. It wouldn’t be much longer before I could hear about the inquest, as well as tell Viv what I’d learnt about Harefield, although now I’d seen that she and Mo
were on a committee together, I suspected she already knew.

The committee members finally stood, but even then they continued talking, clustered in a little group at the front. I stayed in my seat. Sooner or later they’d have to pass me on their way out, and I’d nab Viv when they did. I looked down the row to see if anyone wanted to get past me. The man next to me was the only one left. He had paid little more attention to the meeting than I had, texting or emailing the entire time. He didn’t look up now, either – he may possibly not even have noticed that the meeting was over. He wasn’t the sort I expected to see there. He was probably in his thirties, and was wearing a suit, while I’d imagined the meeting would be attended entirely by retirees, and – I looked at the people heading to the door – I wasn’t wrong, either. Over half were sixty-plus. Of the rest – I tried to categorise them as I waited – there was a heavy sprinkling of Mo-types, concerned, middle-aged women. The retirees had a few men among them, but the younger group was almost entirely female. Most of these were women who would grow up to be Mo, and then later to be Viv. From the contributions I had listened to, they were parents, teachers or social workers. Of the few younger men who had spoken, one had identified himself as a social worker, another was the local councillor. The man on my right on his phone appeared to be none of these things, and had his age and gender not made him stand out, his lack of interest, and his suit, would have.