Capital (60 page)

With these thoughts, full of apprehension, Zbigniew got dressed and went downstairs. Number 42 Pepys Road was almost finished. The paintwork downstairs needed touching up, then Mrs Leatherby had to look around and point out things that weren’t satisfactory, and then they were done. The Pepys Road era of Zbigniew’s life would be over. Maybe another part of his life would begin; he certainly hoped so. It all depended on what Matya said.

‘W
hat, now? Right now? You don’t mean right now?’ said Zbigniew.

They were in a café on the high street, leaning with their heads close together. The agenda for the date had been coffee, film, dinner, and then who-knew-what. She had never looked lovelier. Now, though, it seemed there was a different plan.

‘Right now. This minute. From here – you take it from here and you go to see her. Call first. But you go to see her.’

‘But it’s Sunday afternoon!’

‘So what?’

Zbigniew blew out his cheeks.

‘Right now,’ he said. That was Matya’s solution to his problem. She had not judged or criticised or second-guessed – which, he realised, was what he had both expected and feared. She wasn’t the type to say, take the money and run. And he was glad that she wasn’t like that. He was even gladder that she hadn’t done a Piotr and denounced him or told him off. But she had been clear and firm on what to do next, and it wasn’t what Zbigniew had expected to hear. He had been braced for more of the agonising that had been going on inside him. Instead, she simply told him to take the suitcase to Mrs Leatherby straight away: right now.

Moving slowly, as if daring Matya not to stop him, he fished his
mobile, the Nokia N60 which had changed his life, out of his pocket. She watched. He found the number, held it up in front of Matya so she could see. Matya made no gesture. So Zbigniew pressed the dial button.

The phone rang six times. OK, she was out. Zbigniew moved to break the connection and then –

‘Hello?’

‘This is Zbigniew. The builder. I need to come and see you. Now, today.’

‘Oh! What’s wrong?’ said Mrs Leatherby.

‘Nothing but I need to come and see you. I can’t say over the mobile. You are at home?’ Of course she was, that was where he had called her. Sounding about as worried as a person could possibly be, Mary confirmed that she was at home. Zbigniew said he would be there in about an hour and a half, depending on the train times.

‘And now you have to come with me,’ he said to Matya. This was his revenge.

‘Why?’ Matya folded her arms.

‘I can’t go to this place I’ve never been before, and by the way I have no idea where exactly it is, carrying a suitcase with half a million pounds in cash, on my own.’

That was his excuse, anyway. She had grumbled a little, and pretended to prefer the idea of sitting alone in her flat, listening to the radio, before giving in. They had left the café and gone back to Pepys Road, Matya’s first time there since leaving the employ of the Younts. Zbigniew had taken her up to the room where he was sleeping – which stank of paint, something he always noticed when he came in from outside – and showed her the suitcase. Matya had looked at it, then looked at him, and said, a little sadly:

‘This is probably the only time in our lives we’ll ever see that amount of money in cash.’

And now Matya sat across from Zbigniew in the rattling carriage of the train to Chelmsford. The train kept seeming to have got out of London into the countryside, before being reswallowed by the suburbs. At one point there was a stretch of green fields, and Matya
thought they’d got out of the city, but then there was a long sequence of tower blocks. Some sections of the journey were as beautiful as anything in Hungary, and some were as ugly as anything in Hungary.

The trip was supposed to take forty-five minutes, but at one point the train stopped in a field, without explanation, for a quarter of an hour, so now it was late. The compartment was full. Across from them sat a young man, wearing a baseball cap pulled down, staring straight in front of him while he listened to music over headphones and chewed gum. There was a can of lager on the table in front of him. Zbigniew had thought about putting the suitcase on the overhead luggage rack, but then found his head filled with pictures of the train braking or jolting and the suitcase being thrown down and bursting open and the air filling with ten-pound notes, the passengers gaping at him while he crawled around scrambling to pick up the cash … so no, not the overhead rack. Not the space for luggage at the end of the compartment. In the end he put it in front of his seat with his legs folded over it and every time Matya looked at him she had the impulse to laugh.

They pulled into Chelmsford station. Outside there was a car park and a café. A solitary taxi was waiting at the rank. The cab driver had his eyes closed with a newspaper folded over his stomach. Matya pointed at the café.

‘I’ll wait for you there. If it looks like you’re going to be more than an hour or so, call me,’ she said. Then she leaned over, kissed him, and set off across the car park.

The cab driver gave a jolt when Zbigniew opened the door, then shook himself awake. The trip to Mrs Howe’s house took ten minutes, past houses which to Zbigniew’s eyes all looked very similar, bungalows and near-bungalows. He had thought it would be more like a village but this was just a different sort of town. Zbigniew took the cabbie’s mobile number and paid him – five pounds, much cheaper than London. As he got out of the taxi he moved to shut the door, then realised, just as he was about to slam it closed, that he’d left the suitcase on the back seat. That would have been a very good way for the story to end.

M
ary had been trying to keep herself busy since Zbigniew’s strange phone call. She was at the kitchen sink, washing up some pots which were in theory clean but which hadn’t been used for a bit, when she saw Zbigniew step out of the taxi and start walking up the drive.

Since her mother’s death, Mary had not been miserable all the time, but she had been flat. That was the word for it – flat. Of course she knew that what had happened was in one major way a relief: her mother had been set free of her suffering. Some people died lingeringly, horribly, for a period stretching into years. Petunia had suffered, and it had been too slow, but it wasn’t the worst of all deaths, and Mary was glad of that. And there was one kind of good news in her death – or what would have been good news if it could be considered in the abstract. The house had been valued at £1.5 million and the estate agent was bullish about the figure. Mary would never have to worry about money again. Indeed, if she didn’t want to, she’d never even have to think about it again. Alan’s garages did nicely and they were already well-off – exactly how well-off, she didn’t know, because it wasn’t the kind of question she liked to ask.

That was, for Mary, the trouble. The equation was too plain and too depressing. In the debit column, she had lost her mother; in the credit column, she now had a gigantic pile of cash. It felt as if her
remaining parent had been taken away and in return she’d been given lots of money. Nothing else about her life had changed. Alan was still solid and dependable and, in his solid dependable way, a little distracted. Ben was still behind his wall of preoccupations, either in his bedroom doing God-only-knew-what on the internet or out doing God-only-knew-what with his friends; it wasn’t at all obvious to Mary which she liked less. The great positive addition to her life was her dog Rufus, a Yorkshire Terrier who was now three months old, and who was friendly, good-natured, not very bright, and the only living thing who seemed excited at the idea of being in Mary’s company. Now, as Zbigniew came up to the door, Rufus first ran to it, then back to Mary to check that she was aware of what was going on – come quick, developments! – and then back to the front door to yap at the prospective intruder. Keeping Rufus in position with her foot – which wasn’t hard, since the dog was mainly showing off his keenness – Mary opened the door.

The Polish builder was carrying a battered old brown suitcase. As he usually did, he shook Mary’s hand very formally. ‘I am grateful to you for agreeing to see me with so little warning,’ said Zbigniew.

‘Come in,’ said Mary. The roof has fallen in. One of my co-workers has been killed in an accident. I stayed the week at my girlfriend’s house and squatters have taken over your property. I have forged your signature on legal documents and 42 Pepys Road is now mine. The house has burned down in a fire and I wanted to tell you in person. Over the months working at your mother’s old house I have come to know you and love you as a person: please run away with me. But the builder’s manner did not correspond with any of those propositions. He looked preoccupied, but he did not look like the bearer of catastrophic news.

‘Tea?’ said Mary, gesturing towards the sitting room.

‘Is there a possibility of coffee?’

‘Coffee,’ said Mary. She went out and bustled in the kitchen while he waited in the sitting room. When she came back he was still standing by the window, looking at the largely featureless driveway, still holding the suitcase. Mary poured the coffee, sat down, and gestured for him to sit too. Then she waited.

‘Mrs Leatherby,’ said Zbigniew. ‘This is not easy to explain. It is better if I simply show you.’ He turned the suitcase to face her and opened it. Zbigniew watched her face.

‘Five hundred thousand pounds,’ he said.

Afterwards, Mary always remembered how quickly she had realised what had happened. It was not a process that took time. She just simply and immediately knew. It helped that she recognised the suitcase. Yes, that was it, it all flowed from the suitcase. Dad, cash, suitcase, hiding place, sudden death, builder finds it, not sure what to do, fesses up. She got it straight away. It was obvious what had happened – he’d found the money and had then had no idea what to do with it. Mary knew what that felt like.

It had been interesting to hear about the secret compartment. Her father had of course been handy, in his miserish way. He had no enjoyment of DIY but his passion for saving money was so keen he did it anyway. So he had evidently built himself this hideaway. It would have been in character for him to plan a big revelation, almost certainly as a way of winning an argument. No doubt his fantasy went something like this: Petunia would say something about the need for security in old age, some money to supplement the pension which would be not all that generous during his life and would be less so after his death. She would say something about his needing to make more provision, he would goad her by talking about how you couldn’t trust anyone in the financial services industry, how they were all thieves, she would grow upset, he would then produce the suitcase and make his big revelation: see how I have provided for you. I may be cranky, but I’m not stupid. He would show her the money, the savings he had squirrelled away in cash, under the bed or somewhere, over years and years. And Petunia would be tearful and forgiving and apologetic and furious, all at once. That was the effect her father had had. Except that it hadn’t happened like that. It was lucky he hadn’t lived to see what happened after his death. He’d have been furious.

After the Pole went, Mary just sat there. It was a nice day, getting dark around five, and Alan made full use of it, coming home from the golf course only after nightfall. He had found Mary sitting downstairs
with all the lights off, so much in the dark that she’d given him a shock, a hell of a shock, when he saw her.

‘Crikey,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’

‘Good game?’ asked Mary.

‘Not bad. Got a bit stuck afterwards, he was droning on about his bloody in-laws again. It’s amazing the way he can repeat himself word for word and not think you’re going to mind. But don’t change the subject. What’s up?’

‘Sit down,’ said Mary. Then she opened the suitcase.

‘Christ on a bike,’ said Alan.

‘Half a million,’ said Mary. ‘My dad. Case in a secret compartment. The Pole found it.’

‘But—’ said Alan. Then he stopped. It was funny for Mary to see him at such a complete loss for words.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘They’re old tenners. Worthless. He hoarded it for so long it turned into waste paper.’

‘Not quite,’ said Alan, beginning to recover. He went over to the table where they kept the spirits and poured himself a gigantic Scotch, half of which he drank at a swallow. ‘Christ. You gave me a hell of a turn. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much cash in one go. Anyway, you’re half right. You can’t just take them somewhere and spend them. That tenner was withdrawn in the early nineties and it’s not legal tender any more. But the Bank of England still has to honour it.’

‘So we take it to the Bank of England. I can really imagine that, can’t you?’ Mary would wear a little hat and maybe a fur coat and would plonk the bag down on the counter and then pop it open to see their expressions change.

Alan drank the rest of his Scotch and poured a refill.

‘What happens is, you can’t use it yourself, but once the Bank’s issued it it’s still valid, always and for ever. The trouble is, a lot of the time, if there’s a fair bit of money, they want to know where it’s come from. So they ask lots of questions, income tax, inheritance tax, all that, and if you can’t show that it’s all legit, they investigate you, and the next thing you know they’re claiming tax plus fines. The fines can be up to a hundred per cent of the full amount. And then there’s
lawyers’ and accountants’ fees to pay, and most of the time you end up with hardly any of the money left.’

‘So it is waste paper after all, more or less,’ said Mary.

‘Give or take maybe a hundred grand.’ Alan finished his second whisky and started to pour himself another. Then he thought better of it and came across to Mary and gave her one of his super-powerful, rib-cracking hugs.

‘You all right?’ he said.

‘I’m glad my mother never knew,’ said Mary. ‘She’d have killed him.’

A
t number 27 Pepys Road, Patrick and Freddy Kamo were both loafing around, killing time, waiting for Mickey Lipton-Miller to call or to visit to report on what was supposed to be the conclusive meeting with the insurance company. This was meant to be It – the final offer. The settlement. The meeting had begun late the previous afternoon and Mickey had said that he would either call before nine in the evening or first thing the next day. Father and son had woken up early, waiting to hear from the agent, and now didn’t quite know what to do with themselves. Freddy had a go at
Halo 2
, but it didn’t take, and now he had put a CD of Fela Kuti on and was sitting at the table jiggling his legs, not really listening to the music. Patrick had been out to the newsagent and bought a newspaper, but found he couldn’t read it. The combination of fatigue, worry, and the English language made the letters dance on the page, failing to resolve into words whose meaning he could understand. He could ring home – Adede and the girls would certainly be up already – but that would be such an unsettled, anxious-seeming thing to do that it would make Freddy even more uncomfortable. So there was nothing to do except trust Mickey to be in touch as soon as he could.