Heaven's Light (10 page)

Barnaby tapped his pad. ‘Will you need us to arrange a mortgage? For the purchase price?’

‘No.’

‘How do you intend to pay?’

‘By banker’s draft. I’ll need the details of your client account. I intend to deposit the money at once.’

‘All of it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there some kind of deadline? Is it urgent?’

‘Of course.’ Zhu inclined his head. ‘Your city has a great future, Mr Barnaby. I intend to be part of it.’

Zhu studied him for a moment or two and Barnaby got to his feet, extending a hand, promising to speed the purchase over the inevitable hurdles. Depositing the entire sale price was extremely unusual, a gesture – Barnaby hoped – of intent.

Out in the corridor, Barnaby enquired, as a courtesy, whether there was anything else he could do. Zhu was scanning the row of framed nineteenth-century engravings hanging on the wall. The one at the end, Barnaby’s favourite, showed a huge tract of the naval dockyard. Zhu was looking at it now.

‘I need more,’ he said. ‘This is just the beginning.’

‘More hotels?’

‘More everything.’

‘Business opportunities?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you want me to look?’

Zhu was peering ever more closely at the print. ‘Yes, Mr Barnaby,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that would be advantageous.’

Liz Barnaby sat in her car, watching the drinkers milling around the garden of the pub. The Whippet was the kind of place she normally read about in the pages of the
Sentinel.
It cropped up time and time again, mostly in the special reports they carried on Mondays, gruesome descriptions of weekend vandalism, drug busts and assaults on local householders brave or silly enough to complain about the noise and the broken glass. The Whippet, by reputation, was one of the hardest pubs in the city. You went there at your peril.

Jessie was sitting at a table near the back of the garden. She was drinking something fizzy from a pint glass, taking tiny sips, no real enthusiasm. She was wearing a black T-shirt under a pair of denim dungarees and the way she kept scratching herself made Liz wonder about lice. The third time she’d called round to the basement flat, she’d summoned the courage to try the door. It had been unlocked and the flat empty, but the smell alone had been enough to make her stomach churn. From the chaos of the front room she’d collected what she could, disentangling Jessie’s clothes from Haagen’s, and she’d found an empty Lo-Cost bag for the books, cassette tapes and other knick-knacks that she knew belonged to her daughter.

In the kitchen, beside the gas stove, she’d found a syringe. Holding it up to the light through the back window, she’d seen the smear of fresh blood inside the barrel. When she’d returned to the electric stove and tested the rings with the back of her hand, one had still been
warm. They’ve been back here, she’d thought. They’d made themselves a cup of something or other, and they’d used the syringe to inject more of that filthy stuff.

Afterwards, knocking at the door of the flat upstairs, Liz had managed to rouse a skinny youth who’d blinked at her in the evening sunlight and told her that Jessie and Haagen had gone out. Try the Oxford, he’d muttered, or the Whippet. The Oxford, a gloomy dive near the pier, had been virtually empty. Jessie’s name had meant nothing to the woman behind the bar but at the mention of Haagen she’d bristled visibly. The boy was nothing but trouble. He’d been banned for weeks. If he ever appeared again, she’d kick his arse.

Now, watching Jessie across the road, Liz understood why. Haagen lay sprawled beside her on the grass. He’d been collecting a small pile of what looked like beer mats and from time to time he’d flick one across the garden towards the four-piece band performing in the corner nearest to the road. Each time he did it, he got up on his knees, watching the flight of the little mat, digging Jessie in the ribs when one scored a direct hit. It was an infantile game, the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a kindergarten, and Liz marvelled at the dutiful way her daughter provided the applause. Whatever the syringe contained, thought Liz, had certainly warped her sense of humour.

The band were getting louder now, the volume of the big black amplifiers turned up, and Liz wondered for the umpteenth time exactly what she should do. Simply walking across and dragging Jessie away wasn’t an option. Had she been braver she might have risked it, but her real fear was of social embarrassment, of being out of place, of having everyone else stop what they were doing and look at her. That, she couldn’t bear. It would be ghastly, a
humiliation, infinitely worse than physical injury. All her life, she’d wanted to be looked at, admired, talked about, but not like this, not by these people. She knew in any case that the plan wouldn’t work. She’d get to Jessie. She’d try to talk to her, reason with her, but one or other of them would lose their temper and then there’d be a row. She closed her eyes, imagining the audience they’d command, the cat-calls, the whistles, the howls of derision. No way, she thought. Absolutely no bloody way.

She leaned back in the seat, pushing hard with her feet against the pedals, trying to ease the tension coiled inside her. What she really needed was a man, a husband, someone close, supportive, someone who loved them both enough to care. She thought of Hayden, and of what Charlie Epple had said about him, and she asked herself yet again whether or not she could risk believing it. Did she really matter to him that much? Would he really be lost without her? She knew that the answer was immaterial. What mattered in a marriage was action. If Hayden loved her that much, why wasn’t he here now? Applying that stupendous lawyer’s brain to the tricky issue of his daughter’s heroin addiction?

Heroin. Liz shuddered. Even the sound of the word frightened her. She read about it in the glossy style magazines she bought. She’d seen the evidence they dragged up on television. She was word-perfect on the damage it did you, the way it took a grip on your life, enslaving you, turning you into a monster. The sergeant from the drugs squad had been right. It was the devil’s drug. It paved the way to hell.

Abruptly, she heard the sound of breaking glass. The heavy thump of music stopped and a girl began to scream. Liz opened her eyes, struggling upright in the seat. Across the road, some kind of fight had developed, men lashing
out wildly, bottles flying, a blur of fists and boots. There was more screaming, louder this time, and the mill of drinkers fell back as the pub bouncers plunged in, seizing a small wiry youth. Liz barely had time to recognize Haagen’s snarl before he folded over a heavy blow, raising his face again to spit at his attacker. One man had his head in an armlock, lifting his chin, and the other paused for a second, measuring his distance before slamming his fist into the side of Haagen’s mouth. He did it again, then again, until the lower half of Haagen’s face was a mask of blood. The grip around his throat relaxed and he fell to the ground, curled in a ball, trying to protect himself from the savage kicking that followed.

Liz was out of the car now, running across the road. Jessie was trying to get to Haagen, struggling through the circle of watching drinkers. Her mouth was half open and her eyes were wide. Her head kept bobbing up and down in the crowd like someone on the point of drowning.

‘Jess!’ Liz was calling her name, quietly at first, then louder and louder still, ‘Jess!
Jessie!’

Jessie had nearly made it through the scrum around Haagen. The bouncers had finished with him and laughed as they turned to each other, flexing their fingers, rubbing their knuckles, comparing notes. Miles away, in the distance, Liz could hear the wail of a police siren and the band responded with a hesitant chord or two, then a riff from the lead guitarist, and finally the start of a full-blown number.

Jessie was bent over Haagen’s fallen body. Liz knelt beside her, putting an arm around her, feeling her shiver beneath her touch. Jessie looked up at the ring of watching faces, tears pouring down her face.

‘You’ve killed him,’ she said. ‘He’s dead.’

A youth in a green singlet dropped down beside her.
His fingers found the big vein in Haagen’s neck. He was alive. He was breathing. These guys knew when to stop. They weren’t that daft. Jessie looked at him, not understanding. She seemed to be in shock. She shook her head.

‘Dead,’ she repeated. ‘He’s dead.’

The police car rounded the corner in a squeal of burning rubber and Liz heard the slam of the door and the clatter of running footsteps. One of the policemen was still pulling on his hat. The crowd fell back, giving them space. The music had stopped again.

‘What happened?’

Jessie was on her feet, swaying. Her hands were covered in blood. She stared at the nearer of the two policemen then turned away. Liz put her arm around her again, guiding her gently towards the waiting car. Jessie went without complaint, needful obedience, the way a child might. Beside the car, Liz unlocked the passenger door and helped her in, half expecting the police to intervene. Pushing the door shut, she locked it. Seconds later she was behind the wheel, stirring the engine into life, checking her mirror as she accelerated away. Only at the end of the street did Jessie turn in her seat and look back.

‘They killed him,’ she whispered again. ‘He’s fucking dead.’

Hayden Barnaby sat in the Mercedes, enjoying the early-evening sunshine, looking at the Imperial Hotel. For the first time in months, he felt whole again, an abrupt return to the boundless self-confidence that had become, in so many respects, a memory. After a sequence of appalling hands, life appeared to have dealt him a winner.

In the glove box, he found a small packet of cheroots.
He slipped one out and lit it, savouring the rich, bittersweet taste of the tobacco, narrowing his eyes as he studied the tall, five-storeyed pile across the road. To his surprise, it looked in better condition than he’d expected. The stucco was stained beneath holes in the guttering, and some of the larger pieces of ornamental plasterwork had seen better days, but the overall impression was still one of elegance and a wildly overstated grandeur. Tall, handsome windows in the dayrooms on the ground floor. An imposing entrance, the ornate canopy supported by fluted pillars, the structure big enough to house a revolving door. The door was chained and padlocked now but the wood panels and the brasswork were still intact and in the right hands, Barnaby thought, it could surely be restored to working order.

He gazed across at the door, remembering the noise it made if you pushed hard enough, the sigh of the runners on the polished floor, the chill on the backs of your legs as the sweep of the tall glass panes sucked in air behind you. On his seventh birthday, his father had arranged a modest family celebration at the hotel and after the jelly and ice cream he’d been allowed to play in the foyer. The porter, Mr Jones, had kept an eye open for other guests while Barnaby had treated himself to a twirl or two, pushing and pushing on the cold glass, eager to see just how fast the thing would go. After the third or fourth circuit, he’d begun to feel sick and it had been his mother, as ever, who’d come to the rescue. She’d appeared from the cocktail bar, talking to Mr Jones, and when he’d woven his way towards her across the foyer she’d opened her arms and scooped him up and called him her little hamster. At the time, he hadn’t got the joke at all but now, trying to imagine the scene, he understood exactly how prescient she’d been. Faster and faster. The little boy in the cage.

Barnaby tapped ash through the Mercedes’ open window and then got out. A broad drive swept up to the front of the hotel and he skirted the potholes before stopping and peering up. There were bedrooms from the first floor upwards and he counted the windows, multiplying by the three floors above, concluding that thirty-two rooms had a sea view. There was more accommodation at the sides and the back, of course, and he reckoned he’d been right and that the hotel had at least a hundred bedrooms.

He looked over his shoulder, down the long tree-lined expanse of Ladies’ Mile, and began to share a little of Zhu’s enthusiasm for the Imperial’s potential. From the upper floors, the view would be sensational: the big green spaces of the Common, the zig-zag of the seafront around the battlements of Southsea Castle, and beyond the wide blue expanse of the Solent, the chalk uplands of the Isle of Wight. Add to this a decent refurbishment – tasteful décor, first-class cuisine, state-of-the-art bedrooms – and the package would be irresistible. A truly world-class hotel at last. And the entire city aware of just who had helped make it happen.

Barnaby slipped a hand into his pocket and began to saunter towards an open door. Close to, the window frames on the ground floor were falling apart. He stretched across the empty flower-beds and dug at the faded paint with a fingernail, feeling the sponginess of the wood beneath. These will have to come out, he thought. All of them. He looked up again, doing the sums for the second time. Thirty-two windows. Hundreds of pounds apiece. He smiled, stepping in from the windy sunshine, wiping his feet on the soiled scrap of matting inside.

He was standing in a narrow corridor. To his right, a flight of stairs. To his left, a row of doors. He tried one. It
was locked. He looked at his hand in the half darkness, then lifted it to his nose. The door handle felt sticky to the touch and his fingers smelled suddenly of stale fat. He stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up. The carpet had long gone, and the light, unvarnished wood stretched upwards to a landing on the first floor. A child stood on the landing, barefoot, dressed only in a shabby pair of jeans. He was holding a skateboard in both hands and he turned away, kneeling on the board, pushing himself along the corridor with his hands.

Nearby, a door opened and Barnaby turned to find himself looking at an enormous man in a silver shell suit. His head looked tiny on the cavernous body and Barnaby watched while he bellowed obscenities up the stairs. The noise of the skateboard came to an abrupt halt and Barnaby heard the patter of footsteps as the child ran away.

The man in the shell suit rounded on Barnaby. His feet, surprisingly small, were shod in carpet slippers.