The Turning Tide (34 page)
They said little on the drive; there was little to say. Seminole Billy kept checking his mirrors but only out of habit. The police were not looking for them. Buster got in the boot without even a protest. The radio stayed off. Whatever the news was, they didn’t need to hear about it now. They had been there.
Erykah’s shoulder throbbed painfully from where she had hit the floor. But she was too dazed to do anything about it, even to look through her bag for painkillers.
She wasn’t sure at first if she remembered how to get where they were going. To her surprise, even though the streets and shops had all changed, there was one thing you could never forget: the way home. There was the old crumbling picture house. The boarded-up nightclub where Grayson used to meet his associates. The bus shelter on the corner where they had their first kiss.
The truth of the story, or parts of it, were going to come out. The fake lottery, the laundered money. With neither Heather nor the Major there to keep the cameras distracted, surely it was only a matter of following the money back to – where? The lottery scam, of course. Scotland, maybe. Then? The Channel Islands? Argentina? Who knows? Who got to tell that story, and what kind of narrative emerged, was still to be decided. There was still all to play for. But not for Erykah. Not by her.
Kerry had questions. Well, Erykah had questions of her own. Such as what made Heather do what she had done? Oh, she told them all right – but what caused the switch to flip, caused someone to go from a simmering, long term resentment, to outright hatred, to . . . this? And then, having failed to achieve what she wanted, to end it all. An impulsive decision, maybe. But an impulse at the end of a long and deliberate plan of action. Most people, when faced with the failure of the one thing they had spent their whole lives building for, would take their lumps and go home. Bury the shame and sorrow under food and drink and long nights staring at whatever the television had to offer. Back to their unsatisfying lives, their unsatisfying marriages. Heather must have imagined all that in the time they were standing there, and decided it wasn’t for her. It was admirable in its own way.
At least Heather wouldn’t have to see what the news cycle decided her story was going to be. Erykah knew that even the public’s desire for a mystery to have a satisfying ending was no guarantee of an easy ride for the rest of them. As long as Media Mouse was anonymous people seemed happy to take her at her word, give or take the odd conspiracy theory. Would they feel the same way when presented with a flesh and blood person? Or would they take one look at Kerry with her crooked pigtail, the inexpensive, high street work clothes, and decide that she wasn’t the symbol they wanted after all? How long before the snide columns appeared, tearing her down for being insufficiently feminine or feminist? How long before she became a where-are-they-now, a footnote to the story?
Soon it would turn from a juicy scoop into a feeding frenzy. Erykah had been in the middle of those before and if she had learned anything, it was that she never wanted to be inside of one again. But she wanted to believe it could turn out differently. Maybe someone younger would have a chance of surviving it. Someone who chose to get involved, rather than ending up there by accident. Maybe for people who grew up with celebrity culture and social media, where everyone was angling for their fifteen minutes of fame, things would be better.
It didn’t seem likely, but it could happen.
As the Merc got closer to the flat, the cosmetic differences that had built up in the last twenty years fell away. Here were, if not the same people, the same kinds of people she had grown up with. They were standing on street corners, looking out of windows, waiting for something to happen. She remembered what it was like to be always waiting for something to happen. Had spent most of her life waiting, in fact. Now she was sure she had enough of whatever that something was for a lifetime. Maybe two.
‘That’s it there, pull in on the left,’ she said. Seminole Billy brought the car to a stop under a row of cherry trees. They had been spindly seedlings twenty years ago. The first few pink blossoms were starting to show on the highest branches, now some thirty feet high. Things had been smartened up a little – a few new gates here and there, the short iron fences painted. The grass had recently been cut.
‘You going to be safe here?’ he asked.
Was she going to be safe? Was anyone? On the ride from Soho to the flat she had been trying to make sense of something. Of the story, as she uncovered it. She thought she had found the deep roots of a conspiracy, and for the most part, she wasn’t wrong. What surprised her was Heather’s bottomless hatred for Schofield. The wounded child who wanted revenge for something that had been done a long time ago in another country. It wasn’t just politics. It had been personal for her.
‘I’ll be safer here than anywhere else,’ she said. It hadn’t been true in Molesey, quiet suburban Molesey, but for some reason she knew she would be fine here. She caught the look in his eye. ‘Don’t worry about me. If there’s one thing I know it’s that this place looks out for its own.’
‘You could come with me,’ he said.
Erykah snorted. ‘That had better not be a double entendre,’ she said.
‘Only if you want it to be.’
She rolled her eyes and looked out the window. ‘I was wondering if we were going to be able to finish things without you hitting on me,’ she said. The engine of the Merc rattled and chugged in neutral, shaking the seats under them. ‘Anyway, where do you guys even live? Don’t answer that – I probably don’t want to know.’
‘No, probably not.’ He looked out at the estate, with its crumbling low rises and patchy thin grass sprouting up between pavement blocks. ‘Be in touch. I don’t want to come hunting you down again.’
‘Thanks.’ She opened the door and started to get out, then on impulse, leaned across and planted a kiss on Billy’s cheek. His skin felt older than she thought it would, thin and delicate like paper.
Billy gave a cockeyed salute and waited while she entered the front of the red brick building. She looked back outside and saw him set his mouth in a thin line and look away. The car disappeared around the corner, coughing and sputtering.
She walked up the three familiar flights of stairs. It still smelled the same, like industrial orange-scented cleaner, and underneath that, a smell of rubber and ashes.
Two dark, scuffed squares of linoleum outside the door marked the entrance to the flat. The key fitted in the lock and she pushed the door open. Dozens of old bills and junk mail envelopes were piled behind the post slot. She cleared it away with her foot.
Rab hadn’t been the only one with secrets to keep. While he had been busy trying to hide his mistresses and juggle his lies all those years, Erykah had quietly made an offer and bought her mum’s old flat when the council put it on the market. It had stayed empty most of the years since, gathering dust and spiders and the mildew smell of abandonment. Erykah had never changed the locks, in part hoping her mother would come back, in part afraid that she would. Rainbow stayed gone; whatever had happened to her remained a mystery.
Erykah bolted the door behind her and tossed her handbag on the sofa. It was musty, she heaved open a white-painted sash window to let in some air and light. She looked around. All of the old furniture was still there, sitting on the oddments of carpet that she had dragged piece by piece out of other flats and skips. In the corner of the front room was the television her mum had been paying twelve pounds fifty on every week for years. Those places were such a rip-off, Rainbow had probably paid for the thing in full several times over. Here was the worn spot where she used to sit, waiting for the lottery. Waiting for things to change.
The glass-topped round table in the corner was covered in a thin film of dust. In times when Rainbow had been doing well, that was where she had held court, chain smoking and cackling with neighbours as they played endless rounds of cribbage and spades, sometimes for money, sometimes for weed. When things were not so good, it was where Erykah often found her mother in the mornings, collapsed forehead first on the glass, usually with a smouldering fag butt or a cold cup of coffee in her hand.
She thought about Joy, the neighbour with the grits, and wondered if she was still alive.
Erykah rubbed her thumb across the surface of the table. It left a long clean streak on the top. Maybe the shop was open and she could get a bottle of ammonia and some rags and set about cleaning the place.
In the kitchen the fridge with its tiny freezer compartment was empty, open and unplugged. The walls were still tea coloured from cigarette smoke and cooking grease. She knelt down and opened the cupboard next to the sink. The old electric meter that took coins was gone; now everything was on cards. Erykah put the card in the slot and pressed a button. The lights flickered on. One bulb popped, but the rest were fine. The shower still worked: good. There was clean linen in the hall cupboard: even better.
She pulled her jumper off over her head. Gingerly, so as not to hurt her shoulder. In the mirror over the sink she saw a large bruise blooming on her left side, from where she had hit the ground when Heather started to run. She touched the tender flesh, stretched and rolled her shoulder to test the joint. Only bruised, nothing broken. She rooted in the cupboard but found only an empty blister pack of ibuprofen. There was still half a small bottle of whisky in her bag from Billy. That would have to do. The grimy mirror blurred her face. The woman looking back at her was not the same woman she had seen there a month ago. Or even this morning.
She went back to the front room. There was a cheap chipboard bookshelf with white veneer peeling off the sides. Once it had been in her bedroom, full of books; now it was empty. Well, that wouldn’t do. She took the book of puzzles out of her bag and propped it on the empty shelf.
What was the saying? Home is the place that, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
So this would be home, then.
Erykah Macdonald had a gun with no bullets, a change of clothes, two diamond rings and twenty thousand pounds in cash. She had no idea what she was going to do next.
Thanks are due to my former colleagues at the Medico Legal Centre who put up with a lot and taught me even more. I am especially grateful for the professional knowledge and generosity of Robert Forrest, Andrew Chamberlain, David Jarvis, Ian Newsome, and Steph Davy during those years. Thank you as well to Misha Laurents and anyone who shared a studio with me at
WVFS
, a lifetime ago now (Continuity and News keep the faith). A nod as well to old rowing chums at Sheffield and Imperial, especially Clarice Chung, Ben Anstiss and of course, to Nick Wilde. Much gratitude to Simon Singh for tips regarding ciphers. Uncle Jon, know that dragging me to all those gun shows meant something. This would be a very different book indeed without the input of Schuyler Towne and Nigel Tolley, locksport mavens. Aspasia Bonasera and Chris Nicholson also provided helpful advice. I couldn’t have got through the past few years without the unwavering support of Maggie McNeill, Matthew Garner, Antoinette Cosgrave, and Paul Duane. To Peter Kenny, fellow colonial misfit and keeper of the Brain Soup flame, I hope you find the starter appetising! A certain Internet degu deserves a nod here, for donating the name of his owner to the cause, even though I didn’t use it in the end (sorry, Rog). Much thanks as ever to Genevieve Pegg, Patrick Walsh, and Michael Burton – hands down the kindest and most trustworthy people in London. And thank you to my husband, a forgiving early reader and patient editor with a thing or two to add about the Royal Marines and war history.
Also how gracious is Professor Damian Schofield for allowing me to borrow his name for a corpse? It would be remiss of me not to mention he is neither a geologist nor is he, at the time of printing, dead.
The Sex Myth: Why Everything We’re Told is Wrong
As Belle de Jour
The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl
The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl
Playing the Game
Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men
Belle’s Best Bits
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Orion Books
This ebook first published in 2016 by Orion Books
Copyright © Belle de Jour 2015
The right of Brooke Magnanti to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book, with the exception of those already in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 0728 6
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