Jago had waited until nearly midnight. He reckoned the FrauBoss would be asleep and wouldn’t see it until morning, but he’d keep his mobile switched off anyway. He doubted he would be missed. He sat in the comfortable chair in his room, in the living area beyond the partition that shielded the bed, and sipped coffee. The room, under the sloping ceiling, was tidy. In ten minutes, Jago could have packed a bag, run the vacuum over the rugs, wiped a cloth across the draining-board, cleared the fridge and left traces that only a forensic search would have found. He was the star of the street where Carmel Browne lived, with his brother and sister, the one who had worked at Broadgate in the City and was now on an exchange with a renowned bank in the German capital. His progress had seemed effortless. Neighbours would have congratulated his mother on what he had achieved. She didn’t love him, maybe no one did, but he slept well without love.
There was distant traffic and rain pattered on the skylight, but the quiet gathered mournfully around him. It was more than two years since he had been back to Canning Town. His mother, last he’d heard, cleaned service apartments for people patronising the ExCeL conference centre. Billy was a probationer – at Canary they’d call it an ‘intern’ – hardly paid on a market stall. Georgina worked at an Oxford Street shop, flogging shoes at discount prices. His success had cut the links and the contact. Last Christmas he’d sent a hamper to the maisonette by the Beckton Arms and taken himself to a guesthouse on the Devon coast. There, he had walked the cliffs and eaten solitary meals surrounded by lonely pensioners . . . He didn’t know where he fitted in. He lit another cigarette. He didn’t fit, and it was years since he had.
A dark February afternoon, in his school uniform, homework piled on the kitchen table. Jago was fourteen. There was no milk and Carmel was home from work, flustered and tired. Would he go down to Freemasons Road and get some? A suppressed protest, and Billy, aged nine, had piped up that he’d go. Georgina was too young for errands. Jago had gone, with bad grace, the money jangling in his pocket and Billy had skipped along beside him. He’d worn his school blazer and tie. They’d bought the milk. The kids had come out of the shadows. Some might have known him before he’d become ‘a high achiever’ and been moved on, but his smart blazer would have egged them on. The milk had been snatched. He’d been pushed and shoved, then punched. He’d gone down. The blazer had been a major investment for his mother, with the white shirts, the school tie and the pullover. The milk was over the pavement. Kicks were aimed at him and he was cursed in the gang patois. Blood was streaming off his face, and his phone had gone. He might have been about to take a bad kick, one that would do damage. But Billy, four years younger, had thrown himself across him and saved him from that kick. A car’s headlights had lit the scene and the kids had drifted away. Half of the milk was still in the plastic bottle. They’d gone home. Billy had told Carmel. Jago supposed he had been challenged and had failed, but he was now a banker. Billy had been challenged, had passed the test and worked for a pittance on a market stall on the Barking road in all weathers.
He ground out the cigarette. It was a first: Jago Browne had never before taken a day off work sick, genuine or bogus. Nor, when at Lancaster, had he missed tutorials or lectures. The girl that morning had been pretty, but there had been beauty in her anger as she had spat at her attacker. Magnificent. All those years before, he had seen the same pride on Billy’s face and the same anger on his mother’s. It was about cliffs, the emptiness under them, the waves beating on sharp rocks far below, and how men and women were drawn to the edge, couldn’t help themselves, and didn’t know why they had been born.
Jago could have spent that evening with Hannelore or Magda. He might have been with either of them in one of the Turkish cafés in Kreuzberg, or with Renate. There was another girl further down the office, between the flags that hung from the ceiling, denoting the languages spoken, and the clocks that showed the time in San Francisco, Riyadh and Hong Kong. She sometimes eyed him over the low walls that divided them from each other and seemed to approve. He just hadn’t seemed to have time. It might have been better to be with one of them, not crying off sick and not being pulled towards a cliff edge.
3
The web was tickled by a breeze and moved. What had been the body of the fly swayed gracefully, as if death had brought it some dignity. The manufacturer of the trap, the killer, was not to be seen.
He sat on the bench, waited and watched.