Candidates, he kept saying. Candidates for our lives.
After he’d gone, I returned the clothes to the bedroom floors and the photographs to their rightful spots.
*
Mike was loitering outside my office building when I arrived just before lunchtime.
‘How much?’ he demanded.
‘We agreed two point two.’
‘Undercutting the neighbour, good work. Accept any offer over two mil.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He didn’t move. One of my colleagues passed, a lunch bag from the sandwich bar next door in her hand. ‘Hi, Bram!’ she called.
Great. She knew my name even if I’d forgotten hers. And she’d seen me with Mike. Though he wore a black woollen hat low to the eyes, his bony facial features and brick-wall build were distinctive. (‘Yes, that was definitely the man I saw Bram with. They looked a bit shifty together, to be honest.’)
‘Look, Mike, you need to go. We can’t be seen together like this. Can you contact me in the usual way next time?’
He gave me a long look that said, You don’t give orders, I do. ‘Just make sure you keep on top of this agent, okay?’ he said, finally. ‘And we need the money from the car by the end of next week – I’m meeting a guy.’
‘What guy?’
‘Trust me, better if you don’t know.’
Trust him? Right.
‘If the cheque hasn’t come through by then, you’ll have to find another way to get the cash,’ he added. He stood, hands in pockets, body language maddeningly relaxed. ‘Still heard nothing from the police?’
‘No. Not since they spoke to my wife.’
‘You can use her name, Bram. Fiona. Fi, did you call her?’
‘I can use her name, yes, but I’d prefer you not to.’
‘Oh, well, in that case,’ he sneered.
I ignored this. ‘Listen, the alibi you mentioned?’
‘Yep. Half Moon, Clapham Junction.’
‘I need your full name and a number, just in case.’
‘Just say Mike. I’m there all the time, the bar staff’ll point them my way. We’re not mates, didn’t exchange numbers or anything gay, we just got talking, had a bit of a session.’
Though his instincts were right, it was infuriating to continue to be denied his full name. My investigations online into his and Wendy’s identities had yielded laughable results: you try googling ‘Mike South London’. And of the commercial cleaning companies I’d found in and around Beckenham, none had a permanent member of staff named Wendy. ‘Not a session, I had to be back in Alder Rise by seven for the boys.’
‘Fine. We had two pints between five thirty and six thirty, how’s that? We talked about the football. Nothing too deep. Can’t be expected to remember the details. I know one of the barmen there, he’ll vouch for us for a few quid.’
‘On the subject of money,’ I said, ‘if we do this, when it’s over, what’s my cut?’
He laughed, releasing streams of smoky breath into the cold air. ‘I wondered when you’d ask that.’
‘Well, tell me the answer then.’
He drew his face closer to mine, eyes baleful. ‘Your cut is your liberty, mate. Ten years, I reckon you’d get, minimum. And we all know killing a kid is the lowest of the low inside. Imagine ten years of being beaten up and buggered and God knows what else, a middle-aged child murderer in a cell with a twenty-year-old psycho. Or is it three to a cell these days? Sooner you than me.’
I sucked in my breath, my heart hammering.
‘Hit a nerve, have I?’ he taunted. ‘Just think of all the nerves they’ll be hitting inside, eh? They’ll be queuing outside your cell.’
I began to back away, as if from the Prince of Darkness himself.
‘Don’t worry about the money,’ he called. ‘We’ll send a little something your way on completion. Call it a finder’s fee.’
‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:46:26
No, I hadn’t introduced Toby to Bram. I hadn’t introduced him to anyone. I didn’t wish to parade him on the Trinity Avenue dinner party circuit and he, for his part, had no interest in the social structures of Alder Rise.
‘Why doesn’t he ever invite you to his place?’ Polly asked.
‘Reading between the lines, it’s not somewhere he thinks I’ll be impressed by,’ I said. ‘He downsized after his divorce, so I’m guessing it’s pretty modest.’
‘He’s not still married, is he?’
‘No, but if he is, I can hardly object, since I am as well.’
‘You’re separated,’ she corrected me. ‘Has Alison met him?’
‘No one has. It’s just a casual thing, Polly.’
‘Even so, to not know where he lives? Maybe you should ask his wife,’ she drawled.
It would not be the last time she would propose the married-man theory – and to be fair, Bram’s infidelities gave her good cause to question my judgement – but I chose to close my ears to the clanging of warning bells. I didn’t want to spend my time finding fault or preparing for the worst. Maybe such an attitude doesn’t fit well in our cynical world but I’m not going to apologize for trying.
Besides, I was busy at work and by then it was full steam ahead for half term and our weekend in Kent, which took a certain amount of planning. Having missed a summer holiday, Harry was so excited to be going away that he couldn’t sleep for most of the week before. It didn’t help that one night there was a police helicopter hovering over Alder Rise for hours on end. This is South London; it happens sometimes.
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ I said, when he climbed into bed with me. ‘It’s just the police out catching criminals.’
‘How can they catch them in the dark?’ he asked.
I told him about an article I’d read about police helicopters’ thermal imaging cameras. You thought you were safe in your hiding place under the bushes, but you glowed bright white on the screens above.
‘It’s just like your forensic pen. They use special light to see what we can’t see.’
‘They’re cleverer than the baddies,’ Harry said.
‘Much cleverer,’ I agreed.
Ironic though it may sound, as I lay in bed listening to the relentless staccato of those spinning blades I genuinely thought how awful it must be to be a fugitive from the law with all this new twenty-first century technology to contend with. There was nowhere the police couldn’t find you once they were on your tail. I even thought, briefly, Poor guy.
Well, I assumed it was a man.
Bram, Word document
There was one news report – and only one – that I haven’t needed to remember word for word, because I kept a printout. You’ll find it among my paltry last effects in the hotel room.
Parents mourn their ‘special sunbeam’
The funeral of the tragic victim of the Silver Road collision, Ellie Rutherford, took place today at St Luke’s Church, Norwood, with the ten-year-old girl’s mother released from hospital to say farewell to her beloved daughter.
Many mourners wore yellow, Ellie’s favourite colour, and a yellow-and-white floral arrangement was placed on her coffin. Tim Rutherford, who spoke at the service, described his daughter as ‘our special sunbeam’, a child who loved writing stories and singing and who was proud to have been voted class captain for her final year at primary school. ‘Ten years old is old enough for you to be able to see the wonderful adult she would have become,’ he said.
Ellie died a week ago following an incident in September when her mother’s car was run off the road by a speeding vehicle. As relatives and road victim groups called for increased manpower in the police investigation, the girl’s uncle, Justin Rutherford, said, ‘You would think they’d have a suspect in custody by now. The whole family is desperate knowing that this criminal is still on our roads, putting other children’s lives at risk.’
Detective Inspector Gavin Reynolds said, ‘Police work is often a painstaking process of elimination, but we are confident we will find the offending driver and discover exactly what caused this fatal collision. Our thoughts are with Ellie’s family today,’ he added.
Writing this, I can only assume the Rutherfords know my name by now. They certainly will by the time you read this. I can only assume they must be hoping I’ll rot in hell.
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