‘This’ll help you remember!’
Thwack! A jab of pain rushes down her left temple to her jaw. If only they would stop hitting her, she would be able to think what to do.
The blow has dislodged the blindfold, and she can see that she is in a long low-ceilinged room with a square window at one end. It looks like some kind of storeroom, with things shrouded in plastic stacked up against the walls. What things? She tries to make out the shape. They look like buckets. Hundreds of buckets. The window is closed, and the air is thick and humid. She can smell the men’s sweat and the sharp scent of her own fear. A warm trickle runs down the inside of her leg.
‘Waga got your key. He gone search your office. If you tell us, it will go better for you.’ It is the older man talking. His voice is less aggressive than the young man.
‘They’re not in the office. I … I posted them. Didn’t Queenie tell you?’
She hid the copies so casually inside the computer manual that a thorough search of the office would surely uncover them, if somebody knew what they were looking for. She thinks of the re-invoices she posted to Gillian Chalmers in London. She will have got them by now, but has she read them? And even if she has, will she do anything about them? Or might she just as well have posted them to Marc himself?
‘You’re lying, white bitch.’ The younger man is short and heavily built, with a sneering twang to his voice.
She feels his rough hand cover her breast. She shudders. No one has ever called her white before. Nor a bitch, for that matter. In different circumstances it might amuse her.
‘Who you post them to?’ asks the older man, who is thin with greying hair and deeply lined cheeks.
‘I posted them to the office of the corruption investigator of course.’ She wonders who, if anybody, occupies that precarious post at present, since the resignation of Johnny Githongo. ‘On Friday. On my way home.’ She hopes they don’t press for details, or they will soon realise she’s bluffing. ‘Whatever you do to me, he will get them tomorrow. Nzangu and his hangers-on will be in prison, and nothing you can do will save him now. But if you let me go at least you will save yourselves.’ Her voice doesn’t sound as confident as she intends, but at least she is managing to hold back her tears.
The two men speak together in their own language. She catches the word ofisi — office — and the name Waga. Their talk is interrupted by the sound of a mobile phone ringing — ping-ping-ping, ping-ping-ping — she listens to it for a few moments before she recognises the ringtone as her own. They must have got the phone from her bag. She hears them muttering as they fumble to switch it off behind her back; the ringing stops, and her grandmother’s voice, faint from a few metres away but still distinct on speakerphone, says, ‘Mpenzi, where you got to? When you coming for your lunch?’
The men listen but neither of them speaks.
‘Who is it?’ asks the older one in a whisper.
Without answering him, she heaves herself forward, dragging the chair on the ground in the direction of the phone and screams, ‘It’s Violet! Help! Help! Help!’
Thwack! Her head jolts back as it takes the blow, and darkness falls.
Berthold: A Flat in Hampstead
I wished I could stay with Stacey all the time, but her flat was too small for both of us, and it was impossible for her to move in with me because of Monty. As the gloomy autumn days drew in, I resigned myself to shuttling backwards and forwards on my bike. Even happiness has its downside.
One day I got back home to find the message light on my telephone blinking away. I had received recorded messages before, offering me free cruises, computer upgrades, compensation for deafness and suchlike, in hopeful voices that reminded me of Len and his dreams of self-employment. In his memory, instead of shouting abuse, I flicked on the hands-free while I went to fix myself a sandwich. Through the crackles I heard a woman’s voice that somehow combined bleating with menace.
‘Hello, Bertie, is that you? This is your beloved sister Margaret. We’ve seen your show is a hit success and you must be raking it in, but I can’t sleep for thinking about our pet bunny who is buried in the garden at Madeley Court. Don’t you have any conscience …?’ The message ended in a choked sob.
I bit into the sandwich, crunching the lettuce between my teeth. Even celebrity, I mused as I erased the message, cannot protect one from the attentions of lunatics — another experience that I could now share with George.
Another happier consequence of fame was that I had started to get offers of parts and invitations to auditions, mainly for characters experiencing some kind of trauma. I tried for Hamlet at the Barbican, but lost out to Benedict Cumberbatch. Maybe I overdid the stammer. ‘To b-b-be …’ However, I was delighted to be asked to audition for the part of Lear’s Fool in a new production at the National. It was always a favourite of mine, and it brought back memories of the hours I had spent coaching Inna in this role. I wondered what had become of her now.
As if by serendipity, a letter arrived the same day, asking for my help. She wrote in her execrable English that the subtenants of her flat in Hampstead — she gave the address — had stopped paying the rent, and had not responded to letters and phone calls. She asked if I could go round and investigate, adding on a PS that the key was under the blue flowerpot and she had dispatched Lev to sort them out, who would arrive in a few days. I replied that I was now working and too busy to help, but I forwarded her a cutting of a review of Godot in Metro, and the contact details of a couple of property agents in Hampstead.
Then I had a mischievous idea. Inspired in part by the sinister machinations of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whose fate presages the bloodbath in the last scene of Hamlet, I wrote a note to Jenny and Margaret, suggesting that we could meet up on Friday morning at a lovely flat in Hampstead that Lily had also inherited from Ted, which had just become vacant, that might suit their needs better. For good measure, I left a voicemail message on the i4F number for Miss Crossbow and Mr Prang, the fraud investigators, alerting them to suspicious activities at the flat in Hampstead where two individuals, both impersonating Mrs Alfandari, had taken up residence and, I had reason to believe, would be there on Friday morning.
I spent the rest of the day calmly studying Lear, and honing my interpretation of the Fool in preparation for the audition. Some directors give the part to a boy actor, and maintain that in Shakespeare’s time the same boy might also have played Cordelia, but I saw him as a mature man, in his fifties, maybe, no stranger to sorrow.
All the hand flapping and eye rolling that I had drummed into Inna now seemed a bit OTT, and I decided to give him a solemn demeanour and just a little stress stammer on the ‘b’: If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’d have thee b-beaten for b-being old b-before thy time.
Late on Thursday evening, I received a frantic phone call from Stacey.
‘Monty’s dog walker has had an accident. Can you look after him tomorrow, Berthold?’
‘Look, I’m sorry, Stacey, I’m too … b-busy …’
‘No problem. I’ll drop him off just before nine on my way to work. He won’t be any trouble.’
‘But dogs aren’t allowed —’
‘I’ll hide him under my coat. Nobody will know.’
At ten to nine the next morning, Stacey rang the bell, kissed me on the lips, and handed over the little dog hiding under her raincoat.