15
Elizabeth is leaning out of the top-floor window, puffing on a cigarette but not inhaling. The last time she remembers doing something like this she was fourteen. It was a Pall Mall and she was hiding from her parents. Now she’s thirty-two and hiding from her son’s nanny. Age doesn’t make us any wiser or less prone to guilt.
She found an old packet of cigarettes when she was searching North’s study, looking for clues, trying to piece together his last days, checking his credit card statements, mobile phone bills and emails; lipstick on his shirt collars; or another woman’s scent on his clothes.
Suddenly nauseous, she breaks the cigarette in half, wrapping the butt in a tissue before flushing it down the loo. The tissue dissolves but the dog-end is still there, bobbing in the bowl, mocking her.
She brushes her teeth and goes back to the study, sitting at North’s desk, feeling the contours in the old leather chair, worn shiny in places. She found the chair in a second-hand shop in Camden just after they bought the house in Barnes. North had wanted a new chair, but she told him this one was a classic. It reminded her of something you see in old movies about newspaper offices where reporters hammer on manual typewriters and yell at copyboys to run their words to the subs desk.
Her personal dreams of journalism had made this image seem romantic. At university she imagined herself as a famous columnist-the next Julie Burchill or Zoe Heller or Lynn Barber. Instead she’d presented a “lifestyle” program, as forgettable as a phone number.
Elizabeth opens the report from the private detective. Her husband’s days are broken down into hours and minutes: times, dates and places. Tucked into the front sleeve of the folder is a USB stick. Using a directional microphone, Colin Hackett had recorded some of the conversation between North and the two men he met at The Warrington in Maida Vale.
Plugging the stick into her laptop, Elizabeth opens the audio file and presses “play.” There are background voices, car sounds, wind rustling the leaves. Three voices, one of them North’s, another speaks a guttural-sounding English, his words like gravel rolling in a drum. The other accent is almost too perfect, like listening to someone mimicking Roger Moore.
Voice 1:… you should stop saying these things and calm down…
North: Don’t tell me to calm down… I approved the transfers. I signed off on the details…
Voice 1: You did your job… due diligence… nobody is suggesting otherwise…
North:… it’s a bad sign… the money came from somewhere… it’s going somewhere… tell me.
Voice 1: These are not questions you need to ask. Worry about life, worry about your wife and family…
North: Leave my family out of this.
Voice 1: These things will pass…
Voice 2: We have a proverb where I come from, Mr. North. If you have done nothing wrong, don’t worry about the devil knocking at your door…
North: But I am doing something wrong…
Voice 1: You’re exaggerating… nothing has changed.
There is a garbled section of the recording. North appears to have walked away from the table, but the men are still talking.
Voice 2:… he’s rattled…
Voice 1:… I will call our friend. Tell him we’re concerned…
Voice 2: The time for talking is over… this is what happens when you deal with amateurs…
The recording ends. Elizabeth plays it back and listens for names, but there are too many gaps and unintelligible words. She concentrates on North’s voice, feeling something snag in his chest when he mentions the word family.
This wasn’t a normal business meeting. These weren’t normal business contacts. North told Bridget Lindop that he’d done something terrible and on the tape he talked about wanting to know where money had come from and gone. Perhaps Mitchell was right to be concerned.
Elizabeth looks at the daily log written by Colin Hackett. Before North went to The Warrington, he visited a house in Mount Street, just off Park Lane. She glances at her watch. Rowan won’t be home from nursery for another few hours. Polina can pick him up. Grabbing her car keys and her bag, she gets in the car and programs the satnav for Mayfair. The journey takes her across Hammersmith Bridge and along Hammersmith Road past Olympia and through Kensington to Hyde Park Corner.
Late summer and there are still plenty of tourists in London, eating sandwiches on the grass and taking photographs from open-top buses. London has never seemed like a destination to Elizabeth, but for others it is a postcard, a photograph or the backdrop to their holiday videos.
Mount Street is lined with Edwardian mansion blocks and rows of Italianate houses, every corner has a CCTV camera bolted to the brickwork. Curtains don’t twitch anymore and neighbors no longer study neighbors. Instead cameras record every dropped piece of litter and unscooped dog turd.
Walking up the front steps, Elizabeth presses a large bronze bell. The blue-painted front door is heavy and old. It opens after a moment. A woman in a black smock dress peers from inside. Elegant. Her hair is silver tipped and her features as delicate as a porcelain figurine.
Elizabeth realizes that she should have thought of a story.
“I’ve lost my dog,” she blurts. “I live around the corner. I’m asking everyone.”
The woman shakes her head. “What does your dog look like?”
“Umm, he’s white, ah, he’s a sort of terrier like a Jack Russell.”
“I haven’t seen any stray dogs.”
“Is there anyone else at home? Perhaps you could ask your husband.”
A man’s voice comes from the top of the stairs: “Who is it, Maria?”
“Someone has lost her dog.”
The door opens a little wider. Elizabeth takes the opportunity. She steps into the hallway, glancing up the stairs.
“It’s been two days and my little boy is heartbroken. I thought I’d knock on some doors.”
The man has gone. She didn’t see his face. The woman ushers her into a large front room with dormer windows and a fireplace. Every piece of furniture seems to fit perfectly. Antique or expensive copies, they match the artifacts-Byzantine mosaics, swords, pottery and statues displayed around the room. The beauty of the items seems to distract Elizabeth, who doesn’t realize she’s being spoken to.
“I beg your pardon?”
“What is the dog’s name?”
“Ummm, ah, well, his name is Fred, short for Frederick.”
The woman is almost ageless with a casual elegance that makes Elizabeth feel clumsy and shabbily dressed. She could be Middle Eastern. She could just be wealthy.
“Where do you live?”
“Around the corner.”
“What road?”
Elizabeth can’t think of a neighboring street. She mumbles something and Claudia kicks her as though punishing her stupidity.
“Do you have a photograph?” asks the woman.
“Pardon?”
“A picture of the dog. You could put it on lampposts.”
“Yes, what a good idea.”
Elizabeth wants to ask her about North and why he came to the house. She has the photographs in her handbag. What would the woman say if she just came straight out and showed them to her? She raises her eyes to the ceiling, hearing something upstairs. “Maybe your husband has seen Fred.”
“He’s busy.”
“What does he do?”
The woman ignores the question and stares at Elizabeth for a long time. “Why are you really here?”
Elizabeth’s skin prickles with embarrassment and Claudia squirms wetly in her belly.
“I feel so bloody silly. I didn’t work out what I was going to say.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My name is Elizabeth North. My husband came here about a week ago. It was a Friday afternoon. Now he’s missing. I’m trying to find him.”
The woman is watching her with her almond-shaped eyes, giving nothing away. Elizabeth takes the photographs from her handbag. They are curling now at the edges and stained with something sticky that Rowan put in her handbag.