The driver is listening to the radio. Evening talkback with Brian Noble: “The Voice of the Lord.”
Mersey Fidelity today announced a record profit while the rest of the economy continues to struggle. Isn’t it nice to know that our banks are back in business again? We bailed them out, gave them half a trillion pounds in cash, loans, shares, lucre, dosh, quantitative easing-no strings attached-and now they’re making hay while the rest of us shovel horse manure.
Now I know that Mersey Fidelity weathered the storm better than most of our banks, but I ask you this: Why hasn’t there been one court case, one prosecution, one political resignation, or one apology from a banker? Too big to fail, now they’re cashing in. The lines are open. What advice would you give our banksters?
The cab navigates through Piccadilly, Knightsbridge and along Old Brompton Road. Holly holds on to the side strap as the cab corners, occasionally glancing behind her through the rear window.
Ruiz lives in a three-storey terrace, open plan on the ground floor, bedrooms above and narrow stairs to a loft with his study. The house is too big for him. He should have sold up and moved years ago, but wasn’t willing to abandon the memories.
There is a bicycle partially blocking the hallway. Brand new. Unused. His birthday present from Miranda. She expected him to keep fit by riding along the river. Good luck with that.
“You want a tea or coffee?”
“Anything stronger?”
He opens a bottle of wine and lets Holly do the pouring. He gives her the phone to use.
“I don’t have any numbers,” she says.
“What about your parents?”
“Dead.”
“Friends?”
“I don’t really know anybody in London.”
Ruiz sits on the sofa. Holly prefers the floor. She nurses her wine glass in both hands.
“When you got shot-did you think you were going to die?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you limp when you walk?”
“It is.”
“What would it take for you to kill yourself?”
“What sort of question is that?”
“It’s just a question.”
“I’ve seen too many suicides.”
“What if you were in awful pain, dying of a terrible disease?”
“There are painkillers.”
“What if your mind was failing? You had dementia and couldn’t remember your own name?”
“If I had dementia it wouldn’t matter.”
“What if you were being tortured for top secret information?”
“I don’t have any top secret information.”
“What if someone had a grenade on a bus and they were going to blow it to the sky? Would you throw your body on the grenade?”
“Where do you get these questions?”
“I think about stuff all the time; how one decision, even a small one, can change your life. I have really weird dreams. I once dreamed I had a penis. Does that make me bisexual?”
“I have no idea.”
She tops up Ruiz’s wine and begins looking through his collection of DVDs stacked on a shelf. Old films.
“Oooh, I love this one.” She holds up Philadelphia Story. “Katherine Hepburn.”
“And Cary Grant.”
“I loved him in To Catch a Thief.”
“Favorite old-time actor?”
“Alec Guinness.”
“Mine is Peter O’Toole.”
“Typical.”
“What does that mean?”
She shakes her head. “Favorite old-time actress?”
“Ingrid Berman.”
“I thought you’d say Grace Kelly. Men seem to prefer blondes.”
“Not this one.”
The room has warmed up. Holly unbuttons her jacket, letting it slip off her arms. Her blouse is edged with silver thread and beads. The fabric pushes out over her breasts and she looks more like a woman than a girl.
If Miranda could see him now, what would she say? She’d tell him to go to bed and to stop embarrassing himself.
Holly has poured him another glass of wine. How much has he had to drink? Four pints. A scotch. Three glasses of wine…
Ruiz is trying to shake the fuzziness out of his head.
“I could make a bed for you,” he says, feeling his thoughts drifting. Sliding. Spilling down the mountainside, settling in the hollows. His legs are so heavy he can’t move them.
Holly sits next to him on the sofa and puts a pillow beneath his head. He’s watching her lips move. What is she saying? It might be goodbye. It might be sorry.
3
Sunshine crashes through the lace curtains. Ruiz opens one eye. The ceiling comes into focus, dead moths in the domed light fitting. His right nostril is grouted closed. His mouth tastes like a small animal has crawled inside and died.
Rolling on to his knees, he groans and feels his stomach lurch and gurgle. The rug has a pattern. He hasn’t noticed it before. Perhaps he’s forgotten. Another convulsion and he stumbles to the toilet, holding on to the side of the bowl.
His stomach empty, he sits against the tiled wall. Shaking. Sweating.
The events of last night-the girl, the trip home, the bottle of wine-what’s the last thing he remembers? She put a pillow beneath his head. She said she was sorry. What did she slip him?
Rinsing his mouth out under the tap, he scoops water on to his face, eyes stinging, the cold working. Looking in the mirror, he blinks through bloodshot eyes. The foul taste is in his mouth, the toxins in his system. The smell of urine in his hair, on his clothes… Someone pissed on him. The boyfriend wanted some payback.
He walks up the stairs. Drawers have been pulled out, up-ended, searched. The contents lie on the floor.
What’s missing? His camera, a police medal, an iPod Claire gave him (still in its box), some euros, his passport… He flicks through his checkbook. Two blank checks are torn from the middle. They were clever. Practiced.
He should make a list. Not touch anything. Call the police. Then what? They’ll send a car out sometime in the next two days. He’ll have to make a statement. He can hear them laughing already. The jokes. The ribbing. Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz, taken in by a girl he invited home. They’ll suspect she was a hooker or a call girl. Ruiz is paying for sex now, they’ll say, like some sad old pervert.
Another thought occurs to him. He climbs the stairs to the study. The desk has been swept clean. The pages of the manuscript are scattered on the floor. He didn’t number them.
The drawers have been forced open. One of them had been swollen shut for twenty years. Ruiz remembers what it contained-Laura’s jewelry, her engagement ring and an antique hair-comb that had been passed down through her family. When Laura knew she was dying, when disease swam in her veins and grew in her chest, she wrote a series of letters to the twins-to be opened when they turned eighteen, or when they married, or when they had children of their own…
One of the letters was for Claire on her wedding day. It contained the rings and the hair-comb. Now the torn envelope lies discarded on the floor. The letter screwed into a ball. The small drawstring bag with the jewelry has gone.
Ruiz picks up the crumpled letter and tries to smooth out the creases. Laura’s handwriting had grown spidery as the chemo robbed her of energy, but none of her sentences are crossed out or corrected. Perhaps a person knows exactly what to write when the sand is trickling away.
Ruiz stops himself reading. The letter is meant for Claire. His eyes drift to the bottom of the page where Laura finished with hugs and kisses. A small circular stain has marked the porous paper-a fallen tear as a punctuation mark.
Anger rises. Burns. Most of the missing items can be replaced-the camera, the iPod and the money-but not the jewelry. He wanted Claire to wear the hair-comb on her wedding day. It was the “something old” to go with something new and borrowed and blue-just like the rhyme says. But it’s more than that. The hair-comb is something that Ruiz has cherished. Laura was wearing it when they first met at a twilight ball in Hertfordshire in 1968. She looked like a proverbial sixties flower child with her hair braided and pinned high on her head.