They had talked sporadically during the journey. For most of it, Fox had been playing with her hair, but she seemed calmer now and they had mostly talked about her life as a freelance journalist – how she came into it after getting an article on abortion published in a local newspaper. Eventually, she indicated for him to slow down.

  ‘It’s just through there.’ She pointed to where a secondary road pulled away to the left through a regiment of large oak trees. Priest hit the indicator.

  ‘Nice place,’ he remarked, staring up at the swaying trees as the old Volvo rumbled underneath.

  ‘My parents helped me buy it. Otherwise, I couldn’t afford to live here, not when every pound I earn comes from writing.’

  Hidden away from the main road, they came to a small row of terraces that fronted an orchard. Through the trees, Priest could see the park and, in the distance, a white-stoned church silhouetted by the low-hanging sun.

  ‘It’s the far one.’ Fox motioned towards the end of the building – a four-storey house, but one that was barely wide enough for the front door and single window on each floor.

  ‘You mentioned your boss – Max,’ Priest reminded her, pulling the Volvo up at the gate.

  ‘He’s more of an agent, I guess. I go out and get the stories and he sells them on. I get commission and the chance of a desk job. It’s a shit deal but there aren’t many avenues for those of us that aren’t prepared to fuck our way into a newspaper.’

  ‘Raw deal.’

  ‘Alexia could have done it, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Murdered Simeon.’

  Priest did a double take. ‘You really think so?’

  ‘She wouldn’t have done it herself, of course. She wouldn’t get her hands dirty. She’d have hired someone.’

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘Really? How much would it have cost her? Fifteen thousand? Twenty at the most? A drop in the ocean for her.’

  ‘Probably cost about that, yeah.’

  ‘Worth thinking about it.’ She winked. Priest was forced to agree, but there would be time to think about that later: for now there was something else preying on his mind.

  ‘Look, I can’t stop you from doing anything, but it would really help me if Simeon’s murder was kept out of the papers for now.’

  Her eyes lit up. ‘Are you asking me for a favour?’

  ‘No, that would be unprofessional. I’m just saying – it would help.’

  She smiled – a little impish. Priest wasn’t sure he liked it. ‘How about I give you a head start?’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘A fair amount of time, but of course the public has a right to know.’

  He thought about pressing it, but now wasn’t the time. Besides, what difference would it really make? It was all going to come out soon anyway and trying to get his own injunction against Fox would leave the door open for Hagworth to walk all over the main case. No – he didn’t have the leverage, so he’d have to settle for Fox’s ‘head start’.

  ‘What will you do now?’ he asked her.

  She shrugged and put her hand on the door handle but didn’t open it. ‘Probably have a bath with at least two bottles of Pinot Grigio. You, erm –’ she turned and looked at him ‘– want to join me?’

  He smiled back. Passed her his business card. ‘Mind how you go, Elinor.’

  She feigned a disappointed face. She got out of the car, didn’t shut the door immediately but leant over it, her coat falling open just a little and showing a blouse loosely buttoned over a pink bra. A little taste, Priest surmised, of what he would be missing.

  ‘Can I tag along with you tomorrow?’ she asked, biting her lip while she waited for the reply.

  ‘What makes you think . . .’

  ‘I know you’re not going to leave it to the police to look into Simeon’s murder. Two heads are better than one, don’t you think? After all, we both have a vested interest in the outcome.’

  ‘I might salvage the trial and you might get off the hook?’

  ‘Something like that.’ She swept her hair away from her face. ‘I don’t want to stalk you or anything, I just want to tag along. I had a stalker once, at university. He used to send me flowers and cards and stand outside my bedroom window at night. It really wasn’t very nice, so I’m not going to do that to you.’

  She winked. There was something very elfin about her petite features that Priest liked. Maybe I was a little hasty to turn down her offer. Then he remembered his date with Jessica tomorrow night: the thought evaporated and he felt ashamed for even contemplating it.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

  She straightened up as he turned the car around. Pulling off, he glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. She stood curiously still, watching him as he drove away.

  Chapter 16

  Priest awoke the following morning to the sound of pan pipes drifting in from the open bedroom window. He lay sprawled across the bed, partially clothed, and tried to open his eyes but they didn’t respond.

  He remembered coming back home yesterday with his head spinning and a disturbing sensation of numbness in his fingers and toes. He had spent most of the evening in the lounge trying to make sense of it all until he felt the icy impression of his body detaching itself from its grip on reality. He perceived himself walk out of the room and collapse on the bed in what an onlooker might have assumed was a drunken stupor, if they did not know any better. There he had lain, face down on the covers, conjuring up images of Elinor Fox’s cleavage and the top of her pink bra until the picture was disturbed by a very angry-looking Jessica.

  Now, in the emptiness between sleep and full consciousness, Priest struggled to regain traction.

  The pan pipes emanated from a street performer outside the Royal Opera House, from where he was regularly regaled with music of varying quality and origin if the window was open. Priest liked the pan pipes the best; for reasons that he did not understand, they reminded him of his mother.

  One of the many ghosts who inhabit my head.

  The feeling of emptiness was familiar and depressing, but Priest reminded himself that he was lucky. He could still function, most of the time, and the feeling came and went. Some sufferers of depersonalisation disorder are left devastated, the breakdown in their perception of reality leaving them in a permanent state of disillusionment; they watch, helpless, as their bodies move around in front of them, like a horror film in which they are the star. Some even question whether they are in fact alive. Priest knew that sensation, but the worst of it was behind him – for now – although he still experienced both depersonalisation – the sense that the individual is not real – and derealisation – the perception that the world isn’t real – temporarily, and although unpredictable and terrifying, the hallucinations and out-of-body experiences never lasted for more than a few hours a day at most.

  Like many DPD sufferers, Priest hated his condition. He had wasted months, years, obsessively ruminating – why could he think but not feel? What had happened? What if things had been different? What could he have achieved? Why him? Priest didn’t believe in souls, but it was the closest he had come to admitting that the body and the mind were two separate entities, and that the former could not function if the latter took leave.

  And if his mind had departed from his body, where the hell had it gone?

  He suddenly became aware that his phone was ringing from another room. With a great effort, he hauled his muscular frame out of bed and sauntered through to the lounge where he found his phone next to the fish tank. The lionfish seemed uninterested in him today; their amber and beige striped tentacles waved nonchalantly at him from the other side of the plastic castle Sarah had bought for him last year. The newest addition, Hemingway, was particularly aloof.

  ‘Well good morning to you too,’ he grunted at them.

  His phone had stopped ringing but there was a message:

  ‘Charlie, it’s me,’ said Jessica’s recorded voice. ‘We never agreed a time so I’ll come over to yours at seven. I’ll assume that’s fine unless I hear otherwise from you.’

  He hung up and found himself in a state of unrest. He had acted rashly by inviting her over, but he was prone to ill-conceived impulses. Having said that, he hadn’t expected for one minute that she would accept. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. He sat down on the sofa heavily and closed his eyes. He tried to think about what he would say to her, what he shouldn’t say to her – but there she was, hijacking his thoughts, her flawless body straddling him on her bed. With a smile, she unhooked the top of her silk dressing gown from her shoulders and unpeeled it as she began to writhe on top of him, her soft moaning as melodic as the dulcet pan pipe music he had awoken to.

  And Elinor Fox’s pink bra didn’t feature once.

  *

  Georgie Someday occasionally regretted living with a professional escort.

  That was what Li called herself – a professional escort. Georgie appreciated the importance of labelling but, whatever you called it, it was still sex for money in her book. Li could make an easy living working for herself if she wanted to, but she was more than happy to hand over a percentage of what she earned to her pimp, a mysterious woman whom Georgie had never met named Mrs White. In return, Li’s clients were carefully selected for her – mainly married-middle-class men with big incomes and little risk.

  Today was one of those days. Georgie had been up most of the night – first spending an hour reading every article she could find on the web written by Elinor Fox (of which there weren’t many) and then reading everything she could about the Free People’s Army. Finally, the early hours were spent with a very thick volume of Keats, and Wagner on repeat.

  Another night with the light on. Georgie hated the dark.

  Now she was barely awake and her head was pounding from lack of sleep. The sound of Li and one of her clients wasn’t helping. Georgie hated the ones who dropped in early in the morning having told their wives that they were going to the gym or something equally feeble.

  Fortunately, it didn’t last that long.

  After Georgie and Li had graduated they had shared a flat with three other friends, including a greasy-haired psychology graduate named Martin Penton-Smith. At first, Georgie had been attracted to Martin. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, but she could relate to his geekiness, and the little bit of herself that she had recognised in him. He liked his own company more than that of others – she could relate to that. He had seemed nice. He had seemed harmless.

  Georgie hadn’t gone to the police. How could she? She had gone to his room willingly. They had been alone. She had sent out the wrong message. She was angry with him – she had never felt hate like it – but she was just as angry with herself.

  She opened the wardrobe door and examined its rather drab contents. At the back, three stacks of files and papers – her two-year long investigation into Martin – sat gathering dust. She hadn’t opened the files for a month. She’d forced herself not to look, not to let the obsession overcome her. And the files disgusted her – she couldn’t let it go and, even now, they called to her like Sirens across the water. This was the price she had paid for not going to the police – this was her punishment, her private vendetta.

  Not that she had dug up anything of interest, even after hacking his computer. He liked porn, but what boy of his age didn’t? His emails were dull. His social circle was small. His friends were uninteresting. He was an only child and his mum and dad paid for his accommodation.

  It seemed like the only thing of note that Martin Penton-Smith had ever done in his life was rape his flatmate.

  Georgie closed the wardrobe and caught her breath.

  To distract herself, she inspected her phone and found an email from Charlie; he was on his way to the office to think things through – would she join him? Georgie thought fleetingly about Elinor Fox and the way Charlie had been so quick to dismiss her suspicions, like he had been, she recalled, with Jessica Ellinder.

  She briefly glanced at herself in a small mirror on the dressing table. Her face was too freckly to wear make-up, her mother had told her. Georgie knew of course that wasn’t true but it suited her to think it was and it saved a lot of time in the morning. She quickly tied her hair back and pushed her glasses further up her nose.

  If I was lying, would you protect me, Charlie? Am I pretty enough to be given the benefit of the doubt?

  She felt a flush of shame and scolded herself inwardly for being unkind. After all, Charlie had been right about Jessica and she had been wrong. I must be more trusting.

  She wrinkled her nose in the mirror before scurrying out past Li’s room, hoping she wouldn’t run into her client on the way out. Maybe she would burn the Martin papers tonight. They told her nothing anyway.

  Yes. Georgie would buy matches on the way home.

  *

  Priest felt vaguely guilty about pulling Georgie into the office on a Saturday but, until Peters said otherwise, the trial was reconvening on Monday and there was no guarantee she would give them another grace period, dead witness or not. Consequentially, time was of the essence.

  He calculated that she would be there in half an hour relying on the Tube and then a brisk walk through Holborn. Time for a quick cigarette on the rooftop garden of his penthouse. He rarely smoked nowadays – he avoided most intoxicants – but recently he felt the need for something tangible to anchor him; something other than late night Hammer horror films and dreamless sleep. Dreamless except for Jessica. Moreover, something about seeing Fox cling to the cigarette in her hand when they had met outside the police station yesterday had reawakened an old craving within him.

  So, wrapped in a coat and scarf, Priest took out a menthol cigarette, sat down underneath the shade of a white-tipped amelanchier tree and lit up. He’d barely taken a drag when his phone rang for the second time that morning. This time he managed to hit ANSWER before the voicemail overrode him.

  ‘Hi, Sarah,’ Priest said.

  ‘Are you smoking?’

  How the hell do you know that? ‘No.’

  ‘You’re outside at nine o’clock in the morning on a Saturday,’ she said with certainty.

  ‘That doesn’t mean I’m smoking.’ Priest took a drag.

  ‘Whatever. I was just ringing because I wondered if you were OK.’

  He groaned inwardly. I hate it when you take on Mum’s role. ‘Sarah, I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘You just seemed a bit on edge yesterday – you know, when you randomly turned up with Georgie and demanded the keys to Bristol Road without explanation. It’s not a safe house, Charlie. Who have you got in there?’

  ‘Sarah . . .’

  ‘And you looked even more unkempt than normal. I mean, you generally look unloved, like one of Tilly’s rag dolls she’s forgotten about and keeps under the bed for months.’

  ‘Well, you know what they say, Sarah.’ Priest looked along the strip of flower bed dug around the edge of the square patio, dotted with purple crocus heads protruding cautiously out of the soil in anticipation of spring. ‘Some flowers thrive on neglect.’

  Sarah huffed. ‘How ridiculous. And all this fuss over a tiny two-bedroomed flat. Listen, one of my girlfriends is really keen to meet you. Apparently, she’s spent a lot of time studying your website photo and she messaged me last night and I thought, Wow! My brother would . . .’

  ‘Sarah, not this again,’ Priest sighed.

  ‘No, really . . .’

  ‘Wait.’ Priest found himself stood up all of a sudden. ‘Wait – what did you say?’

  ‘I said I’ve got this friend . . .’

  ‘No, before then – about the flat.’

  ‘I said all this fuss over a tiny two-bedroomed flat,’ Sarah repeated, puzzled.

  ‘Oh, Jesus.’ Priest bolted across the patio towards the stairwell. ‘Thanks, Sarah. Got to go. Love you.’

  *

  Gary had owned the electronics shop on Bristol Road for eight years and in that time he had barely turned a profit. He fixed PCs and laptops and, by all accounts, he was pretty good at it, but he didn’t make any money. Fortunately, having won the best part of four million pounds on the National Lottery in 2008, he didn’t need to. Gary fixed computers because Gary enjoyed fixing computers.

  Gary’s good fortune meant that his shop only opened between ten and three and he picked and chose who he worked for – customer service was relatively unimportant and Gary could decide whether he was helpful and welcoming to new customers or downright rude and hostile.

  Right now, faced with an attractive blonde who had identified herself as a freelance reporter, Gary was on the fence. On the one hand, he hated reporters and didn’t like the line of questioning about the guy who lived in the flat above him – the one owned by that awful lawyer – but on the other hand, with her curvy body and flirtatious smile, she was joyous to behold.

  ‘You don’t happen to have a key, do you?’ asked the reporter, flashing him another gorgeous grin.

  ‘Told you, miss. It’s not my flat,’ Gary replied.

  ‘When was the last time you saw the occupant?’

  ‘Like I told the police when they asked the same thing, keeps himself to himself. I don’t even know his name. But I thought he might be in some kind of trouble.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘There was a lot of scurrying about. You know, sometimes you can just tell these things.’

  The reporter looked thoughtfully at the doorway that led to the flat. ‘How does he get in when the shop’s closed?’

  ‘There’s another door round the back. I don’t know when he comes and goes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said brightly. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’ Gary grunted something in reply and turned back to the corrupt hard drive spread across the counter. ‘You don’t mind if I take a quick look through there, do you?’

  He opened his mouth to reply but he was rudely interrupted.

  ‘Tell you what, how about I open up for us?’

  Gary groaned. The awful lawyer was standing in the doorway holding a key.

 

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