One Plus One, Page 7

  "Don't say it, Marty. Don't you dare say it." She put the phone down before he could.

  And then the police rang at a quarter to ten and said that Jason Fisher had denied all knowledge.

  "There were fourteen witnesses," she said, her voice tight with the effort of not shouting. "Including the man who runs the fish-and-chip shop. They jumped my son. There were four of them."

  "Yes, but witnesses are only any use to us if they can identify the perpetrators, madam. And Mr. Brent says it wasn't clear who was actually doing the fighting." He let out a sigh as if she should know what teenage boys were like. "I have to tell you, madam, the Fishers claim your son started it."

  "He's about as likely to start a fight as the Dalai bloody Lama. We're talking about a boy who can't put a duvet in its cover without worrying it might hurt someone."

  "We can only act on the evidence, madam."

  The Fishers. With their reputation, she'd be lucky if a single person "remembered" what they'd seen.

  For a moment Jess let her head fall into her hands. They would never let up. And it would be Tanzie next, once she started secondary school. She would be a prime target with her love of maths and her oddness and her total lack of guile. Jess went cold. She thought about Marty's sledgehammer in the garage, and how it would feel to walk down to the Fishers' house and--

  The phone rang. She snatched it up. "What now? Are you going to tell me he beat himself up, too? Is that it?"

  "Mrs. Thomas?"

  She blinked.

  "Mrs. Thomas? It's Mr. Tsvangarai."

  "Oh. Mr. Tsvangarai, I'm sorry. It--it's not a great time." She held out her hand in front of her. It was shaking.

  "I'm sorry to call you so late, but it's a matter of some urgency. I have discovered something of interest. It's called the Maths Olympiad." He spoke the words carefully.

  "The what?"

  "It's a new thing, in Scotland, for gifted students. A maths competition. And we still have time to enter Tanzie."

  "A maths competition?" Jess closed her eyes. "You know, that's really nice, Mr. Tsvangarai, but we have quite a lot going on here right now, and I don't think I--"

  "Mrs. Thomas, the prizes are five hundred pounds, a thousand pounds, and five thousand pounds. Five thousand pounds. If she won, you'd have at least the first year of your St. Anne's school fees sorted out."

  "Say that again."

  Jess sat down on the chair as he explained in greater depth.

  "This is an actual thing?"

  "It is an actual thing."

  "And you really think she could do it?"

  "There is a category especially for her age group. I cannot see how she could fail."

  Five thousand pounds, a voice sang in her head. Enough to get her through the first two years.

  "What's the catch?"

  "No catch. Well, you have to do advanced maths, obviously. But I can't see that this would be a problem for Tanzie."

  She stood up and sat down again.

  "And of course you would have to travel to Scotland."

  "Details, Mr. Tsvangarai. Details." Her head was spinning. "This is for real, right? This isn't a joke?"

  "I am not a funny man, Mrs. Thomas."

  "Fuck. Fuck! Mr. Tsvangarai, you are an absolute beauty."

  She could hear his embarrassed laugh.

  "So . . . what do we do now?"

  "Well, they waived the qualifying test after I sent over some examples of Tanzie's work. I understand they are very keen to have children from less-advantaged schools. And between you and me, it is, of course, an enormous benefit that she's a girl. But we have to decide quickly. You see, this year's Olympiad is only five days away."

  Five days. The deadline for registration at St. Anne's was tomorrow.

  She stood in the middle of the room, thinking. Then she ran upstairs, pulled Mr. Nicholls's money from its nest among her tights, and before she could think she stuffed it into an envelope, scrawled a note, and wrote ADMISSIONS OFFICE, ST. ANNE'S in careful letters on the front. She would drop it in on the way to clean tomorrow.

  She would pay it back. Every penny.

  But right now she didn't have a choice.

  --

  That night, Jess sat at the kitchen table and worked out a rough plan. She looked up the schedule for trains to Edinburgh, laughed a bit hysterically, then looked up the cost of three coach tickets (PS187, including the PS13 it would cost to get to the station) and the cost of putting Norman in a kennel for a week (PS94). She put the palms of her hands into her eye sockets and let them stay there for a bit. And then, when the children were asleep, she dug out the keys to the Rolls-Royce, went outside, brushed the mouse droppings off the driver's seat and tried the ignition.

  It turned over on the third attempt.

  Jess sat in the garage that always smelled of damp, surrounded by old garden furniture, bits of car, plastic buckets, and let the engine run. Then she leaned forward and peeled back the faded tax disc. It was almost two years out of date. And she didn't have insurance.

  She turned off the ignition and sat in the dark as the smell of oil gradually faded from the air, and she thought, for the hundredth time: Do the right thing.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ed

  [email protected]: Don't forget what I told you. Can remind you of deets if you lose the card.

  [email protected]: I won't forget. Whole night engraved on my memory. ;-) [email protected]: Did you do what I told you?

  [email protected]: Just sorting now.

  [email protected]: Let me know if you get good results!

  [email protected]: Well, based on your past performance, I'd be amazed if it was anything but! ;-0

  [email protected]: Nobody's ever done for me what you did for me.

  [email protected]: Really. It was nothing.

  [email protected]: You want to hook up again, next weekend?

  [email protected]: Bit busy at the mo. I'll let you know.

  [email protected]: I think it worked out well for both of us. ;-)

  The detective let him finish reading the two sheets of paper, then slid them toward Paul Wilkes, Ed's lawyer.

  "Have you got any comment on those, Mr. Nicholls?"

  There was something excruciating about seeing private e-mails laid out in an official document: the eagerness of his early replies, the barely veiled double entendres, the smiley faces (what was he, fourteen?).

  "You don't have to say anything," Paul said.

  "That whole exchange could be about anything." Ed pushed the documents away from him. "'Let me know if you get good results.' I could have been telling her to do something sexual. It could be, like, e-mail sex."

  "At eleven fourteen a.m.?"

  "So?"

  "In an open-plan office?"

  "I'm uninhibited."

  The detective removed his glasses and gave him a hard look. "E-mail sex? Really? That's what you were doing here?"

  "Well, no. Not in that case. But that's not the point."

  "I would suggest it is totally the point, Mr. Nicholls. There are reams of this stuff. You talk about keeping in touch"--he flicked through the papers--"'to see if I can help you out some more.'"

  "But it's not how it sounds. She was depressed. She was having a bad time getting rid of her ex. I just wanted to . . . make things a little easier for her. I keep telling you."

  "Just a few more questions."

  They had questions, all right. They wanted to know how often he had met Deanna. Where they had gone. What the exact nature of their relationship was. They didn't believe him when Ed said he didn't know much about her life, and nothing about her brother.

  "Oh, come on!" Ed protested. "You've never had a relationship based on sex?"

  "Ms. Lewis doesn't say it was based on sex. She says the two of you were involved in a 'close and intense' relationship, that you had known each other since your college days, and that you were determined to make her go ahead with this d
eal, that you pressed it on her. She says she had no idea that in taking your advice she was doing anything illegal."

  "But she's . . . she's making it sound like we had much more of a relationship than we did. And I didn't force her to do anything."

  "So you admit that you gave her the information."

  "I'm not saying that! I'm just saying--"

  "I think what my client is saying is that he cannot be held responsible for any misconceptions Ms. Lewis might have held about their relationship," Paul interjected. "Or what information she might have passed on to her brother."

  "And we were not having a relationship. Not that kind of relationship."

  The detective shrugged. "You know what? I don't really care what the nature of your relationship was. I don't care if you knobbed her halfway to next Wednesday. What is of interest to me, Mr. Nicholls, is that you gave this young woman information that on the twenty-eighth of February, she told a friend, was 'going to bring us some serious profit.' And her and her brother's bank accounts show that they were, in fact, brought some 'serious profit.'"

  --

  An hour later, bailed for a fortnight, Ed sat in Paul's office. Paul poured them both a whiskey. Ed was becoming oddly used to the taste of strong alcohol in daylight hours.

  "I can't be held responsible for what she told her brother. I can't go around checking whether every potential partner has a brother who works in finance. I was just trying to help her."

  "Well, you certainly did that. But the SFA and the SOCA won't care what your motives were, Ed. She and her brother made a barrow load of money, and they did it illegally on information you gave her."

  "Can we stop talking in acronyms? I have no idea who you're talking about."

  "Well, try to imagine every serious crime-fighting body that has anything to do with finance. Or crime. That's basically who is investigating you right now."

  "You make it sound like I'm actually going to be charged." Ed put the whiskey on the table beside him.

  "I think it's extremely likely, yes. And I think we may be in court pretty quickly. They're trying to speed up these cases."

  Ed stared at him. Then his head sank into his hands. "This is a nightmare. I just . . . I just wanted her to go away, Paul. That's all."

  "Well, the best we can hope for at the moment is that we can convince them that you're just a geek who was in over his head."

  "Great."

  "You got any better ideas?"

  Ed shook his head.

  "Then just sit tight."

  "I need to do something, Paul. I need to get back to work. I don't know what to do if I'm not working. I'm going nuts down there in Nowheresville."

  "Well, if I were you, I'd stay put for now. The SFA may well leak this and then the shit is really going to hit the fan. The media will be all over you. The best thing you can do is hide out down there in 'Nowheresville' for another week or so." Paul scribbled a note on his legal pad.

  Ed gazed at the upside-down writing. "Do you really think this will get into the papers?"

  "I don't know. Probably. It might be a good idea to talk to your family, anyway, just so they're prepared for any negative publicity."

  Ed rested his hands on his knees. "I can't."

  "You can't what?"

  "Tell my dad about all this. He's sick. This would . . ." He shook his head. When he finally looked up, Paul was watching him steadily.

  "Well, that's got to be your decision. But as I said, I think it would be wise for you to remain somewhere out of reach if and when it all blows up. Mayfly obviously doesn't want you anywhere near its offices until it's all sorted out. There's too much money riding on SFAX. So you need to steer clear of anyone associated with the company. No calls. No e-mails. And if anyone does happen to locate you, for God's sake, don't say anything. To anyone." He tapped his pen, signaling the end of the conversation.

  "So I should hide in the middle of nowhere, keep schtum, and twiddle my thumbs until I get sent to prison."

  Paul stood, closed the file on his desk. "Well, we're putting our best team on it. And we'll do everything we can to make sure it doesn't come to that."

  --

  Ed stood blinking on the steps of Paul's office, surrounded by the lead-stained buildings, the couriers tugging helmets from sweaty heads, bare-legged women laughing on their way to eat sandwiches in the park, and felt an acute pang for his old life. The one with his Nespresso machine in his office and his secretary nipping out for sushi and his apartment with the views over the city, and the worst thing being the prospect of having to lie on the couch in the creatives' room and listen to the Suits drone on about profit and loss. He had never really measured his life by that of anyone else, but now he felt cripplingly envious of the people around him with their everyday concerns, their ability to get on a Tube back to their own homes, their families. What did he have? Weeks of being stuck in an empty house with nobody to talk to, facing the prospect of imminent prosecution.

  He missed work more than he had ever missed his wife. He missed it like a constant mistress; he missed having a routine. He thought back to the previous week, to waking up on his sofa at Beachfront with no idea how he had got there, his mouth as dry as if it had been packed with cotton wool, his glasses neatly folded on the coffee table. It was the third time in as many weeks that he'd been so drunk he couldn't remember how he'd got home, the first time he had woken with empty pockets.

  He checked his phone (new, only three imported contacts). There were two voice-mail messages from Gemma. Nobody else had called. Ed sighed and pressed Delete, then set off along the sunbaked pavement toward the car park. He wasn't really a drinker. Lara had always insisted alcohol gave you belly fat and complained that he snored if he had more than two. But he wanted a drink right now like he had rarely wanted anything.

  --

  Ed sat for a while in his empty flat, got a bite to eat at a pizza restaurant, sat again in his flat, and then climbed back into his car and drove toward the coast. Deanna Lewis danced before him the whole way out of London. How could he have been so stupid? Why had he not thought about the possibility that she would tell someone else? Or was he actually missing something more sinister here? Had she and her brother planned this? Was it some sort of psychotic revenge strategy for dumping her?

  With every mile, Ed grew angrier. He might as well have given her the keys to his flat, his bank-account details--like his ex-wife--and let Deanna wipe him out. That would actually have been better. At least he would have kept his job, his friend. Shortly before the Godalming exit, now overcome with rage, Ed pulled over on the motorway and dialed her mobile number. The police had taken his old mobile, with all his stored contacts as evidence. He thought he remembered her number, though. And he had his opening line: What the hell did you think you were doing?

  But the number was dead.

  Ed sat in a lay-by, his phone in his hand, slowly letting his anger dissipate. He hesitated, then rang Ronan's number. It was one of only a handful he knew by heart.

  It rang several times before he answered.

  "Ronan--"

  "I'm not allowed to talk to you, Ed." He sounded weary.

  "Yeah. I know. I just--I just wanted to say--"

  "Say what? What do you want to say, Ed?"

  Ed's voice stalled at the sudden fury in Ronan's voice.

  "You know what? I don't actually care so much about the insider-trading thing. Although obviously it's a bloody disaster for the company. But you were my mate. My oldest friend. I would never have done that to you."

  A click, and the phone went dead.

  Ed sat there and allowed his head to drop onto the wheel for a few minutes. He waited until the humming in his mind leached away to nothing, and then he signaled, pulled out slowly, and drove toward Beachfront.

  --

  "What do you want, Lara?"

  "Hey, baby. How are you?"

  "Uh . . . not so good."

  "Oh no! What is the matter?"

 
He never knew if it was an Italian thing, but she had a way, his ex-wife, of making you feel better. She would cradle your head, run her fingers through your hair, fuss around you, cluck maternally. By the end it had irritated him, but now, on the empty road in the dead of night, he felt nostalgic for it.

  "It's . . . a work thing."

  "Oh. A work thing." That instinctive bristle in her voice.

  "How are you, Lara?"

  "Mamma is driving me crazy. And there is a problem with the roof in the apartment."

  "Any jobs?"

  She made a sound with her teeth against her lips. "I got a callback for a West End show and then they say I look too old. Too old!"

  "You don't look too old."

  "I know! I can look sixteen! Baby, I need to talk to you about the roof in the apartment."

  "Lara, it's your place. You got a settlement."

  "But they say it's going to cost lots of money. Lots of money. I have nothing."

  "What happened to the settlement?" He kept his voice steady.

  "There is nothing. My brother needed some money for his business, and you know Papi's health is not good. And then I had some credit cards . . ."

  "All of it?"

  "I don't have enough for the roof. It's going to leak this winter, they said. Eduardo . . ."

  "Well, you could always sell the print you took from my apartment in December." His solicitor had implied it was his own fault for not changing the locks on the doors. Everyone else did, apparently.

  "I was sad, Eduardo. I miss you. I just wanted a reminder of you."

  "Right. Of the man you said you couldn't even stand to look at anymore."

  "I was angry when I said that." She pronounced it "engry." By the end she was always engry. He rubbed at his eyes, flicked the indicator to signal his exit onto the coast road.

  "I just wanted some reminders of when we were heppy."

  "You know, maybe the next time you miss me, you could take away, like, a framed photo of us, not a fourteen-thousand-pound limited-edition screen print of Mao Tse-tung."

  "Don't you care that I have no one to turn to?" Her voice dropped to a whisper, almost unbearably intimate. It made his balls tighten reflexively. And she knew it.

  Ed glanced in his rearview mirror. "Well, why don't you ask Jim Leonards?"

  "What?"

  "His wife called me. She's not very happy, funnily enough."

  "It was only once! Once I went out with him. And it is nobody's business who I date!" Ed could picture her, one perfectly manicured hand raised, fingers splayed in frustration at having to deal with "the most annoying man on earth." "You left me! Am I supposed to be a nun my whole life?"