To Indigo Read online

  But Maureen was keen to know. She used to get me to read her what I’d done. She would sit spellbound – to this moment I really believe she was – gazing at me, devouring every word with her ears, eyes, and her forthright intelligence.

  “Roy – I was on the edge of my seat. Send it – look, I found this magazine advertised in the paper – try them. That really gave me the shivers.”

  And I would duly send, and duly get back the soulless rejection slip, and Maureen would say, “What do they know? You’re brilliant. You’ll be another Ellery Queen one day, you’ll see. Then they can eat their Y-fronts.”

  Love. Yes, I loved Maureen. In memory I still do. She was my good angel perhaps. Just as he, Sej, must be the bad one.

  The first thing I did was haul him off the chair and away from the table. I laid him out on the floor in the recovery position elaborated in so many diary-backs. He was snoring thickly by then.

  I had had a set ideal of what must be done and how I must operate afterwards. I hadn’t had space to plan beyond it. I couldn’t now.

  For one thing I had no real notion of how long he might be out.

  My success in overcoming him still… disturbed me. He had been omnipotent one minute, and now there he lay, at my mercy. I could kill him easily. I saw that. Perhaps I had anyway, but I didn’t really think so. He was young and fit, big and strong. He would get over it.

  I keep all my important personal documents in a folder in the study, another “fussy” habit of my father’s, rather a good one. (He it was, on the rare celebrations when he drank it, who never liked to mix two bottles of wine in one glass, even the same wine. To me, although I never bothered to adhere to the practice before tonight, this seems to demonstrate a certain common sense. Bottles vary.)

  My overnight bag came down from the top of the wardrobe.

  I put in what I might need for three or four nights, the ordinary paraphernalia – pants, socks, shirts, toothbrush, shaving kit and so on. Any spare cash I drew from the box. There was only seventy pounds, but I had my cards. My passport and birth-certificate I took, and bank and building society details, including the deeds to the house. Cheque books and other financial extras were added, even the used stubs of cheques and payments to me. I wanted nothing left that he could find.

  I don’t keep personal letters, the very few I receive. Business emails were mundane enough but too I always delete those. Like several of my species, that is the well over forty-fives, I avoid buying or paying on the net.

  From the desk top drawer I took up any discs I’d burned relevant to my work. Among these naturally was the great lumbering tome Untitled, plus the notes for the latest ‘project’. Despite abandoning my house to God knew what, I selected none of my published books. There was only one I had ever been at all fond of, in retrospect, Last Orders, and that was still in print.

  Then I set the computer to wipe all remaining data.

  I employ passwords for every file, but nevertheless I was taking no chances.

  As I’ve said, I’d had no plan beyond my plan. It might all have gone wrong anyway and never reached this stage, since he might have caught me out putting the sedatives in the wine and beaten me up, or worse.

  Last prudent thought, I went next door to the bedroom again and took a sweater and a jacket. After that I went out and locked the bedroom door. It had had a key ever since I was thirteen, a perceptive unique act of politesse on the part of my parents. But anyone could break down a door, and anyway there was nothing there of any import. The study, with the buzz of complete deletion going on, I left open. I had everything from there either valuable or pertinent to my life. I turned all the lights off and pulled every plug, except that of the machine. Downstairs the same.

  In the kitchen my guest snored on. He was quieter now. In sleep he didn’t look distressed. He looked very young, softer. Perhaps I’d misjudged his age from his street-wise bolshiness, his very insanity. He could be under thirty even.

  Scrupulously I emptied the last wine in the sink and rinsed out the glasses and both bottles and then slung the latter in the bin. I’d previously swilled the remaining sleeping pills down the lavatory; they were well on their way to pollute the sea by now. (“No, officer. He just collapsed, quite suddenly. Perhaps he’d had something before he came here. He did drink a lot of wine. At least six glasses.”)

  I disconnected the fridge and freezer next. The food, what there was of it, would doubtless go off quite quickly.

  I took the sandwich bag from the drawer that contained his note, and added to it the fork he’d used at dinner.

  Once I had turned out the kitchen light and the outside light, I picked up my holdall and checked my mobile was in my jacket pocket, which it was. Then, in the hall, I ripped the cord out of the telephone and smashed the receiver on the wall twice.

  Going from the house on to the front path I paused a moment, looking up and down. The curtains of 73 were drawn, a rosy pink. Elsewhere I could see the steely flicker of TV screens and, in upper rooms, computers. Outside No 80 the man with the paunch who smoked cigars was indulging in one, and animatedly discussing something with the man with the paunch from No 82, whose wife had made him dig and line the lily pond.

  They paid no attention to me. I could hear traffic along the high street, and further off a distant train.

  I shut the door but did not double-lock it.

  In one of the budding oak trees something stirred, or seemed to. Nothing was visible, even in the denuding glare of the streetlamps.

  Turning away, I walked towards the Crescent, and the station.

  The Belmont is one of those smaller hotels, and lies in the back-doubles behind Langham Place. It had quite a bit of gilt, and mirrors in the lifts, and jazzy carpets that to tired eyes resemble a dropped jigsaw, but it was very comfortable. I had stayed there quite a few times after various obligatory publishing do’s. Now and then a particularly flush publisher had even covered my expenses there, although never, it had always been stressed, my bar bill. But my bar bills normally amount only to a glass or two of wine and perhaps a whisky; I’m so far able to pay them myself.

  They remembered me at reception. I’d been lucky, for at this time of year usually they’re full up.

  “Two nights, Mr Phipps?”

  “It may be three. I’m not sure at present.”

  The smiling girl said she’d make a note, but regretfully cautioned me she might have to move me to another room for the third night.

  It was about nine forty-five by the foyer clock. My watch said ten to ten.

  When I got upstairs to the small alien luxury of the en suite room, smelling of floral cleaning fluids and regularly hoovered dust, I sat down on the bed and let everything hit me like a collapsing wall.

  To my appalled distaste I even cried for a moment. But that passed. Then I took out the whisky I had also put in my bag and had a couple of swigs. I’d done what I must. I’d escaped. Now there was time to think. And think I would bloody have to.

  EIGHT

  “Janette. I apologise for calling so early.”

  “Eight o’clock? That’s nothing for me, Roy, I can assure you. I’m up with the lark. What is it you want?”

  Though rather a good-looking woman, she has an ugly, unmusical voice, Janette, which its university-trained accent only emphasised.

  “Would it be possible to put me in touch with Harris?”

  “’Fraid not, Roy. Didn’t you know, his father died? He’s had to go over there, and I gather there are some complications.”

  “Yes, he did tell me something about it.”

  “Veronica,” said Janette. “The widow.”

  “Yes, so I…”

  “I really cannot comprehend,” expatiated Janette, “how a young woman with so much money of her own can behave in such a peculiar way.”

  “It must be difficult. But I’m afraid – I have a bit of an emergency on my hands. Or I wouldn’t be troubling you.”

  “Oh, yes.” The ugly over-
polished voice was now non-committal. It said quite plainly without words, It’s no use at all your telling me or asking me anything. I am not going to respond.

  I took a deep breath and said, “My life may be in danger.”

  “Good Lord!” She actually laughed. But I had heard and seen her erupt into this type of laughter once before. On that occasion someone at a dinner party had just spoken of finding her dog dead behind a hedge. But while I had, that time, stared at Janette, the friend with the deceased dog had also loudly laughed. “Poor old hound,” had laughed Janette. Would she now say something similar to me? No, it transpired not. “Are you ill?” she snapped with what seemed a kind of anger.

  “No. It’s nothing like that. I’m being – stalked.”

  “Stalked!” She almost hooted now. “You? Roy? Seriously? Who by for heaven’s sake?”

  Before I had called this time I had known any chance of help was slender. Even Harris would probably prove useless. But I had made a mental list of avenues to try and this was the first.

  “Please listen, Janette.”

  “You sound like a schoolteacher, Roy. Do rein it in.”

  “I’m sorry. But when you speak to Harris – I assume you do speak to him now and then in Spain? – would you please ask him if he could call me, if at all possible. I’m staying at The Belmont in Prince Henry Court.”

  “You want him to call you in London? From Spain? Oh really, Roy.”

  “I stress I wouldn’t bother him unless…”

  “All right. There. I’ve noted it down.” She read back to me the alleged note in a tone that managed to be both scornfully amused and irritatedly impatient: “Roy – serious emergency – call at Belmont Hotel. There you are.”

  I thanked her wanting to throttle her, and put down the phone.

  Tish Ackrington, my most recent editor with the White Knife Imprint, took my call immediately.

  “Hello there, Roy. Your book’s doing awfully well! Really great reviews. Did we send you any? Oh dear, that’s too bad. I’ll get someone to. What are you up to now? Anything on your little screen we might be interested in?”

  Tish was always like this. She seemed to want to cheer you up, promising things, exaggerating. I had been fooled at first, but after the initial contract nothing else ever materialised. I had once tested her with the name of an invented novel White Knife had supposedly already published, which of course they couldn’t have. And she had acquiesced gleefully, “Super book! Stayed up all night with that one, couldn’t put it down.” However. At one of those aforementioned parties, this one organised by WKI, I had heard something about her which might now prove useful.

  “The thing is, Tish, I’m doing some research in a certain area and I can’t get hold of what I need.”

  “Oh, that’s so tiresome for a writer, isn’t it?”

  “It’s holding the book up rather. It’s for quite a big house…” I named the firm, who were only less likely ever to publish anything of mine than to jump collectively from the top windows of their tall chrome building overlooking Hyde Park.

  “Wow,” said Tish, suitably impressed. “But can’t they help you with this research, Roy?”

  “Wouldn’t you know it, my editor there is on holiday in Egypt for six weeks.”

  “Oh God. Well, Roy, if there’s anything…”

  “It’s just that I do once recall your mentioning you had a friend, who knew someone who was a little bit on the shady side of the law.”

  A shocked silence. Naturally Tish had never confided this to me of all people. But she had confided it to someone, as it had been discussed as a fact by two or three fairly sober employees at the party. I could hear her now running a scanner over her memory, trying to find out how or why she had ever let slip such a matter to me.

  Finally she said, in rather a different way, “Well actually, Roy, my friend – she doesn’t see him now. He was rather – well, rather kinky, if you know what I mean.” I didn’t, and was glad I didn’t. She said, “Not the sort of person anyway you’d ever want…”

  “It was just for some background. Obviously I’d be happy to pay him a fee.”

  “Well I don’t think – I mean, I really can’t help you. Sorry. Oh Merlin!” she screamed, nearly deafening me. Either her Arthurianly named male PA had come in, or she was pretending that he had. “Roy – forgive me – Merlin’s in a panic. I have to deal with something – big flap. Super to chat. We must do drinks sometime. By-ee.”

  I tried a few others. Before I could even get on to the act of confession, that was only about three sentences into a conversation, they put me off. Only Lewis Rybourne, my most recent editor at Gates, astonished me by saying, “Don’t have a second now, but I’ll give you a call next couple of days, Roy. You’re at The Belmont, right? Talk soon.” He might even do this. But also even one more day might be too late. I ordered room service breakfast, tried to eat it, and started in on my gallery of ageing friends, hoping at least for advice, some ideas.

  Stanley had had another heart attack. He was ‘all right, doing really well’, but still in the general hospital. Matthew was divorcing Sylvia after thirty years of marriage. He was terribly distressed and we had a longish conversation, while the hotel phone bill mounted to frightening proportions, “She’s had a lover,” he kept saying, “a lover, Roy.” And I thought of the fictitious affair of my fictitious version of Lynda. Ed Erskine was drinking again. He told me candidly he never started until twelve noon on the dot. “What else’ve I bloody got, Roy, eh?”

  The immortal, if unvocalised line, I have troubles of my own, drove me slowly back towards my starting point.

  I went out for lunch. I walked round by Lang Gardens and into Langham Place, passed the Art Deco facade of Broadcasting House, and negotiated busy Oxford Street.

  What a change there had been in London over the years. Elegant places had become squalid, abominations had been done up like the Ritz. By night liquid bars of coloured light washed everything to a succulent epic panoply, and from Westminster Bridge the city resembled, at least to me, the cover of a 1950’s Science Fiction magazine.

  I ate at the Pasta Post. Or I tried to.

  Years ago someone ritually would have asked, “Everything all right, sir?” But now they merely scooped up the nearly full plate, bore it off, and offered me the ice-cream menu.

  It was as I was leaving the restaurant that I stopped, petrified, and so abruptly a young man banged into me and with the scathing aristocratic stare of Black Africa, drew aside and stalked on.

  I had recalled something after all that I had forgotten and left behind in my house in Old Church Lane, to the debatable mercies of Joseph Traskul Sej. The red glass dog my mother had loved.

  Needless to say, that second night I couldn’t sleep. Nor had I, the night before. Coming in again I told reception I did indeed want the room for three nights, and they told me, as if I must rejoice, there would be no requirement that I move to another one.

  So I rejoiced that I was not required to move. At least sufficiently that they seemed gratified. For even the most superficial overlay sometimes means far more than we know.

  Through the hours of the night I absorbed, through my portable radio, the turmoil of the world. I fell asleep near dawn and dreamed I was standing on a London bridge, I’m unsure which – perhaps a compendium of them all. No one was with me. The bridge was totally empty, and the river below, the roads beyond, devoid of all traffic. The lights of London glittered all about and there were many eccentric new buildings; one I recall looked like an apple made of windows, with a tall stalk lit palest gold.

  During the time I stood there in my dream I anticipated the arrival of someone – something – I refused to look over my shoulder to see if it had yet come.

  Waking fuddled about five-fifty, the thin light struggling to penetrate the protective Belmont drapes, I thought instantly of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, quoted in M.R. James’s Casting the Runes:

  Like one, that on a lonesome road,
Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, and turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

  NINE

  Showered, shaved and dressed I went down to breakfast the next day. I had decided this would do me good. I forced eggs, bacon and mushrooms down my throat and drank several cups of coffee.

  I had made another decision. I was going to the nearest London police station. I was going to tell them everything, and make them listen. I would not mention the drugs I had given him, even so. Hopefully he wasn’t dead, and so no post-mortem would reveal their presence or their type.

  But was he dead?

  Was it just conceivable he was? What then?

  He would be lying on the kitchen floor of my house, gradually decomposing, as so many had in so many abodes during my lurid tales. Who would believe I’d had nothing to do with it?

  I went back upstairs to my room, leaving the Do Not Disturb light on. I thought through all of it carefully. It was very incriminating, but there would have to be some get-out. I was nearly an old man. And I had no record of violence. I wasn’t gay, had no record of that either. I paid my bloody rates and taxes – A model citizen, Roy Phipps. Never trust the quiet ones.

  At twelve noon on the dot, as Ed would have exclaimed, I got up and went down to the hotel bar.

  It was another sunny day. Some Americans without apparently a care on earth, were sitting laughing in a corner booth, drinking colas and what I took to be screwdrivers.

  A smart woman and man, who looked what one used to call European, were consulting a street map in the corner of a maroon velvet banquette.

  “What can I get you, sir?”

  I asked for a whisky and soda and hastily added, “No ice, thanks.”

  The man came back with the whisky as specified and set it on a small white mat.

  I looked at that, then into my drink. I was going the same way as Ed. What else had I got?

  Raising my glass I drank a healthy swallow, and then gazed through the green and brown bottles along the bar into the shadowy mirror on the wall. You could see the foyer reflected there, a surge of incoming people, luggage on trolleys, a giggling blonde in her fifties, and Joseph Traskul, seated idly and relaxed, in a chair beside a potted palm.