Part 9 (1/2)

'It's more than that.'

She took a gulp of the wine.

'Come on. What's on your mind?'

'I'm sorry I just it's been a bad day. With Millie, with work.' She shook her head despairingly. How could this keep happening? How could she go on being so stupid? All All the time. All the time. It just wasn't getting any better. 'The house is falling down around my ears, Steve. The downpipe at the back has fallen off and there's damp everywhere. The thatch is rotting, there are rats in the ceiling and they've eaten through the plasterboard. I found squirrel droppings in the utility room on Monday. It'd cost me ten thousand pounds to put it all back and me? Idiot me? I don't even know if I'm going to pay my council tax this month. And then ... then today ...' the time. All the time. It just wasn't getting any better. 'The house is falling down around my ears, Steve. The downpipe at the back has fallen off and there's damp everywhere. The thatch is rotting, there are rats in the ceiling and they've eaten through the plasterboard. I found squirrel droppings in the utility room on Monday. It'd cost me ten thousand pounds to put it all back and me? Idiot me? I don't even know if I'm going to pay my council tax this month. And then ... then today ...'

'Today?'

She dropped her hands from her face and looked at him seriously. 'Can you keep a secret?'

'Funny no one's ever asked me to do that before.'

She gave a watery smile. 'Seriously. It's about Millie. I've promised her not to say anything, but I can't help it. It's all so bizarre I can't keep it a secret. I've got to talk about it.'

He pulled up a chair and sat. 'Go on. I'm listening.'

'She ... needed some money. She knew she couldn't come to me, so she went to someone she shouldn't have. Someone who wants the money back. And he's not the sort of person I know how to deal with he's a drug-dealer.'

'Oh, Christ.'

'I know. I'm just so dense dense.' She knocked her knuckles against her forehead, wis.h.i.+ng she could wake up the dumb, sleepy ma.s.s in there. 'I just never get get it. I didn't see any of this coming, just like I didn't see the divorce coming, and now my only chance of making a decent living is to work for a criminal, and he's rude and you say he's dangerous, but I haven't got any choice because my daughter still thinks she can live like all her rich friends do and will make any stupid decisions because of it and now I'm-' it. I didn't see any of this coming, just like I didn't see the divorce coming, and now my only chance of making a decent living is to work for a criminal, and he's rude and you say he's dangerous, but I haven't got any choice because my daughter still thinks she can live like all her rich friends do and will make any stupid decisions because of it and now I'm-'

'Hey hey hey.' Steve reached across and caught her hand in his. 'Hey. Take it slowly. We can work it out. I mean- Do you want me to speak to this character? Do you know how to get in touch with him?'

'You can't. If you do, Millie will find out. I've promised her not to say a word. Anyway G.o.d knows what he'll do to her if he thinks he's not getting the money. I've thought about it. The only way is for me to pay back what she's borrowed.'

'Then I'll lend you the money. The divorce wasn't kind on me, you know that, but I can find the money. It's not a problem.'

She bit her lip and raised her eyes to his. In his open face, his straightforward smile, she saw a sweet and welcoming slope. A slope that she could step on to with ease. Fall on to and be carried along. It would be comfortable: the fear would go away. But it would lead her nowhere. Eventually she'd come back to the same numbness she'd reached with Julian.

'No,' she said, with an effort. 'No. Thank you, but no. I've got to work this out on my own. David will pay me an extra four hundred and eighty a month so it'll take a while, but I'll do it. And I borrowed a DIY book from the library maybe I can fix some of the house myself. There are some tools in the garage that the last owners left and I can borrow some more from Isabelle.'

'OK.' He smiled. 'And what you can't get from her I'll lend you. Whatever you need.'

She smiled back weakly. 'Thank you,' she said. 'Thank you.'

Steve rose and went to the fridge for the wine bottle, but she couldn't draw the line that easily. She sat, her head on one side, turning her gla.s.s round and round on the table, watching the wet rings cross and recross.

'Steve?' she said, when he sat down again.

'What?'

'You know this morning, what you were saying about David Goldrab?'

His face darkened. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully with a knuckle. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I remember.'

'What did you mean when you said it was just fluke he hadn't been banged up years ago? If he had been put in prison, what would it have been for?'

'Oh, Sally. Are you sure you want to know all this?'

'Yes. I've got my first day at his tomorrow and, honestly, I'm nervous. I can't go on any more with my head in the clouds, always missing the plain b.l.o.o.d.y obvious, always being the last to know anything. Please ...'

Steve shook his head. 'OK. Well, chiefly Goldrab's a p.o.r.nographer.'

'A p.o.r.nographer? What does that mean? He sells magazines?'

'Mostly videos. Downloads on the Internet.'

'A p.o.r.nographer? Are you sure?'

'I'm afraid so. A hundred per cent sure.'

She was surprised to find she wasn't more shocked. 'Gosh all day I've been thinking you meant he was a real criminal.'

Steve gave a dry laugh. 'He is a real criminal, a real, live criminal. One of the richest p.o.r.nographers in the country and that's saying something because we're one of the few nations in the world that doesn't have a thriving p.o.r.n production industry. He makes his living from persuading young women not even women some of them, girls, more like to do things they'll regret for ever. Before the Internet took off he spent a long time in Kosovo making illegal p.o.r.n that he smuggled into the country. And I mean nasty stuff animals, bondage. You name it. People have suffered, I can guarantee that. I'm not going to get all Mr Morals on you, for G.o.d's sake I'm a red-blooded man and and I'm not saying I haven't watched a bit of p.o.r.n in my time but, trust me, a lot of the women he's used didn't have a choice in the matter. They didn't have the freedom. Especially the ones in the Balkans.'

Sally sat in silence, digesting this. She could see the reality and all the subtle equations that came out of it if she was working for someone like that, it kind of made her equal to him, complicit, even. But after all her consideration she knew she wouldn't back out. She needed the money. 'I suppose that makes me pretty desperate, if I'm working for him.'

Steve reached over and pushed her hair behind her ear. 'Sweetheart, we're all all desperate. We all have to do things we're not proud of. That's just the way the world goes round.' desperate. We all have to do things we're not proud of. That's just the way the world goes round.'

22.

It was raining so Zoe took the Mondeo. She parked near the locked gates to Sydney Gardens and prised her way through the bushes. The park was officially closed, but unofficially it was open to business. Everywhere she looked she saw young men loitering, standing casually, hands in pockets, or leaning against trees. One or two were actually sitting on the ground, lounging as if it was midday in August and not a rainy night. As she pa.s.sed most of them melted away into the bushes.

The gate in the wall was set to open out on to the ca.n.a.l but not to allow anyone in at night. A police sign had been placed next to it, warning people that the towpath to the east was blocked due to an incident and advising them to find a different route. Zoe flicked out her torch and shone it at the ground. The rain had eased but earlier it had been heavy enough to fill to the brim the holes left by footsteps in the mud. The little pools glinted back at her in the light. She negotiated round the mud, squeezing through the bushes along the edge, and opened the gate. On the other side of the wall a single Victorian-style streetlamp threw down a yellow glow in a circle on the gravel and the ca.n.a.l water. Zoe ran the torch along the ground and found what she'd expected to find about ten feet away.

A slight depression spanned the path. Maybe some pipe-laying underneath had caused a dip, or a fault in the material. Whatever the cause, it had only taken the smallest amount of rain to join the scattering of puddles into one large lake. There was no way round it. You'd either have to splosh through it or take a running jump. And, she thought, looking back at the gate, if you'd just come through that gate and you were wearing shoes that had got muddy, you would probably use the opportunity to rinse off the mud.

If Lorne had come on to the towpath here she could have cleaned her shoes, and yet there'd still been mud on them when she died. Maybe there was another entrance to the ca.n.a.l, another place she'd stepped in the mud nearer the crime scene. Zoe set off down the path, her hood pulled up, keeping the beam on the ground, sweeping it from side to side. The temperature had dropped and smoke was coming from one or two of the barges, which had shut their doors and lit their wood-burning stoves. The chatter of TVs and the flickering blue light came through the windows.

She'd gone about three hundred yards when a small break in the trees to her left made her stop. It was a tiny s.p.a.ce, no more than a badger run. It rose up, away from the path, then fell into darkness on the other side. Pus.h.i.+ng aside the brambles and trees that crowded into the opening, she shone the light down. She smiled. Mud. And in it there were two clear shoe prints. They looked at a glance to be an almost exact match to Lorne's muddied ballet pumps.

'Oh, Lorne,' she murmured. 'You weren't shopping on Sat.u.r.day at all. You've been lying to us.'

23.

The next morning Millie refused point blank to go to school. She said it was going to be crazy, anyway, with everyone talking about Lorne, and all the speculation, but Sally knew it was more to do with the guy in the purple jeep sitting outside Kingsmead. She wasn't going to force her, but she wasn't going to leave her at Peppercorn alone, not after last night. She called Isabelle, but she was going to be in meetings all day, so, in spite of herself, she called Julian. He too was working all day.

'Please, Mum,' Millie begged. 'Please. Just don't make me go to school.'