Going Loco (14 page)

Jago had been impressed, not to say wildly jealous, and took the first opportunity to dispatch Tanner to Sweden, even though his passion for the clone theory had burned out long ago. No, sending Tanner to Malmö was now more a means of removing the young turk temporarily from the office. It is not unknown for people in Jago’s position to arrive at work
one day and find a Tanner in their chair. To find a Tanner in his chair
in a sarong,
however, would be more than Jago Ripley could stand.

So, whereas last week he’d been in Paris hobnobbing with tomorrow’s designers (also known as today’s bedwetters), now Tanner was heading for Malmö to meet a madwoman. No wonder, then, that bored by his demeaning mission and peeved that he’d been refused an upgrade by the airline, he no sooner settled into his seat than he produced a YSL-monogrammed satin blindfold, donned it, and started snoring.

Maggie, why? thought Leon, as the plane taxied to the runway. He tossed aside his Swedish basketball magazine, and squirmed between the punitive arm-rests, which dug into his hips. A man of his size was bound to dislike air travel. His enormous body was now squeezed awkwardly into the restricting window-seat, while the long, spindly Tanner alongside could loll with space to spare.

What did I do wrong? he continued. For the umpteenth time he rehearsed all the events of his wooing routine: it was driving him crazy. The fluffy racing car, the generous show of affection, the bottle of Cognac. Over in Oshbosh, he’d confided his interest in Maggie to a tabloid colleague called Jeff, who had advised him brilliantly, telling him to appear all the things he wasn’t: i.e. thoughtful, sexually self-confident and enormously entertaining. ‘You’re not exactly a self-starter, are you?’ Jeff had guessed, rather woundingly. ‘More of a human waterbed. Well, women don’t like that. Especially actresses. They like you to show fire and initiative and a decent profile.’

Since Jeff had been married three times, once to a lady wrestler, Leon assumed he knew what he was talking about. The trouble with Leon was that, being (indeed) no self-starter, he always took advice if he considered it well meant, regardless of whether it was any cop.

So he had burst into Maggie’s flat as Mister Personality – and look what happened. Maggie had virtually thrown him out. But perhaps she hadn’t liked him in the first place, either. Recollecting that night at Jago’s, he was forced to remember he’d ignored the golden rule of social chitchat – that to be interested in motor-racing you must first own a pair of testicles. Also, he had told Maggie with some confidence that Rembrandt was not a household name, which now made him squirm to remember. It’s always the same when you’re categorical. Since making this silly statement, he had, of course, seen Rembrandt toothpaste in every corner of the globe.

‘She’s in love with that Swede, that’s the real trouble,’ he told himself. And no sooner had he formed this ridiculous, petulant theory than memories rushed to corroborate it. My God, here was the answer – at long last! In the car home after Jago’s, what had Maggie talked about? Stefan. At dinner, with whom had she swapped private jokes? Stefan. And in her bedroom – how blind can a broadsheet sports correspondent be? – whose picture did she have in an elaborate frame surrounded by fairy-lights? Well, it wasn’t Damon Hill. Maggie was in love with the Swede who talked funny. Who’d solemnly informed Maggie in front of everybody that she had been ‘the absolute dog’s bollocks’ in a play he’d seen. Leon shivered at the thought of him, this man who had captivated Maggie with his silvery tongue. Who was, moreover, a slim, blond, exotic academic; the very antithesis of a bulky, swarthy hack who was also a human novelty mattress.

Tanner snored in his seat, annoyingly. Leon had taken care to reserve a position by the aisle, but had arrived to find Tanner already asleep in it, with all his paperwork piled beside him. Clambering over the gangly boy to the window, he’d had to move all the papers on to the floor. Now that the cabin staff were serving food and drink, should he attempt to wake this
annoying man? Sleeping on such a short flight was preposterous. He’d taken off his shoes and everything.

‘Rolls, mate,’ he said companionably, in Tanner’s ear. By dint of weary experience he was an expert on airline food. ‘One roll with egg mayonnaise, and one roll with a slice of unidentifiable grey meat. And, seeing as it’s northern Europe, a small square of chocolate.’

Tanner slept on.

‘Coffee, mate. Lukewarm coffee in a cup with a silly handle you can’t hold without sticking your elbow out so that it jabs into people.’

Nothing. The plane tilted violently to the left, as it always will when liquid refreshment is served.

‘Coffee and rolls, mate. Whoopsadaisy. Nearly got some on your skirt.’

But Tanner slept on, so Leon ate two lots of rolls and drank two lots of coffee, and was just fiddling under the seat for his laptop when a file of Tanner’s caught his eye. He blinked with astonishment. It had the name ‘Stefan Johansson’ on it – surely the name of Maggie’s preferred lover!

He gasped. Could it be the same Stefan Johansson? No, no. There would be millions of them in Sweden. Millions. There were three, at least, in the national basketball team, a fact that had caused famous confusion on several occasions.

Yet he couldn’t help it. He picked up the file, to examine it closer. And what he saw was:

Leon frowned and gulped so hard that some of his egg
mayonnaise came back. A cunning clone? What did that mean? A clone was a sheep, wasn’t it? Blimey, if Stefan was a sheep, he was very cunning indeed.

Surreptitiously, still awkwardly bending to reach the floor, he opened the file and found that it was virtually empty. No dossier as such; certainly no manuscript. In fact, it had just three dog-eared items in it, which Leon – unable to control himself – memorized. The first was the address of a secure unit in Malmö’s university hospital, with the note ‘Ingrid J, Tues, 2.30’. The second was Laurie Spink’s home phone number scribbled on the back of Jago’s business card, with the note ‘Ring any time, we’re paying plenty.’ And the third was a sheet torn from a notebook, with ‘cookie’ and ‘nuts’ written on it in appalling shorthand. Leon perused all three items and grimaced.

That he had never heard of Laurie Spink goes without saying. Leon was unashamedly ignorant of everything except sport. Once, at the time of a Northern Ireland summit, he had spotted the headline ‘Adams in talks’, and had been genuinely disappointed when the Adams in question turned out not to be Tony, the Arsenal and England defender, renegotiating his contract. So until genetic modification became an issue in Chinese swimming (a development not too far off, actually), he wouldn’t know the first thing about the subject that had been filling features pages for the last five years.

As the plane banked and the seatbelt sign was illuminated, all Leon knew for certain was that he didn’t trust the Swede. Was he a cookie? Was he nuts? It would explain a lot. Beside him, Tanner removed his eyemask, folded it neatly, and placed it in his inside pocket. ‘Ah,’ he said airily, when he realized Leon was looking at him. ‘See you’re admiring my sarong.’

He looked very young, Leon thought. Son of a successful father, no doubt. The sort of arrogant Oxbridge tyro who overtakes
you professionally the same way Michael Schumacher overtakes people on the race-track – by ramming into them, sailing past, and getting away with it.

‘Excruciatingly uncomfortable,’ Tanner said, stretching his arms.

‘Mm,’ agreed Leon.

‘Idiots wouldn’t give me an upgrade.’

‘Right. You going into town?’ said Leon. ‘We could share a cab and get two receipts.’

Tanner put his head on one side and thought about this proposal for about fifteen seconds – proof positive that he had been in journalism no more than a couple of months. ‘All right.’ He extended his hand, so that Leon could notice his bespoke cufflinks. ‘Tanner of the Effort, pleased to meet you.’

Leon shook his hand enthusiastically. ‘Are you Tanner? That’s marvellous!’ he cried.

‘Why?’

‘I’m with the Effort as well. Jago asked me to look out for you in Malmö. And here you are all along!’

The Armadale Road job was proving extremely easy for Linda. In short, she loved it here. Belinda’s life had so many vacuums, all of which Linda was very, very glad to abhor. No wonder Belinda continued not to recognize her as a malevolent double like the ones in books, even when Linda posed for author photographs, liaised with a new agent, and signed a deal with a toy manufacturer. Except for those rather alarming wah-wah occasions when she threatened to walk out, Linda was a diligent, selfless, trouble-free sweetheart with a talent for home-making. Also she didn’t charge much, which was astonishing when you consider the extra-mural commitments. Had Mrs Holdsworth ever been asked to effect
an impersonation of Belinda on the
Late Review,
double-time would have been mentioned almost at once.

Only six weeks had passed since Linda’s arrival. It seemed hardly possible, when so much had happened. Linda continued to rustle up smoked haddock in filo pastry, also to shop and to clean. But she had been stupendous on television, which no one could have predicted. Smart as a whip, with an infectious giggle, and no swank – she was spotted at once as a natural. The producer was impressed: he mentioned the possibility of a documentary about literary doubles, to help promote the book. To top it all, he even invited the Johanssons to dinner; and what a night that was for everybody. Stefan looked breathtakingly gorgeous in a blue suit Linda bought in Bond Street. Linda had her hair cut by Nicky Clarke. And while her dear, wonderful ambassadors were engaged in their selfless mission on her behalf, Belinda worked contentedly all evening, amazed by her own good fortune.

To be honest, Belinda did a rather wicked thing that night. When she heard her envoys return home by taxi at two a.m., laughing and drunk, she used her two-way listening device to eavesdrop. It was underhand, and reprehensible. But she was desperate to hear what (albeit vicariously) Belinda Johansson had been up to.

‘When Alan Yentob turned up, I thought I’d die!’ exploded Linda, filling a kettle.

‘But you were brilliant,’ said Stefan. ‘He thought you were great. And the Marquess of Bath wanting you for a wifelet! Wait till Belinda hears.’

As Belinda now sat happily, day after day, at her lovely new desk, the only fly in her ointment was a niggling sensation of guilt connected with the quality of work she was producing. Because perhaps it was not enough, finally, to get your hands on Virginia Woolf’s pure and rounded pearls. Perhaps you needed a smidgen of Virginia Woolf’s talent as well. You had
to be able to dash off
The Waves,
or Mrs
Dalloway,
or something. Sometimes she wished she could knock off another Verity book, to boost her confidence. She had ideas for Verity continually. But she took Linda’s point that she must stop churning them out. Linda was organizing a new uniform edition of her backlist, and had everything in hand.

But this doubles book, how good was it really? What if it were second-rate tosh? What if duality were too complex a subject for her to reduce to seven types? Asking other people to sacrifice themselves in the cause of a bad book was an awful imposition. How would Linda feel when she found out she’d dedicated herself to such a hollow cause? How would Stefan feel, after suffering all those celebrity dinners with television controllers and the master of Longleat? It didn’t bear thinking about.

Oh well. For now, it was terrific. Except for lavatory breaks, Belinda had scarcely left her first-floor office for the last six weeks. She had not left the house at all, or been downstairs, and had mostly kept the thick curtains drawn all day to exclude draughts. Mother was right that she was putting on weight: since Linda had started thoughtfully supplying crisps and Twixes, she had thickened at the middle, but it was a development that did not much alarm her. Bodily things were such an irrelevance. Besides, everyone says that when you write a book, you put on a stone or two, in the way women formerly lost a tooth for each baby they bore. Her burgeoning waistline was a badge of her intellectual fecundity, therefore. It meant she was ‘with book’, which was lovely.

Talking
ad nauseam
about the ex-cleaning lady was not what Dermot had envisaged when he first seduced Viv; and to be honest, it was a bit like being married to her, which wasn’t the
idea. But he certainly sat up and took notice on the afternoon when – as the adulterous pair sat in flowery dressing-gowns at the kitchen table one day in March – she finally explained to him why losing Linda had been such a phenomenal blow.

‘The thing is, she was doing my job at the hospital,’ Viv confessed, sobbing.

‘What?’ In his alarm, Dermot poured coffee down his front, leapt up and stubbed his toe.
‘What?’

‘I don’t know how it happened. It’s just that I didn’t really need a cleaning lady. I liked doing all the things in the house myself. I’m good at cooking and shopping and tidying. I gave her the credit and everyone believed me. I stencilled the bathroom and said it was her. I even made all the Roman blinds!’ The thought of such abject domesticity reduced Viv to a further outburst of tears.

‘Jago doesn’t know,’ she added. ‘He must never know.’

Dermot reeled with shock. He gripped the edge of the table. His toe throbbed horribly. ‘This is outrageous, Viv. For God’s sake, is Linda medically qualified?’

Viv shook her head and blew her nose. She couldn’t speak.

‘Viv, she might have killed people.’

‘I know.’

‘Just so that you could sit at home joining bits of chintz!’

‘There’s a lot more to Roman blinds than that, Dermot!’

‘Viv, listen to yourself!’ He jumped up and started striding about.

‘I know, I’m sorry. I know.’

‘What you did was criminal.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I know.’