Love Story, With Murders (20 page)

‘Look,’ I say, ‘early childhood trauma. What does that mean? Really?’

‘Fi!’ Ed’s voice is warning me. Cautioning me.

I don’t feel cautious.

‘Okay, let’s just pretend I’m a copper. Let’s just say I might have some expertise in criminal investigation. We normally try to make connections. Sift through piles of
data and see if we can make something in Pile A match something in Pile
B.’

‘Yes, and let’s just say that
my
day job involved clinical psychology . . .’

I interrupt. ‘A girl with Cotard’s. You’d probably guess that sexual abuse had been involved somewhere along the line, right? Only a guess, but a pretty damn strong guess,
right? Then – bam! – twenty-something years later, that girl enters a lap-dancing club and experiences a very powerful, temporary increase
in her symptoms. A fucking
lap-dancing
club
, Ed. Tell me what the other options are!’

‘You really want to know?’ He’s heated now. Not angry exactly – Ed is a bit too English to get properly angry – but heated. He says, ‘You have no idea. You
think you do, but you don’t. Sexual abuse is one way to screw up a child, yes. But there are others. Neglect. Drug addiction. Physical abuse. Injury
to the brain or brain stem. Inflammation
or infection of the brain or brain stem. You. Just. Don’t. Know.’

‘She had her bum in my face, Ed. And I was nuts. Totally dissociated. Not like some rinky-dink teenage self-harmer who screws around with razor blades and listens to Kurt Cobain. The only
reason I wasn’t playing with blades myself is that I was way beyond that point. I was so far
past that point that I wouldn’t even have got a kick from cutting myself.’

‘Oh, okay, so that’s your argument, is it? And yes, you can present as evidence the fact that you had a weird evening tonight. But then again,
I
could present as evidence the
fact that you do not seem to be very screwed up around sex. When we were together, the sex was about the most normal thing about you.’

I’m about to respond. Pressured speech is the clinical term. Where the speaker is so driven to talk that they can’t listen. Can’t even get their own sentences out properly.
I’m there, in that place – and then I’m not. As though I’m worn out by the day, the night, the argument. By myself.

So I just say, ‘Yes.’

‘Those things cut both ways, you know. You don’t know, Fi. You really don’t.’

‘Okay.’

I’m not normally this humble. This submissive. But he’s right. I know he is. I could find five facts that argued for the sexual-abuse theory. Five that argued against it. An
unresolvable argument.

‘I think I’ve always been waiting for The Clue,’ I say. ‘I wanted some kind of eureka moment, one that would unlock the past.’

‘Fi, do you remember Brian from the hospital? The
guy with the beard and the acid burns.’

Yes, I remember Brian. A schizo. He was always having eureka moments. Two or three a day when he was fizzy. He’d lean in, with his bad teeth and stinky breath, and explain his latest
vision. One of those visions resulted in him pouring battery acid down his face. Hence the burns.

Ed goes on talking and I say stuff back at him, but I know he’s right.
The eureka moment won’t come. And if it does, it can’t be trusted.

We talk a bit more. Ed yawns. Maybe just a yawn, maybe a ‘shut up and let me go back to sleep’ signal. Either way, I’m good as gold. I say, ‘You sleep well,
Ed.’

‘Thank you. You too.’

We say good night and hang up.

I let the room drift back into silence. I raise my nonexistent gun at the nonexistent intruder and
fire off six rounds. Two groups of three. Chest and head.

Lower the gun.

Why do I miss having a gun with me? Why does the possibility of violent response to intrusion feel good? Why did my brain go AWOL today?

Ed’s right. You can’t trust eureka moments. But that doesn’t make the questions go away. The questions are real.

I fire off another five rounds. Gently, though. Accuracy,
not speed. Squeezing the trigger, not pumping it.

Then call Ed back. He mumbles something into the mouthpiece.

‘Don’t talk, Ed. I don’t want to wake you up this time. Not really. Just thank you. Thank you for being you. Sweet dreams.’

He mumbles a mouthful of nothing and I hang up.

And Ed has taught me something. These last few months, I’ve believed myself to be actively investigating
my past. Those missing two and a half years. The presumed cause of my teenage
Cotard’s Syndrome. But my investigation has been half hearted. I’ve not really tried: haven’t tried the way I normally would on a case I care about.

I’ve wimped out for two reasons. Partly, I’ve been waiting for that eureka moment, a
boom!
of recognition. And that’s not how it happens. Not how it ever happens.

But I’ve also wimped out because of fear. Why did I go nuts tonight? Simple: I was afraid. I’ve chosen never to look under the lid of how my father makes his money, and tonight I
did. I took one tiny step into my father’s world – and instantly, my system was so washed through with fear I could hardly move.

I’m afraid to know who I am
. Terrified. That’s why I haven’t really tried.

The knowledge soothes me. I feel calm and integrated in a way I seldom do. I don’t know what I’ll do with this insight yet, but that’s a question that can wait for another
time.

The room is full of silence now. The hall full of dead intruders. The streetlights glow their unprotesting orange.

I go to sleep.

I know what I’m doing tomorrow.

Barry.

In the 1880s, the place was nothing. Two or three villages on a muddy shore. Population in three digits. Then those bustling Victorians built docks to carry the coal pouring out of the Valleys.
From Senghenydd, Abercarn, Risca, Rhondda, Cwm Cynon, Tondu, Aberbeeg, Aberfan, Morfa. A black tide pouring south. At the outbreak
of the First World War, Cardiff was the world’s foremost
coaling port, Swansea its foremost steel port. Barry, in between the two, shipped every damn thing it could.

The black tide built and the black tide killed. It built the Empire. It built Barry. You can hardly find a house here older than 1890. But it also killed. Every mine had its fatalities, every
village its memory of disaster.
In 1901, the mine at Senghenydd suffered a major blast when gas and coal dust ignited. There were eighty-two men down the mine at the time. Eighty-one of them died.
Twelve years later, same mine: a second blast. Four hundred and thirty-nine men lost their lives. A second generation: gone.

Our cities are built on corpses. Perhaps they always are, but ours are recent.

Cardiff and Swansea
have both found new purpose since the death of King Coal. But Barry – what is it for? The past blows like rubbish in the air, sags like a collapsing door. When we were
kids, my dad used to take us to Barry Island, a place of rides and ice creams and fierce Atlantic winds. I used to love it, but somehow even then I felt the air from Senghenydd. Coal-black and a
smell of gunpowder.

The place
I want, Barry Precision, is down by the docks. Industrial sheds tamped round a rectangle of water. Slate-green and restless. I park. It’s Sunday and the place is closed. Gates
locked by a padlock on a fat chain. Wind, rain, and cold. I’ve got gloves but my coat isn’t particularly warm and I don’t fancy getting out of my car in order to jangle uselessly
at the chain. I think I ought to do
that, though, so I do. Jangle uselessly. The cold from the padlock penetrates my gloves within seconds.

Some people, Buzz for example, would know exactly what to do. He has an almost instant mechanical intuition. Say something like ‘See what the silly buggers have done? All we need to do is
slip the split pin out of the O-socket, then bend the hasp back – no, the other way – and the hinges
should just lift off, like so.’ Mechanical intuition and that unfussed
masculine strength. All I see is a tangle of cold metal that hurts my hands.

I get back in the car. A black and yellow sign on the fence gives the name and number of a security company. I call it. Police, I say. Reports of a break-in. The phone operator, apparently
overwhelmed with boredom, says she’ll send someone.

I wait.

There’s enough wind that I can hear it whistling in the fence. Over the roof of my car.

This northern climate is hostile to life. If you fell in the water, how long before you died?

I make a call to Rhys Jordan.

‘Hi, Rhys, are you okay after Friday night? Dad was a bit over the top.’

‘Oh, that’s okay. He’s allowed, I suppose.’

‘Look, funny question. But a few
years back, where did the girls go at the end of their shift? To get something to eat, have a chat, whatever they did to end the evening off.’

‘Oh, well, the club finishes around four in the morning. A lot of the girls just go straight home.’

‘Right, but if they do stick around? Have a ciggy. Get something to eat?’

‘There’s nowhere really good anymore. A few years back, the big place
was Macca’s. An all-night café. It opened early for the truckers and the market traders and people.
But we used to pour in about four fifteen, four thirty, whatever.’

He starts laughing and telling me some story, the gist of which has to do with a trucker getting a full strip from two of the girls in return for a plate of egg, chips, and beans. The place is
closed now, but he gives me
the name of the person who used to run it, a guy called Gavin Watson.

I tell him thanks and ring off.

The wind still chatters in the fence.

I wonder if I could pick the padlock. I probably could. I’ve got the tools, but not with me here. Instead, I listen to music. Radio 2. Radio 6. Classic FM. Settle on Brahms. Unhappy
violins and plenty of them.

Then the security guy comes.
He’s got a proper coat. Warm, rainproof, and covered in fluorescent strips in case I have difficulty seeing him.

I show him my warrant card. ‘It’s probably bollocks,’ I say, ‘but I need to take a look round.’

He nods. Bored. He’s got a dog in the back of his van that wants to come out and play. Either that or eat me. The guard unlocks the gate and we drive through to Barry Precision. A
blue
shed, fairly new, and large. Ten thousand square feet or more. A stock-holding yard behind. Security cameras.

The guard has keys to the unit but needs to call to get codes for the alarm. More waiting. Then we’re in.

We flip some lights on. There are some thin-partitioned offices at the front of the building, but the main space is a factory. Some fancy machines. Steel gantries. Forklifts.
The place is
ordered, tidy.

No break-in.

The guard looks at me. I say, ‘Look, can you just take a look round the perimeter? I’ll check around in here. Meet you outside in five minutes.’

He walks off. I spend a bit of time in the factory. Running my hands over complex metal objects. Things I don’t even know how to describe. Compressor blades. Cylinder heads. Turbofans. I
don’t know
what any of those things are, but for all I know I’m surrounded by them now. Rods and bars of specialty metals. Tungsten. Copper. Low-density steels.

Mark Mortimer knew about this stuff. So did Khalifi.

Both dead.

I like factories, but it’s not the factory I need. So I go back to the offices, which just look like offices. Holiday calendars. A coffee machine. Grey invoice files. Red
swivel chairs.
Mouse pads with adverts on.

The executive suite isn’t much – an office with glass windows that look out only to the reception area. A fancier type of desk lamp. I go inside.

It’s all weirdly normal. Neither thronged with the spirits of the dead nor even particularly bland. Not obviously hiding anything. It just is what it is. A not very smart office inside a
middling-sized
engineering company located in a decaying port town in an unimportant part of the United Kingdom.

I crawl under the desk. Burgundy nylon carpet tiles. That smell that comes from electric wires and office carpets. I fiddle round to the back of the computer. Pull at various cables until
I’ve figured out which one belongs to the keyboard. Should have brought a torch. Didn’t. Pull out the lead.
Take a thing like a memory stick from my pocket. Fit the keyboard lead into
one end of it. Fit the other into the keyboard port of the PC. Shove the computer back to where it was. Get up.

Everything’s the same as it was, except that my gadget now sits between keyboard and computer. A keystroke recorder. Bought for thirty pounds from Amazon and so simple to use that even an
idiot like me
can use it.

It doesn’t collect mouse clicks.

It doesn’t store images.

It doesn’t record web addresses or emails or copy files.

But it does collect keystrokes. And people use keystrokes to enter their passwords.

I root around until I find a stash of stationery and nick a few envelopes. Find a memory stick and take that too.

Outside, I ask the guard about the perimeter fence.
He shrugs. I shrug. I pretend to call the office while he resets the alarms.

Then we leave.

Outside the estate, the gate again locked and padlocked. The guard goes back to wherever he ought to be. I don’t leave straightaway. Wind the windows down. Get cold.

I’m feeling good. Send a text to Rhiannon Watkins, telling her about Gavin Watson and the place called Macca’s.

Ali el-Khalifi
liked sex with pretty girls, but I think Ali was also desperately concerned about his status. He wanted money, the better apartment, the girl with Manolo Blahniks. I don’t
know where Mark Mortimer comes into that and perhaps he doesn’t, but my little keystroke recorder is about to tell us either way.

I’m feeling good, but not quite satisfied. Buzz and I are spending the afternoon and evening
together. A couple of his old friends are coming round to dinner. These normal
boyfriend-girlfriend days used to terrify me. I assumed that the effort of playing normal for that many consecutive hours would blow a fuse somewhere. Yet that’s not been my experience. I
find the whole thing a challenge, but an okay one. I feel about it the way yachtsmen must feel about crossing the Great Southern
Ocean. Not a voyage to undertake lightly, but one which mostly
repays the commitment.