Painkillers (4 page)

'That's so good,' his wife, Angelica, enthused. She laid her perfectly manicured hand on Eva's wrist. 'It's a great idea.' She was a dreadful Polly-Anna, but she knew how to keep potentially acid evenings like this bright and bubbling; I was grateful.

'Red, anyone?' I said - my own attempt at social lubrication. Very suave. Very urbane. Everyone here knew I'd not be 'starting again' any time soon. How could I, given the cloud surrounding my departure?

Against all evidence, I had given Top Luck a clean bill of health. If now the enquiry did not think I was culpable, it was only because my subsequent performance provided me with a dismal kind of alibi. I spent a lot of time between '92 and '97 on sick leave. Dreadful, shrieking stomach pains, like talons, shredding my insides, had me in and out of clinics for months. The doctors couldn't find anything. And the rum smell in my skin and hair, the long lunch-hour, the tie askew and the three day-old shirt gave personnel more straightforward reasons for my poor results.

'And how are you, Adam?' said Angelica, treating me like an invalid as usual. 'How are we?' I'd half-expected her to say - though I saw her difficulty. The codsup I had made of Hong Kong was hardly for the dinner-table. If it hadn't been for the Handover, I wouldn't have lasted the year. As for another appointment - well, word travels fast in this business.

Easier, then, to make out that I'd suffered a misfortune, a breakdown, ME - something for which I could not be held culpable. 'Oh, keeping busy,' I said, in my best duffer-pottering-about-the-garden manner.

'Eva keeps me in trim.'

David Kwok laughed a dirty laugh. Eva coloured up.

'And you, David,' I said, feeling the heat of the second bottle of merlot rise in my throat. 'Flogged any treasures recently?'

Nobody else missed my tone - Loh's spectacles were flashing like there were LEDs built into the rims but David Kwok was too fat and too happy with himself ever to notice a hit from me. 'You must come,'

he went on, explaining about his latest venture, a fine arts gallery in Dering Street. 'It's next to Anthony D'Offay.'

He had new pieces arriving from mainland China every couple of months. How he got away with it I could never figure. Most of it belonged in a museum, which is probably where it originated. David Kwok was going up in the world. The first time I met him he was churning out fake Alexander McQueen for Stanley Market.

The phone rang. I stood up. David, bless him, decided he still wasn't getting enough attention, and got to the phone before me. 'Wai?'

I took the receiver off him. He winced and shook his hand, like I'd hurt him. As if.

'Adam?'

'Yes.'

'It's Money.'

I swallowed. 'Uh-huh.' I couldn't have been put more off my stride if she'd turned up at the door.

'Did Eddie behave himself today?'

I glanced round at the dining table. Everyone was looking at me. 'Yes,' I said.

'You know how those two are.' She made them sound like a couple of feisty dogs.

'Yes,' I said.

'I forgot it was Justin's birthday, I'm so sorry.'

'That's fine,' I said, as neutrally as I could.

She twigged at last that something was wrong. 'Have I caught you at an awkward moment?'

'We've got some friends round.'

'Who is it?' said Eva.

'It's a woman, Eva,' said David Kwok. As though women were an exotic breed of deer. A well-spoken woman.' He turned to look at me over his shoulder, all coquettish. I half expected him to flutter his eyelashes. 'Very mysterious.'

'Would you like me to call back?' said Money.

'No, no. Let me take it upstairs. Stay on the line, yes?'

Eva wanted me to tell her who it was, but David was prancing around like a fairy, distracting us all. 'So sorry,' he was saying, 'I hear a bell, I answer itjust like Pavlov's dog.'

I ran up to the living room, where Boots was flopped disconsolately on the sofa. He stood up and shook himself, expecting some attention. I ignored him, and took the stairs to the bedroom two at a time. But Boots was too fast for me: as I opened the bedroom door he muscled in past me and jumped onto the bed. I had to tussle with him to get to the phone. I snapped up the aerial. 'Mrs Yau?' I sat down on the edge of the bed and held Boots at bay by his flea collar. He licked my hand.

'Eddie tells me you have a lovely cafe,' Money said.

God knows where that came from. I could hardly imagine Eddie saying, 'Guess what, Mother, Adam Wyatt and his wife run this lovely cafe...'

'Thank you,' I said.

'Look, Adam, I realise you're busy but we really ought to meet up. I haven't seen you since Jimmy... How does next Friday suit you?'

'I'll have to ask Eva,' I said.

'I'm not inviting Eva.'

This was more the woman I remembered; I almost smiled.

'Frankly, I don't think she'd be too delighted to know I was seeing you.'

'Do you have to tell your wife everything?'

I stayed silent - the telephonic equivalent of a shrug.

'I don't suppose for a second you've told her about Frank Hamley.'

Boots leapt on the bed and nuzzled the phone. I clouted him and he fell off the mattress.

'Adam?'

'I'm here.'

'Friday, then,' she said.

'Friday I work at the cafe.'

'Wednesday?'

'I don't think so.'

'You might want to have a read of today's Post before you put me off altogether.'

I swallowed.

'Adam?'

'What's happened?'

'Frank was knocked down by a hit-and-run crossing Queensway.'

I felt as though I were falling.

'He was due to give further evidence. They don't think he'll regain consciousness.'

'What are you saying?'

'The inquiry is going to be looking for a new witness.'

'You know I wouldn't cooperate.'

'I know,' Money said. 'But I'm not the one who ran over Frank's head.'

5.

I got downstairs again to find things warming up pleasantly. Angelica and Loh Han-Wah were holding hands, listening to a funny story of Eva's. David Kwok had drunk himself silent and Brenda and Flora were bullying him into making a liberal gesture for some charity or other. Hardly anyone noticed when I took my seat.

'But you must,' Flora insisted. David blinked. 'It'll bring so many interesting people to your new gallery - '

Loh's laughter drowned out Flora's third-degree. Eva, pleased with her story, leaned over to me. 'Who was it?' she said.

'Some old friends,' I said, off the top of my head.

'Who?'

'Mike and Ylwa,' I said. They were old acquaintances of mine from Hong Kong. Still there, for all I knew.

'Really?' Eva looked like she wanted all sorts of gossip, so I set about clearing the table of empty bottles.

'More wine, anyone?'

Flora and Brenda wanted David Kwok to auction something for a regional opera company they fancied.

'Something small,' Flora suggested. 'Something jade.'

They all left early, off to mansions in Barnes and mill-houses in quaint little villages served by the M4. Eva washed up. I dried.

'Even when you grill it, it just falls apart,' Eva complained. 'Let's not do it again.'

She had cooked a favourite of hers this evening - talapia with a peach salsa. She'd lifted it from a copy of House & Garden.

'It was delicious,' I said, and meant it.

'It looked like we'd scraped it off the grill.'

'Nobody cares about that.'

But Eva cared. Nothing, apparently, had been quite right. 'We should just have plonked a bowl of fruit on the table,' she said, demolishing each stage of her perfectly nice meal in turn.

'You like tirami su.'

'It was too wet,' she said.

I let it go. It wasn't the food was upsetting her, it was the people, and the games they played. There was a third of a bottle of red still on the table, but I resisted and screwed the cork in. Eva snapped off her rubber gloves. 'Let's leave this.'

'I'll finish.'

'No. Come to bed.'

I followed her up.

In the bedroom, she took off her earrings and heeled her way out of her shoes. Boots bounded up the stairs. Eva swung the door shut on him and after a couple of minutes whining and scrabbling, he got the message and thumped back down the stairs.

I watched her undress. It had been a long while since we had been this intimate with each other. Her body surprised me. The way it had thickened. Was her period due? I had no idea. She slipped into bed. I finished undressing and got in beside her. The sheets smelled of dog. She reached for me. Her hands touched my hands. Fumbling, I took hold of her. She rolled onto her front, moving closer. I laid my hand like a dead thing on her back. The knobs of her spine made a ridged line against my palm.

'Thanks for tonight,' she said.

'I'm sorry I got a bit pissed.'

'Did you?'

I yawned. I couldn't help it.

'What did they have to say?'

'Who?'

'Mike and Ylwa.'

I'd had time, by now, to get my story straight. 'It was a social call,' I said. They're coming to London in about a month.'

'It was nice of them to look us up.' She smiled, the way she used to. 'Don't you think it's nice?'

'Yeah,' I said, resisting another yawn.

She touched my cheek. 'Sleep tight.'

I closed my eyes. Relief flooded me. I couldn't lie to her any more - not tonight. I lay there a minute, forcing my shoulders to untense. I thought she was going to turn off the light, but nothing happened. I opened my eyes. She was looking at me. 'What are those marks on your neck?'

I rubbed at them, hiding them; I turned the other way. 'Just muck, I suppose. I should have had a shower when I came in.'

She believed me. Because I was a good liar. Because it was easier.

She turned out the light.

6.

Money Yau lived in one of those huge Georgian piles overlooking Blackheath. I had the taxi drop me at the bottom of Eliot Hill, and walked the last half mile from Lewisham. The streetlights fell away at the edge of the scrubland, and the roads that criss-crossed the darkness were barely wide enough for the BMWs and Volvos that frequented them. In place of road markings were lines of fussy white stakes, everywhere chipped and scraped after one too many private parties at the V&A, one too many bottles of rioja at Zinc.

Jimmy Yau bought the place, thinking to retire here come the Hnadover. He never lived to enjoy it. He'd have been the only householder on Wat Tyler Road who didn't belong to the Chelsea Arts Club. What he had seen in the place I had no idea, unless it was an ancestral preference for high ground. I imagined him, in furs and leather helmet, defending his hilltop palisade. It was the only picture I had of him that ever seemed to sum him up.

The gate was open when I arrived. I caught a glimpse of white walls, elegant high windows, honeysuckle

- the security light flashed on the moment I stepped on the gravel. I stumbled through a halogen glare and took shelter in the porch. They must have noticed the light go on inside because the front door was already ajar.

'Adam.'

I was still dazzled, and the light from the hall was streaming out past the girl who stood there. All I could see was her silhouette.

'Remember me?' she said. There was an edge to her voice; she had expected more from me than this rabbit-in-the-headlights gawp.

'Zoe,' I said, stupidly.

She was at least as tall as her father. Much taller than Brian and Eddie. I wondered if they envied her that

- her physical similarity to their father.

'Come on in.'

'I hoped you'd be here,' I said, stepping past her. Her hair smelled sweet and androgynous - CK One, I told myself, though I knew well enough that startling scent. I watched as she shut the door. She was wearing a georgette slip dress sheer enough that I could follow her long, too-slender legs past the beaded hem. Her Miu-Miu sandals were so wafer-thin, the straps so wire-tight, they had to be some kind of NASA by-product.

'Mother's in the kitchen still. Would you like a drink?' The pearl studs in her ears picked up and accentuated her eerie, blind-seeming grey eyes. Her teenage gawkiness was gone, but she had filled out hardly at all. Her breasts were tiny, pointed nubs against the grey silk. She looked more than ever like a half-starved Siamese.

I followed her into the living room.

'Do you still drink rum?' she said; she was watching me in the mirror above the drinks cabinet.

'White, if you have it.'

'Bacardi?'

My mate Ron. 'Why not?'

Her eyes didn't leave me once.

I sat down uninvited on the sofa and stared into the fire. 'I noticed there's a film on tonight. One of Brian and Eddie's.' It was one of those gas contraptions, the flames too blue at their heart to be convincing. 'I think I remember it. What's it called?'

'Full Auto Angel,' she said.

'I set my video.'

'I thought you couldn't watch them.'

'Well,' I said.

'There.' She sat on the seat next to mine, sipping from a glass that was clear and ice-filled, like mine. How old was she now? Twenty. Twenty-one. Her arms were smooth and unblemished. I thought about Brian and Eddie. I wondered where her scars were.

'How's Eva?' she said.

'Fine.'

'Eddie said your cafe's nice.' She drew her nails through her hair, drawing it from her ear, showing off her smooth, freshly shaved arm-pit.

I looked away. 'I guess it's what I need right now,' I said, and strained the rum out of the ice. As soon as I swallowed I knew it was a mistake. Everything went rubber: my neck, my gut. I closed my eyes, fighting a sudden nausea. Deep inside, the aliens flexed, multiple elbows drumming at my chest wall as they sucked the clear hot goodness from my intestines.

'And Justin?'

'Justin's well,' I said, when I could.

'Where is he now?'

'A school in Kent.'

I tried breathing, and decided it was good.

'Knox Lodge,' I said. 'It's a special school. New.'

'I missed you at the service.'

'I wasn't invited.'

'Would you have come?'