Stop Me (7 page)

Leo didn’t wait for a response but shut the lid of his laptop and lay back on the pillows. He thought about taking off his uniform but turned off the lamp instead and scrabbled for the water and pills. He was asleep before he found them.

As the light in Leo’s room went out Cleaves was just trimming his fingernails. The clippings pinged off the condensation on the windscreen and he turned the warm air on to clear it. Another freezing morning. Night-time vigils were fine but the street was about to get busy and he’d have to move the car every half hour so nobody would alert the police.

The car had nearly ended up as a write-off but that had been Sharpe’s stupid fault. He ran his hand over his head again and felt the sharp prickles of his recent haircut. At least there was no shortage of nearby shops to keep him feeling human. He flipped the sun visor down so he could study the grey hairs amongst the black. He wondered if he should try a spray dye. Perhaps he’d wait for his bald patch to spread
a little more first. It wouldn’t be long and the thought made his stomach shrink. His wife had told him she didn’t mind but he was only in his mid thirties. He kept his abs trim but what the fuck was the point if his follicles were heading towards premature middle age?

His phone rang and he switched his earpiece on. There was only one person it was allowed to be while he was working.

‘Progress?’ Cleaves could hear the motor of a train in the background. His employer was obviously on his way to work.

‘Nothing significant.’ He’d been reporting the same thing since he’d taken on the job and had reached the point when he’d run out of different ways to say it.

‘I’ll call you in a couple of days’ time.’ He hung up.

Cleaves turned off his earpiece. That was another three days expenses then. What the fuck, it was Mr Allan-Carlin’s money.

When the phone rang Leo reached for the bedside table but found that he was sitting in the security booth. He extended his other arm and picked up, vaguely registering that it was morning through the windows on the multiscreens in front of him.

‘Leo?’

‘Ashley?’ Whatever the time, it was definitely too early in the morning to be hearing from her.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘Sat
watching reruns of
Frasier
. Seems to be on twenty-four hours a day.’

‘I was just…’ Leo tried to think about what he was just doing but his sentence tailed off.

He heard the volume of the TV drop and the sound of Ashley laying the remote onto a hard surface. ‘What was the name of the doctor who left a message on your answering machine?’

For a moment Leo had forgotten that he’d mentioned it to her in a phone call. He was convinced that he’d never remember the doctor’s name but found it rolling effortlessly off his tongue. ‘Mutatkar.’

‘Right. I was flicking round and caught the headlines on News 24. I knew I’d heard the name and I’ve only just realised why. Somebody called Mutatkar’s committed suicide.’

Leo felt something coil up inside him. ‘When?’

‘Couple of days ago. Wasn’t headline material until now though. Hang on, the paper’s already arrived. Let me see if there’s anything about it in there.’

Leo watched the cleaners arriving on the screens in front of him and listened to rustling paper on the other end of the line.

‘Here it is.’ Leo visualised Ashley putting her spectacles on. ‘Police believed eminent physician, Doctor Parag Mutatkar, committed suicide by driving into the pathway of an oncoming goods lorry on the afternoon of March 12th. However subsequent examination suggests
that the fifty-five-year-old was dead before the accident occurred. A full autopsy is now being undertaken.’

The line seemed to go dead. ‘Ash?’

‘That’s all.’

‘Is there a photo?’ Leo wasn’t sure why he’d asked. He’d never seen the man and no matter how many times he’d replayed the message he still hadn’t been able to discern the name as Parag.

‘Yes. Nothing else though. Bizarre story.’

‘Which paper?’

‘The
Telegraph
. Wait a minute. Should I really have told you this?’ She suddenly sounded full of self-reproach. ‘Remember, it’s probably a complete coincidence.’

Dr Parag Mutatkar MB BS FRCP MRCS DCH DRCOG wasn’t hard to find. An eminent rheumatologist who had owned his own clinic in Notting Hill, he had been Council and Executive member of the British Society for Rheumatology, an expert adviser to NICE, scientific adviser to the National Osteoporosis Society, and honorary treasurer to the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance. He was one day away from his fifty-sixth birthday when the lorry had ploughed into his car. He left behind a wife, Dakini, and a twenty-two-year-old daughter, Sabri.

Could he really be the same Doctor Mutatkar and, if so, what the hell had he been doing leaving messages on Leo’s answering machine?

Leo had wondered if he would be ex-directory but a quick scan through the Kensington and Chelsea online phone book had pinpointed the sprawling Queen Anne house that Leo’s Saab was now parked outside. He’d wondered if there’d be a mob of reporters outside the black electric gates when he arrived but the story obviously hadn’t been worth a wait in the cold or was already old news.

He got out of the car, crossed the road and pushed on the intercom buzzer beside the gate.

If somebody answers in five seconds then this will be my first real step towards finding Laura
.

Nobody did and as he looked up the gravel driveway to the house again he noticed that some of the windows still had their curtains drawn.

‘Hello.’ The female Indian voice sounded faint.

‘Hello. Mrs Mutatkar?’

‘No, that’s my mum.’

Leo could hear another voice behind the first.

‘Who is this?’ The second female Indian voice had extra layers of weary maturity.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you at a time like this.’

‘Are you from the papers?’

‘No. I may have known your husband. No, that’s not true. Your husband may have telephoned me a few days ago.’

Leo could hear her breathing for a few moments. ‘Nice try, but please leave us alone.’ 

‘Mrs Mutatkar, please believe me. I’m as surprised to find myself knocking at your door as you are but there is one way of confirming this without even letting me onto your property.’

He heard her sigh. ‘We just want to be left alone.’

‘And I promise I will leave you be once we’ve had a chance to talk. My name is Leo Sharpe. My wife was kidnapped in 2007 and a couple of nights ago a Doctor Mutatkar left a message on my answering machine saying that he knew where she was.’

Another pause. ‘Sorry, what is this all about?’

‘He asked me to meet him the following morning and left his mobile number. Can you confirm that his number is…’ Leo plucked the piece of paper out of his pocket that he’d scribbled the number on and recited it to her.

‘Anybody could have that information.’

Leo’s circulation surged. So it was him. It was the an interesting development and suddenly he felt a new impetus brushing his awkwardness aside. He leant further in to the intercom as if she would be able to hear the truth in the volume of his words. ‘I tried to meet him…he said at 10 o’clock in Wick Street, Wednesday morning…’ He gave her time to absorb the information and an opportunity to remember the day in question. ‘When he didn’t turn up, I called him on the number he gave me. If you look in his phone there should be a record of a missed call from my number.’ 

‘Wait a moment.’ Her voice became incoherent but he could tell from the tone that she was issuing an instruction away from the intercom. He shivered but he wasn’t sure if it was the cold.

After a rustling that Leo couldn’t identify. ‘What is your number?’ She sounded more suspicious.

He told her.

Another pause. ‘How did you say you know my husband?’

‘That’s just it, I don’t.’

‘According to this phone, you were the last person to call him.’

The gate buzzed and then opened. 

Leo crunched up the driveway and the front door opened against the chain. He could just make out the diminutive figure of Mrs Mutatkar standing beyond the crack.

‘Why have you not gone to the police?’ she asked warily.

‘Because I’ve had over a year’s experience of their incompetence.’

‘Did you say your wife is…missing?’

‘Your husband told me he knew where she was.’ He sensed her nervousness. ‘I could go to the police with this.’

He saw Mrs Mutatkar blink and then the door closed. For a moment he stood on the step wondering if that was it but then the chain rattled. She’d obviously 
thought about leaving him out there but Leo sensed something else in her behaviour besides antipathy towards an unwanted caller. He’d thought mentioning the police had been a hollow bluff but it had more of an obvious effect that he’d anticipated.

The door opened wide to reveal a barefoot Mrs Mutatkar clad in a cerise silk, ankle-length dressing gown. She was smaller than she’d looked through the crack and had the sort of complexion that belied her age. How old was she? Probably in her mid-to-late fifties but the only giveaway was how sunken her eyes were. He wondered if that had been the result of the past few days, because apart from her dark bob of hair looking slightly tousled, Mrs Mutatkar was immaculate. He saw her daughter, much taller than her and wearing a long T-shirt, leaning nervously against the breakfast bar in the kitchen at the end of the hallway.

‘So sorry to intrude on your grief.’ Having barged into her home it seemed a ridiculous thing to say.

‘Come through,’ Mrs Mutatkar whispered, then turned her back on him and padded through the
thick-carpeted
hallway towards the kitchen.

Leo followed and took in the interior, especially the portraits of the family trio on the walls. Doctor Mutatkar smiled out of a photo that, judging from the age of his daughter, looked to have been taken recently. Outwardly, everything seemed to indicate a happy and successful family. 

‘Sabri, make us some tea.’

Mrs Mutatkar’s daughter was beautiful. She flicked her long ponytail, placed the transparent polythene bag that she was holding on the breakfast bar and went to the kettle at the far end of the long, modern kitchen. Leo took in the contents of the bag. It contained a wallet, some keys, a selection of plastic security swipe cards and some pens.

‘We weren’t meant to open it. The police want his personal effects returned but his phone was in it.’ Mrs Mutatkar placed her fingers gently on the bag and seemed lost for words.

Leo felt himself start to apologise again but stopped himself. ‘No tea for me thanks. I don’t want to encroach on your time. It’s just I can’t begin to understand why your husband would have claimed to know where my wife is.’

‘My husband is a brilliant man.’ She paused, aware that the statement should have been past tense. ‘He made me –
us
– most proud.’

Sabri finished filling the kettle and clicked the lid on.

‘No tea, Sabri. Wait for me in the lounge.’

Doctor Mutatkar’s daughter walked past them casting them both a wary eye. Leo noticed that her features had more maturity than he’d first thought.

Mrs Mutatkar waited until she was out of earshot. ‘Tell me about your wife.’ 

Leo told Mrs Mutatkar about Laura and while he listened to his own story she pulled her dressing gown tighter to her neck and looked in any direction but his.

His lips shaped the familiar words and dates and places but this time they didn’t prompt the dry sickness he always felt when he articulated them for the thousandth time over.

Mrs Mutatkar scraped out a stool and sat down heavily. She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as if relieving pressure until he’d finished. ‘I know nothing of this or why my husband would have phoned you – believe me.’ She looked at Leo and he could see the pain in the dark recesses of her eyes. ‘There are no answers for you here – from us – I promise.’ She arranged the tie of her dressing gown in her lap but she knew he was waiting for her to continue. ‘You won’t go to the police?’ It was more a plea than a condition.

‘I’m tired of the police…but I’ll do anything that’s necessary to find Laura and if that means they have to become involved…’

Mrs Mutatkar held up her hand. She closed her eyes and her lips twisted as if she were flinching from a wound. ‘Parag always provided for us. But sometimes people…people aren’t completely who you think they are. I found that out at the end of last summer.’ She looked at the doorway as if expecting to find her daughter listening there. ‘I know as much as I want 
to…which is very little. Soon, though, I think I may have to know more.’

Leo felt something inflating at the base of his throat.

She inhaled some composure. ‘Post these back to me when you’ve finished. I don’t want you to call here again.’ She leant sideways and pulled open a drawer. She produced a key ring and placed it on the bar with the flat of her hand, her gold rings scraping against its metal as she slid it towards Leo. ‘They’re for a room in Camden Town, 17 Bell Terrace. Do you need me to write it down?’

Leo shook his head but she didn’t meet his gaze.

Mrs Mutatkar seemed to deflate now she’d given him the keys. ‘I went to the terrace once. I found the keys and one evening I followed Parag there when I knew he’d taken them with him.’ She seemed suddenly breathless. ‘It was the place he went when he wasn’t a husband or father. I’ve been trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist.’ Mrs Mutatkar closed the drawer with the heel of her hand. ‘If there are any answers they can only be there. If they’re not, I can’t help you further.’ She looked back in the direction her daughter had left.

Number 17 Bell Terrace was the last sort of place that Leo expected. It was in a respectable enough residential street and the key allowed him access to 
a well-maintained Victorian house crouching behind two topiary cone privets via a yellow front door. He found himself in a bright and airy hallway where the smell of carpet shampoo vied with nicotine. The walls and doors were painted fresh white and there was the sound of a TV coming from the end. The second key had the number 4 scratched into the green rubber grip end.

He climbed the carpeted staircase to his left which took him to a darkened landing that smelt of yesterday’s roast dinner. From behind Door 1 which was directly in front of him, he could hear the sound of a TV. The door to his left was a communal bathroom, still steaming from somebody’s recent use. Leo gripped the wooden banister and followed the rail past doors 2 and 3 until he came to the last one. He paused outside and listened for sounds of movement from within.

Suddenly, the sound of the TV got louder and he turned to find an overweight woman, with her hair wrapped in a towel, emerging from room 1. She cast him a cursory glance but seemed to think nothing of his presence there. She went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Leo returned his attention to the door and inhaled, suddenly realising that his sense of smell seemed suddenly acute. He wondered what time it was; he would normally be submerged in temazepam oblivion by now.

If the key turns easily, Laura is getting nearer
. 

It did, and the door cracked as it opened, as if it had recently been painted. Leo pushed the door wide, bumping it against an armchair that sat behind the door. He took in the room. With its single bed covered by a handmade quilt cover, it was hardly a mistress flat. There was a thick scent in there, like jossticks. The room was as brightly painted as the rest of the house and furnished with the sort of motley collection of old furniture that you’d expect to find in a bedsit.

The curtains were shut but the bright daylight filtered in through the thin yellow material. He walked inside and glanced in every corner – not knowing who or what he expected to see. He closed the door and walked to the window, pulling open the curtains and peering through the nets. He was looking down on the small front garden and the tops of the topiary trees.

Leo sat in the armchair that was positioned in the bay window and scrutinised the low table beside him. It contained a stack of different sized dinner plates, a cutlery holder, toaster and a slightly rusting tray that held teacups, a kettle and a pot. In front of him was a fridge with a microwave sitting on top and beyond that a wardrobe. He rose again and opened the door. He found one casual blue jacket hanging up and a pair of black leather shoes. He checked the pockets of the jacket and found a spare button in a cellophane packet.

As he opened and shut the drawers of the dirty white dressing table on the opposite side of the single bed 
there appeared to be little sign of Doctor Mutatkar’s occupation of the room bar a few rattling pens and a box of matches. When, as an afterthought, he pulled the slim drawer beneath the mirror, however, it refused to budge. There was a hole for a smaller key on the front but he didn’t need to look at the keys Mrs Mutatkar had given him to know neither of them was small enough to fit.

He fetched a knife from the cutlery drawer and tried to prise it. He managed to get the edge of the blade into the gap but the knife bent at the handle as he levered it. He tried another. It wasn’t a sturdy drawer but the lock was obviously solid and the second knife warped with his exertion as well. He took a step back and aimed the side of his heel once at the drawer before kicking it. It didn’t budge but a chunk of the ornate wood on the corner had chipped off so he kicked it again.

The front of the drawer cracked and he waited, listening to his uneven breathing, to see if anyone would come to investigate the noise. When nobody did, he stabbed the crack of the drawer with one of the knife handles until the front caved in. He let his knees take his weight and peered into the frontless drawer. There were a number of objects within the darkened recess but he only needed to remove the first to know what the others were.

It was a small glass pipe with a small bowl that 
was burnt on the outside. There was some dark residue within it. Leo sat cross-legged on the carpet and fished out a few of the foil-wrapped twists and packets and dropped them between his legs. That the doctor had been a crack addict was unexpected but Leo felt around in the drawer for something more. When his knuckles butted the end of the drawer he withdrew his hand.

Dejected, he hoisted himself to his feet again and looked around the room, his gaze coming to rest on the bed. An MP3 player lay on the bedside table and he could picture Doctor Mutatkar sprawled out insensibly with it attached to his ears, time and respectability frozen for however many hours he spent here. Then he noticed the laptop. Resting on its edge, its slim grey casing scarcely noticeable against the frowzy white cover sheet. A phone line trailed from it into the socket beside the bed.

Leo sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed and lifted it onto the counterpane. He flapped the lid open and switched it on. As the laptop buzzed to life, he heard himself dry swallow and felt the familiar prickling in the tops of his shoulders.

If it asks me for a password, Laura has to be hidden here somewhere
.

No password was requested and the desktop suddenly cluttered itself with named files. However, he instinctively clicked on the email icon. The inbox had been scrupulously emptied but received thirteen new 
messages. None were personal and they all appeared to be block update emails from medical organisations. He closed it and focused on the desktop, clicking on one folder at random.

Several documents were saved inside and Leo opened the first and scrolled through it quickly. It outlined the detailed findings of a drug trial and its effect on arthritis patients. Obviously the doctor wasn’t averse to mixing business with pleasure. Leo closed it and opened another, working his way from top to bottom through the remaining files on the desktop and finding dozens of documents inside each one before opening the My Documents folder. It was crammed with hundreds more. This was going to take hours to work through and Leo considered unplugging the laptop and taking it home.

He looked up from the screen and round the room and again tried to visualise Doctor Mutatkar whiling away hour upon hour shut away from his family and colleagues. Then he remembered what Bookwalter had said when he’d asked him about Mutatkar:

Even locked away, ask him if he truly feels secure
.

Leo shut the documents window and opened the doctor’s email again.