The Hollow Man (4 page)

He went back to the kitchen, emptied the bin onto the floor and sifted through the rubbish with his foot: junk mail and catalogues. No food packaging. No tissues. No DNA. He looked for a passport in the bedroom and study, found an old fax machine, a bottle of Bell’s whisky and a box of Cuban cigars, but no documents. There was a framed photograph of St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace on the study wall and a model of an ocean liner in a glass case beside the window.

For the past year I have felt as if the sun has gone out . . .

Belsey returned to the living room, lay down on the carpet and let the darkness enclose him. He turned on the TV and poured himself a cognac from a decanter on top of a cabinet. So this is wealth, he thought. And, after another glass:
This is the most exciting thing I have ever done.
The phone rang. It felt like an electric shock. There were phones all around him ringing, a digital trill from the study and kitchen and, fainter, from rooms beyond. Belsey walked to the study and stared at the phone on the desk and the suicide note on the billiards table. He listened closely, as if the significance of the call might be discerned from its ring. It rang for over a minute, then stopped.

7

B
elsey woke on the living-room floor in a drab light. Above him, the crystals of a chandelier hung like tears too expensive to fall. The clock on Devereux’s home entertainment system said 6:15 a.m. He knew where he was. He rolled beneath the coffee table and covered his face with his arm but sleep had gone.

Devereux’s shower sprayed water at different heights, with a touch-screen panel so you could program yourself a hydro massage. The shower cabinet was big enough for three or four. That would be a party, Belsey thought. It would be nice to bring someone back here, add some female company to the mix. He spent ten minutes washing, used a variety of exotic creams, then wrapped himself in a thick bathrobe bearing the gold monogram
A.D
.

He checked his face in the mirror. Even in the soft glow of the fluorescent mirror lights it wasn’t a pretty sight. But he was passable. His right ear looked raw and there was faint bruising on the side of his face. There would be a scar on the right side of his jaw where the cut was deepest. A souvenir. The rest was superficial.

His own clothes stank so he went to Devereux’s bedroom and laid some suits on the quilted down. Devereux favoured pale greys, blazers, ties with flags and yachts, shirts in yellow and pink with Savile Row tags. They struck Belsey as the clothes of an international figure, a man who did business not work. He chose an outfit: Armani suit with a touch of silver to its grey, a pink Ralph Lauren shirt and a tie with gold-and-navy stripes. It looked awful and he loved it. The suit hung just past his wrists, loose at the waistband, but it went well with the snakeskin shoes. Devereux’s wallet remained beside the bed. Belsey put it in his pocket for the weight.

He checked the road from the front window and when he was sure no one was passing he stepped out, skipping down the front steps. He walked to the north end of The Bishops Avenue, where its grandeur dissipated into the suburbs. East Finchley. The tanning salons and charity shops were waking up. The cafes had started to open. He tried the first one he got to.

“Could I have a coffee?” he said. “I don’t have any money but I’d like a coffee.”

The woman laughed. “You want a coffee?”

“A small one, thank you.”

“No,” she said, and laughed again.

He went into a Costa Coffee on the high road. “Someone cleared my coffee,” he said, and pointed to an empty table.

“Sorry about that, sir.” They made him a fresh one. Belsey sat down and dealt out the contents of Devereux’s wallet. There were a lot of cards for expensive hotels: Mandarin Oriental Geneva; Ritz Carlton Moscow; Florida Marriott. Devereux was a man who collected hotels as if these places were the significant acquaintances of his life. He was a member of a club called Les Ambassadeurs with an address in Mayfair. He used a Barclaycard, black Amex, silver Visa and Diners Club. There was a receipt for a meal at Villa Bianca in Hampstead four days ago; Devereux paid for two glasses of wine, salmon tortellini and a mozzarella salad. There was a loyalty card for a coffee shop on the high street. Finally Belsey pulled out a clump of business cards. On these he was
Alexei Devereux, Director, AD Development
. The company had a Paris office on Rue de Castiglione, an NYC operation on Fifth Avenue and a London address in EC4.

Belsey returned to Devereux’s house, blocked caller ID on the kitchen telephone and dialled the London office.

“AD Development,” a woman answered.

“Can I speak to Mr. Devereux?” Belsey said.

“I’m afraid he’s not in the office. Can I take a message?”

“No,” Belsey said. “Thank you.”

He hung up and called the Paris number.

“
Bonjour
,” a woman said. He hung up.

Every bank has a police liaison team. Belsey called the dedicated CID hotline for Barclays, gave his code, and was put through to the head of external investigation.

“External,” a man said.

“Is that Josh Sanders? It’s Detective Constable Belsey, at Hampstead.”

“Nick, how’s business?”

“Slow. I’m waiting on a warrant for an account of yours. I was wondering if you could speed things up. Can I read you the number?”

“Go for it.”

Belsey read off Devereux’s account number. Sanders typed it in.

“Mr. A. Devereux?”

“Yes.”

“Not one of our most active customers.”

“When was the account last used?”

“Four days ago: withdrawal of sixty pounds, Hampstead High Street.”

“How much does he have?”

“He’s two hundred overdrawn.”

“He’s overdrawn?”

“Went over a week back.”

Belsey thought about this. “Any debits set up?” he said.

“None. He’s only had the account a couple of months.”

“Payments?”

“There’s a purchase on it last week: Man’s Best Friends.”

“Man’s Best Friends?”

“Sounds like a pet shop. Customer present transaction, Golders Green. Would that make sense?”

“Not much is making sense right now,” Belsey said. “Do you have his PIN number there?”

“You know I can’t give you that, Nick.”

“I know, Josh. Just a joke. Thanks for your help.”

Belsey put the phone down. An idea, humorous at first, had persisted until the humour faded and the core of possibility remained. He wanted a plane ticket. He wondered if Devereux could help him raise the cash for that. He sat down with one of the cards and a sheet of Devereux’s paper and practised Devereux’s signature. It wasn’t easy. Alexei Devereux had an ornate hand. It seemed to belong to another age—the signature a brand might use when selling you overpriced grooming products. After ten minutes Belsey had it good enough to pass. He found car keys on a Porsche fob in the cutlery drawer and after some searching made his way through a small door at the back of the kitchen into the garage.

A Porsche Cayenne SUV sat alone beneath strip lights, fat and mean as a tank, with blacked windows and glinting hubcaps. It was the only car in a garage big enough for five. Belsey climbed in. You could get comfortable in a Porsche Cayenne. The dashboard carried a DVD player with touch-screen monitor and GPS. There was almost ninety thousand on the clock, which seemed a lot. Belsey switched on the satnav and scrolled through recent journeys stored. Most started or ended at Heathrow. A lot involved central London hotels. Belsey read it as a rental vehicle but couldn’t think why Devereux would be driving a rental. He checked the glove compartment and found a manual, a dust cloth and some Prada shades.

A button on the wall lifted the garage door. The front gates opened a second later. Belsey eased up the ramp into the city.

It took Belsey a moment to get used to sitting above the early-morning traffic in the SUV. He expected resentment from those navigating the narrow roads of Hampstead but people pulled aside for him, respectfully. It was like being police. Belsey drove to Camden, parked behind the Buck Street market and walked to a twenty-four-hour convenience store with a jumble of souvenirs and cheap hardware at the back. The staff were sleepy and careless. He knew the store let you sign for card payments—they were always calling Hampstead trying to report fraudulent transactions. For the same reason, he also knew their CCTV was permanently broken. After a minute’s browsing Belsey selected a bottle opener, a Zippo lighter and a penknife that said “London.” Start small. He found the silver Visa and slid it out of Devereux’s wallet, moving his fingers over the raised letters of the name.

“Do you have a gift-wrapping service?” he asked the girl on the till.

“No.”

“OK.”

She looked at the credit card, turned it in her hands, swiped it and stared at the machine.

“It says I should contact the card issuer.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Why would that be?” Belsey watched her eyes slide to the phone and back. He knew why it would be: something had been flagged on the system. Maybe it was a new card, or Devereux had changed addresses, or had been travelling abroad. He should just choose another credit card. He watched the shop floor and couldn’t see any security. A door in one corner led to fire stairs; a back exit would lead to Camden High Street and there was an alley from there to the crowded market.

She shrugged. “Sometimes it says that.”

“OK.”

“Do you have any ID?”

Belsey showed Devereux’s business cards and his club membership.

“I’ll have to make a call,” the girl said. She had a memo stuck to the till with the relevant phone numbers, called Visa and read out the security code and Devereux’s name. Belsey counted his breaths. “Yes,” she said. “He’s here now. Yes. OK,” and to Belsey, “It’s OK.”

“Can you ask them how much credit is left?” Belsey said.

“How much credit is there?” she said. “Fifty? Thank you.” She hung up. “Fifty thousand,” she said.

“Fifty?”

“That’s right.”

Belsey chose a greetings card that said “Good-bye” and bought that as well.

H
e drove through the Square Mile, parked on Tower Hill and checked Devereux’s business card:
AD Development, St. Clement’s Court, EC4
. He wanted to know a little more about the man before he borrowed his money. He wanted to know if he was dead or alive.

A colder wind blew through the City these days, but Belsey still felt a thrill when he entered the place: the sense of grind, the sheets of glass and bone-coloured stone; austere, baroque, loaded. He loved the churches stranded among all the finance like ships run aground. He used to do some church sitting in the City, a few years ago. There was an organisation that sat in churches to keep them open. He’d got the idea off a heroin addict he’d decided not to arrest, and it had appealed to him for a while—he had just started at Hampstead and was trying to clear his head. Until then, he had barely spent two minutes in a place of worship, had never received a moment’s religious instruction. He thought he’d start with the real estate. It had been a phase, the same distinct period in his life when he started stealing books from the pubs they were meant to decorate; dusty hardbacks on history and philosophy. He’d even read the Bible, and it was better than he expected. So much was about dissatisfaction, leaving places, being lost. He saw these books now as props with which he’d tried to construct something: a life that was more than a job, perhaps. It hadn’t worked. But the churches, at least, had been peaceful. Each carried its own flavour—some bright and serene, others unspeakably lonely, like being in a cell.

Belsey walked around the back of the City, through the tail end of the morning rush hour in its winter uniform of dark coats and scarves. Basement windows looked down onto rows of unmanned terminals. Every building advertised offices to let. But the crowd had not thinned. It took him a while to find St. Clement’s Court, moving from the main roads onto progressively smaller and more crooked side streets. He found the plain front of St. Clement’s Church, then realised that a slender gap between the churchyard and an anonymous office block beside it was in fact the entrance to an alleyway. On one side of the entrance a plaque said “Here lived in 1784 Desiley Obradovich, Eminent Serbian Man of Letters.” On the opposite wall was an equally weather-worn notice, engraved in metal, with a disembodied hand pointing into the permanent dusk of the alley: “Entrance to 37–41 St. Clement’s Court.”

The passageway was one of those chaotic formations that made the City feel like it had been eroded through limestone. Belsey went down it. By some quirk of the medieval warrens, numbers 37–41 turned out to be a single black door in a narrow, brown-brick facade at the end of the cul-de-sac. Belsey wondered if it had once been attached to the church; a parsonage, maybe. AD Development had the property to itself. It presented one leaded window to the world, the lower half quaintly curtained off like a French restaurant. There was a single brass bell with a brass plaque polished that morning, carrying the firm’s name.

Belsey climbed onto the churchyard wall and peered over the curtain. The glass was fogged but he could make out a young woman at a desk in an office. There was no one else. She looked cold, in a cardigan and heels, writing something. Belsey climbed down before she noticed him. He realised he was wearing Devereux’s clothes. He removed the tie and jacket, reasoning that these were the most conspicuous items, and left them folded at the side of the building. Then he rang the bell.

The door buzzed. He entered a hallway with gold fittings, a large framed mirror and flowers on a table. The side door into the office was already open.

“Come in,” the young woman said, through the doorway.

The office was well worn, oozing old-money charm and suggesting a comfortable few centuries of clever business. It had furniture for four or five, but only the girl was present. She was a brunette, in heavy makeup that failed to disguise how young she was. An old electric heater blew at her ankles. One woman’s coat hung on a hat stand beside three dented bottle-green filing cabinets. There was a large mahogany table at the back with an upholstered armchair that might have been antique. Dusty green curtains filled the wall behind it. Someone had arranged a decorative stack of pine cones in the fireplace. The carpet was worn.

The girl watched him expectantly. She looked like an intern.

“Is Mr. Devereux about?” he said.

“No.” Her face faltered. “I’m his assistant. Can I help?” It was a strange face, he thought; not plain but not quite pretty, with liquid eyes and incredibly pale skin.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.” She twisted a Kleenex in her hand.

“OK. When was he last in?”

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“No. I don’t think so. Is this his office?”

“Yes.”

“Does AD Development have offices upstairs?”

“No. This is the office. Who should I say called?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He was on his way out when she said: “Excuse me.” He turned. She’d let a little more anxiety reach her face.

“Yes?”

“Do you know Mr. Devereux?” she asked.

“Why?”

“Well, I’m a little concerned. I should have seen him. I haven’t seen him for a while, in fact.”