The Revelations (21 page)

‘Lee has taken the car.’

‘Really? She’s a terrible driver. I mean, not to worry you or anything, but she honestly doesn’t know one end of a car from the other. She drove me back from the pub once when I went to stay with her. Terrifying.’ Mouse smiled at Marcus and started climbing the staircase. ‘I’m sure she’ll be full of contrition when we get back to London. Now I’m going to finish packing.’

‘I would offer you three a ride home with us, but I’m afraid we’ve got my guitar and our suitcases. There’s plenty of space in the bus.’ David patted Marcus on the shoulder. ‘I know it’s a pain, but I’m afraid it’s just the price we pay for knowing someone as unique as Lee. She gets these mad spells. But Mouse is right, she’ll be fine back in London. She was probably just missing Darwin.’

Marcus pressed his cheek to the cold window as the bus edged through shuffling traffic along the Banbury Road to the motorway. Abby had made them ham sandwiches. He gnawed listlessly at a corner, his mouth dry. He slept for a while. When he awoke they were at Hillingdon, creeping along in the slow lane. Maki was staring out at the traffic crawling along the grey motorway, headphones on. She tapped her nails on the glass. The twins were chattering at the front, trying to catch the driver’s attention, laughing wildly at private jokes. It had started to rain and the rhythmic swooshing of the wipers lulled Marcus back to sleep. When he woke again they were back at the church.

He lifted his suitcase from the rack above the seats and made his way down the aisle. As he stepped from the coach into the cold rain, Maki took his elbow.

‘I’m not coming back,’ she said. ‘I thought I should tell you. You’ve been very good to me. Goodbye, Marcus.’ She smiled at him, turned, and walked down the path, lifting a small black umbrella over her head.

Marcus and Abby took a taxi home. Abby went to bed as soon as they were in the door, kissing him and trying to drag him with her. He pulled away, called Lee’s mobile again and then decided to walk down Kensington Church Street to her flat. Sunday sadness enveloped Notting Hill Gate. Tramps huddled in the entrance of the Tube as he passed, their breath steaming, hand-rolled cigarettes held up to emphasise their words as they shouted at each other. Italian tourists stood with their hands stretched out, bewildered by the rain: they had heard that the English weather was bad, but this? Marcus held his law-firm umbrella over his head, imagining himself inside a protective bubble. The rain pattered down on the stretched fabric. The sound seemed to move in time with his footsteps, rippling through the patterns of his thoughts until everything was dominated by the syncopated rattle of the rain. Marcus started to look for his car where the road described a dramatic chicane and began its descent to Kensington High Street. When he came to Lee’s door, he rang the bell, stood back, and waited.

Her flat was at the top of a tall building whose ground floor housed an antique bookshop. Marcus could make out a first edition of
Surprised by Joy
in the window, alongside a series of framed etchings of famous composers. Higher up, the building was striped with red and white bricks. It was a feature of many of the houses in the area and always put Marcus in mind of a series of lighthouses standing sentry over the sweep of Kensington and Chelsea below them. Marcus rang the bell again. A face peered out from a window on the second floor, then disappeared. Marcus was about to leave when the door opened a crack.

‘Are you a friend of Lee Elek?’ The voice was that of an old woman. She was lost in the shadows of the hallway and Marcus couldn’t see her face. He walked up as close as he could to the door and peered inside.

‘Yes, I am.’

The door opened for an instant and the woman dropped something into Marcus’s arms. It was Darwin. The dog, recognising a friend, gave a contented yelp and reached up to lick Marcus’s face.

‘I looked after the dog all weekend. She said she’d be back by lunchtime. I’m going to my book club tonight and I simply can’t have the thing yipping around my heels. Goodbye.’

The door shut firmly in Marcus’s face. He carried Darwin under the shelter of the umbrella as he walked back home, letting the small brown dog nuzzle against his cheek. His fur was sleek and soft. Marcus let Darwin tumble onto the floor of the flat as he came inside. Abby was still asleep and so Marcus placed some slices of salami and smoked salmon on a plate for the dog in the kitchen and stretched out along the sofa, his head and joints aching. He dialled Lee’s mobile again. He listened to her message, was about to hang up, and then stopped. He spoke in a whisper, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.

‘It’s Marcus. If you get this, please give me a call. I’m sorry for what happened, I really am. Please come back.’

Abby walked into the room and he hung up quickly.

‘What’s Darwin doing here?’

‘I went down to Lee’s. The batty old woman who looks after the dog when Lee isn’t there literally threw him at me.’

‘So she isn’t back yet?’

‘No.’

‘Are you worried?’

Marcus paused.

‘I’m always worried about Lee. But you know somehow that she’ll always be OK. She has a weird resiliency. She’ll turn up and be charmingly repentant and we’ll all have to forgive her.’

Abby made dinner and they went to bed early, Darwin slumped across their feet. In the middle of the night the dog woke and scratched at the door. Marcus realised that there was nowhere for the animal to crap and so, wrapping a dressing gown around himself and slipping a pair of trainers on his feet, he carried the dog downstairs. In the emptiness of the early hours of Monday morning he stood watching the quivering buttocks of the sausage dog as he forced out a stringy shit. The first planes were queuing to land at Heathrow. He thought about how he used to sit with Lee on her tiny terrace and watch them cruise across the sky. He could tell that Darwin missed Lee. He scooped the dog under his arm and made his way back to bed.

The next day Marcus sat in his office and made telephone calls. It was raining again and he was waiting to receive documents from the shady portfolio manager at Plantagenet Partners. He sat with his feet against the glass of the window, his chair reclined and the phone in his lap. Abby had taken Darwin to the church with her and he could hear the dog barking in the background when he called her. There was still no news of Lee and Marcus continued to dial her mobile, his fingers skipping over the numbers on his phone, tracing the pattern that meant
Lee
to him. He spoke to Mouse, who was somewhere high in Senate House: the howling wind made conversation almost impossible, but they arranged to meet for a drink that evening.

Finally, Marcus looked through his address book until he found Lee’s parents’ number. He dialled it and waited. An old man answered, his heavily accented voice high and impatient.

‘Yes?’

‘Um, hi. Is that Mr Elek?’

‘Yes. This is Lazlo Elek. Who is this?’

‘It’s Marcus Glass. I’m a friend of your daughter.’

‘Yes?’

‘Listen, she’s not with you by any chance? I mean, I was hoping to get in touch with her and she doesn’t seem to be answering her phone. I wondered if she might be with you.’

‘No, she’s not here. And you’re the second person to call for her. That priest of hers was on the phone earlier. Perhaps she doesn’t want to see you. Did you think of that? Poor girl might want to be left alone.’

‘I’m worried about her, Mr Elek.’

The old man’s voice suddenly softened.

‘Don’t worry about Lee. What did you say your name was? Marcus? Ah yes, you came up to visit, didn’t you? Lee will be just fine. We’re stronger than people think, the Eleks. I’ll let you know when I hear from her. Goodbye.’

Marcus sat staring out of the window at the rain until darkness fell and the City was a smear of office lights seen through the downpour. He lit a cigarette on his way to the Tube and smoked it in four drags before plunging down into Moorgate Station.

Mouse was waiting for him at Euston. He had turned up the collar of his faded velvet jacket and was standing in the centre of the station, entirely still as commuters rushed around him. He had his head turned upwards, surveying the rarely observed heights of the station, taking note of the sooty concrete crevices above him.

‘Hello, sport,’ he said.

Marcus embraced Mouse and dragged him by the arm through the hassled rush of workers. Mouse seemed reluctant to emerge from his reverie; his eyes remained misty as they made their way down Gordon Street to the Union bar where they used to come and drink with Lee.

They sat down in a shadowy corner of the bar. A football game was being shown on a large screen at the other end of the room. Marcus had bought them both a pint and they sat in melancholy silence, half-watching the game. Finally, Mouse turned to Marcus and spoke, twisting his signet ring on his finger as he talked.

‘I’m worried that it was my fault. That I said the wrong words to Lee this weekend.’

Marcus looked up at his friend.

‘Don’t beat yourself up. There probably wasn’t a right thing to say. It’s hard to know how to help someone who’s that far gone.’

‘But if I’d really spoken to her, really broken through . . . She trusted me.’

Marcus sighed and shook his head.

‘We’re all to blame in one way or another.’

They left the bar and walked back to the train station. Marcus rode with Mouse to Kensal Green, left him at the bridge over the canal and strode down Ladbroke Grove until he came to the bus stop. When he got home, Abby was watching television with Darwin curled up in her lap. Marcus poured himself a glass of wine and ran a bath. Abby looked up at him as he passed, but since he said nothing she went back to staring at the TV, her hand thoughtlessly playing with the dog’s long, silky hair.

Marcus ran the bath full and hot, lowering himself down gently into the water, which turned his skin bright pink. He lay back and balanced an ashtray on the dry island of one knee. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke upwards. Abby didn’t like him smoking in the bath. He had filled the glass of wine right to the rim and sat with an empty mind until the bath was tepid and the glass empty. He pulled himself regretfully from the water, tipped the ash down the sink as he brushed his teeth, and then half-read a book until he was too tired to turn the pages. He was asleep before Abby and the dog came to bed.

The Course session after the Retreat was always a triumphant one. Friendships that had seemed tentative prior to the weekend away became firmly established: there would be more hugging and some tears, plans to meet up for dinner, for
prayer
sessions over the next weekend, a general sense of optimism and community. Marcus was dreading this particular session, though. He knew that David wouldn’t let Lee’s absence spoil the celebration, and was expecting the priest’s call when it came the next morning. He was going through one of the Plantagenet Partners documents with a tort law specialist when his phone began to vibrate on the desk.

‘Shit, give me a minute, will you?’

The solicitor backed from the office, shutting the door carefully behind him.

‘Hello?’

David’s voice was smooth and melodic when it came.

‘Marcus, David here. Can you talk?’

‘Yes, it’s fine.’

‘I take it you haven’t heard from Lee?’

‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’

‘OK. Well, we can’t let what I’m certain is just another Lee slump ruin the Course for this year. There’s too much at stake. I’ll ask Sally to sit alongside Mouse for their discussion, although he has been carrying that group anyway, so he shouldn’t need her. We’ll have to think about which songs the band can play without Lee. I’m relying on you to be my right-hand man tonight, Marcus.’

‘I’ll do my best.’ Marcus paused. ‘Do you think we should call the police, David?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve spoken to her parents, called her priest at home to see if she was there. I thought we’d wait to see if she turns up tonight. If she doesn’t, then I’m afraid we might have to.’

David rung off. Marcus was busy on the case all afternoon, which was growing more complicated and morally dubious by the day. He left work in a hurry and rushed westwards towards St Botolph’s. He arrived to find David standing in the entrance porch, greeting the Course members as they arrived. The priest embraced Marcus, holding on for just long enough to make him feel awkward. Inside the church everything was bathed in soft light. Sally was standing in her usual place above vats of food. Abby and Mouse moved with broad smiles between the groups of old and new Course members. Marcus saw the Earl and Neil talking in one corner. The twins were standing in front of a group of older members and Marcus watched as they struggled to get their words out, talking over each other and supplementing their speech with violent gesticulations. He sat down wearily and waited for David to start.

He thought that the priest looked old. The video screen behind him picked up the crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes and accentuated the grey tinge of his skin. His hands quivered a little as he spoke. But the words had the same extraordinary fluidity as before, and David’s eyes sparkled as he spoke of the Retreat, of the beauty of hearing the new members speak in tongues for the first time, the holiness that had suffused the service on Saturday night. No mention was made of Lee, and Marcus noticed that when they got up to play their instruments, Lee’s piano had been pushed back into the shadows of the Lady Chapel.

In the discussion that followed the music, Marcus let Abby guide the group. He sat back and listened as each of the members recounted their experience of the Retreat. Neil was the last to speak, leaning forward in his chair, bald head shining, face flushed and happy, his tie hanging loosely around his neck. He talked very quickly, a huge grin sweeping across his face each time he paused for breath.

‘While it was obviously an amazing experience, it was only when I got to work yesterday that I realised quite how much it had changed things. Because that is the point, isn’t it? We should continue to act in our everyday lives as we act here. And David made it very clear to me that this didn’t mean that I couldn’t be ruthless in business. Because that was something that did worry me to start off with. That it might clip the wings of my career if I had to start turning the other cheek on the trading floor. I mean, the markets are a jungle, you know? But it was more that everything seemed to shine. I don’t know how else to put it, but I saw God everywhere. And I felt Him telling me what to do: which trades to put on, which dealers to call. It was quite extraordinary, quite wonderful. I told everyone about the Course. Really didn’t mind what they thought of me. I’m proud to be a member. Proud and humbled.’

Out of breath, he stopped and beamed round at the group. There was a thin patter of applause. At the end of the session Neil helped Marcus to stack chairs.

‘It also helped that the Earl gave my bank some of his cash to manage. I had realised that he was rich, but not
that
rich. I think it’s a great idea to give each other a leg-up professionally. Do let me know if there’s anything the bank is doing on the legal side that you want a piece of.’

Marcus smiled thinly. Abby was waiting for him in the porch when he came upstairs.

‘David wants to see us in the rectory. Mouse is already over there.’ Her voice had been emotionless since the previous evening. She walked in front of him down the path to the Nightingales’ house where Mouse and the Earl were in the drawing room, sitting in large, comfortable armchairs. Mouse had one of the gold cushions clutched against his belly. David poured out glasses of wine and called to Sally, who came in from the kitchen. He addressed them in a low voice, his hands clasped in front of him.

‘I’m afraid we have still heard nothing from Lee. I’m worried and I know you all are, too. I think we will have to call the police. I spoke to her father earlier and he still seems to think that she will turn up. I'm inclined to agree, but we need to err on the side of caution. I’m going to go down to the station tomorrow morning and tell them what we know. You should all expect to be questioned, I suppose.’

He paused, reached across to his glass of wine, and took a long swig. He patted his lips with the back of his hand.

‘I probably don’t need to tell you that there is a great deal of interest in what we do here at the Course. Some think that this is a cult, a movement with political designs or something equally ridiculous. Discretion is paramount when speaking with anyone from outside our group, especially given where we are with the expansion. Any kind of scandal could scupper the whole US project. Now, I’m certain that they will find Lee very quickly. But until that point, less is more when you are speaking to the police. I hope that I’ve made myself clear.’

Marcus and Abby stayed a while longer and then walked in silence down to the King’s Road, where they hailed a taxi. Abby carried Darwin in her handbag, his pink tongue the only thing visible in the darkness of the cab. They sat in silence as the taxi moved up through Kensington. Marcus pressed his nose to the cold, shuddering glass of the window when they passed Lee’s flat. There were no lights on. Darwin was panting and Abby absent-mindedly reached out a hand to fondle his ear. They went to bed without having dinner.

Marcus had expected the police to call him the next day, but it wasn’t until Friday that his telephone rang. He was in the office trying to make sense of a legal document that had been translated very badly from Cantonese. He sat bent over the desk, tugging at a fistful of hair as he read. His phone vibrated in the pocket of his suit jacket. He fished it out and answered it.

‘Hello.’

‘Marcus Glass?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Detective Inspector Farley here, from West End Central Police.’

Marcus felt his heart quicken.

‘I was wondering whether we might meet up to have a chat about your friend Lee? Perhaps I could come and see you and your wife this evening. Kill two birds with one stone, as it were.’

‘Yes, that’d be fine. Seven o’clock?’

Marcus and Abby sat at the dining table in silence as the clock crept towards seven. Darwin was sleeping in Abby’s lap. The television flickered in the corner of the room but neither of them was watching it. Marcus had brought the Chinese document home and was using a thesaurus to try and force meaning into the nonsensical sentences; Abby was reading one of the anti-religious texts that so fascinated her. When the doorbell rang they both jumped up from their seats. Darwin yelped as he was deposited onto the floor. Marcus let Farley into the flat.

The policeman was a tall man in his late thirties, with a thick head of black hair. He was wearing a suit with a blue pinstripe. Marcus thought he looked like a lawyer. He carried the same air of fragile amiability.

‘I won’t take up too much of your time,’ he said, sitting down opposite them at the table. ‘I just have a few questions.’

‘Would you like a coffee? Some tea?’ Abby half-rose from her chair, again sending Darwin tumbling to the ground.

‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’

The policeman drew out a leather notebook and a thin silver propelling pencil. He opened the book and Marcus watched him make a careful note of the date.

‘You were both very close to Lee Elek, is that correct?’

They nodded.

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

Abby looked across at Marcus and then spoke. Her voice quivered and Marcus could see her worrying at the hem of her cardigan under the table.

‘I went upstairs with her on Saturday night. It was quite late, perhaps two thirty. We had been for a walk to get some fresh air, we came back, Marcus and Mouse – that’s Alastair Burrows – stayed in the dining room to clear up while Lee and I went to bed. I said goodnight to her at the door of her room and that was the last I saw of her.’

‘And had anything happened that evening that made you think she might disappear like this? An argument, for instance?’

Abby placed her hands flat on the table. Marcus could see that she had been biting her nails during the day. The skin around her cuticles was red and frayed.