The Sleeper (27 page)

‘What was it?’

‘Right. Now, this is a really weird one. She turned up on her own, in a state of considerable distress, and announced that she had been smuggling drugs in Asia for a period of some months and that it was her fault some woman was in prison. No one quite knew what to do with her, as you can imagine. Anyway, nothing came of it. She ran out of the building, and went back the next day with a guy, her father, in tow and retracted it all. He explained that she was under lots of stress and didn’t know what she was saying, and that she’d made it all up. But in between those two things happening, someone had vaguely looked into it, and discovered that she’d confessed the same thing in Singapore and had been treated as a time-waster and put on the next flight home with instructions not to come back.’

‘She said she was a drug smuggler?’ I frowned and sipped my wine. ‘Lara?’

‘I know. No one believed her. The question is, though, why did she say it? Was she protecting someone? Trying to flag something up? We don’t have any details from Singapore, but I’ve asked for them.’

‘And all this already came up? And you guys ignored it?’

He widened his eyes. ‘Penzance ignored it. It’s not my case. The trouble is, her affair with Guy Thomas overshadowed everything. There was no need to go into her deep past, when her more recent past – her present, really – seemed to offer all the answers.’

‘Yeah. I can see.’

‘Much as I’m not at work, if you’re trying to figure it out, which you are, I’ll help.’

I smiled at him and lifted my veggie burger. ‘Thank you.’

We wandered through a tiny snow shower to the National Gallery, and I took him to my favourite painting, Titian’s
Bacchus and Ariadne
.

‘It’s the blue,’ I said. ‘I used to come and stand in front of it, any time I needed calming down. And I like it that she’s been abandoned by the person she thought was the great love of her life, and along comes Bacchus and not only offers to marry her, but also to give her some stars as a wedding present. Actually, I’m surprised I’ve been in London for this long without coming to say hello to it.’

In fact, I wasn’t surprised. I had been trying to keep away from my old haunts, until today.

‘I can see it would do the job,’ Alex agreed. ‘Did she take him up on the offer, out of interest?’

‘I think so.’ I was sure she had, in fact, but for some reason I did not want to tell Alex that.

He nodded. ‘You know what used to do it for me?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Just wandering around a gallery, like this one, looking at all the Madonna-and-Child pictures. Often the babies look so weird that they make you laugh. They have little-old-men faces and strange creased necks. You can see the artist has tried to make him look more serious than a real baby. What with him being the son of God and all that. And it’s an incredibly hard thing to pull off.’

I was staring at him. ‘I used to do that too. Most of the babies look as if they’re from horror films. And occasionally you’ll come across one that is just so gorgeous and tender, it makes you forget about all the others.’

‘Yes! Those are surprisingly rare, though.’

‘Do you like the Leonardo cartoon they’ve got here? The one with St Anne and John the Baptist?’

He laughed. ‘I hardly think I’m in a position not to like something by da Vinci. Shall we go and look at it? I love it, actually. It’s one of my favourite babies.’ He looked at me with a smile. ‘Are you going to say the thing about it not being very funny for a cartoon, or am I?’

‘I was waiting for you to do it.’

‘And I was chivalrously going to leave it to you.’

‘Well, let’s just consider it said.’

I realised, as we walked around the gallery, that I knew almost nothing about Alex, and that I was, effectively, looking at paintings, speculating about school groups and gaggles of students, listening into parts of other people’s lectures, with a stranger. Until today, we had talked only of Lara.

‘What do you think of this jungle stuff?’ he said, as we stood in front of a painting called
Surprised
by Henri Rousseau. It was a jungle scene painted by someone who had never been to a jungle, with a tiger baring its teeth, and stylised greenery.

‘I like it, but I wouldn’t stand in front of it for hours,’ I decided. ‘Though it’s funny that in a room that also contains Van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
and a load of Cézannes, we both headed straight over here. It’s kind of compelling. It’s very much of its time, isn’t it? Wasn’t Rousseau a customs officer?’

‘
Le douanier
– exactly.’

‘But it’s quite problematic these days, isn’t it? I mean, there are layers to that: he’s a customs officer, feted by the art world, treated as a darling little man accidentally producing these adorable primitive paintings. And his paintings are of jungle scenes, full of colonial undercurrents and steeped in orientalism and “the other”. It says here that he copied the leaves from the botanical gardens in Paris.’

Alex was looking at me, smiling his little smile. ‘Absolutely. It’s a historic relic of its time, rather than a timeless masterpiece. It’s fascinating, though, isn’t it? The social strata. The hierarchy. The way everyone condescends to the layer below them.’

‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘And you know this gallery as well as I do. I half thought I was going to be condescending myself, you know. Showing the Cornish policeman a bit of London culture. And yet that is not the case. I know nothing about you, Alex Zielowski. So you’ve lived in London?’

He looked down at me, amused. ‘The Zielowski should have been a clue. I’m not Cornish through and through, though I did grow up there. But yes, I came to university in London. I lived here for years, then went back to Cornwall for the whole “lifestyle” thing, the way people do. Also, because it felt like home and I suppose I got a bit old and boring and fancied running into old school mates in the pub and all of that. Going for a Sunday surf. Walking the coast path to a pub.’

‘Was there a girl involved? I bet there was.’

He laughed. ‘Is it that obvious? Yes. Juliet. It didn’t work out. Evidently. I thought about leaving Cornwall when we split up, but by then I found I didn’t want to. She’s still there. She’s married now, with a baby. And weirdly, we’re the best of friends. We get on far better now than we ever did when we were together.’

We were in the hall of the gallery now, walking towards the exit. I thought it was nice that he was friends with his ex. That said nothing but good things about him. Alex was lovely, and gentle; he was not fiery like Laurie. He was predictable, where Laurie was tempestuous.

I pushed the thought out of my head.

chapter twenty-two

The bar was indeed in an underground public toilet, the steps leading down to it on the corner of Aldwych, right in the middle of the West End.

‘You’re sure about this?’ asked Alex, as we stood at the top of the staircase. ‘We do seem, literally, to be heading down the pan.’

‘This was the last thing Lara and Guy did together. Well, nearly. I know things have moved on, but we have to check it out.’

‘We don’t
have
to. But we will. It’s a bit intriguing. I mean, why the hell, of all the places around here …’

The doorman was watching us from a couple of steps down.

‘We booked,’ I told him, realising that I had to take charge. ‘Iris Roebuck. Two people.’

‘Sure.’ He had dimples in his cheeks when he smiled. ‘You have a great evening, now.’

As soon as we reached the bottom of the staircase, I saw that it was going to be fine: this place was nowhere near as weird as I had expected it to be. It was a tiny bar, with mirrored walls disguising exactly how small it actually was. Six tables were crammed into the small space, three high ones with bar stools and three normal-sized ones. All of them were occupied by a clientele that looked like the least threatening crowd in the whole of central London. Two tables were taken up by a crowd of women with short skirts and heels and laughing red mouths. They were, I thought, in their thirties and forties, on a big night out. A couple in their fifties sat at the next table, resolutely dressed down and wearing the slightly baffled air of the new-to-London. There was a young Japanese couple; a couple who looked slightly awkward with each other as if this might be a first date; two women giggling and drinking Prosecco.

The bar itself was stocked with spirits.

‘Hi there,’ said a young man behind it. He was fair and relaxed, confident in his familiar role as dispenser of booze. ‘You get a free glass of bubbly. Would you like it now?’

‘We certainly would.’ Alex was at least as relieved as I was. As all the tables were taken, we stood at the bar, shifting around. I was uncomfortable in my new shoes, even though they were flat. The ten pound booking fee did not guarantee us a table, clearly. It did, however, get us our first drink.

I shrugged my coat off, awkwardly.

‘Oh my God,’ said Alex, suddenly, fervently. I was startled, even scared. He said it so loudly, sounded so incredibly surprised.

‘What?’

‘You. You look sensational.’

We both looked down at my dress, which was red and velvety. I had bought it on my first day in London.

‘And that is so incredibly astonishing?’

‘Take the compliment,’ the barman told me, to my mortification. ‘And you know what? He’s right.’

‘Um,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

He slid two glasses of pale bubbles across the counter. I took one.

‘Thanks. Look. You know, you’ll be sick of people asking you this, but a friend of mine was here a few weeks ago. I know you’ve had journalists and everything here, but I’m just wondering if you remember her. And her friend.’

I thought of Guy, suddenly ambushed by the fact that this man I had never met was dead. I wanted to meet him. I never would. He was gone: someone had stabbed him with a knife until he no longer existed. And the night before that happened, he had been right here, exactly where I was now.

He sighed heavily and started fiddling with something behind the bar.

‘Here.’ He passed it to me. It was, incongruously, a basket of popcorn. I gave it to Alex. ‘Yeah. Your friend? Terrible business.’

‘She didn’t kill him, you know. She can’t have done. It was someone else, and they’ve got away. With her.’

‘People do weird things when they’re obsessed with somebody.’

I tried a piece of popcorn and remembered that I didn’t like it. Alex was quiet; I sensed disapproval.

‘She can’t have done it. I know she didn’t. Do you remember them when they were here?’

‘The police say she did. That’s probably good enough for me.’ I looked at Alex, who frowned his reluctance to be introduced by his job title. ‘And yeah,’ the barman continued. ‘Actually. I do.’

‘What were they like?’

A waitress with artfully tousled long hair and a pair of children’s fairy wings on her back came to the bar and pushed a piece of paper at him.

‘And two Proseccos,’ she added.

‘I’m on it.’

I watched him making three cocktails, pouring two glasses of Prosecco and taking the top off a bottle of beer. At last it was all done and the waitress returned to load it on to her tray. Alex did not say a word as we waited, and I did not look at him.

‘Yeah, sorry. Have to concentrate. Um. So, your friend. They sat at that table over there.’ He pointed to where the out-of-towners were sitting. The woman looked back at us with a startled face, wondering why we were talking about her. ‘They knocked back cocktails. Talked to each other. Laughed a lot, as I recall. Listened to the singer. They didn’t do anything weird or unusual. Weird to think that he was dead the next night.’

‘Nothing unusual at all?’

‘No. Nothing. Sorry. Hey, you should grab that table!’

Alex was already there, sitting down the moment the Japanese couple got up, clearly happy to be away from the conversation.

Hours later, the room was spinning. I was drinking what I thought was my fourth martini, eating popcorn in an attempt to soak up the alcohol and leaning on Alex, who had pulled his chair around so he was next to me. We were talking about Cornwall, and art, and what it was like to be a policeman. I was telling him random facts about myself.

‘I don’t have many friends,’ I informed him. ‘I used to. But I don’t now. It’s nice that you’re here. Why are you here anyway?’

‘Because I like you,’ he said.

‘As a friend.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good.’ I nearly started to talk about Laurie, but decided not to. It was definitely a better idea not to mention him. I didn’t want to cry. The singer was a tall, slender black woman, and she was giving the crowd exactly the right sort of undemanding singalong songs, and trying to engage everyone in banter.

‘Who’s going to get up for this one?’ she demanded, surveying the extremely small amount of floor space optimistically. ‘You all know it, so you can all help me out with the singing. It’s called “Hey Jude”.’

And somehow, after the first few bars, Alex and I were on our feet belting it out drunkenly. It was, of course, a song that went on and on, and by the end, the whole bar was singing along. I nearly tripped over while attempting to perform a little dance, and Alex grabbed me and stopped me from crashing into our table. He held me tightly around the waist until I pulled away.

We stumbled out into the night. I had no idea what time it was, but the city was still busy. Taxis and buses thundered by, and people were walking around, and the lights were on everywhere. I could feel my heart rate picking up. The evening had suddenly turned into more than I could handle.

Alex took my hand and held it, even when I tried to pull away.

‘Iris,’ he said. ‘This is a weird thing for me. To come to London, to follow you here. I’ve been telling everyone for so long that I’m self-sufficient and I don’t need to be in a relationship. I completely believed myself. I couldn’t bear it when people tried to set me up. The idea of being somewhere on a “date” seemed so artificial. When I met a woman I half liked I’d run a mile. And then I meet you on a work day, and something about you, and being with you – just everything about you – turns my world on its head. Could you tell? Could you tell I was hiding it when I turned up at your house? I mean, I had no reason to do that, really. I should have called you into the station and got someone else to take your statement. But I wanted to see you. It was such an overpowering feeling that I went with it. And then …’