Philip Kerr - January Window

‘Are you all right?’ she asked as I staggered through the mortuary door.

Outside in the fresh air I wiped a tear from my eye and nodded. ‘It’s him,’ I said. ‘It’s Zarco. Sorry about that.’

‘Don’t be.’ She took my hand and kissed it quickly. ‘Come on. I’ll take you back to Silvertown Dock.’

On my way home from the dock to Chelsea I dropped in to see Zarco’s widow again. It wasn’t as if I had anything particular I wanted to tell her but after not taking Toyah’s call that morning I’d called her back, several times, without success. I’m not sure who else she had to rely on, apart from Jerusa the housekeeper, but I was determined not to abandon my friend’s widow just because I didn’t like her that much. Like a lot of Australians in London she was a little too contemptuous of Britain and its awful weather for my taste, which begged the question: if you don’t like it, then what the fuck are you doing here? The one time I’d been to Australia I’d enjoyed myself a lot; at the same time, however, when you were there it was easy to see why so many Australians came to live in London. The weather was actually the least important part of why anyone chose to live in London. Apart from the weather everything was better than in Australia. Especially the football.

I rang the bell without success. The copper guarding Toyah’s door recognised me from before and told me she was still at home but that he hadn’t seen her all day, which worried us both, a little, so he allowed me to shout through her letterbox; and when eventually she came downstairs and let me into the house, I found her wearing a long silk dressing gown and it was obvious that she’d been in bed.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was starting to get a bit concerned. So was the copper outside.’

‘I’m not the type to do myself in, Scott. Not for any man. And certainly not for one who was cheating on me with some little bitch at Hangman’s Wood.’

‘Did the cops tell you that?’

‘They didn’t need to. I knew what he was up to. I knew and I learned to look the other way because I figured it wasn’t going anywhere, okay? Don’t get me wrong. I loved Zarco. But there were times when he couldn’t keep it zipped. And to have an affair at work? That was just stupid.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘Would you like some tea?’

I took off my coat and we went down to the spaceship of a kitchen, which gave me a welcome opportunity to change the subject.

‘I’m sorry I woke you up, Toyah.’

‘That’s all right. I took a pill after I called you this morning and I’ve been asleep ever since. Really, it’s lucky you woke me up. I’ve got so much to do.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘And apparently very little time in which to do it. Jesus, I had no idea it was so late. I must have slept for eight hours.’

‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘It’s probably the best thing there is for grief.’

I was looking forward to going to bed myself; Sonja had sent me a neutral sort of text, saying that she hoped I was all right and I replied that I was, but thoughts of Louise Considine notwithstanding, I knew I would feel a lot better as soon as I was fast asleep.

‘I identified his body,’ I said. ‘About an hour ago. I thought perhaps you should know.’

‘Thank you. I appreciate you doing that. I know it must have been very upsetting for you.’

I shrugged that off.

‘Have the police got any ideas yet?’ she asked. ‘About who killed Zarco, and why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about you?’

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Nothing yet. But it’s early days.’

She poured the tea and we sat down at the long wooden table.

‘You asked me to tell you about anything unusual that happened,’ she said. ‘Something that might fill in a few blanks, you said. Well, there was something. My builder came round, Tristram Lambton. He’s been handling the work on number twelve. He said he’d come to pay his respects, but it wasn’t long before he mentioned the real reason he was here. He asked me if Zarco had left an envelope for him.’

‘An envelope?’

‘I hate to mention this right now, Mrs Zarco, he says when he’s finished being sympathetic, but your late husband had agreed to pay me in cash for some of the building work. Did he leave something for me, perhaps? An envelope?’

‘How much cash?’

‘Twenty thousand pounds, he said.’

‘That’s pushing any normal envelope,’ I said. ‘I know builders like cash in hand, but twenty grand needs two hands. Maybe three or four.’

‘Tell me about it. But I can’t honestly say I was entirely surprised. Zarco had all sorts of fiddles going, as you probably know. He was a typical Portuguese. Always making bloody deals, he was. It was meat and drink to the man. A right Del Boy.’ She took an angry puff of her cigarette. ‘Anyway, I told him that Zarco hadn’t mentioned any cash to me but I went and checked the safe, just in case. But there wasn’t any envelope. At least not one containing thousands of pounds. And Tristram said something like, well, if you do come across it, then please let me know. And I said that twenty grand wasn’t exactly the kind of sum that I was likely to find in Zarco’s sock drawer. And that’s how we left it.’

I nodded. ‘What kind of guy is this Tristram?’

‘Posh boy. Nice-looking. Plenty of money and a Bentley. Good builder, though. Our architect seems to rate him very highly. And so did Zarco.’

‘I’ll speak to him,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to him after I’ve had my tea.’

‘Thanks, Scott. I appreciate it.’

I stayed another fifteen minutes for appearance’s sake. The house felt odd without Zarco’s loud voice and his laughter. Even the cat was looking a little bewildered. I used Toyah’s lavatory, put my coat back on, went outside and walked around to the other side of the square.

It was dark and well past the usual going-home time for builders, but from the lights and noise behind the Lambton Construction mural that hid the façade of number twelve it was plain that they were still working hard. I could hear what sounded like a carpenter at work, hammering one nail after another into some wood. I went through a wooden gate in the side of the mural and down the side of the house, which had been largely transformed by the addition of a huge modern window. I walked down a flight of stone stairs and found myself facing a man wearing a hoodie under a hard hat with a roll-up in his mouth and a plank on his shoulder.

‘Here,’ he said in a thick foreign accent, ‘what you up to, sunshine? You nicking tools or something?’

‘No, I wasn’t nicking tools.’

‘’Cos people nick our tools and the boss he say it’s us. Threaten to take it from our wages.’

‘No, that’s not what I want.’

‘What do you want? You here to complain? Because I just work here, see?’

‘I’m looking for Mr Lambton. I’m a friend of Mrs Zarco.’

The man’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘Sure, I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re the football guy. Scott Manson. Used to play for Arsenal — I remember. Now you manager of City. Me, I like Arsenal. They good team. Better than City, I think. Arsenal is cake your mother makes. Home-made. Good cake. City is cake you buy in shop. Not as good. More expensive, too.’ He took a last puff on the roll-up and then threw it into the house. ‘Hey, you got any tickets?’

‘No, I don’t. And I’m still looking for Mr Lambton.’

‘There’s two Mr Lambtons. Brothers, see? Tristram and Gareth. Which one you want?’

‘Tristram.’

‘Okay, you wait here and I find him.’

He put down the plank and walked into a maze of scaffolding that was lit by a bare bulb, leaving me alone with my thoughts, which were a knot of this and that. If I’d had a little more time I might have been able to think things out, to perceive what was significant, and to separate what was important from what was not. Being a cop on the Zarco inquiry might have presented them with a few more challenges if they’d been facing a full-strength West Ham on Tuesday night. There was no doubt about it, I was feeling under pressure. In Toyah’s loo I’d glanced at a newspaper article about the fun of being a fantasy football manager, and I’d thought, if only football was all you had to deal with then the job might seem as fun as that; it’s all the other shit that life throws at you — your girlfriend dumping you, the Inland Revenue telling your accountants that they think you owe them more tax, fucking reporters camped outside your house, gay players taking drugs, one of your oldest pals hanging himself — that makes the job so fucking difficult.