Vera was watching me, her eyelids flickering. ‘What you do now?’ she asked nervously. ‘I need this job. I must get my English good enough or I won’t get really good job in Croatia.’
‘I’m not going to tell Beryl, not if you cooperate. You have caused a lot of trouble, Vera. Ivo’s dead. Or do you know already? Did you hear me talk about that when you snooped on my phone call?’
I saw at once that she hadn’t known. I thought she was going to pass out. Her face drained of all colour and her eyes looked enormous. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before she could speak and, when she did, her voice was hoarse.
‘No, is not possible.’
‘It’s possible. It was on the local radio last night. He’s been staying here. Didn’t you wonder where he was when he didn’t come back yesterday? His clothes are here. All he wore was running shorts. Where could he be for forty-eight hours just wearing those?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know where he was,’ she whispered. ‘I think perhaps he was looking for that girl, that one who was downstairs in the kitchen. She is a lot of trouble, that girl. The boss at the club wants her back. Ivo thought, perhaps he could take her back.’ She ran her tongue over her lips, wetting them. ‘The police know this?’
‘They don’t know about Lisa. They know they have a dead man on their hands. He drowned, by the way. They don’t know who he is yet, and they won’t give up until they do. Then they might well find out you hid him here and they’ll want to know why you didn’t come forward. I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to the police—’
‘No!’ she interrupted vehemently. ‘No police!’
‘Are you here illegally?’
‘No, I have work permit, one year. I work for Beryl. It’s nice here.’ She began to snivel.
‘That’s all right, then. No reason for you to worry about the police. Here’s the story. You tell them your boyfriend came from London and stayed here. You don’t want the landlady to know but you’re worried because he’s missing. He went out jogging yesterday morning and hasn’t come back. Well, he wouldn’t, would he? Because I found him in the river. They’ll probably ask you to identify him.’
Vera wrapped her arms around her upper body and rocked miserably to and fro. I felt sorry for her but this wasn’t the time for concern about someone else. Somehow I had to satisfy the police that the reason Ivo had come to Oxford had nothing to do with me.
‘Was not my boyfriend,’ she said sulkily. ‘Only friend of a friend. She ask me, I give him place to sleep.’ She pointed at the sofa. ‘He slept there. Really.’
‘I don’t care if he slept hanging upside down from the rafter with his bat’s wings folded,’ I said. ‘Just get down there and identify him or I tell Beryl you’ve been sneaking men in.’
I thought she was going to cry again but she nodded.
‘Good. Just do it, right? Now. But before you go, you listened at my bedroom door, didn’t you? You heard me arrange to meet someone by the river?’
‘I not listen at doors,’ said Vera obstinately. ‘I don’t know what you say.’
‘But you knew why Ivo came to Oxford?’
‘I only know he came to find that girl for his boss.’ Her voice rose. ‘Is not my fault he is dead. I know nothing, nothing!’
She’d agreed to go to the police and identify him, because she needed the job, as she said. But she wasn’t about to admit anything else and, if I pushed her too hard, she might turn awkward. I had to settle for what I’d got.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m going to London this afternoon and I’ll be back this evening. I’ll expect to hear you’ve been to see the police and you’ve identified Ivo’s body.’
She began to cry then, snivelling unattractively and rubbing tears and snot over her face with her forearm.
‘You don’t understand, none of you understand. There is no work for people at home. There was no work for Ivo. He trained for professional sportsman but no team took him. He want to make movies but no movie company take him. He doesn’t have much education, only his strength. His parents are peasants. He doesn’t want to spend his life working on the land. Jasna is a cousin, a sort of cousin. She wrote to him to come to London and she can get him a job at her club. The big boss there needs strong men at the door. So Ivo came. But the big boss doesn’t like Jasna and he doesn’t like Ivo much either. They are frightened because both of them can get the sack, don’t you understand that? They were frightened! Now I am frightened too!’
I didn’t have time to play nursemaid or to discuss East European labour problems. I left her to it and set out for the station. I didn’t tell Beryl what Vera had done and I didn’t tell her I was intending to be away from Oxford that night. She wasn’t around anyway. Neither was Filigrew. I wondered what he was doing and decided that probably I didn’t want to know. I was in the process of extricating myself from Mickey Allerton’s business. Just this one last little errand for Lisa and I was home and dry.
Chapter Nine
It was five o’clock when I got back to London and well into the rush hour for traffic. People were streaming into Paddington Station and I had to fight my way against the flow through the crowds to go down into the Tube. The underground air was stuffy and warm, heavy with human sweat and dust. Individuals cease to exist in such throngs. They meld into an amorphous mass that is drained of colour except for monochrome shades of grey. Faces are tired and puffy. Even those with companions don’t speak. They are anxious to be home and fearful of missing trains. They clutch briefcases full of work they are taking with them and laptop computers. They carry this mobile office as a snail carries its house on its back. The air is filled with the patter of their feet as they scurry along the corridors and the creak and rumble of the heavily laden escalators which carry them upwards to the anthill of the station concourse. However insecure my lifestyle, I have never wished to join them.
Not that I was without worries of my own. I could have gone first to the address Lisa had given me but I wanted to make sure that Ganesh and I were really back on our old friendly footing and I directed my steps towards the newsagent’s. I also wanted to bring him up to date on what had happened and talk it over with him, just as I normally did. I wanted to be with him and Hari, people I knew were my friends, who might criticise but would always stand by me and who never asked me to do the impossible.
The shop stayed open until eight or eight thirty if things were busy, but not after that. They had to get up very early in the morning for one reason; another was that late-night trade brought with it additional risks. With a busy street scene outside as active as in daylight hours, unwelcome visitations increased. They already got them by day: grubby old winos cadging a handout, light-fingered pilferers and outright nutters who simply wanted to be there and talk. At night it could turn nasty. They closed the shop before some druggie, desperate for a fix to see him through until morning, burst in demanding the contents of the till or drunken yobs decided to round off the night by smashing up an Asian shop.
The pink and yellow space rocket was still outside. A sad little handwritten notice hung round it to tell anyone interested that it was still, or again, out of order. I wondered if the technician had been to fix it.
I pushed open the door and the bell jangled. Hari looked up from behind the counter, a look of alarm on his face. I couldn’t see Ganesh and supposed he was in the stockroom.
‘It’s OK, Hari,’ I said. ‘It’s only me.’
‘You are in Oxford,’ said Hari, still looking alarmed as if I were an apparition from the spirit world.
‘No, well, yes - but I just popped back to London for a few hours to do something. I’m going to Oxford again tonight.’
He came out from behind the counter. I can’t say he looked terrifically pleased to see me. But then, there had been a little upset here while I’d been away and I’d caused it.
‘Look, Hari,’ I began. ‘I’m really sorry I lost Ganesh’s phone in the river and the police found it and contacted—’
He waved his hand, dismissing all this. ‘No, no, my dear. Only that you are safe, that is the most important thing. But I did tell you to stay away from the river there.’
‘No, Hari, you told me not to go in a punt. I didn’t go in a punt. I was just walking . . .’ It struck me that his face was still puckered in a worried frown. ‘Where’s Ganesh?’ I asked. From the stockroom Ganesh could have heard my voice. He should have appeared. It began to dawn on me something was wrong and it hadn’t to do with Oxford.
‘Has something happened?’ I asked sharply.
Hari drew himself up to his full five foot two. ‘Now, Francesca, my dear, you must not worry.’
‘Where’s Ganesh?’ I shouted. ‘What’s happened to him?’
He raised both hands, palms outwards, in a calming gesture. ‘He is perfectly all right. But there has been a small misfortune . . .’
‘What is it?’ I yelled.
Hari looked doleful. ‘Such a remarkable animal.’ He shook his head.
‘Hari,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘If you don’t tell me exactly what’s been going on immediately, I shall scream very, very loudly.’
I don’t know whether he ever would have got round to telling me. At that moment the bell jangled at the opening of the door and Ganesh walked in. Not seeing me at once he began, ‘I’ve put notices in all—’
Then he saw me, stopped with a look of dismay on his face and said, ‘Oh, damn. It’s you. Why aren’t you in bloody Oxford?’
Ganesh isn’t given to swearing, even mildly. This was clearly a moment of great stress. And why did no one want to see me?
‘Come upstairs,’ Ganesh went on quickly, taking me by the arm. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea.’
I allowed him to bundle me upstairs to the flat but before he could escape to the kitchen I barred his way and said bluntly, ‘Come on, all of it.’
‘Don’t freak out!’ he begged.
‘I shall,’ I promised him, ‘if you don’t tell me straight away what’s wrong.’
He drew a deep breath. ‘The bouncer at the club, not the one you found floating in the river, the fat bald one with the wife who likes dogs. She’s been looking after Bonnie. Well, this morning early she thought she’d take the dogs, hers and Bonnie, for a run in Regent’s Park before it got hot. Her dogs are little hairy things, they don’t like the heat. So she took them to the park and when she got there she let them off the lead, all of them, Bonnie included. She thought because Bonnie got on well with her dogs, she’d stay with them. But she didn’t. She ran away.’
‘Where?’ I asked dully, the word dropping into a long deep silence.
‘I don’t know, do I?’ Ganesh snapped. ‘The woman looked all over the park. She asked all the other dog-walkers. She asked the café there to put a lost dog notice in their window.’
I realised he was tired and worried and upset because he had dreaded giving me this news.
I sat down suddenly on the sofa. ‘Bonnie’s been in Regent’s Park before, with me,’ I said, trying to sound calm so that Ganesh wouldn’t get more agitated. ‘She knows the place. Perhaps she’s run back to my place, looking for me.’
‘I’ve been there,’ Ganesh said. ‘No one’s seen her but the other tenants all know. They’re all keeping an eye open. And I’ve put a lost dog notice in the window of every Asian newsagent’s and grocer’s in the entire area. I’ve even told the police and the RSPCA.’ He sat down beside me, his shoulders slumped in dejection. ‘I can’t do any more, Fran. I’ve walked all over the area looking for her.’
‘It’s not your fault, Gan,’ I consoled him. ‘It’s the fault of that daft woman letting her off the lead. Bonnie’s gone looking for me. She probably ran back to the flat, found I wasn’t there, and is running round all the other places I go. She might turn up here.’
‘Hari’s watching out,’ he assured me.
‘Right,’ I said, slapping my hands on my knees. ‘I’m not going back to Oxford until Bonnie’s found.’
‘What’s happening in Oxford, anyway?’ Ganesh asked. ‘Why are you here? Have you come back for good? Is it all over?’ A note of hope entered his voice and I realised how much he’d been worrying about me in Oxford, too.
I felt selfish and was sorry to dash even this faint ray of optimism. But I couldn’t just forget about Lisa and her passport. I explained it to him as briefly as I could. For good measure I told him about Vera and how she’d hidden Ivo in her flat and that Lisa had recognised her.
‘I promised Lisa I’d fetch her passport,’ I concluded. ‘She kept her part of the bargain and phoned Allerton. But the honest truth is I’m fed up with Allerton, Lisa, Vera, Filigrew, Ned . . .’ I sighed. ‘All of them, even Beryl.’