Money Never Sleeps (5 page)

‘I’ll sit at the committee table. I might learn something.’

But she didn’t. The committee were keeping their mouths closed. They were not into gossiping today. But Fancy did detect a slight hostility between the treasurer and the conference secretary, even though they were supposed to be long-time conference friends. It may have been her fertile imagination. They were all under a degree of stress. Everyone was guarded.

Lunch was chilli con carne with either noodles, garlic bread or a jacket potato. Fancy went for the jacket potato. She was not really hungry. She slipped away when the dessert arrived, a big, oval plum pie with the statutory orange custard. She could not face more orange.

After lunch she was besieged by writers wanting to talk about what they were working on and hoping that she could magically put them on the right track. She tried, sorted out a few problems. Some even gave her manuscripts to read.

‘I can’t read anything long,’ she protested. ‘Only short stories. No novels, please. Don’t expect me to read all night.’

‘Please, Fancy, just read a few pages, that’s all.’ The woman had a thick manuscript in a folder. ‘If you’d take a look at the first chapter. Tell me if I’m on the right track.’

‘A few pages, then,’ she relented. ‘Put your room number on the top of the manuscript in case I can’t find you, Peggy Carter, okay?’

She saw herself slipping work back under doors in the middle of the night. Very cowardly. But she could hardly slip this one back. It looked like three hundred pages at least. And she would be expected to write a few lines of encouraging comment. More work.

Fancy slept for an hour of the afternoon. The night had been disturbed and a nap on her bed seemed ideal. It was bliss. But she set the alarm to wake her for the 3.30 p.m. tea break. She wanted to go to a talk titled ‘The Inner Child’. It sounded fascinating. She was prepared to be disappointed, though; she was learning that some speakers had nothing to give beyond a catchy title.

The Orchard Room was packed. Everyone wanted to learn about their inner child or perhaps the IT or politics talks –
scheduled
for the same time – did not appeal. There were not enough chairs so Fancy volunteered to sit on the floor. She could still get down and get up whereas many of the less mobile could not.

They moved on to meditation. Fancy was not into meditation, even though she lived in part of a church. Still, she closed her eyes and did what she was told.

‘Imagine yourself in a nice place, somewhere that you really like. Imagine that it is sunny and warm and that you are walking, very happily, and then someone joins you.’ The voice was soft and hypnotic. The leader of the group was a sweet and tranquil woman, hair like spun silk.

Fancy had been imagining a beach in the Seychelles. That holiday was a long time ago, when she was young and carefree. An empty beach with no footprints except her own and those of an island dog who had decided to join her for the day. She had swum in the azure blue water and it had been miraculous. A memory to last forever. Her best memory. Yes, it was her best memory.

But her mind drifted away and she found herself walking along this riverside, a kingfisher singing on a branch, the water lapping by. A girl came. She was wearing a blue-check cotton dress with short sleeves and a white collar and her frizzy hair sprang out in all directions.

Fancy lay down in the grass with the girl and they picked flowers and made daisy chains. It was all so peaceful.

‘Now I want you to draw this new companion,’ the group were told. ‘But draw with your left hand if you are right-handed, and with your right hand if you are left-handed. Then write some questions to your companion. Wrong-handed.’

Fancy understood. She drew the girl easily in a blue-check dress and asked the girl questions with her left hand. Who are you?

The girl said that she was me. The girl said she would help me with writing. She said my writing would get better.

Fancy relaxed on the floor. It had all been too easy. The inner child was herself. She had told herself what she wanted to hear. No great hassle there.

‘Now I want you to go on a journey with your inner child. Close your eyes and let her take you where she will,’ said the leader.

Fancy closed her eyes obediently. So what. Where would her inner child take her? New York? Paris? Bermuda?

They were on a double bicycle, a bit like the film
ET
. They flew through the clouds and then suddenly took a dive down through the clouds and landed on a barren island. It was dotted about with huge, grotesque statues, sunken into the earth. It was Easter Island. She recognized the statues.

Fancy opened her eyes, shaken. She had never been to Easter Island or shown any interest in it, so why should her inner child take her there?

Why have you brought me here? she asked, using her left hand. Fancy emptied her mind of any thoughts. She did not want to dictate the answer. She wanted her inner child to tell her.

Because they are calling you, came the left-handed answer, the writing disjointed and wild.

The rest of the session was a cacophony of people talking and exchanging experiences. Fancy did not want to join in. She was too shattered. Yet common sense told her this was nothing to do with her recent experiences.

They are calling you. What on earth did that mean?

She opened a new page in her notebook and wrote down all the happenings and their exact times. They were all one minute past the quadrant: one minute past half past, one minute past a quarter to, one minute past the o’clock. It must mean something. There was a pattern, if she could only work out what it was.

They drifted out of the Orchard Room. Fancy thanked the leader, a slim, willowy woman called Tina who lived in some
far-away
place. Time to shower and change. Fancy was half-sure she had a party to go to if she could find out where it was being held. A numbered room in ABC, the invitation said, and she had no idea where that was.

ABC? Strange name for a building. Were the builders going through the alphabet?

A few of the orchard trees had been left standing and they cast long shadows in the afternoon breeze. Something swayed damply across her face. Fancy brushed it aside without thinking.

Then she looked up, wondering what could be wet on a sunny afternoon. It had been tied to a low branch of an apple tree. Fancy stopped, horrified. It was one of Melody’s floating chiffon scarves, slowly dripping water.

The water dripped onto her face.

It was 5.01 p.m.

F
ancy hurried to her room in Lakeside, almost running up the stairs, hand shaking as she tried to turn the key in the lock. She was trying it the wrong way in her haste. She slammed the door shut and leaned against it, getting her breath back.

The scarf didn’t mean anything to anyone else at the
workshop
. It was there as a message to Fancy. It was saying: Look what happened to Melody. But she was sure it had not been there when she climbed the steep path to the Orchard Room. Someone was watching her every move.

She had told no one that she planned to go to this talk. It had been a spur of the moment thing. A way of clearing her mind of the day’s happenings. And she was always interested in learning something new.

If she didn’t go to this evening’s party, would they think she was snooty or too successful to mix with ordinary people? Neither of which was true. She liked parties. She liked meeting people. Everything and everybody gave her ideas, sharpened her brain, refreshed her writing. The Pink Pen Detective liked parties too.

She stood under the shower and let the warm water soothe her shattered nerves. Rubbing herself dry helped to jump-start her circulation. She dressed with special care, slim black velvet skirt and white, crinkled, silk shirt, finishing the look with a wide pink belt, some dangling earrings. She wasn’t going to be scared off by a bit of flapping wet cloth.

ABC was apparently the large residential building she had
walked past several times already, not giving it a second glance. The front entrance door was open. Long corridors stretched ahead either side. She could hear music and headed towards it.

The bedroom was full of people, most of them holding glasses of wine. It was a big room with a double and a single bed. Fancy spotted a bathroom with a bath and shower. Luxury indeed. Music was pounding from a personal transistor radio. It was a bright, cheerful party and the host soon spotted her. In seconds she had a glass of red in her hand and was being introduced to so many people. Some faces she recognized. No committee members present as yet, all delegates, all ages, white badges and regulars, other speakers and course lecturers.

It was a great party. Fancy felt rejuvenated and it wasn’t only because of the wine. It was the company. It was talking to normal people about normal things, not always about writing. Callum McKay was a great raconteur with lots of stories. She met Pheobe Marr, the poet, and enjoyed talking to her. Sometimes she wanted to forget that she made her living putting words down in a certain order.

And it was cosy, sitting on beds, leaning against the window, having her glass refilled. Too soon it was supper time and everyone helped clear up the debris before departing to the dining room. They seemed to stay in the same groups at the tables and the good conversation continued. No one mentioned Melody. Her husband had arrived, someone said, but his first stop was obviously Derby Hospital.

‘Have you ever wanted to do anything different to writing?’ asked Phoebe.

‘No, never.’

‘I wanted to be a ballet dancer but I grew too tall,’ Phoebe said.

Fancy thought about all her dreams and frustrations. She’d never win the Booker or the Orange Prize – not literary enough. She’d never get a film option and walk the red carpet with Johnny Depp, though she often wrote in a part for him. She would be delirious if the Pink Pen Detective got a television series.

‘So really you are the Pink Pen Detective,’ said her host at the party.

‘No, I only invented her. I’m not a detective.’

‘I like the way they slash the cover with a pink pen.’

‘So do I,’ said Fancy. ‘The Pink Pen covers are well designed.’

She scanned the heads in the dining room, looking for streaked dark hair and glinting glasses, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps Jed had gone home. Perhaps he was dining a young and delightful blonde at a nearby hotel. Fancy gathered that sometimes
delegates
ate out, tired of stodgy pastry and orange custard.

Tonight’s supper was fillet of fish in a white sauce followed by, joy oh joy, a strawberry concoction with a weird name, fresh fruit mixed with crushed meringue and cream. It was unbelievably delicious. Everyone wanted seconds, except the young woman who was on a gluten and sugar-free diet. The kitchen produced something different for her at every meal.

She cut her banana into small pieces to make it last. ‘I’d love some of that,’ she said enviously.

‘You could have had just the strawberries.’

‘You tell me now!’

The guest speaker that evening was suitably famous. His books were going to be televised and he was something
important
in the Crime Writers’ Association. He travelled all over the world to conferences and had just flown back from Washington. Northcote must have seemed like the backwoods after the dazzle of a cosmopolitan capital.

Fancy knew him but not well. He bumped into her in the corridor on the way to the main conference hall. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ He peered at her name badge but couldn’t read it properly. ‘Lovely to see you again.’

‘Glad you found your way here.’

‘It looks fun. We’ll have a drink in the bar afterwards. It’ll have to be a quick one, though, as I’ve got to rush back to London this evening.’

Fancy decided not to sit in the safety of the elite corner with the committee and other guest speakers. She wanted her
independence
.
She walked over to the other side of the hall, to the ‘shelf’. Someone had told her it was called the shelf. It was also called the rebels corner, because once, in ages past, there had been a gang of rebels at Northcote who wanted to change the old stuffy image, and they always sat on the shelf. A kind of clan thing.

The shelf was only wide enough for two rows of chairs but it meant you could look over everyone and get a clear view of the speaker. Fancy had not enjoyed her view being blocked by backs of heads, especially if the heads did not keep still and kept bobbing about.

‘Coming to join us on the shelf?’

‘May I, please? Do you mind? Is there room?’

‘Not at all. As long as you behave yourself. No rowdy
behaviour
. No wolf whistles or rude noises. Strict rules on the shelf.’

‘Promise. I can’t whistle.’

‘We are a very refined lot up here.’

‘I can see that. But you also look as if you enjoy yourselves.’

‘We have independent minds. If we think a speaker is rubbish then we clap in an appropriately low-key manner. No overblown hysterics or unnecessary cheering.’

Fancy liked the sound of restrained clapping. For a moment she forgot that they would be judging her tomorrow. They made room for her now, shuffling chairs along so she could sit in the front row. She knew she was going to feel at home on the shelf. She would join them with her dreams and her frustrations.

She had never been top of any best-seller list even with dozens of complimentary reviews. Her website was informative and visited daily by fans. Yet her books stayed stuck in the middle somewhere. W H Smith never put her titles in the number one display spot. She’d never had an advert on the Underground.

But she sold well. And her peers read her writing.

Fancy knew she wrote well. Sometimes she surprised herself with a good phrase or an unexpected turn of words. Her Pink Pen Detective was fun and clever, a woman that readers could identify with. The plots were ingenious and injected with the
right amount of warmth and emotion. The weird plots came into her head without any bidding. She had a strange mind.

She made a good living from her writing, which was a lot more than some writers did. Her church lodge was warm and
comfortable
although she did not really like the location. She supported some starving children in Somalia, but not all of them.

‘May I join you?’ It was Jed, black shirt, black trousers, jacket slung over his shoulder. Jazzy look.

‘Jed. I thought you’d gone home.’

‘Not a chance.’ Jed never mentioned his home life. She didn’t know if he was married, divorced or had a partner. Fancy
realized
that she knew very little about him. He did not look the kind of person she could ask.

‘I’ve been to Derby,’ he said, squeezing in another chair beside her, ignoring a few black looks. ‘My friend in the path lab. I did him a good turn once.’

Fancy dared not ask him what he had learned. He would only tell her if he wanted to. ‘You missed supper. We had strawberries and cream.’

He groaned. ‘Just my luck. My favourite.’

‘I’ve done some homework on my happenings,’ she said, opening her notebook and flicking through pages.

‘Your happenings. Very Stephen King.’

She showed him the list of incidents and her timing record. ‘Do you see anything odd here? A pattern emerging?’ He shook his head. ‘The times are all one minute passed the quadrant.’

‘That’s a big word for a little girl,’ he murmured.

‘Don’t be patronizing. What does it tell you?’

Jed pretended to think, chin in fist. ‘He’s a creature of habit. He has to take medication on the hour or the half hour or both. He’s set his mobile to go off every quarter of an hour because he’s always late for appointments. I don’t know why. Perhaps there’s a message there. Is he telling you obliquely who he is and you’ve got to work it out?’

Jed’s chief super mode began flicking through possibilities. It was odd. It was if he was back at his desk, which had been more
like home than home. He missed the frantic bustle, being
over-worked
, the hair-raising moments, the rivalry and friendships. Cold cases were the only replacement he could find for a man with one useless arm. Quadrants? It must mean something.

The evening’s guest speaker was being escorted into the conference hall by the chairman. He looked at home on the
platform
; big, muscular, standing firm, no notes. No lectern. He was going to speak straight from the heart.

That’ll be me up there tomorrow, thought Fancy, the old nerves rising up into her throat. I shall dry up. I won’t remember a word of what I’m going to say.

It was an excellent talk, amusing and informative. It fired Fancy’s enthusiasm for her genre. She wanted to get to a computer and start writing a new book straight away. She admired the way he researched police procedure in a practical way, spending days with the force, going out at night with them. She wondered if she should do something like that.

The question time was lively. It would have gone on all night but the chairman drew a halt. ‘I must get our speaker to the bar before it closes,’ he said. ‘And before he goes back to London.’

‘He was good, wasn’t he?’ said Fancy, clapping as the speaker left the hall to applause.

‘Very good. But I don’t know how he got away with that police work. I wouldn’t have let a member of the public come with us on call, even one wearing a flak jacket. You never know when something is going to turn dangerous. We’re not insured for the public, not even writers.’

‘True,’ said Fancy. ‘Perhaps he signs some let-out clause before they go out. His books are full of the correct police procedure. Lots of detail about the workings of police stations.’

‘Is that what your Pink Pen Detective does? She always seems to be in some sort of danger and requires rescuing.’

They were drifting out of the hall, among the last to leave. Stewards were going round, straightening chairs, collecting lost property, switching off lights, turning off power.

‘You’ll get locked in,’ they warned. ‘Only water to drink.’

‘And nothing to read,’ Fancy added.

‘Would you like a nightcap?’ Jed asked. ‘There’s just time before the bar closes. The queue has gone.’

‘I don’t think so. I need a good night’s sleep before tomorrow. It’s going to be a heavy day. Two panels in the morning,
one-to-ones
, and then my talk in the evening. And I need to look at my notes.’

‘I shall clap heartily at every word.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t come.’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

He was walking her to Lakeside, quite slowly, making it spin out. It was another clear night, stars like diamond dust, the trees still and ghostly. Laughter carried from the bar into the still air. Music came from the disco-gyrating in the small conference hall.

‘We must go dancing one evening,’ said Jed. ‘Perhaps tomorrow, after your talk. You’ll be feeling relaxed and want to let your hair down.’

‘But…?’

‘I do a sort of one-armed dancing, holding the lady the other way round. Nothing wrong with my legs. They can still move.’

‘Oh,’ said Fancy, lost for words, still wondering what he meant.

Jed keyed in the code for the Lakeside entrance door. It was so easy, anyone could have got in. They walked up the stairs, not wanting to use the lift, still stringing out time, stopping on each landing.

They didn’t know who saw it first. It was hanging from the door handle of room 425; another chiffon scarf, still wet, dripping a puddle on the carpet. It was the kind of scarf that Melody always wore.

Fancy clutched Jed’s arm, the useless one, not knowing what she was doing. But at least his other arm went round her, holding her close. There was some kind of monster out there, walking the grounds.

‘Don’t look,’ he said. ‘I’ll get rid of it and I’ll check your room for you. Then I’ll have a look round outside. Whoever put the scarf there can’t be far away.’

‘One minute past eleven.’ Fancy was shaking. ‘What does it mean? You haven’t told me what your friend said. His report. The pathologist in Derby.’

‘There was hardly any water in her lungs. Melody was
unconscious
when she went into the water. Drugged. Barely breathing. She wouldn’t have known anything.’

‘Sometimes I think I don’t know anything.’

‘There’s one thing you do know. I’m here. And I won’t let anything happen to you.’