Читать книгу Joe Shoe 2-Book Bundle - Michael Blair - Страница 8

Friday, December 17

The Municipality of Delta was an irregular pancake of land south of the main channel of the Fraser River. Largely farmland, and some of the most fertile in the province, it had been reclaimed from forest and marshland and was, as Bill Hammond was wont to say, “flat as piss on a plate.” Which was not surprising, since Delta was just that, an accumulation of millennia of silt in the mouth of the Fraser River.

Ramona Ross lived on 53rd Street, just north of Ladner Trunk Road. Shoe had no trouble finding the address, a three-storey, wood-frame condominium apartment building in the traditional angular West Coast style of Arthur Erickson. He parked in one of the spaces designated for visitors and went into the vestibule. He keyed in the door code for R. Ross.

“You’re early,” a woman answered sharply. “I’m not ready.”

“Ramona Ross?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Joseph Schumacher. I—”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were the taxi. How can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak to you about Patrick O’Neill.”

“Patrick O’Neill? In what regard?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” Shoe said, “but he’s dead.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I’m leaving for the airport as soon as my taxi arrives.”

“This will only take a minute,” Shoe said.

“All right,” she said. “You’d better come up. Suite three on the second floor.” The door release hummed.

Ramona Ross met him at the door of her apartment. She was a handsome, robust woman who looked to be in her late fifties but who, according to Sandra St. Johns’ printout, was sixty-eight. She had a smooth brow, high cheekbones, and sharp blue eyes behind a pair of slightly tinted wire-frame granny glasses. Her auburn-dyed hair was short and simply cut. Her handshake was firm and warm. She invited him in. A two-piece set of matching luggage stood in the small foyer and she was dressed for travelling in loose-fitting pleated trousers and a lightweight hiking jacket with a multitude of pockets. On her feet were sturdy Salomon trail shoes.

“How awful about Mr. O’Neill,” she said. She spoke softly and with slightly rounded vowels. “He was such a nice young man. Was it an automobile accident?”

“No, ma’am,” Shoe said. “He was the victim of a violent crime.”

“He was murdered, you mean?”

“Yes, ma’am. Shot.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Miss Ross—”

“It’s Mrs. Ross,” she said.

“Mrs. Ross,” Shoe said. “You and Patrick spent some time together last month, is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right. He took me to lunch on a couple of occasions when he and Ms. St. Johns were closing the plant where I worked. He also came to see me earlier this month. He was interested in the old days. Excuse me, are you with the police? Shouldn’t you show me your badge?”

“I’m not the police,” Shoe replied. “I’m employed by Hammond Industries.”

“Oh.”

“What did you mean, he was interested in the old days?”

“I used to know William Hammond, you see, a long time ago. Well, actually, it was Claire Powkowski I knew. She was Mr. Hammond’s business partner in the late forties and fifties. Before he married Elizabeth Lindell and merged his company with her father’s. She—”

The telephone warbled, two short rings.

“Oh, dear, that will be the taxi.” She picked up the telephone. “I’ll be right down,” she said. She hung up and turned to Shoe. “I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t have any more time to talk now.”

“Can I help you with your luggage?”

“That’s very kind of you.”

As he carried her suitcases down the stairs, Ramona Ross asked, “When is the funeral?” Shoe said he wasn’t sure, Monday, probably, or Tuesday at the latest. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I shan’t be able to make it. It’s my mother’s ninetieth birthday and we’re taking her camping in Olympic National Park.”

“I would like to know more about Claire Powkowski and ‘the old days’ myself,” Shoe said. “Perhaps I could drive you to the airport.” But the cabbie was already stowing her luggage in the trunk of the cab.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she got into the cab.

“May I call you next week?”

“Yes, certainly,” Mrs. Ross said from the back seat of the cab. “I’ll be back early Tuesday afternoon. I’m sorry I have to rush off like this,” she said as the cab pulled away.

Victoria parked her red BMW convertible in the underground parking space that still bore Patrick’s nameplate, slung her backpack-like purse over her shoulder, and rode the elevator up to the 23rd floor. She was wearing a beige Donna Karan suit, a belted Burberry jacket, and a red tam set at a jaunty angle. She didn’t feel the least bit jaunty.

“Victoria,” Muriel said, coming around the desk, putting her arms around Victoria’s shoulders, kissing her on the cheek. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Victoria replied automatically. “Thank you for the flowers,” she added. “They’re beautiful. I’m sorry I haven’t returned your calls, Mu, but—I’m sorry.”

“I understand,” Muriel said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I need to see Bill,” Victoria said.

“Bill?” Muriel said, black eyes wide with surprise.

“Yes,” Victoria replied. “And, no,” she added with a quick smile, “I don’t have a gun in my purse.”

“Sorry,” Muriel said. “It’s just that, well, I—” She faltered, blushing.

“It’s all right,” Victoria said.

“He’s in a meeting right now,” Muriel said, regaining her composure. “With Charles Merigold,” she added, “so he’ll probably be grateful for an excuse to cut it short. But you should have called.”

“I’m sorry, I w-w-was—” Victoria stammered, paused and regrouped, then started again. “It was all I could do to bring myself to come here,” she said. “I didn’t want to give him any warning, time to prepare his lies. Or slip out the back door.”

Muriel gestured toward an arrangement of easy chairs and low tables, softly lighted and surrounded by tall tropical plants. “Sit down,” she said. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

Victoria sat stiffly on the edge of a chair while Muriel went back to her desk and picked up the telephone. Something that sounded like Mozart played softly over the muted drone of voices, the electronic hum of office equipment, and the distant sigh of air-conditioning. A plump young man in an expensive suit held open the door to the reception area for a thin-legged girl pushing a mail cart. Both of them smiled at Victoria. Muriel hung up and returned to the waiting area.

“He won’t be long,” she said.

The door to Hammond’s office opened and Charles Merigold emerged. When he saw Victoria, he smiled sympathetically.

“Victoria,” he said, offering his hand. “Please accept my deepest condolences for your loss. If there’s anything I or Evelyn can do, please don’t hesitate to call.”

“Thank you, Charles,” Victoria replied, shaking his hand.

He nodded, smile wavering. “Well, good,” he said awkwardly. “Do, please.” He turned and went into his office.

Victoria picked up her purse and stood. She kissed Muriel’s cheek. “Wish me luck, Mu,” she said. Muriel opened the door to Hammond’s office. Victoria took a deep breath and went in.

He was standing by his broad desk. She was shocked by how dry and withered he looked, almost frail. He hadn’t seemed so frail the other day.

“My dear,” he said, coming toward her. “How good to see you.”

“Hello,” she said, hoping the coldness in her voice would stop his advance. It didn’t. She almost flinched when he took her arm.

He led her to the seating arrangement by the tall window overlooking the harbour and the white, stylized sails of Canada Place. She sat on the edge of a sofa, back rigid, hands clasped in her lap.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Coffee? Tea? A drink, perhaps?” She shook her head. “Are you hungry? I can order something sent up if you wish.”

“No, I don’t want anything,” she replied.

He lowered himself into a chair facing her. “What is it you wished to see me about?” he asked.

She looked him in the eye. It wasn’t as hard as she’d thought it would be. “I want to know why Patrick was killed,” she said.

“Yes, of course. As do I.”

“I think you do know. I think it had something to do with Hammond Industries. With you.”

“It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume,” Hammond said, “that his murder is somehow connected with his job or possibly even with me, but I certainly don’t know what that connection could be.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why would I lie to you?” he said. He leaned toward her. “I’ve never lied to you.”

“You’ve only ever told the truth when it suited you.”

He shrugged, hands held palms up before him, a gesture of helplessness that she knew was completely false. “If you believe that, what’s the point?” he said. “Or is it that you just don’t want to believe me. You want someone to blame for Patrick’s death. It might as well be me.”

Victoria turned her head from side to side, savagely, as if to shake loose an unwanted thought.

“My dear,” Hammond said, leaning close again. “Instead of mistrusting each other, we should be trying to help each other. Surely we can put the past behind us.”

“If by that you mean forgive and forget,” Victoria said, “I can’t do that. I won’t do that.”

“It was you who seduced me, if you will recall.”

Victoria’s laugh was bitter. “How can you call it seduction? I was just another one of your whores. Bought and paid for.”

“I never thought of you as a whore,” he said. “But is that why you’re here, to pick the scabs off old sores? What’s done is done. We can’t change the past.”

“I came here to tell you that if you’re responsible for Patrick’s death, even indirectly, I’ll see to it that you pay for it. One way or another.”

The colour drained from his face. “I don’t think that’s why you’re here at all,” he said, voice brittle. “You’re here because with Patrick gone there’s no one left to take care of you. And you need someone to take care of you, don’t you? You always have.” He reached out to touch her. She drew back. “I will take care of you, you know.”

Biting down on her sudden nausea, she stood. “I’d live on the street first,” she said, and walked out of his office.

Muriel stood and came around her desk. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Victoria took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“God, you’re trembling like a leaf.”

“I’m fine, Mu. Really.” She took Muriel’s hand and squeezed gently. “Thank you,” she said. Muriel walked her to the elevators. “I’ll call you,” Victoria said.

She was still shaking when she got down to the parking level, so she sat in her car, breathing deeply through her nose, until the tremors subsided. When she finally turned the key in the ignition, the car wouldn’t start. The engine turned over and over and over, as if to mock her. She laid her forehead on the top of the steering wheel and closed her eyes.

Just what she needed, she thought wearily, eyes burning with tears of frustration. Goddamn Patrick and his fucking BMWs. She felt an immediate stab of guilt. She’d loved this car from the moment Patrick had given it to her. Right now, though, she’d have gladly traded it for her old Toyota. Until she’d wrecked it, the Toyota had never given her a bit of trouble. Of course, it had barely made it up the hills on the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler. She twisted the key and tried again, but the car still refused to start. Despite the night course in auto mechanics Patrick had insisted she take, she didn’t have a clue what might be wrong.

She almost jumped out of her skin when someone rapped at the driver’s side window.

“Is everything all right?” a man asked.

She stabbed at the door lock button on her door. The electromechanical deadbolts thudded down.

“It’s all right,” the man said, voice muffled. “It’s Del Tilley. You—I work for Mr. Hammond.”

She tried again. “C’mon, you bitch,” she hissed through her teeth. She cranked the engine for longer than was recommended, but it did not start.

“Be careful,” Del Tilley said. “You might flood it.”

She turned the ignition key to “On” and powered the window down an inch. “It’s fuel-injected,” she said coldly, hoping she remembered correctly that fuel-injected engines did not flood.

“Would you like me to try?” he asked.

“I’m quite capable of starting a car, Mr. Tilley,” she said.

“Yes, yes, of course you are. I’m sorry. I’m only trying to help.”

She followed the recommended procedure, cranking for five or six seconds, then letting the battery rest for ten seconds, then cranking again. She repeated the process five times, to no avail. She raised the window, removed the key from the ignition, and opened the door. Tilley stepped back as she got out of the car. In her half heels she looked straight into his yellow eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Tilley. I didn’t mean to be snappish. I—it’s been a trying day.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Do you have a phone?” she said. “I want to call the CAA.”

He took a tiny cellphone out of his pocket, but he did not hand it to her.

“I’ll take you home,” he said. “And if you’ll give me your keys, I’ll have one of my staff arrange for the CAA to take care of the car.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Please, Victoria,” he said. “Pardon me. Mrs. O’Neill. If Mr. Hammond was to learn I left you stranded down here, it would be my job.”

“Mr. Tilley,” Victoria said firmly, “I don’t want to be rude. Either let me use your phone to call the CAA or let me pass.”

He stared at her blankly for a second or two, then flipped the cellphone open. He pressed a button with his thumb. The phone beeped. He shook his head. “There’s no signal down here. You’ll have to call from the security office.”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’ll use the payphone in the lobby.”

“You’ll have to meet the CAA truck down here,” he said reasonably. “It would make more sense for you to call from the security office.”

She shook her head.

“It’s this way.” He took a step toward her, reaching out to take her arm.

Victoria backed up a step. Her rump hit the side of the car. Tilley stared at her for a long moment, blinking slowly, lizard-like. He opened his mouth to saying something but was cut off by the sound of an approaching car. Mumbling unintelligibly, he turned abruptly on his heel and stalked away.

As Shoe drove slowly along the row of parking spaces reserved for Hammond Industries’ employees, he saw Del Tilley striding toward him. As he drove past him, Tilley stopped and watched the car go by, head swivelling, eyes shadowed and unreadable. There was no mistaking the hostility he radiated. It had an almost visible aura. What’s eating him? Shoe wondered.

When he pulled into his parking space, Victoria was standing beside her red BMW convertible, parked in Patrick’s spot. She had a brown leather knapsack slung over her shoulder. Her face was pale in the harsh glare of the overhead fluorescent lights.

“My car won’t start,” she said as he got out of his car.

“Do you want me to try?” he offered.

“If you like,” she said. “But, as I told Del Tilley, I’m quite capable of starting a car.”

“I’ll take your word for it then,” Shoe said.

“Can I trouble you for a ride home? I’ll call the CAA from there.”

“Of course,” Shoe said.

In the car, Victoria said, “You haven’t asked me what I was doing there.”

“No,” Shoe said.

“I went to see Bill. I know you’ll probably think I’m being irrational, but I’m convinced he knows why Patrick was killed.”

Shoe said, “Emotional, perhaps, but not irrational.”

“Whatever,” Victoria said with a shrug. “One way or another, though, he’s responsible for Patrick’s death. I know he is.”

There wasn’t anything to be gained by arguing with her, Shoe decided. Besides, he wasn’t sure she was wrong. They continued in silence until they reached the Lions Gate Bridge Causeway at the east entrance to Stanley Park.

“I like the way you drive,” Victoria said. “It’s very relaxed, like you don’t have to think about it at all.”

“I think about it,” he assured her.

“Patrick was a terrible driver,” she went on. “Like most bad drivers, though, he didn’t know it. He prided himself on always buying cars with standard transmissions, but he didn’t know how to drive them properly. He shifted up too soon and didn’t downshift soon enough. He never had an accident, though, which is more than I can say. I totalled that Corolla I bought after I started working for Hammond Industries.”

“I remember it,” Shoe said. “You called it Ethel.”

“Oh, god, that’s right. You helped me buy it, didn’t you? I’d forgotten.”

They were on the bridge now. She looked out over the wintry grey of Vancouver Harbour toward the high yellow mounds of sulphur at the bulk terminal on the north shore. Victoria might have forgotten, but Shoe remembered very clearly the day he took her shopping for a car. Her ponytails and exuberance had made her seem very young and the salesman had mistaken her for Shoe’s daughter, which had rankled. He was, after all, only fourteen years older than she. It didn’t seem like much of a difference now, but then it had been an insurmountable one.

When he parked the car in front of the house, she said, “I’ve been thinking a lot in the last couple of days,” she said without looking at him. “Remembering things. Mostly about my life and the complete hash I’ve made of it.” She raised her head and smiled slightly. “I guess that’s not so unusual, under the circumstances, is it?”

“No, I’m sure it’s not.”

“Patrick’s funeral will be on Monday,” she said. “At Hollyburn Funeral Services on Marine Drive.”

They discussed the schedule for a few minutes, then fell into an awkward silence.

“Do you recall Patrick ever mentioning the name Claire Powkowski?” Shoe asked.

“No. Who is she?”

“Evidently,” Shoe said, “she was Bill’s business partner back in the fifties, before he married Elizabeth Lindell and merged his company with her father’s.”

“How would Patrick know about her?” Victoria asked.

Shoe told her about Ramona Ross.

“I see,” Victoria said. She opened the car door. “Would you like to come in?” she asked. “Consuela called in sick today, but I might be able to manage to make some coffee.”

“Thanks,” he said, “but there’s something I have to do.”

“I’m sorry,” said the woman behind the teller’s window. “There are insufficient funds in that account.” Barbara stared at the teller as she slid Barbara’s paycheque back under the thick plastic barrier. “I’m sorry,” the woman said again.

“But what will I do?” Barbara asked, stomach knotted and fingers trembling as she picked up the cheque.

“I didn’t stamp it,” the teller said.

Barbara didn’t know what she meant, but the man behind her in the queue was grumbling impatiently, so she put the cheque back in her purse and left the bank. She hadn’t had breakfast and her legs were rubbery. Her vision blurred at the edges. She sat on the bench at a bus stop and in a few minutes felt better. However, by the time she got home she wasn’t sure she could make it up the four flights of stairs to her apartment. She did, of course, but as she unlocked her apartment door, her heart was hammering furiously and her undergarments were soaked with perspiration.

Taking off her shoes and hanging up her coat, she sat at the kitchen table and drank a cup of weak tea with sugar and milk made from powder because it was less expensive than fresh. Yesterday’s newspaper was on the table, open to the want ads, but most of the ads she’d circled now had lines drawn through them. Feeling better after she finished the tea, she put on her shoes, took her keys and some quarters from her purse, and went downstairs to the payphone in the lobby. She fed a quarter into the phone and called the dry cleaning store. Mr. Seropian’s wife answered.

“Is your husband there?” Barbara asked.

“Who is calling?” Mrs. Seropian asked. Barbara told her. “Not here,” the woman said and hung up.

Barbara dropped another quarter into the phone. Mrs. Seropian answered again.

“Let me speak with your husband,” Barbara said. “My paycheque bounced.”

Mrs. Seropian hung up.

Unwilling to waste another quarter, Barbara returned to her apartment. Her stomach ached with a mixture of anger and fear and hunger. She heated up leftover soup. She would have to go to the store in person, she knew. At least her bus pass was good until the end of the month. She also needed her pink slip so she could apply for unemployment. The thought of confronting Mrs. Seropian made her queasy, but it had to be done.

Soup finished, she lay down on the bed, on top of the covers. Her doorbell rang, but she was too tired to get up to answer. A moment later, it rang a second time, but still she did not get up. It was probably just another tenant, too lazy to get out his keys, or someone calling on the drug dealer who lived on the first floor.

Before returning to the office Shoe stopped by the dry cleaning store to speak to Barbara about the job at the marina. An overweight, black-eyed woman regarded him suspiciously from behind the counter.

“Is Ms. Reese here?” Shoe asked.

“You got cleaning?” the woman replied.

“No, I would like to speak to Ms. Reese, please.”

“She not work here,” the woman said.

“She isn’t working today, you mean? Did she call in sick?”

“Is filthy slut,” the woman said. “Whore. She not work here no more. Go away you, if you got no cleaning.”

As Shoe turned to leave the store, he caught sight of the store’s owner watching him with sad brown eyes through a gap in the row of plastic-sheathed garments hanging from the overhead conveyor.

Shoe drove to Barbara’s apartment building. The narrow, poorly lit vestibule was shabby with wear but had recently been washed down with some aggressively pine-scented cleaner. The glass of the inner door was reinforced with wire mesh. To the right of the door there were four rows of four mailboxes each. The box for apartment 401 was labelled “B. Reese.” There was a button above the mail slot, but no speaker grill. He pressed the button and waited. There was no response. He pressed it again, but still there was no answer.

It was almost four when he got back to the office. He found Sandra St. Johns in her own office, sitting on her sofa, feet up on her coffee table, laptop in her lap. He knocked gently on the doorframe. She looked up, put her feet down, and moved the laptop to the table.

“Come in,” she said, tugging her short skirt lower on her long thighs.

“Do you recall Patrick ever mentioning the name Claire Powkowski?” Shoe asked.

“No. Who’s she?” Shoe told her. She shook her head. “He never told me what he and Mrs. Ross talked about.”

She was quiet for a moment, then stood and moved past him to close the door. Her perfume, light and flowery, tickled his nose. She went back to the sofa but did not sit. She looked as though she had something to say.

“What is it?” Shoe asked.

“I wasn’t completely honest with you the other day,” she said, head down, not looking at him. Shoe waited. There were tears on her lashes when she finally looked up. “Patrick and I were having an affair.” She picked up a stack of file folders, tapped them on the desk to align them, and put them down again.

“It was just sex,” she said. “At least, it was supposed to be just sex.” She smiled ruefully. “You don’t want all the sordid details, do you?”

“Please, no.”

She smiled gratefully.

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked.

“Sure. No one dies of a broken heart, and mine isn’t broken, just a little bent.”

More than just a little, Shoe thought.

“But it wasn’t just that I wanted to tell you,” she said. “A couple of weeks before he resigned I had the feeling he was trying to make up his mind about something. I thought maybe it had to do with me, like he was thinking of dumping me. Then he told me he was leaving and I realized that that wasn’t it at all, that he’d just been trying to make up his mind about resigning. But now I’m not so sure.”

“Why not?”

“When Patrick and I were—” She paused, blushing, then went on. “Well, we didn’t talk much. When we did talk, it was usually business. Except once, about a month ago. There was a report on TV about that woman in Abbotsford who turned her son in to the police for sexually assaulting the little girl next door. I made some stupid remark about how she couldn’t have loved her son very much to have done that. Patrick said, maybe that was true, but maybe it was because she loved him that she’d reported him. I said, ‘It must have been awfully hard then,’ and he said that when we were faced with hard choices, generally the right thing to do is the one that’s the hardest to do.”

“And you don’t think Patrick’s ‘hard choices’ had anything to do with you or with leaving the company?” Shoe asked. “Could he have been talking about leaving Victoria, asking her for a divorce?”

“No. Although he felt guilty about being unfaithful to her, Patrick had no intention of leaving her. He loved her, even though he thought she might have been having a lesbian relationship with some friend of hers. As for leaving the company, I don’t think that was a hard choice at all, after Mr. Hammond’s refusal to go public. I think Patrick had the idea that he could get rich off stock options. He wanted very much to be rich. I never realized how much.”

“Thank you for telling me this,” Shoe said. Sandra opened the office door. “By the way,” Shoe said, “did Patrick keep notes?”

“He was a compulsive note taker,” she said. “He made notes about everything. And his day wasn’t complete until he’d transcribed them into his daily journal on his laptop.”

“What about his handwritten notes?” he asked.

“As far as I know,” she said, “he shredded them as soon as soon as he’d transcribed them into the laptop.”

The information technology department occupied a cramped but bright corner office one floor down. A polite young man with yellow hair and a silver ring through his left eyebrow consulted his computer and informed Shoe that according to his records Patrick O’Neill hadn’t turned in his laptop.

“How will I know it if I find it?” Shoe asked him.

The young man wrote the model name and serial number on a sticky-note. “Check with security,” he said. “Maybe they’ve got it.”

Upstairs, Shoe knocked on the door of Del Tilley’s office. The door was so heavy and solid that his knuckles made hardly a sound. He knocked again, harder, and wondered what Tilley had in his office that he needed a security door. Feeling perverse, he thumbed a random sequence of numbers into the security lock. To his utter surprise, the door opened.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Del Tilley demanded.

“I’m trying to find Patrick O’Neill’s laptop,” Shoe said, peering over Tilley’s head into his office. It was dark and windowless, the only illumination supplied by a small halogen desk lamp that cast a bright circle of light in the middle of the desk.

Tilley stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him. “Well, I don’t have it,” he said. He moved away from the door so he could stand farther from Shoe.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where it is, would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t. Now go bother someone else. And don’t fool with the lock to my office again.”

Shielding the lock with his body, Tilley entered the code that unlocked the door, opened it partway, and slipped into his office, leaving Shoe standing in the hall. Shoe stood there for a few seconds, staring at the closed door, then went looking for Charles Merigold.

With a hiss, Del Tilley slammed the lid of the laptop shut. “Shit, shit, shit!” he swore. He’d tried everything he could think of, from O’Neill’s birthdate to Victoria’s name spelled backwards to O’Neill’s mother’s maiden name, but still the computer refused to start up. What, he wondered, was so important anyway that O’Neill needed a boot password to prevent anyone else from starting up his computer?

He lifted the lid, fearing that he may have damaged the fragile liquid crystal display, but it seemed all right. Gently, he closed the computer and put it in a drawer of his desk. Although there probably wasn’t anything of vital importance on the hard drive, he knew a hacker who, if he couldn’t crack the password, could dump the contents of the hard drive to a data file.

His telephone rang. He looked at the call display before answering. It was an outside call on his direct line, but no number was displayed.

“It’s me,” a voice said when he picked up the phone. A woman’s voice, but not a feminine one.

“You got my message?” Tilley said.

“No,” the woman replied. “I’m psychic.” She sighed heavily, breath hissing in the earpiece of Tilley’s phone. “Of course I got your message. What do you want?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Tilley said.

“Very funny,” the woman said. “But feel free to waste my time. It’s your nickel.”

“That’s right. You would be wise to remember that.”

The woman sighed. “Tell you what, bud. Next time you want something, call someone else. I got no patience for amateurs.”

Tilley’s knuckles cracked on the handset. He forced himself to relax. If this woman needed to think of him as an amateur, that was fine with him. It afforded him an additional layer of protection should she ever be turned.

“My situation has changed,” he said. “I won’t be needing that last shipment after all. I’m sending it back.”

“Suit yourself,” the woman said. “It still goes on your bill. Which, I might add, is overdue.”

“You’ll get your money,” Tilley said. “But I’m not going to pay for equipment I don’t use.”

“This ain’t Sears, bud. All sales are final. Once you take delivery, the equipment is yours. It don’t matter to me whether you use it or not. All I care about is getting paid.”

“I told you,” Tilley said. “You’ll get your money. Something’s come up, though. I’ve had to adjust my timetable, move things up. You’ll have to give me a little more time.”

“How much more time?”

“I don’t know. Not long.”

The woman sighed. “Listen, bud,” she said, “we all got problems, but if I don’t get my money soon, one of the problems you’re gonna have is me. And, trust me, you don’t want that.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“It’s not a threat,” the woman said.

Tilley’s teeth ground. “All right. You’ll have your money by the end of next week. Now, what about that other matter?”

“Yeah, about that,” the woman said, the brusqueness gone from her voice. “The little dyke may have made me.”

“What do you mean, made you?” Tilley snapped.

“Yeah, well, it happens.”

“You’re supposed to be a professional.”

“Up yours, donkey kong. It was you that wanted me to get close enough to pick up their conversation on the tape. Aw, fuck it. I’ve had it with this amateur-night shit. You want the tapes, pay me what you owe me. All of it. In cash. Today.”

With an effort, Tilley controlled himself. “I can’t get my hands on that much cash today,” he said, his voice grinding in his throat.

“Tough titty,” the woman said.

“Can you give me till Monday?” Tilley said, despising himself for pleading with this woman. It would clean out his bank account and max out both his personal and company credit cards, but he could probably manage it.

“Fine. You got till Monday. But if you’re not here by twelve hundred with the cash, the tapes go into the bulk eraser.” The line went dead.

Stifling a howl of rage, Tilley slammed the handset down. Something snapped off and flew across the office, ricocheting off a cabinet. The handset hung on the base unit in two pieces, joined by thin coloured wires. Tilley swept the ruined device to the floor. The dial tone taunted him. A quick slash of his boot heel shattered the base unit but failed to silence the tone. He wrapped the cable once around his fist, ripped the jack from the outlet under the desk, and threw the mangled telephone into the wastebasket.

Victoria was awakened by the sound of the telephone ringing, but when she picked it up, all she heard was a dial tone. Had it been part of the dream? she wondered. She looked at the clock beside the bed, the numerals glowing bloody in the darkened bedroom. Jesus, she’d slept most of the afternoon away. And yet she felt as though she hadn’t slept at all.

This was no good, she thought. As much as she might want to, she couldn’t spend the rest of her life in bed. She might as well just kill herself and get it over with, but she knew she no longer had the strength, the courage, or the will. Christ, what a bloody awful mess she’d made of her life. The British had an expression: cock-up. That certainly summed up her life. Cock-up.

She got out of bed and went downstairs. The house was dark and quiet. She turned on some lights and the kitchen radio. It was tuned to Consuela’s “oldies” station, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder singing “Ebony and Ivory,” insipid and obvious. She turned it off. She was hungry but didn’t feel like eating. A nagging urge somewhere inside her called out to her to have a glass of wine, but she ignored it and made a cup of herbal tea instead.

The dream had left her depressed and physically drained, although she couldn’t remember any of it. She opened the sliding glass doors onto the broad kitchen patio where on summer mornings she and Patrick would sometimes eat breakfast together. Today the stones were slick with rain and the rooftops lower down the mountain were shrouded in impenetrable grey mist. She stood in the doorway, breathing the cool, wet air. A pressure between her shoulder blades propelled her forward, out onto the wet stones of the patio, where the rain beaded in her hair and soaked through her blouse. She was aware of the cold, but it was soft and soothing against her skin.

She closed her eyes and saw herself standing naked in the rain in an unkempt garden. It was night, and the pale, diffused light shining through the misted glass walls of the small conservatory off his kitchen cast grotesque, desultory shadows before her.

“For god’s sake,” he said. “Someone will see.”

She turned around. Bill stood in the doorway. “Who?” she said, spreading her arms, feeling the cool rivulets of rainwater running between her breasts and across her belly, tickling though her pubic hair, rushing down her thighs. “There’s no one around, no one will see.” She whirled and the shadows danced.

“You’ll catch your death,” he said.

“It’s not cold. It feels good.”

“Come in,” he said sternly, reaching toward her from the shelter of the retractable awning over the kitchen patio.