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Bram, Word document
Act natural. Normal. Just be yourself.
I opened the door, smiling as I would with a new client. ‘Hello, I’m Bram. You must be Rav?’
‘Challoner’s Property. This is a beautiful house, Bram.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is. Come in and see it properly.’
Mike had done his research and found that Challoner’s in Battersea was one of the foremost staging posts for buyers priced out of more central areas and open to migrating to the next zones out, to neighbourhoods that included Alder Rise.
I’d arranged the valuation for Wednesday morning, when the shared diary showed that Fi was leaving early for a trade show in Birmingham and I could claim easily enough to be working from home. I wasn’t worried about neighbours mentioning my presence to Fi – most who knew us well enough to have been briefed on the custody arrangements were at work, and even if the odd one was at home, she (it would only be a ‘she’) was hardly likely to know I didn’t have Fi’s consent to be there or that my guest was an estate agent.
Still, letting myself into the house had felt exactly like the violation it was, even before I’d made a cursory sweep of the place, picking up clothes from the floors and removing – at Mike’s instruction – all photographs of Fi. At least he had not insisted that images of Wendy be inserted in their place or, worse, that she should be by my side for this meeting. ‘You’ll be fine on your own,’ he said, magnanimously, the subtext being, I’ll be the first to know if you’re not.
If Rav picked up on my subdued mood during the tour, it was to interpret it as reluctance of a more conventional kind. ‘How certain are you and your wife that you want to sell?’
‘Oh, one hundred per cent certain. As quickly as possible, that’s why we want to price realistically. And we want to be discreet to the point of secrecy, that’s why we’re doing it through your private sales department. We don’t want neighbours to know we’re selling, so there mustn’t be details in the shop window or online. We can’t have people here on weekday evenings, either. The boys have an early bedtime on school nights.’
‘Understood.’ Clearly Rav, noting this last request in his obliging, attentive manner, had met more troublesome sellers in his time. ‘I would propose an open house. Get everyone in and out in one fell swoop. Anyone who needs a follow-up viewing can come at a time convenient for you or perhaps when you’re at work?’
I told him the day that suited us best was a week on Saturday – 29 October.
‘That’s the last weekend of half term,’ he said. ‘Not ideal, some of my candidates will be travelling back from holiday and won’t be able to come.’
It had been a jolt when Fi had started talking about arrangements for half term, as if the world held a future to be anticipated with pleasure, while I was living – breathing – by the day, my only emotion towards tomorrow abject dread. But from a fraudster’s point of view the timing was helpful: half the street would be away on holiday or visiting relatives, including those who would be with Fi at Alison’s place in Kent.
Admittedly, the husbands would be left behind, but in my experience men noticed very little.
‘There’s no other day that works for us,’ I told Rav.
‘Then that’s the one we’ll go for. There’ll still be plenty of interest. A lot of people have younger children, not in school yet, so half term won’t be an issue for them. They’re after the catchment for Alder Rise Primary, of course.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed.
I didn’t think about my own boys and whether they would continue at the excellent state primary with the pet guinea pigs and the teaching assistant whose eyes teared up when her class sang to their parents at the end-of-year concert. I didn’t think about them as I discussed commission percentages and, when an agreement was produced on the spot, signed my name. I told myself that the legal system, law and order, morality, something would intervene to bring an end to the lunacy into which I’d plunged. To stop Mike holding my head underwater until my lungs burst.
‘As soon as I get back to the office, I’ll start calling my candidates,’ Rav said.
Candidates, he kept saying. Candidates for our lives.
After he’d gone, I returned the clothes to the bedroom floors and the photographs to their rightful spots.
*
Mike was loitering outside my office building when I arrived just before lunchtime.
‘How much?’ he demanded.
‘We agreed two point two.’
‘Undercutting the neighbour, good work. Accept any offer over two mil.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He didn’t move. One of my colleagues passed, a lunch bag from the sandwich bar next door in her hand. ‘Hi, Bram!’ she called.
Great. She knew my name even if I’d forgotten hers. And she’d seen me with Mike. Though he wore a black woollen hat low to the eyes, his bony facial features and brick-wall build were distinctive. (‘Yes, that was definitely the man I saw Bram with. They looked a bit shifty together, to be honest.’)
‘Look, Mike, you need to go. We can’t be seen together like this. Can you contact me in the usual way next time?’
He gave me a long look that said, You don’t give orders, I do. ‘Just make sure you keep on top of this agent, okay?’ he said, finally. ‘And we need the money from the car by the end of next week – I’m meeting a guy.’
‘What guy?’
‘Trust me, better if you don’t know.’
Trust him? Right.
‘If the cheque hasn’t come through by then, you’ll have to find another way to get the cash,’ he added. He stood, hands in pockets, body language maddeningly relaxed. ‘Still heard nothing from the police?’
‘No. Not since they spoke to my wife.’
‘You can use her name, Bram. Fiona. Fi, did you call her?’
‘I can use her name, yes, but I’d prefer you not to.’
‘Oh, well, in that case,’ he sneered.
I ignored this. ‘Listen, the alibi you mentioned?’
‘Yep. Half Moon, Clapham Junction.’
‘I need your full name and a number, just in case.’
‘Just say Mike. I’m there all the time, the bar staff’ll point them my way. We’re not mates, didn’t exchange numbers or anything gay, we just got talking, had a bit of a session.’
Though his instincts were right, it was infuriating to continue to be denied his full name. My investigations online into his and Wendy’s identities had yielded laughable results: you try googling ‘Mike South London’. And of the commercial cleaning companies I’d found in and around Beckenham, none had a permanent member of staff named Wendy. ‘Not a session, I had to be back in Alder Rise by seven for the boys.’
‘Fine. We had two pints between five thirty and six thirty, how’s that? We talked about the football. Nothing too deep. Can’t be expected to remember the details. I know one of the barmen there, he’ll vouch for us for a few quid.’
‘On the subject of money,’ I said, ‘if we do this, when it’s over, what’s my cut?’
He laughed, releasing streams of smoky breath into the cold air. ‘I wondered when you’d ask that.’
‘Well, tell me the answer then.’
He drew his face closer to mine, eyes baleful. ‘Your cut is your liberty, mate. Ten years, I reckon you’d get, minimum. And we all know killing a kid is the lowest of the low inside. Imagine ten years of being beaten up and buggered and God knows what else, a middle-aged child murderer in a cell with a twenty-year-old psycho. Or is it three to a cell these days? Sooner you than me.’
I sucked in my breath, my heart hammering.
‘Hit a nerve, have I?’ he taunted. ‘Just think of all the nerves they’ll be hitting inside, eh? They’ll be queuing outside your cell.’
I began to back away, as if from the Prince of Darkness himself.
‘Don’t worry about the money,’ he called. ‘We’ll send a little something your way on completion. Call it a finder’s fee.’
‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:46:26
No, I hadn’t introduced Toby to Bram. I hadn’t introduced him to anyone. I didn’t wish to parade him on the Trinity Avenue dinner party circuit and he, for his part, had no interest in the social structures of Alder Rise.
‘Why doesn’t he ever invite you to his place?’ Polly asked.
‘Reading between the lines, it’s not somewhere he thinks I’ll be impressed by,’ I said. ‘He downsized after his divorce, so I’m guessing it’s pretty modest.’
‘He’s not still married, is he?’
‘No, but if he is, I can hardly object, since I am as well.’
‘You’re separated,’ she corrected me. ‘Has Alison met him?’
‘No one has. It’s just a casual thing, Polly.’
‘Even so, to not know where he lives? Maybe you should ask his wife,’ she drawled.
It would not be the last time she would propose the married-man theory – and to be fair, Bram’s infidelities gave her good cause to question my judgement – but I chose to close my ears to the clanging of warning bells. I didn’t want to spend my time finding fault or preparing for the worst. Maybe such an attitude doesn’t fit well in our cynical world but I’m not going to apologize for trying.
Besides, I was busy at work and by then it was full steam ahead for half term and our weekend in Kent, which took a certain amount of planning. Having missed a summer holiday, Harry was so excited to be going away that he couldn’t sleep for most of the week before. It didn’t help that one night there was a police helicopter hovering over Alder Rise for hours on end. This is South London; it happens sometimes.
‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ I said, when he climbed into bed with me. ‘It’s just the police out catching criminals.’
‘How can they catch them in the dark?’ he asked.
I told him about an article I’d read about police helicopters’ thermal imaging cameras. You thought you were safe in your hiding place under the bushes, but you glowed bright white on the screens above.
‘It’s just like your forensic pen. They use special light to see what we can’t see.’
‘They’re cleverer than the baddies,’ Harry said.
‘Much cleverer,’ I agreed.
Ironic though it may sound, as I lay in bed listening to the relentless staccato of those spinning blades I genuinely thought how awful it must be to be a fugitive from the law with all this new twenty-first century technology to contend with. There was nowhere the police couldn’t find you once they were on your tail. I even thought, briefly, Poor guy.
Well, I assumed it was a man.
Bram, Word document
There was one news report – and only one – that I haven’t needed to remember word for word, because I kept a printout. You’ll find it among my paltry last effects in the hotel room.
Parents mourn their ‘special sunbeam’
The funeral of the tragic victim of the Silver Road collision, Ellie Rutherford, took place today at St Luke’s Church, Norwood, with the ten-year-old girl’s mother released from hospital to say farewell to her beloved daughter.
Many mourners wore yellow, Ellie’s favourite colour, and a yellow-and-white floral arrangement was placed on her coffin. Tim Rutherford, who spoke at the service, described his daughter as ‘our special sunbeam’, a child who loved writing stories and singing and who was proud to have been voted class captain for her final year at primary school. ‘Ten years old is old enough for you to be able to see the wonderful adult she would have become,’ he said.
Ellie died a week ago following an incident in September when her mother’s car was run off the road by a speeding vehicle. As relatives and road victim groups called for increased manpower in the police investigation, the girl’s uncle, Justin Rutherford, said, ‘You would think they’d have a suspect in custody by now. The whole family is desperate knowing that this criminal is still on our roads, putting other children’s lives at risk.’
Detective Inspector Gavin Reynolds said, ‘Police work is often a painstaking process of elimination, but we are confident we will find the offending driver and discover exactly what caused this fatal collision. Our thoughts are with Ellie’s family today,’ he added.
Writing this, I can only assume the Rutherfords know my name by now. They certainly will by the time you read this. I can only assume they must be hoping I’ll rot in hell.