His first paltry sexual conquest was in a sodden alley in Camden in exchange for a half-bottle of Pink Lady. Later a St Lucian prostitute in Hackney for £10 and four Pernod and blackcurrants. It was at the age of twenty-two, while retaking Biology, Physics and Chemistry A levels, that he got a job as a security officer in UMDS and his life changed.
His duties, in the shadow of London Bridge station, allowed him time to study; they included checking passes, directing visitors, shivering in the car park Portakabin outside the pathology department, and, every other week, alone, at night, doing the time-key patroclass="underline" through the polished corridors, the empty canteen smelling of mashed potato and sour milk, the lecture theatres, the path lab, the anatomy lab.
The anatomy lab, where, one winter eighteen years ago, his life had become inextricably bound to Harteveld's.
Theirs had been a peculiar meeting of disjointed minds. Looking at each other over the green draped shapes and stainless-steel dissecting tables, they knew, with a conviction like that of lovers, that like had met like. Neither needed to vocalize the personal struggle they'd lived. Straight-backed, hard-boned aristocrat looked down across the classes and quite simply, quite poetically knew.
He didn't pass his A levels and soon afterwards he gave up his dreams of being a doctor and left the security company. Harteveld, too, left UMDS, but the allegiance between the heir to a pharmaceuticals fortune and the ex-security guard weathered the years. Their particular, specialized interests remained the same.
There had been four or five rapes over the years: in car parks, forests, girls too drunk to remember the licence plate of the small man who pulled over and offered them a lift. That was how he had first come south of the river. She was a stripper from Greenwich. It was 2 a.m. on his birthday, and he found her wandering the roads north of the Rotherhithe tunnel, trying to hitch a ride. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, in her PVC miniskirt and leather jacket, her Nordic blond hair cut in a neat fringe. Even now, in his dank bathroom in Lewisham, he groaned involuntarily when he thought of the love he'd spilled over Joni.
She had sat limply in the front seat of his car, noises coming from her throat, as he groped at her soft body pressed and folded under the seat belt. Inside the leather jacket her heart fluttered like a weak bird. It was only when he tried to lift her skirt that she resisted. She stumbled drunkenly out of the car and sat woodenly on the pavement, her livid make-up smeared, pushing him away when he climbed out of the car and tried to touch her.
'Not now, yeah?' she muttered. 'I feel sick.'
He stood looking down at her ash-blond head, her knees in laddered stockings and suddenly chose not to rape her.
Just like that.
It was an unexpected deviation. He took her home and said goodnight. Just like that. As if it was nothing. As if this was normal for him.
Afterwards he felt virtuous, elated, filled with light. He quickly decided his generosity to her was an expression of love. He wanted her so much that his head ached when he thought about her.
But Joni pushed his advances away, got angry when he appeared at her pub performances, angrier when she heard he'd got a new job in St Dunstan's and had purchased the ground-floor flat of an old lady's converted house in Lewisham, less than a mile from her home in Greenwich.
He didn't flinch at her anger, she was his reason for living. His flat was a shrine to her, he photographed her in the street, bought her drinks in the pub. Sometimes Joni gave him moments of pleasure — sometimes she smoked or drank so much that she softened to him and he was able to take her home — let her sleep it off in the spare bed. He didn't touch her. Not once. That wasn't the point. The point was for her to come to him. That was crucial. He kept the flat clean in the pained hope that she would understand how he cared for her: hiding his treasured pictures when she stayed, taking every precaution, spraying the flat with air freshener — Joni loved things to smell sweet.
And eventually she did come to tolerate him in a resigned, tired way. In return he learned to tolerate her thoughtless, patternless acts of faithlessness, her flirting with other men, her refusal to touch him. Even when she had driven him to the brink of fury, arriving that day, five years ago, fresh from the surgeon's knife, her new, swollen breasts pouting on her rib cage, he had stayed calm, polite. It didn't matter what Joni did in the present tense, in the three-dimensional world, because she lived on in his internal fantasy theatre as she had been that night, warm and pliable, with her small, soft-tipped breasts and drink on her breath.
Back in the kitchen one of the battered little zebra finches had found the strength to get up to the perch. It stared at him with its bright little eyes. He grunted and shook the cage, hard, until the exhausted bird was dislodged and fell to the floor, too stunned and starved to flap. It lay there on its side panting and blinking at him as he finished the M&Ms, crumpled the bag and started to get dressed.
43
The door was opened by a woman who was indeed wearing bifocals. She had cropped grey hair and large hands and was sensibly dressed in a Fair Isle cardigan, tweed skirt over solid, English hips and brown leather walking shoes. When Caffery flashed his warrant card and explained they were interested in the upstairs neighbour she gave them a gentle, tilted smile and opened the door.
'A cup of tea, I think, gentlemen.'
They went into the hallway, Essex hanging back, still not sure if he trusted this woman. Caffery stood for a moment, staring at the blank doorway at the top of the stairs. He ran a finger over the banister, pressed it to his white cuff. Nothing.
'I don't know their names,' the woman said from inside her flat. 'The couple up there.'
'The couple?' Jack turned back. 'Did you say the couple?'
So there is a girlfriend.
'That is who you're interested in, isn't it?'
She held open the door and led them into a small hallway which had been sectioned out of a high-ceilinged room using plasterboard. When he saw the airbrush fantasy posters on the walls, a silver-breasted Gigeresque woman, maned biker heroes, gleaming winged bikes and dragons, Essex caught Caffery's sleeve.
'Check this gaff out,' he hissed as they followed the woman into the front room. Here the ceiling was hung with Indian shawls, mirrored and tasselled, a lava lamp stood side by side with a teak Afghan water pipe.
'I know them to speak to.' She picked up an orange hessian cushion from the sofa and slapped it. 'My son would know their names, but he's off on his holidays.' She paused, the cushion dangling in her hand, and the three of them regarded each other in puzzled silence. Suddenly she laughed.
'Oh, I'm so sorry, I haven't explained myself.' She dropped the cushion and wiped her hands on her skirt. 'Do forgive me.' She offered her hand to Caffery. 'The name's Mimi Cook. I spend so much time shuffling around here trying to keep the place clean sometimes I forget it isn't my flat.'
'Cook?' Essex murmured, glancing over his shoulder as if someone might walk in behind him.
'That's right. This is my boy's flat. I'm his personal busybody.'
'Mrs Cook.' Caffery stepped forward and shook her hand. 'Pleased to meet you.'
'Likewise, I'm sure. Now.' She put both hands on Essex's shoulders and gently moved him from the doorway so she could get past. 'Some tea and then we can get down to business.'