George Wright sweated. Not on the delayed appearance of his 'girls', but on the problem of cash-flow if a dealer defaulted. He took no exercise, was plump to the border of obesity. Sweat pooled at the back of his neck and on his balding forehead. He needed the party, needed it bad. The thought of Ricky Capel made him sweat, even if the shortfall was only fifteen thousand, less his own cut. Last year a dealer in Croydon had done a runner after taking delivery, and not paid up. George Wright had gone to his bank in the centre of Ashford, drawn the necessary cash out of his deposit account and used it to make up what he owed. He'd told Ricky Capel of his problem. 'Glad you did that, Georgie,' Ricky had said, grinning, snake eyes flashing. 'Wouldn't want you, whatever the reason, to see me short, wouldn't want that. Who was it turned you over?' A week later he had read in the evening paper – and found it hard to hold the page steady – that the dealer's body had been located in Ashdown Forest; the police were quoted as saying he had been tortured, then garotted with cheese wire. He hadn't seen Ricky Capel since: communication was by mobile phone, pay as you go, with number changes every two weeks, and drop-offs and pickups. Wouldn't want you, whatever the reason, to see me short… Hadn't forgotten that.
They came down the stairs. Melanie in a little black dress and Hannah in an off-the-shoulder scarlet number, both a picture.
Melanie knew what he did – knew but did not ask details. Hannah was wrapped up in her pony and her gymkhana rosettes, didn't know, and thought money grew on the orchard's trees.
He was on a treadmill from which there was no exit point. Everything he owned came from supplying class-A narcotics. The house, a mock-Tudor pile with mock-Tudor panelling – worth a million at least, maybe one point two, and no mortgage on it – was from heroin and cocaine. The landscaped gardens, the paddock and the stable block for the pony were from heroin and cocaine. The friendship of the neighbours and party hosts was from a social position based on heroin and cocaine. Without it he had nothing, would be back to door-to-door insurance-selling, where he had been before brown powder and white powder had intruded into his life and he'd snatched at it.
'You're both a bloody treat. Fantastic.'
There was no sharp step off the treadmill – he knew too much about too many. If he grassed he had the certainty that no gaol was safe for him. And no safety for Melanie and Hannah… He helped his wife and daughter into their coats, shrugged into his jacket and paused in front of the mirror to lift his tie. He collected his keys.
His own vehicle was a scarlet-bodied vintage Jaguar. His 'girls' followed him out to it and closed the door, mock old timbers, behind them.
He drove away, left lights blazing behind him. He went down the tarmacadam drive, past the post-and-rail fencing of the paddock, flicked the sensor that opened the outer iron gates and turned into the lane.
Their chatter was vivid around him – who would be there, what the cabaret turn would be, what they'd eat. The foreboding fled him. In his compart-mentalized life, George Wright could usually slip without effort from the world of supplying heroin and cocaine, sold to him by Ricky Capel, into that of one more successful and legitimate businessman resident in the Kent countryside.
Melanie was saying what she'd heard – it was supposed to be a secret worth taking to the grave – about the identity and the act of the cabaret from London.
Hannah shrieked: 'Watch out, Daddy!'
Hadn't seen the man. He swerved to the right side of the lane, then corrected. Only a glimpse. A man, a dosser, vagrant or tinker, stood blinded by the Jaguar's lights, pressed himself into the hedge and averted his face. He was clutching a plastic bag. They were past him. He swung his head, looked back into the darkness beyond the glow of his tail-lights, saw nothing. 'Bloody hell! Never seen him before.
Where does he think he's going? You did the alarm?'
'Of course I did,' his wife answered. 'Relax, George.
We're going to a party. Forgotten that?'
It was another half-mile down the road to the party's fairy-lights and the thud of music.
They had done an hour at the Fortescues' house of drinks, nibbles and conversations yelled to be heard above the four-man, striped-waistcoat-and-bowler-hat jazz band when his host loomed at George Wright's side. 'You see that?'
'See what?'
'Didn't you hear them?'
'Hear what?'
'God, George, are you deaf or pissed? Two fire engines going up the lane like bats out of hell. What's up past you? Only the Gutheridges' place, but that's two miles, then the Blakes' market garden, then the cottages, but if they were going to any of them I'd have thought, coming from Ashford, they'd have used the Tenterden road
… know what I mean?'
George Wright broke away, ran up the stairs, headed for the side bedroom where the Fortescues' boy, Giles, slept when he was home from school. He blundered through a room filled with books, hi-fi equipment, hockey sticks and tennis racquets and dragged aside the curtains. He pressed his face against the mullion lead and the glass – real, not mock like the windows of his home – and saw the glow in the sky and sparks climbing like they were fireworks, and fancied he could make out through the screen of trees what seemed to be the licking tongues of flames… He sank to his knees and the sweat ran to his stomach bulge and he seemed to hear laughter, like Ricky Capel's, that billowed up the stairs with the music.
'Don't mind my asking, Ricky – where's your necklace?'
'Round my throat. Where else would it be?'
'Not that one, not your mum's. The one I gave you.
Why aren't you wearing it?'
His hand went up to his throat. He felt the thin chain – Sharon's present to him for his twenty-first – and touched the crucifix that hung from it. 'Don't know,' he said. 'Don't rightly know. Somewhere.'
She was paring her fingernails, had her head down as she sat in the easy chair and the TV prattled with a game show, worked hard with the file, did it with the same intensity with which she cleaned the house.
'You said you liked it. Why've you taken it off? Cost ever so much.'
Ricky had said he liked the heavy gold chain from a Bond Street store. He had not taken it off. It had cost a little more than three thousand pounds, and that was with the discount for cash – his money. 'It's somewhere.'
'Of course it's somewhere… '
She must have been satisfied with her fingers. She kicked off her slippers and started on the toenails, scraping at them like it mattered. 'Have you lost it?
Don't tell me you've lost it. Did you?'
He had not known that he wasn't wearing it. She had bought it for him last Christmas and he had worn it every day, every night since then.
'I don't know where it is.'
'You have lost it?'
'Maybe I have, maybe I haven't.'
'You got to know whether you lost it or not. You got to know whether you didn't like it and took it off.'
'I don't.' There was a snarl in his voice but with her head bent over her toenails she would not have seen it. 'Well, have you looked for it? Yes? Where have you looked for it?'
'I didn't know it wasn't on.'
'Oh, that's great. I buy you a necklace, big money.
You say you like it. You promise me you do. You lose it and you don't even know.'
Her voice had a chisel rasp. Seemed like the beat of a dripping tap, had that rhythm and persistence.
'I'll look for it.'
'I hope you will…' Right foot done, she started on the toes of the left. 'I'd say that looking for it is the first thing you should do. That necklace, Ricky, was supposed to be important.'
'I said I'd look for it, all right?'
'Where? Where are you going to look for it?'
'I don't know. If I bloody knew it wouldn't be lost.'