I shouted ‘Hey’ into the small central space, and it seemed to reach no further than my own throat.
‘It’s cold in here,’ Hilary said. ‘Colder than outside.’
‘Something to do with ventilation bricks, I expect,’ I said. ‘A draught, bringing in dust and lowering the temperature.’
Our voices had no resonance. We walked the short distance to where the white van stood, with the dark tarpaulin sprawling in a huge heap beside it.
With eyes adjusting to the dim light, we looked inside. The police had taken the water carrier and the bag of cheese, and the van was empty.
It was a small space. Dirty, and hard.
‘You spent nearly a week in there,’ Hilary said, disbelievingly.
‘Five nights and four and a half days,’ I said. ‘Let’s not exaggerate.’
‘Let’s not,’ she said dryly.
We stood looking at the van for a minute or two, and the deadness and chill of the place began to soak into our brains. I shuddered slightly and walked away, out through the door into the living air.
Hilary followed me, and kicked away the door-stop. The peeling door swung shut.
‘Did you sleep well, last night?’ she said bleakly.
‘No.’
‘Nightmares?’
I looked up to the grey sky, and breathed deep luxurious breaths.
‘Well... dreams,’ I said.
She swallowed. ‘Why did you want to come back here?’
‘To see the name of the estate agent who has this place on his books. It’s on the board, on the wall. I wasn’t noticing things much when the police took me out of here yesterday.’
She gave a small explosive laugh of escaping tension. ‘So practical!’
‘Whoever put the van in there knew the place existed,’ I said. ‘I didn’t, and I’ve lived in Newbury for six years.’
‘Leave it to the police,’ she said seriously. ‘After all, they did find you.’
I shook my head. ‘Someone rang Scotland Yard to tell them where I was.’
‘Leave it to them,’ she urged. ‘You’re out of it now.’
‘I don’t know. To coin a cliché, there’s a great big iceberg blundering around here, and that van’s only the tip.’
We got into my car, and I drove her back to the park in town where she’d left her own. She stood beside it, tall in her scarlet cloak, and fished in her handbag for a pen and notebook.
‘Here,’ she said, writing. ‘This is my address and telephone number. You can come at any time. You might need...’ She paused an instant, ‘...a safe place.’
‘Can I come for advice?’ I said.
‘For anything.’
I smiled.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not for that. I want a memory, not a habit.’
‘Take your glasses off,’ I said.
‘To see you better?’ She took them off, humouring me quizzically.
‘Why don’t you wear contact lenses?’ I said. ‘Without glasses, your eyes are great.’
On the way back to the office I stopped to buy food, on the premise that if I didn’t stock up with things I liked, I wouldn’t get back to normal eating. I also left Hilary’s negatives for a rush reprint, so that it was nearly five before I went through the door.
Debbie and Peter had both done their usual Friday afternoon bolt, for which dentists and classes were only sample reasons. The variety they had come up with over the years would have been valuable if applied to their work: but I knew from experience that if I forced them both to stay until five I got nothing productive done after a quarter past four. Bess, infected by them, had already covered her typewriter, and was busy applying thick new make-up on top of the old. Bess, eighteen and curvy, thought of work as a boring interruption to her sex life. She gave me a bright smile, ran her tongue round the fresh glistening lipstick, and swung her hips provocatively on her way to the weekend’s sport.
There were voices in Trevor’s room. Trevor’s loud voice in short sentences, and a client’s softer tones in long paragraphs.
I tidied my own desk, and carried the Glitberg, Ownslow and Connaught Powys files into the outer office on my way to the car.
The door to Trevor’s room opened suddenly, and Trevor and his client were revealed there, warmly shaking hands.
The client was Denby Crest, solicitor, a short plump man with a stiff moustache and a mouth permanently twisted in irritation. Even when he smiled at you personally, he gave an impression of annoyance at the state of things in general. Many of his own clients saw that as sympathy for their troubles, which was their mistake.
‘I’ll make it worth your while, Trevor,’ he was saying. ‘I’m eternally grateful.’
Trevor suddenly saw me standing there and stared at me blankly.
‘I thought you’d gone, Ro,’ he said.
‘Came back for some files,’ I said, glancing down at them in my arms. ‘Good afternoon, Denby.’
‘Good afternoon, Roland.’
He gave me a brief nod and made a brisk dive for the outer door; a brusque departure, even by his standards. I watched his fast disappearing back and said to Trevor, ‘Did you sign his certificate? He said he would wait until you got back.’
‘Yes, I did,’ Trevor said. He too showed no inclination for leisurely chat, and turned away from me towards his own desk.
‘What was I doing wrong?’ I said. ‘I kept making him fifty thousand pounds short.’
‘Decimal point in the wrong place,’ he said shortly.
‘Show me,’ I said.
‘Not now, Ro. It’s time to go home.’
I put the files down on Bess’s desk and walked into Trevor’s office. It was larger than mine, and much tidier, with no wall of waiting cardboard boxes. There were three armchairs for clients, some Stubbs prints on the walls, and a bowl of flowering daffodils on his desk.
‘Trevor...’
He was busy putting together what I recognised as Denby Crest’s papers, and didn’t look up. I stood in his room, waiting, until in the end he had to take notice. His face was bland, calm, uninformative, and if there had been any tension there a minute ago, it had now evaporated.
‘Trevor,’ I said. ‘Please show me where I went wrong.’
‘Leave it, Ro,’ he said pleasantly. ‘There’s a good chap.’
‘If you did sign his certificate, and he really is fifty thousand pounds short, then it concerns me too.’
‘You’re dead tired, Ro, and you look ill, and this is not a good time to discuss it.’ He came round his desk and put his hand gently on my arm. ‘My dear chap, you know how horrified and worried I am about what has been happening to you. I am most concerned that you should take things easy and recover your strength.’
It was a long speech for him, and confusing. When he saw me hesitate, he added. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Denby’s affairs. We’ll go through them, if you like, on Monday.’
‘It had better be now,’ I said.
‘No.’ He was stubbornly positive. ‘We have friends coming for the evening, and I promised to be home early. Monday, Ro. It will keep perfectly well until Monday.’
I gave in, partly because I simply didn’t want to face what I guessed to be true, that Trevor had signed the certificate knowing the figures were false. I’d done the sums over and over on my cheese abacus, and the answer came monotonously the same, whichever method I used to work them out.
He shepherded me like an uncle to his door, and watched while I picked up the heap of files from Bess’s desk.
‘What are those?’ he said. ‘You really mustn’t work this weekend.’
‘They’re not exactly work. They’re back files. I just thought I’d take a look.’
He walked over and peered down at the labels, moving the top file to see what was underneath.
‘Why these, for heaven’s sake?’ he said, frowning, coming across Connaught Powys.