The Family Remains(53)

I’m drunk and horny. Come and find me on your big bike.

(Although actually it says: Im dunk and horn comr adn find em On your big bike, with a bike emoji.)

I try to get into a club but the security guy won’t let me in and I tussle with him, physically, slam my hands into his chest, feel the futility of it as he pushes back with his own steroid-pumped forearms and peels me away from him like a wet leaf, and then I am free-wheeling for a while, shouting things out to strangers now who stare back at me with disgust and wry amusement. I hand the ketamine and the Valium to a pair of teenage boys. ‘Here. Have some drugs.’ They take the baggies with slack jaws, and then I am outside my apartment block and I look up and I see the light is on in Phin’s apartment and my gut is burning, my heart, my head are burning, flames of fury are licking up through me and threatening to swallow me whole and I need I need I need …

I buzz myself into the building and I storm the stairs to the first floor and I know I should wait and I should plan and I should do this properly for God’s sake do it properly but I just can’t and I bang on the teal door with the fox-head knocker and I hear a voice saying, ‘Er, hi?’

‘Hi,’ I say, using an American accent. ‘This is Jeff. From upstairs. Could I have just a minute of your time?’

There is a pause. I shuffle from foot to foot and then I hear the chain unlatch and the door open and I put my foot right there, in the gap and I leave it there and I look up and there is Phin looking down at me and I see it, the split second that he goes from thinking I am Jeff from upstairs to knowing that I am Henry from his nightmares, but it is too late, because I am in his apartment and there is absolutely nothing he can do about it.





Part Three





41




Samuel


I learn a lot from the story in the Guardian. But also, I learn nothing. The piece was written in 2015 by a journalist called Miller Roe and I track him down via Google within about five minutes. However, he does not answer his phone and no email response is forthcoming and there is no address for him and so, while I wait for him to reply, Donal and I take a drive into the countryside to talk to Libby Jones.

She lives in a nice house just outside the city of St Albans. I think it is Georgian, possibly, part of a terrace with some pillars and steps that are creamy and curved and a curtain of ivy climbing the walls. The solicitors in Pimlico told me that the house on Cheyne Walk had been sold for over seven million pounds and this house looks like it did not cost even half or a quarter of that and I wonder what she did with the rest of the money. I cannot help but let my mind spool through the myriad things I would do with a sum of money such as that. I am thirty-six, I am unmarried and I have no children. I would spend some of it, maybe, on an apartment in Florence overlooking the Uffizi in the Piazza della Signoria and maybe some art to furnish it with. I would give my mother most of it, of course, to buy a house that doesn’t leak and creak and has buttons to do everything for her, and then I would invest heavily in pensions because I have no intention of living as my mother does on what the high street bank for whom she worked for thirty-five years deems to be a living sum. Lastly, I would pay off my mortgage and celebrate with some champagne that cost more than my monthly repayments.

It is with these thoughts in my mind that I exit the car and follow Donal to the front door of Libby Jones’s attractive but modest home. And then I am confused to find not one doorbell but four, and I realise that this is a converted house and that Libby Jones, the multi-million-pound heiress, lives in a flat. I put my finger to the doorbell with her name on it and a moment later a woman appears at the front door, but I do not think it is Libby Jones because she looks to be much older than twenty-six. She has dark hair cut to her shoulders, very thick-framed black glasses and a square face and is wearing what appears to be a boiler suit in green but may in fact be a current trend.

‘Good morning,’ I say. ‘I am Detective Inspector Samuel Owusu, and this is Detective Sergeant Donal Muir. We are looking for a Miss Libby Jones.’

‘Crikey. Is everything OK?’

‘Yes, everything is OK. Could I please ask your name?’

‘Dido Rhodes. What is this about?’

At this moment a small dog appears behind her, much more the sort of dog that I like, a dog that can be carried and managed, that cannot jump and lick your face. It growls quietly as if deciding whether or not it wants to bark, and then it stops and sits at Dido’s feet.

‘We need to talk to Libby Jones. Is she at home?’

Dido Rhodes collects the small dog into her arms. I look him in the eye. The dog returns my gaze. This dog appears to contain wisdom. In his eyes I see a story. He has lived some life and if he could talk, I think, he would tell me everything I needed to know.

‘Yes. Hold on. Libbs! Libby! There are some policemen here to see you.’

Her eyes do not leave mine as she calls, as if she thinks I might do something untoward if she were to take them off me.

Then Libby appears. She is small and neat and very blonde and very clean. She wears narrow grey jeans with a green vest top and green flip-flops. She blinks at me.

‘Hello?’

I introduce myself and Donal again.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘Can I …? Do you want to come in?’

The dog recommences its low growl as we cross the threshold. I smile at him reassuringly, but it doesn’t seem to work.