Framed (2 page)

They'll tell me I'm off my head.

He had to admit the scenario was touched with craziness. It was the kind of farfetched obsessive crap that burned-out insurance assessors and barmy pensioners came up with every time the weather turned hot. It was the branch of melodrama even the tabloids had grown tired of. But that didn't matter. Larry was convinced. They could say what they liked; he was in full possession of his faculties and he had seen what he had seen. He had stared through his son's binoculars and looked straight into the face of the late Eddie Myers.

"Oh, shit . . ."

He stopped and stared across at the spot on the beach where he had been lying. Susan was standing there. So were the boys, looking on sullenly as their mother bawled out a bewildered-loolang couple sitting under the umbrella. Family vacations, Larry reflected, were never the occasions for unrestrained pleasure that posters and brochures implied. At best they were a change. The boys spotted him and he smiled and made a little wave. He went across, kicking up puffs of sand, his legs shaky from the running. Susan's scowl turned toward him. He set his jaw and hung on to his smile.

2

By six o clock the boys were changed and waiting to go down to dinner. Susan still raged about the place, moist from the shower, her hair wrapped in a towel. The room, a family occupancy with a double bed and two singles, was too small for strife, especially the shrill, nerve-grating land generated by Susan. This evening she aimed her rancor unflaggingly at Larry.

"I've said I'm sorry," he protested. "Just drop it." He stepped over the sodden towels left by the family and turned on the shower. At the same time the toilet seemed to flush of its own accord, and water seeped over the basin. There wasn't a dry towel left, and he paddled out of the bathroom.

"There's something wrong with the ruddy toilet!"

Susan shrugged. "It's when they flush it in the room above. Is it still overflowing?"

Larry searched around for some underpants, skidded on the tiled bedroom floor. "I'll report it to the manager, it's bloody unhygenic . . . Where'd you put my underwear?"

Susan pointed to one of the rows of drawers, and then looked at her face in the mirror.

"I know they took the bag," she told him for maybe the fifth time, without producing evidence to back her suspicion. "It's all gone—the sunscreens, my makeup, the lot. I mean . . ." She stared at him with stagy exasperation. "All you had to do was sit there. How could you just walk off like that?" She spun suddenly, her antennae alerted. "Tony! Don't lean over the balcony!"

"It was him," Larry said flatly, reprising his only excuse. "I know it. If I could just get the photos blown up I could prove it."

"His head's the size of a pin, Larry. It'd cost a fortune. You wasted half a roll of film as it is." Susan spun again.
"Tony!
I am watching you!"

"Oh! The pair of you!" Larry put in, feeling it was expected. "Inside now." He moved close to Susan and put a kiss on her back. "I'm sorry." There was no way to tell if the apology was accepted.

Later, while Susan and the boys braved the dining room, Larry went to the manager's office and scrounged the use of a typewriter. He put together a brief message, inserting as much urgency as he could, and asked the manager to fax it to London straightaway. Surprisingly, the manager said he would be happy to oblige. He started to say something else just as the Tannoy clicked on; he held up a finger and let his mouth hang open, indicating he would resume as soon as the announcement was over.

"Hi!" a desperately pally voice yelled over the speaker. 'This is your Sun and Sea Tours representative. If you want to join the table tennis championship, come to Games Room Four. Games Room Four."

The message ended with another click. The manager beamed at Larry.

The toilet is okay now?" he said.

"It was the shower," Larry told him as he left. The traffic in the foyer was brisk. Susan stood there with John. She was agitated. Tony, she informed Larry, was missing.

"He went to look for you," she snapped. "The second sitting's gone in now. Where have you been?"

"Getting the shower fixed." They walked together to the door and out onto the steps. "I'll head along the beach and look for him," Larry said.

The sun was going down, the sky grading from light blue to rich cobalt at the horizon, streaked with pink and scarlet. People's faces looked burnished; the waves, dark now, glinting dull silver, made rhythmic breathing sounds against the shore. If there had been nothing on his mind, nothing at all to distract him, Larry would have liked to walk along the sand and watch the sun drop below the sierras, letting the night close around him like velvet. It was the kind of thing he would have done when he was single.

"Tony?" His voice died a few yards ahead of him, grounded by the dense air. "Tony! Come on now, your mum's worried . . ."

He was sure the boy would come to no harm, but he went through the motions of concerned behavior. Down on the beach he shuffled a couple of hundred yards to the west, then the same distance east, winding up approximately where he started. Apart from himself, a dog was the only other sign of life on the beach. He went back to the steps and climbed to street level, kicking sand from his shoes.

As he stood at the edge of the pavement a white Rolls-Royce Corniche glided past, the top down. He was halfway to noting the registration, out of habit, when recognition hit him again. He stared at the driver. It was him, the man from the speedboat. Myers. He seemed laid-back like before, his eyes behind shades this time, looking elegant as hell in a spotless white open-necked shirt.

The car was past in a second but Larry had it all clocked—the precise lines of the driver's face, the repeat certainty that it was Myers—even the Malaga plates. He began running, swerving and ducking past market stalls, keeping the Rolls in sight. It was doing no more than twenty but that was roughly twice what Larry could manage. As it turned right ahead of him he stepped into the road and was almost run down by a horse-drawn carriage. He leapt back, fighting to stay upright, apologizing to the scarlet-faced driver.

"Lo siento, senor . .

By the time he got to the corner there was no sign of the Rolls. He stopped, clamped his eyes shut, and made sure he had the number. He had, but he would lose it if he didn't get it down. Outside a bar he accosted a waiter, borrowed his pen, and wrote the number on his hand— MA 2179 BD.

Deflated suddenly, he wandered back along the road. He checked his watch and decided to find out if the fax had been sent to London. He was leaving the hotel manager's office when Susan caught up with him. She was dragging Tony by the arm. John walked dolefully behind them.

"He was playing table tennis," she announced, her tone implying it was a borderline sin. "You'll have to talk to him, Larry. Where've you been, anyway?"

He ignored the question, pocketing the fax okay slip the manager's secretary had handed him. He gave his sons the heavy-father look.

"Right. Pair of you. Bed. No arguments."

He watched them walk away, feeling sorry for them, as he often did. He turned to Susan and suggested they use up the remains of the evening in the hotel cocktail bar. The idea was agreeable enough to make her smile, slightly.

They took a table near the center of the room. A group from Bradford at the next table were discussing the dangers of going out on a pedalo without proper protection from the sun, and how easy it was to get a bargain from certain street traders so long as you were firm with them.

Raising his voice to make himself heard above the neighbors and the guitarist, Larry told Susan about seeing the white Rolls and realizing it was Myers behind the wheel. She sucked on the straw sticking up from her fruit-decked drink and frowned thoughtfully. Then she smiled.

"This has got rum in it," she said.

"I'm sure it was Eddie Myers," Larry said. He tasted his drink and made a face. "I was on his arrest, you know It was when I was still in uniform."

Susan flapped her hand, her eyes swiveling to the next table. She didn't want people knowing he was a policeman.

"He's a grass," Larry confided, leaning forward and lowering his voice. "An informer. Put away God knows how many blokes. The thing was, we knew he had more than a million stashed. And then he escaped from custody."

Susan's attention flitted around the other tables. Larry broke off to hail a waiter, who indicated he would be there in a minute. Larry got back to his story.

"That was in 1985, had to be about November. I was on the arrest of one of the guys he named, and just after that I passed Myers in the corridor, this close. He was laughing. Maybe that's why I remember him."

The waiter came across and hovered, eyebrows raised inquiringly.

"Room seventy-six," Larry told him over Susan's head. "Same again there, and a beer for me. Lager." The waiter nodded and moved off. Larry leaned close again. "Now listen to this. Three years ago, might be more, nearer five I suppose—"

"I'm not really interested," Susan said.

Larry didn't seem to hear. He looked around then leaned closer still. "We get notification from Italy they got a floater, right? Been in the drink for weeks. The body was eventually ID'd as Eddie Myers. So that's that. All his files are
finito
—understand?"

The waiter returned with his tray and put two cocktails, a beer and a lager on the table.

"Aw, here now, hang on . . ." Larry waved his hand over the glasses, staring at the waiter's uncomprehending face. He tried to find the words to explain. The waiter moved impatiently from foot to foot. Larry sighed. "Never mind," he said. He picked up the beer and took a gulp. 'That's better." He looked squarely at Susan. "It was Eddie Myers I saw today. I swear it."

Susan glanced aside, her mouth closed around her straw.

"You still don't understand, do you?" Larry said. "Eddie Myers's wife ID'd the body. He's supposed to be dead!"

Later, after more explanation and a widening of Susan's indifference, which Lawrence continued to misread, they walked along the beach hand in hand, hearing the occasional seabird beyond the sounds of the sea and the grunts and giggles from the darkness around them.

"His wife had the body cremated," Larry said. "Eddie Myers, good night."

"Did you see her?" Susan asked. "His wife?"

"I don't remember too much about her. Blonde—I
think
she was blonde. . . . Maybe I'm wrong."

"Maybe?" Susan laughed softly. "You haven't seen Myers for more than—how long did you say?"

Larry caught the implication.

"I just remembered him," he said. "He was that kind of bloke."

Susan stopped walking and snuggled close to him.

"What kind?" she said.

"I was very impressionable," he murmured, cupping her face.

Their mouths were an inch apart when he heard the sound of a boat moving across the water. He stiffened, peering out at the sea.

"Larry," Susan said flatly. "It's a fishing boat."

His face was suddenly close to hers again. He kissed her once, fiercely, then broke away and began running. Susan ran after him, giggling. For the briefest surge of time, running and laughing there in the twilight, they were just the way they were when they had been on their honeymoon. He caught her in his arms, swinging her around, and they kissed passionately. Larry would have liked to have made love to her on the beach, but Susan drew away; she didn't want herself all covered in sand . . . but they walked arm in arm, and three times they stopped to kiss and cuddle. They even kissed in the lift going up to their room. Passion at a fever pitch. She even allowed him to unbutton her dress in the corridor, giggling and flirting.