Full Stop (11 page)

Tracey was breathing noisily now, snoring almost, and people at nearby tables were turning to look. Loretta had hardly ever seen him drunk and on those few occasions he had been nothing like this — alcohol made him voluble and argumentative, a bit of a loose cannon ar dinner parties, not comatose.

‘Thanks,'
she said, throwing her Visa card on to the plate the waiter was holding out without checking the bill. She turned back to Tracey, remembering he had been ill after his last trip to Bosnia in February; he had picked up a kidney infection from infected water in Sarajevo which lasted several weeks but she had no idea whether it was likely to recur, or have such spectacular effects if it did.

The waiter returned and she scrawled her name on a credit card voucher. ‘Your hotel, John,' she said as she got to her feet and came round the table to help him up. ‘What's the name of your
hotel'
She thought back to the message he'd left on Toni's answering-machine, almost certain he hadn't mentioned the hotel by name, only its phone number and the address of the restaurant they were in.

‘Shit,' she said in a low voice, propelling him towards the street door. The waiter went first, clearing a path, and at least Tracey was docile, leaning on her with his eyes closed and doing exactly what she told him. They passed a phone in the lobby but the time difference meant it was too late to ring the
Sunday Herald
office in London; it occurred to Loretta that, unless she was prepared to prop him against a wall and search his pockets, the only sensible course of action was to take him back to Toni's flat. She got him out into the street, supporting him with both arms while the helpful waiter looked for a cab, and felt sweat break out on her forehead as they were enfolded by the predatory heat.

A taxi stopped and she heaved Tracey inside, squeezing herself after him. ‘Riverside Drive,' she said tiredly, ‘Riverside and 73rd.' When the driver hesitated she raised her voice: ‘What're you waiting for? Can't you see he's
ill?
'

Her tone warned him not to argue and he set off, taking an immediate right which threw Tracey even more heavily against her. Loretta struggled to push him upright, agonising over what she should do when she got to Toni's flat. Put him to bed? Call a doctor? Toni had left the vet's emergency number, but no doctor; Loretta recalled the name of Toni's gynaecologist, Hester Rosenstein, but that wasn't much use in the present situation. Tracey's head rolled sideways on to her shoulder and she turned away, repelled by the combination of alcohol fumes and stale cigarette smoke emerging from his slightly open mouth.

‘John,' she said urgently, trying to shake him awake, but got no reaction other than a burst of coughing which prompted the taxi driver to glance anxiously at the back seat as he waited at a red light. With some difficulty she encircled Tracey with her left arm, propped him upright and tried not to think about the next hurdle — how she was going to drag an almost insensible eleven-stone man along the path to Toni's apartment block, through the foyer and into the lift to the fifteenth floor.

The time on Loretta's watch, when she woke up with a start and turned on the bedside lamp, was four-sixteen on Saturday morning. She had been catapulted into wakefulness by a dream which left only the lightest impression of itself, evaporating so quickly that she could not say what it was about or why her heart was pounding. She blinked, temporarily blinded by the electric light, and came fully awake only when she looked across and saw the huddled form of John Tracey on the sofa. She tiptoed across the room to check on him, reassured by the even rise and fall of his chest, and as she watched Tracey murmured and heaved himself into a new position under the blanket she had thrown over him. It was slightly chilly in the room, the air-conditioning working too hard now the outside temperature had fallen, and Loretta moved silently to turn it down. Honey, who was lying on the floor near the sofa where she could keep an eye on John Tracey, made a long, whiffling
noise through her nose and glanced sleepily at Loretta over her shoulder.

‘Shh,' she whispered, ‘go back to sleep.' The dog regarded her for a moment, eyes glazing over when she sensed it was too early for breakfast or a walk, and obeyed.

Loretta slipped back into bed, pulling the quilt up over her knees and resting her arms on it. She glanced anxiously at Tracey but he was almost completely hidden by the blanket; in any case, at this distance she probably wouldn't be able to make out the tiny puncture mark she'd found on his bare arm when she pulled his jacket off and helped him on to the sofa. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, which surprised her until she thought about the climate in Washington at this time of year, and the mark was on his inside forearm, no more than a pinprick but the surrounding area was slightly pinker than the rest, like a faint halo. She had traced the circle with her finger, feeling the hard dot at the centre where the substance, whatever it was, had gone into the vein. Then, hardly believing what she was doing, she had examined both his arms for needle tracks and found — nothing. Tracey had moaned and tried to shake her off, but he was still too much under the influence of whatever he'd taken to be properly aware of what she was doing.

He occasionally smoked a joint but she did not think he was remotely interested in other drugs, not even speed which, he said, one or two of his colleagues at the
Sunday Herald
used to keep awake when they were working into the early hours on a big story. Not that anyone injected speed, as far as Loretta knew, and what Tracey had taken clearly wasn't a stimulant. She found it impossible to picture him injecting himself yet the puncture mark was much further down his arm than any vaccination she'd ever witnessed; in fact, the spot was almost exactly where the vein would come up if he applied pressure above his elbow. An adverse reaction to a drug would explain his disjointed speech and sudden collapse at the restaurant, yet Loretta still couldn't quite bring herself to countenance it. On the other hand she was reluctant to call a doctor — always assuming there was one listed
in Toni's red address book — when she had absolutely no idea what he'd taken. She was still agonising, crouched by Tracey's head, when there was a barely perceptible change in his breathing. Loretta held herself still, hoping she wasn't imagining it, and as she listened the rasping breaths which worried her so much began to give way to a shallower, more even pattern. In a while, when Tracey and the dog began to snore gently, unfortunately not quite in sync with each other, she got up, shook each of her feet in turn to get rid of the pins and needles which had set in during her vigil, and undressed for bed.

She had fallen asleep more quickly than she expected and the anxiety which invaded her dreams and woke her up shortly after four was only partly to do with Tracey. She needed to know he was all right, that he hadn't developed any alarming new symptons while she slept;, and as soon as that had been established her brain scrolled down to the next worry on her list. The same unfriendly porter who had been on duty when she rushed out to meet Tracey was at the desk when they returned, regarding her impassively as she struggled towards the lift with him. At the last minute, as her hand reached out to press the button, he called out: ‘You staying in 15G?'

Loretta looked back over her shoulder. ‘Yes. It's in the book,' she added irritably, assuming he was questioning her
bona fides.

‘Visitors gotta be announced.'

‘Oh come on,' she said, assuming he meant Tracey. ‘Even in this state?'

‘Not
him.
Other guy.'

‘What?'

‘Tried to sneak into the elevator without me seeing.' He pulled back the cuff of his dark jacket and looked at his watch. ‘Hour, maybe two hours ago.'

Loretta heaved Tracey round so she could face the porter. ‘What're you
talking
about?'

‘I tell him right out, visitors gotta to be announced. He says, “I'm going up to 15G” and I say, “No you ain't buster, not
without me calling up first. Far's I know, lady's out for the evening.”'

‘15G? You mean he wanted Toni's flat — Ms Stramiello? Didn't he know she's away?'

He ignored her and said stolidly: ‘Just so's you know — visitors gotta be announced. S'why I'm here.'

Loretta let out an impatient sound. ‘It's not my — he can't have wanted me. I'm not expecting anyone. I don't
know
anyone.' Her muscles ached and she eased Tracey's weight on to her chest to give her arms a break. The porter continued to watch her, making no move to help, and she took a deep breath, preparing to propel Tracey into the lift.

‘Hey — I ain't finished.'

‘
Now
what?'

‘This guy. I don't like his attitude.' He pronounced it att-itood.

‘His — how d'you mean?'

‘Sneaky. Like he don't wanna be seen.'

Loretta said impatiently: ‘Maybe he didn't know he was supposed to speak to you first.'

‘He don't wanna tell me his name, no way. Soon's I ask him, he's out the door.' He nodded towards the swing doors Loretta had just come through.

Loretta said: ‘What did he look like?'

The porter shrugged. ‘Was a guy.'

‘Young? Old?' The porter was black and she hesitated before adding: ‘Was he white?'

He nodded. ‘White guy. How old? I can't rightly –'

The phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, turning his back on Loretta, who waited just long enough to hear him embark on a lengthy conversation about a faulty air-conditioning unit in one of the apartments. When he took out a ledger and began to record the problem, insisting nothing could be done before Monday, she finally pressed the call button and got Tracey into the lift.

It occurred to her now, several hours later, that the porter
must have noticed
something
about the unknown visitor, some detail like hair colour or height which might help to identify him next time she spoke to Toni. She pulled the quilt more tightly round her, frowning and shivering even though she had turned the air conditioning down. Taken in isolation, the fact that someone had tried to come up to the flat in this slightly clandestine manner meant nothing, other than suggesting that the stranger was unfamiliar with the building security system. It might have been one of Toni's students, someone who was used to seeing her in her office at Columbia; it was not unknown for students to descend uninvited on their lecturers, it had happened to Loretta in Oxford the previous winter when one of her third-years had had an alcohol-fuelled panic attack. Yet there was nothing unusual about having to check in with a building superintendent or porter. Loretta thought the system was likely to be the same at most apartment blocks in this part of New York. Perhaps he hadn't liked the look of the admittedly rather surly porter, and thought he could sneak past when his attention was engaged elsewhere. There were sufficient unknowns to worry Loretta and although it was an eccentric time to go downstairs and interrogate the man again — twenty minutes to five when she checked her watch once more — she thought it was worth it to put her mind at rest. Anyway — and this hadn't occurred to her before — if she left it much later he might go off shift at six or eight. She flung off the quilt, swung her legs out of bed and padded over to the chair on which she had discarded her own clothes and Tracey's jacket.

His wallet, she saw as she slithered into her underwear, had fallen out of his jacket and was lying on the floor. She bent to retrieve it and several pieces of paper fluttered out, including his return air ticket to Washington. It was too long to fit in any of the wallet's compartments so she tucked it back between the covers as Tracey must have done, giving the other pieces of paper a cursory examination before doing the same with them. There were several taxi receipts, the printed sort which issued from the meter in yellow cabs if a passenger asked for one, and Loretta
looked curiously to see how much he had paid for the journey to his hotel from LaGuardia that afternoon. Three dollars more than it had cost her, she discovered, but it was the times on the print-out which arrested her attention: ‘St. time 09:18 am,' it recorded, ‘End time 10:01 am'.

Tracey had arrived in New York hours earlier than expected, early enough to have been in the Metropolitan Museum at lunchtime as the journalist, Carole What's-her-name, had suggested. Loretta turned to look at the recumbent form of her ex-husband on the sofa, only his wavy grey hair visible above the blanket, but it was enough to stir the deep affection she still felt for him. Whatever Tracey had been doing in New York that morning, Loretta was 99 per cent certain that he hadn't been spying on her. As though they might contain the answer, she hastily looked through the other taxi receipts, discovering only that Tracey seemed to have spent the day making short journeys up and down the city. She shrugged, telling herself there was bound to be a simple explanation, and turned over a blue air mail envelope which had also fallen from the wallet. It had been posted four days ago by Swiftair, the express letter service, and Loretta was immediately curious to know who was sending Tracey urgent letters from Hampshire.

Neither the sender's name, M Stephenson, nor the address — a house called The Warren, in a village near Basingstoke — meant anything to Loretta. She held the envelope between her finger and thumb, studying the writing for clues. There were longish spaces between the words and the letters were crammed together with tall perpendicular strokes, but it didn't tell her whether the writer was a man or a woman. Loretta perched on the edge of the chair, careful not to crush the clothes she'd taken off earlier, and slid the thin pages from the envelope. Suddenly aware that she was sitting there in her knickers, she picked up a shirt and slid it over her head, distracting herself from the moral problem of what she was doing reading Tracey's private correspondence.