Various Pets Alive and Dead (40 page)

Oolie put her hands over her face and started to howl.

‘Can’t you see, you’re just making it worse,’ Doro pleaded. ‘Why don’t you let me talk to her alone?’

The detective was a mother herself. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t stand up in court. I’m just doing my job.’

Doro was sure that Oolie herself was capable of starting a fire by accident, but could she have put the pine cones there and put a match under them? Or was it Serge, home early from school, trying out an experiment or playing a game that had gone dreadfully wrong? Or had someone unknown set out to harm her? Doro shuddered, recalling the incident with the bricks when Oolie was a toddler, wondering why vulnerable people attract such malice.

The minibus driver who’d dropped Oolie off was quizzed.

Why was she there alone at that time? Why had she come home early?

The driver denied he was early; three thirty was the normal dropping-off time. Yes, he’d taken her right up the lane to the house, he said. He thought there was someone at home, because Oolie had waved and disappeared into the house, so the door must have been unlocked.

Had the last person out not locked the door when they left? Or did someone inside the house let her in? Serge?

Serge had called the fire brigade, so he must have been there at the time, or shortly after. Oolie had seen no one when the door from the house slammed, trapping her inside the annexe.

‘Have you anything you want to tell me, Serge?’ Doro had asked quietly when they were alone together. He was about fifteen at the time.

‘Why does everybody think it’s me?’ he’d yelled, and burst into tears.

She didn’t press him any more, but buried the pine-cone fragments in the garden under the broad beans.

The commune with its free-and-easy living arrangements came under scrutiny. The police seemed more concerned about who was sleeping with whom than with how the fire started. Chris Howe confirmed their worst suspicions when he opened the door half naked, and started railing about fascism. Then Social Services got involved and there was talk of taking all the children into care.

The Chrises and their kids decamped one night, without leaving contact details. Jen came and took Otto away, and Nick followed them. Fred stayed in London; he came back one weekend to collect his books and say goodbye. Only Moira and Star, who had nowhere else to go, stayed on in the commune, until they too left at the beginning of 1995. Maybe Doro, Marcus and Serge should have left at the same time. But Oolie was happily settled in a new school and Marcus had become Head of Department at the Institute.

For a while, the four of them rattled around in the huge empty house with its burned-out annexe, charred exposed rafters and sickening stink of smoke that tainted everything. The police investigation dragged on and eventually ground to a halt, with the finger of blame seeming to point at Oolie herself. But Doro still wondered in her heart how Serge’s pine cones had ended up in the grate. There were no further clues. A neighbour thought she’d glimpsed a fleeting figure running up the lane, but couldn’t give a description or a precise time. Serge running to the phone box, or some bad lad running away?

Despite all the gawping, it seemed nobody had seen anything – or if they had, they weren’t saying. In closed communities there’s always talk, tittle-tattle, but although they’d tried so hard to be accepted, the commune had never become a part of that subterranean rumour mill, tuned into its gossip networks, subject to its loyalties, secrets and feuds.

But Janey was. Janey must know someone who knew someone who’d lived in Campsall or Norton at the time. Janey must know what had been said, and what was left unsaid.

‘Do you know Janey Darkins?’ Doro asks a greasy-haired young man on the toy counter, but he just shrugs.

A young woman on cosmetics tells her she’s left. ‘We’re closing down. Everybody’s leaving.’

Doro wanders blindly out into the dank wintry morning, wondering what to do next. Maybe it’s for the best that the questions will never be answered. She sits in a tiny gloomy café, where maybe she would have taken Janey, and drinks bitter charred-tasting coffee from a polystyrene cup, wondering, is it better for Oolie to let the memories lie buried until they finally rot and dissolve away? Or is it better to dig them out and expose them to the bright disinfectant light of day?

There’s a whole industry of therapy and counselling and analysis based on the belief that the past must be unearthed and sanitised like a leaking sewer. And there’s Time the Healer – with his muddled, murky comfort of forgetting.

Slowly, as if walking has become a great effort, she makes her way back up the empty High Street, with its sprinkling of newly boarded-up fronts, fly-by-night shops selling Christmas tinsel, and shops with closing-down sales. Waiting at the bus stop with her pensioner’s bus pass at the ready, she feels the weight of the low grey sky pressing down on her.

What will happen to Oolie now? How could Marcus lie to her for all those years? What is Serge hiding from her?

Everything that has underpinned her life for the last twenty years has been turned upside down in this last month. The allotment, her paradise and sanctuary, is about to be destroyed. Even the city where she lives seems to be disintegrating around her. ‘
SPECIAL OFFER!
’,
‘£
1
GREAT VALUE!
’, ‘
EVERYTHING MUST GO!
’ scream the banners.

Serge decides to walk to work on Monday, rather than catching the tube, to give himself time to prepare mentally for what awaits him. It’s a cold, fresh December morning, with a low sun nudging away last night’s snow clouds, and melting the traces of snow on the pavements. He says good morning to the shopkeepers opening up their blinds and putting out their pavement signs. He says good morning to the buffed-up office drones sipping a pre-office lungo at the heated tables on the pavement outside Peppe’s. He says good morning to the doorman at FATCA and the blonde girls on reception. He says good morning to the four morose guys and one sullen sleepy girl crammed in the lift. He feels good.

The wall of noise as he swings open the doors into the trading hall almost blows him away, after the silence of the last fortnight. But he pulls himself together and smiles. He says good morning to Tootie and Lucie and the Frenchies. The Hamburger’s chair is empty. Maroushka is in the glass-walled office, wearing a new black dress with a matching jacket, talking on the phone and swivelling on Timo’s old chair. She looks fabulous in black, but older. And her hair’s different, pulled back in a tight bun instead of cascading down her shoulders. She catches his eye, wiggles four fingers, then turns away. He hangs his jacket on the back of his chair and switches on his desktop. It takes an age to warm up, upload its fortnight’s worth of security scans, configurations, patches and updates, tick-boxes for unintelligible policies, then reboot itself. So he strolls to the glass-walled office and leans in the doorway.

‘How’s things?’

She finishes her phone call and looks up.

‘Everything normal. Welcome back to Securitisation desk, Sergei.’

‘I’ve heard there’s a new VP?’

She meets his eye with an uncertain smile, from which the mischievous twelve-year-old grin has only recently been banished.

‘He is I.’

A wave of gloom washes over him, blotting out the brightness of the morning. But why does he have this bad feeling? Shouldn’t he be pleased for her?

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you, Sergei. Also, you must congratulate me for success of visa application.’

‘Congratulations, goddess. So you’re not running off back to Zh – … to your country any time soon?’

‘Here is better money opportunity. Also I am now big Anglo-feel. Queenlizabeth fishanchip cuppa tea Royal Navy Witcliff of Dover. Now I apply for British passport.’

He has never seen her look so misty-eyed before.

‘So you don’t fancy Brazil?’

‘Brazil?’ She laughs. ‘Why for, Sergei? Primitive persons are inhabiting Brazil. By the way, we are in interesting situation here. Your cooperation will be helpful for new market strategy for Green Shoots. We talk this afternoon.’

She dismisses him with a chair swivel, and picks up the phone again.

‘How’s things?’ he asks the Frenchies, who are looking pissed off and pouty, in an elegant Gallic sort of way. They shrug, their slim shoulders rippling under the classy fabric of their jackets, and reply in low voices, glancing towards the office.

‘
C’est un peu emmerdant
…’

‘…
avec mademoiselle
.
Elle est
…’

‘
Dites-le
.
C’est un monstre
.
Comme la Méduse
…’

‘Er … jellyfish?’ He dredges up his holiday French. Of all Maroushka’s qualities, jelly-like does not spring to mind.

‘Gorgon.’

‘Surely she’s not
that
bad.’

‘You will see.’

‘What happened to …?’ He indicates the empty chair where the Hamburger used to sit.

‘’E ’as resignated himself.’

‘’E is lacking the courage.’

‘How’s things?’ he asks Lucie and Tootie.

‘Not too bad, actually,’ says Lucie. ‘There’ve been a few disappearances, but we keep smiling, don’t we?’

‘
You
do,’ says Tootie through his nose. ‘
I’m
applying for other jobs.’

‘How did it happen – I mean, Maroushka getting the team-leader job? I thought there were more promising candidates …’

‘Precisely. One minute she’s cleaning the office floor, next minute she’s sitting in the swivel chair. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

‘Now you put it that way. But …?’

‘She either knows something, or she’s shagged someone. Can you think of any other explanation?’

He’s almost spitting venom, and Serge thinks however bad Maroushka turns out to be, Toby would surely have been worse.

‘What about Chicken?’

‘He’s still his same adorable self. Though nowadays he seems to spend most of his time laying eggs in Downing Street.’

‘Really?’

‘Apparently he’s advising them how to fix the financial crisis.’

‘Crumbs.’

‘Precisely. And you’d better watch your back, Freebie, because now he’s found the new philosopher’s stone, he won’t need us quants to eliminate risk for him any more.’

‘What d’you mean? What stone?’

‘Imagine gambling in a casino, Freebie, and everything you win, you keep. And every time you lose, a kind-hearted donkey called Joe Public comes along with a sack of gold and pays off your debt.’

Serge feels a tightness in his throat, like when you try to stop yourself from puking up.

‘Unlimited upside?’

‘Precisely. He just has to keep the Government on side, by keeping them running scared.’ Tootie flings a glance towards the door. ‘And speaking of …’

Even from where he’s standing, Serge can feel the double displacement of air – puff-puff – as the doors swing open and disgorge Chicken into the trading hall. He seems to have grown fatter; for the first time, Serge notices that his belly sticks out over his belt; one of his trouser legs has got hitched in his sock, so you can see the muscular calf tapering to the boot which Serge now clearly sees is built up at the heel. In fact, sideways on, he has the shape of a grotesquely elongated chicken.

‘Freebie! Good to see you back! How’s the nose?’ He rests his knuckles on the desk and twists his head round to peer up into Serge’s nostril. ‘Joachim said you had some digestive problem too. Had to keep dashing off to the loo. You should have said.’

It takes him a moment to work out that Joachim is the Hamburger.

‘Yes, it was a bit embarrassing. But all fine now, thanks, Chief Ken. They gave me the all clear.’

‘Good. I’ll go and tell Maroushka you’re back.’

‘There’s no need. I’ve already told her,’ Serge blurts.

Chicken’s eyes narrow. He leans forward on his knuckles. ‘You want to be the sex manager around here, Freebie?’

Is he kidding? Or could this be a promotion? Serge blinks. It sounds good. In fact, it sounds too good to be true. And in the financial world, when things seem too good to be true they usually are.

‘Er … what does that involve exactly?’

‘It means when I want your fucking advice, I’ll fucking ask you.’ Chicken chortles, showing his teeth.

Serge titters, though Chicken didn’t sound like he was joking.

‘You’ve missed a most interesting episode on the markets, Freebie. New trading conditions. Enhanced prospects for corporate growth. Some might say conflict of interests. But we’re confident in our strategy. Maroushka’ll fill you in on the details.’

Now he’s all smiles again. What the fuck is he talking about?

‘You may have heard about my … er … new involvement?’ Chicken continues.

Serge hasn’t checked the emails recently. Is there a new woman on the scene? Maroushka? He feels that taste of suppressed vomit again. He’s starting to wish he’d stayed at home.

‘Treasury. Policy committee.’ Chicken’s chest seems to puff as he speaks the words. ‘We’re trying to firm up the Government’s commitment to the role of the financial sector in the national economy.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Remind the politicians that what’s good for the banks is good for Britain. They’ve no idea how the financial world thinks. What I keep telling them is, we have to reassure the markets. Show we’re capable of fiscal discipline. Chop the public sector down to size. Chop, chop. Otherwise the markets panic. Government bonds get downgraded …’

‘Downgraded by the … er … rating agencies?’

‘Exactly. Like Greece. Cost of borrowing rises. Public services unaffordable. Riots in the streets. Nasty situation.’

‘A great nation brought to its knees by dinner ladies.’

‘Ask yourself this, Freebie – why should
you
pay for somebody else’s dinner ladies?’

Serge thinks with nostalgia of the thick-armed bosomy dragons who used to dole out gravy and custard from dripping ladles when he was at primary school in Campsall.