Dandelion Souls - Part 4

Chapter 18 - New Year 2018

New Year passed briefly through everybody's lives and Andrew came back.  When he called in to visit Dee and her family to wish everyone well for the coming year, she and Andrew took Wilbur for a walk, despite the windy weather, for she was restless to get out.

"How did your reunion go, then?" she asked him, for her curiosity had been roused.

"Oh, very well!" he answered lighting up in recollection, for he had spent time catching up with one person in particular whom he had always liked, finding her, this time, unattached, and, if there had been a restless night in bed, it had not been due to Andrew's ghost story.  Finding a snowfall had come down early the following morning, though not set to last, they had made it their mutual excuse to stay on for a second night.  They had resumed an attraction where it had been left off formerly and, being already well known to one another, had decided to see where things went from there.  Andrew was going to visit her at her home this coming weekend, a couple of hours drive only, from where he lived now.  He didn't mention this to Dee, however, out of delicacy for her feelings, not wanting to brandish a new relationship of his own in the face of her regrettedly single state.

"Now, I haven't forgotten," he said.  "I've made an initial start on finding something out for you, and I'm just waiting to hear back from someone in connection with things."

"Oh.  Good.  Thanks," said Dee, who for once didn't want to talk about Al right then, because she'd picked up on something in Andrew and found she wanted to know as, used to feeling close to him, instinct told her that she was being excluded from something of personal importance, so she probed a little more but got nothing except a description of a fondly remembered occasion with others, which in itself left her still envious of it.

"I didn't know you were going to have such a lovely time up there," she said, sounding disconsolate.  "It sounds great."

"It was.  Thank you," said Andrew simply, then asked about her own Christmas, which, as she told of it, sounded similarly busy with get togethers to be glad of, and so the moment passed, for Dee unsatisfactorily, feeling sure something of interest was being held back by him, and they returned, perforce, to being amused by Wilbur's antics, since Andrew had deftly turned the subject irrevocably.

Nobody had been in the the office for over a week when Andrew and Nolan went to it and they had trouble getting in, as the foxed door had swollen between rains and frosts in the interim.  Once released it refused to close again so they had to leave it slightly ajar in the frame.

""Well, it can't make it any colder in here," remarked Nolan, kicking the radiators neatly back into life.  "How was bonny Scotland then?"

Andrew didn't even bother with any geographical corrections these days, just went along with it.

"Very bonny, this time of year," he said jauntily, with a happy glimmer that didn't escape Nolan.

"Oh, yes?  Something you're not telling me?"

"Definitely something I'm not telling you," rebuffed Andrew, with a contented smile, which meant he had to put up with Nolan repeatedly singing the first verse of the 'Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomand' at intervals to goad him, with particular emphasis on:

'Where my true love went out for to gaze

On the bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomand',

while Andrew checked up first on his bookkeeping emails on the computer (he was resistant to constant smart phone activity on this accountancy front, work being work and leisure being leisure, he maintained).

"All right, shut up," he said eventually to Nolan, accepting a mug of tea.  "Now, how about Mr Keats?  Anything yet?"

Mr Keats was due in, which was partly why they hadn't bothered to struggle with closing the outer door.

" I can't find any missing persons links to him.  Now it's New Year, I've started circulating acting agencies with those images, but with no idea of his real name....."

"There's always the tooth mould option," suggested Andrew meanly, looking innocent.

"That," said Nolan with a slight shiver, " is my last and least desirable option.  Do you know how many millions of dentists there are out there?"

Andrew smiled to himself.  Just then, Mr Keats did his now famous,

"Hallooo!" up the stairs, to announce his coming and made his entrance a short time later, a bit less laboured now with the aid of the walking stick.  

He had waxed, if not fat, at least robust of  waistcoat (a remainder of the suit) but had been brought a little more up to date in donated clothing elsewhere in outfit, with rather more normal trousers and a puffer jacket, whose royal blue matched the pair of stoutly zippered slippers he now had on his feet, thick soled and with an impudent glimpse of sheepskin about the ankle.

"I see you're admiring these!" he declared, waving one boot slipper elegantly before them.  "Remarkable gift!  I could walk up Ben Nevis in them!  Am I first footing for you in here, my dears?"

"You are," agreed Andrew.  "You're our first client of the year, Mr Keats."

"Marvellous!" Mr Keats beamed at them delightedly.  "I hope you both enjoyed yourselves?  I certainly did.  I've been quite the success in the communal room, as it turns out I've got an impressive  back catalogue of comic monologues at my disposal.  Went down a treat as it happens.  And....there's something else, my dears, that will please you."  He leaned forward confidingly.  "I've remembered something!   There now!"

"What's that?" asked Andrew.

"I suggest we repair to the hostelry, where I can tell you properly."

"I'll fetch my wallet," said Nolan significantly.

"Most kind," said Mr Keats, adding, "But you shouldn't worry, my dear, it's only out of your expenses that I pay, isn't it?"

He gave Nolan an acute look, almost sly, not his usual expression, and it struck an odd note to both the business partners, showing, perhaps, how much of a performance was generally going on.  It was only brief and Mr Keats was quickly back to what had appeared to be his normal genial self.  When settled with a drink and joined for one this time by both of them "to see in the New Year properly", as he put it, Mr Keats began:

 "It came to me quite suddenly.  I was in my room wondering when I'd get back through the green baize door of memory, behind which I seem to have been stuck in the back kitchen below stairs for some considerable time, having got no further than that verse I quoted last time we met."

"That was a Keats poem," Andrew interjected.

""Ah, was it?  I did wonder....and then, Queen Victoria's tiara....round and round the two went in my head and then, suddenly, there I was - out in the hall and dressed in my best!  There were people, not many, who I had to meet, one by one, quite on their own by separate sequential appointment, and take upstairs to a particular room.  I'd been hired for the job, you see, the first in many a long and undistinguished day, it seems to me. 

"Now, this room was done out in black material stapled to walls and ceilings and across the windows, by way of a draped back drop to the main event.  This was two glass show cases.  I had to speak the verse and announce the gems by it, then switch on the showcase lights, so that only they shone in the room.  They were locked and alarmed and these people could only view, but they were invited as experts to do so.  In one was the diamond and emerald tiara, in the other a single earring of diamonds set in rosettes.  Then, under the gaze of the security cameras all around the room, I took its partner out of my pocket in a box and they were allowed to check that over with their little eyeglasses and so on.  They were part of a pair which had once accompanied a famous necklace, I was to announce.  The earrings had been long lost to public knowledge, but had once been part of a set which Queen Victoria called:

'My Turkish diamond necklace and earrings,' worn in fact, on her wedding day......

"They were agog, of course, as it seems they each believed it to be a genuine item.  Then the show was over and the bidding began by phone, they to the anonymous and not physically present seller.  Now, they had all been forwarned and invited specifically and knowing the prize to be had, had been instructed to bring money for any deposits made.  They did not know who else might have been invited and I was to hint that they might be up against competition, so that they knew their bids had to count before this process started.  Each, I may say, turned out to be a successful bidder, and my own instruction was to see them out and place the money that formed their deposit in the case on the hall table for the seller to collect.  I then retreated from view myself into the back kitchen (hence, I suspect, the baize door motif), came back out and retrieved it empty for the next appointment time (it was all done over the one day) and off we went again.

"Only, by the last time, for there were, of course, more buyers than items to buy, it having gone smoothly the first five times, I thought, well, they've got more than enough moulah out of this, time for old Malcolm to trouser a bit.  So, I kept some of the money back in the leather wallet the buyer gave me in my inside pocket, put the rest as before in the case, left that on the hall table,  drank the drink they'd left for me  by way of a thank you pending a final payment to my good self for my offices and buggered off sharpish in case, despite my caution, any of those damned cameras had caught anything.  Mind you, sleight of hand is one of my talents, so I was hopeful they had not."

"What about the jewels, the earring you had?" asked Andrew

"Oh I left that in the case with the money, too, I didn't dare risk taking off with that, they'd surely have come after me directly.  Faked up, I'm sure, but good enough to get the greed going.  If they could sell them on, well, quids in, eh, doubtless, thousands, if not millions.  After that, I really don't remember anything until I woke up under those arches."

They all paused to wonder what might have been in the drink that had been left for Mr Keats, while he busily polished his current one off.

"I think," he ruminated afterwards, "they may have drugged me."

Mr Keats was clearly more than capable of drugging himself, so that remained uncertain for the present.

"And you've no idea....?" queried Nolan.

"Who hired me?  None at all, but it may return to me, whatever I did know."

"Malcolm?"

"I think so, that's what came to mind, but I've no idea about last name.  Besides, I'm quite used to being John Keats now.  Anything else would seem like a travesty," he declared grandly.

They went over, again, a number of the usual questions they had asked him before, in case returning recollection had brought any more prompts about his past.  Did he know where he'd been born, how old he was, any glimpses of people who might have known him, or places where he might have lived?  There was still nothing and no remembered context to suggest anything further.

"They have a memory cafe I go to now, you know," he told them, as if to cheer them up.  "We do mental exercises, that kind of thing. So something might occur.  However, if I am in possession of ill gotten gains," and here he paused conspiratorially, "I don't feel a huge obligation to return them now,  if what I've told you is correct.  Obviously part of a terrific scam!"

Andrew and Nolan agreed that saying nothing was the best course for the time being but couldn't believe that he had not at one point seen something of the vendor or vendors, either beforehand or at the venue.

"It's possible.  And they must have been there, all right, but no, I didn't see them.  Revolving doors.  Me out, they in to field the cash and off again.  It's rather a pity I didn't retain the earring, but as I say, too risky.  They did get nearly all the lolly too, remember," he suggested, as a redeeming factor in his larceny.

Whoever 'they' were.  Neither Andrew nor Nolan were entirely convinced by this outlandish sounding set up and story, perhaps more so than the journalist, however, because they had found the 'Black Tie Black Friday Event' internet pop up, but even so, the whole thing was surely ludicrously implausible?  Or maybe not, as Nolan went on to say when they were back in the office and had done some more internet research on the named items of jewellery.

"They are distinct items, aren't they, no longer in the royal collection and if with private owners, it's owners unknown.  There's enough out there to mimic and mock up a single piece and suggest the rest is real, isn't there?"

"Unless it is all real, and someone's putting them back on the market to make a killing," suggested Andrew.  

The provenance of the story and of Queen Victoria's lost jewels, remained uncertain.

"Imagine, though, what a thing for the auction house that gets and handles them, all the publicity for them about rediscovering a national treasure's national treasure.  You can see why the buyers would be tempted enough to put some extremely good money down, " speculated Nolan.

"We'll have to keep an eye out for sales rooms announcements, or any spoiler alerts in the press, won't we?" said Andrew.  " Before we can really put any faith in his story.  Meanwhile..."

"Meanwhile, we look after the so called loot.  It's paying it's way, he wants to employ us, and if it does all turn out to be some massive delusion and he's just done a runner with all his savings or something, it's still all his own choice, isn't it?"

"True..." said Andrew.  "Malcolm...."

"Well, maybe Malcolm.  Maybe not.  He's happy enough in his new life, isn't he and what he recalls of the old doesn't sound too successful so far, does it?  Perhaps we shouldn't dig too deep.  Let things run a bit."

"Mmmmm" said Andrew.  "Speaking of digging..."

"Peter's garden.  Yes.  Are you going to tiptoe through his tulips, then?"

"Reluctantly, yes.  I might go and have a look myself and see if he's still away and then, I'll make an appointment to go round there one last time.  He's winding things up with us end of this month anyway.  Last payment's gone in."

Nolan regarded him a moment, recognising Andrew's hesitation about all this.

"If you do go to see him in person again, I think I should come too.  Bit of back up in case you ask an awkward question that doesn't go down too well."

"I think I'd like that," agreed Andrew, saying again, "there's something about that man that gives me the creeps."

Today was Friday, the fifth of January and Andrew was looking forward to his weekend away.

"Right, that's enough here for today.  It's too cold to hang about in here, besides, I've got stuff to do."

They both looked up at the mouldy corner of the room, where a an evil looking yellow fungus was now puffily sprouting from the cornice woodwork.

"That's interesting," remarked Nolan of it, casually.  "Fancy popping over to ours tomorrow?" he went on to invite.  "Twelfth night party at ours for the ceremonial de-decorating event.  You know what Billy's like, every scrap packed up or it's bad luck for the rest of the year."

Andrew did usually go to this, an alternative to having a New Year's Eve celebration, because Billy's view was that twelfth night had been the real medieval deal, plus, everybody already needed cheering up again by then.

"He's made mead," said Nolan with distaste.  "Someone's got to drink the bloody stuff, and finish off his Christmas cake."

"Love to, mate.  But sorry, no can do, I'm away this weekend."

"Are you now?" said Nolan.  "On a promise?"

"Well, you know how it is," said Andrew.  "Some of us have it....."

Nolan laughed.

"So it is like that."

"Early days," said Andrew happily.

"Anyone I know?"

Andrew thought about it.

"No, I don't think you'd ever have met her, one of the old friends from home.  It seems we've finally caught up with one another."

"A long felt want, eh?  Good, I'm glad for you, Andrew.  It's been a while since I've heard mention of anyone."

"Well, you can cross Dee off your secret little black book of possibilities for me, then, can't you?"

"Dee?" enquired Nolan, all nonchalance.  "What's she got to do with it?"

"Absolutely nothing, Nolan.  Come on.  Let's lock up.  I'm taking dinner makings down so I need to go shopping."

"Oh, dear.....Are you sure?" enquired Nolan solicitously.

"I'm a perfectly good cook, thank you," asserted Andrew.  "Just because you don't often have the pleasure doesn't mean I can't deliver."

"You never invite me," said Nolan, managing to avoid an obvious opening for innuendo, but narrowly.

"I can't invite you without inviting Billy and you know what that's like.  He's such a connosser!"

" A massive connosser at times," agreed Nolan, this being one of their in joke words, because Billy certainly did consider himself to be a critical connoisseur of all gastronomic offerings and took the view, in spite of Nolan's objections, that people always deserved a frank appraisal of their efforts as being the right way to do them justice.  It was not always well received.  "Well, I'll make your excuses to him, then, just this once," offered Nolan.  "Is it Melanie?"

"Nope."

"Right....Well, I'm glad you feel you can confide in me," said Nolay wrily.  "What are friends for?"

"They're for the right moment," said Andrew.  "And this isn't it.  Stop crowding me."

"All right.  See if I care.  Have it your own way," said Nolan.

They locked up and went their separate ways for the weekend.

"Andrew's got a girlfriend," Nolan told Billy later, "and he won't tell me about her."

"I don't blame him," returned his husband.  "You know what a gobshite you are."

"Charmed, I'm sure," said Nolan, flipping him the bird.

"You leave Andrew alone about it and wrap those baubles up properly in that tissue paper there."

"Yes, dear," said Nolan sarcastically, proceeding with the tedious task of dismantling Christmas.  "Tell you what, shall we have Dee round for the party, she might enjoy it?"

"Why not?  Stop the poor kid pining for a bit.  She can bring a friend," agreed Billy.

Dee, in fact, brought Ed, who jumped at the chance of meeting the intriguing Nolan she had so interestingly described to him.  Nolan and Billy had gone ahead and bought Dee's painting from Dream, which hung to rather dramatic effect on their living room wall.

"Your sister painted that," Nolan told Ed, showing it off to him with Dee alongside.

"Yes?" said Ed doubtfully.  "And you want it hung right here?"

"The prophet is never recognised in his own land," said Billy, coming up to them.  "Never you mind, Dee, that's a very strong artistic voice you've got there."

"It's certainly dominant," agreed Ed of 'Day Glo' , diplomatically.

Billy was going around with his jug of mead, which Ed was amused to see Nolan avoiding.

"You come with me, lad," Nolan advised Ed, who followed him into the kitchen for a bottle of beer instead.  

Ed found Nolan amusing company, very different from Andrew in many ways, he thought and he asked about how they had got together to create the missing persons agency.

"Well, Andrew was doing spot at a careers open day on book-keeping and I was doing one about I.T. and we got to talking, about wanting to use our skills but do something different and way more interesting.  We started joking on about what that could be and came up with the agency idea.  Then afterwards, we took it seriously and followed it up.  Didn't have a clue to start with, but you get the hang of it."

"Were you both careers advisers,then?"

"God, no, we'd both had to do it as a community service option."

"Really?" asked a fascinated Ed.

"No, not really," said Billy, happening upon the discussion on his way to get food to hand around.  "More fool you, if you believe a word he tells you.  They were both signing on and got talking in the job centre, waiting for their 'big moment' in life.  They still are," he added, moving off with a large platter of nibbles.

"Well, you did find Dee," encouraged Ed.

"To be fair, your mate found her first," qualified Nolan, "then we followed up.  There's a lot of luck involved in getting the breaks in this game."

"I think it sounds brilliant," admired Ed.

"It has its moments," said Nolan modestly.  "Back to the beanfeast, or I'll get told off in a minute for monopolising a guest."

Dee had been trying to find an opportunity to corner Nolan alone, which she finally did when he briefly went out for a rare cigarette, it being a party, and she joined him in sitting on the step.

"Nolan," she said, without preamble.  "I've had a message from Al."

"Oh, fuck!" said Nolan expressively.  "And?"

" He said, 'wait for me, like last year.' "

"Did he?  Well he'd no business to say that to you in the circumstances, had he?  Have you answered him?"

"No," said Dee, who hadn't, even though Al had responded exactly to her own last message to him.

"Then don't," said Nolan authoritatively.  "You're done with all that and so is he."

"Right," said Dee, in a small voice.

"Look," said Nolan, turning to look at her, for once seriously.  "Give yourself a chance, here, girl.  Don't answer.  Let it go."

"Right," said Dee again, wishing that Andrew had been there to tell instead of Nolan and knowing (because Andrew had forewarned her of it) that Nolan didn't know he was going to try and help Dee find out what was happening with Al.  

In fact, seeing Al's message to her after so long with nothing had left her, after all the longing, strangely unmoved, because its presumption was classic Al, that if he asked her to wait for him, she would do just that.  He had answered nothing in response to all her questions, about his wedding, his wellbeing, where he was, nor had he asked her about herself.  So, even though she had written to him herself to say that she was here for him and it was his turn to come to her, at some quite strong level, she resented it, that small, bald statement of instruction.  No, she had thought.  Let him wait instead now; look what he did to me.

"Where is Andrew?" she asked Nolan now.  "I thought he'd be here."

Nolan divined that he was not the person she would have chosen to confide in if Andrew had been there.

"He's away this weekend," he told her.  "Besides, you know he'd say just the same to you as me about it."

"I suppose he would," agreed Dee.  "Don't tell Ed, will you?"

"I won't tell anyone," promised Nolan.  "And I suggest you do the same."

Dee nodded, and he was quite surprised, looking at her, how calm she seemed to be about receiving Al's message after all this time.  Perhaps the storm was passing.  Nolan hoped so, for her sake.  His cigarette finished, they went back inside for the rest of the party occasion and she seemed, Nolan keeping a surreptitious eye  on her, to remain herself, no going off into despondent reveries or solitary corners, so that he hoped he was right in his conjecture.  

“ Nice weekend?” asked Nolan immediately, when Andrew phoned him on Monday morning.

“Yes, thanks,” returned Andrew politely.  “It was lovely.”

“Oh.  Good.”

Nolan waited.

“How was your party?” Andrew asked nicely in return after waiting a beat.

“Look!” burst out Nolan.  “Can you stop talking to me as if we’ve only just met?  Chill your beans, mate, I’m not going to be nosy!”

“Oh.  Good.” said Andrew again.  Nolan muttered something rude.  “What was that?”

“Nothing,” said Nolan, giving up.  “What’s on today, then? Accounting or detecting?”

“Accounting first, then I’ve got something on this afternoon.  No.   Not that, “ he responded to an interrogative noise from Nolan’s end of the phone.  “I’m going to take a look at Peter Haddon’s place, see if he’s still away, only from outside.  If he's there I'll wait until you come with me to talk to him.   Can I come to yours tomorrow and we’ll work from your home office?  I can’t face that place over the veranda.  It’s being taken over by triffids.”

“Yeah, sure.  Oh, I’ve given the landlord a blast about the state of the place.  He says he’s going to give it some fungal treatment.  A man with a van’s coming Wednesday.”

“He’d be better off starting mushroom farming in there instead of renting it out to us.  I reckon it’s the epicentre of an underground mycelium network and it’s all getting out.”

“You’re babbling, Andrew.  You weren’t in Wales, were you, at weekend?”

“Wales.  Why?”

“Magic mushrooms sound more like what you’ve had on your plate lately.  Very common in Wales, shrooms.”

“Very funny, and I’m still not telling you,”

“Spoilsport,” said Nolan.  “Have you spoken to young Dee at all?”

“No.  Why?”

“Never mind,” said Nolan, deciding that, if she hadn’t told Andrew yet about hearing from the legendary Al, then he would stick to his word about not telling anyone either.

“Was she o.k. at the party?” asked Andrew.

“Yes, fine.  She brought her brother.  Nice guy.”

“I like him,” agreed Andrew.  “ A fellow fell walker.  We’re planning to do one in Cumberland  in Spring together, some time.”

“You might be otherwise engaged, by then,” suggested Nolan, so Andrew once more told him to shut up, said he’d see him tomorrow morning and rang off.

After some bookkeeping work with a client and a sandwich for lunch, Andrew drove to look at their other still existing private detective case’s house.  It being a dark sort of day, if Peter had been there, there would have been some lights on, he thought.  He walked cautiously around the property and made a show of ringing and knocking on the door, then standing back concernedly when there was no response, just to see how curious the neighbours were, as there were lights on in front living rooms on either side.  Sure enough, a door opened and a vigilant, elderly voice said:

“Hello?  May I help you?”

“Ah!  Good afternoon,” Andrew greeted him.  “I was looking for Mr Haddon?”

“I’m afraid he’s out at present,” a small, spare man replied.

“So I see,” said Andrew, looking his best picture of naive respectability.  “I haven’t called on him lately so I wanted to say Happy New Year.  I must say, how well he’s got on with that garden!  He’d barely started that feature in the summer.  I’m so glad he’s kept busy after Barbara, er….” he stopped delicately.

 He could feel the elderly neighbour warming to him.

“Oh, quite, quite!  I see you know about her having….”

“Yes, a blow to him after all the years together,” said Andrew, sounding caringly thoughtful.

“Indeed so.”

“He must have worked day and night on it.  It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Well, it wasn’t done in a hurry,” said the man.  “He dug proper concrete foundations for it first.”  Oh, God, thought Andrew.  “We had to talk over the garden wall for days at the front because he wanted to make sure it all went off.  ‘Silly me,’ he said.  ‘Fancy relaying the path at the same time.  Now I can only go out of the front door for a week!’ “

Oh, no, thought Andrew, and, oh, God, again.

“So where is Peter now?” he asked.  “Do you happen to know if he will be in later? My mother asked me to call round, you see.  They were all old friends and she’s been worried about him.”

His dutiful son credentials thus backing him up as a bona fide visitor, he was now told that ‘Peter’ had gone on a winter holiday abroad, to cheer himself up a bit after a lonely Christmas.  

“Good for him,” Andrew declared, taking his leave. “Mum will be relieved when I tell her.” 

“I think, “ he told Nolan the following morning, “ we can’t do other than tell the police we have concerns.  If they ignore it, so be it.”

 They debated it further and on the basis that there was nowhere left for them to go with the case themselves, that Peter had made his potentially last payment and talked of winding things up the last time that Andrew had spoken to him, they decided, now, that they would phone the non emergency number, or Andrew would, because Nolan still objected to it,  and place the question mark in police hands with minimum need, hopefully, for any interview of their good selves.

 Having done so, after being contacted back and announcing the bare facts of having been hired as a missing persons bureau (the start of things as being a possible affair, the gradual realisation and revelation that Barbara was no longer there and, after a further interval, a dawning suspicion that they had been hired to follow an apparent trail until it went legitimately cold as back up rather than to make a genuine search, the garden and the current absence of Peter Haddon) Andrew met with a muted and dubious response.  He was thanked for raising the matter and told the police would look into it. 

“You see,” urged Andrew, now launched into trying to convince them, “he has never officially reported her missing and there’s no other family to do so.   They’re in the late middle years, with no children and no living parents of their own, no siblings that I could find.  It’s just the two of them and she had taken early retirement from her office job a few years previously.”

“A missing persons bureau, you say, sir.”

“That’s right.”

“But you, er,  haven’t found any missing person…”

“No, well, that’s my point.”

“I see, Mr Munro.  But you found - a lover, didn’t you say?”

“Well, no not as such.  Only a suggestion of one.”

“Mmm.  So, so far you haven’t found anyone.  And now, you’ve lost Mr Haddon, your employer?”

“No!  I told you, the neighbour says he’s on holiday.”

“And, er, have you verified that?”

“Well….no….” said Andrew, sounding lamer by the second.  “I thought I should phone the police by then.”

“Yes.  You’ve done that now.  Thank you, Mr Munro.  We’ll be in touch again once we’ve looked into things.  I have your contact details.  Have you been in this line of work for long?”

“A couple of years or so.  Why?”

“And before that?”

“I’m an accountant.”

“I see, Mr Munro.  Well, thank you very much.”

 That, then, they concluded, with both relief and confusion, was that.  Unless, as Nolan pointed out, Andrew was dragged in for questioning.

“Dragged in?  Why would I be dragged in?” asked Andrew, alarmed.

“Well who else are they going to question?   Probably to see if you had an ulterior motive for reporting it.”

“And what would that be?” demanded Andrew.

“Malice?  Stalking?  A grudge?  Being a bit off your head?”

“Thanks.  What a lovely thought that is!”

“Well, I did say not to.”

“ Right.  Well.  I have, haven’t I?  So we’ll see, won’t we?”

“You will,” pointed out Nolan.

“That’s what I like about this partner lark,” said Andrew.  “It’s the solidarity.”

“You can always turn to your girlfriend for moral support, you know, if you’re not getting it from me,” suggested Nolan.

“Piss off!,” said Andrew pithily, now thoroughly rattled, because it had all seemed to come unravelled in the telling of it to the unimpressed officer on the line.

“Oh, it’ll be o.k. , mate,” soothed Nolan belatedly and not, Andrew thought, entirely convincingly.

 They broke off for lunch at this point and Nolan opened a bottle of wine left over from the party to go with it, because, he said, Andrew looked as if he needed to steady his nerves.  They drank a glass each while Nolan made them both fried cheese sandwiches topped off with an egg, the hood extractor fan clattering at full blast to clear away any incriminating fumes.  Fry ups were one of Billy’s betes noires and a give away blue fug was practically enough to have him threaten to get the kitchen refitted and the house redecorated.  Out of the house, Nolan was an addicted fast food hound, getting as many illicit fixes in as possible.  Andrew coughed.

“I think that’s probably done enough?” he suggested, wheezing through a burnt butter haze (the culinary secret was to butter all four sides of the bread for each cheese filled sandwich and then fry in butter additionally top and bottom).  “Where’s Billy?”

“Oh, it’s all right, he’s popped down his mum’s.  She’s twisted her ankle, so he’s staying a few days to help out.”

“Lucky for you.  ‘Look at my tiles, grease all over my grouting!’, “ imitated Andrew.

“Ha!  I know.  He’d go mad, wouldn’t he?”

“He would,” agreed Andrew, because Billy’s meltdowns, when he had them, were spectacular.

 They put the midday news on the television and watched the American President making one or other of his offbeat pronouncements, accompanied by his trademark hand gestures.

“What is that he does, all the time?” commented Andrew.

“It’s international sign language for ‘I’m a wanker’?” proposed Nolan.

“No, I think he’s  signalling to the alien mothership.”

“Yeah,” saying, “ ‘Hold off the invasion, this is brilliant!  These people are idiots!’”

“No.  I think he’s saying, ‘Come on down.  You don’t have to be mad to work here…’ ”

“ 'But it helps',” joined in Nolan.

 They finished the gooey fried cheese sandwiches and Nolan poured them another glass of wine.

“Mmmm”, said Andrew, holding his up to the light and then smelling the nose.  “I’m getting aromas of freshly singed cotton like a newly ironed shirt.”

Nolan laughed.

“What, from the wine?”  

“No, from that tea towel catching fire on the burner you’ve left on.”

“Shit!” exclaimed Nolan, leaping up and dashing it into the sink with cold water.

“You’re a danger to yourself,”  said Andrew.  “You really are.” 

He settled down comfortably.  If Billy were away, he could probably work here and stay the night, then they could carry on working from there tomorrow.  His flat was all right, but it was a base rather than a home and the pleasant mid-terrace his partner lived in was a much nicer environment, and sure enough, Nolan soon said,

“Stay over, if you fancy, Andrew and you can work from here tomorrow, too.  Leave the veranda place to the landlord to deal with Fungus the Bogeyman.”

“Yes, great.  Thanks.  I’d love to,” agreed Andrew.

 The news was puttering to its conclusion when they were both alerted by the presenter, now on the local news spot, taking on the cosily animated tone used for unusual or amusing items, saying:

 “Now, then.  How much do you know about Queen Victoria’s royal jewels?  There were many fabulous pieces which over time have been lost to the royal collection.  She didn’t bequeath them all.  Some were given away as gifts, some, disliked by descendents, were remodelled or sold off.  But now, part of one of her own favourite sets, the earrings, made with a necklace from diamonds given to her as a coronation gift by the Turkish sultan himself, have come back on to the market, here in our very own city.  A famous auction house has announced that they have come into their possession after being sold to them by a Russian oligarch and that a date will soon be announced for sale of the items.”

 The presenter paused here for a picture of the earrings to be displayed.  The detectives looked at one another, if they were honest, in some dismay.

“There were two words there I didn’t like the sound of,” said Andrew.

“Yes.  ‘Russian’ and ‘oligarch’! “ agreed Nolan.

“Mind you, it could all be just part of the hype….”

“Could be…”

“Well, let’s keep an eye on the news for the time being, shall we?”

“Not a word to our resident poet?”

“Not yet.   He’s not exactly the soul of discretion, is he?  Let’s hope he doesn’t see it, himself.”

 By evening, the item had made the national news and various pundits and experts were on arguing about whether the earrings, if genuine, should be sold at all, or just given back to the crown, or if to be sold, should somehow be legally ringfenced in the national interest, to prevent any sale back abroad, if that’s where they had been.  One alleged last sighting of them had been adorning a princess who had been assassinated by the bolsheviks, which speculatively shored up the Russian aspect of the sale origin.  It was also beginning to emerge that another specialist auction house had recently obtained another piece of Queen Victoria’s, the ‘Emerald and Diamond Tiara’.

 Andrew and Nolan finished the bottle of wine with dinner and opened another one, by now deciding that they both needed to steady their nerves.  A frozen lasagna later, they agreed, having trawled as much internet information as possible during the afternoon, that there was no doubt these could be genuine pieces but if Mr Keats’s account of the original Black Tie Black Friday Event were true, these objects of desire had also been the fraudulent subject of repeat selling.  Lie low, they agreed, like Mr Keats, and see if anything came to light about that in the press.

“It’s not as if anybody knows about us or our having hold of any of that money, is it?” said Andrew hopefully.

“Not as far as we know,” said Nolan.  “Depends on how reliable old faithful is, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but, they’re not going to pay any heed to him where he is, are they?  Even if he does start banging on. Who’s his audience?  The other residents?  Busy staff?”

“True,” agreed Nolan.  “Well, if we’re only waiting and seeing, we might as well have some more wine.  We’ve seen this bottle off.”

 Andrew agreed that this sounded good to him.  Billy rang and a slightly wrangling conversation ensued, when Billy got wind of the fact that they were having fun without him.  Nolan had put him on speakerphone, so the clink of bottles and glasses was unfortunately quite audible as Nolan refilled their drinks.

“Oh, nice!  I’m down here nursing my poor, frail old mother and you two are turning the place into a speakeasy!” objected Billy.

“Who’s old and frail?” Billy’s mother could be heard enquiring forcefully from the background.  “I’ve only twisted my ankle.  Watch it, or I’ll belabour you with my crutches, son.”

“You do that, Carol,” suggested Nolan.

“She hasn’t got any crutches,” said Billy.  “Look, don’t start frying up chips for supper pissed, will you?  You’ll burn the house down!”

“I won’t,” said Nolan.  “I’ll make oven chips.  How’s that?”

“What’s that bloody awful music you’re playing?” Billy demanded next.

“Mozart.”

“Mozart!  I didn’t think he’d done a jazz funk soul quartet?”

“One of his later works.”

“Oh, go away with you,” said Billy, exasperatedly affectionate.  “Night both.  Try to keep him sensible, Andrew.  I’m relying on you.”

“Absolutely!” replied Andrew with tipsily hearty fervour.  “Night, Billy.”

“Night, John Boy,” said Billy drily, ringing off.

(John Boy Walton was an old nickname they had for him, due to Andrew’s apparent wholesomeness, but it was an appropriate rejoinder to his singsong farewell just then).

Nolan laughed.

“He hasn’t called you that for ages!” he said.

“No, well, I’m safe now, aren’t I, now he knows I’ve got a girlfriend in the offing. He can stop worrying about me having secret designs on you when he’s not around to keep tabs.”

“Billy’s always worried about my fatal charms,” said Nolan.  “And why wouldn’t he be?”

“Big Head,” said Andrew.

 Later, Dee phoned.  Andrew checked the screen but didn’t answer.  They were, by this time slightly drunkenly, playing a re-released game of Crash Bandicoot on Nolan’s Playstation, reliving their youth.  Billy had bought Nolan a new one for Christmas, so, he told him, he could act his real mental age.

“Girlfriend?” asked Nolan, seeing him ignore the call.

“No.  Dee.  I’ll speak to her tomorrow.  I’m a bit slurry right now.”

“Dee….” said Nolan, forgetting, now, after numbers of drinks, that he hadn’t been going to say anything, but was prevented from blurting anything out by Andrew not noticing and saying,

“Oh, all right.  Look.  Here she is.  This is Sarah, the one you’re so curious about.”

Unexpectedly, Nolan was presented on Andrew’s phone with a smiling outdoor image of a young woman in an old green waxed jacket, medium length coppery brown hair blowing about on a bright, breezy day.  She had an attractive, friendly look and a frank expression.

“Aww, Andrew!” said Nolan, soppily.  “She looks lovely.  Thanks for showing her to me.”

“She is lovely, “ said Andrew, smiling.  “ God, you must be pissed, I haven’t seen you look like that since you won Monopoly last time we all played it.”

“I’m a very caring person, Andrew, and much misunderstood,” said Nolan mistily.

“Yep.  You’re pissed.  Oh, now look what you’ve done, you’ve just been squashed flat by the rolling boulder.  Never mind.  My go!”

“Tarnation!” said Nolan, handing over.

 They put their cases and the people they knew in relation to them out of sight and out of mind for the rest of the evening, played some more games, watched a film neither of them remembered the next day, and fell comfortably into their beds at a late hour, leaving the clearing up till morning, there being nobody there to to tell them off for doing so.

 Andrew was up first the following day and had finished clearing away whilst getting through two restorative cups of tea by the time he heard Nolan running the shower upstairs.  Nolan bounced down looking lively enough, though,  and proposed going to McDonald’s for breakfast.  Andrew declined, so Nolan went on his own while Andrew munched toast, texted a “good morning, how are you?” to Sarah and a “sorry I missed your call, I’ll bell you after college” message to Dee, then went into the house office to start up Nolan’s computer.  Nolan himself was going on to a freelance data cleansing job this morning, as they both supported the agency work with commissions in their specialist areas.  Since Billy was a well paid scientific researcher at one of the University institutes, this was less critical in Nolan’s case than in Andrew’s.

 Idly checking the inbox to see if any new jobs were coming their way,  he saw that one of the agencies had responded to Nolan’s enquiry.  A small, long established company, they responded that this appeared to be Malcolm Shrewsbury, now retired, but who had been a minor character actor with some good credits to his name back in the day, particularly as the butler ‘Bristow’, in a long running historical saga called ‘Merchants’, about the heyday of Victorian shipping magnates, when the firm had had the pleasure of representing him.  They attached a few stills of him in that character, then a younger man playing a much older one but clearly recognisable.

Andrew googled as much information as he could.  Malcolm Shrewsbury had been born Malcolm Froome, in 1937 or 1940 (depending on the accounts), in either Bristol or London.  So Andrew concluded that,  if he had been the source of his own biographical details, Mr Keats had always been unreliable as to fact.  He was unmarried and after a period of television work following cameos in box office successes like ‘Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines’, had fallen out of fashion and into obscurity.  His theatre acting was deemed too mannered for the modern taste and so he had not succeeded there in later life (Andrew smiled at this, because Mr Keats’s everyday self fitted that particular bill, too) but would occasionally come out of retirement to grace amateur local productions and lend them some professional skills, the piece claimed.  Now that was interesting, Andrew thought.  Was that a potential avenue to explore as to how Mr Keats had been picked up for the Black Tie Black Friday job?  Perhaps the old actor should try relaunching himself into toothpaste advertisement land, showing only his marvellously cosmeticised teeth, like the Cheshire Cat, Andrew speculated.   

 He noticed a repeat number of online gambling pop ups appearing enticingly on screen and made a mental note to have a word with Nolan about it.  If that were going on to any great extent, there was rather too much money currently accessible to Nolan in the joint business account.   Andrew’s phone alert chimed and he looked eagerly but neither Sarah nor Dee had responded to him yet.  It was Faisal, texting to ask if he would be free to meet at the mill on the following week’s Friday morning at 11.30am.  After checking the electronic diary on screen, he texted back to confirm that he would.  He helped himself to a few more of their printed business cards from a newly delivered box on Nolan’s desk, putting them loose into the inside pocket of his jacket, which he had just put on to go out, when Nolan arrived back from his job.

“Where are you off to?” he asked, observing the outdoor jacket and spare keys he’d told Andrew to use, clutched in one hand.

“I thought I’d drive down to the veranda, see if there’s been any action.  If not, I’ll ring the landlord again.  Hey, check out the email messages!  We've heard back from one of the agencies and we know now who Mr Keats really is.  Have a read up.  I won’t be long.  Shall I grab a couple of pasties?”

“No.  Sack that.  I’ll come with you.  We’ll go down the pub for lunch.  Pie and a pint.  That’s what we need.”

“We do?”

“Definitely.  Hair of the dog and all that.  I’ll have a quick look at that email first, though.”

He duly did and whistled thoughtfully.  “ I’ll message them back,” he said.  “  See if they’re still putting any odd jobs his way.   How did these Black Tie guys find and hire him?  That’s what we need to know about Malcolm.”

“Nolan….” said Andrew, standing patiently alongside.  “Those gambling pop ups….”

“It’s o.k.  I’m on top of it.  Only a bit of recreational when I’m bored.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure,” said Nolan airily, but Andrew was still not sure that he was sure of the matter himself.  He’d have to keep an eye on things, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to drop any hints to Billy.  It had almost, once, in bad times, been the finish of things between Billy and Nolan, but Nolan, in fear of that, had hastened back from the brink.  It wasn’t a thing whose hold Andrew understood himself, but Nolan just told him that this was because he was a dry old presbyterian by nature.

“You’re just a dour Scot, Andrew, “ he had accused jovially, to turn the subject, so Andrew had shrugged and left it.

 Billy, though, despite his vagaries and liking for an occasional scene, had stepped up to the mark and been wholly supportive of Nolan, which Andrew had admired and had seen as enlightening about the real depth of feeling between these two.  His phone chimed again and he smiled to see a greeting from Sarah.

“Right, come on!” said Nolan, finishing his message back to the theatrical agency.  “The Crown and Cushion awaits our pleasure.”

They went out together, checked thhe office over, which did smell of something pungently chemical, and noted the disappearance of the virulent looking growth on the ceiling cornice, so agreed that something had been done but it certainly wasn’t fit to sit and work in for a day or two.  Lunching at the pub, or what passed for it there, they debated on whether to speak to Mr Keats now or wait still, until the agency got back again or he contacted them again himself.

“I tell you what,” said Andrew.  “I’ll ring and arrange to visit their offices first, shall I?  Get a feel in person for what they might know about him?”

Nolan agreed that this was probably a good idea and Andrew’s phone chimed again, with Dee saying yes, would he please ring as she would like to talk to him.  Well, he thought, he could tell her he was going to talk to somebody next week at least, to satisfy her a little, although he didn’t plan on giving away to whom or what about to Dee, not wanting to reinvolve her thoughts again any further with any of those people, if it could be avoided.

Chapter 19 - Next Times

Back in college now, Dee’s class was absorbed in a figure modelling and sculpting project in a variety of mediums and there was a lot of mirth about out of scale heads and limbs, as likely to topple off as not.  Dee took a picture of her own attempt, meant to be representative of the classic mother and child motif and she sent it, finally, as a reply to Al, saying:

“ I got your message.  How do you like my new artistic effort?”

He responded after a time with,

“What’s that, the abominable snowman?” , with a crying laughing emoticon, so she wrote,

“Cheeky!” and somehow the little exchange made a shift back into their earlier rapport , confirming that their connection, however tenuous, was still present, because neither wanted to break it.

When she spoke to Andrew in the evening, she had decided not to tell him about Al having contacted her, or the fact that it had been in response to many earlier messages of hers.  Time enough for that if anything ever came of it and when Andrew said nothing about it himself, she knew that Nolan hadn’t told him, either.  She said instead that she just wanted a catch up, so they chatted about her course, what she was doing with friends, how he and Nolan were, and he said he’d pop round soon, to see how Wilbur was behaving.  He did add, though, that he might perhaps have had a chance to follow up on the contact he had mentioned to her before, in relation to finding more out about Al’s situation now, only to put her mind at rest and help her move on, though, he reiterated to her.  Reminded of it by the conversation, Dee then told him of the vivid dream she had had that time, about Al, to which Andrew prosaically replied:

“Yes.  Well.  It’s Winter over there too, you know, which shows you that it was just a dream, Dee.  You have him there on some kind of hot Summer day.”

“I know,” agreed Dee.  “But I thought it meant something.”

“It did.  It means he’s in your brainscape so sometimes you dream about him, that’s all.  It’s no more significant than that.”

“Mmm.  I suppose so,” said Dee, still privately disagreeing.

Nobody, she thought, understood the emotional  link between her and Al.  Well, she’d wait to find out what Andrew had to say next if he managed to glean any news of where Al was and how he was faring, because he had still said nothing to her himself on that subject.

She was going out that evening, finally having agreed (because she thought she should at least try to have her own life more) to something with the fellow art student who liked her.  They were going to see an upcoming band at one of the many studenty venues in the city.  It was in one of the railway arches, turned into a small club, near one of the main train stations.  It sat in a cobbled hollow, nesting amongst a cluster of other arches hosting little bars, eateries and a bowling alley. There was a big old Victorian pub, still with its original green tiles on its frontage, right alongside the steep stone steps leading up the hill to the station concourse itself.  It was a setting which reminded Dee of Stanley Mill, a surviving remnant of the past in the ever modernising city, both as real and unreal as a film set, dressed up now for today’s activities.  The student she was with reminded her a bit of Nathe, too, not so much in looks as in style, louchely alternative and as if he might play in a band himself.  

Her companion was one of those people whose surname had long ago become his nickname, so that everyone called him Finney and never the Brendan that was his first name.  He dyed his hair black periodically and wore it long, but was always likely to have a few inches of the startlingly blonde roots that was his natural colour carelessly showing.  With strong features, large grey eyes and emphatic eyeliner, he channelled shabby goth rocker combined with a touch of glam (tonight sporting a long woman’s fake fur coat well past its better days).  He twinned the look with battered old hats, the more disreputable the better, which gave him a kind of Artful Dodger air, too, although he was too tall and broad shouldered to be urchin like, slim as he still was at seventeen. Altogether, he cut a striking figure and Dee knew that she was envied by other girls on her course who admired Finney. Although he dressed to draw attention, he didn’t seem to notice especially when he got it and this Dee liked about him, it being a different brand of flamboyance from the one she was used to in Al, who used appearance to show the world his status and style.

After the band’s performance was over, they went next door for a beer and a burger and Dee found herself telling Finney that this all reminded her of somewhere else and began to talk of the mill and about having lived there, telling him about Frankie and Nathe.  Finney made an attentive listener because he was trying to attract her, finally commenting in the slightly rasping voice that was one of the distinctive things about his musicianish air (as well as the occasional toting around of an acoustic guitar which, in fact, he played quite well):

“I knew there was something interesting you were keeping quiet about.  You’re a bit of a mystery, aren’t you, Dee?”

He didn’t probe or ask any more though, so she didn’t really tell him very much about Al, or the set up with the brothers, picking up that, actually, Finney would rather not know about former boyfriends who might still be rivals for her affection, thank you.  Besides, it wasn’t wise to say too much about all that for other reasons.  They discussed the band, then their course and what they wanted to do next.  Dee didn’t know, still just going with the flow at present but Finney had ambitions to study Fine Art somewhere prestigious and then be picked up to exhibit as a new success.  

He didn’t seem to doubt that this would just happen and they had the usual kind of conversation about making your own luck and the need to go for it, because if you didn’t, what was the point? This was the kind of directionless confidence (really just verging on conceit) that Dee thought she had certainly encountered before, even if Finney was lauded by the tutors as a talent.  Perhaps he wasn’t so different from Al after all, then, just posturing in another way. Whilst trying to impress her, he sensed her interest cooling and wasn’t sure why but had enough perception to stop and finish the night on a positive note, thanking her for coming, saying it had been great to spend some time with her and he hoped they could do something again together soon.  Warming to this, because she had enjoyed herself with him, Dee told him that she had and that she’d like to go out with him again, so he suggested maybe a trip to the Art Gallery and lunch there for their next outing, which she agreed to.  Finney didn’t attempt more than a kiss on the cheek at parting, aware that  he should hold back and afterwards, at home, the proposed Art Gallery meetup reminded Dee of being with Al in London, their dutiful tour of the artistic greats and laughing about it, so that she ended the evening by thinking of Al, after all.

She and Finney went to the Art Gallery the following Friday, the same day that Andrew had agreed to meet with Faisal at the mill.  So, while Dee and Finney were studying the romance of the Pre-Raphaelites, Andrew was shaking hands with Faisal and the two of them were going once more into their established patters.  

In the Pre-Raphaelite gallery, however, something had happened.   A famous painting, Hylas and the Nymphs, had been removed, allegedly to start a modern conversation about the sexual representation of women in art.  Dee and Finney both thought this was ridiculous.

“It’s a Greek Myth, and that’s only  one model as all the nymphs !  She was a grown woman, not an adolescent girl,” protested Finney.

“I know, Elizabeth Siddal, she was one of their wives wasn’t she? Rossetti’s.”

“Yes.  I wonder if they’ll take down the other one she modelled for, Ophelia?  How’s that one for an image of female sexuality?  Suicidal woman goes bonkers for love and chucks herself in the river.  Probably all right, though.  She’s wearing a dress in that one, isn’t she, so it’s all respectable, suicide or not.  That seems to be what they object to, the nude female body. What a bunch of hypocrites!” said Finney, making, Dee thought, some very good points.

“Besides, they’re not passive sex objects,  are they?” she put in.  “ They’re luring him in, the water nymphs.  Do they even know what it’s about, these curator people?”

“Just being provocative and jumping on a pseudo feminist bandwagon if you ask me,” said Finney.

People were asked to put comments on post-it notes, so Finney wrote:

‘Where’s Mr Tickle and his bevvy of bathing beauties?’ by way of a raspberry blown at misguided puritanism.

“Mr Tickle?” asked Dee.

“Yeah, didn’t  you see the length of his arms?” he said, and he flapped his own about.

Finney followed this up by flouncing his hair around and affecting a sultry pout like Jane Morris, posing before the various paintings hung about the room.  Dee dutifully laughed but was privately offended on their behalf by his mockery, because she had always loved those pictures and their bright colours had certainly influenced her acid abstracts. But Finney was busy being above such a popular line of art and didn’t notice, getting a bit carried away with himself now, unfortunately for him.

Meanwhile, Faisal was looking coolly at Andrew on the rooftop garden, where a silence had fallen.  Dee’s plants had all died in their pots and Andrew was just realising that he had pushed his luck by giving away more knowledge than he should have had about the mill’s former activities while trying to draw Faisal into a conversation where he could ask about Al somehow. He had asked to have another look at the place from up here and after admiring and discussing various vantage points for the half an hour or so they had been up there, with him encouraging Faisal to go over all his plans for the place again,  had said,

“What happened to the club down below there?  Didn’t you run it with your cousins, Faisal?”

“It’s closed.  Had its day,” replied Faisal, suddenly warily concise.

“That’s a pity.  I came to it a couple of times, you know.  It was one of the things I liked about the idea of living here.”

“Did you?” returned Faisal, with a slight change of expression from personable joviality.  “I wouldn’t have thought it was your kind of thing, George?”

“Oh, yes,” asserted Andrew, committed now.  “I enjoyed it.  So what else are you up to these days, you and your cousins, well, one cousin I suppose, now?” he added unintentionally, out of nerves, having seen Faisal’s look altering.

Faisal did not reply initially and Andrew suddenly became aware of just how alone with him he was up here at this high spot, so easy to be toppled from in some further unfortunate accident, perhaps.  After a moment or two, Faisal said,

“You’re very curious.  I didn’t know you were so well up on my family as all that, George?”

“Oh, I just wondered.  I thought it was a nice set up, you know,  because you all seemed to get on so well.  I chatted to, now, was it, Al, he was called?  Friendly sort,”  Andrew blundered on.

This description, being wrong on all counts apart from Al’s name, was only digging Andrew a deeper hole in his attempts to pass over the revelation that, either he knew of Rashid’s death somehow, or that the other cousin he claimed to have known then was no longer around to work with Faisal.

“You talked to Al,” repeated Faisal.

“Well, yes, a bit,” said Andrew, smiling guilelessly and thinking fast.  “Actually, I knew his girlfriend better.  We got chatting when she worked in that coffee bar, Dream.  In fact, I bought one of her paintings that she had displayed there.  Now I come to think of it, she told me about the mill and the club back then, so I popped along.”

This seemed to work, eating in Dream and buying paintings being more like the kind of thing George Cavendish might do  and it was perhaps conceivable that he might have got to know of the mill and the club through Dee, thought Andrew, hoping he had done something towards retrieving the situation.  Faisal, (who had stepped closer as Andrew tried to stand his ground and not retreat towards the low parapet)  seemed to relax a little.

“So….” he said.  “You talked to Al, and you talked to Dee, did you?”

“Yes, kind of.  Well, only in passing, as you do.  I was taken by the painting, you see.”

Faisal suddenly gave his warm chuckle.

“I never thought I’d meet someone brave enough to buy one of those paintings,” he commented.

“Art’s an investment too, you know.  Originals can turn out to be worth fortunes later on,” said Andrew, trying to shore up his investor credentials.

“Some can,” remarked Faisal drily.  “ I thought you knew what you were doing, George.  I might be starting to lose faith in you.”

This sounded a bit double edged, so Andrew tried to change the subject.  He moved across to the door to the steps back down to the penthouse by way of securing an escape route, saying,

“So, this fabulous flat, Faisal, is it still up for grabs?”

“Not quite yet,” answered Faisal.  “I’m afraid it’s occupied for a few days at present.  By my cousin, as it happens.   It looks like he’s just come back.  His car’s down there.   Perhaps you’d like to reacquaint yourself?”

(“Oh, fuck!”  thought Andrew, this unexpected news making things worse than ever for him).

“He probably won’t remember me,” he said casually with a smile, “among so many.  It was ages ago.”

“It was, but let’s see,” said Faisal, “I think he’s back in now.  Come on through.  Oh, by the way, don’t mention his girlfriend.  Obvious reasons, as you’ll see.  They broke up a while back.”

“Oh,” said Andrew.  “Right enough.  After you.”

He hoped his easily colouring cheeks hadn’t given away his shock, but it was cold and windy on the roof, so that could account for it, with any luck .  He moved  aside to let Faisal go first and had no option but to follow him down into the huge living space below.

“Al!” shouted Faisal as they went in.  “It’s me and a visitor, showing him round because he’s looking at buying a flat in the mill!”

 One of the dividers across the far end opened and Al stepped out, behind him a young woman, heavily pregnant, who quickly covered her head and face with a scarf as Faisal and Andrew entered.  Andrew saw Al flash her an angry glance as she did so and he nodded her to leave them to it, which she quickly did, closing the partition again.  Al himself looked sullen, bored and discontented, Andrew picked up.  Not a happy arranged marriage, then, he concluded.

“Hi.  George Cavendish,” he said brightly, going to shake Al’s hand.  “Sorry to disturb.”

“It’s fine,” said Al absently, not really looking at him, his mind still clearly on whatever disagreement he and his wife had been in the middle of.  Faisal spoke to him but not in English and Al looked at Andrew more closely.

“Actually, I do recognise you now,” he said.  “We probably did talk in the club at some time.”

Out of context, he hadn’t immediately placed Andrew and his thoughts were elsewhere still. Faisal nodded an o.k., which Andrew was pleased to see and the cousins had another private exchange in low voices, then in English, Faisal said,

“All wives want babies, right?” flashing a man to man smile at Andrew.

“I don’t,” said Al.

“You just want more time together first.  Newlyweds, eh?” said Faisal, flashing another grin at Andrew.  “Come on, George.  I’ll show you down.”

Relieved that the moment of danger seemed to have passed, Andrew followed.  They went to go down in the lift and, somewhat to Andrew’s dismay, Al joined them, mooching moodily and half heartedly into the lift, then clearly tried to buck up for business purposes, starting to talk up the apartment proposals too.  As they crossed the yard, he said, suddenly reminded, giving an alert look to ‘George’.

“Hold on, you’ve looked round here before about the flats, haven’t you?  I remember seeing you now.”

“I told you that already, said Faisal, laughing.  “He’s had a think and come back.”

Al abruptly dropped the subject, having remembered that this was the man he’d seen with Faisal and asked Nathe about, and that that wrong conclusion he had made then had led directly to Rashid’s death and his own downfall.  Looking uncomfortable, he said,

“Nice to see you.  Well, I’ll leave you both to it,”  went quickly back to his car and roared off again, the very picture of someone glad to escape.

Neither Faisal nor Andrew knew what exactly had come into Al’s head, not having been in the full picture of previous chains of events but it was clear they had caught him at a bad moment anyway, so Faisal, looking after Al, said,

“Things on his mind, sorry about that.  Now, then.  We’ll need to revisit terms, won’t we?”

Andrew, fully aware that he had made a mistake, was anxious to get away before Al came back, and the cousins could confer further, so when Faisal said, keen to secure him as a buyer with what there already was and he knew he wanted,

“The penthouse flat will be free for sale .  My cousin and his wife are only there briefly.  They live with his brother in Pakistan, and they’re sorting a visiting base over here as we speak. They’re only in the country a few days for that,”  Andrew  was quick to jump at the opportunity to say,

“Tell you what, that is the one I really want.  It’s all ready for action.  Why don’t you give me the word when that’s definitely coming up and I’ll make sure to firm things up permanently with you?”

They shook hands on it and Andrew agreed that at that point, he would put down the deposit but didn’t want to pressure anyone at this stage.  Give the young couple time to get sorted, he said.

“All right, George,” Faisal had to agree, having made the suggestion himself. “ If that’s how you want to handle it.  By the way,” he added.  “Are you still in contact with your young artist?”

“Me?  No,” said Andrew.

Faisal just nodded thoughtfully.  What was that all about, wondered Andrew, who began to panic again as Faisal continued:

“Since you liked her paintings, you’ll be be glad to know she’s at art college now, making something of herself.  Maybe your investment will pay off.”

“Oh, that’s good, then,” said Andrew.  “You, er, you’re still in touch yourself then?”

“Not directly,” said Faisal.  “But I’m one of those who likes to keep an eye on things, and people.”

“Kind of you,” said Andrew as if losing interest.  “Well best be off,” he checked his watch to indicate he had somewhere to be.  “Thanks so much for seeing me.”

“Not at all,” said Faisal.  “ Until next time.”

He watched on as Andrew drove away himself, feeling perturbed.  Had he been given some kind of warning off, or was Faisal just checking he was in no danger of telling Dee Al was back and making sure there wasn’t any likelihood of it?  Faisal needn’t worry about that, thought Andrew.  He had absolutely no intention of telling Dee where Al was, an Al who, even Andrew could see, looked all the more attractive for being unsettled, his good looks sharpened up by the restless edge of someone wanting more.  He only hoped that Al would have no opportunity to contact Dee, and would be occupied in his time here by the family who had wanted to separate them and by having to be with his wife.  Andrew would go as far as to tell Dee he’d spoken to Faisal, he thought, and that he’d found out Al and his wife lived with Zulf in Pakistan, which was part of the story, and the only part he wanted Dee to know of.

In the Art Gallery, Finney had been propounding on a theory that what devalued art was not its content, but having its images made too familiar, so that you couldn't see them properly any more; appropriated by commercialism, the media, mass produced prints, or transfers on to tea towels, placemats and pottery, for example, he said dismissively.  Dee countered this with some spirit, saying,

" So, only people who think they're artists should come and look at paintings, should they, not the plebs?"

"I didn't say that!" he objected, intuiting that he had indicated personal hubris, which had not been his intention.  "What I meant was, say, like the Pre-Raphs, you've seen them everywhere else so often, on posters and stuff, that you can't really see them properly in the gallery unless you understand what they're about."

"I do," said Dee.  "I think they're inspirational.  What you're saying is, they're only for the trained eye.  I don't agree.  What makes you think that just because you can draw you can see more than someone who can't?  Art's for everyone.  Besides, if you're interested, you can read up about all the symbolism in the paintings and come back and look again." (Dee was not the child of socialist teachers for nothing).

"I'm not dissing the Pre-Raphs, Dee.  I'm only using them as an example because we're looking at them.  Besides, I just think they're kind of stilted.  I like figures to flow." 

Finney specialised in life drawing and had produced some quite lovely nudes where he concentrated on the roundness of flesh and musculature, like Michelangelo, a tutor had flatteringly said, spotting the source of his ambition.

"They do flow!" objected Dee.  "Look at those beautiful draperies, the hair, the poses, the glorious colours!"

" I didn't realise these were such a favourite of yours," he said, belatedly realising his error. "I was only being honest about my humble opinion.  Is that so wrong?"

He took off his hat and swept a low bow with it, doing a courtly flourish with his other hand and said ironically.

"Will the lady accept my sincere apology?" making her laugh and think, well, maybe she was being a bit stuffy about it after all.

"Stop it, you fool!" she said.  "Everyone's looking."

"Come on," he said.  "Let's go to the top and have a look at the installation."  

He knew he was on safer ground here, as they had both agreed they rarely got the point of these and that if anything could be both something and nothing, these had the potential for it.  Finney had amused her with tales of his former school art teacher, for whom these modernist efforts were meat and drink, but who had been debunked in his eyes when he and his friend, supposed to be working together on one but unable to be bothered with it, had put tinfoil shapes round cardboard boxes, claimed it represented the often visited conundrum  of whether the Apollo moon landing had been real or not and had been greeted with completely undeserved acclaim.

"So, you see," he had said, "If they think they see what they're looking for, you can get away with anything.  That's why I like doing what I call real art, paintings and drawings of people.  That's what I see as the challenge to really capture something," and Dee, although impressed by his evident commitment to this and his genuine passion about it, had just said, drily,

"It's a good job you can draw, then, isn't it?" in a kind of backhanded compliment.

Finney was finding Dee difficult to win over easily, which he liked.  Accustomed to creating a kind of awe in the girls who fancied him, being apt to put him on a happily accepted artistic pedestal, and used to being pursued as rather a romantic figure, he was finding himself having to put in considerable efforts with Dee, who never seemed prepared to do any such thing.  Their debates were on strongly equal terms, because if she disagreed,  she readily did so and they were both eloquent in their views, which for Finney was a bit of a breath of fresh air, instead of getting the dreamy eyed acquiescence to his pronouncements that he was accustomed to.  He was getting there, though, he felt, she did like him and they had much in common.  Dee had a strongly imaginative inner life, as he did, and he was very interested by her as well as attracted.  He could see the original vivacity of her abstracts and she was now quickly developing technical skills, expanding her range and concepts.  Dee, getting to know him better herself, was responding in kind, seeing that here was a person who had a lot about him, brightly interested and inquisitive, someone who thought about things and had some depth to him behind the decadent image he cultivated.  She enjoyed being in his company and found him eccentrically attractive, but of course, now, she was waiting to hear again from Al.

The installation was a series of videos about something, not really an artistic medium either of them was interested in, so they had gone down for lunch in the echoey gallery restaurant.  Service was slow and their soup was cool already when they sat down.  Finney took a taste,

" Hmmm.  Soup of the day.  What is it?  It's really bland," he said.

"Mine's cold," said Dee.

"So's mine."

A toddler's screams bounced bitterly off the ceiling, killing conversation with a vehement protest about something.

"Maybe his soup's cold as well," commented Finney.  "Let's leave this and go somewhere else.  There's a really good place I know.  Great atmosphere.  You'll love it."

So, quite by chance, Dee found herself taken back to Dream, where she exclaimed to Finney,

" I know this place!  I used to work in here and they hung up my paintings for me when I lived in the mill.  I sold some you know."

"Wow.  Really?  You're amazing!" said Finney.  "You never told me that."

"No, well...." said Dee.

"How many did you sell?  Tell me about it?"

"I did some on commission for a woman who wanted me to do  a series, Andy Warhol style, and then I sold another one of my own.   Look - they've still got my others up!"

They went to look, he duly admired them and they got lunch and sat down, Dee enjoying the fact that she had taken Finney by surprise by having already been a success out in the world, he quite entranced by it and wanting to know more about her commissioned work.  They were, then, deep in animated conversation when Andrew, who had been reminded of Dream at the mill and decided to call in for lunch himself, happened across them.  He was pleased to see them looking like a young couple together and explained his presence to Dee with,

"I still come in sometimes.  Nice place to eat.  I was working in the area this morning.  Anyway, you're in company.  Catch you later."

Glad to see her with Finney (whom she had mentioned to him and who clearly wanted Dee to himself), he tactfully took his meal to another table on the other side, so as not to cramp their style.  They were not facing the door, but he was, and so it was, that they were all in there when Al himself walked purposefully in, a horrified Andrew saw (ducking out of sight, shielded by people at a table in front of him).  Al scanned the staff in a quick recce for Dee (not, thought Andrew by his way of doing it, for the first time since coming back).  Not seeing her among them, he turned to go out again, when quite unexpectedly, he saw her at her table.

Andrew saw a startled surge of real love light Al up at the sight of her.  But Dee was laughing at something Finney (who was looking at her with unmistakable desire) had just said, which Al saw as he was about to call to her, so he hesitated and what Dee caught, looking up just then, was a look of such troubled anguish on Al's face, so extraordinarily presented before her, that she cried out as he banged emotionally out of the place, jumped in his car outside and drove off.  Dee burst into tears from shock and Andrew came over very quickly.

"What just happened?" asked a baffled Finney.  "Who was that?"

Andrew shook his head at him significantly to indicate, not now, leave it and said.

"Let me get her out of here.  She'll be in touch to explain Finney.  I'll take her home.  Come on, Dee."

Finney didn't protest, too bewildered and uncertain about the emotional storm that had just broken over him.  Andrew led the sobbing girl out to drive her back, deeply regretting an encounter that could put paid to any fledgling relationship Finney was trying to develop with Dee.  The timing could not have been worse.  Al had come straight to look for Dee, after rowing with his wife, and now, he had seen her.  What next?  So Andrew found himself, against his wishes, compelled to tell Dee about the morning at the mill once she had started to calm down again.

"Listen, Dee," he said.  "Whatever you think you feel for one another, he has no right to you now.  I'm sorry, but he's here only for a short visit, and he's with his wife.  I saw her with him.  They live with Zulf in Pakistan and that's where they're based.  Faisal told me that.  He is not coming back, and not for you.  They're planning a family," he added, because clearly, whatever Al had said this morning, that would be required of him.

"He was looking for me!" exclaimed Dee.

"Yes but he didn't expect to find you.  I think he just couldn't resist checking Dream out."

"He saw me with him, Finney, but it's not....it isn't....."

"It doesn't matter if it is or it isn't, Dee.   That young man has no right to any attachment to you or jealousy of you.  He can't pick up where he left off!  You understand that, don't you?"

Dee nodded, recognising a truth she had perceived herself but didn't give away the fact that they were both, or had been, already in contact.  She knew Al.  He'd rage but he'd wonder and then he would ask her.  He wouldn't leave things at that, not Al.  The look on his face had told her that he still saw her as his.  Al might have a wife but not by choice. He had told her to wait for him, hadn't he?  He mustn't think she had found another man for her own life.  She would tell him that Finney was just a student on her course, that's all.  She would make sure she did that, if only by message, as soon as she could.

"I can't believe I just saw him," she said next.  "After all this time.....and for it to be like that!"

"I know you're feeling it, Dee, and it was a really, really unfortunate coincidence that you went in there and he came looking but I'm glad you were with Finney and that I was there.  Think how vulnerable you would have been, if you'd seen him alone?  And Dee, there's nothing he can do permanently.  His life is set elsewhere.  He'll be here and gone again in days."

Dee said nothing, because days were long enough for them to find one another again, at least for a while.

“Listen,” said Andrew, as they neared her parents’ house.  “You look as if you’ve been crying, which will upset the folks at home.  Why not come to Nolan’s with me?  He’s there today and Billy’s at work.”

Dee hesitated and then refused, because Nolan did know that Al had contacted her and she didn’t want an encounter between the three of them when he told Andrew, and Andrew realised that she had still kept it from him, even now.

“Thanks, but, nobody will be home yet.  I’ll be fine by the time they are.  I’ll take the dog out, clear my head.”

“All right,” agreed Andrew.  “Shall I come?”  He was reluctant to leave her, not trusting that she wouldn’t do something rash about Al as soon as she could.

“Yes, please do,” said Dee, feeling the need of his moral support and needing some time to think anyway about what she could say to Al.

Andrew used the walk to ask her a bit about Finney (hoping that she wouldn’t cast him out in some knee jerk response to the sight of Al) and then he told her a little about Sarah, finally and showed Dee the photo Nolan had seen, so that, for courtesy’s sake, she had to show an interest and allow him to at least try to divert her.  But all that was really in her head was that Al had come back and had come looking for her.  He would again, once he’d calmed down, she had no doubt of it.  Nothing was ever clear cut between them was it? Another thought intruded.  Did Gemma know, too, had she seen him?  The old treadmill of her feelings in relation to Al churned back into action; desire, uncertainty, jealousy and love, as constant as tides washing in and out.

Andrew, seeing that there was no way round it, came back to the subject of Al again.

“I didn’t know he was there, Dee, truly.  It was Faisal I contacted.  Like I told you, I’m supposed to be interested in the flat at the mill for myself.”

“Did you talk to him?  You saw his wife, you said.  What was she like?”

“She was only there for a moment.  I don’t really know what she looked like, she put a scarf across her head and face and then went back in behind the partition.

“Did they look happy”

“I’ve no idea, Dee.  I expect so.”  Andrew had no intention of telling her otherwise and was only glad that she had not seen Al’s face when he first saw Dee, as Andrew had.  It had taken him aback, because Andrew’s concept of Al was that he did not have such a depth of feeling for Dee.  Al’s second reaction, on realising she was there with another young man, was more in keeping with Andrew’s view of him, and that was the one he thought of when he said next.

“ Like I said, Faisal was joking with him about starting a family soon.”

“Faisal was.”

“Mmm,” said Andrew, seeing his mistake.

“What did Al say?”

“Not a lot,” replied Andrew, avoiding the question. “He went off out again.”

“She sounds traditional,” Dee said next.  “Al won’t like that.”

“Al’s married to her, like it or not,” said Andrew.  “Can I remind you that Al, fundamentally, will always do what the family wants.”

Dee turned to look at him.

“He has done,” she agreed.  “That doesn’t mean he always will.”

“It does,” said Andrew.  “When the crisis came, that’s what he did.  I’d advise you to try and remember that.  You must think of yourself, Dee.” He felt this would be a lost cause, though, if she were put to the test and, certainly, at present, the likes of Finney would be no match for a distraught and demanding Al.  Given what Andrew had seen, he suspected it was a test that she would be put to, sooner or later.   Unless, as he hoped, Al’s prideful ways and misreading of the scene between Dee and Finney made him hold back.  “Listen, Dee,” he went on.  “That’s the last time I’ll go there for you or speak to any of them.  Even before Al appeared, I could tell Faisal was getting suspicious about me.  They’re really not people I want to put myself at risk with,” and he thought of his fear on the rooftop with a shudder.

“Of course not, Andrew,” said Dee.  “You’ve done more than enough for me, a lot more, honestly, than you ever should have.  I’m grateful.  Really.”

And the other unspoken ‘of course’, thought Andrew, was that now, she wouldn’t need him to do any more, because he had told her where Al was.  He gave her a serious look.

“I don’t want to be picking up the pieces again, Dee, do you understand me?”

“I do,” she said.   “Don’t worry.  I won’t trouble you like that.  I promise.”

“That’s not what I meant.  I’m always your friend.  You know that.”

“You’ve been a very good friend, Andrew,” said Dee.

Past tense, noted Andrew, another bad sign.  Well, he had done his best.  He said goodbye to her back at the house, patted an unmoved Wilbur on the head (Wilbur had never shown the slightest recognition of his erstwhile benefactor) and went home to ponder on whether or not he should forewarn Dee’s parents.  If he did, though, what could they do but worry, and also Dee would lose her trust in him.  Best fall back on his native caution, he thought, give it a few days.  Maybe he’d speak to Ed next week, give him a private alert to be on the lookout.  

He was going down to visit Sarah again this weekend and would be setting off shortly.  The following week was booked up with several other things, accountancy work, the meeting he’d arranged with Mr Keats’s (or Malcolm Shrewsbury’s) theatrical agency and seeing Mr Keats himself once he knew more and whether  Nolan could update them on the world of auction dates, as the prospective sales progressed.  He decided to phone Nolan before he set off.

“Nolan,” he began.  “Something not great’s happened,” an introduction which Nolan described as understatement of the year, when Andrew told him of the day’s events.

“So, you went off on your own to see Faisal at the mill and for starters he’s on to something not right.”

“I think so, but he doesn’t know my real name.”

“Yeah……...And now Al’s back and he’s seen Dee.  Who does know.”

“She’s never told them about us.”

“Not then.”

“I don’t think we’re the ones in danger.”

“Not as yet.  Right now, she is.  I suppose she told you that he’d been in contact lately, told her to wait for him like last year.  Just one message and just that.”

“What? No!  She didn’t!” exclaimed Andrew, astonished that she hadn’t .

“Ah,” said Nolan.  “She told me.  Swore me to secrecy and I was pretty happy at the time that she wasn’t going to respond to him.”

“Maybe she didn’t,” said Andrew.

“Maybe…..” said a cynical Nolan.

“Events have overtaken, anyway. He’s back, if only briefly.  Look, we can’t do a lot, can we? Will you give her a call over the weekend?  I’m at Sarah’s.  I can’t exactly be ringing up lovelorn teens when I’m there can I?”

“No, you can’t. All right.  I’ll be agony uncle.”

“It’s a real shame,” said Andrew.  “She was with this lad from her course, on a day out and he obviously really likes her.  It seemed as if it was going quite well, too from what I could see. They were getting on and seemed to have plenty of rapport with one another. ”

“Good looking?”

“I guess so, in an arty kind of way.”

“Sounds more like Dee’s type than Al already,” said Nolan.  “By the way…..”

“Yes.”

“You’re a blundering, blithering idiot,” said Nolan, conveniently never having told Andrew about putting himself in the way of danger with the cousins in the past.

“I know.  I’m really sorry I went.”

"How did Al look?"

"To be honest, incredibly vital, full of angsty presence."

" She'll go for him, then, again, " said Nolan. "Take your size twelves off down to your girlfriend's for the weekend, and try to stay out of trouble for a couple of days.”

“I will.”

“Leave the white charger tied up, won’t you?  In case I have to ride to Dee’s rescue.  If he comes for her, you do know she will totally go for it, don't you?”

“I hope not.”

“Me too.  But, you've described two people to me.  One has ultimate sex appeal for Dee. The other is still trying to get through to her it sounds like.  We can't second guess if the lad will win out in the end, can we?   Allure's not allied to intelligent choices, is it?    So, you're off shortly?  Where does Sarah live again?”

“I didn’t say.”

“Oh…..you didn’t say….”

“Bye, then,” said Andrew, ringing off.

“Tosser,” said Nolan mildly, to mobile silence.

Dee was in her room and had sent a one liner to Al.

“It’s not what you thought.  I am waiting, like last year.”

Following that, she thought she ought to apologise to Finney for leaving him in the lurch like that. She braved trying to phone him but was relieved when he didn’t answer, so texted him instead, explaining that she had seen her ex out of the blue and that this had upset her.  “It’s a long story,” she wrote.  “Andrew’s a family friend and that’s why he took me home.  Thanks for the day.  I’m sorry it got spoilt at the end. Dee x”

Finney didn’t answer until very much later, in the early hours, having gone out to get drunk with friends in his disappointment and when he did, due to that, it was with a misjudged and maudlin message.

“Don’t worry.  I know when I’m not wanted,”  he texted back.

Finney was not as childish, lacking in empathy or as self pitying as that suggested, by a long way, and it was an answer, having forgotten it until the following hangover-ridden day, which he much regretted but when he looked at it and groaned, Dee still hadn’t seen it.

Dee, mostly keeping to her room, not trusting that her preoccupation wouldn't alert, at least her mother, to being concerned, had checked her computer and her phone at intervals over the evening but heard nothing back from either of her prospective menfolk, not entirely to her surprise.  By about eleven p.m., she switched everything off, deciding that it would be better to be incommunicado for her own peace of mind.  If she wanted to, she could always go to the mill herself, perhaps tomorrow, couldn’t she, if she had still heard nothing back?  She could send a message saying what time she would be outside, but perhaps she wouldn’t do that. Chasing Al down was not the best of ideas, given the company he was in.  Her glimpse of him, brief as it was, had been shattering, but she thought again that the look on his face had told her that, married as he was, he still viewed Dee as being entirely his.  She thought of his message, that she hadn’t answered at the time, resenting its assumption.  Perhaps she had misread it, she wondered now.  Al always went directly to the heart of the matter, didn’t he? He had sent her one succinct message in reply to all of hers because there had, finally, been a point in doing so.  He was coming back.  Which meant that he would definitely want to find her again.  She could wait, or she could take the initiative.  The choice was hers.

The following morning, after breakfast, Dee was still undecided.  She had remained at home while her parents and Sophie went out for the day, saying she’d have to get on with things as she was babysitting for them in the evening, when Ed was coming back at some point for a few days.  She fell back on her usual giving herself time to consider recourse, taking up the lead and clipping it on to Wilbur, to  take him out for a walk.  Turning off the street outside to the main road and crossing, she went straight down the slope to the bridle path, taking the direction where the sun would be at that time of day, because otherwise it was dank and cool in the valley bottom where the old railway had once run. Bikes swished past them on the tarmac path, determinedly heading for the big supermarket a mile or so along, backpacks at the ready.  Self seeded young ash trees crowded the steeply sloped sides leading up to the fenced off back gardens of the streets above.  Some tiny, perky birds flitted in fits and starts among the wild bushes at the sides of the path, signalling that Spring might, some time soon, poke its snout out to feel the sun.  There wasn’t much warmth in it yet, but it was bright and shining towards Dee, so that there was a wet shimmer above the ground, with too much of a misty glare all round to see far ahead clearly.

She heard Wilbur, further along from her, fussing and barking and could just make him out dashing about at the foot of the next barrier (these were set at intervals to prevent off roaders and motorbikes speeding through), against which a figure was dimly silhouetted against the pale glow. 

“Wilbur!” she shouted, shading her eyes against the sun to see better.  “Come here!”

Wilbur didn’t.  Coming closer, she saw the dog making a nuisance of himself, scampering around someone ignoring him.  Wilbur was like cats.  Try to get him to like you, not a chance, but be someone who actively didn’t want to know him and he fixated on being petted.   

“I’m sorry!” she called, to the indistinct outline of somebody.   “He’s a bit of a pest but he’s friendly!” 

She hurried forward to contain the situation and the person replied, as she came up to them. 

“Looking for me, Dee?” said a very familiar voice.

There he was, in jeans, brilliant white t-shirt, black leather jacket and his mirror shades, leaning on the barrier as he had on the allotment fence all that time ago. 

“Al!” she cried out, overcome, standing before him amazed.  “Oh, Al!” 

“Come to me, heart’s desire,” he said.  “You don’t know how I’ve missed you.” 

He said it quite straightforwardly and, of course, she did go to him.  They held each other for a long time, until Al said, 

“Lose the mutt, can’t you?   It’s not the most romantic soundtrack, is it?” 

He looked down at the frantically yapping animal and Dee laughed. 

“Wilbur, you horrible dog!  Shut up!” 

She managed to get the lead on him and tied him up at the barrier, while she and Al, their arms round one another, walked a short distance and held each other again closely.  She pulled off his sunglasses. 

“I can’t see your eyes,” she said, “with those.” 

He smiled back, tucking them in his pocket. 

“Now you can,” he said, kissing her again. 

Neither of them broached any other subject, being too beguiled by each other’s longed for proximity to break the dream.  Finally, Dee said, 

“How did you….?” 

“Find you?  The usual way.  I followed you.  I was in the car outside hoping to see you and catch you alone, then you came out with that and shot off down here.  I took a look, worked out where you were headed, drove along a bit and came down the next path ahead of you.” 

Dee smiled, drinking him in. 

“You came to me first.” 

“I said I would, didn’t I?” 

“Yes,” she agreed. 

“Take the dog back, Dee.  Then come out again.  I’ll be round the corner.  You know where.” 

“I do,” she said.  “I can’t believe it.  You won’t, just vanish again?” 

“No,” he replied.  “I’ll be there, waiting.” 

And he was. 

“This feels like deja vu,” said Dee as he pulled away with her beside him.  “Where are we going?” 

“Somewhere we can be alone for a while,” said Al.  “We’ll grab some time, what we can while we can?” 

She wanted him too much to question it.  Other decisions could come later, she thought, and he took her to one of his brother’s places, currently tenant empty. 

“We painted this.  Didn’t we?” asked Dee, looking around. 

“I dunno.  Can’t remember.  Probably.  Come here, “ he said urgently. 

It was an exquisitely passionate reunion.  After a long time, lying over her afterwards and raised on his arms to look down at her, Al said, 

“You are still mine, aren’t you, Dee?” 

“Yes.” 

“Just mine?” 

“Just yours.” 

They kissed again and then he asked her, as she had known he would, about Finney. 

“He’s a student on my course, that’s all, and yes, he likes me, but we’re not together, not a couple, just friends.” 

Reassured, Al was now magnanimous enough to say, 

“I’d understand, you know, if you’d decided to try with someone else.” 

“No, you wouldn’t,” said Dee.  “You’d want to kill them.” 

Al laughed. 

“Well, yeah,” he said.  “There is that.  Anyway, I won’t have to, will I?” 

“No,” said Dee. 

Al then said after a moment, not so much in self justification as in statement, 

“You know how it is for me, Dee.  I know you were told.  I didn't want it.  I had to.  After, you know, Rashid…..I had to fall in line.” 

“You just left me, Al,” Dee said sadly.  “After all you’d said to me!  You just left me.” 

“I didn’t, Dee.  They hauled me off, right at once, after Faisal took me to Hamid’s.  I didn’t so much as breathe my own air till the airport.   Hamid already had my passport.  They switched tickets.  (Zulf’s got plenty of bribery influence).  And that was it. They took my phone off me. I wasn’t even allowed to say goodbye.” 

“You didn’t try to, Al.  You followed Faisal out without a murmur.” 

“I was in shock!  I expected to be back.” 

“I don’t know, Al,” said Dee.  “I remember every second of that day, and all the days afterwards.” 

“Dee, I’m so, so sorry, my love.  Losing you was the very worst thing.  Such bad times.” 

“Very bad times,” agreed Dee.  They stopped talking to caress one another again in the delight of being together.  Then Dee asked, “Where are you supposed to be now, Al?” 

“Here, as it happens.  Checking it out for being mine for visiting.  It’s not far from Hamid’s, or Faisal’s.” 

“Yours.  Yours and your wife’s, you mean.”  Al’s face clouded at the words.  “And right by all of them!” she added. 

“It’s not next door!” he objected.  He sighed.  Dee stroked his face with tenderness and he closed his eyes, enjoying it. 

“What’s she like?” Dee now asked quietly.  “What’s she called?” 

“She’s called Rifat and she’s like a stranger I have to live with.  For now.  Dee, I will do something about it but it will take careful planning.  They’re a powerful family, the marriage strengthens business alliances.  That’s why….” 

“That’s why they forced you into it.  Faisal warned me ages ago that Hamid had plans for you.” 

“I had my own plans.” 

“You did.  With me.” 

“And then I messed up.  My lovely Dee, “ he said, taking her back into his arms.  “We will be together as often as we can when I’m over, until I get back and we can be properly together again.” 

“Al,” said Dee.  “You’d have to break right away from all of them for that to happen.  Do you really think it’s possible?” 

“It will be,” said Al grimly.  “It has to be.” 

“Well, until then, Al, whenever that is, I’ll have to live my own life, won’t I?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“What I said,” answered Dee. 

“You’re at home and going to college, aren’t you?  You are living your own life.” 

“That’s what I’m doing now, yes.” 

Al looked into her eyes. 

“I will do it, Dee. I promise you.” 

“But you don’t know how, Al, or when,” she answered gently.  “Not yet.  Do you?” 

“I will do,” he asserted. 

Dee kissed him. 

“You know I love you, I’ve been destroyed without you,” she told him. 

“I mean it, Dee.  I will do it,” he repeated.  “Just trust me. 

“I’ll try,” she said.  “But you’re going again, aren’t you?  I wish you weren’t.   How soon?” 

“Tomorrow, I’m afraid, sweetheart.  Visiting my mother and all that lot next few days, then flying back from there.  I had to see you first.” 

“Flying back….” said Dee.  “Back to where?  I don’t even know where you are there?” 

“Mirpur,” said Al.  “That’s where Zulf is, where I am,” he added bitterly.  “You’ve got no idea what it’s been like, Dee.” 

“No,” she agreed.  “Because you didn’t tell me.” 

“What was I going to do?” demanded Al.  “Burden you with all that crap and upset you even more?  I had no right to contact you until I knew I could see you.  I brought it all on myself, so I had to deal with it by myself.” 

Dee put her head on his chest and he stroked her hair.  She could understand that and it was what she had thought herself, in the end, was the case with him, wasn’t it?  It was an attitude to the situation which chimed with Al’s notions of manhood and self respect, also of honouring his feelings for her and hers for him. 

“Dee,” he continued.  “We’ll always be together, even when we’re not together in person.  You know that, don’t you?” 

“It’s how I felt,” she said. 

“Me, too,” said Al.  “So there we are.  Don’t forget that, while you’re living your own life, will you?”

 Being physically together right then and both of them wanting it to be, it felt true, and the unclear future could be trusted in, perhaps.  It was hard to think of parting and they lingered together as long as they could, then Al drove her back and she had to let him go again, back to the family, back to his wife, back to his unknown world away.

Back home in the afternoon, she switched her phone on and saw two messages from Finney, first the self-pitying one, then a second saying, 

“Really sorry about that.  Drunk texting.  I didn’t mean it.  Thank you for telling me what happened.  You must have had a bad shock, Dee.  Let’s talk?” 

Still entranced by her meeting with Al, she didn’t really take either message on board until later on, when she thought well of Finney for having texted to make amends for the first message, which, if anything, Dee felt, had shown that her apparent rejection of him after their two good times out together had really wounded him, and she was genuinely sorry for that.  She texted back: 

“Thank you, Finney.  I’m fine now.  Looking forward to seeing you again at college next week and we’ll talk then.  Dee x”

Her own family came back and Sophie was having a friend round for tea.  Dee’s parents went to get ready to go out for dinner, having delivered the two children into her care, which was only light touch required, as they played or watched a children’s film while she supplied drinks and snacks.  Her parents had already gone out when Ed arrived, slinging a sports bag down in the hall, so they ordered take-away from ‘Just Eat,’and all shared the feast. It was a busy evening.  The friend was picked up and Ed took on corralling Sophie at bedtime, involving a lot of roaring games which Sophie loftily told him, while giggling, that she was far too old for.  Dee retreated to her own room, to treasure dwelling on Al and still feeling the sensuality  of him being with her.

In the middle of Sunday morning, Nolan phoned her. 

“Dee,” he said.  “ Are you o.k. after the other day in Dream?  Has that twat been in touch with you?” 

“Who?” she asked. 

“He has, then.  You know who.” 

“If you mean Al,” said Dee frostily.  “No.” 

“If I mean Al.  Of course I mean Al.  And don’t lie to me.” 

“Nolan,” said Dee.  “I like you very much but…” 

“Mind my own business?” he interrupted. 

“Well….” 

“Your look out.” 

“Nolan….” 

“Oh, no,” said Nolan.  “I’m not Andrew, you know.  He’s the soft touch, not me.  Mind how you go, then.  That’s all I’ve got to say to you.  Bye, Dee.” 

He rang off abruptly before she could say any more, leaving her startled, offended and if she were honest, feeling alarmed that she might be abandoned by them, Andrew and Nolan.  What if she needed them and they didn’t want to know?   

“The hell with you, then!” she said crossly, to nobody, smarting from the rebuff.   

Nolan hadn’t intended to be quite so brusque but had lost it when he realised Dee was clearly not telling him the truth, even if it had been unlikely that she would.  It might be a bit rich, considering the way he and Andrew invented things, but that wasn’t about essentials and only, really, part of their fun and techniques in working together, he reckoned.  Nolan hoped that he might at least have made Dee think twice about whatever might have gone on between her and Al, because clearly, something had.  So much for all their efforts to drill some sense into her, then, he thought, angrily.  At least, according to Andrew, Al would be off again in short order, allowing for some damage limitation.  Oh, well, he thought, going back in to talk to Billy, it wasn’t really his problem, was it, now, or Andrew’s, for that matter?

Dee somehow managed to hold it together and did not contact Andrew immediately when he was back.  Al had sent her a farewell message before doing his next vanishing act, saying just: 

“Don’t forget me and don’t forget us.  Trust me.  I love you,” to which she replied: 

“Never. I do. I love you too.” 

Would he ever be strong enough, she wondered, or even able, to escape them all?  She didn’t, she found, feel jealous of Al’s wife the way she had always been of Gemma in the past.  His wife didn’t hold Al’s heart and never had done.  That was hers.  For the rest, in fact strengthened by seeing him again at last, she determined that she would, as Andrew had advised, think of herself and carry on with her own life as she had told Al that she intended to do.  When the time came, she would help Al make the break.  Until that time came, she was helpless in that regard.  When she lived with Al, she had been largely subject to him and what he wanted but now, Al was subject to everyone else, and she was free.  If she were to be with him again, things would have to be different, Dee perceived, along with a realisation that, actually, she had been the strong one following their separation and, in fact, still was, because she had had the support to move her life along in a new direction and it had developed, broadened and matured as a consequence.  It was a thing to be valued and taken seriously, she recognised, not to be seen as a way of passing time until life with Al could start up again and, if it did, what would that consist of?  He had given her no certainties except of his wish to be liberated from his circumstances, because he had none, had he?  What had he ever done but work for his brother and the family and what experience did he really have of an independent life himself?  Very little, she knew, and even less now than he had had before.  She felt for him dreadfully and would miss him terribly again but she had something Al did not, her personal freedom, and she meant to use it  rather than waste her time in regret and indecision.  She had a possible future now and Al would have to prove that he could create one for himself first, before he tried to include her in it.

Her classes resumed the following week.   Finney came to ask her if she was all right and Dee said again that she was sorry about how  their Art Gallery date had ended and dismissed his apology for his late night text, just smiling and saying thank you for his concern for her and not to worry at all.  He was unsure quite what to do, she could see, and about where he stood with her, as he said: 

“Well.  Perhaps we can try again some time?” adding cautiously, “Do you want to talk about it?” 

Dee answered that yes, they could and, no, she didn’t, not just now, but thanked him and added with an understanding grin, 

“You don’t want to hear about all that,” to which, brightening, he said, 

“Well, if you don’t want to, but I’m here if you do,” and then, “do you fancy a coffee?” to which she said, yes, she did, so that they were able to resume, to an initial extent, their developing friendship a bit more comfortably and set that last day’s events aside. 

Finney understood that if Dee had unfinished emotional business, he would have to continue biding his time, or maybe move on, if it looked a hopeless case.  He wasn’t a fall back on to kind of guy and he certainly never came second best, but he would try, because he, too, thought that there was something special about Dee.  Give her a chance to get over this other one, then they could see.  It had clearly been who she had lived with in the mill over the previous Summer, he rightly concluded, which was still recent and had obviously been serious. 

Finney had barely had a chance to take anything in about Al at the time, just seeing someone dashing out as Dee broke down, so from Finney’s viewpoint, this indicated problem issues rather than people likely to get back together.  Wait and see, for now, he decided, glad that he and Dee had got by their own awkward moments at least and that she was pleased to be talking to him again. 

Chapter 20, Further Developments

Nolan was in the office under the veranda, where there was still a faintly fungicidal whiff in the air.  He was waiting for Andrew to come back from his morning bookkeeping stint with someone, stressed about a phone call he had taken shortly before. 

“Is that Munro?” the caller had asked tersely. 

“No, this is Nolan.  How can I help you?” 

“Detective and missing persons agency?” 

“Yes, that’s right.  How can I help you?” asked Nolan again. 

“I have your business card.” 

“Yes?” 

“Someone dropped it.  Is Munro tall, ruddy cheeks, a bit posh?” 

“Umm.  Why do you ask?” 

“Is that a yes?” 

“It sounds a bit like him,” said Nolan, unsure of what this was all about. 

“Tell him I’ll rip him a new one if he ever comes back here again!” said the voice, with assertive ferocity.  “ Whoever you’re working for, get lost and stay lost, or you’ll both be Miss. Per.  No more Nolan and Munro.  You get me?” 

“And, where is here?” asked Nolan, suddenly grasping the import of both accent and voice. 

“Where the fuck do you think? Tell George he won’t be getting any flat.” 

The call was ended.  Faisal Saleem, thought Nolan.  This could be some serious shit.   What the hell was Andrew doing, being so careless with their card?  Fortunately, it contained only their business names, his first name and Andrew’s last name, with the contact number and email address for the agency, of course, but nevertheless, Andrew had been rumbled. Andrew came in eventually, looking like an intrepid explorer returning from a white out, as pinkly glowing as a young boy. 

“It’s snowing!” he announced, gleefully, his hair covered in big snow petals, as if shed by blown winter roses. 

“Andrew, you’re in trouble, mate,” said an agitated Nolan. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I’ve had Faisal on the phone.” 

“You’re joking!  How come?” 

“Far from it.  Because you dropped one of our business cards at the mill, you muppet!  What did you take one for?” 

Andrew felt guiltily in his pocket,  where the loose cards he had put there were among tissues he’d shoved in as well.  It had been cold and windy at the mill.  He’d probably pulled a card out along with a hanky.  (He had, in the courtyard, where Faisal noticed it as he watched Andrew drive off, and picked it up). 

“Oh.  Oh, dear….” he said feebly of this unfortunate indiscretion. 

“Jesus H!  You’re supposed to be a professional, Munro.” 

“What did he say?” 

“Thinks someone’s hired us, or more particularly, you.” 

“Who, and why, did he say?” 

“I don’t think he knew that, just saw that we’re a detective agency and you’re poking your nose into their business repeatedly for some reason.  Not good news for career criminals, I imagine.” 

“He won’t see me again, anyway. Was he warning us off?” 

“In a big way, my son.” 

“I told Dee I wouldn’t ever go back.  No need now.  You see, I’d said I’d find out a bit more for her about Al.” 

“I know.  I know about all that.” 

Andrew thought carefully. 

“There’s no reason for them to look for us specifically, you know.  They can’t find much out from our agency info can they,  and if they did ever get to the truth, that Dee’s parents hired us, so what?” 

“The truth isn’t my concern.  It’s whatever the hell else they might think we’re up to.” 

“I did ask about Al,” admitted Andrew again.  “And I said I’d met Dee.”  He thought, with further alarm, but didn’t tell Nolan, of how he had mentioned the club and given away that he knew that one of the cousins, for whatever reason, was no longer around in the business. 

“Yes…….So where does that leave us?” 

“What if he rings Dee?” said Andrew, suddenly thinking of that possibility.  “I’d better warn her not to say anything about knowing us personally, or tell him where we live.  She had a kind of trust in Faisal and she might think no harm of telling him what he asks. 

“Bloody hell, yes!” said Nolan.  “She knows exactly where I live.  She’s been.” 

“I’ll ring her now.  Explain we’ll all have to steer clear of one another for a while.  Faisal knows where she is, what she’s doing.  He could have a watch kept on her to get a bead on us, so he can get hold of us to question us.” 

“Or deal with us.”

 “That, too.” 

“Before you call….” 

“Yes?” 

“We had words, me and Dee.” 

“What?  Why?” asked Andrew. 

“Over loverboy.” 

“Why?” 

“I called, like you asked.  Little Miss Muffet there hadn’t been sitting quietly on her tuffet.  She lied to me, but I knew she’d been in contact.  Probably met him.  So I told her that, if so, that was goodnight from us.  I tore her off a strip.” 

“Right,” said Andrew.  “You never said?” 

“No.  I was mad with her at the time.  Then, well, then I felt bad for having a go at her instead of being a friend.” 

Nolan did not enjoy feeling guilty about anything, Andrew knew, so he could see why he would have ducked telling him. 

“I don’t blame you, really,” he said.  “But we both knew she would.  Anyway, I’ll call her now.” 

Dee was in college but on a break, so seeing Andrew’s name, took the call. 

“Hi, how are you?” she asked, going out of the canteen to take the call unheard, thinking, rightly, that it was likely to be about Al related matters in some way, after her last conversation with Nolan. 

“I’m not sure,” said Andrew.  “Look.  Has Al gone?” 

“Yes,” she answered immediately. 

“I’m not going to ask you about him, so you can relax.  But I’m afraid Faisal’s on to me.  My fault.  I dropped a business card when I was  there at the mill, by accident. He called today.  Warned us off in no uncertain terms.  He doesn’t know anything, but in that set up they won’t want an agency looking around their activities, even if it did start out as simply looking for you.” 

“Oh.  No, they won’t,” agreed Dee. 

“ I’ve had chance to get to know far too much and like I said to you, Faisal was getting very suspicious about me last time I went.  To be honest with you, I realised that I should be very seriously afraid of that.  Now, listen, Dee.  I told him I knew you, from Dream.  Do you remember, my cover story?  If he calls you, Faisal, I mean, please don’t let him know that we’ve been in such close contact and confirm that you knew me as George Cavendish, who did something in finance. You’ve never heard of me as Munro, or Nolan, or anything to do with a detective or missing persons agency.   He might try to find us through you to get to the bottom of what we know.  Nolan and I will have to steer clear for a while.  We won’t be able to see each other in person for a bit in case he’s watching you to spot us.  Play it safe.” 

“I’m sorry, Andrew.  This is all my fault.  I asked you to go.” 

“No, it’s not.  It’s mine for being a berk and dropping the card,” and blurting a bit too much out at the time, he didn’t add.  “Oh, and Nolan says sorry about before,” he told her. 

Nolan hadn’t, but he nodded agreement, wanting to make amends. 

“Tell him I’m sorry, too,” said Dee.  “I did see Al, but I’m alright.  Honestly.  I can’t talk now,” she told him.  “I’m on the corridor, in college.” 

“Alright, Dee.  Just be careful, won’t you?” 

“I will.  I promise.” 

“And don’t do anything rash about, well, you know who I mean.” 

“I know and I won’t.  He’s gone and I don’t know how long for.  I’m getting on with things.  Really, I am.” 

“Good.  I’ll call soon, catch up.  Let me know if you have any trouble from Faisal, will you, if he asks you about me?” 

“I will but I won’t tell him anything.  George Cavendish, who bought my painting, that’s all I know about you.” 

“Yes.  Good girl.  Thanks, Dee.” 

Dee’s classmates were now going  back into their art room, filing past her from the canteen.  Finney came up. 

“Everything alright?” he asked, having noticed her go out with her phone instead of coming to join their group at the table. 

“I think so,” she said.  “Yes.  Sure.  I’m fine, thanks, Finney.” 

“I hope so,” he followed up with.

“Oh.  It wasn’t anything to do with my ex, Finney,” she assured him, seeing which way the wind was blowing, and it hadn’t been about Al, really, she told herself.  “Just something a friend wanted to tell me about.” 

“Right,” he said, a bit unconvinced, because she had gone out to take the call in private and was looking troubled, he saw, before he spoke to her.  Another girl came up and tried to engage Finney. 

“I love your sculpture, Finney!” she enthused.  “I makes you just want to touch it.  It’s so rich and sensual.” 

“Thanks!” he said, pleased.  “That’s what I wanted it to do!” and he left Dee to walk in with this girl instead, talking animatedly about their work, as he did with Dee, who saw this with a slight pang.  She didn’t, she realised, want to lose Finney’s interest in her and there was plenty of competition for it.   

Dee watched him in the art room, concentratedly working on his figure sculpture with tiny finishing touches, its deep gleam as velvety as French polish, its curves following the grain of the original wood.  When he looked up, noticing her attention on him, he gave her a smile alight with such enthusiasm and delight in what he was doing that she smiled back just as openly, indicating her own less successful effort with a rueful shrug, so that he came over to offer some advice on how to improve it, telling her that, no, it was good, with the captivating generosity of spirit he showed about such things.  Finney liked to shine, certainly, and did, but he wanted everybody else to shine, too, and enjoy it all as much as he did, which, Dee thought, was a rare quality in a gifted person.  He put one arm around her shoulders in a quick, impulsive hug by way of encouragement.  (All the young art people were unselfconsciously tactile, kissing and hugging a usual greeting amongst them, ready to give a consoling cuddle or intimate pat on the arm at any time). 

Dee laughed up at him about her “clay monster”, as she had called it, after, with her agreement, he’d done a bit of smoothing and shaping for her. 

“You’ve got more faith in it than I have, Finney,” she told him.  “It’s more like an octopus with prey than mother and child. It’s putty in your hands and a nightmare in mine!” 

“It’s not!  It’s not that bad!  It just needs a bit of T.L.C.,Dee.” 

“Like me,” she said lightly. 

“Like you.  If you want it,” he answered, in kind. 

“I do,” she told him and found she meant it. 

Finney nodded. 

“Good, then,” he said and left it at that for now, going back to his own work in happy spirits.  It was his eighteenth birthday coming up soon and he had already intended inviting Dee to his celebration.   Now, he hoped, she could be properly with him at it, and planned to ask her.  When he did, she was happy to agree. 

“I’d love to come to your party with you!” she exclaimed.  “Thank you, Finney.  What’s planned?” 

“A thrash in the community centre function room.  You’ll have to put up with a bit of folk at first, though.  Mum and Dad’s band.” 

“Really?  How great is that?” she exclaimed.   

“Well….” he said, modestly embarrassed. 

“What’s it called?  What do they play?  Do you play in it?” 

“They’re called ‘Faerie Ring.’” 

“Ah.” 

“I know, what can I say?  They’re such hippies, bless their hearts.  Dad plays all sorts.  Mum sings a bit.  Not so much now.  I’ll have to show willing.  Do a bit of guitar and singing, but only a one off.  I want to be at the party, not entertaining it.  They’re just planning a spot to start things off.” 

“Do you play with them a lot?” asked Dee. 

“Not nowadays.  Used to as a kid, though.  We went all over.” 

“That’s really cool!” 

Finney gave a hearty laugh. 

“Cool, they are not.  Great fun, though.” 

Perhaps this background was what gave Finney his air of being happy in his own skin, thought Dee, because he always seemed at ease in company, and could talk engagingly to anybody. 

“It sounds lovely,” said Dee.  “I’m looking forward to it already.” 

“Good stuff!” said Finney, with his sudden grin, looking pleased. 

Faisal had not contacted Dee, although she kept a cautious check on her phone for a few days in case of unexpected texts.  Instead, though, she did, being on the lookout for it, notice a telltale car parked up near college when she went in and out, flashy and fast, typical of Al’s brother’s shared fleet of vehicles.  It gave her a heart start at first, in case it was Al but he had not been in touch with her and so she suspected that it was his cousin.  She didn’t try to approach, feigning ignorance, heading to or from her bus at the nearby stop, often amongst other students coming and going.

 It made her nervous, and wonder how often she might have been checked up on before, remembering how Faisal had spoken to her in the shopping centre of keeping a benevolent eye out for her wellbeing.  The weather was poor, wintry rain and snow showers prevailing in a relentless sequence, so she was hurrying in and out, not loitering, until one day, as she hastened out for the bus home, the car was purring alongside, the window down and Faisal’s warm greeting hailed her muffled up and hooded self. 

“Dee, get in,” he called to her.  “I’ll give you a lift home.  It’s hurling it down.” 

It certainly was, and she peered into the car as if completely taken by surprise to see him. 

“Faisal?” she asked.  “What are you doing here?” 

“Just passing, luckily for you.  Recognised you struggling along in the rain.” 

“Thanks, but don’t worry.  My bus is due.” 

“Forget the bus.  You’re drowned already and your umbrella’s blown inside out.  Chuck it away and get in, or whatever you’ve got in that portfolio case will be ruined.” 

It would have seemed odd, perhaps, to refuse, so she did as he said, putting the damaged brolly into the bus stop’s bin.  Did he know she’d seen Al, she wondered?  She thought not, Al would not have told him now. 

“So, how are you and the family?” she asked, meaning his wife and children. 

He favoured her with his broad, neatly white smile. 

“All good, kiddo.  And you?” 

She shrugged. 

“I’m getting on o.k.  What else can I do?” 

“Better than o.k., I hope,” returned Faisal. She shrugged again, after all a malcontented teen who had lost her love, thanks, in part, to him.”I thought we were friends, Dee,” he said. 

“So did I,” said Dee.  “Then you took Al away.” 

“Dee,” he rebuked her but still sounding pleasant.  “That’s old news.  He’s moved on.  You’ve moved on.  Haven’t you?”  She shrugged again, not seeing why she should make things easy for him.  “Well, you should do.”  Faisal left this part of the conversation at that, so she concluded that she had been right and that he didn’t know about Al, or he would have taken her to task about it.  “Dee,” he continued casually, following the directions she gave him for home, “do you remember someone who bought a picture from you in Dream?” 

“Yes.  Two people did.  A woman wanted me to paint some on commission.”  She allowed her face to light up.  “That was really fantastic!” 

“It sounds it.  Anyone else?  A man, I mean?” 

“Yes, a customer who used to get lunch sometimes bought one.  Why do you ask?” 

“I’m wondering if it’s the same person who’s been talking to me at the mill.” 

“What about?” asked Dee. 

“Flat developments there.  He mentioned you, knowing you, the painting.” 

“Oh, right.” 

“Do you remember his name?” 

“Erm…..James?  No, George.  He was called George Cavendish, I remember now..” 

“O.k.  Right.  What did he do, do you know?  I want to know if he’s a good bet.” 

“I don’t know if he told me,” said Dee, thinking.  “Maybe...banking, or something, something financial, I think?” 

“That’s fine, then. It is the same guy.” 

“I thought you were just passing?” she ventured. 

“I was but since you’re here, I thought I’d ask.  Nothing to worry about.” 

“I wasn’t,” said Dee.  “Should I be?” 

“Not in the least!” laughed Faisal.  “Now, here we are.  I saved you a bit of a drenching at least.” 

“Thank you,” she said and then hesitated, because if she didn’t at least ask about him it would seem odd.  “Won’t you tell me how Al is, Faisal? ” 

“He’s well, Dee.  Well and happy.  Not that he didn’t miss you.  He did.  But like I say, you’ve both got other lives now.” 

“I know he has,” said Dee.  “Gemma made sure to tell me that, didn’t she?” 

“Yes.  Well, you know what a little cow she can be.” 

“I do,” said Dee, adding as she climbed out of the car, “because it’s still Al she wants.” 

It was a dig, an intended one, but he let it pass, adult to child, saying, 

“You take care of yourself now, Dee.  I’m glad I saw you.” 

“Thank you for the lift,” she said, closing the door and he sped away, with a cheery wave in the driving mirror back at her as he went. 

Dee went inside the house and up to her room, to change out of her  wet things and tell Andrew that Faisal had just dropped her off and what he’d asked her about.  Andrew was grateful for her caution and didn’t think Faisal would bother her again on the subject but again they agreed not to meet for a time just in case.  He and Nolan, he confirmed, would stay well clear of the mill and anywhere else they were likely to encounter Hamid or Faisal and hoped that they could leave things at that.  The following week, though Dee got a cryptic message from Al, where he said, 

“Things are looking up. Faisal and Hamid have been talking and had a rethink about me.  Something I picked up on before it all went wrong.  If I’m back in favour I might be able to get over again soon. Keep the faith.”

She wondered what he meant and then thought, well, that’s great, my love, but that’s still dependent on your standing within the family, not about getting away from them, isn’t it?  So she replied only that she would and that she hoped he would come soon, that she missed him.  She did but she realised, having referred to him as her ex to Finney, that she was starting to think about Al in that way and beginning to let go, because she could see no realistic way of him achieving any escape from the world he lived in, was judged in and judged himself by.

Andrew had turned up for his appointment at the theatrical agency which had represented “Malcolm Shrewsbury”.  It resided in a tasteful suburb whose high street had a genteel, old fashioned ambience, with the kind of shops no longer present in most places.  There was a baby clothes shop, with one of those slightly sinister toddler sized dolls modelling yellow knitwear in the window, a baker’s, a butcher’s, and a pawnbroker and jeweller’s establishment, (its display ticking with watches and glittering with rings, sold on solitaires from cast off engagements waiting to be chosen again).  The theatrical agency had a show of costumes for hire in its own window, with good rates for schools productions, it offered.  When he went in and the doorbell jangled to announce him, there was a bit of a commotion in the back, where there was a loud crash and someone exclaimed: 

“Hell’s bells and buckets of bloodlust!” 

Going through to see if he could be of any assistance, he found a stout woman with a paint tray and roller that she had knocked off the ladder it was balanced on, startled by the bell. 

“I’m sorry,” said Andrew.  “Is this my fault? I didn’t mean to make you jump.” 

“Not at all,” returned the woman, righting the tray again.  “It’s gone on the dust sheets anyway.  “What do you think?  I thought mint green might be restful in the back office, but it looks a bit bilious to me.”  She surveyed the walls doubtfully. 

“It looks very nice,” said Andrew politely. 

“Well….never mind.  It’ll have to do now I’ve started.  Come on through to the front.  Mr Munro, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, that’s right.  For the appointment about the actor, Malcolm Shrewsbury?” 

“Of course.  Do sit down.  Now, we’re a much small affair these days, of course.  It was my father’s business then but when the email came through I recognised him.   I remembered him in that series, ‘Merchants’ from when I used to watch it myself.  So, why is a detective agency asking about our one time big name?” 

“Well, you see, we’re acting for him,” explained Andrew.  “He’s lost his memory and is trying to find out as much as he can about his past.” 

“Oh, poor old love,” said the stout woman, introducing herself as Sandra and offering him a cup of coffee.  “I’ve got out what I could find for you to look through.” 

There were publicity shots of Mr Keats at different ages and some reviews. 

“To be honest with you, I think there was a bit of a rift between Dad and Malcolm in the end.  Dad said he was a bit of a chiselling rogue.  When he had plenty he didn’t pay his dues on time, or at all on occasion, then when he was a fading star and really not working much, he’d still come in and lord it about, playing the great I am.” 

That, thought Andrew, sounded about right. 

“Did he live locally?” he asked now. 

“Not then,” she said.  “He was mostly off in London.  But I think he did later in life, when he started popping in to reminisce about his good old days and annoy my poor old dad.  It was a link, you see, the agency up here, to all that and I think he might have come from around here originally.  I haven’t heard of him in years.  I have a feeling he boarded  somewhere.” 

This didn’t sound especially permanent, thought Andrew, and also suggested a different origin again for Mr Keats than his publicity suggested.  She let him have some of the duplicate publicity stills and a couple of reviews to show to Mr Keats and Andrew, thanking her for her time and wishing her luck with the decorating, commented on the area here, as being unusual for the way its high street shops had survived the changes common elsewhere. 

“Yes, everyone’s managed to keep going for years, here, but I suppose as people retire it will alter.” 

Andrew thought that if Mr Keats had lived around here, it was the kind of place where people might know their neighbours well.  He took some pictures to show him, in case it jogged his memory.  It was a Wednesday, traditionally half day closing for shops and they were all shut now, the butcher’s window empty except for clean white trays with a green frill of mock plastic parsley around them and a plaster pig wearing a jaunty boater.  The grill was down over the pawnbroker and jeweller’s window and the only thing in the baker’s was its fancily iced, tiered show cake.  He thought he might perhaps come back and talk to the other shopkeepers when they were open because,  if they had been here a long time, they too might remember something about Mr Keats, as he still thought of him. 

Nolan had kept a check on any advertising for auction sales and the story was still running, though an actual date had not been set yet, possibly April, was suggested, a tantalising wait to secure the most advantageous interest, presumably.  Nolan and Andrew were both interested to see what Andrew’s research might bring in terms of Mr Keats’s memory, and had decided that they would have to tell him, if he didn’t already know himself by now, about the prospective auction sales and the need to keep his part in things quiet. 

Mr Keats was quite delighted with himself on being shown the photographs and to hear further about his once illustrious career, but it was as though this had happened to somebody else.  He was now so consumed by being somebody again in his new life, a big show off fish in a small pool, with a captive audience of fellow residents, that it would seem cruel to deprive him of it in any way, and he himself clearly felt that quite by chance, he had finally fallen on his feet. 

“All in all, my dears,” he told them, “I’m quite happy, you know.  I’m freely housed and fed.  I want for nothing and if they knew I had any money, I’d have to pay up, wouldn’t I, so it would all vanish?”  It was, they supposed, a point of view.  “I think, my dears, we’ll call it a day.  I mean to say, I was hired for a job and I did it.  Whoever organised it made plenty at the time and plenty more will be made from the auction sales, won’t it?  It has all turned out rather well.  I think, my dear young friends,” he said, turning oratorical again, “sleeping dogs, you know, should be allowed to lie.” 

“But, what about the lolly?” asked Nolan. 

“Keep it for me, but spend it freely, with my blessing.  I don’t need it now and I expect you do.  A little unexpected bonus falling into our lives, don’t you think?” 

It certainly was. 

“We’ll keep you informed, then, about the auction? What happens?” 

They had already decided to go to it together, fascinated by the prospect. 

“Yes.  I think so,” said Mr Keats.  “But heads down, lads.” 

It was a principle they were both happy to agree to and out of principle, too, Andrew would keep looking into things discreetly himself, by way of earning the massive bonus, which would set a lot of bills right.  If Mr Keats had lost his curiosity about what had led to ‘Black Tie Black Friday’, Andrew had not.  He also doubted that the losers of that money would be likely to let it go quite so easily.  A bit of, this time, very discreet sleuthing, was, he felt, called for.

Dee had heard no more from Al, or anybody else, before Finney’s eighteenth.  At the party, everyone who arrived seemed to come trailing troubadours, ready to play and sing, or not, as the occasion demanded, a clutter of instruments piling up by the low stage platform.  There was a bar, a buffet spread and a casually eclectic mix of family, relatives and friends of all ages.  Here, Finney was addressed as ‘Bren’ by his parents, who took the mike to give an informal speech and greeting, welcoming everybody to his eighteenth bash, then scrambled through a hectic version of Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” with their folk band.  Finney, looking as resplendently eccentric as ever, stepped up to thank them and his guests for coming to his ‘do’, then joined in the group with his own guitar, to start the evening off with a gutsy rendition of the folk song “All Around My Hat, I will Wear the Green Willow”, which he sang with a hearty, gravelly gusto which was well applauded and got the atmosphere going, then he came down to join Dee, while some very lively jigs and reels followed on.  After that, sporadic performances by other people (rock and various solo spots delivered at random amidst the folk,) were interspersed with a playlist of all sorts booming through speakers.  It was chaotically hospitable. Dee loved it.  Finney was, of course in demand, and she was introduced to a great number of people, but their fellow students were there, too, so there was a familiar group for her to mix with.

Finney’s parents, neither of whom he resembled, were sociable but not intrusive, happy to hear that she was on his art course, then, after a quick chat ensuring she was supplied with food and drink, letting them go on their merry way. People danced all the time.  When Finney mingled, Dee danced with the other students, or anyone really, as it was a friendly free for all in the space.   

Towards the end, she and Finney came together there and he grabbed her for a kiss and a hug, whirling her about with him in an impromptu gallop.  As he was the birthday boy, people formed a circle for them and clapped in tribute to their efforts.  Out of breath after their madcap dancing, they fell on to one of the bashed up two seaters dotted about the room, in a collapsed and careless cuddle, and Finney gave her a laughing kiss again, to amused whoops from their audience. Tugging Dee to her feet, he pulled her into a mock bow with him and then let her go.  He kept it light in front of everybody, but it was clear they were being viewed as a couple by the gathering and it felt quite natural to Dee, who was very much enjoying herself.  The evening ended with another short set from Faerie Ring and a final toast to Finney to celebrate his coming of age.  Dee’s brother arrived to pick her up (which she had arranged to avoid any awkward ending to the night), as people began to leave.  Dee introduced Ed to Finney, who kissed her goodnight on the lips, without lingering but as someone with a right to do it, and said, 

“Call me tomorrow, Dee?  Mind you, it might be a very late night.  Looks like the rest of the hooley’s going back to mine!  Enjoyed?” 

“Very much.  I loved it!  Happy birthday, Finney,” she said again, with a hug.  “I’ll ring you after lie in time.” 

He bade them a cheerfully tipsy goodnight and was collared by fellow revellers hooking his arms to pull him along with them.  Ed said, looking after Finney’s dissolutely dishevelled and eye catching figure: 

“Blimey, Dee.  He’s a wild one, isn’t he?” (Ed was a touch on the conventional side himself). 

“He is,” agreed Dee.  “He’s one on his own, is Finney.” 

“I get the feeling that the real party’s about to start now.” 

“Yep, probably.  And he’ll be right in the middle of it.” 

“He’s got a killer smile, hasn’t he?” observed Ed.  “I bet the girls like him.” 

“They do,” she said. 

“How about you?” 

“I like him, too.” 

“Just as well.  He’s clearly got a thing for you.” 

“You think?” 

“I think,” said Ed, as they drove past the raucous crowd rambling back to party on, and Dee waved at them. 

Dee smiled, looking satisfied and Ed, who had more insight into her than she thought, hoped she was finally moving on from her runaway lover.  When Dee phoned Finney late on the following morning, he hadn’t gone to bed yet. 

“I blame my parents,” he told her.  “They had parties that went on for days when I was a kid.” 

He still sounded elated. 

“Are people still there?” asked Dee, who thought this was all rather wonderfully bohemian. 

“Some.  A few crashed out, a few still up.” 

“How’s your head?” 

“I think it’s still on.” 

Dee recalled him being pulled along by girls hanging on his arms. 

“Who was that carting you off at the end, then?” she asked. 

Finney laughed, amused. 

“You’re not the only one with an ex, Dee.  I’ve got the odd one or two as well.” 

“Oh,” said Dee, not liking this, she found.  “I hope they’re not still there, then?” 

Finney laughed outright at this. 

“You needn’t worry.  They aren’t.  Just the hardcore dirty stop ups.  Most of them left are my parents’ lot.  They think they’re still in their Glastonbury heyday, place stinks of doobies.  It’s a wonder we weren’t busted.” 

“You should get some sleep.” 

“Yes, mum.”

“You’ll keel over any minute,” observed Dee. 

“Not me, Dee.  I’m strictly rock and roll.   Come over, why don’t you?” 

“Now?” 

“Sure.  Why not?” 

“It sounds messy.” 

“It is. That’s the appeal.” 

Dee laughed. 

“I still say you’ll crash and burn.” 

“Not yet,” said Finney again, admitting, “I am pretty wrecked, though.” 

“I think I’ll pass, then, “ said Dee.  “Let you get some recovery time in.” 

“Fair enough,” agreed Finney.  “I could fade out in your arms, though?  But not immediately?” he teased suggestively. 

“Not with all your party animals and parents around the place,” said Dee. 

“Another time, then,” he hinted. 

“May….be…..” singsonged Dee. 

“If I’m lucky?” 

“No.  If I’m lucky,” she replied. 

“Wow,” said Finney.  “That’s my best birthday present.  Bless you for that, sweet Dee.” 

Sweet Dee.  She liked that. 

“I’m going now,” she said.  “Catch some sleep some time, Finney.” 

“Might as well,” he replied.  “If you’re not joining me.” 

“Like you said, Finney, another time,” said Dee. 

“Another time,” he agreed, and they said their goodbyes until college the following week.

Andrew received a call from the police, who wanted a further statement from him at the station.  They did not explain whether or not this was as a result of further enquiries on their part into matters, or to firm up their own records of his initial alert to them.  He felt almost the same flutter of panic about this as he had on the high rooftop parapet with Faisal, when he realised that he had lost control of a situation in which there might be no going back from the brink.  He was conflicted, too, about his action in calling the police, feeling in part that it had been a professional breach of client confidence.  In the office over the veranda, which was its customary freezing self, Nolan, coming in and  kicking the radiator into life to add to the clattery fan heater’s efforts, crowed:

“I told you so!  That’s what you get for playing the responsible citizen!”

Andrew, working at his computer muffled in a scarf with his coat on was, for him, rather pale.

“I feel awful about it,” he said.  “But I did do the right thing, didn’t I?”

“Did you?” returned his partner briskly.

“Don’t!” cried Andrew.  “You’re not helping!”

“I was against it.”

“I know.”

“And what about us?  We’re going to get on the radar now, aren’t we?  What about all that money we’ve recently acquired?”

“They won’t look into our business affairs for this.  It’s not relevant.”

“How do you know?” challenged Nolan.  “Just you be careful what you say to them.”

“I will.  Minimum information about ‘Nolan and Munro’.”

But Andrew was deeply uneasy.  For someone so outwardly conventional, he, like Nolan, had a mistrust of officialdom and the forces of control.  If his instincts about Barbara’s disappearance were wrong, then an already distressed husband might be profoundly disturbed by police investigations.  Fundamentally, however, Andrew did not think he was wrong and insisted he and Nolan went through it all again.

“No.  Listen, Nolan,” he said now.  “Help me get it straight logically, why it is that I have such a strong sense things just don’t hold together.  For a start, why didn’t Peter contact the police when she vanished?”

“She hadn’t vanished.  According to him, he thought she’d gone to her lover and wanted to find out.  Hence, us.”

“O.K.  So…….why didn’t he tell us the truth from the start?  He said he thought there was something going on, but made out she was still there.”

“Did he, though?  Or - did you just assume that?” asked Nolan, playing devil’s advocate.

Andrew considered.

“Now that you ask me, I have to say I don’t think he told us directly.  It was more, I don’t know, a gradual insinuation, that he’d hired me reluctantly, not really wanting to even go that far.  I thought at first that he was hoping to find that there was nothing in it.”

“So, the perfect gentleman, a considerately concerned and loving husband?”

“At first.  Yes.”

“And then?”

“Well, then, light began to dawn that she hadn’t been there to start with, had already left him.”

“So…..why didn’t he tell you that she had?”

“I got the feeling then that he just couldn’t face the fact of it.  I was very gentle about it when I asked him.”

“What happened after that?”

“He cried.  Just broke down completely.  It was the first time I thought there was a false note.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.  It just seemed like a bit of a performance.  Sort of, suddenly right over the top.  Then afterwards, I thought perhaps I was just being mean, because I hadn’t really taken to him.”

“You told me more than once that he gave you the creeps.”

“I know.  Not initially but, over time he did.”

“Why was that then?”

“Well,” said Andrew, thinking, “things like, when I went to see him, I’d ring the bell and he’d open the door immediately, as if he’d been standing just inside there waiting for the very second of my arrival.  That felt weird, it was as if he might have been there for hours, just standing there.”

“Mmm.  Inconclusive.  Nervous tension waiting for the detective?”

“Maybe.  But…..that wasn’t his manner.”

“What was his manner?  You’d better get all this straight in your head, you know, Andrew.”

“I know.  That’s why we’re doing this,” said Andrew, who was starting to look more comfortable now.  “His manner was, prepared, quite resigned seeming, mostly.  Only, sometimes, there was an underlying tension, more like excitement  than worry,  and, as time went on, the plot thickening, if you like, in the direction of it seeming definite that Barbara had determinedly left him, I’d catch a look occasionally, as if to say ‘did I get away with that one’? That’s how he looked after he broke down.  I mean, I was really sorry for him at the time, because I thought I’d forced him into admitting it to himself, poor man, that he knew she’d really gone.  I remember I said I’d put the kettle on, give him a few minutes to pull himself together.  He was just bent over in the chair with his head in his hands, sobbing his heart out.  But as I went out, I glanced back just as he looked up for an instant.”

“No tears?”

“Oh, there were tears, all right, but the glance was bright, in control.  Then he covered his face again and went on crying.  As time went on and I got more suspicious about things, I kept coming back to that look, and sometimes I’d catch it again, just a second of it.”

“And then,” said Nolan,” there was the garden project.  All that concrete he laid.”

“Exactly.  Quite an undertaking for one person.”

“Didn’t you tell me that’s what he did?”

“Yes, he said he was a retired builder, but still did the work at home.   He showed me the conservatory he’d already put on along the south side.  He said it was for Barbara to sun herself in, between holidays.”

“So, is he a big chap?”

“Not really, but still sturdy enough.”

Nolan contemplated the evidence.

“I’d lay it on to the police, then,  about all the crocodile tears, like those murderers who go on public appeals and then turn out to the the perps.”

“Yes.”

“And then about the garden.”

“Mm.”

“Feel better now?”

“A bit.  Yes.”

“Good.  Well, you’ll just have to go through with it as best you can and ask if you can stay as an anonymous witness for the sake of our business, if anything comes out.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Andrew.

“When do you have to go in?”

“Thursday,” said Andrew (it was Tuesday).

“We’ll go through it again before that, if you like?” offered Nolan.

“Thanks,” said Andrew, feeling more assured about it all now.

The little hiatus in contact between the detectives and Dee made a natural break from past associations for a while.  Dee’s inner voice, however, sounded like Andrew’s.  Al’s words to her replayed, that they would meet as often as they could when he was over, suggested an even worse version of Faisal and Gemma’s situation, where Dee would remain marginalised, in ignorance of his life.  She looked up Mirpur on the internet, but it was a region as well as a city, so although she could find out a bit about it, she had no clearer idea of his whereabouts, and when she messaged him to ask, she got no answer.  Al had never been a reliable e-correspondent, though, had he, she reminded herself again, because when he was about his own concerns, she wasn’t included, was she, and never had been, until they had determined that she would move in with him?

She had verbally committed herself to Finney now, to making their new relationship an intimate one, and although nothing had happened yet, a subconscious sense of betrayal spiralled through her dreams, where neither Finney nor Al were quite themselves, nor identifiable, but she would vividly dream that she had slept with someone and wake with the physical sense of it upon her, pleasure fading into a sense of wrongdoing.  In her waking hours, she wondered if she would feel better if she messaged Al to say that she had decided it would be better for both of them to finish it, because it was unfair on each of them to keep hope of being together alive, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, and the lure of their recent meeting was too meltingly powerful an influence on her to give up on her first love.

Finney, eager to see her at college, intuited some veil between them again, that Dee was somehow ill at ease and, a little piqued, backed off again slightly himself,.  Then, because he didn’t like to blow hot and cold and didn’t think this game lay behind Dee’s slight withdrawal either, he decided to invite her round to his house for an afternoon, tea and whatever else the evening might hold.  It was half term at college and his parents were away on a short folk tour, so he had the place pretty much to himself.  There was a lodger, he told her, who might bowl in and out, but they didn’t see much of him.

“Really?  Who’s that, then?” asked Dee.

“Some mate of one of my brothers.  Dan asked if Phil could use his old room for a bit till he sorted himself out.  Still with us three years on!  Still, the folks don’t mind.  He’s no bother anyway, out more than in.  So, will you come?”

“Of course I will!” said Dee, glad he had asked, because she hadn’t known how to get by the discomfort that had webbed across their interest in one another.

Finney’s house turned out to be a rambly old building, not looking in the best of repair from the many window frames, unpainted for years by the look of it, and, unusually for these days, not double glazed.  It had, though, a comfortable rather than dilapidated air about it, as if all the human activity within made up for the lack of modern decor, too much going on to waste time on changing things for the sake of it, or keeping up with more than the essentials.  When she rang the bell, the door was answered by a young man just heading out, who let her in without asking who she was.

“They’re in the kitchen, “ he said, gesturing behind him and disappearing with a smile, shutting the door behind him and leaving her in the hall.  The lodger, Phil, presumably.  Dee vaguely remembered seeing the brother, Dan, at Finney’s party.   Finney had a number of older half brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, too, who had all been among the party group.

She followed the sound of a guitar being played and entered a big old fashioned kitchen, where Finney was sitting at the long table strumming vaguely, head down, hair draping.  A dainty looking girl was sitting looking on with reverent attention.  She glanced up as Dee came in and said, in a soft, not wanting to interrupt him way:

“Oh, hello!  We’re having green tea.  Would you like some?”

Finney looked up before Dee could reply and put the guitar down at once.

“Dee!  Sorry.  I didn’t hear the door.”

“I knocked and some guy let me in,” she said.  “I expect you didn’t hear because you were playing.”

He wasn’t really playing, just knocking around with the instrument, passing time with an uninvited guest, Dee realised, when he said,

“Er, do you know Cara, Dee, from college?  She just dropped in.”

Cara was clearly an admirer of the more spiritual sort that Finney seemed to attract.

“No,” said Dee.  “Not really.”

A ghost of a smile flitted across his face at this, realising Dee had picked up that this wasn’t an especially welcome guest and was ready to support him in encouraging her to leave.

“Thanks for the tea, Cara,” he said now, as a preliminary hint.

“I thought you might enjoy it,” she said.  “It’s cleansing for souls.”

Artistic souls, like his, was the flattering suggestion.

“Well, I’ve had two cups, so mine must be all polished up!” said Finney.  “I’m really sorry, Cara, but Dee and I are on our way out to something.  I don’t want to be rude or anything, but we need to head off because it starts soon.”

“Oh, yes, I see, of course,” said Cara nicely, but not as if she personally felt at all in the way.  “I’ll leave you the tea, Finney.  It’s a gift.”

“Great!  Thanks!” said Finney, ignoring the poetic import of this offering.

He went to see her out and returned to Dee.

“Sorry about that.  Erm.  You don’t actually want any green tea, do you?”

“No, thanks,” said Dee.  “I don’t like it.”

“Me, either, but what can you say?” shrugged Finney.  “Come on through. The sun’s in the back sitting room this time of day.  It’s dark in here.”

They had, of course, made no plans to go anywhere, but Dee was impressed by Finney’s tactful handling of the situation with Cara.  The sitting room was shabby homely, sunshine spilling over faded old patterned carpets from a big bay window, a garden beyond still Winter dormant.   A large roll top desk featured in the room, alongside a comfy looking suite of ancient seeming furniture.

“This place is like an old vicarage!” said Dee, looking around.

“That’s exactly what it is,” agreed Finney.  “My parents needed the room for us all and it was going falling down cheap back then.  Not in the most fashionable of ‘burbs, you see.”

“I like it.”

“I’ll show you around in a minute,” suggested Finney.

He gave her a hug in greeting now and said to sit down, then left briefly to come back in with a couple of light beers.

“Fancy one of these, instead?” he asked, handing her an opened bottle.  

Dee took it.  They chatted a little and then Finney asked candidly,

“Dee, tell me about it.  I don’t think we can get it out of the way between us unless you do.  Do you?  Then we can think about where we are, how you really feel.” Dee blushed and looked down.  “No pressure,” he added, regarding her steadily in a serious way he could have that said, ‘I’m listening to you.  Talk to me.’ Dee hesitated.  “It’s all right,” he encouraged.  “It’s so we both know, and not just you.”

This, she felt, was fair enough and so she told him.  She told him of the start of things, the long Summer and Autumn in between, about going to Al in the New Year and about living with him.  She told him about the credit card, about the mill and what had happened there when Rashid died.  She told him about Al being taken away from her and, finally, she told him about Al coming back and finding her after he had seen her with Finney in Dream, but that he’d been made to marry before that.  When she had finished, Finney said eventually, after a long pause to let her recover a little from what felt to both of them like a very long confessional session:

“Dee, it’s not for me to say what I think about what Al did or where he’s at now but what I will say is this.  It wasn’t fair dealing by my standards and I would never treat you like that.  And, it’s not fair dealing to you now, is it?”

“No,” said Dee.  “I know it isn’t.”

She looked up at him, wanting the reassurance of comfort that he wouldn’t reject her but fearing that he might, now he knew the full story.  Finney picked up the two now empty bottles and took them out of the room. Coming back in, he held out his hand to her and when she took it, pulled her up from the couch.

“Come on,” he said.  “I’ll show you round the house.”  He did so, quite naturally, giving them both time to think and when they reached the landing and stood looking through the big, coloured glass arched window that featured there, Finney said, “I don’t want to be a shoulder to cry on, Dee.  I want to be with you.  Do you need to think about that?”

“No,” she said, her look giving him her answer, too.

He took her up next, then, to his own room, a large space with a king size bed in the middle of it,  and a chaotic mess of cast down boots and shoes, clothes and art materials in the corners that hadn’t made it back into wardrobes or cupboards.

“Never mind all that,” said Finney, seeing her look round in aghast awe and, drawing her to him for a first proper lingering kiss said,  “We’ve got other things on our minds.  Haven’t we?”

Finney was a tenderly receptive lover, and while being different from Al in their interactions, it was just as sexually reciprocal for Dee, lying in a languorous tangle of limbs and caresses, then coming together again with eager pleasure.  The afternoon passed into evening, when a different hunger consumed them and they decided they should get up to eat.  Finney raided the fridge, stuck in a pizza and opened some wine.

“Don’t worry, it’s not homemade,” he assured her.  “You could have worse, believe me, and I have.  The banana wine was particularly gruesome, I remember.”

There were thick, half burnt candles in a sconce on the windowsill, which he put on the table and lit, the flames giving off a fragrantly sooty smoke and making their eyes shine as they looked across at one another, smiling, talking, happy together and Dee forced all thoughts of Al aside.  Finney was right in what he had said and it felt right being with him, too, in a way it never had done with Al, she realised, sensing the difference of a choice made but freedom still had.  What had Finney said earlier in bed to her?

“I’ll never try to make you do anything you don’t want to do in life, Dee, only what you’re happy with.  You just make sure you tell me what that is.”  She knew what he meant.  If Al did come back and she chose him, she could do, of course, but she had to be honest with Finney about it first.  “I don’t do disappearing acts,” he had gone on to say, “and I don’t expect them from anyone else, either.”

Dee liked his honesty and felt that she should respect it.  She hoped, too, that she would be able to live up to it, because her resolution had always been so quickly undone by Al in the past.  There might be new chapters, but she always carried the rest of her story with her.  After their meal, some further talk and cuddling up in the downstairs main sitting room in front of a living flame gas fire doing its best, in a baronial sized hearth, to add to the old radiators around giving out a bit of central heating, a chandelier with a few blown bulbs giving them some dusky illumination for kissing by, Finney got the bus into the town centre with her, saw Dee on to her bus and then went back home himself on another.  It was a bit of a contrast, thought Dee, from being chauffeured around in fast cars, and perhaps a welcome one.  Finney had gone out of his way to make sure she got home safely and because it was a lot more effort on his part than giving her a lift, she appreciated it.  He sent her a goodnight text to say that he was happy and hoped she was too, that he was thinking of her and Dee was able to reply that she was, absolutely and was thinking about him as well.

They spent much of half term in each other’s company and often in each other’s arms, discovering one another.  When Finney was introduced to Wilbur, although pronouncing him a ‘proper little oddity’, he wasn’t annoyed by him or dismissive as Al had been, ready to pet him and have him along with them on walks.  Wilbur himself was tolerant in return.  Finney tidied his room in honour of Dee’s visits, and sometimes she stayed the night with him.  He had a freestanding bamboo coat and hat stand on which his own various long coats and hats resided, giving her a few unpleasant starts when, half waking, she thought a figure was standing there watching them.  Often, they worked together, because at one end of the house was a circular gothic turret with a conical, witch’s hat roof, where a folly style room had windows all round, which made a perfect studio.  They used each other as life models and Finney started a new sculpture piece based on curves which Dee knew were hers.

Finney’s house was a place where people dropped freely in and out, often the older half brothers or sisters popping through to see if he was managing all right on his own, casually affectionate with him, or some of Finney’s or the family’s many friends might call by.  Dee would occasionally arrive to chats over tea in the kitchen, impromptu music or jamming sessions, (the house being big enough for a couple of rooms to be used for this), or disorganised tea parties where people had brought in food and cakes to share. In the evenings, Finney’s mates might bob in for a drink and a bit of a rock session, which they favoured over the folk.  He discouraged all this a bit now, wanting to spend more time with Dee, so sometimes they lay low and didn’t answer the door, feeling conspiratorially precious about being alone together.  She began to stay more over the time Finney’s parents were away, into the start of term, and her own parents, having met and been both startled and bowled over by Finney, made no objections because, after all, she had lived away before, and they couldn’t justifiably hold her back now, in her eighteenth year herself, from a new, more observable and better seeming relationship.  

Dee, for her part, occasionally heard herself when at his house being described by people explaining her presence there to others as “Finney’s latest”, which would have been less than reassuring had she not also heard someone say speculatively that this one might be a keeper, as it wasn’t more on her side than his, for once.  Like Al, Finney was the baby of the family but he had been indulged in a different fashion, let to run free in a harem scarem kind of way since infancy by parents who had already brought both their other families up together to teenagehood when Finney arrived.  Everyone seemed to have delighted in him rather than resented him, so that he had led, it seemed to Dee, a very charmed life.  When she told him this he laughed and said,

“I’m always being told I’ve got a lucky face, whatever that means!” which Dee thought was something lovely too.

Unlike most of their contemporaries, Finney was computer indifferent, except perhaps for graphics or photographs, so that they never spent silent side by side time on gaming, as she had with Al, or as so many people did, adding to the feeling that, with Finney, there was always something active going on and too much to talk about to waste their energies on time passing pastimes.  They both liked films, though, so they would stream them occasionally, as the cinema was too expensive for frequent visiting.

The fact of Finney and Dee now being an item made no difference to the others laying siege to him.  If anything, it upped the ante of his attraction for them.  He was hovered about in the college art room, presented with coffees in the cafeteria to oblige him to talk, asked for creative advice and admired, barely from a distance.  When Dee went to his house, she would sometimes find fey Cara there, or one or two of the other girls.  It wasn’t at his invitation but at Finney’s it was open house and anybody was likely to answer the door to visitors.  Finney’s flag of hair was growing out now, more blonde than black, one of his sisters having insisted on cutting it a bit for him but his brows and lashes were naturally dark and he still sported the eyeliner at times, so he was, if anything, even more of a strikingly maverick figure.  He accepted the attention he received without seeming to do anything to encourage it, but not in a way that suggested he meant to act on it, so that Dee, despite all this, felt unchallenged, although perhaps at the risk of being so in the future.

When Finney’s parents returned, Dee had initially felt shy of being there overnight, but Finney’s was a big, attic room that was more like a separate flat and, while the family and their lodger coexisted, it was fairly independently of one another, so that Dee didn’t feel she was intruding, or being judged, nor that she was likely to be the first of his girlfriends to have stayed there.  Indeed, although friendly enough, Finney’s mother and father paid her scarcely more attention than Hamid had done when she was with Al, busy among their panoply of other family or musical activities, rehearsing, doing gigs for events, or simply going to play for pleasure at various sessions.  Once or twice, Finney and Dee went along too, and they were always lively occasions.  She wasn’t quite sure if this was sophistication or benevolent neglect but everybody seemed happy enough with the set up.

There were lots of pictures around the house featuring Finney, from floss haired toddler to young and later boyhood and then, from about fourteen, black haired goth-hood, morphing into the mixed bag look he sported so effectively now.  If she were there, Dee and Finney made their own meals from an always well stocked freezer, timetables being too chaotic for the family to ‘do dinner’ very often but he did come to hers some Sundays, to hold court around the table with Dee’s own family.  He was a lively debater on current affairs and well able to hold his own, which went down well with her parents.  Politics was something that Dee, having heard too much of it all her life, was happy to pass on in the main, any contribution she did make likely to be humoured as the unformed opinion of a child.  Finney, on the other hand, they listened to.  Sophie loved him because he didn’t mind her messing with his hair and more than once he would leave with plaits, ponytails or bunches he had forgotten about under one of his hats which Dee, out of mischief, didn’t mention but he never said anything and, looking as he did anyway, neither did anyone else they passed on their way along together.

Andrew went to his police interview, which, an uncomfortable occasion where he felt that his veracity was more under scrutiny than the reasons for Peter’s wife’s disappearance, he didn’t enjoy at all.  He seemed to answer questions repeatedly, more like a suspect than a witness, he thought, but he kept his responses as consistent and accurate as possible.  He was given no idea as to whether this was a routine follow up or part of an actual investigation.  They would be in touch, they said impassively, when he left.  Perhaps it was for this reason that he decided to follow up on going back to the high street in aspic where Mr Keats’s theatrical agency was, to bolster  his sense of knowing what he was doing professionally and that he did know how to handle things in the correct way.  He bought a pasty in the bakers and some ham sliced from the bone at the butchers, and although chat was cheerful and welcoming enough, they neither of them seemed to recall the old thespian.  Having eaten the pasty in the car and put the ham in the glove compartment, making a mental note to try not to forget about it, the jewellers, then, was next on his agenda.  

Once more the trays of abandoned diamond engagement and bejewelled eternity rings sparkled in the window, next to less poignant seeming dress rings with unredeemed sales prices on them.  He had to ring a bell on the security door for entrance, which in these days of random raids, seemed a sensible precaution.  Andrew was buzzed through and found himself in a rather dark shop front with carefully locked up display counters showing other wares and a selection of silver and gold charm bracelet trinkets, more love tokens to be collected as evidence of devoted sentiments.  

A short, portly man with a frizz of curly grey hair bouncing out round a bald patch and pronouncedly buck teeth asked if he could help him.  Calling on his powers of invention and somehow inspired by the trays of solitaires, Andrew asked if this was a jewellers which also made items up.  He was asking, he said, on behalf of his mother, who wanted to have her parents’ two wedding rings made into one for her to wear as a keepsake and he thought this looked like somewhere that might be able to do it.  The man considered and then called into the back,

“Joe, can you come through to talk to this customer?”

A younger version of him came through, with more and darker hair just as bushily out of control, and even more protruding teeth, but this man had a look of simplicity about him that the older one did not.

“Yes, Dad?”

“Customer here interested in having a piece made up.  Joe likes doing that sort of thing, sir.”

Andrew repeated his story.

“Have you got a sketch?” asked Joe.

“No but I can bring one.  She thought maybe having them looped together somehow in a kind of lover’s knot?”

“I could do that.  Victorian, like?”

“Yes.  I think so.”  A thought, highly unlikely, passed through Andrew’s mind.  “Have you got any examples of things you’ve done?”

“I’ve got a sample book of photographs of things Joe’s made,” said the father, taking a small album out of a drawer and passing it over.

Andrew started to look through and there were brooches and clasps, bracelets, necklaces, rings and earrings of various kinds featured.

“I use things people haven’t come back for,” said Joe.

Andrew didn’t miss the warning glance his father shot him.

“All right, lad, don’t go on.  Let the gentleman take his time looking.”  After giving Andrew a few minutes to take in the pictures, he said.  “So what brought you to us, sir?”

“Oh, quite by chance.  I was at an appointment nearby and saw the shop.  You were shut at the time, but I mentioned to my mother I’d seen a really traditional looking place and would she like me to ask next time I was passing.  She said she would.”

”I see. Mr, er…”

“Munro, Andrew Munro,” said Andrew, opting for his real name in case any words were had with the theatrical agency, although this seemed doubtful.  He hesitated about asking here, though, about Mr Keats, because he thought he might be onto something, some connection. What if Joe were the manufacturer of the earrings, or the tiara, or both?  If he used things cut in the right way for the period, could they pass muster with the experts?  Looking at the pair of them, this did seem like a ridiculous flight of fancy and even if Joe had done that, how on earth could these two characters plan a scam like that?  He handed the photograph album back with a smile.  “They’re quite lovely,” he said.  “Tell you what, I’ll go back to my mother and ask her what she thinks.  See if I can bring the rings in and ask you to design something?”

“Of course, sir,” said the father, while Joe stood looking pleased that his work was being praised, then went  out of the shop again to the back at a nod from his father.  “It’s a bit of a hobby for the lad, sir,” said the father.  “I’m sure you understand.”

It was clear he expected the fact that Joe was on some kind of learning disability spectrum to have been picked up on by Andrew, who just said,

“Great for him to have a talent like that.  Well, thank you, I’ll be back Mr, er?”

“Bryant”, said the jeweller, shaking hands with him, and Andrew left.

Although Mr Keats had decided to call it a day with them, Andrew wanted to follow this up.  He told Nolan about his thoughts, who said it might be a possibility, given that the jewellers was right nearby to the theatrical agency.

“Do you know what?” he said.  “I think our next thing should be going to the auction and just seeing what happens, if anything comes out that the pieces might not be the real deal after all, and if not, and that chap did make them for whoever ran this operation, then they’ve pulled it off, haven’t they?  Let’s wait till after the auction to follow it up any more, don’t you think?  I like the idea that the experts could be fooled, don’t you?”

“I do,” agreed Andrew, “and I don’t want to wake the old man up to perhaps being found out. He’s sharp enough even if the son isn’t.”

“Did they look well off?”

“I can’t say they did, to be honest, it looked a bit of a slow moving concern to me.”

“Maybe money wasn’t the motive, just doing it.”

“Or maybe they don’t know what the pieces were meant for, just paid for a jewellery making job?”

“It’s only our own curiosity we’re satisfying, though, isn’t it, after all?  Let’s take our time, because somebody in that business was definitely playing with the big boys, weren’t they?” cautioned Nolan.  “We’ve had a taste of rushing into things recently, haven’t we?”

“Mmmmm, yes,” agreed Andrew, who was still worried about what might come of the police interview and hadn’t altogether relaxed as yet on the Faisal front.

Since they were in funds, and other business was quiet, they agreed on some time off.  Andrew went on a skiing holiday with his girlfriend, although Nolan pointed out that given the weather forecast they didn’t need to have gone abroad for that, and he and Billy opted for New York, where it was warmer than usual given the shift in the jet stream bringing the Beast from the East to the U.K. any time soon.

 (continued in Serial Part 5)

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