FIVE

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ I said, staring into one of Hugo’s crystal whisky glasses. ‘You knew Susan was going to leave me.’

We’d left my former home, now a Kiwi-laden squat, and driven to Hugo’s elegant Kensington house to assess the situation. I’d decided to leave my car in the garage and collect it later, when I felt less of a liability to other road users.

‘I knew she wasn’t happy,’ Hugo countered judicially. ‘But not that she was actually going to up sticks.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Yes, it was unreasonable, but that’s how I was feeling. When life kicks me unfairly in the scrotum, I tend to look for someone to blame. It was far easier than thinking any of it might have been my fault.

‘Because you should have noticed, you dimwit,’ he responded testily. ‘Honestly, Jake, you must be the only man I know who didn’t realise his wife was chea–’ He stopped dead and stared at me, his face draining of colour. Then he bounded up to refill his glass from a crystal decanter on the walnut and rosewood-veneered sideboard which he’d once told me was inherited from a titled uncle.

‘What?’ I said stupidly. ‘She was what?’

Whatever he was about to say was cut short by a noise from the front door and the faint blare of passing traffic. Like a drowning man seeing a lifebelt bobbing towards him, Hugo turned and fairly sprinted from the room to greet his wife, Juliette.

Cheap? Was that what he’d been about to say – my wife was cheap? Or cheesy? Christ, he might be a friend, but that was a bit much, even now.

Judging by the furious whispering in the hallway, Juliette wasn’t impressed by finding me there. She was a friend of Susan’s and we normally got on reasonably well, providing our meetings were brief. Truthfully, given a choice of having me or Hannibal Lecter in the house, I always suspected Juliette would have plumped for the psychopath.

She finally peered round the living-room door, waving a Prada bag. She wasn’t showing off – merely acting in character. Shopping was a major part of her day, so why not ensure everyone knew it?

‘Jake.’ Her impossibly cultured voice usually trailed my name out like a mild cuss-word. But not this time. There was no peck on the cheek, no witty exchange about the state of the country’s economy. In fact, no sharing the same breathable airspace. But that was normal. Yet something about her looked almost… sympathetic.

Odder and odder.

‘Hello, Juliette,’ I replied, and wondered what was going on. She was tall and willowy, and habitually wore sunglasses on top of her head, indoors and out. A genuine Sloane with years of practice behind her, she carried a permanent air of disdain for anyone not ‘in the circle’ of approved friends and acquaintances. Shop assistants, traffic wardens and utility people – gas men and the like – were to be seen and not heard. Even Susan had once wondered aloud whether Hugo would have been acceptable if he hadn’t had a private income and shares in half of Gloucestershire.

Susan. Juliette must have spoken to Susan. It was the only explanation, since they were usually joined by hip or smartphone. But before I could ask her, she disappeared at speed. Hugo followed, reacting to a look which had the same effect as a whistle to a sheepdog.

When he finally trailed back into the room he looked a little subdued. I guessed he’d been given some kind of ultimatum: me out or he could bed down in the spare room.

‘Jake,’ he said uncomfortably, and waved a hand in the air like someone about to impart bad news.

‘No need,’ I said, heading for the door. I knew the signs of marital thumbscrews having been applied. ‘It’s time I was going, anyway.’

‘What are you going to do? I mean, where will you go?’ He looked genuinely pained, if a little relieved, and I felt guilty for having dragged him into my mess. On the other hand, the more I thought about it, the more I realised Hugo was one of my few options. It was a sobering thought. I’d spent so much time out of the country over the years, I knew the security teams at Heathrow airport better than my neighbours.

Even so, I’d been thinking about it on the way over. Instinct had warned me I might not be able to count on bunking down with Hugo, and the idea of sharing my own empty house with a bunch of squatters was definitely out. That left a hotel or finding somebody else to lean on. Now I’d finished trawling my mental address book for lean-able friends and come up with a disappointing and fairly scary zero, it was another sad pointer to the fact that I was screwed.

‘I’ll camp out with Marcus. He’s got plenty of room.’ Desperationville, Arizona, I thought grimly. Marcus was my kid brother. Well, hardly a kid. Aged thirty-one going on eighteen, he was the co-founder of a start-up dating site and video game production unit in London’s Old Street, where techies gather like flies on a digital jam sandwich. He wore the permanent other-worldly look of someone whose brain was in another dimension, and I’d heard it said he was on target to becoming a millionaire any day now. Not that his appearance supported the notion. He shared a foetid pad with a couple of ex-college roomies he’d known for years, and claimed it kept him on his toes and ‘connected’, whatever that meant. Even though there weren’t more than ten years between us, I’d never pretended to ‘get’ Marcus fully, and he seemed quite happy looking on me in the same fashion. As long as we left politics, drugs, sex and religion out of discussions, we got on pretty well. Silence was usually the safest bet.

‘Ah. Good idea, old chap,’ Hugo offered. ‘Of course, you can stay here if pressed. You do know that, don’t you?’ This last would have been better had it not come with a faint whiff of reluctance, like someone inviting the family alcoholic to a Christening.

I shook my head and stepped out into the street. The haunted look as he said it told me he was being kind but hoping I’d say no. ‘I appreciate that, Hugo. But honestly, not to worry.’

Hugo’s townhouse was on an elegant street in the northern quarter of Kensington. The kind of street where trees loom overhead to give an impression of verdant splendour and to complement the neat brickwork and classic columns of the buildings. According to Hugo, someone on the local council had once suggested that streets with trees attracted a lower level of crime than those without. He should try telling that to people who get mugged on Clapham Common. Follow that kind of thinking and we could disband every rural police force in the country and stick another tree in the ground.

Verdant or not, the trees here served to block out the sickly glare of the street lights. They also dumped large areas of shadow every few yards, mysterious dark pockets of impenetrable gloom concealing who knew what.

I was halfway down the street, sticking as closely as I could to the edge of the pavement – whatever street-savvy instincts I possessed were at work in spite of my brain being in under-drive – when I heard the pad of heavy footsteps coming up behind me. Oh, buggeration. After everything else, I’m about to find out the man on the council was talking bollocks. I stopped and turned, balling my fists and steeling myself. After everything I’d been through today, if this was a mugger he was going to wish he’d never set eyes on me.

It was Hugo, panting like an old washing machine with a saggy belt, and struggling into a wrinkled green Barbour that had seen better days. Behind him came remnants of Juliette’s voice raised in anger followed by the sound of the front door slamming. Dry rations for Hugo tonight, then.

‘Jake,’ he wheezed, and clutched my arm. ‘Please, mate… hold up.’

I waited while he patted down his pockets for a cigarette and got his breath back. Being office-bound most of his working days and generally inert the rest of the time, Hugo is about as unfit as a man is capable of being without being on life support. Added to that, while he didn’t smoke indoors as a concession to Juliette and his two children, he rarely let an opportunity go by without lighting up everywhere else. He’d even threatened to resign one day when someone at HP&P had suggested bringing in a smoking ban within fifty yards of the premises. It also explained why he persistently refused to take his children to Disneyland, Florida, where he’d have been locked up within ten minutes of touchdown.

He puffed away happily in the gloom, then nodded towards the far end of the street where I was hoping to pick up a passing cab. ‘Fancy a drink, old boy?’ he offered companionably. ‘And a chat?’

‘Sure. Why not.’ In truth, I was glad he’d come after me. Whatever he knew about Susan’s departure, it was a whole lot more than I did. And he might have some goss on why I’d been selected by HP&P to join the great unwashed. Maybe over a drink or two I’d find out why my life had suddenly gone into freefall.

We walked along together while I let Hugo marshal his thoughts and inhale more nicotine into his system. I knew him well enough to know he had something on his mind, and in his own good time he’d come out with it. Either that or I’d lose patience and brain him with one of the many ‘no parking’ cones lining the street.

He led the way into a small pub containing a handful of customers. It was one of those rare old places which seemed to have survived the developers and avoided being turned into an Irish theme pub filled to the ceiling with harps, shillelaghs and fishing tackle. The clientele consisted of solitary drinkers staring into their glasses as if there lay the answers to the mysteries of life.

Hugo ordered pints and whisky chasers. It was a bad sign; he only drank chasers when he had to face something particularly unpleasant or shocking. The last time had been when he’d lost a packet during an illicit visit to Epsom, only to turn round and bump into his next-door neighbour, a noted blabbermouth. Apparently Juliette rated gambling on horses on a par with being a wife-beater or a socialist.

‘Bad business, this,’ he said, after inhaling half his pint. I was struggling to keep up, too entombed in my own thoughts about Susan’s departure.

‘Which specific bit of bad business are we talking about?’ I asked, keen to remind him that it had been a bad day in more ways than one.

‘Why, Susan’s leaving, of course. I – oh… you thought I meant the other. Sorry. Listen, I promise I knew nothing about that, Jake. God’s honour. A bolt out of the blue, I promise. I may work for HP&P but they don’t tell me what they’re planning to do. It’s all the new owners’ doing, I suspect.’

I waved away his protestations. I knew he wouldn’t have been involved; I’d worked for HP&P long enough to know that they operated a strict left-hand/right-hand policy. The kind which meant neither hand operated as if it were joined to the same body. It was a corporate nightmare but hardly uncommon.

‘Are you going to let me in on it or not?’ I finally prompted him, staring at his reflection in the bar mirror. It seemed easier than looking at him full-on; a bit like a confessional, although imagining Hugo as a priest was stretching things a bit.

‘It was Juliette who first told me,’ he said slowly. ‘She and Susan, they get on, you see. They talk about things. Always have. They trade secrets and… well, I suppose Susan needed someone to confide in.’ He looked at me in the bar mirror with a spaniel-eyed expression of regret, as if it was his fault for knowing more about my personal life than I did. ‘Like a bloody sponge, my wife,’ he continued dolefully. ‘She knows the secrets of half the married women in West London. I’d make a fortune if I could get her to write it all down. Why, there’s a merchant banker’s wife over in Ealing who–’

‘What did she tell you?’ I interrupted him, before he launched into a long story about someone neither of us knew or cared about. ‘Did she say why Susan left – or where she is?’

‘I don’t know why, other than what Juliette told me – which might or might not be reliable info, you understand. You see, Juliette hates anyone associated with HP&P, for some reason. You included, I’m afraid.’ He grinned nervously and sucked in more beer. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t think she likes me much at the moment.’

I sighed and took a sip of whisky. Its warmth burned all the way down. That was all it did, though, and if there was any answer in the bottom of my glass, it wasn’t in any format that I could decipher. Maybe one of the other drinkers would be able to translate it for me. Roll up, roll up… come and read my glass and tell me the secrets of where I’ve gone wrong.

‘Come on, Hugo,’ I said tiredly. ‘In the absence of Susan being here to tell me herself, it’s all I’ve got. So shoot, will you? I’m a big boy now – I think I can take it.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m afraid – Susan left you because… well, she was bored.’