responsibilities.
DO NOT TRUST THIS MAN.
‘Where was this?’ Kiley asked.
‘On some hoarding up by the Nag’s Head. And there’s more of ’em. All over. Here. The Archway. Finsbury fucking Park.’ The anger in Marshall’s face was plain, the line of his scar white as an exclamation mark. ‘What am I s’posed to do? Go round and tear every one of ’em down?’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Kiley said.
‘Go see her. Talk to her. Here.’ He pushed a slip of paper towards Kiley’s hand. ‘Tell her it’s not fuckin’ on.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if you did that yourself?’
Marshall laughed, a grating sound that finished low in his throat.
Kiley glanced at the poster again. ‘Is it true?’
‘What?’
‘What it says.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Did you leave her?’
‘Course I left her. There weren’t no livin’ with her.’
‘And child support? Maintenance?’
‘Let whichever bloke she’s screwing pay fuckin’ maintenance.’ Marshall laughed again, harsh and short. ‘And she’s got the mouth to accuse me of goin’ with whores. Ask her what she was doing when I met her, ask her that. She’s the biggest whore of the fuckin’ lot.’
‘I still think if you could go and talk to her…’
Marshall leaned sharply forward, slopping his beer. ‘She’s trying to make me look a cunt. And she’s got to be stopped.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kiley said, a slow shake of the head. ‘I don’t think I want to get involved.’
‘Right.’ Marshall’s chair cannoned backwards as he got to his feet. The poster he screwed up and tossed to the floor. ‘You ain’t got the stomach for it, believe me, there’s plenty who have.’
Kiley watched him go, barging people aside on his way to the door. The piece of paper Marshall had given him was lined, the writing small and surprisingly neat. Jennie Calder, an address in N8. He refolded it and tucked it out of sight.
He had met Kate at a film festival, the premiere of a new Iranian movie, the organisers anticipating demonstrations and worse. The security firm for whom Kiley had then been working were hired to forestall trouble at the screening and the reception afterwards. Late that night, demonstrations over, only a handful of people lingering in the bar, Kiley had wandered past the few discarded placards and leaned on the Embankment railing, staring out across the Thames. Leaving Charing Cross station, a train clattered across Hungerford Bridge; shrouded in tarpaulin, a barge ghosted bulkily past, heading downriver towards the estuary. In their wake, it was quiet enough to hear the water, lapping against stone. When he turned, there was Kate, her face illuminated as she paused to light a cigarette. Dark hair, medium height, he had noticed her at the reception, asking questions, making notes. At one point she had been sitting with the young Iranian director, a woman, Kate’s small tape recorder on the table between them.
‘What did you think of the film?’ Kiley asked, wanting to say something.
‘Very Iranian,’ Kate said and laughed.
‘I doubt if it’ll come to the Holloway Odeon, then.’
‘Probably not.’
She came and stood alongside him at the Embankment edge.
‘I should get fed up with it,’ Kate said after some moments. ‘This view — God knows I’ve seen it enough — but I don’t.’ She was wearing a loose-fitting suit, the jacket long, a leather bag slung from one shoulder. When she pitched her cigarette, half-smoked, towards the water, it sparkled through the near dark.
‘There’s another showing,’ she said, looking at Kiley full on. ‘The film, tomorrow afternoon. If you’re interested, that is.’
‘You’re going again?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’ She was smiling with her eyes, the merest widening of the mouth.
The opening images aside, a cluster of would-be teachers, blackboards strapped awkwardly to their backs as they struggle along a mountain road in a vain search for pupils, it turned out to be the longest eighty-five minutes Kiley could recall. Kate’s piece in the Independent on Sunday, complete with photographs of Samira Makhmalbaf and suitable stills, he thought far more interesting than the film itself.
Plucking up a certain amount of courage, he phoned to tell her so.
Well, it had been a beginning.
‘I’m still not clear,’ Kate said, ‘why you turned it down.’
They were sitting in Kate’s high bed, a bottle of red wine, three-parts empty, resting on the floor. Through the partly opened blinds, there was a view out across Highbury Fields. It was coming up to a quarter past ten and Kiley didn’t yet know if he’d be invited to stay the night. He’d tried leaving his toothbrush once and she’d called down the stairs after him, ‘I think you’ve forgotten something.’
‘I didn’t fancy it,’ Kiley said.
‘You didn’t fancy the job or you didn’t like the look of him?’
‘Both.’
‘Because if you’re only going to take jobs from decent, upstanding citizens with good credit references and all their vowels in the right place…’
‘It’s not that.’
‘What then?’
‘It’s what he wanted me to do.’
‘Go round and talk to her, persuade her to ease off, reach some kind of accommodation.’
‘That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted me to warn her, frighten her.’
‘And now you’re not going to do it?’
Kiley looked at her. Pins out of her hair, it fell across her shoulders, down almost to the middle of her back. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Now you’ve turned him down, what will happen?’
‘He’ll get somebody else.’
‘With fewer scruples.’
Kiley shrugged.
‘Maybe it would’ve been better for her,’ Kate said, ‘if you’d said yes.’ The way she was looking at him suggested that pretty soon he’d be climbing back into his clothes and setting out on the long walk home.
Some housing department official lacking a sense of irony had named the roads after areas of New Orleans. Anything further from the Crescent City would have been hard to find. Kiley walked past a triangle of flattened mud masquerading as a lawn and headed for the first of several concrete walkways. ‘Do Not Let Your Dogs Foul the Estate’, read one sign. ‘No Ball Games’, read another. A group of teenagers lounged around the first stairwell, listening to hard-core hip-hop at deafening volume and occasionally spitting at the ground. They gave no sign of moving aside to let Kiley pass, but then, at the last moment, they did. Laughter trailed him up towards the fifth floor.
Two of the glass panels in the front door had been broken and replaced by hardboard. Kiley rang the bell and waited.
‘Who is it?’
He could see a shape, outlined through the remaining glass.
‘Jennie Calder?’
