loosened my shirt. I got a jug of water and a glass and sat them beside my chair. I took the first gulp without water and felt it rip my throat. I gazed at my bed and saw us, saw her, tumbled and lovely on the cover.
I couldn’t accept this was the end. I’d find a way. I’d drop all this shit about followers. She thought I was mad. Maybe I was. Maybe this was one of the side effects of the head wound. Prof Haggarty would know. That’s it; I’d call him and ask his advice. But that would be tomorrow. Right now there was nothing more I could do than wait to get drunk.
TEN
Either I hadn’t drunk enough or drank too much, but it didn’t make me happy. And for a guy who once had problems with his memory, I found it pretty hard to forget every turn of her body and every shift and shadow of her mobile face. I slept, but the dreams were bad; some of the old camp ones crept in and scared the shit out of me. I felt the big boulders piling up all round me and I couldn’t get past them and they kept moving slowly on top of me to hem me in and smother me. I kept waking up gasping for air, and retrieving the quilt that seemed to be having nightmares of its own.
I was glad of daylight, though it brought a mighty headache. I had a raging thirst and gulped at the water pouring from the tap. I threw more water on my face and fought back the nausea. I needed to do something, anything, but it was too early to try Haggarty. I made a big bowl of my father’s patented hangover cure: porridge. Still in my singlet and pants, I cleaned the flat from top to bottom, realising as I did how long it had been since the linoleum had seen a mop. I played the wireless as loud as it could go until the pips went for nine o’clock, then walked through to my office on the still-damp lino to place a call to Professor Haggarty.
“Vivienne, it’s Danny McRae. I need to talk to the Prof. It’s important.”
I could hear her sucking her teeth at my use of her first name. “Professor Haggarty is with a client. He couldn’t possibly be interrupted. You have an appointment next week. I’m sure it can wait.”
“Viv. I said it was important. Can you please get your boss to call me back? I must talk to him.”
I swear she sniffed. “I can’t promise. It’s most unusual. I will speak to the Professor when he has a moment and see what he says. But his diary is very full.”
Full of more important people than me. I retreated to my bedroom. It was tidy but it still held after-images of her. I scrubbed myself raw over the sink, using the nail brush like a scourge as though I could rub her impression off my skin. I banged around making tea and toast, though I had no appetite for either after the porridge. I went hunting for the cat with a slopping bowl of milk, but even she had abandoned me.
Finally Haggarty called back. The lovely Vivienne put me through, but she sounded as though it was costing her blood.
“Right, man. How the hell are you? Are you in bother, now? Tell me about it. Do you want to come in? I can fit you in, no bother.” There was a side comment in a strained female voice, then, “Sure we can, Vivienne.”
“Prof, thanks. Maybe we can do this on the phone. I just wanted to know…” I began to feel stupid. What the hell was I going to ask him? “Look… there’s this girl I’ve been seeing.”
“And you want to know if you really have been seeing her, Daniel?” He said it with a bit of a laugh but I didn’t see the funny side.
He meant Valerie, the girl my beat-up brain had conjured to help me through the Caldwell case. “Others have seen us, talked with us. I’ve touched her. She’s real enough, Prof. But here’s the thing; I think Eve’s being followed. In fact I know she is. They’re pros. Four of them. They aren’t easy to spot but I know what I’m looking for.” Just as I had been certain about my ghostly helper.
“Go on.” There was no hint of scepticism, so I pressed on.
“She’s a reporter. A crime reporter. She’s upset some people.”
“Why doesn’t she call the police?”
“She doesn’t believe me. She says… she says I’m crazy. That I’m seeing things.
That’s what I wanted to talk about. Is it possible? I mean with my history.
Could I be imagining these men?”
“I see. Well, you know I’ve always said what a mysterious thing the mind is…”
“Spare me the philosophy, Prof. You’re the expert. What’s your opinion? Am I having a relapse?”
His voice firmed up. “Based on what I’ve seen of you, Daniel, I would say no.
The Valerie figure is explainable. She was your inner mind trying to get through to the damaged surface. As your brain mended, so Valerie appeared and helped you to solve the crime. But I don’t see your current mind needs to conjure up these… these stalkers or whatever you might call them. Unless they’re figures from your past. When you were an SOE agent, a spy. Are any of them familiar?”
“No. And one of them… I confronted one of them in the street this week… that’s why I’m calling… Eve thought I had completely flipped. One of them had an American accent. It sounded genuine enough, but so what?”
“An American, you say? Wasn’t it the Americans who liberated Dachau? Who saved you?”
Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. Was that the connection? Was I getting my past all mixed up with my present? Was this my subconscious trying to make sense of more buried memories? Or was I just mad as a hatter? “Is it time for the straitjacket again?”
“You know, man, it’s a blooming miracle there’s a sane mind left in this country after what we’ve gone through. And you fellas working behind the lines, in disguise and cut off from home, had it harder than anyone. It does dreadful damage to the psyche.”
“So I am nuts. But it’s OK, ’cos everybody else is?”
“Not a bit, Daniel. Not a bit. You show none of the signs of delusion. Your girlfriend saw this man you tackled, didn’t she? It’s not as if he was imaginary. And you haven’t been having conversations with yourself, now have you?”
“No. And she did see him. She dragged me off him.”
“Well, fine. I suppose. But all the same I’d avoid tackling strangers in the street for a while. Is there no way you can get some corroboration on these chaps following your lady friend?”
“Not from Eve, that’s for sure. That’s why she’s called it off. But you’ve given me an idea, Prof. Look, you’ve set my mind at rest. A wee bit, anyway. Let me see if I can get a second opinion on this.”
We hung up and I had the operator make another call, to Finchley this time. It rang for a long time.
“Hello.” It was a suspicious voice, high pitched, nasal and calculated to make your ears bleed unless you too had grown up in Birmingham and were immune.
“Mrs Witherham? Is that you? And how are you this fine morning? Could I speak to Midge, please?”
“Oh it’s yow again. I’ve told yow before, I don’t run a telephone service for my lodgers.” She made Glaswegians sound couth.
“It’s an emergency, Mrs Witherham. Honest. I need to speak to Midge urgently.
It’s about some money I owe him. I need to give it to him.”
I knew that would get her. She bellowed up the stairs. “Mr Cummins? It’s that Scotch man again. Something about money. Maybe yow can pay my rent now!”
It took a while. Midge wasn’t an early starter. He took the phone from her grumbling hands, “And a pleasant morning to you too, Mrs Witherham.” There was a pause. “She’s gone. I need to move. Danny? What’s happening?”
“I need you and the lads to do some tailing for me. It’s my own money. Ten bob a day. A week at most.”
I explained what I wanted and overcame his objections by explaining that it wasn’t her I wanted followed but the blokes that were tailing her. I hung up and looked round my bare office. But all I could see was the image of her marching through the door on that first day like Miriam Hopkins in Lady with Red Hair.
I met them exactly seven days later in the George. By then I was a wreck. There were more bottles in my bin than in the backyard of the pub itself. This girl had got under my skin. Every morning I woke hoping it was a bad dream, and every morning I felt the world drop away at the thought I wouldn’t see her again. I picked up the phone a dozen times and replaced it without calling her. Once I couldn’t help myself and got put through to her number.
