That man works miracles. He’s
Now Charlie wished she’d thought to ask her sister for the first three names on the list. Liv had said nothing about Lund being callous, entirely lacking in social graces and, as a result, impossible to talk to. On the phone this morning, his PA had told Charlie he would see her today but not in his office-for lunch, at Signor Grilli, an Italian restaurant on Goodge Street. In response to Charlie’s mystified silence, the assistant had said, ‘It’s where he meets people. He likes it there,’ as if she’d assumed Charlie might know this already.
Lund had arrived late, patting his pockets and muttering that he’d forgotten his wallet. He could go back to the office for it, he said, but then he and Charlie would lose their ‘window’. Charlie told him it didn’t matter, she’d pay. Always worth splashing out on a miracle, she’d thought to herself. Lund had tossed a perfunctory thank you in her direction without looking up. Now she was wondering if it was a ruse. Did everyone who consulted him have to buy him lunch? And why this loud, hectic little restaurant in particular? Lund seemed hardly to notice what he was shovelling into his mouth. His BlackBerry was the main recipient of his attention. It lay on the table in front of him; every time it bleeped, he grabbed it with both hands and spent a couple of minutes panting and huffing over it as if it were an addictive pocket computer game that he couldn’t bear to put away, one that offered bonus points to anyone who gave it his all.
Charlie’s pizza lay untouched on the table in front of her. She wanted to ask Lund to repeat back to her everything she’d told him, to check he’d listened properly before deciding her problem wasn’t worth his time or effort. ‘I’m talking about a display,’ she said. ‘It’s not tucked away in a cupboard somewhere-it’s blatant. She’s got them up on a wall for anyone who walks into that room to see: a complete… information resource about the worst, most traumatic event of
Lund’s BlackBerry beeped. He grabbed it and slumped down in his chair for a session of enthusiastic finger- and thumb-jabbing, throughout which he breathed heavily, muttered occasionally and ignored Charlie. When he’d finished, he looked up briefly and said, ‘She waited for you at work for a valid reason, right?’
‘I don’t know about that. She told me a bullshit story about her boyfriend saying he’d murdered a woman who’s not even dead. And she refused to tell me why she wanted to talk to me in particular. When I asked her yesterday why she’d had an article about me in her coat pocket, she didn’t give me a proper answer. ’
‘Miss Zailer…’
‘It’s Sergeant,’ Charlie corrected him angrily.
‘If I were you I’d relax.’ Lund wound some more strands of spaghetti round his spoon, the long fringe of his dark hair dipping into the sauce in his bowl. Then he sucked up the pasta, making a noise like a vacuum cleaner, spattering the tablecloth and his shirt with sauce. He raised his voice and said something in Italian to nobody in particular-into the air, or so it seemed. Then, as if nothing unusual had happened, he switched back to English. ‘It’s her bedroom wall, she’s got a steady boyfriend-how many people are likely to see it? Her, him, a few close friends maybe.’
‘I don’t care if no one sees it,’ Charlie snapped. ‘She’s got no right to have it. Has she? Are you telling me a complete stranger-stalker-weirdo can amass information about my life and turn it into an… an exhibit for her own amusement, and there’s no way of making her stop?’
‘You’ve not been listening to me if you need to ask.’
‘I want her to destroy it, everything she’s got on me, or hand it over to me so that I can destroy it!’ Charlie was aware that she was almost shouting.
‘Your wishing something doesn’t make it legally enforceable,’ said Lund. His tone suggested nothing could matter to him less. ‘There’s nothing here for me to work with. Zero. First, there’s no exhibiting involved. If she was going round sticking this stuff up on billboards all over town, it’d be a different matter, but her home’s her private property. Any information she’s got about you was in the public domain-in newspapers, which she bought, presumably. She didn’t steal them from your house, did she? Haven’t you got any old newspapers or magazines lying around at home?
‘No.’ Charlie spat the word at him. Did she look like she had nothing better to do than read about handbags and cushions? ‘Keeping a few newspapers and magazines isn’t the same thing as obsessively gathering cuttings about one person. I don’t keep anything that constitutes an invasion of someone else’s privacy, no.’
Lund had disappeared beneath the table. He was rooting around in his briefcase. When he surfaced, he was holding a crumpled copy of the
‘She’s fucking stalking me!’ Charlie pushed Lund’s newspaper off her plate, towards him. ‘You don’t think that’s detrimental? Her bedroom wall’s part of it-it’s all part of the same thing, and I need it to stop! She waited for me outside my nick, she wouldn’t explain…’
‘From what you said, you didn’t try very hard to get an explanation out of her.’ Lund rotated his lower jaw to mask a yawn. It made a clicking sound. ‘I’d have demanded to know what she was about and refused to take no for an answer. You didn’t even tell her you’d seen the bedroom wall-why not?’
‘Because I was shit scared, all right?’ Charlie hissed. The truth was embarrassing, but since she was never going to see Dominic Lund again, she decided it didn’t matter. So what if the fourth most influential person in UK law thought she was a pathetic, gutless wimp? ‘Even you can’t deny this woman’s unnaturally obsessed with me. At the moment she’s restraining herself-she thinks I don’t know, so she can afford to take her time. If I’d told her what I’d seen, she might have pulled out a knife and sliced me up-how did I know what she’d do? She’s not normal. I needed to get away and think it through.’
Charlie sniffed hard, wiping away her tears quickly so she wouldn’t need to admit to herself she was crying. Two tears didn’t count as crying. ‘I was desperate to get the hell away from her, but I didn’t, not immediately. I sat in her house for another two hours, listening to an elaborate story about an art fair. I kidded myself I was staying to try and figure her out, but it wasn’t that. It was fear. This woman’s had me in her sights for God knows how long, she’s toyed with me, manipulated me-me and maybe several other people. I’ve no way of knowing how much of this dead-woman-who-isn’t-dead act is genuine-it could easily be a trap of some kind. And last night she wanted to tell me a story, and you know what? I listened like a good girl, hoping that if I did what she wanted, if I could convince her I was her friend and her ally, then maybe she’d change her mind about whatever God-awful thing she’s planning to do to me.’
Lund looked unsurprised but amused by Charlie’s outburst. ‘Miss Zailer-Sergeant, rather. You’re in retreat from reality. From what you’ve said, there’s no reason to think this lady’s stalking you or that she wants to harm you. Yours was clearly a name she knew, so when she had a problem she wanted to take to the police, she thought of you. That’s not stalking. As for not explaining why she had the article on her person when she came to see you-so what? It’s not against the law to withhold an explanation, or to cut things out of newspapers and stick them on the wall. If everyone in the UK decided to fill their houses with column inches about you, there’d be damn all you could do about it.’
‘Okay.’ Charlie forced herself to breathe slowly and steadily. ‘Realistic. I can be realistic.’
Lund raised his eyebrows, making no secret of his doubt. His BlackBerry bleeped again, sucking his attention towards it like a mind-magnet. In an instant, Charlie had become invisible. Even more invisible. By the time Lund had finished prodding his machine, she’d composed herself. ‘What if we were sneaky about it?’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you send the woman a letter, scaring the shit out of her? I’d be willing to pay over the odds.’
