98
Roy sat with Pat and Dennis at a wooden table in the restaurant area of the huge, open-plan Chelsea Brewing Company, which was owned by Pat’s cousin. To his right was a long wooden bar, and behind him were rows of gleaming copper vats as tall as houses, and miles of stainless-steel and aluminium piping and tubing. With its acres of wooden flooring and immaculate cleanliness, it had the feel more of a museum than a busy working enterprise.
Visiting had become a ritual, a compulsory watering-hole stop during every trip Roy made to New York. Pat was clearly proud of his cousin’s success and enjoyed giving an Englishman a run for his money with American-brewed beer.
There were six different varieties in sampler glasses in front of each of the three police officers. The glasses were positioned on a round blue spot on the specially designed table mat that gave the names of the beers. Pat’s cousin, also called Patrick, a stocky, bespectacled and intense man in his forties, was talking Roy through the different brewing processes for each one.
Roy was only half listening. He was tired; it was late according to UK time now. Today had yielded nothing – just one blank after another. Apart from the successful purchase of a precocious- looking Bratz for his god-daughter. In his view the doll looked like a Barbie that was working in the sex trade. But, as he reflected, what did he know about the tastes of nine-year-olds?
The hotel manager of the W had little to add to what Grace already knew other than, for what it was worth, Ronnie had watched a pay-per-view porn movie at 11 o’clock that last night.
And no one at any of the seven stamp dealers they had visited this afternoon had recognized either Wilson’s name or his photograph.
As Pat’s cousin intoned on about the science behind the beer Roy liked best, Checker Cab Blonde Ale, he stared out of the window into the night. He could see the rigging of yachts in the marina and further, beyond the darkness of the Hudson, the lights of New Jersey. It was so vast, this city. So many people coming and going. Live here, like any big city, and you’d see thousands of faces every day. How likely was it that he could find anyone who would remember one face from six years back?
But he had to try. Knocking on doors. The good old-fashioned-policing way. The chances of Ronnie being here were slim. More likely he was in Australia – certainly the latest evidence pointed that way. He tried to do a quick calculation of the time zones in his head, while Patrick moved on to explaining how the subtle caramel flavours of Sunset Red Ale were achieved.
It was 7 o’clock in the evening. Melbourne was ten hours ahead of the UK, so how many did that make it ahead of New York, which was five hours ahead – no – behind the UK? Christ, the calculation was doing his head in.
And all the time he kept nodding politely at Patrick.
It was fifteen hours ahead, he worked out. Mid-morning. Hopefully, ahead of Norman and Nick’s visit, the Melbourne police would make a start on checking whether Ronnie Wilson had entered Australia at any point since September 2001.
There was something else, he suddenly remembered, surreptitiously pulling out his notebook and flicking back a couple of pages to the notes he had taken at his meeting with Terry Biglow, the list of Ronnie Wilson’s acquaintances and friends.
Patrick finally finished and went off to get Roy his own personal jug of Checker Cab. The three detectives each raised a glass.
‘Thanks for your time, guys, I appreciate it,’ Grace said. ‘And I’m buying.’
‘You’re in my cousin’s place,’ Pat said. ‘You don’t pay a dime.’
‘When you’re with us in New York, you’re our guest,’ Dennis said. ‘But shit, buddy, when we come to England you’d better take out a second mortgage!’
They laughed.
Then Pat looked sad suddenly. ‘You know, did I ever tell you that thing about 9/11, about the
Grace shook his head.
‘They had people bring dogs along – to the pile, you know, the Belly of the Beast. They were just for the workers there to stroke.’
Dennis nodded, concurring. ‘That’s what they called ’em –
‘Kind of like therapy,’ Pat said. ‘We were all finding such horrible things. They figured, we stroke the dogs, it’s a good feeling, contact with something living, something happy.’
‘You know, I think it worked,’ Dennis said. ‘That whole thing, 9/11, you know, it brought a lot of good out in people in this city.’
‘And it brought the scumbags out too,’ Pat reminded him. ‘At Pier 92 we were giving cash handouts between fifteen hundred and two and a half thousand bucks, depending on their needs, to help people in immediate hardship.’ He shrugged. ‘Didn’t take the scumbags long to hear about this. We had several came and scammed us, telling us they had lost family, when they hadn’t.’
‘But we got them,’ Dennis said with grim satisfaction. ‘We got ’ em after. Took a while, but we got every damned one of them.’
‘But there was good that came out of it,’ Pat said. ‘It brought some heart and soul back to this city. I think people are a little kinder here now.’
‘And some people are a lot richer,’ Dennis said.
Pat nodded. ‘That’s for sure.’
Dennis chuckled suddenly. ‘Rachel, my wife, she’s got an uncle over in the Garment District. He has an embroidery business, makes stuff for the souvenir shops. I stopped by to see him a couple of weeks after 9/11. He’s this little Jewish guy, right, Hymie. He’s eighty-two years old, still works a fourteen-hour day. The nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. His family escaped the Holocaust, came out here. There isn’t anybody he wouldn’t help. Anyhow, I walk in there and I never saw the place so busy. Workers everywhere. T-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps, all piled up, people stitching, ironing, machining, bagging.’
He sipped some beer and shook his head.
‘My uncle had had to take on extra staff. Couldn’t cope with all the orders. It was all Twin Towers commemorative stuff he was making. I asked him how it was going. He sat there in the middle of all this chaos and he looked at me with this little smile on his face and he said business was good, it had never been better.’ Dennis nodded, then gave a wry shrug, ‘You know what? There’s always a buck in tragedy.’
99
Lorraine lay in bed, wide awake. The sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed for her were about as effective as a double espresso.
The television was on in the room, the shitty little portable that had been in the guest bedroom, the only one that hadn’t been repossessed by the bailiffs, as there wasn’t any money owing on it. There was an old film playing. She hadn’t caught the title, but she kept the set on all the time, as if the screen was wallpaper. She liked the light from it, the noises, the company.
Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway were playing chess in a swish pad with moody lighting. There was a seriously erotic, charged atmosphere between them, with all kinds of nuances.
She and Ronnie used to play games together. She recalled those early years, when they had been crazy about each other and did wild things sometimes. They played strip chess, and Ronnie always wiped her out, leaving her naked and himself fully clothed. And strip Scrabble.
Never again. She sniffed.
She found it hard to focus on anything clearly. Hard to get her head around anything. She just kept thinking about Ronnie. Missing him. Dreaming of him on the rare occasions she slept long enough to dream. And in the dreams he was alive, smiling, telling her she was a silly cow for thinking he was dead.
She was still shaking from the contents of the FedEx envelope that had arrived at the end of September, containing photographs of Ronnie’s wallet and his mobile phone. It was the picture of the singed wallet that was the worst. Had he been burned to death?
A massive wave of grief flooded through her suddenly. She started crying. Clinging to the pillow, she sobbed her heart out. ‘Ronnie,’ she murmured. ‘Ronnie, my darling Ronnie. I loved you so much. So much.’
After some minutes she calmed down and lay back, watching the movie flickering on the screen. And then, to her complete and utter terror, she suddenly saw her bedroom door opening. A figure was coming in. A tall, black shadow. A man, his face almost in total darkness inside a cagoule hood. He was striding towards her.
She scrambled back in the bed in terror, reaching out to her bedside table for something to use as a weapon. Her glass of water went crashing to the floor. She tried to scream, but only the faintest sound blurted out before a hand clamped over her mouth.
And she heard Ronnie’s voice. Sharp and hushed.
‘It’s me!’ he said. ‘It’s me! Lorraine, babe, it’s me. I’m OK!’
He took his hand away and tossed back the cagoule hood.
She snapped on the bedside light. Stared at him in utter disbelief. Stared at a ghost who had grown a beard and shaved his head. A ghost who smelled of Ronnie’s skin, of Ronnie’s hair, of Ronnie’s cologne. Who was cupping her face with hands that felt like Ronnie’s hands.
She stared at him with complete and utter bewilderment, joy steadily catching fire inside her. ‘Ronnie? It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Course it’s me!’
She stared back. Open-mouthed. Stared. And stared. Then she shook her head, silent for some moments.
‘They all said – they said you were dead.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I am.’
He kissed her. His breath smelled of cigarettes, alcohol and something slightly garlicky. At this moment it was the most beautiful smell in all the world.
‘They sent me pictures of your wallet and your phone.’
His eyes lit up like a child. ‘Fuck! Brilliant! They found them! That is so fucking great!’
His reaction confused her. Was he joking? Everything at this moment was confusing her. She touched his face, tears starting to roll down her cheeks.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, caressing his cheeks, touching his nose, his ears, stroking his forehead. ‘It’s you. It’s really you.’
‘Yes, you daft cow!’
‘How – how did you – how did you survive?’
‘Because I thought about you and I wasn’t ready to leave you.’
‘Why – why didn’t you call? Were you hurt?’
