Part 16 (1/2)

'No I b.l.o.o.d.y haven't.'

'So why the doctor's?' said Nikki.

'I can't sleep,' I said.' It's getting me down.'

When Gail rose from the table to get her dessert at the serving hatch, Nikki waited for her to move out of earshot, touched the back of my hand with a long fingernail and said, 'I could make you sleep.'

I didn't know what to say. I think I coloured.

'You sure you're all right?' Nikki said.

'I'm fine,' I insisted.

That afternoon I used the public telephone in the kiosk outside the theatre to phone long-distance. I don't know, maybe it was something the doctor had said about feeling guilty about my parents. I had a pile of coins in my hand ready to force them into the spring-loaded slot whenever the rapid-pip signal demanded to be fed.

'You haven't forgotten us, then,' said my mother.

'Who are you?' I joked feebly.

I answered the usual questions: where I did my shopping, how was I managing with my laundry, did I know that Tesco's had a giant size box of was.h.i.+ng powder on offer at half price. I squirted another coin into the trap and then she pa.s.sed me on to Ken. I asked him how was business and he told me that he'd had to lay off a couple of men who had been with him a long time. I was sympathetic. I knew the men. When a country moves into recession, building is one of the first things to be hit. I expressed the hope that they would find other work and my dad said that they hadn't much chance of that what with all the wogs taking up the jobs.

I admit I over-reacted. I heard myself calling him some names interrupted when I had to shove another coin in the box to complete the list I had in store for him and to his credit he just took it. Somehow we salvaged the conversation and turned it to safe things: football, the drought. He asked me if I needed any money. I told him I was fine.

'Ken, can you put my mum back on the line?'

When she came back on I immediately said, 'Mum, why did my dad come here?'

There was a long silence at the other end. Then she said, 'What is it you think you are doing there, David? What do you think you're doing in that awful place?'

'I'm working,' I said. 'I just want to know why he was here. I have the photograph. I know he was here.'

I heard a m.u.f.fled conversation at the other end, then Ken spoke again. 'You've upset her, David.'

'Then we're all upset,' I said callously.

'David,' I heard him say, 'David.' But his voice was overridden by rapid pips in my ear. I had some more coins in my hand, but in the few seconds I had before cut-off I said, 'I'm out of change, Ken. Tell Mum I love her.'

'David-'

The line went dead.

As I put the receiver back on its cradle I became aware of another man standing a few paces away, waiting, as I thought, to use the phone after me. I stepped aside so he could get to the kiosk, but he held out an arm to obstruct me. 'Can I have a word?'

I recognised him. It was the man who had nodded to me outside the pub the time I'd spent the day in town with Nikki, after seeing the lion. I'd met him originally, with his head of black hair swept back and fixed in place with Brylcreem, at the National Front meeting. It was John Talbot, the man that DC Willis had revealed was Terri's brother.

'It's about Terri,' the man said.

'Oh yes?'

'You know she's my sister, don't you?' Though this man was taller and rough-featured, there was a resemblance though not one you would have seen if he hadn't mentioned it. 'She's gone missing.'

'Yes, the police came here asking about her.'

'Police,' he spat. 'Useless.'

I nodded.

'Did you tell them anything?'

'Anything? I don't know anything.'

'You don't know anything about what's gone off?'

'Gone off?'

'Yes. Something's gone off.'

'What do you mean?' I said.

'It's not like her. She's left everything. I smell a rat.' He looked at me hard. I had the notion he was saying to me that he was looking at the thing he could smell. I had to summon all my willpower not to look away. 'The only people she had anything to do with here was Colin, and you.'

'Me? Have you spoken to Terri about me?'

He nodded. Then he wagged a finger in my face. 'There's something not right here. Not right.'

I shook my head slightly. I was trying to model my features into an expression of concern and bafflement at the same time.

'You're a friend of Tony's, aren't you?'

'Tony? The Tony here at the camp? The children's entertainer?'

'You know who I mean.'

'Well, yes. I mean, yes, he's a friend.'

He took a step away from me. He was still tapping his finger at the empty air. 'Be a.s.sured I'll be back with more questions. Be a.s.sured.'

Then he turned and left me.

I was falling apart. Isolated. I had to know that Terri was all right and that Colin hadn't done something terrible. But I was also re-examining my feelings for her. I suspected that she'd misled me about a great many things. She hadn't actually lied outright but by cleverly editing any information she had given me she had painted a partial picture of herself. Colin's story of rescuing her from prost.i.tution didn't match up with hers, and for some reason I believed Colin's version. She hadn't even told me she had a brother. Just as Colin had led me down one garden path, so she had led me down another. The garden of hate and the garden of love; and I found no succour in either.

Meanwhile I had to go round organising these trivial and inconsequential not to say silly activities when all the time I felt like some kind of horrific dragnet was closing in. That night I was on the roster to run the lights in the nightclub. Normally I stayed sober while I was still on duty, but drinking took the edge off my anxieties and stopped certain thoughts from bubbling to the surface. There were three acts on that night: Tony put them onstage and took them off while I dealt with the lights. During the first interval I sat on a high stool at the bar with Tony, when Nikki turned up looking like she was dressed for the London Palladium Royal Command Performance.

'Look at that man-trap,' he said, tapping my thigh.

She was stunning. She wore a short black c.o.c.ktail dress, opaque black tights and black heels. She had a white flower maybe it was a gardenia or a magnolia pinned in her hair, which was tied back. I don't think I'd seen her face made-up before that night. So pretty was she that her natural look served her beautifully on most occasions, but here she was looking like a cover girl from a magazine. Heads turned all over the small room. If she saw it, she made out she didn't.

She made a bee-line for Tony and he received her with great theatricality, kissing her on either cheek, hamming it up for the many eyes male and female tracking her movements. He loved it. After all, they were celebrities of this tiny holiday camp world. She stepped over to me and gave me a peck on the cheek, drawing me into their aura. I found her a stool and Tony made an extravagant gesture of ordering Sidecar c.o.c.ktails, a drink I'd never even heard of.

While we fussed around and Tony made sure she got to sit between us, the c.o.c.ktails arrived in gla.s.ses sugar-frosted at the rim and with tiny paper umbrellas. I know it was a small holiday camp on an unfas.h.i.+onable stretch of English coastline but the way people stared at us made me feel like I was in a Hollywood VIP lounge amid star company. Somehow, inside the club we had become spot-lit by the effects of glamour. I don't know what was in the c.o.c.ktail but I drank it too fast and Tony ordered up another round.