Shadows on the Nile Page 3

  The last thought made Jessie smile and she reminded herself sternly that the inimitable Sherlock was nothing more than a figment of Arthur Conan Doyle’s imagination. But today she had walked home. A furniture removal cart had clipped her front wheel and buckled it this morning. She had sat in the gutter nursing a grazed shin and cursed all carts. Cursed October. Cursed her luck. When a passing car had offered her a lift, she had glared at the driver, rejected his undoubted kindness and hobbled the last half mile to the studio pushing a wonky bicycle. She had deposited it in the oily but capable hands of a bicycle shop mechanic on the corner of Fielding Road and at the end of the day she’d headed home on foot.

  She quickened her pace now. On each side of the road perched rows of discreetly respectable houses, the kind of houses where librarians and undertakers lived, curtains already drawn like armour against the outside world, the smoke of coal fires gusting down from the chimneys into Jessie’s nostrils along with the rain. As she reached the turning to her street, she glanced over her shoulder. It was automatic. This need to check.

  Behind her, Putney Hill fell away, gleaming wet and secretive in the dark, its pavements lit by an occasional street lamp or car headlight. There was no one in sight. Hardly surprising, as it wasn’t a night for an evening stroll. A dog with long yellow ears and sodden flanks was mooching around dustbins, but otherwise the street lay lifeless. That suited Jessie just fine. She felt her heart steady to no more than a dull thump. All week this had been going on, this need to search behind her.

  All right, tonight she was mistaken. Tonight there was no one. But other nights, footfalls echoed behind her so clearly that she would swing round to confront, face to face, whoever it was who was following her all over London. Yet there was never anyone she could pick out of the shadows by night, and by day there was only the usual flow of pedestrians going about their business, no one’s eyes meeting hers, just the stolid indifference of city-dwellers to those around them. Some nights she hesitated to turn, afraid that she’d see behind her a lean and hungry figure with blue eyes.

  ‘Jabez!’

  No answer. Her flat felt cold as a tomb as she closed the curtains. October was seeping through the cracks in the plaster.

  ‘Jabez!’ she called again, switching on the overhead light, but there was no sign of activity.

  She dropped her coat and scarf on the sofa and unwrapped a newspaper packet of sprats. Instantly the stink of raw fish permeated the air, thick and salty, and Jessie was thankful that Tabitha was out at work, so there would be no complaints. Jessie headed towards her bedroom, frowning slightly at the sight of the door ajar, because she distinctly recalled making a point of shutting it before leaving for work this morning. There was mud on her eiderdown.

  ‘Jabez,’ she said sternly.

  No answer.

  ‘Where are you hiding?’

  She wafted a sprat by its tail through the air and her pillow trembled. A small heart-shaped face and two pointed ears emerged from under it. A pair of vivid green eyes blinked at her and a loud purr shook the bedding.

  ‘Jabez, you are not allowed in here when I’m out. You know that.’

  The cat stretched one coal-black front leg and pretended to ignore the silvery offering that dangled from her hand. Instead he rolled onto his back, wriggling all four feet in the air, inviting her to admire his sleek black belly. But she wasn’t fooled. She stepped forward quickly and whisked the pillow from her bed.

  ‘Jabez! You are a brute.’

  On the spot where her pillow had lain curled the corpse of a squirrel, its mottled fur as dull and flat as its eyes. She prodded it with the sprat. The animal was already cold and stiff. It saddened Jessie. It takes so little for life to be snatched from your grasp: scampering around Putney Heath and leaping from branches one moment but dead as a butcher’s bone the next. She stroked the tiny creature with one finger, then picked it up and carried it out to the kitchen, ignoring Jabez’s cries of protest. She wrapped the squirrel in an old tea towel, rummaged round for the small trowel that lived under the sink and went downstairs, out into the rain, where she buried the corpse in the back garden under the forsythia bush.

  It was while she was standing invisible in the darkness, with hands all muddy and hair flattened by rain, that Jessie had an unsettling sense of doing this before. Burying something. But the memory wouldn’t quite come to her, what it was she’d buried or where. She stared up at the window of her flat and saw the curtains move and Jabez’s small face peer down at her with what she kidded herself was remorse. She had found him as a kitten shut in a Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin up on the heath on Christmas Eve, a tiny starving handful of fluff, and she had taken him with her, nursed him back to health and given him a home. Now he was family. No matter what his unseemly habits.

  To have abandoned one member of her family was bad enough. To lose another would be unbearable.

  The telephone jangled, startling Jessie. She let it ring unheeded. Jabez opened one eye, stretched out a paw from the stack of paper on top of which he was curled and sank his claws into the woolly sleeve of her jumper. Don’t move. Stay here. She trailed a finger between his ears, matching him stare for stare, and let the telephone ring.

  She was working. Spread around her on the table and littering the floor like discarded underwear, sheets of paper rustled against each other, creating that sound she loved. It meant that her drawing was going well. When the flow of ideas stopped, there was nothing but cold silence. It froze her, paralysed her pen. But this evening the designs were dancing into her fingers as she sketched images for a series of posters for a new soap product.

  The telephone rang again.

  With a sigh she walked over and picked it up. ‘Hello, Alistair.’

  ‘Hello, Jessie. How did you know it was me?’

  ‘I’m psychic.’

  He laughed, uncertain whether she was serious or not.

  ‘It’s a dismal night,’ he commented cheerfully.

  He was going to ask if he could come over.

  ‘Can I come over?’

  She released a convincing yawn. ‘It’s miserable out. How was your day?’

  But he sidestepped her delaying tactic. ‘I thought you might fancy some company?’

  ‘Sorry, Alistair. I’m working.’

  There was a brief, meaningful silence. Like drips of cold water in her ear.

  ‘You’re always working, Jessie.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘True enough.’

  She didn’t argue. She had been seeing Alistair on and off for a few months on a casual basis, and at the start she had enjoyed his company. He ran his father’s car-construction business which made delicious little open-topped two-seaters and had introduced her to the thrills of sports car racing at Brooklands. He was a considerate and amusing companion. So why did she do this? Push him away. It was always the same in every relationship she embarked on. Don’t crowd me. Don’t come too close. Don’t reach in and squeeze my heart. If you do, I might … She shook her head. Might what? Might explode? Might turn into a frog? Might commit murder? She never stayed around long enough to find out.

  She listened to Alistair’s tight breathing at the other end of the line and relented.

  ‘How about Sunday afternoon instead?’ she offered. ‘We could go to Kew Gardens. The hothouses will warm us up.’

  ‘Or we could go for a meal after you’ve finished your work tonight.’ Alistair was stubborn as granite. He inherited it from his Scottish father.

  ‘No.’ A pause. ‘Sorry. Too tired.’

  ‘I could bring over a steak and cook it for you?’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks. See you on Sunday afternoon.’

  She hung up, irritated with herself for being cross with this man who so generously offered to cook a meal for her. She was damn sure nobody barged in on Beethoven with an Apfelstrudel when he was hard at work on his Heroica symphony.

  Jabez yawned and treated her to a cool stare.


  ‘I know, you greedy creature, you want steak instead of sprats.’ She ran a hand along his sleek back, triggering a purr, aware that she could easily have done the same for Alistair. Get it right, Jessie, she told herself. You are no Beethoven and this is no symphony.

  She inspected the sheet of sketches in front of her. With a sigh she drew a thick black line across the page and flicked it to join the others on the floor. It was never good enough. Was that what Beethoven said to himself? Was the music ever good enough? Always there was this chasm between what was in her head and what was on the page. She pulled a fresh sheet of paper towards her. She would go on all night, until she got it right.

  The telephone leapt into life once more and this time she answered it with alacrity.

  ‘Hello, Alistair,’ she said. ‘That steak sounds—’

  ‘Hello, Jessica.’

  ‘Pa!’

  ‘I need you to come over straight away.’ Her father was not a person who believed in small talk.

  ‘I haven’t finished the designs for you yet, so—’

  ‘Right now, Jessica.’

  Even for her father, this was abrupt. The evening was dark and wet outside and Beckenham was an hour’s drive away.

  ‘Can’t it wait?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  One word. That’s all. But she heard the fear encased within it, and it set the hairs on her neck on end. Her father was afraid of nothing.

  ‘What is it, Pa? What has happened?’

  There was a silence. She had a sense of something growing under her ribs and felt a thump deep in her chest.

  ‘Your brother has gone missing.’

  4

  There were some things Jessie wasn’t willing to lie about. Not even to herself. But the whereabouts of her brother wasn’t one of them. She had spent an absurd amount of her life lying through her teeth for Timothy. It was amazing that her tongue hadn’t turned blue from all the cold-hearted lies that had slid off it. Her words were finely honed ice-picks to the soft centre of the girls and, later, of the young women who came knocking on the door in search of her brother with their sweet smiles and insistent pleas. Jessica possessed a whole arsenal of excuses.

  ‘I’m sorry, Isabella, but Tim is playing cricket.’

  ‘He’s in bed with the ’flu.’

  ‘He’s caring for his aunt in Peterborough.’

  ‘Thanks for the Sobranie cigarettes, Amanda. Tim will love them. But he’s working late tonight.’

  ‘No, absolutely no more cigarettes, Amanda. He’s given up.’

  As the years went by, the excuses became increasingly bizarre.

  ‘Don’t you know that he’s in training to be a monk?’ or, ‘Sorry, but he’s having dinner with Noel Coward.’

  It wasn’t Timothy’s fault. The girls fussed over him like bees on a honeycomb, fluttering their pretty wings at him. All his life his golden good looks and his effortless charm had been his undoing. They thwarted the attempts of his first-class brain to be taken seriously and undermined his own resolve to make full use of it. Whenever he bewailed his harem-shadow, Jessie would narrow her eyes at him and say nothing. What was the point? Her brother knew his own weaknesses even better than she did. Nevertheless she carried on lying for him because even she was not as immune to his sunny smile as she liked to pretend.

  Even though she was only seven when he first invaded her life, she had kept to her word. She had made herself love her new brother. In the first year it had felt like chewing on needles every time she smiled at him or touched her lips dutifully to his skin. But that was what did for her. The kissing of his cheek. Cuddling him on her lap, brushing his shining curls, and tickling his chubby little body until it was boneless in her embrace. His arms would wrap around her neck, imprisoning her, and his kisses landed on her face whether she wanted them or not.

  To be able to hold her brother’s hand was unheard of before. It captivated her young heart. His skin was peach-warm against hers. It made something inside her ache, and alone in her own bed she would cry with relief as it filled up a cold empty place hidden inside her chest. Sometimes she would creep into Timothy’s bed at night, snuggle under the blankets and read Sherlock Holmes adventures to him by torchlight, just for the pleasure of feeling his head on her shoulder. She would sniff his hair and twirl a curl of it between her fingers and let herself imagine it was Georgie’s.

  Georgie. As she drove south of London through the rain to her parents’ house in Kent, she allowed his name to enter her mind for once. She had learned eventually to lock it out. She had banned it. Refused to let it rampage through her thoughts and bring her to tears at all the wrong moments. She had never seen or heard of Georgie again after that terrible night, yet now echoes of his voice sounded in her head. The windscreen wipers of her Austin Swallow squeaked on the windshield glass and she peered out into the darkness ahead.

  She had passed the cricket club of Dulwich Village on her left and was on the A234 when she felt her spirits sink, and her foot – with a mind all of its own – eased off the pedal. Her speed dropped to little more than a crawl, as if the car itself were reluctant to enter Beckenham. It was always the same when she drove to her parents’ house.

  Your brother has disappeared. Those were her father’s words on the telephone tonight. We must find him.

  Twenty years too late.

  ‘Good evening, Jessica. You took your time.’

  ‘It’s raining, Pa.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Of course it’s raining? Or of course she took her time? Which did he mean? It didn’t matter. Either way, he would find fault. She had entered the house through a side door which led straight into her father’s printing workshop because she’d seen light spilling from its barred window, painting the raindrops butter-yellow. She would prefer to speak to him first. Before facing her mother.

  ‘I drove as fast as I could in this filthy weather,’ she pointed out and could hear the annoyance she had meant to banish from her voice.

  ‘Don’t get snippy with me, my girl.’

  He put down the container of black ink in his hand. He was wearing his brown work-apron to protect his clothes from splashes, but as usual his hair was immaculate, each dark thread Brylcreemed in place, and his beautiful brogue shoes gleamed like black ice. As he approached her, she regretted her words because his eyes were tense behind his spectacles and a telltale looseness at one side of his mouth betrayed that his emotions were bubbling only just beneath the surface.

  ‘Tell me, Pa, what has happened?’

  ‘Timothy has vanished.’ He flicked a hand towards the window, as if her brother might have crawled out that way. ‘We haven’t heard from him.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Seven days.’

  ‘Oh, Pa, only a week! He’s a grown man,’ she said with a gentle smile. ‘He’s twenty-five, not fifteen. He’s probably off enjoying himself with friends somewhere.’

  ‘Jessica, don’t underestimate your brother. You know as well as I do that he always telephones your mother if he is going to be away from home overnight. So that she won’t worry.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  Kind. Considerate. Thoughtful. A loving son. Timothy was all these things. She was not. She was wary of love because she knew it could damage you. That’s what she’d learned one cold October night when she was seven. She had moved out of the family home the day that she reached eighteen, trying to outrun the long shadow cast by her childhood. She had worked her way through St Martin’s School of Art and Design, drawing by day, waitressing by night in her black dress and dainty white cap in the Lyons Corner House on Tottenham Court Road. Each Saturday she had set up a stall to sell her paintings in the market in Porto-bello Road.

  Only recently had she and her father managed to work together on occasional projects with her designs and his printing presses. In the last year they had begun to make allowance for each other. She glanced around the neat workroom and inhaled the familiar tang of ink
and hot metal from the small printing press in the corner, a smell she always associated with her father. It followed him around like a dog. Just as she associated the perfume of freesias with her mother.

  The substantial printing company, Kenton Print Works, which her father owned and ran with fierce dedication, had its main presses on the outskirts of Sydenham. But he liked to keep his hand in with small, private jobs here in his workshop. She was the same herself, doing much of her design work at home in her flat, away from the bustle of the studio. The difference was that her father’s workshop was clean and orderly, everything rigidly in its place, whereas hers was a wanton mess. Here the books and files were arranged in alphabetical order. Disciplined stacks of pamphlets. Neat towers of brochures and leaflets.

  A large pile of posters caught Jessica’s eye. From the top one the face of a handsome man stared out at her, immensely pleased with himself, and she recognised it immediately. It was Oswald Mosley. The charismatic founder of the newly formed British Union of Fascists was a wealthy baronet who had tried his hand as a Member of Parliament in both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. But he was an impatient and arrogant man, and he had parted from them acrimoniously. Instead he’d set up his own political party – the British Union of Fascists.

  Jessie frowned. She felt a ripple of distaste and turned away. She walked over to her father’s desk, perched on the high stool, folded her arms and said, ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing happened. That’s what I can’t understand.’

  He started to pace. Back and forth across the centre of the room, his face creased in a scowl. Jessie noticed his hands fingering a pen as he talked, the same way hers did when her mind was fretting at something. But her father’s hands were refined and elegant, the hands of a thinker, whereas hers were short and spatular.

  ‘When did you last see Timothy?’ she asked.

  ‘Last Friday morning. He came home for a clean shirt before going to work. He spent Thursday night with you, remember?’