The Loop Read online

  Anabel Donald

  THE LOOP

  Contents

  Sunday, 27 March

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Monday, 28 March

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Tuesday, 29 March

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Wednesday, 30 March

  Chapter Eight

  Thursday, 31 March

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Friday, 1 April

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Saturday, 2 April

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sunday, 3 April

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Monday, 4 April

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tuesday, 5 April

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  For Miles Donald

  il miglior fabbro

  and a very funny man

  Sunday, 27 March

  Chapter One

  My row with Barty finally erupted over Newfoundland.

  Or Labrador.

  I still don’t know which, and I don’t want to know, though I suspect he was right. I’ll check when I can bear to.

  We were nearly seven hours out on the British Airways flight from Heathrow, not far from our destination, Chicago. We were in First Class and I had the window seat and Barty’d been silent for at least three hours, which was a relief, though he’d been snoring, which wasn’t.

  For the first few hours I’d thought I was in freebie heaven and I’d mopped up everything. Six little bottles of champagne (three of them Barty’s), the dinner (I had appetizers, soup, lobster, steak, and cheese), five cups of coffee, three mineral waters and the complimentary slippers (stupid name: when were you last flattered by a slipper?). I’d also been to the loo three times and plundered the courtesy toiletries, male and female (I could always use the aftershave on my legs and armpits).

  Then Barty’d told me that in First Class they’d give you more or less anything you asked for, which spoilt my fun completely. That meant I wasn’t being a sharp-witted scavenger, just a bloated greedhead.

  So I’d sulked and watched two films on my individual fold-up screen, the second while Barty slept. I was too excited to sleep; I didn’t want to miss a second of the flight. I love aeroplanes, and I was thinking about America. I’d only ever been to America in my dreams.

  The hostess turned up with the snack suppers. I nudged Barty and put his table down. He half woke, grunted, and waved his food away. I waved it right back.

  When the hostess had gone he peered at me and said, ‘I don’t eat much on aeroplanes.’

  He’d told me that several times already, along with the rest of his frequent-flyer information like ‘alcohol dehydrates you’ and ‘don’t take your boots off, your feet will swell up and you won’t be able to get them on again.’

  ‘I eat tons on aeroplanes,’ I said.

  He didn’t point out I could ask for more food of my own. Instead, ‘OK,’ he said peaceably, which was infuriating in itself. ‘Where are we?’

  I looked out and down to the pack ice on the frozen sea beneath us. Or perhaps it was the snow on the frozen land. It was beautiful, either way.

  ‘Newfoundland, I think.’

  ‘Can’t be,’ he said. ‘It must be Labrador.’

  And that was when I stuffed the complimentary slippers in his mouth.

  He took it well. He takes everything well. But I didn’t think he understood it, which was surprising because he’s usually intuitive and quick.

  But he should have known – we’d been lovers for over four months. He’s an independent television producer and I’d worked for him for years, on and off, as a researcher. He knows my work habits: solitary and quick. He knows my personal habits: autonomous. He knows that America is my magic country, and that I’d never been there.

  Considering all that information, for the past week he’d been behaving like the rear end of a pantomime horse.

  The trouble began when Alan Protheroe offered me three days’ work in Chicago setting up interviews and locations for a drugs documentary. I jumped at it, particularly since Alan’s idea of three days’ work could be completed by a normal human being in one. I booked the return ticket (economy) and the hotel (chosen by Alan). Both of these would be covered by expenses.

  Then I’d bought a Delta Airlines five-flight pass, and paid for it with my own money. When I’d wrapped up the research I’d fly around America. I’d walk the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles and Boston and think of the fictional private detectives, my heroes, who had walked them before me.

  OK, it was juvenile, but without those private eyes my childhood would have been lonely, perhaps even unendurable. They’d kept me going. When I’d first started to read them I’d been seven and none too clear about my sexual identity. I was a tomboy who had to be bullied into a dress (ever tried to climb in a dress?), my name was Alex, and I had cropped hair – because I nearly always had lice and each new set of foster-parents thought short hair made the lice easier to deal with.

  So I looked like a boy and I was in the boys’ gang, and I thought? hoped? I’d grow up into a private eye.

  And I did, as a sideline to my TV research job. But much of what I knew about the world and almost all my ethics were courtesy of those solitary, cynical, independent, brave men. I suppose they’d been my fathers. I didn’t have a father myself. So in going to America, I was going home.

  I’d thought Barty knew most of this and could have guessed the rest. We hadn’t discussed it, but one of Barty’s great attractions for me was that he knew more than he ever discussed, about everything. When I told him about my trip I expected to be told to enjoy myself and left alone to get on with it.

  But instead what I got was a virulent outbreak of ‘me-too’. ‘I’m free – I’ll come with you.’ ‘Let’s stay at the Drake – I’ll pay.’ ‘I’ll show you Chicago; I know it well.’ ‘Let’s fly First Class – give me your tickets, I’ll trade them in and pay the difference.’ ‘We can spend some quality time together.’

  Quality time? Had he been sneaking away to join New Man workshops?

  I looked at him oddly, and I stalled.

  Then it got worse. He tried to co-opt my friend Polly.

  We were in London, of course. Polly was temporarily in Hong Kong: you’d have thought that was safe enough. But last Saturday morning when Barty and I were lounging about my place recovering from a good night in bed (ever noticed sex can be terrific when you’re angry?) Polly rang, and Barty answered. He told her about the Chicago trip and (can you believe it? I couldn’t) asked her to join us there.

  Join us! As far as I was concerned, there wasn’t going to be an us. There was going to be me and my dads and America.

  Polly jumped at it. We’re good friends, and close. She has the other flat in my building. But she’d been away for five months and in the last few weeks I’d had several pointless-chat calls from her. She was warming up to tell me something.
She’d even suggested popping over to London for a weekend, but we hadn’t been able to match dates.

  When Barty handed her over to me, I was submerged in a Polly-torrent. ‘That’s wonderful – I’ll book right after we get off the phone – I love Chicago, great shopping, and Frank Lloyd Wright, and, oh, Alex, I have missed you – we can catch up – I’ve so much to tell you – so much – I can’t wait – where are we staying?’

  ‘Wait a sec, Polly—’

  ‘What hotel? I didn’t get that—’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Polly, listen—Chicago isn’t a good idea. We won’t have time to talk. Come over to London, OK?’

  ‘But I keep trying, and you’re never free!’ she wailed.

  ‘I will be. I promise.’

  ‘When?’ she demanded.

  ‘Right after I get back from America. I’m free for a week.’

  ‘Promise and swear? Cross your heart and hope to die? Girl Guides honour?’

  ‘I wasn’t a guide. Tanner’s honour will have to do.’

  ‘Terrific! I’ll book now!’

  When I got back to London, I’d hoped to have a week free to catch up with paperwork, sort out my tax records and receipts for the accountant, and spring-clean the flat. But she sounded delighted and determined and, in that mood, you can’t stop Polly. Plus I’m fond of her, so I wouldn’t have tried.

  But when I rang off, I gave Barty the dirtiest of dirty looks, which he ignored. He was up to something: I didn’t know what, and wasn’t going to ask in case it opened up issues I didn’t want to address.

  ‘So it’ll be just the two of us,’ he said. ‘You’re probably right, it’ll be more fun.’

  ‘Quality fun,’ I said, bitterly.

  ‘Unless there’s some special reason you want to be alone?’

  I was beaten. My motives were too personal and perhaps too adolescent to air.

  ‘No reason,’ I said blandly, and stomped off to the bath.

  We landed at Chicago at sixteen-thirty local time. It was raining, overcast, and chilly, colder than London had been, and the airport was almost as busy as Heathrow and better organized, newer-looking. We queued for Immigration in silence, neutral in Barty’s case, hostile in mine. I didn’t listen to his silence for long, though, because I loved the American voices straight from Central Casting.

  The Immigration man was old and tired. He studied my passport in silence. Then he stamped it and handed it back to me with a huge white-toothed smile. ‘Welcome to the United States!’ he said. ‘Enjoy!’

  I smiled back. I’d try. And I’d be back. Alone.

  Barty and I shared a taxi. At least we weren’t staying at the same hotel. I’d refused to budge from the Blackstone, so I was staying there (wherever it was). I’d also insisted Barty stay someplace else, so he was booked at the Hilton.

  After a silent taxi ride (I wasn’t talking to Barty, he had more sense than to try to talk to me, and the taxi-driver couldn’t speak English) through driving rain and grey, motorway/city landscapes which disappointingly reminded me of the outskirts of Paris, we stopped at a side door of a battered-looking, elegant building with a canopy and my hotel sign, and I got out. The driver started unloading both our bags. I tried to explain to him that Barty was going on, but Barty stopped me.

  ‘I get off here,’ he said.

  ‘Not at my hotel,’ I said, through gritted teeth. ‘We agreed, I’ll be working, I need space.’

  He waved his arm at the towering newish bright building across the street. ‘That’s the Hilton,’ he said.

  We were in separate hotels, as I’d wanted. But the hotels were next door to each other.

  Round two to Barty.

  He paid the taxi.

  I took the receipt. The amount was left blank, to make expense-fiddling easier, I supposed.

  My kind of place, America.

  I went, alone, up the narrow stairs to the Blackstone lobby. It was a big, shabby area, late-Victorian (what did they call Victorian in the US?) would-be impressive, scattered with high-backed chairs, some occupied, arranged around little tables. There was ornate metal-work on the lifts, a staircase off to a mezzanine floor, and elaborate glass-metalwork doors to a bar which advertised LIVE JAZZ! It was closed and dark. There’d be another bar somewhere, I hoped. And a coffee-shop where I could order two eggs over easy, like Lew Archer, or blueberry muffins like Spenser.

  The reception desk was at the back. I checked in with a thirtyfiveish man, off-hand but competent, who didn’t look at me once but scrutinized my credit card and passport. Then he gave me a key.

  I took the key and clasped it. My room. My solitary room. It was past midnight British time and I was beginning to flag, but I knew a bath would revive me. I had to keep going for another five hours or so otherwise I’d wake up too early, local time. I’d got rid of Barty for the evening. I’d go for a long walk.

  My room was terrific – on the sixth floor, big, with a television, two double beds, a window I could open, and a bathroom with a huge bath and a fixed shower. I turned both bathtaps on full, said ‘Hi! Enjoy!’ to the spider who scuttled up the tiled walls, went back into the bedroom and pulled my leather jacket off.

  Then someone knocked on the door.

  It had to be Barty. Or the hotel rapist.

  ‘Who is it?’ I called.

  ‘Is that Alex Tanner, private investigator?’ It was a female voice. British.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m a friend of Polly’s. She said you’d help me.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To find the love of my life.’

  Chapter Two

  I let her in.

  I turned off the bath.

  I came back into the room, and looked at her.

  She was about my age (nearly thirty) and about six months pregnant. A very tall woman, not just tall compared to me (I’m short), and long-legged, with broad shoulders narrowing to slender hips. She was fair with longish hair plaited and knotted on top of her head, and a round, featureless, amiable, freckled face like a steamed sultana pudding. She was wearing grey leggings and Nikes under a floppy pink sweater, and no make-up or jewellery beyond the gold sleepers in her ears. She carried an expensive-looking cream cashmere coat and a weathered brown leather overnight bag.

  I hoped she wasn’t planning to overnight with me.

  ‘Do sit down,’ I said. I sat down at the writing desk at the far end of the room and pointed her to a chair beside it. ‘What’s this about Polly?’

  ‘I was staying with her in Hong Kong last week and I told her about – about what had happened to me, and what I should do, and then she told me about you, and I knew I had to see you. It was wonderful because you were going to be here while I’m in Toronto – which is where I’m visiting friends this week – so I took a plane down this afternoon. I’m Jams Treliving.’ She had a small, whispery voice, and a trick of fixing her eyes on yours and then, keeping the eye-contact, making little would-be appealing faces. A mannerism which she was twenty years too old for and at least a foot too tall.

  ‘I didn’t catch your first name,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a nickname. I spell it J-a-m-s.’

  She was still standing. I pointed to the chair again. She smiled and sat.

  Silence.

  Her sweater looked designer hand-knit, with a complicated pattern of gambolling lambs and puffy clouds and a meadow dotted with flowers. ‘When are you going back?’ I said.

  ‘Tonight. When we’re finished here. I didn’t know how long it would take . . . I’ve never met a female private detective before.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a model. I’m taking time out now till I have the baby, of course.’

  Silence again. I’d never met a model with a face like a steamed pudding before, but I could hardly say that. Was she fantasizing? ‘And you want to hire me to find the love of your life?’ She nodded and smiled. ‘D’you mind if I smoke? I know I

  shouldn’t, but since I k
new I was pregnant I’ve allowed myself one a day. I didn’t think one would count. I usually smoke forty.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I said, and passed her an ashtray. It was the first time I’d warmed to her; up to then she’d seemed a wannabee-winsome little girl in a strapping Stepford Single body, too innocent for even minor vices.

  She lit up, crossed her legs, and swung the top foot.

  I opened my organizer. ‘Give me some details.’

  She looked puzzled.

  I lost patience. ‘Am I looking for a man? A woman? A dog?’

  ‘A man,’ she said. ‘The father of my child.’ She smiled pleadingly, hugged herself with her arms, and twined her long legs around each other. ‘Go easy on me,’ her body language said, ‘I’m sensitive.’

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself that when I’m tired I have the patience and people-skills of a buzz-saw, and that some people who projected ‘I’m sensitive’ actually were, and that she’d taken the trouble to get on a plane to see me.

  ‘Where did he go missing?’ I said.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘In Chicago.’

  ‘That’s going to be difficult. I’m only here for three days, I’ve got an assignment already, and I have no contacts. You need a local detective. If you want, I’ll hire one for you.’ I’d enjoy that. A real private detective, with a gold shield left over from his time in the police, and underworld contacts, and a huge gun, and a disastrous private life which I knew better than to involve myself in. Didn’t I?

  She smiled. ‘I want you,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay you at your full-time rate for every day you’re here.’

  That meant double pay because Alan was paying me a daily rate for the drugs research, of course. Usually I’d have jumped at it. Apart from everything else, it would cover the Delta five-flight ticket which I’d never get to use. But she was a friend of Polly’s, so I tried to put her off again.

  ‘Really, Jams, I won’t be able to do much.’

  ‘That’s up to me,’ she said. ‘It’s my money,’ and she took a British chequebook from her overnight bag. ‘I’ll pay you in advance, in pounds. Three days. What’s your rate?’