Jay smiled and stood up. ‘Yeah.’
‘I’m Sophie, Zeke’s assistant. Would you like to come up now?’
‘OK.’
As they walked past the receptionist, Jay couldn’t resist pausing to say, ‘You could be a model, you know. Here’s my card. Call me some time.’
The girl glanced at the offered card, looking mortified. Jay was confident she’d never get through. She never gave out her direct line, and her own assistant fielded all calls. However, it felt good to see the girl realise she might have been rude to the wrong person.
As Jay entered Michaels’ office, he leapt up from his chair as if he’d been bitten by something and almost ran across to welcome her. His actions unnerved her, because they were so unlikely. ‘How are you keeping?’ he asked. ‘How’s Gus? Work going OK?’
Nodding and repeating the word, ‘fine,’ Jay eased past him and went to sit beneath the window. She crossed her legs and let her hands dangle loosely over her knees. ‘So - why am I here?’
‘Coffee?’ grinned Michaels.
She raised a dismissive hand. ‘No. Come on, Zeke. Tell me what you want.’ Just being in these offices made her feel anxious and short of breath.
Michaels sighed. ‘I might as well get to the point. Dex has been seen in London.’
A reflex of laughter expelled itself from Jay’s throat. Then, she put her fingers to her mouth. She could not speak. Strangely enough perhaps, she’d not expected him to say anything like that. She felt as if a hard cold fountain of silver waters burst upward inside her, from her stomach to her brain. It was a spurt of dread, hope and joy.
Michaels stared at her, his expression far from sympathetic. ‘Have you met him recently, Jay?’
For a moment, she could only stare back at him, too dazed to respond. Then she became aware that in some way she was on trial. She was innocent, but merely being asked the question made her feel guilty. She shook her head, croaked, ‘No.’
‘Well, that surprises me, because my informant tells me that Dex was sighted in your company.’
‘Excuse me?’ Jay twisted her hands together in her lap. Astonishment kicked her mind into gear. ‘When, exactly, and where?’
‘Is it true?’
‘No. You know damn well it isn’t!’
‘If I did, I wouldn’t be asking the question, would I? Jay, come clean. Admit it.’
‘There’s nothing to admit. Dex is gone, Zeke. He isn’t coming back.’ She was no longer sure of the truth of that. ‘Whoever told you that I’ve seen him is lying, or mistaken. Who the hell was it?’
Michaels blinked slowly and turned his attention to the intercom on his desk. With precise movements, he pressed the buzzer and requested coffee from his assistant. Despite her careful cool exterior, inside Jay felt sick and afraid, yet elated. It was no condition in which to be sitting here with Michaels. She wished he’d told her this on the phone, so that she’d have been ready for him. It was clear to her why he hadn’t done that. This inner terror was not good; she must assert herself. ‘Tell me what you know,’ she said.
Michaels shrugged. ‘Very little. All I can tell you is that Dex has been seen - with you. Or perhaps it was another woman. If he hasn’t already made contact with you, we’re sure he will.’
‘But he’s been seen before,’ Jay said. ‘This is probably just another hoax, or like I said, a mistake.’
‘Perhaps so, but you have to remember he’s bound up to his ass in contracts with us. He thought he could just walk away from us, taking all his work with him - work that in part was already paid for. It was a lot of money. This is a law suit situation, Jay. If you’re holding out on us, it could mean trouble.’ He delivered a smug, meaningful look.
‘I see,’ she said, in a measured voice. Anger contained her more flailing emotions. Anger always made her calm. ‘If it’s a law suit situation, you’d better call my solicitor.’ She got up from her seat, fully prepared to walk out.
‘Sit down,’ Michaels said wearily. ‘If you say you haven’t seen him, then you haven’t. I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Take my word for it?’ She sat down anyway. ‘I can’t believe the absolute cruelty of what you’ve just said. You order me to come in here and then lay this on me, without any warning. You know what Dex’s disappearance did to me. Much to my regret, you saw it. If he’s back, it has massive implications for me. I’ve got my life together now. I don’t want it screwed up again. I don’t give a fuck about your contracts and money, or whatever!’
‘Don’t get upset,’ Michaels said, as if between gritted teeth. ‘I had to ask, Jay. You surely understand that. If you had seen him, would you have called me? I don’t think so.’
‘OK, OK.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Let’s get this straight. Let’s talk. Who’s seen Dex, and where?’
‘I don’t know.’
Jay rolled her eyes. ‘Then why am I here? Your evidence is flimsy to say the least.’
‘The source is very reliable. I don’t doubt them, but I can’t tell you who it is.’
‘If you want us to work together, you’ll have to.’
Michaels seemed surprised by her last remark. ‘Well, er...’
‘At least get more information for me, such as time and place of sighting. You do want me to find him for you, don’t you?’ From his expression, she realised that had not been his intention at all.
‘If you hear anything, I’d be grateful if you’d tell me, that’s all,’ he said lamely. His assistant Sophie came into the room, and handed them both a mug of aromatic coffee.
Jay was torn about whether to leave at this point, or drink the coffee, which smelled appetising, and grill Michaels for more information. Sophie smiled at her nicely, which partly swayed her decision. Once they were alone again, Jay took a sip of the coffee. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘for a moment there, I thought you were calling on my professional talents: Jay Samuels, sleuthing journalist. It’s not that, is it? As far as you were concerned, I was just Dex’s appendage. I can see that sexist attitude hasn’t changed.’
‘Oh, come on, Jay!’ Michaels at least seemed embarrassed.
‘But it’s true. You’ve just given me the shock of my life, do you know that? I’ve read all the reports of sightings in the newspapers, but none of them seemed real. Unfortunately, the fact that Sakrilege is taking this one seriously lends the idea credibility. I’m a professional, Zeke, yet you won’t treat me like one.’
He shrugged awkwardly. ‘We just thought Dex would contact you.’
‘Why? He walked out on me, didn’t he?’ She took another sip of coffee. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Zeke. This all seems too unlikely. It’s just going to be a wind-up. I’m not going to let myself get wound up by a wind up.’ She laughed, perhaps at too high a note.
‘If he has come back, maybe you should stay away from him,’ Michaels said.
Jay could only grin at his pompous tone. ‘If you know what’s good for you,’ she added in a theatrical monotone. ‘Tell you what, you just talk to your ‘source’ and call me. If in the unlikely event Dex makes contact with me, I’ll tell him you want to speak to him. If you want more than that, you’ll have to trade - information is currency.’
Michaels nodded, his face closed in on itself. ‘I’ll see,’ he said. He focused his eyes beyond her, as if someone was standing there. Swiftly, she looked round, but saw only a door standing ajar. Was someone listening to their conversation? For an absurd moment, she wondered whether it was Dex.
‘So that’s it.’ Jay put down her coffee, half finished, and stood up. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’ He doesn’t want my thanks, she thought. There’s nothing to thank him for. This interview was never for my benefit.
As she left the office, she left the door open behind her. ‘Keep in touch,’ Michaels called.
She raised a hand, but did not turn round, ‘You’re such a sweet man, Zeke, so considerate.’
Outside, a moaning wind still hurried high above the city. Jay pulled her ja
cket collar together as icy splinters of air pricked her throat. In her car, her first instinct was to call Gina, but as she was about to press her friend’s contact number on her mobile phone, she changed her mind. No, not yet.
She should go home; half-finished features on her computer were waiting for her. Spectres of deadlines pressed down upon her. But the winds rushing across the city whispered to her with impish persistence. She needed to be out, looking for something. The meeting with Michaels had unnerved her more than she cared to admit. She needed to reassert herself, do something on her own, using her journalistic skills. Where to begin? she wondered, starting the car. The trail was now three years old. Don’t be stupid, she scolded herself. Don’t even think about this. Go home! But another part of her mind ignored this advice. It was thinking about how if this story had been about anybody but Dex, she’d have considered it all more clearly. She’d have begun at the beginning, with his past, his home life. Dex still had family, she knew that, although he’d rarely talked about them with her. He’d met her own parents a few times before they’d died within a year of each other. Jay had been a late child in their life. The legacy they’d left her had bought the flat that she and Dex had shared. Now, it seemed odd that she hadn’t met his family, or at least learned more about them. Why had Dex kept her away from them? It wasn’t that he’d been embarrassed about his roots. Was this part of what Jez had alluded to in the restaurant that night? She knew Dex’s family name was Banner, and where his home town was: Torton; in the north east of England. It was a coastal town, but not a resort. She could afford a day or so, couldn’t she? Didn’t she owe it to herself to delve into this story? She didn’t feel weak or upset, but curious and intrigued. All she needed was an overnight bag.
Chapter Five
Just as Dex had once intuited, Jay was as guilty as many city-dwellers of thinking that once beyond the nebulous bounds of London, travellers entered a kind of cultural hinterland, a place where people watched sullenly from behind their fences and, in private, might well eat their dead. She drove along the M1, weaving dangerously from lane to lane in an attempt to outwit the ponderous flow of the traffic. The sky above the tarmac was too big and oppressive; patches of pale but intense blue, a backdrop to a burst of silver-edged clouds. The horizon seemed to be outlined in India ink.
Jay felt as if she was on her way to an assignation fraught with danger and exhilaration; the danger perhaps being the risk of discovery. She’d left cryptic messages on Gus’ answer-phone, trying to make it sound like she was off on some humdrum job, the details of which were too tedious to relate. She’d be away overnight, but would be back in the morning.
She was driving to the mysterious north; the direction of darkness and cold. She imagined grey-clad people hugging secrets beneath their heavy clothing, like rags against a wound. She was a bright southern spirit, coming to cast her light over their shadows, eager to penetrate and understand. Her mission possessed a mythic quality.
By two o’clock, she’d left the motorways behind, and was driving up an A road, where fields stared away on either side to a flat horizon. She wanted to get a feel of the landscape, move away from the hectic scream of hurry and panic that she felt must be expressing itself silently within every car on the motorway. Light drenched the land, golden as winter soup, ambered with a memory of summer.
She lost herself in back-streets of northern towns, looking for stout women with folded arms on doorsteps, whey-faced children playing in the roads. There was none of that; only the signs that interior decorators had surged across the landscape of back to back houses, armed with neo-Victorian wallpaper prints, and paint-strippers, and rag-rolled paint. She was seeking the source: the source of Dex. But she was only at the outer gate of the underworld. He had not risen up from restructured miners’ cottages, but the bleak and terrible circle of a mid-century council estate; a place where decorators could arm themselves only with bull-dozers and excavators, and tons of salt to sow the land clean.
The afternoon was dying by the time she drove past the sign saying ‘Welcome to Torton’; it had a tired, unconvincing appearance, seeing as it was situated near the entrance to a modern industrial estate, where soulless cyclopean buildings bulked without feature against the sky.
The High Street consisted of fish and chip shops, building societies and a depressing array of boarded up shops, although Jay caught sight of the glare of lights from a modest shopping mall up a side street. She pulled into the car park of a high-flanked old pub called The Ship that advertised bed and breakfast on a shabby, hand-written notice in its front window.
She entered the building through a complicated arrangement of narrow doors and found herself in a dingy bar that smelled of stale beer and cigarette smoke. The interior had a mildly maritime theme, with netting, old life-belts, glass balls and lobster pots gathering dust up in every corner of the ceiling. Jay smiled to herself, wondering whether anyone ever stayed here for their holidays. It seemed unlikely. She imagined the odd couple might book a room for a week. They’d be called something like Ruth and Ernie, and would have a thin, pallid child with a chest complaint. Mainly, however, The Ship had to be a haunt of diminished travelling salesmen, working away from home.
The landlady emerged from a door beside the bar. She was middle-aged, slightly overweight and slightly overdressed but seemed friendly enough. As Jay signed the rather greasy page of a guest register, the landlady did not hide her curiosity as to why a woman of Jay’s type wished to stay there. ‘I’m working,’ Jay answered cryptically, leaving her hostess to draw her own conclusions. Jay was shown to a room decked out in sagging Seventies furniture, with newspaper taped over a hole in the glass above the door. ‘The kitchen’ll be ready in about half an hour,’ the landlady said, adding, ‘for meals.’ She swept out.
Jay unpacked her bag, imagining what drama might have occurred that broke the glass. Had someone tried to get in, their face pressed against the window, their hands clawing at the smooth surface, until it broke, and shards fell down upon the mean carpet? Had a woman screamed in the bed, or had a man sat upright, swearing softly beneath his breath? Perhaps there had been a couple between the sheets, caught in flagrante. Jay smiled to herself as she placed her toothbrush and toothpaste on the edge of the narrow white sink. What tales hotel rooms could tell if they could only speak.
Travelling had tired her, but Jay went down into the bar to order steak and kidney pie and chips, and get a feel of the place. The landlady hovered by as she served the meal, clearly wanting to chat. It seemed an opportune moment to begin enquiries.
‘Do you remember the - er - pop star, Dex, who came from here?’ Jay asked. ‘He used to be called Christopher Banner.’
The landlady smiled eagerly. ‘Yes, of course I do. Chris Banner was about the only famous person that came from here. He and his friends used to drink in here sometimes.’
Glancing at the early evening clientele - elderly men and faded women - Jay thought this unlikely. ‘I don’t suppose you know if his family are still around?’
The landlady frowned a little. ‘Can’t say. I think they lived over at Shorefields, the first estate out of town on the north road.’
‘You’ve never met any of them, then?’
The landlady picked up a clean ashtray and polished it with her apron. ‘Well, yes I have, as it happens,’ she said. ‘I knew the mother, Cora Banner, when I was a girl - she was Lane then, of course. We went to the same school, although she was a year or so above me. Didn’t know her well. She used to sing at the Varsity Bar in the Sixties. Bit of a looker, but I reckon singing got chucked out the window after she married and the kids started coming.’
‘Sounds like Dex inherited his talent from his mother, then,’ Jay said. Cora must have encouraged him to lead the life she never led.
‘Dunno about that,’ said the land-lady. ‘Personally, I always thought she had to strain to hold a note. She had looks, not talent.’
‘What about her kids. Did you know the
m? Do you know their names?’
The landlady laughed. ‘Oh, love, it was a long time ago. The last thing I remember of Cora was when she got married. There was a picture in the papers. After that, I heard nothing of the family. Until her boy made a name for himself, of course. Why are you interested?’
‘I’m a writer.’
‘Oh, I see, you’re writing about that Dex. Well, he’s certainly done well for himself, but we don’t see him around here.’
‘Uh-huh. That’s probably because he’s disappeared.’
The landlady looked surprised. ‘Has he? Well, I never!’ She shrugged. ‘These pop stars. You just never know what they’ll get up to.’ Her lips pursed meaningfully.
What was big news to some was irrelevant to others. Strangely, the landlady’s ignorance pleased Jay. It made her feel relieved. An odd reaction, she thought.
A middle-aged couple came in and went up to the bar, prompting the landlady to sail over to serve them. Jay sipped her gin and tonic. Shorefields. First estate out of town.
After her meal, and some directions from the landlady, Jay sought out the Varsity Bar. It wasn’t called that any more. Now, it was ‘Stampers’, and had clearly gone through a wine bar stage in the Eighties. Some of the decor still existed in the dark green walls and art deco wall lamps, although some Nineties rustic fashion had insinuated itself via the corn dollies and dried grasses that adorned the walls in between framed photographs of Fifties jazz musicians. Jay realised there was no point in questioning the two teenage girls behind the bar about Cora Banner. They would certainly not remember her. She doubted the establishment was even still owned by the same people who’d hired the young Cora to sing for their customers. Jay got chatting to the girls, which was difficult, because they were more interested in gossiping between themselves. They knew who Dex was, but only one of them was aware he’d come from Torton. New stars sparkled over the young now. If Jay wanted to find former fans, who might know where he’d lived, she’d need to talk to people who were in their twenties.