Calendar Girl Read online

I stopped answering the phone, and once the tape was used up, I just unplugged the answer machine and let it ring.

  We sit here together, but she won’t speak to me. As if it’s my fault. She’s trying to make me feel guilty. And I do.

  Catholicism is so similar to Judaism. As my mother’s friend Lorna used to say “There’s only a page between them.”

  Neither of us have ever read much.

  Sometimes I try to get up. Out and about. And I think I should tell someone, but I don’t know who to tell. She didn’t want anyone to know about that man. Or what she was doing. She didn’t want anyone to know, so I don’t know who to call.

  The phone keeps ringing. It’s probably her mother. She can’t have spoken to her for weeks now. But if I pick it up, I’ll have to speak to her. And I know she wouldn’t want that. Neither of them would want that. And I feel like I’m on my best behaviour now, I have to be, I can’t do anything worse. I can’t make it any better either.

  It’s very quiet here now. When the phone’s not ringing. Very quiet. No sounds of us arguing. No sounds of us making love.

  I picked her up from the floor, I didn’t think she’d want to lie there. She was heavier than I thought she’d be. Heavier than the last time I picked her up. Carried her in my arms. There was some stuff, where she’d been lying. Like she’d thrown up. But not much. I tidied it up. Tidied her up. And there was some powder. Coke I suppose. I don’t know. I don’t know about these things. She knows about these things. They just happen on the TV I think. Not really. I don’t know about the drug stuff. It passed me by. I only like beer. And gin, but only with lots of tonic and ice. I tidied it up. I want to tidy it all away. Put it all away. But I know I can’t. I have to do something. Tell someone.

  It was very cold when I woke up this morning. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. I can’t tell any more. I’m going to keep the curtains closed from now on. I don’t want him to come back. He messed up the bedroom when he was here before. He messed up our lovely bed. I don’t think I’ll sleep in it again. He’s got his money now. He should just go away. But I don’t know if he will.

  I saw a funny thing this morning. I didn’t notice it before. She’s not wearing any shoes. And she was. When she fell. When I hit her. When I made her fall.

  Fall from grace. Goodbye paradise.

  When I ran out of the room – she was wearing shoes. And now she’s not. I don’t know why. Maybe he wanted to see her feet. I don’t understand. She liked having bare feet. Used to take her shoes off as soon as she could. And she always put them tidily away. I didn’t give her a chance that night though. I found them in her cupboard. I don’t suppose he put them there. I don’t suppose he even knows which cupboard is hers.

  I’m dozing a lot. I keep dreaming she’s talking to me. Telling me things. She comes to me in my sleep, dressed like a spy. Like Mata Hari. The spy who loved me. We talk in my dreams. Talk like it’s real.

  We don’t argue in my dreams.

  She doesn’t lie in my dreams.

  Then I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, getting ready for her funeral. I was wearing black, not much makeup. I’d been crying. The room was very steamy so I opened the window and there she was. In the garden, picking strawberries. I ran down the stairs and outside. The grass was cold and wet on my bare feet. She turned and smiled at me. I was so happy.

  “You’re not dead. You’re not dead!”

  “No, but I am very sick, I’ve got to get this ready.”

  I looked down. I saw she wasn’t picking strawberries but digging them up. Only she wasn’t doing it right. She was digging too deep. She was digging her grave.

  “No darling,” I grabbed her arm “No. You don’t have to be buried. You’re not dead any more.”

  “But all the people are coming for my funeral. I can’t let them down.”

  She wouldn’t stop. She kept on digging. She was digging her grave and kept saying she had to hurry to finish in time for the funeral. She wouldn’t listen to me. I was pulling on her arm, trying to pull her back into the house, but she wouldn’t come. She wanted to keep digging.

  I woke up. In a cold sweat. And then I realised I’d been dreaming. It was a dream. She wasn’t digging her grave after all. And I felt so good, it meant she wasn’t dead. I was crying with relief when I opened my eyes properly. And I saw her. And I knew she was right. Even in my dream she was right. She’s always right.

  I must have been sitting with her for a few days now. I know I should do something but I don’t know what. My brain is very fuzzy and I can’t work out what to do. I should call someone but I can’t make up any sentences. And anyway, if I do call them, they’ll take her away. They’ll get what they always wanted. They’ll take her away from me.

  I try wishing. Knocking on wood. Even praying. But wishes are for the tooth fairy. And the prayers come out jumbled up.

  “Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners and lead us not into temptation, now and at the hour I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake …”

  But I don’t, do I?

  Her office must still think she’s on holiday. I suppose she is.

  It’s Friday today. Again. Fridays are ghastly, and even now they bring their anxieties. For all I know she’s probably arranged to meet someone for dinner. Her parents, or that man, John. Or someone else. Someone else from her fantasy life. Someone she “forgot” to tell me about, who gave her the excitement that I never could. I expect they’ll call. Perhaps I should just unplug the phone completely. I can’t stand the ringing. I want it to be quiet. Completely quiet. I want them all to leave me alone. To leave us alone.

  I slept some more and then when I woke it was nearly dark again. I could see the street lamps through the crack in the curtains, their orange lights just beginning to warm up. She was still sitting there and I knew I had to go out. I couldn’t sit there any more. I realised the time for waiting was over. I put on my coat and left.

  Or tried to leave. But there you were on the doorstep.

  And here we all are.

  Isn’t it cold?

  CHAPTER 28

  Working it out

  It was after ten before Maggie finally finished her story. Dolores had put her to bed and managed to persuade Saz not to call the police immediately.

  “At least wait until we’ve heard what she has to say.”

  While Dolores was putting Maggie to bed, Saz dealt with September. She laid the dead weight out and covered her with a clean sheet. She murmured an apology to September for the way she half dragged her to the sofa and with memories of a Presbyterian childhood Sunday school was about to offer up a Lord’s Prayer for her when she noticed a tiny menorah on the shelf,

  “OK September, I know Maggie’s Catholic, and I know this might be an ornament, but just in case I’ll stick to the twenty third psalm – it belongs in both books.”

  She smoothed September’s hair from her forehead and covered her with the sheet. It was only once she stood back and looked at the covered body that it occurred to her she should maybe have left it there for the police. She made sweet tea and took it in to the bedroom where Dolores was cradling Maggie and they listened to her explanations.

  Eventually Maggie told herself out and fell asleep in Dolores’ arms. They left her and went into the kitchen.

  “Sorry about this Saz, I feel responsible for getting you involved in all this. God knows what Maggie’s on about – all this drug stuff and all these men – sounds crazy to me.”

  “Yeah, it sounded that way to me too, a couple of months ago. But it all makes perfect sense now.”

  “What?”

  Saz made more tea and told Dolores her side of the story.

  “And now I just feel like shit, because if I hadn’t been playing detective when I met Maggie at that club, if I’d just have come out with it and asked her – maybe she wouldn’t be a gibbering wreck now, and maybe if I’d been honest with you and Annie as soon as I got
back from New York – well, maybe we wouldn’t have to explain to the police why it took us three hours to call them.”

  “Call your friends then.”

  “What friends?”

  “Your policewoman friends. At least they know some of the story already and they’ll be able to convince their boys in blue of our innocence, if not Maggie’s.”

  “Do you think she is innocent?”

  “I think she hit her, but I don’t think she killed her. Do you?”

  “No. Or not intentionally anyway. There’s missing money and there’s the shoes. Maybe she woke up. And don’t forget, I know Simon James. I know him and I’m scared of him. I’ll call Helen and Judith.”

  The two women arrived looking tired with three other carloads of policemen, some plainclothes and several more in uniform, all of whom looked more than wide awake. Helen grabbed Saz as she came in the door.

  “I bloody well hope you haven’t got us all in shit here.”

  “Yeah, so do I Hells. But none of us are in as much trouble as Maggie. Or September for that matter.”

  Saz spent the rest of that night giving statements to the police. First at Maggie’s flat, where they also got her to go over the whole process of exactly how she moved the body, at what time and why – a question Saz couldn’t find a very good answer for, other than that she’d wanted to give the body some dignity. She then had to repeat the entire process again at the Stockwell police station. Dolores was questioned for the first couple of hours and then allowed to go. Maggie was rushed under police escort to hospital, the nights with no food, drink or heating and only the company of a dead lover having taken their toll.

  Two policewomen escorted Saz back to her own flat, where they took all her notes about the case and then searched through the rest of her stuff for anything that might incriminate her. There was nothing. She asked if she could call John Clark to tell him the news herself, but was told to stay out of the matter completely, that under no circumstances was she to try to contact him and to report back to Stockwell police station at eleven that morning. It was already six thirty.

  She ran herself a huge bath, almost unbearably hot and forced herself into the tub. She lay there as long as she could and when she came up from under the water she realised she was crying. She curled up in the water. Sobbing until all the tears were shaken out of her. She let the water out of the bath and lay there, feeling the weight of her own body come back to her. She dried herself and crawled into her bed, setting the alarm for ten. As she fell asleep she realised she’d called Maggie’s girlfriend “September” all night and the police had referred to her as the deceased. She’d held her dead body and she still didn’t know her name. She started crying again as she slipped into sleep.

  Saz spent most of Saturday at the police station answering all the same questions she’d answered the night before. She’d been told that as she wasn’t under arrest she had no need of a lawyer. That she was just “helping with their inquiries” – she wondered how many times she’d heard that phrase on the radio and how often she’d assumed the person “helping” was the person who was guilty. She wondered how often the police made the same assumption. In the late afternoon they brought in an American who asked her questions about Simon James. He seemed to already know a lot about him, the questions were more in the way of confirmations than eliciting any information.

  “So he had coke in his possession?”

  “Did you ever see him give any to anyone else?”

  “Did you meet any of the other women he used to courier drugs?”

  It was only when he asked how long she’d worked for James that it occurred to Saz that the American thought she’d been running coke too.

  “Listen, I only worked there as a hostess. And I only worked as a hostess so I could find out about the place. Find out about him. And if you’re from the New York police, then it’s a bloody shame you didn’t bother to ask these questions earlier instead of assuming that a man with lots of respectable associates, not to mention lots of money, is also a respectable man, because if you had, September might have been alive today.”

  “Yes Ms Martin, it is a shame. It’s also a shame you didn’t contact us when you were in New York and then we might have kept him in the country. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s get on with this. One girl’s already dead, there’s plenty more where she came from. Hundreds of girls no doubt, all running small amounts of coke, all thinking they were the only ones and it wasn’t really a big deal, just a few ounces here or there. But when you add it all up it is a big deal. So why don’t we see if we can stop him now?”

  By ten Saz and the American were both exhausted. He told her he thought he had enough and said she could go.

  “But hey, don’t leave town!”

  She tried to find out about Maggie at the police station but couldn’t get any definite answers, so she called Dolores.

  “I don’t know. From what the policewoman said at the hospital today I don’t think they believe she did it. Maggie’s problem is that she thinks she did. She hit her, ran out, came back, she was dead. It’s an obvious assumption. At least it is if you’re under a fair bit of strain in the first place.”

  “Well, have they charged her with anything?”

  “Not yet. Apparently it’s some kind of an offence not to notify the ‘authorities’ as soon as a living being turns into a dead one, but given Maggie’s mental state I don’t think they’ll bother about it. What about your info? Have they got your Mr James yet?”

  “No. Not that I think they’d tell me, I’m hardly their favourite person. But I think they’re finally convinced that I’m not just his vindictive drug smuggling ex-girlfriend.”

  “Good work!”

  “Yeah, well it’s taken them most of the day to figure out I’m gay – they should have checked my bookshelf first. Anyway, I’m going home now – keep in touch?”

  “Sure. We’re partners in innocence remember?”

  Saz caught the bus home. At her flat she ran up the stairs two at a time, slammed the door behind her and double-locked herself in. She flicked on all the lights, went through each room, looking in every cupboard, under the bed, behind every door. Twice. Only when she was certain she was alone in the flat did she close the curtains and switch off the lights.

  She was about to get into bed when she heard the faint slam of a car door. It wasn’t unusual but she was still feeling pretty jittery and decided to get out of bed anyway. She pulled the curtain back just a little and looked down into the car park. Leaning against a car and lighting a cigarette was Simon James. He threw down his match and looked up. Directly at Saz’s window.

  CHAPTER 29

  Tidying up

  The trial was long and tedious. Involving lots of transatlantic lawyering. Claire had to explain most of the intricate details, and none of it sounded anything like LA Law. Months after the day Saz had first seen September she finally said goodbye to Simon James.

  She had called Helen as soon as she saw James in the car park and within five minutes the place was swarming with police and he’d been arrested.

  James obviously had no idea that Saz was connected with September and Maggie or he’d never have made the mistake of going to her flat. He’d just decided to check up on her as he was in England. He’d had Carrie’s flat broken into and the relevant info sent over to him. As Saz’s address was in Carrie’s diary for their lunch date the week before she went to New York and as her name was all through Carrie’s first couple of weeks there, it was easy to put two and two together and come up with Saz’s real name and London address. He’d dealt with one September, taken a couple of days off and decided to look up the other – probably to resume where they’d left off at their last meeting.

  Proving he’d been in Maggie’s flat the night of the murder was easy – there were fingerprints everywhere, including on the plastic bag that had contained John Clark’s money. The autopsy proved September had died from an overdose of cocaine administere
d intravenously, which pretty much cleared Maggie. The police doctor said the bump on the head had knocked her out but not killed her, she’d probably woken up a couple of hours later – that would have been when she’d taken off her shoes and started to tidy up. Then someone else had come in and administered the “fatal dose”. September was in the lounge, she would have tried to get up and fallen again. No wonder Maggie thought it was all her fault.

  The hard part was proving that Simon James had anything to do with it. He openly admitted he had been in her flat, but maintained that was because he and September were occasional lovers and had been for years. Maggie had to sit there and listen to it all. Using the information Saz had stolen about the other “Septembers”, the police were finally able to trace one of them and get a real witness to James’ activities. When Judith interviewed her she admitted carrying coke for him three times before she couldn’t stand it, or him, any longer and had gone to ground in Cumbria. Having been his sometime lover and having been threatened in the same way that September was when she tried to get out of the work, she was scared but finally persuaded to testify against James. She confirmed that his London business was used as a cover for smuggling, and told them about another business he had in Paris. For her and for Saz this meant days in court waiting to give just a couple of sentences in evidence, all the while the police were trying to stop James’ lawyers taking him back to America.

  In the end there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him of murder, but he was extradited to the States to stand trial there on drug smuggling charges. Saz was treated to a New York trip at the expense of the United States Treasury in order to testify against him. There was a lot of fuss made about protecting Saz from any “connections” James may have had. A lot of fuss, but in the end very little was done. She was called to testify and then sent back to London. She had little choice. Having admitted to knowing much more than she should have in the first place and after “omitting” to tell the police what she knew and having worked illegally for James while she was in New York, she wasn’t exactly in much of a position to make deals with the agents from the US government. Seven months later she heard he’d been jailed for eight years on drug offences. His businesses in both New York and Europe were closed down. Saz promised herself that she’d put extra locks on all her windows and took John Clark out to tell him the news.