Tree of Pearls. Louisa Young

Bates,’ he said.

      ‘Eddie Bates is dead,’ I replied. That’s the official version and there is no reason for me to know any different. ‘He died in prison,’ I said. I even managed to look a little puzzled.

      ‘François du Berry, then,’ he said. ‘Could we just get on?’

      ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I lied. I knew exactly what he meant.

      It was Harry who had told me that Eddie was not dead, but living in Cairo under an assumed name. What I didn’t know was whether Preston Oliver knew that Harry had told me – risking his career and maybe saving my life by doing so. I’m not telling any big policeman who I don’t know anything about this.

      ‘What were you doing in Egypt?’ he said.

      ‘I was on holiday,’ I said.

      He just looked at me.

      Sooner or later one of us was going to lose our temper, and I was afraid it was going to be me. I decided to do it the controlled way. Like the angry posh lady hectoring the Harrods shop assistant.

      ‘I think you’ll find,’ I said, ‘that asking the same question over and over is going to get you nowhere. I have no desire whatsoever to hamper you in the course of your duties, indeed I am happy to tell you anything that may be of use to you, but it is not unreasonable of me to want to know why. Do you think I am a witness to something? Do you suspect me of something? I have to insist that you be specific, because otherwise I’m afraid I can’t help you. You can think about it. I’ll be back in a moment.’

      ‘I think you’ll find.’ What a great phrase. And as for ‘I have to insist’ …

      I found the public telephone, snatched up the receiver and rang Harry at work. Not there. Rang his mobile.

      ‘Harry?’

      ‘What is it?’ he said. He can smell urgency. Logically, I would be calling about our domestic and emotional situation, and he would have no business saying ‘What is it?’ to me in that tone. But he could tell.

      ‘Simon Preston Oliver – mean anything to you?’

      ‘Why?’ he said.

      ‘He’s here. Not right here – you know. He wants to know about Cairo.’

      Harry knew about Cairo. Harry knows it all, pretty much. Well … most.

      A moment passed.

      ‘Tell him,’ he said.

      ‘Everything?’

      ‘Everything you told me.’

      ‘Does he know you told me about Eddie?’

      ‘Not … not as such. I mean yes, he does, he must do. But we haven’t talked about it.’

      ‘So—’

      ‘I think he’s cool with it, but. But. Slide by it if you can.’

      ‘Do you think he’ll let me?’

      ‘He wouldn’t usually. He’s a snake – he’s brilliant. But in this case, yes – well, he loves me. I think. Shit.’

      Well that was reassuring.

      ‘What’s it about, Harry?’ I asked.

      ‘I don’t know. I’ve heard nothing since you’ve been back. Which may be because he’s put two and two together – you and me.’

      The phrase hung between us. You and me. Its other context glowing slightly down the line.

      I wrenched back on course. I’m going to have to get used to this. ‘Is he the bloke you talked to about me before I left?’ I asked. Harry had told me that a senior colleague, doubtful about the wisdom of putting Eddie on witness protection, had told Harry about it, specifically so that someone near to me could know, and remain aware.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s all right. He’s not Ben Cooper.’

      ‘Thank you,’ I said. Meaning it.

      *

      Back at the table, Preston Oliver greeted me with ‘And how’s Harry?’

      I laughed.

      ‘You can’t blame me,’ I said.

      ‘I thought you would have spoken to him earlier,’ he said.

      ‘There’s a lot on my mind,’ I said.

      ‘So I would imagine,’ he said, eyeing me. He probably thinks I trust him now, I thought. Well … he’s not top of the list of people I don’t trust.

      ‘So,’ he said. ‘In your own words.’

      I reckoned quickly. He knows a certain amount about me. There’s nothing to be lost by him knowing my version. And perhaps he will be nice and leave me alone if he feels that I am cooperating. So I briefly ran through for him some of the things that had been keeping me busy over the past few months.

      ‘A few months ago,’ I said, ‘I started to receive letters – anonymous letters, threatening. I worked out that they were from Chrissie Bates – Eddie’s wife. Then some purporting to be from Eddie. Who I knew to be dead. I’d been to his funeral.’ I had. And I’d met Chrissie for the first time, and it had been very mad, though not as mad as later when Eddie turned out to be not dead at all.

      ‘One said … let me get this right,’ I said. ‘One said that he had put money in an account for my daughter in Cairo, and I was to go and fetch it, and if I didn’t his lawyer was under instructions to give it to the BNP.’

      He raised his eyebrows.

      ‘I don’t like the BNP,’ I said. Understating it rather. You don’t live my life, live where I do (where the premises on the main road go: Irish laundromat, Lebanese grocery, Turkish cab firm, Armenian deli, Irish snooker club, Syrian grocery, Trinidadian travel agent, Syrian butcher, Lebanese café, Jamaican take-away, Chinese take-away, Indian fabric store, Nepalese restaurant, Thai restaurant, Italian restaurant, Ghanaian fabric store, Nigerian telephone agency, Australian bar, Polish restaurant, Pakistani newsagent, Irish café which turns Thai in the evenings, mosque, Brazilian film-makers’ collective, Ukrainian cab firm, Serbian internet café, Greek restaurant and something called the Ay Turki Locali, which may well be Turkish but whatever else it is I’ve never worked out), without developing rather strong views about racism. Mine is that it’s both the most ludicrous and the most evil of injustices. ‘So I went out there, and got the money, and came back.’

      He just looked at me. And then made a little gesture, a little twitching of the fingers: more.

      ‘Your turn,’ I said.

      ‘Did you meet François du Berry?’

      Ah, very good. What a delicate way of doing it. Slipping from the ‘dead’ man to his new identity without a word.

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘And?’

      It’s not just Harry. I have a couple of other people to protect here, none of whom have done anything wrong, but who could get in trouble, and who did it for me.

      ‘He, um, he was there to meet us when we collected the money, and then later I saw him at a show, in a hotel. Bellydancing.’

      ‘We?’ said Preston Oliver.

      ‘What?’

      Oh bugger.

      ‘You said “we”.’

      ‘Oh … yes, a friend came with me.’ Please don’t drag him in. Please don’t drag him in. I could see him as he was that day: so cool, so beautiful, so protective, so funny. That fantastical scene in the foyer of the Nile Hilton, carrying £100,000 in a case, and Eddie eyeing him up with a view to group sex …

      Preston Oliver