Chapter Thirty

A Close Shave

Stephen Pohler was not an instinctive killer. Sebastian’s beating had been spontaneous, the manager of Four Legs had been stabbed in a frenzy, and the attempt on Daniel Cameron’s life had been enough to create a mess and to terrify all involved, but in the end the paramedics were able to patch him together on site. His time in hospital afterwards was purely for observation, a time in which he got over the shock and fear of the attack, and began to get bored.

It had been a long night. Sandra had given a full statement to the police, explaining everything that had occurred. She omitted nothing, including the killing of the man known as Clark on the balcony. She’d assumed she’d be able to plead self-defence, but it still involved being charged with something, interviews, maybe court, who knows? Why would you ever want to kill someone, she wondered. The legal implications of covering up or getting caught are mind blowing.

She didn’t have the energy to lie about any of it, and there were far too many people involved to coordinate one anyway. She’d stayed at the police station answering questions, explaining her story, very patiently for another long, long night. They’d listened, recorded, taken notes, asked for details to be repeated. She’d managed to catch a little sleep between rounds of questioning, but it was after dawn before a young policewoman, whom she had met in similar circumstances on Tuesday, walked in and left the door wide open.

“Thankyou for your help, Ms Walker. You’re free to leave.”

Sandra sat there, a little unsure.

“Seriously?”

“Yes. You understand that we may need to contact you in the future if we have any further enquiries.” She smiled as she spoke. Odd.

“No charges then? No more interviewing?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh.”

She stood up, and walked out of the room. She left the police station relieved, and with a fair idea of what had occurred. When she saw the limousine waiting outside on the street, her suspicions were confirmed. Without second thought, she opened one of the back doors and climbed in. Richard was also seated in the back, and there was a well dressed young man opposite next to the coffee machine.

“I’m afraid my skills with this machine are not up to my son’s standards”, Richard began as the car left, and gestured to the seat, “so I’ve been forced to enlist the services of my barista Julian here. Don’t worry, he’s perfectly trustworthy. Espresso, isn’t it?”

“Thankyou”

Julian made the machine make magic coffee noises, and Sandra felt an odd pang of sadness.

“So are you making all of this just go away are you?” she asked Richard.

He didn’t look at her, just kept his head steady looking out the window. He looked a lot older than he did when they first met.

“Not all of it Sandra. Just the part that involved you.”

“How so?”

“There would be a long drawn out procedure when dealing with the man you killed. I found a way to streamline the process.”

“And how did you do that then?” she asked as she was handed her coffee.

“Do you really want to know everything?”

She contemplated this as she sipped her excellent espresso. Her pang of sadness lifted a little with the caffeinated goodness.

“No. No I guess I don’t.” They continued in silence for a few moments. Then she noticed he wasn’t drinking. “You’re not having one?”

“I don’t drink coffee”, he replied. “The machine was Sebastian’s. So is the car, actually. Neither are to my taste. I’m not sure what to do with them now.”

She finished.

“I’m sorry”, she said, and meant it.

“You did a good job with this Sandra.” He completely ignored her attempt at empathy. “I’m impressed. I was in a desperate situation when I hired you, and you came through. If you could give me the stick now, we can call it done.”

She reached into her bag, and handed him the box of tampons. He didn’t react, just opened it up and took out the USB. He handed the box back to her.

“So what exactly is on that?” she asked.

Richard gestured to Julian who passed him a glass of hot water. Richard dropped the stick into the glass, and passed it back. Julian placed it in a secure holder and let it sit. The stick was distorted by the glass and water, and the occasional air bubble blollopped out to the surface as it soaked up the water.

“I’ve no idea”, he replied. She went to speak, then gave up. “I understand you’re out of a job”, he continued. “I’d like to offer you one.”

“Really? Doing exactly what?”

“You’re a capable woman Sandra. There are a number of things I could find for you to do.”

“I see. That guy Clark, he used to work for you didn’t he?”

“Correct.”

“What was his job description?”

“He didn’t have one. He just worked for me.”

“And I would be, ‘just working for you’?”

He paused, seeing where she was headed.

“Yes. In a different sense.”

She spoke evenly, carefully and sincerely.

“It’s not the sense, Richard, it’s the whole vibe of the thing. Look, I appreciate the offer, I really do. But in the last week my life has just gone nuts, and I can’t make any choices right now. I feel calm, like really disturbingly calm about the whole thing, but I know that at some point it’s gonna break. I’m not in the right frame of mind.”

“I understand.”

“Actually, I don’t think you do. Right now, I’m tempted. I think that if I were in the right frame of mind then it’d be an emphatic No Fucking Way. I’ve learnt a lot about myself this week Richard, a lot of which I’m not so sure about. I can survive in your world. It scares me how well I could survive in your world. But I don’t want to live there. Survival isn’t living. So while I appreciate the offer, I’ve got to respectfully decline, and suggest you shove it up your arse if you consider offering it to me again.”

He smiled.

“I understand”, he said. And she could see that he did. The car slowed, and stopped.

She opened her door to leave, and turned to Richard.

“Thanks for the lift.”

He gave a dismissive wave, and she got out of the car at her house and closed the door. She was halfway through her gate when she heard the window being wound down.

“By the way”, Richard said through the window, “since you are currently unemployed, don’t be concerned about the rent.”

“Why is that?”

“And I’ll see what we can do about getting the drainage fixed as well.”

“Why is that?” she asked again, but guessing the answer.

“I bought your house. But don’t worry, there’s no need to pay the rent.” And his head vanished back into the darkness of the car, the window went up, and it drove away.

Bastard.

She noticed how neat the front garden was as she waved to Crazy Greek Lady.

“They do good job your gardeners”, she said, and smiled. Sandra smiled, and waved back. She went inside. Her room was clean. Organised. Tidy. She soon discovered this was the case for the rest of the house also. Now she’d never find anything. She lay down on her bed, fully clothed, and shut her eyes.

She slept for nearly twenty-four hours, getting up only for toilet tips, a drink and a snack, and a polite ‘hi’ to her non-evicted housemates. She spoke to Liz for half an hour and was glad to have her old phone back, but otherwise she slept. She was awake and eating breakfast in her backyard on Saturday, self-consciously baffled by the still calm feeling that hadn’t left, when she received a text from an unknown number.

The message simply asked her to meet someone at a cafe for second breakfast. She didn’t know who it was, but decided she might as well. She rang Liz and casually informed her that if she didn’t hear from her before 12 she should call Richard. Liz, although concerned, accepted the request without question.

The cafe was not far from Four Legs or the apartments. She drank coffee, waiting for her date, and made a silent promise to herself to pick a new neighbourhood to hang out in. This one was tainted.

“Good Morning”, came a familiar voice, and she looked up to see Daniel standing beside the table. His neck had a line of gauze stuck across it hiding where it was cut, but otherwise he looked fine. She stood quickly and they hugged.

“I had no idea that message was from you, your number is in all the other phones but not in my real one”, she said as he sat. “Where did you get my number?”

“From Liz”, he replied. “She came and saw me while you were being interrogated. They let her go fairly quickly.”

“Ah”, she acknowledged, and then sat there silently. He was silent too. It was an awkward three seconds.

“So, how’s your neck then?”

“Fine, good, well, not good but fine. It didn’t go too deep. It does bleed sometimes though, but that should stop soon enough.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

Silence again. Fuck. She decided pleasantries were not her thing, and skipped to exactly what she wanted to know.

“So now that I have your number in my phone, what name should I put it under?”

He didn’t blink.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re name isn’t really Daniel Cameron, is it? What should I put it under?”

He blinked this time, smiled, and sat back in the seat.

“Alright. When did you figure it out?”

“Just now, actually, I was taking a wild shot. But Sebastian calling himself Daniel Cameron as well, then putting it in the phone, then Stephen taking the name, you turning up with the same name. It was just a bit wacky, but Stephen said something that really gave it away. Thing is, I know that Richard’s father is not his father. Stephen said he told Sebastian that, but I reckon he already knew. I reckon the three of you knew.”

He didn’t interrupt. She finished her coffee, pleased with herself.

“You’re Richard’s half-brother, aren’t you? Same father, am I right?”

He laughed, but there was little joy in it.

“My real name is Henry Cooper. My father was Anthony Cooper, he was a carpenter amongst other things, and thirty-five years ago he was doing some work on Richard Pohler’s house, where he met Andrea. They were going to run away together, except Andrea was terrified of Richard so she stayed, and lied about him being the father.”

“He believed it.”

“To his core. My father walked away, eventually met my mother and we lived another life. Ten years ago he died of cancer, and told me everything on various trips to chemo. I checked it out, hunted out Richard. He’d already figured out his father wasn’t his father. I had no money, and technically neither did Richard, but Sebastian who was the – well, let’s say more mature of us three – looked after us financially.”

“What about the name?”

“Daniel Cameron? It was just a bullshit name we’d use when referring to each other. To Richard Senior they’d refer to me as Daniel Cameron. To my mother I referred to Richard as Daniel Cameron. If we were pulling a scam on someone for kicks, it was Daniel Cameron. We plucked the name from somewhere, I don’t even know where anymore, but it stuck. Daniel Cameron meant we were bullshitting. “

He stopped to drink some water. She stopped to think for a moment.

“You introduced yourself to me as Daniel Cameron”, she said. “Have you been bullshitting me?”

“Not for a second”, he said. “We are here, right now, because I wanted to tell you my real name. But of course you figured it out already. You’re exceptionally clever.”

She smiled at that. She normally wouldn’t, but it was nice to hear it from him.

“So what now?” she asked.

He looked her in the eyes, and she could see the sadness. He was still smiling, but that smile was a hundred miles from where he really was.

“I’m sorry”, she said. “I’ve been terribly callous through all of this. It’s a survival mechanism.”

“No, I think that’s just you”, he said. “But that’s fine. I like it, to be honest. I’m envious in way.”

There was silence. They still had yet to encounter a waiter.

“Here’s the thing”, he continued, “I’ve got two funerals to go to this week. One of them is my half-brother, the other was his half-brother and a good friend, and I don’t think that I can do all of that alone.”

“Why did you pick this place?” she asked as if he said nothing. “The service is awful.”

“I need someone to be there with me Sandra.”

“I saw you naked.”

He lost what he was talking about.

“What?”

“I saw you naked. Look, since we’re being honest, for a while there I knew you as naked blond guy. I hid in your apartment when you thought I’d left. You went to have a shower, I was hiding in the kitchen and you went to the cupboard to get something.”

His face was a mask. She was unsure about this. But she had to tell him.

“Is that so? How did I not see you?”

“I don’t know. But you were there, and I saw you naked, and I’m sorry. But I have to tell you this.”

Still no reaction.

“When I went to the corner cupboard?”

“Yup.”

“You were behind me.”

“Yup.”

“And I was naked.”

“You were.”

“I see.”

“Sorry.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“No, that’s about it.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Well then, shall we order?” he said, looking for a waiter.

“You’re not angry?”

“Given the circumstances, no”, he said. Still no waiter.

“Ok. I have to ask you a question then.”

“Sandra, given all that we’ve been through, you can ask me anything.”

She braced herself.

“What’s with the shaved bum?”

He paused, sat back and smiled at her. The waiter finally arrived.

“I’ll explain later”, he said.

And he did.