The Swap - By Antony Moore Page 0,52

we were leaving her until tomorrow.'

'I wonder if you'd mind mixing up our schedule a bit. I think perhaps we should have a talk to her today.'

Allen nodded ruminatively. 'She was the one the fight was over, wasn't she?'

'Yes. I think I'd like to meet the woman Mr Briscow was willing to fight for. He doesn't strike me as much of a fighter.'

Allen, who was six foot three and had the build of a boxer, shook his head. 'No, sir, more of a thinker than a doer, I'd say.'

'Precisely. And I'd like to know why he lied about fighting too. Bit of horseplay indeed.'

'Yes, sir, shall we head straight there now? I'm sure we could put off Rob Calderwood. I only mentioned that we might call in to his shop – sporting goods apparently rather than comics – I'm sure we could just as easily go tomorrow.'

'Good, then let's go and find her, shall we? It's a long drive on the off chance but I think perhaps I'd like to meet her without warning her in advance.'

'Yes, sir.' Without rancour Allen performed a neat three-point turn against the traffic and they sped away for at least forty yards before once more becoming embroiled in the unending traffic jam that is the London road system.

Croydon is not a pretty place. It has some advantages in terms of connections and rail links to the City and at night it looks a bit like Manhattan, if Manhattan was rather smaller and full of shaven-headed men with tattoos driving customised Ford Pumas. Its one real advantage is that it has a tram network, which is decorative even though it only connects the town to places no one would ever want to visit. Like Wimbledon. But as a place of escape and safety it has a number of advantages. First among these for Maisie Cooper was anonymity. Nowhere could anyone be quite as anonymous as they could in Croydon. It was a place that seemed almost built to provide faceless, characterless security. And she found it soothing. She liked to walk in the broad, pedestrianised streets filled with the garish familiarity of everytown high street. She had fallen in love with the supreme ugliness of the shopping centre. She was enchanted by the closed other-ness of the faces that passed her own but never met her eye. She saw the ease with which she and anyone could slip into this place, become part of it, and therefore become nothing: an absence of a person, a non-being. And while she had nothing to hide from exactly – she was in touch with her husband and indeed had told him where she was going – still this seemed right somehow, to have come to a place where whatever identity she was going to have in the future could wait. She could pause and sit in limbo and for now be without character, blank. She would not stay here, had never intended to. But it was a place to wait and linger, to prepare.

This morning in particular there seemed something right about being there. Waking late, she had breakfast, showered and then wandered out for a while in all that glorious impersonality. She had visited the local shop and failed once again to be greeted by the polite but unattainable Asian gentleman behind the counter; she had bought bread baked on the other side of the city, milk delivered from another county, muffins from another country. And she had wandered through the indiscriminate shallowness of the mini-city with a feeling of real contentment, taking her time, using immediate observation to allay any desire to analyse her wider situation.

As she walked back along Cherry Orchard Road there was a fresh wind but also a hint of the possibility of spring in the way the clouds were carried on it. There were flashes of blue and that yellow-green around the wings of the clouds that spoke of potential and newness. Even the weather was leading her into the uncertainty she needed: opening, clearing her way. Maisie shook her head in the breeze, enjoying the feeling of her hair being whipped against her face. As she fumbled for her keys she might have missed the two men leaning against the dark, unshowy car parked outside Lisa's building. She did notice them when they moved towards her. Though recently fond of Croydon she was not unaware of its dangers. She stepped back and looked quickly around. Were there any of those faceless