‘Righto, miss,’ the cabbie replied.
Helen climbed out onto the pavement and walked back three houses to Tony’s basement flat. Nervously, she tiptoed down the steps, dreading the thought that his ‘other woman’ might be there and that was why she’d been stood up.
She knocked three times. At the third knock, there was a light click, and the door opened of its own accord. There was no one behind it. Clearly, it had not been shut properly.
Gingerly, she pushed it open. The flat was in darkness.
‘Hello? Tony, it’s me, Helen.’
There was no reply.
‘Tony?’
She searched along the corridor wall for a light switch and pressed it.
‘Damn.’ The bulb had gone.
Helen felt her way along the wall until she arrived at the sitting room door.
‘Tony? Are you here?’
Thankfully the light was functioning, and the sitting room was illuminated brightly when she pressed the switch.
It was also empty.
Helen walked through the room to the kitchen. The tiny room was in a horrible mess, and there was a funny smell coming from the cooker. She peered into the saucepan on top of the hob and jumped back in disgust, putting her hand over her mouth as she gagged. Whatever meat had been in the pan had turned to a squirming mass of maggots. She stood panting in the sitting room.
‘Tony?’
She shivered. He obviously wasn’t at home. From the state of the kitchen, she suspected he hadn’t been around for the past few days. Quickly, she checked the bedroom. The bed was made and the room neat. She returned to the sitting room and searched for a pen and paper in Tony’s bureau drawer.
Thurs night.
Tony,
Where did you get to? Came looking for you. Give the new director of Metropolitan Records a call.
Love,
Helen
She left the note on the coffee table, and leaving the front door exactly as she found it, ran up the steps to her waiting taxi.
The flat was in silence again, apart from the drip of the tap in the bathroom. The water in the bath, once a bright red pool, had turned a deep copper colour. In the midst of the water, his hand still clutching a bar of soap, lay Tony Bryant. He stared, unseeing, up at the ceiling.
26
‘Hello, Sorcha. Come in and sit down. You look wonderful. Have you had your hair restyled?’
Sorcha picked her way through the piles of photos, envelopes and general mess that lay strewn on Audrey’s office carpet. She removed a pile of magazines from the chair in front of the desk and sat down.
‘Yes. They cut it for the baked beans shoot last week.’
‘Did they really? And did you ask for a fee?’
‘No. I didn’t know I should.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll ring them. They know they have to agree a change of hairstyle beforehand, and pay you for it. However, it looks so nice that I think they’ve done you a favour.’
