PATCHWORK MAN

D.B. Martin

Published by IM Books

www.debrahmartin.co.uk

© Copyright D.B. Martin 2014

PATCHWORK MAN

All rights reserved.

The right of D.B. Martin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are a product of the author’s imaginations and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and organisations is purely coincidental.

Condition of sale

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-0-9929961-2-3

“It is always the best policy to speak the truth – unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.” Jerome K Jerome

Other books by this author:

Writing as D. B. Martin:

PATCHWORK MAN (Book 1) 2015 Winner of a B.R.A.G Medallion

Laurence Juste QC is the perfect barrister; respected, professional, always wins. But Lawrence Juste isn’t who he says he is, and his past is about to come back and haunt him...

PATCHWORK PEOPLE (Book 2)

No-one is what they appear to be, especially not Lawrence Juste QC. And no sooner does he patch one hole in his fraying life than another appears – unless his dead wife can help...

PATCHWORK PIECES (Book 3)

The wheel has turned full circle. The past is the present, the betrayed are the betrayers. Only a deadly form of natural justice can help Lawrence Juste, almost ex-QC, now...

Writing as Debrah Martin:

FALLING AWAKE

The story of Mary, Joe and a world populated by love, betrayal and obsession – and what it does to those who live in it. Fantasy or madness? The impossible is only a breath away.

CHAINED MELODIES

Courage isn’t about facing death, it’s about loving life – and life isn’t always conventional. The unusual story of how two men find not just courage, but self-belief and the true nature of love.

Writing as Lily Stuart (YA fiction):

WEBS

Meet Lily: one smart cookie with a bitchy BFF, moody boys and crazy school friends. Life’s a breeze by comparison to what happens when her mother starts internet dating with lethal results though. Step up Lily S: Teenage Detective.

MAGPIES

A boy with looks to die for – and Tourette’s – tricky BFFs, and and a gang of drug-dealers... THE teenage detective is back and looking for trouble – or trouble is looking for her. It finds her in the form of a childish rhyme, with a deadly hidden meaning.

Click here for your copy: http://eepurl.com/3-965

Contents

Prologue

1: Memories

2: The Case

3: The Boy

4: The Home

5: Innocence Lost

6: Jaggers

7: Danny

8: The Gutter

9: Solomon’s Wisdom

10: Win

11: Hidden Agendas

12: The Case for the Defence

13: Wild Card

14: Families

15: Little Mother

16: Sweet Charity

17: The Female of the Species

18: Medicine

19: Girls

20: Connections

21: Bonds

22: Circassian Circle

23: Patchwork People

24: Rough Justice

25: Atticus

26: Appearance

COMING SOON:

ABOUT D.B MARTIN

Prologue

Secrets.

They overwhelm you when you least want them to – like memories. You tuck them safely away and think they’re lost. They’re not. They’re merely lying dormant, awaiting the miscreant – inquisitive, prodding and delving.

I opened the envelope clumsily, exhausted from the effort of maintaining a dignified propriety since Margaret’s death yesterday. It was a list of names and dates and places, written in her hand. My hidden history, meticulously researched – including the parts I’d thought even I had forgotten. 1999 rolled back forty years to the first time the threads of my life unravelled, when I was nine, and a tidal wave of memories crashed over me in a suffocating arc of white water and humiliation. Then my body shook and the cold finger of fear slid down my neck and into my gut as the patchwork man felt his carefully seamed life pull apart.

1. Memories

It was 1959 and I was nine, the day everything changed. Nine, and puny. The aftermath of the Second World War was plain in my rationed frame and our meagre lifestyle, and the Croydon of then was a bomb-crumbled crater of dilapidated buildings and open spaces, perfect for kids to disappear in when they should be somewhere else. I can still remember it as if it were yesterday. I ran into the room, all skinned knees and flailing elbows, nose running from being outside in the crisp cold of early autumn. I recall even now hastily wiping it on the sleeve of my jumper so Ma wouldn’t chide me, and how the snot made a slimy snail trail. It sparkled in the morning sunlight, like someone had woven magic into the jumper’s holed and matted dereliction. I remember that almost more clearly than what the woman was saying.

‘You can’t carry on like this Mrs Juss.’ The woman was sitting on the only armchair we had; Pop’s chair, by the fire. She’d be for it if he came in. She looked as if she had a smell under her nose. Her bright red lips were stretched into a thin supercilious smile, and her nose wrinkled at Ma as if she was the one making the smell. I stopped in the doorway, mid-way between bursting in and running away. Was she here from the school? Telling Ma on me, and how I hadn’t been in weeks? Her legs were crossed daintily at the ankles but her ankles weren’t dainty at all. They were thick and bloated, like Mrs Fenner’s cat had been after it had died. It had blown up like a balloon and Ted Willis had poked it with a stick to see if it would pop. It hadn’t, it had just oozed pus and maggots and we’d watched fascinated but disgusted as the balloon had deflated and the sickly brown mess oozed out.

‘It were a nice ’un once,’ Ted had said to me. I hadn’t replied. I’d been too busy controlling the urge to retch over the yard wall, but I couldn’t forget too how it used to perch on the fence near the bins, stalking mice. It had been proud and feral then. Why did it have to turn into this?

I didn’t puke. Ted would have thought me a wimp, and told the others. Then Jonno and his mates would mark me as an easy target and tail me when I went down to Old Sal’s shop for Pop’s fags or a jug of milk for Ma, and grab whatever I’d got on me. They’d kick me in the guts for it too. Pop would belt me, and the buckle of his belt would leave a scratch from the spike. No, even as a child, I knew there were times when you had to feign indifference for appearances’ sake and keep your thoughts to yourself.

Instinctively I didn’t like the woman. Not just because her ankles reminded me of the cat, but because of the way she was talking to Ma. Ma looked so defeated. She was never like that with me. Sometimes she was as tough as old nails, hollering at me for being ‘a right little shit’ and whacking me across the knees with her wooden spoon. Other times she’d ruffle my hair and sigh. ‘Oh Kenny, whatever’ll I do with you; all of you,’ and I’d feel a surge of love for her that made me want to hug her tight and never let go because Ma just made you feel special when she did that.

‘What else can I do?’ Ma rounded on the woman harshly, a touch of her old spirit showing momentarily. Then she bent double with pain and gripped the back of the rickety chair that was hers at our dinner table.

‘Do you need the midwife?’ the woman asked anxiously, shifting awkwardly as if about to up and run herself.

‘Nah, I’ve had enough of them to know when it’s me time.’ Ma straightened up and saw me in the doorway. The woman saw me at the same time.

‘Is this one of them?’

‘This is my Kenny.’ Ma held a hand out towards me.

‘How old is he?’

‘I had him after Georgie so he must be nine or thereabouts.’ I wanted to say I’m here, and I can speak for meself, but I daren’t in case the woman was from the school. I studied Ma, trying to work out from her expression who the woman was, but it was blank. Worn out from childbirth and sheer grind I suppose by then.

‘Well, this one will make eleven Mrs Juss, and you can’t go on like this, whatever your religious beliefs. What school does Kenny go to? And why isn’t he there now?’ Ma looked at me, confused, and I felt like I’d betrayed her.

‘Which one do yer go to?’

‘The one down the end.’ My voice came out too loud. I couldn’t remember the name of it either. Shit.

‘So why aren’t you there, boy?’ The woman was addressing me now. I hung my head. She must be from the school. What was she here for otherwise? Now I was really for it. She turned her attention back to Ma. ‘Do you know why he isn’t at school, Mrs Juss?’ Ma shook her head slowly. ‘Do you know whether any of your children are at school right now?’ Ma shook her head again and flinched as another contraction cut her in two. The woman sighed loudly. ‘You have ten children, you’re about to produce another and yet you do not know where they are at any time during the day. I repeat, Mrs Juss: you cannot carry on like this.’ There was silence, broken only by Ma’s involuntary gasp.

‘It’s time,’ she croaked as she bent over, and her waters broke in a rush over the linoleum. The woman jumped up and grabbed me just before the blood-soiled puddle reached my feet, boot soles turning up at the ends where they were worn to splitting.

‘And what about your children?’

I tried to twist away from the woman. ‘Gerroff, you cow! Ma needs the midwife. Leggo and I’ll get her.’ I was afraid for Ma, but I wanted to escape as well. The woman’s nails cut into my shoulder but she let go and I stumbled forwards, almost ending up in the murky pool.

‘Go on then boy, hurry up.’ She waved me off impatiently. To Ma she said, ‘Where do you normally give birth, Mrs Juss – in here or on your bed?’ I didn’t hear Ma’s reply, I took to my heels and ran for Mrs Lapwood.

We kids were made to stay out in the yard as we all straggled back in from wherever we’d been – not at school; that was for sure. Binnie and Sarah looked after the littlest ones whilst the boys played footie and made catapults to ping stones at the crows. If we got one of them, they’d be tea, so it wasn’t just for mischief that we aimed at them. Upstairs the curtains were closed. Ma’s groans after I’d fetched the midwife were enough to keep me out, even if curiosity about what ‘give birth’, like the hoity-toity woman had called it, was actually all about. I’d never been this close to a new brother or sister appearing before. It had always happened whilst I’d been out somewhere. It wasn’t as if it was the first time, of course, but this time made it through the immunity that childhood usually provides. I didn’t want to see Ma’s contorted face, or hear those inhuman howls again. They had terrified me, even though I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone. There was something no longer childish about my world that day.

About five hours later, bellies empty and limbs stiff from the insidious cold of the twilight of an autumn day, we were allowed to troop in and see the newest member of the family. It was scrawny and red-faced, screwed up and misshapen like one of Binnie’s ragdolls that had got mixed up with the red table cloth and come out of the wash deep pink, instead of white. The snooty woman turned out to be from The Authorities – as Pop put it. She was still there, and a bloke with small wire-rimmed glasses and a big folder under his arm had joined her. They were waiting in the corner of the room and counted us in. I didn’t like it. It made me feel like I was being herded. Ted had told me his uncle counted the sheep on his farm in before they went to the slaughter house. Ted had stayed there once, when his mother had rheumatic fever and he and his brothers and sisters were shipped off to the farm until she was better.

‘It were good,’ he’d informed me when he came back, grinning, ‘until they herded up all them little lambs and stuffed them onto a truck. You knew they was gonna get their gizzards slit – sshh,’ and he made a slicing action across his throat like it was being cut. I didn’t like the idea of herds after that or being counted in. It was probably what put me off school because I did like finding out things I hadn’t known before.

The man pushed between us as we filled the room, and separated us into two groups; the ones older than ten and the ones younger. I shuffled toward the older ones’ group, taking Georgie with me, but was kept back by the bloke. The older ones – three of them – were marshalled across to the woman with the bulging ankles. Pop was there too, looking stony-faced in his best trousers and a clean white shirt tucked behind his braces. With the ‘Authorities’ people there, the belt that I feared so much was redundant around his waist. We kids all knew what the belt was there for. Pop stuck his thumbs in it and slouched against the wall, scowling, as the bloke with the glasses and folder told us to sit on the floor. Jill sat on Binnie’s lap and Emm was on Sarah’s, curled into a little huddle like Binnie’s doll. Sarah was twelve and Binnie almost eleven. They bossed me about when they had the chance and I cheeked them back like the devil, but I think they were kind girls really. I wish I hadn’t pulled their hair and pinched them as spitefully as I had when they told me off now. There were times when they mopped my cuts and hugged me when it hurt, like little mothers. I remember those times with a regret it’s hard to shake, because I haven’t seen them again since that night – in all of forty years – over half an expected lifetime. They are a part of my past I might have still wanted around – once.

The fat-ankled woman subdivided us again. The girls went with her, apart from the two tiniest ones who were taken back to Ma. The woman took my older sisters into their bedroom – shared between the five of them, Binnie, Sarah, Mooney Mary as we called her – turned at birth, or so Ma Lapwood said, and Jill and Emm, the girl twins. The man took me, Pip and Jim into our room and told us to pack our clothes into small brown suitcases that were already placed on our beds, open and waiting. Win and Georgie were told what to do and left to it.

Pip and Jim sat either side of the suitcases, eyeing them and the man suspiciously. They were almost identical, but not quite. I could tell the difference because Pip had lost both his two front teeth at the time whereas Jim had only lost one, so it was easy to work out who was who. I always wonder why – given the fact that they enjoyed tricking everyone so much – Jim hadn’t already yanked out his extra tooth. Maybe I remember us all as both harder and more vulnerable than we were at the time? They were the lookers of our motley crew, sandy hair falling in wilful shocks round scrubbed-apple cheeks, freckles and bright blue eyes; tomboys with charm. I was just a scraped-kneed, stick-legged awkward version of them, with sallow cheeks, wary eyes and an apparently hard outer skin. Ironic that my hard outer skin was in reality softer than a baby’s, and my heart easier hurt than a girl’s.

‘You’re going on a little trip, whilst your mother gets better after having this baby. It’s all too much for her to cope with all of you at the same time. It will be nice, you’ll see.’ He was quietly spoken and seemed sincere. I remembered Ted’s trip to stay with his uncle. I liked the sound of the wide open spaces, the animals, the fresh air and time to roam. He’d even said the village school they’d gone to was all right. No more Jonno and his gang, or Pop and his belt.

‘Ted went to stay with his uncle when his ma was poorly,’ I told the twins. ‘It’ll be OK, you’ll see.

‘Will we all be together?’ Pip asked shyly.

‘I’m sure it will all be sorted out satisfactorily,’ the man assured him, but looked away at his watch. ‘We really need to hurry up though. You have a train to catch.’

‘A train?’ Jim was agog. ‘I’ve never been on a train before. Is it a big un? Is it taking us somewhere good?’ The man looked at him reflectively.

‘Yes it is.’ He said eventually. He went to stand by the window and looked out, face half in shadow. ‘Come on, get a move on then,’ he threw back at us over his shoulder without turning round. I bundled what little I had in my suitcase as quickly as I could and then went over to him at the window. He was looking out at the grassy sides of the communal air-raid shelters that were still standing from the war. Ma occasionally told us stories of how cramped and stuffy it had been down them and what it had been like when the bombs fell. My oldest brother Win had been conceived the year the war officially ended and Ma had named him after Winston Churchill in honour: Winston Kenneth Lawrence Juss. She’d rearranged the names for me and Georgie had a similar combination. There was no denying the connection between us – that was sure.

The speed at which you could run down the slopes of the shelters depended on how confident you felt at the time. It was the way we tested who was top dog locally. Jonno was the current holder of the fastest time then so he and his gang were in charge. I’d always intended to beat him one day. I chalked up that particular race as one that would have to wait until I was older – maybe a good thing considering my skinny body and scrawny muscles. Occasional trips and falls did no real damage, but I had still to develop the ability to put my hands out in front of me as a cushion so I usually had a good assortment of bruises, after-effects of nose-bleeds and the occasional black eye as rewards for my practice runs. Ma obviously thought that I was often in fights and would exclaim wearily over me when I rolled in with another set of injuries. I tried once to tell her it was all innocent but she wasn’t listening. It never seemed to matter much after that, other than that I didn’t like her thinking I was in trouble all the time, when really I was anything but.

Now, comparing the man to the child, I’m still largely unco-ordinated. My golf swing is only fair and I gave up on squash and tennis in my early forties once I married Margaret and handed on the baton of the social integration race. Her co-ordination was impeccable – like everything else.

Back to then: our road was quiet for a slum area. Unusual to even have one still around in the sixties, but the rag and bone man was possibly the most interesting thing that made its way down the street at this time in the evening. He was on his way home and just stopping by to see if there was any trade around before ending his day in the next road. No-one had ever been able to explain to me why he was called a rag and bone man, apart from that he sometimes accepted old clothes, even rags. There were no bones on his horse-drawn cart.

I knew that because I’d lain in wait once and clambered up on to it to check when he was having a fag. Once or twice I’d been allowed to pat the horse and feel it blow gently from its great cavernous nostrils onto my open palm as I held out a handful of grass. Its nose felt like nothing I’d ever felt before, soft and smooth like the black velvet they’d draped over Grandpa’s coffin. I couldn’t understand the rag and bone man’s call either until on one of the occasions that I was patting his horse he explained that it was for the things he was after. Everyone dumped the things he might collect on the kerb for him. Opposite our house there was an old loo cistern that had been abandoned in the gutter and he stopped to load it on the cart as I and The Authorities man were looking out the window. A man was walking along the pavement and watching, maybe wondering what the rag and bone man would do with such a foul thing. He wasn’t looking where he was going and walked straight into the lamppost, banging his head with a clang we could hear from our flat. The Authorities man and I both laughed simultaneously and the brief moment of shared laughter encouraged me to ask him more.

‘Is it in the country or in a town?’ I hoped he would say the country so there might be some horses there and I could find out more about the strange way such a big beast as a cart-horse could also be so gentle when I fed it grass. He sucked his lower lip in and rubbed his hand across his face thoughtfully.

‘I don’t know I’m afraid, but I’m sure it will be fine. A nice place where you’ll be with other children your age and it will be fun.’ The words ‘Children’s Home’ were never uttered. Even at that age, and ignorant as I was, if they had, I would have made a fuss. Ma kissed us each weakly on the cheek and Pop nodded at us, still scowling, as we were led away.

*

The records I’ve seen since confirm my age then – nine – but, like Ma, I wasn’t entirely sure of it at the time. Birthdays didn’t feature much in our lives. There was no money so why would there be cake and presents? It’s only since adulthood and seeing the money lavished on modern day kids that ‘birthday’ means anything other than another day of grazed knees, rumbling gut and dodging Pop’s belt for some mischief I’d supposedly done and he’d found out about. I hadn’t done anything wrong that day, ironically, and it was that which worried me for so long afterwards. That and the fact that maybe I should have tried harder to explain to Ma that my bumps and bruises weren’t from fights or mischief, just from running down the side of the air raid shelter. Maybe she wouldn’t have assumed I was bad then and they would have kept me, otherwise why had I been punished when I hadn’t done anything wrong?

You can think something is your fault nearly all your life, but it’s not. It’s just the way it is and you’re the poor sod who got caught in the backlash at the time. So it was for me then, caught in the backlash of the grinding poverty, Catholic rigidity over birth control, and the sheer desperation to survive that was life for my family along with so many others at the time. When number eleven came along, something had to give. It wasn’t just me, of course. The other kids went too, and none of us had done anything wrong.

But it wasn’t anywhere nice, even though it was in the country.

Not anywhere nice at all.

2: The Case

I struggled back to the present and the cold reality of now. I could still barely believe she was dead – or considering blackmailing me whilst alive. I studied Margaret’s blandly smiling face in the photo of her that took pride of place on the desk in my study, as if it might provide a reason for her treachery. She’d been at a charity ball, wearing the black and white silk dress with the splashes of red that now reminded me of blood on a skid-marked road. Ever the correct social hostess, it offered me nothing but polite platitude. It was then I noticed the case folder, lying forgotten next to her photo. The defence case she’d been so keen for me to take – and I’d been so reluctant to. I’d already made my name at the Bar, established my reputation, and determined my career path. Next stop High Court Judge. I didn’t need problematic little legal aid cases anymore. That was my excuse, anyway.

I put the incriminating list she’d left me to one side, sensing now it was the sweetener, not the main course. A morsel to whet my appetite and make me anxious for more – or bilious for less. I wondered which. It must have been very important for Margaret to go to so much trouble, but without her there to explain, sweetly, reasonably, logically – as she always did when I was being primed to do something she wasn’t sure I would want to – it was a mystery. The key to it had to be in the case. It was too circumstantial otherwise. She’d seemed to accept my rejection of it with nonchalance, and I’d been relieved, even though I’d tried not to show it. I knew it must be one of her projects, and her minute but unobtrusive observation of my reaction as I scanned its contents hadn’t gone unnoticed, but I’d naively assumed at the time she was merely gauging what I would do for next to nothing, in her do-gooder role, not assessing what the folder’s effect was on me or how well I could be manipulated. But as with all human life, vulnerability isn’t about the clever trick missed or the careless comment that later trips you up. It’s about the unseen and unplanned.

So what had Margaret planned for me before the unseen had engulfed her? I opened the folder and was faced with yet another inevitability on the first page. I had no choice now but to take the case. Unbeknownst to me, Margaret had told the Chambers’ clerk to accept it – probably with the implied threat of repercussions if they queried it with me. That would have sealed it. They were more in awe of her than me. I silently cursed her for her deviousness but knew I was beaten. I turned the page and read on, head spinning as this time I studied every sordid little similarity between the defendant and myself, and tried to work out why my murdered wife had set me up to defend my doppelganger – an almost exact copy of the child I’d been, but thought in adulthood I’d managed to escape. In the aftermath of what the papers had called Margaret’s ‘untimely and tragic death’ I hadn’t anticipated anything worse could happen – and certainly nothing as bad as this.

With the careful juxtaposition of the two items on my desk, I suspected the list of names, places and dates she’d pointedly provided me with would become very relevant at some stage too, knowing her. Margaret was the only one who’d known anything of my past – albeit the most mean, meagre and insubstantial parts I could be forced to part with. It had been necessary. There are some things you have to tell a wife merely to explain your silence. When we first married I explained that without explaining, and she claimed to understand what I meant. Returning to the list, she’d filled in the gaps well – and with what appeared to be present-day names and addresses. It was a gift horse if I wanted to find or be found. But at forty-nine, and with a lifetime of burying the past, why would I want to unearth it now? Of course, I didn’t, but nevertheless, having read all those excruciatingly analogous facts, and obvious parallels, nor could I ignore it.

By the time I’d reached the final pages of the case folder, it was clear the boy was not only one of Margaret’s projects but that she’d also potentially had another far more private agenda sketched out in relation to it, although not why she’d chosen this way to achieve it. The boy in the folder was almost a duplicate of me – but in the modern day. And the crime was an almost text-book copy. But why should she specifically alight on it and him? There was more to this than coincidence. When this insignificant little case had popped up weeks ago, she’d ostensibly known virtually nothing of my past yet she’d immediately pounced on it and made the connection. The discomfiting thought that Margaret had known an awful lot more about me for a very long time pushed its way through my stunned dismay. Along with it came the lingering fear I’d overlooked something else very important tucked away within the pages of the folder, like I’d tucked away my past and my secrets.

3: The Boy

‘Weren’t me. Weren’t there. Didn’t do it.’ He folded his arms across his chest and the very defiance in his small bony face and East London twang made me want to slap him. It was our first defence case conference – a fact-finding mission, with him offering no facts. I forced the irritation down beneath a smoothly reasoned response. My clerk glanced at me nervously. I would rather not have brought him with me. He was a standing joke and I understood now why my partners in Chambers – Francis, Jeremy and Heather – had passed him on to me with such alacrity. He was pathetically keen to please, but pathetic. He needed toughening up. Less of the clerk, more of the bastard. Perhaps I should encourage him to cut his teeth on this, depending on the likelihood of controversy. It was only a kid involved, so surely he could hold his own against a child, and perhaps relieve me of some of the more tedious aspects of the case. For now, though, I had to get the little tyke to break and actually tell me something – anything.

‘You were caught red-handed by the police, so you can hardly claim you weren’t there. I have it here.’ My clerk obediently passed the statement to me, all fingers and thumbs, and I wafted it lightly in front of the child’s mutinous face. I thought of the stolen video that had been found in his rucksack – a ridiculous concoction based around a street gang who’d discovered they had supernatural powers that allowed them to slip between parallel universes. Slipping the chains, it was called. ‘Or maybe you want me to believe you were universe-jumping and it was your alter ego there beating the living daylights out of Mrs Harris?’ I knew the sarcasm was inappropriate but I had better things to do than waste my time on a vicious little thug – things like ordering the wreath for Margaret’s coffin and choosing the hymns for the service, or seeing what progress the plod had made in tracking down the driver of the hit and run. Apart from which, this was the very last situation I wanted to be confronting again. Margaret had been right about one thing though, and she’d made the point very clearly with all her own good works. Altruism was for putting on a show when a show was needed. But why now? I already had public approbation before all this and with her convenient death, I hardly lacked sympathy. It was catapulting me right into the public eye as the QC with a conscience – defending the underdog even whilst dealing with his own personal tragedy. A veritable knight of compassion.

‘That’s crap really. No-one can jump universes. You’re jarring me man. Don’t yer know nuthin? And I weren’t there anyway.’

The social worker shook her head apologetically. ‘Mr Juste is trying to help you, Danny. He’s very high up in the courts.’ She nodded meaningfully at me, presumably implying she wanted me to follow suit. ‘Important – almost a judge.’ I took a deep breath and joined the charade.

Although, possibly I was. My appointment as High Court Judge, and a real knighthood, had to be on its way soon, with time already under my belt as Crown Court Recorder and Deputy High Court Judge. All the noises from the Lord Chancellor’s Department were positive and as 1999 prepared to slink into the past one newspaper hack in particular was having a field day with me – dubbing me the harbinger of the new order for the year 2000. No longer merely plain Lawrence Juste. Mr Justice Juste in waiting – a true peer of the modern order – embarrassingly before the LCD had. I’d dropped the Kenneth long ago. The Kennys of this world were yobs, not barristers; and Kenny was the name on my criminal record anyway. But Kenny was in serious danger of re-surfacing if my enthusiastic and curious hack dug too deep into Mr Justice Juste in waiting’s past, and Margaret’s inexplicable list found its way into the open. Anyway publicity wouldn’t do me any good with the LCD, even if it was good publicity. The list and my chequered past was definitely bad publicity, and any publicity raised my profile just a little too high under current circumstances. This looked dangerously likely to continue that.

‘If you’re so important why am I still in here? This is long. I want out.’

Long? What the hell did that mean?

‘Gangsta – all the kids speak it now,’ my clerk whispered in my ear. Not so easily floored all the time then.

My aquiline face and stern expression often stared back long and grey from the newspaper at the moment. ‘Distinguished’ they described me as – whether that meant in looks or career. One dimensional was how I felt. A billboard for sterility now Margaret was dead and life was truly based only around work. A choice that now, whilst offering comfort through its encompassing of every spare moment of my time, gave me no warmth or love back for my loyalty to it. My private emotional over-reaction to this case and this child was the nearest to humanity I’d felt in a long time – angry at the inequality, irritated by the child’s belligerence, and disturbed by the similarity to me. One of the last disagreements Margaret and I’d had was over my ‘coldness’ as she put it when we’d discussed, disputed and I’d eventually disposed of her tentative suggestion that we might still have a family one day. Perhaps Margaret’s plan had more to do with that, than the boy’s defence? At least my future prospects were encouraging, if I could navigate the press, even if the boy’s weren’t.

‘Then you need to spill if you want to get out of here – by telling me what I need to know to defend you. Otherwise your time spent inside will be long – get it, gangsta?’

The social worker raised her eyebrows at me and I admonished myself silently. It should have been one of his parents there, but she’d been designated as the ‘appropriate adult’ in their stead. It seemed neither of them were. She explained her current role as link between Social Services and to facilitate communication between Counsel and the boy, since he had little more to say than in the statement his solicitor had prepared with him. He still wasn’t saying anything more, and I had no reason to expect him to from the pysch’s report on him, but I was still irritated by the sullen refusal to admit facts. Nevertheless I knew how to remain stoic; how to cut off the world. Do it now, you fool. Forget the distractions and petty annoyances. This one has to be seen through in the public eye – no mistakes here. Whatever Margaret’s ultimate intentions, she had at least picked it well for its human rights appeal, and played her part even better than usual in inducing me to take it – in her absence, ironically. The boy seemed to be able to cut off the world as effectively as me. His face closed further in on itself and he folded his arms protectively across his chest. The social worker frowned at me and tried to persuade the boy to talk. I let her. It allowed my mind to wander – and it was anywhere but here today.

The acknowledgement that Margaret wouldn’t be hovering in the hallway when I got home, dutifully solicitous as to how the interview had gone, and whether I needed a drink to wind me down after it, brought an unexpected raw ache of – what? I didn’t recognise it, but it felt disturbingly like how I remembered feeling when I was sent to the children’s home in Eastbourne. Small, anxious and very lost. I shook the sensation away by focusing instead on easing something more useful out of the boy. Very few made High Court Judge. It had been my wildly ambitious target since the time I’d first dragged myself out of the gutter. I wasn’t going to let an unexpected personal loss and a curved ball of a case stop me achieving it.

‘Perhaps if you could explain to Danny what will happen if he doesn’t help you, he might understand how important it is?’ the social worker prompted.

I’d give her that – she was trying to help. I took a closer look at her. Unexpected stirrings of something approaching desire surprised me. She was attractive in a not-my-cup-of-tea kind of way. Then shame at the designation of Margaret as an unexpected personal loss took over. It made it seem like I was equating her with losing my watch or my diary, although honesty dictated I admit that ours had been no grand passion.

‘OK, it goes like this Danny, yours is an indictable offence. Someone died because of what you’re accused of so there’s no choice but that you’ll go to court. Therefore you have to defend yourself or ...’

She’d initially performed exceptionally as one of the Chambers’ clerks and then diligently as my wife – even apparently accepting our childless state as a pre-qualifying condition to the title of Mrs Juste. She’d set herself to painstakingly oiling the right wheels to speed her husband on his rapid journey to the top with her charm and social ease, until she’d walked under the wheels of a different kind of speed freak. She was several years my junior, arriving in Chambers when I was finally starting to make a name for myself just nearing forty, and following me faithfully down the aisle four years later when I was forty-four and she in her early thirties. Five years on and here I was contemplating another guest list, but this time for a funeral. The number potentially on the list was testimony to her popularity, but I knew barely a handful of the names better than to acknowledge them politely in passing. Margaret was the socialiser; I was the work horse. People had long since become mere stop-off points along the way to the top – safer like that. No chance to be rejected or used as I had been as a child. Margaret had been the exception to the rule in getting past my barricades, although I’d never fully figured out why, apart from her persistence and my necessity. By the time she came on the scene it was apparent it was going to be necessary to have some form of social respectability after a period of excess. A wife more than fitted the bill – although that might well have been what Margaret had told me at the time. Now I still needed her, even if I didn’t grieve for her.

My monologue concluded with the plea options – guilty unless he opened up and talked. ‘So?’ I waited, casting another glance at the social worker to see how she was reacting. She had brown eyes – deep and rich, like dark chocolate. She flicked a glance at me when she caught me watching her. We both looked away too quickly.

‘Danny?’ she prompted.

‘Shut up will yer? I’m thinking.’

It was a fortnight since the accident and the social requirement to be supportive of the bereaved was beginning to fade. Already the obsequious mourners were forgetting to patronisingly ask how I was and I guessed that once the funeral was over, the invitations to dinner or drinks to cheer you up would also diminish from a flow, to a trickle and ultimately to a dry river bed. Not that I accepted so I didn’t mind. They had been Margaret’s friends, not mine, but the sensation of being wholly on my own again, as I had been as a child, was disconcerting; bewildering even. I’d dug myself into work to dispel it. After the initial horror at the boy’s case, its strange similarity to my past had woven a kind of appalled fascination. Tricky to plead without antagonising the social hordes baying for blood at the death of an innocent – his victim – but also difficult to side-step because of my fascination for a certain member of the press. The careful side-stepping of my past it required, of course, was another consideration. The red and ermine of the High Court were almost within my grasp. I just had to get the little bastard to co-operate and not be dragged into the swamp of emotional turmoil that had begun to swill around me because of him. And still he was thinking ...

I sighed audibly. ‘Danny, I haven’t got all day. You need to get past thinking and start talking now.’ The boy didn’t answer me, just scowled as I would have liked to have done. I tried another tack, remembering the way Margaret had shown me how to take my irritations and ball them into a fist before mentally flinging them away. I clamped my fingers into a claw shape and put the annoyance with him inside it. Control returned. I sensed rather than saw my clerk watching me curiously. I tried again. ‘Danny, I really can’t help you unless you help me. The police have you nailed at the crime scene so it isn’t helping either of us if you insist on lying. One of the most important things we need to agree on is that you tell me the truth as you know it.’

I paused, hoping that the unsaid rest of the rule might dawn on him without me having to ram it home – that was of course if he ever decided to start to tell me anything. Judging by the mulish expression, I doubted his brain would engage before his defiance or his mouth, but I’d briefly thought I’d sensed a canny sharpness in the narrowed blue eyes. I continued carefully, trying to transfer the understanding of how it was in the world of criminal defence from me to him without putting it into words.

‘So what you tell me I will know. What you don’t tell me, I won’t know, so whatever you tell me must be the truth ...’ I left the obviousness of the omission unsaid. ‘And maybe now you can tell me what you know?’

A small smile spread across his face and I thought the penny had dropped. I relaxed. Here we go – and then I could hand it over to the clerk to push on with until the actual hearing. Maybe it would be easier than I’d anticipated after all.

‘Oh, I get it. You want me to land meself in it so you can get rid of me sharpish and go back to your golf or whatever you toffee-nosed fuckers do.’

‘Danny!’ The social worker was horrified. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Juste.’ I waved away her apology – the second of the day. The faintest flush of pink tint stained her cheeks and made the white of her eyes even whiter against the dark of her skin and pupils – dilated pupils. Margaret had told me that meant something.

The adult language sounded wrong from him, yet I knew the harsher kind of world he was learning it from would soon be the only one he’d know unless he backed down and talked. You had to be seen to be hard at all times to survive in the world he was entering. It was simply another form of defence.

‘No,’ I spoke slowly and clearly as if he was hard of hearing – or more likely, an imbecile. ‘I want you to tell me enough true facts to enable me to get you as far off the hook as I can.’ He looked at me as if I was flicking a knife at him. I waited. His lips twitched and half-opened then reverted back to their grim line.

‘Weren’t there. Didn’t do it,’ was all he said at length. I sighed and looked across at his social worker. She grimaced back. She had an expressive mouth too. I resisted the inclination to sigh again.

‘You were there, and you did do something. The police have it on record. Maybe you mean you didn’t mean to do anything?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ He beamed at me and I was taken aback by the transformation. With the grin in place of the sneer, the thin-faced thug became simply a child – a child just like the carefree one who had played shooting practice with a home-made catapult in the back yard of our flats, or tumbled noisily down the hill at the front with his small back street gang of best friends and siblings. Briefly the image of Win asserting leadership over Georgie, Jim, Pip and me in battle – fighting imaginary dragons in the thin strip of trees beyond the yard – almost fazed me. This boy could be me.

I wondered if he would have joined in as enthusiastically as I had, recklessly liberating the bag of gobstoppers Jonno and his gang had stolen from old Sal’s, and then scrambling up into the tree branches to hide when they came to raid us back. We were the Juss kids – snotty-nosed, scabby-kneed but basically all right, and happy. I guessed he probably would. I knew from the notes that he had siblings too – three brothers and two sisters. As that disarming beam momentarily softened my heart he became Danny, not merely the kid I had to defend, and I imagined him playing ragamuffin.

‘I didn’t mean to do nothing so I didn’t do nothing.’ The smile faded and he was sly-faced and wary again. The little bubble burst. I could deal with cold-blooded murderers, greedy embezzlers and unprincipled blackmailers, but how did you deal with recalcitrant kids? I knew nothing about them and nor did I intend to. The boy’s lips remained in the thin white line and I knew from the social worker’s report that it meant he was likely to clam up for the rest of the session. Quixotic – and deadlocked. I hadn’t the patience or the will to be perspicacious today.

‘OK, I think we’re done for today. Maybe you’ll be more co-operative another time.’ I looked at his set face. ‘Or maybe not. Your choice.’ I shrugged and sat back in my chair, feeling it give in the rickety way all interview room chairs seem to. The social worker looked as if she was about to say something but bit her lip instead. Soft lips.

I watched them leave, irritated with the boy, the social worker, Margaret and myself. I shuffled the papers together and flipped the case cover shut. Pointless handing it over to my clerk to gather the rest of the information. If I’d got nowhere, he’d get even less. It was going to be a royal pain in the ass after all. Maybe Margaret’s little list of facts was irrelevant to it, or could be tucked away. If no-one came asking, who was there to answer to? In extreme circumstances we all take on things we don’t intend completing. This would be one of mine. The vicious little bastard probably deserved to go down, anyway. The old woman had been nearly ninety and half blind. It hadn’t been the attack that had carried her off but the complications from the broken hip following the resulting fall. It was a fairly common cause of death amongst the elderly, so the medical report concluded. Manslaughter, not murder; but enough to put this young thug away until his twenties. I tied up the bundle of notes and handed it to my clerk to put in his briefcase.

A sad statistic of life.

Yet unaccountably, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the boy who’d created the statistic because his life was probably the more hopeless overall. The old woman had lived a long life – and apparently full, judging by the hordes of children and grandchildren she’d spawned. He was still merely a child, with no-one to care other than those charged with the clinical ministrations of the state, and already a lifetime of bad role models to follow. Difficult that; to empathise more with the killer than the victim and their grieving family. I sympathised with them but couldn’t feel the emotions they felt because I hadn’t been close to anyone – including Margaret – since I was a child. The boy, though, I understood – more intimately than I cared to admit, no matter how much I’d determinedly sequestered my childhood life from my current one. And that way lay the madness I’d escaped a long time ago.

My clerk had packed the papers away and was waiting quietly by the door, face shining with perspiration. I’d forgotten he was there in my immersion in myself. I was jolted out of my reverie by the social worker returning. Ignoring niceties and the clerk, she plopped down across the table from me, serious faced; a typical do-gooder in ethnic form. Her mouth was still tempting though.

‘Can I make a suggestion?’ My prejudices fired at her temerity. I had a suggestion for her too, but it would have demeaned me to have voiced it, and to be fair she wasn’t responsible for the situation, just the manipulation of it. She was simply another cog in the nanny-state wheel that drove the machinery supporting the Danny’s and hit and run drivers of this world. I made do with a dry rejoinder.

‘You can make it but I won’t necessarily act on it.’

‘Well, you need to earn his trust. I think you’d get more out of him if you did. I don’t think he was responsible, even though he was there. I think at the least, he’s being used by the other kids in the gang he joined – or worse, by someone who runs them – but he’s too afraid to tell anyone in case they get to him. I think there’s more to it than hooliganism – that’s why he’s scared, Mr Juste. He needs someone to look up to and trust. You could be that person.’

‘I should earn his trust?’ l snorted, ‘Miss?’

‘Roumelia.’ It sounded familiar even though it was unusual. The rounded cheeks of her earnest brown face made her seem too young to be doing this kind of job. I could smell her perfume even across the table. Too strong and too tart. She needed something headier – exotic to complement the wide sensuous mouth and Rubenesque curves contained within the regulation bow-necked work blouse and black pencil skirt. Sinner in a social worker’s body. I wanted to laugh at the incongruous ideas forming in my mind. They said pressure got to you in unusual ways. I sternly reeled my imagination in.

‘Miss Roumelia, I am doing this child a favour – not the other way round. He’s accused of manslaughter. I’m trying to get him off the hook and away from a nasty long spell in the University of Crime. He needs to earn my trust, not I his!’

‘But he won’t confide in you if he thinks you don’t believe him. You need to make a connection with him – something you have in common.’ I laughed caustically, insulted that this outspoken young woman should think there could be such a thing and even more so that she had the cheek to suggest it. Yet there was.

‘Us have something in common?’ The thinly disguised sarcasm of earlier came out full-force this time. She looked embarrassed.

‘I didn’t mean you were alike, but he’s only a kid and you are a figure of authority that’s actually trying to help him, not shut him down. He’s already had a tough life and he’s barely ten. He was only in care because of an administrative hitch they don’t seem to be able to get sorted out. By the time they do, he could be trapped there altogether. He feels rejected and abandoned – all on his own. He has five siblings you see. He’s used to being part of a group so I guess that’s why he joined the gang. He probably thought it would be like family, and now he has to appear loyal to them or there will be more trouble for him. Haven’t you ever felt lonely or lost?’ She paused whilst I battled remembered vulnerabilities, unprepared for her final shot. ‘Your wife said you’d understand when I told her Danny’s story. She said you’d appreciate what this meant for him.’

The shock of the statement battled with outrage at her gall in making it. Neither she, nor the boy were invited into my private life, whatever Margaret might have thought. The present and future might be lonely but my past had been desolate, and I wasn’t sharing any of myself with anyone again. Only Margaret had achieved a modicum of understanding of me over the years I’d known her but it seemed even she’d been planning on using it against me. My vulnerabilities would remain mine alone now she was gone. A bolt of misery shot through me – whether for the past, the boy, Margaret or for myself, I wasn’t sure. It made me angry with the plump brown Madonna who’d prompted it.

‘My wife’s not here anymore, so she’s somewhat irrelevant, whatever she may have said.’ It sounded colder than it was meant. She looked quizzically at me. Had she not noticed the news that had graced the inside pages of the newspapers over the last few weeks?

Understanding dawned and she blushed furiously. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean ...’ I waved away her sympathy. I’d managed this far without it, but it did decide me. The hurt child reverted to invulnerable adult. I don’t know what my face said but my words were carefully chosen.

‘I’m not sure I’m the right person to help him, after all. I will see who else can take the case.’

‘But he needs you,’ she pleaded. ‘And he’s a smart kid really – give him a chance.’ I shook my head. The room felt oppressive, and not just from the early summer heat wave. The old miseries reared up and threatened to stifle me. The echoing hall where we lined up for inspection, Miss Liddell’s bony fingers twisting my ear until I thought it would snap off, the harsh rasp of the horsehair blankets on shivering skin at night, and the whispered threats that accompanied the burning pain and knowing it was going to happen all over again ... No, I wasn’t the right person to help him. Somewhere buried deep inside I still needed to help myself. Her eyes reminded me of something too – or someone. ‘Please?’ I couldn’t place them.

The mêlée of emotions were too confusing. I just wanted to get out of there – out of the heat and the pressure and people watching me and her pleading and everyone always expecting me to perform miracles for them without ever wondering how I was feeling. I wanted to be left alone to be the boy under the bedclothes, sobbing his soul into their unyielding depths, letting the misery of the moment be all that there was to feel until it faded enough to bear. I agreed to think about it just to make her leave. She and her soft pink mouth suddenly upset me more than anything else.

*

I set the case notes aside for the rest of the week, reluctant to stir the hornet’s nest again. Margaret’s manoeuvring felt like betrayal as surely as being left in the children’s home had felt forty years beforehand and I didn’t want to feel angry with her. That felt wrong. After all, she was dead. Don’t speak ill of the dead, and don’t think it either. I was sure it was something my mother would have said to me if she’d been around for longer in my childhood. Eventually I re-opened the folder out of necessity the evening before I was due to interview the boy again. The facts were strikingly similar to mine in some ways, but jarringly different in others.

The suddenness of being taken into care and the isolation from the rest of our family were much the same, but his background was one of dishonesty and parental mismanagement whereas mine had been of haphazard poverty ending in loss of control. His father was in and out of jail, and his mother convicted of at least two counts of prostitution with a further one pending. Mine had been upright but inept – or maybe simply too poor. The boy and his siblings seemed to run as wild as we had though, and already appeared to be youthful representatives of the criminal fraternity of the future – apart from the boy, who until taken into care had been doing well at school and mainly stayed out of trouble. Why had he – of all of them – been trapped by red tape? Then it occurred to me that maybe, far from being trapped, he’d been saved; saved from being returned to a foregone conclusion of failure – until the mugging incident. Was this boy a potential murderer? The social worker hadn’t thought so – Miss Roumelia of the brown velvet eyes and inviting mouth. I thought for a long time about both of them; her faith in the boy’s innocence and the boy’s insistence on his innocence. Everything had involuntarily turned on its head in my life recently. Maybe I should deliberately do the same with this case.

I went without an accompanying clerk the next day, and the social worker’s suggestion lingered at the back of my mind so I asked a different kind of question to the one I usually asked.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why are you so angry with everyone?’

‘Cos I been stuffed.’

‘Who by, the other gang members?’

‘No, me mum and dad. They let them take me away – only me, not the other kids. They’re all right. Me; I’m shoved out. Stuffed.’

‘I think you’ll find all your brothers and sisters were shoved out too, as you put it.’

‘No, they weren’t. They went to that place in Putney for just a coupla nights until me mum was back, then they went home again. She,’ he jabbed a thumb in the direction of Miss Roumelia, ‘told me. They weren’t shoved out. They’re all right, Jack. I’m not. Ain’t fair.’ I looked askance at her. It hadn’t helped to fire up his sense of inequality. She tossed her head and stuck out her chin, as if challenging me, and I found myself admiring her spunk. It was a refreshing change in a world of measured words and sycophantic flattery. Even Margaret had been too sugary sweet and polite for me at times.

‘It was an administrative error, we haven’t managed to iron out yet – but we will, in time.’ We locked eyes, hers dark and exciting, mine probing. She looked away first, with that blush again.

I answered for her, and she flicked me a grateful look from under heavy lashes. ‘It seems the mistake was on the authorities’ part, Danny, not your parents. I’m sure they didn’t want any of you shoved out.’

You put it right then. You’re authorities. Your lot took me away. You put it right.’ His faced crumpled momentarily and I wasn’t sure whether he was about to snarl, or cry.

‘I can’t sort that out but I can help sort this out,’ I indicated the case papers, ‘if you’ll help me.’ He went back to his standard response. It was well-rehearsed. I wondered who’d rehearsed it with him. I didn’t think it was the social worker: Miss Roumelia. I savoured the name. Exotic, like a tropical flower.

‘Didn’t do it. Wasn’t there.’

‘Danny ...’ Miss Roumelia shifted anxiously in her chair, face glowing softly with perspiration in the warmth of the stuffy interview room. The air conditioning should have worked but had either been turned off or never been turned on down here. Plod regarded solicitors and barristers as the scum of the earth unless they were taking the case against, not pleading the case for. Defendants and their representation plainly didn’t warrant the niceties of fresh air and pleasant working conditions. The stark overhead light picked out the sheen of faint downy hairs on the side of her face. Her eyes asked for me for mercy and him for co-operation. I felt sorry for her. I’d always thought being a social worker was a shit job, even from the time I’d had to be regularly monitored by them myself, right up until now, when I was the one observing the results of regulation. We were about to deadlock again, and her suggestion of a week ago brought a dangerous idea to me. The very appearance of it surprised me. I didn’t usually take risks unless carefully calculated. This one had no risk calculations made at all – other than that it could be disastrously bad or spectacularly effective – but for who, I wasn’t sure. I changed tack dramatically.

‘Tell me about it then – the day they took you away, and we’ll see what can be done.’ Danny eyed me suspiciously and then glanced over at Miss Roumelia. I wondered inconsequentially what her first name was. It should be something like Jasmine. She stared at me, doe eyes hardening until they bored into me, surprised but unexpectedly comprehending. It occurred to me then to wonder how much more she knew. Margaret might not just have said I would understand. She could have told her why – if she’d worked it out herself by then. The question passed between us and her eyes seemed to apologise. I felt betrayed, and wondered again why the hell Margaret had done it. What had got into her? What was it about this boy that she had wanted to risk our comfortable relationship and my sanity for? Miss Roumelia turned away from me to meet Danny’s frown and nodded encouragingly at him, eyes slipping back over the top of his head as he faced me again.

‘Why?’ he demanded. Miss Roumelia’s gaze sought mine, plainly unsure what I was going to say next.

Perhaps there is a side of us that wants to purge and expunge by regurgitating all our deepest, darkest pain when we least intend to. Perhaps the combination of Margaret’s death and the rejection in the boy’s eyes when he’d denounced his parents for ‘shoving him out’ had opened the door to the dark place where I’d kept mine all those years. Perhaps curiosity played a part too – why Margaret had raised this particular ghost before becoming one herself. It was a split second decision – and it came from the same place as the unintentional agreement to continue the case had come from. I almost said, ‘we could compare notes,’ but I managed to pull back from the precipice just in time. I made a dangerous promise instead.

‘Because you have to convince me first, and if I’m convinced, I’ll defend you – and you’ll get off.’ It was rash – but not as rash as the confession I’d been about to tumble headlong into.

4: The Home

It was called a children’s home, but anything less like a home I can’t imagine. I wasn’t the only one sent there. George and Win got sent there with me too. We were classed as ’older boys’. For some reason the original division of older and younger kids was revised for me and I ended up being re-classified ‘older’ even though I was under ten. Maybe it was another ‘administrative mistake’, or age was as irrelevant as caring in the end.

It was in Eastbourne, so it wasn’t completely in the country, nor completely out of it. It was on the coast – and freezing most of the year, but surrounded by rural countryside too. In fact it wasn’t just on the coast, it was almost in the sea, on a grassy strip to one end of the conurbation, wind-battered and isolated – far enough out of town so we didn’t interfere with ‘decent folks’. It felt like winter there all year round, even when the sun shone, because the breeze, no matter how balmy elsewhere, still had that biting cold to it that defines the coastal airstream. The salt-scorched paintwork was testimony to its interminable beating, and as the elements beat the building, so the staff applied their diligent ministrations to us, the residents.

Barely a day passed without a small act of cruelty. It became the norm to expect rapped fingers, a twisted ear lobe or pinched skin on the inner arm. None of it showed. If the home was inspected all the kids in it were apparently robust and unharmed – and we would never dare complain about the treatment for fear of more. Despite being innocently restrained there, we gradually came to see ourselves as the lowest of the low – the abandoned, the ‘not wanted’. ‘Shoved out’ as Danny put it so eloquently to me later. We knew whatever we claimed would not be believed and then we would suffer ten-fold when the official visit had ended, leaving us to the tender mercies of our Houseparent.

The first week there passed innocuously enough. There were six kids to a dorm, each with a bed, plastic under-sheet in case of bed-wetting, two rough blankets and a checked brown counterpane. I found out later all the dorms were the same – even though there was a different Houseparent responsible for each. If you went into another dorm where you’d made a friend, you’d find it almost exactly identical to your own, apart from perhaps a minor variation in the wall displays, although even then they were simply variations on the same theme. If at any time we’d changed dorms, I think we could have expected our lives to have remained almost identical to before. They all had the sense of being somewhere you were forced to be, not where you’d choose to live.

We kids were responsible for the daily ritual of stripping back our bedclothes and then reversing the process to remake the bed, ensuring as we did that each layer was so neat and tight you could have bounced a pin on it. A sloppily made bed got you a spot on the chart on the wall and a punishment. A black spot was a misdemeanour, a red one a bed-wet and a yellow one signified approval. Needless to say our chart had mainly black and red spots and very few yellows. I always thought of yellow as sunshine, and there was little of it there, without the accompanying cold shiver of imminent threat – whether from the icy wind or the equally cold treatment of our Houseparent or co-residents.

Our dorm was made up of me, Georgie, Win, Fat Sam, Jonesy and Lennox. Lennox was black and at first I was afraid of him because despite having lived in the suburbs on the outskirts of London – the Smoke – there were still not that many blacks even in Croydon, the slum hole of the locality. My only direct experience of coloured people was when Pop had a fight with one over a betting slip at the bookies one Saturday when he’d taken Win and I with him because Ma was struggling around full-bellied just before Jill and Emm were born. He was bigger, harder and meaner than Pop, and Pop’s belt had stayed firmly buckled even after he’d blacked one of Pop’s eyes and kept the ticket. He’d grinned cheerfully as he pocketed it and strolled back inside the bookies, giving Pop a mock salute by way of thank you as he went. His teeth had gleamed unnaturally like stars in the night sky and whenever Lennox grinned, my five-year-old’s brain kicked in and instinctively remembered the mocking black face and the sparkling teeth, with Pop crumpled and defeated. I learnt after a while that Lennox was actually a gentle giant without the will to hurt a fly and then my riotous imagination turned him instead into a Tom Robinson – but that came much later.

I was bolstered initially by the daily expectation that we would be returned home shortly. The board outside the home stating ‘Children’s Home and Orphanage’ remained merely a label in those first weeks. It was a home for us children so I accepted it without question. It took some months to find out the precise meaning of ‘orphanage’, by which time it was a self-evident truth that we were stuck there, and not about to be collected by Ma or Pop any time soon – if ever. I ate the tasteless lumpy porridge for breakfast, did what I was told to by frosty-faced Miss Liddell and trudged obediently between school, ‘chores’, and keeping a low profile.

Chores were specifically allocated and regularly rotated week on week. Mine varied between polishing and dusting the dorm, corridor, communal room and meal area, and mopping the floors on a Saturday morning. Miss Liddell’s motto was ‘the devil finds work for idle hands’ so every bit of spare time not otherwise accounted for would be filled with a chore if she caught you hanging around. I idly wondered once what work the devil was finding for her hands whilst we did all the work and she did none, but that was soon answered by a slap or a pinch when I slackened off. The irony was that a punishment for ‘laziness’ was often more chores so I also learnt how to make myself scarce, thereby avoiding not only the allocation of more chores, but also more trouble. The first few weeks, however, were spent tediously learning that particular lesson. The older the boy, the heavier the duty. At nine, I was deemed old enough to mop the floors and help turn the younger ones’ mattresses once a month, so gradually my stick legs and scrawny arms developed their own rangy strength. Mopping the floors involved not only a damp sweep but also the accompanying dry mop, followed by the polish applied with the heavy bumper mop. By the time I was finished, I’d be sweating, arm muscles burning and weak from over-exertion. I became used to the smell of water and disinfectant so strong my eyes smarted. If I ever now encounter it in the corridor leading to the cells where I’m interviewing one of my clients or after Mrs Mop has done her piece in Chambers, I’m still unwillingly transported back to a Saturday morning in the home, and my arms and back aching.

The only ones who regularly got out of chores on a Saturday in our dorm were Win and Lennox. Win because he cannily got himself a paper round at the shop on the corner of the only block of houses near us. Lennox because our Houseparent displayed her latent racism and proclaimed him unable to be fastidious enough to clean the floor properly when he came from a land where they still went around half-naked and lived in grass huts. Lennox told me his family had lived in Brixton for over fifty years, but that wouldn’t have cut any ice with Miss Liddell. It would have just got him a black spot on the chart for impertinence. He was sent over to the carpenter’s shack to help chop wood instead. However Lennox wasn’t stupid or dumb. He gave me the most useful piece of advice I learnt in those early weeks and months: what went on in the home should stay there, and what went on in school should equally never be mentioned in the home. Have two separate lives – that way you didn’t let the trouble from one spill over into the other; and it allowed choices, something we had very little of otherwise.

Our surroundings were as barren and bleak as the sparse turf on the green leading down to the rye grass hillocks and the wind-tossed beach. Our soap was carbolic, and as coarse as a pumice stone. Our toilet paper the type you’d find in public conveniences at the time – not much better than the newspaper squares Ma told me they’d had to use during the war, and certainly not reaching the dizzying heights of Izal. If you were last through the bathroom any scum mark round the basin or bath was attributed to you, whether you’d made it or not, and you’d have to spend any playtime you’d hitherto been allowed scrubbing it away until it shone, or risk another black spot on the chart.

There wasn’t much of playtime of course – it often went on extra chores, even if you hadn’t misbehaved, and we had little by way of toys or possessions to enjoy during it. We were allowed to kick a ball around on the grassy patch, or swap whatever toys or comics we might have somehow garnered. Win always came out top on this score. His paper round gave him unequalled access to comics and sweets in the corner shop. I do believe this is where his life of crime first started – nicking the occasional comic, fistful of humbugs or a sherbet dip. Later it progressed to fags, tobacco and if he was very sly, bottles of booze, but that was rare and only straight after a stock take. With such meagre resources we had to develop other ways of tracking down treasures to ensure our black market in leisure could continue. The bins were the best option.

Over the week the rubbish contents of our collective dorms, the Governor’s offices and the kitchens were all accumulated in a disused greenhouse at the back of the main building before incineration. There was nothing left of the greenhouse by then but the smoke blackened low brick walls. The glass had long since shattered and lay in increasingly diminishing shards around the area. The place itself was banned to us but if we planned a careful enough look-out and distract system, we could raid the rubbish before its ceremonial burning. The rubbish was piled in sacks or cardboard boxes so we would organise ourselves into three groups – the lookout men, the rubbish sifters and the stash men. The stash men took away the treasures the sifters found and hid the spoils somewhere safe for later divvying. It was an honour to be designated a stash man. It meant your peers trusted you to be fair with them, and you only really stood a chance of being a stash man after ‘initiation’. At the time I arrived, there weren’t so much gangs in the home, as selective groups. All that was to change not long afterwards, but even then, ‘initiation’ was still very much part of the process of acceptance.

My prized possessions were an odd lot – books, puzzles, paper and pens. I suppose they already reflected my more cerebral leanings. Generally the boys fought over Beano and Dandy back issues, sweets and assorted weaponry like catapults and knuckledusters. Once the haul contained a complete set of blunted kitchen knives, swooped on gleefully and sharpened painstakingly over the next two weeks, before being allocated in order of merit to the members of the most select of the select. Occasionally the whole contents of a kid’s locker would find its way into the incineration pile and we would be jubilant at the rich pickings our foraging produced. It was only later when we identified Tony’s things that we found out that if a child died and there were no relatives to claim their personal effects, or the family didn’t want them, everything was thrown away – both life and possessions equally disposable. Things such as knives, cigarettes, matches and alcohol were confiscated on sight and the miscreant sent to the Governor for punishment – which invariably meant the cane, or worse, so we became adept at being not only creative in finding our treasure, but equally so in hiding it. Pride of place in my treasures was the multi-coloured ink pen I’d found and had returned to me during the divvying as no-one had the slightest interest in it. For me, it was like a rainbow in a world of grey, and I delighted in writing some of my private musings – also carefully hidden – in its many colours, reflecting my mood as I did so; red for anger, blue for thought, yellow for hope. Again there wasn’t much yellow.

My immediate impression of those first weeks in the home were ones of uneasy waiting. Miss Liddell was the very first amongst them. She greeted us disapprovingly at the door when we arrived.

‘Ah, the Juss boys,’ and led us frostily to our dorm. ‘Unpack,’ she directed, and waited whilst we did. I didn’t know what to do with the book and two toy cars I’d brought from home. The toy cars had been intended for Pip and Jim but of course we’d been separated. I dithered, and she snatched them from me and threw them in the top drawer of the small locker next to my bed. I knew then, as I felt the pinch of her bony fingers and the scratch of her long pointed nails that she was never going to be a Houseparent, whatever her title. True to my assessment she proved herself clearly before we even went to bed that first night. She could lash out so suddenly and unexpectedly you weren’t sure where the blow had come from when she was displeased. Sometimes it was the back of her hand – a quick flick of the wrist and it was like being lashed by a whip. At other times it was the slipper, vinyl soled and making a crack that stung like blazes on tender skin. She was short and stocky despite the skeletal fingers so a blow from her catching you unawares would send a puny child, like me, reeling. Even as I grew bigger and brawnier over the years I was there, I never lost my fear of her and her sudden violence.

My first involuntary mental arithmetic was to calculate how old the baby must be by now according to the number of days spent there, and whether Ma would be recovered enough for us to go home. By the time I got to fifty-five, and still there seemed to be no visit, I rationalised how old that was in months and realised it was nearly two. Ma had been up and scrubbing floors within two days of Jill and Emm being born. For the first time the thought crossed my mind that maybe things weren’t so all right as I’d assumed. Or maybe Ma wasn’t all right. I asked Win what he thought when we were allowed our fifteen minutes outside to kick a ball around the yard. He was dismissive. I may have tried to appear hard, but Win – older than me by nearly four years – already was. It wouldn’t have been long before he would have made a serious challenge on Jonno’s supremacy if we’d stayed at home. Whereas life in the children’s home might have felt cold and hard to me, for Win it had opened up endless opportunities for control and mastery. He’d joined a ‘select group’ within a day or two of arriving and was already working his way up to second in command. His position gave Georgie and I some protection – Georgie was always the dreamer of us – but only whilst Win could be bothered. The day seemed to be fast coming when he couldn’t.

‘What you going on about little bruv? Don’t you like it here? Don’t I look after you?’ He punched me on the arm and it was meant to be playful but it was just slightly too hard. I rubbed it surreptitiously and shrugged my shoulders.

‘It’s OK Win – you’re great and all that, I just wondered about Ma and stuff ...’

‘Forget it. We’re here and here’s where we’re staying.’ He sounded harsh. ‘They don’t care about us. They got rid of us, remember?’ I didn’t like to argue with Win in this mood. I’d seen his face darken and that ugly curl to his lip appear, like Pop’s did when he was angry. He’d clipped me round the ear once and the red weal had stayed there for hours. Win stuck his thumbs in his belt like Pop and I instinctively tensed.

‘OK,’ seemed safest and I didn’t raise it again. I counted off more days and nothing happened. No call, no visit, no Ma. Georgie withdrew more into himself and I kept my thoughts private, but my vision of the world gradually narrowed and constricted. It seemed this might not be a temporary stay after all, but a permanent sojourn. I had resisted being completely assimilated into the ways of the home until then, taking part in the odd treasure hunt at Win’s insistence, but refusing initiation. There didn’t seem much point in persisting in that vein any more. Pressure from Win, who whole-heartedly embraced the ‘selective’ process, was making it increasingly difficult to function independently. The next time I was cornered on the stairs up to the dorm, I agreed the date and time of my ‘initiation’.

Under the Governor’s admin block was a disused cellar, by then partially under water, and at the far end of the grassy area before reaching the beach there was a dip which led down to an outcrop of the promontory. This led to an abandoned World War Two gun emplacement, now falling derelict. They were the most closely guarded of the initiation and hiding places for the groups, which under Win’s influence were now rapidly taking the stance of gangs. The other place of secrecy was across the fields on the other side of the building and into the thin line of woods that delineated the murky horizon from the muddy land heading away from the beach. Win chose the cellar for me.

The stairs down to the cellar in the Governor’s block were invariably flooded, sometimes by as much as two feet, depending on how much it had rained recently. The most common initiation was to wade through the water at the bottom of the stairs and go into the cellar and wait in the pitch black with the door locked on you for however long one’s examiners determined. There were other initiations, but this was mine. I went firmly down the steps, determined not to show any fear. Anyway, Win was one of the examiners so my big brother would hardly let anything bad happen to me, would he?

Logic does not withstand anxiety. Once I reached the bottom of the steps and the dank stagnant water reached above my knees, my courage was already failing. When the door swung shut and I heard the dull echo of the bolt being shot across the outside, pitched into the dense black of the bowels of the building, my imagination ran riot.

When there is no light, we rely on our senses. Sounds become louder, smells stronger, sensations more intense. So it was for me. I stood stock still and counted, trying to ignore the cold and the dark. I got to three hundred before my nerve broke. I stopped counting and that was my downfall, because then I listened. In the stifling black, at first I heard only the swish of the water around my legs and suffered its numbing cold. I stood very still, biting my lip and determined not to waver. Slowly other noises reached me. The creak of a pipe that sounded like a footstep – even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to hear a footstep under water, then the hollow drip of something into water – more like a subdued splash than a drip.

The book I’d most disliked at infant school had been the Pied Piper because the thought of all the rats following him, plague-infected, sharp-toothed, evil-eyed, swarming everywhere, had made me shudder. What if there were rats down here? What if the drip was the sudden immersion of a rat body as it dropped into foul water and swum steadily towards me? How many droplets had I heard? Five, ten, twenty. How many had there been whilst I was counting? There could be thousands of rats steadily making their way towards me – an army of gnawing, scratching vermin. My heart skipped a beat and turned into a drum pounding irregularly in my chest. My skin crawled with fear – the sensation of a thousand small bodies covering me in a rancid blanket of fur and limb and teeth. I shivered and panic rose further still. A wave of icy cold followed by nauseating heat swept over my body like fever, leaving me trembling uncontrollably and wanting to scream, scream, scream but no noise came out. I suffocated, voice paralysed like it is in a nightmare, but this was no nightmare – it was real. My legs were so cold from the freezing water, I knew I’d wet myself but I couldn’t feel it. All my being was fixed on not being overcome by the rats and consumed by their yellowed spike teeth and scrabbling claws. I opened my mouth again and this time the terror poured out just as light flooded in and blinded me.

‘Kenny?’ It was Win. I scrambled back up the stairs on all fours, feet slipping on the rickety steps and hands grabbing at anything within reach. Win hauled me up the last couple and I stood retching and panting in the middle of the group. ‘They shouldn’t have left you in so long. I said only five minutes – not half an hour. You OK?’ I nodded wildly, teeth chattering and stomach rolling over and over; so relieved to be out – even though wet and stinking – and away from whatever had been down in that cellar, I would have danced and sung, and even shared my coloured ink pen with him if he’d asked. ‘That’s all right then. You passed by the way. You’re one of the Winners now – get it?’ He nudged me in the ribs and grinned delightedly at his gang’s name.

It was seemingly innocent to start with – the boyish ‘initiation’ and then the cosy camaraderie of belonging, but innocence is lost so easily. By then Win was going on fourteen and you didn’t stay a kid long in a children’s home. The group leaders progressed to disagreeing about such things as treasure division and privileges, and then to overt rivalry and finally to outright, but secret, war. It was but a short step for the dissenting members to defect and re-group. After Win’s derogatory jibe at some of the absconders, calling them the ‘Losers’ to his ‘Winners’, there were two gangs. They renamed themselves the ‘Looters’. Win and I were ‘Winners’. Although I was still only a junior member, I sensed the untapped aggression in Win that I‘ve seen so many times since in defendants – and victims – which tells me then and there that whatever they may claim, undoubtedly the desire for trouble originated from them. At ten, I could only put it down to a sense of unease which had no real root cause, other than merely being there at all.

Win made his bid for power not long afterwards. It started with a series of brawls ending with Win victorious. Once installed as gang boss of the Winners he set about naming his lackeys. I was one of them.

‘Can’t leave you out little bruv,’ even though I would have rather become as insignificant as Georgie. For a while I remained relatively safe, running the errands, being lookout, stashing ill-gotten gains, or recovering them. It wasn’t so bad. As long as I said nothing and did as I was told, I was safe, nestling under the protective wing of big brother Win and his buddies. Of course it had to come to a crunch some time though. I could neither stay far enough out of their activities to remain prissily ‘clean’ or resist being drawn in to the properly initiated – and not simply by standing in a flooded cellar in mortal fear of my own imaginings. It started with small things. Lifting something from Woollies, nicking fags from the corner shop at the end of the road – constantly under fire from the orphanage kids, apart from being Win’s original source of booty under the guise of his paper boy role. I’m surprised it stayed in business as long as it did.

The crunch came about six months after Win’s coronation as King of the Winners, when I had to join in a raid on a rival gang outside the home. At the pre-fight pep talk, when I was handed my set of knuckledusters I knew it would be the first time I would have to make an absolute choice – to run with the wolves or be eaten by them. That time I managed to be part of the pack without fully joining it, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before the next time came round and I would be pushed to the fore. It came a month later. Another raid, but this time on the local café where there were some bikers Win had had an argument with over a girl. Of course he wasn’t really bothered – he was fourteen and a half – but pride was at stake. As naïve as I was, it seemed unlikely that bikers – in their late teens – were going to be content with mere knuckledusters in a fight.

And I was right. It was the night that Tony Roberts got knifed.

They pushed me forwards alongside him and, to his credit, he elbowed me back when the biker with the dreads and scar on his cheek advanced on us. I was glad it was dark because no-one saw my cowardice, but I think he knew. I screeched my thin childish ‘watch it,’ wondering whose high-pitched wail it was that was piercing the thicker heavier sounds of bone on bone, and fists in flight as the knife blade flashed and then Tony stumbled backwards clutching his stomach as if he was belly-laughing. The blood streamed through his fingers as he staggered and then crumpled to the floor next to me. The biker froze, bloodied knife pointed at me but at Tony’s ‘ahh’ that rose in volume until it sounded like a banshee wail, he sheathed it and the whole gang seemed to melt away in a roar of exhaust. Only the heavy fug of petrol fumes and Tony’s agony remained hanging in the air. It all happened in slow motion for me and I can still replay the scene in fine detail if I allow myself – my first real encounter with death. I was still staring at Tony and his red top when Win dragged me away, finally finding enough voice to protest about leaving Tony behind.

‘Jesus Christ, Kenny! Shut the fuck up! He’s snuffed it – do you want to get us all caught?’ I hadn’t realised until then that I’d been screaming. Win collected up the weaponry from us and it was carried away to the secret stash in the gun emplacement. We all made a vow of secrecy – on pain of suffering Tony’s fate at Win’s hand – and slipped away to our dorms. Tony’s body was found the next morning after he’d been reported missing at breakfast. From that point on life changed again – from impending fear of violence to continual fear of being caught. Lennox’s advice came back twofold about keeping lives separate and I purposely distanced myself from all and every source of trouble at school. Whereas the initiation in the cellar had been my downfall, that was probably my saving. I had no choice now at the home. I was an initiate. Death and joint guilt had made me one. When Win told us what to do, I no longer flinched from my duty, whereas at school, I was the quietly clever child who did no wrong. I always remembered Tony, and it was the determination to never be falling backwards with a knife in my gut that kept me safe until Jaggers arrived.

5: Innocence Lost

‘If I tell you about all this stuff, how are you going to get me off? You ain’t God.’

‘No, but I have a one hundred per cent success rate in court – that means I always win.’ The social worker – Miss Roumelia – raised her eyebrows at that. OK, it was a boast and probably not strictly true, but the kid needed to hear it.

‘Shit, no way – really?’ He stared at me like I was an alien – or one of the universe leapers from the stolen video he’d been charged for originally.

‘Cool. You’re as good as God then?’ I considered it. Maybe I was, for him.

‘But I can’t win without you telling me what went on so I know what I have to do to win. That’s why I need you to tell me the truth. Will you do that now?’

‘Do I have to tell you everything?’

‘Everything that’s relevant.’

‘Rellyvent?’

‘That makes a difference to things.’

‘Oh.’ He looked at me and wrinkled his nose as he thought about the proposition.’ ‘How’d I know what’s rellyvent?’

‘Well, try telling me something and we’ll test it out.’

‘Me Dad’s a fence.’ An admission I wasn’t surprised by but didn’t want to have to record. I exchanged glances with Miss Roumelia and she shrugged. I’d expected her to be shocked but her expression said you asked ... I suppose like me – but for different reasons – it wasn’t an unusual profession for her clients to be in. ‘Nothing big – just phones and TV’s – that kind of stuff. He smokes too much to go proper burglering. He’d never be able to leg it fast enough!’ The boy laughed harshly. Getting his father a prison sentence wasn’t going to help the boy out of care or off my list so I decided to diplomatically explain the ‘rules’.

‘OK, Danny, remember how I said that anything you told me, I would know, and anything you didn’t I wouldn’t know? Well there are some things I might not need to know in case they get someone unrelated to this case in trouble. Those are the irrelevant things. Do you think you’ll be able to tell which things I need to know – the relevant things – and which I don’t because it’s unrelated to your defence?’

The boy’s eyes glazed over as he considered my complicated meanings. I wondered what the truth was about his supposed intelligence, but his response suggested it might be his way of internally processing information.

‘You mean, don’t tell you me Dad’s a fence in case you have to tell someone else an’ he gets sent down?’

‘Something like that.’

‘OK, so what about other stuff where I do want them to get sent down?’

‘If it’s wrong-doing that needs punishing, then you should tell me.’

‘Right.’ He paused and a sly smile spread across his face. ‘So, me Dad’s a fence and me Mum has it off with blokes for money when the rent needs paying.’

‘Danny, you don’t really mean that – remember what Mr Juste said about wrong-doing and being punished if he knew about it?’ This time Miss Roumelia did look concerned. ‘Don’t you want to be able to go home when this is all over?’

‘They shoved me out. They should get done too.’ The boy looked her coolly in the eyes. She stared back, open-mouthed. Perhaps she had as little real experience of kids as I had, despite her job. His anger was my anger, from years ago, but I had moulded mine into determination to reach the top – to show them it didn’t matter they’d abandoned and rejected me when I was young and vulnerable. I would never be vulnerable again – just as no-one would never matter to me again. I stopped short of damning people these days. It had been a long hard road to get to there, though. Danny had only just started his journey, and I was at risk of becoming part of it. Whatever they’d done I gave them a get-out clause more because Danny needed one – a get out from a children’s home.

‘Danny, you think of me as important and in charge here, don’t you?’ He nodded. ‘OK, I tell you what – let’s look at this as a kind of game and since I’m in charge, to begin with shall we let me decide who needs punishing? If there’s anyone we miss out you can tell me about them and we’ll see what they’ve done. If I think that someone needs punishing for what you tell me they’ve done, I’ll say something like that’s bad – tell me all about it, and if it’s something that doesn’t I’ll just say that’s too bad, let’s move on, but won’t ask you anything else about it. Would that be all right with you?’

‘S’pose.’

‘OK, so we’ll start with me saying that’s too bad about your mum and dad – because it would be a shame for them not to be there for you to go home to, wouldn’t it?’ He considered this, blue eyes losing their sharp edge as the internal argument waged.

‘If they went to clink, would I have to stay in care?’

‘Probably.’

‘OK, then that’s too bad is all right.’

‘Agreed.’ I knew it was lie because it wasn’t, but it was the lesser of two evils.

He paused, and then added, ‘But it still ain’t fair.’

‘No, it’s not,’ I agreed. ‘But sometimes life isn’t.’ He watched me quietly, waiting for me to add to it, but what was there to add? Life was unfair – more than that; at times it was shit.

‘They ain’t as bad as all that, I s’pose,’ he said after a while.

‘No-one’s all bad,’ I agreed, although given the range of human immorality I’d defended over the years, I wondered if that too was a lie.

The desk sergeant brought in a fan after I sent Miss Roumelia out to use her charms on him. I took a break whilst she did so, conscious that my sweating armpits weren’t just due to the heat. They were well hidden under the statutory dark suit but my awareness of them seemed to escalate the problem. The fan interlude helped calm me down as well as cool me down and with some time to think I wished now I hadn’t reacted so rashly to Margaret’s summary of my less than respectable past by taking up the gauntlet she’d thrown down. Everything that passed in the interview room was confidential yet I could end up relying on the morality and trustworthiness of a social worker to keep my secrets confidential at a time when every detail of this case could become potential wildfire. I would have to broach the subject with her some time – some time privately – about what else Margaret had told her. That in itself made me sweat again, although on reflection, I wasn’t sure if it was the subject matter or being somewhere private with Miss Roumelia that brought it on.

I concentrated on drawing the child’s story out from him to deflect my misgivings for the time being. It was like pulling teeth. He went on at length about things inconsequential to his defence but crucial to his sense of self; an outpouring of childish bewilderment that could equally have been mine – I had merely translated it into more adult language as the years went by. Eventually his anger was exhausted enough for him to recount the facts less emotively. I whiled away the intervening time watching the parade of emotions across Miss Roumelia’s face. It was fascinating. Margaret had had that staunch true-blue England kind of face that revealed very little reaction. It had helped keep our relationship tidily business-like so I could deal with it. I doubted whether I would have entertained marrying her if she’d displayed the kind of wildly erratic behaviour I’d observed other women succumb to when they were either upset or delighted. Margaret allowed the status quo to remain, whatever the situation. That enabled me to think – no rush of confusing emotion, no complicated demands or incomprehensible woman-speak meaning quite the reverse to how it sounded. It was more like being married to a man. It was safe.

This young woman, however, seemed to embody the excesses of womanhood with her rounded contours and expressive face. I found myself wondering what it would be like to squeeze her arm and see the blood drain away from the flesh before rushing back, leaving it blush-brown and lush again. What would her lips taste like – raspberries, strawberries – maybe even blackberries, given her colouring? How would it feel to have her lying alongside me, whispering in my ear, hot breath eating into my thoughts until I rolled over and ... Christ, what was going on in my head? I dragged my attention back to what the boy was saying and found he’d tentatively started to talk about the day he’d been taken into care. Miss Roumelia’s attention obviously hadn’t been wandering as mine had. She was helping the narrative along.

‘Tell Mr Juste what led up to how you think it all happened,’ she prompted helpfully, smiling politely at me. I nodded my thanks, desperately trying to stifle the rabid thoughts that were still bubbling away. Her eyes lingered on mine just a second longer than was necessary then flicked hastily away.

‘It were a Mon-day.’ He split up the two parts of the word sing-song, in the same manner as he’d trotted out the didn’t do it, wasn’t there claim. ‘Dad was up north on a job. He didn’t have the rent money so when Nobby came round and said they had summat he might be able to help with he said he’d go to keep us off the streets. He meant Mum really. Mum called him a stupid bastard and said that he’d get caught out one day.’ I stopped him hastily there with the rehearsed ‘that’s too bad,’ He scowled at my interruption and then caught on. He moved on several stages in the story and up several notches in my estimation of his intelligence. ‘That was Thursday and Dad hadn’t come home so when the tallyman came knocking on Fri-day morning Mum told us all to shut up and hide so he’d think we was out. He shouted through the letter box that he knew we was there and to open up or he’d be back with someone who’d make us open up, but we stayed put and after a while he went. Me legs had gone numb from hiding under the table by then and Mum was in a right strop because Benjie had peed himself. She’s like that – real nice sometimes and a cow others. I don’t like it when the tallyman comes round.’

‘Who’s the tallyman?’

‘I think he’s the local debt-collector,’ explained Miss Roumelia. ‘They call them the tallyman because he keeps a tally of who owes what. If they can’t pay he usually brings in the heavies – isn’t that right Danny?’

‘S’pose. Used to be lots of diff’rent blokes round to see Mum but the main one now’s a big fat bastard with bad breff,’ he added. ‘He ain’t quite as bad as the others. And Mum ain’t so rude to him. She don’t go out nowhere for a while after he’s been round but Nobby came round before he did last time so she were fuming and Dad were scarpered. I hate Nobby.’

‘I probably don’t want to know about Nobby, do I?’ I asked Miss Roumelia. She shook her head and grimaced. ‘You might have to at some stage, though,’ she added. ‘His kids are part of the gang that Danny joined – the whole family is in care, from what I understand. They operate on a, you scratch my back and I won’t knife yours, basis.’

‘Ah, all very principled then!’

‘It’s a different world to the one you and I live in,’ she said defensively, ‘but they do have their own moral code nevertheless.’

‘Really?’ I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my voice.

‘Really,’ she replied firmly. The doe eyes narrowed and we assessed each other. We were both supposed to be championing the underdog, but her will to do so was from belief in what she was doing. Mine was because of cynical self-advancement, whatever I might have once imagined of myself in the romanticised role of law-bringer. Momentarily I doubted what I was doing and wished I still had the passion for righting the world’s wrongs that she plainly had – naïve though it was to believe any of us could. I dropped my gaze first and shuffled the case papers whilst I regained some sense of equilibrium. Even more than the boy and his background disturbing my ordered thoughts, this woman was disturbing my calm.

‘Did the tallyman come back?’ I tried to block out Miss Roumelia and concentrate solely on the boy.

‘Not then, but the next day. But the pigs were there by then too. Mum hadn’t come back and the old cow across the road had called them in after Sukie put her fingers in the toaster and blew the place up.’

‘Put her fingers in the toaster and blew the place up?’

‘It’s why they were all taken into care to start with,’ Miss Roumelia answered before the boy could answer. ‘It’s all in the case notes.’

‘In yours maybe, but not mine.’ I retorted, irritated that she should be suggesting I wasn’t doing my job properly. ‘All that is says in here is that the boy was taken into care after a charge of solicitation involving the mother. There’s nothing about hospitalisation in there. Suppose someone tells me the whole story – off the record, relevant or not?’ The boy looked uncertainly at Miss Roumelia.

‘Should I miss? I don’t want to get into no trouble? I didn’t want Sukie to get hurt but it was my fault. ’ I almost laughed. What did he think he was in now, if not trouble? But the volunteered confession that Sukie’s injuries were his fault surprised me. Why admit to something that he wasn’t being accused of – and I hadn’t even known about, yet steadfastly deny his guilt of something he was?

‘Danny, you’ve mugged an old lady, who’s died. I can’t see what more trouble you could get into.’

‘But he didn’t do that – he’s already told you that.’ Miss Roumelia was too quick in his defence. I could even sense a hastily stifled instinctive reaction to put her arm round his shoulders. She made do with attacking me instead. ‘Why can’t you believe him – innocent until proven guilty and all that – or do you not subscribe to that?’

‘I don’t know enough about it all yet – and neither do you.’ Even to me my voice sounded overly harsh. Alongside my lurid imaginings about her, I’d missed the overtures of war that had really been steadily growing between us. God only knew how we were going to work together. A red alert sounded and stupidly I turned off the alarm. We locked in battle like two rutting deer, head to head. Anger made her eyes deepen to near black and set her jaw as if she was a snarling tiger. Tiger woman – yes, she was a tigress, not a scented jasmine. I felt my pulse quicken and real excitement flowed through me for the first time in years. I leant forward, accepting the challenge and breathing in the smell of her sweat across the table.

I’d put my jacket back on to hide the sweat patches on my shirt. Now it clung uncomfortably to me and the wet rings under my arms chafed. A trickle of perspiration slid down my face and ran behind my ear. As it swung on its rotating arc, the breeze from the fan cooled it like ice forming. She watched it make its winding way down into my collar and I felt it soak in there. Her eyes slipped back to mine and they were unreadable. The boy watched us intently. As she sat back he looked at me and then swivelled to look at her again.

‘You fancy him, don’t you?’ Now he had both of our attention.

‘Danny, whatever makes you say that?’ She was clearly embarrassed – just as I realised the boy was also clearly correct in his assessment. His observation enabled me to see through the antagonism now. I was relieved he was only focusing on her or he’d possibly detect the same inclination in me. I consciously reeled myself in. Learning how to play poker-face in court obviously had its advantages out of court too.

‘Well you keep eyeing him up. Aren’t you s’posed to be helping me?’ I could see from the deepening of colour in her cheeks that she was blushing again. I decided to help her out, since I’d got off the hook so lightly for the moment. One can be gracious in victory and I’d long since learnt not to kick my antagonists on the way up in case I met them again later on my way down.

‘You are absolutely right, Danny. Whatever we think about each other is one of those things we said isn’t relevant – but your story is. Let’s get on with it, shall we?’

He studied me coolly for a while. ‘OK, yeah.’

She threw me a thankful look and seemed to physically shrink down in her chair. The tense body language relaxed and was replaced with submission. The boy had centre-stage. Surprisingly it was being centre of attention that released the trap door and Danny’s story came tumbling through it without the need for any more prompting. I’d interviewed enough old lags to already know the psychology, but not that it applied equally well to a kid as an adult. I took note. It had already been an unusually illuminating morning but it wasn’t until the session wound up that I realised how fully my mind had been taken off funerals, newspapers and the bloody route to the top, although it was probably one of the very last things the boy told me that did it.

6: Jaggers

John Arthur Green, he called himself; ‘Jaggers’ – and he’d been to Borstal. He was a legend before he even turned up at the children’s home in June 1962. He’d been sent there for much the same offence as we’d so carefully hidden – a stabbing. With the arrival of Jaggers, it was no longer petty theft or small time crime that we had to keep ahead of, it was full scale war. Not only had he learnt how to play with the big boys when he’d been in Borstal, he’d also acquired their tastes. Sex, drugs, violence, intimidation – all with a smile and perfect courtesy to the Houseparents, who unexpectedly doted on him. I think that might have been when Georgie first started using. No-one approached me. Maybe they knew I would have run and told Win, and Win would have turned it into a fight for control – another part of the empire to conquer. Georgie though, he was so much in his own world by then, I think he barely remembered I was there – let alone who I was. I let him slip away because I didn’t know what else to do.

It had always been a world of barely hidden violence and carefully controlled fear, not just from the gang influences but from each other and the home’s staff. Nights were often punctuated by the screams of nightmarish dreams, and days by small discomforts and petty cruelties. Jaggers brought a new and excruciating level of terror with him. Of course he and Win went head to head straight away even though Win only had months left before he was formally released from care when he was sixteen. The die-hards from Win’s reign stuck with him but the turncoats and spin doctors followed Jaggers. I was left in the middle – afraid of Win, but even more afraid of Jaggers and the unnatural practices it was said he imposed on dissenters. I teetered – withholding my alliance, relying on Win’s protection until Win was ill with gut rot one day about two months after Jaggers arrived. It was probably engineered by Jaggers and his crew, but it left Win out of action and me within firing range. Jaggers wheeled in the big guns to convert me because as Win’s little brother – by then Georgie didn’t count – I was a pivotal point in his strategy. If I defected, so would most of the rest of Win’s gang.

I spent the day anxiously avoiding Jaggers or any of his crew. It was fairly easy during the day. There were lessons to endure, although even then I enjoyed learning. I had to pretend otherwise in the home but I had my secret passions. English class – and one piece of literature in particular was one. For the other boys, hearing the teacher expound on the principles of honesty and truth in something like To Kill a Mocking Bird was an exercise in boredom. For me it was inspiration. Lucky perhaps that we had such an enlightened and rebellious young teacher at the time. Of course it wasn’t part of the curriculum but the book was all the rage because of the Hollywood blockbuster starring Gregory Peck. Not what the school head would have approved of if he’d known that his newly-appointed young English teacher was subversively reading it with his class under the guise of ‘looking at society’s norms in literature’, but for me it was exceptional and ground-breaking.

I’d sneaked into the back of the local flicks when the film was being screened just after Jaggers first arrived. The front of house ticket seller was doubling up on her roles as usherette and sweet kiosk salesperson and I slithered into a back row seat and was completely blown away by both the actors and the notions within the story itself. Thereafter I’d modelled my attitude to the Win/Jaggers situation initially on Atticus Finch, and tried to remain impartial but principled. Atticus became my hero, and remained so when I later made law my career. Ironic that we were secretly reading about rape, repression and inequality in school and I was secretly living it in the children’s home. Unfortunately principle and practice can still make cowards of us all. At times I’m glad the fictional Atticus couldn’t have met me when I think of all the times then that I bowed to pressure and relinquished my beliefs for the sake of saving my skin, and at others I wish I could have debated the rights and wrongs of some of the cases I’ve taken since with such a hero. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself? Maybe being true to oneself includes self-preservation when it is only oneself that would be harmed otherwise?

But I couldn’t dodge Jaggers forever. Night was the time when I could no longer avoid vulnerability and without the threat of reprisal from Win, surrounding me like a dark angel enfolding me in its wings, Jaggers struck. I had tried to stay awake, counting the springs on the underneath of the bunk above me, and reciting my times tables in my head but eventually the insidious down of sleep crept over me and I succumbed. I woke panicky and unable to breath, crushed flat on my stomach but head rammed to one side. I struggled and the coating over my face invaded mouth and nostrils, wet and sticking to my skin with the moisture from my breath, plastic sucked deep into my mouth with every shuddering gasp. Jaggers whispered harshly in my ear.

‘Shut up and stay still or you’ll suffocate, you asshole.’ My head swam and even though the dorm was dark, it seemed as if everything was dropping into a night so dark not even stars could pierce its depth. Even lying still my head spun giddily and my hearing faded in and out as I started to lose consciousness. The plastic bag was secured tightly round my head and I could feel the pressure and then the searing pain as Jaggers violated me. ‘This is what I’ll do to you every night your dearly beloved brother Win is holed up in sick bay unless you leave his gang and join mine.’ It was a mercy I was almost unconscious because confusion and lack of oxygen deadened the pain to a mere fraction of what it could have been. When he was done the unnatural practices I’d previously feared as a kind of far-off threat were a reality. Homosexuality was prevalent in prisons, although I don’t believe now Jaggers was a homosexual. It was more that he was sharing with me – and no doubt many others – the pain and defilement he’d suffered. Maybe transforming it into a tool for control made it more palatable for him.

Just before I passed out, he removed the bag and left me gasping and retching on my soiled sheets before curling into a ball. My body raged at the abuse and I thought I wouldn’t ever sleep again as I relived each moment of desecration in the quiet desperate hours before dawn. It was only then I wondered where the other members of my dorm were and why no-one had come to my aid. Clearly it had been a carefully orchestrated attack and my dorm companions avoided me the next day and the day after that in embarrassment. After the first angry reaction, I realised – just like Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mocking Bird – there could be no impunity for me. I was the target, the stool pigeon, and no matter how much they might want to help, to get between me and Jaggers would have been as lethal as getting between Tony and the knife that killed him. It was my first lesson in acceptance and forgiveness. I forgave them their abandonment of me and I learnt acceptance of the role I knew I had to play. I just wasn’t sure how to play it yet. One other thing became clear – that I should find a way to never be as vulnerable again.

I played a dangerous double game, acceding to Jaggers and pretending to Win when he made it out of sick bay, grey-faced and several pounds lighter. I joined in with both gangs’ raids and for a time it seemed as if I might get away with it. I knew whatever I did I wasn’t going to let myself be subjected willingly to the abject terror of the suffocation and rape ritual Jaggers promised if I didn’t play ball with him. My duplicity came to an end, and a new beginning, when Jaggers came up with a plan to finally rid himself of Win altogether, and I was given the starring role. Looking back now, I wonder why he was so adamant that Win needed to be dealt with. We were down to mere weeks before his sixteenth birthday. Control I suppose – and that ruthless need to destroy he always carried within him.

It was the first mugging either of the gangs had been involved in. Until then our crimes were amongst ourselves or against arch enemies such as the biker gang. We confined ourselves to petty larceny and a minor amount of vandalism to local shopkeepers but this was an audacious and deliberate plan to rob a third party – someone totally uninvolved with our petty internal politics, and an old woman to boot. Jaggers and one of his lackeys had been observing the old dear who lived in the end terrace just before the corner shop. She had to be about ninety, shuffling along in her carpet slippers, clutching her small pink floral shopping bag and battered brown leather handbag.

‘She goes every Tuesday, collects her pension and then comes home. Hers and her husband’s. There’ll be all of thirty quid in that bag.’ Jaggers was jubilant, ‘And you’re gonna get it, Kenny, but you’re gonna make sure you tell Win what you’re doing and take him with you, and when she calls for the Old Bill, you’re gonna dump the bag on Win.’

‘How am I gonna get him to come with me? He knows I wouldn’t go and do something like that off my own bat. And won’t he go down for it?’

‘Exactly.’ Jaggers smiled, a thin satisfied jeer. ‘It’ll be easy to get him to go with you. Just tell him I’m gonna take the cash off you when you’ve done it ’cos I’ve threatened you. He’ll be there like a shot – you see. Unless you don’t want to help me, and then ...’

The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Once was enough to make my insides knot and my lungs become a vacuum. I gasped out my agreement, and our fates were sealed. I’ve since understood how the criminal mind works, and the mentality that cannot be bettered by a rival. Jaggers had already worked it out – the fact that regardless of how risky it might be, the twin lures of me in trouble and Jaggers getting one over on him would be sufficient to get Win on the scene and as vulnerable as I had been with the bag round my head. It was a catch-22 for me. Without Win I was at Jaggers’ whim, with Win around I was always going to be under pressure to be used and abused in order to get rid of Win. If I declined to get involved altogether I set up the rest of my time at the children’s home to be one long nightmare of abuse. Overall, being in Jaggers’ gang was the less daunting because my smattering of practical psychology by then had already also told me that once I was no longer of use as a lever, Jaggers would probably lose interest in me and then life would be considerably quieter and safer. I sacrificed Win for safety as the town of Maycomb sacrificed Tom Robinson to racial inequality. What I didn’t know – and maybe it would have made no difference even if I had because the dilemma I was in wouldn’t have changed – was that Jaggers always planned to be there and taking an active part. It wasn’t merely a rob-and-run, and then dump the goods on Win to take the rap. It was to make sure Win not only went down, but that he went down for a very long time.

Jaggers appeared out of nowhere and beat the old woman to a pulp whilst Win and I looked on aghast. The die was cast. She fell to the ground moaning and I was shocked in the way I’d been when I’d seen Mrs Fenner’s cat dead. The bloody straw-coloured fluid running from her nose and dripping onto the pavement was like the brown gunge – just no maggots. My fertile mind added them later as she lay cold and dead on a mortuary slab. The bobby’s whistle sounded like a miniature klaxon as Jaggers grabbed the bloodied bag from me and shoved it into Win’s hands. Win was rooted to the spot, but instinctive reaction opened his hands to accept the bag whilst I gawped.

‘You set me up!’

I shut my eyes to Win’s face but it didn’t stop me imagining it later – like the maggots. He accused me, not Jaggers, but I knew who’d alerted the bobby. When I opened them Win was struggling to get up from where Jaggers had pushed him on top of the old woman, clothes covered in her blood.

‘Yeah, clever little brother you got, sucker!’ Jaggers grabbed my arm and pulled me away with him. I stumbled and almost fell but he half carried and half dragged me until we were out of sight round the corner of the road. Our running footsteps had drowned out anything else until then but standing behind the rickety fence bounding the terrace yards and struggling to stifle our panting I could hear the shindig surrounding Win and his victim. More whistle blowing and more feet, and Win’s voice stridently denying attacking her. Ambulance sirens followed, and then police sirens. I listened, dazed, until eventually Jaggers shook me and shoved me hard in the back to make me move.

‘C’mon. Stayed here long enough. Your brother’s doing his party piece now and we’ve got to scarper. Good job though,’ and he sniggered.

I’d never done anything until then that my conscience told me was absolutely and utterly wrong. That was one of the few times I have. I would not share that with Atticus. I’ve never shared it with anyone, yet Margaret had included it on her list. The woman’s name and the date. This mugging case was a replica. Was that why Margaret had been so intent on me taking it? Was it a sort of redemption, even though I would never obtain redemption from Win?

I didn’t see him again after that day. The police took him away in the panda car and someone from the children’s home had to sit in on the interview. He told the story as it had happened but no-one believed him. His quiet and studious little brother set him up? Highly unlikely, although of course, there was my name on the police record for ever and a day. Jaggers and I denied it, of course, and after a while Jaggers did leave me alone – once he’d found another use for me.

I got used to putting the guilt in a box and never lifting the lid to examine it after a while. I learnt how to store many things in there over my remaining time at the children’s home – self-respect, belief and the ability to love amongst them. I kept out of the box my instinct for self-preservation and the firm belief I’d never let myself be used by anyone ever again, unless the price was worth it. I would always find a pay-off for myself. Emotion, trust and reliance on anyone was a weakness that could lead to the most devastating vulnerability. Show nothing and share nothing. That way you stayed safe. That was my final lesson there – and what eventually got me out of the gutter I’d crawled into, although at that moment in time, as Win entered Borstal and I connived in sending him there, I still had a very long way to go before I did so.

7: Danny

‘It were when Nobby rang and Mum and Dad weren’t there so I had to talk to him ’cos I’m the oldest,’ he squared his shoulders importantly, ‘and he told me we weren’t to say nothing about where Dad was or how long he’d been away. Just to say he’d gone down the boozer and hadn’t come back yet. The little ones were grumbling about wanting something to eat and I don’t know how to cook stuff so we had toast. Sukie had one of them jumping beans and she was letting it jump all over the kitchen. I told her to leave it but she don’t listen to no-one and she set it off on the counter top and it jumped all over the place until it went in the toaster. She stuck her fingers in before I could stop her and the whole place went bang. Then the lights went out. It were like we were in a cave and it stunk – like a bonfire.’

‘When did this all happen, Danny?’

‘On Sun-day night. Mum said Dad was a prick ’cos he hadn’t come back yet and the tallyman would be back on Mon-day, but it weren’t going to be the usual one so she was in the shit and she’d have to do something about it. She dolled herself up in her gear and I knew she were going off down Brommy Street.’

‘The red light district?’ I queried of Miss Roumelia.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, stealing a glance at me and then looking carefully back down at her hands, clasped in front of her on her lap. A cursory assessment would have indicated they were relaxed but I could see how the thumbs pressed tensely into the fingers, making indentations of lighter flesh where they dug in. The naked pink of her palms peeped through the fretwork of darker fleshed fingers. In that moment she seemed more vulnerable than the boy. Unexpectedly I felt immensely sorry for her. The emotion was somewhere between the kind of protectiveness I imagined a father might feel for his daughter and a mentor might feel for his protégé. It didn’t sit well with the more lurid thoughts that had overwhelmed me earlier and left me feeling uneasy, like something was crawling around my chest cavity and making my innards twitch whenever they came into contact. I must have kept my eyes on her for a moment too long because the next glance she sneaked caught me out and the beast in my guts did a complete three-sixty degree turn. I turned my attention swiftly back to the boy.

‘What happened then?’

‘The little kids were all crying but Gazz found his torch and I found the switch thing Mum usually fiddles with when we’ve had a power cut and then the lights all came back on. It still stunk and Sukie were out cold, with her hand all red and black and the fingers stuck together. It looked foul. I thought she were dead but she were breathing so we put her on the settee and she woke up a bit later. Moll wrapped her hand in a wet tea towel ’cos that’s what you’re s’posed to do with burns. Moll wants to be a nurse, see, so she knows them things – but Sukie wouldn’t stop crying and her hand started to swell up. By the morning it was like a balloon, and all gunky-like, then it started to go brown. Moll said she needed the hospital but we couldn’t get her there and Mum still wasn’t home so in the end I knocked on Frankie’s door and asked his Mum what to do. I could have spit when I saw Mrs Nosy Parker there.’

‘Mrs Nosy Parker?’ In spite of myself, I wanted to laugh.

‘Oh she ain’t called Mrs Nosy Parker, she’s Mrs Parker, but she ain’t half nosy. Mum says if she’d been Pinocchio someone would‘ve taken a circular saw to her long before now.’ It was the kind of thing my mother would have said if there had been circular saws and Mrs Nosy Parkers around in my childhood. I felt a surge of loss for the mother I’d not seen for so long – and whose remembered face was now so shadowy I couldn’t say for certain whether she’d had blue or brown eyes, dark or light hair. Probably she was already dead and I would never be able to answer that question for myself. By comparison, I felt nothing for Margaret other than an unsettled irritation that my pattern of life was so irrevocably changed by her death and I had yet to establish how – or what – the new pattern would be. Anger also, of course – for her interference.

What was wrong with me? I didn’t mourn my wife, yet I felt overwhelming grief for the mother who’d abandoned me nearly forty years ago. Added to that was the inclination to alternately spar with and lust over a black woman almost half my age – whose first name I didn’t even know – so intense that I could barely maintain basic concentration on the case in hand?

I managed a weak ‘Oh,’ and a smile, but it didn’t seem to matter. Danny carried on unbidden whilst I watched the bowed brown head of the siren opposite, half-listening to the story, and the rest of my mind alert to the slightest movement from her that would give me a clue as to how I should respond.

‘Her fingers looked like burnt sausages, all stuck together. Frankie’s mum said we ought to take her to hospital too, and Mrs Nosy said Frankie’s mum should take her and she would sit with us. I didn’t want her in our house but there weren’t much choice. Frankie came in with us so it weren’t so bad. We played with the meccano Dad brought home last time he were away, so we stayed out of Mrs Nosy’s way, but she wanted to know where Mum was. I didn’t tell her. Said she’d gone to the shops, but she looked at me like I were lying and when she called us back downstairs at lunchtime, the pigs were there and so was some snotty man from the social – not her then, though.’ He jerked his thumb at Miss Roumelia. ‘Her name’s Kat.’ She opened her mouth to protest but closed it again without saying anything, like a fish gulping in water. ‘I don’t mind her. She’s OK. If I were you I’d think it were OK that she fancied me.’ He winked at her as her face changed from embarrassment to shock and then back to embarrassment. Suddenly I liked him.

‘I expect if I were me, I would think so too,’ I replied, stealing a glance at Miss Roumelia – Kat – whilst wondering what the hell I was doing. I found myself saying, ‘I thought it would be something more exotic like Jasmine,’ before I could stop the words tumbling out. The boy sniggered and I was tempted to see how it had been received, but I kept my eyes firmly on him and urged the story on. The boy glanced once at her, a twisted smile hovering round one side of his mouth, and then shrugged.

‘The pigs wanted to know where Dad were but I remembered Nobby’s phone call and you don’t cross Nobby so I said he were down the boozer. Mum still weren’t back so it were down to me to be in charge, whatever that nosy cow Mrs Parker said, but the pigs said they couldn’t wait there for ever for Dad or Mum to come home and we would have to go with the snotty man. ‘He called in someone he called a colly-something.’

‘Colleague?’

‘Yeah, that’s it – and he said I had to go somewhere different to the little kids ’cos I said I was fourteen when I was trying to get them to leave us home until Mum or Dad turned up. They said ’cos I was a teenager I couldn’t go to the little kids’ home, I had to go to the big kids’ one. I’d heard of it before ’cos Nobby told Dad he was waiting for his Josh to get out of there at sixteen so he could help him out on the jobs, but until then Dad had to – and he give him that look that them other tallymen do and you know you ain’t going to like it, whatever it is they’re going to do.’

‘So they were all taken into care then?’ I asked Miss Roumelia – Kat. I savoured the name. Yes, it was better than Jasmine – far less stereotypical, but amusingly appropriate. Kit-Kat. I wondered what chocolate she would taste like. She seemed to have recovered her poise during the last section of Danny’s tale. The polite professional was back in place, covering her embarrassment with efficiency and red tape.

‘Temporarily, but Danny’s mum turned up almost immediately afterwards, and the youngest ones were allowed back home then. She said she’d been attacked the evening before and spent the night and part of the next morning in A&E with suspected concussion. She was going to press charges but the attacker counter-accused her of prostitution and all charges were dropped on both sides eventually.’

‘It were him,’ Danny interjected. ‘Mean bastard!’

‘Who?’

‘The other tallyman – he beat her up, I bet. ’Cos she didn’t have the money for him. It’s all his fault, this.’

‘Well, Danny, he may have been part of the reason you ended up in care, whoever this tallyman is, but he wasn’t the cause of you beating up an old lady, was he?’

‘No, he weren’t the cause, but ...’ the pause was intentionally dramatic, and Kat and I both registered it – the implied revelation hanging tantalisingly from the silent gap between the words.

‘But?’ I asked for both of us.

‘But,’ he hesitated, picking at a scabby finger, and watching the blood start to well up alarmingly from the tiny scratch. Miss Roumelia – Kat – gave him a paper hanky and they wrapped it tightly round his finger. It blossomed red through the folds and she gave him another. The second tissue seemed to stem the flow.

‘But?’ I prompted again.

He reverted to his song-sing defence. ‘I weren’t there and it weren’t me.’

‘Danny...’ Kat started on the persuasion routine, but I shook my head at her. This wasn’t the time. We’d done some scene-setting and perhaps more, even though we hadn’t yet tackled the main event, but Danny had also unintentionally gone too far towards telling all the story before back-tracking to his safe place. Kat thought he was acting as scapegoat for the boys in the gang, or a little more. I wondered now if he was scapegoat for something far more sophisticated than young delinquents. I leafed through the papers until I found the page I wanted.

‘This tallyman – how much do you know about him?’

‘Which one? They’re mainly bastards – take your TV and stuff if you don’t pay up – or rough your place up a bit until you do.’

‘I gathered that, but do they use violence on people to get money out of them?’

‘I dunno.’ I sensed him tensing up.

‘Mrs Harris – did you know her beforehand?’

‘Why?’ he hedged.

‘You did know her then?’

‘Why do you think I did?’

‘Mrs Harris – the old lady who was beaten up.’

‘One old lady looks like any other, don’t they?’

‘Why did you choose her?’

‘I didn’t.’ The inflection was wrong. Heavy on the ‘I’ and not on the ‘didn’t’.

‘Who did then?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Someone chose her and told you what to do?’

‘I ain’t saying no more.’

‘What do we know about her?’ I asked Kat.

She looked blank. ‘Just that she was the victim of the attack.’

‘What has happened to her estate? Her home, possessions and so on?’

‘I don’t know. I think it’s being wound up and there are some creditors.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. I could find out, if it’s important.’

‘Is it?’ I looked across at Danny. ‘Might it be important for us to know who her creditors are?’ He looked blank. ‘Who she owed money to?’ His mouth went back to the grim line and the mutinous expression returned to his face.

‘What are these tallymen’s names?’ Danny didn’t answer. ‘We can find out quite easily, Danny – and if you want me to help you, remember you need to help me, otherwise I might decide not to bother if you waste my time.’

‘Mr Juste has an awful lot of other things to see to at the moment, Danny – his wife died a couple of weeks ago ...’ her voice tailed off as she realised the inappropriateness of the comment. She cast an apologetic look at me. I swallowed my irritation with her inept attempt at helping, but it was Danny who really deflected my annoyance.

‘Yeah I know. Sorry about your missus. She were nice ...’ Then almost as an after-thought as I reeled, ‘Win.’ It was so unexpected I had to hide my shock by clearing my throat.

‘Win?’ The beast in my gut rumbled uneasily. ‘Win what?’ He looked at me thoughtfully, obviously weighing up whether to wind me up or let me down gently. He suddenly laughed explosively.

‘Dunno. Just Win – big fat bloke with a funny scar under his ear – like a vee.’ I didn’t hear the words in the order he said them. The beast took over. Kat looked at me timidly. My face must have been the same as the beast’s.

‘Do you know him?’ she asked.

I remembered the day my Win had got his scar – missing his footing when he’d been scrambling up a tree after a spat with Jonno, and crashing down onto the sharp pointed bean cane abandoned by the roots – probably one of our earlier abortive attempts at making bows and arrows. The amount of blood that had gushed out and covered us had been inordinate compared to the size of the wound, but a sliver of the frayed end of the cane had been forced sideways, almost slicing through his jugular. The scar it left had been his claim to fame from that point onwards – an inverted V – just under his ear. V for victory he’d said – just like his namesake had managed.

Could it be the same Win? How many Wins were there around with a scar like a ‘V’ under their ear? I didn’t remember him as a thug or a bully then, but he’d been my big brother. Maybe the boys from Jonno’s gang that he’d beaten up would have said differently. Later on I would have debated how to assess him, but still stopped short of thug or bully. Maybe the way life had moved on for him after the children’s home and my betrayal had finally soured him to one. Maybe the teenage and adult worlds I’d not known him in had forged him differently from the last time I’d seen him? Maybe many things, not least of which was the question of how he would react if we were to meet again, and what it would mean to my career and my life. I didn’t answer, but I knew it was one question I couldn’t now avoid if I carried on with the case.

8: The Gutter

I’d thought of myself as alone before, but never as alone as I was with Win gone and Georgie lost in his own world. At least school was one place I could escape. I always had a quick brain and a thirst for knowledge and I filled evey gap and crevice with information in the hope that one day, I would have a plan for what to do with it. I anticipated school for me would probably end at sixteen, when I would be jettisoned from the slipstream of the children’s home into the flotsam of society to find my way, family-less and homeless and rudderless. Tony with the knife in his guts, the entrapment of Win, and Georgie with his lost soul convinced me that I had to do more than let the system discard me. Ironically, Jaggers found me my plan, even though he didn’t know it at the time.

When they took Win away, I worried how Jaggers would treat me afterwards. I’d hoped to be of no further use to him. I was wrong about that. The way he’d initially persuaded me to co-operate was apparently more than a method of coercion, it was a fully-fledged business. Borstal had educated him well in the finer points of pimping as well as priming. As I suspected, he wasn’t gay – far from it if the stories of his antics with some of the local girls were to be believed. He looked much older than fourteen and he had a cocky self-assurance that seemed to open doors even despite his circumstances. However, there again I was wrong. I’d assumed he was an orphan or a lost boy like Win, Georgie and myself. No: Jaggers background was as far from lost as you could imagine. It was, in fact, immensely privileged, but since his mother’s death when he was five, his father had completely lost interest in him – rejected him in other words. An extreme form of grief, in my view – turning your back on the living simply because of the dead – but Jaggers suffered from its effects as much as his father.

His response was to turn juvenile delinquent and by seven had already been caught shoplifting, smoking and drinking underage. At eight he took his father’s car joyriding and wrote it off, at nine he was up on a charge that would have been GBH, apart from his age, and by ten it was said he’d killed a man. I doubted the last claim. I was sure the children’s home wouldn’t be welcoming a murderer with open arms, no matter how generous the financial patronage his father offered as a sweetener, but certainly he was out of control. His father always bailed him out, paying for the most expensive lawyers when necessary, or simply paying off witnesses if not. His way out of trouble always seemed to be charmed, even if his childhood wasn’t. The only requirement of Jaggers was that he stayed away from home and all the while he did, his father was benefactor and patron of the port currently harbouring him.

I found it all out piecemeal until I had a picture of the threat that was considering me for further use; bribing a confidence here and overhearing a useful snippet here. I was smart. I could do the dumb ones’ homework. I was strong, even if I looked puny. I could do the weak or lazy ones’ chores. I was fearless. I would even take on the frightened ones’ initiations for a good enough reward, but not in the cellar. The only other thing that fazed me was finding myself alone in the dorm at lights out and fearing who would come through the door to join me. My reward was information. Whilst I gathered it Jaggers and I circled each other like a pair of pugilists – he testing and considering, me probing and wondering. He had eighteen more months at the home when he finally made his move, but I was ready. I had successfully taken the eleven plus and was in my penultimate year at the local grammar school. For the time being it had earned me yellow dots on the chart and I was basking in the sun, but it had to fade soon as the seasons changed. Winter arrived with Jaggers’ next approach – much like the first had been – but this time I saw the chance of spring beyond it because information and knowledge give you power.

Amongst his other insalubrious activities, he’d been developing contacts amongst the local community – the gay community, and had discovered a useful and profitable line in escort services.

‘You’re enough of a weed to fit the bill,’ he rasped in my ear as he pulled the bag tighter and panic almost overcame me. I nodded, holding in the breath I’d taken when he’d put it over my head. I had done my homework on the technique now. I could survive and I would. He relaxed his grip, taken aback. He must have expected resistance. Now his curiosity was roused. ‘You’ll agree?’ I nodded again and he let the bag go. I gasped in as much air as I could in case he changed his mind and twisted it tight again. ‘You know what you’d have to do?’

‘I know, but I’ll only go with the rich old ones.’ He swung me round to stare at me. My moment of truth hadn’t arrived in the dead of night but in the light of day, and I knew exactly what I planned to do with it. We were in the gun emplacement and a seagull wheeled overhead and screeched at us, ‘maaad, maaad, maaa...’ I wondered if it was right, but I had my plan, gleaned diligently from as many sources as I could muster. They were generally powerful as well as rich, the old queens; afraid of compromising their respectability. If I had to prostitute myself for my future, it might as well be with someone who could make that future a material possibility. He pulled the bag clear of my head and eyed me suspiciously but I faced him out. ‘I want to get out of this shit hole. I’m going to get an education, be somebody, but that takes cash.’ The wind whined around the solid concrete block of the emplacement, scooting clouds across the remaining August sunshine and making the inside of the building darken as if a storm was brewing.

‘I can’t promise you cash – that’ll be up to them, but as long as they pay their cut to me, get whatever you want out of them.’ He stuffed the bag in his pocket and was about to turn away dismissively but I caught his arm.

‘I know who I want you to set me up with too.’ This time he was really surprised.

‘How’d you know who any of them are?’ I was afraid he’d bag me again when his hand travelled instinctively to his pocket. I readied myself but his hand hovered there without withdrawing the bag as he waited for me to answer.

‘Information, that’s all, but I ain’t going to share it.’ It was an unwritten rule that you didn’t grass anyone up. He and I had already broken it together by setting up Win. I knew he was conscious of that – the villain’s honour was impugned. He would play fair with me and I would play fair with him as a kind of recompense.

‘OK, who?’

I told him.

‘Why him?’

I wasn’t going to tell him my plan. I simply said, ‘He’s rolling in it.’ It seemed acceptable as a reason. He looked at me strangely but didn’t object. My future was assured as easily as that.

Of course it was by no means easy in reality. The degradation, the loss of self, the disgust are things I don’t want to dwell on and as soon as I could store them away in my secret box, I did so. It wasn’t all bad either. Whilst I hated the physical act of homosexual sex, it happened less and less often over the years until by the time I was almost sixteen, I hadn’t had to endure it for many months. The one I’d chosen to be set up with was but a step along the way. I’d intended nurturing a number of mugs from the first contact, but it worked quite differently in the end. I groomed him, but at one of his little ‘soirees’, he introduced me to someone far more useful overall and I groomed him too – eventually transferring all my attention to my one target; someone who kept himself far below the radar of Jaggers and any other source of intrigue, blackmail or adverse publicity.

We talked a lot of the time, and I learned. I extracted every last piece of useful information from my gent like a sponge soaking up moisture until I was sodden with knowledge. I scoured his extensive library, I carefully copied his list of venerable contacts and I steeped myself in the way to success with every discussion, every conversation, every piece of advice he offered. Alongside that I worked assiduously and determinedly at simultaneously achieving success at school and keeping up my liaisons that paid Jaggers his cut so he didn’t become suspicious of how I was really spending my time. I fragmented my lives as Lennox had advised me to. The home remained the place of discontented disappointment and discomfort, school became the route to opportunity and my gent was the stepping stone to success. I knew I would achieve it when he admitted to me he regarded me more as a son than a courtesan. We laughed together at the allusion, even though it was true, but I knew my ultimate goal was in my sights. When he became sickly it was apparent his health was failing. Shortly before my sixteenth birthday in October, I guessed he wouldn’t last out the winter and made my move.

We talked about aspirations and dreams one evening after I wheeled him outside in the bath chair he’d taken to using most of the time. As one of the oldest boys in the home now – and with Jaggers now gone, life had become more relaxed there. Curfew – since I was visiting such an eminent member of the local community – was extended to nine o’clock for me. The night sky was unusually clear and the stars in it pierced its obsidian depths like tiny diamonds lying on black velvet.

‘What’s your bright star of a dream, Kenny?’ he asked. ‘You’ve never really said, but I believe you have one.’

‘The Bar, sir.’

‘Oh.’ He was silent for a while before asking, ‘but how will you get there, with no money to help you through university?’

‘You, sir.’

He didn’t answer, and we remained looking companionably up at the stars for a while. Eventually he asked quietly, ‘Blackmail?’

‘Gratitude.’

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’

He died three months later without saying anything more about the conversation, but he left me fifty thousand pounds in his will on the proviso I did what I’d said I told him I wanted to, but never disclosed where I’d got the money from. It was a non-repayable ‘debt’ in gratitude for my intelligent company and care in his ailing years. There were conditions to it, but it was unlikely they’d ever come into play, until now. At the time it was a fortune – and my escape. He was a High Court Judge.

Atticus, my hero, was within my reach, and I had kept that fragmented life to this day – my profession and my respectable wife in the open, and my early years, with all their attendant dishonour and shame safely tucked away only in the depths of my memories. Curse Margaret for somehow finding his name and adding it to her list. Now the complicated other conditions would kick in if his name slipped off the list and into the papers. The ‘debt’ which was not repayable unless his name was dragged through the dirt, along with Jaggers’ little arrangements, would become immediately recoverable – with compound interest over thirty-three years or more. I wondered if Margaret had dug that up too, and if so why she’d so wanted to risk my ruin.

9: Solomon’s Wisdom

‘Sorry. I can’t help after all. Too messy – and I’m not sure we would win, given the facts. He’s better off out of that kind of family background anyway – father a thief and mother a prostitute. He’s probably as guilty as hell too.’

‘I thought you were meant to be impartial – just?’

‘Only in court. Privately my opinions are my own. I don’t have to like the people I defend – or their way of life, I just have to do my job well, but I also have the luxury of being able to choose what job I do.’ We squared up to a fight across the graffitied interview room table, exhortations to ‘kill the pigs’ and ‘screw you’ carved laboriously into its battered top. Danny was outside in the charge of the WPC allocated to assist.

‘So much for the knight of the people the papers are calling you,’ she threw back angrily. ‘It’s all show isn’t it – Lawrence Juste – just planning on getting to the top, regardless of who he treads on to get there. You saw there was something not right there too – didn’t you? What was it? Was it the name? You recognised it, didn’t you? And you know what you’ve just said isn’t true. He’s not as guilty as hell. Someone else is though and you think you know who.’

‘That’s not true. There are plenty of reasons why I can’t continue – my recent widowhood being one of them, since you so kindly keep reminding me of it.’ She ignored the dig and continued her own attack.

‘You promised him you’d get him off.’

‘Well, sometimes promises have to be broken if they are beyond one’s reach.’ I shuffled the papers together and prepared to leave. The safest option given the way things were going – as far removed as possible from this disturbingly challenging woman, the memories the boy raked up and the dangerous link to a less salubrious family tree he’d just implied. She leant across the table and grabbed my arm. It was so sudden I almost lost my balance. My head swam before I steadied myself. Win and Margaret and Kat became a mêlée of disjointed emotions as disorientating as the sudden dizziness, heat, exhaustion and Kat’s proximity caused. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss her – and the worst. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t respond either. I drew away, unsure what to do next.

‘Just because I’m black, it doesn’t mean I’m cheap,’ she said.

‘I never implied I thought so, did I?’

‘No. But you think you can take advantage of me because Danny said I fancy you.’

‘Kat ...’ I stumbled over what to say, unsure what happened in situations like this. I’d never been here before – wasn’t even sure what or where here was. With Margaret it had been a transaction – profitable on both sides. This was far more ambiguous and probably very unwise. I never took risks like this.

‘Jasmine to you.’ Unexpectedly she kissed me back and I wanted to consume her, suck her into me and devour her like a carnivorous plant would suck the juices from the curious insect landing unwittingly on its trip wire. My stomach flipped and my chest followed, leaving my head pounding with the blood-beat of desire – so completely different to the clinically neat ten minute pump and thrust routine of marriage and the feeling I’d missed something important I should know about. I felt exposed by my raw reaction. If this was lust in its purest form, what would it feel like to be in love as well as in lust? The possibility was electrifying. When we finally drew apart I knew from the opaque film of bewilderment across her eyes that she wondered if it might be more than mere lust too. Then reality caught up with me. I cursed myself for the moment of weakness.

‘That was stupid of me. I’m sorry. I have a reputation to uphold. I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Thanks.’ She pulled away angrily. ‘I wouldn’t want to compromise your respectability with a little black slut.’

‘Kat, I didn’t mean it like that – for God’s sake, don’t be ridiculous. I was representing Danny and you’re his social worker. The papers would have a field day. This isn’t the time to become embroiled in an affair.’

‘Oh, thanks again – I’d only be worthy of an affair then?’

‘No, that wasn’t what I meant either, but anything more serious would require commitment and for me to make important decisions about my future.’

‘It would for me too. What makes you think you are so perfect? You’re twenty years older than me – an old man.’ Margaret had been younger than me too, but we’d never provoked each other to insults – or passion. I let her pace and rage at me until the storm wore itself out and she sat down miserably on the other side of the room to me.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that – you’re not old at all, just older than me. I was angry.’ The apology both clarified and complicated the situation for me. I wanted to burst out laughing but knew it would merely re-ignite the argument so I kept the wildly ridiculous realisation to myself but asked her the crux of it.

‘If I’m such an arrogant self-serving bastard and you’re so angry with me, why are you still here?’

‘I need to persuade you to defend Danny. It’s my job. I have to do it.’

‘Not in this room, right at this moment, you don’t.’

‘Are you telling me to leave?’

‘No, I’m asking you the same question I asked Danny. Why are you so angry?’ She considered, tracing the insults scrawled onto the table top.

‘Seems like we both have a chip on our shoulder.’ She laughed ruefully, looking boldly back at me.

‘I guess you’re right.’

She moved away from the table and stood by the door. ‘And a past.’

I looked quizzically at her. ‘Meaning?’

She studied me from her position by the door, almost leaving, but yet not quite able to. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I’m not usually so volatile. Shall we start again?’

‘Are chips repairable?’

‘Sometimes – fillable – or can be sandpapered smooth, I suppose.’

She brushed an imaginary something from her shoulder, and laughed – a staccato burst of self-deprecation.

‘Then shall we declare a truce before we rough each other up too much and try smoothing things down?’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘We’re different sides of the same problem at the moment – and Danny is the epicentre. You’re right. There is probably more to this than meets the eye, but at the moment my world is so topsy-turvy I don’t know if I can function upside down or back to front. Really, Danny may be better off with someone else defending him, regardless of what you think. My guess is this case isn’t going to be solved quickly – or cleanly. We’ll both be fodder for the press – but me particularly, and therefore we have to be professional about this.’

‘I wasn’t the one getting personal.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have crossed the line. It was inappropriate of me. And I’m not usually so volatile either.’

She studied me in silence for what seemed like hours, but was mere seconds in the scheme of things. I wondered what was going through her mind. What motives she was attributing to me and my tactical withdrawal now. The inclination to run – like I had when Jaggers had set Win and me up – was overwhelming. I was making as much of a mess of things as I had then, it seemed. It was why I’d always left the social niceties to Margaret – not that they would have applied in this situation. Kat surprised me by seeming almost nonchalant when she eventually replied.

‘OK, let’s call a truce, but will you please stay on the case – for Danny’s sake?’

‘That may be difficult.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s complicated,’ I added in my defence.

‘I know, but you’re the best – really.’ She winked impishly and I couldn’t keep up with the lightning mood change again, ‘even if you are old.’ Despite my confusion I laughed at her cheek. The difference between her and Margaret was disquieting, and I knew now why I felt so empty when I thought of Margaret not being there to greet me when I arrived home and when I slid into bed to find her side smooth and cold. I simply didn’t feel anything, whereas just an hour in this woman’s company had made me rage, lust and want to share the most intimate of secrets. Whatever I felt about the case or the revelations it might possibly bring, I already knew I couldn’t simply walk away any more. She had me hooked and if that meant taking the case, I would have to take the case – God help me.

‘Maybe, but whatever passes between us must be kept completely confidential, then – or I shall have to regretfully withdraw.’ I knew I was lying, but I hoped she wouldn’t realise that. ‘I shouldn’t have kissed you. It’s nothing personal.’ It was though – very personal indeed.

‘And how about what I might be feeling?’

‘I wasn’t talking about feelings, I was talking about truces. Feelings, or anything even approaching them, come a long way after that – surely? Of course, we could simply forget what happened and move on, if you prefer. Or if I agreed to stay on the case, just be colleagues.’ I held my breath and hoped it didn’t show – that and the nervous sweat trickling down my back and the bubbling cauldron in my chest, about to simmer over.

‘And will you stay on the case?’

‘It would depend on what we agreed, I guess.’

‘What we agreed ...’ She paused, eyeing me reflectively. ‘And what would you say if I opted for us just to be colleagues?’

‘Damn and fuck, probably,’ I replied, marvelling at myself – the cool-headed man turned lunatic. It came out spontaneously and I wasn’t sure I’d said it aloud until she turned her full beam smile on me, white teeth gleaming like pearls against ebony.

‘Maybe later, but not right now,’ she laughed. She was about to add to it and I wondered how little later it would have been if my phone hadn’t rung and the Chambers number flashed up on the display.

‘That is damn and fuck!’ I commented, suddenly ridiculously light-hearted. I answered the call – it must be urgent. They’d had instructions to only ring me if it was.

‘Mr Juste, there’s a man here asking to see you.’

‘What about – haven’t you told him I’m not available?’

‘I did sir,’ Gregory’s mournful tone was offended, ‘but he said you would want to speak to him. He says his name is Win and you’ll know who he is.’

‘What is it?’ Kat hissed, coming back across the room and bringing her heady perfume with her.

I wished she’d stayed where she was so I could think. I rapidly gave Gregory my instructions and ended the call before he could hear that I had a woman with me.

‘Trouble, I think.’ I replied.

10: Win

I made it successfully back to Chambers without thinking about Kat and her curving surfaces again. The possibility of having to face my brother after so long amply filled my thoughts instead. I slipped in by the basement entrance to the building, edging past the trainee’s bone-rattler of a bike, slanted against the corridor wall leading to the clerk’s office, and efficiently bypassed the reception area that way. I’d always disliked it because it reminded me obliquely of the basement cellar of my gang initiation even after all these years, but it did serve a purpose in extremis. Historically the briefs – myself, Jeremy Squires, Heather Trinder and Francis Allner – generally only took the back way in when we needed to avoid the press if we’d taken a high profile case and had to remain low profile ourselves, or the outcome had been less than pleasing and we wanted to slip in and lick our wounds before mounting the return assault.

When I’d first joined the Chambers as a junior in 1983 and there were three senior QCs and five juniors, that had happened with disconcerting regularity. Dead men’s shoes had given me my chance and it had all changed. In the mid-80s, old Jowett, our then Head, had got his chance at the red dressing gown and Chambers recruited the redoubtable Geoffrey Conan, a QC from the Northern Circuit to take the lead in his place. Already known to be ruthless, he worked his way through our fee books like a vulture on a feast, irascibly directing the clerks who to nurture and who to let wither on the vine before moving on to repeat the process elsewhere, eventually taking all but Francis of our QCs with him. He became privately known by his methods later – Conan the Barbarian – slaughtering the innocents and plundering the rest until he settled on his laurels, taking only the most prime steaks of cases. I didn’t care. Our rape and pillage was the reason I managed to get my foot in the door – nobody that I was then.

The clever selection process streamlined not only the silks, but also their failure rate. After an initially shaky start as the Conan whirlwind ran amok through Chambers, we emerged in 1988 punch drunk but keen to also establish continuity – hence the partnership between Heather, Francis, Jeremy and I was formed in a somewhat maverick departure from more normal Chambers’ arrangements. It was my limited form of family I suppose – a responsibility to my fellows I’d avoided until then. As our first spectacular success a year later turned us around completely, the need to avoid making a statement about a lost case was almost unheard of these days and the basement route had fallen into disuse other than for stealth or storage. There was an element of both involved now.

I left my folder behind an old filing cabinet bursting with aged cases, now finalised and their pink ribbons greying to decay. I couldn’t be certain, but Win’s unexpected appearance suggested there was a link – no matter how nebulous – between the case and him. I’d anticipated this awkward moment of confrontation for years – almost daily when I’d first heard he’d been released in my early twenties – but then as time went by and the silence had deepened, it had dwindled to the occasional anxious moment, and ultimately almost forgotten. In all my years as Lawrence I hadn’t tried to hide, simply be economical with the truth. I was easily enough found if anyone applied themselves to tracking the trail, I’d merely buried the first clue to its start. Kenneth Lawrence Juss – Kenny – had become Lawrence A Juste, moving in a different world and an incomparably higher social strata than Kenny could ever have done; hiding in plain sight. I never elaborated on the newly claimed middle initial, just made it official by deed poll and the imagined man became actual. Atticus Finch was at my core but that was mine alone to savour too.

At times I could hardly believe that in all those years, and even when my name became high profile in my profession, no-one apart from Margaret had bothered to trace the man behind the legal mask – yet they hadn’t. It suggested that maybe Margaret had done more work behind the scenes than simply uncovering my roots. Perhaps she’d also made efforts on my behalf to bury them too, distracting unwanted attention away from me by instead providing interest in what she was doing with her charitable works and good causes. Perhaps Margaret Juste, with her queenly bearing and apparently unassailable confidence in what she did, had created her own smokescreen to assist mine. I’d never considered that possibility before.

Other little incidents not of note then slipped back now. I’d turned the purse strings over to her when I’d overlooked paying a bill and we’d embarrassingly received a final demand from the same utilities company I was defending in court that day. Margaret waved it at me over breakfast, bright-eyed and perfectly coiffed; silk and lace-clad, even though it was six-thirty in the morning and I was still struggling to come to terms with the day and what I had to achieve in it.

‘It arrived yesterday. A Freudian slip?’ she teased archly. I took the red printed bill from her. It was labelled OVERDUE all over it – completely over-done. And it blew my argument for me continuing to oversee the finances completely out of the water. ‘Or have we gone bankrupt overnight?’ A reference to a misogynistic joke I’d made at some boring function she’d coerced me into going to in the name of appearance. I said that if a wife was let loose on her husband’s bank account they’d be bankrupt within days.

‘Funny – and clever – but not true.’ I dropped it on the table. The red print was the same shade as her finger nails. ‘I’ll sort it out later – when I’ve got time.’

She came round behind me and ran her finger nails through my hair. It had an odd effect on me, making me excited and yet want to squirm simultaneously. If she’d been less cool, less clever – less perfectly manicured – I might have wanted to take her back to bed. But I didn’t. As soon as the urge clicked on, her cool perfection flicked it back off. You didn’t romp with my wife, you admired from afar.

‘But you don’t have time – poor darling. Why don’t I sort it out – all of it?’ It was easier to agree than repeat the argument again. She was like that – Margaret. Wore you down without you understanding how, until she was in control of everything, and you in control of nothing – probably not even yourself. The Lawrence Juste I’d perceived as being totally aloof and utterly self-contained had over the years gradually abdicated power thus without really knowing the woman behind the silk and sophistication, or what her innermost motivations were.

I suppose we never really know anyone fully – even ourselves. There is always some unexpected reaction, some unanticipated emotion which can trip us up when we least expect it. My feelings about this case, the boy and his social worker, were seeming to be of that ilk for me. I hardly dare attempt to categorise what my feelings about Win and his part in my past life might turn out to be. For the moment though, they were suspicion. Danny’s revelations about his mother’s involvement with the man he’d called the tallyman and his cronies had sounded warning alarms. The similarity of the name could simply have been coincidence, but someone answering to the description of Win turning up at Chambers made that increasingly unlikely. I wanted time to think through how to deal with him and I certainly didn’t want the case notes to be readily to hand if he became violent or wanted to know what I perceived his involvement to be.

Sidling upstairs, I mentally thanked the nod to old-fashioned values by retaining the plush stair carpet Jeremy had insisted on. It deadened my step and allowed me to make it to my office without being remarked on by any of my colleagues, despite Heather’s door being ajar and the sickly perfume of lilies spilling from it, and Francis’ being flung wide open to allow the stink of his cigarillos to battle the lilies. Francis was on the phone, bent deep over the desk as he listened to the plaintiff on the other end, absent-mindedly tapping non-existent ash off the end of the current cigarillo, already almost consumed to its butt. There was no sign of Heather, other than her robes draped elegantly across the client’s chair opposite her desk, and Jeremy I already knew was in court. I edged past both open doors and through my own with a sigh. Shutting the door to my sanctuary, I pulled the blind down to darken the room. For more than the stealth of my entrance, I was glad Chambers had retained its other century grandeur even if it had divested itself of its old reputation for fiasco. The velvet of the blind was heavy and felt satisfyingly opulent, falling into rounded folds. Involuntarily I thought of Kat again and had to shake my head to clear it of her. I crossed to my desk and perched behind it. Its squat solidity grounded me.

Win.

I knew a little of what he’d done after he’d left prison. Apprehension had encouraged me to keep tabs on him for a while but that had tailed off to complacency as the years passed and so had the stream of information about Win’s criminal career. He’d had a few early periods of gainful employment – miscellaneous jobs with euphemistic titles such as ‘security personnel’ or ‘debt enforcement operative’ – but I knew as well as any that he was merely a glorified bouncer at best – or at worst, a gang boss’s heavy. The last photo I’d seen of him was in his mid-thirties, the first intimations of corpulence and baldness I’d noticed in the images from his twenties already making him seem much older. The tell-tale scar was still apparent though. Whatever he looked like now, I would know as soon as I saw him if my brother was facing me or not.

Apart from anxiety over the case, what did I feel about him? What did I feel about any of my siblings – or my parents – so far into my past? I’d never asked myself that before. It was alien for me to examine emotions in relation to people – especially people not even currently demanding my attention, but people from a life so long behind me. There wasn’t time to sentimentalise over memories or try to rationalise reasons for actions in order to defend or refute guilt. It had to be an immediate gut reaction – like I’d felt with Kat. The gut reaction to Win was to recoil; fear, guilt and anger all swilling around in the vat of acid that was my stomach. The one I didn’t understand was the anger – until the prospect of his presence was facing me and it all came spilling out – the cellar initiation, the coercion to be part of his gang, the night Tony was stabbed, the blood everywhere – and Jaggers. When I thought of Win, the deep rumbling in my gut also reminded me of all that, and I was angry; with the events that had taken me to the home, with the parents who’d been unable to look after me as child expects to be cared for, and with the brother who’d used me as a pawn in his bid for power.

Before I could dissect and categorise the various culpabilities of the people in my past, the phone rang, vociferous and insistent. I couldn’t avoid answering it – the clamour set my teeth on edge, and it signified something I could no longer avoid however many times I sneaked in the basement and up the stairs. I picked up the receiver and Gregory’s hushed monotone announced that the person who wanted to see me was still downstairs waiting. He didn’t need to ask if I wanted to see him. He had a knack of making it clear what his briefs were expected to do when he went through his charade of asking for an instruction.

‘Send him up. I’m ready for him.’ It was further from the truth than anything I’d ever claimed in my life until then. I sucked in air and tried to be calm, but all the routines Margaret had taught me were useless. The anxiety I balled in my fist ready to fling away remained there, a solid mass of fury. Perhaps having a weapon to hand wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

The door opened slowly and respectfully at first as Gregory maintained his pretence of servility, but the burly figure behind him barged past when the door was just ajar. It bounced back on its hinges and slammed against the wall.

‘So this is where you’ve been hiding, is it?’ I didn’t need to see the scar. The voice was as loud and strident as it had been when he was denying beating up the old woman, and I’d been running away. The sound of the Croydon I remembered – common, coarse and over-loud.

‘I’ve not been hiding anywhere.’

‘What happened to Kenny then if you ain’t been hiding?’

‘Nothing happened to Kenny. He’s fine.’

‘Pah!’ He straightened his shoulders and was about to carry on when he realised Gregory was still lingering behind him, face animatedly interested in the way I knew meant he was waiting for snippets of scandal. Win swung round and gave him the finger. ‘Piss off then,’ he said. Gregory looked at me poker-faced and for a moment incongruously I wanted to laugh and reiterate Win’s instruction. The number of times I would have liked to have said it to him over the years all had their satisfaction in that one haughtily offended but defeated look.

I made do with, ‘You can go Gregory, thank you.’ Briefly my enjoyment was unabated, but then the door closed behind him with an officious click and Win and I were alone. I expected him to start on a stream of abuse and I’d tried to mentally prepare myself for it. It wasn’t that I hadn’t got a good grasp of the language of the gutter – even become used to it. I’d learnt it over the years from the children’s home onwards and through my many kerb-crawling, debased, filth-regurgitating clients – of all sexes and walks. Verbal abuse didn’t bother me, and strangely, I now found, physical abuse didn’t either; even Win didn’t. It was emotion that terrified me.

He stood quietly and pensively studying me; eyes raking my face and assessing my body, posture, clothing. Summing me up. I did the same back. I saw a balding, chronically obese man who appeared to be well into his late sixties, but of course I knew I was a good fifteen years out on that. Perspiring face, florid cheeks and heavy jowls folding over that still intensely white V-shaped indentation. His breathing was laboured. Gregory had obviously made him climb the stairs instead of allowing him the comfort of the lift.

What did he see in me? Composed and in control, professionally distanced, sleek, groomed and urbane, I imagined – whatever churned in the depths of my soul – this stranger who was a brother; until the façade slipped.

‘You’re a slimy little asshole! You set me up and left me to it!’ It was said quietly and calmly but with absolute malice. I let it sink in – the composure surprising me to begin with. Then it registered. His words cut through the pulled blinds and the tumult of confusion and slid a jagged knife across my nerves, severing all control. I’d barely regained some equilibrium from the disturbing sensations Kat had awoken in me before I’d had Win’s appearance thrust on me. I wished Kat had come with me from the police station instead of marshalling her real-life child charge and leaving me to face this beast from the past alone. Ridiculous, I knew. I barely knew her and had just coolly told her feelings weren’t involved and here I was wishing she was here to help me with mine. Who or what was Lawrence Juste now? I sensed I was about to start finding out.

‘And you’re a manipulative bastard.’ To me my voice sounded cool and unconcerned. In my hand, the fist of fury tightened and in my chest my heart attempted to break through my ribs.

‘What? You’re the one who fucked me over!’

‘And you’re the one who allowed his brothers to be abused to achieve his own ends. You sacrificed Georgie to the pushers and you sacrificed me to Jaggers. Did you ever bother to find out what he did to me to force me into a situation where it I would rather betray my own brother than face what he would do to me next? And did you ever bother to find out who got Georgie hooked and then kept him there? You had the power, Win. You were head of the Winners – you could have headed off the pushers and kept me and Georgie – your little brothers – out of your gang wars altogether, but you didn’t. You were too concerned with feathering your own nest, getting what you wanted and we were just the tools to help you get it. Well, Georgie found his own escape and I had to find mine. You became the weapon of your own destruction.’

I wanted to say more, tell him how terrified I’d been in the cellar, waiting for the rats to gnaw me to shreds, how disgusted I’d been with myself after Jaggers had violated me, how uneasy every day of my life in that home had been, wondering whether I would be beaten up, coerced or abused, and how I’d looked to him for safety – bigger, stronger, more confident. I didn’t. What was the point if he hadn’t already seen that for himself? I was tired – tired of pretence, of waiting and watching, of trying to be someone I wasn’t, of never stumbling or admitting to weakness and finding someone there to help me up again. He didn’t reply. His face was frozen in a mask of surprise. I wasn’t sure if it was surprise I’d argued back, or surprise because he hadn’t thought about any of it before.

‘What did he do to you?’ His voice was raw.

‘Do you really need me to describe it?’ I asked bitterly.

He hesitated. ‘Naw.’ I almost didn’t hear it. We stared at each other. I shrugged.

‘It’s in the past now, Win. Let’s say we’re quits.’ I wanted this over with. He made me sick to look at him. His mouth worked and then sagged at the corners.

‘Georgie died last year,’ he volunteered. It wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear but I wasn’t surprised.

‘Drugs?’

‘Hepatitis or something like that. They said it were dirty needles.’

I thought of Georgie and his dreamy expression – limpid blue eyes far away in another world he must have found better. Maybe it was. Maybe he was there right now, and it was a world of dreams, not nightmares. The pounding in my chest twisted into a hard knot at the thought I would never see Georgie again. The kind of sadness I should have felt for Margaret.

‘Who was it?’ Win asked abruptly.

‘What?’

‘Got him hooked?’

‘One of your cronies, I should think – or one you were fighting with. I don’t know. All I know is they only targeted him to get at you. One less in your army.’

‘It weren’t my fault.’

‘Not directly, but it was because of you and you just didn’t bother to think about it – or us. I was in the wrong letting you take the rap for the old woman. Maybe I should have told someone later that it was Jaggers, but you seemed to be getting on OK, in your own way, so I got on in mine.’

‘I thought you’d set it up together.’

‘I had no idea he was going to beat her up. I thought he was just going to get you into trouble for snatching the bag so you’d be out of his way quicker than having to wait for you to finish school. He was impatient.’

‘He said it were your idea.’

‘He said what? When?’

‘Don’t matter.’

‘It does to me.’

‘Well, it ain’t your business, is it Mr Clever Barrister Boy? It’s mine and I’ll sort it.’

‘Is it anything to do with why you’re here?’

‘I came to see what my little brother Kenny’s been up to, didn’t I?’

‘Kenny’s fine but he’s not here anymore. I’m Lawrence now. Kenny was my past – you are my past.’ He shifted awkwardly and I wondered if supporting such bulk was tiring. I could have offered him a seat but that would have been like inviting him to stay. ‘Why now though?’

‘Why what now?’

‘Coming to see me.’

‘Why not now?’

‘If you’d wanted to find me you could have easily done so years ago. Why wait until now.’

‘That’s my business.’

‘Well it’s mine too.’ Ironically it seemed it wasn’t the misdeeds of years ago that were going to set us at each other now, but something present day. Something Win didn’t want to tell me about. His chin jutted like it had always done when we were children and one of us had disagreed with his leadership.

‘I came to see if you were who I thought you were, that’s all. Now I know.’

‘And? Win, there has to be a reason for that. You don’t suddenly get curious after thirty-five years of not being bothered.’ I waited. The V-shaped scar contracted and expanded again as he swallowed.

‘I have me reasons, but ...’

For all his bluster and bulk he seemed weaker than me. I could have asked what his life had been like then, I suppose – really like. I could have reached across the abyss and grasped his hand. I could have described my path and why I’d taken it, and listened to an account of his. I almost wanted to. I almost wanted my family back, and yet the old associations still hung round me like a shroud waiting to engulf me whenever I allowed myself to remember. Like the boy, Win brought all the memories flooding back, all the misery and uncertainty, all the sick fear that had lain in the cavity of my chest where there should have been joyfulness. I felt the breath being expelled from my lungs, almost as if it was being sucked out of them and with it the noxious fumes of my childhood fear. My head spun and I felt suddenly empty. Inside was a void, waiting. The anxious child entering the children’s home still sat in my place at the desk but the man observed from across the divide. I heard myself speaking without it being me, but I let the man take over whilst the child adjusted to the void.

‘Then I think it’s time you explained them.’ Win shuffled his feet as if to spread the weight. The perspiration on his forehead stood out in small round globules, even in the murky light of the darkened room.

‘The kid.’ I waited. He cleared his throat. ‘He reminds me of you and then all of a sudden there you are, defending him. It were like a sign that I ought to see what you turned out like and then decide what to do about the kid.’

‘The kid? Danny Hewson?’

‘Danny, yeah.’

‘How do you know Danny?’ I’d already guessed. It was obvious. Win was a tallyman. The one with the V. He didn’t answer. I tried another approach. ‘OK, what did Mrs Harris owe you?’

‘Who?’ He looked genuinely confused.

‘Mrs Harris, the old lady that Danny has been accused of killing.’

‘Oh, her.’ He looked disinterested and disinclined to say any more.

‘You didn’t know her then?’

‘Nah.’

‘So you’re not the tallyman Danny talks about?’

‘Tallyman?’ He was mystified. ‘I ain’t no tallyman, and I don’t know the old gel – only what happened to her.’ I believed him. So who was the tallyman? Was Danny confused? If the tallyman with the scar wasn’t Win, who was he? And why had Win felt the need to confront me and yet back down so quickly when he had every right to be as angry with me for my part in his incarceration all those years ago as I was with him for my abuse? Now it was my turn to be mystified. I wanted to press him about it but I knew him of old and his belligerent expression told me all too clearly he wouldn’t be pressed any further on this point. I decided to play the disinterest card.

‘Well, you’ve satisfied your curiosity now and seen who and what I am. Do we have any more business to settle between us?’ He gaped at me, all pretence at aggressor disintegrating.

‘You’re a cold bastard, aren’t you? Don’t you want to know about any of your kin?’

‘I don’t know. Do I?’ On reflection it was as much a question of myself as him. Probably, in the furthest depths of the child who still lived inside the man, I did. I still wanted to be bossed by Sarah and Binnie, gently teased by George, and hero-worshipped by Pip and Jim. I even missed Mary, even though I’d ignored her most of the time – as we all had. Most of all, I missed Ma. I didn’t know how to say that. Nor did I want to say any of it to this obnoxious bully-boy who couldn’t ever be my brother. As individuals we were too far apart. But unexpectedly, curiosity was too great. ‘Tell me then. Tell me how Georgie died to start with.’

‘Told you. That blood thing.’

‘Hepatitis. When was it diagnosed?’

‘Eh?’

‘When did he become ill?’

‘Dunno. He went yellow. Looked like a Chinky when I saw him. I had to identify him for the coroner. I hadn’t seen him for a while by then. He were living in a squat in Brighton – not far from the home. He went his own way, if you know what I mean – gays and the like, though I don’t think he were.’ I pictured the depravation my brother must have known; the demise of spirit and soul before he succumbed to collapse of the body. I hated Win then with a hatred I couldn’t control or quench. If I’d had sufficient strength and lack of dignity I would have pummelled his brutish pug face, hammered his useless flabby gut, battered him to a pulp for letting our sweet-faced dreamer of a brother become the base drug-ridden addict he’d had to ID; yellow and shrivelled on a mortuary slab. His face twisted momentarily in a caricature of grief. ‘I wish I hadn’t seen him like that,’ he added sadly. Despite my ire with him we shared a moment of joint tribute – to the brother we’d lost and the childhood we’d mislaid. Our mutual silence muffled the sounds of the world around us and locked us into our mutual tragedy. I broke it when it became too intimate. I didn’t want intimacy with this thug.

‘What about the others?’

‘The gels are still around. I can put you in touch with them if you want. Don’t know how they’d take to you. Ain’t been easy for them and you’ve got pots of money you ain’t sharing. One of the boys bought it out in the Falklands. The other’s a bit doolally since – but OK when he ain’t pissed. Mary’s in a home. She’s a bit screwy still – it’s called something but I can’t remember what. All right some days though.’ I held my breath and waited to hear whether Ma and Pop were still around. Ma would be in her eighties if she was. Win faltered. ‘Do you want to see them?’

‘Maybe. What about our parents?’

‘Pop went a while ago – a stroke. Ma, no. Sarah could tell you all about her.’ The decision was made with that statement. Come one, come all. I had a question to ask Ma, if I still could – one the boy inside had wanted to ask all through the long years of waiting and surviving. The same one Danny had asked me and I had asked him. Why? Even if you couldn’t stop us being taken, why didn’t you get us back?

Margaret had provided me with all the addresses. It wasn’t that I needed facts. I needed permission and I needed absolution. I reached into the desk drawer and flung a legal pad and a pen onto the desk and gestured to them. ‘You can write their contact details on that, and if you’ve nothing else to tell me you can go.’ He flung me a look of disgust but scribbled down some addresses and phone numbers nonetheless, and then flung the pad and pen back at me. I looked at it peremptorily and then pushed it to one side. There was one more than on Margaret’s list, but I was loathe to ask Win about it. Something about it was ringing other alarm bells anyway.

‘By the way, you never said when Jaggers told you I was responsible for setting you up?’

‘Why?’

‘I just wondered. It can’t have been long ago otherwise you would have come looking for me sooner.’

‘Nonce,’ he enunciated clearly, looking straight at me. I laughed disdainfully.

‘Sticks and stones, Win. I’m long past being hurt by words now.’ But again, I was lying. He left without replying.

11: Hidden Agendas

The addresses Win had written down were the same as the ones Margaret had bequeathed me, including presumably the squat Georgie had been living in. There were none for Ma on either list. I put the list in my top drawer next to the one Margaret had written and locked the drawer. For the moment I was too shaken up by the encounter with Win to face any more emotional upheaval. I sank back in the outsized office chair which so perfectly matched the overdone opulence of Chambers and allowed it to envelop me. Increasing age can be ignored most of the time when still in what the papers laughingly call your ‘prime’ but stress and trauma strip away the ability to resist vulnerability. My ‘prime’ had been sorely tested by revisiting the past. I felt every ache of middle age now. If Kat could see me as consumed by weariness as I was now, would she still think me the ‘best’?

I closed my eyes and tried to blot everything out whilst I waited for some modicum of the energy that had been drained from me to seep back in. The noise of the clerks and the everyday hubbub of business was muffled by the heavy office door and the blanket of genteel respectability the décor and manners of its inhabitants afforded. I remained cocooned in my complex world of confusion, listening for nothing, relieved I had no appointments scheduled for that afternoon.

I must have dozed after a while. The early afternoon sun, poking its way through the heavy drapes, had sweated itself down to a watery early evening haze by the time I roused myself fully, mouth as thick and foul as the bottom of a bird cage and back rigid from slumping awkwardly in sleep. It was quiet and I wondered if everyone had gone home, leaving me there – solitary survivor of the day. I eased myself from behind the desk and walked stiffly to the door. Win had closed it firmly behind him and it had wedged shut. It gave the impression of being locked unless you pulled it hard so Gregory probably thought I was still engaged in conversation, or had even gone home. Heather’s room was empty, the lilies still flooding the landing with their perfume, and Francis’s ash storm had settled for the night. Jeremy’s door was shut and the junior’s room was abandoned. I looked at my watch. It was six forty-five. They would all have gone home by now – even Gregory, Head Clerk and master of the domain. I felt at once lonely and at peace.

I walked back along the corridor, savouring having the building to myself and intending to merely go back to my room and think unhurriedly through the events of the day when I remembered where I’d left the case notes. I retraced my steps and went silently downstairs. Normally one would have expected an empty building to feel hollow, forlornly echoing its departed resident’s noise. The soft furnishings of Chambers seemed designed to deaden all sound and all sense of life once business was done for the day. Only I and the trapped fly buzzing desperately against the clerks’ window remained of the daily battle between right and wrong. The clerks’ office was piled high with the latest briefs awaiting distribution, pink ribbons festooning the mountain like a miniature celebration. The post out trays lay empty, like a row of open mouths announcing their surprise at what had passed through them. Margaret still had a tray allocated to her even though she’d officially left Chambers when we’d married. Her unofficial extra-curricular duties as champion of lost causes and social wheel-oiler for me had more often than not benefited Chambers too by enhancing our reputation as respected icons of society, so her place here was permanent, if informal.

The tray had lain empty for several days now the first flurry of post-mortem correspondence had been intercepted and prohibited by Gregory in his crusade to protect me from the added burden it represented. Only my clerk had been allowed routine access and he was as useless as an already licked stamp. Momentarily my feelings towards Gregory softened to gratitude and something even akin to affection, miserable prying bastard though he could be. Odd that it now had a large manila envelope protruding from it – both in that it had arrived and managed to bypass both Gregory and my clerk, and that Gregory hadn’t officiously mentioned it to me and tried to peer over my shoulder as I opened it. I collected it en route to the basement.

Entering via the back door was nerve-racking enough during the daytime when Chambers was humming with perky admin staff shuffling papers and clerks jibing and vying with each other for cases on behalf of their briefs. The camaraderie and competitiveness between them had always amused me. Now, with the hush of the deserted building creeping after me like an assassin targeting its quarry, I was unnerved. It was the similarity to descending the steps to the cellar that came back to haunt me every time – hence the reason I used the way in even more rarely than any of my colleagues. As with Win, it wasn’t fear that terrified me, it was the emotion of fear itself.

I clicked all the light switches on at the head of the stairs and clattered down them as if creating so much noise would ward off unseen terrors. The case folder was still wedged where I’d hidden it, back cover bent at the corner where I’d rammed it into its hiding place in my haste to reach the bolthole of my office. I pulled it out and flattened the cover, smoothing it back into place and ruffling the thin post-it note stuck to the inner edge of a sheet inside as I did so. I must have missed it earlier – how could I have done that? Usually I was so thorough – Margaret had always teased me that it was one of my virtues, even after sex. I’d never been sure at the time whether she was teasing me or it was a genuinely meant compliment. Now I suspected it had been a private joke for her – and not necessarily particularly flattering to me.

The bulging cabinet I’d forced the case notes behind grumbled at being disturbed and the creaking spooked me. I made the stairs two at a time, feeling the nip of rat teeth and the shiver of pursuit clutching at my spine until I was able to turn on myself at the head of the stairs and see nothing but my own long shadow trickling down into the gloom at the bottom. I clicked the lights off and stepped backwards into the reception area, closing the door securely on the terrors of childhood, basement and imagination. The rats could stay down there in the dark. I intended living in the light.

I went more casually back to my office and flicked the desk lamp on as a precaution against the dusk. It was now past seven and although it would probably stay daylight until almost ten, I couldn’t quite shake the sensation of not being alone. I put the folder and the letter side by side on the desk and rummaged in the left-hand drawer for my letter opener. Damn! I’d forgotten I hadn’t been able to find it since Margaret had died. I slammed the door shut with irritation, making the desk shudder. The envelope bounced lightly on its surface, demanding my attention ahead of the case notes. I didn’t really want to have to read some gushing invitation from a grateful charity begging Margaret to grace their party/soirée/dinner with her presence. I was tempted to ignore it and leave it in Gregory’s pigeon hole as I left but there was an air of officialdom in the grandiose flourish of the logo across the franking stamp of the post mark.

Finding Futures for Families it proclaimed. FFF. I remembered the initials. It was emblazoned on the banner Margaret had posed in front of for the portrait shot on my desk at home, wearing the red and black road-kill dress. It struck me then how many of her charitable pursuits revolved around families – MADU – Mums and Dads Unite, a charity dedicated to family reunion, Children Without Boundaries – adoption resources for couples adopting foreign children, FFF of course, and Casualties of War, which until then I’d assumed was to do with forces families. I soon found otherwise. Inside the envelope was a full explanation of what both FFF and Casualties of War did – one I assumed that Margaret wouldn’t have intended me to have become acquainted with until quite some time later if she’d had the chance. FFF was essentially an adoption agency. Casualties of War not dissimilar in a way, other than that it sourced the potential goods to supply for adoption whereas FFF located the potential customers and put the product and purchaser together. Margaret supported both not only as a patron, but also as a potential client it seemed, from the paperwork that lay underneath the covering letter.

I remembered our exchange over Danny Hewson’s case when I’d first attempted to reject it without even looking through the folder.

‘Do I have a choice?’ She hadn’t replied, just tapped the headed paper meaningfully. She’d had me there. Of course I didn’t. Grease the palms, lick the arses, climb the slippery pole. I’d done it all my life to get to here. One last push and I’d be at the top. Didn’t I want to appear the right man for the job to the LCD, she’d pointed out coolly.

‘You can’t simply be a money machine all your life, Lawrence. One day you have to be more than that. A presence – a force. A person with a purpose.’

I’d looked hard at her at that, but it seemed to be no more than a way of pushing me onwards in my career, not a personal judgement. Prove my subscription to the cause of justice for all, and earn valuable points with my political masters who were the real arbiters of how justice was meted out and by whom, she’d concluded. But a legal aid case, and now? She simply raised her eyebrows meaningfully and as she was generally right I’d bowed to her judgement, read the summary – and then recoiled in horror.

Now I realised I should have paid more attention to her intense interest in the cause she was championing even though I said no, absolutely, finally and irrevocably. She never did anything for nothing, unless it was for me, but this time, it didn’t seem to be for me at all – quite the reverse. Now I could see who it had been intended for, just still not why.

The thin set of papers, carefully bound together under the covering letter – and intended to be inserted in the case folder where the post-it beckoned – were the preliminaries to adoption. The boy’s name had already been inserted, but the space for the adoptive parents names had been left blank. In the case notes the fluorescent blood-orange post-it note waved at me like a red flag, and I the bull it was aggravating. I turned the notes on their side and read the instruction on the post-it.

‘Insert adoption papers here.’

I flipped the notes open to the page before the post-it. It was a summary of the boy’s defence, identifying the fact that he had little or no chance of him pleading not guilty and it sticking, unless some other mug confessed, or an alternative culprit identified. I had to reluctantly agree, but that was what Kat and I were going to work on, wasn’t it? Underneath was a summary of the family background, and the mother’s statement that she found it difficult to cope with her large family, especially Danny, who was a law unto himself. There little about the father, other than his general air of absence. There was a large red ink star cross-hatched next to the mother’s statement and a c.f. note. I hadn’t checked up on the c.f. note yet. It had been going to be my next task – to track the references and weave in the other statements to check for inconsistencies or leads. It seemed it might be wise to track this particular note and see where the trail led right now.

At the back of the folder was a list of c.f. notes and this one – number five – related to a proposal from FFF, but not what it was. It said ‘see additional papers being obtained by MJ. Counter proposal when defence fails’. Margaret Juste, obviously. And I was probably holding the papers in my hand right now. So Danny was up for adoption because he was beyond parental control. More fairly, he was also unduly disadvantaged by his inappropriate parenting. The reasoning was clear, though. If – or when – all else failed, this was his get-out. Find Danny a new home with adoptive parents prepared to be bound over as responsible for his future good behaviour whilst a minor and he would probably be given his second chance, or at the least, a considerably reduced sentence.

A clever ruse, but who were the prospective parents? I puzzled over it as there were no other notes. Margaret clearly had a clever plan in mind – the hidden agenda. What – or who – the hell was it? And why saddle me with the problem? Then it struck me. I was such a fool. More devastating than the hit and run which had crushed the life from her, more dismal than the childhood nightmare that had crushed the love from me, was the plan Margaret had been steadily putting in place. The plan to create her own family for the future. How the hell she’d been going to do it and get away with it, I had yet to work out, but the names intended to be inserted into the blank spaces were most probably hers and mine.

12: The Case for the Defence

It wasn’t a plan. Not one I would ever follow anyway. A small ungracious part of me congratulated myself on escaping it as a result of Margaret’s death, and then was disgusted. No matter how much I abhorred the idea of fatherhood or facing a child who was more a ghost from the past than myself, it could never be worth another’s death. I slung the case folder and the papers from FFF onto my desk and slumped back in my chair again, sinking into the same sense of depression and pointlessness as had plagued me so many times as a child. I’d not felt so low in a long time – not even straight after Margaret’s death. The need to keep going then had made the adrenaline pump and ironically, if anything, I’d been on a high – glibly fielding press and personal enquiries and soaking up the sympathy that had been lavished on me whilst it was fashionable to do so. Dealing with the boy’s case had also distracted my attention from the reality of the event.

Maybe this was grief, then? Grief, they say catches up with you later – like secrets. Maybe I was grieving for Margaret, annoyed as I was with her for the mess she’d deliberately landed me in. I allowed the idea to sink in, exploring what grieving might feel like. It was difficult to decide since I wasn’t sure I’d ever grieved before. I wasn’t even sure I’d even felt before.

Feelings. Everyone talked about them all the time – you’ve hurt my feelings, I feel you don’t like me, how do you feel? That one had been sent my way a lot recently. How do you feel, Lawrence? Are you feeling OK? Don’t deny your feelings ... I hadn’t a clue what mine were. The only person who hadn’t bombarded me with questions about feelings was Kat. Indeed, she’d been more concerned about her feelings than mine, but she was probably the only person who had engendered feelings in me. And that was it. As soon as I thought about her, my mind was full again and I had the uncomfortable feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to eject her easily. So had I felt the same way about Margaret? The only possible answer was ‘I didn’t know’. When I thought about her the mix was of regret, anger, betrayal and bewilderment. This couldn’t be grief for losing one I loved, it was shock; shock, dismay, confusion and most of all, at the moment – defiance. I would not be walked into the trap she had laid for me – the parent trap. I couldn’t avoid concluding the case for the boy, and I couldn’t avoid my responsibility to do the best job possible for him – which unfortunately would include examining Win’s role in the proceedings more closely. But I would conclude it my way.

If I was going to face Win for a second time, I knew it couldn’t be Kenny who faced him. It had to be Lawrence – and a Lawrence who’d faced his demons. I’d surprised myself by facing him the first time, but it had drained me and I knew I couldn’t have faced him again if he’d walked back through the door minutes after he’d left. The little rat teeth in the cellar couldn’t be allowed to gnaw away at my foundations any longer. I had to finally and irrevocably grow up and leave the past I thought I’d left behind with my childhood fears. I allowed the insidious creeping dark of the past into full view and there, with only the shadows for company, I took a long look at the man Kenny had become – and the child he’d grown out of.

He was a strange mix, that man – pieced together from a ragbag of life – the feelings I’d avoided and the outward trappings I’d adopted. Maybe we’re all patchworks, slowly adding to the pattern, piece by piece – some frayed, some neatly sewn, some brightly coloured and some dull and faded from over-use. I’d shied away from the unravelling edges of part of my patchwork – the tattered sense of loss and failure in childhood – and focused only on the pristine right-angled squares; the years of control and success being the man I wanted to be. Lawrence Juste, QC. But those symmetrical squares nevertheless bordered the rough and ragged. One day, without firmer sutures, they would become unstitched and lost, and the needlework had already been unravelling for decades.

I filed the FFF papers where Margaret had indicated they should go, and stuck my own post-it across them. ‘NFA’ it said. No further action. Oh, no, my dear. This patchwork man has his own design – maybe haphazard and uncertain as yet, but being added to all the time, and the first square is right now.

The odd thing about finally facing yourself is that whilst it’s humiliating to own your failings and accept your weaknesses, it also ultimately makes you more confirmed in your convictions. I wasn’t just Lawrence, I was still also Kenny – and it was no bad thing that Kenny had been afraid, had betrayed and had escaped, because Kenny also understood. Ironically, whilst Lawrence didn’t, he did have those feelings everyone talked about and never displayed. I stayed in Chambers all night, gradually fleshing out what I needed to know to determine what had engendered that uneasy feeling I’d had when I’d first read the case notes and thought that there was something I was missing. I now suspected it was something Win had in my patchwork design, but without talking to him again, I couldn’t see what it was.

I spent half the night cross-referencing all the c.f. notes until I’d placed FFF, Casualties of War and Margaret into their structural positions. Her hidden agenda remained what I’d thought it to be when I’d first inserted the FFF documentation into the file. It was a very feminine one, and try as I might, I couldn’t hate her for my part in it. All those charitable works, all those subtle steers in favour of children’s organisations, all that kudos as the ‘caring wife’ of Lawrence Juste had all been to get her to the position she was in just before the joy-rider trampled her into the dust. She was at the pinnacle of her plan, cleverly balancing my respectability and position in the news as the lawman of the people with her persona as the Madonna of the abandoned. I was to have been manoeuvred into taking Danny’s case. He couldn’t win – there was too much evidence against him – and the great Lawrence Juste would have knowingly accepted a case he had no chance but to fail miserably with. My partners would fume at me for ruining our straight win record over recent years when his ever-loving wife privately came up with a triumphant solution to solve both professional and personal failings; the adoption ruse. The support of public opinion would have been immense. The childless couple saving a child. Both she and I would be heralded as saints. If I didn’t agree, there was always the little matter of all those names and dates and places to ruin me with ...

And if that didn’t persuade me, then there was still Win – and perhaps something more that lurking just behind him.

It was so neat I wanted to laugh out loud. Margaret was certainly a good pupil. She’d obviously listened carefully to everything I’d told her over the years – how the evidence had to stack up, the witnesses dovetail, the public applaud. Oh, she’d orchestrated it all perfectly and I would have been played like a hapless sap if she’d still been alive. I had to admire her, but now with so much of it already in place and me having heedlessly followed the gingerbread trail she’d left so far, I also had to foil her. Danny’s odd response when Kat let slip that my wife had just died drifted back to me as my mind feverishly turned over the possibilities. ‘She were nice.’ It implied he’d met Margaret. When? As part of the lead-in to the adoption process? If so had it been an informal meeting, or one engineered by Margaret without admitting the reason why? In fact how far along was the process? I rummaged through the case papers again until I found the FFF paperwork I’d so dismissively filed away. There was no intimation of how far things had progressed in real terms in the accompanying letter, just thanks to Margaret and the social worker for making so much progress on the case.

The social worker.

It was close to 6.30am by then – too early to reasonably ring anyone on business, unless it was personal business. I made myself a strong black coffee before the hyperactive hum of office girls and last night’s dates filled the poky staffroom on the ground floor behind the clerks’ office, and slunk back to my office. Gregory would be the first one in and I certainly wanted to avoid his hawk eyes, with my five o’clock shadow and greyed complexion. I drank the coffee whilst it was still too hot, letting the bitter burn fire up the antagonist in me, rehearsing over and over what I was going to say. The numerals of the clock on the desk slowly slipped round to 9.00 and I picked up the phone to Kat and called the direct-dial number she’d given me.

‘Mid-West Social Services, Katrina Roumelia speaking – how can I help you?’ It was early-morning sing-song and I knew my attack would take her completely off-guard.

‘Probably more than you’ve been doing so far.’ The sound of a sharp intake of breath was followed by silence at the other end of the phone so I followed through. ‘Perhaps you can fill me in with the progress on Danny’s adoption so far?’

‘Oh.’

‘Is that all you have to say?’ I offered no mercy. ‘Your case notes seem to have an awful lot more in than mine, Miss Roumelia.’ I could sense her flinch at the formality.

‘Lawrence ... Mr Juste,’ she stumbled, ‘Um, oh dear – I don’t know what to say. Can we talk?’

‘I thought that’s what we are doing right now?’

‘I mean, face to face.’

‘Would it make a difference to the amount of facts I am given – as opposed to the fairy-tales?’

‘I haven’t made anything up, really.’

‘Maybe not – but you have left an awful lot out and that makes for a different kind of fiction, doesn’t it?’

‘I’m sorry. With your wife dying like that, it seemed as if it would all come to nothing anyway, so it didn’t seem worth saying anything to you. I thought it would just make it all worse ...’

‘The truth rarely makes things worse,’ but even as I said it I knew it was a lie.

‘Can we talk about it, please? I’ve got no appointments until this afternoon. I could slip out whenever it suited you.’

I suppose I could have continued the game. The old Lawrence Juste would have – toying with the target until they snapped under the strain; but this was more than a target. No, this was something other than a target. This was a woman who did strangely incredible things to my sense of self, whilst also withholding information that could crucify me.

We met at the coffee shop down the road from her office. I didn’t want to be seen with her near Chambers, and definitely not in the state I was in, but I’d forgotten that by the time I was sitting at the shabby table with another overly-strong and unappetising coffee in front of me. She slipped in opposite and gave me a rueful grin.

‘You look awful.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve caused that.’

‘You and Margaret. What was going on?’

‘It was the back-up plan – just in case, although Margaret was certain you’d take the case and win it. You’re the best.’

‘So you keep saying.’ It sounded more like a grunt than a comment.

‘You are! Whatever you look like,’ she winked cheekily. I just stared back ice-faced, distilling the kind of cheek that encouraged her to flirt even when she should have felt at a disadvantage –and liking it.

‘You seem to be remarkably unconcerned that you have potentially been involved in a sackable offence – withholding evidence from legal defence and manipulation of official records.’

Her face fell and she shook her head vigorously. The little coils of hair ringletting her face bounced jauntily.

‘No, no – oh God, we always seem to be getting at each other, don’t we? I know I was in the wrong. I promise I won’t keep anything from you in the future. Please can we put it to one side – forget it? I’m playing by the rules with you from now on.’ I was going to push her a little harder until I realised that she wasn’t being flippant. The minx of earlier was safely confined again. I relaxed a little. I could deal with her subdued – a chastened kitten instead of a playful tigress. The fingertips clutching at her coffee cup handle were pinched pink from the pressure exerted. She was nervous. Afraid even. The light-heartedness was an attempt at masking it. I leant back in my chair and scrutinised her. She caught my eye once and then looked steadfastly into the congealing top of her coffee. ‘I really am sorry,’ she added quietly.

‘I don’t understand you, Kat,’ I admitted eventually. ‘I don’t think I believe your explanation, but I can’t see why you are so anxious. I may be an ogre at times but I don’t believe that you think I would deliberately make trouble for you.’

‘I don’t. I think you’re ... No-one was supposed to know about it. It really was the back-up plan.’ She sighed. ‘Your wife was a very persuasive woman, you know.’

‘So you knew her better than you’ve been admitting?’

‘I guess I knew her well enough. At first she was just one of the patrons of some of the charities I had to make a showing at – one of the big-wigs, so I didn’t really have anything to do with her in my lowly capacity.’ She risked a quick glance at me before looking down again, cheeks flushed – that rosy brown that seeps through tawny complexion like a peach skin bruising. ‘It happened gradually, without me really remarking on it to begin with. I’d be allocated to her team on any leafleting campaigns I joined, or invited to go along to the events and dinners that she was at, and eventually developed a nodding acquaintance. Then one day I was offered a free place at a gala fund-raising event if I could fit in some paperwork errands on the charities behalf – or rather Mrs Juste’s part. Of course I agreed. It was like giving me a gold star – being noticed and invited to be involved. She talked to me then – just casually, but for a little longer the next time, then about a particular topic the next. She was nice – a gracious lady.’

I laughed. ‘Oh yes, Margaret was always a gracious lady if you were doing what she wanted you to. What was the twist in the tail then?’

‘Why should there have been one?’

‘Wasn’t there?’

‘Well, yes. After a while. She asked me about children at risk and then about adoption procedures. I suppose I got a little impassioned about it as a subject. It makes me angry.’ She stopped, as if she was about to say something she’d regret.

‘Why does it make you angry,’ I asked, curious at this unusual woman, by turns flirtatious and earnest. Her passion was evident in the sparkling eyes and set of the jaw. I hadn’t ever thought before that social workers actually believed in what they did. I was clearly mistaken.

‘Oh God, you’re going to think me such a mess.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Yes! I don’t want you of all people to think that.’ She faltered again. I waited, turning over the implication of that statement in my mind but without knowing what to do with it. ‘OK, I’m probably past the point of no-return now, I guess. I have a little brother. Not so little now, of course – he’s twenty-five – but he was always in trouble.

From about the age of eight, if it was bad news, it found Alfie. I was at college when it started – trying to get through my ‘A’ levels and on to university. I kind of opted out at the time and left it to my mum to sort out. The trouble was, she didn’t. Couldn’t really. My dad died when I was fourteen and Alfie was five. I don’t think she ever got over losing my dad, and the more trouble Alfie was in, the more she sank into depression until she committed suicide when I was in my second year at uni. By then Alfie was in trouble more than he was out of it and still only eleven or so. He was taken into care because I couldn’t take him on. He ended up in Borstal, then prison, and I hadn’t seen or heard of him in years until about two years ago. I’m ashamed of that, but I can’t change it. Margaret mentioned she’d come across someone by the same surname as me and I knew it had to be Alfie – it’s such an unusual surname, you see – like yours. Anyway, Margaret hadn’t just come across him, she’d come across him up to his old tricks. She said she’d get him fixed up with a first-class brief if I could help her out a bit too.’

‘That’s why I thought I recognised your name.’ I hadn’t realised until then why her surname had been sounding in my head like a klaxon, alongside the risk she presented. I’d thought my response was purely emotional because she made all sorts of other parts of me buzz with alarm too, but that aside, the name had special significance. ‘Heather took your brother’s case, didn’t she? Heather Trinder. She’s one of my partners in Chambers.’

‘Yes. That was when I first came across you. And she won – but I was never quite sure how. It all seemed so cut and dried against him, but Margaret was always sure he’d get off.’

‘I don’t remember the case, only the name.’ Heather hadn’t spoken about it, but I’d known from her expression and the way the pinch lines above her nose had deepened during its currency that she’d been unhappy about it. Her pre-occupation with appearance would never have allowed that unless she’d been too immersed in other anxieties to notice it. Kat gazed at me, dark eyes fixed on mine, delving and prodding like Margaret had into my past.

‘I think the way you said that means something.’

‘I think the way Heather never talked about it means more.’

‘Oh. Didn’t Margaret mention it to you?’

‘No, and that means more still.’

‘I AM worried now.’

‘I think perhaps we both ought to be worried. So what happened next?’

‘Well the start of the adoption procedure through FFF. Margaret organised it though, I just had to sanction the application and then act as go-between.’

‘Go-between who?’

‘I, I don’t really know now. Do you?’

I didn’t know either, but I was sure there was more to what I’d pieced together so far.

‘And pushing the case my way? Whose idea was that?’

‘Margaret’s. She said you were the best, but I already knew that by then.’

‘How?’

She looked embarrassed and the brash young professional became the gawky schoolgirl. ‘I’d been finding out a bit about you in the meantime.’

‘Such as?’

‘I followed some of your cases in court – in the gallery on my days off.’

‘Why?’ I knew I shouldn’t be asking just as I knew the answer was obvious in her downcast eyes and embarrassed expression. I’d never been an object of desire before. The very idea of it was intoxicating, even leaving aside the age and demeanour of my enchantee. I stirred my now cold black coffee and it reminded me of crude oil. Kat mirrored me by toying with her spoon.

‘Do you want another?’ I asked, more to give myself thinking time than anything.

‘Not really.’

‘Shall we go then?’ She nodded, and followed me to the door, although I had no idea where I was proposing we went. Outside she looked as if she was about to cry, but walked alongside me quietly for a few paces before surprising me by bursting out with, ‘I really don’t want you to think badly of me.’

‘I know. I don’t. We all do ill-advised things at times. You did whatever you did with good intentions. You were just manipulated by a smarter operator.’

‘You’re saying your wife was ...’

‘Probably a bit of a bitch at times, in truth, although I’m only just realising that. I’m only just realising quite a lot of things, actually – including how bad I look after a night without sleep or shaving.’

‘I think you look good whatever,’ she ventured shyly. I couldn’t help the smug expression but shook my head deprecatingly anyway – and the crowd in me wanted more, more... She obliged. ‘No, really, I do – you’re, um, distinguished.’ She blushed again. I’d lost count of how many times she’d done that now but it must be some kind of record in such a short space of time. I considered myself objectively from the angles the papers called distinguished. Maybe I’d been overlooking something in myself until now – or Margaret had been subduing it.

‘Apparently that’s what the papers call me, but distinguished at what?’

‘Most things, I would imagine.’ Now she was flirting – I wasn’t such a witless lump that I didn’t get that. Excitement revved in my chest and I could feel my stomach muscles tighten, sending that familiar tingling into my pelvis. Unbelievably I was about to respond in kind – it seemed to come instinctively with her, whether I wanted it to or not – when the reality of the situation brought me to my senses like I stepped under a cold shower. How could I encourage this infatuation when I was the brief on her client’s case and my wife wasn’t even cold in the ground yet? I was the hoar frost, the stricture of winter. I would blight her fruitfulness before it even met the sun. Our relationship had to remain professional as I’d already said. No matter that she made my limbs tingle and my heart lurch.

Yet professional distance had already been destroyed by that non-returnable kiss. Many people worked and fucked together. It was how Margaret and I had first got together, but then look how that had worked out. No. I poured scorn on the possibility of a more personal relationship and stayed within safe bounds.

‘You don’t want to get involved with me, Kat. I’m old damaged goods.’

‘We’re all damaged goods, old or young, Lawrence,’ she reminded me, and the smile was sweeter than I’d seen in years. My resolve gave. There hadn’t been much of it to start with.

‘Kenny,’ I corrected on the spur of the moment.

‘What?’

‘Kenny. My real name is Kenny. Kenneth Lawrence Winston Juss. I dropped the Kenneth after I left the home and adjusted the surname.’ She looked mystified and I wondered why I kept feeling the urge to vomit out my life story when her trustworthiness was so in doubt after this last admission of guilt. I’d spent most of my life struggling to keep it all compacted inside me. Dissecting oneself was one thing but spreading oneself out for slaughter was quite another.

We stopped by the entrance to the park and I looked into the distance at a small figure exercising their dog to shut out those intrusive eyes. It didn’t work. I still wanted to let her in. We walked on and sat on the nearest park bench, the romping dog still enthusiastically retrieving the ball its owner was throwing. Domestic bliss didn’t seem so far out of their reach as it did mine. A pang of envy stabbed through me at their simplistic pleasure. I looked down at my feet and crumpled trousers. I could feel her thoughts winding into my brain like tendrils of a newly growing symbiant. Whichever way I looked, I couldn’t escape her. I wanted her. It was that simple.

The words spilled involuntarily from my mouth – a small history of Kenny until he’d found a new life as Lawrence. Jaggers, I glossed over, describing it merely as physical abuse. Win’s betrayal I combined with my anger at what happened to Georgie and how Win had manipulated both of us. The old judge remained unnamed but became my benefactor. I might want to spill my guts but the truth took some stomaching even for me. I doubted Kat’s more delicate appetite would still find me palatable if she knew all of it. But it was enough to establish something more than desire between us. When I ended my narrative, her arms were around me and my face was wet – and I didn’t care that we were in the middle of the park or that I looked like shit and was old, or that professional distance was non-existent. She murmured against my hair and my face was buried in the softness of her breasts, warm and musky.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right ...’

I imagined my body inside hers and her reassurance inside my head.

I’ve never been able to describe or quantify that elusive emotion the blasé Romeos and trite socialites I’ve remarked on over the years call ‘love’. Being in love, I love you – love – what is it? One of those feelings I’m supposed to have but hitherto have never found. The rest of the day passed somehow – I don’t remember how. Perhaps in love – or some other deep elusive place.

When I woke the next morning in Kat’s tiny flat to trace the downy curve of her cheek as the flush of sleep still cocooned her in paradise, I knew it wasn’t what I’d ever felt for Margaret, in my frozen, boxed way. That had been mechanical at best, business-like at worst – and always unsatisfactory. How could it be other than that? I hadn’t ever bothered to find out anything intimate about her, nor had I allowed her to know anything intimate about me. This – this was so different that the deepest part of the pit of my soul trembled. I was as afraid as the long-ago shepherds must have been looking up at Gabriel and the heavenly host, blinding them with divine intervention. Kat was my divine intervention – soft, brown, gently over-plump – and sweet. She was also inextricably linked to yet another strand of a tale that was becoming increasingly tangled; a dangerously fragile patch in my patchwork that the framework of my pattern could collapse around all too easily. The boy – and why both Margaret and Win wanted to connect him to me.

Why the hell had I slept with her? I’d managed to extricate myself from the faux pas in the interview room only to march right up to the precipice and jump over it. What a fool – letting momentary need for reassurance override control. If I said it enough it would be true: momentary need. For my own sake, I ran before I could fall any further.

Perhaps I am lucky women can be persistent – or stubborn. I was still wondering how to explain my disappearance – having had second thoughts since then – but was about to go into court when she rang. The modernistic beep sounded out of place in the lofty reception area and I hushed it to silence by turning my back on the foyer and burying it in my robes.

‘I’m about to go into court.’ It sounded too terse but I didn’t know how to soften it.

‘Oh, Lawrence, I’m sorry. I’m always getting it wrong.’ I pictured the woeful biting of her bottom lip and downcast face. My heart double-looped. The idiot took over again.

‘No, no – it’s all right – you weren’t to know.’

‘I wondered if you’d had second thoughts and that was why you left. I’d understand if you did. It was stupid – I shouldn’t have encouraged you, I just ... You’re, oh God, I don’t know what I’m doing or saying and I’m just making this worse, aren’t I?’ Self-preservation abandoned me – or maybe found me. I remained silent, neither agreeing or denying and she answered her own question. ‘But I’m being silly. I should have realised you have cases going to trial. Don’t mind me. Are we all right? As colleagues, I mean?’

‘Of course, Kat.’

‘And the rest?’

I could be off the hook – easier even than my clients with the best cut and dried case. Her hesitancy betrayed her vulnerability so clearly. I could retract, climb back up onto the ledge overlooking the precipice and reconsider the way forward – leap or back away. She’d just made either possible without disgrace. I teetered on the edge – unable to simply accept the escape route she offered. Why? The Lawrence of old would have been complacently pleased with such a satisfactory outcome – a bit of meddling followed by rejection without culpability. She was taking that all on herself, this small bruised fruit with the sweet centre and sweeter still after-taste. But I couldn’t. The thing I wanted most in the world, suddenly, was to be back in her bed and thankful I had another chance at defining that indefinable emotion I suspected it was possible to feel – even if fleetingly – the night before.

That moment of choice remains in my memory still, like the memories of childhood – that moment of exquisite indecision. They say when you die all the most pertinent points of your life play back before you – a parade of successes and failures, belief and disbelief. I think that happens when you choose life too. I jumped, welcoming the precipice, the long fall into oblivion and fear, and Kat. There must be life at the end of death – somewhere.

‘We’re fine, Kat. We’re fine, but I shall have to go any moment.’ I left what as undefined. It would become clearer in due course no doubt, and maybe I would be lucid enough to deal with it then.

She swept on delightedly. ‘Oh, oh – that’s OK. I must just tell you though – Danny’s mother has been in touch. She says she has something to tell us, but won’t give me any clues what. She’s being very cagey. Shall I arrange a time for us to go and see her?’

‘Us?’

‘If you want me there.’ She sounded small and uncertain again. So different to Margaret, this little bird with her plush plumage that could burst into colour and then fade to dull brown at the least discouragement. Margaret was the vibrant humming bird, deafening me with her continuous stream of good works, good principles and good lies. So different, and such a relief.

‘I think that would be fine too,’ and I could feel her pleasure buzzing even through the phone. The case was called a few minutes later and I ended the call with that strange vibration still rumbling inside me.

*

Danny’s mother hardly warranted the title. Scrawny and bitch-faced, she chain-smoked through the interview and my chest felt tight and laboured when she left. We were back in the interview room at the station, fan still broken and the cigarette smoke coiling up into a heavy layer waiting above our heads to bear down on us. Kat looked strained but gave me that quick light smile of hers like the sun breaking through clouds and the humming inside me settled into a rhythm. Stupid fool, it whirred, stupid fool. Sod off, I countered.

‘Mrs Hewson, you had something to tell me that might help Danny’s case?’ She looked at me strangely and then looked out of the window and ignored me. For a moment I thought she was going to refuse to reply. Her face closed even tighter in on itself, if that was possible, but she surprised me.

‘Dunno about that, but plod told me I’d be for it if I didn’t cough.’ She turned her head and ended the comment with a cloud of smoke straight into my face. I was caught between coughing and laughing at the irony. I’d never seen humour in my cases before – only irritation and frustration. This would normally have fallen into both categories in the past.

‘What did the police tell you should be reported to me?’

‘Him.’ I shook my head. ‘Him – the tallyman you want to know about. Danny told me you asked.’

‘Ah – what about him?’

‘I know him – or at least the bloke you’ve been calling the tallyman.’ Hardly a revelation. I wanted far more but she simply stubbed out her cigarette and lit another.

‘And does that have a bearing on the attack on the old lady?’

‘Well,’ she glanced shiftily at Kat. ‘If you can’t pay him one way, you pay him other ways – if you know what I mean? Well, we had a bit of a fall-out and he got shitty with me – wouldn’t take payment any other way. Only wanted cash. He said I’d regret it if I didn’t pay up proper.’

‘Did he beat you up, Mrs Hewson? The tallyman, I mean.’

‘Nah, not like that. It were just a bit of a misunderstanding.’

‘And why do you think this has something to do with Danny?’

‘I didn’t say it did. Plod said that.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘While ago.’

‘Before Danny got into trouble?’ She shrugged. ‘What did you fall out over then?’

‘Danny.’

‘What about Danny?’

Nothin’ to do with this.’ She pursed her lips and stared at me.

‘This tallyman – a name would help.’ She shook her head.

‘You’ll have to get that for yourself. I ain’t naming names.’

‘But you know it?’

‘Which one?’

‘Which one? There’s more than one?’

‘Oh, yeah. Take yer pick. They run areas – for the main man.’

‘The main man? Well, how about the specific one you’re referring to – and how they might be involved with Danny’s predicament?’

‘It were just a misunderstanding, but it went too far – that’s all.’

‘He set up the attack? On the old lady?’

‘Yeah, well, maybe.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I didn’t pay up the cash, because he’s a mean bastard, because he likes beating old ladies – I dunno! To get me back in line, I s’pose. He said Danny were meant to just push her over and run with her bag to the other bloke. She’d been to the post office for her pension, see? It was the same amount as me rent. But he came in all fists swinging and she didn’t have a chance. Poor old cow – she weren’t a bad old girl neither.’

‘So why was there the change of plan?’

‘Dunno. We fell out – like I said. But he done the dirty on me and that ain’t fair. Ain’t fair to land the kid with it neither.’

‘The kid – your son, Danny?’

‘The kid – Danny, yeah.’

‘So why are you here telling us this now?’

‘I want you to do something about it – like she was going to.’

‘She?’

‘Margaret.’

‘You knew my wife?’

‘She were going to see Danny all right – she promised me.’

‘When?’

‘Last time I saw her.’

‘And when was that?’

‘About a month ago – just after the mugging. She said she’d got plans and just go with it – whatever they said. It’d be OK. But it weren’t, were it? And now she’s snuffed it – sorry, I knew she was your missus but what about Danny – and the rest of the cash I got to find for him? That was all meant to be sorted too.’

‘Which him is it this time?’

‘The main man.’

‘And who is the main man?’

‘Jesus,’ she lit another cigarette and blew the smoke at me, pulling a face as if I was stupid. ‘Him.’

‘I can’t help unless I know who “him” is, can I?’

‘You’re meant to be the smart one – you work it out.’

‘This isn’t helping Danny much, Mrs Hewson. You say you have something to tell us, and then you tell us nothing. Help me with a hint or two.’ I felt pissed off with her and it showed.

‘I had something to tell you – but not her as well.’ She glowered at Kat. ‘You’ll just get me banged up.’ She stared at Kat and they looked as if they were about to square up against each other.

‘Shall I leave?’ Kat asked stonily.

‘No.’ I wanted to smack Danny’s scrawny bitch of a mother round her fag-ash face, but professional distance did prevail this time. ‘Whatever Mrs Hewson has to tell me can surely be said in front of his social worker, can’t it?’ I looked coolly at the hollow-eyed tart with distaste. We locked eyes and again there was that strange challenging stare.

‘Oh yeah, social worker – yeah. Piss off.’ She got up to go, then seemed to think better of it. ‘All right. Here’s your hints. Posh voice. Put a bag over me head once. I didn’t argue after that. Me brother knows more about him than I do. I did a bit of stuff for him before the kids, now all I do is pay him back. I don’t mess with him unless I have to.’

‘And your brother is?’

‘Win. Talk to Win. I’m not saying no more.’ The shock wave running through me left me nauseous. She picked up her bag and moved towards the door, tottering slightly on her stilettos, taking a cloud of cigarette smoke with her. My head reeled.

‘Wait,’ I called as she was about to leave. ‘You say Win is your brother...’

‘Yeah.’

‘Win who?’

‘You know.’ She made it sound obvious. I calculated her age. She looked early thirties, but worn? Not Sarah, Binnie, Mary or even Jill or Emm – way too young. She was lying – or winding me up.

‘The Win I’m thinking of is a lot older than you. Are you sure?’ Kat watched me strangely. She didn’t know yet who Win was. I’d not named any actual names in my potted history – just mine – but I was going to have to.

‘Me big bruvver. I’m the baby – the last one.’

‘And your surname before you married?’

‘Juss.’ She took a deep drag and replied through a cloud of smoke as she exhaled, smile crooked and sardonic. She left behind the smoke screen. Kat ran after her but I just sat there, allowing the smoke and nausea to enshroud me.

‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ Kat said when she returned after signing Mrs Hewson out.

‘Yes, it’s bad.’ I replied.

‘Do you want to tell me how bad?’ she asked timidly.

‘Not really – but I’d better.’

So I did – not all of it, but enough of the rest of it for Kat to understand just how unsuitable it was for me to still be representing Danny. I gave her the names this time too – Win, Sarah, Georgie, Binnie, Mary, Pip, Jim, Jill, Emm. And the unknown one – who’d just apparently dropped her atomic bomb and left. Far more than I’d ever told Margaret, but then Margaret had gone and found it out for herself. Enough was still too much for her at this point in our relationship, but it was necessary for her to understand. Amazingly it didn’t seem to change her mind about me. I took solace in that, even if the life that had been becoming lighter seemed to descending the steps into the dark of the rat-hole again.

‘I’ll have to go and see them all now.’

‘Them?’

‘My long-lost siblings, and my long-hidden past.’

‘Why – because Danny’s mother claims to be your sister? The one you never met because you were taken to the home, you mean?’

‘Maybe ... possibly.’ The idea was more than distasteful. It was revolting – as was Win. What other monstrosities would I find on the route backwards? ‘But no, because of the man who put the bag over her head. She and Win are just the messengers. He’s the message.’

13: Wild Card

I didn’t have to wait long to find out more from the other messenger. Win appeared on my doorstep two days later as I left for Chambers. In the meantime I’d spent much of my free time thinking mainly about three things; Danny, the list and Kat. The thoughts were by turn bemused, confused and overwhelmed. If I could, I would have fixed on Kat and the exhilarating tumult of emotions she provoked in me, from the beat of passion to the general hum of excitement deep inside my ribcage, despite the risk she also presented. Everything felt fresher and brighter with her on my mind. The birds sang louder, the cut grass smelt sharper, the sky was bluer. The same warm contentedness as of early childhood on a summer’s day suffused me with good humour and optimism.

Then I remembered why and how she was present in my life and my good mood plummeted into the churning morass of unease that formed my stomach. The problem was, I couldn’t think of one without the other playing tag. It was all so inextricably linked there was no separating it. My habitual ability to box things and only examine them when need or desire urged me to seemed to have deserted me with their arrival.

‘Nice gaff,’ he commented, appearing behind me like an apparition. I swung round, shocked to find him mere inches from me, breath stinking. Apart from marvelling at how a cumbersome brute could approach with such stealth, I wondered how he’d got my address. I might be in the public eye but there were some things I’d always managed to keep very private. My home was top of the list with my past.

‘How did you get this address?’ I asked, cool momentarily deserting me.

‘I can get all sorts of things, little brother, including you,’ he laughed. ‘I got plenty of ways of finding out stuff – better even than the filth.’ I consciously controlled the urge to barge past him and walk away. He was right. He knew ‘stuff’ that I wanted to find out about too.

‘So what do you want?’ I asked, with more equanimity.

‘What you offering?’

‘I’m not into games, Win. I played enough of those as a child. Why have you come to see me again?’

‘Seems we both might have things to talk about.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean Jaggers.’

Poker-faced, nevertheless my heart somersaulted as it always did when in a weak moment I thought about him. ‘What about him?’

‘I want to know what really happened.’

‘Information has its price, Win.’

‘Yeah, well.’ He waited, lounging against the wall, blocking my way. The house opened straight onto a cobbled mews, Georgian splendour and all. The price of an expensive address was also no frontage – the big city cost too much to give you the luxury of a garden. I could have backed up and gone in the opposite direction, but I didn’t. I waited, bloody-minded and irritated. He broke before I did. So the hard man wasn’t so hard any more. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in, little brother?’

‘Why would I want to?’

‘Because you wouldn’t want to hear my stuff out in the street where the jocks can hear it too.’ He indicated over my shoulder. There was a man loitering at the far end of the mews. He could have been a hack, or simply a nosy passer-by, but I couldn’t take the chance.

‘Come on then.’ I opened up reluctantly and led him inside as far as the study. He was in no hurry to share the ‘stuff’ I wouldn’t have wanted to hear in public, but I sensed it would come without too much probing. After all, he’d sought me out, hadn’t he? He must badly want to know about Jaggers. I made up my mind that he would have to tell me what I needed to know before I would satisfy his need to know, and began to feel complacent. He picked up the photo of Margaret and studied it. My heart skipped a beat when I realised I’d also carelessly left Danny’s case folder on the desk after leafing through it again last night. I was relieved that the photo seemed to have temporarily distracted Win.

‘Margaret – your missus?’

‘Yes, that was her.’

‘Very upper class.’ It was dismissive, as if upper class was worthless. I felt an unexpected spurt of righteous anger on Margaret’s behalf. Perhaps the first genuine emotion I’d felt about her since she’d died. She might have been what Win scorned as upper class, but I’d never known her to use that privilege in any way other than for others’ benefit. The sheer volume of charity work she’d committed to even before we’d married had spoken for that. It also occurred to me that I wasn’t quite sure exactly what Margaret’s genealogical pedigree was, other than entirely suitable. I took the photo from him and set it back in place, sweeping the folder off the desk as I did so and stuffing it into a drawer.

‘Classy rather than upper class. And she did a lot of good,’ was all I said.

He made a face at me. ‘Interesting. You’ll have to tell her that. I expect she’d like to know her faggot husband thought the world of her.’

I glared at him but resisted a retort. He was just trying to wind me up. Down to business. ‘So now you’ve gained the inner sanctum of my study, what did you want to tell me in it?’

‘Oh, no tea or niceties, little brother?’ He sneered. ‘That’s what you hot-shot lawyers and upper class toffs do, isn’t it? Drink tea and toss each other off.’

‘I’m not a lawyer, I’m a barrister, and I don’t toss anyone off. I do sometimes get pissed off, though, and you’re making me that right now. What do you want?’

‘So you don’t remember her then?’

‘Remember who?’

He changed tack suddenly. ‘Do you want to see what they look like now?’

‘Who?’

‘Who?’ He spat it at me. ‘Your brothers and sisters, you nonce.’ It was all I could do not to take him by the scruff of the neck and heave him out of the front door, prowling hack, or no, but Atticus prevailed. Sticks and stones. Keep your dignity, stay with your plan. Find out what it is he’s itching to tell you and then get him out of your life. Instead I replied laconically, perching on the edge of the desk and barricading it from further attack by him.

‘And how am I going to see that?’ In answer he produced his wallet and pulled out a wad of photographs.

‘Call me sentimental, if you like, but I keep them all here. There’s the twins.’ Two carefully groomed women in their mid-thirties peered back at me. One rather more over-done than the other.

‘Jill and Emm?’

‘Yeah. Jill’s still all right. Emm’s a bit hoity-toity. Told me to call her Emilia now she’s a businesswoman.’ I assumed the overdone one was probably Jill in that case. The face I allocated to Emm was sleekly coiffed and stylish, rather than obvious. The plump toddlers I’d indulgently tickled and prodded until they squealed with laughter whilst avoiding their podgy retaliations were far removed from these two strangers. Pink-cheeked, wispy-headed and with rose buds for mouths, you take cherubic charm for granted when you are merely a child yourself, intent only on the tumble of boyish mischief and avoiding Pop’s belt. The vast gap of not only years but shared experience hit me as I looked at the two women who meant nothing to me. I handed him back the photo and he replaced it with another. I didn’t need to ask – it had to be Binnie. I could see the same dimple in her cheek. The one I’d always annoyed her by poking at until she slapped at my fingers and called me a little tyke. ‘In the bin’ I’d taunt back, mischievously, ‘stick it in the bin Binnie’s got in her cheek!’ She enjoyed the tease, but hated the spotlighting of what she considered to be one of her flaws. She was always like that – smiley but easily turned. Instinctive curiosity beat detachment momentarily.

‘How’s life treated Binnie?’ I asked. She looked happy in the photograph, fifty-ish, grey-ish and plump-ish, but content. A tribe of Indians were hunting in the garden behind her as she stood guard over their makeshift wigwam.

‘She’s OK. Got three kids and seven grandkids. They seem to just pop out like peas.’ He held out his hand for the photograph. I felt a sudden desire to keep it; to see the real person and tease her about her dimple again. I’d liked Binnie most because of her capriciousness – the kid-like inclination to be kindly one minute and dismissive the next – perhaps because of all of my siblings she had been most like me in that; able to join in and opt out at will. We shared that as a trait, and the ability to box things when they were unacceptable to us. Binnie’s ability displayed itself in her enjoyment of being teased one minute and the unexpected dig back the next. Funny little brother one minute, annoying the next. She could bury herself in a comic or an activity of her own creation as completely as I could, but despite that separateness we could both magic at will, there had been a bond of understanding between us too that transcended the intermittent sibling rivalry with Win, the being smothered by Sarah, the haphazard playfulness with both sets of twins, or the protectiveness I’d felt towards Georgie with his dreamy eyes and gentle fear of everything. For the first time since I was nine, an urgent need for tangible roots beset me. I handed the photo back reluctantly, but wavering how I now perceived the approach to my long-lost family.

I couldn’t decide whether Sarah looked as I imagined she would. She gave the impression of being mid-sixties, but she wasn’t anything like that by my calculations. Her mouth turned down at the corners but that might have just been the momentary expression the photo had caught. I’d always thought of her as happy. Little Mother; the one we all resorted to when Ma – inevitably – was too tired or too busy to deal with us. Ma was always the gold star, Sarah the consolation prize; kind, cuddly and happy. She didn’t look happy now.

‘She ain’t been well,’ Win commented.

The family group shot was blurry and several years older than the first two.

‘I ain’t got very good ones of the boys. Pip bought it the Falklands. He were one of the first out there.’ I studied the indistinct faces of the group to make out how Jim and Pip had turned out; my two charming urchin brothers. The two young men arm in arm off to one side were them, still grinning, still shock-headed, still sunny-natured, it appeared. ‘Nineteen-eighty that was. Year or two before he died. Jim took himself off to Australia not long afterwards. He drank too much. He said he had to go because he couldn’t be doing with seeing his brother’s ghost everywhere. Couldn’t understand that meself. Ain’t no such thing as ghosts.’ I thought of Margaret and her insistently harrying hold on me from beyond the grave.

‘Oh believe me, they exist,’ I replied. I was about to hand the photograph back. The image was too hazy to see much – and besides it was years out of date – when I realised why it seemed unbalanced. There had been ten of us when we’d been taken away, including me. There were ten in the photo – excluding me. I peered closer. The odd one out was the young woman who sat on the grass in front of them all. A good few years younger than any of them. ‘Who’s the woman right in the front?’ I showed him who I meant. I already knew the answer before he gave it.

‘Kimmy.’

‘Kimmy?’ I waited for the bad news to be confirmed.

‘Your other kid sister. The one you ain’t met – or maybe only once or twice.’

‘The baby?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you’re still in touch with her?’

‘Oh yeah.’ He said it with meaning, but didn’t elaborate. He waited. I looked at the photo again. I couldn’t tell if there was a likeness or not – the woman in the photo was too small – and Win was clearly enjoying not telling me. Met once or twice? Once – when she ruined my life. I tried to set aside the sudden jealousy I felt of this woman who’d stolen my world away from me with her arrival. I glanced up at Win. He was watching me carefully.

‘Plainly you want me to ask you about her?’

‘Yeah,’ he smiled knowingly.

‘What?’

‘She look familiar to you?’

‘A family likeness, I suppose. Why?’ The klaxons were sounding, and the sneering face of Danny Hewson’s mother mocked me.

‘Yeah, family likeness.’ He burst out laughing and irritation got to me. Sticks and stones maybe, private jokes at my expense? No. I let my weight settle more heavily on the edge of the desk and thrust the photograph back at him.

‘If you think you’re going to come here and wind me up, you’re wrong. The family album was very interesting but I’ve work to do now.’ I anticipated it might move things along. He might only just be getting started but he hadn’t got anything he wanted from me yet. I got up as if to push past him but he put out a hand and it rested lightly yet threateningly on my chest.

‘Oh, that game again. Hold your horses, Kenny. I ain’t finished yet.’

‘Get on with it, then.’

‘You met her as a baby – that was the first time, but you’ve met her since too. Don’t you remember?’

‘No, I don’t.’ Nor did I want to. It wasn’t her fault – no-one asks to be born, yet still I resented this interloper into my family, my childhood – the one who’d remained whilst I’d been ousted. And I was already computing the difficulty of representing her son.

‘What about that party you was at – about ten years ago.’

‘I probably went to a lot of parties ten years ago. I’m hardly likely to remember what they were now.’

‘Oh, you’d remember this one. It were a big celebration. A bit dodgy maybe, the verdict, but you won it all the same. In the bag, as you might say ...’

It only took those three words for me to immediately extract the party from the haze of memory. In the bag. Not the children’s home, although the soul-twisting memories immediately flooded back by association. Ten years ago, and in the bag. The turning point for our Chambers. The first big win. I’d been nominated to take the lead on the case because I was the slickest in court – the ability to box things never eluded me then. It was another of those moments I wouldn’t have shared with Atticus.

We had all viewed the evidence provided to us with scepticism but the fee was enormous, and so was the kudos for getting one creep off the hook and another onto it. How – or why – the client had the money to pay for us to represent, was never asked. We’d argued about it – oh yes, for hours on end, but eventually pragmatism had won over reluctance. The business was going down the pan, and us with it. This was a gift horse. Whatever our reservations, the stream of other evidence against him convinced us there was no doubt the man to be found guilty eventually should go down for something – even if not this. So it seemed justice would be served, albeit rough justice. Even the police on the case agreed. The fee was paid, the ‘client’ delighted and work flowed endlessly our way after that, whether that was also the client’s doing or not.

The party to celebrate had flowed too – with alcohol, self-congratulation, and towards the end of the evening when polite society had left, with sex. Ten years ago, I’d been a work horse and a stallion, but the latter only in private. When Margaret had complimented me for my thoroughness in bed, it wasn’t irony due to lack of skill, only lack of feeling. My aptitude wasn’t in doubt. Even the girl I’d taken there that night had said so with genuine pleasure, although I’d been drunk – too drunk to remember much other than the undoubted release I’d obtained at the party after the party. It was all in the box, and Win had just taken it out.

The other significant fact that I’d stowed in the box was the nature of the crime the defendant was accused of. A very particular kind of murder. There was no evidence of sexual assault, just fear and death, and one other thing that had particularly bothered me at the time but everyone else had ignored. I’d almost thrown up when I’d read the brief – in private thankfully. The girl had apparently died from asphyxiation – a plastic bag secured tightly round her neck. It had all the hallmarks of my own experiences, but it was our big break and I was up for anything that would take me to the top instead of down the drain then. So it all went in the box too and stayed there.

I didn’t know who was behind the agent commissioning us to take the defence case but it didn’t matter once it was done. We’d accepted the sin, and as sinners, climbed the greasy pole. But how could Win know anything about it? Danny Hewson’s mother – my little sister, apparently – had also mentioned being semi-asphyxiated before she’d stunned me to paralysis with her throwaway exit. The person Win wanted to hear about automatically lurked dangerously close to all these occurrences in my head, but how that was possible eluded me. I feigned ignorance as the best defence whilst I tried to figure it out.

‘There were lots of parties to celebrate successes, Win. If you think you’ve something significant to tell me you’d better spit it out.’

‘You met someone related to Danny there. You can figure it out from there. Now you’ve got what I had to tell you, I want something from you.’ I spread my hands in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘Oh yeah, you can pretend, but you’ll get it when you think about it. Here’s what I want for saying nought.’ He paused for effect, but I already knew what he was going to say. ‘Jaggers.’ For whatever reasons Win wanted him, I had equally good ones to never wish to encounter him again. I wasn’t playing that game unless I had to.

‘For a start, I don’t know what you’re talking about and secondly I haven’t come across Jaggers in years.’

‘Just over ten.’

‘What?’

‘You ain’t came across him in just over ten years. That’ll come to you too, when you put your mind to it. The pair of you stitched me up like a tart’s tights. Now I’m having me own back – for then and for Danny.’

‘For Danny?’

‘Who do you think the main man is, you stupid sod?’

‘Jaggers? Impossible!’

‘Crap. Course it ain’t. He don’t do the dirty stuff himself anymore. He has the likes of me to do it for him, but it still comes down to the same thing. He got me sister’s kid in trouble and other stuff. I would’ve let that go if he could put it right, but now I know he fucked me over to start with, I ain’t doing that. He thinks he’s so clever, ordering me around or he’ll get me put inside again – me with me problems and all. Well, like I said, I got plenty of ways of finding out stuff – and you’re the one who’s going to make it stick for me.’

‘Well that’s where you’re wrong. I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and I think it’s time for you to go now.’ My mind had already started to churn over the possibilities and linking pieces of the jigsaw. I didn’t like the picture it was starting to build and I needed to examine it in private, not with Win’s rancid breath and sweaty paws on me.

‘I want them.’

‘What?’

‘The notes on that case you won before the party.’

‘Why?’

‘My reasons.’

‘They’re confidential.’

‘So’s your past matey, but it don’t mean it’ll stay that way.’

‘That’s blackmail.’

‘No, I’m just stating facts and asking my little brother to help me look at some others – for my own reasons.’

I stood up and pushed against the restraining hand still against my chest. He didn’t resist. He allowed himself to be pushed backwards an inch or two and then turned on his heel and made for the door. I followed close behind him, surprised at the ease of his repulsion, but intent on making sure he left without trying to nose around anywhere else. At the front door, he shoved a card in my hand.

‘Be a Winner,’ it said. ‘Win Juss – gets you what you want when you want it.’

There was a phone number below and an image of clasped hands. I supposed they were meant to be about to shake on a deal, but to me they looked like the pugilists’ fists in round one of a fight.

‘You can get hold of me there, or I’ll come and get hold of you, if I don’t hear back soonish.’ He smiled nastily. ‘Think about it.’ And he was gone – light-footed as a cat burglar, despite the girth, leaving only the impression of stale sweat and distaste behind. I watched the sleight of hand as the giant disappeared and inconsequentially remembered how I’d watched him slink away from mischief as a child. Not then the soft sibilance of the sneak thief. Helter-skelter, elbows flying, he and Jonno had claimed to be sworn enemies, but I’d seen them running away from Old Sal’s together once, booty held high. In fact the similarity between him and Jonno had been so marked that day as they fled, I could have mistaken them for twins. The egoistic stance and overbearing self-confidence of the bully-boy conjoined them in my memory now. I wondered why I didn’t see then what he’d already started to become. Win had been a secret alliance-maker even as a child, treacherous and self-interested. I had no intention of getting involved in whatever unholy alliance he wanted to initiate now, even if it might have Jaggers as its target.

I didn’t go into Chambers after all. I returned to the study, head pounding. I didn’t need to think about it. I already had an inkling of why he wanted to see the case notes. I rang in and asked Louise, the biddable little clerk in the post room, to tell me where the oldest closed briefs were archived.

‘Oh they’re all in the basement, right up the back,’ she replied gaily. ‘Mr Gregory is going to put it on the next Chambers committee meeting for us to get it all converted to pdf files or stored with the rest of our old stuff in Scunthorpe. But please don’t ask me to go down there, Mr Juste. I think we might have mice or something.’

I assured her lightly that I wouldn’t – just checking on security measures and that I wouldn’t be in until tomorrow. ‘Um, funeral arrangements,’ I added vaguely.

‘Oh, of course,’ she sounded guilty. Everyone sounds guilty when talking about the death of someone else’s loved one. Is it because they feel embarrassed that it isn’t one of their own who is dead? Or relief it’s you who’s suffering and not them? I took advantage of the awkwardness to escape more explanations. The funeral arrangements had been my excuse for unexplained absence too much recently. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking I was arranging a state ceremony. Someone was bound to look askance soon. I put the phone down with a crash and it took me immediately to where I wanted to be in the box. The din and reek of the party – overloud celebrants and suspicious substances. How ironic that the apparently most respectable members of society should behave so disreputably when given the chance.

Win had been insistent about Kimmy and the reference to the party had brought a vaguely remembered face back to me. But was it the same face? The girl in the photograph and the girl at the party could have been the same, I suppose. I was as certain about that as I could be given the amount of alcohol I’d consumed by then. And I’d had sex. That was a given. I rarely went without then – before Margaret. On the way up after our landslide victory, the groupies hoped to follow in our wake. Jeremy, Francis and I had been in our element. Heather had indulged her fantasies with shoes and cosmetic surgery. I was still actively separating my lives as I had as a child – school and the home – in fact never more so than then. In the inflated arrogance that success brings I hadn’t even considered that someone would take the pair and empty out the contents of the two boxes so they could mingle. It was inconceivable. I was Lawrence Juste – a success. We were all so much older and more sedate now. Cautious; dead.

Did it really matter? So I might have met my sister when she was an adult – although I somehow couldn’t see the fag-puffing bitch I’d interviewed earlier in the diffuse memory of the pretty girl at the party. Even through a drunken haze, that girl had seemed – classy – as I’d described Margaret. It had probably been that which had singled her out for me that night, incapable of any other judgement as I’d been. I had little doubt Kimmy Hewson would have come across – even ten years younger – as a second-class escort girl or a full-scale prostitute. But no matter how much I tried to stuff it back in the box, I had to admit there was something I should remember about that party and Win obviously thought he had something on me because of it.

Success had gradually painted a different picture after that crazy party. Trompe l’oeil. The baroque artists had used it to deceive the viewer; we used it to deceive our public. The wild men were apparently tamed and tempered to trustworthy mavens; the outward cloak of dour respectability covering previous excesses. Indeed, the excesses diminished rapidly after that time. Success was its own reward – and the affluence that allowed us style and sophistication in place of cheap excitement. It’s the difference between the nobility and the proletariat. The richer you are, the less you need to display it. Margaret assiduously polished the well-wrought façade and it became a fait accompli. We carefully built me a reputation for stolidity and propriety after those wild years and I grew into it like it was a second skin cultivated to replace my own damaged one. Eventually there was no difference between the cultivated persona and me. It had taken over me. And after all, I’d been learning how to dissemble and separate lives like a master myself since the age of ten. Why not make a complete split between them? The unsavoury episodes of pre-success went into the box, and with them the details of that night. Now I needed to withdraw them again.

The hotel we’d moved to after the party in Chambers – genteel, respectable, mannerly. Who had been there? The hierarchy, who’d dropped in for their mandatory courteous single drink in celebration at Chambers, had retired early. The jubilation that we’d nailed the case, and our future, was carefully masked by obsequious conversation, and restrained courtesy until the dignitaries had gone and only the hard-core remained: Jeremy, Francis, some of our colleagues, the girls they invited over, and me. Of course the party didn’t continue in Chambers. We’d gone to the Majestic and a suite of rooms on the top floor generally used for informal business meetings and cocktail parties. Had I taken the girl in the photograph to the hotel with me, and to bed? Or did I just remember her from the party itself? I would have to find out. I toyed with Win’s business card, sitting squat and ignorant in the middle of the polished cherrywood desk. Brutish block-black lettering on aggressive red against the rich burnished brown sheen of the wood; base versus sublime. After the phone number he’d drawn an arrow shape in blue biro, the ink blobbing where the pen stroke launched its missile across the red target. It pointed overleaf. I wondered what was on the back.

‘Can’t remember her name? Kimberley.’

Danny’s mother. Then the klaxon horn directed me to the other alarm that was ringing – the one of arithmetic. The memories coalesced as I did the sums and whether I wanted to believe it or not, there seemed only one real possibility. Woman, sex, kid. My head swam.

Fuck.

I ran to the downstairs cloakroom and threw up.

14: Families

I spent most of the rest of the day alternately vomiting and drinking. Neither helped the other. As fast as I poured oblivion in the form of brandy down my throat, I brought it straight up again. It could barely make me merry, let alone pissed. It had resolved by early evening into the uncomfortable acceptance that I was going to have to face the possibility of disaster head-on. I went to bed, exhausted, but all I did was dream.

It started with the family photograph – the one I wasn’t part of – but this time I was. I was lounging in the back, near Win. Kimmy wasn’t in it. Win handed me the photograph like he’d handed it to me in real life and I took it, off-handed and dismissive. I handed it back.

‘So what? There’s only us in it. Nothing unusual.’

‘Look again little brother.’ He laughed nastily. I took it back and looked at it cursorily before dropping it like my fingers had been burnt.

‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Nothing unusual in it now?’

‘Fuck. When did that happen?’ The family had expanded. Kimmy, Danny and a whole crowd of Danny lookalikes populated the foreground – but somehow they all looked like a cross between me and Danny, apart from one thing. Something about each of them was deformed, skewed, wrong.

‘What do you expect?’

‘No, this can’t be right. Not me. It’s a joke – a trick!’

‘You know what you did and when you did it better than me, kiddo.’ He took the photo off me and put it away. Then he was gone and Danny was looking at me in his place.

‘You ain’t going to let me down are you, Mister? It weren’t my fault. I didn’t do it.’

‘For fuck’s sake! I didn’t know.’

‘You must have done, Lawrence – how could you not know? How could you not know, how could you not know ...’ Kat’s face filtered in and out until I woke up in a cold sweat.

Christ, how did I not know? And yet I hadn’t. How could you not know the person you were having sex with was your sister? I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I rushed to the bathroom and was sick again. There was very little to come out, just the rancid dregs of whatever brandy I had kept down. My stomach ached from convulsing and my throat burned with acid bile. I felt ill and old. I crept back to bed and shivered under the duvet. It was a hot night, but I felt like ice. Was hell ice cold? Or did it burn? Ice burn perhaps. Christ, now my mind was wandering. How was I going to face Kat? What was I going to tell Kat? More to the point, how was I going to face Danny? I wasn’t sure I could. The very thought brought nausea with it again. After a night of no sleep, I started the next day exactly the same, but with a headache that reminded me of a pneumatic drill steadily boring its way into my brain.

What did I say? Did I tell her? Or did I keep it to myself and hope it went away. And what about ethics. I laughed out loud at that. Ethics? What ethics could I possibly claim to have now? Wearily I showered and shaved, and went unsteadily downstairs. I made instant coffee, strong and bitter. No milk, no sugar, boiling water. I laughed again – the barrister’s version of scourging himself. Self-flagellation through ingestion of caffeine. Christ I was pathetic – and in the shit. Whatever I might deserve, I couldn’t bring myself to deliberately self-harm, so I waited for the coffee to cool to drinkable. I filled the gap with trying to figure out what to do about Kat. Ironically, she was now the easier of the issues to deal with. My phone buzzed, reminding me I had an appointment at ten. I’d have to go into Chambers, whether I liked it or not. It was one I’d already postponed once. Heather would have my guts hanging off her shiny spiked stilettos if I didn’t get my act together. I put the coffee cup in the sink and left it staining the stainless steel. I wasn’t meant to do that.

Yeah – and you weren’t meant to do ‘that’ either, were you?

Shut up!

When I arrived at Chambers, Louise breezily handed me my post and a phone message, with a meaningful grin. Kat had another surprise for me. An appointment. The coincidence amazed me. I sat twiddling the piece of paper the telephone message was written on wondering if she knew anything of what Win had dropped so neatly and gleefully in my lap. I hadn’t spoken to him yet. If I was having to painfully come to terms with the shameful possibilities, the bastard who’d given me the news could stew for longer too. He was certainly roasting me so we were both having our pound of flesh one way or another. The fact that she’d left a message rather than call back later so she could talk to me could mean anything. Maybe she’d been trapped into it. It would have seemed odd to ring on business and then not say what that business was. I teetered on relief. Or she’d wanted to avoid talking to me. I tipped over the edge and my head throbbed sickeningly again. I cursed not going into Chambers the day before after all, yet how could I have?

If she was trying to avoid talking to me, why would she take it upon herself to arrange the interview? Surely she would have turned her back on me if she knew what I now suspected? I played devil’s advocate again. No, she couldn’t do that – it would be unprofessional, and letting the client down.

The client. I would have to start re-categorising him. The boy. No, that didn’t work either, but I couldn’t use the other term which hovered on my tongue. It was no good. I couldn’t concentrate here. Gregory hovered irritatingly outside my door every time I went to the cloakroom, which was often as the brandy and puke routine seemed to have upset whatever normal balance I should have, and the clerks chirped too brightly as they delivered post and papers for ongoing cases. The turgid financial mismanagement brief that Francis landed on my desk with a thump that made my head reverberate was the last straw.

‘More you than me, old bean,’ he announced cheerily, the ever-attendant waft of cigarillo ash making my stomach revolt yet again. I’d have an ass as raw as it had ever been after one of Jaggers’ ministrations at this rate, I thought sourly as I made my way to the cloakroom for the fifth time and side-stepped Gregory floating aimlessly around on the landing.

‘I’m going home after this,’ I told him acidly as I passed him. ‘Get one of the girls to cancel my ten o’clock with apologies and just leave anything else you might have for me on my desk.’

‘Indisposed, sir?’ he asked silkily. Whatever genealogical similarity I still shared with Win took over at the unctuous over-servility which I knew wasn’t real.

‘I’ve got the shits, Gregory, if you must know.’

‘Ahhh,’ he faded away, face like a squashed vegetable. I went home before anyone else could ask.

I tossed the case folder angrily across the desk in my study. Christ what a mess! It hit Margaret’s photograph and knocked it flat, but I could still see her laughing obliquely at me. Damn you! Did you know too? Or were you meddling for some other reason? My attention returned to the phone message. The appointment was with Kimberley Hewson. Christ! What else could she want to talk about – other than what I wouldn’t want anyone else to hear? I would have to ring Kat. I didn’t even know if she intended being present at the interview. Given the sensitive circumstances it seemed sensible to have a witness to what was discussed, but who exactly could that be? None of my partners in Chambers. Too close to business. Not Win. Too dangerous. There was only Kat left, and that meant giving up on whatever there might have been between us. I would have to tell her everything in case Kimberley Hewson took it upon herself to pre-empt me. And who would get involved with a pervert – even an unknowing one.

Or could Kat be present without ever knowing the full background to the situation? Perhaps Kimberley wouldn’t want it known either? Maybe she’d told Win purely for leverage on me. That would mean that Margaret hadn’t known either, or given what I now knew about her, she would almost certainly have disposed of the finer footwork in trying to persuade me. She’d have gone straight for the kill, before it got to her instead.

I put the folder back in the drawer I’d hidden it in when Win had unexpectedly visited, and locked it. Until I reached the sidings my thought train had sidled into, I had been undecided whether to openly seek the pink-ribboned package marked CLOSED languishing in the basement at Chambers, or track it down in private. After today, anticipation of the busy hum of the clerks everywhere and Gregory watching me slyly from his position presiding over all routes in and out – apart from the basement – decided me. Maybe I was being paranoid and no-one was watching my movements but I felt exposed in a way I’d never felt before – not even in the home. Guilt did it, I guessed.

They all thought I was indisposed, languishing between toilet and bed, no doubt. Gregory would have borne the mournful news joyfully around the whole of Chambers by now, so there was no likelihood of anyone trying to get hold of me, or expecting to see me out. I parked in the multi-storey car park three blocks away from the offices and walked in from there, entering the back door as shiftily as a thief. Underfoot, the tarmac felt soft, like a cake just under-baked and still volcanic inside. The sun had already scorched what little grass kerb there was to shrivelled brown where it met the lava flow of the pavement. Dust crevassed in the gutter, along with abandoned cigarette stubs and sweet wrappers. Not even the lightest of breezes stirred them today. One of those immaculate blue-sky, yellow-sun days that exhaust you with their perfection whilst fulfilling all the promises you ever asked of the weather, and are surprised when they’re finally realised in Britain. It seemed this text-book summer was going to stay the distance – the way I’d always wanted it to as a child. Now I was an adult I craved the temperate spring or the gently golden autumn in its stead after already six solid weeks of heat and hubris. Things are never as you want them at the time, are they? Perhaps it’s the human condition to be permanently dissatisfied.

It was 4pm, and for the next hour or so, the clerks in Chambers would be glued to phones nagging solicitors for outstanding briefs, clock-watching or chattering idly. Gregory would be blustering at their laziness, and presiding over the fax like a DX Hitler, whilst the clerks tried to evade him and his pompous interference. The immersion in avoiding him generally kept them as busy as their Silks so they could escape when the clock hands ticked over to five. No-one would be bothering with the basement now. It would be mine until the cleaners and security did their rounds just after six. Two hours to find it.

I risked turning the lights on at the far end of the room. They could have been merely forgotten if anyone did stray down here in an unexpected fit of enthusiasm for filing. The cabinets were ranged in rows, interspersed between bookcases full of dusty tomes. Law Society publications and case law from years back. Why the hell did we still have all this outdated crap down here? I pulled one of the books out at random and the dust it brought with it made me want to sneeze. It smelt of snuff and old men. Musty, rotting and consumed with age. It reminded me of the way the old judge had smelt the last time I’d visited mere days before he’d died. Far from disgusted, I found I now felt regret that it had been the way it was with him. In many ways he’d also been a good friend. Time can temper memory too, it seems, as well as grief. Perhaps it is better to be able to take out and re-examine the better parts of memories whilst overlooking the less palatable? I wished I could do that with more of mine.

Odd that I could about the old judge, and not about Win, my own brother, even though part of our childhood had contained camaraderie and affection. Indeed much of my time with Win, pre-children’s home, had been golden. He, Georgie and I had been the Juss boys; small scrape-kneed warriors with dirty faces, scruffy clothes and vivid imaginations. We’d fought Indians, Germans – even marauding Vikings, having learnt all about long boats and our Saxon ancestry one year at school; possibly the only class Win genuinely listened in. There was always much of fighting in our game-playing, but there were also dens and adventures and shared excitement. Such innocence – misplaced on entering the children’s home, and lost forever after living in it.

I pushed the book back into place, and with it the memories. I hadn’t time to become maudlin down here, apart from which it was the place I would be least likely to want to linger out of choice. Louise’s comment about the mice unnerved me enough without allowing memories to come willy-nilly to haunt me. There were too many of the cold and the dark and the dirty. Rubbing the dust from my fingertips, I skirted the bookcase and peered at the labelling on the filing cabinets next to it. 1997-8, 1996-7, 1995-6 and so on, mainly running in blocks of one year until they stretched back to 1988. Before that the cabinets covered three, even four years at a time, and the drawers were subdivided ‘won’ and ‘lost’. For every one ‘won’ there were two or three ‘lost’. 1988 had marked the divide, as in my memory. Before and after. Before iniquity and after. The case Win had been referring to had been won in late 1988. The landslide victory that had precipitated my fall and our runaway success as an up and coming Chambers. It was so far buried in the box that I had to dig deep to remember the name of the accused. The facts we’d been allowed and the circumstances that were proscribed were burned there with a branding iron. Stay within guidelines – no manoeuvring; our brief. Jones, James, Johns? Johns. Wilhelm Johns. Bastard of this parish, but not a murderer.

I had to rummage through to the back of the bottom drawer before I found it. I was just about to retrieve it and shuffle the papers either side of it closer to hide the gap removing it made when the door at the top of the stairs burst open.

‘It’s mean though, isn’t it?’ The high girlish voice of the Louise of the archive information twittered through it. ‘Oh, someone left the lights on.’

‘It’s what it does. Go on.’ Gregory. What the fuck was he doing there? He never deigned to descend to the basement – king though he was of the paper kingdom. I crouched down as low as I could behind the mounds of yesterday’s misdeeds and held my breath. If they ventured downstairs and found me I had no idea what excuse I could make for being there.

‘I’ll leave the water at the top of the stairs then.’ There was the sound of shuffling and then the light clicked off and the door closed. Black deeper than the pit of hell descended. I could feel my heart begin to pound wildly and my ears sing with racing blood. It’s only dark. There’s nothing here. You know what’s here. Files, folders, books – no rats. Still my breath came raggedly as the patchwork man unravelled with his fraying fear.

Get a grip, man!

I took a deep unsteady breath and consciously tried to calm the racing heart, quieten the ringing ears. In, out, in, out. Nothing – silence – see? No rats. In, out, in, out – silence. No, not silence – something moving in the dark. Something else in here with me. Rats – fuck, shit – help me. Rats! I scrabbled to my feet, and stumbled along the row of bookcases and cabinets, knocking books inwards and paper piles into dishevelled heaps. A turning pack of cards falling behind me in an insane run of disaster and mayhem, breath panting, body sweating, spine tingling – and still the noise followed me. The lights – where were the fucking lights? Patting wildly along the wall, the scratching, nipping, gnawing tracked me, stalked me, attacked me... I flicked on the lights.

It was a cat. A small brown tabby glaring at me, back arched and ready to spit. We stared at each other and then I burst out laughing, stifling it hastily in case the madman in the basement became as famously discovered as the madwoman in the attic at Thornfield Hall. The cat thought I was mad, too, but it softened considerably towards me when I smoothed its back and scratched under its chin. It wound ingratiatingly round my ankles, looking dotingly up at me before following me back along my haphazard pathway to the dismantled filing cabinet.

‘So what’s your job, cat? Mouser? Weeding out the vermin? You and me too.’ There was a case for including myself in that category now though.

I found the beribboned parcel where I’d dropped it and covered my tracks as best I could. I couldn’t un-disturb the dust, but with luck no-one else would come searching down here for a while and another layer would eventually fall to obliterate my excavations. I left the cat somewhat guiltily, understanding Louise’s reluctance. It seemed cruel to leave it there in the hated dark, but it didn’t seem too bothered. It wandered off as I repacked the filing cabinet and all I saw as I left was a flurry of sandy-brown fur as it scrambled under a shelf, no doubt in pursuit of its prey. I shivered. The idea had the same effect on me as rats and Win.

The office workers in the area were leaving for home in a steady stream and I had to be careful not to bump into any from Chambers. Head down and package stowed tightly under one arm, I felt like a Bond spy. It amused me to imagine what I actually looked like compared to how I imagined myself – a whimsical idea I doubted I would have been capable of in the height of Margaret’s heyday. Kat seemed to have influenced not only my inner self but also my inner mind, whilst still barely influencing my real-time world. The moments together so far had been barely even snatched. What would full-scale invasion be like? I made it back to the car immersed in that stimulating thought. You asshole – you’re no more Bond than Win is the Pope! You’re a specious fool who couldn’t keep his prick in his pants when it mattered – then or now.

*

The package made its home alongside Danny’s case folder. I poured myself another brandy even though it wasn’t even six and downed it in one. I gagged but didn’t puke this time. The rat claws still crawled over my body if my mind let them. I poured a second and took it over to the desk. Win’s card still lay in the centre and Margaret was still on her back. Pushing up the daisies soon, I thought cruelly and the meanness of the thought made me feel better. It was her fault I’d got dragged into this, even though it was probably a hit and run inevitably waiting to find me some day. Yet ultimately the crime was mine.

I sat for some while, letting the warmth of the brandy soak into me, starting with the burn in my gut and ending up in my brain, soothing and softening. There were three steps to closure. One: read the old brief notes and try to see beyond them to what was being hidden – the real murderer. I suspected the name was there, somewhere. I’d simply stuffed it in the box before I could identify it. Two: make a deal with Win after finding out who knew what, and what they were planning to do with the knowledge. Three: talk to Kat and extract myself from Danny Hewson’s case. If there was a fourth, it would have been to meet Kimberley again, but I hoped that would be encompassed by Two, and what Win could tell me without me having to find it out for myself. My God, even when faced with fathering my sister’s child, I planned my course of action like a campaign. What had I become? I wasn’t merely damaged goods, I was goods beyond repair. I resolved to stay clear of Kat after all and shelved Three. I’d hand the case to someone else to complete. I could at least do right by her and Danny.

I remembered most of the facts and a lot of the detail of the case once I got started. It had been cleverly constructed with all the evidence, which undoubtedly also pointed to the real murderer if we had but looked for them, also being equally direct-able towards Johns. He’d gone ‘No comment’ in all the interviews and then it couldn’t be held against him, but still it did him no favours. Two years later and it would have sealed his fate, but even then it, and the lack of good contemporaneous notes when he waived legal representation, hadn’t helped his cause. Why the hell had he done that? Without assistance from him the defence could come up with nothing and we simply went along with the little we’d got. We completed what someone else had no doubt set up, and acquitted it with style. No-one wanted to delve too deep anyway. We were knee-deep in blood just from the crime scene alone. There was virtually nothing to do yet what little we had done seemed to reach all the right ears, judging by the work that had flowed our way afterwards. Even then I’d been surprised, but as usual, I allocated a box for it to nestle in without bothering me and carried on. But that wasn’t what I was looking for. I was looking for the name behind the name. It wasn’t there, but what was confounded me.

It had no place there, surely? It was almost lost in the list of evidence – labelled ‘Unidentified, NWP’. Not worth pursuit. A photograph of a small red nail clipping found attached to the bag covering the victim’s head, almost lost in the sea of blood that surrounded it.

The girl had not only been suffocated, she’d been macerated; her torso mutilated beyond belief – barely even recognisable as a body so the actual cause of death was almost irrelevant. Whoever had done it was an animal. The suggestion was that it was directly related to the fact that she’d given birth recently – a stillbirth, apparently – but it was still ghoulish. The nail though, it was a very specific red – one I knew well now, and that it was difficult to get hold of – that very particular shade of nail varnish. Margaret’s nail varnish. She ordered it online from the USA when it became too difficult to find here. Why the hell was it there? How the hell was it there?

Ridiculous, but so was the unexpected connection which I couldn’t possibly have anticipated, yet now having been made, confounded me even more. The client’s name was there after all too. How, in God’s name, could I have missed that? John Arthur Wemmick Jnr – the same surname as the old judge, but this was a relation I couldn’t place. I scrutinised the scribbled note. Of all people, Margaret had made it and stuffed it behind a witness statement. I hadn’t missed it. It couldn’t have been there when I’d looked at the papers pre-court appearance because neither had Margaret. Of course, I’d been pretty wound-up at the time because of the nature of the case so I’d applied myself to the facts without allowing myself to think about the ramifications of other possible interpretations. I’d boxed all of it, but there was no doubt Margaret hadn’t been in Chambers when we’d taken the case.

The similarity to Jaggers’ modus operandi was almost too circumstantial for it not to have been him, and Win’s interest in it, of course, but there was no connection otherwise. I ran through all the other possibilities in my head and drew a blank. The cowardly part of me was relieved but the anomalies involving Margaret and the note still screamed at me. She couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it – and yet she apparently had. Boxed? It was clearly time to think outside of it, because if Margaret had also been delving inside this particular one that had somehow to link to what she’d foisted on me.

I set the problem aside too and instead rang Win. Step two.

‘It’s me.’ Inane, I know, but I knew he would know who ‘me’ was immediately. He would have been waiting impatiently for my call ever since he’d left.

‘And?’

‘OK, so I have what you want, but what you expected to be in there isn’t.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You thought the murderer was Jaggers, didn’t you? You thought you would get the dirt on him and then use it to – I don’t know – whatever you wanted to do with it.’ There was no answer, just stertorous breathing on the other end of the line. It must be sleight of hand or my mind tricking me that made me convinced he could come and go so silently. The man was a walking iron lung! I continued. ‘There’s nothing to point to him – or anyone else actually.’

‘I want it anyway.’

‘Why?’

‘I just do.’

‘You’ll have to do better than that.’

‘He was me mate.’

‘Who? The victim was a woman.’

‘No, Willy Johns. I met him again in clink. He were a good friend to me there – kept the fags off of me until I could stand on me own two feet. He died in there when they sent him down for that murder. Some nark knifed him.’ I hadn’t known that. It made the rough justice less just.

‘Met him again? You knew him already?’

‘Yeah, and so did you, little brother. Willy Johns – Jonno.’

‘Christ! I had no idea. Why didn’t you say so before?’

‘Would it have made a difference?’

I didn’t know – maybe. I could withhold what I had surmised, but what did it matter now – and what good would it do? There was no discernible name for Win to go after and the past was merely the past without that. I’d gone far enough down the wrong route with the case already. Another step was neither here, nor there if it got Win off my back – and knowing who the scapegoat was made me more sympathetic.

‘I want something from you as well, and then if you use what I tell you, you’ll have to OK it with me first, right? My timing.’

‘Explosive, is it?’

‘I have no idea – if you can read between the lines and figure it out, possibly.’ I was thinking of that single nail clipping and what it might mean – however impossible.

‘OK, what do you want to know?’

‘How much does Kimberley know? And who else knows? Who’s she told?’

‘Oh, you worked it out then? Sarah and Binnie, maybe Mary.’

‘Mary, for God’s sake! Why Mary?’

‘They got on.’

‘Jesus! Will they talk?’

‘I dunno. You’ll have to find out yourself, won’t you? You know where they are now.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Welcome.’

‘I was being sarcastic. And what about Kimberley – will she talk to anyone? Danny’s social worker for instance?’

‘Nah. She don’t trust authorities, but if I can find it out, they can too.’

‘What about my wife?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘I know, but she seems to have been involved with some dealings over Danny before she was killed. Would Kimberley have talked to her?’

‘Like I said, she don’t trust authorities. Depends whether your wife was talking authorities or personal, don’t it? When do I get the goods?’

‘Talking personal? What the hell does that mean? And no – I’m not handing over the file to you. I’ll tell you the facts, when I’m ready to. I’ve something I have to do first.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Get Danny out of this mess, somehow.’ It was the only thing I could do – should do. It was probably my fault he was even born – a mess I could do nothing about, no matter how guilty I felt. It wasn’t much. It hardly made atonement – or substituted for burning in hell for eternity for the oldest sin – apart from murder – that there was, if you believed in that kind of thing. But it was the only thing I could do. Although how the hell I was going to do it, God only knew.

Win took some persuading but eventually he agreed to wait. ‘Win Juss – gets you what you want when you want it.’ Not on my watch, I thought, the most incredible of potential long-hidden murderers burning into my brain insidiously. It seemed at every turn there was another new and excruciating twist to this tale. He’d said that Kimberley wouldn’t have said anything to Kat, but that could all change at any time, of course. I could play the innocent, but that was difficult to do when one of your audience knows you’re as guilty as hell. What would Atticus do? Never bloody get into this mess! Apart from that, he would weigh the benefits of deception against the impunity of honesty. There was no doubt on the scales of justice, honesty would outweigh everything, no matter how uncomfortable or delicate the balance it also created between acceptance and rejection. He’d tell her the truth. But only after he knew what Sarah and Binnie were likely to do first.

‘I should talk to Jill and Emm too, if I were you.’

‘Why?’

There was amusement in his voice. ‘Just in case ...’

He was playing cat and mouse with me too.

15: Little Mother

I went to see Sarah first. Little Mother. That’s what someone had called her once and the name had stuck. Binnie was fun and I’d liked teasing her and getting that routine response that left us both secure in our relationship as children – best of enemies – funny how security is as much about expectations as reality, isn’t it? But Sarah had always been our mother when Ma couldn’t be. Whether that would make her a kinder or harsher judge now, of course, I couldn’t tell. It was a gamble; all of it was.

The address was a small backstreet terrace, neat, well-kept and unimaginative. It was as unlike the Sarah I remembered as my own life now was unlike the child I’d been. What did that say about either of us? We grow, we change, we find – or maybe we lose – ourselves. I loitered by the gate for a good ten minutes before I steeled myself enough to knock on the pristine dark blue front door. Sarah’s choice would have been red; pillar box red. It had been her favourite colour. Someone else, surely, had chosen this dull blue? She looked exactly as she had in the photograph Win had shown me – sad.

‘Oh.’

It wasn’t a surprised ‘Oh’, it was more an ‘Oh, there you are – where have you been?’ kind of ‘Oh’. I’d expected hostility. This was almost too neutral. I didn’t know what to say in return. The slick protagonist of the courtroom was lost in childish mumbles. I managed to get something out in the end, still unsure whether the ‘Oh’ was welcoming or not. She scrutinised me as I shifted awkwardly on the doorstep.

‘You’ve grown taller than I expected you to.’ Another remark that I couldn’t quite assess. I was neither overly-tall or under-sized short. Average in fact. So Sarah had anticipated me being short in stature. In height or in other ways too? Who might have given her that impression – or maybe I should add, and what? That galvanised me. The interfering bastard might think he had a hold on me but I was damned if I was going to let Win belittle or impugn me.

‘May I come in?’ The hesitation was fractional before she opened the door wide.

‘Of course you can.’ There was a pause, ‘Kenny? Or are you Lawrence now, even to me?’

‘I’m Lawrence to everyone now, Sarah.’ Her face became even sadder, if that was possible and a hidden string tugged, making my chest hurt just under my ribs. I softened the statement with, ‘but if you’d rather call me Kenny, that’s OK I suppose.’

‘Thank you.’ She led me into a small backroom, chintzily cheerful – so out of sorts with her now, yet so Sarah of then. ‘Would you like a cuppa?’ Ma’s ever-ready remedy for any situation. Cuppa if you were cold, cuppa if you were sad, cuppa if you were cross, cuppa with sugar if you were poorly. She didn’t wait for, or I suspected even expect, an answer. I followed her out the kitchen, equally small, but drab and worn – very like her.

‘So,’ we both said it together as the kettle whistled on the hob.

‘You first,’ I acceded politely. She turned off the gas and wrapped a flowered teacloth around the handle of the kettle, spilling some of it as she carried it shakily to the teapot.

‘Here, let me.’ I took it from here and filled the pot. The cosy was almost identical to the one Ma had used. Maybe it was the same one.

‘Thank you.’ I turned round to find her watching me silently.

‘Let it brew,’ I said to fill the gap.

‘You’re exactly how they describe you in the papers though, otherwise.’

‘Oh, how is that?’

‘Distinguished. That’s what they call you. Handsome.’ I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Really Sarah, it’s only to sell papers. I’m pretty average as you can see.’ She shook her head.

‘They call you charming too. You always did have the gift of the gab, Kenny – even when you were only up to here.’ She set her hand at her chest height. ‘Stick-thin, but a charmer.’

‘I always thought it was Pip and Jim who were the charmers.’

‘We never see ourselves how others do.’ She smiled suddenly and her face transformed. I saw the Sarah from childhood in the fragile, prematurely aged woman.

‘Maybe not. Maybe we don’t see others too clearly either, at times.’

‘I know what happened.’ It was such a sudden change of subject the thrill of surprise arced through me like a warning shock.

‘When?’

‘In the children’s home.’

‘Oh, whose version – Win’s or mine?’

‘Win’s. But I think he was telling the truth. He didn’t make himself out to be no angel.’

‘Oh, and what did he make me out to be?’

‘Miserable.’

‘Oh.’ We observed each other again. ‘Yes, I was. Did he tell you anything else about then?’

‘What you did to him, but then I reckon he might have deserved it if I read between the lines. The quarrel ain’t between me and you though, Kenny – never has been.’

‘No,’ and then, because it was true. ‘I’m glad about that.’ I waited.

‘Is it done?’ She motioned towards the teapot.

‘I expect so.’

‘We’ll go in the lounge then.’ She produced a floral melamine tray and filled it with cups, saucers, sugar bowl, milk jug and spoons. ‘Will you do the honours? Me grip ain’t so good these days.’

‘Of course.’ I put the teapot and cosy on the tray and carried it ceremoniously into the lounge behind her. She indicated a small side table I could put it on and eased herself into one of the overstuffed monstrosities that passed for an armchair. I perched awkwardly on the matching sofa, legs too far out in front of me because there was nowhere else to put them. I felt gangly as I had as a child. ‘Would you like me to pour too?’ She was resting against the back of the chair as if exhausted, face completely grey. The similarity between me a few days earlier, after my alcohol and vomit episode, would have been marked if we’d been placed side by side. ‘Are you all right?’

She opened her eyes and smiled again.

‘Yes, just gets me from time to time.’

‘Are you ill?’

‘Cancer, but don’t tell any of the others.’

‘Sarah, I’m so sorry. Are you having treatment?’

‘No, it’s long past that.’

‘So...’ I didn’t know how to ask the unaskable.

‘Maybe six months but no more than a year. It’s in me insides. Tummy.’ She looked rueful. ‘Just wish I could still enjoy me food for the rest of me time here. Always did like me food.’ I thought of the once rounded cheeks and tendency to puppy fat, and realised then, apart from age and the air of sadness, what it was that made Sarah seem so different. She was way too thin under the baggy cardigan and bulky skirt.

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘You came to see me. That’s enough.’

‘But why don’t you want the others to know?’

‘Don’t want them worrying. Nothing to be done about it so what’s the point of wasting the time worrying?’

‘But they could care for you?’

‘They do care. I care more about them worrying, that’s all. Don’t fret. I’m all right. More to the point, what can I do for you?’

‘Maybe more what you could not do.’

‘Which is?’ Win had said she and Binnie knew, yet there wasn’t the slightest inkling that she did from the way she was talking. I hesitated. ‘Oh, that,’ she added. ‘Ain’t nothing to be done about that either, Kenny. Live with it.’

‘But ...’

‘No; no buts. Haven’t you got more important things to be dealing with? Win said your wife died recently. That’s a shame.’

‘The funeral is in three weeks. I’ve had to wait for the coroner and the pathologists to complete their investigation. Sarah, I really can’t believe you think it’s so unimportant ...’ She cut me off.

‘There’s one more child in the world because of it, no matter how he got here. You can’t change that either, so stop worrying about it. Think about what you’re going to do in the future, not what’s been done in the past. Make it right.’

‘I don’t see how I can.’

‘There’s more ways in heaven and earth, as Ma used to say. You’ll come up with the right one. You’re meant to. Wouldn’t have found out, if you weren’t.’

‘I found out because of Win,’ I replied tartly.

‘Well maybe it’s how you’ll settle your quarrel then?’

‘How?’

‘Family sticks together.’

‘Ours didn’t.’ I said bitterly.

‘Sticking together ain’t always obvious, Kenny. Sometimes it ain’t seen, but it still happens. Win’s sticking with you, ain’t he?’

‘Sticking with me? My God, Sarah, he’s trying to hang, draw and quarter me, not stick with me. Have you any idea what he’s like and what he’s up to?’

‘I’ve known him for over fifty-odd years, Kenny. Course I know what he’s like – and what he’s up to now, most like too. But maybe you ain’t seeing the whole picture yet.’ I left it. I wasn’t going to make her change her mind. In her eyes Win might be the less savoury of the two of us, but he was also the one who’d stuck around, whereas I? I’d deliberately and determinedly jettisoned my whole family to create the man I was now. Who was worse under the circumstances? Win, or me?

It was clear she wasn’t going to make things difficult for me, anyway. Lawrence Juste prepared to walk away, but inexplicably Kenny found he wanted to stay. I poured the tea and listened to her narrative describing how my siblings had lived their lives in my absence. I balanced the cup and saucer, with its tea biscuit accompaniment, on my knee, but had no appetite for either. My legs stiffened into position and in shifting to stretch them the tea slopped into the saucer, turning the biscuit into a congealing brown poultice. I put the cup and saucer back on the table, tea undrunk.

‘You still got it, then?’

‘What? Oh, that – yes.’ The strawberry birth mark on my inner wrist had showed as I reached for the table and my cuff slipped back with the movement. It was my guardian angel according to Sarah – shaped like a tiny body with wings. ‘Kenny likes fairies!’ Chanted the other kids, egged on callously by Win until the tears had stung in my eyes and I’d run away, more to hide them than to hide my small body from unending taunt. I’d vowed to get rid of it somehow when I was older, even recklessly planning to burn it off once. ‘It didn’t seem to matter the older I got.’

‘It’ll help you one of these days, mark my words.’

‘You always used to say that when I came home in tears over it.’

‘That’s because I meant it. Ma had one too, did you know?’

‘No, I never saw it.’

‘Not on her wrist. On her back. I saw it once when she was undressed. Seems like it pops up once each generation.’

‘She didn’t have a guardian angel looking over her.’

‘Oh, I think she did. It just don’t seem like it to you. Guardian angels keep you safe, whatever. There were times she needed that.’ I didn’t need to ask why. Pop and his belt were enough explanation – and the thunderous look on his face if she ever dared to speak to another man. For Christ’s sake, when would she even have had time for an affair with all us kids around? Jealousy. It had never occurred to me before that was maybe why there were so many of us. Not just religion and its strictures. To keep her under Pop’s thumb.

‘What happened with her?’ The question I’d wanted answering so many times at nine, and had since wondered whether I wanted the answer after all. Was it better to know you were permanently rejected, if that was the case – or forever speculate on some reason for abandonment that meant you weren’t unwanted just unlucky.

‘She’s dead now.’ The string under my ribs tugged again.

‘Well I guessed she would be. She’d be well over eighty otherwise. I couldn’t imagine eleven kids would make her very robust in old age!’ I sounded facetious but I didn’t mean to. She gave me a sharp look.

‘She’d be eighty-eight if she were alive. She’s in Highgate cemetery if you want to visit her grave, where our grandparents are. We went a few times as kids but I don’t s’pose you’d remember it. In the East cemetery, but you’ll have to ask them for directions and they have opening hours you have to stick to. There’s thousands of them there. I could have taken you there once, but I couldn’t manage it now. Jill and Emm have been, though they don’t really remember her. They were only little mites then. You’ll go and see them too?’

‘Do they know?’

‘I haven’t told them, but I don’t know what Binnie’s said.’

‘Win said I should go and see them in case. I’ll go and see them – and Ma.’ She nodded in satisfaction.

‘Good. That’s right. And Mary. Go and see Mary too. You can’t see Pip – he died in the Falklands and Jim’s in Australia, but you can go and see Mary.’ I hadn’t anticipated a full family round-up but Win had said Kimberley might have confided in Mary too, so it seemed I was being left little choice in it. From a world of choices – my own choices – latterly I seemed to be being forced only into other people’s for me. I was disturbed from my reverie by something completely unanticipated. ‘I met her, you know, your wife.’

‘Margaret? Jesus, when?’

‘Not that long ago. She wanted to know about your childhood. First I’d heard of you as Lawrence ’til then. Win said he’d tracked you down but there weren’t no point interfering if you didn’t want it. I agreed, so he didn’t even tell me your new name to begin with.’ A thousand silver electric eels swum my head, each one revealing a new question in its brilliant wake. When had Margaret wanted to know about my childhood? Why had Win proposed non-interference after my betrayal of him, but mortal combat now? How long had Sarah known about Kimberley and Danny? Had Margaret also known? I didn’t ask any of them. It was Margaret and her meddling I needed to understand first. It all seemed to have started with that – and the little note in the file I’d hoped would never see the light of day again.

‘And what did you discuss?’

‘Your childhood, like I said – and what Win told me about the children’s home.’

‘Anything else?’

‘She didn’t ask about anything else. She just came, asked about when we were kids and left. I told her how good you were with Pip and Jim and about your guardian angel. She liked the angel. She laughed about that like it was really funny.’ Sarah laughed, ‘Oh, yes, and about how you used to roll down the hill at the front of the flats and Ma always used to tell you off for having been in a fight because you were always covered in bruises. She knew what you’d been doing really. She could see you out of the front window. She just did it to make you stand up for yourself. And you did.’

Yes I had. I’d learnt how to fight off the challengers and believe in myself, even when no-one else had. She’d taught me a good lesson with it. Maybe my guardian angel had really been Ma when I was a child, whether she abandoned me later or not. ‘She said she were surprised you hadn’t hurt yourself like she did when she was a kid. Tore her thumb ligaments, she said. Ski-ing. In a cast for months and missed school because of it. Would’ve studied more herself otherwise. Even worse than me at carrying the tray.’ I stared at Sarah. Margaret had confided more in my sister than she had in me. I didn’t even know she had a problem with her grip or had missed schooling as a child.

I was about to ask Sarah more but she had her own agenda too, it seemed. ‘You were a good kid, Kenny – brave. Did what was right. I always knew you’d do the same as a man.’ I looked down at my straggling legs in dismay. They looked as ungainly as my conscience, and as out of control. ‘She rang me afterwards, just once – must have been about a week before she was killed.’

‘Why?’

‘She said she wanted to come and tell me something but she never turned up.’

‘Did you know she was trying to get Danny adopted?’

‘Ah, that explains it.’

‘What?’

‘Why she wanted me to keep an eye on Kimmy.’

‘Christ Almighty – she knew Kimberley? Then she also knew about Danny’s parentage too!’ Sarah gave me a strange look.

‘Course she did. She told Win, I think.’

‘Win? Christ! And now he’s after my blood over it. That’s not leaving me alone, that’s full-scale messing with me – and to what end? Revenge? To land me in a public pile of shit?’

‘No, Kenny. To make things right. Your Margaret was going to make things right, she said. She loved kiddies. Said she’d always wanted one of her own, but it wasn’t possible.’

Yes, not possible because of my say-so. Where was this going? Where was Margaret going? It was all too obvious now that Margaret had known about the possible liaison with Kimberley, even though it had happened long before she’d come on the scene – although that little note in the Johns case file disputed that fact. She’d made all the connections with my family and she’d garnered all the facts, and yet said nothing to me. She’d tried to inveigle me into involvement rather than confront me. And that bright red torn nail section standing out like a beacon – where did that fit in? There must be a link I hadn’t made in all of this, but I was damned if I could see it.

‘Could you get me my morphine, do you think?’ Sarah asked quietly. She looked drained and I felt guilty. I located it in the kitchen cupboard at her direction, and brought it to her with a spoon. She waved the spoon away. ‘Oh, I don’t bother with that anymore,’ she laughed and swigged it back. ‘What doesn’t kill you, as they say.’

‘I ought to go. You’re tired.’

‘Yes, I am. Done in, but don’t be a stranger now you’ve braved the war.’ I agreed, knowing I probably wouldn’t come again. What was the point? I wished I’d kept the laughing plump-cheeked Sarah in my head and didn’t now have the sad, diminished one to have to hide away in my box to avoid despair. Apart from Win, my only other contact with my family had already brought nothing but dismay.

‘One last thing, Sarah?’

‘Yes?’

‘What does Kimberley think about all of this?’

‘I think she’s like Ma – would just be happy for Danny to have a better chance than she can give him.’

‘So how does she fit in with Win and my wife?’

‘You’d have to ask her that – it’s between them. I don’t know the details.’ Out of the two, there was only one I could now ask, and I doubted he would give me a straight answer, but then given the stranger that Margaret was becoming in death, I doubted I would have fared better with her even if she had still been alive. Who was this woman I had been married to for four years but yet found now I knew nothing about?

I left with the tea still undrunk and more questions than I’d come with. I kissed Sarah on the cheek as if we were affectionate siblings although I still wondered if I’d lost that privilege a long time ago. Considering her shadowy form as I glanced back, I wondered how long before my indecision over whether to visit again would become inconsequential. She’d reiterated that she was all right, and not to worry about her. Typical Little Mother. Sometimes we lose things of far more worth than we can ever estimate until it’s too late. It was probably already too late for me and her.

Worry about myself, she’d said. I hardly needed the exhortation. With all the information I’d gleaned today, I still didn’t know the answer to the two personal questions I most needed to resolve – would Kimberley spill the beans in front of Kat? And what had Margaret really been planning? Aside from that, the vexed question of Jaggers’ involvement with Danny’s offence loomed larger than ever since I’d read the old case notes. I couldn’t place Jaggers in the role of the murderer, but it still somehow stank of his involvement as badly as Danny’s predicament did. However, the floral note that overlaid the stench was of a distinctly different character – cool, feminine and extremely organised. Yet how could Margaret possibly have been involved with something that had happened before she was anywhere near the scene of the crime, and involving people she didn’t even know?

16: Sweet Charity

I marked time by looking into the adoption charity, FFF. The interview with Kimberley Hewson was still two days away, postponed because she’d had another spell in hospital.

‘Depression,’ Kat explained on the phone when she did ring, sounding distant. ‘Danny’s not been well either.’ I wanted to press her about both of them but her tone of voice precluded all but business. Added to which, Heather had perched herself on the client’s chair in my office and was swinging one elegant shiny stiletto sandal from perfectly polished blood-red toes. Her expression implied she wanted blood too. I wound up the phone call purposely efficient, deciding two could play the game of detachment, even though I had little idea how to play it in terms of a relationship as yet. In court, however, I was a master and there had to be some similarities. I mentioned visiting the charity’s offices to do some research work before I ended the call, partly to pique Kat, and partly because I was genuinely curious about the charity. When I had gut instincts about cases I’d learn to pay attention to them. This was one of those occasions. There was something about the charity that, to my attuned nose, stank in the same way Jaggers did.

‘So,’ Heather prefaced as soon as the hand piece hit the base. ‘Who’s been digging?’ I immediately thought of the excavated case now sitting secretly in my desk drawer at home. My hands began to sweat. How the fuck had she found out about that? I ran interference as I would in court.

‘Nice end-pins, Heather – new?’ And before she could answer, ‘digging what? I don’t go in for gardening – got no garden, you see.’ I smiled smoothly.

‘Oh, come on Lawrence. You can’t catch me out with that old routine – we do the same job, remember? The Wemmick case.’

‘Wemmick?’ That name again. Until yesterday the name had merely been an echo of my past – the family name of the old judge. Now it had cropped up twice in two days, and both in less than clean circumstances. I gave her my mystified look and she sighed impatiently.

‘Lord Justice Wemmick. He’s dead but his nephew isn’t and added to which, he’s a complete asshole. He’s making life difficult by asking about the Roumelia boy who I got off a couple of years ago.’

‘Roumelia?’

‘Yes, your little social worker’s brother, or didn’t she tell you about that?’

‘I’d gathered there was a link.’

‘Too right, there was a link – your Margaret. I didn’t like to say anything before because it was like speaking ill of, but first Margaret persuaded me, and then Margaret put the screws on me when I wanted to get out of it because it was all too suspect. Now it’s come back to haunt me, with this nosey bastard poking about. So what do you know about it? Margaret made it sound as if I had to do it or you’d be in the proverbial somehow.’

‘I had nothing to do with it at all. In fact apart from your apparent misgivings at the time, it was just one of those cases that crop up – the ones we agree to and then wish to hell and back.’

‘So what Margaret implied wasn’t true?’

‘What did Margaret imply?’

‘That there was something in your past the boy knew and if we didn’t keep him out of trouble, he’d get you into it.’

‘For God’s sake, do I look like someone who’d put his reputation on the line?’ The irony didn’t escape me.

‘Well ...’

‘Why the hell didn’t you come and talk to me at the time?’

‘It was Margaret.’ And that was it in a nutshell. Margaret. I hadn’t realised until now how much Margaret had manipulated. Not just me; Kat and obviously Heather too. I wondered if Jeremy and Francis might tell similar tales. I didn’t really want to hear them if they could, but it made establishing what was going on behind the scenes of FFF, which Margaret had been such a dedicated patron of, more relevant than ever.

‘So what is the problem this asshole, as you describe him, is nit-picking about?’

‘The asshole’s name is John Wemmick. Lord Justice Wemmick’s nephew. He’s suggesting that there’s a miscarriage of justice because he claims to have known Roumelia – used him for odd jobs – and Roumelia apparently confessed to him that he was guilty. It’ll go sky-high if he pushes it. He’s a High Court judge’s relation. Threatening to expose corruption in the courts unless we keep him happy is like offering a rope to hang ourselves with and suggesting he pull the trap door open too.’

‘John Arthur Wemmick?’

‘I don’t usually ask about middle names. Have I asked you yours for Christ’s sake? But you know him then?’

‘No, I don’t know him, Heather. Other than I’ve seen his name crop up recently. Nor do I know what Margaret was up to – sorry. Why would you think I’d been digging around the case though?’

‘Because the folder is gone from the archives, and I saw you coming out of the basement door the other day when you were supposed to be home ill. I assumed you’d been in there and taken it.’

‘No. Not me.’

‘So what were you doing down there then?’

‘Something unrelated.’

‘Something unrelated or something Margaret-related?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I’m starting to wonder what her role was in Chambers, apart from being your wife.’ I stared at her.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said carefully at length.

‘Neither do I!’ she admitted ruefully. ‘But I sure as hell mean something. I need to figure it out – and find those bloody papers. Was that her on the phone?’

‘Who, Margaret?’ My face must have been a picture, because Heather burst out laughing.

‘Oh my God, Lawrence, when did you develop the comedy act?’

I didn’t understand. ‘It was just – oh, never mind.’ I might be quick-witted in court, but at times life eluded me. We’d been talking about Margaret, my mind was full of Margaret, and Margaret seemed to be the inception of all my problems currently. I’d naturally assumed we were still talking about her. The humour reached me about the same time as her response. I laughed too – a belly laugh, and that was a new development as well.

‘I meant your little social worker.’

‘She’s not my little social worker.’

‘Oh no?’

‘So what else have you seen me supposedly doing then?’

‘I don’t need to see you doing anything, darling, it’s written all over your face when you merely mention her name.’

‘Jesus!’

‘It’s OK. I’m a woman. I notice these things. Your secret is safe with me – and I think it’ll do you the world of good, if you keep it to yourself. I don’t know how much Margaret’s manipulation extended to home, but if it was anything like the extent she used it on me, you’re a poor bastard. Be careful though. You do still have a reputation to uphold, now Margaret’s not here to do it for you – not to mention a wife to actually bury still.’

‘My God, that was unnecessary, Heather – and our relationship wasn’t that bad,’ but that was another lie to add all the rest. Looking back, now I could see it had been that bad – or worse; non-existent. And not all of her doing. I’d been shepherded into appropriate situations, primed to respond to selected choices, groomed for the role Margaret wanted me to assume and I’d allowed it. I didn’t know precisely what that role was to have entailed in its entirety but I had gone along with it all willingly enough. It had been easy and I’d been lazy. Perhaps trying too hard for too long had worn away my edge before Margaret even arrived on the scene. She’d been the cement between the cracks I hadn’t even known were there – until she was gone. Now everything was cracking – unravelling. I toyed with the dummy folder I’d made up for Danny’s case to cover for the fact that it now resided permanently in my desk drawer at home, away from the prying eyes of Gregory or any of his minions.

‘I’m going to have a look behind the scenes at one of the charities she was involved with later on today, so I’m not going to be much help right away but let me know if anything turns up.’ It was intended as a get-out, but even that backfired on me.

‘Which charity?’

‘FFF – Finding Futures for Families. It seems to keep popping up in what Margaret was doing – and in relation to my client.’

‘It’s one of the Wemmicks’.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s one of the charities the Wemmicks set up – or rather one the trust fund set up after he died.’

‘Lord Justice Wemmick again?’

‘The one and same.’ Not just twice – bloody regular monotony now!

‘Why didn’t I know that?’

‘I don’t know, Lawrence. You seem to have been walking around with your eyes closed these days.’ She got up and walked elegantly to the door before I could reply. ‘Let me know what you find out, eh? I’ve a feeling there’s more Margaret manipulation here, and I don’t like it. Talk about power extending beyond the grave – this is becoming like a bloody strangle-hold and I don’t like being strangled. I spent far too much on getting my neck done.’ She stroked it lovingly and I had to admit the surgery was exceptional. Heather Trinder was at least my age, going on thirty-five. ‘Don’t forget that.’ I wasn’t being let off the hook – just dangled a little.

Kat rang me back less than five minutes after Heather went. This time I positioned myself in front of the window and tried to see what was written all over my face in the reflection. I couldn’t see anything but irritation.

‘Do you want company?’

‘I’m in Chambers.’

‘I meant when you go and have a poke around FFF.’

‘Ah, I see.’ I knew she’d bite. That much at least I was getting right about human nature. The trouble was the urge to produce a reaction in her hadn’t resolved what I wanted to do about it. There was something sweetly addictive about her that I couldn’t pass up, even though too much addiction can be dangerous. No, I didn’t particularly want her company under these specific circumstances, but how could I say that without offending? It would be less tricky than interviewing Kimberley Hewson, though. I still had a brief to work through and the ice had to be broken between us again somehow, not that I was entirely sure ice had formed, and if it had – why. I went for the safest option. ‘If you’re free, a not so independent witness is always useful.’ It was done. God help the addict needing his fix.

She met me outside an hour later but I had at least done a bit of homework by then. Heather’s revelation about the link to the old judge had shown me exactly how far I’d sunk into myself and my problems. Normally I’d be on top of every twist and turn in the evidence. I’d have been telling Heather what the FFF trustees had for breakfast under other circumstances. Instead I hadn’t even known who they were until she’d prompted me with her sharp little stiletto kick. My edge was not merely blunted, it was virtually non-existent. It was time to smarten up.

The charity had been set up with monies allocated for ‘charitable works’ from Wemmick’s estate and via a convoluted will trust – the one I’d also benefitted from. I made a mental note to obtain a full copy of it and see what else he was connected to at some point. A number of charities had popped up this way over the last five or six years; FFF, MADU, Children without Boundaries and Casualties of War being amongst them. The trustees varied overall, but had an identical core: John Arthur Wemmick, Molly Anne Wemmick and George Edward Wemmick Snr – younger brother, it seemed, to my old judge. National Archives helpfully provided me with a list of them and their trustees. So the judge’s family had control.

George Edward Wemmick was in banking, and mainly abroad – Dubai it seemed. Elderly but still active. John Arthur Wemmick seemed to have multiple financial and property interests, but to the seasoned eye, it was clear that ‘diverse financial interests’ implied some that one couldn’t delve too deeply into without meeting resistance. Probably nightclubs and the like. There the trail went cold though, apart from the fact that his was the name on the post-it note in the case folder Win wanted to get his hands on. There was nothing more about him or Molly in public records, which was odd. In fact the Wemmick family tree seemed to end there in its entirety, like a door slammed shut. These charitable trustee types usually liked their name in lights for all their good works. In fact a little digging around Molly seemed to arrive at more than a complete dead end – as if she didn’t even exist. I set Louise the task of locating a birth certificate whilst I was out, suggesting a birth year range somewhere between mine and Margaret’s initially. It was unlikely she’d be much younger than Margaret if she were a trustee.

The cat had taken up residence under her desk. As soon as it saw me it greeted me like a long-lost friend.

‘Oh, it likes you Mr Juste. Are you a cat-lover?’

‘Hmm,’ I said nothing and tried to surreptitiously shoo it away from my legs. ‘I didn’t know we were developing Chambers into an animal sanctuary – did I miss something at the last staff meeting?’

‘Oh, no. It was Mr Gregory’s idea. To combat the mice. It’s only temporary.’

‘Where will it go when it’s completed its brief then?’

‘Home with me, I hope,’ she grinned infectiously. ‘I like waifs and strays and it came from the RSPCA originally. It’s not all that good at its job though, so that may be sooner than I anticipated originally. Mr Gregory says it’s disturbed some of the archives and he’s had to sort out the mess himself. Right old state in the old filing racks.’

‘Oh, really? Which ones?’ My gut twisted uncomfortably.

‘Last year and the year before.’ I almost sighed aloud with relief. Nowhere near the 1988 archives I’d raided then. She waved the slip of paper with Molly Wemmick’s name and possible dates of birth on it. ‘I’ll see what I can get hold of for you, but you might have to go there yourself if they don’t find anything specific.’

‘Thanks.’ The thought of Gregory on his hands and knees refiling his minion’s dismembered work because of his own mistake amused me sufficiently to arrive in Hammersmith at the offices of FFF still smiling. Kat was waiting by the main entrance.

‘You look very happy – something nice happened?’ There didn’t seem to be any ice at all. Maybe it had just been her phone manner. I relaxed and allowed her calm to invade me too.

‘Just Gregory on his knees in front of the god of the filing cabinet,’ I grinned with satisfaction. She shook her head, not getting the joke. ‘Never mind, it’s not important.’ Steering her through the outsized double plate glass doors, I caught a waft of her perfume and my head spun with giddy thoughts of her lying supine and golden brown against the stark white sheet, warm and sleepily curled into me. I didn’t need Heather to remind me of the stupid expression probably spread all over my face. I sternly banished the thoughts and concentrated on FFF and its triumvirate of power.

I outlined what I’d found out so far to Kat. ‘So where did Margaret and her patronage fit into that?’

‘I never met any of the trustees – or not any male ones, anyway. All the events and meetings I went to were headed up by women.’

‘Well there would appear to be two pretty powerful men and a woman somewhere in the background. Let’s find out a bit more about how this set-up works.’

My appointment was with a non-specific ‘manager’. The Trustees weren’t available – indeed rarely ever there according to the receptionist.

‘I guess they have busy lives to lead in industry and the like, sir. We were very lucky your wife had time on her hands to help us. She was such a natural leader and a power for change. And so unassuming.’ I wondered if we were talking about the same woman, but said nothing. Kat threw me an amused glance which I tried to ignore. If she knew what I did, she wouldn’t have thought it funny either.

We sat in the sleek office; wall to wall glass, minimalistic furniture, chic bespoke artwork on the walls and a claustrophobically stuffy atmosphere despite the air conditioning. The amount of glass magnified the heat, turning the room into a mini hot-house. Kat and the office manager seemed to be unaffected by it. I felt light-headed and weak. My diet of alcohol and fresh air for the last few days didn’t help.

The manager was noncommittal and uninformative. The soft fuzziness Kat had wrought in me started to give way to irritation and then the jitters. I didn’t want to be confined to this stuffy little glass oven, bandying pleasantries when the meat was obviously elsewhere. With the excuse of my recent stomach upset back in play, I left Kat to the social niceties whilst I went into the central courtyard off the atrium for some fresh air. There was nothing much to see on the way there – other than the fact that the offices were far too impressive for a charity. Surely all the money they had coming in would go straight out on expenses, and for all its grandeur, it seemed to be working on a skeleton staff. The admin office was made up of two desks, and the filing was piled up by the door without having been touched in what looked like days. I nodded at the solitary clerk as I peered round the door and spotted her water cooler. I introduced myself and was met with more enthusiastic praise for Margaret and over-done expressions of sympathy for me. I asked for a glass of water and she bustled off to find a glass.

It had been a genuine request. I did want water – cool, clear – in fact a whole blue lagoon of it to wallow in and sink under to dispel this fug of heat shrivelling my brain, but her absence was too good an opportunity to miss. I flipped the cover of the top folder open. It was a set of adoption papers, identical to the ones Margaret had gleaned, but this set had an official looking seal stamped across them, ‘completed’. The next folder was the same, and the one below that. There were close to fifty folders in the pile – all similar. Christ, how many children were there in this world to farm out? They were like a commodity here, not a person in need of help. And then it all became clear. The fug, the light-headedness, the bewilderment, the swanky offices – it all merged into a mêlée of understanding. It was a business, not a charity. A baby business. The girl came back with a glass of crystal cool water and I downed it in one, thanking her profusely before leaving. As I exited, I popped my head back in briefly as she settled behind her pile of paperwork again.

‘Oh by the way – sorry – I’ve rather lost my bearings. I was meant to be heading back to Mr Wemmick’s office but I’ve lost my way!’ I shrugged and tried to look as helpless as possible. I thought of Kat and hoped the resulting expression would be suitably moon-faced. Whether it was or not, I’ll never know, but the girl seemed convinced. Armed with detailed directions, I set off for the third floor. Walking around with my eyes closed, am I, Heather? We’ll see.

Unsure of what to expect of the third floor, I was relieved to find it virtually in darkness apart from some intermittent mood lighting – enough to find my way along the corridor and read the names on the door plates. My three targets lived at the far end, next to the Boardroom. All three doors opened when pushed gently so I slipped inside the larger of them. George Edward Wemmick wasn’t at home, but a portrait of him was. Hung imposingly on the back wall so as soon as you entered the room, the man pierced his visitor with a steely eye. The blinds were drawn and the room was cool and dark – a blessing compared to the airless oppression downstairs – nevertheless the power of the man was obvious. He was well into his seventies in the portrait, but commanding – an ex-soldier perhaps? He had the bearing for it – and something else. I moved closer and was transfixed. I probably stood there for several minutes, just staring. I knew exactly where I’d seen that face before, but it wasn’t possible. The age was wrong.

I debated trying the desk drawers, but guessed they’d be locked. Better to use the time left checking out the other two. The woman’s door was also unlocked, but the room was covered with a fine layer of dust, as if it had been unused for weeks. Plainly a woman busier elsewhere. There were no identifying features for her at all. I went next door to the last of the power players, and there he was. The room was as empty as the other two – of personage – but not of atmosphere. I could feel him in the very walls, the sense of sickening menace and in the photo on the desk. The man himself – the one I’d seen in the face of the older generation next door: Jaggers.

I made my way over to the desk, still reeling as connections clicked into place like the parts of a machine being assembled. If Jaggers belonged in here that made him John Arthur Wemmick. So why had he been John Arthur Green in the children’s home? Or had he been John Arthur Green? Perhaps it was merely an alias? There’d always been something artificial about his rough accent – as if he was acting it rather than speaking it. And if George Edward was his father, that made my old judge his uncle. I tried to remember the judge’s features in detail but it was difficult after all the years of absence, and compounded by his general aura of sickliness for most of the time I’d known him. The gaunt sparseness of chronic ill-health had robbed him of any similarity to the rude vigour of his nephew. The eyes, I supposed – yes, the eyes and mouth were the same, although the judge’s curling lip had been in sardonic amusement. Jaggers’ was cruel. The photo was of Jaggers and a woman, probably fifteen years his junior when it was taken, and it was at least ten years old because it was taken in front of a Wimbledon theatre which I knew had been demolished now. And now it wasn’t mere gut feeling and surmise. It was fact, confirmed by the photograph on his desk and the letter opener beside it. My letter opener. And my wife in the photograph, blonde and more bold-faced, definitely my wife.

The fugue in my head returned – a war between incredulity and fact battling to the death. I sat down at the desk and studied the photograph, disbelieving. I must be mistaken. This was crazy. Worse, how could Margaret be connected to the maniac who’d terrorised my teenage years? And how could that maniac be the privileged and powerful businessman fronting this charity? I put my head in my hands. Think man, think.

Margaret had come out of nowhere – the bright, confident twenty-something, joining Chambers as an intern and rapidly making herself indispensable. Gregory himself had championed her, and there could be no greater pathway to success than that. It was inevitable that she would become a fixture, but she’d chosen me to be the fixing for the fixture. She’d shadowed me on some insignificant case that I was fitting in between more lucrative work because by then we were trying to build a reputation of being ‘the good guys’ – playing on my surname. I remembered the case well, ironically, even though I’d forgotten details of more important ones, it seemed. It had been a pain. Nothing much in it for us; a widow looking for compensation for a life assurance policy gone bad. She’d got it – more because of Margaret’s attention to detail than mine, but I’d received the praise for the success and fairness had dictated I share it. Margaret and I had our first informal drink together and never looked back. Engineered, I wondered now?

The case had been more Francis’s style than mine, but Francis was already unhappily married with two kids and a divorce settlement potential that far outweighed any proclivity to dalliance. Jeremy had just acquired a glamorous and very expensive new girlfriend, not unlike the current model, and Heather wasn’t gay. It only left me. Content with my private life, my private sins and my private past; so private I welcomed no-one into my present until Margaret put herself there. Was that why I’d been allocated the intern – I, who’d least needed or wanted one at the time? Or had I been specifically chosen? It was far too circumstantial, this ill-defined but very apparent link, otherwise.

Yet, how the hell could they know each other? Margaret had only known I was ‘orphaned’, no other details. I’d kept them to myself. She’d known I’d been bullied once and that I’d had a patron of sorts who’d helped me get my start in life, but not the man’s name. The terms of the will had specified secrecy and I’d been happy to go along with them, but if she was this friendly with Jaggers, and he was so closely related to the old judge, then she probably knew all that and more, long before she met me.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! What the hell was going on here? Had she targeted me right from the start – the bright young thing ostensibly looking for a career and then abandoning it to be the wife of the coldest fish at the Bar? I’d always viewed her choice of me with a mixture of mild disbelief and impersonal relief that I was now officially respectable and could stop trying so hard. She took care of it all with a maturity beyond her years – even accepting my unreasonable strictures about no children. And what woman in her right mind would normally accept all of that unless she was completely, utterly and crazily in love with the man dishing out the demands? Whatever else Margaret had been, she hadn’t been in love with me – ever. I didn’t know that then – I knew nothing of love, but I did now. I recognised the passion and insanity in myself for Kat that I couldn’t even have begun to imagine then. It was the explanation I’d been missing all my life – of emotion in general. Heather’s summation of Margaret as a supreme manipulator had been perfect – and I’d missed it completely.

So was this liaison with Jaggers intimate or business? The photo gave no clue, other than that they seemed perfectly at ease with each other. If it was intimate it was betrayal. If it was business, it seemed it was also almost without exception, betrayal too. So what did that mean? That I knew nothing of what was really going on, for a start. I now had a mêlée of concealed identities, ambiguous connections and illusory activities all in full swing around me.

I’d supposedly been wandering the courtyards for over fifteen minutes. Even the most light-headed of barristers would have got their thoughts sufficiently in order by now and there were only so many pleasantries Kat could be expected to think of to keep the posse from forming to track my wandering mind down. I ducked downstairs and found the gents just in time to appear to be leaving it as the manager and Kat appeared. Kat was big-eyed and clearly relieved at the sight of me. The manager was politely irritated.

‘Mr Juste, we thought we’d lost you!’

‘Sorry, I thought I was feeling better than I was. One of your office staff kindly found me a glass of water and then inevitably ...’ I gestured to the toilets.

‘Oh dear. Are you all right now?’

‘Yes, thank you, but maybe I would be better off at home after all.’

‘Of course, of course. I hope it has helped to see where your wife made such a difference. Miss Roumelia has been telling me how you wanted to include some details in the eulogy. I hope you can use what I’ve given her.’ Kat waved a sheaf of notes at me and smiled over-enthusiastically.

‘Most certainly, ‘I replied, shaking the manager’s hand, sweaty-palmed and equally as anxious to escape.

The manager ushered us out, officiously relieving us of our visitor’s badges at reception and standing at the plate glass doors to wave us off. Probably more likely to see us off the premises.

‘My God, where did you go?’ hissed Kat as I strode back to my car and she struggled to keep up. ‘Lawrence!’ I stopped and turned. She hurried to catch up. ‘Slow down, will you, for God’s sake. I might be prepared to follow you to the ends of the earth, but I’d lose you on the motorway there at this rate!’

‘Sorry, I just wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible.’

‘Do you really feel bad again?’

‘Yes, but not for the reason you think.’ We reached my car and she got in. ‘Where’s your car?’

‘Back at the office. I walked.’

‘OK. Let’s drive.’ It was a spur of the moment decision – one of those overwhelming needs to confide which you later regret but can’t see any way out of either. ‘I’ve got a story to tell you and you’re not going to like it.’

17: The Female of the Species

I wanted to tell her everything. It would have been like penance, the knotted flail searing my skin – far more effective than the coffee had been, but I knew I should wait for the impetus to self-harm to cool before partaking or being burnt. It wouldn’t feel any better afterwards, even though I wouldn’t have to pretend any more. That in itself would have been a relief and a revelation. I’d not had nothing to hide since I was nine. But I didn’t. I drove us back to her office and she picked up her car from where she’d parked it in a side street. Then we drove back to her place and sat opposite each other in her small lounge. I declined tea because it reminded me of Sarah, and I edited and told my partial truth. As I talked, I tried to tell myself it wouldn’t matter; it wouldn’t matter what this woman thought of me. It would be over and done with soon – like Sarah had said, think about what you’re goin’ to do in the future, not what you done in the past. Make it right. I was always good at lying to myself.

I started with the day that Kimmy was born, giving her all my siblings’ names this time, and Jaggers. I wanted to leave my betrayal of Win out but if I didn’t tell her, how could she understand the tricky non-relationship between us? I moved on through the judge, softening my role in his life to ‘companion’, and ending with joining Chambers. Once there I had two more confessions to make – the Johns’ case and Danny. After nearly four hours recounting a damage that was immeasurable, my voice was dry and rasping and I’d told her almost everything – bar one thing. The atrocities of the children’s home, the manipulations I’d willingly bought into to achieve my dreams, the turning of a blind eye to injustice – all of that I admitted to; but nothing about Danny – not yet.

It was twilight by the time I’d finished. We sat in silence for several minutes more as I waited for her reaction. I hadn’t yet got to what I’d found in the FFF offices. I needed to know whether I could rely on her before I admitted how much at risk I was from Jaggers, and whatever Margaret and he had planned. After all, Margaret had been a kind of mentor to Kat, and she’d arranged the defence of Kat’s brother. That meant Kat might still have other loyalties. If so, her reaction now would reveal them. When she spoke she sounded thready and stunned.

‘You can’t make injustice right, Lawrence. Ever.’

‘I can’t change the past either, so the only things I have to play with are the present and the future. I have to change the future.’

‘I don’t see how you’re going to do that either. In fact you shouldn’t be involved with this case at all. Neither should I. Oh my God, we’ll mess it all up for him, poor kid. You were his one hope.’

‘Seems like it could be my nemesis instead.’ She hit me then, stinging my face and making my eyes water. I hadn’t anticipated it from her – always so gentle and biddable since I’d broken down in the park, even when pretending to fight with me. I’d almost forgotten the feisty young woman who’d squared up to me when we first met. I still had my eyes shut. I’d chosen to ignore the inner iron in preference to the outer softness.

Don’t be the clever bastard with me! You’re an adult and you can cope with this kind of stuff. Danny’s just a child, and he’s not an awkward predicament to be facetious about. We’re responsible for him. Why can’t you just be – oh, I don’t know – human about it?’ She sank back into her chair and glared at me, soft face shadowed but angular in the darkness. Grim.

‘Well, thanks. The one thing I thought I was is human – to err is human, to forgive divine, and all that crap. If I’d been an automaton I wouldn’t have been swayed by the charms of a woman, no matter how persuasive, and that would have put Margaret and you out of business, wouldn’t it?’ Her jaw dropped and she stared at me. ‘I didn’t mean that the way it came out.’

‘You did.’

The child in me responded – the one I’d been denying since childhood. ‘All right, I did. I’m fucking mad – OK? Not mad-insane, mad-furious. Yes, there is a child involved, there are two of them. I’m the other one, adult or no. We’ve both been stitched up one way or another, all our lives.’

‘Oh poor you. But you’re not a child now, Lawrence – and you weren’t a child ten years ago when you swung that case. Don’t try to defend yourself. You can’t.’ I didn’t reply. She was right. Ten years ago, I’d set aside responsible action for self-gratification. If some divine justice had placed Jaggers and me side by side then, my soul would have been as dark as his. We faced each other in silence. I broke it in the end.

‘I don’t know what to say, Kat.’

‘There’s nothing to say, Lawrence. You’re not who I thought you were. I was wrong – as usual.’ She put her face in her hands and I was excluded. After some time had passed I touched her arm, unsure for the first time in all of my life what this outcome would bring. Even in the children’s home I’d been able to judge the likely possibilities of my actions and react accordingly. Life had been one long manipulation of events since then, with me assuming I had complete mastery of the situation. Ironic that it had been directed unseen by Margaret for the last ten years of it and that when I finally tried to do the right – and the human thing – it blew straight back in my face.

‘Kat?’

She shivered. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘OK, I get the picture. I’ll go. If you think I should be taken off the case, I’ll volunteer a replacement at my own expense.’

‘Can you volunteer a replacement life for Danny?’ She removed her hands from her face and it was still cold and hard, paler than before.

‘That was a cheap shot.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. It was.’ The regret seemed genuine, but her expression didn’t soften with it. ‘I agree. You should go. I don’t know what I think about anything at the moment.’

I’d wanted done with all of it, the lying, the hiding and the secrets. I’d wanted absolution and acceptance. I’d mistakenly assumed I could find it with Kat, but she was just another erring human. No-one could give me what I needed – only God, and he didn’t exist in my world. Now I’d asked and found Kat as lost as me, I wanted done with her too. Thank God I’d kept the ultimate – the worst possibility of all to myself. I’d thought, amongst all the chaos that surrounded me, I’d found a small voice of calm and unconditional love. A voice like Ma’s. She’d seemed to have been promising a future like a rainbow arcing overhead and I’d been foolish enough to believe in the possibility of a pot of gold at the end of it. Life wasn’t like that. I, of all people, should have worked that out by now. What an idiot, what a stupid, bloody idiot I was. I hadn’t been lying when I’d described myself as mad-furious. I was, deep in my gut, I was angry – with her, with me, with a world I just simply couldn’t get it right in, whatever I did. What was the fucking point?

I got up to go. The room was swathed in shadow, only the occasional beam of passing headlights illuminating it and us. My movement cast a silhouette that travelled across the room like a shadow puppet, playing out a scene from a tragedy. She said it quietly to my back – in retreat – as if in her own defence.

It was criminal, Lawrence.’ At least she was braver than me in naming it. I hadn’t manage to formally attach the label yet, even though I knew perfectly well what it was.

‘It was a mistake, Kat.’ She stared at me and the whites of her eyes shone in the dark. They reminded me of a wild animal, afraid of the hunter. I was the hunter – the destroyer of worlds. She was afraid of me, and the damage I could do to her world as well as my own. I was on my own then.

‘I’ll go,’ I repeated, and her reply was the same; nothing. What did I expect? The sanguine survivor in me had cautioned against sharing confidences, but I’d ignored it in my rush of enthusiasm to share the burden. I’d mingled the two separate lives. They should have stayed in their two separate boxes, as Lennox had advised. That way at least one of them might have endured. How could anything as fragile as the tentative tendrils of a brand new relationship survive the blunt instrument that the truth represented here? You should have known that, even with your pig-ignorance of people, the inner me said. But I’d fallen in love – or infatuation. Yes; that could have its formal label too – and love makes you blind.

Heather was right. I had been walking around with my eyes shut. All the literature and homilies I’d ever read or heard quoted had made the concept quite clear and yet I’d wilfully ignored it and insisted on telling the woman I’d fallen for something she wouldn’t want to hear about me. There’s no such thing as pragmatism or objectivity where emotion is concerned. And whereas in the past my problem had been the lack of emotion with Margaret, excess of it was my problem now. I had reached half a century without understanding people at all. The patchwork that was me was still incomplete.

‘I agree it’s not appropriate for me to remain on this case now, but I can’t just leave it all in abeyance. It’s my life this affects as well as the boy’s. I’ll continue with my research until I reach a conclusion and then I’ll turn it all over to you. You can do what you want with it in order to defend the boy. Just please leave me out of the rest of it.’

‘Leave you out of it. That’s what you wanted right from the start, wasn’t it?’ She was bitter.

‘Yes, at the start that’s what I wanted. I wanted something different now.’ I waited but the passing headlights flickered across the room and died as we too died a little death. I thought I heard her call my name as I shut the door, but it was probably just imagination. For my own sanity, life should return to its recognisable pre-case format. I plainly wasn’t cut out for the roller-coaster of emotional investment. Complete Margaret’s obsequies, put my affairs in order and await the death blow professionally. If it included naming my original patron then it really would be a death blow. Thirty or so years of ‘loan’ to repay plus compound interest when the terms of the ‘loan’ in the will were breached would wipe me out. I wondered where I would go then, but at the moment it didn’t really seem to matter. I drove slowly home and parked the car in its allocated spot. The cobbles of the mews shone ghostly in the moonlight. I could almost imagine Margaret walking across them, taunting me over my stupidity. The lure of the brandy was my first inclination, but something else in me kicked out at that.

I pocketed the keys and walked instead, along the narrow streets of Chelsea and past the glamorous boutiques Heather would be likely to frequent, chic and extortionately expensive monstrosities bedecking the giraffe-necked mannequins in the windows. I didn’t care where I was walking. It just seemed to help with the hum of facts and questions circling in my head. The night was still and breathless – that promise of impending summer storm, not quite yet ready to break. Even the air smelt angry. I passed at least three pubs without going in, despite the still insistent lure of alcohol to numb the pain. The sweetish smell of beer and fag ash burst on me whenever a customer left, reeling gently into the night, or another solace-seeker entered. The comfort of anonymity and oblivion beckoned from them, but I declined. My solitary life was best spent alone and sober until I’d figured out what to do about all of this.

I ended up on a small side-road in Battersea after crossing the Thames via Battersea Bridge Road, lingering fleetingly to watch the reflection of the moon wallowing in its murky waters and wondering what it would feel like to jump into them and sink down, down into the depths. I soon shook that notion from my head. The last thing I wanted to be was dead. I was a survivor and that was what I had been battling to be ever since landing up in the children’s home. What was the point of abandoning that now, even though things looked bad? They’d been worse. It was purely self-pity that had made me consider it.

The road was Binnie’s. Whether subconsciously or not I had headed for it. The lights were still on in the front. It was about eleven thirty. A completely inappropriate time for anyone to visit, let alone a long-lost brother. Yet I did. The devil was in me since the confession to Kat and I felt a general animosity towards all my fellow men – or women – particularly any linked to my past, whether innocent or guilty. It was where all the trouble had stemmed from and a hitherto unknown belligerence in me wanted to settle with it once and for all. Kill the past, dead – before it killed me.

I marched up to the door and rapped on it. Its glossy yellow paint shone like fluorescence in the moonlight and a faint smell of curry lingered in the air. Must have been tea. It mingled incongruously with the perfume from the honeysuckle growing up the front wall of the house, and around the door. Surreal like my life. Lights went on in the hall and an indistinct figure loomed behind the glass half of the door. There was a sound of locks being pulled back and a chain being slid on. The door opened fractionally, chain barring full passage. The face behind the chain was a big bruiser of a man, head shaven, jowls giving him a British bulldog look without the British. He was about sixty but could probably still pack a fair punch. He looked suspicious.

‘Yeah?’

‘Is Binnie home?’

‘Why? Do we know you?’

‘Binnie does. I’m her brother.’ He looked unconvinced, but called over his shoulder anyway, heavy cockney accent mangling the words.

‘Binn? Someone here says he’s your brother.’ The middle-aged woman I’d seen in the photo Win had shown me appeared behind him, frowning.

‘Win? At this time?’ She saw me and gasped. ‘Kenny? My God!’ Then more belligerently, ‘What you doing here?’

‘I thought that maybe you might have been expecting me – or at least that was what Win led me to assume.’

‘He ain’t coming in here,’ the bruiser said pointedly to Binnie. She shook her head.

‘It’s not Win, it’s the other one.’ To me, ‘What you up to with Win?’

‘I assumed you’d know.’ I was beginning to regret the spontaneous decision to surprise her. It was showing as many of the hallmarks of backfiring on me as the confession to Kat had. ‘Danny and Kimberley.’

‘Oh.’ Yes, she did know. She looked me over in an unfriendly way. ‘You’d better come in, I s’pose.’ The bouncer on the door looked at her for instruction and she nodded at him. ‘It’s OK Len, he’s me little bruvver – you know, the one ...’

‘Ah,’ he scrutinised me. ‘’im.’ He shut the door and the chain rattled. The door re-opened a few seconds later and he ushered me in. The curry smell was stronger in the hallway and the honeysuckle scent was banished to the night. Old flock wallpaper covered the walls, yellowed and probably as old as the house itself. ‘Only as far as here, though – get it?’ he said to me. A small dog scurried out to greet me and scampered around my ankles, covering my dark trousers in spiky white hairs. ‘Buster – git!’ The man, Len, kicked out at him, but not unkindly. The dog attacked his ankles but followed him along the hallway and into the kitchen anyway. I decided it must be the kitchen because it was the source of the curry smell. Binnie and I remained in the hall.

‘So,’ she said coolly, ‘you decided to just pop by after all these years – and at gone eleven at night? Funny way to do things, ain’t it – or is this what you swanky bleeders do?’

‘I didn’t know where you were before so I could hardly have popped by sooner.’ The welcome here was decidedly frosty – completely unlike Sarah’s. I was surprised at the disparity between their two responses. ‘I’m sorry it’s so late though. I’ll come back tomorrow if you prefer.’

‘Nah, get it over with – and you can’t have exactly tried before neither,’ she responded tartly. ‘So what you come for now?’

‘I told you, Win suggested I should talk to you about the family. He gave me your address.’

‘Win? And why would he do that?’

‘Why wouldn’t he?’

‘We don’t see eye to eye, Win and me, that’s why.’ Her lips compressed and the dimple showed more in its repression. ‘And you ain’t been around to know why.’

‘Well, neither do we, so that’s something at least we have in common.’

She studied me. ‘What d’you not see eye to eye over?’

‘Probably everything – it goes a long way back.’

‘To the children’s home?’

‘Yes, that would be about it.’ The silence lengthened. It was like breaking through a wall of ice that was being steadily reformed on the other side as soon as I chipped a fragment from mine. ‘Binnie,’ I sighed, ‘I can see you don’t regard me particularly highly, but you are my older sister and Sarah said families stick together.’ At Sarah’s name her expression changed.

‘You been to see Sarah too?’

‘Yes, a few days ago.’

‘How was she?’ I wasn’t sure how to answer. Sarah had said the others didn’t know how ill she was. Should I betray her request for my silence or enlist support for her. Binnie pre-empted my response. ‘Oh, like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Bad.’ Her face reflected knowledge she wasn’t supposed to have.

‘Do you know?’

‘Course I know. Obvious ain’t it?’

‘Well, to me it was, but she said she hadn’t told any of you.’ I cringed at the implication of my comment. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ was too embarrassingly apparent in it – and the suggestion of superiority on my part. It was the second time tonight I’d said something I hadn’t intended to come out that way – or maybe I had. I’d had to admit to Kat I’d intended hurting when I’d implied she was able to manipulate the same as Margaret had purely because of her gender. The insulting objectification of womanhood into sexual brokerage had helped soften my own sense of rejection. It wasn’t true. Kat could manipulate me – if she’d wanted to – purely because of my feelings, nothing to do with sex or gender or abuse of femininity. But she didn’t – and hadn’t. The division between myself and my family was also true. I wasn’t one of ‘them’ no matter how much I might play on ‘family’ to extract some truth from the morass of misinformation I was being fed by everyone else. Binnie didn’t seem to register the insult though. She was too taken up with how Sarah was.

‘She hides it pretty well most of the time if she knows we’re coming,’ she explained. ‘She wouldn’t have bothered to cover it up for you.’

‘Why not?’ I was genuinely interested. I deserved the put down I got back.

‘You don’t matter, Kenny. You ain’t mattered to us for a long time – ever since you changed your name and pretended we didn’t exist. Takes two, you know.’ And she was right. Why would I matter to any of them? I’d assumed abandonment by Ma, so I’d abandoned all the rest of them, starting with Win. I’d abandoned real roots in favour of manufactured ones. Family stick together, but I was no longer really part of their family. I’d voluntarily removed myself from it.

‘I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry. Sarah seemed pleased to see me, but maybe that was her way of making peace with me.’

‘Maybe.’ She sighed heavily. ‘You’re here now so why did you really come?’

‘I don’t know, Binnie. I suppose to find something out – to ask about something, but I don’t think I need to ask the question anymore. The answer is obvious.’

‘Maybe you’re wrong there. Was it to ask if I’d say anything about Danny?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t. The lad’s had enough bad luck. I wouldn’t add to it by tarring him as anything other than what he is – just a kid. If you can help him, then do it. If you can’t – if it’s only for your own conscience, then leave it be and let him live his life his way. He’s got enough to contend with as it is – with Kimmy for a mother, and poorly an all.’

‘Poorly?’

‘You’ve saw him, haven’t you? Sickly kid; always in the wars. Scrapes and bumps and sores. Mine never had so many of them. I’m not saying it’s all Kimmy – nah, I don’t think she’s that bad. Just don’t bother enough.’

‘He seemed reasonably healthy when I saw him.’

‘Well, he’s in care now, ain’t he? Bound to look after him. He’s gonna be up in court. Got to look OK for that. Don’t fancy his chances in clink though – or wherever they send ’em now, poor little sod.’

‘Youth custody.’ It was automatic, the barrister reacting before the man, but she was right. Danny wouldn’t be much of a match for it, whatever they chose to call it now. The hard outer would crack as easily as candy coating. It wasn’t paternal in any sense, but my heart contracted for him, the small boy desperately trying to fend off the world as I had. ‘I’ll do all I can for him, Binnie – whatever the past.’ I hadn’t realised until then that I meant it. Duty, responsibility, conscience – they all played a part, but the thin pinched face I remembered splitting into a grin and making the sun shine was what convinced me. I wouldn’t let history repeat itself with him.

‘Good.’ She smiled suddenly and the dimple resurrected itself. I couldn’t help but look at it.

‘You’ve still got your dimple.’

She laughed. ‘Some things don’t change, Kenny.’ She visibly softened. ‘I’m sorry about your wife, by the way. She were nice.’ Jesus! Margaret had been here as well?

‘Did she come to see you too?’

‘Too? Oh, I s’pose you mean as well as Sarah? Yeah, a while ago. Came a couple of times actually.’

‘Why?’

‘Stuff – wanted to find out about you as a kid, and so on. I thought maybe you were ill but it weren’t that. Kimmy could tell you. Had their heads together over something – not that Kimmy tells me anything. Have to find it out for meself most times. Thought we might have heard from you then.’

I ignored the implied criticism.

‘Something wrong with me?’ I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. ‘She didn’t want to talk about Danny too?’ She stared at me.

‘Nah, why would she?’

‘Because of our connection.’

‘Your connection?’

‘Me and Danny.’

‘You’re his brief, ain’t you?’ In response to my raised eyebrows, she explained. ‘Win told me – we still talk when it’s important. But you weren’t then. Why would there have been a connection between you other than being Kimmy’s your sister?’ The clarity I thought I’d been assembling alongside the facts suddenly collapsed like a house of cards.

‘Wait, what do you mean? No connection other than Kimmy’s my sister. What about Danny’s parentage?’

‘We don’t talk about that. Let sleeping dogs lie. Only cause trouble otherwise.’

‘But that’s what I came to find out about – what you’d say about it if asked?’

‘And I told you – nothing. I think maybe you ought to go now. It’s late and I need me bed.’ She shepherded me to the door.

‘Wait, Binnie – I’m confused. Who is Danny’s father?’ She opened the front door and pushed me towards it.

‘Len?’ She called. ‘Kenny’s going now.’ I didn’t resist. The bruiser’s hands were too meaty for me. ‘Look after yourself,’ she called to me as I reached the gate. ‘And mind Win. Don’t believe everything he tells you.’

18: Medicine

I carried on walking. I would have walked for longer, head spinning, but my phone rang. It was a rarity because I gave few the number. Kat was one of them. I debated whether to reject the call. Enough really was enough tonight, and I didn’t even know what ‘enough’ was any more after the conversation with Binnie, but duty won over. I answered her cautiously.

‘Where are you?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes. How close to Great Ormond Street are you?’

‘Why?’

‘Danny’s there. I thought you should know.’ It sounded a reluctant thought, but at least she was talking to me sufficiently to have passed it on.

‘Why?’

‘He had a fit and they took him there. Maybe an epileptic fit, they say.’

‘Christ. How is he now?’

‘Well the fit seems to have resolved although they say they will need to run some tests on him. It’s what else they’ve found as a result of it that’s puzzling them.’

‘What?’

‘The bruises.’

‘Bruises? An attack?’

‘No, it doesn’t look like that, but there’s not really any other explanation at the moment. They called me because I’m his social worker and now we might have to start an investigation into the care he’s been receiving in the remand home.’

‘So what happens now?’

‘Well, he’s being kept in for the moment but I thought you would want to know and might even want to go and see him.’ It wasn’t a question, but it was – and one I was simultaneously asking myself as she posed it.

‘Now?’

‘No, tomorrow. He’ll be asleep now. It’s past one, Lawrence.’

‘I’d forgotten. He’s all right though?’

‘He appears to be, apart from being a little disorientated. Where are you?’

‘Out. Walking. Where are you?’

‘Home. I’ve already been in to see him and I’m back home now.’

‘You could have told me this tomorrow morning then? If I can’t go in there now, I mean.’

‘Yes, I suppose I could.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ There was silence the other end. ‘Kat, are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m still here. Do you want me to come with you tomorrow?’

‘Do you want to come with me tomorrow?’

‘Well, it either has to be me or someone else in lieu of a responsible adult. He’s social services’ responsibility at the moment.’

‘Oh, thanks. Send who you want then, I’ll go in for eleven.’ Insulted, I clicked the connection off without waiting for the answer and turned the phone off altogether. Bridges, boats and whole worlds had burnt, it seemed. I trudged the rest of the way home in the light drizzle which had started just after the phone conversation. It had seemed like mere mist, but by the time I reached the mews I was soaked. The summer storm looked to be about to break. The cobbles glistened and the moonlight lit them intermittently as it passed behind the screen of cloud and rooftops. The mews sparkled like it had been strewn with diamonds. A day or so ago, I might have been in poetic mode and likened them to my hopes, but tonight they were merely wet stones and the small shimmering puddles that were forming, muddy interludes.

I went indoors as quietly as I could. It was a long time since Lawrence Juste had walked the streets and returned home after two am. The veil of respectability had to hold a little longer. Habit made me check my phone messages. I’ll admit to hoping there might have been something else from Kat amongst them. There wasn’t. There was a message from Louise at Chambers though.

‘Mr Juste, I tried to get that birth certificate you asked for but it’s a bit weird. They couldn’t find anything at all and I asked them to search five years either side of the range you suggested too. Everything’s over at the Family Records Centre at Myddleton Street now. They’ve got records for John Arthur and George Edward Wemmick so I asked them if we could have transcripts of them, but they said you had to pick it all up in person as there were fees to pay.’ She continued with the details and the person to ask for at the registry there. No Molly Wemmick? Another complication. The brandy bottle winked at me from the bureau, but it was becoming too much of a habit – that and ineptitude. I settled for bed and a sleepless night. I might as well have filled myself with alcohol after all. I looked as much like shit the next day as if I had.

I’d wanted to detour to Great Ormond Street via the records office and collect the birth certificates before meeting Kat – or whomever she sent in her stead. It was going to be a difficult morning and I wanted to be able to simply go home afterwards and sleep. The slumber that had eluded me for what had been left of the night was banging at the door now and my wits felt as if Louise’s mouser had chewed them up and spewed them back out as a fur ball. Everything went against me though. I finally drifted off half an hour before the alarm sounded and must have turned it off in my semi-conscious state. I next woke at just after ten to the sun streaming in the windows where I’d neglected to pull the curtains and another baking hot day ahead of me. Summer in the city. The cobbles had long since dried and the puddles disappeared. I felt old and disgruntled. My face looked like an old sock, wrinkled and threadbare. I barely had time to dash through the shower and dress if I was to get to the hospital on time. The records office would have to wait. I didn’t bother with my own car. Finding a parking spot there could take hours. Amazingly I managed to hail a cab as it passed along the head of the mews and made it there with minutes to spare, the cool of the shower long since dispersed by the heat in the cab and nerves.

Kat had come in person. She looked cool and fresh, skin glowing like a burnished nut. No haggard shadows and bleary eyes for her, yet she’d been awake till the early hours too. The resilience of youth, I guessed. She didn’t say it but her expression repeated what she’d said to me in the coffee shop mere days ago. Yes, I did look like shit. I felt like it too.

‘He’s on Elephant Ward, level six,’ she said tersely.

‘I thought you’d send someone in your place.’

‘He’s my responsibility,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t let people down.’

‘Like Alfie.’ She looked as if she wanted to slap my face again but it was a public place.

‘That was cruel.’

‘So are you. Everyone deserves to be cut some slack, but you’re just hauling the rope in tighter for me. It was a mistake and I admit it, right? Not that it makes any difference now.’ I walked away to the lifts and stabbed the call button.

‘It’s not that.’ She caught up with me. The lift arrived and spilled its contents in front of us. We dodged the outflow and claimed it for ourselves. Nobody else seemed to want to get in our crossfire, it seemed.

‘What the fuck is it then?’ The lift doors closed and we were encapsulated in our own lift-box.

‘It’s because you’re so, so ... intact.’

‘Intact? What the hell does that mean? I’m spending most of my time falling apart at the moment.’

‘No, you’re not. All this,’ she waved her arm around to indicate the hospital, ‘it’s all passing you by. Things are happening – awful things – and all you do is coolly watch them happen and “research” them. When you cried the other day – when you first told me about Kenny – I thought you were real. Someone I could love as well as be infatuated with. Not adoration  – affection. But you don’t want that. You’re just too ... intact. I can’t get past here,’ she tapped her forehead, ‘to get to here.’ Her hand rested on her breasts.

‘I don’t know how else to be, Kat. It’s the way I get through things – keep it boxed. Keep it separate. Someone told me how to do that early on in the home and they were right. Don’t let things mix – one life to the other. That’s the way to get screwed over. It’s been happening ever since I took this case – personal life and professional. I’m no good at either at the moment, but at least I know how professional life works and I could hack it once. If I stick to that, I might hack it again in the future.’

‘You mean you just refuse to face anything that’s a challenge? Ignore it and it’ll go away?’

‘I’m hardly ignoring any of this, am I?’

‘You’re not facing it though, are you?’

I could feel my fists clenching and my palms sweating with balled up frustration. She just didn’t understand – what it was like for me. And then I got it. She didn’t know what it was like for me because I wouldn’t share it. The history I’d recounted for her – it had been all fact, apart from the one weak display of tears that had taken us into her bed, but it had been Kenny talking to her. Lawrence Juste was indeed still boxed – intact. I consciously uncurled my fists at the same moment I saw hers were a mirror image, knuckles pink with tension.

‘I’m sorry, Kat. I am trying. I’m here, aren’t I? The last place on earth I’d choose to be at the moment. Is that part of my brief?’ The lift whirred and cranked. Level five pinged on the display.

‘I suppose it’s better than not.’

‘What else am I supposed to do then? Tell me.’

She breathed out in a soft rush and I hadn’t realised she’d been holding it until then. ‘You need to trust me. Let me in. Don’t just run away when things get uncomfortable or don’t go the way you want them to.’ She looked me full in the eyes. ‘I know the worst of you and I’m still here, despite that.’

The connection was tentative and terrifying. I hoped my fear didn’t show in my face. No, you don’t know the worst of me Kat, not at all.

‘Well, I’m here and I’m not running away this time,’ I replied. It sounded glib, and not particularly believable. What she wanted to hear, not what I meant. She was silent, studying my face. I wondered what unspoken truths it was telling her. I’d always been proud of my poker-face, a necessity in court. Now I wished it carried more of me in it. Heather had seemed to think it did, but I couldn’t see it – couldn’t see me at all at the moment. Just before the lift moved upwards again, she broke the wheezy compression of our box with her conclusions.

‘Can we start again?’

‘How many starts do we need, Kat?’

‘As many as it takes?’ We paused in front of Elephant ward, with its sprinkling of Dumbos and real-life counterparts. ‘The elephant in the room?’ I indicated the décor.

‘I wish you wouldn’t always be so clever, Lawrence. I’m not, and that worries me too.’ My inability to read people dissolved momentarily and I could read Kat like a picture book.

‘I’m not clever, Kat. I’m glib – and that’s my defence mechanism. You perceive me as clever because of my reputation, but there’s a person behind the patter. A person who makes bigger mistakes than you can even dream of.’ I almost told her how big, but managed to pull myself up just in time. ‘See me as the person not the persona.’ She didn’t have time to reply because the doors opened on us and the ward sister appeared in greeting.

‘Miss Roumelia?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m glad you’ve arrived. We’ve had a bit of a development. Come on through and let me fill you in.’

We exchanged glances; anxiety filling hers, bemusement mine.

‘He’s fine, but we think we have an explanation for the bruises.’ She walked with the briskness one associates with the archetypal ward sister and although my long legs easily kept pace, Kat struggled along behind us. I was therefore first interceptor of the information streaming back to us in the wake of her bustling uniform and squeaking soles. ‘Good news, and bad ...’

The shush and rub of black-stockinged thigh against thigh as she strode purposefully forwards reminded me of a praying mantis rubbing its limbs together before pouncing.

‘Ah, here we are.’ We arrived at her office and she waved us in. The smell of disease pervaded even here, full of paperwork and bureaucracy. Perhaps the sick surround themselves with their own specific smell, regardless of age or place? It wasn’t doing my stomach much good, but then little had recently. That was hardly the hospital’s fault. We perched on the chairs indicated and she produced a regulation blue folder marked with Danny’s name. ‘Doctor will be along shortly, but I can give you the bones of it now.’ She laughed smugly, ‘no pun intended.’ We smiled politely. ‘Father?’

‘Pardon?’

‘I take it you are Danny’s father.’ I nearly choked but said nothing, ignoring Kat’s fierce look, and the sister swept on without waiting for an affirmative. ‘Surprising you’ve not remarked on this before.’ She didn’t wait for an answer, which was a relief. ‘Bruising. Possibly suffered whilst in the fit, but unusually large and extensive. A lot of older ones too. We thought at first it could be abuse whilst in care – well, it would have to be. He’s been nowhere else for the last few weeks. You’ll be relieved to know we’ve ruled that out now though.’

Kat nodded vigorously. ‘Thank God. That would have been a nightmare.’

‘Yes,’ the sister looked at Kat over the glasses which had slipped down her nose. There was shade of Miss Liddell to her. Officiousness and the impersonal approach. That was it. You probably had to be on a children’s ward, where your charges might still die despite the advances of modern medicine. You didn’t have to be like that in a children’s home where all you needed to do was care. ‘I’m sure it would have been. However, some routine blood tests have found us the cause, we believe. Surprised it wasn’t diagnosed much younger but maybe he’s been lucky enough to never have a major bleed. Lots of little ones, and badly healed injuries. A few infected areas, but he’s got off relatively lightly considering.’

‘Considering what, sister?’ I asked.

‘He’s a haemophiliac. In plain terms his blood doesn’t clot properly. He carries on bleeding. The bruising is simply bleeding under the skin from blunt trauma. If the skin is penetrated, the bleeding is obvious. If it doesn’t and instead merely bruises, it isn’t. If there was any suggestion of neglect at home, it’s probable the signs have simply been missed whilst there was no serious injury. Have you never noticed anything before, Mr Hewson?’ She glared at me accusingly.

‘What? Oh, oh no – I’m his brief not his father.’

‘His brief?’ Then I shouldn’t have been talking to you.’

‘On the contrary, the more I know in his defence, the better. Is that not so, Miss Roumelia?’

Kat glared at me again, but came to my rescue nevertheless.

‘Anything I know, Mr Juste is entitled to know since he’s retained on Danny’s behalf.’ The sister nodded. ‘Well, we will need to talk to the parents, even if he’s in social services care currently. They do still have parental responsibility until it’s officially removed, and I understand he has siblings. We will need to check them all. It’s genetic.’ She got up. ‘Do you want to go and see him now?’

The unexpected development coincided with another of my own unexpected developments; Binnie, and her warning. I interjected, ‘Sister, can you explain how haemophilia works? I’m a layman where this is concerned.’

‘How it works? He bleeds too much, Mr Juste. We can almost completely counteract the problem by artificially increasing his clotting factor, but that’s it in a nutshell.’ She looked surprised.

‘No, I meant how the genetics work.’ Kit frowned at me but I ignored her. I’d think of an explanation later if I had to. My head was spinning. The most important thing was to find out what the hell it all meant for me right now.

‘Oh, well, I’m no expert. The doctor would be better with that. I’ll ask him to explain when he comes on his rounds.’

‘Thank you.’ She took us to Danny and the rest of the allotted half hour of visiting time before lunch was taken up with I-spy and me eyeing Danny apprehensively. I had no idea what to say to him as an adult to a child, much less as a potential father. I let Kat fill in the greetings and tried, surreptitiously to identify any similarities to myself. There weren’t any. He looked nothing like me – unless you included the set of his chin and the eye colour and ... Christ, no. He could be mine, but then again, he looked nothing like Kimmy. Who did he remind me of – something, someone vaguely in my mind ... Must be me: idiot!

He greeted me with, ‘You going to ask me any more of them rellyvent things?’ I smiled uncomfortably and shook my head.

‘We’re here to see how you are, Danny.’ Kat replied, sitting carefully on the side of his bed. I stood at the end casting a long shadow. He looked from her to me and then back to her. He seemed very small and insignificant in the wide bed, rails high on the side Kat wasn’t sitting and a tube snaking from one arm to the bag of yellowish-clear fluid dripping slowly into him. Clotting factor, I assumed. The bed cover was an exotic patchwork of colour – I suppose because this was a children’s ward and it was an attempt to inject life into what was otherwise sterility and disease. Danny looked very pale against it. A small pale patchwork piece. I felt sorry for him. It felt odd.

‘I got something wrong with me blood,’ he told us proudly. ‘Makes me different, don’t it?’ Without Kat to temper me I might have corrected him to ‘makes you ill,’ but instead I nodded.

‘Very different, Danny. Quite an exception.’ Kat eyed me coldly. ‘But you need to be well, as well as different. We have things to do, don’t we? When you’re better.’

‘I didn’t do it, honest – Mister Big.’

‘Mister Big?’

‘Danny’s nickname for you,’ Kat explained over her shoulder. I could see the trace of irony in her smile even from the oblique angle I was looking from.

‘Why am I Mister Big, Danny?’ I asked, astonished to have been given a nickname. Nicknames were for the people you liked, weren’t they? There was nothing between Danny and me, apart from dismay on my side and distrust on his.

‘’Cos you is. You’re the big-shot who’s going to get me off.’

I shook my head. ‘No, Danny. I’m not going to get you off.’

‘Lawrence!’ Kat looked agonised.

‘We’re going to get you off – when you’re well enough to help me.’ I wasn’t focusing on Kat as I tried to hold the boy’s gaze, but I saw her body slump with relief. ‘If you still want me on your case, that is?’

‘Do I ever!’ My nine-year-old self jumped back at me, skinned knees, cuts and bruises, snotty nose. Enthusiasm personified – and hero-worship. But never haemophilia, I thought wryly. If Danny suffered from it – why didn’t I? And try as I might, I still couldn’t imagine myself bedding Kimberley Hewson – ten years younger or not. The doctor’s explanation of how it came about suddenly became of immense importance. Distantly remembered equations of X and Y chromosomes and the essential pairing of them to produce characteristics and biological predisposition plagued me. It was far too vague to be more than an inkling of why Binnie might have warned me off Win, but it was enough. He could have been telling me a pack of lies merely to get his hands on the Johns’ folder – or rather, I hoped against hope he’d been telling me a pack of lies.

I waited out the remainder of the half-hour, trying to fix on our inane games rather than my genetic make-up until the buzzer signifying the end of morning visiting sounded. We promised to return, leaving the small rag of a boy in his patchwork bed looking wistfully after us. I steered Kat determinedly back to the sister’s office.

‘Why?’ she asked when we got there.

‘The doctor’s explanation.’ But the doctor had been called away.

‘But why is it so important?’

‘I just need to understand – all the implications. Family.’ Her mouth made an ‘oh’ shape but no sound came out. She watched me as the ward sister explained.

‘Emergency,’ she told us tersely, ‘but he wrote this down for you.’ I took it from her – a sheet torn from a note pad, spiral bound with the torn edge curling like ringlets.

‘Oh, and by the way, we’d like to cross-match blood, and maybe store some from his father, mother and close relatives if they match. Part checking and part useful in case he ever has an accident or a major operation and we need to transfuse. It’s becoming the norm to do that now for any of our patients who might be compromised in the future, especially since unfortunately Danny has quite a rare blood group too – AB negative.’

Kat checked the address on the record and nodded, saying to me as we left.

‘This is going to get complicated again. They’re going to find out about you aren’t they?’ I had to keep reminding myself that she meant it only in terms of my relationship to Kimberley, not to Danny. Uncle, not father.

‘Let’s face that when we come to it, Kat.’

What the doctor had written on the paper looked like nonsense at first.

M D

XX XY

G: XXXY: B

Recessive allele on X masked in phenotype by dominant allele on other; hence females carriers, males exhibitors.

‘Which translates as?’ Kat asked.

‘Which translates as genetics. He’s explaining dominant and recessive genes and why Danny is haemophiliac and I suppose why Kimmy isn’t. Or me, I added in my head.

‘He’s received her damaged X chromosome and also a damaged Y chromosome from his father which has resulted in the problem. If he’d been a girl he would only have had one damaged chromosome – the X from his mother. The other X from his father would have been OK. He would have been a carrier, but not suffered from the condition himself.’

‘Oh, my God – what bad luck. Poor Danny. So his father must be a carrier as well to have passed it on? ’

‘Yes, poor Danny. Seems he’s got the worst of all deals all round.’

‘Is this why you didn’t want children – in case you pass it on like this?’ She hesitated, ‘because if your sister has the recessive gene then presumably maybe do you too? And it would also explain why you’ve been looking so bad recently. Are you OK?’

‘As far as I knew, Kat, I’m clear – if not perfect, genes-wise.’

‘But doesn’t it affect the whole family? And it’s not about perfection, Lawrence. If it’s in your genes, it’s in your genes. You can’t help being ill.’

‘That’s booze, not bad luck.’

‘But you can’t be sure?’

‘I have an extensive medical every year – the price of being self-employed. It provides life assurance cover as well as professional indemnity. I’m either paying a ton of money for a load of crap, or I’m fine.’

‘Then, if you are fine, Danny can’t be related to you.’

‘Not necessarily. I could simply be a means to pass the problem on but not suffer from it, like my mother and father. Remember I might not have the condition but I could have the problematical Y chromosome without having a problematical X as well. I wouldn’t know that without a test to check for it and I’ve never had the need for one.’

‘Until now.’

‘If I’m not having children, it’s immaterial, isn’t it?’ She didn’t answer. ‘It’s just another piece of evidence to damn me with, Kat – if Win or Jaggers got hold of it. Connections, links.’

‘But you would be sure ...’

‘I don’t need to be.’

‘Maybe you don’t, but Danny needs to know about his family and his origins.’

I studied her expression, trying to see if her argument suggested secrets suspected. She looked back bold-eyed. No, the expression wasn’t the one of someone party to a dirty secret. I countered, ‘And what good would that do Danny? He knows who his family is – his parents and brothers and sisters. What else does he need to know? Believe me, it’s not that relevant to the future, only the past.’

‘But you’re his family too.’

‘Only if I choose to own to that.’

‘Jesus, Lawrence – I thought you’d got it.’

‘Got what?’

‘The need for honesty.’

‘I am being honest. I’m just not necessarily going to make a big thing out of it. It’s a bit odd to have your unacknowledged uncle defending you, isn’t it? He may not even want me to be his uncle.’

‘Oh really – Mr Big.’ The sarcasm was as obvious as the name.

‘Oh all right, if it helps. I’ll look into it.’ It was my reason to check too. It made it easier for me to legitimately have a blood test – privately. The problem would be in explaining the results.

We left the hospital and I got the cab to detour past Somerset House to complete my other errand. More nonsensical paperwork.

‘Molly Wemmick. There was nothing on her. We know about Jaggers and his father. We know nothing about Molly, or why she appears to come and go nowhere. I want to see her birth certificate.’

‘Why?’

‘I suspect she’s a ruse.’

‘Explain.’

‘I wasn’t sure to start with but I don’t think she exists. Money-laundering probably. A useful fake ID. When I looked around the trustees’ offices on the third floor, Jaggers and his father obviously occasionally grace theirs with their presence, but Molly Wemmick’s hadn’t been used in months. Now either she’s a very absent absentee, or she doesn’t exist. They use her identity to launder money – through bank accounts and investments in her name. Dirty money in, clean money drawn back out later on. FFF is a business not a charity – they provide a commodity not kindness. They’re in the baby business.’ I kept the other startling discovery to myself: that Molly Wemmick and my wife appeared to be one and the same. Time enough to go into that when I knew whether my wife was Molly Wemmick or Molly Wemmick was my wife. The birth certificate should tell me that.

‘They trade in babies?’

‘And/or kids. They source the product – the child – and put them together with the client, the family – for a price. I suspect all the other charities Margaret was involved in – MADU, Children without Boundaries and Casualties of War, played their part in the process too and if we delved far enough we’d find the Wemmicks firmly entrenched behind all of them. I haven’t had the time to research them all properly, but the signs are all there.’

‘Jesus! Lawrence – this is awful – and I helped!’

‘You didn’t know. We’ve had this scenario before, remember? You can be involved without knowing you’re just a pawn. You and I and Danny have all been pawns along the way, maybe even Margaret too, but that’s all going to change now.’

The girl on reception was bored silly, but she took my money and produced the documents Louise had requested. It was twice the fee Louise had told me. I quibbled.

‘It’s what was requested, Sir. We had to search a long way back. Do you want them or not?’

I took them, grumbling about extortion and feeling the excessive heat of the day combining with my annoyance to turn me into a furnace. I felt old and tired again. The rain of last night hadn’t cleared the air. The storm hadn’t come. It had merely been a damp squib lining up another humid day. We were in the basement and it was hotter than hell down there. It seemed to be a trend in official buildings to kill the air-con as soon as it was needed. No doubt the place would freeze in winter and the red faces of today would turn blue instead then.

Kat nudged me. ‘What do they say?’

‘Let’s get out of here before I wither and die.’ Sweat trickled down my cheek and under my chin. She still looked pristine. What the hell was it that she saw in me? I wanted to ask her, but it would make me look foolish again – or worse still, needy. I waited until we were back in a cab with the windows wound right down and en route to my place before I opened the buff envelope the girl had exchanged for half the contents of my wallet. Sure enough two birth certificates nestled in there, and a note. I’d half expected there to be nothing, but the fee had implied there was something – and more than I’d anticipated. Indeed, it was a lot more than I’d anticipated. Molly Wemmick was far from make-believe. She was very real – or had been. I silently handed over the birth, and death certificate too. No wonder the fee had been twice that quoted. I’d acquired Molly Wemmick’s whole life, not merely her birth details. A note attached mentioned that here was also a name change by deed poll registered for a Molly Wemmick, but that was held at National Archives, and had only been picked up because the researcher had to do such an extensive search on the name to find the certificates. If I wanted that I would have to visit the National Archive Offices at Kew.

‘Jesus! So you’re right – she doesn’t exist? This is awful – and I was helping them!’

‘Oh no, she does exist.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Like my colleague Heather said, I’ve been walking round with my eyes closed for years. Let me tell you some other interesting facts about Molly Wemmick, as well as her dates of birth and death.’

The traffic was queued back for miles so there was plenty of time for me to tell Kat what I’d found in the three FFF offices. Jaggers, the judge and Molly – Margaret.

‘So this Jaggers was at the children’s home and was the one to bully you into, my God – I don’t even want to say it?’

‘Yes, and set my brother Win up and made it look as if I had.’

‘But you said his name was different?’

‘Then. But so was Margaret’s for a while – she was Margaret Green when I married her. Now she’d be Molly Wemmick if she were still alive. Name changes are easy.’

The original Molly Estella Wemmick was born 18th July 1869 and died in 1932. The most recent incarnation of her was the version that was also my wife – created by the name change in May 1999; one month before her death. If ever there’d been a bigger pawn in a devious game, it was me.

‘So what does that mean for you?’

‘Maybe Jaggers is the main man, but Margaret was to be the tallyman – for both Danny and for me,’ I added thoughtfully. ‘Now I need to find out what debt they planned on collecting, and how.’

19: Girls

I got the taxi to drop Kat back to the social services offices in Morden and instead of going home and burying myself under the duvet as I’d wanted to, I faced the latest assault on my grip of reality that Margaret’s alter ego had presented with practical action. I didn’t know whether the twins knew anything of value, but their proximity to Kimberley’s age must make them greater candidates for closeness to her than either Binnie or Sarah. I had to find out, anyway. I’d made the decision to contact them as I watched Kat walk reluctantly away from the idling taxi. I rang the number on the list for Jill and got her salon. It was in Camberwell.

‘Hair we are – what can we do you for?’ trilled the foxy little voice on the other end. It set the scene for the rest of the day. They might not be that outwardly similar any more, but I soon found out that they were two voices of dissent in unison.

The girls, Sarah had called them. They were hardly that now. They must be mid-forties, but I knew also they’d never married, either of them, and enjoyed career-girl lifestyles, but in vastly different ways. It was a salute to the loyalty of ‘family’ and that tendency to stick together that I had yet to experience that they’d both turned up at such short notice. We make so many assumptions in our life. We assume someone is biddable because they agree with us, weak because they never challenge us and loyal because they follow us. Eyes wide shut – as I’d been most of my life. I’d expected them to be welcoming because they’d spun on a dime and turned up so promptly at my request. I’d expected them to be like Sarah or Binnie – or a combination of the two. I’d expected them to be the archetypal down-at-heel-girl-makes-good; typists or secretaries – or even the local department store manager. As infants they’d been two peas in a pod, fair-haired and blue-eyed; the sugar and spice to Pip and Jim’s mischievous puppy dog tails. They were both still blonde, but clearly out of a bottle labelled ‘caution – hazardous chemicals’ and neither sugary nor with the exotic fragrance of spice.

Jill was brassy blonde and Emm was businesswoman blonde. In fact they were both businesswomen in their own ways so they had remained almost identical – but as mirror images. Jill owned her own hair salon and plainly revelled in it. Her Croydon accent remained firmly pinned in place alongside her hair extensions and false eyelashes; glamorous but common. Emm was the sleeker, cooler, more sophisticated version, still perfect down to her false nails and expensive costume jewellery, but the kind of glamorous that Heather might have appreciated. Indeed, Heather might even already frequent her tiny exclusive boutique on the Fulham Road.

We met just along from Jill’s salon, and not that far from Kat’s office. We sat inside the chinzy café and they ordered cappuccino. I opted for espresso. I was going to need my wits about me. The waitress eyed me as if I was a sex maniac lining up two dates simultaneously. The table cloth needed changing and felt gritty with sugar spilt by the previous incumbents. Their reception was as cool and business-like as their appearance was, assessing this stranger who was claiming intimacy without previous affiliation. Hostile. They had been so tiny when we’d been split up, they barely remembered me and I could barely see in them the small cherubs who’d clung to Binnie and Sarah when the woman with the fat ankles had created the delineation between who went and who stayed. Part of me wanted Kat to suddenly appear around the next corner, on an errand, on her way home – anything. The other wanted to protect her from my past. Make it not exist by only taking it out to examine in private and then replacing it carefully in the box again. I acknowledged it was why I was making these visits alone. There were elements to me I couldn’t hide or deny – the less salubrious ones, but that didn’t mean I had to take myself apart in public or drag Kat into the ensuing mess. There was enough of it already spilling over her from the boy. There was only so much anyone could take before they drowned in the deluge: me included.

With Jill and Emm I felt even less of a connection than I’d felt with Binnie. They were the type of women I would normally avoid personally – one loud and obvious, the other hard-nosed and predatory. Either way, I felt like mere litter under foot in their march towards emancipation for women and subjugation for men. Tigress didn’t even begin to describe either of them at first glance. The waitress brought our drinks and thrust the bill at me.

‘Lunchtime in an hour. We get busy then, you’ll have to order food then if you want to stay.’ She took my money with a hostile glare. I wondered if she was friendly with Jill, or all women in Camberwell were men-haters.

‘So why now?’ Emm stabbed her coffee with the spoon and shredded the froth on the top. She might have been disembowelling me in her mind.

‘Yes, why? Why not before?’ Jill, in chorus mode. I got used to the ever-present echo by the time we parted, but it disconcerted me to start with. Which should I answer? I addressed Jill as she’d spoken last.

‘Why not now?’ She was the wrong choice.

‘I asked you the question.’ Emm glared at me. ‘My God, why do you men always evade the issue?’

‘Yeah, like that – evading.’ Jill again. The buff envelope felt bulky in my trouser pocket. It cut into my thigh. I would have liked to have got it out, but then I risked being asked about it. I shifted uncomfortably instead, trying to settle it into the crease of my groin.

‘Stop squirming. He’s squirming ain’t he, Emm? Knows he should have helped us out when we was squirming – him and all his money.’

‘You can’t have expected a warm welcome, surely?’ Emm’s voice sliced though Jill’s twittering like broken glass.

‘I didn’t anticipate anything. I was given your addresses and I thought it was maybe time to build some bridges.’ The lie came out easily but it didn’t settle there so well. My sisters were bull-shit radars.

‘Oh, come on. Build bridges? If you were going to do that, you would have done it ages ago, when a bit of help wouldn’t have gone amiss, Like Jill said. You with your fancy job and plenty of cash from it, no doubt. Nothing for us when it mattered, though.’

‘No, not for us.’ Where Emm led, Jill followed, until it reversed. ‘It’s more what you want from us, ain’t it?’ My heart pounded. I switched attention to Jill. It was beginning to feel more like an interrogation than a reunion. Good cop, bad cop – and neither of them were playing the nice guy.

‘Anyway, Win came to see us.’ Emm continued. ‘He told us you’re helping with Danny.’

‘Uhh,’ I looked from one to the other, anticipating more flak. Unexpectedly they smiled back.

‘Poor kid. We’ll do what we can to help too.’ Emm made it sound as if they were doing me the favour, not Danny.

‘Yeah, help.’ Jill chimed in. My head buzzed again and I wasn’t sure if it was my confusion or their changeability that did it.

‘Uhh.’ It was all I could say, it seemed. If they’d known more about Danny’s parentage, maybe they would have been less accommodating. It soon became clear they didn’t even have a clue. All they knew was that Kimmy’s boy was in trouble, and finally, their long-lost big brother had appeared on the scene like a knight in shining armour to save the day. That was Jill’s description. Emm concurred.

‘I’m not sure if I can,’ I cautioned.

‘Course you can. Hot-shot lawyers – they always win, don’t they?’

‘Always.’

‘What else has Win told you?’

‘Oh, Win never tells you anything other than what he wants you to know.’ Binnie’s warning resonated with that.

‘So why are you going on what he’s said?’

‘The trick is to work out what he hasn’t said. You’ve never been in business, obviously – or played poker.’ Emm laughed.

‘Gets you what you want when you want it – ain’t that it?’ Jill chimed in, ‘so you have to figure out what it is he wants to get for someone else, and then you’ll work out what it is he’s planning on getting from you.’

They were far better at this than me. ‘Tricky.’

‘Oh, he’s that all right, although Mum probably should have called him Dicky, not Win!’

‘I used to call her Ma.’ It was involuntary.

Emm looked at me sharply. ‘We don’t really remember her – or Dad, come to that.’

‘She died when we were little,’ Emm added.

‘We went to foster carers. They were OK – nice. It became home after a while. It wasn’t until we were in our teens that Win got in touch. He put us in touch with Sarah and Binnie too. We remembered them better than Mum, actually.’

‘I remember you too,’ Jill added kindly. ‘You were always in the wars. I remember you banging your nose just before it all happened and Mum couldn’t get it to stop bleeding. I thought you must be dead because you had blood all over you, but Sarah said you were just unlucky.’

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘Maybe we don’t remember things we don’t want to?’

‘She died recently, didn’t she?’

‘Ma?’ I was confused.

‘No, your wife. I’m sorry. She seemed nice.’

‘You met her?’

‘Yes. A few months ago.’

‘She came to see you?’ I couldn’t quite keep the anxiety from my voice. Emm eyed me curiously. Jill took her cue from her silence and answered for both of them.

‘Not exactly. She came into Emm’s shop, didn’t she?’ I focused on Emm, quietly allowing Jill to tell the story uninterrupted. She seemed reluctant to add to it.

‘How did you know her?’

Emm shook her head. ‘I didn’t.’ She hesitated. ‘She was with the bloke.’

‘Bloke?’

‘Win’s mate. I don’t like him much – even trickier than Win, I reckon, and arrogant with it. Smug bastard.’

‘Who was he?’ I wasn’t sure I now needed to ask.

‘I don’t know his name. Win does stuff for him though – ask Win and see what he doesn’t tell you!’ She laughed harshly. ‘You two might get more out of each other – two of a kind.’ The return of bitterness was sudden and vitriolic, but I didn’t see why I warranted it – absent brother or not. And she’d been keen to help me not ten minutes earlier.

‘There’s really not much love lost between you, is there?’

‘No ... well.’

‘He grassed up her bloke, after he’d put him together with Kimmy. He ain’t exactly Emm’s favourite.’

‘He didn’t need to know that,’ Emm rounded on Jill.

‘Yes, he did. He helped.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘Willy Johns. He was her bloke. Win put him in the frame for that girl’s murder and then you put him away.’

20: Connections

I left the mercurial twins still arguing. I wasn’t sure if they even noticed me going. They clammed up after the statement about the Johns case. I couldn’t stay and listen to the back and forth recrimination-tennis that I suspected happened regularly between them. They hadn’t had anything useful to tell me about Willy Johns, other than he didn’t do it; the age-old cry of all defendants’ loved ones. The difficulty was, I suspected this time it was true and yet it threw yet more feint and double feint my way.

And what they’d accused me of was true. I had helped put him away. Win had claimed he wanted revenge on Jaggers for setting Willy Johns up – ‘my best mate’, yet Jill and Emm claimed Win had put Willy Johns in the frame himself. I and my partners had simply bolted the door behind him on the strength of my zeal in court – and the massive fee the Wemmicks had provided. And yet another twisted relationship was revealed – Win, Willy, Emm, Kimmy. The incest didn’t seem so much purely on my side. What had been the relationship between Kimmy and Wilhelm Johns then? Win hadn’t seen fit to mention that at all. It seemed the labyrinth of the past was unending, and not long after that pathway had been grassed over, Margaret had appeared to lay another trail for me to follow. My thoughts were as perplexing as the labyrinth itself, but out of the maze there seemed to be three separate strands revealing themselves.

Jaggers and Margaret were planning something together – clearly related to money. FFF was a front and Jaggers’ uncle had given me my head start in the first place – with a complicated trust clause hanging over my head if I ever brought his name into the public arena or disrepute. Something told me I was about to fall foul of that – to Jaggers’ great good fortune. But it didn’t stop there because Margaret had her own little additional plan lined up too – her, me and Danny, foiled only because of her death. To do it, she seemed to have been wheeling and dealing in false names, family secrets and blackmail. And last of all there was Win, claiming to want justice for his boyhood friend – yet he’d put his boyhood friend in the frame in the first place. Far more likely that he was simply content to play us all of against each other to achieve best results for himself – whatever they may be.

I swung into Chambers on the way back, walking the forty-five minutes from where I’d met the twins in Camden in preference to taking the tube. I needed to clear my head and fighting to keep it in the claustrophobia of the underground was currently beyond my capabilities with so many tangled skeins twisting into knots in my head. Louise was manning the reception desk as usual.

‘Everyone’s at lunch,’ she informed me anxiously. Three o’clock and at lunch?

‘When did they go?’

She looked blank, ‘Umm, I don’t know. But I’ve collected your post for you,’ she added helpfully, waving a fistful of letters at me. I took them from her and was about to leaf through them when the absence of Gregory’s hovering presence struck me.

‘Are you here entirely on your own, then Louise?’

‘Umm, only for a while.’

‘Where’s Gregory?’

‘Mr Gregory’s out too.’

‘Where?’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘You don’t want to tell me?’

‘It’s not that, it’s because of Mr Tibbs ...’ but I didn’t hear the rest of what she said in my surprise at the franking emblazoned on one of the letters. It was the distinctive coat of arms that shut off the rest of the world to me.

‘The Queen has been pleased to approve your appointment as His Honour Judge Lawrence A Juste, to be a Justice of the High Court with effect from 4th October 1999 on the retirement of Mr Justice Holmes. Your appointment will be formally announced on 13th September and you will hold office during good behaviour; as laid down in the Bill of Rights 1689.’

‘Are you all right Mr Juste?’

I looked up from paper, head still spinning to find Louise peering strangely at me. My mouth opened and shut like a fish before I managed to grunt an acknowledgement. She continued to frown at me and I wondered what expression I had on my face now – as dumb as the one Heather said I had when I thought about Kat? I tried to smile reassuringly at her but she looked doubtful. I caught sight of myself reflected in the portrait of Mr Justice Jowett behind her. I looked as half-arsed as he did just before he died, already well into his dotage.

‘Mr Tibbs?’ I asked to fill the gap whilst I gathered my senses.

‘Is actually a Mrs Tibbs.’

Oh?’ I stared at her. What the hell was she talking about?

‘She had kittens in the archives. The 1998 archives.’ Heather’s archives – that was why they were disturbed. ‘Mr Gregory and the others have taken them to be rehomed. I couldn’t bear to say good bye so I’ve stayed behind to man the desk.’

‘Oh.’ She looked so sad I wanted to hug her. ‘And Mr Tibbs?’

‘He’s being done so he can’t have any more – but I get to keep him – her – when he’s OK again.’

‘I’m glad.’ I allowed the inane grin I’d been trying to hold back from splitting my face. She looked at me oddly.

‘Oh, and I almost forgot – Mr Gregory gave me this for you. He said it was hand-delivered just before lunch.’ I took the second letter from her. The paper was thick and expensive – ridiculously opulent in comparison to the thin white paper of the other envelope. It was addressed in a sprawling black hand reminiscent of a tarantula spreading itself across it. Something about the depth and pressure of the address made my stomach turn. It reminded me of Win’s handwritten message on the reverse of his business card. Elation turned to apprehension.

‘Who from?’

‘I’m sorry Mr Juste, Mr Gregory didn’t say. Do you want me to ask him when he comes back?’ I considered the envelope. If it was from who I thought it was from, I wouldn’t want Gregory remembering who had delivered it.

‘Probably not necessary. I’ll let you know if I do.’ I hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, aware Louise was still watching me curiously. I wanted to open the envelope in private and my office was nearest. On the other hand, the cement mixer in my stomach was warning me the contents might be something I’d want to mull over well away from any other curious glances. The information Win had given me last time had been anything but pleasant. However, I couldn’t very well open the damn thing on the tube, or walking home. ‘I’m not here either, Louise, if anyone asks.’ If the clerks could go incognito then so could I, although it occurred to me that their whereabouts must be known to Heather. There was no evading Heather.

I left Louise staring after me and made my way cautiously upstairs and past my co-partners offices. I needn’t have worried. None of them were around either. The place was like the Marie Celeste. I made it to the bolt hole of my office and shut the door firmly, allowing it to stick as if locked. The scent of Heather’s perfume still lingered in the air, but maybe that was from her last visit. Chambers seemed to have a knack of encasing sensations within it and preserving them.

I spread the letters on my desk, relishing for a moment more the red and gold of the coat of arms and the formality of the royal appointment. Margaret had predicted it wouldn’t be long in coming. Shame in a way that she couldn’t see it. Perhaps Danny’s case had played its part too, even though it hadn’t been concluded yet. Ironic, that. In theory now I didn’t need to be seen to conclude it – and yet, it had become imperative on a personal level that I did. The other correspondence looked to be run of the mill and I set it aside, placing the heavily endorsed envelope centre stage. I took a deep breath and slit it neatly across the top. I expected to find an abusive or irritating note from Win, maybe with more accusations or claims. I was wrong. It was far worse than that. As soon as I saw the printed name at the bottom of the page, I knew it was worse than my most rancid fears.

It was signed merely ‘J’, and the message was brief.

So, a HCJ soon. What more could one ask for – other than anonymity from blame and the past – especially if one has both to hide. If you wish to keep both ‘in the bag’, may I politely suggest you stop trying to let the cat out of it. You know what I mean.

Be in touch soon – J.

There was only one ‘J’ in my life – one who had been threatening me from the periphery of it for days now, without being present. The sick fear of those long-ago days slid over me once again. The feel of the polythene over my face. The way it sealed my nostrils and sucked into my mouth as I struggled for breath, forcing my eyelashes into my eyes as he pulled it tight and I writhed, eyes bulging and chest bursting. And then the pain – simultaneously searing and freezing – a dry ice burn of revulsion. When it was over and salvation rushed back into my lungs, the ecstasy of release barely compensated for the black pit of despair and loathing my soul sank back into. Thirty-five years of the feelings washed over me again as intensely as then. I drowned in a tide of stinking sewage – all the flotsam I’d thought I’d left behind, but had merely dragged along in my wake.

Shut up, he was saying. Shut up and leave the past dead. Yet now I’d started, how could I stop? My only hope was to sort out the mess and find a way forward – especially now Queen and country had bestowed the possibility of doing so on me. Yet the threat was explicit and needed no explanation. This time, there would be no salvation, and no loosened bag for this cat to jump out of.

A different possibility struck me. What did be in touch soon mean? Was he intending blackmailing me, or smothering me? ‘Let the cat out of the bag’ was ambiguous. It could mean sharing secrets or be referring to Kat. Was he planning on using her against me, or on me? I couldn’t let either happen. I needed to figure out exactly what was going on so I could minimise damage or I could kiss goodbye to that crested letter ever becoming a reality, and now I also needed to keep the other people safe too.

I bundled the letters back into their envelopes and left the other post untouched, taking with me only the two opened letters. I left without bothering about how much noise I made. The stairs deadened my footsteps anyway, enabling me to slip past Louise, now in the post room busy with the outgoing afternoon mail. There was still no sign of Gregory but the other clerks were engrossed in wading through their sea of files, winding up cases and prepping evidence for court appearances the next day. It was now four o’clock and they would want to escape by five. I slipped noiselessly out of the front door and onto the anonymity of Lincoln’s Inn, walking the rest of the way to the Strand, immersed in trying to rationalise what I knew.

Win’s role had seemed straightforward at first – consumed by the desire for revenge – but the revelation about Danny’s parentage, and now about Wilhelm John’s false imprisonment, muddied the waters. Did they change his intentions, or were they just incidental parts of the same story? Then there was Margaret – or maybe I should say, Molly? They still hadn’t found her killer. I was beginning to suspect they wouldn’t. Given how much she must have known maybe someone had been more comfortable with her not being around anymore, and who that someone might be worried me even more. Eventually I found myself back where it had all started: Danny – and how and why he’d been involved at all. By the time I’d given up trying to hail a cab because it was rush hour, and walked along to Embankment to pick up the District Line, my brain had gone from largo to allegro and stopped working altogether. Now it really was time to pull the covers over me and let oblivion minus the brandy take me.

And yet even that simple respite eluded me. When I eventually fought free of the stale air of the hated tube, the bodies pressed too close and the faces too far into my personal space, there was another surprise waiting for me on my doorstep.

‘Danny!’

‘I ran away.’ He scrambled up and I was struck again by how scrawny he was. I’d not noticed that in the interview room but since I’d seen him marooned in the middle of the hospital bed, and known he could be my son – I’d seen him as the child more than the client.

‘From the hospital – why?’ I hesitated, unsure whether to take him inside or straight back to the hospital.

‘I hate it there ...’ he paused, ‘and I was scared.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘’Bout half an hour.’

‘You were fine when we left you this morning. What changed? ’ His expression turned mutinous. ‘Nothing.’ He scuffed at the edge of a protruding cobble.

‘Well clearly it has or you’d still be safely hooked up to drips and getting better.’ I waited. No, it was a really bad idea to take him in.

‘Uncle Win came round,’ he burst out in response.

‘Win – at the hospital?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How the hell did he get in?’

‘He’s family.’ He looked at me strangely. ‘He told me something about you.’

‘Ah,’ now we had it. I prepared for the onslaught, wondering if I should ring Kat before it started or wait out the worst. My stomach turned over. I could have done with the brandy but it wouldn’t have helped.

‘He said you’re me uncle too.’ The pinched face looked worried. My breath came out noisily in relief, but why hadn’t Win told him the more explosive version? ‘But if that’s true, how can you be me brief as well? And you was going to get me off.’

The options narrowed down to just one – the one that was the bad idea. I put the key into the lock and opened the box. Whatever else Win had told Danny he’d also added another strand to the twisted threads of the weave – family commitment.

‘Let’s go in for a moment, Danny. We need to have a talk.’ He trotted after me like a puppy. I debated where to take him and decided on the kitchen. He perched unsteadily on one of the breakfast bar stools and surveyed the room open-mouthed.

‘Blimey, you’re loaded,’ he commented at length. I suppose to him the sleek elegance Margaret had commissioned did look like ‘loaded’. It was intended to convey that impression. As ever, Margaret was effortlessly effective. Sheer black marble worktops, pristine white glossy doors and sparkling chrome stamped sophistication all over what really was a place of functionality. She’d done the same with the bathroom and downstairs cloakroom before moving onto the lounge, dining room and bedrooms in her make-over of my house and me. The only private space I’d managed to defend successfully had been my study, as doggedly masculine and traditional as I’d first created it, without any modern trappings. It could have been the private room at a gentleman’s club with its burnished wood grain, heavy drapes and outsize office chair. Only the fact that I didn’t smoke kept it from being completely so. When Francis had visited to pay his respects in private shortly after Margaret had died, the room had perfected itself – replete with his cigarillo smoke and expensive cologne.

Danny’s insubstantiality was even more apparent as he swayed gently on the high stool. He reminded me of a malnourished nestling in danger of plummeting to the depths below from weakness due to starvation.

‘Have you eaten today?’

‘Nah, I slipped out when they had the doors open to bring the grub in.’

‘Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?’

‘Cor, yeah!’

I made him a sandwich – cheese, peanut butter and tomato ketchup; his choice. He tucked into it as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Whilst he devoured it, I turned the kettle on to make myself a coffee, debating what to do next. I’d said we needed to talk, but what about – and how much? I was now labelled as his uncle, thanks to Win, which could have been a sign that fatherhood was precluded – or could merely be another twist of the tiger’s tail, to see how much I would roar. Whatever, Win wasn’t stopping until he got what he wanted: ‘Win Juss – gets you what you want when you want it.’

I surveyed the boy who was possibly partly mine. He had a look of me about him that was true, but then so had Sarah, Binnie, Jill and Emm – though it pained me to say it, and even Win. It was in the eyes, I decided. We all had Ma’s eyes even though our features differed. I hoped there was little of Pop in us, with his buckled belt and readiness to use it, but it must be present to a greater or lesser degree – that inclination towards aggression. It was in the genes, as the doctor had amply demonstrated in the hieroglyphics still bundled into my pocket alongside the buff brown envelope containing the enigma of Margaret. In Win, it displayed itself most obviously, but there had been an element of it ever-present in the thinly veiled hostility towards men that Jill and Emm had brandished like a weapon, and Binnie had been far from welcoming, or defenceless, I suspected. Kimmy? The hardness was palpable in everything she did – from child neglect to prostitution. Sarah had said she thought Kimmy wanted what was best for her kids and that was why she’d gladly put Danny up for adoption. More like getting rid of her kids was what was best for Kimmy. I wondered who would be next after Danny.

Sarah, though – she hadn’t seemed hard or hostile. Perhaps Pop’s bellicose nature had passed her by after all, or had been contained in her determination to live – or die – her way. The boys and Georgie, I couldn’t comment on. That only left me. That violent force must be within me too. I faced another part of the patchwork I’d steadfastly concealed in the box – the man who entered court, determined to win at all costs. The man who belittled his opponents, demolished his competitors and ground witnesses to dust in the pursuit of success. That was where my aggression went – and my bitterness – into the man who’d left his principles at the court door when prosecuting the Wilhelm Johns case. The one Atticus would have renounced long ago. I deliberately turned my back on him and watched instead the boy who could be me, wondering how different we actually were. Had his violence already found its mark in the old woman, or was it yet to emerge?

My reverie was cut short by the phone ringing in my study. Danny was still gob-full of sandwich so I left him in the kitchen, cheek distended with too much crust and trying to lick his fingers at the same time. I got the phone just before the caller rang off. It was Kat. I couldn’t keep the terseness from my voice even though it wasn’t intended for her. It was for everything but her at the moment.

‘Oh, have I called at a bad time?’

‘I’m not sure there’s a good one at the moment. No, it’s OK, but Danny is here. I was probably going to ring you in a while anyway.’

‘Danny’s there? But he should be in hospital. What’s going on?’

‘You tell me. My charming brother visited him after we went but I haven’t yet found out why – other than to set the cat amongst the pigeons even more.’

‘Do you want me to come over?’ Once upon a time it would have been the last thing on earth I would have wanted – more complication, but it was all my world seemed to be composed of now. Besides, the thought of having Kat there was inexplicably comforting as well as unbearably complicating.

‘If you can.’ I gave her the address.

‘I’ll be about five minutes.’ Five minutes from Morden to Chelsea – I doubted it, but then as with all things and all people now, I had no idea where Kat actually was, wherever it was she ought to be. I put the receiver down and turned to find Danny had padded in behind me. His cat-like entry reminded me of Win. He was all eyes.

‘You got an awful lot of books, Mister Big.’

‘Mainly law books Danny – for my profession.’ He moved toward one of the floor to ceiling bookcases and caressed the spines of the shelf nearest his eye level.

‘I like books, but we don’t get that many of them at home. Only crappy ones – love stories that Mum reads.’ Love stories was said with disgust. ‘You got real ones.’

‘All books are real, Danny – we just have different tastes. Maybe it’s escapism for your mum.’

‘’Scapism – what’s that?’

‘An imaginary world where things happen the way you want them to.’ It occurred to me with intense irony that I had been suffering from escapism for the last thirty five years or more. Hiding in plain sight? Who was I kidding? I’d been in the sights of either Win, Jaggers or Margaret for all of that time. I’d never been hidden at all. It had just suited them to leave me alone until the time was right.

‘D’you do that? ’Scapism?’ The boy must have a direct line to my brain.

‘We all do at times, Danny. It’s human nature to want what we haven’t got – or for life to be perfect. Unfortunately most of the time that’s not possible. We have to make the best of what we have. Cobble it together.’

‘This is a real book. I seen it in the library at school.’ Mocking Bird. The cover of my copy depicted Tom and Atticus. He was waving it at me. ‘Is there a good guy and a bad guy?’

‘Yes, more than one.’

‘Does the bad guy get his come-uppance in the end?’

‘In a way – although not everyone is completely good either.’

‘That ain’t having a good guy and a bad guy then, is it?’

‘Good and bad are sometimes relative, Danny.’ He looked bemused. ‘Sometimes something bad might have a good outcome and something good might cause harm. You have to look beyond the person or the action to see the outcome before you decide.’

‘But how can something that’s good be bad, or someone’s that’s nice be bad?’

‘Things aren’t always black and white. People aren’t always what they seem to be.’ And there I was in a nutshell.

‘Can I keep it?’ He was clutching the book to himself. ‘I ain’t got no proper books of me own.’ It was my childhood copy, dog-eared, thumbed and cracking along the spine; resident untouched in my bookcase for the last ten years or more. It no longer had seemed an appropriate read after the Johns case, yet it symbolised everything I’d fought to be – and failed. It was right he should have it – me before the fall, perhaps. And maybe a right amongst all the wrongs I’d committed so far.

‘You can keep it Danny. When you’re a little older and you’ve read it we’ll talk about it again.’

He beamed and sauntered around the room examining the rest of its contents. I watched from my transfixed position by the phone. He reached the desk, and the photograph of Margaret, still floored and facing heaven-wards.

‘That’s your missus, ain’t it?’ Of course, he’d met her.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you meant to put photos of dead people flat then?’

‘No, it just got knocked over and I haven’t righted it yet.’ He put Atticus carefully on the edge of the desk and stood the photo back up, facing me.

‘Oh.’

I asked carefully, ‘How often did you meet her, Danny?’

‘Only once before the mugging. She came to see mum with Uncle Win.’

‘When was that?’

‘Last year, round about now. She brought me sweets and a comic and took me outside with the other kids when Uncle Win and mum were having a spat. We talked about drawing.’

‘Do you know what they were arguing about?’

‘Me.’

‘You? What about you?’

‘Uncle Win wanted mum to say something she said were lying. I heard her say it were all right to lie to the other bloke, but she’d done it for cash then and it hadn’t done any harm but she weren’t going to get anyone into trouble.’

‘Do you know what kind of trouble – or what he wanted her to lie about?’

‘Nah, but then when mum had no money for the tallyman, Uncle Win came round and they had the same barney all over again, and it ended up with her agreeing for me to help him out instead.’

‘Help out – how?’

‘I could run fast, see. I had to pinch the old girl’s bags and run like fuck.’ He looked sheepish. ‘I’m sorry, Mister Big. I didn’t want to pinch off them old ladies but mum said they only picked the rich old ones who could afford it ... But I didn’t do it.’ It was the refrain from the interview room. The doorbell rang and I motioned for him to stay where he was and wait. It was Kat, breathless and bright-faced. She burst on me like a flower and irrelevantly I remembered one of Margaret’s foibles as I described her so in my head: Queen of the night – Peniocereus greggi. It was a bloom Margaret had told me about once – not because she was a keen gardener, but because she was a harvester of unusual information; a warehouse of minutiae and trivia she could turn on me whenever she had an argument to win. All information is useful, Lawrence – you just have to know when to use it.

The queen of the night epitomised Margaret to perfection for me now – if not Kat – a dramatic, white, waxy flower composed of elegant petals and dainty stamens. Virtually invisible most of the year, making its inconspicuous home amongst other desert cacti or shrubbery whilst growing its extensive tuberous root storing food and water to out-survive less hardy desert plants; just as Margaret had stealthily gathered her resources secretly beneath her charitable facade. Although each bloom will last only one night, a queen cactus can grow more than one bloom, appearing on a different night over a period of several nights during a week's period – each as dramatic and overawing as the next. Margaret had no doubt been planning her night to bloom thus soon. I hoped to God there was only one flower she’d been nurturing.

‘What’s going on Lawrence?’ Kat’s bloom was far more earthy and in my face. I sucked in a deep breath of her fragrance and took courage. I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Come and find out – I’m as much in the dark as you, even though I have all the facts so far.’ She followed me impatiently back to the study, eyes swivelling en route taking in the minimalistic chic and then widening at the contrast to it in my study.

‘Danny, you know you shouldn’t have run away!’

‘Like a mother hen, ain’t she?’ The comical appeal to me had me smiling. We were comrades: pragmatic men battling the fuss and over-reaction of women. We both laughed and Kat glared at us.

‘It’s not funny. There’ll be all sorts of trouble over this. We have to take you back right now.’

‘Hold on, hold on!’ Danny’s face had taken on the hardened criminal look again where it had been becoming relaxed and childlike. ‘Danny was telling me why he ran away and I think we ought to listen to his side first, don’t you?’

Kat frowned. ‘It’s not just the case that matters, Lawrence. It’s Danny’s health too. You should have more concern over that, considering.’

‘I am considering,’ I told her sarcastically. ‘I’m considering what all this means as well as how it affects Danny’s health. Win has a rather devastating effect on people’s health at times, you know – physical and otherwise.’ I didn’t add what I feared more about Jaggers. That was definitely something to keep to myself for the moment, his letter lying uneasily alongside the crested one in my pocket. I turned back to Danny who’d been watching us carefully. ‘Carry on, Danny. Miss Roumelia needs to hear this too.’ He wrinkled his nose at me in disbelief.

‘You two not got it together yet? Blimey, you’re making a meal out of it, ain’t you?’ He picked up the book as if in self-defence – or in case I took it back off him, perhaps.

‘You have to look beyond the person or the action to see the outcome, remember?’ I reminded him. He studied us.

‘Oh, I see – she’s black and you’re white – like in the book?’

‘No, that wasn’t what I meant – but there are disparities between us, and like in the book, there are also ethics to consider. We’re both working for you at the moment, Danny. That makes things complicated.’

‘He’s me uncle,’ he added, but which of us – Win, or me – he was referring to didn’t seem to register with Kat. ‘That’d be one of them rellyvent things like you said once, wouldn’t it?’

‘Well, possibly that too. Shall we tell Miss Roumelia – Kat,’ I looked at her and she nodded in the affirmative, ‘what you were telling me just before she arrived?’ His head bobbed up and down enthusiastically and I summarised quickly for her, leaving out the more complex elements, before cueing him to continue.

‘That was it, really. Apart from the last time of course. Then that other bloke came along and all hell broke loose. ‘He pushed me over and I hurt me leg.’ He rolled up his track suit bottoms and displayed the bruising proudly. ‘That were it – still ain’t gone and it were ages ago. It’s me himmaphelia, ain’t it? I got left there with the bag and the old dear and she died. The old bill got there like a shot – quicker’n they’d ever turned up before, and I was nicked. But I didn’t do it.’ I looked at the small bony fingers clutching Atticus and was struck by how unscathed they were despite his problem. A switch clicked into place.

‘Danny, will you show us your bruises again?’ He obliged happily. ‘They’re now nearly six weeks old,’ I reminded the Kat. ‘That was when the mugging occurred. Danny’s bruising continued for some while after the event because of the haemophilia, but look at his hands.’ She went over to Danny and tried to take the book from his hands. He resisted. ‘It’s all right, Danny,’ I reassured him. ‘It’s yours for keeps. I’ve finally learned my lesson from it, I think.’ He allowed her to put it on the desk and examine his hands.

‘A few very old scars but they’re fine, otherwise.’ She looked at me. ‘What’s your point?’

‘My point is we’ve just proven Danny’s innocence – not from bag-snatching. By his own admission, he’ll have to take the rap for that, but I’m sure the jury will be sympathetic when we explain how it came about. But there’s the evidence he couldn’t have carried out the mugging right in front of you. The haemophiliac boy, with extensive bruising from the same day still apparent on the rest of his body, but not a mark on his hands; the hands he would have had to use to beat her up since there was no weapon used.’

‘Oh my God, Lawrence, you really are the best! Of course!’ I laughed deprecatingly, but preened nevertheless. ‘His hands would be in a terrible state wouldn’t they?’ She beamed at Danny. ‘Mr Juste has just proven your innocence of the mugging, Danny. Isn’t that wonderful?’

‘What does that mean now then?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Well, the police will want to see the evidence so the forensics people will have to come into hospital and take some photos of your injuries and your hands, and then interview the doctor as an expert witness, but after that it’ll be cut and dried.’ I thought about disputing that. There would still be the little matter of pleading and the trial. If we were pleading not guilty we’d still have to appear in court, but perhaps that was a minor point to talk about later when I understood more about the more worrying elements swilling around in the background.

‘So do I still have to go back?’ Danny sounded miserable. Kat put her arm round him.

‘Oh Danny, just for a little while – but then you’ll be able to go home. That’s wonderful, isn’t it?

‘I don’t want to go back there or home. Can’t I stay here – with Mister Big?’ Kat looked flustered and started to apologise to me. I found I was unconcerned and marvelled at myself. When did Lawrence Juste become so unafraid of commitment – and to a kid? I’d anticipated revulsion, distaste, even horror when faced with the fruit of my sin. Instead I couldn’t help admire the child’s resilience, and a small, locked away part of me revelled in the replication of me, even though I knew it shouldn’t. I didn’t trust myself to say anything whilst the strange melee of emotions spiralled the central question – why couldn’t he? He was, after all, family of one sort or another. Luckily Kat applied officiousness and answered for me before that now disconcertingly frequent inclination to stamp about where angels feared to tread invaded me again.

‘I’m sorry Danny. You have to go back. Mr Juste isn’t responsible for you. I am – as representative of social services. It’s no different for any child placed in the care of the courts or on remand.’ I was relieved and disappointed simultaneously.

‘I thought I was meant to be different. Me himmaphelia made me different.’

‘Your haemophilia does make you different, Danny. It makes it important to look after yourself even more carefully than other kids, because you don’t heal quickly and easily like they do. But it’s you who make you special – like Scout realises about Atticus and Boo and Tom Robinson. To be special you have to be brave.’ I put the picture of Margaret back flat on the desk, face down. ‘How long before we have to take Danny back to the hospital to avoid trouble with red tape?’

Kat shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well, could we ring the ward sister and tell her we took Danny out for a bit of fresh air, but not to worry as he is in official hands – yours – and we’ll bring him back before the end of visiting this evening?’

‘Lawrence – we can’t. It’s getting too involved.’

‘Getting too involved? How much more involved could we be?’

‘He’s me uncle too!’ chipped in Danny.

This time it registered. ‘Who told you that?’ She looked horrified. I couldn’t avoid the complication this time.

‘Win did. When he visited after we left.’

‘Was that all he told him?’

‘I don’t know – Danny?’ I sat on the edge of the desk, equidistant between the flattened photograph and Danny. My two dilemmas faced each other and yet I felt strangely immune to danger from either. The whole affair had become surreal. Boy, woman, man – all dancing a tarantella around the black hole that could swallow the boy and the man as easily as it had already swallowed one woman. Perhaps inevitability makes us finally find the calm in the eye of the storm. Win’s visit to Danny had something of inevitability to it – as had the visits I’d made to my sisters. No matter how hard I tried to hide what I knew, he was showing me he could sweep away my life in mere seconds. A casual comment, a careless aside and I could be sucked to oblivion, the boy with me. The press would have a field day. No longer Mr Justice Juste-to-be but Kenny Juss, ignominious liar, unprincipled rogue and incestuous bastard. Thirty-five years of dissembling and denying would be lost in one moment of disclosure. And yet suddenly I didn’t care. I listened to Danny’s answer with only half a mind, the other half still dumbfounded by the lack of alarm I felt at my imminent exposure. The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast and prepared to die.

‘Yeah, and just to keep me mouth shut or it’d be the worse for you.’ He hesitated, ‘but that means you can’t say what I told you, then don’t it? You can’t get me off after all?’

Second chances. How many did we need? I’d told Kat as many as it took. They had to run out sometime, but for the moment I took this one thankfully – after all it was still case not proven for me, wasn’t it? I couldn’t think about Jaggers just yet. He would have to be a nightmare for later when there was no Kat or Danny to have to pretend in front of.

‘You haven’t told us anything, Danny. Your condition and my conclusions are what will prove your innocence. Come on. It’s time to live a little. You’re a long time dead.’ The irony of it and Jaggers’ threat wasn’t lost on me as I said it. I handed the phone to Kat, dialled the hospital number and left her to deal with how she made our excuses. Something close to joy – or at least release – had infested me with recklessness. Maybe it was the way you were meant to live. I found a jumper of mine that had shrunk in the wash, now lacking Margaret’s careful ministrations, and threw it to Danny. Then I found something similar for myself. We stood together – almost two peas in a pod. Kat stood in the doorway into the hall, watching us with an enigmatic look on her face.

‘Do you need one too? I can find you something of Margaret’s? It gets cold up the top, I’m told.’

‘Up the top of where?’

‘The big wheel.’

21: Bonds

‘You know what, Mister Big?’

‘What?’

‘You ain’t that bad at all.’ We’d had to take him back to the hospital by nine and he was pretty much done in by then, but the child’s face had remained a child’s face throughout that time, despite the shadows of exhaustion.

He was still clutching Atticus when we left him there and wearing my jumper – which he’d wriggled into as soon as I’d produced it, even though the evening was still warm. The forensics team were lined up for the next day and I had my own appointment with a needle to keep then as well. In losing my fear of the outcome, I’d found something unexpected within myself. I still couldn’t share that potential twist of fate with Kat. Things were far too complicated already, especially when I thought about the two letters now lying in my locked desk drawer at home too. Whatever the result, it would take me further forward along at least one of the strands I’d perceived twisting into the knot. If I had a son, it wasn’t so bad. The rest I’d have to think about – and how we could all survive it.

‘Interesting that Win only revealed the connection between you and him, not the one between you and the Wemmicks,’ Kat commented after we’d completed the formalities with the tight-lipped ward sister and been sent frostily on our way with a warning not to repeat the infraction of her laws. ‘Why do you think he did that?’

‘Maybe he wanted to let me squirm whilst I figured it out – or it’s a message to me. Unless I do what he wants, he’ll spill the beans completely. He knows that would ruin me. He knows I know that too.’ But then it occurred to me that Jaggers might have threatened Win too.

‘What does he want from you?’

‘Jaggers: on a plate – or so I thought, but what I’ve learnt since doesn’t quite bear that out.’ I told her about the visit to Jill and Emm.

‘My God, you have been busy! Is there anyone else you’re planning on seeing without telling me?’

‘I didn’t think until recently I had to tell you anything I did?’

‘You don’t.’ She clammed up, face as pinched as Danny’s had been when protesting his innocence. My defensiveness had got it wrong again.

‘I wasn’t saying there was anything wrong in you wanting to know, but we have been rather on-off in terms of communication haven’t we?’

‘I’m sorry. I never know when you’re winding me up.’

‘I’m never winding you up, Kat.’

She gave me the hard, defiant look she’d given me that first day in the interview room. ‘See, that’s exactly what I mean,’ she said.

‘We can’t fight forever. Danny made that quite clear. Shall we call a truce?’

‘I guess.’

I was never that good at conciliatory but it was time to make an effort. I offered the first treaty. ‘There is still someone I haven’t been to see – the one I’m least enthusiastic about seeing.’

‘Who – Jaggers?’

‘Christ, no. I’m staying as far away from him as I can until I’ve figured out what’s going on here. No, it’s my sister, Mary.’

‘The disabled one?’

‘That’s a nice way of describing her. As a child we called her “Mooney Mary” but I guess political correctness would now designate her disabled.’

‘I don’t really understand. If she’s – well – mentally incapacitated, why do you need to go and see her? What is she likely to know? ... Oh, I’m sorry. Its closure, isn’t it?’

‘No, Kat. It’s disclosure. Win implied Kimmy – Kimberley Hewson – had talked to her. Now for a start, that doesn’t make sense, given what I know of Mary’s mental capacity, and secondly if she did, then I need to assess the likelihood for damage depending on what it is Kimmy talked to her about. No,’ I stopped her mouth with a finger across the generous lips. ‘Not for my sake this time – for Danny’s. Win knows he can ruin me any time he likes, but such a massive stain on me will also extend to Danny eventually. If I have no credibility, then neither will any case I make on Danny’s behalf. The results could scar him for the rest of his life, like mine has been scarred.

In my mind I created the headline in the papers. The worst possible one. Lawrence Juste’s incestuous liaison – the kid with a bit too much kin involved, and cringed at the idea of Kat reading it. That scar would never heal – for any of us. Danny would spend his life hiding from prejudice and narrow-minded bigotry, and Kat despising and avoiding me. I didn’t like the risk of exposing that element of the mix to Kat, but I did need her on-board. She was the barrier between me and Danny, and now, in the cold light of day, for all my supposed nonchalance, the thought of being responsible for Danny on my own terrified me. Plainly if I kept too much more of my personal life to myself, she might remove herself – and the barrier – from it, or be vulnerable to other influences suggesting I was playing games with her. Apart from which, I was starting to realise Win didn’t do or say anything without a reason. Either he or his master thought very carefully about each of his steps before Win’s strings were pulled, and every little phrase or nuance was essential to their plans. That meant Mary was part of it too – I just didn’t know how yet. I certainly didn’t want Kat devilling away with her own research out of frustration with lack of involvement from me. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Keep a curious lover closest of all, I might add.

‘We’re all having our strings very cleverly pulled,’ I said aloud.

‘So is Jaggers the puppet-master?’

‘One would assume so, but then I thought my wife’s name was Margaret and I was wrong.’

She was silent, then said, ‘Actually ...’ and looked embarrassed.

I finished it for her. ‘Actually you knew that already?’

‘Yes.’ She looked embarrassed.

‘Communication – our greatest asset as humans.’

‘Don’t be angry, Lawrence. I was going to tell you.’

‘You were going to tell me? When? When I was standing in court making an asshole of myself?’

‘No. I was going to tell you now.’

‘Tell me then.’

‘Win came to see me too.’

‘Oh great. When?’

‘Probably just after he’d been to see Danny.’

‘And?’

‘And he’d come to tell me he knew about our visit to FFF and to keep my mouth shut about what I knew. I said I didn’t know anything – well, I didn’t really then. Just that he was your brother, and that Margaret seemed to be manipulating both of us and it involved FFF which was less than squeaky clean. You told me the names of the people heading it up and I remembered then that Heather Trinder had been employed by people of the same name to get my brother off. Since Margaret helped set that up, there had to be a connection, but I didn’t know what it was. I told him that and he got really weird with me. He said if I mentioned Margaret’s involvement to anyone else my brother’s case would be reopened and he wouldn’t be so lucky next time. That’s why I didn’t say anything at first but Lawrence, I don’t understand – why does it matter about Margaret?’

‘So what else did he say about her? About her name, I mean?’

‘Well he was really twitchy about the name – Wemmick. He said I was to forget I’d ever heard it in relation to her, I was only to refer to her as Margaret Juste, never by anything else. I hadn’t – but of course it made me suspect then that there was a connection, and he really wanted me to make it. Why else would he tell me not to think of Wemmick in relation to her? Classic reverse psychology.’

‘And you claim to not be smart?’ I commented.

‘Oh, well,’ she wasn’t sure if I was serious or not so I rearranged my expression to something more suitable and she continued. ‘Well, it was fishy wasn’t it? That’s why I was so nearby when I rang you. I was already on my way over to tell you about it.’

‘So how the hell did you know my address?’

‘Heather Trinder. I rang her first because I was worried. Win didn’t threaten me – other than about my brother, but I’ve come to terms with that now. Even if it’s your own family at the end of it, justice ought to be done. I always suspected Alfie was guilty. If it comes out that he is, then he’s an adult. I can’t live my life atoning for his sins – or ones I’ve attributed to myself, but I was worried about Heather and you. You don’t deserve any more rubbish coming your way because of me – either of you. You’re good people.’ It took a moment to digest that. Good people? Heather maybe, but could I be genuinely called good? Had Kat forgotten about the Johns case? She’d called me a criminal then. Or maybe I was being too hard on myself – and the explanation of how people were good and bad in parts that I’d attempted for Danny had really been for me – to enable self-acceptance?

‘Well it explains one thing.’ I handed her the buff envelope that was still in my trouser pocket, now perma-creased from the excesses of the big wheel and various other Battersea funfair delights. ‘No wonder her office had been deserted for weeks. The incumbent was already permanently employed elsewhere in the morgue.’

‘You sound so angry.’

‘I am. I’ve been lied to and manipulated by her for years – why the hell wouldn’t I be angry.’

‘But she’s dead, Lawrence.’

‘Yes, she’s dead and I’m alive – and like I said to Danny, it’s time to live a little. However, I have a nasty feeling the reason she’s dead may have a lot more to do with the living than a single careless driver.’

‘Deliberate?’ Her eyes widened to small orbs, the black of the iris almost the same size of the surrounding chestnut brown. They say lack of light and attraction did that. So what about surprise? Or disgust? I imagined telling her about my predicament with Danny. How would her eyes look at me then?

‘Well an exhaustive police search and weeks of newspaper publicity so far hasn’t managed to turn up even a sniff of a suspect. Tyre tracks very carefully covered, don’t you think?’

‘Win?’

‘Maybe – but why come the heavy with you about FFF and the name? Oh no. Like you say, he was deliberately drawing your attention to it. There’s far more to Molly Wemmick and her connections than meets the eye. By the way – when exactly did your brother’s case go to trial?’

‘Just over a year ago – he was acquitted about three months later.’

‘The archives that were disturbed by Mr Tibbs.’

‘What?’

‘Gregory was having to tidy up the archives the cat supposedly disturbed but Heather thinks the case notes have gone missing.’

‘Oh, the paper god.’

I laughed despite myself. ‘Yes, the paper god.’

‘So where are they – the papers? And how could Win have got hold of them?’

‘Fairly obvious, I would say. Money talks – whoever you are; god or not.’

‘So what is the thing that hasn’t been explained yet, if you think Win has the notes?’

‘How Danny got my address. Someone must have given it to him – and I don’t suppose that was also Heather, was it?’

‘Win?’

‘Maybe.’

‘So was Danny lying to us about being afraid?’

‘We’ll have to find out after we’ve been to see Mary, won’t we?’

We went the next day. My sister Mary. Big-eyed, Ma’s, but more extreme and unfocused. Pale-skinned and slack-limbed. More or less how I remembered her, in fact – but aged. The passing of time had taken the bloom of youth from her cheeks and transformed the spring of the athlete to the measured tread of middle age. She was younger than me, but the fire of intellect can dispense with age, or the lack of it add to senility. The venerable man or woman who still inspires through their enthusiasm proves that. They are forever young whilst still burning with the passion of their inner fire. Mary had never had that – or any – fire, other than of a lithe body which could perform better than we fully-witted comparatives. She could run faster, longer and with more agility than any of us. But when the race was run, the fire would die from her eyes and she would sink back to slothfulness. She’d joined in my stampede down the bunker a few times, and watching how she’d navigated the lumpier and more difficult parts of the terrain, I’d learned some of the skills of the runner. My next attempt had been considerably faster and Mary had stood at the bottom of the slope and smiled before wandering off to make daisy chains, singing tunelessly to herself. I hadn’t known if it had been at my achievement or merely because the sun was shining and the grass was green. Maybe it didn’t matter. I had learned from her anyway.

At other times she would comment on one of us, suddenly and without apparent criticism, but inevitably it was something one of us wouldn’t want known. “Jim pulled Binnie’s hair. She cried.” Jim had protested he’d been nowhere near the inconsolable Binnie. “It was when she threw his toy car over the fence.” Now Binnie was in disgrace too. “Sarah bosses Jill and Emm around. She makes them sit in the corner when she eats their malt.” Malt – nectar of the gods and rationed because it was so expensive, but recommended as an essential to correcting health problems. First acquired when the girl twins had rickets, and meant to be mainly for them, but it was Sarah the food lover’s biggest weakness. We all knew that but would never have told on Little Mother. For Mary, it was merely an observation. “Win smoked one of Pop’s cigarettes when Pop was down the bookies.” With both Pop and Win accused, we knew only Win would suffer punishment – the belt with its vicious buckle, no doubt. The look between Ma and Pop chastened him for his perfidy when money was already non-existent for basic food, but Pop would never have to pay for it. It was only me she hadn’t ever named and shamed and yet I felt such disquiet near her that apart from the episode on the bunker, I avoided her whenever possible. “Kenny” was all she said. “Kenny” with that beatific smile.

I suppose it was her very disconnection from us all had made me uneasy with her, as well as the way she never told on me. She was the most harmless soul one could imagine, yet she was a stranger to me and as such, I was afraid of her. I couldn’t see into her world as I could see into my brothers’, or sisters’ worlds. She was alien. The apprehension of what she might suddenly do or say was still with me in my forties, long past the days of over-imagination and flights of fancy, and although she’d never accused me of anything, it felt as if all those accusations might have been stored up ready to tumble out now, when I least wanted more trouble toppling over me.

I tried to describe Mary to Kat on the way to the home she was in. The address was on both lists – Win’s and Margaret’s. In my head I toyed with which name I should use for Margaret now I knew she’d been Molly Wemmick too. She remained Margaret. I hadn’t known her as anything other than that, or rather I hadn’t even known her as that. In the end I gave up. None of my explanations explained why I was more afraid of this meeting than I had been of confronting Win, or in due course, Jaggers. The harder I tried, the more indefinable it became, other than for the possibility she might tell Kat the one thing I wanted kept secret above all else: Danny being my son – and that I couldn’t admit to. We talked about Danny’s future instead.

‘He will go back to the people he belongs with – his family.’

‘Which is?’

She was pushing it, but I played dumb.

‘His mother and father, of course.’

‘Right – a prostitute and a fence.’ I didn’t answer. She replied as if I had. ‘Exactly.’ The silence lengthened between us, until she changed the subject. ‘By the way, have you had your blood test done yet?’

‘First thing this morning so I’m forewarned.’

‘Forewarned before what?’

‘Before the trial.’

‘But you know he’s your nephew. That’s not a crime.’

‘But hiding the connection is – or improper, anyway. Anyway – I’m purported to be his uncle – by Win. I’m still not absolutely sure of the facts – or Win’s readiness to tell me them. I work on truths not suppositions.’

‘Well, you still know you’re sending him back somewhere he shouldn’t be.’

‘Somewhere he shouldn’t be? So where should he be?’

‘Well, with people who could really care ... I know he has to go back to his parents to begin with, but if his mother is convicted of prostitution and his father for receiving he’ll be back in state care again. He wanted to stay with you – you heard him say so yesterday.’

The inner certainty of yesterday seemed to have deserted me. The intact Lawrence felt more present today than the human one.

‘Oh, God, Kat – that was merely meaning he didn’t want to go back to the hospital. I was the best alternative and we were standing in my house. What else was he likely to come up with?’

‘Me – my place. He’s spent more time with me than you. He knows me better than you. I’m female; a substitute for his mum – but he didn’t opt for my place, did he? He hero-worships you.’

‘Oh, rubbish!’

‘He does. You’re Mister Big.’

‘That’s just a name – and probably taking the piss in reality.’

‘OK, so why did you come up with the idea of going to the funfair instead of taking him straight back to the hospital?’

She’d got me, but years of court appearances saved me. I might not be able to control how my emotions reflected on my face around her, but if I imagined I was in court, I could dissemble with the best.

‘I felt sorry for him. Christ, as if he hadn’t had enough bad luck, this last bit – the haemophilia – takes the prize.’

‘It’s also going to get him off the hook though, too. And then he’ll go back home ...’ And we were back to where we’d started. I didn’t reply to that and we drove in silence for a while. It was pretty countryside, heading for Oxfordshire. Rolling hills and lush greenery. The upper level of my mind admired it, but the depths were really still on Kat’s question. Why had I suggested taking Danny to the funfair? Altruism. Really? OK, no. The motivation had been vague at best at the time, other than I felt it was the right thing to do. Something in my gut had said ‘go’. I was so far out of my comfort zone I might as well be in a foreign land – the same one Mary inhabited. No, guilt. That was it. Guilt and pity. But it was more than that too – I just didn’t want to categorise it.

‘You know, there’s another option,’ she said suddenly.

‘No, I have to see her.’ I could feel her eyes on me. I risked a glance. She was staring at me.

‘I meant for Danny.’

‘Oh? What?’

‘Margaret’s idea; adoption.’

The papers tucked in the folder fluttered at me. The fluorescent orange post-it with its ‘insert adoption papers here.’ I didn’t think Kat had seen the folder with that tag attached like target practice to it. I tried to appear unflustered.

‘Who by?’ I didn’t really need her to answer, but I was curious how far she would push it.

‘Well, like I said, he wanted to stay with you ...’

‘No.’

‘But you are family ...’

‘Right. Would you like to take that case? My Lord, I’m taking the case for the defence; I’m also the boy’s uncle, and considering adopting him even though I’m involved in a rather dodgy criminal cover-up myself. But I’m entirely impartial here so I’m sure I could be made to appear eminently suitable with a little airbrushing.

‘OK, so it’s not ideal, but I think Margaret had got some the papers together already, and a possible placement, and Kimberley was in agreement.’

‘So it would seem.’ My mouth twisted ironically but it could hardly have been called a smile – more like a grimace. I wondered if Kat also knew where the placement Margaret had found was. ‘And how much was FFF paying her?’

‘I didn’t know about that side of it then.’

‘And who were the happy couple to be?’

‘Well – I don’t know for certain.’ She hesitated, ‘but I think I’d be right in saying family, wouldn’t I?’

‘Possibly, but it’s not happening. For a start he’d already be half-orphaned, don’t forget. And don’t you need two prospective parents to adopt? Or had you someone to fill the gap there too?’

She blushed. ‘I know, I know. But you’re still officially related, so what if it were possible?’

‘No.’

We pulled up the drive to the care home and the gravel crackled under the tyres. The noise cut off her next suggestion and I got out of the car before she could take advantage of the silence to rally with another attack. Without the privacy of the car, intimacy was denied. I catapulted myself into Mary’s world as a welcome alternative to the one Kat was suggesting. The home manager met us on the steps.

‘Mr Juste, how lovely that you’ve found your sister after all this time. You know she often talks about her siblings. I believe a couple of them are no longer with us – Pip and Kenny, but she will be delighted to see you, I’m sure.’ Kat and I exchanged glances.

‘She thinks Kenny is dead?’ Kat whispered as we followed our escort along the plushly carpeted corridor.

‘He is, I suppose,’ I countered.

‘Expensive place?’

‘Yes.’ It had occurred to me too – and to wonder who might be footing the bill for it.

The corridor led off to a smaller one and at the end of that, a door. ‘Mary’s place’ it said on the door, and then underneath: ‘Hush, listen for the words that aren’t spoken and the silence you can’t hear’.

‘Cryptic.’

‘She is at times – prepare yourself!’ The manager laughed, and opened the door into Mary’s ‘place’.

Across the room, hanging on strings from the ceiling, from the curtain poles at the windows, draped over the corners of pictures and chairs, arranged artistically across every surface, were origami birds. It was like looking through a fog of paper to the vista beyond. In the vista beyond was Mary; twisting, folding and shaping yet another creation. ‘Mary – your visitors are here. Your brother and his wife.’

Kat raised her eyebrows at me. An idea struck me just as Mary threw the paper bird she’d been making and it landed at my feet.

‘Go away. I don’t like you.’

‘It’s not Win, Mary. It’s your other brother, Lawrence.’ The manager sounded persuasive.

‘Lawrence?’ She came at me through the curtain of birds with a speed I hadn’t expected – and yet should have, given her youthful alacrity. She grabbed my arm and pulled me through the curtain with her, like a spider into a web. ‘Kenny, Kenny, Kenny. I knew you’d come back.’

‘No Mary, this is Lawrence.’ The manager corrected her kindly.

‘Actually it is Kenny. Kenneth Lawrence Juss,’ I explained.

‘Oh, you’re not dead then.’

‘Not yet,’ I replied heavily.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ Her earlier bonhomie had frosted over. A woman who always liked to be right. Another Margaret. I watched her withdraw through the veil of birds, still swinging from my incursion into them. A faint sickly sweet smell of disinfectant lingered in the air, mixed with Mary’s lavender perfume.

‘Can Kat come and join us?’ I asked tentatively, my hands still tightly encased in hers as she dragged me deeper into the room and to the window where she had been sitting. There was only one other chair there. She positioned me in front of it. I was expected to sit.

‘Kit-kat,’ she said, high-pitched and sing-song. Now I could see her clearly I saw the features of the Mary I’d known at nine were clearly recognisable in the older face of the woman peering at me. ‘Where’s the kit-kat?’

‘Kat, my friend.’ I turned to squint through the curtain of birds and saw Kat lingering uncertainly just the other side of them, a small brown berry awaiting consumption. Mary gazed after me.

‘Her? The brown lady?’

The insensitive description wouldn’t have been lost on Kat normally, but from her expression I guessed she was feeling far from normal in this strange world of paper pretence.

‘Yes, the brown lady.’

‘Stay here,’ she instructed, and went to collect Kat. ‘She’s sweet, like a nut. Yum, yum. Better not let my birds have her.’ She laughed girlishly. Kat laughed too, but nervously. She placed Kat alongside me as if positioning mannequins in a shop window, then sat down opposite us.

‘Mary, do you know who I am?’

‘Oh yes, you’re Kenny.’

‘I call myself Lawrence now – it was my middle name as a child.’

‘I know, I know. She told me.’

‘Who?’

‘Your wife – not brown though. White. White as snow, and cold. The little brown nut is much tastier. Eat the little brown nut.’ Kat shifted awkwardly beside me. I closed my mind to her distress in an effort to get past the effect Mary had on me – and also obviously on Kat, but I touched her hand as it hung by her side between us. She twitched and then shuffled closer. Proximity comforted me too.

‘So my wife came to see you. When was that, Mary?’

‘You could run fast when you were little. Not as fast as me, but up and down, up and down the mound. All the people under it must have heard you. So much running. Why do you do so much running Kenny? You can’t run away all the time.’

‘I was practising, Mary – so I could beat Jonno.’

‘You can’t beat Jonno. He’s dead. Win killed him.’

‘Jonno was one of the kids when we were little, Mary.’ She leaned close to me and stared at me, almost eye to eye. Then she moved backwards again and spread her arms across the arms of the chair as if arranging long trailing sleeves.

‘I know that, Kenny. I’m not stupid. Wilhelm Johns. Jonno. Didn’t you know his real name as a kid?’

‘Christ, no. Are you sure?’

‘Of course. People think I’m soft in the head, but I know things. Set him up.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Used to live at Win’s. Didn’t he tell you that? Lived at Win’s – and Kimmy too. Kimmy lived there too. They talked. Didn’t mind me. Thought I didn’t listen. But I know things.’

‘Could you prove it?’

‘Why would I want to? I don’t live there now. I live here. I like it here. I have my birds. I don’t need to know things any more – but I do, sometimes.’

‘What do you sometimes know?’

‘Where’s my glasses. Can’t see without me glasses. Are you Kenny?’

‘Yes, Mary.’ I cast a sideways glance at Kat and shook my head. Kat looked desperate. She mouthed something at me. I couldn’t decipher what it was but I could guess.

‘We’ll have to go soon, Mary.’

‘You can’t go until I’ve found me glasses.’

‘Here,’ Kat swooped on the bottle-glass lenses lying on the small box next to Mary’s chair. ‘Are these your glasses?’ Mary snatched them from her and put them on. She stared at Kat through them and the lenses magnified her eyes to distortion.

‘You’re the brown lady, not the white one,’ she said accusingly.

‘Yes,’ Kat’s voice was shrill. ‘I’m not the white lady.’

‘I can’t tell you then.’ She shuffled her feet and kicked the box towards me. ‘But it’s all in there.’ I leant forward and carefully picked it up, breath withheld. Placing it on my lap, I dislodged the lid.

‘May I open it?’

‘I gave it you.’

‘OK.’ I steeled myself for revelation and pulled the lid off. It was empty. I looked at Kat and she looked at me. The dismay was palpable on her face. It was a wasted journey. Whatever Kimmy or Margaret may have said to Mary, when they visited, it was irrelevant.

‘There’s nothing in it, is there?’

‘No, Mary. It’s empty.’

‘Good. Couldn’t open it up myself in case it wasn’t.’

‘What did you think was in there?’

‘All of us – you and Win, Binnie, Sarah, all the little twinlets. Even the cat.’

‘The cat?’

‘The cat out of the bag,’ and she laughed until tears started to run down her face. My skin iced over. Jaggers’ phrase in his note. Mary didn’t seem to notice my fear. She trilled on, like a bird warbling. ‘I let the cat out of the bag and now she’s dead. Poor kitty. Poor white kitty.’

‘I think we’d better go.’ I stood up and put the empty box on the seat. Kat fidgeted beside me. I pushed her gently towards the hanging bird line.

‘Wait,’ Mary caught at my arm. ‘Kenny?’ Her eyes were misted – huge and vacuous behind the over-magnification of the bottle-glass lenses. I hesitated. ‘You really are Kenny, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I acknowledged.

‘You were always the nicest one.’ She smiled and her expression was serene. The years dropped away from her when she smiled. ‘You were kind. You didn’t pull my hair or pinch me. You ran up and down the mound with me.’ She stood and we faced each other. She was surprisingly tall – only a few inches shorter than me. ‘Pop wasn’t his dad. Not Win’s. That’s why Pop was so angry, but he stayed with her anyway. Maybe no-one else would put up with him? Win knew that. I don’t know how. No-one else did, apart from her. Kitty-cat. Poor white kitty-cat. She told him about everything – the pretty flowers, Jonno, Pop, Kimmy, Danny, you. I heard it all – but she let the cat out of the bag. He twisted it out of her.’ She spiralled a finger in front of me. ‘Twisty, twisty, twisty. She wasn’t as smart as she thought she was, and I heard it all. People don’t think I listen, but I do. All the time. I listened when they made their plan, and I listened when they argued. Then I listened when it all went quiet.’

‘Who argued about what?’

‘Win and Kitty-cat. They were going to let the cat out on you, twisty-twisty you. You have lots of money. Loaded. And you have power. Twisty, twisty power.’

‘Who is Kitty-cat, Mary?’

‘The white woman.’

‘Margaret – my wife?’ The deathly white queen of the night bloomed again for me. ‘Why? What plan did Win and Margaret have that involved me?’ But it was pointless. The veil had fallen. Mary had returned to her world. I took Kat’s hand, small and cold, and we ducked back through the birds. I still felt cold too. Brushing though the birds it felt as if they were attacking me like in the Hitchcock thriller of my childhood. I shivered and paused to disentangle one from my hair. Kat had already made it to the door. I imagined the bird’s beak pecking at me, turning into rats’ teeth and the tremors of fear rippled through my body as the dangling bird strings knotted tighter. It was Mary who disentangled me, deftly and tenderly. I turned in surprise.

‘I always loved you Kenny.’ She sounded gentle and my reply was both involuntary and rhetorical, considering now how life had panned out.

‘I don’t think I know what love is, Mary.’ She astonished me by touching a finger to my cheek as lightly as if a feather from one of her creations had brushed against it before being carried away by the prevailing wind. The hand dropped and she pressed something into mine. It was a carefully folded bird made out of printed paper.

‘But you know how to find it. Ma showed you, and now you can.’ Her eyes flicked towards Kat. ‘Kitty-cat,’ she smiled. Then they drifted far into the distance, following the breeze of her thoughts.

22: Circassian Circle

In every case one takes the journey can be as much personal as professional – to a greater or lesser degree. Of course for me, the only choice originally had been to make the professional journey, but in this case there was barely any professional journey to make. It was all personal. It wasn’t so much that I’d been mistreated all my life – more that I’d learnt how to exist for so long in an atmosphere of mainly callous indifference, sprinkled with moments of malicious cruelty. I couldn’t imagine anything different – until now. My personal journey of suppression – of hope, emotion and faith – had started the day I went away. Away from my home, away from my family, away from Ma. At some stage I had to make the journey back – the circular journey – complete the cycle.

I dropped Kat home and went to complete a part of my journey in front of the miserly headstone they’d placed over the small mound that had been my mother, in a mossy and overgrown cemetery I vaguely remembered from childhood adventures with Win and Georgie when Ma had taken us to visit our grandparents’ graves. It was mid-afternoon and hot, but the graveyard was cool from carefully arranged shrubs and trees with overhanging branches canopying its residents. The tree in the far corner was ‘fainsies’ – home. The wall along the back edge our imaginary Hadrian’s Wall – we the marauding army storming the battlefields. Battlefield it was in reality too – the battle of death over life, peace over struggle. RIP. Standing at the foot of her grave, I said it bitterly to her and her legacy to me, but the bitterness couldn’t last.

Sarah had told me some of the details they’d pulled together after we’d been taken away. Jill, Emm and the new baby had been allowed to stay – they were all obviously too vulnerable to farm out anywhere, but it had only been only a brief reprieve as Ma had fallen ill shortly after the birth. First she’d had flu, then pleurisy. The baby struggled along with her, until Ma was taken to hospital and succumbed to pneumonia. All the days I’d been counting off, wondering why Ma didn’t come and claim us back, she hadn’t even been alive. She’d been softly and quietly deposited in this mossy green respite and sunk into her own kind of peace. Away from demanding snot-nosed kids and the rigours of childbirth. Away from Pop and his drunken Saturday night demands and the gossiping neighbours commenting how she was so-so again – their colloquialism for pregnancy. And away from the despair of trying so hard and never quite managing.

The bitterness gave way to sadness and to my relief, private tears, for the cemetery was as deserted now as it had been when we childish soldiers came to conquer it years ago. A vast expanse of the dead and their accompanying grief, visited only by appointment. There are too many at Highgate for it to be quiet. Their unheard voices clamour, but few go there to listen – really listen. I couldn’t remember crying as an adult. Margaret’s death hadn’t wrung any tears from me, and nor had the news of Georgie’s, even though the ache it had brought had been deep and gnawing. Still the tears wouldn’t come then. I hadn’t thought I had any in me, but it seemed there was a vast reservoir of them, just waiting for the dam gates to be inched apart.

Mary’s bird became a phoenix, rising from the ashes of disappointment we’d both felt on leaving Mary. I’d been sure there was something ‘rellyvant’ as Danny would put it about Wins’ deliberate inclusion of Mary in his list. She wasn’t quite mad, but nor was she completely sane. Perhaps interludes of sojourn in this world enabled her to keep pace with it, but they were limited. I suspected whatever dealings Win had with Kimmy or Margaret had been managed under the cover of a visit to Mary – poor Mary, who he thought wouldn’t be aware of anything. That was why she’d been able to listen in to whatever they’d planned, but unfortunately whatever that was had been too far confused in the mists in her mind to be relayed to me. It was a dangerous game Win was playing, nevertheless. Why? At every turn he’d fed me information to lead me on to another discrepancy and with it another piece of evidence. Yes, he claimed to want to have his revenge on Jaggers, so leading me to Margaret’s involvement in the baby business – and through FFF to both her identity and that of her brother’s – pointed me in the right direction, but it hardly established a way to achieve what he wanted. The bird explained a lot. Clever Mary after all.

The bird was Win’s birth certificate on one side, and back-to-back, his father’s death certificate – Jorge Wilhelm Jans. He’d died from ‘complications’ following an injury at work – excessive blood loss. Mary had said Win had a different father to the rest of us. So this was he. And then realisation dawned; Jans anglicised to Johns. Wilhelm Johns was Win’s half-brother. Jesus Christ – no wonder he was baying for blood. The defining factor was parentage after all – family. And I could guess now the reason Jaggers had targeted me first for the Johns case in 1988, then by Margaret, and now by Win. It was a long line of family cause and effect, starting with the venerable Justice Wemmick; the Wemmick legacy.

I hadn’t known about the Jaggers connection when I’d groomed the old judge, and Jaggers hadn’t known who my main ‘client’ had been. We’d worked it together, the old judge and me – he for secrecy and me to be left alone. Judge Wemmick must have known about Jaggers and his little pimping ring all along – how could he not through his happily participating friends? Whatever reasons there’d been at the time for Jaggers not disclosing his real identity, and the judge for not admitting to the connection, they’d also set up the mechanics of this whole goddamn mess. It must have been a nasty shock when the will was read, and the family found out the judge’s money was to be lawfully diverted out of their hands. After that it didn’t take much research to suggest that some of John Arthur Wemmick’s investments had been less than fruitful over the past few years, and his empire was falling. A few phone calls to a few grateful ex-clients filled in the gaps.

The father’s removal to Dubai had been for financial reasons, and indeed FFF and its associates were no doubt fulfilling the double role of profiting from others’ misfortunes, and laundering the proceeds of the other less high profile activities Jaggers was involved in to meet his debts. But why wait so long to come after me? It occurred to me I needed to see the will, and read the fine print of the various clauses, but it may equally have been little more than circumstance that put the plan together; Win coming out of jail and going after Jaggers, only to end up partnering him and Jonno. Perhaps they’d fallen out, and Jaggers had fixed Jonno up to get rid of him. Win could have been the provider of the willing sap ready to take on any well-paid dead cert of a case in order to avoid going under – me. Margaret would then provide the means to control me until the sting was ready to be made; now. It didn’t explain Danny’s involvement but he seemed more likely to be simply a pawn in a dirty game, which Win enjoyed creatively twisting the knife with as the rest of the plan unfolded.

Of course I could have easily gone to the authorities with what I surmised, but Win had cleverly made the risk posed by three of my own indiscretions abundantly clear to me along the way. First, the Wilhelm Johns case –Chambers’ collective part in which, no doubt wouldn’t bear scrutiny. Then there was the miscarriage Heather and Kat had also been parties to in order to clear Kat’s brother. Dirty Chambers, dirty briefs; no ermine and knighthood for me then. And finally, my own childish indiscretion, which had landed Win in jail. I was sure Jaggers would rejoice in publically admitting to his part in if he had to in order to annihilate my good name – with a well-placed ‘mea culpa’ to minimise his culpability. The adoption was doubtless Margaret’s own creative addition to benefit from her own bit of twisting. Twisty, twisty – that was what Mary had said, but it didn’t really matter about the ‘why’ any more – it was the ‘what’ I needed to know about.

There was just one more twisty I’d already bargained for but hadn’t expected to come from Kat. It arrived in a horrified phone message left on my ansaphone whilst I was ruminating over how badly I was about to be screwed over in front of Ma’s grave.

‘Lawrence, I think you need to know this before it breaks anywhere else. Danny’s family have all been tested for the faulty genes and there’s a bit of bother with the results. The hospital rang me this afternoon because they were concerned about the impact on him if he gets to find out before we’ve worked out what to do about it. Terry Hewson is completely clear, and so are the other kids – in fact they don’t even have the same blood group. That means he can’t be Danny’s father. I can’t get hold of Kimberley at the moment ...’

The message rambled on longer about legalities and parental responsibility but I switched off after hearing the salient point. It was too late to ring the hospital to find out my own test results – which presumably would also be back now, but maybe I didn’t need to after all. It seemed from what I now knew, there was potentially another candidate for Danny’s other parent – and another explanation for why he was baying for blood. Half- brother and unacknowledged son, both being destroyed by Jaggers – why wouldn’t he? And so the circle was complete, apart from the price to be extracted from me. I had to find that out from the man himself, not his messenger this time.

23: Patchwork People

It was surprisingly difficult to reach the message himself – Jaggers. I didn’t want to contact him through Win. That felt like doing things his way and I wouldn’t ever do that again. In the end I resorted to the only way I knew would get to him. It took forty-eight hours for the note I hand-delivered to the reception desk of FFF to get a response. I wondered how many of those hours had been in the delivering, and how many in the deliberation of said response. They didn’t show in the reply. It was brief and to the point, as mine had been. A time, a place and a date. A meet.

I drove there so I could easily leave when I wanted to. No waiting around for non-existent taxis – apart from which I didn’t want anyone else seeking a ticket to the party or tracking my path there. The area was seedy – back-street Finchley – and from the outside the building looked like any other run-down tenement in the area. It was the peephole in the door that gave it away. I knocked and waited, casting glances over my shoulder at the passers-by and the tramp on the corner. Look-out maybe? The tramp had a small terrier-like dog with him, and was perched on a dirty red sleeping bag, cap out and with the usual begging letter scrawled on mud-spattered paper perched behind it, but the dog’s collar was new. The area smelt of stale urine and despair.

I turned back to the door, black paint peeling and chipped. The doorstep had been painted red – brick paint. It reminded me of how Ma had scrubbed the stairs up to our flat as part of her weekly routine. When they were dry they were dull, blood brown. When she was scrubbing them the wet patches were bright red – fresh blood red. Why had she bothered? By the time we kids had tramped up and down them, Pop had dropped his fag ash en route to the bookies and numerous other purveyors of gossip, sugar borrowers and visitors with what passed for neighbourliness had all made use of them, the clean veneer was inevitably back to how it had been an hour or so before. What a pointless task. Surely she must have seen the futility of it – the futility of life itself in that environment? Or maybe I was just biased now and current events had wrought an inability in me to see any good in my childhood world. Sarah wasn’t so bad – and nor in their ways were Jill, Emm and Binnie. We were just worlds apart and now the gap between us was unlikely to ever be filled by common experience. And I deserved and accepted their hostility – it was my reward for years of abandonment. The only bridge was Danny, and I had still to decide whether to cross it.

The peephole was filled by a distorted eye and it reminded me of Mary and her bizarre world, with its own peephole through the hanging birds. The look-out had obviously done his job satisfactorily. I passed muster and the door swung open to a narrow entrance and banged shut immediately behind me. The corridor was gloomy and the walls painted a dreary brown, but there was sufficient light spilling from the doorway at the end of it to see that my companion wasn’t Jaggers.

‘ID?’ he demanded. He was muscle-bound, tattooed and smelt of cheap aftershave. I felt around in my pocket and came away with nothing.

‘I’m here by invitation.’

‘Don’t give a shit, mate. ID.’ The only thing I had vaguely resembling a passport was Margaret’s birth certificate – or maybe I should say Molly’s birth certificate – ages old. I flashed it under thug’s nose and it worked like ‘open sesame’. I followed him into the room at the end of the corridor to find it was an old-fashioned snooker hall. Three full-sized tables complete with overhanging lights graced its length with a bar at one end and some rickety looking tables and chairs. It was speak-easy days personified. One the tables contained a huddle deep into a card game, a pile of crinkled tens and fives heaped in its centre, ringed by full ash trays and poker faces. They’d obviously been at it all night judging by the five o’clock shadows the unshaven ones sported and the under-eye bags they all nursed along with their un-played hands. One or two others lounged at the bar, whisky-deep and oblivious of me.

My attention wasn’t on them though. It was on the man leaning casually against the central snooker table, smiling sardonically at me as I approached. The same crawling terror from childhood almost overwhelmed me. I struggled to control it – and the inclination to turn on my heel and run. I gritted my teeth, reminding myself I’d risen above it – and him – once. I could do it again. More so now. I was a man. My neck crawled, anticipating the tightening twist of polythene round it, and my chest went into spasm, lungs clamouring for air. I breathed in deeply, subconsciously measuring the millilitres of oxygen filling them like I had as a child. One long deep breath was better than short staccato ones. I continued walking towards him, every pace tightening my chest muscles to screaming pitch, until I was within a few paces of him. He didn’t move, just studied me laconically with a half-smile.

‘Long time, no see,’ he greeted me when I was within an arm’s length of him. There was no resemblance between him and Margaret up close. I’d assumed the disparity between their ages in the photo, and its bad quality had masked it.

‘How I would have preferred it to stay,’ I replied, consciously steadying my voice. Don’t let him see. You did it once. Do it now. As ice-cool as ever – his elegance was discordant against the backdrop of sleaze and the underbelly of society. He was dressed informally but with a style I knew would run into thousands if I cared to tot up the cost. Savile Row at least. And perfectly relaxed. We were roughly the same age but he easily looked ten years younger – but then the excesses of brandy and insomnia hadn’t been doing me any favours lately. I could see a different family resemblance though. His eyes clearly had that similarity to the old judge that I’d missed before. The anger inside was like a cold hard rod of steel, piercing me from head to gut.

‘Sorry to hear that. We do good business when we do it – you and I.’

‘Hardly what I would describe it as.’ I hoped the rattle in my throat sounded like sarcasm, not fear.

‘Well, we always did view things a little differently, didn’t we?’ He laughed dismissively. ‘Do you play?’ He indicated the snooker table, and without waiting for me to reply, continued. ‘I do. Let’s have a game.’

‘It’s not really my forte.’

‘Oh my dear chap, don’t worry about that. You won’t win – no-one wins against me. It’s why I usually play against myself. No-one else is sufficient of a challenge, but let’s give you a sporting chance, shall we?’ He threw a cue at me and I caught it awkwardly, twisting my thumb backwards doing so. ‘You can go first. White to red and split the pack. Then you can have first pot – if you can make it.’

‘I told you I’m not a player.’

He stared at me before laughing harshly. ‘Oh forgive me, but you are – you’re very much a player, but never mind. I’ll get us under way.’ He lunged into position and sent the triangular cluster of red balls spinning across the table. They collided with each other in a volley of clicks, and three dropped snugly into pockets before the rest settled, splayed across the green baize like splotches of Margaret’s blood. He potted the black as swiftly and waited for the hovering attendant to white glove it back into position. ‘Shall I continue?’ He asked.

‘Shall we talk?’ I countered.

‘We can talk and play. What’s your move?’

‘Molly.’

‘Yes?’

‘Your sister Molly.’

‘Yes, the lovely Molly – oh wait, that’s Margaret to you, isn’t it?’ He threw a glance my way before potting the next red. ‘Of course I know you’ve worked that one out. So what? What else have you to tell me?’

‘Win and Kimberley.’

‘Dear Win. Yes. Such a faithful henchman. And Kimmy, his delightful sister.’ His mouth twisted in derision. ‘Your delightful sister too? Have you divested yourself of the paternity claim yet?’

‘Is that relevant?’

‘No; but it’s fun, isn’t it? Really got you applying the grey matter. Maybe it will prove to be true – or maybe not. What do you think? Are you a betting man? Oh no, you don’t play, do you? Molly thought she could get you involved by appealing to your fear of the past. I knew it was your potential future that would worry you more. Romantic soul, isn’t she?’ I thought of Margaret and her manipulation. Under no circumstances would I have called her business-like use of me romantic. He smiled lop-sidedly. ‘However, we managed it pretty well between us, wouldn’t you say? All the little twists and turns.’

‘So what is it exactly that you wanted to manage?’

‘Well, it generally all boils down to cold hard cash, doesn’t it my dear chap? Sadly it’s no different here – as you’ve no doubt also surmised.’

‘The money from the will.’

He turned his back on me and potted a red, the black, another red and the pink in succession. He surveyed the table, and re-chalked his cue. The tiger’s head ring on his little finger winked its tawny eyes at me. He nodded, smiling. ‘Yes, the money from the will. That has become somewhat important over the years.’

‘Over ten years?’

He laughed appreciatively. ‘You do catch on well after a bit of help, don’t you?’ He sighed and put the cue down on the side of the table. ‘Your go. I’ve hogged the limelight long enough. Let’s look at your star turn, shall we?’

‘You employed us on the Wilhelm Johns case.’

‘Yes,’

‘You primed all the evidence to point to him and buried anything that didn’t. That’s why our brief stipulated we carried out no independent research to verify evidence.’

‘Did I?’

‘How did you get the police to go along with it?’

His expression was surprised. ‘The police go along with it? Who said they did? But if they did, it would be very simple, my dear chap; everyone has a price. You merely have to know what it is. Take you, for instance. Your price then wasn’t in pound signs, it was in recognition – success. As long as you won and won big, your future was made. The case paid for your future, like my uncle did in his will. He arranged it as a form of a loan, didn’t he? Now I simply require the loan back – nothing underhand, just good business.’

‘Why wait for so long?’

He paused melodramatically, as if considering my question. ‘I’m a patient soul.’ He laughed, watching me. ‘No? The truth is that to begin with I didn’t need it. It was a nice little investment for the future I didn’t need to realise immediately. My dear devious uncle left sufficient of his fortune to my father to keep us going quite comfortably, but my father became financially decrepit in his decline – for all his bluster and bravado.’

‘He looked sharp enough in the portrait.’

‘The one in his office? Yes, I heard you paid a visit.’ He laughed. ‘Skilful artist. Didn’t include the alcohol-shakes or the failing memory. A figurehead. We agreed that was what he’d paint. A figurehead with no substance. It took years for him to become that bad though, and my own ventures were going tolerably well in the meantime. It all changed in the early eighties unfortunately. I had a number of US interests. The depression and the banking crisis there made rather an impact on how I did business. I had to tap Daddy and found he’d been leaking cash for years. There was hardly any left in the reservoir by then. Something had to be done, and a swift review determined it should be you.’

‘You’ve been planning this for over ten years?’

‘Oh, only mildly. I wouldn’t even have put it as strongly as planning to begin with – more like taking out an insurance policy. The case locked you in, and Molly kept a hold on the key. I must admit it made me feel very lazy – letting you work whilst I played, but you were such a workhorse, weren’t you, Kenny.’ I flinched involuntarily at the name. He smiled cruelly. ‘Oh my apologies – its Lawrence these days, isn’t it? Success bloated you like a leech sucking blood; blood money.’ He laughed again. ‘Ah, money – the root of all evil.’

‘The love of it,’ I corrected sarcastically.

‘Indeed. Ever correct, Lawrence – and so self-righteous. It becomes you.’ The urge to tell him to fuck off was almost uncontrollable but personal satisfaction was something I would have to shelve under the circumstances. It was plain that as his insurance policy I was strung higher than a hangman’s noose.

‘Thanks for the compliment,’ I countered nastily. The shackles of childhood receded with anger.

He grinned good-humouredly. ‘I suppose you want the rest? They always do – the little pawns in the game. There was really no need to do anything for a long time. Molly siphoned off what we needed, through your lovely expensive house renovation project once you handed over management of the bank account. All those bill payments we had to divert before you gave in – really, you can be tedious at times. And so it would have continued, no doubt, if Molly hadn’t become a little too ambitious. Those charities – so expensive to run, even if they did do a perfectly splendid clean-up job with the dirty money. We needed an investor, a big one. One who would invest everything, and everything you had seemed sufficient – since you did originally acquire it with my help.’

‘The money from the will was only to be repayable if the terms were breached.’

‘And surely they are just about to be? Very publically – in court, no less.’

‘There’s no reason to say anything about it – or him.’

‘Oh, but there will be when there is a claim that you are only defending the boy because he is your son; your incestuously begotten son – and you’ve done it before, ten years ago, on behalf of your brother.’

‘You bastard! You know you set up the Johns case, and you’d have to be able to prove that – incest.’

‘True, but to defend the accusation your very private past will have to become very public. You’d have to prove who the father is as counter-claim, and therefore also lay claim to the rest of your family whilst doing it together with your rather less than honest past. And then we get to your mentor – shall we call him that for nicety’s sake? And that brings us full circle, back to your investment in Wemmick enterprises. The papers will have a field day! What did that appointment say? Something about hold office during good behaviour?’ He shook his head and tutted. ‘Dear me, Lawrence; dear, dear me.’

‘And what about FFF and Molly?’

‘What about them?’

‘Well if all of my past has to come out, then so will Molly’s – and her connection to you and FFF, and what FFF actually does.’

‘I think, old bean, you’re forgetting something. FFF is a wonderful charity that makes a great deal of unhappy people deliriously happy by uniting a hitherto disadvantaged child with advantaged prospective parents. Seems like you and Margaret would have been two of the beneficiaries in due course, wouldn’t you? Fulfilling your long-desired dream of fatherhood, at a price.’ He threw his head back and roared uncontrollably as I battled the inclination to thrust my fist into his open mouth and rip out his tongue. Only the muscle-bound bully-boy in the corner of the room and his twin by the bar stopped me. My chances would be nil.

‘I could prove otherwise.’ His laughter stopped as suddenly as it had started.

‘No you couldn’t. I would say that you married Margaret knowing full well who she is and joyfully availed yourself of FFF’s services. Perjury is merely a matter of perception, and you have no proof otherwise.’ He was right. There wasn’t really anywhere else to go but to perdition. Nevertheless, I wanted to make a stand somehow. He’d got me. He’d got everything on me but I had one last thing to throw at him. I played out my hand, not anticipating much success. It was a very long shot, but it no longer really mattered by then. It was the only one I had.

‘So before I get nailed to the floor, who really killed the girl if it wasn’t Willy Johns – Jonno? And was it the same person who helped Margaret – Molly – along the path to eternity?’

He was cool, but he was also rattled. ‘It’s irrelevant.’ Personally I was shit at character assessment, but professionally I was shit hot. I knew when I’d unexpectedly hit jackpot with my long shot. I staked everything else on it.

‘Not if I dispute that too – in court. The Johns case would have to be re-opened, then, wouldn’t it? Examined in detail – all those little oddities in it we passed over last time, especially if I admitted we wilfully ignored evidence to the contrary.’

He regarded me coldly for a moment and then snorted deprecatingly. ‘But you won’t,’ he replied smoothly. ‘Otherwise an innocent child and a woman you’re rather attached to will suffer too because that other miscarriage of justice would have to be looked into as well, wouldn’t it? I’ve already raised the issue with one of your partners. I couldn’t be the great judge’s nephew and let such inequality rule over law. Alfie Roumelia – the cat with nine lives. Oh no – wait. That’s the sister’s name, isn’t it?’ He paused and studied my expression. I blanked him. Do better than that, you bastard. I can fight in court – it’s what I’m trained to do. ‘And even if you stomach that, there’s always the unexpected to consider. Crime is so prevalent these days – and so uncontrollable – rape, beatings, muggings that end in stabbings. Such terrible things we live with daily nowadays ... I’m sure you wouldn’t want anyone else on your conscience even if you had cleared Willy Johns from it.’

I stared at him open-mouthed. He mimicked my expression back at me. ‘Oh yes, dear Lawrence, I would – but who would believe you? By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll have a credibility rating like your credit score if you don’t let this go down the way I want. Do good business with me and I’ll let you carry on where you left off – apart from the bank balance, and maybe a bit of bonus goodwill with the odd client or two I’ll send your way.’

I’d lost. There were no options left. I couldn’t throw Kat or Danny to the wolves. I couldn’t have done it even if I’d not been attached to them, and I had to finally acknowledge that my feelings for both were rather more than attachment.

The deal: all that I had in stocks, securities, property and overseas investments – courtesy of success assisted by old Justice Wemmick’s will and Jaggers’ manipulations – was to be liquidated and deposited in FFF’s account as a ‘donation’. No tax on donations, you see. What I then did, career-wise was up to me, but it would be bloody difficult to keep up appearances sufficiently to maintain acceptance if I was a pauper. For a start, my investment in the business would also be gone – or handed over to Jaggers. No stake, no partnership.

Kat and Danny? He had no interest in either other than to use Danny as a scapegoat for the mugging, but with character witnesses, he should only get a minimum sentence and good behaviour would shorten that further. Aggravating factors were the woman’s age and vulnerability. Mitigating factors were lack of intent to kill, the age of the offender and the boys’ parentage which could be used to imply diminished responsibility even if it wasn’t proven. It could muddy the waters sufficiently to cause dissent between the jurors and maybe get a split vote, occasioning public focus on the boy’s sad background, and thus drumming up public support. Jaggers outlined the possibilities neatly for me even though I could figure them all out for myself and the sour taste in my mouth made me want to vomit. He should end up with twelve years mitigated down to perhaps five or six. He’d be out by the time he was about sixteen.

‘No worse than us,’ he concluded.

‘We weren’t wrongly convicted of manslaughter,’ I replied angrily, but it was immaterial. He chalked his cue and lined up another shot.

‘So what?’

‘But why do you have to use the boy at all.’

He swung round, pointing the cue at me like a spear, face dark and threatening. ‘I don’t like being played for a fool, Lawrence – do you? Have you enjoyed realising how your Margaret pulled your tail? No, I can see not. Well, neither have I. She tried something like that on me once. She got away with it then, but I’m not having it thrown at me again now – by her, or your family. This is a little reminder of what happens if you pull a tiger by his tail and pull too hard. The tiger gobbles you, or yours, up. You can tell them that when you next see them.’

‘Kimmy and I aren’t exactly close. Anyway – this is about the boy, not us.’ He stared at me, and then started to laugh softly.

‘Really? Poor Lawrence; poor, poor Lawrence. Still so much to learn. I’m not talking about your sister, but I should keep it that way – for your good health’s sake.’ He paused, ‘or for your other little tigress; miaow ...’

I had no choice but to walk away. The alternative was far, far worse. I thought of Margaret and despite her cynical manipulation of me, regretted a life cut short because of deceit.

‘Who was responsible for Margaret’s death?’ I asked before I left. He eyed me warily.

‘Unimportant.’

‘Don’t you even want to find out?’

He shrugged. ‘I already know, my dear chap.’

‘So who was it?’

He smiled sadly. ‘My other bit of advice. We all have our uses – until we don’t.’

I knew then it had been him. I felt sick inside – sick to my soul.

I drove home slowly, barely noticing how I got there. The grimy streets of London that I usually found so pulsing with life and possibility seemed now only grey and depressing. The sun still shone, the birds still sang, the underground still rumbled far beneath me and the taxi drivers still ignored you unless you looked like you could pay, but it was all completely, inexorably and permanently different for me. I wanted to bury myself in my trappings of security whilst I still could but even that was denied me. The phone was ringing off the hook in my study as I put the key on the door. I ignored it but after the fifth assault, I gave up and answered. It was Louise from reception. The persistent purring sound in the background caused me to stop her mid-flow.

‘Is there something wrong with the phone?’ In my highly-strung state I imagined bugging devices as well as look-outs and stalkers at every corner.

‘Oh, sorry. That’s Mr Tibbs.’

‘Who?’

‘The cat we got to get rid of the mice, remember?’

Of course. ‘I thought you said the cat’s female?’ But who was I to argue. I hadn’t seen beyond the end of my nose for years, and I hadn’t really been listening to Louise’s cat carryings-on.

‘She is, but I like the name.’

‘OK, so what did you need me for?’

‘Oh, yes – Mr Juste,’ her voice took on an agitated burr. ‘Mr Gregory asked me to call you and tell you we have a date for the Hewson trial – you know, the little boy.’ I was dumbfounded.

‘I didn’t know it had even been passed on to the Crown Court yet.’

‘Oh yes, it went straight away – on Mrs Juste’s instruction.’

‘Christ! When?’

‘Next week. It went when it first came to us.’ I sat down at my desk and picked up Margaret’s down-turned photo as Louise burbled on. The purring softened the message but not the facts. I focused on the red splotches on Margaret’s dress and tried to get my head round what Louise was saying. ‘The really awful thing is that it’s scheduled for the day before Mrs Juste’s funeral.’ The red splotches blurred and overlapped, encompassing my future as surely if I’d looked down the barrel of a gun and the bullet had entered straight between my eyes. The streaming blood coloured my vision. We all have our uses – until we don’t.

The blood vision turned to anger. Why hadn’t my junior told me about this? And why the hell wasn’t it in the file? And how could you kill your own sister, and think of her merely in terms of use, or lack of it?

‘Have we entered a plea yet?’

‘Mr Gregory said to enter not guilty just in case.’ Just in case. I’d thought of my own siblings as people to extract information from. They’d had their uses too. I disgusted myself. ‘What shall I do?’ Louise sounded worried.

‘There’s not a lot you can do, Louise. We have a date. Let the party commence.’

And the funeral.

24: Rough Justice

I didn’t know what else to do. The messenger I’d avoided I now sought. I didn’t expect any kind of acceptable advice from him, yet he was my older brother. I called the number on the card and he answered almost immediately.

‘I been waiting to hear from you. What’s happening?’

‘I said I’d be in touch when I was ready. Well, now I’m ready.’

‘So you spoken to them all, then?’

‘Yes, and I know the truth, Win. Not what you would have had me believe.’

‘I wouldn’t have you believe anything but the truth – but I knew you wouldn’t believe it from me so you had to find it out for yourself.’

‘So you haven’t been Jaggers go-between all the time, then?’

‘Jaggers. Blimey.’ He started laughing. ‘Nah, I ain’t been his go-between, but like I said – I get what I want.’

‘Well, that still makes two of you making the same claim. So which of you gets what he wants first?’

‘So you seen him as well? OK, you are ready then. Meet me at The Tavern on Warberry Street in about an hour.’ The phone clicked down and there was obviously no discussion to be had. I debated whether to ring Kat and tell her what was happening, but what could I say? I’m about to lose everything so you and Danny don’t get annihilated? Yeah, really. That was exactly my style. At least I had that smallest element of integrity still in me.

Win was lounging at the bar when I arrived. It was one of those places that had been modernised to olde worlde without taste or credibility. I could see his bulk leaning on the dark wood even from outside the door, stomach spilling untidily over his waistband and sweat patches making dark rings under his arms. A sudden memory of Pop in the same position after a small gain at the bookies – for once –dragged me unwillingly back to childhood. They looked so similar, and yet Pop wasn’t Win’s father. Perhaps it was the type rather than the people I was seeing in them. What about me? Was I that type of man too? I’d been trying to be someone else for so long, but I wasn’t even sure who I was now. My type – another Atticus, I’d once hoped – wouldn’t have used his kin for protection, or denied them when they were an encumbrance. Or taken the easy way out to personal success by damning someone else, for that matter, even if that person might deserve justice of some sort. I had to face it. I’d become a variant of Jaggers.

The sour smell of old smoke and rancid ash trays floated through the doorway. Despite the hoot of traffic and the stink of exhaust outside, it still smelt cleaner than the anticipated proximity to Win, but I was no longer entitled to draw a distinction between him and me. My stomach churned and my instincts told me to go – anywhere but in – yet I had to. He presented the only possibility there was of extracting myself from the cesspit Jaggers had tossed me back into. To escape it I had to join it first, and what better sponsor than my brother?

I slid onto the bar stool alongside him. He didn’t even move, just studied me.

‘You reckon you know all of it then?’ he remarked, as if starting an idle conversation about football or the dogs.

‘I do know all of it – or can surmise the rest.’

‘What you gonna do with it?’

‘That depends on you. Do you still want your pound of flesh from Jaggers or were you hand in glove all the time?’

‘Huh,’ it was a shout of laughter. ‘I might work for the bastard but I ain’t his servant!’

‘So?’

‘So, yeah – I still want me pound of flesh, as you put it. How you gonna give it me?’

‘To be honest, Win, I don’t know. He’s got me over a barrel unless there’s evidence you’ve got and I haven’t.’ I outlined everything I knew as he listened quietly, swigging his beer.

‘Yeah,’ he said at the end of it. ‘I got something you haven’t; who run your missus down.’

‘Him?’

‘You knew?’

I nodded. ‘One of the things I surmised, anyway. Christ, how could a brother do that to his own sister?’

‘How can anyone do anything to anyone? Life ain’t pretty, Kenny-boy. Ain’t you learnt that by now – you of all people?’ I suppose I deserved it. ‘It don’t matter who it is. If they’re in the way, they have to go in his world. He ain’t one for sentiment – kin or not. She knew that – your missus. She learnt what a mean bastard he could be once she were past knee-high. Kimmy knows too – got his own back with Jonno for her little games, and then with the nipper too. I knew that but there weren’t anything I could do at the time.

‘So it’s Jonno then.’

‘How do you make that out?’ he asked curiously.

‘It has to be for there to be the right gene pool – a faulty gene pool. Did you know Danny’s a haemophiliac and he could only have the condition, not merely carry it, if he inherited faulty genes from both mother and father? Terry Hewson’s clear so that makes his father someone else with the problem. If it’s not you, it has to be Jonno because I know he and Kimmy were involved. Jill and Emm told me about it – and how you queered his pitch with Emm. But he was Kimmy’s half-brother too. That’s just as bad. Why the hell did you sanction it?’

‘I didn’t. You ever tried telling a woman what to do? It ain’t him anyway.’

‘Then it’s you. Mary gave me your father’s death certificate.’

He stared at me, aghast. ‘Me? Christ, no! What do you take me for? I just helped when the kid were born. Me and Jonno were mates before I found out he was me brother too. We hung around together and we did stuff together – yeah with Jaggers too. He helped me out when I first came out – looked me up and offered me some work at the club to start with. And he already knew the others from when we were kids. When I found out about our Dad I steered him away from Emm. It never even occurred to me that he and Kimmy’d get it together. I was fuckin’ furious when I found out. But it ain’t him.’

‘Then who?’

You want to find out, do some digging, little brother. I’ve given you the clues already.’

‘But Jill and Emm said you were responsible for setting Jonno up. I assumed that was revenge for getting Kimmy pregnant.’

‘I s’pose it was in a way – but not because of that. His nibs threatened to mince Kimmy after she tried to pull the fast one on him and he had the little problem with a girl to deal with. I had a choice – let Kimmy get hurt, or help his nibs out and let Kimmy go clear. I figured Jonno knew the ropes in clink and I were furious with him for getting with Kimmy, so I told him to use Jonno.’

‘So he set Wilhelm Johns – Jonno up?’

‘Yeah, got his own back on Kimmy too, and sorted out his little problem. Efficient bastard, I’ll say that for him. I thought Jonno would get off because he hadn’t done nothing but I didn’t bargain on him setting him up so proper-like. ’

‘So who was the real murderer?’

‘I dunno, but I can guess. Ask Molly – Margaret, whatever you want to call her.’

‘I can’t, she’s dead.’

‘Yeah, and probably best left that way. No-one else gets hurt then.’ I thought about the blood-red finger nail clipping and my own blood froze. I looked him in the eye and knew he meant it.

‘Fucking hell!’

‘They were only kids. Didn’t know what they were doing a lot of the time. Molly were in her twenties or so, Kimmy a couple of years older but still naive. He needed someone to make it stick and that’s when your name came up. I worked out who you were because he was so interested in you, and I was angry with you too – you’d already shafted me, why not get me own back on you too. I let it slip to him and there you were – in the frame too. I thought you were going to be brief for the defence though – not the prosecution. All of us nicely set up and no way of undoing now. Best left alone, matey. You’ve got more important shit to shovel than playing detective – like shafting Jaggers, for me and you.’

I laughed sarcastically. ‘And so how do we do that? How would we prove he killed his own sister? We’ve no chance!’

He looked smug. ‘I got something he ain’t bargained on.’

‘What?’

‘The car that run Molly down, covered in her blood and with his fingerprints all over the wheel.’

‘How the hell did you get hold of that?’

‘Win Juss – gets you what you want when you want it. And he’s so sure of me he don’t even bother. He just told me to get rid of it afterwards and to him that meant it were done – no questions.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I got it in a lock-up in Camden. I got some stuff about Jonno there too, and Molly.’ I stared at him. ‘Files and the like.’

‘From our archives?’

‘Nah, the stuff that weren’t in them.’

‘How?’

‘Everyone has their price, don’t they? And like I said, Win Juss gets what ’e wants. By the way, your little man in reception likes little girls – did you know?’

‘Gregory?’

‘Yeah, something poncy like that.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ I was speechless. It seemed as if everyone was a patchwork of disaster, not just me.

‘Why the fuck didn’t you just tell me all this, Win – instead of putting me through all this shite I’ve been coming up against for the last few weeks?’

‘’Cos that shite is your family, mate,’ he said quietly, ‘and this had to be personal. I don’t reckon things have been personal with you since you were nine. It ain’t real life unless it’s personal. Gotta live before you die, ain’t you? Gotta put stuff right sometimes too. I reckon you still got some of that to figure out though.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like what you want; that girl and your wife – and Danny.’ His expression made my stomach turn over again.

‘I know what I don’t want.’

‘Ha, don’t be so sure. Appearances ain’t all they seem, are they?’

‘Some appearances are all they seem. And as far as Danny’s concerned, he’s my nephew and Kimmy’s my sister. I’m accepting that.’ But he was right – the living had to come first and I still had a lot of figuring out to do. ‘What else do I need to figure?’

‘What if Jonno were your brother too?’ I stared at him. It was personal now. It was very personal.

25: Atticus

I didn’t like Win’s solution. I didn’t like it all, but I couldn’t see any other. Violence was still violence even if it was also rough justice, and Jonno had appeared to be rough justice and that had turned out to be no justice at all. Win proposed bypassing the police, and handing the car over with the whole story, including the suppressed evidence and case notes still collectively in his possession and mine, to the family of the girl murdered in 1988 – supposedly by Jonno. Win would see to the rest. I didn’t need to know what happened after that. It didn’t take much to read between the lines if you opened your eyes. Not particularly respectable or upright as a family in the community themselves, he was confident that Jaggers would find his way, with the car, to the bottom of the Thames before Danny’s case was heard.

The girl’s family and its support network would conveniently lose all recollection of the event when questioned. I went along with it because I didn’t know what else to do but Atticus plagued me about it. I kept away from Kat because I didn’t want to implicate her further, or expose her to Jaggers. That meant I kept away from Danny too, but I couldn’t have faced him anyway after Win’s last knife in the guts.

I sent my clerk off to fill in the necessary paperwork and brief them whilst I languished in my office at Chambers or my office at home, chewing over the case and trying to find a way – any way – to avoid Win’s plan. I couldn’t think of one. The only thing that kept coming back to me was the little piece of evidence in the Johns’ paperwork that didn’t fit and Jaggers’ reaction to my question about it. Momentarily his ice-cool had cracked. Why, why, why? Was the person who’d killed the girl and the one who’d helped Molly on her way really one and the same, and not Win’s creative twist? But I couldn’t prove anything so why had he reacted? Something about it – something – was the key.

I spoke to Kat the day before the hearing because I could no longer avoid it. She hadn’t rung me but she knew something was wrong. Even Gregory’s smarmy charm didn’t fool her. Could she have started to see past my façade, I wondered? The idea was as intriguing as it was terrifying. I assured her I had everything in hand. I had – just not in the way I would have liked it to be. Her tight little voice told me I was pushing it. I used the funeral as my excuse again, but shortly there would be no excuse.

I put Margaret’s photograph back on its face and the stopper back on the brandy decanter. The patchwork man had unravelled completely and now he had to be re-sewn in a different form. A hitherto unfathomed part of me wanted to go back and talk to Sarah, or even Binnie or Jill and Emm – to find where I should have been by now. I needed roots in a way I’d never felt the need for before, and they were mine. The acknowledgement surprised me.

Yet I couldn’t. Win told me Sarah had been taken into a hospice and was only days away from the inevitable. Jill and Emm were furious with me for not telling them she was so ill, and Binnie? Binnie just plain refused to talk.

‘Can’t pick and choose if you’re family. You either is, or you isn’t.’

I could imagine her saying it even though she hadn’t, but it would have been the gist of her opinion of me. She was right, of course – like Win had been. All of life is about people – it has to be. Family, family, family – it all revolved round them; the patchwork of people and emotions that created the whole. I’d had one, but it had disintegrated. I wished I’d done more now to sustain it. The only people who’d unreservedly accepted me, despite the most enormous of failures, had been Danny and Kat, but I’d shut them out too. I had to become like Jaggers now, securing safety through splendid isolation. Worse – I had to send Jaggers to his grave in order to preserve myself. Atticus would never sanction that. Atticus would never sanction me. I was glad I no longer had the book I’d given Danny.

In the end I rang Kat and explained what I was meant to do and why I couldn’t. Her reply was as easy as breathing.

‘But Lawrence – it’s simple. Bullies are cowards. You’re not a bully.’

‘No, but nor do I have a defence against it – for myself, or you, or Danny.’

‘You do. It’s called the truth. Tell it. By the way, did you get my message about the the blood test results? Terry Hewson doesn’t carry the faulty gene so he’s definitely not Danny’s biological father.’

‘Yes, I did. So what’s being done about it?’ I waited for the axe to fall.

‘Nothing at the moment. The ball’s in Kimmy’s court. Whether she wants to do anything about it or try to gloss over it all, I don’t know. Whatever is best for Danny, I suppose, maybe.’

I couldn’t imagine Kimmy considering what was best for anyone other than herself but at least it was something I didn’t have to face head on just yet. I made a mental note to chase up my own results, given Win’s final bombshell, but later. The coward in me didn’t want to face that just yet. I put the phone down, wondering who ultimately would find themselves uppermost in court: Lawrence, Kenny, or a man I had still to come to terms with.

The truth was fine where lives weren’t at risk. Lives. One life – two lives. Many lives. Margaret’s lives; my lives. We’d both had two of them, and there were two versions of us. Then I got it. There were two versions. I could still choose which was public – for now. The whole truth – or the kind of truth Atticus would have revealed. The one that did no harm.

*

The sun was streaming in through the long window on the side of the court building, spattering the marbled floor with splashes of white light on muddied footprints. It reminded me of the dappled sides of the rag and bone man’s horse when I was nine. Kat and Danny were in the cells – a formality I’d been unable to overturn given the charge against him and the not guilty plea required he be present to answer the charge and submit his plea. I’d already made my last visit to them and we’d sat in silence after going through the usual routine of reassurance – knowing no assurances meant anything at that stage – until I’d made my excuses about needing to be in court before the Judge entered.

I went back upstairs from the gloom of the cells and stood sweatily in the crush of defenders and accusers in the reception hall leading to the courtrooms. Magistrates’ courts were always too busy in London. The junior Heather had pointedly substituted for my normal sidekick rustled the case papers officiously and the pink ribbons holding them together fluttered prettily. They cut across my vision like the flashes of a migraine. Through their butterfly whorls I saw Jaggers standing by the door to Courtroom 2 – ours. Win loitered nearby – as squat and pugnacious as ever, but significantly unable to look me in the eye – still waiting for my sign that he could hand the ‘evidence’ over. The sun went in as the courtroom doors opened and the usher waved the stragglers through. I let my new junior march on, mumbling I needed a moment to mentally rehearse my opening address.

‘Oh,’ she studied me curiously. ‘Is there anything I need to do?’ I debated what to say. Probably nothing. I would rather have had my old clerk, despite his ineffectualness, but Heather had insisted.

‘No, just follow my lead.’

‘OK,’ she nodded nonchalantly and disappeared through the doors. There were still five minutes before court was in session. I thought of Kat, soft-eyed and expectant. Little brown nut – yum, yum. And Danny – shifty-eyed and defiant, still clutching the book like his lucky charm. The boy in him was me. How could that boy become more than just the patchwork of pain and futility I’d been for forty years? A patchwork person – for that’s what we all are, cobbled together by the thread of life. What patterns do our patchworks comprise? Hope, optimism and morality or despair, wretchedness and dishonour? I’d aspired to be an Atticus but instead, for years had contemplated cowardice. The claim to be mentally rehearsing my opening address was a lie, just as my platitudes to Kat and Danny had been. I had no idea what words I would use, or what outcome there would be after I walked through that door. I had yet to choose my pattern.

It felt like I remained there, outside, for hours, undecided what to do, as I had in life. The pieces of the case were a collage of good and bad, light and dark, multi-coloured just like my life. Like the chart on the wall at the children’s home, my patchwork life had more red and black than yellow – the red of Margaret’s blood on the road and the black of my dishonesty. More than ever I wanted to move into the light – the yellow. I had lived in the dark too long, yet that entailed assembling all the pieces – the bad alongside the good. After all this time, did I even know how to be principled?

They would be wondering where I was inside the courtroom. I imagined Danny, lower lip jutting sullenly with the unspoken fear he’d always had about me – that I’d let him down, Win – waiting for revenge, and Jaggers – for payback. My patchwork of fear and despair. The only way to keep it all from falling apart was to unpick and re-sew – and yet still I hesitated. It was Lennox’s piece of advice that decided me finally. Keep everything separate; separate lives. That way the trouble of one life wouldn’t spill over into the other. The two versions. Fragmented. Advice can be good at the time, but time moves situations on and everything is changed. And to be a whole person the fragments have to be assembled ...

I pushed open the courtroom door and the sunlight from the arched window with the same motto as in the Supreme Court, ‘Justice cannot be for one side but must be for both’, flooded in with me. It was like a sign. I slipped into my place with a stray strand of sunlight neatly following me. It marked the point on the desk in front of me where I should place my papers. It dawdled over them like a lazy spotlight, telling me the moment could no longer be postponed. I opened the file. Sometimes the only answer is somewhere between the past and the present, the right and the wrong. Atticus knew that too.

I knew if I turned and scanned the gallery I would see Jaggers in one of the rows, smiling complacently. I didn’t know what it meant but that red nail meant something, and it had been planted in the evidence for me to find by someone who knew I’d have a reason to look. There were only two people that could be. Win – but he wanted me to do something completely different so I could discount him. And Margaret: Molly. There was something about Molly and her involvement that made Jaggers twitch. Whilst I found out exactly what it was – which version of the truth it was, I would have to pull the strings myself and make the puppet dance. It was the longest, most extreme shot I’d ever gone for, but then, I’d never been quite so much on the edge of extreme as now.

I motioned to my junior and instructed her to whom to pass the note. It said:

‘I will tell them everything – all the way back to the start, unless this goes the way I lead it today. I have evidence you won’t want them to see concerning Molly. We have a lot more game to play out before we’re finished.’

She frowned and hissed back, ‘This isn’t part of the brief.’

‘It is now.’

She looked disapproving but passed it to one of the ushers anyway. Whilst we waited for the session to start, I watched him receive it, read it, consider it. The eye contact was brief between us but I knew from it that I’d found the chink in his amour, if not how. How big a chink remained to be seen ...

The note came back a few moments later as the clerk shuffled his papers and prepared to open proceedings. It was endorsed on the reverse.

‘Better make sure you’re good at playing pot shots then, and don’t believe everything you are told. Assumptions can produce unpleasant surprises – like families.

And remember, I always win ...’

I looked up again but could no longer see him. The clock ticked over to ten before I could scour the whole court.

‘All rise. Court in session. Wednesday 21st July 1999: Mr Justice Crawford presiding ...’

Now life either fell apart in earnest or started over.

26: Appearance

I stuffed the notes I’d hastily made for the new junior under her nose and swung back round to prepare for the entrance of Mr Justice Crawford. She wouldn’t like what she read when she could get to them, but neither did I. Old Crawford was as long faced and lugubrious as ever. He must have been genetically modified for court, he fitted its ponderous solemnity so perfectly.

‘Indictment in the Inner London Crown Court, the Queen versus Daniel Jonas Hewson, charged with manslaughter as follows: – that on Wednesday the seventh of May 1999 you attacked and robbed Freda May Harris, stealing her handbag including the contents thereof, and subsequently causing her death from the injuries inflicted on her that day.’

I could see Danny in the dock, looking mutinous and flanked by a stern-looking WPC and Kat. The sun burnished the polished wood of the benches, and winked off the number of pips on the WPC’s shoulders like an SOS. To me Danny looked vulnerable, but the expressions of the jury showed they were already damning him. The nail bombings of the previous April gave any violent crime the immediate thumbs down now.

‘How do you plead – guilty or not guilty?’ I nodded at him encouragingly.

His voice could barely be heard even in the hush. ‘Not guilty.’ It cracked mid-point and his mouth turned down as if he were about to cry. Now he looked the child he was. One of the women in the front row of the jury softened and a man leant forward to listen more carefully.

The summary of evidence was fairly mundane – hanging on the witnesses. Jaggers’ witnesses. Win wasn’t amongst them. I was surprised. I’d anticipated controversy over him. That was why I’d included the information about him in the notes I’d given my junior, and which no doubt she was speed-reading in horror now. The notes comprised a summary of my complicated and unwanted past, replete with criminal brother, tortuous family connections to the accused, and a miserable and hitherto unacknowledged childhood in care.

Jaggers must have anticipated trouble or had a pre-arrangement with the witnesses for the prosecution because they were suddenly mealy-mouthed and uncertain about what they’d seen, even without him there to direct them. I could see the Defence barrister, Lloyd Wild’s irritation growing as he failed to scrape anything definite from them to pin the prosecution to. Forensics produced a partial print belonging to Danny supposedly from when he wrestled the bag from the victim, but equally attributable to our claim that he’d merely picked the bag up after the attack, trying to be helpful.

It hadn’t been optimism on my part. The note I’d passed to Jaggers seemed to have worked, and his end of the bargain was being upheld. Honour amongst villains – an odd concept I was going to have to learn to live with, since I was one too now. I would go unpursued for a while longer, the bloodied car would remain garaged and Margaret’s killer left on the loose. I mentally vowed I would right that wrong for her – even if there were other wrongs she might have been responsible for – but only once the case against Danny was safely dismissed.

I largely switched off once Jaggers’ non-interference seemed established and it was clear Wild had nothing new to present. I barely cross-examined the two gormless witnesses. There was hardly anything to dispute – like taking candy from a baby. The case for the prosecution creaked to a conclusion barely an hour later – far too early to break for lunch.

Wild shot me a questioning look as he got up to close. I knew what it was asking.

‘This should have been cut and dried. What is going on?’

In the hiatus after Wild sat down and the clerk stood up I became aware of shuffling and flapping at my back, and half turned to see Ella, the substitute junior, glaring at me. She must have read all of the notes by now. As Crawford left and the clerk advised we’d break for a mere thirty minutes before continuing, I ducked past her, grinning apologetically. Holing up in the gents for the entirety of the break was a new experience – fraught with unfortunate implications, but I managed it without any accusations of loitering or importuning and slipped back into place barely seconds before we were charged to rise again. I could feel the heat of Ella’s curiosity still directed at my back but court etiquette kept me bomb-proof until I pushed the plunger of my own accord and created a different kind of explosion to the one she wanted; the climax, rather than the catalyst.

‘Mr Juste, I believe you are presenting the case for the defence?’

‘I am.’

I stood, sensing Ella’s consternation increase behind me as I began my opening address, but it was too late now. No amount of fluttering papers or daggered thoughts could stop me.

‘It’s a well-known fact that appearances can be misleading. Here we have a case in point. My client, Danny Hewson, would appear to have beaten an elderly woman to death for the coins in her purse. A callous and brutal crime. So brutal, we have heard how the victim’s jaw was broken, her teeth knocked out and her right hip shattered in the fall.

Sadly a blood clot from this last injury ultimately caused her death. Our sympathies for her family are without doubt, but I am going to ask you to also have sympathy for the boy accused of this vicious crime. A boy who has already suffered as much in his short life. A boy who, in fact, bears the marks of his suffering to this day – in bruises, scars and long-term and life-long vulnerability to many more of them.

‘So let me invite you to consider with me how appearances can be deceptive, assumptions wrongly made and peer pressure used to trap hitherto innocent individuals in situations where they are coerced, manipulated and used. Danny Hewson is one such victim and I will demonstrate how there is good cause to show him to be a pawn in a rather rougher game, not the instigator of the crime. And apart from that, there is another extremely good reason why Danny Hewson wouldn’t – couldn’t – have been the perpetrator of this vicious beating. He is a haemophiliac, so every knock, cut or graze could result in extensive bruising, potentially severe blood loss, and a serious risk to his health – even to his life – if the injury is grave enough.

‘Would such a child put himself at risk for a few measly pounds? No. And indeed, if he had, would such a brutal beating not have been apparent in serious injuries to him too? There was no weapon used – forensics have established that, as my learned colleague has already explained – other than the attacker’s fists. So Danny’s fists should, by rights, even now, be black and blue – scarred, damaged and battered. I think you will agree with me that little more will need to be said in his defence when you see they are untouched, apart from a few old scars.’

‘Mr Juste, do you have evidence to prove this claim?’

‘I do, my lord.’

‘And have you submitted it, because I don’t see it here?’ Here was the battle of the day. There’d be no getting anything unorthodox past old Crawford.

‘I haven’t as yet my lord. We have only just received confirmation of the diagnosis.’ I could imagine Ella rummaging desperately through the folder for the paperwork. It wasn’t there. It was attached to the back of the scribbled notes I’d given her as I slipped in front of her minutes before Court first went into session, but I couldn’t turn round and tell her that right at this moment. Court etiquette constrained me. Lloyd Wild glared openly at me. I imagined he probably would have liked to mouth ‘asshole’ at me for stealing his thunder – and the verdict – but etiquette constrained him too.

‘Approach please.’ We stood in line like naughty children. Crawford looked down at us, long nose pointing accusingly, but I was the only bad boy today. ‘This is most irregular, Mr Juste. I won’t have irregularity in my courtroom. Rectify it. You have thirty minutes to get this paperwork in order and then I will see you both in Chambers. Mr Wild, I presume if Mr Juste can prove this riotous claim, you’d like to take new instructions?’

‘I believe I would have to, my lord,’ Wild hissed.

‘Then get on with it. Court adjourned for thirty minutes.’ He rapped his gavel on the block and I was on starters orders.

‘What the hell are you playing at, Juste?’ Wild was coldly furious.

‘I’m not playing at anything, Lloyd,’ I replied smoothly. ‘On the contrary, I think someone giving evidence for the prosecution is doing that. Excuse me, but I must get this new evidence submitted as directed.’ I slipped back in front of Ella, now red-faced and thin-lipped.

‘Heather said to watch out for your little surprises,’ she greeted me. ‘If it’s all of these,’ she waved my notes at me, ‘you really have lost your mind.’

I laughed. ‘Is that what Heather says has happened to me?’ When Heather had deposited Ella on me ‘to help, because God knows you need someone to help you,’ I hadn’t taken much notice of her, other than as another body to be marshalled into position like a general arranging his troops – if I but knew where and how the war was to be fought. Now I wondered if Heather had foisted a mercenary on me – or even a potential mutineer.

‘Well, are you really going to tell them all this family background – and your murky past?’

‘Only the sections in red. They’re necessary.’

She read aloud in a low voice, ‘Win Juss – one of the witnesses who claims Danny beat the old woman up – is your brother, but being coerced by criminal elements linked to FFF, the adoption agency attempting to place Danny Hewson. Danny’s mother is supposedly your sister, and Danny’s parentage is now in question because of a genetic blood disorder his father’s family has never suffered with. It all stems back to the mastermind behind FFF.

Your links to them have been suppressed until now whilst the investigation has been under way in order to protect Danny, and only came to light because of interviewing Win Juss. Other elements involved possibly include John Arthur Wemmick, the business magnate behind the adoption agency FFF, who you knew as a child, and you suspect is using the agency as a cover for money laundering. He’s also related to Judge Wemmick, who left you the money to study for the Bar in the first place. There’s a lot of history between you in other words – bad history.’

‘John Arthur Wemmick, and the section about Danny’s parentage aren’t in red.’

‘They are to me,’ she replied tartly. ‘Is that who you passed that note to when you came in? The one whose reply you insisted on reading before you opened? Bribery?’

I would have liked to have slapped her sneering little face, but everyone – even Ella – had me by the balls for the moment, until we got a dismissal. ‘You are my junior, not my judge, Ella, whatever Heather may have led you to believe. You do what I tell you to. The letter with the formal diagnosis of Danny’s condition is attached to those notes. Get it submitted into evidence now please and then get me a copy of it so I can take it with me to see Crawford. Admin’s on the second floor. They’ll let you use their photocopier.’

She gave me a sour look, but obediently unclipped the two pages, separating the consultant’s crisp formal letter from my handwritten affair. ‘You said we’d only just got it,’ she said accusingly as she scanned it. ‘It’s dated 13th July – that’s over a week ago.’

‘Postal delay.’

She stared at me.

We were called back exactly half an hour later. Crawford looked down his nose at me, obviously still digesting what I’d told him and Wild during the recess.

‘I’ve accepted what you’ve now submitted in evidence, Mr Juste. Before I direct the jury do you have anything else to say in the boy’s defence or about the case?’

Now the rest – the barricade against Jaggers and his public version that could ruin me. ‘I have a short statement which affects my involvement with my client, so that the court is assured there has been no inappropriate behaviour.’ I read the sections of my notes not in red to a suitably hushed courtroom. Crawford cast me another curious glance and then directed the jury as I’d known he would. It was a relief to hear it anyway.

‘Case dismissed.’

Back to the police to decide if they wanted to pursue theft, and to the press if they wanted to pursue the revelations about my unexpected family connections. We might be lucky with the police, but there was little doubt I’d be all over the evening editions. It was twelve fifty-five. Not quite three hours since I’d opened the flood gates and turned my life upside down.

Win accosted me with fists curled and face like rolling thunder clouds, setting my teeth on edge – mainly because he was right.

‘You bloody shafted me instead!’

The exultant bubble created by the dismissal burst. Ella watched and listened avidly and I wondered if her instructions from Heather were to assist, or to monitor my behaviour, for preference. She seemed to be equally happy to do either. Or was that being paranoid? I didn’t risk finding out. I stepped between her and Win and ushered Win away, hoping Ella hadn’t heard what he’d said, and also uncomfortably aware of the approaching hordes of colleagues and press all keen to share in the intriguing developments. Kat’s face floated amongst them. Trouble seemed to have a way of multiplying, even whilst I was trying to subdivide it.

‘I got Danny off the hook and we still have the car to hold over Jaggers. Don’t push it,’ I hissed as I shielded us from the oncoming clamour with my back. I could feel Ella’s eyes on me and imagined the intensity of her expression as she strained to hear our conversation.

‘Don’t push it? And what about the rest of it?’

‘This isn’t the time or place to discuss it.’ Win showed no sign of backing off, face belligerent and sweaty in the heat of the courtroom. ‘Win, I can only deal with one thing at a time. Danny was my first priority – and not being buried so far under a ton of shite I’d never find my way out again. If we’d done it the way you wanted us to I’d potentially have another murder charge on my hands. This way I’ve bought us time. Now let’s think about what we do with that time – after the funeral. I’ll ring you – OK?’

Win gave me a look which told me it had better be sooner than later and slunk away just in time for me to intercept Kat, bursting through the crowd with her delighted, ‘See, I told you truth always wins.’

‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced yet, have we?’ I’d almost forgotten Ella whilst I concentrated on Win. She was looking hostilely at Kat and Kat was looking curiously back.

‘Miss Roumelia – Miss Julien, my new junior.’ I tried to signal to Kat that it hadn’t been out of choice and to say nothing incriminating but facial expression wasn’t one of my strong points. Too many years in court. ‘Miss Roumelia is Danny’s case worker, Ella,’ I added pointedly.

‘Oh, yes. The social worker.’ The ice in her voice could have frozen an erupting volcano. ‘I’ve heard all about you too.’ I couldn’t help my eyebrows rising at that. From Heather, no doubt, but that didn’t explain the chill. She’d encouraged the relationship with Kat, albeit with discretion. We faced each other in an uneasy triangle. Great. I didn’t want anyone else to latch on to the relationship with Kat’s now, any more than I wanted them to notice Win’s hostility – there was already enough controversy in the open to be going on with – but nor could I openly explain the constraints to Kat with so many others within earshot. ‘You’ll be relieved it’s all over and that you don’t need to devote so much time to being at Mr Juste’s beck and call then.’ Ella said it with a smile but I could read the undertone as well as Kat. We were both being warned off. I tried to defrost the ice with détente until I could talk to Kat privately.

‘I’m sure we’re all relieved it’s over, and with such a good result for Danny. Truth was a good place to both start and finish, Miss Roumelia,’ I replied cordially. She hesitated and looked momentarily offended until comprehension spread across her face.

‘Indeed, it is – and we always knew Danny was telling the truth, didn’t we?’ She shook my hand in a business-like fashion and then fixed on Ella.

I could sense how high Kat’s hackles had already risen in response to the blue-eyed china doll in assassin’s black hovering next to me in the guise of assistant, but for all the world she remained the polite professional. Shit. I hadn’t even thought about Ella being a looker – let alone a meddler – just an encumbrance I could do without. Now it was obvious even to me, the man with his eyes shut most of the time, that Kat must be assuming Ella was going to follow in Margaret’s footsteps – perhaps even at my invitation. The junior turned wife. Jesus – how she couldn’t see the last thing I wanted was a repeat performance of being manipulated and married off to a mercenary co-worker, I didn’t know, but no doubt to her it explained both my inclination to keep her at a distance and Ella’s confrontational possessiveness. I’d worked out at least that much about the convoluted female mind; never take something at face value if it could be construed as having more complex intentions.

Kat nodded coolly at Ella, who moved proprietorially closer. ‘Well, as you say, my time can be spent on other things now so I’ll go and see my charge, and arrange to get him back home to his family. Perhaps you can bring me up to date with the formalities when you have some time to yourself?’

‘Of course,’ I hoped Kat would get the unspoken message that there was nothing to worry about in my over-eager smile. Ella blew that out of the water.

‘Lawrence has some important things to attend right now, so I’ll be in touch on his behalf in due course, if necessary.’ That was taking things too far. I rallied, but it was already too late.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry – your wife’s funeral, of course.’ Kat backed away, face frozen, and I knew that far from tricky, life was about to get downright bloody if I didn’t rein Ella in – but for all that I did have a funeral to arrange. I’d used it as the excuse to side-step responsibility, confrontation or anything else I’d wanted to avoid so many times, it had become a platitude, yet now it was actually true. Like I’d said to Win, I needed thinking time. Not necessarily as far as Kat was concerned, but Kat was inextricably linked to Danny, and Danny to familial responsibility, Win and commitment. Them I did need thinking time for. Ella was providing that for me as effectively as reminding Win about the funeral had fended him off. I took the coward’s way out whilst I examined the problems and worked out whether my skill at neatly boxing things needed reinstating after all.

Ella hovered as I shook hands and exchanged niceties with my colleagues and simultaneously tried to see where Kat or Win had gone. Slight as she was, Ella made the barrier between them and me absolute, merely because of her presence. Professional distance. Useful at times. Kat seemed to have melted away into the crowd, presumably to oversee Danny’s repatriation with Kimmy and the man for the moment purporting to be his father.

Around me the wall of noise, congratulation, discussion and question made my head spin. The stuffy heat didn’t help, but slowly we seemed to be making progress, wading towards the doors and freedom. The sun filtered through into the foyer of the courts but it no longer seemed to be offering me illumination as it had before I entered, merely an uncomfortable place in the spotlight. Ella led the way like a tiny porcelain-faced effigy, too perfect to be importuned, too determined to be denied. The similarity to Heather was amusing but frightening. Maybe it was deference to her size and fragility that beat us our pathway through. Sometimes the most unexpected of things turn out temporarily to be an asset.

As we exited I noticed Win was still hovering toward the back of the crowds, like a fat crow waiting to peck out my eyes. I clutched the case papers, hand sweating, having just managed to grab them before Ella tucked them into the Chambers briefcase she was charged with carrying on my behalf.

‘Don’t you want me to sort the papers out, Lawrence?’ she asked pinch-faced and officious as we finally edged our way through the door. I strode on, desperate to get away and hole up somewhere cold and quiet.

‘High-profile, Ella,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘A right pain for anyone to tidy up the loose ends. I’ll do it this time. I’m sure I’ll dump some on you one day, never fear.’

She seemed satisfied with the promise as I looked for a gap in the crowd by the main exit that was hack-free. Another case must have turned out with a more intriguing verdict than ours and the vultures had regrouped to devour the guts of that instead, barring all obvious exits.

‘Come on – that way,’ indicating the side door I knew of old would take us out through the tradesman’s entrance and on to a back alleyway. She looked surprised. ‘Another thing that’s a pain – the press. Just when you want to get away without admitting anything more, they’re waiting to jump you and print whatever indiscretion you may let slip in the relief of having won.’

‘Oh.’ She still looked surprised. ‘Are there more indiscretions in this one, Lawrence? I thought it was cut and dried now.’ I didn’t even answer – any reply to that would have been a joke. I couldn’t see Win any longer. I wondered where he’d gone and what he was up to but for the moment being in the public eye was going to dictate my every move. No private moments for me – with him or Kat – and it seemed likely Ella was to be my public eye in that respect.

We had to enter Chambers by my least favourite, but now, somewhat well-known route – the basement. It was another surprise for Ella and she wanted to know all about it – when it was last used, what was the most infamous case I’d taken, what had the verdict been? Honest answers would have taken her rather too near truths I didn’t want to think about – let alone share. Yet nor did I have the stomach for lies and pretence at the moment. I made a mental note to off-load her onto Francis or Jeremy as soon as I could. Probably Jeremy. He’d appreciate the pretty face if not the barrage of questions. Accepting her help had seemed to be a good way of appeasing Heather – still on the war path for being dragged into what she called my crap. Now the case was won, Heather could complain all she liked without me having to pander to her. The potential for putting Kat’s nose out of joint far outweighed the grief for doing the same to Heather’s. Heather would just have to suffer another nose job to go with all the rest of her cosmetic rearrangements, I thought sourly.

I tried to shake Ella off at the clerk’s office by handing her over to Louise with the explanation that I needed to see to tomorrow’s formalities, but she stuck like chewed gum to a shoe.

‘I could help you with them as well, Mr Juste,’ she suggested. Brittle as porcelain but as tough as old boots.

‘There’s some private business in relation to Mrs Juste’s will for you to deal with here, sir,’ Louise interrupted. ‘I’ll bring the notes up for you while Ella holds the fort for me – you don’t mind, do you Ella?’

Ella plainly did, but Mr Tibbs swiped at her ankle, laddering her sleek black tights. ‘Damn!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why do we have a cat here, anyway?’

‘For the mice,’ Louise replied sweetly. ‘They’re everywhere – keep an eye out for them, won’t you?’ She swept past Ella, making the office chair swivel and nudge at Ella’s legs. Ella sat on it hurriedly and swung her feet off the floor.

‘Really?’

We escaped whilst she scanned the floor for signs of vermin, me wondering what new complication with Margaret’s affairs there was to deal with now. At the top of the stairs and out of earshot of Ella and Herr Oberlord Gregory, Commander of the Clerks – surely lurking poisonously somewhere like mustard gas – I gave in to curiosity.

‘What do you have for me then, Louise?’

She grinned. ‘Nothing, but I thought you might need a breather from Ella. She’s very,’ she paused, ‘enthusiastic.’ I laughed out loud. Bless Louise for her intuitiveness. Perhaps I did have a guardian angel after all – or a variety of them, all in unexpected guises and fulfilling different purposes. ‘But I’ll just slip out for lunch now, if that’s OK with you, Mr Juste, and leave Ella in the hot seat.’

‘Go right ahead, Louise. Have as long as you like on me!’

She disappeared down the back stairs and no doubt slipped out the way I’d come in. For me the peace and thinking space of my office beckoned seductively. I slipped past Francis and Jeremy’s open doors. They were out again – both more out than in these days. Were there nuances I was missing here in my own self-immersion? I paused at Jeremy’s door for a moment, trying to gauge what the room told me of his current state of affairs. It was pristine. Was that the cleaner’s doing, or his – indicative of a tidy mind, or a secretive one?

It occurred to me I’d lost sight of my fellow partners’ lives in the confusion of my own disordered one. Maybe Heather’s allocation of Ella to me had actually been designed to help, not police me, but I disregarded that idea almost immediately. I looked along the corridor. Heather might be more difficult to get past if she was in: eagle-eyed, caustic, suspicious – and on my case. I approached cautiously. Her door was open too but she was on the phone, slewed round towards the window and berating the unfortunate on the other end; oblivious to passers-by for once. One of my guardian angels must still be in place. I reached my bolthole unnoticed and turned the key in the door on my side. Fainsies – like kids – except this was as far from kids’ games as I could conceive.

Louise had been correct in one sense. I did have things to deal with in connection with Margaret’s will – the things she had willed me to do through her plotting and scheming. The not guilty verdict might have been a win, but the case was far from closed. If anything, for me it had been blown wide open by taking a defiant stance against Jaggers. And apart from Jaggers, I also now had an antagonist in Win for ‘shafting him’, as he’d put it. I fished out the note Jaggers had endorsed on the reverse and considered what he’d written in reply to my challenge.

‘Better make sure you’re good at playing pot shots then, and don’t believe everything you are told. Assumptions can produce unpleasant surprises – like families.

And remember, I always win ...’

He’d backed down, but what precisely did he mean by the second sentence? A reference to Win? Or a reference to Danny and his parentage? Don’t believe everything you are told. There were clearly a great deal of family politics I knew nothing of yet, but was going to have to get to grips with. I must have dozed because I woke with a start to hammering on my door. I jumped up, muzzy-headed and stumbled over to it. It was Heather.

‘Christ, Lawrence, what are you playing at? Ella told me you managed to give her the slip and then locked yourself away and weren’t answering any calls. Are you all right?’

‘Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, pressures ...’ She trailed off and frowned at me. I hoped she would go away but Heather was never that easy to put off. She thrust a newspaper at me. ‘Well, now I’ve located you, you’d better have a look at this.’ I took it automatically as she pushed past me and settled herself into my chair, swinging a polished stiletto and tapping immaculate polished red fingertips on the desk. I imagined them tapping a small sharp indent in the smooth wood surface, like a woodpecker tap-tapping its message. ‘It could go either way – depending on how you play it now.’ We were clearly in for one of her ‘discussions’ so I pushed the door shut and took the seat opposite her – the supplicant’s seat. I tried to push the remnants of Danny’s case folder to one side, but she spread her hand over them and the nails looked like talons, digging into flesh. ‘No, if you were considering your options, best to carry on doing so with all the facts,’ she said silkily. I covered the notes with the newspaper instead. ‘Page two – it’s an advance copy. Don’t ask, I have my sources. I sent them a press release before the shit hit.’

I read.

‘Just(ic)e served at last’

After a day of dramatic revelations in court yesterday, Lawrence Juste QC has been crowned not only the justice with a heart, but also a soul. Juste related in court the convoluted case history that led to him uncovering not only his young client’s innocence but also rediscovering his own family.

A spokesperson for FFF (Finding Futures for Families), which Juste’s deceased wife Margaret worked tirelessly for as patron, commented they couldn’t be happier with the outcome for Danny Hewson – Juste’s young client – acquitted of manslaughter as a result of Juste’s revelations. It pledged to continue her work and that of its other former patron, Lord Justice Wemmick, who it is now revealed so charitably financially supported Juste to enable him to achieve his childhood dream of being called to the Bar. The charity reaffirmed their intention to uphold Wemmick’s pledge that no child in care should be disadvantaged by background or lineage. When interviewed later, Juste referred to Lord Justice Wemmick as a veritable saint.

Now the facts are out, certainly, Lawrence Juste can no longer be said to be squeaky-clean but will he prove to be the most squeakily honest lawman we’ve come across in a long time? The jury’s still out on that, but first signs are encouraging...

Just enough, and not too much. Heather was as tart as her shoes when it came to organising press coverage, but now we would all have to live up to it. I wondered how that was going to work. What came next was going to be the tricky part.

I smiled wryly. Atticus would have approved though.

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ABOUT D.B MARTIN

D.B. Martin writes adult psychological thriller fiction, as well as literary fiction as Debrah Martin. She also writes contemporary YA fiction, featuring a teen detective series, under the pen name of Lily Stuart. You can find more of her work on www.debrahmartin.co.uk. Or sign up for updates on forthcoming publications and special offers at: http://eepurl.com/3-965

This is the whole Patchwork People series:

Patchwork Man

Lawrence Juste is top of the British legal world; a paragon of justice in action...

But Lawrence Juste isn’t all that he seems. Outside of the courtroom, he’s another man with another past – one full of conspiracy and secrets. One that is about to catch up with him.

It’s not just the blackmail note his wife leaves him just before her death, or the vengeful family he’s forced to reconnect with that bring the past crashing into the present. There’s someone with their own very specific agenda who’s after Lawrence Juste; someone Lawrence tangled with a long time ago. Someone with a long and vindictive memory, and now they want their pound of flesh.

Patchwork Man is the first book in the Patchwork People mystery suspense trilogy, and the winner of an Indie B.R.A.G. Medallion.

Patchwork People

Previously the name in the news in UK courtrooms, now Lawrence Juste, QC, is making headlines of a different sort. Yet despite admitting to a murky history, he’s still on the up. It’s a PR triumph for the man with the patchwork past; until the first sinister black edged card arrives. It’s followed by a parcel of evidence that puts Lawrence right in the middle of a deceit he helped create ten years ago. Not only that, when his hated sister is found dead in his house, he’s prime suspect number one.

The black edged card is followed by others, and more damning evidence. They draw Lawrence deep into a pit of conspiracy and suspense, with the certain knowledge that the dead do tell tales; and there’s no escaping revenge.

Patchwork People is the second book in the trilogy. Buy it here.

Patchwork Pieces

When Lawrence Juste QC, gentleman and liar, originally championed the case of the boy who reminded him of himself, he couldn’t have known precisely how much like him the boy would turn out to be. Or that the boy’s past was already as entangled in murder and betrayal as his own.

Now the wheel has turned full circle. The past is the present, the betrayed are the betrayers and only the ultimate sacrifice can save both Juste and the boy. The only question ultimately remaining, as the patchwork completes:

Who will be sacrificed?

Patchwork Pieces is the final book in the trilogy. Buy it here.

Other books include:

Writing as Debrah Martin:

Falling Awake

Some would say suffering has driven Mary mad, and the people and places she remembers all just dreams dreamt inside her insanity. But then how can her husband Joe remember them too?

Falling Awake is the story of Mary, Joe and a world populated by love, betrayal and obsession - and what it does to those who live in it.

Magic or madness? The impossible is only ever a breath away.

Just don't fall awake... Buy it here.

Chained Melodies

“Chaos is about rejecting all that you have learnt, chaos is about being yourself.” – Emile M. Cioran

If chaos theory applied to anyone, it’s Will and Tom. Best friends since childhood, life takes very different courses for them until they’re thrown back together in the middle of their own individual chaos. Surviving the terrors of war in Northern Ireland and the heartbreak of childlessness and a broken marriage, Tom learns that bravery isn’t about daring death, it’s about facing life. For Will, it’s about being yourself – or in his case, herself, as he starts an unusual journey towards being just that; the woman, Billie.

Chained Melodies is the extraordinary story of how two men find not just courage, but self-belief and the true nature of love.

Buy it here.

Writing YA fiction as Lily Stuart:

Webs

Deadly intrigue with a ton of teenage humour thrown in... Webs is the first book in the Lily S: Teenage Detective series.

Sixteen-year-old Lily’s policeman Dad is trying to untangle a particularly nasty death and Lily’s intrigued. She’s even more intrigued when she proves to him it’s actually murder. Perhaps she’d make a detective too? If only she could work out what would get Dad to dump awful Ange, grovel, and patch things up with Mum. Irritating isn’t the word!

In retaliation, for awful Ange, Lily’s mum resorts to the web for romance – the world-wide-web. Convinced she can get her parents back together, Lily resorts to her own bit of web-weaving to trip up the candidates for replacement daddy. Whilst her school friends are up to their usual tricks; Matt is alternately ignoring and chasing her. Melezz is being the worst best friend, and Jacob is up to no good with his nipple tassel pranks again, Lily’s busy sleuthing. The trouble is, whilst Lily thinks she’s a clever little spider, weaving clever little traps, one of her prey is smarter still – and deadly. Buy it here.

Magpies

The second in the Lily S: Teenage Detective series - THE teenage detective is back, and looking for trouble!

Or rather trouble’s looking for her. They find each other in the series of little mysteries that start cropping up as soon as Lily’s back at school after her brush with death, and meets the new boy, Si. He’s different, like Lily is now, with her occasional narcolepsy and frequent inclination to investigate everything. But whereas Lily watches and works things out, Si blurts it all out at the wrong time and in the wrong way. He has Tourette’s.

He also has a way with rhymes; one in particular that increasingly makes sense to Lily as the mysteries mount up and a gang of drug pushers target the school and her friends with potentially lethal consequences.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for -

But ‘joy’ isn’t a girl’s name nor the opposite of sad, and the magpies the rhyme is about aren’t just black and white birds that like stealing treasure. They’re far more deadly than that... Buy it here.

Table of Contents

Prologue

1: Memories

2: The Case

3: The Boy

4: The Home

5: Innocence Lost

6: Jaggers

7: Danny

8: The Gutter

9: Solomon’s Wisdom

10: Win

11: Hidden Agendas

12: The Case for the Defence

13: Wild Card

14: Families

15: Little Mother

16: Sweet Charity

17: The Female of the Species

18: Medicine

19: Girls

20: Connections

21: Bonds

22: Circassian Circle

23: Patchwork People

24: Rough Justice

25: Atticus

26: Appearance

ABOUT D.B MARTIN

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