‘You mean move out of his apartment? Out of London?’ Ratcliffe pulls a doubtful face. ‘You can’t get much more discreet than the top floor of The Heights. That’s why we chose it.’ He sighs, his eyebrows lifting. ‘You know, there must be only a handful of flats with a view of his terrace and she happened to be in one of them.’
‘It’s unfortunate,’ Vic agrees, as if he hasn’t had this thought a thousand times already.
A Thames Clipper sails towards Tower Bridge and he thinks suddenly of that trip to the river when Lucas was a baby. Ellen marching an empty buggy across Westminster Bridge, Lucas reaching out to try to touch the clock face of Big Ben with his fingers. He remembers suddenly what he said to his baby boy: ‘Look, it’s as big as the moon!’ And Lucas mimicked his excitement, his little body going rigid.
Pain spreads inside him as if from a ruptured organ and it is all he can do to stop himself from doubling over.
As if aware that something terrible and internal is taking place, Ratcliffe gives him a moment before going on. ‘To answer your question, no, I don’t think he can be persuaded to move, and I don’t think it would help, even if he did. There’s a link with me now, isn’t there? Your ex-wife can get to him now as long as she can get to me.’
Vic doesn’t bother correcting him on the wife. ‘Leave Ellen to me,’ he says firmly. ‘I’ll keep an eye on her. She won’t get to either of you.’
As Ratcliffe sizes him up, Vic gets the distinct sense that his strength of conviction compares unfavourably with that previously observed of Ellen. Hating Kieran is a form of religious extremism to Ellen. Her passion is matchless. ‘Who’s holding the fort this morning, Vic?’
He is slightly thrown by this. ‘George. I’ll be in the tap room later.’
‘But you have an hour or so?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Then you know what I think we should do? Go and see Sam.’
‘Sam?’
‘Kieran. I know he’s in – I spoke to him earlier. Let’s talk this through, the three of us. Make sure we’re all on the same page.’
Inside Vic’s chest, his heart thrashes in protest. ‘I’m not sure I’m ready for that,’ he says, and Ratcliffe surprises him by giving his arm a reassuring squeeze.
‘It will be fine, trust me. And it’s long overdue. On his part, I mean. I know he’s wanted to reach out to you for a long time.’
Vic feels snookered. He’s just said his work is being covered by George and, in any case, if a man as important and powerful as Ratcliffe is willing to make the time, he has no excuse. Except… except he is Lucas’s father, and Kieran is Lucas’s killer. He doesn’t want to be ‘on the same page’ as him. He doesn’t want to be ‘reached out’ to.
As Ratcliffe taps out a message on his phone, Vic sees what must have taken place half an hour ago when he checked in with the Green Shoots receptionist. Ratcliffe alerted Kieran at once and a strategy was agreed: Ratcliffe would warm Vic up and then bring him on over.
It is a fait accompli.
He casts a last look over the river wall at the shifting metallic waters and feels his earlier optimism vanish. He is about to see Kieran for the first time since that morning in the woods, when he promised him a way out – on the naïve understanding that there could be no way back. Well, this doesn’t feel much like no way back, does it?
Ratcliffe pockets his phone and extends an arm eastward. ‘Shall we?’
Vic
Then
In the last week of 2018, almost eighteen months after Kieran took Vic’s offer and fled, and over a year since Vic took a call from a probation officer named Dina about the runaway being safely accounted for in a location far from South London, Vic received an interesting email.
It was from an investor he’d drawn a blank with when he’d pitched Common or Gordon to him years ago, Cam Goodfellow. He said he’d been watching the craft beer sector carefully in the years since their meeting and that quirky, ironic brand names had been proving increasingly marketable. Common or Gordon had been a bit of an earworm for him (‘never not a good sign’) and if Vic was still looking for investment, he was keen to have another chat.
Vic googled Goodfellow to remind himself of his company. He’d been in the Lifestyle department, that was right, but had since moved across to work with the director of Mobility, a man whose specialism was investing in entrepreneurs from disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly projects with an ethical or ecological flavour. Vic couldn’t see how he fell within this new remit, but maybe these departmental labels operated with a certain fluidity – and it wasn’t as if he was in any way privileged (other than being white and male, of course, which, if he was allowed to say, hadn’t always felt so much of a bonus). In any case, he wasn’t about to turn down what might be his last chance to get Common or Gordon bottled and down the throats of a thirsty nation.
He met Cam in his office near Tanner Street Park, where the young and affluent played tennis and slurped flat whites in the shadow of the Shard. A little piece of the East Village in South London. Vic’s spiritual home.
The meeting was successful – it seemed to Vic that Cam had already made up his mind, with or without Vic’s hastily tacked-on ideas about compressed wood pulp packaging and donations to well builders in Africa – and was followed by a brief introduction to the director, who expressed his pleasure in bringing Vic ‘into the family’.
‘This is so exciting,’ Vic said, as they returned him to the lift via the staff coffee kiosk, which was a customized vintage rickshaw. Once inside the lift, he hardly recognized his own flushed and jubilant face in the mirrored panel. He took his coffee to the park, where he sat on the grass, alone but finally a part of the tribe he’d long ago identified as his own.
But, come on. The whole thing was too good to be true – any fool could see that.
* * *
By the time the papers arrived for his signature, he had dug a little deeper. Cam Goodfellow was not quite thirty, an Instagrammer with little traditional media to his name, and tagged to within an inch of his life as he worked and played with a millennial vengeance. Vic glazed quickly at the images of the genetically blessed young man gallivanting in Costa Rican eco lodges with a tanned and teeth-bearing girlfriend and posse of identikit chums.
The boss was older, his history less curated, and there were years of local press coverage on his visits to schools, community centres and prisons, where he’d spoken inspirationally about opportunity and ambition. He’d made countless appearances at corporate events and political summits, attending receptions and having his photo taken with government ministers, at all times emphasizing his outreach philosophy.
This was summarized to stirring effect on the company website:
‘It’s not talent that is the prerogative of the wealthy, but access. Wherever I find talent, I’ll create access, regardless of a person’s background or social standing. Past mistakes do not make a person’s brainwave ineligible; on the contrary, they make it remarkable.’
In the last few months, he had been mentioned in the financial press in relation to one particular investment from which he had profited with spectacular speed. Within just a year of investing in one of his disadvantaged young talents, he’d brokered the sale of the IP and early development work to one of the tech giants in a multi-million-pound deal. It was just the sort of news story Vic might have mentioned to Ellen back in the day, sharing a grumble about some undeserving scally getting the nod from senior investors at the expense of someone like him.
But he didn’t mention it now. He didn’t want to get anywhere near telling Ellen or anyone connected with her about the source of his unexpected investment offer. The money he was going to take.
Blood money, he was quite clear about that.
Because the phrase ‘past mistakes’ had leapt out at him, leading him via a series of clicks to an article in Inside Time, the newspaper for prisoners, in which Kieran’s name had been listed among those who’d attended a talk by
this illustrious speaker. Kieran, who had an A-star Computer Science A-level under his belt and who had continued to hone his IT skills inside, now had an idea for a mental health app and had many questions for the visiting VIP about how it might be developed.
It was the only time their two names were linked in the press. After that, a new name cropped up alongside the investor’s, Sam Harding, and his app had a name: Moodsmart. Early meetings with several European national health services had gone very promisingly, and then there was that lucrative deal with Saurus.
In all the coverage, Vic couldn’t find a single picture of Sam Harding, but there were plenty of the investor, who was, of course, James Ratcliffe, co-founder of Green Shoots and head of its award-winning Mobility unit.
I’ll pay you back, Kieran’s note had said, and Vic had replayed the line many times over the years. It could so easily be made to sound menacing if you knew the context. Pay you back for the misery they had subjected him to with Lock Up Longer, for instance. The army of haters they’d marshalled.
Pay you back for having forced him to leave behind Jade and Prisca and who knew which other loved ones.
But it turned out he’d meant the money, after all.
Vic never questioned Cam Goodfellow directly about the timing of his renewal of interest in Common or Gordon. He didn’t need to. Of course it was at Ratcliffe’s and Kieran’s behest. Of course it was Kieran’s cash (and massively in excess of what he owed, at that). Of course it represented Kieran’s attempt to buy atonement for his sin.
Kieran Watts was Magwitch to Vic’s Pip – as perverse a pairing as the original ever was. And the moment Vic signed the contract, he signed away any right to challenge his investors’ motives.
Only his own.
* * *
He came out of the trap like a champion greyhound. Rented a huge unit in East Croydon and watched it shrink as he installed the kit he’d been mentally acquiring for years: the kettles and tanks, coolers and refrigeration units; the modest bottling and labelling plant. He hired George as his head brewer and India as general manager and sales support. The plan was for a tap room to open on the premises within nine months.
He had always suspected that the more you had the more you got and this turned out to be quite true. The rent on a two-bedroom flat in Skylark Apartments near East Croydon station was readily negotiated now he was a business owner with the backing of a trendy investment team in Bermondsey. Just the kind of tenant the building’s management had hoped to attract. He’d been in there three months when he and India went for dinner to debrief a fantastic meeting with the team at Boxpark, ending up drinking more than was strictly necessary and going back to his place.
Would a woman like her have looked at him twice if he was in his old job, his old flat? He chose to believe that it didn’t really matter. As Ellen and Justin liked to say to each other, We are where we are.
And so, suddenly, where he was was in a cool flat with a much younger woman who expected to live her best life with him, meaning he got to live his best with her.
And the sex. What was it the young’uns said? I’m not going to lie, that was it. Well, he wasn’t going to lie: the sex was great. And not always as careful as it could have been.
Hence his second family.
His second chance.
Vic
Now
The entry system to The Heights involves an old-school keypad and code. Inside, when Ratcliffe calls the lift, he has to press the button three times before it lights up and draws a reluctant groan from high in the shaft. These details strike Vic as incongruous; you’d have thought an app-designing whizz kid would want to be in one of those buildings with smart everything. Sleek and silent and operated by fingerprint or iris recognition or whatever.
Still, it’s a long way from a foster home in South Norwood. Or a car wreck in a disused reservoir.
‘The Heights,’ he says, in an effort to appear at ease, as nausea creeps through his stomach and up towards his throat. ‘My building in Croydon has more height than this.’
Ratcliffe flashes him an expensive smile. ‘It’s a relative claim. Most of the buildings around here are no higher than six floors. You wait, Vic. When you’re up there, you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world.’
Vic doubts this. The lift is one of the smallest he’s ever been in and since he and Ratcliffe are about the same height their faces are closer than is comfortable. It would be just his luck if the thing broke and they were trapped together, dependent on Kieran to rescue them.
‘The penthouse,’ he mutters, eyeing the lit button for the top floor. ‘He’s certainly done all right for himself.’
Ratcliffe nods, earnest, appreciative, as if Vic has said something exceptional. ‘I genuinely believe it’s possible for everyone to start again. If someone like me linked up with every young person leaving an institute like Danstone, the reoffender rates would plummet. It’s about faith, Vic. Doesn’t everyone deserve a bit of faith?’
Only if they have an idea you can make money out of, Vic thinks, though Ratcliffe’s plea is scarcely different from the one he himself made to Ellen the previous night. (Maybe Kieran deserves a bit of consideration here… did he really say that to her?) He can’t imagine her being won over by this sort of messianic set piece. It’s no surprise Ratcliffe didn’t bring her up here that day.
The lift rocks to a halt and the doors part, but Ratcliffe makes it impossible for Vic to exit without shouldering past him. ‘Don’t they?’ he repeats, and Vic knows what he wants. Before they see ‘Sam’, he wants Vic to acknowledge that he is as responsible as Ratcliffe himself for the reinvention of Kieran Watts. That fateful fifteen thousand pounds made him, in his way, Kieran’s earliest investor.
‘No,’ he answers. ‘Not everyone deserves it. Some people should be left with nothing. No future, no luck. Definitely no faith.’
‘Oh, Vic.’ With a look of stately resignation, Ratcliffe steps from the lift and Vic tails him onto a carpeted strip of landing. Directly ahead there is a skinny full-height window with a splintered glimpse of Tower Bridge and the City. He is reluctantly impressed.
They approach the door. Just as he prays Kieran won’t hear their knock, Ratcliffe produces a key. ‘Ready?’
Vic wants to throw up as he is steered into the hallway, which is painted the unsettling yellow of bruised skin. The door shuts behind them and he almost expects Ratcliffe to lock it, to incarcerate him in this vaunted lair, but that’s ridiculous, Vic is one of his clients – not an important one, like Kieran, but still part of the Green Shoots ‘family’.
He turns instinctively to his left, towards the bland white walls and grey carpeting of the living room. It is a simple, high-ceilinged space, with a widescreen version of the skyline he glimpsed from the landing, the curved window giving it the feel of a spaceship hovering above the rooftops and preparing to land on the rooftop of Butler’s Wharf. What a view! What a place to hide!
Speaking of which, there is neither sight nor sound of Kieran. Is there to be a reprieve, after all? Has he given Ratcliffe the slip, deciding he wants this reunion even less than Vic does?
‘He must be up top,’ Ratcliffe says, and now Vic sees that the rear of the room is split by a shallow mezzanine, accessed by a pale-wood spiral staircase. Above that, an impressive expanse of glazed roof showcases a cool sunlit sky.
Ratcliffe strides to the foot of the stairs and raises his voice: ‘Sam? You up there? Let’s go,’ he says, and the sensation Vic has of having been brought up here with a gun to his back only intensifies.
Their footsteps on the spiral are silent, the air odourless. From the mezzanine, the space below looks even starker. Sofa, TV, neatly kept bookshelves. A desk with a single laptop. Where are the banks of terminals and devices you’d expect of an app-designing genius? In a room on the street side, presumably. Vic is guessing he won’t be offered a guided tour.
Glass doors open onto the terrace and he finds himself emerging into the win
ter light, sound (traffic, sirens, the horn of a boat) and odour (fumes, dirt, brine) restored. From the doorway, local rooftops aren’t visible, only a figure at the balustrade, his back to them, outlined by a stretch of empty celluloid sky. He is clothed in black and has a powerful upper body, with an exposed strip of muscular neck and a bleached buzz cut.
Ratcliffe strides towards him – ‘Sam, how are you?’ – and Kieran turns to accept his embrace, the fatherly slap between the shoulder blades. Only when they part does Kieran look Vic’s way, and Vic sees at once what Ellen meant about cosmetic surgery. There is something different about his jawline and mouth and perhaps his nose, too. His eyebrows have been darkened and reshaped into oddly flawless twin lines.
‘Kieran,’ he says, and the other man cringes.
‘Sam, please,’ Ratcliffe prompts.
‘Sam. Right. Congratulations on your app. It all sounds very cool.’ Vic speaks in the level tone he hopes to maintain throughout this ordeal.
Unexpectedly, Kieran glances away with a trace of humility. ‘Wasn’t me.’ His voice is exactly the rumbling exaggeration of maleness Vic remembers.
‘He’s a bit disappointed he had to sell,’ Ratcliffe explains. ‘It’s never an easy decision to give up your pet project.’
‘Had to?’ Vic queries.
‘Yes. If we’d taken Moodsmart to market with him front and centre, it was likely he’d have got too much of the wrong kind of attention.’
‘Ah.’ No need to spell out why: the faint note of reproach is enough for Vic to understand. The product, the commercial value, would have been compromised the moment someone made the link between Sam Harding and Kieran Watts. Even with its expertise in making a virtue of the disadvantaged or downright dodgy, Green Shoots’ PR team would have struggled to neutralize the legacy of Lock Up Longer (Crash Horror Monster Cashes In! anyone?). On the contrary, they’ve done such an immaculate job of keeping Kieran’s real name out of the press Vic suspects they’ve employed one of those scrubbing services. ‘Looks like you played it right, whatever you did,’ he says.
The Heights Page 23