The Heights

by Louise Candlish

  ‘Shall we sit?’ Ratcliffe suggests and they gather at a white bistro table at the river end of the terrace. A jug of water and three beakers sits between them on a chrome tray. Kieran the gracious host, who would have thought it? The boy who only took and never gave, that was how Vic remembered him. Arriving at the flat one weekend after the next, empty-handed but full of shit.

  Feeling fractionally steadier now he is seated, he tries not to stare too curiously at Kieran’s weird new face.

  ‘Right.’ Ratcliffe is pouring water for them all, preparing to launch this little confab. He wears the tolerant expression of the seasoned mediator. ‘Why don’t I kick off by saying I feel very strongly that it’s in both your interests to keep Ellen out of Sam’s business. Her reappearance is at the very least an unnecessary headache for all concerned. Starting with you, Vic, I imagine you can do without her knowing the full extent of your continued involvement with Sam?’

  ‘There’s no continued involvement,’ Vic corrects him.

  ‘Not directly, that’s true, but you share an investor team and when she finds out, which she almost certainly will, she’s unlikely to consider that a quirk of fate.’

  ‘Because it’s not.’ Vic can’t stop blinking – the light is sharp up here and he wishes he’d brought sunglasses. Neither of the other two appear as troubled by it as he is.

  Ratcliffe’s gaze sweeps to his protégé. ‘And, Sam, you found her somewhat unnerving when you came face to face with her recently. She’s since assured me she has no desire to share your new identity either with the press or those who supported the smear campaign against you, but I’m not convinced she won’t change her mind.’

  ‘It wasn’t a “smear” campaign,’ Vic protests. ‘It was a campaign for sentencing reform.’ He speaks directly to Kieran because it feels important to break down this dynamic of Ratcliffe as simultaneous interpreter. ‘Look, she’s just in shock. She assumed you were dead and she’s discovered you’re alive. She needs time to adjust all over again.’

  All over again. Would that shame Kieran, that last phrase? He doesn’t look ashamed. He looks detached, as if all of this has little to do with him.

  Ratcliffe says, ‘So your position is that she poses no physical threat to Sam, either?’

  ‘She’s a middle-aged woman living in a South London suburb,’ Vic retorts. ‘She may dress like a ninja, but she doesn’t pose a physical threat to anyone.’ He sounds a lot surer than he feels, tries not to picture Ellen at their last meeting, her face so close to his he could feel the heat of her outrage.

  ‘All right,’ Ratcliffe says. ‘Perhaps not personally.’ Suddenly changing gears with the vim of a drinker responding to the bell for last orders, he places his hands palms-down on the table. ‘Vic, in the interests of efficiency, and because we all have jobs to get on with, I should tell you that we strongly suspect it was Ellen who tried to pay someone to kill Sam when he was released from Danstone in 2017. We have to assume you already know this.’

  Shocked, Vic swings to face him. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You heard me. She was the one you protected him from, wasn’t she?’

  Vic stares, speechless.

  ‘Come on, it’s not that hard to work out. You weren’t exactly flush back then, so how else would you have come by that cash, if not from her?’

  Vic tries to process what is happening here. Though he’s always known that Kieran must have confided in Ratcliffe about Vic’s part in his escape (hence Vic’s reward), not once, in any interaction with Cam or other personnel at Green Shoots, has this, or even Kieran’s name, actually been mentioned. As for any suspicion on their part that Ellen was involved… Wow. How long have they had that theory? Only since she popped up in the neighbourhood acting like a crazy woman, he suspects. Oh, Ellen. She really has gone about this the wrong way.

  ‘I’m not sure you’re in a position to know how much money I did or didn’t have back then,’ he says, finally.

  ‘Except for the business plan and financial statements you’d supplied to Cam when you pitched to him a few years earlier. And, when he went over your updated financials, there was no new debt for fifteen thousand pounds, so we know you didn’t fund Sam from your own income.’ Ratcliffe’s smile tightens a fraction. ‘Has she worked out you deceived her? Is that why you’re not seeing eye to eye at the moment?’ When Vic struggles to respond, he continues, ‘That’s not good news for us, Vic. It makes us wonder how much influence you have with her now. If you have any at all?’

  Vic feels completely outmanoeuvred. Is there any point denying what is true, on both his and Ellen’s parts? Except… one of them might be recording this meeting. It is best, perhaps, to avoid overt admissions of guilt. ‘She was out of her mind with grief back then,’ he says, carefully. ‘She wasn’t the first bereaved parent to fantasize about revenge and I doubt she’ll be the last. But that’s all it was. She’s in a different place now.’

  ‘She looked out of her mind when I saw her,’ Kieran says, addressing Ratcliffe.

  ‘I would have to agree, Sam. She didn’t seem stable to me. Hence this conference.’

  It couldn’t be clearer that they were expecting Vic’s visit and, had it not come soon enough, would have scheduled it themselves.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on her, okay?’ Again, he tries to engage Kieran. ‘I’ll do my best to influence her – and, yes, I do still have some.’ Then, at the sight of the other man’s expression, not so much remote now as bleak, he adds, with a touch of impatience, ‘What else do you want me to do?’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Kieran says, his tone fatalistic.

  Vic is taken aback. What is going on here? Did Ellen actually threaten him when they met? He heard the audio from their skirmish, but only what she chose to share with him. He thinks of his debt, the reason he made this expedition in the first place. How easily Kieran could spare the sum and yet the way he and Ratcliffe are talking about her, taking as read her part in the 2017 ‘attempt’ on Kieran’s life, they’d as soon as throw a bag of cash into St Saviour’s Dock as advance the funds to subsidize a second. It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

  He doesn’t know how he could have been so stupid, coming here today; he wants to throw back his head and roar into this expensive air space. The mood is already unsalvageable and perhaps this is why he finds himself glaring at Kieran with open hostility and demanding, ‘It was all about Jade, wasn’t it? Back then. She was the reason everything happened that night, wasn’t she? Are you ever going to come clean about it? That’s what torments Ellen, you know. That’s all she wants, in the end. To understand the background of what happened. What was going on before you drove off the road. Not how, why.’

  ‘Vic, is this relevant?’ Ratcliffe chastises gently, but Vic has lost control of the words coming from his mouth.

  ‘Relevant? I’d say my son’s death is highly relevant, yes.’ He leans closer to Kieran, whose upper body stiffens. ‘I saw you together, you know, you and Jade. When she was going out with Lucas. I saw you fucking in my flat.’

  Kieran gapes, flicks a look at his protector.

  ‘Vic, please,’ Ratcliffe says, sharper now. ‘We need to focus on the present dilemma.’

  Vic continues to ignore him. ‘Was it worth it? Everything that’s happened, all these lives destroyed, the fact that you’re still feeling like a prisoner in your own home… Was it worth it for a fling that didn’t go anywhere?’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Ratcliffe exclaims. He removes his glasses, the better to display the censure in his glare. ‘Can we get back to the point, please. Because, if not, I suggest we wrap this up right now.’

  ‘Okay.’ Vic isn’t about to apologize, but he at least manages to reset, holding the older man’s eye with all the strength he can harness. It won’t do him any good to disrespect the boss. He has to think of his brewery, his finances, his second child.

  ‘Is there decent security here?’ he asks Kieran. ‘Cameras in the common pa
rts?’

  ‘Just the video entry phone. An alarm in the lift, but no camera.’ Kieran shrugs and Vic remembers a detail the police mentioned at the time of his disappearance: he’d fitted a new bolt to Prisca’s front door. But almost two and a half years on, he knows that bolts and cameras and other strategies discussed in meetings like this don’t deter zealots like Ellen. Zealots and mothers. It’s all too easy for Vic to imagine her barging her way into the building and… and what? It’s the same question he asked himself half an hour ago but only now does an image surface. Ellen standing at Kieran’s door with a knife in her hand.

  Feeling his face convulse in horror, he averts his eyes from the two men and looks out at the bridge, the Tower of London beyond. Ratcliffe was right, they are on top of the world up here, or at least their square mile of it. Squint and the lines of that clear glass balustrade disappear, leaving nothing between you and the city beyond.

  ‘Well, as long as you’re out here, you’re safe, aren’t you?’ he says, with a sudden note of triumph. ‘You know Ellen’s terrified of heights?’ He can see from the expression that breaks over Kieran’s face that he does know, or did once. ‘So, if she breaks in with a machete or whatever it is you both seem to think she’s capable of, then just get yourself out here. I guarantee she won’t follow. You could ring the police then, couldn’t you?’

  There is a moment when he thinks he’s done enough to convince them, but another, more meaningful look between Kieran and Ratcliffe makes him fear otherwise. They’ve invited him here with the expectation of solid intelligence, if not a concrete plan to foil Ellen then at least some disgrace of hers that could be used as leverage. Not talk of phobias.

  ‘Forget it,’ Kieran says, with an air of finality. ‘I’ll think of a way to warn her off.’

  And it is not so much the sentiment that chills Vic as the realization that in this entire conversation Kieran has not once acknowledged Lucas. Far from wanting to reach out, as Ratcliffe claimed, he has, it would appear, arrived at a position in which Lucas’s death is incidental to his battle with Ellen.

  Just as it had a life of its own before so it does again.

  ‘Fine,’ Ratcliffe says. ‘Just make sure it’s legal.’

  Vic

  Then

  The day he moved out of the Beckenham flat, working alone as he loaded his possessions into his newly acquired work van, Vic became aware of a young woman in a pretty blue summer dress watching him from down the street. At first, he thought she was curious about the van’s graphics. His new hire, India, had helped with the branding and the words ‘Common or Gordon, am I right?’ were emblazoned across the van in the scripted capitals of a Lichtenstein speech bubble from the mouth of a friendly hipster barfly.

  Then he recognized her, raised a hand in greeting. ‘Jade! Long time, no see.’

  ‘Vic.’ She walked up to join him and he remembered how, sometimes, when he came home from the station or the pub, he would suddenly see his flat through Lucas’s friends’ eyes. How ordinary it was compared to the Tanglewood Road pile. He hadn’t ever set foot in Jade’s or Tom’s houses, but he guessed they were similarly well-appointed. Only Kieran would have walked the cracked paving stones of the approach to Vic’s flat and thought it worth coveting.

  The stones never had been repaired.

  ‘I like the van,’ Jade said. ‘You started the business then?’

  He’d forgotten her sore-throat voice. Like she’d been singing karaoke through the night and chain-smoking with every spare breath. Did they still do drugs, Lucas’s old circle, or had his death scared them into clean living? Her eyes and skin were clear, her previously smooth blonde hair tinted pink and arranged in those fashionable corrugated waves Vic had seen a lot of lately. She looked healthy, beautiful. ‘Yes,’ he said, trying to ignore the familiar pain that came with encounters like this. Lucas’s circle growing up, leaving their friend behind. ‘Looks pretty cool, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Wait, you’re moving out of the flat?’ she said, clocking the contents of the van – not stock but personal possessions. Clothes and books and his old vinyl collection.

  ‘Yep. Going down the road to East Croydon,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in this flat almost twenty years, believe it or not.’

  ‘I used to come here all the time with Lucas. You were so nice to us, you used to go out, give us a bit of privacy.’ She chuckled. ‘You probably didn’t even want to go out half the time.’

  Vic smiled. ‘Maybe there were a couple of cold winter nights when I just went to the Odeon on my own, but hey. You were thick as thieves, you, Lucas and Kieran. The three musketeers and all that.’ It was progress, speaking about Lucas in this nostalgic, almost folk way, fondly emphasizing the good times, the cute stories. Then again, there had been good times, hadn’t there? There had been cute stories. Even with Kieran in the mix. His eye fell on a crate of old albums. ‘Remember when you went to that fancy-dress party as different incarnations of David Bowie? Lucas was the Thin White Duke…’

  ‘I was Ziggy with the eye patch,’ she chipped in, smiling.

  ‘Kieran was Aladdin Sane. He looked the best, actually.’

  ‘It suited him,’ she agreed.

  ‘You started seeing him when he came out of prison, didn’t you?’ Vic said and could tell she was startled by his directness, tried to cover it with a shrug.

  ‘For a couple of months, yes. Before he went missing.’

  It was interesting that she used that term. She believed the official line then. He decided a little tentative speculation wouldn’t do any harm. ‘That moonlight flit of his was odd, wasn’t it?’

  She looked puzzled. Did they not say ‘moonlight flit’ anymore? Flit was probably something else now. It probably meant nice, but only when applied to eyebrows, perhaps.

  ‘I take it you haven’t heard from him since?’ he added.

  ‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, he did send me one message.’

  Vic’s pulse accelerated. ‘Did he? When?’

  ‘Ages ago. Right after he went. Just to let me know he was safe. Made me swear not to tell anyone – not that I would’ve dared. I thought it might be a witness protection thing, you know?’

  Swear not to tell: she’d obviously decided the statute of limitations had run out on that, then, Vic thought. Why had he not thought sooner that Jade could be a loose cannon? (Because he’d trusted Kieran not to make contact, that was why. The fucking idiot.) If she was being this open with him – and five minutes into a roadside conversation – might she also have shared this information with others? Her mother, for instance, who was still a friend of Ellen’s, albeit not as close as she’d once been. But, seeing the twist of anxiety in her brow, he decided not. He was the first to be hearing this, he was sure of it.

  ‘Witness protection?’ he said, just light-hearted enough. ‘Wow. Mind you, he always did have delusions of the gangster lifestyle, didn’t he?’

  Jade’s shoulders straightened and her chin lifted in protest. ‘No, it wasn’t, like, a delusion. He must’ve been really worried. He wouldn’t have done it otherwise. He wouldn’t have… Unless…’ Her voice petered away, but Vic tracked her train of thought easily enough. He wouldn’t have given up on me unless he had no choice. ‘He was different after his release,’ she said, rallying. ‘He had all these plans. Positive ones, you know? To help people struggling with life. Maybe through a phone app or something.’

  Vic took a long look at her. Unless she was an excellent actress, she clearly had no idea that her former beau’s fortunes had changed with his name. ‘Yes, well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ he said, his tone short. He was no Ellen, but even so, there was only so much balance he could bring to his own position. It occurred to him that Jade might still be pining, even waiting. ‘Don’t waste your time, Jade. Make your own way in life, don’t hitch your star to some boy. Definitely not to the memory of him.’

  She met his gaze. ‘That’s what my mum says,’ she said.

 
‘How is she?’ He had seen little of Sheridan since the night of the Tesco Bordeaux.

  ‘Same as ever.’ Jade’s easy dismissal of the one who loved her the most was heartbreaking, truly. Did Lucas use to be like this about Ellen and him? But Jade’s mind was already on more important concerns. ‘Can I ask you something, Vic?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Does Ellen hate me?’ Her voice gave on the last syllable as she struggled to stifle her emotions.

  ‘Of course not. Mind you, I wouldn’t tell her you heard from Kieran, even just that once.’ Vic had an unwelcome image of Jade presenting herself at the house on Tanglewood Road in some belated attempt to atone. ‘It suits her to think he’s…’ He paused. ‘Gone for good. She can get on with her life, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘Of course. There’s no way I’d say anything,’ she assured him. ‘Not to anyone.’

  ‘Thank you.’ There was a sense that the conversation was over and they should part, until a loop snagged in Vic’s mind. ‘Why would she hate you, Jade? You mean because you and Lucas had just split up? You mustn’t worry about that. She always understood the boys were still great mates and if it hadn’t been that night it would have been another.’

  Jade’s throat convulsed. ‘No, I meant because I told her I didn’t know what they were arguing about in the car. I didn’t want to upset her. But sometimes I think I upset her more by not telling her.’

  Vic’s senses stood to attention. Arguing? He was pretty sure that, even though he and Ellen had speculated ad nauseam, it had never actually been established what Lucas and Kieran were talking about – if anything – when they drove off the road. He slammed shut the van doors and looked at her. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure we knew they were arguing at all, let alone what it was about.’ His gaze tapered. ‘What is it we don’t know, Jade?’