Thick and Fast

by Tommy Dakar

meant that Harvey would be expected to look after the boy, maybe take him for a ride round the grounds, or a play a game of some sort. It had taken Andrea years to get the two to spend time together, and now she had managed to turn it into a kind of routine. So from eleven to almost lunchtime, Sydney was in Harvey’s care. Except that today Mr. Paulson was best not approached. Had anybody thought of that? Nobody had said anything to her, so she assumed that somebody was watching out for the boy. Still, best check. She went to look for him.

  That is how Pet knew when quizzed by the police that they found the boy’s body at twelve o’clock, almost to the minute.

  The tragedy struck her like a blow to the guts. One minute she was searching for a naughty boy, the next the whole mad world was shattered into tiny, razor sharp fragments. Sydney was lying face down in half a metre of water. He was wearing dark shorts and a very yellow T-shirt which looked almost surreal in the bright midday sun. His blonde hair floated gently around his head like a halo. A hose pipe dangled indifferently at one end of the pool, and by the metal steps was a grey cable, an electrical cable, one of those that Ambrose was using to install the pool lights.

  Her sudden, sharp screams alerted the whole house, and within seconds the pool was surrounded by every member of the household. Stein was the first to react. He yanked the cable out of the pool and jumped in, snatching young Sydney up in his arms. He passed the limp body up to Harvey, who did not seem to know what to do. He accepted it meekly, in a trance, and for a second seemed more concerned about not getting wet than reviving the child.

  Advice and commands began to fly. Call an ambulance, give him the kiss of life, pump the water out of him, save him, raise his legs above his head, move aside, give him room, pinch his nose. Words of common sense to make more bearable their hysteria. The boy was obviously dead, but that was not possible, that was not a reality that could be accepted for an instant, so they continued to run about and shout and scream and cry. Andrea fainted at the first sight of her little boy face down in the shallow water and now lay by a small mound of earth; Pet was next to her on her knees, seized by a coughing fit; Luz wrung her hands and moaned continuously; Stein, taking refuge in practicality, had gone inside to call the hospital and the police, while Harvey tried in vain to blow life back into the child, pushing down hard on his chest, rolling him over, lifting his head, brushing the hair off his face and gently slapping his cheeks. To no avail. And Ambrose, stunned into silence and inaction, stood with his mouth open and his hands on his head, swaying from foot to foot, unable to believe that Sydney was dead, like his father, or that he had seen that grey cable, the cable they had all seen, the one Stein had so quickly removed, dangling, hanging by the ladder. His cable. One of the ones he had been testing that very morning. He knew they had all seen it, knew what they were thinking, knew that they thought that he was, at least partially, to blame.

  But that was impossible.

  Impossible because Ambrose was, if nothing else, methodical to the point of obsession; it was the only way he had of making sure he made no mistakes. He had laid the cables out in parallel, just as his father had taught him. Neatly, side by side, one for each connection. He had counted them several times, and double checked. Then, one by one, he had connected them, tested them, then disconnected them again. Only when each one had been carefully tested would he proceed to the final definitive wiring. It was laborious, and quite probably unnecessary, but it was what his father had shown him to do, and he did not have the initiative to do otherwise.

  So how had a live wire managed to roll over into the pool?

  The ambulance arrived and took the tiny corpse away. Andrea had to be swiftly sedated before she lost her mind, so it was Harvey who accompanied what was by now a funeral procession to the hospital morgue. The others stood around in various states of disbelief waiting for the police to come. Perhaps the detectives and forensic experts, with their methods and techniques, could help restore a little order, some common sense, could add an element of logic and comprehension.

  Because after the death of a child the world made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

  6

  Gross negligence manslaughter. That was the legal term. But then there was so much jargon, so much archaic language, so many documents and forms, offices, departments, government employees. An interminable parade of photographs, signatures, fingerprints and statements. The judicial labyrinth. Ambrose was assigned a lawyer, Stephen Bryant, a forgetful, slightly dishevelled young man who spoke too fast for Ambrose to understand and always appeared to be in a terrible hurry. He wore narrow glasses, his fair hair was thinning, and he sometimes smelt of tobacco. He came and went. That was just about everything Ambrose could remember.

  Harvey too had a lawyer. Rosaline Gerard. The very mention of her soon struck terror into Ambrose’s heart. She was an angular woman, slim and taut, with very straight brown hair, brushed into a middle parting, that she looped behind her ears in a tense way that made her look angry. She wore clothes that could best be described as solemn. Her manner was rapacious. It was as if she personally desired only the very worst for this disdainful Mr. Ork. She badgered, she confounded, she threatened. It soon became clear that she would not rest until this child murderer was severely punished, crushed under the full weight of vindictive law. The lacklustre Stephen Bryant stood in awe of her, and caved in at their first encounter. Rosaline Gerard was not to be messed with. So Ambrose’s defence quickly became no more than damage control. He would be found guilty, he would be sentenced to prison. All that Bryant could do was minimise the blow.

  Had Ambrose enjoyed the financial backing and social influence of Mr. Paulson, he may have stood a chance. Sydney had died, officially, of electrocution, a discharge which led to heart failure, which in turn was what made him fall face down in the shallow water and drown. That was the conclusion reached by the forensic expert, a conclusion that Stephen Bryant never even dreamt of challenging. A more astute lawyer would have pointed out that, contrary to common belief, clean fresh water is not a very good conductor of electrical current, that the amperage was not at a necessarily lethal level, that a live wire coming into contact with water would have blown a fuse or tripped a jump switch somewhere along the line. They would have demanded a new autopsy which categorically showed lesions to the heart tissue. They would have asked for and found alternative electrical experts willing to testify that the possibility of Sydney receiving a shock large enough and sustained enough to make him fall unconscious was little short of impossible. They would have sown the seeds of doubt. They would have cross-examined Harvey and asked him why he had entrusted the job of rewiring to this man if, as he had noted in his warning letter to Ambrose, he already knew that Mr. Ork was not a qualified electrician at all, but rather a self-taught amateur. They would have asked awkward questions about Mr. Paulson’s relationship with Sydney, with Ambrose, with the Haute family itself. In short they would have thrown a veil of uncertainty over the whole affair and petitioned for a verdict of accidental death.

  But Bro’s representative Mr. Bryant was a busy, underpaid, legal aid defence lawyer with low self esteem and his mind on a thousand other cases, most of them mundane. He visited Ambrose and kept him up to date, but at no moment tried to put a stick in the wheels the judicial process. He filled in the forms, kept the appointments, and informed his client. He knew his place when confronted by Rosaline and her penetrating gaze, and bowed obediently before the reality of the situation – Ms Gerard represented the winners.

  During the proceedings Ambrose was held in custody. Not because he was considered a danger to society, or likely to flee the country, or because he could not raise the money for his bail conditions. It was more of a courtesy measure because Bro had nowhere to go. After the incident Haute house fell to pieces. Nobody in their right mind could just carry on as if nothing had happened. The whole place smelt of tragedy. It was as if it had been cursed. The original family had been completely destroyed, Arnold and Alice Haute d
ead, and the two Sydneys, heirs to a fortune, wiped off the face of the earth by tragedy. The old regime was now gone forever, so the rest of the staff decided it was time to pack their bags and start afresh, preferably somewhere far from the haunted house.

  Luz had family up north, a sister and some other less close relatives. She had her savings, and some compensation money for the abrupt finalisation of her contract. There was nothing to keep her at Chester Drive now that Alice, Sydney and Sydney Jr. were no longer alive. Naturally her heart went out to poor Andrea, who was fast turning into a younger version of Alice in her final days; pale, thin, drugged into senselessness, in perpetual mourning. There was an air of gloom and decay that hung about the house now and try as she might she could not chase it away. So she took her leave of Joe Stein. They had spent many years together in service, but they had never really hit it off. She shook his hand and wished him the best. Pet hugged her sincerely, but then she would, wouldn’t she? A kind soul, but overweight and smelling like an ashtray. They would write to each other they falsely promised. Taking