Brand New Friend

by Kate Vane

  The truth was that when she got the news, Salma panicked. She was the one who insisted they leave immediately. Would he have done the same in her place? He would never know, just as she hadn’t, till the moment came, and she had to confront the fact that she was not as strong as she believed.

  He was content to let people think what they wanted. The unwavering Salma who had campaigned on TV had been built up by the media and it had perhaps helped her friends (though after the initial euphoria of their release those friendships had all faded). Salma was left with the fact that she was not that person, the one that Tilda and thousands like her believed in, the one she had once believed in herself.

  ‘You took our story,’ said Mark. ‘Mine and Claire’s.’

  ‘You’d done a bit of desk research, based on some information which Sid obtained, probably unethically, possibly illegally. It wasn’t a story.’

  It might be one piece of a story, though.

  They were at the airport now, almost at Departures.

  ‘You and Dudley are playing the same game,’ said Paolo. ‘You might think you’re on different sides but you thrive on secrecy and corruption and lies. I’m not going to be a party to it. I’m a journalist. My job is to share the truth, not suppress it.’

  As he spoke the words he felt a stirring in his chest. So he did still believe in something, after all.

  Mark got out of the taxi without a word, without even acknowledging Paolo had spoken.

  ‘Have a good trip,’ Paolo said, as the door slammed.

  65

  Paolo only spent two days in Dubai but he felt refreshed. He had caught up with friends and work colleagues, as well as liaising with Vera and Layla. He had been able to get useful background from his local contacts. He had also been in touch with an academic who he worked with when he wrote a story on drug shortages and corruption in Egypt.

  They had built on what Mark and Claire had given them. Sid may have lacked IT skills but he had a knack for the human element of intelligence gathering. He had picked up on the rumour about the patent and pursued it tenaciously, speaking to former colleagues of the dead scientist and even his widow. Mark and Claire had followed the digital paper trail.

  He was giving what he had to Vera and Layla. It wasn’t about ego for Paolo (not this time, anyway). He was a real journalist again, that was what mattered.

  They thought they might just have enough.

  He wanted them to use the clip where Dudley spoke about the rules being different in Russia. They didn’t have Dudley’s consent to use it but Paolo thought they could argue a public interest defence. And he intended to argue hard.

  It wasn’t an admission, but Dudley’s tone was chilling. Afterwards, he had suggested, they say nothing, just let Dudley’s words hang. ‘We respect local customs. Either way we win.’

  Of course it had also occurred to him that Dudley would have known they might use the interview. Maybe it would just add to ZKI’s aura of invincibility, maybe the ambiguity of his words had been calculated. Maybe he found all this amusing.

  That was what he wanted to share with Salma, if she would only answer his calls, if the girls didn’t pick up the landline and say she was busy and hand the phone to the babysitter who was equally vague.

  The day before, Graham had sent him an encrypted email. He had read it, then read it again, wanting to be sure.

  Then he had called Freddie. ‘I think I have something on Sid Jenkins. It may be nothing but if you want the story, it’s yours.’

  ‘Does it involve another trip down south, only I’m helping out with the girlfriend’s grandkids after school.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you won’t have to leave Yorkshire.’

  Paolo disembarked from the plane ready to face the world.

  Now all he had to do was confront Claire.

  66

  They met in the bar in his hotel, the place where he’d met Tilda.

  Claire fidgeted in her seat and looked around at the muted earth tones and the fiercely angular furniture. She was wearing a fuchsia dress with bold blue flowers on it. A splash of colour rebelling against the stark aesthetic of the place.

  ‘They don’t only expect you to eat off slate, you have to sit on it,’ she said. He suspected that wasn’t the real reason she looked so stiff.

  ‘So,’ she said, when they had got their drinks, ‘your scoop came first.’

  ‘That’s not how it was.’

  ‘I should have come to Dubai.’

  ‘You think that would have changed things?’ He was genuinely curious.

  ‘I could have looked you in the eye as you condemned me.’

  ‘Dudley isn’t going to do anything to you. We’re like ants to him. It’s not even worth making a minor detour to tread on us.’

  ‘His lawyers might tread on you if your story ever gets broadcast.’

  ‘I’m hoping the BBC’s lawyers will stop him.’

  He knew he shouldn’t have been daunted by Claire’s glare but he was. He pitied her poor pupils.

  ‘I have to tell you something,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve been to see Isabel. I know what happened.’

  She looked suddenly so lost and vulnerable he felt a strange welling-up of tenderness towards her. Tenderness. A word not much used, except by butchers and sports physios, but that’s what it was. A feeling he didn’t want to probe, that was uncomfortable for both of them.

  He told her about his meeting with Isabel. ‘I’m guessing you told her to move out,’ he said.

  ‘She killed someone!’

  ‘I didn’t say it was an unreasonable request.’ He sighed. ‘You wonder what she might have been. I always thought she was so cool and poised. The cutting and the not eating seemed part of her allure. I was an arsehole back then.’

  ‘You were.’

  ‘Do you think she would have been different, if – Or was she unhappy even before that?’

  If she hadn’t been raped. If he hadn’t been an arsehole. If he had actually held out a hand to the real Isabel when she turned to him, instead of clinging to the fantasy.

  ‘I don’t care about Isabel,’ said Claire. ‘I’ve had to live with what she’s done. I don’t know which is worse, my guilt at doing nothing or my fear of the knock at the door.’ She sighed. ‘Sometimes I think it’s my punishment for daring to be happy. Maybe in a way it made everything more intense, knowing it could end at any time.’

  ‘Does your husband know?’

  ‘How could I tell him?’

  ‘It didn’t feel real, did it? Making our little bombs.’ Even though his voice was low she looked anxiously round at the surrounding tables. ‘It was just a game.’

  ‘It was real to me.’ Claire’s eyes were scanning the bar. She was with Paolo but she was looking for Mark, just as when he was with her he had always been looking for Isabel.

  Her phone bleeped and she checked it. She showed him a BBC notification. ‘There’s been an arrest in the Sid Jenkins murder. They haven’t released a name.’

  He wasn’t surprised. Freddie would have told them what he knew, if they hadn’t got there first themselves.

  ‘Where’s Mark?’

  She was anxious now. He wanted to hold the tension, see where it took her, but too quickly a voice said, ‘I’m here.’

  Claire’s face lit up. ‘I was afraid –’ She didn’t finish. Mark sat across from him, next to Claire.

  ‘Actually,’ said Paolo, ‘I know who’s been arrested.’

  ‘John Farrell,’ said Mark.

  Claire frowned. ‘Wasn’t he one of the men who gave you an alibi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So they weren’t really with you? But you didn’t tell the police?’

  ‘My solicitor advised me to exercise my right to silence. She was concerned that my history meant I would not be treated fairly.’

  Paolo thought this was nonsense – he could have given a statement through a solicitor on that one point. He said nothing, though, because he wanted Claire to
say that. She didn’t.

  ‘You think he did it?’ she asked instead.

  Mark nodded.

  ‘So what happened?’ asked Claire.

  Mark shrugged. ‘Who knows? We’ve had violent assaults at the garden over a share in a bottle of cider.’

  ‘Would that be in John Farrell’s character?’ asked Paolo. ‘Based on what you know of him?’

  Mark didn’t answer. Claire looked from one to the other. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Remember how Mark never liked to have his photo taken? There was one, though, that was in the public domain. His passing-out at Hendon Police College. With his class. Standing next to him was his old friend John Langton. He got that name when he was adopted by his stepfather. His birth name was John Farrell.’

  Paolo had thought, but not been sure, that he had recognised John Farrell in the passing-out photo, but the name was wrong. Graham had searched for birth certificates for John Farrells. It wasn’t an uncommon name but if it was him in the photo they knew his approximate age. Graham had found three possibles. He had then found that the mother of one of them had a marriage certificate indicating she had married a Peter Langton.

  ‘It seems John Langton joined the police with high ideals. He’d grown up watching his mother being abused by his stepfather. Once or twice the police had come out, but they’d never done much to help. He wasn’t the first person to think they could right injustice, but some of what he saw in the police just brought it all back.

  Early in his career he was called out to a nasty incident. A man holding his estranged wife hostage. The man gave himself up but only after he had inflicted some nasty injuries on the woman. She died two days later. PC Langton was first on the scene once they got access to the house and stayed with her until the ambulance arrived.’

  Paolo thought of the day he’d met silent John Farrell, seen nothing to distinguish him as he smoked his cigarette.

  ‘He left the police about fifteen years ago.’

  ‘No one says “about” fifteen,’ said Mark, but Paolo wasn’t in a joking mood.

  ‘He met a new partner on holiday in Spain and moved up to Bradford to live with her. He wanted to make a fresh start. He stopped using his stepfather’s name and went back to his birth name, Farrell. Things went well at first, he got some work doing security in a shopping centre, but he found it mundane after life in the police.’

  Freddie had gone to see his ex-partner in Bradford, happy to be back knocking on doors. He said she’d been only too willing to talk, as if she’d been holding onto unhappy thoughts for years.

  ‘He started drinking heavily – or maybe he was drinking before they met but kept it from her – and it didn’t work out. Eventually she asked him to leave. So he sofa-surfed, then ended up homeless, and in hostels in Leeds, and then he got referred to Acorn Community Garden where he was reunited with his old mate from Hendon.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’ Claire asked Mark. It was the first time she’d spoken.

  ‘That I’d left the police a long time ago and didn’t like to talk about it at work. I said being an ex-cop made it hard for some people to trust me. He said he knew all about that. And when he said he was using his mum’s surname, I said I was doing the same.’

  ‘He liked you. He trusted you. Like we all did.’ Paolo couldn’t help those last words.

  ‘I helped him out a bit, that’s all. Filled out a few forms. Tried to get him a tenancy but he wasn’t ready. He’d have had to give up his friends, his support network, as well as the booze. He was really friendly with Bob and they spent most days drinking together.’

  ‘John Farrell’s ex-girlfriend said he once held a knife to her throat when he was drunk. He broke down and cried once he’d sobered up, said he’d seen his stepfather do the same to his mother, and that he’d sworn he’d never be that person. And that if he saw his stepfather again he’d kill him. Did he say that to you too, Mark?’

  Mark didn’t answer.

  ‘The odd thing is, he still spoke to his partner, and she said that John was worried about you. That you’d told him a man from your past was hanging around, causing you problems. That it was bringing about some bad memories. And that while you’d never actually said it, something in your manner made him think it was your father.’

  Claire was watching Mark with a little frown of concentration.

  Paolo continued. ‘I think you knew Sid was coming to see you that day. You thought he had exposed you and you were furious. When you went to the clinic with Bob, maybe John went with you, just long enough to be seen. But he left and waited at Acorn for Sid.’

  ‘Why would he?’ asked Mark.

  ‘Because he thinks he owes you. Because you are good at getting people to do what you want.’

  Claire frowned. ‘So why give the alibi if he knew it wouldn’t hold? And where has he been all this time?’

  ‘He didn’t volunteer the alibi, it was his friend, Bob. Presumably Bob didn’t know what had really happened. Then they disappeared. Apparently they were picked up at a soup kitchen in Birmingham. It’s not clear how they found the money to get down there.’

  Mark ignored the inference. ‘If you were right, wouldn’t he tell the police?’

  ‘No,’ said Paolo. ‘I don’t think he will. So you’ve got away with it.’

  There was silence at the table. He looked from one to the other. He found he wanted both to be wrong about Mark and for Claire to believe he was right. He suspected he was about to be doubly disappointed.

  Claire’s eyes were on Mark. Only for Mark. The poised, happy Claire, the woman who climbed mountains for fun and worked to change children’s lives, with her hundred-quid hairstyle and her loving husband, had fallen away to leave the fierce, elemental Claire. Her arm was on Mark’s.

  Her eyes were searching his. Neither of them spoke.

  Then her expression rearranged itself. You could actually see it shifting as her brain ticked through the options. She’d have made a great field surgeon if she only had the patience.

  ‘He’s got nothing,’ she said.

  ‘I have a conscience,’ said Paolo.

  ‘So what are you going to do, call the cops? They’ll match the forensics to this John Whoever, now they’ve got him. Mark helped this man and now you want him to seem like the guilty one. That’s been your agenda from the start, hasn’t it?’

  Paolo didn’t answer. There was no point. Claire had decided not just to cover for Mark, but to believe him. And Claire’s beliefs had always been unshakeable.

  ‘You claimed to be our friend, but you wanted to believe Mark was to blame, to make a better story.’

  Mark said nothing. He didn’t look at Claire. He just let her speak.

  ‘And who will you turn in, your beloved Isabel, who has confessed to a murder, or Mark, whose only crime has been in your imagination?’

  All that time, sitting in his room with the yellow gas flame, he had felt drowsily detached (though that was probably the carbon monoxide), that he was on the outside, that life was somewhere else. But it had been in his own house. Their ill-assorted, thrown-together house. Two people were dead because Mark had turned up to investigate criminals who didn’t exist. That was not a great way for police to bring down crime.

  Claire had clearly made her choice. She knew which side she was on. Paolo thought he had finally made his too.

  ‘So was it you?’ asked Claire.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you unmask Mark? Too ashamed to do it under your own name?’

  Paolo laughed at the ridiculousness of the suggestion. ‘I’ve barely thought about you all in thirty years. I’ve been busy.’ And so he had, he thought. Life had been full. He wasn’t going to tell them. They’d never think of Graham.

  Everyone always forgot Graham.

  He picked up the bill. ‘I’ve got this.’

  ‘Thanks for the tea,’ said Mark. He had the same open, guileless face he had always had. He had admitted and denied nothing. He was
a blank page where you could see what you wanted.

  Paolo wouldn’t go to the police. Even if he did share his suspicions about Mark’s role, they wouldn’t believe him. His gut told him he was right but he had no evidence. But –

  ‘I think Isabel might hand herself in,’ he said. ‘At least one person will do what’s right.’

  ‘You’re so noble, aren’t you?’ said Claire.

  ‘I just –’

  ‘Do you think Mark should do the same?’

  ‘That’s up to him.’

  ‘Because he knows about all of us.’ She looked at Mark who gave a slight nod. ‘You were there too.’

  ‘We didn’t do anything!’

  ‘We made a bomb and someone died. That wouldn’t look great on your BBC profile.’

  ‘Mark won’t say anything, because if he does we all suffer.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Claire. ‘Probably. But you’ll never be sure.’

  67

  He sensed the house was empty as soon as he opened the door. He could hear the purr of the central heating, the wine fridge clicking into action, found himself walking in rhythm with them as he crossed the hall. He breathed in the smell that wasn’t any one thing – the new hall carpet, furniture polish, the ghost of Salma’s perfume, the girls’ damp raincoats. How many times had they done this over the years, Paolo coming to a home Salma had left, or the other way round? This time felt different.

  There was a note on the table. Handwritten. He was afraid to read it. He stood looking at it, frozen in the moment, wondering what was going to happen next.

  He heard the key in the door. Salma. The new-old Salma, in city clothes and vivid make-up, tiny drops of rain in her hair.

  It spilled out of him suddenly. ‘Are you leaving?’

  She paused to take off her coat. ‘We are leaving.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think we should go back.’

  ‘To Cairo?’

  ‘To London. I should never have buried us here. I thought I could hide but the thoughts, they’re in here.’ She tapped her head with one magenta-polished nail. ‘I will always be involved, wherever I go. So let’s go back.’