“How many hands today?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Two, three thousand?”
“And Jamal’s gone, I see.”
He turned and smiled. “Jesus, you don’t get even the small stuff past an old copper.”
“Might not be as small as you think. So, I’m right, different driver?”
He nodded. “How did you know?”
“Jamal turns the headlights off because he knows the road now. This bloke had them on full beam.”
“The headlights and his mouth. I fell asleep round about Beaconsfield, thank God.” He took out a bottle of wine from his satchel and offered it to me like a waiter seeking my approval. “His name’s George. He asked if he could come in for ten minutes. He’s had a hell of a day too. I said no and sent him up to The Crown. Was that mean of me?”
I shook my head. “What happened to Jamal?”
“Some rule about them needing so many hours off in order to work so many hours on.” He nodded at the food. “Whatever that is smells fucking wonderful.”
He looked round for Laura, concerned that she’d heard him swear.
“She’s gone back to her place. All that stuff women do before a big night out.”
He took two glasses and the corkscrew to the table and settled himself. I put a bowl of rice down beside the chicken in wine, leaned towards him and kissed him on the forehead. I wanted to ask him about money, why he hadn’t got any, but as I drew breath to do so he reached up and touched my face.
“Good to be home, Dad.”
The money could wait, at least until after the opening tomorrow.
I couldn’t sleep and it was 1.56 in the morning and rather than lie there, watching the red light on the ceiling count down my life in seconds, each of them dragging way beyond its allotted time, I decided to go downstairs and talk to my other children.
It was a clear night outside, sharp and silent, ready to pick up the slightest sound and play it back ten times louder, in this case my leather moccasins scraping the path up to my office. Once inside, I switched everything on - lights, fire, computer, background music - as much to help me forget that I was alone as for their practical value. I sipped my tea and checked my emails.
The last one I’d had from any of my children was from Jaikie at the weekend with flight arrival times; before that Fee, a month ago, telling me how she was planning to move from Hokkaido’s gentle town of Asahikawa, where she taught English to the Japanese, to hard-bitten Tokyo. She had met a man called Yukito who had offered her a job in so-called Electric City as he rebuilt his business after the appalling earthquakes. She was to be head of liaison between his gadget based company and his many customers in England, Australia and America. For a girl who couldn’t speak a word of Japanese a year and a half previously, I thought it was going some. However, I hadn’t heard since what had become of the job, the move or the man called Yukito.
If I was honest with myself, I was hearing less and less from all of them these days and I wasn’t quite sure how to explain that. Laura was a handy reason, of course. Since she and I had become ‘friends’, there was no need for my four children to keep such a close eye on me. In gloomier moments I was inclined to admit that as a family we were breaking up, perhaps into pieces that would never fit together again. Maybe the question I was about to put to them concerning Jaikie would spur them to repair the fractures, to start sticking their noses into each other’s business again, just as they’d always done. But what was the question to be?
“Fee, hi!” I wrote as casually as I could. “Quickie, this. Do you know if Jaikie’s okay? He’s staying with me, pending UK premiere tomorrow of All Good Men and True. Any news on the job? Dad xx.”
I could see from the four clocks on the wall what time it was in each of the places they’d settled in, places I hoped to visit one day. It was ten o’clock in the morning in Japan and eight the previous evening in New Orleans where Con had drifted ashore. Drawn by the lifestyle, the history, the abandonment of its people after hurricane Katrina, he had a new girlfriend, a terrifyingly beautiful creole called Marcie. They must have been at home that night since he replied within the hour.
“Jaikie’s fine, man. Okay, so that bitch Sophie Kent dumped him, but he’s living in Hollywood. Take his pick. Enough about him. We’re off to Haiti for a couple of months, Marcie’s ancestors and all that. How’s Laura?”
I hadn't mentioned money, and certainly not the possibility that Jaikie was in trouble over it, so he didn’t bite on it as a problem. Interestingly, though, there was no request for money from Con himself, from which I deduced that Marcie was as rich as Croesus. If not that she had taught him shame. An hour later I received the following from Fee.
“Dad, job and move still in the pipeline. Don’t worry, you’ll be first to know. I didn’t think anything was wrong with Jaikie, but now you mention it he was a bit distant when we last spoke. I’ll find out more. Let you know. Fee. xx”
Ellie wasn’t far behind, four in the morning my time, 9.15 hers. She was working in Nepal and her email said simply, “What’s this I hear from Fee? Jaikie’s in trouble? More details before I text him. Ellie x”
It wasn't playing out quite how I’d intended. I certainly didn’t want Fee badgering all and sundry about a problem that might not exist. I emailed her back to that effect, but it was way too late. According to her, if I’d thought that Jaikie had a problem, then he almost certainly did. Later still there was an email from Con. “Dad, sorry, didn’t realise it was serious. I reckon it’s classic depression. Sophie Kent. He was nuts about her. If he's peely wally (remember that saying, one of Mum’s favourite?) she’ll be to blame. Go head to head with him about it. Better still get Laura to. But for Christ’s sake keep Fee away from Sophie, she’ll kill the bitch.”
Keeping Fee at a distance had suddenly become more difficult than it sounded. Her final email on the subject was “Listen, Dad, if it’s as bad as it sounds, I’ll take some time out and come home, sort Jaikie out while he’s still with you.”
From my own wish for us to be a family again, however far flung, and my kids’ readiness to pick up an imaginary crisis and run with it, I had turned their brother into a depressive, his ex-girlfriend into a thorough going bitch, and received a threat from Fee to return home and sort it out. I could also, in idle moments, worry about a man called Yukito and Con’s trip to Haiti, under the spell of a creole beauty called Marcie. But at least we were all talking to each other. I went back to bed and fell asleep immediately.
-4-
The next day began for me when the doorbell rang and Dogge let rip in her usual fashion. The red numbers on the ceiling said 6.43. I waited a few moments and then asked, “Was that the doorbell?” I wasn’t sure who the question was directed at. Maggie or Laura, I imagine, each being conspicuous by her absence.
I pulled on some clothes and went downstairs to find that Jamal’s replacement was a man in his mid-30s, dressed in jeans and a sheepskin flying jacket, check shirt open at the neck. The top button was missing. No wife, no live-in lover to sew it back on. That aside, he seemed to believe that I knew exactly what he was doing here, but when the opposite became clear he stepped forward and held out his hand. I shook it before I had chance to decide if I wanted to or not.
“I’m George Corrigan,” he said. “Jacob’s driver. He said he wanted me here at half past. I’m not sure if he meant half six or half seven.”
“Half seven.”
He slapped his forehead with his free hand, a theatrical gesture more up Jaikie’s street than a common or garden driver’s. He was carrying the weekend section of The Guardian, a strange accessory to bring from his car to my house unless he intended to read it, which meant he planned on staying for a while. I led him through to the kitchen and as I turned I caught him in the act of scanning the place like a pro. He stopped and smiled at me. I nodded him to a chair at the table.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“If you’re making some.”
; He was a powerful man, just under six foot tall, with a zig-zag parting to the difficult dark hair and a skin leathery beyond its years, the result of long hikes against wind and rain, I fancied. The stubble squared off a striking face and certainly one that had been struck its fair share of times. In contradiction he had a full set of teeth, suggesting that he’d won most of the fights he’d been in. He also had a soft Irish voice, the kind I could listen to forever, although right now I wasn’t too keen on what it was saying.
“There’s a cracking piece about him in the paper. Thought you might want to see it.” He opened out The Guardian supplement on the table and turned it towards me. “Mentions you. Thirty-seven murders? That is a lot of bad people.”
“Maybe, but why should that interest anyone writing about my son? What else does it say?”
He gestured to the paper. “Keep it. Read it later.”
“Tell me in a sentence now.”
He leaned back and tried to get comfortable in the chair. “The usual kind of stuff journalists go for. Family, girlfriends, interests. Is it a problem?”
“You tell me. The kids were brought up never to talk to strangers and certainly not to journalists about their father’s work. It was a condition of me keeping no secrets from them. More interesting, though, is why you’re so keen for me to read all about it.”
He gazed at me with practised, unflinching eyes. “Am I?”
“Oh, yes. Perhaps it would help if you told me what you are, George.”
“Jacob’s driver,” he said with the full body shrug of a much mistaken man.
He looked ex-Army to me, someone who’d found it difficult back in civilian life until one of the security outfits had collared him. I let it pass and as the coffee brewed I began reading the article. It was long and wrapped around a photo of Jaikie I’d come to know well during the past three months. It showed him in mud-covered action pose, machine gun at his far side, battle dress torn and bloody. The piece began with a synopsis of the film, went on to give a resumé of his career, then all of a sudden it got personal.
Hawk is the son of a retired Detective Chief Inspector who, in the job, brought 35 murderers to justice, seventeen of them as the lead investigator. “Being retired hasn’t stopped him poking his nose into other people’s business,” Hawk says. “Year before last he solved two nasty local murders. The summer after that he found the killer of Teresa Marie Stillman.” I ask if his father’s involved in anything at the moment. “A farmer pal found this orthopaedic plate in one of his fields. The Old Man’s certain it’s off a body that’s buried out there. All he has to do is find…”
I stopped there, pushed the paper away from me and went over to the doorway through to the front hall. I yelled up the stairs. “Jaikie! Get down here!” Several moments of absolute silence went by. “Jaikie, foot to floor. Let me hear it.”
It was a routine Maggie had established, otherwise the kids just turned over and went back to sleep. Another silence was followed by a couple of thumps from way up in the attic room.
Back at the percolator I poured Corrigan some coffee and pointed to the milk and sugar. Directly above our heads we heard the toilet flush, the taps turn full on, and a minute or so later Jaikie entered the kitchen, bleary and belligerent, a far cry from the charming film star who could wow anyone between the age of eight and 80. He’d managed to haul himself into a pair of cut-off jeans and a sweater, no T-shirt, nothing on his feet.
“Dad, what the fuck…?”
I reminded him that way back in the mists of time we’d agreed that he would never talk to strangers about what I did for a living and he gradually twigged that breaking that agreement was the reason he’d been dragged out of bed. I pushed The Guardian round to face him, jabbing at the name of the man who’d written the article, Richard Slater.
“You didn’t think any time, ‘Why is this bloke asking about my father?’”
That brought on a frown, affronted ego I thought at first, but not so. He went over to get some coffee, poured in the milk - or cream, as he’d begun to call it - then stirred it more than he needed to.
“Not just you, Dad,” he said eventually. “The Others, Ellie, Con, Fee, Laura, the house, even the bloody dog. Like a fool I just answered his questions. He was so good at making me talk.”
“And as usual you were reluctant to do so?”
I was hoping Corrigan would have felt the urge to chip in by now and reveal himself as something more than a driver, but I had to prompt him.
“George, you’d better start talking, but if I don’t like what I hear, Jaikie’s not going into London with you.”
“Hang on a sec, Dad,” said Jaikie. “Who the bloody hell is he?”
“That’s what I keep asking and he refuses to say, but he isn’t some hack driver.” Corrigan turned to Jaikie and shrugged an appeal for sympathy. “Unless you’re going to tell me Jamal carries a Glock 29 under his jacket as well, all pumped up and ready to go.”
Jaikie couldn't resist it. “And there was I thinking he was just happy to see me.”
It went straight over Corrigan’s head but on the plus side our soft spoken Irishman handed me a well-used wallet in the front of which was a Met police warrant card. Jaikie was more concerned about him not getting the reference to a gun in his pocket and was on the verge of giving us Mae West’s life story to make up for it.
“I thought everybody knew…”
“Jaikie, shutup and focus. This guy is from SOU. Special Operations, who deal with nasty stuff. Therein lies the question, George. What are you protecting my son from?”
Corrigan tried to relax and, now the Glock was out in the open, so to speak, he took off his flying jacket and hooked it over a chair. “They all get it now. Big stars. He’ll be the fifth I’ve protected this year.”
“Does Josh Hartnett get one?” Jaikie asked.
“Of course. Go phone him.”
At a nod from me, Jaikie went back upstairs to get his mobile.
“Anything else I can help you with?” Corrigan asked, taking back his wallet.
“When were you assigned, Sergeant? Before or after Jaikie went to see this Richard Slater?”
“I rescued him from Slater. Jesus, he’d still be there talking but for me.”
I was beginning to feel I’d overreacted, then remembered an old Desk Sergeant who once told me that was exactly the point at which he double-checked.
“So you never heard of a man called Patrick Scott?”
His eyes didn’t flicker, face didn’t move. “Should I have done?”
“Don’t give me that shit, answering a question with a question.”
“I have never heard of a man called Patrick Scott.”
If it wasn’t the truth, he was an exceptionally well-trained liar. I wanted to treble check but I knew it wouldn’t make me any happier. Only when Jaikie re-entered the kitchen, talking on his phone to Josh Hartnett, reporting that a guy built like a concrete dustbin had taken over from his usual driver and was a member of the Met’s SOU, did I begin to ease up a little.
It was one of those days you look forward to for months but the moment it arrives you long for it to be over and done with. Jaikie left for London with Corrigan at about 8.30 and I won’t go as far as to say that I never expected to see him again, but I did run a few grim-ending scenarios through my mind to test their probability. I couldn’t link any of them to the appearance of Patrick Scott in our lives, but the plate that had held one of his bones together couldn’t be explained away as easily as I would have liked. All morning I fought the notion that because Laura had poked around in his records, they’d been wiped. But there was no other explanation. Then SOU had stepped in and where they go trouble has usually been before, or will shortly follow. And Richard Slater bothered me. I’d read him over the years on all sorts of things, from capital punishment to cooking the perfect venison roast, but why he’d be interested in me was a mystery.
Eventually, I justified my concerns as the niggles of an old
copper expecting the worst, preparing for a thunderbolt out of a bright blue sky. I was succumbing to an old weakness, seeing everything around me as a potential crime and everyone who crossed my path as parties to it. It must have made me lousy company and I apologised to Laura over lunch at her favourite London restaurant, The Mango Tree in Belgravia.
“It isn’t so much the old copper who gets worked up as the man himself,” she said so neatly. “Worrying, especially about your children, is your default position.”
She went on to add that she didn’t mind. She had come to London to see All Good Men and True and planned on enjoying it. Our itinerary was as follows: after lunch, an hour or so at the Tate Modern, then onto the Royal Overseas League where we’d booked a room for the night, change into our finery and then off to the pictures. It sounded like a good way to pass the time, but I still couldn’t settle to it.
Paul Gauguin didn’t help, either. Laura had bought tickets to a special exhibition of his work and, in odd moments during the past month, she'd briefed me on the man, starting with his death at 54, an age close to my heart, shall we say. But as I stood in the Tate before those fabulous, primitive paintings, I couldn’t get past their creator being a man who abandoned his wife and five children and fell out with most of his friends. Was painting his excuse for that? And, more seriously, how would he answer the charge of abuse against young Tahitian girls? Was their immortality as works of art a fair price to have paid?
Back at the Overseas League we lay on the bed and talked it over, tried to make a case for the man who had punched his own wife in the face and drawn blood, then painted something as vibrant as The Swineherd, as sensuous as Nevermore, as powerful as the self-portrait behind bars. We struggled and gave up, but somehow managed to doze off and sleep for over an hour.
We woke to find ourselves in our usual dilemma. I knew we were going to be late, Laura was convinced that we had plenty of time: two opposing theories working towards mustering in the lobby by seven o’clock to be picked up by a limo. Somehow we managed it, me in a DJ so old that I can’t remember buying it, Laura in a blue silk dress she had bought for the occasion. It set off the silver jewellery she was so fond of, the long earrings, an heirloom necklace, bracelets and finger rings.
Scattered Remains (Nathan Hawk Mystery) Page 4