by Tony Salter
I looked at the simple cream-coloured coffin, sitting elegantly in front of the altar. In spite of Granny’s unswerving faith, I’d never come close to being religious, and neither had my dad. There was something about churches though. It was as though centuries of thoughts and prayers, tears of sadness and tears of joy had been absorbed into the fabric of the building itself. I wouldn’t want to go too often, but from time to time, it felt good to piggy back on the stored belief of all of those generations of worshippers.
Before people had started to arrive, Dad and I had walked over to the edge of the churchyard to visit Mum’s grave. I made a point of going every time I was home, but always found it difficult to make the connection between that cold grey marble headstone and the beautiful smiling young woman who I only knew from photos and a diary.
Over the years, I’d struggled so hard to find a true memory of her. However brutally I dug into my mind, I could never be sure if those elusive half-remembered hints of a voice or a smell were real, or if they were wishful fabrications constructed from the stories and images which survived her.
There was one memory I wanted to believe was true. All I could see were her eyes, with their distinctive almond shape. She was looking down at me and love and laughter were dancing in the infinite blackness of her pupils. Real? Made up? I would never know, but at some point I’d decided to accept the memory as true and would draw on it for comfort whenever I needed to.
It's Complicated
Red Pepper was almost empty – not such a surprise at 12:15 on a Tuesday lunchtime. Daz and Liz were first there again and, as Liz lived just around the corner, I was tempted to be mischievous and ask Daz if he’d moved in with her already. I resisted the impulse, feeling quietly impressed by my own mature self-restraint.
My father hadn’t reached my level of maturity.
‘Short walk here is it, Daz?’ he said, grinning and slapping Daz on the shoulder. ‘From the new love nest?’
‘Grow up, Rupert,’ said Liz. ‘You’re behaving like a fifteen-year-old.’
Liz would have needed to work hard to assert her authority as she fought her way through the ranks. Whatever they might claim, the police were still known for their male-dominated culture and rumours of endemic freemasonry were never far away. Even so, as I watched her slap my dad down like a naughty puppy, I wondered if she’d found it challenging at all.
‘Why the short notice?’ I said. ‘We’re all having dinner with Nicki next week. There wasn’t anything worth discussing in the investigator’s report. It could have waited.’
‘Not really. There were a few things we thought were important,’ said Liz. ‘What did you think of Iona by the way?’
‘She’s definitely a piece of work,’ I said. ‘Not someone to cross.’
Liz laughed. ‘Well spotted. I decided years ago that keeping on the right side of Iona is the smart move,’ she said. ‘That said, she’s bloody good at what she does.’
I lifted my copy of Iona’s report. ‘Yes. This is exactly what we needed. Thanks for the introduction – and for convincing me to do it in the first place.’
‘Not a problem,’ she said, picking up her own copy of the report and looking over to Daz. ‘Daz? Do you want to take this?’
Something wasn’t right. The three of them, even my dad, were sharing shifty looks and avoiding direct eye contact with me.
‘What’s going on?’ I said.
Daz cleared his throat. ‘You know we agreed to limit the investigation to the basics?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And that’s what the investigator gave us.’
‘That’s what she gave you,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t comfortable and asked Liz to give her friend a call …’
‘Why?’ I said, although I could see what was coming.
‘We asked her to dig a little deeper,’ he said. ‘Just in case. We weren’t going to tell you originally, but now I think we have to.’
‘You did what?’ I said, pushing my chair back with a screech and hearing my voice squeak up an octave or two. ‘You knew what I thought about it and carried on behind my back, anyway?’
To give Daz his dues, he looked ashamed, as did the others. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but when you hear what she found …’
I stood up. ‘I don’t want to know what sordid little secrets you dug up,’ I said, stomping towards the door. ‘I don’t care. She’s my sister, not yours. I won’t let you ruin everything.’
The door slammed behind me as I ran out.
I’d almost reached Paddington Basin by the time Dad caught up with me.
‘Sam,’ he said, gasping for breath. ‘Hang on a second. You’re behaving like a bloody infant.’
‘And what about you lot?’ I said. ‘You’re all treating me like a child, so don’t be surprised if I behave like one.’ I glared at him. ‘Did you know what they were up to?’
‘Not until this morning,’ he said. ‘They gave me a heads up just before you arrived.’
‘Why didn’t you stick up for me, then?’
‘I tried, until they explained what Iona found. I’m sorry, but I think you have to hear it.’
I turned away, tears pricking at my eyes. The last thing I wanted was to fall out with my closest friends and family.
‘And then what am I going to tell Nicki?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘But you can’t just stick your head in the sand. Come back and listen to what Daz has to say and then we’ll figure out what to do next.’
What choice did I have? The problem was that I couldn’t stop myself picturing the look of betrayal on Nicki’s face when she found out I’d been spying on her. I knew how it would make me feel.
When we got back to Red Pepper, Daz was standing in the doorway. ‘I’m really sorry, Sam,’ he said, handing me his – much thicker – report. ‘Read this and then we can talk.’
I sat at an outside table, flicking though the document which was clear and to the point. With each passing paragraph I realised that Daz and Liz were right. However much I wanted things to be simple, life rarely was. And in this instance, there were too many unanswered questions to ignore.
Once I’d finished reading, I walked back inside with my head bowed. ‘OK. I get it. What now?’
Daz pointed at Liz. ‘I think Liz should talk us through the main points, if everyone agrees?’
We all nodded. She was the only one who knew what she was talking about.
‘OK,’ said Liz, opening the report in front of her. ‘The way I see it there are a number of key facts – each of which throws up a bunch of unanswered questions.’ She looked around the table – presumably to make sure we were all paying attention. ‘These are, in no special order: the arrest and prosecution of Nicki’s adopted father, Damian, which led to her being taken into care; Damian’s sudden death ten years later; Joe conveniently appearing on the scene just as Damian is prosecuted; the source of Joe’s money; Joe’s sudden death; and finally, the fact that Nicki was a Pulsar Scholar and worked for Pulsar for five years.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Have I missed anything?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said my dad. ‘One thought, though. You imply that Joe kept the relationship secret until Nicki was taken into care. There’s another possibility … maybe he didn’t know? Maybe Fabiola never told him about Nicki?’
‘If that was true,’ said Daz, ‘how did he find out about Nicki after Fabiola’s death? What changed?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Liz, ‘but that doesn’t mean it’s not a possible scenario. We have to consider the possibility that Joe didn’t know about Nicki.’
‘It does make more sense in some ways,’ said my dad. ‘If he’d known before, would he have sat back and accepted the adoption?’
I held up the report. ‘Before we get carried away with wild conjecture,’ I said, ‘what about the last paragraph of the summary? Listen to this! "I have never seen such a spotless data signature. In my experience, it isn’t possible for someone of Nicki’Taylor’s generation to h
ave such a vanilla digital profile without highly skilled and pro-active management. This may have been carried out by her current employer, Odell Services, which is itself extremely good at limiting publicly available information." I know that Nicki is some sort of artificial intelligence expert, but this must be important. There’s nothing tangible, but what about the spaces where things are supposed to be. Isn’t that suspicious?’
Daz nodded. ‘I thought the same,’ he said. ‘It made me think of when I was a kid. We had a big tree at the end of our garden, a massive old oak. It was the first thing I saw out of my window every morning. One night when I was maybe eight or nine, there was a huge storm – thunder, lightning, the works. I was curled up in bed too scared to sleep.
‘When the storm stopped, I got up and went to the window. It was pitch black, but something was wrong, something was missing. I couldn’t see a thing, but I knew the tree was gone.’
It was the first time I’d heard Uncle Daz speak about his childhood. He’d had a house and a garden. Maybe his upbringing had been more conventional than I’d thought.
He continued. ‘Sorry, Sam. Rambling on. I’m just agreeing with you that missing things leave a mark on what stays behind – or something like that. We can’t ignore the things which aren’t there, but are supposed to be.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly my point.’ I closed the report and placed it face down on the table in front of me. ‘What are we saying here? That these aren’t simply coincidences? That someone else has been involved in Nicki’s life?’
The waitress came over to our table with two huge pizzas and we sat in silence while she cut them into segments, crunching the pizza wheel from edge to edge with long practised strokes. Once she’d gone, it was Daz who spoke first.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘We all know what everyone’s thinking. This smells of Jax, or Julie, or whatever you want to call her. Nicki is Fabi’s daughter and, if Jax knew about her, that could easily give her reason enough to interfere.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Let’s face it, none of us believe that her latching on to Sam was a coincidence. For Jax, it’s all about Fabiola and always has been.’
‘If that’s true,’ said Liz, ‘then anything’s possible. Literally anything.’
‘And we have no idea if Nicki knows anything about this,’ I said. ‘Let’s face it. I lived with Julie for two years and didn’t have a clue that she and Jax were the same person. If I hadn’t found that phone with pictures of her and Mum together, I still wouldn’t know.’
The pizzas sat untouched on the small table and I could see from the grim faces in front of me that we were all drawing the same disturbing conclusions.
I knew I should tell them about Dave having met Nicki and Julie together, and the Milinsky report with its implication that Julie was co-ordinating some kind of cyber attack against me, even from behind bars. I knew that I should, but it would only feed their suspicion and paranoia about Nicki and I couldn’t face any more of that.
‘No. We don’t know if Nicki knows anything,’ said Liz. ‘In fact, we have no evidence – apart from our own suspicions – that there is anything to know. There is no indication that Julie Martin is even aware that Nicki is Fabiola’s daughter, let alone evidence that she’s sitting like a spider behind some macabre scheme to manage her life.’
‘We have to tell her what we know,’ I said. ‘We have to tell Nicki.’
Although I wasn’t surprised that neither my father, Daz or Liz agreed with me, I hadn’t expected such passionate resistance and we argued in ever-diminishing circles for half an hour as the pizza quietly morphed into cold, soggy cardboard.
I’d known they would be afraid to tell Nicki about the investigator, and I understood why. Even so, I couldn’t help being frustrated by their failure to see my point of view and to appreciate the conflicts which raged inside me. How was I supposed to bond with my new sister while hiding all of these ugly worries and suspicions?
She’d need to know at some point, and every day that went by before she did was another turn of the rack, stretching any hope of trust to breaking point and beyond.
We were all exhausted by the time we gave up arguing, paid the bill and left. As we turned down Formosa Street towards Warrington Crescent, Daz put a hand on my shoulder.
‘Got another ten minutes, Sam,’ he said. ‘Maybe we could grab a pint at the Warrington? Just the two of us.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Just a quick one though.’
We said goodbye to the other two and walked along the soft curve of white stucco houses to the pub. Once we were settled at one of the outside tables, Daz turned to me.
‘I get that you feel you’re between a rock and a hard place,’ he said. ‘And it must look like we’re ganging up on you. But I need to you to understand a few things. It’s up to you how much you actually accept, but do me a favour and hear me out. OK?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I can’t promise I’ll change my mind though.’
‘That’s up to you,’ he said. ‘I’ll start at the beginning.’
His eyes glazed over and an unfamiliar frown spread over his face. ‘I’m the only one of us who actually knew Jax before she became Julie,’ he said, speaking slowly and carefully, almost as though he was in a trance. ‘You saw glimpses, but by the time you met her, she was already the polished article with years of experience of hiding the raw malice underneath. Even after everything you’ve been through, I can see that you, and even Liz and your dad, are shying away from believing the worst. You don’t want to live in a world where that kind of evil exists.
‘It’s not actually evil – I don’t believe in that sort of thing – it’s something worse. Jax is a high-functioning psychopath. She has no concept of empathy, she simply doesn’t care and that’s the part that normal people can’t grasp.
‘Not only did I spend years in her circle when she was younger, I’ve also been working in mental health my whole life and I’ve worked with hundreds of psychopaths. They’re quite different from the other patients; they don’t have an illness as such, they have a fundamental personality disorder which, unlike most mental illnesses, can’t be cured or improved.’
‘So psychopaths are never released back into the community?’
‘Actually quite the opposite, but that’s a failing of the system,’ said Daz. ‘They tend to be better at gaming the assessment processes and charming the decision-makers, so a lot get out. That doesn’t mean they were cured though, and they tend to re-offend.’
‘If you’re right, why didn’t her lawyer claim some sort of diminished responsibility?’
‘You’re not getting it, Sam,’ said Daz. ‘Jax doesn’t see herself as flawed or damaged, she believes she’s a superior being. She would never allow her legal team to use that argument. She’s in a completely different league from any patient I’ve ever known.
‘She sees the world in a totally narcissistic way and there’s no point in trying to identify with her or to double guess what she’s going to do. For Jax, reality is in a state of flux, constantly changing with her always at the centre. She has a simple concept of right and wrong. Whatever she decides to do is right, and that’s it.’
I found myself struggling to take in what Uncle Daz was saying. For hours I’d been listening to older people telling me how I should think and I’d reached some sort of limit.
‘We’ve talked about this before,’ I said, trying not to sound rude. ‘And I’ve lived a lot of it. Whatever you believe, I really think that I do understand what she’s capable of and she terrifies me … but she’s safely locked up now.’
‘… As she was when Nicki’s father died suddenly. Just when he was about to tell you more about Nicki.’
‘You don’t seriously think …?’
Daz looked at me and shrugged.
‘… But she couldn’t have known we’d be going to see Joe …’
He shrugged again.
‘But …’
I decided to assume that Uncle Daz
was allowing his paranoia to get the better of him. Although he was probably right about the kind of person Julie was, that didn’t mean she had anything to do with Nicki. I wondered if he’d been reading too many crime thrillers. Or maybe he and Liz just fired each other up?
Even assuming he was right, it still made sense to tell Nicki the truth. That would bring everything out into the open and I didn’t see what more I could do to protect myself from Julie. With hindsight, I was relieved that I’d kept the whole business with Dave and the Milinsky report to myself. It wouldn’t make a difference one way or the other
After a string of back-and-forth emails, I managed to reach a compromise with Dad, Liz and Daz; they accepted that I was going to tell Nicki about our investigation and I agreed I wouldn’t say anything until after we’d finished eating, and then only if I still felt it was a good idea.
Nicki lived in North London and had suggested a hot new Italian restaurant on the corner of Almeida Street in Islington. In normal circumstances I wouldn’t have had any problems getting there on time. The London transport system had other ideas, however, and I was a hot and sweaty twenty minutes late by the time I arrived.
I took a second to watch Daz, Nicki and my dad from across the room – they seemed to be having a good time. Liz had decided not to join us – she hadn’t really known Fabiola.
‘Apologies for being late,’ I said walking up to the table and leaning down to give Nicki a kiss. ‘Sorry, Nicki.’
‘Not a problem,’ she said. ‘We’ve been having a nice time. We just ordered drinks and I was about to ask Daz to tell me about Fabiola.’
‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘You carry on.’
Nicki smiled and turned to face Uncle Daz.
‘So, Daz,’ said Nicki. ‘You knew Fabiola at university? When she was … what?’
‘Eighteen or nineteen,’ said Daz.