Fresh Flesh

by Stella Duffy

  “This is exciting.”

  “It doesn’t tell us anything for definite.”

  “It tells us she’s bloody worried. It confirms the address Molly had for him. Best of all, it tells us he doesn’t take Georgina seriously.”

  “And how is that good?”

  “Means he’s not worried. She is, so she knows she needs to be careful. He doesn’t know that yet. Which in turn means he’s much more likely to make a mistake. I reckon Lees is my next port of call.”

  Carrie went into the last e-mail, from Georgina to Lees.

  “Fuck. Look. Sukie.”

  Saz looked and what she read made her feel sick.

  “I can confirm that Ms Planchet is currently not in a position to disturb you.”

  Saz shook her head, said nothing.

  “What’s wrong, that’s good isn’t it? You did think she might have had something to do with Sukie getting beaten up?”

  “Thought it, but really hoped not. And it’s not like this proves anything for definite. It’s legal-speak, it could mean anything.”

  “But it is what you suspected.”

  “Yeah. Bitch. Maybe that’s what Sukie left me a message about. Wanted to tell me she’d been in touch with Lees.” Saz sighed, ran her hands through her hair, “Keep going, girlie, it’s good we’ve confirmed what I thought, but we need something bigger than this to get her.”

  Saz found the bigger thing twenty minutes later. Drawing a blank in the messy filing cabinets, she decided to try the cupboards. At the back of the second she found several dated cardboard boxes – Richard Leyton’s notes. And struck gold with the first box she tried. Halfway down the pile there was a thin file. Inside were just six sheets of paper. The top one was a copy of some form of adoption certificate. For Patrick Freeman. It stated that he was in perfect health, gave the time and date of his birth – 30th August, the date he’d always been told by his adoptive parents – Lillian’s name, and finally a brief outline of the emotional difficulties his mother was currently facing, and her delight that her child would be going to a good home. Saz read the last statement with huge relief. Until then she hadn’t really acknowledged how concerned she’d been that the Freemans might have known the extent of Lees’ duplicity. While actually buying the baby in the first place was bad enough, what really disturbed her was the possibility that his parents might also have known that Lees had told Lillian her baby was dead. That they might have been party to the entirety of the lie. At least it was not quite as bad as both she and Patrick had silently feared. At the bottom of the page was a reminder that the “demand for the adoption arrangement fee” would follow with a separate invoice – at a suitable interval.

  The following pages were of other babies, in chronological order. Some with full birth certificate and details, others with the thinnest of resumés. Saz wasn’t surprised to see that one of the babies was Luke. His mother’s name was listed but not the father’s. A pencilled amendment stated the mother had refused to give out this information – Saz thought briefly of how hard it might have been for her to keep that to herself. Especially with both Lees and Leyton pressing her.

  The fourth page listed the baby adopted by Margaret and Peter Marquand. Saz saw the surname and gasped audibly, “I’ve found him.”

  “Who?”

  “Chris. These are adoption certificates. Sort of. From Leyton. There’s a bunch of them. This one is Chris.”

  Saz held the page out to Carrie, her hand shaking.

  Carrie frowned. “Well, come on. Tell me what it says.”

  Saz looked down, terrified of what she was about to read. Hoping she could now name her baby’s grandmother. Grandparents. Praying they hadn’t known about the baby sale either. So scared of what she might have to tell Chris. The father wasn’t listed. The mother was named as Sara Fisher. The baby had been born healthy. The mother was physically well. Only on this certificate there was no mention of an adoption fee. She read through the page three times and then gave it to Carrie who was equally perplexed, “I don’t get it, Saz, if Lees and Leyton were making money every time they gave away a baby, what’s so special about Chris? Why not him? Were they doing the Marquands a favour, or what?”

  Saz shrugged and then, comprehension sickening her, let out a half laugh which turned into a groan as she covered her mouth. “Oh shit.”

  “What?”

  “I think I might know.”

  “What?”

  Saz sighed and held out her hand for the papers, “You just said it yourself. What’s so special about Chris? Out of the four children we know about? He’s the only black one. Mixed race. ‘Half-caste’ to them.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, what do you think? Nearly forty years ago? Knowing what we do about these people, how they treated Lillian? They wrote her off as a nutter for years. They’re hardly the most enlightened of souls.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. Fuck. Lucky they didn’t know he was going to grow up to be queer as well.”

  The two women were silent for a moment, Saz wondering if there wasn’t an alternative explanation that wouldn’t hurt Chris still more. And when that didn’t come, she decided to ignore the nastier assumptions for the moment and concentrate on the good news that at least they had found a name for his mother.

  Saz made copies of the letters and then placed the boxes back in the cupboard. Carrie printed off a few of the e-mails – “a few of the begging notes to Lees and then just the sexier ones mostly, you never know when you’re going to want to do a spot of blackmail – I bet this bloke she’s writing to in Geneva is married, she only ever contacts him at his office.”

  They left the originals of the keys back in the reception desk from where Carrie had stolen them, locking themselves out again with a variety of passwords and the extra set of keys Carrie had had cut that afternoon. Just before she returned the nice suit to the nice lady at Marks & Spencers. They ran silently down the stairs and Carrie reset the alarm and locked the door behind her. Saz couldn’t quite believe how smoothly it had all gone, couldn’t believe they had just got away with it – especially not with Carrie by her side who, even if she was fantastically useful, was also prone to having at least one personal crisis an evening. But not this time. This time it was all fine. In a sick relief kind of way.

  The two women ran straight down into Oxford Street and then grabbed a passing cab. As they finally relaxed into the back seat, Carrie cuddled into Saz, “We’re such a good team, you and me. Why did we ever split up?”

  Not yet ready to be interrupted from her reverie on the iniquities of inequality, Saz wasn’t in any mood for game-playing with her ex, “Because you dumped me, trampled on my heart, ripped it into tiny pieces and then refused to speak to me for a year. You bitch.”

  “Oh yeah, sorry.”

  “Nah, it’s OK. I think I got the better deal in the end.”

  The taxi pulled up outside Saz and Molly’s flat just as first sun hit the windows at the front of the house. Saz paid the driver quickly and walked a half-sleeping Carrie inside. She settled her friend onto the sofa, covered her with a thin blanket and then went through to her own room to give Molly an early wake-up call for her early morning shift.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Molly wasn’t impressed. Not by Saz’s soft wake-up kiss to her upper lip, full kiss on fuller lips. Not impressed either by Saz’s less soft wake-up stroke of her summer-bed naked body. It was morning, she’d slept badly and could well have done with the extra half-hour allowed her by the alarm clock. She was least impressed by Saz’s story of her night’s exploits. It wasn’t that Molly was especially fussed about having slept another night on her own. Long years of shift work and only slightly fewer years of shift-sleeping with Saz meant that she was perfectly happy to go to bed with a duvet all her own. What really annoyed Molly though, what had her storming back from the shower to loom dripping over a semi-comatose Saz, was the stupidity of breaking into a highly secure building in the middle of t
he night.

  “For fuck’s sake, Saz, when are you going to get it into your head? This is our baby! Things have changed, we have a future to think about.”

  “There’s always been our future to think about.”

  “There hasn’t always been three of us. What if you’d been caught? I’m hardly going into this hoping to be a single parent.”

  “We weren’t caught.”

  “Or worse, if this woman really is such a bitch, who knows what she might have done if you’d bumped into her?”

  “Moll, I hardly think Georgina is a gun-toting crim.”

  “But you are assuming she had something to do with Sukie Planchet getting hurt.”

  “Yeah, I am. Not that there’s any direct proof.”

  “But you don’t trust her?”

  “Not as far as I could throw her.”

  “Well, that’s my point.”

  “Yeah, OK. I don’t trust Georgina. But that’s not quite the same as thinking she might have hurt Sukie herself. Georgina’s far more subtle than that. And anyway, if anything had gone wrong I would have been done for breaking and entering. That’s all.”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Yes, of course, but at least if we had been caught, I would have had to explain why I was there. I could have told the cops about Lees and what I think about Georgina’s involvement. It wouldn’t have mattered that I was breaking my promise to Lillian and Patrick.”

  Molly shook out her long dark hair, furious water drops spraying Saz. “You make it sound like you wanted to get caught.”

  “Of course I didn’t. But actually, I already knew it wouldn’t be the worst-case scenario.”

  Molly turned from combing out her hair, “And that is?”

  “That is that you are carrying our baby.”

  “Oh thanks, I thought you wanted this as much as I do.”

  “I do. Of course I do, Moll. I just didn’t want to have to feel so weird about it. So compromised. We don’t know anything about what Lees has been up to in the years since he was last selling babies to other people.”

  “Yes we do, Saz. He’s been selling babies to people like us.”

  “That’s what I mean. His career progression doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence in the man.”

  Molly sat down on the end of the bed. “Me neither. I don’t feel any better about this than you do. I hate that we’ve uncovered horrible things about the man. But that was a long time ago. We checked out the clinic, we went into this with our eyes wide open. Lees has never actually worked there himself, he only set it up. He’s too important to work there, he’s on the board but never seems to go to any meetings—”

  “How do you know?”

  “You think I didn’t look into him more myself? Of course I care about it too, it’s a very horrible, quite yucky coincidence. But that’s all it is – a coincidence. The man who started our clinic happens to have been a baddie at some point in his life. Who hasn’t?”

  “Oh, come on, Moll …”

  “No, listen to me. I’m not excusing him. Of course it’s awful – criminal, unforgivable – what he did to Lillian. To Chris’s mother. But you know, he also did what those adoptive parents wanted. He gave them their baby.”

  “The Freemans paid for theirs.”

  “So did we.”

  “We’re different.”

  “We think we are, but you know as well as I do that there are plenty of people who’d think what we’re doing is wrong. And irresponsible.”

  “We’re not lying about it, it’s not illegal. This is different.”

  “I don’t know, babe. In the end, no matter how legal we are, we’re still doing it for exactly the same, selfish reason that everyone does. We’re having a baby because we want to. Because we can. Just like the Freemans, only they didn’t have the same resources as we do now. I’m not excusing them, I just don’t think of the whole thing in quite the same black and white terms that you do. What Lees did then was bad, what he’s created since then has helped us.”

  “That’s my problem. What I know now just taints it all.”

  Molly climbed back into bed beside Saz, her long wet hair falling over her girlfriend. “No it doesn’t, hon. This baby isn’t touched by any of that shit. You are. You’ve really gone off on this one.”

  “I hate it. I hate that it affects us.”

  “I know you do, but it was always going to be complicated, we knew that. You’ve found Patrick’s mum. You’ve got a name for Chris’s. Find out about her and you’ve done the job. That’s it. Let it go.”

  “I can’t. I know too much of other people’s stories. I’ve got Luke’s mother’s name now, how can I not tell him about her?”

  Molly got up again, picking up her towels to take them to the bathroom. “I don’t know babe, but I can’t imagine why you’d ever want to go near him again, assuming what you do about Sukie. This isn’t just someone else’s life you’re digging around in, it’s ours. And it worries me. You don’t have any perspective – or even less than usual. I’m just scared that you’ll go too far.”

  Saz watched Molly leave the room, unable to reassure her. As she’d said herself, she now knew far too much. And too little.

  When she woke four hours later it was to the rich smell of breakfast. She pulled on a T-shirt, stumbled blearily from bed and walked through to the kitchen where Carrie was beaming at her over fresh coffee, bacon and eggs, mushrooms and grilled tomatoes.

  “Good morning, darling. My, you do look attractive. I’d forgotten how delicious you are first thing.”

  “I doubt you ever noticed. What is this?”

  “Breakfast. What does it look like?”

  “It looks,” Saz said, reaching a shaking hand for the coffee, “like you’ve invaded my house. Did you see Molly this morning?”

  “Nope. But I did hear her. Just hormones or is she always that grumpy?”

  “Neither. She’s concerned for me.”

  “Sweet.”

  “Very. So shut it and pass me that breakfast thing.”

  For a few minutes Saz ate in silence, then on the second egg, fourth rasher of bacon, she looked up, “This is brilliant. When did you learn to cook?”

  Carrie shook her head, “Saz, this is breakfast, it’s not cooking. You don’t need Delia to tell you how to fry an egg.”

  Saz shrugged, her mouth full, hand reaching for a slice of bread to mop up the plate, “Don’t tell Delia.”

  Breakfast over, Saz had a very brief conversation with Gary, giving him Sara Fisher’s name – and nothing else other than a quick pep talk about how much faith she had in his investigative powers. She put the phone down, well aware that she was asking an awful lot for such a little. But he’d found Lillian, maybe he’d score on this one too. Then she and Carrie went into the sitting room where they spread out the smuggled papers on the table. They decided that Saz would deal with Sukie. She’d also contact Chris once she’d heard back from Gary, and then they would both speak to Luke, though neither of them felt up to telling him about his parentage in the top room at Bar Rage. Saz thought it would be far better done at home or on neutral ground, ideally with Luke as sober and coke-free as possible. Carrie was more concerned that a negative reaction might spoil a potentially good night out. They decided to leave the other unknown adoptees until something more was found out about Lees. Neither woman fancied contacting strangers out of the blue and turning their lives upside down for them. That was far more the province of Patrick’s little social worker. Saz did, however, mean to deal with Lees as soon as possible.

  “I want to meet him. I really want to know who I’m dealing with.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Not sure. Molly says he works from home now, so I guess I could just go and see him. Turn up, tell him I’m researching the clinic’s work, flatter him.”

  “He’s probably a bit more careful than that, Saz.”

  “He’s an old man, he’ll be happy to talk about his li
fetime’s achievements. I doubt he gets that much publicity; for obvious reasons he’s had to stay pretty much in the background. And yet, all this playing God with other people’s lives, some part of him must want to brag about it. Anyway, I’m hardly going to ask him to tell me about all the babies that he’s sold. I’ll just start him on the clinic and see what follows from there.”

  Carrie shrugged, “OK, if you have to. You know, Saz, I don’t want to sound like Molly, but I have to say this isn’t really your job any more. I mean, you could just pass all this information on to the adoptees and let them make up their minds themselves …”

  Saz glared at Carrie, “You’re right. You don’t want to sound like Molly. Now, anything else, or shall we get on?”

  “Yeah, there is actually.” Carrie looked at Saz and hesitated.

  “Well, what?”

  Carrie pulled out a couple of pieces of paper from her bag, “Ah – now, you’re not going to like it when I tell you what I’ve done, but you are going to like what I’m giving you.”

  “Get on with it, Carrie.”

  “Right. OK. I found these when you went to photocopy the other stuff.”

  “Where?”

  “One of the other boxes. The next one down from the one you were working on actually.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me while we were there?”

  “You were already pissed off about Chris and the money stuff, I didn’t trust you to keep your temper.”

  “Brilliant.”

  “Yeah … and … well …” Carrie winced, anticipating Saz’s reaction, “I knew you wouldn’t want me taking away originals—”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

  “See? But I just think these are far more valuable to us as originals than copies. I knew you wouldn’t let me bring them with us.”

  “So you waited until we got back to tell me. God, Carrie, you’re devious.”

  “Yeah, but I think you’ll thank me.”

  “Well, what is it?”