A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  A car had drawn up, the kind the hire firms like to describe as an executive car, long and silver with a driver in a suit.

  ‘The number, Paul.’

  ‘Not sure where I’ve put the blasted thing. Look, would you get it from Corinthia, sweetheart? Have to go—late already.’ Scooping up the holdall, he planted a kiss on my cheek and would have marched down the path if I hadn’t held out a hand.

  ‘The name of the hotel, then.’

  ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘You didn’t give me a name, Paul.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lexxy, I can’t remember!’

  ‘Ronnie Buck’s booked it for you, has he?’

  Paul gave an overblown sigh and rolled his eyes.

  ‘Or are you staying at his place?’

  His expression grew sullen, his eyes gleamed with something approaching hatred. ‘It’s just a tennis weekend!’

  ‘Courtesy of Ronnie Buck?’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with that, for God’s sake?’ he argued scathingly. ‘He’s a client, he pays his bills on time—which is more than can be said for most of our customers, the Legal Aid Board included. It’s normal to accept hospitality from a client. Everyone does it, for God’s sake, except, it seems, for us. We’re too grand! We’re above such things!’

  I stepped aside to let him pass. ‘Go, then.’

  The abruptness of my retreat unsettled him. He retorted sarcastically, ‘So I have your approval?’

  ‘You do what you like, Paul. You know my feelings, you knew them when you decided to go.’

  ‘Fine. Fine. So I’m damned for ever, am I? Not to be forgiven?’

  I hadn’t realized I’d come to any sort of decision until I heard myself say, ‘I’ll be gone when you come back.’

  He knew what I meant, but he needed to hear it again. ‘Gone?’

  ‘I’ll have left. Moved out. I think we both need a breaks don’t you?’

  He lowered the holdall, he gave me a reproachful look. ‘And this is the time to be discussing such a thing?’

  ‘Yes, it is actually. Yes, this is the time.’

  ‘So!’ With a theatrical gesture, he indicated the path. ‘I walk down here, I get in the car, and that’s it!’

  Everything seemed confused and clear all at the same time. ‘I think so. For a while at least. Why don’t we say a month? And then we can talk about it again.’

  For an instant he looked at me fiercely, as if I were to blame for creating this crisis, before lifting both hands in a gesture of bewilderment and impotence. ‘I’ll stay, then,’ he said heavily. I’ll stay. ‘

  But that wasn’t the answer and we both knew it. We stood in silence for a time, then he picked up the holdall again and said sadly, ‘We’ll talk when I get back, then. Eh, Lexxy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused a moment longer, then with an awkward nod walked towards the shiny silver car.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The heat hung over the streets in a hazy pall of orange light. There was no movement in the air and no likelihood of any. Fumes billowed out from the crawling traffic and went nowhere. Diners abandoned the pavement tables for the more familiar hazards of the smoky interiors; cyclists wore masks with skull-and-crossbones motifs. For a week the media had been broadcasting air-quality warnings, and the forecasters saw no immediate prospect of an improvement. It was ninety degrees in the street, and not much less in the claustrophobic second-floor office on the Gray’s Inn Road. When I had agreed to take the place, in the bracing winds of a particularly crisp Aprils the rent had seemed very reasonable.

  Across the room Sturgess sat with rivulets of sweat at his temple and damp Romanesque curls across his forehead, clutching a phone to his ear, trying to extract information from a police station on the other side of town. Lisa, the third member of our team, sat in the next room, transcribing a taped interview onto the WP.

  I was studying the monthly balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements for the partnership of O’Neill & Sturgess. At various times in the last three months the accountant had tried to explain how these figures should be read, but I still found it baffling that the balance at the bottom of the page bore no relation to how much cash you had in the bank, and the profit-and-loss statements failed to reveal whether you were making money or not. I wanted to know if we were going to break even this months but had few clues so far. All I knew was that Gary and I were taking on all the work we could get, the duty shifts that the other firms didn’t want or couldn’t do, last-minute jobs, referrals, pass-me-downs. If we weren’t starting to make money then there was something seriously wrong. One thing was certain, with accommodation like this we couldn’t accuse ourselves of going mad over the fixed costs.

  The phone rang and Lisa called through the open door, ‘Jason Hedley for you, Alex.’

  My first reaction was pleasure that he should have tracked me down, my second—and more prudent—was to brace myself. ‘And how are you, Jason? What can I do for you?’

  ‘Thought you’d gone away when they said you wasn’t there no more,’ he complained mildly.

  I’ve set up a new practice, that’s all. But otherwise it’s business as usual. When did you get out, Jason?’

  ‘’Bout three weeks ago.’

  ‘Pentonville, wasn’t it? Treat you okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Okay.’

  ‘In trouble again?’ But I already knew from his voice.

  A long pause. When he finally spoke, it was in a tone of despair. ‘Didn’t mean to, Mrs O’Neill. Didn’t know what they was planning. Never thought they was goin’ to go for the bloke. Never would’ve agreed otherwise. The truths Mrs O’Neill.’

  I got what details I could. The nick was Lewisham, the charge—so far—robbery: two hundred quid from a petrol station. Some injury had been done to the attendant, but from Jason’s garbled account I couldn’t tell if the man had been pushed, shoved or cracked over the head. The only thing I did manage to establish was that no weapons had been involved. At this stage I was grateful for small mercies.

  I told him I’d try to be there within the hour. Jason didn’t need to be instructed not to say anything until I arrived, but I reminded him anyway.

  ‘Robbery charge,’ I told Gary when he came off the phone. ‘Lewisham.’

  ‘Known to us?’

  ‘Jason Hedley. Small stuff till now. Chickens from supermarkets. Funny, but I had hopes for him. Thought he’d got a chance of sorting himself out.’

  ‘You’re just an old romantic, Alex.’

  ‘An optimist,’ I pointed out darkly.

  ‘Same thing?

  ‘So much to learn, Gary.’

  He offered in a more sympathetic tone, ‘Perhaps a big one’ll finally do the trick.’

  ‘What, three years inside?’

  He raised both hands, demonstrating possibilities. Watching me load my briefcase, he added, ‘You’ll let me know a.s.a.p., won’t you, if it looks like running into tomorrow so I can sub for you?’

  ‘I don’t think we want you showing your nose in Lewisham just at the moment, Gary.’ The Russell trial was only a month away; by now the two sides would have exchanged final documents, with Gary’s statement prominent among them.

  Gary brushed this aside. ‘Yeah, but we don’t want you sweating in a hot cell with a common-or-garden robbery when you’re meant to be doing heavy family duty at your brother’s wedding, do we?’

  The wedding. I still hadn’t got a suitable hat. I hadn’t even begun to think of what shoes I should wear with the blue suit I had bought in haste as soon as Edward gave me the news. Somehow, with all the changes in my life, the unstructured evenings, the baffling choice of ways to fill them, I seemed by some curious evolution to have far less time for mundane tasks than ever before, as if the absence of a domestic routine had undermined every other organizational instinct. I had failed to collect my laundry for three weeks running; there was never any food in the fridge—though in my present state of mind, this was a
sort of freedom; and I hadn’t managed to get to the hairdresser for over two months. Instead, I filled my spare time with films and plays and suppers with friends, or semi-business evenings with Gary and his girlfriend. I didn’t spend much time at my rented one-room flat at Chalk Farm: too inept at being alone, too disorientated, too unhappy.

  As I went out through the door, Lisa called, ‘Enjoy the wedding.’

  It was too late to find a hat now; the cream straw with the curvy brim would have to do service yet again, and I hoped I had remembered to pack my only suitable shoes in the two suitcases I’d brought from the house.

  The shady side of the street offered little relief from the heat and by the time I reached the car park I could feel the sweat running inside my shirt. The air conditioning in my car had broken some weeks ago and in the heatwave the repair companies laughed at the idea of fixing it this side of Christmas. The road to Lewisham was slow: there was a traffic-light failure on the Old Kent Road. By the time I reached Lewisham police station, my face was bright pink, my hair dank.

  The cells were stuffy with the scent of too many people with too many problems jammed into too little space. The air smelt of stale sweat and greasy food and cheap disinfectant.

  The month in Pentonville had changed Jason in the way prison changes everyone: he seemed harder and brasher and more cynical. I got more details from him, the date, time and place of the offence, the names of the other boys, their histories, the drugs situation—all three of them high on cannabis and booze—and the story of the robbery itself. Jason said he hadn’t realized what the others were planning. He’d only gone along for the ride. It was the least original defence in the book, but with the benefit of familiarity and plausibility.

  I advised him to co-operate at the forthcoming interview, to tell the police everything, and he agreed.

  ‘Blown it this time, eh?’

  ‘It’ll be a custodial sentence, that’s for sure. Can’t say how long, not yet. But you could look on it as a beginning, you know, not an end.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he sighed sarcastically. ‘Sure. Like this time was goin’ to be.’

  ‘Have faith in yourself, Jason. Take a leap. Go on a youth training scheme, get a skill, move out of the city. Think big, think possibilities.’

  He glared at me, hardly knowing whether to scoff or grimace, before bending his head low and shaking it slowly.

  ‘And while you’re on bail, we’ll see if we can’t get you on a course of some kind, get you started before you go inside. What d’you fancy? Carpentry, arithmetic, reading and writing, plumbing, bricklaying?’

  He was shaking his head again, but less forcefully.

  ‘And I’ll send you stuff when you’re inside. Books and tapes and ideas for when you get out.’

  ‘Jesus, Mrs O’Neill, I dunno. I…’ He sank his head almost to his knees and covered his face with his hands.

  I patted his shoulder. ‘I know all right.’ Though all I knew, really, was that he needed someone to believe in him.

  There was the usual delay before Jason’s interview could start: one of the detectives was unavailable. While waiting, I took my mobile out into the street and called Ray Dodworth. I was asking him to check out Jason’s friends when I vaguely noticed a car sweep into the kerb, a large shiny Jaguar with tinted windows. I paid more attention when all four doors opened and Ronnie Buck emerged from the back seat, his stocky figure looking cool and uncreased in the sort of lightweight silvery grey suit that gangsters wear in American films. I was so busy watching Ronnie that it was a moment before I realized that Paul had got out of the other side and was walking rapidly round the car to join Ronnie on the pavement.

  Ray’s voice said in my ear: ‘You still there, Alex?’

  ‘Speak to you later.’ I turned away and hurried back into the police station, but not before I saw Paul glance towards me and do a perfect double-take.

  Jason’s interview took an hour, the statement another forty minutes. He was scheduled to appear at Clerkenwell Magistrates Court on Monday morning when I would make the first of what would probably be a number of bail applications.

  By the time I got outside again, it was six and a little cooler. Whatever had brought Ronnie Buck to Lewisham police station it hadn’t detained him long: the Jaguar with the tinted windows had gone.

  Walking head down, wondering if I still had time to find a hat, I didn’t notice the car door opening ahead of me, the man stepping out, until Paul’s voice called my name.

  ‘I was hoping to catch you.’ He smiled a quick, diffident smile. ‘Was hoping you might be on for a drink.’

  He seemed larger, smarter, grander, though I couldn’t at first make out why.

  I said, ‘I have to get back.’

  ‘Just ten minutes. No time. A quick glass on the river.’

  The car was the latest Mercedes. The driver wore a crisp shirt and red tie with a logo I couldn’t read. Following my gaze, Paul laughed rather awkwardly.

  ‘Oh, hire him by the hour.’ Then, hastily, as though to justify himself: ‘Got a good deal. Shopped around. You know.’

  I saw now that he had been shopping for clothes as well. His suit was a new one, lightweight medium-grey and beautifully cut with hand stitching on the lapels: Jermyn Street, by the look of it. His cufflinks were new too, chunky and gold. He looked prosperous and not too worried about showing it.

  ‘Just ten minutes, Lexxy.’ He said it lightly, but there was a hint of purpose in his eyes, a suggestion of an agenda.

  ‘I have to get to the shops before they close.’

  He tilted his head to one side, he gave me a look of warm entreaty.

  We went to a place on the river with a terrace and umbrellas. It was crowded, every table taken and the railing lined with knots of young people. We walked to the far end and found a small space with a view. In the thick haze the dome of St Paul’s was a distant outline, but the silvery water, rippled by the current, gave the illusion of space and air.

  Paul was a long time buying the drinks, eventually returning with a bottle of white wine and some mineral water to mix spritzers.

  ‘Well, then.’ He raised his glass. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘You look well,’ I said. And he did. It was six weeks since we had seen each other. If anything he had put on more weighty but there was colour in his face and more shine in his hair, though it occurred to me that this too might have been procured in Jermyn Street.

  I asked, ‘What brought Ronnie in today?’

  ‘Oh, a formality. Nothing more.’

  ‘The Munro case?’

  But he wasn’t going to answer that, and he tipped me a smile for having asked.

  ‘So?’ I said. ‘There’s something you wanted to talk about.’

  His eyes darted away, he shifted awkwardly. ‘Oh, just wanted to know how you were, Lexxy, that’s all.’

  He had always had difficulty in approaching certain subjects directly, anything to do with emotion, anything that activated his insecurities, so we talked about the law for a while, about the staff at Clerkenwell, about some of the cases I’d handed over to the other partners on my resignation.

  Eventually, downing his second glass, he summoned his courage, he gave a nervous laugh. ‘The thing is, Lexxy…I was wondering what you thought about the house. I have to say that I’m finding it a bit much on my own. You know, a bit of a handful.’

  I tensed suddenly. ‘You want to sell it?’

  ‘You wouldn’t mind?’ He said it with such alacrity that my instincts reached out, my imagination raced away with me. I saw another woman, I saw him happy with someone else.

  I managed to say, ‘If that’s what you want.’

  He brightened. ‘You’re sure?’

  Sure? How could one be sure about ending something that had gone on for so long and which, for much of the time, had brought us both happiness. I felt my lip tremble, I felt my heart beat high in my chest. I forced a smile.

  ‘It’s probably the sensible thing to do, isn
’t it? Where would you go?’

  ‘Me?’ he protested a little too forcefully. ‘Oh, my heavens, plenty of time to worry about that. Oh, all the time in the world!’

  He flipped a hand, a gesture that avoided much, yet, in my state of heightened awareness, seemed to tell me everything. With the certainty that comes from instinct I said, ‘You’re going to live with someone else.’

  His head jerked up, he gave me an indignant look, he blustered, ‘No, no! No plans at all.’ He laughed falsely. ‘No, goodness me…’

  I felt a stab of possessiveness, a pang of loss that belonged to another time. ‘Well,’ I said in a voice that wasn’t entirely steady, ‘I hope she looks after you.’

  ‘No, no, there’re no plans, nothing decided—It’s not—’ He was set to bluff it out but, catching my eye, he made a gesture of submission. He said, ‘Oh, it’s early days yet, you know. We’ll see. We’ll see.’

  ‘But she’s all right? I mean, she’ll look after you?’

  He nodded bashfully. ‘Oh, yes. She cooks and all that.’

  The last of my love for him welled up in the blend of regret and relief I felt. There could be no going back, but it was still painful.

  He added, ‘I didn’t mean to…I wouldn’t have…if I’d thought there was a chance, you know…of you and me…’

  We looked at each other, and a moment of truth passed between us: there would be no second chance.

  He said, ‘Well, then…’

  We kissed each other on the cheek. When I looked back Paul raised his glass in salute or farewell.

  The band were packing up their gear and lugging it out through a flap in the marquee wall. The waiters were making a final round of the tables, removing the wine glasses that were not in the grasp of more determined hands. The few remaining guests sat doggedly at their tables, chattering raucously, or stood in clusters in the floodlit garden, waylaid by friends on their way towards the car park. One man sat abandoned at a table, sleeping soundly, mouth open, cigar drooping from slack fingers.