by John Harvey
Paul Broughton was working for a record company in Camden, offices near the canal, more or less opposite the Engineer. Olive V-neck top and chocolate flat-front moleskin chinos, close-shaven head and stubbled chin, two silver rings in one ear, a stud, emerald green, at the centre of his bottom lip. A amp; R, developing new talent, that was his thing. Little bands that gigged at the Dublin Castle or the Boston Dome, the Rocket on the Holloway Road. He was listening to a demo tape on headphones when Kiley walked towards him across a few hundred feet of open plan; Broughton’s desk awash with take-away mugs from Caffe Nero, unopened padded envelopes and hopeful flyers.
Kiley waited till Broughton had dispensed with the headphones, then introduced himself and held out his hand.
‘Look,’ Broughton said, ignoring the hand, ‘I told you on the phone-’
‘Tell me again.’
‘I ain’t seen Vicky in fuckin’ years.’
‘How many years?’
‘I dunno. Four, five?’
‘Not since she told you she was carrying your child.’
‘Yeah, I s’pose.’
‘But you’ve been in touch.’
‘Who says?’
‘Once you started seeing her picture in the paper, those ads out on the street. Read about all that money she was bringing in. And for what? It wouldn’t have been difficult to get her number, you used your mobile, gave her a call.’
Broughton glared back at him, defiant. ‘Bollocks!’ And then, ‘So what if I did?’
‘What did she tell you, Paul? The same as before? Get lost.’
‘Look, I ain’t got time for this.’
‘Was that when you thought you’d put the bite on her, a little blackmail? Get something back for treating you like shit?’
Broughton clenched his fists. ‘Fuck off! Fuck off out of here before I have you thrown out. I wouldn’t take money from that stuck-up tart if it was dripping out of her arse. I don’t need it, right?’
‘And you don’t care she had your child against your will, kept her out of your sight?’
Broughton laughed, a sneer ugly across his face. ‘You don’t get it, do you. She was just some cunt I fucked. End of fuckin’ story.’
‘She was barely fifteen years old,’ Kiley said.
‘I know,’ Broughton said, and winked.
Kiley was almost halfway towards the door before he turned around. Broughton was sitting on the edge of his desk, headphones back in place, watching him go. Kiley hit him twice in the face with his fist, hauled him back up on to his knees and hit him once more. Then left. Perhaps it shouldn’t have made him feel a whole lot better, but it did.
They’d bought a nice house on the edge of Dunstable, with views across the Chiltern Hills. They’d done well. Alicia was in the back garden, on a swing. The apple trees were rich in fruit, the roses well into bloom. Cathy stood by the French windows, gazing out. Her expression when Kiley had arrived on the doorstep had told him pretty much all he needed to know.
Trevor was in the garage, tinkering. Tools clipped with precision to the walls, tools that shone with pride of ownership and use. Kiley didn’t rush him, let him take his time. Watched as Trevor tightened this, loosened that.
‘It’s the job, isn’t it?’ Kiley eventually said.
Trevor straightened, surprised.
‘You sold up, left friends, invested in this place. Not just for Cathy and yourself. For her, Alicia. A better place to grow up, country, almost. A big mortgage, but as long as the money’s coming in …’
‘They promised us,’ Trevor said, not looking at Kiley now, staring through the open door towards the trees. ‘The Germans, when we agreed the deal. Jobs for life, that’s what they said. Jobs for sodding life. Now they’re closing down the plant, shifting production to Portugal or Spain. No longer economic, that’s us.’ When he did turn, there were tears in his eyes. ‘They bent us over and fucked us up the arse and all this bastard government did was stand by with the Vaseline.’
Kiley put a hand on his shoulder and Trevor shrugged it off and they stood there for a while, not speaking, then went inside and sat around the kitchen table drinking tea. Alicia sat in Cathy’s lap, playing with her mother’s hair. Her mother: that’s what she was, what she had become.
‘You could have asked,’ Kiley said. ‘Asked Victoria outright, explained.’
‘We’ve tried before,’ Cathy said bitterly. ‘It’s hateful, like pulling teeth.’
Trevor reached across and gave her lower arm a squeeze. ‘Vicky’s not the problem,’ he said, ‘not really. It’s him, the money man.’
‘Costain?’
Trevor nodded.
‘Leave him to me,’ Kiley said. ‘I’ll make sure he understands.’
‘Mum,’ Alicia said. ‘Let’s read a book.’
Trevor walked Kiley down the path towards his hired car, stood with one hand resting on the roof. The sun was just beginning to fade in the sky. ‘I’d go round to their house,’ he said. ‘Evenings, you know, when I was seeing Cathy, and she’d be there. Victoria. I doubt she was much more than fourteen then.’ He sighed and kicked at the ground with his shoe. ‘She could’ve put a ring through my nose and had me crawling after her, all fours around the room.’ Slowly, he drew air down into his lungs. ‘You’re right, it’s nice out here. Quiet.’
The two men shook hands.
‘Thanks,’ Trevor said. ‘I mean it. Thanks a lot.’
Kiley didn’t see Victoria Clarke until the following year, the French Open. He and Kate had travelled Eurostar to Paris for the weekend, stayed in their favourite hotel near the Jardin du Luxembourg. Kate had a French author to interview, a visit to the Musee d’Art Moderne planned; Kiley thought lunch at the brasserie across from Gare du Nord, then a little tennis.
Costain, buoyant after marshalling Victoria’s advertising contract safely through, had struck a favourable deal with Cathy and Trevor: five per cent of Victoria’s gross income to be paid into a trust fund for Alicia, an annual payment of ten thousand pounds towards her everyday needs, this sum to be reviewed; as long as Trevor remained unemployed, the shortfall on the mortgage would be picked up. In exchange, a secrecy agreement was sworn and signed, valid until Alicia reached eighteen.
On court at Roland Garros, rain threatened, the sky a leaden grey. After taking the first set six-two, Victoria was struggling against a hefty left-hander from Belarus. Concentration gone, suddenly she was double-faulting on her serve, over-hitting her two-fisted backhand, muttering to herself along the baseline. Five all and then the set had gone, unravelled, Victoria slump-shouldered and staring at the ground. The first four games of the final set went with serve and Kiley could feel the muscles across his shoulders knot as he willed Victoria to break clear of whatever was clouding her mind, shake free. It wasn’t until she was four-three down that it happened, a skidding return of serve whipped low across the net and some instinct causing her to follow it in, her volley unplayable, an inch inside the line. After that, a baseline smash that tore her opponent’s racket from her hand, a topspin lob judged to perfection; finally, two aces, the first swinging away unplayably, the second hard down the centre line, and she was running to the net, racket raised to acknowledge the applause, a quick smile and touch of hands. On her way back to her chair, she glanced up to where Kiley was sitting in the stands, but if she saw him she gave no sign.
When he arrived back at the hotel, Kate was already there, damp from the shower, leaning back against the pillows with a book. The shutters out on to the balcony were partway open.
‘So?’ Kate said as Kiley shrugged off his coat. ‘How was it?’
‘A struggle.’
‘Poor lamb.’
‘No call to be bitchy.’
Kate poked out her tongue.
Stretched out on the bed beside her, Kiley bent his head. ‘Are you reading that in French?’
‘Why else d’you think I’m moving my lips?’
The skin inside her arm was taut and sweet.
Before Jack Kiley had moved, courtesy of Kate, to the comparatively rarefied splendours of Highbury Fields, home had been a second-floor flat in the dodgy hinterland between the Archway and the arse end of Tufnell Park. Upper Holloway, according to the London A-Z. A bristle of indistinguishable streets that clung to the rabid backbone of the Holloway Road: four lanes of traffic which achieved pollution levels three
times above those recommended as safe by the EC.
Undaunted, Kiley would, from time to time, stroll some half a mile along the pavements of this great highway, past the innumerable Greek Cypriot and Kurdish convenience stores and the fading splendour of the five-screen Odeon, to drink at the Royal Arms. And why not? One of the few pubs not to have been tricked out with shamrocks and fake antiquities, it boasted reasonable beers, comfortable chairs and more than adequate sight lines should Kiley fancy watching the Monday night match on wide-screen TV.
It was here that young Nicky Cavanagh, nineteen and learning a trade at U-Fit Instant Exhausts and Tyres, got into an argument with one of the Nealy brothers, one of five. What the argument was about, its starting point and raison d’etre, was still in dispute. Some comment passed about last Sunday’s game at Highbury, a jostled arm, a look that passed between Cavanagh and the girl, under-dressed and underaged, by Nealy’s side. Less uncertain were the details of what followed. After a certain amount of mouthing off, a shove here and a push there, the pair of them, Nealy and Cavanagh, stood facing one another with raised fists, an empty bottle of Miller Lite reversed in Cavanagh’s spare hand. Nealy, cursing, turned on his heels and left the bar, hauling his companion with him. Less than thirty minutes later, he returned. Three of the brothers were with him, the fourth enjoying time in Feltham Young Offenders Institution at the government’s expense. His place was taken by a bevy of friends and hangers-on, another four or five. Pick handles, baseball bats. They trapped Cavanagh by the far wall and dragged him out on to the street. By the time the first police sirens could be heard, Cavanagh, bloodied and beaten, lay curled into a broken ball beside the kerb.
Now, some months later, Nicky Cavanagh was in a wheelchair, his only drinking done at home or in the sketch of park which edged the main road near Kiley’s old flat, and Kiley himself had found another pub. Despite statements taken from several witnesses at the time, none of Cavanagh’s attackers had so far been charged.
The Lord Nelson was a corner pub, for Kiley a longer walk though none the worse for that; refurbishment had brought in stripped pine tables and Thai cuisine, wide-screen satellite TV, but left the cellar pretty much intact — John Smith’s and Marston’s Pedigree. The occasional Saturday night karaoke he tolerated, quiz nights he avoided like the plague: which non-league footballer, coming on in extra time, scored a hat-trick in the quarter finals of the FA Cup? Embarrassing when they misremembered his name — Keeley, Kelsey, Riley — worse when he was recognised and some good-hearted fellow, full of booze and bonhomie, insisted on introducing him to the room.
But he had been more than a soccer player and there were those who knew that as well.
‘Jack Kiley, isn’t it? You were in the Met.’
The face Kiley found himself looking into was fleshy, dark-eyed, receding hair cut fashionably short, a small scar pale across his cheek. ‘Dave Marshall.’
Kiley nodded and shook the proffered hand; rough fingers, calloused palms.
‘Mind?’ Marshall gestured towards an empty chair.
‘Help yourself.’
Marshall set down his glass, angled out the chair and sat. Late thirties, Kiley thought, a few years younger than himself. Marshall wearing a waist-length leather jacket, unzipped, check shirt and jeans.
‘I was in the job myself,’ Marshall said. ‘South, mostly. Tooting, Balham. Too many rules and regs. Shifts. Better now I’m me own boss. Damp-proofing, plastering. Bit of heavy rain and you’re quids in. But you know all about that, working for yourself, I mean. Not that it ever really appealed, not to me, like. Going private.’ He shook his head. ‘Missing persons, mispers, lot of those, I reckon. Them an’ wives frightened their old man’s goin’ over the side.’
Kiley shifted his weight, waiting for Marshall to get to it.
‘Here,’ Marshall said, taking a folded sheet from his inside pocket and smoothing it out. ‘Take a look at this.’
It was a poster, A3 size, composed by someone on a dodgy home computer and run off at Prontaprint or somewhere similar. The photograph of Marshall was just recognisable, the print jammed too close together but the message clear enough.
DAVID MARSHALL
Six months ago David Marshall walked out on his family, leaving a gorgeous little baby girl behind. Since then he has refused to pay a penny towards the upkeep of his child. If you’re approached by this man to do building work of any kind, look the other way. Don’t put money into his pockets so he can spend it on whores and ignore his responsibilities.
DO NOT TRUST THIS MAN.
‘Where was this?’ Kiley asked.
‘On some hoarding up by the Nag’s Head. And there’s more of ’em. All over. Here. The Archway. Finsbury fucking Park.’ The anger in Marshall’s face was plain, the line of his scar white as an exclamation mark. ‘What am I s’posed to do? Go round and tear every one of ’em down?’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Kiley said.
‘Go see her. Talk to her. Here.’ He pushed a slip of paper towards Kiley’s hand. ‘Tell her it’s not fuckin’ on.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if you did that yourself?’
Marshall laughed, a grating sound that finished low in his throat.
Kiley glanced at the poster again. ‘Is it true?’
‘What?’
‘What it says.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Did you leave her?’
‘Course I left her. There weren’t no livin’ with her.’
‘And child support? Maintenance?’
‘Let whichever bloke she’s screwing pay fuckin’ maintenance.’ Marshall laughed again, harsh and short. ‘And she’s got the mouth to accuse me of goin’ with whores. Ask her what she was doing when I met her, ask her that. She’s the biggest whore of the fuckin’ lot.’
‘I still think if you could go and talk to her…’
Marshall leaned sharply forward, slopping his beer. ‘She’s trying to make me look a cunt. And she’s got to be stopped.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kiley said, a slow shake of the head. ‘I don’t think I want to get involved.’
‘Right.’ Marshall’s chair cannoned backwards as he got to his feet. The poster he screwed up and tossed to the floor. ‘You ain’t got the stomach for it, believe me, there’s plenty who have.’
Kiley watched him go, barging people aside on his way to the door. The piece of paper Marshall had given him was lined, the writing small and surprisingly neat. Jennie Calder, an address in N8. He refolded it and tucked it out of sight.
He had met Kate at a film festival, the premiere of a new Iranian movie, the organisers anticipating demonstrations and worse. The security firm for whom Kiley had then been working were hired to forestall trouble at the screening and the reception afterwards. Late that night, demonstrations over, only a handful of people lingering in the bar, Kiley had wandered past the few discarded placards and leaned on the Embankment railing, staring out across the Thames. Leaving Charing Cross station, a train clattered across Hungerford Bridge; shrouded in tarpaulin, a barge ghosted bulkily past, heading downriver towards the estuary. In their wake, it was quiet enough to hear the water, lapping against stone. When he turned, there was Kate, her face illuminated as she paused to light a cigarette. Dark hair, medium height, he had noticed her at the reception, asking questions, making notes. At one point she had been sitting with the young Iranian director, a woman, Kate’s small tape recorder on the table between them.
‘What did you think of the film?’ Kiley asked, wanting to say something.
‘Very Iranian,’ Kate said and laughed.
‘I doubt if it’ll come to the Holloway Odeon, then.’
‘Probably not.’
She came and stood alongside him at the Embankment edge.
‘I should get fed up with it,’ Kate said after some moments. ‘This view — God knows I’ve seen it enough — but I don’t.’ She was wearing a loose-fitting suit, the jacket long, a leather bag slung from one shoulder. When she pitched her cigarette, half-smoked, towards the water, it sparkled through the near dark.
‘There’s another showing,’ she said, looking at Kiley full on. ‘The film, tomorrow afternoon. If you’re interested, that is.’
‘You’re going again?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’ She was smiling with her eyes, the merest widening of the mouth.
The opening images aside, a cluster of would-be teachers, blackboards strapped awkwardly to their backs as they struggle along a mountain road in a vain search for pupils, it turned out to be the longest eighty-five minutes Kiley could recall. Kate’s piece in the Independent on Sunday, complete with photographs of Samira Makhmalbaf and suitable stills, he thought far more interesting than the film itself.
Plucking up a certain amount of courage, he phoned to tell her so.
Well, it had been a beginning.
‘I’m still not clear,’ Kate said, ‘why you turned it down.’
They were sitting in Kate’s high bed, a bottle of red wine, three-parts empty, resting on the floor. Through the partly opened blinds, there was a view out across Highbury Fields. It was coming up to a quarter past ten and Kiley didn’t yet know if he’d be invited to stay the night. He’d tried leaving his toothbrush once and she’d called down the stairs after him, ‘I think you’ve forgotten something.’
‘I didn’t fancy it,’ Kiley said.
‘You didn’t fancy the job or you didn’t like the look of him?’