Rick had to concede, though, that brother and sister did have a fair bit in common. Hidden passion versus the obvious kind. They were both incredibly naive. They both fell for him and were willing to do anything, which was quite right and what he was owed. The difference was that while Marianne Shearer made it her business to believe everything she was told, and act upon it decisively in due course, banning any doubt about the client from her mind with fierce loyalty, exactly as she should, she did at least weigh the evidence before she absorbed it for later use. She manufactured her own anger, controlled and refined it into venom only as necessary and added in her own contempt for silly women one dollop at a time, while Frank, the throwback, believed everything he was told, took it without digestion like a dog wolfing food, and acted on it immediately. Then it was light the blue touchpaper and retire. A useless ally in a cold war, a literally bloody liability. All Rick had to do was to make sure it was Frank who drew the blood and none of it got on him. He checked the sleeves on his camel hair coat. The cuffs were wearing thin, but this material didn’t shed much. It was too old.
They were in Frank’s place, and Frank had cried off sick for the day. Or at least, Rick had done it for him. The beast was in the next room, hunched in his bed, waking up to cry and vomit, authenticating the validity of the excuses Rick had made in his most authoritative tones, learned from the likes of Marianne Shearer, to the manager of the car showroom. I’m his brother. I’m afraid he’s frightfully ill and sends his apologies. Yes, of course he’ll be back tomorrow, and of course he’ll make up the time. I’m so sorry. Oh, those patrician, barristerial voices, like those of priests and preachers, they worked all the time; voices which brooked no argument or contradiction and were so easy to mimic. Voices which countered the verbal abuse directed back by saying, I beg your pardon? I don’t understand. Please explain.
Manners maketh man and accents made him heard. Always better than shouting.
So, Frank was ill and staying in bed all day today, damn right he was. He had mugged a girl and nearly killed a bloke, all in the space of a few hours. Phenomenal. Such fun. Rick sat back in this filthy armchair, still in his coat, and considered it. The first was to blame on delusion and paranoia, the second, pure misjudgement. Weeping, blubbering, already bloodied, big ol’ Frank, rallying with alcohol like that, and then going off beam again.
Let’s check on Noble’s office, see what he’s hiding. I know how to get in: I’ve sat and watched them punch in those numbers on that keypad by the door. He was up for that, and then . . . I only suggested we call on the old boy, Frank. I always had his number, from her diary I looked at when she was out of the room; and look here, there’s an address on Noble’s desk. Your sister’s shag, who might just have the stuff we need. I just said, let’s call on him since we’re in the area, why don’t we? Just up the road. What else to do when the pubs are shut? Old geezer might give us a drink. She had a lover. The lover might know about the kid, like where she lives and does she know, as well as knowing about where all those valuable goods and money and furniture are, which Thomas Noble says are lost, even though they’re yours, now. It all belongs to you, really, Frank. He might have taken them.
The mere hint of riches not his own triggered Frank into a frenzy, didn’t it? That room, that taste, that opulence, that privacy. Plus a man lying on a bed, calling him ugly and saying his sister never loved him. Whoah.
Maybe Frank would not go to work tomorrow either. Not with a face full of festering scratches and that contusion on his forehead.
Rick Boyd got to his feet and aimed for the kitchen of this horrible place. The man lived like a pig, with a clean avenue between bathroom and bed, where the daily suit and clean shirt was always ready between one day and the next, with Frank’s remaining sixth sense telling him that personal hygiene and presentation were all that mattered. You couldn’t sit in his chair without something sticking to you.
Rick retrieved the clean lint and saline fluid he had got from the chemist, moved towards the smell of Frank’s room. Wounds must not fester. He dabbed at that big face with the stinging fluid until Frank woke up and screamed. There, there, he said, and Frank, said, Mummy, Mummy, is he dead?
The man who called you scum? I hope so, Frank, my darling. You know that one about dead men not telling tales? Go to sleep, baby, go to sleepy sleep. Good boy. When you get your money, we’ll go fifty–fifty, right?
The contents of the pigskin case were disappointing at first. A copy of M. Shearer’s instructions, all in a kind of code, and a bundle of what looked like part of the transcript of Rick’s very own trial. He had taken it out and leafed through quickly in the dreadful light of Frank’s tiny flat. I want to come home with you, Frank had sobbed into Rick’s shoulder, What did we do? Christ, even before they had got to the end of Chancery Lane and the sight of a taxi. No way, let’s go to yours, not having your DNA in mine, and please don’t mention we. It was all you, love, it was all you, Mr Mighty Man. You did it, you great ape, never mind, I’ll look after you. I loves you, Frank.
He went through the contents of the case again. A copy of the transcript including the bit about kidnap, beginning with reams of law, marked, ‘Send to Peter Friel’. Rick remembered him, silly little tosser on the other side who never got a chance to open his mouth. He threw it aside, then picked it up again, almost fondly. He had been so important then, so much a celebrity that every word that was spoken in his trial was written down. He could remember Marianne, taking exception to the written record of yesterday on each following morning, insisting on examining the record precisely, pointing at it with her long red nails. That’s not what was said, she would say, they’ve made a mistake, I said it that way. The inference is missed. She could waste half an hour every day that way, making it longer and longer, infuriating everyone. Wasting the patience of the absent jury, tearing the heart out of witnesses in waiting. Then apologising in the same tones he used with Frank’s boss. Using her presence to make sure they didn’t notice they were being conned.
He went on to these funny instructions, marked ‘Copy to’, which worried him. Send a copy of this shit to Peter Friel? What was she on about? That courtroom had been stuffed with copies of everything.
What was perfectly, glaringly clear from that note, though, was that Marianne was going to write a book, maybe had written it already or was getting someone to write it. And the Lover had put ticks on a list of what he was supposed to do, which included sending a whole lot of stuff to H Joyce, addressed to Angel’s parents’ place. Whoah, what was this? So that was where everything was. A lot, a very expensive delivery, a vanload, maybe.
Rick sat back and remembered that house. Sitting there and being interviewed by that stupid old dad who didn’t think anyone was good enough for his slag of a daughter. Not good enough for Angel? Angel wasn’t halfway good enough for him; Dad got it the wrong way round. He deserved far better than Angel and Angel only got what was coming to her. As far as Rick Boyd knew he had never done anything wrong in his life, it was the others. That stuffy room with a fire, everything ordered and tidy; Angel’s anally retentive dad talking about his storage place; he had even offered Rick a job in it. Who did he think he was?
Yeah. Dad puts everything we don’t need in storage, Angel said. He hates clutter and he’s got the space.
Better go and get it. See what was in it, before anyone else looked, but how to get in? That’s just what Marianne would do out of spite. Send it all to Hen Joyce, get her to run with it, the way she had run Angel. Put it together with what she had and get him put inside again.
Maybe not take Frank. Maybe just leave him here, covered in DNA. Frank’s worth a fortune and Frank does dirty work. I don’t make him, he just does it, it’s not my fault. And Frank still thinks he’s got a serious rival for the old inheritance. If he goes apeshit with her, so what? I run away and let him. Fucking H Joyce had obviously got together with Marianne Shearer somehow. Plotting behind his back like she did with Angel, using what was hi
s to make another case against him, writing that book. Rick went back and looked at Frank. Frank could drive, and he had access to cars. He would have to do. In the meantime, he would give Frank another pill and settle down to think in this dirty chair.
Think of a plan. Where to first? He couldn’t go to her place alone, it scared him.
I’m sorry, my brother has developed pneumonia.
Are you caring for him?
I care for everyone in my charge. They do not always appreciate it. They don’t always know what’s good for them.
Peter was tired. It was akin to the tiredness of a week in court, when he would burn the midnight oil between the days, working up to a fatigue that would create bad dreams in which he would see himself a naked laughing stock unable to speak. He was heavy with sadness when he needed to be optimistic, and the anxiety which afflicted him was nothing to do with himself. He wanted to see her, needed to see her in situ, while on the way he was working out how to ration the information, spare the pain and the surprise, and yet wanting her to suffer it. Hen might be lovely, but she was also crafty. If he rationed information with her, kept anything back, it would only be revenge for her doing the same thing to him, to her parents, to everyone else involved with Angel, doing harm in the name of doing good. As he walked down her street, he decided against withholding anything. Repeat verbatim, spare nothing, keep nothing back. Wherever it was going to go with her, that was the way it was going to be with him. He was too tired for subterfuge anyway, too shocked to manage it. He would be calm, truthful and precise, and tell her to lock her doors. If there were any questions, they would be asked and answered one at a time.
Instead, he stumbled into her arms and wanted to cry. She held on to him, with her arms round his back, holding him tightly. She was so small, so bitterly strong. You need food, Peter, she said. Come and eat. He could hear her mother’s voice, and was glad of it. The mother who raised her, the one she thought she knew.
Yes, Hen said, she taught me to cook, too.
Up those stairs, to sit in that kitchen he liked. So different from the seaside house, a palette of bright, primary colours, clashing together joyfully, without any of the harmonious forethought of that other place. Tunes in his head, a mind full of interiors.
He ate what was put in front of him: a casserole with unidentifiable ingredients, hot and strong, with crumbly tomato bread.
Ate. Talked. Repeated, verbatim, as if he was making a comprehensive report on the last twenty-six hours. As accurate and complete as if he were a shorthand writer preparing the transcript for the next day of a trial.
An honest and impartial witness, omitting nothing, except his own emotional reactions. She followed his example, remaining silent until he had finished, although her face registered shock, surprise, anger and sorrow, even a smile when he described her mother’s hospitality, and by the end, she had crumbled her half of the loaf into very small pieces which she rolled between her fingers, as if trying to make them disappear.
‘Then I came here,’ Peter ended. ‘That part you know.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. She raised her glass. ‘Let’s drink to the dead. And to lovers everywhere. May they do a little better than those two. And to adopted children everywhere – the lucky ones.’
She was too controlled, he thought, wishing he could stop analysing and simply watch. Too controlled because she has had to be so. Like me, in a courtroom, and I am sick of it. We should all be shouting and screaming, dancing with outrage and staging some sort of riot, joining in a lynch mob, instead of waiting for the due process of law and rational thought.
‘Rick Boyd,’ she said. ‘I feel Richard Boyd right in the middle of this. Especially the bit about the broken glass. What you lot would call similar fact. Rick Boyd, a man without a centre, put on earth to mess up lives. Not worth analysing, because there’s nothing there. Not worth punishing, because he would never understand why, but eminently worth destroying. I should have killed him when I had the chance.’
She brushed her hands through her hair, blinked repeatedly. This was no point to cry or to blackmail him with tears. It simply wasn’t fair. Nothing was bloody well fair. He was looking at her differently, as if the knowledge of her parentage and her parents’ opinions made her pitiable. Let him try.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘This is the time you walk away. This is the time you should walk away. Give up the job with Thomas Noble, get the poison out of your life, forget that damn trial and everything else, especially Marianne Shearer. And me. I shouldn’t think less of you if you did, I’d still think you’re the best thing to come out of the whole business. Give up thinking you’re in some way responsible for that trial. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To make up for a personal failure. I don’t want you contaminated any more. I don’t want you in our kind of danger.’
‘Yes, I do feel responsible, I am responsible. And if I say I can’t walk away, even if you pushed me, can’t, don’t want to, I’m not going anywhere and I’m insulted by the suggestion that I should, what would you say then?’
She considered it, frowning. Peter took off his spectacles and rubbed them assiduously with the linen napkin she had left on the table, suddenly realising he had seen it before. It was the one he had given her. Oh, the magpie. He had an absurd desire to see Hen unpack that trunk full of clothes. It might be like a child with a dressing-up box.
She smiled a shaky smile.
‘Then I’d say we’d better have a full discussion, in which I fill in a few holes. It’s a pretty uncomfortable garment I’m making at the moment. Do you want to see it? I’ve been trying to get to grips with Marianne Shearer’s bosom. I need to do something with my hands.’
He did not understand, but nodded. The aching fatigue had receded. They took the wine down to the dressing room and sat either side of the table. He liked this room as much as the attic kitchen. It was a soothing place, with an atmosphere of calm, contented industry, reminding him of a much-loved library. There was the dummy by the table, the torso dressed in one half of a bodice with half an upstanding collar extending above the headless neck. It looked hopeful and comical rather than sinister. She took the bodice off the dummy and sat with it on her lap. Then she threaded a needle.
‘I’m making one half first, to see what works. It’s a bit like putting together a story, one half is easy, until you get to the next bit and it doesn’t hang together. Should I start by saying I have absolutely no idea why Marianne Shearer would send me clothes from beyond the grave? Oh, I forget, she isn’t buried yet. It’s shattering and disturbing. Why should she want me to have anything of hers? Because I made her feel bad? Because I sent her Angel’s post-mortem report? Because she thought she did us wrong? Because she wanted to be liked?’
She shook her head and stabbed the needle into the cloth.
‘That’s starting with the second half. Let’s go back to Angel and Boyd.’
She got up and dragged out the carpet bag from its new place beneath the suits. She rummaged in it and withdrew a pile of photographs, spreading them on the table in front of him, waiting while he looked, ready to take them away again. Photos of Angel, spreadeagled, masturbating and smiling; a photo of Angel’s lacerated backside; a photo of Angel’s shaven and bloody vagina exposed by her own hands. Pornographic photos of Angel screaming and smiling, and lastly, a photo of her raised hand with the missing fingertip, making a salute in front of her face. Hen took the photos away. His face was ashen.
‘I took his camera, too,’ Hen said, ‘but I think it’s these he wants back. He may think Marianne Shearer had them.’
‘But they should have been exhibited at the trial,’ Peter said. ‘They would have nailed him. They make a nonsense of any idea of consent or cooperation. Why didn’t you hand them over? No woman consents to that.’
‘Not even a woman as sexually curious as my little sister. Or as corrupt, as my mother hinted. I always knew that hunger in her, and that self-destructive kick, but I knew it never went anywh
ere near enjoying pain. She was terrified of physical pain, but oh, did she want to please. These were taken when she was past caring.’
‘They should have been exhibited,’ Peter repeated. ‘You were withholding evidence.’
‘It wasn’t my evidence to withhold,’ Hen said. ‘Just as it wasn’t in my power to force Angel to have the intimate examinations which would show the extent of the injuries. I was pushing her far enough as it was. She was only ever going to go through with it if the worst of it didn’t come out. She said she would die if Mum and Dad ever knew. She thought it would kill them. Better they didn’t know and disbelieved her, than if they knew and still didn’t believe her. She didn’t want anyone to know. I couldn’t change that. Besides, there seemed plenty of evidence of the abuse without including the pictorial record. No one could deny the missing finger. Then there were the other victims, all that similar fact. We could rely on the others, we thought. There was mountains of other evidence against him in the beginning.’
‘Until it all got whittled away. Until the kidnap charge was slung out. Did she actually want him to be convicted?’
She hesitated. ‘I sometimes wonder about that.’
‘But that means no one in that courtroom knew the extent of it,’ Peter said. ‘Not Judge, Jury, the Prosecution or the Defence. Not me, not even Marianne Shearer.’
‘Not even Marianne Shearer, but Marianne Shearer should have known. She knew Boyd. She knew each and every allegation made against him. She knew his history, his habits, his proclivities. She knew the type of victim, the pattern, she knew more than anyone, and she denied knowing, to herself, at least, all for the sake of winning. She denied what she knew.
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