by Zoe Sharp
“Brave?”
He cast me a calculating look, the lenses of his glasses blanking out his eyes. “Well, if you’re not for the defence, you’ll be one of the main witnesses for the prosecution, and Roger knows where to find you. So, no doubt, do his mates,” he said carefully. “And the older brother’s known to be a bit of a hard-case, too.” He watched me while he imparted this information, but I didn’t show him what he wanted to see.
“And then there’s the court case itself,” he went on. He pursed his lips, considering. “Never a nice experience, having to stand up in court, is it, Charlie?”
I felt the colour draining away from my face like someone had just pulled the plug out of a bath. It was the first time he’d used my first name, and the sly familiarity of it brought the hairs up on the back of my neck.
The last time I’d been in court it was to testify against a group of my erstwhile brothers-in-arms. I tried not to think about it much these days, but their names still ran through my head like a chant.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay.
There was a rhythm and a flow to them that chilled my skin and cramped my muscles. When the barrister had read them out in a different order, I had almost failed to recognise them as the same group.
Almost. The memory fades, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget them entirely. I was claiming rape. They were claiming it was all some happy drunken orgy that had got out of hand.
I’d already been through the agonies of a military court martial, and been found guilty of gross misconduct. Foolishly, as it turned out, I’d sought justice in the civil arena.
I might have got it, too. Then the whispers started. Whispers about the affair I’d stupidly indulged in with one of my training instructors. It was against the rules, and soon got blown up out of all proportion.
My main witness defected, and the inevitable happened.
I lost.
It cost me my career in the army, one I’d spent four years carefully constructing. It also cost me my self-respect, and the repercussions blew a hole in my relationship with my parents so big you could have driven a Boeing 777 through it, sideways on.
Still, I’d walked across that burning bridge. It had taken me a while, but eventually I’d picked up most of the pieces. I didn’t know if I could do it all again.
I looked up at O’Bryan, found him watching me intently. I led the way to the door without speaking.
“Look,” he said as I pulled it open for him to leave, “juvenile detention would break a lad like Roger. Perhaps turn him to crime permanently. It could ruin his whole life. Just say you’ll think about it, eh?”
I found myself nodding reluctantly as I stood to one side to let O’Bryan out.
“OK,” he said, “I’ll give you a few days to – Oi! Get away from it you little bastards!”
I jumped as O’Bryan’s voice rose from softly persuasive to a full-blown roar. He leapt out of the front door and went dashing towards the pavement, the briefcase swinging against his legs as he ran.
I stuck my head round the door and saw a group of kids scrambling away from the ruin that was now O’Bryan’s Mercedes, like malicious monkeys in a safari park when the game warden with the tranquilliser darts appears.
The kids scattered with a precision that spoke of long practise, all disappearing over garden hedges and through gates in different directions. O’Bryan got as far as the pavement before it dawned on him that trying to catch any of them was an utter waste of time.
He faltered and then stopped dead, putting his case down slowly on the cracked paving next to his feet. His full attention was taken by the beautiful example of the German sports car maker’s art. Or what had been, when he’d set out that morning.
I saw him lift his hands to his chubby face in horror. As he shook his head the sunlight glinted off the lenses of his little wire-rimmed glasses, as though his eyes themselves had flashed fire.
Almost against my will, I found myself following him out, stopping just behind his shoulder as he surveyed the damage.
The Merc was wrecked. The hood was in tatters, the chrome windscreen wipers had been twisted into loops, and all four tyres had been comprehensively slashed. Something heavy and sharp had been dragged along the bodywork, leaving deep gouges right down to the bare steel from headlight to taillight.
“The little bastards,” O’Bryan whispered. “Three years I’ve spent rebuilding this car. Bought it for peanuts as a right basketcase.” He turned and favoured me with a sad, lopsided smile. “I only brought it today because the clutch has gone on my Cavalier. Three bloody years.”
I didn’t speak. There wasn’t anything I could say. I’ve never owned a car, just an elderly Suzuki RGV 250 motorbike. Still, I could understand his distress. If anything happened to the bike it would be like losing a limb.
Suddenly, O’Bryan jerked round to the back of the car, and was staring at the boot lid. The lock had been punched out of it, and the lid itself was partly ajar. He yanked it open fully, looked inside with an anger that turned his already pale features ashen.
“I don’t believe it,” he muttered.
“What?”
“They’ve taken—” he broke off, scrabbling through the debris in the boot with the air of somebody who knows he isn’t going to find what he’s searching for. Finally, he slumped, defeated.
“What is it, Mr O’Bryan?” I asked again, gently. “What’s been taken?”
“What?” He focused on me, distracted. “Oh, my case notes,” he said weakly. “Private stuff, you know, important documents.”
“Would you like me to call the police?”
“No.” He gave a sigh that was almost a snort. “I don’t suppose it would do much good, would it?”
I thought of the kids I’d seen disappearing from the scene of the crime. None of them looked in double figures, let alone old enough to prosecute. “Not if you’re going to spend all your professional time trying to get them off with a caution, no,” I agreed.
O’Bryan’s face dropped suddenly, and I felt ashamed of my unworthy dig.
We went back into the house and I fed him a cup of tea with plenty of sugar in it to help deal with the shock. He recovered enough to borrow the phone to ring his garage to come and cart the remains away. Once that was done, he called himself a taxi, and departed. A sad, harassed little figure, with the weight of the world sitting heavy on his rounded shoulders.
***
After he’d gone, I rang my mother. Quite a momentous occasion in itself, if truth be told. There was a time when I would have cheerfully chewed off my own hand rather than use it to pick up the receiver and phone home. My, how things change.
I suppose, to be fair, I was never any great shakes as a daughter, even before the disgrace of my court martial, and the endless horrors of my trial.
I lost my father’s interest very early on by dint of surviving my birth when my twin brother failed to do so. My father had fiercely wanted a son to follow him into the medical profession, but the complications that followed my arrival meant that, after me, there were no more children.
I think my mother secretly hoped that I’d turn into one of those girlie girls. It wasn’t her fault that I firmly resisted any attempts to mould me into an ideal daughter. You can take a girl to ballet lessons as much as you like, but you can’t necessarily make her into a ballerina.
It was an accidental discovery on a team-building outward bound course in my late teens that led to my choice of a military career. I found I was physically tougher than I’d realised, and had the natural ability to shoot straight with a consistency that amazed the instructors.
Finally, I’d found something that earned me approval and respect. I’d gone home in triumphant defiance and dropped the news that I was joining up onto my parents with a fearful sense of excitement.
If I was expecting an emotional explosion of atomic proportions I was sadly disappointed.
Now, my mother answered the telephone herself, which
saved me having to make polite, if brief, conversation with my father.
“Hi,” I said. “It’s me.”
For a moment there was a silence brought on by surprise. Although I’d made an effort since the winter before to get back on speaking terms with my parents, we were still at the stage where contact from either party brought about a profound discomfiture, just in case either of us said the wrong thing.
“Oh, Charlotte, how lovely to hear from you,” she cried, her voice jerky and bright almost to the point of manic. “How are you, darling?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
She heard the mental step back and toned down her manner. “So, tell me all your news,” she said, still heartily. “How are you keeping? What have you been up to?”
“I’m fine,” I said again. “I’m house-sitting for a friend. Well, dog-sitting actually.” The dog in question, who’d been spark out on the rug in the middle of the living room, sat up long enough to scratch behind his ear with one hind foot, then flopped back down again.
That launched us into a conversation about her dogs, two elderly Labradors. She seemed relieved to be on neutral ground and had nearly started to relax by the time I got round to the real reason for my call.
“I need to pick your brains,” I said.
“About dogs?”
“No, not really, although I suppose that comes into it,” I replied, thinking of the part Friday had unwittingly played in last night’s events. “I need to pick your professional brains.”
There was silence again, and this time it went on for a while. My father’s lucrative job as a consultant surgeon has meant my mother never needed to work after she married, but to pass the time she’d become a local magistrate.
That had turned out not to be as much use as you’d imagine when it came to my own trial, but sordid little cases like mine didn’t crop up too regularly in the stockbroker belt of Cheshire. Burglary, however, was another thing.
“Of-of course I’ll help, Charlotte, if I can,” she said now, wary, but still amenable.
Before she could change her mind, I jumped right in and explained about the botched burglary by Roger and his mates, including the injury to Fariman, but glossing over any active part I’d played in the proceedings.
I finished by telling her about my feeling that Roger should end up in court, and O’Bryan’s opinion that a caution would better keep him on the straight and narrow. “But, he’s already had cautions before,” I said. “I don’t know what to do for the best and I was hoping for some advice.”
“Not exactly the sort of advice mothers are usually called upon to dispense,” she said wryly, and for the first time there was a trace of humour in her voice.
“No, I suppose not,” I agreed.
“I’ll do a little research, if that’s all right. I never applied to sit on the juvenile bench, but one of my colleagues deals with that type of case and I’d like to check my facts absolutely before I speak. Can you wait a few days. Maybe a week?”
I thought of O’Bryan and wasn’t sure how long I could stall him without making a decision.
My mother heard the hesitation and mistook the reason for it. “He’s not threatening you is he, Charlotte?” she demanded. “Are you quite sure you’re safe where you are?”
“Oh yes,” I said, glibly. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen for a while on this one.”
Honestly. There are days when I only open my mouth to change feet.
Four
It may have been a coincidence, but the trashing of Eric O’Bryan’s Mercedes seemed to mark the beginning of a step-up in the usual level of crime on the Lavender Gardens estate. The next day all the cars which were left parked overnight on Kirby Street had been vandalised.
I made a mental inventory of the damage when Friday took me out for his regular morning walk. I had to keep him on a short lead to stop him from paddling about in the debris with a blatant disregard for vet’s bills.
By the sounds of the shouting going on, the kids of the street were getting it in the neck for the damage. I supposed it was difficult for them to convince anyone they were blameless in this exercise, when just about everyone with a net curtain to lurk behind had seen them pulling the Merc apart the previous day.
As I waited for Friday to finish his minute nasal examination of a tree trunk, it struck me abruptly that, unless they were very, very stupid, that was precisely why the kids on the road hadn’t had anything to do with it.
It was a train of thought that kept me occupied almost right back to Pauline’s front door. I discovered when I got there that two pairs of brown eyes were anxiously watching my return through a gap in the hedge.
Aqueel and Gin were Nasir’s younger brother and sister, of around eight and six. I discovered very soon after my arrival that they regarded Friday with a kind of horrified fascination. They were particularly intrigued by the fact that I could get so close to him, when Pauline was away, without getting bitten. I didn’t enlighten them as to how suddenly tolerant the dog became of the person who controlled the can opener. When Pauline returned, she would want to find Friday’s good name savagely intact.
I waved to them through the hedge and, having been spotted, they waved back. Or at least, Aqueel did, being the braver of the two. Gin merely ducked behind her brother’s back, chewing her hair.
“Is Friday being very fierce today, Charlie?” Aqueel asked me gravely.
“Yes Aqueel, I’ve struggled to keep him from attacking several people,” I told him, with equal seriousness, adding with a hard stare, “He is very annoyed about all this broken glass all over the pavements where he has to walk. It hurts his feet and makes him especially bad tempered.”
Aqueel swallowed and, over his shoulder, his sister’s eyes grew round as coffee cups.
I knew I was trying that one on for size, but I was pretty sure that one of the Mercedes vandals had been Aqueel. Despite his angelic face and general air of butter-wouldn’t-melt.
“Please tell Friday that it wasn’t me, Charlie,” he begged now. “It wasn’t. Honest!”
I glanced at the dog, who had given up waiting for me to open the front door and had sat down heavily on the drive. He stared up at my face with his head on one side, as though considering.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure he believes you, Aqueel,” I said sadly. “You see, he thinks he saw you out there yesterday, and—”
“That was yesterday,” Aqueel protested. “All these cars, that was not us. It was white people, like you.”
“Aqueel! Gin! Get inside immediately, and get ready for school.” It was Nasir who rebuked them, stepping out of the front porch to favour me with a contemptuous glare. He cuffed them both round the head as they dodged under his arm and through the doorway.
Nasir wasn’t dressed for work today. No ripped jeans and T-shirt, but designer labels were in abundance and he had the right build to show them off.
“Morning Nasir,” I said now, as cheerfully as I could, but he didn’t answer. Before I could find a way of bringing the conversation round to his outburst at Shahida’s house, he’d ducked back indoors without speaking further, letting the front door close firmly behind him. I shrugged. There’d be another time. Then I finally let a patiently yawning Friday into his own home for breakfast.
***
It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I was treated to the next instalment. I’d decided to wheel the Suzuki onto the concrete flagged patio in the back garden to give it a good clean, having only worked a half day at the gym.
If you’re into serious body-building, and you live anywhere round Lancaster, then the chances are that you do your training at Attila’s place. Not that Attila was the muscular and athletic owner’s real name, but his German parentage and almost stereotypical Aryan good looks made the misnomer inevitable.
I’d been going to the gym on and off for practically as long as I’d lived in Lancaster, and I’d been working there for around three months.
I
’d fallen into the job by accident, really, having spent a good deal of my time rehabilitating there during the early part of the summer. I might have technically emerged as the victor from my encounter with a vicious killer the winter before, but it was a points decision at best. The knife wounds had healed a lot quicker than the broken bones, and it had taken me quite a while to get back to something approaching full fitness.
By that time, Attila had grown used to seeing me as part of the furniture.
“I think I need to encourage more women to come and train here,” he told me. “Having you around to show them we are not all macho apes with bulging muscles has been very useful, Charlie, and you know what you’re doing. We’ll see how it goes, yes?”
And, having nothing better to occupy me at the time, I’d agreed.
Working a regular number of set hours a week had taken a bit of getting used to after several years of working for myself, but I was just about getting into the swing of it.
It had meant that I’d neglected the bike a bit, which was not something I could afford to do when the council were throwing salt around the roads like it was going out of fashion. The aluminium box frame was pitting with corrosion faster than I could keep up with it.
I washed the worst of the salt away thoroughly, then leathered it off and gave the whole of the bodywork and the exposed bits of frame a coat of wax. While I waited for the wax to glaze over, I sat back on my heels and just looked at the bike.
It wasn’t in its first flush of youth, but it was still my pride and joy. Lightweight and compact, the two-stroke RGV was frighteningly quick for a quarter-litre machine, with straight-line performance that bikes more than twice its size struggled to match. Not to mention the cornering agility of a cheetah.
They were out of production now, and when the time eventually came to replace it, I struggled to know what to go for instead. Which made keeping it in good condition even more important.
“Oh, there you are, Charlie,” Mrs Gadatra’s head appeared over the fence. She seemed to have recovered her good humour. “Did you see all the mess on the street this morning? Wasn’t it terrible?”