by David Mark
‘Bosworth’s got all our tech equipment. Every computer. Every laptop. Every phone. Turned up with a warrant the same time she told me Larry was dead. I barely had a chance to press delete on a few choice files before her team were carting stuff from the office. I was in his office when they came in, trying to find out where the sod had got to and why he hadn’t been answering my calls. He always liked the cloak-and-dagger, like I said. Wouldn’t buy a desk unless it had a secret compartment. Spent many a happy day gluing documents into the pages of old law books and hiding them away on his bookshelves. But I worked with him long enough to know that the important stuff was always hiding in plain sight. This was taped to the underside of his desk.’
He hands the piece of paper to Adam. It’s a list of addresses, handwritten in fountain pen, and a photocopy of an ‘In Memoriam’ placed in the Newham Recorder in September, 1996. At the top, written in fountain pen, a name; at the bottom an address and more notes.
Adam.
Garner, Pamela. September 17, 1971. Always loved and remembered. Your presence we miss, your memory we treasure, loving you always, forgetting you never. Time slips past, but memories last. With such sadness and love, your friend, Alison. Xx
Marketfield Road.
Potters House
West Green Road
Marinello. S?
Garlands Lodge, CA1
Highgate Cem – registrar, Bronwen Moorhouse, 0208 347 2471
‘Mean anything?’ asks Angus. ‘I called the number. Mousy wee thing answered the phone and said the usual registrar was off sick. I pushed. She recognized Larry’s name. He’d been asking questions about a plot. Early September, this was. He was trying to find out which funeral company arranged the burial. Pamela Garner. Died, aged fifteen. No headstone. She gave me more than she probably should have. I got the impression she was expecting a handout so Larry must have already paid for whatever he got.’
‘And what did he get?’
‘Funeral was paid for by Muirhead Storage. A warehouse firm, offices in Lawrence Road. Company director, one A. Jardine. That would be Alison, I reckon. I’ve run that search through a few websites. Makes interesting reading.’
Adam stares out the window, watching the people at the bus stop. Feels unfathomably sad. ‘I only wanted to know who I am,’ he says, quietly.
Lavery tugs at his beard. ‘Alison Jardine. Bloody hell.’
‘Makes sense that it would be on SOCA’s radar,’ muses Adam, wondering.
‘That’s who Bosworth’s gunning for, don’t you think? A result like that and she’s queen of SOCA. You’re going to be collateral damage, Adam. Going to get in the way. Fucking hell, lad – three grand and you’ve bought yourself a shitstorm you could see from space.’
Adam stares at the piece of paper. Thinks of Larry. Wonders whether he was alive when he went into the water. He realizes he is shivering. Can taste pond water and dirt. There are fingers in his throat and eels sliding down his gullet, coiling around his lungs, as he leaks black blood into the blacker water.
He looks again at the names. Blinks, until it comes into focus.
‘I’d leave it at this, if I were you,’ says Angus, fatherly. ‘Go see your missus. Go see your mum and dad. They’re your parents, no matter what they may have said. Forget this. No comment your way through the interviews. I’ll even try and get you your money back. You’re a cocky wee shite but I like you. Let this go. You don’t want any part of the Jardines.’
Adam nods, trying to look grateful for the well-intended advice.
Quietly, a soft voice, right inside his head:
Maybe I do.
EIGHT
Lower Drayton Lane, Portsmouth
5.34 p.m.
Grace Senoy holds the plastic spoon to her daughter’s lips and makes a last, desperate attempt at an acceptable choo-choo train noise. ‘Tunnel, Tilly,’ she says, pleadingly. ‘Show me the tunnel.’
Tilly’s lips remain steadfastly pressed together. Just for the badness of it, she turns her head away from the spoon, leaving a smear of cold, clay-like Weetabix smeared across her mouth and cheek. It’s not much of an evening meal but Grace has rather given up on trying to get her to eat anything else. She smiles up at Mummy with the confidence of one who knows, even at this young age, that she is sufficiently adorable to be forgiven for pretty much anything.
Grace stands, and lifts Tilly down from the table. She gives her a chocolate biscuit. ‘Go play,’ she says, beaten.
Tilly gives her mum a victorious smile, then runs off into her playroom. Grace crosses to the window and pours herself another black coffee from the percolator. She stares out through the grey light and the drizzle at her front garden, with its neat, paved driveway and crew-cut grass. She catches sight of her reflection in the kitchen window, and winces. She still hasn’t lost the baby weight. Round shoulders and big hands. Size fourteen, for most of her life. Tight in a sixteen, now. She’s taken to wearing her pyjamas until lunchtime, when she changes into slouchy jogging pants and baggy jumpers. Some days she wishes she were like the perfect mummies at playgroup, with their six-pack stomachs and gleaming skin. It just seems an extraordinary amount of effort, and she finds the thought of life without Maltesers unpalatable.
A low, yellow light suddenly blinks through the veil of the tall privet hedge which guards the property from the rest of the quiet street; all terraced houses and bay windows, where two-car families play complex games of vehicular Tetris, backing in and out of driveways and rolling their tyres over muddy grass verges.
The big silver car pulls into the driveway and Grace catches a glimpse of Adam’s profile as he parks up. She steps back from the window. ‘Tilly,’ she shouts. ‘Daddy’s here.’
Tilly lets out a shriek of happiness and runs to the front door. There is a gentle knocking on the double-glazed panelling, and Tilly leaps up and pulls the handle down. She’s big enough to do that now, thinks Grace. Better start locking it. She’ll be off. Running down the street in her Dora slippers, looking for Daddy.
Adam bends down and scoops his giggling daughter into the air as he steps inside. Blows a raspberry on her tummy. Wriggles his hand up her T-shirt and tickles her under the chin. She screams with laughter and kicks her feet. Adam pretends to put her down, then scoops her up again.
‘Where’s my kiss?’ he asks her.
Tilly puckers her lips and presses them against Adam’s. They rub their noses together, saying ‘mmm’ and giggling, then break apart. Tilly shouts ‘again, again’ and they repeat the process.
Eventually, Adam looks up and sees Grace. She smiles.
‘Evening,’ she says. ‘How’s your day been?’
Adam finds himself laughing. Feels all the tension and stress and confusion of the past hours leave his body in a rush, as if the sight of his friend and his child have opened a valve somewhere inside his chest. She’s always made him feel better. She was the only one of his university pals who stayed in touch after he left. Even moved to Portsmouth a few years back when a friend of one of Adam’s associates tipped him the wink about a position opening up at a private school nearby. They lived together for a while, every bit as platonic as when they’d been housemates at Lancaster Uni. The night they tumbled into bed together had been dismissed an aberration, a true one-off, when Grace discovered she was expecting his child. The smile on his face when she told him the good news lasted just long enough for her to commit it to memory. Then it was pummelled flat by the weight of obstacles facing them. In the end they agreed to be parents, to stay best friends, but not to force themselves to be a couple unless it happened naturally. He’d been at the birth. He’d held her hand throughout. He’d kissed her and held her and done everything she could have asked of him and more. He just never let his kisses reach her mouth. And then he met Zara.
‘It’s been one peach of a day,’ he says, bone-tired, but laughing.
Grace and Tilly smile too. They don’t know why, but they like it when he laughs. It doesn’t happen
often and he’s been so very cold, so very quiet, these past few weeks. ‘What’s so funny?’ asks Grace, squeezing his forearm and making him look at her. He has had manic episodes in the past. Bought too much; made poor investments, got himself giddy on new possibilities and lost himself to exploring the honeycombs and elastic walls of his mind. She stares into him. Sees the man she knows and nothing more.
He sits down. Bounces Tilly on his knee. Tells her all of it. About Larry. Angus. DCI Bosworth. About his arrest. He only pauses to drink the coffee she has brewed, and to retrieve the bottle of Tia Maria from his daughter as she pretends she’s a pirate and swigs from the bottle. When he mentions the name Jardine, Grace’s eyebrows head north. She likes her true-crime books. Has a bedside table crammed full of lurid tomes by Mad Frank, Dave Courtney, Lenny McLean and just about every crook or headcase who ever met the Krays. She retrieves her laptop from beside the sofa, her look of concern replaced with excitement.
Adam falls silent as her fingers move over the keys.
‘I’ve not met Larry, have I?’ asks Grace, absent-mindedly. ‘Doubt I will, now.’
‘He may have come to the house a couple of times when we were sharing,’ says Adam, pretending to drop Tilly and then swooping her back up, giggling. ‘You’ll have been at work.’
‘Did he leave the smell?’ she asks, looking up. ‘There was a man used to visit sometimes – wore an aftershave that was almost a perfume. Smelled like geraniums.’
Adam nods. ‘Larger than life,’ he says, and his face falls as the poor choice of words hits home. He retrieves the sheet of paper that Angus had given him – the one he can’t help thinking he should memorize and burn. If Bosworth comes back to pick him up, he doesn’t want anything to do with Larry Paris about his person. He hands it to Grace.
‘Marinello,’ she reads, frowning. ‘That’s a cherry.’
‘I don’t think it is,’ he smiles.
‘And the registrar – unavailable?’
‘Like I said.’
Grace types again at the laptop. Before Tilly came along she was working at a secondary school on the outskirts of the city. Most of her job involved child welfare. She was the Designated Safeguarding Lead: sifting through conflicting parental statements and persuading pupils into her confidence – looking for evidence that those in her care were being treated poorly. She got good at the investigative side of the job.
‘Francis Jardine,’ she reads, her eyes flickering over a page of text. The story is from the Independent and is dated April, 2002: illustrated with a photograph of a small, wiry man in an expensive coat. A lawyer, clutching a crocodile-skin briefcase, is holding the door of a palatial court building and even though the image is still, his posture suggests he is in no hurry to get inside. Grace turns the screen. Adam moves closer and nods, curtly. He recognizes him. Grace does too.
‘We watched that documentary together,’ she prompts. ‘The Irish presenter – the one who went undercover to expose football hooligans.’
Adam nods again, his lips pursed. ‘Real deal,’ he mutters.
‘“People stand up when he walks in”,’ reads Grace, turning the laptop back towards herself and using her best newsreader voice. ‘“It’s like having a pop star or the pope in the room. He’s got an air of super-confidence about him, and there’s good reason for that. He behaves the way we all would if we knew with absolute certainty that there will be no repercussions. He’s been around long enough to be as close to bulletproof as you can get in this game. The numbers are silly when you try and get a handle on what he’s worth. The last estimate was north of £300 million, but how do you know for sure? On paper he runs a business selling warehouse space and dabbling in waterfront property. In reality, he’s got a finger in every pie worth biting in London …”’
‘Nice quote,’ says Adam, begrudgingly.
‘“… does the things that other people just threaten to do. Rumour has it that most of the Mockney gangster movies are based on the legends that have sprung up around him. He’s a big fan of electrocution as torture, though word has it he likes to use barbed wire most of all …”’ She stops, eyes wide. ‘Bloody hell, no wonder he sued!’
‘Sorry?’ asks Adam, quietly.
‘The piece is from a Court of Appeal hearing. A broadsheet newspaper was fighting for the right to call him a gangster. He was trying to block it. Most of this stuff came out in open court so it’s covered by the ruling. According to Mr Justice Farrell, Jardine’s everything the journalist claims, and more. Here, come look.’
Adam purses his lips as he considers the image. ‘Certainly looks the part. If Bosworth’s looking for somebody to pin Larry on, he’s a better bet than me, don’t you think?’
‘Untouchable,’ says Grace, tactfully. ‘That’s the point of this piece. It’s a profile called “The Rise and Rise of The Untouchable Gangster”. That doesn’t suggest that many people have been able to catch him – even if he is involved in this.’
‘Thanks for your encouragement,’ says Adam, pulling a face. ‘Should I pack a bag for prison now or later?’
Grace ignores him and continues to read out choice snippets from the article. ‘“Born in Canning Town in 1933, father Billy a petty criminal who served time for bank robberies. Francis was a promising boxer, trained at the same gym as the Krays … running his own firm by the age of twenty-three … name appears in police reports when the twins were at war with the Richardson brothers … avoided prison, began running extortion rackets, armed robberies, drugs, alleged involvement in a blackmail scam that earned him a colossal pay-day from a minor royal and senior members of the House of Lords …”’
‘Oh brilliant,’ mutters Adam, laying back on the carpet, beaten. Tilly, dutifully, imitates him. He turns and presses his forehead to his daughter’s.
‘Daddy. Hug.’
‘All I wanted was some answers about my biological parents,’ he says, softly, holding Tilly as if she is about to float away.
Grace, deep in thought, doesn’t register the catch in his voice. She ploughs on, thinking aloud. ‘Well, his eyes are green and yours are blue, so if Larry was working on something sensational, the biology might not work …’
Adam sits up. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he says, with a forced laugh. ‘That’s not even … why would you say that?’
Grace shrugs, embarrassed. ‘It would be so much easier if you just spoke to your mum and dad,’ she blusters.
‘My mum will stand still and say nothing,’ sighs Adam. ‘And Dad’s not even sure what day it is.’
‘But they must have some paperwork. A birth certificate …’
‘That’s what Larry was supposed to be finding for me. I mean, we celebrate my birthday on September 24th, so he should have been able to find it …’
‘But that’s not necessarily your real birthday,’ says Grace, a little sadly. ‘I mean, that’s what your mum always told you it was, but what if it’s not?’
Adam rubs his hand through his hair. Grace can see he wants a cigarette but he would never roll up or light up in her house, and never in front of his daughter.
‘September 24th,’ she says, and reaches over to grab the piece of paper Larry had left under his desk-lamp. ‘You were born ’71, yes?’
‘Yeah,’ he says, then shrugs. ‘Two years younger than you, remember.’
‘And seven years younger than Zara,’ says Grace, automatically. Her voice drips with disdain as she says it. ‘Pamela Garner,’ she adds, before he can offer reprimand. ‘Died on September 17th, 1971. That’s a week after you were born.’
‘Yeah, I worked that out,’ says Adam, and pulls Tilly closer. He kisses her head, wearing sadness and bewilderment like a well-cut suit.
‘I’ll check,’ says Grace, her fingers swift on the keys. She types the relevant names into Google. ‘Garner, Pamela. Francis Jardine. Should I put in Kukuc? Yes, I will … here we are …’ She shakes her head. ‘Plenty on Jardine. Kukuc is mentioned in an article on a true-crime website – a man call
ed King Rat. He’s written books on all the famous names. Hang on … there’s a blog and a forum, loads of people arguing about who’d win in a fight between Lenny McLean and somebody called Gypsy Joe. All men – what a shock. Somebody here called Dabbler22 – he says Kukuc has lost his bottle, done a runner. Did Angus mention that to you. God, these people are obsessive …’
‘My brain’s hurting, Grace,’ says Adam, and Tilly puts her small, warm hand upon his head. Adam reacts like a happy cat.
‘I could ring him,’ says Grace, brightly. ‘There’s a mobile number here.’
‘For who?’
‘This King Rat. He seems to know his stuff. He might recognize the name – maybe shed some light …’
Adam laughs. ‘Grace, I appreciate that you want to help but it’s specialized work. You’re a teacher. And I’m, well, I’m not anybody really …’
‘But you’ve paid money to find answers. And it’s possible that looking for those answers cost Larry his life.’
Adam pulls a face. ‘I don’t want that to be true.’
‘No, but it’s possible. And it’s also possible it’s going to cause you problems. You got arrested, for goodness’ sake.’
‘Only because I was a prick about it,’ he says, feebly.
Grace picks up her mobile from the windowsill and starts typing in the number. Adam waves his hands. He doesn’t seem to want things to move from this position; seems happier letting every possibility exist. She realizes she is enjoying this a little too much. She’s excited. Pointedly, embarrassed with herself, she puts the phone down.
They brood for a moment, then Adam says, ‘Fucking hell,’ and drains his coffee. He pulls himself up and Tilly lets out a squawk, overcome with fear that he might leave. Grace isn’t sure whether to spare him the torture of confirming his daughter’s fears. She could be the bad guy here – could tell their child that Daddy is needed elsewhere and that she shouldn’t make him feel bad for working so hard. But to do so would make her a liar. Adam only works hard in the sense that he manages to stay one step ahead of the problems he causes for himself. If he could only tolerate reality; if he could handle a domestic set-up and the shackles of fidelity, he could be here, with her and his child, all the time. At once, she feels bad for thinking such disloyal thoughts. Grace can see him struggling to digest all of this information. She knows how hard this is for him. She knows what his family, his real family, mean to him. Despite her enjoyment that he has shared his confusion with her these past months, she is angry that he is having to endure such feelings. His father’s words did more than pull the rug out from under him. They buried him up to his neck in guilt and bewilderment and left him gasping for air.