by Paul Read
‘Why’s that then?’ Patrick aimed for blithe but managed just shy of panic-stricken.
Christophe wasn’t looking at him, and it was then that Patrick realised, all evening, in the run up to this moment, they’d been as nervous as each other. ‘Oh. Well. I found two bags of skunk in my summer house. It’s shitty stuff but it does the trick.’
Patrick swore.
The security light. The neighbour’s barking dog. A twitched curtain.
Patrick had hurled the bags into the back of the summer house and bolted. For all Christophe’s security features, he left his side gate unlocked. Patrick had no experience in evidence concealment, so could perhaps be forgiven for not thinking straight that night, and figured it was better to gift the evidence to a user, on the other side of London, and let them puff the stuff out of existence. He hadn’t expected Christophe to find the stash so rapidly. What the hell had the man been doing in his summer house in the middle of winter?
Patrick said the words before he could veto them: ‘Don’t tell anyone, will you?’ His voice was higher than usual as he leaned over the baize, lanced the cue ball onto the carpet. His hysteria was having pejorative influences upon his volume too. ‘I mean, God knows where it came from,’ he shouted.
Anxiety etched itself into Christophe’s face. ‘But what if someone wants it back?’
Patrick stooped to pluck up the white and placed it behind the balk-line, watched his friend tap it into the D with a careful stroke of his cue tip. He knew he should have just thrown the grass away, or burnt it in the kiln with the rest of the proof of Jenna’s crime, stoning the whole third floor in the process. Now he’d handed the evidence to a man whom Meadows was informing firsthand about suspects.
‘They won’t. It’s on your property. It’s yours now.’
Christophe placed a steadying hand upon his colleague’s shoulder. Patrick’s flinch was almost controlled.
‘But property is theft, Patrick. Remember? Let’s stop the act now. I thought it was a very… kind gesture. If a little stupid.’ The Frenchman stalked the table like a hunter, nervous smile illuminated archly by canopy lighting. He fired in a red, then the pink. ‘Whose was it?’ he asked, squatting golfer-like to eye up his next shot.
‘Denis’s,’ Patrick replied, replacing the pink ball.
Christophe didn’t even blink.
‘Seven,’ Patrick declared.
‘Forgive my curiosity, but last week you made a startling announcement. Might that have some bearing on my recent gift?’
‘Eight. Nice shot. Sadly, there is a connection, yes.’
The blue disappeared.
‘Thirteen.’
Christophe paused to allow Patrick time to replace the ball. ‘And by donating me my… pain relief… Are you asking me to keep quiet about what I know?’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘I’ve always been of the opinion that ignorance is bliss, Patrick, but in this case I think there’s one piece of information I ought to be privy to.’
‘I didn’t kill him.’
Christophe straightened and looked Patrick in the eye. Relief shined an inner light. ‘My friend, that’s all I needed to know.’
The door buzzer propelled him into a world of pain.
Patrick slouched from his bed, smeared his hands across the dark hollows of his eyes. Hangovers now possessed a septic brutality they’d never attained in his twenties and the world lurched violently. What had happened after he’d left the snooker club? Why did the taste of kebab meat soil his mouth?
The buzzer went again and Patrick swore.
It was the police. It had to be.
Patrick shivered to recall the coward’s words as she’d sat, so secure of her gambit, upon her bed that night:
‘Denis told me you hit him.’
Jenna had a knowledge which put him at the vanguard of suspects and had made it clear she’d use such knowledge against him if he declined to help her.
She’d been desperate, but that alone didn’t forgive her, nor him his collusion; he could have stood by his assertion to walk to the police station there and then. No, the real clincher was her threat of gang involvement. If he’d refused to help, she knew a plethora of barely pubic but dangerous people who could and would persuade him. It had seemed so much more civilised to keep his secret between them.
But Patrick hadn’t been thinking properly that night. It wasn’t their secret alone.
Denis had been with five of his gang the evening he’d hit him. Five mouths which, loyal to Denis in death, could have said anything to anyone by now.
Between his classroom encounter with Mary Haynes and the snooker hall confessions with Christophe, Patrick had found time to hastily replant the murder weapon in his Art room. It was safe for a few more days but if Meadows and his team had a warrant…
If only he could get the gun to Christophe’s too. The Frenchman, though far from onside, was surely the one person he could trust at the moment.
The buzzer went again. And again.
It hurt his face to frown. Surely even the police wouldn’t have been so persistent?
He walked slowly into the hallway, peered into the video monitor.
His son’s monochrome face hovered inside the little television. ‘Are you going to let us stand out here all morning?’ Ana’s voice sang off-screen.
He buzzed them up.
‘DaddyDaddyDaddy!’ his son was the first to arrive, tackling his legs and clinging like a vine.
‘You look as shit as you do in the newspaper,’ Ana said, arriving at his door. She slipped past him, taking a rapid look around his flat and making the kind of sigh only the perennially unsurprised can muster. The flat, messy and chaotic, was the physical manifestation of how Patrick currently felt.
Danny ran round in circles, interspersing his gymnastics with little jumps. ‘DaddyDaddyDaddy!’
Ana was already clearing his coffee table of mugs. ‘There’s mould on this one. I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea. That’s if you’ve got any cups left.’ Gingerly fishing a teabag out of a mug, she dangled its dry carcass in front of him. She was dressed for battle: a black body warmer was her flak jacket; her tied-back hair shone like Kevlar.
‘Sit down. I’ll see what I can find us.’ He hobbled into the kitchen, leaving his wife to pick her way to the sofa, peeling back jumpers and takeaway cartons.
‘Hangover?’ she called.
‘Stop shouting. And where the hell have you been? You told me you were going back to Argentina. Your mother even called me.’
It was unknown territory, this. They were still married, but she didn’t owe him an explanation. But his concern, for her, and especially for their son, was genuine and they both knew that. It wasn’t an opportunity to score points.
‘I was thinking.’
‘You were thinking?’ He walked back into the lounge.
Danny jumped from the sofa, to the armchair, to the sofa.
‘Danny!’ Ana shouted.
‘It’s okay.’
‘See,’ Danny chided. ‘Daddy says it’s okay! Daddy says it’s okay!’
‘You’ll hurt yourself.’
Patrick scooped him up, held him close. The strong, warm limbs wrapped themselves around him again.
‘What were you thinking about?’ he asked.
‘Us. Amongst other things.’
‘I didn’t think there was an Us.’
‘I’ve got a job.’
‘Where? Here? In London?’
She nodded.
‘What job? Who have you been staying with? I’ve been calling all your friends.’
‘I know you have.’
‘Why didn’t you call your mum? She was worried.’
‘No. You worried her. I’m sorry. I just… needed some time.’ She inspected her hair in the mirror above the sofa, expressed disappointment with something about it, then ran a hand through its front as if to unknot it.
‘You could have left Danny with me
.’
‘Really?’ She made a show of looking around the flat, its galleries of unkempt bachelorhood. ‘You can’t even look after yourself at the moment. Have you seen what you look like?’
Danny grabbed his father’s cheeks and pulled them, laughing. ‘You look silly, Daddy. You look like a poobum.’
‘Seriously,’ she asked. ‘Are you okay?’
Though he longed to speak to a person removed from the darkness in Union City, this was never going to represent a normalcy of adult communication with his son tugging at his face. In any case, Ana couldn’t be expected to provide her husband sanctuary any longer. Motherhood was, these days, her true subtext. Murder his alone.
Ana paused for a long time. He hadn’t forgotten what the tonality of her silences meant; she wasn’t going to let it go.
‘Patrick… What’s happened?’
‘You read the paper. You know. One of my pupils died.’
‘And that’s all?’
He was taken aback by what, at first, seemed the almost uncaring nature of her question, but became quickly aware that the hiatus this engendered lent his reply the impression of being considered: ‘Yes.’
‘Would you like us to stay?’ she asked.
Danny climbed down. ‘Look at this,’ their son demanded, performing a frankly laughable handstand. ‘And I’ve got Spiderman pants.’
‘I’d love you to stay,’ Patrick admitted. ‘But there’s no room.’
‘The other day, you said…’
‘Look, I’m not being rude. But I don’t want you mixed up in this.’
‘Mixed up in what?’
‘There’s a press conference tomorrow which I’ve agreed to take part in. I’m going to be busy.’
‘All the more reason for me to be around, to give you help.’
He looked at her, unable to hide his affection. But the affection fought too many other emotions now. Patrick was on the brink of caving in, but knew it would be so much worse for Danny if he was arrested while they stayed under his roof.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just not possible.’
‘Patrick. Tell me. What is it?’
He couldn’t bear her eyes upon him. His vocation was a second choice one, their marriage was in cinders, his body a wreck. He was an accomplice to murder.
‘Danny,’ she said, ‘go and play in your room.’
‘What’s wrong with Daddy’s eyes?’
‘Just go.’
When she came for him, hugged him, he wanted to bawl like a baby but all he could do was shiver. She stirred fear, rather than self-remorse.
‘What is it, Patrick? What is it?’
Danny was watching him through the crack in the door, as though this was all a brilliant excuse for a game of hide and seek. Caught in her arms, her familiar scent, Patrick knew this moment was probably about as good as things were going to get for a while.
The buzzer went again.
When he arrived at the hallway monitor, Sarah’s face was pressed into the screen. He tiptoed back and closed the lounge door, then pushed the intercom.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘You invited me, remember? Last night?’
‘I don’t remember anything. I’m sorry but you can’t come in. My… mother’s here. How’s Jenna?’
‘She thinks I’m at the shops,’ didn’t answer his question. Both mother and daughter were sneaking out of home whenever the other’s guard was down. ‘Come on. Let me in. I came all this way. We need to talk.’
‘What’s happened?’
Sarah’s expression darkened and she lowered her voice still further. Patrick had to lean in to hear her. ‘I mentioned… the gun and stuff… to the police. I had to tell them, Patrick. They were at the flat with dogs. You know, sniffing the area, places he’d been. Jenna went to the station to explain everything. It’s for the best. It was… It was his stuff. It was Denis’s… I had to describe the gun. They seem to think it’s the one that killed Denis. Jenna’s room was searched and there’s this dirty black powder left where they hunted for fingerprints… Come on. Let me in. It’s freezing.’
Patrick struggled to recall whether he’d touched anything that night without his gloves, but he didn’t think so. He also doubted it was possible to get a precise date from a fingerprint and, in any case, he’d been in Jenna’s room with Sarah that evening; any prints were legit. Remaining blood traces were a bigger concern, in the hallway, the bathroom, despite how thoroughly teacher and student had cleaned everything. He knew next to nothing about forensics except that, in television drama, microscopic evidence was enough to catch the killer every episode.
What had Jenna coughed up? How much more did the police know? ‘So, are we in the clear about…?’
Danny burst out of his room and ran to him.
‘Found you! Found you! Hahahahahaha!’
‘Patrick, what is going on? Why invite me over and…?’
‘So… we’re all clear. The gun and that…? They released her without charge?’
‘They told me I’d done the right thing.’ On the screen, she turned her head in profile and stared across the street, perhaps to drink in a middle-class view bereft of burning flats, patrolling gangs. The hushed austerity in her voice told him she was trying to convince herself. ‘I did the right thing.’
Without another word, she left.
Patrick hoisted his son back up into his arms and walked into the front room.
Ana was standing at the window, watching Sarah stalk across the road. In her eyes he read rivalry, suspicion, relief, hurt. His wife, after all those years, was easy to translate, yet as closed as anyone had ever felt to him. She didn’t say a word for a while as he waited for the façade to break, for a hint of how she felt to be transmitted to him. In the end, it all came with a sigh and a reminder for that promised cup of tea.
‘It’s complicated,’ he explained.
‘It always is, Patrick. It always is.’
FOUR
Patrick leaned against the stage stairs and attempted to look relaxed in the suit he’d been wearing for a whole term. This particular jacket had a retch of blue acrylic on the left sleeve and no matter how often he’d polished his shoes they’d steadfastly refused to shine.
Twenty or so journalists were already hunkered in Highfields’ hall, before a plain white lectern sporting several microphones and the Metropolitan Police emblem on its front. A compact black television camera was set up in the aisle, standing high on fragile stilts, and there was a framed picture to the left of the stage, the same photo of Denis every paper was printing, blown up to A3.
Mr Hutchinson clearly loved the idea of Highfields hosting the press conference, seeing it as the perfect way to make up for the humiliating incident with the reporter whilst raking together some publicity for a school ‘fighting from the front line’, so was able to rush the idea past the governors. Guests were hooked out of the local pool of concerned parents and, such was the draw of Denis’s murder, a full house was anticipated.
DCI Meadows went over, one last time, what was required of Patrick and Denis’s mother as they watched the dignitaries arrive.
Denis’s mother was almost unrecognisable. Her skin was blotchy beneath excessive make-up and her hair was a dark, mid-length nest of angry curls, specially dressed and dyed, he guessed, for this terrible occasion. If he’d been led to believe she might have been vaguely eye-catching once, before the sleepless midnights and chronic rosacea, she now looked several decades of heartache past her prime. The newly purchased black dress didn’t disguise her obesity.
‘Thank you for this.’ She broke the silence once Meadows disappeared briefly to speak to his team. ‘It’s very, you know, proper of you.’
Another silence fell.
‘What went wrong?’ she sniffed
‘What indeed?’
Patrick’s question was as hypothetical as hers had been, but she appeared to genuinely think it over. When she replied she did so through a hardened jaw. ‘Yo
u know something? When his dad died – five years old, he was – he stood on the sofa and volunteered to be his own daddy.’
The teacher rubbed his shoes together. He felt obliged to say something, but nothing came to him.
‘Denis didn’t get much of a chance,’ she continued. It was a clichéd going-off-the-rails story, but her analysis, no doubt the condensed highlights from two days of fevered guilt, was a theory designed to absolve rather than lionise. Denis’s father was abusive when drunk, weak when sober, and Denis, in line with his ten-year-old Oedipal suggestion, eschewed parental role models and took to the street, where he did become, to all intents and purposes, ‘the daddy’. ‘They searched my place all over, Mr Owers. I know there was rumours he was selling drugs but they found nothin’.’ Was the pride in her voice because her son was sensible enough to hide his merchandise in someone else’s bedroom, or because her confidence in him as a law-abider remained unchallenged?
He found himself saying, ‘I’m happy to help, if I can. Whatever you need.’ Teachers having no call for business cards, Patrick scribbled his number on a Sainsbury’s receipt and passed it over. ‘I mean it. Anything, just give me a call.’
Patrick caught Meadows’ eye.
‘I’ll let you know when the funeral is, Mr Owers.’
Behind the Inspector, Sarah and Jenna shuffled towards empty seats. They both wore similar blue dresses, which Patrick doubted was deliberate – it was more likely an unfortunate symptom of the event’s short notice. His heart sagged somewhat when he spotted Jenna’s father with them. Jenna, as expected, couldn’t look Patrick’s way.
Sarah claimed the chair with her coat then made her way towards him.
‘Hello,’ he said, as Denis’s mother peeled away. ‘You’re looking nice.’
Sarah smiled a non-committal smile. ‘Is this okay? Talking to you?’
‘It’s fine by me. Sorry about yesterday. I’m technically still married and my mother’s very… you know…’ He nodded towards Sarah’s ex, who sat checking for messages on his phone. ‘I didn’t know you’d all be here.’
‘He was around, so…’
‘He’s been a good source of… support?’ Patrick asked. He tried to lace the question with a degree of casualness, but jealousy dripped through.