‘Unless it belongs, what the hell is it doing there? That’s what you have to ask yourself, doc.’
Later, when she confessed her lapse to Tom, he had laughed and said, ‘He did that to me too. It’s his way of changing the way we look at the world; his world.’
‘He put it there?’
‘He does it to everyone once.’
Her thoughts stayed with Tom and she wondered what sort of man he really was. So far he had presented her with a series of snapshots. There was Tom the cynic; Tom the loner; Tom the uninvolved; but the man she had seen with Beanie was a different snapshot entirely. Or was that just a sublimation? Did he love animals more than people? Was he so bruised and battered by the human beings he worked with every day that he had lost whatever humanising qualities he had?
She remembered his house: the room was like its owner, uninvolved. Yet Harry Joyce, the man with the shotgun who had been so rude to her, had seemed like a self-appointed guardian, and to exert that kind of emotional pull on people you had to have something to give.
The phone rang and she heard her father answer it. Clive probably. But Henry’s voice went on and on and unless he had suddenly taken a violent liking to Clive – something she discounted – it wasn’t her London lover.
She dried herself, pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and went downstairs. He was just hanging up.
‘Margaret Newman,’ he said.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘She didn’t want to talk to you; she specifically said that. She wanted me.’
‘Oh.’
He poured himself a whisky and soda.
‘Well? Are you going to tell me what she said?’
‘In a nutshell, she’s not going to see her husband in prison any more.’
‘Oh, Lord. Why?’
‘Too stressful.’
‘What about Jason? Doesn’t she think he’s stressed?’
‘I think she’s completely egocentric. Most mannequins are, they tell me.’
‘Who told you? Watch?’
‘Very amusing. Anyway, I can understand what’s happening. She’s by herself. Cut off in what she sees as a hostile environment . . . people hating her, etcetera . . . and no one to talk to.’
‘If she spent some time with her husband she would have someone to talk to.’
‘I told her that. But she’s certain he’s guilty of the attempted rape and goodness knows what else. She says he was unfaithful before. Now she feels that Julie was at risk, and the baby she’s carrying is also at risk if she goes on being so stressed. People are constantly whining about being stressed these days. I don’t remember being stressed when I was her age.’
Anne did not rise to that.
‘Anyway, she’s off to Mum.’
‘Is she walking out on him for good?’
‘My own experience of the justice system is that once one partner goes inside it takes a very strong relationship to survive.’
‘The fact is she’s abandoning him.’
‘True.’ He held up a piece of paper. ‘But she did give me names and addresses of people who might help, so she’s not totally without feelings.’
‘Who?’
‘Newman’s grandfather, for one.’
‘I told you about the letter he wrote. There won’t be any help from that direction. He said as much.’
‘She also gave me the address of his sister and someone called his guru. I thought that was an Indian gentleman until she told me he was also his tennis coach.’
‘They all have gurus now. Coaches, psychologists, gurus, lawyers, managers, agents, publicists, and after the Seles stabbing, their own minders. Damn! I was hoping she might help me get through to Jason. I was on the verge, too.’
He waved the paper. ‘You could see these people.’
‘When? I’ve hardly got enough time to see Hilly. Where does his sister live?’
‘London.’
‘How on earth am I to get to London?’
‘What about me going?’
‘You?’
‘Why not? It doesn’t matter how you get the information, does it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Well then . . .’
‘What about Hilly?’
‘You take her to school, I pick her up. Or vice versa. It’s not all that difficult. Women always make things more complicated than they need to be. I’m sure it was a woman who designed the ironing board.’
‘You leave the ironing board out of this.’
*
‘Secrets, old cock. That’s the secret of it. Geddit? The secret is to have secrets. Jason? You awake, old sporty tennisplayer?’
Jason listened to the voice coming down from the upper bunk. The cell was dark, the prison restless, insomniac.
‘Jason!’
‘Yes.’
‘You ever had secrets?’
‘That’s a secret.’
‘He’s being funny. Give him a Valium, doc. I mean secret things; secret places. I got secrets from you. You got secrets from me. Stands to reason.’
Far away in the distant night Jason heard the sound of a train. It brought tears to his eyes.
‘I had a secret place once,’ Billy said. ‘Still got it for that matter, because nobody knows about it. That’s the whole point of having something secret, wouldn’t you say old man, old bean? So that the other frigging sods don’t know. That’s why you got to have another secret place – up in the old brainbox. Somewhere the bastards can’t get to. Oh, yeah, they think they’re so fucking clever. They think they can get into your skull; but you know they can’t. Not if you got a secret place.’
Billy paused for a moment and said, ‘You gone to sleep, Jason?’
‘No.’
‘You listening to me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay then, let’s play a game. I’ll tell you a secret if you tell me one. How’s that?’
‘I haven’t got any secrets.’
‘Yes you have, you lying tennisplayer. Come on. I don’t feel sleepy.’
Jason had had enough. ‘For Christ’s sake, why don’t you shut up!’
A voice called from across the landing, ‘Put a sock in it!’
Billy was up in a flash and standing at the door. ‘Shut your fucking face!’ he yelled. There was a surge of shouting and threats along the landing. Billy turned away from the door. ‘That’ll teach the sods.’
He sat down on the edge of Jason’s bunk. ‘You want me to stay down here with you? Keep you company for a little while?’
His hand touched Jason’s leg. Jason pulled it away. ‘I’ll break your arm.’
‘Is that what you said to her?’
‘Who?’
‘The kid you raped, old pal. Take your knickers off or I’ll break your arm.’
Jason didn’t reply and Billy climbed up into his bunk. He was laughing softly.
*
People did have secrets. The eye was a secret; his secret; only he really knew what had happened.
That had been the watershed. If it hadn’t happened his life would have been different. He wouldn’t have been in this cell with Billy Sweete.
But it had happened.
All because his father put a tiger in his tank. That was Lajos’s phrase; the old Esso ad. He loved it.
I put a tiger in your tank. You too nice. You too soft.
I put in killer instinct.
That was another phrase he’d used.
For God’s sake, Lajos, his mother had said, you’re turning him into a monster.
But Lajos no longer bothered to insult her. His silence, his indifference, did more damage. If he wanted to be specially kind to her he spoke to her. Even lines like, ‘Why you no go and get pissed?’ were better than silence.
A tiger in your tank. Killer instinct. Go for jugular. Kill him.
He had heard those shouted phrases on the practice court; even from the sidelines of the major stadia where his father had been warned a hundred
times for coaching.
Come on, Tiger.
Tiger. His nickname for a while. Tiger Newman. New man. You come to new country, you become new man, his father had said.
So . . . next . . . the serve . . .
You tall but you need weights to build muscle. Then you have fastest serve in world. I show you.
And so he had trained with weights. He had run up the Downs and down the Downs. He had practised and practised.
115 mph . . . 121 mph . . . 132 mph . . .
The balls slamming down from a great height; slamming down and lifting so high that his opponent was taking them round his head.
Roscoe Tanner? Sampras? Ivanisevic?
Jason Newman was faster than them all.
Wham! Bang!
But never fast enough for his father.
Cannonball. Another of Lajos’s words.
Cannonball come so fast he break through your guard. Yes? Now you show. And he would have to hit cannonball aces until his shoulder became so sore he could hardly lift the racquet. The cannonball, the slice, the topspin, he learned them all . . .
Listen, you must look at service box before you serve . . . plan where you going to hit ball. Okay?
Then one day Lajos said: Now you ready – ready for the big time.
He went to Queen’s to play in the London Grass Court Championships and he played a Frenchman rated 181st in the world and he won eleven points in two sets and his father spat on the grass and called him a coward.
In front of a crowd of seven thousand people.
They drove back to Sussex in silence, but they didn’t go home. It was late at night and the club was deserted and Lajos switched on the big halogen lights and said, Now you practise.
He had a bag of balls and he put them on the court at Jason’s feet.
First the serve.
Fuck you, says Jason, and goes into the clubhouse and Lajos says, What you say? What you say?
I’m not playing any more. You can stuff it.
What? What?
Freedom. For the first time in his life Jason feels real freedom.
He goes into the changing rooms. He is laughing. And Lajos follows him and throws the bag of balls on the floor and they shoot out and roll and Lajos says pick them up you coward bastard.
And the sense of freedom goes and instead the tiger is in his tank and he picks up the balls and begins to serve.
At his father.
The big serve. Bigger than Becker’s now . . . and the balls smash into his father again and again and he shields his head and tries to run but the balls ricochet around the room and under his feet and he falls and – yes, one big cannonball zoomer connects with his right eye and there it is on his cheek . . . a poached egg . . . sucked out of its socket . . . blood and mucus and . . . oh, Christ . . .
And from that moment Jason is lost.
His father tells everyone that they were practising in the lights and he didn’t see the ball. No one must know, he says to Jason, it will be our secret.
And after that Jason hardly lost a match for seven years.
He is remembering the eye, and feeling the guilt that spread inside him like blood spreads into tissue. He still feels the guilt, the pain of what he did. Yes, he too has a secret.
Chapter Sixteen
Sunday morning and Anne was working. On her desk was the hygiene report. She had already worked on it for a full day and wanted to go over it one more time before handing it in to the Governor’s office.
There was a knock on her door and Tom put his head round. ‘Got a moment?’
‘Of course.’
He closed it behind him and began his usual slow pacing. ‘Les says you had your baptism of fire yesterday. The hep B prisoner. Tell me what happened.’
‘It wasn’t as dramatic as that. I was doing the drug throughcare clinic and—’
‘What was his name?’
‘Reilly. Remand prisoner. Twenty-six years old.’
‘I don’t think I’ve met him.’
‘Aggravated assault on an old woman.’
Reilly had been the last patient, and from the moment he stepped into the medical room she had felt uneasy. She told herself that Les was outside the door and all she had to do was call.
He was of medium height with a shaven head and a series of earrings. His hands were tattooed. He entered the room with a swagger.
‘I come for my tot,’ he said.
When she had first arrived the word had confused her. ‘Tot’ meant liquid to her; she had to learn that most drugs in prison were given as pills in small plastic containers, but still called a tot.
Until a couple of years earlier the prisoners would take the dose in front of the doctor. Not now. It had been decreed that prisoners needed the responsibility of dosing themselves.
They took their tots back to their cells and spaced the drugs as they needed them – and sold what they didn’t need. This was well enough known, but it was responsibility versus illicit sales, and responsibility had won with the Home Office.
‘I’m on sixty mils and ten of the blues,’ he had said. The statement was a challenge.
She already knew that every prisoner exaggerated his dosage and Reilly had come from the Kingstown drug treatment centre whose dosages she was familiar with.
He came to stand beside her and looked over her shoulder as she wrote.
‘What’s this?’ He pointed a tattooed finger at the prescription.
‘The London Road day centre never prescribes more than forty mils of methadone and—’
‘That’s a lie! You got to—’
‘And I’m not giving you more than forty mils of valium. You can have it twice a day.’
He suddenly grabbed her by the arm and she saw the death’s head rings on his fingers.
‘Fucking bitch!’
She opened her mouth to yell. He released her. She looked at her arm. His nails had pressed into her skin. ‘Now you can worry,’ he said. ‘I’m hep B positive.’
Tom’s face showed instant concern. ‘Les never mentioned that.’
‘All I told Les was that he’d grabbed me.’
‘I hope you’ve had your shots.’
‘At St Thomas’s.’
He relaxed. ‘Hepatitis B scares the hell out of us. And the police too. They’re more scared of that than HIV. Half the tarts in London are carriers so they’re extra careful when they arrest them. We’ll try to persuade Reilly to let us check him. He may be lying.’
‘What about Les and the rest of the staff?’
‘We don’t force people to have jabs, but most of them do. It’s too risky not to. I had a part-timer once who wouldn’t handle a case. The governor wasn’t sympathetic. He said that’s what the £800-a-year danger money was paid for and if he didn’t like the heat etc., etc.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘I fired him.’ He crossed to the window. ‘It’s raining.’
‘Oh, no! And I promised to take Hilly out.’
‘How’s she getting on?’
‘At school?’
‘Generally. How are you all getting on in Kingstown?’
‘Hilly’s settled down but I’m not so sure about my father. I think he finds it a bit tame after Africa. But he’s—’ She checked herself. She did not think the time ripe to tell Tom about his interest in Jason Newman. ‘He’s getting used to things, or perhaps Kingstown is getting used to him. How’s Beanie?’
His expression changed into a frown. ‘Her muscle tone is good but—’ he shrugged. ‘If only one could explain to her that she should try.’
‘I mentioned her to Hilly. She’s writing a story about her. Keeps on asking me if there’s any good news.’
‘She’d better come and meet her then. Bring her to tea.’
‘She’d love that.’
‘What about four o’clock?’
‘Today?’
‘Why not, if you’ve nothing else on?’
‘I was going to work on this repo
rt at home.’
‘I’m the boss and I say it can wait. Anyway you’ve been working like hell. Oh—’ He dug his hand into his pocket and brought out a bleeper. ‘I’ve been meaning to give you this. Your umbilicus. When it bleeps, you phone in. We’re not often called back at weekends once the morning’s duty work is finished.’
She hesitated and he said, ‘If it’s Harry Joyce who’s bothering you, his bark’s worse than his bite.’
Hilly was at a schoolfriend’s house and Anne picked her up at lunchtime. ‘Can we have takeaways?’ Hilly said. ‘Grandpa’s not at home.’
Henry didn’t approve of takeaways.
‘Sure.’
They went to a Thai restaurant near their house and bought a series of dishes including sweet and sour chicken which was Hilly’s favourite. The day was grey and rainy and they sat in the cheerful kitchen and ate out of the containers. Anne told her about Tom’s invitation and Hilly’s eyes lit up.
‘Can I take my story and read it to her?’
‘To Beanie? Sure. Dogs love stories.’
They did the week’s food shopping, and in the mid-afternoon Anne drove them to Tom’s. The countryside was dark under heavy clouds.
The woods had lost their autumn colours. The reds and the golds had faded to a uniform brown and already some of the ash trees had lost their leaves and their bare branches moved in the wind. Winter was on its way. Anne drove slowly and carefully over the rutted road trying not to slip into the wheeltracks made by Tom’s Land Rover.
The wooden house, which she had thought so gemütlich and Bavarian, now seemed much more like a house from which children were driven by cruel woodcutters in Victorian fairytales.
An unfamiliar car was parked outside. As Anne drew up a woman came onto the verandah. Anne didn’t particularly want to talk to her but couldn’t remain in the car.
‘Come on,’ she said to Hilly. ‘Let’s see what’s happening.’
As they got out of the car the woman came to the top of the steps and examined them.
‘Oh, I thought you were Tom,’ she said.
She was about Anne’s age, but short and slender. She had long black crimped hair and was wearing a black suit, white blouse, and black high-heeled pumps. Everything was black and white, smart, expensive and, Anne thought with envy, the kind of outfit not often seen in a soggy landscape or even in Kingstown for that matter.
Burn Out (Dr. Anne Vernon Book 1) Page 14