by Suki Fleet
“I know what you mean, Cai. And he’s okay. He was a little distressed when he first got here but he calmed down.”
“Can I see him now?”
“He asked me to talk to you about what happened to him, though I can only give you my side of it.”
Cai stilled, bracing himself for whatever Vivian was going to say. He had a clue, of course he did, but it was going to hurt to hear it all laid out.
Nicky needed him to know.
He took a deep breath. “Okay.”
I don’t want to talk
Nicky stared at the clock on the wall. He was in some sort of forgotten wasteland of a police station waiting area. But at least he was alone. Downstairs there was a heavy door that banged every time it closed. And every time it banged, Nicky jumped.
Vivian had been gone nearly an hour. It was five past twelve. Cai was due at the magistrate’s court in just over an hour. Nicky worried his bitten-down thumbnail. If he thought about what was going to happen, he felt like curling up under one of the chairs in the corner. So, he didn’t think. Instead, he stared numbly at the minute hand devouring the hours.
A click of heels followed a particularly attention-grabbing door bang. Nicky spun in his seat and peered down the stairs. Vivian stood at the bottom. She waved her arm, beckoning him.
It was busier downstairs, which was likely why Vivian had sent him to wait in the dead zone. She still seemed guiltily concerned about his well-being. Nicky dug his fingernails into his palms as they wound their way down corridor after corridor. There were too many people and they were all talking and laughing and shouting. And it was becoming stressful.
“How far?” Nicky said through gritted teeth.
“Nearly there.” She pointed at a door at the end of the corridor. “I’ll wait outside. You’ve got half an hour. And remember, there are cameras.”
Nicky didn’t give a fuck about the cameras. He just wanted to see Cai.
He opened the door. Cai was leaning against the opposite wall. His face was blotchy and his eyes were red.
“I don’t want to talk,” Nicky said, placing his hands flat against the cold metal behind him.
Cai nodded and held his arms open. And that’s all they did. For half an hour they held one another so fucking tight.
Head in hands
Twenty-five minutes before Cai was due in court, he had a visit from two unsmiling detectives. Both female this time. Moss and Oates. His tired-looking lawyer, with his heavy-looking case, followed them into the empty little interview room.
After Vivian had brought Nicky to see him, Cai had thought the relentless questioning was finally over. He was completely wrung out, his emotions flattened. But as soon as they set the tape recorder down on the table, he gritted his teeth and braced himself for another round of answering the same questions.
But this time, they weren’t the same questions.
“Had an interesting little conversation with Sophie at the hospital this morning. She’s very scared you’re going to get into trouble,” the first detective, Moss, said. She was thin and sharp-looking, and her shiny red suit clung to her in all sorts of interesting places. The second detective tapped her fingertips against the table and stared at him. “Said she started the fire at Thorn Hall on purpose.”
Cai’s chair screeched against the floor as he surged backwards, feeling as though he’d been punched in the chest. No.
With a tight smile, Moss got to her feet and began to pace. Something about her movement made Cai feel tenser.
“Now, I don’t believe she started that fire, Cai. But why would she say something like that? Is she trying to protect someone, do you think? Eighteen months you got for arson, didn’t you? And Sophie is what, fourteen now, so she’d be sixteen when—”
“No.” Cai wasn’t sure he could form any other words; he felt winded. Light-headed. His thoughts were a panicky mess. They couldn’t take Soph. What if she ended up in a YOI like he had? He couldn’t stand the thought of her having to go through something like that. He couldn’t let that happen. Ever. He had to protect her.
The lawyer held up his hand. “Remember you don’t have to say anything.”
“No?” Moss pressed.
“Soph didn’t start the fire. I don’t want you to question her again.”
“So who did start the fire, Cai?”
Cai felt as though he was falling down a deep, deep well, the light disappearing above him as he fell. “Leave Soph alone. I want it in writing, official, that you won’t bother her again. With anything.”
He waited until Moss glanced at her colleague and then gave him a sharp nod, then said, “It was me. I started the fire at Thorn Hall.”
Fuck romance. Just fucking fuck it
Vivian drove Nicky to the court. He closed his eyes for most of the journey, only opening them when they pulled into a parking space right outside the courthouse. Fox Mask was sitting on a wall near the entrance swinging her crutches. Her leg was in plaster all the way up to her thigh.
Nicky looked away. “What’s she doing here?”
“I have a proposition for her, so I had her meet me here when she was discharged from hospital this morning. She told me what happened between you. Want me to ask her to wait in the car?”
“Whatever. I don’t give a fuck.” Nicky’s heart was pounding. He couldn’t think about anything else right now.
Getting out of the car, he tried not to look around. It was all too much. He wanted to be inside.
He marched past Fox Mask without saying a word.
The courthouse was airy and old. A huge stone box of a place. Hollow in the middle. People were milling about the entrance hall so Nicky headed away from them and found a quieter space up a short flight of stone stairs. He collapsed onto one of the slatted benches attached to the wall and counted his breaths, trying his best not to look as anxious as he felt. This was his life now and if he had to fight his way through it one fucking excruciating second at a time, then that’s what he was going to do.
He wished he knew which courtroom Cai was going to be in. Though Vivian had said he couldn’t actually be inside the court with Cai, so it didn’t really matter.
Something banged against the stairs. Nicky tensed, saw it was Fox Mask and her crutches and relaxed a little. She was sort of a known quantity at least, even if Nicky had no desire to talk to her. Banging and gasping, she struggled up the stairs.
When she reached the top, she leaned on her crutches, out of breath.
“I wanted to talk to you, then I’ll go. It won’t take long,” she said after a minute.
Nicky shrugged and gripped the bench a little tighter. He didn’t really know what it was she wanted to say.
She limped a step closer. “I know there’s no point in apologising again, but I am sorry for scaring the fuck out of you that time.”
“You scared the fuck out of me twice.”
Fox Mask smiled ruefully, and despite saying she was going to go, she swung her crutches around and sat down next to him. Nicky found it didn’t bother him as much as he expected.
“I looked for you at the hospital, but you’d already gone. It was weird talking to Loz. All this time I’d known who Loz was but we’d never met. Made me promise not to tell their aunt they were involved in all this. I always saw Patsy as a big pussycat, but I guess I don’t know her as well as I thought!”
Nicky didn’t really know what she was on about.
She fiddled with the blue tape wrapped around one of her crutches. “Cai’ll get out. He fucked up his probation, but why would they deny his bail? He’s not done anything criminal. Prisons are overcrowded enough. They must want to save the space for people who’ve actually done something.”
Yeah, like Cyril, Benoit and whoever else had called themselves the Duke. All the other people who never ended up inside even though they deserved it far more than Cai.
“He shouldn’t even be here.” Nicky stared at the tiles. They were so clean the courthouse probably had cleaners hiding i
n the corners and polishing them when people’s backs were turned.
“You’re going to wait for him, though, whatever happens. You’ve got to admit that’s got a certain romance to it.”
“If he’d never met me and got tangled up in my life, he wouldn’t be in court now. Fuck romance.”
Fox Mask laughed. “Yeah. Fuck romance. I like it.” She held out her hand. “I’m Gemma, by the way. We never did introduce ourselves properly, did we?”
Not sure he wanted to shake hands with her, Nicky stared at her outstretched hand for a few seconds. Then he sighed and gave in.
“I owe you, Nicky. I hope one day I’ll be able to do something to show you how sorry I am about everything,” she said quietly. “The Duke took my brother. I just wanted to find him.”
“You found the people responsible. More than the police managed to do.”
Gemma nodded. “We still don’t really know what happened, though. There’s still too many secrets….”
Without turning her head, she glanced across at him as if checking he was okay with having this conversation. Nicky held her sidelong gaze, curious as to what she knew.
“I only found out Lance existed because of the photographs Nigel Commador’s witness took. Don’t tell anyone, but I stole copies of them from his house.” She stopped. Nicky waited expectantly for her to carry on. Gemma rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Look at you, you’re not even shocked by that. Breaking into someone’s house and stealing those photographs was the scariest and most illegal thing I’d ever done. And you think I’m some hardened criminal.”
“I’ve seen you with a gun in your hand more times than I’ve seen you without one.”
“Yeah, well, needs must. Anyway, these pictures were dark and blurry and everyone assumed there was just one man in all of them, Benoit Du Vey. But looking closer there were these tiny discrepancies in what he was wearing, where he was standing and even his body language. The fact there were two different men in the photos was the only thing that made sense. Benoit had no immediate family listed in any of the official reports I found, and yet here was this guy in the photographs who looked exactly like him. Something seemed really off. I couldn’t leave it alone. So, I dug deeper. I tried to find people that knew Benoit and get a clue as to where he’d worked, where he’d lived. But there was nothing. Nothing the police hadn’t already tried. It was as though he hadn’t existed before he was on trial for murder. And only the rich and the powerful can afford to blank out their pasts and their connections like that. So, I started checking out the big houses in the area. Landowners. Politicians. Famous people. I searched and I searched and I found nothing. In the end, it was just luck.”
Nicky stared down at the people wandering the courthouse. Perhaps all of it was just down to luck. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or being in the right one. All you could do was learn how to deal with it. Nicky was going to learn to deal with it. He had to. For Cai.
Gemma carried on. “I’d heard the story of the family who’d died at Thorn Hall in the sixties. The Duke who’d become a recluse. But I’d never paid much attention to it. It was one of the rumours people make up about big houses, and you can never be sure as to whether they’re true or not. Plus, it had happened so long ago. No one knew who lived at the house any more, if anyone did at all. Everyone assumed the Duke was long dead.
“One night when I was driving around, I stopped at a garage for petrol. The garage owner was talking about an ambulance he’d just seen go up to Thorn Hall, sirens blazing. I was close to giving up my search at that point. I’d lost countless jobs, and long since run out of money, and was no further on than when I’d started. I wasn’t sure what impulse made me leave my car by the roadside and walk across the fields to Thorn Hall that night. I didn’t expect to find anything. Everything was dark and quiet. The place looked deserted. I walked around for a bit, then sat on the doorstep. I had no intention of ringing the doorbell or knocking on the door or anything. I’m glad I didn’t. I can’t imagine you or Claudette would have welcomed me.”
Nicky pulled a face. It was true. After he’d called for an ambulance—pretending on the phone that he was Lance, in need of urgent help—he’d unlocked the front door and hidden under a chair in the study. That night he’d been a sobbing anxious mess. He’d have probably had a panic attack if someone had knocked on the door.
“Did you know there was a surname etched into the first-laid foundation stone of that house, right near the front door? A name you won’t find on any ownership records? As soon as I saw it I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. I knew I’d found a link.”
She pulled out her phone. Held it out to him. On the lock screen there was a photograph of the old grey stone Nicky never wanted to see again in his life. The name Du Vey carved deeply across it.
Gemma sniffed, her eyes suddenly glassy. “Two years and all I wanted was to say goodbye to my brother, you know?”
Nicky shifted uncomfortably and sat on his hands. What was he supposed to do now?
With impeccable timing, Vivian click-clacked up the stairs. She must have been listening. Nicky stared at her in relief.
“Cai’s in court five.” Vivian pointed down the hall. “I’ll come back and tell you as soon as the hearing is over.”
She click-clacked off.
Gemma wiped her eyes, then smiled and winked at him. “That wasn’t supposed to end in such emotional wreckage, by the way.”
Nicky looked away. He’d fallen apart enough times to know that wasn’t emotional wreckage. But now that he knew where Cai was, he felt too tense to talk.
Half an hour later, the door to court five opened and Vivian stood on the threshold, her hand clutching the door as several court aides exited behind her. She looked up at him, her expression utterly neutral. Dread swam in Nicky’s stomach. Something was wrong. He jumped most of the stairs and ran over.
“What happened?”
“He’s been refused bail and remanded in custody. He’s been charged with breaching his supervision order, and he’s been charged with the arson at Thorn Hall.”
All the air in Nicky’s lungs whooshed out of him as if he’d been punched. Surely he’d misheard her. “What?”
“They’re still investigating the flat fire too.”
“I gave him an alibi for that this morning!” Nicky couldn’t get his head around any of it.
“I know, but back at the station one of the detectives must have pressed him with something. I’m not sure what. It could be they have evidence that the Thorn Hall fire was started deliberately. Maybe they found an accelerant of some sort. I don’t know. But I do know they’ll push hard to get him for the flat fire too, now.
“His court date is set for six weeks. If they find him guilty for just one of the fires he could get five years. Never mind that there’s the possibility of a manslaughter charge.” Vivian pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “If he’d just kept his mouth shut he’d have gotten charged with breeching his supervision order, and probably have been released after his court date. It would have been a couple of months at most. I don’t know what the hell he was thinking.”
“He must have panicked that they’d find out it was Sophie,” Nicky said flatly. He felt hollow. All the lights dimmed.
“Sophie started the fire?”
A hand touched his shoulder. Gemma. She leaned on her crutches. “There must be something we can do.”
“We tell them it wasn’t fucking her or Cai! That it was Cyril! Who’s going to know the difference?” Nicky was almost shouting.
Vivian looked pensive. “Perhaps. But right now, Cai is going to have to deal with the hand he’s played.”
“Fuck,” Gemma whispered.
There was a bench near the door. Nicky sank down and bent over his knees.
“You’re going to cope, Nicky,” Vivian said with what sounded like a forced sort of confidence. “You can visit him and talk on the phone.”
“Despite what you might i
magine, I’m not thinking about me right now.” He felt sick. There was the possibility Cai would have to endure years. He could only guess what sort of hell Cai was going through right then. “Can I see him before they take him away?”
“He’s already gone. I’m sorry.”
Nicky closed his eyes. He guessed applying for some sort of visitation order was the only way he was going to be able to see Cai from now on. All Nicky could think was, fuck.
On the steps outside the court he ran his hands through what was left of his hair, but it only served to remind him of yesterday. Of everything he’d fought for… and lost. They should have run. At least Cai would be free if they’d run. Fuck everything else.
The world was bright and loud and terrifying. And wrong. So very wrong. What the fuck was he supposed to do now?
Go back to the hospital and make sure Sophie is okay. The thought came out of nowhere.
Something shifted in his chest.
Be in her life. Cai had said.
Nicky could do that. He could fucking do that.
With a jolt of surprise, he realised he wanted to do that.
At the supermarket that day, while he was having a panic attack, he remembered Cai had told him what had happened with Sophie’s mum, why he was taking care of her even though he was barely more than a kid himself.
Everyone had shit to deal with. You just had to get on and deal with it. And if you could make someone else’s shit a bit less shitty, and bit easier for them to live with, then you were doing something worthwhile. Nicky didn’t really have a whole lot of experience dealing with other people, but on a good day he was pretty much human, and he could try.
Vivian and Gemma were waiting by the car.
“Could you take me back to the hospital? I need to see Sophie.”
Vivian nodded.
They were going to be there for Cai. All of them.
Tests
To his great surprise, Cai found prison was pretty similar to the YOI. Only bigger, greyer and very, very full.
The guards were nicer. Which Cai hadn’t expected. In the YOI the few staff there had seemed to hate their jobs and had used their authority like some big righteous stick, because that was obviously the best way to deal with young offenders and never started any trouble.