by John Fairfax
‘Anna, I’m here. Where are you?’
Benson angled the torch towards the voice and switched on the light.
63
Tess was stunned. But she didn’t have time to work out the detail because Benson got going immediately with the alarming authority he brought to the courtroom.
‘Don’t try and leave, Ralph,’ he said. ‘My friend at the door is very experienced in extra-judicial violence. Just stay right there. You’re on stage.’
Ralph Collingstone was squinting, one hand towards the blinding light, a shadow falling on his face. He was hunched like a hammed-up Iago.
‘Sarah came home in a state, didn’t she?’ said Benson. ‘She was so upset she went to bed refusing to say what had happened. And you stayed with Daniel listening to yourself read out The Longridge File. Which is why Sarah didn’t know you’d gone out, boiling with rage, wondering what he’d done this time. She’d been listening to your voice, assuming you were downstairs. The only person who knew you’d gone out was Daniel. Daniel who knows everything. Daniel who’d never tell a soul.’
Greg brought a chair.
‘Sit down,’ said Benson.
The light remained on Ralph Collingstone’s face. He dropped his head to avoid the glare.
‘Bealing let you in because you dropped your head, just like that. I don’t know whether you borrowed Sarah’s coat and it doesn’t matter. That was always a bit of a side show. What really mattered was the hat. Because that is what Bealing saw when he looked through the peephole in the main door. He saw Sarah’s hat, and he let you in. And, my oh my, he must have backed off fast. You wanted to know what he’d done. And you wanted to know when he was going to stump up, for God you were tired of waiting. Sarah might have been patient but you’d had enough. You’d had enough since the day she came home at sixteen and wrecked your career. I give it to you, Ralph. You swallowed the pill. You didn’t complain. You did your best. But it’s not easy, I know. People don’t realise that anger doesn’t go away. It just gets buried. And the deeper you bury it, the more dangerous it gets. You couldn’t tell Sarah. You couldn’t tell Daniel. You just had to go part-time and look at the posters on the wall and pull a few strings to get some recording work, trading on what you’d done, and not what you’d ever do. In my book, Ralph, that makes you one of the good guys. One of the people who didn’t turn away, like the Greenes, who didn’t care if Daniel was blood or not. But that’s Sarah’s story. Your story was a good story, Ralph. You ruined it here.’
Ralph’s shoulders began to shake. He breathed deeply, in gasps.
‘Bealing told you to calm down, didn’t he? He said that everything would be sorted out soon, that it’s not easy to pull a few million from a business without your wife finding out. He said he was almost there. He was just doing the finishing touches. He just needed a couple of weeks, but you weren’t having any of that rubbish. You saw straight through him, didn’t you? You looked at that bottle of beer on the table and you thought, God, he’s had it good.’
Ralph looked up defiantly, gasping, eyes wide open, refusing to be intimidated.
‘I’m sure Bealing was pretty scared. He’d left your daughter pregnant at sixteen. And there you were, the father, staring at him like a madman. This was your first meeting. He told you to leave. Said he had a lot to do. You wouldn’t go, so he left himself, so disorientated he went in the wrong direction, not towards the door, but towards the warehouse. And that’s when you saw the passport, isn’t it? My guess is this: earlier in the evening, after fobbing your daughter off yet again, Bealing thought of his planned disappearance. He’d taken out his new ID to remind himself that Sarah’s teeth would soon be a long way from his backside. She wasn’t going to get a penny. But he’d left that passport on his desk. And you had a look inside. And you saw his face. And you saw the name Alan Shaftoe. And you thought, Christ, he’s going to vanish again. He’s used my daughter like a doormat and he’s going to leave us with nothing. The bastard.’
‘You’re damned right I did,’ shouted Ralph, sneering at the light. ‘And I thought a lot more, believe me. And I don’t regret what I did. Not then, not now. He deserved it, after what he’s done. After what he was planning to do. God almighty, he ruined my life, never mind Sarah’s. I was going somewhere. Yeah, my wife had left me and my daughter didn’t want me. But I still had the stage. I’ve got friends in the RSC, you know. I know people who’ve made it in television. And I was better than them all. I told him as he died. I told him what he’d done to me and I told him what he’d done to Sarah and I told him everything would have been different if he’d only shown a bit of decency. A bit of humanity. A bit of human kindness.’
‘Is that before or after you kicked the phone out of his hand?’
‘After. And it was the best speech I’ve ever made.’
‘And then you tidied away your footprints and took the passport because you weren’t thinking straight, because you thought the passport would get you to Shaftoe’s millions. And, of course, you were wrong, because it won’t. Because you aren’t Alan Shaftoe. Which is why you came here to meet Anna Wysocki.’
‘I can live without the money. I got what I wanted. He paid his debt.’
‘Anger is the problem, Ralph. So much anger. All you had to do was go to a lawyer. Daniel would have got a just and fair settlement, and pretty quickly, too. The right way. And Andrew Bealing would be alive and you wouldn’t be charged with his murder.’
At that moment the main lights came on. Ralph stood up, disorientated, realising suddenly that he wasn’t simply with Benson and his friend at the door. That he’d been playing to an audience.
‘Sarah,’ said Ralph, dropping back on to his chair like a puppet, the strings cut. ‘What are you doing here? What is all this?’
Tess was moved by her grace. Moved by her solemnity. Moved by her composure. This woman had endured the multiple traumas of arrest, charge and trial. She’d been stripped bare in public and humiliated. She’d been hung out to dry by the press. She’d been to hell and back, and even ‘back’ wasn’t that far from hell, because the whole public show was about to start all over again. All because her father, the ruined actor, had refused to tell the police what he’d done. After all that, Sarah Collingstone said:
‘Dad, I didn’t believe Mr Benson, so I had to hear it for myself. Why didn’t you tell me? You know we’d have got through this together? We’ve gone through everything together.’
And Ralph, at last, cracked. The rage had all gone. He looked helpless and tired and broken. He wept. ‘Because I know you need me. Because Daniel needs me. Because he needs us both.’
64
Benson went to Hounslow on Saturday morning. Sarah wanted to see him. And he wanted to see Daniel. He’d offered to explain what his grandfather had done on the night he left him listening to a CD – if he hadn’t guessed it already. Daniel, like everyone else, sat watching the news. Daniel, like everyone else, knew that his mother had been charged with murder. At least he might do. It would have been easy – unless you were Sarah or Benson – to think that the safest way out of this new crisis was to lie about Granddad’s absence. But there had been enough lies. Lies can hold a family together but ultimately, if the chain snaps, they can tear it apart.
And so Benson sat alone with Daniel explaining not simply his grandfather’s mistake, but his mother’s story. It was a story he’d probably never been told before. How she had chosen to be with him rather than go back to school, care for him rather than place him in an institution – a host of decisions that had never registered in her mind as a sacrifice. Because they hadn’t been. She was a special person. An extraordinary person. For Benson there was a peculiar depth to the exchange. Because it had been like talking to Eddie shortly after the accident. He’d tried to tell Eddie what had happened, to explain his role in what had gone wrong, but when Eddie recovered his speech, it turned out he couldn’t remember anything Benson had said; and Benson found he couldn’t repeat it. He’d bee
n imprisoned ever since. For a few flashing seconds Daniel became Eddie, and they were reconciled.
When Benson finished his mitigation on behalf of Ralph Collingstone, he joined Sarah in the room of posters and audio recordings. The room of lies and hidden resentments. And now mercy.
‘How did you know it was my dad? I want to know, now. I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen, before. That I shouted you down. I have to know why you saw something that I couldn’t. I know how his mind works. You don’t.’
Benson had got there in stages and the process began with ‘Jock’s’ mistake.
Cathy Turton had said she worked for the National Crime Agency which had replaced the Serious Organised Crime Agency – SOCA – in 2013. But ‘Jock’ had talked as if the SOCA still existed. His unit didn’t appear in one of its secret directories. He’d posited a fictional SOCA22 when he should have gone for NCA22. It had taken a moment or two for the penny to drop, but Benson realised soon enough that ‘Jock’s’ revelation was based upon information reported by himself or Tess during conferences at which Ralph Collingstone had been present.
‘Your defence had just collapsed in court,’ said Benson. ‘You were as good as convicted. And your father was now desperate. You have to understand what he was doing, Sarah. He’d allowed you to go through a trial because if he told you on Sunday morning he’d killed Andrew the night before, he knew you’d have made him go to the police. And if he went to the police, you would lose his support. So he gambled on me winning this trial – that would keep you both free; and if you were convicted, I am sure he would have told the truth, using Shaftoe’s passport to prove he went to Hopton’s Yard.’
But once Glencoyne had uncovered the truth about Daniel’s parentage, Sarah’s case was over. So Ralph had faked a heart attack. He’d made up the best story he’d never recorded and he did some quick research on the internet. And it had to be quick because he had to act that night – and that’s when he made his mistake about SOCA. But that performance in Shadwell was stunning. It was ironic because there was only one person in the audience. It was ironic because the only flaw was in the script. It was ironic because Ralph’s wonderfully convincing SOCA22 was itself based on a fiction created by Andrew Bealing, and the combination of fictions then compelled Grange and Obiora to give evidence – people who’d been fooled twice: first by Bealing and now by Ralph. It was ironic because even Ralph himself had been fooled. Like Debbie. Like everyone. The fooled had led the fooled.
‘Don’t misunderstand me, Sarah,’ said Benson. ‘Yet I couldn’t help but think that in a different world, a kinder and fairer world, a world without hitches, Andrew and your father would have got on very well indeed. They were both brilliant actors. Neither of them got any acclaim for it.’
She had started to quietly cry. She was nodding. Maybe so much would have been different if Andrew hadn’t run off to London, leaving behind a false trail, a story about tracing his mother’s relatives in Spain. If Andrew had been different; not the sort of man to abandon his own child. If Andrew hadn’t himself been abandoned. If special needs weren’t seen by some as a curse.
‘I understand how you realised “Jock” had to be my dad, but how did you know that Andrew’s story about the Chinese had been made up too?’
‘I wasn’t sure, Sarah. But Cathy Turton said there were no Chinese gangs operating in that part of London. And while I could make a smart point in court, to the effect she couldn’t know everything, she set me thinking. I’d been fooled once and I began to wonder if we’d all been fooled from the outset. Andrew had shifted money abroad rather than give it to you. He’d created a new identity. He’d talked about getting “disappeared”. And I began to wonder if he’d been giving a repeat performance. I wondered if he’d been preparing to abandon you again.’
And if there was no ‘Jock’ and no Chinese gang, then who had killed Andrew Bealing? It could have been Debbie or Wysocki or one of the Hamiltons, Kym or David. They’d all had a powerful motive. As did Sarah and her father.
‘And then I remembered the conference I had with your father after you fainted in court. He said you couldn’t have killed Andrew because you were at home, listening to a story. You were upstairs with the door open.’
Which meant that Sarah wouldn’t have known if Ralph went out. This was the one basic question that Benson had failed to explore, along with DCI Winter and Rachel Glencoyne. They hadn’t dissected Sarah’s alibi. If they had, they’d have seen Ralph’s window of opportunity. And as he realised this error, all the evidence had come together for Benson. But he still couldn’t prove it. He’d never be able to prove it. It wasn’t his job to prove it. So he’d hoped that Sarah would listen, confront her father and force an admission from him, otherwise Debbie Bealing might be charged. And if they didn’t charge Debbie or one of the Hamiltons or Wysocki, there was always a chance of a retrial for Sarah. But Sarah had refused to listen. She’d shouted him down, demanding proof.
‘I’m sorry for lying,’ she said, getting up. She was anxious. She needed to check on Daniel. She’d been out of the room too long. ‘I’ll be ashamed forever. But do you know something, Mr Benson. For the first time in my life I feel really free. I’m a laughing stock and the butt of dirty jokes and people pity me for the wrong reasons and I’m about to lose my dad and I can’t see the end of the struggle, but I’m free. I have no more secrets. I’ll never have to lie again. Can you imagine what that feels like?’
Benson couldn’t answer, because he wasn’t going to deceive her. But he couldn’t imagine it at all. He longed for that freedom. And it would never be his.
65
Sarah made Benson a cup of tea. And she went back to her adolescence – the adolescence Glencoyne had only partly exposed in court. Without bitterness or recrimination she rehearsed the moment she’d arrived back home, sixteen and pregnant, obliged to face the father she’d rejected. He’d been wonderful. And it had only been years later that Sarah learned that her father had turned down roles in London. Turned down a shot at telly. Turned down all the little chances that have to be taken if an actor hopes to make it big. She’d failed to spot the loss. She’d just been proud of the fact her dad knew so many of the big names. That some of them sent him a Christmas card.
Ralph had tried to create a ‘respectable’ history for her. He hadn’t wanted his daughter to be known as a girl who’d had a child from someone she didn’t even know; and didn’t even know where he was or what he was doing. So he’d tied Sarah’s history to the tragic death of Anthony Greene. She’d heard it for the first time when her father gave it to the gynaecologist at the Carlisle General. The lie had been born before Daniel, and it had lived on ever since. At the time Sarah had been too traumatised to object or fight for a different narrative. If there’d been any embarrassment in a teenage pregnancy, it had been displaced by the looks of sympathy and the words of compassion. But that one lie had been a seedbed. The rest had grown like weeds around a single flower. When Benson stepped outside, he turned to her and said:
‘Do you want to make a financial claim for Daniel on Andrew’s estate? Miss de Vere can look after all that. But you’ll need to act fairly promptly because Debbie intends to leave the country and make a new life. It will complicate things for you.’
‘No, thank you. I don’t want to go down that road.’
‘Why, Sarah?’ He asked the question but he already knew the answer.
‘Right from the start, I didn’t want the money, Mr Benson, I needed it. And I didn’t really need it, Daniel did. But now that Daniel’s father is dead, killed by Daniel’s grandfather, all because I came looking for a settlement . . . well, I don’t want it any more. I couldn’t make the claim, even if Daniel needs it. I know he understands. We’ll be fine . . . just fine.’
Benson clenched a fist, as if to hold on to a sudden rush of feeling. Fine was a word he’d learned from Needles. It had helped him to survive.
Benson ambled down Seymour Road rehearsing Tess’s argument against Deb
bie Bealing. Tess seemed to have got it so right, when, in fact, she’d got it so wrong. Had it been aired in court, a jury would have believed her. Debbie may well have found herself in a cell, screaming like she’d never screamed before. All that suffering – and the injustice – had been avoided. The thought soothed his own remembered pain. He strolled on, savouring a depth of contentment he’d never known before, even as a child, for in those simpler days, it hadn’t been truly deep. The hole in the heart that needed filling hadn’t yet been made. And now that it had, his appreciation of the moment was almost reverential. Strangely, the contentment had little to do with himself or anything he’d done or achieved per se; it fed on what was now underway, unknown to Sarah Collingstone who knew she’d be fine.
Yes, Benson had agreed to prove that Ralph was guilty. And he’d organised Ralph’s unmasking, concerned to protect Sarah or Debbie or the Hamiltons from any future proceedings. All that had been important. But Benson had also had his own secret motivation. His concern had been for Daniel, a young man who’d become Eddie, if only for a while.
And so Benson had lured Ralph back into Hopton’s Yard, thinking of a boy in a wheelchair, the first step in a plan that had required the cooperation of Anna Wysocki – the one person who had access to funds that could change Daniel’s life for ever. Funds that had never been available to Eddie. Of course, part of the plan involved letting Wysocki go back to Poland without being charged, but that had been a price worth paying to force Ralph into the open. Because Ralph, supported by Sarah, would now present himself at Merton police station. He’d make a complete confession, without any reference to his last great performance in the warehouse. And Sarah Collingstone would think that that was the end of the matter.