Tightrope

by Marnie Riches

  Angie could see the artist, beavering away, glancing up at the no-nonsense ball-breaker in her short wig and black gown. Sketching, etching a snapshot in time of this long, long trial, capturing the drama, the disapprobation and the national bafflement, that the Labour party’s number-one son should have gone quite so off-piste. Jerry was going to plead ‘not guilty’ of course. Cunning that he’d got himself a female defence, clearly in a bid to bamboozle the judge into thinking he wasn’t a wife-battering misogynist. Maybe he’d actually pull it off. He was quite the charmer until he let his guard drop. His odds weren’t good, though. Thanks to Bev, Angie knew exactly what evidence the prosecution had up his billowing sleeves.

  As she relayed the tale of her domestic nightmare, she weathered the drubbing that the defence inevitably subjected her to. She revelled in the warm feeling in the pit of her stomach where the primordial soup of anxiety, bitter experience and expensive legal advice was coalescing into cautious optimism.

  ‘You’ll get to keep the house,’ her divorce lawyer had said, ensconced in her tower of steel and glass in Manchester’s Spinningfields. ‘Obviously, his assets will remain frozen until the trial’s over. They’ll confiscate anything that’s been embezzled or acquired illegally. But once that’s done and dusted, you’ll still be comfortably off. And more to the point . . .’ The sharp-suited hard-ass of a woman who charged £350 per hour – a fee commensurate with twenty years spent at the top of her game – had patted her hand. ‘He’ll be in prison and you’ll be safe.’

  With another day at the Old Bailey endured, Angie pulled her coat tightly closed against the September wind and hastened through the paparazzi. Battling to conceal her smile, lest the red tops indulge themselves in a hatchet-job portrayal of her as being in cahoots with a dirty politician. Bad enough that they had got wind of her having employed Bev’s services. Catfishing and hacking : she and Bev had agreed to keep those nuggets to themselves. If the press knew the full extent of how the police had come about the evidence against the mighty Jerry Fitzwilliam – fraudster, abuser and accessory to murder – they’d have a field day, and Angie would be done for perjury.

  ‘What’s life like, living with a man who stole millions of the public’s money, Angela?’ one reporter asked her, shoving his recorder too close to her face. ‘Did you know he was planning drug-fuelled orgies for his pals? Did you know about Tatjana Lebedev?’

  Of course I didn’t bloody know, you berk, she thought, ploughing past the persistent little oik with his angles and his deadlines and his ridiculous haircut. Just keep moving, Angie. Hail a cab.

  As she clambered into the back of a taxi on the opposite side of the road, she saw Bev standing outside the grand white stone façade of the Old Bailey. She appeared dwarfed beneath the building’s towering dome with Lady Justice, armed with her sword and her scales, presiding metres above, over the motley band of reporters and photographers that had gathered around.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Angie whispered, catching Bev’s eye as the taxi doubled back before peeling off down towards the river. ‘She hates me for dragging her into this. I can tell. Even after I begged Dad to lend me all that money so I could settle her bill.’

  Turning away in a bid to switch the guilt off, Angie forced herself to focus on what awaited her in her London Bridge hotel. There, her new nanny, Klaudia waited with the children, having been on a lovely riverside walk that Angie had planned meticulously, taking in HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge. Even though she had to endure the scrutiny of the High Court where her character, her morality and her honesty seemed to be on trial, just as that duplicitous fiend she’d married faced judge and jury, it was important not to let her mothering standards drop. The children needed improving activities, after all, and Klaudia needed managing as much as the gardener or the ironing lady or the cleaner. Tate Modern tomorrow, with lunch in the cafeteria. A trip on the London Eye, the day after. They’d love that.

  Angie congratulated herself on holding it all together and managing to bring her A-game in the wardrobe department. That trip to New Bond Street had not been wasted. The new black dress looked a treat. Just the right amount of demure with the correct degree of panache. Her dad didn’t need to know that eight hundred of the three grand he’d lent her for Bev had gone in Burberry’s till. A lady had to have her things, didn’t she?

  She tittered at the thought as the taxi bounced down towards Blackfriars. Angie felt some of the tension leech from her shoulders as the glittering band of the Thames came into view. Open space, at last, quickly supplanted by the congested, claustrophobic Upper James Street that led them among the recently built monoliths in the City of London – Jerry’s old stomping ground.

  In the back of the cab, she shivered with distaste at the thought. Right now, there was no escaping the dreadful legacy of Jerry Fitzwilliam’s misdemeanours. No matter, though. She was playing the long game. Very soon, Angie would be free. And she’d owe that fresh start entirely to Beverley Saunders.

  CHAPTER 50

  Bev

  Gazing dolefully at the scuffed vinyl tiles on the floor, and the bars on the windows, Bev tried to imagine what life would be like somewhere else – a place with gleaming wooden flooring and whitewashed walls covered in quirky art. Stylish sofas where clients could flick through magazines in a waiting room. Sipping a latte from one of those Gaggia machines, before she summoned them into her office for an initial consultation, describing how she could help them to get even . . . for an hourly fee. She visualised the effort it would take to make this dump that idyllic workspace.

  ‘I think it’s got potential,’ she said, noticing that the ceilings were high – always something she’d loved about period properties. ‘What do you think?’

  Doc shrugged. ‘It’s all right. I still don’t think we need an office.’

  The shiny-faced estate agent’s rictus grin dimmed slightly. He started to toy with the brightly coloured plastic tags on his jangling giant bunch of keys. ‘Oh, I think you’ll find this space offers the best value for money in Altrincham. You can’t underestimate the importance of decent business premises.’ He checked his giant gold watch as though he had a more lucrative appointment to attend elsewhere.

  Bev wondered briefly if estate agents practiced their lines in a mirror at home every night before bed, rubbing a slick veneer onto their faces in the morning, after they’d showered. ‘I think calling this “decent” is a bit of a stretch, love.’

  ‘I’ve got another interested party coming to look this place over in a few minutes. It’s going to get snapped up today. No doubt about it.’

  The image in her mind’s eye of the airy workspace with the beautiful floor was fading fast. The butterflies in Bev’s stomach had taken flight and were being rapidly displaced by apprehension. She didn’t want to let her dream slip away on the cusp of it becoming reality. ‘Do you mind giving us a minute to have a little snoop round and talk it over?’

  The estate agent nodded and left. Bev and Doc were alone.

  ‘Look, this is a great opportunity,’ Bev said, wandering through to the functional but tired kitchen. Her footsteps echoed through the space. ‘Two offices and a big reception area. A kitchen. A bloody shower room! But it’s a real shithole.’

  ‘Precisely. You’re not in the sort of game where you need an office, Bev.’ Doc bypassed the kitchen, heading for the offices beyond. His expression was inscrutable. ‘And I’m certainly not.’

  Bev tried to turn the shower on in the tiny bathroom. It sputtered and spat as air worked its way through long-disused pipes. Eventually, a dribble leaked from the grubby plastic handset. She shrugged. ‘I think we could breathe life into this place for a couple of grand, tops. Think about it, Doc. I need a space where abused and frightened people can come. A neutral space that’s got privacy. I also need a home.’

  Doc was standing behind her, now, chewing on his bottom lip. Frowning at the brown bowl of the toilet. ‘Jesus. That’s grim even by my standards.’

  ‘Nothing
Harpic can’t clean, James. And you need somewhere to lay your head too, or had you forgotten that your place was done over while you were at your folks’?’

  ‘Yeah. I know Jerry Fitzwilliam has gone down for a ten-year stretch, but I still don’t feel safe knowing his little spy friends know where they can get to me. Moving into office space that will have our names on the contract is hardly lying low, is it? And I bet there’s something in the small print says it’s not for residential use, anyway.’

  Bev pushed past him and stood in the middle of the empty office she’d already mentally called dibs on. A barred window with a view of some bins. Shredded carpet tiles. Peeling paint. It wasn’t prison. It wasn’t Sophie’s mildewed basement. It was perfect. ‘This is just a temporary stopgap, though, isn’t it? Now Angie’s paid me, I’m flush. It’s the right time to invest in my business, and you, my friend, are my business partner whether you like it or not.’

  ‘Silent partner.’

  ‘You say potato, I say chips. Whatever. I’ve had a lucky escape. I could be behind rather different bars right now. If Kandice with a K hadn’t have turned out to be such a Rottweiler—’

  Doc threw his head back and laughed. ‘Rottweiler? She was a joke! You need to get better legal representation, Bev, man. The only reason the charges against you were dropped was down to Westminster wanting to cover their arse.’

  ‘It’s always a conspiracy theory with you, isn’t it? You’re such a paranoid—’

  ‘The last thing they wanted was a prominent politician getting done for boning an underage sex slave and then helping to dispose of her body parts. Man alive! You think MI5 didn’t put two and two together when they saw that video with those masked wankers and make ten?’

  ‘Eh?’ Bev peered outside at the grey skies, smiling at the sliver of blue that had broken through the thick blanket of cloud. Better times ahead.

  Kicking at a frayed and curling carpet tile, Doc shoved his hands awkwardly into the back pockets of his stonewashed jeans. Today, he wore a Los Pollos Hermanos long-sleeved T. Ever the corporate dresser. ‘They’re thinking that, apart from Tim, who we know was The Wolf, maybe the other guys in that film are all high-ranking politicians like Fitzwilliam. Right? Stands to reason. Maybe they know them! Distinguishing marks on their body and such like. So, the last thing they need is it coming out in a further investigation that there’s a cabal of paedos in parliament, getting off their faces on coke and bumping young girls off. That’s why your case was dropped. Didn’t she say – that solicitor of yours? Didn’t she say, “It’s not in the public interests to try your case”?’

  Suddenly, Bev felt that sliver of blue go back behind the clouds as the turmoil of the last few weeks loomed like a spectre in that hopeful space, ushering in darkness and sucking all the oxygen from her optimism. Rob’s threats that she’d never see Hope again. His solicitor’s letter, applying for a restraining order against her. Sophie’s complete rejection of their friendship. The prospect of losing her liberty as well as her child and her reputation. It was an end-of-days apocalypse that she never wanted to repeat.

  ‘When Kandice asked if I was sitting down, I thought they were going to go for the maximum sentence or actually go the whole hog and charge me with murder,’ she told Doc. ‘But yeah. They dropped the case like a hot stone. She said it was because I was the only witness and that there was a tonne of mitigating circumstances. But thinking about it, you’re right. It was a cover-up. It wasn’t Tim’s death they were interested in at all. It was the probable identities of the cockerel, the horse and the bulldog. I did wonder why Jerry’s trial at the Old Bailey was all about the fraud and not the murder.’

  When Doc placed a supportive hand on her shoulder, the spectre vanished and the blue sliver reappeared.

  ‘You’re in the clear. Forget it now. And your phone’s not stopped ringing with potential new business. You’re like some kind of revenge-ninja for the country’s fucked-over underdogs and bullied women.’ He made a devil’s horn sign with his hand and mimed an air-guitar axe-lick. ‘All’s well that ends well, Bev.’ He strode purposefully through to the adjacent office and walked back again, nodding. ‘Sod it. Let’s go for this place. We can move all our crap in here – just as an interim measure. Take a six month lease, yeah? Get sofa beds. Keep quiet about it.’ He jerked his thumb backward, grinning. ‘There’s even a storeroom in there for my Lego.’

  ‘Great. Let’s do this.’

  The trepidation that now jangled in Bev’s belly was the right sort. For the first time in many many years, she felt in control. And for the first time since her girlhood, when she looked at the beams that spanned the ceiling, she didn’t see her father, grey-faced and hanging by his neck ; didn’t visualise her mother in a corner of the room, glass of vodka and paintbrush in hand, telling her how she was too clumsy and ill-fated to walk life’s tightrope without falling. The office was empty. It was a blank canvas, ready for Bev to paint as she saw fit.

  Epilogue

  ‘Will the nasty man break into our room again?’ Hope asked, her small, pale face wrinkling up with curiosity.

  Bev smoothed down her daughter’s silken chestnut hair, blown into cotton-candy wisps in the stiff Lakeland breeze. ‘No, darling. Course not. Forget all about him. We’re here so I can make up for that weekend. And we’re gonna start the way we mean to go on.’ She enfolded Hope in a bear hug, drinking in her sugary scent of childhood and sweetness and innocence. It was the finest smell in the world. ‘Ready for some fun?’

  ‘It’s always fun with you. Best Mum.’

  ‘Best girl.’

  Once they’d checked into the beautiful Victorian hotel on the edge of Ullswater, Bev led Hope by the hand to the children’s play area. She relished the sight of her little girl clambering up the steps of the slide, squealing with delight as she shot back down to Bev’s waiting arms.

  The sun had come out in earnest and had turned the lake into a giant sheet of blue foil. The sound of bleating fluffy white sheep was carried to them on the wind and the woolly white clouds scudded through the blue, blue sky as if the heavens reflected the earth in perfect symmetry. Bev drank in the clean air, feeling that this was a fresh start and that she was somehow renewed by what she had endured of late.

  ‘Push me, Mummy!’ Hope cried, leaning back and forth on a swing, clutching the thick chains in her little fists.

  As Bev obliged, she considered her decision to keep the identity of Hope’s father to herself. Yes, if she’d had a DNA test performed before his burial to prove Tim’s paternity, she’d be able to get Rob out of her life, once and for all. She’d even be able to take back the family home, since Rob would have no claim on it beyond that of a childless party in a failed marriage. Her needs for Hope would take priority over his. She’d even be able to lay claim to some of Tim’s considerable estate on Hope’s behalf. But Bev had opted to keep her secret as exactly that, preferring not to break Hope’s heart with the knowledge that the man she’d loved as her daddy for all of her ten years was nothing more than another of her mother’s past lovers ; that her true father had been a monster ; that embedded in the fabric of her being was genetic material that marked her as flawed and impure. No way did Bev want to saddle her precious child with the same emotional burden that had been bequeathed to her by her own suicidal father and alcoholic mother – the burden of being made to believe that she possessed a congenital tendency to failure.

  ‘Come on,’ Bev said, wrestling Hope from the swing and running her down the path to the glittering lake. ‘Race you to the rowing boats.’

  Easing the oars back and forth in the crystal clear water, Bev listened to her daughter’s excitable chatter about school and her friends and her favourite food and how she’d like a kitten one day. She watched her dip her skinny fingers into the freezing cold lake as Bev manoeuvred the boat out to the island in the middle. They were surrounded by the majesty of the steep, rocky hills that encircled Ullswater for miles. The only sound apart from their laug
hter was the bleating sheep. The warmth of the sun lit their faces, banishing the shadows cast by strife and separation. Danger felt a million miles away in that glorious unspoiled place. And Bev knew that for now – at least until she took on her next job – she’d climbed down from the tightrope to feel the good earth and all its solid possibilities beneath her aching, tired feet.

  Acknowledgements

  Beginning a new story with brand new characters has been both daunting and extremely rewarding for me. I know you readers are discerning folks, so I’ve tried my best to bring the sort of complex puzzle to the table in Tightrope that you’ve grown used to having to solve in my previous books. My new slightly shambolic sleuthing duo, Bev and Doc inhabit a world that is quite different to those of George McKenzie or Sheila O’Brien, though. I really hope you grew to love them by the end of the story as much as I do.

  My books don’t magically appear in shops without many, many months of effort…and not just from me. I owe thanks to the following people for making this new adventure happen:

  My growing children, Natalie and Adam, who need more food than ever, expensive Dr. Martens, technology I don’t understand and inspiring role models. For their sakes, I will always work harder and strive to be better.

  Christian, as always, for nodding and tutting at the right points when I’m going off on one about life’s many irritants and for child-wrangling when I’m busy. Writing can’t happen without either of those things.

  Special agent and friend, Caspian Dennis, for his cast iron advice and agenting wizardry. This year alone, he has introduced me to the concepts of cleansing rain, compression pants and jacket-based whisky transport. In the monotonously sung words of Morrissey: the pleasure, the privilege is mine.

  The rest of the team at Abner Stein – especially Sandy, Ben, Felicity and Ray. I always feel I’m in really safe hands, knowing I have such a world class literary agency behind me.