by D. B. Martin
‘Oh believe me, they exist,’ I replied. I was about to hand the photograph back. The image was too hazy to see much – and besides it was years out of date – when I realised why it seemed unbalanced. There had been ten of us when we’d been taken away, including me. There were ten in the photo – excluding me. I peered closer. The odd one out was the young woman who sat on the grass in front of them all. A good few years younger than any of them. ‘Who’s the woman right in the front?’ I showed him who I meant. I already knew the answer before he gave it.
‘Kimmy.’
‘Kimmy?’ I waited for the bad news to be confirmed.
‘Your other kid sister. The one you ain’t met – or maybe only once or twice.’
‘The baby?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you’re still in touch with her?’
‘Oh yeah.’ He said it with meaning, but didn’t elaborate. He waited. I looked at the photo again. I couldn’t tell if there was a likeness or not – the woman in the photo was too small – and Win was clearly enjoying not telling me. Met once or twice? Once – when she ruined my life. I tried to set aside the sudden jealousy I felt of this woman who’d stolen my world away from me with her arrival. I glanced up at Win. He was watching me carefully.
‘Plainly you want me to ask you about her?’
‘Yeah,’ he smiled knowingly.
‘What?’
‘She look familiar to you?’
‘A family likeness, I suppose. Why?’ The klaxons were sounding, and the sneering face of Danny Hewson’s mother mocked me.
‘Yeah, family likeness.’ He burst out laughing and irritation got to me. Sticks and stones maybe, private jokes at my expense? No. I let my weight settle more heavily on the edge of the desk and thrust the photograph back at him.
‘If you think you’re going to come here and wind me up, you’re wrong. The family album was very interesting but I’ve work to do now.’ I anticipated it might move things along. He might only just be getting started but he hadn’t got anything he wanted from me yet. I got up as if to push past him but he put out a hand and it rested lightly yet threateningly on my chest.
‘Oh, that game again. Hold your horses, Kenny. I ain’t finished yet.’
‘Get on with it, then.’
‘You met her as a baby – that was the first time, but you’ve met her since too. Don’t you remember?’
‘No, I don’t.’ Nor did I want to. It wasn’t her fault – no-one asks to be born, yet still I resented this interloper into my family, my childhood – the one who’d remained whilst I’d been ousted. And I was already computing the difficulty of representing her son.
‘What about that party you was at – about ten years ago.’
‘I probably went to a lot of parties ten years ago. I’m hardly likely to remember what they were now.’
‘Oh, you’d remember this one. It were a big celebration. A bit dodgy maybe, the verdict, but you won it all the same. In the bag, as you might say ...’
It only took those three words for me to immediately extract the party from the haze of memory. In the bag. Not the children’s home, although the soul-twisting memories immediately flooded back by association. Ten years ago, and in the bag. The turning point for our Chambers. The first big win. I’d been nominated to take the lead on the case because I was the slickest in court – the ability to box things never eluded me then. It was another of those moments I wouldn’t have shared with Atticus.
We had all viewed the evidence provided to us with scepticism but the fee was enormous, and so was the kudos for getting one creep off the hook and another onto it. How – or why – the client had the money to pay for us to represent, was never asked. We’d argued about it – oh yes, for hours on end, but eventually pragmatism had won over reluctance. The business was going down the pan, and us with it. This was a gift horse. Whatever our reservations, the stream of other evidence against him convinced us there was no doubt the man to be found guilty eventually should go down for something – even if not this. So it seemed justice would be served, albeit rough justice. Even the police on the case agreed. The fee was paid, the ‘client’ delighted and work flowed endlessly our way after that, whether that was also the client’s doing or not.
The party to celebrate had flowed too – with alcohol, self-congratulation, and towards the end of the evening when polite society had left, with sex. Ten years ago, I’d been a work horse and a stallion, but the latter only in private. When Margaret had complimented me for my thoroughness in bed, it wasn’t irony due to lack of skill, only lack of feeling. My aptitude wasn’t in doubt. Even the girl I’d taken there that night had said so with genuine pleasure, although I’d been drunk – too drunk to remember much other than the undoubted release I’d obtained at the party after the party. It was all in the box, and Win had just taken it out.
The other significant fact that I’d stowed in the box was the nature of the crime the defendant was accused of. A very particular kind of murder. There was no evidence of sexual assault, just fear and death, and one other thing that had particularly bothered me at the time but everyone else had ignored. I’d almost thrown up when I’d read the brief – in private thankfully. The girl had apparently died from asphyxiation – a plastic bag secured tightly round her neck. It had all the hallmarks of my own experiences, but it was our big break and I was up for anything that would take me to the top instead of down the drain then. So it all went in the box too and stayed there.
I didn’t know who was behind the agent commissioning us to take the defence case but it didn’t matter once it was done. We’d accepted the sin, and as sinners, climbed the greasy pole. But how could Win know anything about it? Danny Hewson’s mother – my little sister, apparently – had also mentioned being semi-asphyxiated before she’d stunned me to paralysis with her throwaway exit. The person Win wanted to hear about automatically lurked dangerously close to all these occurrences in my head, but how that was possible eluded me. I feigned ignorance as the best defence whilst I tried to figure it out.
‘There were lots of parties to celebrate successes, Win. If you think you’ve something significant to tell me you’d better spit it out.’
‘You met someone related to Danny there. You can figure it out from there. Now you’ve got what I had to tell you, I want something from you.’ I spread my hands in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘Oh yeah, you can pretend, but you’ll get it when you think about it. Here’s what I want for saying nought.’ He paused for effect, but I already knew what he was going to say. ‘Jaggers.’ For whatever reasons Win wanted him, I had equally good ones to never wish to encounter him again. I wasn’t playing that game unless I had to.
‘For a start, I don’t know what you’re talking about and secondly I haven’t come across Jaggers in years.’
‘Just over ten.’
‘What?’
‘You ain’t came across him in just over ten years. That’ll come to you too, when you put your mind to it. The pair of you stitched me up like a tart’s tights. Now I’m having me own back – for then and for Danny.’
‘For Danny?’
‘Who do you think the main man is, you stupid sod?’
‘Jaggers? Impossible!’
‘Crap. Course it ain’t. He don’t do the dirty stuff himself anymore. He has the likes of me to do it for him, but it still comes down to the same thing. He got me sister’s kid in trouble and other stuff. I would’ve let that go if he could put it right, but now I know he fucked me over to start with, I ain’t doing that. He thinks he’s so clever, ordering me around or he’ll get me put inside again – me with me problems and all. Well, like I said, I got plenty of ways of finding out stuff – and you’re the one who’s going to make it stick for me.’
‘Well that’s where you’re wrong. I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and I think it’s time for you to go now.’ My mind had already started to churn over the possibilities and linking pieces of the jigsaw. I did
n’t like the picture it was starting to build and I needed to examine it in private, not with Win’s rancid breath and sweaty paws on me.
‘I want them.’
‘What?’
‘The notes on that case you won before the party.’
‘Why?’
‘My reasons.’
‘They’re confidential.’
‘So’s your past matey, but it don’t mean it’ll stay that way.’
‘That’s blackmail.’
‘No, I’m just stating facts and asking my little brother to help me look at some others – for my own reasons.’
I stood up and pushed against the restraining hand still against my chest. He didn’t resist. He allowed himself to be pushed backwards an inch or two and then turned on his heel and made for the door. I followed close behind him, surprised at the ease of his repulsion, but intent on making sure he left without trying to nose around anywhere else. At the front door, he shoved a card in my hand.
‘Be a Winner,’ it said. ‘Win Juss – gets you what you want when you want it.’
There was a phone number below and an image of clasped hands. I supposed they were meant to be about to shake on a deal, but to me they looked like the pugilists’ fists in round one of a fight.
‘You can get hold of me there, or I’ll come and get hold of you, if I don’t hear back soonish.’ He smiled nastily. ‘Think about it.’ And he was gone – light-footed as a cat burglar, despite the girth, leaving only the impression of stale sweat and distaste behind. I watched the sleight of hand as the giant disappeared and inconsequentially remembered how I’d watched him slink away from mischief as a child. Not then the soft sibilance of the sneak thief. Helter-skelter, elbows flying, he and Jonno had claimed to be sworn enemies, but I’d seen them running away from Old Sal’s together once, booty held high. In fact the similarity between him and Jonno had been so marked that day as they fled, I could have mistaken them for twins. The egoistic stance and overbearing self-confidence of the bully-boy conjoined them in my memory now. I wondered why I didn’t see then what he’d already started to become. Win had been a secret alliance-maker even as a child, treacherous and self-interested. I had no intention of getting involved in whatever unholy alliance he wanted to initiate now, even if it might have Jaggers as its target.
I didn’t go into Chambers after all. I returned to the study, head pounding. I didn’t need to think about it. I already had an inkling of why he wanted to see the case notes. I rang in and asked Louise, the biddable little clerk in the post room, to tell me where the oldest closed briefs were archived.
‘Oh they’re all in the basement, right up the back,’ she replied gaily. ‘Mr Gregory is going to put it on the next Chambers committee meeting for us to get it all converted to pdf files or stored with the rest of our old stuff in Scunthorpe. But please don’t ask me to go down there, Mr Juste. I think we might have mice or something.’
I assured her lightly that I wouldn’t – just checking on security measures and that I wouldn’t be in until tomorrow. ‘Um, funeral arrangements,’ I added vaguely.
‘Oh, of course,’ she sounded guilty. Everyone sounds guilty when talking about the death of someone else’s loved one. Is it because they feel embarrassed that it isn’t one of their own who is dead? Or relief it’s you who’s suffering and not them? I took advantage of the awkwardness to escape more explanations. The funeral arrangements had been my excuse for unexplained absence too much recently. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking I was arranging a state ceremony. Someone was bound to look askance soon. I put the phone down with a crash and it took me immediately to where I wanted to be in the box. The din and reek of the party – overloud celebrants and suspicious substances. How ironic that the apparently most respectable members of society should behave so disreputably when given the chance.
Win had been insistent about Kimmy and the reference to the party had brought a vaguely remembered face back to me. But was it the same face? The girl in the photograph and the girl at the party could have been the same, I suppose. I was as certain about that as I could be given the amount of alcohol I’d consumed by then. And I’d had sex. That was a given. I rarely went without then – before Margaret. On the way up after our landslide victory, the groupies hoped to follow in our wake. Jeremy, Francis and I had been in our element. Heather had indulged her fantasies with shoes and cosmetic surgery. I was still actively separating my lives as I had as a child – school and the home – in fact never more so than then. In the inflated arrogance that success brings I hadn’t even considered that someone would take the pair and empty out the contents of the two boxes so they could mingle. It was inconceivable. I was Lawrence Juste – a success. We were all so much older and more sedate now. Cautious; dead.
Did it really matter? So I might have met my sister when she was an adult – although I somehow couldn’t see the fag-puffing bitch I’d interviewed earlier in the diffuse memory of the pretty girl at the party. Even through a drunken haze, that girl had seemed – classy – as I’d described Margaret. It had probably been that which had singled her out for me that night, incapable of any other judgement as I’d been. I had little doubt Kimmy Hewson would have come across – even ten years younger – as a second-class escort girl or a full-scale prostitute. But no matter how much I tried to stuff it back in the box, I had to admit there was something I should remember about that party and Win obviously thought he had something on me because of it.
Success had gradually painted a different picture after that crazy party. Trompe l’oeil. The baroque artists had used it to deceive the viewer; we used it to deceive our public. The wild men were apparently tamed and tempered to trustworthy mavens; the outward cloak of dour respectability covering previous excesses. Indeed, the excesses diminished rapidly after that time. Success was its own reward – and the affluence that allowed us style and sophistication in place of cheap excitement. It’s the difference between the nobility and the proletariat. The richer you are, the less you need to display it. Margaret assiduously polished the well-wrought façade and it became a fait accompli. We carefully built me a reputation for stolidity and propriety after those wild years and I grew into it like it was a second skin cultivated to replace my own damaged one. Eventually there was no difference between the cultivated persona and me. It had taken over me. And after all, I’d been learning how to dissemble and separate lives like a master myself since the age of ten. Why not make a complete split between them? The unsavoury episodes of pre-success went into the box, and with them the details of that night. Now I needed to withdraw them again.
The hotel we’d moved to after the party in Chambers – genteel, respectable, mannerly. Who had been there? The hierarchy, who’d dropped in for their mandatory courteous single drink in celebration at Chambers, had retired early. The jubilation that we’d nailed the case, and our future, was carefully masked by obsequious conversation, and restrained courtesy until the dignitaries had gone and only the hard-core remained: Jeremy, Francis, some of our colleagues, the girls they invited over, and me. Of course the party didn’t continue in Chambers. We’d gone to the Majestic and a suite of rooms on the top floor generally used for informal business meetings and cocktail parties. Had I taken the girl in the photograph to the hotel with me, and to bed? Or did I just remember her from the party itself? I would have to find out. I toyed with Win’s business card, sitting squat and ignorant in the middle of the polished cherrywood desk. Brutish block-black lettering on aggressive red against the rich burnished brown sheen of the wood; base versus sublime. After the phone number he’d drawn an arrow shape in blue biro, the ink blobbing where the pen stroke launched its missile across the red target. It pointed overleaf. I wondered what was on the back.
‘Can’t remember her name? Kimberley.’
Danny’s mother. Then the klaxon horn directed me to the other alarm that was ringing – the one of arithmetic. The memories coalesced as I did the sums and whether I wanted to believe it or n
ot, there seemed only one real possibility. Woman, sex, kid. My head swam.
Fuck.
I ran to the downstairs cloakroom and threw up.
14: Families
I spent most of the rest of the day alternately vomiting and drinking. Neither helped the other. As fast as I poured oblivion in the form of brandy down my throat, I brought it straight up again. It could barely make me merry, let alone pissed. It had resolved by early evening into the uncomfortable acceptance that I was going to have to face the possibility of disaster head-on. I went to bed, exhausted, but all I did was dream.
It started with the family photograph – the one I wasn’t part of – but this time I was. I was lounging in the back, near Win. Kimmy wasn’t in it. Win handed me the photograph like he’d handed it to me in real life and I took it, off-handed and dismissive. I handed it back.
‘So what? There’s only us in it. Nothing unusual.’
‘Look again little brother.’ He laughed nastily. I took it back and looked at it cursorily before dropping it like my fingers had been burnt.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Nothing unusual in it now?’
‘Fuck. When did that happen?’ The family had expanded. Kimmy, Danny and a whole crowd of Danny lookalikes populated the foreground – but somehow they all looked like a cross between me and Danny, apart from one thing. Something about each of them was deformed, skewed, wrong.
‘What do you expect?’
‘No, this can’t be right. Not me. It’s a joke – a trick!’
‘You know what you did and when you did it better than me, kiddo.’ He took the photo off me and put it away. Then he was gone and Danny was looking at me in his place.