by D. B. Martin
‘You ain’t going to let me down are you, Mister? It weren’t my fault. I didn’t do it.’
‘For fuck’s sake! I didn’t know.’
‘You must have done, Lawrence – how could you not know? How could you not know, how could you not know ...’ Kat’s face filtered in and out until I woke up in a cold sweat.
Christ, how did I not know? And yet I hadn’t. How could you not know the person you were having sex with was your sister? I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I rushed to the bathroom and was sick again. There was very little to come out, just the rancid dregs of whatever brandy I had kept down. My stomach ached from convulsing and my throat burned with acid bile. I felt ill and old. I crept back to bed and shivered under the duvet. It was a hot night, but I felt like ice. Was hell ice cold? Or did it burn? Ice burn perhaps. Christ, now my mind was wandering. How was I going to face Kat? What was I going to tell Kat? More to the point, how was I going to face Danny? I wasn’t sure I could. The very thought brought nausea with it again. After a night of no sleep, I started the next day exactly the same, but with a headache that reminded me of a pneumatic drill steadily boring its way into my brain.
What did I say? Did I tell her? Or did I keep it to myself and hope it went away. And what about ethics. I laughed out loud at that. Ethics? What ethics could I possibly claim to have now? Wearily I showered and shaved, and went unsteadily downstairs. I made instant coffee, strong and bitter. No milk, no sugar, boiling water. I laughed again – the barrister’s version of scourging himself. Self-flagellation through ingestion of caffeine. Christ I was pathetic – and in the shit. Whatever I might deserve, I couldn’t bring myself to deliberately self-harm, so I waited for the coffee to cool to drinkable. I filled the gap with trying to figure out what to do about Kat. Ironically, she was now the easier of the issues to deal with. My phone buzzed, reminding me I had an appointment at ten. I’d have to go into Chambers, whether I liked it or not. It was one I’d already postponed once. Heather would have my guts hanging off her shiny spiked stilettos if I didn’t get my act together. I put the coffee cup in the sink and left it staining the stainless steel. I wasn’t meant to do that.
Yeah – and you weren’t meant to do ‘that’ either, were you?
Shut up!
When I arrived at Chambers, Louise breezily handed me my post and a phone message, with a meaningful grin. Kat had another surprise for me. An appointment. The coincidence amazed me. I sat twiddling the piece of paper the telephone message was written on wondering if she knew anything of what Win had dropped so neatly and gleefully in my lap. I hadn’t spoken to him yet. If I was having to painfully come to terms with the shameful possibilities, the bastard who’d given me the news could stew for longer too. He was certainly roasting me so we were both having our pound of flesh one way or another. The fact that she’d left a message rather than call back later so she could talk to me could mean anything. Maybe she’d been trapped into it. It would have seemed odd to ring on business and then not say what that business was. I teetered on relief. Or she’d wanted to avoid talking to me. I tipped over the edge and my head throbbed sickeningly again. I cursed not going into Chambers the day before after all, yet how could I have?
If she was trying to avoid talking to me, why would she take it upon herself to arrange the interview? Surely she would have turned her back on me if she knew what I now suspected? I played devil’s advocate again. No, she couldn’t do that – it would be unprofessional, and letting the client down.
The client. I would have to start re-categorising him. The boy. No, that didn’t work either, but I couldn’t use the other term which hovered on my tongue. It was no good. I couldn’t concentrate here. Gregory hovered irritatingly outside my door every time I went to the cloakroom, which was often as the brandy and puke routine seemed to have upset whatever normal balance I should have, and the clerks chirped too brightly as they delivered post and papers for ongoing cases. The turgid financial mismanagement brief that Francis landed on my desk with a thump that made my head reverberate was the last straw.
‘More you than me, old bean,’ he announced cheerily, the ever-attendant waft of cigarillo ash making my stomach revolt yet again. I’d have an ass as raw as it had ever been after one of Jaggers’ ministrations at this rate, I thought sourly as I made my way to the cloakroom for the fifth time and side-stepped Gregory floating aimlessly around on the landing.
‘I’m going home after this,’ I told him acidly as I passed him. ‘Get one of the girls to cancel my ten o’clock with apologies and just leave anything else you might have for me on my desk.’
‘Indisposed, sir?’ he asked silkily. Whatever genealogical similarity I still shared with Win took over at the unctuous over-servility which I knew wasn’t real.
‘I’ve got the shits, Gregory, if you must know.’
‘Ahhh,’ he faded away, face like a squashed vegetable. I went home before anyone else could ask.
I tossed the case folder angrily across the desk in my study. Christ what a mess! It hit Margaret’s photograph and knocked it flat, but I could still see her laughing obliquely at me. Damn you! Did you know too? Or were you meddling for some other reason? My attention returned to the phone message. The appointment was with Kimberley Hewson. Christ! What else could she want to talk about – other than what I wouldn’t want anyone else to hear? I would have to ring Kat. I didn’t even know if she intended being present at the interview. Given the sensitive circumstances it seemed sensible to have a witness to what was discussed, but who exactly could that be? None of my partners in Chambers. Too close to business. Not Win. Too dangerous. There was only Kat left, and that meant giving up on whatever there might have been between us. I would have to tell her everything in case Kimberley Hewson took it upon herself to pre-empt me. And who would get involved with a pervert – even an unknowing one.
Or could Kat be present without ever knowing the full background to the situation? Perhaps Kimberley wouldn’t want it known either? Maybe she’d told Win purely for leverage on me. That would mean that Margaret hadn’t known either, or given what I now knew about her, she would almost certainly have disposed of the finer footwork in trying to persuade me. She’d have gone straight for the kill, before it got to her instead.
I put the folder back in the drawer I’d hidden it in when Win had unexpectedly visited, and locked it. Until I reached the sidings my thought train had sidled into, I had been undecided whether to openly seek the pink-ribboned package marked CLOSED languishing in the basement at Chambers, or track it down in private. After today, anticipation of the busy hum of the clerks everywhere and Gregory watching me slyly from his position presiding over all routes in and out – apart from the basement – decided me. Maybe I was being paranoid and no-one was watching my movements but I felt exposed in a way I’d never felt before – not even in the home. Guilt did it, I guessed.
They all thought I was indisposed, languishing between toilet and bed, no doubt. Gregory would have borne the mournful news joyfully around the whole of Chambers by now, so there was no likelihood of anyone trying to get hold of me, or expecting to see me out. I parked in the multi-storey car park three blocks away from the offices and walked in from there, entering the back door as shiftily as a thief. Underfoot, the tarmac felt soft, like a cake just under-baked and still volcanic inside. The sun had already scorched what little grass kerb there was to shrivelled brown where it met the lava flow of the pavement. Dust crevassed in the gutter, along with abandoned cigarette stubs and sweet wrappers. Not even the lightest of breezes stirred them today. One of those immaculate blue-sky, yellow-sun days that exhaust you with their perfection whilst fulfilling all the promises you ever asked of the weather, and are surprised when they’re finally realised in Britain. It seemed this text-book summer was going to stay the distance – the way I’d always wanted it to as a child. Now I was an adult I craved the temperate spring or the gently golden autumn in its stead after already six solid weeks of heat and hubris.
Things are never as you want them at the time, are they? Perhaps it’s the human condition to be permanently dissatisfied.
It was 4pm, and for the next hour or so, the clerks in Chambers would be glued to phones nagging solicitors for outstanding briefs, clock-watching or chattering idly. Gregory would be blustering at their laziness, and presiding over the fax like a DX Hitler, whilst the clerks tried to evade him and his pompous interference. The immersion in avoiding him generally kept them as busy as their Silks so they could escape when the clock hands ticked over to five. No-one would be bothering with the basement now. It would be mine until the cleaners and security did their rounds just after six. Two hours to find it.
I risked turning the lights on at the far end of the room. They could have been merely forgotten if anyone did stray down here in an unexpected fit of enthusiasm for filing. The cabinets were ranged in rows, interspersed between bookcases full of dusty tomes. Law Society publications and case law from years back. Why the hell did we still have all this outdated crap down here? I pulled one of the books out at random and the dust it brought with it made me want to sneeze. It smelt of snuff and old men. Musty, rotting and consumed with age. It reminded me of the way the old judge had smelt the last time I’d visited mere days before he’d died. Far from disgusted, I found I now felt regret that it had been the way it was with him. In many ways he’d also been a good friend. Time can temper memory too, it seems, as well as grief. Perhaps it is better to be able to take out and re-examine the better parts of memories whilst overlooking the less palatable? I wished I could do that with more of mine.
Odd that I could about the old judge, and not about Win, my own brother, even though part of our childhood had contained camaraderie and affection. Indeed much of my time with Win, pre-children’s home, had been golden. He, Georgie and I had been the Juss boys; small scrape-kneed warriors with dirty faces, scruffy clothes and vivid imaginations. We’d fought Indians, Germans – even marauding Vikings, having learnt all about long boats and our Saxon ancestry one year at school; possibly the only class Win genuinely listened in. There was always much of fighting in our game-playing, but there were also dens and adventures and shared excitement. Such innocence – misplaced on entering the children’s home, and lost forever after living in it.
I pushed the book back into place, and with it the memories. I hadn’t time to become maudlin down here, apart from which it was the place I would be least likely to want to linger out of choice. Louise’s comment about the mice unnerved me enough without allowing memories to come willy-nilly to haunt me. There were too many of the cold and the dark and the dirty. Rubbing the dust from my fingertips, I skirted the bookcase and peered at the labelling on the filing cabinets next to it. 1997-8, 1996-7, 1995-6 and so on, mainly running in blocks of one year until they stretched back to 1988. Before that the cabinets covered three, even four years at a time, and the drawers were subdivided ‘won’ and ‘lost’. For every one ‘won’ there were two or three ‘lost’. 1988 had marked the divide, as in my memory. Before and after. Before iniquity and after. The case Win had been referring to had been won in late 1988. The landslide victory that had precipitated my fall and our runaway success as an up and coming Chambers. It was so far buried in the box that I had to dig deep to remember the name of the accused. The facts we’d been allowed and the circumstances that were proscribed were burned there with a branding iron. Stay within guidelines – no manoeuvring; our brief. Jones, James, Johns? Johns. Wilhelm Johns. Bastard of this parish, but not a murderer.
I had to rummage through to the back of the bottom drawer before I found it. I was just about to retrieve it and shuffle the papers either side of it closer to hide the gap removing it made when the door at the top of the stairs burst open.
‘It’s mean though, isn’t it?’ The high girlish voice of the Louise of the archive information twittered through it. ‘Oh, someone left the lights on.’
‘It’s what it does. Go on.’ Gregory. What the fuck was he doing there? He never deigned to descend to the basement – king though he was of the paper kingdom. I crouched down as low as I could behind the mounds of yesterday’s misdeeds and held my breath. If they ventured downstairs and found me I had no idea what excuse I could make for being there.
‘I’ll leave the water at the top of the stairs then.’ There was the sound of shuffling and then the light clicked off and the door closed. Black deeper than the pit of hell descended. I could feel my heart begin to pound wildly and my ears sing with racing blood. It’s only dark. There’s nothing here. You know what’s here. Files, folders, books – no rats. Still my breath came raggedly as the patchwork man unravelled with his fraying fear.
Get a grip, man!
I took a deep unsteady breath and consciously tried to calm the racing heart, quieten the ringing ears. In, out, in, out. Nothing – silence – see? No rats. In, out, in, out – silence. No, not silence – something moving in the dark. Something else in here with me. Rats – fuck, shit – help me. Rats! I scrabbled to my feet, and stumbled along the row of bookcases and cabinets, knocking books inwards and paper piles into dishevelled heaps. A turning pack of cards falling behind me in an insane run of disaster and mayhem, breath panting, body sweating, spine tingling – and still the noise followed me. The lights – where were the fucking lights? Patting wildly along the wall, the scratching, nipping, gnawing tracked me, stalked me, attacked me... I flicked on the lights.
It was a cat. A small brown tabby glaring at me, back arched and ready to spit. We stared at each other and then I burst out laughing, stifling it hastily in case the madman in the basement became as famously discovered as the madwoman in the attic at Thornfield Hall. The cat thought I was mad, too, but it softened considerably towards me when I smoothed its back and scratched under its chin. It wound ingratiatingly round my ankles, looking dotingly up at me before following me back along my haphazard pathway to the dismantled filing cabinet.
‘So what’s your job, cat? Mouser? Weeding out the vermin? You and me too.’ There was a case for including myself in that category now though.
I found the beribboned parcel where I’d dropped it and covered my tracks as best I could. I couldn’t un-disturb the dust, but with luck no-one else would come searching down here for a while and another layer would eventually fall to obliterate my excavations. I left the cat somewhat guiltily, understanding Louise’s reluctance. It seemed cruel to leave it there in the hated dark, but it didn’t seem too bothered. It wandered off as I repacked the filing cabinet and all I saw as I left was a flurry of sandy-brown fur as it scrambled under a shelf, no doubt in pursuit of its prey. I shivered. The idea had the same effect on me as rats and Win.
The office workers in the area were leaving for home in a steady stream and I had to be careful not to bump into any from Chambers. Head down and package stowed tightly under one arm, I felt like a Bond spy. It amused me to imagine what I actually looked like compared to how I imagined myself – a whimsical idea I doubted I would have been capable of in the height of Margaret’s heyday. Kat seemed to have influenced not only my inner self but also my inner mind, whilst still barely influencing my real-time world. The moments together so far had been barely even snatched. What would full-scale invasion be like? I made it back to the car immersed in that stimulating thought. You asshole – you’re no more Bond than Win is the Pope! You’re a specious fool who couldn’t keep his prick in his pants when it mattered – then or now.
*
The package made its home alongside Danny’s case folder. I poured myself another brandy even though it wasn’t even six and downed it in one. I gagged but didn’t puke this time. The rat claws still crawled over my body if my mind let them. I poured a second and took it over to the desk. Win’s card still lay in the centre and Margaret was still on her back. Pushing up the daisies soon, I thought cruelly and the meanness of the thought made me feel better. It was her fault I’d got dragged into this, even though it was probably a hit and run inevitably wait
ing to find me some day. Yet ultimately the crime was mine.
I sat for some while, letting the warmth of the brandy soak into me, starting with the burn in my gut and ending up in my brain, soothing and softening. There were three steps to closure. One: read the old brief notes and try to see beyond them to what was being hidden – the real murderer. I suspected the name was there, somewhere. I’d simply stuffed it in the box before I could identify it. Two: make a deal with Win after finding out who knew what, and what they were planning to do with the knowledge. Three: talk to Kat and extract myself from Danny Hewson’s case. If there was a fourth, it would have been to meet Kimberley again, but I hoped that would be encompassed by Two, and what Win could tell me without me having to find it out for myself. My God, even when faced with fathering my sister’s child, I planned my course of action like a campaign. What had I become? I wasn’t merely damaged goods, I was goods beyond repair. I resolved to stay clear of Kat after all and shelved Three. I’d hand the case to someone else to complete. I could at least do right by her and Danny.
I remembered most of the facts and a lot of the detail of the case once I got started. It had been cleverly constructed with all the evidence, which undoubtedly also pointed to the real murderer if we had but looked for them, also being equally direct-able towards Johns. He’d gone ‘No comment’ in all the interviews and then it couldn’t be held against him, but still it did him no favours. Two years later and it would have sealed his fate, but even then it, and the lack of good contemporaneous notes when he waived legal representation, hadn’t helped his cause. Why the hell had he done that? Without assistance from him the defence could come up with nothing and we simply went along with the little we’d got. We completed what someone else had no doubt set up, and acquitted it with style. No-one wanted to delve too deep anyway. We were knee-deep in blood just from the crime scene alone. There was virtually nothing to do yet what little we had done seemed to reach all the right ears, judging by the work that had flowed our way afterwards. Even then I’d been surprised, but as usual, I allocated a box for it to nestle in without bothering me and carried on. But that wasn’t what I was looking for. I was looking for the name behind the name. It wasn’t there, but what was confounded me.