Patchwork Man: What would you do if your past could kill you? A mystery and suspense thriller. (Patchwork People series Book 1)

by D. B. Martin

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Bad.’ Her face reflected knowledge she wasn’t supposed to have.

  ‘Do you know?’

  ‘Course I know. Obvious ain’t it?’

  ‘Well, to me it was, but she said she hadn’t told any of you.’ I cringed at the implication of my comment. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ was too embarrassingly apparent in it – and the suggestion of superiority on my part. It was the second time tonight I’d said something I hadn’t intended to come out that way – or maybe I had. I’d had to admit to Kat I’d intended hurting when I’d implied she was able to manipulate the same as Margaret had purely because of her gender. The insulting objectification of womanhood into sexual brokerage had helped soften my own sense of rejection. It wasn’t true. Kat could manipulate me – if she’d wanted to – purely because of my feelings, nothing to do with sex or gender or abuse of femininity. But she didn’t – and hadn’t. The division between myself and my family was also true. I wasn’t one of ‘them’ no matter how much I might play on ‘family’ to extract some truth from the morass of misinformation I was being fed by everyone else. Binnie didn’t seem to register the insult though. She was too taken up with how Sarah was.

  ‘She hides it pretty well most of the time if she knows we’re coming,’ she explained. ‘She wouldn’t have bothered to cover it up for you.’

  ‘Why not?’ I was genuinely interested. I deserved the put down I got back.

  ‘You don’t matter, Kenny. You ain’t mattered to us for a long time – ever since you changed your name and pretended we didn’t exist. Takes two, you know.’ And she was right. Why would I matter to any of them? I’d assumed abandonment by Ma, so I’d abandoned all the rest of them, starting with Win. I’d abandoned real roots in favour of manufactured ones. Family stick together, but I was no longer really part of their family. I’d voluntarily removed myself from it.

  ‘I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry. Sarah seemed pleased to see me, but maybe that was her way of making peace with me.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She sighed heavily. ‘You’re here now so why did you really come?’

  ‘I don’t know, Binnie. I suppose to find something out – to ask about something, but I don’t think I need to ask the question anymore. The answer is obvious.’

  ‘Maybe you’re wrong there. Was it to ask if I’d say anything about Danny?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t. The lad’s had enough bad luck. I wouldn’t add to it by tarring him as anything other than what he is – just a kid. If you can help him, then do it. If you can’t – if it’s only for your own conscience, then leave it be and let him live his life his way. He’s got enough to contend with as it is – with Kimmy for a mother, and poorly an all.’

  ‘Poorly?’

  ‘You’ve saw him, haven’t you? Sickly kid; always in the wars. Scrapes and bumps and sores. Mine never had so many of them. I’m not saying it’s all Kimmy – nah, I don’t think she’s that bad. Just don’t bother enough.’

  ‘He seemed reasonably healthy when I saw him.’

  ‘Well, he’s in care now, ain’t he? Bound to look after him. He’s gonna be up in court. Got to look OK for that. Don’t fancy his chances in clink though – or wherever they send ’em now, poor little sod.’

  ‘Youth custody.’ It was automatic, the barrister reacting before the man, but she was right. Danny wouldn’t be much of a match for it, whatever they chose to call it now. The hard outer would crack as easily as candy coating. It wasn’t paternal in any sense, but my heart contracted for him, the small boy desperately trying to fend off the world as I had. ‘I’ll do all I can for him, Binnie – whatever the past.’ I hadn’t realised until then that I meant it. Duty, responsibility, conscience – they all played a part, but the thin pinched face I remembered splitting into a grin and making the sun shine was what convinced me. I wouldn’t let history repeat itself with him.

  ‘Good.’ She smiled suddenly and the dimple resurrected itself. I couldn’t help but look at it.

  ‘You’ve still got your dimple.’

  She laughed. ‘Some things don’t change, Kenny.’ She visibly softened. ‘I’m sorry about your wife, by the way. She were nice.’ Jesus! Margaret had been here as well?

  ‘Did she come to see you too?’

  ‘Too? Oh, I s’pose you mean as well as Sarah? Yeah, a while ago. Came a couple of times actually.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Stuff – wanted to find out about you as a kid, and so on. I thought maybe you were ill but it weren’t that. Kimmy could tell you. Had their heads together over something – not that Kimmy tells me anything. Have to find it out for meself most times. Thought we might have heard from you then.’

  I ignored the implied criticism.

  ‘Something wrong with me?’ I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. ‘She didn’t want to talk about Danny too?’ She stared at me.

  ‘Nah, why would she?’

  ‘Because of our connection.’

  ‘Your connection?’

  ‘Me and Danny.’

  ‘You’re his brief, ain’t you?’ In response to my raised eyebrows, she explained. ‘Win told me – we still talk when it’s important. But you weren’t then. Why would there have been a connection between you other than being Kimmy’s your sister?’ The clarity I thought I’d been assembling alongside the facts suddenly collapsed like a house of cards.

  ‘Wait, what do you mean? No connection other than Kimmy’s my sister. What about Danny’s parentage?’

  ‘We don’t talk about that. Let sleeping dogs lie. Only cause trouble otherwise.’

  ‘But that’s what I came to find out about – what you’d say about it if asked?’

  ‘And I told you – nothing. I think maybe you ought to go now. It’s late and I need me bed.’ She shepherded me to the door.

  ‘Wait, Binnie – I’m confused. Who is Danny’s father?’ She opened the front door and pushed me towards it.

  ‘Len?’ She called. ‘Kenny’s going now.’ I didn’t resist. The bruiser’s hands were too meaty for me. ‘Look after yourself,’ she called to me as I reached the gate. ‘And mind Win. Don’t believe everything he tells you.’

  18: Medicine

  I carried on walking. I would have walked for longer, head spinning, but my phone rang. It was a rarity because I gave few the number. Kat was one of them. I debated whether to reject the call. Enough really was enough tonight, and I didn’t even know what ‘enough’ was any more after the conversation with Binnie, but duty won over. I answered her cautiously.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes. How close to Great Ormond Street are you?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Danny’s there. I thought you should know.’ It sounded a reluctant thought, but at least she was talking to me sufficiently to have passed it on.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He had a fit and they took him there. Maybe an epileptic fit, they say.’

  ‘Christ. How is he now?’

  ‘Well the fit seems to have resolved although they say they will need to run some tests on him. It’s what else they’ve found as a result of it that’s puzzling them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bruises.’

  ‘Bruises? An attack?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t look like that, but there’s not really any other explanation at the moment. They called me because I’m his social worker and now we might have to start an investigation into the care he’s been receiving in the remand home.’

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Well, he’s being kept in for the moment but I thought you would want to know and might even want to go and see him.’ It wasn’t a question, but it was – and one I was simultaneously asking myself as she posed it.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘No, tomorrow. He’ll be asleep now. It’s past one, Lawrence.’

  ‘I’d forgotten. He’s all right though?’

 
; ‘He appears to be, apart from being a little disorientated. Where are you?’

  ‘Out. Walking. Where are you?’

  ‘Home. I’ve already been in to see him and I’m back home now.’

  ‘You could have told me this tomorrow morning then? If I can’t go in there now, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I could.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ There was silence the other end. ‘Kat, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still here. Do you want me to come with you tomorrow?’

  ‘Do you want to come with me tomorrow?’

  ‘Well, it either has to be me or someone else in lieu of a responsible adult. He’s social services’ responsibility at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, thanks. Send who you want then, I’ll go in for eleven.’ Insulted, I clicked the connection off without waiting for the answer and turned the phone off altogether. Bridges, boats and whole worlds had burnt, it seemed. I trudged the rest of the way home in the light drizzle which had started just after the phone conversation. It had seemed like mere mist, but by the time I reached the mews I was soaked. The summer storm looked to be about to break. The cobbles glistened and the moonlight lit them intermittently as it passed behind the screen of cloud and rooftops. The mews sparkled like it had been strewn with diamonds. A day or so ago, I might have been in poetic mode and likened them to my hopes, but tonight they were merely wet stones and the small shimmering puddles that were forming, muddy interludes.

  I went indoors as quietly as I could. It was a long time since Lawrence Juste had walked the streets and returned home after two am. The veil of respectability had to hold a little longer. Habit made me check my phone messages. I’ll admit to hoping there might have been something else from Kat amongst them. There wasn’t. There was a message from Louise at Chambers though.

  ‘Mr Juste, I tried to get that birth certificate you asked for but it’s a bit weird. They couldn’t find anything at all and I asked them to search five years either side of the range you suggested too. Everything’s over at the Family Records Centre at Myddleton Street now. They’ve got records for John Arthur and George Edward Wemmick so I asked them if we could have transcripts of them, but they said you had to pick it all up in person as there were fees to pay.’ She continued with the details and the person to ask for at the registry there. No Molly Wemmick? Another complication. The brandy bottle winked at me from the bureau, but it was becoming too much of a habit – that and ineptitude. I settled for bed and a sleepless night. I might as well have filled myself with alcohol after all. I looked as much like shit the next day as if I had.

  I’d wanted to detour to Great Ormond Street via the records office and collect the birth certificates before meeting Kat – or whomever she sent in her stead. It was going to be a difficult morning and I wanted to be able to simply go home afterwards and sleep. The slumber that had eluded me for what had been left of the night was banging at the door now and my wits felt as if Louise’s mouser had chewed them up and spewed them back out as a fur ball. Everything went against me though. I finally drifted off half an hour before the alarm sounded and must have turned it off in my semi-conscious state. I next woke at just after ten to the sun streaming in the windows where I’d neglected to pull the curtains and another baking hot day ahead of me. Summer in the city. The cobbles had long since dried and the puddles disappeared. I felt old and disgruntled. My face looked like an old sock, wrinkled and threadbare. I barely had time to dash through the shower and dress if I was to get to the hospital on time. The records office would have to wait. I didn’t bother with my own car. Finding a parking spot there could take hours. Amazingly I managed to hail a cab as it passed along the head of the mews and made it there with minutes to spare, the cool of the shower long since dispersed by the heat in the cab and nerves.

  Kat had come in person. She looked cool and fresh, skin glowing like a burnished nut. No haggard shadows and bleary eyes for her, yet she’d been awake till the early hours too. The resilience of youth, I guessed. She didn’t say it but her expression repeated what she’d said to me in the coffee shop mere days ago. Yes, I did look like shit. I felt like it too.

  ‘He’s on Elephant Ward, level six,’ she said tersely.

  ‘I thought you’d send someone in your place.’

  ‘He’s my responsibility,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t let people down.’

  ‘Like Alfie.’ She looked as if she wanted to slap my face again but it was a public place.

  ‘That was cruel.’

  ‘So are you. Everyone deserves to be cut some slack, but you’re just hauling the rope in tighter for me. It was a mistake and I admit it, right? Not that it makes any difference now.’ I walked away to the lifts and stabbed the call button.

  ‘It’s not that.’ She caught up with me. The lift arrived and spilled its contents in front of us. We dodged the outflow and claimed it for ourselves. Nobody else seemed to want to get in our crossfire, it seemed.

  ‘What the fuck is it then?’ The lift doors closed and we were encapsulated in our own lift-box.

  ‘It’s because you’re so, so ... intact.’

  ‘Intact? What the hell does that mean? I’m spending most of my time falling apart at the moment.’

  ‘No, you’re not. All this,’ she waved her arm around to indicate the hospital, ‘it’s all passing you by. Things are happening – awful things – and all you do is coolly watch them happen and “research” them. When you cried the other day – when you first told me about Kenny – I thought you were real. Someone I could love as well as be infatuated with. Not adoration – affection. But you don’t want that. You’re just too ... intact. I can’t get past here,’ she tapped her forehead, ‘to get to here.’ Her hand rested on her breasts.

  ‘I don’t know how else to be, Kat. It’s the way I get through things – keep it boxed. Keep it separate. Someone told me how to do that early on in the home and they were right. Don’t let things mix – one life to the other. That’s the way to get screwed over. It’s been happening ever since I took this case – personal life and professional. I’m no good at either at the moment, but at least I know how professional life works and I could hack it once. If I stick to that, I might hack it again in the future.’

  ‘You mean you just refuse to face anything that’s a challenge? Ignore it and it’ll go away?’

  ‘I’m hardly ignoring any of this, am I?’

  ‘You’re not facing it though, are you?’

  I could feel my fists clenching and my palms sweating with balled up frustration. She just didn’t understand – what it was like for me. And then I got it. She didn’t know what it was like for me because I wouldn’t share it. The history I’d recounted for her – it had been all fact, apart from the one weak display of tears that had taken us into her bed, but it had been Kenny talking to her. Lawrence Juste was indeed still boxed – intact. I consciously uncurled my fists at the same moment I saw hers were a mirror image, knuckles pink with tension.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kat. I am trying. I’m here, aren’t I? The last place on earth I’d choose to be at the moment. Is that part of my brief?’ The lift whirred and cranked. Level five pinged on the display.

  ‘I suppose it’s better than not.’

  ‘What else am I supposed to do then? Tell me.’

  She breathed out in a soft rush and I hadn’t realised she’d been holding it until then. ‘You need to trust me. Let me in. Don’t just run away when things get uncomfortable or don’t go the way you want them to.’ She looked me full in the eyes. ‘I know the worst of you and I’m still here, despite that.’

  The connection was tentative and terrifying. I hoped my fear didn’t show in my face. No, you don’t know the worst of me Kat, not at all.

  ‘Well, I’m here and I’m not running away this time,’ I replied. It sounded glib, and not particularly believable. What she wanted to hear, not what I meant. She was silent, studying my face. I wondered what unspoken truths it was telling her. I�
�d always been proud of my poker-face, a necessity in court. Now I wished it carried more of me in it. Heather had seemed to think it did, but I couldn’t see it – couldn’t see me at all at the moment. Just before the lift moved upwards again, she broke the wheezy compression of our box with her conclusions.

  ‘Can we start again?’

  ‘How many starts do we need, Kat?’

  ‘As many as it takes?’ We paused in front of Elephant ward, with its sprinkling of Dumbos and real-life counterparts. ‘The elephant in the room?’ I indicated the décor.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t always be so clever, Lawrence. I’m not, and that worries me too.’ My inability to read people dissolved momentarily and I could read Kat like a picture book.

  ‘I’m not clever, Kat. I’m glib – and that’s my defence mechanism. You perceive me as clever because of my reputation, but there’s a person behind the patter. A person who makes bigger mistakes than you can even dream of.’ I almost told her how big, but managed to pull myself up just in time. ‘See me as the person not the persona.’ She didn’t have time to reply because the doors opened on us and the ward sister appeared in greeting.

  ‘Miss Roumelia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve arrived. We’ve had a bit of a development. Come on through and let me fill you in.’

  We exchanged glances; anxiety filling hers, bemusement mine.

  ‘He’s fine, but we think we have an explanation for the bruises.’ She walked with the briskness one associates with the archetypal ward sister and although my long legs easily kept pace, Kat struggled along behind us. I was therefore first interceptor of the information streaming back to us in the wake of her bustling uniform and squeaking soles. ‘Good news, and bad ...’

  The shush and rub of black-stockinged thigh against thigh as she strode purposefully forwards reminded me of a praying mantis rubbing its limbs together before pouncing.

  ‘Ah, here we are.’ We arrived at her office and she waved us in. The smell of disease pervaded even here, full of paperwork and bureaucracy. Perhaps the sick surround themselves with their own specific smell, regardless of age or place? It wasn’t doing my stomach much good, but then little had recently. That was hardly the hospital’s fault. We perched on the chairs indicated and she produced a regulation blue folder marked with Danny’s name. ‘Doctor will be along shortly, but I can give you the bones of it now.’ She laughed smugly, ‘no pun intended.’ We smiled politely. ‘Father?’