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

  ‘Hair we are – what can we do you for?’ trilled the foxy little voice on the other end. It set the scene for the rest of the day. They might not be that outwardly similar any more, but I soon found out that they were two voices of dissent in unison.

  The girls, Sarah had called them. They were hardly that now. They must be mid-forties, but I knew also they’d never married, either of them, and enjoyed career-girl lifestyles, but in vastly different ways. It was a salute to the loyalty of ‘family’ and that tendency to stick together that I had yet to experience that they’d both turned up at such short notice. We make so many assumptions in our life. We assume someone is biddable because they agree with us, weak because they never challenge us and loyal because they follow us. Eyes wide shut – as I’d been most of my life. I’d expected them to be welcoming because they’d spun on a dime and turned up so promptly at my request. I’d expected them to be like Sarah or Binnie – or a combination of the two. I’d expected them to be the archetypal down-at-heel-girl-makes-good; typists or secretaries – or even the local department store manager. As infants they’d been two peas in a pod, fair-haired and blue-eyed; the sugar and spice to Pip and Jim’s mischievous puppy dog tails. They were both still blonde, but clearly out of a bottle labelled ‘caution – hazardous chemicals’ and neither sugary nor with the exotic fragrance of spice.

  Jill was brassy blonde and Emm was businesswoman blonde. In fact they were both businesswomen in their own ways so they had remained almost identical – but as mirror images. Jill owned her own hair salon and plainly revelled in it. Her Croydon accent remained firmly pinned in place alongside her hair extensions and false eyelashes; glamorous but common. Emm was the sleeker, cooler, more sophisticated version, still perfect down to her false nails and expensive costume jewellery, but the kind of glamorous that Heather might have appreciated. Indeed, Heather might even already frequent her tiny exclusive boutique on the Fulham Road.

  We met just along from Jill’s salon, and not that far from Kat’s office. We sat inside the chinzy café and they ordered cappuccino. I opted for espresso. I was going to need my wits about me. The waitress eyed me as if I was a sex maniac lining up two dates simultaneously. The table cloth needed changing and felt gritty with sugar spilt by the previous incumbents. Their reception was as cool and business-like as their appearance was, assessing this stranger who was claiming intimacy without previous affiliation. Hostile. They had been so tiny when we’d been split up, they barely remembered me and I could barely see in them the small cherubs who’d clung to Binnie and Sarah when the woman with the fat ankles had created the delineation between who went and who stayed. Part of me wanted Kat to suddenly appear around the next corner, on an errand, on her way home – anything. The other wanted to protect her from my past. Make it not exist by only taking it out to examine in private and then replacing it carefully in the box again. I acknowledged it was why I was making these visits alone. There were elements to me I couldn’t hide or deny – the less salubrious ones, but that didn’t mean I had to take myself apart in public or drag Kat into the ensuing mess. There was enough of it already spilling over her from the boy. There was only so much anyone could take before they drowned in the deluge: me included.

  With Jill and Emm I felt even less of a connection than I’d felt with Binnie. They were the type of women I would normally avoid personally – one loud and obvious, the other hard-nosed and predatory. Either way, I felt like mere litter under foot in their march towards emancipation for women and subjugation for men. Tigress didn’t even begin to describe either of them at first glance. The waitress brought our drinks and thrust the bill at me.

  ‘Lunchtime in an hour. We get busy then, you’ll have to order food then if you want to stay.’ She took my money with a hostile glare. I wondered if she was friendly with Jill, or all women in Camberwell were men-haters.

  ‘So why now?’ Emm stabbed her coffee with the spoon and shredded the froth on the top. She might have been disembowelling me in her mind.

  ‘Yes, why? Why not before?’ Jill, in chorus mode. I got used to the ever-present echo by the time we parted, but it disconcerted me to start with. Which should I answer? I addressed Jill as she’d spoken last.

  ‘Why not now?’ She was the wrong choice.

  ‘I asked you the question.’ Emm glared at me. ‘My God, why do you men always evade the issue?’

  ‘Yeah, like that – evading.’ Jill again. The buff envelope felt bulky in my trouser pocket. It cut into my thigh. I would have liked to have got it out, but then I risked being asked about it. I shifted uncomfortably instead, trying to settle it into the crease of my groin.

  ‘Stop squirming. He’s squirming ain’t he, Emm? Knows he should have helped us out when we was squirming – him and all his money.’

  ‘You can’t have expected a warm welcome, surely?’ Emm’s voice sliced though Jill’s twittering like broken glass.

  ‘I didn’t anticipate anything. I was given your addresses and I thought it was maybe time to build some bridges.’ The lie came out easily but it didn’t settle there so well. My sisters were bull-shit radars.

  ‘Oh, come on. Build bridges? If you were going to do that, you would have done it ages ago, when a bit of help wouldn’t have gone amiss, Like Jill said. You with your fancy job and plenty of cash from it, no doubt. Nothing for us when it mattered, though.’

  ‘No, not for us.’ Where Emm led, Jill followed, until it reversed. ‘It’s more what you want from us, ain’t it?’ My heart pounded. I switched attention to Jill. It was beginning to feel more like an interrogation than a reunion. Good cop, bad cop – and neither of them were playing the nice guy.

  ‘Anyway, Win came to see us.’ Emm continued. ‘He told us you’re helping with Danny.’

  ‘Uhh,’ I looked from one to the other, anticipating more flak. Unexpectedly they smiled back.

  ‘Poor kid. We’ll do what we can to help too.’ Emm made it sound as if they were doing me the favour, not Danny.

  ‘Yeah, help.’ Jill chimed in. My head buzzed again and I wasn’t sure if it was my confusion or their changeability that did it.

  ‘Uhh.’ It was all I could say, it seemed. If they’d known more about Danny’s parentage, maybe they would have been less accommodating. It soon became clear they didn’t even have a clue. All they knew was that Kimmy’s boy was in trouble, and finally, their long-lost big brother had appeared on the scene like a knight in shining armour to save the day. That was Jill’s description. Emm concurred.

  ‘I’m not sure if I can,’ I cautioned.

  ‘Course you can. Hot-shot lawyers – they always win, don’t they?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘What else has Win told you?’

  ‘Oh, Win never tells you anything other than what he wants you to know.’ Binnie’s warning resonated with that.

  ‘So why are you going on what he’s said?’

  ‘The trick is to work out what he hasn’t said. You’ve never been in business, obviously – or played poker.’ Emm laughed.

  ‘Gets you what you want when you want it – ain’t that it?’ Jill chimed in, ‘so you have to figure out what it is he wants to get for someone else, and then you’ll work out what it is he’s planning on getting from you.’

  They were far better at this than me. ‘Tricky.’

  ‘Oh, he’s that all right, although Mum probably should have called him Dicky, not Win!’

  ‘I used to call her Ma.’ It was involuntary.

  Emm looked at me sharply. ‘We don’t really remember her – or Dad, come to that.’

  ‘She died when we were little,’ Emm added.

  ‘We went to foster carers. They were OK – nice. It became home after a while. It wasn’t until we were in our teens that Win got in touch. He put us in touch with Sarah and Binnie too. We remembered them better than Mum, actually.’

  ‘I remember you too,’ Jill added kindly. ‘You were always in the wars. I remember you banging your nose jus
t before it all happened and Mum couldn’t get it to stop bleeding. I thought you must be dead because you had blood all over you, but Sarah said you were just unlucky.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘Maybe we don’t remember things we don’t want to?’

  ‘She died recently, didn’t she?’

  ‘Ma?’ I was confused.

  ‘No, your wife. I’m sorry. She seemed nice.’

  ‘You met her?’

  ‘Yes. A few months ago.’

  ‘She came to see you?’ I couldn’t quite keep the anxiety from my voice. Emm eyed me curiously. Jill took her cue from her silence and answered for both of them.

  ‘Not exactly. She came into Emm’s shop, didn’t she?’ I focused on Emm, quietly allowing Jill to tell the story uninterrupted. She seemed reluctant to add to it.

  ‘How did you know her?’

  Emm shook her head. ‘I didn’t.’ She hesitated. ‘She was with the bloke.’

  ‘Bloke?’

  ‘Win’s mate. I don’t like him much – even trickier than Win, I reckon, and arrogant with it. Smug bastard.’

  ‘Who was he?’ I wasn’t sure I now needed to ask.

  ‘I don’t know his name. Win does stuff for him though – ask Win and see what he doesn’t tell you!’ She laughed harshly. ‘You two might get more out of each other – two of a kind.’ The return of bitterness was sudden and vitriolic, but I didn’t see why I warranted it – absent brother or not. And she’d been keen to help me not ten minutes earlier.

  ‘There’s really not much love lost between you, is there?’

  ‘No ... well.’

  ‘He grassed up her bloke, after he’d put him together with Kimmy. He ain’t exactly Emm’s favourite.’

  ‘He didn’t need to know that,’ Emm rounded on Jill.

  ‘Yes, he did. He helped.’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Willy Johns. He was her bloke. Win put him in the frame for that girl’s murder and then you put him away.’

  20: Connections

  I left the mercurial twins still arguing. I wasn’t sure if they even noticed me going. They clammed up after the statement about the Johns case. I couldn’t stay and listen to the back and forth recrimination-tennis that I suspected happened regularly between them. They hadn’t had anything useful to tell me about Willy Johns, other than he didn’t do it; the age-old cry of all defendants’ loved ones. The difficulty was, I suspected this time it was true and yet it threw yet more feint and double feint my way.

  And what they’d accused me of was true. I had helped put him away. Win had claimed he wanted revenge on Jaggers for setting Willy Johns up – ‘my best mate’, yet Jill and Emm claimed Win had put Willy Johns in the frame himself. I and my partners had simply bolted the door behind him on the strength of my zeal in court – and the massive fee the Wemmicks had provided. And yet another twisted relationship was revealed – Win, Willy, Emm, Kimmy. The incest didn’t seem so much purely on my side. What had been the relationship between Kimmy and Wilhelm Johns then? Win hadn’t seen fit to mention that at all. It seemed the labyrinth of the past was unending, and not long after that pathway had been grassed over, Margaret had appeared to lay another trail for me to follow. My thoughts were as perplexing as the labyrinth itself, but out of the maze there seemed to be three separate strands revealing themselves.

  Jaggers and Margaret were planning something together – clearly related to money. FFF was a front and Jaggers’ uncle had given me my head start in the first place – with a complicated trust clause hanging over my head if I ever brought his name into the public arena or disrepute. Something told me I was about to fall foul of that – to Jaggers’ great good fortune. But it didn’t stop there because Margaret had her own little additional plan lined up too – her, me and Danny, foiled only because of her death. To do it, she seemed to have been wheeling and dealing in false names, family secrets and blackmail. And last of all there was Win, claiming to want justice for his boyhood friend – yet he’d put his boyhood friend in the frame in the first place. Far more likely that he was simply content to play us all of against each other to achieve best results for himself – whatever they may be.

  I swung into Chambers on the way back, walking the forty-five minutes from where I’d met the twins in Camden in preference to taking the tube. I needed to clear my head and fighting to keep it in the claustrophobia of the underground was currently beyond my capabilities with so many tangled skeins twisting into knots in my head. Louise was manning the reception desk as usual.

  ‘Everyone’s at lunch,’ she informed me anxiously. Three o’clock and at lunch?

  ‘When did they go?’

  She looked blank, ‘Umm, I don’t know. But I’ve collected your post for you,’ she added helpfully, waving a fistful of letters at me. I took them from her and was about to leaf through them when the absence of Gregory’s hovering presence struck me.

  ‘Are you here entirely on your own, then Louise?’

  ‘Umm, only for a while.’

  ‘Where’s Gregory?’

  ‘Mr Gregory’s out too.’

  ‘Where?’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘You don’t want to tell me?’

  ‘It’s not that, it’s because of Mr Tibbs ...’ but I didn’t hear the rest of what she said in my surprise at the franking emblazoned on one of the letters. It was the distinctive coat of arms that shut off the rest of the world to me.

  ‘The Queen has been pleased to approve your appointment as His Honour Judge Lawrence A Juste, to be a Justice of the High Court with effect from 4th October 1999 on the retirement of Mr Justice Holmes. Your appointment will be formally announced on 13th September and you will hold office during good behaviour; as laid down in the Bill of Rights 1689.’

  ‘Are you all right Mr Juste?’

  I looked up from paper, head still spinning to find Louise peering strangely at me. My mouth opened and shut like a fish before I managed to grunt an acknowledgement. She continued to frown at me and I wondered what expression I had on my face now – as dumb as the one Heather said I had when I thought about Kat? I tried to smile reassuringly at her but she looked doubtful. I caught sight of myself reflected in the portrait of Mr Justice Jowett behind her. I looked as half-arsed as he did just before he died, already well into his dotage.

  ‘Mr Tibbs?’ I asked to fill the gap whilst I gathered my senses.

  ‘Is actually a Mrs Tibbs.’

  Oh?’ I stared at her. What the hell was she talking about?

  ‘She had kittens in the archives. The 1998 archives.’ Heather’s archives – that was why they were disturbed. ‘Mr Gregory and the others have taken them to be rehomed. I couldn’t bear to say good bye so I’ve stayed behind to man the desk.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked so sad I wanted to hug her. ‘And Mr Tibbs?’

  ‘He’s being done so he can’t have any more – but I get to keep him – her – when he’s OK again.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ I allowed the inane grin I’d been trying to hold back from splitting my face. She looked at me oddly.

  ‘Oh, and I almost forgot – Mr Gregory gave me this for you. He said it was hand-delivered just before lunch.’ I took the second letter from her. The paper was thick and expensive – ridiculously opulent in comparison to the thin white paper of the other envelope. It was addressed in a sprawling black hand reminiscent of a tarantula spreading itself across it. Something about the depth and pressure of the address made my stomach turn. It reminded me of Win’s handwritten message on the reverse of his business card. Elation turned to apprehension.

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘I’m sorry Mr Juste, Mr Gregory didn’t say. Do you want me to ask him when he comes back?’ I considered the envelope. If it was from who I thought it was from, I wouldn’t want Gregory remembering who had delivered it.

  ‘Probably not necessary. I’ll let you know if I do.’ I hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, aware Louise was still watchin
g me curiously. I wanted to open the envelope in private and my office was nearest. On the other hand, the cement mixer in my stomach was warning me the contents might be something I’d want to mull over well away from any other curious glances. The information Win had given me last time had been anything but pleasant. However, I couldn’t very well open the damn thing on the tube, or walking home. ‘I’m not here either, Louise, if anyone asks.’ If the clerks could go incognito then so could I, although it occurred to me that their whereabouts must be known to Heather. There was no evading Heather.

  I left Louise staring after me and made my way cautiously upstairs and past my co-partners offices. I needn’t have worried. None of them were around either. The place was like the Marie Celeste. I made it to the bolt hole of my office and shut the door firmly, allowing it to stick as if locked. The scent of Heather’s perfume still lingered in the air, but maybe that was from her last visit. Chambers seemed to have a knack of encasing sensations within it and preserving them.

  I spread the letters on my desk, relishing for a moment more the red and gold of the coat of arms and the formality of the royal appointment. Margaret had predicted it wouldn’t be long in coming. Shame in a way that she couldn’t see it. Perhaps Danny’s case had played its part too, even though it hadn’t been concluded yet. Ironic, that. In theory now I didn’t need to be seen to conclude it – and yet, it had become imperative on a personal level that I did. The other correspondence looked to be run of the mill and I set it aside, placing the heavily endorsed envelope centre stage. I took a deep breath and slit it neatly across the top. I expected to find an abusive or irritating note from Win, maybe with more accusations or claims. I was wrong. It was far worse than that. As soon as I saw the printed name at the bottom of the page, I knew it was worse than my most rancid fears.