by D. B. Martin
‘Like a mother hen, ain’t she?’ The comical appeal to me had me smiling. We were comrades: pragmatic men battling the fuss and over-reaction of women. We both laughed and Kat glared at us.
‘It’s not funny. There’ll be all sorts of trouble over this. We have to take you back right now.’
‘Hold on, hold on!’ Danny’s face had taken on the hardened criminal look again where it had been becoming relaxed and childlike. ‘Danny was telling me why he ran away and I think we ought to listen to his side first, don’t you?’
Kat frowned. ‘It’s not just the case that matters, Lawrence. It’s Danny’s health too. You should have more concern over that, considering.’
‘I am considering,’ I told her sarcastically. ‘I’m considering what all this means as well as how it affects Danny’s health. Win has a rather devastating effect on people’s health at times, you know – physical and otherwise.’ I didn’t add what I feared more about Jaggers. That was definitely something to keep to myself for the moment, his letter lying uneasily alongside the crested one in my pocket. I turned back to Danny who’d been watching us carefully. ‘Carry on, Danny. Miss Roumelia needs to hear this too.’ He wrinkled his nose at me in disbelief.
‘You two not got it together yet? Blimey, you’re making a meal out of it, ain’t you?’ He picked up the book as if in self-defence – or in case I took it back off him, perhaps.
‘You have to look beyond the person or the action to see the outcome, remember?’ I reminded him. He studied us.
‘Oh, I see – she’s black and you’re white – like in the book?’
‘No, that wasn’t what I meant – but there are disparities between us, and like in the book, there are also ethics to consider. We’re both working for you at the moment, Danny. That makes things complicated.’
‘He’s me uncle,’ he added, but which of us – Win, or me – he was referring to didn’t seem to register with Kat. ‘That’d be one of them rellyvent things like you said once, wouldn’t it?’
‘Well, possibly that too. Shall we tell Miss Roumelia – Kat,’ I looked at her and she nodded in the affirmative, ‘what you were telling me just before she arrived?’ His head bobbed up and down enthusiastically and I summarised quickly for her, leaving out the more complex elements, before cueing him to continue.
‘That was it, really. Apart from the last time of course. Then that other bloke came along and all hell broke loose. ‘He pushed me over and I hurt me leg.’ He rolled up his track suit bottoms and displayed the bruising proudly. ‘That were it – still ain’t gone and it were ages ago. It’s me himmaphelia, ain’t it? I got left there with the bag and the old dear and she died. The old bill got there like a shot – quicker’n they’d ever turned up before, and I was nicked. But I didn’t do it.’ I looked at the small bony fingers clutching Atticus and was struck by how unscathed they were despite his problem. A switch clicked into place.
‘Danny, will you show us your bruises again?’ He obliged happily. ‘They’re now nearly six weeks old,’ I reminded the Kat. ‘That was when the mugging occurred. Danny’s bruising continued for some while after the event because of the haemophilia, but look at his hands.’ She went over to Danny and tried to take the book from his hands. He resisted. ‘It’s all right, Danny,’ I reassured him. ‘It’s yours for keeps. I’ve finally learned my lesson from it, I think.’ He allowed her to put it on the desk and examine his hands.
‘A few very old scars but they’re fine, otherwise.’ She looked at me. ‘What’s your point?’
‘My point is we’ve just proven Danny’s innocence – not from bag-snatching. By his own admission, he’ll have to take the rap for that, but I’m sure the jury will be sympathetic when we explain how it came about. But there’s the evidence he couldn’t have carried out the mugging right in front of you. The haemophiliac boy, with extensive bruising from the same day still apparent on the rest of his body, but not a mark on his hands; the hands he would have had to use to beat her up since there was no weapon used.’
‘Oh my God, Lawrence, you really are the best! Of course!’ I laughed deprecatingly, but preened nevertheless. ‘His hands would be in a terrible state wouldn’t they?’ She beamed at Danny. ‘Mr Juste has just proven your innocence of the mugging, Danny. Isn’t that wonderful?’
‘What does that mean now then?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Well, the police will want to see the evidence so the forensics people will have to come into hospital and take some photos of your injuries and your hands, and then interview the doctor as an expert witness, but after that it’ll be cut and dried.’ I thought about disputing that. There would still be the little matter of pleading and the trial. If we were pleading not guilty we’d still have to appear in court, but perhaps that was a minor point to talk about later when I understood more about the more worrying elements swilling around in the background.
‘So do I still have to go back?’ Danny sounded miserable. Kat put her arm round him.
‘Oh Danny, just for a little while – but then you’ll be able to go home. That’s wonderful, isn’t it?
‘I don’t want to go back there or home. Can’t I stay here – with Mister Big?’ Kat looked flustered and started to apologise to me. I found I was unconcerned and marvelled at myself. When did Lawrence Juste become so unafraid of commitment – and to a kid? I’d anticipated revulsion, distaste, even horror when faced with the fruit of my sin. Instead I couldn’t help admire the child’s resilience, and a small, locked away part of me revelled in the replication of me, even though I knew it shouldn’t. I didn’t trust myself to say anything whilst the strange melee of emotions spiralled the central question – why couldn’t he? He was, after all, family of one sort or another. Luckily Kat applied officiousness and answered for me before that now disconcertingly frequent inclination to stamp about where angels feared to tread invaded me again.
‘I’m sorry Danny. You have to go back. Mr Juste isn’t responsible for you. I am – as representative of social services. It’s no different for any child placed in the care of the courts or on remand.’ I was relieved and disappointed simultaneously.
‘I thought I was meant to be different. Me himmaphelia made me different.’
‘Your haemophilia does make you different, Danny. It makes it important to look after yourself even more carefully than other kids, because you don’t heal quickly and easily like they do. But it’s you who make you special – like Scout realises about Atticus and Boo and Tom Robinson. To be special you have to be brave.’ I put the picture of Margaret back flat on the desk, face down. ‘How long before we have to take Danny back to the hospital to avoid trouble with red tape?’
Kat shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, could we ring the ward sister and tell her we took Danny out for a bit of fresh air, but not to worry as he is in official hands – yours – and we’ll bring him back before the end of visiting this evening?’
‘Lawrence – we can’t. It’s getting too involved.’
‘Getting too involved? How much more involved could we be?’
‘He’s me uncle too!’ chipped in Danny.
This time it registered. ‘Who told you that?’ She looked horrified. I couldn’t avoid the complication this time.
‘Win did. When he visited after we left.’
‘Was that all he told him?’
‘I don’t know – Danny?’ I sat on the edge of the desk, equidistant between the flattened photograph and Danny. My two dilemmas faced each other and yet I felt strangely immune to danger from either. The whole affair had become surreal. Boy, woman, man – all dancing a tarantella around the black hole that could swallow the boy and the man as easily as it had already swallowed one woman. Perhaps inevitability makes us finally find the calm in the eye of the storm. Win’s visit to Danny had something of inevitability to it – as had the visits I’d made to my sisters. No matter how hard I tried to hide what I knew, he was showing me he could sweep a
way my life in mere seconds. A casual comment, a careless aside and I could be sucked to oblivion, the boy with me. The press would have a field day. No longer Mr Justice Juste-to-be but Kenny Juss, ignominious liar, unprincipled rogue and incestuous bastard. Thirty-five years of dissembling and denying would be lost in one moment of disclosure. And yet suddenly I didn’t care. I listened to Danny’s answer with only half a mind, the other half still dumbfounded by the lack of alarm I felt at my imminent exposure. The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast and prepared to die.
‘Yeah, and just to keep me mouth shut or it’d be the worse for you.’ He hesitated, ‘but that means you can’t say what I told you, then don’t it? You can’t get me off after all?’
Second chances. How many did we need? I’d told Kat as many as it took. They had to run out sometime, but for the moment I took this one thankfully – after all it was still case not proven for me, wasn’t it? I couldn’t think about Jaggers just yet. He would have to be a nightmare for later when there was no Kat or Danny to have to pretend in front of.
‘You haven’t told us anything, Danny. Your condition and my conclusions are what will prove your innocence. Come on. It’s time to live a little. You’re a long time dead.’ The irony of it and Jaggers’ threat wasn’t lost on me as I said it. I handed the phone to Kat, dialled the hospital number and left her to deal with how she made our excuses. Something close to joy – or at least release – had infested me with recklessness. Maybe it was the way you were meant to live. I found a jumper of mine that had shrunk in the wash, now lacking Margaret’s careful ministrations, and threw it to Danny. Then I found something similar for myself. We stood together – almost two peas in a pod. Kat stood in the doorway into the hall, watching us with an enigmatic look on her face.
‘Do you need one too? I can find you something of Margaret’s? It gets cold up the top, I’m told.’
‘Up the top of where?’
‘The big wheel.’
21: Bonds
‘You know what, Mister Big?’
‘What?’
‘You ain’t that bad at all.’ We’d had to take him back to the hospital by nine and he was pretty much done in by then, but the child’s face had remained a child’s face throughout that time, despite the shadows of exhaustion.
He was still clutching Atticus when we left him there and wearing my jumper – which he’d wriggled into as soon as I’d produced it, even though the evening was still warm. The forensics team were lined up for the next day and I had my own appointment with a needle to keep then as well. In losing my fear of the outcome, I’d found something unexpected within myself. I still couldn’t share that potential twist of fate with Kat. Things were far too complicated already, especially when I thought about the two letters now lying in my locked desk drawer at home too. Whatever the result, it would take me further forward along at least one of the strands I’d perceived twisting into the knot. If I had a son, it wasn’t so bad. The rest I’d have to think about – and how we could all survive it.
‘Interesting that Win only revealed the connection between you and him, not the one between you and the Wemmicks,’ Kat commented after we’d completed the formalities with the tight-lipped ward sister and been sent frostily on our way with a warning not to repeat the infraction of her laws. ‘Why do you think he did that?’
‘Maybe he wanted to let me squirm whilst I figured it out – or it’s a message to me. Unless I do what he wants, he’ll spill the beans completely. He knows that would ruin me. He knows I know that too.’ But then it occurred to me that Jaggers might have threatened Win too.
‘What does he want from you?’
‘Jaggers: on a plate – or so I thought, but what I’ve learnt since doesn’t quite bear that out.’ I told her about the visit to Jill and Emm.
‘My God, you have been busy! Is there anyone else you’re planning on seeing without telling me?’
‘I didn’t think until recently I had to tell you anything I did?’
‘You don’t.’ She clammed up, face as pinched as Danny’s had been when protesting his innocence. My defensiveness had got it wrong again.
‘I wasn’t saying there was anything wrong in you wanting to know, but we have been rather on-off in terms of communication haven’t we?’
‘I’m sorry. I never know when you’re winding me up.’
‘I’m never winding you up, Kat.’
She gave me the hard, defiant look she’d given me that first day in the interview room. ‘See, that’s exactly what I mean,’ she said.
‘We can’t fight forever. Danny made that quite clear. Shall we call a truce?’
‘I guess.’
I was never that good at conciliatory but it was time to make an effort. I offered the first treaty. ‘There is still someone I haven’t been to see – the one I’m least enthusiastic about seeing.’
‘Who – Jaggers?’
‘Christ, no. I’m staying as far away from him as I can until I’ve figured out what’s going on here. No, it’s my sister, Mary.’
‘The disabled one?’
‘That’s a nice way of describing her. As a child we called her “Mooney Mary” but I guess political correctness would now designate her disabled.’
‘I don’t really understand. If she’s – well – mentally incapacitated, why do you need to go and see her? What is she likely to know? ... Oh, I’m sorry. Its closure, isn’t it?’
‘No, Kat. It’s disclosure. Win implied Kimmy – Kimberley Hewson – had talked to her. Now for a start, that doesn’t make sense, given what I know of Mary’s mental capacity, and secondly if she did, then I need to assess the likelihood for damage depending on what it is Kimmy talked to her about. No,’ I stopped her mouth with a finger across the generous lips. ‘Not for my sake this time – for Danny’s. Win knows he can ruin me any time he likes, but such a massive stain on me will also extend to Danny eventually. If I have no credibility, then neither will any case I make on Danny’s behalf. The results could scar him for the rest of his life, like mine has been scarred.
In my mind I created the headline in the papers. The worst possible one. Lawrence Juste’s incestuous liaison – the kid with a bit too much kin involved, and cringed at the idea of Kat reading it. That scar would never heal – for any of us. Danny would spend his life hiding from prejudice and narrow-minded bigotry, and Kat despising and avoiding me. I didn’t like the risk of exposing that element of the mix to Kat, but I did need her on-board. She was the barrier between me and Danny, and now, in the cold light of day, for all my supposed nonchalance, the thought of being responsible for Danny on my own terrified me. Plainly if I kept too much more of my personal life to myself, she might remove herself – and the barrier – from it, or be vulnerable to other influences suggesting I was playing games with her. Apart from which, I was starting to realise Win didn’t do or say anything without a reason. Either he or his master thought very carefully about each of his steps before Win’s strings were pulled, and every little phrase or nuance was essential to their plans. That meant Mary was part of it too – I just didn’t know how yet. I certainly didn’t want Kat devilling away with her own research out of frustration with lack of involvement from me. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Keep a curious lover closest of all, I might add.
‘We’re all having our strings very cleverly pulled,’ I said aloud.
‘So is Jaggers the puppet-master?’
‘One would assume so, but then I thought my wife’s name was Margaret and I was wrong.’
She was silent, then said, ‘Actually ...’ and looked embarrassed.
I finished it for her. ‘Actually you knew that already?’
‘Yes.’ She looked embarrassed.
‘Communication – our greatest asset as humans.’
‘Don’t be angry, Lawrence. I was going to tell you.’
‘You were going to tell me? When? When I was standing in court making an asshole of myself?’
‘N
o. I was going to tell you now.’
‘Tell me then.’
‘Win came to see me too.’
‘Oh great. When?’
‘Probably just after he’d been to see Danny.’
‘And?’
‘And he’d come to tell me he knew about our visit to FFF and to keep my mouth shut about what I knew. I said I didn’t know anything – well, I didn’t really then. Just that he was your brother, and that Margaret seemed to be manipulating both of us and it involved FFF which was less than squeaky clean. You told me the names of the people heading it up and I remembered then that Heather Trinder had been employed by people of the same name to get my brother off. Since Margaret helped set that up, there had to be a connection, but I didn’t know what it was. I told him that and he got really weird with me. He said if I mentioned Margaret’s involvement to anyone else my brother’s case would be reopened and he wouldn’t be so lucky next time. That’s why I didn’t say anything at first but Lawrence, I don’t understand – why does it matter about Margaret?’
‘So what else did he say about her? About her name, I mean?’
‘Well he was really twitchy about the name – Wemmick. He said I was to forget I’d ever heard it in relation to her, I was only to refer to her as Margaret Juste, never by anything else. I hadn’t – but of course it made me suspect then that there was a connection, and he really wanted me to make it. Why else would he tell me not to think of Wemmick in relation to her? Classic reverse psychology.’
‘And you claim to not be smart?’ I commented.
‘Oh, well,’ she wasn’t sure if I was serious or not so I rearranged my expression to something more suitable and she continued. ‘Well, it was fishy wasn’t it? That’s why I was so nearby when I rang you. I was already on my way over to tell you about it.’
‘So how the hell did you know my address?’
‘Heather Trinder. I rang her first because I was worried. Win didn’t threaten me – other than about my brother, but I’ve come to terms with that now. Even if it’s your own family at the end of it, justice ought to be done. I always suspected Alfie was guilty. If it comes out that he is, then he’s an adult. I can’t live my life atoning for his sins – or ones I’ve attributed to myself, but I was worried about Heather and you. You don’t deserve any more rubbish coming your way because of me – either of you. You’re good people.’ It took a moment to digest that. Good people? Heather maybe, but could I be genuinely called good? Had Kat forgotten about the Johns case? She’d called me a criminal then. Or maybe I was being too hard on myself – and the explanation of how people were good and bad in parts that I’d attempted for Danny had really been for me – to enable self-acceptance?