The Allegations

by Mark Lawson

  If Tom were not currently being so careful with money, he would search for ‘Oleanna’ on iTunes. Unlike Nod, he would never be on Desert Island Discs, but could play it in his unproductive study as a reminder of the attempted latter-day Arcadia from which he had just been exiled.

  What Are You Celebrating?

  First the waiter and then the maître d’ asked: ‘Are the rest of your party definitely coming?’

  If Tom had been there, he would have corrected the verb to ‘is’. But the pedant – the pedant, though – was absent, which was part of the problem.

  Booking the table, Emma had enjoyed the chime of ‘eight at eight’. At twenty-five minutes past, with three of the chairs still empty, the five who had arrived were being watched like shoplifters. On a Friday night, turning away walk-up custom, the restaurant was as conscious of occupancy as a hospital.

  Helen had texted that the Pimms were running late because Tom was a bit wobbly. Phee kept messaging her sister, who wasn’t responding. Emma, who had only invited Dee from a sense of stepmaternal equality, had been surprised when she accepted and so was now uncertain whether to worry at her absence.

  So four guests – Ned, to her impressed astonishment, was continuing his sobriety even tonight – were sharing a second bottle of champagne. With finger and thumb, Emma made the half-glass signal to Basham, who was pouring. She had been unable to concede to his frequent pleas to ‘Call me Bash.’ The ex-detective brimmed full Claire’s and Phee’s glasses and then his own. Angling the bottle towards Ned, he said: ‘I really can’t tempt you, Teach? Never had you figured as an Evianista.’

  Ned defiantly sipped his elderflower spritzer. ‘No, it’s not an AA thing,’ he lied.

  Phee came to his aid: ‘It’s just if he gets Instagrammed drinking champagne, it might get the Twitterati going again.’

  ‘Lines unlikely to be spoken in the nineteenth century,’ Ned said. ‘A joke which, if certain websites are monitoring my conversation, I attribute to my absent friend Tom.’

  Claire nodded. ‘Probably sensible not to be pictured pissed.’

  ‘Yeah. “Offensive” to the “victims” who aren’t actually victims,’ said Basham. ‘Tell me how that works? In my day, when we nicked serial killers, paedos, whatever, we got mullered. Drinking to the victims.’

  This anecdote stopped the conversation. Emma had been unsure about including the copper in the dinner but he had become a sort of mascot to Ned, who, after reclaiming his phone at the police station, had found a congratulatory voicemail from Basham, already tipped off by contacts about the outcome.

  And Emma had an ulterior motive. Basham, who had become a telly regular telling news programmes why his successors were failing to find famously missing children, reviewed crime fiction for a Sunday tabloid.

  Asking if she could send him a super-proof of Your Love Always, as soon as she secured the deal, she told him the premise, quoting the stonking opening sentence: Two days after my beloved wife, Harper, was laid to rest in the earth of the Connecticut town where she had been born, married and killed, she sent me a message. It said: ‘Scott, we need to talk. H xx’

  Basham took a big gulp of bubbly, swirled it like mouthwash. ‘Okay. Harper is dead. The messages are coming from someone who has stolen her identity online and elsewhere. A chick who’s in love with Scott, wants to be his wife, maybe an ex-girlfriend. No, ex-mistress. She set the fire that killed Harper. Gabriel is her brother, half-brother, stepbrother? Psycho. Thousand-yard stare, probably Vietnam vet. The chick who’s stolen Harper’s identity sent bruv to get close to Harper to kill her but he wrecked it all by falling in love with her so she had to be burned. When Scott eventually meets a woman who to all intents and purposes is his dead missus – hairstyle, utility bills, memories – he has to decide if it’s the answer to his dreams or the start of his nightmares.’

  The ex-cop beat a Hollywood thriller score on the table with his fingers.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Emma asked. ‘Very funny. You got an American copy from somewhere.’

  ‘What? No. Picking holes in murder stories was what I did for twenty years. It’s like asking Pele to be impressed by the tactics in a playground kickabout.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry,’ blurted Helen, arriving with the stumbling haste of the late, her long winter coat and trailing scarf threatening the drinks on the table. ‘Tom’s exhausted. He’s been trying to write his book and not really sleeping. He thought he’d have a power nap but he woke up feeling groggy, so I’ve left him. Sorry sorry. I hope you’ve started.’

  She wafted a kiss across the table at Ned, stooped towards Emma’s cheek without contact – they had been wary with each other since Manchester – but hugged Phee, her goddaughter. Helen already knew Claire – who was representing Tom in his appeal against UME – but needed the heads-up on Basham, who handed her a glass of champagne as she gave a precis of who the Pimms were and why her husband wasn’t here.

  ‘Yeah. Teach told me some. I’m sorry for your bollocks. When it happens in our line, you set yourself up in private security. But I don’t suppose in lecturing …’

  ‘Not really. No.’

  Across the table, Claire asked quietly how Tom was but Helen’s answer was loud enough for Emma to hear: ‘I think it’s the thought of eating in public, to be honest. He gets the sweats, from the medication or the stress, whatever. You know, he has to actually have a towel at the table.’

  Though aware of this upsetting symptom from Ned, Emma was pleased that Tom had wimped out. The evening had the feel of the family of a patient who had received a donor heart inviting to dinner the relatives of someone who had died while on the waiting list.

  The manager of Luigi’s came over and asked again about the missing diners.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry but I think six is it,’ Emma said. ‘A lurgy and the M40. Sod’s law.’

  ‘Right. We will leave you for this moment.’ Emma’s liberal conscience struggled not to find a parallel between his manner and scenes in Goodfellas or The Godfather. ‘But if we need big table we may move you to the annexe.’

  The waiter, before taking their order, asked: ‘What are you celebrating?’

  In Winslow, apparently, champagne was still an aperitif for special occasions. Ned looked agitated. Emma said: ‘Oh, my husband’ – the word was still new enough to make her stumble – ‘has just had some good news at his work.’

  ‘Cool.’

  Too old to be a student but too young, well-spoken and (forgive her) English to have chosen to be serving food, how he must hate these smug rich people luxuriating in their success. If only he knew. Did he know? (The question that now shrouded everything they did.) If so, he gave no sign.

  Emma had thought about proposing a toast but could not work out how to word it. Clarity, she considered. Or: Normality. And: Getting Ned Back. But all of these seemed either too simplistic, triumphalist or, in the last case, ambiguous. She had just rejected Relief! as overly two-edged when Phee lifted her glass and said: ‘Common sense!’

  These words – a neat enough solution – were murmured in a ragged round, followed by the sort of pause that is waiting to be filled with a speech. Emma threw a sympathetically encouraging glance at Ned, who equivocated facially, twitched his shoulders and began: ‘As a supportive fellow academic once said in History Today: we could all sound smart if we were reading it from an Autocue. So I won’t sound smart. But I hope I sound … grateful. Because I really am.’

  It was audibly his television voice, though lower in both confidence and projection.

  ‘The people here tonight’ – his eyes wavered to the two empty chairs – ‘The people I invited here tonight range from those I’ve … known for around thirty years’ – looking at Helen – ‘to someone I’ve worked with once’ – a nod to the cop – ‘and, of course, Emma, Phee and Claire who, in their different ways got me through it … and … and, of course …’

  Ned was staring dumbly ahead. Emma was thinking of the banquet sc
ene in Macbeth when, catching the line of Phee’s anxious smile and following it across the room, she saw the ghost not of Banquo but Cordelia, shaking rain from her coat at the hole-in-wall cloakroom by the door.

  ‘If Tom were here – and we now have to try to support him in the way that you have all sustained me – he would be as beady as ever for such solecisms as the misuse of the word literally. However, it is not a misuse to say that I literally wouldn’t be here without all of you.’

  In fact, Emma knew, Ned had wanted the assembly to be even more representative. Brimming again with ideas for books and documentaries, he had invited his publisher and producer, but Beane and Ogg both had clashing commitments.

  Ned had stayed seated for the speech but now stood as Dee came towards them.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. It was a general greeting, meeting no eyes.

  Because the earlier arrivals had arranged themselves to exclude gaps, the unoccupied seats were at the far end of the table. Father moved towards daughter in welcome but stopped as she took the space at the far end next to Claire. Ned, at the head of the table, now faced the one remaining social hole, where Tom should have been.

  A Pinot Noir and a Sancerre had replaced the champagne. Basham held up both bottles as options to Dee, who smiled tensely and held a glass towards the white.

  ‘I thought you were identical twins,’ the detective said.

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Yeah? I’ve seen closer matches on an identity parade.’

  ‘We needed our space.’

  ‘You missed our toast to your dad for …’ Again, Emma rejected several suggestions from her mental thesaurus. ‘For getting through it.’

  ‘Yes. Well done,’ Dee said.

  ‘And his speech thanking everyone for standing by him,’ added her sister. Emma had never seen Phee so feline.

  The disquieted silence was broken by Phee asking Emma: ‘Tobes okay?’

  ‘Yeah. I think so. He’s flexi-boarding at Abbey Grove tonight. We’d never send him full-time but this gives him a bit of the best of both worlds.’

  Basham had looked bored during the talk of children, as if weighing up whether to say something, which he now did: ‘Teach, do you want to know how close it was?’

  Claire leaned across to gloss the policeman’s presence to Dee.

  ‘I think we probably don’t, do we?’ said Emma.

  Ned shrugged. ‘A – sorry, absent friend, an – historian is supposed to want all the facts.’

  The ex-cop aerated the wine in his glass, checking the legs by candle-flame, until he had the full attention of all six. ‘The CPS was gung-ho for it to go before a jury. The Millpond playbook is Yewtree rules squared – better lose in court than risk being monstered for dropping it by people whose phones are smarter than they are. But, just as they were about to charge it, one of the women told them she wouldn’t go into the box for them.’

  Ned, previously quick to show his feelings vocally and facially, had recently taken on an almost Parkinsonian slowness (two of Emma’s older writers had developed the condition), which, Google reassured her, was probably due to his medication for depression and insomnia. But something close to the old speed and needle returned as he asked: ‘Really, which one?’

  ‘No names. Just that they lost a witness.’

  Sprung at once from recreational to professional mode, Claire challenged Basham: ‘You guess that or you know it?’

  ‘I know it. Leaving the job is the only divorce where you never stop talking to each other. I’m not saying you wouldn’t have won anyway. But this is the better way to do it.’

  After a colossal platter of antipasti to share – and a small vegetarian selection for Dee – Ned stood and said: ‘Just going to …’ Aware that toilet was supposed to be wrong, but finding loo awkward, people like them now generally left the word unspoken. Helen pushed back her chair and said: ‘Snap. Can you show me?’ Ned sat down again: ‘No. I think they only have the one here. You go first.’

  Working out that Ned was terrified of being alone in a corridor even with Helen, Emma understood that this is what his life would be like now – always making sure that there were witnesses.

  In Helen’s absence, they talked about Tom, giving Basham a catch-up on what had happened.

  ‘Accused and convicted in secret on the basis of anonymous gossip,’ the retired policeman summarized. ‘No trial followed by a show-appeal. It makes Millpond look like Solomon. Wouldn’t last an afternoon in court.’

  ‘And it may come to that,’ Claire told him. ‘But, first, we’ve got a hearing next week with – they all have these titles – the Group Divisional Director of Campus Happiness, or something.’

  Helen, returning to the table, passed, in the lavatorial relay, by Ned who murmured: ‘I’ll call him tomorrow. Or should I pop round? How bad is he?’

  ‘Not great. It’s the not sleeping and effect of the pills when he does. I honestly think, if he was here, were here, he’d be face down in the bresaola by now.’

  While Ned was away, Basham tried to pour wine into his water glass but Emma warned: ‘No, he’s genuinely off it.’

  The fact that her husband wasn’t drinking was good but, less happily, made a later attempt at sex (their marriage remained in a strict sense unconsummated) more likely.

  During the main courses, the talk was of crime novels Emma was representing or Basham reviewing, Phee’s progress on her Ph.D. and scandalous anecdotes about celebrities who had done interviews or shoots for Helen’s magazine. The closest the conversation came to the two defendants connected to their number was Phee’s mention of having taken a break from Twitter because of the threats of rape and death.

  Even when telling her stories from work, Helen was busier on her phone than you expected from a woman of sixtysomething. And, despite ordering coffee, she stood and said, before it was served: ‘I’d better go. Tom hasn’t replied to my last two texts.’

  ‘He’s probably just taken a zonker,’ Ned reassured her. He could still only sleep with pill assistance.

  ‘I think you should go back now,’ said Basham. His demeanour was immediately changed: sober, in both senses, an instilled skill at taking charge of situations. ‘I’ll fix you a taxi. Where to? Do you want me to come with you?’

  Helen looked shocked and confused. ‘Oh, er, no. No, I’ll be fine.’

  Emma glanced at her husband. He was too preoccupied to respond but she guessed that he was thinking about a world in which men and women had to treat each other with suspicion.

  When Helen unfolded notes onto the table, Ned tried to insist it was on him. Since his phone call from the steps of the police station – Emma wept at once and had not stopped by the time he got home – Ned, confident about the resumption of his career, had abandoned his crisis economies. Helen, however, precisely divided the bill by seven and added a tip.

  In the commotion of arrangements and goodbyes, Ned got himself next to Dee. When she didn’t say anything, he tried a joke: ‘I guess you probably expected it to be tea in Wormwood Scrubs, not dinner in Luigi’s.’

  This brought a scowl from his daughter, so Emma added: ‘It means a lot to your dad for you to be here.’

  ‘Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  When Ned put his hand on Dee’s arm, she shivered but accepted the touch.

  ‘Cordy,’ he said softly. ‘You know, I do accept that this kind of stuff has to be investigated.’

  ‘Well, bully for you. Or is that your friend Tom?’

  Thrown off the always careful tread of a stepmother, Emma snapped: ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Why did you come if you’re still being like that?’

  Dee answered with the sulky superiority with which, as a teenager, she had regularly tormented her father’s new love. ‘Look, as far as I can tell from my sister, Daddy’s line is that he wasn’t a bad guy, he just couldn’t keep his pants on …’

  ‘Well … ,’ began Ned.

  ‘We’re supposed to be celebrating the fact that he isn’t actu
ally going to jail. But you’d hardly raise a glass of champagne to the rest of it.’

  Basham seemed not to be listening, which was probably a copper’s trick. Helen, getting ready to leave, had stopped, tantalized, which concerned Emma because she thought the Pimms had been led to believe the allegations were malicious fantasy rather than conflicting narratives.

  ‘I’ve forgiven him,’ Emma told Dee. ‘Why can’t you?’

  ‘Because, as far as I know, he’s only done this to you once. He’s done it to us twice.’

  Helen was leaving.

  ‘Let us know how Tom is,’ Emma threw after her.

  ‘Take care,’ Ned said.

  Ray (4)

  Ellis shook the cider up again, making it as fizzy as possible, which, Toby knew from last time, made him even burpier and then more sick.

  Wiping off the previous mark with a tissue, Ellis lifted the felt pen and drew a new black line, four or five centimetres below the old one, then shook the bottle again.

  ‘Down to the line!’ Ellis said.

  As the liquid burned his throat, Toby felt some sick coming up, gulped it back down. As he spluttered and coughed, Oscar and Sweetman started the low whispering growl (so the patrolling prefect wouldn’t hear): ‘Drink! Drink! Drink!’

  Because he had never drunk any until now, Toby couldn’t know if what was in the bottle was really cider or only cider. The drink smelled like the jakes but he didn’t want to think about why that would be.

  Ellis grabbed the bottle and checked the line. ‘Rubbish, Ray.’

  He handed back the cider. Sweetman started up again the quiet growl. ‘Drink! Drink! Drink!’

  When Toby felt the hot horrible burning stuff at the back of his throat, he tried to choke it down, but there was too much and it was too late. Ellis held the wastebasket, lined with a supermarket plastic bag, and, as Toby chucked into it, pushed his head down into the mess.