The Talisman

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘How long – for Chrissake, tell me what he’s likely to get?’

  ‘Ten to twelve years.’

  Alex felt the breath rush from his body, and he had to be helped to a chair. Someone put a glass of water in his hand, which was shaking, and the glass rattled against his teeth when he tried to drink. ‘Will I be allowed to see him? Tonight?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I suggest you go to the jail immediately. They are moving them all to a top-security wing first thing in the morning. It’s a prison forty kilometres outside Paris. I am very sorry, Mr Barkley, but we will use every moment we have, do everything we can. I have a car waiting if you would like to leave now . . .’

  Alex was driven to the prison in a Mercedes. He leaned back and closed his eyes, saying over and over to himself what a fool his son was, what a fool . . . All he could picture in his mind was Evelyn on his fifth birthday, running to him, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘Dad, Dad, I got a farmyard, I got a farmyard – I got cows and sheep and chickens . . .’ Alex sighed – this farmyard was full of weapons.

  Alex was searched, and questioned until his brain reeled, then he had to wait for over an hour before he was led into a small visiting room. Two guards were stationed at the door.

  At last he heard footsteps and keys turning in locks. His mouth went dry and he couldn’t get his breath. He half rose from his seat only to be ordered by the guards to sit down again. Through the small glass window in the door he could see the top of his son’s head. He swallowed hard to stop the tears welling up.

  Evelyn was led into the room. He was wearing grey overalls and his hair had been cut very short. He was thin, almost gaunt. His wrists were handcuffed, his hands hanging loosely in front of him. He gave his father the ghost of a smile, but his eyes, his dark, wide eyes, were terrified. Alex had to sit back in his seat when he saw the guards push his son into the chair, ordering him to put his hands on the small, bare table.

  ‘You all right? They treating you all right?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘I got here as soon as I could, I only heard this morning.’

  Alex turned to one of the guards and asked if he could hold his son’s hand. The man shrugged, and Alex reached over and gripped Evelyn’s hands tightly with his own. The boy hung his head, ashamed.

  ‘I’ve only got fifteen minutes, so I’ll be as informative as possible. I’ve got the best lawyers there are, and they will be working around the clock. They have asked me to tell you to be completely honest with them, and not to hold anything back – you understand? I will stay here, and when they move you tomorrow, I shall come to see you as soon as possible. I think I can do more here in Paris, see the right people and try to sort this out.’

  Evelyn clung to his father’s hands, unable to look up, incapable of speech. The tears trickled down his cheeks. Alex swallowed again, trying to keep his own emotions in check.

  ‘I can bring you some food, and shaving stuff. They said you will be allowed fruit, and a little money for cigarettes. You must keep yourself to yourself, don’t mix. Don’t, whatever you do, get into any fights. Evelyn? This is not the time to say what you did or didn’t do, I just want you to know that I am here, I am with you, and I will stand by you . . . Look at me, son, look at me.’

  Slowly, Evelyn raised his tear-streaked face. ‘I’m sorry . . . Go back to England, there is nothing you can do. I was part of them, Dad, whether I wanted to be or not is immaterial. You’ll only make it worse for me inside if you try to get me off.’

  Alex gritted his teeth and held the boy’s hand so hard he could feel the bones. ‘Ask to be placed in solitary, keep away from the others, hear me? We may have a chance, but only if you are segregated. I don’t want to hear you say again that you were part of them – you were not, hear me? You were not.’

  ‘I was . . . I’ll take whatever they hand out, it’s the way it has to be.’

  Alex could no longer hold his tears back, and his voice broke. ‘I love you, I love you, and I’ll be close, visit you whenever I can.’

  The look on the boy’s face made Alex reach over to take him in his arms, hold him tight. The bell rang, it was over, and the guard had to pull them apart.

  They hauled Evelyn to his feet, marched him to the door. As they took him away he whispered he was sorry, sorry . . .

  Alex heard the prison warders shouting at his son. He froze into a catatonic state, unable to make his limbs work. The sounds, the walls, the smell . . . He was back inside himself, he was suffocating . . . He clawed at the edge of the table, somehow managed to rise to his feet and leave, but he had no recollection of the journey back to his hotel. Just those sounds, those echoed voices, those keys . . . and those terrible locked doors.

  There were messages waiting for Alex from his office and the lawyers, and there had been five telephone calls from Ming. He lay on the bed, unable even to wash himself or eat.

  At last he roused himself to call Barbara, but the butler told him she was not at home. He called Miss Henderson, and noted down all the things he had to take care of. She began to tell him how sorry she was, and he cut her short, not wanting to discuss it. She told him she had given Ming his Paris number as she had been calling the office every hour on the hour. Whatever it was must be very urgent.

  It was after midnight and he was still taking calls from the lawyers, arranging meetings. Every time he put the phone down it rang again with more messages, and top of the list was always Ming. He rang room service, then told the switchboard to block his calls while he took a shower. The water felt good, and he began to relax.

  He rang down for his messages, and no sooner had he put the phone down than it rang again. This time it was Ming in person. Before he could say a word she berated him for not returning her calls. He let the phone rest on his shoulder, closed his eyes while she went on.

  ‘Alex . . . are you there? Alex, will you answer me? I have just had a visit from Juliana Barkley, did Edward put her up to it? Alex, how can you, you of all people, treat me like this? I have trusted you . . . Alex? Are you there?’

  He sighed and admitted he was, and Ming continued, ‘This little bitch walked in as if she owned the building. I offered her more than her shares are worth, double, and she refused. She wants all the audited accounts, and the Japanese company is giving me hell . . . You told me to go ahead and agree there would be no third party involved . . . Alex . . .?’

  Alex swung his legs down from the bed. ‘Yes, I am here, and right now I couldn’t give a tuppenny damn about your bloody tinpot company. I know nothing of Edward’s daughter, and I haven’t seen him for months . . . and I don’t give a damn about it. Do you hear me? I don’t give a fuck what you do from now on, just don’t call me again.’

  She screamed down the line, ‘You had better get this thing sorted out, do you hear me? You have been paid a hell of a lot of money off the top, so don’t start saying you don’t give a damn. You said you were taking over the Barkley Company – well, Alex, are you? I have to know.’

  Alex hung up on her, then told the switchboard he was not going to take any more calls from Miss Takeda. Ming had, as always, touched a chord inside him. His intentions of taking over were as strong as ever but, like the pattern that always formed in his life, every time he took a step forward something dragged him back. He had not given a thought to Edward, to the carefully laid plans for uprooting him. Nothing could be further from his mind, and in a strange way he almost wished his brother were with him.

  The phone rang again, and he picked it up. Miss Henderson told him that the press was full of leaks on insider dealing, the Barkley Company could be in trouble, and she needed to contact Edward. Did Alex know where he was?

  Sighing, he interrupted her. ‘Will you not call me again unless it directly concerns my son, is that clear? Anything else will have to wait until my return. Just fend everyone off, do you understand me?’

  There was a loud crackle on the phone, and Miss Henderson apologized for the intrusion, then the pho
ne went dead.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Edward’s arrival in Paris coincided with the transfer of Evelyn to the top-security wing. He missed his son by a matter of hours. He contacted London and discovered Alex was in Paris, so he went directly to the hotel, only to find he had checked out and left no forwarding address.

  Edward spent a considerable time asking questions of as many people as he could get to see. He sifted through the facts, those he managed to acquire, then tried once again to discover where Alex was staying, without success. He decided to make his way to where Evelyn was being held. Before he left, he paid a visit to the Foreign Office, then drove across Paris to the prison in the hope of seeing Evelyn.

  Edward now knew it was far worse than he had anticipated. The main terrorist group were amateurs who had been making attacks on post offices, telephone exchanges, television transmitters, tax offices and banks since the late seventies. They had also destroyed an office at the Académie in Brittany. The new faction had not started causing real damage until three years ago, when they had bombed an officers’ mess, two banks and a customs depot. The list made no sense, there was no logic to it. The only good thing from Evelyn’s point of view was that no one had been killed or seriously injured.

  But the police had found enough ammunition and explosives at the farmhouse to give great cause for alarm. The terrorists’ every movement had been monitored by the police, who had had them under surveillance for six months. Initially prepared to wait and catch them red-handed, they changed their minds when they discovered that the group had bought vast amounts of explosive. They decided to move in before anyone got killed, and had raided the farmhouse. One of the ringleaders, Kurt Spanier, was determined, if he and his friends went down, to take their little stool pigeon with them. He had given the police a long statement implicating Evelyn as the financier behind the organization.

  Edward was refused permission to see Evelyn. He was standing outside the high prison walls wondering how to trace Alex, when he saw him driving out of the prison. He shouted and waved, chased the car. His brother’s face was grey with worry, and he stared in panic at Edward for a moment, not recognizing him. Edward gasped for breath, ‘I’ve been trying to contact you all day, lemme in the bloody car . . . Hang on, I’ll pay off my cab.’

  Alex opened the door and Edward, wheezing and coughing, squeezed in beside him. The cigar smoke made Alex feel sick, and he opened the window as he drove away from the threatening brick walls topped with barbed wire.

  The visits were a nightmare for Alex. Every time he entered the prison he went through agonies. He washed himself obsessively after each visit, unable to get the stench of disinfectant and urine out of his nostrils. The acrid cigar smoke had a similar effect on him, and he kept gasping for air, unable to talk. Edward was totally unaware of the mental strain Alex was undergoing every time he visited Evelyn. Attempts at conversation drew nothing but blank silence.

  Alex’s hotel room, though a double, was small. It was clean, but without any of the luxuries the two men had become used to. Alex splashed cold water on his face from the small handbasin, soaped and scrubbed his hands and nails. His brother’s questions, fired at him one after another, made him feel worse. Finally Edward blew his top, yelling, ‘For God’s sake, Alex, talk to me, talk to me.’

  Edward’s presence filled the room along with his cigar smoke. He lay down, the single bed creaking beneath his weight.

  Alex was washing his hands yet again, and Edward threw his up in despair. ‘You going to fucking talk this through with me or not? You tell me what you’ve got and I’ll say what I’ve sniffed out – isn’t there any room service in this dump?’

  Alex loosened his tie and put his head into his hands. The headache still throbbed, but it was fading, the nausea subsiding. At last he spoke. ‘Any way you look at it, he’s going to get at the very least eight, they say more like ten years. The police were staking out the place, the farmhouse, for over six months. They watched him coming and going freely, so there’s nothing to that angle we can try. They have cheques I sent which were signed over to one of them – a German, the one they call Kurt Spanier. The stupid bastard was part of it whether we like it or not.’

  Edward took off his thick overcoat and threw it on to the only chair in the room. It fell to the floor in a heap. ‘What about bribes, any joy in that area?’

  ‘That what you’re here for? What are you going to do, splash your money around? Grow up, money won’t get him off this one – have you seen the list of things they’ve been trying to blow up?’

  ‘Yeah, talk about arseholes . . . I dunno, but money gets everyone off everything, just that you’re too dumb to know it . . . I want to talk to the lawyers. I’ve got contacts in the Foreign Office, maybe we can work something out, some kind of deal. If you ask me, it would maybe do the boy some good to spend a year or two behind bars getting his arse kicked . . . You never gave him the thrashing he deserved over that Harrow business.’

  ‘Don’t you start telling me how I should have treated my son . . .’

  ‘He’s my son, and you know it.’

  ‘Wrong – you lost him when you kicked my wife out of your bed. Now why don’t you and your fat cigar get the hell out of here and leave me to try to sort out my son’s problems.’

  ‘Don’t be a fucking crass idiot. Your son, my son, what difference does it make? Stupid git gets himself into trouble, surely the two of us can put our heads together and come up with something to get him out . . .’

  ‘I’m doing just that, and I don’t need you . . . I don’t want you, nor does he – go on, get out!’

  Edward took a massive wad of notes from his pocket and started to count them. ‘That’s exactly what I said to your wife when she came running round begging me to help. She had no idea where you were. Where have you been all these months, anyway? All hell’s going to break loose in the City – you know that, don’t you? So I’ve been cleaning up the back yard, so to speak, and keeping a very low profile. You know the Americans have started blabbing? Take one big guy down and the rest fall like a pack of cards. You know who they’ve got, don’t you? Well, if he can cough up millions in fines, he’s going to make sure he’s got a deal and he will name names . . . You hear what I’m saying, Alex?’

  ‘Right now I’m not interested in the backhanded deals you have always persisted in, all right? I will straighten everything out as usual, when I get back. Just get your bulk out of here and leave me alone.’

  Edward showed no inclination to get off the bed. He plumped up the pillow, lay back on it. ‘Way I look at it, Alex, you are desperate to hold on to him as your son, because – and for this reason only – you know I want him.’

  Alex flung open a window to clear the cigar smoke that billowed around his brother’s head. ‘Oh, yeah, what are you going to do? Offer me a deal, you get him off and he’s yours, is that it? You’re too late, you won’t ever have him . . .’

  For a man his size, Edward moved incredibly fast, pinning his brother against the wall, pushing him so hard his head snapped back. ‘This is the second time I’ve had to do this, first time was with your bitch wife, you know what she’s worried about? That you won’t get your fucking title! That’s what she’s worried about, so just listen, you stupid bastard . . . I don’t care if he knows who I am, what I am. I’m here to get him out, even if it means using a rope and scaling the wall. All right? I know I lost him, I know he’s not “mine”, and I have to live with it, here, inside me . . .’

  ‘All right, all right, I’m sorry . . . I’m all strung up, it’s the prison, it gets to me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it would . . . You got to admit you did a bloody poor job of bringing him up.’

  Alex pushed his brother away, went to lie on the other single bed. Even when Edward wasn’t talking, his presence was an intrusion, and his heavy breathing was irritating Alex. He closed his eyes, sighed. ‘You’re right, maybe I did make a mess of bringing him up, but that was down to you. Y
ou destroyed everything I had going with him, did you know that? For a while I hated the poor kid, not because of what he had done, but because of what you had done. Barbara may be a bitch, but deep down inside that plastic body there is this guilt. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been a girl, but your son? Have you any idea what it felt like to find that out? The way I held him, when he was born – I was there, and to find out he wasn’t . . . wasn’t . . . Ah, shit . . .’

  Edward had a coughing fit while he thought of something to say. But, unusually for him, there wasn’t anything, because he was actually trying to imagine what it must have been like for his brother.

  Alex stared at the wall, then after a while he said, turning to Edward, ‘See, I was blinded, because I thought he looked like Dad. But she, Barbara, never knew him, all she saw every time she looked at Lyn, as she calls him, all she ever saw was you . . . When I found out, Christ, I felt such a prick, so dumb that I’d never even tumbled to it . . . Jesus, what a cunt you have been, all my life you’ve been kicking me. So tell me, why did you go to bed with her? Why, Eddie? All the women you could have had, and it had to be her, why? Was it to get at me? Was that it?’

  Edward coughed again, spat in the handbasin and ran the water. ‘I didn’t want her, Alex, she came of her own free will. I never set out to take her, I never set out to hurt you. And right now, if I said I was sorry, it would mean nothing, but if you want to hear it . . .’

  ‘I don’t – like everything to do with you, it’s too late.’

  Edward walked aimlessly around the room, searched his coat pocket for another cigar. He could remember Barbara’s visit clearly, and that it had coincided with one of Harry’s breakdowns. But there was no point bringing it up. He unwrapped the cellophane from the cigar, picked off the small gold band. He had screwed her, and had even enjoyed it for a while. He patted his pockets, looking for matches – he never could keep a lighter for more than a few weeks. Well, only one. He had kept the solid gold one he had been given in payment for the use of his body. He chuckled to himself – he wouldn’t be paid so much as a matchstick for it now, the size he was. He puffed on the cigar, the smoke coiling in the air, then sat on the bed opposite his brother. He looked at Alex as he lay stretched out on the other bed, put out his big hand and squeezed his shoulder. No words could ever make up for the things he had done, and he knew it.