Which meant that Joni went home to change her urine-spattered clothes, had a shower and then started driving around Corham. She was sure the women would be bewildered by their surroundings, having probably never been allowed out by their captors. They also had no money, though it wouldn’t take them long to make some. She wondered if they knew to go to Newcastle to find other Albanians, or if they would try to get to London. Either way, it was likely they would be trying to hitch, probably having split up. She headed to the eastern edge of the town. The dual carriageway led to Newcastle in one direction and Carlisle in the other. Decelerating as she approached the last roundabout, Joni saw a shadowy figure in the twilight. It was one of them. She slowed down more, trying to keep her head back so she wasn’t recognised. The woman was one of those who spoke Italian, but she must have worked on roads before because she leaned down to inspect the driver before coming close. The instant she saw who it was, she turned away and dashed into the undergrowth. Joni got out and shone a torch around, but a planner had located a pinewood by the roundabout and she had little chance of finding anyone in the deepening gloom. She considered calling a patrol car, but decided against it. The women would go to ground the moment uniformed officers appeared. Short of driving around the vicinity all night, there was little Joni could do. The last thing she wanted was to persecute the Albanian women. She would try to find some other way of helping them.
Back at her flat, she did half an hour of yoga. Then she prepared herself a vegetable stir-fry. She had given up meat and fish when she was thirteen, much to her mother’s amusement. Moonbeam rarely cooked, preferring to be taken out by the men she was involved with, so Joni had taught herself how to make nourishing meals. After eating, she sat on the sofa with a cup of mint tea and tried to get her thoughts in order. It had been a strange day, and not only because someone had tried to kill her. The fact that she’d been able to overcome the fear of opening her wounds by throwing Blerim Dost was reassuring. The tackle that she’d made on Nick Etherington had been the first step, although her unwillingness to follow the runaway Suzana over the high gate had seemed to neutralise that progress. That reminded her. She needed to speak to Nick’s mother in the morning to find out when he’d be home from school. He had definitely seen more outside the brothel than he admitted in interview.
Joni thought back to the conversation she’d had with the Albanian women. It was the first time she’d spoken Italian since she moved north. She could have gone to Newcastle at weekends easily enough. For some reason that didn’t appeal, as if, having decided to move out of the big city, she didn’t want to be drawn back into another one on her days off. She also hated shops, multi-storey car parks and pubs full of screaming pissheads. Heck and the others had told her Newcastle was well stocked with all of those. Corham was enough for her now, and she kept up her languages by reading French and Italian newspapers and criminology articles, and listening to news broadcasts on the internet.
She had a sudden flash of Aurelio Moretti, with the harbour at Bari in the background. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, dark hair running back in waves from his perfectly proportioned face, full lips revealing gleaming white teeth. She had been twenty-one when she went to Italy for the first time, for a teaching job arranged for her by the university during her year abroad. Aurelio was a games master at the same school and she fell for him the day she started work.
‘Hey, beautiful brown lady, you want come for coffee?’
His English had made her laugh and she replied in Italian that was fluent though lacking any regional inflection. They ended up in bed that night. He wasn’t her first lover. Having avoided sex completely when she was at school, she had slept with three men and one woman in her first two years at Oxford, but had never been satisfied. Aurelio did things to her body she had never imagined. She didn’t even mind that he was married. He gave her the standard story about his wife not understanding him. A functioning feminist at the time, Joni knew she should have planted a knee between his legs, but she couldn’t resist him. He was mad about cars and started her off on the tinkering with machines that she still did in her spare time. They were together until the day she left Bari to take up her next teaching job in Marseilles. He had begged her to stay, told her he would follow her, cried as she boarded the train. She still had the charm bracelet he had given her, but she never wore it. Not my style, she would tell herself. Maybe if he’d come to France she’d have put it on. But he never showed up, never wrote apart from one card declaring his love. She hadn’t replied, seeing that her future was different and elsewhere, even if she didn’t yet know the details.
And now she was reduced to using the language of love – not just of Dante and Petrarch, but of her stunning Puglian man – to question sex slaves and their pimps. The starkness of the situation almost made her weep, but she pulled herself together. At least there were no French gangsters in Corham, probably not even in Newcastle or Sunderland. She could keep that language for memories of love. In Marseilles, she’d been an instant hit with the teenagers in the run-down suburb where she was posted. She argued with the headmaster for more time with her pupils and eventually he agreed. Julien Sorel was divorced, bald and as different from Aurelio as it was possible for a man to be. He didn’t even like bouillabaisse, but he was an intellectual and a kindly lover. Without him she would never have borne the harshness of the kids caused by the society they were forced to grow up in. Many were from immigrant or mixed-race families.
Looking back, Joni saw that her decision to join the police was rooted in the squalid streets of Marseilles, where drugs were king and prostitution queen, as much as it was in her Hackney childhood. She had lost touch with Julien soon after her return to Oxford. One of the other teachers sent her a note a few months later, saying he’d been killed by a hit-and-run driver after he had stormed into a café that sold drugs to teenagers.
That had made her even more determined to right society’s wrongs.
32
Nick and Evie were at the table in the library, the afternoon light shining through the tinted yellow windows. Their shoulders were touching as they studied the laptop screen.
‘Read it,’ Evie said, tugging her ear nervously.
Nick turned and kissed her on the cheek before she could react.
‘What … what was that for?’
‘Don’t know,’ he said, his long eyelashes flicking.
Evie stared at him. She wasn’t surprised – she’d had feelings for him for weeks, but she hadn’t been sure what he felt about her. She’d liked him at school, even though he was in the year below. He was a star of the rugby and cricket teams. Everyone knew him and most people, girls, boys and even some members of staff, looked up to him. At first she’d thought he was a typical good-looking sporty type, but he was smart and hardworking too. And he’d been sweet to her after the accident, visiting her in hospital, though always with others from the Abbey.
‘I know,’ she said, and kissed him back, on the lips. It wasn’t easy for her. Growing up in proximity to her mother had put her sexual development back by years: she’d become aware of Victoria’s eye for men when she was still small. There was no way she wanted men to look at her the way they did at her mother – with desire, of course, but also with contempt. Finally it was Nick who had got to her.
‘You’re going to uni in the autumn,’ he said, when they broke off. ‘And I’ve got my gap year. What’s the point?’
Evie laughed. ‘For a start, there’s the whole summer ahead of us. We’re young, Nick. Every day counts.’
They kissed again and, pushing back their chairs, embraced.
‘Did I hurt you?’ he asked, seeing her brow furrow.
‘Just my leg. Don’t worry about it.’
So he didn’t. They ended up on the floor under the table, caution tossed to a gale-force wind. Evie expected it would hurt and it did, but it was worth it. With Nick everything was good.
‘I love you,’ he said, when he’d go
t his breath back.
‘I love you for saying so.’ Her forehead creased. ‘Love’s a big word, but, yes, I love you too.’
They laughed, then got dressed. Sitting together, they were looking at the screen again when the door opened.
‘Don’t you two want to go outside?’ Victoria said, her eyes on Nick. ‘It’s a lovely day.’
‘We’re working, Mother,’ Evie replied.
‘You’re only young once.’ The door closed behind her with a loud click.
‘Cow,’ Evie said. ‘Now, read this. I put together a diary and letters from the first Lord Favon. God, this family makes me sick.’
Nick was surprised by her venom, but did as he was told.
This is the story of a slave called Jaffray. Today he would be seen as high-spirited if he came from a rich home and in prison if his family were poor. But in eighteenth-century Jamaica there was no mercy for black men who took what belonged to their masters. Jaffray was tall and strong, and he worked in the estate sugar-boiling factory. Temperatures were high and the slaves were frequently scalded by spits and splashes of the sweet liquid. Some lost eyes and fingers. Some even dropped dead from the shock of the blazing contact. Jaffray had been two years in the inferno and was trusted for his steady hand and quick reactions. But his fate was sealed when he fell in love with a black woman, a housemaid in the master’s huge abode. Jaffray looked for her at night, climbing the wall to her garret room and charming her with his devotion. For a while – a month at most – they were happy. Then they were discovered when the master himself came for the woman. He had taken a fancy to her when she was cleaning the drawing room.
The master struck hard with the butt of his pistol before Jaffray could move – no doubt he was protecting his lover from their lord’s violence. When the slave awoke he found himself in the sugar factory, stretched out on a makeshift St Andrew’s cross. Through the steam from the cauldrons he saw his master holding the long shaft of a deep spoon, manoeuvring it over his naked, bound body. His genitals were first to go. He bore that without a sound. Then the boiling liquid was dripped over his belly and he felt it burn through the skin and reach his very entrails. Next went his eyes, but still he did not scream. Then he was left alone for over a day.
When the master returned he spoke to Jaffrey. He told him that his love, the housemaid, had been returned to the cane fields, where she would work until she died from exhaustion or disease. But Jaffray could save her. All he had to do was beg for mercy. His owner would rescind the order and bring the woman back into the big house. He had already had her, of course, had spent all night pleasuring her. He gave Jaffray the full details. ‘So, my brave fellow,’ he said, ‘will you save the woman you love?’
But Jaffray, owner of a spirit considerably stronger than the white man’s, would not speak. Perhaps he thought the woman was better in the plantation than near the master. Some said his mind had already broken, but that is disproved by the action Jaffray took next: he spat in the white man’s face. The slaves at the cauldrons could not believe what they had seen. The owner’s fury was terrible. He ordered the tongues cut out of the four men who had witnessed his shame. Then he had Jaffray smothered in hot but not boiling sugar, before hanging him from a gibbet by a rope tied tight around his midriff. There are no reports of how long he bore the attentions of birds and insects. No one knew when his ribcage finally cracked and his innards ruptured completely. The master, my ancestor, rode by the gallows frequently and taunted Jaffray, but the black man never responded. His silence was his power and his glory.
Nick looked at Evie. ‘It’s fantastic. I mean, the writing. This really happened?’
‘So it seems.’ Now that she had finally shown the first fruits of her research to someone, Evie felt drained. ‘Like I said, the Favons are disgusting people.’
‘Not you.’
‘I … thank you.’ She kissed him on the lips again. ‘You’d better go. I’m very tired.’ When she saw his face, she laughed softly. ‘That isn’t a brush-off. I really am ready to keel over.’
‘It’s OK.’ Nick helped her up.
A few minutes later he was on his bike, his heart and mind ready to burst.
33
‘Ow!’ Luke Rutherford yelled, falling backwards as if he’d been axed by a particularly unbending pole.
‘Bloody hell, Kat,’ Heck said, under his breath. He went over to his son, who was clutching his lower abdomen and writhing on the lawn.
‘Sorry!’ Kat said, running across the grass. ‘I didn’t mean it, Luke. Honest.’
‘Piss … off,’ the twelve-year-old gasped.
Heck picked up the rugby ball that his daughter had accurately kicked into her brother’s groin and chucked it at her without much force. ‘Go and practise grubber kicks against the garage wall, will you?’ He kneeled down. ‘Come on, lad. Deep breaths.’ He pretended he hadn’t seen the tears in Luke’s eyes. ‘It was an accident,’ he said, even though he suspected it wasn’t. Luke had been winding Kat up and she’d let it get to her. She wasn’t in any of the girls’ teams at the local club – too worried about her looks – but she’d followed plenty of Heck’s coaching sessions in the garden.
‘I’ll … I’ll kill her,’ Luke said, getting unsteadily to his feet.
‘Don’t talk daft. Come on, I’ll test you under the high ball.’ Heck sent up a few mini Garryowens, which his son took with aplomb. There was no doubt the boy had talent.
Ag appeared on the terrace with a tray of tea and biscuits.
‘One of the usual injuries, I saw,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Maybe you could let his balls drop before they get atomised.’
‘If you were watching, you know your daughter’s the guilty party.’
‘I saw you hand her the ball and point in Luke’s direction, Heck Rutherford.’
Her husband’s head dropped. ‘Well, he’s got to learn how to—’
‘Suffer?’ Ag asked sharply.
‘Ah, Dad,’ Heck said, relieved by the distraction of the old man as he came out of his quarters. He had an amazing ability to detect sweet food – it was a miracle he wasn’t diabetic. ‘Fancy packing down against Luke?’
‘He’s seventy-six, Heck,’ Ag said. ‘This place is going to turn into Corham General.’
Activities on the lawn turned into a general rabble with no reference to the ball, David joining in. Cass ran across, chased by Adolf, who had also smelled food.
‘Tea’s up!’ Ag called, pouring out the last of the pot. ‘Get away, you stupid dog. And stupider cat. You can’t have chocolate digestives.’ But she surreptitiously broke one up and slipped pieces to both animals under the table.
‘Ah bliss,’ Heck said, stretching out his legs and taking a mug.
‘I suppose this is what they call family time,’ Ag said, watching as her son pushed his grandfather backwards, the old man slipping and falling flat. ‘More like mad people time.’
Heck smiled at the kids. They were dragging his old man to the table, their faces wreathed with smiles. David was laughing, though it didn’t sound too healthy.
Ag stood up. ‘I forgot the cake.’
‘Has it got cream?’ Luke asked.
‘Wait and see.’
‘Oh, Mum.’
Kat repeated the words sarcastically.
‘Calm down, jungle creatures,’ Heck said. ‘Where did you find that decrepit giraffe?’
His father gave him two fingers, dropping his hand rapidly when Ag came back from the kitchen.
‘No cake for you then,’ Heck said, prompting loud laughter from Kat and Luke.
34
Joni’s phone rang as she was getting ready for bed.
‘Mother,’ she said, seeing the number on the screen. ‘I thought you’d be out on a blasted heath boiling up frogs’ eyes and bats’ spleens. It’s late enough.’
‘Very droll.’ Moonbeam Pax, who had changed her name by deed poll from Mary Higgins during her hippy days, wasn’t endowed with a sense of humour.
‘For your information Beltane, also known as Walpurgis Night, was last Wednesday.’
‘And did you go to a blasted heath?’
‘If you’d ever shown the slightest interest in modern paganism, I’d answer your question. As it is, you mock things you don’t understand.’
Joni heard plangent music in the background and felt her skin prickle. Moonbeam knew how much she hated Joni Mitchell’s music, but she never missed an opportunity to play it when her daughter was in earshot. The fact that she’d been given the singer’s assumed first name and her real one, Roberta, as her middle name was another sore point. Joni had sworn she’d change all three when she came of age but, in the end, she hadn’t. The irony of her mother’s hippy adopted surname being used by a cop amused her. But, for all the tension between them, her mother was the only person she’d had any kind of lasting relationship with. Her father, an African-American, had left before she was born and had never been in touch since.
‘Turn that racket down, will you?’ she said. ‘So what have you been up to? No, let me rephrase that. What do you want?’
‘Some idiots are riding motorbikes up and down my road.’
Joni took a deep breath. ‘Is that so? And what do you want me to do about it?’
‘Throw the dolts in jail.’
‘That’s hardly very liberal of you. Anyway, public order’s not my responsibility. I’m a detective, remember?’ Her mother had never come to terms with her choice of career or with her refusal to countenance any kind of illegal drug use.
Carnal Acts Page 9
