I said, ‘I’m not sure we have the right to ask for information about transactions made during Pa’s lifetime.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Edward exploded. ‘I told you, it could be our money, it could be rotting away in an account somewhere, totally forgotten. You may be doing fine with all your fat legal fees, but I’m very far from flush, I can tell you, not with this damn roof to replace and all the modernizing of the estate. Aunt Nella did nothing, absolutely nothing, in the way of maintenance, not for years. There are three cottages to repair, and a drainage problem over on Mill Farm, and God knows what. I tell you, it’s going to cost a fortune.’
I ignored the comment about my fees. Whatever the size of Edward’s income—and it must have been comfortable by any standards—he couldn’t be accused of spending a lot on himself. He preferred sweaters and tweeds to anything which, for him, smacked of style or affectation. He hadn’t been abroad for some time, he rarely came to London, I had the impression he didn’t eat in restaurants very much. Wickham Lodge may have been large—counting the attic rooms, there were something like ten bedrooms—but apart from painting the woodwork against rot and a slap of blazing white emulsion on the kitchen walls, the place was largely as Aunt Nella had left it. There was the Mercedes in the drive, but, in our family, the men had never counted cars as an extravagance.
‘Okay,’ I agreed, preparing to sign the letter. ‘But don’t bank on this producing anything.’
But he didn’t want to hear any of that. He was consumed by the suspicion that Pa had deprived him of this money on purpose, as a final reproof.
He hung over me while I scribbled my signature, then swept the letter out of sight like a conjuror.
‘Christ,’ he said, thrusting his watch up to his nose, ‘we’re going to be late.’ He strode into the hall and yelled Jilly’s name. It was typical of Edward not to have told me she was in the house. I waited by the front door while he lifted a jacket off a hook and pulled it on, alternately commanding the wildly excited dog to calm down and shouting to Jilly.
Eventually light steps sounded on the landing and Jilly came running down the wide staircase, trailing a handbag and sweater. ‘Hello!’ she exclaimed in surprise, and still at a run came and kissed me on the cheek. She appeared in energetic spirits, a great deal more lively than when I had last seen her. Sometimes when she despaired of her relationship with Edward she fell into a bleak and impenetrable mood; at other times she managed a more philosophical front. Rarely had I seen her confident or lighthearted. She was twenty-nine and desperate for marriage and children. After four years with Edward and no sign of a marriage proposal, she was tormented by the thought that she had invested all her time and effort in a relationship which would fail to deliver.
‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she said in her little-girl voice.
I explained what had brought me.
All expression faded from her face. ‘She was organizing the music festival, you know.’
‘So I gather.’
Edward strode up to the front door and flung it open. Jilly and I moved obediently outside.
‘Perhaps she was depressed,’ Jilly said, speaking as someone who knew all about the subject.
‘Apparently not.’
‘People don’t always talk about it,’ she said gravely. ‘Sometimes they hold it in.’
‘But there are usually signs, I believe. Most people give some hint, so the experts say.’
She considered this as if it were a new and rather curious idea. ‘Well…perhaps.’
Jilly had grown her hair and had had it streaked a rather startling blonde colour. She wore no lipstick but, as always, her eyes were heavily rimmed with mascara. With her finely pencilled eyebrows and newly bleached hair, the effect was of someone wearing rather more makeup than was necessary or flattering. Her clothes were determinedly tweedy, as though she had gone to Aquascutum and asked for a female version of Edward’s wardrobe, yet the country look only succeeded in emphasizing the incongruity of her makeup. I suspected that Edward was secretly ashamed of her, that in the sporting circles in which he now mixed he felt she didn’t quite pass muster, and but for the fact he’d got used to having her around he would have called a halt to the relationship some time ago.
Edward, having slammed the front door and locked it, swore suddenly. ‘The camera, Jilly! The bloody camera! Jilly moved as though jerked by hidden wires. ‘Oh, sorry, sorry.’ She rushed back towards the house. ‘Let me get it.’
‘No,’ Edward sighed, reopening the door. I’ll get it.’
For some moments after he had disappeared Jilly hovered on the threshold in case she might yet be called upon to help. Turning back finally, she muttered in self-reproach, ‘Forgot the camera. We’re going to look at a horse…’
I nodded mutely. There was nothing one could say to ameliorate Jilly’s misery when things went wrong. ‘Did you see a lot of Grace?’ I asked.
‘Oh, no.’ In her agitation her voice was even wispier than usual. ‘I mean, we didn’t see them socially, except at other people’s parties. And then when this tenancy thing came up—’ She pressed a hand to her mouth, frightened that she might have spoken out of turn.
‘The dispute.’
‘The dispute,’ she affirmed with a small wince of relief. ‘Well, it all got a bit awkward after that.’
‘Edward couldn’t very well withdraw his offer to host the festival, I suppose.’
‘Oh, but he didn’t want to! No, he rather liked the idea of—’ She withdrew awkwardly, as if she had been on the point of saying something disloyal. ‘I think,’ she said, with a glance towards the house, ‘that he liked the idea of hosting such an important event for the neighbourhood, the idea of having everyone here. He had plans to replant the garden.’
Quite the country squire. The image pleased me. ‘And Grace?’ I asked. ‘She wasn’t bothered by the dispute?’
‘Oh, no. She just pretended it wasn’t happening. Behaved as if we were all the closest of friends—which we weren’t, never had been. But that was her way, of course.’
‘Her way?’
‘Always smiling. Always full of sweetness and light.’ And to show she hadn’t meant this unkindly, she gave one of her apologetic laughs, one shoulder raised, head tilted. Her gestures, like her voice, were excessively feminine, as though such mannerisms might make her more desirable. She added confidingly, ‘Rather too grand. I always thought, anyway…’
‘Grand?’ The word surprised me.
Jilly, who reacted to any challenge, however slight, by distrusting her own judgement, backed down immediately. ‘Well…gracious, perhaps.’
I still wasn’t absolutely sure I understood her and the doubt must have shown in my face because Jilly said, ‘What I mean is, to meet her you’d think she was out of the top drawer, born with a silver spoon in her mouth. You’d never think she was just an ordinary person. The way she talked, you know. And her clothes, her whole manner—like a duchess.’
I hadn’t thought of Grace in quite this way, but now that Jilly mentioned it I recognized the seeds of this grandness in my memory of her.
Edward reappeared at the door and began the process of locking up again.
Jilly, on duty once more, hurried off towards the Mercedes. ‘Lovely to see you, Alex,’ she called with a wave.
Edward strode up and planted both feet heavily on the gravel. ‘Sorry we couldn’t have more time.’ Then, making, a visible effort to be brotherly, offering something that resembled a smile: ‘Why don’t you come and stay one weekend? You and Paul?’
I made my usual excuses for Paul, how his workload kept him in London at weekends. ‘But if this business brings me to Norfolk again I might need to beg a bed off you.’ I tilted a mocking smile at him. ‘If that’s okay.’
‘I think we could manage that.’ His pretended indifference could not conceal the gleam of satisfaction in his eyes, and something else I couldn’t quite identify, like sorrow. Seeing this, I felt a lu
rch of guilt for not having made more of an effort to come and stay before. Edward’s invitations had always been so equivocal, his manner so perfunctory, that even I, the one person who should have seen through this subterfuge, had fallen into the trap of believing he didn’t really want to see me. I should have remembered that Edward’s greatest talent had been for alienating those closest to him. On the emotional front, he was an expert at own-goals.
‘Maybe even next week,’ I said.
Recoiling from the dangers of such intimacy and affection, the demon in Edward shot back to the surface. ‘So soon?’ he said acerbically. ‘But then, you always had a soft spot for Will Dearden, didn’t you?’
I said coldly, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Oops, hit a nerve, did I?’
‘Don’t be pathetic with me.’
‘Was I?’ He paused and took stock. ‘Oh, Lally,’ he moaned placatingly, choosing the name he had used as a child, ‘don’t take any notice of me.’
‘You should take more notice of yourself, Ed. You should be more careful of what you say.’
He gave an exaggerated nod. ‘You’re right,’ he said ruefully. ‘Always were.’
Chapter Four
Bare concrete and gunmetal, sudden cacophonous clangs and long echoes: the cold world of the cells behind Clerkenwell Magistrates Court. I passed through the familiar succession of security doors and windowless passageways, and approached the desk sergeant, a stony-faced man with a well-honed brusqueness.
I wished him good morning and informed him that I was Duty Solicitor for the day. ‘How many do you have for me?’
Taking his time, leaning an elbow wearily on the desk, he referred to the list on his clipboard. ‘Ten, eleven. Could be more,’ he murmured lugubriously. ‘There’s two still winging their way from Islington.’
As Duty Solicitor there were very few certainties about the day ahead, except that Mondays were never quiet. Not only did a Monday bring two days’ arrests into the courts, but they were the two days of the week on which people thieved and fought and misbehaved with far greater energy than usual.
I noted the names and charges. Hearing the name Hedley, I asked the warder to start there first.
The warder lowered the wicket and called into the cell. The face that appeared in the slot could have been sixteen instead of twenty-two. Large troubled eyes and deathly white skin under a fiery scattering of acne.
‘Jason, Jason,’ I said in mild despair. ‘Short time no see.’
‘Hi, Mrs O’Neill. What you doing ’ere?’
‘I’m Duty Solicitor today, so you get me on tap, lucky thing.’
He smiled at me.
‘Jason, the charge is theft from Sainsbury’s.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What was it?’
‘A chicken. Four quid’s worth.’
I felt like asking him why he hadn’t gone for a steak, which would have been far easier to conceal, but I wasn’t supposed to say things like that.
‘Guilty, then?’
‘Yeah.’ He knew the form. He had been committing petty misdemeanours since he was twelve. He was already on bail for stealing whisky from a rival supermarket.
‘What about your family history? Do you want me to refer to that in court?’
‘Sure.’
‘Just to make certain I have it right—your father was killed when you were three? And your mother died a year ago, wasn’t it?’ The mother, who had also been a client of mine, had died from injecting contaminated drugs into her veins, but I wouldn’t be mentioning that.
We were both momentarily distracted by loud shouting from an adjacent cell, a stream of obscenities culminating in, ‘It’s a frame! They fuckin’ framed me!’
‘Where are you living, Jason?’
He made a rueful face.
‘Rough?’
‘Mostly, yeah.’
‘What happened to the hostel?’
‘There was this guy there. Gave me a bad time.’
‘And your probation officer couldn’t find you anywhere else?’
He dropped his eyes.
I sighed. ‘Do I take it you haven’t been reporting to your probation officer?’
His expression said no, and, like a mother admonishing a hopeless child, I gently shook my head at him. It was no good getting angry or fierce. Quite enough people in Jason’s life had done that already. If he was going to be one of the sixty per cent of young offenders who made up their minds to stop offending in their mid-twenties he needed unbiased advice, not censure.
Footsteps sounded at the end of the passage. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure approaching. Something about the jaunty walk was familiar, and I took a proper look. It was Sturgess, who fanned out a hand of greeting. I could only imagine something important had come up at the office and he’d rushed over to tell me about it. Gesturing that I’d be with him shortly, I turned back to the face in the open wicket. ‘Look, Jason, I’ll try for bail, but the magistrate is going to lose patience with you if you don’t promise to meet the terms of the existing order. You understand? I’ll tell the court that you were bullied at the hostel and you’ve been sleeping rough ever since, that you stole this chicken because you hadn’t had a proper meal for days. But it might not wash, you realize that?’
‘There’s a place in Islington I wouldn’t mind.’
‘A hostel? You’ve got mates there?’
He nodded.
‘But good mates, Jason? Not people who are going to get you into trouble?’
He couldn’t answer that. All of them were in some sort of trouble, trouble with drink or stealing or drugs, trouble with not having homes or families or education or prospects.
‘Okay, I’ll have a word with the probation people. But I can’t promise anything, Jason.’
‘Yeah. Thanks, Mrs O’Neill.’ He pulled away from the door.
I put my face back to the slot and said in a low voice, ‘Why a chicken, Jason? They’re so damned bulky.’
‘Thought there weren’t no one watchin’ the chickens.’
I made a face at him before raising the wicket.
Sturgess was nowhere near. Looking back along the line of cells, I was surprised to see him leaning against a cell door at the far end, conferring with the occupant.
I asked the warder which detainee he was talking to.
‘Munro. GBH. Remand at Brixton.’
It made no sense. If this was one of Paul’s clients and it was simply a remand, I couldn’t imagine why Paul hadn’t asked me to stand in for him. Sending Sturgess was both inefficient and unnecessary.
With barely half an hour before court began I still had to receive instructions from the nine other people who might be in need of representation. The first was the gentleman who had been making the noise, a shimmering vision in a vermilion-and-silver disco suit so tight that it appeared to be painted onto his lanky body. He was charged with possession of a quarter gram of heroin and a stolen and doctored road-tax disc.
‘Hello, I’m the Duty Solicitor. My name is Mrs O’Neill. I’m here—’
‘It’s a frame-up, man.’
‘Would you like me to represent you, then, Mr Finn? My function is to represent you if you would like me to…’
As I was talking, Sturgess passed soundlessly behind me. I kept an eye on him in case he should turn and make some signal to me, but he rounded the corner and disappeared in the direction of the duty desk without a backward glance.
A joy-rider, an actual bodily harm, an offensive weapon and a possession of drugs completed my tally for the morning, which, typically, was fewer than the desk sergeant had predicted since many detainees had managed to locate their regular solicitors. I hurried into court as everyone was upstanding for the arrival of the magistrate, a stipendiary named Alice Knapp who had served her time as a criminal defence solicitor in Isle-worth. She had a reputation for toughness. Famously, she had once told a knife-wielding yob that if it had been in her power to have him whipped, s
he would have done so publicly. This, with her exuberant fluffy hairdo not entirely unlike a soft Italian ice cream, had earned her the nickname Miss Whippy.
Sliding onto the bench next to Sturgess, I whispered, ‘Who’s the client, then, Gary?’
‘One of Paul’s. GBH, a remand. Paul’s on his way, but he wanted me to confirm the client’s instructions.’
‘But why didn’t he—’ But whatever Paul should have done was no concern of Sturgess’s, and I cut myself short with a wave of one hand.
The first two cases did not find Ms Knapp in benevolent mood and I began to worry about Jason, but swayed by the bullying he had suffered at the hostel she allowed him bail on the condition he found another place to live and reported twice a week to his probation officer.
Three more cases, both adjournments, and Paul’s grievous bodily harm was coming up the list fast. Sturgess, increasingly fidgety, finally slipped out of his seat and held a whispered conversation with the clerk. My irritation with Paul was rekindled by the knowledge that all this duplication and bother could have been avoided if he’d taken the simple step of briefing me.
The vermilion-and-silver disco suit entered court muttering tautly, twitching his shoulders and generally exhibiting the body language of a storming bull. Despite my attempts to restrain him, he sealed his fate by directing a stream of four-letter abuse at Ms Knapp and earning himself two weeks inside for contempt.
As the fracas died down and he was led away, I sank back onto my seat, to be met by Paul’s breezy smile from the far end of the lawyers’ pew. I sent him a questioning look which he chose to misunderstand or to ignore.
My joy-rider, already on bail for two similar offences, got bail again, which was more than he deserved. Then Paul’s GBH. I listened in expectation of something unusual or difficulty but it was a simple remand for a further two weeks, no request for bail, nothing complex, nothing mysterious, the whole thing completed in three minutes. The moment it was over Paul bowed hastily to the bench, threw me a quick nod and flew out of the court with Sturgess close on his heels, the very image of the busy lawyer. Or, bringing it closer to home, the image of Paul in one of his increasingly evasive moods, anxious to avoid explanations.
A Dark Devotion Page 10
