by Andy Bailey
Jimmy had been sufficiently arrogant to assume that he would always be superior to his children, that they would always be dependent upon him, that he would always be teaching them. So it had come as something of a shock to realise that, ultimately, they were independent of him, they had their own views, strengths and weaknesses, and their own lives that they didn’t need or want him to guide.
And yet he cleaved to the knowledge that his legacy could still be discerned – his instruction, his example, his genes – and the overriding sentiment, finally, was simple delight at having had anything to do with the remarkable person that now sat before him. He allowed himself to believe that he could see, in Susan particularly (Maria, he felt, was ultimately more of her mother), the virtues he liked to think had served himself well – insight, spirit and conscience; for all his repeated transgressions Jimmy still basically viewed himself as a moral man – concerned for the underdog and tilting at the establishment – and, effectively, viewed his occasional deviations from correctitude as the inevitable slips of a fully rounded man of the world; minor issues, and certainly not to be weighed that seriously against him. (In truth, he wasn’t entirely displeased at the comparisons with Lloyd George that were frequently levelled at him – again, warts and all.)
And he could see that, in Susan, there was something compelling added to that mix: a kindness, sympathy, generosity, that – he had to accept – must have been borne from elsewhere.
And, in his fondest imaginings, a hope lurked (that barely dared speak its name) that, in due course, Susan would be the one to assume the mantle of the family business – that is to say repaying the debt the family owed to the country that took it in by the devotion of one’s life to unstinting public service (preferably in high political office . . .) but he was sufficiently astute to understand that Susan was not a copy of himself, she was her own person, with her own motivations and her own desires, who knew for what? A life with Martin Dash?
At this his mood darkened again.
“Do you know where Martin is, Susan?”
Susan was taken aback by this directness and hesitated.
“Why?”
“What do you mean – why?” Jimmy felt an anger rise up in him and struggled to contain it. “Because I’m asking, that’s why !” The air between them changed suddenly and Susan was now on her mettle.
“Well, I’m bloody asking you why !” She felt the words come out, unbidden, and the same fire that burned Jimmy’s belly crackled in her too.
Jimmy had spent a lifetime beating up adversaries of all sizes, ranks and hues and his instincts always bade him to attack but this was his beloved daughter, not one of those he was obliged to crush, surely? He was confused and felt vulnerable – truly, for the first time in a long while. Susan pressed the advantage, sensing his weakness, herself feeling no compunction about attacking – after all, he had started it.
“What the hell is going on, Dad? Why are you so interested in where Martin is? So much so that you send your goons out to bring him in?” – a nod to the corridor outside. On the other side of the room’s door Danny and George, following every word of the exchange, grinned at each other.
Jimmy was momentarily flustered and he just sat, looking foolish, with his mouth open.
“Who has killed Barry, Dad?” – the, as yet unasked, question now hung in the air.
Jimmy was not helping himself; not having experienced such a level of vehemence from his daughter before, he was floundering and, as he started to mouth, helplessly, “I don’t know” – with an injured expression – he merely succeeded in appearing to be evasive.
He attempted an explanation: “Look, Darling – I do not know who killed Barry, believe me, but it’s probably not too wild a guess to think that it might have something to do with our friends out East. Those people do not want to be named in a court, believe me, and they’ll stop at nothing to prevent it.”
“Oh really? And how do you know this? Christ, Dad, listen to yourself – you’re a bloody MP, a Government Minister for goodness’ sake; you’re supposed to be upholding the law – you’re a servant of the people. You’ve told me that often enough yourself and now you sit here talking like a fucking gangster. What the hell has happened to you?”
“I’ve told you” hissed Jimmy through gritted teeth, now getting angrier himself – “I simply put some money into Barry’s company myself, thought it was a good investment. That’s all I’ve done. I had no idea all of that rabble were involved, I promise. What on earth do you take me for?”
Good question – Susan studied her father, dubiously.
“OK, so why do you want Martin?”
Jimmy tried to formulate his words: “Susan – you see what has happened to Barry . . . I . . . I don’t want the same to happen to Martin.”
Susan’s head rocked back as if from a blow and she glared, incredulously, at her father. This was undoubtedly a thought that had been lurking somewhere deep down in her but it was only now – when someone else voiced it out loud – that it really hit her, that Martin might suffer the same fate as poor Barry.
She felt like she could no longer keep hold of her mind, as though her thoughts kept slipping out of focus. She should have been able to lean on her father – her own father – so why did she get such a bad feeling, observing him, sat here in this gloomy room in the centre of the beast that was the all-powerful British State? Why did she feel so threatened?
As he looked at her now, he appeared not as her father but some alien reptile surveying its prey. Her breathing felt constricted but she managed to croak out – “You want to protect Martin?”
“Yes, of course, Darling – we can help him.”
“We?”
“We? Yes, we . . . I . . . you know what I mean. We – I – can shield him from this. You know I can.”
“Or silence him . . ?” Susan felt her pulse banging in her ears. It seemed like the walls of the room were sliding inwards. Her father’s face turned a funny colour – she couldn’t quite work out why. Was it true indignation or frustration?
“What the fucking hell do you mean by that?” he spat out, leaning forward now. How had it come to this between them, so suddenly? He looked ugly to her and she just wanted to get out of that room now. She stood up but Jimmy did the same. As she moved towards the door, he blocked her way.
“Get out of my way – I’m leaving,” she seethed.
Susan could see that Jimmy was now gritting his teeth and his lower jaw jutted forward. He grabbed hold of both her upper arms and she immediately let out a terrifying scream that rent the air like lightning. Jimmy was stunned, his eyes widened. He released his grip and staggered back, horrified.
The door burst open and Danny appeared, hardly daring to look at what he might behold. Susan took her chance and barged past him, now sobbing. As she did so, Danny looked to his boss for instruction. The Secretary of State for Transport slumped back into his chair, defeated. He shook his head, mumbled: “No – leave her,” and went for his glass.
As she walked fast back down the corridor, Susan tried hard to resist the urge to run. She just wanted to be away from that scene as quickly as possible but something told her that if she brought attention to herself the opposite result would be more likely.
Before she reached the stairs back down to the busier corridor below, she grabbed a tissue from her bag and wiped her eyes as she walked. Wet black eyeliner stained the white paper so she stopped at the top of the stairs to pull out her compact and do a quick repair job. Seeing her face in the mirror almost started off the crying again; she couldn’t understand what had just happened and now felt bereft and frightened. She wanted to call Martin but a sudden rush of paranoia prompted her to wait until she had got out of the range of that oppressive building.
Susan headed straight for the members’ entrance, keeping her head down, not meeting anyone’s gaze, walking purposefully but not hurriedly. As she brushed past a group in the lobby before the exit, she heard a voice say:
“Susan?” but didn’t recognise it and didn’t pause. Seconds later she was out into the fresh air of the city’s bustling evening.
31.
Susan stood by the cultivated green lawn of New Palace Yard and turned to look up behind her at the gilded clock face of Big Ben – 7:15. The sun was now low in the sky but it was still warm. Her only thought at this point was to, first, get away so she jogged across Margaret Street and towards the north side of Parliament Square where, she knew, she’d be able to flag down a taxi.
As she approached the blackened bronze statue of Winston Churchill glowering down at his fellows with barely concealed irritation, Susan’s eye was caught by a black clad figure standing directly before it, a figure similarly imposing and gruff as though the great man had finally stepped down from the plinth and was pondering his next move. His hands were clasped in front of him and he was staring directly at Susan.
She suddenly realised it was Michael Green’s driver, Derek, looking for all the world like a heavyweight Russian hitman, all in black, awaiting his quarry.
Susan instinctively looked behind her but saw nothing and, when she saw that he was smiling and waiting for her to approach him, she remembered his concern for her at Martin’s flat (just the night before ! God – how everything had changed since then . . .) and she relaxed and slowed to stand right in front of him.
“Derek, what’s . . ?”
He put his finger to his lips to shush her and laughed. “No. No questions just now, please. Martin’s asked me to fetch you and we need to get away from here – OK?” He scanned the pavements and Susan shuffled, suddenly nervous. Another courier come to spirit her away – this was getting silly. But all she said was: “Yes.”
Derek pulled a mobile from his coat pocket and clamped the device to his ear.
“Where are you now?”
On hearing the reply he turned to look left behind him – “Cool, just pull up there and we’ll be with you in a sec.” Derek shoved the phone back into his pocket and took Susan’s arm with a smile: “Come on, love – just over here.”
He led her quickly over the pedestrian crossings off the back of the square and they were then heading along Birdcage Walk. Susan recognised the silver Lexus from last night, now parked – illegally – ten metres in front of them, just as the driver’s door swung open and a squat, pasty-faced youth with a crew cut and spectacles jumped out to await them. He and Derek merely nodded to each other. The youth flashed just a quick glance at Susan, expressionless, and Derek held his hand out for the car keys. “I’ll take it from here, Bud – you’ll get back to base?”
“Yep.” Just a nod to Derek and Susan and he was gone, along the pavement and towards the railed entrance down to Westminster Tube station. Derek motioned for Susan to get into the back seat and he pulled the big sedan away from the kerb as quickly as he could.
As they crawled through the evening traffic, stop-starting at all the lights, Susan discerned that they were heading towards the East End and that Derek was continually checking the rear view mirror, his eyes darting across its range. This rendered her correspondingly jumpy and she found herself turning to look out of the rear window also. Derek saw this and laughed: “Don’t worry, Susan – everything’s OK. No-one’s following us.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah. Nothing to worry about.”
"Apart from people being murdered?"
Derek rolled his eyes. “Nah, no-one’s gonna get murdered."
“Just Barry then?”
Derek shrugged his shoulders, unfazed – “I don’t know anything about that. But you’re OK. Believe me.”
“And Martin?”
“Yeah, yeah – Martin’s OK. We’re all OK !” He laughed again and put his foot down on a stretch of road that had now become clearer.
“Where are we going, Derek?” asked Susan, finally.
“Ah . . . about 40 minutes,” he answered, obliquely.
“No – where?” Susan pressed.
“Ah . . . north,” Derek ventured, not much more helpfully.
“Jesus,” Susan rolled her eyes now and sat back in the seat. “Are you sure you don’t want to blindfold me, just to be on the safe side?”
The burly bodyguard burst into booming laughter and slapped the steering wheel; then, after a short pause: “Yeah, perhaps we’d better,” and started off chuckling again. Susan shook her head.
Derek glanced in the mirror once more.
They were now going through Stratford on the A12 heading towards the M11 out of London. How far north? she wondered.
Derek called back to Susan: “You all right, love? Hungry? I’ve got a sandwich you can have,” and held up a pre-packed, hopefully.
“No, I’m fine thanks,” Susan declined, politely. “How did you know where to pick me up?”
“To be honest, we came for you at the flat. But when we arrived, you were just letting those two fellas in. So we waited.”
“What – and you followed us?”
Derek looked a little abashed but answered “Yeah” as if to say “So?”
“When we saw you going into the big house, we thought we’d better not try and follow you in there,” a wry grin flashed at her as he enjoyed his little joke. “So Robbie – you just met Robbie – he drove around while I waited to spot you coming out.”
“But you didn’t know if I would come out. Or when.”
“True. I would have phoned you eventually but I preferred not to.” Susan wondered why. “Anyway, you weren’t in there long, were you?”
Derek watched Susan’s face for a reaction. She simply gazed out of the side window, abstractedly – “No.”
“Everything OK?”
“No.”
“OK,” and he drove on.
32.
They were soon on the M11 and Derek manoeuvred the sleek machine onto the outside lane so they could gobble up the miles effortlessly. Susan tried to stay her troubled thoughts as the indigo sky, buff fields, green trees, grey tarmac and dirty white barriers flashed by.
She began to question what she was doing. She had just made some sort of break with her father (who she had always loved, nay, adored) in favour of – what? An angelic freak guarded by what appeared to be an underworld gang – Derek seemed nice but she had no doubt that he’d be capable of being very un-nice if the circumstances required it. Or his boss ordered it.
But, then again, what was her father? She did love him but that scene in the upper room had unnerved her and the more she thought about it, the more recollections came to her of incidents in the past – face-offs with colleagues in their home, heated phone calls in the middle of the night, sudden departures and prolonged absences – that seemed now to take on a more sinister turn. Was her father, in reality, just another gangster, albeit licensed?
She suddenly wished she could talk to her mother and thought momentarily of phoning her. But she couldn’t have that conversation with Derek listening, so that would have to wait. Then she began to wonder what sort of life Rosa had really spent with Jimmy? What sort of compromises had been demanded and given up?
Ultimately, it all came back to Martin. All the rest of it had been imposed upon her – the gilded childhood in the big house; the private schools moulding the elites of the future; the flat bought by her parents – none of that was her own but Martin was something she had marked out for herself. He had come from such an alien landscape, like nothing she had known before, and yet she had connected right from the off; she had recognised his true worth, beyond the mere novelty of such an exotic creature; and she had been there when he emerged, chrysalis-like, from that deep sleep.
Somehow she knew that Martin represented the future for her. She could feel it inside her.
Susan started to take notice of the road signs again. They were now travelling along the M25, eastbound, and when the sign for Junction 28 came into view, Derek indicated to come off. Susan nearly asked where they were going again but decided to save her breath and watch f
or herself instead.
Through the maze of roads around the interchange, they came out on the A1023 to Brentwood, then quickly turned off left onto what looked like 'Wigley Bush Lane'. Susan couldn’t help but childishly smirk at the name. They went through South Weald and past Weald Country Park but from then on it was just a blur of country roads that all looked the same – tarmacked, yes, but nondescript and anonymous with reed-filled ditches on either side at the foot of dense hawthorn hedges screening field after field.
However, after just five minutes, Derek swung the car right onto an unmade lane and Susan realised that she now had no idea at all where they were. The lane was covered merely with rough stone that crunched under the car’s tyres like popping bubble wrap. Susan glanced at the dashboard clock – 8:00 p.m. Before them the reddening disc of the sun was now sliding down the back of the horizon settee and the dark ran along behind them. Derek had the headlights on and their mesmerising rays gliding over the pulsing stones brought to mind many a film scene with a crawling vehicle and a bad end for the passengers.
“Derek?” Susan heard how plaintive her little voice sounded but she was, finally, beginning to lose her nerve and she had to ask. A wave of fear had crashed over her and she felt like crying.
Derek’s eyes fixed her in the mirror and he furrowed his brow. “It’s all right, darling – we’re here now. We’ve just come to see Martin. Don’t worry.” There was real pity in his voice and for some reason this opened the floodgates. Susan’s body shook, her throat gagged and her nose was instantly running. As the car pulled to a stop, she had her face in her hands, sobbing like a child. She knew she was going to die. She didn’t look up but simply keened through the cradle of her fingers – “I’m sorry,” hardly able to get the words out.
Derek jumped out of the car and spun round to open the right rear door. She flinched.
“Oh no, no – darlin’ . . . it’s all right. Nothing’s going to happen to you.” Derek suddenly felt ashamed of his part in bringing her to this and was desperate to redeem himself.
