Straight Back

by Menon, David

  STRAIGHT BACK

  A NOVEL

  BY DAVID MENON

  Copyright 2015 Silver Springs Press

  This version April 2015.

  All rights reserved by the author

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of any character to any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  I’m once again grateful to Paul Barker for his skill and advice in putting this revised edition together.

  David was born in Derby, England in 1961 and has lived all over the UK but now he lives in Paris, France. In 2009 he gave up a long career in the airline industry to concentrate on his writing ambitions. He’s now published several books including the series of crime novels featuring Detective Superintendent Jeff Barton that are set in Manchester, UK and the series of Stephanie Marshall mysteries set in Sydney, Australia. He’s also created the DCI Sara Hoyland series beginning with Fall from Grace. Apart from being a full-time writer he goes off two or three times a year to teach English to Russian students for a school in St. Petersburg. His other interests include travelling, politics, international current affairs, all the arts of literature, film, TV, theatre and music and he’s a devoted fan of American singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks who he calls the voice of his interior world. He loves Indian food, a gin and tonic that’s heavy on the g and light on the t, plus a glass or three of red wine. It doesn’t make him a bad person.

  www.davidmenon.com

  www.facebook.com/davidmenoncrimefictionauthor

  www.amazon.co.uk

  Also by David Menon

  Detective Superintendent Jeff Barton series.

  - Sorcerer.

  - Fireflies

  - Storms.

  - No Questions Asked.

  - Straight Back

  - Thrown Down – coming 2015.

  The Stephanie Marshall mysteries.

  - What Happened to Liam?

  - Could Max Burley Be a Killer?

  DCI Sara Hoyland crime mystery series

  - Fall from Grace

  - Beautiful Child.

  - Best Friend, Worst Enemy.

  Peak District Mystery featuring Danny Holdsworth

  - The Murder in His Past.

  - The Murder of a Good Man – coming 2015.

  Other Titles

  - The Wild Heart.

  Short story collections

  - Kind of Woman.

  - Losing Grip.

  This is for Gill … and for Karl and Sandra.

  ONE

  The Shadow Home Secretary, Martha Langton, was in the Victoria, London, flat she shared during the week with her husband, fellow politician and Labour Party front bencher, Nick Langton. They were having a flaming row. It was all to do with the document that had been passed anonymously under her office door at Portcullis House, where many MPs have their Westminster offices and which was joined to the House of Commons by a tunnel underneath the road that divided them.

  “Look, you’ve dealt with it, Martha,” Nick pleaded. He was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. He was still in his suit trousers but he’d taken his tie off and undone the top couple of his shirt buttons. He’d also rolled up his sleeves. He’d cooked dinner because he was the better cook and he was now seeing to the pots. He had a tea towel slung over his shoulder and with his dark hair he didn’t look unlike one of those Italian restaurant owners who does all his own cooking.

  “Not all of it, I haven’t,” said Martha, looking up from the Evening Standard that she was reading at the table.

  “Martha, there’s a whole paedophile ring been discovered because of what you passed on to the police,” said Nick, with his hands on his hips. “I don’t need to tell you that the scandal has been seismic and it’s already made you a hero,”

  “Yes, I know, and I’m not interested in being a hero, Nick,” she countered. “I just did what any responsible citizen, let alone politician, would do, to bring individuals to justice for heinous crimes that they’ve got away with for too long because they’re well connected with the Establishment. Christ, one of the reasons I’m in the Labour Party is to bring an end to the Establishment being able to cover its own bloody arse.”

  At least twelve arrests had been made of prominent members of the entertainment industry, the legal profession, police officers and politicians who’d been involved in a paedophile ring in London during the seventies and eighties. The arrests had all been made because of information contained in the anonymous document that had been passed to Martha. It had left the governing coalition with a lot of egg on its face and the Conservative Home Secretary, Angela Carter, had given Martha the kind of praise at the Commons Dispatch Box that must’ve made her run for the sick bucket as soon as she was out of the House. Angela hadn’t asked Martha during their private briefings why she thought the document had been passed to her rather than Angela herself, but Martha was sure she’d be itching to know. So would Martha for that matter, and the only conclusion she could draw so far was that Martha, being a Labour politician who hadn’t gone to public school and whose family wasn’t part of the acknowledged Establishment, had been sufficiently detached from all the people accused in the document of wrongdoing that she wouldn’t be sufficiently compromised by any relationships with any of them. On the other hand, Angela Carter, it turned out later in the more detailed press coverage, had family connections with several of the names contained therein.

  “I still can’t quite get over the extent of it,” said Nick. “Although I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. There have been such strong rumours for years.”

  “Which we sat on when we were last in office, Nick. We’re no better than anybody else here.”

  “But this is where it stops, Martha.”

  “Nick, the paedophile ring isn’t the only crime that document reveals.”

  “I’m aware of that, Martha but as I said before, that’s where it stops.”

  “Nick, you cannot be serious,”

  “Martha, we’ve been through all this,”

  “I know.”

  “And I thought we’d sorted it.”

  “No,” said Martha, as she folded the paper up. “You decided that I wasn’t going to do anything with the other information. I had no part in that decision.”

  “Oh,, here we go again!”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning this is going to be one of those times when you accuse me of reverting to being the alpha male domineering his little woman.”

  “And I’d be right.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Nick insisted. “Martha, we’ve always taken all our decisions together. And we’ve always given each other the veto. We both have to agree or it doesn’t happen.”

  “This is too big and too serious, Nick,”

  Nick stood for a moment and breathed in deeply. His wife was right, that this was too big and too serious and it was for that very reason that he believed they should stay silent. The consequences if Martha revealed what they knew from the rest of the document could not be measured hypothetically. But they were enough to make Nick think they should leave well alone.

  “The reaction to the discovery of the paedophile ring will seem like nothing compared to what would happen if the rest of it breaks,” said Nick. “And I’m thinking of the safety of our family.”

  “And you’re saying I’m not?”

  “I’m saying that you can kiss goodbye to becoming Party Leader after the election if you go public with this.”

  “That’s if we lose the election,” Martha corrected. She knew that Nick and the current Party Leader were at absolute loggerheads on almost everything and there were rumours that the Leader was preparing to drop Nick from the Labour front bench and not see him journey from Shadow Cabinet to govern
ing Cabinet if Labour wins. Martha’s knives for the Leader weren’t quite as sharp as Nick’s although she wasn’t exactly the Leader’s biggest supporter within the Shadow Cabinet. This was where her emotions often conflicted but it was inevitable when both you and your husband were senior politicians. “But if I don’t do something with this information, if I just sit on it and let the guilty go unpunished, then I can kiss goodbye to my conscience.”

  “Yes, well, I’m not sure if having one is a positive thing if you want to be Party Leader.”

  “Stop twisting it, Nick.”

  “I’m not, darling, I’m just … Martha, you know the consequences if you reveal the rest of what’s in that document. I’m asking you to think about the family, Martha. I’m asking you to put them first.”

  “Are you saying I don’t do that as a matter of course anyway?”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “So what did you mean then?”

  “I mean that as much as I know you and as much as I love you, I also know that you’ll end up doing what you think is best. And I have no say in that.”

  TWO

  Sheridan Taylor hated her life. It hadn’t always been the case. She used to love it. She used to think she must be one of the luckiest girls in the world. She used to have a horse. That was now gone. She used to have friends from families which were equally as well off as her family was. Now she’d be too embarrassed to pass them in the street. She used to have a mum, a dad, a sister, and a big Alsatian dog called Brutus. She adored Brutus. He was the family dog but he was her dog. She could always get him to do whatever she wanted. None of the others were able to do that. When they’d had to leave their house, they’d given him away to the police because the housing association which owned the property they were moving to didn’t allow pets. He was out there somewhere, catching criminals now. It had broken her heart the day they took him away. She’d cried for days afterwards. She’d never forgetten the look on his face as he stared helplessly out of the back window of the van they drove him away in. He was barking like mad. He didn’t want to leave her. She didn’t want him to leave.

  She walked through from the kitchen and, in the living room, her gran was minding the new baby for Sheridan’s mum.

  “He’s a beautiful little thing,” said Joan, who couldn’t take her eyes off her new grandchild Tariq.

  “No, he isn’t, Gran,” said Sheridan, who wasn’t going to let herself get swept up by all the emotion over a stupid brown baby. “All babies are ugly.”

  “Look at that mass of black hair and those dark eyes,” Joan gushed, ignoring Sheridan’s bad-tempered dismissals.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what you get when you’ve got a darkie for a father,” snarled Sheridan.

  “Sheridan, that’s enough,” Joan warned. She was running out of patience with the way her eldest granddaughter had been behaving lately. “You’re being rude and offensive.”

  “Well, don’t ask me to care because I couldn’t care less.”

  “Don’t you speak to me like that, young lady.”

  “Well, I’m not in the mood for a lecture either, Gran, so save your breath.”

  Joan stood up and raised her finger to Sheridan. “Your mother has been too soft on you, Sheridan, for far too long. I know you’ve been through a hard time but so has everyone else in the family and you’re no different.”

  “Gran, you’ve gone as soft as everyone else around here. Am I the only one who can see that Arif doesn’t belong in this family, in this house or even in this country?”

  “And why do you think that, Sheridan?”

  “Because he isn’t white and English like us and he’s given me a half-breed brown brother that I absolutely refuse to love.”

  “He’s also a good man who mended you mother’s broken heart.”

  “Oh, here we go again,” said Sheridan. “You’re going to start bad mouthing my dad.”

  Joan saw red and had to stop herself from smacking Sheridan’s face. “Well, yes, it might help to go over some of the things your precious dad did to destroy this family. He took your mum out to one of the swankiest restaurants in Manchester only to tell her that he’d lost all their money and, once the meal was paid for, that was it. He left you all the very next morning to go and run a health spa in the south of Spain with the woman he’d been having an affair with behind your mother’s back. Do you ever hear from him? No. Does he ever ring you or email you? No. And that’s all because he, basically, doesn’t give a damn about you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Were you listening just then? You’re deluding yourself, Sheridan. Your dad was a total failure as both a husband and a parent.”

  “You’re a liar!”

  Joan recoiled in shock at the ferociousness of Sheridan’s verbal attack. “I’ve already asked you to watch what you say to me, Sheridan.”

  “My dad wouldn’t have just abandoned me and our Paige like you’re all making out he did! You just want to make him out to be a really bad person and you’re all liars.”

  It broke Joan’s heart to see her granddaughter cry. Sheridan had been a real daddy’s girl. She’d idolised her father, Joan’s ex-son-in-law, Brian, and could never believe anything bad about him, despite the obvious truths. She wished he could see the damage and the heartbreak he’d left behind.

  “Sheridan, if your dad is seen as a bad person then he’s done it all by himself.”

  “And why are you happy for your daughter to be with a dirty Arab?”

  “Sheridan, where did you get your prejudice from? Neither your mum, nor your dad for that matter, brought you up that way. Arif is taking good care of your mum and he wants to take care of you too, if you’d let him.”

  “I don’t want to even look at him.”

  “A bit difficult that when you’re living in the same house.”

  “I wish he’d just go away and leave us alone.”

  “If you only knew what Arif had to run from in Iraq ….”

  “Well, tough! Okay? He can run right back there for all I care. There’s too many like him in our country and we need to send them all back.”

  Joan kept having to remind herself that her granddaughter was only fifteen years old. She spoke like she had all the emotional baggage and resentments of someone much older. She was so unlike her sister, Paige, who was only two years younger but had an older and more mature head on her shoulders. When their father, Brian, had declared himself bankrupt and gone off to Spain leaving the family with no money, Joan’s daughter, Ellie, had been forced to uproot her two daughters from their home and from their lives and move them into temporary accommodation provided by a housing trust in the Ancoats area of Manchester. It had been two years since then and they were still there. The neighbourhood wasn’t brilliant and it wasn’t what they were used to but there were some good people around and Ellie had managed to make some good friends and so had Sheridan’s sister, Paige. Sheridan, however, had remained obstinately opposed to doing anything positive to at least try and settle down.

  “Mum drove Dad away,” said Sheridan between sobs.

  Joan was beside herself with frustration. “That’s not true, Sheridan.”

  “It is true.”

  “But it isn’t true, Sheridan. One day, you’ll have to accept that he deliberately hid money away that belonged to his family, meaning you, and used it to start his new life in Spain.”

  “You mean I’ve got to listen to lies from you and Mum. Well, I won’t do that, Gran. I will not do it!”

  “Sheridan, I really don’t know what to say to you any more.”

  “You don’t have to say anything because I will never accept a darkie as my stepfather and I’ll never accept that half-caste bastard as my brother!”

  Joan couldn’t stop herself this time and slapped her one. “Now, I’m sorry, but you deserved that, Sheridan. Tariq is your flesh and blood! He’ll be looking to you, his big sister, to help take care of him and there’s so much fo
r you to be proud of, if you’ll only open your heart and let both Arif and Tariq in. I’m scared, Sheridan, because I just don’t know you anymore. What happened to the little girl who used to come and stay the weekend with me and bring her colouring books and I’d plait her hair? That little girl would never have been so horrible to a defenceless little baby, especially when he was her little brother. If your granddad could see the way you’re acting now, it would break his heart.”

  “Finished?”

  “What?”

  “Because I’ve had enough and I’m going out,” said Sheridan, as she made for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “As far away from this joke of a family as I can get.”

  “Sheridan, stay and let’s talk,” Joan pleaded. “Sheridan!”

  “I don’t want to, therefore I won’t.”

  Sheridan left her grandmother reeling and stormed out of the house. It had all been so easy at the old house with the old life that had been so cruelly ripped away from her. All anybody goes on about now is how happy her mum is with her brown boyfriend, Arif, and how happy they all were for her. But were they mad? Didn’t any of them see what Sheridan saw? The stupid, foreign bastard came out with words in English that Sheridan had never even heard before. What was his problem? Why did he have to talk like English was a language that Sheridan didn’t understand? She’d always been dead set against her mum going to work at that refugee centre. She’d told her she’d be mixing with all the dregs from the rest of the world who’d thrown themselves at Britain because we were such a bloody soft touch but she wouldn’t listen. She’d said she’d wanted to help people. She should have started with her own family.

  There was a large expanse of waste ground behind where she lived and Sheridan loved to wander across it, to be alone with her thoughts and right away from everybody. She felt safer with all that open space around her than she did in the tightly-knit streets around where she now had to live. She knew that some of the other kids in the neighbourhood hated her but she couldn’t care less. They could all go to hell. They were all losers who’d do nothing with their lives except have babies with dead-loss, idiotic men. Well, they were welcome to it. Sheridan was determined never to have kids and, as soon as she could save up enough money, she was going to Spain to be with her dad whether her mum liked it or not.