Call to Witness

by Coleman, Spencer;

  ‘Christ, you sound like my ex-wife.’

  ‘Someone has to say it. I can see it in your face. Is Gemma –or whatever her name is – that useless that you have turned to drink?’

  ‘Under 60 seconds.’

  ‘What..?’

  ‘I had a bet with Ronald that you would mention her name in under five minutes. He was rather more kind to you, he reckoned within half an hour, tops. Gemma, by the way, is delightful.’ He grimaced, waiting for the inevitable low shots coming his way.

  ‘Delightful?’ Kara shrieked. ‘Is that in reference to her pert bottom? Which, incidentally, I no longer have owing to my enforced weight gain… or is she delightful to work with because she is less demanding than me?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Bearing in mind you had the best secretary in the world working for you just a few months ago – and my arse wasn’t bad either – reply with caution. One of the side effects of pregnancy is a short temper and a pathetic tendency to wail uncontrollably at the slightest provocation. Don’t push your luck with a clever response.’

  ‘You were – are, as always – irreplaceable.’

  ‘Correct answer. I’m starving.’

  Michael beckoned the waiter. They ordered a shared plate of antipasta, followed by seafood Linguini for two. They ate in comfortable silence, as old friends do. Pipe and slippers: a perfect match. Anything else didn’t really matter to them. They sat at a window overlooking the array of gin palaces that bobbed gently in their moorings. The reflection of the water in the dock dazzled from the sunshine. It made them feel special.

  Michael finished his food and stared at Kara. In spite of what he had heard, she looked pretty good if a little tired. Her tongue was still waspish though when something had to be said. They talked endlessly now, with much laughter, which seemed to lift their spirits beyond what each of them had expected after their time apart. Good food, good company. Like old times. Eventually, they fell into a secure calm once more, where words were not always necessary.

  Michael ordered coffee, Kara choosing Earl Grey tea to finish.

  ‘Can we do this again?’ Kara asked.

  ‘You bet.’ He smiled and took her hand. ‘Kara, do you want to talk about the…past. Or is it too painful?’

  ‘I thought you would never ask…’

  Then in a rush, she poured her heart out.

  ***

  Arm in arm, they sauntered across Tower Bridge and caught sight of the angled sunlight bouncing off the towering office columns of Canary Wharf in the distance. Oddly, the tall buildings resembled a line of silver bullets protruding from the white and emerald green sheen of the Thames. A sudden breeze whipped up and cooled their faces. Beyond the Victorian iron bridge, they descended the stone steps on the south embankment which led to the narrow passageways that made up Butler’s Wharf, a labyrinth of warehouses now converted into chic apartments. They idled through the row of coffee houses, estate agents and numerous posh restaurants. They kept their distance from Marcus’s gallery. Click. Kara turned, staring at the passers-by. Then walked on. Within the narrows, the sun did not penetrate here. Instead, Kara shivered and was thankful to Michael, who removed his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. Click.

  Eventually, they stepped onto the wide promenade beside the river, busy with tourists and businessmen, and felt the cold of the shadows give way to the warmth of the sun once more. The high tide was hectic too with pleasure boats and industrial barges jostling for space on the foaming waters. Michael marvelled at it all. He never tired of his London. A metropolis of forsaken dreams and killer ambitions of those who lived here: Hard cases, rich entrepreneurs, poor folk, the forgotten. No one wore their heart on their sleeve for fear of looking weak. In his opinion, you had to dig deep beyond the brittle façade of human behaviour to find this beating heart, a heart of a nation, but it was there hidden away.

  As far as he was concerned, you could take any city, any city on the planet, and anyone who lived this daily existence always wore a coat of armour, a steely mask of independence. Keep away, I am invincible, each would say. It was mainly just for show, this mask, as a deflection against expressing emotion or vulnerability in a hardened environment…and the evidence of this stood beside him. Michael stared at Kara, and wanted to remove her mask. She had been to hell and back, and was still in denial.

  ‘I’m sorry that this has been so difficult for you,’ he said. ‘I offer no defence on my part. I have overlooked the suffering of others, and you in particular. I’ve selfishly concentrated on my own frailties, which to be frank have been too numerous to look beyond. What you have just told me in the restaurant brings everything into sharp focus.’

  He touched her cheek. Click.

  ‘I hate the fact that I’ve kept my distance, Kara. I should have been there for you…and Marcus.’

  ‘And we should have been there for you too.’ Kara took his hand in hers and squeezed. Click. ‘From now on, we do just that. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  They crossed the narrow bridge at St Saviour, and walked along Bermondsey Wall West before finally turning back on themselves, once again retracing their footprints over Tower Bridge. Beyond, the Tower of London loomed into view in the gathering mist. The ravens circled.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Kara asked.

  ‘Not really…’

  ‘I keep getting weird phone calls. They scare me. Do you believe in bad dreams coming true?’

  ‘I hope not. I have enough of them.’

  They laughed awkwardly and took the steps down onto the promenade.

  ‘I have a recurring dream,’ Kara continued. ‘I’m being pursued by a woman in a Venetian mask, her identity concealed from me. She has a knife, and in this dream this woman attacks me, slashing at my throat with the blade. I sense that I know her, and, as I claw at her mask, I awake with a scream…never knowing her identity. I have a premonition, Michael, that this woman really exists and that our paths are destined to cross – just as the dream foretells.’

  Michael could see that she was shaking, her skin sweating. Finally, he dared to say the name.

  ‘Is it…Maggie in the dream? He asked.

  Her eyes closed and then she took a deep breath. ‘It has to be, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ll try to do everything I can to protect you.’

  Their eyes met and locked. Just then, Kara became distracted and pointed at the crowd standing on the bridge high above them ‘Who’s that woman taking our picture?’

  Michael turned and looked upward, squinting in the light.

  ‘Where...?’

  ‘There…on the left. She’s moving away! Can’t you see her, Michael?’

  He tried to follow the direction of her moving finger. He was losing patience quickly. ‘There are hundreds of people up there, Kara. Loads of them are taking photos.’

  ‘No! She was focusing on us, I’m sure. She disappeared when I started pointing at her…’

  ‘It’s just a tourist.’

  ‘No. I’m sure it was…her. Christ, Michael! I’m sure it was…’

  He took her arm. ‘Let’s not get paranoid.’

  ‘Easy for you to say.’

  ‘Forget it, Kara. It’s just your imagination playing tricks, that’s all.’

  The mood changed as heavy clouds moved in.

  ‘Oh, fuck you, Michael.’ She pulled away in disgust and then faced him again in an instant, anger in her eyes. ‘Don’t bullshit me. It’s Maggie. That was her on the bridge.’

  Michael didn’t doubt her for one minute. He tried to defuse the tension and hurriedly changed the subject. ‘Does Marcus know about the dream?’

  ‘What..?’ she hated his clever tactics. ‘Yes, of course he bloody knows.’

  Michael held her arm and marched her away. Of course Maggie was out there. He could feel the imprint of her prying eyes on the back of his head. It was red-hot. She was getting brazen in her approach.

  Out of sight, Michael got to the point. ‘Bad news: You’re ri
ght about Maggie. Marcus needs to know. We’d better call an emergency meeting between the three of us, and plan for eventual warfare. I reckon that she is here in London and right under our noses. She’s baiting us.’

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘Revenge. She blames us for Lauren’s death. She wants our blood. An eye for an eye. I have the evidence to back up my theory.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  ‘The smashed window, for starters,’ he murmured.

  ‘What smashed window?’

  ‘The gallery was vandalised. It’s no coincidence that the attacker only picked out our premises on the entire street. It was a wilful act, her first warning shot. The flint was a sign too.’

  ‘Flint…?’

  ‘The missile.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Kara laughed nervously. ‘This is getting too close to home.’

  Michael wasn’t finished. ‘The second indication is the numerous phone calls you mentioned.’

  ‘I’m not dreaming them up.’

  ‘I know. The list is getting longer…now we have the happy snapper on our trail.’

  Kara swayed against him and momentarily caught her breath. ‘I thought for one moment you weren’t taking any of this seriously.’

  Michael refrained at this stage from telling her about the dud calls he was getting too. Enough for one day, he reckoned. ‘I’m just trying to keep everyone calm, until we can be absolutely sure that she’s back on the scene. Then I can deal with the situation. Marcus would think I’m stirring things up.’

  ‘Tell me about it! He thinks I’m off my rocker…’

  ‘There’s another thing, too,’ Michael said. ‘I’ve spoken with Terry Miles, remember him? He’s a journalist. The tabloids are writing a feature on me, an investigative story uncovering the events of Laburnum Farm. Apparently I’m going to be seriously big news soon…Again! Terry, by the way, is the commissioned writer.’

  ‘I thought all of this had died down?’

  ‘No such luck. The police want to interview me again. Did you not see the write-up in the paper?’’

  ‘I try to avoid such crap. Why do the police want to talk to you again?’

  ‘Because of the suspicious nature of Lauren’s death: They don’t think it was accidental, as they first believed. And in view of the continued press coverage highlighting the case and Lauren’s protected status under the laws of the land they are beginning to smell a rat. No smoke without fire, if you forgive the pun. And why wouldn’t they be suspicious? According to our testimonies, there was no crime committed, and yet the circumstances of why we were all there that day, under the same roof so to speak, doesn’t add up to many people. And remember Lauren and I were ill-fated lovers…the public crave for that kind of story. None of us can truthfully explain our actions that day without giving away the game…and our guilt.’

  ‘And what game is that?’

  ‘Get real, Kara. Fraud, for starters.’

  ‘How the hell did you get us into this mess in the first place?’

  ‘You know only too well,’ Michael snapped. ‘I was at a very low point…I needed money fast, Adele was about to skin me alive in the divorce courts and I saw a way out…I was greedy and foolhardy and fell in with Lauren’s crazy plan to make a fast buck…or a million quid to be exact.’

  ‘You were bonkers, more like…’

  Michael’s voice softened. ‘I should never have involved you. I pushed you into cooperating in the secret disposal of paintings by Patrick Porter, and it was foolhardy to the extreme. But I was desperate and I reckoned on dealing mostly in cash, thus avoiding tax and VAT payments. I thought I could get away with it and keep the money out of the clutches of my wife.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame you on that score, the scheming bitch.’

  ‘It got more complicated, as you know. On top of that little scam we were also associating with a woman who I later discovered was a former convicted criminal…banged up for murdering her father. She had history. If I had known that I would never have got involved. I was out of my depth but in too far…it was a kind of madness.’

  ‘I was frightened, Michael, but I got caught up into it as well…so don’t blame yourself entirely. Who were we to know that Lauren was also, over many years, painting on the sly under the assumed name of her dead brother, Patrick? But that’s in the past. Outside of the three of us, no one is any of the wiser, including the cops. Most of the incriminating evidence which would have exposed her lie and your scam was destroyed conveniently in the fire at the barn, namely in the destruction of her studio and what was contained in it. So we got away with it.’

  Michael raised his eyebrows. ‘Shall I go on? All is not forgotten. We also have the slight problem of a dead woman who cannot be officially identified as Lauren O’Neill at this stage, even by using DNA methods because the police need to match these findings with that of her sister to prove conclusively who the real victim is.’

  Kara said in bewilderment: ‘But you were adamant it was Lauren…’

  ‘At the time, yes.’

  ‘Have you changed your mind?’

  ‘No! But there has to be an element of doubt until the proof is conclusive, and that means apprehending the wayward sister. She, as you well know, is on the run and therefore cannot be identified either. The police need to find her, bearing in mind that the body in the barn was burnt beyond recognition, so visual identification is impossible from their findings. What a fucking mess. So whoever is on the run needs to be caught, and bloody quickly. Then we’ll know who really died in the fire.’ He took breath. ‘The police believe the remains are those of Lauren. The coroner too. I testified to this fact. However, I repeat: until we have absolute proof then it is all conjecture. But I remain convinced it is Maggie stalking us and in that case who knows what will come out of her vile mouth?’

  Kara was aghast. ‘She can implicate us again, is that what you are saying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You swore an oath that it was Lauren who died. Why are you suddenly doubting yourself?’

  ‘It was impossible to be absolutely sure. I could just make her out in the dense smoke and flames, fighting with her sister. It was hell in there and I was confused and fading fast…my memory plays tricks on me, even to this day. I try to remember things and then everything goes blank.’

  ‘We were all victims that day, not just you.’

  ‘I know, I know…’

  ‘But Marcus saved you.’

  Michael dropped his shoulders and sighed, his vacant eyes betraying his inner struggle with everyday survival. ‘Did he?’ he muttered in feeble resignation.

  ‘He endangered his own life to do so.’ Kara saw the defeat etched on his face, felt compassion and then suddenly lost it. ‘Don’t be so fucking ungrateful. He could have died trying to save your skin. How dare you –’

  Michael grabbed her fist as she threw it in the direction of his chest in sheer frustration and anger. Her eyes blazed.

  He had to cool it, and quickly. ‘I’m sorry, Kara. I’m not thinking straight…’

  She unclenched her hand and pulled away, folding her arms instead. An awkward silence fell between them as they circled each other like two wounded animals, neither giving ground.

  ‘Marcus saved me, I know,’ Michael said quietly, trying to mend the sudden distance between them. ‘Maggie escaped…someone escaped… now we live with the terrible consequences. That was what I was trying to explain…’

  ‘She was a coward. She ran…’

  ‘She ran for sure. She was only interested in saving herself. Now she has to be caught. Or silenced.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Until then, none of us can resume our lives for fear of reprisals. And not just us either. There is Julius and Antonia to think of as well.’

  ‘Christ, Michael, you can’t be responsible for everyone! There was no love lost between Julius and Lauren, his crackpot wife…’

  ‘Remember, he is a party to this deception. He knew t
he real identity of Patrick Porter. He knew Lauren was attempting to swindle him by selling the paintings through me, without informing him. Well, lucky in love or not, he’ll eventually inherit the farm and the remaining paintings and be set up for life. The estate is worth a fortune. It’s in his interests that Maggie is found and then he can prove the demise of his wife. Until then…he is in limbo, so how do you think he copes in all this? He can’t even lay claim to what’s rightfully his. Either his estranged wife is laid to rest…or seven years needs to elapse before the estate is lawfully transferred over.’ He caught his breath again with a sharp intake, his brain spinning with all the confusion. ‘Is that enough of this so-called game for you to be getting on with?’

  Kara took the point. She turned and reached for his hand. ‘What do we do?’ she pleaded meekly.

  ‘Clawing at each others’ throats is akin to playing right into Maggie’s hands. We need to be strong. Keep our heads down, our mouths shut and our eyes open. At the moment we are in the clear, until the story breaks or the police uncover the truth. Lauren died by misadventure, in the words of the coroner, and that suits us just fine. But this will start to get messy from now on. No stone unturned etc. You and Marcus need to leave London for a few weeks while I get Terry to bury a few ghosts, if that’s possible.’

  ‘Will we be questioned by the police again?’

  ‘Unavoidable, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We won’t run, Michael.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest that option. Just keep a low profile. That will leave the heat firmly on me. I have broad shoulders.’

  ‘I don’t like it. First Maggie, then this garbage…’

  They walked slowly toward The Minories just off Tower Hill. Then Michael faced her again with more harsh words. ‘Hard unpalatable facts: The police want to open the files again, and the press are sniffing around for more lurid details. Both are like a dog with a bone. This story was inevitable and someone wants to bury me once and for all,’ Michael said. ‘I have enemies in high places. I’m just surprised it’s taken them so long to start digging the grave.’ He tried to lighten the mood. ‘If they do the movie, I rather think Daniel Craig would do me proud.’