Blood From Stone

by Frances Fyfield

She remembered Angel taking out the eyes. She went back upstairs and turned the music on, loud.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Later than midnight and the music had stopped.

  Wake up, old man, wake up. Talk to me.

  He had been pirouetting round the polished floor and then he had fallen. Marianne had liked salsa; the Lover did not care for it himself, and could not remember why he was trying to remember the few steps she had taught him, pleased with himself that he did. Oh, so clever. He had staggered, recovered enough to career across the room until he hit the bed and sprawled on it, still dizzy. Mildly shocked, with his heart not even pounding until he opened his eyes, minutes or seconds later, and saw that man leaning over him in double vision. An awful coat, pushed up to the elbows, as if he had something to do which should not be done while wearing an overcoat, like dancing.

  Where’s her stuff, old man? Where is it? What do you know?

  A voice in the background saying, come away. What are we doing here anyway?

  It’s your sister’s shag. Where’s her stuff, you old bastard?

  A face, too close to his own, spittle on his skin, angry, shouting in a low octave no one would hear, as if anyone would hear. The distant music, and his own voice, his Loverly, mellifluous voice saying, go away, you silly little man, in his best accents, using his hand to push that other body, his fist encountering solid muscle.

  Confused now, beginning to be afraid but not enough to mask his contempt for anyone who came into this place without an invitation, the Lover sat up wearily, then turned his head to the other person in the room, the one he sensed, rather than saw, and said, ‘Who is this clown?’

  ‘Don’t,’ the figure said, knowing something he did not. ‘Don’t provoke him.’

  There was a disgusting smell of stale beer.

  ‘Where’s her stuff, old man? That bloke came from Noble to find it, didn’t he? I followed him, and now he’s gone home, and you’re on your own.’

  Desperately awful, dear, but easy on the eye. Dress sense? Unbelievable.

  Her stuff, where’s her stuff? Where’s her paperwork? Where’s the stuff she was going to put in a book? If you haven’t got it, where is it?

  Spitting the words; gobs of spit landing on the Lover’s face.

  Stop shouting at me.

  Look, I’m Marianne’s dearest. She loved me, old man, she loved me. I want my legacy, and he wants his money, all of it, not some of it, do you hear me?

  Marianne loved you? How ridiculous.

  He found the thought of Marianne touching this creature amusing. She would despise you. She did, didn’t she? She would despise you both.

  He thought it, he might have said it, whatever he said, his voice sounded high and shrill to his own ears and he felt as if he had fallen not on to his own soft couch, but down into a pit from which he would never arise. A huge hand slapped him into silence, cutting off contemptuous laughter.

  Tears sprang into his eyes and he roared, You stupid little prick.

  He, they, left him then. He could hear them, banging around the room, pulling open drawers. He heard a glass smash, then another, the noise of the fruitless search of someone who did not know what they were searching for, sensing the one pulling the other back, somehow smelled the presence of rage and caution and the rattle of breathing which might have been his own. He sat on the side of the bed where they had lain, countless times, let the spittle remain on his face, refusing to wipe it away in the same manner he and she had let the sweat dry in its own time. Oh, he had been proud of her, once, why had he never said it? The same face loomed over him. Write it down, the voice commanded. Write down where everything is. The notepad from his briefcase was held in front of his eyes. He nodded.

  He took hold of his own pen and wrote in large, shaky letters, NOT PETER. Then he let go of the pen, and pulled the man’s hair, hard, holding a fistful of it, and not letting go although the texture disgusted him, grabbing it for purchase as he butted him on the forehead, twice, still not letting go until he felt drops of blood on his face. He had known how to fight, once. Then he let go. He felt the hands circle his neck, almost without surprise, heard again that distant shouting and let himself go limp.

  He was aware of nothing much now, except that it had been a mistake to laugh, and he was face down on the bed with his buttocks exposed, and a searing pain as something sharp ground into soft flesh.

  One voice said, make it look like a rent boy didn’t get paid. Another voice pleading, no, no, stop. The sound of retching and whining. No music.

  He laughed at me. He hit me first.

  Then . . . silence. Pain and silence and only the sound of his own breathing. Focusing his thoughts on something else, the way he did to maintain control, never letting anything drift. Controlling his mind the way he had ever since he was a boy and lost everything. Remembering what she had said once, if you’re ever going to get murdered, make sure they leave their DNA all over you. Such unequivocal evidence. He was faintly proud of writing NOT PETER, as if the DNA wasn’t enough to exonerate the person who had not done this. She had liked the boy, would never have wanted him implicated, shame she had never had a son. However unnecessary the writing had been, it was still a nice touch and the least he owed her. Were they sent by her to kill him, or had it been entirely unintended?

  If he moved now, he might bleed to death. It would be better to lie still and wait for someone to come. He decided to move, all the same, because he could not bear the thought of anyone finding him like this.

  Undressed.

  January 12. Morning

  The cold was intense, as raw and grey as it ever became, with a fierce wind tugging at coats. Snow was forecast and the arrival would be a relief. People scurried on to the train and did not want to get off. They were cross and defenceless because close-packed streets and ordinary clothes were not keeping them either safe or warm. Peter Friel was glad he had not been born in a city. The very idea that it sheltered you was just another illusion. He had been born a country boy, sent out to school in sensible vests, and it still amazed him when Londoners reacted to cold, ice and snow as if it had never happened before.

  It was another emasculating lack in himself not to own a car, since a non-car-owning male was far less useful or desirable, he was told, but he hated cars and loved the thinking times provided by trains. He could retreat into his own skull on public transport, even when hemmed in by other bodies; he could read or think even when hanging from a strap in a swaying carriage or he could lose himself in watching. His father said if Peter could speculate on investments the way he did on crowd observation, he might make his family rich. No chance of that. Peter felt almost childish and irresponsible on a train and he was looking forward to seeing the sea, as if this was a holiday. He allowed that anticipation to overcome the seriousness of the mission and his profound disappointment with all of them. Because of a terse, hardly informative phone call from Thomas Noble, he was angry with Hen for not trusting him with whatever she was prepared to take to Noble herself and he was relieved that she had been, in Thomas’s brief words, sent home safe. He was angry with the Lover for being extraordinary; he was furious with Ms Shearer, QC for everything, including her own humiliations, and he was trying to preserve a little righteous anger with Hen’s parents whom he was, after all, going to see. He was irritated with himself for not knowing quite which way to turn, for not phoning Hen and deciding to do only what he had already promised to do today. He knew enough about law to know that it was usually best to concentrate on one thing at a time and to allow everyone to speak at their own pace, in their own time, especially if truth was required.

  The task of the Prosecution in the trial of Rick Boyd had been to establish the truth. The transcript of the trial, the distillation of evidence into printed words on paper, moved him. He was remembering the frustration he had felt when the law was discussed, similar to what he felt now. Can you kidnap a person without kidnapping them, so to speak? Has there ever been a case
before your Lordship where the kidnap is only the result of the victim’s naiveté, rather than deception, and where there was no force involved because she went willingly? Albeit she went seduced by hopeful promises which are only now called lies? Could you kidnap a person without force, by seduction only? Kidnapping, my Lord, surely involves the active subjugation of will, and there was none of that here. Just as the infliction of grievous bodily harm cannot be made out as a punishable offence when the only perpetrator is the victim. My client has been framed by facts, my Lord. Some of the facts may be indisputable – the woman went with the man; she became ill; she was hurt – but the inferences drawn from these facts, such as any of this being my client’s fault, are riddled with doubt. Peter could hear in his imagination exactly the way Ms Shearer would have argued a powerful closing speech, if ever they had reached that point. If Rick Boyd had ever given evidence and been revealed in cross-examination. If Angel had not died of her own free will.

  The train sped through the station where his sister lived and he had the sudden urge to get off and find the noisy sanity of children in her crowded house. An hour outside London, it was emptying fast and careering towards Dover. The sky lightened and the threat of snow was far behind. Despite himself, and the monstrous scenarios that were forming in his mind in a mushroom cloud of an explanation of why Marianne Shearer might have killed herself when she did, he looked forward to seeing where Hen had lived. Curiosity, a clue to the enigma she was, perhaps, or simply something to endorse the powerful need he had to believe in her.

  His thoughts deviated to wondering if Marianne Shearer had really formed some master plan before she jumped. He decided it was unlikely that she had, or at least not any plan which bore close inspection. If she were mad enough to jump, she would surely not have been sane enough to plot the details with her usual finesse. It followed from this thinking that he wanted to tell Hen that Marianne Shearer might not even have planned the course of Rick Boyd’s acquittal, since no one in a trial could ever have the exclusive power to do that. It just looked as if she had controlled it while really it was a procession of accidents with its own momentum. He wanted to explain that it was not entirely her fault. Peter got out on to a platform and smelled the sea.

  After the warmth of the train, the fresher cold took his breath away and he plunged his hands into the pockets of his coat. There was only one colour for a coat and that was black. He was still wearing the borrowed suit because it was big and comfortable and he thought he would ask Hen if he could buy it. A red woolly scarf was his only colour, worn like a badge. It was like setting out to interview a client or witness in prison, with him always hoping he could like or admire something about the person at some level or other, even if he only liked their shoes, because that always helped. There was also something else intervening which made him feel increasingly uncomfortable. He felt like a suitor, come to woo the parents of a beloved and wishing their approval, without quite knowing from when and where that feeling had arrived. He was nothing of the kind. He was searching for words for what he was. An interfering arbitrator, come to make peace. He turned off his mobile phone.

  The route to the house was as easy as she had described. Go the long route, she said, because it’s easier to explain and you see the sea soonest. Walk through the town down to the front, turn right, continue along, turn right at the end of the street, it’s three doors up, and oh, by the way, if you see a woman with white hair sitting in one of the bus shelters you pass en route on the sea side of the road, bring her along, she might be my mother. Peter looked as he walked and saw no one either waiting for a bus or sheltering from the wind. The sea was magnificently churlish, speaking to him with the subdued violence he had met in many a prisoner. He turned into the correct side road and stepped up to ring the bell. There was a small Christmas tree lit in the window next to the door which was flung open as if whoever indoors was waiting for a signal.

  A big man and a small woman crowded into a narrow entrance to greet him, competing for the privilege. He was standing on the bottom step of three, just about level with their waistlines, which despite the disparity in overall height appeared to coincide. One with a long torso and short legs, and the other with long legs and a thin middle leading to a long neck, bypassing the bosom entirely. He could see no resemblance to Hen at all. A blast of warmth hit him.

  ‘How kind of you to come all this way. I’m sorry to have sounded so brisk, yesterday, only . . . ’

  ‘Silly old bugger . . . ’

  ‘Honestly, we get so upset . . . Come in . . . ’

  ‘I was in the bus shelter when it came and I didn’t know . . . I’m not going to do that any more. I get so cross. I think, if only Angel . . . ’

  ‘Stoppit, Mother. Oh come in, it’s cold out there. Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘My name is Peter Friel . . . I spoke to you yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, I know the name, but who exactly are you?’

  Peter smiled at them. They were the kind of people it was easy to smile at. He remembered them now, from the single day they had come to court and taken their daughter home.

  ‘I’m an arbitrator,’ he said. ‘I help sort things out.’

  ‘Of course, of course, come in, cold out there, come in.’

  And then he was in, hauled up steps and into an overwarm room with a blazing fire, and his eyes getting accustomed to dark and light and an onslaught of colour. Rubbing shoulders with tapestries in glass, slinking in like a stranger on what felt like false pretences, smothered in words, but welcome. It occurred to him, humbly, that they welcomed him because they needed him and they had needed someone like him all along. An outsider to talk to. His coat was almost forcibly removed.

  The fire blasted out heat and the room was an oasis of comfort. The coffee lived up to its own smell and biscuits were proffered with urgency by Mrs Joyce, both of them talking at once, as if he knew everything already. He let it flow.

  ‘I shouldn’t have got so angry,’ Mr Joyce was saying. ‘I really shouldn’t. I never get angry at work, even though people irritate me, so why should I get angry at home? It was just the last straw, you know. Henrietta always thinks she can fix things, always took it for granted she could. She thought she could cheer us up by staying with us at Christmas, but she was just a reminder, you know? Acting as if she owned this house, when she hasn’t lived here for years, getting stuff delivered here, as if we were her postbox. She knew it would have to go in Angel’s room.’

  ‘That’s not so bad, Father, she wasn’t to know, was she? And it is her house, always will be. Just like it was always Angel’s house, only Angel never really went away.’

  ‘ . . . And she would have come back in time, if only Henrietta hadn’t gone and fetched her and made all that fuss. She’d have come back with her tail between her legs, like any girl who’s been left by her bloke and it hasn’t turned out right. She could have come home whenever she wanted, couldn’t she mother?’

  Not if she was debilitated, depressed, wounded, ashamed, deprived of a mobile phone and without the price of a train ticket.

  ‘I would have gone and fetched her myself, wouldn’t I, Mother? Even it meant driving up there in one of the vans.’

  Mother was silent. She began to fidget with the hem of her skirt, then clasped her hands in her lap. Her face was lined with grief, but also with determination, a person in command of herself, wanting to say something but biding her time. She poured more coffee into Peter’s cup. He sensed a person who would pile on a second helping of everything, whether asked or not. Love was food and food was love. The house was a cocoon of colours. A little cloying on a hotter day, perhaps.

  ‘But no, Hen wasn’t having any of that. It had to be her doing the business, taking Angel back to that wretched place of hers in London, setting her to work and getting that bloke charged. I ask you! All right, he was a bloody bad lot, excuse my language, he really was, and a bit violent with it, maybe, but he’s not the first and he won’t be the last. He was
always very polite to us, wasn’t he, Mother?’

  She remained silent.

  ‘The evidence suggests he was a sadist, Mr Joyce,’ Peter said, quietly.

  ‘Yes, so I gather, but I still think it’s best to keep these things in the family. Not go running to the police because you’ve let yourself get messed up. No, you dust yourself down and get on with it. Me, I felt bad because it looked like we’d never taught her how to spot the rotten apple, but he fooled us too, didn’t he, Mother?’

  She nodded. ‘He seemed a nice man,’ she said. ‘That’s why we gave them the money.’ She turned to her husband, anxiously. ‘Do you think Hen might have been a little bit jealous about that? After all, we never gave her any.’

  ‘Didn’t need it, did she?’ he interrupted. ‘Always wanted to make her own way, you could never get Hen to take anything, could you? She’d never ask, would she? Why should it bother her? No, it was Hen knowing best, before she’s even met him. And then keeping Angel in London when she should have brought her back here.’

  He turned to his wife. ‘But maybe you’re right at that. Maybe Hen did resent the money, but to be fair to her, Mother, I can’t see it myself. She always knew that Angel would need more because she didn’t have the brains.’

  Peter was beginning to understand why Angel might have preferred to stay with her sister than crawl back here into this smothering forgiveness and lack of comprehension. To be cosseted by a mum and dad who would never, ever be able to bring themselves to believe what had happened to her. Dad radiated angry innocence, blustering with a shame he could not understand, a horror that this was his fault. The impotence of the male provider, failing to solve the problems of his children with blundering love alone. About the mother, Peter was less sure. Her face was wiser than his. Dad had a sudden burst of temper, which seemed to be his alternative to tears.

  ‘That bastard corrupted her. She was so sweet, my Angel. She was a star. She’d have been a lovely mum herself, like Mother here. Only he comes along, and he does the business and he wasn’t even proud of her. Oh bugger, I could kill him, but God help me, I could have gone for Hen too. Why did she make her do it?’