The Hook

by Raffaella Barker

  ‘What a sunset,’ said Christy. ‘A real fanfare to mark your birthday.’ She turned to Mick, but he was straining his eyes towards the cottage.

  ‘Someone’s turned the lights on. What do you make of that?’ They ran up the track and in.

  It was Danny. Sitting at the table carving chainsaw teeth on to a pumpkin.

  ‘Hi there, I thought I’d come and say Happy Birthday, Mick,’ he said. ‘It’s good to be back from that dump at last.’ He started telling Mick about college and Christy went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

  She’d left the cake in the car so Mick wouldn’t see it, but it was dusk now. She went to get it before it was too dark to find the car. She had almost not bothered making one but it had seemed wrong to celebrate any birthday without a cake. It was an ambitious cake and she had gone to a lot of trouble with the illustration. She had made it in the shape of a folded newspaper, giving the surface over to an icing photograph and a headline: ‘MICK FLEET HOOKS HIS FORTUNE’. The photograph had been very difficult to do. In the end she cut out a real photograph of Mick and stuck a red polythene fish across it. She had found the fish in a gift shop. It was Chinese and its packaging said it was a Fortune Fish. If you laid it flat on your palm it curled up to reveal your character. When Christy tried it, her hands powdered white with icing sugar, both sides of the little body curled up and in. ‘This position represents fickleness,’ pronounced the leaflet . . . She hoped Mick wouldn’t try it out on her.

  In the dusk she rested the cake on the bonnet of the car to add the candles and was about to go back in when she heard a car engine. I wonder who that can be, she mused, turning to look up the track. A column of headlights was approaching. Christy gasped, wondering if Mick had arranged a party. She remained where she was, rooted in astonishment, holding her cake. The cars spread in front of the cottage in a line and stopped, cutting their engines. As if a switch had been pulled they all flicked their headlights to full beam. Tiny red dots like predators’ eyes appeared next to the cars, blue flashed above the glare and Christy stood in a flood of light, her hair a dazzling halo against the brick of the cottage. She screamed.

  The red lights separated from the rest and bobbed towards her at shoulder-height and her throat closed in terror as she saw that they were attached to guns. Suddenly there were men everywhere, looming out of the cars, running towards her, pushing past into the cottage, crashing into the woods. Radios beeped and bled trailing voices into the darkness behind the cars.

  A woman in uniform had her hand on Christy’s shoulder.

  ‘You’d better come with me, love.’

  Still holding the cake, Christy followed her to a car.

  ‘What’s happened? I don’t know what’s going on. Why are there guns? Is it Danny?’

  Dry-eyed and numb, she slid into the back seat of the car, wedging the cake between herself and the policewoman. Maybe Danny had been arrested because of those bikers. They must have been drug dealers. Oh God, what if he was shot by a policeman.

  ‘My brother, what are they doing with my brother?’ She started to shake.

  Danny and Mick were thrust out of the cottage door, their shadows dancing on the men behind them. Mick was handcuffed. Danny was not. She leapt out of the car and ran over to them.

  ‘Keep out of the way, miss.’ The policeman behind Mick raised an arm to stop her touching him. Danny pulled her away.

  ‘It’s OK, Chris. Come with me to the police station and we’ll get this all sorted out.’

  ‘What’s going on? Please tell me.’

  Christy’s numb shock gave way in sobs. She rubbed at her eyes, frantic to stop herself crying. She looked round for Mick, but he was already in a car. She saw the doors shut; she saw him taken away. She turned back to the policewoman.

  ‘Do I have to come with you or can Danny and I drive ourselves?’

  ‘You can drive yourselves, love. No one is arresting you.’

  Christy headed back to the cottage to get her bag, but the woman stopped her.

  ‘Sorry, miss, you can’t go in. The house is being searched.’

  Christy glared.

  ‘This is crazy, I just want my handbag. What are they looking for anyway? I need to go and get my things and I’ll have to take the dog as well. Perhaps you could go in for me.’

  The policewoman nodded.

  ‘Just wait there, please, and I’ll see what I can do.’

  Christy and Danny waited. The cottage was alive with disruption. Black-clad men swarmed through the small rooms, past the windows, staggering beneath heaps of books and papers. The lights were on everywhere and all the doors were open.

  ‘Danny, tell me, please tell me what’s happening. Why have they got Mick? Are you all right?’

  Danny hugged her.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m scared, Christy. I don’t know what’s happening. But it’s big. Look at those guns.’

  His arms around her were light and thin; she hugged him back, half of her exhilarated with relief that none of this was to do with him.

  ‘We need to find the dog.’ Christy broke away and ran around to the back of the cottage.

  She whistled, praying Hotspur hadn’t run off. He crept towards her from the wood, his head low, crouching in apology.

  ‘Good boy, come on, Hotspur.’ Soothing him calmed Christy.

  She walked back towards the car where Danny waited, her mind clear as comprehension settled. She felt no surprise. This was always going to happen; she realised it now. Mick had lied again when he said he was a car dealer and had stolen a cheque. The truth was something worse by far. ‘Oh God,’ she whispered and crouched to pick Hotspur up.

  Danny drove to Lynton, Christy with Hotspur shivering on her lap sat next to him. They followed the police convoy with Danny talking all the way. He had grown up in a sudden spurt; he was in control now.

  Christy sighed.

  ‘I left my cake in the police car,’ she said, and started laughing, silly with shock.

  Danny squeezed her hand. ‘Calm down, it’ll be OK. We’ll find out what’s happened at the police station.’ Danny leant forwards over the steering wheel, his face illuminated by the police car lights in front. ‘This is crazy, isn’t it?’ He laughed nervously, his eyes round and wild staring at the road.

  Christy lit a cigarette. She couldn’t tell Danny her thoughts, he admired Mick so much.

  ‘I thought they had come for you,’ she said.

  The car jerked with Danny’s surprise.

  ‘What do you mean? Why?’

  Christy was worn out and close to tears; she sighed again.

  ‘Oh I thought you’d got involved in drugs or something. I don’t know, but it was Mick anyway.’

  Danny looked across at her.

  ‘What do you think he’s done?’ he asked carefully. ‘You don’t know, do you?’ He sounded so worried, frightened that Christy might be involved in this nightmare of guns and handcuffs and sirens.

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ she said. How could Mick have done this to them? He had told so many lies. Rage took over from Christy’s shock. ‘I’m leaving him anyway,’ she said. ‘And it’s not because of what’s happened today.’

  Lynton’s yellow night glow seeped into the car as the convoy reached the outskirts. They were approaching the police station.

  Danny said quickly, ‘I think we’ll have to give statements to the police. I wonder if we’ll be allowed to see him?’

  ‘I don’t think we will,’ said Christy. ‘But we’ll be able to visit him later on.’

  Danny slowed the car in front of the police station.

  ‘Maybe they’ll let him out. It might be a mistake.’

  Christy’s head ached, otherwise she was numb.

  ‘It isn’t a mistake. There will be a trial.’ She opened her window and dangled her hand in the fresh air.

  The convoy, with Mick somewhere in its midst, snaked around the building and in through an iron gate. Danny parked on the road, inching ba
ck and forth to make sure he was not on a yellow line. Christy pushed Hotspur over into the back.

  ‘I’ll see him through the trial. But it’s over. I was going to tell him that tonight; I’m glad I didn’t. But after the verdict, that’s it.’

  Danny grinned at her.

  ‘What if he’s found innocent?’

  ‘He can have his dog back,’ said Christy. She got out of the car and followed her brother into the police station.

  The day of the verdict was hot. As I drove to court, clouds puffed high and hung weightless in the blue morning. I saw two magpies and a black cat. ‘Two for joy, two for joy,’ I chanted under my breath as I joined the queue of people snaking into the court house. Mick’s case always drew big crowds; in the last days the security-searching took as long as a weekend supermarket check-out. Nausea made me tremble and to forget it I smoked, leaning against a pillar, staring up at the sky. I wondered what Mick had been given for breakfast today. Surely they would have made an effort on the final day of his trial. I imagined cooking him breakfast tomorrow. At home. In another life. I would make scrambled eggs, the china would match and Mick would read the paper while I poured coffee. A plush cat would roll its pink tongue through a saucer of milk accompanied by the murmer of the radio. I might wear an apron.

  ‘Here, Christy love, you come this way.’ A policewoman beckoned me through a side door. ‘I can search you here and get you up to Court 4 before the hordes. That way you’ll be sure of a seat.’ She frisked me as she spoke, patting my pockets and running a metal detector over me with the brisk gentleness of a mother preparing her child for school.

  I wore my red linen dress for the verdict. It was short. The second metal detector, the one right outside Court 4, went wild and the skinny policewoman waving it glowed peony pink when I wriggled out of my bra without undoing my dress. I could have just told her it was my underwear, but I was so nervous I thought I had to take it off.

  ‘Now try. I think it was the clasp on this, or its undercarriage, or whatever they call it.’ I stuffed the bra in my handbag and she whisked me through to the courtroom.

  The public gallery was already full. The hordes had beaten me. None of the court staff were in yet. They would swarm a second or two before the Judge arrived and just after Mick came up from the cells below. I slammed out of the door again into a crowd of people already waiting for seats to come free.

  ‘There’s no room in there.’ I banged my fist on the desk in front of the little policewoman. ‘I can’t go in to see the verdict.’

  She bobbed nervously, as if she was curtseying to me.

  ‘There must be a mistake, I’ll just check.’ She vanished into the courtroom and a moment later was back herding a vast woman with a face pockmarked like a pincushion. ‘I’m sorry, Christy.’ The policewoman was on tiptoe whispering in my ear so the furious pincushion couldn’t hear. ‘This one slipped past me. I had saved you a place, now in you go.’

  I slid into my seat between two old men and crossed my legs, tugging the hem of my dress down, horribly conscious of the bareness of my thighs. Mick and his attendants took their places in the dock. I blew him a traitor’s kiss and he tried to smile. He was wearing the shirt I had bought him as a good-luck present; the price tag dangled behind his shoulder and made me think of evacuated children during the war. I shivered, feeling stupid and angry as I realised for the first time that none of his family had come over for the trial. Maybe they didn’t even know about it.

  The clerk who was fussing around with his papers stood to attention as the black flock of barristers and solicitors entered.

  ‘Rise in court,’ he then commanded and the Judge swept in.

  The jury had still been out at the end of the session the day before, but this morning, following a night in a hotel, they had reached a verdict on all four charges.

  In his summing up the Judge had sent them out to deliberate with the words, ‘Members of the jury, you must look at the evidence and reach your verdict upon that evidence. You must decide beyond reasonable doubt whether or not Mr Fleet is guilty as charged. Remember, Beyond Reasonable Doubt.’ It seemed such a feeble phrase upon which to hang a future.

  They filed in and sat down in their familiar formation. Everyone was looking at them, trying to gauge their expressions and see inside their minds. I glanced along the public gallery, wishing Dad was with me. He would be waiting outside with Maisie. Danny was back at college again until Maisie’s wedding.

  The Judge spoke.

  ‘Members of the jury, have you reached your verdict on all four charges?’

  The foreman rose, formal in a tweed suit and probably very hot.

  ‘We have, Your Honour.’

  In the dock a navy-blue wall of policemen merged behind Mick. His head was bowed, he was no longer tall. His eyes hooked like claws on the jury. None of them returned his gaze or glanced at me. They didn’t even turn to the Judge but stared into glassy space.

  ‘The first charge. Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Not guilty,’ said the foreman.

  Until that moment a shell so fine I hadn’t known it encased me had been protecting me from reality. I sank as it cracked open and strength welled out of it.

  ‘Second charge. Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty.’

  I couldn’t remember what the second charge was. There were two bank robberies, one burglary and a possession of firearms charge but I had long ago lost track of which order they came in.

  ‘Third charge. Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty.’

  I forced myself to look up. The two ladies on the jury whom Mick had won round were crying. Lemon Face pressed a handkerchief to her mouth and the man with the Roman nose had his fists knotted as if in passionate prayer.

  ‘Fourth charge. Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘Guilty.’

  Mick had not moved. He was stone-faced and staring as if in a trance and his scar was livid and pulsing. He still looked the same, he still was the same, but he was nothing to do with me now.

  I cried and cried as Tobin and the Judge talked about weapons and former behaviour. It would have been better if I had left him when he was arrested. Now my treachery was greater; he would always think I had left him for his guilt.

  The Judge scribbled a few notes and speaking slowly, as if he were dictating to a new secretary, pronounced the sentence.

  ‘Because of the serious nature of the crimes committed and to ensure the safety of the public, a custodial sentence is in order.’

  Blood drummed in my head. Mick was going to prison. I longed for a cigarette.

  ‘Fifteen years . . . eighteen years . . . ten years to run concurrently . . .’ The Judge powered on, throwing Mick’s life away almost randomly. ‘Take the prisoner down now, please.’ The tone in which he requested this was mild and anti-climactic.

  I thought I was screaming, but it must have been in my head because Mick went away without looking at me.

  A Note on the Author

  Raffaella Barker, daughter of the poet George Barker, was born and brought up in the Norfolk countryside. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels, Come and Tell Me Some Lies, Hens Dancing, Summertime, Green Grass, Poppyland, A Perfect Life and most recently, From a Distance. She has also written a novel for young adults, Phosphorescence. She is a regular contributor to Country Life and the Sunday Telegraph and teaches on the Literature and Creative Writing BA at the University of East Anglia and the Guardian UEA Novel Writing Masterclass. Raffaella Barker lives in Cley next the Sea, Norfolk.

  By the Same Author

  Come And Tell Me Some Lies

  The Hook

  Phosphorescence

  Hens Dancing

  Summertime

  Green Grass

  A Perfect Life

  Poppyland

  Also Available by Raffaella Barker

  COME AND
TELL ME SOME LIES

  Gabriella lives in a damp, ramshackle, book-strewn manor in Norfolk with her tempestuous poet father and unconventional mother. Alongside her ever-expanding set of siblings and half-siblings, numerous pets and her father’s rag-tag admirers, Gabriella navigates a chaotic childhood of wild bohemian parties and fluctuating levels of poverty. Longing to be normal, Gabriella enrols in a strict day school, only to find herself balancing two very different lives. Struggling to keep the eccentricities of her family contained, her failure to achieve conformity amongst her peers is endearing, and absolute.

  Come and Tell Me Some Lies is Raffaella Barker’s enchanting first novel – a humorous, bittersweet tale of a girl who longs to be normal, and a family that can’t help be anything but.

  ‘Funny … Clever and touching’ Guardian

  HENS DANCING

  When Venetia Summers’ husband runs off with his masseuse, the bohemian idyll she has strived to create for her young family suddenly loses some of its rosy hue. From her tumble-down cottage in Norfolk she struggles to keep up with the chaos caused by her two boys, her splendid baby daughter and the hordes of animals, relatives and would-be artists that live in her home. From juggling errant cockerels, jam making frenzies and War Hammers, to unexpected romance, Bloody Mary’s and forays into fashion design, Hens Dancing is like a rural Bridget Jones’ Diary as it charts a year of Venetia’s madcap household.

  ‘A positive hymn to provincial living, it is an entertaining celebration of family life with all its highs, lows and eccentricities’ The Times

  SUMMERTIME

  After one year of being ‘buffered from single-motherhood’ by her boyfriend, David, Venetia Summers suddenly finds her life unravelling as he is sent to the Brazilian jungle and she is left alone in Norfolk. As chaos reigns in her home and her three children run wilder than ever she finds her life further complicated by a bad-mouthed green parrot, a burgeoning fashion career designing demented cardigans and her brother’s outrageous wedding. As emails languish unanswered, phone lines cut out and long-distance relationships prove both vexing and bewildering, life and love take some very unexpected turns.