Henry places his knife and fork on the plate with a clatter. His face has ruddied and not just because of the wine. It is an idea that has fired him up.
‘Gabriel,’ he says.
‘Is that the best you can do?’ Curtis says. ‘Look what happened after the party.’
‘It was too open-ended last time. This time I’ll make sure we do it properly.’
They sit in the park, tucked under the shade of the trees. Kids wheel and shriek. Above them, the whir of a police helicopter chasing a car thief, or an armed robber no doubt. A plane’s contrail slices a brilliant sky. Jackets are off. Sleeves rolled up.
‘The thing is, Curtis, we can’t just go in and deal with Linda. It’s too risky, what with that moron from The Times sniffing around. We have to be creative.’ Henry knows Curtis likes a bit of creativity. ‘We got it wrong last time. But we know Gabriel can’t refuse a woman. A proper woman. Tabloid circulation would collapse if it weren’t for his sex life. We set him up with . . . Mariela. Yes, that’s who. Mariela disappears after their rendezvous. Gabriel is in the frame.’
‘And what do you propose doing with Linda?’
‘Linda will be with me. My cottage in Scotland is lovely at this time of year.’
‘And how do you plan on getting her to Scotland? She’ll hardly agree to be your house guest.’
Henry laughs at his own audacity. ‘No, she won’t. But what if one of the women from the website lived up there and happened to offer her an interview?’
Curtis snaps his eyes shut. Henry knows he’s trying to decide whether this is the most ridiculous plan he has ever suggested, or if it is quite brilliant. He’s hoping for the latter.
‘Linda travels to Scotland where our fictitious victim lives. Meanwhile, Gabriel will be under investigation for Mariela’s disappearance. Her choice will be simple: save her son and stop digging or—’
‘Or?’ Curtis interrupts.
‘Gabriel faces the music and we deal with Linda.’
‘She’ll check the woman out. You won’t be able to fool her with some fictitious name. She’s not stupid, unfortunately.’
Henry considers this, refuses to accept his plan is flawed. All it needs is a little refinement.
‘What say I give her the name of a real woman, one of the cleaners in the cottages. I’ll find someone who is around the same age. They’ll be none the wiser, and Linda will be satisfied.’
Curtis whacks Henry on the back with such force he almost falls off the bench. ‘I knew there was a reason we were friends. Just one thing . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Make sure that woman who runs the website accompanies Linda. I wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to get rid of her when no one’s looking. Two for the price of one.’
Thursday 4.20 p.m.
Linda
Knock knock. Who’s there? Someone is at the front door. A persistent type, whoever they are. Thank God for perseverance. My spirits soar. I’m here. Back here. Help! Footsteps circle the cottage, squelching against the mud and the mulch. My face is pasted to the window, fist pummelling the glass. Whoever it is is moving closer, not far from my window now. I try to reel this visitor towards me by sheer force of will.
‘Can I help?’ It is Anna’s voice asking, a pitch too high, laced with nerves. The footsteps stop their march, turn and walk in the opposite direction, towards the entrance.
‘I brought you . . .’ Words snatched away by the wind. ‘. . . brown trout. Freshly caught . . .’
I move to the bedroom door, press my ear to it, desperate to hear the conversation. A sing-song lilt I recognise. Emily, the woman from the general store. Why would she have come? And when had Anna expressed a liking for brown trout?
‘Thanks.’
Emily dispenses advice on how to cook it, six minutes in the pan, a pinch of salt, a knob of butter. I feel a stab of pain, nostalgia for a time when recipes and cooking mattered.
‘Oh, wait a second,’ Anna says. ‘I’ll get you that shopping list.’
‘Shopping list . . . oh aye. Visitors, have you?’
‘Just a few. Here you go.’
‘Right. Well, it won’t be ready until tomorrow evening. I’m rushed off ma feet right now.’
She walks across the driveway, slams the car door and my last sliver of hope drives away with her.
In the mirror, I consider my injuries. I take a towel, wet it in the sink and scrape it across my bloodied face. Then I press it to the back of my head, where the tree has cut an incision two or three centimetres long. My body sings in agony, but the pain itself is an irrelevance now. What is worse is the knowledge that Anna did this to me.
I see her face again, white with fear as the Scot’s voice insisted she hurt me. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he’d asked, like a bully in a playground forcing the weaker child to collude in his game.
And she had obeyed.
Sorry. Did she really say that? Or was it simply what I wanted to hear? The fact is I don’t trust myself any more. How can I, when Anna turned out to be a stranger.
I employed her after Bernadette insisted I get some help around the house, ‘because it’s clear you’re not up to it yourself’ was her constant refrain. Usually, while I was still drinking, her words would run off me like water, but now in sobriety and with a purpose, the book, the website, the renewed zeal of getting to Curtis and Henry, I saw my house through her eyes. The old newspapers stacked high, books tumbling out of shelves, piled by doors, the grime. Christ almighty, I had let it go. It was to Bernadette’s credit that she hadn’t admitted defeat and persevered with her visits through the years; my home was enough to end the most hardy of friendships.
Anna was hired on the basis she didn’t flee the house at first sight, and yes, there was something about her I immediately liked. I sensed she was fragile, bore damage from the past which I attributed to the death of her mother, but during our time together she relaxed, opened up, gave me glimpses of a warmth, a kindness at her core.
At least, this was what I believed.
Now it transpires she was simply a very good actor.
Except, I’m not ready to believe she is rotten. Call me a fool, but I’m convinced there is something that eludes me, a catalyst for her actions that has set her on such a destructive path.
And until I work it out, I cannot find it in myself to hate her.
Time drifts. At some stage a knock on the door stirs me from my stupor. It is Huxtable with a hot drink, another sandwich. He bends down to place it on the floor and for a moment, I am above him, his head close to my foot. I consider kicking it, snatching the key from him, but these are precious seconds I waste to thought because before I know it, he is upright again, closing the door behind him, turning the key in the lock. Another chance gone.
I am too slow, too old, too tired for this game.
Picked myself up too many times. Lost again and again.
Perhaps I should have learnt my lesson the last time they tried to stop me.
2000–2008
Linda
It came as a relief to leave the Home Office. I wasn’t fit to be in the post and limped through to the election safe in the knowledge an annihilation was on the cards. It seemed like a fitting end to be buried under the opposition’s landslide.
Unlike many colleagues who lost their seats, I won mine by a narrow margin. Without a Government post, I found myself with more time on my hands. I could have thrown myself into being a good Member of Parliament, railed from the backbenches against factory closures, the sale of playing fields or the high cost of rents. Or I could have turned to my son, acknowledged that he was struggling, couldn’t cope, that he needed me. I could have held him and listened and maybe we could have worked through his problems together. Instead I went through the motions, shook him awake in the morni
ng, insisted he washed and went to school, kept him fed and watered. Arranged for him to see a therapist, and when she recommended a hospital stay, I agreed to that too. I doled out his medication when he was discharged, encouraged him to retake his exams, and all the time he slipped further and further away because what he needed wasn’t a timetable or a menu or expensive counselling, a mother on autopilot. He needed love and attention, but my mind was elsewhere.
The girls the girls the girls.
How to right a wrong?
I couldn’t think of anything else.
By 2001 Jonathan had persuaded his news editor to run a story about Curtis Loewe and Henry Sinclair and the dubious behaviour at their Cotswolds parties. There was no outright accusation of sexual abuse, the lawyer wouldn’t countenance it, but it was written in such a way as to suggest they had serious questions to answer. It wouldn’t have landed a killer blow, but we hoped it would persuade more victims to come forward with their stories. Jonathan had tried to trace the original two girls who’d made the police complaint but they had disappeared, slipped between the cracks of life.
The night before the story was due to run, Jonathan got a call from his friend on the newsdesk. The editor had personally intervened to spike it.
‘The fuckers must have found out,’ Jonathan said in the pub that night. He was already a bottle of wine down. ‘They’ve got friends everywhere.’ He was distraught. ‘No one wants to believe it, that’s their trump card.’
We stayed at the pub until last orders, when I called a cab. Against my advice, Jonathan refused my offer of a lift. He needed to walk off the rage, he said, otherwise he’d never sleep. He made it halfway home before he was attacked, punched and kicked in the face. Two ribs broken. He woke up in hospital three days later.
Jonathan was stubborn, always has been, and he refused to connect the attack with his attempt to unmask Curtis and Henry. I suspected this was for my benefit; he wouldn’t have wanted me to blame myself. ‘For God’s sake, Linda, it was probably your run-of-the-mill homophobic attack.’
‘But you’re not gay.’
‘How were they to know that, late at night?’
‘They almost killed you.’
‘Don’t be so dramatic. We live in London. It was bound to happen at some time. And by the way, you can stop bringing me those stews now. You have many attributes, but cooking is not one of them.’
I decided to try a different tack and devoted my time to campaigning for better laws to protect children, tougher safeguards against abuse and checks on those who worked with children. No question, I was a hypocrite, but better this than nothing at all. When I was asked to chair a report into historical abuse in children’s homes, I thought my time had finally come, a golden opportunity to root Curtis and Henry and their ilk out once and for all.
I should have known they would never allow me to get too close.
It was late Saturday afternoon, not long into the role, when a call came in from the News of the World. They were running a story the next day, front page, and would I like to comment?
They’d seen documents relating to my time in office that allegedly proved I had offered companies Government contracts in return for sizeable donations to the party. Not only that, but there was the accusation that I had siphoned off a portion of the money for my own personal benefit.
Henry had done a number on me. It couldn’t have been anyone else. He had encouraged me to fundraise in those days and I was only too happy to oblige. I had no idea he was offering sweeteners on the side. And if the amount going into the party account was less than the donations, it would have been Henry taking his cut. If anything, I was guilty of naivety. I had trusted Henry back then, but even when I thought he was on my side, he’d been incriminating me to cover his own back.
My name was filth, I resigned before I was sacked from the abuse inquiry. Hounded by the press, I retreated, locked myself away, refused to answer the door for fear a reporter or photographer would spring from the bushes. I hit the bottle for comfort – such a bloody cliché – watched television for company.
Gabriel didn’t come near, muttered something about his reputation when I questioned his absence on the phone. But he had been thinking of me. When I tuned in to watch his stand-up routine at the Apollo, I was the butt of his jokes.
He got some laughs, at least.
Worth it, I supposed.
Saturday, 15 November 2014
Jay Huxtable
His knee is twitching. He places his hand there to still it but it has no obvious effect. For once he’s grateful that John is playing techno. Jay can’t stand it, hates the way the beats crash against his skull, but tonight at least, it’s doing him a favour, disguising his unfortunate nervous tic.
They’re in the van together, parked opposite a Japanese restaurant in Hampstead. It is Saturday night and the streets are bulging with people rich enough to burn money on raw fish and order wine from way down the list. Jay has pressed his nose up against the glass of that world but it’s not his, never will be. Take tonight, for instance. Even if Jay liked sushi (he doesn’t), he won’t be eating it. He’ll be lucky if he scores a bag of crisps. They’re here on a job, the scope of which no one has fully explained. ‘Surveillance,’ John unhelpfully informed him. ‘Should be right up your street, Sunshine.’
Mariela is meeting Gabriel Miller for a date. Yes, you heard it right: Mar-i-fucking-ela. Of all the women whose talents could have been enlisted to ensnare Gabriel Miller, they had to choose the one he has fucked. Not just fucked – that makes it sound cheap. Jay made love to that woman, coaxed screams of pleasure from her. And there’s no way Gabriel Miller, for all his millions and his tedious crowd-pleasing jokes, will ever get her to come like he did.
That said, he’s angry with her. Correction, he is fucking furious. Hasn’t had so much as a text since the night he spent three hundred quid taking her to dinner. What a bitch. But my God, look at her! He feels a warmth spreading between his thighs at the sight of her outline sashaying into the restaurant, a dress sprayed on to her body. He’s thinking of her face, and that gyrating thing she did that was just so . . . Don’t think of that. Don’t fucking go there.
Gabriel Miller is already inside the restaurant. He and his crew of friends arrived half an hour ago. John has told him that everything tonight rests on Miller falling for Mariela’s seduction, but seriously, is there a man in London who wouldn’t?
‘You have tae wonder, are there any women left he hasn’t shagged?’
‘He hasn’t shagged her yet.’
‘No, but he will.’ John starts to laugh. ‘Oh Jesus, I forgot, she treated you tae a night, didn’t she? Did you think you were special?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Hey man, chill. I’m just having you on. Here, have some of this, it’ll perk you up.’
John hands him a plastic bullet packed with cocaine. Jay considers abstaining but the prospect of spending a sober night with John coked up to the eyeballs is too much even for his willpower.
‘Thanks. Don’t mind if I do.’
He sits back and closes his eyes while he waits for the drug to burst into his bloodstream. When it does, a few seconds later, the chemical whoosh, like a slice of lightning, makes him smile for the first time tonight. The taste of burnt plastic dripping down the back of his throat is less pleasing, but hey, you can’t have everything, can you?
‘Look, he’s over at her table now,’ John says. His jaws are chewing gum, fast and furiously, like it’s an Olympic sport. ‘Next stop, Gabriel Miller’s house.’
‘How do you know he’s going to invite her back?’
John eyes him up as if he’s some kind of alien life form. ‘Ah like you, man, but if they were handing out medals for sheer fucking stupidity, you’d be right up there on the podium.’
They follow the cab through H
ampstead to Gabriel Miller’s house. Jay recognises it from his previous visit and once again it makes him itch with jealousy. It doesn’t seem fair, how one bloke can have everything he wants and all Jay gets to do is peer in at his beautiful life. He used to be funny himself, all his mates at school said so, even the lads in the station would have agreed, but that was before Stacey went and took all the fun out of him.
Jay wonders if Gabriel has said something to make Mariela laugh, because they’re giggling like a pair of schoolkids as they fall out of the taxi and into each other. Gabriel takes her hand and leads her down the path. At the door, he stops, his hand goes up her dress, and Jay can feel it, soft and wet, as if he’s touching her himself.
‘Now what?’
‘Give them a bit of time tae settle and we’ll take a look.’
A look! Jesus Christ, this is his personal fucking nadir, have some mercy, please.
‘Hello . . . Hello . . . anyone there?’ John taps him on the forehead. ‘Ah thought ah’d lost you for a moment. Here, have another toot, get sparky.’ John hands him the bullet again. He takes it without thinking this time. He needs something to help him. One nostril, then the other, and the first one again for good measure. It kicks into his head.
‘Better?’
BOOM. BOOM. It’s like someone’s fixed an amplifier to his heart. The noise is crazy, drowns out everything else. He shouldn’t have topped himself up, but this flare of self-awareness comes way too late, the drugs have already whizzed him past the tipping point, one layer of agitation sits on another and another, like he’s a human lasagne shot through with anxiety.
Gabriel’s garden backs on to allotments, which means they can get a bird’s-eye view. Everything is conspiring against him tonight. At John’s insistence, they go along the outer perimeter, ‘so we leave no trace,’ he says, but the instruction doesn’t reach Jay and he falls into a plot.
‘Watch where you’re going,’ John hisses. ‘Ah said leave no trace. What’s the matter with you?’
An Act of Silence Page 24
