Other Countries

by Jo Bannister

  ‘I’ll ask the Youth Offending Team to provide an appropriate adult and I’ll interview the boy,’ said the DI. ‘See what he says.’

  Hazel nodded sombrely, but Ash wasn’t satisfied. ‘Not until my solicitor gets here.’

  The house in Railway Street was a crime scene. They returned to Highfield Road. Neither of them spoke. Hazel was still in shock, torn three different ways by her fondness for Saturday, her desperately confused feelings about Ford, and her obligations to the police service which employed her.

  Ash didn’t want to talk either. He was making a mental list of the things he needed to do to help Saturday deal with what was coming. Legal representation was the priority. Whether or not the boy had attacked Ford, he would need good advice and someone to speak for him. Ash didn’t think Gorman wanted to nail him for something he hadn’t done, or ascribe to him motives he hadn’t been acting on. But a public figure had come to harm – possibly a great deal of harm – in Norbold, and there would be pressure to bring a culprit to justice.

  Even if Saturday managed to convince the police that he’d acted in self-defence, that might not be the end of it. Ford’s public would never believe in his innocence, would clamour for retribution. Nor would the boy be safe in custody. There wasn’t a lot of Saturday. His quick wits, grubby charm and cat-like reactions could get him out of only so much trouble. In a Young Offenders’ Institution, sooner or later someone slower, less charming, and possessed of a set of home-made knuckle-dusters, would get hold of him and break him in a million pieces. Gabriel Ash had failed, not long ago, to prevent the death in custody of one young man. He would do everything in his power to prevent the same thing happening again.

  He spent fifteen minutes on the phone to his solicitor. Afterwards, in the hall, he found Frankie leaving for church. She had the boys with her. ‘I’ve been promising to show them where I go on Sunday mornings. This seems as good a chance as any.’

  Ash cast her a grateful smile. Right now he wasn’t particularly concerned with his sons’ religious education, but he appreciated her getting them off-side while he attempted to deal with this latest crisis.

  After the front door had closed, Hazel fixed Ash with an armour-piercing bodkin of a look. ‘Oliver hit Saturday?’

  Ash nodded. Suddenly he felt very weary.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Saturday told me.’

  Hazel picked her words carefully. ‘Saturday has been known to lie.’

  ‘I don’t think he was lying about this.’

  ‘Oliver blamed him because …?’ And there she stopped.

  Ash finished the sentence for her. ‘Because my boys gave him the slip, and you left Ford at Wittering in order to help round them up. It seems Ford came looking for you the next morning. You weren’t at Railway Street but Saturday was. Ford was angry, Saturday was cheeky, and Ford slapped him.’

  Hazel was remembering that morning. It had begun in Superintendent Maybourne’s office, proceeded by means of an argument with Ash, and finished with the encounter – slightly puzzling at the time – with Ford in Railway Street. ‘He was waiting in his car when I got home. Saturday had gone out. I thought it was a bit odd at the time. Saturday isn’t usually up and about much before lunch.’

  ‘No. Well, Ford came looking for you and got Saturday. They argued, Ford hit him, and Saturday did a runner.’ He always used slang as if he’d only just heard it and wasn’t sure he was using it right.

  ‘Oliver didn’t tell me any of this.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he?’

  ‘Saturday should have told me.’

  ‘Probably he should. But I understand why he didn’t.’

  Hazel thought a little longer. ‘And’ – still selecting her words with tweezers – ‘you slapped Oliver.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And threatened him.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Because of me?’

  Ash gave a snort of exasperation. ‘No, because I didn’t agree with his stance on the Knights of Malta! Of course because of you. He hit you, Hazel. You can make all the excuses for him that you like, but that’s what he did. He hit you in the face with his laptop. If I’d been there, I’d have taken a cricket bat to his head!’

  Hazel considered that in silence. Finally she said, ‘Do you think that’s what Saturday did? Saw an opportunity for pay-back and took it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ash said honestly. ‘I hope not. I hope he woke up in the middle of the night, heard someone creeping around downstairs, and lashed out with the first thing that came to hand because he thought he was in danger. If it wasn’t like that – if he knew it was Ford and decided to take his revenge – I’m not sure what any of us will be able to do for him.’

  ‘I could try talking to Oliver …’ She didn’t finish the sentence. Ash knew as well as she there was no guarantee that, even if Ford woke from his coma, he would be able to conduct an intelligent conversation or reach a rational decision based on it.

  Ash hunched his shoulders like a bear emerging from hibernation. ‘You can’t be seen interfering with a witness, and anyway it wouldn’t do any good. This was a serious assault: it’s not down to Ford to press charges. The police will bring the case unless Saturday can persuade them he was acting in self-defence. Even if Gorman believes him, he may feel he has to put it before a jury. Because of who Ford is, and the severity of his injuries.’

  ‘We have to do something! I have to do something. None of this would have happened except for me.’ Hazel’s gaze was hot on his face. ‘If I hadn’t taken up with Oliver in the first place. If I’d kept a professional distance.’

  ‘You did nothing wrong,’ insisted Ash. ‘No one can look into the future and guess what the ultimate results of their actions might be. We’ll do everything we can for Saturday, but in the end he may have to pay for what he did. We’ll know more after Dick Gervais has talked to him. If there’s a defence to be made, we’ll know then.’

  Hazel nodded numbly. At length, embarrassed, she said, ‘Gabriel – can I stay here for a bit? I’m not sure when I’ll be able to go back to Railway Street. And anyway, I don’t really want to be alone.’

  Ash’s jaw dropped as if she’d just said something very stupid. ‘Of course you’re staying here!’

  Hazel had a clear mental picture of Ash’s family solicitor. She imagined he had been inherited, along with the fine, run-down house and eighteen-year-old car, from Ash’s mother, was of much the same generation, and wore a small moustache and a homburg hat.

  She was wrong.

  Dick Gervais was younger than Ash, better looking, and much better dressed. He did sport a moustache, but it was a generous, even dashing, affair as blond as his hair. He arrived at the house mid-afternoon and sat down with them at the kitchen table.

  His expression was grim. ‘The boy’s in trouble, Gabriel.’

  ‘How does he say it happened?’

  ‘He says he was in bed, asleep, when something woke him. He listened and heard someone downstairs. He wondered if Ms Best had changed her mind and come home. But the hall light wasn’t on, which he thought was odd.’

  ‘His door was open?’ interjected Ash.

  ‘No. When the light’s on, he can see it through the gap underneath. He went out onto the landing, and listened some more. He could hear somebody moving downstairs, and he was pretty sure by this time’ – to Hazel – ‘that it wasn’t you. No lights, and a man’s footsteps on the kitchen lino.

  ‘The cricket bat was under his bed – he doesn’t know why. He went back for it, to defend himself if needs be, and tiptoed downstairs. He says he was going to call the police – that he doesn’t have a mobile phone and the land-line’s in the hall.’

  Hazel nodded. ‘That’s true.’

  Dick Gervais elevated an eyebrow. ‘He really doesn’t have a mobile?’

  Hazel bristled slightly. ‘Three months ago he didn’t have a bed. I bought his bed. The phone can wait until he can buy one fo
r himself.’

  The solicitor continued. ‘He says he got to the phone while the intruder was in the kitchen. But when he lifted it to dial, the click must have warned the guy because he came through the door shoulder first and knocked Desmond the length of the hall. He still had no idea who it was, he says. They struggled, with Desmond getting the worst of it. Then, still in the dark, his hand found the bat. He swung at the guy on top of him, landing a blow around shoulder level, and the guy yelled, then renewed his attack.

  ‘Desmond swung again – he says he was still flat on the floor – and hit the guy’s head, and this time he went down and stayed down. Desmond got out from under him and switched the light on. He says that was the first he knew that it was Oliver Ford.’

  They sat back in their chairs and avoided one another’s eyes for a moment. Then Hazel said, carefully, ‘Well, that sounds pretty plausible.’

  ‘It sounds possible,’ amended Gervais. ‘I think plausible may be pushing the envelope. I’m not sure how plausible Detective Inspector Gorman found it. He was asking a lot of questions he wasn’t getting answers to.’ He looked directly at Ash. ‘He wanted to know why the boy phoned you instead of either the police or an ambulance.’

  ‘What did Saturday say?’ asked Hazel.

  ‘He said he panicked. He knew he was in trouble, he wanted someone there who was on his side.’ Gervais looked at Ash. ‘How long did it take you to get there?’

  ‘Ten minutes, maybe a little over.’

  ‘If Ford dies, that ten minutes may be the difference between a plea of self-defence and a conviction for manslaughter.’

  ‘The man was an intruder in someone else’s house in the middle of the night,’ Ash said sharply. ‘He came unannounced, let himself in with Hazel’s keys, and prowled round her house in the dark. He expected to find Hazel there, and since Saturday works nights he probably expected to find her alone. Never mind what Saturday was thinking. Shouldn’t we be asking what Ford had in mind?’

  Hazel paled. ‘No. Oliver wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why do you think he went there? To apologise, to see if you were all right? At one o’clock in the morning? Hazel, he came to your house in the middle of the night to force himself on you. To show you that it wasn’t your decision when your relationship ended. You walked out on him, and I’m pretty sure that women aren’t supposed to walk out on Oliver Ford.’

  ‘No,’ she said again, insistently. ‘Gabriel – you’re wrong. I know him. He may be a far from perfect human being, but he wouldn’t do that. However it ended, we were genuinely fond of each other. He isn’t a psychopath! I lived with him, for pity’s sake: if he’d been capable of that, I’d have known.’

  ‘Two days ago you thought everything between you was fine,’ Ash said pointedly. ‘Isn’t that what you told me? Then you realised that a relationship you were prepared to invest years of your life in wasn’t worth an hour of his time to Oliver Ford. You were wrong about him, Hazel. You were wrong then, and you’re wrong now.’

  ‘I was wrong about him,’ she conceded fiercely. ‘But not that wrong. I was in love, or thought I was, and maybe that blinded me to his faults. But don’t tell me I was in love with a rapist, because I would have known. I would have known.’

  ‘Can’t you see, this is what he does? He’s so used to people dancing attendance on him that he thinks he has a God-given right to have what he wants, when he wants it. And he wasn’t going to take no for an answer from you.’

  Dick Gervais interrupted the developing row. ‘You may very well be right, Gabriel. But suspicions aren’t enough. Even if he recovers, Ford’s not going to say something that will exonerate Saturday and bring the police to his own door. If he doesn’t recover, or doesn’t remember, we can only speculate. The plain fact is that it was Ford who got hurt, and it was Saturday swinging the cricket bat.’

  Hazel swallowed. ‘What about Oliver? Is there any word from the hospital?’

  ‘He has a significant head injury. As with most head injuries, the doctors will only know how significant when they wake him up and ask him.’

  ‘Could I – should I – try to see him? Will they let me?’ Her voice cracked. ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to feel. I thought I loved him. Forty-eight hours ago I thought we might spend our lives together. Then suddenly it was over; and now maybe he’s going to die, and I don’t know how to feel about that.’

  Already Ash was ashamed of his uncharacteristic impatience. ‘You’re bound to feel confused. You couldn’t have seen any of this coming. And you couldn’t have prevented it if you had.’

  ‘But that isn’t true, is it?’ she countered fretfully. ‘Saturday and Oliver Ford would never have met except through me. They move in different worlds. Now Oliver’s fighting for his life, and Saturday’s facing prison, and whatever you say it was avoidable. If I hadn’t got involved with Oliver, it would never have happened. But I enjoyed what he had to offer – just not enough to pay what he wanted for it. I wasn’t content to be a decoration on his sleeve, which is what he thought he was buying.’

  She dashed away mortified tears with the back of her wrist. ‘Well, maybe he was entitled to think that. Maybe it was me who misread the situation. I wanted to have it both ways: to enjoy the attentions of a rich and famous man, but still be treated as an equal. And maybe that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t him being unreasonable – it was me. Even before I got him hurt, I short-changed him.’

  Ash tried to answer her, but Hazel rushed on, unheeding in her distress. ‘And what about Saturday? He wouldn’t have hit Oliver with a cricket bat in any other circumstances. Whatever his motives, it’s my fault he found himself in a situation he didn’t know how to deal with. This is my doing, Gabriel. I’ve injured them both, and I don’t think I can bear it.’

  By then she was crying openly: not a ladylike sniffle into a lace hanky, but a great stormy tempest of tears that coursed in untidy rivulets down her hot cheeks and round the ragged corners of her lips. There was no dignity in it. Emotion was tearing her apart, and that was how she looked: like someone suffering torture.

  Ash went quietly to her and, stooping, folded her shaking frame against his breast. With nothing to say that would make things better, he said nothing, just held her and waited for the storm to pass.

  Gervais watched the pair of them compassionately. He was no stranger to emotional outbursts, regularly had to take a time out while his clients composed themselves. He wished he could make everything all right, and – as so often – wasn’t at all sure he would be able to. Sometimes the best he could do was help them to find the least painful route through the gauntlet.

  At length he cleared his throat and moved onto the firmer ground of practical advice. ‘As far as visiting Mr Ford, it would be better not to. It wouldn’t do any good while he’s still unconscious and it might conceivably do harm.’

  It wasn’t Oliver Ford’s condition that concerned Ash. ‘Can I see Saturday?’

  ‘Not at the moment. You’re not family, you’re not part of his legal team, and you are a potential witness. Later it may be possible, but not yet.’

  ‘How is he? Is he coping?’

  The solicitor looked at Ash as if he was mad. ‘Of course he isn’t coping. He’s scared to death. He’s a seventeen-year-old boy facing the possibility of life imprisonment. He has no idea what the future holds for him, only that he’s in a whole heap of trouble and he thinks he’s got to face it alone.’

  ‘I hope you put him straight on that,’ said Ash gruffly.

  ‘Of course I did. I told him I was there because you’d sent me, that we’d both be there for him for as long as he needed us, and that however difficult things got, we would somehow find a way through them. And now I’m telling you – both of you – the same thing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Gabriel Ash.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Superintendent Maybourne served coffee in small china cups. Detective Inspector Gorman tried not to break the handle off with his
thick blunt fingers. The coffee, too, was not what he was accustomed to. He suspected it was foreign and expensive, whereas what he really liked was supermarket instant served in a pint mug.

  But for all her airs and graces, Gorman was developing both respect and regard for Superintendent Maybourne. The crystalline accent and perfect manners were no doubt invaluable at Home Office soirées, but immediately under the polished surface was a copper. Perhaps not an old-fashioned, beat-pounding, beer-swilling, collar-feeling sort of copper, but someone with all of a copper’s instincts allied to a keen grasp of the modern world. Sometimes Dave Gorman thought he’d been born twenty years too late, might have felt more at home in that simpler time of blaggers and rozzers. But Grace Maybourne had been born at exactly the right time, and knew instinctively how to reconcile the competing demands on a modern police service.

  She pressed him to a small iced fancy. The fact that they were both still working on a Sunday afternoon was excuse enough for a little indulgence. ‘I suppose the only real issue is, is the boy telling the truth? Did these events transpire essentially as he says they did? Was Oliver Ford the victim of his own misjudgement in entering someone else’s house, unannounced, in the middle of the night?’

  The small china cup came with a small china saucer. Even the small iced fancy was too large to sit comfortably on the edge of the small china saucer, so Gorman had to balance the saucer on his knee while holding the cup in one hand and the cake in the other. It left him incapable of even the most careful gesture.

  Trying not to spray crumbs he mumbled, ‘He’s lying. I don’t know yet what he’s lying about, but I’m pretty damn sure that what he’s telling us isn’t the pure unvarnished truth.’