by David Thorne
‘Your father saw this as a charitable act,’ I say. ‘He was keen to improve the lives of others. He seemed a very devout man.’
Luke Gove laughs. ‘My father,’ he says, ‘wouldn’t have pissed on the Pope if he was on fire.’
‘Mr Connell,’ says Saskia, standing up and putting a hand on Luke’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze, ‘could you give us some time alone?’
I wait in the silence of the Goves’ entrance hall while Luke and Saskia and possibly Duncan discuss what I have told them, what it means. I check my phone and see that I have missed a call; I have voicemail. I dial and hear Halliday’s voice.
‘I’m out of town. Four days. We’ll talk when I get back. Might be an idea to have those deeds drawn up.’ He stops and I think he is finished but then his voice comes back. ‘You are one lucky little cunt.’
Hearing his voice in a setting as refined as the Goves’ magnificent home gives me a brief feeling of disconnection, of unreality. I look at my phone, think back to the events of yesterday. He has a point. I was fortunate.
‘Mr Connell? Daniel?’
Saskia clicks across the tiles towards me, smiles. ‘I’m sorry about that. It was a shock.’
I nod. ‘Must have been.’
‘Let’s speak outside.’
Again I follow at her heels, out into the sunlight. Saskia looks up at the sun, eyes closed, seems to bask in it. She stands like that for some moments and is surely aware that I am watching her. Eventually she turns to me, opens her eyes.
‘You think he was crazy? My father?’
‘I think he was scared,’ I say. ‘Crazy? No.’
‘Luke’s not going to let this one go,’ she says. ‘He likes money.’
‘Who doesn’t?’
Saskia looks down at my hand, sees the bandage. She takes my hand in hers, lifts it. Her touch is cool. She rubs a thumb over my broken knuckle, feels me stiffen, take a breath.
‘Hurts? How did it happen?’
‘Changing a tyre.’
Saskia laughs softly. ‘That car. You help me get hold of that money, I’ll buy you a Porsche.’
I look at her and her eyes are mocking but I know that she is serious, that she is inviting me to be complicit in betraying William Gove’s will. That if I do, she will show her gratitude in any number of ways. She is still holding my hand and before I answer I pause, wait until I can trust my voice.
‘Couldn’t do that. Anyway, I like my car.’
Saskia lets go of my hand but manages to keep the smile on her face. ‘A man with integrity. Be still my heart.’
‘You’ve got my number. If you need me.’
I drive away and Saskia Gove watches me leave. Standing in front of her palatial home she looks as glamorous and unattainable as a model gracing the cover of a magazine. I can still feel her cool touch on my hand as I pull out of the iron gates and head for home.
On the way back, the road passes the converted convent which Halliday has demanded I sign over to him. I park outside. It is a large brick building with ornate stonework around the windows; it is beautiful, despite what lies underneath. I think back to Halliday’s ex-wife, Xynthia, a lady who held no love for him and who died only months ago. It was she who told me about the place, told me where the bodies were buried.
I have sunk all the money I have and much more besides into turning it into apartments. The income I receive from the tenants barely covers my debts. Without it I have nothing: no hold over Halliday and no money. To lose it would ruin me and, I do not doubt, leave me at Halliday’s mercy. A broken hand is nothing. What he would do to me would be ugly, painful and would not be short.
I think of Gabe and the position he is in, what he is facing. I should go and see him, find out how he is. I need to do the right thing by him, I owe him that. But sitting in my car and watching one of my tenants enter the building, I cannot think of any way out that will not end in blood.
7
EARLIER TODAY GABE had been at our tennis club. It is a long-established club with a proud record of competing both regionally and nationally. In the clubhouse is a trophy cabinet, and I would guess that a third of the trophies within it have Gabe’s name on, some for singles, some for doubles tournaments he won playing alongside me. He has been a member of the club since he was a child and has frequently left everything on the court, played his heart out in its name. He has given up hours and hours of his free time to coach juniors, children who look up to him as if he is a god.
But today on arriving at the club he was met by a woman named Margaret who is in her sixties and believes that she embodies the spirit of the club; something I question, unless the spirit of the club is mean and judgemental and lacking in any human warmth. She told him that he was no longer welcome, not while he was under investigation, told him that it did not reflect well on the club.
‘You do understand?’ she said, a smile she no doubt considered well-meaning on her face.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Gabe said.
‘Well,’ said Margaret. ‘I would like to think not.’
A boy came into the clubhouse carrying a tennis bag on his back that was almost as big as he was.
‘Hey, Gabe,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting outside.’
‘I’m afraid there’s no question of Mr McBride teaching you today,’ said Margaret. She turned to Gabe. ‘Is there?’
Gabe stood quietly for some moments, his own tennis bag in his hand, in a place he considered a second home. He rubbed his hand over the boy’s hair, said, ‘Sorry, Josh,’ and walked out. He passed another member, George, as he left but did not stop to say hello. As he walked away, he heard George talking to Margaret, saying over and over and louder and louder, ‘What did you say to him? What did you say to him?’
Now I am sitting opposite Gabe in his kitchen and he has just finished telling me this, his expression stunned, real hurt in his eyes. Coaching the nine-and-overs was one of the few things he looked forward to, and it has been taken from him.
‘I’m sorry, Gabe,’ I say.
‘I don’t understand,’ he says. ‘How… how can they think I did this? To a kid?’
‘It’s one person. Pay no attention.’
‘That your best advice?’
I sigh. ‘Listen, Gabe. Whatever’s going on, it’ll get sorted. Maybe this kid’s got memory loss, thinks it was you. He won’t survive the witness box. There’s no way you’re going down for this.’
‘And the knife? Found here?’
‘I doubt they had a proper warrant. Almost certainly inadmissible. Forget it.’
Gabe watches me and I try to hold his gaze, but I do not believe what I am saying and neither does he. I have never lied to Gabe before and I have the feeling I imagine an adulterous husband must have, spinning stories to his wife, explaining away a lipstick stain, a hotel receipt.
‘Yeah, whatever, Danny. Listen, I’m no company. We’ll catch up soon.’
He stands up and so do I; I know when I am being dismissed. ‘Try not to worry,’ I say. ‘Hey? Gabe?’
‘Sure.’ But he is drinking from his bottle and his eyes are obscured by his tipping hand and I cannot see them, cannot read them. Gabe, I think. I am so sorry.
The next morning I am in my office early. On my desk are the details of William Gove’s will, the names of the ten perfect strangers to whom he decided to give away his fortune. I have to find them, give them the good news. It should be a job to relish, bringing joy to unsuspecting people; I am going to be playing the role of a seventeen-stone fairy godmother, changing people’s lives in one visit. Yet something about it bothers me, I cannot say what. Perhaps it is just too unusual, too bizarre. Perhaps William Gove was simply too odious for me to believe his motives. Did he really want to improve people’s lot, or was this just a self-serving project to grease his way into heaven?
Of course Maria cannot understand my reticence, told me that if I didn’t want to do it then she would, said that the problem was I lacked a romantic soul. Regardles
s, the beneficiaries of his will need to be told. I close the office and get into my car. The day is not warm and it is raining gently, the sky light and white, luminescent like a blank projection screen. I check the address, head off to give the good news to my first name.
He is called Joshua Backler and he is not at home; his wife tells me that he works at a nearby garage, sounds worried when I tell her that I am a lawyer, asks me if he has done anything wrong. I get directions to the garage and pull up in the parking bays at the back, walk towards the open doors where three ramps are side by side, a car on each.
‘Help you?’ says an old man in grey overalls, walking out to meet me.
‘I’m looking for Joshua Backler.’
‘Josh?’ The man nods, turns, shouts. ‘Josh?’
Joshua Backler is small and thin, almost emaciated; he looks like he’d do well to spend the first couple of hundred he inherits on eating out. As he gets closer I see the broken veins in his cheeks and revise my opinion: better find a restaurant without a drinks licence.
‘What?’
‘Fella here to see you. Need that Merc out today.’
Joshua nods vaguely, turns to me. ‘Yeah?’
‘Joshua Backler?’
‘Unless there’s another one. What d’you want?’
‘There anywhere we can talk?’
But clearly Joshua Backler isn’t a man accustomed to receiving good news and his first instinct is suspicion, swiftly followed by hostility. ‘Anything you’ve got to say, you can say it here.’
‘I’m a lawyer.’
‘And?’
‘I’ve got some…’ How do you tell somebody a thing like this? ‘You’ve inherited some money.’
The magic word. M-O-N-E-Y. He takes a small step backwards, looks at me properly for the first time, up and down. ‘Yeah? Who’s died?’
‘You don’t know him.’
‘Okay.’ He nods as if this makes sense, which it doesn’t. ‘How much?’
‘Two hundred and seventy thousand pounds.’
Joshua smiles. ‘Fuck off.’ But he continues to look at me and I can see hope in his eyes, like a child asking for a bicycle for his birthday.
‘I know it sounds unusual. He was a religious man and picked you out at random to receive the money. Think of it like winning the lottery.’
Josh glances around him, looking for the hidden cameras, checking that his workmates aren’t in on it, hiding their laughter behind his back.
‘Fucking serious?’
‘Serious,’ I say. The man has a nasty cunning about him and I am quite sure that he does not deserve this money. But the law is the law. ‘That is, if you wish to receive it.’
‘If I wish to receive it,’ he repeats, not registering the words to begin with, replaying them in his mind before he answers. ‘Fucking right I do.’ He smiles, laughs. ‘How much did you say?’
‘Two hundred and seventy thousand.’
‘That’s a lot, right?’
‘Right.’
He rubs his mouth with a greasy hand and shakes his head into it. He cannot help smiling. The old man in grey overalls walks back towards us slowly.
‘Josh? You were late in. Think you could get back to work, make me some money?’
‘Fuck off, Ted,’ says Josh. He walks away, towards my car, adds without turning around, ‘Do it yourself, you old cunt.’
At my car I give him my card, tell him I’ll be in touch. He offers to buy me a drink but I tell him no, I have other people to see. As I drive away, I see him cross the road to a pub, and I think that with a quarter of a million pounds plus change to drink, it’s unlikely that Joshua Backler will last a year.
Karen Reenie is a nurse who has been on nights all week; her hair is limp and the skin underneath her eyes is purple. I woke her up and she is wearing a bathrobe and has slippers on her feet with Mickey Mouse ears. We are sitting in her living room with the curtains still drawn against the daylight, a cup of coffee each between us on the low table.
‘Rough night,’ she says. She lifts her cup, takes a drink. ‘Had a young man come in, he’d come off his bike. His fiancée got there and he was conscious, but sometimes… They can’t understand. He was talking. Then he’s gone.’
‘Nights are worse?’
She nods. ‘Just, emotions get low. Something happens three, four in the morning, it’s hard. Finding the energy to deal with it. Sorry. You mind?’
She lifts cigarettes, a lighter. I shake my head and she lights up, inhales with the quiet, transcendent pleasure of the long-term addict.
‘And me a nurse,’ she says, an excuse she has delivered many times before. She takes another drag, nods to herself. Pauses as if about to jump off something dangerous. Says: ‘So. This man, this…’
‘William Gove.’
‘He’s left me a fortune.’
‘That’s right. You and others.’
She nods to herself again, inhales. When she looks at me her eyes are hard, a history of broken promises and disappointment behind them. ‘What do I have to do?’
‘Do? Nothing.’
‘Nothing.’ Said with flat disbelief.
‘The money’s yours.’
But still she won’t accept it. Joshua Backler didn’t need any persuading. Karen Reenie is a very different proposition.
‘I don’t deserve it.’
‘It’s not a question of deserving it. It’s just…’ I shrug, ‘luck.’
‘I’ve never been lucky.’
‘So there’s always a first time.’
She doesn’t say anything to this. She sits forward and stubs out her cigarette, then takes her coffee and leans back on the sofa, closes her eyes. I look about her dark living room. There is an ironing board set up in one corner, children’s school uniforms hanging over a wire drying rack. Karen Reenie’s television is not large and her furniture is not new and I do not believe her life is easy. She said that she didn’t deserve William Gove’s money. I do not agree.
When she opens her eyes there are tears in them. She sits forward and puts her coffee cup down and reaches across the table, takes one of my hands. She looks me in the eye and I have no problem returning her gaze.
‘Is it true?’
‘It’s true.’
‘I have debts,’ she says, almost whispers the words, as if confessing a shameful sin in church.
‘Unless you owe over a quarter of a million,’ I say, ‘then you don’t any more.’
I walk to my car, but before I unlock it my phone rings. I do not recognise the number and do not want to take it but I hit the screen anyway, put it to my ear.
‘Daniel Connell?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Luke Gove.’
I hadn’t recognised his voice. He sounds polite, civil, his arrogance held in check. ‘Yes?’
‘Listen, Daniel, I apologise for yesterday. I lost my temper. It was a shock.’
‘You don’t need to apologise.’
‘Let me buy you lunch. What are you doing tomorrow?’
‘That’s not necessary.’ The last thing I want to do is spend an hour across a table from Luke Gove.
‘At my club,’ he says as if I have not spoken. ‘I hear you play tennis. Bring a racket, we’ll have a game.’
I do not know how he has found out that I play tennis. But I have never, I do not think, turned a game down. I imagine facing him across a net rather than a table and although it is childish I feel my pulse quicken. I look down at my damaged hand. It will do. I only need it for the ball toss.
‘What time?’
He gives me the address and it is one I recognise, an upscale country club which has a waiting list for members and a panel I doubt I would get past if I applied. I tell him I know it, that I will see him tomorrow. But Luke Gove cannot entirely keep his arrogance reined in, cannot help but assert his superiority; before I hang up, he says:
‘Oh, and Daniel? Tennis whites, please. We’re quite strict about that.’
While
I was accepting Luke Gove’s challenge, my father was back in the Seven Stars, drinking alone at the bar. Although it was now bright afternoon outside, the boarded-up windows of the pub and tired decor created an eternal gloom regardless of the weather or time of day. Earlier he had won fifty pounds on an Irish filly called Eastern Magic at Chepstow; he had already drunk half of it, pints of lager chased by double brandies. Despite the darkness inside the pub it was warm, and his glass was beaded with water, his forehead dripping with alcoholic sweat.
The landlord of the pub, Paddy, tells me what happened next; he calls me on my phone, worried about my father’s well-being, his state of mind. He tells me that my father had just ordered another pint when the door to the pub opened and the crew we had encountered at his birthday came back in. They walked to the bar, ordered bottles of lager. There were four of them and Kane was among them, did the ordering. The group looked my father over and he met their eyes, returned their stares from his bar stool, watched them over the rim of his glass as he drank. My father has never been one to blink first.
‘Enjoy your birthday?’ said Kane.
My father did not respond. Kane looked around the pub.
‘Can’t see any of your friends here today.’
Still my father did not say anything. The men with Kane looked on with interest, hands at their sides. It was as tense as a boxing weigh-in.
‘How’s your son? That little piece of his?’
My father is fundamentally incapable of accepting provocation without reacting; anything he has ever achieved has been through violence, it is his only strategy. He shook his head, eased himself off his stool and headed for the men. He took two steps, then turned and arced a punch at Kane’s chin. To a man like Kane the shot was as telegraphed as a child’s and he swayed back at the waist, watched it pass by with a smile on his face. The momentum of the punch turned my father, and he was now facing Kane.
‘That’s twice now,’ Kane said.
Paddy tells me that he did not even see Kane take a backswing, did not see the punch. Kane drove his fist into my father’s stomach, my father folding over so Kane’s entire arm seemed buried.
