Promises of Blood

by David Thorne

  I know that using your wealth and power to sexually threaten young women is worse than cheating, I know that what Luke Gove did to Sophie, how he made her feel, was a more outrageous act than wrongly calling my ball out. Yet if I am honest, this makes me even more angry. If I was not confident of beating him, I would climb over the net and make him eat that tennis ball.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Ball was long. Just long. Good effort.’

  I nod, cross to the other side of the court. Deuce. He serves out wide but he is rattled now and he cannot get near my return. Another break point. He misses his first serve. His second is average, at best. I put everything into the return, hit it with both feet off the ground. He watches it pass by and it is all I can do not to laugh.

  The rest of the match is a formality. My serve is so fast and so hostile that it twists the racket in his hand, too powerful for his grip. I take the set 6–3, ask him at the changeover if he wants to give me the money now. He does not answer, and he goes down in the final set 2–6, his mind gone, confidence blown. I have made more money in two hours than I usually make in two months.

  I will give Luke Gove his due. He shakes my hand after the match and writes me a cheque before leaving the court, which is more than I would have been able to do. I would have been on the phone to my bank, telling them lies about why I needed the loan. He showers and changes quickly, says, ‘Good game,’ and leaves before I have started to dress.

  As I am leaving I pass by the bar and Sophie comes out, takes hold of my arm like a child who cannot wait to tell something to an adult.

  ‘You won!’

  ‘I did.’ I try not to smile but cannot help it. Sometimes victory feels like a benediction from God himself; for a moment you can believe that you are anointed, chosen, favoured. And I have clearly made Sophie’s day.

  ‘Never seen him beaten before.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘And he cheats.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  Sophie laughs, delighted.

  ‘You okay?’ I say. ‘With him? You don’t need to accept what Luke Gove does to you.’

  ‘You think?’ says Sophie. ‘Like anyone here’s going to tell him not to.’

  ‘He’s done it before?’

  ‘Not to me. But other girls, yeah. We keep out his way.’ She looks about, makes sure management isn’t listening. ‘One girl, don’t know what happened. Wouldn’t talk about it. But why’d he buy her a car?’

  It is a good question. Perhaps a car is the going rate for silence in this part of Essex. Sophie is quiet, sighs.

  ‘Rich people, you know? Nothing they can’t do.’

  ‘Luke Gove gives you problems, you call me,’ I say. I hand Sophie my card. She stands on tiptoes and gives me a kiss and it surprises and embarrasses me. She could be my daughter.

  ‘You won,’ she says. ‘Didn’t think I’d ever see it.’

  Outside, I check my phone and I see that I have voicemail. I call it and it is Ms Armstrong, the social worker.

  ‘Daniel? I’ve tracked down young CJ.’ There is humour in her voice as she gives me the address, which she tells me is a shelter for young homeless people. ‘And Daniel? Remember that you promised. To keep an eye on her.’

  I head back down the grand drive, back to my office. I am feeling good, still buzzing with the unreal euphoria an unlikely victory can give. I am even enjoying my work, executing William Gove’s will, tracking down the lucky recipients. Anything that gives Luke Gove the needle is fine with me.

  I stop at my father’s home on my way back to the office. He is in and does not look well, but he refuses to talk about what happened between him and Kane, reacts with a shamed anger when I press him. He tells me to piss off and is enough like his ordinary self to prevent me from worrying.

  When I get back to my office, Doolan and Akram are parked outside in the unmarked BMW. Doolan is drinking coffee, and he watches me over the rim of his paper cup through the windscreen as I open up my office, walk inside. I do not acknowledge them, know the kind of mind games police like to play. They will wait outside for five, ten minutes, keep me guessing, make me question what they want and why they are here. I put on coffee, look through William Gove’s papers, pretend to myself that their presence outside my window is not a distraction. But I am relieved when I hear the ring of my office bell, keen to get this over with. They carry with them an aura of corruption which leaves me feeling tainted, wanting to wash, take a shower. The quicker they are gone, the better.

  I open my door. Doolan blocks the entrance, Akram behind him. ‘Help you?’ I say.

  ‘Need a moment of your time,’ says Doolan.

  I do not invite them in but Doolan takes a step forward anyway. I can either make way or let things escalate right here, right now. But Gabe is in trouble and I need to play nicely, or as nicely as I am able. I step back, nod them into my office. Akram smiles at me as he passes. At least this time he does not blow me a kiss.

  Doolan is sitting down in front of my desk by the time I follow Akram in, as comfortable and at ease as he would be in his own home. I sit behind my desk, keep my gaze level, steady.

  ‘What do you want?’ I say.

  ‘No small talk?’ says Doolan. ‘No coffee?’

  ‘I’ll give you five minutes,’ I say. I look at my watch. ‘Start talking.’

  Akram laughs softly and Doolan smiles, crosses an ankle on a knee, leans back. My chair creaks under his weight. ‘Seems your client Gabriel McBride might be in even deeper shit than he first thought. Young Rafiq, his victim, is now in a coma.’ He holds a flat hand out, gives it a waggle. ‘Touch and go. Could soon be looking at a murder charge.’

  I do not respond immediately, organise my thoughts. That Gabe is innocent I do not question. But Rafiq has named him as his attacker. And it is hard to retract a statement from a witness who is no longer breathing. If he dies, it is game over for Gabe; he will be looking at twenty years inside.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘Did you plant the knife at my client’s home, or was that Halliday’s people?’

  Doolan does not answer that, just smiles. He has beads of sweat on his forehead as if he has been sprayed with a mist of water.

  ‘And on the subject of Halliday, how much is he paying you to act like his lapdogs? You know he’s a murderer, right? That he destroys the lives of vulnerable young women?’

  ‘Who?’ says Doolan. ‘Don’t know who you’re talking about.’

  Akram is still standing. He thumbs through some papers on my filing cabinet.

  ‘Want to leave them alone?’ I say. He raises his eyebrows as if I have shown myself to be unaccountably touchy.

  ‘Anyway,’ says Doolan, ‘you’ve got business with this, what’d you call him, Halliday? You got business with him, that’s between you. Us? We’re just keeping you up to date with the investigation.’

  ‘Think of it as a courtesy call,’ says Akram.

  ‘Right,’ says Doolan. He stands up, looks about him as if he has only just noticed his surroundings. ‘Nice place you’ve got.’

  Akram laughs and they walk out. I do not get up, watch them leave from behind my desk. After they have gone, I put my head in my hands, try to centre myself. My glow from earlier has gone. Even if I give Halliday what he wants, sign the deeds to my property over to him, it might not help Gabe. If Rafiq dies, he cannot change his story. If he dies, it is all over.

  Eventually I sit up, rub my face, take deep breaths. It is still early and I still have work to do. I check the time; it is barely five. I lock up my office, head back to my car, and go looking for CJ Millar.

  10

  ST BASIL’S COURT is a long, low, one-storey building in a side road off the centre of town. It has a roof which extends out over the concrete walkway in front, supported by white-painted poles, and its row of doors and windows gives it the look of an American motel, though not one where anybody would willingly choose to stay. Outside are two young men in running bottoms and vests sitting with thei
r backs against the wall and smoking a joint. They watch me as I approach but do not say anything. I ask them if they know a CJ Millar, but they just smile. One of them says something to the other which I do not catch, and they laugh. A bald man in glasses and a tracksuit comes out of a door marked Office, looks at me, the two men.

  ‘You know the rules,’ he says. ‘Put it out or piss off.’

  ‘Oh bruv…’ begins one of the men.

  ‘Don’t fucking bruv me,’ the bald man says. ‘And don’t take the piss.’

  One of the men sighs and takes a last drag before chipping the joint off on his trainer and putting the end in his pocket. The bald man turns to me, lifts his chin at me as if I am trespassing.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m looking for a CJ Millar.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He studies me closely. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘It’s between me and her.’

  The bald man does not say anything immediately, pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘You know what this place is?’ he says.

  ‘A hostel. For young people.’

  ‘Young, troubled, vulnerable people. Women. Girls.’ He takes a step towards me. The two young men are looking on with interest; one nudges the other. ‘So, again,’ the bald man says. ‘What do you want with CJ?’

  ‘You want us to get rid of him?’ says one of the young men. His biceps are thinner than my wrist and I wonder what he imagines he could do.

  ‘I’m a lawyer. CJ’s—’ I stop, question the wisdom of announcing her new wealth in front of the present company. ‘I’ve got business with her.’

  ‘Yes,’ says the bald man. ‘What I want to know is, what kind of business?’

  ‘Man in the suit wants to fuck CJ,’ says one of the young men. He says it with a dozy delight and sniggers and I imagine throwing him over a car bonnet, bursting his happy narcotic bubble. But then the penny drops and I realise why the bald man is so hostile, and I immediately think of Luke Gove, and that I am not like him, how could anybody think that I was?

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Listen…’ I nod at the young men. ‘Can we get some privacy?’

  The bald man looks at me then backs to the door he came out of, opens it. I follow him in and as I pass the young men they are laughing again and one of them has already taken out what remains of his joint and is lighting it, squinting stupidly at the flame so close to his face.

  Once the bald man, whose name is Rob, accepts that I am not looking to sexually exploit CJ and that my business is legitimate, he tells me that she is a troubled young lady and that unfortunately at this time there is no place for her here and that as far as he knows she is living on other people’s sofas, or on the street.

  ‘It’s important. This could change her life.’

  ‘Or destroy it.’

  ‘I’ll look after her.’

  The bald man looks at me with scepticism. ‘You have no idea of the problems someone like CJ Millar will cause you,’ he says. ‘She will steal. She will lie. She will try to manipulate you. You’re a lawyer. What do you know about the life of somebody like that?’

  More than you imagine, I am tempted to say, but I do not. Instead I nod, respect his professional concern.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ I say, ‘it is her money. I need to find her.’

  Rob sighs, shakes his head, gives me an address. Tells me that it is a meeting place for young people like CJ, the lost and troubled and disenfranchised. He tells me to be careful, takes a second look at me, tells me not to cause any trouble. He says that suspicion and insults are part of the deal, that we are adults and, given these kids’ experiences, are automatically the enemy. I think of my father. Think of how close I came to a life like CJ’s. I thank him, shake his hand and head back to my car, taking care not to step on the legs of the two young men sprawled outside the building, giggling about something somebody said to somebody else, you wouldn’t fucking believe that shit, bruv, serious.

  The address Rob gives me is the top floor of a tower block long earmarked for redevelopment. Many of its window are boarded up and I have heard that entire floors are now empty, that the electricity supply is intermittent, the water foul. Derelict as it is, it seems less a place to live, more a giant tired monument to our indifference to the poor, needy and vulnerable, our disdainful approach to social housing.

  I take the stairs the fourteen floors up; even if the lift had been working, I would not have trusted it. At the end of the concrete walkway I find the number Rob gave me. The door is open and, although it is still day outside, walking in I seem to pass into a different reality; despite being high up, the feeling is subterranean, some bizarre nether land with little in common with the world most of us accept as normal. It is dark inside, lit only by UV lamps so that my white shirt glows. I walk through the entrance hall, past a large man who nods at me as I go by. He is no more than twenty years old but big, tall and well built, and dark, perhaps Turkish. There are indistinct shapes above doors and in the top corners of rooms, and as I get closer, I see that they are torsos of mannequins, leering out, their faces painted in grotesque ways with gaping lipsticked mouths and wild wide eyes. I can smell marijuana, and music is coming from behind a closed door somewhere. In the main room which I imagine was once intended to be a living room young people are lying on the floor, some talking but most listless, bored. It is five in the afternoon but here it seems a different time, the torpid hours of early morning before the rest of the world has woken up.

  ‘Looking for someone, man?’

  I turn and the man from the entrance hall is standing close to me. He is so tall that I have to look up at him and it feels strange, being dwarfed by a man who is barely out of his teens.

  ‘CJ Millar.’

  ‘Yeah? You want with her?’

  ‘Between me and her. You know where she is?’

  ‘Seen her around. Wait.’

  The people in the room have looked at me but do not seem interested. I stand in the middle of them and I feel like an intruder, a middle-aged man gatecrashing the aftermath of a rave. But I do not have long to wait; the man comes back towing a young girl who does not seem to want to know. He is holding her high up on the arm and she is struggling but she is small, not much above five foot, and he must be six four, five.

  ‘Here he is,’ he says to her.

  ‘You want to let her go?’ I say.

  The man frowns. ‘Said she didn’t want to see no one.’

  ‘So you thought you’d take that choice away from her.’

  He does not understand and I ignore him, say to CJ, ‘I’m sorry to intrude.’

  ‘Fucking want to be.’ She is petite and heavily made up, fake eyelashes and a lot of lipstick. In the gloom it is hard to see detail and she looks more like a little doll, her features exaggerated, eyes dark and teeth bright. She cannot be older than sixteen.

  ‘My name’s Daniel Connell,’ I say. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘Yeah? Why’d you want to do that?’

  ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

  ‘We’re talking ain’t we?’

  ‘In private.’

  She examines me for some moments, then says at last, ‘No. Don’t know you, do I?’

  I will not tell CJ about the money, not in this place, in front of these people. Will not paint a target on her back. I look down at her, try and think from her perspective, imagine this world of uncertainty and threat. She has been dragged here by another man; to her I am the same, big and unknown and potentially dangerous. She is little more than a child. I get down on one knee. She is so short that we are almost the same height, and the ears of the tall guy are a long way above us.

  ‘CJ, I’m a lawyer,’ I say as gently as I can. ‘Your father was left some money. That money is now yours.’

  CJ’s eyes are big and quite lovely underneath her fake lashes and she looks at me for a long time, candidly and openly. They seem older than her face somehow and I wonder what they have witnessed, been forced to see. Eventually she
nods and I stand back up and for some reason I have the urge to hold her hand, as a father would a child’s. But instead I put out an arm, invite her to go first, and together we leave that strange apartment, watched out of the door by the big man who does nothing to stop us.

  CJ is short and she has to walk quickly and busily to keep up with me even though I walk slowly. We find a coffee shop and CJ orders hot chocolate, says she can’t stand coffee, never could, can’t see the point. We sit down and she takes a drink and makes a face, says, ‘Hot,’ then adds, ‘Fuck,’ as if to prove a point, show her edge. In the light I see that her eyes are grey and grave, eyes that have not smiled nearly as often as they should have.

  ‘Said something about money,’ she says.

  ‘Right. It’s going to sound strange, but your father was left a lot of money.’

  CJ laughs, no joy in it. ‘Dad? Who by? He didn’t know nobody with money. Never had any.’

  ‘How did he die?’ I ask. CJ doesn’t answer, shifts so that she is sideways on to me and stares out of the window, into the street. I watch her for some moments, say, ‘CJ?’

  ‘What?’ she says, looking at me as if I have just indecently propositioned her.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say. I do not want to step over any boundaries, ask her questions I have no right to. But she did hear me, says, ‘Cancer. Didn’t take long.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  CJ regards me sceptically for some seconds, then she shrugs, decides to parade her misfortune, show it off. ‘Mum? Died years ago. Broken heart.’

  I frown. ‘Broken heart?’

  But again CJ doesn’t seem to hear me, goes back to staring out of the window of the café where a couple of young men are calling out to each other from opposite sides of the road, laughing. She does not move as she watches them go past, as if they are a threat and she is their prey, as if they might spot her.

  ‘Lost my sister. When I was a baby.’

  CJ picks up her mug again, brings it close to her lips, decides against it. ‘They were left stuck with me. Maybe that’s what killed my mum.’ She laughs, a sad sound, takes a sip of her chocolate. Then she thinks of something and wriggles in her seat, pulls a wallet from her back pocket. She opens it and takes out a photograph. It is small and creased and the corners are turned up and fluffy with age and use. It shows a woman, smiling at the camera. She looks like CJ.