by David Thorne
This morning he arrived at the Goves’ estate unannounced with a van full of uniforms and two ground-penetrating radars. None of the Goves were there and they drove past the house and outbuildings and up a beaten track to the meadowland where Duncan Gove had confronted the men from the power company. The day was warm and, he tells me, to begin with it was enjoyable, a day out from the office. After ten or so passes from the radars which, Hicklin tells me, look like lawnmowers on steroids, they found skeletal remains, buried four or five feet deep. An hour later they had found another two and by three o’clock the radars had picked up four in total.
‘So the boys, we’re all getting excited. Thinking maybe you aren’t so full of shit,’ he says. ‘So we get digging.’ He pauses, takes a breath to calm himself. ‘Know how long it takes to dig down four foot?’
‘Just get to the point,’ I tell him. I may feel some culpability but his outrage is beginning to wear thin, my patience with it.
‘The point?’ He laughs, no humour in it. ‘Barely started before Duncan Gove arrives. What’s his story anyway? Missing a chromosome?’
‘What did he do?’
‘Man was raving, walking in circles, pulling at his hair, tried to take a spade off one of my men. Had to handcuff him to the steering wheel of the van. Sits there sobbing.’
‘And?’
‘And we find bones. In every hole. Graves, I suppose you could call them. Know what they were?’
‘No.’ At this stage I am guessing that it wasn’t what he was expecting. Wasn’t the historical remains of missing young women.
‘Dogs. It’s where Duncan Gove buries his bloody dogs.’
I imagine Hicklin’s face as somebody picks up a skull, shows it to him. Maybe makes the jaw move, the men all laughing, barking in scorn. Again I feel sympathy for him. This is not going to look good on his record. I cannot imagine that the Goves will let it lie.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘Yeah?’ says Hicklin. ‘And I’ll bet you’re sorry your best friend somehow escaped from custody at the exact moment you at last deigned to visit him. Yes?’
I listen to his breathing on the other end of the phone for a couple of seconds. I need to be careful what I say. ‘I’ve already been questioned regarding that,’ I say. ‘No further action.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Not for the moment.’
‘You check the outbuildings?’ I say.
‘The what?’
‘You might want to take a look at Unit Five,’ I say.
This time Hicklin is silent. I wait one, two, three seconds. Then: ‘Tell me you’re joking.’
‘Last time I saw it, it was full of stolen cars.’
Now Hicklin laughs properly, long and hard. ‘You’re a fantasist.’
‘Mercedes, Porsches, Beamers. Full.’
‘I’m hanging up.’
‘I’m serious. Listen, you need something from today. Trust me. You’ll get a result.’
Hicklin hesitates. I can understand. Why would he listen to a man who has not only already sent him on one abortive mission but has, in all likelihood, also colluded in the jailbreak of a wanted murderer?
‘Christ’s sake,’ he says eventually. ‘I’ll call you back.’
Earlier that day I got a call from Ms Armstrong, the social worker who had asked me to promise I would keep an eye out for CJ. She asked me how she was and I told her that she was staying with me, that we, Maria and I, were doing our best to provide a safe and stable environment for her. I expected Ms Armstrong to be pleased, to endorse what I was doing. But instead she was silent for a time, then said:
‘You do understand, Daniel, that the more you offer her, the more she has to lose.’
‘I understand.’
‘I’m not sure that you do. She has never known stability. Do not give her a glimpse of it then take it away.’
‘I don’t intend to.’
‘At some point she will do something you will find hard to tolerate.’
‘She’s a good kid.’
‘She’s a good kid with a history of abuse, criminality and violence. Not something which will vanish overnight.’
Makes two of us, I thought. But instead I said, ‘Ms Armstrong. Please, trust me. I’m looking out for her.’
She sighed. ‘Okay. Okay, Daniel. Just, be mindful. She’s complicated.’
I assured Ms Armstrong as best as I could but after I hung up I could not feel so confident that I was doing the right thing by CJ. Or by Maria. For the last few days I had been hiding out in my office; Maria wanted answers, wanted to know what had happened with Gabe, how he had escaped from custody. I had given her no answers. The atmosphere between us was tense and CJ had picked up on it immediately with the instinct of a hunted animal. She had been keeping to her room, avoiding mealtimes. Was this the safe and stable environment I had promised Ms Armstrong I could provide? Or was I simply introducing more uncertainty into CJ’s life?
I am interrupted from my thoughts by my mobile again. It is Hicklin, and this time his anger is replaced by nothing but disgust.
‘You do know who the Goves are?’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘You know what influence they have. The kinds of people they know.’
‘I know.’
‘There was nothing in that building. Empty.’
‘No cars.’
‘Nothing. Met Luke Gove on the way out. Asked me if I liked my job.’
This is not what I wanted. Hicklin does not deserve this. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘This how you repay what I did for you?’
‘No.’
‘Goodbye, Connell.’
‘Sergeant—’ I say, but Hicklin has hung up; too late. I sit back in my chair, look out of my office window at the street outside. I am a lawyer and much of my business brings me into contact with the police. And I have just lost my one ally on the force.
I am amazed when I walk into the Seven Stars to see that a man is replacing the boarded-up window with glass and that the interior has been repainted. Paddy is behind the bar reading the Racing Post, circling runners with a chewed biro. He is the only person in the place. So far, his rejuvenation project does not seem to have brought in the punters.
He looks up when I walk in, straightens, puts the pen down. ‘Danny. How’ve you been?
‘Good, Paddy. You? Like what you’ve done with the place.’
‘Yeah? Fucking brewery made me do it. Came round, spot visit. Told me the place needed, you know.’ He waves a dismissive hand. ‘Sprucing up. Whatever. Nothing wrong with how it was, ask me.’
‘Still,’ I say.
‘People come here to drink, not look at the fucking scenery. Right?’
I look around the empty bar. People don’t come here full stop, I think. ‘Right.’
‘Told me I had to get a cleaner. Paying fucking Svetlana twenty quid a week to push a fucking hoover about. Should see her. Fit enough body but a face on her like she’s gargled piss.’
I nod, decide not to respond to this one. Seems Paddy’s having a bad day.
‘How’s your old man?’ he says, remembering what in his world passes for manners. ‘Not been in here since, you know.’ He nods across the bar, to the place I imagine Kane and his crew waterboarded my father.
‘He’s all right,’ I say. But I am glad that Paddy brought it up; what happened to my father is the reason that I am here. Not to see the fresh paintwork. ‘What do you know about him? Kane?’ I say.
Paddy nods down at the bar a couple of times, looks at me. ‘Gone in the head, you ask me. Took too many knocks as a kid. But he’s nasty.’ He pauses. ‘Scares the shit out of me, anyway.’
‘Tell me about what happened.’
Paddy shrugs. ‘Already did. Held your old man down in a chair over there, put a towel over his face.’ He shakes his head. ‘Fucking middle of the day, that lot couldn’t give a shit. Laughing while they did it.’ He looks at me. ‘I’d have done something, Danny, tried to stop it…’
&nbs
p; I hold my hand up. ‘It’s okay. Nothing you could have done. So Kane, he started it.’
‘Yeah. Then the rest of his crew. Thought it was funny.’
‘What was Kane doing? While it was happening?’
‘Watching. Laughing. Same as everyone else.’ The guy fixing the window has finished, walks over to the bar. He wipes putty off his fingers on his overalls.
‘Done. Weren’t easy, some of the frame’d gone rotten, had to—’
‘Spare me,’ says Paddy. ‘I ain’t paying you more than we agreed, so save yourself the bother.’
‘Just saying,’ the guy said.
‘Tell it to the missus,’ Paddy says. He opens the cash register, takes out money. Says to me, ‘Thirty notes to replace a piece of glass.’ Says to the guy, ‘Never even asked me to cough.’
‘Do what?’
‘Before you fucked me.’ This amuses Paddy and he laughs wheezily as he counts the notes, hands them to the guy. The guy shakes his head, does not answer. ‘Before you fucked me,’ Paddy says again.
The guy leaves with as much offended dignity as he can manage, Paddy watching him go in belligerent silence. I suspect that thirty pounds is equivalent to a day’s takings. A good day.
‘That’s all?’ I say. ‘Kane. He just watched.’
‘Eh?’ Paddy rouses himself from his dark thoughts of extortionate tradesmen. ‘Yeah. Watched.’ He thinks back. ‘Nah. Weren’t that. He fucking filmed it didn’t he?’
‘Filmed it?’
‘On his mobile. Yeah. Sick cunt.’
I remember Kane filming when Halliday had my hand in the vice, capturing it all on his phone. Think of him filming my father being tortured. Why he feels compelled to keep a record of his brutality I cannot say. But it raises a question: what other acts of violence has he kept on film?
31
THE TRUTH IS that I do not wish to go home, do not want to face Maria’s questions, about Gabe, about his escape from custody; about my slow re-entry into the world of violence and threat, my apparent inability to escape from its gravitational pull despite my promise to her. It is evening when I leave the Seven Stars, and I am debating what to do and where to go when I see that I have a message. It is from Saskia Gove and it says simply, Drink? along with the name of a bar in town.
I believe that Saskia Gove is a dishonest and manipulative woman who treats people with the carelessness of a spoilt child with too many toys. But I cannot help but be fascinated by her; her company is, if nothing else, never dull. Besides, after Hicklin’s call, the mystery of what happened to those three young women is still unanswered. Perhaps she knows something. She is closer to her brothers than anybody else.
Or perhaps this is just a futile and childish justification; perhaps I am simply looking for a temporary escape, from my responsibilities at home and from the guilt I feel at causing Gabe to flee the country, a wanted man. Whichever. I am too tired and wrung out for self-examination, and I want a drink. I tell myself that is all I want. I get into my car and head into town.
‘By the end, it just felt like I was bailing out a boat which was sinking anyway. No matter how hard we emptied it, more water came in. Futile. Heartbreaking but futile.’
‘How long were you over there for?’
‘Four years, just shy. You arrive believing you can make a difference. You leave wondering what the point was.’
‘Where?’
‘Sudan mostly. You think, if there’s enough of us, we can turn it around. Pull up in Land Rovers, trucks full of grain, medical supplies, think that’ll be enough. Then you see a refugee camp the size of a city. And it’s just…’ Saskia jabs at her drink with her straw. ‘Nothing anyone can do.’
I watch Saskia Gove across the table. She looks tired and drawn, the memories of her time working as a nurse for Médecins Sans Frontières perhaps still weighing heavily on her. I try to picture her in the middle of a dirty camp, hot dusty wind in her hair, surrounded by hundreds of desperate, supplicating people, doing her best to make a difference. The image that comes into my head is instead of a Renaissance painting, some northern vision of hell with a beautiful, serene saint in the centre radiating love and goodness. Saskia Gove is a woman of so many contradictions that I have no real idea of her, of who she is.
‘Fuck it,’ she says, and looks up at me. She smiles and her face changes, her eyes alive and full of devilry. ‘Know what happened today?’
‘No,’ I lie.
‘Po-lice,’ she says. ‘Came to visit.’
‘Why?’
‘Looking for bodies. Of women, apparently. Now, Daniel Connell, why would they be doing that?’
I try to meet her eyes. They are laughing, amused, and I wonder how much she knows. ‘No idea.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she says. ‘Should have seen Luke. Went fucking nuts. Told the sergeant there he’d have his job. Probably will, too.’
‘What happened?’
‘Started digging over where Duncan lost it, shot up those men’s car.’ She closes her eyes briefly and laughs as if her dysfunctional family is a source of humour. I guess laughter is one way of dealing with it. ‘Christ.’
‘Find anything?’
‘Duncan’s dogs. He loves his dogs, Duncan. More than people. Always buries them up there. Oh yes, it was quite a day.’
I look around the bar, buy myself some time. I need to get my story straight in my head. I had nothing to do with what happened, with the police turning up at the Goves’ estate. I act for William Gove. I know nothing about any missing women. I have had two drinks and I am tired and it is an effort to keep track. The bar is dark and busy, groups of men and women talking, laughing loudly. Saskia and I are in a booth at the back. I guess people must think we are a couple.
‘How’s your girlfriend?’ Saskia says.
I am momentarily thrown. ‘Fine.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she says again. ‘You want to talk about it?’
‘About what?’ I wonder if Saskia Gove has some magical power, some diabolical means of reading my thoughts.
‘You. Out with me. Friday night. Shouldn’t you be with her?’
‘You asked me,’ I say. It sounds weak, the sad justification of a pitiful philanderer.
‘Yes.’ Saskia nods. ‘Yes, I did.’ She finishes her drink, holds it up, smiles. ‘Another?’
I should go home. But I cannot face the idea. I should not be here, not with this woman. I shrug, push my glass across to her. ‘One more.’
While Saskia is at the bar, I lean back in the booth and will myself not to think of what I am doing, of the mess I am in. A man is talking to a woman near me. The woman is pretty and is sucking on a straw while he speaks to her, and I think that I have heard somewhere that this means she is interested in him, wants to sleep with him. The music is loud and she has to lean in to hear what he is saying. I watch them until Saskia comes back with drinks, slides into the booth.
‘Tell me about her,’ she says. ‘Cheers.’
‘Maria?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s not speaking to me.’
‘Why not?’
The woman I have been watching laughs at something the man says to her, throws her head back, shows her throat. Something about lionesses willingly exposing weakness to males they desire. I realise that I have not answered Saskia’s question.
‘Promised her I’d stay out of trouble.’
‘Oh?’ Saskia lifts an eyebrow. ‘What kind of trouble?’
‘The violent kind.’
Saskia widens her eyes, pretends to be shocked. ‘Violence? Tell me more.’
‘Friend of mine, framed for murder. Kind of, yeah, my fault. So, helped him get away.’
‘And is that something they teach you at law school?’
‘Not exactly.’ I laugh.
‘So she’s not talking to you.’
‘And I don’t want to go home.’ The words sound childish and I am surprised that I have said them, that they came from my mouth. Saskia smiles. ‘Not jus
t that,’ I say, though I do not know why. ‘Don’t want CJ to see what’s happening.’
‘CJ?’
‘Girl who’s staying with us. She’s a good girl but, her life. It’s been hard.’
‘And she’s staying with you?’
‘Took her in.’
‘Daniel Connell. You are full of surprises. Aiding and abetting a murderer, now you’re taking in charity cases.’
‘Because of your dad,’ I say. I am talking too much, saying too much.
‘Oh?’
‘One of the people he left money to. Her dad and mum are dead, so she gets it.’
‘Okay.’ Saskia nods slowly. Her eyes are very dark and for a moment they look like black pools, holes into nothing, no longer a person. ‘She had a hard life?’
‘Her sister disappeared.’
‘Her sister.’
‘Right.’
Behind me I hear a loud laugh and I think for a moment that I am at a circus and the laughter is from one of the freaks, a grotesque person kept caged for visitors to gape at. I do not know why I would think that. I look across at Saskia.
‘What did you put in my drink?’
She smiles. ‘This and that.’
My scalp tingles as it would if I was scared except the tingle is warm and pleasant. Even though Saskia has drugged me part of me does not care and I smile back at her. ‘Feels strange.’
‘But good, right?’ she says.
‘Kind of.’
‘So you’ve worked out my father’s will?’
I nod, cannot help but feel pleased with myself. Saskia looks beautiful, her face shimmering as if in the light of a flickering candle although there is no candle.
‘You think you have,’ she says. ‘Don’t be so sure.’
‘Is it a secret?’ I say and I want to reach out and take her hand. Instead she reaches across and puts her hand on my cheek, strokes it with her thumb. She seems to leave a trail, a warm buzz on my skin where she has touched me. I close my eyes, lean back, soft cushions. I feel myself drifting away, warm night sky, floating over a huge stadium, thousands of people, an ocean of them listening to the music which I also know is playing in the bar as I sit opposite Saskia Gove and she strokes my cheek, leaving a warm buzz on my skin where she has touched me. Somebody lifts me, a man, perhaps the doorman, my face against his shoulder, smell of leather and aftershave, but I cannot open my eyes and I feel like a child carried to a beloved bed, lights and sounds beyond my eyelids I cannot understand. Walking, a rhythm, whoever carries me. Put down, laid down, a car door closes, a car door opens, a car door closes. Movement and now a plane, not a plane, still a car, taking off, banking and up, up, up into the sky for ever.
