Patchwork Man: What would you do if your past could kill you? A mystery and suspense thriller. (Patchwork People series Book 1)

by D. B. Martin

  ‘I wasn’t the one getting personal.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have crossed the line. It was inappropriate of me. And I’m not usually so volatile either.’

  She studied me in silence for what seemed like hours, but was mere seconds in the scheme of things. I wondered what was going through her mind. What motives she was attributing to me and my tactical withdrawal now. The inclination to run – like I had when Jaggers had set Win and me up – was overwhelming. I was making as much of a mess of things as I had then, it seemed. It was why I’d always left the social niceties to Margaret – not that they would have applied in this situation. Kat surprised me by seeming almost nonchalant when she eventually replied.

  ‘OK, let’s call a truce, but will you please stay on the case – for Danny’s sake?’

  ‘That may be difficult.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s complicated,’ I added in my defence.

  ‘I know, but you’re the best – really.’ She winked impishly and I couldn’t keep up with the lightning mood change again, ‘even if you are old.’ Despite my confusion I laughed at her cheek. The difference between her and Margaret was disquieting, and I knew now why I felt so empty when I thought of Margaret not being there to greet me when I arrived home and when I slid into bed to find her side smooth and cold. I simply didn’t feel anything, whereas just an hour in this woman’s company had made me rage, lust and want to share the most intimate of secrets. Whatever I felt about the case or the revelations it might possibly bring, I already knew I couldn’t simply walk away any more. She had me hooked and if that meant taking the case, I would have to take the case – God help me.

  ‘Maybe, but whatever passes between us must be kept completely confidential, then – or I shall have to regretfully withdraw.’ I knew I was lying, but I hoped she wouldn’t realise that. ‘I shouldn’t have kissed you. It’s nothing personal.’ It was though – very personal indeed.

  ‘And how about what I might be feeling?’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about feelings, I was talking about truces. Feelings, or anything even approaching them, come a long way after that – surely? Of course, we could simply forget what happened and move on, if you prefer. Or if I agreed to stay on the case, just be colleagues.’ I held my breath and hoped it didn’t show – that and the nervous sweat trickling down my back and the bubbling cauldron in my chest, about to simmer over.

  ‘And will you stay on the case?’

  ‘It would depend on what we agreed, I guess.’

  ‘What we agreed ...’ She paused, eyeing me reflectively. ‘And what would you say if I opted for us just to be colleagues?’

  ‘Damn and fuck, probably,’ I replied, marvelling at myself – the cool-headed man turned lunatic. It came out spontaneously and I wasn’t sure I’d said it aloud until she turned her full beam smile on me, white teeth gleaming like pearls against ebony.

  ‘Maybe later, but not right now,’ she laughed. She was about to add to it and I wondered how little later it would have been if my phone hadn’t rung and the Chambers number flashed up on the display.

  ‘That is damn and fuck!’ I commented, suddenly ridiculously light-hearted. I answered the call – it must be urgent. They’d had instructions to only ring me if it was.

  ‘Mr Juste, there’s a man here asking to see you.’

  ‘What about – haven’t you told him I’m not available?’

  ‘I did sir,’ Gregory’s mournful tone was offended, ‘but he said you would want to speak to him. He says his name is Win and you’ll know who he is.’

  ‘What is it?’ Kat hissed, coming back across the room and bringing her heady perfume with her.

  I wished she’d stayed where she was so I could think. I rapidly gave Gregory my instructions and ended the call before he could hear that I had a woman with me.

  ‘Trouble, I think.’ I replied.

  10: Win

  I made it successfully back to Chambers without thinking about Kat and her curving surfaces again. The possibility of having to face my brother after so long amply filled my thoughts instead. I slipped in by the basement entrance to the building, edging past the trainee’s bone-rattler of a bike, slanted against the corridor wall leading to the clerk’s office, and efficiently bypassed the reception area that way. I’d always disliked it because it reminded me obliquely of the basement cellar of my gang initiation even after all these years, but it did serve a purpose in extremis. Historically the briefs – myself, Jeremy Squires, Heather Trinder and Francis Allner – generally only took the back way in when we needed to avoid the press if we’d taken a high profile case and had to remain low profile ourselves, or the outcome had been less than pleasing and we wanted to slip in and lick our wounds before mounting the return assault.

  When I’d first joined the Chambers as a junior in 1983 and there were three senior QCs and five juniors, that had happened with disconcerting regularity. Dead men’s shoes had given me my chance and it had all changed. In the mid-80s, old Jowett, our then Head, had got his chance at the red dressing gown and Chambers recruited the redoubtable Geoffrey Conan, a QC from the Northern Circuit to take the lead in his place. Already known to be ruthless, he worked his way through our fee books like a vulture on a feast, irascibly directing the clerks who to nurture and who to let wither on the vine before moving on to repeat the process elsewhere, eventually taking all but Francis of our QCs with him. He became privately known by his methods later – Conan the Barbarian – slaughtering the innocents and plundering the rest until he settled on his laurels, taking only the most prime steaks of cases. I didn’t care. Our rape and pillage was the reason I managed to get my foot in the door – nobody that I was then.

  The clever selection process streamlined not only the silks, but also their failure rate. After an initially shaky start as the Conan whirlwind ran amok through Chambers, we emerged in 1988 punch drunk but keen to also establish continuity – hence the partnership between Heather, Francis, Jeremy and I was formed in a somewhat maverick departure from more normal Chambers’ arrangements. It was my limited form of family I suppose – a responsibility to my fellows I’d avoided until then. As our first spectacular success a year later turned us around completely, the need to avoid making a statement about a lost case was almost unheard of these days and the basement route had fallen into disuse other than for stealth or storage. There was an element of both involved now.

  I left my folder behind an old filing cabinet bursting with aged cases, now finalised and their pink ribbons greying to decay. I couldn’t be certain, but Win’s unexpected appearance suggested there was a link – no matter how nebulous – between the case and him. I’d anticipated this awkward moment of confrontation for years – almost daily when I’d first heard he’d been released in my early twenties – but then as time went by and the silence had deepened, it had dwindled to the occasional anxious moment, and ultimately almost forgotten. In all my years as Lawrence I hadn’t tried to hide, simply be economical with the truth. I was easily enough found if anyone applied themselves to tracking the trail, I’d merely buried the first clue to its start. Kenneth Lawrence Juss – Kenny – had become Lawrence A Juste, moving in a different world and an incomparably higher social strata than Kenny could ever have done; hiding in plain sight. I never elaborated on the newly claimed middle initial, just made it official by deed poll and the imagined man became actual. Atticus Finch was at my core but that was mine alone to savour too.

  At times I could hardly believe that in all those years, and even when my name became high profile in my profession, no-one apart from Margaret had bothered to trace the man behind the legal mask – yet they hadn’t. It suggested that maybe Margaret had done more work behind the scenes than simply uncovering my roots. Perhaps she’d also made efforts on my behalf to bury them too, distracting unwanted attention away from me by instead providing interest in what she was doing with her charitable works and good causes. Perhaps Margaret Juste, with her queenly bearing an
d apparently unassailable confidence in what she did, had created her own smokescreen to assist mine. I’d never considered that possibility before.

  Other little incidents not of note then slipped back now. I’d turned the purse strings over to her when I’d overlooked paying a bill and we’d embarrassingly received a final demand from the same utilities company I was defending in court that day. Margaret waved it at me over breakfast, bright-eyed and perfectly coiffed; silk and lace-clad, even though it was six-thirty in the morning and I was still struggling to come to terms with the day and what I had to achieve in it.

  ‘It arrived yesterday. A Freudian slip?’ she teased archly. I took the red printed bill from her. It was labelled OVERDUE all over it – completely over-done. And it blew my argument for me continuing to oversee the finances completely out of the water. ‘Or have we gone bankrupt overnight?’ A reference to a misogynistic joke I’d made at some boring function she’d coerced me into going to in the name of appearance. I said that if a wife was let loose on her husband’s bank account they’d be bankrupt within days.

  ‘Funny – and clever – but not true.’ I dropped it on the table. The red print was the same shade as her finger nails. ‘I’ll sort it out later – when I’ve got time.’

  She came round behind me and ran her finger nails through my hair. It had an odd effect on me, making me excited and yet want to squirm simultaneously. If she’d been less cool, less clever – less perfectly manicured – I might have wanted to take her back to bed. But I didn’t. As soon as the urge clicked on, her cool perfection flicked it back off. You didn’t romp with my wife, you admired from afar.

  ‘But you don’t have time – poor darling. Why don’t I sort it out – all of it?’ It was easier to agree than repeat the argument again. She was like that – Margaret. Wore you down without you understanding how, until she was in control of everything, and you in control of nothing – probably not even yourself. The Lawrence Juste I’d perceived as being totally aloof and utterly self-contained had over the years gradually abdicated power thus without really knowing the woman behind the silk and sophistication, or what her innermost motivations were.

  I suppose we never really know anyone fully – even ourselves. There is always some unexpected reaction, some unanticipated emotion which can trip us up when we least expect it. My feelings about this case, the boy and his social worker, were seeming to be of that ilk for me. I hardly dare attempt to categorise what my feelings about Win and his part in my past life might turn out to be. For the moment though, they were suspicion. Danny’s revelations about his mother’s involvement with the man he’d called the tallyman and his cronies had sounded warning alarms. The similarity of the name could simply have been coincidence, but someone answering to the description of Win turning up at Chambers made that increasingly unlikely. I wanted time to think through how to deal with him and I certainly didn’t want the case notes to be readily to hand if he became violent or wanted to know what I perceived his involvement to be.

  Sidling upstairs, I mentally thanked the nod to old-fashioned values by retaining the plush stair carpet Jeremy had insisted on. It deadened my step and allowed me to make it to my office without being remarked on by any of my colleagues, despite Heather’s door being ajar and the sickly perfume of lilies spilling from it, and Francis’ being flung wide open to allow the stink of his cigarillos to battle the lilies. Francis was on the phone, bent deep over the desk as he listened to the plaintiff on the other end, absent-mindedly tapping non-existent ash off the end of the current cigarillo, already almost consumed to its butt. There was no sign of Heather, other than her robes draped elegantly across the client’s chair opposite her desk, and Jeremy I already knew was in court. I edged past both open doors and through my own with a sigh. Shutting the door to my sanctuary, I pulled the blind down to darken the room. For more than the stealth of my entrance, I was glad Chambers had retained its other century grandeur even if it had divested itself of its old reputation for fiasco. The velvet of the blind was heavy and felt satisfyingly opulent, falling into rounded folds. Involuntarily I thought of Kat again and had to shake my head to clear it of her. I crossed to my desk and perched behind it. Its squat solidity grounded me.

  Win.

  I knew a little of what he’d done after he’d left prison. Apprehension had encouraged me to keep tabs on him for a while but that had tailed off to complacency as the years passed and so had the stream of information about Win’s criminal career. He’d had a few early periods of gainful employment – miscellaneous jobs with euphemistic titles such as ‘security personnel’ or ‘debt enforcement operative’ – but I knew as well as any that he was merely a glorified bouncer at best – or at worst, a gang boss’s heavy. The last photo I’d seen of him was in his mid-thirties, the first intimations of corpulence and baldness I’d noticed in the images from his twenties already making him seem much older. The tell-tale scar was still apparent though. Whatever he looked like now, I would know as soon as I saw him if my brother was facing me or not.

  Apart from anxiety over the case, what did I feel about him? What did I feel about any of my siblings – or my parents – so far into my past? I’d never asked myself that before. It was alien for me to examine emotions in relation to people – especially people not even currently demanding my attention, but people from a life so long behind me. There wasn’t time to sentimentalise over memories or try to rationalise reasons for actions in order to defend or refute guilt. It had to be an immediate gut reaction – like I’d felt with Kat. The gut reaction to Win was to recoil; fear, guilt and anger all swilling around in the vat of acid that was my stomach. The one I didn’t understand was the anger – until the prospect of his presence was facing me and it all came spilling out – the cellar initiation, the coercion to be part of his gang, the night Tony was stabbed, the blood everywhere – and Jaggers. When I thought of Win, the deep rumbling in my gut also reminded me of all that, and I was angry; with the events that had taken me to the home, with the parents who’d been unable to look after me as child expects to be cared for, and with the brother who’d used me as a pawn in his bid for power.

  Before I could dissect and categorise the various culpabilities of the people in my past, the phone rang, vociferous and insistent. I couldn’t avoid answering it – the clamour set my teeth on edge, and it signified something I could no longer avoid however many times I sneaked in the basement and up the stairs. I picked up the receiver and Gregory’s hushed monotone announced that the person who wanted to see me was still downstairs waiting. He didn’t need to ask if I wanted to see him. He had a knack of making it clear what his briefs were expected to do when he went through his charade of asking for an instruction.

  ‘Send him up. I’m ready for him.’ It was further from the truth than anything I’d ever claimed in my life until then. I sucked in air and tried to be calm, but all the routines Margaret had taught me were useless. The anxiety I balled in my fist ready to fling away remained there, a solid mass of fury. Perhaps having a weapon to hand wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

  The door opened slowly and respectfully at first as Gregory maintained his pretence of servility, but the burly figure behind him barged past when the door was just ajar. It bounced back on its hinges and slammed against the wall.

  ‘So this is where you’ve been hiding, is it?’ I didn’t need to see the scar. The voice was as loud and strident as it had been when he was denying beating up the old woman, and I’d been running away. The sound of the Croydon I remembered – common, coarse and over-loud.

  ‘I’ve not been hiding anywhere.’

  ‘What happened to Kenny then if you ain’t been hiding?’

  ‘Nothing happened to Kenny. He’s fine.’

  ‘Pah!’ He straightened his shoulders and was about to carry on when he realised Gregory was still lingering behind him, face animatedly interested in the way I knew meant he was waiting for snippets of scandal. Win swung round and gave him the fi
nger. ‘Piss off then,’ he said. Gregory looked at me poker-faced and for a moment incongruously I wanted to laugh and reiterate Win’s instruction. The number of times I would have liked to have said it to him over the years all had their satisfaction in that one haughtily offended but defeated look.

  I made do with, ‘You can go Gregory, thank you.’ Briefly my enjoyment was unabated, but then the door closed behind him with an officious click and Win and I were alone. I expected him to start on a stream of abuse and I’d tried to mentally prepare myself for it. It wasn’t that I hadn’t got a good grasp of the language of the gutter – even become used to it. I’d learnt it over the years from the children’s home onwards and through my many kerb-crawling, debased, filth-regurgitating clients – of all sexes and walks. Verbal abuse didn’t bother me, and strangely, I now found, physical abuse didn’t either; even Win didn’t. It was emotion that terrified me.

  He stood quietly and pensively studying me; eyes raking my face and assessing my body, posture, clothing. Summing me up. I did the same back. I saw a balding, chronically obese man who appeared to be well into his late sixties, but of course I knew I was a good fifteen years out on that. Perspiring face, florid cheeks and heavy jowls folding over that still intensely white V-shaped indentation. His breathing was laboured. Gregory had obviously made him climb the stairs instead of allowing him the comfort of the lift.

  What did he see in me? Composed and in control, professionally distanced, sleek, groomed and urbane, I imagined – whatever churned in the depths of my soul – this stranger who was a brother; until the façade slipped.

  ‘You’re a slimy little asshole! You set me up and left me to it!’ It was said quietly and calmly but with absolute malice. I let it sink in – the composure surprising me to begin with. Then it registered. His words cut through the pulled blinds and the tumult of confusion and slid a jagged knife across my nerves, severing all control. I’d barely regained some equilibrium from the disturbing sensations Kat had awoken in me before I’d had Win’s appearance thrust on me. I wished Kat had come with me from the police station instead of marshalling her real-life child charge and leaving me to face this beast from the past alone. Ridiculous, I knew. I barely knew her and had just coolly told her feelings weren’t involved and here I was wishing she was here to help me with mine. Who or what was Lawrence Juste now? I sensed I was about to start finding out.