by D. B. Martin
‘Dunno about that, but plod told me I’d be for it if I didn’t cough.’ She turned her head and ended the comment with a cloud of smoke straight into my face. I was caught between coughing and laughing at the irony. I’d never seen humour in my cases before – only irritation and frustration. This would normally have fallen into both categories in the past.
‘What did the police tell you should be reported to me?’
‘Him.’ I shook my head. ‘Him – the tallyman you want to know about. Danny told me you asked.’
‘Ah – what about him?’
‘I know him – or at least the bloke you’ve been calling the tallyman.’ Hardly a revelation. I wanted far more but she simply stubbed out her cigarette and lit another.
‘And does that have a bearing on the attack on the old lady?’
‘Well,’ she glanced shiftily at Kat. ‘If you can’t pay him one way, you pay him other ways – if you know what I mean? Well, we had a bit of a fall-out and he got shitty with me – wouldn’t take payment any other way. Only wanted cash. He said I’d regret it if I didn’t pay up proper.’
‘Did he beat you up, Mrs Hewson? The tallyman, I mean.’
‘Nah, not like that. It were just a bit of a misunderstanding.’
‘And why do you think this has something to do with Danny?’
‘I didn’t say it did. Plod said that.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘While ago.’
‘Before Danny got into trouble?’ She shrugged. ‘What did you fall out over then?’
‘Danny.’
‘What about Danny?’
Nothin’ to do with this.’ She pursed her lips and stared at me.
‘This tallyman – a name would help.’ She shook her head.
‘You’ll have to get that for yourself. I ain’t naming names.’
‘But you know it?’
‘Which one?’
‘Which one? There’s more than one?’
‘Oh, yeah. Take yer pick. They run areas – for the main man.’
‘The main man? Well, how about the specific one you’re referring to – and how they might be involved with Danny’s predicament?’
‘It were just a misunderstanding, but it went too far – that’s all.’
‘He set up the attack? On the old lady?’
‘Yeah, well, maybe.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I didn’t pay up the cash, because he’s a mean bastard, because he likes beating old ladies – I dunno! To get me back in line, I s’pose. He said Danny were meant to just push her over and run with her bag to the other bloke. She’d been to the post office for her pension, see? It was the same amount as me rent. But he came in all fists swinging and she didn’t have a chance. Poor old cow – she weren’t a bad old girl neither.’
‘So why was there the change of plan?’
‘Dunno. We fell out – like I said. But he done the dirty on me and that ain’t fair. Ain’t fair to land the kid with it neither.’
‘The kid – your son, Danny?’
‘The kid – Danny, yeah.’
‘So why are you here telling us this now?’
‘I want you to do something about it – like she was going to.’
‘She?’
‘Margaret.’
‘You knew my wife?’
‘She were going to see Danny all right – she promised me.’
‘When?’
‘Last time I saw her.’
‘And when was that?’
‘About a month ago – just after the mugging. She said she’d got plans and just go with it – whatever they said. It’d be OK. But it weren’t, were it? And now she’s snuffed it – sorry, I knew she was your missus but what about Danny – and the rest of the cash I got to find for him? That was all meant to be sorted too.’
‘Which him is it this time?’
‘The main man.’
‘And who is the main man?’
‘Jesus,’ she lit another cigarette and blew the smoke at me, pulling a face as if I was stupid. ‘Him.’
‘I can’t help unless I know who “him” is, can I?’
‘You’re meant to be the smart one – you work it out.’
‘This isn’t helping Danny much, Mrs Hewson. You say you have something to tell us, and then you tell us nothing. Help me with a hint or two.’ I felt pissed off with her and it showed.
‘I had something to tell you – but not her as well.’ She glowered at Kat. ‘You’ll just get me banged up.’ She stared at Kat and they looked as if they were about to square up against each other.
‘Shall I leave?’ Kat asked stonily.
‘No.’ I wanted to smack Danny’s scrawny bitch of a mother round her fag-ash face, but professional distance did prevail this time. ‘Whatever Mrs Hewson has to tell me can surely be said in front of his social worker, can’t it?’ I looked coolly at the hollow-eyed tart with distaste. We locked eyes and again there was that strange challenging stare.
‘Oh yeah, social worker – yeah. Piss off.’ She got up to go, then seemed to think better of it. ‘All right. Here’s your hints. Posh voice. Put a bag over me head once. I didn’t argue after that. Me brother knows more about him than I do. I did a bit of stuff for him before the kids, now all I do is pay him back. I don’t mess with him unless I have to.’
‘And your brother is?’
‘Win. Talk to Win. I’m not saying no more.’ The shock wave running through me left me nauseous. She picked up her bag and moved towards the door, tottering slightly on her stilettos, taking a cloud of cigarette smoke with her. My head reeled.
‘Wait,’ I called as she was about to leave. ‘You say Win is your brother...’
‘Yeah.’
‘Win who?’
‘You know.’ She made it sound obvious. I calculated her age. She looked early thirties, but worn? Not Sarah, Binnie, Mary or even Jill or Emm – way too young. She was lying – or winding me up.
‘The Win I’m thinking of is a lot older than you. Are you sure?’ Kat watched me strangely. She didn’t know yet who Win was. I’d not named any actual names in my potted history – just mine – but I was going to have to.
‘Me big bruvver. I’m the baby – the last one.’
‘And your surname before you married?’
‘Juss.’ She took a deep drag and replied through a cloud of smoke as she exhaled, smile crooked and sardonic. She left behind the smoke screen. Kat ran after her but I just sat there, allowing the smoke and nausea to enshroud me.
‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ Kat said when she returned after signing Mrs Hewson out.
‘Yes, it’s bad.’ I replied.
‘Do you want to tell me how bad?’ she asked timidly.
‘Not really – but I’d better.’
So I did – not all of it, but enough of the rest of it for Kat to understand just how unsuitable it was for me to still be representing Danny. I gave her the names this time too – Win, Sarah, Georgie, Binnie, Mary, Pip, Jim, Jill, Emm. And the unknown one – who’d just apparently dropped her atomic bomb and left. Far more than I’d ever told Margaret, but then Margaret had gone and found it out for herself. Enough was still too much for her at this point in our relationship, but it was necessary for her to understand. Amazingly it didn’t seem to change her mind about me. I took solace in that, even if the life that had been becoming lighter seemed to descending the steps into the dark of the rat-hole again.
‘I’ll have to go and see them all now.’
‘Them?’
‘My long-lost siblings, and my long-hidden past.’
‘Why – because Danny’s mother claims to be your sister? The one you never met because you were taken to the home, you mean?’
‘Maybe ... possibly.’ The idea was more than distasteful. It was revolting – as was Win. What other monstrosities would I find on the route backwards? ‘But no, because of the man who put the bag over her head. She and Win are just the messengers. He’s
the message.’
13: Wild Card
I didn’t have to wait long to find out more from the other messenger. Win appeared on my doorstep two days later as I left for Chambers. In the meantime I’d spent much of my free time thinking mainly about three things; Danny, the list and Kat. The thoughts were by turn bemused, confused and overwhelmed. If I could, I would have fixed on Kat and the exhilarating tumult of emotions she provoked in me, from the beat of passion to the general hum of excitement deep inside my ribcage, despite the risk she also presented. Everything felt fresher and brighter with her on my mind. The birds sang louder, the cut grass smelt sharper, the sky was bluer. The same warm contentedness as of early childhood on a summer’s day suffused me with good humour and optimism.
Then I remembered why and how she was present in my life and my good mood plummeted into the churning morass of unease that formed my stomach. The problem was, I couldn’t think of one without the other playing tag. It was all so inextricably linked there was no separating it. My habitual ability to box things and only examine them when need or desire urged me to seemed to have deserted me with their arrival.
‘Nice gaff,’ he commented, appearing behind me like an apparition. I swung round, shocked to find him mere inches from me, breath stinking. Apart from marvelling at how a cumbersome brute could approach with such stealth, I wondered how he’d got my address. I might be in the public eye but there were some things I’d always managed to keep very private. My home was top of the list with my past.
‘How did you get this address?’ I asked, cool momentarily deserting me.
‘I can get all sorts of things, little brother, including you,’ he laughed. ‘I got plenty of ways of finding out stuff – better even than the filth.’ I consciously controlled the urge to barge past him and walk away. He was right. He knew ‘stuff’ that I wanted to find out about too.
‘So what do you want?’ I asked, with more equanimity.
‘What you offering?’
‘I’m not into games, Win. I played enough of those as a child. Why have you come to see me again?’
‘Seems we both might have things to talk about.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean Jaggers.’
Poker-faced, nevertheless my heart somersaulted as it always did when in a weak moment I thought about him. ‘What about him?’
‘I want to know what really happened.’
‘Information has its price, Win.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He waited, lounging against the wall, blocking my way. The house opened straight onto a cobbled mews, Georgian splendour and all. The price of an expensive address was also no frontage – the big city cost too much to give you the luxury of a garden. I could have backed up and gone in the opposite direction, but I didn’t. I waited, bloody-minded and irritated. He broke before I did. So the hard man wasn’t so hard any more. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in, little brother?’
‘Why would I want to?’
‘Because you wouldn’t want to hear my stuff out in the street where the jocks can hear it too.’ He indicated over my shoulder. There was a man loitering at the far end of the mews. He could have been a hack, or simply a nosy passer-by, but I couldn’t take the chance.
‘Come on then.’ I opened up reluctantly and led him inside as far as the study. He was in no hurry to share the ‘stuff’ I wouldn’t have wanted to hear in public, but I sensed it would come without too much probing. After all, he’d sought me out, hadn’t he? He must badly want to know about Jaggers. I made up my mind that he would have to tell me what I needed to know before I would satisfy his need to know, and began to feel complacent. He picked up the photo of Margaret and studied it. My heart skipped a beat when I realised I’d also carelessly left Danny’s case folder on the desk after leafing through it again last night. I was relieved that the photo seemed to have temporarily distracted Win.
‘Margaret – your missus?’
‘Yes, that was her.’
‘Very upper class.’ It was dismissive, as if upper class was worthless. I felt an unexpected spurt of righteous anger on Margaret’s behalf. Perhaps the first genuine emotion I’d felt about her since she’d died. She might have been what Win scorned as upper class, but I’d never known her to use that privilege in any way other than for others’ benefit. The sheer volume of charity work she’d committed to even before we’d married had spoken for that. It also occurred to me that I wasn’t quite sure exactly what Margaret’s genealogical pedigree was, other than entirely suitable. I took the photo from him and set it back in place, sweeping the folder off the desk as I did so and stuffing it into a drawer.
‘Classy rather than upper class. And she did a lot of good,’ was all I said.
He made a face at me. ‘Interesting. You’ll have to tell her that. I expect she’d like to know her faggot husband thought the world of her.’
I glared at him but resisted a retort. He was just trying to wind me up. Down to business. ‘So now you’ve gained the inner sanctum of my study, what did you want to tell me in it?’
‘Oh, no tea or niceties, little brother?’ He sneered. ‘That’s what you hot-shot lawyers and upper class toffs do, isn’t it? Drink tea and toss each other off.’
‘I’m not a lawyer, I’m a barrister, and I don’t toss anyone off. I do sometimes get pissed off, though, and you’re making me that right now. What do you want?’
‘So you don’t remember her then?’
‘Remember who?’
He changed tack suddenly. ‘Do you want to see what they look like now?’
‘Who?’
‘Who?’ He spat it at me. ‘Your brothers and sisters, you nonce.’ It was all I could do not to take him by the scruff of the neck and heave him out of the front door, prowling hack, or no, but Atticus prevailed. Sticks and stones. Keep your dignity, stay with your plan. Find out what it is he’s itching to tell you and then get him out of your life. Instead I replied laconically, perching on the edge of the desk and barricading it from further attack by him.
‘And how am I going to see that?’ In answer he produced his wallet and pulled out a wad of photographs.
‘Call me sentimental, if you like, but I keep them all here. There’s the twins.’ Two carefully groomed women in their mid-thirties peered back at me. One rather more over-done than the other.
‘Jill and Emm?’
‘Yeah. Jill’s still all right. Emm’s a bit hoity-toity. Told me to call her Emilia now she’s a businesswoman.’ I assumed the overdone one was probably Jill in that case. The face I allocated to Emm was sleekly coiffed and stylish, rather than obvious. The plump toddlers I’d indulgently tickled and prodded until they squealed with laughter whilst avoiding their podgy retaliations were far removed from these two strangers. Pink-cheeked, wispy-headed and with rose buds for mouths, you take cherubic charm for granted when you are merely a child yourself, intent only on the tumble of boyish mischief and avoiding Pop’s belt. The vast gap of not only years but shared experience hit me as I looked at the two women who meant nothing to me. I handed him back the photo and he replaced it with another. I didn’t need to ask – it had to be Binnie. I could see the same dimple in her cheek. The one I’d always annoyed her by poking at until she slapped at my fingers and called me a little tyke. ‘In the bin’ I’d taunt back, mischievously, ‘stick it in the bin Binnie’s got in her cheek!’ She enjoyed the tease, but hated the spotlighting of what she considered to be one of her flaws. She was always like that – smiley but easily turned. Instinctive curiosity beat detachment momentarily.
‘How’s life treated Binnie?’ I asked. She looked happy in the photograph, fifty-ish, grey-ish and plump-ish, but content. A tribe of Indians were hunting in the garden behind her as she stood guard over their makeshift wigwam.
‘She’s OK. Got three kids and seven grandkids. They seem to just pop out like peas.’ He held out his hand for the photograph. I felt a sudden desire to keep it; to see the real person and tease her about he
r dimple again. I’d liked Binnie most because of her capriciousness – the kid-like inclination to be kindly one minute and dismissive the next – perhaps because of all of my siblings she had been most like me in that; able to join in and opt out at will. We shared that as a trait, and the ability to box things when they were unacceptable to us. Binnie’s ability displayed itself in her enjoyment of being teased one minute and the unexpected dig back the next. Funny little brother one minute, annoying the next. She could bury herself in a comic or an activity of her own creation as completely as I could, but despite that separateness we could both magic at will, there had been a bond of understanding between us too that transcended the intermittent sibling rivalry with Win, the being smothered by Sarah, the haphazard playfulness with both sets of twins, or the protectiveness I’d felt towards Georgie with his dreamy eyes and gentle fear of everything. For the first time since I was nine, an urgent need for tangible roots beset me. I handed the photo back reluctantly, but wavering how I now perceived the approach to my long-lost family.
I couldn’t decide whether Sarah looked as I imagined she would. She gave the impression of being mid-sixties, but she wasn’t anything like that by my calculations. Her mouth turned down at the corners but that might have just been the momentary expression the photo had caught. I’d always thought of her as happy. Little Mother; the one we all resorted to when Ma – inevitably – was too tired or too busy to deal with us. Ma was always the gold star, Sarah the consolation prize; kind, cuddly and happy. She didn’t look happy now.
‘She ain’t been well,’ Win commented.
The family group shot was blurry and several years older than the first two.
‘I ain’t got very good ones of the boys. Pip bought it the Falklands. He were one of the first out there.’ I studied the indistinct faces of the group to make out how Jim and Pip had turned out; my two charming urchin brothers. The two young men arm in arm off to one side were them, still grinning, still shock-headed, still sunny-natured, it appeared. ‘Nineteen-eighty that was. Year or two before he died. Jim took himself off to Australia not long afterwards. He drank too much. He said he had to go because he couldn’t be doing with seeing his brother’s ghost everywhere. Couldn’t understand that meself. Ain’t no such thing as ghosts.’ I thought of Margaret and her insistently harrying hold on me from beyond the grave.
