Justice for the Damned (10 page)

Edward fell silent at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. A woman of about fifty entered the room. Bobbed russet-brown hair framed dark eyes, a straight nose and full lips. A tailored beige business suit outlined her slim, well-proportioned body. Philippa regarded her husband with more curiosity than concern. ‘Have you been up all night?’

‘What are you doing dressed like that?’ Edward asked, ignoring her question.

‘What do you think I’m doing? I’m going to work.’

‘Oh no you’re not. We discussed this, Philippa. Neither of us is going to work today.’

‘I’ve not got time for this, Edward. I’ve got a meeting with the Licensing Sub-Committee at ten.’

‘You’ll just have to rearrange it, like I’ve had to rearrange all my meetings.’

‘And what about the speech I’m giving this afternoon at the opening of Sheaf Steel’s new hydraulic press? I can’t very well rearrange that, can I?’

‘Oh, to hell with the sodding hydraulic press.’

‘The national media’s going to be there, Edward.’

‘To hell with them too!’

Philippa exhaled a sigh that suggested infinite patience. ‘Perhaps if you told me what this is all about…’ She trailed off and took a step closer to her husband, eyes narrowing. ‘Have you been crying?’

Edward’s eyes filled with indignation. ‘Of course I bloody well haven’t.’

‘Yes, you have. I can see it.’ Philippa indicated the phone. ‘Who have you been talking to?’

‘No one. I was about to make a call.’

‘To who?’

Edward hesitated. Only for a second, but it was enough to suggest some reluctance to answer his wife’s question. ‘My mother.’

Philippa shook her head. ‘I should have guessed this had something to do with her.’ The word ‘her’ was spoken with a disdain approaching hatred.

‘This isn’t her fault, it’s mine. The fact is, I made a bad judgement. I invested a lot of money in someone and they let me down.’

‘What someone?’

‘Stephen Baxley.’ Edward didn’t like to admit to a connection with the disgraced dead businessman. But if politics had taught him anything, it was to sprinkle his lies with just enough grains of truth to make them believable. He knew, too, that the lie needed to be as alarming as it was credible if he wanted Philippa to swallow it.

Her perfectly plucked eyebrows bunched together. ‘How much have you lost?’

‘A couple of million.’

‘Two million! Christ, Edward. How could you have kept this from me?’

He spread his hands in a kind of helpless gesture. ‘I didn’t want to worry you. I had everything under control, but then Stephen went and… and did what he did. If the press get a sniff of this, my political career will be all but over.’

‘Then don’t give the buggers a reason to start sniffing around by hiding away.’ Philippa took her husband’s hands between hers, her voice earnest and firm. ‘Get out there and carry on as if everything’s fine.’

‘I would do if it was just the press I was worried about. But as we both know there are a lot of people who’d like to see me fall from grace. Jealous, vindictive people. Old Labour buffoons, socialist and communist sympathisers who pretend to believe the love of money is the root of all evil, but who turn out to be the greediest bastards of all as soon as they get a taste—’ Edward stopped as his wife pulled a face that suggested she’d heard the same rant many times before. ‘The point I’m making is, there are people who would gladly hurt you to hurt me. That’s why I need you here with me until I’ve put my finances in order.’

‘You mean until your mother has put your finances in order.’

A ripple disturbed Edward’s face, like the surface of a pond breaking. ‘All I’m asking you for is two or three days.’

‘And what am I supposed to tell everyone in the meantime?’

‘I don’t know. Tell them we’ve both come down with the flu or something.’

‘I don’t like lying, Edward.’

‘I know.’ Philippa’s reputation for honesty and integrity was one of the things that had first attracted – if attracted was the right word – Edward to her. It gave an added sheen to his own reputation as a plain-speaking Yorkshireman. But he would never have married her if he hadn’t detected a certain flexibility beneath her seemingly unbending attitude. He was good at sensing things like that, things that appealed to his self-interest. ‘I also know how good you are at it when the need arises.’

Philippa sighed deeply again, this time in defeat. ‘I tell you what, Edward. I’ll take the rest of the week off. But I’m going to have to make that speech.’

Edward thought over his wife’s words momentarily, then said, ‘OK, but you don’t leave this house until an hour before the opening. And when you’re done there, you make your excuses and come straight home. Agreed?’

‘Agreed, just so long as you get on that phone right now and call your mother.’

‘I will do,’ Edward glanced at the clock, ‘in five minutes. You know how much she hates being disturbed before nine these days.’

Sucking her teeth with irritation, her footsteps heavier than before, Philippa headed back upstairs to change out of her work clothes.

‘Love you, darling,’ Edward called after her.

‘Do you?’ she shot back. ‘Sometimes I wonder.’

Edward wondered, too, as he had done many times over the course of their eighteen-year marriage. Did he really love his wife? If love meant needing someone, then yes, he loved her. If it meant wanting to hold and be held by them through the darkness of the night, then no, he didn’t love her. There was only one person in his life he’d ever felt like that about. His gaze dropped to the phone. He stared at it a long moment, before hesitantly dialling.

After a single ring, almost as if his call had been expected, his mother picked up. ‘Who is this?’ Mabel Forester’s voice was a touch hoarse, but strident as ever.

‘It’s me.’

‘Who’s me?’

A prickle that was part irritation, part anxiety travelled down Edward’s arms. His mother knew exactly who ‘me’ was. The caller display would have told her that before she even answered the phone. She was just playing funny buggers, the same as she always did when he’d done something to incur her displeasure. ‘It’s Edward.’

‘I didn’t recognise your voice. It’s been that long since I last heard it.’

‘It’s only been three weeks.’

‘More like four. And at my age a month’s a lifetime.’

‘Oh, Mother, don’t be so dramatic. You’re as healthy as a horse and will probably outlive the lot of us.’

‘That’s where you’re bloody well wrong, Edward.’ As always when she was angry, a Yorkshire twang peeked out of Mabel’s self-consciously well-spoken accent. ‘I’ve been on antibiotics for the past fortnight.’

‘What for?’

‘I’ve had a chest infection.’

‘When you say “had”, does that mean you’re better now?’ For once, the concern in Edward’s voice was genuine to the point of fear. All through his childhood and for most of his adult life, his mother had worked twelve or fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, relentlessly building her cake-making enterprise into the multimillion-pound business it was today. In recent years, she’d cut herself some slack. But at seventy-eight, she still put in more hours than most of the executives she’d employed to take over her workload. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a day off for illness. He’d always thought she would go on forever. The sudden realisation that she wouldn’t, that one day she would die, brought with it a clutching sense of panic, and something else too, something he wasn’t yet ready to acknowledge.

‘What do you care if I’m better?’ Mabel retorted. ‘If you cared you’d call.’

‘I’ve been meaning to, but I’ve just been so busy.’

A tremor of hurt shook Mabel’s voice. ‘How long does it take to pick up the phone and say “Hello, Mummy. How are you?” One or two minutes, that’s all. Am I not worth even worth one or two minutes of your precious time?’

‘Of course you—’

‘To think of everything I’ve done for you,’ Mabel continued as if she hadn’t heard her son, ‘of everything I’ve sacrificed, and this is the way you treat me. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t got better.’

‘Please don’t say that.’ Edward’s voice was trembling too now.

‘Why not? Sometimes I think it would be easier for both of us if I just died.’

‘No, Mummy, you can’t die.’ Edward screwed his face up like a child, tears suddenly spilling down his cheeks. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call. It won’t happen again.’

‘Do you promise?’

‘Yes, I promise. Just don’t leave me alone, please don’t leave me—’ Edward choked off into deep, wrenching sobs.

‘Shh. Hush, my darling.’ Mabel’s tone was suddenly gentle and reassuring. ‘Mummy’s always here for her little man. You know that, don’t you?’

Edward mumbled through his tears, ‘Yes, Mummy, I know.’

‘Good boy. Now take a deep breath, dry your eyes and tell Mummy all about it.’

How do you know I’ve got anything to tell you?
Edward knew better than to ask the question. If there was one thing his mother despised above anything else, it was people trying to play her for a fool. Early in her career, many of her competitors – mostly men – had made the mistake of underestimating her. As she took great pleasure in pointing out, all of them had long since gone – or, more accurately, been driven – out of business. Edward never usually rang her at this time of day. She knew well enough that he wasn’t phoning simply to say hello. He managed to bring his tears under control sufficiently to speak clearly. ‘I’m in serious trouble. I’ve lost some money. A lot of money.’

‘How much?’ There was no surprise in Mabel’s voice. When her son told her the amount, the line was ominously silent a moment. Then she asked, ‘So who do you need me to buy off this time?’

‘It’s not like that. I made a bad investment.’

Edward started to feed his mother the same lie he’d fed Philippa, but she cut him off with a humourless, biting laugh. ‘Who am I, Edward?’

He ran his tongue across his quivering bottom lip. ‘You’re Mummy.’

‘And what does Mummy know?’

‘Everything. Mummy knows everything.’

‘That’s right. Now start again from the beginning, and this time tell me the truth.’

‘I… I can’t. Not on the phone.’

‘Then I’ll just have to come up there.’

‘No! It’s not safe for you to come here.’

‘All the more reason for me to do so. If you’re in some kind of danger, Edward, my place is there with you.’

‘Please—’

‘No more arguments. I’ve got one or two work things to take care of, but I should be with you by this evening. And for God’s sake, pull yourself together, Edward. No more crying. Remember who you are. You’re better than them. They have no right to judge you.’

‘Yes, Mummy. Sorry. Thank you, Mummy.’

The line went dead. Edward glanced at the mahogany clock, a familiar mixture of dread and delight vying with each other in his heart as he calculated the hours until his mother’s arrival. Sniffing back his tears, he flung the phone onto a sofa and strode from the room. With the wolfhound padding after him, he climbed two flights of stairs to a cavernous attic, cluttered with boxes and antique furniture. At the rear of the attic, sunlight slanted through a round window, illuminating a galaxy of dust particles. He took a nail out of a chest of drawers by the window. Dropping to his haunches, he pushed it into a hole in a floorboard. He pulled the floorboard loose, reached into the cavity beneath and withdrew a little black book. He flicked through it until he found the page he was looking for. It was discoloured by a brownish-red stain, but not sufficiently to obscure the writing thereon. The dog peered over his shoulder, sniffing at the book.

‘Smells good, doesn’t it, Conall? There’s no other smell quite like it.’ Edward ran his finger down the page. ‘You see those names? They think they’re safe. But if I go down, I’m taking them with me. Every last fucking one of them.’

Reece sat in his car, staring at the semi-detached house he’d grown up in. It was looking a little the worse for wear these days – the garden was overgrown; the window frames needed a new coat of paint; bricks showed through in places where the pebbledash cladding had flaked off. Sighing deeply, he got out of the car and approached the front door. He tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked. As he stepped into the hallway, a musty smell of old cigarette smoke, fried food and body odour assaulted his nostrils. Unopened mail was strewn on the doormat. Through an open door at the end of the hallway, a pile of pots was visible in the kitchen sink. Since finding out about his illness, his dad had all but given up on household chores. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the energy for them, he’d simply ceased to care about the upkeep of the house. Not that he’d ever had much interest in it. That had been his wife’s domain.

‘Dad,’ called Reece, gathering up the mail and making his way to a living room that showed signs of a woman’s touch in its matching floral wallpaper, carpet and three-piece suite – signs that were being steadily blotted out by food, drink and cigarette stains. The room was stiflingly warm. Heat pumped from a gas fire. The dusty mantelpiece above it was cluttered with photos, some of them in frames, others merely propped against the wall, all of the same woman. She was well-built, verging on stocky, with the same good-looking angular features, moody brown eyes and dark hair as Reece. There were more photos of her balanced on top of a television. As always, it struck Reece as ironic that his dad surrounded himself with pictures of his late wife, considering that he seemingly couldn’t stand the sight of her when she was alive.

Pale sunlight slanted through half-drawn curtains onto a figure slumped in an armchair near the window. Frank Geary’s chin rested against his chest. A string of saliva stretched from his lips to the slight bulge of his belly. His nostrils trembled as he snored. The low morning sun picked out every wrinkle, crease and broken vein in his unshaven face, making him look even older than usual. His pyjamas hung loosely on his frame, which although still big, was rapidly being consumed by the malignant tumours in his lungs. A mug rested in his lap, tilted halfway over so that some of its contents had spilled out.