Patchwork Man (21 page)

‘She didn’t have a guardian angel looking over her.’

‘Oh, I think she did. It just don’t seem like it to you. Guardian angels keep you safe, whatever. There were times she needed that.’ I didn’t need to ask why. Pop and his belt were enough explanation – and the thunderous look on his face if she ever dared to speak to another man. For Christ’s sake, when would she even have had time for an affair with all us kids around? Jealousy. It had never occurred to me before that was maybe why there were so many of us. Not just religion and its strictures. To keep her under Pop’s thumb.

‘What happened with her?’ The question I’d wanted answering so many times at nine, and had since wondered whether I wanted the answer after all. Was it better to know you were permanently rejected, if that was the case – or forever speculate on some reason for abandonment that meant you weren’t unwanted just unlucky.

‘She’s dead now.’ The string under my ribs tugged again.

‘Well I guessed she would be. She’d be well over eighty otherwise. I couldn’t imagine eleven kids would make her very robust in old age!’ I sounded facetious but I didn’t mean to. She gave me a sharp look.

‘She’d be eighty-eight if she were alive. She’s in Highgate cemetery if you want to visit her grave, where our grandparents are. We went a few times as kids but I don’t s’pose you’d remember it. In the East cemetery, but you’ll have to ask them for directions and they have opening hours you have to stick to. There’s thousands of them there. I could have taken you there once, but I couldn’t manage it now. Jill and Emm have been, though they don’t really remember her. They were only little mites then. You’ll go and see them too?’

‘Do they know?’

‘I haven’t told them, but I don’t know what Binnie’s said.’

‘Win said I should go and see them
in case
. I’ll go and see them – and Ma.’ She nodded in satisfaction.

‘Good. That’s right. And Mary. Go and see Mary too. You can’t see Pip – he died in the Falklands and Jim’s in Australia, but you can go and see Mary.’ I hadn’t anticipated a full family round-up but Win had said Kimberley might have confided in Mary too, so it seemed I was being left little choice in it. From a world of choices – my own choices – latterly I seemed to be being forced only into other people’s for me. I was disturbed from my reverie by something completely unanticipated. ‘I met her, you know, your wife.’

‘Margaret? Jesus, when?’

‘Not that long ago. She wanted to know about your childhood. First I’d heard of you as Lawrence ’til then. Win said he’d tracked you down but there weren’t no point interfering if you didn’t want it. I agreed, so he didn’t even tell me your new name to begin with.’ A thousand silver electric eels swum my head, each one revealing a new question in its brilliant wake. When had Margaret wanted to know about my childhood? Why had Win proposed non-interference after my betrayal of him, but mortal combat now? How long had Sarah known about Kimberley and Danny? Had Margaret also known? I didn’t ask any of them. It was Margaret and her meddling I needed to understand first. It all seemed to have started with that – and the little note in the file I’d hoped would never see the light of day again.

‘And what did you discuss?’

‘Your childhood, like I said – and what Win told me about the children’s home.’

‘Anything else?’

‘She didn’t ask about anything else. She just came, asked about when we were kids and left. I told her how good you were with Pip and Jim and about your guardian angel. She liked the angel. She laughed about that like it was really funny.’ Sarah laughed, ‘Oh, yes, and about how you used to roll down the hill at the front of the flats and Ma always used to tell you off for having been in a fight because you were always covered in bruises. She knew what you’d been doing really. She could see you out of the front window. She just did it to make you stand up for yourself. And you did.’

Yes I had. I’d learnt how to fight off the challengers and believe in myself, even when no-one else had. She’d taught me a good lesson with it. Maybe my guardian angel had really been Ma when I was a child, whether she abandoned me later or not. ‘She said she were surprised you hadn’t hurt yourself like she did when she was a kid. Tore her thumb ligaments, she said. Ski-ing. In a cast for months and missed school because of it. Would’ve studied more herself otherwise. Even worse than me at carrying the tray.’ I stared at Sarah. Margaret had confided more in my sister than she had in me. I didn’t even know she had a problem with her grip or had missed schooling as a child.

I was about to ask Sarah more but she had her own agenda too, it seemed. ‘You were a good kid, Kenny – brave. Did what was right. I always knew you’d do the same as a man.’ I looked down at my straggling legs in dismay. They looked as ungainly as my conscience, and as out of control. ‘She rang me afterwards, just once – must have been about a week before she was killed.’

‘Why?’

‘She said she wanted to come and tell me something but she never turned up.’

‘Did you know she was trying to get Danny adopted?’

‘Ah, that explains it.’

‘What?’

‘Why she wanted me to keep an eye on Kimmy.’

‘Christ Almighty – she knew Kimberley? Then she also knew about Danny’s parentage too!’ Sarah gave me a strange look.

‘Course she did. She told Win, I think.’

‘Win? Christ! And now he’s after my blood over it. That’s not leaving me alone, that’s full-scale messing with me – and to what end? Revenge? To land me in a public pile of shit?’

‘No, Kenny. To make things right. Your Margaret was going to make things right, she said. She loved kiddies. Said she’d always wanted one of her own, but it wasn’t possible.’

Yes, not possible because of my say-so. Where was this going? Where was Margaret going? It was all too obvious now that Margaret had known about the possible liaison with Kimberley, even though it had happened long before she’d come on the scene – although that little note in the Johns case file disputed that fact. She’d made all the connections with my family and she’d garnered all the facts, and yet said nothing to me. She’d tried to inveigle me into involvement rather than confront me. And that bright red torn nail section standing out like a beacon – where did that fit in? There must be a link I hadn’t made in all of this, but I was damned if I could see it.

‘Could you get me my morphine, do you think?’ Sarah asked quietly. She looked drained and I felt guilty. I located it in the kitchen cupboard at her direction, and brought it to her with a spoon. She waved the spoon away. ‘Oh, I don’t bother with that anymore,’ she laughed and swigged it back. ‘What doesn’t kill you, as they say.’

‘I ought to go. You’re tired.’

‘Yes, I am. Done in, but don’t be a stranger now you’ve braved the war.’ I agreed, knowing I probably wouldn’t come again. What was the point? I wished I’d kept the laughing plump-cheeked Sarah in my head and didn’t now have the sad, diminished one to have to hide away in my box to avoid despair. Apart from Win, my only other contact with my family had already brought nothing but dismay.

‘One last thing, Sarah?’

‘Yes?’

‘What does Kimberley think about all of this?’

‘I think she’s like Ma – would just be happy for Danny to have a better chance than she can give him.’

‘So how does she fit in with Win and my wife?’

‘You’d have to ask her that – it’s between them. I don’t know the details.’ Out of the two, there was only one I could now ask, and I doubted he would give me a straight answer, but then given the stranger that Margaret was becoming in death, I doubted I would have fared better with her even if she had still been alive. Who was this woman I had been married to for four years but yet found now I knew nothing about?

I left with the tea still undrunk and more questions than I’d come with. I kissed Sarah on the cheek as if we were affectionate siblings although I still wondered if I’d lost that privilege a long time ago. Considering her shadowy form as I glanced back, I wondered how long before my indecision over whether to visit again would become inconsequential. She’d reiterated that she was all right, and not to worry about her. Typical Little Mother. Sometimes we lose things of far more worth than we can ever estimate until it’s too late. It was probably already too late for me and her.

Worry about myself, she’d said. I hardly needed the exhortation. With all the information I’d gleaned today, I still didn’t know the answer to the two personal questions I most needed to resolve – would Kimberley spill the beans in front of Kat? And what had Margaret really been planning? Aside from that, the vexed question of Jaggers’ involvement with Danny’s offence loomed larger than ever since I’d read the old case notes. I couldn’t place Jaggers in the role of the murderer, but it still somehow stank of his involvement as badly as Danny’s predicament did. However, the floral note that overlaid the stench was of a distinctly different character – cool, feminine and extremely organised. Yet how could Margaret possibly have been involved with something that had happened before she was anywhere near the scene of the crime, and involving people she didn’t even know?

I
marked time by looking into the adoption charity, FFF. The interview with Kimberley Hewson was still two days away, postponed because she’d had another spell in hospital.

‘Depression,’ Kat explained on the phone when she did ring, sounding distant. ‘Danny’s not been well either.’ I wanted to press her about both of them but her tone of voice precluded all but business. Added to which, Heather had perched herself on the client’s chair in my office and was swinging one elegant shiny stiletto sandal from perfectly polished blood-red toes. Her expression implied she wanted blood too. I wound up the phone call purposely efficient, deciding two could play the game of detachment, even though I had little idea how to play it in terms of a relationship as yet. In court, however, I was a master and there had to be some similarities. I mentioned visiting the charity’s offices to do some research work before I ended the call, partly to pique Kat, and partly because I was genuinely curious about the charity. When I had gut instincts about cases I’d learn to pay attention to them. This was one of those occasions. There was something about the charity that, to my attuned nose, stank in the same way Jaggers did.

‘So,’ Heather prefaced as soon as the hand piece hit the base. ‘Who’s been digging?’ I immediately thought of the excavated case now sitting secretly in my desk drawer at home. My hands began to sweat. How the fuck had she found out about that? I ran interference as I would in court.

‘Nice end-pins, Heather – new?’ And before she could answer, ‘digging what? I don’t go in for gardening – got no garden, you see.’ I smiled smoothly.

‘Oh, come on Lawrence. You can’t catch me out with that old routine – we do the same job, remember? The Wemmick case.’

‘Wemmick?’ That name again. Until yesterday the name had merely been an echo of my past – the family name of the old judge. Now it had cropped up twice in two days, and both in less than clean circumstances. I gave her my mystified look and she sighed impatiently.

‘Lord Justice Wemmick. He’s dead but his nephew isn’t and added to which, he’s a complete asshole. He’s making life difficult by asking about the Roumelia boy who I got off a couple of years ago.’

‘Roumelia?’

‘Yes, your little social worker’s brother, or didn’t she tell you about that?’

‘I’d gathered there was a link.’

‘Too right, there was a link – your Margaret. I didn’t like to say anything before because it was like speaking ill of, but first Margaret persuaded me, and then Margaret put the screws on me when I wanted to get out of it because it was all too suspect. Now it’s come back to haunt me, with this nosey bastard poking about. So what do you know about it? Margaret made it sound as if I had to do it or you’d be in the proverbial somehow.’

‘I had nothing to do with it at all. In fact apart from your apparent misgivings at the time, it was just one of those cases that crop up – the ones we agree to and then wish to hell and back.’

‘So what Margaret implied wasn’t true?’

‘What did Margaret imply?’

‘That there was something in your past the boy knew and if we didn’t keep him out of trouble, he’d get you into it.’

‘For God’s sake, do I look like someone who’d put his reputation on the line?’ The irony didn’t escape me.

‘Well ...’

‘Why the hell didn’t you come and talk to me at the time?’

‘It was Margaret.’ And that was it in a nutshell. Margaret. I hadn’t realised until now how much Margaret had manipulated. Not just me; Kat and obviously Heather too. I wondered if Jeremy and Francis might tell similar tales. I didn’t really want to hear them if they could, but it made establishing what was going on behind the scenes of FFF, which Margaret had been such a
dedicated
patron of, more relevant than ever.

‘So what is the problem this
asshole
, as you describe him, is nit-picking about?’

‘The asshole’s name is John Wemmick. Lord Justice Wemmick’s nephew. He’s suggesting that there’s a miscarriage of justice because he claims to have known Roumelia – used him for odd jobs – and Roumelia apparently confessed to him that he was guilty. It’ll go sky-high if he pushes it. He’s a High Court judge’s relation. Threatening to expose corruption in the courts unless we keep him happy is like offering a rope to hang ourselves with and suggesting he pull the trap door open too.’

‘John Arthur Wemmick?’

‘I don’t usually ask about middle names. Have I asked you yours for Christ’s sake? But you know him then?’

‘No, I don’t know him, Heather. Other than I’ve seen his name crop up recently. Nor do I know what Margaret was up to – sorry. Why would you think I’d been digging around the case though?’

‘Because the folder is gone from the archives, and I saw you coming out of the basement door the other day when you were supposed to be home ill. I assumed you’d been in there and taken it.’

‘No. Not me.’

‘So what were you doing down there then?’