A Daughter's Secret (11 page)

I try for Caffè Nero, I really do, but it’s full of backpackers with overflowing rucksacks and harassed baristas screeching orders at each other over the hissing machines. Patrick rolls his eyes towards the musty wine bar next door, an empty table right there in the window, two green leather chairs either side. I haven’t the fight for this fight – I have a feeling I might need it for later.

‘I’ll go to the bar,’ he says. ‘What’ll you have?’

‘Sparkling water.’

He stands there just looking at me, and I try to glare back but after a while it makes my eyes hurt. He lopes off, then comes back with his hands full of glasses. He sets the sparkling water down in front of me, swiftly followed by a glass of white.

‘Seems rude to sit here with a drink, and you not have one. Especially on such a beautiful evening. If you don’t want it, it’ll save me making another trip.’

‘This isn’t a two-round scenario.’

‘You clearly haven’t seen how fast I drink,’ he says, smiling.

I take a small, sanctimonious sip of sparkling water.

‘So what is it that you think I so desperately need to know?’

I don’t like myself for my sarcasm – not least because it makes me look like a naive idiot – but I like him less for snooping on a vulnerable child. It tugs at my heart, the way she thrust the present towards me, desperate for me to accept it. Accept her.

‘I just wanted you to understand why I was putting pressure on you last week. With Christopher gone, there’s a real chance that we’re going to have to call Gemma to give evidence.’

‘What does that even mean?’

‘Playing back the video tapes of her interview. Cross examining her on the stand and looking for holes in her story. We’re running out of options.’

I think about her pale smudge of a face, the way she can blank out until she’s no more than a ghost. How far into the ether will she float away if they try to trap her? When their briefcases have slammed shut and their case notes have been shredded, there’ll be no one left to bring her back down to earth.

‘What’s the point of that? If she doesn’t know where her dad is, and there’s no evidence that she does—’

‘It’s not just about that. From everything we’ve learnt, those two are uncommonly close. You know he took her to New York on a business trip? Just her?’ I keep my face neutral, ignoring the way he’s scrutinizing me for a reaction. He smiles, shrugs. ‘Whether you do or you don’t – these kind of scenarios. She may’ve overheard stuff that’d give us proof.’

‘Proof of what, exactly?’

‘That her dad knew that Stephen was corrupt. Information about deals, things that tell us where the bodies are buried, financially at least. Al Capone didn’t go down for gangland killing, he went down for tax evasion. If we had access to all the accounts, could see all those dirty channels of money, I guarantee we could lock Stephen up and throw away the key.’

‘Yeah well, even if Christopher Vine does know, from the sound of Stephen, I’m not surprised he doesn’t want to hand over his calculator to you lot.’

Patrick’s jaw clenches, his eyes cold.

‘Them’s the breaks,’ he says. ‘If you take the money, you take the risk. Have you seen their house?’ I shake my head. ‘Big white fucking pile in Wimbledon, looks like a wedding cake. He’s enjoyed that gravy train long enough. Stephen’s victims deserve better than him getting away with it because Christopher Vine’s too much of a coward to pay his dues.’

‘I’m sure it’s completely irrelevant to you,’ I say, icy, ‘but, in my professional opinion, being forced to be part of a criminal trial – to testify about her dad – would be incredibly damaging for Gemma. She’d never forgive herself for betraying him.’

He goes to reply, then swallows his words back down. He takes a sip of his drink, looks at me.

‘Not true. It’s very relevant for me, Mia. She’s a vulnerable witness. Emotionally vulnerable and, potentially, physically vulnerable.’

‘Do you really think she is?’

‘The kind of guys Stephen Wright has around him don’t mess about.’

‘I know, but she’s a child!’

Patrick gives me a look that borders on pity, like the only real child is me. I look back at him, almost pleading with him to reassure me, to tell me that the world is not as dark as he’s painting it, and he stares straight back at me, refusing to let me off the hook.

‘Stephen’s looking at a very lengthy sentence. He’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s better we know what she knows, and give her witness protection if she needs it. If she testifies, and he goes down, she’s far safer than she is now.’

‘If she even knows anything! You’re making huge assumptions. If Christopher loves her so much, surely he’d protect her from this stuff. He’s not stupid.’ The words echo inside me, bouncing off the damp walls of my history, around the chambers of my heart. I know better than anyone that love doesn’t work that way. Patrick’s studying me, his gaze too penetrating. I pause a second, my voice less shrill. ‘She’s soft still. These – these traumas – they could shape her whole life.’

He smiles in a way that makes me self-conscious. I’ve shown him too much.

‘And that’s why it needs to be handled so sensitively. I can see how much she relies on you. We can support each other here.’

‘You saw us together for two minutes!’

‘You can sense a lot in two minutes.’

‘So you’re Mr Sensitive all of a sudden?’

That wounded look again, those kicked-puppy eyes. He pushes the second glass towards me.

‘Have a sip. It won’t kill you.’

I look at the cool dampness of the glass, the pale apple hue of the wine. It glides down my throat, taking a tiny bit of the heat with it.

‘I don’t know how you do your job,’ I say.

‘I love my job,’ he says hotly. ‘I don’t know how you do yours.’

‘I love
my
job. Just because you don’t see the value of therapy—’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Oh come off it.’

‘Went to a therapist after my dad died. Well, a “grief counsellor”,’ he says, doing inverted commas in the air with his daddy-long-legs fingers. ‘Wept like a baby.’

‘When did your dad die?’ I say, before I can help myself. I wish I didn’t have this compulsion to unpack people. He’s not a lost suitcase, not something for me to rummage around inside of in search of a handy piece of ID.

‘Couple of years ago. Lung cancer.’ He looks down at his glass, then takes a gulp. ‘It was kind of self-inflicted.’

‘Some people smoke eighty a day and live till they’re a hundred,’ I say gently.

‘I don’t think he necessarily wanted to be here,’ he says, his eyes meeting mine for a brief second. There are so many ways for a parent to abandon their child, and every single one cuts to the bone.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘How’d we get on to that?’ he says with a half-smile. ‘You’re good, aren’t you?’

‘Devastatingly good,’ I say, smiling back, despite myself. I take another sip of my wine, against my better judgement. It’s pretty heinous on second tasting. Patrick’s staring at me again, almost crackling with nervous energy. I steel myself.

‘This entire case could collapse without Christopher’s evidence. Or Gemma’s, if that’s what we end up needing. Quite apart from all those people’s livelihoods and all that dirty money, we’re talking about a cost of millions to the taxpayer. I can’t stand by and watch that happen.’

I grab my jacket, my blood boiling now. It wasn’t me opening him up, it was the exact reverse.

‘Just stop it, OK? Stop using me to threaten her. You’re shameless.’

Patrick’s arm shoots out, bars my way.

‘Mia, I’m sorry. OK?’ His expression is deadly serious. ‘I’m sorry. I’m obsessed, and it turns me into an insensitive dolt, but . . . It’s not just you who’s worried about her welfare. I shouldn’t tell you this, but we think it’s possible she’s hiding evidence for him. Papers, documents.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Gemma’s face floats up before me, the way she fixes her gaze on the rushing cars when my questions get too real. She’s holding on to something very tightly. I sit back down again, my legs almost giving way. Patrick’s voice is soft.

‘You might be the one person who can stop her sacrificing herself for him.’

‘He does love her,’ I say, the words jagged, ‘however screwed up their relationship is. Surely he wouldn’t put her in that kind of danger . . .’

‘Love can get twisted into some very strange shapes,’ he says, half smiling again. ‘Kind of like balloon animals.’ We sit there for a minute, the information silently exploding like a pill dropped in a tall glass of water. Then he glances meaningfully at my wine, a clump of his floppy ginger hair falling across his milk-fed face. ‘Well I, for one, am going to the bar. You’ve barely touched yours. Quite an unimpressive performance there, Mia.’

‘I’m not much of a drinker.’

‘Wasn’t the best choice either, was it? I’m going to see how we fare with an upgrade.’

I should stop him, insist on going home to my slice of tracksuit-bottomed solitude, but somehow I don’t manage to do that. The truth is, I’m not sure I can face being on my own right now. He comes back from the bar, puts another couple of glasses down and chinks his against mine, even though I’m not holding it up.

‘Cheers. To second chances.’

‘Who says I’m giving you a second chance?’

‘You have to admit, we’re having far more fun than we did last week. Go on, try your wine.’

I look at him, taking a deliberate, dubious sip. It’s about a million times nicer. I take another one.

He raises a questioning eyebrow.

‘You win.’

‘Though to be fair, the first one was like horse piss.’

‘You still drank it.’

‘The thing you need to know about me, Mia, is that I’ve got very low standards.’

It’s me who goes to the bar the next time, though I don’t know why I do. Maybe it’s self-protection. Patrick O’Leary isn’t going away, and I need to know what it is that I’m dealing with. I put his glass down in front of him.

‘Why serious fraud? Why not – I dunno – juicy divorces or megamillion City deals?’

He gives a big, theatrical yawn.

‘No stakes. Did you watch
The A-Team
when you were a kid?’

‘No.’

‘No? What, you just watched girlie telly?’

‘Mainly I read a book. My parents didn’t like American television.’

Quite an understatement. A camera flash: me snuggled up to Lorcan on the sofa, watching a scratchy VHS of
A Matter of Life and Death
, too young to really understand anything much beyond the fact that he loved it. We spoke to each other in those clipped English tones for weeks – the more Mum begged us to stop, the more he’d egg me on.

‘Right. Well I watched it – religiously – every Saturday. This is like
The A-Team
for me.’

‘What, you’re Mr Zee, triumphing over evil? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Mr Zee? I can only hazard a guess you mean Mr T.’

‘You’re some kind of avenging angel?’

I can’t quite keep the sarcasm out of my voice. He catches it.

‘Don’t really see what’s wrong with that. You quite a fan of evil then, Mia?’

‘Yeah, no, it’s good. It’s just, it’s not always that simple, is it?’ He looks at me, disappointment etched into his expression, three glasses of wine leaving his face wide open, like a door hanging off its hinges. I’ve sipped no more than a centimetre off the top of the last glass: it sits, undisturbed, in front of me, getting warm and soupy. ‘Words like evil, they’re reductive. I mean – in my work I see every possible side of things. Even when someone’s behaviour seems inexcusable, there’s always a whole network of drives and reasons underneath.’

‘How’d you work that out with Hitler? Big fan of Pol Pot, are you? I’m sure he had a whole network of reasons—’

‘Obviously Hitler was evil, but you don’t get many Hitlers in the real world.’ I look at him, thinking of the way he slunk up the stairs after Gemma like a fox hanging around the bins. ‘And actually, I think his childhood
was
incredibly brutalizing.’

He snorts to himself, looking around the bar like he can’t quite bear to dignify the remark with a response. The crowd are older than us; suited businessmen buying Sancerre by the bottle for women who should know better, a group of Japanese tourists with enormous cameras, probably put to ample use on this afternoon’s Sherlock Holmes tour. What am I doing here? What am I doing here with him?

‘Do you know what, I don’t see what’s wrong with simple. I think we all make everything so fucking complicated—’

‘I bet you’re a Catholic.’

‘Dr Cosgrove, you’re a genius. Patrick O’Leary’s a Catholic. Do you know what, if we had a time machine, I reckon you could probably get Hitler to see the error of his ways. Change the course of history with your noble counsel.’

‘The way you talk about good and evil . . . I went to a convent school. I know what it’s like, heaven and hell and fire and brimstone. Life just isn’t like that. People aren’t like that.’

‘Oh I bet the nuns loved you.’

‘They did, actually.’ At least for a while. Then they really didn’t. I hate the way the past keeps lapping at my toes like it’s high tide. ‘I should go.’

He downs the last of his wine, his eyes mock pleading.

‘But it’s your round.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve reached my limit, Mr O’Leary.’

We look at each other, neither gaze wavering. Who are you? Who are you really? Is that what he’s thinking too? I glance at my phone in my bag, a message silently flashing up at me like a flare. It must be Marcus, the thought an instant comfort. I stand up.

‘Thanks for going one stage further than a latte,’ he says, a lilt in his voice that I ignore.

‘My pleasure.’

He stands up, touches my arm for a second.

‘I know you think I’m a – I’m a fucking mosquito, buzzing in your ear when you’re trying to sleep, but think about what I said. You could really make a difference.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to do.’

A vein pulses urgently in his neck, like the monster of his frustration might burst forth from his body, horror-movie style.

‘OK,’ he says, anger contained. ‘But Mia, I’m not trying to scare you. They’ll know who you are. We need to keep talking.’