Brodmaw Bay (31 page)

There was nothing about the suicide note in the stories. McCabe had suggested the note itself was ambiguous. It could be interpreted as a love letter or a maudlin tribute or an elegy to a lost love. It was only a suicide note if he had deliberately killed himself and she supposed that conclusion would be determined during autopsy by the quantity of the drug he had ingested. Lillian thought dabbling with coke in any quantity about as safe as Russian roulette. But a recreational quantity, a gram or so taken over a whole evening, would not be interpreted as a deliberate attempt at killing himself by an athletic young man.

There was not that much coverage in the newspapers. Mostly it was confined to single columns and almost all the stories carried the same cropped agency picture of O’Brien grinning bareheaded and in sunglasses astride his Harley Davidson. He was only a writer, after all. It was not as though a pop singer or soap star or Premiership footballer had died.

Jack walked in on her. He had just finished his breakfast and there were crumbs in the bumfluff thickening and coarsening on his upper lip. Puberty was in full swing with him. The assault had done nothing to retard that. He was on the way to becoming a man. She took a tissue from the box of them on the desk and stood and wiped his mouth clean, noticing that her son was almost as tall now as she was. He glanced beyond her at the story on the screen.

‘Blimey. How did he die?’

‘Drugs overdose,’ Lillian said.

Jack looked outside to the garden. It was overcast, raining, the fleshy leaves of the shrubs against the far wall glimmering greenly in the wet, matt light. ‘Good riddance,’ he said.

‘You should not speak ill of the dead,’ his mother said.

‘Nor should you be a hypocrite, Mum.’

They tried to share equally the burden of work involved in the preparation for their move over the following week. Inevitably, though, more of it fell to Lillian than to James. He had the Colorado meeting to prepare for and neither of them underestimated its potential importance and the beneficial impact it could have on their lives.

Lillian also understood, privately, that it was more than a question of prosperity. James had fallen into despondency and depression because he had lacked self-esteem. Colorado could restore his confidence, giving him the professional direction and personal vindication he felt his life lacked. It was vital that he was allowed to prepare properly for a trip upon which so much could depend.

Whatever the outcome in Colorado, she did not think they would ever fall back into the dismal situation together that had triggered her affair. They were too close and too passionately honest with each other now for that to happen. In Jack’s phrase, they were locked on. But she wanted the game he had invented to succeed. She wanted the man she loved to earn happiness and satisfaction through achieving success on his own terms. He had certainly worked hard enough and long enough for it.

They did talk about delaying the move until after the Colorado deal was signed and sealed. But relocation to the bay was something they could afford comfortably without supplementing their existing resources. And these things had their own momentum. Summer beckoned far more seductively on the Cornish coast than it did in Bermondsey. Topper’s Reach was waiting for them. The children almost literally could not wait.

So it was that Lillian organised the specifics of the move. She liaised with a very helpful land agent called Cooper who worked for Richard Penmarrick. She saw to it that the house was opened up and aired and supplied with its utilities. She ordered new furniture she judged to be of a piece with Topper’s Reach; arranged for it to be delivered there. She did not really want physical reminders of their Bermondsey home. Not beyond the four of them. There had been happy times in the house, but she agreed with James that this should be as fresh a start for them as possible. They would rent their townhouse furnished. They would leave almost everything tangible behind them. James drove the Saab to his brother’s house and simply parked it up and tossed his brother the keys.

‘The documents are in the glove compartment,’ he said. Mark had written off his own car the previous month in what he described as a takeaway cappuccino-related incident. The Greers would not be a two-car family in Cornwall. It was unnecessary and ostentatious. James thought Mark touchingly grateful for the gift.

On the Thursday afternoon, DS McCabe arrived promptly at
2
p.m. James and Lillian were both there to see him. Olivia, outraged by the fact, was probably not very much enjoying her penultimate day at school. Jack was in his room, involved in the pain and pleasure of deciding what among his many possessions he could and could not dispense with and see donated to the nearest charity shop.

McCabe told them that the boys accused of assaulting and robbing their son were now unlikely to be brought to trial. Their families had offered to rescind voluntarily their asylum seeker status and return to Somalia as soon as they possibly could. They were begging to return. The nightmares endured by the three alleged assailants had got much worse. They were not sleeping. They were living in terror. They were convinced they were the victims of witchcraft and thought returning home the only way of escaping the curse they had incurred.

‘It’s an interesting ploy,’ James said.

‘I’ve spoken to the family liaison officer assigned under their bail conditions,’ McCabe said. ‘She said if they’re acting, they are the best actors she has ever seen. She says they’re genuinely terrified.’

‘I wonder if they’re as genuinely terrified as an innocent thirteen-year-old being beaten on a bus with a tyre iron by complete strangers in the middle of the afternoon,’ Lillian said.

‘It might simply come down to cost,’ McCabe said. ‘We live in straitened times.’

‘I thought justice in this country was done partially at least simply so that it could be seen to be done,’ James said. ‘I thought that was how the criminal justice system functioned.’

McCabe said, ‘Think of the cost of bringing this case to trial. Prosecution counsel, expert witnesses, legal aid defence, jury expenses to compensate those jurors whose employers won’t and then if the prosecution is successful, the cost of incarceration in a secure youth facility. And then the cost of deportation, if a deportation hearing arrives at that outcome. You’ve got the involvement of the Borders Agency. After their sentences were served they would be entitled to relocation expenses when they were repatriated.’

‘You’re kidding,’ James said.

‘No,’ McCabe said, ‘I’m not. Much easier and cheaper just to accept their offer to return to their homeland, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve said this to you before, but there is such a thing as natural justice,’ James said.

McCabe smiled. He sipped the coffee Lillian had brewed him. He looked tautly muscled and immaculate in his uniform. James did not think it remotely funny or ironic that the police officer seated on their sofa took his coffee strong and black.

‘Natural justice is not a real world concept,’ McCabe said. ‘It’s as illusory as the village life idyll in that picturesque place by the sea where you and your family are escaping to.’

The Greers were both silent for a moment. James said, ‘You don’t believe there’s such a place as England any more?’

McCabe shrugged. ‘It depends on what you mean by England. Maybe in a tourist theme park sort of way, there is. Beefeaters still guard the Tower. Stratford has been dressed up to look fairly Shakespearean. You’ve always struck me as a pragmatist, Mr Greer. You should go back to trusting your instincts because you can butter crumpets from now till kingdom come. Rupert Brooke isn’t coming to tea. It isn’t going to happen.’

James said, ‘You’ve changed your tune, Detective Sergeant. You approved of our plan the last time we spoke about it. You told us that you’d moved out yourself, from Brixton to the Kent suburbs. You said you and your family were glad you’d done so, had no regrets at all.’

‘The tune where you’re going is by Elgar, played at
78
rpm under an old-fashioned gramophone needle. It’s Elgar or it’s Benjamin Britten. He was very partial to the seaside. Do you know there has not been a felony crime recorded in Brodmaw Bay since the summer of
1932
?’

‘You looked it up?’

‘I was curious. It’s fifteen years since a new surname was added to the electoral roll. The last census shows everyone there is of the same ethnic origin. No prizes for guessing which. Joblessness is registered officially at
0
per cent. But it’s the crime statistic that really stunned me. It seems less like a living community than a bricks and mortar museum. It’s not right.’

‘Well, thanks for your optimism and encouragement,’ Lillian said. ‘It’s much appreciated, Detective Sergeant.’

‘Thanks for the coffee,’ McCabe said, climbing to his feet. ‘It was excellent.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Lillian said. ‘What happens now?’

‘Nothing happens, at least for a few weeks. I’ll keep you informed. I gather your move is imminent?’

‘We leave on Monday.’

He nodded. ‘Could I say goodbye to Jack?’

‘Of course,’ James said. ‘He’s in his room. Just go up.’

Lillian and James listened to McCabe’s light, agile tread receding up the stairs. Lillian said, ‘I wouldn’t have had him down as an authority on classical music.’

‘Maybe his daughter’s ballet has made him one. Books and covers, you of all people should know that. I mean, what music do you think Richard Penmarrick enjoys?’

‘His wife’s singing, if he has any taste.’

‘Generally, I mean.’

‘Easy,’ Lillian said, ‘the Doors and a bit of Free and Traffic and the Strolling Bones, obviously.’

‘He told me he likes Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers. I think that shows how deceptive appearances can be.’

Upstairs, they talked about Chelsea and their next season prospects for a bit before McCabe steered the conversation in the direction of the assault on Jack and his feelings about it.

‘Still want them punished?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

‘An eye for an eye is it, Jack? Is that how you play your football?’

‘No, it isn’t. I don’t go in for retaliation on the pitch at all. Only muppets play like that.’

‘But you want revenge against the boys who hurt you.’

‘It isn’t about revenge, Alec. I want them to get what’s legally coming to them. I want them punished. But mostly I want them off the streets so they can’t do it again to someone else.’

‘Looking forward to your move?’

‘I was and I wasn’t. I was looking forward to leaving school. Against that, I thought I was going there damaged goods, like one of those people sent to a convalescent home in an old-fashioned movie. But I played tennis against my uncle at the end of last week and I’m going to be fine, I think. I’ll be heading a ball again before Christmas.’

‘That’s great.’

They shook hands. Jack said, ‘Will you keep in touch?’

‘Would you like me to?’

‘Of course I would.’

‘Then I will.’

On the following morning, Lillian received an email forwarded by her agent, from the publisher of the series of books she had been collaborating on with Robert O’Brien. It stated that it would be unlikely now that any but the first of them, the single completed story, would ever be put into print. Nevertheless, in recognition of her commitment to the project and the quantity and quality of material she had already produced, her contract was to be honoured. She would be paid the original sum agreed in full.

She replied saying that she wanted the entire amount minus her agent’s percentage donated equally to three charities. They were ChildLine, the NSPCC and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. For a moment she thought about adding a fourth. She thought about listing Narcotics Anonymous. But she was actually quite unsympathetic to mature adults with drug habits. She thought the problem largely, if not wholly, self-inflicted.

They left for the bay not on the Monday as originally planned, but on the preceding day, the Sunday. This meant a pre-dawn drive back to Heathrow and his flight to Denver for James less than twenty-four hours later. But Lillian thought it important he go with them. She thought it essential that they all leave their old home and arrive at their new one together and her husband agreed with her. And Richard Penmarrick’s man Cooper had assured them that Topper’s Reach was ready and Richard had himself made sure the fridge and food cupboards were provisioned as a welcoming courtesy.