East of Innocence (19 page)

‘Anyway, you had evidence. Then you lost it.’

‘Yeah. Thanks for the reminder.’

But Gabe is right. I have lost the discs incriminating Baldwin, and with it any kind of hold over him. He will get away with whatever it was he did to Rosie; he will do whatever he likes with me. The thought makes my hands clench; I want him brought to justice, crushed, destroyed. And I want justice for Rosie; I did not know her well, only by sight, but I am the sole person who knows what might have happened to her, and I have failed her. But these feelings of guilt and remorse have no practical value. The reality is that, without those discs, Baldwin can do whatever he likes. He is untouchable.

Gabe shrugs. ‘Just trying to help.’ He regards me levelly over the top of his coffee cup then looks away, nothing more to be done. Tough love indeed.

In my car on the way to my office I think about what Gabe said, and about my options. I am no angel but I am not in the business of knocking off policemen, regardless of what they might have done. I was telling the truth when I told Gabe that I wanted to bring Baldwin to justice; I just do not know how. Without the footage I have no evidence, and without any evidence I have nothing.

I am paranoid enough that I drive past my office twice to make sure that nobody is waiting for me, and park a street away. I have not done any work towards Halliday’s property purchase, and so spend the morning in the dull paper chasing of conveyancing, organising searches from the Land Registry and ordering surveyor’s reports. My
heart is not in it but it is only work and I can see no point in antagonising Halliday, with all the other problems I have got at the moment. A day too late, I call Eddie to tell him about my progress, feed him some legal jargon, which he doesn’t understand but which seems to pacify him. I give him a timeframe of a fortnight to get everything in order which he tells me is much longer than Halliday expected but I can tell that he is pleased to be able to tell Halliday something, anything.

I leave my office at a quarter to two and head for the hospital. My father has been moved from Intensive Care and he is now on a ward, his tubes removed and just a drip feeding into the back of his hand. He is awake when I arrive and I am amazed to see his face brighten momentarily as he sees that it is me, his son, who has come to see him. I have heard that near-death experiences can have profound effects on people’s personalities, but I have never before seen my father pleased to see me. I sit down next to his bed and look at him. On his back, his skin seems to be slipping off his face as if it is not sufficiently well anchored and he looks old. His hair is greasy and I can smell it from where I am sitting. He turns his head to look at me, doesn’t sit up.

‘All right?’ I say.

‘Better,’ he says. ‘Nearly died.’

‘Yeah, well…’ I know that I am expected to deliver comforting words but I cannot. ‘Who were you fighting?’

‘Someone got the drop on me. Didn’t see them.’

‘No faces?’

‘Can’t remember.’

‘Didn’t say anything?’

‘Said I can’t fucking remember, didn’t I?’

He turns his head away; it did not take long for the old antagonism to resurface. We sit in silence for a while. Fuck it, I think.

‘Went to see Xynthia Halliday. She told me about my mother, about what happened.’

My father does not respond and I watch the back of his head resting on his pillow, wonder what’s going on in there. I am about to say something else when he slowly turns his head back towards me.

‘She told you, did she.’

‘You let Halliday sell her?’

‘Think I could have stopped him? Least he didn’t kill her. Or me.’

‘You could have tried.’

My father closes his eyes, perhaps replaying the situation back to himself, asking himself if he could have done anything differently. But he is not one for self-examination and he opens them again, this time looking defiant.

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to find her.’

‘How you going to do that?’

‘Don’t know.’ I don’t, and suddenly the futility of it hits me. What can I do? She could have gone anywhere, done anything. Anything could have happened to her. She could be at the bottom of a canal.

‘Why’d you want to find her, son?’ my father asks softly and I look at him in astonishment, this gentle tone one I do not believe I have ever heard from him before.

‘Wouldn’t you? She’s my mother and I never got to know her.’

‘So long ago.’

‘You never told me anything. You think I didn’t always wonder?’

‘Couldn’t say anything. Fucking pointless.’

‘I want to know.’ The word ‘closure’ springs to my mind but of course I do not say it; my father knows nothing about such things. He sighs deeply and closes his eyes again, for such a long time that I wonder if he has gone to sleep.

‘Dad?’

He opens his eyes. ‘Some Irishman,’ he says. ‘In Manchester.’

‘Irishman?’

‘Took your mother.’

‘Took her. You mean, was sold her.’

My father ignores me. ‘Fucking ex-Provisional or something. Only met him once. Horrible cunt.’

‘Got a name?’

‘Connolly. No, Conneely. Sean Conneely. He was forty then, probably dead now.’

This is more than I had ever expected. A clue, a step towards my mother, a name from thirty-seven years ago, shining up at me like metal from under the sea. ‘You sure?’

‘Sure.’ My father lets out a long ragged breath. ‘Never found out what happened to her. Couldn’t…’ He blinks and a tear rolls out of the corner of his eye, past his crow’s feet, on to the pillow. ‘Tried to forget.’

‘How could you forget? I was there.’

My father looks at me and in his eyes I can see that the anger that was always there has gone and that instead
there is a pain which seems fathomless. ‘You were,’ he says. ‘Always.’

Manchester. Sean Conneely. I have a name, a destination, somewhere to go. He may be dead. He may not have anything to say to me. But this is all I have and I will follow it through until I know for sure. What I will not do, what I cannot do, is wait like a cornered animal for whatever Baldwin is planning for me. I can still feel his tongue in my ear; my finger will not let me forget his existence, out there, a lurking horror. As a child, I would listen for my father’s return home; the feet on the stairs, the twist of the door handle, the widening shard of light. But, as afraid as I was back then, I never thought I would be killed. Hurt, yes, but in my small bed, underneath my blankets, the possibility of death never crossed my mind. But Baldwin has killed, and I am sure more than once; behind his easy smile and genial manner is a murderer entirely without pity. Nowhere is safe for me any more. I believe he means to kill me; he has got under my skin, into my head. And perhaps it is merely because I am tired, and it is late. But I can think of nothing that will stop him.

Still, I will not call what I am about to do running away, merely a strategic withdrawal. I drive to my office and leave a message on my answerphone explaining about a family emergency, then home and pack a bag, lock the windows, close the curtains. All the time I tell myself that I will be back, that this is just temporary, that I am not being run out of town. But if I stop to think about it, I cannot see any way back.

22

I ARRIVED IN
Manchester yesterday, having driven up the M1 doing a hundred and more, looking in my rear-view mirror with a sick feeling of paranoia right up until I hit the M1 and left London far behind. Every car that came up behind could have been Baldwin. Once a Porsche driver tailgated me flashing his headlights and I felt a dread, as I pulled over and willed him to go past, which caused me to clench my teeth so hard my jaw ached. As I drove north and passed exit signs bearing the names of towns I had never visited and never would, I wondered whether I would ever be able to go back to Essex. But fear, like any emotion, cannot last for ever, and with every passing mile my feeling of dread lessened. It felt reassuring to be caught up in this tide of people with places to go, their own business to take care of; the number of cars on the motorway was so great that I could not help but feel diminished by them. I became comfortable in my insignificance.

For some parochial reason I had expected colder weather, perhaps drizzle as I headed north but the sun continued to blaze and I wondered how long it could be until it rained.
The countryside that I drove past looked as parched as the South of France, yellow grass and trees that seemed exhausted by the effort of standing up in the heat. I stopped off at the services for a coffee and drank it in the bright sunlight surrounded by families in cars loaded up with bags and bicycles and towing motorboats or caravans. Although I was headed for Manchester and not the Cote d’Azur or Miami, I still shared, in some small way, that feeling of escape that only a holiday can give. I was going to find somebody; but nobody would be able to find me while I was away.

There were only four people named Conneely in the phone book for Manchester, and only one of them had the initial S. I thought about calling the number, but there are some things it is best to do in person and, anyway, I did not want to scare him off. If I turned up out of the blue in person, there would be little a man of his age could do to get rid of me.

The only person who knew where I was going, and why, was Gabe; I’d passed by his place after I left my house and thanked him for putting me up, told him what was going on. I must have caught him on one of his more empathetic days as he took the time to engage with what I was saying.

‘Sold her? Jesus. I guess it explains why your dad wasn’t keen on discussing her. Christ, Daniel, every time I think your background can’t get any more fucked up.’

‘Yeah. Well.’

‘Think you’re going to be able to find her?’

‘Have to try.’

We were standing up in Gabe’s kitchen and he sat down at the table, indicated that I should too. I pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him. His pale eyes looked concerned.

‘Listen, Danny, you sure about this?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘It’s been an age. A lifetime. Think you’re going to find anything you like?’

‘I could find
her
.’

‘Whoever that is. She didn’t ever try to track you down, right? I mean, shit, Danny, it’s not as if you ever moved. You live about a mile away from where you grew up.’

I shrug. ‘Could have had her reasons.’

‘Sold her.’ Gabe shakes his head. ‘You ever read the story of “The Monkey’s Paw”?’

‘Nope.’

‘This couple’s son dies at work, gets chewed up in some machinery. They use this monkey’s paw to wish him back to life, right? So immediately there’s a knock at the door but the father, he suddenly realises how messed up his son was by the accident, how horrific he will look. Uses their last wish to wish the kid back in his grave.’

I give Gabe a stern look. ‘Please. Be careful what you wish for?’

‘Just saying. It’s been a long time. You’ve got no idea what you’ll find. Her life, Danny, it must have been fucking horrific. You can’t imagine.’

‘You think I can stop? Now?’

‘Probably not,’ says Gabe, getting up and stretching, sermon over. ‘No point trying to tell you anything anyway. You’ll do what you want.’ He yawns, arms extended over
his head, something feline in his dismissiveness. ‘Try not to get killed.’

‘I’ll try.’

Conneely lived in Salford, on the west of the city. I could have gone and visited him then; it was only four o’clock and it would not have taken me long to get there. But the hotel I was staying in had a bar and a roof terrace, and I had been driving all day. And the truth was, I was not mentally prepared to confront a man I had never met before, who might well have caused my mother immeasurable pain and humiliation. I put my bag in my room, took the lift up to the bar, ordered a vodka and tonic. The terrace filled up and soon I was surrounded by people drinking, talking, laughing. I felt camouflaged by their presence, lost within this new city where nobody could find me. I drank too much and of course my size attracted glances, curious from the women and appraising from the men. But I was left alone and I felt safe and eventually when a group asked if they could share my table I went back down to my room and slept more soundly than I had done in weeks, lulled to sleep by a show in which men and women entered and left an apartment and talked with each other and the audience laughed.

Now I am standing in front of Sean Conneely’s address in Salford. He lives in a red-brick terrace house with a small front garden, on a street in which half the houses are vacant and have perforated metal sheets fixed over the windows. There are no cars parked in the street unless you count the burned-out shell of a Mercedes half on, half off
the kerb three houses down, resting on its disc brakes, its tyres melted away. There are small squares of broken glass everywhere so that it crunches wherever you walk. A group of kids on BMXs are swearing at the end of the road, throwing stones at a streetlight that is already smashed. Sean Conneely’s front garden is overgrown with weeds and his front door is wide open. There is an armchair in the front garden amongst the weeds and an old man who I assume is Sean Conneely is sitting in it and my immediate suspicion is that he is quite mad.