Nothing Sacred (27 page)

The woman is reaching for something under the bar, a weapon of some kind, I expect. But the bar is too small to swing anything and besides, I am on Louie before she can give it to him, landed three headshots before he can defend himself. He puts his arms up like a child in the playground, but I hit him under the ribs, once, twice, and his legs go. I stand back, take a breath, prepare to go back in.

‘That's enough,' says the woman behind the bar. ‘Fucking leave it.'

I stop. I am breathing heavily. I look at her.

‘If we knew who was talking,' she said, ‘he'd be a dead man.' She shakes her head, confounded by my stupidity. ‘Now go on, whoever you are. Do one. Before you get yourself in real trouble.'

I look at Louie, who now has blood down the front of his Jack Daniels t-shirt. He is looking up at me, his expression fatalistic, and already one of his eyes is beginning to swell and close. At the end of the bar Del is still and quiet, lying on his front among fallen chairs, his legs bent carelessly like a huge sleeping child.

I have found nothing; this has been a mistake. I nod to the woman behind the bar, who smiles sarcastically back at me. I turn to leave and can feel the throb in my knuckles. So much for that. I am going to need a new plan.

I had spent the day going through Blake's file, looking for something, anything that could help me find the identity of the sole witness against him. But I had found nothing; all I discovered was that Connor Blake was responsible for the death of a young man who emphatically had not deserved it. Karl Reece, the file told me, had been a twenty-two-year-old medical student at Oxford who was visiting college friends over Christmas. He came from the north of England where his father owned a farm. He was scholarly and gifted and originated so far from the aggressive brash world of suburban Essex that he might as well have been born on the moon. He had never encountered a man like Connor Blake, never imagined that good-natured banter could go so wrong, so quickly. He did not know the rules. And because of that he was dead. Karl Reece undeniably deserves justice, and I am doing my best to see that he does not get it.

If I am honest with myself, what has just happened was partly a result of this, my feelings of culpability and helplessness. Louie and Del had not deserved what I had unleashed on them; Connor Blake was my real target. But he is untouchable. And along with the shame I feel for what I did to them, the truth is that I also feel calmer. Violence has its uses, disgraceful as it is to admit.

I do not want to go home, cannot face Maria. At times like this there is only one place for me to go; only one person who can help. Someone who is as hard as anybody I am dealing with, probably harder, who sees the world with an eye even more cynical than my own. I get in my car and head for Gabe's.

Major Strauss is in Gabe's kitchen when I arrive. They are drinking and talking, and I do not want to intrude, but Gabe looks pleased to see me, waves me in. The last thing I should be doing is drinking. I have too much to do, too many things to sort out. But one drink clears the way for another and before long I am halfway in the bag, yet with the reptilian part of my brain still sober and alert, keyed up way too tight.

Much of what Gabe and Major Strauss are talking about is beyond me so I just sit and listen as they discuss their time in Iraq, Afghanistan, the difficulty of raising a domestic army in a foreign land, issues of ethics and logistics, politics and tactics. I can see by the way he talks about it how much Gabe misses the army; how its rules and challenges ignited his imagination, still do.

At some stage Gabe is silent for a little too long and he sets his glass down abruptly, says, ‘Bed,' gets up and leaves.

I imagine that Major Strauss will now leave but instead he refills his glass with Scotch, pours more into mine, looks over at the door Gabe has just left through and sighs.

‘That, Daniel, is one of the tragedies of my career.'

‘Gabe?'

‘An excellent soldier. Excellent. Would have ended up my boss. No doubt.'

I nod, do not reply. I know so little about his time in the army that I have no contribution to make.

‘Fighting?' says Major Strauss, looking at my knuckles.

‘Something like that.'

But he has already lost interest, mind back on Gabe. ‘Always first. Always. In the lead vehicle. Didn't have to be. Led by example.'

‘His men liked him?'

‘Loved him. You can't imagine. Be next to his men, on his front, looking for IEDs, prodding at the ground with a bayonet. Tell me how many other commanding officers'd do that.' But he is not asking a question, does not want a response. There is a genuine sadness in his voice. ‘If a bomb went off under a vehicle, he'd be the one hosing it out, fishing out body parts, pieces of soldiers. Him. Not his men. Every time.'

‘He misses it.'

‘Course he does.' Major Strauss laughs without humour. ‘Doesn't understand what it's like now. They blow his leg off, we're not even allowed to shoot back.'

‘That bad?'

Major Strauss shakes his head, downs his drink. ‘He's a good man. Involved in all this, that dead corporal.' He sighs again, something wistful and regretful in his face. ‘Such a shame.'

‘How's that going?'

‘Getting there,' he says. ‘Reaching a resolution.' He stands up, looks down at me. ‘I'll see you.'

‘Yeah.'

He walks unsteadily out of the kitchen and I hear the front door close and shortly after his car leave, headlights through the window painting the wall of Gabe's dark kitchen. He should not be driving. Neither should I. But I know where Gabe's sofa is and I head for it, take out my phone and keys, notice that I have missed two calls from Maria, and fall asleep.

26

THE FIRM OF
lawyers I worked for in the City before my public disgracing and banishment back to Essex owned an office building near London Bridge, had been there for nearly a century. The firm was run by men of privilege, privately educated sons of the social elite; looking back I find it hard to understand why they hired me. Perhaps they enjoyed the idea of having such a brute in their midst, a caged beast to wheel into meetings and put the frighteners on recalcitrant clients. But maybe I am being hard on myself. I was a competent lawyer and made them a great deal of money. Though it is also true that I never felt at home in their hushed book-lined corridors, always saw myself as an imposter.

About five years ago I worked on a case there with a junior solicitor named Charles, a fundamentally decent man but weak and easily turned. I soon discovered that he was fiddling his time, claiming hours that he had not worked. I confronted him about it and he told me in a cracked voice that he had been instructed to do so by one of the senior partners, Gideon, a florid-faced man with long white curled hair who affected brightly coloured bow ties and braces. Gideon was a loud and unpleasant bully who had carved himself out his own fiefdom, which he ruled with spite and greed. Charles told me that Gideon had threatened him, told him that he would be out of the firm if he did not do as he was told. Charles had a demanding wife and children in private schools, and he could not afford to lose his job. As he told me this he had taken off his glasses and elaborately cleaned them without looking at me, but I had seen that they had begun to fog from his tears.

At a firm golf day several weeks later, I had been paired with Gideon, consigned to spending three hours hacking at a golf ball in his unpleasant, hectoring company. He had spent the first nine holes filling me in about his younger girlfriends and how much his house was now worth, how it had doubled in value in little over three years even though it was in a neighbourhood that had a lot of blacks.

On the tenth hole he had knocked his ball off the fairway into the rough and close to a small lake. I followed him as he went to find it, and next to a small stand of trees told him that if he did not promise to stop bullying Charles and the other solicitors under his jurisdiction, then I would drag him over to the water, hold his head under until he nearly drowned, then do it again and again until the point at which he saw things my way. His initial outraged reaction had been to question my sanity, then threaten me, then mock my heritage. But I had held him by the balls and looked into his eyes until he nodded in sullen, cowed agreement. We had played the rest of the holes in silence. Whether it was the pain in his groin or his chagrin at what I had said to him, I could not tell; but on that back nine his golf swing went to hell.

Now I am sitting in a café over a cup of expensive cappuccino, looking at Charles. He has not changed much; he has new glasses but his shoulders still slope and his chin is still weak. He does not look happy. I cannot blame him, after what I have just asked him.

‘It's impossible.'

‘It's difficult, I accept that,' I say. ‘But please. Don't tell me it's impossible.'

Charles no longer works in private practice; the pressure eventually became too much. He now works as a prosecutor for the CPS, and while he is not working on Connor Blake's case, I have no doubt that he knows somebody who is. Somebody who knows the real identity of Witness A.

‘You owe me,' I tell him, not for the first time. But it is at least true. I had said nothing to anybody about his dishonesty back then, about what Gideon had told him to do. And after our golf day, Gideon had left him alone.

‘But Daniel.' He looks at a passing waitress as if he is considering asking her for help, to save him from the nasty man. ‘It's beyond illegal. We'd both go to prison.'

‘I won't tell.'

‘Daniel.'

‘Listen, Charles. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't necessary.'

‘But why? You know you're not allowed to know.'

‘I just need it.'

‘I can't do it.'

‘You need to,' I say. I have never felt as low and contemptible and I despise myself for what I say next. ‘Or you want me to go to the Law Society with what you were up to back then? It'd finish your career.'

‘Daniel.' The way he says it, as if he had held me up as some kind of paragon and is devastated to see that I am human after all; the disappointment of a child discovering his favourite football star is a drug user. ‘Why are you doing this?'

He's not getting it. He still cannot believe what I am asking of him. He needs to understand I am serious.

‘Your wife, what's her name?'

‘Ophelia.'

I should have remembered. ‘What's she going to do when you lose your job, can't get a new one because of what you did?'

‘Christ, Daniel…'

‘Kids still in private school? Want to keep them there?'

‘This isn't fair.'

‘No. No, it isn't. But Charles, it's happening. So. Can you do it?'

‘No. Don't know. Maybe. Daniel, this… this is insane.'

‘Look at me, Charles.'

Charles tries to meet my eyes but he cannot, ducks back down over his pot of Earl Grey.

‘Charles, I just need a name. Then I'll leave you alone.'

He shakes his head at his tea. ‘A name.'

‘Two words. All I need.'

He is still shaking his head. ‘Can't believe this. Not you, Daniel.'

‘Just nod if you can do it.'

Charles stops shaking his head, is still for some seconds. Then he nods slowly, but still does not lift his head, still does not look at me. I put one of my cards on the table and wait until he picks it up.

‘Need it soon, Charles. Need it yesterday.' Charles just nods again. I stand up and look down at him, a small man huddled over a small teapot, and I feel sick at myself, as much of a bully as his old boss Gideon. No, worse. I turn to leave and Charles does not even look up to watch me go.

Back at my office I put a call in to Jack, my acquaintance on the local paper. Gabe had asked me if I could find out anything about Global Armour, told me that he had tried but that their accounts were held offshore and he did not know where to look, who to ask. Jack had done his share of investigative journalism on Fleet Street until the bottle had beaten him. He probably still had contacts he could lean on.

‘Danny. How you doing?'

‘Good, Jack. You?'

‘Decent, pretty decent. You still acting for Connor Blake?'

‘Yeah.'

‘You all right?'

‘Yeah. Think so.'

‘Tread carefully, Danny. Those Blakes, you know? Not a lot they won't do. Not a lot they haven't already done.'

‘Got you.'

‘So what can I do you for?'

I tell him about Global Armour, tell him that they might be involved in something and that if they are, he'll be first to know. Tell him it could be juicy. Jack listens in silence.

‘So,' he says.

‘So.'

‘What do you want from me?'

‘Anything you can find out. Who they are, who's backing them. Be good to know what we're up against.'