Patchwork Man (13 page)

Margaret had provided me with all the addresses. It wasn’t that I needed facts. I needed permission and I needed absolution. I reached into the desk drawer and flung a legal pad and a pen onto the desk and gestured to them. ‘You can write their contact details on that, and if you’ve nothing else to tell me you can go.’ He flung me a look of disgust but scribbled down some addresses and phone numbers nonetheless, and then flung the pad and pen back at me. I looked at it peremptorily and then pushed it to one side. There was one more than on Margaret’s list, but I was loathe to ask Win about it. Something about it was ringing other alarm bells anyway.

‘By the way, you never said when Jaggers told you I was responsible for setting you up?’

‘Why?’

‘I just wondered. It can’t have been long ago otherwise you would have come looking for me sooner.’

‘Nonce,’ he enunciated clearly, looking straight at me. I laughed disdainfully.

‘Sticks and stones, Win. I’m long past being hurt by words now.’ But again, I was lying. He left without replying.

T
he addresses Win had written down were the same as the ones Margaret had bequeathed me, including presumably the squat Georgie had been living in. There were none for Ma on either list. I put the list in my top drawer next to the one Margaret had written and locked the drawer. For the moment I was too shaken up by the encounter with Win to face any more emotional upheaval. I sank back in the outsized office chair which so perfectly matched the overdone opulence of Chambers and allowed it to envelop me. Increasing age can be ignored most of the time when still in what the papers laughingly call your ‘prime’ but stress and trauma strip away the ability to resist vulnerability. My ‘prime’ had been sorely tested by revisiting the past. I felt every ache of middle age now. If Kat could see me as consumed by weariness as I was now, would she still think me the ‘best’?

I closed my eyes and tried to blot everything out whilst I waited for some modicum of the energy that had been drained from me to seep back in. The noise of the clerks and the everyday hubbub of business was muffled by the heavy office door and the blanket of genteel respectability the décor and manners of its inhabitants afforded. I remained cocooned in my complex world of confusion, listening for nothing, relieved I had no appointments scheduled for that afternoon.

I must have dozed after a while. The early afternoon sun, poking its way through the heavy drapes, had sweated itself down to a watery early evening haze by the time I roused myself fully, mouth as thick and foul as the bottom of a bird cage and back rigid from slumping awkwardly in sleep. It was quiet and I wondered if everyone had gone home, leaving me there – solitary survivor of the day. I eased myself from behind the desk and walked stiffly to the door. Win had closed it firmly behind him and it had wedged shut. It gave the impression of being locked unless you pulled it hard so Gregory probably thought I was still engaged in conversation, or had even gone home. Heather’s room was empty, the lilies still flooding the landing with their perfume, and Francis’s ash storm had settled for the night. Jeremy’s door was shut and the junior’s room was abandoned. I looked at my watch. It was six forty-five. They would all have gone home by now – even Gregory, Head Clerk and master of the domain. I felt at once lonely and at peace.

I walked back along the corridor, savouring having the building to myself and intending to merely go back to my room and think unhurriedly through the events of the day when I remembered where I’d left the case notes. I retraced my steps and went silently downstairs. Normally one would have expected an empty building to feel hollow, forlornly echoing its departed resident’s noise. The soft furnishings of Chambers seemed designed to deaden all sound and all sense of life once business was done for the day. Only I and the trapped fly buzzing desperately against the clerks’ window remained of the daily battle between right and wrong. The clerks’ office was piled high with the latest briefs awaiting distribution, pink ribbons festooning the mountain like a miniature celebration. The post out trays lay empty, like a row of open mouths announcing their surprise at what had passed through them. Margaret still had a tray allocated to her even though she’d officially left Chambers when we’d married. Her unofficial extra-curricular duties as champion of lost causes and social wheel-oiler for me had more often than not benefited Chambers too by enhancing our reputation as respected icons of society, so her place here was permanent, if informal.

The tray had lain empty for several days now the first flurry of post-mortem correspondence had been intercepted and prohibited by Gregory in his crusade to protect me from the added burden it represented. Only my clerk had been allowed routine access and he was as useless as an already licked stamp. Momentarily my feelings towards Gregory softened to gratitude and something even akin to affection, miserable prying bastard though he could be. Odd that it now had a large manila envelope protruding from it – both in that it had arrived and managed to bypass both Gregory and my clerk, and that Gregory hadn’t officiously mentioned it to me and tried to peer over my shoulder as I opened it. I collected it en route to the basement.

Entering via the back door was nerve-racking enough during the daytime when Chambers was humming with perky admin staff shuffling papers and clerks jibing and vying with each other for cases on behalf of their briefs. The camaraderie and competitiveness between them had always amused me. Now, with the hush of the deserted building creeping after me like an assassin targeting its quarry, I was unnerved. It was the similarity to descending the steps to the cellar that came back to haunt me every time – hence the reason I used the way in even more rarely than any of my colleagues. As with Win, it wasn’t fear that terrified me, it was the emotion of fear itself.

I clicked all the light switches on at the head of the stairs and clattered down them as if creating so much noise would ward off unseen terrors. The case folder was still wedged where I’d hidden it, back cover bent at the corner where I’d rammed it into its hiding place in my haste to reach the bolthole of my office. I pulled it out and flattened the cover, smoothing it back into place and ruffling the thin post-it note stuck to the inner edge of a sheet inside as I did so. I must have missed it earlier – how could I have done that? Usually I was so thorough – Margaret had always teased me that it was one of my virtues, even after sex. I’d never been sure at the time whether she was teasing me or it was a genuinely meant compliment. Now I suspected it had been a private joke for her – and not necessarily particularly flattering to me.

The bulging cabinet I’d forced the case notes behind grumbled at being disturbed and the creaking spooked me. I made the stairs two at a time, feeling the nip of rat teeth and the shiver of pursuit clutching at my spine until I was able to turn on myself at the head of the stairs and see nothing but my own long shadow trickling down into the gloom at the bottom. I clicked the lights off and stepped backwards into the reception area, closing the door securely on the terrors of childhood, basement and imagination. The rats could stay down there in the dark. I intended living in the light.

I went more casually back to my office and flicked the desk lamp on as a precaution against the dusk. It was now past seven and although it would probably stay daylight until almost ten, I couldn’t quite shake the sensation of not being alone. I put the folder and the letter side by side on the desk and rummaged in the left-hand drawer for my letter opener. Damn! I’d forgotten I hadn’t been able to find it since Margaret had died. I slammed the door shut with irritation, making the desk shudder. The envelope bounced lightly on its surface, demanding my attention ahead of the case notes. I didn’t really want to have to read some gushing invitation from a grateful charity begging Margaret to grace their party/soirée/dinner with her presence. I was tempted to ignore it and leave it in Gregory’s pigeon hole as I left but there was an air of officialdom in the grandiose flourish of the logo across the franking stamp of the post mark.

Finding Futures for Families
it proclaimed.
FFF
. I remembered the initials. It was emblazoned on the banner Margaret had posed in front of for the portrait shot on my desk at home, wearing the red and black road-kill dress. It struck me then how many of her charitable pursuits revolved around families –
MADU
–
Mums and Dads Unite
, a charity dedicated to family reunion,
Children Without Boundaries
– adoption resources for couples adopting foreign children,
FFF
of course, and
Casualties of War,
which until then I’d assumed was to do with forces families. I soon found otherwise. Inside the envelope was a full explanation of what both
FFF
and
Casualties of War
did – one I assumed that Margaret wouldn’t have intended me to have become acquainted with until quite some time later if she’d had the chance.
FFF
was essentially an adoption agency.
Casualties of War
not dissimilar in a way, other than that it sourced the potential goods to supply for adoption whereas
FFF
located the potential customers and put the product and purchaser together. Margaret supported both not only as a patron, but also as a potential client it seemed, from the paperwork that lay underneath the covering letter.

I remembered our exchange over Danny Hewson’s case when I’d first attempted to reject it without even looking through the folder.

‘Do I have a choice?’ She hadn’t replied, just tapped the headed paper meaningfully. She’d had me there. Of course I didn’t. Grease the palms, lick the arses, climb the slippery pole. I’d done it all my life to get to here. One last push and I’d be at the top. Didn’t I want to appear the right man for the job to the LCD, she’d pointed out coolly.

‘You can’t simply be a money machine all your life, Lawrence. One day you have to be more than that. A presence – a force. A person with a purpose.’

I’d looked hard at her at that, but it seemed to be no more than a way of pushing me onwards in my career, not a personal judgement. Prove my subscription to the cause of justice for all, and earn valuable points with my political masters who were the real arbiters of how justice was meted out and by whom, she’d concluded. But a legal aid case, and now? She simply raised her eyebrows meaningfully and as she was generally right I’d bowed to her judgement, read the summary – and then recoiled in horror.

Now I realised I should have paid more attention to her intense interest in the cause she was championing even though I said no, absolutely, finally and irrevocably. She never did anything for nothing, unless it was for me, but this time, it didn’t seem to be for me at all – quite the reverse. Now I could see who it had been intended for, just still not why.

The thin set of papers, carefully bound together under the covering letter – and intended to be inserted in the case folder where the post-it beckoned – were the preliminaries to adoption. The boy’s name had already been inserted, but the space for the adoptive parents names had been left blank. In the case notes the fluorescent blood-orange post-it note waved at me like a red flag, and I the bull it was aggravating. I turned the notes on their side and read the instruction on the post-it.

‘Insert adoption papers here.’

I flipped the notes open to the page before the post-it. It was a summary of the boy’s defence, identifying the fact that he had little or no chance of him pleading not guilty and it sticking, unless some other mug confessed, or an alternative culprit identified. I had to reluctantly agree, but that was what Kat and I were going to work on, wasn’t it? Underneath was a summary of the family background, and the mother’s statement that she found it difficult to cope with her large family, especially Danny, who was a law unto himself. There little about the father, other than his general air of absence. There was a large red ink star cross-hatched next to the mother’s statement and a c.f. note. I hadn’t checked up on the c.f. note yet. It had been going to be my next task – to track the references and weave in the other statements to check for inconsistencies or leads. It seemed it might be wise to track this particular note and see where the trail led right now.

At the back of the folder was a list of c.f. notes and this one – number five – related to a proposal from
FFF,
but not what it was. It said ‘see additional papers being obtained by MJ. Counter proposal when defence fails’. Margaret Juste, obviously. And I was probably holding the papers in my hand right now. So Danny was up for adoption because he was beyond parental control. More fairly, he was also unduly disadvantaged by his inappropriate parenting. The reasoning was clear, though. If – or when – all else failed, this was his get-out. Find Danny a new home with adoptive parents prepared to be bound over as responsible for his future good behaviour whilst a minor and he would probably be given his second chance, or at the least, a considerably reduced sentence.

A clever ruse, but who were the prospective parents? I puzzled over it as there were no other notes. Margaret clearly had a clever plan in mind – the hidden agenda. What – or who – the hell was it? And why saddle me with the problem? Then it struck me. I was such a fool. More devastating than the hit and run which had crushed the life from her, more dismal than the childhood nightmare that had crushed the love from me, was the plan Margaret had been steadily putting in place. The plan to create her own family for the future. How the hell she’d been going to do it and get away with it, I had yet to work out, but the names intended to be inserted into the blank spaces were most probably hers and mine.

I
t wasn’t a plan. Not one I would ever follow anyway. A small ungracious part of me congratulated myself on escaping it as a result of Margaret’s death, and then was disgusted. No matter how much I abhorred the idea of fatherhood or facing a child who was more a ghost from the past than myself, it could never be worth another’s death. I slung the case folder and the papers from FFF onto my desk and slumped back in my chair again, sinking into the same sense of depression and pointlessness as had plagued me so many times as a child. I’d not felt so low in a long time – not even straight after Margaret’s death. The need to keep going then had made the adrenaline pump and ironically, if anything, I’d been on a high – glibly fielding press and personal enquiries and soaking up the sympathy that had been lavished on me whilst it was fashionable to do so. Dealing with the boy’s case had also distracted my attention from the reality of the event.