Patchwork Man (14 page)

Maybe this was grief, then? Grief, they say catches up with you later – like secrets. Maybe I was grieving for Margaret, annoyed as I was with her for the mess she’d deliberately landed me in. I allowed the idea to sink in, exploring what grieving might feel like. It was difficult to decide since I wasn’t sure I’d ever grieved before. I wasn’t even sure I’d even
felt
before.

Feelings. Everyone talked about them all the time –
you’ve hurt my feelings, I feel you don’t like me, how do you feel?
That one had been sent my way a lot recently.
How do you feel, Lawrence? Are you feeling OK? Don’t deny your feelings
... I hadn’t a clue what mine were. The only person who hadn’t bombarded me with questions about feelings was Kat. Indeed, she’d been more concerned about her feelings than mine, but she was probably the only person who had
engendered
feelings in me. And that was it. As soon as I thought about her, my mind was full again and I had the uncomfortable
feeling
that I wasn’t going to be able to eject her easily. So had I felt the same way about Margaret? The only possible answer was ‘I didn’t know’. When I thought about her the mix was of regret, anger, betrayal and bewilderment. This couldn’t be grief for losing one I loved, it was shock; shock, dismay, confusion and most of all, at the moment – defiance. I would not be walked into the trap she had laid for me – the parent trap. I couldn’t avoid concluding the case for the boy, and I couldn’t avoid my responsibility to do the best job possible for him – which unfortunately would include examining Win’s role in the proceedings more closely. But I would conclude it my way.

If I was going to face Win for a second time, I knew it couldn’t be Kenny who faced him. It had to be Lawrence – and a Lawrence who’d faced his demons. I’d surprised myself by facing him the first time, but it had drained me and I knew I couldn’t have faced him again if he’d walked back through the door minutes after he’d left. The little rat teeth in the cellar couldn’t be allowed to gnaw away at my foundations any longer. I had to finally and irrevocably grow up and leave the past I thought I’d left behind with my childhood fears. I allowed the insidious creeping dark of the past into full view and there, with only the shadows for company, I took a long look at the man Kenny had become – and the child he’d grown out of.

He was a strange mix, that man – pieced together from a ragbag of life – the feelings I’d avoided and the outward trappings I’d adopted. Maybe we’re all patchworks, slowly adding to the pattern, piece by piece – some frayed, some neatly sewn, some brightly coloured and some dull and faded from over-use. I’d shied away from the unravelling edges of part of my patchwork – the tattered sense of loss and failure in childhood – and focused only on the pristine right-angled squares; the years of control and success being the man I wanted to be. Lawrence Juste, QC. But those symmetrical squares nevertheless bordered the rough and ragged. One day, without firmer sutures, they would become unstitched and lost, and the needlework had already been unravelling for decades.

I filed the FFF papers where Margaret had indicated they should go, and stuck my own post-it across them. ‘NFA’ it said. No further action. Oh, no, my dear. This patchwork man has his own design – maybe haphazard and uncertain as yet, but being added to all the time, and the first square is right now.

The odd thing about finally facing yourself is that whilst it’s humiliating to own your failings and accept your weaknesses, it also ultimately makes you more confirmed in your convictions. I wasn’t just Lawrence, I was still also Kenny – and it was no bad thing that Kenny had been afraid, had betrayed and had escaped, because Kenny also understood. Ironically, whilst Lawrence didn’t, he did have those feelings everyone talked about and never displayed. I stayed in Chambers all night, gradually fleshing out what I needed to know to determine what had engendered that uneasy feeling I’d had when I’d first read the case notes and thought that there was something I was missing. I now suspected it was something Win had in my patchwork design, but without talking to him again, I couldn’t see what it was.

I spent half the night cross-referencing all the c.f. notes until I’d placed FFF, Casualties of War and Margaret into their structural positions. Her hidden agenda remained what I’d thought it to be when I’d first inserted the FFF documentation into the file. It was a very feminine one, and try as I might, I couldn’t hate her for my part in it. All those charitable works, all those subtle steers in favour of children’s organisations, all that kudos as the ‘caring wife’ of Lawrence Juste had all been to get her to the position she was in just before the joy-rider trampled her into the dust. She was at the pinnacle of her plan, cleverly balancing my respectability and position in the news as the lawman of the people with her persona as the Madonna of the abandoned. I was to have been manoeuvred into taking Danny’s case. He couldn’t win – there was too much evidence against him – and the great Lawrence Juste would have knowingly accepted a case he had no chance but to fail miserably with. My partners would fume at me for ruining our straight win record over recent years when his ever-loving wife privately came up with a triumphant solution to solve both professional and personal failings; the adoption ruse. The support of public opinion would have been immense. The childless couple saving a child. Both she and I would be heralded as saints. If I didn’t agree, there was always the little matter of all those names and dates and places to ruin me with ...

And if that didn’t persuade me, then there was still Win – and perhaps something more that lurking just behind him.

It was so neat I wanted to laugh out loud. Margaret was certainly a good pupil. She’d obviously listened carefully to everything I’d told her over the years – how the evidence had to stack up, the witnesses dovetail, the public applaud. Oh, she’d orchestrated it all perfectly and I would have been played like a hapless sap if she’d still been alive. I had to admire her, but now with so much of it already in place and me having heedlessly followed the gingerbread trail she’d left so far, I also had to foil her. Danny’s odd response when Kat let slip that my wife had just died drifted back to me as my mind feverishly turned over the possibilities.
‘She were nice.’
It implied he’d met Margaret. When? As part of the lead-in to the adoption process? If so had it been an informal meeting, or one engineered by Margaret without admitting the reason why? In fact how far along was the process? I rummaged through the case papers again until I found the FFF paperwork I’d so dismissively filed away. There was no intimation of how far things had progressed in real terms in the accompanying letter, just thanks to Margaret and the social worker for making so much progress on the case.

The social worker.

It was close to 6.30am by then – too early to reasonably ring anyone on business, unless it was personal business. I made myself a strong black coffee before the hyperactive hum of office girls and last night’s dates filled the poky staffroom on the ground floor behind the clerks’ office, and slunk back to my office. Gregory would be the first one in and I certainly wanted to avoid his hawk eyes, with my five o’clock shadow and greyed complexion. I drank the coffee whilst it was still too hot, letting the bitter burn fire up the antagonist in me, rehearsing over and over what I was going to say. The numerals of the clock on the desk slowly slipped round to 9.00 and I picked up the phone to Kat and called the direct-dial number she’d given me.

‘Mid-West Social Services, Katrina Roumelia speaking – how can I help you?’ It was early-morning sing-song and I knew my attack would take her completely off-guard.

‘Probably more than you’ve been doing so far.’ The sound of a sharp intake of breath was followed by silence at the other end of the phone so I followed through. ‘Perhaps you can fill me in with the progress on Danny’s adoption so far?’

‘Oh.’

‘Is that all you have to say?’ I offered no mercy. ‘Your case notes seem to have an awful lot more in than mine,
Miss Roumelia.
’ I could sense her flinch at the formality.

‘Lawrence ... Mr Juste,’ she stumbled, ‘Um, oh dear – I don’t know what to say. Can we talk?’

‘I thought that’s what we are doing right now?’

‘I mean, face to face.’

‘Would it make a difference to the amount of facts I am given – as opposed to the fairy-tales?’

‘I haven’t made anything up, really.’

‘Maybe not – but you have left an awful lot out and that makes for a different kind of fiction, doesn’t it?’

‘I’m sorry. With your wife dying like that, it seemed as if it would all come to nothing anyway, so it didn’t seem worth saying anything to you. I thought it would just make it all worse ...’

‘The truth rarely makes things worse,’ but even as I said it I knew it was a lie.

‘Can we talk about it, please? I’ve got no appointments until this afternoon. I could slip out whenever it suited you.’

I suppose I could have continued the game. The old Lawrence Juste would have – toying with the target until they snapped under the strain; but this was more than a target. No, this was something
other
than a target. This was a woman who did strangely incredible things to my sense of self, whilst also withholding information that could crucify me.

We met at the coffee shop down the road from her office. I didn’t want to be seen with her near Chambers, and definitely not in the state I was in, but I’d forgotten that by the time I was sitting at the shabby table with another overly-strong and unappetising coffee in front of me. She slipped in opposite and gave me a rueful grin.

‘You look awful.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve caused that.’

‘You and Margaret. What was going on?’

‘It was the back-up plan – just in case, although Margaret was certain you’d take the case and win it. You’re the best.’

‘So you keep saying.’ It sounded more like a grunt than a comment.

‘You are! Whatever you look like,’ she winked cheekily. I just stared back ice-faced, distilling the kind of cheek that encouraged her to flirt even when she should have felt at a disadvantage –and liking it.

‘You seem to be remarkably unconcerned that you have potentially been involved in a sackable offence – withholding evidence from legal defence and manipulation of official records.’

Her face fell and she shook her head vigorously. The little coils of hair ringletting her face bounced jauntily.

‘No, no – oh God, we always seem to be getting at each other, don’t we? I know I was in the wrong. I promise I won’t keep anything from you in the future. Please can we put it to one side – forget it? I’m playing by the rules with you from now on.’ I was going to push her a little harder until I realised that she wasn’t being flippant. The minx of earlier was safely confined again. I relaxed a little. I could deal with her subdued – a chastened kitten instead of a playful tigress. The fingertips clutching at her coffee cup handle were pinched pink from the pressure exerted. She was nervous. Afraid even. The light-heartedness was an attempt at masking it. I leant back in my chair and scrutinised her. She caught my eye once and then looked steadfastly into the congealing top of her coffee. ‘I really am sorry,’ she added quietly.

‘I don’t understand you, Kat,’ I admitted eventually. ‘I don’t think I believe your explanation, but I can’t see why you are so anxious. I may be an ogre at times but I don’t believe that you think I would deliberately make trouble for you.’

‘I don’t. I think you’re ... No-one was supposed to know about it. It really
was
the back-up plan.’ She sighed. ‘Your wife was a very persuasive woman, you know.’

‘So you knew her better than you’ve been admitting?’

‘I guess I knew her well enough. At first she was just one of the patrons of some of the charities I had to make a showing at – one of the big-wigs, so I didn’t really have anything to do with her in my lowly capacity.’ She risked a quick glance at me before looking down again, cheeks flushed – that rosy brown that seeps through tawny complexion like a peach skin bruising. ‘It happened gradually, without me really remarking on it to begin with. I’d be allocated to her team on any leafleting campaigns I joined, or invited to go along to the events and dinners that she was at, and eventually developed a nodding acquaintance. Then one day I was offered a free place at a gala fund-raising event if I could fit in some paperwork errands on the charities behalf – or rather Mrs Juste’s part. Of course I agreed. It was like giving me a gold star – being noticed and
invited
to be involved. She talked to me then – just casually, but for a little longer the next time, then about a particular topic the next. She was nice – a gracious lady.’

I laughed. ‘Oh yes, Margaret was always a gracious lady if you were doing what she wanted you to. What was the twist in the tail then?’

‘Why should there have been one?’

‘Wasn’t there?’

‘Well, yes. After a while. She asked me about children at risk and then about adoption procedures. I suppose I got a little impassioned about it as a subject. It makes me angry.’ She stopped, as if she was about to say something she’d regret.

‘Why does it make you angry,’ I asked, curious at this unusual woman, by turns flirtatious and earnest. Her passion was evident in the sparkling eyes and set of the jaw. I hadn’t ever thought before that social workers actually believed in what they did. I was clearly mistaken.

‘Oh God, you’re going to think me such a mess.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Yes! I don’t want you of all people to think that.’ She faltered again. I waited, turning over the implication of that statement in my mind but without knowing what to do with it. ‘OK, I’m probably past the point of no-return now, I guess. I have a little brother. Not so little now, of course – he’s twenty-five – but he was always in trouble.

From about the age of eight, if it was bad news, it found Alfie. I was at college when it started – trying to get through my ‘A’ levels and on to university. I kind of opted out at the time and left it to my mum to sort out. The trouble was, she didn’t. Couldn’t really. My dad died when I was fourteen and Alfie was five. I don’t think she ever got over losing my dad, and the more trouble Alfie was in, the more she sank into depression until she committed suicide when I was in my second year at uni. By then Alfie was in trouble more than he was out of it and still only eleven or so. He was taken into care because I couldn’t take him on. He ended up in Borstal, then prison, and I hadn’t seen or heard of him in years until about two years ago. I’m ashamed of that, but I can’t change it. Margaret mentioned she’d come across someone by the same surname as me and I knew it had to be Alfie – it’s such an unusual surname, you see – like yours. Anyway, Margaret hadn’t just come across him, she’d come across him up to his old tricks. She said she’d get him fixed up with a first-class brief if I could help her out a bit too.’