Patchwork Man (23 page)

I debated trying the desk drawers, but guessed they’d be locked. Better to use the time left checking out the other two. The woman’s door was also unlocked, but the room was covered with a fine layer of dust, as if it had been unused for weeks. Plainly a woman busier elsewhere. There were no identifying features for her at all. I went next door to the last of the power players, and there he was. The room was as empty as the other two – of personage – but not of atmosphere. I could feel him in the very walls, the sense of sickening menace and in the photo on the desk. The man himself – the one I’d seen in the face of the older generation next door: Jaggers.

I made my way over to the desk, still reeling as connections clicked into place like the parts of a machine being assembled. If Jaggers belonged in here that made him John Arthur Wemmick. So why had he been John Arthur Green in the children’s home? Or had he been John Arthur Green? Perhaps it was merely an alias? There’d always been something artificial about his rough accent – as if he was acting it rather than speaking it. And if George Edward was his father, that made my old judge his uncle. I tried to remember the judge’s features in detail but it was difficult after all the years of absence, and compounded by his general aura of sickliness for most of the time I’d known him. The gaunt sparseness of chronic ill-health had robbed him of any similarity to the rude vigour of his nephew. The eyes, I supposed – yes, the eyes and mouth were the same, although the judge’s curling lip had been in sardonic amusement. Jaggers’ was cruel. The photo was of Jaggers and a woman, probably fifteen years his junior when it was taken, and it was at least ten years old because it was taken in front of a Wimbledon theatre which I knew had been demolished now. And now it wasn’t mere gut feeling and surmise. It was fact, confirmed by the photograph on his desk and the letter opener beside it. My letter opener. And my wife in the photograph, blonde and more bold-faced, definitely my wife.

The fugue in my head returned – a war between incredulity and fact battling to the death. I sat down at the desk and studied the photograph, disbelieving. I must be mistaken. This was crazy. Worse, how could Margaret be connected to the maniac who’d terrorised my teenage years? And how could that maniac be the privileged and powerful businessman fronting this charity? I put my head in my hands. Think man, think.

Margaret had come out of nowhere – the bright, confident twenty-something, joining Chambers as an intern and rapidly making herself indispensable. Gregory himself had championed her, and there could be no greater pathway to success than that. It was inevitable that she would become a fixture, but she’d chosen me to be the fixing for the fixture. She’d shadowed me on some insignificant case that I was fitting in between more lucrative work because by then we were trying to build a reputation of being ‘the good guys’ – playing on my surname. I remembered the case well, ironically, even though I’d forgotten details of more important ones, it seemed. It had been a pain. Nothing much in it for us; a widow looking for compensation for a life assurance policy gone bad. She’d got it – more because of Margaret’s attention to detail than mine, but I’d received the praise for the success and fairness had dictated I share it. Margaret and I had our first informal drink together and never looked back. Engineered, I wondered now?

The case had been more Francis’s style than mine, but Francis was already unhappily married with two kids and a divorce settlement potential that far outweighed any proclivity to dalliance. Jeremy had just acquired a glamorous and very expensive new girlfriend, not unlike the current model, and Heather wasn’t gay. It only left me. Content with my private life, my private sins and my private past; so private I welcomed no-one into my present until Margaret put herself there. Was that why I’d been allocated the intern – I, who’d least needed or wanted one at the time? Or had I been specifically chosen? It was far too circumstantial, this ill-defined but very apparent link, otherwise.

Yet, how the hell could they know each other? Margaret had only known I was ‘orphaned’, no other details. I’d kept them to myself. She’d known I’d been bullied once and that I’d had a patron of sorts who’d helped me get my start in life, but not the man’s name. The terms of the will had specified secrecy and I’d been happy to go along with them, but if she was this friendly with Jaggers, and he was so closely related to the old judge, then she probably knew all that and more, long before she met me.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! What the hell was going on here? Had she targeted me right from the start – the bright young thing ostensibly looking for a career and then abandoning it to be the wife of the coldest fish at the Bar? I’d always viewed her choice of me with a mixture of mild disbelief and impersonal relief that I was now officially respectable and could stop trying so hard. She took care of it all with a maturity beyond her years – even accepting my unreasonable strictures about no children. And what woman in her right mind would normally accept all of that unless she was completely, utterly and crazily in love with the man dishing out the demands? Whatever else Margaret had been, she hadn’t been in love with me – ever. I didn’t know that then – I knew nothing of love, but I did now. I recognised the passion and insanity in myself for Kat that I couldn’t even have begun to imagine then. It was the explanation I’d been missing all my life – of emotion in general. Heather’s summation of Margaret as a supreme manipulator had been perfect – and I’d missed it completely.

So was this liaison with Jaggers intimate or business? The photo gave no clue, other than that they seemed perfectly at ease with each other. If it was intimate it was betrayal. If it was business, it seemed it was also almost without exception, betrayal too. So what did that mean? That I knew nothing of what was really going on, for a start. I now had a mêlée of concealed identities, ambiguous connections and illusory activities all in full swing around me.

I’d supposedly been wandering the courtyards for over fifteen minutes. Even the most light-headed of barristers would have got their thoughts sufficiently in order by now and there were only so many pleasantries Kat could be expected to think of to keep the posse from forming to track my wandering mind down. I ducked downstairs and found the gents just in time to appear to be leaving it as the manager and Kat appeared. Kat was big-eyed and clearly relieved at the sight of me. The manager was politely irritated.

‘Mr Juste, we thought we’d lost you!’

‘Sorry, I thought I was feeling better than I was. One of your office staff kindly found me a glass of water and then inevitably ...’ I gestured to the toilets.

‘Oh dear. Are you all right now?’

‘Yes, thank you, but maybe I would be better off at home after all.’

‘Of course, of course. I hope it has helped to see where your wife made such a difference. Miss Roumelia has been telling me how you wanted to include some details in the eulogy. I hope you can use what I’ve given her.’ Kat waved a sheaf of notes at me and smiled over-enthusiastically.

‘Most certainly, ‘I replied, shaking the manager’s hand, sweaty-palmed and equally as anxious to escape.

The manager ushered us out, officiously relieving us of our visitor’s badges at reception and standing at the plate glass doors to wave us off. Probably more likely to see us off the premises.

‘My God, where did you go?’ hissed Kat as I strode back to my car and she struggled to keep up. ‘Lawrence!’ I stopped and turned. She hurried to catch up. ‘Slow down, will you, for God’s sake. I might be prepared to follow you to the ends of the earth, but I’d lose you on the motorway there at this rate!’

‘Sorry, I just wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible.’

‘Do you really feel bad again?’

‘Yes, but not for the reason you think.’ We reached my car and she got in. ‘Where’s your car?’

‘Back at the office. I walked.’

‘OK. Let’s drive.’ It was a spur of the moment decision – one of those overwhelming needs to confide which you later regret but can’t see any way out of either. ‘I’ve got a story to tell you and you’re not going to like it.’

I
wanted to tell her everything. It would have been like penance, the knotted flail searing my skin – far more effective than the coffee had been, but I knew I should wait for the impetus to self-harm to cool before partaking or being burnt. It wouldn’t feel any better afterwards, even though I wouldn’t have to pretend any more. That in itself would have been a relief and a revelation. I’d not had nothing to hide since I was nine. But I didn’t. I drove us back to her office and she picked up her car from where she’d parked it in a side street. Then we drove back to her place and sat opposite each other in her small lounge. I declined tea because it reminded me of Sarah, and I edited and told my partial truth. As I talked, I tried to tell myself it wouldn’t matter; it wouldn’t matter what this woman thought of me. It would be over and done with soon – like Sarah had said,
think about what you’re goin’ to do in the future, not what you done in the past. Make it right.
I was always good at lying to myself.

I started with the day that Kimmy was born, giving her all my siblings’ names this time, and Jaggers. I wanted to leave my betrayal of Win out but if I didn’t tell her, how could she understand the tricky non-relationship between us? I moved on through the judge, softening my role in his life to ‘companion’, and ending with joining Chambers. Once there I had two more confessions to make – the Johns’ case and Danny. After nearly four hours recounting a damage that was immeasurable, my voice was dry and rasping and I’d told her almost everything – bar one thing. The atrocities of the children’s home, the manipulations I’d willingly bought into to achieve my dreams, the turning of a blind eye to injustice – all of that I admitted to; but nothing about Danny – not yet.

It was twilight by the time I’d finished. We sat in silence for several minutes more as I waited for her reaction. I hadn’t yet got to what I’d found in the FFF offices. I needed to know whether I could rely on her before I admitted how much at risk I was from Jaggers, and whatever Margaret and he had planned. After all, Margaret had been a kind of mentor to Kat, and she’d arranged the defence of Kat’s brother. That meant Kat might still have other loyalties. If so, her reaction now would reveal them. When she spoke she sounded thready and stunned.

‘You can’t make injustice right, Lawrence. Ever.’

‘I can’t change the past either, so the only things I have to play with are the present and the future. I have to change the future.’

‘I don’t see how you’re going to do that either. In fact you shouldn’t be involved with this case at all. Neither should I. Oh my God, we’ll mess it all up for him, poor kid. You were his one hope.’

‘Seems like it could be my nemesis instead.’ She hit me then, stinging my face and making my eyes water. I hadn’t anticipated it from her – always so gentle and biddable since I’d broken down in the park, even when pretending to fight with me. I’d almost forgotten the feisty young woman who’d squared up to me when we first met. I still had my eyes shut. I’d chosen to ignore the inner iron in preference to the outer softness.

Don’t be the clever bastard with me! You’re an adult and you can cope with this kind of stuff. Danny’s just a child, and he’s not an awkward predicament to be facetious about. We’re responsible for him. Why can’t you just be – oh, I don’t know –
human
about it?’ She sank back into her chair and glared at me, soft face shadowed but angular in the darkness. Grim.

‘Well, thanks. The one thing I thought I was is human – to err is human, to forgive divine, and all that crap. If I’d been an automaton I wouldn’t have been swayed by the charms of a woman, no matter how persuasive, and that would have put Margaret and you out of business, wouldn’t it?’ Her jaw dropped and she stared at me. ‘I didn’t mean that the way it came out.’

‘You did.’

The child in me responded – the one I’d been denying since childhood. ‘All right, I did. I’m fucking mad – OK? Not mad-insane, mad-furious. Yes, there is a child involved, there are two of them. I’m the other one, adult or no. We’ve both been stitched up one way or another, all our lives.’

‘Oh poor you. But you’re not a child now, Lawrence – and you weren’t a child ten years ago when you swung that case. Don’t try to defend yourself. You can’t.’ I didn’t reply. She was right. Ten years ago, I’d set aside responsible action for self-gratification. If some divine justice had placed Jaggers and me side by side then, my soul would have been as dark as his. We faced each other in silence. I broke it in the end.

‘I don’t know what to say, Kat.’

‘There’s nothing to say, Lawrence. You’re not who I thought you were. I was wrong – as usual.’ She put her face in her hands and I was excluded. After some time had passed I touched her arm, unsure for the first time in all of my life what this outcome would bring. Even in the children’s home I’d been able to judge the likely possibilities of my actions and react accordingly. Life had been one long manipulation of events since then, with me assuming I had complete mastery of the situation. Ironic that it had been directed unseen by Margaret for the last ten years of it and that when I finally tried to do the right – and the
human
thing – it blew straight back in my face.

‘Kat?’

She shivered. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘OK, I get the picture. I’ll go. If you think I should be taken off the case, I’ll volunteer a replacement at my own expense.’

‘Can you volunteer a replacement life for Danny?’ She removed her hands from her face and it was still cold and hard, paler than before.

‘That was a cheap shot.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. It was.’ The regret seemed genuine, but her expression didn’t soften with it. ‘I agree. You should go. I don’t know what I think about anything at the moment.’

I’d wanted done with all of it, the lying, the hiding and the secrets. I’d wanted absolution and acceptance. I’d mistakenly assumed I could find it with Kat, but she was just another erring human. No-one could give me what I needed – only God, and he didn’t exist in my world. Now I’d asked and found Kat as lost as me, I wanted done with her too. Thank God I’d kept the ultimate – the worst possibility of all to myself. I’d thought, amongst all the chaos that surrounded me, I’d found a small voice of calm and unconditional love. A voice like Ma’s. She’d seemed to have been promising a future like a rainbow arcing overhead and I’d been foolish enough to believe in the possibility of a pot of gold at the end of it. Life wasn’t like that. I, of all people, should have worked that out by now. What an idiot, what a stupid, bloody idiot I was. I hadn’t been lying when I’d described myself as mad-furious. I was, deep in my gut, I was angry – with her, with me, with a world I just simply couldn’t get it right in, whatever I did. What was the fucking point?