A Place of Hiding (38 page)

“As far as we know,” Le Gallez inserted.

“As far as we know,” St. James agreed. “But to pin this on her based on evidence that
anyone
could have planted . . . If nothing else, you've got to see that China River's advocate is going to tear your case to pieces.”

“I don't think so,” Le Gallez said simply. “In my experience, Mr. St. James, if you follow the smoke, you find the fire.”

Chapter 15

P
AUL
F
IELDER USUALLY AWOKE
to the sound of his alarm clock, an old, chipped black tin affair that he religiously wound every night and set with some care, always mindful that one of his younger brothers may have messed it about sometime during the day. But the next morning it was the phone that awakened him, followed by the sound of feet clumping up the stairs. He recognised the heavy tread and closed his eyes tightly on the off chance Billy came into the room. Why his brother would be up at all in the early morning was a mystery to Paul, unless he'd never gone to bed last night. That wouldn't be unusual. Sometimes Billy stayed up watching the telly till there was nothing more to watch and then he sat and smoked in the sitting room, playing records on their parents' old stereo. He played them loud, but no one told him to lower the sound so that the rest of the family could sleep. The days when anyone said anything to Billy that might set him off had long since passed.

The door of the bedroom crashed open, and Paul kept his eyes squeezed shut. Across the small room from his own bed, his youngest brother gave a startled cry, and for a moment Paul felt the guilty relief of one who believes he's going to escape torture in favour of some other victim. But as things turned out, that cry was only one of surprise at the sudden noise, because a slap on Paul's shoulder followed hard on the heels of the door's abrupt opening. Then Billy's voice said, “Hey. Stupid git. Y'think I don' know you're faking? Ge' up. Gonna have a visitor, you are.”

Paul stubbornly kept his eyes closed, which may or may not have prompted Billy to grab him by the hair and lift his head. He breathed the rank breath of early morning into Paul's face and said, “Want some tongue, little wanker? Help you wake up? Like it better from blokes, don' you?” He gave Paul's head a shake and then dropped it to the pillow. “You're lame, you are. Bet you even have a stiffie with nowhere to put it. Le's check that out.”

Paul felt his brother's hands on the covers and he reacted to that. Truth was, he did have a stiffie. He always had one in the morning, and from conversations he'd overheard during games at school, he'd reckoned it was normal, which had been a big relief to him, because he'd begun to wonder what it meant that he woke up daily with his prong at the perpendicular.

He gave a cry not unlike his little brother's and clutched on to the blanket. When it became obvious that Billy was going to have his way, he leaped out of bed and raced to the bathroom. He slammed the door shut and locked it. Billy pounded against the wood.

“Now he's pulling the pud,” he laughed. “Not so much fun without help, though, is it? One of those you-'n'-me wank jobs you like so much.”

Paul ran the water in the bathtub and flushed the toilet. Anything to drown his brother out.

Over the rush of water, he heard other voices shouting outside the door, followed by Billy's crazed laughter, followed by knocking that was gentler but insistent. Paul turned off the water and stood next to the tub. He heard his father's voice.

“Open up, Paulie. Need to talk to you.”

When Paul had the door open, his father was standing there, dressed for his day with the road-works crew. He wore crusty blue jeans and dirt-smeared boots and a thick flannel shirt that was foetid with the scent of heavy sweat. He should have had his butcher's clothes on, Paul thought, and the sadness of it felt like a grip on his throat. He should have been wearing the smart white coat and the smart white apron covering trousers that were clean every day. He should have been setting off to work where he'd worked from the earliest time Paul could remember. He should have been ready to set out the meat on his very own stall at the far end of the market, where no one now worked because everything that had once been there was as gone as death made everything in the end.

Paul wanted to slam the door on his father: on the dirty clothes his father never would have worn, on his face unshaven as it never would have been. But before he had the chance to do that, his mother appeared in the doorway as well, carrying with her the scent of frying bacon, part of the breakfast she insisted that Paul's father eat every day to keep up his strength.

“Get dressed, Paulie,” she said over her husband's shoulder. “You got an advocate coming to call on you.”

“Know what this is all about, Paul?” his father asked.

Paul shook his head. An advocate? To see him? He wondered and thought there was some mistake.

“You been going to school like you ought?” his father said.

Paul nodded, unrepentant of the lie. He'd been going to school like he
thought
he ought, which was when other things didn't get in the way. Things like Mr. Guy and what had happened. Which brought grief back to Paul in a rush.

His mum appeared to read this. She reached in the pocket of her quilted dressing gown and brought out a tissue that she pressed into Paul's hand. She said, “You be quick, luv,” and “Ol, let's see to your breakfast,” to her husband. She added, “He's gone below,” over her shoulder as they left Paul to prepare himself for his visitor. As if in unnecessary explanation, the booming of the television sounded. Billy had gone on to another interest.

Alone, Paul did what he could to get ready to meet an advocate. He washed his face and his armpits. He dressed in the clothes he'd worn a day earlier. He brushed his teeth, and he combed his hair. He looked at himself in the mirror and he wondered. What did it actually mean? The woman, the book, the church, and the labourers. She held a quill pen and it pointed to something: the tip to the book and the feathers to the sky. But what did that mean? Perhaps nothing at all but he couldn't believe that.

How are you at keeping secrets, my Prince?

He went below, where his father was eating and Billy—the television forgotten—was smoking, slouched in his chair with his feet propped on the kitchen rubbish bin. He had a cup of tea at his elbow and he hoisted it when Paul entered the room, saluting him with a smirk. “Good wank, Paulie? Cleaned the toilet seat, I hope.”

“Watch your mouth,” Ol Fielder said to his older son.

“Oooh, tha' scared, I am” was Billy's reply.

“Eggs, Paulie?” his mother asked. “I c'n do you fried. Or boiled if you like.”

“Las' meal before he gets taken away,” Billy said. “You wank in the nick and all the boys'll want some of it, Paulie.”

The sound of the youngest Fielder squalling from the stairway interrupted this conversation. Paul's mum handed the frying pan to his dad, asked him to mind how the eggs were cooking, and went in search of her only daughter. When she was brought into the kitchen on her mother's hip, there was much to do to settle her crying.

The door bell buzzed as the two younger Fielder boys clattered down the stairs and took their places at the table. Ol Fielder went to answer it, and in short enough order he called out for Paul to come to the sitting room. “You, too, Mave,” he called to his wife, which was invitation enough for Billy to join them uninvited.

Paul hung back at the doorway. He didn't know very much about advocates, and what he
did
know didn't make him eager to meet one. They got involved in trials, and trials meant people in trouble. No matter which way the bread was sliced, people in trouble might well mean Paul.

The advocate proved to be a man called Mr. Forrest, who looked from Billy to Paul in some confusion, obviously wondering which young man was which. Billy solved that problem by shoving Paul forward. He said, “Here's wha' you want, then. Wha's he done?”

Ol Fielder introduced everyone. Mr. Forrest looked round for a place to sit. Mave Fielder swept a pile of washed laundry from the biggest armchair and said, “Please do sit,” although she herself remained standing. No one, in fact, seemed to know what to do. Feet shifted, a stomach growled, and the little one squirmed in her mother's arms.

Mr. Forrest had a briefcase with him, which he placed on a PVC-covered ottoman. He didn't sit because no one else did. He rooted through some papers and cleared his throat.

Paul, he informed the parents and the older brother, had been named one of the principal beneficiaries in the will of the late Guy Brouard. Did the Fielders know about the laws of inheritance on Guernsey? No? Well, he would explain them, then.

Paul listened along, but he didn't understand much. It was only by watching his parents' expressions and listening to Billy say “Wha'?
Wha'?
Shit!” that he realised something extraordinary was happening. But he didn't know it was happening to
him
until his mother cried, “Our Paulie? He's going to be
rich
?”

Billy said, “Fucking shit!” and swung to Paul. He might have said more, but Mr. Forrest began to use the expression “our young Mr. Paul” in reference to the beneficiary upon whom he'd come to call, and this seemed to do something profound to Billy, something that made him shove Paul to one side and hulk out of the room. He left the house altogether, slamming the front door so hard that it felt as if the air pressure had changed in the room.

His dad was smiling at him and saying, “This is good news, this is. Best to you, son.”

His mum was murmuring, “Good Jesus, good God.”

Mr. Forrest was saying something about accountants and sorting out exact amounts and who got how much and how it was determined. He was naming Mr. Guy's children and Henry Moullin's girl Cyn as well. He was talking about how Mr. Guy had disposed of his property and why, and he was saying that if Paul was going to need advice when it came to investments, savings, insurance, bank loans, and the like, he could phone up Mr. Forrest straightaway, and Mr. Forrest would be only too happy to give all the assistance that he could. He fished out his business cards and pressed one into Paul's hand and one into his dad's hand. They were to ring him once they sorted out the questions they wanted to ask, he told them. Because, he smiled, there
would
be questions. There always were in situations like these.

Mave Fielder asked the first one. She licked dry lips, glanced at her husband nervously, and readjusted the baby on her hip. She said, “How much . . . ?”

Ah, Mr. Forrest said. Well, they didn't quite know yet. There were bank statements, brokerage statements, and outstanding bills to be gone through—a forensic accountant was already at it—and when that was done, they would have the correct figure. But he was willing to hazard a guess . . . although he wouldn't want them to depend upon it or to do anything in expectation of it, he added hastily.

“D'you want to know, Paulie?” his father asked him. “Or would you rather wait till they have the exact amount?”

“I expect he wants to know straightaway,” Mave Fielder said. “I'd want to know, wouldn't you, Ol?”

“It's Paulie's to say. What about it, son?”

Paul looked at their faces, all shining and smiling. He knew the answer he was meant to give. He wanted to give it because of what it would mean to them to hear good news. So he nodded then, a quick bob of his head, an acknowledgement of a future that had suddenly expanded beyond anything any of them had dreamed.

They couldn't be absolutely certain till all the accounting was done, Mr. Forrest told them, but as Mr. Brouard had been a shrewd-as-the-dickens businessman, it was safe to say that Paul Fielder's share of the estate would likely be in the vicinity of seven hundred thousand pounds.

“Jesus died on the cross,” Mave Fielder breathed.

“Seven hundred . . .” Ol Fielder shook his head as if clearing it. Then his face—so sad for so long with a failed man's sadness—lit with an unshakable smile. “Seven hundred thousand pounds? Seven hundred . . . ! Think of it! Paulie, son. Think of what you can
do.
”

Paul mouthed the words
seven hundred thousand,
but they were incomprehensible to him. He felt rooted to the spot and quite overcome by the sense of duty that now fell upon him.

Think of what you can do.

This reminded him of Mr. Guy, of words spoken as they stood on the very top of the manor house at
Le Reposoir,
gazing out upon trees unfurling in springtime April splendour and garden after garden coming back to life.

To whom much is given, even more is expected, my Prince. Knowing this keeps one's life in balance. But living by it is the real test. Could you do that, son, if you were in that position? How would you begin to go about it?

Paul didn't know. He hadn't known then and he didn't know now. But he had the glimmer of an idea because Mr. Guy had given him that. Not directly, because Mr. Guy didn't do things directly, as Paul had discovered. But he had it all the same.

He left his parents and Mr. Forrest talking about the whens and the splendid wherefores of his miraculous inheritance. He returned to his bedroom, where, under the bed, he'd shoved his rucksack for safekeeping. He knelt—bum in the air and hands on the floor—to root it out, and as he did so, he heard the scrabble of Taboo's claws on the lino in the hallway. The dog came snuffling in to join him.

This reminded Paul to close the door, and for good measure he shoved one of the room's two bureaus in front of it. Taboo leaped up on his bed, circling for a spot to lie on that smelled most of Paul, and when he'd found it, he sank down contentedly and watched his master bring forth the rucksack, wipe the slut's wool from it, and unfasten its plastic buckles.

Paul sat next to the dog. Taboo placed his head on Paul's leg. Paul knew he was meant to scratch the dog's ears, and he did so, but he gave the duty short shrift. There were other concerns that had to take precedence over loving his animal this morning.

He didn't know what to make of what he had. When he'd first unrolled it, he'd seen it wasn't exactly the kind of pirate's treasure map he'd expected, but still, he'd known it was a map of some kind because Mr. Guy wouldn't have put it there for him to find had it been anything else. He'd recalled then, as he'd studied his find, that Mr. Guy had often spoken in riddles: where a duck rejected by the rest of the flock stood for Paul and his mates at school, or a car sending out plumes of nasty black exhaust stood for a body hopelessly polluted with bad food, cigarettes, and lack of exercise. That was Mr. Guy's way because he didn't like to preach at anyone. What Paul hadn't anticipated, however, was that Mr. Guy's approach to helpful conversation might bleed over to messages he'd left behind as well.