A Poison Tree (Time, Blood and Karma Book 3) (2 page)

2

DAVID

There are days when I hate England.

Days when the sk
y is as grey as a corporate banker’s hair; when the rain doesn’t fall so much as float around in the air for days making everything damp and everyone miserable; when the pinched, mouldy faces of the children of Perfidious Albion depress my already waterlogged spirits.

On such days, my local city, Leicester, dons a cloak of
sodden desperation. Its lowbrow centre, staked out by pawnbrokers, betting shops and discount stores, reeks of urban decline. Trudging through the drizzle, the locals look defeated. They clutch plastic shopping bags and drag their feet through the endless present towards a future which offers nothing different or exciting. Except maybe the release of yet another electronic gadget with even more unneeded features.

Leicester has never had much of a history – its main claim to fame being that Richard III was defeated nearby at Bosworth –
yet it wears its current shabby incarnation with a degree of stubbornness.

In the 1970s and 1980s it seemed to me
the city enjoyed a brief flowering, spurred on by the influx of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and those fleeing persecution in East Africa. The new residents rejuvenated the place for a while, many bringing with them hard-headed business principles and a staunch work ethic of which the city’s founding fathers would have approved. But after a while, even these new enthusiastic citizens succumbed to
Leicesteritis
, a degenerative condition which attacks the joy centres of the brain. There is only one cure: leave.

Some may say I am being unfair
to dear old Leicester.

To those I say
bollocks
. Try living here for over a third of a century, then tell me how you feel about the place. I have earned my right to curse this nonentity of a Midlands city.

So why do I
continue to live here?

Good question, you inquisitive bastard.

1999 did not start off as a
noteworthy year, despite the surrounding media hype and the Millennium clock ticking down toward zero hour. For those of us in business we began fretting about the Millennium Bug, when the various computer software programmes that separated civilisation from anarchy might fail. More apocalyptically-minded souls started making plans to be at the rendezvous point for the alien spaceships that would take them to a new world; or to be atop a mountain for when the winds of the End of Days started to blow; or just to be pissed out of their brains in Trafalgar Square when the clocks chimed midnight.

January was, as ever, cold and miserable. I celebrated my forty-first birthday
with my wife and daughter at an Indian restaurant on London Road. We were all clad in sweaters, while we munched down poppadoms, gosht dhansak lamb and vindaloo curries cooked with potatoes in hot, spicy sauces. We sat, shivering in spite of the food, surrounded by dark red pebble-dashed walls on which hung friezes of blue elephants and hunting parties. Sitar music played in the background while we and the other stalwart patrons determined we would enjoy ourselves through gritted – if not quite chattering – teeth. As is our custom we left a familial food mess on the yellow tablecloths, and smiling staff grateful for the big tip.

February was much the same; just another humdrum month in the life of David Braddock, Chief Executive Officer of
Braddock Motors, a retail operation founded and still owned by my father.

My father. Edward Braddock. Ramrod-backed Englishman and former planter in post-war Malaya. Frightener of small children. Master of the cutting remark. Workaholic. Capitalist extraordinaire. Midas-touch investor.
Interfering
eminence grise
in the affairs of the business whose running he had in theory delegated to me. And in February passing the sixty-nine year mark with no sign of either slowing down or becoming any closer to his only child. Age cannot wither him, it seems.

March opened with an uncomfortable meeting with the old man.

“The latest sales figures are far from impressive, David,” he intoned from his leather chair in the Board Room. “That Vectra facelift and re-launch doesn’t seem to have impressed many people. And I’m disappointed with how the new general manager is shaping up at the Coventry showroom.”

“I’m driving over there to talk to Mark tomorrow.”

“You should have done it sooner. He’s far too hands-off. So are you, for that matter,” he added as an acidic afterthought.

“Mark was
your
appointment, father, as I recall. Harry would have been my choice for general manager.”

“Don’t try to pass the buck, David
. You are the CEO. I just make suggestions, which you are free to ignore. These matters are for you to decide on.”

Yes, right. Like y
our suggestions are not meant to be taken as instructions
.

As
usual, I bit my tongue. I never win arguments with Edward Braddock, so there is no point in trying. I also found myself wondering for the millionth time how on earth my Thai stepmother, Nang, has managed to put up with the annoying goat for all these years, let alone love him – which she does, by the way. If I didn’t owe her such a debt of gratitude for bringing me up after the premature death of my own mother in Malaya, I’d have severed ties with Braddock Senior long ago, job or no job.

“As for the sales figures, it’s hard to sell new cars when half the planet thinks the world is ending in about ten months.”

He snorted. “Nonsense, that’s just an excuse. Whatever the newspapers might say, people are continuing to behave rationally, Millennium or no Millennium.”

“
Rationally?
Do you know the bookies are taking bets on whether Armageddon will arrive at the end of December? You can get great odds. The only trouble is, you won’t be around to collect your winnings. That’s not stopping people from betting though. Rational behaviour, indeed.”

Braddock Senior consulted his watch.
“I have to go in about fifteen minutes. I have a meeting with Roger on this new property development in town.”

Gratitude for small mercies
.

“But I’d like to go through these sales figures in detail first.”

After the old bugger had left, my PA Sandra brought me a coffee.

“It’s a strong one,” she said. “I thought you might need it.”

“Sandra, if Claire ever runs off with her tennis coach, I’m going to marry you.”

“I think my husband might have a view on that,” she replied. “And I didn’t know Claire had a tennis coach.”

“She doesn’t yet, so you’ve still got time to work on your husband. Start with small doses of rat poison in his food so he doesn’t suspect anything.”

“You are so un-PC, David.”

“I try my best.”

I sipped my coffee and thought about Jim Fosse and the bizarre evening I’d spent with him at
The Bell the previous week. I suppose if I’d been on the ball, I could have offered my father as a candidate for a tit-for-tat murder. That would have been much more appropriate than ordering a hit on my wife.

Sunday afternoon, the hottest so far of the summer, and the village swelters under a cloudless sky. Even the thick walls of the old rectory cannot keep out the heat. From my study window I have an uninterrupted view of the surrounding fields and the Welland Valley beyond. It is a sight to calm and clear the mind, and one I have cherished since we set up home here some ten years ago. This green perspective wobbles and surges in the distant haze.

On my desk lie piles of work papers, unread. An intrusive fly buzzes aimlessly around the room before at last exiting through the open window. A trickle of sweat runs down my face, but I cannot summon the energy to wipe it away.

I can hear, though not see, Claire at work on the roses. Snatches of sentimental tunes float in from the garden. It is a huge garden, and it keeps our gardener well occupied, although Claire feels the need to ‘help out’ from time to time. I imagine her slim figure, dressed in white, crouched over her labours, her flame-red hair hidden from sight and bundled under the ridiculous soft hat she wears on such occasions.

At length the singing stops, and I hear her footsteps on the wooden floor. Her head appears around the door and, as expected, she is wearing the ugly hat.

“Are you still here?”

“Looks like it.”

“You may as well put those papers away, it’s far too hot to work.”

“You seem to be managing.”

“I’ve come in for some lemonade. Would you like some?”

“No thanks.”

“I thought you were supposed to be playing golf with Max today.”

“That’s next Sunday. Assuming
it’s cooler. I’ll fry on a golf course in this heat.”

“Not if you take sensible precautions, darling. Listen, if you’re not going to join me for lemonade, then take a walk down to the village, don’t sit in here. And take a sun hat.”

“Right.”

“And you’re picking up
Katie from town later, remember.”

“I know. I’m not wearing that loopy sun hat though.”

“Do as you’re told.”

She vanishes in search of cold lemonade. I put on the loopy sun hat and set out into the glare.

Bewdon is a beautiful place, at least for me. Once the centre of a Saxon royal estate, and grouped around greens, the village is made up of timber-framed seventeenth-century houses, as well as brick houses of various shapes and sizes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

My family ha
s a long association with the place. My great-great grandfather, William Ernest Braddock, provided the village with its first school in 1842. My great grandfather built various lodges in the village, all associated with hunting and horses, and came to be seen by many locals as the Squire. The next two generations continued to be associated with the good works of the village and with the local hunt, until the changing political climate made this latter association undesirable. It was only recently that my father sold his half-share in Bewdon’s only pub, an oddly-angled pile of beams and brickwork, known with affection as The Bell, to which I now repair.

The interior is dark and dusty and, happily today, cool. It is also quiet. Two ancient locals nod to me as I make my way to the bar where
the owner Ian, a man of few words, is fiddling with the music system.

“Fucked again,” he mutters.

“Good day, Ian,” I say. “A pint of your finest foaming ale, please.”

“That’s a bloody awful hat.”

I take my pint and the hat to a table in the corner. Through the grimy window I can see the war memorial. The village looks deserted.

I feel calm now. Sometimes it is as if nothing has happened, as if things are as normal in reality as they seem to be on the surface. Some days, some hours, the whispered voices of betrayal are silent, and life goes on much as before. There are, however, the other times.

In my wallet, amongst the credit cards, notes and other detritus of affluent living, is a small, crumpled photograph of Claire, taken shortly after we met. I take it out and study it. She is standing by a narrow boat and the locks at Foxton are in the background. She looks relaxed, serene ...

A pint glass is plonked down on my table as Ian takes it upon himself to keep me company. I put away the photograph.

“I’ve become a Buddhist,” he announces without preamble.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

He looks at me in a challenging fashion, but doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate further. Even the few words I’ve had out of him so far are more than he can usually muster by way of conversation. He takes a drink of beer and stares out of the window.

I persevere. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why have you become a Buddhist? I’ve never exactly seen you as the spiritual type, Ian.”

“That’s because you only look with your eyes.”

“Is that you being all enigmatic and Zen?”

“Fuckin’ right.”

“I thought Anna looked strained over dinner,” I said to Claire. “What did you think?”

“I think my sister has married an arsehole, that’s what I think,” she replied.

We were tidying up in the kitchen. Our guests had departed and for once we were not having a battle with Katie about her going to bed. With her exams only a few months away – and with so much riding on them – she was
of late displaying adult tendencies.

“Does she talk to you about it?”

Claire sighed. “No. Anna is too loyal to Max to do that. It makes me sad. There was a time not so long ago when Anna and I used to share everything, but now she’s withdrawn. She doesn’t talk to Mum about it either, yet it’s obvious to a blind man that she’s unhappy.”

“Do you think Max is playing around?”

“Of course he is. He’s already got form on
that
. And he’s the type to do it.”