Black Teeth (42 page)

72

The doorbell. It echoed through the house, held its volume as if time had stopped and none of what lay ahead would ever happen. So analogue, the man thought. It made you wish for a satellite to crash down through the roof and thrust these people into the modern age.

The door was opened by a young male who wore a jumper over a collared shirt. His face was tanned, his shiny hair flat like a lego man. Beyond him the expanse of the house was deserted but for the small dog in the backyard, visible through the living room and the spotless kitchen and the rear glass door. No further humans.

By his relaxed stare he was not surprised to find a courier on his doorstep in a hi-vis polar fleece, carrying a heavy cardboard box with a clipboard balanced on top.

‘How are you today?' the courier said. ‘My name's Benjamin. Package for you.'

The man sighed as though Benjamin's presence until now had been fine but these words presented an insurmountable problem. ‘I think you had better leave it there and we will bring it in ourselves.'

He pinned an invisible lock of hair behind one ear, cocked his head to read the brand name on the box. His brow furrowed.

Benjamin said, ‘The other bloke usually has me bring it to the cellar door. Just there under the stairs. I'm happy to.'

But familiarity with the house was not enough to put the resident at ease.

‘I'm sorry,' he said with the tone of voice he probably used to
discipline that tiny dog. ‘Just leave it there and he'll come—'

‘Now, I'm not going to hurt you, but I'm coming in.'

Benjamin placed the box down on the verandah tiles and pulled from the back of his trousers a crowbar. He pushed against the door.

The small man's neck-flesh wobbled. He was confounded at first, then Benjamin stepped into the doorway and the man fled the ground floor, heaved himself up the long staircase screaming indiscernible words, didn't stop to see that Benjamin wasn't following, that he'd tossed aside his clipboard; that he had, in fact, wiped his feet.

Benjamin's assumption that the cellar would be locked was correct. He jammed the crowbar into the crease in the staircase and barrowed his weight against it. With a third shove came a crack of timber and paint but it was the lock that gave, levering the door out and revealing a black unlit nothingness.

He found the light switch and flicked it.

It was the size of a disabled toilet, walled with cobwebbed racks and wine bottles, the ceiling slanted with the angle of the stairs.

Commotion from up there. Benjamin slipped in and shut the door.

The wine racks revealed nothing more than wine and racks. By edging out random bottles he found only the red brick of the walls behind, had to clap the dust from his hands. A ratty Persian rug covered the floor, ornate but apparently tasteless enough to belong out of sight. He peeled it back and saw a beetle run for cover, other dead insects noosed to the rug's belly, the sunken edges of the central floor tile.

Footsteps again on the stairs above. Not the panicked mallet steps of before but cautious ones in softer shoes. Inches from Benjamin's head the ceiling creaked. He was shaking but he hardly needed the crowbar to jemmy up the tile. It rose loose.

Packed into the cavity was a black garbage bag, slightly damp, enormous in comparison with its contents but heavy, folded around on itself so that Benjamin had to twirl it like a circus clown before he could reach in and grasp.

Papers. A will by Piers Alamein. Other important-seeming documents as well as newspaper. A
Daily Sun
front page featuring Rudy
Alamein. These he dropped to the floor and drove his hand back inside.

The footsteps arrived at the last stair and stopped.

The chiming rattle of keys.

Benjamin fingered more papers and finally a crease of plastic around something solid, graspable. He drew it out and the weight of the bag dissolved. It fell to the floor, leaving in his grip another bag, transparent. Inside were two more, snap-locked shut.

One held a document of four or five pages. Handwritten. The words unreadable through the plastic layers.

The other enveloped a thick and detailed artifact. The one he'd dreaded and hoped he'd find.

More rattling. The door shook. It seemed Benjamin hadn't ruined the lock by forcing it. Warm air swirled around him as it opened but he could barely raise his eyes from the plastic, smeared it with his glove, checking and re-checking he was holding what he held.

A tall man, gaunt and grey, spoke from the doorway.

‘I thought it might be you.'

He would have to bend down to get through the door but he didn't try. Only stood out there in the afternoon light of the living room and loathed this intruder.

‘Desmond Blake was your client,' Benjamin said.

The tall man's eyes sparkled with surprise, which he tried to hide.

‘Who told you?' His voice was dry and he coughed for lubrication. Before he could continue Benjamin throttled the plastic wrappings, shook them in the air.

‘He told you he killed Cheryl Alamein. He gave you proof.'

‘Who told you about Desmond Blake?'

A cry from the top of the stairs: ‘Tristan, the police are on their way!' A clear and careful voice, designed to be understood by the man in the cellar. Tristan didn't seem to hear.

‘Who are you?' He asked, temperate. ‘Not, I suspect, a community lawyer.'

Benjamin's shoulders shivered. He had no desire to speak quietly.

‘Rudy's father sat in prison for
eleven
years. He went nuts. He
killed himself.
And you had this and you did nothing.'

‘My agreement with Desmond Blake was that I would take the relevant evidence to the police after his death.'

‘A fucking
agreement
? Piers Alamein is
dead.
'

The rage was overwhelming. He'd invited it to be, but now that it was he had to steady himself with a hand against the wine rack, heart drumming like an army.

Tristan said, ‘Distasteful though it may be to you, whoever you are, solicitors have a responsibility to act in their client's interest. We swear an oath to do so.'

‘
Fuck
you.'

‘Please…' He raised a delicate hand. ‘Put those items down.'

Benjamin held the bag like a dangerous animal was captured within. Such weight.

‘It was Blake who told you Piers was changing his will.'

The tall man crossed his arms. You could see the instant he resolved to keep Benjamin talking, keep him here until the police arrived.

‘Blake was in Severington. For matricide. Having Piers Alamein on the same floor was an infinite source of amusement for him. In conference I received regular updates about Piers's deterioration, the black teeth, the new will…'

‘That's why you helped Rudy. Because you knew. It had nothing to do with some bullshit in the newspaper. You went to Rudy and you
told
him his father was innocent.'

‘It was a moment of weakness.'

‘There's a reporter at the
Daily Sun
who knows about this.' Benjamin shook the bag again. ‘Did you tell
her
in a moment of weakness?'

‘I never spoke to the press. But colleagues…It was difficult, being the only one who knew.'

‘So difficult you did nothing about it.'

‘On the contrary, I had the will annulled.'

‘The fucking
will
? You had
this
. You had
everything.
'

‘Everything but an ethically acceptable means of betraying my client.'

He drew his face even longer, could see the disbelief in Benjamin's.
Behind his horn-rimmed glasses his eyes twitched.

‘It's not as though I didn't beg him to come forward. Someone must have fabricated the evidence against Piers Alamein and if that came out then Blake would look like a hero. That's what I told him, anyway. But he felt he had enemies enough. Then he received a rather dispiriting diagnosis and I persuaded him to write that statement. It took him all afternoon, because of his arthritis. But he got there. That's something, isn't it?'

‘And then you hid it in your cellar.'

‘On the proviso that I withhold it until the event of his death. And believe me, he took some convincing to agree just to that.'

‘Step aside. I'm leaving.'

Tristan shifted his weight.

‘I can't let you leave with those items.'

Benjamin raised the crowbar. Not menacing with it, just to be sure Tristan saw it.

‘You think I won't hurt you? After what you've done?'

‘Look here,' he said, raised his hands. ‘Desmond Blake is dying. It's a matter of days. The truth will come out then. You won't be the only person calling for my blood when that happens.'

Benjamin repeated: ‘Step aside.'

And he flung himself up the cellar steps.

In a single flinch the old man lurched away. A hand grabbed for Benjamin, for the plastic bundled in his grip, but it was mostly symbolic. The comic, sickened face watched Benjamin make for the door.

‘Where are you going with them?'

Benjamin stopped. Turned, pointed the crowbar. Felt the dumbness of the steel through his gloves.

‘
You
don't get to demand answers from
me
.'

‘I think I do. In my own home—'

‘Fuck, your nerve.' Despite taking a stand here at the door, Benjamin couldn't help a quick glance at the leafy street. Idyllic. You wouldn't believe a police car was rushing to get here. ‘What would it take for someone like you to feel guilty?'

‘You think this was
my
decision?' Tristan lingered there, wrinkles
around his mouth growing deeper and longer even as Benjamin watched. ‘It's
demanded
of me. You
commit
to your
client
.'

At the top of the stairs, standing this side of the big red door, was the other man, Tristan's partner. The terror on his face, his fear of Benjamin, was enough to indicate he didn't understand. Tristan had kept this secret to himself.

‘You
met
Piers Alamein.' Benjamin's lips trembled. ‘You saw what had happened to him.' And now, when he spoke, his eyeballs stung. ‘You've seen what's happened to Rudy.'

Tristan dipped his head as if a script was taped to the floor and he had to check the line.

‘You have to understand,' his arms held each other at the elbow. ‘When you make this kind of commitment to a person, the whole point is…what happens next doesn't matter.'

And his face: he wanted Benjamin to understand. But Benjamin only walked away. Felt the cold air wrap around his head, as tight as his grip on the plastic bag. No sign of police cars. No further protest from Tristan and Co. No demand that he come back. No snide remark about the cheap plonk he'd left in a box on the doorstep, one bottle missing. Just a thirteen-year silence bidding him farewell.

While he drove home the day was dimming the lights, secret fingers of evening across the firmament. He opened the car window and the wind was more than cold, it was pain. It helped, to feel that. Focus there.

Benjamin did not make for the refuge of his front door, rather jogged on for warmth, came to Hobsons Road, passed the service station and the supplements store and the barber, his shoulders bunched, one hand happy and warm in his trouser pocket, the other jealously, achingly hugging the crinkled package to his chest.

It was his second visit to this nameless park in the twelve months he'd lived so close, the first being out of curiosity as well as the belief that a walk along the river would be a regular means of getting outdoors without having to interact with people. But it had remained, he thought as he moved through the boom gate and on towards the picnic tables, too much of a risk.

He stuck to the bike track that traced the river, didn't know the
name of the river either. Maybe it didn't have a name. On its bank was a large shed and a sign offering group kayaking but the shed was locked, its roof and driveway overblown with black bracken and leaves. Not even with the protective membrane of a kayak would anyone touch that water in July.

On he went in the half-light. A momentary gaze at the clouds and his gloved fingers gripped the plastic and tore at it, opened it to reveal further layers. These he tore as well and drew from its insides the document, scrawled in something like a child's hand. He peered over it like just an impression would be enough. There were as many mistakes as words, crossed out with such vehemence they looked like scorch marks on the yellowing paper.

Beneath the Joad & Clark letterhead was a single word—
AFFIDAVIT
—and beneath that:

Then, in malformed, almost illegible writing: