Catalyst (47 page)

Allan laughed again,

“There's just one thing, though,” he said, with a sly smirk.

“What's that?”

“You really will have to move out of your office this time or Jo won't have anywhere to work. I knew I'd get my own way in the end.”

Tom and George exchanged silent nodded greetings through the bars of the iron door. The sombre surroundings seemed to actively discourage the use of words. The bars slid noiselessly open and they crossed with a snatched handshake before going their separate ways.

The guard opened the door of the small cell.

“Thirty minutes,” he said, nodding towards the interior of the room, like a pimp ushering a client into a boudoir.

As Tom entered, Jad was already off his chair walking the two or three steps towards him. They didn't speak at first, as if they were each coming to terms with the other's presence, then they shook hands, briefly, and embraced tightly.

“You look great,” said Jad, at last, hoarse with emotion.

“So do you, all things considered”.

They seated themselves, neither taking his eyes off the other.

“Almost unbelievable, isn't it,” said Jad, “how paths that run together for so long can end up so far apart.”

Tom didn't speak for a while, the words refusing to come out, trapped inside by sadness. Then he smiled.

“I guess so; though I'm not sure which one of us is calling the shots right now. I do know it
should
be me, but… ”

They laughed.

“You really do look great,” said Jad, again.

“And, as I said, so do you. I hope I look as good as you when I've been dead for three years.”

Jad did not laugh or even smile at this.

“I guess you could say I owe you an explanation,” he said, quietly.

“An explanation and an enormous apology,” said Tom, just as softly.

“I can't tell you everything, Tom. Not even you. You'll find out a lot more when you become PM or whatever next year.” He gave a brief laugh, then hesitated, not knowing where to start.

“I cried at my funeral, you know,” he said. “I cried for you and Maggie… Oh God, I haven't asked yet, how is Maggie?”

“Fine; sends her love, of course. Please, carry on.”

“I was supposed to be miles away, in a ‘safe' house. But I couldn't stay there. I had this stupid idea that if I could get you – both of you – on your own, I could explain, then just sneak away. How mad is that? Well, I got as far as the gates of the churchyard and I saw you two standing together – well, more leaning on each other than standing, crying your eyes out… ”

He stopped speaking, his own tears falling onto his shaking hands. Tom reached across, grabbing them, his hands soon moist with his friend's tears.

“It's okay, Jad, really. Just go on, please.”

He looked up and smiled through his reddened eyes.

“That's the first time for five years I've heard the name ‘Jad'. It sounds good.”

He reached for his handkerchief and wiped his eyes; putting it away he smiled again, embarrassed but composed.

“That's when I cried,” he said, “seeing how much you were hurting. It affected me more than seeing Mum upset, somehow. It was her disowning me that made me do it; so she shouldered part of the blame. I don't mean I thought ‘serves her right' or anything like that. At least I don't think I did… ”

“Made you do what, exactly?” asked Tom, trying to get him back on track.

Jad paused. “As you know, up to the time of my… death, I was sniping for the MTU. Alma couldn't live with it; she gave me an ultimatum – give it up or she'd disown me – denounce me as her son – cut off my inheritance, sort of thing. Well, I couldn't give it up, not just for an elderly lady, even if it was my own mother, who didn't – and wouldn't even
try
to – understand why I was doing these so-called terrible things or who I was doing them to. So she told me she had no son and I was never to return. I tell you, Tom, I've been shot on four separate occasions, but what she said hurt more than anything I've ever experienced.” His voice again broke a little, but he went on.

“Then I was assigned to a different role, one which required a new identity. And so I was killed off in Afghanistan. I became James Lorimar. So there you are.”

“And that's it; that's all you can say?”

Jad thought for a moment.

“Look, why don't you ask me questions, and I'll answer as much as I can.”

“That's fine with me; I've got about a hundred. For a start, why couldn't you let us know?”

“Because John Deverall was dead. It had to be like that. I couldn't write to you and say, ‘by the way, Tom and Maggie, I won't ever see you again because I'll be pretending to be someone else'. It had to be absolute – that was the deal. I guess I could have said no to the whole thing, but I needed it, in a way, after the thing with Mum and – well, other reasons. I really am sorry, Tom. Remember you lost me, but I lost you as well. I couldn't get in touch, and if you think about it, it was actually harder for me. I knew where you were, what you were doing. My Godson growing up, and his little sister. I could have been part of all that… ”

“And what you're doing now, was it worth it?”

“What, languishing in prison – no definitely not,” he said with a weak attempt at levity. “But what I did before – yes, certainly. I believe I've made a difference and that's very important – to me. But it came, like most important things, at a price. A new life without friends, in this case.”

“Christ, Jad. It must have been
really
important for it to be worth that.”

“Yes, that's right,” Jad said it quietly, almost to himself.

“So what's this about you being an investment strategist? It seems you have hidden depths, Mr Deverall.”

Jad laughed. “Nothing like that. I have a work double; someone who does everything I'm supposed to be doing, so all the stuff is there to prove I'm what I say I am. I think of him as a sort of inverted stuntman; I do the dangerous bits and he takes over when I have to sit behind a desk.”

Tom laughed at the imagery. “And ‘the dangerous bits'?”

“That's what I can't tell you, but you know what I did before, so I'm sure you get the general idea.”

Tom nodded. “So what made you… come back? Was it just the Bradys?”

“I guess so. After a couple of years, living and working – for most of the time – only twenty or so miles away from Mum, I just had to see her again; check she was alright. I wasn't supposed to, and I didn't actually intend meeting up with her. But… well… she wasn't alright; she was anything but alright. She was being terrorised. So I took her away – well, you know the story, don't you?

“And we had a great time, some of the best days of my life. Her apartment was just a short distance away from mine and I saw lots of her. She never mentioned my work again; didn't even press me too much about how come I was still alive but somebody else. She was just glad to have me back, and I was glad to be back. I think she really enjoyed the subterfuge of my having a different name. She kind of joined in the adventure. We actually created a new name for me just as a secret between the two of us. Alex Anderson. Get it?
‘Alexander'
, her
‘son'
. She said if she could call me that, it would be like having me back completely. What I can't believe is that I gave the police that name – when I told them I was a carer. How stupid was that? As if they wouldn't have checked it out…

“Anyway, when the six months was nearly up on the lease she got a bit down, but then she said she was ready to go back. God,” his composure slipped again, “I should have pressed her more as to whether she was sure…”

He was silent for a full minute. Tom waited, moved by his own thoughts on the tragedy that followed.

“Two days before she was due to go back to St George's Close, I found her… ”

Tom still made no comment, but his own guilt swamped his feelings for a while. Thinking how he passed by so close to where she lived at least twice a week on his way to the office, and didn't realise what was happening to her just down the road on his own patch.

Jad's voice cut into his thoughts.

“I didn't decide straight away. I'm not sure when I made up my mind. But the Bradys had to pay. I watched them over a period of a week or so after she died. Saw what they did, how they treated the kids – how they used them, where they drank, who they dealt drugs with; built up a picture. They were unbelievably evil, Tom. I've never known the like. In the end, it was the easiest decision I ever made to take them out.”

“Why do it so publicly though, Jad? You could have done it anywhere, without being seen at all, most probably. Why take that sort of risk?”

“Because, as I said in court, I wanted it to be as dramatic and high-profile as possible. For people to know what was happening – or what
had
happened. I seriously thought about taking them out in the pub, you know. But I wanted to be sure I got away, and that no-one else got hurt. And three bad guys just found in an alley wouldn't have had anything like the impact without the build-up beforehand. You have to say, it worked! I certainly didn't expect all this.”

“And you really believed you'd get away with it?”

“Absolutely. Why not? I wasn't even a real person. I just planned to fade back into the black hole.”

“So how did it go wrong?”

“Accident of timing. I can't take anything away from Gerrard and Cottrell – they did their job better than I did mine. I just figured they'd be through with scouring the estate by the time the house went up for sale. But the council were real quick with the sign. From what I understand – and I'm not supposed to know this – Gerrard and Co went back to my mother's house the day after the council put it up. If they'd gone two days earlier – or the council had done it two days later – they would never have seen it and quite possibly they'd never have gone down that route. Unlucky, eh?

“But then, to their credit, they put the story together really fast. They picked me up at the grave. I'd been twice every week since her funeral. And I'd planned that to be the last visit for a while, just in case they were getting close. Again, unlucky, but careless all the same. Even more ironic, the undertaker had assumed she would be cremated, but it was always Mum's wish that she should be buried. Without a grave there'd have been no obvious place to visit and for the police to stake out.”

Tom smiled in spite of the seriousness of the topic.

“Christ, Jad, you know a bit about generating excitement, don't you? And why the drama in court if you intended to reveal who you were anyway? I can understand why you had to admit your real identity – somebody, like me, was going to recognise you anyway. But why take it to the wire like that?”

“I'd got up such a head of steam as Lorimar; I just didn't want anything to get in the way of the message. Actually, I thought I'd blown it for a moment. When I told them who I really was, they looked at me like I'd sort of betrayed them. As if what I'd said didn't mean anything because suddenly it wasn't the right guy saying it. Difficult to explain – but it was okay, I think.”

“You
think
! I should say it was. You really can't begin to imagine the mood out there, Jad. And the press can't truly reflect it either, not for all the superlatives. Everyone was talking about what you said – and what George said, as well, of course. It was just about the only topic of conversation up to the leaked document – which only mirrored what you'd both been saying anyway. What do you think of our little revolutionary, by the way?”

“I like him a lot,” said Jad. “I mean, what is there not to like? He's an amazing guy. When you think of what he's just been through, and how he stays focused on his goals. The guilt alone of what happened would stop most people. How do you live with the fact that somebody died saving you?”

“I guess we had to, didn't we, all the time.”

“But that was totally different. The ones who died in that situation signed up for danger, knew what they were getting in to. This was just a nice lady… ” The sentiment briefly robbed him of words again.

“I'm still not sure why all this is happening,” said Tom. “What is so different about the Bradys, about the way they were killed, about Cullen Field? We have this problem country-wide. I mean, it's not on every street, or every estate; it's not even in every town. But where it does exist, it affects hundreds of people. And that means – cumulatively – thousands – in fact, tens, most likely hundreds, of thousands; perhaps even millions. Does this mean that all we've ever needed were a few vigilantes to take matters into their own hands and we'd get a government elected with a mandate to take over from them? Has it always been that simple?”