Maloney's Law (22 page)

Dominic’s arrest for questioning is on Page Three. Or rather, not arrest. There’s no mention of any charges yet. He’s just helping them with their enquiries. The police have moved fast. My tape and statement must have been more successful than I’d hoped. No, it’s not just me. They must have been working things to a point of action way before this, and what my contribution has done is speed up the inevitable. My tape was good. I heard it. I know. My statement, too. They’ve added it to the sum of their findings, and they’ve sprung the trap.

Good luck to them.

I hope Dominic survives.

No. No, I don’t. Not after what he’s done and the way he’s walked away from it. And not after Jade.

I read the item again. The main thrust is suspected people trafficking, which is no surprise. Dominic’s family is mentioned, his company, too, but then I expect that. It’s part of the story. As is Bluesky and what happened to her. What does make my mouth go dry and my muscles tighten is the mention of Delta Egypt that comes in the penultimate paragraph. It’s just a throwaway comment, focusing on Dominic’s business dealings with Blake Kenzie, but the fact that this is part of the first tranche of reporting is enough for me to drop the paper onto the bench, sit back, and think.

The police are further along in their investigations than Jade and I ever supposed. If Blake is mentioned here, then they already know, or suspect, that the two companies are involved in the trafficking together. And have proof beyond what I might have been able to add to the mix. Because if Dominic has been brought in for questioning, then Blake also must be facing the police in an interview room. Whether here in London or back in Cairo.

All this means the shit has hit the top of the wall and is even now glooping down, muddying everyone who comes into contact with it. I might well be in more danger than I thought. Until now, I’ve assumed I’ll go down when Dominic plays his final cards and makes his counter-accusations. Now, it looks as if the fall-out from Delta might catch me instead. In a much more deadly fashion.

Today, the thought of Blake’s henchmen acting out their bloody fantasies with me once more gives me more trouble than it did yesterday. The encounter with the hooker, and then with Craig, while not lasting in any sense, has changed things.

I want to be here. Alive, sitting on a bench in the middle of London, feeling the beat of my heart in my chest and the flow of blood through my veins. I want to enjoy the warmth of the air on this mild October morning. I want to hear the sounds of the city moving from sleep into the vibrancy of day: the tramps on the far side of the square from me drinking and squabbling; the early morning workers hurrying along on their way to their offices; the stray clubbers creeping home. All of it, the noise, the shit, the colour, the smell, is worth hanging onto, no matter what the cost. I don’t want to be on the other side. Not even if Jade is there. Not yet.

I want to live.

Because of that and that alone, I’ll take my chances with Dominic.

This decision made, the next realisation is it’ll be safer not to go home. Being at the office is beyond my courage now. I have to think what to do, where to go to wait for the inevitable explosive statement from my ex-lover. I’ve not been followed from the hospital or the club. I could run.

I could, but I won’t. Somewhere it has to end. I need to be where there’s a television or radio tuned to breaking news. Some place where I’ll know when the death-blow has landed.

Launching myself upright from the bench, I start to walk and keep on walking. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know it has to be deeper into London, to be amongst people as the morning broadens out into day. Not too many people, though, not so as danger might come unseen, unannounced.

All I can sense is my sweat and the sound of my breathing. Though I look behind and around myself once, twice, there’s nobody I see to distrust. Nobody is there. Nobody cares.

Keep on walking. Keep focused. That’s important. I can’t lose my purpose now. I’m looking for one thing and one thing only. Somewhere to step aside for a moment, somewhere with a television and a chance to drink in the news. The news about me maybe. And then a chance to think.

I find the perfect place, a small café in The Strand. It’s empty except for one old bloke, dark-skinned and muscular, behind the counter and a couple of young women who look like they’ve been out all night and plan to spend all morning discussing it. Through the smeared window, it looks bleak, metallic, but clean enough, and it’s got what I want. A working television. The colours and lines of it flicker across my eye, and I blink.

When I push open the door and walk in, the rich scent of coffee and warm bread makes my stomach twist and groan. It seems like I haven’t eaten in years, and now I’m starving. As I enter, the two women stop talking and turn ’round to stare at me. They look me up and down once in experienced assessment, find me wanting, and turn back to their conversation, whispering behind manicured hands. Can’t say I blame them. I must look like crap, though I’ve not yet studied myself in a mirror to confirm this diagnosis. Must smell, too, if I only knew it, of smoke and sweat and sex.

As I approach the counter, the old bloke picks up a clean white teatowel and steps back, wrinkling his nose, but saying nothing. Behind him, in the optics, I can see a slight figure, hunted, suspicious, with a frown on his pale face. His hair is unbrushed, his eyes are bleak. He looks as if a change in the wind might make him lash out without warning. He looks like me.

‘Sorry,’ I say with a gesture of appeasement to the old bloke. ‘I’ve had a rough night. I’ll have a coffee.’

‘What do you like?’ he says, his accent strong Italian. He waves his teatowel at the hand-written menu on the counter.

‘Espresso. Double, please.’

He deals with the machine and pours out the dark pungent liquid. When the time comes to pay, my skin goes cold for a second or two as I wonder if I’ve even got the cash for this, but the coins I scrape together from the depths of my pockets are just enough.

As I take the cup and head to the nearest seat not next to the window, I point at the television. ‘Do you mind if I watch the news?’

With a shrug, he glances over at the two women. He says something rapidly, in Italian I imagine, and they look up and say something back. It sounds chatty, informal, as if they all know each other. I hadn’t realised the women were Italian, too. Their whispers hadn’t penetrated that far. Whatever, their answer must be in the affirmative, as he picks up the remote and switches through a couple of channels until he reaches a breakfast news programme.

‘Thank you,’ I say, trying to take in all three of them with my smile. I sit down where I have a good view of the screen and also the door. Because you never know.

I swallow down another couple of pills with the coffee and stare at the television as if it’s about to bring me my future. I can’t seem to understand what it is they’re talking about; the images sway back and forth, in and out, and I have to blink and shake myself to bring them back into clarity. News items appear and disappear. The mouths of the people talking make meaningless words that don’t reach me, and I realise the volume is too low. Of course. It doesn’t matter, though, not yet.

Then, suddenly, there’s a picture of Dominic close up, an old one, next to a shot of Scotland Yard. Seeing him there makes my heart beat so loud I’m surprised when the women carry on chatting as if they haven’t heard it. Seeing him in this context makes everything that’s happened real, solid, and not just a nightmare of my own imaginings. God. They’re talking, talking, but I can’t hear. I have to hear.

From my sitting position, I swing ’round in appeal to the proprietor again, not caring if my voice is too high, too harsh. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Si?’ he says, turning to face me.

‘The volume? Please?’ I make a desperate movement of my hand at my ear, and he sighs.

‘Okay.’ He reaches for the remote, a look of boredom on his lined features.

Still he’s too slow, too slow, and I leap up and grab the remote with one hand, still clutching my coffee cup. ‘Sorry, I just...sorry.’

No time for further apologies. In two strides I’m at the screen and have put the sound up four notches. The reporter is still talking. Now he’s standing outside Dominic’s house in Islington. It seems a lifetime since I was there. He nods to camera, apparently in answer to some question the presenter might have asked and continues:

‘...Yes, that’s true. And since this morning’s early encounter with the police, there’ve been no statements from Mr. Allen and no further clarification from Scotland Yard concerning the reasons for Mr. Allen’s apparent arrest. Or indeed any confirmation that any formal arrest has been made. We’ve been advised that it may have something to do with the breaking case of people trafficking the police have been investigating, but the exact nature of Mr. Allen’s involvement remains unclear. A gentleman who described himself as Mr. Allen’s solicitor arrived at the house here in Islington ten minutes ago. He was admitted by a member of his family, presumably his wife, Cassandra Allen, but has not yet left. As I’ve said, no indication of the nature of any charges, if there are in fact to be any charges, has been made.’

Even as the reporter is speaking, there’s a flurry of movement behind him, a sense of something about to happen. Dominic’s front door opens and then shuts just as quickly. On the threshold stands a lean, bespectacled man in his late fifties, holding a sheet of paper. He begins to walk towards the gathered reporters. I’ve never seen Dominic’s solicitor, but it’s obvious who it is. Here it comes then, I think, here it comes. Dominic’s counter-attack and then everything I’ve known or worked for will vanish. My business, my life, me.

The reporter glances back and steps to one side, so the camera can zoom in. He keeps on speaking. ‘As you can see, the gentleman understood to be Mr. Allen’s solicitor has just exited the house and is heading in our direction. He may well have a statement to make to us, at which point we might hope to learn more about this mysterious case.’

The solicitor comes to a halt on the pavement as the journalists jostle for position around him. He glances into camera. His eyes are sharp, intelligent. Dominic has chosen his representative well. Dropping the remote, I grip the counter so hard with my free hand that pain shoots through my knuckles. No matter now, as the mouthpiece begins.

‘I have a short statement, which Mr. Allen has asked me to read out to you, but I’m afraid I cannot answer any questions at this stage,’ the solicitor says, unfolding his papers, and I think, go on, go on then, let’s bloody well get it over with. I’m as prepared as I can be. ‘Mr. Allen would like to say this: I very much regret the events of this morning and the distress it has caused and will cause my family and colleagues. I have spent many years building up the expertise and reputation of DG Allen Enterprises, and I trust that those currently in charge of proceedings in my absence will continue to act with integrity and professionalism in every challenge and opportunity they face. As from this moment I am stepping down from my position as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board will as a result take over my duties until such time as a replacement can be appointed. I admit that mistakes have been made, and I’m prepared to pay for them as the law decides. That’s all I’m able to say at this moment. Thank you.’

I am wrong. I’ve not been prepared for this.

I could never have been prepared for this.

Why?

On the screen, the crowd of journalists explodes with questions that will not be answered until much later. In the television studio, the presenter kicks into an improvisation that can tell us nothing that we haven’t already heard. In a small café in London, meanwhile, my cup drops from my fingers and shatters on the tiles in a combination of whiteness and searing heat.

And I think it’s over.

And once again I’m wrong.

Chapter Nineteen

During the next month and four days, the long, cold haul through the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, I become a news junkie. As, I imagine, do many around the country. I learn about the sudden but only partial destruction of Blake Kenzie’s sex trafficking empire and something about the long hours of police and welfare agencies’ work that has made this possible. I learn how Blake disappeared just hours before the swoop was due to take place and wonder how he found out and where he is today. I miss the chance of seeing him suffer for Jade’s death and wonder if I’ll ever be able to let that need go.

I wonder, too, about the fate of my attackers and whether they were already dead when Blake or his messengers got to them. And I wonder if Dominic has thoughts to spare for that in the middle of everything else he must be going through. I learn how several of Blake’s closest contacts in Egypt, the UK, and along the smuggling route have been captured and questioned and are now facing imprisonment. For how long, who knows? His empire has suffered a blow, and I’m grateful as, without it, I no doubt would be dead. To them, I’m small-fry now, unimportant in the grander scheme of their difficulties. I’ve been forgotten, and, I think, because of that and that alone I’m alive.

Most of all, though, I learn more about the people whose lives Dominic and Blake have ruined. Not just facts and figures gleaned from a police file I’ve never admitted to seeing, though I wonder that the police have let my incomplete knowledge of it pass. No, I and millions of others hear for the first time the real story: tales of suffering from women forced to work in the sex trade, stories that no-one will ever forget. For a while, Bluesky and what happened to her is the main focus for speculation, but the facts are few, and neither Blake nor Dominic is accused of her murder. Or Jade’s. Any evidence I could bring to the table is nothing but circumstantial.

The police don’t call me. My business isn’t ruined, and life eases itself back into a new path that, step by step, becomes a kind of routine. Even my wounds heal, but I will be scarred for life. Dominic has set me free by a silence I can’t understand. For as long as he sees fit to keep that silence, I will walk in it.

I clean up the office, and after a while take on a few new cases. They don’t grip me in the same way, but bring in some much-needed money. I stop thinking I’ll see Jade each time I look up and notice her empty desk. Sometimes I can even manage half a day without wondering where she is. I miss her. I miss her dazzle and glitter, the sense she always gave me that life was fuller than I’d imagined and there was more to hope for than I could guess. I wish I’d had the chance to tell her this is what I’ll remember. Always. Twice I visit her parents. The awkwardness is fading. It helps all three of us to be together, to talk about her, or at least I like to think so, but maybe I’m fooling myself. All I know is they don’t turn me away.

Once, on Wednesday 27 October, I think about calling my own parents but decide not to. Not for a while. On that day, I sit in my office, unplug the phone, and light a candle, watching it flicker as it burns. And I remember Teresa at 3.29pm, the last time I saw her, twenty-five years ago. I think also I might cry a little, but I can’t be sure.

So the autumn ticks by, the days grow colder and the long nights longer. There’s a feeling in the air as if something is changing, but I don’t know what. When I get up in the morning and look in the shaving mirror, each time I expect to see something different, and each time I’m disappointed. Same green eyes, same dark hair, same hunted expression. I look a little older. At least I’m alive, I tell myself; I’m alive and others are not.

When I say this to Andrew, he smiles and lets me talk. Not that I’m going as often as before, but when I’ve got the cash, I find it helps. I’ll have my final session one day soon, and I’ll walk away and not make another appointment at his front desk. I’ll keep his card, though, just in case.

And I have a sense of waiting. I don’t know what for. It’s as if I’m marking time, looking for some kind of permission to be given or a point to be reached to allow my feet to choose a path I can’t yet see. The journey into darkness, the chance of a light. This isn’t something I talk about at any of my sessions during those autumn weeks, but it’s as real as if it’s been carved on my skin, as real as the physical scars I carry. I can neither ignore it nor confront it. The rules I’ve made my life by are vanishing, and I don’t know what may be left to replace them.

Most often, that knowledge keeps me awake at night, my skin as cold as loss. But sometimes it gives me a sense of standing in a city square with no borders and all around me a sense of space. Inviting, dangerous, unexplored.

Dominic, of course, doesn’t stay in police custody for long. In a matter of days he’s granted bail and released on condition that he reports on a regular basis to the police. This small break in his routine is no balance against the misery caused to Starlight, Dancer, Bluesky, or Aqua or any of the hundreds of others. To him the two things are not even comparable, he being rich and they being poor. When I think of that and all that he told me the night I nearly died, the nausea lurches up, and I have to stand, panting like a dog, over the sink until the sickness subsides again.

Still, riches can’t help every situation. There will be a trial. I wonder how long it will be before he goes to court and how long the sentence will be. He’ll have good lawyers, and even though the media have spent countless column inches telling us their outrage at the crime, the punishment will never be enough. I wonder what he thinks when he considers the rapid downhill track that DG Allen Enterprises is on and when he might be free again to start another business. A man like that won’t disappear into obscurity. It’s not who he is. Finally I wonder what this will do to his marriage and how much he might miss his children.

In the middle of November, at the start of one of the coldest nights I have known, he comes to see me.

When I open the door to him, I wonder if this after all is what I’ve been waiting for. Even so, for a blink of time, I don’t recognise him — he’s grown older, and his face, almost gaunt, has new lines. Still, despite myself, despite what I know, it’s as if my blood is singing.

‘Dominic,’ I say, before I can control myself.

He doesn’t answer, and I gaze at him. Without glancing away, I reach out sideways until I feel the shape of the emergency cigarette packet on the hall table. I pull one free, pick up the lighter from the drawer, and offer him the cigarette. He almost drops it, so instead I take it, ease it into his mouth, and light it for him.

‘Thank you,’ he says and stands there, unmoving apart from the slight shake of his body.

Glancing beyond him, I see no-one else. ‘Did you come on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are you living now?’

He names a location on the eastern outskirts of the city, the sort of area he hasn’t been used to for a long time. Maybe he sees my surprise, because he almost smiles. ‘No money, Paul.’

‘What about your family?’ I ask. ‘Do you see your children?’

‘Yes, sometimes, when Cassie allows it. But not alone, never alone. Are you...? Are you all right now? Your injuries, I mean?’

The night air gusts in between us like memory and I shiver. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Thanks. Look, what do you want, Dominic?’

He hesitates, drops his cigarette on the step, and crushes it underfoot. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Don’t you think you’ve said enough?’

‘This is different.’

I step to one side. ‘You can have ten minutes. No more.’

‘Thank you.’

In the living room, he paces across the carpet, touching the wall, a chair, the mantelpiece. He runs his fingers along a line of books on the shelf, his movements jerky. I watch him from the doorway and wait until he turns to me.

‘You won’t believe me,’ he says, ‘but I’m sorry for what happened. For using you, threatening you. I didn’t realise...no, that’s no excuse for anything. There isn’t an excuse. I’m sorry.’

He’s right. I don’t believe him, but that isn’t what I’m interested in.

‘Why didn’t you cut me loose?’ I ask him. ‘Why didn’t you let me be destroyed? You said you would when that moment came. I was ready. In the end, I was ready. But you didn’t do it.’

He looks puzzled as if it’s an issue he’s worried at himself over many days and weeks but has been unable to turn up the answer. I can imagine how, in the middle of everything else going on, that must have angered him. He’s always prided himself on knowing the answers.

‘Why not?’ I say.

‘It’s stupid, isn’t it?’ he says, almost smiling. ‘You can work out your life for so long. You can know exactly how you’ll react to every situation you have to face, make strategies to win and win again, until winning is your trade, nothing else. There’s no room for mistakes or for pity. Only for success. And then something happens, something you don’t expect, and there are no more strategies or action plans. At least, not ones that fit. Something comes free, Paul, it comes free, and it can’t be put away again. When it came to it, I cut everyone adrift, everyone and everything I’d ever known, in order to try to save myself. My job, my company, my home, my friends — what there are of them — and my life. Even Cassie and...and my children.’ He passes one hand over his eyes, and I almost want to comfort him, maybe even touch him, but I can’t move to do it. ‘Even my children. Henry, Judith. Everyone. Everyone, except you.’

‘Why not?’ I ask again. ‘Why not me?’

‘I wanted to, very much,’ he says, and as always his capacity for a kind of reality pierces me. ‘But when it came to it, I couldn’t do it. Not to you. The truth is...the truth is I love you, you see. More than anything, more than myself. And I know...I know that nothing I can do will ever be enough for what I’ve done. Maloney’s Law — I crucified it, didn’t I? And you. But try to understand now that I love you, and for once in my life I’m telling you the truth. And because of it I want to ask you one question.’

He stops then, and when he glances at me his face is wet with tears. I have never seen him cry before.

‘What question is that?’ I ask.

‘Maloney’s Law,’ he whispers. ‘Please, Paul. Do you think, one day, you can trust me again?’

In the silence, when I look at him, the path before me is clear and for the first time I’m not afraid.

‘I’m sorry, Dominic,’ I say. ‘There are more laws than just one. Though you think what you’re telling me is true, it’s also true that friendship is more important than love. Jade taught me that. And you and I, we’ve never been friends.’