Patchwork Man (17 page)

‘How’s life treated Binnie?’ I asked. She looked happy in the photograph, fifty-ish, grey-ish and plump-ish, but content. A tribe of Indians were hunting in the garden behind her as she stood guard over their makeshift wigwam.

‘She’s OK. Got three kids and seven grandkids. They seem to just pop out like peas.’ He held out his hand for the photograph. I felt a sudden desire to keep it; to see the real person and tease her about her dimple again. I’d liked Binnie most because of her capriciousness – the kid-like inclination to be kindly one minute and dismissive the next – perhaps because of all of my siblings she had been most like me in that; able to join in and opt out at will. We shared that as a trait, and the ability to box things when they were unacceptable to us. Binnie’s ability displayed itself in her enjoyment of being teased one minute and the unexpected dig back the next. Funny little brother one minute, annoying the next. She could bury herself in a comic or an activity of her own creation as completely as I could, but despite that separateness we could both magic at will, there had been a bond of understanding between us too that transcended the intermittent sibling rivalry with Win, the being smothered by Sarah, the haphazard playfulness with both sets of twins, or the protectiveness I’d felt towards Georgie with his dreamy eyes and gentle fear of everything. For the first time since I was nine, an urgent need for tangible roots beset me. I handed the photo back reluctantly, but wavering how I now perceived the approach to my long-lost family.

I couldn’t decide whether Sarah looked as I imagined she would. She gave the impression of being mid-sixties, but she wasn’t anything like that by my calculations. Her mouth turned down at the corners but that might have just been the momentary expression the photo had caught. I’d always thought of her as happy. Little Mother; the one we all resorted to when Ma – inevitably – was too tired or too busy to deal with us. Ma was always the gold star, Sarah the consolation prize; kind, cuddly and happy. She didn’t look happy now.

‘She ain’t been well,’ Win commented.

The family group shot was blurry and several years older than the first two.

‘I ain’t got very good ones of the boys. Pip bought it the Falklands. He were one of the first out there.’ I studied the indistinct faces of the group to make out how Jim and Pip had turned out; my two charming urchin brothers. The two young men arm in arm off to one side were them, still grinning, still shock-headed, still sunny-natured, it appeared. ‘Nineteen-eighty that was. Year or two before he died. Jim took himself off to Australia not long afterwards. He drank too much. He said he had to go because he couldn’t be doing with seeing his brother’s ghost everywhere. Couldn’t understand that meself. Ain’t no such thing as ghosts.’ I thought of Margaret and her insistently harrying hold on me from beyond the grave.

‘Oh believe me, they exist,’ I replied. I was about to hand the photograph back. The image was too hazy to see much – and besides it was years out of date – when I realised why it seemed unbalanced. There had been ten of us when we’d been taken away, including me. There were ten in the photo – excluding me. I peered closer. The odd one out was the young woman who sat on the grass in front of them all. A good few years younger than any of them. ‘Who’s the woman right in the front?’ I showed him who I meant. I already knew the answer before he gave it.

‘Kimmy.’

‘Kimmy?’ I waited for the bad news to be confirmed.

‘Your other kid sister. The one you ain’t met – or maybe only once or twice.’

‘The baby?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you’re still in touch with her?’

‘Oh yeah.’ He said it with meaning, but didn’t elaborate. He waited. I looked at the photo again. I couldn’t tell if there was a likeness or not – the woman in the photo was too small – and Win was clearly enjoying not telling me. Met once or twice? Once – when she ruined my life. I tried to set aside the sudden jealousy I felt of this woman who’d stolen my world away from me with her arrival. I glanced up at Win. He was watching me carefully.

‘Plainly you want me to ask you about her?’

‘Yeah,’ he smiled knowingly.

‘What?’

‘She look familiar to you?’

‘A family likeness, I suppose. Why?’ The klaxons were sounding, and the sneering face of Danny Hewson’s mother mocked me.

‘Yeah, family likeness.’ He burst out laughing and irritation got to me. Sticks and stones maybe, private jokes at my expense? No. I let my weight settle more heavily on the edge of the desk and thrust the photograph back at him.

‘If you think you’re going to come here and wind me up, you’re wrong. The family album was
very
interesting but I’ve work to do now.’ I anticipated it might move things along. He might only just be getting started but he hadn’t got anything he wanted from me yet. I got up as if to push past him but he put out a hand and it rested lightly yet threateningly on my chest.

‘Oh, that game again. Hold your horses,
Kenny
. I ain’t finished yet.’

‘Get on with it, then.’

‘You met her as a baby – that was the first time, but you’ve met her since too. Don’t you remember?’

‘No, I don’t.’ Nor did I want to. It wasn’t her fault – no-one asks to be born, yet still I resented this interloper into my family, my childhood – the one who’d remained whilst I’d been ousted. And I was already computing the difficulty of representing her son.

‘What about that party you was at – about ten years ago.’

‘I probably went to a lot of parties ten years ago. I’m hardly likely to remember what they were now.’

‘Oh, you’d remember this one. It were a big celebration. A bit dodgy maybe, the verdict, but you won it all the same. In the bag, as you might say ...’

It only took those three words for me to immediately extract the party from the haze of memory. In the bag. Not the children’s home, although the soul-twisting memories immediately flooded back by association.
Ten years ago,
and in the bag. The turning point for our Chambers. The first big win. I’d been nominated to take the lead on the case because I was the slickest in court – the ability to box things never eluded me then. It was another of those moments I wouldn’t have shared with Atticus.

We had all viewed the evidence provided to us with scepticism but the fee was enormous, and so was the kudos for getting one creep off the hook and another onto it. How – or why – the client had the money to pay for us to represent, was never asked. We’d argued about it – oh yes, for hours on end, but eventually pragmatism had won over reluctance. The business was going down the pan, and us with it. This was a gift horse. Whatever our reservations, the stream of other evidence against him convinced us there was no doubt the man to be found guilty eventually should go down for something – even if not this. So it seemed justice would be served, albeit rough justice. Even the police on the case agreed. The fee was paid, the ‘client’ delighted and work flowed endlessly our way after that, whether that was also the client’s doing or not.

The party to celebrate had flowed too – with alcohol, self-congratulation, and towards the end of the evening when polite society had left, with sex. Ten years ago, I’d been a work horse and a stallion, but the latter only in private. When Margaret had complimented me for my thoroughness in bed, it wasn’t irony due to lack of skill, only lack of feeling. My aptitude wasn’t in doubt. Even the girl I’d taken there that night had said so with genuine pleasure, although I’d been drunk – too drunk to remember much other than the undoubted release I’d obtained at the party
after
the party. It was all in the box, and Win had just taken it out.

The other significant fact that I’d stowed in the box was the nature of the crime the defendant was accused of. A very particular kind of murder. There was no evidence of sexual assault, just fear and death, and one other thing that had particularly bothered me at the time but everyone else had ignored. I’d almost thrown up when I’d read the brief – in private thankfully. The girl had apparently died from asphyxiation – a plastic bag secured tightly round her neck. It had all the hallmarks of my own experiences, but it was our big break and I was up for anything that would take me to the top instead of down the drain then. So it all went in the box too and stayed there.

I didn’t know who was behind the agent commissioning us to take the defence case but it didn’t matter once it was done. We’d accepted the sin, and as sinners, climbed the greasy pole. But how could Win know anything about it? Danny Hewson’s mother – my little sister, apparently – had also mentioned being semi-asphyxiated before she’d stunned me to paralysis with her throwaway exit. The person Win wanted to hear about automatically lurked dangerously close to all these occurrences in my head, but how that was possible eluded me. I feigned ignorance as the best defence whilst I tried to figure it out.

‘There were lots of parties to celebrate successes, Win. If you think you’ve something significant to tell me you’d better spit it out.’

‘You met someone related to Danny there. You can figure it out from there. Now you’ve got what I had to tell you, I want something from you.’ I spread my hands in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘Oh yeah, you can pretend, but you’ll get it when you think about it. Here’s what I want for saying nought.’ He paused for effect, but I already knew what he was going to say. ‘Jaggers.’ For whatever reasons Win wanted him, I had equally good ones to never wish to encounter him again. I wasn’t playing that game unless I had to.

‘For a start, I don’t know what you’re talking about and secondly I haven’t come across Jaggers in years.’

‘Just over ten.’

‘What?’

‘You ain’t came across him in just over ten years. That’ll come to you too, when you put your mind to it. The pair of you stitched me up like a tart’s tights. Now I’m having me own back – for then and for Danny.’

‘For Danny?’

‘Who do you think the main man is, you stupid sod?’

‘Jaggers? Impossible!’

‘Crap. Course it ain’t. He don’t do the dirty stuff himself anymore. He has the likes of me to do it for him, but it still comes down to the same thing. He got me sister’s kid in trouble and other stuff. I would’ve let that go if he could put it right, but now I know he fucked me over to start with, I ain’t doing that. He thinks he’s so clever, ordering me around or he’ll get me put inside again – me with me problems and all. Well, like I said, I got plenty of ways of finding out stuff – and you’re the one who’s going to make it stick for me.’

‘Well that’s where you’re wrong. I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and I think it’s time for you to go now.’ My mind had already started to churn over the possibilities and linking pieces of the jigsaw. I didn’t like the picture it was starting to build and I needed to examine it in private, not with Win’s rancid breath and sweaty paws on me.

‘I want them.’

‘What?’

‘The notes on that case you won before the party.’

‘Why?’

‘My reasons.’

‘They’re confidential.’

‘So’s your past matey, but it don’t mean it’ll stay that way.’

‘That’s blackmail.’

‘No, I’m just stating facts and asking my little brother to help me look at some others – for my own reasons.’

I stood up and pushed against the restraining hand still against my chest. He didn’t resist. He allowed himself to be pushed backwards an inch or two and then turned on his heel and made for the door. I followed close behind him, surprised at the ease of his repulsion, but intent on making sure he left without trying to nose around anywhere else. At the front door, he shoved a card in my hand.

‘
Be a Winner
,’ it said. ‘
Win Juss – gets you what you want when you want it
.’

There was a phone number below and an image of clasped hands. I supposed they were meant to be about to shake on a deal, but to me they looked like the pugilists’ fists in round one of a fight.

‘You can get hold of me there, or I’ll come and get hold of you, if I don’t hear back soonish.’ He smiled nastily. ‘Think about it.’ And he was gone – light-footed as a cat burglar, despite the girth, leaving only the impression of stale sweat and distaste behind. I watched the sleight of hand as the giant disappeared and inconsequentially remembered how I’d watched him slink away from mischief as a child. Not then the soft sibilance of the sneak thief. Helter-skelter, elbows flying, he and Jonno had claimed to be sworn enemies, but I’d seen them running away from Old Sal’s together once, booty held high. In fact the similarity between him and Jonno had been so marked that day as they fled, I could have mistaken them for twins. The egoistic stance and overbearing self-confidence of the bully-boy conjoined them in my memory now. I wondered why I didn’t see then what he’d already started to become. Win had been a secret alliance-maker even as a child, treacherous and self-interested. I had no intention of getting involved in whatever unholy alliance he wanted to initiate now, even if it might have Jaggers as its target.

I didn’t go into Chambers after all. I returned to the study, head pounding. I didn’t need to
think about it
. I already had an inkling of why he wanted to see the case notes. I rang in and asked Louise, the biddable little clerk in the post room, to tell me where the oldest closed briefs were archived.

‘Oh they’re all in the basement, right up the back,’ she replied gaily. ‘Mr Gregory is going to put it on the next Chambers committee meeting for us to get it all converted to pdf files or stored with the rest of our old stuff in Scunthorpe. But please don’t ask me to go down there, Mr Juste. I think we might have mice or something.’

I assured her lightly that I wouldn’t – just checking on security measures and that I wouldn’t be in until tomorrow. ‘Um, funeral arrangements,’ I added vaguely.

‘Oh, of course,’ she sounded guilty. Everyone sounds guilty when talking about the death of someone else’s loved one. Is it because they feel embarrassed that it isn’t one of their own who is dead? Or relief it’s you who’s suffering and not them? I took advantage of the awkwardness to escape more explanations. The funeral arrangements had been my excuse for unexplained absence too much recently. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking I was arranging a state ceremony. Someone was bound to look askance soon. I put the phone down with a crash and it took me immediately to where I wanted to be in the box. The din and reek of the party – overloud celebrants and suspicious substances. How ironic that the apparently most respectable members of society should behave so disreputably when given the chance.