The Ties That Bind (31 page)

‘The morning after Jacky died, he had to let me go – he said he’d be seeing me soon – so I was free by the following afternoon, out in time for Dave to drive me to the auction house. I got the Temperance Place house for nine hundred quid in the end. I never did make any money on it. Not that profit was the point. Seeing Kathleen in that house . . . knowing she had somewhere safe to bring up her boys . . . there’s more than one way to launder money, I was finding out. Once I’d sold up, even once I’d paid everyone off, I had enough money to buy plenty more properties and, after a few years, it was
all
clean money.’

Minutes ago these words would have been music to Luke’s ears; now they rang flat and hollow. The early sweet victory of Grand’s confession was sucked dry by the half-truth of it. Another denial and Luke would write the story, Sandy and all, whether Grand liked it or not.

A gust of wind outside made Grand shiver. ‘Vaughan, go and warm the car up for me,’ he ordered.

‘Sir,’ said Vaughan.

Luke waited until he heard the expensive slam of the car door before he gave Grand one last chance.

‘You know, when I first overheard you that time, you said that Kathleen was the only one who knew, and I was sure I’d finally identified the missing witness that people talked about. The girl in the red coat.’

The only noise came from outside, where Vaughan turned on the engine. Luke watched through the window as the car windows steamed then cleared as dry heat filled the interior. Eventually Grand’s response came in a sneer.

‘That was just some old dosser keen to get in on the act. He was completely discredited. There were
definitely no witnesses
.’

When you have denied me three times . . . Disappointment was packed densely beneath Luke’s anger. He had come genuinely to believe Grand’s version of Jacky’s character, and in the sincerity of his reincarnation as a philanthropist. What a bitter shame it was that a man could take a lifetime to redeem his soul, then go from salvation back to damnation in the time it took to tell a story.

Chapter 46

The pub in Kemp Town was filling up with evening drinkers, young people in their autumn uniforms of fake fur and slouchy beanies. Luke sat alone at a table big enough for six. A passing girl with a ringing handbag stopped by him and emptied its contents onto his table. Among the possessions that fell out as she scrambled for her phone was a JGP keyring. He fought the urge to throw it across the room. People glanced his way, tried to smile, then decided to cluster at the bar rather than ask to share his space. He made linking rings on the pine with the damp base of his glass, then shredded a beermat. He had taken Grand’s lie of omission intensely personally and wanted the whole of Brighton to know about his bad mood.

Real loneliness lapped at his feet for the first time since he had left Jem. More alcohol was the last thing he needed and the only thing he wanted. He ought to have stayed in Kemp Town but he drank his way west, away from the rainbow flags, through the student dives and towards the stag-and-hen bars, so that each drink was more depressing than the last.

He might have indulged his sulk for another day if Maggie had not telephoned the next morning at an ungodly antemeridian hour.

‘Luke! I didn’t wake you up, did I?’

‘No,’ said Luke, who had been staring at the same peeling square of wallpaper for ages. He swung his feet out of bed and stumbled down the stairs, her voice pouring enthusiasm into his ear. ‘Now, I know it’s early days but I got chatting to a couple of editors at a drinks thing last night, and they’re both interested in seeing as much material as we can give them. So I’m just calling to retract my original advice to take your time and nag you to finish it as soon as you can. How are the interviews going? Has he talked yet?’

‘Slowly but surely,’ said Luke, opening a cupboard in the kitchen and wondering if soluble aspirin would go well with black coffee. ‘I’ve still got one other source to talk to.’

Strictly speaking, Jasper Patten was more of a resource than a source, and an untested one, but Maggie didn’t need to know that.

‘Well, don’t make me wait too long. We ought to strike while the iron’s hot.’

They drifted for a while to publishing gossip – Maggie had heard on the grapevine that Len Earnshaw was still insisting on writing every word of his memoir himself, driving his agent and editor close to nervous breakdowns. This joyous news blew away Luke’s hangover like dandelion seeds.

‘Oh, before I go, you never told me whether you got that package or not,’ she said, as the conversation wound down.

‘What package?’

‘I’m sure I mentioned it in my last email. A couple of days after you went to Brighton, some guy rang from a PR company about a DVD he wanted you to write about. He needed to know where to post it.’

Luke heard the tweet of Jem’s little bird on his shoulder. ‘Why didn’t you get him to send it to you? I asked you not to give out my address.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ said Maggie. ‘I didn’t actually take the call. I had a new intern that week and I forgot to tell her. Did it turn up?’

There was no point in telling her not to do it again, not as long as he remained in Temperance Place. The damage was already done. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be rid of her voice.

‘Um, yes, it did, thanks. I’d better go, Maggie. Got an interview to get ready for.’

‘That’s what I like to hear. Speak soonest.’

Luke swallowed the dregs of an old can of Coke and flicked the kettle on to boil. Relief that Viggo had not, after all, betrayed him at once delighted him and undermined his faith in his own assessment of character. Along with recall and an aptitude for prose, reading people was one of the things he prided himself on, one of the things he
was
. It had started to go wrong when he had fallen for Jem. With that original misjudgement something had changed and he had not been able to recalibrate since. Just look at the way he had bought into Joss Grand’s story, believing him right up until that last lie undermined everything.

Knowing that only humble pie would wash away the sour taste of self-loathing, he called Viggo. The phone seemed to ring for ever and Luke was just about to lose his nerve when it was answered with a cool hello. There was no point in pre-amble.

‘I’m sorry, Viggo,’ he said.

‘Hang on.’ Viggo was somewhere with loud music blaring in the background. A door slammed and then the music muffled. Luke pictured him on the freezing fire escape of a TV studio.

‘I’m so sorry,’ repeated Luke. ‘I know it wasn’t you who told Jem where I was. I’m sorry I thought it was.’

‘At last,’ said Viggo. ‘It’s cool. But why did you even think that in the first place? First of all, I wouldn’t do that to you, and second of all, he’s a mentalist.’

‘Because I’m a paranoid twat.’

‘Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared that up. What made you see sense, anyway? Did Jem tell you how he really found out?’

‘No, Maggie did. He tricked someone at her office into giving the address away. How could Jem have told me? I don’t think they let him contact the outside world where he is.’

Viggo drew a deep breath. ‘Oh, you don’t know then. He’s out.’

Luke put a hand on the worktop to steady himself. ‘I bumped into him in town the other day in the Victoria Quarter.’ continued Viggo, ‘He was with Serena. I had a drink with them . . . I hope you don’t mind? It was all in the spirit of investigation. I was trying to get a feel for whether he was going to come after you again.’

‘And is he?’

‘You know what? I don’t think he is. The upside of Serena following him around like Gollum is that she seems to be keeping him away from the razor blades. And he’s still going into his rehab place most days, so he’s tied to Leeds. Honestly, if I was worried I’d have called you before now, sulk or no sulk.’

‘I know. Thanks, Vig.’ He emptied the kettle over coffee granules and inhaled the vapour. ‘Um, don’t suppose you’ve spoken to Char?’

‘Of course I have. I don’t think she’ll forgive you as easily as me. How’s the book going, anyway? Worth the loss of the friendship?’

It stung, but Luke knew he deserved it.

‘When it’s finished, she’ll understand,’ he said. ‘She’s got nothing to worry about. I’ve protected her the whole way.’

He
had
protected Charlene, as far as he was able. He only wished he could say the same about Sandy.

Chapter 47

‘I’ve got a definite address for Jasper Patten,’ said Marcus McRae in his time-is-money way. ‘No doubt about it this time. I’ve just put a call in to confirm he’s a resident there. It’s a hostel. London Road, same street as the benefit office.’

Luke wrote the address down. ‘I meant to ask last time, what benefits was he claiming?’

‘A few quid of housing to top up his crappy income,’ said McRae. ‘Ball’s in your court now. I’ll email you my invoice by end of play today, for payment within ten days.’

The high Victorian viaduct that loomed over London Road looked down on pound shops, burger bars and budget supermarkets. Tucked among these was the hostel, a four-storey house where the curtains at the windows were pinned bedsheets. This was the lowest rung of the social housing ladder. A note on the door told him that visitors were only allowed between six and eight o’clock in the evening. It was half-past five.

In a nearby pub, Luke sipped a lemonade and counted down the minutes. His fellow drinkers were lone males, and all of them, with their wet eyes and stained clothes, looked as though they could have qualified for hostel accommodation. Could one of them be Jasper Patten? He recalled the picture on the dust jacket of
Hell on the Rocks
: the sandy hair and moustache, the pasty complexion. Most of the faces in here were roughly shaven and empurpled and swollen by drink, ages impossible to gauge. Luke checked his pocket for cash. He was ready to buy any material that Patten might have.

At one minute past six, he rose from his table and this time found the door to the hostel open. There was a signing-in sheet bearing the residents’ names on a cork board in the hall; a pencil on a string dangled by its side. Jasper Patten was in room number twelve, and a tick told Luke that he was in.

The rooms were not signposted. Luke wandered into an empty television room where a news channel rolled on a muted set. In the games room, a lightning flash had been ripped into the baize of the snooker table. Imagine having written all those books and then ending up somewhere like this.
Imagine
.

He finally found Room Twelve on the second floor, at the end of a dingy Artexed corridor. His heart beat in double time; he had waited weeks, and paid a lot of money for this moment, and he genuinely had no idea what, if anything, the meeting would yield. He knocked twice, one hand already on the knob.

‘Jasper Patten?’

‘Come in.’ The voice disarmed Luke for a minute: low, strong and sonorous, and what the hell kind of accent was that? Nowhere in Britain. Had Jasper Patten grown up abroad? Cecil hadn’t mentioned it, and neither had the biographical note in
Hell on the Rocks
. Luke’s surprise swelled into shock as he entered Patten’s room to find that the man sitting on the narrow bed, wearing a tracksuit and reading a book, was not the man in the photograph. He was black, for a start.

‘I haven’t seen you before. Are you new?’ said the man in what Luke now realised was a thick African accent. ‘Do you work here?’

Luke tried to stop his disappointment and anger showing on his face.
Fucking
Marcus McRae. How dare he charge so much money when he hadn’t even checked the man’s nationality?

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Luke. ‘I think I’ve got the right name but the wrong man.’

At these words the man’s eyes rounded in what looked like panic, and when he said, ‘Then I’ll say good evening,’ his voice had risen an octave.

Luke backed out of the room while his temper was still under control. In the corridor, he kicked the wall so hard that he wondered if he’d broken a bone in his foot. If McRae thought Luke was going to pay his bill now then he had another think coming. Alexa had said that he was the best in the game but the man had made a schoolboy mistake and Luke had wasted his afternoon and been made to look a fool.

He stopped still as an idea slammed into him. One of the first freelance pieces he’d written after his magazine had folded had been a story for the
Leeds Echo
about an immigration racket in the city. Illegal aliens assuming the identities of the British dead; Afghan and Somali women who spoke no English but claimed benefit under names like Mary Black and Fiona McTavish and possessed birth certificates that ostensibly proved they had been born in the UK. The crime was not new but its efficiency and the scale on which it had been organised was. It had made headlines not just in Leeds but across the country. Luke turned on his heel before he had time to change his mind, and this time he entered the room without knocking. The man was visibly unnerved; he stood in the middle of the room as though he’d been pacing. His stricken face almost made Luke lose his nerve.

‘Let’s start this again,’ he said, reluctantly hardening his voice. He hated to bully or blackmail, but in this instance it was the quickest, and possibly the only, way to the truth. ‘I’m on to you. I know you’re not the real Jasper Patten.’

The man looked out of the window as though considering whether to jump. ‘You DSS?’

‘I’m a journalist.’ The imposter clearly didn’t know whether that was cause for relief or alarm. Luke toned down the aggression one notch. ‘Look, don’t worry. I’m not going to get in touch with Border Control or anything. It’s the real Jasper Patten I’m interested in, not you. But to assume his identity, to get his National Insurance number, you must know he’s not coming back. If he was dead – that is, if he was officially dead – I’d know about it.’ He had instructed McRae to exhaust every avenue looking for a death certificate before he even began to search for a living man. He could not believe that McRae could be so incompetent as to get
that
wrong. The implications of his words nipped at his heels but he kicked them away. ‘What happened to him?’