A Clear Conscience (17 page)

It was such bland carpet, piecemeal from where the bloodstained parts had been replaced, and she did not want to think about that.

Cheap carpet, Clapton. Number 59. Take Cath. Good for her, she clearly likes this stuff, might also get her to talk. An outing. Two days off booked already. She shivered in anticipation. A trip to buy carpet had all the flavour of gun running. Cath's obvious energy with the paint meant she was well. No need for immediate concern, just a niggling doubt.

D
amien Flood had moved around during his life. He had been dedicated to impermanence and achieved it through a measure of deceit. Putting down roots was anathema. Which was why a one-room flat at the top of a high-rise council block, easily obtainable even on a long waiting-list, because no-one else – not a pensioner or a mum with baby, or anyone who resented burglary, or had no stamina for the stairs – wanted such an inaccessible space. Damien did not mind a place where it took forty-five minutes on a bad day to put out the rubbish. He had another gaff, grace and favour of Mickey Gat: he had drifted between a dozen more in his thirty years of riches and penury. Cath said Damien had a death wish: he liked the high places from where he could fling himself, and he denied himself the anchors which would ensure survival, such as bricks, mortar and the love of a good woman. On the last point, there was less conjecture. Why settle for one woman, when you could run a string of them?

Not that he seemed to do that either, not in public. Cath could no longer remember his public persona, only that she had never seen him with any serious attachment. Nor could she quite recall him in any other setting but this one, from which a serious girlfriend, however besotted, and however low her expectations, would surely recoil. A single room, with mattress and armchair, a kitchenette at one end with a selection of other unmatched chairs abandoned round a white melamine table. A poster on the wall, shelves made with breeze blocks. A bleak bathroom. The whole
place was drab, unkempt without evidence of heavy dirt, lived in by a man who washed his clothes and his person with obsessive care and left the rest to itself until just before it began to rot. No wonder the council had showed no interest in getting it back. Cath doubted if Damien's erstwhile landlords even knew he was dead. Someone had given her the contents of his pockets some time after he died; it might have been one of his friends, it might have been a policeman, but the packet included his keys.

She had given the Mickey Gat keys back straightaway, via Joe, but she never admitted having this set. As far as she knew she was the only visitor here when Damien was alive, and the escape route it provided was heaven-sent now, a sign of divinely orchestrated protection, evidence that Damien's soul might have gone to the right place. There was nothing about home she missed, apart from the telephone. On a wall in the living room, there was a hole where a socket might have been. Cath realised with a start that she had no idea how to get one connected. Then she shook herself. She was not going to stay here for ever. It was like living in a greenhouse far above the world, while she craved the spaces below, away from the milky light, the windows with nothing but view, the slight swaying in the wind and the movement of the water in the brown lavatory pan.

Cath closed the door softly behind her, moving in the early morning heat which ascended the building, like smoke up a chimney, towards the lift. Today, it worked. She felt safer than houses at this hour in the morning. No-one else seemed to recognise the light of day before noon, and only then, she thought, nose wrinkling in disgust at the smell and the graffiti, to go and get some booze, collect the giro, or admit the social worker. On the tenth floor, the door opened to admit a white mother and black child. Both cried softly all the way to the ground.

Cath got on the 59. She felt both tranquil and resigned. She had the nagging doubt that this would be the morning Joe came to find her at the Eliots'. He had left her in peace for three days, but Emily Eliot would surely help, surely tell the man Cath was taking a week off, something like that; Joe would not leave the
Spoon for long in the morning, because he was frightened of Mickey Gat: it would only be a short call, and in the afternoon Cath would be safely cocooned in Helen's basement. There was enough to do there for the rest of the week and she wasn't thinking further ahead than that.

Jane Eliot greeted her on the doorstep. She was wearing a gold cardboard crown (courtesy of McDonald's) and her mother's old silk dressing-gown tied in a lump round her middle and still trailing on the ground over her bare feet. She put a finger to her lips, ushered Cath inside with the imperious gestures which seemed to confuse royalty with courtier, then stamped her foot angrily when Cath exploded with laughter. The little darling: she looked so sweet and so guilty and the sound of Cath's laughter, strange to her own ears, startled and amazed them both. Jane forgot where she was.

‘What's the matter with you, Cath? You never laugh.'

She had all of a child's resentment against inconsistent adult behaviour. Cath gave her a hug, another upsetting action. The child smelled like a perfume counter.

‘Well, I am today. Where's your mother?'

‘Out. Dad had a day off work, so they said, sod everything, they were going out. Without us!' The indignation was profound, although little Jane had already decided there were ample compensations for paternal absence. It was something worthy of revenge. ‘Mark is supposed to be looking after me,' she added. ‘Mummy made him promise faithfully, but she didn't know about his hangover. He's gone back to bed. You'll look after me, won't you? We can play.'

‘Where's your sister?' Cath asked, beginning to sense alarm as she looked upstairs and saw a trail of listing paper cascading down like a banner. Jane stamped her foot again impatiently.

‘It's all in Mummy's note, silly. In the kitchen. She is staying with her stupid friend. They're going swimming.'

‘And you,' Cath stated firmly, ‘will drown in big trouble when your Mummy comes home.'

H
ow much big trouble became apparent some
little time later as Cath whistled through the long skinny house. Her own feeling of joy at being given responsibility, this accolade of trust and this freedom, was beginning to wane even before she reached Mr Eliot's study. There was so much to do in three hours, plus keeping Jane happy. Since she knew the futility of trying to wake a boy with a hangover, Cath did not attempt to rouse the trusted guardian, Mark. She judged the carnage wreaked by a younger and jealous sibling to be fairly thorough. But, above all, Cath who never resented work and was given this small element of control, wanted to honour everyone, prove her own worth. Happiness gave her energy. She wanted to protect the baby from a scolding and also succour the errant older brother; she wanted to be all things to all of them, because they loved her and she wanted to love them back. Onward Christian Soldiers.

At the door to the study, the room supposed to be sacrosanct, resolution failed. The child had scattered the papers. She had untied the bundles Cath had seen in there, bound with either pink or white tape. Some of the tape was round her wrists, a little more round her ankles: she was a gypsy princess, decked in scraps. Cath did not understand paper. She could read and write better than most teenagers, but she was confused by the quantity; knew she could only restore some semblance of order and felt a brief surge of pity for poor Mr Eliot, who worked so hard and was always so courteous.

Jane was downstairs, exhausted by her labours and mesmerised by the usually forbidden day-time TV. Cath began to sort and tidy. The room smelt of perfume, all at odds with the masculine air of the desk, the solid chair, the old pen-and-ink set and the anonymity of Alistair's computer screen. Cath moved with precision and speed, pulling papers into rough piles, not looking, but judging by familiarity of typescripts and creases in the pages to get them into some sort of order. She was coy in doing this, averting her eyes from the written word, until from the depths of the mess, she caught sight of her own name. Not Cath. Mary Catherine Boyce. Joseph Boyce, listed next in alphabetical order in the index. The
rest of this bundle was more or less intact. Cath felt her heart shudder against her ribs. She began to read. Continued to read as her back rested against the wall, her legs splayed and her lips, ready to laugh again, mouthed the words.

There was so much about the aftermath of her brother's death she had not known. Joe had shielded her and she had welcomed it, believed him when he said it was better not to know, to forget everything as soon as possible. He was dead; nothing else had any importance. Joe had taken her to identify the body, a formal identification, Damien's lovely face so perfect. She did not understand the words of the doctor with all the initials after his name, but she understood the photos of a golden-haired man with his entrails falling on the ground. Cath clutched herself, feeling the rising tide of nausea, bit her lip, and carried on. Joe's statement was precise about times, emphatic about how he had left early in order to come home to her. Her statement contained the times he had told her to say. She had taken his word as gospel. Joe Boyce, saying how he loved his brother-in-law, but the man did not have time for him. Lies, all lies. Damien always had time; Joe had always envied him, that was all. Joe was such a liar.

‘What are you doing?' said Jane from the doorway.

‘Nothing,' said Cath, shuffling the papers so the photographs remained hidden. For God Almighty's sake, why didn't Mr Eliot lock his study door? Children could not help it if they were untrustworthy. Nor, at this moment, could she.

‘Only there's a man at the door, asking for you. I said I didn't think you were here today, but I'd go and look. Are you here?'

The child was cunning. Cath wondered where she had got it from. She pretended to yawn.

‘Oh, he must want your mother, selling something she doesn't want, I bet. If I come and talk to a man at the door, I'll have no time to play with you. Go and tell him you've had a good look round, 'cos you know I'm usually here, but your mummy is really cross because she's got a note from me saying I've gone away for a week. Ask if he knows where I am. Can you
do that?' Cath winked, roguishly.

‘Course I bloody can. What do you think I am, stupid?'

The child flounced. Little actress. Cath gave it three minutes, standing on the landing, listening for the dull echo of the front door closing, then went down.

‘He went,' said Jane, with all her mother's authority. ‘I asked him if he'd like to come in for a cup of tea, just to make it seem real, but he didn't want to.'

‘Good girl,' said Cath, making her voice echo an indifference she did not feel. It could only have been Joe; he would have to try once, and she could not have faced him.

‘I've got to tidy my room,' Jane announced. Cath was surprised; the effect made her calmer. Even a child was strong cnough to guard against Joe.

‘Why's that, then? I thought you wanted to play.'

‘That man at the door. He's the one who comes round when I'm messy, so he knows my room's messy now. We scare him off with perfume. Actually he only looked in the window once, but I tell everyone it was more than once, and he left something in the garden. Want to see?' She paused mid-flood. ‘Daddy doesn't believe me. Do you believe me?'

‘No,' said Cath, ‘not a word of it. You've probably told fifty stories about that man, all of them different. What did he look like?' Oh, the shame of it. Joe coming round here and looking in windows like a thief, tainting this perfect house. How could he? But Cath thought more about Damien, haunted by the vision of him captured on celluloid in the study. I should take those photos away, Cath was telling herself. Take them away, if I dared, and hide them. No strangers should ever have seen Damien like that, all naked and ugly. It was shameful.

‘This is what I found in the garden,' Jane was chanting, sick of subterfuge, television and anything short of exclusive attention. ‘This thingy.'

She made a feint at Cath's toes with the sheathed, rusty bayonet. It looked as lethal as her toys. Cath regarded it with anger and horror. It was obscene for
a child to brandish a knife in fun.

‘I only think that man left it here, ages ago. Absolutely ages. Who else would leave it? Daddy says it's very sharp inside, though. Want to see?' Her eyes were full of teasing challenge.

Cath's hand was raised in sudden nervous rage, ready to slap. She brought it down instead, heavily on the girl's shoulder, shaking her roughly, ashamed of the action and the look of hurt she had caused. She turned the gesture into a clumsy hug, but Jane was not mollified. The hug turned into a pat: Cath struggled for self control, gained it.

‘How lovely,' she said, still more sharply than she intended. ‘Let's play with something else, shall we?'

B
ailey stood with Ryan outside court number four, Snaresbrook. The outside of the building looked like a bishop's palace: the inside bore witness to extensive refurbishment. None of that old Victorian lavatory that Bailey rather liked and Ryan detested. It was modern, spacious and dignified, but nothing altered. By noon they were in their third hour of waiting their turn as witnesses in a case which had taken a year to come to trial: they had no idea how long they might wait and the one thing which united them was stoicism. Since they could not discuss the facts of an ancient episode of grievous bodily harm on a shopkeeper, they read their newspapers,
The Times
for Bailey, four-minute bursts with the
Mirror
for Ryan, who was harbouring, as usual, a sense of grievance unalleviated by Bailey's silence.

‘I know what I was going to ask you, guv,' Ryan said, bored to death with scandal. ‘You know yesterday? Going to see that Mr Eliot? Can you tell me something? Do all those barristers have rooms like that? I mean, a mess. I can't see how he'd ever find anything in there, let alone read it, but he had read ours, hadn't he?' Ryan had been dying to discuss this phenomenon since Bailey had abruptly abandoned him in the Temple; Bailey had forestalled him all morning.