Capital Punishment (54 page)

The two men arrived, sat down on the bench. Boxer looked around the empty, freezing park. He didn’t think about it. He walked calmly out of the darkness and into the light, fired, dropped the gun and carried on walking.

1.00 A.M., THURSDAY 15TH MARCH 2012

Bupa Cromwell Hospital, London SW5

Alyshia had been taken to Newham General Hospital emergency department, where she’d been given a full check-up. When her father heard about the rescue, he immediately organised an ambulance to take her to a private room in the Bupa Cromwell Hospital where Isabel would be waiting for her. Frank D’Cruz was not able to make it as he was undergoing a debrief at Thames House.

Isabel didn’t get to see her immediately as the doctor D’Cruz had hired at great expense to give Alyshia a thorough examination did not want any interruptions. He came out to give her exactly the same findings as the NHS doctor at Newham General: Alyshia was in very good physical shape, considering the extremes of her ordeal. However, mentally there could be repercussions: the dreaded post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Isabel didn’t know why, but once the doctor had left her in the corridor, she knocked on her daughter’s door before going in. An etiquette had established itself in her mind. This disappeared on entry as Alyshia, connected to a saline drip, held her arms open and cried out something that Isabel hadn’t heard for many years.

‘Mummy!’

For the first few minutes they didn’t speak and just held onto each other: Isabel hugging her, breathing in her hair, kissing her head, rocking her child while Alyshia inhaled the familiar warmth of the cashmere sweater, the perfume, the deeper, atavistic mother scent.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Alyshia, over and over again. ‘I’m so sorry, Mummy.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Isabel. ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. If you weren’t here, that would be something to be sorry about. But you are. You really are here.’

She crushed Alyshia until she squeaked.

‘I meant I’m sorry for all my cruelty,’ said Alyshia. ‘For pushing you away when I came back from Mumbai. I should never have done that. You are the one true person, the only really true person I can trust more than anybody else. And I didn’t know that until I thought I was never going to see you again.’

Isabel said nothing, just crushed her so hard that Alyshia whimpered like a kitten.

They held hands, looking at the miracle of each other, unable to speak, a whole lifetime to exchange in one sitting.

Over the next fifteen minutes, they calmed down. A nurse brought some tea. Isabel went to the window while she checked the drip, temperature and blood pressure. She told Alyshia that D’Cruz wouldn’t be able to come until after his debrief.

‘I don’t want to see anybody except you,’ said Alyshia, shaking her head. ‘I’ve been surrounded by men for a week. Bad men. Let’s just have some time together, the two of us.’

‘Deepak’s here, too,’ said Isabel. ‘He’s desperate to see you.’

‘I can’t do Deepak now,’ she said. ‘I might never be able to do Deepak.’

Saturday midday, Boxer was sitting with his mother, Esme, at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. He’d come to pick up Amy, who was getting her things together in the bedroom. They still hadn’t actually spoken to each other since the ugly phone call he’d made at Heathrow.

‘How’s Amy been?’ asked Boxer.

‘She’s been good; great, in fact. We’ve had a nice time together,’ said Esme, lighting up her fourth cigarette of the morning, Marlboro, full strength. ‘I like her. She has spunk, as my bloody father used to say. She reminds me of me, when I was her age. She can take the battering. She’s strong inside. And she’s learnt to protect herself.’

‘Maybe you’re getting childhoods muddled up,’ said Boxer. ‘Your father beat you up. We’ve never laid a hand on Amy. Mind you, she’s aggressive enough to make anybody think we
have
laid a hand on her.’

‘You and Mercy are making parental demands on her, which Amy doesn’t think you deserve to make when you’ve already fallen short in your parental duties,’ said Esme. ‘When you’ve already built up such a deficit of love.’

‘A deficit of love?’ said Boxer. ‘But, Christ, doesn’t she understand that we’ve done everything we possibly can, given the jobs we’ve got?’

‘Why should she? She was just a kid when you went globetrotting, saving people in Mexico, Pakistan and Japan. Why should she have to grasp the reason her parents don’t come to see her play football, act in the school play, do her stand-up session at the Comedy Store—’

‘Do her what?’

‘You didn’t know that, did you? They had a school’s night at the Comedy Store. She did a set. It went down a storm. She did it for me a couple of nights ago. She’s good. As you say, a lot of aggression to work out there.’

Boxer sipped his coffee, rocked in his chair, watching his mother smoke her cigarette in the most luxuriantly enjoyable style.

‘I’m no different. I haven’t exactly been there for her as a grandmother. Had my own problems, as you know,’ she said, wiggling her cigarette, tilting her wrist. ‘But I don’t make any demands on her. She doesn’t call me granny. I don’t expect her to. I just see her as another girl, or rather, a young woman. I like her when she’s being attractive, and dislike her when she’s being unpleasant. But I’ve recognised that I don’t have the right to expectations. That’s the destructive thing about families. If the child doesn’t live up to your expectations, then you’re unhappy and so is the child.’

‘But we weren’t, I mean aren’t, a destructive family,’ said Boxer. ‘Not like your crazy dad.’

‘You weren’t violent, that’s true, although it sounds as if Mercy can be threatening.’

‘Probably under a lot of provocation, and she had a destructive father, too,’ said Boxer. ‘My father didn’t do anything to me. He murdered
your
business partner and ran away.’

And killed something in you in the process, thought Esme, but for once didn’t say it.

‘And you didn’t take that as a rejection?’ she said. ‘I know I did. And that’s what you’re handing down to Amy. You were away a lot, but that was your choice. You could have decided to be there for her, but you weren’t, probably because your father abandoned you.’

‘She seemed very happy when she was small,’ said Boxer, aware that he sounded defensive, reeling with the guilt. ‘It’s only since she became a teenager she’s been so impossible.’

‘You decided to spend more time with her, but it was too late, Charlie. She’d already started protecting herself. You weren’t around, Mercy had her own problems and she’d chosen a certain career path. What’s a child supposed to do? And once those barriers are in place...’

‘So what do I do now?’

‘Try to form a relationship with her with no fatherly expectations. Don’t expect love when you’ve done very little to engender it. Treat her like any other young woman. See if you like her. See if she likes you. Take it from there. I reckon it’s your only chance.’

Frank D’Cruz was pacing the corridor outside Alyshia’s room. He was nervous in a way that he’d never been before. He’d been told, even when Alyshia had heard his debrief was over, that she still hadn’t wanted to see him. Isabel had been able to persuade Alyshia to give him a hearing, only after she’d told her about a three hour discussion she’d had with her ex-husband once he’d got out of Thames House.

But there was another reason D’Cruz was finding it difficult to go into the room. He knew Deepak Mistry would be there at her bedside. Part of that three hour discussion had been about Deepak and how he’d successfully made his case to Alyshia, which hadn’t reflected well on D’Cruz.

D’Cruz hadn’t seen him since the day before he’d fled from Konkan Hill Securities in December last year. On Thursday morning, three days ago, as he was being driven to Thames House, he’d heard a news report about a suspected gangland murder of an Indian mafia don on Primrose Hill. Now he had to go into this room, look Deepak Mistry in the eye, accept him, and then win over his daughter.

He knocked, went in. Deepak Mistry stood, not as if ready to flee, but more as her protector. D’Cruz looked at his daughter in her hospital gown and realised that he hadn’t seen her since December last year either, and it came to him in that moment how much he’d missed her. How much he’d sacrificed in his rage.

He went to her and she accepted a kiss, but did not embrace him. Her restraint was palpable and painful to him. He shook hands with Mistry, made eye contact, let him know that there should be nothing between them now.

‘Maybe I should leave you two to talk,’ said Mistry.

‘No,’ said Alyshia. ‘You’re part of this. We’re both going to listen.’

D’Cruz went to the window, peered through the blinds for a moment and turned to face them, hanging his head.

‘I realise I’ve done some great wrongs,’ said D’Cruz, with total solemnity. ‘Great wrongs. And the greatest of wrongs I have done have been to those closest to me. I am sorry. I can’t undo what I’ve done, but I would like to try to put some things right. I have decided to set up a charitable foundation to look after street children in Mumbai,’ he said, ignoring Alyshia’s raised eyebrow. ‘And I would like you to come back with me to Mumbai to run it. And if it would suit you, I would also like Deepak to be involved in some way.’

‘It sounds as if you’ve been talking to Mum.’

‘As you know, she is the centre of all goodness in my world. She has spoken and I have listened,’ said D’Cruz. ‘I have also decided to stop the escort agency and encourage Sharmila to work with the Mahale family’s AIDS awareness programme.’

They looked at him. He stood with his back to the window, held out his hands, palms upwards, the charisma streaming out towards them from his fingertips.

‘What?’ he said.

Driving Amy back to Mercy’s house in Streatham, Boxer found himself trying to work his way into this new idea of a relationship:
not
being a father.

‘I’m thinking of having a dinner tonight with Mum in an Iranian grill just off Edgware Road. I’d like you to come, if you’re up for it?’ he said, thinking how odd that sounded.

‘Yeah, that sounds good.’

‘I know you haven’t seen much of your friends while you’ve been staying with Esme, so if you want to see them first, that’s fine. I’ll tell you where the restaurant is and you can make your own way there. The place is nothing special, but the grilled meat is fantastic. It’s bring your own booze, too, so it’s cheap, cheerful and relaxed.’

‘OK, great,’ said Amy, nodding while texting Karen.

They arrived in Streatham. Amy took her case upstairs. Boxer joined Mercy in the kitchen. It struck him now, after that merciless conversation with his mother, just how sterile this house was. It was brightly painted, nicely furnished and very neat, but it didn’t feel lived in or welcoming. There wasn’t the usual crap around that he associated with family life. He realised with a pang that Mercy had never had a real home. Her father’s house had felt like a barracks while her own had something of an aparthotel about it.

‘What you looking at?’ asked Mercy.

‘Nothing,’ he said, taking a seat.

‘What’s the scene with Amy?’ she asked. ‘Her greeting was almost civil.’

‘A new strategy,’ said Boxer. ‘I’m pretending
not
to be her father.’

‘Is this some counselling from that great expert on family matters: the drunken hag?’

‘She wasn’t drunk, hasn’t been drunk, according to Amy.’

‘They’re in the same coven, those two,’ said Mercy. ‘How did I come out in the parental review?’

‘We both scored nought out of ten, but with mitigating circumstances,’ said Boxer. ‘Your brutal dad and my absent one.’

‘Right, so we’re just acting out the family scenarios we’re familiar with,’ said Mercy, sounding bored. ‘It’s easy looking down from the hallowed heights of Hampstead, but I can tell you it’s different down here in the mean streets of Streatham.’

‘Her theory is that you should treat her like a young adult who’s staying with you.’

‘You mean I get rent?’

‘You’ll probably find she could pay off your mortgage.’

‘Is she coming tonight?’

‘I asked her and she’s accepted.’

‘We’re all so bloody grown up.’

They were upstairs in the Iranian grill. The chair Boxer had kept for Amy stood at the head of the table, empty. Occasionally Mercy glanced at it and then at Boxer, and shrugged. The chair remained like a silent rebuke. Except that, in his new role as ‘non-Dad’, he refused to allow it to develop into anything as powerful as a rebuke. He decided that she’d preferred the company of her friends. He wasn’t going to let it get to him. They ordered their food, drank the wine Boxer had brought. Mercy was looking festive. She had make-up on, which was rare, and the gold stud earrings he’d bought for her on one of his trips. She was wearing some multi-coloured African cloth, which she’d had cut into a mini-dress, with a shawl to match. Her foot nodded against his shin.

‘So,’ said Mercy, rolling up fresh herbs and yoghurt in flatbread, ‘what are you doing with yourself now that it’s all over?’

‘I’m preparing to move The LOST Foundation into some new offices near Marylebone High Street.’

‘And how much is that costing you a month, or are you working out of a shoebox?’

‘Zip,’ said Boxer. ‘And it’s two hundred square metres. A satisfied client let me have it.’

‘What it is to be in the private sector,’ said Mercy. ‘Anyway, that’s not what I meant. What I meant is: how’s it going with Isabel? Or should I say: how’s it going to go? Have you seen her since...?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ said Boxer, pouring more wine. ‘I’m giving her space to see if she wants to continue ... the thing.’

‘Ah, yes, the thing,’ said Mercy.

‘You know how it is.’

‘Do I?’ said Mercy. ‘I haven’t had a thing in ages, although if I’d been as mad as you, I might have found myself having “a thing” with a crack dealer called Delroy Dread.’

‘Seriously.’

‘Yes,’ she said, putting her hands to her face, letting out a high-pitched giggle. ‘He flirted with me and I found myself flirting back. You should have seen the muscles on him.’