Lemonade and Lies (22 page)

It was an admission of some kind, I believe. That he couldn’t control everything in life. That there were some things you just had to stand by and let others get on with.

We went back up to the ward together. It was a small room and the place was getting crowded. They’d be selling tickets soon. But I don’t think Millie minded. She was pleased with the fuss and she looked a lot better. Kids are amazing, their powers of healing. Their vitality and hold on life.

My mother worked her magic and found some extra chairs from somewhere, and the hospital staff turned a blind eye to the small mob that had gathered in room 3B.

I went and sat next to my mother. Took her hand. “Christmas should be fun,” I said. “And I can’t think of any other people I’d rather spend it with than my mum and dad.” I smiled and held her gaze, for I needed her to know that it was true. I think it was the
mum
and
dad
that did it. She was a woman who rarely broke down, but she had to turn her face to the wall. I guess she didn’t want the kids to see their grandma cry. Or maybe that was for me.

The next few days floated by in a surreal bubble. At least for me. Other people didn’t seem to have trouble coping with them, but I had to get used to being part of a family group again when I’d spent so much time alone. My reality had been different to theirs.

I passed the rest of the time at the hospital waiting for something to happen. For someone to jump out of a corridor and mug me. Or come looking for Millie and Tom. It was like knowing a landslide was on its way, wondering where it would hit. Everyone said I should relax. But in my experience, when you relaxed that’s when shit happened.

It was just as bad when we all went home to Maidens. My radar was permanently stuck at the on position. My body stiff with tension.

Andy Patterson told us the documents had been faxed to the appropriate place. I assumed this was the Met and that the computer flash drive had also made its way there. I couldn’t help but think of Jamie McDonald. If he hadn’t given up, he might have been the copper sitting in an office somewhere looking at this stuff and trying to make sense of it.

I don’t know what had prompted me to make
two
print-outs and slip one into my laptop case. Whether it was natural caution or the sort of company I’d been keeping lately. It was inevitable that once the police got their hands on whatever evidence Bill had squirreled away in my carving that I wouldn’t get to look at it again. So just put it down to outright nosiness. Right now I figured that I’d earned the right to these papers. And so had my father. He’d paid for it with his blood.

Not that it did either of us any good. We didn’t have a clue what they were. Other than the obvious verdict that these were random pages from some kind of accounts books, neither I nor my father had been able to make much sense out of them.

“Some sort of creative accounting going on here, I’d say.” He laid two pages side by side, comparing them.

We were in Harry Webster’s famous study. A male sanctuary that I don’t suppose many women had entered. I’m not even sure my mother had been allowed in there to dust. For he’d once complained that he’d never be able to find anything if she did.

The two of us had taken turns at going over the pages of numbers in the print outs.

“Two pages. Same layouts,” I said. “Some kind of accounts trial balance. But two very different versions of the same thing. Jamie thought Kabak might be keeping two sets of books.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Can’t understand why he didn’t use a computerised accounts program though,” I said, and thought about somebody secretly photocopying these pages, having to scan them.

“Maybe he didn’t trust computers, or the people who operated them.”

“Maybe he was right,” I said. “But all this other stuff. What’s that about? Seems to originate in Panama.” A faint glimmer of light filtered through to me. It came with the name. Panama equals Shell Corporations equals money circulating that isn’t quite honest. Honest! It was hardly a word Kabak or his friends would be familiar with.

“Have the police got this stuff as well?” asked my father.

“Sure. It was all together,” I said. “You know, part of Jamie’s job had to do with money laundering.”

“That so?”

“He once told me that Bill recruited staff for Kabak. People good with figures. Prepared to do dirty laundry. Viktor Kabak must have had a lot of dirty drugs money that needed cleaning up. I know folks go to Panama for other reasons, but you hear about these dummy companies taking funny money and making it good. Sounds out there, I know. Far-fetched.”

“No more far-fetched than people chasing you. And me getting stabbed in my own front garden,” he said. “I think we should phone Detective McDonald. Cut through the red tape and see what he . . .”

The phone rang. Its shrill tone cutting across his words, making me jump.
Saved by the bell
. I didn’t want to get into a discussion about Jamie, or admit that he was no longer down there in London somewhere, steering things.

“Hello. Uh huh. Oh, it’s you young man.”

(
Who
?) There was a long silence during which my father’s face went through a variety of expressions. None of them negative or bad. But I was constantly on the look out for bad stuff now. I had turned from a glass-half-full to a glass-half-empty person, and I figured it would take some time to regain my natural optimism. Maybe it had fled forever.

“No, Jill’s fine. We’re all fine. Yes, that would be fine. I’ll let mother know.”

Fine? He’d be wearing the word out.

“Right. Need a lift from the airport? No, no. That’s fine. Prestwick’s only twenty minutes away. Either me or Jill.”

Another pause. And I tried to guess who it was. The list wasn’t long. There weren’t that many contenders who knew me, knew him, knew Mother.

“Okay. Until tomorrow then. No, don’t worry. I said it was fine.” (He did!)

My father put the phone down. And a thought struck him. “Sorry, never thought. You might have wanted a word with him.”

He looked at the phone as if the thing had somehow let him down. He wasn’t good at the interpersonal stuff. The thing they were really hot about having on your C.V. But it never seemed to worry him, the fact he wasn’t a communicator, a people-person. He was his own man and I guess that’s all you could hope for. That a man would be true to his principles.

“Well?” I prompted.

“What?”

Blood, stones, and other allied objects came to mind. He wasn’t easy to wring information out of.

“Who was it?”

“Oh, David. Alice’s young man. He’s coming tomorrow. She can’t come until Christmas Eve.”

“So she said.”

“Don’t know why he wants to come early. Maybe he just got fed up with London. Don’t blame him. Give me this place any day,” he said, “somewhere you can breathe, watch the sea at sunset, go for walks.”

Yes, David would like that. But maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe he and Alice were having trouble. No! Stop that. Enough of this negative stuff. We were interrupted by a thunderous and insistent banging on the door and Tom’s loud voice telling us that Grandma had dinner ready.

“Steady, lad. You’ll break my door down,” my father shouted back, but all the same he smiled. For my son hadn’t yet been battered into submission by the world of adults. He was still noisy and excited about things and did everything at breakneck speed. And I thanked God for it.

Dinner was a relaxed and happy affair, with the kids airing their excitement about Christmas and Mother and I making plans for the shopping, deciding who would take care of the cooking on Christmas Day. I didn’t fight her for it. Making food for the family was her joy. Her way of showing love. And I guess she’d been dreaming about cooking Christmas dinner for us all for a long time. I couldn’t take it away from her.

Tom and Millie organised the old man. He was to be in charge of getting the tree. A huge one, Millie insisted. And one for the front garden as well, smothered in lights. And the decorations. The three of them would put those up together. “We’ll see,” he’d said. But a flicker of a smile invaded the grumpy look he’d cultivated.

My mother and I washed up, the conversation between us as frothy as the washing up water. We tried to keep it light. We’d both had an epiphany of a kind and understood each other better because of it.

I’d even gone as far as telling her about my writing. Only my kids knew about that. And they saw it as normal, for I was their mother. Didn’t everybody’s mother make up stories for them? It didn’t make the stories the work of a genius or even publishable. I warned her not to breathe a word to anyone else. I suppose it was the idea of being exposed and vulnerable. Open to criticism. She wanted to read the children’s book I’d written. But I wasn’t ready for that. She would either hate it, and have to say she liked it because she was my mother, or love it because she was my mother. Either way it wouldn’t work.

I brought out the jigsaw board with the half-finished puzzle of the Flying Scotsman on it and we all had a go, sitting in the warmth of the scullery. I thought about the time I’d spent alone in our cold house in Cornwall, dreaming of a similar scene, wishing I could magically project myself into the middle of it. And now here I was. And it was good.

The kids were allowed to stay up an extra half hour. Neither of them was going to school tomorrow. It was the final day before they broke up anyway and it didn’t seem fair that Tom should have to go if Millie couldn’t. The doctor had explained to her that, although she was getting better, she still had to take it easy. The phrase wasn’t one she recognised.

I got the kids to bed. Tucked them both in. They had to share a bedroom now that there were about to be so many of us over the holiday. But although Tom grumbled loudly, I don’t think either of them truly minded.

My mother had fussed over the new rooming arrangements, making sure they were perfect and my father had come along in her wake, moving beds, doing the heavy lifting. He might have changed a bit, but he still believed in demarcation lines. Women shouldn’t have to move furniture. But he was perfectly happy to see them in the kitchen, sorting out his dinners, doing the washing up, the cleaning. The phrase Barefoot and Pregnant seemed to fit, but I discarded it. They were from another time and the system worked for them. For both of them.

“Mum?”

“What, love?”

Millie’s face crinkled up in concern. “Is the man still in the garden?”

An echo of another time. And an image of another man, another garden, drifted into my head. A man with long straggly hair and FANGS. But I relaxed. This was different. I went to the bedroom window and checked.

“Yep. He’s out there. It’s all fine.”

The young policeman was over by the hedge, stamping his feet, trying to keep warm. And every so often the glow from his cigarette intensified as he pulled on it. About now he’d be wondering why he hadn’t taken that job in the Bahamas, for it was a freezing cold night. I doubt he’d be thrilled to have drawn the short straw and was having to babysit us in the height of a Scottish winter.

“Okay you guys. Bedtime.”

“Mum?”

More delaying tactics, but I played along. I’d been young once. “Yes, Tom?”

“You like it here, don’t you?”

“You mean with Grandma and Grandpappy?”

“Not just that. The place, I mean.”

“Sure I like it. But we live in Cornwall. We’ll have to go back home sometime.”

“But you just said you like it here.”

Problem with kids is that everything is so straightforward. So black and white.

“Tom, Mum has a job. She doesn’t have any choice. And she’s our mum. We’ve got to go where she goes.” Millie sounded like an ancient sage instead of an eight year old. At least a thousand years old. And I wanted to cry.

“But I thought you guys would be happy to go home,” I said. “See all your friends again.”

“We’ve got friends here,” said Tom and his voice sounded sad. “And Rupert loves it here.”

“So, if you had a choice between going back home or living somewhere in this village, which would you chose?”

“Here, of course,” said Tom, his voice sleepy.

“Me too,” said Millie, “but I’d have to have my own room.”

“Right, that’s it. Lights out.”

The grumbling was only slight. I kissed them both one more time and went downstairs.

My mother was in the kitchen. Cleaning worktops that (in my humble opinion at least) had already been clean.

“Cold night,” I said, thinking about the bloke guarding our hedge. “Should I take him out a coffee?” I asked.

It wasn’t easy being in another woman’s kitchen. Even if it was your mother’s. You had to be sensitive, diplomatic. Acknowledge where the authority lay. I didn’t give a damn who did what in my kitchen, but then I was less strung out about household chores.

“Good idea. I’ll put the kettle on,” she said.

See what I mean?

She started to hum. And the words ‘domestic bliss’ came to mind. My mother loved all this, organising the household, having the family around her, thinking about what she’d cook for tomorrow. I wondered if it was enough, though. If there was anything else she dreamed about. I knew she did crossword puzzles and enjoyed jigsaws, read novels, but I realised that I knew very little about her, other than the character I’d made up in my mind. She looked happy, content with what she had right now.

“Think we should put a shot of your dad’s whisky in?” She nodded in the direction of the garden. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

I thought about it. We didn’t want the guy to freeze to death out there, but then again we didn’t want him drunk either.

“Don’t coppers have some sort of rule about not drinking on duty?” I asked

My mother gave me a surprised look. “This is Scotland,” she said.