Never Tell (31 page)

James stared at me, his mouth stained red. ‘No, not bloody Liam. Of course not Liam. The bastard who did the deal on the importation. He set me up.’

‘Who was he, though? Who was it?’

‘He never told me his full name. Saquib something.’

‘You must have had an idea, though, James, of who you were dealing with?’ I was nonplussed by his apparent denseness. He must be lying again, he had to be. ‘Surely?’

‘I met him in London before I went,’ was all he would say before he drank himself to sleep.

And I watched him and I thought perhaps I should feel real guilt about Danny, but I knew that I didn’t. Not really. I had lost James long, long ago.

In the morning over breakfast, I asked James why the police had said that he had never left the country.

‘Because they’re out to fucking get me.’ He slammed the chair against the kitchen wall so hard it dented the paintwork, his plate of toast flying to the ground. ‘They’re all out to get me. Don’t you understand?’

He yelled so loudly that Effie began to cry.

‘It’s OK, darling,’ I crooned, cradling her to me as if she was still a baby. She looked up at me with woeful eyes.

‘I want Daddy to go away again.’

All morning James rampaged through the house shouting and cursing until he wore himself out, just like his three-year-old son on a bad day. He yelled at me about the torn-up carpet for ten minutes until I quietly explained why I’d done it. Then he slunk off to the studio and slammed the door.

After school I took the children to the playground behind the church and then to The Copper Kettle for cheese-on-toast and lemonade for tea. I watched the little bubbles crowd round the glass that Effie held, and I craved peace for them; for their innocence. I listened to the women behind the counter moan about the Poles in Witney taking over their clientele.

‘Bloody foreign muck,’ one said, and I looked at her thinning crown, her baby-pink scalp, as she wiped the table next to her and I tried not to despise her fear.

I was sure people were staring at us as I watched the children laugh on the climbing-frame, screeching down the slides. People who didn’t know us were busy making judgements, and I thought that I wanted to leave this place now, this place that had never welcomed me. All I wanted – as was my habit, my oldest trick – all I wanted was to fly.

Later James was calmer. He’d spoken to his solicitor; Liam was coming up tomorrow.

‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘I’m just under a lot of stress.’

I said of course I knew how hideous it must be, and I understood – but actually I didn’t. I concentrated on the children because I didn’t know what else to do.

As darkness fell, Helen Kelsey arrived on the doorstep with a basket full of charity, but I didn’t let her in. I watched her from the upstairs window; I knew she had only come to delve and then impart the gossip to the village. I was quite simply done with being nice for the sake of it.

‘Rose,’ I could hear James calling me as I turned away from the window and drew the curtains, ‘have you got a number for Hadi Kattan?’

My heart thumped painfully. ‘Why?’

‘I need to speak to him now.’

‘Why?’

‘Have you got a number or not? The one I’ve got doesn’t seem to work.’

‘Somewhere, I think. But why do you need him?’ I said carefully, coming down the stairs.

‘Because the furniture guy, I’ve just remembered. He was recommended through the Kattans.’

James went through to the studio and I followed. I was shocked at the tip it had become; he had pulled every file and box and folder from the shelves. There was paper, CDs, album artwork everywhere, the floor was covered. He was never usually the tidiest man, but James was extremely house-proud when it came to the studio.

‘What do you mean you’ve just remembered?’ I said, stepping over Mick Jagger dressed as a wizard. ‘How could you possibly not remember before?’

His eyes were blazing with something. ‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’

‘But you were banged up for three days and you didn’t remember—’

‘Shut up, Rose. I’ve remembered now.’

‘Remembered
what
, though?’

‘When I spoke to Kattan at his house, at that party he had. He offered to put some money into Revolver.’

‘Yes, I know that. But what has it to do with – to do with—’

‘And then we were talking about decking it out, the new club. I was admiring some of his furniture. All that gold-inlaid marble. I thought it would be classy in the new VIP. He said he would put me in touch with someone who imported it.’

‘James,
please
. Be straight with me about everything now.’ I sat heavily.

‘I am.’

‘You’re not. You went back there, to Albion Manor, and I saw you, and you lied about it.’

‘When?’

‘You know when. What else are you lying about?’

‘Nothing.’

‘James! Were you really in Vietnam? Come on, J. Be honest.’ He was about to argue – and then suddenly he shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

‘About what?’

‘Stuff?’

‘What kind of stuff?’ God, he was infuriating.

‘I had so much to sort out here and I – I
was
going to go, really, only then—’

‘But I dropped you at the airport and everything.’

‘Yeah. Well, I was going to go and then – they rang me, asked me to meet in London before I went away.’

‘And what did you talk about?’

‘When?’

‘At this meeting when you were meant to be in Saigon?’ How could I have been so slow? Marble wasn’t even a Vietnamese product. ‘Was it – was it heroin, J?’

He stared at me and I waited, hand outstretched to him, frozen. Finally he was going to tell the truth, I could tell. The computer pinged suddenly, announcing an email, and the spell was broken. He turned away.

‘That bloke sorted it. The meeting in London.’

‘What bloke?’ I said carefully.

‘You know, that Scottish geezer. The tall quiet one. Callendar. He arranged the meeting – about the furniture. I didn’t trust him then. Never trust the quiet ones. I think – Christ’s sake – careful, Rose.’

‘Ouch.’ I sliced my finger on the silver knife he used to open his post. ‘Sorry. You think what?’ I fumbled for a tissue to stem the blood; it dripped down onto the snowy paper I’d been assembling.

‘I think he’s fucking set me up.’ He pulled another in-tray of stuff from the desk; it swirled through the air. ‘Where are their fucking numbers? Why does everyone move my fucking stuff?’

My blood flowered onto the white tissue; a deep deep red.

That night James had another nightmare, the worst since we’d left university. He kept screaming a name over and over, a name I couldn’t make out; he kept screaming it and moaning, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry …’ When I eventually managed to wake him, his eyes were wide with fear. He said he couldn’t remember anything, but his distress was tangible.

* * *

The next morning I drove to Albion Manor but it was boarded and shuttered – no cars, no horses in the field. I took a deep breath and rang Danny, but his voicemail was always on. I tried to call Hadi Kattan, as James already had, but his number was unobtainable. I tried Maya too, several times, but although it rang, she never answered her phone or returned my calls.

At night James paced the house, too frightened to close his eyes in case the nightmares came again; in the day he dozed on the sofa. Liam came and went, they spoke to endless lawyers, they muttered to one another – but they never really told me what was going on. However hard I tried to get it out of James, he was constantly vague. ‘Set up’ became his mantra; deep down I was terrified he was guilty.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that Liam knew more than he was admitting, but he was at great pains to avoid being on his own with me at any time. I’d still never understood why he’d collected my children that day, and I’d lost my trust in him. My paranoia was growing, I was aware of that, but our world was falling apart and my reason was following close behind.

At the end of that week, one morning around dawn, the police came and took James away again – and this time he looked broken. Fred woke up crying with all the noise and confusion, and I scooped him out of bed and carried him downstairs. He was too heavy for me these days to hold for long, but now I held him tight in my arms, his head heavy on my shoulder, blinking and bewildered, tears like dewdrops on his lashes. We stood on the doorstep in the early morning mist, the distant hills wreathed as if in dragon’s breath, shivering in our pyjamas.

I watched DS Montford escort my husband into the back of an unmarked car: I thanked God at least two of my children were still sleeping. James stared out at me, and he looked just like his son, like a little boy – and my heart went out to him. He looked like someone who had lost his fight. I held Fred’s hand up to wave to his father.

And later the expression on James’s face – oh God, it haunted me. I’d seen that look before. The same look he wore the day that Dalziel tried to kill his own brother.

Chapter Twenty-Four
THE TIMES, MAY 2008

Record producer James Miller has been rearrested and is now apparently being held at London’s Pentonville Prison. There is still no news of the exact charge, but it’s understood that bail has been refused on the grounds that he might flee the jurisdiction, unusual in a case as high-profile as his, and worrying indeed for Miller
.

When everyone starts lying, how do you ever know whom to trust?

The one person I needed to speak to most had completely disappeared. His phone was never answered, and then the number stopped working altogether. Like a mighty slap in the face, finally and irrevocably I realised I’d been played for an utter fool. I blocked the pain of rejection from my mind as best I could, busy with the salvation of my family, but the knowledge that Danny could never have cared at all nagged at me until I felt dust-like. Until I was nothing. The ridiculous longing dragged at me, scraped its rusty fingernails across my self – until slowly I realised this was the price I must pay for daring to look outside my life for happiness; for the lust that meant I’d forgotten I was not just me, I was many. I was not me; I was my children too.

But there was no space for self-pity and heartache. I had to figure out how to keep my family together the best I could, before we lost everything.

The week after James’s second arrest, I took the children out of school for a few days and we went down to stay with Jen in London. I had people to see and questions to ask.

Liam wasn’t expecting me when I buzzed at his door. He answered it in a pair of cut-off jogging bottoms, sporting a small paunch I’d not seen before. He was obviously hungover, his pale skin unhealthily pallid, his sandy curls on end. He looked not unlike the derelicts who lived at the bottom of his stairwell.

‘Rose.’ Was it my imagination or did he seem apprehensive?

Liam lived in the penthouse of a converted button factory in Hoxton – the apartment all shiny floors and James Bond posters, Nintendo Wii’s and BMX bikes that Liam never rode unless he’d been partying all night. He was the archetypal London geezer, full of charm and exclusive drinking clubs and expensive dinners, until his women fell for him and began to dream of wedding dresses and chubby babies. Then Liam would turn into the proverbial ‘toxic bachelor’ – in short, his duped girlfriends wouldn’t see him for dust.

‘God, Hoxton’s a dump,’ I said, dumping my bag beneath a leather chair shaped like a vagina. ‘I’m gasping for a cuppa, Liam. I’m having the worst week.’ My chattiness was designed to disarm him. I sat on the vagina. ‘Make that the worst year, actually.’

‘No kids?’ Yawning, Liam put the kettle on, rubbing his eyes blearily.

‘No, Jen’s babysitting. You remember Jen? I finally got my visitor’s order to see James.’

‘That’s good.’ He yawned again, so wide I saw his fillings.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said drily. ‘Did I wake you?’

It was two in the afternoon.

‘No. Just a bit of a late night.’

The detritus strewn across the flat spoke volumes: empty bottles, fag ends, rolled-up notes. An electric-blue bra hung from the lampshade over the table. The matching pants weren’t visible.

‘Who’s there, Liam?’ The little voice came from the mezzanine.

‘No one. Just Rose.’

The kettle snapped off.

‘Hi, Star,’ I called. I’d hoped to catch him alone.

‘So what can I do for you?’ Liam tried a strained smile. He sounded rather like my bank manager.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I was taken aback by his terse manner. ‘I didn’t realise you were – I mean – I – I won’t take up your time.’

There was an infinitesimal pause whilst he hung his head. ‘Sorry, Rose,’ he said sheepishly. ‘I don’t mean to sound—’

‘Unfriendly?’ I met his eye. ‘Because you do, a bit.’

‘I’m really sorry.’ He flushed. ‘I’ll do anything to help, you must know that.’

‘Thanks.’ But I didn’t know that, I realised. What did I really know about Liam at all? I wasn’t even quite sure why I had come. I had no plan formulated, nothing more than these nagging certainties that James’s own partner
must
have known something was wrong; if James was guilty as charged. If James
hadn’t
been set up, as he so vehemently insisted that he had. Right now, I wasn’t sure what the lesser of two evils was.

‘Liam, do you
swear
you don’t know what’s going on?’

‘I swear I’m as flummoxed as you about the drug thing.’ Liam had read my mind. ‘I swear. It just doesn’t seem like James’s style.’

Didn’t it? What was my husband’s style? The things that had attracted me in the past were his gung-ho spirit; his restless, reckless lust for adventure. I stared at my hands. My inevitable attraction to the proverbial bad boy. How pathetic.

‘It’s not the only reason I’ve come.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, I’m broke.’

‘You can’t be.’ He stared at me uncomprehendingly. ‘The house, the flat, the—’

‘No, I mean, broke right here and now.’ The blood suffused my own face. ‘I can’t get my hands on any money. They’ve frozen the credit cards, there’s nothing in the bank accounts. Everything’s in James’s name. I’ve been a bit dozy, I suppose. Baby brain for too long.’ I took another breath. ‘I’ve been wondering, can you help me? Sub me some cash against the club or something? Something from your shared account.’