‘How did this start? How do you know Bram? Tell me, Toby, you owe me that!’ She begins to cry and he eyes her with disdain. She can tell her display of emotion repulses him. You owe me that: so weak and plaintive and female.
‘He ran another car off the road and it crashed. He wasn’t supposed to be driving, he’d been banned. There was a kid in the car who died.’
‘What?’ The air is sucked from her chest. ‘You mean that accident in Thornton Heath?’ The one she’d read about, the one the detective was investigating, he’d come to the house. If she’d thought to ask him some questions, would she be here now? ‘You mean you were there? You witnessed it? You found out about the ban and you blackmailed him?’
‘Correct.’ Toby shrugs. ‘Turned out I struck gold. He hated the idea of prison more than he loved his wife and kids. What can I say? We all have our Achilles heel.’
Fi shakes her head. ‘That’s not true. No way. Maybe he started out scared of going to jail, but he wouldn’t take it this far.’
‘He would if he thought he was going to get ten years, maybe fifteen. He’s a pretty nasty piece of work on paper, had a conviction for assault, did you know that?’
‘Rubbish,’ she cries.
‘He beat up some guy outside a pub, put him in hospital. Just a few years ago.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you do. The thing is, the police won’t give a shit what you believe. It’s a past record of violence, isn’t it? Once the kid died, he was looking at a maximum term.’
Fi feels her breath thinning. ‘Even so, he wouldn’t choose this. He wouldn’t abandon his boys. You must have . . . you must have broken him.’
He regards her with genuine curiosity. ‘He broke himself. He’s a loser. It’s in his blood, you know that.’
She gazes at him, appalled. Until this moment, she has been aware of only one other person in her life knowing the truth about Bram’s father and that is his widow, Tina. Never has it been discussed between the two women and only once, in the beginning, between Bram and her. ‘How can you be so heartless?’ she whispers. ‘He was a child when his father died. It destroyed him.’
‘Boo hoo. Some of us have had it a lot worse than him. You should have seen what my old man was like.’
Fi inhales. There is no path through this conversation, no route to reason or mercy. ‘Whatever happened in that accident, he wouldn’t have hurt anyone intentionally. He doesn’t deserve this.’
‘Oh Fi, are you really qualified to say what that cunt deserves?’
She gasps. ‘Don’t call him that.’
He laughs and there is spite in it, a sadistic edge. ‘Do you know how much you used to talk about him? You wouldn’t hear a word against him. Only you were allowed to criticize him and in such a self-righteous way. It was pathetic how you couldn’t get over him. Always comparing us.’
‘I never compared you!’
‘Don’t worry, love, you didn’t hurt my feelings.’
She has stopped shaking, stopped crying, and is very still now, possessed by an energy she doesn’t recognize, a response to this degradation deeper than fight or flight, something from the soul, not the brain. ‘In Winchester, I thought we were . . .’
‘What? Falling in love?’ he sneers.
‘Did you not care at all? About me?’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yes.’
Toby’s mouth moves cruelly before he answers. ‘It didn’t cross my mind. You were just another way to keep him in line. Show him I had all his exits covered. Mind you, I thought he was going to blab that night he found me in the house.’
But he didn’t blab. He left her in this monster’s clutches, when she might have been the one person who could have rescued him from them.
‘What about your ex-wife? And Charlie and Jess? Do they even exist?’
‘Who are Charlie and Jess?’ he says. He reaches for the key in the ignition, turns it on. ‘Now, unless you’ve got any useful contribution to make, you might as well get out here. I need to get on.’
‘You were supposed to take me to—’
‘I’m not a fucking Uber. Get out of the car. You’re obviously no use to anyone.’
She stumbles out, her bags with her, feels the door pull away from her hands as he tugs it closed. There is the faint clunk of doors locking and then the Toyota jerks away from the kerb, its acceleration breathtaking. There are cars parked on both sides of the road, barely space for one to fit down the middle: if he met someone coming the other way he’d kill them both.
Lyon, 9.30 p.m.
He’s settled in his room in another insipid chain hotel, his second within twelve hours. Tomorrow he will find something semi-permanent. On the desk, there is the standard-issue directory of local attractions and accommodation, as well as a map of the city, and he studies both. He decides to try an aparthotel on Rue du Dauphiné that boasts discounted weekly rates for smoking units with a kitchenette, cleaning service, and free WiFi.
He won’t need the WiFi.
He tears the page from the directory and stores it in his wallet for the morning. Masochism, or maybe even sentimentality, prompts him to extract Mike’s printout from the same place. He pauses before unfolding it, pauses a second time before reading the title:
Deaths in Prison Custody 1978, England and Wales
There are approximately sixty names on the list. A bleak tally of souls. His eye finds the one he recognizes about a dozen lines down and absorbs the given facts:
Surname: Lawson
Name: RL
Sex: Male
Age: 34
Date of death: 24/07/1978
Establishment: Brixton
Classification: Self-inflicted by hanging
The prison authorities had forwarded a letter to his mother that he’d never been permitted to read, but which had been summarized by her for his young ears. ‘He thought it was better for us this way. He was convinced it would be easier for you if he wasn’t here to bring more shame on you.’
Privately, sharing nothing with his mother or, later, Fi, he’d done what research he could. There’d been a rise in suicides in British prisons in the 1970s, an increase in excess of the rate of rise in prison population and put down to overcrowding and mental health problems like depression and anxiety, factors that had got far worse since. It wasn’t easy to discover details of his father’s case, but he’d found someone who’d been at Brixton at the same time and had known his father’s cellmate. Lawson had been agitated from arrival and unable to adjust. There’d been an inmate with a neighbourhood connection to the elderly woman he’d injured and this had resulted in bullying. (‘He got a kicking most days.’) He’d begged to be moved, but this was never facilitated. He’d hanged himself with a bed sheet in the night, had had no pulse when he was found and cut down.
Bram feels a sharp smack of pain through his centre, followed by the one feeling he’s been craving all day – longer than that, for weeks, months, years: the knowledge that the final destination he has chosen for himself is utterly right.
Not just for him, for all of them.
51
Friday, 13 January 2017
London, 9.30 p.m.
The temperature has plummeted and it’s deathly cold now. Rage insulates her only so far and she digs into her coat pockets for the gloves and hat she used in Winchester. Before putting them on, she bundles them to her face and inhales the scents of yesterday, of cathedral and woodland and ancient cobbled alleys. Of a lifestyle – a life – that’s gone.