Guilty Parties Page 11

  Quod Martha to the doctor. “And advise

  The royal court, dear husband, that the crown

  Your father donned is due for handing down.”

  Then once the co-conspirators had left

  The chamber, Egbert’s servant girl, bereft

  And tearful hurried to the regent’s side.

  She caterwauled, she beat her breast and cried

  Until the ‘dead man’ opened up his eyes

  And winked – at which she fainted in surprise.

  The moment Fredrick sat upon the throne

  To take the right of kingship as his own,

  His father yelled across the hall: “This claim

  I’m dead is false. My doctor’s much to blame.

  So sharpen up the executioner’s blade,

  That with a single swing the bungler’s slayed.”

  The treacherous physician made a plea

  For clemency and wept on bended knee;

  But nought in mitigation could he say,

  So Egbert’s guardsmen dragged the man away.

  Quod Egbert: “Since the royal court’s convened,

  I now decree Prince Fredrick must be weaned

  Off luxuries, so hereby I promote

  My son to head our harshest, most remote

  Of garrisons – accomp’nied by his spouse.”

  Thus Egbert slyly cleansed the royal house

  And quietly arranged to see his lands

  Would not fall into undeserving hands.

  Some twelve months on, a courier arrived

  At Fredrick’s fort with news he’d be deprived

  Of any royal legacy, for writ

  Upon a scroll, King Egbert saw it fit

  To make, at last, his joyful tidings known –

  My servant girl sits by me on the throne,

  The message read: And now a better heir

  Than you my queen’s been good enough to bear.

  Epilogue to the Franklin’s Second Tale

  The Franklin, with his yarning done, once more

  Uncorked his flask, and passed around its store

  Of ale amongst us pilgrims whilst we mulled

  The import of his message ere we dulled

  Our minds with beer. It seemed his story told

  How tenderness affected by the cold

  Of calculating greed turns good men bad

  And made a son a patricidal lad.

  So mark my words, if avarice you choose

  To rule your days, the game of Life you’ll lose.

  SECOND CHANCE

  John Harvey

  John Harvey has published scores of books under various names, as well as writing poetry, working on scripts for TV and radio, and running a small press. His Nottingham-based series featuring Charlie Resnick began with Lonely Hearts, and was adapted for television. His later books include those featuring Frank Elder and Jack Kiley. In 2007, he received the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger.

  He hadn’t recognised her. Not right off. A slender woman in blue jeans and a green parka hesitating on the pavement outside the building where he lived. Her hair scraped back into a tight ponytail; make-up an afterthought at best.

  ‘Jack …’

  ‘Victoria?’

  It had been the voice that had nailed it, Essex laid through with pre-teen years of elocution lessons, a mother with ideas above her station. Basildon, at the time, east from London on the line to Shoeburyness.

  ‘I thought this was the right address, but then, with the shop and everything, I wasn’t sure.’

  For the past several years, home for Jack Kiley had been a first-floor flat above a charity shop in north London, the stretch of road that led from Tufnell Park down towards Kentish Town. Terry, that morning’s volunteer, drape jacket and duck tail, was playing Chuck Berry at near full volume. Midway through the guitar solo on ‘Johnny B. Goode’, the needle stuck and was lifted delicately clear and set back down a beat before the voice returned.

  ‘You hungry?’ Kiley asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Coffee, then?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He threaded her through the lines of buses and private cars to the Vietnamese café across the street. One latte, a flat white, and, for Kiley, a baguette with chillies, coriander and garlic pork.

  ‘Breakfast, Jack, or lunch?’

  ‘Both?’

  When she smiled, crow’s feet etched deeper around her eyes.

  He had first met her when she was just nineteen, a minor sensation at Wimbledon and on her way to being something of a celebrity: Victoria Clarke, the first British woman to reach the semi-finals since Boudica, or so it had seemed. Her world ranking had been twenty-three and rising; in the Observer list of Britain’s Top 20 Sportswomen, she was number seven with a bullet. Canny, her agent had bartered her image between cosmetic companies and fashion houses, settling finally for a figure that tripled whatever she was likely to make out on the WTA tour.

  During the Championships, billboards appeared in every major city, showing Victoria in full-colour action: crouching at the base line, racket in hand, lips slightly parted, waiting to receive; watching the high toss of the ball, back arched, white cotton top taut across her breasts. Beneath both, the same strap line: ‘A Little Honest Sweat!’ The deodorant itself was pictured discretely bottom right, alongside the product’s name.

  Students tore them down and used them to paper their rooms. Feminists festooned them with paint. Victoria crashed out in the semis, came unstuck in the first round the following year; three years on, advertising contract cancelled, she failed to get through qualifying. Retired at twenty-five.

  Since then, she’d done a little coaching, some tennis commentary on local radio, moved for a while to Florida – more coaching – and returned the wiser. The last time Kiley had caught sight of her, aimlessly flicking the remote, she had been modelling heart-shaped pendants on the Jewellery Channel.

  ‘So, how’s it going?’ he asked.

  ‘You know …’ Shrug of the shoulders, toss of the hair.

  ‘You’re looking good anyway.’

  ‘And you’re a lousy liar.’

  Kiley bit down into his baguette; a touch of chilli but not too much. ‘When you called, you just said you needed to see me. You didn’t say why.’

  ‘I was probably too embarrassed.’

  ‘And now?’

  She curled the ends of her hair around her finger, sipped her latte.

  ‘I always seem to be coming to you with my problems, Jack.’

  ‘Goes with the job,’ Kiley said.

  Victoria had fallen pregnant when she was fifteen and persuaded her older sister to bring the child up as her own; an unorthodox way of parenting that had threatened to break into the spotlight just when her big advertising contract was due to be signed. One of Kiley’s first jobs as a private detective, having some time previously resigned from the police, had been to trace the root of the problem; help it go away.

  ‘This isn’t about Alicia?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘So tell me.’

  She leaned closer; lowered her voice. ‘When I was in the States I met this man, this guy. Adam. He wasn’t American, English, he was out there filming. Some, I don’t know, documentary. We … we had this, this thing. I suppose it was pretty intense for a while.’ She lifted her cup; set it back down. ‘Anyway, he came back, I stayed. We kept in touch, you know, phone calls, email. It was okay for a while, but then he started getting on at me, trying to get me to change my mind. About living there. Come back to England, he’d say. We had something special, didn’t we? It’s not as if what you’re doing is going anywhere. And he was right, that was the thing, I just didn’t like being told. As if I’d made, you know, another mistake. But in the end – he wore me down, I suppose – I packed it all in, what I was doing, the coaching, and came back, and then when I saw him again there was nothing. A big zero. Nothing. It wasn’t just I didn’t fancy him, Jack, I didn’t e
ven like him.’

  ‘And I suppose he didn’t feel the same?’

  A quick shake of the head. ‘When I told him, tried to tell him, he wouldn’t listen. Went on and on about how he’d made all these plans, put his life on hold, while all the time I’d been leading him on. I tried to reason with him but he just went – I don’t know – crazy. Called me every dirty name under the sun. Punched the wall. The wall, Jack.’

  ‘Not you? He didn’t hit you?’

  ‘No, though I think it came close. In the end he calmed down enough to tell me he never wanted to set eyes on me again. If he did, he didn’t know what he might do.’ She straightened, arching her neck. ‘That was a little over a year ago.’

  ‘And now?’

  Victoria sighed, twiddled more hair. ‘When we were … when I was still in Florida, some of the emails we sent, back and forth, they were … they were pretty, well …’

  ‘Sexy?’

  ‘Yes. Just, you know, what would you do if I were there now? What would you like me to do to you? That sort of thing. Pretty harmless, really. But then, after a while, there was more. More than just, you know, words.’

  ‘Photos? Videos?’

  ‘Yes.’ Not looking, looking away, out towards the plate glass of the window, the road. Her voice was dry, small. ‘There was a camera on the laptop. He’d make up these little scenes and have me act them out. Download them and then edit them. Send them back. Some of them, they were …’

  Her voice trailed into silence.

  Outside, the driver of a Murphy’s construction lorry was embroiled in a noisy argument with a cyclist in full gear, padded shorts, skin-tight top, helmet, the whole bit.

  ‘You want anything else, Jack?’ the young Vietnamese woman who ran the café asked.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Kiley said, ‘I think we’re fine.’

  Victoria opened her smart phone, went into her emails and passed the phone across the table. Time enough for Kiley to see the image of a naked shoulder; a woman, clearly Victoria, turning her face towards the camera, the open bed behind. When the image disappeared, a message: ‘Listen up, whore. Less you want this all over the internet, do like I say.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Kiley asked.

  ‘A couple more, the same. Just threats. Nothing spelled out. And then a few days ago another, asking for money. Stupid money.’

  ‘And these emails, they came from the same address?’

  ‘All except the most recent, yes. But any reply bounces back, undeliverable, account closed.’

  ‘And the one asking for money, how’re you supposed to pay?’

  ‘It doesn’t say.’

  Kiley thought he could do with another flat white after all.

  ‘It’s someone playing around,’ he said. ‘Someone’s idea of a joke.’

  ‘It’s no joke, Jack, especially not now. Not when I’m just starting to turn things around. I’ve got a shot as a presenter for one thing, only on one of the shopping channels, but it’s a start. And I’ve been talking to BT Sport about maybe doing Wimbledon next year; you know, expert analysis, that sort of thing, other tournaments, too. All it needs is for that stuff to get out onto the internet and for the media to get hold of it, and I wave all of that goodbye. Besides which, there’s Alicia. Think what it might do to her.’

  Kiley followed her out on to the street.

  ‘She’s staying with me now, Jack, term time at least.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I arranged with Cathy for her to switch schools last September. Year Eight, Jack, can you imagine that? Alicia, all grown up.’

  ‘And your sister, she’s okay with that?’

  ‘She and Trevor, they’ve been going through a bad patch, and if I’m to be honest, I think Alicia’s part of the reason. I think it’ll do them good to spend some time without her.’

  ‘Alicia, she’s happy about it, too?’

  Victoria looked at him in surprise. ‘Of course. I am her mother, after all.’

  People are rarely, if ever, what you expect. Adam Lucas was shortish – five-five at best – and stockily built; gingerish hair cropped short on top and worn in a trim goatee showing the first signs of grey. Kiley tried to picture him together with Victoria and failed. But then, what did people think when he was out with Kate, when she introduced him to her friends? Her aberration? Her bit of rough? An experiment in social engineering?

  Adam’s offices were in a basement in Soho, Bateman Street, two rooms liberally festooned with posters: a documentary about illegal migrant workers in East Anglia; a short film about embalming; a recent London Film Festival Poster for Bad Monkey: Carl Hiaasen’s Crazy World, showing grinning alligators deep amongst the Everglades.

  There was a receptionist’s desk, but no receptionist. Adam Lucas was editing something on a laptop. He shook Kiley’s hand, looked twice at his card.

  ‘This for real?’

  ‘Real as it gets.’

  ‘Never say that to a maker of documentaries.’

  There was a low settee along a side wall; all the easier, Kiley thought, for Lucas’s feet to touch the floor. Petty, but he enjoyed it nonetheless.

  ‘How about pornography?’ Kiley asked.

  Lucas looked at him askew. ‘Not something we’re involved in.’

  ‘Just privately.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Yesterday, I was talking to Victoria.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Little home movies she made in Florida. Your direction. Do this, do that, put that there. Someone’s threatening to put them on YouTube, Viddler, Phanfare.’

  ‘And you think that’s me?’

  ‘Until you convince me otherwise.’

  Lucas shook his head, reached for a cigarette. ‘I haven’t seen Vicky in twelve months, more. Haven’t called, emailed, anything. It’s – whatever it was – it’s over, finished. Last year’s model. She made that clear enough.’

  ‘All accounts, you were pretty angry when she did.’

  ‘She’d fucked me around, of course I was angry.’

  ‘And this is a way of getting your own back.’

  Tilting back his head, Lucas let a slow stream of smoke waver up towards the ceiling.

  ‘Tell you something about myself, Jack. It is Jack? I’ve got a short temper, short fuse. Always have. Got me in trouble at school and just about every day since. But once it’s blown it’s blown. People I work with, they understand.

  ‘Vicky walked in here now, I’d kiss her on both cheeks, shake her hand. No grudges, Jack. Believe it.’

  Kiley thought maybe he did.

  ‘These films, videos, whatever, if they were just private between the two of you—’

  ‘How could someone else have got access?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re not exactly sitting around on my hard drive, waiting for someone to hit on them by chance. Okay, I could’ve been hacked into, it happens all the time, but then, so could she.’

  Lucas got to his feet.

  ‘I can’t help you, Jack. Wish I could. See Vicky, give her my love. And those videos, believe me, compared to what’s out there, it’s pretty tame stuff. I’d tell her to chill out, whoever it is, call their bluff.’

  Since returning from America, Victoria Clarke had been living south of the river, Clapham, a nest of Edwardian terraces between Lavender Hill and the common. Kiley could hear the commotion from the front door. A young voice raised in anger, words scything the air: ‘bitch’, ‘selfish cow’, ‘bitch’ again. Footsteps and the sound of something breaking, smashed against the floor. Helplessness on Victoria’s face; helplessness mixed with resignation. Behind her, feet stamping up stairs and then the slamming of a door.

  ‘Hormones,’ Victoria said, ruefully. ‘Kicking in a little early in Alicia’s case.’

  Kiley followed her along a narrow hallway and into a living room with French windows out into the garden. Flowers in a glass vase above the fireplace. Tail fuzzed out, a black and white cat scuttled
out the moment they walked in.

  ‘Belongs two doors down,’ Victoria explained. ‘Sneaks in here whenever she gets the chance. Sleeps on Alicia’s bed, more often than not.’ She smiled. ‘Calming influence, cats, or so they say.’

  ‘What was all the shouting about anyway?’

  ‘Oh, she wanted to have some friends round for a sleepover next weekend. From her new school. Three of them. I said I thought three was too many.’

  She sat down and gestured for Kiley to do the same.

  ‘She’ll stay angry for an hour or so, shut herself in her room. I’ll back down a little, compromise on two friends instead of three. It’ll be fine.’

  Kiley told her about his meeting with Adam Lucas.

  Bass prominent, the sound of music from above filtered down.

  ‘Have there been any more emails?’ Kiley asked.

  Victoria shook her head.

  ‘Maybe it was just someone messing around. Came across one of the videos somehow and decided to chance their arm.’

  ‘I don’t see how that could happen.’

  ‘Me neither. But what I don’t understand about the internet would fill a large book.’

  What Kiley didn’t understand, almost certainly Colin Baddeley did. Something of an IT whiz, and briefly attached to the Met, which was where Kiley had first met him, Baddeley now had a very nice and expensive line in electronic surveillance. For friends, he was usually prepared to throw in a little pro bono after hours.

  A lover of real ale and British folk music – the two interests irreducibly yoked together – Kiley took him round a generous supply of Baltic Porter from Camden Town Brewery and a copy of Shirley Collins’ The Sweet Primroses he’d found knocking around at the back of the charity shop.

  ‘These emails she’s been getting,’ Kiley said, ‘is there any way of finding out where they’re from?’

  It took Baddeley something in the region of ten minutes. From the IP address to the ISP in a matter of moments and from there he was able to access the right geolocation: general area, region, post code. Satellite picture on the screen.

  ‘I owe you,’ Kiley said.

  Baddeley nodded in the direction of his newly acquired and rare LP. ‘I’d say, paid in full.’

  He had to ring the bell three times before Alicia came to the door. A One Direction T-shirt over pink pyjama bottoms.