Having checked the huge iron gates had firmly closed behind him, Sir Ben Parsons drew up outside his porticoed ten-bedroom mansion within which he now rattled. Taking half a dozen deep breaths, he steeled himself for the transformation necessary every time he stepped over its threshold. Would it have been easier had his wife not left him a decade ago, or if they had managed to produce the family they so craved? At least there would have been someone to share the burdens with.
God, he could do with that now. The afternoon’s events had hurtled out of control. He was furious that Nathan had brought an undercover detective into the fold, more so that he had the temerity to introduce them. The order he’d given at half-time was ruthless but necessary. He didn’t enjoy playing God, but what choice did he have?
He pulled himself out of the car, blipped it locked and walked like a condemned man to the front door, which opened with a glance at the iris-reader. As he did each time he got home, he paused in the hallway to sense what kind of crisis he was walking into. Now, the house was silent except for the chatter from a television upstairs. 73
‘Mum, it’s me,’ he called, as he climbed the sweeping staircase. The stench of faeces and urine hit him the second he reached the top. That bloody care agency.
The scene that greeted him as he stepped into his mum’s room brought tears to his eyes and bile to his throat. The room had once been the main guest bedroom and, before he’d moved Audrey in, a work of art. Brighton’s finest designers had given it the feel of a suite at the Dorchester. The furniture alone would buy you an average city starter home.
Now, it resembled a crime scene; his mother entangled in a mesh of sheets, her grey wispy hair matted with unidentifiable foodstuffs. Even from the door the multicoloured stains of human waste splattered across her nightie and the linen were as plain to see as they were to smell.
On the table by her arm was an upended mug and a plate with encrusted, untouched, salmon en croute.
But it was the fear in her eyes that hit him the hardest.
‘Don’t hurt me. Take the money and go, but please don’t hit me,’ she sobbed.
‘Mum, it’s me. Ben.’
‘I don’t know a Ben. Please go now before my husband gets home.’
He edged closer, careful not to scare her. The dementia had been getting worse and while Ben was determined to keep her at home as long as possible, he was actively scouring for remedies which would give her dignity in her twilight years. So far, only the USA seemed to have the right treatment programmes but most were unproven despite the six-figure sums they were asking.
‘Mum, Dad died ten years ago. It’s just you and me, Ben, now. What’s happened?’
‘Ben who? I don’t know you.’
‘We’ve been through all this. Look, let’s get you cleaned up and we can sit and chat. Maybe look at some photos.’ She flinched as he went to touch her, cowering on the other side of the bed. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll put some music on.’ 74
He pressed some buttons on his phone and My Fair Lady’s ‘Ascot Gavotte’ purred from the Bose Wave sound system. It was as if he’d flicked a switch in her.
‘Hello, darling. Enjoy the football?’
‘Yes, it was good thanks. Just like the old days,’ he lied. ‘Look, let’s get you cleaned up and we can have a good natter.’ He walked her to the en suite and eased her into the wicker chair just inside the door while he ran the bath. ‘Did the carers come in today?’
‘Who dear?’
‘The carers. Have they been?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure they do at the weekend, do they?’
‘Never mind, I’ll give them a call.’
Half an hour later, his mum now clean in a fresh nightie and with the bedding replaced, Sir Ben was on the phone to the care agency. It turned out they had been that day, twice, but the first time his mum had just told them to ‘get the fuck out of my caravan’, and the second she’d threatened to call the police. They apologised for not being able to reach him on his mobile, which he accepted. He stayed quiet about the notoriously poor signal at the Amex stadium on match days.
He checked his watch. 7.00 p.m. The others would be round soon, so he popped up to his mother’s room again to check whether she needed anything. ‘I’ve got all I need with Ant and Dec,’ she said, pointing to the TV. ‘See, you could have made something of yourself if you’d have followed in their footsteps.’
She had a point. He bet those cheeky chappies never had to order executions while nibbling a buffet.
His phone chirped and he saw on the Ring doorbell app that both Nicola Merrion, the CEO of Lifechoices, the city’s drug treatment provider, and Arjun Sharma, the Prison Service regional executive director, were standing side by side. He strolled downstairs and opened the door.
‘Nicola, Arjun, do come through,’ he said with the warmth of a long-lost buddy. 75
They took their seats in the drawing room, the baby monitor in the corner humming away with sounds of tacky TV and his mother’s mumbling.
‘I’ll get straight to the point. We’ve got a huge problem.’ He didn’t insult either’s intelligence by recounting what had happened at and after the match. If they didn’t know by now, then he’d seriously underestimated them as business partners. ‘Christ only knows what damage this undercover officer’s done. Him and Challenor are, of course, no longer a problem, but we need to embark on some serious damage limitation and up our game.’
‘How do we know there aren’t any more?’ said Nicola. ‘What the hell do we do if there are moles elsewhere?’
Sir Ben glared at her. It unnerved him when she returned the stare with equal menace, but he continued nonetheless. ‘You better hope for your sake there aren’t. If I have any chance of breaking even, let alone profiting from the Synthopate trial, we need a flourishing heroin market, which means lots of users. Now’s the perfect time for you to pull out of Eradicate.’
‘I’m trying to, but it’s not easy without losing the commission and the funding that goes with it. Lizzie’s murder has terrified the staff though, so I’m fuelling that. If we’re seen to pull out, the powers that be will just find someone else to take over from us.’ Nicola knew her stuff – that much was obvious from her previous role as Director of Public Health.
‘Leave that side of things to me. We all know Chief Superintendent Howe’s evangelical quest is born out of the guilt of not being able to save her sister. However, if she succeeds here then others will follow suit, and I don’t need to explain what that will do for not only our pockets but our shareholders’ too.’
‘She’s like a dog with a bone,’ said Sharma, piping up for the first time. ‘I’ve even heard her quoted at Prison Service HQ meetings. “Cut the demand, choke the supply.” “Users in treatment, dealers in prison,”’ he mimicked. ‘And if I’ve heard those supposed crime reduction stats once, I’ve heard them a thousand times.’ 76
Sir Ben glared at the prison director. ‘Then do something about it. The bloke I’m going to replace Nathan with will need you to keep the steady flow.’ He noticed how they both looked at each other when he talked of a replacement before Nathan’s body was even cold. ‘Get your prison governors to send more ex-cons to Brighton. And not just from Lewes nick. Drip them from prisons right across your domain so no one joins the dots. You’ve got an endless source of bribable labour, we just need more of it.’
Both guests nodded.
‘This isn’t more of the same. This is a turbocharged effort to make sure that bloody woman’s leftie ideology is buried under an avalanche of heroin, users and, if necessary, overdoses.’ Nicola flinched. ‘Anything to keep the business going and crash Op Eradicate.’ He stood. ‘Happy? Good, I won’t keep you any longer.’
Other than mumbled goodbyes, no one said another word on the way out. Sir Ben closed the door behind them, a ripple of optimism trickling through him for the first time since the football.