It was a long haul out to the judge’s flat on the rail link. He’d said he didn’t mind how late it was. Up to him, really.
When he got there, getting himself into the citadel in the darkening light was bad enough, and once through the front door, it was refreshingly untidy. It turned out that Sam was using the living room to spread out his packing for a week’s holiday. The severe lines of the place were improved by washing hanging over the balcony. Carl led Donald in, smiling welcome.
‘Don’t you have a home of your own to go to, Donald, working these hours? Come in, come in, have a drink.’
‘Yes, I do have a home, but my wife usually takes the daughters on holiday this time of year. Sun and sand’s not for me, so I’ve got all the time in the world.’
‘My good fortune, then. I’m honoured.’
‘Maybe not, sir. I’ll have a beer please.’ He pointed at a pile of shirts on a chair. ‘Is your boy expecting his clothes to be ironed by the time he comes home?’
‘Probably. The worst of it is, he’s probably right. Donald nodded, understanding. They sat with ice-cold beer, relatively at ease and quite pleased to see each other, apart from the business in hand. Pity it wasn’t social, maybe another time. The world would be a better place if judges and coppers drank together.
‘I’ve found the man who sent the e-mail stuff. It was Blaker, the man I told you about who knows your ex-wife. I haven’t arrested him, there’s no official admission, and he’s a poor sick creature.’
‘Is he the one who got into the office at my chambers?’
The beer was Belgian and delicious, if only he wasn’t so tired. Donald had been dreaming strange dreams recently, instead of sleeping. Might be sickening for something. Felt poorly since Sunday night.
‘No, I don’t think so, or at least if he was, I don’t think he was alone. I think that was someone else. Possibly someone with a cleaning crew.’
Donald was making that up, but it sounded plausible, and it was what the other team were working towards. ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s the motive behind the whole thing worries me. Blaker talks to me; he might talk to you if I ask him nicely, and for a reason which might surprise you. He seems to be genuinely worried for your ex-wife …’
‘Ivy.’
‘For reasons beyond my understanding, he’s worried about her.’
Carl was silent. Donald took a slug of his beer. The second mouthful was never quite as good as the first.
‘Blaker sent the e-mail stuff because Ivy’s not so hot on that, although I reckon she was standing over him in the art college where she works, part-time student and model, maybe tore the stuff out of books. Blaker’s not fond of you because you sent him down, and Ivy, well, she doesn’t like you at all, to put it mildly. Blaker thinks it goes way, way beyond that. Now, sir, could you help me out here and just tell me about your relationship with your ex-wife? Begin at the beginning, it’s always easier.’
Carl had left his own beer untouched, listening intently, thinking up an answer which would be both honest and brief.
‘Once it was good, in the very beginning, passionate and absolutely hair-raising, then very bad. It would have fallen apart even if my daughter hadn’t drowned. I haven’t seen Ivy since before we divorced. I settled money on her. She’s never asked for anything more.’
‘I know about you shooting the swans; your boy Sam told me about that. He also told me his mother mistreated him.’
‘He probably thinks I do too. What a trustworthy boy he is. I’m afraid she did. She hated me then, blamed me for the death and especially for the swans. That bit’s really too complicated to explain, but she blamed Sam even more for just about everything, for throwing stones, for his very existence. She’d already been experimenting with drugs before the accident … making up for stolen youth, poor thing. Ivy’s an obsessive personality, she does nothing by halves, and then grief made her go over the edge. I couldn’t blame her, or reach her, poor thing, but she was very cruel to Sam, hurt him quite badly.’
He swallowed. ‘Poking, pinching, slapping. Took me a while to notice him cowering away. He couldn’t say; believe it or not, he was dangerously asthmatic and a deeply introverted boy. I lost count of the times I took him to hospital. Ivy was often out, or out of it. It got to the point where she simply couldn’t be left alone with him. She took away his inhaler, she could have killed him. That was the last straw. I got her committed on to a treatment course. She ran away once or twice. Then I couldn’t let her come home.’
‘So you shut her out.’
‘It was her or Sam. He was ten years old. What would you have done?’
Donald got out his cigarettes, and crushed an empty packet.
‘I don’t know, but if you don’t mind my saying so, you could have mentioned some of this at the beginning, because personally, a violent ex-wife is the first person I’d think of when it comes to death threats. I asked you if this could be something personal rather than professional, some woman scorned or whatever, and you said no.’
‘Donald, if you haven’t seen your ex-wife for nearly a decade, and you know she’s turned out all right because you’ve been in contact with her parents, you don’t actually imagine she’ll come back out of the blue and send vile messages, especially if she’s not exactly literate. She wasn’t bad, she was mad, and she surely came to know that. Yes, I know she hated me, and I gave her cause, but she made an alternative life, and hatred dies, doesn’t it?’
Donald was patting his pockets, looking for the other packet of cigarettes. He had never been able to stand waiting in a street without smoking a cigarette. The last one had made him light-headed; he really did not need another.
‘No, sir. You’re way too rational. Hatred doesn’t always die. Most of the time, yes, but other times it grows and grows until it becomes all-consuming, people feed off it. Supposing she blames you for everything that happened in her life, the whole mess she made of it was because of you, and the only way out of the mess is revenge. Remember miasma. No honour without revenge, the soul rots without revenge. Supposing she thinks you deprived her not only of her daughter, but also her son, and you remain the sole barrier, to what? To him loving her again, to her feeling, how can I put it, whole? Back to what she was, with a clean slate?’
Carl walked out of the room and came back with another beer.
‘Thanks. It’s OK, I’m not driving.’
He felt he had to say that to a judge.
‘Sam’s the barrier to any reconciliation,’ Carl said. ‘Not me. As for the rest, with the greatest respect, Donald, what you’ve said sounds a bit psychobabbly to me. And how does she get her revenge, her liberation, by simply making me feel foul with a few futile gestures? What does that show about her feelings for Sam? It certainly doesn’t help Sam to hurt me. And why is this man Blaker worried about her?’
Donald wanted to down the beer in one. He deliberated briefly about doing it, and then did it anyway. It was strong stuff.
‘Blaker says she wants to wound you. Literally. The e-mails are only to prime you, make you frightened, sort of flush you out into the open. She knows where you are, she knows where you live, even though you’ve tried to duck and dive for the last few years.’
‘Sam’s tried to hide both of us for the last couple of years. He doesn’t want to remember and I don’t want him to either.’
‘Well, it looks like you. Blaker says he thinks she’s enlisted some help, some real muscle apart from him. And she’s been practising … techniques. Blaker thinks she wants you a dead judge, soon.’
It was Carl’s turn to toss back the beer, very quickly. He stood up and paced over to the balcony.
‘For God’s sake, this is ridiculous. Enlisted help? Ivy can’t have much money, unless she’s found someone rich. Hitmen don’t come cheap. And what could she do on her own? She’s a woman. And WHY?’
He stopped short of the balcony and laughed, briefly. ‘Maybe she thinks I’ve still got money, but I sold the house, for God’s sake, Ivy got her share, it all went on treatment and whatever. No, they can’t think that.’
‘Money’s the root of all evil, Carl. And who said anything about a hitman?’
‘Money never meant much to Ivy, and whatever her parlous mental state, I don’t believe she could ever carry out a plan to do serious harm to me. She’s essentially incredibly kind, and anyway, it would take such nerve.’
‘Unless she practised,’ Donald murmured.
‘What did you say?’
‘Practice,’ Donald said. He was suddenly a bit dizzy and felt awful. ‘Dress rehearsals for murder. Have you noticed, everyone gets it in the neck? The man in the office, the man in the ambulance, poor old Blaker. The man off the coast, who’d been staying with them, seaweed all round his neck. A girl bitten by a bloody swan. Always the neck.’
The beer and the earlier drink had finally gone to his head. He realised he was mumbling and incoherent. Bloody Belgian beer, too strong, and himself feeling tearful and stupid. Just as well the judge wasn’t listening, because this was a pathetic performance, moving into the realms of conjecture and nightmare he had been hoping to avoid, the same nightmares which ruined his sleep. Carl was still pacing around, making him feel dizzy. Donald sat up straight and tried to control himself. There was another beer in his glass.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I agree with you. Bloody women. Fit for nothing. Murder’s a man’s job. But what would you do if you were determined to get away with it? Practise. I bloody would. And I wouldn’t be worried, Carl, if I hadn’t seen already what she might be able to do. I’ve seen it with Blaker, just like you have with your son. Only he was little then, wasn’t he? You’ve been warned, that’s all. Suggest you alter your route to work. And Sam’s not your son, is he? He does-n’t look like you.’
He still wasn’t listening. Donald was looking at the washing hanging around, and it made him feel sad, at the same time as realising his chin was on his chest, and he wanted to blub into his beer, and that he liked this man, very much, he was a good mate and a good dad, which was what counted in the end. It was the washing did it, fucking washing. A man ready to iron clothes for a boy who was not his flesh and blood.
‘This is very kind of you,’ the judge said, still at the end of his first beer, the bastard. ‘If a little extreme. Ivy always fantasised. It’s a way of dealing with impotence and frustration when you can’t analyse facts. And if she’s been fantasising about revenge to a friend, playing with the idea, so be it. As it is, fate’s intervened. I think the end may be in sight. There’s another way round it. I have been hiding, but I’m not any more. I’m doing the right thing for once. I’m going to meet her parents at their farm on Saturday. Try to bury the bad news of I don’t know how many years. See my dad’s best friend. My dad was Ivy’s father’s hero. Difficult to imagine, isn’t it, that a German prisoner of war, ten years older, could actually be the soul of glamour. An exotic foreigner, my dad was. Ivy adored her dad. Her dad adored mine. Anyway, I’m digressing. If Ivy’s got a bee in her bonnet, I’ll find out from them, see what it’s all about. If these puerile threats are a plea for help, we’ll get the help. Head off trouble. The situation will be defused, and I’m not a humble judge for nothing, diplomacy goes a long way. I’ll find out what’s up with Ivy, what she wants … Why can’t she just say what she wants? Rachel was right, approach sideways, via Ernest and Grace, and it’s absolutely the right time. Oh shit and damn. If Ivy’s really sick, what about Rachel? What have I got her into?’
‘You don’t want to trust that Rachel, you really don’t.’
‘What else did you say?’
‘Rashell … Dow.’
‘No, not that. About Sam not being my son.’
Donald felt suddenly faint, the words difficult to articulate, and the judge was looming over him saying, are you all right, are you all right? When did you last eat, for God’s sake, I’m so sorry, what an idiot I am, look, what do you think you need? And then Donald leaned over the side of the chair he was in and was gracelessly sick on the laminate floor, immediately better, but weak as a kitten. A long, hot day, and yes, he was hungry. Not much since morning, and far too stressed out and sad to be the inefficient bearer of bad news, even before he got as far as Rachel Doe, and he wasn’t going to elaborate on that, and he felt hollow. A hollow man, from his toes to his head. Not good in heat, with only an empty home to go to, and the long-forgotten remnants of a West End doner kebab, still doing damage.
He was left in his chair, drowsing, until a cheese sandwich appeared on a low table by the side of his chair, where a glass of water had materialised minutes earlier, and the sick efficiently removed, so that there was not even a sniff of it. His feet were propped up on a low stool. The judge would make a good wife. Donald wolfed the food. It was like an injection of adrenalin, normality, everything, and left him still awash with the seedy sediments of sentiment. That bloody washing hanging around, that was what did it. Like just before a holiday at home.
‘Look, it’s late,’ Carl was saying. ‘You’re really welcome to stay here, more than welcome, and I’d rather you did, you look awful, but what will your wife think? Can I phone her and say it’s all my fault?’
‘I haven’t got a wife,’ Donald said wearily. ‘She died two years ago. Breast cancer. I just go on thinking and acting and pretending as if she’s still here. It’s the only way.’
‘Ah,’ Carl said, as if there was nothing wrong or odd about such a statement. ‘And the daughters?’
‘Oh, they’re real all right. Flown the coop, keep coming back. Perhaps makes me understand some of this shit. I wanted to kill the doctors and the nurses when my wife died. As for the kids, if anyone had barred me from one of them when they were small, I’d have killed the bugger and gone to the gallows with a clear conscience.’
‘Are you sure you haven’t got a nice gay son I could introduce to Sam?’
‘No, sorry.’
‘They tell me,’ Carl said, presenting a snifter of brandy now that the matter of going or staying seemed to have been settled, ‘that it’s better if your wife dies on you than if she leaves you for someone else. I’ve always wondered if that was true.’
Donald thought about it and shook his head.
‘Don’t think so. I think I’d rather she was alive, whoever the hell she was with. Cheers, Judge. Do you want some help with that ironing?’
‘No, you’re all right there.’
He went into the kitchen and came back with an iron and board, selected a couple of vibrant shirts. ‘The hell with it,’ he said. ‘You’re only an irresponsible, feckless boy once. OK, Don, you talk or sleep or whatever, I’ll do his bloody ironing. I quite like it, as it happens.’
‘You’d make some woman a lovely husband.’
‘I’m thinking of it,’ Carl said.
‘And you’re a Grade A dad. You iron his clothes and spoil him rotten, and he’s not even your son.’
‘Is that guessing or simple deduction?’
‘Guessing. Allowing for appearances to be deceptive, of course.’
Carl was dashing away with the smoothing iron as if he was well in practice. If only his courtroom could see him now, they’d never be scared of His Honour again. His Honour, ironing in a wig, now there was a thought.
‘You’re quite right. He isn’t biologically mine. My fault, and mine by default. Ivy and the horror of motherhood didn’t quite gel. She was still a wild child herself. Went straight out of the cage as soon as Cassie was weaned, and as far as I know, shagged everything in sight. Hormonal madness, I think. Hypnotised by living in London. Went to her head.’
He folded shirts with quiet precision.
‘Must have taken some explaining.’
‘Yes. Evasion, horror, forgiveness, acceptance, and explanation, not necessarily in that order. The most novel explanation was that she’d been impregnated by a swan, all done by magic. I told you she fantasises. She knew I wouldn’t walk away and she was more terrified that her parents would find out, especially her father. They never did. They would forgive her anything but that, especially Ernest, who was over the moon about the prospect of a son. Sam was convincingly blond when he was small. He’s really quite dark and bleaches it all the colours of the rainbow now. He just got born, somehow.’
‘And?’
Carl spread his hands.
‘It was love at first sight.’
Donald was now thoroughly drowsy, with sheer, appalled curiosity the only thing keeping him awake.
‘I thought it was always the woman who was left holding the baby.’
‘Someone has to catch them,’ Carl said lightly. ‘Every boy deserves a father. And it’s been a privilege and a pleasure. Maybe not the next bit, but most of the time.’
‘You’re a good man, Carl. Does anyone know how good?’
His eyelids drooped. A voice came from a distance.
‘First on the left after the kitchen, bathroom on the right. Pyjamas on the bed if you need them.’
Donald hauled himself to his feet.
‘Thanks, Dad. I needed that. What are you so fucking cheerful about?’
He was putting away the ironing board.
‘It’s not been a bad week, Donald. My son’s happy, I’ve met a beautiful woman, we may be on the way to solving a big problem by peaceful means, and I think I’ve made a good friend. Can’t be all bad, can it?’
Donald wanted to cry, smiled slowly instead. If he talked about Rachel Doe now, no one would listen.
‘Speaking in my official capacity as a bodyguard, Mr Judge, I shall need to know your movements over the next few days. And I don’t think you should go and see your in-laws all by yourself. It’s never a good idea.’
‘If you don’t go to bed,’ Carl said, ‘I shall give you a good-night kiss.’
Donald hesitated, one last question hovering in his mind.
‘Did you really never suspect that your wife was behind the threats? She was always artistic, wasn’t she?’
Carl shook his head.
‘Yes, of course I did. Then someone delivered a rat. A dead rat, remember? I was convinced then it couldn’t have been Ivy. Ivy would never go anywhere near a rat. She’s terrified of them.’