Confessions Read online

  Joshim was still speaking. ‘Talking of which, causation.’

  Nat tried to drag her stunned mind to the legal term. ‘Causation?’

  ‘Not who done it, but what done it,’ he managed, before being plucked off his chair by the indefatigable Chantelle.

  Nat turned to Robbie, her surrogate child. He was talking to Max, his stutter noticeably pronounced, but Max’s quiff had fallen forward and his eyes were rabbit-pink, so she doubted he’d notice. She’d told Robbie that Max was someone to keep in with, a man of the legal future, the next generation Jack Goldman. Not that Wes wasn’t. He was as clever and as forward-thinking as anyone; it was just that Wesley Hughes was scrupulously fair, he did everything by the book, whereas she sensed that Max would cut corners or bend the truth if he had to.

  ‘Max the man,’ she said, leaning over. ‘I’ve got a bone to pick with you.’

  He swigged his beer and wiped his damp mouth. ‘Oh yeah?’

  With a look of relief, Robbie stood. ‘I’ll just…’ he said, swaying towards the dancers.

  ‘What did you say to Wes?’ Nat asked Max. ‘He thinks, you and me…’ She circled her fist and poked it with her other forefinger. Putting a hand on her belly, she cackled. She hadn’t done that since she was twelve.

  ‘What, me?’ he replied once she’d finally stopped hooting. He lifted his eyebrows, all innocent. ‘I didn’t say anything, Your Honour. A little jealousy doesn’t hurt, though.’ He looked at Nat meaningfully. ‘Unless you’re in a relationship already, in which case sleeping around with someone as handsome as me isn’t so good.’ He gazed for a moment then rolled his eyes. ‘I might have said something to wind up Emilia.’

  Nat snorted. ‘And whatever you tell her goes straight to Sharon–’

  ‘Who can’t help but mention it to Wesley. Sorry. Do you want me to put him straight?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ She lifted her glass in a salute. ‘He can fuck off!’

  He groaned loudly. ‘God, I wish it was that easy.’

  Some erratic movement caught Nat’s eye. What the…? Dancing pogo-style, Robbie and Joshim were clearing the dance floor. She brought her attention back to Max. ‘Talking of which, how come you’ve been allowed out again?’

  ‘She’s at some posh medical event.’

  ‘She’s a doctor?’

  ‘Oh yes. Super clever, attractive, plenty of dosh. I should be counting my–’

  ‘Fingers? Bunnies? Testicles?’

  He pulled out his mobile and showed Nat the screen. ‘There you go. Six missed calls during the last two hours.’ He burped. ‘I won’t bore you with the texts–’

  Nat leaned forward and crooked her little finger. Yup, she was really, really pissed; the last time she’d done that, she was older than twelve but under twenty. ‘Come on, spill the beans. What’s the ammo, Max? You’ve got a small dick?’

  Sniggering, he spurted out a mouthful of ale. ‘You’re closer than you think.’

  ‘You snore and dribble when you sleep? Nah, that’s all boys. Cheesy willy? Spotty bum? Porno?’

  ‘Very warm.’ He banged the table, still shaking. ‘I don’t know why the fuck I’m laughing about this. Like I said. Blackmail. Basically blackmail to stop me from leaving.’ He lifted his phone and waved it in the air. ‘A moment of madness.’

  ‘Not a sex tape?’

  He nodded.

  ‘With her? Your girl? If so, surely she wouldn’t want–’

  He winced. ‘No, just me.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Nat laughed. ‘Beating the old bishop, eh?’

  When he didn’t reply, she thought for a moment. Posh private-school guy who played rugby… ‘Oh God, don’t tell me it was a ‘Piggate’ moment?’

  Putting his head in his arms, he groaned. ‘No, but along those lines…’

  Smirking, she ruffled his hair. ‘Fifteen minutes of fame on your way. Couldn’t happen to a prettier boy.’

  Max lifted his head. ‘It’s not funny though, is it?’ he said, his face abruptly sober. ‘It isn’t “conduct becoming a solicitor”. This partnership offer is my big chance, Nat. Put that on social media and it would fuck everything up. And she knows it.’

  19

  Silver Spoon

  A brand-new week at Savage Solicitors. Nat had bunged Chantelle a tenner for air fresheners on Friday, so the smell of mould was now mixed with sweet, cloying scent. She sniffed. Better or worse? She couldn’t decide.

  His head down at the laptop, Robbie was already on reception. He greeted her with a grunt. He was suffering from the excesses of Saturday night, no doubt. Nat herself felt fine; indeed, she was full of energy and an idea. The others had continued to drink steadily at the bar, but she had decided to match them glass for glass with tap water. It was impressive stuff; peeing several times in the night was a nuisance, but she’d awoken on Sunday looking half human and without even the hint of a headache.

  It had been nice to have a work-and-stress-free day at home on the Sabbath. She, Bo and Fran, had a ‘Jacob’s Table’ every few weeks, and it had been her turn to host it. As usual they’d each contributed a few surprise food items with a flourish, hoping no one else had the same idea. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had: bread and jam would have done. The joy was catching up, exchanging funny stories, news and irritations, and more often than not, telling each other tales they’d heard many times before.

  Her mum usually flittered in and out of the conversation and kitchen, but yesterday she’d driven Borys to a garden centre for a ‘coffee and a browse’. Nat had raised her mild concerns with Fran and Bo.

  ‘Should I drop a few hints that neither Anna nor I have any money?’

  ‘And you need to do that because…?’ Fran asked.

  ‘Long story, but Lover Boy has a son who, by his own admission, is a waster.’

  ‘And…?’

  Nat laughed. ‘Well, I don’t know; it might be a hereditary condition!’

  The waster, and particularly the villains who’d conned him, had been in her sofa-thoughts yesterday evening and they were here again today as she studied Gavin’s stationery-cum-storage room. His ground floor premises comprised the reception area with a partition for Chantelle and her word processor, his office, two smaller rooms and a loo. There wasn’t a lot one could do about the tiny kitchen, but in here, albeit deeply hidden, she found just what she was looking for: a desk.

  She nudged Robbie from his elbow malaise. ‘Come on, Smart Alec, it’s time for action.’

  He followed Nat to the stationery room and loitered at the door, watching her lift a crate with a puzzled expression. His shoulders hunched even further when she passed it to him.

  ‘Chop, chop, Robbie. You’ll be pleased, just you see. You might even crack a smile,’ she cajoled, the words intriguing Chantelle sufficiently to honour them with her presence.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re making space for a beauty salon,’ Nat replied.

  ‘Very funny. Though…’ Chantelle held up her sparkly aqua nails. ‘“Self-made mermaid” today. What do you think? Could make us some money…’

  ‘Tempting, but some wild instinct tells me manicures aren’t Gavin’s thing…’

  They spent most of the morning moving boxes, Chantelle simply watching on the grounds of said nails and the need for someone to man the phone and reception.

  ‘Are you still here?’ Nat asked from time to time, but she didn’t blame Chantelle for her lack of manual labour. She was wearing a figure-hugging shimmery blue dress with eye shadow to match, and in fairness she regularly brewed up, imperative for de-clogging the dust from their throats.

  Feeling a tad naughty, Nat couldn’t resist lifting lids and peeking in. Some of the contents were old client files which Gavin was obliged to hang on to for six years, but others contained miscellaneous items, from Christmas decorations, which she could see the merit in keeping, to a dead Bonsai tree, which she couldn’t.

  She sent the tatty suitcases with
Robbie to the upstairs flat. Suspecting they contained Gavin’s life before he moved out of the matrimonial home, she had no desire to open them. It gave her pause for thought as they stopped for another tea break. How hard must it have been to pack his bags and leave the children behind? Gavin did fathering in his own feral way, but the love and affection between him and his kids was plain to see. She didn’t know the ins and outs of why he and Heather had split, but he had once mentioned Andrea’s influence. She and Heather had been close friends at one time. No wonder he’d celebrated her final downfall with gusto. She sighed. If that’s what it would eventually be; who knew with the Cling-on?

  The room finally rearranged to her satisfaction, Nat sprayed the desk with another ‘value’ product from the kitchen and rubbed hard with a cloth. ‘Ta da!’ she said to Robbie when she’d finished. ‘What do you think? You now officially have your own office.’

  From what she could see behind his fringe, he appeared relatively pleased, but Chantelle’s orange lips were turned down. ‘A pile of boxes along one wall. Pretty damned dark. No window, no telephone, no computer…’

  ‘A desk, two chairs, pen and paper.’ Nat glared at her meaningfully. ‘And a brilliant paralegal to go in it.’ She handed a fiver to Robbie. ‘There’s a spare lamp in Gavin’s office. Nip to the pound shop and buy some light bulbs. The highest wattage you’re allowed these days. You’ve got a mobile and you can bring in the laptop. All sorted.’ She glanced at her watch; bloody hell, her nosiness had added an hour or so to her mission. ‘Heck, look at the time. You’d better be quick, Robbie, your first client arrives in twenty minutes.’

  Hopping from foot to foot, Nat hid in Gavin’s office and peered through the blinds. Trying to clean them had been a mistake; it turned out that the dust was glued to the slats and they were now covered in fluff.

  Michal Gorski was fifteen minutes late for his appointment. Had she not heard him introduce himself to Chantelle through Gavin’s open door, she wouldn’t have known the scowling guy walking past was the son of charming Borys. She felt ridiculously nervous. She’d prepped Robbie and he was bright; he understood what he needed to find out from Michal, the instructions he should take and the terms of his retainer, and he especially knew the importance of keeping Nat’s name well out of it. Of course she wanted to do the best for Michal and help him out of his financial pickle (even if he was a waster whose father was after her mum), but if she could get some ammo, as Max had put it, on the Levenshulme Mafia, so much the better.

  What she would actually do with the information was a whole other thing.

  Holding her breath, she listened to Robbie greet him. ‘My office is this way,’ she heard him say without the hint of a stutter. Fantastic. Go Robbie!

  Intending to work on the Lee’s file for next week’s tribunal hearing, she returned to Gavin’s desk and picked up the latest medical report, but the word ‘ammo’ took her on another tack. Saturday night’s drunken conversations: she’d knotted two things of significance in her mental handkerchief. What were they?

  Yup, that was the first: Joshim and Brian Selby. But she’d made an appointment to take a witness statement from Brian’s GP tomorrow, so she could shelve that for now. The second was Max, his girlfriend and ‘conduct befitting a solicitor’. She’d mused on that for some time when she awoke on Sunday. It was a tricky one, for sure. Historically, she’d always stuck up for her own sex. Women hadn’t had the same political, economic, personal and social equality as men for too many aeons, so she’d had a default button in that regard. These days she might, if pressed, admit that she might have been a tad blinkered at times. However, with age had come reality: some females were plain bad – Danielle Foster, for example. Others downright evil: Andrea was evidence of that. As for Max’s Caz, she had felt a little sorry for her at first; the poor woman was clearly insecure; maybe Max gave her good grounds to be. But stealing a private video from your boyfriend’s phone, then threatening to expose it? Nah, Nat didn’t like that one bit.

  She searched for his number. He’d know the law as much as she, but would it have occurred to him? She’d speak to him now while the thought was fresh. She stared at the screen. Hmm… probably not a good idea to call his mobile after what he’d said about his girlfriend’s monitoring. Best try him at work.

  She put a call through to Goldman Law.

  ‘Nat! Hi. How’s it going?’ Christine asked. ‘We’re missing you. It feels like ages. When are you coming back?’

  It did feel like forever, and for a moment Nat felt quite sentimental. Silly though it was, Goldman Law was like a first love; it would always be there in her heart; she’d move on at some point, but never really get over it.

  ‘I know, it feels like months. How’s my conference room?’ she asked.

  ‘Max is in there now. I took him a pizza and drink earlier, and he’s not half as tidy as you are. You know what boys are like, files all over the floor, screwed up paper that doesn’t quite reach the bin, feet on the table…’

  ‘Definite breach of the office manual. Good job for him that Wendy’s still on maternity leave,’ Nat replied to cover the jolt of pique.

  Of course Golden Boy would be in her room, waited on hand and foot. He was a partner-to-be, important now. They were hardly going to leave him on the fee-earners’ bench downstairs with young Tom, Dick and Harry. And here she was trying to help him. She took a sharp breath of self-reproof. He was her mate; that’s what mates did. ‘Is Max there now, Christine? I just need two minutes of his time.’

  He came on the line straight away. ‘Nat. Can I call you back later? I’m just tied up with Catherine right now.’

  ‘Sure,’ Nat said, putting down the receiver. Max was ‘tied up’ with Catherine. Of course he was.

  Larry was in her chair when Nat returned from her usual lunch walk. She had discovered that John Lewis was closer than she’d thought. If she walked briskly, she could make it there in fifteen minutes, spend thirty just touching mugs and throws and cushions and vases in the Homeware department, then be back at the office within the hour. Not that the sixty minutes was mandatory; she was at SS after all. There were no swipe cards, time-recording or hundred-page office manuals. No salary either, as far as she was aware. She hoped she’d be paid by someone at the end of the month; she and Wes hadn’t worked that one out when they’d hatched the secondment – when they’d still been friends.

  Of course she was happy doing Gavin the favour for as long as it took, but she needed an income to pay the bills; her mum only had her small pension and Nat had given her ill-gotten gains to Jose to buy ‘Havana’. Having spare cash to buy delicious colour-coordinated bedding and curtains, Le Creuset Cookware, a lover’s armchair and matching pouffe and a new flat screen TV would be great, but in truth she didn’t need any of those things; her small terraced house was packed to the rafters as it was, a rattle bag combination of her possessions and her mum’s. These days it felt more like Anna’s home than hers, but in fairness her mum had lived there for five years on her own. Neither she nor Nat had expected her permanent return.

  Nat inhaled the mouth-watering smell of her bacon barm ‘with a twist’ from the sandwich shop. She had been hoping to discover the twist while it was still warm, but Larry was clearly impatient to fill her in with his morning’s endeavours at the magistrates’ court. After all, at two o’clock, it was way past his usual pub date time. The poor man’s glint had been replaced by trembling hands; she could feel his need for ethanol-related sustenance before he expired.

  ‘George, the mother murderer?’ he started. ‘Remember the one?’

  It wasn’t as though Savage Solicitors had so many homicides she wouldn’t remember them all, but she let it pass by nodding.

  ‘An indictable offence, so the case was sent to the Crown Court for a plea and case management.’

  ‘Okay…’ Nat watched the movement of his white whiskers, glad that Larry had everything in hand, but distracted by her rumbling stomach. Cranberry sauce was her
guess; yup, the twist was definitely cranberries.

  ‘Had a little chat with George while I was there. A veritable witch, the mother. Wouldn’t let him have a life, dictated his every move, demanded complete loyalty and attention. My interpretation, mind you, not his words.’

  Nat grabbed a notepad and pen. It sounded similar to Madge and her mother. But of course the difference was that she hadn’t resorted to strangulation.

  Larry was still speaking, his tremor receding as he warmed to his subject. ‘Mother love. So intensioris and complicatas, especially between mothers and sons…’

  Nat duly scribbled. Was he really speaking in Latin (or perhaps Greenlandic)? She tried her best with the spelling; she’d look it up later.

  ‘Yes, young lady, I’ve seen it before, that unconditional and suffocating love matres have for their filiorum; that inbred willingness to go to the ends of the earth. That’s what brings the men to the final ghastly deed. The need to escape.’

  ‘Not yet a legal defence to murder,’ Nat replied dryly, though she was thinking about Gavin’s mum. What type of mother left an eight-year-old boy with his puritan dad?

  ‘Very true,’ Larry replied, the twinkle surfacing. ‘But I think we have an excellent argument for manslaughter. We’ll have to see what our expert psychiatrist will say, and it will be for us to prove it, but my money is on diminished responsibility, abnormality of mental functioning.’ He stood and paced, his fingers in the lapels of his checked jacket as though it was a court gown. ‘Did he understand the nature of his actions? Was he able to form a rational judgement? Could he exercise self-control? No, we will say, he did not!’

  He looked to Nat as though he expected applause, but she was too busy making notes to oblige. ‘Very good,’ she said instead. ‘Please go on.’

  ‘Then we have loss of control, the old provocation defence. He had bruising on his face and his body that he’s currently unable or unwilling to explain. Was there a qualifying trigger? Was he in fear of serious attack? Were things said or done to cause him that loss of control? I realise Matre was elderly, but that is certainly no bar.’