Confessions Read online

  ‘Gav has a brain the size of his penis,’ Joshim Khan once quipped.

  Gavin and Joshim’s humorous fencing was usually derogatory, so she’d assumed he had meant both were small, but now she wondered. She hadn’t known the Rabid Scot that well at law college. He’d shared a house with Wes and some other lads on the same Chester street as her and her friends. Thinking back, there was some mention of Cambridge, but she’d thought the others were taking the piss; a burly, beer-guzzling, non-PC Glaswegian didn’t seem the usual recipe for Oxbridge.

  The thought of asking Wes popped in her head. Her stupid mind still did this from time to time; that split second of thinking everything was fine until she registered it wasn’t. She pushed the discomfort away; Wes had made his position quite clear, and far more pressing things than an aching heart were going on in the folders on her desk, let alone beyond the office.

  She peered at her tally of ‘calls to return’. Jack’s name was included. Should she begin with him or keep that conversation for the end? There were pros and cons to each, but in truth Jack Goldman was always number one. She couldn’t say whether it was affection and loyalty or irritation and annoyance, but she called him first anyway.

  ‘Seventh hole,’ he said. ‘I birdied the third and fourth. Got an eagle on the fifth.’

  ‘What is this? The Master’s latest leaderboard hotline?’

  ‘No, it means I’m busy and we should have a drink later to celebrate my hole-in-one.’

  ‘Wow, a hole-in-one too?’

  ‘Not yet, but I will. I’ll text.’

  Smiling, she swung on the seat. Sod it, it was affection and loyalty every time. A dose of annoyance and irritation, certainly, but at the end of the day, love. Her dad had died the same month she’d joined Goldman Law; she’d swapped an angry old father who’d never appeared to give a damn, for a younger, charismatic and encouraging one. The thought reminded her of the Harrow saga. She tapped her nails on the desk. She and Issa hadn’t spoken since the car park conversation. Her name wasn’t on the list, but all the same, Issa had to be the next call.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Nat asked when she answered. ‘Is little Carlos growing bigger and even more beautiful every day?’

  ‘He is; thanks Nat, you’re sweet.’

  ‘And everything else?’

  Issa sighed. ‘I don’t know. I thought it had settled down. You know, now I’ve listened to what JP needed to say. But he was out last night at his survivors’ group. I haven’t seen him yet, but whenever Chen turns up, he’s always unsettled afterwards.’

  ‘Who is Chen?’

  ‘The whole bloody problem. He’s the journalist.’

  ‘Oh right. Funny name, Chen…’

  ‘It might be a nickname or his surname. He’s part Chinese, I think. I’ve only met him a couple of times.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  As though thinking, Issa paused. ‘If I’m being honest, I thought he was nice, friendly, interested. But I could tell he was ambitious. We met in a big group and he seemed to go from person to person, asking questions. Really intense with everyone, wanting to know about their lives. Digging tenaciously, when I look back. I now reckon he was looking for a headline.’ She sighed. ‘But at the time I felt a bit sorry for him, thought how hard it must be to get on in journalism. I almost wanted to make up a story for him. God, Nat, how little I knew.’

  ‘You can smile and smile and still be a villain.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Well, fingers crossed for JP and last night. Keep me posted. And give Carlos a little kiss from me.’

  Hearing a surge of noise from reception, Nat stifled another yawn and walked through to investigate. She chuckled with pleasure. The scene was akin to ants swarming around something sweet. OAPs and flipping Gavin Savage! Opening his long arms, he scooped up three purple-permed ladies into a group hug. Once he’d released them, he moved on to two elderly men.

  Quickly returning to the office, she glanced around. Oh God, was everything in order? All the trinkets and toys made by his kids were still in situ on the desktop, but whether she’d done the correct thing procedurally, or made the best decisions on his cases, was a whole other thing.

  ‘Do I get one?’ she asked when he eventually appeared.

  ‘Still gagging for it?’ he asked as he complied, hugging her tightly for several moments.

  It was lovely to hear his old quip and have him back, but tears were near the surface as she took him in; his cheeks still looked sunken, his clothes far too big and there wasn’t even a hint of his bracing cologne.

  He sat down opposite her. ‘I tried to resist between the ages of nine and nineteen, but my grandma made me cuddle her every time we met. She said that no one wants to touch you, let alone hold you, when you’re old. I’ll never forget that.’

  Swallowing, Nat nodded. Gavin was wearing a jumper, not a suit. ‘Are you back?’ she asked, not sure how else to put it.

  He shrugged. ‘Here and there, I guess. See how it goes.’ He smiled a thin smile. ‘The staff at the hospital seem to think I should visit less often.’

  ‘What does Heather say?’

  He picked a hair off his sleeve. ‘Not a lot. We’re not often in the same place at the same time.’

  Nat nodded. It wasn’t a surprise. When she’d chatted with Cameron at McDonald’s on Saturday, he said that his mummy was sleeping in Ruthie’s bed to keep it warm until she came home. The relationship was clearly under strain. Whose wouldn’t be under the circumstances? But at least Gavin was there with his boys rather than in the flat upstairs.

  ‘So, what’s this?’ he asked, pulling one of Nat’s lists towards him.

  Feeling like a schoolgirl, she tensed. The head teacher was marking her work; God, she hoped for an A star and some praise. But Gavin read the sheet without making any comment.

  Her heart raced. ‘Obviously crime’s not my area of the law, but I hope I haven’t made any irretrievable cock-ups. Larry and Robbie have been great–’

  ‘Who the hell is Larry?’ he asked, looking up from her next inventory with a frown.

  The alarm spread. ‘Larry who does the court work…’

  Gavin’s face was blank.

  ‘Lawrence Lamb QC. He was a…’

  But by then Gavin was laughing. She aimed a kick which he deftly avoided. ‘Bloody hell, Savage. You got me really worried.’

  ‘Father Christmas, eh?’

  ‘I know. Absolutely!’

  He smiled a moment longer, then went back to her scrawl and made notes with a pencil. He slotted it behind his ear. ‘Right, need to look sharp, there’s work to be done.’

  Supposing that was a dismissal, Nat made to stand, but Gavin lifted a hand.

  ‘Nah, stay there, you’re not going anywhere.’ He continued his jottings, then lifted his head. ‘And I’ve a wee bone to pick with you.’

  Tensing, Nat waited. He pointed his pencil. ‘What the hell have you done to my storage room?’

  Feeling carefree and light-headed, Nat drove straight from Heald Green to Mobberly. Alleluia, she was no longer in charge! Though her relief was immense, she was incredibly tired and her pasty face in the mirror agreed. What Gavin’s ‘here and there’ meant, she wasn’t sure, but that was nothing new at Savage Solicitors. For the present she’d just continue to turn up every morning and see what happened. Right now there was no alternative; she didn’t want to bump into Wes; Jack had her files; and Max had her office.

  Turning into the golf club car park, she pulled up and watched two ladies tee off the first hole. She had played herself a few times in years gone by, mostly at Goldman Law ‘client entertainment’ outings. Fortunately a poor performance on her part hadn’t been the ‘entertainment’ – she’d had a damned good swing and had whacked the ball steadily up the fairways. Finishing the game had been her weakness. ‘More practise on the putting green, Natalie,’ Jack always said. ‘As you sow, so shall you reap.’

  The memory reminded her of Doctor Wo
odcock’s surgery. Did he perfect his putting between appointments? Because despite so many tragedies, life did go on. It was a sobering thought, but people had to live and be happy, despite the grim reaper doing his worst all around them.

  She pinched her cheeks for some colour and climbed from the Merc. The men’s changing rooms appeared to be on this side of the building, so she walked towards the manicured greens, looking for the entrance.

  ‘Natalie.’ It was the usual bass tone. ‘Up here.’

  A glass in his hand, Jack was standing on the veranda above her. Was the drink alcoholic at this time of day? It was one of the things he’d been advised to cut back after his heart attack, or his ‘rogue artery’, as he preferred to call it. Should she ask and reprimand him if it was? No. Though it felt like it at times, she wasn’t his daughter.

  She joined him on the balcony, but even with the warmth from the outdoor heaters, it was still bitingly cold. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked.

  ‘Do they do hot chocolate?’

  He smiled. ‘They will if I ask them. Nothing stronger?’

  Jack nodded to her cocoa once it arrived. ‘This isn’t the Natalie I know and love,’ he commented.

  ‘But it’s warming and I’m driving. I have a nice company car someone arranged and for which I’m very grateful.’

  ‘Must be quite a boss.’

  ‘He is. So, what did this boss want?’ she asked. Alcoholic snifter or not, Jack was looking good; bright eyes, glowing skin and trim.

  ‘A drink and a catch-up, of course. How’s Anna?’

  ‘She’s great, actually.’ Nat laughed. ‘Stepping out with a dashing Pole, would you believe.’ A quip about the waster son almost leaked out, but she muffled it with a cough. God, that was close. Michal and the possible DFL connection was a definite Chinese wall alert. It was a good job she wasn’t drinking alcohol. As the Yanks put it, ‘loose lips sink ships’.

  ‘Good for Anna.’ Jack studied her for a moment. ‘And how are you, Natalie? How’s life treating you? How’s work?’

  She snorted. ‘Come on, Jack. You want me to tell you something that I shouldn’t. Pass on confidential information. Fact is, I know nothing about anything which might be useful to you. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the taser PC’s file and Brian Selby isn’t talking. How’s Shirley doing?’

  ‘See how smoothly you did that,’ he replied, deftly avoiding the question himself.

  ‘I must have learned from the expert.’

  ‘So, just a drink and a chat, then?’

  She clinked his glass with her mug. ‘Certainly looks like it.’

  22

  An Ass

  Wondering whether Gavin would be in the office and where she should sit if he was, Nat headed straight to Worsley in the morning. She had mentioned the Lucy Selby interview to him yesterday and asked if he still wanted her to go.

  ‘Business as usual, Miss Bach,’ he’d replied, which she’d taken to mean a yes.

  ‘By the way, your suitcases are now upstairs,’ she’d mentioned before leaving to meet Jack. Then, worried he might think she’d been snooping. ‘Robbie took them up.’ Itching to mention her magic kit discovery, she’d studied his profile for a few seconds, but the pencil was back behind his ear, his head down towards a file.

  ‘They contain my best bib and tucker for when I need to leave the country,’ he’d said without looking up. ‘Need to launder the money first. If you have any bright ideas, let me know.’

  ‘You could try opening a dodgy solicitors’ office in Heald Green,’ she’d replied.

  He’d turned and cocked an eyebrow. ‘Not bad, Natalie. You know, for a girl.’

  She now smiled as she manoeuvred the Merc from lane to lane. If Gavin was hoarding ill-gotten gains, he was making a good show of it. Still, she had heard of villains living like paupers for many years to avoid alerting the police. If she came into a shed load of dosh, she’d want to enjoy it. Though could anyone really ‘enjoy’ money they’d stolen, or received through menaces, extortion and blackmail, selling drugs or other illegal acts? Well, yes; Danielle Foster, if her several-million-pound (and annoyingly tasteful) home in Prestbury was anything to go by.

  There had been several expats in Mallorca she’d wondered about. Fat-bellied Londoners splashing the cash with the mandatory boob-op-blondes on their arms. She and Jose had been pretty scathing: ‘I expect she adores him for his love of ornithology,’ he’d say.

  But Nat knew there was no accounting for love. Who would have thought down-to-earth bubbly Issa would be attracted to an ageing sensitive rock star type? But then again, Harrow and his wife were a similar mix of extrovert and introvert. Could the same be said about her? Had she been like Issa and Jose like JP? Maybe. But as the years went by she’d contained her friendliness whenever Jose was watching. He hadn’t approved of it; without her even noticing, he’d become the dominant one in their partnership. His need for submission and control had filtered through to their sex life. Funny how one only saw these things in retrospect.

  The surgery car park was full, so she parked along a grass verge, tucking the Mercedes in as closely as she could without denting the manicured lawn. She took in the variety of high spec vehicles. Was Thursday a popular day for appointments? Or were the residents of this upmarket area particularly prone to illness? Not that Nat knew much about doctors and their patients. It was eight months on and she still hadn’t re-registered at hers. It had been hope upon hope that Jose would have her back for the first four, lucky good health for the second.

  Lucky good health. She sighed at the thought. It was so incredibly arbitrary. Some people lived to be a hundred and three, whereas others suffered a short, painful existence. What if the stroke had left her mum in constant agony and without a life worth living? What would she have done if Anna had begged to die? Such a dreadful decision. Lose the relative you deeply love, forever and ever? Or grant them their desperate wish and allow them peaceful, painless final moments? And what about potential medical cures just around the corner? Oh God, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  She brought her attention back to the modern building. Dr Woodcock had suggested meeting Lucy Selby here and that was fine. At only seventeen, she would be entitled to have a parent or a guardian with her in any interview, and perhaps the formality would be easier than at her home. The poor, poor girl; how would anyone cope when they had effectively lost their whole family? Even worse, at such a tender age? Nat had been twenty-five when her father died, and though she’d left home on bad terms before then, it had upset that delicate balance of duty and love, resentment, expectation, disappointment, loyalty. And a whole host of other emotions she still felt guilty about.

  Focusing on today’s mission, she strode up the path and waited for the glass door to swish open. ‘Hi, I’m here to see Lucy Selby. I’m Natalie Bach,’ she said in a low voice to the receptionist.

  ‘Of course,’ the woman replied. ‘Doctor Woodcock is waiting. Give me a minute and I’ll take you down.’

  Hearing the usual coughing and spluttering, Nat glanced over her shoulder. A memory bounced back. Her dad again, watching Casualty, ER or any medical drama. ‘Bloody hospital and doctors’ waiting rooms,’ he’d say. ‘Germs, illness, death. If you’re not ill when you go in, you will be when you come out.’

  The smile fell away. She and her brother used to laugh at his ridiculous grumbling, but who knew what his past had held? Almost combusting with anger, she’d shouted at him on the day he died like never before, berating him for his refusal to go to hospital, for what he was doing to Anna.

  She quickly snapped back to the counter. She hated thinking about that day, but inevitably did whenever heated words were near the surface with her mum. Suppose this was the last day? Suppose those were her very last words?

  The receptionist led Nat to a door at the end of a corridor. She opened it before turning back. ‘The staffroom,’ she said over her shoulder, ‘so help yourself to drinks.’

  ‘Thanks.’


  Taking in the aroma of fresh coffee, Nat looked around. Easy chairs and magazines; sink, microwave, fridge, kettle. And, to her surprise, two girls on a sofa. They both turned their heads.

  ‘Oh, hi.’

  Nat stepped towards them, then stopped, unsure which was Lucy. They were both fair-haired and pale, but on second glance one was older, her foundation not quite concealing a bruise beneath her eye. The woman stood and held out her hand. ‘Hello.’ She gestured to the other. ‘This is Lucy. She’s asked me to sit in, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Of course. And you are?’

  She smiled pleasantly. ‘Sorry, I assumed my father had explained. Typical Dad. We thought Lucy might be more comfortable with someone her own age.’ She gave her companion a friendly nudge. ‘Well, sort of. I won’t tell if you don’t.’

  ‘You’re Dr Woodcock’s daughter?’

  ‘Yes, Cassandra. And you must be Miss Bach.’

  Nat handed over Gavin’s business card. She’d added her name and mobile number in biro, which looked pretty naff. ‘Please call me Natalie.’ She sat down in the armchair nearest to Lucy. Close up, she appeared even younger. ‘Hi, Lucy. Thanks for seeing me. I understand this must be incredibly hard for you. I’m the solicitor who represents your dad. Someone else represents your mum.’

  ‘I know.’ The girl stared at her hands. ‘Peter – Doctor Woodcock – said you had some stuff you wanted to ask.’

  Nat took a breath; should she ask the vital question at the outset? She felt bad, but she needed to know. ‘Your mum and dad both say they helped Melanie to die. Can you shed any light on what happened that could–’