Felix Francis - Crisis

‘No, I won’t shut up,’ I said. ‘All four of you spend far too much of your time shutting up about everything. Not one of you ever mentions or confronts the big Chadwick family secret, so I’ll do it for you.’

I paused and looked around at them. What a complete mess.

‘Where shall I start?’ I said. ‘The sexual abuse of Zoe or her abortion?’

They said nothing. They just looked at each other, and then at me with hate in their eyes.

‘Come now, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Let’s not try and fool me that you don’t know anything about it. Why then have you all been paying Zoe blackmail money?’

It was Ryan who broke their silence first.

He took two more steps towards me. ‘I don’t have to listen to this claptrap any longer.’

‘Truth hurts, does it, Ryan?’ I said. ‘Then show me your bank statements to prove you’ve not been paying.’

He knew he couldn’t. He lifted the whip high as if to strike.

‘Go on,’ I said to him. ‘I’m sure the police can add assault to your charge list.’

‘How much do you want?’ It was Oliver’s voice that cut through the tension of the moment.

Ryan lowered his arm and relaxed.

So did I.

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘How much do you want?’ Oliver repeated. ‘It must be money you’re after.’

I almost laughed. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No money. It’s justice I want. Justice for your daughter. And for Sheikh Karim.’

But mostly for Zoe , I thought. I’d never known her but, over the last week, I had developed a degree of empathy towards her. She’d never had a chance to grow up as a normal, carefree child. These four men had used and abused her, damaged and rejected her. And then one of them had killed her.

‘Everyone has their price,’ Oliver said confidently. ‘What’s yours?’

‘You couldn’t afford it,’ I said.

‘Try me,’ he said.

He was serious. He still thought he could buy his way out of trouble.

‘Don’t pay him anything,’ Tony said. ‘He knows nothing. He’s only bluffing.’

I turned to face him.

‘Am I, Tony?’ I said. ‘Bluffing about what? What is it I don’t know?’

‘You know nothing,’ he said.

‘I know that you were paying Zoe blackmail money too, as was Declan and your father.’

‘It wasn’t blackmail money,’ Tony said. ‘I was just helping to support my sister and her kids. There’s no law against that.’

The others nodded their agreement. They were beginning to regain their confidence. Together they were strong. What I needed to do was to get them arguing among themselves.

It was Ryan who was most volatile. He was the one I had to needle.

‘So tell me, Ryan,’ I said, ‘why did you break Declan’s nose in a Doncaster hotel? What were you arguing about? Did it concern Zoe? Was Declan telling you that, as the eldest, you should have known better?’

‘Shut up,’ he shouted at me again, this time with perhaps more anxiety.

I turned towards Declan. ‘What was it you said to him? What was so bad that your own brother punched you full in the face and broke your nose?’

‘None of your business,’ he said.

‘Ah, but it is my business. By luring me here today, you’ve made it my business, to say nothing of shutting me in a stable with a mad horse.’

‘I didn’t do that,’ Declan said vehemently.

‘Someone did.’

‘Shame the bloody horse didn’t kill you,’ Ryan said.

Something about the way he said it, with arrogance, even pride at the idea, made me realise that it had been Ryan, not Oliver, who’d been responsible for that little episode. Instinctively, my hand went up to the stitches in my right ear. I owed him for that.

‘Did you expect it to frighten me off?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Ryan said with a laugh. ‘I expected you to die.’

‘So we can add attempted murder to the list. You’re going away for a long time, Ryan.’

He laughed again and shook his head. ‘You don’t know when to give up, do you? You’re nothing more than a buzzing mosquito that needs swatting. Admit it, you have nothing on any of us.’ He looked around at his father and brothers. ‘So crawl away into a hole, you subordinate little worm, and let us get on with our lives.’

His self-assurance was clearly growing by the second. It was time for me to try and deflate it.

‘You seem to be forgetting that I represent Sheikh Karim.’

‘I don’t care if you represent the Queen of Sheba,’ Ryan said angrily.

I was seriously losing the initiative here. I needed some sibling conflict.

It was time for me to play my own trump card.

I looked around at the three sons.

‘Didn’t your father ever tell you who was the father of Zoe’s unborn child?’

‘Is this more of your nonsense?’ Tony said.

‘It’s not nonsense, is it, Oliver?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, but there was a nervous quiver in his voice that all of us heard, and the skin on his face had gone rather sweaty and pale.

‘Does the Chancery Lane Medical Laboratory mean anything to you?’ I asked him.

If anything, his face went a shade paler.

The three boys were now looking at their father rather than me.

‘Didn’t he tell you?’ I said. ‘Your father arranged with his friend Dr Gavin Andrews to have a biopsy taken from the aborted foetus and sent to a laboratory for analysis. For a DNA profile to be obtained. Then he compared it to each of your DNA. He’s known for sixteen years which one of you impregnated Zoe.’

The sons went on staring at Oliver.

‘Zoe herself didn’t know,’ I went on. ‘Six years ago she found out about the biopsy and she managed to obtain the DNA profile of the foetus, but she still didn’t know which of you was responsible. So she blackmailed you all, threatening to reveal the profile to the press unless you paid up. You knew that if the profile became public it would lead to irresistible pressure for your own DNA to be analysed and compared. So you paid. Regularly, every month. So did your father, to keep the Chadwick name away from a scandal.’

The four of them were now all looking at me.

‘But your father knew the culprit all along. Not that the actual sire of the foetus was any worse than either of the other two. The fact that each of you didn’t know for certain that it couldn’t be you is indication enough of what had been going on.’

I paused briefly for that to sink in.

‘Zoe was just thirteen,’ I said. ‘Ryan, you were twenty-six. Declan, you were twenty-four. You two, at least, should have known it was wrong? You even fought over the affections of your young half-sister.’

‘That wasn’t the reason,’ Declan said.

‘Shut up,’ Ryan shouted at him.

‘What was it then?’ I asked. ‘What was so shameful that your wife would rather kill herself than live with the stigma of it becoming known?’

‘But wasn’t that because Declan had been arrested for murder?’ Oliver said.

‘No, it wasn’t, was it Declan?’ I said. ‘Murder she could cope with. Arabella killed herself because she knew that all of this would come out, and she couldn’t stand the shame of being married to a man who had made his own sister pregnant when he couldn’t do the same to her.’

‘But it wasn’t me,’ Declan said resolutely. ‘It couldn’t have been. I was riding for a year in America when I was twenty-four.’

‘Did Arabella know that?’ I asked.

From Declan’s demeanour it was clear that she hadn’t. But, I suppose, a husband’s former incest is not the most obvious topic of discussion with his wife over the breakfast table.

‘So, if you knew it couldn’t be you, why did you pay?’