John Harvey - A Darker Shade of Blue

‘And you don’t care she had your child against your will, kept her out of your sight?’

Broughton laughed, a sneer ugly across his face. ‘You don’t get it, do you. She was just some cunt I fucked. End of fuckin’ story.’

‘She was barely fifteen years old,’ Kiley said.

‘I know,’ Broughton said, and winked.

Kiley was almost halfway towards the door before he turned around. Broughton was sitting on the edge of his desk, headphones back in place, watching him go. Kiley hit him twice in the face with his fist, hauled him back up on to his knees and hit him once more. Then left. Perhaps it shouldn’t have made him feel a whole lot better, but it did.

They’d bought a nice house on the edge of Dunstable, with views across the Chiltern Hills. They’d done well. Alicia was in the back garden, on a swing. The apple trees were rich in fruit, the roses well into bloom. Cathy stood by the French windows, gazing out. Her expression when Kiley had arrived on the doorstep had told him pretty much all he needed to know.

Trevor was in the garage, tinkering. Tools clipped with precision to the walls, tools that shone with pride of ownership and use. Kiley didn’t rush him, let him take his time. Watched as Trevor tightened this, loosened that.

‘It’s the job, isn’t it?’ Kiley eventually said.

Trevor straightened, surprised.

‘You sold up, left friends, invested in this place. Not just for Cathy and yourself. For her, Alicia. A better place to grow up, country, almost. A big mortgage, but as long as the money’s coming in …’

‘They promised us,’ Trevor said, not looking at Kiley now, staring through the open door towards the trees. ‘The Germans, when we agreed the deal. Jobs for life, that’s what they said. Jobs for sodding life. Now they’re closing down the plant, shifting production to Portugal or Spain. No longer economic, that’s us.’ When he did turn, there were tears in his eyes. ‘They bent us over and fucked us up the arse and all this bastard government did was stand by with the Vaseline.’

Kiley put a hand on his shoulder and Trevor shrugged it off and they stood there for a while, not speaking, then went inside and sat around the kitchen table drinking tea. Alicia sat in Cathy’s lap, playing with her mother’s hair. Her mother: that’s what she was, what she had become.

‘You could have asked,’ Kiley said. ‘Asked Victoria outright, explained.’

‘We’ve tried before,’ Cathy said bitterly. ‘It’s hateful, like pulling teeth.’

Trevor reached across and gave her lower arm a squeeze. ‘Vicky’s not the problem,’ he said, ‘not really. It’s him, the money man.’

‘Costain?’

Trevor nodded.

‘Leave him to me,’ Kiley said. ‘I’ll make sure he understands.’

‘Mum,’ Alicia said. ‘Let’s read a book.’

Trevor walked Kiley down the path towards his hired car, stood with one hand resting on the roof. The sun was just beginning to fade in the sky. ‘I’d go round to their house,’ he said. ‘Evenings, you know, when I was seeing Cathy, and she’d be there. Victoria. I doubt she was much more than fourteen then.’ He sighed and kicked at the ground with his shoe. ‘She could’ve put a ring through my nose and had me crawling after her, all fours around the room.’ Slowly, he drew air down into his lungs. ‘You’re right, it’s nice out here. Quiet.’

The two men shook hands.

‘Thanks,’ Trevor said. ‘I mean it. Thanks a lot.’

Kiley didn’t see Victoria Clarke until the following year, the French Open. He and Kate had travelled Eurostar to Paris for the weekend, stayed in their favourite hotel near the Jardin du Luxembourg. Kate had a French author to interview, a visit to the Musee d’Art Moderne planned; Kiley thought lunch at the brasserie across from Gare du Nord, then a little tennis.

Costain, buoyant after marshalling Victoria’s advertising contract safely through, had struck a favourable deal with Cathy and Trevor: five per cent of Victoria’s gross income to be paid into a trust fund for Alicia, an annual payment of ten thousand pounds towards her everyday needs, this sum to be reviewed; as long as Trevor remained unemployed, the shortfall on the mortgage would be picked up. In exchange, a secrecy agreement was sworn and signed, valid until Alicia reached eighteen.

On court at Roland Garros, rain threatened, the sky a leaden grey. After taking the first set six-two, Victoria was struggling against a hefty left-hander from Belarus. Concentration gone, suddenly she was double-faulting on her serve, over-hitting her two-fisted backhand, muttering to herself along the baseline. Five all and then the set had gone, unravelled, Victoria slump-shouldered and staring at the ground. The first four games of the final set went with serve and Kiley could feel the muscles across his shoulders knot as he willed Victoria to break clear of whatever was clouding her mind, shake free. It wasn’t until she was four-three down that it happened, a skidding return of serve whipped low across the net and some instinct causing her to follow it in, her volley unplayable, an inch inside the line. After that, a baseline smash that tore her opponent’s racket from her hand, a topspin lob judged to perfection; finally, two aces, the first swinging away unplayably, the second hard down the centre line, and she was running to the net, racket raised to acknowledge the applause, a quick smile and touch of hands. On her way back to her chair, she glanced up to where Kiley was sitting in the stands, but if she saw him she gave no sign.

When he arrived back at the hotel, Kate was already there, damp from the shower, leaning back against the pillows with a book. The shutters out on to the balcony were partway open.

‘So?’ Kate said as Kiley shrugged off his coat. ‘How was it?’

‘A struggle.’

‘Poor lamb.’

‘No call to be bitchy.’

Kate poked out her tongue.

Stretched out on the bed beside her, Kiley bent his head. ‘Are you reading that in French?’

‘Why else d’you think I’m moving my lips?’

The skin inside her arm was taut and sweet.

Before Jack Kiley had moved, courtesy of Kate, to the comparatively rarefied splendours of Highbury Fields, home had been a second-floor flat in the dodgy hinterland between the Archway and the arse end of Tufnell Park. Upper Holloway, according to the London A-Z. A bristle of indistinguishable streets that clung to the rabid backbone of the Holloway Road: four lanes of traffic which achieved pollution levels three

times above those recommended as safe by the EC.

Undaunted, Kiley would, from time to time, stroll some half a mile along the pavements of this great highway, past the innumerable Greek Cypriot and Kurdish convenience stores and the fading splendour of the five-screen Odeon, to drink at the Royal Arms. And why not? One of the few pubs not to have been tricked out with shamrocks and fake antiquities, it boasted reasonable beers, comfortable chairs and more than adequate sight lines should Kiley fancy watching the Monday night match on wide-screen TV.

It was here that young Nicky Cavanagh, nineteen and learning a trade at U-Fit Instant Exhausts and Tyres, got into an argument with one of the Nealy brothers, one of five. What the argument was about, its starting point and raison d’etre, was still in dispute. Some comment passed about last Sunday’s game at Highbury, a jostled arm, a look that passed between Cavanagh and the girl, under-dressed and underaged, by Nealy’s side. Less uncertain were the details of what followed. After a certain amount of mouthing off, a shove here and a push there, the pair of them, Nealy and Cavanagh, stood facing one another with raised fists, an empty bottle of Miller Lite reversed in Cavanagh’s spare hand. Nealy, cursing, turned on his heels and left the bar, hauling his companion with him. Less than thirty minutes later, he returned. Three of the brothers were with him, the fourth enjoying time in Feltham Young Offenders Institution at the government’s expense. His place was taken by a bevy of friends and hangers-on, another four or five. Pick handles, baseball bats. They trapped Cavanagh by the far wall and dragged him out on to the street. By the time the first police sirens could be heard, Cavanagh, bloodied and beaten, lay curled into a broken ball beside the kerb.