The Touch of Innocents Read online

  She had compromised, thinking of today, of herself, trying to balance dreams of professional success against those of motherhood. She told herself that her work had saved the lives of countless children – at the school in Bulgaria, in the besieged cities of Yugoslavia, in the camps of Southern Africa and on killing fields around the world.

  But it had cost the life of her first baby. The miscarriage was her responsibility. Maybe.

  Now she was responsible for the death of Bella.

  Maybe.

  There were beginning to be altogether too many maybes in her life.

  There were no maybes with Grubb. He was unmistakably clear about her body. Have it parked back on location within two weeks, or not at all. Kiev or kids. Media star or motherhood. The balancing act was over, she was going to have to choose.

  The ornate, hand-blocked wallpaper with its heavy Tudor motif gave the small room a gloomy aspect. Behind the palatial scrubbed stone exterior there were few Members’ offices in the House of Commons with any style or hint of magnificence, and certainly this was not one of them. A desk, a couple of chairs, a filing cabinet that doubled as a lock-up for bottles, an undernourished hide sofa. Even swift and fast-improving steeds like Devereux had to wait their turn behind the old parliamentary warhorses, long ago put out to grass and living off cobwebbed memories of when it had been their time.

  They should be shot, put down, out of their misery, he had long ago concluded. Not for him the lingering death of an elder statesman, waiting in desperation for the telephone to ring, for someone to remember. Devereux would go up. Or out. Up to the very summit decreed by his talents and ambitions, if his luck held; out to some new and well-grassed pasture if it did not.

  He had made preparations. His diaries. Memoirs in the making and easy pickings at that. An advance of a hundred thousand in exchange for patronizing and poisonous reviews in the Sunday book sections, two hundred if he named names and times and treasons and revealed who screwed whom and how.

  God knows, he needed the money after the destruction his father had wrought upon the family’s fortunes, but memoirs were one-off, unrepeatable. There were other, more incisive ways to catch the financial tide, particularly with his newly established credibility on matters of defence. A few well-placed consultancies. A splicing together of contracts. A facilitator’s fee of modest percentage paid into a bank account of indecipherable anonymity. Using what he was already learning and would continue to discover so long as he remained in post. Another reason for giving the Americans a damned hard time but, in the end, giving them what they wanted.

  The Duster.

  They would remember, and recognize his value, if the time ever came.

  He wondered what she would remember. What was her name? – Rosalinde. The tall, elegant, tight-breasted wife of the Transport Secretary. Or, rather, the former Transport Secretary. She was a Westminster wife, more ambitious than he and infinitely more corruptible, utterly unforgiving that he, and therefore she, was now numbered amongst the living dead. ‘Like wandering through the catacombs of Rome,’ as she had put it, ‘and never being able to find the door.’

  Devereux had brushed into her along the Library Corridor. She had been reeking of Givenchy and gin, drifting between receptions and anxious once again to be touched by the trappings of power. And he had touched her, there, on his parliamentary sofa as, in that grating Sloane voice of hers, she had whispered venomous disloyalties about inadequacies, political and physical, of her husband.

  She had approached sex like an election-night count, rushing through the initial tally more rapidly than seemed possible only to demand an immediate recount. Incredibly dominant female, constantly wittering about his massive majority. It had been all but beyond him.

  It was only after sex that her true seduction began, building from vows to be rid of her encumbrance of a husband through outpourings of her long-standing admiration for her new lover and climaxing in protestations of her desire to see more, much more, of Devereux.

  He had told her of his suspicions that her tits were as false as her loyalties and had thrown her out. Almost invariably he had humiliated and discarded every woman he’d ever known. Yet still they came back; or, at least, a certain type of woman did. Those attracted to power, who could only reach orgasm on a front page.

  He took little pride in such sterile passion, the adulation and easy conquests. He recognized his trait for what it was. Failure. His failure, though not his fault. Like father, like son, he heard himself mutter, tasting bile. He washed it away with a mouthful of Scotch.

  He looked across the room to the dark oil painting behind his desk, the portrait of his father that had hung in every office he’d occupied since entering Parliament. It lied, like all portraits. The face was imposing, as was his father’s, even if the artist had shaded the most unkind ravages of time and alcohol which had spattered his father’s cheeks. But the eyes were not those of his father. The eyes depicted in the painting were clear, forthright, staring directly at Devereux in a way his father had never done. His father had never been able to hold his gaze or return the affection offered by the child. At first Devereux had imagined it was because his father had no love for him; only later did he realize that his father was too ashamed to face his only son and look him in the eye.

  Perhaps it was because of the dog. Scarcely more than a puppy. A token – as it turned out, the final token – from his dying mother. And it had fouled the rug. His father had been looking for a target, that afternoon it was the dog, and the father’s hunting boot had driven into the animal several times before Devereux’s desperate lunge had placed his own body between boot and dog. And for a while the father had seemed not to notice the difference.

  There had been damage to the dog, perhaps a dislocated hind leg, and the boy had been instructed to leave his whimpering dog in the stables. That cold night, in defiance of his father’s explicit instruction, the young Devereux had crept out to comfort it.

  Discovery had perhaps been inevitable; the consequences less so. As the child cowered amongst soiled straw, clutching his pet, pleading with his father, the animal had been wrenched from his terrified arms. Towering above him, the father had dangled the dog by the scruff of its neck. Then, accompanied by a savage snapping sound, the neck had been broken. A stifled yelp of innocence, a twitch. And a relentless, unforgiving anger that would wash away any future moment on which his father might be tempted to offer trust or love.

  It had not been the only cruelty, but it had been more than enough.

  The father disgusted even himself with his increasingly frequent and irrational outbursts of wrath that would send the son scurrying in terror from the sound of his approaching footsteps, but the rages proved to be beyond anyone’s control. Particularly after the mother’s death.

  Living with an alcoholic father created many wounds, even a father who climbed so high. And fell so far. It had condemned Devereux to a life spent taunting his father’s ghost, yet at the same time trying to escape from it. He hated his father with a fixity of purpose which, otherwise directed, might have built empires. He hated his father for not being what he might have been, someone to respect, to honour, to teach him love. There had never been love in the Devereux family, not after his mother had deserted him, opted out, by dying. After that it had been an expensive school, all male, where the only regular female contact was with matrons and cleaning women. Servants. Nothing to teach him respect for women, only for power.

  Devereux knew his ill-formed emotions were a grievous fault, even as he indulged them. He had built a life in the mirror-image of his father. He drank, sometimes to excess, but not to dependency, and every time he put away a half-empty bottle was another little victory over his father’s weakness. He had entered Parliament, where his every political victory mocked his father’s failure. He had achieved his father’s ministerial position. And now he would surpass it.

  And he had his own family. Devereux had sworn protection to his family with the in
tensity with which his father had offered only abuse. A childhood of fear, of being betrayed, was not what Devereux would inflict on his own child. His love might be imperfect but unlike his own father’s it would be given without question, the new generation contemptuously rejecting the old.

  Yet, as he had come to know, even in a father’s unquestioning love there could be danger. And dishonour.

  As he looked up, his father’s lips seemed to sneer.

  The bass guitarist stank. But to be truthful so did the entire band, a desperately fashionable post-heavy metal funk ’n’ fuck affair which tried to drown its deficit of talent in an excess of volume. The bass guitarist was the worst. He had completely lost it in the middle of a complicated riff and, fumbling, had attempted to cover his ineptitude with the visual extravagance of throwing his guitar high above his head.

  Perhaps it had been the glare of the lights, or the sweat in his eyes, or simply the head full of smack. In any event his coordination was way off. The tumbling instrument had evaded his flailing hands and struck him directly on the bridge of the nose. Practically killed the bastard. The audience screamed hysterically as the cameramen closed in for the full effect.

  Michelini laughed, for the first time that day, a sound that implied no humour. He’d been flicking idly through the cable channels and picking at slices of belly pork from the Cantonese take-away, trying to fill the hole in his life. It had been one of those days. A cancelled meeting on the Hill, stood up by his date for dinner, time to brood and to remember. It was one of those empty evenings when he could no longer hide behind the macho male frontage, and he felt very much alone.

  It was her fault, of course, and somehow when the phone rang he knew it was she.

  ‘Joe. How are you?’

  He offered little beyond an indecipherable grunt.

  ‘We have to talk, Joe.’

  ‘I’m listening. But I’m busy,’ he barked, commencing another attack with his chopsticks. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s about Bella. There may have been a mistake, I think she may not be dead.’

  There was nothing but silence, a crushing silence of incredulity and anger. She felt her confidence draining away.

  ‘Benjy says she’s not dead, Joe, that she was taken away by some woman. I know it sounds far-fetched but … The post-mortem. It was wrong. The hair colour. But we can’t check because they’ve locked away the file and … Oh, Joe, I’m so confused.’ She was losing control; it was so unlike Izzy. ‘I need your help,’ she added. That was unlike Izzy, too.

  ‘How?’

  She wanted to say that she needed his love and comfort because she felt hurt and so very much alone, and he wanted to hear it, but they both knew there was no point.

  ‘Money. Send some money, Joe. Right away. I need to buy clothes, to look after Benjy, until I can get my credit cards and everything else sorted out. I need time, to find out what the hell is going on.’

  If hearing her voice had made him smoulder, her demands turned him to incandescence. Savagely he pushed away the stir-fry. ‘The only thing you’ll get from me is the price of a one-way ticket back to the States so I can be sure you stop dragging that poor damned kid of ours around. He needs to be back home, not dumped in some foreign backwater.’

  ‘But Joe, there’s something wrong. I know it, I can feel it. I can’t leave here just yet, not until I know.’

  ‘Then send Benjy back.’

  ‘To you? And you’ll let me have him back when I return.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Joe, let’s try and be reasonable about this. Put the divorce and everything to one side, just for the moment. Bella may not be dead.’

  Her words were tearing at him. He ached for certainty, for the simplicity of bereavement. He could handle that, through his anger, but not this. Alive. Dead. Despair. Doubt. Hope. She was toying with him.

  ‘What in God’s name are you trying to do with me?’ he responded plaintively, his anger for the moment blunted by confusion.

  She told him what she knew. What very little she knew. And felt. As she spoke she realized how inadequate it still all seemed and how unconvinced he remained, like Pomfritt. And, yes, she had raised it with the doctors.

  ‘What did they suggest?’

  ‘Tranquillizers.’

  That he believed. He sighed. ‘Why don’t you come home, Izzy?’

  ‘I can’t. Not until I know. I’m staying here.’ Resisting him. As ever, stubborn.

  ‘And where is here?’

  She told him, and the name seemed to grow until it had filled all his emptiness inside. Paul Devereux’s. The Paul Devereux’s.

  An image came into Michelini’s mind. Of a plane. In flames. Crashing. A plume of smoke and debris. Dust.

  She had destroyed his family, of that he was sure; now, through her interference and neurotic behaviour, she could end up doing the same damned thing to his career.

  ‘We have to find out the truth,’ she was saying.

  ‘The truth, Izzy, is staring you in the eyes. It’s simply that you refuse to face up to it. Bella is dead. You killed her in a car smash, and now you’re trying to concoct some unmitigated crap to explain away your guilt.’

  ‘But they may have made a mistake …’

  ‘For Chrissake! People like that don’t make mistakes.’

  ‘Benjy says …’

  ‘Benjy’s not even three years old. The poor kid might say anything after what you put him through. And mixing up bodies in a morgue – neurotic nonsense!’ He snorted in contempt. ‘Think, woman. Stop trying to fool yourself. Accept the fact. It was your damn fault!’

  ‘Be reasonable.’

  ‘You be reasonable. Put Benjy on a plane back home.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Send him back.’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Then I’ll see you in court.’

  And the phone went dead.

  She sat alone in the night, her world wrapped in darkness, bewitched by her sense of guilt, her need for an excuse – any excuse, other than the obvious. A torrent of uncertainties emerged like demons from the mists of her overwrought mind: could they all be wrong? The psychologist? The mortuary technician? Weatherup? The Consular Officer? Grubb? And Joe? How much more likely that they were right, that she was being absurdly emotional, distracted, deceiving no one but herself? Made distraught by grief and guilt?

  Yet there remained one fragment of certainty that no one could refute. In the morning, when the first rays of sunlight and sense came to chase away the demons of the night, she would be there, alone. Without Bella. That certainty set against their doubts.

  She tore herself away from the study and its morbid perspectives and began slowly to walk around the house, running her hands over the furniture, touching, feeling the need to stay in contact with what was solid and undeniably real. In the corner of the great hall stood a grand piano and she sat down on the stool, laying her fingers on the keys. She’d always loved the piano, yearned to play, yet suddenly she had no memory of whether she could. Had desire ever made contact with reality? Bizarre. She couldn’t remember. That part of the brain which held those memories was still fumbling, dropping the pieces, creating confusion. She might not recall whether she could play, but surely she could never forget the art of playing?

  She emptied her mind, allowing instinct to take over. She raised her hands high above the keyboard, prepared herself, let herself go, allowing her fingers to fall where they would.

  The result was a discord of jumbled notes and noise.

  For the first time since the accident she began to laugh. Of course she hadn’t learned to play, never had the time. Bloody ridiculous. She was deluding herself. About the piano. About Bella.

  And the laughter took hold and gripped her, and turned to tears. Of loss. Of guilt. Of pain and the anguish of bereavement. The tears turned to a flood of weeping as at last she began to submit to her misery and shame, to release her despairing grip on the false hopes and fanciful
explanations, to come to terms with her folly.

  She had lost.

  It was many minutes before she could begin to compose herself, to dry the tears, trying to find comfort in the feeling that at last she had unshackled herself from the evil spirits of doubt that had so plagued her. As the mists in front of her eyes cleared, she began to see the real world again; her fumbling fingers, the keys, the piano in its dutifully polished walnut case and, on it, the decorative silver frames with their melody of family images.

  A wedding scene with a younger Devereux and a statuesque but somehow vulnerable bride.

  A baby wrapped in christening clothes.

  A man who bore more than a passing resemblance to Devereux shaking hands outside Number Ten Downing Street with Harold Macmillan.

  Devereux in court clothes bowing before his Queen.

  And the photograph of a man and a teenage girl on a tropical beach, posing as any father and gangling daughter would in swimsuits and sun hats, looking overly pink and uncomfortably English.

  It took her paralysed mind what seemed an age for the memories to stop passing by on the other side, to reach out and make the connection. The man, of course, was Devereux, ten years younger but the unmistakable lean frame and self-confident air. And beneath the shoulder of the doting father nestled the fledgling, soon to be of an age to fly the parental nest, the form beginning to fill and grow more feminine, the figure already setting aside the ungainly architecture of youth for the statuesque heights of early adulthood.

  And, beneath the straw boater with pink ribbon, a cascade of shoulder-length hair glistened blonde in the sun and fell around a face that, though not yet flawed and drained, was nonetheless that face. The face infecting her dreams.

  The skin, youthfully fragile, that would turn to dried parchment. The eyes, bashful before the camera lens, not yet tinged with fear. The lips, dried in the sun, that would one day grow thin and cracked and come to sneer at Izzy as she lay in her hospital bed. The long, thin fingers that would snatch at Bella.