Continuation of cross-examination of Angel Joyce by Marianne Shearer, QC
MS. That’s right, Angel. Have a glass of water. I asked you to speak up, not to shout.
AJ. You don’t believe me.
MS. It’s up to the jury to decide if they believe you or your sister, Angel. Just tell the truth.
AJ. I am telling the truth.
MS. Of course you are, as you know it. Subjective and objective are two different things.
Interruption.
MS. We’ll go back to the indictment, shall we? How often did you say you were raped, Angel?
AJ. Every time I begged him to stop.
MS. Do you mean every time you begged him to start? How did he get you to agree to anything?
AJ. He smiled at me. And he asked me to smile.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He was not smiling. He was fingering pieces of paper and definitely not smiling until he was ready.
No seduction upon which he had ever embarked had succeeded so quickly, or so badly. He should have done his homework, should never have assumed Frank would resemble his own sister. Frank Shearer had required so little. All it had taken was promises and then the threat of promises denied. Nurturing Frank had involved a matter of hours, pandering to Frank’s worst fears, requiring the minimum of pretence and reinvention on his own part. It always depended on the raw material. He could never have known what Frank was like. Frank could have been as cold and persuadable as his clever bitch of a sister, with vanities and ambitions of the same intensity. He could have been as cunning and ruthless. Instead he was a powder keg of the most stupid, volatile, senseless violence and a fucking liability.
Rick had to concede, though, that brother and sister did have a fair bit in common. Hidden passion versus the obvious kind. They were both incredibly naive. They both fell for him and were willing to do anything, which was quite right and what he was owed. The difference was that while Marianne Shearer made it her business to believe everything she was told, and act upon it decisively in due course, banning any doubt about the client from her mind with fierce loyalty, exactly as she should, she did at least weigh the evidence before she absorbed it for later use. She manufactured her own anger, controlled and refined it into venom only as necessary and added in her own contempt for silly women one dollop at a time, while Frank, the throwback, believed everything he was told, took it without digestion like a dog wolfing food, and acted on it immediately. Then it was light the blue touchpaper and retire. A useless ally in a cold war, a literally bloody liability. All Rick had to do was to make sure it was Frank who drew the blood and none of it got on him. He checked the sleeves on his camel hair coat. The cuffs were wearing thin, but this material didn’t shed much. It was too old.
They were in Frank’s place, and Frank had cried off sick for the day. Or at least, Rick had done it for him. The beast was in the next room, hunched in his bed, waking up to cry and vomit, authenticating the validity of the excuses Rick had made in his most authoritative tones, learned from the likes of Marianne Shearer, to the manager of the car showroom. I’m his brother. I’m afraid he’s frightfully ill and sends his apologies. Yes, of course he’ll be back tomorrow, and of course he’ll make up the time. I’m so sorry. Oh, those patrician, barristerial voices, like those of priests and preachers, they worked all the time; voices which brooked no argument or contradiction and were so easy to mimic. Voices which countered the verbal abuse directed back by saying, I beg your pardon? I don’t understand. Please explain.
Manners maketh man and accents made him heard. Always better than shouting.
So, Frank was ill and staying in bed all day today, damn right he was. He had mugged a girl and nearly killed a bloke, all in the space of a few hours. Phenomenal. Such fun. Rick sat back in this filthy armchair, still in his coat, and considered it. The first was to blame on delusion and paranoia, the second, pure misjudgement. Weeping, blubbering, already bloodied, big ol’ Frank, rallying with alcohol like that, and then going off beam again.
Let’s check on Noble’s office, see what he’s hiding. I know how to get in: I’ve sat and watched them punch in those numbers on that keypad by the door. He was up for that, and then… I only suggested we call on the old boy, Frank. I always had his number, from her diary I looked at when she was out of the room; and look here, there’s an address on Noble’s desk. Your sister’s shag, who might just have the stuff we need. I just said, let’s call on him since we’re in the area, why don’t we? Just up the road. What else to do when the pubs are shut? Old geezer might give us a drink. She had a lover. The lover might know about the kid, like where she lives and does she know, as well as knowing about where all those valuable goods and money and furniture are, which Thomas Noble says are lost, even though they’re yours, now. It all belongs to you, really, Frank. He might have taken them.
The mere hint of riches not his own triggered Frank into a frenzy, didn’t it? That room, that taste, that opulence, that privacy. Plus a man lying on a bed, calling him ugly and saying his sister never loved him. Whoah.
Maybe Frank would not go to work tomorrow either. Not with a face full of festering scratches and that contusion on his forehead.
Rick Boyd got to his feet and aimed for the kitchen of this horrible place. The man lived like a pig, with a clean avenue between bathroom and bed, where the daily suit and clean shirt was always ready between one day and the next, with Frank’s remaining sixth sense telling him that personal hygiene and presentation were all that mattered. You couldn’t sit in his chair without something sticking to you.
Rick retrieved the clean lint and saline fluid he had got from the chemist, moved towards the smell of Frank’s room. Wounds must not fester. He dabbed at that big face with the stinging fluid until Frank woke up and screamed. There, there, he said, and Frank, said, Mummy, Mummy, is he dead?
The man who called you scum? I hope so, Frank, my darling. You know that one about dead men not telling tales? Go to sleep, baby, go to sleepy sleep. Good boy. When you get your money, we’ll go fifty-fifty, right?
The contents of the pigskin case were disappointing at first. A copy of M. Shearer’s instructions, all in a kind of code, and a bundle of what looked like part of the transcript of Rick’s very own trial. He had taken it out and leafed through quickly in the dreadful light of Frank’s tiny flat. I want to come home with you, Frank had sobbed into Rick’s shoulder, What did we do? Christ, even before they had got to the end of Chancery Lane and the sight of a taxi. No way, let’s go to yours, not having your DNA in mine, and please don’t mention we. It was all you, love, it was all you, Mr Mighty Man. You did it, you great ape, never mind, I’ll look after you. I loves you, Frank.
He went through the contents of the case again. A copy of the transcript including the bit about kidnap, beginning with reams of law, marked, ‘Send to Peter Friel’. Rick remembered him, silly little tosser on the other side who never got a chance to open his mouth. He threw it aside, then picked it up again, almost fondly. He had been so important then, so much a celebrity that every word that was spoken in his trial was written down. He could remember Marianne, taking exception to the written record of yesterday on each following morning, insisting on examining the record precisely, pointing at it with her long red nails. That’s not what was said, she would say, they’ve made a mistake, I said it that way. The inference is missed. She could waste half an hour every day that way, making it longer and longer, infuriating everyone. Wasting the patience of the absent jury, tearing the heart out of witnesses in waiting. Then apologising in the same tones he used with Frank’s boss. Using her presence to make sure they didn’t notice they were being conned.