He thought of Minnie, immolated and cast on the wind. In his mind he could smell her, feel the chuff of her cardigan on his cheek, and see the glee in her watery blue eyes. Like the present itself he would chase her, ephemeral, like the ever un-snatchable now. Years he had shunned her, but now she was gone: not in the old house, not in the farm, not in the cemetery, not in her sister’s eyes. Minnie had disappeared from the earth without so much as a piece of marble sitting dumbly to tell of her passing.
Daniel remembered crying at this grave. Now he stood with eyes dry and hands in pockets. He could remember Minnie more easily than he could recall his own mother. He had been so little when he last lived with his mother. For years their meetings had been fraught and brief. He had run to her and been dragged away.
He had stayed with Minnie. She had been with him as a child, a teenager and a young man. Now that she was gone he felt strangely calm, but alone: more alone than he had before he knew of her death. It was this that he could not fathom. She had been lost to him years before, and yet now he felt her loss.
Losses should not be weighed, he thought. And yet now, considering the loss of both his mothers, he felt Minnie’s loss the greater.
Driving back to London, Daniel stopped at the service station at Donnington Park. He bought petrol and a coffee and then checked his phone for the first time since he had left.
There were three missed calls from work. Sipping lukewarm coffee and inhaling petrol fumes, Daniel called Veronica. He sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, listening to the hoarse whisper of the motorway behind him.
‘Are you all right?’ said Veronica. ‘We’ve been trying to get in touch with you. You are not going to believe this … How was your funeral, by the way, not someone close, was it?’
Daniel cleared his throat. ‘No … no, what’s happened?’
‘You’ve not been answering your phone!’
‘Yeah, I … turned it off. I had stuff to deal with.’
‘You have the Sebastian Croll case back if you want it. Will you take it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Kenneth King Croll is well connected.’
Daniel rubbed a hand across his jaw. He hadn’t shaved and he felt the stubble against his palm.
‘The case ended up with McMann Walkers, but … believe it or not, Sebastian wouldn’t work with them. He had a massive tantrum and said he would only have you as his solicitor!’
‘Why wouldn’t Seb work with them – what did they do?’
‘Well, the solicitor from McMann Walkers went to see Sebastian the day after you left. I know him, Doug Brown, apparently he’s an old school pal of Croll’s …
‘Anyway, I don’t have all the details, but Sebastian was very rude to him. His parents stepped in but then Sebastian started screaming and shouting and saying that he wanted you back. He actually asked for you – for his lawyer, Daniel.’ Veronica twittered with laughter. ‘In the end it was so bad that McMann Walkers turned it down. I’ve had that King Kong bloke, whatever you call him … calling me non-stop. They want you back to keep Sebastian happy.’
Daniel finished his coffee and bit his lip. He had felt an urge to protect the boy, to save him. Sebastian was the same age that Daniel had been when he stood in Minnie’s kitchen for the first time. But now Minnie was gone and Daniel felt drained. He wasn’t sure that he was ready for the case.
‘So, will you take it back?’ asked Veronica. Her clear voice was insistent. ‘I looked at the brief and it seems strong.’
‘Of course I’ll take it,’ said Daniel, but the words were robbed from his lips. The motorway growled behind him and he turned from its callous, aberrant noise.
‘Great. Will you call Irene’s chambers tomorrow? Make sure she and her junior are still available? I would have approached her, but I wanted to check with you first.’
Daniel drove fast, leaving the north behind him. He stopped off at the office to pick up Sebastian’s case notes. It was late, and as he walked through the office’s surreally quiet spaces, he felt relieved that none of his colleagues was there.
The day was waning when he finally returned to Bow. He picked up a takeaway in South Hackney and then found a parking space not far from his flat on Old Ford Road. The sun was setting on Victoria Park, the pond with its fountain like a watery sundial reflecting the bloodied sky. He could smell the vestiges of barbecues in the air. Opening the boot of his car, he lifted out the box that Cunningham had given him and walked to the flat chin-down, the box in one hand and the takeaway and his keys in the other.
He felt strangely deflated, the empty farmhouse inside him still, creaking with her loss. He heard notes again, painful as exposed bone. They chimed cold and hard.
He put the box on the kitchen table but still did not open it to see what it contained. Instead, he ate his curry quickly, hunched over the table in the box’s shadow, then had a shower. He made the shower too hot and leaned into the jet, holding on to the nozzle with both hands. His skin stung as he towelled himself dry. He stood naked in the bathroom, looking at his face in the mirror as his skin chilled, and thought of the kestrel he had seen hovering over the Brampton moors. He felt himself to be alone and unyielding, stiffening his wings and rising on a thermal.
The last two days left him cowed, but he didn’t know if it was fear of the boy’s case and all that it implied, or fear of her loss – fear of life knowing that she was gone; he didn’t need to ignore her any more.
Loss. Daniel considered as he rubbed a hand across his chin and chose not to shave. Loss. He wrapped a towel around his waist and exhaled. Loss. It was like everything else. It could be practised. He almost did not feel it any more. His mother was gone and now Minnie was gone; he would be fine.
Daniel dressed and began to leaf through Sebastian’s case. He hoped that Irene would still be free and willing to take it on. He would call her clerk first thing. He and Irene had worked closely on several cases but particularly on Tyrel’s gang shooting the previous year. They had both been devastated when Tyrel was convicted.
The last time he had seen her was at the party to celebrate her promotion to QC in March, although he had barely managed to say two words to her. She was a Londoner, born in Barnes, and several years older than Daniel, but she had read Law in Newcastle. She liked to try to impress him with her Geordie. Daniel couldn’t bear to think of anyone else defending Sebastian.
Alone in the flat, Daniel found that he couldn’t sleep, so he settled down to work. His clerk had already watched the CCTV tapes which had been released to the defence through disclosure. Daniel watched them again, in case they had missed something. During the day, the cameras were mostly facing Copenhagen Street and Barnsbury Road, turning to focus on the park after 7 p.m. Daniel fast-forwarded to flashes of the park, but there were no unaccompanied children, no one else who seemed suspicious.
It was after one o’clock in the morning when he finished writing notes on Sebastian’s defence and only then did he lift the lid of the cardboard box which Minnie had left for him. It contained what he expected: his school photographs, photos of picnics on the beach at Tynemouth. There were his medals from primary school and prizes from secondary school, drawings and paintings that he had done for her as a child, an old address book of Minnie’s.