Connections Page 23
“What do you mean? Recognised him from where?” she asked.
Ellen, opposite her at the table, was now looking very distressed.
“What’s he done?” Fleur asked.
“It was about five years ago,” said Dominic. “A long story. Not very nice. Vanessa wasn’t even sixteen then. I was twenty-one, Joe was twenty. I came down from Liverpool because there wasn’t any work and found there wasn’t any here, either. Joe’d been in and out of hostels and short-stay places and squats since he’d got out of the children’s home. We were all on the street. We got together in a short-stay place we were in, got friendly. We were a team, the three musketeers. We did what we had to do, boosting from shops, a bit of dealing – and the rest. There’s always opportunities to sell what you’ve got. There was a lot of stuff we didn’t do, though,” he said carefully, looking at Ellen. “Joe and me were trying to watch out for Vanessa, but by that time she was getting to be a full-time addict. We were trying to keep her off the game because obviously that’s the easiest way for a girl to get money for drugs. Boys too.” He was still talking to Ellen. “You know all this. Then you two started speaking again and there was a chance Van would go into a programme. She was talking about it. It was a critical moment for her, I still think that. And that was where your father came in,” he said to Fleur.
Fleur’s heart was in her boots. She looked at Ellen’s face, so drawn and sad, Melanie’s questioning stare, Joe’s face revealing nothing, carved from stone.
“We were going along one Sunday night,” Dominic said. “We had no money and nowhere to go. It was autumn, cold and rainy. About nine at night, dark and we were heading towards Holborn to find somewhere to bed down. We hadn’t got much to look forward to: a frosty night, an early wake-up and no cash – not even for a cup of tea. Vanessa was saying she wanted to pick up a punter and get something and we were arguing with her. She wasn’t experienced at that sort of thing,” he told Ellen. “I’ve got to say she’d tried it once or twice, but it had put her off. But broke is broke and she needed a fix just to tide her over. I’m telling the truth,” he assured Ellen. “She wanted to get better. This particular night was more of a blip and we all knew if we could get over it everything would be better next day. Sunday’s a bad day in that life, that’s a fact.
“We were mooching along somewhere in the West End, arguing about what to do. A long broad street, very quiet, houses and posh hotels. Then suddenly coming up behind us was a big black limousine, chauffeur in front and a guy leaning out of a half-open door as it travelled along, waving a big wad of cash at us and shouting, ‘Girl – do you want some money?’ and stuff like that. He hardly spoke English. He had a Russian accent, or something similar. Scary bloke. He had a black coat on. He was tall, very young, with long fair hair – white really – and very pale blue eyes. The car came right beside us, crawling forward, him leaning out the door, waving the money. I didn’t like the look of him. He looked dangerous. He looked like a person who lived by violence, one of those people who you’d be talking to one minute and the next he’d be trying to kill you. There was another man, sitting next to him while he was leaning out of the door, a man in a business suit, looked English and he was frowning. He didn’t like what the other guy was doing but he wasn’t trying to stop him.
“We kept on walking. Joe got hold of one of Vanessa’s arms, I grabbed the other and the car just kept moving beside us. He was still leaning out of the open door, going, ‘Come on – much money for a fuck – you want it. Come on boys, let your sister go.’
“Vanessa kept looking at him, at the money, and the other man started talking. He said, ‘Leave her, leave her. I’ll get you a girl if you want one,’ but the tall man kept on at Vanessa, waving the money at her. ‘You want this? You want this?’
“We were trying to hold her back but suddenly she shouted, ‘Leave me alone. You’re not my keepers.’ She wrenched away, went across the pavement and grabbed at the cash in the man’s hand. Quick as a flash he whipped the hand with the money in it back, reached out with the other arm and dragged her into the car. He was very fast, very good reactions. I hadn’t expected it,” said Dominic. He told them, “I ran towards the car but the driver had sped up. He shot up the street, then round a corner. Joe and I took off, running up the street after the car. It was a rich, respectable street, all porticoes and brass plates on doors, and it was deserted. And Joe and I were running after this limousine, yelling.
“We ran round the corner into the mews and there was Vanessa, now tugging away from the guy. She’d changed her mind, probably, after he hauled her in the car, got scared. But he was pulling her into one of the small houses there and the other bloke was behind them, trying to say something but still shaking his head and following on. You could see everything clearly because there was one of those small Victorian-style street lamps right outside the house. Joe and me yelled and ran towards them. The older man saw us and then it looked as if the tall guy pushed a load of money into Vanessa’s hand. She seemed to sag and stop resisting and in they went, the other guy following on. And the door slammed.”
Dominic paused, sighed, then seemed to force himself to go on speaking. “Joe and me were stuck outside. So was the chauffeur in the big black car. He gave us one look, started up and drove down the mews and out the other end, going off somewhere to garage the car. He wasn’t going to interfere. So there was Joe and me in this little mews, all little trees outside the doors and window boxes, and inside one of the houses, there was Vanessa. We stood there like idiots,” said Dominic.
Joe said to Ellen, “We couldn’t do nothing. Van was our mate, but we weren’t her babysitters. She’d gone off of her own free will. OK, we knew free will wasn’t one of those ideas that goes with being a junkie. But she done it deliberately.” He looked helplessly at Ellen. “I know what you’re thinking. We should have banged on the door and yelled. The residents would have called the cops on us and then maybe, just maybe, Vanessa would have got rescued. Or maybe the police would have looked at us, street people, no address, no job, no nothing and arrested us instead.”
Dominic continued, “We were so angry and frustrated and fucking helpless to do anything. You don’t know what it’s like to be on the street. You can keep yourself together, just about. If you’re lucky. But everybody’s against you, especially the law. We couldn’t get in there. It was all bolts and bars and burglar alarms. We didn’t believe the cops would help us. And I was angry with Van for going off like that. After all we’d said – I was to blame, Ellen. I’m sorry, I got it wrong. I was all for pissing off and leaving her to it, that’s the truth. I said to Joe, OK, if that’s what she wants to do, let her do it. We’d been so careful of her, so nice. We’d nicked for her. We’d given her stuff and supported her every way we knew, then some rich crook comes along and waves a roll of cash at her and it all goes out the window. It was Joe who said we might as well stick around, we didn’t have anything else to do so we should stay in case anything went wrong.
“We found a doorway across from the door Van had gone into. That house was dark. We thought there was nobody in. We settled down there and waited. The windows of the house opposite the one where Van was were shuttered up, but you could see lights through the cracks. You couldn’t hear anything from inside the house, though. At first. Then we heard this muffled screaming – that was about ten minutes later. We jumped up. We were halfway across the mews when the door was flung open and there was Vanessa in front of the tall guy, no coat, clothes all torn, blood running down her face. The tall guy was behind her, his face all twisted, shouting. He had her in an armlock, about to throw her in the street. Behind them was the other bloke, shouting something.
“The man with Vanessa walked her right out of the door, so we could see the man behind, plain as you are now, Fleur. And it was your father. We didn’t know who he was until we saw him in that magazine. But it was him.”
Fleur gazed at him. “What did you do?” she asked hopelessly.
“After we took her to hospital she never said anything for two days. When she did, she said the minute they got into the house he’d grabbed her shoulder and her hair and hauled her upstairs, torn at her clothes, hung on to her hair while he punched and beat her, then thrown her down on the bed. The door’d opened then, while he was on top of her, and your dad had come in and said something like, ‘Leave her alone. Do you want to get us all into trouble?’ Sensitive guy, eh?” he said to Fleur. “All heart. He called the man mad and the guy turned on him and yelled something in what sounded like Russian and your daddy, Fleur, turned right round and went out of the room. Whereupon the tall guy got on with raping Vanessa, then went back to clouting her again. She said she rolled off the bed and lay on the floor and started screaming. She didn’t know where she was or what was happening by that stage. It had all happened too fast, but she just kept on yelling and yelling until, seemingly, the man dragged her to her feet and started hauling her down the stairs. She was knocking from side to side.
“Your father came to the door and started shouting, ‘Get her out of here. Get her out.’ At the foot of the stairs he pushed money into her hands. When we picked her up she had three hundred pounds in her fist. He must have emptied his wallet. Nice, eh? Get her out, never mind how badly hurt she is, then throw money at her.
“We went back there that night, after Vanessa was in the hospital and we’d called Ellen, but the house was empty – they’d cleared off. We went back every day for a few weeks, but it was obvious the place was empty. Then the For Sale board went up. They didn’t want us to find them, or the police. Not that we reported it – Vanessa wouldn’t have it.”
“I’ve been dreaming about catching those two and giving them a just reward for what they did,” said Joe. “Now we’ve found one and he’s your father. He’d know the man who did it, wouldn’t he?” he asked her.
“If it’s him, yes,” said Fleur. “But even if it is, I’ve walked away from my father and I don’t think if I went to him he’d give me the name and address of this Russian, or whatever he was. Why would he, when all he was bothered about at the time was keeping everything quiet? I’m sorry, Joe. I can’t see a way of doing this.” It sounded weak, but it was the truth.
“What good would it do, anyway?” Ellen asked. “Beating up that man, killing him, wouldn’t make any difference to Vanessa, or me.”
“She’s right, Joe,” Melanie said.
“It might help me,” said Joe.
“Couldn’t that just be your guilt?” said Melanie.
Joe looked at her. “I never wanted to go out with an old, wise woman. It doesn’t matter what I feel. He’s guilty, that bloke, and I want to get him.”
“After it was all over the police started looking for you all, when you hadn’t done anything – that’s right, isn’t it?” Melanie asked.
“Yes,” Dominic told Fleur. “A week later suddenly the cops were asking round about Joe and Vanessa and me. Somebody got it out of them it was about a burglary in the West End. Which we hadn’t done. But that might not have made any difference if they’d caught us – and anyway, none of us was squeaky clean. So we just disappeared. Vanessa went to her auntie in Wales and Joe and me worked hard and got our fares for a business trip to Barcelona. And stayed away for six months and then got together again in London. Only this time we were careful. We had enough cash from Barcelona to fix ourselves up with new ID. It was only when Vanessa got the flat and we decided to join the mainstream that we made a bonfire of our fake IDs and surfaced again.”
“You told me I was paranoid when I thought Vanessa was killed,” Joe interrupted.
“You were,” Dominic said.
“So – Mel says there was a man photographing us at Vanessa’s funeral,” Joe told him.
“What?” Dominic said. “What are you talking about?”
“He was,” said Melanie. “He was right over the other side of the cemetery, but he was pointing the camera at us.”
“You must have good eyesight,” Dominic said disbelievingly.
“I have, as a matter of fact,” she told him.
“She has,” Joe confirmed.
“Probably a bird watcher,” Dominic said.
Fleur was dazed and upset. She had to admit that from what she knew of her father he could have been involved in the affair at the mews house in exactly the way Joe and Dominic had described. He might have tried to stop Vanessa’s assailant, but if his own interests were likely to be affected, not determinedly enough. His aim, once the damage was done, would have been to get the thing over as quickly and quietly as possible. There was no proof he was the man Joe and Dominic were accusing. But he could have been.
She barely listened to the rest of the conversation, about the police enquiries and the photographs taken in the graveyard. All three of them, she thought, Joe, Dominic and Vanessa, had been involved in petty crime, dealing small quantities of drugs, shoplifting, using stolen credit cards. You didn’t have to be a genius to work out what Joe and Dominic had been doing in Barcelona.
They hadn’t all been forced to live like that. Vanessa could’ve gone home at any time. Perhaps Dominic could have gone back to Ireland where his family would have taken him in. Only Joe would have had nobody to turn to. Instead they’d taken to the streets. Vanessa had become a heavy drug user. The other two were thieves. Vanessa had taken a step too far, got into a car when money was held out to her and when the customer turned out to be a sadist. Dominic and Joe had been too scared to call on the only people who could, at that point, have protected her – the police. They’d all fucked up.
Terribly depressed, she realised she was turning against Dominic and Joe – Vanessa, too. All right, she thought, she was probably criticising the three because Dominic and Joe were implicating her father in a crime. But what was she doing here listening to his sordid story which had ended in a death, not to mention the conspiracy theories surrounding it? It took her too close to a frightening, out-of-control world she wanted nothing to do with. She felt sick and scared, and said what was on her mind. “What a bloody mess. Vanessa raped and beaten, then dead. You two make a pig’s ear of the whole thing and now you’re working on some conspiracy theory. And my father, or somebody pretty much like him, colluded and there’ll never be any accounting. Never be any justice.” She stood up. “I’m sorry. I’m going home.”
She went back to her flat on her own. She went straight to bed, but her head was whirling. She couldn’t sleep. Ben was arriving tomorrow. How could she take another afternoon off the course to go and meet him? They’d chuck her out. She must complete it. The Camera Shake contract was for six months only. If the production company didn’t work out she’d be back looking for another job in the summer. She mustn’t get thrown off the course. And she had to meet Jess as soon as she could get to Soho after the afternoon session ended, because they had work to do. And what if Ben’s flight was delayed? She couldn’t go to the airport to meet him. Funny, she thought, six months earlier she’d have walked barefoot to the airport in a blizzard to see him as soon as he arrived. Now, somehow, it seemed she wouldn’t. He’d probably expect to stay with her, she thought.
Had the man who’d colluded in Vanessa’s attack really been her father? Dominic and Joe had seen the man only briefly five years earlier. Now all they had was a photograph to go on. But she knew whoever the man was he’d reacted just the way her father would have. To that man – her father, or anyone like him – what happened to Vanessa would have been just an episode, something involving a woman of no account
, a bit of trash from the streets. What had happened to Vanessa then, he would reason, was probably what had happened to her before and would do again. The important thing would be to deal with it, quickly and quietly. But, she thought, if it had never happened, if her father, or whoever it was, had helped Vanessa instead of throwing her out in the street, she might have felt more like someone who deserved to live. Ellen would not now be so sad and disillusioned and Joe and Dominic so profoundly cynical about what they and anyone like them could expect. It’s a nightmare, she thought, all a nightmare.
She went to sleep eventually. Too early, her alarm rang and she got up to read some of the bundle of scripts she’d taken from Camera Shake the night before. She felt horrible knowing she was pushing aside Dominic and Joe’s story. She could not stop to consider the problem of Ben and what she thought about him.
At lunchtime she rang Jess from the call box in the hall of the computer centre and asked if she could organise a Camera Shake car to collect Ben from the airport that afternoon.
“Ben? Back? Oh God!” cried Jess.
“Can you do it?” Fleur asked desperately. “I’m in a call box – the money’s running out.”
“Give me the details,” demanded Jess and Fleur did so.
“But where’s he going to—?” asked Jess. The connection was broken. Yes, thought Fleur, as she went back into the classroom, that’s what I’m wondering – where’s he going to sleep? Perhaps he had somewhere fixed up already. Perhaps.
When Fleur arrived in Debs’ luxurious office, where Jess was mixing herself a martini, there was no sign of Ben. Fleur thought hopefully that he must have arrived there, then gone off somewhere else. She was surprised at how much of a relief this seemed to be. It was, she told herself, nothing to do with Ben. It was just not a good moment for this. Then she grinned, remembering how she and Jess had once laughed at people who used that phrase, “Not the best possible moment”, when asked to help.
“The driver called from Heathrow,” Jess told her. “The flight’s three hours late so he’s still there, waiting. The plane’s due in any time now.”