‘She didn’t. She couldn’t have.’
‘No, you’re right, she didn’t have it in her. Not her thing, she’d have been more careful. Only…’ He leaned forward, so he was whispering in Frank’s ear, patted his arm again and leant back, looking towards the oh-so-unavailable women, making sure he had Frank’s full attention as he began to absorb this absurd idea, and Rick turned the full focus of his honest blue eyes upon him. Frank’s blood was running hot; he could feel sweat bursting into his hair. Rick leaned forward again. ‘Only it was something she said, in all those hours together. She had to ask me once, did I have kids, and I said, no, not that I know of, and I was a bit sorry about that, but I’d still got time, and did she? And she said, perhaps just to make me feel at home, yes, she’d had one, once. Then it was gone, just like she wanted, because she hadn’t wanted it at all, so it went to someone else. It was only her talking, trying to get close. Probably not true. Oh, you do look ill. Had I better get you home?’
Best friends. United. Nothing freeloading about Rick, he’d paid for it all. He had a job selling advertising space, he said, somewhere along the line, boring as anything, but paid OK if you knew how to sell. Frank liked a man who bought the drinks, and then when he was a bit wobbly, bought another, and waited for him to feel better and then, would you believe, stuffed cash in his pocket towards a taxi. They would meet again, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, ’cos we do have to work, don’t we, Frank? We could check out Thomas Noble’s place, see what he’s up to, don’t trust him, Frank, he’ll shaft you and then we’ll go down to one of those proper pubs round Fleet Street where you see the lady lawyers and bankers, and the booze is better, OK?
I think she said she had a son, Frank, but it may have been a girl. It wasn’t a gender-specific conversation, it was about kids.
Take no notice, Frank, I’ve upset you again, but I’m here to help, really. Why should it matter one way or another, might be nice to be an uncle, now that she’s dead, no, perhaps not.
Why did she tell you, Rick? Because we had hours together, waiting for things to happen and you get talking, you know? She was good at getting people to talk, open up, you know?
On the way home, feeling sick again, but not too sick to notice the time and find it still early enough for recovery by morning to be a distinct possibility, Frank thought, And you’re not so bad at that, either, in the briefest moment of suspicion which passed, quickly. They had that in common, he and Rick Boyd: they could both talk the talk and there was nothing wrong with that. He was thanking his lucky stars that Rick had come along because he knew he had found a friend, just at the time when the lack of them weighed on him. He was lonelier than a lost soul in hell, buoyed up by hope of redemption, which just at this moment looked awful shaky. Fancy him coming straight from fucking Thomas Noble as soon as he knew, the very next day. His head had cleared, only now it felt like a hollow drum, supported by his shoulders, with someone banging on it.
The rules of intestacy, Thomas had said, doing his pompous, finger-wagging lecture that had accompanied his first introduction to the client, mean, as follows: If parents are dead, all goes to children. If no children, to brothers and sisters in equal shares, if none of them, cousins etc. Children first, they take all, so you’re a lucky chap, she didn’t have any, not her thing. Otherwise, you’d be out of the loop. Nada. And my client would not be you. It would be him or her. Or them.
Frank’s head jarred against the window of the cab, the driver treating him with contempt, cornering fast, lurching around with a prepaid customer, hating the route north away from the fleshpots of Mayfair. Fat chance of picking up another fare in Willesden for the route home. Frank clutched the door handle, steadied himself upright and automatically checked his heart, his wallet and his balls, finding all intact. Not a bad day all round before that last bit, still winning, been dreaming of living in Marianne’s all-white flat in Kensington, debt-free, new suits, new opportunities. Before this spectre introduced itself in the form of a grown-up bastard bent on taking it all away with a prior claim of blood that would nullify his. The last revenge of his hateful sister would be this and he could hear her laughing. I really got you going there, didn’t I, Frank? Only nothing was ever yours.
Rick’s words, over the last round, like, I didn’t mean to upset you, and then Frank had found himself explaining the point. If Marianne had a child still alive and known, I’m fucked, Rick, I really am.
‘No, you’re not. Not if it’s not interested. Not if it’s dead. Not if it lives in another country. Not if what she said in passing wasn’t true. Just a woman boasting.’
‘Thomas Noble will find It. If he knows there’s an It, a legal inheritor, he’ll find It. He’ll regard it as his bounden duty, the prick.’
‘Well, we’d better find It first, hadn’t we, Frank? And what business is this of Mr Noble’s? Who’s going to tell him? Everything’s confidential with me, Frank.
Here we go; see you, when did we say? There’s better pubs down the City end. More intimate. Better tarts, we’ll go there Wednesday, drink here tomorrow? Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out. I’ve got your number. Go easy, friend, phone me in the morning.’
We. Frank’s first instinct had been right. Rick Boyd was the bearer of bad news, but also the bringer of good tidings. He was like a tidal wave of reassurance, bringing the not-so-good news and also the solution. Don’t shoot the messenger, or ignore him.
When Marianne was twenty, she was here, in London. He was still in NZ with Mummy and Daddy; none of them would have known.
Rick Boyd watched the taxi trundle away into the distance and hugged his coat around his body. It was a good coat and he was fond of it. He had found it in the open cloakroom of a club into which he had invited himself and selected it on the way out as being far warmer and better-fitting than the one he had worn on the way in. He was trying to remember which club it was: the Groucho, the Travellers or the Reform. It was an old man’s coat, indistinguishable from many others; no one would recognise it again. The visiting of such clubs was the cautious part of a wider plan on which he had been working ever since his acquittal. The strategy had formed itself in prison, where his incarceration with exclusively male company had made him realise that maybe he had got it wrong, because men were easier to con than women, equally gullible while demanding less. They required a different approach, sure; none of the physical seduction, although he didn’t rule it out; only the befriending, the playing of the role, and so many men were lonely, willing to compromise with the virtual, rather than the actual embrace.
Rick Boyd did well in custody. Model prisoner, barrack-room lawyer since law was his hobby, benign influence on the younger inmates, got even fitter in the gym – done wonders for his upper body strength – and even the warders liked him. Rumour had it he was in for fraud, he looked so smart. That was what gave him the idea, because if you could fool a screw, you could fool anyone. Conning men would be easier than conning women; he should have seen it before. Either way, you got the trust and when you couldn’t keep it any longer or the game was up, or they turned sour, you turned on the pain. Picking the target, working out the scam was the hardest bit. You needed someone already halfway to corruption. Rick was congratulating himself. Sweet Marianne Shearer had handed him an heir.
He walked through Jermyn Street, passing the shirtmakers’ and shoemakers’ shops, into Regent Street to Oxford Circus, passing Aquascutum, Austin Reed with the January sales notices in the windows. Displays of clothes never tempted him any more than the clothes themselves, except for the sweet cleanliness of anything new. He liked the smell of new, unused things; he was rigorous to the point of neurosis about hygiene. That was where prison had hurt and where the humiliation of it was excruciating, the constant smell of men, but at least it did not enrage him like the smell of an unwashed woman. It was the stench of their misery that made him want to hurt them; no such complications with men. Rick was not going to get that close and he was sick of any kind of flesh.