Life Without Me Read online

  He was about to turn and walk away, when, panicked and desperate, I screeched alongside the lead singer, ‘Uuuuhaaa!’

  He stopped and looked at me, intrigued. I felt like such a twat, but at least I had his attention. I performed an elaborate body twist – till then I didn’t know I had it in me – and gave out another heartfelt ‘Uuuuhaaa!’

  ‘Are you local?’ I was keen to establish his credentials before going anywhere further with it.

  ‘Bristol!’

  ‘Nah, get out of here! Me too!’

  He shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘Working?’

  ‘Studying!’

  ‘I can’t believe it! Me too! Don’t tell me it’s Bristol Uni?’

  ‘It is!’

  ‘You’re kidding me!’

  ‘Third year, Law!’

  That was when I stopped twisting and twitching and stood dead in my tracks. I knew it then – it was destiny. ‘First year, Law.’ I said.

  ‘What did you say?!’

  ‘Take me out of here!’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Just somewhere else!’

  We tumbled out into the streets of Edinburgh. I had no idea where I was, but I was in good, reliable hands.

  ‘Got a name?’ I asked him.

  ‘Rob,’ he said and fell silent. He was positively bewildered.

  ‘I got a name, too. It’s Georgiana.’ And that dealt with all the preliminaries.

  I was deflowered that very night in a dark alley, standing on an abandoned beer crate to match his height. The premature deflowering was the only thing that didn’t go according to my plan, i.e. it didn’t take place on our wedding night. But that was academic. I’d found my Mr Right – even if I had had to go all the way to Edinburgh to get him. From then on it was plain sailing. I had us engaged by Christmas and married two years later when I was three months pregnant with Mark. Mark was born two days after my graduation. Everything fell into place like tiny pieces of a puzzle. And I was the puzzle master; Rob was just watching, still very much bewildered – but happy, I led myself to believe.

  I was happy too. Our family was my greatest achievement. I wasn’t going to let a moment of madness destroy it. I ended it with Tony, reinstated myself in the driver’s seat of life, and once again everything was fine and jolly, until the hit-and-run.

  I am getting ahead of myself. Back to that fateful day …

  It was going to be a long morning. There was a line-up of well-meaning relatives, friends, and neighbours willing to testify to Ehler’s unassailable character. It was all but a formality, yet I was feeling restless. Something was niggling at the back of my mind. The guilty plea had come too easily. There was something to it. There had to be something to it. Tony didn’t throw in the towel unless there was something bigger at stake. But what?

  Jason Mahon, the juvenile in a stolen vehicle we had followed all the way to Ehler’s garage, was yet to testify against him. He was jittery and highly unreliable, trapped into giving his testimony by a deal that would keep him out of prison but would destroy his budding criminal career. He could back out at any time. The connection between him and Ehler would be hard to establish. No one else was prepared to talk to us, and yet Ehler entered the guilty plea.

  Of course, we had other evidence of cars with false papers and reinvented bodywork turning up on the market and a trail of crumbs leading to Ehler, but it was circumstantial. I had been looking forward to piecing it all together before the jury, exposing Ehler’s trademark handiwork and blowing the network of his underage associates out of the water. His garage was the headquarters for small-time trade in stolen cars and he was the brains behind juvenile car crime in Clifton, where Jags and BMWs stood in every driveway – and where every well-connected resident had a high expectation of the law in action. The law had to be seen to be done.

  I had already been relishing the sight of Tony’s face as I dragged his client through the grilling cross-examination by my brilliant silk, Hugh Bramley-Jones, as I threw at him evidence he would have to sweat hard to repudiate, as the jury declared his client guilty, as the judge sent the bugger down. Defeating Tony would be orgasmic. I needed it. I had it all planned …

  Then came the guilty plea. It felt as if someone – Tony – had pulled out my teeth. It just wasn’t right. I had been deprived of the satisfaction of winning.

  I sat through the excruciating catalogue of Ehler’s good deeds and services to the community. Short of the young car thieves telling us what a star-of-the-year employer he was, we had heard from every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Tony was sprawled across the courtroom, smiling, looking relaxed. He definitely wasn’t defeated. Quite the opposite, he was relieved.

  ‘Could you please state your name, address, and occupation for the court,’ the court clerk was initiating yet another character witness, an elderly man, stooped, shoddily dressed in an oversized, stained suit and striped tie straight from the seventies.

  ‘Harold Prickwane, 24B Sparrow Rise, West Street, Bedminster … um, pensioner.’

  Prickwane … Prickwane, what a funny name. I knew that name. That sort of ridiculous name always stuck …

  As the old man was explaining his relationship to the accused as that of his father-in-law, I was frantically paging through my bundle of documents. I remembered that name from somewhere. It struck me as peculiar. I even remembered thinking that it wasn’t a real name. Yes! I had it! Prickwane Properties Limited! That was the name of Ehler’s landlord!

  Ehler was allegedly a small fish who, upon reneging on his mortgage repayments and losing his house six years ago, earned himself an adverse credit rating and could no longer afford to own a property. The house he lived in, in the leafy area of Clifton, was rented. Poor chap had been – apparently – pushed into the life of crime by his financial difficulties. To make ends meet, as he himself had put it with a humble and plaintive expression in his face, he would take on a dodgy car, without asking questions, repaint it, puff it up and pass it onto a dealer, make hardly any profit for his efforts … That’s all, your Highness … You almost felt for the poor bastard. Until now.

  Ehler’s landlord was Harold Prickwane, his father-in-law, who himself resided in a council flat in one of the shabbiest areas of Bristol! I scribbled a quick note to Hugh, saying: He’s Ehler’s landlord. Prickwane Properties! Ask what he lives on. Hugh obliged.

  ‘Mr Prickwane, would you be so kind as to tell the Court what your monthly income is?’

  ‘Me income?’

  ‘What do you live on?’

  ‘Me pension, what else?’

  ‘How about the income from your properties?’

  ‘Me what?’ Harold Prickwane blinked. ‘You trying to be funny or something?’

  ‘My understanding is you’re the director and sole shareholder of Prickwane Properties, a company that owns, amongst other properties, the house where your daughter and son-in-law live.’

  ‘What’s he on about?’ Prickwane addressed the judge, who prompted him to answer the question.

  ‘Let me help you there, Mr Prickwane, if you don’t mind my helping?’

  Hugh was a brilliant Cheshire cat of a barrister. He was fat. He was smooth. And he was lethal. ‘Perhaps you simply don’t have the heart to charge rent to your own family. Is that it? Is that why you have to live on state support while being the proud owner of an estate worth over half a million pounds?’

  ‘I owns Mick’s house?’ Harold Prickwane was laughing heartily. ‘That’s a good one, that is!’ He was thoroughly amused, unlike Tony, who’d tensed up in his seat, looking pallid and seriously shaken. I had him! His silk raised an objection that Mr Prickwane was not on trial here. I didn’t care. Hugh didn’t care. We let the poor sod go. We had bigger fish to fry.

  After the hearing, I phoned Tony to suggest lunch. I wanted to look him in the eye when I told him my plans for his client. I wanted to be sexy, predatory, deadly – everything he loved to fear in a woman. He agreed and I tarted myself up to the
hilt: shedload of lipstick, buckets of Opium. God knows why (our sex-in-a-toilet-cubicle days were done and over with) but I shot out to Ann Summers and bought a pair of fishnets and crotchless knickers. Equipped for every possible climax, I headed to the Café Rouge.

  I could feel goose pimples all over my body! This was the beginning of a long and tantalising battle. I knew in my bones that Ehler’s panel-beating garage in Clifton was just the tip of an iceberg. There was more, much more to Mick Ehler than making ends meet!

  Tony was waiting for me. He smiled, waved; I waved back and trotted to his table. I could smell his stag scent over my bucketfuls of Opium. Cold air tickled my naked groin. I felt drunk already. The large glass of red I’d ordered would see me under the table. I decided not to touch it.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Tony purred nonchalantly, ‘you closed a case in under two weeks. It calls for a promotion. Director of Prosecutions? What do you think?’

  ‘Not yet, Tony.’

  ‘No? Family first, career second? It’s not like you, Georgie.’

  ‘I’m not talking about the promotion; I’ll take it any time,’ I purred back. ‘It’s the case that isn’t over yet. I thought I should let you know –’

  Our lunch arrived: my salad Nicoise, his risotto.

  ‘So what is it you want to share with me? Something tasty, I hope?’

  What a dirty tease, I thought, feeling sticky between my legs.

  ‘Proceeds of Crime Act, Tony. You realise I can’t let it go after this morning’s revelations. I will be asking for full disclosure of your client’s assets, bank accounts, directorships – the lot.’

  ‘You’ll be wasting your time and the taxpayer’s money,’ his voice was cold.

  ‘Perhaps, but you know me – I’m a sucker for a challenge.’ I laughed, but he didn’t join me. ‘I will be digging into the affairs of all of his relatives. Dead or alive. You never know what I may unearth.’

  ‘A few corpses, I imagine.’ This time he laughed. We clinked glasses mid-air. I decided to have my glass of red after all. Once again I was in control of myself and of events. I was looking forward to crossing swords with Tony and it looked like he was too.

  I was late picking the girls up from the school gates. After my impromptu lunch with Tony, I had thrown myself into the frenzy of reconstructing Ehler’s family tree: paternal, maternal, aunts and uncles, his wife’s side inclusive. I cross-checked those names with Companies House. In no way was Harold Prickwane the mastermind – this much was certain. Prickwane was a dummy: a dumb dummy at that! The whole scheme was down to Ehler. Either he was running a lucrative money-laundering scam spread neatly amongst all his hapless relations, or I was The Queen of Sheba! And the question that begged an answer was this: where did the money come from if not from trade in stolen cars? Legitimate, hard-working panel beaters weren’t generally self-made millionaires, with their tentacles hooked firmly into real estate and multiple travel agencies. And Ehler was, by proxy. The network of his family-based companies returning fat profits was elaborate. It had to – and I was sure it could – be traced back to Ehler. I called the Central Fraud Group to organise a meeting. I wanted them to start digging into it. This affair would see me rise to the top! My cheeks were burning and I could feel myself sweating with excitement, like a teenage girl with raging hormones. That was when I realised how late it was.

  I shot across the city centre, merging onto countless roundabouts and flying under the white sails of Broadmead whilst cursing my dedication to work. I had got it from my father, I think, though I was never quite sure if he had been a genuine workaholic or simply lingered at work to avoid Mother at home. I leaned towards the latter.

  As I languished at yet another red light, my mind was racing through the unthinkable: Emma there, on her own, outside the safety of the school grounds, in her sheer tights and short skirt, fluttering her long black lashes at the passing traffic … She was only fifteen, for God’s sake! I was twenty minutes late. Anything could happen in twenty minutes. Anything could happen in a split second! Becky had probably given up waiting and gone home by bus. My daughter was alone, alone against the legion of anonymous paedophiles this city was crawling with! Again, I started breaking out in a sweat. A cold sweat.

  Then I saw them. Two girls – one short and chubby, unattractive (oh, how I wished she was the one I had to watch over!), and the other one, the one I did have to worry about: tall, long-legged, unashamedly blonde, her bony hips pushed forward, her mannerisms provocative.

  ‘Get in the car,’ I hissed.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Ibsen!’ The car wobbled comfortingly under Becky’s weight.

  I muttered a sulky greeting that was more like a growl than a spoken word. Nobody took any notice of my indicating so I braved it into the stream of traffic, hoping for a submissive driver. He was not that. It was a man in his late fifties, bald and furious-looking, driving a battered old Skoda, which lent itself to little or no respectability. He compensated by honking loudly and tailgating me all the way to the top of the road, where at last he turned and disappeared from my life forever.

  The girls were texting each other at the back of the car. Their thumbs took turns to punctuate their mobile phones’ screens. Maddening pings followed and explosions of conspiratorial laughter set my teeth on edge. I found it baffling how inept young people were these days at the art of face-to-face conversation. The spoken word was dead; dialogue subsisted only in foreign language classes. The youth of today were rude mutes with twitching thumbs and emoticons instead of faces.

  ‘Noooo!’ howled Becky after opening another message from my child.

  ‘Yes!’ my child countered. ‘Do you want to see it?’

  I saw a very keen nod in the rear view mirror.

  ‘Promise to delete it straight away?’

  Another nod.

  Another maddening ping.

  Another gasp for air and explosion of laughter.

  ‘Delete it!’

  ‘It’s huge –’

  ‘Shush! Mum …’

  ‘So when?’

  Emma bit her lip and hit the touch screen of her phone. A few seconds later – Becky’s phone’s text alert, the sound of a slaughtered pig, resounded. She read the text and typed in a reply. Emma’s phone screeched. She grinned, ‘I’ll be sixteen – I can do what I like.’

  That was the longest sentence she had uttered in ages. It had put the fear of God in me. Alarm bells sounded in my head. What did mindless teenagers do when they turned sixteen these days? Got tattoos! Huge ones! What else? What else could be huge and forbidden at sixteen? A huge tattoo, or … I couldn’t contemplate any alternatives. Anyway, she wouldn’t do anything like that. She was like me – or she was supposed to be – and I never did anything stupid. It had to be some ridiculous big tattoo. On her backside. Or her neck. She would regret it for the rest of her life. Over my dead body, I declared inwardly. Little did I know …

  I dropped them off in front of Becky’s house. It was a reassuring red-brick end of terrace with a neat front garden brimming with lavender. An empty crisp packet was trapped in the bushes. I wished someone had picked it up, or preferably, that no one had dropped it there in the first place. Any sign of neglect attracted vandalism. Allowing litter in your front garden was serious neglect. How much did it take to pick up rubbish and put it away?

  I was entertaining those dark thoughts as I was driving away. I stopped at the T-junction at the top of the road and glanced into my rear view mirror. A young man approached the girls, acting as if he knew them. He was scruffy, wearing a beanie and dirty, frayed joggers. I had the impression he knew the girls because he stood way too close to them. To be precise, he stood way too close to Emma. In fact, he and she leaned against each other, shoulder to shoulder. They laughed and their bodies parted. The young man shook his hand as if he’d been handling something very hot. Emma wagged her finger at him. He swerved and, briefly, I caught the glimpse of his face.

&nb
sp; I knew him! He was Jason Mahon, my juvenile car thief from Ehler’s case! The same square figure, the same thick black brows and large teeth. Becky pointed to my car and Jason squinted in my direction. I looked away, indicated to turn left. When I looked again, he was walking away, hands in the pockets of his joggers, head tucked between his shoulders. The girls had disappeared inside Becky’s house.

  There were several things I could’ve done, but didn’t. I could have turned back, driven past the youth, taken a good look at him, even confronted him. I could’ve knocked on the door of Becky’s house, asked about the young man and his relation to my daughter. But I didn’t do any of it because it would have made me look foolish. Instead, I told myself not to be paranoid. I told myself it couldn’t have been Jason; the world was full of scruffy young men dressed like hobos. They all looked alike.

  As Jason Mahon’s lookalike was sailing into the sunset, something was niggling at the back of my mind. Something about those two large front teeth sticking out and that narrow face of a weasel. Something about the way he hunched, burying his head between his shoulders. Something about the curious step that had the attitude of a swagger but the physicality of a limp, as if one leg was shorter than the other … I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I cast my mind back to our numerous interviews when his lawyer and I haggled over a deal. I regretted now that we had reached an agreement; I didn’t need young Jason any more now that Ehler had pleaded guilty. The little weasel didn’t deserve a nice chummy arrangement allowing him to redirect his energies into a cosy apprenticeship of his own choosing. If I remembered correctly he had managed to secure a dishwasher’s job in some restaurant. For how long would he stick to this new work experience before he returned to the life of crime? A dishwasher’s pay would certainly inspire no loyalty.

  What was it about those interviews that kept pushing Jason Mahon to the front of my mind?

  Untypically of his age and profession he was rather outspoken. His account of Ehler’s guilt was compelling.

  ‘I knew Mr Ehler was after Jags. Vintage models, leather seats, wooden dashboard –’