Chapter 10
ROBYN
‘I’ve been ringing you all evening, Fabian.
’ After seeing Jess, Sorrel and Arthur safely into an Uber, Robyn had left the Honda in The Green Dragon car park, walking the ten minutes around the village duck pond, across the village green and cricket pitch to the Dower House cottage she and Fabian had been renting for the last few months.
While she certainly didn’t have any concerns about walking across the village in the dark on her own, the awful events of the evening had left her utterly distressed and she just wanted to be home with Fabian.
‘You didn’t pick up,’ she went on as she collapsed on the sofa next to him.
‘Sorry, sorry, didn’t hear the phone.’ Fabian reached over, kissing the top of her head.
‘What?’ Robyn sat up, staring. ‘You’ve never not got your phone attached to your ear. You’re actually worse than Sorrel…’
‘I turned it off.’
‘You never turn it off. Where’ve you been?’
‘What’s this? The Spanish Inquisition?’ Fabian laughed but she felt a tension in his response. ‘I’ve been over to Harrogate to see Jemima.’
‘Oh, you didn’t say you were going over to see your sister.’ Robyn sat up properly now.
‘Tea?’ Fabian jumped up, moving to the kitchen cupboard for mugs and teabags. ‘Yes,’ he continued, not looking at her, ‘thought I’d check she got Boris back down to Mum and Dad OK.’
‘And did she?’
‘Did she what?’
‘Get the dog back to Marlow safely?’
Fabian nodded.
‘Funny that,’ Robyn said. ‘Because I spoke to her at lunchtime. I wanted to know how her twenty-week scan had gone. She and Bruce are having a little girl. She must have told you that, Fabian?’
Fabian didn’t turn from dropping teabags into the bin and adding milk to the mugs.
‘Trying to work out your next move?’ Robyn asked quietly, now standing behind him. ‘All your training and experience in court advising you where to go next? Bit like a game of chess, is it?’
‘OK, OK, OK!’ Fabian, still with his back to her, put up two hands. ‘Look, I don’t want you involved in what’s going on.’
‘What is going on? Fabian?’ When he didn’t respond, when he was obviously trying to justify lying to her, Robyn said, ‘Blane Higson’s dead.’
Fabian whirled round, slopping scalding liquid onto his hand and down the cream kitchen units. He didn’t appear to notice.
‘Blane Higson? That scrawny little kid I went with you to see a few months ago? At his mum’s place in that awful tower block?’
Robyn nodded.
‘Fuck, they’re serious then.’ Fabian stared.
‘They? Who? What’s going on, Fabian?’
‘What did they do to him?’
‘They, whoever they are, didn’t do anything to him.’
‘Oh?’ There was a slight release of tension in Fabian’s voice. ‘I’m sorry. So sorry. I know you and he…’
‘He was probably high on something – glue or ketamine – nicked a bike…’
‘A pushbike?’
Robyn gave him a withering look. ‘A pushbike? He’d got one of those motorbikes they’re all on these days. Did a wheelie at speed and smashed into George Sattar’s car outside school.’
‘George Sattar? Kamran’s younger brother?’ Fabian stared again. ‘What the hell was he doing there?’
‘Having a meeting with Mason and the governors about razing the school to the ground presumably; he got more than he bargained for when Blane crashed into him.’
‘Is George OK?’
‘Dunno. I think so. I saw him helped out of the car and put into an ambulance. His car seemed to get the brunt of it.’ Robyn paused. ‘Look, Fabian, George Sattar isn’t my priority at the moment. What you’re up to is.’
‘It’s nothing. I don’t want you involved.’ Fabian turned away, not looking at her.
‘Oh, don’t give me that. This is something to do with those two blokes in the car park in Leeds, isn’t it?’
Fabian said nothing.
‘And, you might as well know, I know.’
‘You know what?’ Fabian turned to face her, holding her eye.
‘That you’re working for them.’ Robyn folded her arms, daring him to deny what she was saying.
Fabian grimaced slightly. ‘What? What are you talking about? Working for them? Robyn, this isn’t the effing Godfather…’
‘Oh, as good as,’ Robyn snapped. ‘Blane came to me this afternoon telling me you’re their new consigliere…’
‘The kid knows Italian?’ Fabian attempted levity. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘Fabian, Blane Higson hardly knows any English… certainly can’t spell it… apart from broad Yorkshire…’ She broke off, tears starting as she remembered. ‘Fabian, he’s dead.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ He put his arms round her. ‘But his death can’t be put down to this lot he was involved with. Sounds like he was high and out of control on a stolen bike.’
‘Not directly, maybe. But certainly indirectly.’ Robyn stood back from him, staring up into his face. ‘What do they want you to do?’
‘Oh, the usual.’ Fabian shrugged nonchalantly.
‘The usual?’
‘They saw how I helped to get Joel off through the National Referral Mechanism. They now want me to defend a couple of the kids working for them who’ve been arrested like Joel was.’
‘And?’ Robyn felt her pulse race.
‘And, I said no.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. Told the two blokes I met up with that I was no longer a practising barrister. That I’d simply been doing Joel a favour.’
‘You met up with them?’ Robyn was open mouthed.
‘The men who were in the car park in Leeds? Where?’ She pictured a deserted warehouse under the arches down by the River Calder, a couple of sober-suited men backed by thumbscrew-turning lackeys standing in the shadows, ready to chop off a couple of fingers as warning if Fabian didn’t comply.
‘Had a drink with them in a rather nice bar in Leeds.’
‘What? Are you mad? Stark-staring mad?’
‘I don’t think so. They needed to know I was no longer practising.’
‘Sounds like you’ve been practising being an idiot, Fabian.’
‘Believe me, Robyn, I know what I’m doing. Now, you look all in. Come on, I’m going to run you a bath and tuck you up in bed. You’ve had a terrible shock with Blane.’
With everything that’s happened today, Robyn thought, giving Fabian a protracted look regarding Blane’s boast that Fabian was now ‘working for us’, before heading, deep in thought, for the stairs.
* * *
Bunches of spring flowers, handwritten – some badly spelt – notes torn from exercise books and a couple of teddies were already in place outside the railings of St Mede’s when Robyn arrived at the school next morning.
The whole area where Blane had died was cordoned off, a couple of young PCs and community officers holding the fort, answering questions and showing those who’d heard of the terrible accident and come with tributes where these could be laid.
Blane had, apparently, in death, achieved the fame he’d never quite achieved during his short fourteen years of life.
An atmosphere of confusion and consternation mixed with a frisson of shocked and feverish excitement covered the whole school like a blanket, huddles of kids chattering and greeting newcomers with hugs and kisses and tears, eager to be the bearers of such impelling and intoxicating news to those not already in the know.
Robyn, having spent a turbulent night tossing and turning next to Fabian, felt exhausted and tetchy, unwilling, or at least unprepared, to turn Blane into the hero or saint some of the kids were now making him out to be.
Most of the pupils, even down to the Year 7 kids, knew who Blane Higson was.
Most hadn’t liked the scruffy, scrawny kid, had looked down on him, despising him for what he stood for.
Now, suddenly, he was a gang member, put up on the cross of a stolen motorcycle for his sins, a martyr to the cause.
The thought only added to Robyn’s feelings of sadness and despair as she made her way to the staff room.
‘Full assembly straight away,’ Mason barked, putting his head round the staff room door where, for once, there was an atmosphere of shocked bewilderment rather than the feverish planning, photocopying, last-minute cups of coffee and toast consumption before the staff headed once more into the fray.
Robyn made for the kettle but was stopped in her tracks by John Vaughn, Head of maths, addressing her loud enough for other members of staff to hear.
‘Your sister, I believe?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Robyn frowned.
‘I hear it was your sister who caused the accident?’
‘It was your Sorrel? No!’ Colleen McCartney, Head of girls’ PE, with whom Robyn had never had much of a relationship, turned, animated. ‘She was there? She was to blame? Have the police questioned her then?’
‘What? Oh, for heaven’s sake, Colleen, what’s the matter with you?’ Robyn threw the woman a disgusted look.
‘Well, John’s just said it was your sister! And I assume she’d been at one of your rehearsals after school?’
‘Blane killed himself!’ Jo Cooper, coming into the staff room, glared at Colleen and John in turn. ‘In a terrible accident.’
‘Well, the rumour is that your sister had something to do with it, Robyn.’ John Vaughn wasn’t letting it go.
‘Sorrel was with me all evening,’ Robyn said angrily.
‘Well…’ Colleen’s eyes were wide.
‘My big sister, Jess, if it’s anything at all to do with you, Colleen, was in her van waiting for Sorrel and me…’
‘And she knocked him off his bike?’
‘No, Colleen, let’s get rid of this rumour once and for all before it’s all the way round Little Micklethwaite…’
‘Yes.’ John Vaughn nodded sagely. ‘And his OCG gang come looking for her to get their revenge for her taking out their most prolific drug pusher.’
‘What? Oh Jesus, you’re all as bad as each other.’ Robyn had had enough and turned, heading for the door.
‘…and if this big sister of hers was parked on double yellows – well, that has to tell you something, doesn’t it…?’ Colleen McCartney’s whining voice followed Robyn as she left.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Robyn muttered furiously under her breath, striding quickly towards the drama studio, wanting only to put distance between herself and the staff room.
‘Miss?’
Robyn whirled round, embarrassed to be caught swearing.
‘Oh, Seb. What’s up?’
‘Can I have a word, Miss?’