The Woodcutter (8 page)

‘Though that might be described as the triumph of hope over experience,’ he concluded.

‘That sounds rather sexist even for a dedicated male chauvinist like yourself,’ said Alva.

‘Why so? I refer not to the sister’s unattractiveness, although it is great, but Childs’ predilections.’

‘You mean he’s gay?’

‘Very likely, though in his case he seems to get his kicks out of moulding and mentoring personable young men, then sitting back to watch them prosper in their adult careers. Geoff Toplady was one such, I believe, and he’s certainly prospered. Word is that he’ll be lording it in the Court of Appeal by Christmas. Oh yes. Hitch your wagon to John Childs and the sky’s the limit.’

‘Meaning what? That he’s buying their silence?’

‘Good Lord, what a mind you have! Still, if you spend your time dabbling in dirt, I suppose some of it must stick. No, on the whole Childs’ young men seem to be very positively heterosexual types, and the fact that most of them seem perfectly happy to continue the relationship in adult life suggests that he never tried to initiate them into the joys of buggery as boys. A form of sublimation, I expect you’d call it.’

‘Giles, if you don’t try any analysis, I won’t try any cases,’ said Alva acidly, stung more than she cared to show by the dabbling-in-dirt crack. ‘Would Simon Homewood have been one of his mentored boys?’

‘I believe he was. Of course, it could be Childs is going blind and mistook you for a testosteronic young man in need of a helping hand. Whatever, you simply hit lucky, Alva. No subtle conspiracy to take a closer look at you. Even the seating plan at these do’s is purely a random thing so you don’t get all the nobs clumping together.’

Alva didn’t believe the last – nothing lawyers did was ever random – but she more or less accepted that fate alone had been responsible for her advancement. Which, she assured herself, she didn’t mind. The world was full of excellent young psychiatrists; far better to be one of the lucky ones!

Still it would have been nice to be headhunted! Or perhaps she meant it would have made her feel more confident that she was the right person in the right job.

She met Chief Officer Proctor as she went through the gate. He greeted her with his usual breezy friendliness, but as always she felt those sharp eyes were probing in search of the weakness that would justify his belief that this wasn’t a suitable job for a woman.

She put all these negative thoughts out of her mind as she sat and waited for Hadda to be brought into the interview room.

His face was expressionless as he sat down, placing his hands on the table before him with perhaps a little over emphasis.

Then he let his gaze fall slowly to the exercise book she’d laid before her and said, ‘Well?’

And she said, with a brightness that set her own teeth on edge, ‘It’s very interesting.’

And this led to the brief exchange that ended with them trying to outstare each other.

This was not how she’d planned to control the session.

She said abruptly, ‘Tell me about Woodcutter Enterprises.’

Her intention was to distract him by focusing not on his paedophilia, which was her principal concern, but on the fraudulent business activities that had got him the other half of his long sentence.

He looked at her with an expression that suggested he saw through her efforts at dissimulation as easily as she saw through his, but he answered, ‘You know what a private equity company is?’

She nodded and he went on, ‘That’s what Woodcutter was to start with. We identified businesses that needed restructuring because of poor management and organization which often made them vulnerable to take-over as well. When we took charge, we restructured by identifying the healthy profit-making elements and getting rid of the rest. And eventually we’d move on, leaving behind a leaner, healthier, much more viable business.’

‘So, a sort of social service?’ she said, smiling.

‘No need to take the piss,’ he said shortly. ‘The aim of business is to make profits and that’s what Woodcutter did very successfully and completely legitimately.’

She said, ‘And you called yourselves Woodcutter Enterprises because you saw your job as pruning away deadwood from potentially healthy business growth?’

He smiled, not the attractive face-lightening smile she had already remarked upon but a teeth-baring grimace that reminded her that his nickname was Wolf.

‘That’s it, you’re right, as usual. And eventually as time went by with some of our more striking successes we retained a long-term interest, so anyone saying we were in for a quick buck then off without a backward glance ought to check the history.’

Interesting, she thought. His indignation at accusation of business malpractice seems at least as fervent as in relation to the sexual charges.

She said, ‘I think the relevant government department has done all the checking necessary, don’t you?’

For a moment she thought she might have provoked him into another outburst, but he controlled himself and said quietly, ‘So where are we now, Dr Ozigbo? I’ve done what you asked and started putting things down on paper. I’ve told you how things happened, the way they happened. I thought someone in your job would have an open mind, but it seems to me you’ve made as many prejudgments as the rest of them!’

The reaction didn’t surprise her. The written word gave fantasy a physical existence and, to start with, the act of writing things down nearly always reinforced denial.

‘This isn’t about me, it’s about you,’ she said gently. ‘I said it was very interesting, and I really meant that. But you said it was just the first instalment. Perhaps we’d better wait till I’ve had the whole oeuvre before I venture any further comment. How does that sound, Wilfred? May I call you Wilfred? Or do you prefer Wilf? Or Wolf? That was your nickname, wasn’t it?’

She had never moved beyond the formality of Mr Hadda. To use any other form of address when she was getting no or very little response would have sounded painfully patronizing. But she needed to do something to mark this small advance in their relationship.

He said, ‘
Wolf
. Yes, I used to get Wolf. Press made a lot of that, I recall. I was named after my dad. Wilfred. He got Fred. And I got Wilf till . . . But that’s old history. Call me what you like. But what about you? I’m tired of saying
Doctor.
Sounds a bit clinical, doesn’t it? And you want to be my friend, don’t you? So let me see . . . Your name’s Alva, isn’t it? Where does that come from?’

‘It’s Swedish. My mother’s Swedish. It means
elf
or something.’

The genuine non-lupine smile again. That made three times. It was good he doled it out so sparingly. Forewarned was forearmed.

‘Wolf and elf, not a million miles apart,’ he said. ‘You call me Wolf, I’ll call you Elf, OK?’

Elf
. This had been her father’s pet name for her since childhood. No one else ever used it. She wished she hadn’t mentioned the meaning, but thought she’d hidden her reaction till Hadda said, ‘Sure you’re OK with that? I can call you madam, if you prefer.’

‘No,
Elf
will be fine,’ she said.

‘Great. And elves perform magic, don’t they?’

He reached into his tunic and pulled out another exercise book.

‘So let’s see you perform yours, Elf,’ he said, handing it over. ‘Here’s Instalment Two.’

Wolf

i

You open your eye.

The light is so dazzling, you close it instantly.

Then you try again, this time very cautiously. The process takes two or three minutes and even then you don’t open it fully but squint into the brightness through your lashes.

You are in bed. You have wires and tubes attached to your body, so it must be a hospital bed. Unless you’ve been kidnapped by aliens.

You close your eye once more to consider whether that is a joke or a serious option.

Surely you ought to know that?

It occurs to you that somehow you are both experiencing this and at the same time observing yourself experiencing it.

Neither the observer nor the experiencer is as yet worried.

You open your eye again.

You’re getting used to the brightness. In fact the observer notes that it’s nothing more than whatever daylight is managing to enter the room through the slats of a Venetian blind on the single window.

The only sound you can hear is a regular beep.

This is reassuring to both of your entities as they know from the hospital soaps it means you’re alive.

Then you hear another sound, a door opening.

You close your eye and wait.

Someone enters the room and approaches the bed. Everything goes quiet again. The suspense is too much. You need to take a look.

A nurse is standing by the bedside, writing on a clipboard. Her gaze moves down to your face and registers the open eye. Hers round in surprise.

It is only then that it occurs to you that they usually come in pairs.

You say, ‘Where’s my other eye?’

At least that’s your intention. To the observer and presumably to the nurse what comes out sounds like a rusty hinge on a long unopened door.

She steps back, takes a mobile out of her pocket, presses a button and says, ‘Tell Dr Jekyll he’s awake.’

Dr Jekyll? That doesn’t sound like good news.

You close your eye again. Until you get a full report on the spare situation, it seems wise not to overtax it.

You hear the door open and then the nurse’s voice as she assures the newcomer that your eye was open and you’d tried to talk. A somewhat superior male voice says, ‘Well, let’s see, shall we?’

A Doubting Thomas, you think. Feeling indignant on the nurse’s behalf you give him a repeat performance. He responds by producing a pencil torch and shining it straight into your precious eye.

Bastard!

Then he asks, ‘Do you know who you are?’

You could have done with notice of this question.

Does it mean he has no idea who you are?

Or is he merely wanting to check on your state of awareness?

You need time to think. Not just about how you should respond tactically, but simply how you should respond.

You are beginning to realize you’re far from certain if you know who you are or not.

You check with your split personality.

The observer declares his best bet is that you’re someone called Wilfred Hadda, that you’ve been in an accident, that leading up to the accident you’d been in some kind of trouble, but no need to worry about that just now as it will probably all come back to you eventually.

The experiencer ignores all this intellectual stuff. You’re a one-eyed man in a hospital bed, he says, and all that matters is finding out just how much of the rest of you is missing.

You make a few more rusty hinge noises and Dr Jekyll demonstrates that the tens of thousands spent on his training have not been altogether misused by saying, ‘Nurse, I think he needs some water.’

He presses a button that raises the top half of the bed up to an angle of forty-five degrees. For a moment the change of viewpoint is vertiginous and you feel like you’re about to tumble off the edge of a cliff.

Then your head clears and the nurse puts a beaker of water to your lips.

‘Careful,’ says Jekyll. ‘Not too much.’

Bastard! He’s probably one of those mean gits who put optics on spirit bottles so they know exactly how much booze they’re giving their dinner guests.

When at last you get enough liquid down your throat to ease your clogged vocal cords, you don’t try to speak straight away. First you need a body check.

You try to waggle fingers and toes and feel pleased to get a reaction. But that means nothing. You’ve read about people still having pain from a limb that was amputated years ago. With a great effort you raise your head to get a one-eyed view of your arms.

First the left. That looks fine. Then the right. Something wrong there. You’re sure you used to have more than two fingers. But a man can get by on two fingers. Missing toes would be more problematical.

You say, ‘Feet.’

Jekyll looks blank but the nurse catches on quickly.

‘He wants to see his feet,’ she says.

Jekyll still looks puzzled. Perhaps he had a hangover when they did feet on his course. But the nurse slowly draws back the sheet and reveals your lower body.

The Boy David it isn’t, but at least everything seems to be there even if your left leg does look like it’s been badly assembled by a sculptor who felt that Giacometti was a bit too profligate with his materials. There’s a tube coming out of your cock and someone’s been shaving your pubic hair. So far as you can see, your scrotum’s still intact.

You try for something a little more complicated than wiggling your toes but an attempt to bend your knees produces nothing more than a slow twitch and you give up.

You say, ‘Mirror.’

Nurse and doctor exchange glances over your body.

They’re both wearing name tags. The nurse is called Jane Duggan.

The doctor claims to be Jacklin, not Jekyll. A misprint, you decide.

Jekyll shrugs as if to say he doesn’t care one way or the other, mirrors are a nurse thing.

Nurse Duggan leaves the room. Jekyll takes your pulse and does a couple of other doctorly things you’re too weak to stop him from doing. Then Jane comes back in carrying a small shaving mirror.

She holds it up before your face.

You look into it and observer and experiencer unite in a memory of what you used to look like.

You never were classically handsome; more an out-of-doors, rough-hewn type.

Rough-hewn falls a long way short now. You look as if you’ve been worked over by a drunken chain-saw operator.

Where your right eye used to be is a hollow you could sink a long putt in.

Out of your left eye something liquid is oozing.

You realize you are starting to cry.

You say, ‘Fuck off.’

And to give Nurse Duggan and Dr Jekyll their due, off they fuck.

ii

It turns out you have been in a coma for nearly nine months.