13. REMEMBERING TIFFANY

THE FANCY DRESS BALL (13)

“Jessica!” shouted Cynthia when she saw what her daughter was up to, “what in the name of goodness do you think you’re doing? Wait until your father hears about this, he’ll have quite a lot to say about it!”

“Oh, dearest daddy!” scoffed Jessica, “He won’t say much. He can’t, not any more. You’ll find out.”

“What do you mean?” stammered Cynthia, and I could guess the two or three thoughts that must have been on her mind when she heard what Jessica had said.

The girl was about to reply when the door she had quietly entered through was flung open much more noisily. In the instant that it banged into her back she must have involuntarily pulled the trigger of the pistol she was holding because there was an almighty explosion and the sound of a bullet ricocheting off the ceiling above my head and then burrowing itself into the nearby wall. In that instant I had two awarenesses. Firstly, that I hadn’t been hit by that bullet and secondly that I must disarm Jessica.

As she staggered forwards, a look of total surprise on her face, I grabbed hold of the gun and looked rather helplessly at it. I have been involved in researching some rather dodgy things in my time, but I’ve never held a gun, nor wanted to. But I had no time to wonder what to do with the blasted thing because I found myself faced with what I can only describe as a catfight.

It was Dakota, the other twin, who had barged in, and her face was aflame with anger.

“You silly cow!” she spat at her sister, “I never thought you could be so stupid, and my twin at that! With all the decent things in the world to do, and all the privileges you were born with, to turn to that!”

She was holding Jessica in a grip from which, struggle as she might, there seemed to be no escape. Looking at them like that it was hard to believe they were twins. They had never been identical, but now they looked a mile apart as they were locked in a tussle that I rather hoped they would stay in until I had worked out what to do.

It was the different expressions on their faces that struck me to begin with. Dakota had always been the genler of the two, and when she a young child it had been Dakota who people had warmed to, not that Jessica had been neglected. She had been more boisterous, a bit of a tomboy. And looking at their faces I could see those differences emphasised as they fought. Yet the tomboy was being dominated by the gentler twin, which was just as qwell.

It was Cynthia, now sporting some of my summer gear and looking, even though I say it myself, quite attractive in it, who tried to intervene.

“Now girls,” she snapped, “would one of you care to tell me what’s going on?”

“It’s Jessica,” said Dakota angrily, “she’s gone over to the dark side and I hoped she never would!”

“The right side, you mean!” snapped Jessica.

“The side that puts greed and selfishness before human decency,” growled Dakota, “I heard you! When you thought there wan nobody listening, I heard you and your pathetic planning! And as you worked out how you were going to achieve your dodgy ends the one thing you put in front of everything else was killing Roger! Yes, you, Roger, dad’s friend and the man who sacrificed his future so that the right side could be heard and those with evil in their hearts punished!”

“Well, he spoilt it last time!” snapped Jessica, “if it hadn’t been for him and his meddling we’d have sorted everything out long since! But instead he had to put his journalistic hat on and wreck our plans! As if anyone’s bothered about right and wrong when all people really want is more of the folding stuff! Especially now, with a pandemic dictating everything.”

“It’s now that we need more sympathy for those less fortunate than us, more time to grieve for the dying, more love in our hearts,” said Jessica softly, and I could tell that she meant every syllable of every word she uttered.

“You’ll get nowhere with stupid pipe-dreams like that!” scoffed Jessica, “because when the dust dies down it’s money you’ll want, not lovey dovey stuff like you;re so fond of spouting!”

I was beginning to understand what was going on, and as the girl raged on there was one image in my mind from the past, before I retired because nobody would touch my work, and at that moment it sprang into sharp focus.

The one thing that had forced me back then to focus on the gang that was responsible for most of the big-time crime was a drug pushing and money laundering syndicate. And along with all the international fraud it had been responsible for the abduction of the child Tiffany. I never worked out why it was that child because she was pretty ordinary, but they used her image as a sort of justification for everything. And her image had been everywhere because the international criminal gang had adopted it for their badge.

The innocent face of a ten year old had been the calling card they had used in an attempt to add a layer of purity onto their evil plans. And after a while people forgot the child had been abducted and just focused on her sweet and innocent little face.

“Tiffany says,” the message had been, “that these things are good” when these things, you name it and they covered it with the child’s image, were invariably very bad indeed. In a way society began to fracture with truth becoming a thing of the past. Even the Prime Minister lied! And at the same time distraught parents whose child, the real Tiffany, had been abducted, were forced to grieve in public as wide-ranging speculation as to the whereabouts of the child was everywhere.

And it was the image that had been used, the sweet and innocent child with eyes imploring everyone that this or that or the other was both desirable and good, that lifted itself from my memory banks and hovered, taunting me in the room where Jessica stood, still struggling.

“Tiffany!” I whispered.

“What are you saying, Roger?” whispered Cynthia.

“It just struck me, just now, there was the scandal what, years ago now, maybe ten years though it seems forever, and the girl who was abducted, Tiffany...”

“Yes?” asked Cynthia, a trifle coldly.

“The resemblance,” I stuttered, “just for a moment I thought that if Tiffany had grown up...”

“Yes?” repeated Cynthia, equally coldly.

“She might have looked a bit like Jessica...” I said slowly, “only, of course, it’s nonsense.”

“Just you shut up!” snapped Jessica, “I’m not Tiffany! I couldn’t possibly be, because Tiffany’s dead and buried! You killed her!”

© Peter Rogerson 29.07.20