by Kate Simants
‘But I thought, later on, you know, once the dust settles—’
Rob jabs a finger in his face. ‘Do you want to live with me?’
‘Yeah,’ he mumbles to his chest.
‘Right. So let’s do that then, Lukey. The application’s in. Play the fucking game.’
Luke says nothing for a minute and then, quietly, ‘Can we just look at it, though? As a possibility. Just, maybe?’
Rob growls in frustration. ‘I don’t know! I don’t even know if that’s a thing. Maybe, all right? But just – leave it. And stop thinking with your dick.’
Luke smiles. It’s not a no.
They need milk and some food, Rob says, and Luke sinks a bit because he knows what that means.
‘Do we have to?’ he mumbles, but Rob pretends he doesn’t hear.
They make a detour to the place they haven’t been to for a while, just behind the City Road. Luke sighs and goes to step off the kerb but Rob holds him back.
‘Just a sec,’ he says, and he gets everything out of one pocket ready. A few notes and a handful of change. He tucks the notes carefully away and gives Luke the change. There’s maybe a couple of quid, mostly fives and coppers. Last time they did this, he was sure the woman at the counter knew what was going on.
He doesn’t say anything but Rob gives him this look and says, ‘It’s not much, mate. Just a few bits and pieces.’
‘I can just wait and eat at the home,’ Luke says.
But Rob shakes his head. ‘Wouldn’t be much of a big brother if I couldn’t even get you fed, would I?’ He folds Luke’s hand over the coins. ‘Take your time counting it out,’ Rob tells him. ‘And wait—’
‘—until you’re clear. I know.’
Luke goes in first, gets a pint of milk then has a careful look at stuff right at the front of the shop. Will he buy the plain beans, or the ones with little sausages? He picks both of them up, makes a big thing of taking out the glasses he hardly ever uses and reading what they say on the back. The shop woman is watching the little telly next to the register.
She doesn’t even look up when the bell at the door rings and Rob comes in.
Forcing himself not to look at his brother, Luke changes his mind about the beans, picks up some noodles instead, then goes to the desk. He pushes the stuff across the counter and she gives him a big smile that takes over her whole face, and rings it up.
She says, ‘And how was school today?’
‘Fine,’ he says.
‘One nineteen,’ she says, and then she looks up and frowns at the door and the bell rings again and he thinks it’s Rob leaving, already finished. But it’s not, it’s an old guy coming in, and she calls out hello, starts having a chat with him. Luke gets out the change and he hates this bit but she’s looking at the door now and he has to get her distracted or she’s going to clock it. He drops the coins, pretty much throws them at the floor, and they roll everywhere.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, careful not to swear because you never know. ‘I’m really sorry, hold on,’ and he starts scrabbling round.
And she does what they never do. She stops talking to the old guy and comes to help him pick them up. Blocking the door as she crouches down.
Grabbing on the floor for the money, Luke glances back and he’s right, Rob’s still inside, but now there are three people blocking the exit. The woman finds the last coin and hands it to Luke, and as he takes it, Rob passes her, slipping out of the shop with his coat so obviously concealing something that Luke can’t believe she doesn’t run down the street after him. But she doesn’t. She lets Luke count the coins out, gives him his milk and noodles in a used placcy bag, and says goodbye.
When he catches up with Rob he gets a grin and a slap on the back. ‘Close one,’ Rob says.
Luke doesn’t think it’s funny. His heart’s still going like anything because what just happened was too fucking close. Rob nearly got caught. And if he got caught, what then?
They go under the tunnel to the back of the block and up the concrete steps. His flat’s on the third floor but he stops on the first. Luke follows him along the walkway, waits while he knocks on a door with a flowery net curtain hanging behind it.
It takes ages but eventually a woman opens the door. She’s about a hundred and ten, and she squints at Rob for a bit before her leathery face cracks into a big smile.
‘What you got for me today then, my lover?’ she says.
Rob opens his coat and inside there are two bottles of wine. ‘You’re a red girl, aren’t you, Marge?’
‘Ooh, lovely,’ she says, peering at the bottles.
He quickly thumbs the bright yellow £3.99! labels off and he tells her twenty for both of them.
‘That dear, are they?’ she says, peering at them.
Rob shrugs. ‘It’s really good stuff. Not that I know about wine, but my auntie, you remember? Lives in France?’ She nods back at him, without certainty. ‘Says it’s really great stuff. But no probs, Margey. Derek’s been on my back for a sample for weeks.’
He shrugs, turns as if he’s leaving.
‘No, love, I’ll have them,’ she says. ‘Treat myself.’ She balances the bottles on the radiator and shuffles inside, returning with two crumpled notes.
Rob takes it with a wink and says goodbye. As they walk away, he hands both of the tenners to Luke.
14
Now
The main CAP area is a jumble of mismatched office desks and conference chairs. When the programme was launched, Wren’s team had been shipped off to new offices near Temple Meads, all glass and greenery. Not for long. Once the minister had done her bit with the cameras, they’d lasted all of about three days before they were moved back to where they’d started.
Her end-of-week supervision should have been half an hour, but they’ve already been in the overheated windowless room at the back of the Probation Service offices for forty minutes. The building backs onto the motorway, and everyone inside it speaks at an embarrassed shout.
Callum Roche, a senior probation officer seconded to the project to oversee Wren and the two dozen other CAP officers, folds his arms on the table and rubs his temples with nicotine-stained fingers. ‘Run this past me again then. Your offender is attending the meetings.’
‘Yes.’ Wren glances at the clock.
‘You’re on schedule. He reads the script.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s behaving. You haven’t got any broken conditions.’
Wren had known where this would go before she even sat down. ‘That’s right.’
‘So?’ He spreads his hands. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘What I’m saying is, his motivation for staying straight is going to be stronger if we find the brother.’
Roche gives the cynicism a good long soak before he speaks again. ‘Let me explain something to you, Wren. No one wants this to work. I mean, sure, maybe the yogurt-knitters at the Guardian, but everyone else, they’re praying for this to fail. I’m having to call the Southwest Observer every fucking day to stop them following our offenders, trying to catch them out.’ Wren flinches at the mention of Marty’s new employer, but Roche is on his feet now and doesn’t notice.
‘And don’t even ask me about the national press,’ he says, going over to a filing cabinet and yanking the long drawer open. ‘I got called an “anarchist” by The Sun. An anarchist!’ He selects a file, slams the drawer shut, and slaps it on the desk. ‘We go one day over budget, they’re going to know about it.’
‘If I can put him back in touch with Luke, the brother, he’ll have that connection with the straight and narrow, back in the family bosom,’ she tries. ‘By the time they get to publishing the stats, he might even be in established employment, if we can give him a reason to stay there.’
The key with Roche, Wren has learned in the few months she’s worked with him, is to frame everything in terms of outcomes. He’s a National Probation Service veteran, his career stretching back over half a dozen home secretaries and twice as
many massive budget cuts. She’s been told he’d once been a genuine activist. But the Callum Roche she knows, the SPO in charge of daily business on the Community Atonement Programme, got this job by being a reliable box-ticker, plain and simple.
He narrows his eyes at the file and lays his hands on it. ‘We have eight days intensive contact per offender. You’re telling me you need, what?’
‘A week.’
‘An extra week?’
‘Four days, then,’ she says, holding up fingers. ‘The brother dropped off the social services radar two years ago. I’ve had a sift though his old caseworkers already but no one’s got a current address.’
He makes a pff sound. ‘Nope. No way I can justify that.’
‘Two?’
He takes a deep breath, pulls a face as if he’s giving it some thought, but then shakes his head. Little flakes of dandruff drift onto his shoulders. ‘Look. I’m glad you care, it’s lovely, it’s really…’ he says, wafting a hand in the air, ‘inspiring. Whatever. I can see you want the best for him. But neither the budget nor the timeframe give a shit about that stuff. Just sign him off and move on.’
Fingers poised to open the file in front of him, he pauses, remembers something. ‘I know we went over this in the pre-release but tell me again: the girl’s mother, what was her name?’
‘Leanne.’
‘You didn’t get anywhere finding her, right?’
‘Complete dead end. Why?’
‘Having lunch with an old colleague from care placements, thought I’d double check.’
‘Yeah, I already covered that. She went out of borough, no forwarding address.’
He nods. ‘Drugs, was it?’
‘Yep. Could be anywhere by now. Or, you know…’ Wren says, making a face and not needing to finish the sentence.
‘Poor kid,’ Roche says. Then, looking up, ‘You done that bloke yet? The school shrink? Been on my back from day one.’
He means Yardley. ‘The victim, yeah. Saw him this morning.’
‘Satisfied customer?’
‘It went fine.’
Before she’d left Yardley’s driveway, she’d pressed her business card into his hand, telling him she could meet him anywhere, any time. He said he’d think about it, but she’s not holding out much hope. Something about him had descended like a portcullis during that meeting with Ashworth.
‘Well, thank fuck for that,’ Roche is saying. ‘Seen it all, after that. Victim of a violent crime practically begging to have a chinwag with the offender. And the effort he went to for the kid. Paige.’ He shakes his head, baffled. ‘At least someone gave a shit about her. Makes up for the absent mother, I suppose.’
He slides a folder across the desk. Wren’s next offender: Liam O’Shea, late thirties, domestic assault. ‘He gets out ten a.m. Monday week; all the prelims have been done.’
He runs her through it, but Wren isn’t listening. She’s still thinking about Roche’s take on Yardley: how much he’d clearly cared for Paige, how even after the crime, he’d taken on the things a parent should have been doing for her. How would that have made Paige feel, if she’d been around to see it?
Wren blinks, shakes the thought away. It is important not to go down those kinds of routes, she knows. They are too dark. A person can get lost.
Roche, who has stopped talking, gives her a wry look. ‘Am I boring you?’
She makes herself laugh. ‘Just thinking about the next steps.’
Placated, he flaps the cover onto the folder, the meeting over. ‘I used to be like you, you know.’
‘Like what?’
‘You know. Obsessed with it. Wanting to get it all right, wanting to understand the crime,’ he says, putting quote marks round it with his fingers like it’s some out-there concept.
‘Sure I’ll get it out of my system eventually,’ she says.
‘Here’s hoping.’
She gets a coffee from the machine by the lifts and heads to her desk, checking her phone as she goes. If Roche isn’t going to give her the time she needs, she’ll just have to prioritise. She’s already fairly sure she’s exhausted the leads she has on Carrie, Rob and Luke’s mother: the wall of confidentiality from the professionals who’d known her had proven too high and thick to breach, and as far as friends and family went, she seemed to be little more than a ghost. So what matters now is finding Luke. Even in the absence of a parent, or a relative, there must be somebody out there with a clue. Someone who cared about him.
She stops walking. The only route is to find the staff he’d known. Someone at Beech View must know something. And if the Polzeaths and James Yardley aren’t going to help her find him, she’ll have to do it herself. With renewed resolve, she tucks her folder under her arm and takes the stairs two at a time.
But as she comes onto the office floor and rounds the corner, she slows. Perched on her desk, casually flipping through a notepad, is a blond man in his twenties.
‘Oh, Wren!’ he says as she gets close. He lets the notepad slap shut, hops off the desk and puts out his hand. ‘Gary, HR,’ he explains. ‘We met before your interview? I’ve left you some messages?’
‘Messages?’ She shrugs. ‘Sorry. Must have missed them.’ She puts her bag on the desk. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her monitor, which she definitely shut down before the meeting, is turned on and displaying a webpage. A government crest in the top corner: Department for Work and Pensions.
‘Oh, just, you know,’ he says, following her eyeline to the screen. ‘Thought I might as well log in while I waited.’
‘But this is my desk!’
‘No harm in a bit of hotdesking, is there? But listen, there’s a couple of background bits I need to fill in. Have you got a minute?’
‘Background on what, the offender?’
‘No. You.’
Shit.
‘What kind of background?’ she asks brightly. ‘I’ve worked for the NPS for years. I’m not new.’ Have they run new checks, something they hadn’t needed when she first started? Because before, she’d made sure everything was airtight, rock solid. She’d made absolutely sure.
His smile is beginning to snag. ‘Just dotting a few is, nothing to worry about. School history needs validating.’
‘Why on earth do you need that?’ She smiles, trying to buy herself a few seconds. ‘I mean, they really go that far back, do they?’ She scans her options. Does she even have options?
‘Yeah, kinda,’ he says, conspiratorially now. ‘Not unheard of for people to totally falsify degrees, even.’
‘Excuse me? I haven’t falsified anything.’
‘OK.’ His hands go up. ‘Look it’s just my line manager trying to get promoted. She wants everything perfect, especially on your thing because it’s so high profile. I should have had your certificates before you even started. Have you got them?’
‘Professional ones? I’m sure I can—’
‘No. GCSEs.’ He picks up his A4 pad from her desk, draws a finger down a handwritten list. ‘Just – English and Maths. You said you got Bs?’
She nods, smiling. Mute.
‘And the school was – which one?’
Keeping her voice level, she says, ‘I think it’s changed names since I was there.’ If she doesn’t respond to the confused frown on his face, maybe it will just go away. ‘How about I just get you the certificates?’
He clicks his pen a few times, eyes on hers. Then the door to Roche’s office bangs open. They both look round at the sound and Roche spots them, glares, and cups his hands around his mouth.
‘Fuck you doing?’ he calls. ‘I thought there weren’t enough hours in the day to get the job done.’ He strides over.
Double shit.
Gary tucks the pen into his jacket and nods to Roche. ‘HR,’ he says, holding out a hand. ‘Need some background on Miss Reynolds. Secondary school.’
Roche ignores the hand. ‘Firstly, it’s Ms Reynolds, and secondly, I’ve seen all the records we need. All right?’
/> Gary fish-mouths for a second and then, to Wren, says, ‘Scans’ll be fine. Soon as, right?’
Roche watches contemptuously as Gary slinks away. ‘Fucking bean counters,’ he says. ‘Never trust a man in shoes that shiny.’ The two of them instantly look down at Roche’s own footwear. Which gleams.
‘Ah,’ he says, rubbing the sole of one over the toe of the other. ‘Wife must’ve done that.’
After he’s gone, Wren sinks into her chair, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. She wakes her mouse and drags the cursor to the top right to close the window, then stops. Across the top, G. S. Kitchener – Staff ID 337LN2.
She checks behind her. Gary S. Kitchener is gone. Gingerly, she looks back at the screen, holding her breath as she minimises the window. Behind it, there’s a screensaver of a shirtless, tanned man and a slim young woman in a bikini, astride an elephant. That shirtless man is Gary, which mean the icons dotted all over this picture of his idyllic trip to the Far East contain his access to all the local government staff records. Dates of employment, payroll information, addresses – including clearances for staff employed by private contractors.
Private contractors like Acumen Social Care.
Wren doesn’t waste a second. She scans the icons, finds the database and gets in. The system is divided up into departments, so she makes a path straight through. Social care > Children’s > Auxiliary Providers. Checking over her shoulder every half a minute, she changes the date parameters, sets the location, and after a bit of scrolling, she hits Beech View.
She swaps the mouse to the left, leans into her screen, scribbling fast with her right hand without even looking at what she is writing.
‘Excuse me!’ A shout from the stairwell; no need to look round to identify who it is. ‘Excuse me, Wren! Don’t use that computer for a minute!’
She flips the notebook over, closes the browser window, and in three clicks, she’s logged out.
By the time Gary Kitchener is close enough to see what she’s doing, she isn’t doing anything at all.
15
Before
She’s in the Occupational Therapy room, painting a tiny chest of drawers. The nurse tells them to wait at the door, and goes over to talk to her. On the far wall, there are faded posters of sunsets and mountains with little messages on them like Mistakes Are Proof That You’re Trying and A Smooth Sea Never Made a Skilful Sailor.