by Kate Simants
Wren opens her mouth, closes it, and nods. James stares at her for a moment longer, his eyes dark and simmering. And then he turns and walks up the path, leaving Wren holding a bundle of letters that she took – stole – from Paige Garrett’s room.
She says it so quietly the first time that it takes him a moment to register it. He turns. ‘What was that?’ His hand is on the gate.
She clears her throat. ‘It was a phone,’ she says. ‘The reason Ashworth was so anxious to get those boxes from Leah. He was after a phone.’
He nods, slowly, not taking his eyes from hers. ‘Then I guess that’s what we need to get hold of, isn’t it?’
29
Before
Oliver fucking Polzeath has come to the house and there’s no reason for it. Mrs P is there too, staff meeting, and yeah, that’s OK, there’s a reason for that, it’s fine. But him? No. He isn’t a carer, he isn’t a member of staff, he’s not having a meeting, he’s got nothing to do with any of the kids. Nothing he’ll admit to anyway. And Luke was supposed to be going round Rob’s to play on his new xbox but he’s texted him to say he’s staying in. Because he’s not letting that wanker out of his sight.
Luke sits on the sofa, phone in his hand. Polzeath’s doing the same, keeps glancing over. No one’s saying anything. After about ten minutes Polzeath gets up.
‘You off?’ Luke says.
Polzeath’s mouth flaps a few times. ‘No, I’m just, uh,’ he says, gesturing at the door. He leaves the room and Luke gets up when he hears his footsteps on the stairs. Paige is on the first floor. Surely he wouldn’t just go up there and… when the house is full of people?
But he’s a paedo. You can’t know.
Luke follows him. Polzeath gets to the top step before he looks down and sees him. And Luke just stays where he is, halfway up. I know what you are, you fucker. Polzeath turns left like he was going to the gents all along.
As Polzeath disappears into the toilet, Paige’s door opens.
‘Luke,’ she says. She’s bare-faced, pale as a block of chalk. ‘Come in here.’
He does what he’s told. Inside, the room is stuffy and disordered. Her clothes are piled up, and at first it looks like it’s just a mess but then he sees that’s not it: she’s sorting them. She’s got a big rucksack bulging with stuff and her school-bag’s full but it doesn’t look like books in there.
‘Sit down.’
He finds a space on the bed. She moves some scraps of lace from the stool of her desk onto the floor, then he sees that they’re not scraps, they’re underwear. He looks away.
‘Luke, I need to talk to you.’
He squares up. Whatever she needs from him, he’s ready to give it.
She lowers her eyes, looks at her hands. ‘I know you’ve talked to Mel. But you’ve got to keep away from me for a bit, all right?’
White heat rushes to his eyes. He gets up, sits down again. He doesn’t know what to do.
‘I don’t need your help. You’ll understand why,’ she says, her voice barely there. ‘I really care about you Lukey but you have to back off.’
‘Why?’ he says, and the force of it surprises them both. She looks at him properly for the first time and it’s not just her skin that’s grey. There’s no life around her eyes at all, her cheeks are sunken. She sees his shock and covers her face with her hands. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Jesus Christ, I feel awful,’ she says. He can see the nausea in the hunch of her shoulders, can almost smell it.
‘You need a doctor,’ he says. ‘I can take you.’
But she glares at him. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. It’s not – you just need to leave me alone. All right?’
He realises, horrified, that the heat in his eyes is tears.
‘Come on, Luke,’ she says. Everything about her is exhausted.
He brings his knees up, stops a pile of her sweaters from tumbling to the floor. ‘What is all this?’
She glances at the piles. ‘Sorting out.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m selling some stuff.’
‘But it’s your best stuff.’
Then they both think the same thing at the same time. She gets to her feet, scanning the floor with her eyes wide, but he sees it first.
The hem of a dress, hanging out the edge of a binbag. Silver and weightless. The one he bought.
He pulls it free. There’s a crashing inside him that he can’t hear through, can’t think through, because it’s too many things at once. He brings it up in his fist like he’s going to throw it but then he sees her shrink back.
Scared of him. Terrified.
He goes to take her hands but she flattens herself against the wardrobe. Hands across her belly.
And when he looks back up at her, and she won’t meet his eye, he knows.
‘Fucking hell, Paige.’
All this stuff on the floor. How she’s given up smoking, just like that. How ill she looks. She’s selling her stuff because she needs money because she’s pregnant. She’s leaving, because she’s pregnant.
‘Where are you going to go?’
She leans her head back against the wardrobe door and then slips down into a squat. Closes her eyes.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But like, another place like this? Or a mother and baby unit, or something?’
She laughs, like it’s the most ridiculous thing in the world.
‘What?’
‘You think they’d let me keep it? Social would have it out of my hands in ten seconds flat.’
It takes him a minute to work out what she’s saying. She’s not just leaving. She’s running away.
‘Do they know?’ he says. She won’t meet his eye. ‘Tell me you’ve told them.’
She hasn’t told them. Which means she’s going to be on her own. Unless—
‘Whose is it?’ She won’t look at him. ‘Is it – is it him?’ he says, spitting it, jerking his head towards where Oliver Polzeath is supposedly taking a piss.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake – whatever Rob’s told you…’
‘Rob? What the fuck’s it got to do with Rob?’
From the hall there’s the sound of the flush, then footsteps. Luke knows the bastard has dragged it out in the hope that he’s gone back downstairs. There’s a knock at the door.
‘Paige?’ A hushed voice.
It’s Mr Polzeath. A ball of rage starts spinning in Luke’s throat.
Paige casts a panicked look around the room, the stuff everywhere, bags half packed, then she glares at Luke and puts a finger to her lips.
Moments pass. He doesn’t knock again. The creak of the top step, then a soft padding as he goes back down. And it’s like the air in the room goes slack again.
‘Does he know?’
Paige sighs like she’s just too tired of him to even answer.
‘Do you know?’
‘Luke, please—’
‘Whose is it, Paige?’
‘Keep your fucking voice down, all right? I’m asking you to help me by staying out of it. I’ve got enough to worry about without you messing it all up.’
‘Messing what up?’ He laughs, and it comes out angry and cruel and he does not give a toss. ‘How can this be any more messed up?!’
But she looks away, like he doesn’t know the half of it.
And he makes up his mind right then that this is one of those times you’ve got to do the right thing. He doesn’t care what Mel says, or Rob, or Leah, or anyone else. Even if Paige says she’s going through with whatever it is she’s got planned, if it’s just him who can see that it’s not right, he’s got to do something about it.
He drops the dress, the one he bought her, and it drifts back to earth, half on the binbag and half on her floor, forgotten and discarded whatever way you look at it.
She’ll thank him. Might not be right away, but she will.
30
Now
Wren pays the taxi driver and heads down the cobbles be
neath the approach to Temple Meads station to the garage under the arches. Of Suzy’s multitudinous cousins, Paul is the one you go to when you have car trouble. When he called her a few hours ago to come and collect it, he was friendly but to the point. Either he doesn’t know about the recent developments between her and Suzy, or he doesn’t want to get involved.
She dodges the perennial oily puddles and goes inside. As bad luck would have it, there is Marty, Paul’s brother, the one with the point to prove on the news desk.
He smiles broadly when he sees her. ‘I was talking to Paul, he told me your ride was fixed. I was passing, thought I’d drop it home for you.’
‘You didn’t need to come,’ she tells him. They haven’t spoken since he’d mentioned the article he was doing on Ibrahim. ‘I’m not going to change my mind, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
He pulls in his chin, feigning offence. ‘I just thought as I was here, I’d do you a favour.’
‘I don’t need favours,’ she says.
Paul appears and ushers her through to the workshop. The tinny sound of something by Phil Collins emanates from a radio balanced on the bonnet of a BMW.
‘Good news?’ she asks, ignoring Marty hovering behind her.
‘Well, kind of.’ Paul wipes a sheen of moisture from his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a swathe of dark grease.
He clicks the radio off. ‘I mean, I’ve diagnosed your problem, it’s not a complicated fix.’
‘But?’
‘I found something kind of strange,’ he says. ‘You got many enemies, Wren?’ He’s joking, but there’s a ghost of concern behind the smile.
‘I annoy ex-convicts for a living, mate.’
He laughs, but the frown stays put. ‘Come and have a look.’ She follows him through to where her car is. ‘So it wasn’t your battery.’ He opens the driver’s door, pops the bonnet, and comes round the front to prop it open with the rod. ‘The first thing I thought was that it was the alternator.’
‘Feel free to simplify this for me,’ she says, peering at the mysterious entrails of the engine.
He takes a step back. ‘Your fuel line’s been severed.’
‘What?’
He twists his face into an awkward apology. ‘Yeah.’
‘You can’t be sure, though? I mean, presumably it could have just… I don’t know, broken?’
He wrinkles his nose. ‘No. Look.’ He directs her attention to the section in question with a torch. There are two pieces of a tarnished metal tube, one about six inches long, the other half that. ‘It should be one piece. But it’s been cut in half. I mean, deliberately cut, Wren, not just disconnected, even. See where it’s compressed next to the break. Someone’s used pliers of some sort,’ he says, peering at the severed ends. Then, decisively, ‘No, not pliers: diagonal cutters. You don’t get that shape with the flat-blade kind. See how the cut is pinched at the top?’
Wren does. Alarm bites in her stomach. ‘When – I mean—’
Marty is behind her, leaning in for a better look. ‘Who would have done that?’ he says.
Wren straightens up. To Paul she says, ‘How long until you can fix it?’
Paul regards her. ‘I can do it in an hour,’ he says, ‘but that’s not the point. Do you want to, I don’t know, take pictures?’
‘What for?’
‘Insurance,’ Marty puts in. ‘And, you know, the police? Just tell Suzy. She’ll know who you need to talk to.’
She doesn’t deem it necessary to tell her partner’s favourite cousin that they are not currently under the same roof. ‘Yeah, maybe,’ she says, poking at the break.
‘No, not maybe. Someone’s sabotaged your bloody car.’ Marty slaps her hand away. ‘Fingerprints,’ he says. And he is serious.
‘Marty, can you back off, mate?’ she says, snapping.
‘Jesus,’ he says, and slinks back inside.
Paul says, ‘You got any idea who it could have been?’
She forces a smile. ‘I did break Cathy Bennett’s ruler on purpose when I was eight,’ she muses. ‘Do you think it could have been her?’
Paul folds his arms. ‘It’s not funny, Wren. You work with some pretty dodgy characters, don’t you? People with grudges?’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Come on. This isn’t downtown Chicago. Can you just fix it?’
He makes no secret of his reluctance, but relents in the end. Wren goes to the hipster bakery a few doors up for a coffee, then sits turning the thing over in her head as she sits on the bench outside. Who would even think of sabotaging her car? Who could benefit from that? It wasn’t like she’d parked anywhere she couldn’t get a bus from, wasn’t as if it was going to cause her to lose her job or miss a court appearance. So what, someone wanted to scare her, then? Who?
Ashworth?
After a few minutes, Marty comes over. Wren immediately gets up to go.
‘Wait, Wren.’
She huffs. ‘What?’
‘Look, I just want you to know. They’re not letting it go, in the office. They’ve really got it in for the CAP, they’re trying to discredit it any way they can. If you would just talk to me—’
‘No,’ she says.
He sighs. ‘Someone else is writing something up. They’re saying the team – your team – are underqualified—’
‘I don’t care.’
There is a pause. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this but… they’ve got someone in your office. Apparently you don’t have any GCSEs; they’re saying there’s no proper background checks.’
Wren’s heart does a bellyflop. Gary fucking Kitchener.
‘And they’re trying to make out that’s why Ibrahim got out. Because you’re…’ he says, but he can’t finish it.
‘Incompetent?’
Marty scratches his neck, looking mortified.
‘But is it true, Wren, about you not finishing school? Because I can put it right, if you can just give me something else…’
‘Like what? What could I possibly tell you that’s going to be of any fucking interest to a newspaper that just wants to make it look like we’re choosing to let violent criminals out willy-fucking-nilly? The prisons are bursting at the seams, Marty! Something had to happen!’
He looks at her for a moment. Then, quiet as anything, he says, ‘Suzy told me about Paige Garrett. How you got obsessed when she disappeared.’
Wren stares him out for a moment.
‘OK, you know what?’ she says eventually. ‘Print whatever the hell you like. But you and me are done.’
And then she walks past him, back to the garage.
Paul’s apprentice comes over wiping his hands on his overalls and tells her the job is finished, and within a few minutes, Paul brings the car round to the front.
He gets out and hands her the keys, telling her about another few tune-up jobs he did while he was there. He won’t accept payment for any of it. ‘But if it happens again,’ he says as she gets in and starts the engine, ‘I’m going straight to the police.’
She thanks him and goes to close the door, but he stops her and holds out the two sections of metal that he’s replaced.
‘Look. I know Suzy doesn’t want looking after. But, please, look after her, won’t you?’
Wren takes the pieces. ‘Of course,’ she says. Because what else can she say?
The whole way to Ashworth’s, Wren thinks about that fuel line. He worked in a garage before he went inside, was on a post-sixteen scheme as an apprentice mechanic. But can it really have been him? What possible gain could he have made from stranding her at work?
She parks in a quiet side street round the back of his block. She drops open the glovebox and tucks the two pieces of metal inside.
Diagonal cutters. Can’t be everyone who has a pair of those.
Does Ashworth? Right at the back of the glovebox is the envelope with his spare key in it. She brings it out, turns it over a few times. Then she gets out. She starts walking, and pulls her phone from her pocket.<
br />
He answers on the second ring.
‘What do you want?’ Ashworth says, annoyed. The sound of traffic and wind in the receiver tells her everything she wants to know: he’s out. ‘I thought I was free until two.’
‘You are,’ she says. She passes the corner shop and his block comes into view, its mirrored windows blazing back the sun. ‘I’m just checking in. Staying out of trouble?’
He sighs. ‘Goodbye,’ he says, and hangs up.
The lift is out of order so she takes the stairs. An elderly woman nods at her solemnly as she passes, and Wren has to resist the urge to turn, check she isn’t being watched or followed. And if she is? If someone comes to the door while Wren is inside, what then? Fact is, it was Wren who’d found him the flat, negotiated the rent with the housing association the NPS dealt with. Wren who’d picked up the keys, stocked the fridge and bought the toilet paper the morning before he got out.
It isn’t like he doesn’t know she has a key. It isn’t like she’s breaking in.
Forcing confidence into her stride, she makes her way to his front door, and lets herself in.
The flat is musty inside. Gloomy, blinds drawn. She turns her attention to the search. Two things she’s after. That phone, which she knows he’s got, and the cutters, which she suspects.
The kitchen, barely three units wide along one wall with a sink under the window, yields nothing more than an insight into the culinary life of a man accustomed to prison food. The basic provisions the state provided – cans of chopped tomatoes, pasta, rice – are still exactly where she left them the day before she brought him here from HMP Bristol, and have been joined on their shelf only by a packet of Jaffa Cakes. She rummages under the sink, looks behind the pipe-work, but there is only a tacky layer of something spilled, plus a dusty half-bottle of drain cleaner.
If I were you, Rob, where would I put them?
Further into the flat, she feels around the threadbare, sagging cushions of the sofa, then gets onto her knees to peer underneath it. Junk mail, a discarded battery, wrappers. Dust. She gets back up, eyeing the room. The boxes she brought from Leah are side by side next to the TV, their contents jumbled. With less care than the day before, she sifts through their contents again, but doesn’t find the phone.