Cry Baby

by Mark Billingham

  Angie said, ‘Fucker better hope the police get there before we do. All I’m saying.’ She glanced across and nodded. ‘He’d better pray they do.’

  Cat closed her eyes and tried to tune out her friend’s anger. She thought about what Kieron would feel like in her arms, her lips on the back of his neck, thought about breathing him in.

  She thought about burying him.

  She thought, clever boy.

  Loving father . . .

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  Kimmel had found a second torch in one of the kitchen cupboards, so, once she and Thorne had ventured a few yards into the woods, they split up and went in separate directions. Kimmel held on to their only radio, but Thorne reckoned the night was still enough for a shout to be heard a good distance away, if either of them had anything serious to shout about.

  They did not want to risk alerting Ashton to their presence before then.

  Thorne froze as something skittered through the undergrowth a few feet ahead of him. He pointed the torch but saw only a jumble of exposed roots and fallen branches at ground level, thick bushes and cinder-black earth. He raised the torch higher, but the beam was not strong enough to reach more than halfway up the tallest trees.

  He kept walking.

  Eyes fixed on the pool of milky light dancing across a wave of ferns a few feet ahead of him, then shifting, every few seconds, to the shadows on either side. Listening for anything beyond the hiss of the treetops above him and the noises he was responsible for.

  The crackle-crunch beneath his feet, the wheeze in his chest.

  A few minutes from the house, what had seemed to be a path of sorts had petered out and there was no sign that he was following in anyone’s footsteps. Thorne had little choice but to keep moving in as straight a line from the house as was possible, veering slightly right or left only when he had to, his choice dependent on nothing save the size of the gap between the trees. Making his choices quickly, hoping his instinct was taking him in the right direction and that Ashton, too, had chosen the path of least resistance.

  The man would know these woods intimately, Thorne guessed. He would know where to hide if he heard them coming, how to circle back to the front of the house if he needed to. Thorne cursed himself for not having the forethought to find the keys to that Volvo and pocket them. He should probably just have instructed the back-up units to approach silently and waited at the house for Ashton to come back.

  He should probably have done all sorts of things differently.

  It was too late to worry about that now.

  Thorne stopped momentarily at a fluttering high above him. His palm was sweaty against the rubber grip of the torch. He wiped it on his jacket then ducked beneath a low branch and pressed on into the darkness.

  Ashton would have known those woods at Highgate too, of course. The paths and the short cuts, the quickest route from that playground to the second-hand Fiesta he’d bought and had resprayed for the job in hand.

  Thorne wondered what Ashton had said to Kieron that morning. A story planned well in advance, or something he’d come up with on the spur of the moment as the boy had stared at him, confused to see his best friend’s dad stepping out from the trees?

  Smiling and putting his finger to his lips.

  A secret . . . an adventure.

  A surprise for Josh—

  Thorne paused, mid-step, as the torch beam floated across something bright, caught in the bushes a few yards ahead of him. A white face and shining black eyes. He moved quickly towards it, reached into the tangle of briar and pulled out a tattered, mud-stained teddy bear.

  He sucked in a breath and held it, turned off the torch.

  He could hear voices.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  ‘The thing to remember, that you must always remember, is that you can never be weak. Do you understand? Weak is the stupidest thing you can be. I know that some of the time we’ve spent together hasn’t always been easy for you, but nine times out of ten it’s the difficult experiences that turn out to be the most important. You might not believe it now, but these last few weeks could turn out to be the making of you.’

  They’re still sitting on the big fallen tree and the man is talking and talking, so Kieron nods, because he knows that’s what the man wants him to do. That’s what grown-ups do; he’s seen them. When they’re having conversations. They nod like toy dogs because they’re supposed to be listening and paying attention, even when they’re not. Sometimes they make a funny noise, too, like a hum, so he does that as well.

  He nods and he hums.

  ‘There’s an expression,’ the man says.

  He nods and he hums and he thinks.

  ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’

  Kieron stops nodding. ‘Are you going to kill me?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s just an expression.’ The man pulls a face and shakes his head. ‘What I’ve been trying to explain to you, basically. You can let the bad things . . . or what seem like bad things at the time . . . make you feeble and frightened or you can say, “No, I’m not going to let that happen.” It’s up to you, do you understand what I’m saying? You can be weak or you can choose to be strong. You can spend your whole life scared of your own shadow, or you can be brave.’

  Kieron nods and says, ‘I’m not weak.’

  The man smiles and pulls Kieron closer to him. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I’m going to be brave!’

  The man’s smile gets bigger and he leans down to kiss Kieron on the forehead. He says, ‘Do you know how happy that makes me?’

  Kieron jumps off the tree and stands to attention, like a soldier. ‘I’m going over there to see what’s making that scritch-scratch in the bushes.’ He points into the darkness, to where he’d heard the sound that had frightened him so much. ‘That would be really brave, wouldn’t it?’

  The man laughs. ‘Yes, it would.’

  Kieron turns and scrambles back over the fallen tree. He stands behind the man. He closes his eyes and gives the man a little pat on the back, because he thinks the man will want to know he’s there, then creeps slowly away.

  He takes a few steps, then turns to check.

  The man hasn’t moved and just sits there looking up at the trees. The man can’t see him.

  ‘What do you think it could be?’ Kieron asks. He turns again, checks again. ‘The thing in the bushes.’ He’s close to them now, every bit as terrified as he was before, but he doesn’t want the man to hear that in his voice.

  ‘I had to do it when I was a boy,’ the man says. ‘Same age as you, give or take a year or two. I had to decide if all the things that hurt, all the bad things, were going to destroy me, or make me better . . .’

  The man isn’t listening.

  The man is looking the other way.

  For a moment, Kieron thinks about running, but he knows the man will hear that and he knows the man will catch him. Then, when he takes his next step, his foot kicks against a log on the ground. A big one.

  ‘I don’t really remember sitting down and making that decision,’ the man says. ‘It was just something inside me. Like an instinct. Do you know what an instinct is? Like something that happens without really thinking about it very much . . .’

  Kieron bends slowly down and takes hold of the log. It’s very heavy and he can only just wrap his hands around it. He knows there will be a noise when he picks the log up, so he shouts, ‘Whatever it is, I’m not going to be scared,’ as he lifts it.

  ‘Something hardens inside you,’ the man says.

  Kieron hums.

  ‘I suppose that’s what it is.’

  The man carries on talking, but Kieron doesn’t really understand. Now, he’s only thinking about his mum and about Josh and all the things they talked about, when Josh was there and when he wasn’t.

  He moves as quietly as he can back towards the fallen tree.

  Grandmother’s footsteps.

  The log weighs, like . . . a ton, easy, pressing into
his neck and shoulders, his two small hands wrapped around the bottom.

  The man says, ‘Where are you?’

  Kieron starts to run and he swings the log just as the man starts to turn.

  He screams when he hits him and he’s not sure if the thing he sees fly into the shadows is a bit of the log or a bit of the man’s head. It doesn’t matter and he doesn’t think about it very long, because now the man’s on the floor and kicking his legs through the dirt and the dead things, and he’s moaning like Josh was doing in the cellar.

  Like that poorly dog.

  Kieron lifts up the log again.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  Cat and Angie were lost.

  Angie had bumped the car up on to a verge and now, by the dim light from the vanity mirror, Cat sat staring helplessly down at the tattered map, trying to work out where the hell they were.

  ‘Christ alone knows.’ She turned the page, then turned it back again. ‘I thought you said you knew where we were going.’ Cat was struggling to keep the irritation from her voice. Angie was doing her a massive favour, after all.

  ‘I said I knew this part of the world a bit, that’s all.’

  ‘You promised you’d get us there.’

  ‘Don’t panic—’

  ‘We could be bloody anywhere.’

  ‘Look, I knew exactly where I was until just after Hertford.’ Angie leaned across to peer at the map for a few seconds, shook her head. ‘We just took one wrong turning, you ask me.’

  Cat looked up from the map and stared out into the blackness. The single-lane road was deserted. There were no road markings, no lighting. Just high hedges on either side and a small wooden gate picked out in the headlights, leading into fields. ‘There’s not even anyone around we can ask.’

  Angie turned the engine off.

  ‘I think we should turn round,’ Cat said. ‘Try and work out where we went wrong.’

  Angie said nothing.

  ‘At least try to find a house or something.’ Cat peered at the map again, but it looked like the road they were on didn’t even have a name. She slammed her hand against the passenger-side window in frustration, felt the tears coming and let her head fall back. ‘I need to get there, Ange, I need to get to him right now. Even when I was telling Billy how I thought Kieron was still alive I wasn’t sure I believed it. Just couldn’t bear to think he might not be . . . saying it for Billy as much as me. But now I know he is.’ She clutched her stomach. ‘In here . . . sure as I know anything, and I know he’s somewhere close and that he’s calling out for me, and we’re sitting here like idiots in the arse-end of nowhere, when I need to be with him.’

  Something screeched from a tree nearby.

  ‘It’s a bit late for all that,’ Angie said. ‘Don’t you reckon?’

  ‘What?’ Cat turned to look and saw the knife in Angie’s hand.

  ‘Get out,’ Angie said.

  Cat stared confused. She couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. She did not move, even when Angie leaned across and slowly pushed the knife towards her face.

  ‘Get out of the fucking car.’

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Thorne was trying to move as quickly as he could, but it was tricky getting anywhere in a hurry without the aid of the torch. The bigger trees and bushes were still easy enough to make out, the dark shapes of them looming ahead of him, but he was repeatedly stopped short by branches that caught him at head height, or by tangles of those lower down that caused him to stumble several times; that sent him briefly – sprawling and swearing – hard on to his arse.

  He knew that Ashton – if his was indeed one of the voices Thorne had made out – would hear him coming, but there was nothing he could do about that, or particularly cared to.

  One of the voices . . .

  Getting there fast was now the only thing that mattered. Fear had been pumping adrenalin through him since he and Kimmel had taken their first steps into the woods, but now hope had ramped it up still further. His breath no longer rattled. He barely felt the scratches across his face or the pain from the muscle he’d torn when he’d fallen.

  A child’s voice.

  What Thorne had been sure was two different voices had become only one as it had grown louder, then no more than a noise . . . or chant . . . by the time the trees had started to thin out and he found himself on the edge of a small clearing.

  A fallen tree, like a footbridge. The shape of someone flat out and face up on the ground in front of it.

  A man. Ashton . . .

  He could see the movement and hear the sounds – a grunt and then a dull crack – but when his eyes had finally adjusted to the semi-dark and it became clear what he was actually looking at, Thorne could do no more than stand and stare.

  Once more, the boy grunted with the effort of raising the log above his head, then calmly intoned the same two words as he brought it crashing down on to Jeff Ashton’s face.

  ‘Hulk, smash!’

  The log was huge, almost as big as the boy himself, and he moaned as he bent to lift it up again.

  Thorne stepped forward, arms outstretched, and said Kieron’s name; shouted it above the noise of the approaching sirens.

  Then he shouted for Kimmel.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  With the knife at her back every step of the way, Cat was marched along the muddy verge for a minute or more, then forced to open the gate before being ushered into the field.

  ‘Keep going,’ Angie said.

  ‘Going where? Angie, what the fuck—’

  Cat felt the point of the blade break the skin between her shoulder blades and cried out as she staggered forward. There was no more than a sliver of moon and, bleak as the unlit road had been, it seemed to grow darker with every step further away from it. A deeper dark. Cat heard the grumble of a car somewhere behind them and turned, then felt the edge of the knife on the back of her neck.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Angie said.

  The ground beneath her feet was rutted and Cat was finding it hard to keep her footing. It made her think that the field had been recently ploughed and that there had to be a farm or something nearby, though she doubted anyone would be out in their fields at this time of night. Even if she screamed, she didn’t think anyone would hear.

  She didn’t know what Angie would do if she screamed. What her friend was capable of. Her friend . . . ?

  Cat didn’t know anything, any more.

  Why the hell would Angie want to hurt her?

  They’d been stumbling across the field for what felt like twenty minutes when Angie said, ‘Right, this’ll do.’

  Cat stopped and stood, breathing heavily. It had been warm all day, but suddenly, wearing only the thin jacket she’d grabbed on her way out of the flat, she was shivering.

  ‘Turn round.’

  Cat did as she was told, and waited. It was too dark to make out the expression on Angie’s face, within arm’s length of her own, but Cat didn’t need to. The cold stare and the mocking smile were clear enough in every word the woman spat and snarled.

  ‘Mental, isn’t it, babe?’ Angie said. ‘I mean, knowing you’re right’s one thing, isn’t it? Ridiculous, though, that it takes something like this, something horrible happening, to prove you’re right.’ She hissed out a laugh. ‘Means you can’t even enjoy it.’

  Cat wasn’t looking at Angie’s face, anyway. Her eyes stayed firmly locked on the knife, its silhouette cutting across the grey sky behind her whenever Angie waved her arm around.

  ‘You never deserved that child. Simple as that. Yeah, I made all the proper noises at the time, bought the toys and the baby clothes and the rest of it, but what else was I going to do? Auntie Ange, right? But you were never supposed to be that lad’s mum. Not my brother’s little boy. You were never . . . right for it. Like putting make-up on a pig. And I knew you’d make a mess of it, never doubted it for one single second. I just had to hang back and wait for it to happen, didn’t I? I never in a million years thought you’d
fuck up to this degree, though. I never thought you’d just take him out one morning and lose him.’

  It felt like the woman wanted a response, but Cat was not going to give her the pleasure. She knew those words had been carefully chosen to inflict the most pain, the maximum damage, but she was beyond that now. She kept her eyes on the knife.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Angie said. ‘Well, I can’t see the point in being anything else, really, can you? Not considering where we are. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t actually think Kieron is still alive. Sorry, but there we are. Just trying to be realistic.’

  She waited, letting her words hit home.

  ‘But, here’s the thing. If I’m wrong, and trust me, I hope and pray that the little fella’s right as ninepence and waiting for us just up the road . . . there is not a chance in hell I’m letting you have him back. How could I? I mean, it’d be irresponsible, apart from anything else. So, there you go.’

  Cat saw the knife moving again and, without thinking too long about what might happen, lunged for it. Angie stepped back and slashed hard across Cat’s arm, that thin jacket. Now, Cat screamed.

  ‘Don’t piss about, babe—’

  Cat turned and sprinted headlong into the darkness.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Thorne put the phone down – having listened to his call go unanswered for half a minute – and walked out of the cottage, past local uniforms smoking by the front door and a pair of plastic-suited SOCOs on their way down to the cellar. Now, the small drive was heaving with emergency vehicles and officers. Kimmel wandered over as Thorne stood and watched the stretcher carrying Jeff Ashton being loaded into an ambulance.

  ‘Any joy?’

  Thorne shook his head.

  ‘Nipped out for milk, or something.’

  ‘Maybe.’ While Thorne had understood Catrin Coyne’s frustration back at the flat, the instruction to stay by the phone had been clear enough and he couldn’t think of any good reason for her to have simply ignored it. ‘Can you radio through and ask them to send a couple of bodies across to Seacole House? Give her the message when she gets back from . . . wherever she’s gone.’