Hal’s legs felt weak, but he had to know for sure who had been in that flat. Moving quickly, he snuck down the hallway and the stairs to the door looking out from Moynihan House onto the courtyard. Hal scanned the dark, but he couldn’t see anyone. Then movement caught his eye: skirting the edge of the court, keeping to the shadows was a tall figure in a wax coat.
His quarry sighted, Hal let himself sink to the floor of the stairwell where the cool concrete calmed his nerves. He dared not follow the Rag and Bone Man on his own.
3
THE NEXT MORNING, the boys met outside Shahid’s flat. Hal hurried Shahid down to the playing fields; when he was sure there was no one around who could hear them, he told him what had happened the night before.
“I told you. I told you he was suspicious. My mum’s been worrying about him for years. We have to find out more.”
“Shouldn’t we tell your mum or someone?”
“We’ve nothing to tell them. Not yet. You say you heard someone crying in a flat and then, later, you saw a person in a coat. I know what it means, you know what it means, but the adults won’t listen.” Shahid thought for a moment. “We have to learn more. We have to catch him doing something illegal.”
“And we need proof, too,” Hal said. “Something we can show an adult.”
“We should follow him. If we can find out more about him—where he lives, what he looks like, and if there’s anyone suspicious who talks to him”—Shahid held up his camera—“we’ve got him.”
Sticking together, the boys walked through the estate’s linked courtyards, searching for their mark.
They heard his shout before they saw him—“Any old scrap?”—calling up to the women hanging washing on the lines between Victoria House and Wright House. The boys kept low and hidden, peeking round the corner of Wright House. A few women came down to sell him rags and food cans, which he stuffed in a sack hanging from a belt inside his coat; despite the hot sun, he wore the same heavy clothing he wore the day before. When his work was completed, the man set off away from the boys, round the corner from Victoria House towards Thoresby and the football pitch the boys in York House had painted onto the concrete. Keeping their distance, the boys followed. They cautiously poked their heads round the turn the man had just taken, but saw nothing. The man was nowhere to be seen. They walked the length of the building and peered round the next turn. Again, nothing.
“He must have gone inside,” Hal said.
“Quick! You go to that corner and see if he comes out the front of Thoresby and I’ll watch the back.”
The boys split up and sprinted to their watch points. Hal waited and watched. Five minutes passed, then ten. No one came out. He turned to check if Shahid had seen anything, and saw Shahid looking back. Both boys shrugged, and Shahid came to join Hal.
“Either he’s still inside or we’ve missed him somehow,” Hal said. “You stay here and watch the front. I’ll go up and check each floor.” Before Shahid could protest, Hal broke from cover and ran up the stairs.
Hal checked on each floor and found nothing, and trudged back down to the ground floor to find Shahid was gone. He looked round the side of the building, round the back, down the row of blocks and couldn’t see him. Panic rose in his gullet as he ran to the front of the house; he swallowed it down when, up the row, he spied Shahid waving to him. He sprinted over.
“He’s over there,” Shahid said, pointing ahead to the distant Rag and Bone Man now talking to the women huddled outside Priestley House.
“How’d he get past us?”
“No idea, but if you watch from here I’ll circle round and watch from the other side. That way, whichever direction he leaves, we should be able to follow. Just don’t let him see you if he comes this way.”
Hal nodded and watched Shahid jog down the side of Savile House.
Ten minutes later, his sack full, the Rag and Bone Man set off in Shahid’s direction. Hal lost sight of him when he went into the Savile courtyard—he had to hold back with no cover to hide him—and as he rounded the corner he came across an exasperated Shahid. “Did you see him?” Shahid asked. “He passed right by me, then the fruit cart came through and I lost sight of him.”
All afternoon the boys would spot the Rag and Bone Man and then lose him, never quite managing to get a good look at him. They continued the chase the next day, and the day after. Each day their plans became more elaborate: one time Shahid climbed onto Jackson House’s roof and directed Hal from there, pointing out the direction the Rag and Bone Man had taken, waving his arms like a conductor. But as always, the man got away. Neither boy wanted to admit it, but they’d both realised their mission to uncover a murderer had become something of a game, and they kept up the search because it filled the long summer days.
On the evening of the third day, after saying goodbye to Shahid, Hal came home to find his mum waiting for him.
“I had a visit today from Mr Foster, head of the estate’s housing board,” she said sternly.
Hal’s blood ran cold.
“He tells me you’ve been hounding the rag and bone man. What have you got to say for yourself?”
Hal stood dumbly in the doorway.
“We’ve not even lived here a week. One week. And already I’ve had a complaint about you. Didn’t you think once about the poor man? Three days you chased him, and just because he looks different. Just so you could get a look at his scars. Yes, Mr Foster told me about that. It’s not the first time boys have taken an interest in the rag and bone man. But never—never, he says—have they followed him with a camera.”
“I didn’t—” Hal began.
“Didn’t what?” she interrupted. “Is Mr Foster lying? Did my son and his friend not chase a man burned in the war to try and get a photo of his scars?”
“It wasn’t that—It was a game—” Hal mumbled. His stomach felt heavy, like it was full of lead.
Hal’s mum sent him to his room, saying she needed time to think of an appropriate punishment. He lay curled up in his bed as the shame washed over him, thinking of what he and Shahid had done to the man.
4
HAL WAS WOKEN by a knock at his door. His eyes flicked open, registering the dawn light, a moment of confused awakening before remembering the night before.
“You’re coming with me to the university today,” Hal’s mum shouted through the closed door. “Get dressed.” Hal could picture her firm expression.
He dressed and joined his mum for a silent breakfast. He couldn’t meet her eye. After breakfast, she checked herself in the mirror by the door and then ushered Hal out of the flat.
The sun was rising as they walked the length of the estate and out through the great archway that cut through Oastler House, the entrance gate to the city they had driven through in Eli’s van earlier that week. Hal’s mum walked quickly, eyes ahead, not checking to see if Hal was keeping up—the surety of a parent leading a guilty child. The two exchanged no words.
Outside, where the main road ringed the estate like an asphalt moat, was a bus stop already busy with a queue of men and women waiting for a ride into the city. They joined the end of the line. Hal stared at his feet.
The bus came and they took their seats. Hal looked out the window, watching people going to work. Leeds was coming to life, shopfront shutters rising and pavement signs coming out.
The bus took them through the heart of the city, down the Headrow, packed with its department stores, and up towards the university.
Hal felt a tug at his sleeve—they were getting off here.
The bus left them right outside the Parkinson Building, the university’s main entrance. It was an impressive sight, a great classically-styled building made of white stone that stretched off in both directions, longer even than Moynihan House. A sweeping flight of stairs led to three sets of vast oak doors framed by columns. Reaching up to the sky overhead was a great clock tower with squared sides.
“Hurry or I’ll be late,” Hal’s mum called to him,
already halfway up the steps. Hal raced to catch up.
The heavy doors opened into a hall big enough to house one of the blocks at Quarry Hill. The cool air of the place gave Hal goosebumps. He expected it to be quiet, especially this early in the day, but students and professors crisscrossed the stone floor to and from lectures, seminars, and libraries. The noise of their footsteps on the floor and their conversations were amplified by the space, making a confusing clamour.
Ahead of Hal, in the centre of the hall, stood a circular desk, a ring of brown oak in the stone chamber. Three receptionists manned the desk, poised to answer questions from visitors.
Hal’s mum offered them a quick “Hello” as she marched him past and towards a staircase down to the basement. The change was stark: the lower floor of the Parkinson was a rabbit warren of tight corridors, seminar rooms, toilets, and, finally, a staffroom.
Hal’s mum shepherded him inside and stood in the doorway.
“You’re to stay in here and clean the place up,” she said. “The PhD students have been messing up the staffroom for all of us and everyone will appreciate you giving it a thorough clean.”
Hal surveyed the messy room. It was actually quite a large space, made to feel cramped by the cheap sofas and armchairs crowding the floor under the low ceiling and artificial light. Strewn about the tables were half-empty cups of tea and coffee, plates of unfinished meals, and ashtrays piled with cigarette butts and ash. Hal could barely make out the floor, it was so covered with newspapers—as though, somewhere under all this, he might find an animal being toilet trained. Hal’s heart sank when he spied the small kitchenette in the corner of the room, and the mountain of crockery in the sink and on the counter.
“But—”
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Hal’s mum interrupted. “And I don’t want to hear you’ve been bothering anyone.”
She closed the door behind her before Hal could finish his protest. As she left, Hal felt the nagging shame dissipate, replaced with the dawning despair of the Herculean task ahead of him. He hardly knew where to start.
Hal rummaged through the cupboards of the kitchenette and found some sponges, a tea towel, and soap. He set to work gathering up the crockery, assembling it into precarious towers beside the sink, fitting them in around the mess already there. He found mess within mess—in the cups of half-finished teas and coffees, were cigarette butts, doused out by students heading off to lectures; a ritual of the rushed. Plates, too, held grubby secrets. Packed between the stacked crockery, like mortar between bricks, was leftover food pressed down by the weight of the plate above.
The day gave Hal a new and deeper understanding of the word ‘pigsty.’
As the hours ticked by and he washed crockery, upending dregs and butts into the bin, the door to the staff room would sporadically swing open, announcing the arrival of a new group of PhD students. The groups would always be deep in discussion, trying to upstage each other in their knowledge of a granular subject. They barely noticed Hal as they made themselves teas and coffees—spilling them when the debate was most animated, Hal noted. Other times a single student would enter, poring over a book or a paper. Again, Hal made little impact on their morning—though, when they’d tap out ash on the sofa, missing the tray they’d balanced on the arm, they’d impact his. There was one student who came in, spotted Hal and, thrown by the presence of a child, immediately backed out of the room. Simply because he did nothing to add to the mess, Hal kept him off the rapidly growing list of students who he felt had crossed him.
By lunchtime, he had started to make some headway. The bulk of the crockery was washed and drying by the side of the sink. He had managed to clear a path through the newspapers, folding and piling them on a table in the corner of the room. He had even managed to clean the coffee tables of all but the most persistent stains. Hal’s mum couldn’t hide her approval when she came to collect him for lunch.
She took him to the café in the hall above. Over sandwiches and cups of tea, the silence of the morning thawed. They talked about the students he’d seen, and his mum tried to identify them from their different manners. The one she sure of was the timid man who had backed out of the room; he was studying a PhD in architecture.
“A sharp man,” she said. “But terribly shy. That’s not a great problem among academics, but it has been an issue with the seminars he leads.”
It wasn’t just the iciness of the morning that was breaking down, Hal realised. There had been a gloom between him and his mum for months now. In their last house, they’d been the whole world; she’d walked him to and from school, played with him in the garden, kept him away from his dad on his darker days. Clouds had formed in the weeks after his death. She’d become detached, often not leaving her room until the evening. Then there was Eli, who had arrived so suddenly in their lives.
After lunch, she walked him back down to the staff room, where any kindly thoughts on the last months were banished at the sight of what had become of his morning’s work. He stood in the doorway and stared in despair at how the piled newspapers had been plundered and strewn about the sofas and coffee tables. The plates and cups he had left drying by the sink had been largely used by a horde of hungry students for hurried lunches. Those that hadn’t been used were speckled with ash from a smoking sandwich maker.
A gentle push on his back from his mum sent him back to work. She left with a grin on her face.
HIS AFTERNOON WAS spent undoing the damage of the lunchtime rush and continuing his work from the morning. Head down, scrubbing dishes, he was surprised by a voice behind him.
“Well, aren’t you a marvel.” Hal turned to see a woman in her twenties looking around the room in exaggerated surprise. “No, not a marvel. A godsend. You’ve even managed to get the tables clean! I heard that Patricia Ward’s son was down here working wonders, but I couldn’t believe a single person could clean this place up, and that it wasn’t a team of cleaners with hoses and bottles of bleach.”
Hal smiled, taken aback.
“I’m Rose,” the woman said, proffering a hand. “Your mum’s done us a great favour conscripting you to our cause.”
“Hal,” he said, taking her hand.
“How did she do it? Offers of jewels? Grand days out on the town?”
Hal hesitated. “It’s actually a punishment.”
“Ah, hard labour. I think I’d prefer to break rocks than deal with this mess. Should I be looking through the papers to hear tell of your crime? Must have been severe to land you in this brig of academia.”
Hal told her about following the Rag and Bone Man, emphasising how it had become a sort of game, that they’d not meant to be cruel. Rose empathised; her curiosity had got her in trouble at times, too. She told him how she earned a little money working in the university’s main library, the Brotherton, and had been told off for accessing the special collection without supervision. “One day I’ll get a look at Shakespeare’s First Folio,” she said with a gleam in her eyes, explaining that it was kept under lock and key.
Rose stayed for a tea and helped Hal clear away the clean crockery before going back to her work.
Hal had finished cleaning the staffroom by four and spent the last few hours leafing through the newspapers and filling in the crosswords. The hours without work crawled by slowly. He welcomed his mum’s return, and the bus ride back to the estate.
BACK AT THE estate, Hal found out it could have been worse.
“Dad sent me to count all the stock in uncle’s shop,” Shahid told Hal with a sigh. “I finished after lunch and then my uncle sent me to his friend’s shop two streets over. I’m doing stock in every shop in the community.”
5
THE REST OF the week followed the same routine. Hal’s mum would wake him in the morning, they would take the bus to the university, and he’d spend the day fighting the tide of mess. After the first day, Hal learned to take a book with him, and he would spend the last hours of the day reading Frankenstein.
&n
bsp; Each day he’d look forward to a visit from Rose in the afternoon. She would tell him about the university and he would get her up to speed on what had happened in Frankenstein.
After four days, it had stopped being such a chore, though he was aware of the summer holiday ticking away with each passing day and not being able to spend time up on the roof with Shahid.
On the Friday, after lunch, Hal’s mum said he had been punished enough and could go back to the estate. He was almost sad to go.
Almost.
THE SUN WAS all out when Hal got back to Quarry Hill, bathing the estate in its warm glow. He knocked on Shahid’s door, but no one answered; it appeared his sentence hadn’t been waived like Hal’s.
Stopping home long enough to get a flask of water, Hal went to the top floor of Moynihan House. He checked he was definitely alone, then jimmied the lock to No. 52 and slipped inside. He walked through the empty flat to the bathroom, opened the window, and climbed out onto the windowsill.
It hadn’t seemed so high to him when he had climbed to the roof with Shahid—company brings courage, particularly between 13-year-old boys. He stuffed the water flask into his pocket, freeing up his hands, and found the lip of the window’s concrete surround with one hand and one of the brackets holding the drainpipe in place with the other; the rusty metal bit into his fingers as he pulled himself up. He had a hairy moment when his foot slipped on the narrow bracket, but he kicked out and found the handle of the bathroom window, pushing himself up until he reached the edge of the roof. With a final heave, he scrambled up the wall and rolled over onto his back, breathing deeply and looking up at the golden summer sky. Baked by the day’s sun, the roof gave off a gentle warmth.
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