by Mo Hayder
The change in Carl's attitude didn't escape Tracey's attention. She was glad. He had stopped being surly and losing his temper every five minutes. One night she heard noises coming from the bathroom, noises that echoed around the dark house, animal screams and the thudding of a body being battered against the cast-iron bathtub. When she tiptoed upstairs she met Carl coming out of the bathroom, a grim look on his face. He was sweating, he didn't meet her eye, and she knew, without knowing how, that from now on the boy was going to be Carl's special friend.
And she was right. When he got boozed on the weekends Carl would come down the stairs in a T-shirt and Jockey shorts, a cigarette between his teeth, down to the living room where she and the boy watched the TV on a Saturday. He never spoke, he didn't snap his fingers or beckon or anything, he'd just switch on the light so they'd both look up and he'd stand there until the boy got up and limped out of the room. Tracey would turn up the volume on the TV and smoke a bit faster on those nights, trying not to think about what was going on upstairs. For days after these episodes the boy would go off into long periods of noncommunication—he would sit in the corner rocking, a blanket over his head, a steady whinnying coming from his mouth.
“Just make out like it's our brother,” Carl said. “Say he was born like that, OK? And we'll call him something, call him, I don't know, call him Steven.” And so it was estab-lished—Steven was his name, he was their idiot brother. The Borstal boys liked to beat “Steven” up: Tracey often found him lying on his side in the hangar rocking and whimpering, covered in engine oil. After a few years Carl lost his taste for him. Steven had started smoking on the sly and tearing photos of Debbie Harry and Jilly Johnson out of the News of the World to Sellotape on the wall. One morning Carl had woken up and found the pile of partworn tires in the garage burned to a cinder from one of Steven's carelessly dropped cigarettes. He'd cracked the boy's nose open for that. Steven was showing signs of growing up, didn't have a child's body anymore, and now Carl prowled the house losing his temper every five minutes, if not with him then with anything he encountered: with Tracey, with the cars in the garage, with the Borstal boys. Steven was a young teenager now, an overgrown child in cancer-shop trousers whom Carl didn't fancy anymore and didn't have the ingenuity or energy to get rid of. He started locking him in his room at night with a slop bucket and nothing else. “It's for your own good, you little fucker.”
Tracey was pleased—at last it seemed that Steven had reached the end of his useful life. But then one day, by chance, Carl discovered that Steven had been doing the work of the Borstal boys. While they sat back with their plastic bottles of cider and watched, it was Steven who was lugging the piles of car windows etched with vehicle identification numbers into the trees to smash. It was Steven who was doing the work with the angle-grinder, removing chassis numbers or cutting panels out. It was Steven who was growing bigger and more muscular and skilled around the garage. He couldn't string a sentence together but he could weld a plate over a chassis number in seconds. A light seemed to come on in Carl's head. If Steven could do the Borstal boys' jobs, then “What the fuck am I doing wasting me gin and Silk Cuts?” Before long he had set him to work—he became a little grease monkey, filing and beating and grinding and “I don't even have to find him a mask for the resprays,” Carl said. “He don't know any better. Absolutely pukka.” Now any Borstal boy who couldn't help Carl in the bedroom was redundant, and the trailer stood empty for long periods of time.
Then suddenly, out of the blue, Steven said Penderecki's name. That made Carl sit up and pay attention: “What d'you say?” He glared at him from over the News of the World. “What was that?”
“AhhhBan.”
“Whassat?” Carl looked up at his sister, standing there biting her nails and pulling a face. “Whatsee say?”
“I don't fucking know, do I?”
“Iibaaan.”
“Fuck me.” Carl crumpled the newspaper and jumped up. “He said Ivan. Didn't you? Didn't you say Ivan?”
“Unnng!” Steven tugged his head back and his hands jerked up under his chin. “Ung.”
“What's Ivan?” Tracey said. “His name?”
“Nah—that's Penderecki's name, isn't it?”
“Uh-hh.” He jerked his head back, his claw hand flailing under his chin. He had odd, wandering irises, which skittered across the top of his eyes like windblown leaves across a lake.
“Say it again. Who broke your head, eh?” Silence. “Come on, you stupid little shit, who done your head? Was it Penderecki?”
Silence.
“Come on—was it Penderecki what broke your head?”
A sudden jerking and rolling of his eyes. “Ung!”
“Who?”
“BBeMBe—rrrrr-dhi—”
“That's it!” Carl was amazed. “And who helped you? Eh? Who helped you after? Was it me? Was it Carl?”
“Ung—ung!” He jerked his head and rolled his eyes. That meant yes. Carl sat down on the sofa with an odd look of revelation in his eyes.
“That Polish piece of shit!” He slammed his fist into the newspaper and Tracey shrank back a little, not sure what was coming next. “I've got him, that piece of shit.”
The way Carl explained it to her, that Penderecki was getting old, slowly drying up, becoming inactive, losing all interest in little boys and forgetting he had anything at all between his legs, that there was some leverage to be had here, that he, Carl, could drop hints about what really happened to the boy and soon have Penderecki eating out of his hands, it all made sense to Tracey in a way. He'd have a place to crash in London whenever he needed it, he'd have Penderecki's contacts if he wanted them, he'd have a second place to stash his collection of tapes if things got dodgy at the garage.
“Or if I have to go away for some reason. He'll guard them with his fucking life if he knows what's good for him.” Carl was in a good mood now. “So, Tracey, you ain't to talk about who Steven is, right? If Penderecki ever turns up here for some reason don't you never let on—if there's talking to be done it'll be me does it.”
So Steven became part of the house and they got used to him wandering around. He had a favorite hat—a knitted Manchester United bobble hat that he wore pulled down over his forehead: “Bobah,” he called it, no one knew why. If he was separated from Bobah he would cry— so when she was feeling spiteful Tracey hid it from him until she had managed to get him curled up on the kitchen floor in tears. Afterward he never seemed to bear any resentment toward her; he seemed to forget about it almost as quickly as it had happened. In fact, Tracey realized that he didn't have much of a memory for anything that had happened since he came to Norfolk. He craved chocolate and got fat on Caramel bars; over the years he had crushes on Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears. When Carl wasn't around Tracey tormented Steven. She made him clean the house, and would sit on the sofa painting her toenails, listening to him in the hallway, ringing out each task he did: “Duh-ddinnn, now,” he'd warble. That meant dusting. Or “Hooooberiinnnn” (hoovering) or simply “Kerneaninnn, now” (cleaning).
“What do you put up with him for? He's a fucking mong. Why you hanging on to him?”
“Tracey, it's none of your fucking business.”
But she thought it was her business—she was savvy enough to know that Carl wasn't telling her something about the boy. She felt sure that there was something else about Steven. Maybe Steven meant something to someone important—and if she knew anything about Carl, there was probably money involved somewhere along the line.
And so it went. When Carl died Tracey was left to deal with her “brother.” She'd entertained some ideas about approaching Penderecki—she turned the idea around for hours as she sat watching Ricki Lake. But then DI Caffery had knocked on the door and everything had fallen into place. Now she saw why Carl had clung to the boy—there was money involved. Just what she'd always thought. She wasn't the slow-thinking mule Carl said she was, after all.
The first thing she decided to do was fi
nd somewhere to put Steven—she didn't want Caffery coming back and finding him pottering around the house clutching a duster and grinning idiotically. So yesterday she had put him in the Datsun—“Look, you can bring Bobah too,” and taken him out to the trailer at the top of the quarry. “Later I'll bring Britney.”
“Bwidney—”
“I'll bring her over too. I promise.”
And she did. She brought all of his Britney posters and his one Britney tape and the Walkman Carl had given him four Christmases ago, and settled him down with some Caramel bars and Cokes, padlocked the trailer and stood outside in the rain, smoking a cigarette and watching the cars go by on the road with their headlights on, thinking that she was very brave and very clever. And today, back at the trailer on the day that Caffery was due to come up the A12 with the money, she was feeling even braver. It was sunny and clear. She paused briefly outside the trailer to spit on the ground. She had to find a way of establishing that Steven was indeed the same boy Caffery wanted.
Inside he was warbling along to a song—“ooopsh, ah did id dg-ed.” Britney fucking Spears. The only tape he had and he never seemed to tire of listening to it. Over and over again, and still he didn't know the words. She unlocked the padlock and went in. The curtains were wet with condensation and the trailer stank of mildew.
“Listen, Steven.” She put down the bucket and sat on the bunk next to him, lifting one of his earphones. “Steven …”
He grinned at her, flopping his head back and forward. “Traith—”
She smiled, trying to look patient. “Look.” She took the headphones off and rested them on the bed, switching the Sony to the off position. “I've got something I want to ask you. OK?”
He paused for a moment thinking about this, his eyes skittering around, his hands moving one over the other.
“I said OK?”
He seemed to focus. He nodded hard, so hard that his heels knocked against the floor. “ 'Kay.”
“Good. Now listen. Do you remember the name of the bloke in London?”
Steven stopped nodding. He made a little choking sound and his eyes wandered away and came to rest on Britney Spears, pasted up on the back of the door: Britney lying back on a yellow pickup truck in a red and white cheerleader outfit.
“Steven?”
He bobbed his head up and down and now she saw he was mouthing something. She bent closer.
“What's that? What you saying?” He put his finger up his nose. “No, come on, don't do that.” She snatched his hand away. “Now, come on, you used to know it, you little shit—come on, the man what broke your head?”
He frowned suddenly and his eyes glazed over. He tipped his chin back and flapped his face toward the windows as if he was laughing. But he wasn't laughing. He was nodding.
“You remember?”
“Uuuungh.”
“What's his name?”
“AahhhBaaan …”
“Ivan? Is that what you said? Ivan?”
“Ungh.” He jerked his head up and down, eager to please.
“Good. Now if someone asks you, ‘Who did this to you? ’ you say, ‘Ivan, Ivan Penderecki. ’ ”
“Aaaahh-baannn Bemmb-bbbemmb—” He looked as if he was going to weep with the effort of getting the words out. “Aaah-bann. Bember—Ahhbann Bemmberedddih!”
It was good enough. Tracey sat back, satisfied, and lit a cigarette. She felt confident now—very confident. Britney Spears, in jeans and a pale blue T-shirt, smiled sideways at them out of a hot day in Times Square.
From the Jaguar parked outside the bank in Lewisham, Caffery called Souness: “I'm not going to make it this morning. I'm sorry, I'm—I don't know, food poisoning or something.”
“Oh, Jesus, Jack.” The two DCs she'd assigned to him were waiting in the office. “They're sitting here like a pair of wee bairns waiting for their daddy to come and tell them what to do.”
“OK. OK—put them on.” He spoke for ten minutes to one of the DCs, giving him the door-to-door parameters he wanted them to cover—Logan had already done the west of the park and he wanted the two DCs to start on the east side. Afterward he spoke to Kryotos, asking her to contact Champaluang Keoduangdy and arrange a meeting at lunchtime.
“Lunchtime? I thought you were dying.”
“Marilyn, please, I just need a little rest.”
“OK. I'm with you. I won't say a dickie bird.”
“The phone'll be off the hook so if you need me use my mobile.”
“Will do. Oh, and Jack?”
“What?”
“The dentist. From Kings. Remember?” She paused. “He called again Jack. Can you please—?”
“Yeah, yeah. OK. Leave it with me.”
After the call he took off his tie and put it into his pocket. He had felt like a fashion plate sitting there with the bank manager. But he'd got the money—it was in a brown banker's envelope in his breast pocket—he had his bargaining tool. Pathetic, so obsessed that you'll pay more than a month's salary for the ramblings of a washed-up old con and then lie about it to everyone. After this, he made a promise to himself: after today he was going to put it all behind him. He pointed the Jaguar toward Norfolk, opening the window, keeping the radio off. If nothing happened today it was going to end: he was going to hand it all over to the pedophile unit and tell Rebecca she'd got what she wanted and that the Ewan story was over. But as he drove he couldn't help catching sight of his eyes in the rearview mirror and all he could see in them was hope— as if he really expected to pull the car up at Lamb's and see Ewan saunter around the corner of the house, out into the sunlight, still wearing his shorts and little mustard T-shirt.
And now think what you're really going to see.
An old child's shoe, or a fragment of bone, probably. Three thousand pounds and the prize would be delivered with a saintly relic's ceremony: I hold in my hand a genuine piece of the True Cross. Or another animal carcass, green with burial. He knew he was going to be screwed around with—he just wished he could get rid of that bubble of hope in his chest.
Tracey Lamb knew the moment she got through the door. She didn't see them, and they'd been clever, hiding their car, but she knew. She dropped the bucket and turned to bolt. A uniformed arm came out, pushing the warrant into her face.
“Miss Tracey Lamb?”
“You never fucking asked to come in my house!” She thrust away the hand and swiveled so that she could look back up the hallway and see the extent of it. “You never fucking asked.”
“Didn't have to, Miss Lamb. You weren't here.”
“No! You cunts!”
Everywhere the house was being clawed at. They were walking around in their shirtsleeves, ignoring her wails, in and out of the rooms, snapping on their latex gloves. At the top of the stairs she could see a stepladder placed in the attic access panel, and a woman's elegant ankles in tan high heels, cut off just below knee height. She could hear someone walking around up there and see the flash of a torch.
“Get out of my fucking attic,” she yelled up the stairs.
An officer put both hands on her shoulders. “Miss Lamb, I think you'd be better off just letting us get on with it.”
“You fuckers—oh, God—” She knew she couldn't fight this. Caffery—that bastard—that fucking shit-for-brains piece of filth. She sank to the floor, her hands in her hair. “You bastards.”
The woman in the attic came carefully down the steps and passed an old blue shoe box, covered in cobwebs, to the PC at the foot of the ladder. He turned and carried it down the stairs.
Lamb saw him coming toward her and was furious. “Don't you dare take my things.” She grabbed hold of his leg. “Give me back my things—give me that.”
“Yow!” The PC tried to wrench away his leg, holding the shoe box in the air out of her reach, but Tracey clung on. “Get off—get her off me, someone!”
“Miss Lamb,” another officer said, “that contains evidence.”
“I know what it fucking contains. It's m
y bollocking shoe box—”
“Get her off—”
With unexpected speed Lamb jumped up and swung out her arm, catching the PC enough of a blow for the box to tumble to the floor. “Jesus, you cow—” The contents spilled out, slithering along the floor. For a moment everyone fell quiet, staring at the images among their feet. Even Lamb was momentarily shocked by what she saw. She stood over them, her body curled forward, her knees half bent, her face white as if she had been about to fall to her knees.
“Tracey, let's make this as easy as—”
“FUCK OFF.”
There were thirty or so photographs—the old type of print with a small white border around them, the images grainy. They showed a tiny blond girl of about ten sitting on a garden bench. In some of the photos she wore hot pants with a bib and braces, a bunny rabbit embroidered on the bib. Her hair had been back-combed and given a shoulder-length sixties flip, like an adult's. In some shots she was pictured playing with a beach ball; in others the bib was peeled down and she was proudly baring her thin white chest, her head tilted on one side for the camera. In two photographs, which had fallen near the back door, between the feet of an embarrassed officer, one slightly covering the other, the same little girl was on a bed. She was straddling the face of a grown man. No hot pants in this one.
“No!” Lamb fell forward, landing facedown on the photographs. “No—they're mine, don't take them, please!” She moved her arms compulsively up and down— like an exhausted swimmer trying to stay afloat—gathering the images under her body, one Wellington boot coming adrift.
“Come on, Miss Lamb.” The silence in the hallway broke, and someone put a hand on her shoulder. “Get up. And pull your skirt down too—you're showing the world what you've got.”