Off Script

by Graham Hurley

  ‘Pleased to hear it.’ He’s found the marmalade. ‘I’ll show you downstairs after coffee. I need some inspiration myself.’

  I leave the Beacon mid-afternoon. After what I’ve seen of the work waiting for him in the retirement home, I’m surprised that Deko has time for in-depth discussions about colour schemes and the merits of certain shades of washed-out greeny-greys. The standard of the finish on every floor exactly meets the clientele he seems to have in mind when the building is ready for occupancy. When I gently press him about the money these people might be paying, he says it’s complicated. What he has in mind is a leasehold purchase they can sell back at any time, plus a monthly service charge to take care of the all-important medical support. That leaves me guessing about the actual figure.

  ‘Pretend I’m seventy-five,’ I suggest. ‘I’m white, respectable, I might just have been widowed or I might not, I’ve got perfect manners, and I’ve just sold the family acres. What am I parting with?’

  The question makes him laugh. My client profile, he says, is spot on. No DHSS. No arsonists. No one with a taste for Led Zeppelin. The greyer the pound the better.

  ‘So how much?’

  ‘On today’s market?’ He shrugs. ‘Three fifty for the leasehold. Plus a couple of hundred a month for peace of mind.’

  ‘You mean aspirins?’

  ‘I mean anything from company to shopping to low-level medical support. If it comes to bed baths and trips along the front in a wheelchair, we’d have to reassess. This is a trial run. I can’t complete until I’ve sorted the other place out but there might be a case for taking this to market first and then using the proceeds to hire some help and give the other place a kick up the arse. That’s not as easy as it looks. Finding the right guys can be a nightmare.’

  ‘You’ve got backers?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Are they patient?’

  ‘Always.’ He laughs again. ‘If this place works, I’ve got a list of other properties. Budleigh Salterton. Ottery St Mary. A couple of those little villages around Dartmoor. Anywhere with low blood pressure and a view. This country’s dying on its feet. It’s getting older, and fatter, and more frightened. Believe me, you can make money out of that.’

  ‘Really?’ The way he puts this proposition gives me a moment’s pause. He’s clearly thought all this through, and I don’t quarrel with any of his conclusions, but there’s a hint of steel, a ruthlessness, that doesn’t quite go with Aretha Franklin and exquisitely cured herring fillets. ‘So what will you put on your tombstone?’ I ask him. ‘Apart from your name?’

  ‘My tombstone? What sort of question is that?’

  ‘I want to know how you view yourself. Builder? Sailor? Businessman? Everyone’s got a label. What’s yours?’

  He nods, seeming to understand, and gives the question some thought. Then the big hands shepherd me towards the final flight of steps that lead to the basement. Only in the back garden, shaded now, does he give me an answer.

  ‘Chancer.’ He stoops to kiss me. ‘Happy now?’

  THIRTEEN

  Chancer? Perfect. This is the world where Deko belongs. The world of risks, and effort, and never losing your nerve. The world where you back your own instincts, your own judgement, weather the hard times, and never lose a night’s sleep. Chancer, I think. How come I’ve been lucky enough to meet a man like this?

  Carrie is on the phone when I get back to the apartment. I wait for her to finish and then join her on the balcony. She sees the envelope in my hand, and I sense she knows what’s coming. The first of the CCTV prints shows Moonie sitting alone in the carriage. She gives it a cursory glance and then moves on to the other one. This time she looks at it properly, shaking her head before turning away.

  ‘Where did you get these?’

  ‘Look at me, Carrie.’

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘The police. Because I worry about you. And so do they.’

  ‘You told me you’d keep it a secret.’ She turns to face me at last. ‘You promised. You gave me your word. Otherwise I’d never have told you.’

  ‘About him?’ I gesture at the print.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is him?’

  ‘Yes. And you know what happens now? When he comes for me? You know what he’ll do? You remember what he said to me? That night? In my own fucking bedroom?’

  I blink. Carrie never swears.

  ‘You can sleep here,’ I say at once, ‘until they find him. You can have my room. It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘That’s not the point. I trusted you. And now look what’s happened.’

  I take a step closer to her, try and give her a hug, but she fends me off. I’ve betrayed her. Worse still, I’ve opened the door to all kinds of nightmares.

  ‘This is unreal,’ she says. ‘I can’t get that night out of my head. Things like that aren’t supposed to happen, not in a little town like this, not to someone like me. Don’t tell me it’ll all be OK. Don’t tell me I’ll get over it. I don’t want to hear any of that shit. One day it may happen to you and then you’ll understand. Everything you’ve ever taken for granted, everything, it’s just gone. I can’t sleep properly. I can’t get that face, those eyes, out of my mind. Then you turn up with pictures like these and suddenly it’s all much, much worse.’

  ‘We’ll take care of you,’ I tell her again. ‘But first you have to go to the police. I’ve got to know the woman in charge. Her name’s Geraghty. She’s good. She wants to find him but first you have to give her a statement. Otherwise she can do nothing.’

  ‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘No way.’

  She’s crying now, her back to me again, her hands clutching the railing. She blows her nose between her fingers, then shakes them over the drop. Finally she turns to face me. Her face is like stone, pale, expressionless.

  ‘I’ll have to leave town,’ she mutters. ‘Find somewhere else to live, some place he’ll never find me.’

  At this point, my phone begins to ring. I ignore it.

  ‘And Pavel?’ I’m staring at her.

  ‘You’ll have to make other arrangements, look after him yourself, whatever it takes. You should have kept your word, thought it through, not go running off to the police.’

  ‘You really think that was an option? After what you told me?’ I mention the thefts of underwear from gardens on her street. I somehow assumed that she must have got word of these creepy visits but – once again – it seems I’m wrong.

  ‘When did this happen?’ She’s horrified.

  ‘A couple of nights ago.’

  ‘It’s him. It has to be. It’s so fucking obvious. He’s sending me a message, isn’t he? He’ll be leaving dead animals on my doorstep next. He’ll take a knife to them first, do horrible things to them. If he can get them through my letterbox, he probably will. The boy’s sick. He needs help.’

  ‘Exactly. And that’s what the police are for. You have to talk to them, Carrie. Before he really kicks off.’

  She studies me for a long moment. For the first time I notice the reddening around her fingernails where she’s been picking them. I have Geraghty’s card in my jeans pocket. I fetch it out and give it to her.

  ‘Call her, Carrie. Please. We care about you. We really do.’

  ‘You know nothing about me,’ she says hotly. ‘Nothing.’

  In a number of ways, that’s probably true. There are whole areas of Carrie’s private life she’s kept to herself, but just now that’s of absolutely no relevance.

  ‘Make the call,’ I say again. ‘Just do it.’

  ‘You had no right.’ She shakes her head.

  ‘I had every right. Let’s get this thing sorted.’ I pause. ‘Yeah? We agree?’

  She doesn’t make the call, not that afternoon, not later. After she’s left the apartment, handing over to Felip, I try and sort out the implications for all of us in my mind. If she really does leave town, then Pavel’s care will fall to me until I can find a rep
lacement. A trillion agencies deal in all kinds of care but I know Pavel far too well to have any confidence in an easy fix.

  Pavel, once we’d installed him in the apartment, insisted on auditions when it came to hiring someone to look after him and we were in double figures before Carrie turned up and won his full approval. Do I really want to go through all that again? An endless succession of strange faces at the door? Women, and occasionally men, without the faintest idea of what it needs to put a smile on Pavel’s face?

  At this point, Malo turns up. He’s been out on the Duck Pond with Jean-Paul, trying to master the basics of getting the huge kite to take him in the right direction. This was way more difficult than he’d ever expected, and he was glad I hadn’t picked up when he’d finally managed it, phoning me to witness a second attempt.

  ‘I was hopeless,’ he said. ‘I blew it completely.’

  I tell him it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, he’ll get it together.

  ‘Here, take a look.’ I show him the CCTV prints.

  ‘Cool.’ He’s grinning. ‘Peng.’

  ‘Peng’ is a term of approval in Malo’s world. The shot on the station platform wins special attention.

  ‘Look at his eyes,’ he says. ‘There’s no one at home, no one there.’

  ‘He got off at Lympstone,’ I tell him. ‘I thought the police might make enquiries, you know, house to house, but I’m not sure they’ve got the time. At least they know what he looks like now. We live in hope.’

  For a moment, I toy with telling him about Carrie, how upset she is, but the very mention of her name sparks another grin.

  ‘They’re at it,’ he says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Carrie and Jean-Paul. He thinks she’s the dog’s bollocks. I bet he can’t get enough of her.’

  ‘And Mrs Jean-Paul?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. He’s forty-something, for Christ’s sake. You think he doesn’t know how to handle this kind of shit?’

  ‘Sweet thought,’ I tell him. ‘All I care about is Carrie. She needs looking after. I’ve no idea how she’ll fit into his life, but I hope he recognizes a woman in trouble when he sees one.’

  That evening passes in near silence. Malo recognizes tension when it surrounds him, a legacy of what Berndt and I mistook for parenthood, and after a glum supper I’m relieved when he slumps on the sofa and switches on the TV. He flicks through the channels like any other adolescent, giving each programme a couple of seconds to make its case, then he digs his Xbox out of his rucksack and starts to play Grand Theft Auto. I retire to the silence of my bedroom, glad of my own company. I know I owe Pavel a conversation, and I know as well that he’ll blame me for not showing up, but just now I can’t face it. In Malo’s parlance, it’s been a truly shit few hours. Enough.

  FOURTEEN

  I must have been exhausted because I don’t wake up until gone nine. Carrie is standing at my bedside. She’s holding out my phone, which I must have left in the lounge.

  ‘For you,’ she says tonelessly, turning on her heel and leaving the room.

  ‘We’ve got him.’ It’s Geraghty. ‘Picked him up at the station at quarter past seven.’

  One of her officers, she says, had left a set of CCTV photos with the station staff. Moonie is now in the custody suite in an Exeter police station, awaiting his first interview.

  ‘So what’s he said so far?’

  ‘Nothing. We’re still waiting for the duty solicitor to turn up.’

  ‘You’ve got a name?’

  ‘He calls himself Montague. Foster Montague.’

  ‘Calls himself?’

  ‘We searched him but found no ID.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Nothing. No credit cards. No correspondence. No bills. My guess is he’s too young for a driving licence. So, Foster Montague it has to be. Oddly enough, we found the name scribbled inside one of the books he had. The book looks second hand. He probably got it at a charity shop and lifted the name.’

  ‘He gave you an address?’

  ‘No. He said he couldn’t remember.’

  ‘So, what else did you find?’

  ‘Very little. The boy needs a good wash, and a visit to a laundrette wouldn’t do any harm.’

  ‘No women’s underwear?’ I’m trying to hide my disappointment.

  ‘I’m afraid not, and when we asked him about the thefts, he denied all knowledge.’ She pauses to fire a question at someone nearby. Then she’s back on the phone. ‘You talked to Carrie?’

  ‘I did. Has she called you?’

  ‘No. She’s there now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then try again. Be forceful. Point out how important we get her onside. We’ll hold the interview until we hear from you.’

  The phone goes dead and I lie back for a moment or two, my eyes closed, listening to the beat of my heart. Foster Montague. Moonie. No address. No background. Nothing. Rien. Nada. I try to imagine him in the custody suite, probably alone, waiting to see what happens next. At length, I force myself to get up. In the bathroom, when I look in the mirror, I barely recognize the face that is staring back at me. Gaunt is too kind a word. As the scales confirm, I’m definitely paying the price for ratting on Carrie. I’ve lost six pounds in as many days. In any other circumstances, I’d view that as a triumph.

  Showered and dressed, back in jeans and a T-shirt, I fiddle in the kitchen, waiting for Carrie to emerge from Pavel’s bedroom. To my relief, it seems we’re back on speaking terms.

  I tell her about Moonie. The news that the police have found him appears to alarm her.

  ‘They’ve arrested him?’

  ‘That isn’t clear. They certainly want to talk to him.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I’m guessing the theft of the underwear.’

  ‘Not me?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  For the umpteenth time, I try and explain. A statement, plus a positive ID, would – I’m assuming – lead to a formal charge. Breaking into someone’s house in the middle of the night and threatening to kill them, even these days, isn’t something the law takes lightly.

  ‘So, what would they do? If I gave them what they want?’

  ‘I’m guessing they’d want an explanation.’

  ‘From the boy?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He’ll deny it. He’s bound to. He’ll say it never happened. His word against mine. No other witnesses.’

  ‘Then they’ll dig around.’ I’m trying to put her mind at rest. ‘Look into his past. Make enquiries elsewhere. Find out what else he’s been up to.’ I’m making this stuff up and Carrie knows it.

  ‘You really think that?’

  ‘Of course. That’s what the police are for.’

  ‘And if it goes to court? If the police can make some kind of case? What then? Say he’s got a good lawyer. Says he hears voices in his head. Says it’s not his fault. Where would all that take us?’

  ‘They’ll lock him up. Section him. Put him away.’ I shrug. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘But he’ll come out in the end, won’t he? And then he’ll come looking. It happens all the time. Domestic abuse. Take all those battered women. The husbands get a slap on the wrist, told to stay away. Some of them even go inside for a couple of months. But doing time like that means nothing when you’re lying in bed, listening for noises, listening for those footsteps down the hall. No.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, but no. I won’t phone your police friend. And I’m definitely not making a statement.’

  I try a little harder, try getting angry, but Carrie refuses to budge. This is her life we’re talking about, her peace of mind, and both are precious. Thank you, but no.

  I relay the news to Geraghty, who appears to be at the Exeter police station. She tells me the duty solicitor has arrived and is in an office downstairs, talking to her new client. The detective constables assigned to the case will need to ma
ke a start on the first interview very shortly. Am I sure Carrie won’t attend?

  ‘Sadly, I am,’ I say. ‘I tried, and I failed.’

  I listen out for my mobile for the rest of the morning, half-expecting an update from Geraghty. When it doesn’t ring, I’m not sure whether this is good news or not. Finally, mid-afternoon, I get a call.

  ‘We’ve had to release him,’ Geraghty says. ‘He’s back in the wild.’

  At first I assume she’s joking, but it turns out she’s not. Pressed on the underwear thefts, Moonie continued to deny everything, and in the absence of hard evidence the interview team were helpless. Asked to account for a lack of address, he simply shrugged and refused to comment. Earlier, he’d given his age as eighteen, which was a relief because otherwise Geraghty would have had to lay hands on someone she calls an Appropriate Adult, but now she’s inclined to doubt even this.

  ‘We think he’s younger,’ she says.

  ‘What about his past? Stuff he’s been up to? Previous convictions?’

  ‘We checked our databases. Nothing.’

  ‘What name did you use?’

  ‘The only one we’ve got. Foster Montague.’

  ‘No wonder, then.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Geraghty seems to agree. ‘It’s a mess.’

  So far, I’ve been conducting this conversation in the lounge, standing by the window, staring out at the view, but suddenly I’m aware of Carrie in the room. She must have ghosted in without a sound. I shoot her a look and step out on to the balcony, sliding the door closed behind me. Geraghty, thank God, is still on the line.

  ‘He’s mad,’ I say. ‘He has to be.’

  ‘That may be the case, but it doesn’t help us. Under the Mental Health Act we can hang on to him for seventy-two hours and keep him in a place of safety pending an assessment, but we’ve got a problem with cell availability and the mental health folk are in denial. No time. No beds. Nothing. To be frank, I can’t afford to have officers babysitting this boy for the next three days. It’s just not going to happen. Not on the basis of the available evidence. The duty seems to think he’s harmless.’