SUNDAY, 20 FEBRUARY
11:55
Sunday morning meant Mass, which Ellen hated as much as the kids but endured for the sake of her parents and a Catholic education for her children. Before that, she made two phone calls. The first to Raj Patel, for an update on Dan Harris.
‘Not a nice character,’ Raj informed Ellen. ‘Harris is a low-life crim who’s been done for everything from drugs through to burglary and D&D. The last time our lot had a run in with him was when his girlfriend accused him of assault. He beat her up pretty bad, by all accounts. Except when the case came to the Magistrate’s, the girlfriend withdrew her statement. Said someone else had carried out the attack.’
There was a subtext there that Ellen and Raj both understood without needing to discuss it. Something they saw again and again. Women being abused by their partners but, when it came to the crunch, too scared to do anything about it. The partners threatened them and, nine times out of ten, the broken women succumbed to the threats.
‘Pretty much backs up how Kevin described him,’ Ellen said. ‘I don’t suppose Harris could have had anything to do with Jodie, could he? I know it’s a long shot, but is there a revenge angle here, maybe? Kevin was done for GBH. What if Harris was on some sort of revenge mission?’
‘Doesn’t sound like he’s got the brains for something like that,’ Raj said. ‘But I’ll look into it. He lives in Bromley. Want me to head over there later, have a quiet word?’
‘Good idea,’ Ellen said. ‘Let me know how you get on. Thanks, Raj.’
Her second phone call was to Alastair. She wanted to find out what he’d uncovered about Simon Wilson, Brian Fletcher’s boss. When her call went to voicemail, she left a message asking Alastair to call her back. Then she packed work away for the rest of the morning and went to collect her children and parents for the weekly visit to St Joseph’s church.
After Mass, Ellen drove through the Blackwall Tunnel to Limehouse. She had a tonne of work to do, but the prospect of a few hours in the company of her brother and his partner was a welcome break. Sunday lunches in Limehouse were something of a family tradition and one Ellen cherished.
Usually her parents were an obligatory presence at these lunches with Sean and his partner, Terry. Today, though, they were going to a seventieth birthday party at the Irish Centre in Lewisham.
‘Mick Taylor,’ her father had explained as they’d stood freezing outside the church earlier that morning. ‘My old pal from Spiddal. We went to school together, imagine that. And here we are now, nearly sixty years later, living it up in the Big Smoke. You couldn’t make it up, could you?’
Beside him, Ellen’s mother tutted and rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll be calling you later, Ellen, when he falls asleep on the sofa and I’ll need to carry him up to bed. All himself and Mick do when they get together is drink themselves into oblivion.’
It was a vast exaggeration, of course. If he was lucky, her father would get away with two, maybe three mild lagers, before his wife put a stop to any further drinking.
Sean and Terry lived in a modern, riverside apartment in Limehouse. From the outside, the building was all glass and clean lines. Inside it was neutral colours, open-plan and the definition of taste.
‘Something smells good,’ Ellen said, as Sean opened the door of the apartment.
‘Stuffed roast pork,’ he said, putting his arms around her. ‘Free range and organic. Full of goodness.’
She luxuriated in his embrace, feeling his absence sharply when he pulled away and turned his attention to Pat and Eilish.
‘Hey guys! Long time no see. High-five, Pat. Eilish? Oh wow. What’s that? A Peppa Pig princess. Fantastic. Come on, let’s go and show it to Terry. He loves princesses almost as much as you do.’
‘Men don’t like princesses,’ Eilish said, putting her little hand in Sean’s and letting him lead her into the apartment, Ellen and Pat trailing close behind.
‘That’s not true,’ Sean said. ‘Terry loves princesses. And pink. It’s his favourite colour.’
‘Is that because he’s gay?’ Eilish asked.
Sean pretended to consider this seriously for a moment, then nodded. ‘I guess so, Eilish. What about you, Pat? Is pink your favourite colour as well?’
‘Euurgh!’ Pat pulled a face and pretended to strangle himself.
‘Hey, don’t do that!’ Terry called, from somewhere far away in the other corner of the living room. ‘At least not before we’ve had a chance to go through this.’
He held up Match, Pat’s favourite football magazine.
‘Cool!’ Pat yelled, jumping forward. ‘Is it this week’s one?’
‘Sure is,’ Terry said, coming forward to greet them. ‘And this is for you, Eilish. Her name’s Roxy.’ In his other hand he held some sort of doll that looked like a funked-up, saucier version of Barbie. It had a nest of dark hair, breasts at least five times the size of any other part of her, and was wearing a short, figure-hugging red dress that would have looked better on a hooker than a child’s toy.
Terry smiled at Ellen. ‘A friend of mine makes a whole line of them. This one is the most, er, subdued version. Most of the others are bespoke models used in various bondage clubs in the City. Roxy was the only one I could find that didn’t have her nipples pierced.’
‘Nipples?’ Pat started sniggering. ‘Why would someone pierce a doll’s nipples? That’s disgusting!’
‘Indeed it is,’ Ellen said, relieved her father wasn’t here. She could just imagine the questions he’d ask about bondage clubs and body piercings. Only last week, the mother of one of Eilish’s friends had to have a quiet word with Ellen about Eilish teaching her child the word eejit.
‘As in fecking eejit, apparently,’ the concerned mother informed Ellen. ‘Eilish told Freya her grandfather had been very specific about that.’
Ellen bit back her first instinct, which was to laugh, and promised the woman she would have a word with her father. Something she had no intention of doing, of course. He would treat any such intervention with the disdain it deserved and, she was sure of this, would go out of his way to teach Eilish other, even less suitable phrases to shock her friends with.
Lunch was the full works. Alongside the pork, they had Heston Blumenthal roast potatoes, Delia’s apple sauce, and a selection of sublime roast vegetables. Dessert was Baked Alaska and whipped Cornish cream. Ellen thought she might never be able to eat again.
Afterwards, they went for a walk, heading west along the river towards Wapping and Tower Bridge. Sean walked ahead with Pat and Eilish, while Ellen lingered behind with Terry.
‘You’ve got something on your mind,’ Terry said, linking his arm in hers.
She looked at him, surprised. ‘How do you know that?’
He grinned. ‘I’m a lawyer, Ellen. Part of my job is paying attention, working out whether people are trying to hide something or not.’
‘I’m not trying to hide anything.’
‘I know. But you’re distracted. Work getting to you? Must be hard being back. Although you were suited to being a stay-at-home mother. All that time spent worrying about the state of the neighbourhood and fretting over your next gym class.’
Ellen smiled.
‘Why does everyone think being a housewife is so unrewarding?’ she asked. ‘It’s bloody hard work looking after two kids, let me tell you. Hey, maybe we should swap places for a week. Let me take on the Home Office and you can deal with the yummy mummies at St Joseph’s and use your lawyer skills to negotiate a deal between Pat and Eilish on which TV programmes they can watch before bedtime.’
Terry laughed. ‘Point taken. So come on then. What’s worrying you? And don’t say nothing. I can see something’s the matter. Sean’s noticed too. He kept glancing over at you during lunch, like he was checking you were okay. Only you were so distracted you didn’t even notice, did you?’
Ellen looked into Terry’s kind eyes and thought, not for the first time, how lucky Sean was to have met him. On paper, you
’d never have put the two men together. Sean, the working-class boy from South-East London, and Terry, public school education, Oxford graduate, partner in one of the UK’s top human rights law firm and a regular human rights commentator on radio and TV. Sean was into clubbing and house music and recreational drugs. Terry preferred opera, fine wine and country walks.
Except somehow, their relationship worked. Perfectly.
Before Terry, Sean had never had a serious partner, just a series of one-night stands in seedy clubs with names like Fist and Shaft.
A carpenter, Sean met Terry when he was asked to build a set of shelves for the library of Terry’s old house on Fournier Street, near Spitalfields. One week into the job, Sean had moved in and the two men had been together ever since.
‘Ten years,’ Ellen said now. ‘That’s how long I’ve known you, Terry. Don’t you ever get sick of this?’
‘Sick of what?’
‘Me,’ she said. ‘Me and all my shit. You and Sean, everything in your life just seems so simple. Straightforward. The only crap you ever have to deal with is mine.’
Terry smiled and wrapped his arms around her. ‘That’s not true, Ellen. Believe me, my life is every bit as complicated. I’m just not as good at dealing with stuff as you are. I prefer to lock my demons away in a box at the back of my mind and pretend it’s not there. And that, my dear, is not a very healthy way of managing it, I can tell you. Now then, why don’t we take the children to the park for a bit? I’ll entertain them while you and Sean can chat about whatever it is you need to get off your chest.’
‘Thanks, Terry,’ Ellen said. Her face was pressed up against his cashmere coat and her voice came out all muffled. Which was just as well because it hid the tremor in it. It also meant he wouldn’t be able to see the tears that had, inexplicably, filled her eyes as he’d been talking.
At King Edward Park, true to his word, Terry took Pat and Eilish into the playground while Ellen and Sean wandered across to the railings overlooking the river.
‘Spit it out then,’ Sean said. ‘You’ve got that look on your face. What’s wrong?’
She tried to smile, didn’t quite manage it.
‘I’ve been having these counselling sessions,’ she said. ‘You know, to help me deal with all that Dunston stuff. Or something.’
Sean nodded. ‘I know that, El. I thought the sessions were going well. Are you saying there’s a problem with them? You could always ask for a different counsellor, you know.’
‘It’s not that,’ Ellen said. ‘The counsellor’s great. But something came up in the last session. I started talking about what happened with Eilish. And since then, I can’t stop thinking about our first mum. Noreen. I want to find her, Sean. I need to know what happened.’
A pulse twitched at the corner of his eye. Apart from that, he stayed still.
‘What do you think?’ she asked. Stupid question, but she asked it nonetheless.
He turned to face her. He looked so bloody vulnerable. She forgot, sometimes, how soft he was. Mostly with Sean, all you ever saw was the sunny, carefree front he put on for the world. It was easy to forget that underneath there was a sensitive man who didn’t cope well with change or unexpected news. It was easy to forget that the haunted, lost look on his face now was one she’d seen too much of in the first four years of their life.
‘It’s a terrible idea,’ he said. ‘But I would say that, wouldn’t I? Because I’m not like you. All I’ve ever really wanted was this, what I have with Terry. A home, someone to love me, a job I enjoy and the rest of my family living close by. You’re different. You’ve got this drive and this need to get to the heart of things. It’s not something I understand. Eilish, our mother, everything that happened, how can you cope with digging up all of that? It was horrible. A horrible, ugly time and I never want to think about it or have to deal with it or talk about it or whatever it is you’re meant to do with all that stuff. I just want to forget about it.’
Ellen took his hand in hers. She felt him tense but he didn’t move away and she took that as a good sign.
‘It’s because of Vinny,’ she said.
Sean frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s difficult to explain,’ she said. ‘But when he died, it left me feeling dirty somehow. Like this bad thing that had happened had tainted me. I know it’s ridiculous, but that’s just how I felt. And then there was all that business with Dunston. I’m not sure, but I thought if I confronted him it would make everything better. Only it didn’t. It made it worse.’
‘Oh Ellen.’ Sean pulled his hand away and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. ‘You should have said something.’
‘I don’t think I could have explained it properly,’ she said. ‘At the time, I wasn’t even aware that’s how I was feeling.’
‘I still don’t see what any of this has got to do with her.’ Sean spat out the last word like it hurt his mouth.
‘It’s Eilish,’ Ellen said. ‘I can’t stop thinking of her. Surely you think of her too from time to time?’
The edges of his lips tightened. ‘Of course I think of her. Jesus, Ellen. She was my sister too.’
‘I need to know what happened,’ Ellen said. ‘It’s like I can’t move on with the rest of my life till I find out. I feel I owe it to her.’
‘You know what happened,’ Sean said. ‘Our mother got pissed, Ellen, and drowned our baby sister in the bath. That’s all there is to it. There’s no deep, dark secret. She was an alcoholic who had three kids and she couldn’t cope. So she drowned one of us. It’s that simple. And if you really care about your own kids, then I suggest you do everything you can to keep them as far away from that evil, murdering cow as you can.’
14:00
‘It’s about Dan Harris.’
Kevin’s grip on the phone tightened as he struggled to breathe.
‘You still there?’
The man’s voice sounded far away, like he was speaking to him through a long tunnel.
‘Who is this?’ Kevin managed.
Images assailed him. Harris and Cassie. Phones being used as cameras. Cassie’s face, all scrunched up from crying. Harris falling to the ground, fists and feet pounding into him. Hands on Kevin, pulling him off.
‘I know something about Harris,’ the man on the phone was saying. ‘Something that might interest you.’
Blood rushed to his head, pounding in his ears, pressing against his skull. His heart thudded wildly, so rapidly it felt like any second it would explode, bursting through the insubstantial wall of his chest.
He closed his eyes, saw Harris and opened them again. Harris lying face up on the floor of his sitting room. The hole in his chest, the dark stain across his white shirt. Eyes wide open, staring at nothing, devoid of life.
‘What about him?’ Kevin whispered.
‘Not over the phone,’ the man said. ‘We need to meet. Tonight. The Northbrook. Seven o’clock. Don’t be late.’
14:04
Rob hung up and looked at Frankie, sitting across from him on the only other chair in the sitting room.
‘Tonight, then.’
Frankie raised his can of beer in the air. In his hands, it looked too small, like a can made for a child, not a grown man.
‘Who’s this Harris bloke, then?’
‘The kid he hurt,’ Rob said. ‘The one he got sent down for. Thought if I mentioned his name, it’d work. Bet he thinks I’m some mate of his or something.’
Frankie belched loudly. ‘Good thinking, Rob. So, fella, seven o’clock it is. Christ, I can hardly wait.’
Rob said nothing. He wanted to feel good about it. Everything was working out just the way he’d planned. Except, he couldn’t shake off the feeling he’d got when he heard Hudson’s voice for the first time. The guy sounded scared. More than scared. Terrified. He hadn’t been expecting that.
He picked a fresh can from the ground, opened it and drank, trying to block the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He
drank long and deep, trying to focus on Molly, reminding himself he was doing all of this for her.
‘You all right, Rob?’ Frankie asked.
He took another slug of beer and nodded.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Just fine.’
It was the truth. Almost the truth. And even if he wasn’t quite right about it yet, he knew he would be. He’d come this far. No way he was turning back now. No matter what happened. He owed it to Molly.
This was payback time.
18.30
‘Police are investigating the murder of a man found dead in a flat in Bromley but have refused to give any details of the victim’s identity. Early speculation is that this is another example of the escalating problems between rival drug gangs in the Bromley area …’
Ellen’s mobile rang and she pulled it from the pocket of her jeans. At the same time, she pointed the remote control at the TV, turning it off.
It was Dai.
‘I need to see you,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘When were you thinking?’
‘Are you free now?’
Ellen glanced across at Abby Roberts, sitting at the other side of the oversized kitchen table.
‘Not really. Have you got something for me?’
‘Yes,’ Dai said. ‘But I don’t want to do it over the phone.’
‘I’m busy this evening,’ Ellen said. ‘And most of Monday. How about we grab a quick coffee late afternoon? Unless it can’t wait till then?’
‘It can wait. I’ll see you tomorrow. The Dacre at five. They serve coffee, if that’s your thing.’
He hung up before Ellen could say anything else and she looked at the phone, as if it might give up some clue as to what Dai had discovered.
‘Everything okay?’ Abby asked.
Ellen nodded. ‘Fine. Are you ready to go? Only I told my mother I’d pick the kids up by nine.’
Abby pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘I’m ready,’ she said. ‘I thought we could walk across, if it’s all the same with you. I’m doing this excruciating diet at the moment and I’m trying to fit in as much exercise as I possibly can. You know how hard it is trying to stay healthy in this job, right?’
Hunting Shadows Page 20