In the TV movies this was the time to whip out the old police special but the only thing Silver had to point was his finger.
The block was four storeys high with a fixed ladder leading to the roof. Silver looked about for some implement. The landing stank of solvent and there were empty glue tubes everywhere. But nothing he could use as a weapon. He mounted the stairs and pushed open the door to the roof.
It was flat, surrounded by a parapet. The roof too, was littered with empty tubes and plastic bags and there were several needles. Apart from that it was empty. But on the parapet were three more pieces of concrete all the same size as the first one. Ready and waiting. Boy scouts be prepared. No wonder no one came near the place, he thought.
He went down and reported to Macrae. ‘Well, there’s not much we can do about it. What’s her number?’
‘Twenty-eight. It’s on the second floor.’
The door to Number 28 was like all the other doors in the block. It opened on to a long exposed corridor that ran the length of the building. The mauve paintwork was cracked and peeling, one window had been broken and was boarded up, the second was heavily re-inforced with wire mesh.
Macrae pressed the bell but that was broken too. He tried to rattle the letterbox flap but it had been blocked. He banged on the door for several seconds and then put his ear to it. ‘There’s someone there all right. I can hear voices. Come on! Open up!’
He rattled the door handle and banged again. After what seemed like an age Silver heard a lock turning. The door opened a fraction on a heavy chain.
At first Silver could not see anything, then he let his eyes travel downwards. A little girl was looking at them through the crack.
‘Is your mother in?’ Macrae said.
‘Are you a new friend?’ the little girl said. Silver thought she might have been seven or eight.
‘We’re from the police.’
The little girl stared at them.
Silver went down on his haunches. ‘What’s your name?’ he said.
‘Sharlene.’
‘That’s a lovely name. We want to see your mummy. Will you let us in?’
‘I’m not allowed.’
Behind her, Silver could hear voices, then music. He realised it was the TV.
‘We’re new friends,’ Macrae said. ‘Your mummy will want to see us.’
Sharlene closed the door and slipped the chain. As Macrae opened it she ran back to the sitting-room. She picked up an old teddy bear and sat in a torn chair in front of the screen.
‘Leave her be,’ Macrae said, closing the lounge door.
There were two bedrooms. They looked into the first. It contained two bunks with cheap duvets crumpled on them. The floor was a mass of dirty clothes and broken toys. They moved to the other bedroom. Macrae knocked on the door and opened it. The smell was almost solid; a mixture of stale perfume and marijuana.
The walls were painted black and the closed curtains were dark red. Paper mobiles hung from the ceiling and when Macrae switched on the light Silver saw that its shade was a Japanese lantern.
On the floor on the far side of the room was a double mattress. Someone was asleep on it. Macrae went over and shook the sleeper by the shoulder.
‘Wake up.’
Silver found himself standing in the centre of the room unwilling to touch anything in case whatever made up the patina on the furniture came off on his fingers.
‘Are you Mrs Collins?’
This time Macrae was rougher. The woman groaned and turned. Macrae said, ‘Open the curtains, laddie.’
The hard grey light of March rushed into the room.
‘What you want?’ The voice was a subterranean croak.
‘To talk to you,’ Macrae said.
This took some moments to sink in. ‘Can’t you see I’m sleeping?’
‘Mrs Collins? Mrs Delilah Collins?’
‘What?’
Macrae took out his warrant card and held it in front of her.
‘Police? How you get in?’
‘Your daughter let us in.’
‘Shit! I tell her no one!’
‘We’re new friends,’ Macrae said, drily.
‘To hell.’
Mrs Collins got to her knees, wrapping a blanket round herself and then rose slowly. She was a light-skinned coloured woman with a skin tone like beech leaves in winter. Her black hair came down to her shoulders. She heaved herself up and in doing so the blanket slipped and Silver saw that she was naked. She had large breasts that were beginning to sag, but her body was still quite good.
They had checked on her before leaving Cannon Row. Twenty-seven years old, with a history of petty crime. Married to a lorry driver called Wayne.
‘What you want?’
‘It’s about Terence.’
‘Who? Oh, Terry. Listen I . . .’ She rubbed her face with her hands as though trying to clear it – and clear her mind at the same time.
‘Maybe she’d like to get dressed,’ Silver said. ‘We could wait in the sitting-room.’
‘You want to get dressed, Mrs Collins?’
‘What the time?’
‘About noon.’
‘You find Terry?’
‘You get dressed,’ Silver said.
They went through to the sitting-room. Sharlene was sitting about three feet from a huge TV set. The teddy bear was on her lap and she was sucking her thumb. She was watching an old black-and-white programme about World War II in France. She was staring at it like a zombie and Silver realised she was not absorbing anything. After a few moments Mrs Collins came into the room. She was dressed in mock leopard-skin pants and a white see-through blouse.
‘Go to the bedroom,’ she said to Sharlene.
Instantly the child slipped out of the room carrying her teddy.
‘Now, what you want to aks me?’
‘How many children have you got, Mrs Collins?’ Silver said.
‘What you want to know that for? You aks me about Terry, nothing else.’
She had recovered, and all her inherent distrust and hatred of the police was written on her wide face. Silver had wondered first of all if she was a dealer, but she looked too dim for that. He had met her type several times before. Caught in a poverty trap, abandoned by her husband, probably only semi-literate, almost certainly innumerate, she would not have been able to cope with even the modest complexities of drug dealing.
It was much more likely that she was a tart and that the ‘new friends’ which Sharlene let in and out were clients.
‘Where’s Terry? Where’s my boy? You’ve had more than a week.’
She padded round the room, found a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
‘Tell us about Terry,’ Macrae said.
‘What can I tell you?’ The anger was near the surface now. ‘He’s fourteen years old. He run away. What more is there?’
‘Photographs?’ Silver said. ‘You got any?’
‘No . . . Yes.’ She rummaged in the drawer of a scarred bureau and finally found a creased photograph. It showed a boy in running vest and shorts holding a small silver cup. Beside him was a coloured man in his sixties, his arm about Terry’s shoulders.
‘He’s an athlete,’ she said.
‘Who’s the man with him?’ Macrae said.
‘His grandfather. He was teaching him.’
‘When did Terry leave home, Mrs Collins?’
‘A week ago. I said so!’
‘It’s nearly two weeks ago,’ Macrae said. ‘You couldn’t have seen much of him.’
‘That’s my business how much I see of people.’
‘What was he wearing the last time you saw him?’ Silver said.
‘Shirt . . . brown jersey . . . jeans . . .’
‘What about a hat?’ Silver said.
‘Hat?’
‘Hasn’t he got a green woollen hat?’
‘Oh, that. Yeah. His grandfather give it to him.’
‘Why would he run away?’ Silver said.
&nbs
p; ‘Yes, why?’ she snapped back. ‘He has a good home here. Everything. TV. You aks why he run away? You find out, you tell me. I’m going to lather him when I find him.’
‘You lather him often?’ Silver said.
‘What you want to know for? What business is it of yours?’
‘Watch your mouth!’ Macrae said. ‘I know all about you. I know the sort of person you are. I know what you do for a living. I know how you spend your days and nights. You start getting cheeky with us and I’m going to start asking questions about Sharlene. Why she’s not at school. Why she’s being brought up in an unwholesome atmosphere.’
‘Unwholesome!’ Her voice rose.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Macrae said. ‘Just answer the questions.’
‘What d’you mean teaching him?’ Silver said. ‘You said his grandfather was teaching him. What? Reading? Writing?’
‘No. Not that. Running. Jumping. They were always in the park.’
‘Was your father an athlete?’
‘He done some in Jamaica. He always telling people. Talking big.’ She spat it out and Silver registered that her anger had switched from them to her father.
‘Where is your father?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘When?’
‘Two months ago.’
‘Did he live here?’
‘He slep’ there, on the couch.’
‘All right, Mrs Collins,’ Macrae said. ‘Let’s get back to Terry. Why d’you think he ran away?’
‘Maybe the school business.’
‘What business was that?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘You tell us.’
‘He try to burn it down.’
‘What, the whole school?’
‘His classroom.’
‘Why?’
‘How can I know? You aks me questions I tell you, but no one knows what going on in that boy’s head.’
‘Where’s his school?’ Macrae said. She told him. ‘All right, we’ll do some checking and we’ll get back.’
‘Here?’
‘That’s right. And when we come back I don’t want to see Sharlene here. I want to hear that she’s at school. You understand me?’
She did not reply, but stood with her hands on her hips, staring at him.
‘You better do it,’ he said.
Chapter Fourteen
Terry was in the house. He was safe. It was a piece of cake. That’s what his grandfather always used to say when he meant something was easy. Piece of cake.
When gas had been brought into these houses late in the nineteenth century, the pipes had been laid in the roof spaces and had run the length of the mews. All the houses were the same height, all looked the same.
When Terry had come through the party wall from the stables he had entered the roof space of the house next door. He had wriggled along the narrow planks and the sound of the horses vanished and the smell vanished and he lay in the loft, which was lit only by a dusty skylight, and tried to work out what to do.
He was afraid, and for those early moments the enclosed space helped. It was a kind of cave, a shelter, a den – like they’d had under Hungerford Bridge. If Gail had been there he would have been all right.
He knew he was over the rooms in a house because there were small holes in the ceiling and he could look down on to floors and a bed and a bath. But he did not know if the house was inhabited.
He lay quite still for a long time. If he remained like that no one would ever find him. He would die there. He had seen corpses and skeletons in horror movies, the kind his mother and her friends sometimes watched. That’s what they’d find up here one day. And when they touched him everything would turn to dust and no one would know who he was.
He had little idea how long he remained in this confined and chilly place but eventually he began to try and stretch his limbs and make a plan for the future. Not the future that other people planned for, but the next few minutes.
He had listened and listened but heard nothing from below. Now as he moved about he found a couple of old dusty suitcases and a canvas golf bag with half a dozen ancient clubs behind a galvanised water tank. He also came upon a short ladder.
If someone had stored suitcases and there was a ladder then there must be a way up and a way down. He was ‘thinking’. ‘Use your brains, mon,’ his grandfather had always told him. ‘Think.’
But he couldn’t see how the ladder could go anywhere until he realised that it was itself fixed to a trapdoor. He pushed on the ladder. Slowly the trapdoor swung down and the ladder gave access to the top of the house.
He lay in the loft for a while listening and looking. He could see two doors leading off a tiny landing. Everything was tiny in this house. There was blue wall-to-wall carpeting and the paintwork was white. The place had a chilly look.
He climbed down the ladder. Each step was an exploration in itself. He looked into the top-floor rooms and recognised the double-bed in one as the bed he had seen through the hole in the ceiling. He looked into the bathroom. There was no sign of it having been recently used.
Slowly he went down the stairs and found that he was holding the knife in his hand. Hastily he put it away.
The rooms were suffused by a soft grey light coming through the venetian blinds that covered each window. There were two rooms on the ground floor. One had a sofa, chairs, a filing cabinet and a desk. Off it was a small kitchen. He noticed there was a layer of fine dust over everything and the musty smell of a house which has not been opened for some time.
He stood in the centre of the room, his ears like hydrophones searching for the slightest noise. Suddenly there was a sound behind him. He whirled. He was looking into the kitchen. But it was empty. He realised that the fridge had switched itself on. In his hand was the knife. The blade was extended. He had no idea how it had got there.
He opened the fridge door. There was nothing in it except icetrays. He opened a long food cupboard. There were dozens of tins and packets. He knew now that the house had not been used for some time. He smiled. He felt almost arrogant. He had a house in London. He had food. He opened a tin of baked beans and ate it with a spoon, then opened a pot of apricot jam and ate that. His hunger was stilled for the moment.
He went into the sitting-room, opened drawers and cupboards. There was nothing that interested him. On a low coffee table there was a carved wooden box containing cigarettes. They were stale and brittle but he lit one and smoked it.
For the first time in many hours he felt safe.
*
‘They go like that,’ Howard Smith said. ‘Call it puberty, bad company, modern society – call it what you like. One week they’re young boys. Biddable. Even sweet. The next they’re bloody monsters.’
Macrae and Silver were in a small ante-room at the Edward VII Comprehensive School in North London. It was part red-brick, part 1960s ‘modular’ with an asphalt playground and a perimeter fence that would have looked more natural, Silver thought, at Auschwitz. Apart from the buildings there was some exhausted grass squeezed in between a plastics factory and a British Rail goods depot.
When they drove up to it Macrae had said, ‘No wonder they turn out knife artists.’
‘I went to a place like that,’ Eddie Twyford said, pulling up at the kerb.
Silver had thought of his own school. Also Victorian red-brick but a world away from this.
Howard Smith was – or had been, it depended how you looked at it – Terry Collins’s form teacher. He was in his mid twenties, with a pudgy face, thinning hair, and heavy-framed glasses which gave him the look of a technocrat. Which was what he was going to be.
He had told them, in almost his opening sentence, that he was getting out of teaching. ‘You’ve seen how grim it looks,’ he said, waving his hand to encompass the school, ‘and they expect us to come here day after day and teach for a pittance. How would you like to earn—’
‘We’re not here to listen to a speech about teachers’ p
ay,’ Macrae said, still angry about Sharlene. ‘We’re talking about a boy.’
Smith flushed. ‘I know that. You don’t have to take that tone with me. I’m just telling you why I’m leaving the profession. Why I’m going into industry. And from that you should be able to build a picture of part of the reason why Terry is like he is, why he did what he did. Oh, I’m not excusing the little bastard. You think I shouldn’t talk like that about the country’s young? Well let me tell you about the country’s young. They’re—’
‘He ever call himself Huntsman? Or a name like that?’ Macrae said, cutting brutally across Smith’s rising inflection.
‘What?’
‘Huntsman.’
‘Not that I ever heard. His name was Terence. Terry.’
‘You ever see him carry a knife?’ Silver said.
‘Not that I can remember. But he came from the Douglas Garden Estate. Nothing would surprise me.’
Macrae said, ‘Tell us about the fire.’
‘It was about two weeks ago. He’d just finished a project. It was his idea. He’d built an athletics stadium. The stands were made out of papier mâché, the grass was green plastic matting and the running track some sort of rubber which he’d painted light brown and then marked with lanes. That’s all he thought about. Athletics.’
‘Well, it’s different, isn’t it?’ Silver said. ‘Who coached him? You?’
‘Me? Heavens, no!’ He threw up his hands. ‘I don’t know the first thing about running. Even if I did it would be a non-starter. Not with what we’re paid. They want us to teach? We’ll teach. They want us to oversee games, they pay us to oversee games.’
For a second Silver caught an old-maidish tone and he looked at Smith more closely.
‘Who coached him? I’ve seen a picture of him holding a cup.’
‘I don’t know anything about a cup but, if he was coached at all, it would be by the P. E. teacher. All I know is he’d been in trouble before. Sniffing glue. But they all do that. I had a talk with him. Didn’t get anywhere. So I spoke to Social Services and they sent someone round to his home. Then one of his relatives died. An uncle or a grandfather. I remember that because he stopped work on his project. It was nearly finished and he just stopped. I kept on at him about it and finally I told him if he didn’t finish it I’d withhold his marks and he’d fail his year.’
Dirty Weekend (Macrae and Silver Book 1) Page 9