‘Do you like rabbits?’ said the man.
Jakey did not have much movement in his neck, but tried to nod anyway. ‘Ye-es,’ he said, ‘but I like dogs best.’
‘I’ve got a dog. She’s at home. Do you want to come and see her?’
‘I’m not allowed out of school.’
‘I thought you liked dogs.’
‘I do.’
The man shrugged. ‘Doesn’t sound like it.’
‘But I can’t. I’ll get into trouble.’
‘I’m sure you could if you really tried.’
Jakey had wanted a dog for his birthday. Dogs didn’t care if your arms wouldn’t work and your head was all wonky. When he had opened his presents to find a mechanical puppy, he had cried for two hours. Then his mother had cried too.
He should go back to his classroom, but the man was smiling at him, and his eyes had crinkly lines around them, a bit like his father’s.
If his father was at school right now, like all the other daddies were, the ones who hadn’t broken their promises, he’d make Jakey stop talking to this man and go back to class.
Jakey decided to do the opposite.
‘I suppose I could see if the playground gate is open,’ he said. ‘I sometimes see the Year Threes go through it for PE when my teacher Miss Haines is reading us a story.’
‘Attaboy!’
Jakey didn’t know what that word meant, but he thought it must be good as the man was still smiling.
‘If it’s not open, same time tomorrow?’
He smiled shyly in reply, and had just turned to walk back up the field when he saw Mrs Husselbee running towards him, the belt of her coat flapping behind her.
‘Jakey! Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. You must never leave your classroom without telling me.’
‘I was only . . .’ He turned back towards the fence, to show Mrs Husselbee who he’d been talking to, but the man in the suit had gone.
15
5.11 p.m.
When Erdman told his colleagues he was going home to bed, it wasn’t a lie, exactly. He was going home, but only after a teensy diversion.
Six pints and one game of pool later, he lurched past the site of the old Cross Bones graveyard and staggered towards London Bridge station. He wasn’t sure if it was the beer or the rush-hour traffic making his head whirl.
What was it Samuel Johnson said? When a man is a tired of London he’s tired of life. What a load of bollocks. Samuel Johnson had never caught the sodding 5.16 p.m. to Lewisham.
Fighting to keep his balance, Erdman stumbled the length of the platform, scouring the crowded carriages for just enough space to fold himself in. Commuters thumped on the windows and shouted at passengers to move down, to make room. Erdman favoured the stealth approach and elbowed his way in a moment or two before the doors slammed shut, forcing the mass of bodies to absorb him.
He pressed his cheek against the cool glass doors and shut his eyes. When he opened them, a blank-faced man in a pinstripe suit and a bulky holdall at his feet was staring at him from across the carriage. What you looking at, weirdo? But he daren’t voice it. Alcohol made him bolder, but he didn’t have that instinct for trouble, however aggrieved he felt. A frisson of recognition tingled his synapses but was washed away on a wave of giddiness as the train juddered home. He closed his eyes again. That jammy bastard Axel. This was all his fault.
By the time he forced his eyes open again, the man had been replaced by a black woman reading a newspaper. Her multicoloured dreads partially obscured the headline, but he could see enough to recognize the mother of that missing girl, Clara whassername again, splashed over the front page, on a pilgrimage to the sweet shop where she was last seen. Her face was mangled by anguish.
When the train pulled in, Erdman weaved the short distance up the hill from Lewisham station, but didn’t make it home in time and pissed against the low wall outside their home. He wiped his hand on his trousers, then patted his pocket. Better switch his mobile back on. It beeped loudly at him, and he grimaced at the sound. Three messages. Probably Axel or Amber. He’d check when he got in.
In the dusk, the converted Victorian flats on his street were stacked upwards like packing crates. Retching and wretched, he fumbled in his pocket for his key. It took him three goes to slide it into the lock.
Lilith was in the kitchen watching the press conference on the early evening news. Mrs Foyle was barely coherent, distress plastered onto her features like make-up. Mr Foyle was shrunken and grey, desiccated by grief.
‘Please, if you have any information, get in touch with the police,’ stuttered Mrs Foyle, the contours of her face ragged with suffering.
Her husband was more composed, but his eyes gave him away, those hollowed-out pools of desperation.
‘Clara, if you’re watching, Mummy and Daddy love you very much.’ Mr Foyle looked directly into the camera. ‘Please, just bring our baby home.’
Erdman wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t sense the atmosphere as soon as he put down his keys. Lilith kept her back to him, eyes glued to the screen, hands in the sink. Jakey was at the breakfast bar, pushing chicken casserole around his plate, his attention snared by a woman police officer describing the suspect seen leading Clara away.
‘What’s up, champ? Does your arm hurt?’ Erdman sat on the stool next to him and gently touched his son’s stiffened limb, but Jakey wrenched it away.
‘You didn’t come, Daddy.’ His big brown eyes were accusing.
‘I’m here now, aren’t I?’
Lilith whirled around, sending suds flying. ‘You forgot, didn’t you?’
What was he supposed to have forgotten? His booze-befuddled brain searched for the answer, but it eluded him. He grinned stupidly at Lilith, whose arms were folded across her chest.
‘You look beautiful.’
She refused to take the bait. ‘You were supposed to be at Take Your Dad to School Day. Remember?’
Erdman groaned, a vague memory pressing at the edges of his brain. ‘I thought that was tomorrow afternoon.’
‘We tried to ring but your mobile was off—’
‘The battery was—’
‘DON’T INTERRUPT ME. Jakey was gutted.’ Lilith’s eyes spoke the words that she couldn’t say aloud. That they didn’t know how much longer their son would be physically able to go to school. That it was bad enough he wasn’t allowed in the playground at break-time, or to take part in PE, or that he had to sit at a specially adapted desk, or that the other mothers were all too terrified to invite him for tea. That Jakey’s needs should come first. Always. Always. Always.
He opened his mouth to say something, and shut it again. He slid onto the stool next to Jakey.
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’ll buy you a toy tomorrow. Will that cheer you up?’
‘You can’t buy forgiveness, Erdman. You have to earn it. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?’
‘You’re not helping, Lilith.’ He held his arms open for a hug. Then dropped them to his sides when Jakey didn’t budge. ‘Daddy’s really sorry.’
‘Joe’s daddy was cool.’ Jakey’s voice was sulky. ‘He came in a police car. And Harry’s dad earns loads of money and buyed us all sweets.’
Cops and robbers. The officer and the lawyer. Erdman had met them both at a family social at the start of term. Groping for conversation, they had settled on football, that great equalizer. Except Erdman had never quite perfected the art of small talk. He had plenty to say about Messi’s sliding tackle or Fergie’s replacement. But somehow he could never get the words out. Three minutes of awkward silence followed, and then they’d both made their excuses.
‘You smell funny, Daddy.’
‘Oh God. You’re drunk.’
Lilith didn’t speak to him for the rest of the evening.
Her spikiness was one of the reasons he fell in love with her. He had always admired the way she could skewer an adversary with words alone, but these days Lilith’s barbs were aimed at him. He’d
read in some weekend supplement or the other that marriages rarely survive once contempt has crept in. Well, contempt hadn’t just crept into theirs, it was stomping about with bloody great boots on.
When once they’d sung along to the radio and discussed the day’s news, they’d now fallen into the habit of snarling at each other like wounded animals. Erdman couldn’t remember the last time Lilith had slung her arms around his neck and smiled that smile.
When Erdman first met Lilith, she fizzed and sparked with an invisible energy, always laughing, always moving. Now she barely spoke to him at all. He knew why, but he didn’t know how to make it better so he did what he usually did. Nothing.
Naturally, his darling wife had stalked off to bed without saying goodnight. When he’d gone up a couple of hours later to try and smooth things over, she was asleep, slack-mouthed, a slug trail of dribble on the pillow.
In the early days, he’d have slid in beside her and gathered her naked body to his, murmuring an apology. They might have made love or spooned, like two pieces of a well-worn puzzle.
Now she slept in faded pyjamas and didn’t like being disturbed, so he inched his way into the cold sheets, careful not to touch her.
On nights like these he missed her most.
16
11.59 p.m.
Miles Foyle counted to ten and knocked on his bedroom door.
‘Who is it?’
‘Me.’
‘Go away.’
He tried the handle, but it was locked. ‘Please, Amy.’
‘I said, go away.’
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Try talking to one of your whores instead.’
He rapped on the wood until his knuckles turned pink. After a couple of minutes, he heard the sound of the privacy bolt being drawn back.
‘You’ll wake Eleanor, you selfish twat.’
He tried to grab her hand, but she pulled it away.
‘Please. Give me a chance to explain.’
‘What’s to explain, Miles? There’s a prostitute in today’s Sun telling the world that my husband fucked her for money.’
‘It was only once.’
‘So?’
‘I was lonely.’
‘So?’
Amy sat on the edge of their bed, poured herself a glass of wine from the bottle on her nightstand. She swallowed a large mouthful.
‘She’s old and raddled and disgusting, and you paid to fuck her.’ Her words were laced with disbelief, her lips stained with tannin.
He knelt on the floor next to the bed, his knees sinking into the thick carpet. He could see the skin under her nose had been rubbed raw from endless crying, and that vulnerability made him weak with regret.
‘I was lonely, Amy. I’m sorry.’ His voice wavered. ‘I’ll make damn sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘You lied to me,’ she said, refusing to look at him. ‘You promised you’d never had sex.’ Amy swiped at her eyes. ‘That you liked to talk.’
‘Look, we’re going to get through this.’ He was crying now. ‘The police will find Clara and I’ll prove to you how much I love you, and we’ll be a family again.’
‘But it’s the not the first time, is it? That you’ve been accused of something’ – her voice was barely audible – ‘unsavoury.’
He flinched, as if she had fired a slingshot at him instead of words.
‘She withdrew the allegation,’ he said. ‘It was a horrible misunderstanding.’
‘She was fourteen.’
‘She was a hormonally charged teenager who completely misread the signals.’ His sigh was impatient. ‘We’ve been through this before, Amy.’
‘And we’ll go through it again, Miles.’
‘Look, she was a work experience girl who tried to seduce me and when I didn’t respond, she stitched me up.’
Amy stared fixedly at the carpet.
‘It’s the truth,’ he said. ‘I certainly never held her against her will.’
‘No, the truth is you’re a cheating bastard who pays for sluts and can’t keep his thing in his pants.’
‘It was once.’
But Amy would not answer.
A quiet knock on the door.
‘What is it, Gina?’
‘It’s Eleanor, Mrs Foyle. She’s crying again. She’s asking for you.’
Amy walked across the bedroom floor. The light from the lamp reflected the sheen of tears on her face. Gina was waiting for her on the landing, her dressing gown belt tied tightly around her waist, slim legs visible beneath its hem.
‘I think she’s had another of those nightmares. She was shouting for her sister.’
Amy stood very still. She leaned towards the nanny, whose shattered face already wore the answer to the question that Amy now hissed into her ear.
‘Have you stopped to consider that all this might be your fault, Gina? None of this would have happened if you’d been there to pick up my daughter.’
TUESDAY
17
3.04 a.m.
Before Erdman even opened his eyes, he could hear the low gulps of Jakey’s distress. He dragged himself to the surface of sleep.
‘All right, champ?’ he mumbled.
His son didn’t answer.
Erdman rolled out of bed, reached for his dressing gown and padded down the half-lit hallway to his son’s bedroom.
Jakey was sitting up, holding his bruised arm against his chest. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. The night light cast shadows across the walls.
‘Everything hurts,’ he said, misery rolling across his features.
Erdman fought to keep his face very still. ‘Does Mummy know about this?’
‘No,’ said the little boy. ‘I tried calling but she didn’t wake up.’
Erdman sat on the bed, the weight of his body on the mattress causing Jakey’s body to briefly rise, and uncurled his son’s fingers.
His ‘good’ arm was now hot and swollen, a lump already forming on the flat of his forearm. His son’s breathing sounded laboured, his face much warmer than usual.
Jesus.
He calculated how many doses of medication his son had taken in the last twenty-four hours. It would have to wait until morning before they could give him anything else, even a painkiller.
His son leaned into him, his body burning through the thin fabric of his pyjamas, despite the chill of the room.
‘Stay with me, Daddy,’ he said. ‘Just ’til I fall asleep.’
‘All right, champ.’
Erdman swung his legs into his son’s bed and pulled the covers over them both. A pale moon threw down its light through a crack in the curtains. He stroked the hair from his son’s face. The sounds of Jakey’s ragged breath filled his ears and his heart.
Although neither of them knew it then, father and son had just a few hours left together before their lives were as ruined as Jakey’s bones.
18
8.12 a.m.
Clara scraped at the patch of mould on the wall with her fingernail. Her nose was blocked and it was getting harder to breathe. Her mother would blame it on her allergies. She hated it here.
Her eyelids were heavy, like someone had sewn miniature weights inside them. She was tired all the time, but she could see grey light through the window so she knew it must be morning. She crawled under the sheet which hadn’t been changed since she wet herself two nights ago. It was smelly and cold against her skin and she wanted to go home.
There was ice on the inside of the window. The freezing air made her shiver.
It was several hours since Clara had eaten a proper meal. For two nights now, he had brought up a glass of milk, a slice or two of bread and butter, and once, a bruised banana, which he had peeled for her. There had been no need. Despite the awkwardness of her hands, Clara could manage simple tasks, had been doing so since she was tiny. She wolfed down the food first because when she drank the milk, the darkness came. The funny thing was that even when she wasn’t hungry, her stomach hurt.
Nothing seemed to fill up the emptiness inside.
At night she slept, but daylight was no protection. Sometimes she hid under the bed just so she didn’t have to see the cold, damp walls pressing down on her.
This room frightened her. Like everything about this place. Especially the Night Man.
She had begun to call him that after a horrible, vivid dream a few hours after she was taken. She had woken, with a thud of dread, into the sort of dense blueness that signals the hour before dawn. There was a chalky taste in her mouth. The room was empty, the house silent, but all Clara could see was his black eyes and carved-out face.
On his last visit, he had brought a cardigan with him. It was yellow and knitted and he had buttoned it up for her, right to her chin. She didn’t like the way he looked at her hands as he did it.
If anyone had asked Clara how his gaze upon her made her feel, she might have said like she was shrinking. And one day soon she would disappear altogether. He made her want to hide.
Clara sat up, and stilled herself as tiny stars danced about inside her head, like the fireworks she had watched through the slats last night. The fireworks had baffled her. She knew it couldn’t be Bonfire Night, because she had spent that on the Heath with her parents and Eleanor. She remembered it quite clearly because her mother had complained about the mud, the cold, the crowds. She had rummaged in her handbag for her little silver flask, and shouted at Clara’s father when she couldn’t find it, and everyone had stared at them. Clara had said to Eleanor that their mother was always cross about something, and Eleanor had shaken her head and put her finger to her lips.
‘Don’t forget me,’ Clara whispered.
On the street below, she could hear the muffled hum of rush-hour traffic. On the first day, she had tried to look out of the window, but she was so small she couldn’t reach the sill. On the second day, she had pressed her back against the door and pushed, but it was locked.
She was starting to lose count of how long she’d been in this room that smelled of cabbage and a sweet, sickly scent she hadn’t come across before.
Rattle: A serial killer thriller that will hook you from the start Page 7