"Like what, lad? What do you want to stick in my gob?"
"Shall I see what I can find?"
"I've had my rations," the old man said, and tweaked his jacket shut over his bruised chest. "Don't go giving her an excuse."
Marshall was bewildered, but more afraid that the smell of the room was about to make him retch. "I'll be downstairs if you need me, then."
The old man gave a wink that sent a drop of liquid zigzagging down his cheek. "I'll be thinking about you."
"Just call if you need anything," Marshall said, trying not to seem in too much of a hurry to quit the room. He sidled around the door and closed it behind him, and ran down all the stairs he could before having to renew his breath, which was still tinged with the smell of the old man's room. He wasn't sure whether or not he was hungry after the talk of food; his uncertainty dismayed him. He hurried into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator, which danced from one foot to the other in its eagerness to please him. He slammed it shut at once, trapping the smell of moldering milk, and retreated to the front room.
He would have left the door ajar to hear if the old man called him, except that the smell of the bedroom seemed to be creeping through the house. He would hear if he was needed, he vowed, but he still felt guilty, both for having left the old man on his own and for indulging even the faintest suspicion of him. The old man had been exposing himself because he was unable to care for himself, that was all. Any other notions were the fault of the video Marshall had watched—of the images he had perhaps only imagined he'd seen. If he could just see what was actually there, surely that would drive them and the shame and self-loathing out of him.
As he squatted to rewind the tape, he felt his groin bulge. He fell back into the chair and watched the digits on the player racing toward zero. Counters wired to bombs did that, and when the digits turned into a line of glowing green holes it took him a while to move; he was afraid of what he might set off.
It appeared that he needn't have worried. Once it settled into visibility, the movie looked so familiar it was comforting. He was growing used to it, and to how much the woman with the dog resembled his mother.
The digits were increasing—counting toward the moment when his mother's face would grow unquestionably recognisable. He watched the melting orange face advance toward that transformation, straining itself into shape. Everything about the movie was reaching for that moment, and he found it hard to breathe. His mother's face came clear at last, weeping for everything she'd had to go through in order to appear to him. Then he was there beside her, but before he could feel that he was, the newsreader did away with them by calling the police and the screen turned nervously blank.
If it had left Marshall and his mother visible for just a moment longer, Marshall was sure he would have felt safe. He crouched in front of the player to rewind the tape no further than the sight of them, but the sound the cassette made scared him into rewinding it entirely. He watched it through again and darted forward to pause it as his mother appeared, but an outburst of noise lines beheaded her, and he released the pause for fear of damaging the tape. He rewound it and watched it again, rested his eyes for as long as he could bear the nightmares which closing them awoke inside and outside him, replayed the tape once more. Each time the orange face turned into hers, he felt a little closer to her. Maybe his watching would bring her to him.
When the colours on the screen began to fade, he thought he'd worn out the tape until he saw that daylight was seeping into the room. It made his surroundings and his situation seem less real. He ran the tape to regain some hold on its reality, and kept replaying it as the light threatened to blot it from the screen and all sense of his mother from his mind. He'd lost count of the times the newsreader had appeared, just too soon for the sight of Marshall's mother to have lasted long enough, when he heard a key at the front door.
The screen became a grey blank disturbed by meaningless flickering, and so did Marshall's mind. Suppose the enemy was here? He'd seen how they'd tortured the old man, and was afraid to think what they might do to him. Footsteps came marching along the hall, away from the slam of the door, and he saw that Darren had left the gun under the chair with the bullets in case Marshall needed to protect himself. Before he could make a grab for the revolver, the door of the room was thrown open. Beyond it was only the nurse.
As soon as she saw him she swung around, her overcoat flapping, and dealt the banisters a thump which set all the uprights rattling. "Darren," she yelled. "Are you in, you little shit? Don't you be hiding from me, you pansy. Come here to me right now."
Marshall heard the old man groaning in protest above him, and was about to draw her attention to that when a door banged open upstairs. "What's up with you?" Darren demanded. "I've got a headache now. I was asleep."
"You'll have worse than a headache if I get hold of you. I told you what to do before I went out. You're worse than useless, you. I should have got rid of you before you were bom." She flung herself away from the shaking banisters, and Marshall was afraid she was going to attack his friend, but she stayed in the hall. "You had your chance to fix what you did," she said, so quietly she seemed not to care whether Darren or anyone else could hear. "Now I'll get someone who'll do what needs doing."
28 Having Seen
The car swung off the road between two No Entry signs, twin crimson discs which the sunlight turned raw. As the vehicle coasted along the sidewalk, pedestrians stared at Susanne in the back. She saw that some of them assumed she'd been arrested, but she didn't care what anyone thought; nothing mattered except that she wasn't being led to a false hope. The policemen's heads confronted her with two bulbs of hair cut short above shaved necks, and their silence made her head ache with thoughts. "Where are we meeting him?" she said, to say something.
The large blue eyes of the policeman whom she'd misidentified as Askew found her in the mirror. "He's on duty, Mrs. Travis."
"Oh, right." That was all she could think of to say, and felt rather stupid for having spoken. She gazed between the two policemen while the car crept behind pedestrians who eventually moved aside. She grabbed her purse from beside her on the seat immediately the car showed signs of halting. She had to wait until Askew, whom she'd thought was called Angel, manoeuvred the car between a baked-potato stall and a handful of protesters outside a leather store, and then until he switched off the engine and tipped his seat forward so that she could climb out. She unbent on the sidewalk and flexed her shoulders, which were stiff with tension, and met the eyes of spectators as the policemen joined her. She jerked one hand at the nearest entrance to the covered portion of the Arndale Centre. "In here?"
"That'll do as well as any, Mrs. Travis," round-faced watchful Angel said.
He and his colleague had to catch up with her as she strode at the doors, one of which slid aside hastily as though sensing her determination. A soft mass composed of dozens of blurred voices and of more than one piece of music which seemed reluctant to identify itself closed around her. At the top of an escalator climbing between two levels of shops she saw a guard in a mostly black uniform. "Is that him?"
It was apparently Askew's turn to answer. "We'll find out right now, Mrs. Travis."
Susanne was on the escalator by the time he finished speaking. She clattered up the moving stairs, because the guard was strolling away into the mall. "Hold on," she cried, clutching at the crawling rubber handrail. "Security. Security."
She subsided once he turned and saw the police, and she let them precede her once they were off the escalator; she didn't want to take over the questioning—she knew she was with them in case the witness said anything that would mean more to her than it did to them. Nevertheless she willed them to be quick as they waited for the guard to approach. "Trevor Tubb?" Angel, not too belatedly if she was going to be fair to him, said.
"I'll get him." The guard planted his feet wide apart and, as Susanne wondered why he wasn't doing as he'd said, reached for his radio. "Trev, they're
here for you."
The radio hissed, then hissed louder. "The police, is that?"
"And a lady."
"Send them along. I'm by the birds," the voice said, and was dissolved by a wash of static.
The guard clipped the radio to his belt before pointing along the mall. "Down there, turn right and you'll see the cage by the escalators," he said, and Susanne stopped herself from running, though her stride did require the police to speed up.
At the end of the broad crowded walkway was a cage as tall as the ceiling and fluttering with birds. Beside it stood a guard in conversation with a woman in a checked coat who was holding onto two wheeled baskets. He nodded slowly as he listened to the woman, and tapped his chin with a forefinger whenever it came within reach. Having spared Angel and Askew a nod, he turned his long sharp-nosed face back to the woman. "But you're the guard," she was insisting. "You guard them."
"I'm one of the guards, yes, madam. We patrol the centre."
"If you aren't responsible, just you tell me who is."
"I can give you the address of the company that runs the centre."
"I'll have that," she said, and leaned on her baskets to stare hard at him. Susanne imposed patience on herself while he unbuttoned his breast pocket and extracted a notebook and laid it open on one large palm so as to write down the information, raising his eyebrows almost imperceptibly higher at each line. He tore out the page and handed it to the woman, who peered suspiciously at it, by which point Susanne had exhausted her capacity for silence. "Mr. Tubb? I'm—"
"Hang about, love, he's not done with me." The woman looked up from aligning the ends of the page so as to fold it precisely in half. She unzipped the top of the left-hand basket and removed a leather wallet into which she inserted the page, then shoved the wallet down among her purchases and secured the basket. "I just want to be sure you know what you're involved in," she told the guard, and pointed at a pair of birds sidestepping together along a branch. "That species shouldn't be kept in these conditions for a start."
Susanne never knew how fiercely she might have interrupted if Angel hadn't. "Excuse me, madam-—"
"I'll show you as well. You can be witnesses." The woman lifted both baskets and slammed them down with a thud of rubber tires. "Or did he call you to have me thrown out? I'm not so easy to silence. These poor creatures need someone to speak up for them. They can't speak for themselves."
"I'm sure they'd thank you if they could, madam. Now if you'll excuse us, we're trying to find a lost child."
"Don't you be mocking me," the woman said, and as though she hadn't changed the subject. "Lost child indeed. If you ask me it's some of these children today who want putting in cages, then their parents wouldn't be able to say they don't know where they are."
Susanne felt a sharp breath snag her teeth. She sucked at the ache in them and took a step toward the woman, and Askew intervened. "What's this about the birds, madam?" he said, and moved his head in a gesture at his colleague which was almost as invisible as his moustache. "Show me what you mean."
Angel led the guard and Susanne out of earshot. "Perils of the job," he murmured to the guard.
"You do meet them."
"Don't I know it."
Susanne felt excluded or even, if she let herself, referred to until Angel said, "Anyway, Mr. Tubb, you called us. You think you saw Mrs. Travis's son."
"I won't say one hundred per cent, but yes."
"With another lad."
"Two of them together, that's it."
"What time was this?"
"It'd be about four. More like after it than earlier."
"You'd say that because..."
"I wondered if they were skiving off school, the way you automatically do if you see kids on a weekday, specially kids of that age not in uniform. And I thought no, it was too late."
"So you didn't speak to them."
"No reason to." The guard lowered his chin toward his rising forefinger. "No, scrub that. I might have had a word if they hadn't shot off. This lady's lad, if that's who he was, he wasn't looking too champion."
Susanne wished she didn't have to understand. "Too..."
"He could have looked happier is what I'm saying." The guard gazed at her as if to judge how much she could take. "Let's be honest, I'd say he was scared. That's why I nearly went after them, except we had an alert just then down the other end."
"Scared." The word came out like an accusation as Susanne tried to steady her voice. "Scared of the boy he was with?"
"No, I'd say definitely not. The way I saw it, the other lad was looking after him. Your lad, if he was yours, he went off with him quick enough, and glad to do it, I'd have said. That's another reason I didn't feel I had to catch them."
Susanne asked the question she would have put sooner if she hadn't been deferring to the police. "What was the other boy like?"
"Like he needed a few good dinners and a week's sleep and all the days out in the sun he could get." To Angel the guard said, "Same height as the other lad, round five three or four, but a lot thinner. Same age too, I'd have to say. Pale complexion, shadows under the eyes. Mousy hair in need of a wash, down over his collar. Green track suit big enough for his pal and I think trainers, I forget what color."
"Anything else? Did you hear him speak?"
"Wish I could say I did."
"Anything you'd like to ask, Mrs. Travis?"
"No." The word felt dismayingly final, and the rest that she had to say didn't help. "I can't think of anything. I don't recognise the description. It isn't anyone I've seen with Marshall."
"There'll be people he knows at school who you've not met, though, won't there?"
"I guess," Susanne said, and heard herself being ungrateful for the hope Angel was offering. "I mean, sure. Of course. Thanks. So you'll..."
"We'll contact the school, obviously, and we'll also put out an expanded description. We often find the public remembers having seen more than one person when they couldn't having seen just one."
"That makes sense." She supposed that was so, but nothing else seemed to. Why would Marshall have been frightened and not have phoned her? A blur of voices and insinuating music gathered around her, and she wondered whether it had sounded as meaningless yet ominous to him. She wondered why Angel continued standing where he was, since nothing further could be learned from the guard. He was waiting for Askew, who had helped the woman with the baskets down the escalator and ushered her away from the cage. "Anything?" Askew said when he was close enough to his colleague to be heard.
"Hopeful."
"Yes," Susanne felt she had to say in case that made it so.
"I hope I've been some help," the guard told her. "I'll ask around the shops in case anyone else noticed your lad and his pal."
"Thanks," Susanne responded, unable to imagine what his course of action might achieve. She turned toward a rack of left shoes to hide her dissatisfaction from him, and heard him say, "I'll be in touch if I remember anything, and I'll be keeping my eyes open." His voice was swinging away from her. "They've been having a bad time of it over here recently, these folk."
Susanne glanced at him and saw he was regretting having spoken. "Who?" she said.
"Not you. Not just you, rather. You Americans, I was meaning. There's no connection, I wasn't saying that, don't think that, but a chap from your part of the world, well, he came off worst with a couple of our bad sorts just round the corner from here the other month. Mind you, he was waving a gun about from what I hear."
Susanne gazed at him, unable to speak. Askew emitted a warning cough and folded his arms, and Angel said with heavy gentleness, "That was this lady's husband."
"Good—" The guard turned his body as well as his face toward her. "I'm sorry. I wasn't to know. I wouldn't have—"
"Believed it? I don't blame you. I've difficulty in believing it myself."
Though she didn't mean that to sound sarcastic, she feared it might. "Really, don't feel bad. You did your best for me," she
said, moving away into the insubstantial tangled mass of noise, toward dozens of colours too bright for the way she felt. At least there was somewhere else to go—to the school. The other boy must be a pupil there, nothing else made sense. She looked back to see if Angel and Askew were following her, and saw the guard was too, frowning at her. "It's okay, really it is," she said, walking faster, anxious to be at the school.
"Can you spare me one more moment? I was just thinking. I'm just trying to recall."
He'd brought the policemen to a halt. She didn't need them, she could go to the school by herself, but his gaze was holding her—the doubt in it was. "Sorry to keep on like this," he said. "The men who went for your husband. Wasn't that the case where they were relatives of someone he'd put in jail?"
"So?"
"It's coming back to me. There was something about an identikit, wasn't there, that the feller he put away didn't like?"
Susanne shifted her feet, preparing to stride away. "Yes. So."
"I'm trying to picture it in my head. I didn't make the connection till just now. I want to be sure if I can be. You wouldn't have a copy at home by any chance."
"Of what? The picture? You're asking did I keep a picture of the man whose fault it is my husband's dead?" People were turning to stare at her, but her voice and her feelings were out of control. "You think maybe I should have framed it and hung it on the wall?"
Angel raised the splayed fingers of one hand toward her. "Mrs. Travis..."
"I didn't think you would have. Kept it, that's to say," the guard said, and to Askew, "Will you have?"
"I doubt it once we caught him."
"That would be right, sure enough," the guard admitted as Susanne, having lost all patience, turned her back. "Madam," he called after her. "Mrs. Travis."
She halted, hunching up her shoulders. "What now?"
"I was just trying not to send you on a false trail. I'm pretty sure I'm right, I'm going to say I am. The more I think about it now, the more I think the other boy, the one with no meat on him, looked like that picture."
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