Wesley lifted the heron’s wing, took out his knife and cut firmly into it. He sawed for a few seconds until it came free (the cruel sound of bone shattering), then he opened it out, like a fan. ‘Goldfinches migrate in the winter,’ he informed her. ‘What do you think?’
Even Katherine found it difficult not to be impressed by the wing’s unfolding; by its bright and flawless close-knit construction. Wesley attacked the second one. He removed it –after a brief struggle –then placed them both, side-by-side, on the table-top.
He looked around him. On the floor close to his feet –stuffed into an old half tea-crate –were a pile of shells, some mouldering sheafs of wheat (semi-weaved into a dolly) and two coils of wire; one brass, and thin, the other steel and thicker.
He grabbed the steel wire, cut off a long segment with his knife and rapidly threaded one end –in and out, in and out –through the top strut of the left wing.
Katherine watched him intently, her mouth slightly open.
‘Don’t just gape,’ Wesley reprimanded, ‘loosen your clothing and come on over.’
She didn’t move initially. She continued inspecting him for any casual indication of cursory derision –
Nothing
– so she took a last puff on her cigarette, balanced it, carefully, facing inwards, between the two taps on her stainless steel sink and slowly walked over.
‘Katherine Turpin,’ she muttered (her reputation preceding her, like a series of bright ripples in a shallow puddle of dirty water), ‘game for anything.’
‘Kneel down for me.’
She frowned. She rested her hands on her hips, briefly. Then she knelt –her face glowing –before him.
‘Good.’
Wesley carefully inspected Katherine’s apricot layers. He removed the first two (they came away easily; the silky wools massed, slithered, formed warm piles on the floor) then paused ruminatively when he reached the third and fourth (the first two’d had sleeves, the others had been casually doctored –the sleeves torn away, and the collars –so that the frayed edges which remained tickled lightly at her throat and shoulders).
Underneath these half-altered items she wore –he smiled when he saw it –an old-fashioned 1930s peach bodice. Loose-ish. Under that, an old, ill-fitting, heavy-fabric, cream-coloured bra.
‘I’ll try not to scratch you,’ he told her, as he slowly threaded the wire across her collar bones, under each of her double straps, over and around the back of her. When he’d finished, the first wing hung limply at her shoulder. Almost apologetically.
He threaded in the second wing –this one with more difficulty because of his missing fingers –the cigarette still hanging slackly between his lips, his hands still bloody and feathery, then adjusted them both gently, touching her throat, her neck, her nape, her hair.
The whole process took many minutes. Katherine knelt –blissfully mute –goosebumps forming intermittently.
(He was very dark. Very handsome. Like the bad character in a children’s story. Shadowy, temporary, incomplete. She liked that. She… )
He finally drew back, removed the cigarette from between his lips, and held it away, conducting a thorough –and rather lordly –inspection of his achievements.
‘Katherine Turpin,’ he told her, ‘you are…’
Angelic wasn’t cutting it.
‘A little fairy. Playing on the compost heap. Kicking up the turnip heads. Trampling the cabbage leaves. Full of spite. Full of… full of air…’
‘Tinkerbell,’ he suddenly remembered –as if he’d only just met up with her after almost an eternity, ‘once she’d got all disillusioned,’ he pushed back Katherine’s hair –light as thistle-down against the broken skin of his mined hand, ‘all pissed-up and fucked-off and bitter.’
Katherine remained kneeling. She hunched her shoulders and smiled at him. She seemed to find this nasty fairy evocation particularly pleasing. Her wing’s reach was five foot at least. The wire pulled across –and pinkened –her breastplate. Her bra-straps creaked under the pressure of it. The wings shuddered mothily as she breathed in. Wesley breathed in too. He leaned forward and inhaled her. Her eyelids dropped. Her lips parted. She thought he might…
Ted walked in.
‘Oh Jesus bloody Christ,’ he stuttered, barely missing a wing with the door.
‘Hi Ted,’ Wesley was unmoved, ‘what do you reckon?’
‘She…’ Ted gawped at her. Smears of blood on her neck. Wings. He could see her… her bra. Bad fitting. One breast half-slipping out beneath it. Like… like…
Tripe.
Ted didn’t understand women. Not at all.
Katherine reached out her pale arm, took the cigarette from between Wesley’s fingers and smoked on it herself. She stared deeply into his vile, sage eyes. The wings fell lop-sided.
Wesley liked this even better.
‘You are fallen,’ he announced.
‘Don’t I know it,’ Katherine countered.
Ted cleared his throat
I’m such a… such a lump
I’d hate to spoil the…’
I’m such a…
‘but I think there might be…’
The heron’s torso lay across the kitchen table, a bloodied embankment, between himself and Wesley. Wesley was sitting on a stool, remarkably self-contained, plucking away again, vigorously –Remember the pond.
Katherine clambered to her feet, looking around –slightly dazed –for her glass on the counter, finding it, drinking from it, her wings slipping further.
‘Spit it out,’ Wesley said.
She turned –alarmed –almost ready –
Oh my God
– to oblige him. Then she realised.
‘Trouble,’ Ted continued, and pointed, somewhat ineffectually, back down the corridor. ‘Is it Dewi?’ Katherine’s voice was hardened by self-disgust and the liquor.
Wesley glanced up, sharply.
‘I think…’ Ted interrupted again, ‘I think it might be…’
‘Behindling,’ Wesley flapped his bad hand, ‘just ignore them.’
‘No, but…’ Ted floundered, ‘well, there are Behindlings; the old guy we saw in the Wimpy earlier, and another man in a white van…’
‘Hooch,’ Wesley grimaced, adjusting the bird again.
‘But it’s the Police, too. They just pulled up outside. In a jeep.’
‘Looking for the boy,’ Wesley shrugged. ‘He’s under some kind of care order. It happens all the time. It’s nothing, believe me.’
Before he’d finished speaking, however, there came an authoritative rap on the front door, followed, seconds later, by the lifting of the postal flap, a short hiatus, then its snap.
‘Will I answer it?’ Ted asked, breathing slightly faster. Katherine lifted her shoulders (as if suddenly feeling the chill) then bent stiffly over to pick up her pool of cardigans from the floor. ‘It’s my door,’ she said, her voice, as she crouched down, sounding –and for the first time –a little slurred.
The doorbell rang. Just a second too long to be entirely friendly. ‘Let Ted go,’ Wesley told her, ‘those wings’ll make it difficult to manoeuvre properly.’
He stood, placing his hand, as he rose –the slightest pressure –onto her shoulder. This weight pressed through her body and into her heels. They glued her to the floor.
Ted had gone already. Wesley followed, just a few steps behind him.
‘Don’t mention the bird, Ted,’ he instructed him, his voice hollowed by the close walls of the corridor. ‘If it is the police and they notice the blood, tell them it was a rabbit…’
The floor was… was warm. Katherine sat down on it, like a child in a sandpit –hands spreading flat behind her, knees falling open. The wings were heavy. She collapsed onto her back and stared up at the ceiling; bird-bones creaking, feathers skidaddling. The ceiling… right above her. So profoundly reassuring. So flat. So white. So very familiar.
‘I have some rather bad news for you, sir,’ the male office
r spoke first, earnestly clasping his two hands together and glancing over anxiously towards his female accomplice. She nodded back at him, curtly.
Ted was there. Wesley had insisted. He needed a witness, he’d said –always did with the Law –and, much more importantly, an intermediary, because he tried not to speak to the people Following. The police were no exception.
‘Do you want me to…’ At the mention of bad news, Ted indicated modestly towards the living room door, ‘I’m happy to make myself…’
‘Ask them if it’s about the boy,’ Wesley instructed brusquely, ‘ask them if it’s about Patty.’ Ted shrugged, half-apologetically, at the handsome male officer (Ed Cole. He’d found him a lovely semi in Ellesmere Road, only last year).
‘I have no information whatsoever,’ the officer spoke to Wesley directly (ignoring Ted completely. Ted crumpled, involuntarily), ‘about any situation involving a boy. We’re here to discuss a girl. We’re here to talk about Sasha…’ he paused, uncertainly, ‘your daughter.’
Wesley was standing over by the window. He’d tugged the curtains aside and was gazing out through the nets. It was raining. Only lightly. Under the streetlight opposite he could see a lone figure.
The figure –the girl –the informer –the double-face… It had to be –was staring (shoulders slumped forward, rather poignantly) towards the small green house with the prodigious balcony. She muttered something –he saw a puff of steam, a tiny cloud condensing in the dark night air –then stepped down heavily into the gutter and slowly began walking.
The gutter…
Ah
Wesley turned, abruptly.
‘What did you just say?’
Ted could tell that he wasn’t concentrating.
‘Sasha,’ the male officer repeated, ‘your daughter. She appears to have gone… gone…’ he struggled to find a word in his vocabulary less frightening than missing, ‘walkabout,’ he said, finally.
Ted had a vision of the Duchess of Kent, in Eltham, opening a Conference Centre.
‘Sasha.’
Wesley repeated the name. It seemed alien to him. He paused, mulling it over.
‘Hang on,’ he suddenly butted in –although nobody else was actually speaking –‘has something happened to her?’
Still –Ted noticed –he seemed more irritated than concerned.
‘We hope not,’ the male officer spoke, ‘but her grandparents have reason to believe that she’s intent on making her way down here to Canvey. She disappeared first thing this morning. She took twenty pounds and left a note saying…’
‘But where’s her mother?’ Wesley asked.
‘Her mother…’ at last the woman officer felt able to contribute something, ‘is on the Island of Madeira. On Honey…’ she corrected herself, ‘on holiday. Her parents thought it best not to worry her –not at this early stage, anyway. As you probably already know, they currently enjoy full parental rights over the child –have done since she was a baby…’
‘Bloody Iris,’ Wesley muttered, ‘but the kid won’t get too far on twenty quid…’
‘I think you underestimate her,’ the female officer smiled, sarcastically, ‘apparently she’s very tenacious. Takes after her father.’
Wesley stiffened. He didn’t like this at all.
‘She’s been gone since first thing this morning…’
The male officer quickly took over. ‘She left for school, as normal, but didn’t arrive. In the light of your…’ he paused, ‘celebrity, the force became involved a little earlier…’
He looked over at Wesley as if expecting some kind of commendation for the promptness of their reaction.
Wesley stared back blankly at him. Giving nothing.
‘We know she caught a… got on a train,’ the officer stumbled, as if spooked by Wesley’s blankness, ‘to London. But we don’t know if she actually got there. She left a note saying…’
‘Was she alone?’
‘I was just getting to that part, sir. She took…’ the male officer faltered, ‘it sounds slightly…’ he grimaced, ‘she took a… a reindeer with her.’
‘She took a what?’
Ted couldn’t help himself. The male officer turned towards him, almost smiling his relief. Ted’s cheeks reddened.
Wesley glanced over. The grandparents farm them,’ he explained, tightly, ‘they run a Christmas-themed Garden Centre in Norfolk. They keep,’ he held up his bad hand, smiling darkly, ‘beautiful exotic owls there.’
Ted shivered.
‘May I…’ the female officer spoke again. She was staring at Wesley’s shirt, his hands.
‘What?’
‘It’s just that you seem to be very… very bloody this evening, sir.’
Wesley shrugged, ‘I killed a rabbit earlier.’
‘Well it certainly must’ve put up quite a struggle, sir.’
She was mocking him.
‘I skinned it,’ Wesley growled, ‘and we’re having it for dinner.’
The female officer turned to the agent, her eyebrows raised, ‘Is that right, then, Ted?’
Ted opened his mouth. He shut it. He glanced over at Wesley whose jumper was –no point denying it –literally coated in bird down. He nodded his head.
‘How…’ to distract attention from the lie he addressed Wesley directly, ‘how old is she?’
‘Who?’
Ted swallowed, ‘Your… your missing daughter.’
Wesley shrugged, ‘Six… maybe seven.’
‘Ten.’
The female officer shot Wesley a potent look.
Wesley didn’t buckle. ‘I’ve never met the girl,’ he shrugged, ‘and the truth is that I have no interest in her. I had none when she wasn’t missing, so I might be in danger of seeming a little…’ he pondered, ‘hypocritical if I suddenly began caring about her now that she is.’
The female officer considered his answer for a moment. ‘Do you ever actually think about anybody except yourself, sir?’
Wesley laughed out loud. A bark.
‘Of course not,’ he said, ‘what a silly question.’
‘That’s as may be…’ the male officer quickly stepped in (struggling to keep the atmosphere down to a simmer), his right hand clutching at the collar of his stiff white shirt –
So damn hot
– ‘But I’m sure you must still feel some… some concern over this situation, sir. She’s only young. It’s freezing outside. She’s coming down to see you. She left a note behind saying…’
‘In actual fact,’ Wesley interjected, ‘I’m not especially concerned. The girl has never been fed any illusions about my intentions towards her. I have none. I’d call myself the anti-father, but I’m too indifferent to be anti-anything. I am the non-dad. Is that…’ he paused, ‘does that explain my feelings with sufficient candour?’
‘She’s a ten-year-old child,’ the female officer’s voice was harsh, ‘and it’s the middle of winter…’
‘If you’re so concerned, madam,’ Wesley interrupted, ‘then perhaps you should be out in the cold looking for her instead of standing here and harassing me.’
‘She’s a ten-year-old child, in the pitch dark, alone…’
‘With a reindeer,’ Wesley corrected her. ‘I find it’s always a good ruse,’ he continued facetiously, ‘to take a deer along to increase your sense of anonymity. The force must be literally at their wits’ end trying to hunt her down. Talk about merging into the background…’
The female officer’s fists tightened. Wesley –observing as much –put his own hand to his cheek. His bad hand. Rested it there for a moment.
The male officer quickly interjected again, ‘Do you have any reason to believe that she’ll know where to find you in Canvey, sir? Is she aware that you’re staying at this address currently?’
‘She may know,’ Ted piped up, struggling to be helpful, to improve the atmosphere, ‘if she has access to the net.’
‘It’s down,’ the female officer snarled, still glaring at Wesley
–his cheek, his bad hand –‘since first thing this afternoon.’
The male officer glanced over at Ted, supportively. ‘Her grandparents do have a computer, though. So she may well have looked at the site last night. From what we’ve been told she was certainly aware of it.’
‘Down?’ Wesley frowned, dropping his hand to his side again.
‘Yes,’ the officer nodded, ‘some kind of virus.’
Wesley stared at him, as if in doubt of his sanity.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ he said.
‘Why?’ the female officer snapped.
Wesley shrugged, his face closing, ‘It just is.’
He turned to Ted, ‘Give me your phone.’
Ted scrabbled around in his jacket. He pulled out his mobile. Wesley took it and stuck it into his trouser pocket, ‘I’m getting back to dinner. Will you see the officers out for me, Ted?’ He left.
Ted stared –round-eyed –at the two officers. He swallowed. He took a deep breath –
The Pond…
Frogspawn throbbing and bubbling in the shallows…
The sweet, yeasty stink of thick, green pond-weed…
Then he indicated –summoning all the intrinsic authority of real, quality agenting (a straight arm pointing, a smile of untold promise and efficiency) –towards the wide-yawning doorway and its heavy muscle of straight, black-tiled tongue beyond.
Twenty-three
The infamous Saks was just about as smoked-up, packed-out and crazy as she’d ever imagined it might be. Friday Night. The town’s outer periphery. Depths of winter. Canvey.
Jo steeled herself, then pushed her way in, pulling back her hood as she staggered through the door, mopping her cheeks and lifting her chin –her eyes two wide saucers of anxious misanthropy –before forging a determined but unsteady (was that really her feet squelching so audibly?) route to the bar.
After five minutes of standing around in a thick scrum of drink-seekers (each part of her duly poked, nudged and trodden on by a dozen oblivious elbows, rumps and feet; fivers and tenners scything through the air like tiny, paper jack-hammers) she found herself a stool (walked straight into it, banged her thigh, nicked her calf), felt its seat with her palms, blindly, and then gratefully straddled it, holding her legs high off the floor (bent hard at the knee) like a tenacious spider riding out a flash flood on a bobbing wine cork.
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