The Two O'Clock Boy

by Mark Hill

  ‘He was finally getting himself together.’ Ryan watched the kids kicking the ball about. ‘He was really trying, you know?’

  ‘We can talk again tomorrow,’ said Flick.

  ‘What if they come for me?’ He turned to her. ‘What if whoever killed them wants to finish the job?’

  ‘We’re not going to leave you alone, Ryan. There’ll be an armed officer outside your door round the clock, for as long as it takes.’

  Ryan snorted, reaching for his seat belt release. ‘No offence, but I’ve seen that movie, and it never works.’

  10

  At dusk, when Ray Drake arrived beneath the black mass of Ryan Overton’s tower block, a few determined kids were still kicking a football.

  Work had kept him from coming earlier. Drake wanted to keep an eye on Flick’s investigation, but DCI Harris had insisted he coordinate the police response to the frenzied media coverage. A meeting with a Met communication officer had dragged on. The press office was inundated with inquiries, and a briefing was hastily organised, had gone reasonably well despite there being little to report. As usual, Drake positioned himself well away from the nest of cameras and microphones while Harris enjoyed the limelight.

  He stared up at the tower, a rectangle against the night sky. Drake hadn’t given a thought to Kenny Overton for many years. The idea that he had been living so close to the nick was disconcerting. It had been a long time since they’d last seen each other, decades, and they probably wouldn’t have given each other a second glance if they’d passed on the street. But Drake’s instinct was that Kenny’s murder, so near to his place of work, wasn’t just a coincidence. Ryan Overton’s remark about Kenny’s childhood, and that research, had nagged at him all afternoon.

  He tried to concentrate on his wife’s recital of a Prokofiev concerto – Laura had been a professional musician and Drake played all her acclaimed cello recordings on repeat on the music system – but the music did nothing to temper his anxiety. Taking out his mobile, he scrolled again to that familiar number.

  It rang and rang and rang, and then his daughter’s voice said: ‘Hi, this is April. I can’t get to the phone right now, but you’re clever, and know what to do!’

  The tone beeped in his ear. She hadn’t come home last night. He’d phoned her five, maybe six times already today, and hadn’t left a message, but he was determined to say something this time, to ask how she was, and when he would see her. Staring at the parked cars ahead, Ray Drake took a deep breath, opened his mouth and—

  A body plummeted out of the sky and smashed onto the roof of the car in front with an almighty bang and crack of glass.

  The car’s suspension bounced. The alarm screeched, wing lights flashed crazily. A broken arm flopped from the dented roof to hang across the shattered windscreen. The kids raced off across the forecourt screaming in terror, melting into the muddle of subways and passages.

  Drake flung open his door and crunched across the glass towards the body. Ryan Overton’s ragdoll limbs were flung every which way, the two ends of his torso at right angles. A woman screamed nearby. A dog barked at the pulsing wail of the alarm. Running to the tower block entrance, Drake stabbed random intercom buttons. When the door unlocked with a hornet buzz, he ran inside.

  Two lifts, a fire door to a stairwell.

  There was little chance the killer could have left the building in the scant seconds since Overton’s body fell twelve storeys. An LED indicator showed a lift dropping towards the lobby: five … four … three … two … one …

  The pneumatic machinery wheezed. The lift settled. The doors trundled open. Drake lurched forward, and a woman screamed, pulling her toddler close. He held up his hands, don’t be afraid, and backed away. He flung open the door to the stairwell, and his soles slapped on the concrete as he took two steps at a time, sticking close to the banister, darting glances up the central shaft.

  By the time he pulled open the door to the twelfth floor his knees were buckling. He could barely get his breath. Drake doubled over, heart pumping, shirt clinging to his back, propped his hands on his knees and waited for air to fill his lungs. Time was, momentum would have kept him moving, but he was a middle-aged man now. A few yards over, the lift clanked into life. Just as he reached it, the small square window in the door disappeared into the floor, obscuring whoever was inside.

  A fire door dissected the long corridor and Drake ran through it. The copper outside Overton’s flat was startled when he pulled out his badge. ‘Open it up!’

  The officer fumbled a door key beneath the sallow ceiling lights. The car alarm squealed faintly on the other side of the building. Curious residents emerged from flats. Drake shouted: ‘Get back inside!’

  They slipped into the flat, through a stubby hallway into the living room. Wild applause thundered from the television. The balcony window was open. Heavy curtains moved in the wind. Drake saw a small crowd gathering around Ryan Overton’s broken body splayed across the roof of the car. The alarm screaming, lights flashing. A slim figure in a red hoodie peeled from the group, walking casually towards the entrance of the estate. Stepping onto the street, the figure paused to salute Drake, then disappeared into the dark.

  ‘Oh my …’ The officer stared down at the body, dumbfounded.

  ‘With me.’

  Slipping gloves from his pocket, Drake led the way back down the corridor and through the fire door. It was solid metal, another square of reinforced glass in the centre. When it was shut, the copper at Overton’s door wouldn’t have seen anything on the other side.

  Drake pushed at the doors of the flats on the same side of the corridor as Ryan’s. The third door swung open at his touch, the lock was broken. He stepped into the dark flat to find the balcony window open. Ryan’s flat was four windows along. The balconies in between were placed evenly apart. With a bit of dexterity it would have been possible to jump from one to the other, and into Overton’s flat.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Gill.’

  ‘Officer Gill, I need you to get downstairs,’ said Drake. ‘Move those people away from the body. Don’t let anybody use the lifts, or enter or leave the building.’

  Gill swallowed. ‘I was outside … nobody came …’

  ‘Did you leave the door at any time?’ The uniform shook his head. ‘Did you fall asleep?’ Gill flinched, shocked. ‘Then you did your job. Go downstairs.’

  Back in the corridor, Drake watched Gill disappear into the stairwell. Sirens emerged faintly from the city din. He hadn’t much time.

  When he returned to Overton’s flat, it was filled with explosions and gunfire – a movie on the television. The flat reeked of booze and stale smoke. An open pack of B&H lay on a low table, an ashtray cradled the ash skeleton of a cigarette. An empty Bacardi bottle lay on the floor beside an upturned chair. The intruder must have come in through the window as Overton faced the TV, clamped a hand over his mouth, or a knife to his throat, and dragged him to the balcony to tip him over.

  Along the back wall was a shelf of storage boxes. Drake peered inside. There was a cupboard containing DVDs, a torn carton of cigarettes, a stash of mucky mags.

  No box of research.

  The bedroom off the hallway was tiny, barely big enough for a queen-sized bed and a pine wardrobe. Drake rifled through a chest of drawers and found underwear, balled-up T-shirts, belts.

  The wardrobe door listed to the side when he pulled it open. A single suit hung inside, reeking of mothballs. Jeans, shirts, a denim jacket. Pristine white trainers were lined up at the bottom, a pair of leather shoes in a box. He ran his fingers along the duvet lining. There was nothing under the bed except for a lone sock, furred by lint and dust.

  The sirens were louder now, converging. No box file, no notes.

  The kitchen was barely more than an alcove. He flung open cupboards full of glasses and broken devices. A pair of scales, stacked plates and bowls, a toaster missing a plug shoved at the back.

  Outside, the siren
of an ambulance whooped as it entered the estate. The living-room walls pulsed blue. Drake heard raised voices in the corridor. He was running out of time.

  Switching on the light in the bathroom, he saw a shower cubicle and toilet, a sink smeared with dried toothpaste. The space smelled of damp towels and talc.

  High on a wall was a shelf for towels. Drake pressed his hand between the rough cotton – and felt paper, a couple of dumped tabloids. But underneath the bottom towel was a shoebox. Drake took the box into the living room and opened it, ignoring the shouts and clanging doors in the corridor. Inside was a pile of clear plastic folders containing newspaper cuttings. Headlines leapt out at him as he flicked quickly through the brown and curled cuttings: CRASH A TRAGIC … SUICIDE SAYS COURT … TWINS KILLED …

  Footsteps, voices, outside the door of the flat.

  His heart lurched when he saw the cutting, yellow with age, at the bottom.

  The headline read: JUDGE VISITS LOCAL CHILDREN’S HOME.

  Below it was a black-and-white photograph, the forced smiles of a grim line of adults and children.

  Tallis, Kenny, Toby, Jason, the judge and his wife, Elliot, Amelia.

  Connor Laird, slipping into the shadows at the edge of the photo.

  Disappearing before his eyes.

  Her hand, hot and clammy.

  Fetid breath. Fingers clawing.

  The crackle of flame.

  Drake was about to slip the photo out and pocket it, when a voice said: ‘Sir?’

  Flick Crowley stood at the door. She stared at the upturned chair, the curtains swaying in the breeze. The clipping in his gloved hands. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Someone climbed over the balcony.’ Drake eased the clipping back into the pile, replaced the lid on the box, as uniforms poured into the room. ‘From a neighbouring flat.’

  ‘Is that the file Ryan was talking about?’ When Drake nodded, she said: ‘I’ll get it bagged up and taken away.’ She stared, looking sick. ‘I promised Ryan we’d keep him safe.’

  ‘I can handle this if you—’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine.’ Then she gave him a curious look, as if it had only just occurred to her that he was already here in Ryan Overton’s flat. ‘Show me where they got in.’

  Drake moved to the door, glancing back uneasily at the shoebox.

  11

  Spending all day down the pub probably wasn’t the best way to get a grip on the situation, but it was the only way Elliot knew how to absorb the increasingly disconcerting turn of events.

  It was bad enough that Gavin had taken his money, but to bring to his attention a triple murder and then to cry down the phone like a baby, to hurl angry insults … Perhaps Gavin was a headcase and was having some kind of breakdown. Or perhaps Elliot was.

  Truth was, he was putting off for as long as possible having to explain to Rhonda about the money – how he had lost tens of thousands of pounds of her savings. The idea that she would throw him out gnawed at him. After umpteen pints, and too many fags, he badly needed forty winks. Maybe then he could muster up the courage to come clean.

  I gave it away, all of it.

  Gavin, that weird voice on the phone, had hit a nerve.

  She’ll know the kind of man you are.

  And then there was that business with poor Kenny …

  But when he walked up the lane, the sky thickening with dark, and heard raised voices, he knew he wouldn’t be able to skulk upstairs for a nap.

  Elliot lingered at the front door, getting his shit together. He pinched the metal tendrils of the wind chime hanging above the door so that they didn’t jangle in his ear, threw the cigarette he had been smoking down the drive. Straightening his collar, he cupped his hand over his mouth to check his own stinking breath.

  ‘We’re in here,’ called Rhonda from the kitchen, when he let himself inside. The living room was spotless, the surfaces dusted and the carpet vacuumed, and Elliot felt even worse. Rhonda had come home, after working all Saturday, and cleaned up.

  He walked into the kitchen to see Dylan flinging his arms around, and saying: ‘I ain’t gonna do that!’

  The kid stuffed his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. He was tall and skinny with big eyes, olive skin and a swirl of curly hair gelled across his forehead into an enormous fringe. His mouth pouted in disgust as Rhonda, still dressed in her blue dental assistant’s smock, moved around the room spraying cleaner on every surface.

  ‘I’m not asking you.’ She rubbed the kitchen table with a cloth. ‘That’s not how this works.’

  ‘You mean,’ Dylan made an incredulous face, ‘this is a dictatorship.’

  ‘If you like.’ Rhonda blew a spiral of hair out of her eyes. ‘You live in my house, you follow my rules.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Kim Jong-un, you don’t have the right to tell me who I can and can’t see.’

  ‘I’m your mum, and the last time I looked, that gives me every right.’

  Conscious of the stink of booze on him, Elliot loitered at the door. ‘You’re going to have to bring me up to speed.’

  ‘He rules North Korea,’ Dylan said, smirking.

  ‘Very good, I see what you did there.’

  Rhonda threw the cloth in the sink and regarded her son, hands on hips. She had the same olive skin, and the same curly hair, which was permed into tight, shivering corkscrews, but none of her son’s height. She couldn’t have been more than five foot five. ‘A couple of Dylan’s so-called mates have got done for shoplifting.’

  Dylan shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘What’s that got to do with me? The answer, in case you’re wondering, is nothing!’

  ‘They were caught stealing sweets from the shop down the road, the one by the GP.’ Rhonda shook her head as if she couldn’t quite get her brain around it. ‘Another boy – leather jacket, skinny jeans, ridiculous fringe – was seen legging it.’

  Dylan slapped his forehead. ‘Which could describe literally thousands of other kids. Thousands. All this goes to show is what a low opinion you have of me, your own son.’

  Rhonda appealed to Elliot. ‘Tell him.’

  ‘It’s a pretty silly fringe,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.’ Rhonda pulled kitchen towel off the holder to rub at the fridge handle. ‘Let’s just suppose, for the sake of a quiet life, it’s not you. But you’re not seeing those boys again for a while.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Dylan snorted. ‘And how are you going to stop me?’

  ‘By taking away your phone.’

  ‘But you won’t.’ Dylan flashed a smile, a nasty, triumphant thing. ‘Because then you’d have no idea where I was, I could be arrested or run over, I could be lying on the road dead, and then you’d be sorry.’

  Dylan was a sweet kid most of the time. They used to be good pals, Elliot and the boy. But these days, consumed by turbulent teenage hormones, he probed boundaries constantly, tested limits, flew off the handle at the slightest thing. His mother struggled to cope with his moods. Christ, they both did.

  It didn’t help that Rhonda worked every hour available to put food on the table and, he winced, put a little money aside each month. Or that Elliot, who worked cash-in-hand on building sites, never knew what hours he would be working from one day to the next – times being what they were, sometimes he didn’t work at all. Dylan resented living at the end of a potholed lane in the country – the ‘arse end of the arse end of nowhere’, he called it – and spent a lot of time staring at his phone or cocooned in enormous headphones. That’s when he wasn’t off with his mates, getting up to who knows what.

  The kid didn’t know he was born. Elliot wanted to tell Dylan where he was at his age, in that shithole home, and what he did there. How he had nightmares, even now, about what went on at the Longacre. That place had made him the man he was. A ne’er-do-well, a jailbird. A failure.

  And look what happened to Kenny.

  When he thought of that TV footage, an
unexpected feeling veered close. That information, the vital, connective fact he needed to make sense of what had been happening to him, bobbed tantalisingly near, like a piece of driftwood on the tide. For a moment he felt like a tremendous truth was about to be revealed to him …

  But then Rhonda said to Elliot: ‘Please, you have a go.’

  ‘The last thing your mum needs is for you to get involved in any—’

  ‘In any what?’ The boy’s eyes flashed.

  ‘Just stay away from trouble. Once you get sucked into—’

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk. You being in prison for most of your life.’

  ‘That’s enough!’ snapped Rhonda.

  ‘Then you should listen to me,’ Elliot said calmly. Getting into a shouting match wasn’t going to help, he had learned that much. ‘Because you don’t want to end up like I did.’

  ‘A burglar.’ Dylan counted on his fingers. ‘A thief, a thug.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Elliot swallowed. ‘And a few more besides.’

  Rhonda ripped off another square of kitchen towel and blew her nose.

  ‘I got off to the wrong start in life,’ continued Elliot, and Dylan played an imaginary violin. ‘I didn’t have your advantages. A home, a mum who loves me; I had to learn the hard way. But I did learn, eventually.’ He reddened, thinking of the money he had lost. ‘I learned from my mistakes.’

  ‘Fell on your feet, didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Mum took you in off the street, gave you a home.’

  ‘I wasn’t on the street. But, if you like, yeah, I owe everything to your mum. She believed in me.’

  ‘Believes,’ said Rhonda, squeezing his hand.

  ‘And when are you going to pay her back what you owe?’

  Elliot sucked in a breath. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘When are you going to pay her back for all this beautiful trust by getting a proper job, one you can actually stick at for more than five minutes? When are you going to make something of yourself, instead of pissing off down the pub all day?’