by Mark Hill
‘Everybody back to your seats.’ There were tears of laughter in Elliot’s eyes, but his voice was firm. ‘So Toby can eat.’
‘But there’s a …’
Debs reached for the plate. ‘I’ll take it back.’
‘Leave it!’ Elliot slammed his hand on the table. ‘Nobody leaves here until their food is eaten. That’s the rules.’
Connor had wondered when something like this was going to happen. Elliot had been spoiling for a fight with the kid since he’d arrived.
Toby gazed bleakly around the table. ‘I can’t!’
Nobody could take their eyes off the creature leaving trembling indentations in the mash. Elliot raised the plate to Toby’s face.
‘Eat it!’
‘You ain’t in charge, Elliot,’ said Connor, leaping to his feet.
Sensing his best hope lay with him, Toby edged behind Connor.
‘He’s going to eat it.’ Elliot’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘Or I’ll stuff it down his throat myself! Shouldn’t be a problem, his gob’s always open!’
Meeting in the middle of the room, their foreheads bumped together hard. This wasn’t about the new kid, Connor knew, he was just the excuse. Elliot had been boiling with resentment since he’d given him a hiding.
‘You got me by surprise last time,’ Elliot said hoarsely. ‘But everyone knows I can take you, any time I want!’
‘Gordon said we look after the kid,’ Connor said.
‘He don’t get no special treatment!’
Elliot’s forehead burned against his own. Connor was ready to teach him another lesson. This time he’d make sure Elliot stayed on the floor. He fancied giving him a hiding.
‘What’s going on here?’
When Gordon staggered into the room, Connor knew things were going to get worse. A wailing Toby raced to him, burying his head against the manager’s chest. Gordon’s hand stroked the boy’s hair. Toby said something but his voice was muffled against Gordon’s shirt, which was wet with his tears. The manager gently pulled back his head.
‘Someone … put a cockroach … in my food!’
Out of the corner of his eye, unwilling to turn his face from Elliot, Connor glimpsed Sally in the doorway.
‘Who did this?’ Gordon slurred. His eyes moved slowly around the table, from Ricky to David to Debs and Cliff and Amelia. His gaze lingered on Jason. ‘Was it you?’
When the boy’s eyes nearly popped out of his head in terror, Gordon turned to Elliot.
‘No, this smells like you.’ Elliot stared back, defiant. ‘I distinctly remember asking you to play nice.’
Connor moved towards the knives and forks on the table, but Elliot caught his eye. Stay out of this.
Gordon’s smile twisted into a spiteful leer. ‘I’m going to ask you one more time.’
‘Yeah.’ Tears welled in Elliot’s eyes. He couldn’t hide behind Connor, not this time. ‘I did.’
‘You can’t find it in your shrivelled little heart to be kind to a new boy for five minutes? At least you’re true to yourself, lad.’
The manager swiped him across the face with the back of his hand. Elliot flew backwards, crashing across the table. Plates and glasses smashed around his head when he hit the floor.
‘Gordon!’ Sally stumbled forwards.
‘Poor Elliot’s upset, so he is. He’s not getting enough respect around here, isn’t that right? So just this one time we’re all going to do as King Elliot says.’ He grabbed Toby. ‘Come here, boy.’
‘Gordon, that’s enough.’
‘Shut up!’
Sally flinched. Toby was crying harder now, his sobs unbearably loud as Gordon picked up the plate. When the kid squirmed, Gordon gripped his neck and forced his head to the food.
‘Eat it,’ said Gordon softly. The kids watched with a sick fascination as Toby picked up a lump of mash and put it in his quivering mouth. Tears and snot poured down his lips. The cockroach turned exhaustedly on the plate. ‘All of it.’
Toby wailed. ‘I’m not hungry!’
‘Look at you.’ The manager’s voice was all cheery reason and encouragement, but his sweating, scarlet face told a different story. ‘You’re all skin and bones. Look how wee you are. What you need is protein. Eat it up.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Look, I’ll help you.’ The manager picked up the cockroach, the creature’s antennae rotating furiously in his fingers. ‘Open wide.’ Gordon forced open Toby’s mouth and shoved the insect in. ‘Now chew.’
The boy closed his mouth. Connor was sickened by the gagging sounds he made, the soft crunching in the heavy silence of the room. He saw Debs staring at him, a pleading look in her eyes, as if he could do something to make it stop. But Connor did nothing. These kids, they didn’t care about him. Nobody wanted him there, they hated him – so he didn’t lift a finger.
Ronnie Dent exploded with laughter, and Gerry smirked. Karen retched on the floor as Amelia ran from the room.
‘That’s good, now open your mouth,’ Gordon said, forcing open his jaw. Toby’s teeth and gums were smeared with brown juice, pulpy flecks of flesh and shell. ‘Here’s a good boy who does what he’s told. The rest of you could learn a lesson from him.’
The plate of food dropped from Gordon’s hand and clattered to the floor. He gripped the boy’s neck. ‘Now, me and Toby are going to my office. You boys and girls eat your dinners.’
Toby wasn’t seen again that night.
26
Thistles scratched at Ray Drake’s trousers as he stumbled along the side of Amelia Troy’s warehouse. Something scampered away in the weeds. Drake pointed the torchlight at a rusted coke can, stepping carefully in the thick tangle. In this kind of place – remote, even in the heart of the city – there could be used syringes on the ground.
On the far side of the building, where scrub and thicket swept towards the train track, he switched off the torch and propped himself against the wall to listen for anything out of the ordinary, ignoring the shooting pains in his ribs. All he heard was the pounding in his own head, the dull ambient hum of the city at night.
After his attackers had fled, Drake had let himself into his house – the old woman was asleep downstairs, thankfully – to swallow pain-relief tablets. Livid bruises were already deepening across his chest and stomach. Pain crackled along his ribs, but he didn’t think any were broken. He changed his suit and shirt and splashed water on his face, gingerly avoiding the swelling beneath his eyes.
A train clicked in the distance, a gentle rhythmic cascade. Drake continued along the wall and the tide of rubbish and rusted metal. The ground-floor windows were shuttered and protected by mesh. Steel plates were bolted across disused loading bays. If anyone had been here, stalking around the building, they were probably gone by now. If they were still here, the state he was in, he wasn’t sure what he’d be able to do about it.
Amelia was standing at the door, silhouetted against the bare bulb, while he placed the torch in the boot of his car.
‘Anything?’ she called. ‘There was definitely someone here, keeping close to the wall.’
Slamming the boot shut, pain knifed down his shoulder and he winced. ‘Did you see them?’
‘I saw their shadow on the ground.’ When Drake approached, her hand flew to her face. ‘Christ! What happened to you?’
‘Somebody resisting arrest,’ he said. ‘It happens.’
Amelia stepped aside to let him inside. The heavy door clanged shut. She snapped two deadlocks, turned keys at the top and bottom of the door. Ascending in the wooden lift, Drake saw grey stubs of corridor flicker briefly in the wan bulb’s light. This was a grim and foreboding place for anyone to live in, let alone a single woman.
‘The other floors are alarmed,’ she said, as if reading his mind. ‘And the elevator is switched off every night. Nobody can get upstairs.’ Her eyes flicked uncertainly to his. ‘That’s the idea, anyway.’
‘I’m not sure you could live in a more insecure envir
onment if you tried,’ he said.
Following her out onto the concrete expanse of her floor, he saw the enormous space was lit by a dozen standing lamps, which didn’t quite obliterate the pools of darkness in between. Nests of plug boxes snaked across the concrete. The long trestle table in the studio space had been cleared. Isolated in a soft puddle of light, Amelia’s living space looked like a theatre set, a weird Pinteresque fever dream. The edges of the sofas were eaten away by shadow, the faceless torso of a wooden tailor’s dummy listed on a pole at the edge of light. Somewhere, lost in the darkness, was her bed. Where her husband had died; where Amelia had nearly died.
‘Very moody,’ he said.
She tugged a cigarette from a packet on the sill. ‘I know it’s a bit eighties rock video, but it’s all I’ve got left of Ned. I love it here most of the time … but maybe not tonight.’ She lit the cigarette. ‘I’m sorry, would you like a drink?’
‘No, thanks,’ he said, eyeing the bottle of beer on a coffee table beside a paperback biography of an artist he’d never heard of.
Amelia peered at him through a cloud of smoke. ‘Of course, you’re on duty. Or is that a myth about drinking on duty?’
‘I just don’t want to,’ he said.
The paintings leaned against radiators looked ominous, the deep reds turned jet black in the gloom. When Amelia lifted the cigarette to her mouth, Drake saw her hand tremble.
‘Tell me again,’ he said.
She let out a deep breath and pointed down at his car. ‘He ran across the gravel towards the door. He was moving fast, but I saw his shadow stretch along the ground. There’s no reason to come down this end of the road unless you’re here to visit any of the businesses on the way and they’re shut, obviously. Occasionally kids hang about, but never this late.’
Drake shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘You think it was a man.’
‘In my experience, crazy stalkers tend to be men.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Uh.’ She picked at the label on the bottle. ‘It was about eleven o’clock. I haven’t been … Well, earlier, I wasn’t altogether truthful to you and your colleague. You gave me something of a shock, and I didn’t say anything because I suppose I was feeling a bit defensive, but … I think someone’s been watching me. It’s nothing I can put my finger on. A strange feeling when I’m out, sometimes, or an odd miscall.’
‘What kind of miscall?’
‘When I answer, the caller hangs up. I’ve had three or four in the last few days. I can count on one hand the number of people who have my number. It could be some robot trying to sell insurance, of course.’
‘Does the caller say anything?’ Amelia shook her head. ‘For your own piece of mind it might be a good idea to move out for a couple of days. Is there anybody you could stay with?’
‘There’s no one.’
‘A hotel.’
‘No, I want to stay here.’ Her eyes flashed angrily, and she folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’m sorry; I’m a bit on edge.’
‘Of course.’ Drake turned away. There were so many shadows you could hide a whole army of intruders. ‘Do you mind if I look around?’
‘Be my guest.’ Smoke poured from her nostrils as she mashed the cigarette in an ashtray. ‘By the way, I have something for you.’
Amelia looked through a pile of papers on a sill, and he walked around the windows, checking they were secure, and that the exit to the roof was locked. Eight floors up, it was unlikely anybody could get in, but after what happened to Ryan Overton …
‘What does your wife feel about your working all hours of the night?’ Amelia was standing behind him. Her gaze dropped to his wedding band, and he put his hand in his pocket. ‘I’m sorry, there’s probably some strict rule about asking policemen personal questions.’
‘There’s no rule about asking,’ Drake said. ‘But I’ve got one about answering.’
‘DI Drake, have we … met before?’ she asked. ‘When you came this afternoon I had an overpowering sense that I knew you. You seem so … familiar to me.’
He began to move. ‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Were you one of the policemen who found Ned and me, perhaps? My memory of that time is a touch unreliable on account of my mostly, you know, being in a coma. And let’s not forget the dissociative amnesia.’ He sensed her keeping pace behind him. ‘But maybe you came to the hospital.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ve never met.’
‘That’s a shame.’ She swung round in front of him, touched his arm.
Her hand, hot and clammy, in his.
Head pulsing.
Fingers clawing at him.
‘Because I don’t get this feeling often, Detective Inspector.’
He nodded at the windows. ‘Everything seems secure.’
‘Good.’ She let out a dramatic breath. ‘I feel much better now that you’ve discharged your duty to your satisfaction. You’ll probably be relieved to get away from the mad woman and home to the wife.’
‘She died.’ It was the last thing he should have said, but the words slipped out unbidden. He was sickened by the urge he had to tell her.
‘That explains why I feel I know you. You’re another lost soul doomed to carry your dead spouse around with you. We’re two peas in a pod.’ When he looked away, she winced. ‘Sorry, my morbid small talk isn’t quite hitting the mark tonight. The truth is I’m scared.’
‘You have no reason to be.’
‘Don’t I?’ she said quickly. ‘Every time I think everything’s going to be okay … I thought my husband would keep me safe, but he used to … Ned was …’ She smiled sadly. ‘Well, I imagine you know all about Ned.’
Drake nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘That’s past now, my husband will never touch me again, but I can’t seem to be able to leave everything behind. And the worst thing is I don’t even know what it is, who it is, that I should be scared of.’
They stood there for a long moment, and then she took his hand.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said.
Smoke bulging beneath the door.
Threats, obscenities, in his ear.
Her hand, hot, in his.
She withdrew her hand and rubbed her calloused fingertips self-consciously. ‘One of the problems of being an artist, I’m afraid. Paints and detergents play havoc with your skin.’
‘If you feel safer now …’
‘Time for bed,’ she said. ‘I’ll take something to knock myself out.’ Amelia held up her hands quickly, smiling. ‘Oh, don’t worry, DI Drake, these days it’s strictly prescription.’
‘Then I’ll go.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘The last time you were here you and your colleague asked if I had been in contact with anyone from the home. I remembered today that someone wrote to me.’ She gave him a slip of paper with a name on it, Deborah Yildiz, and an address in South London. ‘This woman has written to me several times saying that she was at the Longacre and asking to meet. I never replied. I get a lot of mail from people and, well, they often ask for money … and you know how I feel about that place.’
On the way down, they stood beneath the yellow wash of the elevator bulb.
‘If you hear anything else, or if anything else occurs to you,’ he said, ‘call me.’
‘And I’ve DS Crowley’s number.’
‘Call me,’ he said, and she smiled.
On the ground floor Amelia unlocked the steel door and pulled back the deadbolts. When he stepped outside she gave him a curious look.
‘You don’t seem like the kind of man who shares information about himself very often, DI Drake. I’m sorry, I’ve already embarrassed you, so, in for a penny … You look like a man with a lot of stuff packed down tightly. I just wanted to say … it doesn’t work. Take it from somebody who knows.’ In the gloom, Drake thought he saw tears glisten in her eyes. ‘Just let go of whatever it is or you will never be free.’
He stared as she closed the door on
him.
Outside, listening to the locks snap into place, Drake took out the slip of paper and read the name and address.
The name Deborah only registered very dimly. There were so many kids in that place, so many faces. But Kenny’s cuttings included the name Deborah Willetts. It would very difficult for Flick to trace her if Yildiz was her married name.
He only hoped the man who called himself the Two O’Clock Boy hadn’t found her first.
27
Rusting appliances were stacked against a metal fence outside the scruffy ground-floor maisonette on an estate in Somers Town. Rubbish spewed from the gaping mouth of a wheelie bin. Flick stepped over the carcass of a cooked chicken, heard the rasping thump of heavy bass coming from an upstairs window.
Despite a good night’s sleep at her sister’s – not even the three young children screaming up and down the hallway at the crack of dawn could wake her – she felt drained. When her phone alarm went off she took a shower, dressed and slipped out of the house while everyone was having breakfast. The kids chattered, and she heard Nina’s patient voice trying to keep some semblance of order – move your chair so others can sit down, Coral; who wants juice? – while a cheerful pop song played on the radio. The smell of eggs and coffee made Flick hesitate at the door, but she couldn’t face a repeat of the previous night’s conversation. She’d managed to avoid bursting into tears then, but more apologies from Nina would only her upset her again. And her sister would bring up Harry, insisting Flick should let bygones be bygones with their father. Flick wasn’t in the mood for a repeat of that conversation.
She rang the bell, and the door was opened by a woman wearing a tartan onesie and flip-flops. Her thin, undernourished hair was feathered around her face, and her bottled tan, which looked positively terracotta in the morning sun, streaked at the nape of her neck.
The woman’s eyes flashed with expectation beneath long false lashes. ‘You from social services?’
‘Police.’ Flick took out her ID. ‘Detective Sergeant Flick Crowley.’
The woman threw her head back, exasperated. ‘I thought we’d got all this sorted. Either take him away or leave us alone.’