by Mark Hill
‘I don’t know what you think this is about, but I was hoping to talk to Mr Ronnie Dent.’
‘Is that right? Whatever it is you think he’s done, you’re wrong. Because he ain’t left the house for three godawful years.’
‘I wanted to talk to him about somewhere he worked years ago. He may be able to provide information.’
‘A cold case!’ The woman’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Like on the television.’
‘Yes,’ said Flick. ‘That’s exactly it.’
‘You ain’t come to take him away, then? Because it won’t take me long to pack his stuff. He don’t have much to his name; anything he owned was sold years ago.’
‘Not today.’
The woman’s sour attitude returned. ‘Better come in.’
The hallway was crowded with cardboard boxes and supermarket bags, and smelled of old socks and pork chops. The pounding bass made the light shade sway. She led Flick upstairs, a cigarette packet outlined in a pocket against one buttock and a mobile phone in the other.
‘I’m his granddaughter, by the way. Julie. I’ve been going on about getting him moved to a home for years. I told the social workers but it’s murder getting them to listen. The way Grandad is now,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘he’s driving us mental.’
‘Us?’ asked Flick.
‘Me and that brother of mine.’ At the top of the stairs, Julie Dent rapped on a door with the edge of a bulky ring. ‘Turn that bloody music down!’ A voice returned fire inside, but the volume edged down. ‘We’re only kids, really. It ain’t fair that we have to put up with it.’
Flick had presumed Julie was approaching middle age, but looking closer, saw that she was a lot younger, in her mid-twenties, perhaps.
‘Gran died years ago. Gerry went out in a blaze of glory, downed three bottles of Duty Free.’ She nodded appreciatively. ‘He don’t leave his room no more, except to piss. His lungs have almost packed in. There must be somewhere they can take him; he finds it a strain here, poor soul. We do our best, course we do, but he does our heads in most of the time.’
The walls of Ronnie Dent’s bedroom were painted a depressing beige colour and stained with damp, the worn carpet moth-eaten. The smell was diabolical. Julie cracked a window.
‘Jesus, Grandad, it’s like someone died in here.’
An old man lay in bed, his emaciated body outlined beneath a single sheet. He was peering up at a portable television atop a wardrobe. His granddaughter quickly pulled the sheet over his arms. ‘Look at you, you exhibitionist, showing off all your saggy bits. You got a visitor.’
Thud, thud, thud. The bass throbbed next door.
The old man ignored them both.
‘Mr Dent, I’m Detective Sergeant Flick Crowley. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.’
Perching on the end of the bed, she tried not to look at the twisting brown nails on his yellow feet, which poked from beneath the sheet like jagged shards of broken pottery. Dent was watching a children’s show, all primary colours, baby voices and trilling xylophones. ‘It’s about the Longacre home in Hackney. You worked there in the nineteen eighties, I understand.’
‘Probably don’t remember, do you, Grandad?’ Julie returned Flick’s look. ‘He can barely remember what day it is, or his grandson’s name.’
‘It’s Liam, you silly cow,’ Dent snarled. ‘And it’s Tuesday.’
‘But it ain’t, is it?’ Julie surged forward, teeth bared. ‘It ain’t Tuesday! See what I mean? He winds me right up!’
The old man scowled. ‘Get me a tea! Four sugars.’
‘I’ll get you something in a minute!’ Julie spat, and shot a crafty glance at Flick. ‘We like a bit of banter, don’t we, Grandad?’
Flick noticed discolouration at the top of the old man’s arms. Pulling the sheet down, she saw cloudy bruises.
‘How did you get those, Ronnie?’
‘He falls over. His balance ain’t good,’ Julie said. ‘Is it, Grandad?’
‘My balance ain’t good.’
‘We do our best, but we’re busy people, I got a part-time job. And him next door is useless, well, he’s only a kid. I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, Grandad should be in a home. We love him, of course we do, but it’s not like we’re close or anything.’
Thud, thud, thud. The music was so loud Flick could barely hear herself think.
‘The Longacre …’ The deep creases in the old man’s forehead crinkled. ‘Yeah, I worked there. Me and Gerry.’
‘You never told me you worked at a children’s home?’ said Julie. ‘What the fuck do you know about kiddies?’
Ronnie Dent narrowed his eyes. ‘There’s plenty you don’t know about me.’
‘I bet there fucking is!’ Julie erupted. ‘No secret money stashed away, though, aye? No pot of gold! You’re a drain on the house, you eat my food, use my electricity!’ Her voice was shrill. ‘Soil your clothes!’
‘You’re a hateful person!’
Thud, thud, thud, through the walls.
‘I got cause! You’re a vampire sucking the life out of me. They should put you down!’
‘Get away from me!’ Thud, thud, thud.
Flick stood. ‘Julie, would you do me a favour and ask …?’
‘His name is Liam.’
‘Would you ask Liam to turn down the music?’
Julie sucked air through her teeth. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but I ain’t promising anything. He don’t listen to me, nobody does in this house.’
Flip-flops slapping on the carpet, she left. Flick sat back down on the bed. The old man’s eyes were clamped on the television.
‘You worked at the Longacre, Mr Dent …’
‘Did I?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe. I don’t remember.’
Flick grabbed her notebook. ‘You said you and your wife worked there, Mr Dent.’
He sighed. ‘I miss her.’
‘I bet the pair of you had some happy times.’ Both the Dents had recorded offences going back years, including ABH, fraud, various drugs, shoplifting and a few motoring misdemeanours. Happy times, indeed. ‘I’m going to read out the names of children at the home to see if you remember them … Deborah Willetts.’
His attention drifting back to the TV, Dent shook his head vaguely. The bass next door was joined by the growl of a furious argument between Julie and Liam.
‘David Horner,’ Flick said, watching him closely. ‘Karen Smith.’
Thud, thud, thud. Thud, thud, thud.
Snatching up the remote, Dent lifted it at the television. The volume went up, competing against the bass and the argument.
‘Toby Turrell,’ Flick said loudly. ‘Ricky Hancock … Jason Burgess …’
This was no good. She was getting nowhere.
‘Kenny Overton … Elliot Juniper … Amelia Troy …’
The old man stared at the television.
‘Connor Laird,’ she said.
His Adam’s apple jerked. His hand shot out to grab at her wrist.
‘Connor Laird,’ Dent whispered. His tongue darted between his teeth. His grip was feeble but his papery touch was repulsive.
Leaning close to hear him better, she asked: ‘Do you remember him, Ronnie?’
And then he bellowed in her face, a bovine wail that drowned out the TV, the music and voices. Flick lurched back.
The thin sheet covering the old man dropped from his bony chest as he jerked upright to let out another scream. Within a moment, Julie Dent was back in the room, along with an acne-scarred kid in a baseball cap, who laughed. ‘He’s off again!’
‘Now look!’ shouted Julie, over the old man’s wail. ‘I knew this would happen!’
‘Connor Laird,’ said Flick. ‘Do you remember him?’
The old man’s distress increased. The boy doubled over. ‘Go on, Grandad,’ he jeered. ‘Let it all out!’
Julie grabbed Flick by the shoulders. ‘Look what you’ve done!’
‘He recognises the name,’ said
Flick. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
The missing kid: Connor Laird. Dent was terrified of him.
‘He don’t know fuck all about anything.’ Julie’s face twitched with anger. ‘He’s a senile old fool and I’ve had it with him.’ She reeled towards the old man, holding a hand above her head. ‘Up to here!’
The kid in the cutting: Connor Laird.
Thud, thud, thud.
‘Having a bad trip, Grandad, yeah?’ The boy walked out, laughing.
Something about that cutting.
Ronnie Dent screamed: ‘Don’t let him near me!’
Flick moved closer. ‘Who, Ronnie? Connor Laird?’
The old man’s pigeon chest heaved. ‘Don’t let him near!’
‘I think you’d better leave!’ said Julie Dent.
‘Keep him away!’
Flick needed to get out of there. Without looking back – the music and wailing in her ears, the boy’s cruel laughter – she clattered down the stairs, cracking her shin on a side table at the bottom.
Julie followed her down, shouting as Flick heaved open the door. The knocker juddered. ‘You tell the social services to come and get him! Or I’ll dump him on the motorway, you see if I don’t!’
When the door slammed behind her, and she’d made it all the way down the path in one piece, Flick placed her hands on her hips and breathed out slowly to calm herself.
That name repeating in her head. Connor Laird.
The kid from the missing photograph.
The torn cutting.
The boy in that cutting.
Connor Laird.
Something about that cutting.
28
He’d barely pulled past Loughborough Junction, with its railway bridges cutting across the roofs in every direction, when he saw water pour from a turning and gush into the drain, thick black smoke tumbling above it. And he knew he was already too late.
Drake rolled his Mercedes past the turning, stopping on Coldharbour Lane, just past the junction, to watch the fire engines, patrol cars and ambulances blocking off a street. Evacuated residents stood watching in slippers and dressing gowns as firefighters dragged hoses back and forth beneath the black smoke rolling from the first-floor window of a mansion block.
There was no point in staying. He sensed already what had happened in this South London street. The body of Deborah Yildiz, formerly Willetts, would be found in that building – and her family, if she had any.
The last thing he needed was local police asking awkward questions and making a note of his car and registration. So he quickly scanned the openings to the crooked alleys sliced into the junction, with their walkways and shuttered businesses – the auto repair shops and joineries and design companies wedged into the narrow spaces – and decided to leave. Reaching for the ignition, his eyes whipped past the side mirror –
And caught sight of the figure by the entrance of the overground train station.
It wore dark clothes and a woollen hat pulled low, and the instant Drake saw it, it started moving.
Drake accelerated into the next turning to circle back, past the grinding pumps and the shouts of the firemen, towards the station. Adrenalin spiked in his veins, washing away the pain. He gunned the engine beneath the bridge, turning into the road he thought the figure had disappeared along.
And he thought: What next?
What would he do when he caught the Two O’Clock Boy?
He didn’t want to contemplate what had to be done, and was almost relieved when he lost sight of the tall man. Drake cruised slowly along the road, tower blocks looming beyond a green space on the left, twisting in his seat to find him. But the pavements on either side were empty. The figure could have doubled backed behind the station, or vanished into the maze of surrounding streets.
But then he saw a flicker of movement in the rear-view, saw the top of the woollen hat bobbing behind a row of cars in the narrow alley beneath the arches of a railway bridge. Drake pumped the brakes. Reversed back, swerving with a screech so that the nose of his car was pointed down the alley.
And there was the guy, the so-called Two O’Clock Boy, running down the middle towards a dead end. Drake saw a flash of pale flesh as the figure darted a look over his shoulder.
And then he put his foot down.
The car surged forwards. A high chain-link fence blocked off the far end. The row of cars on the park side were bumper to bumper. Drake would be on him in less than a minute. He saw the figure thicken in his vision, saw it dart another look over its shoulder, its features hidden beneath the hat. The road was empty of people. Drake debated what to do. He could injure the guy, knock him over the roof of the car, and then tip him into the boot …
Or he could finish it.
The shuttered businesses built into the arches flew past – Drake swerved to miss a concrete block in the road – keeping pace with the loping figure, still deciding what to do. The answer came to him, and it was obvious.
End it now. Here on this long, empty lane.
He accelerated, gaining ground quickly, and the figure loomed closer, its arms and legs pumping ineffectually. The man panicked, tried to jump over a car bonnet, but misjudged the leap and bounced off its door, going down in the road. And Drake pressed his foot hard on the pedal, the engine roaring in his ears, bearing down on him.
He’d drive into him, send him flying into the air so that he fell to the floor in a heap of broken bones. He’d dump the body somewhere. The whole nightmare would be over. April would be safe.
It was the only way.
The figure scrambled to its feet as Drake’s car hurtled at him, and spun. Drake glimpsed a pale whirl of face just as one of the wheels bumped over a brick. The car’s suspension lifted, and when it dropped—
The figure was gone.
Drake slammed his foot on the brake, gripping the wheel as the Mercedes drifted, tyre rubber burning, and came to a screeching halt. He jumped from the car.
Door alarm pulsing: ping ping ping.
There was nothing in front of the car – nobody.
He kicked the door shut and moved stiffly to the pavement. The businesses were padlocked, the man nowhere to be seen. A few yards further along one arch hadn’t been developed, providing a cut-through beneath the bridge. Light poured in from the other side. Drake ducked beneath the curling corner of wire mesh that covered the opening. He moved quickly over the accumulation of stinking rubbish, and out the other side into another set of arches. The space on this side was much wider and the bridge opposite soared higher. At the far end, a group of men loaded planks of wood onto a lorry.
When Drake heard a noise coming from behind a protruding wall to his left, he plucked a brick from the floor and swung round the other side, his arm up, ready to fight. Saw a group of young men – two white, two black. Money changing hands – some kind of drug deal. They stared at Drake and the brick.
‘What the—?’ The kids stepped back in shock.
‘Where is he?’ said Drake.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ one of them stammered.
A couple edged away, a couple moved forward. Drake didn’t have time for this. ‘The man who came through here.’
One of the kids stomped towards him, and Drake drew back his arm, ready to pound the brick into his face, in no mood to take another beating. The kid thought better of it, and fled. Spooked, the others followed, bolting towards the entrance of the road.
Drake dropped the brick, slapped the dust from his fingers, walking into the wide, open space filled with diggers and skips of scrap metal. The Two O’Clock Boy was gone, if he had even come this way in the first place. Drake made his way back beneath the arch. The brickwork roared around him as a train trundled above. His head was filled with sound, and a sudden, unwelcome memory of the track that ran behind the Longacre.
He climbed into his car and sat behind the wheel, thinking he had lost the last, best chance to get the man he had briefly known decades ago, and whose fragile e
motional state had tipped into a murderous psychosis. Taking out his phone, Ray Drake thought briefly about trying to speak to April again, but immediately pocketed it. And then he smelled the tang of something in the compartment.
Petrol.
Before he could react, a hand whipped from behind to pull his head back, and a blade was placed against his throat. Drake sucked down a breath, fully expecting to never get the chance to let it out again. Expecting to see his own hot blood spurt across the dash and windscreen. When the blade slashed his jugular he would bleed to death in a matter of minutes. Even quicker, if the carotid artery was sliced open.
His quick, shallow breaths masked the excited, rasping exhalations of the man hidden in the back. Drake’s eyes lifted to the rear-view mirror, but his assailant was safely hidden out of sight.
‘So this is it,’ said Drake. ‘You’re going to kill me.’
What he felt, more than anything, was anger at a wasted opportunity. If he had pressed his foot on the accelerator earlier, he would have killed the man who called himself the Two O’Clock Boy. He should have finished the job. Instead, he was going to die and the realisation sickened him … April would be next.
The blade tightened against his throat. He felt it nick into his skin.
‘Like you killed those others.’ Drake’s heart clattered against his chest. His eyes lifted to the empty mirror. ‘Tell me about them.’
He felt hot breath in his ear, smelled the trace of a familiar scent. But nobody spoke.
A horn blasted, he heard an engine. A van pulled up behind his own car, a voice calling: ‘Move it!’
‘Kill me and this is finished. You leave everybody else alone. I’m the one you want, right? I saved your life, I kept you alive, I’m responsible. Nobody else needs to get hurt.’
The gloved hand tightened around his forehead. His head was yanked back hard. The tip of the blade probed the flesh at his throat. Drake imagined the torn meat of his trachea suddenly flopping onto his chest, followed by a deluge of his blood. He closed his eyes, and thought of how much he loved his daughter and how much he loved his wife.
‘Kill me, but leave my daughter. Please, leave my daughter. All you have to do is say yes.’