The Two O'Clock Boy

by Mark Hill

  Myra’s shoulders slumped and she looked confused. Flick remembered how old she was, how frail and vulnerable. She had the awful feeling she was bullying this old woman and removed her hand from the door.

  And with a triumphant smile, Myra Drake slammed it in her face.

  Annoyed that she had been played for a fool, Flick wanted to jam her finger on the bell and keep it there, but the stubborn old mare, she knew, wouldn’t open the door. She imagined Myra was already dialling her precious son. From her reaction to Connor Laird’s name, she clearly remembered the boy. In all likelihood she had already discussed him with Ray Drake.

  Upson was slapping his hands on the wheel to a song on the radio when Flick climbed back in the car. He turned the ignition.

  ‘That was quick.’ He drove out of the square. ‘Heading back now?’

  ‘No,’ she snapped.

  The indicator ticked at a junction, a tense metronome in the interior, and Upson clicked it off. A car beeped behind them as he cranked the handbrake.

  ‘Eddie, please,’ she said. ‘Just drive.’

  He lifted his hands in exasperation. ‘I don’t know where we’re going.’

  ‘Hackney,’ she said, blushing. ‘We’re going to Hackney.’

  Upson sighed. ‘Have I got punchbag written on my forehead today?’

  An empty can in the footwell tumbled over her shoes whenever he took a corner and she threw it over her shoulder. Embarrassed by her outburst, Flick persisted with questions about his family, and by the time they reached Mare Street she had even managed to squeeze some terse conversation from him.

  When they arrived Flick was relieved to leave the car’s cloying atmosphere of curdled dairy and resentment. ‘Get yourself a coffee,’ she told him.

  The weekly Hackney Express had closed fifteen years ago, a casualty of the declining fortunes of the local newspaper industry. For a while its name lived on in the tangerine masthead of a free sheet called the Hackney Argent and Express, but a mouthful in a diminishing market, the title was shortened to the Hackney Argent.

  The reception, with its stacks of newspapers and cardboard cutouts of grinning celebrities, managed to be both sparse and untidy. A sales team spoke on headsets behind the counter. When Flick asked about the Express, the teenage receptionist was dismissive.

  ‘This is the Argent,’ she said.

  ‘But it used to be the Express.’

  The girl’s expression hardened. ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘I’m looking for a report from nineteen eighty-four.’

  Flick may as well have asked her about Tudor England. ‘That was way before I was born.’

  ‘I was hoping there’d be copies of the Express on computer or microfiche.’

  Please not microfiche, thought Flick. It was cumbersome to use. The Met had long ago transferred its microfiche files onto a computer database. But she needn’t have worried, the girl clearly didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about.

  ‘Micro …?’

  ‘Fiche,’ Flick told her, growing impatient.

  ‘Micro … fish.’

  ‘It’s like camera film, which you run through a machine and read off a screen.’

  The girl’s face was incredulous. ‘I got all my photos on my phone.’

  ‘We don’t have anything as sophisticated as that, I’m afraid.’ A middle-aged woman came bustling to the counter, a mug of tea swinging carelessly in her fist. Her glossy black hair was cut into a bulbous helmet around her plump face. Beneath a long sweater, leggings as thick and straight as artillery shells disappeared into Ugg boots. ‘What is it that you’re looking for?’

  ‘I’m investigating four murders,’ said Flick, showing her ID.

  The young girl leaned forward, interested now. ‘Wow.’

  ‘You can be my assistant,’ Flick said, but the girl favoured her with a look that suggested she didn’t care to be anybody’s assistant.

  ‘Do you have an exact date?’

  ‘July thirty-first, nineteen eighty-four.’

  The woman, who said her name was Diane, wrote down the date and gave Flick an appraising look. ‘It’s just as well you’ve got long legs.’

  Ushering her behind the counter, Diane led Flick downstairs to an ill-lit corridor, which smelled of bleach.

  ‘This is where we keep all the old binders.’ Diane opened a door and pressed a switch. Fluorescent lights buzzed into life. ‘Good luck in getting to them.’

  The entire room was filled with office furniture and equipment dumped every way up. Tables and desks, filing cabinets, a photocopier, beige computer drives and monitors, all gathering dust. It was impossible to step in any direction without having to clamber over something.

  ‘Over there.’ The entire length of the wall was lined with shelves full of tall volumes. Diane pointed to the far corner.

  Tossing clutter out of her way, Flick hesitantly moved forwards. Nearly twisting her ankle while straddling a fax machine, she saw the embossed gold lettering on the spines of the leather books, archives of a host of long-defunct newspapers. Halfway across the room, her phone buzzed. She saw a text from April Drake. Biting down her excitement, she tucked away the phone.

  Finally reaching the back of the room, Flick climbed on upturned drawers to reach the highest shelf. Each of the Hackney Express volumes contained six months’ worth of newspapers. The Jul–Dec 1984 binder was against the wall. The drawers wobbled precariously beneath her as, balancing like a surfer riding a wave, she plucked at the lip of the binding. The volume was squeezed tight. It wouldn’t shift. The drawers teetered. Locking her knees, she tried again. The cheap leather of the book shifted with a dry snap, separating from the wall and the adjacent volume. Flick prised the heavy book from the space.

  Climbing carefully off the drawers, she opened the cover, as heavy as the lid of a box, and turned the dry, brittle pages.

  ‘Found what you wanted?’ called Diane from the doorway.

  ‘Yes, thank you!’ said Flick.

  Anticipation rose in her. After about ten minutes, she found it. The newspaper was dated 6 August 1984. The front-page headline said: LOCAL HERO KILLED IN CHILDREN’S HOME BLAZE.

  A children’s home manager died a hero when a blaze ripped through the building to which he had devoted his life.

  Gordon Tallis (44) made the fatal decision to return one last time to the burning building and was overwhelmed by flames.

  This was the article in Kenny Overton’s clippings, with the photograph of the blackened remains of the home below. A caption beneath it, missing from Kenny’s file, credited the photograph to Trevor Sutherland.

  Flick turned to the previous week’s edition, 31 July 1984. The front-page headline was about an outbreak of graffiti in the borough. She carefully scanned each page in the news section, then the features section, the classifieds, the sports pages at the back.

  And that was it.

  Somehow she’d managed to miss the story of the Drakes’ visit to the home and the accompanying photograph, so she flipped back to the front of the paper and started again, counting the page numbers.

  One sheet, pages seven and eight, was missing. It had been removed. A thin strip of paper raced down the spine, straight and sharp to the touch.

  Another dead end.

  ‘You will put it back where you found it, won’t you?’ called Diane.

  Flick slammed the volume shut. Dust exploded into the air, and she sneezed. Balancing precariously on the drawers again, she replaced it on the shelf and made her way carefully back across the room, as if negotiating a minefield.

  ‘Has anyone else been down here recently?’

  ‘Not as far as I recall,’ said Diane. ‘I’ve always thought it pointless keeping those silly volumes, but it’s a kind of heritage, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nobody has asked to do research for a book or a university paper?’

  Someone sliced out that page, covering their tracks, someone who didn’t want to be identified.

/>   ‘In my time here nobody has shown any interest in anything to do with the Express. Tell me what you’re after, and I’ll ask in editorial.’

  Flick told her about the article detailing Leonard and Myra Drake’s visit to the Longacre home. Diane wrote down the date and page number of the edition in a pad and tore it out. The sound made Flick shudder. It was the noise she’d heard down in the Property Room when she interrupted Ray Drake.

  When he tore the photograph from the cutting.

  Tampering with evidence, hiding something.

  Connected somehow, implicated in a way she didn’t understand, to the deaths of an untold number of people.

  35

  Ray Drake stayed away from pubs if he could help it. He was forced to go to them occasionally for work functions, like the celebration bash the other night. But alcohol was for other people. He’d never smoked, never taken drugs, avoided caffeine. He and Laura often ate out and dined with her friends, but there was nothing in this cave of wood and mirror, imbued with a sharp vinegar tang, to make him a good man, a better man. And that’s all he had ever wanted to be.

  His instincts had pulled him towards police work, but his home life had given him balance. It was quiet and loving, ordered and nourishing, Laura had blessed him with that. But she was gone now, and he was forced to face this situation alone. His vivid memories of his wife were fading, swept away by the recent storm of events, and now he was in danger of losing April. It was unthinkable; it would be catastrophic. If something happened to his daughter, he sensed he would unravel. He had to keep his daughter safe, his life on track. The Two O’Clock Boy could strike at any time. Drake had to stop him.

  Easier said than done, but Drake didn’t have the luxury of doing nothing. All it took was for Flick Crowley to voice her suspicions about the Longacre in the office and the investigation could swing in that direction.

  Getting a gun from the station was out of the question. He didn’t have the authorisation to access the firearms locker. Ray Drake knew plenty of criminals who would supply one for the right price, but most of those people could cheerfully hold you to account for it later.

  His repeated attempts to call April came to nothing. Her phone was switched off, or went to voicemail. So Drake pocketed his mobile and took a table in the pub in Bethnal Green to wait for Amelia Troy. She’d texted him this morning, and when he phoned back, she asked to meet.

  Somewhere public, she said. Somewhere busy.

  A pair of regulars chatted at the bar. A boisterous group of builders in overalls flopped noisily at a nearby table.

  Shading his eyes against the low winter sun, he saw Amelia Troy approach along the high street. Hair pulled back, wearing sunglasses, a yellow hoodie beneath a battered leather jacket; hands thrust into the pockets of her jeans, which tapered into dirty white plimsolls. Something was clamped beneath an arm. When she slumped into the seat opposite, a curled book covered in crepe paper fell to the table, specks of glitter working into the grain of the wood. Drake couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  ‘Drink?’

  She ignored the question, nodded towards the swelling on his face: ‘You never really explained how you got that.’

  ‘I thought I did. Somebody resisting arrest, a fellow we needed to talk to about some robberies.’

  ‘You investigate robberies as well as murders?’

  ‘If necessary,’ he said. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘I had another call last night. Five, maybe ten minutes, after you’d left.’

  Drake placed his juice to the side. ‘Why didn’t you—’

  ‘The voice was electronically altered. You know, like a robot’s.’

  He nodded, wary. ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It said that I had to remember where I had come from, and then I would know why I must … why I must die. It said I was to blame.’ She laughed, a skittering sound that filled Drake with foreboding. ‘But like I told you, I can’t remember, it the one thing I can’t do. So I asked what I had to remember, and you know what it told me?’ She watched him carefully. ‘It told me to ask you.’ Drake shifted in his seat. ‘Do you have any idea what it was talking about, DI Drake?’

  He forced his gaze from the sketchbook. ‘No. How could I?’

  ‘So, as we know, I’ve no idea what happened back then. But I’ve always recorded my experiences. I’ve dozens of books like this, though not quite as old.’ More specks of glitter drifted to the table when she tapped the cover. ‘All through my shitty life, the drugs, the suicide attempts, the husband who hurt me, I’ve worked hard. Last night I searched for any drawings I did as a kid. I hire storage, one of those places with twenty-four-hour access. I keep all my preliminary sketches there.’

  Her fingers scratched across the crepe.

  ‘I spent the rest of the night there, going through my sketchbooks. The truth is, I didn’t feel safe at home and I was too embarrassed to ask you to return. At this storage place, I didn’t feel so alone. I found many projects I started and abandoned. Perhaps I’ll pick up a few of them again, see if the old magic is still there.’

  ‘It’s an idea,’ said Drake.

  ‘You look tense, Ray. Can I call you Ray? I feel I know you, I said that last night, didn’t I, that your face is familiar to me.’ She picked up the sketchbook, the kind of cheap stationery found in any newsagent, her name in neat bubble writing on the cover, and turned the pages with a thumb. ‘This is one of the sketchbooks I had as a kid. I don’t remember it, but it’s very old, as you can see. I was amazed when I saw some of the illustrations. I was pretty good even back then, if I say so myself.’ She slid it towards him. ‘Take a look.’

  ‘Amelia—’

  ‘Look at it, please.’

  Drake opened it to see the drawings and patterns she had done as a child. He remembered her, the book against her knees, a pencil dancing in her hand, lost in her own world. On every page the designs became more elaborate. Sketches of people appeared. There was Gerry Dent. The likeness was clumsy, Amelia still had much to learn about life drawing, but she had caught the essence of the woman: her slovenliness, her dull, predatory gaze.

  ‘I’ve no idea who she is.’ Amelia swiped through the pages. ‘Or any of these other people.’

  Other kids from the Longacre. She’d captured them playing, laughing, crying. He recognised a boy called Cliff who had a compulsion to eat dirt, and Lena, a girl whose mattress was lumpy from the stolen toys she hid underneath it.

  ‘I wonder where those children are now. Are they getting on with their lives somewhere or, like Kenny, are they …?’

  Her voice trailed away when he turned a page – and saw a drawing of himself, sitting on the steps outside the home. She had captured his sad, troubled expression. The unruly hair, the jagged plummet of his cheeks.

  ‘That’s you, yes?’ Her voice cracked. ‘I’d say that’s definitely you.’

  ‘Amelia.’ He pushed the book away.

  ‘Explain why I drew you in one of my sketchbooks thirty years ago.’

  ‘It’s just a kid, your mind—’

  ‘Please don’t tell me I’m paranoid. These days I know the difference between illusion and reality.’ She looked stricken. ‘I have nightmares. I see a room on fire. I see children, and a crazed man with a beard. I see him shouting and pulling at me, I feel his breath on my face. He hates me and wants to kill me, wants to kill us all. I wake up drenched in sweat, my sheets sopping. So if that’s you,’ she tapped the image, ‘I really would like to know why you’ve been lying to me.’

  The door to the street burst open and more builders swaggered in, laughing.

  Drake swallowed. ‘That’s me.’

  Amelia giggled nervously. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Drake leaned forward. ‘It’s complicated but, yes, I—’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Amelia, please.’

  Her thighs banged against the underside of the table when she stood, and Drake’s glass shattered on the floor. Som
eone at the bar cheered. ‘Why have I been scared since I saw that drawing? Is it because when I turned on the radio this morning I discovered a woman called Deborah Yildiz was burned to death just hours after I gave you her address?’

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  He reached out, but she yanked her hand away. ‘Stay away from me!’

  ‘Everything all right over here?’ A group of builders came over and crowded behind Drake’s chair.

  ‘We’re fine, thanks,’ he said, without looking up.

  ‘Yeah?’ One of the men, hair coated with plaster dust, nodded at Amelia. ‘Cos the lady looks like she wants to leave.’

  Amelia flew out of the door. Drake watched her throw the hood over her head and melt into the crowd.

  ‘You might want to get that deposit back, chum,’ the guy said. ‘From the charm school!’

  The men turned away, laughing. Drake looked again at his own glowering portrait, then slipped the sketchbook into his pocket.

  Minutes later, he sat in his car, which was parked in a quiet residential street, and thought about playing one of Laura’s concertos. But he knew it wouldn’t do any good. He wouldn’t hear her music. That silent roar inside of him, those troubled memories, would drown it out.

  He felt anger spiking inside him with every hour that passed, like the agitated head of a seismograph jumping on paper. Felt it rising ever more strongly, filling the empty space his wife left inside him the day she died.

  36

  ‘They’re next door listening to the Cornetto man,’ said the receptionist at Valleywell Retirement Village. ‘Pop on in, he’s used to all the comings and goings.’

  Flick headed towards the baritone rendition of ‘O Sole Mio’ blasting from the lounge, slipping inside to see the singer belting out the song to a room of elderly men and women. He was an incongruous sight on a weekday in Finchley, in his dinner jacket, bow tie and scarlet cummerbund, hair slicked back in the Mafioso style. Flick scanned the room for Harry, but it wasn’t easy when all she could see was an ocean of grey hair. The receptionist had been certain he would be there – ‘the ladies and gentlemen love their opera’ – but her father’s appreciation of music, Flick remembered, went as far as a bit of Dolly.