Jonesy persisted. “But if you had to guess.”
They were silent as Rose cleared the glasses from their table. Pointedly, none of them looked up at her.
When she walked out of earshot, the Father said, “I suppose it would be someone who was losing control.”
“Losing control of what?” Jonesy asked.
“I’m not sure. They are sending you notes and haven’t done anything yet. They’re hesitating.”
“What do you think, Steve?” Baz asked. Steve hadn’t really been listening. It was his fourth beer.
“I don’t know. I just know the vise is on my balls right now. The wife is pissed and everyone wants answers and I’ve got none.”
Jonesy watched him, taking a deep drink of his beer, then looked back to the Father. “So why send it? They want us to know they’re serious?”
“They want you to know what kind of person they are,” the Father said slowly.
“Someone with urges?” Frank asked, his eyes not leaving Steve’s face.
“Filthy ones,” added Baz.
“Maybe.”
Jonesy sucked the liquid from his top lip. “But how could you find out who had filthy urges?”
Frank smiled. “Technology is amazing these days.”
“Really amazing,” added Baz.
“You can find anything you want.”
They were all looking at Steve now. “I don’t think I know what you boys are talking about. Do you have a lead or something?”
“You could say that,” Jonesy said, leaning forward now.
“Well, go on, then.” Steve was chuckling, although in truth he was getting a little exasperated. It was like they were talking in riddles.
“We’ve had the rookies going through the records of every adult in town who wasn’t born here. Slow process, but we’ve found out some things we didn’t know,” Frank said.
“Like the school principal got thirteen speeding tickets, lost her license three times.”
“Really?” asked Steve, although the smile had left his face. He was staring intently at Frank’s hands. As though the thick hair on each of his fingers was somehow fascinating.
“That’s right. Don’t know if I would want that woman to be in charge of my kids,” Frank said.
“Good thing you don’t have any,” Jonesy told him.
“Not now, but one day. All those speeding tickets, it shows bad judgment.”
“And recklessness,” the Father added.
“What do you think, Steve? Your daughters are at that school.”
Steve shrugged. “You know, I think I’ve had enough. My wife wants me coming home a bit earlier.”
“Really?” said Frank. He was smiling, but it didn’t look right. It was a broad, toothy smile, but his eyes were dark.
“That’s not all,” Baz said.
“Before she bought this place, Jean claimed to be a victim of a crime,” Jonesy said. “But she dropped the charges halfway through the trial.”
“Didn’t think she was the kind of woman to lie, but there you go,” Frank added. “We learned a lot about the people of this town.”
“We learned loads,” Bazza said.
“You think you know everything about everyone in a town like this. But you don’t. Not everyone was born here—you forget that,” came Jonesy’s hard, even voice.
“Where were you born again, Steven? London?” Frank said, still smiling.
“Nottingham.”
“Oh, yes—that’s right. It was in a Nottingham toilet that you were arrested, wasn’t it?”
Steve didn’t reply. He looked toward the Father, eyes pleading.
The priest did not look back. “I should be going,” the Father said, rising from the table.
“I’ll get a lift from you,” Steve said, beginning to stand. Frank’s hand was on his arm in an instant.
“You haven’t even finished your beer.”
“I really do need to get home,” he said feebly, but the door had already swung closed. The Father was gone.
“So,” Frank continued. “Now that the good Father is on his way, can you tell me what is it about public toilets attracts sick fucks like you, Steve?”
“Do you get off on getting your dick sucked by strangers?” Jonesy asked in his low drawling voice.
Steve was looking between them.
“I dunno,” Frank said. “They say a mouth is a mouth, but the idea of getting beard burn on my balls doesn’t do it for me.”
“Or is it because you can get kids on their own there?” Jonesy asked.
Steve’s voice was high and pitchy. “Kids? Hang on there!”
Jonesy pushed back his chair with a squeak. “I’m going for a smoke.”
“I’ll join you.” Baz also stood up.
“You guys have the wrong end of the stick.”
“Come on,” said Frank. “Don’t want to talk about this sort of thing in front of the ladies, do we?”
Bazza grabbed Steve by the shoulder, a little too hard, and the men walked out toward the back corridor.
* * *
Rose watched them go, feeling the shift in the air. Something was wrong. She’d noticed Baz’s grip on Steve’s arm, the paleness of his face.
“Are they arresting him?” she asked Mia.
“Baz said he’s a pervert.”
A muffled yell echoed down the corridor. Will stood so quickly that his chair fell onto the floor.
“What’s happening?” he asked. It was only the three of them in the tavern now.
“I guess they’re teaching him a lesson,” Mia said, apprehensively.
“Are you kidding?”
Another yell. Rose ran. Down the corridor and out to the back entrance.
Steve was on the ground next to the bin. Bazza, Jonesy and Frank were all kicking him, their boots cracking into his ribs. He was trying to crawl, trying to get back inside.
“Cut it out!” Rose yelled.
She grabbed Frank and tried to pull him off. His shoulders were hot and wet with sweat. But he was stronger than she thought. She couldn’t even move him.
Steve was almost at the steps, but Rose knew that would do him no good. If Jean was here she could fix this, but Rose didn’t know what to do. Will and Mia appeared in the hallway.
“Stop!” Will yelled, taking in the scene. As they got closer, Mia saw Steve on the ground. She put her hands over her eyes.
“Oh, God,” she murmured.
“We’ll decide when we’ll stop.” Frank’s chest was heaving.
Will walked toward him, his fists clenched. “No, this stops right now.”
Bazza muscled forward, standing between Will and Frank. “Or what? You’re going to call the cops?”
Mia came over and put a hand on Bazza’s chest. “We’re going now, Baz. Right now.”
She grabbed his arm and started trying to pull the hulking man away.
“Go,” Frank said, not breaking eye contact with Will. “It’s under control.”
“Come on,” she said quietly and Bazza let himself be dragged away.
While the others watched them go, Rose looked down at Steve. He was still crawling. His clothes were ripped and he was making quiet groaning sounds. She was going to have to take him to a hospital.
“Can you get up?” she said quietly, feeling queasy at how defenseless he was. He turned over and stared up at her, his eyes rolling around in their sockets. She imagined this was what a cow looked like before it was slaughtered.
“Oh, God. Fuck!” She bent down onto the ground next to him. Jonesy stepped closer to them.
“Will you help me carry him?” she called to Will, not wanting to leave Steve here in the dirt. Something whizzed in front of
her face.
Jonesy’s boot.
It smashed down onto Steve’s face. His nose crunched. His teeth shattered. Blood sprayed over Rose and she screamed.
Jonesy laughed, scraping the blood off his heel on the edge of the step.
“Enough,” Will said, his eyes hard on Frank.
Frank took a step forward, so he was right in Will’s face. Jonesy’s hand went to his gun.
“Get the hell out of here!” Rose yelled.
Frank turned to her, his eyes softening. “He’s a pervert, Rose.”
“I don’t bloody care. Get out. Now!”
Reluctantly, Frank took a step away from Will. “Come on.”
The two of them, Jonesy swaggering a little, walked back toward the car park, leaving Rose and Will alone with the unconscious man.
25
They carried Steve between them. They couldn’t just leave him on the hard dirt ground. Will held him under the arms, and Rose held his ankles. As they turned the corner into room two, his head clunked against the door frame. They dropped him carefully down on the bed.
Rose tried not to look at him. What had once been a clean-shaven, neat-looking face now more closely resembled raw meat. He writhed, making a horrible throaty sound, then coughed, blood and teeth splattering onto the quilt.
“I’ll call the ambulance,” Will said, leaving the room. Rose went to the bathroom and got a towel. She put it under the tap and waited for the water to turn warm. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was white. Splatters of red dripped down from her chin, cheek and neck. The anger that surged through her before was now completely gone. Now she felt shaky, and her head pounded. She splashed herself with water, rubbing at the blood roughly, trying to hold it together.
When the towel was damp with warm water, she came back into the room and sat down next to Steve. Carefully, she started wiping away the blood. His nose was bending at an impossible angle. His jaw must have been broken. It was hanging open crookedly. As she tentatively wiped at it, she saw that the sides of his mouth were split. His teeth were completely shattered.
Blood bubbled out from his mouth. He was trying to talk.
“Shhh,” she said.
Another bubble came out, popping in the ripped corner of his mouth. He was almost crying, trying to get the words out through his delirium. She swallowed. She could hear Will from the other room.
“At Eamon’s Tavern Hotel on Union Street. No, I don’t know what the street number is.”
“Seventy-two!” she called, desperate for him to come back in.
Steve’s lips were moving again, making her wince. She leaned in closer.
“What is it?” she said, just wanting him to stop trying to speak.
“She knows. It’s...not kids... How could they ever...?”
Rose wasn’t sure what he meant, but she was sure he wasn’t any kind of child molester.
“I know,” she said, barely able to look at him. “Just try to rest.”
She kept wiping his face, hoping it was soothing somehow. There was nothing else she could do. Will came back in and sat next to her. He put a hand on her knee. She kept softly wiping the man’s face, watching his features swell and bruise, until, faintly, she could hear the ambulance’s sirens.
The paramedics took Steve away, leaving Rose and Will standing in the corridor. They stood in silence.
“Good night,” she said eventually, going into her room and closing the door.
Rose sat up on the bed, looking at the bloodstain on the sheet. She could still see his face, still hear the sound of Jonesy’s boot. The crunch it had made on Steve’s nose.
She closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears, but it was still there. It was almost two in the morning; she should try to sleep. All the adrenaline had leaked out of her, and now her limbs felt heavy and her head throbbed. Kicking the bloody sheet off the bed, she lay down and closed her eyes. The room swung around, like she was drunk, so she sat up again, her back against the wall.
Sometime later, there was a soft knock on her door.
“Rose?” Will’s voice.
She stood, her legs feeling wobbly, and went to the door, opening it. He looked so young all of a sudden.
“Were you asleep?”
She shook her head.
“You can come into my room if you want,” he said, “if you don’t want to be in here with—” His eyes looked at the bloodied sheet on the carpet. “If you don’t want to be alone.”
She looked at him, not knowing what to say.
“I don’t want to be alone,” he said. Then, “Just to sleep. I won’t try anything.”
“Okay.”
Her shoulder brushed across his chest as she passed him to cross the corridor into his room. He followed, pulling the door shut behind them.
Will stood next to her as she sat down on the bed. Then he walked around the other side and got down onto it. He pulled the sheet over him, lifting it on her side. She climbed underneath it and lay on her back. They weren’t touching, but being encased in his sheets, surrounded by his warm smell, was soothing. Her head didn’t spin now.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he said, staring at the ceiling.
She closed her eyes. “Me neither.”
* * *
Unexpectedly, sleep came quickly. Will’s smell was like a sedative. But the dreams were horrible. She was running, Frank and Jonesy behind her. They knew. They were going to kill her. She ran, saying sorry, screaming, waking up as Frank was on top of her, pinning her down. Jonesy lifted his boot above her eyes, its mud-encrusted sole inches from her face, and then it came whooshing down.
She woke up panting like she was winded, her body slimy with sweat.
“It’s okay.” A voice came from next to her. She turned around, scared again. Will was next to her, looking at her with concern.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. If I could have slept I would have had nightmares too.”
She felt like she had only been asleep five minutes, but the room was filled with a pale gray light. It must be early morning. She put a hand over her eyes and tried to steady her breathing.
“I’m here for my kid,” he said.
“What?”
“You keep asking me why I’m here,” he said. “I’m here to find my child.”
She took her hand away, looked at him. He was staring up at the ceiling, the gray light tracing his profile.
“Ages ago, when I was still a young, arrogant jerk-off, I was dating this girl. Bess,” he went on. “She didn’t really talk about it, but I think she’d had a bad relationship before me. We went out for just a few weeks. I think I liked the idea that I was saving her, you know, showing her how she should be treated or some bullshit like that.”
Rose was going to tell him that he didn’t have to tell her, but he just kept on talking.
“It was pretty casual, so when she stopped calling me back I didn’t think too much about it. Then, months ago, I got this letter. It was from Bess. She said she’d had a kid. My kid. Honestly—” he looked at Rose then “—I swear I had absolutely no idea.”
Rose wanted to reach out and touch him, show him that it was okay, that she wasn’t judging him, but she didn’t.
“Anyway. It was bizarre. Who writes a letter? An email maybe, or a phone call, but it was a letter. She said she was in trouble, and so was our child. She said she knew I was a good guy, and I’d do the right thing. She said she needed me to take the kid, to be ready, and she’d write me again to say where and when.”
“She didn’t write again?”
“No. I waited a month, longer maybe, and nothing. Something must have happened to her. That’s why I came. I gave up my job, everything. But I can’t find her
.”
“How did you know she was here?”
“There was no reply address or anything, but the stamp had a postcode. The letter came from Colmstock.”
“Do you have a picture of Bess?”
He shook his head.
“And that’s why you were looking at the files? That’s why you’ve got that bear?”
He looked at her. “How do you know about the bear?”
She tried to think of a lie, but he smiled for the first time, rolling onto his back and shaking his head. “You’re terrible,” he said.
“So that’s why.” She took a breath. This felt so awkward, saying this when they were in bed together. “Why you didn’t want to kiss me. Because you want to make a family.”
“No,” he said, still smiling, looking at her from only the corner of his eye. “It’s because I know you’re trouble, and that’s the last thing I need right now.”
“I’m not!” she said. “In fact, I was just going to say I’ll help you. This town is a small place, and I doubt there are many mums named Bess. We can figure it out. Don’t suppose you can remember the last name?”
“Yes, of course!” he said. “I’m not that bad. Last name was Gerhardsson. But I’ve looked. No Bess Gerhardsson.”
She tried to think about it, remember if she ever had heard that name before, but her head was still swimming.
“So you’ll help me?”
“I thought you wanted me to stay out of it?”
“You seemed like you wanted to know too much, like you were hoping to write some horrible sob story for your paper about it.”
“I wouldn’t do that!” she said, genuinely offended. “I’m definitely not going to help you now.”
“Come on,” he said, a grin in his voice. “I can tell you’re dying to meddle.”
“I’m not!” she said. “Screw you.”
He rolled onto his side. “Please.”
“Nope,” she said, the warmth of his skin radiating onto her.
He reached out and touched the tattoo on her arm, tracing the pattern that reached up to her shoulder.
Her insides quivered, but she tried not to show it. Shifting even closer, he ran a finger over her eyebrow. His face was serious, like he was committing the lines of her to memory.
Little Secrets Page 17