by Kate Blair
He gives a braying laugh.
In the next room, he takes my jacket and bag, and gives me blue plastic overalls to put over my clothes, like the ones forensic teams wear. They catch on my heels as I pull them on. I’m fitted with a white face mask he calls a respirator. He tightens the elastic straps on my chin and face, then pulls one over his mouth.
“Just a general precaution,” he says, voice slightly muffled. “Jack Benson hasn’t been sentenced, and there will be glass between you and him.”
The suit and mask are oddly reassuring. I feel anonymous as he leads me through more gates, more doors, more checkpoints, all stinking of industrial disinfectant. Finally, we reach a room at the end of a long corridor and he ushers me in. There’s a plastic orange chair facing a thick panel of glass. A phone receiver hangs next to it. On the other side I see an empty room, with a matching phone and chair. There’s no way Jack Benson will be able to reach me.
Still, I brace myself. Will he recognize me?
The door opens and my whole body tenses.
But the man who slumps in, led by a warden in an orange protective suit, is nothing like the monster with the cleaver. His shoulders are rounded, his head hangs forward, a bald patch at the top.
The warden leads him to the chair and he collapses into it. He looks up at me from under his brow, like a child caught lying. The warden puts the phone receiver in his hand, and I pick up the one on my side.
The man studies my face for a moment. His eyes are clouded with confusion, not the rage I expected, the hate I saw in the eyes of Mum and Rebecca’s killer.
Jack Benson sits up straight. “Tig…. Tig, is that you?” He shakes his head, as if to clear it. “No.” There’s a pleading in his expression. “Is she coming? My daughter? Or Kieron?”
“You have children?” This wasn’t what I was expecting. He’s well spoken. And I certainly didn’t imagine him as a father.
A quizzical expression spreads across his face. “I saw her … Tig, I mean. At the place ….” He trails off. His brow knots. “The place!” He’s agitated now. “With the … the tables, the marble ….”
Cold creeps through my veins. He shakes his head and rests his head in his hands, pushing at the skin with his fingertips.
“I don’t remember.”
It feels like something is stuck in my throat. I swallow. No, it couldn’t be. He’s black. The girl at the hospital wasn’t, was she? She did have dark skin, but not as dark as his. But if her mother were white …. My insides twist.
“At the hospital,” I say. I have to pause, take a deep breath. It’s hard to suck air in, through this mask. “At the place …. The girl was your daughter?”
He nods. “Little Tig. I think she was looking for me.”
I stare at him for a moment as I remember how the girl seemed to be pleading with him and the horror in her eyes when I hit him with the chair.
“She was your daughter? You weren’t going to hurt her?”
“Hurt her? No! I ….” His eyes lose focus. “I got lost, I think.” He rubs a hand over his big forehead. “I wasn’t meant to be out.”
The mask is suffocating me. There’s something not right about Jack Benson. The way he phrases things. He talks too slowly. I turn to Frank.
“Is he drugged?”
Frank shakes his head. “Was like this when he got here.”
I remember the impact of the chair, reverberating through my hands. The blood leaking from his head as he lay on the floor. Did I do this? Did I give him brain damage?
I swallow the bile that rises to my mouth.
“This is Quarantine, isn’t it?” Jack Benson says, drawing my attention back to him. He stares at the wall, the ceiling, at the phone in his hand. “No, I can’t be here.” He starts rocking in the chair, a violent motion.
“Tig,” he says. “Take care of Tig. She has no mother.”
My mouth opens and closes. She also has no father now, or as good as. Thanks to me.
“Where is she? Tig, I mean?”
“At home. Isn’t she?” He’s rocking faster. His eyes are wide now.
“I think that’s enough,” the warden says, behind him.
“Where’s home?”
Jack looks around, panicked, then turns back to me. “Shakespeare.”
“Miss Hale, he’s getting worked up.”
“One minute, please.” I lean forward. “Shakespeare? What do you mean?”
“Promise.” Jack Benson slaps the glass. “Promise to take care of Tig!”
“Of course,” I say, quietly. It’s the least I can do. Although I have no idea how to keep my promise.
“Come away from there, miss.” Frank is standing right behind me, but I can’t move.
Jack didn’t hear me. “Promise,” Jack stands up, drops the phone. But he’s shouting, and it still picks up his voice. “Promise you’ll look after Tig!”
He punches the glass, and I push backwards, knocking over my chair and virtually falling into Frank’s arms. The warden in the other room hits a button on the wall, and the screech of an alarm fills my ears.
“No, wait!” I say.
Jack’s still shouting, his mouth moving, forming her name, but I can’t hear over the noise. Uniformed men rush in, in full hazmat suits. One shoots a Taser, and the big man collapses to the floor, body jerking.
I stand by my fallen chair, the alarm screaming around me, and I want to shout too. Frank has my arm, he’s trying to pull me toward the door, but I slip from his grasp, move back to the window, press my hands against it, shake my head. But no one on that side is paying attention to me. Their focus is on the man on the ground.
A hand on my shoulder makes me jump. I spin around to see Frank, eyes wide with concern above his mask.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, miss.”
“His daughter,” I say. “The girl was his daughter!” I point at the men surrounding him. “Make them stop! Make them let him go!”
He shakes his head, sadly. I’m being stupid. They aren’t going to release him on my say-so. I pull off the mask. I’m too dizzy with it on. I lean my forehead against the wall and try to breathe. There’s been a mistake. A big one.
“I don’t think he wanted to hurt her. Can we get the charges dropped?”
Frank puts a hand on my back, steers me toward the door. “He’s not just up for the hospital incident. He’s got a rap sheet as long as my arm, going way back. Drug dealing, mostly. And he assaulted a police officer on the way to Quarantine.”
I force a breath in. In the other room, one of the wardens wheels in a gurney, and three of them struggle to lift him onto it.
Frank keeps talking. “You caught a wanted man. You saw how violent he got.”
He had a cleaver at the hospital. That’s true. Who knows what he was like before I hit him? His daughter might not have been safe around him.
They flop him, face up, onto the bed, and busy themselves with straps and restraints. I turn away, and walk through the door Frank is holding open for me.
“Are you okay, miss? I’m sorry about what happened. Please tell your father it isn’t usually like this.”
My breath stops in my throat. Dad cannot find out I was here.
“It’s … it’s fine. These things happen with criminals. I won’t worry my father over this. He’s very busy. And you don’t need to explain about my visit. To anyone.”
Frank’s eyes crinkle with a relieved smile. “Thank you, miss.”
I feel sick on the drive back through the bustle of London. Worried about Jack Benson. Worried about Tig, and worried about Dad finding out about my trip. At least Frank wanted to keep it under wraps. But I got him to promise to tell Jack Benson’s lawyer that Tig is his daughter, and to get a doctor or a psychologist to examine him. Hopefully he’ll get a lighter sentence. Get medical treatment.
I stare blankly at the crowds, the shops, the restaurants that flash past the window. Tig has no mother. Not much of a father either, now. And that’s my fau
lt.
I’ve put my sunglasses back on, even though I feel stupid wearing them in the car. They help to hide my red eyes, the tears that keep coming.
The cab pulls up outside Parliament. I pay the driver, and head through the crowds of milling tourists, trying not to walk into them as they weave across the pavement, taking photographs. I have to keep my promise to Jack Benson. Have to find his daughter, get her taken into care, adopted by a good family. I owe him that much, after what I did to him. I’ll have to find his address and start searching for her.
I stop. I already know where he lived. A man walks into me and I mutter an apology as I remember the article in the Guardian. Jack Benson lived in the Barbican.
That’s where I have to go; that’s where I have to look for Tig: the slums of the Barbican Estate, where the police fear to tread.
Where Mum and Rebecca’s killer lived.
CHAPTER SEVEN
PENTHOUSE FLAT, BANKSIDE, LONDON
EIGHTEEN DAYS LEFT
GETTING AWAY FROM DAD and his staff is the easy part. I tell them I’ll study at home. Dad agrees, promises afternoon tea another day. Tells me how much he misses me and to call him or his staff if I need anything.
But I can’t wander into the Barbican dressed in a Burberry coat and tweed skirt. It would stand out like a bikini in winter. So I head for Oxford Street and get buffeted by the crowds as I work my way to the cheapest of the chain stores. I grab an ensemble modeled on the woman I saw ahead of me at Holloway: pink jacket, short denim skirt, tight T-shirt and cheap trainers. I add a leopard-print Stetson and a scarf I can pull over my face to act as a makeshift mask. I decide to wear my Dior sunglasses. People will assume they’re knockoffs, and I need one thing that’s still me.
I get changed at home and adjust my makeup, layering on too much eyeliner and drawing wider lips over my own in bright red. I reshape my cheeks with bronzer, curl and back-comb my hair, then shove the hat on top.
I’m a total mess, but I don’t even recognize myself. For a second, I feel weightless. I could be anyone: someone normal, someone who doesn’t have to behave, who doesn’t have to talk politics to everyone she meets. I twirl and laugh.
Unfortunately, I didn’t count on the rain. It begins halfway across Southwark Bridge, a stubborn drizzle that fogs up the view and saturates clothing. By the time I reach London Wall my bare legs are freezing, the water running down them and into my trainers, which squeak with each step.
The nearest entrance to the Barbican is a passageway between two buildings, half in shadow below a concrete walkway. Cardboard boxes huddle under the walkway, but the wind blows the rain sideways, and they’re as wet as I am.
I take a deep breath, and remind myself I’m doing this for Tig. What if she’s living rough in the Barbican? I peer into the boxes as I pass, but she’s not there. Just adult-sized lumps under thin blankets.
I head under the walkway, trying to look like I know where I’m going. How do criminals walk? I add a swagger to my step, but I splash in the puddles and it feels wrong.
To my left is some of the original Roman London Wall. It’s crumbling now, camouflaged with graffiti: bright orange obscenities sprayed on our ancient history. Disgusting.
It’s surrounded by a mess of old tents and lean-tos made of cardboard and plastic, tarpaulins flapping in the wind. My trainers slip in the wet mud, and cupped hands reach out as I pass, mumbled requests for money, for a smoke, for alcohol. I’m still too well dressed for this place. My clothes are new and clean, unlike the filthy shirts that hang off the men clustered around here. Everyone is coughing or sneezing. The smell, the squalor, the clamor for money threatens to overwhelm me.
But I keep my head down through the park, heading for the Barbican itself.
It was meant to be beautiful when it was first planned. But as St. Barts expanded in the sixties, everyone respectable moved away from the beggars, drug dealers, and alcoholics who crowded around the hospital, waiting for their fellow gang members or addict customers to be let back out with diseases too minor to warrant a stay in Quarantine.
So the Barbican became where no-hopers ended up. A place people could hide. Walls were erected around much of the estate, the entrances narrowed and the flats divided in two.
I have to hide my surprise as I step out from the park.
It’s a city. A whole city, within the city. Buildings rise up on all sides. Concrete grids of identical windows, tiny gray balconies, rain running down from them. Pollution-stained high-rises, supported on columns, dank paths like tunnels underneath. A dirty labyrinth of walkways, columns, ledges, balconies and flats, intersecting with each other and looming over me.
I’m staring up so much I almost trip walk into a stinking concrete trough. There are dozens, lining the walkway. I guess they were meant to be planters when this place was designed, but it’s obvious from the stench they’re used as open-air latrines.
The path takes me between two buildings. I step out into a grubby courtyard, surrounded on all sides by the brutal high-rises.
There’s an empty fountain in the center, in use as a tatty market, filled with people. I can blend in better there. A crate has been placed at the edge to act as a step down. I tread on it gingerly and climb into the market. Threadbare clothes, filthy tomatoes, dog-eared and soaking paperbacks are laid out on scraps of plastic, someone sitting behind each heap, as people mill around the rudimentary stalls. One woman has four plucked pigeons presented in front of her, and appears to be haggling with a man offering her an old pair of shoes. Her face is covered in a bright red rash.
Men and women are coughing, and noses are being wiped with dirty scraps of cloth. I tighten my scarf around my face and jump as someone sneezes right behind me. These people don’t need to be sentenced to diseases; they must pass them around like sweets. No wonder so many of them are immune to what they’re sentenced to. It makes a mockery of the whole justice system.
It was dumb to come here. I thought I could walk around for a while and keep an eye out for Tig. I thought I could ask people where Jack used to live, pretend I was a friend. But I stand out too much. And I’m going to catch something here.
Men whistle at me as I go by.
“Oooh,” one coos, “fancy lady.” There’s a hand on my bottom. I spin around, but there are too many people behind me. It could be any one of them.
There must be another way to find the girl, a safer way. There’s another crate here, a step out of this nightmarish market. I slip in my haste to get out. Where’s the exit? I’ve been spun around, I don’t know which way is south. I’m hemmed in on all sides by the graffiti-strewn walls of the estate, by the foggy rain, by the people and the smell of sweat, the sour scent of alcohol on breath, their broken-teeth leers and dirty hands. The air here is a miasma of germs.
My breath comes hard now. My gaze swings from person to person. They’re too close, coughing and sniffing, criminals I’d cross the road to avoid. Killers, like Thomas Bryce. There’s a hand in my pocket. I don’t react. What if the thief is armed and waiting for an excuse to attack?
Ahead of me, someone walks with purpose, cutting a path through the crowd. His shoulders are back, chin high like he owns the place. His jeans are clean, his jacket new. He’s familiar, and I dive through the crowd toward him, as if to a long-lost friend.
He’s young, not that much older than me. He says something in acknowledgment to a man he passes, turning around so his face is visible; his brown skin, his green eyes.
I stop.
I’ve seen him before. It takes a moment for the memory to click into place: the hospital. He looked in my room, asked if I’d seen a big man. I blathered at him, and he moved on.
I put my hand to my mouth. I’d forgotten all about that. But it’s obvious now. He was looking for Jack Benson.
His green eyes are as startling as they were then.
Tig has green eyes, too. Could he be the “Kieron” Jack mentioned in Quarantine?
I follow him. It�
�s not like I have any better options. If he’s Tig’s brother, maybe he’s going home. He could lead me right to her. If he isn’t, he’s still the most normal-looking person in this place, and he clearly knows where he’s going.
If he’s sensible, it’s out of here.
I move into the gap he leaves behind him in the crowd, and match his pace. I keep focused on his feet as they pad along the gum-stained ground. He’s wearing high-street trainers, which I guess is expensive for here. How does he make his money? Sensible employers won’t touch a resident of the Barbican, for obvious reasons.
Maybe he’s a drug dealer, like Jack Benson. I let some distance grow between us. He was sneezing at the hospital. Perhaps he wasn’t there to have a Transfer. Perhaps he was receiving one.
He’s heading for one of the taller towers. The balconies condense the drizzle into proper rain, and throw it down onto our heads. The boy reaches the door, a spider’s web of smashed glass held together by masking tape. He swings it open and disappears into the darkness of the foyer. I grab the stained and loose handle and hesitate.
A man under a drenched blanket nearby is staring at me, his face as filthy as the sheet that covers him. He leers at me, sits up fast, and reaches for my ankle. I yank it away. He breaks into a coughing fit, not even bothering to cover his mouth. I pull the door open hastily and follow the boy inside, out of range of the man’s germs.
The glass rattles as the door closes behind me. I pull off my sunglasses but it still takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust. Most of the windows have been replaced by plywood, blocking out the sun. The stench of urine reaches me, and there’s liquid on the brown tiled floor. I retch.
A bang to my left draws my attention to a stairwell, the door slamming shut. The boy obviously went that way. I glance over at the lifts, but one set of doors opens into the shaft itself, and the second appears to have been beaten inward. The third set has “out of order” written in spray paint. I should get out of here, get out of the Barbican. But the front door starts to open again, and I’m terrified it’s the man with the blanket. I can’t let him corner me in here.