by David Thorne
‘All right?’ Maria walks into the kitchen, has come down from upstairs.
‘Fine. CJ take her things?’
‘Most of them.’ She sits down, takes a deep breath.
‘Nothing more we could have done,’ I tell her, wishing that was true. She nods, elbows on the table, her forehead resting in her hands. I walk over to her, stand behind her, put my hands on her shoulders. They feel small underneath my palms. I feel too big for them, for her.
‘She’s not a bad person,’ she says, half question, half statement.
‘No, she isn’t. But she’s had a bad life.’
‘I thought we had some… a connection,’ she says. ‘Me and her.’
‘Trust, any kind of relationship, with people like her…’ People like me, I think. ‘Doesn’t come easy.’
‘What if she comes back?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘You think she will?’
But Maria does not answer, and we are both silent for some time, thinking about how we have failed CJ, and how we could have done things differently.
17
AT THE FRONT desk of the police station a young woman is explaining to the desk sergeant that her car is registered in her name and that she did not give her boyfriend permission to take it, so yes, she does still want to fucking report it as stolen. The man behind the desk does not react to her language.
‘Not something you can sort out between you?’ he asks.
‘Ain’t met him, have you?’
The desk sergeant nods, sighs. ‘All right. Registration?’
‘Might want one of them sniffer dogs, too. Just saying.’
This gets the sergeant’s attention, but I do not hear the rest of the exchange as Hicklin comes into the reception through a plain wooden door. He looks as untidy as the last time I saw him, his moustache still wanting a trim. He has eyes that seem amused at what he sees, and I know there is little in the world which would cause him surprise. But he is a good man and somebody I believe will do the right thing, if called upon.
‘Follow me?’
He goes back through the door, holds it open behind him until I am through, then walks down a corridor, opens another plain door on the left. It is an interview room, though not the same room I was in with Doolan and Akram. He pulls a chair out from under the table, walks around the other side and sits. I take the chair he has pulled out, sit opposite him.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Let’s keep this short. You say you have something to tell me?’
I explain about the Goves, about the coincidence of money being left to two parents of young women who disappeared at the same time. He watches me as I talk and does not react, and as I tell him of my suspicions they begin to sound less and less convincing. I describe Duncan Gove’s violent reaction to people trying to dig up his land, Luke Gove’s behaviour around women who are little more than children. I tell him about the man I saw leaving one of their warehouses. At this, he raises a hand.
‘Stop. Enough. What…’ He pauses, organises his thoughts. ‘Why are you here? What do you want me to do?’
‘Investigate? What you police do.’
‘Investigate what? This, who, William Gove? He’s dead. Hard to question. These young women? Anything could have happened to them. I go to my superiors with this, they’d laugh at me. And they’d be right to.’
‘You don’t think something’s going on?’
He strokes his moustache. Doesn’t make it appear any neater. ‘Maybe.’
‘And you won’t do anything?’
‘No.’
I watch him, make no attempt to hide my disdain. ‘I expected better from you.’
‘Really.’ For the first time since I have known him, I see something approaching anger in Hicklin’s eyes. ‘This coming from an unscrupulous lawyer who has brought I forget how many bodies to my front door. I’m sorry not to measure up to your standards.’
I stand up. ‘Thanks for your time.’
Hicklin stands too. ‘Not a problem. Just so you know, I’ve got no more for you.’
I feel my pulse pick up and my heart flush with warm heat. I need to be careful, watch my words.
‘You find it easy to keep that moral high ground,’ I say, ‘working with officers like Doolan and Akram? How does that work for you?’
This gives Hicklin pause; he puts both hands on the table in front of him, looks downwards, takes a couple of seconds. Then he looks up at me and smiles, walks past me and opens the door.
‘Through the door at the end,’ he says. ‘You can find your own way out.’
I have parked out the front and as I head for my car, still wound up tight after my meeting with Hicklin, I pass Akram. He is holding a coffee and he stops to watch me pass, his face obscured by his paper cup as he drinks. I stop, give him the stare; think, Bring it on. He lowers his cup and smiles at me, winks. Turns away and walks towards the building. I watch him go, thinking of Gabe, the situation he has been put in. It takes all of my willpower not to follow him and beat that sleepy smile from his face.
I am on my way to my office when my mobile rings and I see that it is Ms Armstrong. I do not wish to answer, do not want to admit to Ms Armstrong that I could not look after CJ for more than four days. But I hit the button anyway, take a breath.
‘Hello?’
‘Daniel. I thought you were looking after CJ.’ Ms Armstrong does not deal in pleasantries or preambles.
‘Was trying.’
She laughs. ‘Well, she’s currently being looked after by the police. They picked her up. She’d been drinking. A lot.’
‘Right.’
Ms Armstrong tells me that CJ was with a group of boys who stole a car, which they took the wrong way up a dual carriageway in an attempt to escape a pursuing police car before losing it at an exit and rolling down a bank. She tells me that CJ was not injured but that in attempting to avoid arrest she left a female police officer with scratch marks on her face, and that she doesn’t know whether the police will be pressing charges or not. Either way, could I go and find her?
I listen to Ms Armstrong as I turn my car around in a side road, and as I pull back out in the direction I have just come from, I tell her that I am already on my way. I just hope I do not run into Hicklin again.
I introduce myself as CJ’s lawyer and when the young PC behind the desk tells me that she has not asked for a brief, I tell him that she is a minor, that she has no parents, and that if they have questioned her at all then any case they may believe they have against her has already been irrevocably compromised. He meets my gaze for all of two seconds before buzzing me through the door next to the desk and taking me to her cell.
CJ is sitting on a wide bench that also doubles as a bed, holding a grey blanket around her. When I walk in she shakes her head in disgust and examines her feet, which are drawn up against her. The PC hangs around behind me and I say, without turning, ‘You want to give us some privacy?’
But when the door closes behind me I wonder what I am doing here, what I think I can achieve, how I can undo a decade of mistreatment and betrayal. CJ does not look at me and I am at a loss as to what to say. This is not my area, not my thing.
‘What kind of car was it?’ I say.
CJ does not answer, picks at the toe of a sock, her chin on her knees. I can smell the drink on her, heavy and sweet.
‘You’re going to need a lawyer,’ I say. ‘Might as well have one who gives a shit.’
Perhaps it is the coarseness of my language but this gets her attention, a brief glance from her grey eyes before she goes back to her sock.
‘CJ,’ I say, ‘I don’t care about the money. Maria doesn’t care. You can come back any time. The door’s always open.’
‘They tell you I hurt a policewoman?’
‘They did. Not the end of the world.’
‘Now I’m locked up.’ The last word is smothered by a sob.
‘Not for long. Not if I’ve got anything to do with it.’
CJ ke
eps picking, picking, but soon I notice that her shoulders are shaking and that she is crying, silently and hard, very hard. I stand five feet away from her and wonder if I should do something, put an arm around her, and I wonder also how long it has been since CJ has allowed herself to show tears, how many years.
CJ tells me that three weeks ago some boys took video of her performing oral sex on a man who they owed money to. She tells me that she did not have a choice, that they forced her to do it and would have done worse if she had refused. She tells me this in a long, soft, unbroken monotone, staring at her small toes in her socks without once looking at me. Now, she says, they are blackmailing her, telling her that they will share it online if she does not pay them. That is why she took the money, she says. She pauses, picks again at her tatty sock. Sorry, she says.
Watching her, as helpless and at the mercy of others in a police cell as she is in the outside world, I try to imagine the uncertainty and threat she has to contend with daily. We pride ourselves as a society on our civility. But for a section of that society, the day-to-day world around them offers no more security and comfort than the jungle. It is little wonder that CJ is as hard as she is.
‘Who are these boys?’ I say.
‘Ain’t boys,’ says CJ, shaking her head. ‘You don’t know what they’re like.’
‘Where can I find them?’
‘No,’ says CJ. ‘Serious. They’re… Please. Don’t.’
If the press are to be believed, the current generation of teenagers is more dangerous, feral and lacking in moral scruples than any that has come before. But I believe differently: that people are no worse or better now than centuries ago, and that our basic definition of bad has not changed for millennia. It does not matter what CJ tells me: these young men won’t be anything I haven’t encountered before. But they might not have met anybody like me.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ I tell CJ. ‘I’ll get you out of here. I’ll get the video. And I will not look at it.’
At last CJ raises her head and looks at me. I am standing opposite her and I do not say anything. Along with tears there is hope and enquiry in her grave eyes. I nod, twice, and just for a moment she allows herself to believe me.
The arresting officer is about as interested in pressing charges as he is in feminist politics, scratched colleague or not, and he is only too happy to turn CJ over to me. I have her outside within minutes and she stands blinking in the sunshine dramatically, as if she has been incarcerated for decades, some of her natural spirit already returned now that she has unloaded her troubles. I touch her on the elbow and she does not flinch or pull away.
‘Shall we go home?’ I say.
She waits before answering, on the steps of the police station, the sun warm on her face. Then she says:
‘Ain’t got a home.’
CJ is not going to be won over that easily.
18
THE PERSON BLACKMAILING CJ was, she told me, the same man I encountered in the top-floor apartment of Merceron Tower, the man I kicked in the head and feared that I had killed. She told me that his name was Maz and that even though he was only nineteen, he already had a reputation; that grown men were frightened of him and that he had put girls in hospital. CJ gave me his number and I called him up, asked him if he could sort me out with five grams of cocaine. He asked me where I got his number and I told him a name CJ gave me, one of his associates. I told him to meet me in the car park of a large DIY store outside town, gave him a time.
Violence is not an act, it is a cycle, a pattern of behaviour which is, in my experience, passed down from parent to child. As I watch Maz pull into the car park, I feel little anger at what he has done, only weariness at the thought of perpetuating that pattern. I wonder what kind of life has led him to this place, to become the person he has. He is playing music loudly with his windows down, and after he has switched off his engine, I reach through the window and take his keys out of the ignition. He looks up, sees me, takes a second before he recognises me. One side of his face is bruised, blue and green across his cheekbones, temple, eye socket. I did that.
‘I know you, man,’ he says.
‘Wanted to speak to you.’
He smiles and opens his door and I take a step back. He is even bigger than I remember and in the light seems more like an overgrown boy, barely an adult. He puts a hand on the central pillar and I kick the door shut on his fingers. I hold back, do not give it everything, but still: that has got to hurt. He opens his mouth and silently screams, head back, eyes closed.
‘Stay in the car,’ I say.
He sits back down, still for some time, trying to control his breathing. He is holding his damaged fingers in his other hand.
‘Fuck do you want?’ he says at last. He is sweating, his forehead wet with it.
‘Your phone.’
‘Do what?’
‘I know about you and CJ, what you made her do. What you’ve got on your phone.’
‘And?’
‘You’re going to give it to me.’
‘Fuck I am.’
A man in an orange apron walks towards us, stops a safe way back. He looks like he does not like what he is seeing. ‘Police are on their way,’ he says.
‘Hear that?’ I say. ‘What’ve you got in that car? Apart from five grams of cocaine? Want the police to find it?’
Maz tries to think through his pain. ‘What?’
‘Give me your phone, I give you your keys, you get out of here.’ He looks at me. ‘Clock’s ticking.’
‘Need my phone, man.’
I reach in through the open window, hold his hair and give his head a shake. ‘You listening? Nearly killed you last time I saw you. Can’t want more. Give me your phone, you get out of here.’
‘Fuck this,’ he says. He arches his back, reaches with his good hand into his back pocket, takes out his phone. He hands it to me.
‘This got the video of CJ on it?’
Maz nods, does not answer.
‘Only on here? Nowhere else?’
He shakes his head.
‘Sure?’
‘Fucking sure.’
‘Okay.’ I stand next to Maz’s car. He watches me, eyes squinting against the sunlight.
‘My keys, bruv.’
‘Know somebody called Rafiq Jahani?’
‘Who?’
I do not answer, wait him out.
‘Yeah, man, what about him?’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Fuck would I know?’
Again I do not answer. I am in no kind of hurry.
‘Got shanked, didn’t he?’
‘Who by?’
‘No way.’
I bounce Maz’s keys in my hand, draw my arm back to throw.
‘Not saying nothing about that, man.’
In the distance we hear sirens approaching, on the A road next to the car park.
‘Shit.’ Maz closes his eyes in pain and fear. I can almost hear him thinking, Fuck it. ‘You know Kane?’
‘I know him.’
‘He did it. Rafiq, he thought he was it, man, thought he was running things. Kane told him different.’ He smiles despite his pain. ‘Rafiq gives Kane a load of shit, Kane fucking sticks him. Had it coming, man.’
The sirens pass, fade into the distance. I think about what Maz has told me. Know there’s no way I’ll be able to get him to testify. Still, knowledge is power.
I hand Maz his keys and he takes them, starts his car. He has to use the same hand to put it in gear, reaches across clumsily, the fingers of his other hand useless.
‘Go near CJ again and I’ll break more than your hand,’ I tell him but he does not even look at me, takes off and gives it so much gas, the tyres take some time to grip the tarmac before his car judders away in a squeal of rubber.
I watch him go, then walk over to the man in the orange apron who warned us about the police, hand him a twenty, thank him for his help. I walk back to my car and along the way I drop Maz’s phon
e through the grille of a drain. I wish that CJ could erase what happened to her as easily.
On my way back to my office, I think about what Maz told me, imagine the sequence of events. Halliday finds out that Rafiq is getting cocky, ripping him off. Maybe tells him he wants to test his loyalty, tells him to attack Gabe. Then lets Kane loose on Rafiq, to make an example of him. Two birds, one stone. Kane plants the weapon, Doolan and Akram play their role in framing Gabe. The only problem, Kane went too far with Rafiq, couldn’t keep it under control. Halliday, as well as Gabe, must be hoping that he doesn’t die. A bargaining chip is no good dead. Rafiq is only useful if he can change his story.
But my day is not over. When I arrive back at the office Doolan and Akram are once more waiting out the front. But this time they do not wait for me to go in; instead, Akram calls out of the open window of the passenger side.
‘Get in.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Something you need to see.’
I walk to the window, look down at Akram. He smiles at me, nods his head back at the seat behind him. ‘Get in.’
‘Whatever it is, you can show me here.’
Doolan leans across. ‘Just get in. Unless you want us to take you in. We’ll think of something.’
I do not doubt it. I look up and down the street, think, Fuck it, open the back door of their car and get in. I sit in the middle, look at the backs of their heads. They have the air conditioning on and the car smells of coffee and sweat, Doolan’s, I imagine. ‘Well?’
‘What did you want with Hicklin?’ Doolan says.
‘Case I’m working on.’
‘Didn’t talk to him about us?’
‘No.’
Doolan turns, raises an eyebrow. ‘Sure about that?’
His breath is rank and I should not have got into this car. ‘We’re done,’ I say. I try to open the door but it is locked.
‘No you don’t,’ says Doolan. Akram laughs although he still hasn’t turned around. Doolan hands me a wad of photos. ‘Told you there was something you need to see.’