Let The Bones Be Charred

by Andy Maslen

  ‘The lid came free with a kind of grating tearing noise and I put the tin down in front of her. She looked, I can only say, genuinely grateful as she lowered her pink nose and sniffed the silvery-brown fish before dabbing her paw in and hooking out a mouthful.

  ‘That’s when I picked up a half-brick and brought it down smartly on Greta’s skull. Well, she went down without a fight. I mean, it was a pretty good first attempt. Smack! went the half-brick. Crack! went Greta’s skull. And that was that.

  ‘I was thinking we should take her body somewhere quiet and see if we could find the kittens, but just then one of the shopkeepers, old Ali from the Paki shop, came round with a bin bag full of some stinking rubbish. He saw us crouching in there behind the bins and told us, rather rudely, by the way, even though we hadn’t done anything to him, to get lost.

  ‘I don’t mind telling you, I found the whole experience rather liberating. I went home, did my chores, listened to another of Mother’s sermons on sin and scuttled off to my bedroom just as soon as I could. We didn’t have a telly in the house (now why aren’t you surprised?) so I read.

  ‘It was about a month after that when I killed Mother. I hated her so much for what she did to him, I guess I just snapped.’

  96

  FRIDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER 10.00 A.M.

  WATFORD

  The hall floor was littered with free newspapers, takeaway menus and junk mail. The house had a musty smell.

  Arran yelled out.

  ‘Miriam Robey! This is the police! Come out here now!’

  Behind him, the uniformed sergeant and a couple of the TSG officers headed up the stairs, their boots clumping on each tread.

  Arran ran through to the kitchen at the back of the house. It was spotless. Unused.

  He turned to Cam.

  ‘The other rooms.’

  He ran back, with Cam behind him, throwing open doors to dining room and sitting room. They were empty. Not only of Miriam Robey but of furniture. One by one, the TSG officers shook their heads as they passed him, heading outside.

  ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘She doesn’t live here. She’s just using it for legal purposes.’

  ‘So what do we do now, boss?’ Cam asked.

  ‘We need to get back to Paddington Green. We have to find out if she’s got another property. Fuck!’ He slammed his hand, palm out, against the wall. ‘We’ve been played.’

  He called Garry.

  ‘The place is empty. Get back to the station. I’ll see you there.’

  Back at Paddington Green, Arran convened the whole team, bringing in everyone from wherever they were and whatever they were doing. Callie was there, too. She spoke now.

  ‘Stella’s not at her place. She’s not answering her phone. Her Airwave’s dead, too. I’m assuming she’s missing. We also need to track down Miriam Robey. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but if she’s been helping her brother, they might have snatched Stella. So, everyone, I want you digging deep. Every source we have up to and including Special Branch, MI5 and MI6. Plus the internet. Surface and deep web. Go!’

  The group scattered like rabbits before an oncoming greyhound. Callie returned to her office and called her own boss.

  97

  FRIDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER 10.45 A.M.

  BECKTON, EAST LONDON

  Miriam carried on talking. Stella listened with half an ear. She was remembering a conversation she’d had with a gangster named Freddie McTiernan, a fearsome East End character who’d ended up shot dead in his own front room by Adam Collier. She and Freddie had been discussing the difference between old-school villains and their newer counterparts.

  ‘For instance,’ Freddie said, ‘in my day, you wanted to tie a bloke up, you used rope. A few decent boy scout knots and Bob’s your uncle. Now it’s all cable ties. Haven’t they heard plastic’s bad for the planet?’

  ‘Yeah, but given time you can undo knots,’ Stella had countered. ‘Cable ties are impossible to get out of without a knife.’

  ‘That what you think, is it, Stel? Come into the workshop with me. I want to show you something.’

  So she’d followed the ‘retired’ gangster out into his spacious workshop and let him bind her wrists with a heavy-duty black plastic cable tie.

  ‘Looks secure, doesn’t it?’ he asked her.

  She twisted her wrists experimentally, succeeding only in digging the sharp edge into the soft flesh of her wrists.

  ‘Yes. And it hurts.’

  ‘Watch this,’ he said, picking a nail out of a little yellow box on a shelf. He pushed the point into the little box that locked the plastic tape in. ‘All right, now pull.’

  She did as she was told, and gasped as the ridge tape slid free of the locking mechanism.

  ‘See,’ Freddie said. ‘New ain’t always better.’

  She refocused on Miriam.

  ‘Malachi had been off sick for two days with a cold. I deliberately stayed in bed, even though I knew I had to be washed and dressed and ready for school. So, in walks Mother at quarter past seven and sees yours truly snuggled under the covers.

  ‘She goes into her routine, screaming about my blasphemous conduct, and how I was the embodiment of corruption and she pulled the blanket and the sheet off me. She turned away and flung her final threat over her shoulder. “If you’re not downstairs, washed and dressed in five minutes, you’ll go to school without any breakfast.”

  ‘I jumped out of bed the moment her back was turned. “Yes, Mother,” I said. “I’m sorry.” She walked out through my bedroom door and along the narrow upstairs hallway. I followed her on tiptoes. I don’t know what demon or deity was howling into that empty space between her ears but he was doing a great job of drowning out any ambient noise from the real world.

  ‘And then, when she reached the top of the stairs and put her right foot out, I charged at her and hit her amidships with both my outstretched palms.

  ‘I still remember the feel on my hands of the Crimplene dress she was wearing. It was a sort of slippery, slidey sensation, but rough, as well. Not at all like you’d imagine a silk blouse would feel. The pattern was enough to give you a migraine! I mean, really, it was horrendous! Lime-green, peacock-blue and a sort of off-white, all in intersecting diamonds.

  ‘Our stairs were straight, no half-landing. Thirteen in all, if you counted either the landing at the top as a step or the last step you took when you put your foot down onto the floor in the downstairs hall as a step – if you were going downstairs, obviously! Well, what I mean is, let’s say you’re standing with both feet on the ground in the downstairs hall and you say to yourself, well, I think I’m just going to go upstairs to bed or whatever, the toilet, maybe, and you start climbing. Well, if you counted “one” as your right foot hit the first stair and you stopped counting when your same foot or maybe the other one hit the top landing, you would just have said “thirteen” – unlucky for some, eh, Mother?

  ‘So when I pushed Mother, she didn’t scream. Instead she made kind of an “Ooh!” noise. Not as if she were surprised, like at the circus when an acrobat does some amazing trick. More like when her period pains were really bad and she’d get a cramp or whatever and, in a low way, she’d go “ooh!”, you know? Anyway, that.

  ‘Her arms went out in front of her and, for a moment, she looked as if she’d elected to do a forward pike with two and a half twists, degree of difficulty two-point-nine. Then she landed about halfway down, so, what, the sixth stair? Technically it should be the sixth-and-a-half but I don’t think that’s a thing. Call it the sixth from the top. It was not a great success.

  ‘Her head went sideways and her neck snapped with a really quite loud crack. Over she went, skirt flying, showing her knickers, to land in a bit of a tangle at the bottom. Somewhere along the line one, or I think easily it could have been two, of her limbs broke or became dislocated. More popping than snapping noises, so maybe they were dislocated after all.

  ‘And there she lay. Dear Ol’ Muvver! Dead as a doornail. Lo
oking, frankly, a bit of a mess. Blood leaking out of her nose and she must have caught her lip on something on the way down because it wasn’t properly attached to her face anymore.

  ‘Mal came out of his room, took one look at Mother, then went back into his room. I told him to come out when I said it was OK. Then I went down the stairs, holding onto the bannister and stepped over her at the bottom.

  ‘We used to have a phone in the kitchen. Dad screwed it to the wall. I wasn’t allowed to use it to call my friends when Mother was alive but I felt even she would have allowed me to call the emergency services. Which I did now. “Hello?” I said, “My mummy just fell down the stairs.” “Oh,” the woman at the other end said. I suppose she could hear from my voice that I wasn’t very old. “Is your mummy awake?” “No,” I said. “She’s asleep. Her eyes are closed and I think she’s got a nosebleed.” “OK. Is she breathing?” “Yes, she is.” “Good. Listen, we need to get Mummy to a hospital. What’s your name?” I told her.

  ‘She asked me if I knew my address. I felt like saying “yes of course I know my address, you stupid cunt, I’m not a little child,” but I didn’t say that. “Yes,” I said. “It’s Martlebury, 47 Charlotte Road, Watford, WP2 7YT.” “Good. I am going to send an ambulance for Mummy and I want you to wait with her. Will you be OK doing that?” I assured her I would and rang off.

  ‘I had no idea how long the ambulance would take to arrive, not having any prior experience, so I went up to my room to fetch my book – Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. I think in my mind I was going to take it back downstairs to read sitting on the stairs but I had just got to a really good bit, so I sort of flopped onto my bed and read it there.

  ‘Then I had another brilliant idea. I went into Mother’s bedroom. She had a phone in there as well as the one in the kitchen. A Trimphone, I believe it was called. In a shade of green that was very fashionable in the late seventies: avocado. I tried to avoid looking at all her religious statues and called Dad instead. He’d made me memorise his home phone number before he left and I called it now.

  ‘He answered. One of the joys of being self-employed was that Dad could set his own hours. Driving a London taxi was, he explained to me, “the best job in the world”. You’re your own boss, you make good money, decide on your own hours, whereabouts you want to ply your trade, – “ply” is such a good word, by the way, don’t you agree? “Dad?” I said. “That you, Mim? What’s up?” “It’s Mum,” I said. “She fell down the stairs.”

  ‘There was a pause. I mean a noticeable pause. Then Dad spoke. “She all right then, is she? Not hurt too badly?” Here’s a quick translation of that for you. “Is she dead then? Did the twisted bitch finally get to meet her Maker?” “I don’t know, Dad. I think she might be pretty badly hurt.”

  ‘I could hear the glee in his voice. “Right. Listen to me. Where are you and Mal?” I said, “I’m in Mum’s room and Mal’s in his.” Dad said, “Go to your bedroom. And stay there. I’ll be right round.” Almost as an afterthought, he asked me, “Did you dial nine nine nine?” “Yes, Dad.”

  “Good. That was the right thing to do.”

  Miriam paused and looked down at Stella. As if seeing her for the first time, her eyes roved up and down her body before coming to rest on Stella’s.

  ‘I’m so sorry. You must be thirsty. Would you like a glass of water? ’

  Stella fought down the urge to swear and plead for her freedom. She coughed.

  ‘No thanks. I’m good.’

  Miriam shrugged.

  ‘As I was saying, Dad arrived ten minutes after I’d called him. I’d say the ambulance crew turned up about three minutes after that. Maybe two. Dad had to ring the doorbell. Mother had changed the locks after he left. I got Mal then went down and let Dad in. He came in and bent down beside Mother. He actually put his face against her nose. Then he stood up and put his hand out. I took it and he led me and Mal into the kitchen.

  ‘‘‘She’s dead,” he said, when we were sitting opposite him at the breakfast bar. “I know, Dad,” I said. “What’s going to happen to me and Mal?” He smiled. “Don’t worry. Everything’ll be fine,” he said. Which turned out to mean being packed off to boarding school.

  ‘Apparently Carol, Dad’s squeeze, was expecting, and they didn’t have enough room as it was. His taxi business was thriving, he said. Got himself a second cab and a driver to go with it. He could afford the fees and tuckshop money besides. And that’s when my life took another tottering step to what you could call “the Dark Side”.

  ‘Monksfield was co-educational so Dad sent us both there. Naturally, boys’ and girls’ dormitories were well separated and, as you can imagine, the penalties for transgressions were severe. For the first six years Mal managed not to stray. But soon after his fourteenth birthday, he told me he really felt that he deserved it. You know? I mean, he had been so patient.

  ‘In the holidays, most of the children went home to Mummy and Daddy. Or their super-rich uncles or their fairy-fucking-godmothers for all I know. Naturally, that wouldn’t work for us. No, my dear old dad made that perfectly clear. He and Carol were expecting again or so he said and it was best if we just stayed at school.

  ‘So we were stuck in “ninety acres of beautiful rolling Dorset countryside”, as the school brochure had it. I suppose he sent us all the way over there because he didn’t want us anywhere close to his new family. Can’t say I blame him. Not really. Not when you look at how we turned out.

  ‘We weren’t alone. There were a few other kids whose families were so dysfunctional they couldn’t even have their offspring around for a couple of months in the summer. A couple of Army brats. A boy who clearly had mental health issues. And a couple of girls. One of them was a dull little bird. But the other one?

  ‘Lauren Bourne-Clarke was a different kettle of fish altogether. She was in the sixth form, seventeen, and clearly destined to be a model or an actress. Her parents worked in the film industry, hence her name. Lauren. You know? Like Lauren Bacall, the actress? It doesn’t matter. Anyway, they were on a shoot that was delayed because of a revolution in Angola or a tropical storm in Bangladesh or wherever the fuck they were.

  ‘So she stayed on at school while all the other beautiful people – that’s what we called them, her and her little coterie of followers, we being the great unwashed, the saddos, the losers – fucked off to Bali or New Zealand or wherever.

  ‘Lauren was beautiful. She had proper tits, too. Mal was obsessed with her. She played tennis, hockey, football and was superb in all of them. She fenced. She was clever, too. Captain of the Debating Society and widely predicted to go on to Oxford or Cambridge. Or possibly Princeton or Harvard. And, I’m sorry to say, a whore.

  ‘Oh, she had lots of friends and she volunteered at the local children’s hospice at the weekends, but I knew. I could see what lay behind that facade. Lauren Bourne-Clarke had the look. Lauren Bourne-Clarke would offer herself up to whichever randy sixth-former or pencil-dicked art teacher who so much as smiled in her direction. So Mal decided she might as well give herself up to him, too.

  ‘He followed her one morning. And I followed him. She was heading off to the woods at the far end of the football pitches. “Pitches”, plural. Did I mention what a very well-endowed school Monksfield was?

  She had a notebook with her, so maybe she was going to write a nature poem. Or it could have been a journal. You know, “Dear Diary, today I masturbated until my fingers bled thinking about sucking off the headmaster.”

  ‘They left the manicured pitch with its pristine white lines and passed through the long grass to the woods. Then he tripped over a root and swore, and of course then Lauren did turn round and see him. She smiled at him. “Hi. You stuck here for the holidays, too?” she asked him.

  ‘He nodded. Then he took a few steps closer. “I’m going for a walk. Want to join me?” Lauren said. “Yes, please,” he said. “Come on, then,” she said, and carried on walking as if this was the most natural thin
g in the world.

  ‘We hadn’t really figured out the practicalities, so when they came to another patch of long grass, he hit her as hard as he could on the side of the head with his open hand. He was big for his age.

  ‘So when he clouted her, she went over sideways with a yelp like when you kick a dog in the ribs so hard you feel one of those thin little bones give beneath the toe of your boot. Then he fucked her. Then he ran back to school. Like I say, he hadn’t thought about the practicalities.

  ‘The fallout was pretty much what you would imagine. Or would you? For a start, they didn’t call the police. He was fourteen for one thing, so technically a minor. He could have said, “She wanted it. She made me.” After all, she was whoring herself around all over the school.

  ‘But, more to the point, think of what it would have done for the school’s reputation. I mean, Monksfield was a nice enough place but it wasn’t exactly Eton. Plenty of other private schools to suck up the droves of kids pulled out of “Three Grand a Term School For Sex Fiends” if they didn’t squash it.

  ‘What happened was they called in the parents when they got back from Mauritius or Zanzibar or wherever and explained that there had been an incident. Paid them off with a shit-ton of money. Persuaded them that it would be unlikely to even get to court, what with it being his word against hers and also he was fourteen, as I said. The Bourne-Clarkes took the money and ran.’

  98

  FRIDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER 11.11 A.M.

  BECKTON, EAST LONDON

  Swallowing hard, Stella spoke.

  ‘That’s quite a story. But I’m surprised you haven’t cut and run. Half the Met will be out looking for me when I don’t call in.’

  Miriam shrugged her wide shoulders and checked her watch.