DYING EMBERS an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘It was on my own time.’

  ‘You do know what this looks like?’

  Vince met his stare. ‘I suppose it depends what you’re looking for.’

  ‘Insolence won’t help you, Sergeant Beresford.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘I knew Ryan,’ he said. ‘I knew Frank. I wanted to find him before he ended up in a mortuary, on a slab. If my concern was unauthorized, I’m sorry.’

  Superintendent Allan looked ready to launch into a tirade, but DCI Thomas intervened. ‘Your actions were ill-judged, Vince.’

  ‘My timing was certainly off,’ he muttered.

  ‘Why?’ Allan asked sharply. ‘Because you got caught on tape?’

  Vince bit back a reply. ‘Is there anything else, sir? I’d like to find out what’s happening to Mandel.’

  Allan checked his watch. ‘Your shift finished ten minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Go home. Mandel will be interviewed by CID.’

  The office was empty when Vince returned. He bundled together the papers he had been working on and reached for a folder to file them into temporarily. As he did so, the top page caught his eye: the n of his first name had been carefully Tippexed out, so that it read ‘Vice Beresford’. He dumped the documents and stormed out into the corridor. Nobody. The communications room was quiet.

  * * *

  Alex was working the concourse. Vince saw him exchange a glance with James Dean, then he turned his back and dropped a couple of coins into the vending machine. As Vince approached, he bent down to retrieve his sweets, pushing out his buttocks in a manner reminiscent of street girls negotiating a trick with a punter in a car.

  ‘Pastilles,’ he said. ‘I love ’em.’ He popped one in his mouth. ‘I can suck ’em down to a sliver, me.’

  ‘Save it for the punters, Alex. What have you got for me?’

  The boy turned his startling blue eyes on Vince. ‘Depends what you want to pay.’

  ‘You said you had info on Frank Traynor.’

  ‘You said there was a reward.’

  ‘For information leading to an arrest.’

  ‘I need some up front.’

  Vince handed him a five-pound note.

  ‘You’re joking me!’

  ‘Another fifteen if I’m satisfied.’

  Alex arched an eyebrow. ‘I’ve never had no complaints.’

  ‘Stop pissing me about,’ Vince warned.

  Alex pouted. ‘He was here. Tuesday.’

  ‘Frank Traynor? You’re sure it was him?’

  Alex looked in the direction of James Dean. Vince followed his line of sight, but the boy avoided his eye, and Vince formed the impression that Alex was talking on James Dean’s behalf. Alex fished in his pocket and drew out a crumpled photograph of Frank. ‘Him,’ he said. ‘That’s the one I saw.’

  Vince gave him the rest of the money.

  ‘Surprised you didn’t see him yourself.’

  Vince held his breath for a moment.

  ‘Well you were here. I seen you.’

  ‘I didn’t see you,’ Vince replied.

  ‘You weren’t looking for me.’

  A silence stretched between them. Vince could almost see the cogs turning as Alex calculated how much he could make out of the knowledge he possessed. The boy could do a lot of damage with what he knew.

  ‘Another fifty and I’ll likely forget you was ever here.’

  Vince hauled him up to eye level by his jacket front.

  ‘Fuck with me, little boy,’ he snarled, ‘you’re going to get hurt.’

  Alex squeaked and Vince let go, dropping him to the ground. He fell awkwardly, landing on his backside in a greasy puddle on the marble tiles. For a few moments he seemed unable to catch his breath, then he spat out the pastille he had been sucking and began screaming at Vince’s back as he walked away. ‘Bastard! Bastard fag!’

  Vince glanced over to where James Dean had been standing. His pitch beneath the poster advertising vodka was empty.

  33

  Dean woke in the dark. His room was stiflingly warm; he had fallen asleep fully dressed, on top of the bedclothes. He hadn’t been getting much sleep over the last two weeks, and for once he had been undisturbed by dreams. He looked across at Ryan’s bed. There was a hump, a clear outline of a human form, lying under the bedclothes.

  ‘The stupid bastard,’ he breathed. Then he was on the floor — four, maybe five steps, grabbing Ryan by the shoulder—

  The bed was empty. There was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing that could have made him think it was his big brother lying under the covers, waiting for him to say ‘Wake up, dickhead! We’ve all be worried sick about you.’

  A trick of the light, of the mind. Ryan’s bed was empty.

  Every night, sometimes three or four times a night, he would dream: the bedroom door opened and Ryan walked in and flopped onto his bed. He carried a magazine in his hand, or sometimes textbooks.

  Dean glanced up, then back to his own reading; Ryan was going through a familiar routine, there was no reason to take special note of it. After a while, Ryan said, ‘Gotta go, bro.’ A phrase he often used. A second or two of dreadful recognition, when Dean would realize he had missed his chance again.

  He would jump out of bed, yelling, ‘No! No! Stay!’

  He always woke at this moment, sobbing. The terrible, terrible anguish, the awful sense of loss was just as strong as on that first day, in Mrs Golding’s office, when they had told him Ryan was dead.

  He sat on Ryan’s bed and wept until his head ached. The sudden electric bolts of pain in his broken tooth, reactions to hot and cold, had abated, replaced by a dull feverish ache that played along the length of his jaw. But it wasn’t enough. In RE they had learned the word atonement. He wanted to atone for his sins, for not making enough of his time with Ryan, for not saving him.

  He carried Ryan’s knife with him always — even in school — hidden in his sports bag, up the sleeve of his jacket, its steel cool against the hot, stinging pain of the thin score marks on his arm. Three now. One for every day since he’d failed to get Baz. Since he’d failed to atone. He would make a tally, marking time until he did what he’d set out to do.

  It took a little while for him to register that the banging wasn’t in his head. His dad was at the bedroom door, his voice now raised, panicky.

  ‘Dean, son. Open the door.’

  ‘All right.’ He didn’t mean to sound nowty, but somehow everything he said lately seemed bad-tempered and sulky.

  He slid the chest of drawers away from the door, feeling a mixture of self-pity and angry satisfaction as the effort pulled at the healing tissue of the cuts on his arm.

  ‘What?’ he said, staring sullenly at his father’s shirt front. He couldn’t bring himself to look into those horrified eyes, red-rimmed with sleeplessness and unshed tears.

  ‘Come downstairs, son. The police want a word.’

  They were waiting in the front room, an Indian woman and a man. They looked too big for the room, seemed to make it shrink. The man was standing next to the mantelpiece when they came in, looking at a family photo: Mum and Dad, Ryan with his hands around Dean’s neck, like he was about to throttle him, both of them laughing. He wanted to tell the copper to put it down, that he had no right, touching their things, but he just stood there, glaring at him. The man put the picture back, and the woman got up from the sofa.

  ‘Hello, Dean,’ she said. ‘I’m Constable Dhar, and this is Constable Mayhew. I hope we didn’t get you out of bed.’

  ‘It’s only eight o’clock.’ People always did that. Treated him like a baby, just because he was small. He saw a look pass over his head, between the policewoman and his dad. They were ‘making allowances’, because of what he’d been through. It pigged him off, that — the sympathetic looks, the way they talked to him like he was thick or something. Although he didn’t realize it, their compassion only made him behave more badly.

  ‘Dean,’ the woman said. ‘We’ve come to ask you about Barry Mandel
— Baz.’

  ‘Sod him!’ He turned, ready to walk out, but his father barred his way. He placed both hands on his shoulders and turned him back to face the two police officers.

  ‘Show some respect, lad,’ he said under his breath.

  ‘Don’t see why I should.’

  ‘Now look—’

  ‘They never even started looking for Ryan till it was too late.’

  His dad sighed. A silence followed. The heat of his dad’s hands burned through the fabric of his shirt, his sadness like a heavy weight, so that Dean felt as if he were holding his father up, that if he moved, his father would fall.

  Dhar tried again. ‘I understand you being upset,’ she said. ‘I would be, if it was me.’

  ‘Yeah, well it wasn’t, was it?’

  ‘Dean!’ His father gripped his shoulders more tightly and Dean blushed a little for having shamed him.

  ‘Baz is seriously ill in hospital,’ WPC Dhar told him.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘He was attacked earlier this evening.’

  ‘Dean’s been home since a quarter to four,’ his dad said.

  Dhar smiled. ‘We don’t think Dean was there,’ she said. ‘The neighbours saw two men.’

  Dean threw her a hot, resentful look. Like it couldn’t be him because he was just a short arse.

  ‘I’m nearly fourteen,’ he said, then felt an idiot for having said it.

  She didn’t laugh. ‘Do you know anything about it?’ she asked.

  Dean shrugged.

  ‘He’s badly hurt, Dean.’

  ‘Hope he dies. Hope he bloody dies!’ A tear spilt onto his cheek and he wiped it away, furious in case they thought he was crying for Barry.

  His dad spoke, talking down at the top of his head, pressing firmly on his shoulders. ‘Answer the lady. Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘They hurt his grandma as well,’ Dhar said. ‘Pushed her around. Hit her.’

  Dean frowned at the floor.

  ‘She’s just an old lady, Dean.’

  The furrow between his eyebrows grew deeper. Why should he feel guilty? It was Barry he wanted, not his grandma.

  ‘I wish I’d been there.’

  ‘Dean!’ His father spun him around, bent down to his eye level. ‘God forgive you!’ he demanded. ‘That’s a wicked thing to say!’

  He couldn’t help himself, couldn’t bear to have people think so badly of him. ‘Not her,’ he said. ‘Not his gran. Him. Baz. I wish it could’ve been me with Baz.’

  His dad shook his head. Tears trembled on the raw rims of his eyelids. Dean couldn’t take his eyes off them, fascinated and horrified by the possibility of his father breaking down. He stared full into his father’s face for the first time since Ryan’s death, wanting to comfort him, but not knowing how.

  * * *

  Before he finished up for the night, Garvey called in at DCI Thomas’s office. He stood across from Thomas, who was working in a pool of lamplight, which when he sat up, lit the lower half of his face, putting his eyes in sinister shadow.

  ‘I hope it’s good news, John,’ Thomas said. ‘Because so far, today’s been a complete wash-out.’

  ‘You had to let the psychic go?’

  ‘What can you do with someone like that?’ Thomas asked. ‘Tell her she knows more than she should, and she says she got it from the “other side”.’

  ‘She didn’t give you anything useful, then?’

  ‘Not unless you count a few bland statements about Frank being safe in the light, and the spirit world taking special care of the young when they pass over. The man we’re looking for hates all mankind, apparently. What he can’t control, he wants to destroy.’

  ‘There may be something in that.’

  ‘Doesn’t help us find him, though, does it?’

  ‘This might,’ Garvey said. ‘Frank Traynor is on the railway-station security videotapes. The video timer puts it at 9.12 p.m., Tuesday.’

  ‘Was he with anyone?’

  Garvey shook his head. ‘He didn’t stop long, either. Got frightened off by station security. I’ll get some stills made up from the tape and send someone over tomorrow, see if we can get anything out of the guard who moved him on.’

  ‘Good. Thanks, John.’

  Garvey hovered by the door, undecided whether to say what was on his mind.

  ‘Was there something else?’

  ‘Yeah, Boss. Vince Beresford.’

  Thomas’s eyes narrowed. ‘What about him?’

  ‘I was wondering what was going to happen — you know, about the evidence on tape.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  Aware that he sounded defensive, but determined to make his point now he’d stuck his neck out, Garvey went on: ‘Him hanging around the station. Talking to the rent boys.’

  ‘Interviewing them,’ Thomas corrected him. ‘He was looking for information on Frank Traynor.’

  Garvey gave a short laugh. ‘Is that what he said?’

  Thomas returned a blank stare. ‘His explanation satisfied both me and Superintendent Allan.’

  Garvey, hearing the implied reprimand, drew himself up, almost standing to attention. ‘Right, Boss, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘You know about Beresford’s history — the kid who fell off the roof?’

  ‘Yes,’ Thomas said. ‘I know about that. What’s your point?’

  Garvey wanted to yell ‘similar fact evidence’ at him, but this was his boss, so he remained polite.

  ‘There’s the drugs link, for a start, then there’s the fact that boys are involved, and given his sexual orientation—’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

  ‘And he knew the house — the place where the first lad was found.’ Garvey had been building up to this all day, and he wasn’t going to be put off. It was the railway-station security tapes got him thinking. ‘Said he was interested in local history. I’ll bet Vince knows every empty old building on the canal side of town.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Thomas interrupted angrily. ‘You’d better drop this vendetta against Sergeant Beresford. You made the error of judgement. You got kicked up the backside for it. Accept it.’

  Garvey took a breath and held it.

  Thomas stared at him for a few seconds, then, satisfied that Garvey understood his position on the matter, he went on in a more even tone.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any further reference to the videotape in the office, the canteen, or on the station grapevine — do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Sir.’

  Bloody typical! Folk were too easily impressed by the glamour of a cockney accent. Still, Garvey thought, as he took out his car keys, there was one small consolation — it was a bit late to scotch rumours about Vince cruising Handley Street for something warm to cuddle up to.

  34

  Geri watched TV without really taking anything in. She sat on the floor with a cushion behind her, while Lauren stretched out on the sofa with her feet up. From time to time they exchanged the odd word. One or other of them would get up to make coffee in the programme breaks but for most of the night they simply watched, trying to anaesthetise themselves with banality. Neither of them could bear to watch anything that might contain violence, or even conflict, which left them with a choice of nature programmes and quiz shows.

  ‘God, this is depressing!’ Lauren said at last. ‘Mind if I turn it off?’

  ‘I want to listen to the local news,’ Geri said. ‘See if anything . . .’ She left the rest unsaid.

  Lauren flipped channels and they caught the end of the national news. The first item on the regional bulletin was a shooting in a pub not far from them. The next made Geri sit bolt upright.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘What?’

  Geri shushed her, while they listened to an account of the attack on Barry Mandel.

  ‘There is a suspected drugs connection,’ the newsreader said. ‘But police are refusing to speculate on a possible link with the death of
a second pupil at St Michael’s school in what was thought to be a glue-sniffing experiment.’

  The camera cut to a shot of DCI Thomas standing outside a derelict warehouse.

  ‘We’re anxious to trace a young woman who purchased a gas canister at Great Outdoors in Dean Street on Tuesday, February the eighth,’ he said. ‘She could have vital information about Frank Traynor’s death — even if she can’t help us, we need to eliminate her from our enquiries.’

  Adèle! No wonder she was so cagey about what had happened to her gear. Geri’s stomach did a sickening roll — if Adèle had seen something, she was in terrible danger.

  She scrambled to her feet and Lauren followed into the hallway and started pulling on layers of clothing.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Geri asked.

  ‘Depends where you’re going.’

  ‘The shelter on Fairview.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ Lauren stuffed one cardiganed arm into her coat sleeve.

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘I think there is,’ Lauren said. ‘And there’s safety in numbers.’

  ‘I’m going to see a five-foot-three skinny girl. Where’s the danger in that?’

  ‘I’m going, and that’s that,’ Lauren insisted. ‘We could take separate cars, but it makes better sense to go together.’ She picked up Geri’s car keys from the hall stand. ‘I’ll drive.’

  Geri reached her own coat down. ‘Why my car?’

  ‘I’m almost out of petrol again.’

  Geri was dazed with tiredness and too much TV. ‘Then why don’t I drive?’ she protested, following Lauren out of the house.

  ‘You’ll need your wits about you to explain what you’re so het up about.’ Lauren wrapped a scarf around her neck and hurried to Geri’s car, hunching her shoulders against the cold.

  * * *

  The shelter was twenty minutes’ drive away in a shabby pocket of urban decay, rimmed by reclaimed mills and warehouses. The streets surrounding it had mostly been bought up by property developers and several rows of terraces were in the process of being demolished.

  St Charles’s stood on the side of a hill, black and crumbling, towering defiantly over the squat, red-brick houses of the two remaining streets which flanked it on two sides. The church had been deconsecrated long ago, but it still cast its pious shadow over the area.