Gone in the Night

by Mary-Jane Riley

  Behind Boney Alex saw a disparate group of men and women, girls and boys, all thin and grubby and all dressed in what looked like cast-offs. Many of them didn’t look more than teenagers. She was reminded of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan and her heart bled for them. She thought of her own son, Gus, and how easily he could have ended up as a lost boy, but thankfully he had weathered the crises that had beset him as a teenager and as a young man trying to find his way in the world. Now he was safely at university with his girlfriend. He’d be back soon for a weekend of rest and relaxation and she couldn’t wait to see him.

  Cora ignored the open arms and folded her own. ‘Boney.’

  ‘Still looking for that wastrel brother of yours?’

  ‘Yes. Please, Boney, have you any idea where he might be?’

  Alex stepped forward, she needed to be at the front of this. ‘And Martin. Apparently he’s gone missing too, together with Nobby and a woman called Lindy. That’s four people.’ She lifted her chin.

  ‘Who might you be?’ Boney’s tongue flicked out of his mouth and played with his lip ring. His eyes gleamed.

  ‘I’m Alex.’ She wished he wouldn’t do that with his tongue and the ring, it was really disconcerting.

  ‘And what have you got to do with our delicious Cora?’

  ‘I’m a friend. I’m helping her look for Rick.’

  ‘First I’ve heard about Cora having a little friend. Usually too busy with work and looking after Rick, isn’t that right, Cora? Always helping the fucking cripples.’

  ‘Shut up, Boney.’ Cora brushed his words aside. ‘And Rick isn’t a cripple. I’ve helped you and now it’s payback time. That was the deal if you remember. One good turn and all that. You know everything that happens on the streets. You must have heard something about Rick. About Martin.’

  ‘And Lindy. And Nobby,’ said Alex, wondering how exactly Cora had helped Boney in the past.

  Boney’s eyes narrowed. Now his smile was dangerous, his teeth vicious. His followers shuffled impatiently behind him. As yet, none of them had said a word. ‘If you take my advice,’ he said, enunciating every word and sounding like a school teacher, ‘you will forget about Lindy and Martin and Nobby and, yes, even Ricky-boy, and get on with your lives. Nice shiner you’ve got there, Cora. I’d’ve thought you got that message last night.’ He turned his head sharply and his eyes bored into Alex. ‘You too, Alex Devlin. Don’t think I don’t know who you are. Journalist.’ He spat out the word.

  Alex was shaken but was determined not to show it. ‘If you know who I am then you know I like to write about social issues.’ She was pleased to hear her voice came out evenly.

  He pulled at his earlobe. ‘Really? Social issues.’ He laughed. ‘What bollocks. Social fucking issues. Want to write my life story?’

  ‘I might,’ said Alex, determined to stand her ground and not be intimidated. ‘Can’t promise anything though.’

  Boney did nothing for a moment, then a smile curled his lips. ‘Fuck me. Ballsy. I like that. As for you, Cora, no can do, I’m afraid. I guess your old bro has just buggered off. Like the rest.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens.’

  ‘I don’t believe you, Boney,’ said Cora, hotly. ‘You know everything that goes on. And you owe me.’

  ‘I owe you nothing. Now, get out of here. Before I make you go.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’ said Alex, emboldened. ‘Call the police?’

  ‘Come on, Alex.’ Cora tugged at her sleeve. ‘He’s not going to help us. I should have known his word’s not to be trusted.’

  Boney’s mocking laughter followed them out of the cemetery.

  ‘So, what was the favour you did for the charming Boney?’

  They were sitting in a coffee shop back in the city trying to get warm and dry, two sausage rolls and two cups of coffee in front of them. Alex couldn’t feel her toes.

  ‘I stitched up one of his gang members after a knife fight,’ said Cora, her hands shredding a paper serviette. She looked down at what she was doing and gave a hollow laugh. ‘See, I don’t know what to do with my hands when I can’t smoke.’ She shaped the pieces of serviette into a pile.

  ‘Drink some coffee.’ Alex pushed the cup towards her. Cora curled her hands around the china mug. ‘Had Rick been involved? Is that why you did it?’

  ‘Got it in one,’ said Cora. ‘A fight between the homeless guys and some youths from the city. Boney and his boys waded in. I didn’t want the coppers coming along, shutting Rick away. He wouldn’t be able to stand that, you see. But Boney. I thought he’d be as good as his word. That’ll teach me. I won’t make that mistake again,’ said Cora. ‘At the time he said he owed me one. Would repay me. Shows there’s no honour among thieves.’ She shook her head. ‘But you know, I can’t believe he doesn’t know something.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Alex took a sip of her coffee. ‘I’ve been doing this job for so long now that you develop a sixth sense for when people are lying. And he was lying.’ Alex put her cup down carefully. ‘What happened last night, Cora?’

  Cora’s head snapped up. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Boney said that you had a message last night. What did he mean? It’s something to do with that nasty bruise on your cheek, isn’t it? And you’ve been moving as if you hurt in other places too.’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  ‘Yes, that, Cora.’

  Cora drank some coffee. ‘Couple of thugs tied me up and threw me into a wheelie bin.’ Alex gasped. ‘Told me to stop poking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted.’

  ‘Cora – anything could have happened. The bin lorry could have come and—’

  ‘It very nearly did. But whoever was behind it didn’t want me to die. Not yet anyway. They paid someone to let me out just in time.’

  Alex looked at her steadily. ‘Who do you think’s involved?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Cora avoided her eyes.

  Alex didn’t believe her.

  ‘You asked me about the Riders.’

  ‘So?’ Still Cora didn’t – or wouldn’t – look at her.

  ‘You don’t like them.’

  ‘No shit, Sherlock. Look, leave it, Alex.’

  Alex put down her coffee cup. ‘You think it’s one of them.’

  ‘I said, leave it.’

  But Alex didn’t want to ‘leave it’. She decided to try another avenue. ‘So Boney knew about it. The wheelie bin thing, I mean.’

  ‘It would seem so.’

  ‘Do you know his real name?’

  Cora smiled, a real smile that lit up her face and chased away the pasty edges. ‘Someone on the street told me once. Nigel.’

  Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘Nigel?’

  ‘Nigel Bennet.’

  Alex grinned. ‘He doesn’t look much like any Nigels I know.’ She fished her phone out of her bag. ‘Let’s see if Google knows who he is.’ Her fingers stabbed at the phone. ‘There are five Nigel Bennets on LinkedIn, but I can’t imagine his business would have a profile on there.’ She scrolled some more. ‘A few on Facebook. Unlikely too.’

  ‘He’s not really going to be on social media, is he?’ Cora sounded impatient.

  ‘No, not now maybe, though it’s always worth checking. He could be like one of those stupid people who post pictures of money and goods they’ve stolen. Now let’s see …’ She turned the phone round to Cora. ‘Look, there are a couple of Nigel Bennets in images. But I can’t tell if any of them are him. Especially without the—’ she gestured at her face.

  Cora smiled. ‘You mean the piercings, the long lobes and the sharp teeth?’ She squinted at the screen. ‘Nor me. Too fuzzy. You’re not going to find him there. I wouldn’t bother, if I were you.’

  Alex put her phone away. ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Now,’ said Alex, smearing some Colman’s mustard over her sausage roll before popping a piece into her mouth and deciding not to pursue the Nigel angle for the moment, ‘we report Rick missing – yes we will,’
she emphasized as she saw Cora about to interrupt. ‘He’s a vulnerable person and if he’s on the police radar then they’ll look out for him.’

  Cora frowned. ‘If you really think—’

  ‘I do,’ Alex said firmly.

  ‘Okay. Then what?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Alex said, thinking it through. ‘But Rick is missing. So are Martin and Lindy. And Nobby. Do you suppose there are others? After all, as you rightly said, no one really cares if someone who is homeless isn’t seen for a while. People just think they’ve moved on, or have been banged up for one reason or another.’

  ‘Are you seeing a pattern in this?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She knew who she should be speaking to, though she really, really didn’t want to. She sighed. ‘I am friends – sort of – with the guy from Fight for the Homeless.’

  ‘David Gordon.’ Cora flicked a piece of the serviette on the floor.

  ‘You know him?’ She was surprised.

  ‘Bit self-serving. Doesn’t really care about the homeless, only about his reputation.’

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘Take it from me.’ She moistened her fingertip and dabbed flakes of puff pastry from her plate. ‘I like this sausage roll. Is there any more?’

  ‘Here,’ Alex pushed the plate across to Cora, ‘help yourself. Anyway. I think I’ll go and see him, find out if he knows anything.’

  ‘And in the meantime, Rick is still missing.’ Cora looked at Alex, her eyes suddenly sharp.

  Alex nodded. ‘Yes, he is. But we will find him. I promise.’

  ‘Really?’ Her voice was part hopeful, part scathing.

  ‘Yes.’

  Oh, Alex, she said to herself. There you go again, making promises you may not be able to keep.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DAY TWO: MORNING

  A weak grey light filtered through the gaps between the trees. Rick groaned and opened his eyes. The taste in his mouth was worse than the bottom of a parrot’s cage and the pounding in his head threatened to split his skull in two. The smell around him was awful, too. Vomit, sweat, unwashed bodies, well, one unwashed body – his.

  The smell evoked a memory: a concrete room underground. He was lying on a thin mattress, covered by a couple of blankets. There were two or three electric heaters dotted around, so there had to be electricity. Not that those heaters did anything except maybe take the edge off the freezing cold.

  He thought hard. He hadn’t been the only one there. How many? Two? Ten? More.

  The memory faded as another bout of sickness overcame him.

  He had to fight this.

  The night had been full of dreams of white space, white noise, swaying snakes, insects crawling over his skin. When he woke up from the nightmares – which was often – he would be sweating, his heart pounding. He vomited more than once. Was he ill? No, it was that stuff they’d put into his veins, or rather, the lack of it.

  Withdrawal symptoms. That’s what this was.

  More disjointed memories. Being tied down, straps across his chest. A tourniquet around his arm. A stab. Darkness and vivid dreams full of colour and sound.

  And was that responsible for his loss of memory or did that come from the car accident?

  Car accident. Yes, he remembered that. Swimming in icy water, finding a car, crashing it, being picked up and put in another car, escaping. Walking, keeping to the shadows, away from the road, until he found this barn. He’d managed to take off the wettest of his clothes and crawl underneath some old sacking.

  Wait.

  Rewind.

  There was a woman somewhere in that mix. Softly spoken, kind eyes. He’d given her a piece of paper. What was on that paper?

  Nothing. Couldn’t remember. It would come back to him, wouldn’t it?

  What was he doing here?

  He became aware of another pain. His arm. He twisted to look at it. A long gash. Throbbing. Needed stitches, maybe.

  Priorities: clean water; food; dry clothes; dental floss to stitch the wound; a needle. Or better still, a decent bandage. And he needed shoes.

  He reached for his clothes. They were damp and they stank. Nevertheless he pulled them on – didn’t want to frighten the horses. Or the cows. Or the pigs. He guessed he was on a farm from the other smells that surrounded him – good, clean farm smells compared to his body odour.

  But it was getting light, so had to be after seven. Damn, he needed to get moving.

  He looked around. In one of the corners he saw round bales wrapped in plastic. With a combination of his hands and teeth and shutting his mind to the pain in his head and his arm, he managed to tear a hole in the plastic and grab a couple of handfuls of the straw inside. The straw hurt his hands. So sore. He wanted to cry out. He rubbed himself down, feeling as though he was doing something to get himself clean. Though not enough.

  He threw the straw to one side and peered at the palms of his hands. They were a mess. Looked as though he’d suffered burns on his right hand. Left was not so bad. He’d need to find something to put on them so they didn’t become infected.

  He limped to the barn door, pushed it open slowly and peered out.

  The day was grey and misty. Cold too. He shivered, but his forehead was hot.

  He could see more plastic-covered bales of straw stacked up across the concrete yard. He heard the sound of cows and pigs on the still air. There were some fairly ramshackle sheds about fifty metres away, and that’s where he reckoned the sound was coming from. Looking to his left – fields. Some ploughed, some showing a scant green carpet. To his right, a farmhouse. Square, solid. Smoke coming from the chimney.

  The front door opened. A woman came out. Rick didn’t move, didn’t want to catch her eye. He saw her whistle, and two dogs came bounding out of the door towards her.

  Fuck. They might catch his scent.

  But the woman clipped the leads onto the dogs before they had a chance to sniff him out – at least, that’s what he hoped.

  The dogs – Labradors, he thought – suddenly pricked up their ears and looked towards the barn. He would bet their noses were quivering.

  ‘Come on,’ he heard the woman say. ‘If you want a proper run we’ve got to go now.’

  She turned and locked the door, before pushing the key under a large flowerpot.

  A flowerpot? Laughter bubbled up inside him. Surely not?

  ‘Right. Let’s go.’ The woman turned and set off in the opposite direction, the dogs now more interested in walking her than in him.

  Rick listened carefully. He heard a dog barking in the distance. Different dog? The drone of a tractor somewhere. There had to be a farmer and maybe someone – what – milking cows? Or whatever they did on farms these days. But there wouldn’t be too many people around.

  A loud bang made him drop to the ground and cover his head with his hands. Blood was roaring around his body and he was shaking with fear. Pictures flickered into his mind: sun reflecting off sand, a soldier laughing, sweat beading his forehead where it met his helmet. A group of children walking. A girl, peeling off from the group. The girl looking at him. Her head becoming a mass of blood and brains and bone.

  Another loud bang.

  Rick had to bite his tongue to stop himself whimpering. It’s all right, he told himself. It’s all right. You’re in England. England. It was a bird scarer, that’s all.

  Funny how he knew that.

  His heart rate gradually slowed. The shaking subsided. The blood began to flow normally around his body.

  His mouth was dry.

  He got up off the ground. Looked around again. Still nobody. Ignored his aches and pains and did a crouching, crab-like run to the front of the farmhouse, scrabbled under the flowerpot for the key, and let himself into the house.

  In the dim gloom of the hallway his mind was clear, focused. He could do this. After all, he’d been in the … the …

  In the army.

  Why did he keep forgetting?

  Don’t dwell on it. P
riorities.

  He crept down the hall and found the kitchen. It smelled vaguely of wet dog, but was fuggy and warm, thanks to the Aga in the corner. He could smell fried bacon and toast on the air and his mouth watered. Priority: food.

  There were crumbs on the work surface next to the Aga. A knife, greasy with butter lay next to a plate that had the remnants of bacon and egg on it. His mouth watered, and it was all he could do not to pick the plate up and lick at it.

  He opened a cupboard door. Biscuits. An unopened loaf of bread. A jar with no label. It was honey. Chocolate bars. Muesli bars. He didn’t like those at the best of times, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He stopped for a minute. Somehow he’d known he didn’t like muesli bars. That was progress. Of a sort.

  He took the items out of the cupboard and put them on the work surface.

  There was an old biscuit tin at the back of the cupboard. He opened it and found several £5 notes and plenty of coins. Somewhere, in the past, he had known someone who had kept money ‘for a rainy day’ in a biscuit tin. His mum. He had a sudden clear memory of her reaching up to the top cupboard and pulling the tin out and putting money in it. He could almost hear the clattering of the coins as she dropped them in.

  He pocketed some of the money. Didn’t take it all.

  He looked around.

  The fridge in the corner made him stop. It was covered in magnets that pinned messages, takeaway menus, colourful drawings and photographs to its door. There, in the middle of it all, a photograph of two girls, smiling for the camera. They could only have been about four or five, the same age as his girls.

  His girls. Briony and Bethany. His heart twisted. Helen – his wife, Helen – had taken them away from him. For a moment he felt an almost uncontrollable anger, then he remembered it was his temper that had been the problem. He had hurt Helen. She didn’t trust him not to hurt the children.

  He closed his eyes briefly, willing the tears not to come. His girls. He had lost his girls.

  No time to mourn now.

  He shook himself, and spied several large bottles of water on the floor next to the fridge. He took four, put them next to the food.

  But his movements were slow and clumsy and he had to hurry.