Cry Baby

by Billingham, Mark

  ‘You could always come back here,’ Boyle said. ‘It’s a bit out of the ordinary, but I’m sure we could provide a bed for a few nights if you arrived voluntarily. Not five-star, of course.’

  Figgis was still nodding, as though he might be considering the offer, but Thorne could tell he had stopped listening. He had shrunk into his chair, and now he closed his eyes and began muttering inaudibly to himself.

  ‘Look, I’m sure we can run to a car to get you home safely.’ Boyle pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘Other than that, there’s not an awful lot we can do.’

  ‘I’d be happy to go back with him,’ Thorne said. ‘There’s probably still plenty of press around.’

  ‘If there’s nothing else you should be doing,’ Boyle said.

  Figgis did not move. He looked as though he wanted nothing more than to be left alone in that room to drift away for a while, as though his own mumbled words were the only ones that would make any kind of sense; that he could trust. Thorne could not take his eyes off the man as he hummed and tutted. The suspicious manner, the peculiarities that had rung so many alarm bells just a few days before, were now blanked out by despair. Where once he had seen a curiosity, Thorne now found himself staring at someone who simply appeared . . . absent.

  A shell, broken and unreachable.

  ‘I’ll get that car organised.’ Boyle stepped towards the door. ‘Oh, and I wouldn’t worry too much anyway, Mr Figgis. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to look at a paper this morning, but you’ve been knocked off the front page.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  A journalist – Maggie, or Mary – had called first thing, her voice a little too hushed and thick with concern as she’d asked Cat what she thought of the article and if she had any comment. Having provided one that was almost certainly not printable, Cat had quickly thrown a coat over her pyjamas, run down to the newsagent to pick up a copy of the newspaper and read the story for herself.

  He looked smart but suitably mournful in the photograph, clutching a teddy bear that had almost certainly been provided for him. A touching, faraway look on his face and a simple enough, four-word headline:

  KIERON IS MY SON.

  Now, Cat understood exactly what it was that Dean Meade cared so much about.

  He declared that he was ‘sick with worry’. He revealed exclusively that he’d been ‘cut out’ of his son’s life and though he bitterly resented being ‘sidelined’ and denied access to a child he had never stopped loving, it was now time for Kieron’s real family to pull together. ‘It’s only at times like this,’ Meade had said, ‘that you realise what’s really important.’

  Cat screwed the newspaper up and pushed it down hard into the kitchen bin. Thinking: Yeah, right – the money they’re paying you, that you might be able to squeeze out of a few more papers and magazines, the fat fees for TV interviews and all the rest of it . . .

  She carried tea across to the sofa and set her rage to one side, because it would be there to draw on when she needed it. Because Dean Meade meant less than nothing and because, right then, it was hard to think of anyone else but Billy.

  He would know by now, of course, the paper left outside his cell by a helpful screw. He would have done his best to deal with the crude comments over breakfast. The snide remarks from inmates and guards alike about his shortcomings in the bedroom and the gleeful insinuations about the woman he stupidly believed was waiting faithfully for him.

  Her. His two-timing slag of a girlfriend.

  ‘It’s not news in here, mate. We’ve all had her.’

  ‘More cock than KFC . . . ’

  ‘They’ll have to bury your missus in a Y-shaped coffin.’

  Would Billy have risen to the bait and lashed out? Or would the anger be something that built up slowly; that festered? She knew the temper he had on him. It was something the two of them had in common. One minute she imagined him banged up in solitary already, nursing bloodied knuckles, and the next lying on his bunk, hollowed out by her betrayal.

  She knew she would have to call and try to explain.

  She would take whatever he handed out, had every right to hand out, and do everything she could to make him understand that he was Kieron’s dad in all the ways that mattered. That her and Dean Meade had just been something stupid that only happened because she’d been so messed up at losing Billy.

  Cat lay down and cried for a while, because she knew how mealy-mouthed she would sound saying all this, coming clean now only because she’d been rumbled. Making it worse by trotting out a piss-poor excuse when what she’d done could never be excused.

  It was just because I missed you.

  I was thinking of you, I swear . . .

  Then Angie rang, so Cat said it all to her instead.

  ‘Calm down,’ Angie said. ‘Look, I’m not going to say I’m happy about it, because I’m not, but for good or ill, it’s all out in the open now, so everyone’s just going to have to deal with it.’

  ‘I think I should talk to Billy.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea just yet.’

  ‘I should go and see him.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Angie said. ‘If he is going to kick off, it might be best if I deal with it first. Take some of the flak, yeah?’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Let me . . . pave the way or whatever.’

  Cat was grateful, if a little taken aback. Angie had always been close to her brother and Cat would not have been surprised if the woman had let her have it with both barrels. That temper ran in the family.

  Instead, Angie said, ‘You’ve got more important things to worry about right now. You and Billy. This shit about you in the news is going to blow over soon enough.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, babe.’

  Cat knew that, despite how wretched and guilty she felt now and however much it seemed like she’d ruined everything, Angie was probably right. She and Billy would survive this, because they’d been through plenty already and what had happened with Kieron would only make them stronger. They were a team, always had been.

  ‘Just sit tight and don’t do anything stupid,’ Angie said. ‘I’ll come over after work and we can talk about it. Open a bottle, yeah?’

  ‘Open several bottles,’ Cat said.

  When she’d finished talking to Angie, Cat felt a powerful urge to get out of the flat for a while. She needed to get some air, to talk to people. She decided that she’d go and sit in Whittington Park for a while, try and clear her head.

  She got dressed quickly. She tidied up her hair and put on some make-up for the first time in several days. She hadn’t noticed any press types knocking around outside when she’d gone out for the paper, but even if there were a few down there by now, she would deal with them in one way or another.

  She would spit on their lenses and swear at them or she would smile sweetly and answer all their questions like a good girl. Perhaps she would just keep her head down and her elbows out and knock them aside like skittles as she ran.

  She would see how she felt when the time came.

  Before she left, Cat picked up the phone and left a message on Dean Meade’s answering machine.

  ‘I hope you’re pleased with yourself, you spineless wanker. You are a worthless piece of shit and I thank God that Kieron doesn’t have an ounce of you in him. You don’t deserve to live.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Jan had suggested the Pizza Express in Muswell Hill and Thorne hadn’t argued. Looking around a room they’d both been in many times before, he could see now that it was the ideal choice. Nice enough, but not stupidly posh or anything, not a venue for any sort of special occasion. Bright and buzzy. The kind of place that would quickly smother any wildly misplaced romantic notions that either party might still be kicking around. Food was always reliable, too.

  You knew where you were with Pizza Express, and it never let you down.

  After a meal there, one or other of them would u
sually come out with some version of that shared homily and, looking at her now across the table, Thorne could tell that Jan knew more or less what he was thinking.

  Shame you can’t say the same about a marriage.

  ‘You’re not going to get all maudlin, are you, Tom?’

  ‘God forbid,’ Thorne said. ‘Never felt cheerier . . . but you know me, I love a pizza.’ He leaned back as a waitress laid their meals down. A Margherita and sparkling water for her, American Hot and a large Peroni for him. ‘On top of which, this hasn’t been delivered on the back of a moped, so it’s like I’m eating at the Ivy or something.’

  She smiled and he smiled back. They began to eat.

  ‘Is that how it’s been, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Home delivery pizza?’

  ‘Not had a lot of time to cook,’ Thorne said. ‘Work’s been full-on.’

  ‘It always is,’ Jan said.

  Thorne did his best to take that as a comment on the crime rate as opposed to a less-than-subtle dig at his commitment to the Job. His inability to leave it at the door. A niggle which had grown to become a major bone of contention as their marriage had gone on.

  Dragged on . . .

  ‘I like your hair, by the way,’ Thorne said. ‘What you’ve had done.’

  The moment he’d sat down he’d thought how great she looked and, fifteen minutes on, he was still asking himself if that was just the way it went once you’d been dumped. He remembered being fifteen and fancying the pants off Fiona Lomax way more after she’d got off with that knob-head from the rugby team on New Year’s Eve and subsequently chucked him. Or was it that his wife had simply made more of an effort because there was a new man in her life? Now there was someone who might actually appreciate it?

  ‘I’m not sure I like it.’ Jan moved her hands through hair that was shorter than it had been the last time he’d seen her and streaked with reddish highlights. ‘I think the hairdresser went a bit over the top.’

  Thorne looked at her. ‘Why can you never take a compliment?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You never could. You always had to turn it into something else . . . I don’t know, I was thinking about it the other day, that’s all.’

  Jan laid down her cutlery, though she had barely eaten anything. ‘Is that why you think I wanted to get together? So we can sit here and score points off each other?’

  ‘No . . . ’

  ‘You really want to go over it all again, drag everything up and talk about what went wrong? You need reasons?’

  ‘I’m just talking.’ Thorne bit into a slice and wiped the grease from around his mouth. ‘Something we never did enough of, apparently.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tom.’

  ‘You said that.’

  She leaned towards him and lowered her voice. ‘So, you want me to explain, again, why I ended up feeling shrivelled up and . . . shit. How I had no self-esteem at all. You want chapter and verse on why I fell out of love with a man who seemed like he couldn’t give a toss and could only show his emotions if he was screaming at a rapist or being threatened by a serial killer?’

  Thorne swallowed and shrugged. ‘Well, I was thinking more along the lines of why you jumped into bed with a beardy twat who wears sandals, but I suppose it’s the same thing.’

  Jan sighed, leaned back slowly. She said, ‘I’m not going to do this. I’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. We should be past all this now and moving on.’ She pointed. ‘You should be moving on.’

  ‘You say it like it’s easy.’

  ‘I know it’s not easy,’ she said. ‘But nothing worth having ever is, is it?’

  Thorne finished his meal and watched Jan finish hers, the perfect ring of crust that she always left on the plate.

  ‘I’m doing my best, I swear,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘Have you found a solicitor yet?’

  ‘No.’ He saw the look on her face and raised a hand. ‘But I will.’

  ‘What about the house? Have you sorted estate agents out?’

  This time Thorne decided it would be simpler to lie. ‘I’ve got a couple coming round next week.’

  ‘That’s good. Let me know what they say and remember they always tell you it’s worth more than it is.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ The waitress came back to collect the plates and Thorne asked for another beer. He said, ‘Oh and so you know, it hasn’t just been home delivery pizza.’

  She waited.

  ‘My mum brought me some stuff to put in the freezer.’

  She laughed, in exactly the same way she had when he’d passed out of training college at Hendon all those years before, when she’d seen him in the tall hat for the first time. Thorne watched her laughing now, and it killed him.

  Figgis tried to ignore the knocking, praying that whoever was outside his door would go away. After half a minute’s silence, he presumed they had given up and he crept close to the door, only for the knocking to start again and drive him cowering back into the hall. The police had told him that no more reporters would be allowed past the entrance downstairs. They had promised, but he’d been doubtful to put it mildly and he wasn’t very surprised that one had mysteriously wormed their way inside.

  Slipped one of the coppers a few quid, probably.

  He was padding quietly back towards his bedroom when he suddenly wondered if it might be Cat outside and felt something like a smile begin to tug at his lips for the first time in days. He understood why things between them were so weird, but seeing that look on her face when he’d tried to talk to her two nights before had been unbearable, nevertheless. She knew him, knew what he was like, so he’d thought that she, of all people . . .

  Catrin wasn’t herself though, how could she be? He balled his fists and pushed his nails into the flesh of his palm; berated himself for even daring to think that his own situation, awful as it was, could even compare to what she must be going through. How did he even have the nerve to stand there and worry about himself?

  He was just the worst friend anybody could have . . . the stupidest . . . the most hideously selfish bastard that ever drew breath, and not very much better than those newspapers said he was.

  He walked back to the door, leaned a sweaty forehead against it and said Cat’s name.

  ‘Listen, I only need a minute.’

  Not Cat, but a voice he thought he recognised.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘A friend, OK? Open the door, Grant . . . you’ll be glad you did.’

  Figgis listened and heard only his own rasping breaths. Felt the pulse ticking in his neck. It didn’t sound like a reporter and, even if it was, what could they possibly do to him that would make things any worse?

  He opened the door a few inches and peered around it.

  A face he recognised, too.

  Hands were raised, seeing the concern on Figgis’s face. ‘It’s OK . . . I don’t want anything.’

  ‘Everybody wants something,’ Figgis said.

  ‘I know what you want, Grant.’

  He waited, watching the hand that slipped inside a jacket pocket.

  ‘Well, what you need, at any rate.’

  If the face was only vaguely familiar, Figgis knew exactly what was inside the small plastic bag that was being dangled in front of him. His eyes followed it as it swung gently. ‘Why, though?’

  ‘Because I know what’s happened to you and you don’t have to be a genius to work out how shit that must be. Because I reckon you could do with cheering up and every once in a while it’s good to do something nice for someone.’

  Figgis looked from the bag to the face of the person offering it.

  ‘Because I can, OK? Look, it’s up to you . . . ’

  The bag was slowly withdrawn.

  Figgis reached out quickly for it.

  Outside on the pavement, Jan said, ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘No problem,’ Thorne said. He had volunteered to pay the bill even if he could not have
explained why, though when handing over his credit card he had not been able to stop himself wondering just how much money the lecturer earned.

  ‘I mean it.’

  Thorne knew that she wasn’t thanking him for her pizza. She was grateful because she understood how hard the evening had been for him, and why – subconsciously or not – he’d been doing everything he could to avoid the sort of conversation they’d spent the latter part of the meal having.

  The nuts and bolts of their separation.

  The arrangements.

  ‘I’ll get it all sorted,’ he said. ‘As soon as work eases up a bit.’

  Jan seemed content with that, or at least accepting of the fact it was as much as she was going to get. They hugged, a little awkwardly, and moved away from the door. Things quickly became more awkward still when it became clear that, at least until Thorne turned into the street where he’d parked, they’d be walking in the same direction.

  ‘Is it the missing boy, this case that’s taking up so much time?’ Thorne nodded.

  ‘Horrible. That poor woman.’

  A young couple, arm in arm and clearly the worse for wear, weaved towards them. Thorne and Jan stepped apart to let them through.

  ‘It’s all gone mad in the papers.’

  ‘That’s our fault,’ Thorne said. ‘Somebody on the team taking a backhander.’

  Jan winced. ‘Be good to find the boy before that gets out. Or find out what happened to him, anyway.’

  Thorne stopped at the corner and pointed. ‘I’m down here . . . ’

  ‘Right.’

  They hugged for a second time and Thorne held on a second or two longer than he probably should have. He wanted to catch just a hint of the perfume she always wore, some vanilla stuff from The Body Shop. He could smell nothing and wondered if the lecturer wasn’t a fan, or just preferred the way she smelled naturally.

  When they separated, Thorne said, ‘I know we went through this and we’re moving on and all that . . . but do you think things would have been any different if we’d had a baby?’