by RJ Dark
Jackie watched him in the rear-view mirror.
‘Twat,’ he said, and started the car.
23
Annoying a police officer always put Jackie in a better mood. He whistled as he drove back to my flat. When we got in, I put my clothes in the wash and showered the blood, well water and quite a lot of mud off. While the hot water cascaded off me, I tried to think through everything I knew – or didn’t know. A circle of information existed in my mind and around the perimeter were all these figures, criminals, police officers, wives, children, churches, Scout groups, corner shops and council houses. I could see no reason for them to be linked; in the normal world none of these things would be linked. But Larry Stanbeck hovered in the centre of the circle, a faceless figure, a misty presence that should somehow make sense of all these disparate elements.
I just didn’t know how.
In fact, I didn’t really know much about Larry Stanbeck at all.
Hot water flowed over my face and I realised what an idiot I had been. If this had been a normal job, if I’d simply been trying to offer Janine Stanbeck some comfort about her husband, I wouldn’t have been interested in any of the peripherals. How people died was often the last thing people wanted to talk about – ‘Yes, the pain is over, etc.’ usually wrapped that one up. What did it matter? No, any other job, I would only have been interested in her husband. That was what mattered, but I’d been led away from him – admittedly, at some points I’d been running away from him in fear of my own safety, but I had still taken my eye off the ball. If I wanted to find the money, and really I could do with the finder’s fee, then who murdered Larry Stanbeck didn’t matter because it was clear that the suspects didn’t have the ticket either. So, knowing who ran him off the road wouldn’t help me find the ticket if Larry had hidden it.
I needed to understand Larry.
I finished my shower and dressed and found Jackie sat at my desk playing on his phone.
‘Did you know your shop is full of Pokémon?’
‘What do you know about Larry Stanbeck?’ I sat opposite him.
He shrugged. ‘Not much, never met him. He wasn’t part of his dad’s outfit as far as I know. Well, not the bits I come into contact with – they tend to be a bit’ – he looked up from his phone and gave me a sparkling grin – ‘rougher.’
‘Do you even know what he looked like?’
He wrinkled his brow. ‘Can’t say I do. He just never crossed my path.’
‘No pictures of him in his house either, people usually bring pictures of their loved ones to me. She didn’t.’
‘I don’t think it’s a big stretch to say she probably didn’t love him much.’
‘Yeah, but we know nothing about him, Jackie.’
‘We know where he worked, we know his family, we know—’
‘No, Jackie, we know about the people around him and what he did. But we don’t know him – you didn’t even know what he looked like.’
‘Are you about to say he might not even be dead?’ Jackie looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
‘Where did that come from?’
‘I just thought you were going to say he could be alive and has run off with the ticket.’
‘No. We’re not in an Agatha Christie book.’ He nodded and went back to his phone. ‘I want to go to St Jude’s School and speak to Miss Feeney.’
That got his attention.
‘I’m not going to Choppy’s,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop you at the bottom of the drive and wait for you, but I’m not going in.’
Choppy’s was all Jackie ever called our old school. He had been expelled from the place when he was fifteen, and then he tried to burn it down. I could understand him not wanting to go in – he wouldn’t get the warmest welcome.
‘That’s fine. Can we go now?’
‘Your hair’s still damp, Mal.’
‘I’ve been damp most of the day.’
‘You’ll catch your death.’
We walked back to the car. It was late in the evening, but the teachers at St Jude’s all stayed late. The school did a lot of outreach; late-night clubs to keep the kids off the streets while parents tried to make ends meet by working two jobs, extra tutoring for those struggling. It had been a hole when I went there but, bit by bit, it had dragged itself up and, though it would never be well funded enough to be a great school, it was doing all right.
My phone chirped as I got in next to Jackie and he started the car. I looked at it.
‘Text message from Callum Callaghan,’ I said to Jackie.
He made a sort of wordless grunt I took to mean that I should read it out.
‘Says “I know about my da. Thanks for trying.”‘ So much pain reduced to so few words. I deleted the text; I didn’t want it to be the first thing I saw when I opened my phone. The thought of Benny Callaghan, and what had been done to him, made my stomach turn.
We drove to the school in silence. Its entrance was outside the Blades Edge estate, to stop people joyriding through it, and anyone visiting in a car had to come out of the estate and drive round the busy road to get in. Jackie stopped at the bottom of the drive.
‘I’ll drop you here. How long do you think you’ll be?’ I shrugged.
‘I thought you were going to wait?’
‘No.’ He looked out of his window, away from the school. ‘I need to get the tyres off this car – we might have left prints up at Richmile. I’ll burn the old ones.’
‘Why not just burn the car?’ He looked at me like I was an idiot. ‘I mean, I’m glad you’re not going to burn my car, but you are always burning cars,’ I added.
‘Yes. But not cars I’ve been stopped by the police in or seen in by them. If we burn this after that copper stopped us, it’ll just look suspicious. I’ll put some worn tyres on it, then it won’t match anything we may have left up there, and these old Kas are common enough.’
I undid the seat belt and got out.
‘Mal,’ said Jackie. I leaned over to hear him. ‘If I’m not here when you come out, ring the kebab shop and ask for Asif – he’ll arrange a cab for you. Don’t try and come home by yourself, okay’
I nodded and shut the door. He managed to make the Ford’s tyres screech when he set off. I could never get it to do that.
A fence ran around the school; not high enough to stop a determined kid escaping, but tall enough to keep most of them in. The only way in was down the drive; in a car you had to stop at the barrier and one of the rent-a-cops, or ‘security officers’, would let you in. On foot, you had to wait at a gate while they looked at you from their little hut. I didn’t mind it so much as it was a warm evening, but they still took their time before answering the intercom and grudgingly letting me in to visit Miss Feeney. Then they took their time getting me through the scanner and though I plainly didn’t have a bag with me, they still asked me if I had one. I filled in the book to get my little visitor’s badge.
It was quiet, and the corridors I remembered as being thronging with kids from my time here were empty. Somehow that made them feel sadder, even though when I had been here it had been a miserable experience. It wasn’t the same school though; in my time, it had been falling part and now it was anything but. New parts had been built, and the old and falling-down parts had been extensively remodelled in the nineties. I’d last been in here about fifteen years ago, for reasons I’d rather not try to remember. I do remember thinking it was very shiny then, new and shiny. It wasn’t so shiny now; it was starting to look more than a little frayed around the edges.
I realised I didn’t know where Miss Feeney taught. I knew the classroom she’d taught me English in a long time ago, but she probably didn’t have the same one now. In fact, I’m not sure that part of the school even existed any more. A cleaner was methodically making their way toward me with a mop, progressing through arcs of shining moisture. Wet the mop. Wring it out. Mop the floor. Move on and repeat. A well-practised and repetitive action that I found hypnotic. He stopped mopping and
stared at me. I shook myself from my trance.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I used to come to school here. I am a bit lost. Looking for Miss Feeney, if she’s still here?’
He nodded. ‘Languages annex – follow the cyan,’ he said, the ghost of Eastern Europe in his accent. ‘Classroom twelve.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. And he stared at me as if he didn’t know the words. I walked away in the direction he’d indicated, feeling his gaze on the back of my neck and fighting not to look back. His reference to ‘following the cyan’ had confused me until I looked down and saw thick colourful lines drawn on the floor. I’d noticed them when I came in, but presumed they were just a design element. Now they made more sense: they were paths for visitors to follow so they didn’t get lost. The echo of my footsteps sounded impossibly loud.
I followed the cyan line and found the languages block and then followed the numbers on the rooms until I came to Miss Feeney’s classroom. I knocked softly on the door.
‘Come in!’ There was something about her voice that made me warm inside. High, almost squeaky and with a trace of her native Liverpool. I was sure she’d been far more Liverpudlian-sounding when she taught me, but it must have faded with the years. Entering the classroom, I found her stacking chairs. Like her accent, she had faded a little; she was a tiny woman who’d been all bright clothes and black hair when she taught me, but her clothes were more subdued now and her hair, still long, was mostly grey. Her eyes were the same as I remembered though: bright blue and sparkling with mischief.
‘Malachite Jones,’ she said. ‘Never thought to see you back here after you tried to nick that photocopier.’ She smiled, letting me know she was glad to see me. ‘How is your back, by the way?’
‘Better, Miss Feeney,’ I said. Some teachers, when you were an adult, wanted you to call them by their first names, but not Miss Feeney. She was still a teacher and I was still a pupil in both our eyes, I was pretty sure of that. ‘I don’t do things like that anymore.’
‘Good – you were never very good at it. How’s Jackie?’
‘Well, Miss Feeney.’
‘You should tell him to come by one day.’
‘I don’t think he will.’
‘I know.’ She lifted another chair and added it to her stack. ‘So, what do you want? I doubt you’d be here if you didn’t want something.’
I picked up a chair and started a stack of my own by hers. I didn’t bother denying I was here for something – she never did have much time for excuses.
‘I came here to ask you about Larry Stanbeck.’
‘Poor Larry,’ she said. ‘If you’re going to try and use me to fleece his wife with your nonsense, then I’m not saying a word.’
‘I’m not, I promise, miss.’
She smiled. ‘I’ve heard a lot of promises in my time, Malachite Jones.’ She lifted a chair, started a new stack. ‘Well, what do you want to know?’
‘Anything, everything. His wife doesn’t think his death was an accident. I’m looking into it.’ She stopped, utterly still with a chair in her hands and stared at me. ‘And he had some money, so she wants to find it.’
She nodded, then continued stacking her chairs.
‘He came a few years after you left, I think. Larry was one of the ones that made Mick Stanbeck realise he was getting things wrong, had him get his brood under control.’ The chair she was stacking stuck at an awkward angle and she wriggled it, filling the room with the clattering of wood on metal before it fell into place. ‘He made this school, in a way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean Larry was clever. Very academically capable – art, music, English, history, he excelled. Mick’s organisation was growing and I think Mick realised that soldiers, thugs, are ten-a-penny, he could get them from anywhere, they came to him. He could deal with them through intermediaries, withhold information, and as long as he paid them, they would do as they were told and couldn’t be linked directly to him. But he could never really trust them. Then he had Larry – the boy should have gone to university really, but his dad was having none of that. Stanbecks don’t get to leave the Edge. And I think he saw in Larry someone he would be able to really trust. Family, see. It matters to Mick more than he lets on.’
‘But Larry wasn’t involved with his dad.’
She shook her head. ‘Sons and fathers, eh?’ she said sadly. ‘Larry was a soft boy. No one touched him, cos he was Mick Stanbeck’s son, but he wasn’t strong in a way his father understood. And Larry, he wanted to impress his father, but he didn’t want to be like him either. I knew Mick,’ she said, ‘hard not to. I don’t think Mick had the mental equipment to bridge the gap between him and his son, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t love him. And Larry loved his dad too. They’d probably have been closer if Mick had let him go to university, you know. He could have become something – historian, teacher, artist, whatever – but Mick couldn’t let go. I think Mick realised in the end, but it was too late for Larry. I’d watch Mick drop him off, some mornings. They never spoke.’
‘Do you have a picture of him, from back then?’
She smiled, and I swear there was the hint of a tear in her eye. ‘I have pictures of you all,’ she said, and headed back toward her desk. On her way, she stopped, looked at the floor and stooped to pick something up. A rolled cigarette. She sniffed it. ‘Someone will be let down tonight, they dropped their joint.’ She held it out. ‘Do you want it?’
‘I don’t do that,’ I said, ‘not anymore.’
‘Good.’ She grinned and tucked the joint behind her ear, then she opened a big cupboard at the back of the room. It was lined with ring binders. Each had a letter of the alphabet printed on it and she picked up the one marked S. ‘I’ve taught a lot of Stanbecks,’ she said, and put the heavy binder down on the desk then opened it. ‘There he is, Larry – the day he qualified as an interior designer from the sixth form.’ She stared at his picture. ‘He deserved better.’
I went over and looked at the picture of Larry. He didn’t look like I expected from the few pictures I had seen; he was smaller and rounder. Soft faced and smiling.
‘He doesn’t look much like a biker,’ I said.
‘He was a Stanbeck,’ said Miss Feeney. ‘They’ve all got something wild in them.’
Her words seemed to hang in the air. It was one of those moments when someone says something so obvious and true that it feels like it lodges in the back of your mind, irritating you with the fact you had never thought of it before.
The silence was broken by a bark of static from the radio on Miss Feeney’s desk. She turned from me, picked up the radio and took a few steps away. She put one finger in her ear so she could hear what the person was saying on the other end better.
‘Yes?’ I couldn’t make out the reply, the words were lost to poor reception, and Miss Feeney had the radio pushed right against her ear to be able to hear. Her eyes flickered toward me. ‘No. He left a while back.’ More noise from the radio. ‘I presume he went out, you’re the one with the CCTV system.’ More noise from the radio, then the green receiving light on top went out. Miss Feeney stared at the radio. ‘Jumped up little prick,’ she said. ‘Malachite, you had better go, Mick Stanbeck’s twins just turned up looking for you.’
Something felt like it slithered down my spine.
‘Okay.’ I headed toward the door but Miss Feeney put her hand on my arm.
‘Are you in trouble?’ she asked.
‘Possibly. Look, I really should go.’
She stepped toward the door and peered round the edge. ‘Too late, they’re on their way.’
‘Did they see you?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve got pretty adept at hearing people walking through these corridors. You leave now you’ll walk straight into them.’ She glanced behind her. ‘Get in the cupboard. I’ll get rid of them.’
‘They’re dangerous.’
‘I’m not scared of Mick Stanbeck’s twins. Get in the cupboard.’
> I got in the cupboard. I was actually quite scared of Miss Feeney, and it never really occurred to me to do anything but what she told me to. She shut the door, and I found myself entombed in the pitch black. I didn’t dare move. I felt like I was in a coffin, but the feeling didn’t last long. Though light could not get into the cupboard, sound could. I heard the classroom door open.
Footsteps.
Voices.
Miss Feeney: ‘Hello boys, can I help you?’
A Kray: ‘We’re looking for Jones.’
Miss Feeney: ‘I’m afraid he’s gone.’
A Kray: ‘Where?’
Miss Feeney: ‘I don’t know, boys. You seemed friendly with John on security – why don’t you ask him to check the CCTV for you?’
A Kray: ‘He says it doesn’t work.’
Miss Feeney: ‘That’s government cuts for you, eh?’
A Kray: ‘What?’
Miss Feeney: ‘It doesn’t matter. He’s gone.’
A Kray: ‘Was the Paki with him?’
Miss Feeney: ‘We don’t use that word in this school.’
A Kray: ‘What do you say instead of “Paki” then?’
Miss Feeney: ‘If you must refer to someone by their nationality, then “Asian gentleman” is fine.’
A Kray: ‘Was the Asian gentleman with him? [No trace of sarcasm.]’
Miss Feeney: ‘No, he was on his own. If you hurry down the corridor, you might even catch him.’
Silence.
The sound of my breathing.
Miss Feeney: ‘I have work to do, boys, you should go now.’
A Kray: ‘You’re quite hot. For an old woman.’
Miss Feeney: ‘You should go now.’
A Kray: ‘Do you feel safe here? All alone?’
Silence.
Tension.
I wondered what I would do if they decided to hurt her. If the threat hanging in the air was carried out. Would I stay here, hiding in a cupboard?
Footsteps.
Light.
