In the Dark

by Mark Billingham

  Theo had gone back down to the Dirty South on the Sunday morning and checked around the back for blood. He’d found nothing, was relieved that Easy seemed to have been happy enough waving his blade around and scaring the shit out of the bloke. He’d watched all the news reports as well, just in case, and seen no mention of anything, which was good. Not that a stabbing was going to be a mega-story, not any more, but all the same.

  All he could do now was sit on his arse and keep safe, keep everyone around him safe, until someone told him what to do next.

  He turned the pages slowly as he ate, one eye on the door like it always was, feeling the weight of the gun he’d taken from the stash house in his pocket. The one that Sugar Boy hadn’t been quick enough to get to.

  He stopped chewing, stopped breathing for a few seconds, when he saw the picture. And the headline above it: DISTRESS OF COP’S PREGNANT WIDOW.

  Her face was tight and her mouth was open like she was shouting, but he knew it was the woman he’d spoken to a week or so before. He’d been surprised at the weight when he’d lifted her up. The woman with the blue Fiesta, the broken eggs.

  Theo read the story, but he wasn’t really taking it in. He’d helped her and she’d thanked him for it. Christ, she’d even said something in that car park, some joke about naming her baby . . .

  He remembered the noise as the BMW hit. Felt it. The metal and the glass and the low thump as they drove away and he tried to look back through the rain.

  ‘Be as good a name as any, probably.’

  He stared down at the picture and let his breakfast go cold. The headline said ‘distress’, but it didn’t seem that way to him.

  She looked like she wanted to kill someone.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Helen looked up at the CCTV cameras on each corner of the roof as she waited at the front door. She’d seen others at the gates where she’d turned off the road and wondered if he’d been watching her as she’d driven up. Not a surprise really, that a man like this was careful. He had plenty to protect, and there were probably a good few who’d be happy to see him lose it all.

  But then, he’d have a few of his own too; people who could warn him of any threat, or gather information when others were struggling. A network. And his own methods for getting people to make some noise when an official investigation had its nose pressed against a wall of silence.

  It made no sense, the idea that whoever was behind Paul’s death was also responsible for the shootings. If you were trying to cover your arse, why set up something that would necessitate getting rid of a whole gang afterwards? So, with whoever had used the boys in that car to do his dirty work out of the picture, it wasn’t a big leap.

  There weren’t exactly many other contenders.

  Helen had called Jeff Moody early, after several conversations with the Murder Squad to sort out her appointment at the Workz. When she’d mentioned Frank Linnell, he’d assured her that he was still making enquiries, checking into the precise nature of Linnell’s relationship with Paul.

  ‘I think I might be able to find a bit more out myself,’ she’d said.

  ‘Not sure that’s too clever.’

  ‘I gave up being clever weeks ago,’ Helen said.

  This time there wasn’t a problem asking for Linnell’s address.

  The hallway felt like the lobby of an exclusive hotel, with an expanse of veined, brown marble and an over-the-top chandelier. There were oil paintings on the walls and a wide stairway curving upwards to three, maybe four, more storeys. A good few million, Helen reckoned.

  Linnell showed her through to a kitchen that made Jenny’s feel like her own. She sat at the table and watched him make tea. She was surprised that there didn’t seem to be any live-in staff around, that there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the house.

  ‘You look amazingly well this morning,’ he said. ‘Considering the kind of night you probably had. I didn’t get a lot of sleep myself, to be honest. It’s hard, isn’t it, to just crack on like nothing’s happened?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Helen stared at his back as he poured milk and stirred. He was doing it again, talking as though his relationship with Paul meant as much as hers did.

  ‘Got no choice ultimately, though, have we?’ He carried the mugs over, asked if she wanted biscuits. He said the woman who did his cooking made the most amazing cakes, if she fancied some.

  Helen had eaten already, and been sick twice.

  ‘You did well yesterday,’ he said. ‘Showed a lot of strength, if you don’t mind me saying. More than most of us did, anyway. There was a tear or two shed, I can tell you that.’

  Helen took a scalding sip of tea, enjoying the burn. She didn’t want to make small talk about the funeral, didn’t really want to talk about anything she didn’t have to. She wanted to get into it. ‘You’ve heard about these shootings in Lewisham?’

  He nodded, wrapping hands around his mug. ‘Can’t get away from it, it’s all over the news.’

  ‘Four murders in nearly two weeks,’ she said.

  ‘Twelve days.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  ‘Something needs to be done,’ Linnell said. ‘Not just by you lot. By people higher up . . . Sort the mess out.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to sound callous, but it makes me feel a bit sick, you know what I mean? You bury someone like Paul, while there’s people walking around doing that, like life’s not worth the price of a takeaway. Makes you want to throw your hands up . . .’

  He looked as though he meant it. Maybe the likes of Frank Linnell could do that, she thought; could dissociate their own actions from those of others, however terrible they were. Or maybe he’d been fronting it out in situations like this since before she was born.

  ‘They were the boys in the car,’ she said. ‘The ones that were shot. They were in that Cavalier when Paul was killed.’

  Linnell didn’t put quite as much effort into looking shocked. ‘Hardly boys.’

  ‘The youngest was fourteen.’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t you think you give up the right to any sympathy when you make your living the way they did? When you start carrying guns?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Look, you’ll understand if I’m not heartbroken. You should understand, at any rate.’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Wasn’t there even a bit of you that was happy when you found out?’

  Helen couldn’t hold his stare and her eyes drifted across to the dresser in the corner. There were a dozen or more photographs in brightly coloured frames on the top: a black-and-white shot of an old woman with a baby; a more recent picture of a different woman standing with a young girl; Linnell himself posing with various men in suits. And several photos of a young woman. She was exceptionally beautiful, with long brown hair, huge eyes and a smile that suggested she didn’t quite accept the fact. Helen knew very little about Linnell’s private life and wondered if she might be his daughter.

  Linnell turned and followed her gaze. ‘I’ve got a couple of Paul somewhere, if you’d like to see them.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  They both turned away from the pictures.

  ‘Look, I know why you’re so pissed off,’ he said.

  ‘Do you?’ Do you have the slightest idea? Helen thought. Do you understand for one second that whatever the boys in that car did, whatever they were part of, they did not deserve what you doled out to them in return? Do you seriously believe that what you’ve been doing is justified or, in some self-serving, fucked-up way, honourable ?

  ‘You can’t stand the thought that Paul chose to spend any time with the likes of me.’

  Helen swallowed. ‘What Paul did was his business.’

  ‘I’m not saying I can blame you for that.’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about Paul.’

  ‘I take it you’ve found out what he was doing.’ He waited, but Helen said nothing. ‘Which means you’re also deeply pissed off about the fact that he told me and d
idn’t tell you.’

  ‘Why do you think that was?’ She had been determined to remain calm, but she was raising her voice. ‘He told you because you were part of the operation. He was hoping you’d be useful to him, that’s all.’

  ‘If that’s what you choose to believe, fine. But if you listen, it’ll make you feel a lot better.’

  ‘I don’t need you to make me feel better.’

  ‘I was the only person he could confide in,’ Linnell said. ‘Think about it. Who am I going to tell? Believe what you like, but I don’t pay a single copper for anything, and if what Paul was up to caused problems for some of my competitors who do, then so much the better. Yeah, he came to me right at the end for a bit of a leg-up - which, believe me, I wish I’d given him - but that was as far as it went.’ He was fingering his gold chain again now, wrapping it around his finger. ‘I think he needed to tell someone, you know? I think it was doing his head in a bit. And it couldn’t really be anyone else.’

  There was some relief, a welcome dose of understanding, but the feeling evaporated quickly and left a bad taste. Helen couldn’t stomach the idea that what Linnell was telling her was supposed to be some kind of comfort, any more than she could bear the thought that he might get away with taking revenge on the boys in that car.

  But there was not a great deal she could do about it.

  ‘So, you know nothing about these shootings, then?’

  ‘Other than what you’ve just told me, you mean?’

  ‘And what you’ve seen on the news, of course.’

  He downed what was left of his tea and smiled. ‘I really don’t know what you expect me to tell you, Helen.’

  When she pushed back her chair, Linnell stood up and reached out a hand as if to help. She ignored it. He watched her stand and start to walk out, tutting quietly, as though he were disappointed in her, thought she was being ill-mannered. He asked her if she was sure about that cake, said that he’d be happy to wrap a piece that she could take with her.

  He opened the fridge, but Helen kept on walking.

  Theo had heard it in his mother’s voice when she’d called, and he could see it on her face when he let himself in. When she got up from the sofa and moved across to hug him.

  ‘You had a drink?’

  ‘Had a few drinks.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Why does anything have to be the matter?’

  ‘It’s not Sunday,’ Theo said.

  They sat down at the front-room table. She didn’t offer him anything or ask if he’d already had something to eat. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Is Angela OK?’

  She looked at him as if it were a ludicrous question. ‘Angela’s at school.’

  ‘You were getting me worried, that’s all.’ He smiled, but he was feeling like he might not want to for much longer.

  ‘You’re worried?’ There was a flash of anger in his mother’s eyes, rare and fierce.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You been worried for how long? The couple of minutes since you came through that door?’ The drink made her accent thicker; put the lilt and the stretch into the words. ‘You want to know what it’s like to worry all the time?’

  Theo kissed his teeth and looked away, thinking that she had no idea.

  ‘To worry so you can’t sleep? So much worry for one of your children that you have no time to think about the other?’

  ‘Come on, Mum . . .’

  ‘Come on, nothing.’ She shook her head slowly and stood up. ‘I don’t want to fight with you, Theodore.’ She walked across and picked up her handbag from the sofa. ‘I didn’t mean to get angry with you.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have opened that bottle.’

  ‘Once in a while isn’t going to hurt.’

  She carried her handbag back to the table and sat down. ‘I think you worry more if you have your kids late, like we did. You think that you won’t be around for them as long, you know?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Course, turned out we were right in your father’s case.’

  Theo wondered for a second if he’d been so caught up with everything that he’d forgotten an important date: his father’s birthday or the anniversary of his death. But both were months away.

  ‘He always told me you were too clever,’ she said. ‘He’d sit over there and say that you had all the brains, that you obviously got them from his side of the family.’

  ‘Yeah, he said that to me, too.’

  She smiled, then the sigh cut through it. ‘Too clever to get tied up with anything stupid, he said. To get into any trouble.’ She paused and fiddled with the catch on her bag. ‘Nobody had a better heart or worked harder than he did,’ she said, ‘but I tell you, he couldn’t see shit sometimes.’ She paused and looked at Theo.

  Theo looked at the table. He could not remember the last time he’d heard her say anything like that about his father.

  ‘I can, though,’ she said. ‘Mind you, you’d have to be blind not to see what’s going on round here. Or stupid. You know I’m neither of those things, don’t you?’

  ‘Course I do—’

  She raised a finger to silence him. ‘So . . .’ She opened her bag and pulled out a small, blue, plastic book. She pushed it across the table.

  Theo opened it. ‘What’s this?’ It was obvious enough, though: the building society’s logo on the front; the list of payments on every page.

  ‘You could go,’ she said. ‘You, Javine and Benjamin.’ She pointed to the book in his hands. ‘It’s not much, a little under nineteen hundred pounds, but it’s enough to get somewhere. Enough to look after yourselves until you find something.’

  Theo offered the book back to her. ‘I think you should stick to drinking on Sundays, yeah?’

  She didn’t even look at it.

  He flicked through the pages; the payments had been made every fortnight without fail. His mouth was dry and his fingers felt sweaty against the plastic. He still had the gun in his pocket. ‘We could all go,’ he said.

  Hannah Shirley shook her head.

  ‘Why not?’ He leaned across the table. ‘Like we did last time.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got lots of friends here and Angela has her own friends now, too. It’s not like when we moved away last time. I don’t want to unsettle her.’

  Theo remembered what she’d said a few minutes earlier: his mother had lavished all her worry on him and he knew that his sister deserved a little of it. ‘You can’t afford to give me this,’ he said.

  She pulled a mock-offended face. ‘I’m not a useless old woman, you know? I’m fifty-one years old. I still get your father’s money from London Transport and until your sister finishes school, I can get myself a little part-time job. I’d like to do that, maybe work in a shop or something. It would be good to get out of this house a bit more, tell you the truth. I’m good with people, you know?’

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘And you,’ she pointed, ‘need to be looking after your own family a little bit more.’ She sat back in her chair and stared at him for a few seconds, then she threw up her arms, as though it had all been a bit of nonsense; a nice hypothetical discussion. ‘Anyway, I’m just talking.’ She smiled and reached a hand across to one of Theo’s. ‘It’s just the drink talking.’

  Theo nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘Right. I’ll go and make us some tea . . .’

  When she’d gone to the kitchen, he looked through the savings book that his mother had left on the table. Some of the amounts were almost ridiculously small, a couple of pounds, but they had gone in every fortnight and the list of payments was many pages long.

  Theo felt the tears bubble up and burst. As he wiped them away, he looked up to see his mother watching from the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Don’t you be afraid of doing that, either,’ she said. ‘Your father never did; he was one of those sorts of men. Even when he was i
ll, I had to do all the crying for the both of us.’ She leaned against the door frame. ‘Only time I remember him doing it was when England beat the West Indies . . .’

  Laura came down a few minutes after Helen had left and sat on the bottom stair. ‘I heard you arguing,’ she said.

  ‘Not really.’ Frank paced slowly around the hallway. ‘She just got a bit worked up, that’s all. You can hardly blame her for being upset.’

  ‘I don’t know how she does it,’ Laura said. ‘How she walks about and sees people and gets on with things. I think I’d just want to crawl into a corner.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s certainly tough. She’s going to have to be, mind you.’

  Then he asked Laura what he should do. If he should help Helen out by passing on what he knew. He didn’t tell her how he knew, for obvious reasons, but even as he was asking the question, he knew he was probably kidding himself. Laura was always able to read him, to know what he’d done or was thinking of doing; but even so, he kept the whys and wherefores to himself. It was just something he’d found out and he wanted to know if she thought he should let Paul’s girlfriend know about it. Simple as that.

  ‘You want to do this because you feel guilty?’

  He’d been right: kidding himself. ‘Don’t be daft. It’s just that, bearing in mind what it is, this feels like the proper way to go about things. It feels . . . appropriate, you know?’

  Laura sat, chewing a nail and Frank went to fetch himself a Diet Coke from the kitchen. When he got back, she was standing on the first-floor landing, on her way upstairs again.

  She leaned over the banister. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s the right thing to do.’

  There was a bright red ‘5’ flashing on Helen’s answering machine when she got back to the flat.

  Jenny, her father and Roger Deering had all called to see how she was, each one telling her to phone back if there was anything she needed. Gary Kelly had wanted to arrange a time to call round and collect Paul’s guitar.