In the Dark

by Mark Billingham

  ‘Yeah, well, that makes sense, everything being so great at home and all that.’

  ‘Come on, you must know you’re in danger. You saw what happened to the boys in that car.’

  ‘You said you know who did it, though.’

  ‘But I’m not sure we’ll ever prove it.’

  ‘All the more reason to get on my toes, no?’

  ‘He’s the sort of person who’d spend the time finding you,’ Helen said. She waited until he looked across; made sure he could see she was serious. ‘I think you should go to the police.’

  ‘Yeah, right, whatever.’

  ‘You didn’t do anything.’

  ‘I was in that car,’ Theo said. ‘I had a gun. You know the business I’m in, yeah?’

  ‘They’re not interested in the drugs.’

  ‘I think they’d be interested in possession of a firearm with intent, though. That’s not nothing, is it?’

  ‘Look, you’re the only witness who was in the car. If you give evidence, there’s every chance they’ll drop it. I’ll write a full report, do everything I can. Here!’ She pointed at the entrance to the hospital car park.

  ‘You’re worried about me being in danger, yeah?’ He turned to her as they slowed. ‘I give evidence, I’ll be running from a whole different set of people. It doesn’t end with Wave. You see what I’m saying?’

  As they turned into the car park, Theo said, ‘Actually, I’m not sure they’re all dead, the others in the car. There’s someone missing.’ He drove as quickly as he could over the speed bumps, Helen holding tight to her belly across each one. ‘His name’s Ezra Dennison.’

  ‘I’ll mention it.’

  ‘Easy. He’s sixteen, yeah?’

  ‘I’ll make sure the right people know,’ Helen said.

  Theo parked as close as possible to the maternity wing and went round to help Helen out. They walked a few paces, then stopped at the automatic doors. Helen told him that she would be fine from then on; that there was no need for him to come in and that her sister would be meeting her. He asked if she wanted him to drop off the car back at her flat.

  ‘Streatham police station isn’t too far away,’ Helen said.

  ‘Yeah.’ He poked at the ground with the toe of his trainer. ‘You had your say on that one.’

  ‘Really, you should do it. You’ll all be safer.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He backed away towards the car.

  ‘Just tell them exactly what happened.’

  Theo opened the car door. ‘What I did and what I thought I did. You know? Not sure the difference really matters.’

  ‘Just tell them,’ she said. ‘We can sort it all out in a couple of days.’

  ‘You should go in.’

  ‘Please. And get rid of the gun on the way . . .’ Helen turned and walked through the doors, catching the eye of a woman on her way out who had clearly overheard and looked away fast. She heard the car drive away as she dropped her bag at the desk.

  FORTY-ONE

  Theo called Javine as soon as he’d left the hospital. He told her that everything was OK, that he’d be back as soon as he could, and that he’d try to explain everything. He’d expected an earful, but she’d been calm; just said that they wanted him home.

  He was heading south, without paying too much attention to any particular route, just wanting to drive around for a while. He wasn’t going anywhere near Streatham, though, he knew that much. It felt like a massive weight had been lifted and the last thing he wanted to do was march straight back into the shit. He knew that copper’s girlfriend thought it was for the best, that he’d be better off in the long run and all that, but she wasn’t where he was. She had no idea.

  She could say all she liked, but he knew how it was. He went walking into a cop shop, saying, ‘I’m that gang-banger you’ve been looking for,’ there wouldn’t be no open arms.

  And like he’d told her, there might be a few people from triangles he never even knew about, wanting to talk to him afterwards.

  Better off him and Javine taking their chances.

  He reckoned Helen Weeks was OK, though. For a minute or two, he wondered how she’d react if he borrowed the car for a while, used it to get Javine and Benjamin away. They didn’t have too much stuff, could probably do the whole thing in one trip, and he wasn’t sure his dad’s old Mazda would make it halfway to Cornwall.

  Then he realised that if she found out the car wasn’t where it was supposed to be, she’d presume that he’d nicked it. She was probably stressed enough as it was, and she’d be bringing a kid home on top of everything else. He decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation, that he could probably get a good deal on a hire car. It wasn’t like they needed anything fancy.

  And he didn’t like the idea of Helen thinking badly of him.

  Money wouldn’t be too much of a problem anyway, not for the next few months at least, while they got themselves sorted. He’d meant what he said when he told Javine they didn’t need his mum’s money; even if he didn’t want to tell her why.

  There’d been a grand, or just short of it under that loose board in the stash house. He’d grabbed the cash box, shaking like a fucking leaf, and shoved it into a plastic bag with the hundred or so rocks from the kitchen cupboards before legging it out of there.

  A few months at least, if they were careful.

  He knew what Easy would have said: ‘Sweet and simple, Star Boy . . .’

  Driving good and slow along Norwood Road, Theo wondered if his friend had been taken for a mug that night, too. Easy had nicked the Cavalier, Theo knew that much, but had he been involved in putting the whole thing together? Had he known exactly what he was doing when he pressed to get Theo moved up?

  When he as good as placed that gun in his hand?

  Theo still hoped he might have the chance to ask him one day.

  He pulled up at the lights, thinking that he’d talk to Javine about getting out of her friend’s place as soon as they could. They’d be sharing one small bedroom with the baby and they’d probably have enough for a smallish deposit on something. It was a tourist place, so he guessed there might be a few jobs going, stuff in hotels or whatever. Javine could ask her friend to get hold of a local paper and check it out before they got there.

  He turned on the radio and flicked through the stations. He stopped and turned it up when he heard a reggae track fading out, but he didn’t know the song. He was vaguely aware of a car drawing alongside, though he didn’t see the window moving down.

  Looking at the lights as they began to change.

  The gun was already coming up when Theo glanced across at the man in the car, and the DJ was saying who the song was by. Someone his father might have sung along with once. But there was only time for the merest glimpse of his father’s face, of Javine’s and Benjamin’s.

  Not even enough time to cry out, in that second or two before the dark.

  When he’d had the sound system installed in the office, Frank had made sure he could hear music from almost anywhere in the house. There were wall speakers mounted in the bathroom and sitting room, and out in the conservatory, of course, where he spent most of his evenings these days.

  He’d fancied something light and summery; sat listening to a Vivaldi concerto, with a glass of wine and an upmarket property magazine on the table in front of him. He was watching and waiting for the lights. He hadn’t seen the foxes for a while, and had left out ever more food over the last few nights, in the hope of enticing them back.

  ‘Yours isn’t the only garden they go to, you know,’ Laura said. ‘They’re not pets.’

  ‘I bet nobody feeds the buggers as well as I do, though. There’s half a leg of lamb sitting out there.’

  ‘Maybe they’re vegetarians.’

  They watched for another quarter of an hour, until Frank told her he was almost ready to call it a night. She walked across and sat next to him, began flicking idly through the magazine, pointing out the properties she thought were nice.

&nb
sp; ‘You don’t think I let you down, do you?’ Frank asked.

  ‘How many glasses of wine have you had?’

  ‘Do you?’

  She reached for his hand. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘What about afterwards? What I got organised in Wandsworth.’

  ‘Well, you can’t expect me to love it, but I know you only did it because you care.’ Her voice dropped. ‘I know you’ve got your own way of doing things.’

  ‘I’ll have to settle for that,’ Frank said.

  The music started to build again, after a long slow passage. The solo violin was jagged and stuttering, almost impossibly high.

  ‘You didn’t let down Paul, either.’

  Frank could see that Laura was uncomfortable, that it was hard for her to talk about these things, but he knew that ultimately she would forgive him anything. She was the only one who would. It was there in her eyes, and in her arms as she leaned across and laid her head on his chest, absolving him.

  Frank was alone, asleep in the chair, when the lights came on an hour or so later and a well-fed ginger tom came creeping from the bushes on the far edge of the lawn. Watchful for a minute or so, low to the ground, then hurrying across the lawn towards its meal.

  FORTY-TWO

  Just short of nine hours into it, they said it was almost over.

  ‘Come on, love, nearly there . . .’

  Then again, they had been saying that for a while.

  Jenny was doing her best to be supportive, telling Helen to breathe and keeping cool in the face of the subsequent abuse, her face contorting as if she were feeling it herself when the contractions hit. Each one was a searing wave that began in Helen’s side and swept across her; rock hard and paralysing by the time it reached the middle and squeezed her like a lemon for a minute or so. Her throat was hurting almost as much as the rest of her by the time the pain had ebbed again.

  She’d started on gas and air once the labour was established, floated away for a while, but had started screaming for an epidural after four hours, when she was still only three centimetres dilated. Shouting at the midwives and the walls, and at her stubborn fucking cervix. After what had seemed like another hour, a young anaesthetist had come in looking flustered and reeling off the risks: the one-in-twenty chance of her blood pressure dropping; the one-in-a-thousand chance of rupturing the membrane around the spinal cord; the extremely slim chance . . .

  She’d told him, in no uncertain terms, that she didn’t care.

  After five minutes of painful jabbing he’d shaken his head. ‘Can’t get the bloody thing in.’

  Jenny had grinned at him across the bed. ‘I bet that’s what the father said.’

  The father . . .

  Just a stupid joke, Helen knew that, and it had been terrible to see the look on her sister’s face when she’d realised what she’d said.

  ‘I only meant . . .’

  Helen had wanted to tell her that it was all right, but another contraction had forced all the breath out of her. Held her rigid as they all went back to work.

  ‘Too late anyway,’ one of the midwives said. ‘Pretty much fully dilated now, darling.’

  There were two of them, working together in a well-practised nice cop/nasty cop routine. One was telling Helen to imagine her cervix opening like a flower, while her partner just urged her to ‘get her head down’ and ‘work harder’. She was the one who took control when they got down to the blood and guts. ‘Concentrate, Helen. Push this baby out. Do it.’

  She hated the agony, didn’t believe for a single second any of that new-age, holistic rubbish. It was not something she’d ‘earned’ for forty-two weeks, and it was not ‘part of the experience’. Each time, she felt as though the next contraction might kill her; but still, when it came, she pushed with all the strength she had left. The mixture of emotions was enough to take at least some of the feeling away, to lessen the agony just a little, while she drove the muscles in her abdomen until they sang.

  She tensed as she felt the next one coming.

  Jenny squeezed her hand.

  She pushed . . .

  She knew that she would have to live with the guilt and the painful memories. Those things had found a home, had lodged inside her. Like a shard of glass slipping into the soft part of a foot.

  She pushed and screamed, inside and out.

  ‘Here he comes. Last one now.’

  She would deal with those things.

  She would beat them down as best she could, for both of their sakes. For the baby that she knew - prayed - was Paul’s.

  She felt strong suddenly, and focused. Energised. She was the fierce, still centre of the turning world.

  ‘Just one more good one, love . . .’

  Her bowels opened, and it felt like her belly would split like a watermelon any second. She wanted to claw it open to fight the burning in her stomach, and pelvis and back. It felt as though she were being turned inside out.

  But she kept pushing.

  She’d known worse pain.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As always, there are a great many people without whom I would have remained in the dark . . .

  Thanks are due once again to Tony Thompson, this time for pointing me in the right direction, and to Ember Phoenix and Nathan from West Camp for all the right words.

  DCS Neil Hibberd was as patient and helpful as ever, though I did need to go elsewhere for advice on the matter of police officers working while pregnant. I am hugely grateful to Sergeant Georgina Barnard for her expertise in this, and many other areas. I must also thank Jane Maier who, as luck would have it, was two weeks away from giving birth at just the right moment and was thus able to provide some timely heartburn, nausea and leakage-related information.

  Thanks, obviously, to Sasha for causing all the trouble.

  I would also like to thank Frances Fyfield for saving some procedural bacon, Jane Doherty for her wonderful moderation, John Brackenridge for help I could not have got anywhere else, and Mike Gunn for the best - if not the only - joke in the book.

  And, of course: Hilary Hale, Wendy Lee, Sarah Lutyens, and David Shelley, who has never eaten in Chicken Cottage.