The One Safe Place

by Ramsey Campbell

  The support was too welcome for Darren to fight it off, though it made him feel uncomfortable with himself. He winced as stepping down renewed all the pain in his crotch, and Marshall helped him more carefully onto the next stair. Their awkward progress had taken them halfway downstairs when Marshall said, "Maybe..."

  "Maybe all sorts of shit, lad. What?"

  "I was thinking if these people may try and stop us, maybe we should take your gun with us."

  "You take it if you want. I'm not."

  "Where is it?"

  The pain was getting in the way of Darren's thoughts. He eased one foot onto the next stair, and the ache opened like a wound. The gun might come in useful once they were away from any witnesses, especially if only Marshall's fingerprints were to be found on it. "Under the floor in the back," he said.

  "Can you manage while I get it?" Marshall said, just as Darren's mother came out of the back room. She planted her clawed hands on her hips and stared in incredulous disgust at the boys. "God, what do you look like. What are you playing at now."

  "We're going out, mam. We're going straight out. Never mind what you were after, lad." Darren had realised just in time that if Marshall found the gun he would see the loot, and then how could he be argued onto a bus when there was so much money for a taxi? Besides, Darren's mother would hardly let them take the gun. Marshall was hesitating, not quite dissuaded, and Darren stepped down faster, grinding his teeth. He'd be passing on the pain and more to Marshall once he got him by himself. "Move," he snarled.

  His mother flounced to the front door to open it for them. Marshall's hold on his waist loosened as they trod on the hall floor, and Darren forced himself to put an arm around the other boy's shoulders to stop him making for the back room. That action and his pain were greeted by a series of nearby sounds: the halting of an engine, a sliding and a slam of metal. His mother grabbed the latch and threw open the door as if she hadn't heard, and Darren limped forward as Marshall took a step. But there was a van at the end of the path, and as the gate screeched over the concrete, Barry stalked toward the house.

  32 The Look

  You fool, Susanne was still thinking. You idiot. Imbecile. Cretin. Incompetent. Blunderer. Useless bitch. Perhaps when she'd finished calling herself everything she felt she was she would once more be able to think. Worse than wasting police time with her mistake about the track suit, she'd wasted Marshall's, and her sense of having done that walled her off from the world. She was dully aware that only a few minutes' driving through unfamiliar side streets had brought the police car to an area she knew, the Wilmslow Road. Angel braked at the end of the side street as an ambulance wailed past, its blue light pounding. She became conscious that it was lunchtime: the Indian takeaways were crowded with patrons, quite a few of whom were boys uniformed like mourners. The car swung onto the main road as a munching group of them prepared to step off the corner of the sidewalk, and she heard herself speak for the first time since she'd climbed into the vehicle outside the Fancy house. "They're from my son's school."

  Angel steered the car into the street which led to hers. "We may want to interview some of his friends."

  "Shall I come with you?"

  "Just give us their names, Mrs. Travis. I should try and get some rest if I were you."

  No doubt he meant that sympathetically, and she appreciated that it was good advice, but it made her feel criticised and excluded, not least because she couldn't blame him for doing either. Being able to rest was another matter entirely, depending on whether she was too exhausted or only too exhausted to stay awake. The passing street made her eyes smart as though it was physically catching at her vision, but she had to keep looking, to assure herself there was nothing she needed to see while she told Askew all the names of Marshall's friends she could recall. She saw a mailman hitching his bag over his shoulder as he went back to close a garden gate, but otherwise the sidewalks were deserted all the way to her house.

  As soon as the car drew up outside, one front tire momentarily brushing the curb, she planted her hands on the seat on either side of her, ready to send her toward the house. She'd had a sudden intuition that while she and the police had been searching, Marshall had come home. She could hardly tell that to the police. "I'd better see if there are any messages," she said.

  Askew's seat crouched forward to release her, and both men climbed out of the car. "We'll wait in case there are," Angel said.

  "Come and listen," Susanne said, intent on finding her keys as she ducked onto the sidewalk. Askew opened the gate for her, and they followed her along the path. Shutters of sunlight slid up the windows, revealing her uninhabited front room, and she wondered if Marshall had just dodged out of it, having seen the police. "Let me go in first," she said. "I need to switch off the alarm."

  She slipped her key into the Yale lock, and twisted it, and pushed. The door was unmoved. She reached for the doorbell in case Marshall had bolted himself in for some reason, and sensed the policemen watching her, and felt absurdly guilty—so much so that she withdrew the key in order to try the mortise lock rather than have them realise she'd been less than honest with them about her expectations. The mortise was indeed locked, but then, she told herself, Marshall could have done that from within if he wasn't feeling safe. She turned the key, and then the Yale, and pushed the door open. The inner door imitated its movement, and set off the warning drone of the alarm, the cry of an empty house.

  Susanne strode in like a robot, protruding another piece of metal which she thrust into its slot. The alarm fell silent before its siren could tear at her ears, but the silence was as painful, and more difficult to bring to an end. She'd already glimpsed the illuminated numeral on the answering machine, and when she made herself confront it, it was still a zero, a red rim as raw as her eyes. She swung her leaden body toward the policemen who were standing in the irrelevant sunlight just beyond the gaping doors. "Nothing," she said.

  Angel gave two blinks which seemed designed to rid her of a little of his constant scrutiny, and Askew offered her a minute shake of his head. "So," she heard herself say dully, "what happens now?"

  "We'll continue the investigation, rest assured, Mrs. Travis," Angel said. "And of course you appreciate it isn't just the two of us who are looking for your lad."

  "Do you want to call in while you're here in case anyone, anyone made any progress?"

  "I'm sure they would have contacted us in the car if there'd been any developments."

  "I imagine." Susanne felt as though her mind and her body had come to a complete stop. It took the sensation of something like cold liquid trickling down her wrist—a key dangling from the ring in her raised fist—to start her up. "I'm keeping you," she said. "I've got in your way long enough."

  "We'll be in touch the moment there's anything. Is there someone who can sit with you?"

  "If I need them." She let go of the banister, which she had become aware of clutching, and gestured the policemen away. When the keys jangled she realised she was waving her fists as if to mime triumph, and let them drop. "Go ahead, please go," she said. "I'll be all right."

  Perhaps she would be once she felt she wasn't delaying the police. She stood by the phone while they returned to their car, which left a greyness in the air as it swung away. The smell of the fumes reached her just as the rear lights reddened at the corner of the street. The hint of a metallic taste coupled with the sight of red made her feel faint. Then the car was gone, the grayness fading along with its smell, and she saw Hilda Mattison emerge from the house diagonally opposite.

  Perhaps Susanne could use company, but she only watched as Hilda stepped onto the sidewalk. Hilda looked at her and advanced another step, and when Susanne didn't countermand that, kept coming. Susanne pushed herself away from the banister, which somehow she had once more taken hold of, and into the front room to sit quickly. She landed on the seat facing the table piled with essays as Hilda arrived on the doorstep. "Susanne? Shall I come in?"

  "If you—
" Susanne said in virtually no voice, and breathed one in. "I'm through here."

  "Shall I shut these?"

  "May as well."

  The two doors were closed with a respectful gentleness which served only to make Susanne feel that worse had happened than she knew, and then Hilda ventured into the room. Her broad face beneath the flat cap of her auburn hair was trying to decide whether to smile. She took some seconds to lower herself into an armchair which barely contained her, and hitched herself forward, hands on her overalled knees. "So did they..." she said, and turned up her hands.

  "Not yet, Hilda, no."

  "Ah dear." Hilda seemed not to know where to put her hands now that there was nothing to receive. "Ah dear," she repeated as if that might lend the words more sense, and sat back with a sigh which the chair emulated. "Us neither. I'm so sorry."

  "I'm sure you did all you could."

  "Hopefully."

  "That would be the way to do it."

  "I expect so." Hilda gave a small puzzled frown, and Susanne felt ashamed of having corrected her even so lightly. "Half a dozen of us from the street have been looking," Hilda said. "What you'd call a posse, wouldn't you? Everyone who's at home and knows your lad."

  "Tell them thanks for me, Hilda, if I don't see them myself."

  "You'd rather not have them come in."

  Susanne supposed she had meant that, however ungrateful it sounded. Company wasn't reassuring her as she'd hoped it might, because she had an impression, so slight it could well be illusory, that talking was preventing her from grasping some important detail. A movement beyond Hilda caught her attention, but she had to focus her mind in order to distinguish that the figure ambling toward her house was the mailman, and then a further effort was needed to remind her that she hadn't answered Hilda. "Maybe not right now," she said.

  "I understand. You don't want crowds all over you. You know where we are, anyway, love. Any time at all you don't want to be by yourself."

  "I know. I appreciate it. I'm grateful. Thanks." Susanne saw Hilda planting her hands on the arms of the chair to hoist herself out of it, and felt compelled to explain whatever attitude she had been conveying. "I'm sorry, Hilda. Maybe if I can just sit and think I'll be able to straighten out my head. Right now I'm wishing I'd left the police alone to do their job. All I did was lead them wrong."

  "How was that, Susanne?"

  From the tone of the question it was clear that Hilda aimed to try to coax her out of that view, and Susanne regretted having mentioned it. "We went looking for the son of the guy who pulled the gun on my husband in the first place," she said.

  "You thought he might have wanted some kind of revenge for his father being in prison."

  "I didn't, no. Well, yes, I suppose I may have thought that, but that wasn't why we went to his house. A guard at your Arndale Centre thought he saw him with Marshall."

  "When?"

  "Late yesterday afternoon."

  "But that sounds... You'd think..."

  "Except that the boy and his family swear he was home all yesterday."

  "They would though, wouldn't they, if..."

  "And the guard only remembered seeing Marshall with another boy until he realised who I was, and then he remembered the picture of the father in the papers and started saying the other boy had looked like him."

  "That doesn't mean he was wrong though, does it?" Hilda sounded close to angry with Susanne for arguing against her. "And even if he was wrong about that, there's still this other boy."

  "If there was one."

  "They'll be able to check, won't they? They'll have the security video."

  "I suppose," Susanne admitted before the idea caught up with her. "I hadn't thought of that. You think the police will have?"

  "I'm positive they will."

  "They won't want me ringing them up to tell them their job." More to the point, Susanne was certain this wasn't the issue she'd overlooked, and that convinced her there was one. The mailman was advancing, helping to distract her. "They'll have had enough of me," she said.

  "I'm sure they wouldn't have taken you if they didn't want you there, and I can't believe you were any hindrance."

  "You would if you'd been there." Susanne wanted to leave it at that, and then she knew she had to explain, because that might recall whatever she'd forgotten. "I found a track suit I thought was Marshall's in the other boy's room. It looked exactly like."

  "I don't want to upset you all over again, Susanne, but how can you..."

  "Because it was made in England, maybe a fake that they sell in your markets, and Marshall's was made in America. One letter on the tag showed me I was wrong, but only after I nearly convinced the police."

  "They'll have understood, love. They must know how you feel."

  Susanne no longer knew that herself. There was something she ought just to have realised which the sight of the mailman was driving out of her mind. He was coming up the path and removing from his bag a package too bulky to fit through the slot in the door. She had a sudden dreadful suspicion that the contents might relate to Marshall in some way she wouldn't be able to bear, and yet it rushed her to the front door to head off the shrilling of the bell. She wasn't quite in time, and only her pulling open the door caused the mailman to take his finger off the button. She grabbed the package from him as he raised his eyebrows cheerfully, and then she saw the house number on the label. "This isn't mine."

  "Didn't I see Mrs. Mattison come in here?"

  "I know what it is, Susanne," Hilda called, and plodded into the hall. "He'll be bringing me my seeds."

  Susanne supposed she ought to be reassured because the package wasn't anything she'd been afraid to define to herself. She handed it to Hilda as the mailman strolled away, whistling in search of a tune. "Do you mind if I see about rousing the old man now?" Hilda said.

  Susanne managed a tweak of a smile at that. "Go on before he wonders where you've vanished to," she said, wincing inwardly at her choice of words. She closed the door after Hilda to conceal the dismay that might have brought her neighbour back. Her mind was dulling again. Since she'd been wrong about the package as well as the track suit, how could she persist in believing she had almost noticed some detail which nobody else had found significant? It seemed to be only her lack of any sense of purpose which was lifting her feet and planting them on each stair up to Marshall's room.

  She pushed the door and watched it fall away from her, and gazed into the room. There appeared to be nothing that meant more to her than the last time she had looked. Movie posters; as many books as the shelves could hold; Marshall's bed and his school uniform lying on it, their emptiness multiplied by the dressing-table mirror. A few clothes slept on the floor, reminding her until she recoiled from any such comparison of the boy's bedroom in the Fancy house. Did she secretly believe that leaving the clothes where they were might conjure Marshall back to her? The idea sent her into the room as though she was fleeing her own irrationality. She was remembering another instance of that—her behaviour in the Fancy boy's room. As she cringed at the recollection it touched off another memory, and she became absolutely still.

  She'd been wrong to think the track suit was Marshall's, and she'd been suffering the mistake ever since. She'd let it gather in her mind until she couldn't see past it. She remembered saying "That's—" and the boy's face turning blank as Angel asked her what she'd noticed. Why would the boy have assumed that lack of an expression unless he'd known not only what she'd seen but the meaning it would have for her?

  He knew what Marshall had been wearing yesterday, and she was certain how he knew. The room around her seemed to grow clear and bright and even emptier. The next moment she was running downstairs to the phone, and then she knew she had no time to try to convince the police. Where had she put her keys? She dodged into the front room and saw them huddled on top of the essays, and selected the key for the alarm as she snatched them up.

  All at once her nerves were working for her, her brittle sleep
lessness concentrating her actions. She turned the key in the control panel, and was immediately through the inner door, closing it behind her, and locking the house. She let herself into the Volvo, which started the first time, and reached the speed limit almost as soon as the car swung away from the curb.

  The police might well not have believed her. They might have pointed out that the Fancy boy could have learned from the appeals on the radio what Marshall was wearing. But they hadn't seen how the boy had arranged his face—they hadn't glimpsed the realisation which he had almost succeeded in hiding. It would take far too long to persuade them of all this. She had to reach his house before he left it. He knew where Marshall was, she had seen he did, and he was going to lead her to him.

  She braked at the corners and more decisively at the Wilmslow Road. A car flashed its headlamps to invite her into the rush of traffic, and it wasn't until brakes screeched as she accelerated out of the side street that she understood it had been sunlight making the lamps flare. The driver leaned on his horn and thrust his grimace close to the windshield, but she was across the road now, just ahead of a bus, so near that a sample of it filled her mirror. She swerved left into the first side street. That was the direction for the Fancy house.

  It wasn't the precise route the police had used to bring her home. The narrow roads were breaking out in old cobblestones which made the car and her head jounce. Blocks of small shops alternated with blocks of houses as flat-faced. All the shops appeared to sell secondhand goods, some of which loitered outside them. She was driving as fast as the law allowed—indeed, unless she kept glancing at the dial, somewhat faster. Her senses were trawling everything she passed. The blank screens of a dozen televisions piled in a window turned from grey to blinding white as sunlight trailed over them, a cat lying on top of a refrigerator between two armchairs on the sidewalk stretched its black and white body like a movie projected through the wrong lens, and Susanne was wondering if the immediacy of details such as these had caused her to lose her way—she was wishing she'd thought to ascertain the name of the main road nearest the Fancy house so that she could ask for directions, although just now there was nobody in sight to ask—when the street curved, and at the end of it she saw the very road, the saplings tottering on crutches in front of the low brown boxy houses on the far side of the concrete strip which divided it. She drove to it only as fast as the limit, and braked at the intersection, and looked left. No traffic was coming. She trod on the gas pedal and spun the wheel right, and was speeding toward two lanes of traffic which raced headlong at her.