“How are you doing, Steve?”
“Fine, thanks.” Larkin felt he should say something in return. “And you?”
“Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. The point is, Steve, I did have some initial misgivings when I offered you this job. I know we used to be friends way, way back, and that’s why, as soon as I heard you were in Newcastle again, I rushed to see you.”
Larkin felt the scar tissue on his right hand itch. “Aye. You heard what had happened and wanted an exclusive.”
“Which you gave.”
“In return for a job.”
“And a handsome salary. Yes.” Bolland allowed himself a smile. “That’s why I want you to know that I’m very pleased with the progress you’re making with us. Very pleased.”
“Thank you. Sir.”
Bolland reddened slightly but persevered. “I know you – have a reputation for – having – unorthodox working methods—”
“You mean, I’m a pain in the arse to work with?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that…”
“Oh, that’s OK. I’ve heard it that many times it doesn’t bother me anymore.”
“Mm. Well, what I mean is, you have a reputation for allowing … a higher sense of morality to creep in and inform your work.”
Larkin attempted to stifle a smile as Bolland tried to dig himself out of his hole.
“Yes, well. What I’m trying to say is, I’m pleased you have adapted yourself to our work ethic so readily.”
Larkin shook his head. “Needs must.”
“I mean, if there are any prizewinners in this agency, you’re the one.”
“I think Ms Brewer would disagree with that.”
Bolland smiled. “She probably would. But I just wanted to let you know. That’s all.”
“Thank you.”
They both sat there for what seemed like a century. Eventually Larkin stood up.
“Well, I have to go now, Dave. I’ve got the prejudices of Middle England to confirm. Thanks for the chat.” Larkin turned to go.
“Great, great. We must grab a beer sometime.”
Grab a beer? “Yeah, Dave, smashing. I’ll see if I’ve got a window. Sometime.”
“Steve.”
Larkin turned around.
“You are all right, aren’t you? I mean … all right?”
Larkin looked at Bolland. The smug-bastard mask had slipped away, leaving an expression of genuine concern.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Good. I know work can be a help, taking your mind off things and all that, but … well, if you’re not, well, you know, old friends and everything…” He seemed to be having difficulty in finding the right words. Larkin was almost touched.
“Thanks, Dave. You’re a good mate.”
And he left the office and went to work.
3: Deep Pools Of Truth
Larkin drove down to Scotswood. If the Golf looked conspicuous behind the Central Station, then here it stood out like a Sunderland fan at a Newcastle game.
The area consisted of one dilapadated concrete monolith after another, with a few rows of two-storey houses thrown in: a half-hearted stab at community. But most of them had boarded up windows and doors sporting huge padlocks. That, and the blackened fronts, marked them out as easy, but pointless, targets for roaming gangs.
Brightly-coloured boards announced the imminence of urban renewal and promised a safe new future funded by EC money. But the glib declarations had the hollow and hopeless ring of a politician at election time. The Rebirth Of The Region didn’t extend to here, noted Larkin.
Although the sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue, announcing the last burst of a dying summer, it couldn’t make Scotswood look jovial. Larkin didn’t know how Jane could bear to live here. He didn’t know how anyone could. He rounded another corner, dodging the craters in the road, and thought back to his morning.
He’d just returned to the office from his conversation with the rabid landowning squire and found the message from Jane waiting. But before he could phone her, Bolland had asked him how the encounter had gone.
To describe the bloke as right-wing, Larkin had informed him, was to say that Hitler liked to start a bit of trouble. He had started off ranting about the bypass protesters; his diatribe had gone on to embrace the benefits of National Service, the wonders of capital punishment, the laxity of the immigration laws and the evils of homosexuality. In no particular order.
“Wonderful,” Bolland had replied. “Extreme opinions, irrespective of the truth, make the best copy.” He habitually spoke in epigrams.
“Yeah,” said Larkin. “It was when he started on compulsory sterilisation for the poor and the unemployed that it got me.”
Bolland smiled. “Not as bizarre a suggestion as you would think, Steve. Even that well-known vegetarian and left-wing intellectual George Bernard Shaw once vigorously championed the idea.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve found that no one is ever fully good. And no one is ever fully bad. And nothing is black and white.” He turned to go. “Oh, and Steve?”
“Yes?”
“Make it angry. The Mail will pay more.”
He had hated writing the article; hated putting his name to something he patently didn’t agree with. He had consoled himself by running over the events of the previous evening as the article took shape. The more he thought about it, the more justified he felt his actions had been. At least it was a way to make a difference, he thought, as he wrote. And he clung to that fact like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood.
And started to think about Jane Howell.
He had met her over six months ago, just after his return to Newcastle. It had been a boring party; she’d livened it up for him just by talking. Unmarried, living in a tower block in Scotswood with her young daughter, she ran a daycare centre for inner-city children and was trying to get a credit union going. She had established herself as a community activist despite disadvantages which would have turned most people into victims. They had gone out together a few times – drinking, the cinema, the odd meal – but it hadn’t really taken off. Larkin was still shell-shocked after Charlotte’s death and Jane was naturally wary of men in general. They had remained friends, however; Larkin was using her for one of his colour supplement features.
She knew he would be visiting her that afternoon. So why would she call?
Two and a half rings. Then the phone was picked up with such speed it left the bell echoing.
“Hello?” a voice said, too quickly.
“Jane?”
“Yeah?”
“Stephen. Larkin.”
“Oh!” Relief, followed by silence. Larkin waited for her to speak. “You still comin’ over today?”
“You know I am. What’s up?”
“Nothing.” There was a pause; Larkin could feel her tension. “Look – can you come a little bit earlier?”
“Why?”
“Can you?”
He told her he had some work to do but could make it by three.
“Come to the centre. That’s where I’ll be.”
“OK.”
“Right — ” It was as if she wanted to say something, something important, but couldn’t find the words.
“Are you all right, Jane?”
There was another pause. “Yeah. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later, right?”
She put the phone down. And a puzzled Larkin held a dead receiver.
Larkin felt unseen eyes on him as he drove. He knew he was being watched; his car marked him out as not living in the area. They probably thought he was a DSS snoop. He remembered the torch he kept in the glove compartment: an American police model that could double as a truncheon, it was as effective as a baseball bat and twice as legal. Although he hadn’t had to use it yet, he was definitely prepared to.
He pulled up beside another car: an anonymous, hermetically-sealed Nineties blob. Parking behind it, he noted it was a virtually br
and-new Fiesta with a protective camouflage of inner-city dirt. He killed the Gold’s engine, got out and locked it. Though if someone wanted to break in, all they had to do was slit the roof.
The daycare centre was a primary-coloured, single-storey, concrete-clad edifice. It had been enthusiastically, if not professionally, painted with a mural featuring huge daisies and smiling children. There was a cheerful optimism about the place that Larkin admired, as if it were refusing to be choked by the surrounding oppressiveness. He went in through the bright red double doors which opened onto a large room where children’s paintings covered the walls. Care-used toys and games littered the floor, and a couple of shelves bearing well-worn storybooks and some over-loved stuffed toy animals completed the look of cheerful chaos.
He was expecting noise and he got it. Lots of small children were running around, shrieking with delight. They were supposed to be painting but from the looks of it the only thing they were painting was each other.
Suddenly, one of the children let out a shriek that wasn’t due to pleasure. Larkin moved to where the noise was coming from, found a tiny boy with a clump of another boy’s hair in his hand. The other boy was on the floor, his face red and wet from crying. The first child looked at the clump of hair in his hand almost in disbelief; then he started kicking the prone boy, rage in his eyes.
Larkin was wondering whether to intervene when a man who Larkin hadn’t noticed before pulled them apart.
“Daniel! Stop that!”
The boy looked up at him and dropped the clump of hair, fear creeping into his eyes. The man pointed a finger at him sternly and the boy fell silent.
“Good,” the man said. “Now apologise.”
Hate and fear fought it out on the boy’s face. The end result had an equal slice of both in it, as he muttered a sulky “Sorry.”
The man nodded at him, and then turned his attention to the boy on the floor.
He examined the boy’s head. It was bleeding. He picked him up, holding him close; he made comforting noises and the boy’s crying gradually subsided. He was about to carry him out of the main room when he looked round and saw Larkin.
“Can I help you?” A clipped Scottish accent. His voice made the cradled boy flinch almost imperceptibly.
Larkin looked the man over. Under six foot, early thirties. Washed-out, dirty, thinning blond hair, glasses, shapeless jumper and trousers. Nondescript. Safe.
“I’m looking for Jane Howell. Is she here?”
“She is, yes. And who might you be?”
“It’s all right, James. I’m here.”
Both men turned to see Jane standing in the doorway. Blue jeans, boots, black T-shirt. Her dark hair in a long bob. She was attractive in an honest, intelligent way; though she carried the burden of a tough life, her big brown eyes lent her a fetching vulnerability. Today, though, they showed nothing but badly-concealed anxiety and trouble.
She saw the child in the man’s arms and came dashing over. “What happened?”
“Daniel got a bit boisterous. Don’t worry – it’s all over. I’m just taking little Harry into the kitchen for a look at his head.”
“I’ll do that,” she snapped, making both men start. Noticing their reaction, she forced a smile. “Go on then – you do it. Where’s Carol?”
“In the loo.”
At that moment another woman appeared and crossed over to them.
“Sort Daniel out, Carol. I’ll be out in a while.”
With that she crossed over to another red door and entered. Larkin looked round, smiled weakly at the woman called Carol, and followed.
When Larkin reached Jane’s office he found her sitting behind an old paper-covered desk, delving into her bag for a Silk Cut and a lighter. She lit her cigarette and pulled a deep drag, her chest expanding. Larkin tried not to look at her breasts. After holding on for a few seconds she let go. Her tension ebbed along with the smoke.
“Fuck, I needed that.”
Larkin walked round to her side of the desk. “Come on, then,” he said, as reassuringly as he could manage. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“Bollocks. Tell me.”
She took another deep drag and followed it up with a huge sigh.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that… Everything was going so well, you know? This place was a success, the credit union was gettin’ taken seriously. I don’t know. It just all seems to be turnin’ to shit.”
“In what way?”
“Well, for a start, the grant’s up for renewal. If you’d have asked me a couple of weeks ago I’d have said sure, fine, we’ll walk it – you know?”
“Why won’t you now? What’s gone wrong?”
“Oh … nothin’. It’s just … I don’t know.” Another drag. “You don’t want to listen to all this.”
“Too late for that now. You called, I answered. So here I am.”
She gave him a weak little smile. “Well … it’s probably nothin’, but I’m not so sure. Did you see what happened just now?”
“One kid fighting with another one. Nothing unusual in that.”
“No, but … that boy, Daniel. He used to be such a good kid, but just recently he’s started to behave … well, like you saw. Aggressive, arguin’. Startin’ to hurt the other kids.”
“What about his parents? Can’t they do anything?”
The deepest drag of all. Then: “It’s a classic abuse pattern he’s developin’.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“You mean, his parents?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, they’re a rough lot, most people round here are, but they’re not… I know them. No.”
“What then?”
Her cigarette was down to a stub. She ground it out in an already overflowing ashtray, lit another one and settled herself, coming to decisions in her head. Larkin waited patiently for her to speak.
Finally: “No. It’s not at home.”
“Where, then?”
“Maybe … here.”
“At the centre?”
She nodded her head, downcast, as if she didn’t want to admit it even to herself.
“Who?”
She moved her face closer to his.
“You saw that guy when you came in here?” Her voice was low.
“The Scotsman with the charisma deficiency?”
She almost smiled. “Yeah.”
“Him?”
She stood up, paced the room. “This place is a success. We’ve made it one. It’s been hard fuckin’ work, an uphill struggle, but we’ve done it. This place is open every weekday for kids under school age so their mothers can have a bit of time off. Try to get jobs, even.” Another drag. “It’s gone that well we’ve had to expand. We got a grant from the council and one of the other girls and me get paid to run the place. The rest work as volunteers.”
“But?”
“About four months ago, this guy came to us. Said his name was James Noble and did we need any help. Said he used to work in Social Services with kids in Scotland until he was made redundant. Well, naturally we were interested. I mean, he had brilliant references and he sounded too good to be true. You know?”
She stopped talking again, took another drag. Larkin remained silent, letting her story unfold the way she wanted it to.
“Well, it was great for a while. But then… Well, we started to have doubts about him.”
She stopped. Larkin sensed that she couldn’t quite believe the enormity of what she was saying. He prompted her.
“What kind of doubts?”
“After he arrived, some of the kids began to behave – differently. Like you saw. I mean, at first he was left alone with them, but now … well, I can’t be everywhere. When that happened just now I was on the phone, trying to get some sense out of the council about the grant.”
“Why don’t you just ask him to leave?”
“I’ve tried. He hasn’t actually said anythin’, but he’s sort of made
little intimations that if he goes our grant goes an’ all.”
“How can he do that?” asked Larkin.
Jane hesitated before answering. “He said he had friends in high places.”
“Did he mention names?”
“No. And I don’t want to know them.”
“So what’s he been doing, exactly?”
“Somethin’ – physical. I think so, anyway. I haven’t been able to examine any of the kids but…”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
She looked directly at him. “Stephen, I haven’t a clue…” Her voice trailed off.
“Couldn’t you get the wonderful Alan Swanson to help you?”
“What, our esteemed Minister for Youth? I wouldn’t piss down his throat if his heart was on fire – pardon my French. We’ll get no help from that bastard.”
Larkin gave a grim smile. “Couldn’t agree more.”
“Kids are too young to vote. Why would a politician wanna help them?”
“Yeah,” said Larkin, “maybe he’s just—” He stopped suddenly, a terrible thought entering his head.
“What?”
“Paranoia city, this, but… What if Swanson is Noble’s influential friend?”
The colour drained from Jane’s face. “Then I’m fucked.” She put her hands to her face, rubbing the skin as if to erase her worries. “Aw, hell, I’ve never felt so helpless before.” She stared into her lap. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said all this.”
“Don’t be daft. That’s what friends are for.” His voice took on a soothing, placating tone. “We don’t know that it’s Swanson. In all probability it isn’t. So don’t worry. Now listen…”
She looked at him, expectant.
“I’ve got a friend on the force. I’ll ask him to check up on this Noble, see if anything turns up. I’ll get him to check the referees on his CV as well, if you like.”
“Oh, Stephen, I hate doin’ this! Creepin’ around. Checkin’ up.”
“Yeah, but what choice d’you have?”
She sighed. “I know. I’ve got to do it for the kids, haven’t I?”
Little Triggers Page 3
