by Sarah Hilary
The bat rattled the railings again then reached in to stir at his ribs.
He couldn’t stop any of it.
‘Ollie . . .’ His left ear was crammed full of car horns, sirens, people shouting, but it was just the damage done to his head, sounds shoving inside his ear where the bat had hit.
He stayed on the steps. Ollie or whoever it was stayed right there on the steps with the bat and it couldn’t be the same one, not the bat they found in his flat, because Fran had that. She was scraping it for Kyle’s DNA. This was a different bat. A second one for her to scrape.
What was he waiting for? Ollie.
Why wasn’t he finishing it while Noah was like this, too hurt to fight back?
He’d have to come down the last couple of steps, though. He’d have to get close enough for Noah to reach out and grab one of his legs. If he could manage it; his hands felt huge, and a long way away from the rest of his body. He was shivering so hard his teeth jarred.
He tried his voice again: ‘Police . . . I’m . . . DS Noah Jake—’
Something falling, heavy, on his face.
He couldn’t work out if it was snow or litter or the baseball bat.
But whatever it was his world was shrinking.
Going, going—
Gone.
34
Aidan Duffy wasn’t what Marnie had expected. A man of Jacob Collins’ age, she’d assumed, balding and bulky. But Aidan was in his thirties with a boyish head of black curls, cool grey eyes and a Viking nose. The nose was unbroken like the rest of him, which was slim and tight and smooth with muscle. He didn’t look her up and down the way Collins had, just took the seat in the visitors’ room, folding his hands on the table between them. No tattoos on his fingers, and no visible scars. He kept himself clean. Others did his dirty work.
They were the only two seated here. A couple of guards at the door, fulfilling regulations. Marnie hadn’t missed their deferential body language when they’d escorted Duffy – moving like a dancer, loose in the hip – in here. Collins wasn’t the only one outclassed by Aidan Duffy.
‘You advised Mr Collins to ask for me by name. Perhaps we can start there. With how you know my name and why you gave it to Mr Collins after he was attacked.’
Aidan wrinkled his straight nose. ‘I’d rather start with something else.’ A lilt in his voice, southern Irish, soft as a cat’s paw. ‘Forgiveness, can we start with forgiveness?’
‘Whose? And of whom?’
‘For the sake of argument and because I don’t want to be missing my lunch, can we say it’s yours? And of Stephen Keele.’
He had her full attention, and he knew it. Taking his time, lifting a hand to knuckle the bridge of his nose, rubbing his fingers through his black curls. Confident that he looked good, and was saying words she had to hear. She couldn’t stand up and go, not now he’d given out Stephen’s name.
‘They moved him here, oh it’s going on for five months ago now. Nice-looking boy like that, even after he put himself to the trouble of looking less nice, shaving his head, getting the six-pack.’ Aidan broke out a grin, fresh and white. He had very good teeth. ‘Not that the six-pack goes amiss in a place like this. Well, in a place like this, you know?’ Lilting his voice, slurring his words a little until they ran into one another. ‘Even the little four-packs have something going for them and your boy’s got himself the full six. In he comes, that head of his held high and I’m for calling it killer instinct. Because he’s nice-looking and he’s got the brains to match. Barely twenty years old and he’s circling with the sharks. No more juvie with your daytime telly and your Pot Noodle, no. This’s the real thing.’ He dropped his head to the side, smiling at her. ‘He’s lining them up and he’s potting them down and I’m right away thinking, “Oh, you’re a bright boy, you’re smart enough to be scared, and clever enough to hide it,” and I’m for taking him under my wing because it’s nice to do that from time to time, to have a brave bright boy by your side.’
He stopped, keeping the smile switched on. He was very good.
Marnie looked for a chink in his armour, but she couldn’t see one. Not a single red thread on his face, no hint of pink or yellow in the whites of his eyes. Clean-shaven, smelling of green fern, expensive. He didn’t use the prison soap; he’d got his hands on something better. How many of the men in here were under his long thumbs? Was Stephen?
‘Five months ago, then, I’m for taking him under my wing. Tucking him in, keeping him safe. You don’t want to know what happens to a nice-looking boy in here when he’s not being kept safe.’
‘Can we dispense with the prison mythology?’ Marnie said. ‘And skip to the part where you gave my name to Jacob Collins?’
‘You’d not have come if I’d crooked my little finger. Not even if I’d said his name. Stephen Keele.’ Drawing out the syllables, rolling the first off his tongue. ‘Stephen Patrick Keele.’ Widening his eyes. ‘Oh you didn’t know the middle name? Patrick, that’s a good Irish name. Saintly. That’s a sense of humour someone had, calling him Patrick.’
‘All right.’ She smiled back at him. ‘Mr Duffy. You’re very clever and charming, and you’re very used to getting your way. I can see that. It’s boring in here, so I do sympathise. But if you don’t cut to the chase in the next minute? I’m going to stand up and walk out.’ She leaned a fraction closer to him. ‘I’ll send a constable to take your statement, as I’m sure you have a lot to say. But you won’t be saying it to me.’
His eyes gleamed. ‘I’ll cut to the chase, Marnie Jane Rome.’ Leaning towards her by the same small fraction. ‘Your little brother’s in a fuck-load of trouble and it’s all your fault.’
‘How is it my fault?’
‘You’re the one let him down. The one who lied, pretending she didn’t know why he did it.’
This again. A girl in Sommerville had said Stephen blamed Marnie for his incarceration. Stephen himself had said, ‘I did it for you.’ There was nothing new here, just the same old lies repackaged with a white smile and a pair of cool grey eyes.
‘Mr Duffy—’
‘Aidan,’ he said softly.
Then, ‘You’re the one broke his heart.’
Her teeth ached where she’d clenched them.
‘You broke his heart, Marnie Jane Rome.’
Aidan tipped his head, the light lying along the high bone of his cheek.
‘And now everybody’s paying for it.’
35
‘Safe. Take it easy, yeah? I called an ambulance. You need checking over.’
No argument there. Noah sat with his head in his hands, nursing the first lump’s new friend, the pair of them conspiring at the side of his skull to make everything hurt. His fingers came away tacky with blood, but he was alive. The world had come back from the pin hole where concussion had sent it. He was breathing, and he was in one piece. Propped upright, more or less, in the litter trap outside Carole’s front door. No new bruises, other than the ones left by the steps; Ollie hadn’t hit him while he was unconscious.
Sitting on the steps was a black woman of about his age, with a nose stud and braided hair. In a fake leopard-skin coat over a red jumpsuit and blue snow boots. Her hands in her pockets, shoulders up around her ears. ‘I’d give you my coat but I’m freezing my tits off already.’ She stamped her feet on the step. ‘Should’ve gritted your yard.’
‘Yes . . .’ His ears were ringing, but it was a hundred times better than before. He felt out the bones in his face – nothing broken.
‘Safe,’ she said. ‘You’re still beautiful.’
Her grin was the best thing he’d seen all day.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he managed. ‘I’m just lucky.’
His voice was slurred, but not much.
‘You fell down your steps and you’re bleeding all over your nice coat. Not my idea of lucky.’
‘Did you . . . see anyone? Else. Anyone else.’
‘Just you, lying down here.’
He felt in his
pocket for his phone. It was in one piece, showing Dan’s latest text.
‘What’s so funny?’ She stamped her feet, breathing a cloud of cold.
Noah put his aching head back against the brick wall. ‘Taco emoji . . .’
‘Taco . . . You’re funny when you’re bleeding.’
He wiped the side of his head with his sleeve, squinting at the screen. He needed to call Marnie. And Ron. He’d lost time. Not long, but— ‘Here.’ She pulled her hand from the pocket of her coat. ‘Give me that.’
He should’ve put up a fight. The phone had personal stuff on it, not to mention police stuff. But he held it out and she shuffled down a step to take it.
‘What number? You’re trying to ring someone. Taco emoji? What’s her number?’
‘His . . .’ Noah was still stupid from the baseball bat.
She grinned, her fingers poised over the keypad. ‘Number?’
He gave her Ron Carling’s number, watching as she punched it in.
‘Hey, Taco. I’ve got your boyfriend here. He’s in need of some loving.’ She scooted down the step to hold the phone to Noah’s ear.
Ron was saying, ‘. . . taco—?’
‘It’s me. I found our vigilante.’
‘Sounds more like he found you.’ Ron’s voice was sharp. ‘Where are you? Are you okay? Who’s that with you?’
‘Carole’s place. Not really. And I don’t know.’
‘Have I got to come and get you?’
‘There’s an ambulance coming.’ He looked up at the woman, who nodded down at him. ‘I’m okay. Baseball bat, but he only got my head.’
‘Only?’ Ron repeated.
‘I saw him.’ Noah shivered.
He was starting to feel sick.
‘It’s Ollie. I think— It’s Ollie.’
36
‘The poison and the antidote are brewed in the same vat. Have you heard that saying now?’ Aidan Duffy linked his hands behind his head, leaning back under the light that was bruising Marnie’s skin. ‘The poison and the antidote,’ running the words together, ‘brewed in the same vat. Tell me you know what I’m talking about so we can get to what’s really going on.’
‘You’re quoting creed from the Forgiveness Project. What’s really going on?’
‘Anger.’ He shifted his hands to the crown of his head. ‘Locks you in a cage.’
At the inside of his right wrist: a word. No, a name. Inked in black. Finn.
‘But then forgiveness?’ He was showing her the tattoo. He wanted her to see it. ‘Forgiveness is a great big act of betrayal to many. I’ve known families broken up by it, into little bits. Do you know what it is to be broken into little bits, Marnie Jane Rome? Of course you do.’
Finn. Who was that – a brother? A lover? A child?
‘They say a guilty conscience needs to confess. They say that now, don’t they? And a work of art’s a confession.’ He dropped his grey gaze to her hips, as if he could read the words inked on her skin, her teenaged tattoos. ‘According to your man, Camus.’
‘Who’s Finn?’
His eyes darkened, warningly. Too soon. This was running to his timetable, not hers. She didn’t want to sit here with a man to whom Stephen had told God knows what lies about her, and God knows what truths. How much did Aidan really know? About Stephen, about her?
‘You know about prisons,’ he was saying, ‘I know you know about prisons. How you have to make friends in here, a whole new life for yourself because no one can live out in the cold for long, not for long. You fit in, find your place. Rub along. You call it survival, but it’s living. Life. Then there’ll be a lockdown, there’ll always be a lockdown. Alarms ringing, your cell searched for drugs, weapons.’ A movement of his shoulders, acknowledging the guards by the door. ‘Everything turned upside down and stamped on all over again. And you’re sick for days afterwards. Not just because they reminded you where you were, how low you’d sunk. You’re sick that you let yourself start living in here. Now your life’s in pieces all over again, but you pick them up because you have to. Every time, you pick them up.’ He stopped, asking a question with his eyes.
‘Give me a name.’ She was calm now. She didn’t even know why, but she was calm. ‘You want my help, that’s why I’m here. Give me a name.’
‘You’re here because he’s here. Your boy’s here, and you can’t stay away.’
He dropped his hands to the table, wrists flat to its surface. His face hollowed suddenly. ‘I had him under my wing, tucked in tight. Oh, he was like a little bird and I had him safe . . . But it’s hard, you know? To stay safe. And now he’s asking to be out, now he’s lost and there’s this unholy fucking fireball all around him, between him and me, and I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t.’
He was scared.
It hit her like a jolt under the ribs.
Aidan Duffy was scared.
Of what, or whom, she didn’t know. Not yet.
‘Give me a name.’
‘Carole Linton. Stuart Rawling.’ His eyes shone at her. ‘How many names do you need? Kyle Stratton.’ Scared, and angry.
‘Give me the other name. The one that can make it stop.’
Laughter left him in a short burst. He put both hands into his hair, burying his fingers in his black curls. ‘Oh Marnie Jane Rome! I’ve been giving you that name since we began. It’s yours. You’re the one started this and you’re the one can make it stop. The only one.’
‘How?’
‘By finding the bastard who’s having so much fun for your sake, in your name. Leaving the little presents all over London. Teeth and bones and eyeballs like some pagan fucking ritual.’ The Irish accent was stronger now, no spark of a smile left on his face. ‘My brother had a dog used to bring him dead frogs, but you! You take the fucking biscuit.’
‘Who attacked Jacob Collins?’ She held hard to the panic which was stuttering its way from her sternum into her throat. ‘That wasn’t the same person who killed Kyle Stratton.’
Aidan shook her question away as if it were a wasp. The expensive cologne wasn’t working, not now. She could smell stress under the green fern.
‘They drew on him, did you not know that? His ma and da. Drew on him with their fingers.’ He put his hands into a prayer shape. ‘Finger-painted dirty words everywhere on his little body, even the places he couldn’t see without a couple of good mirrors. His ma was the worst for it, a filthy mind and a temper to match. You never bothered looking in those corners, though, did you? Too busy wading through your own mess to think about his.’
Stephen. He was talking about Stephen.
‘You were putting on your lovely blue uniform while he was learning how to stand in the snow barefoot without weeping, because his ma hates a crybaby.’ Aidan hardened his eyes at her. ‘And the whole house’s a fucking museum of what’s wrong with them, it’s receipts and bills and it’s gadgets turned into torture devices. A whole sick-in-the-head existence with no neighbours near enough to care, just bad noises and nice smiles when anyone gets close enough to interfere. Think of that, think what it’s like to live with the throb of the city outside and life going on like nothing ever happened, cars going past and lights like the funfair’s in town – like the kids are running sticks along the railings and shouting for sheer joy while he’s in there with the Franklin fucking Mint on the walls, gilded plates and silver thimbles, and he’s trying so hard to work out what she’s written, what lies she’s told to his skin, or maybe they’re truths. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.’
When he stopped speaking, silence rushed to fill the gap left by his words.
He had his eyes on her, daring her to speak.
Daring her to ask, again, for the name. Any name.
‘I knew a boy once,’ he said, when the silence had saturated the room. ‘He was with his ma like Stephen was, because they’d decided his old daddy was a bad man. His whole family got moved to a safe house while the police investigated. His da was locked up, but his ma? She was right
there with him.’ He drew a heart on the table with his thumb, tracing over it. ‘She’s as bad if not worse than the other and she’s right there with him in the safe house, put there by the police because they think it’s all about the da. They think that boy’s safe.’
‘Are you talking about Finn?’
His head tipped back until his eyes were on her. ‘You took that house apart, a murder house. Police ripped it out brick by brick, poured cement to stop it coming down around them while they dug and dug to see what horrors they could find. You weren’t even in your lovely blue uniform then, still at school. They burned everything. That’s what you do, isn’t it, with a murder house. You’re for burning it all up, making it disappear. Except it never does. You can dig it up and pull it down, feed it into incinerators and crush it into cubes, crush those into smaller cubes until it’s all just dust to blow from your fingers.’
He put his palm up and blew across it, into her face. His breath smelt of cherries. ‘All you’ve done is make a big hole where it used to be. And you try not looking at a big hole when it’s carved in the middle of your life because someone stole the thing that matters most. Came like a thief in the night to take it and you know he’s crying, you know he’s scared but you can’t reach him.’
He blinked. ‘All you can do is listen to the wind whistling through like it’s your heart with a hole in it. You’d plug that hole, wouldn’t you. Any way you could, with whatever you could lay your hands on. So don’t sit there and tell me you’re on top of this. That you’re whole. Don’t be telling me he can’t hurt you locked up in here, just the same as he could out there, filling your house with whatever he needed to do to forget.’
‘Are you finished?’ The itch of her watch at her wrist, taking time away. ‘Or is there more?’
‘There’s a boy,’ he said abruptly. ‘Wakes to the sound of sharpening knives. Duct tape on his mouth. God knows what round his wrists and ankles. They put him in a bath. He’s cold and scared and sick – and they’ve put him in a fucking bath.’
