A Cast of Vultures

by Judith Flanders

  It was only when I got home that evening that I remembered I hadn’t told Steve what Jake did for a living. Nor could I find the paperwork he had left for me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NOW THAT I had nothing to occupy me, the questions I’d been blocking out with work during the day came roaring back. I wanted to find out about the house, and about Harefield, if it was in fact him. I texted Jake: Will you be home for supper?

  Twenty minutes later, there was still no reply, no matter how many times I picked up my phone. I even shook it once, but that didn’t dislodge any messages that had got stuck in cyberspace either. I stared at my bag full of manuscripts. It wasn’t that I had nothing to keep me busy, but I was antsy, and wanted to be up and doing. I just didn’t know what I should be doing. So I searched systematically for Steve’s papers. I hadn’t absent-mindedly filed them – there wasn’t an extra folder on my desk, and I carefully checked the drawers. I hadn’t binned them. I went through the recycling box outside to make sure of that. They weren’t in the kitchen drawer where I keep my shopping list.

  After an hour, I admitted defeat. I looked out the window. It would be daylight for ages. I could go for a walk. I could water the back garden. I needed to do laundry, or I could visit Mr Rudiger. Instead I did what I knew I was going to do from the moment I left the office. I got my cycle out and went to find Viv and hear what she’d managed to dig up on Harefield, and give her my news. I could have rung her, but that seemed less purposeful. Going somewhere made me feel as if I were acting, not just reacting. To what, or about what, was less clear.

  The drawback to this brilliant plan, I discovered ten minutes later, was that Viv wasn’t home. So instead of hanging about in my sitting room, I was hanging about on her doorstep. I looked at my watch. I’d give it ten minutes. If she wasn’t back by then, I’d go home and start supper, and do some work. It was still hot, but the building across the road blocked out the worst glare of the late-afternoon sun. I sat down by her front door and pulled out my phone. There’s an app that lets you download free out-of-copyright books, and when I first bought a smartphone I got carried away and loaded up, figuring you never knew when you might need an emergency copy of Great Expectations, or Treasure Island. So far, Great Expectations emergencies had been thin on the ground, but today was apparently the day those advance preparations were going to pay off. I stretched my legs out and began to read.

  Miss Havisham had just appeared when the sun was blocked by a cloud. Without my noticing, the day had moved from warm to mild, and I’d definitely been there for longer than ten minutes. I looked up. It wasn’t a cloud, it was a person. Sam, my namesake. He was standing less than a metre away from me, and I hadn’t heard a thing.

  Apart from our name, Sam and I have little in common. I’m female, and over forty, and no one ever notices me much. He’s eighteen or so, and his south-east Asian dark hair is set off with peroxided blonde tips, his ears are multiply pierced, and his jeans permanently hang down around his arse, which, since he’s young and pretty, draws attention. Despite our differences, we like each other.

  ‘You’re not texting, and you’re not on Facebook,’ he said. ‘YouTube without the sound?’

  I smiled up at him. ‘Much worse. I’m reading a book.’

  He shook his head. He’d already told me what he thought of my bizarre hobby. He looked towards Viv’s door. ‘You waiting for her?’

  ‘Um-hmm. I wanted to hear if she had news of her missing neighbour.’

  Sam shrugged. He didn’t know about missing neighbours. So I moved on. ‘What’s the news on the fire?’

  He’d been leaning casually against the wall, but now he pushed himself upright, and his face became blank. ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean, why? A building burnt down two minutes’ walk from my house. Of course I’m interested in updates.’

  He crossed his arms defensively. ‘Who you asking for?’

  ‘What do you mean? I’m asking for myself, for exactly the reason I said I am – I’m nosy.’

  No smile. ‘Not for your boyfriend?’ It was an accusation.

  ‘My boyfriend? What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘He’s a cop.’

  ‘He is. But he’s CID. He doesn’t do fire investigation. And’ – I snorted – ‘and he definitely wouldn’t use me to ask questions. Mostly he tells me to stop asking questions.’ I waited, but so did Sam, so I tried again. ‘What’s going on?’

  Sam leant back against the wall again, but he still didn’t look at me. ‘The cops have been around, “making enquiries”.’

  ‘Talking to you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Me and my mates.’

  ‘About the fire? Why?’

  He still wouldn’t look up. ‘Because when there’s trouble, it’s us that’s to blame.’

  I knew this was true. When I first met Sam, I’d been told that he’d been ‘in trouble’ with the police. I didn’t know what that meant. It could have been anything from drunk and disorderly to something more serious. I’d never asked, and didn’t plan to now, either. Whatever he’d done before, in the time I’d known him he was so clearly a good person.

  ‘They think you know about the fires? One of you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘That’s nuts.’

  He smiled, but it was bitter. ‘Glad you think so, but they don’t. They wanted to know where we were Saturday night, and then on Wednesday last week, and a lot of other days, which we think must have been when the other fires were.’

  ‘You weren’t there.’ I made sure it wasn’t a question.

  He was tense, staring at the ground. ‘I could tell them where I was on Saturday, and last week. Before that, how would I know?’ He put on a parody upper-class accent: ‘“I’m sorry, officah, but you’ll have to ahsk my secretary. She keeps my engagement diary.” I work part-time, when I can get it. I don’t know what I was doing three months ago.’

  ‘What do you do?’ I’d never known. I’d guessed he was seventeen or eighteen, but maybe he was older.

  He shrugged. Not a question he liked. ‘What I can. Building sites, mostly. Sometimes a friend of mine’s dad, who’s an electrician, gives me a few days’ work. I’ve done the NVQs, but I’m not qualified.’

  ‘That’s what you want to do? Be an electrician?’

  He still wouldn’t look at me, his arms crossed defensively.

  ‘How much longer would it take to get qualified?’

  ‘I’ve got the prelim certificate, but I’ve got to do an apprenticeship, put in the hours, and getting a place is hard.’ He glanced over at me, and then away just as quickly. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just wondering what it took. Look.’ I went back to the main point. ‘Would it help if I talked to Jake – my boyfriend? If the police are bothering you? Or would it make it worse?’

  He shook his head once, sharply. ‘It would make it worse.’

  I’d probably think the same if I were him. ‘OK. I’m not going to wait any longer for Viv. If you see her, will you say I dropped by to talk to her about Dennis? Tell her—’

  ‘How do you know Dennis?’

  ‘You know him too?’ We were both silent, startled. Then I connected the dots. ‘He ran a youth club. Did you know him from there?’

  Sam was back to being mistrustful. ‘Did your bloke tell you about him?’

  ‘No, Viv did.’

  ‘How does she come into this?’ He wasn’t mistrustful now, he was downright belligerent.

  ‘He lived upstairs here. He went missing last week, and she was worried.’

  ‘Last week? Before the fire?’

  ‘Yes.’ I ploughed on. ‘What day did you say the police asked you about last week?’

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘That’s it, then. Viv said the neighbours saw him on Wednesday; he was supposed to have dinner with her on Thursday, but he never showed.’ I added, ‘She liked him a lot.’

  Sam swallowed. ‘We –’ he gestured behind him, as though to his absent f
riends ‘– we went to the youth group he ran.’ He paused. ‘He was a good bloke,’ he said, as if I had argued the point.

  ‘Was he?’ I said neutrally. ‘I never met him.’

  ‘He was, really. The things they’re saying about him …’ He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t Dennis. Just not.’

  I bent to unchain my cycle. ‘I’m sure you’re right. You knew him, and they didn’t.’

  He eyed me warily, unsure whether my assertion was what I truly believed, or a trap. I decided that repeating myself would make me sound less trustworthy. Finally he said, ‘I’m not saying he didn’t have dodgy friends.’

  I tried a joke. ‘Everyone has dodgy friends. Look at me, I live with a cop.’

  He smiled absent-mindedly, to register he knew it was a joke, but he didn’t give it his full attention. It helped him make up his mind, though. ‘He was a good bloke,’ he repeated.

  I just nodded. He was heading somewhere.

  ‘There were a lot of people like me, who used the club as a place to hang out with our friends.’

  ‘Tell me about the club.’

  ‘It started off just as a casual group. They were skateboarders.’

  ‘And Dennis skateboarded with you?’ That sounded implausible.

  He laughed, loud and clear. Harefield was seemingly not the type. ‘No, that wasn’t his thing. He was helping us make some dosh, to pay for our kit.’

  That hadn’t been what I imagined when I heard youth-group worker. ‘How did he do that?’

  ‘A few of the others had been making T-shirts with skateboarding tags, and selling them. Dennis showed us how to do it more professionally. Before, they’d been buying T-shirts from Asda, and with the price of paint, and a market stall, there was barely any profit in it. Dennis explained about buying the materials in bulk, wholesale. That was why we needed the shed, to store everything.’

  ‘Sounds like a great idea.’

  ‘It was. That was what we mostly did.’ Sam sobered.

  More nodding from me. I could get a job as one of those dogs that go on the rear shelf in the back of cars.

  ‘But there were others.’ He hesitated, not sure how much to say. Then he went for it. ‘Some groups are recruiting grounds for gangs. There’s a lot of low-level stuff going on—’ He left what the ‘stuff’ was unsaid. ‘Dennis let it happen, not because he was part of it, but because didn’t want to drive off the kids involved.’ He looked at me directly now for the first time. ‘He really did want to help. He wanted to keep them out of trouble. Sometimes it worked.’ He looked away again, and again I remembered how when I first met him he’d been described as having been ‘in trouble’ himself. ‘Sometimes it didn’t. But those kids didn’t get thrown out. Dennis kept after them, and then he stayed in touch.’

  That could be altruism, or it could be an excellent way to set up a network of runners if you were a dealer. Sam wasn’t stupid, though, and he didn’t think that’s what the man had been doing. ‘If you trusted him, you’re probably right,’ I said, therefore.

  We stared at each other. Sam looked as though no one had ever told him that his judgement was probably sound, and didn’t know what to do with that. I touched him on the arm and got on my bike.

  While we’d been talking, I’d heard my phone ding with a text, so at the next light I checked it. Jake. Won’t be back tonight. Working late, will go to H’smith. Then a second text. Inquest on Harefield tomorrow. More then.

  So that was that. I went home and did those very things I’d decided against earlier. Laundry, watering the garden, manuscripts. Who said my life wasn’t a roller-coaster ride of thrills?

  With Jake sleeping at his flat, I was at the office even earlier than usual in the morning. I always make coffee in the coffee-maker I keep on a filing cabinet as soon as I get in, even before I boot up my computer. Today, however, I picked up my cup to head off to the kitchen, where cheap, nasty coffee sits stewing on a burner. It’s a gourmet delight I normally found easy to miss out on, but the kitchen was the gossip nerve-centre, and the place to hear whatever rumours were flying about the morning’s group meeting. But before I’d even finished standing up, though, I sat back down, all in one movement. It was too early. Publishing people are, for the most part, vampires, coming to life as daylight ebbs. No one would be in for another hour.

  I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate enough to work on anything that mattered. I pulled over my in-tray to see if there was anything there that I could deal with using half my mind, or perhaps a quarter. The tray was overflowing, which was not a surprise, because these days I barely looked at it. Everything important came by email. Anything that needed to be done on paper was dropped in front of me if I was at my desk, or if I was out of the office, left on my chair so I’d see it when I sat down. Maybe, I thought, staring at the Everest of paper that had piled up without my noticing, maybe I should get rid of the basket altogether. Didn’t it just encourage people whose views I wasn’t interested in to send me crap I didn’t want to know about? Or maybe that sentence was a description of office life.

  I started at the top. Meeting minutes, which I tossed unread into my filing basket for Miranda to stick somewhere we would never look at them again. A couple of manuscripts I’d asked her to print out, which I dropped on the floor near my bookbag, to take home to work on. Printouts of jacket roughs, which I’d already looked at and commented on as email attachments: more filing. Printouts of contracts to check and sign. Back in the basket, to be dealt with when I had a functioning brain. I reached the bottom and looked at my watch. It was now 8.35.

  I poured some coffee and sipped, staring out the window. 8.37. I sighed and rubbed my face. 8.37 and a quarter. This was going well. I picked up the phone and hit speed dial 1.

  ‘Good morning, darling.’

  My mother made me, and everyone else, look like a slouch. She was always at her desk by seven. Most days that was annoying, but today it would kill a – I peeked at my watch. 8.38 – a bit of time. But that didn’t mean I was going to match her relentless good cheer. I liked being in the office early, but mostly because no one else was, and so I had a space when I didn’t have to talk. ‘Morning,’ was the most I could manage.

  Helena was good, I’ll give her that. She didn’t speak, just waited. Since she’s a corporate lawyer, her area of expertise can best be summarised as ‘money’, and so when the first rumours of Olive’s mysterious meetings surfaced, I’d asked her to keep an ear out for any whispers that might indicate a takeover was on the cards. If she’d ever heard anything, she hadn’t said, and I’d forgotten to ask. Now was a good time to repeat the question, but to my surprise, when I opened my mouth, what came out was, ‘Mother, do you know how – or if – you can find out about drug dealers, and distribution? Local networks, I mean?’

  Helena knows about everything. ‘The Home Office compiles figures for arrests, and it’s likely it’s broken down geographically,’ she said, almost absently, as if this were the type of question a mother expected from her child. Mummy, why is the sky blue? Mummy, where did Fido go when he died? Mummy, how do you find out about drug dealers? ‘That is, if you mean in Britain.’ As if I might be interested in drug dealing in Pretoria, or Novosibirsk.

  ‘Yes, here. In my neighbourhood.’

  One of the blessings of Helena is that, while she knows everything, and everyone, she rarely displays any curiosity. If she had asked me why I wanted to know, I would have said vaguely that I needed it for a manuscript I was working on. In the face of her lack of follow-up, though, I found myself explaining. ‘A house on Talbot’s Road burnt down at the weekend. They found a man dead in a shed outside, and the assumption from the circumstances is that he was an arsonist, using fires to cover his drug dealing. He worked with a youth group, mentoring boys, and they seem to think that was suspicious too. That he was using the boys as part of his distribution network. So I wanted to know more about the link between the youth groups and gangs, and how drug-distribution systems operated �
� how he would have been using the boys, if he could have been doing it without some of the other boys knowing.’ Sam believed Harefield was clean, after all.

  ‘What does the group do?’ asked Helena. ‘Was it a sports group? Did they travel to play matches, perhaps?’

  ‘No, I could see how that would work. But this sounds much more harmless: they just made T-shirts with skateboard logos on them.’

  Helena sounded engaged now. ‘To sell them?’

  I had no idea, so I said, smartly, ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘There’s a starting point, then. Selling is already a distribution network. Who they sold to, and where, might tell you more. However, it’s not my area.’ I’d never heard Helena say she didn’t know something before. If I kept a diary, I’d pull it out now and paste a gold star on the page in commemoration. ‘The police are the people to ask, but you know that.’ By which she meant, if I wasn’t asking Jake, she presumed there was a reason. ‘Otherwise an academic who works in the field? Criminology? I’ll see who I can find.’

  And she was gone. One more task in Helena Clair’s ever-expanding, ever-achievable To-Do list: Find my daughter a criminologist.

  I was still shaking my head at the phone when I heard voices in the open-plan area outside my office. I leant back to look around the door. Yep, the seething masses had seethed. I picked up my cup and headed to the kitchen.

  As had everyone else. There was a group of four inside, which meant the little galley space was at capacity, and then in the hall around it was what looked like an early-morning drinks party, except that everyone was clutching a mug, and the conversation was not superficial. Instead it was ‘Did you hear?’ and ‘What if?’ I joined in. I knew it was pointless, that everyone else knew it was pointless, but it was our livelihood, and no one was going to get any work done before the mystery meeting we’d been summoned to.