by Neil White
Laura made a mental note to find out one day. The day was getting long enough without having to spend it dodging bruised egos.
‘But what if he’s right about Luke King?’ she said. ‘Maybe Eric Randle should come first.’
‘Yeah, if he’s right he’ll take his applause. But if he’s wrong he’ll make sure we cop the flack. Just me and the new girl.’
They were turning to walk out of the room together when someone shouted from the back of the room, ‘What’s the old boy’s name again? The one who called it in?’
Laura turned around. Yusuf, a young Asian officer with a soul patch on his chin and thin-rimmed glasses, was sitting in front of a computer screen. ‘Eric Randle,’ she shouted back.
‘In his sixties? Scruffy? Lives on the Ashcroft estate?’
Laura nodded.
‘I might be wrong,’ he continued, looking up now, ‘but I think his name came up in the abduction cases, when the children first started disappearing.’
Laura snapped a look back at Pete. They raised their eyebrows at the same time. This was about to get very interesting.
Chapter Seven
Eric Randle lived in a pebble-dashed semi on the Ashcroft estate, a collection of local-authority cul-de-sacs and high privet hedges. It wasn’t Laura’s first visit—she had been given a tour of the Blackley trouble spots on her first day—but this was her first incursion as part of a case.
Pete seemed like he knew it well, and as they did the circuit of the estate Laura started to understand why. The neighbourhood grocer had a red neon sign, but it was cracked and dirty, the windows protected by metal grilles during the day and shutters after it closed. Young girls walked the streets, but they weren’t the carefree teenagers they should have been, with college books tucked under their arms or heading into town to work in chain-stores on a Saturday. These girls pushed prams, their hair pulled back tightly as their fingers glittered with cheap gold, a ring for each finger, the gleam broken only by the orange glow of a cigarette as the smoke swirled around the next generation in the pushchair beneath. Laura didn’t see many smiles, and as Pete drove on she sensed the hostile recognition in their look. They were the police. They were trouble.
‘Seems a strange range of suspects,’ she said.
Pete looked over from his driving. ‘Huh?’
Laura pointed outside the car. ‘The son of a local hotshot or this. I’m getting a feeling already which way it’s going to go.’
‘The kids are ruining this place,’ he said. ‘It used to be okay, twenty years ago.’ He looked over at her. ‘But do you know what? There are some good people here. The older ones, the ones who didn’t have the savings to get out when it turned to shit, scared to go out, scared to stay in.’
Laura had seen these waste estates in London, but they seemed different there. In London they were more like spots of squalor in a vibrant whole, just part of the London jumble. She had been in the north long enough to know that the affluent areas were usually out of sight, often over a hill or two.
But it wasn’t just the housing that gave the estate away for what it was. It was the desolate looks in people’s eyes, the hopelessness, the cold northern winds etched into their pale complexions, the hunched shoulders, their hands pink and raw.
‘Do you know what the worst thing is?’ Pete said. ‘There are some decent kids too, whose parents do their best, but they just get swept up by the rest of the shit and end up with needles in their arms or a pocket full of rocks. By then it’s too late. Just debris, that’s all they are round here.’
Laura looked back out of the window and realised that Pete had described the real poverty she could see. It wasn’t about money or housing. It was about hope. Every face she looked into seemed to hold an acceptance that this was it, this was as good as it was ever going to get. It was no wonder they took shortcuts.
‘Here we go,’ said Pete, and he swung the car into a street of semi-detached houses.
Laura looked at the line of net curtains, at the long, unkempt grass, at the discarded plastic toys on the lawns. There was a dismantled car in one garden, engine parts leaking oil onto the path.
As they got nearer the top of the road, Pete curled his mouth into a snarl.
‘The bastard,’ he said, his teeth gritted. He banged the steering wheel. ‘He’s given us the wrong address.’
Laura peered through the windscreen as she felt her stomach turn over. She thought of the dishevelled old man from the murder scene, upset and scared. Could she have got it so wrong?
As the car came to a stop, she saw that the house was boarded up, covered with graffiti. There was a large splash of white on one corner of the board over the main window where someone had thrown a tin of paint.
‘But I called it in and he checked out,’ she said, her voice suddenly heavy with fatigue. It was still too early for the day to seem so long.
Pete was quiet for a while, but then he started to climb out of the car. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I could have stopped him too, but I didn’t. We’ll take the shit two-handed.’ He nodded towards the house. ‘We might as well take a look now we’re here.’
They walked up the short path together. It was cracked and chipped along the edges. There was also a splash of paint on the floor, obviously where the tin had landed. Pete went to the front door and kicked it.
‘Pretty solid,’ he said.
Laura grabbed his arm. Eric wasn’t enough of a suspect yet to arrest him, Egan had decided that, so she knew it was too early to go in uninvited. ‘Don’t. Let’s just take a look around.’
‘But he’s not living here.’
‘Someone does.’
When Pete looked at her quizzically, she pointed downwards. ‘Look at the lawn.’
He looked at the small patch of green in front of the house, puzzled. It was a neat square with a line of soil around it.
‘It’s been cut,’ Laura said, ‘and there are no weeds in that border. If he doesn’t live here, he must have good neighbours, because someone is looking after it.’
Pete smiled. ‘If you keep on bringing these clever city ways with you, you’ll be my boss soon.’
‘Let’s try round the back, see what we can see.’
Pete followed her as she went, and Laura sensed curtains twitch in the houses across the road. No one came out to speak to them. No coffees around here.
The back garden was similar to the front. Just a small lawn surrounded by empty flowerbeds, maybe only fifteen yards long. The windows at the back were boarded up as well, but they were free of graffiti. Laura looked round when she heard a noise, and she saw Pete had his head in the wheelie bin at the side of the house.
‘Anything unusual?’
He let the lid bang shut. ‘It’s empty.’ He rubbed his hands together as if to get dirt off them. ‘Let’s go. He’s not here.’
Laura looked around. She wasn’t so sure.
‘C’mon,’ Pete said. ‘I’m going to find him. I want to know why he gave you a fake address. That must put him higher up the list.’
Laura was about to say something, when Pete turned to go. She decided that she was too new to object. Instead, she agreed with him. ‘I think he was already at the top.’
The boy looked peaceful. His eyes were closed, his breaths soft and light, blond hair splayed out on the soft cotton pillow. The light came from an old paraffin lamp, the flame making the shadows pull in and out and his skin glow and shimmer.
He stood over him, listened to his breathing. It sounded regular. He went to stroke the boy’s cheek, but he stopped himself. The boy wouldn’t be with him for much longer. He didn’t want to leave traces. But as he looked down and saw the warm velvet of his skin, innocent and pure, he knew he couldn’t stop himself. He held his hand over the boy’s mouth, felt his warm breath, and then he lowered his hand, felt the boy’s lips on his palm, felt the breaths get hotter.
He closed his eyes for a moment, relished it, let out a groan of pleasure as his palm bec
ame warm. Then he pressed more firmly. He opened his eyes so that he could watch the boy’s chest rise. He gave a small gasp as the tiny chest stayed there, as the boy waited to take a breath, for the air to return.
He pressed harder, just a few more seconds, felt the rush as the boy’s face started to go red. He swallowed, felt his own breaths come faster. He could choose. It was entirely up to him. Life or death.
He smiled to himself, almost in congratulation. He chose life.
He moved his hand away and the boy’s chest sank. The boy let out a long sigh, and his breathing returned to normal.
He put his cheek near to the boy’s, felt the warmth on his own. He sat back and began to laugh, excited. He held up his hands, turned them in the light from the lamp. Healing hands, he thought, laughing louder. Healing hands.
He turned towards the television. It was the morning news that interested him. The old portable television was plugged into a car battery, a long coaxial cable leading out of the room. It threw blue flickers around the dirty walls, making the colour of the boy’s face shift and move.
The boy was on a bed by a wall, an old camp bed, a collection of sheets and blankets over him at night. There was a book next to it, The Little Prince. He read from it sometimes. The boy had been looked after, and he would be going home soon.
The news started on the hour. The boy had been the lead story for the last week. It was slipping down the news now, often just a tail-end reminder. The parents had done what they could to keep the press interested, but with no news there was nothing to report. The police had done what they always did, released information slowly, repackaged old leads as new ones, just to keep the story alive.
He settled back in his chair. His breathing slowed down, his body became still. He sensed the shadows in the room settle around him, like a cloak around his shoulders, dark and comforting. As the news came on, he closed his eyes and waited.
The boy was the third story in. The parents wept some more. They loved him, they realised that now. But what about when he had taken him? He was just hanging around the streets, close to midnight. Cider and cigarettes. Bikes and skateboards. Not at home. Not safe.
He smiled as the parents pleaded to the camera, felt himself become aroused. They were searching the streets, doing their own door to door. Oh, he liked that. They desperately wanted him back. And he could do that. He could make it better. He sat forward. He wanted to see their eyes, wanted to know that it would be different when the boy went home.
He sighed with pleasure. He had seen it, the pain, the longing, the apology in their eyes. They knew now how much being without him had hurt them.
He looked towards the boy.
‘I’ll make you rich, Connor,’ he whispered, a tear forming in his eye. He leaned forward, so that his mouth was by the boy’s face. He spoke softly, tenderly. ‘Richer than you’ve ever been before. Not money,’ he said quietly. ‘You won’t need that. There are greater riches in the world than that.’
He looked back towards the television.
‘Just one more day,’ he whispered. ‘Just one more day.’
Chapter Eight
I made it to the morning briefing on the abductions, held early to give the evening editions and lunchtime television a chance to get their reports ready. There was nothing much that was new so I headed to the Magistrates’ Court, next to the police station.
Going to court had been my fall-back in London. If in doubt, go to court, because there was always something to write about. My career had started by writing court reports, when I had worked on one of the local papers based in Turners Fold. All the crime from Turners Fold ended up in the Blackley court—it was the biggest local town—so I knew my way around the courthouse, an old Victorian building, with pillars by the doors and high ceilings that wrecked the acoustics. The magistrates sat high and lofty, looked down on the lawyers perched on old wooden pews, and at the defendants perched high in the dock.
The regular court reporter, Andy Bell, a haggard old smoker with long, grey hair and patched-up trousers, had been hostile at first. He had put the years in, on Fleet Street in his younger days, and, like me, he had returned to his northern roots. But he had mellowed over the last few days. He remembered me from before I moved to London, and he soon realised that we wanted different things. I wanted the angles on Blackley life, the background stories. He just wanted the day-to-day knocks.
It was the internet thieves Andy hated, the ones who scoured the web for his stories when cases first hit the courtroom and then just arrived for the sentence hearings. I didn’t do that. He had earned the right to those stories. And anyway, he knew the tricks. If he had a story that he knew would interest the nationals, he would get the local paper to hold it back from the website until after the London deadlines. By then his story would be in London and in print before the internet hyenas knew anything about it.
It was one of those stop-start days, the cells quiet, and I was filling in the gaps by drinking coffee with Sam Nixon, one of the defence lawyers.
Nixon was one of the main players in the courtroom. Tall and dapper, he looked every inch the lawyer. Single-breasted Aquascutum suit, neat and sharp, and Thomas Pink shirt, he shone success when surrounded by failure. The courthouse attracted showmen, those who strutted and boasted, promising clients acquittals they couldn’t deliver, but Sam was different. His accent didn’t have the polish of his looks, he spoke direct and bluntly and the magistrates liked him for it. If Sam Nixon said it had happened, then it had. The earth is flat? According to Mr Nixon it is, and that’s enough.
I was talking football with Nixon and watching the movement from the court corridor, the town’s drama. Young men in tracksuits slouched on hard plastic seats, there to see friends, to socialise, part of their scene. Bad skin. Bad teeth. Bad lives. The older ones sat back and looked bored. The first-timers wore suits and stared at the floor, picking at their nails.
A prosecutor loitered nearby, but he wasn’t saying much, more interested in Sam’s football tales than his caseload. He was a good lawyer—I had been around enough prosecutors to know that most of them are—but the machinery of the civil service knocked the fight out of them, so that being able to forget about work became the best part of the job.
I turned around at the sound of laughter from a corridor that ran from one of the back courts. A man bounced into the foyer, his arms swinging defiantly, his grin showing off brown teeth and a complexion that looked like he had hovered over too many joints, his skin tarred and lined. He turned in a circle, his chest out, his arms in a come-on pose, and said to Sam, ‘She’s a fucking star, that one,’ before strutting past the glass ushers’ kiosk and out of the main door.
The ‘fucking star’ emerged from the same corridor, a tired look in her eyes. I had met her before but I couldn’t remember her name. She was one of Sam’s assistants, pretty and blonde and tall, with her hair tied back into a ponytail that swished against the black suit cut tight to her body, her skirt just above her knees. She had the figure to carry it, and I sensed the mob of track-suits a few yards away turn to gape.
Sam Nixon nodded towards her. ‘Have you met Alison Hill, one of the lawyers at Parsons?’
I smiled and held out my hand. ‘I’ve seen you around.’ When Alison shook, she smiled back at me, her eyes warm.
‘Nice to meet you,’ she said. I sensed the confidence that comes from good education and good looks.
I nodded towards the exit doors. ‘Looks like someone was happy.’
Alison looked that way briefly, and then she said, ‘I lost.’
I thought back to the client as he’d bounced through the court foyer. He looked like he had spent his life being beaten by the system, every loss carved into the anger lines around his eyes. He had lost again but at least he had stood up to it.
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ I said. When she didn’t respond, I asked her, ‘Was justice done?’
‘Not yet,’ interrupted Sam, and he looked solemn.
Alison looked puzzled.
‘The bill,’ said Sam, and then he began to grin. ‘The job’s not done until we get paid. Then there’s justice.’
As Alison rolled her eyes, my eyes caught someone looking at Sam.
He was in the middle of a pack of drinkers. They all looked haggard and tired, their faces much older than their years, red and puffy, their eyes unfocused. Their clothes hung loose and stained, their movements were slow and deliberate.
I guessed that whoever it was, he wasn’t pleased with Sam’s last effort for him. His eyes were red like all the rest, drunk even that early in the morning, but the focus was sharp and clear. Despite the drink, his stare was hard and direct.
I looked at Sam, who acted like he hadn’t noticed him. He was talking to Alison.
