Lost Souls

by Neil White

  Harry threw his pen down and stood up sharply. ‘I worked hard to build this firm. All hours. All days. I gave Helena a good life.’

  ‘But where were you?’ Sam looked around. ‘Here? Helena needed a father, not a lawyer.’

  Harry seethed as he looked across at Sam, their eyes locked.

  Then Sam smiled and pulled a disk out of his pocket. ‘Maybe this will answer a few questions. See what Helena thinks of your friends then.’

  Harry looked at the disk, and then at Sam. He went pale.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, but Sam could tell that he had worked it out already.

  ‘You’ve got good cameras, Harry.’

  Harry’s eyes widened and his cheeks turned crimson, but before he could respond, the air was broken by the ring of Sam’s phone.

  Sam stepped back and looked at the screen on his phone. He held it up for Harry to see. ‘Your daughter,’ and then he turned around to answer.

  When he heard her voice, he was worried. She was crying, a soft mew.

  ‘I’ve been attacked,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘On the canal path,’ she said, the words coming in gulps, ‘between the school and home. I was walking back when I was jumped.’

  Sam’s nails dug deep into the back of the chair.

  ‘What about Henry? Is he okay?’

  Then he heard Helena begin to wail.

  ‘I can’t see him,’ she screamed. ‘He’s gone.’

  Sam dropped the phone, his hand trembling. He could hear Harry asking what was wrong, but it was background noise, the sound of the blood rushing through his brain the only thing he could hear. He had to swallow, just to stop himself from being sick.

  He turned round to Harry. ‘Something’s happened.’

  I turned off Johnny Cash. The first American Recordings album had rumbled around the room, his voice resigned to his short future, the guitar lean and raw, but it distracted me. My father had brought me up on Johnny Cash, but for once, I wasn’t in the mood. I offered my father a silent apology, a quick look to the heavens, and then looked down at Eric’s paintings.

  They were spread across the table, a mosaic of his final years, the images that haunted him as he woke. There was no logic here. I didn’t think Eric could dream the future any more than I could. But I knew that I was looking at the pictures for more than just interest now. I was looking for clues, some hint that he might have dreamt his own future, his own end.

  It was the most recent paintings that troubled me. There was darkness in them. The colours were flatter, almost dirty, and they all showed the dark building.

  I thought back to Jimmy King’s house, and then looked again at the paintings. In silhouette, it wouldn’t look much different. It was large, imposing, with two gables at the front, H-shaped. Is that what Eric had seen?

  And then I remembered the outbuildings there, at the end of the long, neat lawn. A child could be hidden in one of those.

  I smiled to myself. I sounded like I was starting to believe it. I knew why I was looking, why I was giving Eric the benefit of the doubt. It was because I had that same feeling that I’d had the year before, when my own father was killed, that there was something to look into. These paintings were by someone I knew, just briefly, and they had somehow led to his death. I knew there was a great story in them, but it had become more than that to me. I had seen the look in Mary Randle’s eyes, that loss, that disbelief. I had the chance to somehow make it right.

  I glanced towards a photograph on the wall. It was my father, playing football. He’d had a brief career as a professional in the lower leagues, before he gave it up and joined the police. I’d had it on my wall in London. It had made its way north, and I found myself nodding at it, making promises.

  Luke King. He was the key. He was at the centre of all of it, I sensed it, felt it, knew it with every gut instinct I had. He was linked to Jess’s death by his arrest. He was linked to Eric by the painting. He was linked to Terry McKay by Terry’s own words. And he was linked to the abductions by Eric’s death. But I didn’t know enough about him. I decided to go to Luke’s house, just to see what else I could find. I had the paintings now. I might see things I hadn’t seen before.

  * * *

  ‘So how do we play Billy Hunt this time?’ asked Pete. ‘We’ve tried softly softly.’ When Laura shot him a glance, he held his hands up. ‘That’s not a dig.’

  Laura looked at the house and thought about that. ‘We’ll just play it as it comes. He’ll be suspicious, but if he’s talking, keep it soft.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  Laura looked at him. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since you keep on getting things right.’

  They walked to the door together, but when they arrived, Pete hung back. The net curtain twitched even before she got her finger to the doorbell. When the door opened, it was Billy, and he looked flustered.

  ‘Who called you? I didn’t.’ He stepped to one side. ‘Come in, come in.’

  Laura and Pete exchanged confused glances but went in anyway. As they passed the front room, they saw Billy’s mother on the sofa, asleep. When they got to the back room, they saw a young woman in there, pretty, dressed in khaki trousers and white T-shirt, her short dark hair filled with red flashes. Protest chic.

  But it wasn’t her clothes or hair that drew Laura’s attention. It was the cut above her left eye, and the purple swelling over her right eye. There was a cut to her top lip, fat and red, and swelling to the side of her cheek, just above deep scratch marks on her neck.

  The woman looked at Billy, and then at Laura.

  ‘You said you wouldn’t call them,’ she wailed, and she pulled her knees up to her chest. Her hands went over her face, and Laura could hear the sniffles.

  ‘No one called us,’ said Laura. ‘We came to speak to Billy.’ She paused, and then asked, ‘Do you want to tell us what happened?’

  The girl said nothing.

  ‘Charlie, tell them,’ pleaded Billy, his eyes wide.

  She looked up, wiped her hand across her cheek and winced as she made contact with the swelling.

  Billy spoke for her. ‘It was Dan Kinsella. He did this.’

  ‘Dan Kinsella?’ queried Laura.

  ‘He goes to our group,’ said Billy.

  ‘The dream group?’

  Billy nodded.

  ‘So what happened?’ Laura asked Charlie. ‘Were you a couple?’

  Charlie looked down and shook her head slowly. ‘No,’ she said, but she said it in a way that told Laura that maybe she had hoped differently.

  ‘He came round yesterday morning, early,’ Charlie continued. ‘He seemed different, all excitable.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She looked up. ‘Just that. He was pacing up and down and talking really fast. I mean, he’s always bubbly, the life and soul, but this was different. He seemed, well, a bit desperate.’

  ‘So what did you do yesterday?’

  Charlie shrugged. ‘Just chilled out. But he didn’t want to go out, so we just stayed at my house.’

  Laura and Pete exchanged brief looks. They’d both picked up on the timeframe, that he had gone to see Charlie at around the time that Eric was discovered, along with Kyle.

  ‘Did he say why he didn’t want to go out?’ asked Laura, now sitting next to Charlie, her voice gentle, trying to coax out the facts.

  Charlie shook her head again. ‘He’s the sort of man you go along with. If he doesn’t want to go out, he just sort of makes it seem okay.’

  ‘He’s a control freak,’ interrupted Billy, his tone hostile.

  Charlie shot him a look, part anger, part acceptance.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Laura.

  ‘Just that,’ he said, but more quietly now. ‘He’s only been coming to the group for a few weeks, and he acts like he runs it, knows everything there is to know about precognition, as if he has read it all in a book.’

  ‘So what di
d you do all day?’ Laura asked Charlie. She was worried that Billy might stop her from talking.

  ‘Nothing much,’ replied Charlie quietly. ‘Just talked. About him. About me.’

  ‘What about him? Where is he from?’

  She looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t really know. He seems to know Blackley, but he doesn’t like to talk about himself Then she looked up. ‘His parents are dead, he told me that much, killed in a car crash. That’s when he started having precog dreams, like the emotions were a trigger.’

  Laura looked at Pete and nodded that he ought to go outside. He realised what that meant, that he should call it in, see what the computer had on Dan Kinsella.

  Once Laura was on her own with Charlie and Billy, she asked, ‘How did it get rough?’

  Charlie’s chin began to tremble, so Laura asked Billy if he would leave the room. She thought he was going to refuse, but when Laura smiled at him, he reluctantly agreed and went to make a drink. Once she was alone, Laura asked, ‘Did you become involved last night?’

  Charlie didn’t respond at first, but then, as the tears started, she nodded. ‘I went out to buy some wine, and I thought, well, you know, I thought something might happen.’ She wiped her eyes and shook her head. ‘It sounds stupid, but I thought we would, you know, kiss or something, maybe even end up in bed.’

  ‘But that isn’t what happened?’

  Charlie shook her head, and then she started to sob. She covered her face as she spoke, her voice broken and high.

  ‘He went through the bottle too quickly, so I opened another, and then he started coming on to me, but it wasn’t like how I’d imagined it. He gripped my neck, became all aggressive, like he was angry with me, but I hadn’t done anything wrong.’

  Laura reached out and held Charlie’s hands, giving them a reassuring squeeze. ‘Go on,’ she said quietly.

  ‘He kept on squeezing my neck,’ Charlie continued, ‘really hard, and I knew I didn’t want that. I had been having a dream like that, and I’d told Dan all about it, that I wake up gasping, my throat all closed up. It was like he was trying to make my dream come true. When I told him no, he said he wanted to put his hands around my throat, wanted me to feel like death was close, and that he could bring my life back.’ She sniffled and wiped her eyes. ‘He was so different when he was drunk.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I thought he was joking at first, so I laughed. But that made him angry, so he pinned me down.’ Her hands went to her throat and tears started to meander down her cheeks. ‘I could feel his hands on my neck.’ She gulped at the memory, and then seemed to steel herself. ‘I fought back. I screamed, kicked, thrashed around. I was scared. Then I bit him, really hard on his hand. He shouted out, and then he began to swear at me, loudly. Then he started to hit me.’ She took a deep breath as she recalled it. ‘He only stopped when the old man in the house next door banged on the wall.’

  ‘So he left?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘He ran out. I haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘You’ve no idea at all where he lives?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘We see each other at the meetings, and sometimes in town. It sounds stupid now, but he just never mentioned it.’

  Laura looked back towards the kitchen. ‘Why did you come here, to Billy?’

  Charlie wiped her nose and sniffed heavily. ‘I know he’s done some strange things, that he got into trouble over that girl, but anyone who looks after his mum like Billy does can’t be all bad. He never liked Dan, I knew that. I thought he was jealous, because maybe he liked me or something. I knew he liked Jess, and I thought Dan did too. It turned out that Billy was right.’ She smiled. ‘I think he gets lonely. He’ll make someone happy one day.’

  ‘I think his mother comes first,’ said Laura.

  Charlie nodded, gave a little laugh. ‘For now.’

  Just then, Pete came back into the room, shaking his head. ‘Intel hasn’t thrown anything up. There aren’t any Dan Kinsellas in Blackley, as far as we know.’

  Laura looked back at Charlie, who looked shocked. ‘Can you describe him?’

  She nodded, her eyes wide. ‘I can do better than that. I’ve got a picture of him.’ As she rummaged in her bag, she said, ‘I don’t think he knows I took it. It was at one of the meetings, just a couple of weeks ago.’

  Laura smiled. Progress. But as she looked at the photograph, something troubled her. She had seen him somewhere before.

  Just as they were getting ready to leave, Charlie smiled weakly, her eyes bleary from tears, and said, ‘My mum always told me I picked men badly.’

  Laura put her arm round her and guided her towards the door. ‘Just be patient,’ she said softly. ‘Your luck will change.’

  Chapter Fifty

  Sam’s tyres spewed out some gravel as he came to a stop, and then he ran to his house. There was a policeman by the door, taking a cigarette break. He almost stopped Sam from going in. The glare from Sam made him give way.

  The police activity was less than Sam expected. There was a female officer in uniform in the kitchen, making drinks. Helena was lying down on the sofa, a cold cloth over her head. There were two uniformed officers with her. Sam looked back into the kitchen. He saw that some of the empty vodka bottles were lined up on the worktop, taken out of the recycling bin. When he looked into the policewoman’s eyes, he saw pity.

  He turned around and walked into the living room. He went straight over to Helena and knelt beside her. He gripped her hand. Helena’s mother was there too, sitting in a chair by the window, sobbing quietly into a lace handkerchief.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

  The two policemen glanced at each other, and then one said, ‘Can we speak to you in private, Mr Nixon?’

  ‘Why not here?’

  They shrugged and then gestured towards a woman in black jeans with purple tints in her hair, standing in the corner of the room. ‘This is Madeleine Chilton from Blackley Social Services. She might be able to help.’

  Sam felt his head go light. Social Services. His family?

  He stood up and nodded. He noticed how Helena had just rolled over.

  Sam went into the dining room, Madeleine just behind him. When they were out of Helena’s hearing, Madeleine said, ‘We think Henry might have just run away, frightened.’

  Sam was confused. ‘Why? Helena called me. She told me that she had been attacked.’

  The two policemen had come into the room. They glanced quickly at Madeleine and then looked down.

  ‘The school has been concerned about your eldest son for a while now,’ said Madeleine quietly. ‘He has been arriving at school unkempt, sometimes without his coat in winter, and often complains of being hungry. They tried to speak to your wife about it, but she seemed drunk.’

  Sam stepped away, angry now. ‘What has this got to do with Helena being attacked, and Henry going missing?’ He went towards her, his eyes wild. ‘What is being done to find my son?’ he shouted, every word spelled out slowly.

  Madeleine swallowed, cleaned her front teeth with her tongue. ‘When the police arrived,’ she said, ‘your wife seemed confused, disorientated. There were no injuries.’

  ‘What, you think she made all this up?’

  Madeleine’s cheeks started to flush. ‘We think she may have collapsed, and then Henry ran away, frightened. This is being treated as a lost child, not an abduction.’

  The two officers stepped in. ‘We know about your wife’s drink-driving yesterday, Mr Nixon,’ said one, ‘and all the evidence says that she has a serious drink problem. We think that might be connected to whatever went on this morning.’

  Sam stepped forward, breathing hard, his voice deep and low. ‘Is this because you fucking clowns have told the world that the kiddy snatcher is dead, and you want to keep this quiet?’

  The two officers didn’t answer.

  Sam put his hands on hips and laughed out loud, bitter and angry. ‘I do not fucking believe it. You can thin
k what you like about Helena, but she has always been honest.’

  ‘Did you know she was drinking so heavily?’ asked Madeleine.

  That stopped him dead. He did know she was drinking heavily, but Sam had also known enough alcoholics to realise that their lives are all about lying, an endless self-delusion that they are in control. He took a deep breath, and then said, ‘My son is being left out there with some madman because you fucking idiots are trying to save face.’