Out of the Dark Page 9

  ‘And how far have the police got in identifying him?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ said the nurse, surprised. ‘All we know is that he had your name and address with him. The police have checked all the agencies that deal with runaways and he doesn’t fit any of their records, but then he’s a bit young to run away. I heard someone say you thought he might be connected with one of your cases.’

  ‘Yes.’ Trish had been so taken up with the idea that David must be her half-brother that she’d almost forgotten the likelier explanation of his search for her. The woman who looked after him had probably got Trish’s name from the papers after a child-protection case and found out where she lived. It couldn’t be that difficult, whatever Dave had said. There need be no connection with Paddy – or the mysterious Jeannie Nest.

  ‘Before I go,’ she asked, noticing how much easier her breathing had become, ‘is there anything David needs? I can’t help feeling responsible for him. He says he likes apple juice and I assume it’s OK to give him that?’

  ‘Fine.’ The nurse’s face was patterned with lines that made him look much older than his manner suggested, but his lips softened and his voice was warm with compassion as he added, ‘But honestly what he needs most is the comfort of regular visits from you. At the moment you seem to be the only person in the world he trusts. When you’re here he opens his eyes and communicates a little. When you go he watches till you’re out of sight and then shuts down. He barely moves the rest of the time, except occasionally to eat – and that’s not nearly often enough. He won’t talk to any of us.’

  ‘What about the other children? They all look friendly.’

  ‘They tried, but he won’t respond, so now they’ve given up. I hope the police find his mother, poor little scrap.’

  So long as she’s not the cause of his terror, Trish thought, saying aloud, ‘Or his father.’

  ‘That’s less likely, as you must know. He hasn’t mentioned any father to you, has he?’

  ‘No. And I haven’t asked, but perhaps I should.’

  ‘More important is to get him to eat. Lunch is coming up now. Could you take his tray and see if you can persuade him to have some of it?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll do my best anyway.’

  David was much too old for the aeroplane games Trish had seen her friends play with their babies to encourage them to eat, but she set about distracting him when the nurse pulled his tray table forwards and put the food on it. She tried Harry Potter, which got them past two forks of pasta, laboriously chewed and swallowed, then Pokémon. But he didn’t like Pokémon and had never swapped the cards. She asked if he’d had a scooter, but he hadn’t, and so she tried asking about his friends.

  His face brightened then, and he started to tell her about Joe, who had red hair and was always getting into trouble at school for fighting. Trish watched a little colour warming David’s cheeks and heard his voice quicken. He began to eat more vigorously, talking with his mouth full about Joe’s latest exploits.

  ‘What’s his other name?’ she asked without thinking and watched everything close down.

  All the animation in David’s eyes died and he stopped talking. He let the fork drop back into the half-empty bowl of food and closed his eyes, letting his head drop back against the pillows. Trish put her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘That was silly of me. I wasn’t trying to trap you into giving anything away, I just liked the sound of your friend. I’m really sorry.’

  But it didn’t help. He did open his eyes, but he stared at her with such bleak, resigned disappointment that she hated herself. She stayed with him, sometimes trying to talk, sometimes letting him pretend to sleep, for another half hour. Realising she wasn’t getting anywhere near him, or doing anything to help, she stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry, David,’ she said again. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, not to ask any questions, just to see how you are and bring you some more apple juice. Is there anything else you’d like? Have you read the latest Harry Potter, or would you like me to get that for you?’

  A flicker in his eyes told her he wanted it, but the obstinacy of his lips showed that he wasn’t going to ask. She nodded and smiled again.

  ‘I’ll bring a copy along with me anyway. Just in case it helps. Bye for now.’

  She let her hand rest for a micro-second on his short dark hair and had to force herself to pull back, instead of stroking his head and bending down to kiss it. He looked so small, so lonely, and so brave that she wanted to slay dragons for him.

  Back in the flat, she phoned chambers to tell Dave she’d be working at home for the rest of the day and asked whether the police had been in touch with him.

  ‘They took the list of your clients, as I told you, but I haven’t heard anything since. Why would I? It’s nothing to do with us. You’ll be coming in tomorrow, I take it?’

  ‘Probably,’ Trish said brightly. ‘But you can always get me on my mobile. Bye, Dave.’

  There were all sorts of things she should be doing, things there was never time for in the normal maelstrom of her work: seeing the dentist, getting all the clothes that needed mending to the nearest dry cleaners that had a repair service, even persuading the freeholders to organise a building firm prepared to come out to scrape down, fill and repaint her window frames, several of which were showing distinct signs of rot. But none of it held any attraction whatsoever. Still, she had to do something.

  Restless but bored, and worried, she moved around her big flat, flying back to the phone when it started to ring. But it was only a nervous-sounding young man in a call centre, wanting to sell her double glazing. She let out some of her frustration on explaining to him why no one with any sense would ever buy double glazing or indeed anything else over the phone and why it was an unconscionable outrage for call centres to disturb total strangers with idiotic interruptions like this in the middle of the working day. The call-centre script obviously didn’t include answers to that kind of outburst, so the young man put down the phone without another word, while Trish was still in mid-diatribe.

  Feeling guilty – it wasn’t his fault, after all, and at least he was working for his living – she made herself collect all the clothes with broken zips, dropped hems, and missing buttons, bundled them up and took them to the cleaners.

  She managed to find enough errands to keep her out of the flat until nearly seven o’clock. Her mobile rang at intervals, but none of the calls was important. And all her friends were busy when she rang them. Anna Grayling had time for a five-minute chat, then said she had to go, reminding Trish that they could catch up with everything else when they met at the National Film Theatre next Wednesday.

  Eventually there was nothing for it but to go home. At the top of the iron staircase, she realised she could have stayed out longer by going to see a film that evening, too. She hesitated, with the front door open, looking back across the lower roofs all round her. Two men were standing below, pointing up at her. She was too far away to see their faces, but she wasn’t going anywhere near them. Turning quickly, she abandoned the idea of the cinema and went inside, double-locking the door.

  The red light on the answering machine was flashing. She pressed the play button to hear Caroline Lyalt’s voice, saying:

  ‘Trish, I know it’s been days, and I’m sorry. Things have been going bananas here, but I’ll be at home on Thursday evening from six-thirty if you still want to talk then.’

  Lil Handsome was searching the Evening Standard, as she’d done every night since her son had come bursting into her flat with blood on his trousers. There should have been something in one of the papers by now. There was one tiny paragraph about a woman’s body being found in a flat in West London, but it read like a suicide report, so it didn’t count. She lit another fag, the fifth of the day, hoping it would help her think. Her memory was still sharp as a tack, so it wasn’t hard to go through everything Gary had said that night. She’d been in bed, woken out of a rare deep sleep by crashing and cursing outside.

>   At first she thought her old man had got out, so she didn’t bother to look at the clock, just grabbed her dressing gown and tied it tightly under her bust. When she opened the bedroom door and saw that the intruder was only Gal, she was glad, even though it was shocking to find he had a key to her place. His dad must’ve given it to him. She wondered how often he came here when she was out. And what he did then.

  ‘You been on the piss?’ she said crossly to hide her fear. ‘What’re you doing here? And what’s that on your trousers?’

  He looked down, wiping the palms of his hands down the marks.

  ‘Nothing much, Ma. Gi’s some of Dad’s clothes, will you?’

  ‘Looks like blood to me,’ she said, casual-like. She’d seen plenty of blood in her time and knew what it looked like at all stages of drying and on all surfaces. This looked newish, not sticky any more, but still red not brown. ‘You bin fighting?’

  ‘Only a tom, Ma. She come at me out of the dark, like a wildcat.’

  She wondered what he’d been reading – or who he’d been talking to. Like a wildcat! Didn’t sound like her younger son at all.

  ‘Where was this then, Gary?’

  ‘Wanstead. I’d bin to the pub and come out with me mates. They went off to get their motor; I was going for the van and she come at me like I said. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just give her one and she fell in the gutter. I got the mess on me trousers when I bent down to make sure she was OK. She was breathing fine, so I phoned 999 and waited till the ambulance come. Then I legged it back here. Gi’s some of Dad’s clothes, Ma. I’ll make a cuppa while you’re getting them. Mikey here?’

  ‘I haven’t heard him come in, so he’s probably still out cabbing.’ Lil was glad of that. She didn’t want them quarrelling, not with Gary in this mood anyway. As it was, she barred the way to the kettle, saying, ‘I’ll make the tea.’

  She wasn’t letting him near any boiling water, not if she could help it. She kept her eyes on him all the time she could, except when she was filling the kettle. He’d never hit her yet, but he was so like his dad, she wouldn’t be surprised if it happened. She knew well enough that he’d hit plenty of other women, and that he liked doing it.

  Could he be telling the truth about the tom? It didn’t seem very likely. He was much too wired for one thing, and phoning an ambulance didn’t sound like him. Whoever the woman had been, he’d obviously hurt her bad. Lil hoped it really was a stray prostitute, who wouldn’t be able to finger him. She didn’t want the police around, asking questions. Not now. Not ever again.

  The tea made, she emptied the spare boiling water into the sink, so there wouldn’t be anything for Gal to throw at her like his father had done. Her hand was stroking her jaw, like it always did when she thought of Ron, even now he was doing life. The hospital had set the jaw straight, but still it ached, even after all these years.

  ‘Come on, Ma. What’re you waiting for?’ Gal said, taking a step towards her.

  She shied; she couldn’t help it. It was hard to think of this great hulking brute as the same slippery, bloody little creature that had emerged from between her legs, screaming and rigid forty-five years ago, with the cord like a fat blue-grey worm snaking out between them. She held out a mug of tea, like a shield, giving him the glare that had always made him mind her in the past.

  It worked again. He looked at his useless great feet and shuffled a bit. He took the tea. She’d put a lot of milk in it so that even if he threw it, it wouldn’t do much harm.

  ‘What’re you going to do with the clothes if I give them to you?’

  ‘Change?’ he said, making it sound like he was asking her a question. She thought of Mikey’s brains, and her own, and asked God for patience.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Go home.’

  ‘You can’t. Not if you hurt this girl as bad as it sounds. Remember last time? You ought to get out of the way for a bit.’ Lil looked him up and down and thought of the pesetas she had left after her last holiday. She should’ve taken them back to the travel agent, but she’d never got round to it. ‘Spain. That’s where you should go.’

  ‘Spain? Ma, you gotta be joking. I hate all that foreign muck.’

  ‘There’s lots of ex-cons living there, so you’ll feel right at home, and you can get all the English food you can eat, and cheap booze too. You’ll be fine. You got your passport, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. But not here.’

  No, she thought. Of course not. Nothing so useful. Post Offices used to sell some kind of European travel permit. Could you still get those? Maybe not. Better safe than sorry.

  ‘Go home in the van, park it unobtrusive-like. Get your passport. Don’t pack nothing. You don’t want the neighbours seeing you carting a case out of there. I’ll pack you some of your dad’s things, and get you a pair of trousers for now. You can leave them ones with me and I’ll burn them for you.’

  ‘I’ll need money.’

  ‘I’ll give you some.’ She might have known he’d ask for that. It was all he’d ever wanted from her. ‘Then you can take the van to Dover and get a ferry, like you do for the beer and fags. After that it’s a straight drive down through France to Spain. It’s not hard. You’ll be OK. Go on, go and get your passport. You can come back after a week or two. Take a holiday. Enjoy yourself and keep out of the way till the Old Bill loses interest.’

  He shrugged, but she could see he did remember the last time he’d beaten up a working girl, and the nights he’d spent in the police cells and all the interrogations till they’d let him go because they didn’t have the evidence. That girl hadn’t died in the end, but she’d been too scared to identify him in the line-up. Lil wasn’t so sure about this one. This one sounded bad.

  The young constable felt as though he was swallowing pints of hot saliva, desperate to stop the nausea. He’d never seen a body that looked like a brown-and-purple shopping bag before. There was blood everywhere, splattered in patterns over the floor and up the white cupboards under the bookshelves. He’d never seen so many books before either, except in a library.

  Groping for his radio, he tried to think about the books instead of the body. His fingers slipped and he couldn’t work out how to switch the thing on. Then he remembered the woman who’d let him in and who he’d made wait outside. She was a friend of the householder, worried because she hadn’t seen her since lunch on Sunday and she should’ve been at work. They hadn’t taken her seriously at the station, which was why they’d sent PC Feather to investigate.

  The radio cracked into life so his fingers must have known how to work it even though his mind had forgotten. He muttered into it. They couldn’t hear him, so he had to shout and Mrs Mason, the friend, came bursting into the room, looked at the body and collapsed. He stared at her, crumpled into a heap like an old Indian cushion in the middle of her friend’s blood.

  ‘Wait there, Feather,’ said the radio. ‘Don’t touch anything. Don’t let anyone in. Got that? Feather? Feather?’

  Chapter 7

  Chief Inspector Lakeshaw nodded to the pathologist. He slid a scalpel into the dead woman’s skin to make the Y-incision that would reveal the flesh of her face and then her internal organs. Lakeshaw dreaded the coils and colours he’d see as soon as the flaps of skin and flesh were parted, and the smell. He should have been used to it all by now, but he wasn’t. Every time, he was shocked by the tubes and lumps, brownish-red, purple, grey and orange, still wet, and quivery as soon as anyone touched them. There was something about the way pathologists’ dead-looking white-latexed fingers held the plump mobile lumps of dead offal that …

  Flashes distracted him. The photographer pumped his camera like a machine gun. As the sickening reek rose from the opened cadaver, Lakeshaw was glad of the mask and the drops of lavender water his wife had given him. The smell of bodies, even ones like this that weren’t seriously decomposed, was vile. He sometimes thought he’d die with it in his nostrils, however long he lasted after he’d retired.

&
nbsp; The saw glittered in the bleak white lights of the morgue as Dr Hardy began to split the ribcage. In a way this performance was hardly necessary. He’d already established that the woman had been strangled with something like a scarf. A few fibres had been collected and would be examined later. It had surprised Lakeshaw, who’d assumed that she’d died from the beating.

  Her face looked like a pile of mashed black- and redcurrants, showing crusted maroon breaks in the skin where the blows had got through. One cheekbone was completely smashed and her jaw hung out of alignment. There were broken teeth too. Bruises spread all over her, right down to her slim ankles. They’d all been meticulously measured and photographed for later analysis.

  They looked bad enough to have killed anyone, but Hardy was sure the beating had happened after death. There’d been plenty of blood, though. All that stuff about dead bodies not bleeding was so much cock. Lakeshaw thought he might get photographs of this one and the scene for use in some of the elementary training courses.

  The spurts of this dead woman’s blood had reached at least two feet away from her body as it lay in the centre of the living room. So Lakeshaw had officers out now, doing house-to-house to find witnesses to a blood-spattered fugitive. And there were others out emptying all the skips and dustbins in the neighbourhood in case the bloke, whoever he was, had been bright enough to get rid of his saturated gear there.

  Nick Gurles, who’d been checking the time all through the morning, got up and swung his jacket from the back of his chair. Something caught his eye as he looked down, and he saw there was a mark on his tie. He couldn’t see it properly, even by squinting, and didn’t want to make whatever it was worse by careless scraping. There were mirrors in the bog.

  He washed his hands carefully, scraping a minute gob of dirt from under one thumbnail, then dried them, making sure there wasn’t the slightest hint of dampness to mark the silk, before picking the ball of fluff off his tie. Some of his colleagues kept spare ties, even spare shirts, in the office, but that had always seemed far too girly. One last check in the mirror and he was ready. He went back to his desk and awaited the Chairman’s summons.