The Chameleon's Shadow (17 page)

She eyed him curiously for a moment, then gave a small shrug of disappointment. ‘You’re not the person I thought you were,’ she said.

‘Ditto,’ Acland murmured.

‘Then we’ve both wasted our time.’ She offered a small nod of farewell and headed towards the ambulance, where she had a brief word with the paramedics and Chalky before continuing on to her car.

Chalky came back. ‘Shift your arse,’ he ordered. ‘Your lady friend wants to follow the meat wagon so that we can see the lad safely delivered.’ He retrieved all the bags from the pavement, including Acland’s kitbag, and set off after Jackson.

Acland stalked angrily behind him. ‘Did she tell you to do that?’

‘What?’

‘Take my kitbag.’

‘Just doing you a favour, mate.’

‘Not interested. I want my stuff.’

‘Then show the lady some gratitude first.’ Chalky crossed Caroline Street and dumped all the bags into Jackson’s open boot before slamming it shut. ‘Grow up, son,’ he said scathingly. ‘Do you think anyone’s ever cared enough to come looking for
me
?’

* Jackson made no comment when Acland slid into the seat behind Chalky and pulled the door closed. She merely lowered the windows to dispel some of the older man’s aroma then headed down towards the Aldwych. Amused by Chalky’s cheerful announcement that it was the first time he’d been in a car since he’d walked out on his old woman, she encouraged him to talk about himself. How old was he? ‘Last time anyone took notice, thirty-three . . . but I gave up counting after that. I went for a drink with some mates . . . had a few too many jars . . . and found the wife waiting for me when I got home. She had a bad temper, that woman. Didn’t want to

celebrate my birthday herself but got steaming mad because
I
did.

Is that fair or is that fair?’

Jackson smiled. ‘How long ago was that?’

‘Now you’re asking.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Twenty-two years, give or take a year or two. I was born in ’51 . . . joined the army in ’69 . . . spent three years in Germany . . . did a couple of stints in Northern Ireland . . . married in ’78 . . . fought in the Falklands in ’82 . . . cashed in my chips a year later . . . then took to the road when I couldn’t stand the missus any longer. She blamed me for the lack of nippers. That’s what got her riled.’

‘Did you think about getting help for it?’

‘Nah. Waste of time. Reckoned the best thing I could do was bugger off and let her have a bash with someone else.’ He sounded quite cheerful about it. ‘It wasn’t much of a marriage. She only liked me when I wasn’t around – sent letters and such – then, soon as I came home, the knives came out.’ He pulled a face. ‘The drink might have had something to do with it. Couldn’t face her without a few jars under my belt . . . Kept asking myself why I’d tied myself to a roly-poly pudding – no offence – when I should have gone for something I could have got my arms round.’

‘What did you do after you left the army?’

‘Couldn’t settle to anything. The world seemed pretty flat after the Falklands.’ Chalky sighed. ‘I should have stayed a soldier. I got a buzz out of going to war.’

Jackson glanced at Acland’s face in the rear-view mirror, but if he had any fellow-feeling with Chalky’s views, he wasn’t showing it. ‘What rank were you?’

‘Made it to corporal just before we left for the South Atlantic. Best year of my bloody life that was . . . been downhill ever since.’

This time Acland did show some interest. ‘Which regiment?’ he asked.

‘Two Para.’

‘Which company?’

‘B Company.’

‘So you were in the attack on Goose Green?’

Chalky lifted a grimy thumb in the air. ‘Certainly was. It was us took Boca Hill. I lost a good mate there.’ He shook his head in sudden wistful nostalgia. ‘We joined up together and I can hardly remember what he looked like now . . . Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

Acland stared out of the window as Jackson turned on to Waterloo Bridge. The river was only beautiful at night, when the lights along its banks gleamed like diamonds on black velvet, and the Palace of Westminster, lit by arc lamps, looked more like a fairy castle than the seat of government. In daylight hours, with the embankments and bridges thronged with people and cars, he could see no beauty in it at all. ‘So how come a corporal from 2 Para ends up drinking meths in the gutter?’ he asked harshly.

Surprisingly, Chalky didn’t take offence. ‘I never drink the
dyed
meths,’ he said, as if such abstinence were a matter for pride, ‘though I still go for the white stuff when I can get it. It’s not so bad – rots your brain and rots your liver – but it’s cheap and it keeps the boredom at bay for a few hours.’ He scratched the beard at the side of his face. ‘I prefer cider.’

‘That’s not an answer. You wouldn’t have made corporal if you hadn’t had something going for you. What happened to that person?’

Chalky shrugged. ‘Who knows, son? Maybe he just got lost on the Falklands.’

T
HE AMBULANCE HAD ALREADY
arrived by the time Jackson turned off Lambeth Palace Road into St Thomas’s A&E entrance. With every emergency parking space taken, she glanced at Acland in the mirror and asked him if he had a valid driving licence.

He nodded. ‘No one’s asked for it back yet.’

She pulled over and opened her door. ‘There’s a staff car park round the side. Find the main entrance and follow the signs. I just need a couple of minutes to check through the kid’s things . . . see if I can find out who he is. If you’re challenged, show this – ’ she pointed to a medical priority sticker on her dashboard

– ‘and ask them to page Trevor Monaghan or phone me on this number.’ She took a card from her pocket and passed it back to him.

‘Don’t go looking through anything of mine,’ said Chalky firmly. ‘The black rucksack belongs to the lad . . . everything else belongs to me . . . and it’s private.’

Jackson eased out from behind the wheel. ‘You’re safe on that score,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’m not in the habit of rifling through plastic carrier bags full of rubbish.’

She opened Acland’s door and handed him the keys. ‘You’re very trusting,’ he said, climbing out. ‘Why shouldn’t I be? You’re not planning to steal a BMW, are you?’ He watched while she opened the boot and made a quick search of Ben’s rucksack. ‘I haven’t driven since I lost my eye.’ ‘So? You can see well enough to climb railings.’ She removed a

label from the inside flap with a name, Mr B. Russell, and an address in Wolverhampton. ‘I’ll take this for the moment, but can you go through his things with a fine-tooth comb after you’ve parked? We need home address, surname and next of kin.’

‘Shouldn’t the hospital do it?’

‘It’ll be quicker this way.’ She took out her medical case and slammed the boot shut again. ‘Bring the bag to reception when you’ve finished and ask them to page me or Dr Monaghan –’ she eyed him for a moment – ‘and don’t leave Chalky alone in my car. I’d prefer the contents to be intact when I come back.’

Acland wanted to tell her that he knew what she was doing – tying him to a responsibility he hadn’t asked for – but she was gone before he could say it. In any case, part of him rose to the occasion, even if he recognized, and resented, how easily Jackson manipulated him.

‘You sure you can drive this thing?’ asked Chalky suspiciously as Acland climbed in beside him and turned his head to focus his good eye on the gearbox. ‘I notice no one asked me what I thought about it.’

Acland saw with relief that the car was an automatic. ‘If you want to make yourself useful, help me get out of here. Shout if I get too close to anything on my left.’

In the event, it was more by luck than good judgement that Acland made it safely to the car park. Chalky was about as much use as a maiden aunt who’d never been in a car in her life. He peered religiously out of his window but, with a complete lack of spatial awareness, he failed to mention a single hazard until after it had passed.

‘You damn near hit a bollard back there,’ he said helpfully as Acland killed the engine.

‘Thanks for warning me.’

‘Didn’t need to. You were doing OK on your own.’ He pulled a baccy tin out of his coat pocket and started to shred wisps of tobacco on to a Rizla. ‘So what’s the plan?’

‘We both get out so you don’t pollute the doctor’s car any further.’

‘She’s some woman,’ said Chalky, rolling the paper in his fingers. ‘Seems pretty interested in you.’

‘She’s a lesbian.’

The older man gave a snort of amusement. ‘The meths hasn’t totally rotted my brain, lad. I’ve a few dyke friends down in Docklands – they tend to hang together for safety – but I share a cider with them from time to time. They look after each other . . . There’s a couple of schizos in the group that the others take care of.’ He paused to run his tongue along the paper. ‘The doc’s doing the same for you.’

Acland got out and walked round to open Chalky’s door. ‘She wants me to check the boy’s rucksack to see if she missed anything.’

The older man studied him thoughtfully. ‘You’d better let me do that, son. The kid doesn’t like strangers poking through his stuff any more than I do. Think I didn’t notice you eyeing up the bags in the alleyway?’

Acland ignored him. ‘I’ll only be looking for next-of-kin details. You can watch while I do it if it’ll make you happier.’

But Chalky was more interested in creature comforts. ‘I’ll take a quiet smoke and a drink in here where it’s warm. You can show me what you’ve found afterwards . . . and I’ll tell you what’s important and what isn’t.’

‘No chance.’ Acland put his hand under the other man’s elbow and heaved him upright. ‘You can do your smoking and drinking on that wall over there.’

‘I’m not taking orders from you, lad.’

‘I outrank you.’

Chalky shook him off. ‘Not in my world, you don’t,’ he said with sudden belligerence. ‘In my world, anyone who’s been at this game longer than you takes precedence . . . and that includes young Ben in there.’

Acland kept an eye on his fists. ‘You don’t want to take me on, Corporal. I’ve been a mean bugger since the ragheads destroyed my face.’

‘You look it,’ Chalky agreed. ‘Seen guys like you before . . . fucked on the outside and fucked on the inside. What the hell? The wall’s as good as anywhere.’ He removed a half-bottle of vodka from another pocket. ‘I got lucky,’ he said by way of explanation as he wandered off. ‘A lass gave me a tenner this morning . . . said I reminded her of her grandpa.’

* If Acland had ever thought about leaving, he abandoned the idea as he watched Chalky perch on the low wall bordering the car park and unscrew the vodka with shaking hands. Perhaps it was the desperate way the corporal sucked at the alcohol, or the fact he looked older than the fifty-six he was claiming, but the scene – Dickensian in its harsh reality – burned into Acland’s brain. He couldn’t imagine this man as a soldier with the fortitude to march and fight for two days on the desolate ridges of the Falkland Islands. He retrieved Jackson’s torch from the dashboard pocket, then opened the boot and upended Ben’s rucksack in the front corner. The ceiling light was strong enough to show objects, but Acland propped the torch on his kitbag to help him decipher anything written. He experienced a similar embarrassment to DI Beale as he surveyed the adolescent’s pathetic haul. There were more gadgets than Acland possessed – a couple of mobile telephones, a digital camera, a BlackBerry and four iPods – but fewer clothes. Acland guessed the gadgets were stolen – certainly none of them had functioning batteries – but he separated out the mobiles and the BlackBerry in case there was anything relevant on them. There were several envelopes, all addressed to Ben Russell c/o a drop-in centre in Whitechapel. Inside were handwritten letters from someone called Hannah. Acland skimmed through them.
I miss you so much . . . Dad’s been over the moon since you left . . . He’s such a knobhead . . . keeps saying out of sight, out of mind . . . I

feel sorry for your mum . . . I saw her in town and she looked really sad . ..
At the top of each letter, by way of Hannah’s address, was
The Hell Hole
, but the frank marks on the envelopes suggested they’d been posted in Wolverhampton.

In one of the rucksack pockets, Acland found a photograph of a simpering girl with straight blonde hair, heavily made-up eyes and pale pink lips. A flourishing dedication had been scrawled in felt-tip pen across the bottom –
Love you, babe – don’t forget to write –
and on the back in pencil was written
25 Melbury Gardens, WV6 0AA
. It didn’t take Einstein to work out that this was the address for Ben’s return letters, although Acland doubted it was where Hannah lived. The ‘knobhead’ father wouldn’t ignore letters from London.

He repacked the rucksack, placing the phones, BlackBerry, envelopes and snapshot in the front pocket, then dropped it to the ground at his feet. He took another look at the array of bags that Chalky claimed were his, then stepped away from the car and raised his voice. ‘Are you sure nothing else in here belongs to Ben? I remember him bringing more than just the rucksack into the passageway.’

‘You’re talking through your arse.’

Acland studied him for a moment. ‘If you keep claiming to be a soldier,’ he said coldly, ‘I’ll slit your bloody throat. Nothing you’ve ever done in your whole miserable life allows you to range yourself with the guys I’ve led.’

‘I don’t take that kind of talk off jumped-up lootenants.’ There was noticeably more aggression in Chalky’s tone, as if vodka had released the fighter in him. ‘If you’re looking for his cash, he wears it in a belt . . . same as I do. The nurses will have pocketed it by now.’

‘Nurses don’t steal off kids, Chalky, and neither do I. Which of these bags is his? I’ll go through the lot if necessary.’

‘Jesus
Christ
!’ The corporal heaved himself off the wall and came towards him. ‘I’ll have your guts if you’ve touched anything of mine.’ He loomed menacingly at Acland’s shoulder. ‘It’s the Londis bag . . . the one with the baccy and the booze. They’re no good to him here. He won’t be able to smoke and drink in a sodding hospital, will he?’

Acland pulled the Londis carrier forward and untied the polythene handles that were holding the contents together. Two hundred Benson & Hedges and a bottle of whisky. ‘How did he get them? You said he was fifteen.’

‘Nicked ’em.’

‘You can’t nick spirits and cartons of cigarettes off the shelf.’

‘OK, he paid for ’em . . . probably in a Paki shop. Pakis don’t care who buys the stuff as long as cash changes hands.’

‘Where would he get the money?’

‘Snaffled a rich bitch’s handbag, I expect. They’re thick as pig shit, those women.’ His tone was contemptuous now. ‘They yackety-yack with their friends outside cafes, and they don’t even know their bag’s gone till they come to pay. All you need’s a diversion – a mate pretending to beg – and the bitches all look at him while you do the business behind them.’

‘You’re a real hero, Corporal.’

Chalky shouldered the lieutenant aside. ‘It’s an ugly world, son, and stripes and pips don’t mean a fucking thing outside the army. The sooner you get wise to that the better.’ He took the carrier out of Acland’s hands, retied the handles and shoved it to the back of the boot. ‘There’s nothing in there that’ll do a sick kid any good.’

‘Did he have a duffel bag with him?’

Chalky coughed smoker’s phlegm into his throat and spat it on the ground. ‘Not that I saw.’

‘Are you sure?’

Something in the lieutenant’s tone irritated him. ‘You calling me a liar? Just take the rucksack.’ He closed the lid. ‘I’ll wait in the car till you’re done.’

Acland clicked the remote on the key fob to lock the doors. ‘You’ll wait on the wall,’ he said without hostility. ‘I’d prefer my kitbag to be here when I get back.’

*

It was twenty minutes before Jackson came to find him in the A&E waiting room. He opened the front pocket of the rucksack and showed her the electrical gadgets. ‘How’s he doing?’

‘He’ll live but he’ll have to stay in for a few days.’ She took the chair beside Acland. ‘We’ve found a phone number for the address in Wolverhampton, but no one’s answering. Did you come up with anything else?’

Acland removed the photograph. ‘I think she’s his girlfriend.’ He turned it over to show the address, explaining why he thought it was a friend’s house rather than her own. ‘If it was a commercial poste restante there’d be a PO Box number, so whoever lives there must know her, and probably Ben as well.’

‘I’ll try it. What about the mobiles? Anything on them?’

‘Dead. The BlackBerry, too.’ He paused. ‘There’s a digital camera and four iPods as well. I’d say it’s a good bet they’re all stolen.’

Jackson viewed him with amusement. ‘A dead cert more like. I hope that means you haven’t given Chalky free rein of my car. He’ll have the seats out of it before you can blink . . . not to mention the CD player and the radio.’

‘He’s sitting on a wall. Vodka and him don’t mix. He’s spoiling for a fight.’

‘That’s alcohol for you. I expect he uses it to self-medicate for depression . . . It’s what most of them do. Sometimes it’ll send them to sleep . . . other times it’ll gee them up for a confrontation. Where did he get the vodka from?’

‘Stole it, I should think . . . or got Ben to do it for him. He’s appropriated a bag of booze and fags that the lad brought in with him.’

‘Payment in kind for a secure pitch for the night,’ said Jackson matter-of-factly. ‘It’s a dog-eat-dog world on the streets. How much did he take you for?’

‘Nothing.’

Jackson looked amused. ‘Chalky’s a pro. You’d probably have woken up tomorrow morning to find most of your cash missing.’

She lifted the phones out of the rucksack pocket and selected a Nokia, removing the back and the battery to check if the SIM card was there. ‘I keep a Cellboost in my bag. How’s your conscience when it comes to the Data Protection Act? Shall we give it a whirl?’

‘Won’t it be locked?’

‘We won’t know till we try.’

* Following in Jackson’s wake, Acland was interested in how many negative reactions she seemed to inspire. He was used to attracting suspicious looks himself, but it was a new experience to see someone else draw the flak. Even in the early hours, St Thomas’s A&E was busy, and he saw the faces people pulled as she passed and the way they turned to watch her retreating back. From behind, her bootleg trousers and black leather jacket, topped by her thick neck and short hair, made her look more masculine than ever, and he wondered how many of the reactions were caused by confusion over her gender. She spoke on her mobile as she walked along, apparently oblivious to the interest she was causing. ‘I’ve another address for you . . . 25 Melbury Gardens, WV6 0AA . . . No name, I’m afraid . . . Not sure, but I doubt it’s a relation . . . Possibly someone who knows his girlfriend . . . That’s right . . . no surname . . . just Hannah. If I leave his rucksack in the PCT office, will you make sure he gets it? Cheers.’ She redialled. ‘Anything new for Dr Jackson? Dr Patel covered it...? Thank him for me. No, I’m still at the hospital . . . almost finished . . . ten minutes max but I can be out of here in two if something comes up. Cheers.’ She stopped outside an office and punched a code into an electronic lock before ushering Acland inside. She passed him a piece of paper and a pen from the desk. ‘Print “Ben Russell” on that in block caps and leave it with the rucksack in the corner,’ she