Someone Else's Son (14 page)

For now, he was more concerned with finding Carrie Kent and begging for an emergency slot on next week’s show. With the immediacy of the stabbing, he knew his superiors would slate him for prioritising this, but it needed to be done. Besides, he was concerned for Carrie. Running off like that wasn’t typical behaviour. He glanced at his watch for the hundredth time that morning. Where the fuck was she?

Leah had charged out of the studio in a fit of panic during their meeting, following the call from Carrie. He never even got to ask why she’d walked off stage and then his day had subsequently exploded with news of the stabbing. Now Carrie wasn’t answering her phone and neither was Leah. He would need her approval, too. The secretary at the television studio hadn’t a clue where either of them were but promised to pass the message on. He also left messages for the director and the assistant producer to call him urgently. If they didn’t get this latest stabbing aired next show, even a five-minute slot, it would be pointless. As it was, he was hedging his bets and praying for an arrest before the end of next week. But contingency plans had to be set in place and he was doing what he could. The public reacted best when news was fresh, when emotions ran high. One little piece of information could score them the arrest he was determined to make,
needed
to make, for his community. For his bloody job, he thought, recalling the last grim meeting he’d had with the Commander over the borough’s knife crime statistics.

He parked the car, got out and headed up Carrie’s steps. He’d give up looking for her if she wasn’t here. There were things to do. His phone rang just as he hammered on the door.

‘Yep?’ But he didn’t catch what the caller said because another Met car pulled up behind him. Several voices yelled out.

‘Chief, wait up. Thought you wanted us to take care of this?’

Dennis swung round, the phone a few inches from his ear. He saw Al Marsh and Chris Rowe. He half registered a voice saying something on his mobile. ‘Al, Chris, what’s up?’ He forgot the phone call and hung up when he saw the looks on their faces.

‘Have you been in yet?’ Chris Rowe hitched up his trousers.

‘What?’

‘Carrie Kent. Have you seen her?’ Al looked weary. They’d been at Dayna’s house together only a short time ago and Dennis knew he’d been up most of the night.

‘No. Not yet. Why are you two here? You were supposed to—’

‘Chief.’ Al nodded towards the door, glancing beyond Dennis’s shoulder.

Dennis turned. Leah was leaning in the half-open doorway. Dennis frowned. She looked awful compared to when he’d seen her only a short time ago.

‘Thank God,’ she said, eyeing the three detectives. ‘You’d better come in.’

Dennis stepped into the cool dark hall. ‘Would somebody mind—’

‘Shh,’ Leah said. The exhalation contained grief, matching the forward droop of her usually straight, businesslike shoulders. She pulled the door to the drawing room closed. Dennis had been in the grand room many times. He was confused.

‘Is she in there?’ Al asked.

Leah nodded.

‘How’s she doing?’

‘How do you expect?’

Dennis realised he was out of the loop. Which loop, he wasn’t sure.

‘I found her here, alone. It was awful.’ Leah began to cry.

Dennis was getting impatient now. He put his hand on the door handle. He needed to speak to Carrie about the show.

Wait
, he thought he heard Leah say.

His mind raced, the school, the proximity of the area . . . surely not. He dragged up the kid’s name – what was it, Matt?

He opened the door and, sitting on a pure white chaise longue, her face wet and milky, was Carrie Kent. She looked tiny, he thought; a minuscule version of the powerhouse that millions watched every Friday morning.

‘Carrie?’

Her eyes were scarlet. Her hair was flat and seemed to have lost its colour. She’d tucked her bare feet up under her and they poked from beneath the garment she was wearing. Her toenails were shell pink. Was that a hospital gown?

‘Have you been in an accident?’ he asked.
She’d
been in hospital. It was nothing serious by the look of it. Dennis visibly relaxed. He sat next to Carrie, causing her to lean towards him. She stared straight ahead. ‘Are you hurt?’ He touched her arm. Shock. What was the hospital thinking, discharging her in this state?

‘My son was killed today.’

Flat words against a background of nothing.

‘Killed?’ Dennis’s mind went blank. He recalibrated, started to think over. ‘Jesus, Carrie. How?’

She looked at her watch. She wasn’t wearing one. ‘Is it still today?’

‘It’s Friday.’ Dennis gripped both of Carrie’s hands. They were cold.

‘Was it only this morning that Max was killed?’ Her voice was pathetic.

Max
. Dennis’s mouth went dry. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ He looked to the door. Leah, Al and Chris stood in the hallway, staring at the scene.

‘Den, can we have a word?’ Al Marsh beckoned to his boss. Leah swapped places with Dennis.

He wheeled Dennis down the hall; spoke in a low voice. ‘Max Quinell, the lad that got stabbed at the school this morning. Turns out he was Carrie Kent’s son. Jess gave us the address of the parents and . . . well, here we are.’ He said her name as everyone says a famous person’s name – with a touch of envy, of distance.

‘Jesus fucking—’ Dennis wiped his hands down his face. His stomach lurched. In all his time working for the Met, he’d only ever had to deal with something this personal once before. A girl in Estelle’s kindergarten class had been the victim of a hit and run. Thinking of that only added to the chill that crawled over his skin. ‘Jesus, now I understand.’ Carrie’s day fell into place with his. He nodded his head slowly. ‘OK,’ he began, his chest heaving then exhaling. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Al nodded. With bowed heads, they rejoined Carrie in her drawing room. Like she had done to hundreds of guests on
Reality Check
, Dennis Masters prepared to question her about her son. He knelt down beside her and looked into her vacant eyes. He wasn’t sure where to begin.

Neither of them wanted to admit that they’d seen the film before. They popped into a Spar to get some sweets and cans before going to the cinema.

‘Do you like Revels?’ Max asked.

‘The coffee ones suck.’

‘Maltesers then.’ He picked up a large bag.

‘Nah.’

Dayna fondled some jelly sweets. ‘These?’

‘Sure.’ Max hated them. They reminded him of chemistry lessons at his previous school, but he wanted to please Dayna, saw the way her eyes lit up at the sight of the neon colours. They paid and stepped out into the sunshine. The pavement almost hissed with steam as the earlier rain evaporated at their feet.

‘Indian summer,’ Max said. They waited at the bus stop. The cinema was a five-minute bus ride away. ‘One’ll come soon.’ He stared up the road, over the heads of an old couple who stood next to them.

‘Not technically,’ Dayna said. The can was cold and wet in her hand.

‘Not what?’

‘We haven’t had a frost yet. You really need a frost for it to be an Indian summer. And then at least seven days of high temperatures.’

Max thought. ‘There’ll have been a frost in Scotland, I bet.’

‘That’s not here though, is it?’ Dayna pressed the side of the can to her lips.

Max noticed her doing this and wondered if she was imagining what it was like to kiss him. She had nice lips and she knew a lot. He was desperate to snog her but had no idea how to start something like that. He stuck his arm out to stop the bus.

‘What was it like then, that old school of yours?’

Max made sure his shoulder was touching Dayna’s as they stop-started to Willesden. ‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Whether you’re one of the popular kids or not.’

‘Were you?’

Max laughed. ‘Do I look popular?’ He lifted up his sweater and smoothed his hands down his skinny chest, straightening out the words on the T-shirt hidden beneath.
Loser
started off huge at the top and was repeated over and over until it faded away.

Dayna glanced down. ‘You are so not.’

Max suddenly felt silly, as if a tiny part of him might not actually be like that when he was in her company. ‘Ah,’ he said with a grin. ‘But you haven’t seen the back of it yet.’ Max bit hard on the inside of his cheek.
Yet
, he’d said, as if it was a given his sweater was coming off.

‘No, but really, what was it like, living at school?’ She wasn’t giving up. ‘I can’t imagine it.’

Max watched Church Road give way to High Road. He gripped the bag containing the sweets and his drink. ‘It wasn’t for me,’ was what he settled on. He didn’t want to put her off snogging him; didn’t want to go into detail. The bus wasn’t the place for dragging it all up from where he’d buried it.

‘Your dad must be loaded.’

To avoid answering, Max imagined what Dayna’s house would be like – maybe not even a house, but a small flat. He conjured an image of her parents – her stepdad perhaps working nights in a factory, her mum going mad at home trying to make the money stretch. He thought there’d be a couple of younger brothers riding around the streets on their bikes, and probably a dog or two taking up most of the space when they all watched telly at night. Then there was Dayna, shut away in a bedroom that she perhaps shared with two others, surrounded by the books that she’d saved up for or borrowed from the library. He liked to think of them reading the same school book, their heads filling with similar scenes.

‘Nah,’ he said, laughing. Since she’d said he spoke funny, he’d tried hard not to. ‘My dad just lives in a shitty flat.’

‘What about your mum?’

Max tensed. ‘Don’t really see her much.’

‘Thought you lived with her?’ Dayna cracked open her can of Coke. It fizzed up and she slurped from the rim.

Max shrugged. ‘Technically I do but she’s not around much. We don’t really get on.’

Dayna nodded slowly. She was thinking. ‘So who’s got all the cash for that posh school then? Or was it left to you by a distant relative?’ She shook her head and grinned.

‘Got a scholarship.’ He hated lying to her.

‘You have to be really clever for that.’

Max felt a twinge of pain radiate through his chest. He opened his drink, even though he’d wanted to save it for the film. If he was sucking on that, perhaps he wouldn’t have to answer. As soon as Dayna found out about his mum – or indeed if anyone at his new school found out about his mum – then it was all over. He would give up. He would run away, except there wasn’t anywhere left for him to go, not round here anyway. Another bus went past in the opposite direction. When he saw it, Max sprayed Dr Pepper all over Dayna’s jeans, choking, coughing, red-faced.

‘Hey, what d’you do that for?’

‘Sorry.’ He didn’t have anything for her to mop the mess with. He took off his sweater and rubbed vigorously at her legs. ‘So sorry.’

As they stepped off the bus a few minutes later, Max didn’t know whether to curl up and die because he had seen his mother’s face as big as a house on the side of that other bus, or because Dayna was right behind him reading the back of his T-shirt.

‘I fuck losers,’ she said loudly, trying to sound amused.

Max pulled his damp sweater back on and led Dayna by the hand to Willesden Cinema.

 

She thought Max did everything funny. He wasn’t like normal boys. He fumbled with his wallet, unable to open it and hold his can and the bag of sweets all at the same time. She laughed and helped him out. Then he insisted on paying for everything without directly looking her in the eye, as if he was ashamed or didn’t want to embarrass her, before disappearing into the loos for ages without saying a word after he’d handed over a
gold credit card
to pay for the tickets.

‘You OK?’ Dayna said when he came out. Part of her wanted to put an arm round him. He’d been acting very weird since he spat that drink over her.

‘Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.’

‘Shall we go and get a seat then?’ The popcorn smell filled Dayna’s nostrils and reminded her of when things had been better. She stared at the booth, watching the woman scoop the buttery stuff into huge tubs.

‘I guess.’

‘What’s up?’

Max hesitated in the middle of the foyer. He was flicking his gaze between Dayna and a woman with two small kids in tow at the popcorn counter.

‘Just a minute.’ Max went over to the kiosk.

She shrugged. It had been her idea to get the sweets from the Spar. She couldn’t afford cinema prices but Max had paid for the stuff anyway.

A moment later, he came back with two of the biggest buckets of popcorn she had ever seen. It would last the rest of their lives. ‘Jesus, Max. We’ll be sick.’

‘Sick together, then.’

Max handed one bucket to Dayna. There was a moment of fumbling, a panicked look exchanged when each thought the other had let go, but they managed to get themselves into the theatre without spilling the snacks. They sat right at the back. There were only four other people in there.

‘You have a credit card,’ she whispered. It sounded silly. The lights dimmed.

‘Oh. Yeah.’ Max stuffed his mouth full of popcorn. He stared straight ahead, his nose highlighted by the flickering screen.

‘How come?’

Max shrugged in reply. The still-framed local ads gave way to a sudden rush of sound as the turn-your-phone-off film played. Dayna fished in her bag and switched off her ancient Nokia. She hid it away again. She watched as Max tapped his iPhone to silent mode.

‘Prize?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yeah,’ he said reluctantly but didn’t elaborate.

Dayna watched as he shovelled popcorn in continuously. He didn’t want to talk. She tried to convince herself that it was because they were in the cinema, not because he was going off her. Having Max in her life had lightened her days, given her a reason to get up each morning, made everything bearable.