But Corrine’s face was gravely serious.
“That in’t mental,” she said. “That’s black magic.”
She looked at Debbie, an idea forming in her head.
* * *
“Byeee! Happy New Year!” Amanda and Samantha stood on the doorstep, waving Edna and Eric off. Eric sounded the
horn as they pulled away, cigar clamped between his teeth. Edna blew them a kiss.
“Well,” said Amanda, turning to face her daughter, “I’m proud of you, Sam, you were great tonight with your nana and granddad. And you look lovely, you really do. Did you go and have your hair done today?”
“M-hmm,” Samantha nodded, twirling a strand of her shining black locks around her index finger. “New salon in the arcade,” she informed her. “They were doing £5 specials so I thought I might as well.”
“Don’t suppose you’re going to keep it like that, though, are you?”
“No,” said Sam, her mouth twisting into a smile. “But it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
“It really was,” said Amanda, putting her arm around her daughter’s shoulder and giving her a little squeeze. “Go on then, off you go and mess it all up again.”
Samantha disentangled herself from the embrace with a little chuckle. “It proved something to me,” she said, staring at her mother with undisguised disgust. “Just how easy it is to be as false as you.” And with that, she bounded off up the stairs.
* * *
Bully looked up at the clock for the tenth time in five minutes.
“Don’t reckon he’s coming,” he said.
“In’t like him to be late,” Kris agreed, crumpling his empty beer can and tossing it in the bin. “But if we don’t catch this train now … Oh, hang about.”
A figure appeared through the turnstiles, waving in their direction. He was wearing a long black coat the same as Al’s, but he was shorter and thicker set, the black corduroy hat on
his head barely containing a big ginger quiff of hair.
“Hold up!” Marc Farman called.
“Where’s Al?” frowned Bully.
“In Swing’s,” Marc panted an explanation. “He said he don’t really feel like going up Norwich tonight, so he sold me his ticket.”
Bully and Kris exchanged glances.
“He have anyone else with him?” asked Bully.
“Shaun and Bugs,” said Marc. “But he was looking at the clock the whole time …”
* * *
“Where you been hidin’ yourself anyway, Al?” asked Shaun. “We in’t seen you round for a while.”
“I been working,” Alex lied. “You know, on my course. They start laying it on thick in the second year.”
“Oh,” said Shaun, for whom working meant standing on a conveyor belt, slicing up dead turkeys, day in and day out. “That’s hard, is it?”
Alex nodded, thinking of the times he had held the pencil up, measured so carefully with his thumb the proportions of her face. His eyes flicked up to the clock. Quarter to nine.
“You seen much of little Debs?” Shaun went on.
Alex shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Any minute now, he realised, Debbie could walk through that door. He didn’t want to see that hurt, uncomprehending expression on her face. Not when he couldn’t explain it to her any more than he could explain it to himself.
“Sorry, Shaun,” he said, getting to his feet, “but I now got to be somewhere else.”
Shaun didn’t even have time to register his surprise before
his friend was out the door.
“What’s up with him?” Bugs scowled at Alex’s departing back.
* * *
“Oh, look,” Shane Rowlands pointed a fat finger down the Victoria Arcade. “It’s one of them weirdos!”
“Oh yeah.” Neal Reeder swayed slightly as he tried to focus.
Rowlands turned to his other companion. “Look who it is, Smollet,” he said.
Dale hadn’t even put away the half of what his friends had sunk tonight and he was beginning to wonder what he saw in their company. His stomach flipped for a different reason as she snapped towards them into the Arcade.
Rowlands was studying Dale’s face, while his own grew redder by the second. “You fuckin’ fancy it, don’t you?” he accused. “Go on then,” he lunged towards Smollet, attempting to push him towards her. “Give it one, I dare you.”
Dale stepped out of his way neatly, years of afterschool judo lessons combining with his comparative soberness to aid him. “Leave off, Shane,” he said.
Samantha Lamb stopped in front of them, head cocked to one side, her eyes glittering.
“Yeah,” said Reeder, stumbling to get out of Rowlands’ trajectory and catching his balance on a doorframe. “Leave it out, I in’t in the mood.” He was starting to feel sick.
“Leave it out?” Rowlands was ready to blow. “I in’t even started yet, you pair of queers. You,” he stared at Samantha, “make me fucking sick.” He wove in front of her, stabbing a finger at her face. “Posh fucking witch. Who d’you think you are?”
“Shane,” Smollet’s voice turned hard. “I said, leave off.”
Rowlands turned to stare at him. His face was crimson, a vein pulsating on his forehead. “You’re asking for it,” he said, bunching his hand into a fist.
“Don’t make me,” Smollet felt icily cool inside, a lifetime’s friendship falling away in the beat of a drunken heart. He could finally see how pathetic Rowlands really was.
Rowlands swung for him and Dale moved, like he was in slow motion, catching his arm and twisting it back, putting his right leg between his opponent’s knees so that his legs buckled and he was sent sprawling down onto the concrete.
“Bloody hell,” said Reeder, as the contents of his guts started to rise up his throat.
“Fuck,” said Rowlands, tasting blood as a tooth dislodged where his chin had hit the floor. He looked up and saw stars dancing around the figure of Smollet.
Looking past him at Samantha disappearing out of the end of the arcade, walking towards the tall figure waiting for her there, without so much as a backwards glance.
Behind Smollet, Reeder sprayed the pavement several shades of brown.
“That’s right,” said Sean, staring down at the eye on her hand, feeling that strange, light-headed disconnection that had come to characterise each one of their meetings.
In the corner of his mind, a shape moved out from the shadows …
He dragged his eyes upwards, looked round at the others. “This is who I meant,” he said, waiting to see if they would string out the feigning of ignorance any longer.
“Oh,” said Bugs, lifting his pint and shaking his head. “Didn’t realise. Thought you said a girl.” He snorted with laughter as she slapped him across the arm.
“Pay no attention to this philistine,” she said. “Would you like to talk to me? Maybe we should take a walk,” her eyes narrowed, looking beyond him to the corner she had shared with the biker the night before, clocking him there and nodding a greeting. “It might be easier that way.”
A shape taking on human form, raising both arms, pointing a weapon towards him …
Sean batted the image away, put his pint down on the counter. He didn’t need any more of that, didn’t want the side effects.
“Sure,” he said, assuring himself that this slight figure could offer him no harm.
He followed her out the front door. “See you then, Mr Ward,” Bugs called from behind him, to the chuckles of the others. Sean raised a hand in salute, didn’t look back.
“I didn’t catch your name,” he said, as they stepped out onto the pavement.
“I didn’t offer it,” she said, smiling. “I have to say, though, you ought to be more careful. We’re not completely thick down here, however we may sound to you.”
Sean frowned. “I’m sorry,” he began, “I didn’t mean to—”
“In his time,” she cut him off, “which was the days of the Civil War, the Witchfinder General’s name was Matthew Hopkins.”
Sean had a flash of Francesca standing outside the Greek restaurant, telling him about how women were tortured in the Tollhouse for witchcraft.
“However,” she went on, “in our time, we knew him by a different name. We called him Detective Inspector Leonard Rivett.”
Sean stared at her.
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’ she said. “You’ve come about Corrine.”
Sean felt his throat grow dry. He nodded.
“Then it is me you want to see,” she said, and began to walk up the road.
Sean followed her, wondering exactly what he was doing. She walked swiftly, and he began to sweat keeping up, despite the sharp night air, the wind that was coming off the river, feeding into the chill that coursed up the metal within his bones.
She passed the bookshop and turned left into the row,
following it to its end and turning right into a little square where the remains of some ancient cloisters stood under a cluster of trees.
“Stop a minute,” said Sean.
There was something about the trees, the streetlights shining through their bare branches. It was just like he was back in Meanwhile Gardens …
“What is it?” she asked.
Sean shook his head, trying to rid himself of the déjà vu.
“That old war wound I told you about,” he said through gritted teeth. “I can’t keep up with you.”
“But we’re here,” she said, taking a key from her pocket and nodding towards the two-storey house at the end of the terrace. “If you’d care to come in. It’s just that I’d rather not discuss these things out on the street, walls …”
“Have eyes and ears around here,” Sean finished the sentence for her.
“Quite.” She nodded, turning the key in the lock.
Sean hesitated on the doorstep, waiting for her to go on ahead, turn on the lights, suddenly unsure whether there’d be a reception committee of Swing’s drinkers waiting to lynch him, or even if Francesca would be sitting there, joining in the laughter, ready to take him down the Tollhouse dungeons and clap him in leg irons …
Leg irons.
The thought made him laugh, despite himself – he already had iron legs. He found himself looking down an ordinary hallway, cream walls and beige carpet, neat row of coat hooks along the wall, and through a door into what at first appeared to be a dentist’s surgery. He took a tentative step through and realised the reclining chairs and surgical equipment were those of a tattoo studio; the far wall was covered
in photographs of the work. Celtic knots and interlaces; tribal totems; whorls and swirls; flowers and peacock feathers; the horror-book imagery of the teenage dispossessed.
“So this is what you do,” he thought aloud, his eyes catching the mohicaned head of Bully for the second time that day in a photo on the wall.
“Pays the mortgage,” his hostess said, her eyes flicking from the montage to Sean and back again. “But come through to the kitchen. We’ll be more comfortable in there.”
Sean was further surprised by the comparative homeliness of this room too; the pine table and chairs, aspidistra in a pot by the French doors, red ceramic tea pot and stout, matching mugs – not really what he had been expecting.
“Like some tea?” she said, noticing his gaze.
“Love some,” said Sean.
“Take a seat,” she said, gesturing, picking a kettle up off its stand and taking it over to the sink. Sean’s eyes roamed around the room as she turned on the tap. On the windowsill in front of her were a couple of spider plants. The sink and the draining board stainless steel, the work surfaces white Formica. A four-ring electric oven and a white fridge, white tiling on each wall apart from the dividing one, which was painted pale blue, and hung with a framed watercolour of a seascape. There was an animal’s basket the other side of the French doors, two bowls next to it. A cat, judging from the ginger hairs on the red lining. Everything was neat and tidy but it didn’t look as though an awful lot of money had been spent here. Except perhaps on the painting. His eyes were drawn back to it.
“English breakfast?” his hostess enquired.
“Please,” said Sean, turning his head to face her.
“Thought so,” she said. Under the strip lights that ran across
the ceiling, Sean could see her more clearly, but would still be hard pressed to gauge her age accurately.
The kettle clicked off and she filled the pot, moving across to the fridge to retrieve the milk and placing it down on the table in front of Sean. She took off her leopardskin coat, putting it over the back of a chair, only after she had brought the pot, two cups and a sugar bowl to the table.
Everything else she was wearing was black – jeans and a long-sleeved ethnic blouse with embroidery on the front. Thin leather straps around her neck hung with amulets. Rings on every finger, including a giant green eye; metal bangles around her wrists. Tendrils of partially concealed tattoos snaked down her arms and around her neck.
“So,” she said, raising the pot and starting to pour. “If you’re inclined to tell me your name, then I might just tell you mine.”
“Sean Ward,” he said.
“Sean Ward,” she said, nodding. “A strong name.”
This close, he could see that her pupils really were the colour of emeralds, it was not an illusion created by coloured contact lenses. He could finally discern crow’s feet under the kohl she wore around her eyes, fine lines between her nose and lips. Perhaps she actually could be as old as Corrine Woodrow.
“And you are?” he asked.
She smiled, dimples forming in her cheeks. “My mother wasn’t much of a churchgoer,” she said. “She never had me christened. But the name on my birth certificate is John Brendan Kenyon.”
Sean smiled, marvelling at his loss of discernment. Of course, that was it; there had always been something about her voice that didn’t quite ring true.
“Though my schoolfriends decided, by some form of
collective unconscious, that she had got that wrong. They called me Noj – my name backwards – and it stuck. They thought that I couldn’t really be a boy, I was so little like any of them,” she raised one pencilled eyebrow, “so I became a girl.”
She passed him a teacup. “I like the name,” she went on, “so that’s what you can call me.”
Sean wondered if that was why he hadn’t seen her in the old police files, because he was looking for a girl and not a boy. But he didn’t think so. He was sure she was not among any of the mugshots he had seen.
“And you were at school with Corrine?” he asked.