“No one,” he said. “You’re my first interview. Len Rivett, DCI Smollet and an old guy called Alf Brown in Records are the only other people I’ve spoken to so far.”
Gray’s eyes narrowed, a frown creasing his forehead. He looked as if he was on the verge of saying something but then thought better of it, shaking his head, turning instead to continue running the torch around the pillbox.
“Well,” he said, his eyes following the beam of light, “at least we in’t got another dead body in here. Just some bloody sick bastard …”
He switched it off, handed it back to Sean. “You want to show Len what we found in here,” he said, referring to Rivett
as if he were the officer in charge again. “But if you don’t mind, I’ve seen enough.”
It took Sean a while to snap off some shots of the scene, then fumble on the plastic gloves, bag up the effigy, a sample of the salt and the candle wax. By the time he stepped out onto the beach, Gray was halfway back to The Iron Duke, a stick figure of a man in a long black coat striding rapidly across the dunes.
Sean found him waiting by the steps up the sea wall, the rims around his eyes redder than they had been before, although that could have been the wind.
“Sorry,” Gray said. “That was unprofessional.”
“It’s all right,” said Sean. “It’s not what I was expecting to find there either.”
“No,” Gray shook his head. “No,” he repeated.
“Well,” said Sean, putting his hand on the railings. “I’d better let them know at the station, they might want to get some forensics. You never know, there could be a match here for the person I’m looking for. Let me run you back first, though.”
“Actually,” Gray put his hand on top of Sean’s arm, “I can see myself home, if you don’t mind. I’d rather be on my own for a while.”
“Sure,” said Sean. “It must have been a shock …”
“Yeah,” Gray nodded rapidly, lifting his hand and looking embarrassed. “You could say that. But listen,” he looked at Sean earnestly. “I’m sure you want to ask me some more questions and that’s fine. Only do us a favour and ring me on my mobile.”
“OK,” Sean nodded, taking his own out. “Let me put the number into mine.”
“It’s just the wife,” said Gray. “I don’t want her to have to
think about all that again …” He glanced back in the direction of the pillbox.
He looked shell-shocked. Sean wondered how much of it was what they had just found and how much of it bad memories resurfacing. It didn’t do to make snap judgements, but Sean had felt more comfortable around Gray than anyone else here so far.
He shook the older man’s hand, pressing his card into it as he did, which Gray registered with a brief nod. Then he waited by the side of the car until Gray had disappeared over the bridge, thinking of fatherless children, the circumstances that connected his nemesis in Meanwhile Gardens to Corrine Woodrow and finally, to himself. The reason he tended to look up to men like Gray, like Chief Superintendant Charlie Higgins.
He pressed familiar digits on his phone.
“Charlie,” he said as his old boss answered. “Just one favour, for old time’s sake …”
Julian was flicking through the “S” rack in Woolsey & Woolsey for the 12-inch remix of “Numbers” by Soft Cell, when he felt someone come up behind him.
“Interesting,” she spoke softly, “that you like
them
so much.”
Julian turned around, blinked, taking a second to recognise the person standing there. Samantha Lamb had changed her appearance yet again; now she had Corrine’s hairstyle, the one she had been staring at so hard after school the other day. Only, Julian saw, she’d had to go that little bit further in her attempts to stand out.
“If you ask me,” Samantha went on, tapping a fingernail on Marc Almond’s face, “he’s a poof.” Her mouth twitched upwards into a smile that didn’t meet her eyes.
“But no one did ask you, did they?” said Julian, smiling back at her.
Her expression didn’t waver. “Are you a poof, Julian?” she asked. “Only you do look like one. And I’ve never seen you out with a girl. But maybe,” she twirled a strand of her newly dyed hair around her finger, “they just don’t like you.”
Julian stepped backwards, frowning. “What is wrong with you?” he asked.
Samantha chuckled. “What’s wrong with you, more like.” She winked and turned away, sweeping out of the shop.
* * *
Amanda jumped to her feet as she heard the front door go. She’d been waiting for her daughter to return for hours, minutes stretched as finely as her nerves – especially since her doctor had told her she must give up smoking when he’d given her the news that she had been meaning to broach with Sam for the past week. Four cigarette butts she had guiltily thrown in the dustbin, one for each hour. The place reeked of air freshener, the synthetic notes of pine not quite concealing the JPS fumes that loitered beneath.
Wayne said he would back her up, that they should present a united front and tell Sam together. But Amanda could foresee the likely outcome of that. Trying to consider her daughter’s feelings, she had given Sam the money for a haircut as a treat, an attempt to soften her up that she knew would only be condemned as another act of “falseness” and bribery. There was simply not going to be any easy way of doing this.
“Hello, Sam,” she said, and stopped in her tracks. The top of Samantha’s hair stuck up like a bog brush, but the sides were shaved to the skin.
“What on earth have you done?” Amanda gasped.
“Like it?” Samantha’s eyes flashed and she did a little pirouette.
“No, I don’t,” Amanda replied. “Are you deliberately trying to get expelled from school?”
“Oh,” Samantha’s mouth dropped open in an expression of
mock-innocence, “now why on earth would I want to do a thing like that?”
Amanda’s jaw clenched with the effort of self-control. “I need to talk to you, Sam,” she managed to say. “Come in the front room a minute.”
Samantha stuck her nose up in the air. “Sorry,” she said, “but I’m meeting Alex and I’m late. I only came back to pick something up. You can tell me later, it can’t be that important.” She made to move past her mother.
“No,” Amanda caught hold of Samantha’s arm. “It’s very important that we talk now.”
Samantha’s face turned bright red and she pushed her away with such force that she sent Amanda reeling backwards. “I’ve already told you,” she hissed. “I’m late for Alex, I don’t have time for this.”
Amanda put her hand out to catch hold of the doorframe, trying to regain her balance from the sudden seasick lurch the push had given her. “Samantha!” she yelled. “You come in here now, or …”
“Or what?” Samantha’s glittering eyes ran up and down her mother with undisguised loathing. “What is it, are you jealous or something?” she said. “That I’ve got a boyfriend who’s a hundred times more intelligent and better looking than yours? A boyfriend,” her mouth curled upwards, “who’s actually
older
than me? What a novelty that is, eh?”
Amanda heard the slap before she realised what she was doing. She looked down at her tingling palm and then across at Samantha, crouching down in the corner with her hand to the side of her face, looking up at her in outrage, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. It seemed as though she was watching her in slow motion, from the end of an extraordinarily long tunnel.
“You bitch,” Samantha’s voice was an incredulous whisper. She scrabbled to her feet, putting her hand on the door handle. “You’ll pay for this!”
She pulled the door open and was out of it, slamming it behind her before Amanda could gather her senses, before the red mist had cleared from her eyes.
* * *
Alex slumped across the bench at the top of the town square, watching a constant stream of people come and go. Glancing over his shoulder for the umpteenth time, he saw the hand of the clock in the shop behind him had only moved forwards a minute, even though it felt like ten. He pushed his hands further down into his pockets, dug his chin deeper into his collar. He was cold from sitting out here so long, and starting to feel foolish. There had been plenty of time for Debbie’s words to revolve around his head, like the music of a carousel.
“She used Corrine to help her go after you. Corrine told her who you were and where you went drinking, she even did her hair for her that night.
“Have you got any idea what Samantha Lamb looked like five minutes before she met you? She had a blonde wedge and pink legwarmers!”
Not to mention the earful his mother had given him, wanting to know what he had done to upset Debbie. The hardness that came into her eyes when she asked him what he was intending on doing with himself today, as if she couldn’t guess …
“
She’s sending you mad, trying to draw the perfect picture of her. You’ll never do it, and d’you know why? The person you think she is don’t really exist!”
Alex launched himself up off the bench. He couldn’t stay
here any more, it had been half an hour and he couldn’t tolerate the row going on in his head. Turning abruptly on his heel, he barrelled straight into someone going the other way.
“Ooof!” the impact knocked the wind out of Alex’s chest. Looking up, he realised with shock that he’d walked straight into Julian.
“Sorry, mate,” he put his hand out to touch the other boy’s shoulder.
“S’all right,” startled by the impact, Julian’s first action had been to make sure his record was still in one piece. “Nothing broken,” he said, his eyes travelling upwards from his bag to Alex’s worried frown. Then all the friendliness drained out of Julian’s face.
“Not with Samantha today?” he asked.
Alex cringed inside. “No,” he said, looking over his shoulder, in case this would be the exact moment she chose to make her appearance, “I mean, I …”
“I saw her when I was buying this,” Julian swung his bag, “Soft Cell record. She called me a poof.” He raised his eyebrows challengingly.
“No,” Alex felt the colour pouring into his face. “She din’t, did she? I don’t know why she said that, shit, I hope you don’t think that’s what I think, Julian …”
Julian raised a palm to stop Alex’s burbling. “I always thought you were all right,” he said. “But she in’t. I don’t know what you’re doing with her. That girl’s mental.”
He shook his head and strode away down the centre of the marketplace. Alex stared after him, his mouth hanging open. Then he turned around, eyes rapidly scanning for a girl who still wasn’t there. The clock now read four-thirty.
He hurried away towards the bus stop.
* * *
Rivett pulled the car up round the back, out of the bright lights, under the dark stairwells of fire escapes, laundry hatches and service doors, the rows of industrial-sized bins. So different from the elegant façade, that offered a smiling, vanilla-painted face towards the tourists, the service end of the Albert Hotel resembled a dark fortress, where slitty, frosted windows exuded the minimum of light and air vents belched hot blasts of second-hand oxygen into an atmosphere already heady with the aroma of rotting four-star meals.
Gina peered up at it through the windscreen the way a condemned man might take in his first view of the scaffold. Things had not been going well for her since she returned from the cop shop. She had found a sentinel waiting for her on her doorstep, a grizzled man in his early forties who went by the name of Wolf. Wolf was an unpleasant enough character to be around at the best of times, a man with flat grey eyes and a cluster of hairy moles sprouting up from his rubbled countenance that lent him an appearance more warthog than lupine. He was older than the rest of them and very suspicious.
Wolf made it clear that her card was marked. He followed her into her hallway, put a hand between her legs and forced her up against the wall, his fingers knowing exactly what to do to push the breath out of her, render her silent with fear.
“You turned Rat stupid with this, didn’t you, bitch?” he hissed, his facial hair like wire wool rubbing against her face, the smell of stale sweat, engine oil and decades’ worth of patchouli curdling in her nostrils. Dead fish eyes boring into her, letting her know there would be no reasoning, no compromises with him.
“Well, I in’t so stupid. Things are gonna change round here … now
I’m
in charge.”
Gina stifled the scream welling up in her throat, a strangled, bird-like gasp escaping instead. When he finally released his grip, her legs buckled and she slid down the wall, while he went upstairs and helped himself to her and Rat’s entire stash.
“I get word of any other business going on in our patch while Rat’s away,” were his parting words, “I’ll cut that treacherous cunt right out.” A smile snaked across his lips, a dull gleam coming into his cadaverous eyes. “Give me something to look forward to.”
A smile that was still dancing in front of Gina’s eyes as she watched a fire door open.
“Off you go, Gina,” said Rivett. “Your public awaits.”
“Len,” she said, putting her hand on his lap. “I know who’s taking over, I know where you can find him. He’s got everything,” as hard as she tried, she couldn’t keep the tone of her voice from rising, “that belongs to us.”
Rivett lolled back on his headrest, an amused expression on his face.
“Go on, my little Venus flytrap,” he said.
“I’ll tell you,” he saw himself reflected back in her black eyes as she spoke, her fingertips kneading into his flesh, “if you take me away from this.”
“Awww,” he crooned. “And where should we go to, my sweet? Somewhere where no one can find you?” He put his hand on top of hers and lifted it firmly up and off him, dropping it back on her lap. “Still expecting me to sort out all your problems after all we’ve just been through? Two-timing me with a Dutchman? Really, Gina,” his expression hardened along with his voice, “it’s time you were a big girl.”
He leant across and undid her seatbelt. “Now,” he pointed, “don’t keep the man waiting.” Gina saw a figure standing there, silhouetted against the light.
“I keep telling you, it was Rat’s idea, not mine,” she said. “Now you’ve got him banged up, do you really think his mates are going to share anything with you?”