The Last Voice They Hear

by Ramsey Campbell

Table of contents

- Annotation

- Acknowledgments

- one

- two

- three

- four

- five

- six

- seven

- eight

- nine

- ten

- eleven

- twelve

- thirteen

- fourteen

- fifteen

- sixteen

- seventeen

- eighteen

- nineteen

- twenty

- twenty-one

- twenty-two

- twenty-three

- twenty-four

- twenty-five

- twenty-six

- twenty-seven

- twenty-eight

- twenty-nine

- thirty

- thirty-one

- thirty-two

- thirty-three

- thirty-four

- thirty-five

- thirty-six

- thirty-seven

- thirty-eight

- thirty-nine

- forty

- forty-one

- forty-two

- forty-three

- forty-four

- forty-five

- forty-six

- forty-seven

- forty-eight

- forty-nine

- fifty

- fifty-one

- fifty-two

- fifty-three

- fifty-four

- fifty-five

- fifty-six

An investigative journalist is in the middle of a publicity tour for his new book when a voice from the past phones him. Someone is killing happily married couples, looking for the right combination of age and attitude, the right sort of family ties. That someone might be the journalist’s brother.

for Maro and Caro, David and Jen — more red! more red!

tocIDAKUMLB”>

one

When the phone rang just after midnight he was sure it must be Gail. He threw a handful of cold water in his mouth to clear it of toothpaste and unhooked the receiver from the hotel bathroom wall. “Hi,” he said, and then “Hello?” He’d already heard a newsreader’s voice. “Police have confirmed they believe there is a link between the murder of a Sussex couple,” she said, and more that he covered up by repeating his hello. He was beginning to think he had a crossed line when he heard the close hollow sound of a face pressed against a receiver. Then the presence went away, and the broadcast voice came forward, reading another story. “This is Geoff Davenport,” said Geoff, wanting to get to the end of rather too long a day. “If I’m who you’re after…” He was holding a dead lump of clammy plastic, which he returned to the wall. He switched off the anonymous glare of the bathroom and crossed the extensive panelled bedroom to the phone by the window. Beyond the parks on the far side of Princess Street, tiers of a dozen or more windows supported the gables of the tenements of old Edinburgh against the crags and a glowing stony sky. Very faintly through the double glazing he heard along one of the tracks gathered into Waverley Station a train shaking itself awake. He felt in need of doing so. He reached for the phone to ask the hotel operator if she could trace the call, and it rang.

“Geoff Davenport.”

“That was worth waiting for,” said Gail, her San Francisco voice hoarse yet sweet, invigorating as a cappuccino. “I hope it wasn’t a playmate who stopped me getting through before.” “My only playmate’s hundreds of miles away at the end of this line.”

“Better had be. Sorry to call so late. The pride of the family’s working on some new teeth.” “How is he now?”

“Quiet at last. Lifting weights in his sleep.”

Geoff clearly saw younger than three-year-old Paul lying face up in his cot, fists half open above his head. “Will he have any new words to surprise me with when I come home?” “He nearly said milk today if I’m not kidding myself.”

“We knew he was fond of the containers.”

“Takes after his dad. So who was that on the line before?”

“Must have been a wrong number. The kind that can’t be bothered to say who they are.” “Not even any heavy breathing? Poor Geoff. Edinburgh’s been looking after you better than that mostly, I hope.” “Plenty of books to autograph and questions to answer.”

“Any awkward ones I could have helped with?”

“When’s the next series of The Goods to be was the popular choice.” “To which the answer was…”

“As far as I’m concerned, not until my favourite researcher is ready to work on it. But then I’m only the front man who was lucky enough to be asked to write the book.” “Famous presenter and best-selling writer, you mean. Maybe the channel will have brought the creche back by the time I’m needed. And if not you’re the essential one, not me.” “Without you I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

“So long as you aren’t at the weekend, or Paul will be starting to wonder what you look like.” “Show him a tape of The Goods. Help, no, don’t. I’ve done enough trying to live up to how makeup and the camera make me look without having to at home as well.” “How you look at home is how we like it. Better head for bed now so you can look your best for Glasgow. Or are you in bed?” “Wish I were, with you.”

“Sleep well instead. Take the phone off the hook if you like.”

“You know I won’t.”

“That’ll help me sleep,” said Gail, and then there was a silence, since neither of them liked saying goodbye. “We’ll call you tomorrow,” she told him instead, and was gone.

Having talked to her allowed Geoff to enjoy his tiredness, of which there was at least a day’s worth. He slipped beneath the quilt, the underside of which was several degrees cooler than the room. He seemed hardly to have groped for the light-switch when he was nothing but asleep.

The phone wakened him. As he grappled the receiver off its cradle he saw twelve on the bedside clock reduce itself to one, and the minutes turn into the blank eyes of a double zero. “Hello?” he demanded, wobbling into a sideways crouch draped with the quilt. “Who is it? What’s…” The voice awaiting him might almost have been a recording one hour old. “Police have confirmed they believe there is a link between the murder of a Sussex couple and several similar crimes still under investigation …” “Damned bloody…” Geoff snarled, then was sufficiently awake to control himself. “Whoever you are, you need help. I don’t think it’s my kind of help you need, but if you really want to talk to me I’d appreciate it if at least…” He wasn’t expecting the sudden violent breath in his ear. It seemed to focus the mugginess of the room on him, and made the caller feel uncomfortably close. “I can hear you,” Geoff said, “and I’ll tell you now…” This time the breath was measured, and he knew the caller meant to speak. The arm that held the phone was propped on the bedside table, and Geoff used it to hitch himself into a less cramped position. As the newsreader came to the end of the story Geoff s arm began to shiver. He was about to struggle out of the posture in which he’d trapped himself when a voice spoke so close that it felt like part of him. “You didn’t stop it, Geoffrey.”

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three

Though Jess Bennett was ten minutes early for work, the moment she walked into the small stark office Harry Adrian stood up from the switchboard as if she was late. One look at her eyes, and he confined himself to a mumble of “How’re they hanging?,” the feminised version of his greeting to the drivers. At least there weren’t any drowned stubs in the plastic cups she had to bin from the top of the switchboard and the low table in front of the faded creaky chairs where the drivers waited for calls; indeed, both Nikos and Muhammed were smoking on the pavement beyond the reception area with its flabby armchairs and its drinks machine. “Quiet so far,” Harry complained to her, and was off to whichever of his pair of women was having him that night. That was women for you, Jess thought — long-suffering until they realised they’d suffered enough. That had certainly been her with Rex the Ex.

She spun the wobbly swivel chair up to give herself some leg room, and promised herself she was going to convince Harry to replace at least that piece of furniture before it showed the rest how to collapse. She took her crossword magazine and a ballpoint from her bag before perching on the chair. Her short clingy skirt rode up her long thighs, and she used her palms to draw it down an inch. She was dressing to please herself, but it made her wish she had never dressed, let alone the opposite, for Rex.

Maybe at twenty-eight, two years of which he’d had, she was no longer young enough for him, or maybe her legs weren’t long enough. Maybe he’d meant her to see him in their very first restaurant, the one she would have proposed for their anniversary next week — see him sitting in the window with the receptionist from the car showrooms where he worked, as if to show the passing crowd how spectacular her legs were. One glimpse of the way they’d been holding hands across the table and gazing into each other’s eyes had been all Jess could take, but she’d marched onward, laughing and pretending to her friends she hadn’t seen, pretending once it became clear they had that it didn’t matter because really she’d already known. Perhaps she had indeed known she was losing him when he’d realised her growing concern for her parents must leave her less time for him.

If that showed what a self-centred bastard he was, oughtn’t she to have known sooner? Maybe she had only needed to admit it to herself. By now she’d passed beyond crying herself to sleep over him and imagining suitably horrible revenges for him to suffer, and had turned the glare of her examination on herself. By now he’d given up attempting to contact her, so that she stopped thinking of him as soon as the phone rang. “Twenty-four Hour Knights,” she told the microphone in her best welcoming voice.

It was a call to one of the pubs where Harry had stuck up a card by the phone, probably pocketing another firm’s card as he did so. Jess didn’t much care for that trick, and wouldn’t do it herself, though other firms did it to them. She had just located a taxi within half a mile of the pub and sent it when the street door opened and Pete Denton appeared, patting his curly hair down with both hands. “Borrow my comb if you need one,” Jess told him.

While she wouldn’t have said that to most people, she’d seen how fastidious he was, not to mention tidy. His gaze found hers and his neat mouth framed a smile. “Only making sure I was presentable to the fair sex.” “When I’m here I’m just one of the boys.”

“I’m sure you could never be just anything.” He didn’t wait for a reaction. “How’s your dad?” he said.

“Doesn’t know what time it is any more, specially when it’s time to sleep.”

“Is your mother still on top of it?”

“She’s moved into my old room, but she doesn’t get much sleep for listening to him. Three o’clock this morning she had to stop him phoning me to ask if I’ll be there for Sunday dinner, as if I’m not always. It’s not his fault. Sometimes I don’t think he even knows who he is.” “What about the drug you want to try on him?”

“All the family have been at him to accept some medication, all the aunts and uncles. He mostly won’t admit there’s anything wrong with him, and when he does he forgets he has.” “Do you…”

“Hold on,” said Jess, and listened to the headphone she hadn’t raised in order to talk to him. “Five minutes,” she told the caller, and informed Pete “Two loads going to the West End.” “I’ll tell the boys. They’ve been waiting longer.” He made his quiet-footed way to the street door, leaving Jess to speculate whether his interest in her parents might be partly an attempt to win her affections, to reflect that given time she mightn’t altogether mind if… She gave Nikos and Muhammed the address as Pete rejoined her in the staff area, where he sat on the least quavery chair and rested his heels against the table. “Do I what?” Jess said.

“Think the worst part is your dad not knowing how he is.”

“It is for the family, but I wouldn’t like to if it was me.”

“Trust me, never you.”

How positively was she supposed to take that? People didn’t lose their minds in jobs like this, only wore themselves down to retirement if nothing better came along. She had to wonder what a person as intelligent as she sensed he was determined not to seem was doing in their line of business. “How about your parents?” she said.

“No complaints last time I checked. I’ll be off to visit the old home when I get the chance.” “Sounds like you’d rather be there than here, wherever…”

“No need to fish,” he said, and she blushed for the first time in years. At least he hadn’t interrupted her; the switchboard had. She ducked towards it so that her hair concealed most of her face while she answered the call. Hair tickled her tingling cheeks when she raised her head and gave him the address. “I’m on my way,” he said, but delayed long enough to present her with an uncomplicated wide-eyed smile that chased away her blush. Having achieved that, he strode out like a man with a mission, and Jess released a long breath that left her giddy as a fast glass of champagne. He was wasted, she thought; his charm was so long as he had nobody — no wife, not even a girlfriend, and not a boy either. There was more to him than he admitted, and she made up her mind to discover how much.

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five

Maureen and Frank had finished gardening and were lying on the patio when the doorbell rang. The noise probed Maureen out of a snooze composed of the afternoon sunlight, the scents of flowers and dug earth, the electric buzz of a bee that kept sounding as though contact with a blossom had fused it, the intermittent clatter of trains on the line through Windsor. Frank only groaned, and neglected to disagree when she said “I’d better see who it is.” She pushed herself carefully off the recliner, a twinge in her right leg threatening to turn into a spasm that would kick over the remains of her gin and tonic, and groped her way into the kitchen.

Entering the shade of the house was a little too much like starting to go blind. She rested a hand on a cool stone surface and sent herself into the hall. A dozen increasingly confident steps took her to the front door. She was expecting the milkman, but the man on the path was nobody she knew. “I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said.

“You aren’t yet,” said Maureen, wondering if he was a door-to-door evangelist — he had the wide-eyed direct gaze, the scrubbed fresh face. “What can we do for you?” “I saw your sign, and I was wondering if I could make an appointment for my wife and myself to view the house. Or if I need to make it with your agent, could you tell me where their office is?” “They’re friends. They don’t mind if we arrange things direct. Whereabouts have you come from, Mr…. ?” “Norton. My name, that is. We live in Cambridge at present, me and my wife.”

“Quite a long way to come.”

“I’m here for an auction. I’m sure the journey will have been worth my while.” “We’ve friends who have picked up some bargains. What I was meaning, though, it’s a long way for you to come back with your wife.” “It won’t be if it’s the kind of house she’d like.”

His gaze flickered past her as she heard Frank stumble into the kitchen. As she saw Norton welcoming the knowledge that she wasn’t on her own she said “Would you like to come in for a look? Then you won’t have had a wasted journey if it turns out not to be the kind of thing you’re looking for.” “I’m already sure it will be.”

“Frank, this is Mr. Norton. He’s scouting houses for his wife, and I said he could have a prowl now.” “Always glad to see a friendly face. Mr. Norton, will you have a drink to take with you on the tour?” “Thanks, but maybe later.”

“Whatever appeals. Where are you parked? Do you want to come up the drive?”

“I’m better off leaving it. I’m well out of the way.”

“You’d have to get used to our drive if you lived here. She won’t admit it, but Maureen’s always worried we’ll be killed one day coming out on that bend.” “Let’s hope I’ll be saving you from that.”

“Well, here’s where the best meals of my life have come from,” Frank said, and waited in the kitchen while their visitor, having closed the door, followed Maureen along the hall. “Mostly fitted, so it’ll be staying, but I don’t suppose it’s your territory, is it? The son keeps telling me I should learn to cook. Too old to change, that’s my excuse.” “You haven’t heard me proposing to trade you in,” said Maureen, and gave his cheek as lingering a stroke as seemed polite in company. “Now here’s the dining-room with a hatch through from the kitchen for whoever does the cooking, Mr. Norton.” “It’s seen a good few birthdays and Christmas dinners, that table has. All the furniture will be leaving with us, you understand.” “I imagined that would be your plan. The house is all I need.”

“And here’s where we while away our evenings,” Maureen said. “The television’s that big because of my eyes.” “She reads a lot, and I try to beat that board at chess. You’d think I’d be able to see further ahead than a computer chip, wouldn’t you, Mr. Norton? Do you play?” “You should see me.”

“Maybe we’ll have a challenge later.”

“I expect Mr. Norton may be wanting to hurry home to his wife, Frank.”

“I always leave myself time to spare,” said their visitor. “I’m in the mood for a game.” Having concluded that didn’t mean an immediate session at the chessboard, Frank led the way up the stripped pine stairs. “Four bedrooms. More than we need these days, sad to say.” Maureen hung back while the men sidetracked into the guest rooms which had been Hilary’s and Arthur’s bedrooms. However many words a picture was supposed to be worth, a room could be worth that many times a picture, and you couldn’t take rooms with you. Before she and Frank moved, and before the rooms were left bare of the beds and the rest of the items that were part of the children’s growing up, she was going to sit in each room for as long as it took her to remember all they meant to her. She caught up with Frank in their bedroom, where he was stretching an almost steady hand towards the distant view of Windsor Castle. “Looks like the neighbours are out. If you’re lucky you may see the Queen to wave to.” “Or her old mum,” said Maureen. “Mr. Norton, have you any relatives round here?” “Do you think I should have?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. It’s just that you remind me of someone, and I can’t think who.” “It’ll come to you. But no, I haven’t any relatives unless I can call you two some.” “I’ve always thought it would be exciting to find you’d a relative you didn’t know you had,” Maureen said, feeling obscurely sorry for him. Once the bathroom and fourth bedroom had been viewed she followed the visitor downstairs. He was flexing his fingers as if for balance, and his light tread put Frank’s and her heavy descent supported by the banister to shame. Behind his right ear she noticed a single curl that had eluded a determined brushing of his sleeked-back hair. That was threatening to arouse her maternal instinct for tidying such details when Frank said “Any children, Mr. Norton?” “What about them?”

“I was wondering if you had any, that was all.”

“Why should you do that?”

Maureen would have decided her curiosity was unwelcome, but Frank ploughed on. “With you looking for a house this size it struck me you must be thinking of children.” “They’re what I’m thinking of all right.”

That silenced Frank until he reached the hall. “Do go in and sit, Mr. Norton. You didn’t say no to a drink.” “Perhaps he will now he’s driving, Frank.”

“Don’t let me intrude if you’re expecting visitors.”

“We aren’t, are we?” The milkman wasn’t worth mentioning. “I just want to be sure you get home safe,” Maureen said.

“I always do,” said Norton, seating himself in one of the massive leather armchairs, and nodded at the photographs that occupied the shelves of the Welsh dresser. “Are all these yours?” “All except the top shelf are our son and daughter. The top shelf are their children, but we like to think those two are ours as well.” “I know exactly what you mean.”

“So was there a drink you would like?” Frank said.

“I don’t suppose there might be any wine.”

“You’re in the right house, my friend. Red or white?”

“Red’s my colour.”

“My feeling too. White’s for the ladies, especially the German stuff,” Frank said, and performed an exaggerated flinch, though Maureen was yards away. “Let me find something to impress you with. Oh, would you like to see?” Norton didn’t move or blink. “See what, grandfather?”

“We ought to have included it in the tour. I don’t know what use you would have for it, but we’ve a cellar.” “I’d like to see that, certainly. Shall I come down with you?”

“Do.”

“I may as well join you,” said Maureen, anxious to be there in case Frank lost his footing on the steps. She moved between him and their visitor, giving him an apologetic pursed smile to which he responded by widening his eyes, the opposite of a wink. They stayed widened while Frank muttered at his pockets until he located his keys to unlock the door in the side of the staircase.

The door swung into a wedge of darkness that put on its whitewash as Frank flicked the light-switch, and Maureen remembered the day ten-year-old Hilary had tumbled all the way down the steps after the children had been forbidden to use the cellar in their games of hide-and-seek. She remembered eight-year-old Arthur in tears at the thought of having killed or at least permanently injured his sister; Hilary opening her eyes as though she’d lost the knack, so that when the doctor had diagnosed only mild concussion Maureen had had to remind herself how to breathe; the family dinner after the recriminations, when the four of them had simultaneously fallen silent with relief at still having one another; her and Frank making love that night, a passionate restatement of their life together… Life moved on, and now she was trying unobtrusively to watch out for Frank. She did without a sigh as he set foot on the stony floor.

The wine-racks, rather less than half full, occupied the walls opposite the steps and to the right of them.

Beneath the steps, and cut off from most of the glare of the unshaded bulb, the gas and electricity meters whispered and clicked to themselves. Norton halted on the bottom step, his fingertips splayed on his thighs. “I don’t see how this could be improved upon,” he said.

“I take it you’re serious about your wine, then. Come and see what you’d like me to open.” “I’m serious,” said their visitor, but had made no move when, adding the resonance of the floorboards above their heads to itself, the doorbell rang.

“Excuse me, Mr. Norton. You’ll have to come down to let me up.”

“Who’s that going to be?” Frank complained.

“The milkman, I should think.”

Norton moved aside at once, and rested his fingers on her elbow to help her on her way. His hand felt not much warmer than she knew the stone floor to be. “Hurry back, grandmother,” he said. “We’ll be waiting.” She didn’t altogether care for his familiarity, and she had the impression he didn’t want it to be liked. Perhaps it was his way of protesting at having been reminded of whatever children meant to him — some problem with conceiving them, she guessed. She was steadying her climb with one hand on the banister when Frank said “So what are you going to be up to in Windsor, Mr. Norton?” “He was here for an auction, Frank.”

“What kind was that?”

“A car auction,” their visitor said.

“I didn’t know we had those,” Frank admitted, and Maureen had to agree with him. She supposed they were new, and somewhere outside Windsor. She climbed out of the cellar and fetched her handbag from the front room before tramping to the front door.

The slow stocky placid milkman was indeed there, poking change about in the palm of his hand. His van was parked opposite the drive, hardly the safest place. “Was there a car in your way?” she said.

“When was that?”

“It doesn’t matter. I just thought …” If she went on she would seem critical of his parking, and besides, she wanted to get back to Frank and their visitor. “Don’t let it bother you. An old lady’s prattling. Thanks, and see you next week.” “That you will,” he said, and having handed Maureen her change, used the hand to scratch his head. He continued to attempt to enliven his brain that way while he completed his deliberate progress to the gate in the rosy arch. “Bye,” Maureen called as he slammed the gate with a firmness she was always intending to ask him to moderate. She closed the door and hurried to toss her bag onto the nearest armchair.

The men had ceased speaking, no doubt rather than shout over her footsteps. “Everything all right down there?” she called.

“It will be once you join us,” Norton said.

Presumably the selection of a bottle was preoccupying Frank. Maureen started down, only to realise she couldn’t see him. Their visitor was facing her from the corner formed by the wine-racks, his hands behind his back, his eyes unblinkingly wide. “Where is he?” she demanded, intending her briskness for Frank to answer.

Norton nodded at the area beneath her — his whole body seemed to unstiffen itself towards it. “Just there.” She grasped the banister with both hands and leaned over, and saw an unopened bottle of Cotes de Roussillon standing by the rack opposite the meters. “Frank, what are you playing at?” she demanded, a glance beneath her feet having shown him crouched under the steps. “Save playing hide-and-seek for when the grandchildren come, and not down here either.” She heard movement below her — the restlessness of the meters. At the limit of her hearing the milk-van receded into inaudibility. She held onto the banister and clattered down the steps, hoping that gave Frank a headache. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” she demanded, knowing that he must be, because otherwise their visitor would have gone to him. “Really, sometimes you’re worse than the grandchildren. What must Mr. Norton think of you?” Norton brought one hand from behind his back and took hold of his mouth and chin, miming pensiveness. The chill of the stone floor insinuated itself through Maureen’s shoes as she hauled herself around the end of the banister and saw Frank.

He wasn’t crouching in front of the meters; he was collapsed against them, his right cheek flattened by the electricity dial. A stripe of light through the gap between two steps bandaged his closed eyes and displayed a zero clicking into sight beside his face. The rest of him was dark as the space beneath the steps — extinguished. Part of the darkness was moving, worming over the section of the meter between his head and right shoulder. It was a trickle of liquid from the concealed side of his head.

Maureen’s hands went out helplessly to him, then found themselves slapping the edge of the steps as faintness raced through her from the top of her head, parching her mouth and unstringing her body. She swallowed and struggled to be capable of ducking under the steps. Then Norton started to hum to himself, and she twisted her head round to him.

He was still in his corner. He’d stretched his forefinger along his upper lip and was covering his chin with the remainder of his fist, framing an eager expectant smile. As their eyes met, he drooped his eyelids. At once she knew where she had previously seen him, and that he was wearing a glove and humming “Here Comes the Bride.” He saw her recognise him, and brought his other gloved hand into view as he strode very fast across the cellar. He was holding a stained bottle-opener — not just an opener, a knife fat with blades and tools. He closed it deftly and slid it into a pocket of his jacket, producing a rustle of plastic. He was within reach of her now, and she tried to make a claw of her right hand, to defend herself or attack him for whatever he’d done to Frank. But he uncovered his face and darted past too swiftly for her wild swipe to make contact, though it nearly overbalanced her. “Time to put your lipstick on, grandmother,” he said, and clubbed her with the bottle he’d snatched from the floor.

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seven

Five minutes after Gail had flown him back into the playpen Paul, having thoroughly twirled the dial of the activity board clamped to the bars, threw his picture book across the dining area and clambered in pursuit. “Out,” he declared.

“You sure are. I can’t imagine anybody giving you an argument. Don’t forget there’s In as well. How about practising that to give your father even more to be impressed with and the chef a chance to fix tomorrow’s dinner?” Paul was supporting himself on the rail of the playpen as though rehearsing how to lean against a different kind of bar, and favouring her soliloquy with a bemused grin. Apparently her conversation wasn’t to his taste, because he toddled at a speed that more than compensated for any unsteadiness to his Fisher-Price garage and plucked a car off the roof. “Now where might that be racing off to?” said Gail, and “No” in the tone of a question as he veered towards the television. When he dropped to his knees in front of the empty mouth of the video recorder she repeated the word in her best voice from the skies, which sent him fleeing back to her. “I think you can go in your chair with a biscuit,” she said, “and work on chewing yourself another tooth.” “Kit,” he agreed with enthusiasm.

“Biss-cuit,” Gail pronounced, earning herself a seven-toothed grin but no other response. She sailed him through the air to the dining-table, where she strapped him into his high chair before ceremoniously unwrapping him a rusk. As he set about gnawing she returned to the kitchen and her much-requested Chinese marinade, and was adding more wine from the box in the towering refrigerator when the phone trilled.

“Fo.”

“Bet if that’s MetV they aren’t saying they’ve brought the creche back so you can come to work with me, and if they aren’t, screw them.” “Skoo.”

“Yes, well, I don’t think we need to work on that. You didn’t hear me say it, all right? What’s that in your hand and all over your fat little messy chin? It’s a …” “Skoo.”

She gave up trying to conceal her amusement in the midst of her attempts to look reproving. Just in time to beat the answering machine, she went to the knee-high bookshelf between the dining area and the rest of the pale expansive room that seemed to have stored the light now the sun had moved behind the bridge over the Thames. “Hello,” she said into the white sliver of a receiver.

She heard an enormous hollow voice saying it was sorry, and then Geoff. “I’m at Waterloo at last. Hello.” “Do you want to say that to someone else who’d love to speak with you, or shan’t I say who you are?” “Best wait. Spent nearly all my change in the buffet while we were nowhere for an hour.” “How about we pick you up at Hammersmith?”

“That would be…” At this point the phone decided he’d had what he’d paid for and turned him into a monotonous two-note chord, but she’d heard his enthusiasm. “We’ll fetch your father and dine out tonight,” she said.

She called to book a table, then she dabbed at Paul’s generously decorated protests and demonstrations of how well he could say no, and managed to trap his feet in socks and shoes before releasing him from his chair. “Now I think Mr. Diaperless had better prepare himself for the road,” she said, and carried him upstairs to save time, his chubby bare arms warm around her neck, pressing against her cheek his face that smelled like milk. Once she’d unbuttoned his overalls in the bathroom on the middle floor he yanked them down and demonstrated how improved his aim was since last month. “Enty,” he announced.

He was doing well, she told herself. Even if some of his friends had more to say, not all of them were out of diapers at less than three years old or even off the breast. She helped him to button himself up and walked downstairs ahead of him, his breaths soft and warm on the back of her neck.

She set the alarm and held his rebellious hand while she locked the front door. As she raised him to his lookout on her shoulders a bus stuffed with children bound for Mortlake cruised by like a condensation of the imminent rush hour. Paul objected and twisted his head round when, having passed under the railway bridge, she turned away from the Thames, up the side street where the retired myopic teacher let the Rover have her parking space. At the sight of his personal seat in the back, however, Paul almost squirmed out of her hands around his waist with eagerness to be off.

Two minutes’ driving took her through Barnes, past the pond on the green and Paul’s favourite street with its abundance of lions, sprouting on the gateposts and the roofs among stone eggs and buds. None of this provoked a word, nor the drive along Castelnau past the reservoirs to Hammersmith Bridge, which had been painted bright as any of his toys. As she drove beneath the flyover beyond it, the reason for their journey must have struck him. “Daddy,” he said, clearer than she’d ever heard.

“You got it.”

In another minute they saw Geoff outside the station entrance, one foot on his suitcase, one hand massaging the back of his neck while he closed his eyes and opened them again. Gail had pulled up where only taxis were supposed to before he noticed her. “Sorry,” he said, and dealt his wide forehead a slap that almost connected. “Far away.” “So long as you’re back with us.”

He slung the case into the trunk and sat beside her. “No risk there,” he said, and leaned over from tugging out his seat-belt to kiss as much of her mouth as he could reach.

Gail sent the car around the square of roads that returned it to the bridge. As the Thames shimmered on both sides of the Rover she said “Was it harder than you figured, being shown off?” “Not as hard as your week, says a fiver.”

“Exhausting isn’t hard, it’s just exhausting. One good night’s sleep would fix that. Ten says you’ve had a week of those.” He turned away to dig in his hip pocket. “I won’t argue. Do you want it now?”

“I’ll take it in trade,” said Gail, and then “Anything we should discuss?”

He widened his eyes, which were almost as luminously dark as Paul’s. “What makes you ask that?” “Don’t turn on your eyes at me while I’m driving. I was wondering how it feels not to come home just to me any more.” “That’s what kept me going all my lonely week.”

“Poor solitary Geoff. We’re so glad to have you back that we thought we’d eat out to celebrate.” “You’ve booked somewhere.”

“The Italian by the river. Don’t you want to?”

“It’ll be fine. Portable Davenport will have a fuss made of him. When I’ve dumped the luggage why don’t we go along to the pub,” Geoff said, and it was clear to Gail he was trying to find somewhere that would help him talk.

She halted the car at their front door to let him dump his case out, then she drove the Rover to its space. At the main road she met Geoff and the stroller, into which they managed to persuade Paul with the promise of a fizzy drink. While Geoff bought the round she sped Paul to a table by the river, along the far margin of which a heron was skimming parallel with the wake of a rowing team. “Welcome home,” she said as Geoff sat on the bench opposite her and clinked his glass of wine with hers, “only that’s where you’re going back next week, right?” “You can’t actually go back, can you? Things change, except up here.” He rested his chilly glass of white wine against his forehead. “Maybe there as well, particularly if you want them to.” “Why would you want to change…”

“Dink.”

“That’s right, babe, drink,” said Gail, and refilled the lidded cup. “What are you saying you’ve changed, Geoff?” she said as Paul set about sucking and chewing the toothmarked mouthpiece.

“What’s your impression of my childhood?”

“That you were spoiled like only children tend to be. Maybe more than someone sitting not too far away from us, since your parents were way older than the average, only I’m not saying spoiled in a bad way. I remember wishing I could have met them to thank them for making you.” Geoff was rolling his cold glass across his forehead. He brought the glass down to swig from before he raised his eyes to her. “Was I wrong?” she said.

“Not exactly. In a way we can even thank them for my career. But …”

“Why do I get the feeling that’s suddenly such a big word?”

“I’ve never lied to you — at least, I hope you won’t think so. I wanted to forget, and being able to help people was one way of forgetting.” He frowned at Paul as if to reassure himself he wasn’t being overheard, but the toddler was watching ducks march past in the mud at the edge of the river. “Not lying isn’t the same as telling the truth,” Geoff said.

He put down his glass in order to take Gail’s hand, a gesture that would have made her feel closer to him if his eyes hadn’t grown distant. “There was something I never told you I had,” he said.

tocIDAJ3NLB”>

nine

Rain.”

“A train, sure enough, and an upside-down one under the bridge.” As the train and its reflection made for London, Gail found Paul’s small warm hand and hid it in hers. Above them the pub was filling up with late-afternoon drinkers, but the Davenports still had the tables by the river to themselves. Soon Geoff carried another trayful of drinks down the steps, and returned the tray to the bar before resuming his seat opposite Gail. His eyes were asking her to give him some idea how she felt, but the best she could do just now was to ask for more information. “You haven’t told me his name.” “Ben. That’s what he liked to be called, but they always called him Benjamin.” “You mean that was another way they got at him.”

“One of the hundreds, like telling him he wasn’t my brother.”

“He wasn’t quite, was he? You didn’t have the same father. But your parents saying that, it must have affected him and you as well.” “I knew it wasn’t fair as far back as I can remember.” Geoff risked a smile at her and laid his hands palms upwards on the table. “I do appreciate how you’re taking this, I hope you realise. I know it must be a shock.” “I’m not shocked. Maybe a bit disappointed that you didn’t tell me sooner, but I see it upset you. I know the person you are now, that’s what counts. It can’t change that, can it?” “You’d hope not.”

“So carry on.”

“What do you want to hear?”

“Everything, what else? Now you’ve started I want to end up knowing there’s nothing you’ve kept from me. Tell me the single worst thing.” Geoff glanced at Paul, who was busy gnawing the mouthpiece of his cup, and looked down at his hands on the table before turning them over. “For him it must have been when they sent him away.” “Because they split the two of you up, you mean?”

“Because of where they sent him.”

“Boarding school? Not a home.”

“My mother’s parents.”

“Couldn’t his father…”

“She was always telling him his father hadn’t wanted him. When I got older I wondered if her having custody of Ben was a way of scoring off his father. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d told him Ben didn’t want to see him. Ben told me they hadn’t been divorced a year when his father went off to New Zealand to live with another woman and raise a family, but even before that mother was forever finding ways to stop Ben spending a day with his father. And once they’d gone Ben never even saw a card from him. It didn’t occur to me at the time, and I don’t know if it did to Ben, but chances are she would have destroyed anything he sent. Do you want me to stop?” “Of course not, Geoff. She just sounds so unlike the mother I thought you had.” “I’m sorry,” he said, several apologies in one. “That’s because I only talked about how she and my father were to me.” “I’m not blaming you. So your grandparents …”

“If it’s possible, they thought less of him than my parents did.”

“Poor Ben,” Gail said, not that it seemed adequate. “So really he only had you.” “I’m not so sure he felt he did.”

“I’m sure you helped him all you could. How old were you then?”

“Eight, and he was eleven. I’ll tell you one thing he did that shows how he felt. While he was away he made up a family for himself.” “Made how?”

“Convinced all his friends at school he was an only child with a mother and father who hadn’t much money but couldn’t do enough for him.” “I can imagine how he might have wanted to do away with everyone but you. So then was he sent home?” “Eventually, if you could call that his home. They still wanted him out of the way, so they sent him to boarding school. Left when he was sixteen, and my father put him to work for the firm.” “He couldn’t have been too intelligent, then. Not that I’m saying you can’t be intelligent if you’re a builder, but you’d think he would have done his best to stay away from working for your father.” “Ben was intelligent all right. That was one of the things they hated about him. Too clever for his own good, that was their refrain. I always thought he did badly at school so he could get on with earning some money and freedom, not realising my father could force him to work for him.” “He couldn’t once Ben was eighteen, could he?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he spent those two years thinking that. The day he turned eighteen they were actually going to take us out for dinner. It was a Sunday, so he didn’t have to go to work. About the middle of the morning mother started shouting for him to come downstairs, and when he didn’t she flounced up to his room. I remember her flinging his door open and shouting ‘You creeping crawling reptile, after all we’ve done for you’ and then just standing there. He must have sneaked away while everyone was asleep. And that was the last we ever saw of him.” “Or heard of him?”

“I’ve absolutely no idea where he is.”

“Didn’t anyone ever try to find out?”

“I did after they died. They had practically nothing to leave by then, but they left it all to me. I paid the solicitors to try and track him down, only it seemed he wanted to stay hidden. I thought he must have made himself a new life and he wanted to keep clear of the old.” “Maybe he’ll get in touch when you aren’t expecting it.”

“Maybe.”

She would have liked to know how he felt about the possibility, but a family composed largely and loudly of teenagers had arrived at the adjacent table. A boat mounted with the upper halves of five women glided by, the oars of four of them digging at the water. “Lift them up for me,” shouted the cox. “Give me a long strong one.” As the bare arms of the rowers darkened with the shadow of the bridge Gail was caught by an unexpected shiver. “It isn’t cold, is it?” she said to Geoff.

Paul produced a sneeze that included a sample of his drink, and Geoff pulled out a handkerchief to dab the small startled face. “Must be getting colder.” “Let’s hit the road, then.” Gail took hold of the handles of the stroller, and could have wished the rubber grips to feel a little firmer. “So you’ve been remembering because you’re going back where you came from.” “Yes,” Geoff said at once.

tocIDAJJOLB”>

eleven

Geoff was in the playroom when the noise began. He’d managed to coax the white mouse out of her cage, and was watching her scurry from his hand to his hand to his hand. Just as he took pity on her — she must think she was going somewhere, she might even imagine she was making her escape — he heard a sound of chipping or digging upstairs. It was a noise he thought a mouse in a wall might make, or a prisoner tunnelling out of his cell, but he knew it came from Ben’s room. He was willing it to stop before anyone else noticed when he heard the lounge door open, and a mass of deliberate footsteps that seemed to be treading the grownups’ voices low. He cupped his hands to keep the mouse safe and tried to send Ben a mental warning. They were supposed to stay absolutely quiet whenever Geoff’s father showed someone what was wrong with the house.

The caller wasn’t just another of the increasingly reluctant council officials Geoff’s father knew well enough to persuade them to visit. He was a lawyer and so, apparently, more important — Geoff had gathered this from his parents’ conversation at dinner, and would have expected Ben to have before he’d been sent upstairs for eating in a way Geoff’s father didn’t like. But the noise from Ben’s room didn’t relent, and Geoff opened his hands for fear that he might crush the little palpitating ball of fur. He was carrying her back to her cage when the playroom door was thrown open with a violence that almost made her jump out of his hands. “What do you…” his father demanded, then moderated his voice. “What was the row? Was it in here?”

He was wearing one of the suits he donned to impress official visitors, and otherwise only for church or for the dinners he attended more frequently than his wife did. The weathered breeze block of his face, which often had Geoff wondering if the plaster dust his work spread everywhere could insinuate itself beneath the skin, was perched on the strangulated collar of his whitest shirt. His reddened eyes had given up narrowing themselves at the possibility of seeing Ben, but his undersized mouth was still trying to render itself smaller by drawing its corners in. “Was that doing it?” he said, pointing at Geoff’s hands.

The mouse was in less danger than Ben, thought Geoff. “I took her out so she wouldn’t.”

“Put it away now before you get germs,” said his mother, following his father into the room. Her perfume came first, and then her face around the door — her wide lips pinked, her eyebrows tweezed, her eyelids painted the blue of a sky with a milky skin of cloud. Her light quick purposeful step brought in the rest of her, a ruffled white silk blouse both softening and emphasising the thrust of her front, a kilt without a tartan swirling around her stockinged calves. “Put it away so the gentleman can see what a good boy we have,” she said.

“She’s a her, mum.”

“Put it away regardless. You shouldn’t be able to tell the difference at your age.”

“I’d have to bang my hammer there, Jewel,” Geoff’s father said. “Can’t know the difference too young is my belief, or you won’t know what to use your barge pole for.”

“I’ll bow to that, but I haven’t seen him putting what he was told to put. We don’t want the gentleman thinking we’ve no boys we’re proud of.”

Geoff experienced the familiar tug-of-war of emotions: wanting to live up to his parents’ estimation of him, wincing at the prospect of giving them yet another reason to compare Ben unfavourably with him. “I was just seeing she wasn’t frightened,” he said.

“Nobody here needs to be frightened if they don’t deserve to be.” She watched queasily as Geoff poured the mouse into the cage and fastened the gnawed wire. “Sit quietly now and let your father demonstrate for Mr. Marsh.”

Geoff sat at once in a playroom chair that was slightly too small for him — Ben’s old desk chair, into which he’d seen Ben cram himself as though to make himself less conspicuous — and watched his father raise a finger. Here came the rumble of a lorry, and before the sound had finished dragging itself through the ears of the listeners it was joined by the protracted muffled thunder of an even larger vehicle and the underlying vibration of a train. “See what I’m getting at?” Geoff s father said. “It’s louder in than out. It’s shut in.”

“I’d have to have that monitored, Mr. Davenport,” the lawyer said from the hall.

“You’re saying that’s worth it.”

“Definitely, if you want something that has a chance of standing up in court.”

“What I’m saying, you’ll take the case.”

“Just remind me now. You aren’t satisfied with the compensation the council are offering.”

“Not when they want to give us what the neighbours got for half the noise. I want the council sorted out, and the architect who said he’d cut the row down and it’s like living in a hut under the flyover.”

“You altered the interior to his design yourself, I think you said.”

“That’s me, bricks for brains. He’s supposed to be the expert. I’m just the brickie that made good.”

“Point taken, Mr. Davenport. I’m on your side, do believe me. And if the question were to be raised as to why you moved to this location when the proposals for the motorway were public knowledge …”

“It was Julie’s aunt’s that died. We were going to sell it, we still are, only we had to move in when a firm that owed me went bust and the bank said the solution was sell the house we had.”

“Perhaps I could glance at the relevant correspondence.”

There would be plenty of that, thought Geoff. His father often sat up after midnight in the office, drafting letters for Geoff’s mother to correct and tone down and type. The adults made for the office, then all the footsteps shut themselves in the dining-room. Muffled voices were becoming part of the grumble of the house when Geoff heard the sound of chipping recommence upstairs.

He levered himself out of the chair and dodged across the hall. The boxy staircase had trapped the smells of tonight’s boiled vegetables and of a recently smouldering saucepan, together with a lingering trace of the fly killer his mother seemed to believe could double as an air freshener. He tiptoed quickly up the stairs into the corridor decorated with paintings of rosy-cheeked curly-haired children, heavy-framed items his father had acquired while renovating somebody’s grandmother’s house. The sharp dogged noise hadn’t relented when Geoff reached Ben’s door. No sooner had he begun to inch the door open, however, than the noise ceased and Ben swung to face him.

Ben was crouched beside the window. Though the June evening wouldn’t be dark for hours, the thick brown curtains were drawn. The light was uneconomically on, which wouldn’t please Geoff’s father. The room was almost as tidy as ever — so tidy that it looked as if it was begging for praise or at least acknowledgement — except for a sprinkling of wooden dust and fragments on the dark brown carpet in the angle of the skirting-board. Whatever expression Ben had produced as the door opened had vanished at the sight of Geoff, and now his narrow bony uncoloured face said he was ready for a game, his pale eyes wide, his lips parted in a grin that bared his moist top teeth. “What were you doing?” Geoff blurted. “They can hear you.”

“Shut it then.”

Geoff eased the door shut behind him. “They already heard.”

“Can’t be helped then.” He sounded proud of himself, perhaps trying to judge what that felt like. “Look at my art,” he said, springing to his feet.

He’d carved his first initial in the darkest corner of the room. It resembled a diagram of one squarish object pressed under another. “They’ll see too,” Geoff protested. “Don’t you care?”

“It’s my room. Anyway, they don’t. Why should I?”

“I do,” Geoff said, so awkwardly it emerged as a mumble he was too embarrassed to repeat, and cleared his throat of the taste of the air on the staircase. “I mean, don’t you care what he’ll do when he sees?”

“What’s he going to do?” Ben let his gaze sink to the penknife in his hand, and reopened the blade with a thumbnail. As the metal glinted, his eyes did. “He won’t do this.”

“What are you…”

“Look,” said Ben, and fixed Geoff’s gaze. He placed his left forefinger just beneath his left eye and pulled his cheek down, exposing a strip of glistening pink skin and more eyeball than Geoff liked to think was in anybody’s face. “He wouldn’t dare,” Ben said.

Ben wouldn’t either, Geoff tried to convince himself. He was only playing with the knife, only lifting the blade level with his bulging eye, only aiming the point at it: that would be where he would have to stop playing. “I believe you,” Geoff assured him, so hastily he left half the last word behind in his mouth. Ben lowered the point of the blade into the niche he’d made in his face, and rested it against his eyeball, and let go of his cheek.

“Don’t,” Geoff screamed, and slapped himself across the mouth at the thought of having made Ben move inadvertently, causing the knife to — The sharp edge of the blade was uppermost, he saw; only the dull edge was resting between the eyeball and the skin, and so long as Ben’s hand didn’t jerk or waver — “Sorry,” he pleaded. “You’re right, he’d never. He’d be too scared. Better stop now before they come.”

“That’s nothing. Watch this.”

He was just saying that, Geoff did his best to think: there was nothing more he would risk doing to himself. Then, slowly and deliberately, Ben raised his left foot and planted it on his right knee. He swayed an inch to either side before steadying himself and widening his delighted eyes at Geoff. “That’s amazing,” Geoff said with at least as much control as Ben must be exerting. “Only stop now.”

“Want a go?”

“No, I just don’t want a one-eyed brother.”

“Who said you had a brother?”

“I’ll bet they said you had one.”

“Maybe.”

Geoff thought the idea had found a home until Ben threw out his free hand to ward it off, and had to sway in search of his balance, his fist tightening on the knife. “And then they let me know I hadn’t,” he said.

“Well, you have. I say you have. It’s up to me to say.” Geoff felt in danger of losing control of his words, which were making Ben widen his eyes again, pressing his left eye against the blade. Geoff’s own eyes were stinging — he could almost feel cold hard sharp metal digging into the hidden parts of them. “You’ve got a brother,” he said, nearly as desperate to stop repeating himself as to shift the knife away from Ben’s face. “Give me that and I’ll show you.”

Without warning Ben overbalanced. The knuckles of his free hand collided with the wall behind him and saved him. His face winced, then pretended it had done no such thing, and he pressed his foot harder against his knee. “Show me what?”

Geoff hadn’t thought beyond persuading him to give up the knife. An outbreak of noises downstairs let him look away. Footsteps and voices stopped at the front door, which closed gently. That seemed to be the last of the restraint Geoff s father could bear to exert, because he’d hardly started back along the hall before declaring “There goes another clever sod.”

“He said he was in our corner, Alf, so shush.”

“He’d better be, and I don’t care if he can hear. It’s when they think they’re cleverer than you they take advantage if you give them half the chance. I hired one weasel to design the house, I’m not paying another. Maybe they think I’m not good enough to employ them.”

“Of course you are. Your men know that, and so do we.”

“Who’s we? I can tell you one who doesn’t think so in this house.” His voice was at the stairs now. “I’m going to find out what that row was. It was never down here the second time.”

“Don’t go getting yourself in a stew so you can’t sleep again.”

Geoff turned, so carefully he felt crippled, to make sure his father’s words had reached Ben. The other boy had lowered his foot but not the knife. “I’m not kidding. I wouldn’t,” Geoff pleaded, hearing his father set foot on the stairs with a thud like a blow from a lump hammer. “Give it me, quick, and I’ll show them.”

Ben cocked his head while keeping his attention on Geoff — keeping the blade against his rolling eyeball. He listened to five footsteps on the stairs before he eased the blade out from beneath his eyelid. “Let’s see you then, Geoffrey.”

Geoff closed his fist around the handle. He was expecting it to be warm, even clammy, so that its coldness came as a shock. A single minute tear of blood clung to the point. He hadn’t time to let it affect him. He sank to his knees and began to gouge at the initial on the skirting-board.

He saw the drop of blood run off the metal and soak into the wood. He drove the point in deeper and prised out a splinter that almost doubled the length of the top bar of the B. He was starting to extend the middle bar when the footsteps rushed upstairs and along the corridor and, with scarcely a pause for the door to be thrown aside, into the room.

Geoff staggered to his feet and crammed his shoulders into the angle of the walls so that his father must see the knife and, framed by Geoff s ankles, the damage he’d done with it. But his father took a step at Ben that made the comb and brush and hair-cream jitter on the dwarfish dressing-table. “What’s he doing in here?” he said through his teeth.

“Ask him.”

“Don’t get clever with me, Ben Jam In. I’m asking you and no sod else. What were you up to that needs the curtains shut?” He slapped the light off before shoving Ben aside and flinging the curtains apart, at which point he looked directly at Geoff. “What’s he doing with a knife? Whose is it?”

“It’s Ben’s, dad, but I was…”

“Give it here,” Geoff’s father said, glaring at Ben, and stretched out a hand twice the size of his son’s. Having closed the blade, Geoff placed it on the swollen white palm that looked ingrained with white dust. His father opened the knife with a cracked rough thumbnail and waved it in front of Ben’s face. “Where’d you get it?”

“Someone in my class was selling it.”

Geoff’s father inverted his fist, pointing the knife downwards, and swooped it through the air. As his wife gasped in the doorway, her perfume flaring to fill Geoff’s nostrils, he pressed the blade against his jacket over his heart. The veins in his wrist swelled like tubular bruises for a second before the blade snapped. He caught it in his free hand and thrust both pieces of the knife into a pocket of his trousers. “Now it’s nobody’s,” he said, “and God help you if you mess up my house with anything else.”

A tear leaked from the inner corner of Ben’s left eye. He pinched the bridge of his nose at once, dismissing the moisture, but not before Geoff glimpsed a tinge of red. “I did some of it,” he said, his voice shrill with the attempt to draw some of the anger to himself.

“I saw you, son, and there’ll be no pocket money for you this week.” His father looked at him, or rather between his legs. “But I know a B when I see one. Know a few of the things it can stand for, as well.”

The boys’ mother leaned forward from her pinched waist to peer at the damage, then recoiled. “If you ask me it looks like the kind of thing we’d have carved on a tree when we were in love, initials stuck together like that. I’d like to know whose idea it was.”

“I don’t reckon we need to ask.”

“Dad, it was…”

“I said we don’t want to hear.” Geoff s father met his eyes, at the same time performing a jerk of the head. “Get in your room and stay till you’re told. And listen to me,” he said, throwing so much weight on the last word but one that it felt like a poke in Geoff’s chest. “Don’t you ever, that’s never, understand, never ever come in this room again.”

Geoff thought he had succeeded after all: he’d managed to divert some of the blame to himself, and so there would be less for Ben. He was easing the door shut, only to have his mother push him out with it, when he heard his father say “Not so clever this time, were we? Or maybe a bit too clever.” The door slammed, blotting out the sight but not the memory of Ben’s face. It was saying that Geoff had made the situation worse for him.

tocIDAZWOLB”>

thirteen

The first thing that came to find Jess was a whiff of cigarette smoke. From her position at the switchboard of Twenty-four Hour Knights she saw through the reception window a silhouette on the frosted glass that faced the street. The silhouette turned, and turned again, and each time redness flared before its face. There came a noiseless explosion of sparks that suggested the pacing figure had crushed the cigarette in its fist. The street door was pushed inwards, forcing its rheumatic metal arm to give, and revealed her disused boyfriend Rex.

He held up his parted fingers at the sight of her and risked an apologetic grin that was uncertain how far to raise itself. It made his face as emptily genial as a badge with a smile on it, and she couldn’t believe she had once thought him cuddly enough to hug whenever she had the chance. He was wearing a Majorcan souvenir cap with its peak turned backwards to display where he’d come from. “I’ll stay out of your bit, Jessy,” he said.

“You can stay further out than that. Try the street and then don’t stop.”

“I’ll sit here,” he said, and dropped himself on one of the long-suffering chairs in front of the calf-high table on which magazines were turning up their corners like old bread. “This bit is for the punters, isn’t it? You can let me sit here while I talk.”

“You’ll be talking to yourself.” When the chair gave a belated groan she said “If you break that you can pay for it.”

“I would, you know that. I’d never stick you with a bill.”

“No, you were always good at paying. Buying people for as long as you want them.”

He answered that with an extravagant flame that his petrol lighter shut off with a clunk. She’d laughed at the size of his fire when they’d first met, but now he could be signalling his distress for all she cared. As he emitted a mouthful of smoke she said “You can take that outside as well.”

“There’s an ashtray here with someone’s ash in.”

She felt as if he was daring to rebuke her for not cleaning up after a fare. “Couldn’t you even stay off that?” she demanded.

“I only gave it up for you. Remember when you used to sniff my hair to see if I’d…”

“Pity you didn’t do without a few more things while you were at it.” That was too much like the kind of remark she might have made while they were together, and so she added “Not that I give a stub in the gutter either way.”

“Whatever you say, Jessy. I just want you to know I didn’t come here for myself.”

“Who’s the cab for, then?”

“No, I mean — I mean I didn’t want you to feel more badly done to than you really were over, you know, that night.”

“As far as you’re concerned, mate, I don’t feel anything at all.”

“Well, that’s …” He clearly didn’t know what it was. So long as he couldn’t sense it was growing less true by the moment, Jess told herself furiously as he said “There really wasn’t anyone but you while we were together.”

“I must have dreamed I saw you feeding some little secretary to get past her stomach.”

“That’s all you saw, us eating, me and her. That’s all there was to see.”

“That must have been a relief to the rest of the diners, not having Sexy Rex put them off their stroganoff.” When the cigarette had the grace to droop in his fingers she said “Just hungry for company, were you?”

“No, all it was, and being a woman you’ll know how it is, she was depressed. They’d put her brother out in the community, and he’d forgotten to take his medicine and gone for a dog in the street. All I did was buy her a drink after work to try and take her mind off.”

Jess wasn’t about to remind him how he’d started to find her concern for her father excessive — she wasn’t going to recall how that had hurt. “Funny place to do that, a restaurant,” she couldn’t help responding.

“No, I mean we went to a pub. Only then she thought she hadn’t better drive till she’d had something to eat, and she’d been meaning to try, you know, our restaurant.” He gave the cigarette a suck while watching Jess’s face and said “She wouldn’t let me buy her dinner in case you thought I did. She even tried to pay for mine.”

“Thanks for coming to tell me you weren’t stuck with the whole bill.”

“She saw you, I should tell you. She wouldn’t say another word till I told her about us. She wanted me to go after you, but I thought you wouldn’t want me to, not in front of your friends.”

“No other time either. She must be as understanding as you’re thoughtful.”

“Tell you what, Jessy, if I didn’t know you better…”

“You’ve no right to think you know me at all. Go on then, what?”

“I’d think you were glad of an excuse to get rid of me. I’d think there was another bloke.”

“You’ll never know, will you?” That was the last answer she was giving him. She hugged herself with her folded arms and raised her eyebrows above her indifferent eyes. He only laid his cigarette in a glass gutter of the ashtray so as to use his finger tanned with nicotine to poke the rear end of his cap higher on his forehead, and she was about to ignore him when the door announced a new arrival with a creak of its untreated elbow. “Oh, Pete,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“What do you need me for, Jess?”

Just to be there, she told herself: just to embarrass Rex so that he went away. But Rex shoved his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a spectacle he knew she didn’t like, and used his fists to shove him to his feet. “Is this him?”

“Could be.”

That was Pete. Jess had been about to tell Rex he had no right to ask, but Pete’s playfulness was seductive. “Maybe,” she said.

“You weren’t so bare-faced last time I saw you,” Rex said to Pete, and the cigarette levered itself up, its tip reddening.

“I like him without the beard,” Jess said. “Liked him with it too.”

“That’s the trick, is it? That’s how to hold their interest, keep changing how you look.”

“That’s part of it,” said Pete, and gazed invitingly at him.

“Let’s have the rest, then. Who’s going to tell?”

“Leave it out, Rex.” Jess strode across the waiting area and hauled the door open. “You’ve said what you came to say and all you’re going to.”

“Haven’t got what I want yet.”

“Let me guess.”

“Don’t encourage him, Pete,” said Jess as Rex barked “What would I want in this hole? A cab.”

“I’ll call one.”

“No need. Your friend’s here.”

“I’ll…” Jess started to repeat, but this time it was Pete who interrupted. “Fair enough. I am.”

“It’s up to the two of you.” Jess threw her hands wide, then turned them up to show she had no hold on anyone. She watched while Rex mashed his cigarette into a smouldering mass in the ashtray and stood back with a laborious politeness to let Pete reach the door first, only to have Pete open the door and bow him out. The sliver of evening narrowed after them and pinched itself invisible, and she heard two car doors chop shut in unison. The switchboard buzzed and she ran to it, leaving behind most of her thoughts. Rex had better be careful, she was thinking, not quite sure how that made her feel. Whatever happened, she sensed Pete could take care of himself.

tocIDAXAPLB”>

fifteen

Geoff phoned home from the hotel lobby, since he no longer had a room. He stood with his head in a plasterboard helmet like an item of a pantomime giant’s armour and dialled, and waited for five rings to rouse Gail’s recorded voice. But she answered after three, and not on tape. “Are you on your way?” she said.

“Not quite on it yet, no. More people showed up to do interviews than we were expecting. They like their local boys round here once they’ve made good. Why, are you anxious to have me back?”

“A bit.”

“Anxious? Is something …”

“Just Paul. I don’t think it’s much.”

“What about him, love?”

“A touch of a bug. Well, more than a touch. He didn’t get to the can in time, and he’s upset about that. There was quite a face for a while. Maybe that bottom lip is going to be his special weapon, like your big eyes.”

“Like just about every inch of you. So is anyone else suffering?”

“I won’t pretend I’m having the most fun of my life.”

“I can hear that. I wish I could be there right now. I was really asking if any of his friends have been misbehaving internally.”

“Half the pack. Seems last year’s summer virus has mutated. Ginny who’s going back into tropical diseases says the bugs are getting cleverer.”

“Does that mean you can’t do anything?”

“She’s given me some of her three-year-old’s medicine to hold Paul overnight, and I’ll take him to morning surgery if he’s no better, or you can. When are we expecting you?”

“I thought of eating here to let the traffic die down unless you’d rather I set off now.”

“I can stand a few more hours by myself in bed if it keeps you safer.”

“Maybe you’ll find I’ve crept in when you weren’t looking,” said Geoff, and told himself there was no reason to regret his choice of words. “I’ll see you soon. I’ll see you very soon.”

He wheeled his luggage up to the car park and paid to let the Rover out. He hadn’t altogether lied to Gail; the city was expelling its herds of evening traffic. When he came in sight of the traffic lights that did their best to control the race for the motorway, there were tail-backs in every lane. The next dispensation of the lights moved him no farther than the entrance to a pub car park, and he gave in. He had a pint of ale that tasted increasingly metallic, a ham salad sandwich to tone down the effects, and a packet of crisps to render a second pint somewhat less immediate in its consequences. By now he wasn’t sure if he was drinking to delay what he had to do or prepare himself for doing it. As he drained the second pint he saw that the traffic had died away, and he lingered only to visit the Gents with an orchestra under its roof before heading for the car.

Some of the vehicles that were stringing themselves into view down the motorway had switched on their headlamps. For the few moments Geoff would need concealment, the twilight ought to be enough. The traffic lights released him at the motorway, and he had travelled only a few hundred yards up the concrete slope when he parked the car on the hard shoulder.

The pale brow of the motorway, six lanes and a central ridge wide, stood above him against a sky that was turning to ash. The desertion made him feel vulnerable, and not only to being seen — to the memories that were poised to crowd into his mind. He turned on the hazard lights and ducked out of the car, only to find he’d miscalculated. He was at least a hundred yards short of the stretch of motorway that overlooked his old home.

It wasn’t far enough to drive. He hurried uphill alongside the parapet lower than his waist and surmounted by a wide rail on stumpy metal posts. When the house came in sight through the railway bridge he turned to the wall. He was peering at it in search of a hiding-place when a glare of light flattened his shadow against the concrete. The headlamps of a police car had found him.

It was on the far side of the motorway, and it didn’t stop — surely had no reason. Geoff was heading for the nearest motorway phone to have his car seen to, that was all. Once the police had vanished in the direction of the traffic lights he crouched by the wall. It was decorated with shallow rectangular grooves, and there was half an inch of overhang beneath the capstones, but no niche when he felt for it, only cold rough stone. He straightened up, resisting the impulse to clutch at the rail as the height fell away beneath him, and was fishing out the envelope to check the angle from which the photograph of the wall had been taken when he heard a car approaching up the slope.

It pulled over behind his with an imperative squeal of brakes. He moved his hand away from his pocket and stood still as a car door creaked open. When it slammed he had to turn. The police car had come to find him. The driver was advancing on him at the pace of the hazard lights.

His body was trained for action, but his face had stayed almost plump. An expression that wasn’t yet a warning took as much time to form as he spent in approaching within a few feet of Geoff. “Looking for help, sir?” he said.

“Not really for anything,” Geoff heard himself blurt, and tried to intensify the neutral look that often helped him into places he needed to investigate. “Thanks for offering, though.”

“What’s the problem?”

“To be honest, there isn’t any. I know we aren’t supposed to stop here without one, civilians, I mean.” He might have said less if the low sun hadn’t been probing his eyes at the same time as blotting out the policeman’s face. “Sorry, I’m babbling. The truth is I’m here revisiting my childhood.”

“On foot on the motorway?”

Geoff could have said yes. He was scratching around in his mind for some response that would lead no further than itself when the policeman stepped forward and held out his hand. Geoff almost grasped it, having assumed that the man had belatedly recognised him, before he understood what was required. “My licence, yes, of course.”

The ragged plastic sheath caught the flap of the envelope in his pocket, and he had to disengage it for fear of spilling in front of the policeman the photograph of where they were standing. “Bit tatty, I’m afraid. Here it is in all its glory, anyway. All present and correct, I think you’ll find.”

He’d pinched the torn sides of the flat sheath together, but it splayed itself so wide as the policeman’s thumb closed over the far end that Geoff made a snatch at the documents in case they slipped out. “Just…” he began to explain, and held his hand back from covering his mouth or fingering the envelope in his pocket or betraying his sudden unsteadiness by clutching at the rail. There was more to fear than the policeman — there was being seen with him.

Eventually the policeman, having extracted the insurance certificate from within the fifteen-year-old licence whose folds were showing their age and subjected the papers to a scrutiny so prolonged it made Geoff feel interrogated, raised his shadowed eyes. “Quite a long way from home, aren’t we?”

“How long do you think it should take?” Geoff’s nervousness was loosening his words. “I mean, do you know if there’s anything I should be looking out for?”

“Depends when you get started. Depends how long it takes to fix your car.”

“There’s nothing up with it. Sorry, I thought we’d established that.”

The sun had edged behind the policeman until he moved to keep it in Geoff’s face. “Were you waiting for somebody, sir?”

“Up here? I should say not. If I were involved in anything like that I’d be a fool to do it here, wouldn’t you say?”

“What kind of thing is that, sir?”

“The kind of thing you might meet somebody somewhere out of the way for. The kind of thing I investigate sometimes, if my name there means anything to you.”

“Should it?”

“Well, you know, The Goods, the television series. Or maybe you don’t. I’m not suggesting for a moment that I’m in the same league as, I don’t know, your favourite footballer.”

If possible, that earned even less of a visible response than Geoff’s name had. “All I was trying to say,” Geoff insisted, “I was here in town signing the book of the series, here where I was born even if you wouldn’t think so listening to me, and I’d just driven onto the motorway when I remembered being able to see my old house from here. Not here, not up here, you understand. The motorway wasn’t built then.”

He was babbling, he knew. The policeman’s inexpressive gaze was trawling words out of him. He felt the taste of ale returning to his lips. He was going to burp, he was going to breathe alcohol into the policeman’s face. He crammed a knuckle into his mouth, against his clenched teeth, and gulped until he felt safe to speak. “Sorry. I didn’t know when I got out it was going to be this high.”

“So you’re saying that’s your show.”

“The Goods? Mine and a lot of other people’s.”

“I saw it once.” The policeman paused long enough to be readying a criticism. “I don’t remember him looking much like you.”

“People never look the same on screen. Fatter, for one thing.”

“Have you any other form of identification?”

“What, with a photo? Why would I…” He was going to be arrested not for having drunk too much, Geoff thought, but for claiming to be himself. He looked away from the policeman and the throbbing of the hazard lights and the sun that was continuing to lower itself, the better to drive his dried-up thoughts against the inside of his skull — and then he saw a chance. “There is something, someone, rather. They can identify me at the hotel down there. It was my old house.”

The policeman looked down, but at the documents. He slid the insurance certificate inside the licence and closed the torn plastic on them, then he used them to point at Geoff’s car. “We’ll see about that, shall we? I’ll be behind you.”

“I’m not sure how to get there from here.”

“Watch me in the mirror. I’ll show you how to go.”

Geoff could only climb into the Rover and start the engine and wait for the police car’s headlamps to urge him out of his stasis. It wasn’t just his failure to find whatever had been left for him that made him want to stay where he was. He mustn’t invent reasons to be nervous, his situation was fraught enough, but he couldn’t help feeling watched by not only the policeman. Surely there was no way Ben could learn that Geoff had been with the police — no possibility of his suspecting that Geoff had been talking about him.

tocIDA2MPLB”>

seventeen

Leave him alone,” Geoff heard himself protest, perhaps aloud, and stared at himself in the mirror. In the dawn over Brent he looked haggard with sleeplessness, not at all the ideal driver. A milk cart he overtook might have been enacting his sluggishness. He could barely remember the motorway on which he’d spent most of the last five hours; he’d been trying not to remember the consequences of having concealed Ben in his bed. Now he should be home in less than half an hour, and he wanted nothing to distract him.

At least the Liverpool policeman hadn’t arrested him. “You’re never going to lock him up for seeing where he was born,” the landlady of the Home From Home had said. She’d done her best to entice the policeman with an offer of tea and home-made cakes, but he’d retired to his vehicle after cautioning Geoff for not having had a conventional reason to park on the hard shoulder. Nevertheless Geoff had hardly regained the motorway before repeating his offence. He’d located the envelope almost at once, in a niche that had been scraped beneath the capstone less than an arm’s length from where he’d previously searched. He hadn’t risked examining his find until he arrived at the motorway services ten miles up the road. One glance had shown him that the photograph recalled far too much.

It wasn’t going to reach him now. He switched on the car radio and found a local station in time for the travel news. There was no warning about his route, and here was the news: a plane crash, a riot, a renewal of war, but no mention of the couple who had been murdered near Windsor. He suspected that the media were finished with them unless the police announced they had a lead, and he didn’t know how much he was hoping the police would track their man down before Geoff had no option but to follow up the photograph — to dig deeper in himself.

Where the North Circular met Hanger Lane a dispatch rider overtook him with a spurt of fumes and sped into Ealing. On a pond in Gunnersbury Park a duck fanned its head high with its wings. Beyond Kew Bridge, beside the gardens, the alarms of a house and a parked car were calling to each other. The road swung away from the Thames, then back at Mortlake, and ten minutes later Geoff was home.

The bridge was counting the wagons of a goods train as prolonged as a dream. His overnight bag leaned over the shoulder it was strapped to as he unlocked the front door and typed the code on the keyboard of the alarm before it could declare him to be an intruder. Having deposited his bag on the couch nearest the door, he tiptoed upstairs.

At least he hadn’t wakened Gail and Paul; he couldn’t even hear their breathing. The shared spout of the bath taps loosed a drip as he brushed his much-travelled teeth and gave his face the wash it had been missing all night. He delivered himself of the contents of his bladder, more than a minute’s worth, and leaned on the handle of the flush. He glanced into the guest room and the workroom, across which a blank computer screen and the glint of the river greeted him, before he padded to the top floor.

Sunlight was probing between the curtains of the window above the stairs that climbed into the bedroom. Light pierced Geoff’s eyes as his head rose above the floor, and he blinked hard. He saw a pale rectangular blotch that was the window, and then the beds considered taking shape beyond a patch of blindness that moved wherever he looked. He made out the wooden cage of Paul’s cot, the double bed between it and the stairs to which Gail had fixed a temporary gate, the contorted forms lying still in the cot and the bed. Geoff closed his eyes as he unlatched the gate, and then he could see. Bedclothes were tangled in the cot and on the bed, but there was no sign of Gail or Paul.

He stumbled to the window and snatched the curtains open. His family was nowhere on the road beside the river, and nobody was to be seen from the back window. Brittleness spread from his scalp through his body as he ran downstairs. Perhaps the phone might give him a clue — the number of the last person to have called, if they hadn’t blocked their number. He was halfway down the last flight when he saw a note which must have been propped against the phone had slid down beside it. At that distance he could read just a single word: GONE.

His knuckles struck the telephone, clattering the receiver in its hollow, as he grabbed the scrap of paper. The handwriting was Gail’s — became more like hers as it progressed. There wasn’t much reassurance to be found in that when it suggested how close she must have been to panic, nor in her words. GONE TO HOSPITAL WITH PAUL was all they said.

tocIDAXQPLB”>

nineteen

And I think you should definitely keep after the supermarket, Gail,” said Angharad Bailey, producer of The Goods. “There’s something big and nasty there hoping nobody will notice.”

“Not just cheap and nasty like their stock,” said Anna Wren, the editor.

“Don’t say you’ve ever shopped there,” director Bella Raymond protested with a shake of her small blonde thatched head.

Anna propped her heavy forearms on the long conference table and displayed her rueful face on top of her knuckles. “Once.”

“I thought Fortnums was your style. I’d never have taken you for a Frugo customer.”

“Neither would my cats, and believe me they let me know it. Frugo was the only place open at midnight when they started crying they were starving.”

“Open all hours, but not to scrutiny,” said Angharad, and patted herself on the head, flattening her cascade of red hair where it escaped beneath the arch of a tortoiseshell comb. “No overtime and no unions, and the customers can’t afford to care.”

“The guy I’d almost persuaded to tell his story has cried off,” Gail said. “The way he was talking he wouldn’t just have been out of a job. Seems like staff who try to go public find themselves in trouble with the police or their house broken into or their car stolen, stuff like that. I don’t think we’re in the business of destroying people’s lives to get a story, are we? Don’t worry, I’ll find another way to it. I’m in a hunting mood now. I’m glad to be back, and amazed I was the reason MetV resurrected the creche.”

“You were just the last and best,” Angharad told her. “We told upstairs we couldn’t be sure of keeping up the standard without you, and they got the message there was one saving they better hadn’t make.”

“How about you, Geoff?” Bella said. “Glad your tour’s over? You haven’t been your usual fluent self.”

“He does look a bit shattered,” said Anna.

“Sorry if I was too eager to establish where we’re heading,” Angharad said, pushing her comb deeper into her hair.

“I’ll be fine so long as nobody tries to persuade me I’m indispensable,” Geoff told her.

“We won’t, because you are.”

“And not just to us,” Gail added.

Geoff was searching for an appropriately self-deprecating response when the door opened with a knock just about preceding it, and Ruth from the financial news looked in. “Thought I’d better answer your phone when it didn’t give up. Sounds as if it may be urgent, and they’ll only speak to you, Geoff.”

“Point proved,” said Bella.

“The price of fame,” Anna suggested.

“They’re who?” Geoff asked the financial reporter, and when she responded with a polite smile “Did they say it had something to do with The Goods?”

“They said only you could deal with it.”

“We’ll talk about you until you get back,” Angharad said.

Geoff always experienced a surge of anticipation whenever a new story seemed about to break, a new institution-sized stone to be turned over, and a hint of adrenaline made itself felt as he followed Ruth along the corridor to the office opposite hers. In the sunlight across Hyde Park the upturned white receiver on the grey expanse of his desk looked as though it had been carved from soap, the cord curling away from it like an unbroken shaving. As he picked it up he saw cars dart onto the Marble Arch roundabout, dragging segments of traffic along Bayswater Road after them. “Geoff Davenport,” he said.

“That’s the Mr. Davenport who investigates.”

It was a man’s voice, light and rapid and with an edge to its vowels. “I’m part of a team that does,” Geoff said.

“You’re the part most people see. Look up to, you might say.”

“I’m afraid that’s in the nature of the medium, having just me visible, I mean. Can I ask …”

“Of course. Pardon me. You must be expecting an interview.”

“Not that I’m aware of. Why …”

“You must think I’m asking to interview you.”

“I wouldn’t assume that. It isn’t generally why people ring us here.”

“Assume if you want to, Mr. Davenport. It is a kind of interview. I’d like to discover what you feel able to say about a particular matter.”

“If it’s something we’ve broadcast, you ought to know we always pass a copy to the appropriate authorities, and not only of the material we broadcast. If it’s anything we’re in the process of investigating…”

“It would be more in that area.”

“You’ll need to speak to my producer, then. If you’d like to hold on while I fetch her…”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Davenport, or advisable. The matter in question is being investigated, but not by your team.”

“I — see.” All at once Geoff found he had considerably fewer words at his disposal. “By you, you mean.”

“Exactly.” The caller paused and said “By the police.”

“Which is you, you’re saying.”

“That saves time. Some aspects of law enforcement aren’t public knowledge, if you follow me.”

“I don’t know if I do. To be frank, I’m not clear yet why you’ve called me.”

“Now, Mr. Davenport.” The reproof was sharp and disappointed. “I imagine we’re both thinking of a person I’ve been led to believe is close to you.”

“Go on.”

“I think you must be clear now, Mr. Davenport. I think you must know what to do.”

“You’re asking me …”

“To help in any way you can.”

“Perhaps you can tell me what you already know.”

“More than you in some areas. Let me propose an exchange of information and begin by asking if you’ve been contacted.”

“By …”

“Mr. Davenport.”

Geoff couldn’t tell if that was intended as a rebuke or a precise answer. Not only the sunlight in his face was making his throat feel parched. “Look,” he said, “I don’t know how much longer I’m likely to be alone in here. Somebody’s bound to come looking, and then I won’t be able to talk.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I …” The fear that Ben might somehow learn he’d talked to the police had been waiting for this moment to revive it. “I ought to leave that up to you,” he said.

“I take it you’re implying we should meet.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been leading up to?” When that was greeted by silence, or possibly a breath, Geoff said “Did you have somewhere in mind? How would I recognise you?”

This time a breath was definitely audible. Though it was short, it was split in half, and by its nasal shrillness he knew it for a snigger. Then the voice — no longer the same voice, but the same speaker — said “Well played, Geoffrey. Very close. You’re learning.”

“It’s you.” If he said that, or betrayed that reaction in any way, Geoff saw Ben would know he’d been tempted to inform on him: barely in time, Geoff saw. He swallowed to ease his shrunken throat, and closed his eyes to fend off the brightness that was flaring out of the contents of the office. “It was you,” he said as lightly as he could.

“Don’t tell me you weren’t sure.”

Geoff’s lips twitched, and he almost overstated his loyalty. Before he could speak Ben said “When did you know?”

Geoff thought fast, but had to speak first. “Guess,” he said.

“Don’t play with me too much. We need to get serious.”

“When you wouldn’t say what you were, wouldn’t even give me a name.”

“That’s our secret, isn’t it? Who I am and what. That’s my present to you for old times’ sake. I was making sure it still means something to you now you’re back at work.”

“It means as much as it ever did, Ben. But listen, I’m not playing now. I meant it when I agreed to meet you, the real you.”

“We’ve a long way to go before that, Geoffrey. How did you like the reminders I’ve left you so far?”

“I wasn’t supposed to like them, was I? They brought too much back.”

“That’s our Geoffrey, always the sensitive one. Just think what you may have to remember before you come to the end of the trail.”

“Look, Ben, I want to help. I’ll meet you any time, anywhere you say. You must want that or you wouldn’t be calling. But I can’t keep making time to search. I can’t go driving halfway up the country just to find a photograph when they need me here at work.”

“Couldn’t you wait to be back at it? Don’t you care about anybody you can’t put in front of the public?”

“You know bloody well I do, Ben. I should think if anyone does…”

“I’d have thought you would be more concerned about your little boy.”

“What do you mean?” Threats were ready to crowd out of Geoff’s mouth, every one of them helpless. “What are you saying about him?”

“I’m saying it about you, didn’t you hear? You and your wife, going back to work and leaving him with someone as if you’ve no idea what can happen to a child then.”

“We aren’t leaving him. He’s here with us.”

“He’ll be learning how to watch, will he? How to watch until you’ve got enough material before you stop it.”

“It isn’t just material, it’s evidence. And I hope you won’t say that when you and I were children…”

“There’s plenty yet for you to see. If you don’t go looking soon there’ll be some more news for you to hear.”

“If that means what you want me to think it means, Ben — if it does and you want to be stopped, why don’t you stop it yourself?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking, Geoffrey. Why don’t I stop?” Ben’s voice had grown playful — it sounded as though it was dancing on an edge. “It’s too much fun.”

“I can’t believe that, Ben. Not of you. I’m not sure I even believe you’re the person who’s been doing — whatever it is.”

“You will.”

Geoff’s surroundings flared again: the desks occupied by papers, a gathering above Hyde Park of blinding clouds with contours sharp as tinfoil, the lines of traffic hitching themselves to Marble Arch and speeding away. It wasn’t just Ben’s words that had unsettled him; he’d heard Gail’s voice along the corridor. “Ben, listen. If you don’t want…”

“You know what I want, and I’ll be checking to see you’ve done it. Now do you want me to keep my promise?”

“Which was that?” Geoff said, hearing footsteps start towards the room.

“Don’t say you’ve forgotten. I said this time I’d give you an idea what I do.”

“I remember.” Geoff felt his mind preparing to protect itself. “Better tell me, then. We haven’t much time.”

“Eager Geoffrey. That’s more like it. You’ll be the only one who knows apart from me and the police and some people who can’t talk any more. They couldn’t for a while, however much I’ll bet they tried.” This time his snigger sounded not unlike a shiver. “I put their lipstick on so they can have a kiss,” he said, and Gail came into the room.

It was impossible to tell whether Ben heard her footsteps. No sooner had he finished speaking than he’d gone, leaving the receiver to hum monotonously at Geoff. Replacing it allowed Geoff to turn away for long enough to think what to say to Gail. “It could be something. I’ll tell you about it when I’ve had a chance to think. I may want to follow it up.”

tocIDAQ5PLB”>

twenty-one

Jess never wore a hat except on holiday abroad, but that Sunday she wished she had. She felt as though the sun was targeting her scalp. The heat made her a little dizzy, and it shrank her thoughts like drops of water unable to meet so as to flow. She ought to feel better once she was inside Pete Denton’s flat, not least for having found a reason to see where and how he lived.

The car wash on the corner of his road was holding up its insect legs of brushes to show how dry and dusty they were. A less than teenage boy on a mountain bike raced across the forecourt, guzzling Zingo from a plastic bottle he then flung under a car with two wheels on the pavement. Many of the tall white houses had spilled people dressed for the beach onto the front steps, but the occupants of Pete’s house were represented only by a little girl sitting on the top step.

She wore the lower half of a minute green bikini and was solemnly dunking a doll wearing the whole of one in a jug of water. “You can swim,” she was insisting. “It’s the simplest. Just float.” Jess gave her a smile she was too preoccupied with teaching to return, and read the name-tags by the doorbells. She was taking her finger away from her lips so as to reach for the bellpush, and rubbing a trace of lipstick from her fingertip with her thumb, when the little girl bumped her thin shoulder-blades against the front door, which swung inwards. “She can go in if she wants, can’t she, Salmon?” she said to the doll. “We let ladies in. It’ll be a good surprise.”

“Who do you think I’m visiting?” Jess said.

“We’d like it if it was Mr. Denton, wouldn’t we, Salmon? Nobody ever comes to see him.”

“That’s a bit sad. What does he do when he’s home, then?”

“We don’t know, do we? Nobody sees in his room. He doesn’t stay in much.”

“Is he in now, do you know? Maybe I’d better ring to check.”

“He’s up. Me and Salmon heard him before.”

“Up. You mean …”

“He sleeps funny. Not like us,” the little girl said, and dropped the doll head first into the jug. “You try properly now, Salmon. You can do it if you want to.”

“So you don’t think anyone will mind if I go up.”

“Salmon and me don’t, and there’s nobody else in.”

“Well, thank you. Thank you, Salmon,” Jess added in the direction of the legs protruding from the jug, and felt it was polite to ask “Why’s she called that?”

“It’s her colour,” the little girl said with several times her age’s worth of ostentatious patience.

Only if the salmon came out of a tin, thought Jess, managing to look suitably corrected as she ventured into the house. The glossy white walls of the broad hall gleamed like ice and laid a chill on her. A wide staircase with banisters supported by arthritic posts bent itself double to reach the next floor, and Jess saw a trail of drops leading downstairs from the flat where the jug must belong. Somewhere in the house she heard a repeated fanfare, and as she turned past the middle floor the music proved to have announced a man’s voice — a television’s voice. “For most of us childhood is a place we had to leave,” it said, “but for some it’s a place they may never escape from …”

As Jess left the stairs, the banister rattled an upright. Another voice that sounded less professionally assured had taken up the tale, beyond the right-hand door at the top of the house. The door had been not too expertly stripped down to the scratched wood. It bore a brass doorknob that smelled of metal polish, and a brass number 6 that tallied with his name-tag downstairs, but no bellpush. A spyhole gleamed at her from beneath the polished number. She raised a hand to knock, and then she peered one-eyed through the lens.

She saw a miniature hallway drowning in green that had swollen the walls into curves. At the end of it, beyond an open door almost too small to be recognisable as one, a point of light flickered like an undersea lure. It must be the television, which she could hear describing a nightmarish childhood. She felt as though the microscopic view and the hesitant voice were shrinking her in readiness to draw her in, beginning with her eye. She rested a hand on the panel to push herself away, and the point of light went out. The voice was silenced in the middle of a word, and the door was snatched away from her so swiftly that she almost fell into Pete Denton’s arms.

She didn’t know what he would have done if she had. His eyes weren’t saying, and his smile seemed meant exclusively for himself. As she regained her balance, she saw he was holding the remote control for the television. “Did you see me coming?” she demanded.

His eyes joined in the smile and lit it up. “Maybe in my dreams.”

“Oh, very witty,” Jess said. “So this is where you live.”

“The place I call home.”

“Are you likely to invite me in, do you think?”

She could have imagined the proposal was outside his experience. For some moments he only continued to smile, and then he said “What made you come?”

“Just to see how you were, Pete.”

“And how might that be?”

“Fine by the look of you. Same as ever. You tell me. You know yourself best.”

“Like nobody else.”

Footsteps were coming upstairs, making so little impression on the emptiness of the lower floors they seemed rather to be demonstrating it, and Jess heard the little girl say “We’ll get you some new water and see if you can float in that.” Jess would have expected his expression to acknowledge his fellow tenant, but it didn’t stir. “She told me I should come straight up,” she said.

“She’s the concierge today, is she?”

“There’s nobody else in. Not much of a surprise on a day like this.”

“Were you hoping for one?”

“I told you, all I wanted was to make sure you haven’t had any trouble with my ex.”

“Oh, that. Him. No trouble. I’m sure he’ll tell you the same.”

“He won’t get the chance.”

“Sent him away, have you?”

“Maybe it’ll help him grow up.”

“That’s still how it’s done, is it?” Pete said, and stepped back. “I’m being rude, aren’t I? I’m supposed to ask you in.”

“Not unless you want to.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She almost thought the question invited an answer. He watched her cross the threshold, and didn’t turn until she’d closed the door behind her, shutting herself in the underwater glow that turned her hands green; then he strode along the corridor, rapping on doors with his knuckles. “Bedroom. Bathroom. Kitchen,” he said, but opened none of them. “And here’s where I mostly live.”

“Did you move from a smaller place?”

The room contained the television and a video recorder that were faced by a chair with a footrest. That was all the furniture. Hanging behind the television was a single framed picture, an abstract as green as the carpet and the walls, which would have been of that colour even if the green curtains weren’t drawn. She felt as though the self-absorbed colour was stifling her thoughts. She let herself sink into the chair as he upturned a hand at it. “Are you going to finish furnishing?” she persisted.

“It does for me.”

The rectangle in the picture-frame wasn’t an abstract painting but a mirror, placed so that the head and shoulders of anybody seated in the chair were visible above the screen. Her face looked rather too much like a cartoon of nausea, so that she met Pete’s interested gaze instead. As if she’d given him a cue he said “Drink?”

“What are you having?”

“Nothing alcoholic.”

“Don’t you like to lose control?”

“Nobody’s ever seen me do that.”

Maybe he should let someone, she thought but refrained from saying. “Water would be fine on a day like this.”

“I’ll bring it to you.”

As soon as he glided out of the room she realised all over again how empty it was. It seemed to have absolutely no smell. She heard the rumble of tap-water in a metal sink grow shrill and confined in a glass, and the surreptitious movement of the videotape. She glanced about for the remote control, then remembered that he’d slipped it into his pocket. At least she had time to identify the theme tune she’d heard on her way upstairs, and when Pete reappeared with a single glass she said triumphantly “The Goods.”

“Water.”

“Yes. Thank you, Pete.” She took a sip, which tasted more metallic than it should until she understood that she was smelling polish on her hand from the brass knob. “I just figured out what you were watching when I came up. The programme you’d taped.”

At that moment she became fully aware that there was no other tape in the room, only the slipcase gaping at her with its long thin mouth on top of the video recorder. “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling as though she’d trespassed somehow. “Was someone you know in there?”

He was standing against the light through the curtains, his face less defined than the room. “Where?” he said.

“A care home, I thought it was, the bit I heard. Was there someone?”

“Not for long.”

“They got out, you mean?”

“They think so.”

“Have they a family of their own now? That ought to help.”

“They’ve one of those all right.”

She closed both hands around the perspiring glass. It had struck her that she could be talking about Pete if he had later been adopted. “Have you been to see yours yet?” she said.

“I’m saving that.”

“Saving it for…”

“For when I can take all the time I need.”

She mustn’t trespass further, not now — perhaps if there came a time when he felt more at ease with her.

“You’re owed a break,” she said. “Have a word with Harry. Tell him why you need to go away.”

“Maybe I will.”

He sounded playful, which only made her feel awkward and intrusive, understanding far less than she presumed. She drained the glass and took hold of the arm of the chair. “I’ll let you have your throne,” she said.

She must have touched a lever. The chair fell away from behind her, and she sprawled backwards, dropping the glass with a dull hollow clunk. “Don’t say I’ve broken it,” she said, and “What an exit,” holding out her hands for Pete to help her up.

He was standing over her before she’d finished speaking. “Did you find out what you wanted to know?” he said.

“Whether you were all right, yes.”

“And am I?”

“I think so. I hope so, Pete.”

“Who’s going to hear?”

“Nobody at all.” She didn’t know why she felt threatened, pinned down, because what had she done? She wished that his face were clearer — that he were. “I won’t be discussing you with anyone if you don’t want me to,” she said, a little too loudly. “I just wanted to find out for me. Now are you going to be the gentleman you’ve always been and give me a hand up?”

“Always? Nobody knows anyone that long.”

He was somewhere in his past, she sensed; he seemed hardly to be seeing her. “As long as I’ve known you, then,” she said, and took a wary hold of both arms of the chair, trying to avoid whatever mechanism would render it more treacherous. “I hope that’ll be for a good while longer,” she said.

At once he stooped to her as though her words had caught him. For all his closeness, she had a disconcerting impression of not being able to make out his face. He found the hidden lever with one hand and hauled the chair-back vertical with the other, and she felt he wasn’t seeing a person below him, just a burden that needed to be shifted. Then their faces were scant inches apart, and as her eyes sought his she saw him come into them, bringing an instant smile, tolerant and amused, even playful. “Nearly,” he said, and moved aside.

Jess ignored his remark as she stood up. “Thank you,” she said, deliberately enough for it to be half a rebuke. “Thanks for cooling me down. I’ll see you at work.”

She was angry both with him and with herself. In the corridor she clenched her fists to prevent herself from flinging all the doors open as if they hid secret areas of him it was her duty to discover. She was at the door, in the dimmest of the green light, when it grew dimmer still. His shadow had caught up with her without her realising he’d followed her. He reached past her and grasped the latch beside her face, and a metallic smell surged into her nostrils before the stagnant introverted light gave way to the pale glow of the landing. When she reached the stairs she looked back. His door was about to close, but he was watching her. “Thank you,” he said.

More confused than ever, Jess hurried down into the sunlight. The little girl had managed to persuade her doll to float by sticking its legs through a tyre from a toy car. “You be good now or I’ll have to push your head under,” she was saying. Jess gave them both a smile that went unnoticed and walked away, more than usually glad that she was going to her mother’s for the inevitable Sunday roast and gossip. She wouldn’t be mentioning Pete, though just now her thoughts were all of him — of his last words in particular. She would have thought he’d intended them as a joke, except that she had never heard him mean anything so much.

tocIDA1LAFC”>

twenty-three

For the first time ever in their lives Geoff seemed to hear something like affection in the roughness with which his father addressed Ben. “If you’ve finished deciding what you can bear to be seen in then maybe you’ll let us be off.”

Ben was dressed in a school jumper and grey trousers too hot for the summer morning. “Mother packed all the things I’d wear.”

“Just get on with taking the bags out, you two,” she said, “while we see to the house.”

Geoff took hold of the suitcase she’d packed, which was smaller and certainly lighter than Ben’s. “We’re really going to stay by the sea,” he said.

She turned a mascara-framed stare on him. “Would you rather not?”

“Ben and me both want to. He’s looking forward to it more than me.”

If anything was capable of cancelling the holiday, he saw at once, this would. He was trying frantically to think of a comment that would displace its predecessor when his mother said “Your father told you what we’re doing, didn’t he? When you’re older you’ll know grownups can do with a break.”

Geoff felt as if he’d started at that moment to grow older. At last he saw a reason for his parents’ mysterious behaviour. All these weeks since they’d found Ben hiding in his bed he’d spent dreading what they might do, what their wordless stares at him and Ben that night had promised. The longer he’d waited, the worse and more unimaginably menacing the unfulfilled threat had seemed. When the pet mouse that was mostly his had died last week, he’d wanted to take that as the punishment; he’d even wondered if one of his parents could have poisoned the little creature’s food, except that surely they would have wanted the boys to realise — to feel responsible. He hadn’t dared hope his parents had forgotten or decided to forget their discovery in his room, but now that seemed much closer to the truth. They wanted to get away from all the complications and frustrations the house or his father was creating, even if their break involved giving him and Ben a treat. “Come on,” he urged Ben out of the house.

His father had cleared the back of his builder’s van. There was room enough for all the luggage and both boys, but Geoff s father insisted he sit in front next to his mother. The first belch of the engine brought Mrs. Slough and her trowel into view over the shared hedge. Geoff’s mother sent her a neighbourly wave he couldn’t help thinking pathetic, his father started muttering. “Stare all you want, missus, you aren’t getting rid of us. You can tell all your pals that, the whole lot of you that think you’re better than the rest of us. I’ll bet I’d be welcome if your precious houses wanted fixing.”

None of this had much to do with the situation as Geoff understood it. The lawyer had hired someone to check the noise level, which didn’t register as high as Geoff’s father believed it was. Once he’d calmed down, or rather as a means of doing so, Geoff’s father had asked neighbours to have their houses monitored at his expense so that he could demonstrate his was worst affected. That the lawyer had predicted their refusal only made him as resentful of the lawyer as of them. At least, Geoff thought, there was something that wasn’t Ben’s fault for once.

The van emitted a defiant blackened belch that sent it under the railway bridge. Geoff remembered when his parents had owned a shiny Jaguar that would have been used for a journey like today’s, but he wasn’t going to let that spoil the occasion. He was so excited as the van headed for the intersection that he didn’t think what he was saying. “Are we going on the motorway?” he hoped aloud.

His father gave him the stare he usually reserved for Ben. “I only meant it’d be quicker,” Geoff stammered.

“We’ll get where we’re going, and that’s a promise,” his father said in the tone of a warning not to bother him, and Geoff saw his mother pressing her lips together until a corner she’d missed with her lipstick grew almost as pale as his father’s skin.

Neither of the boys spoke again as the van sped out of town. Beyond Aintree, where Geoff’s father and some of his men always went to the Grand National more rowdily than they returned from it, houses scattered themselves among fields that looked ironed out to the horizon by the metallic blue sky. More than once, to Geoff’s eager eyes, the horizon seemed to glint with sea. Houses lined up beside the road at Maghull, and forced it to narrow itself to wriggle through Ormskirk, and then there was most of an hour’s worth of intermittent villages as far north as Preston, where signs for Blackpool started to appear — signs for sand and games in the waves and rides on the Big Dipper and so much ordinarily forbidden food that you had to vow to yourself not to be sick.

Then Geoff’s father took a firmer grip on the wheel and hauled it rightward, away from the direction of the signs, into a road closed in by ranks of small two-storey houses the colour of scabs. Some of them had shops in their front rooms, and all of them gave the impression of wanting to squeeze themselves smaller and darker. Geoff saw Ben sit forward and stare about, his eyes narrowing as if they were pulling the skin around them closer for protection. Geoff couldn’t keep quiet now, not when he would be speaking for the other boy as well. “Dad, this isn’t the way.”

“It will be when we’ve dropped off at my parents,” his mother said.

He ought to have remembered that was where the road led — to his least favourite place in the world. He felt as though a gloom that smelled of dogs had closed around him; worse, around Ben. Above the roofs the hills called fells had loomed into view, huge vague shapes like storm clouds fallen to earth. Then the sky closed down, and the rain over the fells closed in, and the houses turned the colour of both.

In just a few miles there were no more houses, only the road labouring to squirm clear of muddy fields, sodden unkempt hedges. A smell of wet manure seeped thickly into the van, overpowering even the scent Geoff’s mother had sprayed on twice that morning. Geoff stood the smell as long as he could before releasing a sound half delighted with his disgust. He wanted Ben to share it, but the other boy’s face wasn’t letting him in. At that moment the windscreen wipers heaved the rain aside to reveal the sign by the road.

KENNELS, it said. The first time Geoff remembered having seen it, he’d thought it was the name of the house, as so many of the houses at home had names: The Arbours, Bella Vista, Hideyhome, Herewestay… Now he knew what the outburst of barking meant that greeted the van as it swung between the shaggy hedges taller than itself into the rutted squelching drive. He saw Ben’s stare draw itself farther in, and his lips part for an instant over his tight teeth.

The wide squat two-storey house shouldered its way through the downpour to meet the van. Even when the sun was out here, which Geoff had the impression was seldom, the facade was as dark as rain beneath black clouds. Fifty yards or so to the left of it was a long low stone shed of the same colour, divided internally into six cells, from the far side of which six narrow wire pens stretched. As the van drew up before the house with a gritty squish, it seemed to Geoff that every pen was vibrating with dogs that snarled and leapt and yapped furiously. He saw Ben refuse to be made to flinch, just as their grandparents appeared at the front door.

They stepped into the rain as the van’s engine died. Geoff saw rain twitch the ends of the moustache that was the one extravagance about his grandfather — that struck him as having used some of the old man’s wizened face to create itself, to be pinching his mouth until it had hardly any lips. “You’ve all come, then,” he said, no more unwelcomingly than usual.

Rain streamed down his wife’s long blonde hair that put Geoff in mind of a sheepdog’s coat. She lowered her weighty eyebrows to peer at Ben. In an accent as flat as her husband’s, or as her broad face with its disappointed mouth, she roared “Have you not…”

Both Geoff s parents shook their heads. “Best way,” his grandfather said.

Geoff understood none of this. As soon as he was clear of the van he could think only of taking refuge in the house. Once his grandfather threw open the back doors of the vehicle, Ben followed. The rain lashed the boys across the grey slab of a doorstep. “Feet,” their grandmother shouted in her deaf voice, and barely gave the boys time to scrape their shoes on the grid in the vestibule before herding them into the glum hall too narrow for the house. “Lounge,” she shouted over the barking that, for a moment of flinching on Ben’s behalf, Geoff thought was coming from that room. “Don’t be sitting while you’re wet,” she bellowed as he opened the door.

Neither boy would have, not when all the chairs hardly less dark than the back of the cold gaping fireplace — as dark as the walls and the rest of the hulking furniture illuminated only by the light the rain let in — were ready to attach to any sitter some of the dogs’ hairs that seemed to be adhering even to the downcast shade of the overhead bulb on its hirsute flex. As she marched to the kitchen to fetch two high hard stools, Geoff heard through another outbreak of barking the slam of the front door, and a thud. The other grownups had come in, bringing some item with them. They crowded after Geoff’s grandmother into the lounge and stood watching while the boys perched on the stools. “Had to come in too, did he?” their grandfather said.

Geoff looked away towards the barking in the next room. If his position made him feel like a child in disgrace in an old school story, how much worse must Ben feel to be talked about that way? Geoff assumed his grandmother had misunderstood his reaction, because she poked a finger at the noise. “Lady dog’s been bad.”

“Got herself some whelps,” said his grandfather.

“If they don’t find themselves a home they’ll be going up the chimney.”

“That’s what happens to creatures nobody wants.”

“Would you like to see them, Geoffrey?” his grandmother yelled.

“Yes,” Geoff said, and made to climb down from the stool.

“Don’t be wandering,” his grandfather said, and stared so hard at both boys it seemed to squeeze a raindrop out of his left eyebrow. “We’ll let them in.”

Everyone knew Ben was afraid of dogs — ever since Lady had chased him the length of the drive and brought him down. “I can go and see,” Geoff said, and managed to think of a reason. “Then she won’t miss them.”

“No,” his father and his grandfather said as though they were sharing a voice.

His grandmother vanished out of the door, leaving the rest of the grownups in a line between the boys and the hall. He heard the next door open, and his grandmother emit a piercing whistle that brought a great deal of barking and a confused stampede into the hall. He saw Ben crouch forward on his stool and grip its legs as four Alsatians, each of them no bigger than Geoff s torso, piled through the doorway. “Look, Ben,” Geoff said, unable to think of any other way to help. “They’re sweet, aren’t…”

He’d jumped down to stroke two of the puppies, all of which had the softness of stuffed toys and were as animated as the grownups were immobile, but that wasn’t why his voice trailed off. Lady had followed her litter into the room. At the sight of her Ben either fell off his stool or put it between himself and the dog. Lady dropped into a crouch, chafing her nipples on the carpet, and skinned her teeth and gums until her lips could stretch no farther. A snarl that kept giving way to breaths like water dragging gravel forced its way between her teeth as Geoff s grandmother grabbed her collar. “Still the same and no mistake,” she said of Ben as if she was shouting at him.

“He’d have been the first to turn tail in a battle,” said her husband as loudly.

“Turn it for anyone who had a fancy for it too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“If he hadn’t run your guard dog wouldn’t have gone after him,” Geoff s father said.

“We wouldn’t have had to break a stick on her,” Geoff’s grandmother yelled, glowering at Ben and patting Lady’s head.

“We’ve trained worse,” her husband shouted back.

“Their owners didn’t know them when they came to fetch them.”

“Leave anything with us and you’ll get it back improved, that’s our motto.”

“That’s fine with us,” Geoff’s mother said.

Ben was still gripping the stool like a circus performer about to defend himself. Geoff continued stroking the puppies, glancing at Ben in the hope of communicating some of his affection for the animals. Ben wasn’t about to look away from the snarling dog as long as she was in the room, however. “Like them as a boy should, do you, Geoffrey?” his grandfather said.

“Yes,” Geoff felt forced to admit.

“Take them through, then. Whistle them and they’ll be after you.”

Geoff stood up at once. If he enticed them out of the room, presumably Lady would follow. The noise his pursed lips emitted was so feeble, however, that his grandmother stared as though he’d made no sound at all. Nevertheless the puppies scampered after him as he sidled past Lady. They almost knocked him over as they tumbled like the contents of an opened package full of fur and muscle into the hall.

Because of the dimness, and his eagerness to lure them away from Ben, at first he didn’t notice what was there. Before he could shepherd the puppies to their room, the grownups marched out of the lounge and shut the door behind them — behind the three of them.

Geoff’s grandfather uttered a whistle as sharp as the teeth it penetrated, and the puppies dashed after him down the hall. “Come along, Geoffrey,” said Geoff’s mother as his father took his arm to steer him towards the front door, past Ben’s suitcase. Geoff was too stunned to resist, and too small to make a difference. He wasn’t just stunned by knowing that the grownups must have planned a trap for Ben. Much worse — so bad it shrank him almost to nothing — was the knowledge that they’d used Geoff to help carry out their plan.

tocIDALTAFC”>

twenty-five

They were almost back at his grandparents’ house when Geoff’s mother said “So did you manage to have a good time with us?”

Geoff saw no point in trying to get at the truth. “Yes,” he said with all the enthusiasm he was beginning to experience.

It was enthusiasm for seeing Ben after a week of wondering about him and his situation — enthusiasm that they were going to rescue him. Geoff’s father gave him a searching sidelong glance, and his mother said “We didn’t cramp your style too much, then.”

“He did enough that boys like, I reckon. He did everything I’d have done when I was his age.”

“I expect that’s all right then, is it, Geoffrey? You being your father’s son.”

She wasn’t asking if that was all right, Geoff realised. “Yes,” he said, no less enthusiastically than before.

He was eager to tell Ben about his week in Blackpool. The part he couldn’t tell was how he’d ended up feeling reluctantly grateful that his parents had tried to be adequate companions for him. Lying in deck chairs with handkerchiefs over their faces while he built forts at the edge of the lazy waves hadn’t taxed them, but much else clearly had: his mother eating fish and chips out of a newspaper on the vulgar seafront instead of dining in the hotel, and sitting stiffly next to him in a Ghost Train car and fanning herself whenever she was made to gasp, and clinging to the neck of a horse beside his on a roundabout while each rise and fall of her steed put her shoes more in danger of flying off; his father accompanying him on rides she wouldn’t even consider, the roller coasters and the headlong spinning rockets and the bucket seats that seemed determined to fling themselves off the spokes to which they felt none too securely attached — his father swaggering off each ride with the expression of a hero who had yet to find a challenge worthy of him, although Geoff knew that during the rides his father’s face had looked as if the features yearned to retreat into his head…. “I loved it all,” he said. “Thanks for taking me.”

“That’s what we like to hear,” his mother said.

“Thanks for being with me all the time.”

She blinked hard once and stared ahead. “Well, you’ve finished with just having us.”

It must be the thought of Ben that caused her and Geoff’s father to grow as heavily silent as statues, rocking with the swerves of the van on the bends of the deserted road — so deserted that he wondered whether Ben had seen anybody other than his grim hosts all week. Then the sign for the kennels poked out above the road, the lower corner of the board dripping like a nose with rain. The van swerved through the gateway, slewing the luggage about in Ben’s section of the van, and the dogs in the pens began barking at once.

They weren’t the same dogs as last week; they were considerably bigger. Wherever Ben was, he must be hearing them. Geoff tried to imagine being him in the house — hearing dogs on the other side of doors, smelling dogs in every room and finding traces of them on himself, knowing that they wanted nothing more than to chase him and bring him down, their claws digging into his back, their mouths on his neck. Rescue had arrived now, Geoff told himself. The van squelched to a halt as Geoff s grandfather came out of the house and stood like a warder on the step. “Are you all coming?” he demanded.

Geoff s father seemed taken aback by the uninviting tone. “If you’ll have us.”

“Suit yourselves. The door’s not shut that I know of.”

Geoff did what he could to improve the mood of the grownups. Once out of the van he called to the dogs, which barked louder and sprayed a mixture of rain and saliva through the jangling fences, and the moment he reached the vestibule he scraped his muddy shoes on the grid. “Good boy,” said his mother, which at least earned a grunt from her father as the family trooped down the hall.

Geoff was last into the ponderous gloom of the lounge. He was hoping to see Ben, but only the grownups were there, his grandmother with one hand doubling her ear. He heard the puppies yapping and yipping in the next room, and would have liked to think Ben was playing with them. “Is Ben packing?” he said, more realistically. “Shall I go and help him?”

“He isn’t that,” said his grandfather.

His voice was blunt as a club. There was silence until Geoff’s grandmother bellowed “Is he getting his surprise?”

“That’s what we said,” Geoff’s father bawled.

“Are you coming to see?”

She was shouting at Geoff. “Yes,” he said with as much confusion as enthusiasm.

“What’s that? A piece of cod can make more noise than that. Pipe up or you’ll have us thinking you’re no better than the other lad. You like surprises, don’t you?” she roared, and cupped both her ears.

Geoff felt as if he’d been enticed up on stage in a pantomime where everyone but him knew what was about to happen to him. “Yes,” he nevertheless responded, twice as loud as before.

“Come and make friends, then.”

Geoff assumed that would involve the ordeal of a sloppy kiss and a hug that smelled of dogs. Instead she tramped into the hall and opened the next door, and as the puppies did their utmost to sound as big as dogs he realised what she might have meant. “Are we having one of them?” he said at the top of his voice.

“You want one, don’t you?”

He did — he would love one — but would Ben? He had to make sure he chose a puppy even Ben would like. “Yes,” he said with all his breath.

“Get in and wait, then.”

Was she going to fetch Ben? Perhaps Geoff ought to delay choosing until they both could. When she narrowed her eyes at his hesitation he thought it best to hasten into the small dingy almost unfurnished room. The four puppies scampered to meet him while their mother, having delivered herself of a token bark, watched from her wicker basket spread with old blankets. The puppies jumped up to lick his bare knees and hands and face, and he would have hugged and stroked them all except for realising that Ben wouldn’t welcome such an onslaught, however affectionate. “Sit,” he said. “Sit. Lie down, good dogs.”

One did — the softest of them. Having lain down, he rolled over to have his stomach patted. If any dog could take away Ben’s fear, Geoff thought, this one would. He picked up the puppy and hugged the soft warm wriggling body to his chest, and laughed as a hot wet tongue found his ear. He held onto his prize as he heard his grandmother in the hall, bringing Ben with her, he hoped; her tramp was certainly heavy enough to blot out the boy’s unobtrusive tread. But she’d brought only a collar and lead. “That’s your friend, is he?” she shouted.

“Please, gran. What’s his name?”

“Whatever you’ve got for him.”

“I’ll…” Just in time Geoff thought it might be inadvisable to say he would wait for Ben, in case she hadn’t meant the puppy as a present to them both. “I’ll think,” he said.

“Get him carted off before Lady wants him back.”

Geoff was more than ever anxious for Ben to see their pet — to begin emerging from the nightmare Geoff had brought on him by hiding him in the bed. He could hear his father saying “How’s the training?”

“He’s done nothing we don’t do. Cleaning out the pens.”

“Can they get at him?” Geoff’s mother sounded actually worried. “They’re bigger than him, some of those dogs.”

“They’re locked in the cages while the inside’s cleaned. He’ll know they’re there though, right enough.”

“That’s some of what he needs,” Geoff s father said.

Geoff felt as though the gloom of the house was sticking to the inside of his head. He hugged his prize and went into the lounge. When the puppy gave a playful growl his mother turned from the cold cavern of a fireplace and smiled with both ends of her mouth. “That’s yours now, is it?”

“He’ll be ours.”

“It’s clean, is it?” she said to her mother. “It won’t …”

“It’s trained like all our dogs.”

“Just the same, it can go in the back of the van.”

“We both will, shall we?” said Geoff.

“I thought you would. There’ll be plenty of room.”

“Me and Ben, I mean. Will there be room with his luggage?”

The silence seemed to weigh more than all the grownups put together. He dragged his gaze from face to grim face, none of which was quite looking at him, and heard his father’s exact words before they were spoken. “He’s not coming.”

“He’s staying until he leaves school,” his mother said. “They’ve always wanted another boy to bring up.”

“Ever since her brother was killed in the war,” his grandmother yelled, shoving her ears forward.

“We’ll hear no crying over him,” said her husband. “He was the sort we needed.”

“He’d never back away from owt, our Jack.”

“Benjamin knows that’s how we’ll have him before we’re done.”

“Let’s get the leash on him.”

Geoff’s thoughts were so clogged with dismay that for a moment he imagined his grandmother was still referring to Ben. He yielded the puppy to her, and watched her yank a collar at least one notch tighter around its neck than he would have, extracting a yelp from the dog. “Be still,” she shouted loud enough to make it cringe, and having clipped the lead to the collar, thrust the end at Geoff. “You treat him like he understands and your parents won’t have any reason to get rid of him.”

Geoff gripped the lead and patted the dog to keep it from jumping up at him in defiance of her. “Good boy,” he murmured. “Thanks, grandma, grandpa. Thanks, mum and dad.”

“I should think so,” said his mother. “Keep tight hold till it’s in the van and we’ll be off.”

“Can’t I see Ben first?”

The presence of the grownups turned itself into a barrier that didn’t need to be physical. “Maybe you will as you go,” his grandfather said.

Geoff didn’t know what they suspected him of planning; he only wished he had some plan to rescue Ben. He found himself being virtually marched along the hall without their touching him, the women deafening him with a discussion over his head of the care of the puppy while the men maintained twice a silence behind him and his new friend tried to wrap the lead around Geoff’s legs. As the puppy emerged from the house the dogs inside the wire started reminding it how to bark, and Geoff saw Ben in the enclosure closest to the drive.

It was the only cage empty of dogs. He was scraping turds with a shovel into a flat pan at the end of a pole. At first he seemed determined to ignore everyone, and then he looked at Geoff. Whatever expression might have revealed itself on his face vanished as he saw the puppy, and he grew expressionless as a piece of slate.

“Ben,” Geoff pleaded, and took a step towards him. The dogs hurled themselves against the fences, but Ben’s face didn’t change, his eyes didn’t waver. Why couldn’t he have hidden in the van while he had the chance? thought Geoff. “He’s stopping,” his grandfather said in only just three syllables.

Ben let the shaft of the shovel fall against the wire in front of him. “I’ve stopped.”

“Still too clever for his own good,” said his mother.

It might have been a rebuke to her parents. “He won’t be when we’ve done with him,” her father said.

Geoff knew instantly that the old man was wrong. He tried to make Ben look at him, and perhaps Ben was doing so, but his gaze through the fence saw nothing Geoff wanted to think was himself. Then Geoff’s father grasped his shoulder and steered him to the van. The back doors slammed, the puppy snuggled against him. Ben had already turned away with the shovel, yet Geoff saw his face, hard as a mask that was holding down more than Geoff could begin to imagine. Through the rear window he saw Ben prowl out of the cage into the stone building. The van pulled away with a crunch of mud, and in a very few seconds the hedges swallowed the house and the kennels and everything they contained as if to keep a secret best forgotten.

tocIDAO5AFC”>

twenty-seven

The sun was rusting in the Thames when the Davenports came home. A heron flew towards the sunset, its extended neck charring in the shadow of the bridge before emerging pink as an unextinguished ember. As the taxi drew up outside the house Gail raised a faint cheer that was half a sigh. Paul’s wriggling and wails of protest had only recently subsided into grogginess, and Geoff had never been more aware why luggage was called luggage. By the time he’d paid the Greek driver and waved away his change Gail had unlocked the front door and quelled the alarm and carried Paul in. Geoff struggled with the folded buggy and the luggage into the house, and saw that the answering machine at the foot of the stairs had registered eight calls. At once he was anxious to hear the messages before Gail could. Though he felt grimy with exhaustion he said “Do you want the first shower?”

“I think someone else had better have the first one.”

“You take care of him while I make us some coffee.”

“I’ll have mine upstairs. I might share a bath.”

“I can take him out, and put him to bed by the look of him, when I bring your coffee.”

“It was you I was thinking of sharing it with,” Gail said, and gave him a look whose weariness he prayed was only the effect of all the day’s travelling. He hurried to squeeze her free hand in both of his. “Sorry I’m so dull.”

“Better dull than unreliable,” Gail said, and after not much of a pause “You aren’t either.”

She hitched up a smile to leave with him while she bore Paul upstairs. Geoff set the coffee brewing in the kitchen, and ran to rewind the answering tape once he heard the drizzle of the shower become a downpour. A cartoon voice gabbled backwards and turned around to reveal itself as Angharad Bailey’s. “Hello Gail and Geoff whenever you get home. Interesting developments on the Frugo front. I’ll ring you in the morning. Oh, and Geoff, did anything come of the call you took during our last meeting?”

“Nothing for transmission,” Geoff muttered as a bleep brought her message to an end. The tape produced an expectant silence and then another bleep. Somebody had failed to speak to the machine. Callers who didn’t even bother to identify themselves frustrated Geoff, but now, as he heard only a series of bleeps that suggested a parody of censorship, he felt as though his nerves were tightening around his stomach. A seventh bleep cut off a silence that admitted to no presence, and he twisted the knob to rewind the tape. The machine was rearranging its innards with a good deal of busy clicking when the phone rang, and he grabbed the receiver. “Davenport,” he said. “The real thing, in the flesh.”

“Nice to hear you own up at last.”

He crouched beside the stairs and pressed the mouthpiece against the corner of his lips. “What are you playing at now, Ben?” he whispered furiously.

“Just checking on my only person in the world. You tell me when it’s safe to talk.”

“It is now, but not for long. Look here, Ben…”

“I wish I could. I can see you when I shut my eyes. You’d be amazed what I see. You’re telling me your family’s safely out of the way, are you?”

“In the bathroom. If you’ve anything to say…”

“You know me. Unstoppable as ever, and all unrehearsed. You and the family were away being together, were you?”

“I won’t apologise for that. It doesn’t mean I don’t also care…”

“You’re saying quite a lot if you don’t want us to be overheard, aren’t you? I thought there wasn’t meant to be much time.”

Ben’s voice seemed to be forcing itself to stay playful. If he was angry for some reason, that angered Geoff too — made his head feel like the inside of a rusty bell about to clang. “What did you mean I was owning up to?” he demanded.

“Why, being the real Davenport. Everybody always thought you were.”

“Not everybody. I never did, and let me assure you, these days…”

“You will. I’m going to help you be real. I’m devoting myself to that now. I’m the devoted brother.”

“If that’s how you’re feeling it’s time we got together. Don’t just keep sending me on…”

“That’s still the way it’s played, Geoffrey. You must remember.”

“I don’t want to remember you like that. You were only a boy when you did it. You’d never been given a chance to grow up, so you pretended you had to everyone but me. It was a dreadful thing you did, but you shouldn’t keep reliving it. It doesn’t have to mean…”

“You’re wasting time, Geoffrey.” There was no playfulness in Ben’s voice now. “You found what I left you. Better follow it up. It isn’t just my time you’re wasting.”

Geoff crouched lower over the scooped-out hollow his stomach felt like. The shower had fallen silent. “What do you mean?” he whispered, so close to the mouthpiece his teeth scraped the plastic.

“I know something you don’t know.”

“You’ve got my attention. You already had it. If time’s so precious…”

“It is for some people, believe me. I’m looking at two of them now.”

“Leave them alone, Ben. Don’t harm them, whoever they are. If you promise not to touch them I give you my word…”

He almost bit his tongue. Gail had opened the bathroom door. “Geoff,” she said, conversationally but loud. “Do you want to take him?”

“I’m just …” Geoff straightened up as though the dead receiver had hooked him like a fish. Gail couldn’t see him, and might not have heard him on the phone. “Coming,” he called, hoping that covered up the noise of replacing the receiver. He ran upstairs to be handed pink squirming Paul in a bath-towel, and was heading for the family bedroom when Gail said “Just what?”

“What?”

“You were just what before?”

The panic Ben’s call had implanted in him flared up behind his eyes. He kept climbing so that she couldn’t see his face. However it looked, it made Paul giggle. “I was on the phone,” he said.

“I figured out that much. Who was it?”

Paul was giggling harder. “Hold on,” said Geoff, and lowered him into the cot where his sleepsuit was waiting. “See if you can dress yourself as long as you’ve so much energy,” he said, and went to the top of the stairs into the bedroom. “Remember the call I took last time we were at Metropolitan, during the meeting?”

“The one you said was something about children in danger, that you were so mysterious about. Yes?”

“That was all I told you because that was all I was told, and they took all that time to make that much clear. I said so then if you recall. Well, that was them again.”

Gail stepped out of the bathroom to gaze up at him. She was wearing only a pair of black panties, and he couldn’t help feeling watched by her dark nipples too. “They called here?” she said.

“That’s — yes.”

“How did they get our number?”

“There aren’t many G. Davenports in the book.”

“I could be happier if there was one less. There are things we mightn’t want to come this close to home,” Gail said, and folded her arms as though to protect her breasts. “What did he say this time? Was it the same guy?”

“He wants to meet me. I think I ought to give him the chance, do you?”

“Where?”

“In Liverpool. The thing is, he wants it to be tomorrow, only Angharad’s called a meeting. You can go, can’t you? Will you mind if I take the car?”

“I won’t have to mind. Do you know any more about him?”

“I don’t even know what he looks like, never mind what he calls himself. He’ll have to make himself known to me,” Geoff said, and tried to gaze the doubtfulness out of her face. “All I know is it may have to do with a child who’s been mistreated. I wouldn’t be going except he insists I can’t tell anyone else.”

“You just did.”

“Involve them, I mean,” Geoff said, more sharply than he meant to.

“Then you should go ahead.”

“Go ahead with…”

“You should do what you told him you’d do. Just promise me you’ll tell me what comes out of it, all right?”

“Of course I will,” said Geoff, and leaned a smile on her before turning away, ashamed of having lied to her. What a professional, he thought, and then was struggling to speak. “Look,” he called, and louder “Come and look.”

Gail ran upstairs and halted close beside him. “Gee,” she said. Paul was sitting on his mattress, both legs and one arm snug in his sleepsuit, his expression a mixture of pride and frustration as he attempted to capture the empty sleeve. “That’s our boy,” said Gail, and slipped an arm around Geoff’s waist. He hugged her bare midriff and felt the envelope in his breast pocket intervening between them. As soon as he could he gave her a squeeze and went to guide Paul’s hand into the sleeve. The envelope flexed itself secretly against his heart, and he told himself that once he went back where its contents led there surely could be nothing worse for him to find.

tocIDARLBFC”>

twenty-nine

Geoff nearly believed in Ben at the funeral, and it seemed everyone else did. When they returned to the kennel house, out of the rain that had muddied the graveyard on the hill below the church that had failed to snag the rushing black sky with its grey spire, all the old ladies who helped Geoff s grandmother pour large glasses of sherry and empty them almost as fast had nothing but praise for both boys. “What perfect little gentlemen,” declared the lady who appeared to be entitled to all the superlatives on offer — oldest, slowest, heaviest, most thoroughly dressed in black. “They’re a credit, Thora, to you and poor Rod and your daughter.” Presumably she and her friends were approving of the boys for offering around the platefuls of sandwiches, minute triangles of bread so thinly filled with ham or tinned salmon or cheese that the recipients had to lift a corner to discover which. Even Geoff’s parents were impressed, not to say surprised, by how self-effacing Ben had grown, how unobtrusively sociable — for the moment as discreet as the kind of waiter he was playing — and Geoff could only think they were so worn out by their problems at home that they had no energy left to turn against Ben, to continue to be suspicious of him. The sherry helped the women sniffle as they talked about his grandfather, Geoff observed, and didn’t know where to look — certainly not at Ben. It was Geoff’s father who rescued him and audibly himself as well. “I’d better be getting them home, then,” he said.

“Go on, you leave us women to our waterworks,” said the boys’ grandmother, dabbing all four corners of her eyes one after the other.

“Get your goodbyes said,” Geoff’s father told the boys.

Geoff couldn’t help suspecting this was yet another trick. Apart from his mother, who contented herself with a kiss from him, all the women insisted on having a hug. Trying to give each of them a quick embrace only made them hug him harder — as hard as he saw Ben hugging them. At last he was done with being enfolded in scent and having tears dripped on him, and he and Ben were in the hall. Even more incredibly, so was Ben’s suitcase. Instead of running to it, Ben turned to the depths of the house. “I’m off now, Lady,” he called to a frenzy of barking.

Rain and barking urged them to the van, where Ben joined Geoff on the front seat. As Geoff s father started the engine he scowled across his son at Ben. “This family’s good enough for you now, is it?”

Geoff shrank inside himself. It was over a year since Ben had invented a family to tell his schoolmates about, but this was the first time Geoff’s father had confronted him with it. Ben only smiled. “It always was, dad.”

Geoff’s father gave his attention to the road at once, and didn’t say another word for the eventually less rainy hour and sunny half it took him to drive home. As they came in sight of the house Mrs. Slough peered over the shared hedge, then stooped out of view. “We’re back all right,” Geoff’s father said, and Geoff thought he might even be including Ben. “Should have helped us get our compensation if you wanted rid of us.”

As he opened the gates the dog started barking in the house, and Ben gazed eagerly up the path. “What did you call him?”

“Rex,” said Geoff, overwhelmed by the relief he’d spent most of the day holding back.

“What’s that mean?”

“Means a king,” Geoff’s father said. “Should have thought you’d know that. Not as clever as you wanted us to think after all, are you? Only middle of your class at school.”

He’d hardly unlocked the house when Rex dashed out, all yelps and tongue, to greet Geoff. “It’s just like Lady,” Ben said, more delighted than Geoff would have dared hope.

“Go to the chippy if you’re starved,” Geoff s father told them. “I’ve got sums to do about this place.”

Geoff had heard him complain too often recently about their finances to take the bait. “We can just have a sandwich.”

“Make it yourselves,” his father said ungratefully, and shut himself in his office.

Ben patted the dog’s head, earning a friendly bark. “Don’t disturb our dad while he’s working,” he murmured, and to Geoff “I’ll make friends while you do dinner.”

Geoff buttered some sliced bread before quartering the lump a tin of corned beef expelled onto a plate. Ben joined him in the kitchen, Rex trotting after him, and poured two glasses of milk. Having served himself half the corned beef, he cut off a piece and fed it to Rex, his fingertips brushing against the dog’s teeth. “You’re not afraid at all, are you?” Geoff blurted.

Ben’s eyes took their time about finding him. They seemed to have grown paler in the years he’d been away — pale as eyes in a photograph that had faded or not yet developed. “I’m never going to be afraid again,” he said.

“What was it like while you were away?”

“I’ll let you know sometime.”

It must have been too bad to talk about so soon, Geoff thought. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and felt shy of speaking until Ben did, which meant there was no more talk while they finished eating and washed up, at which point Ben said “You’re tired.”

“I know. I’m going to bed.” Geoff let Rex into the back garden, where the dog’s ears pricked up at the sound of the motorway, and chained him in the kennel where Geoff s parents made him sleep. “Be good,” he murmured, ruffling the fur on the nape of Rex’s neck, and stumbled to his room.

He was asleep so quickly he didn’t remember climbing into bed. Now that Ben was back the house felt like a home — no longer so weighed down by the burden it was to his father. He wakened once with the impression that Rex had barked, and then there was another stretch of sleep before the sun was glaring into his eyes and he heard voices raised downstairs. His father had turned on Ben. “You can tell him what happened. Tell him what you did.”

Geoff ran downstairs, a cold smell of stale vegetables catching in his throat. His father and Ben were in the hall, and neither of them looked at him. “What is it?” he cried, stopping short of “What’s he done?”

His father jerked his calloused upturned hands at Ben, who let his head sag and blinked at Geoff. His eyes were cloudy enough for tears. “I was just telling dad, the dog. I woke up early and then I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d …”

“What, Ben? What?”

“I just took him out for a walk, that’s all.”

Geoff felt as though he had to drag himself forward through layers of words to reach the truth. “So?” he pleaded.

“There was a motorbike that came when we were crossing at the lights. They were red.”

“He’s never…” Until now Geoff had thought only people in films trailed off like that. “Where is he?” he had to ask.

“That’s it. I don’t know, Geoffrey. The bike scared him coming at him, and he ran off.”

“Couldn’t you have held onto him?”

“Don’t you think I tried?” Ben displayed the reddened palm of his right hand. “Look what his lead did.”

“He’ll be back, I reckon. We all come back round here,” Geoff’s father said with little enthusiasm. “Watch out for yourselves if you go looking for him. I’m off to the site now to make some cash for him to gobble up.”

“When are you back?” Ben asked.

“When I am. I’ve got to fit in the solicitor. I’d like to fit him in the ground for all the use he’s been, the lot of them, damn bloody…” His voice was sinking into him, but then he remembered something. “While you’re out see if one of you can get a tube of superglue. Your mother keeps it in the kitchen, but I can’t find where she’s put it. She can’t have used it up.”

Geoff sprinted upstairs, trying not to hate Ben for having lost the dog. He pulled on yesterday’s clothes, which felt as if they were beginning to sweat in anticipation of the chase, and ran down to the hall. Ben was gazing at an object in his hand. It couldn’t be remotely as important as finding Rex, and Geoff demanded “What have you…”

Ben moved his hand away from his face. He was holding a small mirror of the kind their mother always carried with her. He slipped it into a pocket as he turned to Geoff. For the briefest instant his eyes looked as tearful as before, then they were dry as stone, and as expressionless. “Fooled him,” he said.

“You mean dad? About Rex? You’re saying he’s all right?”

“That’s him. Mr. Davenport. The man everyone’s cleverer than. And you’re his son, so you believed me too.”

“I know,” Geoff said, which didn’t soften Ben’s stony gaze. “Where is he, though? Where’s Rex?”

“Remember when I used to hide things and draw you a clue? I’ve been looking forward to playing that again all the time you left me with the dogs.”

“I didn’t leave you, Ben. I couldn’t stop the grownups, could I? When I tried to say anything they shut me up.” Geoff heard himself begging, but it had no visible effect on Ben, who reached in his pocket for a folded scrap of paper — a page torn from a school exercise book. He unfolded the page and held it up.

It was a picture of the path that led behind the house. A curved line under a straight one with a sketch of a train on top, and another with a car, showed where it passed beneath the railway and the motorway. A stick-figure was running along it with hands like gloves pressed to its swollen panicky balloon of a head. The figure was supposed to be himself, Geoff saw, because it was running towards a pair of words hovering above the far end of the path: WOOF WOOF. “Why?” he wanted to plead, but could think of far too many answers. When his stiff shivery lips managed to open he said “What did you do to him?”

“You’ll have to find out.” Ben’s eyes were bright and dancing, but no more alive. “Better not waste time. Shouldn’t think there’s much left,” he said, and slipped the sketch into the pocket with the mirror.

Geoff’s sense of almost understanding sent him racing to the gate, where he discovered that Ben had shut the front door and followed unobserved behind him. As Geoff ran around the outside of the garden to the grassy slope that descended to the path, however, Ben crossed to the opposite pavement. “Aren’t you coming?” called Geoff, who had hoped Ben’s face might betray when they were near wherever he must have tied Rex up.

“I’ll be watching you. I’m going to the shops.”

“Why? What’s the point of that now?”

“You heard what he said. Got to replace the glue.”

The playfulness that entered his voice for the last few words dismayed Geoff beyond thinking, and he slithered down to the path. The morning roar of the motorway sank with him and filled the air between the grassy banks three times as tall as he was. “Rex,” he shouted, and was answered only by his echo, squashed small as a toddler’s voice by the noise of traffic. He dashed under the railway arch and stood where it would act as a megaphone. “Rex. I’m coming, Rex.”

The barking started at once. Geoff had to move out from beneath the weight of the traffic noise into the heavy sunlight before he could be sure that the dog wasn’t Rex — that it was guarding a house above the right-hand bank. He hurried down the rough path, which snaked between nettles as high as his waist. “Rex,” he kept calling as his voice grew parched. Once he heard a rustling in a clump of nettles to his left, but whatever was in the undergrowth, which was so thick he couldn’t see through it, didn’t bark. Once some children in the garden of a house with an organ-pipe chimney, its three pots growing progressively lower, imitated Geoff s shouts before they settled for laughing at them, and he saw a girl of about his age soar in a swing above the hedge as if she was acting as his lookout. When he shouted up to her to ask whether she could see a dog she only giggled as she continued to reappear and vanish.

She and her friends had gone when at last Geoff trudged back along the path. He’d found a fallen branch with which to poke and slash at the weeds, but all it achieved was to sting his hand with sweat where it gripped the scaly bark. Was Ben spying on him? If he could have found the other boy he might have attacked him with the stick to force him to say where Rex was — except that he knew it would take more than he dared imagine to affect Ben now. The rumble of the motorway gathered in his ears, compressing his thoughts and muffling his senses, so that he might have walked past the place where he’d heard the rustling in the nettles. But he saw a feeble movement beneath them.

He cut down a swathe of nettles so as to step off the path. There was fur in the depths of the weeds, and he slashed at the leaves above the supine body to clear his view. Then his mouth wrenched itself open, but he felt as if he was incapable of uttering enough of a cry, of making any sound at all…

“Geoff. Geoff.”

The sunlight went out as his eyes jerked open, and darkness pressed down on them. He was lying on his back in bed. Gail was holding onto his arm, and in not too many seconds he distinguished her face above him. “You were having a bad dream,” she murmured.

“That’s all, you’re right. Just a dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Better not. I’ll sleep now. I’ve a long way to go in the morning.”

Gail lingered over giving his forehead a stroke and a kiss and pulling his arm around her as she lay down with her back to him. Eventually he felt her reluctance to sleep without having talked yield to sleep, and wished he could follow her. He’d dreamed only at the very end; everything else had been memories that had resurrected themselves as he’d tried to doze. But the nightmare was closer now, its pitiless light finding all the darkest shadows in his mind and laying his emotions bare, and there was no point in telling himself it was only a nightmare — not when he knew the truth.

tocIDA1VBFC”>

thirty-one

He should have spoken up, Geoff thought as he came to the end of the motorway. He should have, but he couldn’t. The words had never left him.

He was back yet again, and he didn’t want to be recognised — couldn’t afford the time that would take. At the outsize crossroads bristling with traffic lights he swung the car away from the route that led to his old home. Another left turn took him off the dual carriageway into a street where parked cars basked under trees outside pairs of stocky houses standing shoulder to shoulder. One more left and then a right led him into a short narrow street with a sign at its dead end. When he halted by the sign he saw that it did indeed point the way down to the path behind the houses, which was now a cycle path.

He switched off the engine and unbent onto the choppy pavement, and all at once he was barely able to stand up. He used a knee to slam the door as he leaned his forearms and his aching fists on the hot dusty roof. He’d been driving for close to five hours without a break, but there were other reasons why he felt glassy and nauseous. He’d come to the end of the trail, he was certain. The envelope he’d found in the ruins of his grandparents’ house had contained Ben’s sketch of the path — of Geoff’s childhood self with its balloon head and big scared eyes running towards the barking in the air.

He had never been able to find Rex. Months later, someone else’s dog had led them to a corpse in the nettles by the path. It had been little more than a skeleton, with nothing except its contorted position, its legs pressed inseparably together in pairs, to suggest how it might have died. On hearing about the discovery from a schoolmate who lived nearby Geoff had known at once it was Rex, but when he’d made himself venture to look it had gone, leaving a cleared patch and a trail through the weeds. He never learned who had found the body or how it had been disposed of — and since he’d heard no more, he’d known that only he and Ben realised how the dog had been prevented from struggling to his feet while he had suffocated to death.

Geoff hadn’t told his father about the game Ben had made him play. His father had been blaming more and more people for his failure to get the compensation he wanted or to sell the house for even half the price he believed was fair, and whatever Geoff might have felt Ben deserved, he’d been afraid his father would do far worse to him. Once the boys’ mother returned from looking after their grandmother and confined her regrets about Rex to a grudging sentence, the grownups had quickly forgotten the dog — since he’d ceased to be a puppy they had barely tolerated him and the expense of him. But when Geoff had heard that the corpse had been found he’d set out to tell them the truth.

He’d tried that night at dinner. He’d met Ben’s eyes across the table, he’d seen Ben realise what he meant to do, and then he’d turned to his father, to wait until his complaint about the day was finished. “What?” his father had demanded at last, though not before Geoff’s mother had indicated the boy might want to speak. “What are you after?” But it hadn’t been the roughness that had paralysed Geoff’s tongue — had made the unspeakable words gather into an immovable mass, a mouthful he could neither spit out nor swallow. The more he’d fought to speak, the bigger the insubstantial gag grew, until his father had turned away with a contempt he’d previously reserved for his stepson. Hardly knowing where to look, and no longer wanting to be seen, Geoff had found his gaze straying to Ben. With no more than a stony blink Ben’s eyes had told him he knew Geoff could never tell.

Geoff shoved himself away from the car. He might have been too young then, but he wasn’t now. He’d never been at ease with Ben after that — had tried never to be alone with him, had been alert for hints that he was planning some further revenge — until Ben had vanished on his eighteenth birthday, when Geoff had come to believe that freedom would be enough for Ben: that he could achieve freedom. Now, as Geoff hurried down to the path, he felt neither of them had.

A stick was lying in the weeds to the right of the way down from the road, a branch some four feet long, its splintered end gleaming white as bone. He couldn’t help wondering as he picked it up whether it had been snapped off a tree to point his route. Since his childhood the trees had grown higher than the grassy banks, but he knew where he was going. In a minute he saw the organ-pipe chimney pots above him, and within the bend of the path ahead was an expanse of undergrowth where the dead dog had been found. Before he reached the bend he spied the corner of an object almost hidden by the weeds.

It was white, it was rectangular. It seized his heartbeat as he ran to the bend. He had to swipe the knee-high nettles flat before he could see that his prize was an empty packet of condoms. He began to poke the fat green stalks aside, and then to cut them down, flinging them across the path. In a few minutes he’d cleared a patch larger than a man could hide in, and he was able to see all the way to the grassy bank, but there was no sign of an envelope.

He wiped his forehead with the back of one hand and leaned on the stick, which creaked. Might someone else have found whatever had been left for him, or could the childhood sketch now mean that he had to search the whole length, mile upon mile of it, of the path? He made himself straighten up before the weight of the thought broke the stick, and a white object revealed itself at the edge of his vision. It was a butterfly so basic it didn’t even run to colour, and he had to restrain himself from lashing out at it; he dealt the weeds in front of him another dull scything instead. Stumps of nettles snapped and squelched and flew in all directions, and the tip of the branch frayed on a surface harder than earth.

He poked soil and fallen weeds aside, exposing a flat stone an arm’s length from the edge of the path. The stone was as wide as his face, and the colour of dried blood. As he levered it up with the stick he saw moist pinkish segments withdrawing into the earth. Then the stone tipped onto its back with a thud, uncovering the envelope.

He trod on the flattened weeds and stooped to it so fast the smell of mingled growth and decay surged up at him. A sting found his thumb as he snatched the envelope. The pain wasn’t worth cursing under the circumstances, and he retreated to the path, tearing at the flap of the envelope with his thumbnail. The stick fell into the nettles with a wet thud as he took hold of the photograph. Two words were written on the back in wrong-handed capitals: NEVER TELL. “I told you I wouldn’t,” he muttered, and turned the photograph face up.

The mumble of the motorway lurched at him out of the trees. All at once his surroundings were a lurid image of themselves, the greenery glaring like lightning that refused to be extinguished. The photograph began to distort itself before his eyes, to curl towards him as though his panic was drawing it closer, until he managed to relax his cramped hand.

He was looking at a small figure photographed as it walked away from a zoom lens. The person whose hand it was holding was cut off by the right edge of the frame, but he didn’t need to see more to know that she was Gail’s mother and the green blur to the left was a shrubbery beside a path at Kew. The photographer’s subject, as unaware of being followed as the rest of the party had been, was Paul.

tocIDASBCFC”>

thirty-three

Glue, thought Paul, and tried to move away from the smell of it. He’d forgotten that hurt so much. Every inch of him had pain in store for him, and the more he shifted the worse it grew. Best to keep still with his arms around Bebe and his lips pressed against hers until his head stopped swimming with the smell and he could think well enough to plan. Best to loll there on the front seat of the van in the unfocused dimness that was almost dark, and hope that he and Bebe would be found and taken care of before he had to discover for himself how badly injured he was. At least Bebe was unconscious, though she’d stirred in response to him — she’d followed his numb lips with hers. “Rest,” he would have whispered if he had been able to operate his lips, and so he thought it instead. “Save your strength until …”

He wasn’t sure what he was proposing: perhaps just the hope that she wouldn’t regain consciousness before the ambulance came. Very little was clear to him except that both of them must have been made to sniff glue by their guide who had proved not to be one at all. Perhaps he sniffed glue himself — that would go some way towards explaining his behaviour if the practice affected his mind as it was affecting Paul’s. All his dull sensations and his memories were melting together into a shapeless mass that was himself, and he didn’t know how much that he seemed to remember had actually taken place.

Did the driver of the Cavalier prowl the back roads in search of lonely travellers to lure away and perhaps to rob? He’d moved the barrier that had closed off the abandoned quarry, Paul had deduced, but how often did he play that trick? Was the quarry hiding other wrecked vehicles besides the van? The thought dragged his senses outwards, and he seemed to hear, through the rain that was hammering the metal roof and thumping the windshield and splashing in the shattered rear windows, the sound of rusty vehicles creaking with the downpour — seemed to grow aware of corpses in them, a stillness composed of abandoned flesh, a heavy absence pressing closer to him. His innards flinched from it, his consciousness swayed like a boat wrenched from its moorings by the storm, and then he was able to think again, to fend off the gluey hallucination, because the reality was terrible enough. Though what was it exactly? What was meant to happen to Bebe and him? How could he judge that when he couldn’t even grasp the last words the man had said to him?

“Give me the rest of your…”

“Gonna make a mess of your…” He couldn’t have said “Geoffrey” — Paul must have been desperate to hear something familiar in the midst of his shock. The man had stared at him as if he was prepared to wait as long as it took Paul to understand; then his eyes had brightened with loathing, and he’d hauled the door open and punched Paul quite lightly, even deftly, on the chin.

The memory of that — of his own inability to protect Bebe — swayed Paul’s consciousness afloat again on the gathering darkness. Surely the man hadn’t felt the need to do anything to Bebe, who had already been unconscious; indeed, Paul had thought she was dead. She was still insensible, and might be hurt worse than him — why wasn’t he trying to go for help? Nobody was coming for them; the man would have replaced the barrier, and they were by no means visible from the road. However much pain and dizziness he might experience wouldn’t have to matter. The worst part would be leaving Bebe in the van, since he didn’t dare risk moving her when he had no idea how badly she was injured. As long as he could struggle to the road, he’d wait until a car chanced along — soon enough for Bebe, it would have to be, must be. He tried to flex his fingers, which were clasped together behind her back so tightly his hands felt like a single lump of bony meat, and opened his mouth to tell her what he had to do.

As his lips, which felt swollen and somehow weighed down, parted so did Bebe’s. Even if she wasn’t conscious, she was giving him a drowsy kiss. He responded with a gentle pressure and made to pull away and speak. Her head rose too, her lips stayed fastened to his, pulling them away from his teeth. Without thinking he sucked in a breath that tasted of glue and felt himself sucking it out of her. He gasped, and her lips clung to his as the air was expelled back into her mouth. Then the pounding of rain clamped itself to his ears, and the smell of glue tried to float his mind away from acknowledging at last what had been done to Bebe and himself. Now he knew why her hands were fastened together behind his back as inexorably as his were behind her — knew when he tried to force his clasped hands apart, to move even a finger. He had to part them, however much he damaged them, or he would be useless. Once he had his arms free he would be able to slip out from under Bebe’s, he told himself desperately — but he didn’t want even to begin to consider how he would have to separate their glued-together mouths.

tocIDAHICFC”>

thirty-five

He was emerging from the phone booth in the alcove off the hall when Mrs. Minken accosted him. She lowered her square head, giving him even more of a view of her permed auburn hair foaming over it like beer out of a tankard, to gaze expectantly at him. “Is your wife missing the family, Mr. Reaper?”

“Call me Ted, won’t you? She’s hoping she can join us later in the week.”

“That would be happiest, wouldn’t it? What did you say she did?”

“She’s a carer. Some people won’t be happy till everyone has one.”

“She ought to be given her break when she booked it, all the same. Can’t someone take over for her while she comes away?”

“Some of these cases get to know the person they’re assigned and won’t have anyone else.”

“They oughtn’t to be let expect so much, should they? I’ll say no more, I see you’re keeping your thoughts in. Is the little soldier missing his mam?”

“I’m doing my best to make sure he doesn’t.”

“You could have a handicap at that and still come out the winner. He’s a credit to you. A little credit, aren’t you? A credit to your dad.”

“Mrs. Minken is saying you’re a good boy, Ben.”

“Ben.”

“Ben, that’s right. That’s your name.”

“Isn’t he a treasure. Doesn’t say much, but when he does it’s as clear as the news on the telly. I wish all the kiddies we’ve had staying were like him. Put you off your Sunday roast, it would, some of the language we’ve heard and the mess we’ve had to clear up after them. Does he speak up for himself more when he’s in the mood?”

“He’s learning at his own pace. I’m teaching him all the time. As you say, we wouldn’t want him coming out with things we don’t want to hear.”

“I didn’t mean a word against him or you either. Is he a bit tired as well? Is that part of why he’s so quiet?”

“I think you could be on to something, Mrs. Minken.”

“And I hope you won’t mind me opening my mouth a bit further, but you look as though you could do with some sleep too.”

“I’ve been driving quite a way of late. That’s my business, long-distance transport. I’m hoping to catch up on my rest before I have to get going again.”

“What must you think I’m thinking of? Don’t let me keep either of you from your beds.” She stooped to tickle the toddler under the chin. “You’re the image of your father,” she said.

“Thank you for reminding me, Mrs. Minken.” As the hotel landlady vanished into the basement kitchen he used the club attached to the room-key to prod the toddler onto the stairs beneath the teardrop chandelier too large for the hall. “Up you scrabble,” he murmured. “Nobody’s making you do anything you don’t want to do, are they? Can you hear the television? You can watch mine when we’re in the room.”

On the middle floor the child tramped straight to the room at the front of the building. It was furnished with a double bed and, closer to the floor, a single truckle. A chair beside a wardrobe faced a shrunken television on a ledge, next to which a frosted-glass enclosure somewhat larger than a cupboard managed to contain a toilet and a shower booth. Outside the window, above which the hotel cocked a satellite dish at the evening sky, a cordon of white three-storey hotels did for most of the view, but the toddler wasn’t bothering with that. He waddled to the truckle and sat facing the television. “Want to watch, do you?” his guardian said. “Call me pa, then. Remember how we practised on the way. Say pa and you get the control. Pa, that’s better than dad.”

“Dad,” said the toddler, and his face searched for an expression.

“Never mind him. He doesn’t mind anyone he can’t make into a film. Not going to start howling, are you? Boys aren’t supposed to do that. Boys who don’t act like men get to stay in a room with something nasty in it and a dog outside. Here, look at your picture you like.”

He slipped the American passport out of his pocket and found the photograph, and the toddler’s face cleared. “Randad.”

“Randad! That’s a good name for them. None of them ran fast enough, though, randad or randma. Nothing grand about them either when I’d finished with them.” He closed his fist around the passport, just not tightly enough to bend it out of shape. “You call me what you have to call me and you can see him again later. Pa. Say pa.”

“Pa.”

“That’s it. That’s what you say when you need anything. You’ve nobody else you can ask,” he said, and thrust the passport into his pocket. “Here, I said you could watch.”

He snatched the remote control from on top of the television and brandished it in front of the small intent face. “Push this to switch on, look. And this button with an arrow on it changes channels. You try now,” he directed, and dropped the control on the truckle bed.

As the boy started to play with the channels, Reaper eased his legs onto his own bed with hardly a sound. Now he could observe the chained door, the boy he need only lean sideways to reach, the ash of the twilight gathering on the dull red roofs beyond the window. He’d set the volume of the television so that he would hear any noises on the stairs well before anyone came close to his room. Here was a United Nations meeting, a bombed street full of dust and gunfire and some corpses, policemen digging up the garden of a council house, men in turbans picketing a women’s refuge. “Slow down a bit,” Reaper said, beginning to grow restless. “Find something to put you to sleep.”

A game show host zooming about in a wheelchair. A man playing two miniature piccolos stuck up his nostrils. A chimpanzee with electrodes on its skull and using its food to construct a barrier within its cage. The Arranged Marriages Show. A man with a toy rocket emerging from his fly to the sound of laughter and cheering and applause…. Reaper was making to put on his gloves when the parade snagged on a cartoon, and the toddler let the control drop.

An old woman and a canary were avenging themselves on a cat. Whatever was done to their victim, it regained its shape in the next scene so as to come back for more. “Dogs don’t do that,” Reaper commented. “Grannies and their husbands don’t either.” He was close to the state in which he was intensely but calmly aware of everything around him, and nothing could threaten him, because it was all a part of him — he was close, but not there. He must be failing to achieve it because he had to share his room. “Not for long,” he said, quieter than the cartoon. “Better than sleeping three to a cell, I can tell you.”

He wasn’t really speaking to the boy; the very fact that the boy wasn’t listening, and would surely not understand if he did, helped Reaper talk. “The only place to get a real education, all the same. Harder to get into than you might think. I had to go for someone’s face with an army knife before the judge thought I was fit to be let in. Can’t even remember whose face it was. Less of a face than it used to be, I’ll promise you that.” His reminiscent smile was floating out of him, hovering invisibly in the dim flickering air. “The system tracked my mother down, her and her hero who stuck Geoffrey in her, but they didn’t want to know. Don’t know if they told Geoffrey, and I’ll let you guess if I care. I almost feel like thanking them for helping me become myself. Is Geoffrey going to come for you when he never bothered finding me? Do you think that’s fair?”

But the toddler was saying even less than usual, because he was asleep. Except for the glow of the screen, on which a hairy man was staring at a footprint on a supposedly deserted beach, the room was dark. Time could pass like sleep for Reaper when there was no immediate reason to be alert; his surroundings turned into a dream from which he could instantly waken. He switched on the light and pulled the sheets over the toddler, then tucked them beneath the mattress of the truckle bed to pin him down. Once he’d given the room a slow thorough survey he switched the radio between the beds into its intercom mode. “Don’t bother trying to hear me,” he mouthed at it, and having locked the toddler in, went soundlessly down to knock on the door marked PRIVATE. “You said you’d listen out for him when I’m not there, Mrs. Minken. I’m just off for my constitutional.”

“That’s what our air’s for.” Nevertheless the landlady’s face, which the doorway extruded gargoyle-like, bore a concerned look. “Have you and your little prize not had any dinner?”

“We ate just before we got here. Someone couldn’t wait. I can see you’re thinking I ought to be firmer with him.”

“I was only thinking I hope he won’t be hungry if he wakes up. If you see the light under this door you can always ask me to make him a sandwich.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Minken. That’s thoughtful of you.” Reaper was out of the hotel before adding “Better not think too much about us.” That was meant to give him back his sense of power, but instead it confused him — made him feel close to being pushed beyond the point where he could choose, as he liked to push himself when the times came. “Just another old bitch,” he muttered, strolling away from the hotel. Once he was out of sight from it he veered deeper into the town.

Very soon the pale houses gave up having notices in their front windows and grew thinner to make room for more satellite dishes. The gleam of the streetlamps clung like frost to the net curtains, contradicting the mugginess of the night. As he crossed narrow intersection after intersection he felt compelled by events to move faster than he liked, but it would be no faster than he could cope with. There was the pub on a corner ahead.

It was called the Game Dog, and it was no larger than any of the houses in either of the streets onto which its opaque windows faced. The houses seemed to be ignoring it, preoccupied as they were with elaborating themselves: front doors were attended by pairs of antique carriage lamps, and one bore a knocker with the face of a Greek god; there were doors carved of mahogany, porches composed of oak or stained glass. Two dead streetlamps framed the mouth of an alley that led back where he came from. Having established this in case of need, he went into the pub.

Beyond the door, the upper third of which contained four panes that had been painted black, was a single room. Some cigarette smoke made its escape as he entered, but there was still far too much for the size of the interior. Nevertheless it was criminality more than smoke he smelled, and so he knew he’d come to the right place.

A bar whose front was upholstered in leather and studded with brass slanted across the corner farthest from the door. The rest of the room was occupied by six round black iron tables and twice as many stools hard with leather. Quite a few of the men poised on the stools had rendered themselves bald as the day they were born, and they weren’t the only ones bearing tattoos to show they had form. Those who were facing the door were watching the newcomer, while the rest seemed more interested in the rugby game on the television above the bar, which meant they were waiting for him to walk past them. None of them knew how much worse he’d done than they could imagine, and that excited him as he moved through the undergrowth of muttered conversation to the bar.

The barman was perched on a staircase behind it. His thin bare arms wired with veins were the colour and texture of leather, his sharp face looked as though it was being tugged against the bones by his greying pony-tail. He let his reddened gaze stray over the other patrons before acknowledging his customer. “After something, chum?”

“A drink if it’s not too much trouble.”

“There’s never trouble here,” the barman said, and used an unenthusiastic thumb to indicate the shelves beside him and the pumps behind the bar. “If you see it you can have it.”

“I’ll have a Coke.”

“Suit yourself.” The barman came fast to the bar as if to startle him, but Reaper only observed him while the machine between them stuttered out the drink; then he dropped a note beside the mat the barman slipped beneath the glass. “Don’t let me drink on my own.”

“Drop it in there,” the barman advised him, having produced his change from an old brass till, and nodded at the Care for a Child tin on the bar. “Or are you asking me to fix you up with someone, love?”

Reaper left the change where it was and rested his gaze on the barman’s eyes. “Barney,” he said, only just raising his voice.

“Not much of a name to give me.”

“The word is it’s all I need.”

“What makes you so special?”

Reaper was letting his eyes suggest that when a voice behind him demanded “Who said ask for Barney?”

He didn’t turn. He waited until she appeared alongside him and he could judge how he’d managed to overlook the presence of a woman. Her bullet head was shaved grey; the tops of her breasts, now that she was close enough for him to see into the meagre cleavage framed by her camouflage waistcoat, were as elaborately tattooed as her muscular arms. “Wai in Soho. Old Compton Street,” he said.

“You’re famous,” the barman told her, not that it sounded much like praise.

At a look from her he unbolted the flap of the bar and jerked his head to signify that Reaper should climb after her. Years of smoke from the bar seemed to cling to the bare yellow bulb over the narrow stairs, and to stain the walls brown as nicotine. The woman’s trousered buttocks kept thrusting towards his face like a pair of giant gloved fists warning him how she treated anyone unwelcome. She stumped left at the top of the staircase and switched on the light in a room.

The unshaded bulb glared at the windowless walls, at the frayed carpet on which two folding chairs faced each other across a rickety card-table, at the dusty glass of three framed photographs leaning against the wall, photographs of boxers dressed in thigh-length shorts and squaring up to each other. The woman dropped herself in the chair with its back to the door and kicked the legs of the table wider open as Reaper sat opposite with his drink. “What’s Wai up to these days?” she said.

“Passports.”

“That’s why you went to him, is it?”

“I got one from him, and now I need another.”

“Why couldn’t he do it?”

“I didn’t have time to see him again.”

She planted her fists on the table, backs upwards. Having scrutinised him for a few moments, she turned her right fist on its side and curled its stubby forefinger. “Got a photo?”

Reaper passed her a quarter of the strip of photographs a booth had taken for him. Once she’d swivelled it the right way up she said “How old is he?”

“He’s working on being three in October,” Reaper said, and held out his empty hands to suggest how his innocence had allowed him to be robbed. “When his mother grabbed him so I had to steal him back she took his passport.”

“I didn’t ask, did I? Anyone can see he’s yours. Got his details?”

Reaper gave her the folded sheet bearing the information he’d written with his left hand: name, date and place of birth, nationality, gender… “Benjamin, do you want him to be?” she said, and a whistle shrilled below them.

Reaper let a smile play with his lips. When the muffled roar of the rugby crowd recommenced underfoot he said “You’re right, he’s got to be Benjamin. How long will it take?”

“How good do you want his passport?”

“How good does it need to be?”

“Depends where you’re taking it and if you want a visa in it.”

“I’ll know tomorrow when I’ve booked the flight. How much longer do your visas take?”

“I’ll tell you when I know where it’s for. Lots of countries don’t need them. Turkey, you slip them a fiver in the passport and they give you the visa right there.”

“Without a visa, how long?”

She rolled her eyes upwards as though she was running out of patience, but she must have been going behind her eyelids to think. “Day after tomorrow, same time here.”

“No chance of tomorrow?”

“Maybe for an extra hundred. Don’t know what Wai charges these days, but here it’s three plus the extra for the rush. That’s for a passport nobody’s going to look at twice in Europe, and once you’ve got that far, nowhere else either.”

“That’s as far as I’ll need to go,” Reaper said, pushing his knife deeper into his pocket while he dug out the wad of notes. “Here’s half,” he said, and pocketing the rest, stood up.

The woman stuffed the notes into her breast pocket, exposing another coil of a snake nestling in her cleavage. “Where can I find you if I have to?”

“You won’t.” Reaper picked up his glass to empty it. “I’ll find you, no fear,” he said, and wiped his fingerprints off the glass with his sleeve as he skipped downstairs. He slid the glass off his palm onto the bar and sauntered to the door. Outside the Game Dog he walked away from the direction he’d come from, and only when he was several streets away and certain that he hadn’t been followed did he set about doubling back.

He was as sure of himself as he could be, but not having been for even a moment made the inside of his flesh feel exposed. He ought to have noticed a woman in the bar — he’d spent his life learning to be aware of everything around him and letting nobody realise he was. “It’s you, Geoffrey,” he said to the deserted locked-up curtained street. “You rushed me, not keeping your mouth shut. You’ll be sorry.”

The thoughts this aroused sent him hurrying back to the hotel. The left-hand window on the middle floor — his window — was dark and silent as a switched-off television. Nobody but Geoffrey would have dared remove the toddler, and Geoffrey could never have found him so soon. Reaper let himself in, an average father who had needed an hour’s babysitting to give him time for a stroll at his own pace, and padded upstairs to unlock his door. At the sight of the toddler gift-wrapped by the sheets of the low bed, he experienced a smile that almost involved his eyes. “It isn’t just a dog this time, Geoffrey,” he whispered as he eased the door shut. “You haven’t long left to care.”

tocIDATXCFC”>

thirty-seven

Now it was dark — as dark, Paul thought, as the inside of a block of coal: so dark his eyes might as well have been transformed into the substance. He’d always believed that being unable to see your hand in front of your face was one of those exaggerations people substituted for imagining how a situation would really appear, but now he saw how accurately it summed up the experience, even supposing he’d been able to separate his hands in order to confirm the invisibility of either of them, even if there had been room for one between Bebe’s face and his. It was so dark he kept fancying he could see her face that was pressed against his own.

He didn’t know how long it had been since her face had flickered with a last hint of dimness before going out — didn’t know when his being barely able to see her had turned into remembering. He mustn’t let that distract him, mustn’t let it lure him into the dark of his mind. He needed to know only that Bebe was alive. All he had to do was summon help while she could still be saved.

She’d relapsed into unconsciousness. At least they wouldn’t be struggling to move without either of them knowing what the other meant to do — without being able to see in order to communicate. But he’d seen her eyes flutter open and manage to focus on his in the instant when the darkness took her face. He couldn’t have dreamed that, any more than he was dreaming the almost imperceptible throb of her heart against his chest, and either would have been enough to rouse him. He and Bebe weren’t finished yet. They only had to make it to the road.

He couldn’t just lean over to the door behind her. He might bang her head against the window, which could be ready to shatter at a touch. He lifted her awkwardly with his forearms under her armpits, edged himself across the seat he was sharing with her, let her down onto it as gently as he could, drew a shaky breath through his raw nostrils, lifted her again and moved another fraction of an inch. Lifting her body, which had seemed to sail into the air like a bird taking flight when he’d carried her across the threshold of their first apartment, sent shivers and piercing aches up his arms to penetrate the rest of him, which felt as though it needed just one wrong movement to reveal how damaged it was. None of his suffering could be allowed to matter. Not being able to see helped him focus his other senses, so that he knew he was about to touch the door just as his knuckles rapped against the chilly metal.

A dizziness that smelled of glue rose to meet him as he groped for the handle. The fingertips of his right hand bruised themselves against it, and he thrust them under the metal plate and tugged. The handle lifted, but the door didn’t budge.

He expelled what was left of the aching breath he’d drawn to give him more strength, and felt a gentle answering breath on his upper lip. It was a sign from Bebe — it couldn’t be his own breath returning to mock him. He mumbled an undefined syllable twice into her mouth, the best he could do towards speaking her name, and dug his right elbow into the seat so as to lever himself up. The gluey dizziness slopped back and forth in his head as he threw all his weight and Bebe’s on his fingertips. The handle gave with a creak, but the door didn’t shift, and he heard stone grinding against metal.

He heaved himself up on his elbow, he shoved his toecaps against the floor and his fingers deeper beneath the handle, and wrenched at it with more force than he would have dared believe himself capable of exerting. This time he not only heard the edge of the door grind against the obstruction, he sensed how immovably wedged the piece or pieces of stone must be — driven so hard between the door and its frame that he knew the blockage was deliberate.

The thought made his body flare with rage, and he thought he saw the blackness turn red. He was quickly chilled by the night-wind through the smashed rear windows, and he lowered Bebe against the seat, trapping his right arm, before sagging there himself. He swallowed dryly, appalled by the thought of retching while his lips were fastened to Bebe’s, and tried to breathe slowly and lightly to recapture some control. He was struggling to think what more he could do — imagining his vain attempts to reach his door, his clumsy efforts to lift Bebe past the steering wheel — when he heard a sound, faint but increasingly definite. It was a car, and it was approaching.

It wasn’t the blonde man’s car. The instant Paul was sure of that, he lifted Bebe off the seat and lurched for the steering wheel. She felt lighter, surely because of the way he was lifting her, not because some part of her had gone away. He jabbed his left elbow at the dark where he knew the horn to be. But his movements had confused him. He toppled against the dashboard, his shoulder colliding with a bank of switches, and the hazard lights flashed on.

There was no use hoping they would be enough. His shoulder was throbbing all the way to the bone, his head felt as though he and Bebe were continuing to fall, but the lights weren’t visible from the road. He strained his head back, taking Bebe’s with it, and managed as pain impaled his spine to find the steering wheel, a curved blur that appeared and vanished in the pulsating glow from the dashboard switch. He jammed a heel against the floor and hitched up his body and the almost immovable burden that was his wife’s, and shoved at the horn with his left temple. He shoved until the skin and fragile bone felt close to giving way, but the horn didn’t utter so much as a croak.

It had been either damaged by the crash or disabled on purpose. Not only that almost made him give up. All of his weight and Bebe’s seemed to be resting on his neck, which was extending its agony down to the base of his spine, and he caught himself wishing to pass out. But the car was still coming, and he couldn’t deny Bebe the chance it represented. He straightened his crippled legs and thrust at the floor, and managed to heave himself far enough to rest his flinching shoulder against the wheel: then, with a last shuddering effort, his elbow. He shoved with it, and all at once was toppling towards the seat almost as fast as the inside of his head was falling. He twisted himself around just in time for Bebe to fall on top of him. His ribs cracked, the smell of glue sloshed through his head as though she’d gasped it into his face, but he held her just as firmly as he dared, and she settled on top of him as she often had while they were courting. He could have wept at that, and his vision blurred as he stretched out his legs on either side of hers. He strained upwards until his toes encountered metal beyond the dashboard, and set about kicking the front of the van with all his remaining strength.

Not just the front but the entire vehicle began to resound like a drum. Each kick appeared to rouse the orange flicker of the hazard lights. He held his feet in mid-air for a few seconds, painful though that was, while he tried to judge whether the noise he was making had had any effect on the progress of the car. He couldn’t tell, and so he went on kicking, each kick more of an ache. He desisted only when the aches became unbearable, and heard the car. This time there was no question that it was receding.

For a dreadful moment he imagined tearing his face free of Bebe’s in order to yell for help — found himself trying to decide in the trapped dark of his mind whether any injury he might do her, any disfigurement she would suffer, mustn’t be preferable to letting her die before help reached them. A moan of distress so profound he wouldn’t have been able to put it into words released itself into her mouth. The car engine shrank into the night and turned into a humming that had no existence outside his ears. It was gone. It had been the only car since he’d regained consciousness. Perhaps it was the last he would ever hear.

The notion brought with it a resignation calmer than despair, and he seemed to be looking down on himself and Bebe, a pair of lovers still together after all the years whose end was now, an end they could never have prepared for. At least they were in each other’s arms, and perhaps in whatever dream she was having Bebe knew they were. He let his legs sink and laid them protectively against hers. He mustn’t close his eyes yet, in case he drifted away — in case she came to herself only to discover he’d abandoned her. The flashing of the hazard lights would help him maintain his vigil, however distant they seemed — the ticking of the mechanism would, even if the glow seemed to be fading, unless his awareness of it was. He only had to stir for any number of aches, so monotonous they were almost soporific, to sharpen and jar him back to awareness.

Then something else did: a sound advancing out of the blackness. He had to hold back from straining his ears, because their throbbing deafened him. It was a vehicle, no doubt of that, but suddenly he wasn’t sure that he wanted its driver to find him and Bebe. He hugged her body closer as he realised that the sound beyond the feeble flicker of the hazard lights was descending into the quarry — was coming to find them as only someone could who already knew they were there.

tocIDAP5CFC”>

thirty-nine

Ted Reaper slapped aftershave on his smooth pink cheeks and chin and ducked his head at the mirror to peer over the clear lenses of his spectacles at the hint of stubble on his scalp. “Time to find a barber,” he declared, and took his face that was stinging with readiness for anything into the bedroom. “Want some breakfast, Ben? Want some of that English breakfast you can smell? Better make the most of it. Give me that condolence card and we’ll go down.”

The toddler was sitting on his low bed, the control of the television in one hand, his grandfather’s passport in the other. When he’d started whining in the night Reaper had stood the passport on the windowsill above the truckle bed. The sight of his grandfather’s face glowing like an image on a tiny television beside the streetlamp had quieted the boy, and soon Reaper had been able to resume his watchful trance. Perhaps he’d underestimated how comforting he had allowed the picture to become. As he stooped to retrieve it, the boy pressed it against his chest and bowed forward as though to make it harder to reach.

Reaper snatched his gloves from under his pillow and pulled them on before taking hold of the boy’s face. He felt the eyes tremble against his palm and the mouth deliver something like a kiss, but he pushed no harder than he felt he needed to. As the child opened out of his crouch, Reaper peeled the startled fingers away from the passport and slid it into his hip pocket. “Don’t start howling,” he said as he returned the gloves to their den. “Nobody cares. Kids are expected to sound like that, so nobody’s even going to notice. You can have him back when we’re by ourselves if you can’t stand being alone with me.”

Little Ben blinked moistly at him. His mouth worked as if he was just starting to taste his grief, but he had apparently been persuaded not to make a row. “Randad,” he pleaded.

“More than he could say last time I saw him. Mm-mm would be the best he could do. Mm-mm.”

The boy giggled at that, more loudly when it was repeated. “Mm-mm,” Reaper said, protruding his lips that were keeping in most of the noise. Abruptly he tired of the stupidity of it, the waste of himself. “Go and do whatever you do in the bathroom.”

“Bath.”

“Not a bath, no. You can do without them. I’m not giving you one,” Reaper said, and wiped on his trousers the memory of feeling the child’s mouth. “Use the toilet.”

“Toy.”

“That’s it, use your toy, and I hope you aren’t expecting any help. Always kept mine to myself, so you can. Don’t want undressing, do you? Get on with it, then, and make damn sure you don’t wet yourself.”

At the first sound of pouring beyond the frosted glass Reaper turned up the volume of the cartoon. None of the figures, which appeared to require so much energy to move their mouths that the rest of their anatomy had to stay still, could utter more than half a dozen words at a time, and left too many silences that were filled with the noise from the cubicle. Reaper dragged the sash up and stuck his head into the fresh air until he heard the toilet flush. “Hope you can clean yourself up when you need it,” he muttered. “I stopped wiping up muck a long time ago.”

He slammed the window as the boy trotted back into the room. His hair looked like an old cartoon of madness, his clothes as if he’d slept in them, which he had. No wonder the landlady swooped at him as he reached the downstairs hall. “What can your dad be thinking of,” she cried. “Let’s give you a comb.”

Reaper was gratified to see him flinch and sit down hard. She must seem more of a stranger to him than his new guardian did. “He got away before I could groom him,” Reaper said.

“You shouldn’t ever let them get away from you, not at his age.” She was parting his hair with a comb she’d produced from beneath her striped plastic apron. Perhaps the comb scratched his scalp, or perhaps he was echoing her use of the name when he protested “Dad.”

“You’ve confused him. We call me pa, don’t we, Ben? Who’s pa?”

“I’ll have to keep remembering you’re old-fashioned.” The landlady patted little Ben’s combed head. “Now nobody will say he needs his mater. Should he get changed before you go out, do you think? It’s already hotter than yesterday.”

“I’ll fix him. Don’t give it another thought.” Reaper had begun to wonder what else the pressure of events might have hurried him past noticing. “I’d better see to his feed first,” he said.

The dining-room was large and bright and almost full. The table farthest from the door and by the wide bay window was unoccupied. Between the window and a small subdued television elevated on a pedestal, a serving hatch allowed whoever might be in the kitchen to spy on the room. Just two of the seated adults looked as if they could be or act like police, and they were close enough together that a fork in the eye would take both of them by surprise. Reaper didn’t think that would be necessary, not least since his seat in the corner enabled him to watch both the room and the street, but he enjoyed imagining the shock, the chaos, his escape with Ben in the midst of it. “Is it two big breakfasts for two big men?” the landlady said in a tone that brooked no disagreement, and hardly waited for her answer.

Reaper surveyed the street, where a slow march of old people was loading itself onto a coach, before he fixed his gaze on the toddler as he supposed a father should. Or were you meant to play games if you had a child? He took hold of his knife and fork, and was thinking how to use them to make the toddler laugh when his neighbour said “None of us know if we’re safe any more, do we?”

He gave her and the rest of her red-headed family a harder appraisal. She wore a loose white dress printed with brown spots like enlargements of the swarm of freckles it was doing its best to hide. Her plump children were more lightly sprinkled, and her stout husband had escaped the contagion, though he spoiled his fresh-faced appearance with a moustache so rectangular it might have been attached to an adhesive strip. Nobody who looked so fake, or their associates, could be anything but what they seemed, Reaper decided, but his voice still came out sharp. “Who doesn’t know?”

“Well, do you? He can’t any more than the rest of us, can he, Arthur?”

Her husband lingered over chewing his mouthful of breakfast before he reluctantly swallowed. “So you say.”

“I do, because it’s so. That’s his way of agreeing with me. Haven’t you heard the news this morning, Mr. Forgive Me?”

“Reaper. Ted Reaper.” He’d missed the early news because he had been keeping the toddler happy with cartoons. He laid his hands flat beside his knife and fork, exactly close enough just to feel the edges of the metal, to remind himself how much control he had. “Which news?” he said.

“He should always keep his eye on it, shouldn’t he, Arthur? We’re religious about it since we’ve had these two. You’re not even safe when you’re older, not with this thing on the news.”

Her husband poised a fork piled with toast and black pudding and egg in front of his open mouth. “He doesn’t know which thing, Doris.”

“It’ll be on again in a minute,” she said, brusquely enough to make him load his mouth. As though she had only been waiting for him to be quiet she added “Here it comes.”

Reaper turned to the screen and saw a tousled man grinning as he pointed at the weather map behind him, which showed suns multiplying and driving black clouds armed with lightning northwards. Reaper thought she was trying to trick him until he grasped that she was referring to the trayful of breakfast in the hatch. The landlady’s top half bustled away to bring the rest of itself into the room and carry the tray over. She had just arrived at Reaper’s table when a newsreader appeared on the screen with photographs of Geoffrey’s in-laws at his shoulder.

“They’re for Mr. Reaper,” the landlady said, setting down his overloaded plate and a coffee-pot in front of him. As she blocked his view he lurched sideways to watch the screen, and little Ben turned to see where he was looking. “Randad,” he announced at the top of his voice.

Reaper moved so fast to prod the small arm out of the space between the utensils that only the boy could have been aware he’d used not his fingertips but the prongs of the fork. “You’re right,” he said, “the old gentleman getting on the coach does look a bit like grandad.”

At least he’d made the boy forget the television, but his eyes had tears in store, and what might Reaper have to do about them? Then the landlady deposited a smaller plate in front of the boy, and he decided against crying. “Careful. Hot plate,” the landlady said. “Can he see to himself?”

“If he can’t I’m not his pa.”

When the boy dug his spoon into the heap of scrambled egg the landlady sighed her approval and moved away, clearing Reaper’s view just too late for him to be sure if he’d seen Geoffrey’s face vanish from behind the newscaster. The bumble of conversation and the mechanics of breakfasting drowned out the man’s voice as if the more Reaper strained to hear, the more some substance clogged the mouth. “What did he say?” he demanded as an image of two juggernauts sprawled one on top of the other manifested itself behind the newsreader.

“Just that they haven’t been able to talk about it,” the freckled woman said.

Reaper picked up his knife and fork before saying as little as possible. “Who?”

“Only some relatives of that investigator who showed the children’s home there was all the fuss about on television. Let’s hope this creature’s taken on more than he bargained for this time. He’ll have all the media after him now.”

Reaper copied her grimace of anticipation as he began to cut at the food on his plate. “Which creature is that?”

“The one who’s…” She shuffled her chair away from her children to face him. “Who’s been leaving all these old couples God knows how, God forgive him.”

“How do you know he’s a he?” her husband objected.

“Because a woman wouldn’t do such things, would she, Mr. Reaper?”

“I’m sure that…” Just in time he saw the trap. “How can I say when I don’t know what they are?”

“You know he kills old folk. Isn’t that enough?”

“Do I?” Reaper said, beginning to enjoy the game. “Didn’t you tell me they were supposed to be going to talk?”

“These are. He must have been in too much of a hurry this time. He left them for dead, but they aren’t, neither of them.”

“Neither.”

“Either, then. Whichever you like. I don’t know why you men are so bothered about what people say instead of what they mean,” she said with a reproachful pout at her husband. “All I care about is what this creature’s done, and I know what I’d like to see done to him.”

“What would you see?”

“Whatever he does, twice over. What would you do, Mr. Reaper?”

“To someone who has to do that to old people?” He felt his knife slicing through the fleshy bacon and scraping the plate. “I’d beat him like a dog until he couldn’t stand, and then I’d lock him in a cage no bigger than a dog’s cage and let him starve to death, except that’s too good for him.”

She was nodding and screwing her eyes up and shaking her head, and he saw he’d impressed her. “Your heart’s in the right place, that’s for sure,” she said.

He was enjoying holding her eyes with his forthright gaze so much he couldn’t look away. “I’d feed him dog food. I’d force-feed him with it and never let him out. Or maybe I’d let him out when he was so crippled he couldn’t stand up like a man. Then you could take him for walks on a lead for everyone to jeer at, and after that he’d have to go back in his cage without even being cleaned up. And something else we could do…”

“Mr. Reaper.” She was only shaking her head now, jerking it sideways. “Big ears.”

“I just wanted you to know I’m one of you.”

“You ought to hear Arthur when he gets started.” Nevertheless she seemed wary enough of Reaper to place her chair between them as she stood up. “Come along, you three. Time to walk off our spread.”

As Reaper saw how like a procession of overgrown toddlers the family looked while they waddled out of the room their ability to threaten him lessened enough that he could dismiss them to the back of his mind. He set about eating some of his fragments of breakfast to pass the time before he could watch the news in his room. As soon as little Ben had finished strewing around his plate the bits of egg he hadn’t managed to put in or near his mouth, Reaper laid his knife and fork together and tipped the boy out of his chair. They were nearly at the door when the landlady blocked their way, and Reaper almost went for the knife in his pocket. “Stop there,” she said, reaching for a paper serviette to mop the child’s face.

“Men,” Reaper said to her, and knew he should have let her say it. Once she wasn’t watching he used the attachment of the key to prod the boy none too gently up the stairs. “Mine,” he snarled when the boy made to pick up the remote control in the bedroom, and snatched at the channels until he found a news summary. Geoffrey’s in-laws had indeed been rescued, and there was no indication that either of them was dead.

“This is what I call a game,” he said. “The closer it gets the better it is.” Could the media be trying to convince him they were alive so that he would betray himself? “It’ll take more than that,” he muttered. Time was shrinking, but he mustn’t let the urgency distract him. Having someone with him was enough of a distraction to deal with; it had already interfered with his concentration too often. He held out the control to bring the boy to him. “You’re doing it,” he said. “You’re your father.”

tocIDAFKDFC”>

forty-one

When Gail reached the Scottish hospital at last the windows of the field of cars in front of the building were crimson with the dawn. She spent five minutes driving up and down the ranks of unresponsive vehicles before a Mini whose driver must have been in it all the time pulled out of a space twice its size. Gail backed the Rover into the white sketch of a box and raised herself stiffly into the sharp chill air. She felt as though she was still driving, her hands numbed by the wheel, her body swaying back and forth with the curves of the road, as she stumbled at a run across the car park.

Beyond the wide glass doors of Accident & Emergency the reception area was lit like the inside of a glacier yet relentlessly warm as a hothouse. A few bruised people were slumped among the rows of chairs as though enacting the way Gail hadn’t time to feel. She hurried to the enquiry desk, behind which a young woman whose face looked scrubbed awake had already sat forward to await her. “I’m here for my parents,” Gail said. “They were in an accident. Paul and Bebe Henderson.”

The receptionist’s eyes shifted as if she might have liked to glance away. “And you’ll be …”

“I’m their daughter. Gail Davenport, if you need to write it down. What’s wrong?”

“They aren’t…” This time the receptionist did glance aside, and Gail was almost certain she glimpsed relief in her eyes. “Dr. McKechnie? This lady wants to see her parents, the Americans, you know. You’re bound that way, aren’t you? She thought she had to come to Accident.”

Gail turned and saw a youngish doctor in a not entirely tidy white coat. The black circumflexes of his eyebrows gave him a surprised expression that the rest of his broad face seemed designed to contradict. “Where are they, then?” Gail said in a voice she had to steady.

“They’re in Intensive Care. They’re stable, let me say. Do please come.” He pushed open a pair of doors, releasing a disinfectant smell that would have seemed cool if the heat had let it. “It’s a good bit walk.”

“I can use it,” Gail said, but wasn’t expecting him to set off so fast down the long white corridor, almost as if he preferred to outdistance any questions she had. As she caught up with him, the heat laid hold of her. “Why,” she said, and waited until that slowed him enough for her to talk as well as breathe. “Why was I in the wrong place?”

He didn’t quite look at her. “Who told you what happened, Mrs., now it won’t be Henderson, will it?”

“Davenport. The police told me all I know, which isn’t much.”

“I think they might rather I left it to them.”

“How far am I supposed to go without knowing what’s happened to my parents?” She was being unfair to him, making him feel not merely responsible but also younger than he was, but she cared far more about her question. “I want to be ready, don’t you understand? I want to know what to expect when I see them.”

Gail saw him glancing about for somewhere private, but there were only wards and glassed-in offices with people in them off this corridor. “Talk to me,” she urged him. “I’ve had a night of not knowing.”

A nurse hurried by, his eyes reminiscing about sleep, and then the excuse he gave the doctor not to speak was gone. McKechnie turned his bedside face to Gail, who could almost have imagined he was about to offer her some comfort until he spoke. “The best guess is they were enticed to one of our old quarries.”

Perhaps it was a Scottish trait, or only his, to be as blunt as possible once he’d undertaken to talk. “You mean it couldn’t have been accidental?” Gail demanded.

“No reason they would have been out there at night by accident. Seems they were driven off the road and over the edge, and then — well, at least he must have been in some kind of a hurry, so they were lucky there. None of the others he caught were found alive.”

“Who are we talking about?” Gail heard a small voice say — her own.

“The one who — he doesn’t just kill old couples, doesn’t just leave them for dead.”

It was Ben. Gail was scarcely aware of having halted until the doctor hesitated and came back to her. “Pardon me, Mrs. Davenport. I should say he did do what he does.”

“To my parents. He did it to them.” She could hardly speak for her loathing of Ben, of the man who was no longer a child — who was this — but she had to say “What?”

“He — sticks them together. Glues their mouths. We’ve separated them, but there’s bound to be scarring, and then there are the injuries from the crash.”

She felt as though all she had been told was crushing her, preventing her from moving. She lurched at the next pair of doors and bruised her knuckles against them to reveal yet another corridor. “How much farther?” she protested, too much like a child.

“A bit way yet,” he said, and nothing more until they were halfway down the hollow disinfected corridor. “They’re in the best hands,” he offered her as some kind of an answer to the plea she had kept to herself.

“I’m sure,” she responded, but she was thinking of Geoff. If he’d told her sooner then her parents might be safe, and so might Paul, and she found she had hatred to spare for him. She followed the doctor through one more set of doors, to be confronted by an arrow pointing left to Intensive Care. “Will they knew I’m here?” she said.

“I shouldn’t expect too much.”

But she was, and her sense of being confined to her own head was intervening between her and everything else. She watched herself turning the corner into a stubby side corridor, at the end of which the windows of a pair of doors showed her an indoor camp, a row of screens pitched along either side of an aisle in which deserted chairs sat back to back. The doors were guarded by a busty sister whose uniform buttons were only just taking the strain, and who sailed out of her office without abandoning the frown she’d been training on a stack of forms. “Sister, here’s Mr. and Mrs. Henderson’s daughter,” the doctor said.

The sister blinked her frown away as she appraised Gail. “You’ll have come a good distance, will you?”

“Drove all night,” Gail said.

“You’d best go through. I’ll show you to them. Only see about not making much of a noise, would you? We mustn’t have people disturbed.”

She eased the left-hand door past a faint creak and held it until Gail ventured into the stagnant heat of the ward. A chorus of electronic bleeping seemed to raise all its voices to greet her. She was staring at the uncommunicative screens and listening for even a hint of which might hide her parents when the sister gripped her elbow momentarily to steer her leftward and inched back the nearest screen, and Gail saw them.

How could she be shown to them when their eyes were shut in their masked faces? Then she grasped how the sister had meant the phrase, and her mind had no more ruses to distract her from the sight in front of her. Only her parents’ heads and shoulders and arms were visible above two lumpy stretches of white sheet that lay altogether too still; even her mother’s slim elegant neck had vanished within a fat off-white ruff. Their mouths were blanked out by white bandages that shrouded them from just beneath their nostrils to their chins, and their hands were gloved with bandages. A feeding tube was taped to her mother’s upper left arm, another to her father’s right. Beside each of them a monitor bleeped in time with a green blip that might have been in search of a singalong tune to illustrate. Their beds were close enough for them to have reached across the gap, and the sheets beneath the hands they would have used were crumpled, so that Gail could imagine they were yearning to find each other. “Can I touch them?” she whispered. “Can I hold their hands?”

“Gently. Here, let me bring you a chair.” The sister moved the nearest into the space between the beds. “I’ll leave you, then. I’ll be out of the doors if I’m needed,” she said, and drew the screens together.

Gail lowered herself onto the chair, which emitted a slow breath, and took her parents’ bandaged hands. “I’m here,” she murmured. “Can you feel me? I’m holding both of you. We’re all together.”

No response. The hands in hers felt lighter than they should, hardly there. The upturned faces, as much of them as was exposed, looked smoother than when she’d last seen them, as if they were in the process of transferring their wrinkles to the pillows. “Don’t go away. Stay with me,” she pleaded, and hardened her whisper. “I know who did this to you. He’s going to be caught, only you need to tell the police what he looks like.”

Did the fingers she was clasping almost flex themselves at that, or was she feeling only her own pulse? “You don’t have to talk. You can write, or you can draw. Anything that helps to track him down. We have to catch him.”

No movement — not the slightest flicker of an eyelid. She wasn’t meant to be disturbing anyone, she thought; suppose she was reminding her parents as they lay helpless, at the mercy of their dreams, what had been done to them? It couldn’t help for her to talk about it now — it couldn’t help Paul. She had to believe that Geoff was close to finding him, perhaps on the very point of it. Her job was to coax her parents back to the surface of themselves when they were ready to come.

The moment she wondered why she was thinking of it in those terms she knew. She had been five years old and just learning to swim. She’d seen a schoolmate at the far edge of the pool, and she’d run to greet her — had almost caught her when she’d felt the tiles slide away, flinging her into the water, no longer the friend she’d made of it. It had given way beneath her and dragged her down, it had piled on top of her, shoving her face deep into itself and itself deep into her nose and mouth. It had filled her brain until there seemed to be no room for her, so that she’d floated out of herself into a depth where not even light could reach.

She’d never known how much time had passed before she’d grown aware of her body again. It had felt so much like water that the struggle to regain it had hardly seemed worthwhile. Only her hands had felt solid, because each of them had been clasped by one of her parents, whose resolute grip had succeeded in dredging her up from wherever she’d gone. As her watery eyes had focused she’d become aware that they were both stroking her forehead, drawing her towards the light of their faces. She’d forgotten that as a cough had spewed water out of her lungs, jerking all her sensations back to life — the unyielding tiles beneath her back, the shouts and splashes in the pool, the taste of chlorine filling her throat — but she remembered now. A white glow was gathering within the enclosure of the screens as the sun raised itself above the mountains, and to her sleepless eyes it appeared that the light was transforming the two faces on the pillows into itself. That had to mean what she remembered it as meaning — she would make sure it did. She bent her head to kiss each of the hands in hers. Surely there was more than a trace of warmth in them. “You brought me back, and now it’s my turn,” she whispered. “You were the only ones who could, and now I am.”

tocIDA1UDFC”>

forty-three

When Geoff reached the first of the hotels on his list an actor was descending the front steps. The creases of his long pale face were so deep that Geoff imagined decades of makeup had been dug out of them. “Not a mattress to be had, old dear,” he mourned as his white mane fluttered in a summer breeze. “Not even the foot of a bed. Theatricals stacked high in every room, nay, every cupboard.” He looked extravagantly hurt when his performance failed to deter Geoff from ringing the heroic brass doorbell. Not only was there no room, the landlady informed him, but she’d nobody except regulars staying and never took children, so that Geoff had to wonder how much use the list might be.

It must be able to lead him to Ben. He was the second man who’d recently assumed a child would be welcome at this hotel, which surely meant that Ben would have tried another on the list. Geoff couldn’t know which, only try them all.

By the time he arrived at the hotel overlooking Sefton Park, the suburbs were humming with the race to beat the rush hour. Through the wide bay window next to a front door crested with a stained-glass fan the breakfast room might have belonged to an old folks’ home, and the landlady told him she would have preferred not to take the man with a small son even if she’d had a vacancy. “The least thing can give my residents a headache,” she said, jangling the bangles on her thick tanned arms as if to demonstrate.

Geoff hurried back to the car, though its hot heavy smell of having travelled such a distance with scarcely a break was starting to sicken him, and drove down to the river. When the road had had enough of being a promenade it bricked up the view with warehouses opposite which, on the edge of the city, several new hotels had been built. The one he’d been directed to, however, was no more than a house on the corner of a nondescript gardenless street. Except for the Rooms To Let placard leaning back against the grimy net curtains of a downstairs window, he wouldn’t have guessed that the plastic sign with a chunk out of it had once said HOTEL.

A Mercedes was parked outside, and a businessman with a briefcase rendered lumpy by its contents was following a girl whose hair was dyed almost as red as her tight buttock-length dress into the twilit hall. As Geoff stopped his car just short of the Mercedes, the man who had admitted the couple stepped onto the pavement to confront him.

His small suspicious face looked rubbery, the skin stretched pale over the angles of bone. As he gripped the door-frame and levelled his face at Geoff, his enlarged reddened nostrils appeared to be scenting him. He stared at Geoff for some seconds, and favoured him with a sour whiff from the pits under his singleted arms, before demanding “What’s it about?”

It was clear he knew more than the other hoteliers had. He must have been told to expect Geoff, who had to restrain himself from flinging him aside and lurching into the deserted dingy hall. “About what we both know,” he parried instead.

“You’ve come to the wrong place, la. I know buggery, and that’s a fact.”

“Now that isn’t the way I read you at all. No point in underrating yourself. I’d lay money there’s nothing goes on round here you don’t know about.”

“You watch who you’re telling that.”

“I’m telling you. I’m not saying you’re involved, just that you’re the one to ask for information. I can see you’re the type that wouldn’t let anything slip past him.”

“Nothing worth your kitty, la.”

“We’ll see,” Geoff said, clenching his fist once it was in his pocket. “So long as it’s worth both our whiles.”

“What do you reckon you’re buying?”

“I don’t suppose you’ll have a visitors’ book, will you? How about the number of a room?”

“We’ve none of them.”

“Then just direct me to it. What’s the price of that?”

“Here’s the deal, la,” the manager said, leaning forward to bring his face within inches of Geoff’s. “Seeing it’s you, I’ll tell you where to go for free if you can’t guess.”

It was only the way the wallet bulged Geoff’s fist, making it difficult for him to wrench his hand out of his pocket, that gave him time to realise how unproductive violence would be. He had to draw on all his experience of the frustrations of interviewing to help him contain himself. “Then we’ll both be none the better off, won’t we?” he said as lightly as the throbbing of his head permitted. “I can’t believe you’re the kind to miss a chance.”

The manager straightened up, leaving his stale breath in Geoff’s face, and stared with renewed distrust at him. “Come ahead then, let’s hear what you reckon you’re after. Bit small for you, that’s what I’m thinking before you open your trap.”

Any possible interpretation of that seemed capable of enraging Geoff beyond control. “Tell me they’re in there at least,” he blurted. “Tell me I’m not wasting my time.”

“Who?”

Geoff dragged both his fist and the wallet into the open. “Let’s respect each other’s intelligence. What’s the asking price?”

“A bunch of those when I know what you’re sniffing after.”

“It looked to me as if you knew before I got out of the car.”

“You want to try being a bit less sure of yourself, la. I know your game, so don’t tell me about intelligence.”

“How do you know?”

The manager sniffed with such disdain it appeared to suck his upper lip towards his nostrils. “Even round here we’re clever enough to turn on a telly, Mr. Goods.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t imagine I was meaning to suggest…” It wasn’t only his own time he’d wasted, it was Paul’s. “I’m trying to make contact with someone who I understand was given your address. He’d have checked in last night. A man with a boy about three years old.”

“Oh, them.”

“Yes.” That was a gasp as much as a word. “Are they here?”

“What’s it worth?”

Only a sense that he might have to negotiate further deterred Geoff from handing over all the cash he had. “Enough?” he said, and when the twenty was met with silence, doubled it. “I hope that does it for you.”

“No,” said the manager, closing his fist on the notes.

“No what? What do you mean, no?”

“They aren’t here.”

Geoff could have floored him, had it not been for the hint of an informed gleam in the man’s eyes. “But you know where they are,” Geoff said.

“Sounds like you’d pay to hear.”

“I’ll pay. Better watch you don’t price yourself out of my pocket.”

The manager used two fingers to extract his previous fee from the back pocket of his shabby jeans, and having doubled it, eased the wad out of sight. “I sent them downtown to my cousin’s place,” he said then. “I wouldn’t have a kid here.”

“You’re going to tell me the address, are you?”

“You reckon.”

Geoff pulled a twenty from his thinning wallet, and two tens. The manager only stared at them. “This is all I have,” Geoff almost pleaded, showing him the twenty that remained.

“It’ll do.” The manager withdrew it from Geoff’s wallet with the deftness of a conjuror and used it to pinch the other notes. “You listening? I’m not writing it down.”

Geoff tensed himself to be alert for any hint of deception, but the address sounded likely enough. The manager ended it with a sharp nod as if to butt Geoff on his way; then his eyes owned up to a speculative gleam. “Is he a peedy? Is that what you’re after this time?”

“Maybe something like that. Wait and see.” Though Geoff sensed that the man wanted the information to sell if he could, his fury at the notion didn’t prevent him from thinking. “Nothing your cousin will need to deal with,” he said. “I give you my word you don’t need to call ahead. Please don’t do that or I might lose the trail.”

“You’ll see if you have when you get there, I reckon.”

Geoff didn’t know if that was intended as a demand for more money, or an expression of indifference, or even a grisly attempt at a joke. He stepped close to the manager and exhaled so hard it drove back the man’s stale breath. “No more games. Don’t play with a child’s life,” he said. He could have vowed to have the place closed down if he found Ben had been scared off, he could have promised to hunt the manager down too, but he thought he’d conveyed what he was capable of. He turned and strode, not quite running, to the car.

tocIDAI5DFC”>

forty-five

Geoff reversed into the space between two cars in a single sinuous manoeuvre. He slid the window up and cut the engine and without a pause ducked out of the car. He took a breath that helped him straighten up as he strode across the pavement and up the three white railed-in steps to the open door. As though Geoff s urgency had brought him forth, a man came along the hall to meet him. “Just seeing who this is, dear,” he called, and having patted the knot of his wide silk tie, brushed at the shoulders of his dress suit with one fleshy hand. “Looking for a room, sir? I’ve a nice top floor single that’s free for the weekend.”

No more than a hint of a resemblance to his cousin was discernible within the plumpness of his face, and Geoff deduced he would prefer to be as unlike his relative as possible, which must be a good omen. “I’m looking for a couple you have staying,” Geoff said.

“Be my guest if you won’t be my guest. Any special pair?”

“Very.” It was clear to Geoff that the manager hadn’t been forewarned about him. “Only I hope you won’t think this is too odd, but I can’t tell you their names.”

“I’ve heard odder in this job. Seen it too. We had a student we thought was with his mother, but it turned out…” He summed up the punch line by coughing with all the discretion of a butler. “I can see you haven’t time for what my wife calls my rovings when she doesn’t put an a in it instead. Let’s see if we can’t pin these folk of yours down.”

“They’ll be a man a bit older than I am and a boy no more than three.”

“Well, of course. The little chap my wife took a fancy to.”

Geoff stiffened to keep in a gasp of relief. “They’re here?”

“Were.”

The word seemed to snatch his life out from beneath him. “When?” he demanded. “How long ago?”

“Half an hour or so. Thirty minutes, not much more. Were they expecting you?”

Had Paul been? The question was another layer of distress. “I was expected. I know I was.”

“Then I’m sure they’ll be back before you know it. Would you like to wait in the lounge?”

“What makes you say, why do you think they’ll be back?”

“They’ve a room for the week for a start. Besides, they won’t have gone far. I heard your friend saying to his son they were off to shop, and the car’s still there.”

“Where? Which one?”

“Over the road there, just behind the skip.”

Geoff had already noticed the hulk of an empty skip outside a building under renovation. The car parked close behind it was a nondescript black Vauxhall that, he saw, only needed to have a name and phone number perched on its roof to do duty as a taxi. Ben would surely have taken it unless he meant to return. “So will you be in the lounge?” the manager prompted.

“That’s the best plan,” Geoff said, and was moving farther into the concealment of the hall when the manager put up a pudgy hand. “I don’t think you’d be wise to leave your car there.”

“Why, what will it — what do you…”

“Just our local warden’s a miserable little tyke. Only happy when he’s writing you a ticket.”

“I’d rather not go far in case I miss my people again. I should be all right, do you think, if I keep an eye out and move over the road when there’s space?”

“I can’t guarantee it. I wouldn’t want you to be sorry later.”

Geoff felt as if his own doubts were being expressed by the manager, but however Ben might react to the sight of Geoff’s car, he couldn’t see it any sooner than Geoff would see him from the lounge. Besides, wasn’t the whole point supposed to be for Geoff to find him? The worst possibility — so bad that Geoff didn’t want to consider it — was that Ben himself mightn’t be sure what game he was playing. “I’ll be responsible,” he said.

“Will you have a cup of something while you wait?”

“I’d appreciate a coffee,” Geoff said, and halted in the doorway of the lounge. The tropical mops of potted plants that stood in every angle of the room weren’t the only occupants. A small boy was sprawled in the largest armchair to watch a cartoon on television with the sound turned down. “You don’t mind if the nephew sees his programmes, do you?” said the manager. “There’ll be no peace otherwise.”

“Not at all,” Geoff said, making for the chair nearest the bay window. Like all the chairs except the one with the boy in, its top was draped with lace not unlike a handkerchief keeping the sun off a head. Geoff was moving the chair to command the view from the window when the boy said “Don’t you want to see Crime Smashers?” and lifted his face as if to catch the answer on it.

“I’ve got to watch out for something else.”

“Haven’t you see them? They rid the world of crime every week.”

“So I’ve heard,” Geoff said, having recognised the slogan, and sat towards the street. “I did have a look at them once.”

“Have you got some children?”

Though Geoff saw how the question followed, he wished it hadn’t been asked. “Just one,” he said.

“Are they like me?”

“He isn’t half your age,” Geoff said and crouched away from him. That didn’t bring Paul into view, nor Ben either, and so only the arrival of the manager with a tray bearing a coffee-pot and its accessories helped Geoff control his thoughts. “Say if he’s bothering you,” the manager advised.

“Not at all,” Geoff felt bound to assure him. “Nothing wrong with a child speaking up for himself.”

Suppose Paul said something that gave Ben away or that Ben imagined had done so? Surely it would send them back to the hotel or to the car. Geoff poured himself a drink, only to have the jittery cup spill black coffee over the saucer and onto his crotch. He was mopping at the stain that looked altogether too much like evidence of panic when he became aware of activity across the road. The car behind the Vauxhall was about to move off.

Geoff was behind his own wheel in seconds. By the time he’d started his engine and remembered to strap himself in, the other driver was still waiting for the traffic to let him loose. The moment the other car swung out, Geoff executed a U-turn that smelled of charred rubber and drove into the space, then crept forward until his bumper touched the Vauxhall’s. “Get out of that,” he muttered as he dashed back to the hotel.

He fed himself coffee as he waited for his trap to work. At first he wasn’t sure if the caffeine or the wait was affecting his senses, and then he grasped that the sound of the cartoon was indeed, if almost imperceptibly, growing louder. The boy was teasing it with the remote control while he provided the action with a voice-over, whether for his own benefit or Geoff s wasn’t clear. “He’ll stop him soon. He won’t let him do anything really bad. He isn’t dead, he’s pretending. He’ll get there in time.”

Geoff had glimpsed enough of the cartoon at home to be reminded agonisingly of Paul, and as he sat forward over his replenished cup of coffee he didn’t know if he was trying to keep more of a watch or distance himself from the encroaching sounds. Nobody who looked at all familiar had appeared in the street when the manager returned. “Any other way we can take care of you?” he said.

“Is there a phone I could use?”

“The pay one’s waiting for the engineer. Life or death, is it, your call?”

However little of a joke that was meant to be, it felt like less of one to Geoff. “I said I’d call my wife.”

“Like I said, life and death. Your life won’t be worth living if you let her down, not if she’s anything like mine. I’ll watch out for your friend while you use the phone in our office.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Geoff said, feeling as though he had to wrench Gail and himself apart when they had almost been together. “Don’t think me ungrateful, but I’d better stay here just to make certain I don’t miss them again.”

“I don’t see why — Turn that down a touch, would you, Sylvester?” The manager bent his upper half towards the boy until he obeyed. “I don’t see why you can’t have our phone in here for a few minutes. You won’t be too long, will you?”

“I’ll be as quick as I can. Thanks again.”

A plastic clatter and a muffled bell heralded the return of the manager, who plugged the phone into a wall socket before handing Geoff the instrument. “Shall I send him out?” he murmured.

“Don’t disturb him,” Geoff said, trying to remember the number for the operator to call. It came to him as she responded, and then she made way for a succession of sounds, each of them closer to him: a clicking, a ringing, a woman’s voice that, once he’d asked to speak to Gail, wanted to know who he was. “I’m her husband,” he said with less conviction than he might have liked to have.

“Do you know which ward?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. Don’t you?”

She was silent for a few seconds, at least towards him. He wasn’t sure if he heard a muffled dialogue beyond the mouthpiece before she said “I’ll have a word with sister.”

“You might just tell me which ward…” But she’d gone, and all Geoff could hear were the sounds of the television creeping up on him again, and the boy’s commentary: “He’s never really dead.” Then another female voice, uninviting despite its words, said in Geoff’s ear “Yes, can I help you?”

“Is that where Gail Davenport and her parents are?”

“It may be. Who’s enquiring?”

“I’m Geoff Davenport. I’m her husband.”

“Are you that. Don’t fly at me, but can you prove you are?”

“Prove it? How am I supposed — Just what exactly is the problem?”

“There’s been a few reporters trying tricks to get at her. You’ll have an idea how they operate, these media people.”

“I promise you I’m her husband. I don’t know how else to convince you.”

“Isn’t there something I can tell her only you and she would know?”

Geoff felt his memories of Gail withdraw from him as though he’d ceased to deserve them. For an aching moment he thought he had no answer to the question, no way of reaching Gail, but he was almost as dismayed by thinking of one. “Tell her she’s waiting for an update on my brother.”

“Will he mean a whole lot to her just now, do you think?”

“How much does he have to mean?”

“A fair bit at the moment, I’m afraid,” the woman said, and for some seconds nothing more. It seemed her silence meant she was deciding whether to trust him, because she broke it by saying “Her mother died an hour ago.”

“The bastard. The fucking bastard.” Geoff only mouthed the words, which didn’t begin to sum up his feelings about Ben, but he turned to see if the boy across the lounge had witnessed him. When the information that the boy was busy pointing the control at the loud bright violence reached his brain, he sat back in the chair to keep his voice from straying past it. “Then for God’s sake let me speak to her,” he said.

“Hold on while I see how she is.”

He lurched forward to peer both ways along the street — a large selection of adults, but not a solitary child — and stayed alert until he heard footsteps approaching the distant phone, two pairs of footsteps. As he sat back he might have been trying to hide from them. “I’ll stay by your father until you’re done,” he heard the ward sister say, and the closing of her office door. He heard the receiver scrape a desk, and the creak of plastic in a fist. “Gail,” he said, “I’m so…”

“Have you got him?”

He couldn’t blame her for sounding as cold and sharp as a knife; he blamed himself. “I’m where they are. I just have to wait. But Gail, let me…”

“Wait for what?”

“For them to come back. They have to. The car’s here.” And whatever luggage Ben had surely must be, he thought, or the manager would have observed its removal. “I know what I’m doing. I wouldn’t have called you otherwise,” he said. “I just wish…”

“Like you did last time?”

“Like I… I’m sorry, love, I don’t quite …”

“Like you knew what you were doing when you left him at large?”

“Gail, I was wrong. I was trying to do what I thought was best for us and maybe even for him, but I — Christ, you don’t need to remind me what I did. That’s why I can’t be wrong now. I won’t ask you to forgive me for everything that’s happened, but I hope you know I…”

“Don’t, Geoff.” The sharpness had gone from her voice, leaving no emotion, just weariness. “I know what you want to say, but it doesn’t mean anything now. Maybe later it will. Maybe not.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Never mind. There isn’t time. Just do one thing for me.”

“Anything. You still know that, I hope.”

“Don’t speak to me again until you’ve got Paul safe.”

“All right. That’s a promise.” Geoff yearned to hear more hope in her voice — wondered if her mother’s death might seem to presage a further loss. “If I only ever get one thing right for the rest of my life…”

“I mean it, Geoff. Don’t speak to me. I have to go now and be with my father.”

“Yes, you must.” There was so much more that Geoff wanted to say, but he didn’t feel entitled to have spoken even those words. He heard Gail replace the phone quite gently, and wished he could think the gentleness was intended for him. When the operator had told him the cost of the call he unplugged the phone and counted out the money once he’d hurried back to the window to watch while he awaited the manager. The shrill jagged pounding theme music of the cartoon series announced that the episode was over, and the boy turned down the sound. “Thank you,” Geoff said, not looking at him in case that invited conversation.

His gratitude seemed to have done so, because the boy said “Hey, mister?”

Geoff sighed only inwardly. “Yes?”

“Did you say to my uncle you wanted the little kid and his dad?”

“Yes.” Geoff gave the street a look so searching it stung his eyes and glanced at the boy. “Yes, I did,” he said more urgently, and when that brought him no response “Why?”

“They came while you were on the phone,” the boy said.

tocIDAPMQYC”>

forty-seven

Everything all right, Mr. Reaper? You look as if you’ve caught a prisoner.”

“That’s what he is, Mrs. Minken. He tried to run away.”

“You mustn’t do that, Ben, it’s naughty. Why would you want to run away from your father? Doesn’t he look after you? You know he does.” The landlady had squatted in front of the boy, and Reaper let the tag go slack in case she thought it was choking him, but the boy didn’t speak. “Your pa, I mean,” she remembered. “You mustn’t get yourself lost in these crowds. Someone might take you away.”

“Pa.”

“That’s it. Just you never forget he’s your pa.” She stood up and hushed her voice. “I’m right though, aren’t I, Mr. Reaper? You can’t be too careful with the sort of people that are about.”

“You can’t. If you’ll excuse me I’ll take the miscreant up to his cell. He won’t be coming out of there again today.”

“Not even for dee eye double en ee ar?”

“After what I just said? Do you think it’s fair to break your word to a child?”

“I don’t indeed, Mr. Reaper, but I wouldn’t want to think the little scamp was starving.”

“That’ll take a few days. Will you leave me to deal with him now?”

“You won’t be too hard on him, will you, now you’ve got him back?”

“No harder than I have to be to keep him,” Reaper said, and gave the tag a gentle yank. The boy climbed the stairs so enthusiastically that Reaper congratulated himself on training him. As he followed he sensed the landlady’s concern like a cobweb on the back of his neck. He shrugged off the sensation and overtook the toddler. As soon as the child had ambled into the room, Reaper shut the door. “Trying to get me into more trouble, were you?”

The boy raised his small face. He looked trusting, and ready to emit his giggle if he was offered an excuse. For a moment Reaper didn’t know how to respond to such trust — felt suspended in a place within himself he didn’t recognise — and then he saw how dangerous that was. He’d almost let himself be rendered vulnerable by little Ben’s vulnerability, and he focused on it all the contempt his life had gathered in him. “Can’t you take me seriously?” he said, closing the curtains. “See if this helps.”

Though he was smiling so tightly it squeezed his lips dry, the toddler didn’t flinch. He looked ready for a game when Reaper lifted him by the tag and fitted it over the hook on the back of the door. The collar of his overalls dug under his chin, and his face started to redden, his eyes to blink and leak. When his small fists began to thump the door while his heels drummed against the lower panel, Reaper roused himself from a trance of watching, of enjoying the new spectacle even more than he’d anticipated, and lifted him down.

Little Ben’s heels struck the carpet, jarring more moisture out of his eyes. As he gulped red-faced and opened his shaky lips, Reaper thrust his face so close to the boy’s he thought he saw himself loom within a swelling tear. “Don’t make too much noise. We don’t want anyone to think you’re getting worse than you deserve, do we? That wouldn’t be fair to your pa.”

He saw the boy decide against howling, as if Reaper’s closeness had forced the outburst back into his mouth, which appeared to be struggling to find some way to placate him. “Papa,” it stammered, spitting the consonants straight into Reaper’s face.

Reaper felt the alien spittle on his lips. All he did, because otherwise he couldn’t have predicted where he might have stopped, was wipe them fiercely on his sleeve and inch back from the toddler. “Get those off and put on some of the stuff I’ve had to buy,” he said, pointing at the overalls. “We’ll keep those for if I need to hang you again. And while you’re out of them, do what you do in the toilet. I don’t want to have to clean you up.”

Once the garment fell around the boy’s ankles, taking the underpants with it, Reaper trod on a trouser cuff to urge him to step out of the clothes. “Toilet,” he repeated, and kicked them into a corner as the small bare pink figure waddled into the cubicle containing the toilet and the shower.

The noises that ensued were a problem. Reaper made sounds like that himself — had to live with them — but the presence of somebody else’s was nearly unbearable: they seemed to be located inside his own skull. “Better not be too much longer. Better not be disgusting when you come out,” he warned, staring at the intercom to confirm he’d switched it back into its radio mode when he’d returned last night from the Game Dog. “Can’t hear me, can you?” he said to it. “Not still listening in case he cries? If I thought you were you wouldn’t need that to hear him scream. Come on if you’re listening or it’ll be too late for him.”

The toilet roll rumbled on its spindle, and then the toilet flushed. As the boy slid open the cubicle door Reaper pulled on a glove. He planted the heel of his hand on the small forehead and shoved it back, not looking at the pink stump sprouting from the junction of the legs. “Get in the shower,” he ordered, treading on the sandals to force the boy to step out of them. “Let’s make sure you’re clean. There’s nothing dirtier than a whelp.”

“Help,” the boy seemed to imagine he’d said, and stepped into the shower.

Reaper pinched the child’s scalp between a gloved finger and thumb to turn him away. “Face the wall. We’re going to hose you down,” he said, and unhooked the hose before addressing the intercom. “How hot do we want it? They used to have it scalding in the prison, but they never made Ben scream. Maybe this would.”

As the jet of water struck the boy he arched his back like a bow and jerked his trembling fists high. Reaper was close to believing himself to have done as he’d threatened until he realised the child was only reacting to the impact — or could he understand more of Reaper’s words than he admitted and have tried to trick him? Reaper held him still by gripping the top of his head and directed the water at his lower half, and didn’t relent when, having found that squirming failed to impress his captor, the boy started to wail. “That’ll do,” Reaper said at last, meaning both the shower and the boy’s protests, and dropped a towel on him. “Dry yourself and get dressed. Nobody wants to look at you or listen to you.”

The boy stood in the shower to rub the towel up and down his front, and Reaper was beginning to think he was afraid to emerge until he padded to the bag of clothes on the truckle bed, printing the carpet with wet tracks as he went. “Wait,” Reaper ordered, and held the towel taut between his hands so as to drag it back and forth over the boy’s spine and buttocks and legs. “Stop whining. Put something on and lie down till it’s dark.”

He watched the boy sit on the bed to drag on underpants and shorts and a T-shirt with a television hero flattened on it. He stared at him until the boy withdrew further onto the bed. He saw the small face build up to giggling at his stare and subside instead, he saw the mouth begin to loosen as though the stare was a weight that was pressing it open in preparation for a burst of wailing. Only a whimper emerged, and the boy looked scared to have released even that. Reaper watched with hardly a blink as the small face sagged, as the eyes dulled, as the boy forgot his feelings in the process of retreating inside himself. Before long the cowed eyes pulled their lids down, and he was asleep.

Reaper continued to watch as if the face might have some revelation in store for him. In time it grew bruised with twilight. The gathering darkness shrivelled the features, so that he seemed to be watching the face decay, an idea that made him feel peaceful. His calm couldn’t rob him of awareness, however. He heard the slow careful footsteps before they began to ascend the stairs.

They were alone, and so he waited until they arrived at his door. He heard a muted thump, a jumble of sounds that belonged to the dining-room, a key sneaking into the door, a knuckly rap on a panel. The boy awoke and rolled over to blink at the door. “Dad?” he said, indistinctly but loud.

“May I come in, Mr. Reaper?” said the landlady’s voice.

“Not while the bolt’s on you can’t,” he said, and for her to hear “Give me a moment.” He took longer than that to lean his face so close to the boy’s he felt as if his own indrawn breaths were sucking the child’s attempts to breathe out of him. “Pa,” he reminded him, “pa,” and went to the door.

Beyond the lens of the spyhole the landlady appeared to have served up her swollen head on a tray. All it needed, he thought, was a fruit to gag its mouth. In fact she was bearing two plates of lamb chops and potatoes and peas, not to mention a cruet and utensils. “Since you’ve paid full board and you aren’t coming down,” she said, “I thought I’d bring your dinners up to you.”

“Look how kind your friend is, Ben. She must have thought you wouldn’t last the night.”

The landlady stood the tray between the beds on the legs it proved to have. “They need looking after at his age.”

“Do you think I may be failing as a parent?”

She hesitated just long enough to let him know she had. “I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything except the best for him, you and your wife. Maybe he’s missing her and that’s why he strayed off.”

“That would certainly explain it,” Reaper said, moving to the door so as to coax her out of the room.

Hadn’t he satisfied her? Was she unsure about something? Her reluctance as she followed him was obvious. She had nearly reached the door when she stopped and looked towards the child, and Reaper experienced the tingle he only ever remembered when he felt it — the delight of knowing that a situation had gone too far, that somebody was beyond surviving it. Then she said “I’ve given you nothing to drink.”

“We’ll get something when we go out for a walk.” He didn’t know if he felt relieved not to have to deal with her, or let down, or both. “Thanks from the bottom. I don’t know what we’d do without you,” he said, and shut her out of the room.

He wasn’t just being sarcastic. By trying to admit herself she’d reminded him that she could reach the boy if he was left alone. “Feed yourself,” Reaper said as he heard her plod downstairs, and wasted some patience on watching the boy struggle to cut meat off the bone in imitation of him. “Gnaw it,” he said, picking up one of his own chops to demonstrate.

He finished before the boy did, and had to watch. He thought of putting the plate on the floor so that the boy would have to go down on all fours, but instead he spied on the street and the reflection of the boy until he saw him fork the last potato like a lollipop into his mouth. “Time to go out. Put your sandals on, and don’t you even think of running. I know everything you think. I’ll hang you up again,” he said, and was pleased to see the child flinch when Reaper took a step towards him.

He left the tray in the downstairs hall. Outside the night was ideal: warm and dark. As soon as the hotel was out of sight he removed his necktie — the tag of the T-shirt was too short for him to hold without having to touch the child. He knotted the narrower end of the tie around the boy’s wrist, tightly enough to draw a whimper from him, and held onto the other end. An old couple out for a stroll looked as if it was the kind of thing they expected to see or approved of. Otherwise the houses on the way to the Game Dog were keeping their occupants to themselves.

Only the barman was in the bar. His head rose as though it was being forced back by the hair, the pony-tail tugging his eyes narrow. “Not in here,” he said.

“I see that,” said Reaper, glancing up at a collision of footballers on television as he pulled the boy after him. “Where is everyone?”

“Which are you, deaf or stupid? I said not in here. No kids in here.”

“I need to wait for Barney. What do you want me to do, tie him up outside?”

“She’s on her way. I don’t care what you do with him so long as it isn’t in here.”

Reaper had meant to exaggerate, but it occurred to him that there was very little he could do in public to the boy that wouldn’t make him seem more like a parent, not less. He led him to the headless streetlamp a few yards from the pub door and tied the free end of the necktie around the rusty shaft. “Stay,” he said into the boy’s face, and returned to the bar. “There, I hope that cheers you up.”

“Depends if he starts making a row,” the barman said, more lugubriously than ever.

“Better give me something to keep him quiet, then, and the same for me,” Reaper said, and took one glass of Coke outside. “Drink this and don’t drop it and don’t cut yourself. I’ll be watching you all the time.”

Though the pub windows had been painted black, other customers before him had needed to watch the street. Several patches no bigger than his thumbnail had been scraped clear, and from his seat at a table by the door he had a view of the boy’s head. In the secretive glow from the pub it looked metallic, a mechanical object that kept dipping to the glass of Coke. He’d begun to imagine how the blackness around it would swallow up the small head, fill the mouth and extinguish the eyes, when he saw Barney approaching the pub.

She wore heavy boots and outsize Boy Scout shorts and a short-sleeved ribbed sweater that appeared to have been woven of grey string. She marched into the bar and addressed herself to the room in general. “Who tied up that poor little tyke out there?”

“You know the rules,” the barman said. “Can’t have…”

“There’s rules about how you treat kids all right. Laws about it too.”

“Don’t use language like that in here, Barney. The last thing either of us wants to get mixed up with…”

“Is giving kids the kind of time I had when I was one. Watch out I don’t take my business somewhere else.”

“No skin off my dick if you do, lass.”

They seemed to have forgotten Reaper, who gave a dry stuttery cough of the kind the person he was meant to be might have emitted. “I know I shouldn’t have brought him, but it was either that or risk having my wife find him.”

“Could have taken him for a walk till I came, couldn’t you? Maybe she ought to have him if that’s the way you treat him.”

“She’s not the one who’s paying you.”

“There’s some things I won’t do for money, so don’t you go thinking it. Any reason why she wants to keep you and him apart, is there?”

“She’s a bitch. She’d do worse to him than leaving him outside a pub if she got her hands on him again, believe me.”

“I don’t know if I do.”

The barman swung round from pretending to watch a slow-motion replay. “Take it upstairs.”

“I’m going nowhere I can’t see my son.”

That apparently convinced her. “Let him bring him, Frank. Don’t be more of a sod than you have to be. I want him up there too.”

The barman raised his hands as if flinging two missiles high in the air and turned up the volume of the football crowd. Barney lounged in the doorway to watch Reaper unpicking the knot on the lamppost. “Keep still,” he whispered fiercely as the child appeared to toy with the notion of backing away — of making the woman suspicious. Reaper almost split a fingernail before he managed to coax the knot loose. He sent the boy towards the pub and flapped the free end of the tie to demonstrate how comical it was. “Couldn’t find one of those leads for children in any of the shops, they’re so popular.”

Barney unbolted the flap in the bar and slapped it with a hand that sounded like a large steak while Reaper followed the boy through. She led them onto the stairway that smelled as grey as it looked, and into the bare glaring room. “You park your bum, Benjamin. You’ve done enough standing around.”

The boy only gazed about as if she didn’t mean him. For longer than a moment Reaper didn’t know why, and all he could think of was the knife. His hand was straying to his pocket when he understood. “Here, Ben, have the seat the lady’s offering. You don’t answer to Benjamin, do you, Ben? Sit, boy, sit.”

When the boy perched on the chair Barney pushed it close to the table, then stood where she could watch Reaper and the child. “Comfortable now, are you, Ben? Looking forward to going away with your dad?”

The boy’s face lit up. “Dad,” he said eagerly.

“He mostly calls me pa, don’t you, Ben? But you see how much he’s looking forward to it. Good job we won’t be letting him down.”

He’d said too much, Reaper saw. He ought to have let the boy’s enthusiasm speak unaided. Barney’s stare said as much before it sought the child. “And what do you call your ma, Ben? Ma?”

“He doesn’t call her what she deserves to be called. I don’t use words like that in front of him.”

“Let him talk for himself. Mummy, is it, Ben? Mum?”

“This isn’t why we’re here,” Reaper said, and reached in his pocket. “It’s time to…”

“Mum.”

The boy’s face had brightened again. Perhaps it had only cleared of puzzlement, but Barney stared harder at him. “Tell me the truth, Ben. Don’t let anyone stop you. Is it your mum you want to be with?”

The glare of the room seemed to lurch at Reaper, to penetrate his eyes and set his brain ablaze. He’d had enough. Words hadn’t worked — the boy was making him lose control of them — and so it was time to back them up. “See what you made me do,” he could already hear himself saying to the boy as they left the room with Barney and the barman in it. His fingers pushed the wad of notes aside and closed around the knife, and he spoke another line of his role to distract the woman. “Are you leaving me out of the question?”

For a moment it seemed she wouldn’t admit to having heard him. She didn’t look away from little Ben before saying “Or your dad.”

“Dad.”

“You want to go away with him? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Go dad,” the boy pleaded, gazing at Reaper.

Reaper trapped the woman’s stare with his. “Are you sure yet? Anything else you need? Maybe my birth certificate to prove I’m his father?”

“Nobody’s going to give you an argument about that. I just don’t like doing anything that puts a kid at risk.”

“Which are you, a crook or a social worker?” What Reaper said aloud, not smiling as he kept his gaze as steady as a church, was “Do I look as if I would?”

She didn’t move until his eyes began to smart and the skin of her face glared like the light bulb. Then she lowered her head and pulled out a passport and laid it on the table with a loud snap that the walls applauded. “Look, Ben, that’s you,” said Reaper. “That’ll be you on a plane tomorrow.”

“Play.”

“That’s the word,” Reaper agreed, and took his hand out of his pocket. He’d hardly dropped the wad of notes on the table when they were hidden in Barney’s fist. At that moment he remembered that he hadn’t yet bought foreign money for the trip. He would do that in the morning. The world was his game, and he was the winner. “Thank the lady, Ben,” he said. “Say ta. Say it twice.”

Barney didn’t wait for that. She patted the boy on the head with an awkwardness that suggested she was having to remind herself not to be rough. Reaper led the boy downstairs and past the barman’s back, and was opening the door when Barney called to him. “What do you think you look like?”

“A father who’s determined not to lose his son,” he said, and wagged the end of the tie at her as he guided the boy out of the door. Its metal elbow pulled it shut with a weary creak that made him glance up, and he saw the number. It was the first building in Cod Street — the address he’d given to the travel agent.

It surely couldn’t matter. The credit card he’d used was valid, and so there would be no reason for the agent to check anything else. Nevertheless, once again the boy had succeeded in confusing him, and that couldn’t be allowed. As he urged the boy downhill towards the hotel, the roofs cut off a glimpse of lights on the horizon — of Liverpool, fifty miles away. Their disappearance felt to him as though he had stopped being watched. “Nobody knows we’re here. Geoffrey’s not so clever,” he said. “When we’re back in the room I’ll show you a trick with a knife.”

tocIDA2ZQYC”>

forty-nine

Perhaps the man in charge of airport security that day was thorough or just slow, or perhaps he’d taken a dislike to Geoff. In a windowless room behind the scenes with nothing in it other than a table and four chairs so basic they resembled early stages in the production of themselves, he had each of the guards give a detailed version of events before he would entertain so much as a word from Geoff. He listened to the accounts with his downcast eyes nearly shut, then raised the lids as gradually as his red hefty face. “Well, Mr. Davenport. Is that how you normally conduct your research?”

“I thought…”

“I’m aware some of the media these days seem to be competing to see who can behave worst, but I understood you were supposed to have a reputation to maintain, at least in public.”

“I was trying…”

“Besides which I’d have assumed a show like yours needed you to be discreet.”

Geoff felt as if the interruptions were a series of ponderous burdens being heaped on top of his speech. He was desperate to be out of the airport, to be left alone so that he could try and think where Ben could have taken Paul. “It wasn’t…”

“Yes, Mr. Davenport? I’m listening.”

Geoff had almost blurted out that the incident had nothing to do with his work. “It wasn’t the man I have to interview. He was trying to take the boy somewhere his wife can’t regain custody, wasn’t he?” he appealed to the guards. “That’s how it sounded from what he tried to stop the boy saying.”

“We’ve had no notification of that,” said the man in charge. “As far as we’re concerned there’s no reason to hold him. You’re the one who caused the trouble, and it won’t help you to blame him.”

“I’m not blaming anyone. I just meant that was why he was running away, and I had to get close enough to see his face before I knew he wasn’t my man.”

“And why were you after whoever you thought he was?”

“I can’t reveal that, not even to you. You’ll see why when the story breaks.”

“That’s a considerable distance from being anything like good enough.”

“You know who I am and what. Won’t that do?” Geoff twisted in his chair to face the female guard. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I really didn’t mean to. I just thought if he’d got on that plane I might have lost him for good. I lost my head, and that’s the truth.”

She frowned like a mother forgiving a child. “Not much damage done. I’ll survive.”

“Thank you. Really, thanks. I promise you won’t regret it when you understand what was involved. So if that’s settled, will it be all right if I…”

“Nothing’s right and nothing’s settled,” said the man in charge. “You put security at risk and assaulted a member of my staff.”

“I did apologise for that, and since this lady doesn’t want to make an issue of it…”

“You’re wasting your time, Mr. Davenport,” the man in charge said. “I’ve already called the police. They don’t like threats to security any more than I do.”

The door wasn’t locked. Could Geoff simply jump up and run? Might that be so unexpected it would give him time to reach his car, even to pay to leave the car park? He was realising how helplessly cornered he was to consider such a scheme when he heard footsteps marching towards the room. The door was opened to an officious knock, and two policemen came in. “Ready for us?” the stockier and more thoroughly bald of them said, not to Geoff.

“Whenever you want him.”

“We’ll have him now,” said the second policeman, who was cropped and moustached like an army sergeant. “Be in touch.”

Geoff stood up quickly, and the other policeman grasped his arm. He let go once they were clear of the room, but now Geoff had a policeman on either side of him, and could only walk and return the stares of everyone who saw him. “Well, Mr. Davenport,” the stocky policeman said, “we hear you made quite a scene.”

“I told them why. I thought someone I was chasing was getting away, only it turned out I’d been after the wrong man. That’s all I can say at the moment. I know you expect me to explain myself better, I really do want to cooperate, but…”

“We understand why you did it.”

“You do? How — I mean, what…”

“Your wife told them up in Scotland.”

The automatic doors drew back, and Geoff felt as if the outer air, summery though it was, had frozen his face. “Told them what?”

“About your son and who’s got him.”

As the air grew heavy with the rumble of a descending plane, Geoff had the impression that the noise was taking the place of his thoughts. “She couldn’t,” he muttered, and didn’t even know whether that was an unfinished sentence.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Davenport,” the moustached policeman said, “we’re as keen not to take any risks with him as you are. We’ve people who are experienced in these situations. Which is your car?”

“I thought he might recognise it. It’s parked in town. I followed him, except as you know it wasn’t him, followed him in a cab.”

Too late he saw that the security cameras would have recorded his arrival in the car park. The stocky policeman swung a hand towards him, but only to point at a police car ignoring double yellow lines. “We’ll drive you to the station,” he said.

No sooner had Geoff strapped himself in than the police car took off, flashing its urgency lights as it screeched into the road. It retraced his route considerably faster than he’d dared to follow the taxi. In less than fifteen minutes it was speeding past the riverside hotel, which dragged at his mind with a sense of how much time he’d wasted. Five minutes later the car was swerving across the dock road and into a grey concrete yard behind a police station built of much the same material.

The stocky policeman let Geoff out of the car while his colleague typed the combination of the metal door at the rear of the building. Beyond it was a concrete corridor barely relieved by six featureless doors, the furthest left-hand one of which Geoff s stocky guide pushed open. “Take a seat in here,” he said.

Two chairs, one table, no window. Geoff sat facing the doorway and propped his elbows on the table while he pressed his fingertips against his temples. He had to work backwards to where he’d gone wrong — had to identify the clue Ben apparently thought he was able to follow. Only the noises resounding down the corridor — thick blurred shouts that sounded like a prelude to violence — were distracting him, and so was his need to remember before someone else’s questions prevented him. He was rubbing his forehead in a fierce attempt to wake its contents up when a tall man in a suit as grey as his curly hair tramped into the room. He gave Geoff’s hand a solitary shake as he sat opposite him. “Ware, Mr. Davenport,” he said.

“Hello.”

The policeman’s greyish eyes in his broad face were calm in a way that seemed not far short of weariness at having seen too much. “May I start by being personal?” he said.

“I don’t see how I can stop you.”

“I want to ask you not to blame your wife, that’s if you do.”

“Blame her, no. Wish she hadn’t brought you into it, I can’t help that.”

“I understand, but I’d ask you to believe it’s my experience of these cases that it isn’t our involvement that can lead to problems.”

“Cases like what? He doesn’t want money, he just wants me to stop him, only me. He’s wanted it since we were kids.”

“Perhaps we can arrange for that to happen. He needn’t see us unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

That struck Geoff as very little of a promise. “Are you looking for them now? What are you looking for?”

“Your wife gave us a photograph of your son and a description of the man she got from a nurse in the creche at your workplace. And of course your wife informed us you were searching Liverpool. If you’ll tell me what leads you’ve been following that will be helpful.”

Geoff couldn’t see how a refusal or a lie would help Paul, and so he spread the contents of a pocket across the table. “He made me follow a trail. This one’s the cycle track under the start of the M62.”

“I know it. I often bike it with my children.”

“Do you?” Geoff felt a parental smile tug at his lips and lose its hold. “And this is the one I found there. It’s my son. It’s meant to show how close my, he’s not my brother and never was, how close he came to us without anybody noticing.”

“I see that.” Ware separated the pictures Geoff had dealt him, lined them up with a fingernail against the edge of each. “But how did they lead you to the man you followed today?”

“I’m supposed to guess where Ben would go. The house we used to live in is a hotel now. They told me there they’d given a man with a boy about my son’s age some addresses, and I tracked him down.”

“You did well.” The policeman seemed engrossed in the photograph of Paul. The beginnings of a frown poised themselves above his eyes as he looked up. “Where did you find this? In the undergrowth by the track?”

“Hidden so I almost didn’t find it.”

“Can you think of any reason why it should have been left there in particular?”

“To remind me what he did. To make me have to remember. He left my dog there to die when we were kids. Glued up his nose and mouth and his legs together, he must have. I never told anyone, and if I had Ben mightn’t have gone on the way he has. He must have wanted me to remember that too.”

“That’s a good deal of reason.” The policeman still appeared to be about to frown, or hopeful that he needn’t. “You don’t think there could be even more to it.”

“Tell me what.”

“Could he have put it there to indicate where you should look for your son?”

“You mean like…” The words Geoff had to utter tasted like bile. “Like my dog. Christ, I don’t know. Christ, the bastard. If he…”

“We won’t waste time speculating,” Ware said and stood up, his frown disappearing as if, Geoff thought, it was no longer enough. “I’ll have a search begun at once.”

“I want to be there,” said Geoff, stumbling to his feet, and wondered whether that might prove to be the worst lie he would ever tell.

tocIDAUDRYC”>

fifty-one

The sun was going down by the time they were sure no small body was hidden in the undergrowth beside the path. Geoff watched lorry after lorry drag its shadow along the edge of the motorway and wished he could feel more relieved. He and the police had spent hours searching, and all that was nothing but time during which Paul had still not been found. His thoughts felt crushed beneath the notion that he would only understand what clue Ben had given him once he was left alone to think.

Three boys on bicycles sped by, evidently more anxious to be out of sight of the police than to learn what the situation was, as Ware came up to Geoff. “I believe we can assume your son was never here,” the policeman said.

“It wouldn’t make sense for Ben to have harmed him,” Geoff said, trying to convince himself. “He needs to keep Paul safe until I find him.”

“We’re taking that into account. We won’t move on any sightings without you. Perhaps you should try and catch up on your sleep if you can. We’ll contact you the moment there’s any news. Would you be best booking into a hotel?”

“If there are any with room.”

Geoff trudged after the police under the motorway, on the far side of which they climbed to a street he knew all too well. “That might do for you,” Ware said.

He was indicating Geoff’s childhood home, outside which a man was carrying suitcases down to a hatchback while his wife strapped in their two children. The landlady was waving them off, and saw first the police, then Geoff. “Why, has it been you all the time, Mr. Davenport?” she said, nodding at the line of parked police cars. “We wondered what on earth was going on.”

“It’s over,” Geoff heard himself say as if to mock his own hopes. “It was a false trail.”

“You look tired out. We’ve rooms tonight if you need one.”

All at once Geoff seemed to lack the strength to disagree with the consensus on how he should proceed — and then he saw a problem. “How will the police be able to contact me if you and your husband are asleep?”

“We’ve a cellphone you can have. A salesman who was staying gave us it to try, but we’ve never found much use for it.”

Once Ware took his leave, having copied down the number of the phone, Geoff insisted on paying for his night’s stay in advance. “We’ve finished dinner,” the landlady said, “but I could throw something together for you. How does bangers and mash sound?”

To Geoff it sounded unnervingly as though he was being coaxed into reliving his childhood, much as the house was affecting him. “You’re very kind. I’m sure they would go down a treat.”

He grew less sure as he awaited them — had time to wonder when Paul had last eaten and what, how much if any care Ben was taking of him, how much longer Ben could be expected to wait for Geoff to interpret the clue Ben was apparently convinced he’d laid … When the meal arrived, however, he was ashamed to discover he was ravenous. “Sleep well,” the landlady said with a maternal smile at his cleared plate. “Sweet dreams. Pleasant memories.”

She’d given him the room he’d led her to believe had once been his. He hurried out to the nearest late-night shop for a toothbrush and razor and the rest of the items his brain had become almost too dull to remember. The first thing he saw as he let himself into the room was the letter carved into the skirting-board, an initial forever undecided which letter it meant to be. He brushed his teeth and showered and shaved his vagrant’s face, none of which enlivened his thoughts. He felt as if his brain was pressing against the inside of his skull, and his being alone was only making it worse. He had to speak to Gail, whatever she’d said last time.

“Geoff Davenport. Can I speak to my wife?”

“I’ll see, Mr. Davenport.”

Perhaps the sister only meant that Gail might be asleep, but the longer he waited, the likelier it seemed that Gail wouldn’t want to talk to him. At last he heard the receiver scrape a desk. He was struggling to think of a message to leave for Gail when she said “Yes, Geoff.”

“I just wanted to say I needed you to tell the police. I don’t think I ever could have.”

“Have they…”

“Not quite yet. I’ve been given a cellphone, so they can tell me the instant they know where I have to be, and then they’ll be there if I want them. They’ve got their special knowledge, and I — well, I must have.”

“What about the clues you were supposed to be following?”

“I thought I was right, but I went wrong somewhere. I know there’s something I should know if I can only think. If you like I’ll call you when it comes to me and then we can decide together if I should involve the police or go alone.”

“Call me when you need to.”

So much besides distance had intervened between them that Geoff was unsure how to take her words. “You too, whenever you want,” he said.

Her silence gave him time to regret having presumed she would, but then she said “You’d better tell me the number.”

Geoff did before his tired brain produced a question he should already have asked. “How’s…” he began, only to find that speaking Paul’s name would bring far too many associations with it. “Your father, how is he?”

“He’s still unconscious. He doesn’t know yet.”

“Have you been able to get any sleep?”

“What do you think?”

“Me neither.”

He hadn’t finished uttering the phrase when he winced at its crassness. The last thing he would have dared expect to hear Gail say was “You should try.”

“You think so?”

“You’ll need to have rested, won’t you?”

“That’s true enough. I’ll say goodnight then, shall I? Remember I’m here.”

“Where?”

“The last place you’d think. My old home that’s been turned into a hotel.”

“You’re right, it never would have occurred to me.” He was wondering if she’d had some further thought when she murmured “Good night then.”

“Good night,” Geoff said, and “I…” He’d paused too long, and was speaking to the drone of the hundreds of miles between them.

He hoped she felt less alone, as he did. If his mind wasn’t clear yet, it wasn’t quite as burdened; he might even be able to think. He kicked off his shoes and lay back on the bed with the telephone beside him, and tried to relax. His eyes yearned to close, but he mustn’t let them, certainly not for more than an instant. The instant felt like sleep, and then it was.

A light in his eyes wakened him. He’d been dreaming about nothing at all, and so as he tried to blink away the glare he took his surroundings for a dream — wasn’t sure if Ben or his father had found him in the room where he wasn’t meant to be, didn’t know which of them was probing his eyes with the beam. Then he thought to move aside, having seen it was the dawn through a gap between the curtains. At once he was fully awake, and knew not only where he was and why but where Ben must be.

Of course Ben wouldn’t have expected him to think he was in their old house. By saying her colleague had gone to his parents, the telephonist at the taxi firm had confirmed Geoff in his mistake, but Ben would have gone to the only hotel where Geoff should have known he had reason to go — the one he’d been promised and then denied as a child. “Got you at last,” Geoff cried, shoving the phone into his pocket as he leapt off the bed. He had to think as he moved now, he’d no more time to waste. He would know his destination when he saw it, he vowed to himself. After so many years, and with no reason to remember it, he’d forgotten the name of the hotel.

tocIDA2ORYC”>

fifty-three

The Royal,” said Geoff, and overtook a lorry that was overtaking a coach. “The Royal or the Palace.”

He was almost there, and almost sure where he was going. Nobody had hindered him, and nobody appeared to have followed him. The landlady had even insisted that he take the mobile phone with him. At the airport a taxi had deposited him beneath the eye of the security camera, but the sound he’d heard rushing towards him had been only the wake of an airliner. Once he’d paid the attendant in his hut and the barrier had deferred to him, more than half an hour of suburbs had tethered him to forty miles an hour until at last a motorway had released him. Dozens of caravans were swaying towards the Lake District, and at times the traffic moved no faster than the suburbs had allowed. But now, an hour later, he was about to leave the motorway, and he knew the name of the hotel where Ben had been led to believe he was going to stay with the rest of the family had something to do with the crown. The Kings, with or without an apostrophe, or the Queens? He would know it when he saw it — he would if he remembered where to look.

His speed was halved by a roundabout, beyond which a slow road stretched above miles of streets. Ahead on the horizon he saw the dinosaur curves of a roller coaster, and a Big Wheel turning as though to scoop up the glittering sea, and dwarfing the fairground from half a mile away the tower, five hundred feet or more of it. They were separated by the promenade to which — he was sure of this at least — the street containing the hotel led. When he saw a sign for the promenade he swung the car into the side road.

It conveyed him to the fairground end, where it became apparent that the holidaymakers thought their numbers were enough to daunt the traffic. They strayed across the dual carriageway whenever the fancy took them, they stepped into the road without warning, they weren’t averse to strolling ahead of vehicles for a laugh, especially if that made the horns blare at them. Groups of them were riding in carriages drawn by horses, others were patting animals at stands or jumping extravagantly clear of the production of manure, and all these were reasons why the traffic kept slowing to the pace of the train that was hauling itself up a slope of the roller coaster. At least the lack of speed let Geoff survey the side streets. It had been a long walk from the hotel to the fairground, he recalled now, and it had seemed just as far to the tower. Was that the street on the far side of the dual carriageway, beyond a fortune-teller’s kiosk, or was it the next street, which was just as full of white hotels? When he saw a gap being held in the traffic by the lights of a pedestrian crossing, he swerved the car across the road.

A man stout enough to be hiding a barrel beneath his flowered shirt mimed not being able to cross the intersection in time, then not knowing which way to get out of Geoff’s path. Geoff braked, braked again, and again — not this time for the man, who’d hopped with a parody of nimbleness onto the pavement, but at the sight of a hotel halfway along the right side. Wasn’t that the one — the Crown? He’d driven up to it and was searching for somewhere to park before he noticed that it sported a small garden beside its front steps. All the hotels in the street did, and it took them to remind him that the place where he’d stayed hadn’t had one.

He had to be close. He swung into the road that paralleled the promenade, and in a few hundred yards turned left again. The Friendly, the Cardigan, the Princess — no, that wasn’t it — the Bedsock, the Trencher… the Royal. The white facade seemed to blaze brighter than its neighbours, and he groaned aloud, a sound both of triumph and of frustration at not being able to see anywhere to park. There had been on the street he’d just turned out of. He reversed at speed and swerved backwards round the corner into the space he could only hope was far enough from the intersection to be legal. He snatched the keys and ducked out of the car, barely remembering to lock it. He dashed along the hot white street and grabbed the railing of the front steps, and was running up them when he stopped as if a weight had fallen on him. Every time he’d left or entered the hotel he had counted the steps, eight of them: child-sized steps, he thought now. These steps were higher, and there were only six.

Could they have been rebuilt? Even if the hall beyond the front door didn’t look familiar, would it after all these years? The door would have to have been replaced, since the one he remembered had contained no glass. He was wavering halfway up the steps — he was trying to fend off the sudden dreadful thought that Ben might have been even less able to recall the name and could be in any of the hundreds of hotels — when a man in shirtsleeves and baggy trousers held up by braces, altogether more like a seaside comedian than a hotelier, waddled into the hall and saw him.

He protruded his lips in a sad grimace and shook his large blunt head. When the mime didn’t shift Geoff, he laboured to the door and panted at hauling it open. “Can’t do a thing for you at the present, old boy,” he wheezed. “Haven’t so much as a mouse-hole to offer you.”

“I’m not looking for a room. I thought I stayed here once.”

“I hope you had a fine time if you did.”

“I don’t think I did. Stay here, I mean. Not with these steps.”

“They’re as old as me at least. When do you think you were here?”

“As a child. More than thirty years ago. I know the place is round here. I was sure it was called the Royal.”

“Well, now.” The man stretched his braces with his thumbs as though poising himself to joke. “Maybe it almost was.”

“Don’t think me rude, but this is urgent. If you can tell me anything…”

“You wouldn’t by any chance have the Royalty in mind, would you?”

“Christ, that’s it,” Geoff all but shouted, and saw the man’s head jerk back from the profanity. “Sorry. Where is it, do you know?”

“The next street but one towards the tower.”

“Thanks.” Geoff was already running down the steps. “Thanks,” he said again from the pavement, and sprinted along the street. A phone was ringing somewhere, ringing louder as he ran. It was in the road where his car was parked. It was in his car.

He thrust the key into the lock and threw the door open and flung himself across the driver’s seat to grab the phone from the floor. It shrilled twice before he was able to switch it on, and brought it to his face as he crouched awkwardly over the seat, the car roof bruising the back of his head. “Geoff Davenport,” he gasped.

“Ware here, Mr. Davenport. We’ve located them.”

Geoff tried to speak without taking the breath he needed. “Is my son all right?” he just about finished.

“I’m assured he is. I fear there’s a time factor in getting you to them, though. They’re in Blackpool.”

“So am I. I figured out that was where they had to be.”

“In that case I wish you’d told us.”

That sounded less reproving than regretful, and Geoff was afraid to learn why. “What’s he done?” he made himself say.

The policeman’s voice was so neutral he might almost have been describing a holiday treat. “He’s taken your son up the tower.”

tocIDA42RYC”>

fifty-five

Since Geoff had left the mobile in the car, he was allowed to use the phone in an office off the ballroom. Signed photographs of stage and television personalities watched over him while he waited for the hospital to put him through to Gail. As soon as he heard her voice he said “I’ve got Paul. He’s safe.”

“Thank…” A thought must have interrupted her, because she said “Only safe?”

“He’s fine,” Geoff said as Paul twirled himself around in a swivel chair behind the broad old desk. “Thank God he’s too young to understand.”

“And Ben?” “He’s dead.”

She greeted the information with a silence that felt like the emptiness the name produced in Geoff. After a pause she said “Are you bringing him?”

She meant Paul, of course. “I imagine so,” he said, then realised he had absolutely no sense of what might be expected of him now. “Let me check.”

He went to the door and cleared his throat. The policewoman and a colleague were waltzing gravely to no music in the middle of the deserted ballroom. They parted and marched over to him, their faces turning professional at once. “Am I going to be able to take my son to his mother?” Geoff said.

The policewoman used the phone at her belt to bring Mace to him. “We’ll find you if you need to ask you any questions, Mr. Davenport. Only forgive me, but you don’t look fit to drive.”

The notion that the family wouldn’t be reunited until Geoff had slept was unbearable. “What am I going to do?”

“Under all the circumstances I think we can spare a driver to run you where exactly?”

“Scotland.”

“Too far for you in your condition,” Mace said as if the distance he was undertaking to convey the Davenports hadn’t taken him aback. “I think we’d better get you moving before the press start gathering. Leave me the keys to your car and I’ll have it taken care of.”

Geoff explained it was a hired car that could be returned to the local branch, then he led Paul after their driver. “We’re going to see mummy. We’re going in a police car,” he said as they emerged into the sunlight. While he dodged after the policeman through a crowd of people staring up at the tower and exchanging progressively inaccurate versions of events, he had a fleeting sense of Ben above him on the roof, or rather of the absence Ben had become. For just a moment he wanted to tell the crowd some kind of truth. Then the impulse was gone, and the driver was opening the rear door of the nearest police car.

Once Geoff’s safety belt was secured he hugged Paul to him. The boy blinked at souvenir shops cruising past, and then he was asleep. Geoff interlocked his fingers and held Paul in the crook of his left arm, and let his awareness rest on the peaceful regular breaths of the small body in his care, every breath a reason to rejoice. His breathing settled down to pace Paul’s, and soon he couldn’t distinguish the boy’s from his own.

Something like a cry wakened him. Though he hadn’t been dreaming, he wasn’t sure which of them had uttered it. They were on the motorway, racing along the edge of a drop of a hundred feet or more to a stream. Paul was staring through the window while he tried to climb on Geoff s lap. “All right, son, he’s there now,” the driver said.

“Here I am, Paul. Snuggle close. What was he saying? Was it for long?”

“He only just started. He was calling for you. For his pa.”

“You’ve got him,” Geoff assured him, and promised himself he wouldn’t fall asleep again. He kept his stare on the majestically advancing landscape as it produced peak after peak. Then everything was still: the car, the driver gazing back at him, the trustful arms around his neck. It was an hour later, and the car was in front of a hospital.

“Any time you’re ready, Mr. Davenport,” the driver said through the open door. Geoff thanked him, and having eased Paul into the sunlight without wakening him, was making for the hospital entrance when the driver raised a thumb and mouthed “Good luck.”

Geoff had forgotten how much goodwill he might need. All he knew was that he was bringing Paul back safe. He succeeded in rousing his legs enough that they ceased stumbling as he approached the enquiry desk. The clerk was visibly less than charmed by the unkempt tousled father who’d allowed his son to get into the same state until Geoff named himself, at which she beamed and indicated a corridor as a preamble to striking up an urgent conversation with a nurse as soon as Geoff was on his way. Geoff did his best to shoulder doors aside without jarring Paul awake, but the toddler began to stir and practise opening his eyes. As Geoff pushed open the door to the ward Paul’s arms loosened around his neck. “Mr. Davenport?” the sister said, emerging from her office. “Your wife’s with her father. He’s just come round.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it?” Geoff told Paul, and ventured into the ward. He saw Gail and her father at once, beyond the open side of a screen. She was murmuring to him and stroking his hands while he did his best to focus on her. His lips were pink as a healing wound, and as wrinkled and uneven as one. Geoff winced and hung back, painfully unsure of how Gail might react to his presence. Then Paul said “Mum” no more than conversationally, and both Gail and her father turned to look.

She saw Paul first, and gave him a smile that couldn’t begin to express what she felt. She held it for some seconds before she raised her eyes to Geoff. There was gratitude beyond words in her eyes, and a kind of resignation. That was enough to let him go to her and place Paul in her arms, but he hadn’t touched her when he stepped back.

“Thanks, Geoff,” she said — perhaps only, he thought, for his reticence. She held out a hand towards him, then grasped air with her fist and wrapped her arms around Paul, burying her nose and mouth in his hair. “When did you last have a wash or your hair brushed?” she eventually said. “Just come and say hi to grandad and then your father can take you and make you halfway to presentable.”

Geoff couldn’t have wished for more. He watched as Gail’s father blinked slowly but determinedly at Paul. “Here he is. I feel better already. Bottle him so I can take him with me,” the old man said with not too much difficulty as he attempted to smile, baring the teeth at the corners of his stiffened lips. Then his gaze wavered and turned aside, searching. “Where’s Bebe gone?”

“Gone,” said Paul, and giggled at the noise his mother was unable to suppress.

Table of Contents

Annotation

Acknowledgments

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thirteen

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sixteen

seventeen

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thirty

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forty

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forty-eight