Текст книги "Bones in the Nest"

Автор книги: Helen Cadbury

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Bones in the Nest

HELEN CADBURY

To Z, the girl on the train, and her dad

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

By Helen Cadbury

Copyright

PROLOGUE

O, Allah, help me through the hardship and agony of death

Glass crunches on the road. Pavement hammers up through ankles, knees. On to the grass. Too slippery to get a grip. Jump over a low fence. Playground. Feet whack down and it gives something back, speed, pace. Can hardly breathe. They’re not far behind. Need to get under cover. There’s someone there, by the community centre, moving my way. Don’t go down there. Double back, past the swings. Now there’s another one, crossing Darwin Road. Thick-necked fucker. Need to get to the flats, lose myself.

I’m not even tooled up, nothing, because I promised her I’d stop carrying. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me and I told her, I’m in it for the long haul, girl, I’m going to change up for you. And I meant it. I mean it. Right now the last thing I need is some white boys on my tail. She wasn’t at the library. The text said to come and pick her up. But there was nobody there. Door locked. Where did you go, princess? Saw the flicker of a reflection. Got out of there before a baseball bat whacked on my skull. Heard it crack on the glass. Been running since. There were three of them. The big one with the bat and two others. White boys, bad skin. Maybe smackheads, maybe not. Now there’s two more. My chest’s burning. Need to stop. Door open, corner of the block. Head for it. Head down. Don’t know who they’re with or what their beef is, except my face don’t fit.

Cooler inside. Dark. Bleach on concrete hurts my throat. Grab the handrail and haul myself up the stairs. Something moves. A shape. Two shapes. Turn round and the door shuts below me.

This is it.

CHAPTER ONE

One Week Earlier

Doncaster

The marked police car slowed as it turned the corner behind the railway station. A row of terraced houses led away from the fenced-in track. From the passenger seat PC Sean Denton could see two hooded figures, silhouetted beneath a street light. It was hard to tell, but male and under twenty would be his best guess. There was a glimmer of skin as one hand reached out from a pocket into another hand; a split second as the two figures froze and one hooded face peered up at the approaching headlights of the car. Then they were gone.

‘Down there,’ PC Gavin Wentworth put his foot on the accelerator, without changing out of second gear, then slammed the brakes on at the opening of a narrow alleyway.

‘I’m on it,’ Sean said.

He jumped out and ran into the dark. Ahead of him a security light came on and the shadows flooded with colour. He clocked one red and one blue hooded top, one pair of grey tracksuit bottoms and one pair black. A car door slammed behind him, followed by Gav’s footsteps. Sean was gaining on the suspects, but he had to make a choice. One was faster than the other, so he left the slow one for Gav. There was a risk the slower lad would make a swing for him and, for a split second, it was like running through the pages of the training manual: torch in his left hand to shield himself, while he grabbed the back of the red hoodie, twisted the fabric hard round and tucked his leg in front of the runner. The suspect fell sideways, folded under Sean’s arm and went down. Out of the corner of his eye, Sean sensed the other lad look back, see Gavin and sprint off down the alley.

‘Shit.’

He felt like he’d backed the wrong horse, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. His prisoner squirmed face down on the ground, kicking and swearing, as Sean reached for the cuffs.

‘Oi! Calm down, son!’

He tried to grip the boy’s wrists. They were bony and thin. Sean wondered how old he was. The boy turned his head and the hood fell back to reveal sharp cheekbones and dark eyes, which narrowed as they met Sean’s. Then the boy lifted up his head and smacked it face down on the ground.

‘What the hell?’

Sean had the cuffs on him now, but again the boy cracked his forehead against the stone sets of the alleyway.

‘Oh, Jesus! Stop him doing that!’ Gav shouted.

Sean tried to get the suspect up on his feet, but the boy pulled back, twisting and slippery like a fish. His forehead met the ground again and when he lifted it this time, there was blood above one eyebrow. The security light went out and the blood dimmed to a shiny purple in the gloom. Then Gav was there, grabbing the boy’s shoulders, spinning him round. Sean pulled him up from behind, both hands on the cuffed wrists. It was like trying to control a puppet with a life of its own, but together they managed to propel him towards the car.

‘What about the other one?’ Sean said.

‘He’s gone.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ the young lad was saying. ‘You’re not allowed to batter the suspects.’

Sean felt sick.

‘Take no notice,’ Gav said. ‘He’s well known, this little shit. He tries it every time. Don’t you Saleem? Well I think you’ve pushed your luck now. Let’s see if we can have you for resisting arrest.’

At Doncaster Central Police Station, they handed Saleem Asaf over to the custody sergeant and went back to the car. It smelt of overripe apples, sweet and dying in trapped air.

‘Mucky buggers,’ Sean said. His foot found an apple core under the empty chocolate wrappers and it gave way under his heel. ‘How come the day shift never clean the cars out? I’ve got a good mind to dump this lot in someone’s boots.’

Gav belted up and put the car into reverse. Except it wasn’t reverse, it was third. The car leapt forward and juddered as it stalled, inches away from the concrete wall of the police yard.

‘Bollocks,’ Gav said. ‘Why does every car have reverse in a different place?’

‘One of life’s mysteries, Gav.’

‘You’re not wrong there.’

Sean loosened the seat belt that had tightened across his neck.

‘Count to three and start again,’ Gav muttered under his breath and reversed the car, smoothly this time, out of the tight space, avoiding the dented end of a van. He wiped something sticky off the steering wheel with his sleeve and indicated to pull onto the road.

‘Living the dream, Sean, living the fucking dream.’

Sean didn’t reply. He wanted to say it was all right. It’s what he’d signed up for, worked hard for, harder than some when it came to it. He knew he was lucky to have Gav as a partner. There were plenty of officers who took the piss, still made the same jokes they did when he was a Police Community Support Officer, but Gav was all right: a time-served constable with a reputation for being fair, but firm. Sean just wished he didn’t moan so much. It was taking the shine off.

Sean shifted his feet on the mound of thrown-away crap as Gav swung left around Market Place. They parked the car and watched and waited for the next call. This town didn’t sleep and Sean wondered where people found the money. After half an hour a job came in around the corner, two men fighting outside the Ace Bonanza Amusement Arcade. When they arrived, neither assailant wanted to press charges.

‘No worries, he’s my best mate!’ The apparent victim was wiping blood from his nose.

The two men locked together in a hug, but Sean thought they were just as likely to shift back to something uglier.

‘If you say so,’ Gav shrugged. Sean was reaching for a notebook, but Gav shook his head. ‘Let it go, son. Less paperwork.’

A pub called in a handbag theft, so they dropped in to take statements, shouting to be heard above the karaoke. Then they were back in the car, trying not to collide with a woman weaving drunkenly across the road. She turned and flicked two fingers at them, before staggering on to the opposite pavement.

By 11 p.m. they were passing the railway station again. A British Transport Police van was parked up on the forecourt. Sean thought back to the first case he’d covered as a PCSO, and the vulnerable women who’d been befriended on the station platforms and ended up on the game. He wondered what their colleagues in the Transport Police were up to tonight. He hoped for their sake it was nothing more than fare dodgers.

‘What’s the difference between South Yorkshire Police and the BTP?’ Gav said.

Sean shrugged.

‘BTP do longer shifts.’

‘That meant to be funny?’

‘That’s what they say!’ Gav laughed but Sean just shook his head.

As they drove, they looked out for Saleem’s associate and argued back and forth over what the two lads were doing, who was dealing and who was buying. The sky began to lighten. Sean opened the car window to let the clean, damp morning air drive out the stale smell. A blackbird sang a greeting from the skinny tree outside the law courts as Gav pulled into the police yard. It was 6.25 a.m. and their shift was almost over.

‘What are you up to for the next couple of days?’ Gav said as they walked down the corridor of the police station.

‘Not a lot.’ Sean did have a plan for his days off, but he wasn’t ready to share it with Gav. ‘You?’

‘I’ve got a box set to catch up on and the usual domestic drudgery of DIY and sorting out the jungle we laughingly call a garden. Nothing special.’

Gav said goodbye and went off in the direction of the custody suite. Sean finished his paperwork and was handing in his radio, when Gav reappeared.

‘They’ve let him go.’

‘Saleem Asaf?’

‘Aye, nothing on him. Little bastard.’

‘What a waste of time,’ Sean said.

‘There’s something else,’ Gav said. ‘He’s filed an official complaint.’

‘Against me?’

‘That’s right, son. You might be getting a call from Professional Standards.’

‘Should I be worried?’

‘Not necessarily.’

Back in his nan’s kitchen, Sean sank his face into a cup of strong tea. It was eight o’clock in the morning and he needed to sleep.

‘Busy night?’ Maureen put a plate of toast in front of him.

Sean rolled his head to one side to release a crick in his neck from wrestling with the boy.

‘You could say that.’

He chewed on the hot toast and picked up the local newspaper, trying to read the sport on the back page, but his eyes couldn’t focus. He liked to read something every day, to keep up what he’d started at night classes. It’s what his teacher had told him to do: that patient, mild-mannered man, who’d never called him thick or lazy, just gave him ways to see things differently. He put the paper down. It was exhausting sometimes. He would always be dyslexic, however good he became at finding ways around it.

A second piece of toast, and a third, filled his stomach. Sleep was overcoming him. There was something he needed to say to his nan, but it would have to wait.

‘I’d better go up,’ he pushed the plate away.

Maureen reached for the paper and opened it in the centre, hunting for her horoscope. He read the headline on the front page.

‘“Chasebridge Killer … Released?” What’s that about?’ he said ‘Have I missed something?’

‘Hang on, I’m reading my stars: it’s going to be a good week for money, but I need to be careful who I rely on and someone will bring me news about a change. What? Oh.’

Maureen looked over the headline and the short column underneath. Most of the page was taken up with a picture of a dark-haired girl in a school uniform, with a choppy fringe and a sharp chin.

‘I can’t believe they’ve let her out. Flipping nutter.’

Sean leant against the door frame, wanting so badly to go up to bed, but not moving. ‘Who’s that then?’

‘It was while you were still living at your dad’s, not long after your mam died. Here it is: Marilyn Nelson, teenage killer. She pushed a lad of sixteen off the top of the flats. Says here he’d been abused and tortured before she pushed him. Nasty.’

‘I think I remember.’ The sound of a rusty swing and a shape falling. ‘And she’s out?’

‘Says so here. Thought she could be living in Scotland or Devon. Well, that’s not very precise. Served ten years. Doesn’t seem much when his poor mother will never get him back.’

He hesitated, needing to say something to Maureen, but he couldn’t find the words. Someone will bring news about a change. Not yet. It could wait.

Upstairs, he closed the curtains and kicked off his shoes, undid his belt and let his trousers fall. He peeled his shirt off over his head and climbed into the single bed. He set an alarm on his phone and turned his back to the light that was seeping through the pattern of footballs and trophies on his curtains. In the back pocket of his trousers was a piece of paper, folded into a tight, hard square. It was details of a flat to rent in town.

He was on the edge of sleep when it came back to him. He was eleven years old and swinging on the only swing that wasn’t broken, listening to the grind and squeak of the rusty chain around the top bar. He saw something move on top of Eagle Mount Four, the block where the lift never worked. He thought it was a bird at first, then he thought it was a bundle that someone had dropped. And then he understood. It was the unmistakable shape of a person in a dark coat, a coat that billowed out like a pair of wings. The shape carried on falling and the wings didn’t open. He knew it must have landed in the square, in the middle of the four blocks that made up the Eagle Mount flats. He didn’t want to see it. He stayed on the swing until the sound of metal on metal slowed down to nothing.

Long after it happened, after his own memories were messed up with other people’s versions, he could still hear the quietness that followed, as if the four towers were holding their breath.

CHAPTER TWO

York

The telly’s on in the corner of the lounge. There’s a programme on about that spaceman. Years ago. First man on the moon. Chloe doesn’t like the look of the other girls hogging the soft seats. She doesn’t want to sit on the hard plastic chair with the wonky leg, so she stands for a while just inside the door. Nobody looks round. Eventually she goes back upstairs and lies down on her bed. There’s no need to put the light on; the orange street light floods the thin cotton curtain. She can see the pattern of a stain. It’s like the outline of an arm with a knobbly elbow. She narrows her eyes and it changes to a bird’s-eye view of a cliff edge and a beach, the ins and outs of coves marked in orangey brown. The woman’s voice on the spaceman programme is still with her.

‘There were no challenges left. He’d flown higher and further than anyone had ever flown.’

The woman speaking was his wife. The second one. She was obviously prettier and younger than the first. The spacewife said it wasn’t true that he was a recluse, just that he was a media recluse. Chloe smiles. She can relate to that, except he had a whole ranch to hide in, while she’s only got these four yellow walls and a curtain between her and them. She wonders how long it will be before they find her. There’s always someone who needs the money, who’s willing to sell a story to a tabloid. The spaceman threw himself deeper into work. He went into the world of business. That sounds like a nice world, not open and empty like the moon, but a busy world, a world you could hide in; a whole planet of computers and desks and photocopiers. She closes her eyes and sees star-fighters flying at lightning speed through a landscape of filing cabinets. It’s too hot in the room; she can’t settle. She gets up to open the window. The hinge is fixed so that it only creates a five-centimetre gap, but it’s better than nothing. She notices a car waiting on the kerb, engine running.

‘He was true to himself. He was the man that you saw. That was him,’ the spacewife said.

What you see is what you get. She closes the curtain again and gets back into bed. That’s me too, she thinks, and turns on her side, pulling the quilt over her. She’d like to sleep now, it’s been a long day, but someone is ringing the doorbell below. A man shouts into the intercom:

‘You’ve got to talk to me!’

There’s a silence and she hears the front door open. They shouldn’t let a man in here, not at this time of night. She gets up and peers through a small gap where the curtains don’t quite meet, not wanting to draw attention to herself. The man hasn’t gone inside, he’s standing on the path and the young woman who welcomed her this morning is standing close to him. Chloe can’t hear what they’re saying, but the woman is trying to calm the man. It looks like she knows him; they stand close but they don’t touch. There is no violence between them and the man is pleading with his hands. Chloe is relieved that it’s an officer he wants to speak to, not one of the women. Then she corrects herself. The Asian girl on duty isn’t an officer, she’s something else; Chloe can’t remember the word. There will be new words, new jobs now she’s on the outside. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ will have different labels. The young man is Asian too. He wears a suit, but his shirt is hanging out of his trousers and his tie loose around his open collar. Chloe thinks he must be the staff woman’s boyfriend. Link worker. That’s it. She’s Chloe’s link worker. She gets back into bed, thinking about links in a chain, links in a fence, the missing link.

The door closes and for a few moments there’s quiet. Then someone’s kicking the door from the outside, kicking it so hard Chloe can feel it coming up through the building, vibrating through her thin, spongy mattress. The front door opens again and another voice, male this time, clearly threatens that the police will be called. Chloe gets up and shuts the window. As she gets back into bed, she reaches for the radio she got this morning on the market. It plugs into the mains, so she can have it on all night.

Under the quilt a DJ’s voice joins her. He introduces a guy called Jimmy Page and together they tell a story about Jimmy Page’s mystery guitar. The DJ and Jimmy must know the story, but the DJ’s asking questions to make sure Jimmy doesn’t miss bits out. She listens carefully to see if Jimmy sounds like he means what he’s saying, or whether he’s just going through the motions. It’s a special skill when someone’s asking you about stuff you’ve said a thousand times before. She’s an expert in it. Panels and boards and psychologists and governors. She’s been over the same things again and again with them.

The guitar is in the house when Jimmy Page is growing up. It doesn’t belong to anyone and he doesn’t know how it got there. He sees someone playing a Lonnie Donegan tune at school, and he wants to be able to do that. He goes home to get the guitar and the rest …

She doesn’t hear the rest. She wakes up later and there’s a woman talking. The music is different. She switches the radio off and puts it on the floor, carefully. Behind her closed eyes, Jimmy Page and the spaceman dance together, silhouetted against a huge Hollywood moon.

Chloe wakes in a light-filled room. For a moment, she thinks she must have taken an extra tablet. She can’t focus, can’t snap out of the heavy, sweat-damp sleep of messy dreams. The sun is pouring through the glass, cooking up the air. She remembers closing the window to keep the noise out, but now it smells of the trapped odour of all the other women who have slept here before her. She pushes the quilt off and peels her damp T-shirt away from her belly, flapping it to cool her skin. The display on her phone reads ten-twenty. Confused, it takes a moment to sink in that this is ten-twenty in the morning; she’s slept for eleven hours. She leans over and reaches for the bottle of water she filled from the tap last night. It’s blood heat, but she swills it around her mouth and swallows it anyway.

Finally she swings her legs round and sits up, dizzy for a moment. She takes the can of Icy Mist body spray from the top of the bedside locker and sprays a long burst, coughing as the droplets drift back towards her and sting her throat. She bought it yesterday in Boots. On her way to the till, she browsed the lipstick testers, inhaling the greasy sweetness that took her right back to her childhood, watching her mum get ready for work. Don’t touch me! You’ll mess up my face. She left the lipsticks on their stand and paid one ninety-nine for the own-brand body spray.

She moves on shaky legs to the window and opens it again, letting a puff of warm air into the room. A bus is pulling up outside. There’s something she has to remember. Her link worker mentioned it yesterday. A trip out, did she want to come? A trip into the city centre, on the bus, or they could walk, it would depend on the weather. Meet at ten-thirty. She looks at her watch. Ten twenty-eight. Shit. She drops the curtain and pulls off the T-shirt, sprays her body all over and grovels in her bag for a clean pair of knickers. No time for socks. She pulls her canvas pumps over sticky feet. In two minutes she’ll be ready.

The girl in the office is wearing a pale pink dress over black leggings. Her shoes are tiny sandals, covered in pink sequins, as if she’s going to a party, not on a sightseeing trip. She tells Chloe that she’s waiting for a couple more and then they’ll set off, and she might as well sit in the garden until they’re ready, since it’s so hot. Chloe wishes she’d made more effort to remember the girl’s name. She can’t ask her now. It will make her sound stupid.

The garden at Meredith House is more like a yard, surrounded by an old brick wall. Someone’s filled a few pots with busy Lizzies and begonias. Chloe would have chosen something textured, like gazanias, whose petals she would like to press against her cheek to feel their softness. The back door of Meredith House opens and she senses someone watching her. She’s not going to turn around; she’s got stuff to look at. This is her time and her space. Let them cram in their sweaty TV room with the curtains closed, watching daytime chat shows, if they want to, but they should leave her alone.

‘You Chloe?’

She nods.

‘Not deaf then. Thought you might be.’

She turns then, thinking this woman is trying to wind her up, but she sees someone smiling through grey, broken teeth. The woman has a scar pulling her cheek up to the corner of one eye. Despite the damage, Chloe sees softness in her face. Maybe the smile is genuine. She does her best to return it.

‘I’m Emma,’ the other woman says. ‘Taheera said you were coming on the trip into town. I think it’s just the two of us. The others can’t be bothered.’

Taheera. She’ll try not to forget it again. Taheera. It sounds good, smooth and pretty like a stone on the beach. Emma heads back into the building and Chloe follows. It’s too hot to walk, so they take the bus. A low single-decker carries them through streets of semi-detached houses and out on to a straighter road, before it dumps them opposite a dirty concrete building, with a Job Centre wedged in one corner.

When she heard she was coming to York on release, Chloe wasn’t bothered either way. All she wanted was to go where nobody knew her. People told her it was a beautiful city, the sort of place you’d go on holiday, but that didn’t help. The only holiday she remembers was a trip with her mum to Skegness, sitting on a donkey with a melted ice cream dripping down her arm, not daring to lick it in case letting go of the reins made the donkey gallop away.

‘There’s the Job Centre, Chloe,’ Taheera’s voice interrupts her thoughts. ‘You’ve got your appointment tomorrow, so you’ll know the way now, won’t you?’

Chloe’s not sure she’ll remember anything. She took no note of street names or how many corners they turned. She just watched the people, the colours and shapes of them, the sheer variety of people. It shouldn’t have been so sudden, her release, but her jail was closing and although the parole board asked the same questions they’d asked every year, this time she got them right. Now she’s out, with a room in a bail hostel and Taheera as her link worker. It could be worse, she thinks, and lets herself smile.

‘Good,’ Taheera nods briskly. ‘You’ll be fine. Right, let’s go sightseeing.’

As they wait to cross the road by the bus stop, Chloe watches a group of tourists, cameras slung round their necks, hunting for something to capture, but there’s not much to see on this street. Minicabs and buses go past, looking like minicabs and buses. To Chloe the world looks the same as it always has done, as if ten years were a day, or an hour. A woman lifts her camera and Chloe turns her face away.

‘Come on!’ Emma takes hold of her arm.

They cross the road and pass the Job Centre. Immediately the streets become narrower and prettier. She dodges a school party, pressing its way along the pavement, and steps into the road. There are fewer cars now and the buildings begin to push in on them. Taheera rushes ahead, cutting between the clumps of people. Chloe and Emma nearly lose her.

‘There!’

Taheera has rounded the end of a high wall. In front of them is an enormous old building. Chloe can’t take it in. She steps back to get a better view.

‘York Minster,’ Taheera says. ‘If you fancy it, we could go up the tower. You can see for miles.’

Chloe looks up. There’s a figure, standing on the very top of the tower, like a statue on the battlements. He raises an arm and waves. She blinks hard and he’s gone.

‘Are there people up there?’ Chloe says.

‘I should think so,’ Taheera says. ‘There’s a tour every half hour. Shall we?’

‘I’ll give it a go,’ Emma shrugs, laughing, as if she’s not sure she’ll make it. ‘I’ll try anything once.’

Chloe shakes her head, rooted to the spot, trying to understand what she’s seen.

‘You coming?’ Emma says.

The other two women are walking across the open space that surrounds the building. Taheera looks back, inviting, shaking out her straight black hair. Chloe looks up and sees someone falling from the tower, long hair streaming out behind. It can’t be. She looks again and there’s nothing. Taheera and Emma are walking away from her. She can’t stay here alone, so she forces herself to step forward, longing for the claustrophobia of the shopping street.

As they get closer to the building, Chloe thinks she might be sick, but she doesn’t tell them that. They climb a wide flight of steps.

‘I’ll sit here, by the wall of the church,’ she says, pressing her back into the warm stone and sliding down until she’s cross-legged.

‘They call it a minster, actually,’ Emma says. ‘Are you not coming in?’

Taheera glances at her watch and looks out across the open space as if she’s expecting someone. A young man is working his way round a tour group towards them. He’s taller and slimmer than the man who was shouting outside Meredith House last night.

He stops a few feet away and flicks a glance to Emma and Chloe, as if he’s waiting for an introduction.

‘Hey! You made it,’ Taheera tucks a long strand of hair behind her ear. It makes her look instantly younger.

‘Yes, I made it,’ the young man says.

‘Hiya! I’m Emma, pleased to meet you.’

Emma holds out her hand to shake his and Chloe thinks she sounds a bit forward, a bit desperate. Taheera doesn’t introduce him, just suggests they go inside. That suits Chloe, the fewer people she has to talk to the better.

‘I’ll stay here,’ she says, ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache.’

‘Are you sure?’ Taheera looks concerned.

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘You’ll stay right here, on the steps?’ Taheera says. ‘I don’t want you wandering around getting lost.’

‘I won’t budge. Promise.’

Chloe watches them go in, Emma leading the way. As the young man passes, Chloe catches a glimpse below the hem of his jeans. He’s wearing an electronic tag round his ankle. His hand reaches for Taheera’s and together they disappear inside the Minster.