Текст книги "Bones in the Nest"

Автор книги: Helen Cadbury

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

CHAPTER THREE

Doncaster

After a run of night shifts, Sean slept until mid-afternoon. He’d got two nights off and was hoping to get into town before the estate agents’ shop closed. He pulled the little square of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. Fabulous studio apartment to let in sought-after square, a few minutes’ walk from Doncaster centre. He dialled the number. Getting a place of his own had been on his mind for a while, but it had to be the right place, at the right time. When he had everything sorted, he would tell his nan. A woman answered the phone and invited him to come in right now, if he was in the area. She’d be happy to take his details and set up some viewings, including the flat he’d got his eye on, and there were others that might appeal. He thanked her and said he’d be there shortly.

The afternoon was beginning to cool as he rode his moped up the hill through the Chasebridge estate. He usually tried to avoid this route, but today he stopped near the top of the slope, beside the playground. It looked as if someone had lit a bonfire at the foot of the slide. A patch of asphalt had sunk into a hollow, its edges curled up, like burnt bacon. There was something about the girl in Maureen’s newspaper that was pulling him back to where he’d sat on the swing, a witness to something he didn’t understand at the time. He never told his dad what he’d seen that day. Jack Denton’s moods had taught Sean to be wary of starting conversations for fear of them spiralling into arguments. Not long afterwards, one final row has driven him out of his father’s home for good, down the hill to the quieter streets of The Groves and his nan’s house. Gradually the story of the murder had faded from his consciousness.

He switched the engine into neutral and rested his foot on the kerb, trying to recall what he’d seen. While he was staring into the middle distance, he spotted an old man, shuffling along the pavement towards the entrance to Eagle Mount One, a white plastic bag dangling from one hand. It knocked against the side of the man’s leg as he limped slowly along the pavement. Sean put the moped into gear and followed the road around the top of the playground. He watched the man put the bag down and fumble in his pocket for something, his free hand clenched awkwardly as he steadied his balance. Sean gripped the brake and came to a standstill.

‘All right, Dad.’

Sean was struck by the fact that his father had shrunk since he last saw him. Folds of dry, bristled skin met round his mouth and his skin had a yellow tinge. A slow smile revealed more gaps than teeth. Jack Denton wasn’t even sixty, and Sean had mistaken him for an old pensioner.

‘Sean, lad! You coming in for a cuppa?’

There was still plenty of time to get to the estate agents’ before they closed. Jack had been a bugger all his life, but he was still his dad. It wouldn’t hurt to spend five minutes with him. As he followed his father up to the first floor flat, Sean told himself that Jack couldn’t hurt him now. That was all a long time ago.

In Jack’s hallway it looked like someone had tried to decorate. One wall was painted a muddy orange, which petered out before it reached the ceiling, and a new vacuum cleaner stood in the doorway of the lounge. It would take more than a vacuum cleaner, Sean thought, to find the pattern in that carpet; it was dark with grease.

‘Nice colour paint.’

‘That was Eileen’s idea. Terracotta she says. Not finished yet. Needs someone with a stepladder to do that last bit.’

Jack headed for the kitchen.

‘Who’s Eileen?’ Sean said.

His dad coughed and it caught in his throat so he couldn’t answer for a moment.

‘Lady friend. She stays over, keeps the place in shape.’

The kitchen was grubby and strewn with dirty plates, but someone had put a bunch of artificial flowers in a vase on the table.

‘Good. That’s good.’

Jack bent stiffly to put a carton of milk in the fridge and Sean noticed there wasn’t much else in there. No food, but also a curious absence of beer cans, both in the fridge and on the side, and not a bottle of whisky in sight.

‘Dad,’ Sean asked carefully, ‘have you packed in drinking?’

His father stood up straight and turned to face him.

‘Doctor’s orders, son. My body can’t take it. I’ve been off four weeks and counting. They’ve even got me going to AA meetings.’

‘That’s great.’

‘Aye, well, it was that or die and I’m not ready yet. Are you going to put that kettle on?’

Sean filled the kettle and considered this new information carefully while Jack shuffled off into the lounge; Sean heard him lighting a cigarette.

‘Eileen’s gone to her sister’s,’ Jack called through to Sean. ‘Bit of fresh air, you know.’

‘Right,’ Sean said.

Any air would seem fresh compared to this flat. She must have been gone a few days and Jack wasn’t keeping up her good work. Sean found a couple of clean mugs in a cupboard and made two cups of tea.

‘Here you go.’

In the lounge, Jack was staring into space, the ash building up on the tip of his cigarette. He looked momentarily startled to see Sean standing there. He focused and reached for the mug.

‘What are you going to eat for your tea?’ Sean sat down next to him, carefully checking the settee for anything that might stick to his jeans. ‘Was Eileen doing your cooking?’

Jack shrugged. ‘Not that hungry.’

‘But you’ve got to eat. Do you want me to ring for a pizza before I go?’

‘Don’t be bloody daft,’ Jack snapped. ‘They don’t deliver in the blocks any more. Haven’t done for ages. Where have you been?’

Sean felt like telling him exactly where he’d been. He’d kept his head down and got himself a good job.

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Too many delivery boys getting robbed. Drugs mind, you can get them any time, delivered to the door. Not my thing, but there you go.’

‘Dad, be careful what you’re telling me.’

‘You still a frigging copper? You want to give that up, get a proper job.’ Jack Denton started to sing. ‘Maggie Thatcher’s boot boys, Maggie Thatcher’s boot boys, tra-laa la la, tra-laa la la!’

He cackled himself into a coughing fit and Sean was saved from having to justify himself by his phone vibrating in his pocket. He got up and went through to the kitchen.

‘Hello?’

‘PC Denton?’

Sean didn’t recognise the voice.

‘Yes.’

‘This is Wendy Gore from Professional Standards. We’re looking into a complaint that’s been filed.’

‘Right.’

‘Can you come in for a meeting tomorrow, first thing, with myself and your divisional inspector? Nine o’clock.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

It wasn’t a question; it was a command. He looked through the half open door into the lounge. His father drank from the mug, missed his mouth and wiped his face on his sleeve. Wendy Gore ended the call.

‘I’ll nip out and get you some chips, if you like,’ Sean said.

The estate agents’ would be closing soon, but the studio apartment could wait, at least until after his meeting in the morning.

Jack winced. ‘I have to be careful what I eat. Can’t handle most things, if I’m honest. Bit of white bread. Or the fish out of the middle of the batter. Everything else, you know, just goes straight through. Chips are no good.’

Sean didn’t think he was putting on the self-pity. He really was ill.

‘What does the doctor say?’

‘They do tests. I have some pills, but my liver’s had it. It’s only a matter of time, then I’m finished. There, that’ll put a smile on your soft face!’

‘Don’t be daft.’

But was it daft? Hadn’t he wished him dead every time he’d run out of the flat to Maureen’s or hidden in the woods around the quarry? His mum had died from a brain haemorrhage when he was ten, and for years he’d held onto the idea that Jack Denton was in some way responsible. His temper was horrible in those days, but looking at him now, it was hard to believe he could hurt a fly.

‘Why don’t I go out and get you a can of soup, eh? Could you manage chicken? And a bit of toast?’

Jack’s faced creased in a smile.

‘You’ve got such a look of your mam,’ he said, ‘standing there. Get us mushroom, will you? I prefer mushroom.’

Sean suppressed a shiver and headed for the front door.

On the way back from the shop, Sean saw a group of men coming out of Eagle Mount Two, heading for Eagle Mount One. By the time he got to the entrance hallway, they were going up in the lift. Sean took the stairs and was at Jack’s door in time to see a man in a white T-shirt shoving a leaflet through the letter box. He bent down and called through the slot.

‘Jack! Will we be seeing you at the meeting?’

‘Is it my dad you’re after?’ Sean said.

The man stood up and looked at him.

‘Your dad? I didn’t realise he had a son.’

Sean let it go.

‘Just seeing if he’s coming to the meeting,’ the man continued, fixing Sean with surprisingly blue eyes.

‘AA?’ Sean said.

‘You what?’

‘Is it an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting?’

Sean wondered whether he’d breached a code of confidentiality as the man frowned and the muscles in his neck tightened. He was a little over six foot, early thirties at a guess, with a tattoo on his neck that read: Made in England. Sean instinctively took a step back.

‘No, mate, it’s the CUC.’

He thrust a leaflet at Sean. The title was in large black letters: Clean Up Chasebridge – Public Meeting. Thursday June 2nd 6.30 p.m.

‘It’s at the community centre. Getting everyone involved in improving the estate.’

‘Right,’ Sean said.

‘I haven’t seen you before, have I?’

The other man didn’t appear to be in a hurry to go, although the rest of his group could be heard clattering up the concrete stairs to the next floor. Sean shrugged and shook his head.

‘I’ve been living … away.’

He wasn’t sure why he said it like that, but something told him that he needed to be cautious.

‘Working?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Right,’ the man smiled and the eyes lit up. ‘Give my regards to Jack. Tell him Terry was asking after him.’

Sean let himself in with Jack’s key. He took the shopping into the kitchen. As he passed the lounge he could see Jack fast asleep on the settee. He stood at the kitchen window and looked out across the dual carriageway to the rough edge of the fields and the woods beyond. Tomorrow’s meeting with Wendy Gore filled him with dread. The little boy inside him wished he could run away and hide in the woods until it was all over.

‘Is that you, Terry?’

Sean jumped at his father’s voice.

‘It’s Sean, Dad.’

He put his head round the door of the lounge where Jack was trying to sit up straight on the settee, wincing at some nameless pain nagging at his insides.

‘There was a feller here called Terry,’ Sean said. ‘He left this.’

‘Right, right.’

Jack was blinking, trying to read the writing on the leaflet Sean was showing him.

‘You might be able to help him,’ Jack said.

‘With this clean up campaign?’

‘No, your inside knowledge,’ Jack tapped his swollen nose. ‘You might be some use after all, being a copper.’

‘What are you on about? Anyway,’ he said, to himself as much as to his dad, ‘after tomorrow I might not even be a copper.’

He wasn’t sure how much damage Saleem’s accusation could do him and although he knew Gav would stand by him, what if the lad really had hurt himself, got brain damage or something, and was pinning it all on Sean?

‘What did you get for my tea?’

Jack’s mind flicked from one thing to another at random, but Sean was happy he was thinking of food. He went back into the kitchen and warmed up some mushroom soup while the toast cooked.

‘I’ll have to be getting back home.’ Sean settled a warped tray on his dad’s knees and handed him the spoon.

‘Home?’

‘To Nan’s. She still fusses over me.’

‘Oh, aye. Will I see you tomorrow? You could take me to this.’ Jack waved the spoon at the leaflet, spraying it with soup.

‘Aye, why not. I’ll come over later in the day and give you a hand cleaning up.’ Sean said. ‘We’ll give Eileen a surprise when she comes back from her sister’s. See you, Dad.’

As Sean was letting himself out of the flat, Jack called after him.

‘Terry wants to find who killed his brother.’

‘You what?’

‘He wants to find who did it.’

Sean went back into the living room.

‘He needs to go through the proper channels then. Look, Dad, if it’s easier for you, you don’t have to tell anyone I’m a police officer.’

‘No, good plan!’ Jack wheezed a bitter laugh, ‘I never do!’

Sean wasn’t sure how well this Terry knew his dad, but it sounded like Jack didn’t even admit to having a son, never mind one in the police force.

CHAPTER FOUR

York

When the York Minster clock strikes the hour, the bell vibrates through the stone steps, up into the bones of Chloe’s chest. Compared to this huge building she is nothing, just a bundle of twigs that can be rattled apart by the sound. She hugs her arms around her knees even though it isn’t cold. The sun is overhead and she feels it pressing through her thin hair. She needs to move before her skin burns. She gets up and looks around. To one side she sees a road full of people and bicycles, but to her right there’s a sort of garden. If she stays close to the building there might be some shade.

She walks through a gate onto a lawn, slips her shoes off and enjoys the grass, cool and soft under her feet. There’s an ice cream van, but she can’t afford anything on their price list. She’s bought food, toiletries and her radio. She’s paid her hostel charge for the first week and now she’s down to her last few pounds. There are some children at the ice cream van, speaking another language, laughing, so she turns away from them and heads for the shade of the building where the grass is longer, more protected. There is something there, where the wall meets the ground, and she thinks at first she’s looking at the broken pieces of a wafer or a cornet, but as her eyes adjust to the shadows, she sees they’re little bones, cradled in a dry brown nest. She kneels down to get a closer look. Two skulls, with perfect beaks, tiny ribs and fine white legs, tucked up where they lay, hungry perhaps, or their hearts stopping as the nest fell. She looks up and sees a line of guttering, and beyond it a glimpse of the square edge of the Minster tower. It seems to be falling towards her. Her stomach lurches and she drops down on all fours. She’s crouching, staring at the skeletons of the young birds in the nest, when she hears a voice.

‘Are you all right?’

A woman is watching her from the path with two children, a boy of about eight and a teenage girl. The woman hesitates, while the children look embarrassed, the boy tugging at his mother’s hand.

‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Just found something, a nest. The baby birds are dead.’

The girl pulls a face, but the boy lets go of his mother’s hand and darts forward.

‘Cool! Can I see?’

Chloe sits back on her heels and he comes close.

‘Amazing! They’re sparrows’ skeletons, I think. Can I pick the nest up?’

She nods.

‘How do you know they’re sparrows?’ she asks him.

‘From the beaks.’ He cradles the nest in his small hands and peers into it. ‘It’s hard to be exactly sure; they could be coal tits. I’d need my book.’

‘Do you want it? The nest?’

‘Would you mind? Brilliant! Thanks.’ He looks back to check. ‘Mum, this lady says I can have it. Can I?’

The teenage girl rolls her eyes.

‘It’s not very clean,’ the mother says.

‘It’s fine, Mum. They’re just dry bones.’

‘Well, all right,’ she smiles at Chloe as if to say, this is what he’s like, this curious little boy. ‘Say thank you to the lady.’

‘Thanks.’

Chloe shrugs. She doesn’t have anything to say. It’s only when she watches them walk away down the path, the boy holding the nest up to eye level to scrutinise its contents, that she thinks how easy it was to give a gift of something that wasn’t hers to begin with. She shivers, her skin cooling in the shade. She lets her fingers play over the grass, thinking back to the first time she was allowed to work outside, in the prison grounds, and how strange the grass felt to her then. It was as if she had misremembered it. Each blade seemed stronger and thicker than she expected. Another chiming bell startles her and she checks her watch. Quarter to twelve. She stands up and decides to explore further round the building. She runs her fingers along the stone mass of wall until she reaches an iron fence and a gate. A cobbled street curves round to the right and she picks her way over the uncomfortable bumps until she feels smooth stone slabs under her feet again.

She half-laughs inside her mouth. Laughs at herself. They said at one of her parole hearings that she hadn’t grown up yet and she’d have to grow up if she was ever going to settle back into society. They wouldn’t think talking to little boys about dead birds and walking barefoot was proper grownup behaviour, but who cares? They’re not watching her now. She takes a step, which is half a skip. For the first time in ages she thinks she might be happy. She skips again, two, three times, until her toe catches the edge of a paving slab and she swears. She looks around to check if anybody saw and puts her shoes back on.

They’re coming out of the door when she gets back to the entrance. Emma is rubbing one of her knees and moaning about how many steps there were.

‘Oh my God, Chloe, I wish I’d stayed out here. You go round and round this horrible little staircase and the top’s all fenced in, like a cage. I wanted to go back down, but they said I couldn’t.’

Emma scowls at Taheera and the young man. Chloe isn’t sure what the situation is, but she saw them hold each other’s hands as they went in and she thinks they might want to be alone for a bit. Her mum trained her from an early age to be discreet around all the boyfriends she brought home from the pub.

‘Come on, Emma, there’s some nice shops we went past before. Wouldn’t mind having a look in the windows.’

She links her arm in Emma’s and half expects her to pull away, but she doesn’t. She clamps Chloe closer to her and they start to walk back across the open square towards the narrow streets.

‘Wait a minute!’ Taheera calls after them. ‘I thought we might all go for a coffee.’

Emma hesitates.

‘OK, if you’re buying,’ she says.

Chloe thinks she’s shameless, after having moaned so much, but all the same she wouldn’t mind one herself. It’s only her second day on the out and she fancies sitting in a café, sipping a nice coffee. They end up in a little place, not much more than a shop front, with two soft untidy sofas in the window. Chloe would rather sit further back where it’s more private and there are proper chairs and tables, but Emma has steered her towards one of the sofas and sits down heavily.

‘I’m knackered!’ she says. ‘Do they do cake?’

Taheera ignores her and asks Chloe what she’d like first. Then she takes Emma’s order and tells the young guy, whose name turns out to be Mo, that he’ll have to get his own. The budget doesn’t stretch to him. She doesn’t sound mean when she says it, just playful and then Chloe gets it. This trip is meant to be about her. That’s why Taheera has got money to spend. That’s why she didn’t want her and Emma to go off together and why she clucked like a mother hen when Chloe said she wanted to stay outside the Minster. Chloe sits back on the sofa and decides she doesn’t mind being fussed over. She’s sure it won’t last.

Taheera goes up to the counter and Mo leans forward.

‘Do you want to see a magic trick?’ he says.

‘Do you make yourself disappear in a puff of smoke?’ Emma laughs, her scar tugging at her skin. ‘Only joking!’

But Mo looks annoyed. He turns to Chloe.

‘What about you?’

She shrugs.

‘You don’t say much, do you?’

No, she thinks. But that’s probably just as well because if she was a talker she’d be asking questions; what she really wants to know is why he’s on tag, what he’s done and where he’s been. She’s sure he’s been inside, and he must know she and Emma have too. What she really she wants to know is why Taheera has got a criminal for a boyfriend. It’s probably a sackable offence if you work in a bail hostel.

Emma goes off to find the ladies’ toilet as Taheera comes back to the table.

‘It’s a shame you didn’t have your camera up the tower, Mo.’

‘I left it at home. I didn’t think you’d want …’ he doesn’t finish.

Chloe sips the froth on her coffee and pretends he’s not looking at her. She sits back in the depths of the sofa and soon it’s as if they’ve forgotten she’s there.

‘Have you been doing much photography?’

‘Not much time,’ he says. ‘Been helping my cousin in the shop.’

‘How is she?’

‘Ghazala? She’s OK. Yeah, she’s good. She gave me the train fare to get up here. Her little brother Saleem’s being a pain in the arse, though.’

Taheera nods.

‘My brother was here last night,’ she says quietly.

Chloe tries to look interested in the tassels on one of the sofa cushions, spinning the purple and gold threads and watching them unravel. When you don’t say much, people tend to think you don’t hear much either.

‘Kamran?’ Mo says. ‘What was he doing in York?’

‘He’d been to York Races and he wanted to borrow some money to get into a club. He’d been drinking. My parents would go mad if they knew.’

So that was her brother. Chloe’s almost forgotten the scene she witnessed from her window last night, but now it comes back to her.

‘Had he come up here on his own?’ Mo says.

‘Someone was driving his car, a white guy. At least he wasn’t stupid enough to drive himself.’

Mo looks worried.

‘This guy, what did he look like?’

‘I didn’t really see, it was dark. Why? Does it matter?’

‘No, probably not.’

‘Mo?’

‘Nothing. It’s nothing. Look!’ And he touches Taheera’s ear and pulls out a pound coin.