Blacklands (16 page)

He felt the spiky prickles on his arm, the side of his face, and even through his jumper and jeans; he jerked his head up to save his face, and heard the hoodies laugh.

“Get his trainers.”

The anger that had started to rise in Steven when the boy grabbed his anorak now made him kick at them as they tried to take his shoes. New last Christmas. His mother had been angry they were muddy; she would kill him if they were gone.

The boys gripped his flailing legs and he curled his foot up in an effort to hold the left trainer on, but it was wrenched from him.

His tears now were furious helplessness. He wanted to kill them; he wanted to yank them by the ears and smash his knee into their grinning faces; he wanted to pick up the stone shaped like a jelly bean and beat their laughing mouths until their teeth were jagged, bloody stumps.

Instead he cried while they took his right shoe too, and walked off laughing.

He waited and cried, wincing at the pain of the gorse pricking into him, but too scared to follow too closely behind them.

Finally he got up, flinching his way back onto the path. One of his socks had been pulled halfway off his foot. They were his favorite socks; his nan had knitted them for him for his birthday two years before and he kept them for special so as not to wear them out. Grey marl and ribbed, with a cleverly turned foot she called a French heel that made them hold their own shape, like cartoon socks. They’d been big for him when he got them, and they were small for him now, but he still wore them for special. Today had been special because of the photo of Dunkery Beacon. Now he’d remember today for other reasons too. He began to cry again, making it hard to find the jelly bean stone through the blurring, but he managed it eventually and then found the camera and started back down the path. It was slow going and painful and—by the time he reached the stile that led through the backs of the houses to the road—both his socks had holes in them.

“What do you mean, lost?” Lettie was not furious yet, but she was well on the way and Steven knew she’d get there before long.

“I’m sorry.”

“How can you lose your anorak
and
your shoes? And not know where?”

“And ruin his socks,” Nan chimed in. “Took me weeks to knit those with my arthritis. Doesn’t appreciate anything.”

“I
did
appreciate them!” he said, angry that she could think otherwise. Hadn’t she seen how he’d kept them for special? The thought made him start to cry again and some part of his mind sighed wearily at that. He was so fed up with crying today; he could hardly believe he had more of it left in him.

“Stevie’s crying, Mum!” Davey was intrigued.

“Fuck off, Davey,” he snapped.

“You
dare
use that word in this house!”

Lettie slapped the back of his head—not hard, but stunning him anyway, and shocking them all into a horrible, ticking silence.

His mother
never
slapped his head or face. She’d lash out at his arms or legs occasionally, but the head was off limits on the unspoken understanding that only drunks and council tenants slapped their children there.

Steven wanted to apologize. He wanted it so badly. He wanted his mother to hold him again the way she had the other day. He wanted to lay his head on her shoulder and be a baby again and not have to worry about his socks or his shoes or his anorak or the hoodies or the spade or bodies or serial killers. He wanted to curl up in bed with hot milk and sugar and have someone sing him to sleep while they stroked his hair.

He was so tired of his life.

But she’d slapped his head.

So, instead of apologizing, he yelled: “Fuck you too!” then pushed past his mother, ran upstairs, and slammed his bedroom door so hard that she came pounding up the stairs in a fury.

He knew he’d gone too far.

If she hadn’t been so angry Lettie would have seen how scared he was—standing by his bed, eyes wide, hands splayed before him in surrender, no longer sure she had any control.

“Mum, I’m sorry!”

But it was too late and she slapped his head again—and then again, and hit his arms and hands and ears and, finally, rained slaps and weak, side-fisted girl punches down on his back as he cowered over his bed with his head between his elbows.

It was Davey’s hysterical screaming that brought Lettie back to her senses at last. She gathered her favorite son into her arms and shushed him gently.

“You see how you’ve upset Davey!” she shouted at Steven, in a voice shrill with guilt. “Now come down for tea.”

“I don’t want any tea.” His voice was muffled in the bedspread.

“Fine,” said Lettie, hefting Davey higher onto her hip. “Don’t have any, then.”

Steven heard them leave and go downstairs. He heard Lettie’s voice, low and gentle with Davey, and some part of him understood that she was trying to make up for what she’d done—even if she wasn’t making it up to him.

He sniffled and hitched and started to feel the places where his mother’s ring must have caught him—his left ear, his left wrist, a stinging on his shoulder blade. He put his finger to the ear and found a little spot of blood. His ears also rang a little and his right cheek burned from a slap. He crept onto the bed, turned to the wall, and curled more tightly into a ball. He hugged himself, suddenly cold but not wanting to move again to get under the covers.

The touch of something soft on his shoulder startled him. Nan had picked up the bedspread behind him and folded it over him. He met her eyes briefly, but she straightened up and turned to leave.

“Nan?”

He expected her to stop and look back at him, the way it happened in the movies, but she kept going, disappearing down the hallway.

His voice was cracked with crying, but he spoke anyway, as if she were listening to him; as if she cared.

“I did appreciate the socks. I kept them for special.”

Steven thought he heard her pause at the top of the stairs, but he couldn’t be sure.

Chapter 20

T
HE PHOTOS WERE CRAP.

The ones he’d taken from the top of Dunkery Beacon were blurred by wind shake and the one he’d taken from the car park had the front wing of a car encroaching into the left-hand side of the frame.

But because he’d spent the last of his pocket money on getting the film developed—and because it was at least in focus—that was the one Steven sent to Arnold Avery.

Chapter 21

P
RISON
O
FFICER
R
YAN
F
INLAY ENJOYED CONFISCATING PHOTOS
sent to prisoners, and today was no exception.

Usually the photos were blurred, scuzzy shots of prisoners’ wives and girlfriends lying on unmade beds wearing mismatched lingerie. Sometimes the pictures included some small, careless domestic detail that shattered whatever shaky fantasy was being offered. A tabby cat; a grubby child peering through the bars of a cot; Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes on the bedroom floor.

Sometimes the prisoners got their photos and sometimes they didn’t. In this respect, Ryan Finlay was god.

Total nudity meant immediate confiscation, as did any lewd act or simulation of the same. Those photos were supposed to be destroyed and, if the prisoner’s wife was a dog, they were—although not before much passing round and disparaging remarks in the staff canteen. The prisoner concerned would merely get a tag on his letter, if one had been enclosed, which said “Contents Confiscated.”

Sean Ellis had never had a letter without a tag. His wife was so hot and so uninhibited that the photos she often enclosed formed the backbone of Officer Ryan Finlay’s personal collection, and the bank robber who’d shot two tellers in the face at a small branch of Barclays in Gloucestershire had probably forgotten what his wife looked like under the demure beige mac she always wore to visit him. Ellis never complained, and that made Finlay and the other men laugh. The poor bastard probably thought his missus was sending him pictures of the family mutt.

Today Finlay and PO Andy Ralph sat at the Formica desk in the post room, carelessly ripping open envelopes addressed to prisoners.

“What do you think?” Ralph held up a photo from a freshly torn envelope. It showed a small blond girl with no front teeth, dangling a docile cat down her chest.

“Who’s it for?”

Ralph glanced at the envelope. “Karim Abdullahai.”

Finlay shook his head. “That pervert’s as black as the ace of spades. Doesn’t look like a relative to me.”

Ralph—whose own skin tone was a shade away from coal—tossed the photo aside and put a tag on the letter without comment.

Mrs. Ellis’s photo was relatively tame today—her face blank as she lifted up a pale blue tank top to expose her perfect breasts.

“Jesus, would you look at the tits on that.”

Ralph peered over and grinned.

“Double fucking handful.” Finlay sighed. It had been years since he’d had a nice firm double handful. He’d have needed a cardboard box to cart his Rose’s stretched, wrinkled tits about in.

The photo was hardly lewd and, if it had been any other wife or girlfriend, Finlay would have passed it on without hesitation, but he couldn’t have Ellis realizing that all those photos he’d never seen might look very much like this one and starting to make a fuss, so he slapped a tag on the accompanying letter and stuffed Mrs. Ellis in his pocket.

They worked in silence for a few minutes, struggling to read barely legible letters, sorting photos and tiny gifts—six safety-razor blades, a dozen Trojans,
Origami for Beginners
.

Ralph looked briefly at a photo of a tired-looking redhead holding a pizza box, and read from the accompanying letter: “ …
at night I think about you fukking me up the arss
…”

He sighed. “Misspelled fucking
and
arse.”

He took the censoring black felt-tip and corrected both spellings before putting it on the Go pile and picking up the next letter, which was addressed to Arnold Avery.

There was no letter and the badly composed photograph barely warranted a glance. It certainly did not warrant seeking the permission of the senior screw. Andy Ralph was well able to discern what was lewd, what was inciting, and what was fetishistic. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that a photo of a car and a rainy hillside was none of the above. Least of all Ryan Finlay.

The racist Paddy bastard.

When Arnold Avery saw the photo he felt faint. He thought he might collapse with the sheer erotic charge of it. He immediately wanted to cry that it was not night, not dark, even though his cell was always gloomy because of the board across the window. Well, Leaver might have blocked the view of one moor through the bars, but he held the view of another in his hand that was even sweeter.

His killer’s eye had found the spot immediately. Yasmin Gregory. There she was. Or there she had been until sometime after his arrest when the forensics teams had moved in and Exmoor had started to give up its grim secrets. They hadn’t allowed him back on the moor, even to point out the bodies. They knew too well it was what he wanted—one more chance to feel the holding soil between his fingers; one more peer into the filthy holes he’d dug out of the heather—and they cruelly denied him that even when they finally had to call off the search for more victims. But they couldn’t erase his memories. Couldn’t then, and couldn’t now, as they washed over him like a spicy balm.