Changeling (2 page)

Trey had never seen the head care worker of Apple Grove Care Home so angry in the three years that he had been there. Colin was a hurtful, spiteful man, who seemed to derive some sick kind of pleasure from belittling the children in his care, but as far as Trey was aware he had never physically harmed anyone in his charge. Instead he was an insidious bully who relied upon harsh and unkind words to hurt the kids he didn’t like. Trey had never seen him as worked up as he was now, and was fearful that the man might actually be on the point of hitting him.

‘Do you have any idea how much trouble and extra work you have caused me with this little stunt?’ Colin asked through clenched teeth. A tic had started up above his left eyebrow, causing it to twitch repetitively. ‘I’ll have to file a report, get someone in to fix that window and—’

He stopped and sniffed, his face contorting into a gargoyle-like caricature of disgust, the tic still merrily dancing to some unheard tune over his eye.

‘What in God’s name is that stench?’

He bent and picked up the tattered sweatshirt at his feet. Smelling it and deciding that this was not the source of the reek that filled the room, he dropped it and eyed Trey suspiciously. ‘What have you been
doing
in here, you disgusting little turd?’

Trey could smell it now. It was an oily, metallic smell, which reminded him of rotting leaves and freshly turned earth. But there was something else lying within the odour that was not so easy to identify. A brownish-orange smell, which, although strangely familiar to him, just eluded his attempts to identify it.

He stopped. Brownish-orange smell? What on earth was he thinking? You don’t see odours, you just . . . smell them.

But that was exactly how he envisioned this smell that permeated through the room, as a rich, gravy-like colour, with slowly pulsating globes of orange moving around within it – but even
colour
wasn’t the right word to describe the feeling he was trying to pin down. It was more like a
memory
of a sensation, some innate sense that he had either lost or never used before – like being blind from birth and trying to describe how you
see
the sky in your mind’s eye.

Frowning, he shook his head, trying to rattle loose these strange thoughts and clear them out.

‘Are you listening to me?’ Colin said, pointing a shaking finger at him. ‘This,’ he said, staring around him again, ‘is too much. Even for you. I thought that we were beyond the anger issues that you brought with you when you came here three years ago. But clearly you need to be reminded of how to behave like a human being again. I’m going to refer you for a little
holiday
in the APU. Remember your last stay there? I’m sure you’ll feel right back at home once you’re on a ward surrounded by a whole gang of other psychopaths. Pack your stuff – you’ll be leaving for the Tank today.’

The Tank was a referral centre for the Adolescent Psychiatric Unit where Apple Grove sent kids that had gone off the rails. Self-harmers, kids who were at risk of suicide, violent and abusive children were all sent to the APU. The unit itself wasn’t so bad, but before you got there you had to go to the Tank, where the approach to keeping you quiet was to fill you so full of drugs that you became one of the living dead. Trey had been sent there five months after his arrival at the home when his refusal to communicate with anyone, coupled with beating up a boy named Matthew Cotter, was deemed serious enough to warrant a visit. What the care home failed to realize was that Matthew Cotter had been the cause of Trey’s refusal to talk and that he had been flushing Trey’s head down the toilet every day for all of those five months until the day Trey had snapped and fought back, putting the bully in hospital with a broken nose.

‘Colin, I’ve already told you,’ Trey said, with a wince. Just talking was extremely painful. ‘I didn’t do any of this. Why on earth would I? You can’t send me to the Tank for something I didn’t do. Just listen to me. I don’t know how—’

‘I don’t want to hear it, Mr Laporte. Now pack your stuff.’

‘But.’

‘Pack your stuff . . . NOW.’

‘
Whatever.
’ Trey glared at the care worker with utter contempt. ‘I’ve only had those shoes a week!’ He kicked out at one of the trainers, lost his footing and fell back on the mattress again, where he sat scowling down at the floor. He was feeling progressively more unwell; he ached all over as if in the early stages of a virus.

‘I think I must have been drugged,’ he said meekly, shaking his head at how lame that sounded. ‘Someone must have slipped something in my food or drink and then managed to break in here after me and do all this.’

‘Oh yes, that’s right, maybe Belinda or one of the other carers dropped some Rohypnol in to your tea while you weren’t looking so that they could come in here and smash the place up. Then, unseen, they carried you back in here and locked the door from the inside. Perhaps they’re hiding under the bed right now? Come on, Trey, credit me with some intelligence, will you?’

A deep sea of resentment rose up within Trey at the injustice of the whole situation. He clenched his fists and tried to control the anger that was building up inside him. He was the one who had been wronged here. It was
his
room and possessions that had been violated and destroyed, and here he was being accused of that very act. The brown-orange smell seemed to be getting stronger, and he felt the need to bellow his fury at the world. He was vaguely aware that the smell seemed to be coming from him, and it was coupled with an uncomfortable itching feeling in the base of his spine, which quickly grew into an unbearable ache.

There was another knock at the door.

‘Not now,’ shouted Colin. ‘We’re not finished in here yet! I won’t tell you again, Trey. Pack your stuff.’

Trey doubled over in pain as the spasms increased in intensity. His whole body felt incredibly hot and the itching ache had spread so that all the skin on his body had become a source of exquisite agony. His stomach rolled and he gagged. ‘Colin, I’m telling you, I . . . ungh—’

‘Oh, how convenient,’ the care worker sneered. ‘We get to the point where only the truth will fit the facts and you get ill! What? Do you think this little act will save you from being sent to the Tank? Well, think again.’

The soft, hesitant knock on the door was repeated, and when it opened Wendy Travers’s head appeared around the door jamb. Wendy was a young woman with a kind face and a laugh that erupted from her whenever she was nervous or embarrassed – which was often. She was by far the nicest care worker in the home, and Trey admired how she always went the extra mile for the younger children, especially those who were new to the care environment.

‘Wendy, love, not right now, please. Young Trey and I are trying to get to the bottom of what has happened here and he appears to have rather fortuitously come over all peculiar.’

Wendy quickly took in the mess of the small room before turning her attention back to her boss. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that it is rather important, Colin.’

‘So is this. So if you would be so kind as to leave us alone, I’ll deal with whatever it is when I get finished in here.’

Wendy chewed her bottom lip as she considered this, the small frown on her forehead deepening. Eventually she took a breath and announced, ‘Trey’s got a visitor. There’s a gentleman in reception who says that he’d like to see him. He says he’s his uncle.’ Wendy smiled up at Colin apologetically before looking over in Trey’s direction. The look on her face was difficult to decipher, but Trey thought that she looked deeply uncomfortable and more than a little scared.

Trey slowly straightened up. The waves of pain that had so quickly escalated started to recede as he took in this announcement. He looked for a clue in Wendy’s face to see if she was playing some kind of a trick on him – although it would have been completely out of character for her to do such a thing – but her features merely mirrored his own puzzled expression.

Trey had no family. He was an orphan whose only living relative, his grandmother, had died three years earlier. After her death, the authorities had tried to find any extended family to ascertain if there might be someone willing to take him in, but none could be found, so he’d ended up in care.

Trey never had visitors, and he made a point of not being around on visiting days so as not to have to witness the buzz of excitement that took over the care home when the children knew that someone from the outside world was coming to see them. Today wasn’t even a visiting day.

‘What should I do?’ Wendy asked. ‘He was very insistent and said that it was a matter of the utmost urgency.’

Colin paused for a second and looked over at the fourteen-year-old boy in his charge. ‘Ask him to wait in the contact room, please, Wendy, and tell him that I shall be in shortly.’

He turned back to Trey as the door clicked shut, an unpleasant sneer playing across his thin, mean lips. ‘Well, well. What do you know? Some long-lost relative riding in on his white horse to rescue little orphan Annie. You’d better put some proper clothes on, if you can find any in this chaos. Wait in here until I find out what this is all about.’ He gestured with his thumb towards the window. ‘And don’t think for one second that you have heard the last about this little caper,’ he said.

He turned and left the room, kicking the ruined trainers out of his way as he left.

Trey stood up and moved over to the door as soon as Colin had shut it. He pressed his ear to the surface, listening intently for any noise on the other side. Colin called out to somebody and was answered by the sound of approaching footsteps. Strain as he might, Trey couldn’t make out the details of what was being said in the corridor outside his room. It didn’t matter; Trey knew that Colin would be asking whoever it was to keep an eye on his room to ensure that he stayed inside and didn’t come out. He pulled some clothes out of his dirty washing basket and threw them on as quickly as he could. He stalked around the room, trying to come up with a plan. Leaving by the door was out of the question, and all the windows in the home were security windows that would open only a fraction of the way. Trey stopped and turned to look at his window again. The security of this window had been well and truly breached. If he climbed out of the ruined mess he could make his way around the back of the building and re-enter at the staff entrance. There was a numerical keypad to gain entry, but all the kids in the home knew the combination. He just had to hope that it had not been changed in the last week or so.

He clambered out of the window, being careful not to cut himself on the jagged edges of the metal frame, and dropped down into a rose bush that happily did the job instead. Ignoring the pain in his hands and legs, he looked about him. He didn’t expect anyone to be in the grounds, but it wouldn’t do to be caught sneaking around like this. Stooping over and keeping low so that he would not be spotted, he ran along the back of the building. At the front he used the parked cars as cover, darting between each one until he was standing outside the staff door. He paused to get his breath back for a moment and then entered the four-digit code into the keypad; the buzzing sound that resulted indicated that the code was still good and that the door was now open. He pushed his way inside and crept forward, scanning the corridor for any signs of staff members.

Trey stood outside the rear entrance to the contact room. He glanced up the hall to ensure that nobody was coming and placed his ear against the cold, glossed surface of the door, trying to hear what was going on inside. The contact room was L-shaped, with doors at either end so that families could be brought in from one end and children from the other. This way, if the meeting went very badly, the two parties could be ushered away in separate directions with the minimum amount of fuss. Trey hoped that Colin and the visitor claiming to be his uncle were at the other end, and the lack of any voices through the door he was listening at seemed to confirm this. He pushed very gently against the metal hand plate, holding his breath and grimacing up at the hydraulic damper at the top of the door that hissed as he pushed against it. Slipping through the small gap that he had created, he entered the room as swiftly and silently as he could, relieved this time when the damper did its job properly and gently brought the door to a close without a sound. He’d guessed correctly – this end of the room was empty – and he silently made his way to the corner of the L so that he could listen in on what was being said.

Colin was in the middle of his usual welcome speech in which he recounted facts about the number of children that the home had helped and how proud he was to be part of such a worthwhile establishment.

Unable to resist a peek at the mysterious visitor, Trey dropped down on to his haunches so that he could peer around the corner with one eye, certain that he would not be spotted if he kept as low as possible.

The visitor stood with his back to Trey and appeared to be admiring the view of the garden through the French windows off to his left while Colin prattled on. Wendy was also in the room, leaning against the wall just inside the far entrance and trying to distance herself from the scene as much as possible. She played with a loose strand of her hair, curling and uncurling it around her index finger between casting furtive looks at the stranger.

‘. . . for the delay, but we’ve had a minor crisis that needed to be sorted out and weren’t expecting any visitors. Mr . . . ?’ said Colin, extending his hand in greeting and walking towards the man in the centre of the room.

Trey noted the way that the care worker’s fingers wilted as they extended from his outstretched palm and instinctively knew that Colin Wallington’s handshake would be a limp, impotent affair.

The man in the grey suit turned round to face Colin for the first time. He was a little over six feet tall and was athletically built beneath his well-cut suit. His head was perfectly shaven; the pale dome reflecting back the light from the tungsten bulbs set into the ceiling above. A black and grey neat goatee beard framed his wide mouth. Despite the low level of lighting in the room, he wore black sunglasses that obscured his eyes and reflected back a smoky image of his surroundings as well as the man standing in front of him. Trey guessed that he would be considered handsome by women, and a quick glance over at Wendy’s expression as she stared at the tall visitor seemed to confirm this suspicion.