Deadly Virtues (17 page)

He felt his eyes grow hot on her smooth, nicely brought-up, and, above all,
clean
face—just a touch of makeup, long fair hair tied back neatly, wouldn’t Mummy be proud, bet she’s got a photo on the fireplace of Plodette in her lovely blue uniform and kick-ass hat—and somehow it mattered to him, more than making a fool of himself, more than making himself memorable to a police officer, which was not generally recommended for people in Saturday’s position, that he jolt that smug self-confidence, that inbred knowledge of her own worth that informed her view of how the world worked. Maybe it worked like that for people like her, girls with nice accents and ponies and foreign holidays, but most of the world was more like him than it was like her and the least she could do was
bloody well recognize the fact
!

“Lady,” he said roughly, “who the hell do you think you are? Who the hell do you think
I
am—Little Orphan Annie? Do you think that’s all I need—a bit of motivation? That a Christmas cracker motto’s all it’ll take to turn me into a model citizen?” He gave a bleak laugh that made him sound far older than his sixteen years.

“I am not like you. Trucker and his crew, they’re not like you. We don’t do things because there’s a good reason for it. We do things because we can—because you can’t stop us. We take things, and scare people, and hurt people, because you can’t stop us. Most of the time you can’t even catch us, and when you do, the worst that happens is we get a warm bed and an extra meal every day for six months.

“I’m trash,” he spat. “We’re all trash. You know what makes us strong? Knowing it. Knowing we were born trash, and we’ll die trash, and everything between is trash as well. Knowing that nothing you can do to us will make it any worse.”

“And that nothing you do will make it any better,” said Hazel softly. “That’s what you think, isn’t it? Not that you’re strong, but that you’re too weak to make things any better for yourself. And you don’t try because the only thing that would be worse than staying where you are would be trying to leave and failing. As long as you don’t try, you can tell yourself there’s no alternative. But if you tried—if you pulled yourself far enough out of the gutter to see where the road leads—and then slipped back, you’d never again have the comfort of thinking that way. You’d know that I’m right. That if you tried hard enough, you might succeed.”

The boy blinked at her. He was used to the blame-free approach of well-meaning social workers who’d been taught that poverty is a misfortune, which it certainly is, and largely beyond the ability of the victim to change, which Hazel had been taught it was not. Now that she had his full attention, she pressed home her point.

“
Hard
is the operative word. You want something in this world, you have to work for it, and I don’t think that’s a concept you’re entirely familiar with. Taking, yes; being given, maybe; earning, not so much. But you’re worth more than this, and that’s how you get it. I’m not here to motivate you. Self-respect should be motivation enough.”

Saturday stared at her in astonishment. It was like being savaged by a kitten. He’d thought she was soft and fluffy. He’d thought to bring a blush of shame to her middle-class cheek, and instead he felt himself growing hot and awkward. “You know nothing about it,” he mumbled resentfully.

“Of course I do,” Hazel retorted briskly. “I see it every day. I see more than you do—I also see the people who start off with nothing and end up with something. I’ll tell you something you don’t know. You’re one of the people who could do it. I don’t think Trucker is, I don’t think any of his crew are, but you are. You’re smarter and you’re tougher.”

A part of him didn’t want to believe her. “I’m the same as them.…”

“No, you’re not. While they were kicking nine bells out of a man on the ground, you were looking for a way to stop it. You didn’t have to do that. You stuck your neck out doing it. You did it because you didn’t like what was happening and you were willing to take a risk to stop it. Take another risk. Stop”—she looked him up and down, critically—“this.”

The others weren’t like this. They brought you soup at Christmas, and new socks and little homilies, but they didn’t tell you that, essentially, it was your own fault you were living like this. That you could change it if you tried. Of course, new socks only lasted so long.

“Where do you live?”

“Up the Flying Horse.” He indicated the direction of the estate with a wary jerk of his head.

“With family?”

“In a squat.”

“With friends, then.”

“I told you, I don’t—”

“Have any friends,” she said, finishing his sentence impatiently. “Except that you have. You’ve got at least two. Like it or not, I’m one. And the other”—Hazel’s eyes narrowed as a train of thought that should probably have been shunted into a siding for inspection first went barreling through the points—“would probably like to meet you again, would like to thank you, and might be persuaded to make lunch for the three of us.”

“I don’t need feeding up, either,” growled Saturday, as if there was something patronizing in the suggestion.

“Maybe you don’t need to eat,” said Hazel, ignoring the testimony of his gaunt young body, “so much as he needs to cook. And I need the company of people who aren’t police officers. Come on, the car’s this way.”

He’d been right about one thing: she’d been nicely brought up. She resisted the urge to spread newspapers before letting him onto the front seat. “If we’re going to be friends, we should probably know each other’s names. I’m Hazel.”

“Saturday,” he responded in a low voice.

She looked surprised. “Really?”

He scowled. “No, not really. It’s a street name.”

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Like Acacia Avenue?”

The boy grinned and leaned back in his seat with his hands laced behind his head. Unaccountably he was starting to feel comfortable in this woman’s presence. “My name’s Saul Desmond. My family’s Jewish, so the kids at school called me ‘Excused Saturdays.’ All right? Now, are we going to eat or what?”

CHAPTER 16

T
HEY ARRIVED AT
the house in Highfield Road as Ash was letting himself in. Hazel lowered her window. “Everything all right?”

He hardly looked surprised anymore to see her. “Fine. Though Detective Inspector Gorman had no idea what Mickey Argyle might want with me, either.”

“Nye Jackson was right, then—they were Argyle’s goons?”

Ash nodded. “DI Gorman called them ‘known associates.’ I picked them out of some photographs he showed me.” Belatedly, he noticed that she was not alone. “Er…”

“Yes,” said Hazel, getting out of the car and beckoning her passenger. “This is Saul. Also known, apparently, as Saturday. You have actually met.”

There was a silence that stretched to perhaps a minute. Long enough for Hazel to wonder if she’d done the right thing bringing the boy here. Long enough for Saturday to wonder if he should run. Even long enough for him to remember that on the other side of that door was a dog with the speed of a greyhound and the jaws of a mantrap, so that a head start of anything less than about a quarter of an hour wasn’t worth taking. He stood his ground. But his eyes were wary and his body tense.

Finally Ash said quietly, “Yes, I remember.”

Saturday still didn’t know if he was in for a meal or a thrashing. “I done my best, mister. I’m sorry you got hurt, but it wasn’t my fault.”

“They were your friends.”

“No. They weren’t. I haven’t got…”

Hazel was making
Don’t let’s go there
gestures behind his head. “Gabriel, can we go inside? I don’t like you hanging around out here. Just in case someone’s watching.”

He hesitated a moment longer, then opened the door. “Come in.” And, after the briefest pause: “Both of you.”

The dog was waiting in the hall. Hazel—and probably also Saturday, though he was too proud to show it—experienced a moment of concern, because dogs aren’t sophisticated thinkers and if she associated the boy with the violence in the park, things could quickly get unpleasant.

She gave no warning signals. No growling, the curtains of her lips drawn back from the scimitar teeth, no lifting of the hackles along her smooth back. She stood four square at the end of the hall, regarding the visitor steadily, both with her gold-rimmed eyes and with the constant twitching of her nose. Then she waved her tail, just once, and everyone relaxed.

“Come into the kitchen,” said Ash. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

“Actually,” said Hazel, following him, “I could murder something to eat. If you’ve nothing in, I’ll fetch fish and chips.”

Ash looked at her, then at the boy, then at Patience. “There’s stuff in the freezer.”

What was in the freezer was mostly fish and chips, too. Ash cooked with immense concentration, as if even at this modest level entertaining was a forgotten skill. He’d eaten off trays for so long, he couldn’t find a tablecloth.

Hazel found one buried in the airing cupboard, shook out the creases, and threw it cheerfully across the kitchen table. “That’s better. Plates, glasses, cutlery—have you enough for four?”

Ash stared at her blankly, and when she realized what she’d done, she colored to the roots of her hair. It was his fault—he’d got her talking like something out of The Famous Five! The dog
was only a dog and didn’t warrant a table setting
.

“Anything to drink?” Saturday asked hopefully.

“You’re too young to drink,” said Ash disapprovingly, and unrealistically, and Hazel jerked a thumb at the kitchen tap.

“Adam’s ale.”

Despite the awkwardness it was—nice. Eating together. For all of them, for different reasons. For Ash, because he didn’t get much company. For Saturday, because he didn’t get much food. And for Hazel, because today she desperately needed a success of some sort, and this was better than nothing. It had been a good idea and it reassured her that her instincts had not entirely gone AWOL.

Afterward she made Saturday help her load the dishwasher. It hadn’t been used in a while. A dog and a man with no appetite don’t produce much washing-up. As she worked she said over her shoulder, “Had Dave Gorman anything useful to suggest?”

Ash shook his head. “He didn’t offer any suggestions. He just asked questions.”

Hazel thought he seemed low. Whether it was the shock sinking in, or disappointment because for a moment he’d thought something good was happening to him, or even resentment that she’d brought to his house one of the gang responsible for his involvement with Jerome Cardy, she had no way of knowing. Or maybe it was none of the above. Maybe this was normal for him—not so much peaks and troughs of emotion, more troughs and deeper troughs.

She tried to reassure him. “That’s his job. He will get to the bottom of this, you know. He’ll find out what Mickey Argyle is up to, and whether it’s anything to do with … what happened at Meadowvale. You’re in good hands.”

Ash shrugged. “At least he listened to me. Of course, having a reporter as an eye witness couldn’t hurt.”

“Mickey Argyle?” Saturday had abandoned the washing-up and was looking at Hazel with an air of casual curiosity totally betrayed by the sharpness of his gaze. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

Hazel frowned. “You know Mickey Argyle?” But of course he did. Trucker’s gang and all the wasted youth hanging around the street corners of the Flying Horse were the bottomless reservoir from which he tapped the help he needed. They ran errands for him, kept watch for him; the more promising among them ended up on the staff. If Mickey Argyle was interested in Gabriel Ash, Saturday probably knew. Or, if he didn’t know, could probably find out.

Hazel gave a somewhat disingenuous shrug. “We don’t really know. Some men wanted to talk to Mr. Ash. They were interrupted and drove off before they said very much, but someone thought they worked for Mickey.”

“If Mickey wants to talk to him, they’ll be back,” said Saturday darkly.

“I expect so,” said Hazel casually. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything?”

The boy shook his head quickly. She thought it was the truth. He’d been surprised to hear Argyle’s name mentioned.

“What about Trucker?”

“What
about
Trucker?”

“Would it be worth asking him?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” said Saturday forcibly. “It wouldn’t be worth you asking him because he wouldn’t tell you anything. And it wouldn’t be worth me asking him because he’d rip my frigging head off!”

“Fair enough,” said Hazel mildly. “I just thought you and Trucker must hear a lot of stuff. And you probably know these people better than I do. Mickey Argyle. Robert Barclay.”

Somewhat mollified, Saturday sniffed. “Barking Mad Barclay. That’s what everyone calls him.”

“That I knew. But not till after I tried to stop him head-butting the war memorial.”

“That was you?” The boy’s eyes widened, though possibly more in astonishment than admiration. He barked a little chuckle. Hazel could hear nights on a cold street in his chest. “Jesus, you really are new in town, aren’t you?”

“That’s me,” she agreed wryly. “Everything to learn, and only till yesterday to learn it in. Like, why would anyone want to nut ten tons of granite?”

Across the room Ash sat still. He didn’t know much about angling, but he knew you need to keep very still when there’s a fish nosing at your bait. He’d only just realized Hazel had a line out. With luck the fish hadn’t realized it yet.

Saturday gave the glassy grin of a child who’s coming to realize that what seemed like really good fun to him isn’t striking the adults in the same way. He turned back to the dishwasher. “Trucker’s idea of a joke,” he mumbled.

And you don’t yank until you’re sure the hook has taken. “That was Trucker, too?” Hazel gave a light laugh. “Seems to me, if we knew where Trucker was holding his birthday party and locked the doors, we could put a stop to most of the mischief in Norbold.”

Saturday grinned at her again, back over his shoulder, happier now.

“Still—
how
?” Hazel wondered aloud. “I couldn’t make Barclay let me clean the cuts on his head. How did Trucker make him beat himself up?”