Mind the Gap (7 page)

She didn’t tell him that. Not yet. But she wondered about Harry. If he heard them, maybe he saw them too.

“So, echoes?” she said.

“Like memories,” Cadge said. “The city’s memories; something like that.”

They fell into step together, more cautiously this time, making their way deeper beneath London.

“Not ghosts?”

His eyes widened a little. “No, not ghosts.”

“Why not?”

Cadge glanced away. “’Cause I’m afraid of ghosts.”

“Just echoes, Cadge,” she said, and she sensed Cadge more at ease beside her. It felt strange, her trying to calm him, but though she seemed to hear and see much more, she could not find it in herself to be frightened. There was something about the visions she’d just seen, a sort of sad innocence, that perhaps had a little to do with the old times they were from.

“Hear ’em now and then,” he said. “That’s all. Now and then.”

“So let’s keep them between us for now, yes?”

Cadge turned to her and smiled, and she saw his pleasure at their complicity.

“All right by me,” he said. “Besides, there’s plenty else to be scared of down here. Ask Harry to tell you about the Hour of Screams sometime.”

Jazz frowned. “What’s that?”

“Told ya, ask Harry. Don’t even like to talk about it myself.” He shivered theatrically, to make sure she got the point. But then he smiled. “We’d best get moving.”

Jazz shook her head in amusement. “You are so odd.”

Cadge offered a courtly bow, grinning, and then they walked on. Rats scurried out of their way, avoiding the torchlight. Now and then they heard the rumble and rattle of a train in the distance, like the Underground grumbling in eternal hunger. A wind pushed through the tunnel from ahead of them, carrying stale scents of dust and despair. Jazz had always sensed that down here, every time she’d traveled somewhere with her mother.
London has more than its share of sadness,
her mother had said once.
Like an old person, an old city can sometimes get wistful and melancholy.

Old city,
Jazz thought.
That’s for sure.
She sniffed the breeze and thought of so many people dead and gone, and the sadness of growing toward death.

Her mother had been forty-four years old when she died.

Jazz had been down beneath for over a month, but still she searched for news of her mother’s death. Harry made it his duty to keep tabs on what was going on aboveground, and every day one of the lost kids would return from an excursion with a newspaper, bought or nicked. Harry read them, then left them stacked beside one of the storage cupboards, ready to be used to light the occasional fire they had when the tunnels grew cold. Jazz had been looking through these papers, and nobody had interrupted her. They all knew what she was searching for.

So far, nothing.

No mention of the Uncles in their black BMWs. No reports of the bloody death scene in their house, no stories about the dead mother and the missing daughter who was yet to be found. Nothing. A blank, as though what had happened was so far below the normal surface of things that nobody knew.

“
Someone
has to know,” Jazz said. Cadge was sitting beside her, as usual, watching as she scanned the discarded copy of the
Times
she’d picked up from the station platform. “Someone has to know
something.
”

“From what you said, lots of people know stuff,” he said. “Just that the ones that know don’t wanna tell the papers.”

She turned another page and read some more old news. Everything here described events happening in another world, and she could not find it in herself to care about another rise in inflation, a minor royal’s indiscretion with a pop star, or the latest record-breaking celebrity divorce settlement. None of that mattered. None of it ever had. Her mother had told her that, and it was her
mother
who mattered, and between these pages of cold dark print there was nothing concerning her mother.

Up there, her mother’s murderers still walked free.

She had burned with the injustice of things since spying that initial smear of blood on her mother’s bedroom door handle. But now, for the first time, Jazz’s thoughts were clouded with revenge.

They celebrated that evening with hot dogs cooked over an open fire, while Harry Fowler relayed a tale of his time as a gentleman. Exaggerated and ridiculous—travels in Africa, hunting tigers in India, and carrying out expeditions to find the Yeti in the Himalayas—but the kids were all entertained, and Jazz found herself caught up in the banter and enjoyment.

But that night she dreamed of her mother, as an idea rather than a real person. In her dream, Harry sat her down one day and broke a terrible truth.
Jazz girl, pet, you’ve been down here with us forever,
he said.
You were born down here and you’ll die down here. The upside is just where we go to hunt tigers.

She woke up with a start and cried in the dark, vowing to never let the memory of her mother fade away.

Three days after her first nick, Jazz went back up with Cadge, Stevie, and Hattie.

“Money’s all good and nice, pets,” Harry said, “but our United Kingdom needs plenty more besides. There’s stuff money can’t buy, but luckily it’s not just pockets our hands can worm their way into.” Everyone listened, but he was speaking to only Jazz.

They caught the Tube to Covent Garden and parted company before the station exit. Stevie and Hattie went their separate ways, and Jazz watched Stevie disappear quickly into the crowds. For someone so striking, he hid well. She wanted to say good-bye, wish him luck, touch his hand, and try to catch a smile from him. But during the entire Tube journey, he had sat opposite her and stared over her head through the dark window. Never once had his eyes flickered down to meet her own. And in his feigned disinterest, she wondered whether there was something to find.

Time will tell.
Her mother had said that, using it as a full stop after telling her stories about the Uncles, and other people, and what the future might hold for her.
Time will tell.
And it certainly had.

Cadge went with Jazz, and the two of them browsed shop windows, chatted, and laughed, keeping one eye on the time. There was a place to be and a time to be there, and everything was leading up to that.

Cadge seemed even more ebullient than ever. Once or twice he touched Jazz’s hand, blushing and looking away as he laughed at something she said. He carried an outwardly cheeky confidence, all bluster and defiance, but it was obvious that there was a deeper side to him that was both vulnerable and delicate. In the beginning, his attentions had made her feel awkward, but now she was flattered. Still, she did her best to temper her response. She liked Cadge—he had a good heart, and she believed he could be a very good friend—but there was an age difference that she could not shake from her mind. She was still all but innocent of the opposite sex, but she knew enough to realize that Cadge was just a boy. So while he touched her hand and exuded an image of togetherness, she thought of them more as brother and sister.

Jazz did not like facing out into the street. She felt exposed. There were eyes upon her, and she expected an Uncle to emerge from the crowd at any moment and bury a knife in her gut. They’d go for Cadge too, of course, and drag him into some shop doorway, and the last thing she’d see would be the Uncle’s face pressed up close to hers, the last thing she’d smell would be his garlic breath, and he’d pant in excitement as her blood pulsed over his hand.

Her murder would be quick and quiet, a brief disturbance in a street filled with everyone minding their own business. London was like that. So many people pressed so closely together, and the more people there were, the more alone she felt. Nobody seemed to pay attention to anyone out here. If the street was virtually deserted, passersby would nod a brief hello, maybe give a smile, and if there was only her and someone else, they’d pause for a chat. But in crowds like this, everyone kept to themselves. The more people there were, the less human they seemed to be.

So she looked in shop windows and studied the reflections of the street behind her. Cadge nattered on, pointing out things in the window displays—CDs here, clothes there, books and shoes and sexy lingerie—but Jazz’s eyes were always searching beyond these things. Was that a man in a black suit staring at her back from across the road? She shifted sideways, and no, it was just the shadow thrown by a slowly closing coffee-shop door. They walked to another shop, and Jazz looked past the display of hats and handbags at the reflection of a man standing motionless behind her. Cadge made some quip about Hattie not being here, and Jazz lowered her head and looked at the reflection. Still not moving, still staring across the road, his immobility in such a bustling street marked him.

Like picking a scab, the urge to turn was impossible to resist. But the man was only a mannequin placed on the pavement outside a clothes shop. Its arm was raised, finger pointing at her accusingly. In its blank pink face she saw a hundred expressions she did not like.

Someone nudged into her and passed by without apologizing.

Windows lined the buildings above her, any one of them home to an enemy.

“Cadge, let’s get a drink,” she said. “Got half an hour yet.”

“Sure!” He grabbed her hand and headed for a newsagent’s stall, but she held back and nodded across the street.

“Coffee,” she said. “Somewhere inside.”

“Oh.” He looked grave for a second, then smiled and nodded. As they dodged traffic across the street, he held her around the waist and leaned in close. “It was like this for me the first few times back up,” he said.

“Like what?” Jazz asked. They reached the pavement and negotiated the equally busy streams of human traffic.

Cadge looked up at the ribbon of gray sky between rooftops. “Too exposed.”

She felt a rush of affection for Cadge then, and she opened the coffee-shop door and motioned him in first.

Harry always sent them up with some money. Jazz had a cappuccino and Cadge a milk shake, and they drank them quickly.

“So what’s your story, Cadge?” she asked. “I feel so selfish. Things are bad for me, but I’ve never asked about you or any of the others, and that’s bad too.”

“Don’t feel guilty,” he said over the top of his glass, and she sensed a maturity in him then, something that belied his outward image. He suddenly reminded her of herself at that age. “My story ain’t too much fun to tell either.”

Jazz sipped her coffee and glanced around the busy coffee shop. Everyone in their own world, nobody looking at them, and she no longer felt so out of place. She glanced at her watch. “We’ve got time.”

“Well…” He sucked up more milk shake through his straw, then licked his lips. “To be honest, it sounds like a really bad soap. ’Cept it ain’t. It was real lives ruined, and no one to watch but me. See…I came home from school one day and found my dad and auntie…you know. Doing it. Thought they hadn’t heard me, but as I was creeping out, Dad ran downstairs an’ caught me. Gave me the beatin’ of me life. Never was one to hold back with his fists, my dad. So he beat me, and my auntie came downstairs without clothes on, tried to stop ’im, and he hit her too. Just smacked her one in the eye and she fell down, all naked and that. Mum came home later—she’d already heard what had ’appened from her sister—and she and Dad had a row. Real screaming, shouting match right in front of me, while I held a cold flannel against my mouth and cheek where he’d hit me. I thought he’d hit her too, but he didn’t, and then she ran away. Just…left.” He shook his head, looking down at the scarred timber table, as though searching for clues to his mother’s whereabouts in the scratched names.

“What about your dad?”

“Kicked me out. Said he’d never wanted me, I’d ruined his life, and told me to piss off an’ ruin someone else’s.”

“Fucking hell, Cadge.”

He grinned. “Told you. Not much fun.” He noisily sucked up the dregs of his drink, and a few eyes turned their way.

“Just fucked-up adults, Cadge, that’s all. They didn’t mean it, I’m sure.”

“Maybe not Mum,” he said. “Maybe not her.” He seemed to drift away for a time. Jazz let him. She finished her drink and scanned the street outside. Tourists, office workers—she could tell them apart with ease—and she spent a couple of minutes picking out people who’d have fat wallets. She seemed to be a natural at this thieving lark. Her mum had always told her to be observant, cautious, secretive.

She gasped and closed her eyes, catching a whiff of perfume that reminded her of so much.
Waking from nightmares and she’s there for me, ready to calm and soothe…Arriving home from school and she gives me a kiss, and I can always sense her relief that I’m okay…Passing her bedroom in the morning, seeing her staring into the mirror, smelling that perfume she always used and feeling both contented and sad…

“What is it?” Cadge asked. His hand closed around her upper arm, warm and protective.

Jazz opened her eyes. “Beautiful,” she said. “Perfume my mum always wore.” She glanced around and saw a tall, smart woman just sitting down at a table. Perhaps she had a daughter too, and perhaps her daughter would not appreciate her fully until she was gone.

“Beautiful,” Cadge said. “That’s something to hold on to, Jazz.”

She nodded. “It is. Come on, let’s go.”

“Yeah.” He slipped from the stool and grabbed her hand, and Jazz gave him a brief squeeze. He beamed. “Yeah! This’ll be fun.”

They exited the shop and turned left, and the crush of pedestrians forced Cadge to let go of her hand. Jazz weaved through the people, head down but eyes always looking forward.

The chemist was on a corner at the T-junction of two streets. A pub took up the opposite corner, one of those old London boozers with leaded stained-glass windows and history oozing from every glazed brick. There was not quite so much bustle here, and a woman smiled thinly at Jazz as she walked by.
What does she see?
Jazz thought. She’d come topside that morning wearing nondescript jeans, a baggy T-shirt, and a denim jacket, the clothes worn but not tatty.
Why did she smile?
Jazz turned and watched the woman walking away, and Cadge frowned a question.

“Nothing,” Jazz said.

“Calm down,” Cadge said. “You know how it’ll go. Take it easy. This is what I’m good at. Just follow my lead.” With those few words, Cadge took charge. He glanced at his watch, listened for the sound he was waiting for—raised voices—and then walked past Jazz and approached the shop.

Timing was crucial, and Jazz marveled at how perfectly it flowed.

Hattie ran from the shop, screeching and scattering packets and bags behind her: toothpaste, throat lozenges, corn plasters, and sun cream. She darted straight across the road and pelted down the street, waving a bag over her head.

A man shouted in the shop, a deep, angry roar, and then Stevie Sharpe leaped from the door. He stood there looking around for a few seconds, eyes skimming past Cadge, pausing briefly on Jazz, and passing on. His long hair swung as he spun around and saw Hattie disappearing along the street.

A man appeared beside Stevie wearing the white coat of a pharmacist, and Jazz froze.
He’s caught!
she thought.
He should have run faster, shouldn’t have looked around for us, shouldn’t have looked at
me!