Someone Else's Son (32 page)

‘You say
us
, Dayna. Do you think you were hated before you knew Max?’

‘God, yeah,’ she replied. ‘The same people hated us both. In fact, it was almost as if poor Max inherited everyone who hated me just by being my friend. He’d not been at the school long. I’d had a few years for everyone to, well, you know . . . know I was different and didn’t fit in. A freak.’ She spat out the last word in verbal self-harm.

‘Why?’ asked Jess. ‘Why do the other kids pick on you?’

Dayna didn’t need time to think of her reply. ‘Because I look different. I’m not in a gang and I’m not a chav or an emo or whatever. Everyone likes to label everyone else.’

‘So what are you?’ Jess asked.

Dayna shrugged. ‘I’m just . . . me.’ She reddened as fast as she said it.

Dennis cut in. ‘Did Max fit into a group? Was he in a gang?’

‘God, no. He’d come from this weird school. It was a private one and cost a fortune. I don’t think he told many people, but word got out anyway and that was, like, you know, petrol on the fire.’ Dayna swallowed. ‘He was good at lessons and stuff. He tried to work hard, but it’s a zoo, not a school.’

‘So would you say he was a loner?’ Dennis asked.

She nodded. ‘We just wanted to be left alone.’

‘What made Max happy, Dayna? What did he like to do for fun?’ It was necessary to build a full picture of Max. He couldn’t press Carrie for details – he didn’t honestly think she was capable of answering. Dayna would have to do for now. Numerous detectives and officers were out in the field, interviewing, scouring, door-knocking, piecing together the events of Friday morning. He and Jess were best placed here for now, with Dayna, unravelling Max’s life bit by bit. Something, his inner voice said, didn’t add up. He just wasn’t sure what yet.

‘He liked going down to the . . . he liked doing puzzles and stuff.’

Dennis noted the sudden change of tack, but didn’t pounce. ‘What kind of puzzles? Sudoku?’

‘No. Not puzzles, exactly. More like competitions. He entered things.’

Dennis was surprised. ‘Did he win anything?’ Another reason for the boy to feel like a loser, he supposed.

Dayna shifted on her chair. She eyed up the packet of cigarettes and Jess pushed them across to her. It was a while before she spoke. ‘He never won anything. Maybe a pen once.’

Dennis nodded. Just as he thought. The kid just wanted some escape. ‘Was he into music or cars or gaming?’

‘Yeah. A bit. He read books, like me, and we went to the cinema sometimes. He cooked me a meal once. Pasta.’

Dennis wrote fast. He stared at the girl. She looked utterly dejected, as if her world had fallen apart, which, even compared to how it usually was, it had. ‘What did Max think of the gang culture in the area, Dayna? Was he ever pressured by local gang members to join?’

‘There were these kids on his dad’s estate. They used to hassle him when he went there. Not to join, but because he was dissing their territory by visiting his dad.’

Dennis rolled his eyes behind closed lids. It was all a mystery to him, yet he lived and breathed it every day. He suddenly had a huge need for Estelle and vowed he would call her later. ‘Did they ever hurt him?’

‘He had . . .’ Dennis could see how much the girl was suffering. Tears pooled in her eyes and she tipped back her head to restrain them. ‘He had a computer nicked once. He got beaten up. It was a present for me.’

‘A computer for you?’

‘Well, you know. Just a cast-off.’ Dayna reddened.

It figured, Dennis thought. Carrie would have no doubt thrown it away otherwise. ‘Anything else? Did he get gratuitously beaten up? You know, like for no reason.’

‘Yeah. It hurt him inside as much as it hurt his body. He suffered a lot.’

Not any more, Dennis thought. Jesus Christ. None of this could move quickly enough. ‘Did Max ever carry a knife?’ he asked.

It seemed an age before the young girl answered and Dennis wished he could read whatever was flashing at speed behind those dark eyes. ‘No,’ she whispered, almost as if she was in a trance. ‘No, he never did.’

 

Dayna wanted to run but her legs were paralysed. Someone had put lead in her boots or cut the tendons to her muscles. Her bones ached almost as much as her head and there was no way, after all those fags on the trot, that her lungs would power her at the speed she wanted to flee.

Damn that man. She leant her head on the loo wall. There was a window but it was high and too small to squeeze through. Why did she have to answer all these stupid questions? Over and over the same bloody stuff. Couldn’t they just drop it, leave it all alone? Max was dead. End of. None of this shit was going to bring him back.

‘Are you OK, love?’

It was that Jess woman again. She’d said she’d wait in the corridor but she must have come in when the toilet had flushed.

‘Yeah. Won’t be a sec.’ She pulled a length of loo roll off and blew her nose hard. Then she did it again. She went out of the cubicle and washed her hands.

‘I know it’s tough, but we had to do it. We’re finished now.’

‘Can I go?’

‘For now, yes. I’m going to drive you home.’

Adrenalin flooded Dayna’s body and powered up her muscles. She walked briskly to the door. ‘No need. I can walk. It’s not far.’

‘Are you . . .’

But Dayna didn’t hear the rest of what DI Britton had to say. She was already scooting past the desk sergeant and the latest trouble to be brought in – she thought she recognised the sullen youth as his drug-heavy eyes watched her pass – and she burst out into the spring evening as if she’d been given a second chance; as if she’d been set free.

Set free from what? she asked herself, as she forced her pace to quicken.

Dayna was off to the hut. She should probably pack it all up, give the stuff to charity. The last thing she wanted was the cops picking through the remnants of Max’s life. It was none of their business. She pressed her hands to her sides as a stitch gripped her, causing her to stop for a second, lean forward on her knees. There shouldn’t be pain, just from walking, should there? She stood upright and noticed the big dark car pulling up beside her.

‘Would you like a lift?’

Behind the dark glasses, behind the curtain of grief that hid the woman’s features, Dayna saw Carrie Kent through the open car window. She took off her glasses and forked them on her head, exposing eyes that were sunken, puffy and red. Her cheeks were hollow and without make-up and her lips thin and colourless. If she hadn’t spoken, even though her voice was a mere breath of its usual television tone, Dayna would not have recognised her.

‘Where to?’ she whispered. Any louder and she thought the woman might shatter. This was Max’s
mother
she was talking to. The pain in her stomach grew worse. A lift anywhere was better than walking feeling like this.

‘My house,’ she said. ‘Leah will drive us.’

Dayna glanced to the driver’s seat where another woman sat. It was somehow a soothing proposition, to be cocooned in Max’s world, to be taken care of by his mother in the big luxurious car. The shed could wait a while.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll come.’ She opened the heavy rear door and got in. The buckle on her boots scratched the cream leather of the seat. The pain in her belly eased a little.

‘I went to your house. Your mother told me that you were at the police station,’ Carrie said, half facing backwards.

‘Yeah,’ Dayna said. Her lungs were already burning for another smoke. The fags got her through, minute by minute. ‘They wanted to talk to me about what happened.’

‘So do I,’ Carrie confessed. ‘But let’s get home first.’ She turned round fully and met Dayna’s eyes.

Pure sadness, Dayna thought. She saw it in the mirror every day.

 

The first thing that struck Dayna wasn’t the opulence or the expensive gadgetry that allowed them access to the grand house, but that Max hadn’t ever mentioned the place or brought her here.

Dayna stared around in disbelief. Her mouth hung open. This was just the garage.

From inside the basement, Carrie pressed a series of remote controls and entered codes on keypads and they climbed up some white internal stairs. They were plastic and shiny and unlike anything Dayna had seen before. Almost white glass, she reckoned, hardly daring to place one boot in front of the other.

‘This way,’ Carrie said, and Dayna felt a hand gently on her back – the other woman, Leah, whoever she was. Probably a servant or something.

‘Bloody hell.’ Dayna couldn’t help the exclamation as they emerged into a vast white hallway that had another staircase spiralling up one side. Everything was made of white marble and other stone stuff and there was crazy furniture that wasn’t the right shape, yet seemed to hold huge vases and a massive display of perfect flowers in the brightest colours. Dayna reckoned they must be fake. ‘It’s different to my house,’ she said.

Carrie smiled vaguely and took off her jacket. She tossed it over the graceful swirl that marked the end of the huge staircase.

‘I mean, Max never said anything, you know, about all this.’

‘That’s why I want to talk to you, Dayna. To find out . . . things. About you and Max. He never mentioned you either, yet I get the impression you were close.’

They were in the kitchen, another homage to minimalism and purity with its glossy cupboards and sleek stone counters. The whole room was immaculate and immediately brought to Dayna’s mind the kitchen back home – but only because of the contrast. Their entire house usually smelt of fat from Kev’s chips and Dayna knew for sure there was a skim of it on the ceiling. Her gum had got stuck up there once in a silly game with Lorrell and, when she stood on a chair to peel it off, her fingers came away with a layer of green-orange grime. Her mother never bothered with cleaning.

‘Max was a good friend.’ Dayna suddenly felt giddy and wondered if she should sit down. There were a couple of stools on shiny legs that looked as if they would collapse if she put any weight on them. Instead, she gripped the stone worktop but then let go in case she left marks.

‘Were you boyfriend and girlfriend?’ Carrie asked. She had taken the lid off a kettle the likes of which Dayna had never seen – theirs was an old whistley thing that sat on the gas. This was like something from a spaceship.

Dayna shrugged. ‘I guess.’ She thought Carrie let out a little sigh but was unsure if it was from the effort of making tea – Leah had to take over as Carrie found the process too complicated in her state of mind – or because she was disappointed in her son’s choice of girlfriend. Dayna already realised that, compared to all this, the way Max lived, his other, secret side, she wasn’t a good catch at all. She felt dirty here and wondered if Max had felt the same way. He spent a lot of time at his dad’s place and the hut. ‘We snogged and that.’

Carrie closed her eyes and Dayna frowned. ‘He loved me.’

‘Did you love him?’

‘Yes,’ Dayna replied. ‘But...’ She trailed off, remembering who she was talking to. Just because she wasn’t on the telly and she wasn’t all dolled up and stomping about with a microphone didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to save it all up and use it on her show in the future. What had gone on between her and Max was private.

‘How did you meet?’ Carrie sat on one of the stools and indicated that Dayna should do the same.

‘At school. In English class. It was our favourite subject and we were in the same stream.’

‘I see.’

Carrie almost seemed surprised at this, Dayna thought, as if she didn’t know anything at all about what Max liked. Mind you, she thought again, she doubted that her own mother even knew which school she went to let alone had any idea what lessons she liked. ‘We’re good at it.
Were
good at it,’ she added, having no intention of setting foot inside school again.

‘Max went to a decent school once,’ the woman continued. ‘He should never have left.’

‘He’d probably still be dead.’ Dayna instantly regretted saying this. ‘What I mean is, some things happen anyway.’

‘Max always thought he knew best. Even when he was really little.’ She half laughed and Dayna thought this was a bit odd. She glanced around for an ashtray, supposing, really, that Carrie Kent would never smoke and she probably shouldn’t ask. Everything was so white.

‘He brought me nice food,’ Dayna said. ‘Leftovers and stuff like that.’ She had already spotted the tank-like refrigerator set within the cabinets and imagined Max standing there, choosing what to bring in for their feast at the hut or by the stream if it wasn’t raining. Smoked salmon, foie gras, hard-boiled duck eggs, fruit that she didn’t recognise that was both musty and sweet. They’d tasted and laughed, spat out and gorged, kissed and smoked.

‘He could have done anything, you know. Gone to Oxford, Cambridge, studied in the States.’

‘Did he want to?’ Dayna eyed the clear glass mug that Leah passed to her. It was filled with boiling water and had green leaves floating in it.

‘It’s not a matter of
wanting
to, is it?’

Dayna didn’t think that was much of an answer but admitted that she’d done things she hadn’t wanted in her life, so she kind of understood. ‘I have to look after my kid sister all the time.’ She tried a sip of the drink. It was minty and very hot. ‘And I don’t always want to do that.’

Carrie directly faced Dayna. The woman’s skin was as pale as her surroundings, framed by a frail halo of hair that hadn’t been brushed in a while. ‘Who did it, Dayna? For God’s sake, tell me who killed my son.’

Dayna swallowed and burnt her throat. She stared into the other woman’s eyes, feeling like one of her show guests. She understood exactly why they crumbled and spilt their deepest secrets. Even with Carrie Kent a long way from her best, she was still a force hard to ignore. Dayna stared at the floor.

‘I don’t know,’ she said quickly. ‘And that’s the honest truth. They were kids, like in a gang, and they had their hoods up and it happened so quickly. I just tried to help Max. Maybe I should have done more, but I was—’