The Nightmare Place (5 page)

Beside me, Chris coughed.

The room had fallen totally silent. I stepped away from the boards and joined him at the table, not apologising or even acknowledging the delay. Not caring, in fact, what anyone thought, including Drake, leaning there with his knotty little forearms and his expression of impatience.

No pressure
.

It wasn’t true.

Five

That evening, after work, I went to visit John.

It was a pleasure as well as a duty. John wasn’t my father, but he might as well have been, and a part of me actually thought of him that way – not that I’d ever admit it to him, of course. Increasingly, though, I’d started dreading these weekly visits. Dreading
seeing
him.

My mother died young, so I didn’t have the chance to watch her age properly, and I never knew my real father at all. The estate housing I grew up in was single-storey and ramshackle, frequently dirty and untidy, and from an early age I was often left alone. There would be times I’d wake up in the morning and find my mother passed out on the settee, empty cans of beer littering the carpet and the smell of weed still hanging in the air. Other times I’d wake up and she wouldn’t be there at all. And when she was elsewhere, I never had the remotest impression that she might be thinking about me, or worrying.

Despite all that, I loved her fiercely. My memories of her are nothing but fond. When she was around, she was the most attentive and caring person on the planet. I remember her as a young woman made old before her time: always unkempt, wearing tatty jeans and cardigans, and often – incongruously – a cheap crimson beret. Thinking about her as an adult, I notice an air of regret about her: the knowledge that her life had not gone the way she wanted, and that even on those reduced terms, she was failing to live it the way she ought to. I see the sadness of an inebriated woman dancing happily, clicking her fingers, in an almost empty pub on a sunny afternoon.

There are other memories, of course. I remember the men in drab grey suits who would turn up at our house. As a child, I couldn’t understand why my mother allowed them in; she clearly didn’t want them there. I’d always know when they were coming, because she’d suddenly be far more present, and would enlist me in frantic cleaning exercises, usually pretending it was a game. When they arrived, I’d sit patiently beside her on the settee, and look at the men seated across from us, sad expressions on their faces. I’d notice the difference between them and my mother – that she would always try to look happy, even when really she was feeling sad and serious, while the men were the opposite.

I didn’t know why they were there, only that it had something to do with me and my mother, and whether we loved each other enough. Sometimes I’d cling to her arm while she talked to them, her voice more careful and controlled than I was used to. There was no raucous laugh; it was as though a dial had been turned down inside her. She’d place a reassuring hand on my own.
Everything’s going to be okay.
And that was the kind of life we had, looking back. Never really okay, but always going to be.

I think it’s to her credit that I didn’t notice those things until I was an adult. Whatever flaws she stumbled so frequently over, she tried to do her best, and she loved me, and I loved her. In my head, I try to keep her frozen at that age, barely older than I am now. There are later images, of course, as the carefree young woman who liked to drink and should probably have cut down transitioned into the woman who needed to, and then the woman for whom it was too late. The woman lying in her final bed, in the hospice, as small and thin as a child. But I try not to think about that. The point is, I never got to see her age.

Not so with John.

He still lived in the same house he always had: a slim terrace only a short distance from the estate I’d grown up on. The road sloped steeply upwards, and John’s house was close to the top, so that, standing in the overgrown front garden, you could see the spread of cheap houses stretching out in the distance.

Tonight, his house key in my hand, I stood there for a moment, looking down at it. From this far away, the haphazard sprawl of tiny buildings and warren of pathways looked peaceful and still. The sky above was pale lilac, with threads of cloud that appeared dull green in the slowly dying light. I tried to pick out the waste ground, and eventually found it. There were tiny figures crossing it: children, I imagined. At this distance, they seemed to be dissolving and rolling rather than walking.

As always, the sight of it made me think about the nightmare.

Although I had a key to John’s house, I knocked hard before unlocking the front door, then called out his name as I let myself in.

‘It’s only me.’

The hallway smelled musty, and my shoes scuffed up an itch of dust from the threadbare fuzz of the carpet. There was another odour, as well, which I found hard to place at first. It smelled like cats, I decided finally, but John didn’t have any pets.

He came slowly out of the front room to meet me. These days, he walked with a shuffling gait, as though he was a puppet on strings that were growing increasingly slack and could no longer lift his knees properly. Sometimes he looked as though he was trying to run on the spot. A proud man, he continued to insist he was fine – and perhaps he could still manage for now. But we both knew full well that the day was approaching when he would not be able to.

‘Zoe.’

I steeled myself as he emerged into the hallway, and it almost wasn’t enough. It had only been a week since my last visit, yet he looked months older than he had then. He was dressed in a dark suit a few sizes too big for him. Every time I saw him, the suit seemed a little looser, and yet he never bought a smaller size, as though he couldn’t quite believe – or refused to admit to himself – that his body was diminishing. But it was. Former detective John Carlton looked every one of his seventy-three years, and more besides.

It didn’t feel so long ago that I’d first met John – when I was fifteen, under arrest, and sitting on the wrong side of a desk from the tired but concerned man tasked with facing down my clever, cocksure teenage attitude. It
wasn’t
that long ago. But the difference between that smart, neat sergeant, still youthful despite the widow’s peak and worry lines, and the man before me now was stark.

I swallowed the emotions and walked to meet him, embracing him carefully. His body felt like a fragile cage of bones.

‘Hello, John. It’s good to see you.’

‘And you.’ He placed his hands on my arms; they were shaking slightly. ‘What a lovely surprise to see you.’

Surprise
. It worried me, that, because it wasn’t like I didn’t call in every week. Over the past months, I’d begun to notice that his mind was deteriorating. Increasingly he seemed to remember less, and sometimes I could see him grasping for thoughts and words, not always finding what he was searching for. He’d just shake his head:
no, it’s gone
. It was as though memories were being packaged away as he prepared to move out of his life altogether.

I didn’t want to accept that.

‘Just thought I’d stop by to bother you,’ I said. ‘You know – the way you used to pester me, all those years ago.’

That brought a smile.

‘Well, that’s nice of you. Come through.’

I followed him patiently into the front room. The carpet here was beige and faded, and the fabric on the armchairs was worn away. Sitting on them was as comfortable as sitting on hard, bare wood. The coffee table was strewn with magazines and piles of unopened post, while bundles of old newspapers rested against one wall, below the closed front curtains.

It was always sad to see, because he’d been so fastidious and precise in the past – fussy, even. Old age had enforced untidiness upon him. It had actually seemed like the house of an old man from the beginning, as though he’d had it fixed and fitted in expectation of these later years, when he’d finally catch up with it. All that had really changed was that the three-bedroom property had become too large for him. But that was easily solved, I supposed, by closing a few doors and simply not opening them again. His living space shrinking alongside him.

‘Have a seat.’ John eased himself down into a chair. The movement caused him to wince; I knew he was increasingly having trouble with his legs. ‘I’ll make us coffee in a minute.’

‘I’ll do that,’ I said quickly. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘All right. But tell me how you’ve been first.’

‘Not great. I talked to victim five today.’

I updated him on the creeper case first of all. One thing I liked about talking to John was that there was never any need to spare him the details. However fragile and doddery he looked, he was not as vulnerable as he appeared; as police, he had seen it all. Unlike my friends, the partners who had passed through my life, John was a confidant who needed no protection from the harshness of what I did.

I finished with the chewing-out that Chris and I had received from Drake after the briefing.

‘Results, results, results.’ I made a yapping motion with my hand. ‘You can imagine. From the way he talked to us, you’d think we hadn’t been working flat out on this for weeks.’

John chuckled. ‘I remember Drake. Always a pipsqueak.’

‘He’d have thrown us off this ages ago if he thought it would make a difference. Deep down he knows nobody else is going to cover it any better. It’s crap.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s a load of crap.’

‘It’s politics, Zoe. It’s role-playing.’

‘Yeah, maybe. I’ve never been too good at that. Oh – and I got burgled, too.’

John leaned forward, suddenly serious. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh, don’t be. I just wish I’d got downstairs in time. Saw them, though. Drew MacKenzie. Do you remember him?’

He frowned, his forehead ridging with creases, attempting to attach the name to a face and a thread of memories. After a moment, he shook his head.

‘Sylvie’s little brother,’ I said. ‘You must remember Sylvie.’

I couldn’t help the hint of desperation in my voice. The
must
wasn’t so much a statement of fact as of hope. I was relieved when, after another few seconds of frowning, a light seemed to go on behind his eyes, and he nodded.

‘Oh yes, of course. Sylvie MacKenzie. I remember her. Friend of yours, wasn’t she?’

I grimaced. Not one I particularly wanted to think about.

‘Once.’

John sighed. ‘You try your best, but sometimes it isn’t enough.’

‘You can’t help everyone.’

He nodded, but it pained him, I knew, when one of his kids turned out bad. One of the hardest things about old age had been giving up the outreach activity he’d continued in his retirement. For a while, he’d served on various community groups and volunteered at drop-in centres, and still gone out on cold, dark evenings to speak to the children on the street corners. Freed from his uniform, he had probably been even more effective, but throughout his career he’d always concentrated on helping people in the community around him.

I knew I wasn’t the only child he’d rescued. As dramatic as that might sound, it was the truth. Without him, my life would have been very different. I doubt I would ever have escaped the gravitational pull of the place I was born into, the trajectory that was set for me.

But of course, that was another thing I’d never admit to him. It’s not just old men who are proud.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Well, we’ll pick him up.’

‘It’s a shame, but it’s necessary. If not your home, it would be someone else’s, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yeah. How about that coffee?’

He hesitated. ‘That would be nice. But …’

‘Don’t worry.’ I stood up. ‘You wait here; I’ll only be a second. It’s not like I don’t know where everything is.’

Out in the hallway, I noticed the smell again. I liked it even less now, but rather than investigating, I went through to the kitchen. The sink was full – days old, by the look of the water – and the worktops were a mess: crumbs, greasy smears of butter, crusted sauces and a flat archipelago of old coffee stains. A teaspoon was stuck to the counter near the kettle. Looking around, I realised I’d be doing some cleaning before I left, regardless of John’s protestations. This must have been the source of his reluctance to let me make the coffee. Embarrassment.

It made me feel a sudden burst of love for him. Not a duty of care, as such, but a kind of privilege.
Hand over hand
, he’d always told me, about his ventures into the community.
The government won’t do it. So we help each other. We keep pulling each other up
. So he had, and – for him at least – so would I.

For now, though, I found two clean cups and a teaspoon, put fresh water in the kettle, and clicked it on to boil. Then, when the sound was loud enough to obscure any other noises I was going to make, I went back out into the hallway.

There was a pantry off to the right, behind a glass door. It was filled with old bric-a-brac and not-quite-rubbish, things for which there wasn’t a proper place: shelves of muddy boots and rusty cooking equipment, dusty vases, and bottles that would never be recycled.

I opened the door quietly, and sniffed – then wrinkled my nose at the intensity of the smell. A moment later, I realised what it was.

Oh, John.

My heart went out to him. I closed the door and moved back through to the kitchen. We were going to have to have a difficult conversation, John and I. It had been coming for a long time. Perhaps we should have had it before now.

There was no way I could mention the pantry, not directly. I finished making the coffee and put the teaspoon in the sink, then took the cups through. I put his down on the small table to one side of his chair, and sat down opposite.

‘John,’ I said gently. The expression on his face was almost unbearable. He knew that I knew. ‘I want you to be honest with me, okay? Are you having trouble getting up the stairs?’