The One Safe Place (24 page)

Marshall didn't care—not on his own behalf. It was the implication that his parents had been found wanting, that it was their fault, he didn't like. When he stopped at the corner before his house to pat Loper's head as the dog bounded up to the costume designer's gate, he was glad nobody would be home for his feelings to be hidden from. He gave the warm hard short-haired scalp a last pat, then crossed the road beneath the emptily blue sky, a rectangle of which had invaded his parents' bedroom. He glanced over his shoulder only twice, as he inserted the first key and as he pushed the front door open. He stepped quickly into the vestibule and pulled the door after him, making sure the lock clicked into place. The inner door swung away from him before he could touch it—the displacement of air had moved it, of course—and set off the alarm.

He dumped his bag at the foot of the stairs and poked his key into the control panel, shutting off the alarm just as the siren raised its howl. He needn't be so nervous of it—it proved that nobody had broken into the house. He was opening the doors of all the downstairs rooms to admit more light and more sense of the house into the hall when he realised that there was a note from his mother on the pad slumped against the answering machine.
Gone to the shop. Phone there out of order. Call you as soon as I've spoken to your father. Don't worry, everything's fine.

Without that reassurance Marshall might have believed it was, and why shouldn't he still? The note didn't mean to remind him how alone he was in the house. He made to take the key out of the control panel, then left it there in case—in case of nothing in particular. Something which he didn't need to identify stirred in the sideboard as he hurried past the dining room to get himself a Coke from the refrigerator. As he pulled the tab above the sink, the can spat over the window, which he rubbed clean with a kitchen towel. The paper squeaked on the glass, the kitchen bin clattered like a plastic toy with a big dumb mouth as he trod on the pedal. He was heading back along the hall, telling himself not to check the video Ali had given him because he would only end up watching it through before he did his homework, when he saw the pad had obscured the fact that the machine had a message for him.

He twisted the switch and waited while the tape rewound. It appeared to be a long message—long enough to make him uneasy. The tape returned to zero, the mechanism emitted a series of clicks as it rearranged itself, and at last delivered its message. Only there was more than one: an order for books in an Irish accent so thick he thought at first it was meant as a joke, a call from his father which eventually proposed a meal at the Efes Kebab House, a reappearance by the Irishman. Marshall gathered his mother had rewound the tape only to that point so that his father could pick up the order. A beep separated the messages, but whoever had called next hadn't bothered to speak. Another beep, and Marshall wasn't sure if he heard breathing or just static. It might as well have been silence, and it lasted only a few seconds before being ousted by a call the tape had recorded weeks ago.

Marshall stopped the tape and set it to record and picked up his bag, then relinquished it while he dialled the shop in case the phone there had been fixed. A long mournful drone answered him. He carried his bag and the glass of Coke into the dining room and told the rattle in the sideboard to shut up, and spread his homework over the table, and wondered how long ago his mother had gone to the shop. Wondering that would only get mixed up with his math, which they called maths in Britain although it seemed to be the same amount, and he took several deep breaths to clear his head before he wrote down the first equation. He was inscribing an
x
under the ledge of a square root sign when a car door slammed outside the house.

It didn't sound like the Volvo or the Honda, but he thought it was parked directly outside. Maybe somebody had brought one of his parents home. He heard the clash of the gate, and footsteps on the path, heavy footsteps which belonged to neither of his parents. The footsteps halted, and without giving him a chance to think, the doorbell rang.

His chair jerked backward, digging its hind legs into the carpet and almost depositing him on his back as he jumped up. The contents of the sideboard trembled as he let go of the chair and ventured into the hall, as far as the front room. He inched his head around the doorframe until he could see through the window. Standing on the path was a policeman, and another was climbing out of the car beyond the gate.

The man on the path stepped back to survey the front of the house, holding his helmet against his chest, and caught sight of Marshall just as the boy considered dodging back. A number of suppressed expressions almost surfaced on the policeman's face before he raised his eyebrows and hooked a finger several times to indicate that Marshall should let him in. It must be about the videos again, Marshall thought, and instantly felt as though the one in his schoolbag had buried itself in his stomach. They couldn't require him to talk unless there was a lawyer present—unless his parents were. He made himself walk quickly to the vestibule, where he slipped the chain into its socket before opening the front door to the length of the chain.

Both men were just outside, the driver so close behind his colleague that they resembled a double image, especially since they had both removed their helmets. "Is your mother in, son?" the foremost policeman said.

The hair on top of his head was raising itself like turf that had been trodden on. Somehow that made Marshall more uneasy than his sky-blue gaze did—so uneasy that the only answer he could manufacture on the spot was, "I don't know. Why?"

"Come on, son, you know if your mother's in."

"Suppose I do?"

"Just get her for us, will you, there's a good lad."

"She'd want to know what it's about."

The policeman turned his head a fraction toward his colleague while keeping his gaze on Marshall. No communication which Marshall was able to identify had passed between them when the man in front said, "Look, son, don't make this harder than it has to be. Is she here or not?"

"What if she—" Abruptly it occurred to Marshall that besides whatever they wanted her for, there might conceivably be some English law which said he had to be a certain age before he was supposed to be left alone in the house. "How old do you think I am?" he said as nonchalantly as he could.

"Same age as mine, I'd say." For some reason this seemed to bother the policeman. "Now listen, son, do yourself and the rest of us a favour and give me a straight answer. This isn't easy for us."

"Then don't do it. Leave her alone."

The backup policeman leaned forward, narrowing his eyes as though composing his small face around the whisper he aimed in the other man's ear. "Maybe he thinks—you know, Operation Nasty."

The blue-eyed gaze flickered away from Marshall and returned to him. "Look—what's your name, son?"

Something like regret was hiding in his eyes and maybe under his blunt tone of voice. "Marshall Travis," Marshall said.

"Marshall. Well, Marshall, I want you to know we aren't after your mother. I mean, this has nothing to do with any police coming to your house before. We only want to talk to her. We've been to the University, and they told us she'd come home."

"She isn't here now."

"I'm glad we've got that sorted at least. Can you tell us where she is?"

Marshall imagined being left ignorant and even more anxious than now while they went to her. "I'll, I'll phone her and tell her you want her, but I'll need to tell her why."

"It's best if we do that, Marshall. Trust me, son, will you?"

Marshall thought of a way to make his mother sound protected. "She'll be with my dad."

"Whereabouts would that be, son?"

Though the question came from the usual speaker, his awkward gentleness seemed to emanate from both men, and it disturbed Marshall as much as having let himself be manoeuvred into a position where he was virtually bound to tell the police what they wanted to know. "I don't know the street names," he lied in a final attempt to maintain some control. "I'd have to take you there."

He sensed the police avoiding looking at each other. "Your mother mightn't want that just now, Marshall," the foremost said.

His colleague touched his elbow. "Shall I—"

The other policeman appeared to have only to glance at him to understand. "Better had."

As the driver hurried to the car the blue-eyed policeman took a step toward Marshall, fingering his lapel badge as though it was a secret sign that would admit him to Marshall's confidence. "Open the door properly, there's a good young feller. We won't come in unless you say."

Marshall saw the driver sit in the car and pick up a microphone from the dashboard. "Who's he calling?"

"Just to find out how things—we'll see."

Marshall felt and heard his own fingers rubbing his sweaty palms. The sensations were distanced from him by the questions which had begun to grind together in his skull and, though he struggled to prevent them, spill out of his mouth. "How do you know what my mother—why do you keep saying—how about my—
" He wasn't sure how much of this the policeman heard, but it felt like admitting too much. "I'm going to call them," he blurted.

The policeman reached for him. For a moment Marshall thought he meant to grab him across the chain, but the hand stopped in front of the policeman's chest, fingers spread and almost imperceptibly trembling. "Listen, Marshall, son—I'm sorry. You won't be able to."

That had to be true unless whatever was wrong at the shop had been fixed, but how could the policeman know? "Why?" Marshall said, a question which came out as little more than a breath.

There was a rattle from the police car as the driver replaced the microphone, and the blue-eyed policeman glanced at him. Marshall saw the driver close his eyes and open them as he shook his head from side to side once. The blankness of his small face lent him a resemblance to a crudely animated life-size doll. Marshall's left hand gripped the chain, the links digging into his fingers, the dull ache stinging with sweat. His other hand was rubbing its knuckles against the door as though to convince him something was solid. "Marshall, son, your father's," the blue-eyed policeman said, "been attacked."

Perhaps he hadn't paused between the words, but Marshall felt as if the world had, like a heart stopping. No words seemed likely to be able to struggle out of his stiffening mouth, and he began to fumble at the chain. "That's right, son, we're your friends, we're here to help you," the policeman said.

Marshall wasn't planning to let him in—he was planning to run if, as seemed likely, his emotions became too much for him. The door fell away from him, the chain slipped out of its slot and clanked against the doorframe, and Marshall bruised his shoulder against the door as the policeman placed a hand against it to prevent it from closing. The impact jarred speech out of Marshall as though it had wakened him. "He's not hurt, is he? I mean, not bad? How bad?"

He became aware that his face was jammed in the gap, the frame and the edge of the door trapping his cheeks. He didn't care, he only wanted to know. It didn't matter how old the police thought he was, they had to tell him about his own father. He dragged himself backward with one hand on the vestibule wall and pulled at the door with the other, and the blue-eyed policeman came to him and put an arm around his shoulders. Marshall felt as though he was being held so that he would have to face the driver who was walking inexorably, no more able to halt than a puppet would have been, toward him. "He's not in pain, son. I can promise you that," the driver said.

Words fought their way past Marshall's lips before he could hold them back—hold back the worst from having happened. He didn't know if they were a question or a plea or a denial. "He isn't dead."

The man beside him hugged his shoulders, and Marshall glimpsed him staring a last hope at his colleague. When the driver said, "I'm sorry, son" the arm hugged Marshall tighter, and the boy felt as though it was trying to squeeze him to nothingness. He was still there, still unbearably alive, because he heard his own voice. "No, he isn't. No, he isn't, no," it said with a babyishness that filled him with self-loathing as everything around him grew bright and flat and remote from him.

"How's your da, Darren?"

"Fucking great."

"Listen to it, will you, Bern. Sounds just like his da. Been to see him, have you, lad?"

"Nah. Says he doesn't want me seeing him with a baldy head."

"How long'd he get, eighteen months? Bet your dick he's out in half that. Is he getting everything he needs?"

"Says you get better dope in there than outside. And he's with lots of his friends, mam says."

"So long as they're not friendly with his arse, eh? Hey up, lad, only joking. No need to get yourself worked up. You don't want to tangle with me even if you are Phil's lad. Where is she, anyway?"

"Out."

"Know where?"

"Never says."

"You want to do something about that as long as you're the man of the house. She knew we was coming, didn't she, Bern?"

"Maybe she forgot. She does. I expect she's out scoring one way or the other. Nobody else in, is there, Darren?"

"Only granda."

"Jesus, is he still around? If I was Phil I'd have taken him up the moors and come back on my tod fucking years ago. He won't say nothing, will he, Bern?"

"Been a long time since he's known what's going on around him."

"Can't think why Phil wants to keep him round the house, costing Christ knows how much and contributing fuck all. Don't you ever get like him, lad. We've got to look after us selves round here, we've no time for cunts who don't muck in. So how much fucking longer are you going to keep us standing on the step?"

"Uncle Bernard didn't say you wanted to come in."

"Aye, well, fucking Uncle Bernard says it now, don't you, Uncle Bernard? And Barry says it too. That's me, in case you forgot."

"I don't forget."

"Look at him, Bern. Just like Phil the time that cunt spilled some ale on his shoe in the pub. You're a credit to your old man, lad. I bet you're a killer when you grow up, only don't come it with me. Want to help us instead?"