The One Safe Place (50 page)

He crept quickly downstairs and eased the door ajar. Marshall was crouching on the edge of his chair, gripping his knees hard as he watched the woman and the dog. Darren would have liked to spy on him to see what he might do, but there wasn't time. "What about that then?" he said, ignoring the tightening of his own crotch. "Fucking good, eh?"

Marshall began to shake his head from side to side as far as it would reach. "I don't like it."

"Aye, I saw you not liking it just then. Anyway, there's more important things right now than you getting your willy up. Them people I said you wouldn't want to meet, I just saw them watching the house."

"Can they stop me going to my mom?"

Marshall sounded doubtful, dangerously close to rebellion. Darren switched off the panting video to command all his attention. "They can do what they want round here. I'd stay out of their way, I'm telling you."

"I heard them making you and your mom do something last night, didn't I?"

"That's nowt to what they'd do to someone they don't know. If I'm scared of them you'd better be, lad."

"Did they make you have that video?"

"Aye, and worse ones, and they said if my mam gives them any trouble they'll make her be in one." The idea of his mother going with the dog both amused and excited Darren, and he had to put the distraction of it out of his mind. "If they find you, that's what they'll make you do, and I won't be able to save you."

Marshall shuddered and pressed the back of one hand against his mouth. "Where do you want me to hide?"

"Upstairs again. Only—"

"What?"

Darren had glanced out of the window to check there was no sign of the motorcyclist, an action which revived Marshall's panic. "They may have seen there's someone in the house they don't know," Darren said.

Marshall crouched over himself as though he'd been kicked in the stomach. "Hey up, no need to shit yourself," Darren said, furious in case he'd terrified Marshall so much that the boy wouldn't be able to move. "You'll just have to make them think it's not you if they come looking."

"How? How?"

"Bark."

Marshall raised his head, staying in his crouch. "You mean—"

"I mean fucking bark like a dog."

The left side of Marshall's face twitched into a grin, and that eye narrowed toward a wink. While Darren didn't know if the expression was the product of nervousness or disbelief, his fingers were writhing with an urge to twist it off Marshall's face. Then Marshall squeezed his eyes shut and nodded his torso a few times, apparently to pump some breath into himself. He jerked up his face and bared his teeth and forced out two embarrassed sounds. "Uff uff," he said, and peered pleadingly at Darren.

"Pathetic. Get ready for them to pull your pants down if that's the best you can manage."

"Wuff." Marshall growled through his teeth in an attempt to sound fiercer. "Wuff wuff wuff."

"What's that supposed to be, a fucking steam engine?"

Darren glanced toward the window as a movement caught his eye, and the black helmet turned to confront him. "Bastard," he spat, and leaned his face into Marshall's. "They're coming for you. Better get it right while there's time. Christ, can't you even be a dog?"

Marshall sprang out of the chair, almost knocking Darren over backwards. Darren thought he was making a break for freedom, and darted between him and the door, only to see Marshall drop to all fours and claw at the carpet and begin to yap. "Raf raf," he cried, so fiercely that spit flew between his teeth. "Raf raf raf raf raf."

"Not bad. I reckon it'll do." As Darren swung away from him to check that the motorcycle was out of sight, he could believe there was a vicious mongrel in the room. The road was deserted. "Best place for you is under my bed," he told Marshall, "and if you hear anyone come in the room—"

He hadn't realised how tense his own nerves were. For a moment he thought he heard someone battering the front door in, and then he realised it was somebody pounding down the stairs—his mother, who threw open the door of the room, splintering the plastic handle against the wall. "What are you playing at now?" she screeched. "What's all the sodding noise?"

"He's going to hide and pretend he's not him. He knows there's people looking for him he doesn't want finding him." Surely that would be clear enough to anybody except a cretin, but his mother was staring at Marshall on the floor as if she either didn't understand or didn't want to. So long as she didn't interfere, she didn't matter. If she got in the way now, having told Darren to solve the problem, he didn't know what he would do. He risked another glance out of the window to reassure himself there was time to spare, and pain flared in his knuckles as he clenched his fists. A police car was drawing up outside the house.

For just a few seconds, as the wheels of the police car pulverised a stray chunk of brick and squealed faintly against the curb, Susanne wished British police were armed; then Angel dragged at the parking brake, and she told herself she mustn't wish. She'd had enough of guns to last her the rest of her life, and there surely wouldn't be any in the house on the corner of Handel Close, since none had been found there when the man who'd threatened Don had been arrested. Where there were guns there could be crossfire, and the thought of Marshall in the midst of that made her stomach jerk. She clutched at it and rubbed it to help herself relax as much as possible, because otherwise she would be less use to Marshall and the police. She was preparing to duck past Askew's seat once he tilted it forward when Angel craned around his headrest to encompass her with his wide gaze. "I think it might be best if you stay in the car for the moment, Mrs. Travis."

"You mustn't ask me to do that." Susanne heard herself pleading, and sharpened her voice, the way she'd very occasionally had to use it on Marshall. "We already established I can help. You can see I'm in control. All we want is to find my son safe, and you don't imagine I'd do anything to jeopardise that."

Angel gazed at her for several of her heartbeats, and she gave him back the same and held herself still. She saw him change his mind before he spoke, and in that instant she became fully aware that he and his partner were years younger than she was. That didn't matter, only their professional training did, but she couldn't avoid feeling that Marshall's safety might have been entrusted to people less experienced than she would have chosen. Oughtn't they to call for backup, just in case? But they were climbing out of the car, having exchanged glances, and Askew levered his seat forward to release her. "We'd appreciate it if you'd leave the talking to us to begin with, Mrs. Travis," Angel said.

"Fine. Whatever achieves what we're here for."

Askew straightened the fence in front of the house in order to open the gate, which bumped over the broken concrete path with a screech of wood. Now anyone in the house must know there were intruders, and Susanne considered sprinting to the back, since both policemen were heading for the front. She hurried after them, between twin patches of littered marshy garden which smelled like an untended enclosure in a zoo, toward the last of the row of boxy flat brown houses whose upper windows put her far too much in mind of gun holes in a bunker. She didn't think she had ever seen homes she disliked so much—ghetto architecture, she found herself thinking, houses designed for secrecy or for caging their occupants. In almost any other circumstances she would have felt sympathy for whoever had to live here, but now she experienced a mixture of loathing and raw fury as Angel thumbed the doorbell.

She didn't like the noise it made—more like a rattle than a trill. Like a snake, she thought, the only comparison she wanted to admit to her mind as the rattle died away and Askew kept his thumb raised an inch from the bellpush as though he was giving her an optimistic sign. She saw him prepare to ring again just as footsteps rushed downstairs beyond the door. Someone was running for it, and she poised herself to chase around the side of the house. But the footsteps approached the door, and chains and bolts sounded through it, and then it swung wide open. Beyond it was a boy about as old as Marshall, and at once she could see nothing else.

He wore a dark green track suit slightly too big for him. His thin pale face was aged in a way she would never want Marshall's to look. She had the impression that he was doing his best to resemble the identikit picture of his father even more than he did. He'd thrown open the door with a swagger, and managed to appear to be standing with one too. As his gaze trailed over Susanne as though she wasn't there, she saw him pretending not to care that she was. He'd only been expecting the police, she realised. She willed them to take advantage of that, because if they didn't, she should. But Angel said, "Is your mother in, son?"

"Who wants to know?"

Askew's foot shot out, and Susanne thought he meant to kick the boy into the house—thought she might look away from anything that helped find Marshall. The toecap met the door with a gentleness which suggested that the men were restraining themselves as much as she was. "Life's tough enough, son," Askew said, "Fancy, isn't it? Just tell her we're here, Fancy. You don't want to be alone with us."

The boy gave him a blink which scarcely bothered looking contemptuous, and stepped rapidly backward. He threw his head back, jerking his ragged hair over his forehead and ears and brandishing the cords of his neck. "Mam, there's two filth and some woman," he yelled, staring at them down his face.

"Charming," Askew muttered with what sounded like genuine offence, and Susanne wondered uneasily how inexperienced he was. She kept her stinging gaze on the boy in case, despite his street wisdom, he betrayed anything. When he returned her stare she pressed her palms against her hipbones so as not to shove between the policemen and go for him. He kept staring at her, though it made his reddened old man's eyes bulge, while he strained his head back further to yell, "Mam, they want you. Mam."

He was playing a trick. He was alone in the house, but he was going to pretend he had to fetch his mother, and escape. Susanne grabbed both policemen by the arm before she knew she meant to, just as a door struck a wall upstairs. "What's wrong with you, you little shit? I told you—"

The voice stopped as the woman tramped down enough stairs to be able to see out the front door. Her orange dress, the kind of garment one might wear around the house when there was no likelihood of visitors, bulged and crinkled and gaped between her lower thighs at each step. Susanne saw bruises on the pudgy mottled pinkish arms, and what looked like the remains of several days' worth of makeup beneath the current layer on the heavy swollen immature face, and thought that if the woman cared so little for herself, how much less might she care about anyone else? Then the woman glared at her as if the police weren't there. "What do
you
want?"

"My son," Susanne almost blurted, except that the woman's defiant look was choking her—the look which she could imagine meaning that the woman already knew. The woman stepped two stairs closer as if to demonstrate she couldn't be touched, and Susanne pressed her hands against herself. "Mrs. Marie Fancy?" Angel said.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"And this is your son Darren, is it?"

"No other sod would have him. What's he done now?"

"Shouldn't he be at school, Mrs. Fancy?"

"You tell his headmaster that," Mrs. Fancy said, and shook off the banisters as her heels thumped the floor of the hall.

"You're saying he's suspended."

"Wish he was, by his balls. Might teach him how to behave."

Susanne saw the boy's eyes and mouth tighten. He looked ready to be even more unhelpful, and she felt her nails scrape her hips. "How long has he been off, Mrs. Fancy?" Angel said.

"All his life, if you ask me."

Askew leaned his head around the doorframe and spoke into her face, which she'd brought close enough for him to touch. "Off school."

"What's it to you? You're not the truant man."

"We can find out from the school if we have to," Angel said.

Did they know which school? How long were they going to stand out here playing the Fancy game? The boy had retreated and was watching from beyond his mother, who abruptly shrugged. "This week. Let's see that do you any good."

"We'd like to ask him a few questions."

"Do what you want with him."

Susanne imagined her saying that to someone else, about someone else, and had to overcome a sudden queasiness. "Perhaps we could talk inside, Mrs. Fancy," Angel said.

"Why not, your pal's already got his boot in. Wouldn't have much chance against you two, would I. I'm only a woman, it isn't even like I own the house. Don't blame me for the state it's in, I've only just come back."

Though Susanne had the impression that at least some of this was aimed at her, she didn't let it reach her. Even before she followed the police into the hall she could see that the condition of the house had taken years to achieve—the carpets grey with spilled ash and decorated with trampled cigarette ends, the wallpaper blotched with blurry handprints, the smell of trapped stale sweat and worse. When she closed the door behind her, cutting out most of the sunlight, she felt as though she had entered a cell. Mrs. Fancy picked up a post which had fallen out of the banisters, and used it to prod open the door of the front room. "Get in there."

Susanne wasn't certain she was addressing her son, but he was the first to respond. Angel gestured Mrs. Fancy and then Susanne to follow the boy. There were only three chairs, all of them unmatched, and the Fancys each dumped themselves in a chair once Mrs. Fancy had kicked a caseless videocassette behind the player. Angel bowed slightly to indicate that Susanne should take the third chair, on which a cardigan sprawled as though to reserve Mrs. Fancy another place, and then he leaned against the mantelpiece, beside an electric fire stuffed with paper, as Askew shouldered the door closed. Angel gazed at Darren for some seconds without admitting to any expression, and was opening his mouth when Mrs. Fancy demanded, "So what's she, a social worker?"