The Slaughter Man (25 page)

Rocky hit his man with a seven-punch combination. Jab, right cross, left hook to the body, left hook to the head, right cross, left upper cut, jab and away, pivoting to an angle of safety, out of harm’s way as his man lurched desperately towards him, flailing now, and walked onto Rocky’s big right.

There was something sickening about the damage it did. The big right rocked the man’s brain as much as his body, and although he did not go down, the strong legs not deserting him, it was one of those moments when those of us who love boxing are forced to ask – what is it exactly that you love? The bell went and the two men embraced as a ripple of applause went around the ringside.

Fred shot me a rueful grin. There was no clapping in Smithfield ABC. It was not about applause in here.

But as he approached his first professional bout, Rocky’s sparring sessions were drawing a sizeable crowd. There was an excitement around him. A journalist was taking notes. Two photographers were taking pictures – with cameras, not phones. There were men we had never seen at the gym before – white men in suits and ties, who had the hard-eyed, smooth-skinned look of boxing promoters.

They loved his story, and they loved his style, and they loved his spite. Although you would never have known it outside the ring, when he was fighting there was a viciousness in him, a cruelty, and that would be his best friend in his chosen career.

‘He’s going to make somebody a lot of money,’ Fred said. ‘I hope he makes a little for himself and his family.’

Echo Nawkins sat by Rocky’s side on the steps to the ring as a journalist took notes. She sat close by her man, and every now and then the palm of her hand would run over the curve of her belly, as if stroking the baby that was growing inside her.

Oak Hill Farm, I thought. They marry young.

Neither of them gave any indication that they were aware of my presence. Then, the interview over, they walked across to me.

‘I know you’re angry with me,’ Rocky said. ‘Because I didn’t tell you we’d done work at The Garden.’

‘You make it sound as though you forgot my birthday,’ I said. ‘It’s a lot more serious than that.’

Rocky began taking off his hand wraps, unspooling the black, sweaty, threadbare cotton.

‘The trouble is,’ Rocky said, ‘you looked at Peter Nawkins and saw a killer. I looked at him and saw a decent man who had paid for his sins and was trying to build a good life.’

‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘you withheld information during a murder investigation. The trouble is – that’s against the law. Obstruction of justice. Impeding a police investigation. It’s not too late to do you for being an accessory to the crime.’

‘I
tried
to tell you the truth,’ Echo said, coming towards me. ‘And you weren’t interested in the truth!’ Tears came as her mouth twisted with anger. ‘And now he’s gone.’

She began to sob helplessly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rocky told me, holding her close. ‘About everything. I truly am.’ He led Echo away as my phone began to vibrate.

MIR-1 CALLING, it said, although Wren and Whitestone were still on sick leave. I did not even know there was anyone still up there.

‘An old lady wandered in,’ PC Billy Greene. ‘Says she saw Bradley Wood with a UM in a UV.’

I almost laughed. Another sighting of another child with an unknown male in an unidentified vehicle.

‘Why don’t you just take a statement from her?’

‘Because I think she’s telling the truth,’ he said.

‘I’ve got three grown-up children and seven grandchildren,’ said Mrs Margaret Duffy of Stow-on-the-Wold.

‘That’s lovely,’ I said.

She looked at me as if she might tear out my throat.

‘I’m not making small talk, young man,’ she said. ‘I’m telling you that I know how children act. I raised three of them myself, and spent a lot of time with one of my grandchildren when my daughter was between husbands. I know all their moods. I know when they are sulking, and when they are tired, and when they are frightened. And I never saw a little boy like this one before. That’s why I caught the train to London. That why I’ve come to see you rather than wasting time with the yokels in my area.’

She considered her surroundings.

‘So is this the Major Incident Room?’ she said.

‘No, this is the room where we conduct interviews,’ I said. I indicated PC Greene standing by the door.

‘Mrs Duffy, why don’t you tell me exactly what you told PC Greene here?’

The old lady gave Billy an affectionate look.

‘He’s been very courteous,’ she said approvingly. ‘Young William. Told me that I should speak to a more senior officer.’ She looked at me, still in my sweaty boxing kit, profoundly unimpressed. ‘That would be you.’

I waited.

‘Since my local newsagents closed down, I walk to the service station for my morning paper. I like my morning paper. There was a man with a child. And you never saw a little boy quite so lost. As though he thought life had become a dream. Or a nightmare.’

I pushed the photograph of Bradley Wood across the desk. The classic shot of Bradley smiling in his mother’s arms as he waves his favourite toy at the camera.

‘Is that the child you saw, Mrs Duffy?’

‘The child I saw was older,’ she said. ‘When was that photograph taken? You should have a more up-to-date photograph. Children can change a lot in just a few months, you know, Constable.’

‘Detective,’ I said, trying not to sigh.

Another crank. Another fruitcake. I got up to go.

‘Oh, pardon me all over the place,
Detective
,’ she said, rummaging in her handbag. ‘The answer is – I can’t say for certain if the child I saw is the child in that photograph because your photograph is so old. But he dropped this before the man dragged him out to the car.’

She placed an eight-inch Han Solo figurine on the desk.

Classic Han Solo – white shirt, black waistcoat, leather boots. The cocky captain of the
Millennium Falcon
. I picked it up, aware that I had stopped breathing.

‘And that’s the same toy, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Margaret Duffy.

I pressed the doorbell of the big house on Fitzroy Square.

‘He’s alive,’ I said, and I held out my hand.

Charlotte Gatling stared at the battered little Han Solo figure in my palm. Then she took it. And then she kissed me.

Awkward, desperate kissing, mouths that were out of practice, our lips missing then finding each other. Warm breath, no words.

The heat of her in my arms. A moment that had been delayed so long it felt like it would never come.

And yet here it undeniably was – her face next to mine, her skin under my fingertips, her hands in my hair, the beautiful fact of her, suddenly full of hope, wild with hope, giddy with it, still gripping the eight inches of intergalactic space cowboy and pressing them into the back of my head.

She took me inside and closed the door.

We stood in the hall as I told her everything I knew.

A torrent of words, the taste of her still on my mouth.

The phone call from PC Billy Greene. Mrs Margaret Duffy of Stow-on-the-Wold in the interview room at West End Central. The child she saw and recognised at the service station. The dropped toy. How she had travelled to London to place it in my hand. And Mrs Duffy’s certainty – total certainty – that here was the boy on the news, although he was older now, and Mrs Duffy a woman, mother and grandmother who knew from personal experience how a child can seem older overnight.

Then I found myself lapsing into cop speak, telling Charlotte about the HP action that I had raised on HOLMES2, the highest priority directive that would have eight forces cancelling leave, and the fast-track action authorised by my SIO, DCI Whitestone, that would have every officer in the land understanding that this was a positive sighting, before I abruptly stopped, and told her again what really mattered.

‘Bradley’s alive,’ I said.

Charlotte stared at the Han Solo figurine in her fist, nodded and took a step towards me.

Then there were no more words for a while.

There were no words in the hallway where she took my hand, and no words on the staircase as she led me to the top floor of that grand house on Fitzroy Square, and no words in the bedroom, where we undressed quickly in a state of shy wonder, and there was absolutely no space for words with our mouths so busy seeking each other, and finding each other, there were no sounds at all beyond our gasps and cries as we made love with fierce, tender urgency and the night fell outside and the room was lit by nothing but the street lights of Fitzrovia.

There were no words as we lay with our limbs entwined, stunned and breathless, so close in that moment that I could not tell where she ended and I began.

I gently pulled her towards me and I kissed her mouth, and I could have kissed it forever, feeling the blood flowing, the heat rising and a wild joy inside me.

‘Max,’ she said. ‘This is not easy for me.’

‘I understand,’ I said, not wanting any words, feeling they were unnecessary.

I kissed her face again, her shoulder, her arms, her hands, loving her taste and her touch, and it was only then that I saw the band of white scar tissue around her left wrist, the unmistakable bracelet of self-harm.

‘No,’ she said softly, pulling her arm away, hiding it under the sheet. ‘You don’t understand anything. But you’re kind, aren’t you? You’re good.’

She kissed the back of my hand. Tears shone in her eyes. She was starting to scare me.

‘It’s not you,’ she said, and I felt myself flinch.

When someone says –
it’s not you – w
hat they usually mean is –
it’s definitely you
.

But not this time.

‘Tell me,’ I said. There were more kisses. ‘Trust me.’

I didn’t know what was happening.

I didn’t understand what had gone wrong.

‘What is it?’ I said. ‘Tell me why it’s difficult for you. Because it doesn’t feel difficult to me. It feels like the most natural and right thing in the world.’

She did not look at me. She could tell me or she could look at me. But she could not do both.

‘There are things that happened years ago,’ she said. ‘When I was very young. After my mother died.’ She took a deep breath and slowly, slowly released it. ‘Everything fell apart. My father was drinking – oh, God, he was drinking so much.’ Now she looked at me. ‘He didn’t know what was happening.’

The dread was building inside me.

Something dark had entered this house, this bedroom, this bed.

‘What happened to you?’ I said, feeling my heart fall away, dizzy and sick, suddenly knowing what had happened to her.

And I saw her make that old gesture, her right hand over her left wrist, wringing the skin, and I saw now it was to cover the scars she had cut into her flesh all those years ago.

‘You were abused,’ I said, numb with shock and grief.

She said nothing.

‘Who was it?’

She still said nothing.

Because she knew I wanted to kill the man who had done it.

Kill him tonight.

‘At home?’ I said.

A small downward nod of her head. Not looking at me.

‘Home. Yes.’

‘What about Mary?’ I said.

‘It was worse for her.’

‘Because she was older?’

She laughed.

And I had never heard such bitterness in a laugh.

‘Because she was
prettier
.’

The silence built between us. Now I wanted to know everything. I wanted to hear how bad it really was.

‘Is that why your mother killed herself?’

She was suddenly furious.

‘
My mother did not kill herself
. She fell – she fell in front of the train … my mother …’

The words trailing away, the fury subsiding.

‘Who?’ I said.

‘Let’s stop talking about it.’ She kissed me. ‘Can we? Let’s be like we were.’

She put her arms around me.

‘Do you know who abuses children?’ I said. ‘It’s almost always their family members. Nearly all the time, the statistics are overwhelming. Strangers? That happens. But not as often as people believe. It is usually someone trusted. Someone with access.’ I shook my head. ‘You’re talking about your father.’

She buried her face in a pillow.

‘No,’ she said, her voice small and muffled.

‘Your mother killed herself, didn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did she kill herself?’

‘Why does anyone kill themselves? Because life was unbearable.’

I got out of bed.

‘I’m sorry, Charlotte.’

It was true. I was sorry about everything. The mother. Her pain. And I was sorry about what I had to do now.

I wasn’t sure what was happening. I did not know what it meant. But I was certain that there was someone I needed to see immediately.

I began to retrieve my clothes from where they had been discarded. I started to put them on.

She sat up in bed.

‘Please listen to me,’ she said. ‘My father was a good man.’

I kept getting dressed.

She got out of bed, grabbed my arm and threw me around.

‘
Listen to me!
’

It was the voice of one who was used to being obeyed, the voice of someone who had grown up surrounded by hired help.

‘You can’t go,’ she said. ‘You’re
not
going. I don’t want you to go!’

‘And I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you. I wish I could stay with you forever. But I have to go.’

‘This is
private
.’

I nodded. But I didn’t stop getting dressed. Her eyes were wild with misery.

‘I didn’t tell you because I want you to
do
something! I told you because I want you to
understand
.’

That was the moment to stay.

‘I have to work now,’ I said.

She cursed me. ‘You can’t
tell
anyone! You can’t
use
this!’

I tried to kiss her one last time.

She turned her face away.

‘
No
.’

‘I have to go.’

‘If you go now, then I don’t want you to come back.’

I heard her crying as I went down the stairs.