Gone to Ground (35 page)

They lapsed into an easy silence.

"Are you seeing anyone?" Lorraine asked.

Helen laughed. "Following a train of thought."

"Sorry, it's none of my business."

"No, it's okay. And, no. No, I'm not." Helen broke off a piece of cake with her fingers. "I was. A while ago now."

"It didn't work out?"

"Something like that."

"You want some more coffee?"

"I'm still fine."

"Cake?"

"No, thanks. Really."

"It's not as fresh as it could be. It'd probably be better with some butter."

"Did you ever have that thing," Helen said suddenly, "when you just can't say no to someone? Someone you were involved with. No matter how much you wanted to."

"You mean ... sexually?"

"Yes, partly. Partly that." Helen smiled. "Mostly."

Lorraine hesitated before answering. "Once or twice, I suppose, when I was a lot younger..." She blushed, remembering. "Fifteen or sixteen, hanging out with boys a lot older." She laughed. "Round the back of the bus station. But that's not what you mean, is it?"

Automatically, Helen reached for her cigarettes, but then dropped them back in her bag. Since leaving hospital she'd kept herself down to two, maybe three a day. "There's this bloke," she said, "I went out with him, off and on, the best part of a year. Lived with him for a bit. He was in the music business. Still is, I suppose. Concerts, stuff like that. Promoting, you know? Used to manage a couple of bands as well. Quite big names. I hadn't seen him for ages, and then when I was in the hospital, he turned up. Flowers, sympathy. I couldn't handle it—I was half out my head on painkillers, anyway—and I asked Will—I never should have done this—I asked Will to tell him to stay away."

"He never mentioned it."

"No, well, anyway, after that he sent me a letter. Andrew. That's his name. I tore it up. Never read it. And then he phoned. A couple of times he phoned, and as soon as I knew it was him I hung up. But now I'm worried he's going to come round, one evening, you know, out of the blue. He's done it before. Knock on the door, late, and when I open it he's standing there..." She took out a cigarette, and this time lit it quickly and drew the smoke down deep into her lungs. "There's this song. Emmylou Harris. 'Loving You Again,' something like that. This man she used to know, he calls her from a phone booth, two in the morning, says he's got nowhere to go. When he gets round there, where she lives, she pays for the taxi, tells him, okay, he can sleep on the couch or the floor, I can't remember which, but even as she's saying it she knows that's not how it's going to be, you know? As soon as he steps inside and shuts the door that's it, she knows she's going to sleep with him, she can't stop herself, even though next day he's going to be gone."

"And that's what it's like with him?" Lorraine said. "This man? Andrew?"

Helen fanned smoke away. "It was. For a while. He'd be on his way back from some gig, three or four in the morning, and he'd ring or, more than likely, just turn up at the door, and I'd tell myself, when I was unlocking the door, tell myself that it was because I was feeling sorry for him, stuck out in the cold or whatever, but I knew it was a lie, I knew it was because I wanted him. Sometimes we'd be pulling off our clothes almost before he got inside and we'd fuck on the floor. And then, just like the fucking song, in the morning he'd be gone."

She glanced back into the room. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't swear in front of the baby."

"That's okay. She'll hear it all soon enough."

Helen stubbed out her cigarette, half-smoked. "Anyway, that's my problem."

"And there's no way you could ever—I don't know—sort things out? You know, go out with him properly?"

"Get back together?"

"Yes."

Helen shook her head emphatically. "No way at all."

Lorraine was thoughtful. "If you really feel that bad about it," she said, "him coming round, perhaps you should move?"

"I did that once. He found me."

"What about getting one of those restraining orders?"

Helen laughed. "On what grounds? Man gives great sex?"

"But if you don't want him...?"

"It's not rape, he's not forcing me. I'm the one who's saying yes, remember? And the sex is great. When it's happening, it's unbelievable. Almost every time. But afterwards..." She shook her head. "I feel dirty. Like something he's used. And I hate myself."

"I don't know," Lorraine said. "I don't know what to say."

Helen smiled. "There's nothing, is there?"

"I'm going to heat up some more coffee, you sure you don't want some?"

"Sure."

Lorraine squeezed Helen's shoulder as she passed.

Helen watched Susie pulling at the pages of her rag book and had to resist the impulse to go over and pick her up. If she hadn't had the abortion, her own child would be how old?

She didn't want to go there.

Quickly she got to her feet and followed Lorraine into the kitchen. "That coffee—is it too late to change my mind?"

Later, they put Susie in the buggy and went for a walk to the small recreation ground at the centre of the village.

"So," Helen said, "when d'you start the new job?"

"I never thanked you for that," Lorraine said. "Talking Will into changing his mind."

"He just needs a kick up the arse once in a while, that's all."

Lorraine smiled. "He's not so bad."

"I know."

Susie stirred in her buggy.

"I used to be jealous of you sometimes," Lorraine said.

"You'd no need."

"Some weeks I'd scarcely see him and the two of you, you'd be together all the time. Early in the morning till God knows when."

Helen took hold of her hand. "Will's a lovely man. He's a good boss and good to work with and I enjoy his company, I like it a lot, but I don't fancy him, okay?"

"Okay."

Helen smiled. Most of the time it was true.

THE TROUBLE STARTED TWO NIGHTS LATER, A LITTLE before ten o'clock. Two groups of teenagers, as many as fifteen all told, mostly boys, became involved in an argument between themselves in the market place at the centre of Heanor, the next small town along from Eastwood, across the river and up the hill through Langley Mill.

Pushing and shoving, name calling, swearing, threats of violence and retribution, a few random punches thrown. A lot of noise. Fair to say that most if not all had been drinking—cider and cans of cheap-label lager in the main, though an empty bottle of vodka was found, smashed against the curb—and more than a few would have been pilled up.

After a while—who knows how?—some kind of reconciliation was reached and, en masse, the group ran off down one the residential streets leading from the square. Wheelie bins were turned over, windows broken, wooden staves broken from a fence and brandished as weapons. At this juncture three separate calls were made to the police.

After terrorizing an elderly couple on their way back from bingo, snatching the woman's handbag and then tossing it into a garden farther down, the gang turned round upon themselves and headed back toward the square.

As they arrived, Quadeer Ali, and his girlfriend, Kylie Lewis, were emerging from the Golden Pish and Kebab Bar with two donner kebabs, which they intended to take home to Lewis's flat, where Ali was staying. The pair immediately became the focus for racist taunts and jeers, the three girls in the group calling Lewis a slapper and a slag for going with someone of a different race and colour. One of the girls grabbed Lewis's wrapped kebab from her hand and threw it across the square, while another spat in her face; when Ali moved to defend her, half a dozen of the gang set upon him, the rest cheering them on.

Eventually, the pair managed to get to Ali's car, an aging Ford Escort, and lock themselves inside, whereupon the youths started attacking the doors and windows with lengths of fence post, boots and fists.

By this time several more calls had been made to the police, and three units had been dispatched.

Inside the car, Kylie Lewis, crouched low, sobbing and shaking. Ali, bleeding from a cut to the side of the head and one corner of his mouth, tried and failed to start the engine. From somewhere, one of the attackers found a piece of broken paving stone and hurled this from close quarters against the front windshield, splintering it across.

Lewis screamed.

Ali turned the key in the ignition, pressed his foot down hard, and put the car into reverse; it skidded through a half-circle, scattering the crowd, struck the rear of the vehicle parked nearby, bounced forward and stalled.

The offside window had been smashed by the impact, glass lacerating Ali's face.

Sirens blaring, police cars were approaching fast. A riot van, carrying nine officers, was speeding past the hospital on its way from Ilkeston. Two ambulances were on their way. Within five more minutes, the gang scattering as best they could, a police helicopter was hovering overhead.

Both Quadeer Ali and Kylie Lewis were treated by paramedics at the scene.

Twelve arrests were made, three girls and nine boys aged between fourteen and eighteen.

Gary Maitland was sixteen years and eleven months old and unemployed. He'd left school with minimal qualifications and some kind of a record for truancy, tried college for barely six weeks before chucking it in favour of hanging out with his mates, a little mild shoplifting, playing video games, and sponging off his mum.

Slumped back in his chair in the interview room, one leg of Gary's trackie bottoms was ripped and there was blood on the sleeve of his knock-off England replica shirt. His dark hair, unlike that of most of his friends, was quite long, falling across his face in two strands. There were two small studs in the lobe of his left ear and a silver ring, which he fiddled with constantly, in the right. A cut, partly healed, continued the line of his mouth across his cheek, and, when he wasn't toying with the silver ring, Gary picked at the edges where it was starting to scab over.

He looked, Chris Parsons thought, the comparison provoked as much by the name as the shirt, a bit like a young Gary Neville, but one who'd have neither the wits nor the skill to pick out Beckham, free on the wing.

His mother, Christine, sitting alongside him in fake leather jacket and baggy jeans, wore the long-suffering expression of the perpetually disappointed, exhausted from having been up half the night, and desperate for a cigarette, that at least.

Almost the only time she'd looked at her son directly in the past twenty minutes had been when he had sniffed loudly and wiped his nose with the back of his hand; the used tissue she'd pushed toward him he had ignored, and it had slipped to the floor between them where it still lay.

Three sons, of whom Gary was the youngest, their father long gone; she worked shifts at the local supermarket, occasional afternoons at the newsagent's. Saturday nights, if she weren't working, she got dressed up and went for a drink with her mates. Once in a while, not often, she talked some man or other into coming back home with her, instead of just a quick fumble in the alley alongside the working men's club or the backseat of his car. Two weeks in Skegness every summer.

Parsons wondered if he felt sorry for her and thought most probably he did. Not that that was going to help here.

"Nasty cut, Gary," Parsons observed.

Maitland said nothing.

"Get that last night, did you?"

No reply.

"Last night, Gary? When you and your mates were having a bit of fun?"

A quick shake of the head.

"The confrontation with Quadeer Ali and his girlfriend? Is that when it was? Catch you one, did he? Smacked you in the mouth?"

Maitland sneered. "Never fuckin' touched me."

"Watch your mouth," his mother said.

"Someone did," Parsons said. "Caught you fair and square."

"Well, it weren't no fuckin' Paki."

"I told you," his mother said, aiming a blow at his head, "to watch your fucking mouth."

Maitland ducked and glared.

"You were there, though, Gary?" Parsons said. "When it was all happening."

"I'm not saying nothing."

"Your version of what happened, that's all we need."

Maitland shook his head again, more emphatically this time.

"We know you were there, Gary."

"So?"

"So it's not the first time, is it?"

His chin jutted forward. "What d'you mean?"

"It's not the first time you've been involved in that sort of situation."

"What sort of situation?"

"Harassing someone because of the colour of their skin."

Christine Maitland murmured something beneath her breath.

"Last year some time, wasn't it?" Parsons looked at the computer printout in front of him. "Nottingham city centre. The Old Market Square."

Maitland shifted a little uneasily on his chair.

"And then there was this other incident, a little over twelve months ago. When you and three others assaulted a man in Shipley Country Park."

Maitland bristled. "He come on to me, that's why. Fuckin' pervert. Got what he fuckin' deserved."

"Gary's right," his mother said. "Bloke was a pervert. A bloody pedophile."

"Perhaps fortunately for Gary," Parsons said, "the man concerned declined to bring charges."

"He should have been locked up, not out there preying on young boys."

"Gary was fifteen, nearly sixteen. And the man claimed one of Gary's friends led him on, then asked for money."

"Well, he would, wouldn't he? And anyway, what's all that got to do with keeping my Gary here now?"

"We're treating last night's incident, Mrs. Maitland, with the utmost seriousness. And Gary's behaviour forms part of a pattern."

"It wasn't just him though, was it? There was a whole bunch of them. Why you pickin' on him?"

"We're not, I can assure you."

"It don't look like it."

"Mrs. Maitland..."

"No." She scraped back her chair. "I've had enough of this. We're getting out of here. You come round the house, knock on my door in the middle of the bloody night, tell me Gary's in trouble, drag me down here and then keep us waiting for soddin' hours and all because of what? Nothing. There was a bit of fight—so what? Anybody get hurt serious? Anyone get killed? No." Getting to her feet, she caught hold of her son by the arm. "Come on, Gary, you're not under arrest, we're getting out of here."