The Shadows in the Street (14 page)

‘Why not?’

‘I doubt if the medical aspect of this is any of our business here,’ Miles said.

Cat nodded. ‘There’s no rush. We must get it right. Let’s go through things point by point. Shall we begin with trying to decide what exactly we are hoping to achieve?’

There was a silence, and then several voices at once. ‘Shelter.’ ‘Bring them to Christ.’ ‘Give them someone to talk to.’ ‘Do what we already do, minister to them where they are, on the streets …’

Ruth held up her hand. ‘Priorities? Let’s get some order going. What’s our main aim for these girls? From a cathedral point of view.’

‘Or perhaps,’ Ilona said quietly, ‘from their point of view?’

Forty minutes later they had decided that a drop-in centre was most needed. Ruth determined that it should be housed on cathedral premises, Miles Hurley questioned whether there was anywhere suitable, Ilona and Cat were doubtful if prostitutes would come precisely because it would be seen as part of the cathedral and therefore have a religious agenda.

‘Well, of course we’ll have a religious agenda!’ Ruth said. ‘I mean, we
are
Christians, aren’t we?’

‘Reachout has a Christian agenda,’ Damian said sadly.

‘Yes, but you’re just an intermittent thing, we’d be there all the time.’

‘All the time?’ Miles asked.

‘You know what I mean. Not just a van turning up at random.’

‘We have a proper schedule.’

‘Yes, Damian, but I’m sure you take my point. They want somewhere they can go to when they need it, not when you choose to be there.’

Cat smiled at him sympathetically, but he seemed to have retreated into himself, unable to deal with Ruth’s combative manner.

‘So, I’ll start finding out where we can put this centre. It’ll be the Magdalene Centre obviously. I’m sure there are plenty of places we can use.’

‘I’d be glad to know where.’

‘I’ll find the right place, Miles. Leave it with me.’

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that the purposes and aims of this centre are not yet properly thrashed out.’

Ruth sighed.

Cat looked round. ‘This may be the wrong phrase,’ she said carefully, ‘but what about some market research?’

Ilona nodded. ‘As in, asking the girls what they might want? Absolutely.’

‘Damian.’ Damian jumped as Miles turned to him. ‘You know these girls, you talk to them. They come to the Reachout van.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it would seem that you are best placed to start asking some questions. Doing what Cat calls – and I think it’s exactly the phrase – market research. Any other approach would not only be counterproductive, it would be patronising in the extreme. Let us ascertain the extent and the nature of the need, otherwise, we are in danger of doing something to make ourselves feel good and not for the good of these young women.’ He stood up. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go. Will you excuse me?’

Ruth Webber’s angular body exuded tension. Her long fingers ruffled the pages of the notebook and she met no one’s eye, did not acknowledge Miles Hurley’s departure nor bring the meeting to a conclusion.

Cat’s phone ringing brought them out of an embarrassed silence. As she left the room to answer it Damian jumped up, but she didn’t hear anything else that was said. The call was unimportant but she told a white lie about having to go into the surgery and fled, knowing that Ilona had understood perfectly, even if Ruth Webber was too thick-skinned to do so.

Twenty-one

‘Deano? You coming or what?’

Deano Whelan lay on the sofa trying to make the Nintendo work with the remote which he knew was broken. He had a bag of crisps and he was all right. He didn’t need Tyler yelling at him from the garden and banging on the window.

‘Come on, what you doing?’

He tried turning the sound up but that didn’t work either.

The next thing, Tyler was kicking the front door open.

‘Shut your racket, me dad’s asleep. He’ll fuckin’ have you.’

‘He on nights then?’

‘No, he’s pissed.’

‘What, at half past ten?’

‘You bunked off?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Not me dad anyway. All right, hang on, hang on.’

Deano stuffed the last crisps into his mouth and rolled off the sofa. His bike wheel was bent so he went next door and borrowed one that was up against the side gate. Next doors wouldn’t be back till late.

‘I got a sore throat,’ Tyler Nobes said, doing a wheelie off the kerb.

‘Yeah, right.’

‘That’s what it says on the note.’

‘What note?’

‘The one I’ll have for next time I’m there, dickhead.’

They shot down the slope and fast across the road, quick right and left as they went but there was never much traffic just here.

‘That bike’s crap.’

‘So’s yours.’

Tyler headed off. They didn’t have a plan. They never had a plan. They just went until they got somewhere and that was the plan.

Somewhere was the canal towpath.

Nobody about. Cold with a drizzle.

‘You got any money?’

‘I’ve got a smoke.’

‘All right.’

But the drizzle was becoming heavy rain. Tyler turned his bike and skidded off towards the footbridge. Underneath the footbridge they could at least light the single cigarette Deano had and pass it between them, and wait for the weather to clear. Wait for anything.

It was Tyler who saw it first. He pulled the bike up so that Deano nearly rammed into him.

‘What? What is it?’

Tyler stared until he made out that it was a person, on the ground, head down, knees up. He saw a bit of face, white face, some dark hair.

He could feel Deano’s breath on his neck. He took a step, then another, until he could see better.

‘You OK?’ Deano asked after a minute.

But Tyler had moved another couple of steps until he was close to the huddled figure.

Then Deano saw it, too. He thought at first it was a dog. But it didn’t move. Just a heap of rubbish then.

Tyler bent over.

At first Deano thought Tyler was crying, but then he saw that what he was doing was being sick, retching onto his own shoes, and at the same time backing away, pushing Deano back too so that he almost fell over.

‘Shit,’ Tyler said. ‘Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.’

‘What? What?’

Tyler grabbed hold of Deano’s arm. ‘There’s …’

‘What? Fuck it, Tyler, what is it?’

‘Dead body, dead body, it’s there, I saw its head and …’ He threw up again.

Under the footbridge the thing seemed to sway.

‘Christ,’ Tyler said, pulling up his bike and swinging it round.

‘What you doing, where you –’

‘Tell someone,’ Tyler shouted over his shoulder. ‘Come on, don’t stay there for fuck’s sake.’

But he was away and almost out of sight before Deano could get himself together sufficiently to climb onto his own bike and follow after him, his hands so wet with sweat he had a job keeping his grip.

Twenty-two

‘You lost, mate? That’s the fire escape.’

Ben Vanek backed away from the door he had been trying to push open.

‘Canteen?’ he asked, face blazing and furious with himself.

The PC was grinning.

‘Basement,’ he said.

‘I suppose it would be. Thanks.’

How could you be twenty-seven and a half years old and still blush like a teenager for making a daft mistake?

‘Don’t know you, do I?’ The uniform looked suddenly wary.

‘DS Vanek. No, first day – can’t you tell?’

‘OK, no probs, sorry, Sarge.’

That’ll be round the station, Ben thought, racing down the stairs. While Steph Mead was checking out the libraries in search of Loopy Les, he had realised he was starving. The station was like all stations, people racketing up and down stairs, banging through swing doors, phones going. He liked to be out, looking people up, going to crime scenes, talking to strangers. Every hour at a desk tapping at a keyboard was an hour he counted as lost. He wondered whether Serrailler let himself get desk-bound, thought not, wondered when the DCS was going to show his face. Ben hadn’t come to Lafferton to work with a plod like DI Franks.

There was the slightest of murmurs as he walked into the canteen. He thought he could hear the ‘who’shewhere’d-hecomefromnewDSbityoung’. A bit of him was tempted to stand up on a nearby table and introduce himself to the room. Most of him took a tray and slid into the queue at the counter.

It was only as he was taking his coffee and toast away that he glanced quickly round, clocked a couple of the CID he had seen in the conference but otherwise saw only uniforms.

‘Sarge!’

Ben found a seat in the corner and started to open the small pack of butter.

‘Sarge …’

He didn’t look up.

Then she was at his shoulder. ‘DS Vanek?’

He jumped up.

‘I called you three times. You not answering to Sarge then?’

He prayed that he wouldn’t colour up even as he knew he was doing so.

‘DC Mead, sorry, I was miles away. Can I get you anything?’

‘They found Marie O’Dowd’s body.’

He swigged down three mouthfuls of coffee and took the toast with him.

‘And I think I’ve found Loopy Les,’ she said as they went up the stairs. ‘College of FE. Senior Assistant in the Humanities Library. Leslie Blade. I tried the public libraries – nobody in any of them here or in Bevham called Leslie. Unless he’s in a school I haven’t tried yet, looks like this must be him.
And
,’ she said, as they headed towards the car park, ‘uniform have his car number. They pulled him over … Kerb-crawling.’

As they crossed the yard, Ben Vanek stuffed the remains of the now cold toast into his mouth and swallowed it in a lump which he knew would sit in the middle of his chest for the next couple of hours.

‘Bags I stay on the Chantelle case,’ Steph said. ‘If the boyfriend gets charged, Marie O’Dowd’ll be open-and-shut. Bor-ing. Shall I drive?’

Twenty-three

It was the quietness that woke him. He sat up, puzzled for a moment, then got to his feet and went to look out.

The gale had died down. The cottage had been battered by it for days but now everything was still. The heavy clouds had been blown away, leaving a sky pricked all over with bright stars and a huge moon that rode the surface of the water. The sense of quiet was extraordinary.

Simon half thought of dressing and going out, but he had not slept well for the last few nights, because of the wind hurling itself at the windowpanes until they rattled like loose teeth. So now, glad of the calm, he went back to bed.

When he woke again, sunlight flooded in, and the patch of sky he could see as he lay there was clear silver blue.

He was alone. Kirsty had come down with a heavy cold and though he had much enjoyed her intermittent company during his time on Taransay he was glad, as ever, to be by himself. The subject of his leaving had scarcely been mentioned but she knew that he would have to go before long and had seemed quite sanguine about it. The whole thing had been stress-free, he thought as he dressed – the first time in his history of relationships – and for that he held Kirsty McLeod in great affection.

Twenty minutes later he had put fruit cake, cheese, some of his favourite dark chocolate and a bottle of water into the rucksack with his drawing things, and was heading west across the island. After an hour’s walking, he came upon a run-down stone crofter’s house. Leaning into its walls was a single small tree, bent half over by the wind. He settled down in the sun.

There was never complete silence here, always some birdcall, or the wash of the sea, but without any wind it was as quiet as he had known it. He worked steadily, doing several small rough sketches of the croft and tree before moving to make a more careful drawing of them from another angle. He ate and drank and got up a couple of times to stretch his legs, and when the sun was full on his face, took a fifteen-minute nap. And for the whole time he was conscious of a deep sense of contentment, a freedom from any petty irritations or discomforts, which made him wonder again whether this was what he should do, where he should be, whether he should resign from the force and spend at least half his year on Taransay, the rest travelling and perhaps with Cat, if he gave up his flat. But it was when he imagined doing that, packing up and handing his home over to someone else, or, more likely, to be turned into yet another suite of offices, that he felt sure he could never do it. It was not the flat as such that he cared about – though he did – but what the flat represented, the privacy and quiet space, his own rootedness.

He was concentrating so hard that at first he did not hear the sound of the vehicle, until it drew up on the track a few yards away and the door slammed.

‘Hello?’

Douglas Boyd, Kirsty’s farmer friend, was coming towards him, his long Scottish oval of a face reddened by the sun.

‘What’s wrong?’

Serrailler was six foot four but when he stood up Boyd was of a height with him plus perhaps an inch.

‘Call for you – they rang twice then asked if someone could locate you.’

Simon followed Douglas to the jeep, stuffing things into his rucksack as he went.

‘Who? My family?’

Douglas started the engine up as he swung into his seat. ‘Your Chief Constable, I’m told. They want you to call straight back.’

He did not speak again for the five-mile journey over the hill and down towards the village.

This is the last day, Serrailler thought, looking out to where the dark seal heads were bobbing up and diving down, bobbing and diving in the silver water.

‘Thanks for that,’ he said to Douglas, as they climbed out of the jeep. ‘Good of you.’

‘It was nae bother.’

He faced Simon, blocking his path.

‘Just another thing,’ he said, and without a split second of warning, swung his fist into Serrailler’s jaw. ‘That’s for Kirsty.’

The line from Taransay to the mainland could be temperamental but he got through within a couple of minutes. He touched his jaw a couple of times. It was tender but a clean hit. Boyd hadn’t drawn blood.