The Sick Rose (35 page)

Chapter 46

January 2010

Sooty flames made ghosts dance on the walls of the Lodge. He had dragged a brazier up to the centre of the hall to bake potatoes in foil and mull wine; humour and anger had failed to snap her out of her mood so he was desperate enough to try romance. It wasn’t going well: the wine was too hot, it scalded their mouths, and the potatoes had been in the brazier since early afternoon but had blackened skins and rock-raw insides. Something in the bonfire caught and crackled, sending a report throughout the hall. It gave an aural illusion that they were surrounded by creeping watchers, dozens of twig-snapping feet.

He wished with his whole heart that he had never told her Adam might still be alive. He could not forget the change that had come over her face; her age caught up with her in seconds and although her face had returned to normal now, twenty-four hours after his revelation, she was different on the inside, somewhere he couldn’t access. She was distant from him; everything about her body said, ‘Back off.’ Tonight, she wore her waxed jacket like a shell, both zips fastened, collar turned up against him as well as the wind. It didn’t make sense. You would almost think that she had been happier as a murderer, which no sane person would be. She was acting lovesick over a boy she hadn’t seen for twenty years, a boy she’d tried to kill, and it was as though
he
no longer existed.

No matter how hard he tried to understand he could not help but interpret her withdrawal as ingratitude. He told her, more than once, that he had used his credit card and his own money and not asked for any back, and that he had travelled the length of the south coast in freezing conditions – the further into history the journey receded, the more it came to resemble a life-threatening mountaineering expedition in his memory – surely that was what she should be focusing on. To that, she had just said, ‘I can’t believe that you got to meet his mother.
I
never did.’ He had told her what it was like spending time with Theresa Murray, that she was a distressing person to be around, but all Louisa said was, ‘Tell me again what she said about Adam.’

She swigged the wine, which wasn’t hitting the spot because  much of the alcohol had burned off (he hadn’t known that you were supposed to heat it gently; she had snarled at him, asking him what the hell he thought ‘mull’ meant). Then she stared at the dregs, like someone reading tea leaves. He knew she was going to start going on again and sure enough, she said, in that strange, dreamy voice she was using now:

‘I can’t believe he lied about his name. The thing was with him, there were layers and layers and
layers
of lies and all this time I thought I had finally got to the bottom of them but I didn’t even know his name. It’s taken me twenty years to process this and now I feel like I’m back to square one.’

He felt a childish urge to upend the brazier and shock her out of the reverie dedicated to another man, but instead he shouted at her, the first time he had done so. ‘Do you not think it’s a
little
bit fucked up that you’re having a stronger reaction to the news that he lied about his name than you did when I told you he might be alive?’ A single spark shot out of the brazier and landed on his coat. He hit it harder than was necessary to stop it catching fire, bruising his own arm in real frustration.

‘Knowing that I didn’t kill him is not the same as knowing he’s alive,’ said Louisa.

‘Why do you still care if he had a stage name? What does it matter whether he’s alive or not now? What does
any
of it matter? He isn’t here, is he?’

She cast her eyes up to the low pink snowcloud which seemed to be propped up by the jutting peaks of the ruin.

‘If you were older, if you had a bit more history with women yourself . . .’ He took the words like a blow. ‘Oh, Paul, I didn’t mean that. Please let’s not fall out over this.’ She patted the ground next to her. What did she think he was, a puppy? ‘I won’t deny that it’s partly that you’ve opened up old wounds. But this puts me in a position of . . . there’s a world of difference between . . . look.’ She slowed her voice as though talking to an idiot. ‘Say he
isn’t
really brain-damaged and he’s looking for me but he just hasn’t found me yet. Or say he’s told someone else? I know you said his mother was away with the fairies but who’s to say who he’s been talking to? He might have made contact with the others, he might have gone to find Ciaran, he could be
living
with Ciaran for all I know, he’d probably have loved the chance to nurse Adam back to health . . . Someone else might know and be looking for me now, for blackmail or something. I’ve got money, I’d be a good target, and I’m hard to find but not impossible. Even if he doesn’t remember, it might come back to him; these things do . . . or he might have told the police and they’re looking for me . . .’

‘For something that happened twenty years ago?’

‘I don’t know, they could charge me with attempted murder, or leaving the scene of a crime. I don’t know, Paul. I don’t know how long they wait, I don’t know about police and offences and things, I don’t know how that kind of thing works—’ Louisa’s head jerked up and her voice broke off as though the sharp movement had snapped her vocal cords. Paul had heard something too: they both turned to see their visitor at the same time, although he was known only to one of them. He was as solid as a snowman. The bonfire bounced orange flashes from the shaft of the knife which dangled from his belt. Its handle was the colour of clotted blood.

‘Lucky for you that I do, then,’ said Carl Scatlock.

Chapter 47

August 2009

He had spotted the school when they had relieved a swathe of the Essex countryside between Laindon and Colchester of its street furniture. They had passed through a little hamlet of weatherboard houses, dotted with the hazy coronas of reproduction Victorian or Edwardian lamp-posts, elegant swan-necked designs that looked like wrought iron but must have been powder-coated steel. ‘That’s the sign of a rich town, that is,’ said Daniel. ‘Any neighbourhood that has them fake old-fashioned lamps, that means the property prices are sky-high.’ The cars parked in the driveways were big, new and expensive, which confirmed his theory.

The school was a few hundred yards outside the edge of the town. It was one of those low stone-walled village schools, only this one was not tiled in the usual slate; its roof was luminous turquoise. Daniel had slowed to a crawl as they passed it and said, ‘That’ll do nicely.’ The little school was vulnerable, overlooked by nothing except a pylon in the neighbouring field and, closer by, another curving olde worlde lamp-post whose bulb had gone. The playground wrapped around the building; there was a painted snakes and ladders on the asphalt and bright primary-coloured climbing frames with chipped bark underneath. A weathervane, a traditional cockerel design but rendered in some pale grey, modern-looking material, twisted on the brow of the roof.

‘I feel bad, an infant school. It feels like picking on a little kid.’

‘Jesus,
how many times
? These places are all insured. They
like
it when you break in: they claim back and bump it up to get more new stuff. Come on. Besides, it’s the holidays. They’ll have it all patched up by the time the kids are back in. They’ll just blame it on some old boy with a grudge.’

He could have said no. Daniel couldn’t do it without him. Their abortive attempt to recruit a third man – Hash had relegated himself from potential saviour to Carl’s colleague – had only strengthened Daniel’s view that it was the two of them against society, Grays Reach, the world, whatever. Besides, Paul was feeling greedy. He had £2,910 in his building society account; there was enough copper in that roof to yield more than the £90 he would need to bring him up to a nice, tidy three grand. He could have said no and saved a life.

That first time, they only looked at the school. After the farce on the railway line Daniel had grown cautious, insisting on a few days between the recce and the job. The night before they returned there, Paul looked around the room they had shared for the last few months and tried to recall some happy times in it that might help to explain the undertow of guilt that dragged and pulled at his mind. He could remember only miserable nights of hearing Daniel’s grunts and girls’ laughter and sighs curling up the stairs like smoke. He recalled with piercing clarity the night he had betrayed Emily, when he had cried into the hard, flat pillow, and it strengthened his resolve. As though some other authority had taken temporary control of his body, he fetched his holdall from on top of the wardrobe and with automatic precision began to fold his clothes and pack them away. He put his phone charger, both parts of his driving licence and his building society book in the secret inside pocket. When he unzipped it he found the good luck card that Emily had sent him the morning of his driving test. She hadn’t written much, but she had signed her name ‘with love’ and dotted the card with doodles of kisses, love hearts and L-plates. He stared at it in a kind of trance for a minute or two, then resumed packing for his escape. All that was missing now was the other, more important document. It wasn’t on the desk in the room, although he was sure he had left it there. He waited until Daniel took a shower to search downstairs and eventually found it on the kitchen worktop under a sliced white loaf. He read the three stapled pages again; the more often you saw something in print, the truer it became. There it was in Times New Roman font, the confirmation of the place he had scraped on the teacher training course at Brighton University, and the address of his halls of residence. He still found it hard to believe his luck. Brighton was only a few miles from Goring, where his mother and Troy were living. It was the best of both worlds: far enough away from Daniel for accidental meeting to be out of the question, and close to his mother without the liberty-sapping, eggshell-treading reality of living with her. Still, he cursed himself for leaving the letter somewhere so prominent. It might not mean anything to Daniel but Carl – who didn’t seem to be around this week, but that didn’t mean anything, he came and went without notice – could certainly have read it. He didn’t mind them knowing he was going away, but the destination must be kept secret. Telling them without making it sound like an insult was going to be tricky. He was hoping for some eleventh hour inspiration.

Upstairs, clouds of steam from the shower were replaced with clouds of anti-perspirant; he had only a few minutes of solitude left. To throw Daniel off the scent, Paul left a couple of T-shirts he didn’t much care for – designer ones that Daniel had bought him – hanging over the back of the chair, and drew some of Daniel’s clothes into his half of the room so that it would not look too stark. The letter from Brighton University went into the secret pocket of his bag. He had packed everything he needed and it was still only half full. It was easy to place it back on top of the wardrobe and crumple it down again as though there was nothing in it. He pictured himself pulling it down, creeping past a sleeping Daniel and walking to the station on his own. It wasn’t until then that he fully understood that he had never intended to say goodbye.

Chapter 48

January 2010

Carl flicked the blade in and out as casually as someone clicking the lid of a retractable biro. Paul tried to rewind his mind sixty seconds but he could not remember the details of their conversation. How long had Carl been there? What had he heard and what did he know? He could hear the crackle of the fire and the rasp of Louisa’s breath.

‘Please don’t hurt us!’ she cried, taking the cabin keys out of her pocket and holding them out to him with trembling hands. ‘You can have the computer . . . there’s lots of valuable gardening equipment, there are tools you can sell, it’s all in the lock-up, just please don’t hurt us!’

‘Shut her up, Paul,’ said Scatlock.

‘Do you
know
this person?’ Paul saw a flash of that London girl again, ingrained snobbery steeping her voice. Louisa might not be lily-white but her experience of violence was limited. To her, people like Carl were dark-alley encounters, not acquaintances.

‘This is Carl Scatlock,’ said Paul. ‘Daniel’s dad.’ Louisa’s eyes widened. ‘How did you find me here?’

‘Same way I got your number,’ said Carl.

‘And how—’

‘I’m asking the questions here,’ said Carl, still clicking his knife. The blade winked in and out of the handle, flashing like an indicator, constantly making and withdrawing the threat to the flesh. He knows exactly what he’s doing, thought Paul. He felt the old dizziness begin to throw him off balance. His problems, so epic and complex before, began to narrow and simplify until the only thing that mattered in the world was not to see blood.

‘Daniel’s looking at fifteen years because of you, and you’re having a fucking picnic with some . . .’ Carl turned to Louisa. You could almost see the mental gears shifting as he recovered the memory of what he’d heard when he walked in. ‘Where are my manners? Don’t let me interrupt your conversation, darling. You were saying?’

Louisa shook her head. Carl walked towards her.

Paul waited for the Louisa he knew to emerge from this tiny, terrified woman and say the right thing, do something that would stop events moving any further forward, but he saw to his dismay that she was looking to him for guidance. He was frozen between flight and intervention. He had felt this twice before, once with his father and once with Ken Hillyard. Carl circled Louisa a couple of times before stopping in front of her, his body a barrier between them. Without retracting the blade of his knife, he put his hands on her shoulders and then, to Paul’s further stupefaction, he began to undo her coat. The rustle of waxed cotton and the sounds of the Velcro tabs and then the zip being unfastened seemed unnaturally loud, against the low white noise of the fading bonfire. Carl undressed her with slow, deliberate movements that could, in other circumstances, have been interpreted as tender but now, here, they were almost more terrifying than violence. His heavy hands on her body made Paul feel sick, but he knew that the wrong word or movement from him would rupture Carl’s illusion of calm and control and that was not something he was willing to risk while he was so close to Louisa. Carl tugged at her sleeves and removed her coat, tossing it aside; her arms dropped to her sides as though they were stuffed. He rolled up the sleeve of the sweater she wore and the shirt that was under that. He turned it out so the cotton-white skin of her inner arm was exposed and pressed the flat surface of the blade to her wrist. Despite his feeling of paralysis, Paul must have made a move because Louisa looked at him and said ‘Don’t’, in a strangled sort of voice, as though the threat was at her neck and not her wrist. Carl wiped the blade up her arm as though smoothing out plaster, away from her inner wrist and up to the flesh just inside the elbow.