The Silent Ones (21 page)

He shrugged.

She looked him up and down, her eyes lazily roaming over his body. ‘I called you but you didn’t answer.’

‘Sorry, I never listen to messages. Text is the best way.’
Please don’t text me,
he was silently begging her,
please don’t text.
‘I really have to get this to the kitchens.’

She nodded and used the bunch of keys on her belt to open the door. She held it open for him to pass through. ‘We should get together again some time, Darren Smith. You maniac.’

He nodded balefully as she walked away.

The door to the kitchens buzzed open and Darren was in. It was light and bright in here, sunlight slanting across the lino floor. Behind the counter the catering team were still clearing up from lunch.

He placed Olivia’s tray on the metal countertop and waited as Berenice picked it up and cleared away the meal Olivia had barely touched.

‘You did her room today?’ Berenice asked. Darren nodded. Chloe saw him from the sink and came over.

‘You didn’t have to see her did you?’ Chloe asked.

Darren shrugged. ‘Only from a distance.’

‘That’s close enough,’ Chloe said. ‘You OK?’

‘I guess.’ He felt sweat break out down his spine.

She sighed. ‘I guess she’s going to be eating in that room for a long time after what she did. She used to line up here with everyone else.’ She waved at the space around Darren. ‘But now one of us has to take all her food to her room every day.’

‘I like the walk,’ Berenice said, patting her sides. ‘Gotta try and keep it off somehow.’ She looked at Darren. ‘I hear you and Chloe have a rather more pleasurable way of keeping the weight down.’ She winked.

Darren blushed.

Two lads in the kitchen behind Berenice began tossing ladles at each other in some kind of game. Daren was glad he was here, among normal people who had a laugh with each other, instead of stuck in the enclosed corridors and silent rooms.

A ladle clattered to the floor behind them and someone swore. Darren turned round and asked the guy, ‘Did she talk to you much when she was in here?’

The dropped-ladle guy came nearer. ‘Only to the women. She never talks to me. She’s got a
real
thing about women.’

Chloe and Berenice rolled their eyes. Darren pressed on. ‘In the dayroom one time she talked about Rollo being six foot two. What does that mean, I wonder?’

They all shrugged. Berenice wiped down the counter with a cloth. ‘Who knows? She’s mad remember.’

‘The really mad ones often sing, you know,’ ladle guy said.

‘Better that they sing than that they scream,’ Berenice added.

‘Yeah,’ Chloe said. ‘That’s the worst. The screaming.’

K
amal watched Darren Smith come through the security door from the facility. The little fucker had changed his name. Who knew what he was really called, what he was really trying to achieve turning up to this shithole every day?

It was hot in Kamal’s office and he had already jumped enough hurdles to leave him exhausted for the rest of the afternoon. The security review was giving him sleepless nights. It was a pointless exercise in his view – not that anyone asked him for his view;
that
was a luxury someone from his part of the world never experienced.

The pompous Andrew Casey-Jones had been in here only this morning, ordering the employee files to be inspection ready. Kamal’s assistant Roksandre had already complained that the printer was about to break under all the photocopying that was being done. The summer holidays were upon them; there was a blizzard of employees jacking in their jobs, or leaving for a break and not bothering to come back or send so much as a postcard. The governor had lost sight of the main point; no one had ever escaped from Roehampton and they weren’t likely to do it anytime soon – but Darren out the door with his security pass revoked would mean one less problem on Kamal’s desk.

He picked up the phone and made a call. It was time to give Darren whatever-the-fuck-his-name-was a taste of Tangiers – brutal, spicy and ugly.

Darren waited near Kamal’s office to put the trolley back in the cupboard. His shift was over, and he was desperate to get out in the fresh air but there was something he needed to do first. Before he changed into his own clothes he turned round and headed up the stairs to the first floor and security control.

Sonny and Corey were there, surprised to see him. ‘Hi Darren, you not cleaning up here at this time of day are you?’ Sonny asked.

‘No, I just thought I’d come by and say hello. I’ve just finished.’

‘Well, that’s nice,’ Sonny said. ‘I wish we had something interesting to tell you, very quiet the days at the moment, eh Corey?’

Corey smiled, looking uncomfortable, giving Darren daggers behind Sonny’s turned back.

‘Let me take those,’ Darren said, leaning over and picking up a couple of mugs from the desk. ‘I’ll put them in the kitchen for you.’

Sonny pushed his hand away. ‘You work hard enough! Your shift is over for the day.’ He stood. ‘I have to stretch my bad back every opportunity I get, doctor’s orders. You want another drink, Corey?’

Corey smiled and shook his head as Sonny walked out of the room.

‘We should have another drink soon,’ Darren called as Sonny walked away.

‘A lovely idea,’ Sonny said.

‘What the fuck you coming up here for, man?’ Corey hissed. ‘People’ll get suspicious.’

‘Did you get his details yet?’

‘No man! Jesus!’ Corey got up and poked his head out of the door to check that Sonny wasn’t close.

‘I really need them—’

‘Yeah, yeah, my cuz could lose his job.’

‘If you get me the details I’ll stop coming up. Take my number and text me.’

Corey scribbled the number down on a piece of paper. Darren patted him on the shoulder and left the room.

A few moments later he came out into the lobby and found Nathan on security. ‘How you doing, Nathan?’

The perfect forehead pinched into a frown. ‘Nightmare, Darren, nightmare.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Darren put his possessions in the tray and walked through the barrier. He didn’t beep.

‘That.’ Nathan pointed at a tiny red dot on his chin. ‘It’s the size of Krakatoa and I’ve got a casting.’

Darren had to squint to see it. ‘Don’t worry, you can’t even see it.’

Nathan shook his head. ‘Studio lights, HD TV, nightmare,’ he muttered again. ‘Life’s so unfair.’

Darren was at that point thinking life was unfair to those who hadn’t been blessed with Nathan’s looks.

‘I mustn’t grumble, Darren, I know that other people are less fortunate, that in many ways I have been blessed.’ Nathan put his hand on his heart. ‘Others toil unseen.’ It was an Oscar speech in the making.

Darren heard a voice behind him. Berenice was leaving, putting her handbag in the tray.

She passed through the barrier. ‘You know, Nathan, you really look like someone, I can’t remember their name – who is it?’

He gave her his catalogue-model smile. ‘Bradley Cooper?’

Berenice looked startled. ‘No. I was thinking of that Polish cleaner who started recently. Piotr, is it?’ She picked up her bag, affronted at his arrogance, and walked hurriedly away.

W
hen Darren got home his mum was packing her bag for her mastectomy. It was small, containing only what she really needed for her hospital stay. She was a practical, sensible woman in so many areas of her life, Darren thought – except one.

She was nervous, and he couldn’t help her with that. But he wanted to do something to support her. He took the rubbish out and glanced back up at the house. She had been nagging him about the clapboard for so long now. He’d already booked a couple of days off work so that he could be with her in hospital while she recovered from her operation. He could spend the rest of the time stripping and painting the front of the house.

He got excited about his idea.

He went out to the shed and rooted around among the dried-up tins of paint and the stiff brushes no one had cleaned properly. He was searching for paint stripper, but he couldn’t find any.

He was about to go shopping for supplies when his phone rang. It was Orin Bukowski.

‘You got a TV, young gun? I suggest you put it on.’

‘Just a minute.’ Darren went into the living room and put the news on. Details of how Molly had died had been made public. Darren listened to a reporter reveal that she had been smashed across the skull with a heavy, blunt object. Her injury was severe enough to kill her instantly.

‘What they will not tell you, and what I am going to announce in ten, is that for the angles to match with the height of prisoner 1072B Molly Peters would have had to be kneeling.’ Orin paused for effect. ‘You come join my campaign, we’ll buy better justice.’

Darren shook his head. ‘My mum’s about to—’

‘Go into hospital. I know. You want me to pay for a private room? You just have to ask.’

‘Thanks, Orin, but let us get through this first. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re not the one who needs to be sorry.’ Orin ended the call.

Darren sat down on the floor of the stuffy shed, warmed by the sun so the creosote in the wood released its musty, pleasant perfume. It was the smell of the summers of his childhood. Some of the paint supplies on the shelves had been here since Carly was still alive. Dust motes danced in the light through the ill-fitting slats. Darren felt the impotence and pain rise up in him again as he absorbed what had happened to Molly; tiny strips of light trying to illuminate a picture, but highlighting only horror. The only thing that stopped grief overwhelming him was his phone beeping. It was a text from Corey.

John de Luca, 91 Clapham Park Road, London SW4. U o me cuz.

Darren ran back into the house and upstairs to his computer. Number 91, the flat above the charity shop, was where John Sears lived. Were John de Luca and John Sears the same person? Why did anyone visiting a serial killer need two names? As he himself knew only too well, that would require a lot of fake ID.

D
arren cycled to Clapham and parked round a corner from the charity shop near the Common. The tinkling door jarred his nerves; the musty smell evoked old men in dressing gowns. He noticed that there was a video camera in the corner, trained on the shop floor. He couldn’t understand why a humble charity shop would need that level of security.

He was pleased to see that the woman who had helped him last time wasn’t in today. Instead, there was a black woman at the counter. She looked up from the pages of a paperback. ‘You dropping off, dear?’ Darren shook his head. ‘There’s men’s at the back there.’

He was unsure how to proceed, so he walked past a rack where pairs of creased and wrinkled shoes begged to be picked up, past belts on a rotating display and mismatched crockery struggling to find space on some narrow shelves.

‘Where do you put all the stuff you can’t sell?’ He began to flick through a rail of tweedy trousers no one could possibly want to buy in the hottest June for years.

The woman put down her book. ‘We get too much, that’s for sure. Some too dirty, some too worn. We bag it up and ship it to the Third World. I think they push it through huge machines and shred it and make new stuff from it.’

Darren was interested in that. ‘That sounds like a big industry.’

The woman smiled. ‘I don’t know, dear. But open that door behind you and take a look.’ Darren turned and saw through a partly open door a small storeroom piled to the ceiling with black bin bags brimming with clothes and bedding nobody wanted.

‘World is full of too much stuff, eh?’

The woman nodded. ‘Too much stuff around us, you know.’

The bell tinkled and the door opened. Two dark-haired women came in, both pulling suitcases. ‘Maybe it’s a bit like people, it feels like there are too many of them at times,’ Darren said.

The woman was being friendly. ‘Some of the people who come in here feel a little surplus to requirements, but we do what we can.’

Darren nodded, noticing a door to the right of the storeroom. It would lead to the stairs and the flat above.

Darren walked closer to the door and looked at some T-shirts on a rail. He was about to ask the woman about John when he heard the heavy tread of someone coming down the stairs from the flat upstairs. He grabbed a T-shirt off a rack and darted into the changing cubicle as the door to the flat opened and closed.

A man coughed.

The woman at the desk said hello, and whoever had come through the door murmured a greeting.

‘Quiet today?’ He had a south London accent.

‘Like always,’ she said. Darren heard a metallic creak. He looked down and saw under the bottom of the cubicle curtain the dusty work boots of Olivia’s befriender. ‘I haven’t seen you around much lately, where you been?’

‘Keeping out of trouble. By the way, I wanted to tell you, I think someone’s been trying to tamper with my post – I had someone trying to take out a credit card in my name. No one suspicious has been in asking about me, my name, anything like that? My bank says I need to be extra vigilant.’

The woman made a clucking noise of disapproval. ‘That’s terrible. I’ve seen nothing like that, but I’ll warn the others.’ Daren heard more creaks and shuffles. ‘You OK in there?’ she called out to him suddenly.

‘I’m fine,’ Darren said, taking a step backwards towards the mirror. The boots were back outside the curtain, pointing towards him this time.

Darren held his breath. The boots moved away and he heard the door next to the changing room open and shut behind him.

Darren pulled back the curtain and came out into the shop, the T-shirt in his hands.

‘That’s three pound fifty dear.’ The woman licked her finger and used it to open a plastic bag.

‘I heard that man,’ Darren said, shaking his head and pulling out the coins. ‘Same thing happened to my mum last year. Someone took out a credit card in her name and ran up a bill of seven grand. You can never be too careful.’