A Reason to Kill (25 page)

A police report had been filed. The assumption had been that Parker was the victim of a violent mugging and he'd not disabused anyone of the notion. He'd been stabbed in an alley at the side of his favourite pub. No one had connected him with the Edward Parker wanted for domestic abuse simply because for five days no one even knew his name and also because no one was looking very hard for Edward Parker, abuser. He was assumed to have long gone.

By the time the connection had been made, Parker had disappeared from there as well, together with a hospital wheelchair, implying that he must have had some help.

‘These friends of his, I suppose,' Mac muttered to himself.

Two knife wounds, both potentially life threatening. One was a slash to the face and neck. He'd lost a lot of blood, but his attacker had failed to connect with the major vessels, the knife deflecting off the jaw. The second was a deep stab wound to the side and from that he should have died. Luck saved him. Another drinker taking a short cut back to his Sunday lunch. He'd run back inside, raised the alarm and the barman had administered first aid, keeping pressure on the wound until the ambulance arrived.

Mac leaned back in his chair and stared hard at both reports as though staring could bring him answers. She'd have been fifteen then, abused for a good portion of her life, witness to abuse that Mac could not even begin to imagine.

That gave her a reason, but, Mac asked himself, did it give her the
right
?

Paul had gone with his parents to stay with relatives for a few days and George missed him. He was bored. His mum had woken up for a while and had some tea and toast but then flopped on the sofa in a half doze, staring at the daytime television.

Karen had gone back to the house to get some more of their stuff and George hoped she'd remember his PlayStation. George hoped she'd be OK. He told her she should ask Mac to go with her but she'd just smiled and told him she'd be fine. She'd keep her eyes open.

George sat on the windowsill, staring out on to the promenade and watching people go about their daily tasks. It was too early in the season for there to be tourists and the locals were all bundled up against the steady drizzle that had started at dawn and gave no sign of letting up.

George glanced across at his mother, wondering if he should make her a cup of tea. At least it would be something to do. He went across to the sink and filled the kettle, flipped open the cupboard doors, curious to see what policemen ate. This one, it seemed, not a lot.

Sighing, George slammed tea bags into the pot and then wandered back to the window, waiting for the water to boil. George froze. Out there on the promenade, leaning against the sea wall, stood Edward Parker – and he was staring up at George. Then, absurdly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he smiled and waved.

George backed away. He was seeing things. He should tell his mother, call the police. Phone Karen on her mobile.

He moved back to the window, half convinced that the man would have gone, or transmuted into some harmless stranger who just happened to bear a passing resemblance to his dad. But no, Parker senior was still there and now he was crossing the promenade and heading towards the front door.

George, eyes wide with fear, looked again at his mother. She was oblivious to it all, mouthing the answer to the questions on the quiz she was watching. George could not let his father come inside. He couldn't even let him bang on the door. She'd hear. She'd know. She'd freak out.

Squaring his shoulders, he sneaked behind the sofa, paused to grab his coat from the peg near the door, and slipped out. He met his father on the stairs.

‘Georgie boy!'

‘Shhsh, please, Dad.'

Parker's grin broadened. ‘Your mother there, is she? Your bitch of a sister?'

Shocked, George shook his head. ‘She went out,' he stammered.

‘Yeah, I suppose she must have. I don't hear any sirens, see any little hell cat with a knife.'

‘Knife?' George was confused now.

‘Oh, you don't know?' Edward Parker turned and headed back down the stairs and out on to the promenade. Hesitant, George followed him.

‘I don't know what you're on about.'

‘Maybe we should go and find her?' Parker threw back over his shoulder. He started to walk down the promenade.

‘No!' George shouted after him. ‘I told you, she went out.' Worried about his dad getting to Karen, it didn't occur to George that his father was headed in quite the wrong way anyway. The opposite direction from their house.

Not sure what to do, afraid that if he retreated to the flat his dad would follow, George trailed after him, trying to keep a decent distance behind. They reached the end of the promenade. Turn one way now and you were on the stone-built jetty that jutted into the bay. The other way took a big loop round towards the Railway pub or up to the hotel at Marlborough Head. George wondered desperately what his father was planning to do.

Edward paused, waited for George to catch up, then beckoned him on. ‘What's up, Georgie boy? I ain't going to hurt you.'

‘You said that before,' George told him. His dad's eyes hardened but he forced a laugh.

‘Well I'm sorry I scared you, old son,' he said. ‘But sometimes your mam would provoke me so far I just didn't know what I was doing. I'd lose it with her and I know that probably frightened you, but it's past history now. You and me, we're going to start again. Be a team like. Father and son. Like it's supposed to be.'

George stood stock still. He couldn't be serious. Could he? He shook his head. ‘I ain't going nowhere with you.' He turned on his heel and started to run. He only managed three paces before strong arms swept him off his feet. George yelled but then a hand was clamped tight and moments later George was bundled into a car, squashed on the back seat between his dad and the man who'd grabbed him.

George whimpered in fright. He couldn't help himself.

‘Nothing to be scared of, Georgie boy,' his father said. ‘Nothing at all.'

‘Where's George?' Karen demanded as she came back into the flat. Her mother looked up momentarily from the television then turned back to her chat show.

Karen switched the television off. ‘Mum, where's George?' She marched through to the bedroom. Knocked on the bathroom door. It swung open to her touch. There were only so many places in the flat that a boy could hide. Where the hell was he? She checked the coat hooks, but his coat was gone. ‘Mum, didn't you even see him go?'

Momentary bewilderment on Carol's face was followed by blankness. She shook her head. ‘Isn't he here?'

‘Oh, for God's sake, Mum!'

She grabbed the phone; delved in her bag for the number Mac had given her. ‘George is gone,' she said. ‘No, I don't know where. I don't know how long. I went to the house to get some things and left him with Mum. I got back and he'd gone and she'd not even noticed. OK, I'll wait here. Please hurry.'

She lowered the phone and tried not to give into the dread gnawing at her belly. It was their dad, she just knew it. She just knew.

George found himself in a tiny room papered with large cabbage roses. More roses, red this time, climbed a trellis print on a pair of ageing curtains. A window gave a view out on to the sea. The window was locked. He angled his neck, trying to see what was below, but he couldn't even glimpse the ground and, considering the several flights of stairs it had taken to get up here, he figured he must be three floors above the ground.

George had a vague idea where he was. They'd taken the road past the hotel, winding up on to the headland, and then joined the coast road. He'd managed to look at his watch. It had been ten fifteen when they'd passed the hotel and only fifteen minutes after that they'd turned into a long cart track of a drive. The car had been put in a garage before they got out and they entered the house by a side door. George had then been taken upstairs and locked in. He'd rarely had reason to be out this way but he remembered that from Marlborough Head you could see a cluster of buildings, whitewashed and imposing, on a craggy outcrop of land jutting out into the sea as Marlborough did. The house was tall, unusually so for one as exposed to the elements, and George felt certain that was where he was now imprisoned.

All he had to do now was let someone know. Easy.

He surveyed his tiny kingdom. A single bed, made up with clean sheets. He could smell the fabric conditioner. A chest of drawers, empty. A bedside table with a single drawer and a cupboard, also empty. George had used the cupboard to climb up on to the high sill of the locked window. He rested his feet on it now and perched uncomfortably on the sill.

He couldn't see much of anything, and even less of anything helpful.

His dad had taken his coat from him before leaving the room and made him empty his pockets. Where, George wondered, was the carefully concealed Swiss Army knife when you most needed it?

He sighed. A right mess he'd made of things, yet again. He couldn't quite figure out what his father wanted. He didn't for one minute think that his father really, actually wanted him. He'd always despised George and had never bothered to hide the fact. ‘You're just a waste of skin,' he'd say and mean every word of it. ‘Your mam must have put it around while I was inside. No way I fathered a ginger idiot.'

And what was all this stuff about Karen? This stuff about a knife?

George thought back to the day they'd run away from their father. The ambulance had come, taken their mum away and instead of following her on the bus or cadging a lift in the police car like they usually did, Karen had said they'd wait and go later on.

The police woman had been a bit quizzical, but he'd heard her fellow officer say that the kids must be used to it by now. Probably sick of it all. Good that Karen wanted to put her dad away. They'd arrange for a responsible adult to come to the station to sit with her while she made a statement.

‘Don't change your mind,' he told her sternly.

‘Oh, don't worry,' Karen had said. ‘You'll be seeing us.'

Then she'd told George to go to the shops and given him a list of stuff to get. He tried to recall how long he'd been gone and guessed it must have been about an hour. He'd not been scared. Not been worried about meeting their dad. They knew his habits, knew he'd be getting pissed in one of two local pubs and George could easily avoid both.

When he'd come back, Karen had still been cleaning up. She told him to pack a bag, just with his favourite stuff, then she'd phoned for a taxi and they'd gone to the police station, sat in the reception area and waited. George had fallen asleep stretched across the chairs. They never had gone back to collect the rest of their gear.

He tried hard to remember anything else that had happened that day, but it was four years ago and so much had happened since. So much moving around and turmoil and anxiety that it all got a bit confused – and anyway, he didn't spend much time these days trying to recall a time he'd rather blank from his memory. If it was possible to take a pill that would selectively wipe out bits of your past, then George would probably have done so.

He remembered he'd been offered counselling in one of the hostels they'd stayed in. The chance to talk things through and tell this woman called Philly what had happened. George's mum had. She'd spent hours with this Philly woman, crying and wailing and talking about how bad it had been but George just said ‘no thanks'. Why would he want to keep remembering all that? George wanted to move on, to have a future, not to keep rehashing a lousy past.

Thinking about it, he couldn't remember what Karen had done.

Footsteps coming up the uncarpeted stairs told him his dad was probably on the way back up. George tensed, but stayed put. The door opened. His dad and the man from the promenade came into the room. George had not had a proper chance to look at the other man until now. He was younger than his dad and tall with blond hair that was kind of spiky at the front. He was smartly dressed in dark trousers and a blazer with shiny buttons. George stared at him and the man stared back.

‘Get down,' his dad said. George obeyed.

Edward Parker handed him a mobile phone. ‘Call your sister. Tell her you're with me.'

George took the phone and stood nervously passing it from hand to hand. ‘I don't know the number,' he whispered.

‘What do you mean you don't know the number?'

‘She's not going to be at home,' George was desperate to explain. ‘She'll be at the flat by now and I don't know the number for the flat and I don't know her mobile either; she just got a new one and I wrote the number on the list on the wall in the hall near the phone but I don't know it.'

Edward Parker stared hard at his son and took a step closer. ‘You what?' The hand came back and George cowered. He was back then. Nine years old and scared to death, knowing how much his dad's fist hurt.

‘I ain't lying to you. I wouldn't lie to you not ever.'

‘You better not be. What's this load of junk?' He dropped the business card Tim had given George on to the bed.

‘He's a friend,' George stammered. ‘He does magic.'

Parker senior laughed loudly. ‘Magic,' he said. ‘Bloody magic.' He stepped closer once again, a thought striking him. ‘He seeing your mam?'

George was genuinely taken aback. ‘No. Course not. Mam ain't seen no one. You got her too scared.'

His father's eyes narrowed and George prepared himself for a blow that never arrived. His dad pushed past the other man and left. In the doorway, the blond man turned. ‘Don't get him riled,' he said. ‘He enjoys it. Don't forget that.'

‘What's he want?' George begged. ‘I don't understand what he wants.'

The man paused, considered George for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind. ‘He wants your sister,' he said. ‘He reckons it's payback time.'