Bones in the Nest (5 page)

Sean worked for three solid hours. The kitchen floor was two shades lighter and Jack was standing by the door, jingling his keys. It was time to go to the Clean up Chasebridge meeting. Sean pulled his father’s baseball hat low over his eyes. Its greasy band felt cool on his forehead and he tried not to think about how seldom Jack washed his hair. He folded his arms over a grey-green anorak he’d found hanging on the back of the front door. The zip was broken and he didn’t dare put his hands in the pockets, but it was a good disguise. Even his dad agreed.

‘I wouldn’t know you in that lot,’ Jack Denton peered through his cigarette smoke. ‘Ah, I get it. You fancy yourself as an undercover spy, now you’ve given up policing.’

‘Eh?’

‘Aye, you said, yesterday. You’d soon be out of a job, you said. Her Majesty’s Secret Service is it now? Eh? Nice one, lad!’

Sean shook his head. Let Jack have his mad fantasy; he wasn’t going to admit that staying unnoticed was deliberate.
The estate had been on Sean’s beat when he was a PCSO and it was impossible to be off-duty where people still remembered you.

They set off in the stinking lift to the ground floor and left the building. The low sun cast a glow over the estate and a bank of dark clouds was stacking up in the east. It was one of those pent-up summer evenings when something is bound to break. Sean noticed several people heading towards the community centre. Groups of middle-aged men, whole families, one or two couples and an elderly pair making slow progress with their wheeled walking frames. It could have been a summer fête, except no one was smiling. Sean pulled the peak of the cap lower.

The community hall was even shabbier than Sean remembered it. The rain had come in through the roof and left a dark stain across the mural:
Chasebridge Kids: Peace and Love!
The result of a summer scheme a decade ago.

‘We can go near the door so I can get out for a fag,’ Jack said.

The hall filled up slowly. At the front, a man in a white T-shirt was adjusting the microphone. He bent down to check a cable. When he stood up, Sean could see it was the guy with the sharp blue eyes who’d put the leaflet through the door. Terry.

‘What were you saying yesterday? About his brother?’

‘Eh?’ Jack looked blank. ‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Sean shuffled lower in his seat. The chairs began to fill and a tall man sat in front of him. It was enough to block his direct view of the stage, but that suited him fine. He looked
around at who else was here. Rain had started tapping on the skylights in the roof. A couple of teenage girls ran in, shaking water from their hair and giggling. The next arrival was better prepared. He saw her from the back as she threw the butt of her cigarette outside the door. The smoke was still escaping through her lips as she came into the room, fingers struggling to un-knot the plastic rain hood protecting her neatly set hair. It was Nan. Sean dipped his head but not quick enough. She caught his eye and started towards them.

‘Now then, Jack Denton,’ she greeted Jack, who looked at her, confused, not recognising the mother-in-law he hadn’t spoken to for years. Sean stared at his feet and she hesitated, nodded at them both and veered off down the side aisle to find a seat nearer the front.

A man with a bald head and a thick neck, squeezed into a tight shirt collar, stood up at the front. He welcomed the residents of Chasebridge with a warning that these were dangerous times and it had never been more important for people to stand shoulder to shoulder. Communities of like-minded people were forged in times of adversity, he said, and this was one of those times.

‘The foreigners who claim to be part of our community have no respect, even as they’re making their money out of us.’

There was a murmur that sounded like a suppressed laugh.

‘There’s a shop on the corner there, and where you’re seeing ciggies, newspapers and birthday cards, I’m seeing something else. The younger generation are drawing undesirable elements into the area, folk who are causing
trouble, bringing drugs onto this estate. Our parents stood by and let those people come in. Now the gates are open to all the Asians, Polish, Bulgarians and so-called asylum seekers. And what protection is there for our own youth? The police don’t care. Look, this campaign may have started with litter picking, but now we’ve got to get rid of the rest of the rubbish, so our own people can walk the streets without fear.’

A few people clapped and there was a cheer from the front row.

‘We’re organising a torchlit march next week, to reclaim our estate, to keep it safe.’

Applause broke out as Sean sank deeper into his seat.

‘Friends!’ The voice changed. It was Terry. ‘I’ve been away, but you’ve welcomed me home, like the prodigal son. But what do I find? I find my home has been spoilt and I want it back; I want it how it used to be. Is that too much to ask? I don’t want foreigners bringing their drugs round here. So, listen to me, if you want to keep your estate clean, you need to keep it English.’

More applause broke out at the front and a woman punched the air with a big bare arm. The rain started to knock harder against the skylights. Terry handed the microphone over to the man with the tight shirt collar. He was saying something about the torchlit parade, but it was no use, the rain was too loud. Talking was breaking out among the back rows and only the loyal supporters at the front were able to pick up their cue to clap and cheer at the right moments.

The rain turned to hail. Jack was twitching and Sean saw he was chuckling with laughter.

‘What is it?’ he mouthed.

Jack pressed his mouth to Sean’s ear. ‘I hope they get better weather. I’d like to see ’em try a torchlit march in this.’

‘I’m going, Dad. I’ve heard enough.’

He stood up but a hand grabbed his sleeve. Jack was pointing at the coat. His father was only wearing a thin shirt. The air had been warm when they’d left the flat. Sean quickly dropped the coat on the chair and pulled the brim of the baseball cap lower. He’d drawn more attention to himself than he’d wanted and it hadn’t been missed by the speaker.

‘This is not the time to leave! This is the time to stand with your own people!’ The voice from the front boomed above the rain.

Sean headed for the door and had his hand on the handle, when the drumming on the roof stopped as sharply as it had started. In the quiet that followed he sensed everyone staring at him.

‘Are you with us, or against us, lad?’ A voice from the front spoke calmly in the silence.

Sean didn’t look back. He pushed the door open and walked out into the clean, damp air. The ground shone with water and the sky ahead was brilliant blue. A rainbow arched over the four tower blocks. He could hear a muffled voice from the hall, rising to a crescendo, followed by a burst of applause. It grew louder for a moment before being muted again, as if the door had opened and closed behind him.

‘Now then,’ Terry was standing on the rough concrete ramp in front of the hall. It gave him a couple more inches of height over Sean. ‘Want a smoke?’

‘I’m OK.’

‘So you’re Jack’s lad.’

Sean nodded.

‘He’s been good to me,’ Terry said.

‘Really?’ Sean didn’t mean to sound surprised, but he hadn’t realised that being good to other people was in his dad’s repertoire.

‘That bother you, does it?’

‘No, no. It’s up to him.’

Sean mentally logged all the details in front of him: height, hair colour – a browny-red already peppered with grey – a spotless clean T-shirt, new-looking jeans pressed to a crease and an expensive pair of trainers. The ‘Made in England’ tattoo was rougher than the rest of his outfit, the sort of amateur job that might have been done in prison.

‘Terry … sorry, I didn’t catch your other name—’

‘And I didn’t catch yours, can’t call you young Denton, can I? So we’re both at a disadvantage with only half a name each.’

Terry smiled as he dragged on his cigarette and the light caught his eyes. Sean had an odd feeling, like he was being flirted with.

‘The name’s Sean,’ he said and wondered if he should offer a handshake, but he held back; there was too much energy around Terry that he didn’t like. Trust your instincts, Gav was always telling him.

‘Terry Starkey.’ Another long slow drag on his cigarette. ‘Good to meet you.’

‘Likewise.’

‘You don’t want to come back in?’ Terry flicked the spent
butt onto the grass. ‘It’s a good bunch of lads. We look out for one another.’

‘I’m OK, thanks, I—’ Sean struggled to think of a reason apart from the obvious truth. ‘I don’t like so many people, crowds, you know, I get freaked out.’

‘I hear you, bro!’ Terry lurched forward and Sean winced as he gave him a manly clap on the shoulder. ‘Take care, I’ll see you around.’

Another chattering round of applause burst out of the opening door as Terry went back inside and Sean let out the breath he’d been holding. He pulled his phone out and scrolled through his contacts.

‘Gav? Is it too late to change my mind about that pint?’

At nine-thirty on Monday morning, Chloe walks up the drive for her first day of work at Halsworth Grange. She feels sick. She thought it was the motion of the bus, but it’s still with her. Something moves on one of the chimneys of the house. She holds her breath, but it’s just a bird, taking off and circling above the trees. It’s a warm day, but dark grey clouds hang about to the east. They have a strange effect on the light, deepening the colours around her. She hurries on; Bill Coldacre is waiting for her in the potting shed.

‘Height of summer,’ Bill says. ‘The garden’s at its best, especially the borders. Now we’ve had a bit of rain, even the lawns are recovering.’

He keeps up a running commentary: the weather, the rain last night and the forecast of another heatwave on its way. They go outside and he shows her where she’ll be working today. She leans forward to touch the soft leaves of a plant with purple flowers.

‘Lamb’s ears,’ he says, ‘because, well, you can see why.’

They’re a dusty pale green but they feel like velvet. She strokes one of the leaves with her fingertips.

She spends the rest of the day deadheading roses and pulling up cleavers where they’ve started to encroach on the beds. Bill has given her a pair of gloves. They’re not like the tough cotton ones she’s used before. He says these are made of pigskin in China. They’re too nice to get dirty, but they stop the cleavers giving her a rash. It’s a quiet day; Bill says Mondays usually are. The few visitors look at the plants and ignore her. That suits her fine. She’s happy to be invisible.

She works hard and by four o’clock she’s stacking the tools according to Bill’s tidy system, when she hears a familiar voice outside the potting shed.

‘Ouch! Ow, ow!’

She looks out to see Taheera, wearing a huge pair of film-star sunglasses, hopping on one leg, trying to take one of her sandals off.

‘Got a stone right under the ball of my foot.’

She hops onto a strip of lawn and puts her foot down, shaking the offending sandal to check the gravel isn’t stuck inside it. A tiny pink sequin falls out onto the grass.

Bill follows Chloe outside and wipes his hands on an old rag. His arm twitches as if he wants to offer Taheera a hand. She hops on one leg again, trying to put her sandal back on, and he hesitates. Chloe can tell he sees what she sees: Taheera is beautiful, and here, in the garden, she looks more beautiful than ever.

‘Hi,’ Chloe breaks the silence. ‘Is it all right if I go now, Bill? This is Taheera. She’s going to give me a lift home.’

‘Aye,’ he clears his throat and rubs at an oil spot on the
palm of his hand. ‘You get off. You’ve worked hard.’

They walk to the car park where the little cream car is parked. They get in and Taheera pulls away fast, spinning the wheels on the gravel. The car swings round the corner of the drive and Chloe reaches for something to hold on to. She wonders if they’ll chat, but Taheera turns Radio 1 on loud. Chloe sits back in her seat and settles down to enjoy the ride.

At the far side of the village, Taheera pulls up to a junction and indicates right. The sign says Doncaster, twelve miles. Chloe feels the sweat rising in her armpits and hopes Taheera can’t smell her fear.

‘Hope you don’t mind, I need to nip back to my parents’ house, I’ve left something,’ Taheera shouts over the music. ‘It won’t take a minute.’

‘OK,’ Chloe says, reading every signpost carefully.

Taheera slows at a crossroads and turns into a leafy narrow lane overhung with beech trees.

‘Sleepy hollow!’ Taheera says. ‘That’s what I call it. Mum and Dad think it makes them more English to live in a village like this.’

Chloe isn’t sure what she should say, so she says nothing. The house is at the end of a pretty lane. It’s detached, with a big garden. Along the side of the house there’s a row of apple trees heavy with leaves and the tiny nubs of fruit waiting to fill and grow.

Taheera drives between two large stone pillars and stops in front of the garage, next to a dark blue BMW.

‘You OK to stay here?’ Taheera says, opening the door and getting out.

‘Sure,’ Chloe feels a crush of disappointment that she’s
not been invited in, but she tries not to show it.

‘Won’t be a minute.’

Taheera slams the door shut and Chloe watches her pick her way across the gravel drive. As she reaches the front door, it opens. Taheera stands aside for a white guy in jeans and a denim jacket. There is a younger man standing in the doorway. Chloe recognises the brother, the one who shouted under her window the first night she slept at Meredith House. She can’t hear what’s said, but the guy in the denim shakes the brother’s hand and turns to get into the BMW. He doesn’t notice Chloe, a few feet away, as he ducks into the driver’s seat. He adjusts the rear-view mirror and starts the engine. It’s only when he begins to reverse that he looks across at her, but she lets her hair fall in front of her face and turns away. When the BMW has gone she looks up to see Taheera gesturing angrily to her brother, who simply smiles and stands aside to let her in.

She’s gone for a few minutes and when she comes back she’s carrying a bag and a paper plate.

‘My mum thought we might be hungry. Do you want some sweets?’

The plate is crammed with brightly-coloured cakes; one of them is oozing orange jam. Chloe takes the plate on her knee and puts one in her mouth. She’s hungry and the sugar is wonderful.

‘Who was that guy?’ she says, when she’s swallowed most of it.

‘Who?’ Taheera starts the engine.

‘In the BMW.’

‘No idea, one of my brother’s cronies, I guess.’

‘Oh.’ Chloe says.

There was something about his eyes, but she tells herself lots of people have blue eyes.

‘Kamran must think pretty highly of him: he’s lent him his car.’

Taheera turns the radio back on and turns it up loud, skids into reverse and backs out of the driveway.

Chloe doesn’t recognise these roads. They’re nowhere near the local station where she got the train home after her interview.

‘Are we heading back to York?’ Chloe shouts over the drum and bass.

Taheera turns the music down a couple of notches.

‘Just need to see someone,’ she says. ‘It won’t take long.’

They pull up to a ‘give way’ sign and wait. Halsworth is to the left, Doncaster to the right. A gap opens on the main road and she swings right.

‘But where are we going?’ Chloe says.

‘I’m going to try his uncle’s shop. He’s probably working.’

Chloe stares out of the window, pressing her fingernails into her palms.

‘The guy who came to the Minster?’

‘Oh, yeah, of course, you’ve met him. I forgot.’

Chloe sits tight. They’re on a stretch of dual carriageway now and there’s no chance of turning round. She shifts in her seat, the backs of her legs stick to the leather. Taheera fiddles with the control for the air-conditioning and the temperature starts falling.

The road feeds onto the M18 motorway and a sign reads:
Doncaster - four miles.
They pass an exit but Taheera
keeps going. They swing out into the middle lane to pass an Asda lorry. Maybe it will be all right. Maybe they’re headed beyond the town. The car is swamped on either side by lorries that will surely crush them. She looks at Taheera’s hands on the wheel, gripping so tightly her knuckles peak in little mountains of hard bone. They sway back into the left-hand lane.

It’s hard to tell what direction you’re going on a motorway. Everything looks the same, except the sun. It was on their right when they started but now it’s behind them. Taheera is indicating onto a slip road and the next sign leaves Chloe in no doubt. She feels like she’s going to be sick.

‘I can’t go this way,’ Chloe says. ‘I’m not allowed to go to Doncaster.’

‘It’s just on the edge,’ Taheera says. ‘It’s OK. We’re not going into the town or anything.’

They slow down for the roundabout at the top of the slip road and Chloe feels for the catch on the door.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Taheera turns to look at her.

‘I can’t be here. It’s part of my licence. I thought you knew. Didn’t you read my file?’ Her fingers pull at the catch, but Taheera is faster and clicks a switch on her door.

‘Calm down! You can’t get out here. Where would you go?’

Chloe slumps back. The nausea is real now. She takes deep breaths to keep the sticky sweets down but acid creeps into her throat. Taheera’s right. If she got out here she’d be wandering along a road she doesn’t know, a road where a police car could pull up at any moment.

‘Look, sorry, Chloe, I had no idea this is where … where
you’re from. Hang tight. You can stay in the car. No one will see you. Here, wear these. You can be in disguise, like in a movie.’

She’s laughs and hands Chloe her sunglasses.

‘I need to check if Mo’s at work. It’s just a shop. I promise I won’t take a second.’

They pass rows of new houses and a supermarket, more fields and a stretch of dual carriageway. Chloe knows this road. The new houses confused her for a moment, but the line of hedges and trees hasn’t changed. They’re slowing down, turning in along the side of the playground. Chloe catches a glimpse of the four Eagle Mount tower blocks and closes her eyes.

When the car stops, they’re in front of the shops. Library at one end, Health Centre at the other, with the bookies and AK News and Convenience Store sandwiched in between. It’s a bit shabbier than she remembers it, but otherwise nothing has changed. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t have trusted Taheera. While she waits in the car the sunglasses keep sliding down her nose. She daren’t open the door. A group of teenage girls shriek past in too-tight shorts. She tells herself that they won’t recognise her; they would have been toddlers the last time she was here. The older women scare her more. She’s torn between wanting to scrutinise their faces and trying to keep her own face turned away. There’s a glossy magazine in the footwell of Taheera’s car, so she stares hard at a C-list celebrity’s wedding photos, and lets the people outside blur in her peripheral vision.

Finally the driver’s door opens and Taheera puts her head in.

‘You have to get me out of here,’ Chloe says but it comes out as a whisper.

‘Here, have a couple of quid and get yourself a cold drink. I’ve got to nip into the library.’

She drops two pound coins on the seat and shuts the door again. Chloe picks them up and holds them in her damp palm. She turns to see Taheera disappear through the double glass doors of the library. She’s thirsty, incredibly thirsty. Rows of cold drinks will be lined up in the fridge in the newsagent’s. She looks around her and opens the door, pushes the sunglasses back up her slippery nose.

He’s coming out of an alleyway between the buildings, Mo, the bloke she saw at York Minster. He’s carrying a big folder and heading for the library. He walks straight past her and if he sees her, he doesn’t acknowledge it. That’s good: if the huge sunglasses that cover half her face have hidden her from someone she’s seen recently, then perhaps she’s safe from being recognised by people who haven’t seen her for ten years. She decides she’ll be all right, if she’s quick, and walks the few yards to the shop without turning round.

Inside it’s cool and gloomy. She finds her way to the fridge, but it’s hard to see with the glasses on, so pushes them on top of her head. She lifts out a small bottle of the cheapest lemonade and goes to the till. There’s a girl in a headscarf who takes her money and gives her the change. Chloe turns away quickly, back towards the door, passing a low shelf of newspapers on her left. Heavy black headlines and the face of a teenage girl in school uniform stare up at her.

She doesn’t break her stride as she leaves the shop. The sunglasses thump against the bridge of her nose as she runs
to the car. She gets in, slams the door shut and presses the cold plastic bottle against her neck. Her hands are trembling.

When Taheera comes back, Chloe says nothing. She barely notices the young man slipping back up the alleyway. They move off and soon a blast of air from the fans chills the sweat on her legs.

‘Thanks for waiting,’ Taheera says cheerfully, as she drives towards the top of the estate, where the road opens out onto the dual carriageway.

Chloe just wants to get out of there. She doesn’t look at the flats this time, keeps her eyes fixed on the label of her lemonade bottle, scratching it away with her thumbnail. When they reach the motorway, she snatches a look at the speedometer, creeping up past sixty, seventy, still rising as the tiny car hurtles along the inside lane, getting her away from the estate and its towers, the shop, the local paper with the headline she’s been dreading. She wishes they could go even faster.

‘Look, um, I hope you don’t think I put you in a difficult position,’ Taheera says, twirling a section of her long black hair in her fingers. ‘I should have explained. It’s a bit difficult between me and my boyfriend. I’d rather you kept it to yourself, do you know what I’m saying?’

Chloe doesn’t reply.

‘I’ve said I’m sorry, Chloe. But nobody needs to know about you being in Doncaster, or about me and him, do they?’

It sounds like a deal. A deal in which she has no choice. The kind of trade she’s got used to over the years. Another debt to honour and obey.

‘OK,’ she says. It sounds hollow in her mouth.

The little car drifts towards the hard shoulder, until it runs over the catseyes and the tyres set off the ratchet sound designed to wake up sleeping drivers.

‘Oops!’ Taheera laughs and straightens up the car.

‘He’s on tag, isn’t he?’ Chloe says. She doesn’t care all that much, but she’d like to know the terms of their deal, to work out how much it’s worth.

A truck swings too close to them. It tries to overtake, gives up and slides back in behind them, as the road rises up over a long bridge. Yellow fields are spread out on each side of a river far below. Chloe feels the nausea of vertigo rising in her throat. She tries not to look over the side.

‘He was,’ Taheera finally says. ‘But he’s just had it taken off. How did you know?’