Flesh And Blood (22 page)

McKeirnan’s rules. But McKeirnan was inside, likely facing another ten or twelve years before he could even think about asking for release. And Shane, here he was, free sort of, outside at least. The fuss there’d been, that had mostly died down. As for the police looking for him, didn’t they have better things to do? Of course, coming back this way he’d been taking a chance, but if he kept himself pretty much to himself, stayed out of trouble, maybe he’d get away with it. Why not? After all the shit that had been handed down, wasn’t he due a little luck? And he had Angel, didn’t he? At least he thought he did. Wasn’t that proof enough?

He thought she was never going to come back that night. Considered going out after her, talking her round, but no, she was most likely in Della’s caravan and just about the last thing he’d wanted right then had been the wrong side of Della’s tongue.

So he lay there, restless, his head still abuzz. Despite the way Angel had reacted, he was thinking about that moment when he had grabbed her and thrown her down and when he did that he was remembering being with McKeirnan, McKeirnan and the girl. Lucy. All the things they had done. The pictures blurred yet clear enough in his mind. He felt himself growing hard and he was thinking he’d have to bring himself off when the door to the caravan opened and Angel stepped back inside.

In the dark he turned away from her silhouette. He could hear her taking off her clothes and he thought most likely she’d sleep in the chair or even in the old sleeping-bag on the floor, but instead she climbed in behind him and he held his breath as she settled in beside him, her back towards him, their skins, their spines barely touching.

‘Angel,’ he said softly, minutes later. But she said nothing and after a little while more he thought she was sleeping and that was when she started talking, telling him in a small clear voice of what had happened to her first when she was seven and then again when she was nearly eleven and when she was thirteen, and the anger inside Shane welled out of him and he lay there rigid, his fists clenched, wanting nothing more than to go and find them, the men who had done those things to her, and cut them, cut them until they bled and the blood had drained out of them and they were hanging upside down on a butcher’s rail with hooks where their pricks had been.

And in the morning, when she was still sleeping, he found his knife and took it to the sink and cut deep into the flesh of his left hand and held it there, watching the blood run out.

‘What happened to you?’ Angel asked, once she was up and awake, looking at the plaster on his palm.

‘Nothin’. Accident.’

‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ Angel said, moving past him.

‘Yeah, why not?’

There were still a few splashes of blood high inside the metal sink and Angel washed them away while she was waiting for the kettle to boil.

♦

Everything was fine until later that day. Neither Shane nor Angel said anything more about what had passed between them the night before; Angel went to ready her darts stall and Shane began to wash down the inflatable. Music was coming from the dodgems, even though there were no visitors yet on the site and none of the dodgems were working. The music made Shane feel pretty good, some of it stuff he remembered hearing in prison, songs that might have been by Queen or Abba, and then it was Elvis – ‘All Shook Up’ and ‘Teddy Bear’ and ‘Loving You’ – Shane singing along as he worked and remembering then what McKeirnan had said about Elvis Presley, that he should have died when he was young and lean, not fat and old, and Shane not knowing whether that was right or wrong.

By now the first punters of the day were beginning to trickle through, kids mostly, small groups of them, ten and eleven-year-olds, then younger ones with their mums and once in a while their dads, and Shane was busy taking the money and doling out change, making sure everyone going on got shot of their shoes before they climbed the rope-ladder the first time, trying to keep in mind how many goes each kid had had and calling them back down if they tried to sneak another for free or getting the extra money out of their parents which was better still.

Time passed quickly like this and he was able to forget everything about what had happened before and what might go wrong again.

Early evening he saw that Angel was taking a break and sitting with four or so of the others, mostly lads who worked the fair and another he didn’t recognise. It took him a little time, but eventually he managed to collar somebody else to spell him on the slide and he wandered over and joined them, Craig from the dodgems making the introductions. ‘This is Brock,’ and Brock, at closer sight, was one of those fat-bellied, bearded rockers who liked to call themselves Hell’s Angels. Shane had come across a few of them inside and more when he’d been with McKeirnan. This one had tattoos the length of his arms and around his neck and a snake and a death’s head side by side on the belly which hung fat and white over his belt, his T-shirt rising up as he leaned back and laughed and belched and laughed again.

‘Here,’ he said, tossing Shane a can of Heineken from the batch at his feet.

Shane caught it and snapped it open and when he did the beer squirted out over him causing Brock to laugh some more.

‘Fuckin’ waste,’ he said. Then, leering at Angel, ‘What we should’ve done was pour it over girlie here and have ourselves a show.’

‘Don’t think about it,’ Angel said and Shane bit his tongue.

Another beer or so on and Brock and Craig tired of discussing the respective merits of Nortons and Kawasakis and somehow the subject got back to Angel, how she wouldn’t know she’d really been had until she’d gone low round the bend with her legs stretched round the pillion of a Harley 750.

‘In your dreams,’ Angel said and got up to leave.

Which was when Brock made a clumsy grab for her and she half-stumbled avoiding him and Shane, quick to his feet, told the biker to keep his fucking hands to himself.

‘If I wasn’t having such a good time,’ Brock told him, ‘I’d wrench your miserable fucking head off your fuckin’ neck and shove it up your arse.’

At which Craig and the others hollered with laughter, Brock himself louder than the rest, especially when Shane turned and started to walk away, hoots of derision following him on his way.

Angel, not sure what he was doing, half-heartedly tried to intercept him, but Shane pushed her aside and went straight to the caravan, coming back out again almost immediately and walking fast back towards the group he had just left, quickening his pace still more for the last ten metres before sticking his knife into Brock’s belly and slicing upwards through the loose, pale skin.

Brock stared up at him, open-mouthed, too astonished at first even to scream or shout, both hands clutching at his abdomen as if to hold it together. Shane spat in his face and turned away, one arm around Angel, leading her back towards their caravan, no one following them, no one, for those moments, daring to.

Inside the caravan, Shane dropped the knife on to the floor between them.

‘You didn’t have to do that,’ Angel said.

‘Yeah,’ Shane said. ‘Yes, I fuckin’ did.’

He was reaching things down from the narrow shelf and stuffing them into his rucksack – T-shirt, thin sweater, underwear.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What’s it look like?’

Angel turned away, eyes closed.

As he moved towards the door, Shane’s arm brushed hers.

‘You’re coming back?’ she said.

‘Maybe, yeah.’ Stooping, he picked up the knife and slid it down into his bag. ‘Tell Otto a couple of days, okay?’

Rather than see him walk away, Angel pushed the door to the caravan quickly closed.

Elder received his first-ever text message on Saturday morning. It was from Katherine. When he had added the necessary vowels and consonants and applied a leavening of common sense, it appeared she was running in a three-way club meeting at Loughborough that afternoon. Why didn’t he come along?

Katherine was competing in the two hundred metres and the four-by-one-hundred relay, neither perhaps her best events, but good speed training and besides, there were other athletes to accommodate. There was a small crowd but a good track and the weather conditions were near perfect: not too much heat and the kind of wind that could only be called a light breeze. Katherine had drawn the outside lane in the two hundred, fine if you liked cruising into the bend, the sense of being out there all on your own, but less good in that, unless you turned your head, you had no real idea for ages where the other runners were, and turning your head was something you just shouldn’t do.

Past the halfway point and with the stagger starting to unwind, it looked as though Katherine’s lead was unassailable; midway down the straight and with the tape in sight, suddenly there were three of the other runners pulling back on her; in the last moments of the race Katherine glimpsed them in the corner of her eye and dug deeper, pushing for a final surge that didn’t quite materialise. A dead heat for third, Elder thought, nothing to separate her from the Loughborough Harriers athlete, and then, when the announcement was made, Katherine had been pushed into fourth place by five hundredths of a second.

He was standing with her when the result came over the loudspeakers and, remembering what had happened at the Harvey Hadden Stadium, feared it would send her into the doldrums at best, but no, she seemed philosophical enough.

‘That’s what I’ve got to work on, my speed through that final third.’

In the relay, she was running the third leg, her team with a slight lead when she took over the baton, that lead marginally increased by the time she’d handed over to the athlete on the final stretch, who cruised home with several yards to spare, arms aloft.

The meeting over, Elder bought a can of Coke and sat with his book and tried to keep his mind from straying elsewhere: Helen Blacklock up in Whitby, hoping for news, a knot in her stomach tightening every time the phone chanced to ring; Shane Donald still somewhere at large.

‘Dad.’ Katherine was walking towards him with two of the other girls, one of whom Elder thought he recognised from the relay team. ‘Any chance we can give Ali and Justine a lift back?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

Elder scrambled to his feet, Katherine made the slightly more formal introductions and they shook hands. A few hiccups with the one-way system and they were heading for the A60 that would take them through Bunny and Ruddington to Nottingham.

‘What are you doing later?’ Elder asked, inclining his head towards Katherine in the front seat.

When she didn’t answer right away, one of the girls in the back seat piped up. ‘She’s got a hot date, Mr Elder.’ Both girls laughed.

‘Is that true, Kate?’ Elder asked.

‘Of course it’s not,’ Katherine retorted. ‘They’re just being stupid.’ But she was blushing despite herself, his mature daughter reduced to twelve or thirteen.

‘How about you, Dad?’ Katherine asked a short while later. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Oh, nothing special.’

‘No villains to catch?’

‘I don’t do that any more, remember?’

‘No?’

Elder didn’t respond.

‘Mum’s home, you know,’ Katherine said. ‘And I’ll bet you anything she’ll be on her own. Why don’t you give her a call?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

They both knew that was all he would do.

♦

Maureen said that she would meet him in the Chand, a curry house near the foot of the Mansfield Road, somewhere between a quarter to ten and a quarter past.

‘Sorry it’s a bit vague, Frank; someone I’ve got to see.’

An informant, Elder guessed. Unpaid overtime where Maureen was concerned. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a book.’

‘Okay. And Frank…’

‘Yes?’

‘We’re not talking anything but business, understood?’

‘Understood.’ He knew he should have kept his thoughts about Maddy Birch to himself.

Arriving at the restaurant around ten, Elder ordered poppadams and chutney and a bottle of Kingfisher and propped open his book: not the best judge of character, Copperfield was getting in a right tangle over the behaviour of his best friend, who had just eloped with the young and vulnerable niece of a Yarmouth fisherman. Yarmouth. In his mind’s eye Elder travelled north along the contours of the North Sea coast: Great Yarmouth, Cromer, Skegness, Mablethorpe, Cleethorpes, Bridlington, Scarborough, Whitby.

‘You look a bit of a sad git, you know, Frank, sitting there like that,’ Maureen said. ‘Just a book for company.’

‘I’ve done worse,’ Elder replied, slipping the envelope he was using for a bookmark into place.

Maureen sat and when the waiter appeared at her shoulder ordered a pint of lager. ‘Same again?’ she asked, indicating Elder’s almost empty glass.

‘This’ll last,’ he said, with a shake of the head.

Maureen smiled. ‘Prudent as ever.’

‘You know me.’ From the plastic bag at the back of his chair he withdrew the Polaroid camera and set it down. ‘Thanks for the loan of this.’

‘Any result?’

Opening the book again, he took a single photograph from inside the envelope and passed it across.

‘Hm,’ Maureen said, ‘not bad-looking in an arty kind of way.’

‘Apparently.’

‘Tell me about it,’ she said.

Pausing only so that they could place their orders, that’s what he did.

‘So now,’ she said, when he had finished, ‘you’ve got a reason for disliking him, but no proof.’

Nodding, Elder lifted the picture of Paul Latham away as their food arrived. Chicken rogan josh, lamb pasanda, pilau rice, sag aloo, more poppadams and a peshwari naan.

‘The team looking into Susan Blacklock’s disappearance, they didn’t question Latham at the time?’

Chewing, Elder shook his head.