In the Dark (30 page)

The boy finished lighting another cigarette and shook his head, narrowing his eyes as the smoke drifted back into his face. ‘Can't see me getting on me toes any time soon,' he said.

‘Well, keep your head down at least, eh?'

‘Yeah.' He took a drag. ‘You got a name for it?'

Helen was confused for a moment, then he pointed and she realised that he was talking about the baby. ‘No. Not yet.' She and Paul had tossed names around for a while until he'd found out about the affair. Then the subject was quietly dropped. Now that she had nobody to consult, it was something to which she'd given remarkably little thought. She smiled. ‘Maybe I should name him after you,' she said. ‘You hear about women doing that, don't you? Naming their kids after the midwife, or the taxi driver who rushes them to the hospital. Be as good a name as any, probably.'

The boy grinned and shook his head. ‘Seriously bad idea,' he said.

‘Oh well . . .'

Helen got into the car and yanked at the seat belt. Aware of the boy watching as she reversed out of the tight space. She raised her hand to him as he stood aside to let her drive away.

TWENTY-SIX

It had become a thing now.

There'd been no let up since SnapZ's death, and there seemed to be cameras on every corner. Hordes of journalists from the big papers as well as the red tops; standing around in those jackets with elbow patches, pointing their recorders at anyone in a hooded top, nodding like hungry dogs and getting hard-ons. All mad keen to get some scoop; to get a bit of that lovely danger on their front pages.

And there was no shortage of people willing to give it to them. Kids who'd never so much as nicked a bag of crisps talking like they were proper gangsters, turning on the talk and walking away with a tenner for their trouble. ‘Make sure you spell my name right, man, you get me?'

Even some of those in the crew were getting in on it.

Theo had seen a bunch of them, Sugar Boy and a few of the others, framed at the end of a dark alleyway at the edge of the estate, turning it on for
London Tonight
. Some of them were wearing bandannas pulled down over their faces, dark glasses, all that. One idiot was posing with a gun. It might have been his; might have been a replica the TV people gave him. All of them striking their best hard-man poses and gobbing off.

‘You ain't part of a crew, you got nothing, man.'

‘Closer than family.'

‘When one of your bredren is shot, you all feel it, you get me? You feel it
here
.' The fist against the chest, and the nodding.

Theo had wanted to charge across and slap their stupid faces and tell them to shut their mouths. Take the cameraman's gear and shove it up his arse; smack his fist to his own chest and tell them all that what
he
felt in there was the same thing that made you stammer and shit your pants. Made it hard to breathe when you were wide awake and staring down at your son in the middle of the night.

He'd been at the stash house since just after eight, had taken to leaving the flat earlier and earlier. Getting his paper and fags, and waiting outside the door for the café to open.

They'd walked in and shot SnapZ in his own place.

Theo had never felt particularly safe at home anyway: people had been knifed in his block often enough. But this was different. Trouble was, what was he supposed to say to Javine? It was tricky to suggest that she should take Benjamin out for the day,
stay
out until he got back, just in case, you know, someone came knocking with a gun in their hand while he was hiding out like a pussy on the other side of the estate.

Sugar Boy came in around ten-thirty. They talked for a few minutes about what was happening, and Sugar Boy showed Theo the cash he'd made talking shit to reporters. Theo turned on the TV, tried to lose himself in it.

He'd suggested that Javine should pop down and spend a bit more time with his mum, but that hadn't gone down well. Nothing had been going down too well over the last week or two, if he was honest.

‘Try spending a bit more time with her your own self. And your son too, come to that.'

‘I have to work.'

She didn't need to say any more. It was there in the way she hoisted up the baby and held him there, rubbing his back while she stared across his shoulder at Theo. Right: out working and being a buff man like your little friend Easy. Like Mikey. Like whoever put a bullet in his stupid head. A buff man, a
proper
buff man might think about really taking care of his woman and his son; might think about getting a job where a gun wasn't a tool of the trade.

But she didn't know that he'd killed anyone. That someone, for whatever reason, had set about making those responsible pay with their lives. That he couldn't think straight or make a decision and hadn't slept or shat properly for a fortnight.

‘We'll knock on your mum's door a bit later,' Javine had said eventually. ‘Pop in for ten minutes, OK?'

She didn't know that he felt like a sheep, bleating for its life, with a wolf outside the door.

 
There was still concern in Helen's mind that anyone investigating Paul might also be interested in her, so when she'd stumbled half asleep to the phone at eight-fifteen and heard an officious-sounding police officer introducing himself, she'd feared the worse.

The panic had subsided when the officer had explained that he was calling to finalise the arrangements for the forwarding of Paul's pension; to talk through bank details, set up standing orders and so on.

That had heralded a different sort of panic altogether.

Although the funeral arrangements were theoretically in hand, somewhere between Paul's mother and the Police Federation, Helen knew there was still a raft of administrative duties that would have to be dealt with at some point: the closing of accounts; life insurance; HP payments. The will itself, which she and Paul had made out one afternoon using one of those DIY kits from WH Smith, was fairly straightforward, as far as she could remember, with each of them the sole beneficiary of the other. None of it could be taken care of properly until the inquest had returned a verdict and a death certificate was issued; but even so, she preferred not to think about any of it, at least not until after the baby was born. Her father had volunteered to help out with that side of things, and for once she'd been delighted to take him up on his offer.

On the phone, the officer from Financial Liaison Services had been gently efficient and sensitive to her situation as he'd talked her through the process. It was the worst part of his job, he'd told her. When it was over she'd thanked him, then rushed to the bathroom to throw up.

Now, after a few pieces of toast and a shower, she walked across to the desk, to the deep drawer that was as close as she and Paul had come to any sort of filing system. She flicked past files that contained mortgage details, car documents and mobile phone bills, and drew out the clip folder that held Paul's bank statements.

She turned on the radio and carried the folder across to the sofa.

Maybe she should try to deal with all the other stuff, too. A distraction - a nice, dull,
safe
one - would have been welcome. She would surely have been better off spending her days talking to building societies and insurance companies, wallowing in the sympathy of call-centre workers, than behaving as she had. Dashing around like a mad bitch and digging up enough dirt to bury Paul three times over.

On the radio, a woman was talking about how she'd coped with a severely disabled son. The presenter said she was amazing. Helen got up and retuned to Radio One.

Paul had held current and savings accounts with HSBC; did most transactions over the phone or online. Helen took out a sheaf of statements going back six months and flicked through them. It was odd that such a dry and ordered series of names and numbers could be so telling, could provide an instant snapshot of a person.

Payments made to Virgin, HMV and Game; the local Indian restaurant; the branch of Woodhouse in Covent Garden that sold the easy-iron shirts he was fond of wearing with jeans. Direct debits to Sky and Orange. A small standing order paid to a charity for deaf children ever since Paul's niece had been diagnosed a few years before.

She found the payment for the watch he had bought for her birthday two months earlier. He'd said that he'd hung on to the receipt in case she wanted to change it, but she'd told him it was fine. She'd meant to pop in and check the price the next time she was passing the jeweller's, but had forgotten. She saw now that it had cost thirty quid less than he'd told her it did.

‘You sodding cheapskate, Hopwood.'

There were plenty of payments that she did not recognise: card transactions that she could check with the bank if she wanted to, but none for any large amount; and besides, it was payments
into
the accounts that she needed to look hardest at.

Salary, a few cheques from Helen herself, the tiny dividends on some shares he'd been given by his mother. Nothing that looked significant. If he had received payments from the likes of Shepherd and Linnell, they must have been made into another account.

There was no sense of relief as Helen clipped the statements back into the folder. She knew that there was something she was not meant to find. And whatever else Paul had been, he had not been stupid.

She
was the one who couldn't keep secrets.

Helen walked into the bedroom to get dressed, pulled out a T-shirt and wondered if what she'd been looking for might be tucked away at the back of the wardrobe, behind Paul's guitar. With limited technical ability that was about as frustrating as a dead-end could get. She'd run into brick walls plenty of times at work, of course, but there was usually somebody on the team who had the expertise to find a way around them.

This time she was on her own.

In the next room, a DJ they had both always hated droned on about some gig he'd attended, confident as ever that his own C-list social life was of more interest to listeners than any music he might play.

A memory: Paul, snarling at the radio as he fetched milk from the fridge, ‘
Pointless, fat bastard
.'

You could try to find a way around a brick wall, or you could just stand and stare at the bloody thing. If all else failed, you could just keep throwing yourself at it, because the pain felt good.

Felt better.

 
It was just a look. No more than a glance up from his cue as he leaned across the table, and something like a smirk passing across his face, but it was enough to bring up the hairs on Theo's neck, to tell him something bad had happened.

Something else.

They had gone into the Cue Up for a bit of lunch: a sausage sandwich and something to drink; a frame or two of pool and an hour away from the stash house and the heat of the afternoon. Easy was in a good mood. He had suggested twenty quid a frame, but Theo had seen Javine's face again, heard that tone in her voice, and agreed on a tenner for best of three.

The place was no busier than usual. The same faces talking low across the snooker tables or hanging around near the bar. The same old guy muttering over his tea and toast and boring the arse off the woman behind the counter.

Easy won the first frame and was well ahead in the second; would probably have walked it anyway, even if Theo's mind had been on the game.

‘Can't pot shit today,' Theo said.

‘Outclassed, Star Boy, simple as that.'

‘You're right.'

Easy had on a new chain, thick as rope. It swung against his cue when he leaned down to take a shot. ‘You're not concentrating, man.' He smacked in a stripe. ‘Not for days.'

‘There's a lot going on.'

‘Maybe.'

Theo nodded towards the window, the street outside. ‘You got a problem with your eyes, man?'

Easy grinned, shrugged. ‘That's when you need to focus most, you get me. Other people taking their eye off the ball, dodging the Five-O, grieving, all that. That's
exactly
when you need to be sharp.
Someone
got to keep this crew slick.'

‘Wave not doing that?'

Another stripe went down. ‘Wave doing what he does.'

Theo hadn't seen a great deal of Wave since it had all kicked off. Hadn't seen too many of the crew hanging out in threes and fours like they usually did. It was all down to Mikey and SnapZ, he knew that; but still, there were faces he'd not spotted on the usual corners for two or three days, maybe more.

‘As If keeping his head down, is he?'

‘If he knows what's good for him,' Easy said.

‘Hanging out with Wave?'

‘Hanging out of his arse, more like.'

‘Not seen Ollie around for a bit either,' Theo said.

Then that look up, like a punch, and a dreadful certainty that began to take hold as Theo waited for Easy to turn away and leaned a hand down on the edge of the table to steady himself.

He thought back to a Saturday night, two days after Mikey had been killed, when the crew had gathered in the Dirty South. To drink and smoke themselves stupid. To regroup.

He had listened to a band playing in the back room, then wandered back to join the crew when he'd had enough. Easy had been loud and full of himself, moving from one member of the crew to the next; geeing them up like a football coach trying to talk a losing team back into it at half time.

Ollie had been nursing a bottle at a table in the corner, and Theo remembered Wave and Gospel deep in conversation a few feet away on a sofa near the door. He'd noticed the cuts and bruises on Gospel's face as she'd leaned in close to whisper; seen Wave put fingers on the back of her neck as she talked, clearly already getting a piece of what Ollie wanted.