The One Safe Place (35 page)

"Hi, Mr. Warns. Susanne here, Marshall's mother."

"Yes?"

Surely he was being hostile to the unabated uproar, not to her. "Get out of it, the lot of you. Right out. You too, Trev," he bawled, and had nothing to say to Susanne until the chorus of complaints had receded almost into inaudibility. Then he said, "Yes?"

"Quite a handful you've got there," Susanne said, trying to reach past his continuing hostility, but was confronted by a silence which appeared to imply she'd been more personal than she had intended. "Three boys, isn't it?" she said, and when that provoked no more than a grunt, "I'm sorry to bother you. I only wanted to ask Trevor if Marshall was there with you."

"With me."

"With him. At your house."

"No, he wouldn't be."

"He isn't, then." That was all Susanne needed to know at the moment, but not all she wanted to know. "Why wouldn't he be? I didn't know he and Trevor had fallen out."

"They still see each other at school. Hang around together, knowing Trev." With a resentfulness which struck Susanne as wholly inappropriate he said, "The lassie and me told Trev not to have your lad round for a bit, that's all."

"You won't mind my asking why."

"Come on, lass, I thought you were supposed to be a professor. You don't need it spelling out for you." When she clamped her mouth shut, though she could hear he was resentful because he was embarrassed, he had to go on. "If you think it's on to let your lad watch exactly what he likes then maybe it's not my place to say owt, but we aren't having ours getting mixed up with the law."

"Marshall isn't, except when he was a witness in court."

"Aye, well, we know all about that." Mr. Warris's embarrassment was rendering his words so blunt they sounded as though he was blaming her, especially when he said. "What's up with him, anyway? Trev said he sagged off school this affy. I'd not have thought that was like him."

"It wouldn't be if he wasn't being made to feel a lot of people disapprove of him."

"We disapprove of sagging, right enough. So you won't find him here setting ours a bad example."

Susanne squeezed her eyes shut until the light in them began to pound. "On the remote chance he hasn't realised he's no longer welcome at his friend's house, would it be too much trouble to send him home if he turns up? If you can bear to, you might tell him I'd like to hear his side of what happened at the school."

The distant squabble was returning, eager to invade the room. "I'm coming to sort you lot right now," Mr. Warris yelled, and Susanne thought that would be his excuse to say nothing more to her. Then he said conspiratorially and with audible reluctance, "If he finds his way here I'll put him on the blower and you can tell him yourself."

She was only starting to utter some expression of gratitude when Mr. Warris cut her off. How much time had she wasted in talking to him? Too long to have time to glance at her watch now. She held onto the book while she turned pages with the deftness of a croupier turning cards, then let the book flop shut. She had dialled and was wondering if her haste had garbled the number when Tom Bold said, "Her her—"

A woman's voice which sounded as though it scarcely ever paused for breath commenced gabbling at him. "Who's that, Tom? Is it for me? It's not your Auntie Noddy, is it? Don't you know who it is?"

"Hi, Tom. Have you seen Marshall?"

"Mam, it's Marshall's mermother."

"Which Marshall's that? Is he the one who talks like what's his name when he's at home, the feller with the nose, you know the one I mean, don't be trying to get me all of a tizz, Harvey Kitetail?"

"It's Keitel, mam. I've told you, Mer Mer Marshall doesn't—"

"Tom, I just want to know where Marshall is."

"Hang on, mam. She's asking about her, about him. Hello, Mrs. Travis. Marshall wasn't at sker, at sker—"

"I know he played hoo, took the afternoon off," Susanne interrupted, feeling as if she'd caught some of Tom's stuttering. "But he isn't home. I wondered if you knew where he might be."

"He ser ser—"

"Do you want me to talk to her, son? I'll bet she knows which feller he sounds like. I heard someone just like him in one of the videos you had. Shut my eyes and I'd have sworn it was him. I'll remember what the feller said if you keep quiet for a moment. When you look round I'll be gone, he says at the end, or something like."

"Mam, I'm trer, I'm trying—"

"Did he say anything to you before he walked out, Tom? Anything at all."

"No, Mrs. Travis. I didn't ner, I didn't know he'd gone till we went in. Won't he be all rer—"

"I'm sure he will, Tom. I mean, what are the chances of something bad happening to him? I expect he just doesn't know how to tell me what he did. If he shows up at your house, you'll tell him I only want to know he's safe, won't you? Which he will be, don't you think?"

"I her her—"

"I hope so too," Susanne said, and immediately thought she should apologise for completing his word, except that the apology would make him even more conscious of his problem. She rang off, because Marshall had other friends he sometimes visited, though not as often as the three she'd attempted to contact so far. She was leafing through the address book when the receiver shrilled in her hand.

Surely it was Marshall. The time wasn't far short of six o'clock—dinner time. He would never keep her guessing past that; he must have at least some sense of how anxious she was. She jabbed the talk button. "Yes, I'm here."

"Susanne Travis?"

How could a voice simply asking if she was herself make her need to sit down on the stairs? Because of its official sound—because its tone was carefully neutral. "This is she," Susanne said, her grip lightening on the receiver.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Travis. Inspect a drum of Manchester Constabulary."

His vowels were so clipped that for a moment Susanne was able to believe he'd issued that invitation, but it didn't help. She groped with her free hand for the banister to steady herself. "You're the police."

"Right enough, Mrs. Travis. I've been trying to contact you."

"What—" She seemed unable to say much more than that, even when she tried a second time. "What's—"

"We'll need to see you as soon as possible."

Her throat shrank, and her question came out small and pleading. "Why?"

"It isn't as bad as it might be."

She thought he was taking pity on her, which made the next question even more difficult to ask. "How bad?"

"A large fine, Mrs. Travis. Maybe prison. That's how bad it could have been."

The pity had gone from his voice, and there wasn't much patience left either. "I don't—" Susanne said, but didn't feel quite confident enough to finish, not even a question. "What are we talking—"

"The decision has been taken not to prosecute."

"Prosecute whom for what?"

"Under the circumstances, Mrs. Travis, only you."

She was beginning to grasp that the subject might not be Marshall, in which case she saw no point in talking while Marshall could be trying to call her. "For..."

"I appreciate you've had a tragedy, but there's a limit to how much we can take that into account, unfortunately. You'll recall our reason for visiting your house."

So that was the point they'd taken all this time to reach. Why couldn't anyone speak plainly to her? Was her uncertainty infecting them? "The videos," she said.

"Precisely. If you'd like to come into the station and sign a waiver that'll be the end of it."

"It isn't too urgent, then."

"I'd like to close the case as soon as possible," he said, more heavily than she felt was required. "Can you come in tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow might be a problem." Surely it wouldn't be, at least not one to do with Marshall, but she found herself wishing she hadn't arranged to meet the bookseller either, not until she was sure... "Can I call you tomorrow when my schedule's firmer?"

"I may not be here in the morning."

Though that might have been intended to force her to commit herself, she only waited until he doled out the phone number. "Inspector Drumm," she confirmed, and opened her mouth again, suddenly deciding to tell him about Marshall. But he'd gone, and it was six o'clock, time for the local news. She ran to fetch her radio from the kitchen, and switched it on as she carried it to her vantage point in the front room.

All it had to tell her were more details of the crimes she had already heard headlined. Then came the weather, a cold night for anyone who might be wandering the streets or sleeping on them, and Susanne was reaching for the off switch when the newsreader added, "Some news just in..." A hollow tinny sound filled Susanne's ears, and she was afraid both of hearing what he was about to say and of not being able to hear. The information which the local radio had just received, presumably from the police, concerned two men in Balaclavas who had smashed a bank guard's legs with metal bars to make the tellers hand over all the money in the cash drawers. Susanne released a sigh which could have been mistaken for a sob and switched off the radio.

She hadn't written down the addresses and phone numbers of all Marshall's new friends in her book. Some she had to find in the floppy cumbersome directory; more than one surname she had to strain to remember. Most of her calls interrupted families at dinner. She watched the street and saw figures turning the corner, always neighbours coming home, as she spoke into the phone, growing more apologetic and more desperate. It was almost seven o'clock when she exhausted her list of the people she knew Marshall knew, and so she listened to the latest news, which it transpired she had already heard. She opened the front door and gazed along the street, empty of all the people who'd gone into their houses. She closed her door and listened to the silence she was alone with, and then she called the police.

For a while Darren only watched. Marshall had sat down at last, not that it seemed to have done him much good. Darren had given him the channel control and told him he could switch the telly on, but he was too busy trying either to catch sight of things around him in the room or not to see them. Darren watched his eyes dart back and forth as though they were doing their best to jerk themselves out of their sockets, staring at the cardigan which Darren's mother had slung into one corner, and the hair-dryer poking its muzzle out of another, and the bills stuffed through the bars of the electric fire, and the picture above it of some fat women having a bath, Bernard's idea for giving the place a bit of class. Darren had a good idea of how Marshall was feeling, and maybe even what he was seeing; he'd done it to himself often enough. He'd proved he could take it, and if Marshall couldn't, that showed he was as much of a wimp as Ken and Dave had shown his da was. Darren had expected that, but now Marshall's twitching and staring had begun to get on his nerves; he wished he hadn't taken off his Walkman. He hoped his mother or someone else in the family would turn up soon to see what he'd brought them.

Maybe now his mother would stop giving him a hard time about telling the headmaster to fuck off and spitting on his desk. If Darren hadn't been suspended from school he mightn't have been on the spot when Marshall had skived off from his. He'd been hanging around outside the schoolyard in case Marshall went home for lunch, but he couldn't have expected him to make such a present of himself. He would have done him in the graveyard if the footballers hadn't started playing toward that side of the field. He'd crouched behind some bushes near the grave someone had smashed up—he'd felt as though they'd gone for it on his behalf—and watched Marshall's face go red and his mouth pull his chin up and his eyes start to leak. He'd been close enough to thump the back of Marshall's neck when he'd finished snivelling and talking to the grave, a performance which had made Darren have to squash his sniggers behind a hand, but he hadn't been able to think of anything bad enough to do to Marshall for putting his father in jail and killing his favourite uncle. He'd tracked Marshall home, feeling like a camera that was being the eyes of a maniac stalking his prey, only then some bitch who was working in her garden had never gone inside long enough for him to sneak past. He'd seen Marshall come out again, wearing a track suit exactly like one of Darren's, and Darren had dodged ahead until Marshall caught a bus. As Darren had poked around in his pocket for change, he'd found something he'd believed he'd lost, and he'd grinned all the way into Manchester.

It might have been meant just for Marshall. He'd even left his Coke for Darren to slip it into. If anyone had noticed Darren dodging into McDonald's and pretending to pinch a drink, they'd said nothing to him as he'd strolled outside to watch. Marshall had even moved to a window to give him a better view. He'd watched Marshall begin not to know what was wrong, and wander to the shop where Ken and Dave had done for his father, and then around the Arndale Centre as the monsters came out to play. He'd intervened only when it had looked as though Marshall might attract the attention of one of the Arndale arseholes who thought wearing a uniform made them somebody. What was going to happen to him had hardly started, and so Darren had brought him home.

Only he was beginning to get tired of him, of his shutting his eyes and popping them open because he couldn't bear to keep them shut for any more hours which in fact had only been seconds, and peering around him in the hope that something he was afraid to see had gone away, and making little kicked puppy noises in his throat. Darren mightn't have been so irritated if he could see what Marshall was seeing, but imagining it was too much trouble and besides, trying made his hair feel as though it was crawling back and forth on his skull. Now Marshall had given over making noises for a bit and was staring at Darren instead. He seemed to be trying to resemble the puppy he'd sounded like, and all that would get him was punched in both eyes if he carried on doing it. Except that was too far to reach unless Darren moved out of his chair, and so he snarled, "What?"

"Darren?"

Marshall might have been asking if that was really his name. Darren wished he hadn't let it out to help Marshall trust him. "Who says?"