The One Safe Place (48 page)

The radio hissed, then hissed louder. "The police, is that?"

"And a lady."

"Send them along. I'm by the birds," the voice said, and was dissolved by a wash of static.

The guard clipped the radio to his belt before pointing along the mall. "Down there, turn right and you'll see the cage by the escalators," he said, and Susanne stopped herself from running, though her stride did require the police to speed up.

At the end of the broad crowded walkway was a cage as tall as the ceiling and fluttering with birds. Beside it stood a guard in conversation with a woman in a checked coat who was holding onto two wheeled baskets. He nodded slowly as he listened to the woman, and tapped his chin with a forefinger whenever it came within reach. Having spared Angel and Askew a nod, he turned his long sharp-nosed face back to the woman. "But you're the guard," she was insisting. "You guard them."

"I'm one of the guards, yes, madam. We patrol the centre."

"If you aren't responsible, just you tell me who is."

"I can give you the address of the company that runs the centre."

"I'll have that," she said, and leaned on her baskets to stare hard at him. Susanne imposed patience on herself while he unbuttoned his breast pocket and extracted a notebook and laid it open on one large palm so as to write down the information, raising his eyebrows almost imperceptibly higher at each line. He tore out the page and handed it to the woman, who peered suspiciously at it, by which point Susanne had exhausted her capacity for silence. "Mr. Tubb? I'm—"

"Hang about, love, he's not done with me." The woman looked up from aligning the ends of the page so as to fold it precisely in half. She unzipped the top of the left-hand basket and removed a leather wallet into which she inserted the page, then shoved the wallet down among her purchases and secured the basket. "I just want to be sure you know what you're involved in," she told the guard, and pointed at a pair of birds sidestepping together along a branch. "That species shouldn't be kept in these conditions for a start."

Susanne never knew how fiercely she might have interrupted if Angel hadn't. "Excuse me, madam-—"

"I'll show you as well. You can be witnesses." The woman lifted both baskets and slammed them down with a thud of rubber tires. "Or did he call you to have me thrown out? I'm not so easy to silence. These poor creatures need someone to speak up for them. They can't speak for themselves."

"I'm sure they'd thank you if they could, madam. Now if you'll excuse us, we're trying to find a lost child."

"Don't you be mocking me," the woman said, and as though she hadn't changed the subject. "Lost child indeed. If you ask me it's some of these children today who want putting in cages, then their parents wouldn't be able to say they don't know where they are."

Susanne felt a sharp breath snag her teeth. She sucked at the ache in them and took a step toward the woman, and Askew intervened. "What's this about the birds, madam?" he said, and moved his head in a gesture at his colleague which was almost as invisible as his moustache. "Show me what you mean."

Angel led the guard and Susanne out of earshot. "Perils of the job," he murmured to the guard.

"You do meet them."

"Don't I know it."

Susanne felt excluded or even, if she let herself, referred to until Angel said, "Anyway, Mr. Tubb, you called us. You think you saw Mrs. Travis's son."

"I won't say one hundred per cent, but yes."

"With another lad."

"Two of them together, that's it."

"What time was this?"

"It'd be about four. More like after it than earlier."

"You'd say that because..."

"I wondered if they were skiving off school, the way you automatically do if you see kids on a weekday, specially kids of that age not in uniform. And I thought no, it was too late."

"So you didn't speak to them."

"No reason to." The guard lowered his chin toward his rising forefinger. "No, scrub that. I might have had a word if they hadn't shot off. This lady's lad, if that's who he was, he wasn't looking too champion."

Susanne wished she didn't have to understand. "Too..."

"He could have looked happier is what I'm saying." The guard gazed at her as if to judge how much she could take. "Let's be honest, I'd say he was scared. That's why I nearly went after them, except we had an alert just then down the other end."

"Scared." The word came out like an accusation as Susanne tried to steady her voice. "Scared of the boy he was with?"

"No, I'd say definitely not. The way I saw it, the other lad was looking after him. Your lad, if he was yours, he went off with him quick enough, and glad to do it, I'd have said. That's another reason I didn't feel I had to catch them."

Susanne asked the question she would have put sooner if she hadn't been deferring to the police. "What was the other boy like?"

"Like he needed a few good dinners and a week's sleep and all the days out in the sun he could get." To Angel the guard said, "Same height as the other lad, round five three or four, but a lot thinner. Same age too, I'd have to say. Pale complexion, shadows under the eyes. Mousy hair in need of a wash, down over his collar. Green track suit big enough for his pal and I think trainers, I forget what color."

"Anything else? Did you hear him speak?"

"Wish I could say I did."

"Anything you'd like to ask, Mrs. Travis?"

"No." The word felt dismayingly final, and the rest that she had to say didn't help. "I can't think of anything. I don't recognise the description. It isn't anyone I've seen with Marshall."

"There'll be people he knows at school who you've not met, though, won't there?"

"I guess," Susanne said, and heard herself being ungrateful for the hope Angel was offering. "I mean, sure. Of course. Thanks. So you'll..."

"We'll contact the school, obviously, and we'll also put out an expanded description. We often find the public remembers having seen more than one person when they couldn't having seen just one."

"That makes sense." She supposed that was so, but nothing else seemed to. Why would Marshall have been frightened and not have phoned her? A blur of voices and insinuating music gathered around her, and she wondered whether it had sounded as meaningless yet ominous to him. She wondered why Angel continued standing where he was, since nothing further could be learned from the guard. He was waiting for Askew, who had helped the woman with the baskets down the escalator and ushered her away from the cage. "Anything?" Askew said when he was close enough to his colleague to be heard.

"Hopeful."

"Yes," Susanne felt she had to say in case that made it so.

"I hope I've been some help," the guard told her. "I'll ask around the shops in case anyone else noticed your lad and his pal."

"Thanks," Susanne responded, unable to imagine what his course of action might achieve. She turned toward a rack of left shoes to hide her dissatisfaction from him, and heard him say, "I'll be in touch if I remember anything, and I'll be keeping my eyes open." His voice was swinging away from her. "They've been having a bad time of it over here recently, these folk."

Susanne glanced at him and saw he was regretting having spoken. "Who?" she said.

"Not you. Not just you, rather. You Americans, I was meaning. There's no connection, I wasn't saying that, don't think that, but a chap from your part of the world, well, he came off worst with a couple of our bad sorts just round the corner from here the other month. Mind you, he was waving a gun about from what I hear."

Susanne gazed at him, unable to speak. Askew emitted a warning cough and folded his arms, and Angel said with heavy gentleness, "That was this lady's husband."

"Good—" The guard turned his body as well as his face toward her. "I'm sorry. I wasn't to know. I wouldn't have—"

"Believed it? I don't blame you. I've difficulty in believing it myself."

Though she didn't mean that to sound sarcastic, she feared it might. "Really, don't feel bad. You did your best for me," she said, moving away into the insubstantial tangled mass of noise, toward dozens of colours too bright for the way she felt. At least there was somewhere else to go—to the school. The other boy must be a pupil there, nothing else made sense. She looked back to see if Angel and Askew were following her, and saw the guard was too, frowning at her. "It's okay, really it is," she said, walking faster, anxious to be at the school.

"Can you spare me one more moment? I was just thinking. I'm just trying to recall."

He'd brought the policemen to a halt. She didn't need them, she could go to the school by herself, but his gaze was holding her—the doubt in it was. "Sorry to keep on like this," he said. "The men who went for your husband. Wasn't that the case where they were relatives of someone he'd put in jail?"

"So?"

"It's coming back to me. There was something about an identikit, wasn't there, that the feller he put away didn't like?"

Susanne shifted her feet, preparing to stride away. "Yes. So."

"I'm trying to picture it in my head. I didn't make the connection till just now. I want to be sure if I can be. You wouldn't have a copy at home by any chance."

"Of what? The picture? You're asking did I keep a picture of the man whose fault it is my husband's dead?" People were turning to stare at her, but her voice and her feelings were out of control. "You think maybe I should have framed it and hung it on the wall?"

Angel raised the splayed fingers of one hand toward her. "Mrs. Travis..."

"I didn't think you would have. Kept it, that's to say," the guard said, and to Askew, "Will you have?"

"I doubt it once we caught him."

"That would be right, sure enough," the guard admitted as Susanne, having lost all patience, turned her back. "Madam," he called after her. "Mrs. Travis."

She halted, hunching up her shoulders. "What now?"

"I was just trying not to send you on a false trail. I'm pretty sure I'm right, I'm going to say I am. The more I think about it now, the more I think the other boy, the one with no meat on him, looked like that picture."

As Susanne stumbled to face him, the sounds of the mall drained from her cars while all the colours flared. "How much like?"

"Enough that I'd say he could have been his son."

She was supporting herself with one hand on the window of a boutique. She felt the glass beginning to yield to her weight, as though the world or everything about it which she still took for granted was about to crack. Angel stepped toward her in case she needed support, and she saw that she mustn't panic—mustn't hinder them from following the lead. She straightened up and managed a tight smile to convince Angel she was in control. "What are you going to do?" she said.

"We'll find out where the family lives for a start. We'll have that on record, and then we can track down the boy for questioning."

"Now?"

"We'll call in from the car for the information. Thanks, Mr. Tubb. Solid work."

"Yes. Thanks."

"My pleasure, madam. I only wish—" The guard shook his head as though to erase having said that. "Good luck."

He was wishing he'd remembered sooner, but surely that needn't matter so long as the police acted fast—she mustn't let herself think it did. She hurried along the mall, dodging dozens of people who stared at her or at the police rather than move aside. She thought of the spectators who hadn't intervened to save Don, and told herself that people weren't like that all the time, not most of them. Only the people who had Marshall were important now. She veered around a clot of teenagers and ran down the sluggish escalator. The police clattered after her, the doors parted to let an unexpectedly chill breeze send a shiver through her, and then she had to stand by the police car with Angel while Askew used the radio. Though Angel's alertness seemed to encompass the entire street, she sensed his thoughts were with her, and she avoided looking at him in case he felt bound to offer her more sympathy than she wanted to believe she would need. She stared back at anyone who took her for a spectacle, and tried to hear what Askew's muffled voice was saying. But he had ceased speaking, and there was a protracted pause during which her pulse added itself to the street noise. At last he said a single word, and laid down the microphone, and leaned across the front passenger seat to open the door. "We know the family," he murmured to Angel. "They're all over the area. I had to make sure which address we need."

Susanne wasn't sure how much of that she wanted to understand just now—perhaps only that they had the address. "Are we going there now?"

Askew gazed at her, and she saw doubt in his eyes. "Please," she said. "I have to come with you if Marshall's there. He'll need me."

The policemen glanced at each other, then Askew sat up behind the wheel. Angel walked around her and stooped into the car, and she thought he was ensuring she couldn't climb in, until he levered his seat forward. "All right, Mrs. Travis. We'll go to the address and then we'll decide what's to be done," he said, and Susanne slid in so quickly that she felt suddenly nauseous. She was trying to leave whatever had been left unsaid unconceived as well.

His mother's voice dug into Darren's skull. "You little shit," she was yelling. "You pansy." He was used to that and worse, but as an ache took the place of sleep he began to wonder what she was screeching about, not that he cared. Maybe Marshall had had a last play with the gun, as Darren had gone to sleep hoping he might, except wouldn't the shot have wakened Darren? He kneed the quilt until it sprawled on the floor, and swung his legs off the bed, dragging his shorts up with both hands. He kicked yesterday's track suit across the carpet as he padded to the door and threw it open, snarling through his teeth at his grandfather's moans next door. "What's up with you?" he demanded of his mother. "I've got a headache now. I was asleep."

His mother butted her face at him. "You'll have worse than a headache if I get hold of you," she shouted, grabbing the knob at the end of the banisters as though to hurl it at him. He could see the hem of her coat twitching as her legs wavered with whatever she'd been doing to herself or with someone else. "Try, come ahead, give us a laugh," he scoffed.