White Riot (22 page)

And ran out of the shop and down Westgate Road as fast as he could.

Turnbull sat in his car on the opposite side of the road and watched the school kids walk out. Anyone asks, he thought, I’m just a dad on the school run.

His own kids came into his mind. And his wife, Karen. How he’d fucked it all up. Blinked hard, pushed them out of his mind. He was on a job, he was working.

The school was private, boys only, in Bishop’s Stortford. You could see the money in the cars the parents drove, the Mercs, Audis, Beamers and 4×4s. Almost smell it coming off them as they waited, windows down. Bastards. He hated them. All of them. Thinking they were protected. Thinking that because they had money nothing would ever go wrong in their lives. Nothing would happen to their kids or their jobs or their marriages. They wouldn’t get cancer or get made redundant or come home early one day to find their wives shagging the postman. Or the paperboy. Or the IKEA delivery man. Because money protected them, put up an invisible force field to keep all the bad stuff out.

And the thing was, most of the time it worked.

That was why he hated them.

He saw the Milsoms’ 4×4 waiting. The boy walked through the gates, got in. Didn’t walk out with anyone, wave to anyone, smile even. Just got in the car.

Turnbull saw Mrs Milsom turn in her seat, smile at him. He returned it, but it was a small smile, edged with sadness, not reaching his eyes. A response only. Mrs Milsom’s smile widened as if to compensate. She leaned over, kissed him
on the cheek. He took it, smiled again. This time it might have seemed real.

They drove off.

Turnbull had hoped the boy might have walked down into the town after coming out of school as some of the other boys did. Gone round the shops, through the park. Because that was how he was going to get near him. Find a can he had drunk from and bag it, perhaps some discarded chips that might have had a trace of saliva on them, a sweet wrapper maybe. Perhaps even get close enough to pick up a stray hair. Or catch him at some after-school club. A football team. Make off with his sweat-stained T-shirt. But there was nothing. The boy just got in the car and went home.

Like he was a prisoner.

Turnbull felt pity for him. All that money and the force field stopped him from getting out.

Turnbull waited a few seconds then pulled out after the 4×4.

There was no hurry. He knew where it would be going.

The sign said St Hilda’s Trust in black plastic hard-wearing, functional lettering. Peta switched the engine off, looked out. Eyes directed at the building, gaze fixed on something else.

Thoughts were tumbling over in her mind, snatches of conversation coming back to her.

Colin Baty: ‘
Trevor Whitman was a waster. In his hippie commune. Shagging all his birds, kids all over the place
…’

Mary Evans: ‘
And that’s why you were chosen. Oh, Lillian. He got you too
…’

Over and over, the words not leaving her alone. And their meaning …

She had phoned Donovan but he had been unavailable. Left a message on her mobile saying he was off to interview
Abdul-Haq. She was amazed he had managed it at short notice, but remembered Mary Evans’s words about how much Abdul-Haq loved to talk about himself. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised.

She looked at the building. Old, stone and bay-fronted, it looked like it had once housed a firm of Dickensian lawyers. And in its way the street, with its overflowing rubbish bins and garbage-strewn pavement, was twenty-first-century Dickensian. The buildings alongside it were now mostly cheaply rented flats, all peeling paint and rotting old wood. An archetypal run-down inner-city neighbourhood. The checklist: a convenience store, all brittle, broken lino, selling out-of-date fruit behind smeared windows in mildewed aluminium frames. An off-licence broadcasting low prices for undrinkable, death-hastening chemical stews. A betting shop. Cash Converters. Opposite was an abandoned park, empty but for a drinking school gathered around two benches.

St Hilda’s Trust had a large, heavy-looking front door, a buzzer at the side, a keypad underneath.

She locked the car, switched her mobile off, walked to the door, pressed the intercom. Waited. Some of the drinking school had detached themselves from the group in the park and were slowly making their way to the entrance, sucking down the dregs of their cans, landlocked Popeyes imbibing strength from tins of spinach.

Peta was buzzed in. The door slammed closed behind her. Inside was a foyer: reception, chairs, water cooler, toilets, keypad-operated doors behind reception. Anonymous. Could have been a police station, the DSS, anywhere. She approached the desk. An elderly woman with sparkling eyes looked up at her expectantly.

‘Hi, I’m Peta Knight. From a company called Albion. I’m here to see Richie Vane.’

Her eyes became immediately guarded. Peta knew what she was thinking: police.

‘Can I ask what it’s concerning?’

‘Mary Evans of COU made an appointment for me.’

The woman’s attitude softened. Peta had said the magic words. ‘Wait there,’ she said and left the desk.

As she waited, the reception area filled up. The drinking school from the park came in, were joined by others. Some, their faces scarred and scabbed over, looked like they had slept in their clothes; others had attempted to look smart. They were in good humour, happy to be there, chatting with passing staff, the security guard. The atmosphere seemed friendly and relaxed, but they didn’t attempt to engage Peta in conversation.

Eventually the receptionist returned along with a dark-haired woman, dressed casually, with sharp, intelligent eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses.

‘I’m Kaye,’ she said, shaking hands. ‘Come with me.’

Peta was ushered through a door, up a flight of stairs. The walls, in contrast to the reception area, were covered with primary-coloured murals depicting an idealized, child’s view of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic world. Characters were smiling, sharing possessions, enjoying a happy, if unrealistic, life.

‘Some of our students’ work,’ Kaye said as they walked up. ‘The art class is one of the most popular we run here.’

‘What kind of students have you got?’

‘You saw some of them in the foyer,’ she said. ‘Anyone who’s fallen through the net, basically.’

‘What kind of problems?’

‘The usual. Homelessness, abuse, alcohol, drugs. Mental health. Sometimes all together, sometimes in different combinations. We run all sorts of courses, help them back on their feet and into society.’

‘Good success rate?’

Kaye shrugged. ‘We try to perform miracles every day.’

They reached the first floor. Kaye took Peta into a large room with chairs and tables stacked against one wall. Kaye closed the door behind them, pulled two chairs from the stack, sat down. Peta did likewise.

‘Mary Evans told me about you. Now, as Richie’s caseworker I should say that he’s responding very well to the work he’s doing here. Very well. He’s stopped drinking, is attending AA and taking art and computing classes. So if you’re going to say something that’ll upset him, trigger off a relapse, then we won’t be going any further.’

‘We’re not police’ said Peta. ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong. We just want to know if he’s got any ideas about who’s making these calls.’

Kaye looked at her watch. ‘Ten minutes. That’s all I can allow. If you want to speak to him further it’ll have to be another time. And I’ll be in the room too.’

‘Fine. You work with vulnerable people. I don’t want to compromise that work.’

Kaye smiled. ‘Exactly.’

Kaye left the room. Peta glanced around the room, reading posters on the walls, absently scratching her arm. It was like the kind of treatment centre she had attended to control her growing alcohol addiction and to receive counselling. It all came back. She knew they had been trying to help but it had still felt like going to the doctor, waiting to be told she had cancer. She shivered at the memory.

She knew that the guys in reception, the drinking school, weren’t a different species. They could be anyone. Just one wrong turn and it’s there but for the grace of God.

The door opened. Kaye led in one of the men from reception. Not one of the drinking school. He sat down next to her. Tall, rake-thin, skin red and blotchy, his face
unshaven. Wearing supermarket jeans and T-shirt, hair sandy-coloured and thinning, short. Looking at least in his sixties, his face lined, his breathing laboured. But his eyes drew Peta. Pale, watery blue, holding intelligence and a hard-won compassion; they had seen things no one rightly should, but they were determined not to harden over. He smiled, stretched out a hand.

‘I’m Richie.’

Peta shook, introduced herself.

Richie Vane’s hand was warm, clammy. Peta could feel it vibrating as she shook it. Richie Vane’s whole body was shaking slightly, like he was just in focus. Peta didn’t know if it was the cumulative effect of years of self-abuse or just nerves at meeting new people. Probably a bit of both.

‘Mary said you’d be comin’ to see me,’ he said.

‘Did she tell you why?’ said Peta.

Richie Vane nodded. ‘Trevor Whitman.’ He smiled. Peta saw damage in that smile, wondered how much of it was irreparable. ‘Trevor Whitman. Blast from the past.’ His accent had traces of the north but was mostly flat, neutral. Could have come from anywhere, belonged nowhere.

Peta’s notes on Richie Vane: a true believer in the Hollow Men, but along the way that belief had been perverted. The loyalest of the loyal, he had begun to separate from the group, head off on his own, claiming to be undertaking some shadowy, secret work. Dangerous and daring missions, potentially lethal. The others had laughed it off, but suspicions had grown. Maybe he was Special Branch, MI5. Feeding stories to the media, even. They froze him out, not trusted. Uninvolved.

Then the real reasons became apparent. Drugs. Harder than hard. Heroin and cocaine speedballs for the highs, prodigious amounts of acid for the trips, cannabis, beer and
whisky for the comedowns. A self-medicating pharmacological experiment. That was Richie Vane’s dangerous, daring and potentially lethal mission.

They cut him loose. Drugs they didn’t mind; instability and unreliability they did. Richie’s spiral had been a swift downward one. He had remained lost for years, presumed dead, until a chance encounter with Mary Evans had led him on a slow climb up rehab mountain.

‘Have you spoken to Mary?’ said Peta.

A small smile crept around the corners of Richie Vane’s face. He nodded. ‘Trevor’s been havin’ some nuisance calls.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why? Why’s he think that?’

Peta frowned, wondering how much to tell him. ‘Because … because the person said something, apparently. Something from the Hollow Men.’

‘Like what?’

Richie Vane seemed sharper than Peta had been led to believe. ‘Some old password, I think. I don’t know for sure. He didn’t tell me.’

Richie Vane nodded, the smile creeping around his mouth like ivy on a crumbling old building. He rocked slightly, back and forth. ‘Right. Aye. She’s a good ’un, Mary, a good ’un.’

‘Right,’ said Peta. ‘So any ideas?’

Richie sat back. ‘About what?’

‘Who’s making the calls.’

Richie let out a guttural, phlegmy sound from his ruined lungs which may have been a laugh. ‘You’re jokin’, aren’t you?’ Another smile, the grin of a dry alcoholic. ‘Ancient history. All that happened to another man, not me.’

‘You don’t keep in touch with any of the old crew?” said Peta.

‘Just Mary. My fairy godmother. Checks on me now an’
again. Makes sure I’m on the straight an’ narrow.’ He sounded like it was both an inconvenient arrangement and paradoxically one he drew strength from.

‘None of the others?’ said Peta. ‘Abdul-Haq?’

Richie made a face. ‘Wanker.’ Kaye leaned forward, looked at him. ‘Not expressin’ a racist slur. My opinion is not based on his ethnicity or religion.’ He sounded like it was a well-worn phrase. ‘Was a wanker when I knew him, he’s an even bigger one now that he thinks he’s doin’ God’s work. Can’t turn on the telly without seein’ him shoutin’ about somethin’.’

It seemed like Richie Vane was going to go on a tirade that would take some time when he abruptly stopped. ‘What they said on the phone. Was it T. S. Eliot?’

Peta’s mouth fell open, momentarily taken aback by the abrupt change. ‘Well …’

Richie Vane smiled. There was some kind of twinkle in his eye. ‘Was, wasn’t it? T. S. Eliot. Bet it was from “The Hollow Men”. Bet it was.’

‘Why?’

‘Bomb code.’

Peta leaned forward. ‘What?’

‘Bomb code. When somethin’ was gonna happen, somethin’ was planned, there would be a phone call. Quotin’ a few lines. Bomb code, we called it.’

‘Always for a bomb?’

‘Not necessarily. Anythin’, really. But it meant there was somethin’ about to happen.’

Peta was about to ask another question, but Richie’s mind had taken off at another tangent. ‘Heard Trevor was back. Always liked him. Good bloke. Very fair.’ He looked at the floor. ‘Y’know. To me, like. Not gonna badmouth anyone for, you know. Not now. Not after all those years.’ He was shaking even more than he had been when he had first entered the room.

Peta leaned forward to question him further, but Kaye looked at her watch. ‘Sorry. I think that’s all the time we can allow you. Don’t want to overdo it.’

‘OK. Thanks, Richie.’

He nodded, body shaking slightly less, coming to a standstill now that the ordeal was over.

They shook hands. Kaye stood up to usher Richie out but he didn’t leave.

‘So, eh …’ Richie Vane looked at his hands, the shakes not completely gone. ‘What are you, like? Private detectives? Somethin’ like that?’

‘Something like that.’

‘D’you wanna new recruit, like? Eh? Someone to work the streets? I could do it, you know. Got contacts I bet you could never get.’

‘I bet you have,’ said Peta.

He made a phone sign with his shaking fingers, nodded. ‘Bear it in mind,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, if I hear anythin’ where can I get in touch with you?’