He crept to the top of the stairs and sat down. From here he could see the shadows of the men. He recognised his father’s voice patterns even before he’d understood what was being discussed. When it became clear it was him at the centre of their debate, he found it difficult to follow the conversation over the clamour of his heart. They were discussing money, a final payment. He forced himself to concentrate.
His father was begging the visitor now but the other was apparently unmoved.
“We have the facility ready, Mr. Nevin, and a car waiting outside. It’s really out of your hands now. We’d appreciate it if you went and woke the boy.”
“But my wife… she’ll be devastated.”
A sigh from the visitor. “Mr. Nevin, Joe, we had an agreement. Monies have been paid into your account for the past year. You don’t seriously believe that we are simply going to turn around and leave without the boy? That isn’t going to happen.”
“It is,” said the boy’s father. “I’ve changed my mind.”
There was a silence and then, very clearly, his father said: “Fuck.”
It was the profanity rather than the explosion that followed it that startled the boy onto his backside. He heard a burst of static and then the voice say: “Round the back. Quick. Watch out for the boy.” Once the radio had been switched off, he heard the voice say: “Godspeed, Joe, you stupid, stupid bastard.”
Now feet on the stairs.
The boy scampered back to his room just as his mother emerged from her bedroom, her hair in curlers, a white dressing gown wrapped around her.
“Joe?” she called, querulously. Another explosion: the top of her head came off. The boy watched, open-mouthed as his mother elegantly lifted her hand from the door as though about to primp her curls. She fell like something without bones, the remaining half of her head spread across the balustrade.
The boy ran to his window and shoved it open. He swung his body out and, clinging to the lintel, waited until he’d stopped swinging before dropping to the ground. He landed awkwardly and twisted his ankle. He didn’t feel a thing. Glancing at his window – the light just coming on – he ran across the garden and began leapfrogging the neighbouring fences until he’d lost count and the sounds of his pursuers’ cries were lost to a cacophony of disturbed dogs and the labour of his own lungs. By the time he stopped running, thin light was breaking above the roofs and he was standing bare-foot, bare-chested, at a traffic island, shivering with cold. The early-morning churn of the M56 lay below him. He realised he didn’t have anybody to turn to.
He hurried to the southbound sliproad and huddled by the verge. Tired, dirty and half-naked, he guessed it would be a while before he flagged a lift, if at all, but the first vehicle that swung by – an Escort van driven by a builder on his way back to Birmingham – stopped for him. The driver’s name was Jerry. He provided the boy with a jumper and a pair of boots three sizes too big from the back of the van. By the time they arrived in Birmingham, the boy had been offered a job as a builder’s mate on a site just outside Walsall.
Wolfing breakfast in a lorry drivers’ café at the end of his journey, the boy watched TV over Jerry’s shoulder and was surprised to see his parents’ house appear on the screen. It seemed alien to him, pinned beneath the harsh lights of the TV crews, barricaded by yellow police tape, despite the many years he’d spent there. A hunt was on for the killer of his mother and father. A photograph of their missing son appeared, shocking him. His own face seemed unfamiliar to him. He glanced around at his fellow diners, but they were deep in their tabloids, or their bacon and eggs.
He couldn’t risk anybody recognising him. He knew it could only lead to his being presented to the people who had destroyed his parents. When they’d finished, Jerry led him to the van and took him home, which turned out to be a small terraced house in Acocks Green. Jerry showed him the spare room and told him he could stay until he’d earned a bit of cash and found some digs. When Jerry disappeared into the bathroom for a shower, the boy walked through the kitchen into the utility room at the back of the house, plugged in the Bosch drill and drove the hammering bit deep into his right eye.
PART ONE
UNREAL CITY
CHAPTER ONE: SUDDENLY, AT HOME
IF THIS JOB was a dog, I’d have it put down.
Sean watched Sally let the steering wheel spin back through her hands as the squad car righted itself; a fluid movement. It was early, no need to use the sirens, a good hour and a half before the traffic began to breed. Sally was a good driver and she drove best when she was telling a story. She was deep into one now.
“Next time I took a wander along Loampit Vale, Hunter had shrunk. He was about two foot six. He was kneeling down on the floor counting the coins he’d made from that morning’s begging.”
Sean watched the dawn parade of buildings stream past the liquid windows. Limp Christmas decorations hung from telegraph poles like ropes of phlegm. Neon lights sizzled: Happy 2K9. Static barked from his PR; his first coffee of the day was a greased, tepid knot in the centre of his chest. He was glad of Sally’s persistent murmur. He hated getting the Devil’s Hour calls; they were always the worst. This morning looked like being a total bastard. On the shift ten minutes and already there was someone intent on ruining his good mood. He thought of his bed, probably still warm but getting colder by the minute.
“I actually says to him, ‘Come on there, Hunter. Up and at ’em. Bow down for royalty if you like but I’m a far cry from that.’ I didn’t realise, did I – the bastards at the nick never told me – poor Hunter there’s had both his legs off. Thrombosis. Been injecting Temazepam. I gave him a quid – he saw the funny side.”
Slowing now, switching off the police lights, coasting into George Lane, the disused Hither Green hospital on their left a series of black shapes against the failing dark. Sally parked on Lullingstone Lane and they waited for a moment, the engine’s tick a strange comfort as it cooled.
Sean assessed the buildings. “Which one does the girl live in?” he asked.
“That one there. Number fifty-six. Bottom flat. The call came in from a neighbour who lives across the way. He said he saw someone creeping about outside her window.”
“Really? What’s he doing up so late? Wristing himself off watching her curtains?”
“He works nights. Security guard at the hospital.”
“We’re going to get piss-wet through,” Sean said.
Sally opened her door; late December wind knifed them. “It’s good for the skin. Come on.”
They searched the gardens and gulleys surrounding the flat, Sally with markedly greater conviction than her partner. Sean knocked on the door of fifty-six and was about to suggest to Sally that they visit the man who had made the emergency call when he saw movement: a face peering from the window of the woman’s home.
“Sally, there’s someone watching us,” he said, and, to the face, stridently: “Would you mind opening the front door, please, sir?”
It was a pasty-faced thirty-something in a towelling robe that greeted them. Nuggets of sleep in the corners of his eyes. Bed hair.
“Sorry to bother you, sir,” droned Sean, going through the motions. He felt like a glove puppet in an act that hadn’t changed for decades. “We’ve had word of a prowler in the area. Have you seen anything? Heard anything?”