“So who’s behind it?” Madeleine pressed, but even with her looming over him, Jav couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell.
“Langford knew, though, didn’t he?” I said quietly. “Is that why he took a knife in the chest?”
Fresh dread bloomed on Jav’s features. You could smell the fear in him as he began to struggle afresh.
I knew we weren’t going to get anything further out of him. Besides, the crowd was growing. They still didn’t try and intervene, but there was a burgeoning air of menace about them, nonetheless.
I touched Madeleine’s arm. “It’s time to go,” I said.
Wayne and Attila let go of the Asian boy and left him still lying there as we all moved towards the stairs. The onlookers took in the solid width of the German’s shoulders, and the mean look the black man had contrived onto his normally cheery face, and carefully gave us room to depart.
Once we made it out at street level, I let my breath out slowly, and turned to find Attila frowning, but Madeleine and Wayne exchanging big grins.
“That,” I said tiredly, “was not exactly how I wanted to play this, Madeleine.”
She shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?” she said, defiant and completely unrepentant. “We found out what we needed to know.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice grim as I recalled the sea of watchful faces, “but so did everybody else.”
Twenty-five
I thanked Attila and Wayne again for their help when we dropped them off back at the gym, then I retrieved the Patrol, and Madeleine followed me up to Caton.
The rain was still falling, glazing on the windscreen in the oncoming headlights. The day had already started to weaken into evening, the light levels dropping fast. God I hate the winter.
The boys had returned by the time we arrived at Jacob and Clare’s. Sean was sitting propped in one of the kitchen chairs, very much at home, with his left arm in a very professional-looking sling, and Beezer asleep on his lap.
Jacob had broken out a bottle of wine, which I wasn’t sure was a wise move, in view of the amount of morphine Sean had had over the last twenty-four hours, but it wasn’t up to me to tell him that. In any case, Madeleine jumped straight down that track as soon as we walked in, so I was glad I hadn’t opened my mouth.
“So tell me what happened with Jav,” Sean interrupted the other girl’s flow, calmly stroking the terrier’s ears.
Madeleine stopped talking abruptly, realised that she was onto a loser if she pursued things any further, and let it lie.
Clare smiled at her sympathetically. I got the impression she’d already voiced her objections before we’d arrived, and had met with the same outright disregard.
Clare was bustling round making us all some food, a giant native American sweetcorn soup, reinforced with celery and onions. Madeleine was overcome with enough of an attack of good manners to lend a hand.
Weariness was settling down over me like a leaden fog. I can function on around four hours’ sleep a night if I work up to it, but it’s not a combination that works well with high levels of stress.
I dropped into a chair opposite Jacob and Sean, and helped myself to a glass of the dark, almost metallic red. I gave them the bare facts about what had happened that morning, trying to mask the annoyance I’d felt at Madeleine’s actions. It wasn’t easy.
Sean grinned at my carefully worded account, but his amusement faded when we got to the substance of what Jav had told us.
“So, how do we find out when Roger’s likely to be moved into one of the houses?” he wondered.
“Do you even know where he’ll be?” Jacob put in.
I nodded as I sipped my wine, twirling the short fat stem of the glass in my fingers. “I think so,” I said. “Most of the houses were built in the fifties, but there’s half a street of stone Victorian stuff left, right in the middle of No Man’s Land. They’re the only ones old enough to have cellars.”
“That should narrow the search down a bit,” Sean said, frowning in concentration. He eased his shoulder in its sling, flexing his hand. Would he be ready, if it came to a fight?
“As for when,” I said, “I thought I’d see about moving back in with Pauline for a few days so I can keep an eye out from there. I’d be happier being with her at the moment, in any case. Did I tell you someone threw a brick at her?”
This, of course, was news to Jacob and Clare, and the time between then and the arrival of the food was largely taken up with recounting my last visit to Lavender Gardens.
“That dog of hers is worth its weight in gold,” Jacob said. “You don’t think she’d ever want to part with him, do you?”
I remembered at this point that I also hadn’t told Sean about my latest run-in with Garton-Jones. He listened in silence to the sly hints the security man had dropped about him, his face giving nothing away.
“I really will have to do something about that man,” he said at last, and the calm in his voice was chilling.
We none of us talked much once the food was in front of us, and I realised just how hungry I was. The Succotash was so thick you could have eaten it with a fork rather than a spoon. There was Caesar salad, too. We mopped up everything with chunks of fresh bread torn rather than sliced from a crusty loaf.
Afterwards I think it was Clare who suggested we listen to the local radio station, to see if there was anything mentioned on the early evening news about Langford’s murder. There wasn’t, but what we did hear had us abandoning the dirty crockery where it lay, and heading for the door.
“Police aren’t naming the Asian teenager whose badly beaten body was thrown from a moving car in the Lavender Gardens area of the city earlier today,” the announcer said, “but he’s known to be local to the area. His condition is described as critical. Police officials are calling for calm, but gangs of youths are already forming between there and the neighbouring Copthorne estate.
“Reports are coming in that missiles and some petrol bombs have been thrown, although as yet there are no confirmed injuries. The exact situation is unknown as even fire and ambulance crews are having difficulty gaining access. Police are advising everyone to stay clear of the area until matters have been brought under control . . .”
***
Out on the forecourt, it was Madeleine who commandeered the keys to the Patrol, and I surrendered them without argument. At least the rain had eased, but the air was heavy with the promise that more was on its way.
“We’ll come, too,” Clare said, making for their Range Rover.
“No!”
All of them stopped, turned to look at me as I voiced my dissent. I registered uncomfortably that my tone had been just a touch too vehement, and a tad too loud.
Sean stepped in front of me, searched my set face and didn’t find the answers he was looking for written there.
“No,” I repeated, more reasonably this time. “There’s no need for them to come with us.”
“Why not, Charlie?” he murmured. “We might be glad of their help.”
I shook my head. “They’ve done enough,” I said, dogged. “More than enough. I won’t have you risking their safety.”
Jacob appeared at my elbow. “It’s all right, Charlie,” he said gently. “We know what we’re getting into this time, and we want to do what we can.” He put his arm round my shoulders. “You don’t have to keep protecting us forever.”
“I know that,” I said, swallowing, and wished that I believed it, too.
Jacob seemed to take that as agreement. He released me with a reassuring squeeze, and he and Clare climbed into the Range Rover. The rest of us piled into the Patrol, with me in the back seat. Madeleine led the way, our headlights bouncing wildly in tune to the rutted drive.
It wasn’t until we’d almost reached the edge of town that I realised how quiet she’d gone since we’d heard the news report.