Daniel spent the morning with Bennett, determined to find the tramp from the train. They walked the main streets where people often sat and begged for money, gradually venturing into the smaller alleys and cut-throughs like two explorers mapping the tributaries of some dried-out river system.
Eventually, they reached Jesus Green and saw a group of them sitting underneath an oak tree, the sun dappling their shoulders. Despite the heat, they were wearing thick coats and jumpers, passing a bottle of vodka between them, taking swigs as if it was only spring water catching the light.
Their talking was babble and burble and burps and laughter.
It was like walking up to the sixth-formers at school.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ said Daniel as they all looked up at him and Bennett through red, rheumy eyes.
One of them, a woman with rickety teeth and a boil on the side of her neck, laughed and shook her head.
‘I’m trying to find a man. He’s got red hair,’ said Daniel again. ‘And a red beard too.’ But they just kept passing round the bottle of vodka, laughing loudly as one when something landed with a splat between the shoulders of a raggedy man wearing an old blue donkey jacket, the rising laughter scaring the wood pigeons out of the tree above them.
‘He carries a big darning needle with him,’ said Bennett.
‘Bobby,’ said one of the men absently, shading his face as he looked up at the two boys, and the others nodded. ‘Bobby carries a needle.’
‘Thinks he’s the fourth bloody musketeer,’ said one of the women and the others laughed, some of them slapping the ground because it seemed so funny.
‘Do you know where we can find him?’ asked Daniel.
‘Is it important?’
Daniel nodded. But they all blinked at him as if they didn’t believe it. ‘I think he can help me with something.’
‘We can help, can’t we?’ said the woman with the boil on her neck and the others agreed.
‘I think it’s just him.’
They looked at Daniel and Bennett, the lines in their faces inked with grime, their teeth marbled with brown streaks.
‘Try the canal,’ said a thin man wearing a dirty baseball cap and then he took a swig from the bottle. ‘He likes it there, says it reminds him of where he grew up.’
‘Thanks.’
Daniel reached into his pocket and dug out some pound coins and held them out, but the man shook his head and the others all started laughing as Daniel turned red and walked away with Bennett.
The path beside the canal was brown and dusty, cracked into hexagons by the heat. The water was the colour of milky coffee. When Daniel bent down to try and see through it, he saw it was swirling with tiny yellow grains, like dots of pollen. Bennett kicked a stone off the path and it disappeared through the murk with a plop, a single ripple vanishing quickly, swept away in the flow.
They walked for some time, passing people coming the other way, overtaking others loaded with shopping bags or marshalling toddlers away from the water. When they reached the edge of town, they sat on a lock gate and looked at the buildings around them. Old warehouses three or four stories high, with the windows blown out, and weeds with bright yellow heads growing out of the walls, bouncing on their green stems in the breeze.
‘Have you been checking Mason’s phone?’ asked Bennett.
‘No.’
‘Maybe you should.’
Daniel saw there were ten missed calls from Mason, but no messages.
‘You’ll have to speak to him eventually,’ said Bennett.
Daniel didn’t know what to say.
The sound of coughing made him look up and he saw Bobby emerging from one of the warehouses, his dirty mackintosh wrapped about him with his hands in the pockets. When the man stopped and took a swig of something, Daniel saw the sunlight glinting off the top of Bennett’s hip flask as he screwed it back on.
‘Grubby bastard,’ grunted Bennett.
‘Stay here,’ said Daniel. ‘You might scare him off.’
When Daniel walked up to the man, he smelt of the sea, but there was something sweet-smelling too. Like warm popcorn in a bucket.
‘Ahhhh,’ said Bobby and gave a bow. ‘The young gentleman from the train.’ He clicked his tongue against his teeth, making the clackety sound of a train. ‘I believe your travelling companion was kind enough to furnish me with a drink.’ He waved the flask and laughed at Bennett who raised a finger in reply. When Bobby shuffled on past Daniel, the boy put out his arm.
‘Stop.’ But Bobby didn’t, the dirty mackintosh creaking like a sail as he went. So Daniel walked on after him. ‘I need your help. I want to make the fit with you. I need you to try and help me find something.’
The man stopped and licked his blistered lips. Played with a wisp of his ginger beard, rolling it between his fingers. ‘Make the fit? With me?’ And something caught fire in his eyes as if the sun had lit something deep inside him.
Daniel nodded. ‘As much as you dare. Please.’ He took out the twenty-pound note he had been keeping in his pocket and all the change he had too. ‘This is all I have. I don’t know anyone else who can help me.’
Bobby peered at the boy’s face as if staring through a magnifying glass that had cracked. ‘What do you want to know? What can I work with?’
‘I have something that can help,’ said Daniel and he held up the two pieces of Lawson’s business card.
Bobby’s tongue wiggled out of the corner of his mouth, like a leech looking for a spot to clamp down. ‘I’m keeping the hip flask; he can’t have it back.’ And he gave a little wave at Bennett.
‘OK,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ll sort it.’
Bobby nodded and took the twenty pounds and the coins, dropping it all in a mackintosh pocket. ‘It’s a beautiful day,’ he said. ‘So let’s not screw it up.’ He began shuffling through the knee-high weeds and grasses towards one of the warehouses, sending bees and butterflies swirling round his shins.
They sat on a bare patch of concrete with broken glass catching the sunlight all around them, like three people shipwrecked on a tiny desert island.
A bird flapped up through a large blue crack in the ceiling, and it took a while for the quiet to creep in again.
Bobby took the two pieces of the business card and looked at Lawson’s name. He eyed Bennett for a moment and then smiled. Bennett just grunted and shook his head.
‘Lawson found a flask,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s very special. He put it somewhere and I need to know where.’
‘Well, that depends on whether we can make the fit.’ Bobby closed his eyes. ‘Can you feel it?’
‘Yes.’ Daniel saw tiny golden sparks popping behind his eyes when he blinked, as if someone was holding a sparkler out in the dark of him. There was a familiar warm sensation in his chest.
‘Tell me about this man you want to know more about.’
‘His name was Lawson. He was a vicar once. He lived in a house just outside Cambridge.’
‘And what did he look like, this Lawson?’
‘He was dark. Tall. Neat and tidy. He—’ Daniel stopped when Bobby’s hand reached out for his wrist and grabbed hold.
‘I see somebody.’ Bobby started to breathe more deeply, his breath oaty and sour as he leant closer to Daniel. ‘I can see a man in a bed. Machines blipping round him.’
‘No, not him,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s Lawson I need to know about. He had a flask and I need to find it.’
‘I’ve got to work harder to see it,’ said Bobby. ‘I’m not as strong as I used to be. I’m all rusted up. Ginger on the inside too.’ He spluttered a laugh and held on tighter to the boy’s wrist.
‘What can you see?’ asked Daniel.
‘The man in the bed is very ill.’
‘Not hi—’ Daniel paused as he thought about something. ‘What about this man in the bed?’ Daniel glanced at Bennett who was about to say something and then thought better of it.
Bobby muttered sounds that didn’t make sense. ‘Open your heart,’ he said finally. ‘Open it as big as you can. As wide as a barn door pushed back. I can almost see it.’
‘See what, Bobby?’
‘What’s going to happen to him.’
Daniel tried keeping his mind pure and clean and simple, his breath a knife that cut apart any thought as it came to him, good or bad or hopeful. But something was welling up inside him. Bloating him. Something red and hot and angry.
‘I see him!’ shouted Bobby. ‘I see the blighter.’
‘Be careful,’ whispered Daniel. Bobby’s teeth were shiny with spit. He wobbled and held on tight to Daniel.
‘You found a good fit with that girl, Daniel. It gave you what you weren’t expecting, just like I said it would. It didn’t help your daddy though, did it? It didn’t do that. It was telling you to let go of him.’ Bobby was juddering. His shoulders were jerking. ‘He’s going to die, your daddy. He’s going to die and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.’
Daniel tried to shake off Bobby’s hand.
‘Let me go!’ he shouted. He felt Bennett’s hand trying to pull Bobby away. But the man was hooked on tight.
‘It’s the what not the why,’ screamed Bobby. ‘Tell me, Daniel. Tell me: who are you going to be when your daddy’s gone? Who’s the girl going to be with this tumour in her head?’
Bennett yelled and swiped Bobby across the head and the man’s hand fell away and Daniel felt the connection between them cut off, like a plug had been pulled from its socket.
Bobby fell back and lay gasping on his side, his eyes flickering open and his head resting on the broken pieces of glass lying around them.
‘That’s all I can see,’ he wheezed. ‘Not Lawson. Not this flask you want. My mind’s a muscle. It’s out of shape. It doesn’t do what I want it to any more.’ He found the hip flask in his pocket and took a long sip before holding it out to Daniel who shook his head. When Bobby managed to sit up, there were red spots of blood on his head. Splinters of glass sparkled in his hair like the remnants of a frost.
‘Come on, Daniel,’ said Bennett. ‘Let’s go. He’s no good. He’s a nobody.’
‘Least I still got both hands,’ shouted Bobby and he roared with laughter as they crunched their way out of the building over the broken glass.