SIMON BESTWICK
March started late that year, as if waiting for a cue it had missed. The conversion back to BST was scheduled for late in the month; the days stayed short, the nights dark, long, and cold. When snow fell it lay for days in a brittle crust, and every other morning all stone was patterned with frost.
I was looking unsuccessfully for paying work that didn’t drive me crazy after a fortnight, and still living out of cardboard boxes in my friend Alan’s spare room. Although he’d said I could stay as long as I needed when I moved in, it’d been six months now and his patience had started to fray, all our little habits scraping at one another’s nerves.
So I took to going for long walks around the area. I like walking, even in the cold night on treacherous pavements.
I went down Bolton Road to the roundabout where it met Langworthy Road, then walked down Langworthy ’til I was opposite the abandoned shell of the Mecca bingo hall; I was on the corner of Brindleheath Road, which ran under a bridge, past the edge of the industrial estate and a couple of vacant lots and up onto the A6 next to Pendleton Church and near a Chinese takeaway. I decided to get some chow mein before heading back home.
As I came out from under the bridge, I heard a child call out “No.”
That was followed by a noise somewhere between a gasp and a cry, then silence. My skin prickled; I ran up the road.
I saw them vanishing into the bushes at the edge of one of the vacant lots: a small girl, tiny in a red coat, and a figure that looked like a shadow walking at first, ’til I realized it was dressed in black, only the white of its face visible. Then they were gone into the dark. They hadn’t seen me.
I pelted up the road and crashed through the bushes, shouting. They were white in the gloom, or at least the girl’s body and the man’s face were. Something silver, brighter than breath, glimmering like motes of powdered glass, was pouring from the girl’s opened mouth and into his. The man looked up. His face was long, pale: a thin blade of nose, one thick eyebrow a line across the top. The eyes looked black too.
I kicked out at him, but he was already rolling away. He scrambled up and ran, vanishing into the shadows. I stood there, gasping for air; I couldn’t see him and on the uneven ground all I’d do was break an ankle. And there was the girl to think about.
He’d worked fast; she lay with her clothes scattered about her, staring up at the night stars. For a moment I thought she was dead, but then I saw her breath. I took off my jacket and covered her; she flinched from my touch as if stung, whimpering like a hurt animal and curling up on her side. I couldn’t tell if it was the cold or the hate that made my fingers so clumsy as I dug out my mobile and dialed 112.
The first assault on a local child had happened in Higher Broughton just before Christmas, in Albert Park. A six-year-old boy almost dead with hypothermia, his torn clothes scattered around him. There’d been more over the following months, the same pattern: police offering nothing but pleas for vigilance and information, the victims unwilling or unable to provide any leads.
They took the girl to Hope Hospital and me down to the police station on the Crescent. I was interviewed for two hours by a pair of detectives. Poole, the Detective Sergeant, was the hardest to handle, spending the first hour treating me as a suspect. In the end, the Detective Constable, Hardiman, put a hand on his arm and led him outside. They left me with a paused tape and a stony-faced policewoman; I heard raised voices through the breezeblock wall.
Hardiman took it from there. He was young, earnest, and sympathetic. Poole stayed silent, looking at the scarred desktop, light gleaming on his bald crown. He had a drinker’s lined, ruddy face. Hardiman’s was smooth and pale as fiberglass. I told him everything I’d seen, except whatever it was I’d seen passing from the girl’s mouth to her attacker’s. I didn’t want dismissing as a nutter.
“You’ll have to excuse DS Poole,” Hardiman said later, as we watched the Identi-Kit picture take shape. “He’s got a kid of his own that age. Takes it personally.”
“It’s okay,” I told him, meaning it. Normally I’m pretty scathing about heavy-handed policing, but having seen what had been done to the girl I’d’ve quite happily held Poole’s coat for him while he threw the offender down the stairs several times. As long as it was the right man.
“It’s not,” said Hardiman. “My missus wants us to have kids, but …” he gestured at the picture to indicate all it represented. “You shouldn’t have to think of this when you’re thinking of a family.”
“I know.”
I looked at the finished picture and nodded slowly. Hardiman rubbed his eyes and pushed his fingers through his sandy hair. “Okay,” he said. “Come on. I’ll drive you home. And I want to thank you. This is the first clue we’ve had of any kind,” He must’ve been tired, to let that one slip out.
They had my details, of course, but I didn’t hear any more from them for over a fortnight. In the interim, I received bad news of a different kind: a friend of mine called Terry Browning died.
He’d choked on his own puke, sat in his armchair by the window with an empty bottle of Lone Piper beside him on the floor. It happened in his flat on Langworthy Road, a scant hundred yards from where I’d heard the little girl cry out. The funeral was at St. John’s Church, in the Height, about a week later.
He’d been a priest, but had left the church with a deep loss of faith the previous year; maybe they thought it was catching, as the only dog-collar in sight was the one who read the service, which didn’t mean anything to me or Terry’s brother, the only other mourner, and probably wouldn’t’ve to Terry any longer. I wasn’t even sure if it meant much to the priest, but it was hard to tell. The bitter wind tore his graveside oration to shreds, like gray confetti.
Rob Browning and I went for a pint down at the Crescent afterwards, more to chase out the chill than anything else. We hardly said a dozen words to each other. He was smart and suited and had a southern accent; I knew he and Terry hadn’t been close. He stayed for one drink and then left; I ordered a double Jameson’s and raised the glass to the memory of a friend whose death I still felt a certain guilt for.
“Mind if I join you?”
I looked up to see DC Hardiman standing over me with a Britvic orange in his hand.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“Didn’t make CID on my good looks.”
I laughed. “Didn’t think so.”
He flipped me the bird and sat. “Sorry about your mate.”
“Thanks. Looks like we’re the only ones who are.”
We sat in silence; I waited for him to probe about Terry but he didn’t. In the end it was me who started fishing. “How’s the investigation going?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing?”
“Oh no. Something. But … there’s complications.”
“How d’you mean?”
He didn’t answer at first. “I looked you up on HOLMES. Quite the colorful character.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“You say what you think and kick up a stink when you reckon you have to.”
“Fair assessment,” I had to admit.
“And you don’t believe in keeping your trap shut or leaving things alone when not doing so would piss off certain people.”
“People in high places, sort of thing?”
He nodded.
“Guilty, I suppose.” I took a swallow of whisky. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
He studied his glass, turning it this way and that like a faceted gem. “The evidence I’ve got … it’s taking me somewhere where shutting my trap and leaving things alone is pretty much what the doctor ordered.”
Everything seemed to go very still. “I’m feeling on my own on this one in a big way,” he said, almost to himself, then looked up. “Even Poole’s not sure, and I thought he wanted that bastard more than anyone.”
“Close to his pension.”
“Yeah. I just thought … you’d understand where I’m at right now.”
“I do.” I studied my own drink for a minute, then looked up. “What are you going to do?”
Hardiman put his glass down on the table. “The little girl you found. Ellie Chatham, her name is. I visited her yesterday. To see if she remembered anything, or … I don’t know. She’s like an old woman. Five years old and she’s like an old woman. Shuffles from place to place and just sits there. Breathing, staring. Waiting. I don’t know what for. Death, maybe. Like something’s just gone out of her.”
I thought of the silver glittering I’d seen passing from her mouth to the attacker’s. “Yeah.”
“And the psychiatrist reports on the others … Christ, I don’t think one of those kids’ll ever be the same again. It’s different for all of them, but … night terrors, rages … there’s one, the boy they found in Albert Park, he flies into a rage every time he sees anybody black or Asian. Don’t know why, there’s no indication anyone nonwhite was involved. The opposite is how it looks, thanks to you. It’s like he’s full of hate and rage, but it’s not going where it should, it’s going at someone else, a scapegoat. Fuck knows why.”
“I’ll lend you one of my books on capitalism sometime,” I said. “Might give you a few pointers.”
He snorted a laugh. “That’ll raise a few eyebrows in the canteen. All these kids, and he’s taken something from them they’ll never get back, that’ll fuck them up forever. And my wife, she still wants us to try for a kid. I just … just want to know any child of mine is gonna be as safe as I can make it, from something like this. But I’m supposed to keep my trap shut and look the other way. Well, fuck that.” He lifted his glass. “Here’s to colorful characters.”
I clinked my glass against it. “Amen.”
Twenty-four hours after he spoke to me, Detective Constable Alec Hardiman’s Ford Mondeo went off the motorway between Manchester and Bradford, on Saddleworth Moor. It was two in the morning, and no one ever knew what he’d been doing out there. His neck was broken in the crash. He left behind a wife, Sheila, but no children, actual or in the womb.
I would’ve gone to the funeral, but had a strong sense I wouldn’t be welcome if I did. I watched it from a distance, saw a thin pale woman in black that I assumed to be Sheila Hardiman, leaning on two other women—mother and sister, at a guess. Other mourners included a gray-faced DS Poole and a lone man in his sixties, bald on top with a salt-and-pepper goatee.
It was this last mourner who turned up on my doorstep the following evening, with a brown paper parcel under his arm. My first thought on seeing him was: Jesus, people still wear tweed?
“Mr. Paul Hearn?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Don Hardiman.” He offered his hand. “Alec’s father.”
“Please come in.”
The parcel sat on the table, between us and our coffee cups. Don Hardiman’s voice was quiet and modulated, very clear; he was a university lecturer. There was a black armband round one sleeve of his jacket.
“Alec came to me the day before he died, and put the package into my keeping, along with your name and address and a request to bring it here. We weren’t particularly close, and I wasn’t the first person anyone would think of coming to for any little … legacies of this kind. Which is why I expect Alec chose me.”
My hand kept twitching toward the package, but I kept stopping it.
“My son wasn’t a paranoid man, Mr. Hearn—”
“Paul.”
He inclined his head. “But he was definitely afraid of something and believed he could no longer trust his colleagues. I believe I have some idea of what’s in there, and I’d presume you do as well.”
I nodded. “I think so.”
“I suspect as well that I wasn’t intended to know anything about this. Alec did love me, in his way, and would want to protect me. But I loved him in my way too. He was my son, and now he’s dead. I’d like to help.”
“Don—”
“Please.”
“All right.” I nodded. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Timothy was the son of Arthur Wadham, a highly successful businessman known for his generous donations to New Labour’s party funds. He’d inherited his father’s charm and ruthlessness, by all accounts, but neither his looks nor his business acumen. Nearly thirty, he’d launched about half-a-dozen business ventures since returning from the all-expenses-paid-by-Daddy backpacking tour following his graduation from Cambridge.
All expenses paid by Daddy, in fact, seemed to be pretty much a—even the—recurrent theme in Timothy Wadham’s life. All half-a-dozen business ventures had ended in financial disaster, but Wadham senior was always on hand with a blank check for the next one. Hard-nosed and void of sentiment he might be, but he clearly—like most parents—had a blind spot where his offspring was concerned. Under any other circumstances, a man who could cock up running a lap-dancing club in Romford would have been filed in the do-not-touch-this-fuckwit-with-a-bargepole category and left there.
Just another rich kid bombing happily through life secure in the knowledge that pater would always be there to bail him out. What money didn’t solve directly, the connections it bought most assuredly would.
I picked up the photograph of Timothy Wadham; the long face and thin sharp nose, the black eyes and the unbroken line of the eyebrow. I showed it to Don Hardiman. Wadham’s address was written on the back.
“Still want to help?” I asked after he’d finished reading. He looked up with a wintry smile.
“I’m not my son’s father for nothing,” he said. “What do you need?”
“What in the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, Paul?”
When my reflection didn’t reply I opened the sock drawer and rummaged around in the back. I found what I was looking for and unwrapped the old t-shirt it was folded in.
I’d taken the Browning automatic off the body of a man called Frankie Hagen in Ordsall the month before. I hadn’t killed him, any more than I’d had any idea what I thought I wanted a gun for. I began to wonder if I now knew.
I unloaded the pistol—there were eight rounds left in the magazine—and looked at myself in the bedroom mirror. I was wearing black, including a wool skully and Thinsulate gloves. I dry-fired the pistol with the gloves on. They didn’t get in the way of the trigger pull; that was all I needed to know.
I took a few more deep breaths, looking at myself in the mirror, and asked myself a new question. Not what are you doing?, but why are you doing it?
For Ellie Chatham, old woman of five, and all the others naked and shivering in the cold, all leeched of parts of themselves whose absence they would never overcome. For Terry Browning, who had seen reality and refused to turn away even knowing it would destroy him, and for Alec Hardiman who had done the same. In some way perhaps it would atone for Terry, who could and should have received more from me, even if it had only been sitting up with him for a few nights. Could that have helped? It was too late to ask now.
And perhaps most of all it was for me, in my thirty-something dread of failure and the dark, so that at the withered arse-end of my life I could look back and say this at least. Even if no one knows but me, I achieved this. Even if I started nothing, at least I ended something that needed ending; this, at least.
Whether they were good enough or not, they were the only reasons I had, and so they’d have to do.
I pulled the curtains back and looked out of the window. Don Hardiman’s Vauxhall Astra was parked outside. Fifteen minutes later he pulled up in a Volkswagen Polo. That one was for me. I reloaded the Browning and went out to meet him.
“Do you think Wadham did it?” he asked.
“Did what?”
“Alec.”
I shrugged. “I suppose he could’ve. But more than likely it was someone looking out for him. Working for his dad, or one of his dad’s connections. Don’t suppose we’ll ever know, will we?”
“No.” He shook his head. “And it doesn’t really matter, does it? The effect’s the same.”
“Yeah.”
“Good luck, Paul.” We shook hands.
“You too.”
Don picked Wadham up first, coming out of his gravel drive in Sale in a BMW. We stayed in touch with mobiles, and I followed at a distance, picking up when I had to. We alternated pursuit like that for nearly an hour, until he reached Lower Broughton.
“He’s pulled in,” said Don. “Shit, Paul, he’s getting out of the car. Heading up Broughton Road, on foot. What now?”
“Leave it with me,” I said. I was surprised how calm I felt.
Wadham was heading up from the Irwell Valley campus. Broughton Road led ultimately to the Broad Street roundabout, a stone’s throw from the vacant lots off Brindleheath Road. The arrogance of the bastard; so close to where he’d attacked Ellie Chatham. Of course, there were a lot of roads branching off along the way. I pulled in near the roundabout where Broughton crossed Seaford Road. He walked past, head down; I ducked so he wouldn’t see me, in case he remembered too.
When he was gone, I got out of the Polo and followed at a distance, hands thrust into my pockets. He kept going up, over Lower Broughton Road, ’til he reached the lowrise blocks and estate terraces on the left-hand side of the road. Then he vanished down one of the walkways and was lost in the shadows.
I hung back, waiting by a small birch sapling someone had optimistically planted on the green apron outside the terrace. It occurred to me that, dressed in black and loitering in the shadows as I was, I might easily be mistaken for my prey, and I had to smile bitterly at the thought. Should I follow him? In the dark, the walkways were a maze, and what if Wadham knew I was trailing him? Before I could make a move, he came back out again, leading a small boy by the hand.
The boy was maybe eight, wearing tracksuit bottoms, a t-shirt, and a baseball cap, his hair almost shaved clean it was cut so close to the skull. The estate kids in Broughton are tough, they have to be, but the boy followed Wadham meekly as a lamb. Why he was out that late, or how Wadham charmed him so easily, I never knew.
Wadham and the boy crossed the road; they were heading for Broughton Park, a small zone of green surrounded by a multicolored fence. Wadham climbed the gate; the boy waited patiently to be lifted over.
I ran across the road, scaled the gate, landed in a crouch. I couldn’t see them. Then there was a whimpered cry from the child, and a sound of ripping cloth. I pulled the Browning from my belt, pulled back the slide, and ran.
I floundered through the bushes; the boy lay on the open grass. He was naked except for his underpants; they came away in Wadham’s hand with a final rip as I ran up. Wadham’s lips were skinned back from his teeth; I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or the snarl of a predator about to strike. His head turned as I reached him; our eyes met for the second time. Then I swung up the Browning and shot him in the face.
The bang was sudden and deafening; there was a flash and a brass cartridge spat out of the gun. Something warm and wet splashed my cheek. Wadham’s face was black with it as he fell backwards, arms flailing, then jerked once and was still.
I turned to the boy; he was sat up, hugging his knees. “Are you all right?” I asked. He nodded. Wadham hadn’t had time to do whatever it was he’d done to Ellie Chatham and the rest.
I turned and Wadham’s snarling face lunged up into mine, teeth bared. One eye was gone, the socket streaming blackness down a bone white cheek. He grabbed my throat; his hand was bitter cold. I shoved the Browning into his chest and fired twice, blowing darkness out of his back; he reeled away and fell to one knee, arms windmilling, then launched himself up and came at me again.
I aimed two-handed and shot him in the forehead, then again in the temple as he fell to his knees. He rolled onto his back and I stood over him; blood-covered, his glistening face was a blackness like the rest of him. There was a noise in his throat that was either a rattle or a laugh as he began to sit up.
I shot him in the face again and again, the sulphur smell of cordite in the crisp night air, and felt sprays of blood and bone hitting me. He reached out a hand to me as the gun emptied, the trigger clicking helplessly as I pulled it, then toppled back and lay still. But I could still hear him breathing, and after a while he began moving feebly. Then the breathing stopped and his limbs went slack.
I turned back to the boy. He began fumbling in the grass for his clothes. “Come on,” I said, “let’s get you home.”
I still have nightmares about Timothy Wadham’s one-eyed corpse slithering into my bedroom by night, smashed face grinning.
About a week into April, spring was finally underway. Crocuses and daffodils were in bloom. The sky was clean and blue and the air was getting warm. I opened the windows and cleaned the house; a late spring was better than none. Then the doorbell rang. When I answered it, it was DS Poole. “I think you know why I’m here,” he said.
Instead of the station, he took me down the pub; Mulligan’s in town, to be precise. I’ve always been a sucker for Irish whiskey. Over a shot each of Black Bush, we talked.
“Worst part is,” he said, “that Alec went to you, not me. He didn’t trust me.
“He didn’t know who he could trust,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t just you.”
He glowered at me. “You think that helps? I was his partner. I wouldn’t have let him down.”
I wasn’t sure which of us he was trying to convince, but I didn’t press the point.
“I didn’t see anything about Wadham in the papers,” I said at last.
Poole grunted. “That’s how it’ll stay. The boy’s mum called us in. No chance that one could just go away. His old man’s not chasing up revenge—not through us anyway. The boy gave us a description of his rescuer. Or rather, me. No one else knows and no one else will. From that I put two and two together.”
“And Wadham?”
“Up in smoke, Paul. Saw to it myself.” He toyed with his drink, then looked up at me. “You know, when I saw how many times you’d shot him, I thought you must’ve hated him even more than I did. But when we burned the fucker, I understood why.”
I waited, but I knew what was coming next.
“He was banging on his coffin lid,” said Poole. “And then he was banging on the oven door. All the way through, ’til all he was was ash. And the ashes went in the river. Saw to that myself, an’ all. With all the shit that’s gone in the Irwell over the years, who’ll notice a bit more?”
“They’ve just had it cleaned,” I pointed out.
“Well, they’ll just have to clean it all over again.” We finished our whiskies; Poole looked toward the bar. “What’s that bottle?”
I looked. “More whiskey. Midleton.”
“Any good?”
“Supposed to be, but at a tenner a shot I wouldn’t know.”
Poole came back with two doubles. “To Alec,” he said.
“Alec,” I nodded, and touched my glass to his.