ON THE following Saturday night, almost a week since Red’s dinner with his parents, Carter had a dinner date too, though his was with Zeke, in Carter’s own kitchen. It wasn’t an unusual event, but Carter knew Zeke had come around to check up on him. It made him smile, albeit irritably, to see how the tables had turned since the days when he looked after Zeke’s welfare.
Tonight, Zeke sat at Carter’s kitchen table and let out a long, theatrical sigh.
“For heaven’s sake. I’m fine, Zeke,” Carter said. He was busy at the cooker, his back to Zeke. “Or are you just complaining at how long it takes to cook pasta? I couldn’t leave work any earlier. It was my turn to lock up the center. There’s the garlic bread if you can’t wait for supper. Or we could have gone out, like I suggested.”
“You need to start looking after yourself better.” Zeke reached for another slice of warm garlic bread. “That means cooking and eating proper stuff.”
“Zeke, I remember nights you existed on an apple doughnut and a bottle of chocolate milkshake.”
“Well, yeah, if I was in the middle of an exhibition. That’s different.”
“Sure. Whatever.” Carter stirred the pasta. “And I am looking after myself.” He smiled, remembering Red’s disgust at the lack of food in Carter’s fridge. Since that night, Carter had made sure he had a good supply of the basics in his flat, and cooked at home more often. “And the doctor’s signed me off as perfectly healthy. The other week was just a bad patch. Working too hard, worrying about the job and the youth center, not sleeping well.”
“And now?”
Carter’s hand slipped on the wooden spoon he was using to stir the sauce, but he caught it before he spilled anything. “I’m sleeping much better.”
“The nightmares?”
“Zeke.” Carter paused, drew a deeper breath. Zeke was obviously determined to peel more information out of him. “Okay. I haven’t had one since that night you were around—I reckon that was the worst it got.” He deliberately didn’t turn to face Zeke, but he knew exactly the look of smug triumph there’d be on his friend’s face if he did.
“So. How’s Red these days?”
“My God.” Carter did turn around now, glaring at Zeke. He forgot to drop the spoon back in the pan, and tomato sauce dripped from the end of it onto his white-tiled floor. “Can you be any less subtle?”
“Probably. If I really tried hard.” Zeke grinned back at him, halfway through demolishing the penultimate slice of garlic bread. “But I like to meet expectations, you know?”
Carter laughed, then stopped when he saw Zeke tilt his head and frown. “What is it?”
“Sorry, man. I was just teasing you, you know? If I’ve really stepped over the line….”
“It’s okay.” Carter sighed. “Come and dish this pasta up for us. I’ll get us another beer.”
Zeke wisely stayed off the subject of Red until they’d finished eating. Instead, they discussed Zeke’s next exhibition, which he was still preparing in his mind, then Miles’s latest trip to the States, then the surreal movie Zeke had watched on some odd satellite channel at 3:00 a.m., and finally even the proposition that Zeke might take on an intern at the art gallery—partly to mentor the kid, and partly to have someone to maintain the intravenous line of espresso during exhibition work, as Zeke put it.
“Bloody bizarre, isn’t it, that I could be telling someone what to do? Tutoring them?” Zeke looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to look scornful or self-satisfied. His eyes sparkled, whichever response he privately settled on.
“It’s a good idea,” Carter said, settling back in his chair after the meal. “So it was Miles’s, I assume?”
Zeke gave an ugly and insulting snort, but grinned. “Of course. Personally, I can’t think of anyone who’d put up with me for more than an hour, apart from you lot. Maybe this trainee will come equipped with ear defenders, plus an extra bouncy spring in their neck so they can follow my snap changes of decision without getting whiplash.” He paused, probably expecting to catch Carter enjoying the joke, then realized Carter wasn’t laughing. “Is that the problem with Red? He’s annoying you?”
Carter started, and felt himself color. “No, not at all. We’ve met a couple of times at the youth center and… here, actually. We don’t have much free time at the moment, he’s working with his parents and Marie Atherton on a fundraising campaign for a new sports field for the center, and I’m… well, we’re still getting the place straight for the opening. It’s a busy time for me too.”
“So?”
“There’s no problem with Red.” Carter tried to pitch for the right kind of careless tone, but wasn’t sure he managed it. “He’s fine. He’s great.”
Zeke gave an encouraging and rather forced smile. “Like I said. So?”
“It’s me, really. He said I gave mixed messages.”
“Yeah, and?”
Carter stared at Zeke in some surprise. “You agree with him?”
Zeke blinked hard. Carter knew that Zeke didn’t often think twice before speaking, but that was one sign of his best attempt. “Well. Yeah.”
Carter bit back a snappy answer. “How come?”
“Look.” Zeke sighed. “You’re looking at the king of mixed messages, right? When I first met Miles, I wanted to smack him in the mouth. Hard. But that was my problem, right? Nothing to do with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yeah, he was taking over my gallery, my life. But I was angry at the event, not the party planner, if you know what I mean.”
“Sort of.” Despite himself, Carter smiled.
“I hated life, I hated the fucking mess I’d made of it. I hated my grief over Jacky, the fact I couldn’t paint worth shit. I hated myself. I was in denial, man.”
Carter opened his mouth to ask a question, then decided it was wiser to hold back when Zeke was on a conversational roll. He shut his mouth again quickly.
Zeke laughed, as if he were fully aware of Carter’s caution. “In denial about thinking he was hot. Bloody hot! I’d have acted on it earlier if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my own misery. If I hadn’t mixed up Miles the man with Miles the business.” He laughed again, more softly. “I never was much good at the objective professional bit, was I?”
Carter reached across the table and put a hand on Zeke’s arm. “It wasn’t that kind of time.”
Zeke shrugged, though not heavily enough to shake off Carter’s touch. “I’m just saying—even though I give mixed messages, I can recognize ’em as such. And they’re bloody frustrating, I know that. It’s taken me a long time to come clean with Miles—to know I don’t have to cover everything up with bravado and snark. That I can trust him. But it was worth it.”
“Like Pride and Prejudice.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a book by Jane Austen—”
“I know that!” Zeke rolled his eyes. “But… huh?”
Carter grinned. “Miles was pride, you were prejudice.”
“Guess so. So which one are you, Carter?”
“I think… I’m both,” Carter said slowly. Even he could hear the mournful tone of his voice. “Why the hell would Red want someone like me?”
Zeke seemed to go very quiet. If Carter hadn’t been so engrossed in his own worries, he might have been concerned. Then Zeke leaned on the table and stared Carter in the eyes. “Confession time, bro. I worshipped Jacky.”
Carter frowned, puzzled at the apparent change of subject, immediately hurting for Zeke. “He was your brother, Zeke.”
“No. He was just that kind of a guy. He brought out the extremes in people.”
“I’m not sure I understand you.”
“Face it, Carter, we both loved him. Hated him, sometimes. But above all, we worshipped him. And that’s where we fucked up our own lives.”
Carter just stared. He’d helped Zeke through many a miserable night, when Jacky had first died, when Zeke had railed and shouted and raged at life. This firm, harsh speech was something different.
“Get free of him. Cut it loose.”
“Like you have?” Carter heard the tightness in his voice.
“Yeah, I have.” Zeke winced as if it were a physical pain to speak. “Don’t look at me like that. You know I don’t say this easily. When the fire killed Jacky, losing him nearly killed me too. But now it’s a long time gone, and I won’t worship him like that anymore. I admit to what a fuckup he was, and I won’t make excuses for him. But… it’s funny. I also love him, for what he really was, at last.”
“Is that so different?” Carter’s chest felt tight. He didn’t know whether he wanted to hug or punch Zeke for stirring all this up.
“Shit, yeah. It hurts more, because I remember him as a man, and what he did for me, and how we were often there for each other. But it hurts less too, because now I remember me at that time as me, not Jacky’s shadow. I feel better about myself, even the way I was in the middle of that shit. Does that make sense?”
Carter let out his heavy breath and chuckled. “Some.”
Zeke stood up and came around to Carter’s chair. “It’s tough, man. But you’re almost there already, I reckon.”
“I’m trying.” I really am.
Zeke sighed and thumped Carter playfully on the shoulder. “Don’t fuck it up, you hear? Don’t let Jacky have the rest of your life as well.”
Carter rubbed his shoulder thoughtfully. “Yes. Right, boss.”
“Let’s go and fire up that sci-fi movie,” Zeke said, laughing and shaking his head. “Are there gonna be subs for Cantonese again, or can we watch something from this side of the globe?”
AFTER Zeke left that night around eleven thirty, Carter turned off the TV and cleared away the empty beer cans. He pulled the curtains shut and switched off the light in the living room. Then he sank down on the edge of the sofa. The middle cushion was still dented from Zeke leaping on and off it every time he went for more beer, or needed to get up for a piss, or got overexcited at the plot development in the movie and the potentially imminent destruction of the whole human race. In Cantonese. Much as he loved and cared for Zeke, things were always calmer and quieter when he left. Carter smiled to himself at the thought.
He sat in the almost-dark for a long while, still smiling, thinking over the evening’s conversation. Zeke’s company was so often a tonic, but this time he’d been fierce too. Carter had never heard him speak that harshly about Jacky. Or rather, it was the way that Zeke’s own self made itself heard through the words. He was no longer the pale, immature shadow of his older brother—and hadn’t been that way for a long time. Carter knew Zeke had done this largely by himself. Time had been its usual healing self, and of course meeting and committing to Miles had played a huge part in giving Zeke a haven. But Zeke had grown up too.
Get free of him. Cut it loose.
That’s what Zeke had done, and he’d fought through to contentment and a place in life. Carter wondered if that was what he wanted too. Hell, did he even have to ask that question? Of course that was what he wanted! He lay back against the soft cushions and let his eyes drift closed.
The phone rang suddenly, the noise splitting the silence of the flat. Carter started, then fumbled for the handset on the side table, misjudging the distance in the dark and whacking the side of his hand on the wooden edge. What time was it? Who’d be calling at this time of night unless it was an emergency? In a sudden flash, his gut twisting, he remembered just how many nights Jacky had called—or worse, the police, or that week’s favorite bartender—at some godforsaken hour. And then the one night when the police came to the door, and Carter knew it’d be the last time he ever got a call like that again.
Enough!
“Hello?” he said. He sounded breathless.
It was Pam. “Carter? There’s been trouble at the center. Can you get down here? As soon as you can?”
CARTER pulled into the car park of the center, grateful for the clear roads at this time of night. It was nearly midnight. He could see the front door open and several of the lights on. To his mounting concern, he saw a police car parked on one side of the drive. And another car beside it that made his throat tighten for rather different reasons: Red’s sleek new Audi. He hurried over to the door. He could hear voices inside. Some of them were raised, as if in distress.
“Carter? Thank God you’re here.” Pam came out from the office to greet him. She was white and drawn, with glistening marks on her cheeks that suggested she’d been crying. She grasped his hands and then hugged him quickly, but fiercely.
“What’s happened? Are you all right?”
A young male police officer in uniform came out behind her, flanked on the other side by Red. “Mr. Davison? Thank you for coming out so late. There’s been no personal injury, sir, or structural damage. It’s inside the center.”
“What is?” Carter saw movement inside the building, torchlight flickering over the dark rooms on a quest for the main light switches, and his heart sank. He guessed what had happened.
“A break-in, sir. Some upset in the office, and more damage in the games room. We’re taking the details right now.”
Carter nodded and followed the police officer back into the center, Pam beside him. Red walked just behind the two of them, and Carter had a few seconds to talk to him.
“Did Pam call you?”
Red nodded. His hand drifted at Carter’s side, as if he wanted to touch him, to hold him closer. Then he grimaced and pulled it back. “Is it all right for me to be here?”
“Of course,” Carter said. The reply came instinctively and willingly. “I’m glad you are.”
Red’s eyes widened and he nodded again.
Pam’s cry floated out, high and tight, from inside the games room. “Carter?” Carter and Red hurried to the room and pulled up in the doorway.
“Oh my God,” Carter said.
Pam gave a half sob. “I know.”
The room was a mess, starting with the pool table. The cues had been pulled from the wall cabinet and broken in half on the floor. The green baize on the table had been ripped by a knife or some other sharp object, the flaps of it dragged out to hang over the cushions. A can of something sticky and sweet had then been spilled over it, leaving a dark, spreading stain on the slate. The rest of the room had been trashed too. Table-tennis bats had been beaten against something much stronger than their wood, and their surfaces were bent and distorted. The balls had been upended over the floor and then trampled on. Small piles of squashed plastic made a forlorn trail under and beyond the pool table. The football goals and basketball hoops were still in boxes at the back of the room, but these had been kicked around and stamped on. Judging by the force used, they’d be mangled inside the packaging.
Carter doubted much of it could be salvaged.
“Oh Carter, Red. I’m so sorry,” Pam said. She looked almost in tears again. “I can’t imagine what’s happened. All that wonderful equipment… all that promise.”
Red shook his head. “It’s just equipment, Pam, it can be replaced. Please don’t worry about that. And at least no one’s been hurt.”
“They’ve turned the office upside down too.” Pam gulped back a righteous anger. “But nothing as bad as this damage.”
“Who the hell would do this?” Carter was both shocked and angry.
“You locked up last night, I know you did. I watched you. No one could get in without keys, without setting off the alarm.” Pam was beside herself. “Only you and I have copies, Carter, and I never leave them anywhere except in my bag. Even if I ask Ben or Amy to lock up, they return the keys to me straightaway.”
“Pam, it’s not your fault. I know.”
Red moved to Carter’s side. “There’s no sign of the lock bein’ broken,” he murmured, low enough that only Carter would hear. He obviously didn’t want to add further to Pam’s distress. “No damage to the alarm box.”
“So someone had a key?” Carter felt a jolt of shock through his body. Red obviously suspected this was an inside job. But who the hell would do this?
A couple of police officers were stepping carefully around the room, looking for any trace of the perpetrator. The original officer Carter had met drew them to one side. “Can you provide a list of all the equipment stored here?”
“I can,” Red said. “I’ll find you the original orders.”
“Has anything been taken?”
Carter glanced at Pam, who shrugged wearily. “I couldn’t see anything gone from the office,” she said. “I mean, all the drawers have been turned out onto the floor and the books flung around, but the computer’s still there, and my iPod in the desk drawer. It was just damage.”
“And do you have any idea who may be responsible?”
Carter asked, with more hope than expectation, “Could it have been random vandalism?”
The police officer raised his eyebrows. “I can’t say for certain at the moment, sir, but there’s no evidence of forced entry.”
“So you’ll want to know about access. I locked up last night, as Pam and I were the last to leave. And I set the alarm as usual.”
“Mrs. Hawthorne has confirmed that only you and she have keys. Could you have left them lying around, where someone might have borrowed them, or taken a key from the ring?”
Carter shook his head. “Not last night. Occasionally I leave them in my desk, I admit. At least when I’m in the center. But they’re always out of sight. And the young people aren’t usually in the office, it’s just for staff use.”
The policeman nodded, still as calm, but Carter had a horrible feeling he was mentally rolling his eyes at Carter’s naïveté in the face of young adults’ less honorable behavior. He’d inevitably seen more examples of that than Carter ever would. “And the alarm code? Who knows that?”
Pam looked a little less confident. “Only me, Carter, and the other full-time members of the team. But Ben’s currently away on a long weekend break, and Amy was with me all evening.”
“Were there any other people present when you locked up? Any of the kids?”
Pam frowned. “Well, yes, they were here. We’d run a late session with the youth committee. That’s a group of the young people who act as liaison and help with the entertainment schedule. We’re planning a small celebration for the reopening.”
“They were still around in the car park as we all left,” Carter said.
“Could any of them have seen you using the alarm code?”
“Only as easily as they could any other time,” Carter said, then colored. “I mean, we always try to keep the code secret—and change it occasionally—but I suppose if someone wanted to, they could watch us locking up and memorize it. We’re usually all just milling around in the hallway at the time.”
“But the young people wouldn’t have had anything to do with this!” Pam cried. “They’re working with us, not against us. And they were all really excited about the new equipment. They’ve been giving feedback to Red about the plans for a new sports field.”
“Mr. De Vere?”
“It’s true. They’re a very committed group of young people. They care about this center.”
Carter darted Red a look of gratitude.
One of the searchers called out they were done. “We’ve finished up here now,” the first officer said. “I’ll write up a report and give you a crime number. And of course, if you think of, or discover any new information, please let us know as soon as possible.”
Carter felt Red stir at his side, as if he were going to speak. But he stepped back instead, allowing Carter to pass by on the way out of the building with the police. Carter caught his gaze, but Red’s expression was guarded. He put an arm around Pam and nodded tightly to Carter as if to say “later.” Carter exchanged contact details with the lead officer, and then the police drove off. He wandered back inside, rather miserably, to stand with Pam and Red among the debris.
“How did you find out, Pam?” he asked gently. She still looked close to tears.
“I went for a burger with Amy after the meeting and offered to drop her home. She only lives a few streets away. Then I remembered I’d left my best coat in the office, and I needed it for church service on Sunday. I thought I’d just pop back in and pick it up.”
“Anyone hanging around the center?”
“No one. It was dark and looked deserted.”
“They must have broken in as soon as we all cleared the area, and moved pretty fast. You didn’t use your keys to get back in?”
“No. I didn’t need to. The door was already unlocked, though closed. There was something holding it shut, but I pushed past that. A desk had been forced up against the handle from inside the building.”
“They probably let themselves out of the back fire exit. The alarms had all been switched off,” Carter said.
“Intruders will do that,” Red said. “I don’t remember who told me, but they often lock the front door from inside, or barricade it like they did here, in case the inhabitants come back unexpectedly and catch them in the act.”
Pam shuddered. “Oh my God, you don’t think they were still inside—?”
Carter rushed to reassure her. “No, I’m sure they’d gone already.” From the corner of his eye, he caught a searching look from Red.
“Pam, who was at the youth committee meetin’ last night?” Red asked.
“Carter, Amy, and myself. The usual crowd of young people. A good turnout this week, actually. Jag and Ruchi, Prince, Ethan, Khallil. Owen’s still on a ban, I’m afraid. The twins Annie and Allison came, and their mate Niamh. Ben is on holiday, as I told the police. I think that was it.”
“What did you discuss?”
“We talked about the early sponsorship we’ve got already for the new sports field. Miss Atherton sent us a report last week—her father’s office is kindly coordinating it for us. And then we discussed whether Ethan’s brother’s band could play at the reopening. Carter also reported on a local tae kwon do group which has offered to run sessions at the club for anyone who’s interested.”
“No particular problems?”
Pam glared at Red as if he were the problem. “I know what you’re implying. I won’t believe they had a part in this. Not without evidence.”
Red held up a hand, acknowledging that. “I don’t mean anythin’ against them. I’m just tryin’ to get context.”
“Go home now, Pam.” Carter gave her a long, tight hug. “It’s been a horrible shock.”
“But the mess….”
“We’ll worry about that tomorrow.”
“Oh my God.” Pam’s voice had risen a couple of pitches. “I just remembered. Someone from Lord Atherton’s office rang last week to say a representative may drop in tomorrow, to look around the center. What are we going to do about that?”
“We’ll sort something out. Go on.”
“Trust us, Pam,” Red said, putting a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I’ll see you out.”