Flesh And Blood (7 page)

As he stared up at the house, someone moved behind one of the upstairs windows and he felt a sudden urge to turn and run, go back the way he’d come and keep on going. Lose himself. He’d done it before.

The front door opened and a man was standing there, sandy-haired, forties, a grey cardigan unbuttoned over a faded green shirt, grey trousers, sandals.

‘Shane Donald? Good. Excellent.’ Walking towards him now. ‘You’re joining us today. I thought you’d be here pretty much round now. Though with the trains the way they are these days, you can never tell.’

He held out his hand.

‘Peter Gribbens. Assistant manager. I’m to be your key worker.’

There was peppermint on his breath and his eyes were a twinkling blue.

♦

The interior smelt faintly of disinfectant. Music was playing somewhere, somebody’s stereo, just the bass clearly audible. Movement. The sound of television or maybe radio. Clatter of cutlery being laid. Voices raised in anger, shrill laughter and then quiet. Higher up in the house, someone using a vacuum cleaner.

‘Come on,’ Gribbens said, moving towards the stairs. ‘I’ll show you to your room, give you a little time to settle in. Then I expect you wouldn’t mind a cup of tea. And we can have a little chat.’

The room was on the second floor, high-ceilinged, square; there were single beds on opposite sides, a wardrobe in dark wood, embossed at the centre and deeply scarred, twin chests of drawers. The window was barred.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Gribbens said, following Donald’s gaze. ‘All the windows were like that when we moved in, the upstairs ones at least.’ A suggestion of a laugh. ‘It’s not to keep you in.’

One bed was made but not too evenly, a few possessions clustered near it, magazines and an alarm clock on a straight-backed chair.

‘Your room-mate is Royal. Royal Jeavons. He’s been with us almost two months. He’ll show you the ropes.’

Royal, Donald was thinking, black then, got to be.

Gribbens retreated to the door.

‘Come down just as soon as you’re ready. My office is on the ground floor, across from where we came in. My name’s on the door.’

Donald sat down on his bed and stared at the floor.

♦

Peter Gribbens’s office was long and narrow, one of several which had been partitioned off from a larger room. One wall was dominated by a chart, names and dates in different colours, arrows and asterisks in black and red. On another were clustered more than a dozen framed photographs, in most of which Gribbens stood smiling in the company of colleagues or with disparate groups of his charges, mugging ‘Cheese’ for the camera. On his desk were piled folders, manila or plastic in different colours, several notebooks, two jars crammed with pencils and pens; to make room for a tray holding two mugs, sugar and a packet of biscuits, Gribbens’s laptop computer rested on top of a telephone directory. Behind the desk, a tall window looked out on to a lawn with shrubs to each side and an ivy-clad wall at the foot.

‘Shane, Shane, come on in. No sense letting this get stewed. Sugar, yes? One or two?’

Donald sat in the empty chair, accepted his mug of tea and looked around uneasily.

‘Here. Have a biscuit. Chocolate digestives, no expense spared.’ Again, the beginnings of a laugh that failed to follow through. ‘You must be hungry, coming all that way. Changing trains. I expect you had something on the journey. A sandwich, something of the sort. Never mind, there’ll be a proper meal soonish. No complaints about the food here, that’s one thing. No complaints at all. Like Oliver Twist, most of our lads. Coming back for more.’

The biscuits were slightly soft, chocolate coming off on Donald’s fingers. He didn’t know whether to lick it off or risk wiping it away on the underside of the chair.

Gribbens opened one of the folders, then flipped it closed. ‘The thing is, while you’re here there are certain rules…’

Donald looked back at him attentively and let his mind go blank.

‘Under the terms of your licence… Abide by the rules and regulations… Avoid contact with anyone involved in criminal behaviour…’ The voice went on and on and then stopped. For the first time, Donald noticed the ticking of a clock.

‘Shane?’

‘Yes?’

‘You understand all that? What I’ve just said.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good.’ Gribbens shuffled another piece of paper across his desk. ‘Any special dietary requirements? You’re not vegetarian, for instance?’

Donald was shaking his head.

‘Nothing you’re allergic to? Wheat? Nuts? No? Good, good. How about religious affiliation?’

‘What?’

‘Your religion. You know, Catholic, Church of England.’

‘No, nothing.’

‘Just Christian, then. We have quite a few who…’

‘No, I said. Nothing. I don’t believe in nothing.’

Gribbens ticked the requisite box and pushed the paper away. ‘Your probation officer will see you tomorrow. Just to make sure you’re settling in.’ Gribbens got to his feet. ‘All right, off you go. You’ll find some of the others downstairs. There’s a pool table, television.’

When Donald was at the door, Gribbens called him back.

‘It’s important that you try and make this work, Shane. That we all do.’

♦

Royal Jeavons was sitting on his bed, head back against the wall, headphones in place, CD Walkman close to hand. He opened his eyes briefly when Donald entered, a few seconds, nothing more. Donald crossed to the window and looked out, the backs of houses, lower down the silhouettes of trees. The paint on the bars had been chipped away with time, smeared with the droppings of birds. He went across to his own bed and sat. He was trying to remember what time it was: he didn’t have a watch.

Jeavons was stocky with thick muscles at the neck, a shaven head, wearing sweat pants and a matching top. Trainers without socks.

‘Fuck you lookin’ at?’ Jeavons leaning forward a little now, eyes still closed.

‘Eh?’

‘Fuck you lookin’ at?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothin’?’

‘Yeah, nothing.’

‘Calling me nothin’?’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘I’m not.’

‘Not what?’

‘Calling you nothing.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Then that’s cool, innit?’ Jeavons looking now, full across at Donald, looking now and smiling. Broad face breaking into a wide grin.

‘New, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘In today.’

‘Yeah.’

‘’Safternoon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t give away fuckin’ much.’ Jeavons shutting off the player, lifting the headphones clear. ‘But that’s okay, man, that’s cool.’ Moving forward, stretching out a hand. And Donald rising to meet him, hoping it wasn’t going to be some fancy high-five shit, but no, just a quick old-fashioned handshake, two of Jeavons’s fingers the thickness of his entire hand.

‘Royal,’ Jeavons said, splitting the word decisively in two. ‘Royal Jeavons.’

‘Shane. Shane Donald.’

Jeavons nodded, stepped away. ‘So, Shane. You had the lecture, right? Gribbens.’

‘Yes.’

‘An’ he ask you if you a Christian, right?’

‘Yeah.’

Jeavons laughed and shook his head. ‘Told him I was brought up Baptist, right? Pentecostal Baptist. And he’s askin’ me was it the full, like, immersion, like when I was baptised, and I says, yeah, this pool, innit? South London. Which is true. Thought he was gonna grab hold of my hands and ask me, you know, kneel down on the carpet and pray. Huh! Some sad motherfucker, but least he plays it straight an’ that’s more’n you can say for some. Once in a while, he’ll turn a blind eye, too. Say maybe you comin’ in late, somethin’, yeah? I mean, he’s got this lecture, right, you just have to stand there for that and say you’re sorry when he’s done. See, he love that. That sorry shit.’ Jeavons laughed again. ‘Give that man some genuine-soundin’ repentance and you got him, eatin’ out your hand, innit?’

He punched Donald on the upper shoulder, playful, no bad feeling, not hard enough to raise a bruise.

‘You an’ me, we’re gonna get on, man. Just so’s you don’t snore too loud and don’t make too much noise when you come.’

Rob Loake had filled out and then some, the centre button of his blue suit straining to be free. Seated behind his desk, he wore a pale blue shirt, striped tie, the long-suffering expression of a man for whom piles are a way of life.

‘You know what you’re asking for’s against the rules?’

Elder allowed his weight to shift, almost imperceptibly, from one foot to the other.

‘No way it’s bloody on.’

‘Then why am I here?’ Elder said.

Outside, traffic moved with a steady hum.

‘Don Guiseley’s a mate of mine, a good skipper. He always reckoned you was worth the time of day. Me, I don’t think you’re more’n shit on a shoe.’

Elder nodded, said nothing. When the phone went, Loake had the receiver in his hand before the second ring. He spoke tersely, then rose to his feet. ‘Something important I’ve got to attend to. You can wait here.’

Elder waited some seconds after the door closed before stepping around to the other side of the desk. The Susan Blacklock file sat there, three files to be precise, each thick to overflowing. Tension tightening in his stomach, he began to leaf through, skimming what seemed tangential and seeking out the rest.

There was a long statement taken from Trevor Blacklock, transcriptions of a series of interviews, officers probing for signs of tension between Susan and himself – a father who had been too distant from his adolescent daughter or possibly too close? Trevor Blacklock’s responses were sometimes angry, at others almost evasive and it was clear that for a while he had been regarded as a suspect. Yet it seemed to Elder that the feelings Blacklock expressed about Susan were akin to those between most fathers and their teenage daughters: bewilderment, exasperation, love. And his alibi – after helping Susan’s mother with one or two jobs around the caravan after lunch, he had driven the car into Whitby to have an almost threadbare tyre replaced prior to their journey home – had been checked and double-checked and deemed, as far as possible, watertight.

Elder looked at his watch. A little sweat had collected in the palms of his hands and along his scalp. Footsteps came towards the door and paused outside before moving on.

When interviewed, the woman working in the holiday park shop had said that Susan had seemed especially preoccupied that afternoon, nervous even. Apprehensive.

Elder wrote the name Christine Harker down in his book, and several minutes later added that of Kelly James, a local girl Susan had got to know over the course of several years’ holidays.

He was still reading when Rob Loake came back into the room, not quite closing the door behind him. ‘You know how it is, took longer than I thought.’

‘Yes, it can happen.’ Closing the file, Elder stepped around the desk.

‘No time now for a chat.’

‘No.’

‘You can find your way out?’

‘Yes.’

Cigarette smoke was sour on Loake’s breath.

Sometimes, Elder thought, as he crossed the car park, you can be too close to really see what’s there, fail to recognise what’s right before your eyes. Believe, all too readily, what you’ve been told. What you think you’ve seen.

He knew the drill: go back to basics, assume nothing, look with a fresh eye. With any luck he could be back at the coast before midday.

♦

Kelly James was now Kelly Todd.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays she worked as a beautician – facials, manicures, pedicures, waxing. When Elder went into the shop, she was just finishing a half-leg, underarm and bikini wax on a dental technician bound for ten days’ bed and half board on Ibiza.

‘Just take a seat over there,’ she called. ‘I’ll be with you in ten.’

Elder thumbed through an old issue of
Vanity Fair
. Ten became fifteen. The radio seemed to be playing the same song, over and over again.

‘Here we are, sorry it took so long.’ She was swathed in a fuchsia wraparound, her face made up to high-gloss perfection. ‘Susan Blacklock, that’s what you said.’

‘Yes.’

‘They’ve not found her, have they?’

Elder shook his head.

‘Poor girl. It sounds awful, I know, but I’ve not thought of her in years.’

They sat on the steps at the rear of the shop, a view along a narrow alley, a ginnel, Elder supposed: a few dustbins, geraniums at back windows, the inevitable seagulls. Kelly had produced mugs of instant coffee and nursed hers now with one hand, cigarette in the other.

‘Somebody killed her, didn’t they? Nobody stays away that long, else. Disappears and never gets back in touch. Don’t matter what’s upsetting you, getting you down, what kind of rows you’ve had. You send a postcard, don’t you? A phone call. Eventually. Don’t fret, I’m all right.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette, holding the smoke down in her lungs.

‘And were there?’ Elder asked. ‘Things getting her down, I mean?’

‘Oh, just the usual. Pocket money. Clothes. Who she could see, who she couldn’t.’ Kelly sipped her coffee. ‘There’d been this lad the year before. Back home where she lived. Bit rough, by the sound of him. Older than her. Well, when you’re fifteen who wants to waste their time coppin’ off with some mucky little tyke with spots? Anyhow, her mum and dad, they’d sort of freaked – maybe it was worse, her being the only one. Laid down the law. Her dad especially, after that he was on to her all the time, by all accounts. Wanting to know where she was, who she was with.’

‘And you think this might have been enough for her to want to leave home?’

Kelly watched a near-perfect smoke ring till it fragmented into the air. ‘No, not really. Like I say, it was just normal teenage stuff. Something to moan about, feel sorry for yourself. She wasn’t above that, Susan. Bit dramatic, in her own way. Oh, not shouting and screaming all over the place, don’t get me wrong. No, quiet, she were that. What I mean, she seemed to like makin’ out things was worse than they really were.’