Someone Else's Son (21 page)

‘Is there ever, you know, fuss in your place?’ Max asked. It was really hot underneath his hand now, still attached to Dayna’s leg.

She laughed loudly. ‘God, yeah. Is there ever
peace
, you should ask, and the answer would be no. Only when Kev’s passed out and Mum’s at bingo. Me and Lorrell just play. I read to her. That’s true peace.’

Dayna wasn’t like the other girls he’d met. ‘You can have too much of it, you know. When things are just too . . .’

‘Good?’ she finished.

‘No . . . not good.’ Max thought. He so desperately wanted to sit up, pull Dayna against him, hold on to her. ‘Too
perfect
,’ he finished. By the little grunt she made, he figured that Dayna didn’t get what he meant, that he was – although she didn’t know it – referring to his mother. His perfect mother.

He swore a promise in his head that the two of them would never meet.

‘I’ve got to go.’ She stood up, causing Max’s hand to fall off her leg. It tingled, sending shock waves up his arm. Max knew, that for the briefest of moments, he’d just experienced perfection too.

 

He decided to go home too, feeling rather empty now that Dayna was leaving. He opted to walk rather than take the bus. Thankfully, there had been no trouble getting off his dad’s estate – they didn’t see the youths again – and Dayna didn’t comment on where his father lived or how horrid it was. Probably because her place wasn’t much better. Deep inside, though, Max still thought about protection – that it wasn’t just him now risking a confrontation on the estate. If he brought Dayna here again, he vowed to protect her, make her think he was a proper man. If there was trouble, he wanted to be ready next time.

They’d parted after ten minutes or so, her veering off down towards school, towards where she lived, and him making an excuse that he was going to meet some mates. It made him sound as if he had some, while really it was cover for going back to his mum’s place in Hampstead.
His mother’s eight million pound house
.

Max shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at his trainers as he walked briskly home. At Denningham, his last school, everyone had known exactly who he was. Carrie Kent’s son . . .
Reality Check
. . . Britain’s sexiest TV personality of the year, the woman who dominated the screens of the nation every week, the star of the show everyone talked about, the name that filled the gossip magazines regularly. She was as famous as Oprah and as polemic as Jerry Springer. But then, he thought, he had been rubbing shoulders with the sons of corporate millionaires, lords and foreign princes. Had his mother not been famous, he would have stood out for being ordinary.

‘Hello?’ he called out as he went through the second security door. The first was a reinforced steel grille blockade; if the code was entered incorrectly more than three times, the police were automatically informed. That was if anyone had managed to get past the face recognition cameras. Max yelled out again from the hallway. He never knew who would be in the house. Generally it wasn’t his mother, rather an assortment of domestic staff, security guards and maids.

‘Hello,’ came back at him from down the long white corridor at the end of the vast marble-tiled reception hall. Martha. ‘There’s some food for you if you like, pet. Your mother’s gone to Charlbury. She’ll be back on Sunday.’

Max went into the kitchen. He felt small in the huge room. His mother had had the back wall ripped out and a glass structure added. It made the space about twenty times bigger than they needed. Everything was white; dazzling.

‘Thanks.’ Max sat down at the table and tucked in to the plate of food Martha set in front of him. He smiled at her. Had she been waiting all afternoon for him to come home? He liked to think so. He reckoned he spoke more to the housekeeper than he did to his mother. Max ate greedily. He liked Martha. She was kind.

Charlbury, he thought. It made his stomach knot. He’d not been to the country house since New Year when his mother had thrown a cocktail party. He knew he’d let her down by getting drunk and throwing up in a stone urn. She had the staff deal with him then, too, escorting him away, locking him up in some faraway bedroom so that he didn’t embarrass her further in front of the celebrity guests.

‘This is good. Thanks, Martha.’

She smiled in reply. He’d wished that Martha was his mother, slightly shocked at the sudden feeling but also relishing the warmth it brought.

‘You seen that brilliant father of yours recently?’ Martha wiped her hands. The kitchen gleamed.

‘He’s gone away too,’ Max said. ‘Conference.’ Had either of his parents actually realised that he would be on his own for the weekend? ‘I’m an orphan, me.’ He grinned.

‘Well, I’ll be around until seven. Give me a shout if you need anything, love.’

Max thought she was going to pat him on the head as she went out of the room, but she didn’t. He pressed a button on the remote and a television rotated out of the wall. Some Sky channel. A phone-in competition.
How many days of the week are there?Your chance to win five thousand pounds cash. A) One. B) Seven. C) Three hundred and sixty-five
.

Max’s mouth went dry. His palms began to sweat and his heart kicked up a gear. He dialled the premium rate line and listened to the lengthy message. When it was done, he left his details and said clearly that the answer was B. Then he did it another dozen times. He forked up the rest of his meal, left the plate beside the pristine white sink, and walked out of the kitchen. Apart from feeling dirty against the brilliant white of everything, he didn’t feel much else at all. Only that somehow, this time, he knew he wasn’t going to win.

 

Max desperately wanted to see Dayna again. He couldn’t forget the real live person he’d felt warm and solid beneath the fabric of her jeans, and neither could he get out of his head that she really seemed to like him. So far, they’d shared a picnic, she’d seen inside his hut, he’d given her a present, they’d been to a movie together and spent time on their backs on his father’s bed. It virtually made Max do a backflip.

He hadn’t spoken to anyone since Martha had left the day before. She’d huffed out of the house with sackloads of his mother’s clothes to take to the charity shop. Today it was raining. He took his Coco-Pops into the drawing room – the space his mother reserved for important guests, for pre-dinner cocktails, for important meetings – and parked himself on the damask-covered salon suite while he ate. He splashed chocolate milk on the fabric and wiped it off with the hem of his towelling robe.

It was a boring room, he thought, gazing around. No television, not even any books. He stared at the paintings his mother had chosen. Huge canvases with chunks of bold colour, abstract forms – a naked body? he wondered – hung in every nook and niche. Above the fireplace was the largest of them all, a chocolate and blue striped mass of crusty paint forming an image of . . . of absolutely nothing at all. Max knew how much they’d cost. He didn’t understand his mother one bit.

He went back to the kitchen and opened the fridge. He stood staring at the contents. There was nothing he liked. Punnets of berries, trays of salad, cuts of unusual meat wrapped in wax paper piled up next to cheeses that appeared too bizarre to eat, and the usual assortment of patés, fish and unrecognisable fruit. He was still hungry. Max really fancied a pasty. Or sausage and chips.

He pulled his phone from his pocket.

The text came back in seconds.
Yeah. Where?

She’d put a kiss. A
kiss
. Max wouldn’t delete that one for ages. He raced up to his room and threw on jeans, a T-shirt, a zip top. He scrubbed his teeth, fingered his hair with some spray stuff, decided to leave the spot on his chin well alone, and took the stairs two at a time back to the kitchen.

He suddenly felt giddy, as if today could turn out to be the best day of his life.

They would have chips, maybe take a walk down by the stream, throw rubbish at the trains as they sped past. Then he would suggest they go to the hut, sit next to each other on the car seat, shoulders nudging . . . and then . . . he so desperately wanted to kiss Dayna that it hurt low down in his throat.

In all his muddle of thoughts, beneath the desire, the excitement, the fear that he might blow it, say something wrong, Max wasn’t surprised to find that he had opened the kitchen drawer. It glided out smoothly, exposing a clean wooden interior with perfect slits housing a dozen of the highest quality knives. His mother only bought the best.

Just a small one, he thought, useful for cutting open the packaging on his winnings, if nothing else.

He ran his fingers along the backs of every knife. His heart beat faster, as if he was playing a lethal xylophone, his fingers softly brushing every iridescent handle.

This one.

He withdrew it from its slot.

He skimmed his thumb sideways across the blade. It was so bloody sharp.

He nudged the drawer closed with his hip, gazing intently at the six inches of high-grade glistening steel. Already he felt better; safer.

Max put the knife in the zip-up compartment of the brown leather bag he wore slung across his back. He left the house feeling more of a man than ever.

Dennis had the two boys brought back to the interview room. The scabby little pair of sods sat at his table kicking each other’s feet and letting out pseudo-manly growls that made them seem a lot younger than the fifteen or sixteen years he reckoned they were.

‘Decided to remember anything interesting then?’ Masters looked at his watch. It was ten forty. Three hours past the end of his shift. If he’d even bothered to go home from the last one. He couldn’t remember. ‘Like who stabbed Max Quinell?’

The youths shrugged.

‘But you were there, right?’

‘Nah.’

‘What if I said I’ve been speaking to someone who could confirm that you were there?’ Dennis wanted to know more about Warren Lane. He reckoned these two could give him a reason to bring the boy in.

They shrugged, but not before glancing at each other. This is why Masters wanted them together. ‘Then they’re lying,’ Driscoll said. His teeth clamped together.

‘Even if they were prepared to swear that in court?’

‘Yeah,’ Samms said, egged on by the other boy’s cockiness. ‘’Cos we didn’t fucking hurt no one.’

‘What if it was Waren?’ Dennis asked, turning to Owen.

The boy paled and looked at the floor. ‘If he said anything then he’s a fucking liar. Warren doesn’t know nuffin.’

Dennis glanced at Jess who’d just come into the interview room. Maybe worth following up but not a priority. As it was, they were probably wasting their time with these two.

‘Are you in a gang?’ Masters asked. Jess handed him a coffee.

‘Everyone is.’ Owen Driscoll spoke this time. ‘Otherwise, you know, man . . .’ He drew a line across his neck. ‘It ain’t safe not to be.’

Masters nodded slowly. ‘Does your gang have a name?’

The boys reverted to shrugging.

‘The quicker you tell me, the quicker you’ll be out of here.’

‘We have rights, you know.’ Samms kicked the table leg. He was picking the paint off it.

‘You reckon?’ Masters turned to Jess. ‘Another hour in the cells, detective.’ He got up to go.

‘Wait . . .’ It was unexpectedly Driscoll’s voice that cracked. ‘Blade Runnerz. With a zed. But we ain’t hurt no one, all right?’ The boy stood up.

Dennis made a face at Jess and swung back round. ‘Sit down, you.’ He put his coffee on the table, sloshing it as he sat opposite the boys. ‘Blade Runnerz,’ he repeated. ‘And you carry knives, right?’

The pair just stared at him. It was as good as a yes. Of course they’d been searched when they were brought in, but they were clean. No doubt there had been enough time to get rid of weapons or hide them at home before they were escorted out. Dennis recalled the amnesty he’d instigated last year. Thirteen hundred knives of all kinds had been brought in to police stations in the area. He remembered sifting through them with a broom handle. The large container was brimming with lethal metal, some of which had probably already inflicted injuries.

‘Why?’ Dennis had to ask. ‘Why do you carry them?’ He knew, of course, he just didn’t understand. It was going to be a long night, even after he let these two idiots go home.

Samms and Driscoll stared at each other then at Masters. ‘’Cos if we don’t, then we’re dead,’ Driscoll said. ‘Tha’s all.’

 

It was late but Dennis desperately wanted to call Carrie. He still couldn’t believe that her son was dead. He’d never met the boy; never met the father before today either. He’d ended up staying at Carrie’s place on several occasions but had either been ushered out before or after Max had gone to school. In the light of what had happened, he felt even guiltier for dipping his toes in the water of a very turbulent, brief relationship with one of the most famous women in Britain. The only good thing to come of their time together was that they’d agreed to continue with their professional commitments, even if their personal ones had fizzled out.

The phone made him jump. The detectives going through the CCTV footage thought he should come and look at something.

Dennis hadn’t eaten for hours and couldn’t recall the last time he’d slept. He stopped at the coffee machine in the hallway. He put in a pound, pressed the buttons, but nothing happened. He kicked the machine and walked off.

‘What have you got?’ He pulled up a chair next to the two detectives whose job it was to scan through the hours and hours of footage captured from the streets in the vicinity of the school. The bank of monitors glowed in an otherwise darkened room.

‘Take a look at this,’ Deb Curry said. She’d not been with Brent Met long but had already proved her worth. She was diligent, caring, but also wickedly tough. Dennis had heard a few of the lads suggest she was a man in drag.