Speak No Evil (3 page)

He tried to scream. A hand was clamped round his neck, cutting off the air, trying to make a fist with his neck at the centre of it. He struggled, tried to claw it away. It quickly moved, turned into a fist, punched into the side of his head.

Stars exploded before his eyes. Painful ones. Another punch. More painful stars.

He was roughly thrown to the ground. His attacker said something to him, something unintelligible that he felt he had been expected to know. He turned round, tried to run.

Saw the knife coming towards him.

Calvin didn't have time to cry out, to scream, to feel fear, to think. The knife plunged straight into his chest.

There were other jabs, other cuts, other slashes, but he felt none of them.

The first cut had stopped his heart.

Anne Marie awoke. Daylight seeped almost apologetically round the curtains. The lights were still on, Scott Walker still going on repeat. She sat up, looked round. She was on the floor by the door to the kitchen. Cold all around her. She was frozen.

Anne Marie sat up. Shivered. She pulled herself to a kneeling position, tried to get up off the floor. Placed her hand on the wall for balance.

And stopped.

Where her hand had been, she had left a smear of blood.

She crumpled down again as if she had just been punched.

‘No … no …'

Her hands went to her face, covered it. She felt the blood on them, knew she was smearing it all over herself, knew she couldn't stop it. She looked down at her clothes. Even against the black fabric she could see blood.

‘Oh God …'

The door opened. Jack entered, ready for school. He looked at her and froze, face a Munch-like tableau.

‘Get out!' Anne Marie screamed, aware of the blood mask she was wearing. ‘Get out!'

He did so, running for the front door, slamming it behind him.

Anne Marie curled herself into a ball. Started sobbing.

‘No … no …'

They were back. Anne Marie Smeaton knew it.

The bad spirits had broken through.

PART TWO

CLIMATE OF HUNTER

‘I'd been on remand for four months when the trial started. I remember it well, considerin'. September 1967. It was strange. I didn't have a clue what they were talkin' about. It was just gob-bledegook, you know? All that legalese. I didn't even think they were talkin' about me. They kept lookin' over an' referrin' to me, pointin' an' that. But I still didn't know it was me they were talkin' about.'

‘How did they describe you? Evil child? Bad seed, all that kind of rhetoric?'

She becomes thoughtful. ‘No. Not really. They never said I was evil. Not as such. It was like they couldn't understand it. I mean, I couldn't understand it, so why should they? But no, not evil, they never used that word. Thinkin' back, they maybe didn't want to. Maybe they thought in those days that if you talked about evil and shared a room with someone you thought of as evil, then that would rub off on you.'

‘Not like that now.'

She shakes her head. ‘Times have changed. We like to think they've got better but they've got worse. You know, my mother tried to sell the story – my story – to the papers? The
Sun?
Said that I was out of control, that she could never do any thin' with me. That I'd always been a horrible kid. Had photos to sell to them an' all.'

He frowns. This wasn't in any of his research. ‘What happened to it?'

‘They wouldn't have it. Wouldn't touch it. Can you believe that? The
Sun!
Be bitin' your fuckin' hand off if it happened now. Get bloody Max Clifford involved.'

‘Was your mother there?'

‘Yeah, my mother was there.' She goes through the lighting of the cigarette ritual again. Not speaking until it's fully lit and burning. ‘She came every day. Swannin' in and sittin' in the same place. Some days she wore a headscarf done up like Grace Kelly with sunglasses. She would wave to the cameras. Smilin', like it was some Hollywood red carpet. I don't think they knew what to make of her.'

‘How was she with you? The same?'

Another short, sharp bark of a laugh. ‘Anythin' but. When she looked at me I could feel her sendin' daggers at me. Daggers of hate.'

‘Why?'

‘Because she did hate me.' Stated like simple fact. ‘She did.' She thinks. Drags on the cigarette. ‘More than that, though. She'd tried to kill me loads of times when I was little. Push me out of the upstairs window. Give me pills and pretend they were sweets. Loads of times. Tried to give me away. Lose me.'

He bristles at her words.

‘It's true. Honest. Loads of times.'

‘And did no one pick up on it?'

She shakes her head. ‘Not once. Never.'

‘So you blame her? For what happened?'

She sucks on the cigarette.

‘Well, I wasn't like those two kids in Liverpool. I never saw horrorfilms when I was little.' She sighs. ‘I just lived in one.'

3

On Calvin Bell's last night on earth, a lone girl sat in Victoria Coach Station in London. It was busy. The smells of sweat, diesel and cheap fried food giving the place its usual ambience as travellers, thrifty by necessity or design, dragged bulky luggage round the concrete and glass concourse, determined to find the cheapest way to cross the country. She sat on the bench, tried not to be a target for swinging bags, looked up at the board, waited for announcements. The bus would be ready any minute.

She checked her pocket again, losing count of how many times she had done that. The ticket was still there. She checked again. The lifted credit card was there too. She had paid for the ticket with it. She was glad she had watched him at the ATMs, memorized his PIN, filed the information away. Never knew when something like that would come in handy.

Then a pang of guilt. Because it wasn't like her, stealing credit cards and running away from home. It was the kind of thing teenagers in Channel 4 documentaries did, not girls like her. Good ones from good schools and good homes. Supposedly.

She kept one hand in her pocket, the other tightly coiled around the straps of her holdall, stopping anyone running off with it. She had heard the stories, knew what these kinds of places were like. Knew that there would be predators wanting more than her luggage. No eye contact, no conversation. With anyone. She had seen the Channel 4 documentaries.

The board changed. The bus was announced. Newcastle.

She stood up, joined the rest of the people making their way towards the coach. She reluctantly gave up her bag, watched it get thrown into the hold, thinking she would never see it again, that someone would steal it at the first stop. Then she joined the scramble for the door, found a window seat, put her iPod on straightaway, looked away. Not soon enough. A man walked down the aisle, caught her eye, smiled. His grin was predatory. He looked at the empty seat next to her. Panicked, she turned to the window, stared resolutely at whatever was out there. Before the man could speak or sit down, a woman claimed the seat and he shrugged and moved away. She felt his eyes on her all the time.

The woman settled in next to her. The girl kept staring out of the window, no eye contact, no conversation, her face blank. Show nothing. No anger, no pain. No resentment, no hurt. No guilt. Tried not to think about what she was doing. What she had done.

The bus pulled out.

She glanced out of the window into the crepuscular darkness and was shocked to see hurt, wounded eyes staring back at her. She wondered who it was. It took her a couple of seconds to realize it was her.

She cranked up the music, let it flood her brain. The Hold Steady: ‘You Can Make Him Like You.' No you can't, she thought. Not always.

She kept her eyes closed. Tried not to think. Tried not to cry.

Early next morning and Joe Donovan sat in the office of Albion at his usual vigil, staring at the screen of the iMac. It was how he started his days and ended them. Sometimes it was how he spent them.

The screen showed a blue front door in a town house. A live feed, channelled all the way from Brighton. It was where he seemed to spend most of the day – and night – just staring at that screen, waiting for something to happen.
Willing
something to happen. Someone to appear, to make contact, to let him know his lonely vigil wasn't in vain. He felt his life couldn't move on until something like that had happened. But nothing happened. No matter how hard he wished, nothing changed.

Sometimes a supermarket delivery van would turn up and groceries would be carried in. His heart would skip and he would jump forward then, playing around with the screen's settings, trying desperately to see inside. Just a glimpse, a quick look. But he never could. It. was usually the woman who answered the door and even then she kept out of the way as much as possible, her face hidden, as if she knew she was being observed. Usually the woman. Hardly ever the man.

And never the boy.

The back door of the town house led to a walled, enclosed courtyard garden that was similarly watched round the clock and from which there had never been any movement. So he knew they were in there. They had to be. The grocery deliveries proved it. The curtains never opened and the lights were on day and night. So Donovan watched his screen incessantly. And waited and hoped and prayed.

The not knowing was killing him. Twisting him up inside, turning his insides out. So far away and not able to directly influence the course of action. Impotent and passive when he wanted to be direct and authoritative. If it had been up to him, he would have been to the door, forcing his way inside by whatever means necessary. Kicking up a storm. And getting the boy out. David.

His missing son. Or the boy he hoped was his son.

But it wasn't up to him. And he knew why, even if he didn't like it.

Six and a half months previously, Donovan had nearly died. He had been alone in his cottage in Northumberland, at night, standing in David's room. The boy had never lived in it; it was just a shrine to his memory. Photos of the lost boy covered the walls, some taken from life, some juxtaposed with background images of holidays they had never taken, places they had never visited, things they had never done. Dreams that helped him keep the boy's memory alive. Alongside the photos, files and folders, the investigation and press reaction in full. Donovan had kept everything. And added to it: every sighting or possible sighting logged and investigated. Mainly by him. Every lead and half lead thoroughly exhausted. Files full of paper: maps of every dead end he had walked down.

Gone six years and counting. In a department store, standing behind Donovan, getting a present for Annie, Donovan's wife, David's mother.

There, then gone.

Nothing on CCTV, no witnesses, no cries or screams. Like he had just disappeared. Like he had never existed.

Donovan had searched for years. It had cost him his wife, the love of his daughter, his career and almost his life. But he had never given up, never stopped believing. Never lost hope of finding him either dead or alive. It hadn't been easy. It had consumed him. Sometimes he had doubted that David ever existed, that his own past was a lie, a false construct, a memory implant. And sometimes it felt all too painfully real and he felt himself breaking down, his heart literally aching once more with agony and loss.

In the intervening years, Donovan, a one-time investigative journalist, had pulled himself together and started a company. Albion, an information brokerage, consisted of himself, ex-policewoman Peta Knight, security and surveillance specialist Amar Miah and Jamal Jackson, a young mixed-race boy that Donovan had rescued from a life on the streets. They took a lot of referrals from a lawyer, Francis Sharkey, who also kept his ear to the ground for any leads on Donovan's missing son.

There had been false dawns and dead ends. But one lead had seemed promising enough. A boy answering David's description had been seen with a young couple at a house in Hertfordshire. The couple, Matt and Celia Milsom, a TV producer and his wife, had been thoroughly investigated and nothing suspicious discovered. Donovan, not wanting to jump to conclusions even though the resemblance – aged through computer enhancement – was startling. He had put an ex-policeman friend and part-time Albion operative, Paul Turnbull, on surveillance and to try, if at all possible, to get a DNA sample they could use. Turnbull reported back that the boy was an HIV-positive Romanian orphan that they had adopted after meeting him while working on a documentary over there.

So that was it. Just another dead end. Another one for the file. Then Turnbull turned up dead and the Milsoms disappeared. And Donovan began to doubt.

That night in David's room just increased his doubts. He had been alone in the house. Donovan had stood in David's room, looking again at the photos, waiting to hear a voice that could guide him, tell him where to look next when he heard a sound. Someone entering the house downstairs, making their way up. And Donovan had opened the door to Matt Milsom.

He hadn't had time to think let alone react before Milsom hit him with something very large and heavy and he went down. The next thing he knew he was in pain and being pulled roughly over the ground. He had opened his eyes: Jamal and Amar, his friend and co-worker, were there looking down at him, concern and terror in their faces. He had closed his eyes again and the next thing he knew he had woken up in hospital.

Milsom had torched his house, leaving Donovan inside. Nothing was left. If Amar and Jamal hadn't turned up with booze, DVDs and takeaway food, Donovan would be dead.

So he was alive. But every memento of David was gone.

Donovan threw himself into his work. He hadn't involved the police because if he did they wouldn't let him near Milsom. He had learned that previously when he tried to approach him in Hertfordshire. So it was down to Albion. But despite their best efforts, Milsom had disappeared without trace. And that just added to the pain and confusion Donovan carried around with him.