The Silent Ones (27 page)

He turned back round and they gave each other a long hug. After a while she pulled away and looked at the floor, inches deep in discarded dreadlocks and her own hair. ‘It’ll be a struggle to get this lot out of the carpet.’

‘I’ll do it, Mum.’

‘You can use a hoover, can you?’

Five hours a day, sometimes, he wanted to say, but he actually said, ‘I can work it out.’

O
lly was gulping down his bowl of Frosties; breakfast TV was showing people fighting somewhere far away. The doorbell rang and Nan looked at him accusingly from the armchair. She rolled her eyes towards the door, indicating that she wasn’t going to move to answer it. This was no surprise; she only ever got out of the armchair to get tea or go to the toilet. Olly put his bowl on the carpet and slid from the sofa. Beggs was at the door, a football under his arm, panting with excitement. Olly had to come to the harbour, Beggs had heard there was a right carry-on going on down there.

Olly yawned. Beggs wasn’t selling it to him.

‘There’s talk of dead bodies and that.’

Nan was suddenly behind Olly at the door, urging him into his shoes and racing up the stairs to shed her dressing gown. She was moving faster than Olly had seen her do in years. No one loved a scandal like Nan.

By the time they got to the harbour, the crowd was three people deep, back behind blue and white crime scene tape. Nan started to complain that she couldn’t see anything. ‘It’s not the bloody opera,’ someone muttered, and Olly peered between necks and backs to see three policemen keeping the crowd well back.

Nan was not so easily put off, and wriggled and barged her way to the front, Olly and Beggs following in her wake. A white tent had been erected over one of the boats; huge men in white boiler suits with white things over their shoes were moving about.

Beggs elbowed Olly in the ribs and pointed. A news van with something slowly turning on its roof had pulled up in the car park. ‘That’s Sky TV,’ Beggs said in awe. The crowd was murmuring that a dead body had been found in the red boat. Olly had seen enough cop shows on the telly to know that the police wore white suits and TV news came only if murder was suspected.

Nan turned. ‘Get to school, both of you.’ She left her hard-won position to push them away down the road. Now that they really might be exposed to dead bodies and violence, she wanted to protect them from it. ‘There’s nothing to see here.’ She watched them to make sure they were really on their way before hurrying back to the very thing she was keen to dismiss as nothing.

Olly and Beggs ran off down the road with the football, the unusual start to the day making them feel wild and transgressive. Beggs crossed the ball to Olly and he dribbled down the street and across an expanse of grass. He slowed to a stop, the ball coasting to a halt. The red boat was Gert Becker’s. Was he dead? A strange feeling came over him, like he knew the answer to something but couldn’t express it. He was thinking about the blonde woman he had seen – although, in the sharp light of this summer morning with so much activity and speculation, he wasn’t sure any more that she had even been real.

‘Oi, what you doing?’ Beggs was waiting for him to pass the ball.

Olly shook off the feeling. After all, what had he even really seen, what had the blonde ghost even done? He ran up and kicked the ball and, as he had done so many times in his life, ran in Beggs’s shadow to school.

‘B
woy, look at your hair!’ Sonny slapped his thigh repeatedly, a grin exploding across his face. ‘Or lack of it.’ He frowned. ‘From Rasta to skinhead – me prefer you the other way.’ The smile was back as he turned to Corey. ‘But the bwoy is fresh-faced under all that, what you say?’

‘That is a sick style, cuz! He’s showing his tats too.’ Corey nodded appreciatively. ‘What’s that say?’ he said, peering round the back of Darren’s neck.

‘It’s just an abstract symbol.’

‘Now what does Chloe say about this, eh? I hear you and her are an item! The whole hospital know, eh?’ Sonny was grinning again. ‘Hi Helen, how do you like Darren’s new style?’

Darren turned. Helen was standing in the doorway, her face stony. ‘Chloe? You’re going out with Chloe?’

Darren cast around for a hole to crawl into, but knowing really that there wasn’t one he turned and stared at the CCTV monitors so that he didn’t have to meet Helen’s eye. His eyes had settled on the one showing the kitchens and he could see Chloe in her white peaked hat moving baking trays around and Berenice wiping a counter. ‘Um, I guess, well, we’ve only just started seeing each other—’

‘They went surfing at the weekend,’ Sonny put in, smiling.

‘Surfing?’ Helen said it with the surprise one might use for news of an outbreak of diphtheria in south London.

‘Well, I’ve got to get on,’ Darren said, and slid out of the door back to the safety of his cleaning trolley. He retreated up the corridor, planning to take refuge in the men’s toilets. It had been a mistake to alienate Helen, she was his best bet for finding out more information, particularly about Olivia’s befriender.

‘Darren, can I have a word?’

He froze. Her voice was crisp and accusatory. He turned. The yellow cleaning sign in his hand showed a man falling backwards. He erected it on the carpet outside the women’s toilets, knowing exactly how the poor stick figure felt. Helen was standing by the toilet door, holding it open like it was the mouth of hell itself.

Like a scolded child, he followed her in.

Helen decided to stand rather than lean, arms folded across her chest. Darren came in, his palm roaming over his scalp.

‘So, um, yeah, like, I was going to tell you … that the way I’m feeling, it’s kinda …’

She let him talk on, but she wasn’t listening. Something had struck her when she’d seen him in security. Without his hair he was a different person. He was no longer Darren, the mumbling, shambling cleaner to be more pitied than admired. Under that thatch of dried-out locks had always lurked someone handsome, tall and young. And she felt a fear clutch at her heart; a sudden nostalgia for all the years that she had lost, for all the decades she had travelled and would never get back. She had crossed a barrier only visible to those who could look back; she had become all those words she used to scorn: mature, experienced – middle-aged, old.

Darren had his hands clasped together, trying to emphasise some point, his eyes roaming the washroom because they didn’t want to alight on her face. She revelled for a moment in examining his teeth, his prominent cheekbones, the whites of his eyes. Such promise. Instead of feeling angry or used, she suddenly felt joy for the possibilities of all the years that were still to come. He had kick-started her on another road that she had never expected to travel, had helped her drag herself out of the shame and failure that was her divorce.

She held up her hand in a stop gesture. His monologue stumbled to a halt. She smiled. ‘I wish you all the best of luck, Darren. Really I do.’

There was a pause. ‘Huh?’

Helen shook her head and smiled. ‘Darren Smith, you maniac.’

B
y the end of the day, there was chaos at the harbour. The body on the red boat had been confirmed as its owner, Gert Becker, a millionaire from Birmingham. The crowd had swelled to a hundred strong, people from towns and villages far away. There were more news vans and an ice cream van. There was wild talk of a video confession by the victim, admitting rape and murder. The mood had changed while Olly had been at school and now people were pointing fingers, shaking their heads, speculating aloud. Only a few hours ago Gert Becker had been a victim; now he was a pervert.

Olly didn’t hang around but headed for home. He knew now that this morning he had done the right thing in keeping quiet. The blonde woman was indeed just a ghost. He berated himself for even considering telling Nan about the woman, and how he had been sure she had been on Gert’s boat, or about how he had watched the now dead pervert-good-riddance set out to sea many times in his red boat. It would have only pulled a whole ton of trouble on top of Nan’s head, which in turn would have ended up on his.

D
arren spent the boring, lonely hours on his shift thinking about John Sears and who or what he really was. When he was forced to leave Roehampton he could do worse than to keep an eye on what John did. When his shift finished he cycled to John’s flat above the charity shop in Clapham and checked the pub car park. John’s car was there. Darren waited on the corner, pretending he was on his phone. He looked anxiously around for the women he’d seen the last time, but the charity shop looked empty. At six on the dot the elderly lady he’d met the first time he’d gone in came out, locked up and walked away.

Commuters began to spill out of the nearby tube station entrance as the evening wore on. He became itchy and scratchy with boredom. He texted Chloe but she didn’t answer.

As he was wondering how long he could tolerate just standing and waiting in a south London street, John’s door opened and he came out, wearing work boots covered in dust and a white all-in-one. Darren shrank back into a nearby doorway and watched John walk towards the car park. A moment later his car emerged and pulled away sharply in the direction of central London. Darren got on his bike and followed.

John drove aggressively, but Darren had no trouble keeping up with him; he was faster on his bike in the rush hour traffic than John was on four wheels.

They travelled towards the river, the cranes of the Nine Elms construction site looming high in the night sky. John took the road that ran by Battersea Park and turned right into the huge development at Battersea Power Station. Darren figured he must be going to work. He stopped and considered. The lights in the unfinished buildings were all on, and while the large machinery had stopped for the night to let the nearby residents have some peace, Darren could still see cars in a makeshift car park and plenty of activity.

He coasted into the development and stopped by a huge awning with a monster-sized photograph of two blond children in the arms of grinning Caucasian parents, a sunny London river view visible through the windows of their flat. A large ticker tape ran across the picture, claiming that all of the luxury apartments had been sold off-plan.

Darren took a look at the car park and building site beyond, but couldn’t see John’s car.

The development was a maze of access roads, temporary fencing and plastic sheeting that obscured the huge towers thrusting skywards. Darren cycled down an unpaved road that lacked pavements or street lighting, and looked cautiously round a corner. He saw John’s car turning left round another building and bobbled down the unpaved road, his bike wheels clattering.

John’s car was parked by a large foyer that hadn’t yet had its glass inserted. The interior was dark and unfinished. Darren locked his bike to a lamp-post missing its light and followed John into the building. He could hear men talking and laughing in a language he didn’t understand, the sound of heavy bags of something being dragged across cement floors. He heard a lift arriving and turned to walk away. John was at the start of nothing more sinister than a work shift. Darren was wondering what time John finished when he passed a pillar and something heavy smacked him on the side of the head.

He slumped sideways to the ground, trying to get his hands up to protect himself. A foot connected with his stomach and he gasped in pain, doubling over tightly. He felt hands on his shoulder and braced for another blow, but instead he heard a voice close to his ear. ‘Leave Roehampton, or next time it’s worse.’

A kick connected with his back before a shout produced a volley of running feet. He tried to stand and glimpsed two figures being swallowed up by the dark.

A hand was pulling him by the biceps to get him upright, but the pain in his stomach was too great and he was on his knees and palms on the rough concrete.

‘You all right, mate?’ Darren flinched. John was standing in front of him. ‘They take your wallet, mate? Which way did they go?’ He was already half at a run out of the foyer into the road, scanning for the culprits or their car.

‘No, no, they didn’t, everything’s fine,’ Darren gasped.

John turned to look back at him. ‘Don’t look fine to me, mate. The security here’s a bloody joke!’

Darren leaned back against the pillar and felt his head. He pulled his hand away and saw blood.

‘You need to get that looked at.’

‘I’m fine, really.’ Darren made a move to leave but John put a hand out to stop him.

‘Hang on.’ He frowned, staring. ‘I know you.’ The hand pushed harder into Darren’s chest, making him back up to the pillar again. ‘I’ve seen you at the charity shop. On video. You were asking questions about me.’ Now his face was hard and full of suspicion. ‘Why are you following me?’

Darren tried to stand up taller than John, but he was still in pain and found it hard to straighten. His mind had taken a knock and he couldn’t clear the fog of confusion. If John had saved him, who were the other guys?

John dragged Darren by his T-shirt, further away from the lifts towards a darker corner of the foyer. ‘Why?’ One of his fists was balled, ready to continue what Darren’s attackers had started. ‘You fuckers can’t let an honest man alone, can you?’

The pain was beginning to pulse through Darren’s frame now the shock had subsided. ‘Honest? That’s a joke. No one who’s honest has two names and befriends a serial killer.’

The change was instant. John dropped his hand and stared at Darren. ‘This is about her?’

‘Why are you not who you say you are?’

The hand was back round his throat immediately. ‘Hang on. I’ve seen you at the prison.’ John paused, his mind working it through. ‘You
work
there.’ His hand jammed Darren against the pillar again. ‘Who are you?’