Gallowstree Lane Read online

  And off Sarah had gone, rushing back to her straightforward life where the issues were black and white and the world was perfectable. She would put arrest inquiries on for Jarral and nick him and get another big gold star. For Sarah, doing the right thing never seemed to be complicated or unclear. Surely Kieran did have a point. Perseus needed protecting. And anyway, what about Lizzie’s own life? What about her relationship with Kieran? What was going to happen now? She should have rung him first.

  Fuck.

  She realized too late that she was putting dirty crockery into a dishwasher that had only just completed its cycle. There were dregs of tea and coffee over the clean plates beneath. It was, briefly, a mind-numbing catastrophe. She stood there and wondered what to do. Run it again and leave all the dirty stuff on the side? Clean the few things that were now dirty? Wash up the stuff on the side. Throw the dirty stuff in the damn bin? Just throw it all in the bin. Christ!

  Connor was crying in his cot. Of course he was. Why wouldn’t he go to sleep when she put him down? She went and stood over him. He was red-faced and wriggling and apoplectic, and although she loved him so much that she’d die for him, if she wasn’t careful she might also kill him. There he was, just like his father, screaming away, so determined that his needs be attended to. She walked away and her anger turned to remorse. She returned to the cot and saw Connor, not a monster at all, but her poor baby filling his lungs with distress.

  ‘Darling.’

  She picked him up. So sweetly he put his head into her chest and patted her breast. They were a team, of course they were. She’d let him down.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He rubbed at his face. A mosquito had bitten him on his eyebrow and it was sore-looking and a bit swollen. ‘Is that bothering you?’ Lizzie took his hand and nibbled at his fingers. ‘Leave it alone, sweetheart.’ He giggled and tried to pull his hand away.

  Holding ice in a flannel to the mozzie bite, she sat with him on the sofa. Would he remember, she wondered, her standing over his cot like Medusa? The moment of birth was like a promise that she must keep. He had emerged like a little greased seal and reached for her not only with his hands but with his searching wide eyes too. And when she’d lifted him to her breast, it was as if they weren’t really two, but one.

  In a minute, they were both asleep.

  34

  Sarah had rung Lee from outside Lizzie’s house and asked him to turn round and drive to the magistrate for an out-of-hours search warrant. Now she stood with him and Elaine outside Jarral’s house.

  It was a 1930s semi with 1980s updates. Plastic double-glazing. A frosted-glass door. The front garden paved over. There were wheelie bins and two cars: a Mazda Spyder and a Honda Jazz. To the right, attached to the house, a garage with a grey metal roller door. A cul-de-sac ran round the back and Sarah had placed uniformed officers there just in case Jarral made a run for it. A carload of officers waited down the street to conduct the search.

  The approach was as unostentatious as they could manage given the risk of flight or violence: Lee, Elaine and Sarah in covert stab vests strolling up the drive and knocking at the door. Jarral opened, instantly recognizable from his mugshot: a tall, skinny man with hair that stood up. He wore pointy black suede shoes with gold buckles, indigo jeans and a thin leather jacket. Lee arrested him for the murder of Alexandra Moss, cuffed him at the front and searched him.

  Jarral, an uncomfortable blend of extreme anxiety and outraged dignity, said, ‘You come to my home?’

  Lee was feeling around the back of Jarral’s waistband. ‘Oh, come on. You know the drill.’

  Sarah said, ‘We’ll do our best not to disturb your family. Have you got a solicitor you use?’

  He nodded.

  ‘OK, let’s make a call so we can get things moving. Then I’ll give you a moment to explain to your wife what’s happening.’

  She watched Jarral being put in the car. Elaine walked over to the garage and tried the metal handle. It was locked.

  There was a stand for shoes in the hallway, and Sarah slipped hers off and moved into the sitting room. Two boys, aged maybe five and seven, were sitting on the sofa in pyjamas. The house was ultra tidy. A rug in golden colours. Two white leather sofas. A framed picture of a temple above the wooden fireplace. Jarral’s wife, a tiny woman in a purple and white shalwar kameez with a shawl over her head, held her hands braced against the front of her legs and spoke constantly to Sarah in a foreign language.

  Sarah cleared her throat and spoke slowly. ‘You might want to arrange for your boys to be picked up by a family member.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘Children stay here.’

  Sarah showed her the warrant. ‘Like I explained with your husband, the warrant gives me the power to search your house.’

  The woman shook her head again and waved her hand. ‘Not good English.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  Sarah walked over to the bay window and pointed towards the garage. The woman stared as if she had never seen it before. No one was more surprised to see it than her! Elaine, standing by it, smiled and put her hand on the handle and made as if to turn it. The gesture was perfectly clear – Marcel Marceau came to mind, and Sarah thought she’d tease Elaine about it later – but Jarral’s wife shrugged as if she had no idea what it meant.

  Sarah said, ‘The key?’

  The women waved her hand again. ‘Not good English.’

  Sarah looked back across the room at the older boy. It wasn’t ideal, but she didn’t want to wait for an interpreter and she didn’t want to force the garage door if it was avoidable. In any case, she rather suspected that the moment her son started to translate, the woman’s English might miraculously improve.

  And so it transpired.

  Ten minutes later, Sarah, now gloved, masked and suited up, rolled the garage door open. It was well oiled and moved easily in its tracks. The Volkswagen, still bearing the plates that displayed the cloned registration, had been reversed in, perhaps to make it easier to work on the damaged front. The concrete floor was still wet. The driver’s-side wing was staved in but had been thoroughly washed. Sarah knelt down and looked under the wheel arch. That had been washed too. She wondered whether Jarral had done it himself, or whether he’d got his wife to do it.

  35

  Lizzie woke from her heavy lost sleep, wondering what was happening. The doorbell was ringing. She hefted Connor onto her hip and moved along the hallway in her socked feet. Kieran was there, spruced up and feigning embarrassment at arriving unannounced. He stepped into the hallway. Connor wriggled out of her arms to be held by his dad, who took him and bounced him up and down in the air.

  ‘His eye looks sore. Is it OK?’

  ‘Yes, it’s just a mozzie bite.’

  ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘Couldn’t you have rung?’

  ‘I tried, but it went straight to voicemail. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Shut the door then.’

  She turned and went into the sitting room, wondering whether he was recording this in some way. Her tired grey jogging pants, saggy in the arse. A stain of something down the front of her T-shirt. Mashed avocado, was it? Connor liked avocado. The untidy kitchen. A used tea bag on a saucer. A half-full bottle of warm baby milk. The place was like an exhibit in a family court case. Unfit mother, KS/1.

  Her phone was on the table. She checked it for a missed call, but Kieran was right – it was completely dead.

  He was talking, saying he had news about Perseus. Things were moving quickly. The delivery was going ahead: tomorrow. This was the fun bit.

  She resumed her attempt to impose order on the kitchen. In Kieran’s London flat, shirts were hung on slim beech hangers, jumpers folded in piles, cutlery organized in a bamboo tray. They’d had a lot of sex in that flat. All that fucking in those austere and tidy masculine rooms. And now this.

  Kieran, on the floor with Connor playing with his animals, seemed happy. The shouting match of the previous night
, the row in the office: both had apparently been forgotten. She marvelled at his ability to move on. He had a job for her tomorrow, he was saying. Operational. He looked up and smiled. Better than typing. She listened and answered but her mind was elsewhere, watching Connor and his dad.

  Kieran was walking the baby elephant across the floor and Lizzie remembered Sarah doing the same thing maybe only an hour ago. She’d been halting, unconfident, but Kieran was master of the elephants. When he’d been trying to persuade her to have an abortion, he’d warned her: ‘Having children will change your life for ever. You’ll never be free again.’ Watching him now, it didn’t seem to have been such a disaster. Not for him, anyway. He was a natural. The baby elephant was getting too far from the mother and she trumpeted wildly and galloped over. Connor burst out laughing and said, ‘Naughty babby!’

  Words were coming to Connor, dawning in fragments, popping from his mouth like bubbles, as if language was all part of the same miracle that had produced limbs and fingers and toes from the tadpole she had seen on the ultrasound.

  Kieran looked up from the elephants. ‘So that’s all OK then?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Did Trask tell you to do this?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I got a missed call from him but I haven’t had a chance to return it.’

  His phone rang now and he fished it out of his pocket, checked the screen. He leant over, kissed Connor quickly on his forehead, stood up. ‘That’s Angel calling. I’d best be off.’ Connor, shocked by the sudden change, started bawling. Kieran picked him up and bounced him and handed him to Lizzie. Now, now, Mummy’s here. And the sweet thing – and the painful thing – was how Connor hitched himself into her body and was comforted but stretched his hand out to his daddy. Kieran felt it too. He took Connor’s hand and pretended to bite his fingers. Connor laughed and pulled his hand away, burbling like a stream, and Kieran smiled and said, ‘Lizzie, I’m sorry about last night. Let’s try to work this thing out.’ And she said, ‘Yes.’

  They didn’t dare go into the details of what working this thing out would look like, but who knew, perhaps they could get there after all. He risked a kiss on her forehead and said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  She didn’t have the courage to ruin it and tell him about Jarral. She hoped that that wasn’t what the phone call had been about.

  36

  The city looked amazing, the neon, the skyscrapers’ windows lit up and a super moon huge in a deep blue sky. How did they make that shit look so good? Trevor ran up to a Zentorno, opened the door and pulled the driver out onto the road. She had long blonde hair, wore tight jeans and was screaming as usual. Ryan chose an assault rifle and shot her up. The police radio played. Citizens report a two-four-five. Almost immediately a cop car pulled across the road. Dispatch, we got eyes on the target. LAPD tumbling out already firing. Ryan used Trevor’s special power and the action slowed down. Pump pump went the assault rifle. Everyone yielded before Trevor. Trevor was fucking crazy.

  Ryan paused the game. There was talking in the hallway. How long had that been going on?

  He listened: his mum’s voice, hushed but furious, hoping he wouldn’t hear probably.

  ‘That you, was it? Got Spence killed?’

  Ryan grabbed his hoody, got up from the sofa and walked along the hallway trying to look like he was in no particular hurry.

  Shakiel was at the door, polite like always, but forceful too. ‘I need a word, Loretta. Then I’ll be gone.’

  Sure enough, his mum was embarrassing him. ‘Well you can’t.’

  Ryan guessed she would have shut the door but for the fact that Shakiel’s foot was on the threshold. He had spotted Ryan now and he leant past his mum and nodded and said, ‘Whassup?’

  ‘Yeah. Safe.’

  His mum turned and said, ‘Go back inside now. I’m telling you.’

  Ryan pulled his hood over his head. ‘Won’t be long.’

  He pushed past his mum. It was easy. He was much stronger than her nowadays. But her face had changed. She looked like she might cry and, like a splash of cold water, he felt an instant of stinging regret to be treating her like that. Shakiel, he saw, was carrying a backpack over his shoulder. Black and green leather. That was unusual. Normally he didn’t carry stuff. That was Jarral’s job. They were moving along the walkway to where they could watch the tube trains, but he heard his mother still shouting – ‘I told you not to come round here!’ – and then the door slamming.

  Ryan was embarrassed. He said, ‘Sorry ’bout that.’

  Shakiel kissed his teeth.

  Ryan looked at his feet. Briefly he was furious with Shakiel. His mum had been rude, OK, but Shakiel shouldn’t disrespect her. Then he noticed the shift in mood between him and Shakiel. It was like you might feel finding yourself unexpectedly alone with a girl who was out of your league. Kind of thrilling but also a bit uncomfortable. Usually he would wait at the edges for Shakiel to pay him attention. Now that he’d got what he thought he wanted – Shakiel’s undivided attention – he felt uneasy. Where was Shakiel’s dog, Jarral? And that great gulf of loneliness expanded inside him again, now that he didn’t have Spence. It was different doing this stuff on your own.

  He said, ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Everything’s good. There’s something happening. You want to step up? Be part of it?’

  ‘Course I do.’ He tried to sound enthusiastic, but the loneliness was still there, like a big black spreading pool of water. Then he was cross with himself. Instead of being excited, he was like that fucking Hobbit in that movie poster – tiny figure, large desolate background. All that shit.

  Shakiel said, ‘First thing, I got your man.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘That wasteman that killed Spence. Kingfisher they call him. Know all about him now. Where he lives, all the shit. We’re gonna sort it.’

  It was like the travel sickness he’d got on a coach once. Everything moving quickly but kind of slow-motion at the same time. The tart – Lexi – all that: he wanted to know about that! He was frightened too, now that Shaks had said it was actually happening, this thing he thought he’d been wanting so badly. He didn’t want to admit to that. Anyway, he didn’t have time to ask all the questions he needed to ask, because he had to show Shakiel he was up to it. He said, ‘That’s great. When we gonna do it?’

  He hated his voice. It still sounded so high. But Shaks laughed. He hadn’t seemed to notice. ‘You’re in a hurry.’

  Ryan laughed too, kind of relieved and also kind of because he thought he ought to. ‘Yeah.’

  He looked at the bag and wondered what was in it. But he didn’t have time to ask about that neither. If anyone was in a hurry, it was Shakiel.

  He said, ‘So here’s where you got to step up. You think you can do that?’

  ‘I can do it.’

  ‘There’s something happening before we sort that Kingfisher thing and I need you to be part of it. You wanna move up, you got to do this thing.’

  Shakiel seemed on edge, impatient. Ryan worried that it was his fault. He needed to step up, like the man said. Stop being moist, for fuck’s sake. Still he wanted to know about Lexi but didn’t dare ask. It looked like Shakiel had sorted everything anyhow. So instead of asking, he said, ‘I’m in.’

  Shakiel put his hand on Ryan’s shoulder. ‘And after we done that thing, we gonna fuck up that likkle Kingfisher. OK?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Shakiel lifted his bag off his shoulder. ‘You got a good place to hide something?’

  Ryan looked at the bag with dread. ‘Yeah. I have.’

  ‘Feds don’t know about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You gotta be sure. Hundred and ten per cent.’

  And then he thought of him and Spence, laughing and fooling around and high-fiving. Dem feds don’t know about dat shed. It wasn’t a joke he could share. He felt so lonely.

  He said, ‘When they nicked me last time, they never went near it, never
asked about it, nothing. They don’t know.’

  ‘OK, we’re gonna go talk this thing through. It’s all happening. When we done this, sorting out Kingfisher’s going to be nothing. You’ll see. You seen The Wire?’

  ‘Course I have.’

  ‘Wants to be Marlo, don’t he, Kingfisher? Or Stringer Bell. But he’s just that likkle kid with the braids, the one that tears up when somebody hits him.’

  Something Ryan was ashamed of stirred. He had felt it all those years ago, sitting on cold concrete steps somewhere too public: the kid who’d been pushed out of the front door and told to fuck off for the afternoon.

  Shakiel was still talking. ‘You’ll see how it is with him.’ He held up the bag. ‘You like it?’

  The bag was one of Shakiel’s things. You had to know that to appreciate it because it was like the cars, not showy, just in a different league to everyone else’s shit.

  Ryan said, ‘Sure, yes.’

  ‘Six hundred and fifty bills it cost me. Harvey Nichols. When we’ve done this thing, it’s yours.’

  For some reason, Ryan felt like crying. He said, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Take it now. Safe keeping.’

  He offered it, and Ryan, feeling the weight of it, had already guessed. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

  37

  The broad streets around Victoria station had long since emptied of their daytime office workers. The security guards at New Scotland Yard were leaning against the wall, chewing the fat, while they waited for customers for the X-ray scanner. Sarah collected her jacket and phone from one of the grey plastic trays and moved through. She shared the lift with a short, dark man with a greying beard and a crocheted skullcap whose hand rested on a trolley of cleaning kit. A scratched hoover sat despondently on the floor beside him. The lift glided to a halt and Sarah left the man and his hoover and stepped out onto a deserted landing on the fifth floor. Her warrant card didn’t work for the internal lock and she had to wait. Kieran Shaw greeted her only with her name – ‘Sarah’ – then turned and walked back along the hushed corridor.