Boy A Read online

  There was an item on Radio 4 about how Mick Jagger was pissed off because they put his picture on the front of Saga magazine. Terry rubs at the yellow goo that lines his bloodhound eyes. If he looked as good as Jagger he wouldn’t care where they put his picture. These days he feels as wrinkled as Keith Richards’ bollock.

  ‘Breakfast’s ready,’ comes a shout from the kitchen. ‘Do you want it in bed?’

  ‘No, I’m just coming,’ Terry croaks.

  Breakfast in bed. Zebedee’s really grown up. It’s taken over twenty-five years but he’s finally there. ‘Zebedee’; well, you can hardly blame the boy for resenting him a bit, saddled with that for life. He was named for the Magic Roundabout though, not the Bible. They were different times. Should have called him Ben, for Mr Ben, the number of different jobs he’s had.

  Terry crosses the hallway in his dressing gown and into the flat’s kitchen. Zebedee grins and salutes with a spatula.

  ‘You all right, Dad?’ he says. ‘We knocked back the whisky last night.’

  He’s wearing a Fred Perry shirt; the tight sleeves emphasize his probably steroid-enhanced arms. Old Fred must be back in, Terry thinks, for Zeb to be wearing it. Everything he wears seems to have someone else’s name on it: Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Sergio Tacchini. When Terry was growing up he used to wear clothes with other names on too, tags in the back from the previous owner. It’s funny, but he’s never lusted after money, like some of his friends from those days did. Not having it never made it mystical. Money’s a metaphor, that’s all, it’s standing in for what you need, and so you need it to a point, but it’s not the be all and end all; it has no intrinsic value. Cuts your fingers when it’s new and stinks when it’s old, that’s what Terry always says about money. Didn’t make much of an impact on Zeb, though.

  Zebedee carefully transfers an egg, two sausages and two rashers of bacon from a large frying pan to his father’s plate; on which a monstrous split, grilled tomato already lounges. He cracks two more eggs for his own breakfast, while Terry sits down, staring at the mountain of food for a moment, feeling slightly queasy, knowing that the grease will help to set him right, though. Or else give him a coronary. It’s all right for his son; he’s probably off to the gym, calories converted to muscle by lunchtime. He’s laid out the usual suspects of condiments on the Formica table, and Terry takes the ketchup, squeezes a splash of colour between the dead pig products. A scab of decrepit sauce has formed around the plastic lid of the bottle. He scrapes it off with a fingernail, and then regrets doing so, when he sees nowhere better to put it. In the end he wipes it on his dressing gown, which needs a wash anyway. Zeb puts a cup of coffee down beside him, and Terry says: ‘Ah, thank you,’ and picks up his knife and fork, as if he’d just been waiting for this final piece of the puzzle to begin. He dunks a chunk of his tomato into the ketchup, before he realizes the absurdity of the action, and then finds that, in fact, even tomato is improved with ketchup.

  After five minutes of hunting, Terry locates his tie, hanging from the key on the back of the wardrobe door, still formed in yesterday’s noose. He slips it over his head and tightens it to an approximation of straight. He’s got other ties, but they don’t have his ID clipped to them. He scratches up a pocketful of coins from the sideboard, as he shouts goodbye, and grabs his wallet and keys. At least it’s Friday.

  The car skips the first start. It’s just messing with him, though; comes in with a roaring over-rev when he hits the accelerator on the second try. He had to pull a lot of strings to get his job transferred up here, to work in another secure unit, alongside being Jack’s liaison. Everything’s gone like clockwork so far. He doesn’t want today to be his first fuckup. He’d swear Zebedee’s trying to turn him into an alcoholic. They’ve been getting drunk far too frequently since he moved in. But it’s been good to spend a bit of quality time with his son. They haven’t had that much of it. Though Zeb’s always been close to his heart. He laughs to himself, at his little joke, and touches the medallion behind his shirt. It can open up, like a tomato, split into two neat halves; and inside that secret space there’s a pair of tiny photos: one of a baby Zeb and one of a young Zeb, taken not long before the divorce. Terry’s worn it ever since then. Of course he’d never tell Zebedee about the hidden compartment. Zeb’d think he was a sentimental old fool. No, they don’t have that kind of a relationship.

  He turns on the radio as he eases out of the side-streets and into the rush-hour traffic. He’s just about on schedule. Still feeling rougher than ideal, for a full day of dealing with disturbed kids; but the fry-up and the aspirin are starting to kick in. Two girls are waiting for a bus, next to where his Sierra stops for the red light. College kids, by the looks of it, probably art students – they’re wearing flares.

  When Terry wore flares they meant something; they were a statement of intent, not just a fashion statement. No one gives a shit any more, that’s the way it seems. Where are all the marches? Where are the demonstrators? Has no one noticed the world’s worse than ever?

  There’s a fly in the car. It should have died off by now, or hibernated or whatever flies do. Maybe it had and the heating’s woken it up. It’s moving tiredly around, banging at the windows, buzzing at the tension in Terry’s head. It’s a big, blue, loud bugger. He swipes at it with a backhand, and swerves over the white lines, nearly hitting a Cherokee in the inside lane. It veers away, mimicking his movement, heading for the pavement, but seeing the pedestrians there it swings back again, over-compensating. Crunch. Terry jerks forwards in his seatbelt.

  Shit. Whose fault’s that? He started the swerving, but it was the Cherokee that hit him. They weren’t going that fast, maybe it’s not too bad. He gets out of the car and the fly plunges out with him. The Jeep looks all right; it’s got massive steel side-protectors fitted, thinly disguised as steps. The left-front wing of Terry’s trusty Sierra is crumpled like foil on to its wheel. The driver of the Cherokee gets out, and smiles in slightly smug satisfaction at the unblemished state of his vehicle. He’s young, tall, balding, chalk-striped. Someone sounds their horn from the midst of the traffic which is rapidly piling up behind them. The man raises a long arm to the sound, with a single finger at the end of it. But concedes to Terry, in a public school accent which doesn’t fit in Manchester, that they’d better pull over to swap details.

  Terry bends down to try and pull the wing from the tyre it’s bitten into. He can’t get it out; clumps of rust and road dust crumble away on his hands. He looks up to see where the Cherokee driver has parked. And discovers that the man has simply driven off while his back was turned. Cars are tearing through the empty space next to him, gunning their engines to demonstrate their displeasure at being held up.

  ‘Do you think I did it on purpose?’ Terry shouts, to no one in particular.

  Eventually, a car heeds Terry’s indicator, and lets him pull over the inside lane and on to the pavement. Luckily he’s rear-wheel drive. But the front tyre that isn’t turning properly leaves a scar of rubber on the road; and his engine sounds like it would burn out under any more strain.

  He phones the secure unit, apologizing profusely. Knowing this means some of the boys will have little or no activity today. Then he phones the AA. Maybe it’s better him and the Jeep driver didn’t get into blame for the prang. They’d probably have had to get the police involved; he might technically still be over the drink-drive limit. Terry can usually see a bright side.

  He wonders whether the Sierra’s worth repairing, while he waits for the canary yellow cavalry. He can’t even remember how long he’s had it. From the days when Jack was still in the home, he knows that. And Jack used to ask about the car when Terry visited the prisons.

  ‘How’s the motor, Terry?’ he’d say, a proper little cockney. He’d sounded like a kid from Byker Grove when Terry first met him. First realized there was something more to him. It was the day his mother died that changed it all. Terry can remember sitting down on the bed and putting his arm
around that puny, ugly, despisable child, and discovering that he could love it.

  And somehow after that, the boy had become like his ward, his responsibility. None of the other staff in the secure accommodation had much time for him anyway. They weren’t cruel at all, just didn’t seem to care. Except that second psychiatrist, maybe, Elizabeth something. She was the only one that ever seemed to really try. Him and Jack both had a lot to thank her for: she’d made the recommendations that had led to the ruling allowing them to maintain contact. All of this would be different if it weren’t for her. And she’d made the breakthrough with the boy. It had started to seem like he really might not be guilty, he denied it so strongly, until she’d helped him to come to terms with what he’d done.

  What had he done? Something horrible, something terrible, but something he’d done as a child. Can you commit murder in innocence? It’s too big a thing for the human mind to take in, that’s the problem. And it grew with the ever-larger newspaper pictures of a girl who was near enough an angel, even before she died. Only the young die good. And Angela Milton died young enough to be perfect. A martyr to modern society. Evidence that we are fucked. Though records suggest we always have been. Her hair and eyes had clamoured from the front pages of every paper: ‘Never mind locking away, let them swing.’ One of them did. She was only ten, but had looked twelve, would soon have been sixteen, though nobody said it. ‘The Angel that could have been a model’, wrote the Star and the Sun, brave upholders of women’s rights.

  If Jack had been nine months younger he would have been innocent, simple as that. How can you have definitions and scales about murder? Why was it all right for the CIA to kill Che in cold blood, a man who really might have changed the world? Or the innocent people in Chile, Argentina, East Timor, Congo, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala, Turkey, Brazil, the Philippines. Political mass murders, that are lucky to make the papers at all. Crimes committed by mercenaries, men who kill for money, not seen to be as bad as someone who acts from some nameless sickness, shameless sudden impulse?

  Terry’s felt the power of that perverse desire. He believes that everyone has. He can still picture himself as a child, sat on a bus, biting his tongue to stop himself shouting out: ‘You’re all fucking spastics’, at a group of happy, helpless, handicapped. Even as an adult, he’s had to fight the need to take his wife, by force, when he found out about her affair. Yes, rape. Just to show her that he could, not from desire, just to wipe that bloody smirk away. Does that mean he’s evil? Or is it that without those urges he could not be good? If being good is a denial of the bad then those we deem evil are not worse, they are weaker. And if goodness means anything at all, surely it means the strong helping the weak. That’s what Terry thinks.

  Zebedee’s strong. Jesus but he’s strong. He looks like he could pull a man in half with those arms. He’s dusting the computer when Terry walks in from the AA tow home. He’s told Zeb he’s not supposed to touch that computer. But he doesn’t scold him, because he can’t. Zeb looks so funny, dusting away with no shirt on, like Schwarzenegger doing a spot of hoovering. And he’s trying so hard at the moment. It really seems like he wants to make good for everything that’s gone wrong in the past. Where does it all go though? Where does all that time disappear to?

  V is for Vanish.

  Find the Lady.

  Jack spends Saturday morning phoning Shell. There’s no reply on her home phone and her mobile’s turned off. After he’s heard the answerphone message five times the cheerful nonchalance of her voice is beginning to grate on him. The power is low on his own phone, though, so he keeps calling until it cuts out altogether. Chris has told him the emptier you can get it before you recharge, the better it is for the battery.

  Out the window the blue of the heavens is untarnished, the colour of Wish You Were Here swimming pools. Kelly’s baking a friend’s birthday cake in the kitchen. Not having much better to do, Jack decides to walk to Shell’s place, and make sure she’s really not just ill in bed. Though he knows that wouldn’t be much reason for her not to be answering the phone. It’s colder outside than you’d think from the cloudless skies. The air makes his eyes water. He’s still thinking about Shell.

  It’s out of character, that’s what worries him. She’s so organized, so dependable, so concrete. She isn’t the sort of person who just disappears. If she’s not at home, he wonders whether he should phone her mum’s. That’s most likely where she is; he might be able to find the number in the book. But then he remembers that her mum’s remarried; she’s probably called something different to Shell. This is a world where names are erased after use.

  The bell still trails empty echoes through the town house. The table is still blank where her bag should be. Jack’s disappointment shows him how much he must have been hoping, against all sense, that she was in. A look through the letterbox shows him the morning mail. Two envelopes have their back to him; the third says that if the missing number’s found inside, Shell could be entered in the Reader’s Digest million-pound draw. The letterbox snaps shut with a clack. Jack opens it and lets it go twice more. In case she just can’t hear doorbells and phones. The silence is even louder after the letterbox noise. Jack turns around from the house and walks away down the street. He kicks a Tango can from the pavement, and it ejects the remains of someone’s drink, as it rattles into the space where a Clio should be.

  It’s the third time he’s done this walk from Shell’s back to his. The first two he stuck to the route she takes in the car. This time Jack allows himself to experiment, and finds he can save himself some distance. Even though he has to turn around from a couple of blockages. Not all roads lead to Rome, there are side-streets and switchbacks, circles and cul-de-sacs. But if you have a sense of the direction you want to head, and you’re not so bothered about the how and how-long of getting there, Jack finds most roads are right. In this view he differs from Chris, who believes there is only ever one most appropriate route.

  Chris phones not long after Jack gets back. ‘Steve the mechanic and Jed have gone to the football,’ he says. ‘They wondered if we wanted to meet them after, for a couple of beers.’

  Jack doesn’t feel like going. He’s stretched out on the sofa, tired from the walk and stressed from worrying about Shell.

  ‘I’m feeling a bit poorly. I think I might be going down with that thing Michelle’s got. Next time, heh?’

  ‘How is Michelle?’ Chris asks.

  ‘Not really sure. All right, I hope. I think she’s at her mum’s.’

  ‘Haven’t you rung her?’

  ‘Her phone’s switched off.’

  ‘Hang on, I’m pretty sure I’ve got her mum’s number. Michelle moved back there for a bit after she split up with that bloke.’ There is a sound of drawers opening, Chris rooting through the remains of his recent past. Eventually he comes up with a number, and reads it out.

  They leave it there, with Jack having added another carefully folded pair of lies to Chris’ pile.

  Shell’s mum answers in a thick Salford Manc, most of which Shell must have left behind in the short move to the city centre. The mum sounds kind, like Shell described her. The woman that gave her the security and the will to be someone. But as helpful as she tries to be, she can’t change the fact that her daughter isn’t there, and she hasn’t heard from her. Jack tries to make light, but the conversation ends with both of them more concerned than at its start.

  Later he calls Terry. It sounds like Terry had a bad day yesterday. He’s smashed up his car. Jack feels a momentary sadness for the Ford, which is a tie to a shared past. He used to see it pull in and out the gates of the secure unit. Sometimes Terry would wave when he left, knowing he’d be watched through the wire-reinforced glass of a second-floor window.

  Terry’s upbeat as ever, though. He reckons the prang could be the excuse he needs to finally get shot of the Sierra. Jack had secretly hoped that one day he’d be able to buy it off him. But not now; he hasn’t got anything much saved and
can’t even drive.

  He tells Terry about Michelle. Wanting to be cheered up and told it’s nothing. But he picks up an anxious edge when Terry gives him the words he needs to hear.

  ‘Look, let’s go out for Sunday lunch tomorrow,’ Terry finally says. ‘I’ll meet you at the Firkin at one. But ring me if you hear from Michelle before then.’

  The gravy’s the same Bisto-brown as Terry’s car. Jack’s not sure if that’s a good omen or a bad one. Michelle is missing, and he is missing her. Both facts hang over the roast dinner, souring the flavours.

  Jack tells Terry about the man he thought was following them the other week, and how she had said it was her exboyfriend. Terry doesn’t disguise his worry when Jack adds the doorman’s criminal past.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this at the time, Jack?’

  ‘She said it was nothing to bother about. She said he’d done it before.’

  ‘And what happens if he’s done something to her? You’re on licence. If they even suspect you’re involved they’re going to take you in, and boyfriends are always the first suspects. That means it’ll all be over, this life we’ve built. Your cover could be blown. We’d have to try and start you up again. All of our work gone down the pan.’

  ‘Terry, if he’s done something to her, like you’re suggesting, then I don’t care about all this. I love her.’

  ‘She’s the first girl you’ve ever been with, Jack. Of course you love her. Shit, she’s practically the first girl you’ve ever met. I knew it was too soon. We should have let you adjust slower.’

  ‘I love her, Terry, this is real. She’s disappeared off the face of the earth, and I want you to tell me she’s all right. Instead you’re saying she’s been murdered or something. You just assume it, like it’s fucking karma coming back, and it’s the most logical thing in the world. There are a million things that could have happened. Her ex is probably nothing to do with it. It’s only three days. Maybe she just needed a break. Maybe she just needed to think, to get away. You’re supposed to be the optimist.’ Jack realizes he’s shouting at Terry, the man who’s never raised his voice in his life, except perhaps to yell: ‘Ban the Bomb.’ The man who has sacrificed so much for him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, quietly, with eyes flicked down at the unfinished meal.