I was right to be scared. A week later, on the way back to camp from one of the local pubs, I’d encountered a group of my fellow trainees who were just drunk enough to be dangerous, and my whole world had come crashing down around my ears. Sean wasn’t there to save me that time. In the aftermath I tried to get messages through to him, but I never received any response to my increasingly frantic calls.
At my lowest ebb, it wasn’t hard to convince myself he’d abandoned me. That my first impression of him had been the right one.
I never saw him again until he and Madeleine had swooped into that alleyway to pluck me and Roger out of the dirt. Even then, it seemed his first instinct was to reject me. Too much had happened. How could I even begin to trust him now?
I sat up, aware of a dull ache in my temples. The light had faded, the film had ended, and some inane game show was playing out to squawks of canned laughter.
The dog jerked awake at my movement. He scrambled off the sofa, shook himself so vigorously that his ears flapped together, and padded through into the kitchen.
I heaved myself to my feet. My head was muzzy, as though packed with cotton wool. Perhaps I just needed some fresh air. “Come on, Friday,” I called, collecting his lead, “walk time.”
***
It was bitterly cold outside, with the hint of frost in the gathering night, so I decided to give the Ridgeback little more than a quick turn round the block. He didn’t seem too upset by the lack of distance. We were out for such a short time that I realised afterwards they must have been watching the house, and waiting for their opportunity.
As soon as I unlocked the front door again and pushed it open, I knew there was something wrong. The draught that met me could only mean the back door was open and the cold air was suddenly being sucked through the intervening rooms like a wind tunnel. I knew full well I’d locked it before we’d gone out.
Friday got as far as the hallway, then went from semi-dormant to almost rabid instantaneously, like a shape-shifter. He gave a strangled whimper and bolted through my legs heading for the kitchen.
I ran after him, not bothering with the lights, but by the time I arrived, he’d already got the situation under control.
There was a figure hunched up on top of Pauline’s draining board, trying desperately to keep his legs out of range of Friday’s snapping jaws. The deep growls the dog was giving out were enough to bring the hairs up on the back of my neck. In the darkness they swelled until they were out of all proportion to his real size.
Much as I was reluctant to shatter my unwanted visitor’s illusions about the mammoth hound that had him cornered, I reached out and flicked on the kitchen light.
“Well, well,” I said, surprised. “Would it be pointless to ask what the fuck you’re doing in here?”
Jav, the blond-haired Asian teenager lifted his feet out of the sink and glared at me. His expensive white trainers were now smeared with a film of scummy washing-up water. He seemed more upset about that than the prospect of being ripped limb from limb by an increasingly agitated dog.
Then the boy reached up onto a shelf above him and grabbed hold of one of Pauline’s ornamental teapots. He held it over Friday’s head and glanced at me questioningly. “Either you call him off, or I crack his skull,” he said, his lisp more pronounced than I’d remembered.
I clicked my fingers and Friday moved grudgingly to my side. I complied more because I knew how attached Pauline was to her pottery, rather than any fears for the Ridgeback’s safety.
“So,” I said, “what do you want, Jav?” I didn’t bother to ask how he’d got in. Lock-picking was a compulsory pre-school subject round this area.
He swung his legs over the side of the kitchen unit and let his feet drip onto the lino. “I came to warn you,” he said sullenly, “but I can’t be seen warning you, right?”
“Why do I need warning?”
“Because you’ve been seen with the wrong people, lady.” He saw the scepticism in my face and hopped down from the draining board with an elaborate shrug that was only slightly spoiled by the faint squelch he made as his feet hit the floor. “It’s your neck, not mine,” he said, and took a step towards the back door.
“Wait,” I said. He halted but more, I suspect, because Friday had started growling again. “OK, let’s start again. Excuse my natural cynicism, but what exactly are you warning me about?”
“Like I said, you’ve been seen hanging around with the fascists, and that don’t do your rep round here no good at all.”
The communication system was amazing. I’d had a brief chat with Langford that afternoon on Copthorne, and by early evening the gangs on Lavender Gardens had got to hear about it and sent the boys round. Well, the boy, anyway. “I hardly think that one conversation counts as associating with fascists, Jav.”
“Oh yeah?” he threw back at me, stung by the obvious amusement in my tone. “What do you call going round to his house, then, and protecting his kid brother when that piece of shit’s tried to kill one of us?”
I could feel my eyes growing wider. “Whoa, whoa,” I said quickly. “You’re not talking about Langford?”
“Course not,” Jav said contemptuously. “Sean Meyer, that’s who. He was up to his neck with that National Front lot before this area got too hot for him and then he bailed. Army, I heard.”
The information hung over me like a dark, wet cloud just before the thunder starts. I could hear it building up in the distance. I glanced at the boy, found him watching me, nervous, wary. “What else have you heard?”
He shrugged again. “That Meyer hated Nas not just for leading his precious brother into trouble, but because he was a damned Paki,” he spat the word out. “And now Nas is dead. Shot dead,” he emphasised meaningfully. “It don’t take a genius to work out that Army Boy’s got to be involved somewhere along the line.”
No, it didn’t. That was the trouble.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, suddenly tired.
“For your own good,” he said, looking disgusted with himself. He took another few steps, reaching the doorway before he turned back, shuffling his feet. “You didn’t rat on me to that bastard West,” he said, looking embarrassed, and defiant. “I owed you. Now we’re even. OK?”
I nodded. “But Jav,” I added grimly, making him pause. “You ever break in here again, and next time I won’t call the dog off. OK?”
He nodded, face grave, then disappeared out into the darkness of the back garden. He left me with a barrage of unanswered questions that meant a long and largely sleepless night.
***
I got a few of them answered the next morning, but that didn’t make me feel any better, on the whole. I was due in at the gym at ten, but I hit town just after nine o’clock and was soon rolling into the car park of the Defender on Meeting House Lane.
Clare was already at her desk in the busy Accounts office when the disapproving woman from reception showed me through. My friend looked up with a ready smile that faded when she saw my face.
She swept a batch of files off the chair next to her desk and patted the cushion. “Come, sit, and tell me all about it,” she said. She was wearing a brown suit that would have been frumpy on me, but looked like a catwalk special on Clare’s willowy frame. She studied me with worry lines between her eyebrows. “Spill it, Charlie, you look like death.”
“Thanks,” I said, dredging up a smile from some recess. She suggested coffee. I agreed, even though I’d had the dubious pleasure of the paper’s office coffee machine before. Her brief absence gave me a chance to marshal my tattered thoughts.
“There you go,” she said, plonking down a plastic cup full of a sludgy dark grey liquid in front of me. “Now, come on, what’s happened?”