The policeman seemed to be sizing him up. Then he took off his sunglasses and said, ‘Look, son, I’m not trying to be difficult. Was he a good friend of yours, this feller?’
Chris’s mind raced. It sounded as if something bad had happened – but not to Jenny, or the policeman would have said she.
‘No, just someone I know. His name’s Derek.’
‘Well, your friend was arrested yesterday and charged with selling drugs. Was that what you came here for?’
‘What? Drugs?’ Chris was gaping with astonishment. ‘Me? Course not!’
‘No, naturally,’ said the policeman, taking out a notebook. ‘Can I have your name and address?’
‘What for?’
‘In case your friend needs your help. In case we need to get in touch with you.’
Like most people his age, Chris had had little to do with the police, but he feared and mistrusted them. On one occasion earlier that year, he’d been cycling home late with his friend Carl, and two policemen in a car had made them stop and give their names and addresses, and had insisted on checking their bicycles to see if they were marked with their postcodes. Chris remembered feeling frightened and helpless, even though he’d done nothing wrong, and he felt the same now. It simply never occurred to him to give a false name and address; and if it had, he’d have imagined that the truth would be found out, and it would make things worse. So, angry and resentful, he gave his real name and address. The policeman wrote them down.
‘What about the others living here?’ Chris asked.
‘Others? What others?’
‘Derek’s friends.’
‘Who might they have been?’
‘You want me to give you their names, right? So you can look for them, too?’
The policeman looked at him steadily. ‘If they’re involved, and if you know anything about them, and if you withhold that from the police, then you’re involved too, sunshine.’
‘I just told you my bloody name, and it’s not sunshine.’
‘This is true,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s a good thing I know you’re telling the truth, Chris. I can always tell. Well, now, whoever was living here was doing so illegally. Squatting, in a word. They’d been warned to leave, so they were liable to be arrested for trespassing, in any case. How helpful do you want to be to your friends?’
The meaning was clear: I’m going to tell you nothing, but the more we talk, the more you’ll tell me. Chris found himself flushing with anger. He couldn’t ask about Jenny without incriminating her.
‘Where are they now?’ he said.
‘In St Aldate’s police station, I expect.’
Chris turned to go. He dropped the paper bag with Jenny’s ice cream into the nearest litter bin, and rode away with his head thudding.
As soon as he got home, and his mother had gone into the garden so he could do it without being overheard, he phoned the police station.
‘Hello. I’m trying to find someone … she’s missing …’
He had to give his name and address. Having had time to think, he gave a false one.
‘And who’s the missing person?’
‘Her name’s Jenny. Er – this is stupid. I’m sorry, I don’t know her surname.’
‘Where does she live?’
He hesitated. ‘Somewhere in East Oxford. Off the Cowley Road. I’m not sure exactly. She’s about seventeen years old, and she’s slim, and she’s got short dark hair. Oh, she’s white – got a Yorkshire accent.’
‘How long’s she been missing?’
‘About … twenty-four hours.’
‘And what’s your connection with her? I mean, do you work with her? Is she a friend, or what?’
‘She’s a friend.’
‘Girlfriend?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘You don’t know where she lives, you don’t know her surname … What, did she not turn up for a date or something?’
Chris felt foolish and bitter. ‘Yeah, something like that.’
‘She comes from Yorkshire, you say? Could she have gone home?’
‘Well, I suppose she could have.’
‘Why don’t you try there, then? We haven’t got much to go on here, have we?’
‘No, but … I think she might have been arrested, that’s all.’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘What, here in Oxford?’
‘Yeah. Possibly.’
‘Just hang on a minute.’
The phone went quiet. A short while later the voice spoke again.
‘Nobody of that description has been arrested here, I can tell you that. Would you mind telling me what—’
Chris stopped listening. He put down the phone.
Chapter Eight
That evening Mike Fairfax was attending a meeting somewhere, so Chris and his mother had supper together on their own. Instead of eating at the big table in the kitchen, as they did when Mike was there, they had pizza on their laps watching television. Chris was glad that they didn’t have to face each other and talk. There was only one thing that was occupying his mind, and he didn’t want to talk about that.
His mother was a good-looking woman of forty, whose dark hair and skin led some people to think of her as Middle Eastern, even though she wasn’t. She worked as an art teacher in a private school, and from time to time she half-seriously took up pottery, or weaving, or some other craft, and got quite good at it before losing interest. She feared that she was less interesting, less gifted and magnetic than Chris’s father, and she was probably right. She suspected that Chris enjoyed his company more than hers, and she was right there too. All in all, she was an unhappy woman, and only Mike Fairfax had saved her from becoming bitter; but now, in love with him, she gave off a glow of contentment that even Chris noticed.
That evening as they sat together in the untidy comfort of their living room, she felt that she’d been neglecting her son and realized that they hadn’t even planned a holiday that year. In all the changes that had been taking place, it had simply been forgotten.
‘I’ve just thought!’ she said. ‘We haven’t got anything planned.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘A holiday. I should have thought … It just slipped my mind. How stupid.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I don’t want to go away in any case.’
‘Oh, come on, don’t be a stick in the mud. We always go away.’
‘With Dad, yeah.’
‘Well, things are different. But we should still have a holiday.’
‘Everything’s different. Anyway, Barry Miller needs me full-time. He said so.’
‘What, for ever? It’s only a holiday job. Is he forbidding you to go away or something?’
‘There’s nowhere I want to go. Anyway …’
He didn’t know how to put it. She guessed what he meant, though, and, feeling confident for once, she said, ‘Anyway what?’
‘Well, I mean, who would it be?’
‘What d’you mean, who would it be?’
‘Well, me and you, or what? You talking about Mike as well?’
‘Why not?’
‘No reason why not. I’m just saying would he be coming with us?’
‘I don’t know, Chris. I haven’t asked. I only this minute thought about it. I just thought that we hadn’t planned a holiday, and I thought you might like to go abroad somewhere, that’s all.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, normally … I don’t know, Mum. I just hadn’t sort of reckoned on it.’
‘Well, wouldn’t you like to?’
‘No, actually. If you’re asking what I want, well, what I want is to stay here and work for Barry Miller. I don’t want to go anywhere.’
They were both watching the television rather than each other, though neither could have said what the programme was about. She took a careful sip of her wine.
‘Would it make a difference if Mike didn’t come?’ she said.
‘No.’
The
re was another pause.
Then Chris said, ‘Why don’t you and Mike go off by yourselves?’
‘What? Don’t be silly.’
‘Why’s that silly?’
‘I’m not leaving you on your own.’
‘I can cope. I managed all right at Dad’s. I managed here, actually, before you met Mike.’
‘I know, darling. I know you can. It’s not that. But I couldn’t go off and leave you on your own, absolutely not. I just can’t understand why you want to spend all summer working at a boring little job in Cowley.’
‘Because I like Barry Miller, that’s why. And it’s not boring. And if you’re going to twist this around and make out it’s me preventing you from having a holiday, I’m not, OK? I can look after myself, and I’m happy to look after myself, so if you and Mike want to go off somewhere that’s fine. That’s OK, that’s no problem. Just go.’
The last thing Chris wanted to do for the rest of that evening was sit and watch television. Restless, unhappy, desperate to see Jenny again and hold her safe in his arms, to talk, to kiss the butterfly tattoo, he left the house as soon as he’d stacked the dishwasher, and cruised the warm evening streets on his bicycle, scanning every face, and finding her nowhere. Only when it was completely dark did he turn reluctantly back towards home.
The girl on whose floor Jenny spent Sunday night had left her old job and gone to work in a café that had become popular with the sort of people who liked to be seen drinking fashionable foreign beer and listening to the latest fashionable live music, which that summer was jazz. The café sold calzones and pizza and baked potatoes on cast-iron plates and salad in wooden bowls, and the staff sounded even more aggressively snobbish than the customers.
They needed another waitress, and since Jenny had run out of money, her friend suggested that she come along and meet the manager. He was named Tommy Sanchez. He was in his thirties, stocky and husky-voiced; his long dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. He had the same upper-class background as his staff and customers. Jenny wasn’t the sort of girl he normally hired, but he offered her a job starting that Monday night. She knew she was lucky to find one so quickly; she had no choice but to accept.
She was becoming more and more aware of the effect she had on certain kinds of men. They were usually much older than she was, old enough to be her father, and they seemed to sense some quality in her that aroused them. And then they stopped being men and became something like tigers or wolves – bright-eyed, cruel-mouthed, intent not on kindness or friendship or love but on consuming her, destroying her, rending her apart.
Boys and men she liked and trusted, on the other hand, were either those whose interests lay elsewhere, like Derek and Ollie, or those who carried a sort of innocence with them, like Chris. She’d never met anyone quite like him. He was no coward, no weakling, nor was he just ignorant or childish; but there was something clean and unknowing about him, like a pure-hearted inhabitant of some unpolluted culture a long way away. There was nothing more she wanted to do, in the time they spent together at Rose Hill, than to tell him all about her father and how he’d blasted and destroyed her childhood. But at the same time she knew it would shock him; she feared that he would come to see her as she saw herself: corrupt, poisonous, tainted.
And when she met Tommy Sanchez, she recognized him at once for the type she knew, and made up her mind to keep clear of him as much as possible. And to spend all her spare time looking for Chris.
While she did that, he was looking for her. The city of Oxford isn’t big enough to get lost in, and it would have been possible for them to meet by chance; but bad luck kept them apart.
For one thing, Jenny was working in the café all evening, which was mainly the time that Chris had to look for her; whereas during the morning and afternoon he was usually at the warehouse or out in the van. Secondly, if she’d been working in any other café he might have gone in for coffee or something to eat, and come across her that way. But the year before, when the place had opened, Chris had gone there looking for a summer job, and Tommy Sanchez had been so unpleasant that he swore he’d never go there again. And, finally, Jenny had to move. She couldn’t sleep on her friend’s floor for ever, and places in Oxford itself were almost impossible to find. Now that she had a steady job she could at least afford a room, even though it wasn’t in the city. She found a bedsit in Kidlington, a bus ride to the north, the place where Barry Miller lived; so for much of the time she wasn’t even in Oxford.
Their paths did cross. Once they came within a few yards of each other; but the street was crowded with tourists, and they simply walked past, unseeing. And once in the late afternoon, as Jenny was sitting in the hot minibus going down the Banbury Road to work, she saw Chris riding up the other way – grim-faced, intent, and withdrawn. She asked the driver to stop, and jumped out at once, but Chris was too far away to hear her calling, and he didn’t look back.
Finally, swallowing her misgivings, telling herself not to be stupid, Jenny went to Rose Hill and rang the bell of Chris’s father’s house. All she had to do was ask his address, after all.
But there was no one there, and an estate agent’s sign in the front garden said Sold. Chris’s father and Diane had moved out to their cottage near Long Hanborough, and the vacant Rose Hill house had sold quickly. The bell resounded in the empty hallway, and no one answered, and Jenny came away defeated and unhappy.
Chapter Nine
About ten days after he’d last seen Jenny, Chris was sitting in the warehouse checking through some stage lights that had just come back from hire when Barry Miller came in. The two of them were alone; Dave and Tony were out on a job somewhere. Barry sat down on the bench near Chris and picked up a switch, fiddling with it absently. He looked preoccupied.
‘How’s the chalet?’ said Chris.
‘Oh, fine. That infrared thingy hasn’t come through yet. Suppose I ought to give ’em a ring. Hey, you done any plastering?’
‘Never.’
‘Joinery? Carpentry?’
‘Well, a bit. I can saw straight, put screws and nails in, do simple joints … What sort of thing do you mean?’
‘In the chalet. The walls, right, they’re just concrete panelling. Well, I want to put studs in – you know, a timber frame along the inside to nail plasterboard to. And put insulation in behind it. Keep the place nice and snug.’
‘I could do that.’
‘And maybe a stud partition across one end, with a door in it.’
‘Yeah,’ said Chris. ‘Easy.’
‘What, on your own?’
‘Well, it can’t be too hard, can it? Wood’s easy stuff. So’s plasterboard, probably. I couldn’t do proper plaster; I wouldn’t try. But I like wood. Yeah, I could do that.’
‘What about a ceiling?’
‘I’m trying to remember the roof … It’s corrugated iron, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. Corrugated iron over timber beams. Sloping, you know. But I thought I’d have a false ceiling, just to make it look tidier. Nothing fancy. Polystyrene tiles, maybe.’
‘So you’d want a framework there first. I’d need help for that, I reckon. You can’t hold something above your head and work on it.’
‘We could do that together, maybe. But if you want to do the walls, I’ll make it worth your while.’
‘OK, then,’ said Chris. ‘Do you know what materials you want? I mean sizes and quantities? Otherwise we’ll have to go there and measure up, work it out. And what about plumbing? You were thinking about that last time.’
‘Oh, I’ll get around to that sometime. No hurry for that. No, listen, the thing is not to speak about that place to anyone at all. Not even Sue or Sean.’
‘No. I know.’
‘’Cause, you know, I’m not exaggerating, it could be bloody dangerous.’
‘What was it all about, then?’ Chris said. ‘This family that’s after you … What’re you supposed to have done?’
He thought he had the right to ask, since he
was being involved in the building of the chalet. Barry looked around carefully and lowered his voice when he answered.
‘I mentioned Ireland, didn’t I? Northern Ireland. Belfast. I used to work there … I dunno how much I can tell you, but bugger the Official Secrets Act – the whole thing stinks. I was working for the army, right. Special technical operations. Connected with the SAS. Not in the army but sort of attached. It was all unofficial, you know, deniable. In case anything went wrong, we didn’t exist, kind of thing. We were involved with bomb disposal, surveillance, anything electronic.
‘Anyway, the point is, there was this paramilitary group. A family named Carson. Protestants. Most of the time we were working against the other lot, the IRA; but this bunch were nutters, honest. Killers. Murderers. We got word they were looking for an explosives expert, some bloke from London. He was an expert on industrial explosives, and he was a bit bent, you know. He’d do anything, sell anything. But he knew how to get his hands on some Semtex, which the Carsons had never used before, it was new to them. They didn’t want to blow themselves up.
‘Well, what they reckoned – the blokes in charge of our unit – they reckoned they’d intercept the London bloke, ’cause the Carsons had never met him, see; they didn’t know what he looked like. They’d keep the real bloke out of the way and get someone to substitute for him. You know, pretend to be him, go and meet the Carsons, and catch ’em red-handed. So they asked for volunteers, and I did it.’
Chris was listening half-incredulously. It was the sort of story you saw in TV thrillers. And yet things like that did happen, and Barry was telling it in a slow, reluctant, embarrassed way which made it very hard to disbelieve.
‘So what happened?’ Chris said.
‘Well, I pretended to be this explosives expert, which was easy enough. I knew all the technical side. And I set ’em up. Tape recorder, hidden video camera, the lot. Trouble was, there was a fight. There was an ambush. The whole thing went off half-cocked. The RUC – you know, the police – they hadn’t been properly briefed, and they stumbled on it, and before we knew what was happening there were bullets flying all over the bloody place. One of the Carsons, Frank, he was jailed. Twenty years. Another one, his brother Billy, he got shot. Their cousin was killed as well. Most of the group was rounded up, and we got Frank and the others on tape, so I suppose they called it a success.