‘No, I’ll see what the pics are like, then be on my way. I get a name under as usual?’ He meant acknowledgment beneath the picture of O’Leary and Plaskett which no doubt would appear on the front page of tomorrow’s edition.
‘Naturally. Unless you’re so pissed off you don’t want a mention.’
‘See you tomorrow, Freddy.’ Creed hoisted his camera bag and headed for the processing room.
Squires called after him, ‘Stay home tonight, Joe, leave the glitzies in peace for once. You look better, but you still don’t look good.’
The contact sheet of that day’s shoot was ready by the time Creed reached the photographic department and he studied each frame through a magnifier, making small crosses against his personal choices with a white chinagraph, although it would be the picture editor or his deputy who would make the final decision. He was pleased with the results, but somehow couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to be delighted. You’re tired, he told himself. Tired, mystified, and . . . he had to admit it . . . scared. It was difficult to feel delighted about anything in that condition. Today’s assignment had kept him busy, kept his mind concentrated on more mundane – mundane and (relatively speaking) natural – things. But now it was dark outside and he had to go back alone to the house and he had to sit down and consider what to do about the note and the negs and whether to call in the police and how the fuck did you explain what had happened to the boys in blue who would probably want to search his place for drugs the moment he mentioned the toilet bowl had tried to bite off his pecker and the night before he’d met Nosferatu the thinking man’s fucking Dracula and last night bugs had tried to eat him alive in his bed although they’d left no marks on his body and the police would ask him how he got the bump on his head and he’d tell them he’d fallen downstairs the day before and yes he realised concussion could lead to all kinds of complications and even hallucinations . . .
He stopped, having wandered into a corridor outside the processing room, and leaned against the wall. Concussion? Had he jolted something inside his head, was something swelling, blood clotting, something pressing against certain cells . . . touching certain nerves . . . pressuring tissue . . . oh God, was that it?
He moaned softly.
Wait. That didn’t explain the note. It didn’t explain Cally. Both were real enough. Neither one was a figment of his imagination. Were they?
He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the piece of paper.
YOU WILL BRING THE FILM TO US
YOU WILL NOT SPEAK OF IT
It was real enough.
And so was Cally. He’d spoken to her, given her wine. He’d lusted after her, for Chrissake! She was no figment of the imagination. Dipstick – Lidtrap – remembered her, even though she’d lied about working for him. So you’re not cracking up, Creed. Not yet, anyway.
He left the corridor and went through the newsroom to the features department next door. In a far corner there were four desks pushed together, these combining to make up the Diary desk. Not one position around the assemblage was occupied. Creed scanned the untidy working tops, looking for a folder or package among the jumble of papers and cuttings that might bear his name.
‘Is this what you’re looking for?’
He looked up to see Antony Blythe, without jacket but still immaculate in blue pin-stripe shirt with white collar, pink silk tie and lethally creased grey slacks, standing in the doorway of the glass-partitioned cubby-hole he called an office. He held a fifteen-by-ten manila envelope in his hand.
‘Has it got my name on it?’ asked Creed.
Blythe waggled the prize at him.
Creed walked over to the diarist and reached out for the envelope. Childishly, Blythe held it tight against his chest.
‘You were supposed to deliver some photographs to me,’ he said tartly.
‘They haven’t been processed yet,’ Creed lied, snatching the package from the other man’s grasp. ‘You can go down and help yourself when they’re ready.’ For all the good it’ll do you, he thought. No way would the story be allocated to the gossip column alone. He noticed the envelope flap was open. ‘Have you been into this?’
‘Prunella is my assistant. Any research she does comes to me first.’
‘She gave it to you?’
‘She works for me.’
Yeah, and you picked it up from her desk and stuck your nose inside even though it had my name on the front.
‘Why the desperate interest in this foul person Mallik?’ Blythe had no shame.
Creed had had enough for one day. He turned away, waving a weary hand at the bald-headed diarist as if to dismiss him.
‘I asked you a question.’
‘It’s none of your business,’ Creed replied, already walking away.
‘I can make it my business, you know,’ Blythe called after him.
The photographer’s response wasn’t very clear, but the diarist was sure it had something to do with his own head and a bucket of shit.
All Creed wanted to do now was sleep.
It’d been a long day and the preceding nights had been nightmarish – literally. It was catching up on him. Maybe tomorrow he’d see a doctor about the bump on his head, maybe even take the day off, phone in sick. The newspaper didn’t own him, neither did the photo agency; ultimately he was his own boss, even if he did have contracts with them both. Sleep away the tiredness and the dull ache inside his head, that was the thing to do. Hell, when was the last time he took a day off? He couldn’t remember. When he got home he’d have a stiff drink and a long bath, followed by another stiff drink. The booze would help him sleep better.
The traffic, even at that time of evening, wasn’t good, but at least it was moving freely. He kept his speed low, too tired to do battle with others on the road.
Stopped at traffic lights, he glanced down at the envelope lying in the shadows on the front passenger seat. The right thing to do would be to turn the whole lot over to the police first thing in the morning and let them get on with it. He had the photographs of the funeral, the warning note, and now whatever information Prunella had dug up on this character Mallik. Let them make of it what they will. If he were in some kind of danger, then it was their job to protect him (but would they, could they?). He needn’t mention the hallucinations, and they already knew about the intruder. Let them figure out the connection between the nutter at the funeral and the man who was hanged all those years ago.
He snatched a look at the envelope again. For some reason it made him nervous just lying there in the shifting light.
Eventually he turned off the main drag into the sidestreets and from there it was only minutes before he reached Hesper Mews. He left the jeep idling on the cobblestones outside his garage while he opened the doors; he climbed back aboard and drove in, then closed the doors again, making sure they were firmly locked. He used another key to get into his office and locked it after him. He left the office and locked that door too. Then he stood at the foot of the stairs and wondered why a light was shining from the landing above.
Creed scrabbled blindly for the front door latch behind him as footsteps approached the top of the stairs.
14
‘Lo, Dad.’
Creed’s hand stayed on the door lock. ‘Uhhh . . .’ was all he could find to say.
His small but portly son stepped down one step, light from behind throwing his face into shadow.
‘Sam . . . Sammy?’
No reply from the boy.
Creed moved away from the door, his hand reaching out and clutching the stair-post for support. ‘What . . .’ rage crept in ‘. . . what the f – the hell are you doing here?’
The first sniffle broke from the boy. A knuckle lifted to his face.
‘Okay, okay, take it easy.’ Still shaking from the shock he’d had, Creed began to climb, one hand outstretched to pacify the boy before the floodgates opened. Sammy stared down at him, his shoulders drooped. He was still wearing his school uniform, Creed notic
ed.
When they were at eye level, Creed three steps from the top, he paused. ‘What’s going on, Sammy?’ he said as gently as he could, restraining himself from grabbing his son’s shoulders and shouting into his face for scaring him half-to-death.
‘She doesn’t want me,’ came the reply that was more petulant than sorry. Another sniffle followed.
‘Who? Your mother? Christ, ’course she wants you, Sammy. Your mother loves you.’
‘She doesn’t!’ The boy turned and stomped away from him into the kitchen.
‘Hey, wait a min—’ Creed ran a hand through his already dishevelled hair. This was all he needed. Usually Evelyn and Samuel teamed up against him – God knows what poison she’d fed him over the years – but now it seemed the ranks had split. So what was he supposed to do with the kid?
‘Sammy . . .’ He followed the boy into the kitchen and found him sitting at the table, a loaf of bread in front of him, jam and sugar spread on the slice he was just cramming into his mouth. ‘I’ve got plates in the house, Sam. And you don’t need a carving knife to spread jam.’
The boy regarded him sullenly, his jaw steadily working on the mulched bread.
‘Your mother will be worried sick. Does she know you came here?’
Samuel nodded, then licked jam off a finger.
‘You rang her?’
A shake of his head with another sniffle.
‘Then how does she know?’ Creed pulled out a chair and sat down opposite his son. ‘Will you stop feeding your face for a minute and answer me? How does she know you’re here?’
‘She sent me.’
Creed leaned forward, arms on the table. ‘She sent you here?’
The boy nodded again.
‘Sam, I’m gonna give you five seconds to explain yourself. If I’m no wiser after that you’re in serious trouble.’
Samuel considered him for four of those seconds. ‘Mum put me in a taxi and told the driver where to take me. She gave me the key to get in in case you were out.’
‘She’s got a key?’
Sam shook his head. ‘No, I’ve got it.’ He dipped into his blazer pocket and put a Yale key on the table between them.
The crafty bitch, Creed thought. How long has she had that? Another reason to change the locks. ‘I don’t believe you, Sammy. She wouldn’t send you here.’
The boy shrugged and resumed eating.
‘I’m gonna call her,’ the father warned.
No reaction at all this time.
‘Okay, kid, you asked for it.’ Creed rose and went to the phone. He dialled and watched the boy eating as he waited for an answer.
‘Hello?’
‘Evelyn, it’s Joe.’
The voice at the other end dropped a tone or two. ‘Enjoying your son? You see what I have to put up with?’
‘What’s this all about, Evelyn? Did you send him here?’
‘Of course I did. You are its father, aren’t you? Perhaps you’d like to take on that responsibility for a while.’
‘Evelyn, you know it’s not that easy—’
‘You think it’s been easy for me all these years? Bringing up that brat on my own, acting as mother, father, and God knows what else, teaching him things his father is supposed to teach him, laying down the law when he’s difficult – which is most of the time – feeding him, clothing him, nursing him. Running myself ragged for the ungrateful little . . . little . . .’ Tears now. ‘You don’t know what it’s been like, you have no idea. While you’ve been having fun I’ve had to work and worry and take care of everything myself . . .’
‘Evelyn . . .’
‘And what do you care, what have you ever done for him? Well enough is enough, you can see what it’s like for a while, no, not for a while, for good, permanently, you—’
‘Evelyn!’
The outflow stopped momentarily. Her words were icy, not a tear in them, when she resumed. ‘It’s your turn, Joe. It’s about time you were a father to him, so here’s your chance. See how you like it for a few days.’
‘A few days? You know I can’t do that. Christ, I’ve got a job that keeps me busy at all hours. And I can tell you this – now, right now, isn’t the time to have him with me.’
‘There’s never a good time for you. You’re just going to have to cope.’
‘Look, Evelyn . . .’ wheedling ‘. . . have a talk with Sammy – Samuel. You know, he’s missing you already.’ Creed watched the boy sprinkling sugar on a fresh slice of bread and jam. ‘He’s really upset, Evelyn.’
‘The little shit!’
‘Hey, c’mon. What’s he done to upset you like this?’
‘Ask him, why don’t you? Ask your son the thief.’
‘He’s been stealing?’
‘Ask him! Money from my purse, money from the other children at school. Did you know he was a bully, too? He’s been taking – not stealing, taking – money and sweets from the smaller boys. The headmaster called me in today. I had to go to the school and be told my son – your son – was a thief and a bully and if he didn’t change his ways pretty smartish the headmaster would have no choice but to expel him. Can you imagine how I felt? How small, how low, how . . . how degraded! And do you know what excuse Samuel gave me when I got him home? When I asked him why he’d done such a terrible thing? And by then, of course, I’d realized what I’d only suspected before, that he’d been helping himself to money from my purse for months now. Do you know what excuse he gave me?’
‘No, I don’t know, Evelyn.’
‘None at all! Doesn’t that make you want to hang your head in shame, you bastard?’
‘Me?’
‘You. You’re its father. And God, doesn’t it show! Well, now it’s time for you to show it some discipline. Let’s see how you handle it.’
‘I’ve told you, I can’t—’
‘You’ve got no bloody choice!’
The phone went dead. Creed stared at it and then at the boy. ‘Your mother’s missing you already,’ he said.
The jam around Samuel’s mouth was like a big cheery grin, but his eyes remained sullen. Wearily, Creed went over to the table and leaned against the back of a chair. ‘Right, let me get us both a drink, then we’ll talk. You want milk, lemonade, orange juice?’
‘Diet Pepsi.’
‘Lemonade coming up. You don’t mind if I have something stronger?’
‘Whiskey? Mum says you always drink whiskey.’ The boy seemed genuinely interested.
‘Not all the time, Sam. But tonight I think I need it. You want me to fix you something proper to eat? Some beans or something?’
‘Fish fingers and mashed potatoes with gravy.’
‘Uh, I’m out of fish fingers and I think – I can check though – I think I’m out of potatoes. Hey, how about a burger? I could nip round the corner and bring some back for us both. I’ll get you a milkshake, too.’
‘I’m not allowed.’
‘You’re only ten, for Chrissake. You’re supposed to have those things.’
‘Mum says I’ve got to cut down.’
‘Well, yeah, you can have too much of a good thing, but let’s make tonight an exception. Sam, the other kids at school been calling you names?’
The boy looked down at his bread as if he’d found something interesting crawling in the jam. If he had, it was soon devoured.
Creed regarded his son with a feeling that was dangerously close to compassion. Since Sammy had turned six a rift had opened up between them – not that the link before had been too wonderful in terms of father-son relationships. Evelyn was right: Creed had always been too busy, his working hours irregular, for his natural parental duties and obligations to be effective. And for sure, as every parent knows, there’s more to bringing up children than duties and obligations. Apart from the obvious loving and caring, there is what might best be termed ‘free time’. That’s the hours, even the minutes (they’re all crucial), you give over to just being available, whether it’s to play, tell stories, inst
ruct, or enter into debate. This time is equal to the other two in importance (some might say more so) and that was the biggest problem as far as Creed and Samuel were concerned. Finding time for fun wasn’t easy for this particular working man, but worse than this, when there was time, Creed’s boredom level was very, very low. Playing with his son was okay for brief periods, say five, ten minutes or so, but after that his attention invariably wandered, ‘important’ things he had to do suddenly occurred to him; his patience ran out. It’s a problem the selfish have. To be fair to the father, though, the son wasn’t exactly a bundle of joy either.
Samuel was overweight by the age of two and, while on some infants ‘baby-fat’ can be cute, on Creed’s son it was undoubtedly obese – no other way to describe it. His face, with its mop of curly brown hair above it, would have been almost pretty had not his swollen cheeks and forehead recessed his eyes to such a degree that he appeared to be wearing a permanent frown. That, you might remark, was hardly the boy’s fault, especially if his parents indulged him so; but Samuel did have the tendency (and the cunning) to create the most God-awful fuss if he were hungry and sustenance wasn’t immediately forthcoming. Burdened with the difficulties of an already rocky marriage, Evelyn was inclined to appease Samuel rather than endure his ear-bashing tantrums; also, lost affection for her husband was increasingly redirected towards her son (so much so, in fact, that Creed eventually realized that mother and son had formed some kind of tacit alliance against him). And Samuel wasn’t dumb: from an early age he was adept at using mother-love against father’s wrath. The final and irrevocable break-up of the marriage hadn’t helped the kid’s personality any, and naturally enough parental guilt was fully taken advantage of. Creed wasn’t at all surprised to learn that his son had developed into a thief and a bully, for on those odd days or weekends they did manage to get together he had found Samuel not just sulky (unless things were going entirely his own way) but also a little sly and a whole lot spoilt. In truth – and a terrible thing for any father to admit – Creed found his son somewhat obnoxious.
Now he gazed down on the boy who, when all was said and done, was only ten years old, and felt an unfamiliar lump in his throat. The boy might be a bit overweight, he might be a mother’s boy (albeit not quite at that particular moment), he might have an attitude problem, but he was his son!