A Cast of Vultures Read online

  At that, Jake burst out laughing. Then he didn’t stop. Finally he put his head down on the table. He didn’t quite hold his ribs, but it looked like he was thinking about it. I waited. He didn’t lift his head off the table, but he looked up. ‘The police can’t use “a satchel is first cousin to a suitcase”?’

  I was sure that there was a witty comeback to that, one that would at one and the same time make clear my certainty while defusing my peculiar thought processes. But I was too tired to come up with it. I was too tired to care. I finished wiping down the counters and flicked on the dishwasher. ‘Helena said to tell you, so I followed orders: I told you. Now, I know it’s not even nine, but I’m done. Finished. I’m going to bed.’

  In the morning, when I woke up, Jake was gone and had left a note, ‘At the gym’, as he did most Saturdays. It also added, somewhat mysteriously, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back in plenty of time.’

  Don’t worry? Time? Then I remembered. It was the day of Helena’s party. I pulled the pillow over my head and whined into it for a while. When I lifted it off, nothing had changed. I still had to go to Helena’s party.

  Steve and Mike were both in the garden when I collected my cycle from under the stairs, but I waved and said, ‘Don’t stop on my account’, which they appeared to understand was code for ‘Hey, guys, how about we don’t talk.’ There’s only so much sociability a person can take in any twenty-four-hour period, and with Helena’s knees-up looming, my sociability levels were going to be stretched to their limits.

  I’d slept in, and I was a good hour late when I got to Viv’s. She always had a packed schedule – you don’t get to be the eyes and ears of a densely populated neighbourhood by sitting at home and knitting. She wasn’t sitting at home, much less knitting, when I got there. I rang and waited, but there was no ‘What do you want?’, Viv’s greeting of choice. I set Mr Rudiger’s offerings on her doorstep, only then noticing a plastic bag on the mat. I peered in. Yes, seedlings, and a note. ‘Mr R.’ it said. Nothing for the messenger. I was just a small cog in the wheel that was the Great Garden Swap.

  I was almost at the turn-off for the market when I spotted Viv standing outside the train station. I was stopped at the lights, so I had hopped off and was walking towards her before I realised that one of the three people she was talking to – or, if I was reading the situation correctly, one of the three people she was haranguing – was a policeman. I stood back and waited as she jabbed her finger in his direction and he replied, rabbit-in-the-headlights, by nodding frantically. When she had him suitably cowed, she gestured behind her. My turn.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said, dividing it up among the three of them.

  Viv kept an iron grip on the conversation. ‘This is PC Neill. And his colleagues. Community police officers.’ As such, they didn’t rate highly enough to have names, said her tone. ‘I’ve been trying to find out how many times the police are going to traipse in and out of Dennis’s flat. They’ve been keeping me up nights. I can’t afford to be short on sleep.’ She said this with the grave importance of the keeper of the nuclear detonator, the free world at risk from a finger shaky with lack of eight hours’ solid rest.

  It was a challenge, but I didn’t smile. ‘I’m sure PC Neill isn’t responsible for that. It’ll be either the arson people, or detectives from the drugs division, I imagine, who have been investigating.’

  I wasn’t sure of the proper names of the various departments, but I doubted Viv knew either, and the poor constable in front of us had been so terrorised by Viv that he was agreeing with everything – if I’d said the Prime Minister of New Zealand, aided by a team of crack haka dancers, had stepped in to take charge, he would have backed me up on that too.

  Viv folded her arms and looked me up and down. I was no better than the police. ‘And then what?’

  I was silent.

  She snorted: she’d thought as much. ‘Apart from morrising above my head at midnight, what are the police doing?’ She looked over at the poor PC, who couldn’t have been much older than Sam. ‘He won’t tell me anything.’

  I thought he might cry, which would embarrass all of us, so I interrupted. ‘Look, they’re there, they’re doing something, that’s what you wanted last week, when they weren’t doing anything, isn’t it?’

  The community officers had used my appearance as a cover to back away, pretending that they’d made entirely different career choices – poultry farming, perhaps, or oil-rig construction – and were now in the vicinity merely by chance. The PC’s radio squawked. It was probably his mother, reminding him to be home by ten, but he too now used the interruption as an opportunity to retreat.

  I wheeled my cycle beside Viv as she marched to the crossing. She was ignoring me, payment for siding with the PC. I should have been grateful, and headed off to the market, but to my horror I heard myself saying, ‘I was told Harefield had a friend who worked at Camden market. I thought I’d go down this morning and see if he’d talk to me.’

  I’d thought this would pacify her, since she’d been complaining that no one was doing anything, but instead I got a glare. ‘How long have you known about him? Why didn’t you tell me his name, and I could have gone to see him while you were at work?’

  I thought quickly. ‘I found out about him on the night of the fire; I couldn’t have told you until yesterday. And since the market is half-operational during the week, we’d have had to wait until today anyway, to make sure he was there.’

  I got a grudging nod. Excuse accepted.

  Since we were pooling information, she handed over her share. ‘I’ve been trying to find his family. I rang his colleague at the council. The one whose name you gave me.’ This merited another sniff. Whatever he’d said, it was my fault.

  I tried to be optimistic. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he didn’t know, and passed me on to personnel, or manpower, or human resources, or whatever they call themselves. They weren’t any help, either. They wouldn’t tell me who they had down as his next-of-kin.’ She stiffened her spine. ‘So I’ve given it to someone else.’ Now she was a police divisional inspector, allocating assignments. ‘One of my friends has a grandson who is good at computers. He’s promised to do a search for me.’

  ‘That’s an excellent idea.’ I added, hopefully, ‘The police may be more active now that the pub burnt down, since they can’t think Harefield was the arsonist for that.’

  Viv was scornful. ‘They’ll just bother the boys more.’

  ‘Have they come back to question them again?’

  Viv made an exasperated ‘tuh’ noise, which I took to be her view on the reappearance of the police.

  I was concerned. ‘They should have someone to look out for them. My mother is a solicitor. I can ask her to recommend someone.’

  ‘Who is going to pay for that?’

  ‘No one. That is, they won’t need to pay. She’ll find them someone who works with—’ I hadn’t thought of a diplomatic form of words, and I stumbled. ‘Someone who works with boys who have been in trouble.’ There. That sounded all right. ‘They do it without a fee,’ I added quickly.

  She was suspicious. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Plenty of lawyers take on extra cases for people they think need help, or are about things they’re interested in, and they don’t charge.’

  She didn’t reply, just marched along, arms swinging. She just didn’t believe me.

  ‘They do, really. The good guys, at least. My mum is one of them, and her friends too. I think I should ask her to find someone for Sam and the other boys.’

  Decision made. ‘They need it,’ she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  AT THE MARKET, I bought flowers for Helena, and then, as an afterthought, texted her: Anything you want from the market for your party? Ice cream from the place that does bizarre flavours: basil, ginger beer, liquorice? Helena was fanatically organised. She made storm troopers look like they’d majored in interpretative dance. She’d already have everything s
he needed, so something she didn’t need would be more useful. And if she said no, I could go back to bed later with ginger beer ice cream.

  I whizzed through my shopping as quickly as I could and then, stocked up for the week ahead, I headed down to Camden market. The contrast between the two markets could not have been more extreme. The farmers’ market I went to consisted of twenty produce stalls that were erected every Saturday in a school car park, and was attended by several hundred mostly middle-aged people, intermixed with a sprinkling of young marrieds pushing their progeny, and oldsters dragging shopping trolleys. Camden market, on the other hand, had possibly a thousand or so vendors selling to an average of fifteen thousand mostly teenaged customers, who wouldn’t be seen dead with either a pushchair or a pull-bag. And instead of organic rye bread, or courgette flowers, these customers were getting their eyebrows pierced, or were looking for Doc Martens.

  Fifteen thousand is a lot of people, so in the years I’d lived less than a kilometre away, I’d devised numerous routes especially to avoid the main drag where the stalls were concentrated. It felt strange now to be searching out the most congested area, but that was what my map had assured me I needed to do. After a few minutes, I realised I’d do better on foot, so I dumped my cycle, chaining it to a lamp post.

  Then I headed in, feeling like one of those soldiers going over the top in World War I movies. They knew it wasn’t going to be pretty, but stiff upper lip and all that. And it wasn’t pretty, if you were over twenty-seven and had few occasions for lava lamps, skull rings or more Celtic jewellery than there had ever been Celts. I kept moving forward, putting me at odds with everyone else, none of whom had any firm destination, but were simply drifting from stall to stall.

  I tried to keep on a straight path to where I estimated the stall was, shaking my head ‘no’ to the dozens of people thrusting out ads for merchandise, for shops and for concerts at the passers-by, shaking it ‘no’ again as stallholders promoted their goods, which were, they promised, cheap, beautiful, cheap, original, and did I mention cheap?

  The online map had put Kevin Munroe’s stall next to a row of takeaway food places, and a pub. In taking evasive action around various groups of teens, I’d got myself turned around, and had lost any sense of where I was. I swayed in a circle, trying to get my bearings. A heavily tattooed man stood by the doorway to a shop. ‘Which way is the Hawley Arms?’ I asked.

  He looked at his watch ostentatiously. ‘A little early for a pint, girl?’

  I gave a polite, if forced, smile, the kind women have been giving men who get in their face for centuries. ‘I’m looking for a stall that’s right next to it.’

  ‘A tattoo before you head off there?’ he offered.

  I didn’t need to force that smile. I laughed out loud. ‘Because I’m the type, right?’

  He smiled back, honestly this time. ‘There’s no type. I could do you something small.’ He gestured to my cleavage. ‘A rosebud would look good there.’

  ‘It would.’ I was serious. ‘And then over the years, as gravity takes over, my partner and I can watch it turn into a long-stemmed beauty rose. It would be so romantic.’

  He raised his hands. ‘I surrender. A woman with an eye on the future isn’t my customer base.’ Wasn’t that the truth. ‘The Hawley Arms is that way: head for the railway cutting and you’ll see it in front of you.’

  I grinned and gave him a mock salute before I set off. I might have an eye on the future, but you never knew when you’ll need an emergency rosebud.

  Once I located the pub, finding Kevin Munroe’s stall wasn’t difficult. It was large, evidently very popular, and therefore surrounded by what looked like hundreds of teenaged boys, all turning over piles of T-shirts covered with graffiti designs. Sam had said that some of the boys had made T-shirts before Harefield had helped them set up a more professional sales system. I wondered if Munroe was that system.

  The man behind the stall was the man I’d seen with Azim on the night of the fire. He was tall and very thin, so thin he probably looked even taller, and he was a decade or so older than Sam and his friends. I stood in the shadow of the next row of stalls and watched as he bantered with his customers, selling his stock almost without pause. I didn’t approach. At first I told myself I would ‘in a few minutes’, minutes that, however, were never up. Then I admitted I wasn’t moving for two reasons. First, Munroe was more than a little frightening. He was dealing avuncularly with the teens shopping for shirts, but he had an air of menace. I had planned to be a customer, and fall into casual chat with him. Looking at him, I changed my mind.

  And that brought up the second reason: What could I ask him? Was Harefield dealing drugs, and were you his distribution conduit? Want to tell me about it? – Yes, just speak into the microphone. And anyway, I had been hoping that Harefield had been the good guy Viv thought him. If this more-than-slightly frightening man was his friend, that seemed increasingly unlikely, and I didn’t know how to proceed.

  Or was Munroe the prime mover? What if Harefield had been on the level, and the drugs in the shed had nothing to do with him? What if one of his boys was working with Munroe, and they had cached the drugs in the shed, and Harefield had found them? Then what? I was no longer watching Munroe, just staring blankly into space, trying to sort out where that might lead me. If Harefield had found the drugs, he might not have gone straight to the police. I considered. If it were me, I would want to know which of my boys had been involved. So perhaps Harefield had asked questions, or maybe he’d found the boy – and Munroe – with the drugs. They’d knocked him out and set fire to the shed to destroy the evidence and stop Harefield from going to the police.

  I ran through that scenario a few times. It would explain Harefield’s death, and also explain why everyone who knew Harefield thought he was a straight arrow, but he was nevertheless a straight arrow found in a shed with drugs, and with— I stopped. With drug-dealer sums of cash in his flat. Damn. That didn’t work.

  I refocused on Munroe’s stall, and blinked. A short, bald man wearing the same graffiti-style shirt that Munroe had been wearing was standing in his place. Munroe was nowhere to be seen. I stepped away from the stalls and looked around crossly. My, hadn’t that gone well.

  A voice came from directly behind me. ‘Looking for me, doll?’

  No one had ever called me ‘doll’, and until that moment, I would have been willing to bet that no one ever would, but all the same I knew it was me who was being addressed. I swung around. And there was Munroe, leaning against the street railing and smiling mockingly at me.

  I took an unconscious step back. ‘Why would you think that?’ Jesus, I was pathetic.

  ‘Because you’ve been standing watching me for the past twenty minutes? Or maybe it’s because you were also staring at me two nights ago when the pub burnt down?’ His questions came in a sneering sing-song. ‘Or do you just like looking at me? You’re a bit long in the tooth for me, but …’

  He’d looked frightening when I saw him at the fire, and that was nothing to the chill coming off him now. But since he was right, I had been watching him, there was no point in pretending. I ignored his last sentence and blurted out the question I had already decided I couldn’t ask. ‘I’m trying to find out about Dennis Harefield,’ I said. ‘What I’m hearing is so at odds – he was a great guy, he was a drug dealer, he helped out people who found themselves in trouble, he was an arsonist. They can’t all be true.’

  ‘Why not? And why the hell should I talk to some silly moo who comes nosing around asking questions?’

  From ‘girl’ to ‘doll’ to ‘silly moo’: the day was definitely going downhill. I ignored the name-calling. ‘Because I think he was a good guy, and I’d like to find out more. Can I buy you a drink?’ I gestured towards the Hawley Arms even as I knew the verdict was in: I was officially certifiable.

  Munroe stared blankly at me. He should have been handsome: tall, long blonde hair, surfer-dude body. But the blankness was pervasive, and
it was frightening. He shook his head once, sharply. ‘I don’t have time,’ he said, but before I could ask when he would have time, he added, ‘and I won’t have time later, either. There’s nothing I can tell you. Nothing I will tell you. Harefield was a good bloke. He worked with kids, and he did his best. Not all of the kids ended up in a good place.’ I presumed he was talking about himself. ‘I know nothing about arson, and I don’t believe Harefield did, either. That’s it. No more, so piss off, you hear?’

  He turned and started to walk away.

  ‘Did you work with him and his boys’ club?’ I called after him.

  He stopped. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘I didn’t.’ He moved so quickly I wouldn’t have had time to step back again even if I’d had the smarts to. He grabbed my upper arms and squeezed hard, shaking me sharply. ‘Just fuck off out of it. Harefield knew nothing. Nothing. And you need to keep your nose out of it before you make people angry.’ He shook me again, pushed me backwards and strode away.

  I stared at where his retreating back had been long after the crowd had closed around it. That was one terrifying man, and I wouldn’t put anything past him, not arson, not drug dealing, not failing to separate his plastics from his glass when he put his recycling out. If someone told me that he’d once saved seventeen schoolchildren from drowning, that would be time enough to revise my view. But if it turned out it had only been sixteen schoolchildren, that wasn’t going to tip the scales in his favour. I shivered.

  Jake was back from the gym by the time I got home, and I allowed him to assume I’d come straight from the market. It wasn’t a lie, and besides, there were probably lots of things he didn’t tell me, I consoled myself as I went to change for Helena’s lunch. It was still achingly hot, so my wardrobe choices were limited, as in, I had one possible item, so there was no choice at all. I pulled on the single dress I owned that was light enough, slapped on some lippie and glared at the mirror: that was as good as it was going to get.