Speak No Evil Read online

  ‘Where you goin’?’ asked Pez, clearly confused.

  Calvin shrugged. Tried not to make it into a big gesture. ‘Home. Not stayin’ here with you two little-boy losers.’

  He walked away. As he passed the massed ranks of racers, one of them detached himself from the bunch, walked over towards him. The same gangsta rapper rolling gait as all the others used, baseball cap on his head, hoodie on top of it.

  Calvin stopped, looked up. The older kid’s eyes were hidden. Calvin thought his luck was in, that he was going to be asked for a ride. The kid held out his hand, flashed something hidden in the palm.

  ‘Want some stuff? Some gear?’

  Calvin’s heart sank. He recognized the boy. It was the dealer who had been ready to fight. He still looked as if he was up for it, his anger curtailed but not satisfied. Calvin always avoided the dealers anyway. This one especially.

  He shook his head, tried to walk round him. The dealer didn’t move.

  ‘Some blow? E? Get you happy?’ The dealer’s voice didn’t sound very happy.

  ‘No money,’ said Calvin, trying again to go round him.

  ‘First taste is always free,’ the dealer said, ‘an’ if it’s not your first taste I’ll pretend it is. Can’t say fairer than that, can I?’ He sounded like a salesman in a kid’s body.

  Calvin shook his head, tried to move forward. The dealer still didn’t budge.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missin’,’ he said, trying to sound encouraging, unable to suppress his anger. ‘Go on, sort yourself out good.’ It sounded like a command.

  Calvin tried again. Couldn’t get round. He knew the dealer would be armed, that there would be a blade somewhere on him. Calvin was starting to panic. If he kept saying no, the dealer might force him. Or worse—

  ‘Will you fuckin’ shift, man!’ Calvin hadn’t expected the words to emerge so vehemently.

  The racers glanced round. Saw what was happening. The dealer still didn’t move. Calvin didn’t want to stay there a moment longer. He kicked the dealer as hard as he could in the leg. The dealer, unprepared, crumpled to the side. Calvin ran.

  There was stunned silence from the racers, then jeering laughter. Calvin didn’t look back. Behind him an angry voice started shouting. The dealer. He was called something unpleasant, something that he would have been expected to square up to and fight to make the speaker take it back if it had happened at school or anywhere nearer home. But he didn’t stop to challenge, to rise to it, he just kept running. A description was then spat out of what the dealer would do when he caught up to the little kid who had disrespected him in front of his mates. That made Calvin run all the harder.

  He ran and ran, not looking back once. Just going forwards. Ignoring the aching in his chest, the pains in his legs and feet. Eventually he could run no more. He found a side street, ran round the corner and dropped to the ground.

  On his back, gasping for air, thinking his lungs were too small to cope with the amount he needed to take in. Every breath hurt. But not as much as what the dealer would do to him if he caught up with him. He put his hands to his ribs, hugged himself. Looked around.

  He had no idea where he was.

  Panicking, he sat up. He didn’t know if he had run further away from his home or nearer to it. The place was all rundown factories, old buildings, rubble and weeds. He stood up, trying to ignore the sudden light-headedness that affected him. Scoped. Factories, industrial units. Streetlights. Beyond them, trees. Beyond them an estate. Hope rose within him. Was that the Hancock Estate? If it was, all he had to do was walk through it then at the other side he knew the way home.

  Behind him, he heard the roaring of engines. The racers were off.

  ‘Shit,’ he said out loud, then chastised himself. He didn’t want to be heard. They were looking for him. He knew they were. They had to be. He turned and, dragging his protesting little body, ran towards the trees, the estate.

  Anne Marie Smeaton slept. Sprawled on the sofa, Scott Walker whispering to her in the background.

  But her face betrayed her dreams. Her features were twisted, contorted, her breathing ragged and quick. She moved her head from side to side, flung her arms around. Her mouth made sounds. No words, just moans, sighs. She was trying to hold them back, but she seemed to be losing.

  The bad spirits were breaking through.

  *

  Calvin was lost. The Hancock Estate was like a maze. He had thought he was on the right track, knew the way. But every time he moved forward in the direction he wanted, the street or walkway took an unexpected twist and left him somewhere else entirely. He had tried to keep track of the corners, keep a sense of direction in his head, but it was hopeless. Now, he didn’t know whether he was going forwards or backwards. And the cars were still revving.

  They were circling him, getting closer all the time. He was trapped and they were just playing with him, toying with the moment they finally pounced on him, tore him to shreds.

  His back was against a wall. He tried to listen, get his bearings that way. The nightly beer screams and responding sirens, the human hyena howls of the estate that he grew up with. Nothing. All he could hear was the pounding of blood round his body, the ragged gasp of his breathing. And the cars.

  He wanted to cry. Just sit in the street and cry. But he couldn’t. Because Renny and Pez might be in the cars as well. And he didn’t want them to see him like that. So he stood up, looked round. Saw a walkway he hadn’t been down yet. Or didn’t think he had been down. Walked towards it.

  There was no light, only darkness and shadows. The streetlights were broken, his trainers crunched glass underfoot. The walls were graffiti-enriched concrete, it stank of bodily emissions. Calvin tried to hold his breath, hurry along. Perhaps this was it. The right way lay just ahead. The opening, lit by the weak orange glow of a streetlight, seemed a long way off. But he made his way towards it, moving as quickly as he could. The wind carried the sound of engines again. He moved quicker and, in his haste, tripped.

  He put his hands out to break his fall, felt broken glass, sharp stone, pierce his palms. Felt his hands connect with other substances that he was glad he couldn’t see. As he hit the broken concrete slabs, the air huffed out of his lungs. He pulled himself on to all fours, tried to force air back into his body. Supporting himself with the wall, he got slowly to his feet. Looked ahead. The light didn’t seem so far off, now. In fact, he could make out houses beyond it, streets he recognized. He heard a drunken howl going up. His heart leapt. He knew where he was. He knew how to get home.

  Reinvigorated, he made his way towards the light. And abruptly stopped.

  He had been grabbed from behind, arms tight around his body, pinning him to his assailant, stopping him from moving. Calvin struggled, kicked. No good. Whoever it was had him held tight.

  He tried to scream. A hand was clamped round his neck, cutting off the air, trying to make a fist with his neck at the centre of it. He struggled, tried to claw it away. It quickly moved, turned into a fist, punched into the side of his head.

  Stars exploded before his eyes. Painful ones. Another punch. More painful stars.

  He was roughly thrown to the ground. His attacker said something to him, something unintelligible that he felt he had been expected to know. He turned round, tried to run.

  Saw the knife coming towards him.

  Calvin didn’t have time to cry out, to scream, to feel fear, to think. The knife plunged straight into his chest.

  There were other jabs, other cuts, other slashes, but he felt none of them.

  The first cut had stopped his heart.

  Anne Marie awoke. Daylight seeped almost apologetically round the curtains. The lights were still on, Scott Walker still going on repeat. She sat up, looked round. She was on the floor by the door to the kitchen. Cold all around her. She was frozen.

  Anne Marie sat up. Shivered. She pulled herself to a kneeling position, tried to get up off the floor. Placed her hand on the wall for balan
ce.

  And stopped.

  Where her hand had been, she had left a smear of blood.

  She crumpled down again as if she had just been punched.

  ‘No … no …’

  Her hands went to her face, covered it. She felt the blood on them, knew she was smearing it all over herself, knew she couldn’t stop it. She looked down at her clothes. Even against the black fabric she could see blood.

  ‘Oh God …’

  The door opened. Jack entered, ready for school. He looked at her and froze, face a Munch-like tableau.

  ‘Get out!’ Anne Marie screamed, aware of the blood mask she was wearing. ‘Get out!’

  He did so, running for the front door, slamming it behind him.

  Anne Marie curled herself into a ball. Started sobbing.

  ‘No … no …’

  They were back. Anne Marie Smeaton knew it.

  The bad spirits had broken through.

  PART TWO

  CLIMATE OF HUNTER

  ‘I’d been on remand for four months when the trial started. I remember it well, considerin’. September 1967. It was strange. I didn’t have a clue what they were talkin’ about. It was just gob-bledegook, you know? All that legalese. I didn’t even think they were talkin’ about me. They kept lookin’ over an’ referrin’ to me, pointin’ an’ that. But I still didn’t know it was me they were talkin’ about.’

  ‘How did they describe you? Evil child? Bad seed, all that kind of rhetoric?’

  She becomes thoughtful. ‘No. Not really. They never said I was evil. Not as such. It was like they couldn’t understand it. I mean, I couldn’t understand it, so why should they? But no, not evil, they never used that word. Thinkin’ back, they maybe didn’t want to. Maybe they thought in those days that if you talked about evil and shared a room with someone you thought of as evil, then that would rub off on you.’

  ‘Not like that now.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Times have changed. We like to think they’ve got better but they’ve got worse. You know, my mother tried to sell the story – my story – to the papers? The Sun? Said that I was out of control, that she could never do any thin’ with me. That I’d always been a horrible kid. Had photos to sell to them an’ all.’

  He frowns. This wasn’t in any of his research. ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have it. Wouldn’t touch it. Can you believe that? The Sun! Be bitin’ your fuckin’ hand off if it happened now. Get bloody Max Clifford involved.’

  ‘Was your mother there?’

  ‘Yeah, my mother was there.’ She goes through the lighting of the cigarette ritual again. Not speaking until it’s fully lit and burning. ‘She came every day. Swannin’ in and sittin’ in the same place. Some days she wore a headscarf done up like Grace Kelly with sunglasses. She would wave to the cameras. Smilin’, like it was some Hollywood red carpet. I don’t think they knew what to make of her.’

  ‘How was she with you? The same?’

  Another short, sharp bark of a laugh. ‘Anythin’ but. When she looked at me I could feel her sendin’ daggers at me. Daggers of hate.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she did hate me.’ Stated like simple fact. ‘She did.’ She thinks. Drags on the cigarette. ‘More than that, though. She’d tried to kill me loads of times when I was little. Push me out of the upstairs window. Give me pills and pretend they were sweets. Loads of times. Tried to give me away. Lose me.’

  He bristles at her words.

  ‘It’s true. Honest. Loads of times.’

  ‘And did no one pick up on it?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Not once. Never.’

  ‘So you blame her? For what happened?’

  She sucks on the cigarette.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t like those two kids in Liverpool. I never saw horrorfilms when I was little.’ She sighs. ‘I just lived in one.’

  3

  On Calvin Bell’s last night on earth, a lone girl sat in Victoria Coach Station in London. It was busy. The smells of sweat, diesel and cheap fried food giving the place its usual ambience as travellers, thrifty by necessity or design, dragged bulky luggage round the concrete and glass concourse, determined to find the cheapest way to cross the country. She sat on the bench, tried not to be a target for swinging bags, looked up at the board, waited for announcements. The bus would be ready any minute.

  She checked her pocket again, losing count of how many times she had done that. The ticket was still there. She checked again. The lifted credit card was there too. She had paid for the ticket with it. She was glad she had watched him at the ATMs, memorized his PIN, filed the information away. Never knew when something like that would come in handy.

  Then a pang of guilt. Because it wasn’t like her, stealing credit cards and running away from home. It was the kind of thing teenagers in Channel 4 documentaries did, not girls like her. Good ones from good schools and good homes. Supposedly.

  She kept one hand in her pocket, the other tightly coiled around the straps of her holdall, stopping anyone running off with it. She had heard the stories, knew what these kinds of places were like. Knew that there would be predators wanting more than her luggage. No eye contact, no conversation. With anyone. She had seen the Channel 4 documentaries.

  The board changed. The bus was announced. Newcastle.

  She stood up, joined the rest of the people making their way towards the coach. She reluctantly gave up her bag, watched it get thrown into the hold, thinking she would never see it again, that someone would steal it at the first stop. Then she joined the scramble for the door, found a window seat, put her iPod on straightaway, looked away. Not soon enough. A man walked down the aisle, caught her eye, smiled. His grin was predatory. He looked at the empty seat next to her. Panicked, she turned to the window, stared resolutely at whatever was out there. Before the man could speak or sit down, a woman claimed the seat and he shrugged and moved away. She felt his eyes on her all the time.

  The woman settled in next to her. The girl kept staring out of the window, no eye contact, no conversation, her face blank. Show nothing. No anger, no pain. No resentment, no hurt. No guilt. Tried not to think about what she was doing. What she had done.

  The bus pulled out.

  She glanced out of the window into the crepuscular darkness and was shocked to see hurt, wounded eyes staring back at her. She wondered who it was. It took her a couple of seconds to realize it was her.

  She cranked up the music, let it flood her brain. The Hold Steady: ‘You Can Make Him Like You.’ No you can’t, she thought. Not always.

  She kept her eyes closed. Tried not to think. Tried not to cry.

  Early next morning and Joe Donovan sat in the office of Albion at his usual vigil, staring at the screen of the iMac. It was how he started his days and ended them. Sometimes it was how he spent them.

  The screen showed a blue front door in a town house. A live feed, channelled all the way from Brighton. It was where he seemed to spend most of the day – and night – just staring at that screen, waiting for something to happen. Willing something to happen. Someone to appear, to make contact, to let him know his lonely vigil wasn’t in vain. He felt his life couldn’t move on until something like that had happened. But nothing happened. No matter how hard he wished, nothing changed.

  Sometimes a supermarket delivery van would turn up and groceries would be carried in. His heart would skip and he would jump forward then, playing around with the screen’s settings, trying desperately to see inside. Just a glimpse, a quick look. But he never could. It. was usually the woman who answered the door and even then she kept out of the way as much as possible, her face hidden, as if she knew she was being observed. Usually the woman. Hardly ever the man.

  And never the boy.

  The back door of the town house led to a walled, enclosed courtyard garden that was similarly watched round the clock and from which there had never been any movement. So he knew they were in there. They had to be. The gr
ocery deliveries proved it. The curtains never opened and the lights were on day and night. So Donovan watched his screen incessantly. And waited and hoped and prayed.

  The not knowing was killing him. Twisting him up inside, turning his insides out. So far away and not able to directly influence the course of action. Impotent and passive when he wanted to be direct and authoritative. If it had been up to him, he would have been to the door, forcing his way inside by whatever means necessary. Kicking up a storm. And getting the boy out. David.

  His missing son. Or the boy he hoped was his son.

  But it wasn’t up to him. And he knew why, even if he didn’t like it.

  Six and a half months previously, Donovan had nearly died. He had been alone in his cottage in Northumberland, at night, standing in David’s room. The boy had never lived in it; it was just a shrine to his memory. Photos of the lost boy covered the walls, some taken from life, some juxtaposed with background images of holidays they had never taken, places they had never visited, things they had never done. Dreams that helped him keep the boy’s memory alive. Alongside the photos, files and folders, the investigation and press reaction in full. Donovan had kept everything. And added to it: every sighting or possible sighting logged and investigated. Mainly by him. Every lead and half lead thoroughly exhausted. Files full of paper: maps of every dead end he had walked down.

  Gone six years and counting. In a department store, standing behind Donovan, getting a present for Annie, Donovan’s wife, David’s mother.

  There, then gone.

  Nothing on CCTV, no witnesses, no cries or screams. Like he had just disappeared. Like he had never existed.

  Donovan had searched for years. It had cost him his wife, the love of his daughter, his career and almost his life. But he had never given up, never stopped believing. Never lost hope of finding him either dead or alive. It hadn’t been easy. It had consumed him. Sometimes he had doubted that David ever existed, that his own past was a lie, a false construct, a memory implant. And sometimes it felt all too painfully real and he felt himself breaking down, his heart literally aching once more with agony and loss.