Graven Image (3 page)

I went round the back.

In a shot.

No way had she come down this thing in a hurry. Not without half the neighbourhood knowing about it anyway. I’m no expert on fire escapes but even I knew scrap iron when I saw it. Two or three tons of the stuff in what looked to be two thousand moving parts. What wasn’t rusted solid was loose and rattling like a bag of change. There’d have to be some serious blaze going on for any sane person to set foot on this heap of nails, let me tell you.

I set foot on it.

The doors on these old lodging houses are shit. I’m no housebreaker and even I had it open with no more fuss than a little scattering of white paint flakes on the floor. You didn’t get a number round the back but I knew straight away it was Carla’s. I could smell her. When you work in a house full of hookers, you learn about perfume, mouthwash and all kinds of fragranced detergents. I don’t know what scent Carla used, but it reeked.

No one in.

For one so organised in her working life, I’d never have guessed she was a such a slob at home. Bed unmade, clothes on the floor, empty wine bottles all around, bins overflowing and no sign of a Hoover. This wasn’t just turning a blind eye to filth and disarray, we are talking a concerted effort to achieve it. It was like she was making up for the po-faced order of her job by having chaos at home. I hoped it was working out for her. I knew it was good for what I had in mind. A domestic setup as relaxed as this means a good chance you’ll find some evidence. You can always do with evidence.

I mean, you can’t take anyone’s word for anything.

I started rooting around, grimacing as I slid a plate of half-eaten chow mein off a pile of papers. Most were bills, the rest made up of sun-bed sessions offered at two for one (a month free if you renew your health club membership NOW), a letter from the NHS asking her to come for a smear (dated eight months ago) and various final demands. A letter from a solicitor looked like it was to do with divorce proceedings, but I ignored it. I’d never been able to understand legal stuff and I had no hope now. And besides, it was nothing to do with abducting a girl on behalf of a vindictive crime boss. So I looked elsewhere.

I was starting to give up hope of finding anything more interesting than a smiley face mug with five week’s worth of penicillin growth in it when I found the box, under the bed, obscured by a black nightie with what looked like spunk stains on it. It was only a shoe box but you could see it was special. The sides were repaired with yellowed Sellotape and endless flowers had been doodled on the top in blue biro.

I knew the sort of thing I’d find inside, and I wasn’t wrong: old letters, photographs, sentimental knick-knacks. I struggled to imagine Carla with a sentimental bone in her body, but there you go. One snap was of a younger Carla in a wedding dress, smiling and looking like the whole of human experience lay before her. The photo had been cut in half to get rid of the groom, leaving a tanned hand grasping Carla’s bare white shoulder. There you go: even icy bitches like Carla can have a past where things were different. Other photos were of her at school, out on the lash with her pals as a teenager, ripping up her L-sign next to a red VW Polo.

I went to close the lid. Carla was becoming like a real person in my mind, and I didn’t want that. She was the enemy right now, the one who’d snatched my kid, and the last thing I wanted was a twinge of sympathy for her. But another picture caught my eye and I paused, picked it up. It was the most recent one of Carla, by the looks of it, but still a few years old. She was sitting on Darren’s knee.

Darren?

I was pinned to the spot for a moment, I don’t mind saying. This did not compute. Darren was one proposition and Carla was another, and never the twain shall rub shoulders. Or so I thought. But like I said, only for a moment was I flummoxed. Everyone knows everyone in a town like this, and sooner or later they’re going to shag them or fight them. Mind you, I had Darren down for fighting her.

Under the photo was a diamond engagement ring. I looked at it, rubbing the 22ct gold between my fingers, thinking back to when me and Jane had got engaged. But only for about five seconds. I was here for evidence, remember?

One last scout around the grottier corners of the flat and I found it. I stared at it for ages, hardly breathing at all. Everything around me was silent. Nothing existed except me and this evil little fact.

It knocks the wind out of you, reality does.

There is a song by Michael Jackson called “She’s Out of My Life”, and it means a lot to me. Around the time me and Jane split, it was all I heard in my head. You’d think that would turn you nuts but this song didn’t. It’s a special song, and fitted my situation like Michael Jackson’s glove fitted his hand. But it wasn’t about Jane. I didn’t give much of a shit that she was out of my life after the initial trauma. It was about Kelly, my little girl. It’s about every quiet moment that could have been filled with her.

And they
were
filled with her, those lonely moments. You close your eyes and swear you can smell her hair. You see her soft, light brown face, clear blue eyes. Sapphires in the desert, Jane called her when she was a baby: the perfect mix of white and black, cold and warm, her and me. We looked down at her as she slept, all new and sated on mother’s milk, and wondered how she would turn out. I still do.

Then I open my eyes.

Sounds odd, what I’m about to say, but until me and Jane split I hadn’t really thought of myself as having a daughter. I knew Kelly was mine, of course, but I didn’t feel the connection. When she was born, I didn’t feel no different. I didn’t go around acting like a dad, and that’s because I wasn’t one inside.

I’m painting myself as a bit of a bastard here, but I’m not. The difference between me and a bastard is that I can look back and see it, point at that period of my life and say I was no good. Right up until the point when I found that leaving Jane meant leaving Kelly as well, in the end.

It cuts like a knife.

That’s what the injunction was about. Jane stopped letting me see my own daughter, so I’d had to go round and throw gravel at the window like a lovesick teen. And that’s what I was, in way (although I was in my twenties by then). Any good father would be lovesick if they weren’t allowed to see their kid. Like I say, cuts like a knife. Which is probably why I ended up crashing that house party with a machete.

It wasn’t for Jane or Kelly. Don’t be stupid. It was for him, that toe-rag of a boyfriend Jane was knocking around with. And I wasn’t going to use it. Of course I wasn’t.

I mean, come on.

What do you think I’m capable of?

I just wanted to scare him, let him know that there was already a family here - broken though it may be - and that he was walking on thin ice. One foot wrong and you’re under. And by a foot wrong I mean try and replace me as her dad. Or try and turn Kelly against me. Or anything, really. There was a long list of potential wrong feet he could step into, and I’d be there waiting for him if he ticked a box.

So the machete was to help him, really.

Keep him on his toes.

But I needn’t have worried too much. Kelly was a good girl. She knew what she was about and where she came from. Love between a child and her father does not recognise injunctions, curfews nor threats. She stayed in my life, and it had stopped cutting like a knife.

Only it was starting again now.

I didn’t know where she was.

But I knew one thing. If someone had hurt her, touched her or upset her in any way, I’d show them what cutting like a knife feels like.

Starting with Carla.

They must have known I was coming.

I could tell as soon as I stepped inside the Eagle. Every punter in there carried on drinking and ignored me. One or two looked up but didn’t bat an eyelid. And that smelt wrong to me. When I walk in a pub around here, people bat eyelids. Especially in a pub like The Alma. Someone must have tipped them off. They’d all had a chat about it and decided to play it calm, act like nothing’s up. And if you don’t believe me, hear what the barman said when I went up and ordered a Famous Grouse and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps from him:

‘I see you’re back.’

See? So I’m not paranoid. I can judge situations and read between lines.

I looked over my shoulder, craning my neck to get a view down there. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s good that you can see my back. ’Cos I can’t, for the life of me.’

I can play it calm too. I can play it loose and easy and sardonic, no problem. You have to. No point being all keyed-up and frothing at the mouth. There’s too much at stake.

He ignored my comment and got on with getting my Famous Grouse. I was looking around the room, sizing up the threats of violence, locating any alternative exits. Things could kick off in here. I couldn’t see Carla, though, which surprised me. I was sure I’d heard her say about this dump being her local, a quiet little enclave where no one judges you, so long as you’re the right colour.

‘You can have this one on the house,’ the bloke was saying, pushing me a double, ‘but then I want you gone. We don’t want none of your antics here. Right?’

See what I mean?

‘Antics,’ I said. You’ll note the absence of a question mark there. I was interested in the word and wanted to voice it myself, feel the shape of it in my black mouth. ‘So, what, you’ve got me down for swinging from the light fittings, have you? Reckon I’m gonna pull a knife and rob someone?’

‘You know full well what antics I mean. And if I see any of them I’ll have no hesitation in calling the coppers.’

‘Whatever you say, boss,’ I said, wincing at the whisky. ‘I’m just here looking for someone. I’ll be out of your hair when I find her.’ I glanced at his bald head. ‘Out of your scalp, anyway.’

‘She’s not here.’

‘Who ain’t?’

‘The one you want.’

‘How do you know who I want?’

‘Because there’s no other reason for you to—’

‘Frank.’

That’s not me saying that last one. It was behind me, a female. And you can guess the one. If you think it’s a tad unlikely that my daughter’s kidnapper would just step up to me like that, imagine how I felt. I was all set for a blade in the kidneys. Carla could be like that sometimes.

Frank wasn’t a happy barman. ‘Bloody marvellous,’ he was grumbling. ‘I thought we agreed you’d stay back there in the—’

‘It’s my problem. I’ll deal.’

‘But he’s just gonna carry on—’

‘No he won’t. Let me do this.’

‘But... at least let me call the—’

‘Frank!’

I hadn’t actually seen her yet. I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I did. She was stood right behind me, three or four feet away. She’d stolen my daughter. She knew where Kelly was. She was working for Graven. I could snap her neck. Or at least break her jaw. I turned.

She wasn’t there.

‘She’s gone and sat down, mate,’ said the barman, nodding at a corner table. ‘Any funny stuff and I’ll have no hesitation, got me?’

I told him I’d be good so long as he gave me the crisps, which he’d forgotten as yet. He tossed me a bag, scowling. They weren’t the flavour I’d asked for but I let it go. Sometimes a compromise is in order.

And I don’t mind cheese and onion.

Carla’s hands were clasped and resting on her legs, which were clamped together very tight. Her mouth was the same way, pursed so hard you could see the muscles popping out in her bony cheeks. Her back was bolt upright and she was facing away from me slightly. You don’t need a degree in body language to work out how nervous she was. That’s because I’d put her on the spot. I’d come right into her lair and demanded cooperation. And she was doing alright so far. I put a photograph of Kelly on the table.

The evidence I’d found at her digs.

‘You got some serious explaining to do,’ I said.

‘Where’d you...?’ she started saying, picking it up. ‘You’ve been in my flat, haven’t you?’ Her voice was wavering. Seemed like she was more upset than nervous. She’d thought long and hard about what she’d done and realised it was wrong. Fair play to her. But it didn’t help me.

It didn’t help Kelly.

‘Never mind that - where is she?’

She looked at me straight for the first time. There was something funny in that look. Hatred?

‘Alright,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you. But I want you to promise something first. I want you to swear that you’ll never, ever come looking for me again. And I want you to put your hand on this photograph when you swear it.’

She placed the snap on the table. It was from when Kelly was about five. She was on a little bike in the back garden of my old house. Just before it was taken she’d fallen off and cut herself, and you could see the plaster. I’d put it on myself, lining it up perfectly with the creases on her knee.

‘Go on, put your hand on it. Swear on her life that you’ll stay away from me. Swear it!’

People were watching me. Frank up at the bar. A couple of lads over there, both of them munching pork scratchings. An old lady in the other corner, stretching out half a Guinness. All eyes on me. I could feel them.

I put my hand on the picture. I had to close my eyes. I saw Kelly there, crying about her knee and asking for a plaster with a crocodile on it. We didn’t have any of that sort left, so she had to have a tiger. I opened my eyes again.

Don’t get weak now.

It made me want to puke, swearing on Kelly’s image for a treacherous bitch like Carla. But I did it. I said the words she wanted to hear, then slipped the photo in my pocket, adding: ‘Where the fuck is she?
Now
.’

Carla blinked. I think some of my spit had gone in her face. She didn’t like that and I thought she was going to send it right back, but she just wiped it off. The jewel in her ring glinted blue at me.

‘She’s gone because of you,’ she said, nice and slow, still looking like spitting but not. ‘You need to face that, Leon. It doesn’t matter how people try and help you, in the end you’re gonna have to—’

‘The fuck is this?’ I said, getting up.

Frank grabbed something behind the bar and held it where I couldn’t see it. ‘I’ll have no hesitation!’ he shouted.