The Make

‘Okay,’ she gasped out. ‘Okay.’

The boy stepped past them to the door. Then the door pushed inward and Lorcan stood there. He looked at the blade in the boy’s hand, at Gracie and Sandy. He lunged forward and grabbed the boy’s wrist and squeezed, hard. The boy let out a scream of pain, and the knife fell to the floor. Lorcan pushed in further, sending the boy stumbling back against the row of sinks.

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Lorcan, looking like he was about to take the boy’s head off. He shook him, hard. Alfie’s head collided with rock-hard porcelain and he let out a yell.

‘You little fucker, what do you think you’re doing?’ spat out Lorcan in a rage.

‘Don’t!’ shouted Gracie; she could see that Lorcan was about to give the boy a pounding. ‘Lorcan, don’t. He’s terrified.’

‘He fucking-well will be in a minute . . .’ Then Lorcan stopped. He held the boy in front of the long slab of mirror and stared at him. ‘Hold on a second. Don’t I know you? Aren’t you . . . Alfie? George’s pal?’

Chapter 56

Christmas Eve

‘What do you mean, engaged?’ Alfie was asking Sandy, looking at her like she was an escapee from a lunatic asylum. ‘George ain’t engaged, not to anyone.’

They were sitting in the hospital canteen, all of them. Lorcan, Gracie, Suze, Jackie and Emma, Alfie and Sandy Cole. The heavy was still upstairs, outside intensive care.

‘Maybe you don’t know him very well,’ said Sandy, staring sniffily at this impossibly beautiful boy.

‘No, I do. I think you’re the one mistaken here.’

‘What are you to George anyway?’ demanded Sandy.

‘Look,’ said Gracie pointedly. ‘Can we all calm down?’ She looked at Alfie. ‘Do you know anything about George’s injury? How it happened? When it happened?’

Alfie shook his head dolefully. ‘No. I don’t. I wish I did.’

‘George got you the job at Lorcan’s place, is that right?’ asked Gracie, glancing towards Lorcan for confirmation.

Alfie nodded. He stirred his coffee and sighed.

‘You’re a friend of George’s,’ said Gracie.

‘I was staying with him. Him and Harry.’

‘So where is Harry?’ said Jackie quickly, leaning forward. ‘Do you know?’

Alfie shrugged and reddened. ‘No. I know he was going to move out. But he just went out and didn’t come back.’

‘Why was he going to move out?’ Now it was Suze’s turn to speak. She looked raddled, wrung out in the harsh fluorescent lighting in the cafe. Seeing George like that had shaken her badly. ‘George and Harry have always got on. They’ve never argued.’

‘They didn’t argue,’ said Alfie, looking awkward.‘I think . . . well, Harry just wanted to move on, that was all.’

‘But no forwarding address?’ queried Lorcan. ‘That don’t make sense, if the split was amicable.’

‘Look, I don’t know why Harry left or where he went. And after this happened to George, I felt spooked in the flat on my own. So I moved out too. I had wages, so I checked into a B & B.’

‘And came visiting George claiming to be his brother,’ said Gracie.

‘I had to do that. They wouldn’t have let me see him otherwise, and I had to see him. He’s been so good to me. Him and Harry. I had some trouble . . .’

‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Lorcan.

Alfie shrugged. ‘I left home last year. Came to London. Met a guy called Lefty and he said he could get me a job. Turns out he was working for Deano Drax.’

‘Deano Drax?’ said Lorcan.

Gracie looked at him sharply. ‘You know him?’

Lorcan nodded. ‘I know of him. He runs a fetish club in Soho. Likes young boys, so the rumour goes. Nasty bastard.’

Gracie looked across at Alfie. ‘What, you mean this “Deano” wanted to—’

Alfie twisted his lips in a grimace. ‘Lefty drugged me up for him. Christ, you’d have to be doped to go with a twisted minger like that. But I managed to get away. Then Lefty cornered me . . . and George was just passing by. George saved me. Gave me a roof over my head. Him and Harry were just great to me.’Alfie was looking at Sandy again. ‘I can’t understand you saying what you did, though. George, engaged? No. That’s not possible.’

‘It is possible,’ said Sandy hotly. ‘He’s engaged to me. Look.’ She flourished the ring at him.

Alfie sat back, folded his arms. ‘Crap,’ he said.

‘Now look—’

‘Shall we not fight among ourselves?’ suggested Lorcan. ‘The main thing is, George is on the mend.’

‘We don’t know that yet,’ said Suze dejectedly. ‘God, he just looks so ill. It looks like he’s screaming his head off and can’t make a sound. And how do we know what he’s going to be like when he does come round? He could be paralysed. He could be brain damaged.’

‘We have to try and be positive,’ said Gracie, squeezing Sandy’s hand because she looked so distraught at what Suze was saying. Then she looked at Lorcan. ‘Do you think the “scorched-earth” policy would be Deano Drax’s sort of thing?’

‘The what?’ asked Suze and Jackie at the same time.

‘Like Saddam Hussein did after the Iraq war,’ said Gracie. ‘Burning things. Destroying things. Trashing everything left behind.’

Lorcan was staring at the table, looking thoughtful. He looked up at Gracie. ‘That twisted git’s capable of anything, from what I hear,’ he said.

‘Setting the fire? Doing Mum’s door with a chainsaw? Slashing my car tyres? Sending us Harry’s hair?’

‘What?’ demanded Emma, going deathly white.

‘We each got a packet of Harry’s hair,’ said Suze with a shudder.

‘Then Harry didn’t leave,’ said Jackie forcefully. ‘Someone must have snatched him. Oh my God.’ She put her hands to her mouth, horrified. ‘We must tell the police.’

‘The notes with the hair said no police,’ said Gracie quickly. ‘We can’t risk it. We might be putting Harry in terrible danger if we did that.’

Jackie sank back in her seat, her face a mask of terror and confusion.

‘And nobody knows even now where Harry is,’ said Emma, close to tears. Jackie hugged her. Gracie felt so sorry for them. It was obvious that they both cared hugely for Harry.

Gracie looked at Lorcan. ‘Everything’s pointing towards Deano Drax,’ she said to him. ‘Wouldn’t you say? Drax must have bashed George’s head in when he found out – somehow – that Alfie was with him. That bastard.’

‘Looks that way,’ said Lorcan.

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Gracie, her voice betraying her desperation. She thought of Harry, in the clutches of an evil man like that. Thought of the bags of Harry’s hair. And shuddered with dread for him.

Lorcan was looking very angry. ‘That bastard needs his arse kicking,’ he said.

Emma was looking at him with stricken eyes. ‘What do you think’s happened to Harry?’

Lorcan shook his head. ‘I wish I could answer that.’

‘Will you try to find him?’

Lorcan looked at her. Read the desperation and the love in her eyes. ‘Yeah. Of course I will.’

‘Hold on . . .’ said Gracie, alarmed.

‘Then . . . if you see him, when you see him, tell him I didn’t mean it.’ Her voice