Luther brings down the half bottle of whisky and pours a measure into a cloudy glass. ‘So what happened?’
Bill’s face is white-whiskered. He looks played-out. ‘I should never have called your lot,’ he says. ‘They mean well. But it’s calling the law that got me into this.’
Luther gathers up the remains of the fish and chips, shoves them into a carrier bag.
He twists and ties the handles of the carrier bag and places it in the doorway, ready to dump in a wheelie bin.
The old man sniffs.
Luther stares at the carrier bag. He’s so tired, he can’t seem to complete a thought.
Then it occurs to him.
He says, ‘Bill — where’s the dog?’
CHAPTER 20
At 8.47 p.m., Stephanie Dalton picks up her elder son, Dan, from an evening drama class off the Chiswick High Road.
Dan’s fifteen and wants to be an actor.
Steph and Marcus would like for him to be anything but, but what kind of career should they actually be hoping for these days? It’s not like being a bank manager is any safer.
Steph grew up wanting to teach but fell into modelling at twenty-one, enjoyed a moderately successful career (catalogues, mostly) made some money, got tired of it all, then left and had the kids. Then Dan and Mia grew up a bit and Steph became bored hanging round the house all day.
She started a domestic cleaning company, called it Zita after the patron saint of cleaning — and of people who lost their keys, apparently. Although she didn’t mention that bit on the website.
After Zita took off, she started a company called Handy woman, supplying women-only handyman services to women-only clients and the elderly. Handywoman had a rockier start than Zita, but it’s grown into a franchise. All over the country, mothers and daughters, best friends, young mothers, drive around in little white Citroen vans, fixing taps and dry walls and power points. Steph’s proud of that.
The downturn has hit them pretty hard, but they’re riding it out. Things will turn round.
And Dan wants to be an actor. He’s already got the looks, in a still-growing, lanky way. He’s got the floppy fringe for it, and a certain way of wearing a shirt. And since he’s been taking the lessons there’s a new confidence in his voice, in his walk. She doesn’t know if it’s real or if it’s an act. But she supposes that’s the point.
Dan emerges from the shabby doorway and she flashes her headlights. He waves, huddled in his coat, and jogs across the road.
She reaches over to pop the passenger door. Dan slides in, bringing the night’s cold and wet with him. Sits with his Crumpler messenger bag on his lap.
Steph sees the look on his face. He’s not that good an actor, not yet.
She says, ‘So what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
She wants to reach out and brush the floppy fringe from his eyes. But she knows it’ll embarrass him. ‘Well, it’s not nothing,’ she says, ‘I can see it’s not nothing.’
‘It’s just, we’ve got these agents coming round,’ he says. ‘Like actual agents? We get to, like, quiz them about the business.’
The business, she thinks, simultaneously cringing and burning with love.
‘And then after that,’ he says, ‘or before, or something. We’re putting on this, like, performance? Like the best in the class. And I got chosen to play Rosenkrantz?’
‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘That’s amazing!’
He beams at her. He looks pure and beautiful — somewhere in the sunlit grasslands between child and adult.
‘Don’t call Dad,’ he says, ‘I want to tell him when we get home.’
She pats his knee. ‘Tell him yourself. He’ll be so proud. He’ll burst!’
Dan hugs his messenger bag.
‘What should we have for tea?’ Steph says, pulling away. ‘Your choice. We’re celebrating.’
‘Don’t jinx it,’ he says.
‘I’m not jinxing it. We’re just celebrating this bit. Some good news. Everybody likes good news.’
‘What about KFC?’
‘We had KFC on your birthday.’
‘Yeah, ages ago.’
‘Six weeks.’
‘Yeah. Ages.’
Not far behind them, Henry and Patrick watch from a stolen Toyota Corolla.
They watch Steph pull away, indicate, turn onto Chiswick High Street.
‘Hurry up,’ Henry says. ‘You’ll lose them.’
‘We know where they live,’ says Patrick. ‘We’ve got a key. We can’t lose them.’
‘That’s not the point. I like the hunt.’
Patrick indicates, pulls away.
Henry says, ‘The kid. The one with the floppy hair. What’s his name again?’
‘Daniel,’ says Patrick. ‘Wants to be an actor.’
‘That’s right,’ says Henry. He sometimes gets them mixed up — all the second-players on the watch list. He says, ‘I’m going to cut his fucking head off. That’ll make him famous.’
He grins at Patrick, sidelong and ravenous.
Patrick’s arms flash with goosebumps. Its proper name is horripilation. Patrick knows that because he once looked it up in an old dictionary. The dictionary lay in what had once been Elaine’s bedroom, but was now Henry’s. It was next to the Bible, both of them water-stained and damp-smelling. They were inscribed inside with long-faded blue ink, given as a spelling prize when Elaine was a young girl.
So he knows that’s what Henry gives him at times like this: horripilation.
And that’s what looking in the dictionary gave him, too.
He thought of it, passing through time, sitting in the room already old the day Henry was born, older still the day Patrick was born. Sitting in the room through all those years and all those hands.
Only Patrick, the killer’s son, used it to look up the proper word for gooseflesh before throwing the book into the garbage. The book’s owner, once a clever child, lay beneath a compost heap in the garden, a half-rotted old lady.
Marcus Dalton is an architect, currently thanking God he didn’t take the decision to strike out by himself when he was thirty-five. He’s kept the reasonably boring but reasonably safe job with a large firm based in Covent Garden.
Right now he’s at home, playing on the Wii with Mia. She’s eleven and she’s kicking his ass at Super Mario Cart.
Marcus delights in getting his ass kicked. It makes him proud of her.
He’s seen competitive parents at the sidelines of primary school football matches wrapped in parkas and scarves and muddy wellingtons; grown men and women with craziness in their eyes for loss of possession or an uncalled foul during a game played by eight-year-olds.
Marcus hates that, and hates them, and hates himself for not enjoying his kids’ sporting activities. He’d rather spend time with them in less active ways. Being beaten on the Wii excuses him from congratulating or commiserating from the edge of a divoty soccer field where he sorely does not want to be.
In the kitchen, Gabriella the Gorgeous is making popcorn. Gabriella’s tiny, Italian American, ravishing. In the early days, the nickname took some of the heat from her swanning round the house in micro-shorts and crop tops.
