No Help For The Dying

Chapter 25

It was the man Mr Grobowski had seen hanging around. He was thin, wore glasses, and his clothes bore the crumpled and over-pressed look of constant wear and cleaning, like someone governed by upbringing and habit but constrained by a limited wardrobe. Riley put his age at anywhere between forty and sixty; it was hard to tell.

He stood up as she approached and brushed at the seat of his pants before stepping down onto the path. He was taller than she’d thought, and slightly stooped, like a spent reed. Then she realised she had seen his face before; he was the Nissan driver from outside the headquarters of the Church of Flowing Light. She stopped a cautious three paces away, and wondered if he was a friend of Quine’s.

‘Miss Gavin.’ If he was nervous he hid it well, and clearly knew who she was. Riley wondered what had prevented him from making himself known before. She doubted it was shyness. ‘My name is Eric Friedman.’

She kept her expression blank. Friedman. Another building block suddenly began to fall into place. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’d like to talk to you. I think you know what it’s about.’ His voice was well modulated, the words carefully pronounced, and Riley wondered what his profession might be.

She gave it a few seconds of deliberation, then mentally tossed a coin. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, and led the way up the stairs. There was no sign of Mr Grobowski, so she guessed he was out. She picked up her mail on the way and unlocked the door to the flat. As she pushed it open, she felt the air go out of her in a rush.

The walls either side of the hallway were covered in red spray paint; vivid and garish, it was a hideous pattern of meaningless scrawl and foul words, a mish-mash of graffiti. A thick spray of the same colour ran down to the floor, across a small, semicircular antique table where Riley usually kept her keys and bits and pieces, and up again in a wild slash across a row of hooks holding a windcheater, scarf and spare jacket. A large, dripping cross, glittering with black paint, stood out starkly on one wall, with smaller ones on each door. As Riley stepped inside, her feet crunched through pieces of broken crockery. Plates, saucers… her teapot — even an unused butter dish. It must have been kicked or thrown from the kitchen. As she stepped over the shards she heard Friedman take in a deep breath and mutter softly behind her. It might almost have been a prayer.

The hallway was merely a taster of what lay ahead. As she entered the living room, she recoiled with the shock. More crosses and more spray paint. A lot more. They were daubed across every surface, soaked into fabrics, ghosted across the ceilings and walls in a mad, obscene frenzy, a venomous mix of crazy art exhibition crossed with inner-city underpass. Nothing had been spared.

The other rooms were the same, with food from the fridge trampled into the carpets alongside broken glassware and slashed chairs. Cans of beans and tomatoes had been opened and sprayed around and the vivid slash of orange juice arced across the floor and up one wall like a grotesque smile. A jagged hole pierced the television screen, exposing the guts of electronic circuitry and coloured wiring, and her laptop lay on its side, mangled beyond repair. In the bedroom, the mattress had been opened up like a dissected corpse and the duvet was a tangled frenzy of scarred fabric, gaping holes and feathers mixed with faeces and urine. The human smell hung heavy in the air, choking and vile, and deeply personal. Riley backed out and closed the door, too stunned even to feel sick.

Eric Friedman stood in the centre of the devastation that had been the living room, watching her. He looked greyer than he had a few minutes before, but somehow resigned, as if this was nothing new. His first words since speaking outside confirmed it.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen this before. It’s… appalling.’

‘Christ, when?’ She’d seen vandalism, too. But never this close and never directed at her.

‘Somebody crossed them once before.’ He looked around and shook his head. ‘But that wasn’t as bad as this. Not as… extreme. They must feel very threatened.’

‘They? You mean you know who did this?’

‘I think so.’

With a guilty start she remembered the flat’s other occasional inhabitant. Cat. She ran through to the bedroom, peering beneath the bed and behind overturned furniture, looking for any space small enough for a cat to hide in. ‘Cat? Where are you, Cat?’ But she knew there was nowhere left that hadn’t been trashed. She went back out to the hallway, convincing herself that he’d have taken one look at intruders and bolted for safety.

She led Eric Friedman back out of the flat and locked the door behind her. The thought of dealing with what lay inside was beyond her at the moment; she’d come back and pick up a few things later. She doubted, however, the vandals had left much to salvage, and would probably have to start again. Get a team in here to clean up and leave it to the insurers. Right now she was too upset to think clearly.

She went back downstairs and stopped at Mr Grobowski’s flat. This time she could hear him singing inside, accompanied by the rattle of pots and pans. She leaned on his bell until the singing stopped and he threw open the door.

‘Hello, miss,’ he greeted her enthusiastically, the smell of cooking wafting around him. If he had heard any noise from above, he evidently wasn’t going to complain about it. Then he noticed Eric Friedman in the background. ‘Ah. So your friend he has come in. Good. What can I do for you, miss?’

‘Mr Grobowski, have you seen my cat?’ she asked.

He nodded and gestured with a large thumb. ‘You bet, yes. He is in my kitchens, eating. First time he comes in, I promise. You not feeding hims, maybe?’

Riley sighed with relief. ‘It’s a long story, I’m afraid. You haven’t heard any noise from my flat, have you?’

‘Not a things, no. I been out a lot, busy with some stuff. Lots of peoples, they want my times. Why? You had a party, huh?’ He grinned and rolled his eyes as if he could give her a few hints about partying. ‘Is why your cat he move homes?’

‘No, no party, I promise. Look, I might have to be away for a couple of days. Could you look after the cat for a while, please? Feed him some of your fabulous cooking?’

‘Sure, miss. Of course. He good cat. Like Polish recipe. Don’t you worry.’

Riley thanked the old man and led Friedman to the coffee shop where she had seen the poster of Angelina Boothe-Davison. In spite of feelings of shock and nausea, she wondered if she had been found yet… and if the Angelina who came back would be the same one who’d gone missing.

She asked Friedman to order two coffees and went to find a corner well away from the nearest customers. As soon as she sat down, she had to clamp her hands between her knees to still a sudden violent fit of trembling. She closed her eyes, instantly seeing flashes of the destruction to her flat, and opened them again before her stomach gave way and she threw up. Friedman set down two cups on the table but said nothing, stirring his coffee and waiting, his eyes on her. His hands were bony and red, with fingernails bitten to the quick and the skin of his first two fingers stained with nicotine. In the intrusive glare of the overhead lights he looked worn and stripped of energy, like an old car with too many miles on the clock. Only his eyes retained any spark.

‘You said you know who did it,‘ said Riley softly, finally getting the shivers under control. ‘The mess in my place.’

Friedman nodded. ‘So do you.’ He looked at her steadily, then reached into his jacket and took out a three-by-four coloured snapshot in a worn plastic sleeve. It was of a teenage boy, smiling and fresh-faced in a school uniform jacket with a shield on the breast pocket. He had a ghosting of adolescent hair across his top lip and a few spots on his chin, and could have been any teenage boy anywhere. But the resemblance between the man and the boy was obvious.

‘His name is Nicholas,’ he said softly, and let the photo rest on the table between them. ‘He’s my son. He left home ten years ago, saying he wanted some space.’ Friedman shook his head with a bitter expression. ‘Space. It was the thing everybody wanted at the time. Space to do, space to be. Space to… Anyway, Nick had been having a tough time at school; bullies and exams and… other things. It was all piling in on him. In the end it got too much. We tried talking to him, drawing him out. But he wouldn’t tell us. Then one morning he said he couldn’t take any more, and announced he was thinking of going away. Just for a few days, to clear his head.’ He played with his cup, twirling it round in the saucer, slopping some of the contents onto his hand. If it hurt he seemed not to notice. ‘We tried to talk him out of it — he was only seventeen, for heaven’s sake. No age to be wandering off. Whatever problems he had — thought he had — we could help him through. I thought we’d managed it, too. But he waited until we were at work one day, then bunked off school and disappeared. Cleared out his savings account of a hundred pounds or so and took off. Just like that.’

‘What happened?’

‘We looked for him, of course, but it was like he’d left the planet. Not a trace. Well, you know what that’s like. I went over his tracks immediately afterwards, and a hundred times since.’ He looked at Riley and in that drawn face, she saw failure, loss and impotence. ‘We used to be close, Nicholas and I. We did things together all the time: football matches, cricket — that sort of thing. I thought I knew him.’ He trembled like a man with a high fever. ‘Eventually I pieced together a picture, of sorts. On the day he left home he met up with a girl he knew. They stayed in a friend’s parents’ caravan on the south coast for a few days.’

‘Friend?’

‘Just a friend. Maybe his only one.’ He stopped and sipped his drink, wincing as if the coffee was too bitter.

Riley was holding her breath, dreading what he would say next.

‘Who was the girl?’

‘The one everyone’s been looking for,’ he said finally, looking her in the eye. ‘Katie Pyle. Do you mind if we walk?’ They left the coffee shop and walked. Friedman suggested some fresh air would do her good, but she wasn’t sure which of them was in more need of it. He seemed very fragile, as if he was holding on by willpower alone, and she wondered how long it had been since he’d eaten properly. She allowed him to dictate the direction, along quiet streets, through occasional pockets of green and past rows of houses and parked cars, skirting the occasional burst of activity yet crossing busy roads with unerring ease. The pity was, she had a feeling he was never going to be able to walk fast enough or far enough to get away from what hounded him. It would follow him always.

They found a small park and a childrens’ playground, with a few battered playthings and a worn patch of stubby grass. A bench sat amid a scattering of litter, close by a pair of watchful mothers with a clutch of small, shrill children. It wasn’t a restful place and there was a coolness in the air with a threat of rain, but she could see that Friedman needed to talk.

‘I’m a lawyer,’ Friedman told her, after a few minutes of silence. ‘I was, anyway, before Nicholas left. I used to work for the Ministry of Defence, producing and vetting contracts, checking agreements, writing tenders, that sort of thing. It wasn’t the most interesting work in the world. Nicholas always said I was one of the ‘grey men’ like something out of Yes, Minister, only not as colourful. Or exciting.’ He smiled to himself, a brief flicker of the lips as a memory reeled by. ‘He had a great sense of fun. Infectious. Lively. He could light up a room just by being there.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘We found out later that he moved on from the caravan and joined a church. Not the established church, but an independent group called the Church of Flowing Light.’ He looked up at her. ‘But you know them already, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘He wasn’t religious or anything — none of us was, to be honest. Why he joined them is still a mystery. But then so was his leaving. A total puzzle.’

‘Was it?’

‘Pardon?’

She watched him for reaction, then said, ‘Did you know that when Katie Pyle joined Nicholas, she was pregnant?’

If she was expecting him to show surprise, she was disappointed. The news had little effect other than mild interest; no shock, no associated guilt, nothing. Yet Riley was pretty sure the revelation was new to him. ‘I didn’t, no. Who was the father?’ The question sounded normal, with no hint of guile, and she stared at him. If he was acting, he was very good at it.

‘Well, I thought… your son.’

Friedman shook his head slowly, with enormous sadness. ‘No. It wasn’t. I wish it could have been. It might have saved him.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He stared at his hands for a moment. ‘The ‘other things’ I spoke of earlier — the fears torturing him — were the facts of his sexuality, Miss Gavin. My son was gay.’

Even as Riley took in what he was saying, she saw his eyes shift momentarily past her, scanning the area beyond her shoulder. He froze, his body stiffening and his eyes taking on the look of a hunted beast. His mouth worked helplessly. ‘I… I must go.’

‘What is it?’ said Riley. She turned but couldn’t see anything apart from the children and their mothers, and a few birds diving for scraps on the ground. When she turned back, Friedman was on his feet but hunched down, scrabbling in the pocket of his jacket. He produced a piece of white card and thrust it into her hand.

‘Here,’ he whispered. ‘Take this and call me. I can’t stay.’ Then he was hurrying away, thin shoulders bent and head down, a Lowry figure desperate not to be noticed.

When Riley turned to look again behind her, she caught a brief glimpse of a white van turning a corner a hundred yards away. She could have sworn there was a builder’s logo on the side, but when she turned back to tell Friedman, he was nowhere in sight.