The Chalk Girl

TWENTY-NINE

Losing them is easy in the Ramble. We know where to hide so no one can find us. Hell, even we can’t find us. We hold our breath, Phoebe and me. They pass us by, and then they double back – double-fisted. Hunting. They call out our names – so angry because they can’t find us, hurt us. Then Humphrey and the girls gang up on another target. From the first scream to the last, we can’t move. We can only listen to what they do to that poor crazy bum. They do it forever, dragging out the pain. The wino screams. Phoebe cries. I’m scared out of my mind – still scared even as I write this line.

—Ernest Nadler

Phoebe Bledsoe ran down the alley and across the garden to her cottage. Only time enough to dress, and then she would have to hurry, run all the way if she must. She dare not be late to the gathering at her mother’s mansion.

The gleam of a garden lantern shone through the crack as she opened her front door, and there on the floor was a note that had been slid under the sill.

Another threat?

‘Don’t turn on the light!’ Dead Ernest stood by the window, looking through a slit in the curtain. ‘Light attracts bugs like Willy.’

Phoebe’s hand hesitated on the wall switch and then dropped to her side. She made her way across the dark room by touch of chair and couch and table to find the drawer with the flashlight. She clicked it on and trained a yellow beam on the notepaper. Willy Fallon’s handwriting was almost illegible. Phoebe had to labor over every obscenity.

‘Murder makes people crazy,’ said Dead Ernest.

No, none of them had been crazy – only cruel.

A shadow passed by the curtain of the front window. Then came a knock at the door, and Willy Fallon yelled, ‘I know you’re in there!’ Rapping knuckles escalated to banging fists. ‘Tell your mother she has to talk to me!’

Willy slammed her body into the door. Screaming and kicking at the wood, she finally got the attention of the night watchman. On the other side of the garden, old Mr Polanski opened the school’s back door. Armed with his own flashlight, he aimed it at the intruder.

Willy fled.

They were driving home from Birdland in Midtown traffic. Riker had always loved the city best by night with the car windows all rolled down. He stared at the windshield, a panorama of neon colors and diamond-bright headlights. A duel of Latin music versus rap blasted from car lanes up ahead, but the detective hardly noticed. He had trouble on his mind.

The child sleeping in his arms was lightly snoring. He turned to the man behind the wheel, who had just ended the story of a surprise visit from Rolland Mann. ‘When Mallory said she took care of it, did she say how?’

Charles Butler shook his head. ‘She only told me he wouldn’t be back – ever.’

‘Well, I know she didn’t kill him. Word gets out when you shoot the top cop.’ Riker slumped low in the passenger seat. What had she done to that man? Could things get any worse? The tallest buildings were behind them now as the car traveled south through Greenwich Village, a neighborhood built on a more human scale. He looked down at the sleeping child. ‘So when were you planning to tell the kid that her granny’s dead?’

‘I thought I’d deal with one trauma at a time,’ said Charles. ‘Perhaps we’ll talk about the death tomorrow.’

‘Mallory told her yesterday.’

Charles’s hands tightened around the wheel, the only sign that he was angry. His voice was calm as he turned east on Houston. ‘Coco took it in stride, didn’t she? No crying, right?’

‘Yeah. How’d you know?’

‘She always knew Granny was dead. Coco never asked me any questions about her – never talked about going home. She knew she had no one to go back to. That’s why she fastened all her hopes on Mallory. From the moment they met, Coco was angling for a new home and someone to love her.’ They shifted across the lanes of wide Houston in silence, and then, as Charles made the turn down to SoHo, he said, ‘This would be a good time for Mallory to back off – just walk away. There has to be a breach that a real parent can step into. That has to happen very soon.’

‘You’re probably right, but Mallory thinks the kid knows more than she’s telling. It’s gonna take us a while to crack the fairy-tale code.’

‘I say it ends now. I have the strongest legal claim on Coco. Thanks to Robin Duffy, I’m the recognized guardian in both New York and Illinois. The law says—’

‘Mallory is the law.’ The Mercedes pulled up to the curb in front of the saloon that Riker called home. ‘You got no shot. You never did.’

Charles cut the engine. ‘I’m very close to placing Coco in a permanent home. That’s what she needs right now. She’s in crisis. The child can’t go on this way. But Mallory won’t sign the papers to let her go . . . This is heartless.’

Riker did not want to end the night like this. ‘Heartless? Yeah, that’s my partner. But you know she’d take a bullet for Coco . . . and maybe she already did. You never asked her how she solved your problem with Rolland Mann. She just told you the kid was safe, and you believed her. Absolute faith, right? I guess it never occurred to you that she could ever go into a fight – and lose everything. Charles, you know – you know she went after that bastard and scared him shitless. That’s her style . . . That’s her romantic side,’ he said to the sorry man who loved Mallory – heart or no heart.

The salon at the mansion was in full swing when Phoebe Bledsoe arrived with sweat stains under her arms from racing two blocks on this muggy night.

The caterer’s people, all more formally dressed, carried trays laden with glasses of red wine and white, moving through a babble of voices from every quarter of the wide room. Most of her mother’s guests stood in conspiracies of two and gangs of four or more. Others sat on chairs, divans and sofas positioned in conversational clusters. In this social hierarchy of furniture, there could only be one throne. High above her mother’s favorite chair, the chandelier burned bright with electric candles and a thousand pieces of reflecting crystal. Another chair, a smaller one, had been placed beside her mother’s, allowing only one person at a time to curry favor. It was the most coveted seat in the house, and people made wide circles around it, waiting for a chance at the ear of Grace Driscol-Bledsoe, a maker and breaker of careers and fortunes.

Phoebe’s late father had called this weekly affair the Night of the Toadies. As a child, she had taken this term to mean a squishiness of character, slimy souls – and a stink. ‘Yes,’ he had said to her then, ‘that’s exactly right.’

She walked about the room as her mother’s feeble apprentice, accepting kisses from familiar CEOs and politicos, but only handshakes from the up-and-comers. Every fifteen minutes, the drab companion, Hoffman, popped into the room to see that all was well with her employer, and then, after a moment or two, popped out – a clock’s broken cuckoo silently announcing the quarter hour. And finally, finally, at the end of the evening, when the room had been cleared of every toad, and coffee was served for two, Phoebe sat in the petitioner’s chair beside her mother.

‘Seriously? That’s what this says?’ Grace Driscol-Bledsoe stared at the note of scrawled lines. ‘Willy’s pushed a few of these through my mail slot, but I never actually tried to read one.’ Nor this one – she crumpled it into a ball and set it on the small table that held her coffee cup.

‘Did you really throw Willy out of the house?’

‘Hoffman did – with the help of those lovely detectives who interrogated you. I rather hoped they’d shoot her, but they only loaded her into an ambulette.’

‘If you’d just talk to Willy, she’d leave me alone.’

‘Scary little beast, isn’t she? Well, you could move back into the mansion with me. It’s very safe here, and your old room is always waiting for you.’

Of course it was. This was an old conversation. It had gone on for years. She was still regarded as her mother’s runaway child. And this was not the first bribe to bring her home – only the most callous one.

‘So that’s what it’s going to cost me to get rid of Willy?’ Phoebe stood up, preparing to leave now that she understood her true place – a bit of a shock. She was one of the toads.

‘Send him up,’ Mallory said to the doorman at the other end of the intercom. Minutes later, when she heard the soft knock, the detective was ready with a bottle of wine under her arm and two glasses in hand. She opened the door to Rabbi David Kaplan, a slender, middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed beard, a sweet smile and a penchant for poker.

‘Kathy.’ He was among that close circle of men who had loved her foster father, and the rabbi was fearless in the use of her first name. He kissed her cheek, already forgiving her for not returning his calls. ‘It’s been a long time – too long.’ He spread his open hands, and slowly shook his head. What was he to do with her? ‘Are you coming to the poker game this week?’

In lieu of an answer, she handed him the wine bottle, and he read the label of his favorite vintner. Now suspicion would begin. The rabbi would wonder if she could have known that he would drop by tonight unannounced.

Mallory smiled to say, Oh, yeah.

After failing with Riker, of course Charles Butler would send another diplomat to plead the case for moving Coco beyond the reach of the police. Also, she had noticed the rabbi standing on the sidewalk below and looking up at her dark street-side windows, awaiting an opportunity to catch her off guard with no excuse for refusing to see him. She had only to flip a light switch in the front room. Then, following a count to ten, the doorman had announced him.

‘So,’ she said to the man who lived on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, ‘you just happened to be passing by?’ The detective stepped out into the hall. ‘Let’s go to the roof.’

They entered the elevator. As the doors closed, Mallory said, ‘I know you called my boss while I was away – quite a few times.’

‘Kathy, you were gone so long, months and months.’ He raised his eyebrows in a gentle reprimand. ‘No goodbye, no postcards.’

Following elevator etiquette, they both turned their eyes to the lighted numbers for the rising floors.

‘So you hounded the lieutenant.’

‘Hounded? No.’ The rabbi shrugged. ‘Well, it could’ve been worse. I wanted to file a missing-person report, but Edward stopped me. He said you wouldn’t want that kind of thing on your record. So then I went to Lieutenant Coffey. A nice man, very sympathetic. He told me he’d know if you were in trouble. He said he was always the last to know, but eventually . . . if anything bad should happen . . . he would know.’

‘And what about your poker cronies? How many times did they call Jack Coffey?’

‘I rat on no one.’ David Kaplan was devoted to his friends, though he would take their money at cards every chance he got. In a penny-ante poker game, that might be a ten-dollar win. What a player. The rabbi, the gentlest man in creation, so loved this little fantasy that he could be ruthless.

The elevator doors opened onto a narrow stairwell, and they climbed these steps to a well-lit roof with a wooden deck and chairs in clusters around metal tables. The summer wind was warm. Above them, the moon and a poor show of stars could not compete with this view of a million city lights. She sat down with Rabbi Kaplan and poured the wine. ‘So you badgered Lieutenant Coffey every day.’

‘A few times. He told me nothing. Well, he did say that no news was good news.’

‘I bet you spent a lot of time talking about me on poker nights.’

‘Oh, Edward and Robin always talk about you behind your back. They’ve been doing that since you were a little girl. They love you.’ The rabbi sadly shook his head. ‘Those bastards.’ Now he graced her with his most innocent smile, the one he used for killer poker hands. And yet this man probably still wondered how she had managed to fleece him at cards all through her childhood.

He laid a folded sheaf of papers on the table. ‘More legal work for Coco.’

‘From Robin Duffy?’

Now why was that a hard question?

The first document was a court order for Coco’s travel to the state of Illinois. It was subject to the qualification of adoptive parents. Buried in the fine print of legalese was the second condition: the child’s release from material-witness protection. The next sheet was the companion form that required Mallory’s signature to bind the deal. Robin Duffy had already given her copies of this paperwork, but those had been left undated pending the wrap of her case. She turned back to the court order. It bore today’s date. And it was already signed by a judge. ‘This wasn’t Robin Duffy’s idea.’

That was only a guess, but a good one.

David Kaplan widened his sweet smile, inadvertently confirming that this was Charles Butler’s plot. The man picked up his wineglass for another taste – a stall. And now, in classic rabbi evasion, he said, ‘I know you want what’s best for the child. You want her to have every good thing that Louis and Helen gave to you.’

In the cold tone of a machine that could talk, she said, ‘How well you know me.’

The rabbi’s smile faltered, perhaps with a suspicion that he knew her not at all.

She laid the papers on the table. ‘I have to wonder why you thought this was a good idea. It isn’t – not if you want me to keep that kid alive.’

Only moments ago, everything had been clear to this man, but when he looked down at the document once more, he regarded it with some confusion.

Good. It was Mallory’s turn to smile. She was certain that Robin Duffy had not obtained the signature on this court order, though the old lawyer knew the signing judge quite well – and so did the rabbi. Judge Cartland was sometimes a guest player in the Louis Markowitz Floating Poker Game. The detective lifted her glass and drank deeply. ‘Charles sent you. You forgot to mention that.’ She tapped the document’s signature line. ‘When did the judge sign this – like an hour ago?’

Maybe right after Charles Butler got home from Birdland?

David Kaplan raised both hands to say, You got me. ‘That little girl is in very deep trouble, trauma layered over trauma. Charles has a list of likely parents in Illinois. And he’s lined her up with a therapist in Chicago, a very good doctor. This poor fragile child needs a—’

‘That kid’s not going anywhere. She’s a material witness in a murder investigation.’

‘Charles says she’s not good witness material. When I spoke to the—’

‘You told that to the judge?’ She read her answer in his face, his quizzical eyes with no trace of denial, only wondering what he had done wrong. ‘You did!’ Mallory slammed one hand down on the table. ‘Behind my back!’

Had she ever yelled at him before? No, never. They stared at each other with equal surprise.

Angry still, she said, ‘You trust Charles Butler’s judgment more than mine.’ She leaned toward him. ‘In a homicide investigation?’

How upside down was that? How would it square with this man’s flawless rabbinical logic? It would not. He simply had no faith in her. There was no other way to spin this night.

‘Rabbi, it was a mistake to mess with my case.’ She crushed the court order into a ball. ‘So you chose up sides.’ Not her side. ‘And then you gave that judge a reason to screw with me.’ She rolled the paper ball between her hands, making it smaller, harder. With the flick of a finger, she sent it spinning across the table, and it came to rest by his wineglass. ‘Keep it . . . Something to remember me by.’

The rabbi’s eyes were sad, for this was a death of sorts, an end to things. She had stabbed him with words, and the win was clearly hers.

Or not.

‘Kathy, when you only figuratively cut out someone’s heart – that won’t necessarily get rid of your problem . . . I will always love you.’ David Kaplan leaned back in his chair and emptied his glass. ‘I’ll always be here for you.’ The rabbi rose from the table and kissed her cheek in farewell. ‘But I’m guessing you won’t be sitting in on the poker game this week.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘Well, maybe next week.’

When he had left her alone on the roof, she smashed her wineglass into the brick parapet. Unconditional love could be infuriating.

The den in Mallory’s condo had one wall lined in cork. She had stolen it from Lou Markowitz’s office after the old man’s death. As far as Riker knew, it was her only theft of sentiment.

To accommodate her electronics, the temperature of this back room was always on the chilly side, but it was ice cold by the looks of it – decorated with metal furnishings, wires and cables, steel shelves of manuals and gadgets. Even the damn carpet was gunmetal gray.

And baby had a brand-new toy.

The four computer monitors on workstations no longer had pride of place. They had been upstaged by a gigantic flat screen, and Riker gawked at it. A television set this size was every guy’s wet dream on Super Bowl Sunday. But he did not salivate; it was just another computer. No need of a keyboard or mouse – she only pointed to the picture of a file holder and pages tumbled out in animation. With two fingers, she caught them in midair and juggled them into positions across the wide field of electric blue. It was not bad enough that his partner’s only stable relationships were with machines – now she had found one that responded to her touch, one that could feel her body heat, and this vaguely creeped him out – possibly because he was drunk.

Riker had moved on to the good stuff, Mallory’s single-malt whiskey, as he watched glowing boxes of text enlarge their type for the benefit of his middle-aged eyes. Standing up as straight as the liquor would allow, he gave his best impression of actually listening to her lecture on a tired old theme: How to Buy a Politician.

Elected officials loved to see their names plastered on charities, so said Mallory. But all the worthy causes listed on her screen were funded by the Driscol Institute, and the Institute was funded by moguls in search of political whores to bed down with. ‘Good works get votes.’

When she turned around to see if he was paying attention, Riker recited what came to all New Yorkers with their mothers’ milk. ‘The politicians wow the voters and then screw ’em over after the election.’ He said this in the tone of Yeah, yeah, what else is new?

She rewarded him by refilling his glass. How many times had she done that? He had lost count of his shots tonight.

Mallory capped the bottle. ‘The mayor doesn’t run this town. Grace Driscol-Bledsoe does.’ She faced her giant screen and pointed to one of her lists. ‘These council members were bought with small stuff, their names on scholarship funds and after-school programs.’ Her pointing finger moved to the next column of more impressive charities. ‘The Driscol Institute funded a civic center with the mayor’s name engraved in stone. That bought him votes in a district that hated his guts. Coincidentally, that’s when he dropped his opposition to a building site for a high-rise on the West Side. The land was owned by a real-estate broker, one of the major donors to Grace’s family charity – and he made a fifteen-million-dollar profit overnight. I figure Grace’s cut was ten percent.’

And now Riker was paying attention. ‘Why didn’t the feds pick up on that? I thought they were tracking this stuff.’

‘They are. Corporations have to declare every donation to charity, but that has no effect on a money-laundering racket like this one. There’s nothing on paper that ties a charity donor to a politician. The trustees of the Driscol Institute are the middlemen.’

‘The money cleaners – and Grace is their leader.’ Riker looked down to see Mallory topping off his glass – a small bonus for staying awake. And so, just to prove that he was somewhat sober, he asked, ‘How does Grace collect her cut? Wouldn’t that show up in an audit?’

‘No. She gets paid by the donors.’ With a touch of the screen, Mallory opened another folder. ‘And here they are.’ This was an old client list for the late John Bledsoe’s consulting firm. ‘Grace used to channel the payoffs into her husband’s company. It looked good on paper – like legitimate earnings for a lobbyist. And the taxes got paid. No red flags for the IRS.’

‘So all that money her husband left to Humphrey – that really belonged to Grace? Well, that explains why the portrait of hubby and the kid was hung over a toilet.’ And now he could clearly see a pissed-off Grace Driscol-Bledsoe out in the woods, stringing up bodies, one of them her own son. ‘But can the lady climb a tree?’ He raised his glass for a deep swallow. ‘For a hundred million bucks, I say she can. That broad’s in better shape than I am.’

His partner smiled – she was smiling at his empty glass. And then she turned back to the screen. ‘After the husband sold his company, Grace had no holding pen for the next batch of money-laundering fees, and her personal finances had to jibe with legal earnings.’ Mallory touched another folder, and a slew of facsimile checks spilled out across the blue screen, all of them made out to the woman’s personal companion. ‘Here’s the weak spot, a stupid mistake. Hoffman is underpaid. I’m guessing Grace gives out weekly cash bonuses.’

‘I bet she does a lot of things with cash,’ said Riker. ‘She’d never trust another partner to launder her own money – not after what her husband did to her.’

‘Right. And the feds have been tracking large cash flows for years. I know she’s got big money squirreled away – but she’s been selling off her jewelry.’ With one finger, Mallory dragged a parade of photographs across the screen. ‘These were taken after her husband sold the company and walked out on her. Count the jewels.’

Riker stepped up to the screen and looked at the first photo of the society diva all decked out in shiny gemstones. Years later, in the final shot, she was almost modest. ‘So the lady’s down to her last strand of pearls – and that silver medallion.’

‘Grace really needs Humphrey’s millions,’ said Mallory. ‘It’s the only money she can spend in the open. Every cash transaction is a risk.’

‘Are we gonna share this with the rest of the squad?’

‘If we do, it’ll get back to Joe Goddard.’ One hand waved over her list of top politicians on the charity circuit – and on the take. ‘You want him to run this town?’

‘Oh, God, no.’ Crazy bastard – the chief of detectives was on a twisted mission, collecting dirty secrets for the good of the force, an extortionist on the side of the angels and the NYPD. It would be insane to give him the entire city. Yet Riker’s next thought was for a day down the road, when he might need to use all of this, trade the whole town to that lunatic to save his partner’s badge – and to keep her from waging a war she could not win.

‘It’s all about power with him,’ said Mallory, ‘but the chief’s just another version of Grace – just as dangerous.’

Amen to that.

‘So . . . if the bad guys don’t get us, the good guys will?’

‘Now you’ve got it.’ Mallory tilted the whiskey bottle, and when she had filled his glass to the brim, she looked deep into his eyes, as if she could extract his soul this way. ‘That day – when Goddard told us he planned to get rid of Rocket Mann – he put his own job on the line. So he already knew he could control us . . . but how? A blackmailer has to put his leverage on the table. There’s no other way to get what he wants.’

Through one clear spot in a fog of alcohol, he saw the true purpose of tonight’s civics lesson. Civics my ass. It worried him how often Mallory’s paranoia panned out. She knew the leverage had been laid out – for her partner.

Riker shook his head to plead clueless. He waited for the accusation of betrayal, but all that came back on him was heartache. She only stood there so quietly – waiting for the truth.

Standoff.

He set down his glass and showed himself out.

The alarm on the bedside monitor woke Grace Driscol-Bledsoe. The loud noise was enough to terrify her even before the door opened and the apparition flew into the room. By the poor light of a bedside lamp, she saw a disembodied head with balls of fire for eyes. Oh – only the nurse wrapped in a black robe. The lenses of Hoffman’s eyeglasses reflected the opaque globe of the lamp on the night table as she leaned over her employer to fuss with the tangle of sheets.

‘You slipped off the finger cuff, ma’am. Here it is.’ Hoffman had found the small device that was attached to the monitor by a cord, and she replaced it on Grace’s index finger.

So this was not a stroke – more like a rehearsal.

When the nurse had returned to her own room, Grace lay back on the pillows, but sleep would not come. After switching off the monitor and removing its connecting finger cuff, she rose from her bed with only the security of her emergency-alert medallion. With one press of the button at its center, a voice would boom from a box, seeking her out wherever she might be, increasing its volume and sound sensitivity until it found her and assessed her needs. During all her waking hours, this level of security would do. It was the nights that frightened her. She was most vulnerable in sleep.

Barefooted, she padded down the hall to the room where her father had died. It was much the same as it had been all those years ago when Papa had been crippled by a stroke.

As a girl, Grace had seldom visited the sickroom, so repulsed was she by the sight of that drooling man rolling his eyes and making pathetic attempts to form words, half her father’s face gone slack and the other half crying. In recent years, Grace came here all the time. Taking inventory soothed her. The closet had been restocked with supplies, and now she counted the bottles of medicines not yet invented in the days of Papa’s drawn-out death. Prized above all of them were doses of tbs, not legally obtainable outside of a hospital. This precious contraband was also kept in Hoffman’s black bag – kept close at hand every hour of the day and night.

Moonlight gleamed on the chrome rails of the mechanized bed – her inheritance. It was still serviceable, though a new mattress had been purchased against a day when Grace might suffer another stroke of her own, a trauma more debilitating than the other two. It ran in the family – this other legacy from her late father. Papa, thank you so much.

She inspected the red lights on a march of bedside machines, assurance that they were operational. Last, she opened a door to a linen closet, making certain that the stacks of sheets had not become musty while awaiting the worst day of her life.

And the checklist was done.

There were clinics in this country that were not so wonderfully equipped. This room guaranteed that she would not end her days in a nursing home, however feeble she might become. Hopefully, by the time she could no longer fend for herself, Hoffman would have been replaced by another nurse, one with greater incentive to keep her alive. And Phoebe would sleep at the foot of the bed, much like a good and loyal dog.

Phoebe Bledsoe’s friend, Mr Polanski, was a skinny twin to Santa Claus and a kindred soul, another one who walked with the dead. The night watchman could not part with his late wife, and so he took her with him on his solitary rounds. But not tonight. ‘I talk to her more as I get older,’ he said, accepting a thermos of ice tea from Phoebe’s hand.

‘But your wife never talks.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘not like your Dead Ernest. I missed that little boy when he left us.’

Years ago, Mr Polanski had been the Driscol School’s man of odd jobs, a janitor and a fixer of leaks, a mender of cracks in the plaster and sometimes a roofer. In later life, physical labor had been too hard on him, and so he had become the protector of priceless furnishings and artwork. With a change of title from handyman to watchman, he had been kept on in this place of tradition – just another antique to the board of directors.

And Phoebe, a former student, had been recycled as the school nurse.

She accompanied the old man on his rounds, and they strolled through the gallery of alumni portraits dating back to the 1800s. Most of the people pictured here were renowned in the seas of politics and commerce. These lying walls advertised respectability beyond reproach.

The gallery opened onto the dining hall, a vast space lit by streetlight slanting down from a bank of tall windows. The long mahogany tables and their chairs wore ghosty dust covers. Long ago, this had been a place of sanctuary. The table in the far corner was where she had sat with Ernie, two children catching their breath and licking wounds in the no-cruelty zone of lunch hour.

Mr Polanski and Phoebe retraced their steps to the grand staircase and climbed to the next floor, where classroom doors stood open in a hallway lined with wood paneling and freestanding lockers that clanged when hit with the soft body of a child. Ernie had once asked her why he was the only one singled out for physical violence in a school that offered so many variations on torture. Phoebe had theorized then that it was because he was two years younger and ten years smarter than his tormentors.

When Mr Polanski had completed his rounds on every floor, they descended the back stairs to the garden door and went outside into a warm night scented by flowers. The watchman shined his torch on shrubs that hid a portion of the rear wall from the rooftop security lights.

Phoebe stared into a patch of absolute darkness where it was daylight in an old memory. This was where Humphrey and the girls had Ernie pinned down, his back to the wall. And here he had disappointed them. All his fear had been spent that day. The boy had given himself up for dead and faced them down with a calm resolve.

A mistake.

Nothing could have angered them more. Before they tired of him, one of them – was it her brother? No, that time it was Willy Fallon. She had grabbed Ernie by the ears and knocked his head into the gray stone wall. The little boy had slumped to the ground, leaving a slick of his blood to mark the spot. It was still there on the following day. And all that day long, other students had streamed into the garden to gawk at a child’s blood. Eleven-year-old Phoebe knew the teachers had seen it, too, but they kept walking past it.

Mr Polanski saw the train of her gaze, peeked into her mind and said, ‘It took me a long time to get rid of that stain.’

No. Phoebe shook her head. It’s still there. And it was on her hands. It was everywhere.