Chameleon's Shadow

Thirteen

JACKSON PARKED HER CAR at the top of Caroline Street, alongside the rear of Drury Lane Theatre, took a torch from her dashboard pocket and walked down towards the Aldwych. She knew the two pubs on the right-hand side, the Henry Fielding and the Pepys Tavern, but both were attached to the buildings beside them. Not a railing in sight, she thought grimly, convinced she was on a wild-goose chase. Susan’s directions had been hopelessly vague – a bar in Caroline Street with a fenced-off gap at the side – and Jackson seriously doubted that any such gap existed in a part of the city that priced square yards in tens of thousands of pounds.

At one o’clock in the morning, this part of Covent Garden was deserted, although a regular flow of traffic passed along the Aldwych, heading from the Strand towards Fleet Street. The theatre, pubs and handful of restaurants had long since closed and Jackson had the road to herself. Making her way down the pavement, she flicked her torch at every vertical shadow thrown against the buildings by the street lighting, but each property was firmly attached to the one beside it. With a sigh of frustration, she crossed to the other side and walked back up, repeating the exercise. Nothing.

Nor was there anything Jackson would class as a bar, apart from the two pubs. One of the restaurants had its windows obscured by discreet net curtaining, but the name – Bon Appetit – hardly suggested a drinking establishment. She leaned on her car roof and studied an empty unit across the road which was undergoing renovation. There was no gap between it and the building to the right of it, but it stood on the corner of Caroline Street and Russell Street and the weathered fascia board above its whitewashed windows showed some barely discernible letters which looked like ‘Giovanni’s Bar & Grill’.

More in hope than expectation, Jackson made her way into Russell Street and walked along the side elevation of the unit, where more whitewashed panes reflected the beam of her torch. The gap, when she came to it, was just a yard wide and appeared to serve no purpose at all, apart from offering a glimmer of daylight to the few upper-storey windows in the adjoining property. The metal railings, seven feet high, six inches wide and without a crosspiece in the middle to offer a foothold, were merely preventing access to a narrow, twenty-yard-long passageway with a brick wall at the end. There were no doors opening off it and no sign that it was ever used, except as a receptacle for cigarette butts, which lay in filthy piles around the entrance.

Jackson moved to the left and lined up her torch to shine at a diagonal down the alley. The beam wasn’t strong enough to do more than produce a pinpoint of light on the bricks at the end, but she was able to steer it a fair way to the right before it jumped forward to the side wall of the passage. For whatever reason, this wasted space in the heart of London made a ninety-degree turn, and it didn’t take a genius to work out that it was heading back towards Giovanni’s redundant kitchen.

Nor did it take a genius to work out why the railings were necessary. During the previous three centuries, when Covent Garden had been a working flower and vegetable market and labour was cheap, the Garden never slept. Fresh produce came in during the hours of darkness to be sold by the stall holders the following day, chop shops and brothels stayed open round the clock, and theatregoers and opera lovers flocked in for afternoon matine´es and evening performances. Intruders down any passageway would have been met and challenged.

Now, with the market gone and the area converted to a daytime tourist attraction, only a fool would leave a recessed back door vulnerable to a burglar’s jemmy at night, and his insurance premiums would be prohibitive if he did. With another sigh of frustration, Jackson studied the bars and wondered how Acland had got over them without a lift. Assuming he was even in there.

She raised her voice. ‘Charles! Are you there? It’s Jackson. Susan sent me. Can I talk to you, please?’ No response. ‘Is anyone there?’ she called next. ‘I’m not the police. I’m just trying to find a friend.’ She pointed her torch towards the right angle, looking for movement, and thought she saw the flash of something white. A face?

‘I’m hoping a friend of mine’s in there,’ she shouted. ‘Will you help me? He’s a young guy with an eyepatch.’

‘Who are you?’ The voice was cracked and gritty from smoke and alcohol.

‘My name’s Jackson. Is he with you?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Will you ask him to talk to me?’

‘I’ll ask but it doesn’t mean he’ll say yes.’ There was a long pause. ‘He says he’s not coming out. You’ll have to come in.’

‘Great!’ She ran her torch over the bars, which were held upright by two crosspieces at the top and bottom cemented into the brickwork on either side. ‘How do I get over this without help? Is there a knack to it?’

She heard a snicker of laughter. ‘It helps to be skinny, girl . . . and from the way you’re blocking most of the entrance, that ain’t the case. There’s ties holding the outer bars. If you can get a toe on to any of ’em it makes it easier . . . but you’d better put a coat over the spikes at the top. With your size, you’ll come down on ’em like a ton of bricks if you’re not careful.’

Jackson swore under her breath as she examined the inch-wide rivets that secured the framework into the buildings. Even in bare feet, she’d have trouble securing a toehold and she certainly didn’t fancy the ornamental spearheads that capped the upper crosspiece. Nevertheless she stooped to unlace her boots. ‘Will you do me a favour?’ she called. ‘Come and hold the torch so that I can see what I’m doing?’

‘As long as you don’t blame me when you go arse over tit.’

‘I won’t.’ She reached up to place her boots upside down on the two middle spikes, then shrugged out of her jacket and rolled it into a tight pad to cover the remaining spikes on the left-hand side. A figure approached down the passageway and she played torchlight briefly over a bearded face before handing the gadget through the bars. ‘Cheers.’

The light turned on her. ‘Gawd struth, you’re a big lass. You sure you want to do this?’

‘It depends how drunk you are.’ She reached through the bars again to guide the beam towards the rivets on the left. ‘Let’s see if you can keep your hand steady.’

‘Steady as a rock when I’m drunk,’ the man confided on a gale of alcoholic breath. ‘Only get the shakes when I’m sober. How’s that?’

‘It’ll do.’ She placed her hands on either side of her boots on the top crosspiece, inserted her left toe on the highest rivet she could reach, took a deep breath, hoisted herself off the ground and locked her arms. ‘Where next?’

‘That’s why it helps to be skinny. If you take it easy, there’s room for your arse and your prick between the spikes. You have to squeeze down carefully, mind.’ Another snicker. ‘I’m not saying it doesn’t sting occasionally.’

‘You’re a great help,’ said Jackson sarcastically, transferring her weight to her right hand and using her left to rearrange her jacket over her boots to make an improvised saddle. ‘Here.’ She retrieved her mobile from her trouser pocket. ‘Catch this.’ She tossed it down to him before clamping her right hand over the crosspiece again. ‘If I get skewered on this sodding thing, call an ambulance before I bleed to death. And don’t move the torch!’

‘Bossy, ain’t you?’ he said. ‘Just like my old woman.’ But he’d caught the mobile cleanly and the beam remained focused on the rivets.

‘With a husband like you, I don’t blame her,’ said Jackson, supporting her weight on her hands and working her left foot up the wall. ‘Did she ever get to spend money on the kids, or did you drink it first?’

‘Wasn’t around long enough for nippers.’

Jackson’s toe locked on to another rivet. ‘I’m aiming to straddle this thing, so get ready to move in case I lose my balance.’ With a grunt, she straightened her left leg, swung the other one over the saddle and, in a surprisingly graceful movement, like a female gymnast on the asymmetric bars, reversed her grip and twisted over the spikes. ‘Never even touched it,’ she said with satisfaction as she lowered herself to the ground.

The wino nodded approval. ‘Not bad for a big girl,’ he agreed. ‘You’ve got some muscles on you, that’s for sure . . . assuming you are a girl.’ He ran the torch up and down her body. ‘You’re not one of those guys who want to be women, are you?’

‘No,’ said Jackson without offence. ‘I’ve always had a fanny.’

She reached down her jacket and boots and stepped away from the cigarette butts, wiping detritus off her socks with the back of her hand before relacing the boots. She held her breath while she did it to avoid taking in the man’s aroma. Susan had told her the story of the urinating yobs to explain why she thought Charles might be in Caroline Street, and Jackson concluded that not only was this the vagrant in question but, judging by his powerful smell, he hadn’t washed his clothes since the episode. Either that or he had prostate problems.

She stood up and opened her palm. ‘Mobile?’ she asked pleasantly. He gave it to her but wasn’t so keen to give up the torch. She gestured down the passageway. ‘You lead,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow.’

But he had quaint ideas about escorting women and insisted on walking beside her, shepherding her carefully with one hand behind her back and lighting the ground in front of her with the other. It made for close communion in the narrow confines of the alley and Jackson wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t touching her up. He was a couple of inches shorter than she was, but his shoulders looked powerful and, despite the grey streaks in his beard, she suspected he was younger than he looked.

‘There’s three of us,’ he told her, ‘me, a young lad who’s out cold and your bloke.’

‘What kind of “out cold”? Drugs?’

‘Never seen him with any . . . but I can’t swear to it. He turned up in a right state about half an hour ago, saying he felt sick and his belly hurt. He passed out shortly afterwards.’ They rounded the corner and he directed the beam towards a couple of seated figures in front of a darkened doorway, one leaning against the other. ‘It’s not much,’ he said apologetically, as if Jackson had made a request to join them, ‘but it’s safer than the Strand. You get some real nutters down there.’

‘What name do you go by?’ Jackson asked him.

‘Chalky.’ He played the torchlight over some bags against the wall as if to satisfy himself they were still there, then handed the torch back to Jackson. ‘The lootenant –’ he pronounced it the American way for reasons best known to himself – ‘was planning to go for help till you turned up. He says you’re a doctor.’

‘True.’

‘So will you look at the lad? My guess is he’ll be dead if no one does anything.’

‘Sure. What’s his name?’

‘Ben. I dunno his last name.’

She walked forward and flashed the light into Acland’s face. ‘You might have given me a hand over the railings,’ she admonished mildly, kneeling beside the other figure. ‘What good would I have been with a spike up my arse?’ She shone the torch over the grey, unconscious face of his companion.

‘I didn’t think you’d come in if I climbed out.’

‘Why not?’ she asked, rolling the youngster’s lids back with the ball of her thumb and shining the light into his unresponsive eyes.

‘I don’t know what your agenda is. You told me you worked for the police the first time I met you.’

‘Only in a medical capacity. I don’t round up witnesses for them.’ Jackson leaned forward to sniff the unconscious boy’s mouth. ‘How long’s his breath been smelling of nail polish remover?’

‘Since he got here. It was even stronger when he was awake.’

‘Have you tried speaking to him? Calling his name? Any response?’

‘No. He’s been like this from the moment he passed out.’

She turned the torch on the youngster’s neck, where patches of inflamed skin stood out against his ashen pallor. ‘How long have you known him, Chalky?’

‘A month or so. He’s a pretty lad, so the shirt-lifters came after him. I took him under my wing cos I don’t hold with that kind of malarkey. The fact a little lad’s run away shouldn’t make him easy meat for the first predatory pervert that passes by.’

‘I agree. Has he been complaining of thirst?’

‘Haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘Does he pee a lot?’

‘Anywhere he fancies.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Said he was eighteen . . . but I reckon fifteen’s nearer the mark. What’s wrong with him?’

‘His symptoms suggest diabetic coma brought on by a buildup of chemical poisons in his blood.’ She took out her mobile, scrolled down her menu and punched in a number. ‘Yes . . . Trevor Monaghan, please . . . Dr Jackson . . . It’s an emergency. Cheers.’ She glanced up at Chalky. ‘Go back to the railings and holler when you see an ambulance, and you –’ she said to Acland, fishing her car keys out of her back pocket – ‘hop round to my car and get my medical bag out of the boot. It’s a black BMW and it’s parked on the corner of Caroline Street opposite this bar.’ She pressed the keys into his hand. ‘Trevor? Are you on call? I need you to meet me in A&E. I’ve one sick kid for you, mate . . . Deep diabetic coma . . . initial diagnosis, ketoacidosis shock from untreated type one. Can you organize the ambulance from your end? Yes . . . absolute priority . . . the corner of Caroline Street and Russell Street in Covent Garden...And we need a fire crew . . . there’s no way out of here without ladders...’

*

‘Is he going to die?’ asked Chalky twenty minutes later as the paramedics loaded the stretcher into the ambulance. He’d been impressed by the speed of the operation. Seconds after shouting down to Jackson that the ambulance had arrived, he’d called again to say that a fire crew were erecting a ladder gantry over the railings. ‘You’d have to be pretty ill to have this many people turn out for you.’ Jackson was using Acland’s back to write a note to the consultant. ‘He’s very ill, Chalky. Juvenile diabetes is a serious condition, and living on the streets won’t have helped any.’ She signed her name and tucked the piece of paper into an envelope which she took from her medical bag. ‘If it’s any comfort, I’m sending him to an expert.’ She slapped the envelope into Chalky’s hand. ‘Make yourself useful . . . Give this to the driver, then grab your stuff and follow me down to my car. I’ll give you a ride to the hospital.’ She levelled a finger at Acland. ‘You, too . . . and bring everything of Ben’s. There might be some personal information in it.’ Acland shook his head and retreated against the nearest wall, where his, Ben’s and Chalky’s bags were stacked. Because of the narrow confines of the passageway, they’d been ordered to remove themselves and their possessions before the stretcher was brought in. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. I don’t know the boy.’ ‘Me neither,’ said Jackson, kneeling to close her bag, ‘but it didn’t stop you involving me in his problems.’ ‘It was your choice to come here.’ ‘True.’ She stood up. ‘So what’s the deal?’ ‘There isn’t one. You’re not responsible for me. You go your way . . . I’ll go mine.’

She eyed him curiously for a moment, then gave a small shrug of disappointment. ‘You’re not the person I thought you were,’ she said.

‘Ditto,’ Acland murmured.

‘Then we’ve both wasted our time.’ She offered a small nod of farewell and headed towards the ambulance, where she had a brief word with the paramedics and Chalky before continuing on to her car.

Chalky came back. ‘Shift your arse,’ he ordered. ‘Your lady friend wants to follow the meat wagon so that we can see the lad safely delivered.’ He retrieved all the bags from the pavement, including Acland’s kitbag, and set off after Jackson.

Acland stalked angrily behind him. ‘Did she tell you to do that?’

‘What?’

‘Take my kitbag.’

‘Just doing you a favour, mate.’

‘Not interested. I want my stuff.’

‘Then show the lady some gratitude first.’ Chalky crossed Caroline Street and dumped all the bags into Jackson’s open boot before slamming it shut. ‘Grow up, son,’ he said scathingly. ‘Do you think anyone’s ever cared enough to come looking for me?’

*

Jackson made no comment when Acland slid into the seat behind Chalky and pulled the door closed. She merely lowered the windows to dispel some of the older man’s aroma then headed down towards the Aldwych. Amused by Chalky’s cheerful announcement that it was the first time he’d been in a car since he’d walked out on his old woman, she encouraged him to talk about himself. How old was he? ‘Last time anyone took notice, thirty-three . . . but I gave up counting after that. I went for a drink with some mates . . . had a few too many jars . . . and found the wife waiting for me when I got home. She had a bad temper, that woman. Didn’t want to celebrate my birthday herself but got steaming mad because I did.

Is that fair or is that fair?’

Jackson smiled. ‘How long ago was that?’

‘Now you’re asking.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Twenty-two years, give or take a year or two. I was born in ’51 . . . joined the army in ’69 . . . spent three years in Germany . . . did a couple of stints in Northern Ireland . . . married in ’78 . . . fought in the Falklands in ’82 . . . cashed in my chips a year later . . . then took to the road when I couldn’t stand the missus any longer. She blamed me for the lack of nippers. That’s what got her riled.’

‘Did you think about getting help for it?’

‘Nah. Waste of time. Reckoned the best thing I could do was bugger off and let her have a bash with someone else.’ He sounded quite cheerful about it. ‘It wasn’t much of a marriage. She only liked me when I wasn’t around – sent letters and such – then, soon as I came home, the knives came out.’ He pulled a face. ‘The drink might have had something to do with it. Couldn’t face her without a few jars under my belt . . . Kept asking myself why I’d tied myself to a roly-poly pudding – no offence – when I should have gone for something I could have got my arms round.’

‘What did you do after you left the army?’

‘Couldn’t settle to anything. The world seemed pretty flat after the Falklands.’ Chalky sighed. ‘I should have stayed a soldier. I got a buzz out of going to war.’

Jackson glanced at Acland’s face in the rear-view mirror, but if he had any fellow-feeling with Chalky’s views, he wasn’t showing it. ‘What rank were you?’

‘Made it to corporal just before we left for the South Atlantic. Best year of my bloody life that was . . . been downhill ever since.’

This time Acland did show some interest. ‘Which regiment?’ he asked.

‘Two Para.’

‘Which company?’

‘B Company.’

‘So you were in the attack on Goose Green?’

Chalky lifted a grimy thumb in the air. ‘Certainly was. It was us took Boca Hill. I lost a good mate there.’ He shook his head in sudden wistful nostalgia. ‘We joined up together and I can hardly remember what he looked like now . . . Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

Acland stared out of the window as Jackson turned on to Waterloo Bridge. The river was only beautiful at night, when the lights along its banks gleamed like diamonds on black velvet, and the Palace of Westminster, lit by arc lamps, looked more like a fairy castle than the seat of government. In daylight hours, with the embankments and bridges thronged with people and cars, he could see no beauty in it at all. ‘So how come a corporal from 2 Para ends up drinking meths in the gutter?’ he asked harshly.

Surprisingly, Chalky didn’t take offence. ‘I never drink the dyed meths,’ he said, as if such abstinence were a matter for pride, ‘though I still go for the white stuff when I can get it. It’s not so bad – rots your brain and rots your liver – but it’s cheap and it keeps the boredom at bay for a few hours.’ He scratched the beard at the side of his face. ‘I prefer cider.’

‘That’s not an answer. You wouldn’t have made corporal if you hadn’t had something going for you. What happened to that person?’

Chalky shrugged. ‘Who knows, son? Maybe he just got lost on the Falklands.’