Crime

23 Holocaust

THE FULL-LENGTH BATHROOM mirrors collapse, for his own critical eyes, a thousand naked Ray Lennoxes into infinity; each one carrying the maternal stain of infidelity. Avril Lennox was the surprise package; he’d been watching his father to see how he’d turn out and the old girl had sneaked up on the blind side, the one with the clandestine life and the lusty secrets. From adolescence through your twenties it had been about making your mark as an individual, concealing your hereditary legacy in the process. Then, suddenly, you were on the stage like a stripper under harsh lights; peeling off everything to reveal your DNA.

He clicks off the bathroom spots, watches them bruise to dark, swings the door open with a flourish. The oomph is back; that sexual urge, no, that sexual imperative. Will I be able to do the right thing by Trudi? he wonders, emerging into the pulsing light of the hotel bedroom.

He pulls a cord, twisting the blind closed as she clicks on a bedside light, like a chessmaster expertly countering an opponent’s manoeuvre. She’s as naked as he is, meeting his approach with a defiant thrust at him, her sunbed tan a new outfit. Her body, in his trembling hands, is even tighter than he remembers. In the light from the indented lamps above the headboard he can see a rash of milk-white hairs, finer than silk, across her light brown arms, broken up by the odd little patch of peeling pink that dismays her. She seems so fresh that to squeeze her would leave marks; a gingerbread girl from the oven. A wave of tenderness rushes over him and he has an irresistible urge to stroke her face. Misinterpreting this gesture, Trudi pushes him gently back on to the bed, swivelling round, her sharp, pointed tongue licking down his freshly scrubbed chest, heading south. It lodges for a few tantalising seconds in his navel. A cursory flick or two and it continues as her lips open around his prick.

Lennox gasps, feeling himself stiffen, his cock swelling up in her mouth. He looks at her adjusting to the newer, more formidable status quo, a gratified surprise in her eyes that accompanies the meeting of an old friend. He tucks her hair behind her ears to enjoy the feast of her face.

Both are determined the erection will last, and she’s eagerly complicit when he groans, — I don’t want to get there yet, and he pulls out and mounts her as they make love in a controlled, precarious way, almost delighted that they can, respecting the wondrous building power of each moment with something close to forensic intensity.

They climax together, wildly; Lennox’s pulsing ejaculations so thick and heavy they almost hurt him. Trudi’s eyes roll to the back of her head and a banshee-like howl he feared he’d never hear again fills the room. Spent, they quickly dissolve into a deep post-coital slumber. He feels himself careering across an ocean until he can see Toal behind the lectern at the auction rooms. The still and silent mannequin stands in the coffin. They are bidding, the others; all in shadow, but they seem weaker. Because Les Brodie is by his side, and they’re not boys any more. The voice of a nonce behind him says, — Two million.

— Three million! Les screams.

— Four million, comes the cry, but there is now uncertainty in the voices of the men in the shadows. They seem to be coming from further away.

Lennox studies Brodie’s face. Gets the signal. — FIVE MILLION! they cry out in unison, in that noise Scots make, through their inventions and their drunken carousings, their gift to Planet Earth of its anthem, ‘Auld Lang Syne’: the sound heard around the world.

— Sssiiixx milliiooonn… the nonce voices fade.

— I didn’t get that bid. Could you repeat it? Toal asks. — No? The last bid was five million. Going… going… sold… to Ray Lennox!

The girl on the stage is now wearing a white bridal gown. She reaches up and removes her mask as Lennox flies to the surface from that mine of sleep, sweat and duvet. Opens his eyes. Trudi’s face next to his on the pillow. Eyes shut, crooked smile. He takes a grateful, exhilarating gulp of air. After savouring a few moments of intense pathos and adoration, he wakes her with a kiss.

She’s both delighted and irritated to be roused in this way. — Oh Ray… what’s up, baby? You’ve not been having those horrible dreams again?

— No, beautiful dreams of white brides, he says, reaching out for her.

Trudi snuggles into him, then after a pause, where she’s so still and silent he thinks she’s fallen back asleep, says, — At least give Stuart a bell, Ray.

— Later, he forces a smile, pulling one arm behind his head on the pillow, feeling the wastage and shrinkage of his biceps muscle and thinking gym, gym, gym, — we’re on holiday.

— Okay, she says, and gets out of the bed and heads to the bathroom. He watches her move with lithe, coltish grace, admiring the slender tautness of her buttocks, the blades of her shoulders and the smooth indentation her spine leaves in her back. Then she’s gone and he hears the water jets hiss.

Stuart.

What had happened to the elfin-eyed kid with the clear skin and golden-brown curling hair?

Their father’s funeral. Stuart’s face reddening after every whisky; that vile, sickening concoction. The pastry from the sausage roll he was eating flaking off into his glass without him noticing. Pulling Lennox into the corner at the funeral reception and whispering in a nervy excitement. Beetroot countenance and flaring nostrils in such proximity. How Stuart had no notion of personal space at the best of times and just how smotheringly close he got when he was drunk. — It was embarrassing having to go and tidy out his office. I found a porn stash in the desk.

Lennox had raised a tired eyebrow, wanting him to stop, but too weary to insist. His skin crawling from being up all night free-basing coke in his Leith flat, where he’d gone after he’d walked out on Melissa Collingwood and the counselling.

Stuart misread this sign as intrigue. — Everything in it, Raymie, I shiteth thee not. Couldnae believe it. Dad! I took Jasmine for a drink. She admitted she felt terrible because when she’d looked through his office window and saw him all tensed up, she thought he was having a wank. He must have been known for it! So she turns away sharpish, then she hears stuff crashing around. She opens the door and sees Dad lying on the deck. He hadnae been jerking off. He was huvin a fucking heart attack.

The poor old bastard. Trying so hard to find his sexuality, that cardinal component of the self, but buried by the pills that were keeping him alive.

Lennox looking at his young brother, seeing blemishes on the skin he’d never noticed before. They might have been new. Beholding a slack-jawed muppet; an actor, a performer, always onstage. The more fucking drama, the more spoiled wee Stu would absorb it, would thrive.

— Are you going to talk to Mum?

— Just keep her the fuck away fae me, he’d said, watching his teary mother. Trudi standing beside her, consoling her. Trying to explain the inexplicable. Why isn’t Ray talking to me, Trudi? He’d told Trudi, of course, but he wasn’t sure if she’d believed him or had put it down to a deranged fantasy to be placed in the ‘stress’ dustbin.

Then Jock Allardyce had moved across to him, and he was followed by Avril Lennox, her trembling hand unwittingly teasing a glass of red wine. Big Jock’s shock of white hair, lustrously gelled back, his sad, blue eyes. — Look, Raymond, I just want to say—

— You get the fuck out ay my face, Mr Confectioner, and take her wi ye. He turned to his mother. — Ma faither’s still fucking warm, ya sick bastards!

He recalls Jock’s horror and bemusement, and his tearful, oval-eyed mother trying to cough out some words, but breaking down instead, to be comforted by Trudi and Jackie. Even at the time he knew it was petty and inappropriate to call Jock by the nickname they’d given to the murdering paedophile Horsburgh. ‘Uncle Jocky’ had never been employed in this way, nor did he have a sweet tooth. Even Horsburgh hadn’t used candy to lure his prey, just fire and Sprite.

Then Stuart was over, chameleon face and gait trying to assume the shape of nightclub bouncer. — What’s the story?

— You love this, he’d sniped at his young brother. — Well, you can bond with stepdaddy here, I’m offski.

Stuart had rounded on him. He recalls his brother balling his fists up, standing on his toes, his whisky breath an inch from him. — You think that because ye work with shite in yir fascist job that ye ken everything about human nature? You’re a fuckin novice, Raymie. You dinnae have a clue what Mum needs or wants oot ay life!

And Avril Lennox repeating a closed-eyed prayer, — It’s ma fault, it’s ma fault, it’s ma fault…

Lennox had calmly planted his hand on Stuart’s chest, pushed him back a couple of feet. — I’m sure you do. Go and swap fucking make-up tips. He’d turned away and headed outside into the car park, his mood blackening like the dark clouds that swirled above. Walking for a bit, without knowing where he was going, he ended up back at the graveyard, sitting on a bench. Thinking how he couldn’t ever tell his dad, or any of them, what happened to him in the tunnel. Wondering what it must have taken John Lennox to let go of his own big secret.

After a while there was the sound of gravel crunching underfoot, and a thin shadow passed over Lennox, making him aware that somebody had joined him on the bench, parked a respectable distance away. Les Brodie, cigarette in hand, was staring ahead, squinting in the weak sun that was trying to reassert itself. Lennox was going to ask to be left alone, but Les was saying nothing, just looking up into the murky sky.

Lennox could feel the cold air on his neck now, which throbbed with his pulse.

Les eventually spoke. — Cauld yin, El Mondo.

His childhood nickname. Used only by the immediate family and Les. That’s how close we were, he’d thought. — Things are as fucked up as they can be, Lennox moaned, looking round.

— They can always be fucked up mair. Les Brodie shook his head. Then a smile played across his lips and he turned to Lennox, meeting his gaze. — But they can be made better as well.

— That cunt, and my old lady, shagging him, bringing him there while my old man’s still warm in his grave.

— Jock was his mate, Raymie.

— Aye, some fucking mate, eh, shagging his wife. And that wee cunt Stuart—

— Aye, folk can be a bit strange. Les Brodie nodded in the way people do on such occasions; banal and vacuous in the face of the insolvable riddle of mortality.

— Tell me about it.

— But you’ve got to let go, Raymie.

— How? How the fuck, Lennox began, and his mind shot back to the tunnel and a broken Les emerging into the light with his bike, — how can you let go?

Les cleared his throat. — You know what those cunts did to me, Raymie? They raped me. Two of them, one after the other. Never told you that, did I? Never came right out and said it. Two of them, he said again, his eyes creasing around the laughter lines. — Just when I thought it was over, the other started. I was waiting on the third, the young guy, but he bottled out.

— Fuck sake, Les, I – He couldn’t say any more. He’d gotten away. Should he have stayed, fought, screamed and taken his punishment – as they might say, like a man – by Les’s side? That question had tormented him all his adult life.

— I could go into more detail, but I won’t. Les fished out some smokes and offered one to Lennox, who declined. — I’ll tell ye about how angry I was though, how I was looking for people tae hurt for what happened to me, and lookin tae hurt myself. I went way, way off the rails, he smiled in bitter reminiscence. — All that hate, naewhere to go. I even hated you, for getting the fuck out ay there.

— I hated myself for that, Les. I tried tae get help, tae raise the alarm. I got those people tae come, but it was too late.

Les took a deep drag on his fag. — Have to pack these in, he said. — Naw, mate, you did right. If you hadnae got away they’d have taken their time, and the other boy might have, he raised his brows, — you know.

Lennox dipped his head a few degrees. He realised that his closeness with Les had never been compromised, that the years apart had only incubated it. Les hadn’t rejected him, they were just at different ends of that long, black tunnel that stretched between them. — Did ye ken that was the reason I became a cop? I wanted those bastards, Les. I still fuckin well do. If you knew how many mugshots I’ve looked at in my spare time since I joined the force. Every sex offender on our files, UK-wide. Nothing. That was why I got into Serious Crimes, to get that kind of access to those cunts. Tae hunt the bastards doon. But zilch. He shook his head. — Maybe they just vanished into thin air.

Les Brodie’s smile grew wider. — Yeah, maybe they did.

Lennox stared at him, agog. The cop in him rose to the surface, before he could stop it. — What! You’re saying that you—

His old friend let out a long, hollow laugh, dropped his cigarette butt and crushed it into the gravel under his heel. — Nope, I fuckin wish. For a long time I’d have given anything to have found them. But they’re no in ma life now. Dinnae get ays wrong, I hope they’re in a place where they cannae harm any other kids, but I made the decision tae wash my hands of it all.

— But how could ye?

— Because I have tae, Les said, reaching into his jacket, pulling out a wallet and a family photograph of his wife and children. — I’ve other people to worry about. I don’t want ma wife’s husband and ma children’s faither tae be a fucked-up bam. I need tae be there for them, no obsessed wi auld vendettas. Your girl, Ray, she’s a cracker. Dinnae lose her. No tae a bunch ay fuckin nonces, that would be the real tragedy.

You could hear words like those a million times and understand the sense of them, but until you were emotionally ready to embrace them, it was trying to sow seeds on a motorway. After another silence Lennox rose from the bench like a football substitute in injury time, no role but to run down the clock, and shook his old friend’s hand. Les stood up and pulled him close, but Lennox was stiff in his embrace, managing only a cursory pat on the back. — I need tae get a wee walk, Les, clear the heid, he’d said, breaking the hold.

— Want company?

— Naw, I’m awright.

— Ray? Les Brodie paused. — Let it go, mate.

— See ye, Les.

Lennox walked without realising where he was going; mud and gravel under his feet, the water roaring below him, the river visible through the threadbare winter trees. The tunnel ahead, now so small and benign to his adult stature. He walked into it, headed to the dead zone in the middle, wanted it to work its magic and transform him again. Change him back. Then he craved their reappearance, the three very human monsters who had changed the boy, to come back and face the man. Willing something to happen. Voices to start up. Anybody. Anything. — C’MOAN THEN! he roared. — COME OAN THEN, YA CUNTS! His right hand jabbed out, pummelling the big, unforgiving stone bricks of the wall. There was a halting charge of pain but he smashed through it, then could feel nothing but a sick throb in his chest, his hiccup-convulsive breathing, and watch the blood from his pulped fist drip on to the harsh ground.

He had no idea how long he sat in that tunnel, head resting on his knees, lost in psychotic ramblings, but Trudi and Ally Notman found him there. — Ray… oh my Ray, my baby… Les said you’d be here… Trudi began, before seeing the state of his hand, her gaping mouth freezing in the egg of horror.

But Les had known he’d be there.

See ye, Les.

And he resolves that he will try. When he gets back to Edinburgh he’ll look Les up. Take the friendship outside that glass storage tank while they still had time to enjoy it. He stretches out the fingers on his damaged hand. Picks up and clicks on the remote.

He is seized by the programme. The local Miami-Dade County channel: a show called Sexual Offender Watch. Mugshots of wild-eyed and stone-faced men designated either ‘sexual offenders’ or ‘sexual predators’ – Lennox doesn’t know the difference – are paraded on a loop with name, race, eye colour, hair colour, d.o.b. and accompanied with a cheesy supermarket instrumental version of ‘Caravan of Love’.

The revolution will not be televised, but the register will be, he thinks as he watches for a bit, but recognises none of the men from the nonce conference. They were all white, while almost everyone here is black or Hispanic. He laughs bitterly and clicks on the real-estate programme. A breathless female voice coos: — People who live in glass houses, then breaks into a forced frivolous laugh, — have more fun!

It seems that a luxury condo overlooking South Beach, Biscayne Bay and downtown Miami is twenty thousand dollars cheaper than it was last week. Then a new advert starts up, as a hunky, young Christopher Reeve-type sits at a table by a pool with a laptop and cellphone, finishing a staged call. He faces the camera. — At Bonaventure, the emphasis is on adventure, and he rises and looks across to a pier where a boat moors, waving at the family who disembark and tie up the craft. The camera pans to the tower block. Then we cut to the luxury apartment and the man takes us around.

Trudi emerges from the bathroom, naked save for the towel round her head, looking at the screen as the chiselled-featured salesman says, — I’m Aaron Resinger and I’m not just selling the dream, I’m living it. That’s right. When I say this complex has the highest quality design specifications and is the ultimate in luxury, stylised living, its more than just fancy sales talk. When I built this place, I decided that I simply couldn’t find anywhere better to live. So come take a look, Aaron urges, then produces a full, toothy smile and with a minor self-deprecating shrug, adds, — and the neighbours are pretty darn nice too.

Trudi freezes and turns away from the screen.

— I’ll bet you’d fancy some ay that! Lennox says.

— What…? she gasps.

— Marble-top kitchen tables, hardwood floors, built-in mod cons, sun balcony, breathtaking views, boat moorings and car parking, I saw your eyes widen… Lennox teases, and his hand rests around the small of her back. The other grazes between her legs. — Hey… you think we might have time…?

She pulls away from him. — We have to get ready. We’re going to Fort Lauderdale to have lunch with Ginger and Dolores, and pick up Tianna remember, she says and switches off the television.

— Right… Lennox says reluctantly and heads to the bathroom to confer with other selves, who will all sing the same song.

Robyn had come through, making a full statement. Johnnie and Starry had been taken into police custody, no bail set. He’d be informed of the trial date, and would need to come back to Miami. There had been a number of charges made in three states. They had questioned him about the condition of one of the men they’d arrested, a James Clemson, who was found in a city hospital having been brutally assaulted. — I should imagine that bunch would turn on each other pretty viciously when it went tits-up, Lennox had observed, deadpan, to the interviewing officer, who had looked pointedly at him, but it was obvious that it was going no further.

Lance Dearing had made it as far as the ambulance before the lights had gone out. Technically he’d hung on another three days in limbo, his body eventually succumbing to the septic poisoning caused by the wounds. Lennox hoped he could feel every second and that they’d spared the morphine. For those who satiated their drives by handing out life sentences to children, he was short on mercy.

He sits in a restaurant, awaiting Tianna’s arrival as he talks to Dolores’s granddaughter, Nadia, a teacher. She is spending time with her grandmother, who has not taken well to Braveheart’s demise. Dolores hadn’t been the same at the ballroom-dancing tournament the previous night, where Bill and Jessica Riordan had easily defeated her and Ginger, who is still rankled by this. — Have you ever heard of a Paddy who could dance? he asks the assembled company of Lennox, Nadia, Dolores, Bill and Jessica over pre-lunch drinks in his favourite Mexican Cantina.

— Michael Flatley? Jessica retorts.

— Poofs, faggots; they can always dance, Ginger scoffs, — I’m talking about normal heterosexual Paddies like Bill here.

— Flatley’s not gay. He’s married, Jessica says, lifting a margarita to her lips.

— He dances like that and he’s straight? Ginger laughs in derision.

El Hombre de el Cantina de Fettes, Lennox considers. Then, thinking of Tianna, who is on her way following an impromptu shopping detour with Trudi, he asks Nadia about the way the girls at her school dress.

— It’s my biggest headache, she says, crunching a dipped salsa chip. — I gotta send kids home all the time. Ten, eleven, they wear short skirts; you can see their panties. I tell em, ‘You gotta go cover yourself up, girl.’ In most cases they don’t think anything of it, it’s just the fashion. They look at me like I’m some evil old spinster hag, she says, sweeping her long, curly hair out of her face. — But what happens if you let it go? Young guys and not so young guys start giving them attention. And they like it, so they start all the sexy prancing around, without really knowin what it is they’re doin.

Lennox has found himself paying attention to young girls’ consumer habits over the last week: how they dressed, what they read, the records they bought, how they spoke to each other. He’d read that they were hitting puberty and getting their periods earlier. It seemed that growing up was more stressful than ever. He considers his own childhood. It had seemed fine until the dark curtain abruptly came down on it that summer’s day in the tunnel. But perhaps even the happy memories were rose-tinted.

Les Brodie. He could tell him what it had been like before then. Because Les hadn’t been fucked up by what happened. Yes, he’d gone off the rails in his teens, been a bit of a tearaway, but now he’s the family man, with a successful plumbing business. Ray Lennox is the disturbed one. Les has just absorbed it, and got on with things. What would have happened if it had been him those nonce jailbird guys had buggered? All he did was suck some cock. He finds his shoulders shaking in nasty mirth, the idea now briefly seeming as slapstick and benign as pantomime at the King’s Theatre; certainly not worth a crusade over. How would he have reacted, have turned out, had the roles been reversed? Probably even worse, he grimly considers, as he sips on his orange juice, while craving the margarita he can’t trust himself with. He was the real nutter, so consumed with his own fear, he hadn’t realised how badly he’d spooked Dearing and the nonce gang from the off.

One thing he is sure of; America is a far more complicated place than he’s allowed on his previous visits. It is more than a country of big cars and strange sports. Or a place where even feted novelists can’t write a book without mentioning Jell-O and where animals excel athletically in the movies. He’s learned a little about himself as well. He’d often hid behind the curtain of Calvinistic gloom his tribe could wear like plaid, knowing that the heart would be taught bitter lessons in spite of all our conceits. But he’s seen how behaviour shapes outcomes. He would now find it hard to shrug the years away as a passive stoic.

— Thank God for that, I’m famished, says Ginger, picking up a menu, as Trudi and Tianna skip excitedly into the restaurant together, clutching bags containing the sort of stories Lennox loathes. They’d spent a lot of time together in the last week, enough for them to assume the corporate appellation, ‘the girls’. Tianna has her hair tied back, with big shades resting on her head. She wears a knee-length claret dress with white polka dots, white silky scarf tied round her neck, cream pop socks and black shoes. She looks like somebody’s cool ten-year-old. — These shades are SFA, Lennox tells her.

— Skarrish Football Association, she smiles, giving him a niece’s peck, then Trudi follows up with a smack on the lips, a slice of tongue slyly left in. She pulls out some moisturiser she’s gotten him, applying some to his dried, baked face. — You need to take care of your skin, Ray, she says. The contention makes sense to his playfully speculative mind: it has been trying to run away from him for so long, maybe he should be treating it a little better. He is being babied, even minorly humiliated, but he dosen’t care. Sex has come back into their lives so emphatically, it’s already impossible to conceive of it as ever having gone. Another wall has tumbled down; they’d soon be fucking with a grateful lack of inhibition. And like any drug, it numbs concern over other issues. Life was slowly returning to what he thought might be normality. — So how are the landlords? Still treating you well? Ray Lennox asks Tianna Hinton, as he winks at Eddie and Dolores Rogers.

— They’re pretty cool, she giggles.

— Good stuff. So where would you like to go this affie?

— Skatlin.

A cloak of sadness falls over Lennox’s shoulders. They are heading home tomorrow and he’ll miss the kid. Trudi has gotten attached to her too. He’s begun to enjoy their playful collusion against him, usually regarding the forthcoming wedding plans. But there’s something he wants to do with her before leaving. And for that they need to be alone.

The food comes and Trudi regards her fiancé, how he looks sweetly dumb when he eats something, as if lost in it. He’s finally wearing shorts, which she approves of, his legs losing their milk-bottle whiteness. Tianna delves into a bag to show off something to the table.

Lennox turns to Ginger. — How’s it worked out, Eddie?

— An awfay sweet wee lassie, and she’s been nae bother at aw, Ginger says. — In fact, her being here’s really helped Dolores, cause she doted on that fuckin dug.

After a spell Trudi raises a downy wrist to check her watch. Lennox takes the hint, and he, Trudi and Tianna say their good-byes and head outside, getting into Trudi’s rented car and driving down to Miami Beach. As they leave the Julia Tuttle Causeway and drive down palm-lined streets with handsome stucco homes and lush tropical gardens cutting into the bay, Lennox thinks this is a spot a newcomer could take his Colombian, Haitian, Cuban or Scots family and they’d proudly say: this cunt’s done awright. And how the American dream is never the property of Americans, but belongs to aspirational citizens of the globe, and how it will fade and die when the US seals its borders up, as it will inevitably do.

Trudi parks at a garage on Alton, then they head down to Lincoln, the upmarket strip of restaurants, bars, galleries and designer stores that is Miami Beach’s glitzy beating heart. Lennox, an orange-and-black backpack hanging from one shoulder, wants to stop and look at the Britto Central Gallery as an appeasement to Trudi, just to go through it quickly, believing that if you see something that moves you, it’s best not to linger too long and dwell on it, and ruin some of your capacity for wonderment. But Trudi isn’t keen, instead taking Tianna into a nearby fashion store. Afterwards, they call in at an Internet café on Washington, where they have a coffee and do some Netsurfing. Tianna and Trudi check out Scottish Wedding websites, while Lennox goes on to Jambos’ Kickback. He sees Maroon Mayhem’s last entry into the Craig Gordon thread, which had little to do with the Scotland goal-keeper.

I deeply regret the things I said to Ray of Light. It’s no excuse, but I was drunk at the time. Anybody who knows me will tell you that I’m not in the habit of behaving that way.

Lennox types a reply into the thread.

No worries. These things happen. My head wasn’t in the best of places, so I apologise for my overreaction. I also know what drink can do. If we ever meet I’ll buy you a beer – or maybe we’ll both stick to tomato juice!

Yours in Hearts

Ray

As they move from their terminals to settle down in the dedicated café section of the premises, Tianna says to Lennox, — So where is it you’re taking us? Not here?

— No, it’s close by. But there’s something I’ve got to explain first, he says. — Those dreams we were talking about, mind I promised to tell you about them?

— Yes.

— Ray, Trudi intervenes, — Tianna doesn’t want to hear—

— Please, give me a moment, Lennox is insistent, — and I want you to hear about this too. I’ve never told anybody before. Not my mum, dad, anybody. It’s something I dream about a lot, something that happened. He looks over his shoulder. The place is almost deserted as they sit in a cramped corner, sipping at the coffee or milk and eating chocolate-chip cookies.

Lennox speaks softly, but authoritatively. There is no cop in his voice, at least to his own ears. — I had a very good friend. His name was Les, he tells Tianna. — When we were round about your age, we were out on our bikes, going through a long, dark tunnel, like a disused train tunnel. Some really bad, disturbed people were waiting in there and they caught us. At first we thought they wanted to steal our bikes, he says, looking at her for understanding.

Tianna dunks the cookie into her milk. She looks up warily. Trudi’s bottom jaw tightens and slides out towards him. — This is Les Brodie and you?

— Aye, he says, then turns back to Tianna. — I managed to get away, but not before they did something bad. I’ve never told anybody this before, but one of the men made me suck his penis.

— Ray, Trudi gasps, — that’s terrible, could you not tell the pol— She stops and looks at Tianna.

The young American girl has hung her head shamefully. But a small, defiant voice rises from her. — I know… Vince… he used to…

Lennox lifts her head up. — It’s not your fault. You’re a kid. I was just a kid. It wasn’t my fault. I never told anybody because I was ashamed and embarrassed. But it’s not me who should’ve felt that way. I did nothing wrong. It wasn’t my fault. He takes his hand away.

Her head stays up. Her eyes locked on his. — No. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t our fault, Ray.

— They got a hold of Les. He didn’t manage to get away. I tried to find help, but it took so long. They did bad things, terrible things, to him.

— Did they do… she whispers, casting a privacy-checking gaze over the café, — like, sex things with a man’s penis inside him?

— Yes, Lennox says. — Yes, they did. After this, Les was very angry for a while. He was angry because it wasn’t fair what they did to him. But he was so raging that he caused himself and other people a lot of hurt. Then he realised that by doing this, they were winning. They were controlling him still. All that anger, not going to the people that caused it, but back at himself and everybody he loved, right?

— Yes, she nods. — Yes, that’s right.

— I’ve tried to find those people who did that to Les. And me. I haven’t done so yet. But I will. I’ll never stop.

— You won’t stop because you’re good, Ray. You’re a good person, she tells him.

— No, I won’t stop because I don’t like what they do. My friend Les is the good person, because he was big enough to get over it. Do you understand?

Yes, it was true. Trudi shares a simultaneous notion with him: Ray Lennox is stunted in his emotional growth. Part of him will always be that fearful little boy in the tunnel. The rest, the kick-boxing, the policework, the hunting of nonces, it’s all a futile attempt to negate that. As long as he has to do the job, he’s stuck in that mode. He has to let it all go.

I have to let it all go.

She can feel the frightening honesty bursting from him, compelling her to mirror his behaviour, to confess, to start their married life with a clean slate. The real-estate guy; I need to say…

They leave the café in silence. Lennox wants to stop off at a Walgreens for some unspecified reason, and Trudi is disconcerted when he emerges with a small can of gasoline. They go back down Lincoln but he swings left at Meridian Avenue and they walk up a few featureless blocks. — Where are we going, Ray? Trudi asks in mounting concern.

— It’s not too far, Lennox says, as the art deco district starts to thin out, building slowly into north Miami Beach’s high-rise condo land. Passing the Convention Centre, the girls struggle in the heat to match Lennox’s driven stride.

But Tianna Marie Hinton suddenly remembers how she likes to walk, loved to walk in Mobile, and she’s in keen pursuit of him, feeling her feet hit the ground and arms swing, her essence rising up through her body. Not buried so deep inside her that the conquerors of her flesh would never be able to dig it out, but rippling and crackling around her in the heat and light. She thinks of what Ray said about Hank Aaron and the plate smashers in the restaurant. Fuck those assholes! Trudi Lowe, inspired by the girl’s reanimation, quickens to keep pace.

Then, when they cross 19th Street, a startling sight greets them; to their right, a huge green hand rises into the air. At first it seems as if it belongs to a drowning body, but its reach into the azure sky is as defiant as it is pained. What initially appears to be a tangle of weeds wrapped round its wrist, is, on closer examination, a confused knot of life-sized human bodies, all undernourished and writhing in agony. Drawing closer, an impending sense of something tumultuous crackles in their bones and the air around them. The hand sprouts out of an island in the centre of a pond cut into a flagstoned plaza. As they walk on to the paved area, a statue of a weeping mother and two children ambushes them, with the slogan on the wall behind the petrified family reading: ‘Then in spite of everything I still believe that people are good at heart.’ The quote is attributed to Anne Frank.

A guard in uniform, with the uncompromised skin tone and features of the African rather than African American, sits outside a booth in the sun. Traffic seems to rumble up Meridian Avenue in a hushed reverence. Palm trees, still and solemn, tower over the pond, which is semicircled by foreground pillars interspersed with white-blossom plants, forming a canopy over a marble wall, stark and candid as bone. On this edifice, vandal-proof words and images are engraved, conveying the story of the Holocaust. A blackboard nothing can whiten, deface or erase; a library of last resort. Then there are the names: hundreds, thousands, millions of them: the adults and the children who perished in the death camps.

An enclosed bridge splits the crescent, and leads to the island and the green hand. Inside the tunnel, the names of the camps, household ones like Auschwitz and Buchenwald, sit mounted in blocks in the wall alongside ones Lennox hasn’t heard of before: Belzec, Ponary, Westerbork.

Unlike the other tunnel branded in his memory, slats of sunlight cut through this one like lasers, pouring in from the spaces above. At the other end they are greeted on the island by more withered green figures and yet more names, etched into another, inner marble circle. Lennox looks at the family names, so many young lives wiped out. He wonders if it ever occurred to the Nazis and those who served them that they were working for a giant child-abuse ring.

— I need to talk to Tianna, Lennox says to Trudi. — You understand? he asks both of them.

— Okay… Tianna says, —… but Trudi can come too.

— We all make mistakes, Ray. Trudi looks warily at him. — We all… She falters and thinks of that stupid night, looks down on the grassy knoll by the path, hands bunching into fists, ready to say something, but when she lifts her head she sees he’s moved away and is walking sombrely out of the memorial, through a gate, with Tianna alongside him. Trudi’s first impulse is to follow but something overrides, freezing in her synapses, rooting her to the spot. Dangerous thoughts stampede within her. Ray and Tianna had spent all that time alone. People did strange things alone. He’d been abused and never, ever told her this dark secret. What other secrets did he have?

Trudi Lowe is suddenly frightened. She sets off in pursuit of her fiancé. Wonders if she knows him any more than the facade, any more than she knew that smiling, toothsome real-estate man in that night of tortured fantasy. How well can we truly know others when we only see them through the lens of the self? She turns into the gate. The sun stinging her face like a peeling cosmetic mask left on too long. In the gardens she squints but can’t see Lennox or Tianna. The air is still and dense with heat.

Then she stumbles into a clearing, and to her relief, they come into view and have stalled by a bench. She hears Lennox say to Tianna, — Remember when those scumbags gave you stuff to make you sleepy, and then mucked about with you, on the boat. You remember, don’t you?

Listening intently, but keeping her distance, she hears Tianna’s faltering words: — Yes. I thought it was a dream, but it wasn’t no dream, she says. — Starry gone and drove me there. They gave me roofies, or something. I keep dreaming about him, that Lance Dearing, touching me… I thought they was dreams and that I was dirty for having them… Dearing said he was a cop and that he’d know if I’d been a bad girl, and that he could put away bad people… he’d know if I was dirty…

— No, not you. You’re not dirty. It’s them. These people are paedophiles. They’re nonces. What do you do when somebody tries to touch you, or says dirty things to you?

— You walk away, or you run away, she says, chewing on her bottom lip.

— Aye. And you tell them to fuck off, he says, and now Lennox trembles as he can see that sweaty prick in his face, feel the taste of it in his mouth. Touches the bristle under his nose. Grown to cover his lip. To put turf on the pitch. Scare away the beasts. The moustache that said, a little too desperately: I’m a man. — You say: fuck off, ya dirty fuckin stoat!

— Fuck off, Tianna shouts. — Fuck off, you dirty fucking stoat!

Trudi approaches them, touches his arm. It’s as stiff and unyielding as a bus stop. — Ray… Lennox turns and looks at her in pain and what she thinks is accusation. He knows. That guy I went with. He knows. He can tell.

Then he sharply turns back to Tianna. Trudi’s aware that he’s formed a terrible bond with this young girl, one that she can never share. — That’s right. Fuck off, you tell them, her policeman fiancé says. — Fuck off, ya dirty fuckin beast. And you shout and scream, he urges, — from the bottom of your lungs. You make people listen, you make them hear, right around the world, and Ray Lennox closes his eyes and he can see the men in the tunnel, the men that pulled him into this strange and terrifying world, who made him a cop, and Gareth Horsburgh and Lance Dearing, Johnnie and Starry, as he bellows a primal roar from the pit of his stomach and the depth of his soul in denouncement of all the tricksters and bullies and pervert beasts he or anyone else would ever encounter: — FUCK OFF, YA DIRTY NONCE!

His roar echoes and shakes around the still and peaceful garden. An elderly man and woman walking along a path jump back in alarm, and quickly retrace their steps.

— Ray, we need to go, Trudi says, but now Tianna is screaming manically along with him: — FUCK OFF, YOU DIRTY FUCKING NONCE, AND LEAVE ME ALONE!

Lennox seizes at the air, his gulps like punches. It’s time to get rid of it; to start expunging the black leaves and dead water that fill his heart. To stick with that process, no matter how long it takes. They shout together until they are breathless. Then Trudi puts her arm round the sobbing girl’s shoulders. — Ray, we have to go now!

— Wait. A panting Lennox raises his palm, looks at Tianna, then takes her smaller hands in his. — They had a list, these nonces. It’s a list of the kids they were planning to hurt. To get at through their mothers, like they tricked Robyn. The police have a copy of it, he says, as he tugs a sheaf of white papers from the backpack. The sun blasts off them in dazzling reflection. He takes out the can of gasoline and pours its contents over them. He sets the soggy papers down in an empty steel-framed garbage basket. — Now this isn’t the right thing tae do, not in a park, but on this occasion it’s justified.

Tianna nods as Lennox clicks open a lighter. Trudi looks nervously around. He catches her objection. — We have to do this one thing.

Anger surges through her. — There’s always one thing, Ray! Trudi grabs his shoulders and shakes them in exasperation. What does he want? To tell him that he caught one of Britain’s most notorious child killers or broke up a paedophile ring spanning three American states would be offensive to his ears. He will only ever see the Britneys, Tiannas, Leses and his own younger self he’s been unable to protect. He is a man who will always define himself by his failures. — Then what? Then what do we do? What do you do?

— Then we… Lennox breaks into a slow smile, — then we go back to the hotel and I give my mother a phone, he says, — and I tell her I’m sorry. He rubs his face, his breath catching. — Then I get a shave.

Trudi swallows stiffly, filling herself with Ray’s brown eyes, misty with self-reproach, nodding her head slowly in acknowledgement.

— This is all that’s left of them, Lennox tells Tianna, looking at the papers in the trash basket. — Your mum’s put them all away where they’ll never get at you; Vince, Clemson, Dearing, Johnnie and loads of others like them. It’s rubbish, cause that’s what they are, and he hands her the lighter. — Burn it. Go on. Burn the bastards.

Trudi, jaw clenched, sucks some air in through her teeth.

Tianna looks at him, then the papers; her eyes now in iron focus. She takes the lighter and crouches, smoothing out her dress over her knees. At first it’s hard to see the flame in the bright sunlight, it’s only when she feels the heat on her hand and pulls it away that she realises she’s achieved ignition. They watch the papers warp and blacken for a bit, then in a silent procession, leave the gardens together.

Exiting the park, they head through an adjoining floral-wrapped iron gate, back to the Holocaust memorial. They return to the crescents of marble and the concourse of paving stone in front of the green hand. On Meridian Avenue, the traffic is now busier. Yet Lennox still has to look up at the blue sky and the apartments across the street with their verandas, in order to realise that he isn’t standing in a field in Poland. In fact, across the road is the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, which has its own visitors centre.

Tianna’s crying has intensified; her slow, halting sobs are breaking into loud wails. Then it dawns on him, from Trudi’s concerned reaction, that tears are streaming down his own face. He looks at Tianna and sees Britney Hamil, in that striking photograph, the one that found its way on to the cover of every newspaper in Britain. — I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, he says miserably.

Trudi is about to speak, but Tianna beats her to it.

— You were, Ray. You were the only one who ever was, she cries, embracing him, and he sees that this is a different child, from the other side of the world. And this one was alive as all children should be. He’s thinking of why we have stories, songs and poems; why we’ll always have aspirations for something we call love. And now he sobs in unison with her, in pain, but also infused with a simple gratitude for being free, clear and present, underneath a big green hand in the Florida sun.