Off Minor

Thirteen

Raymond lay there, that narrow bed in his twelve by fourteen room, seeped in semen and his own stale sweat, trying not to think about the girl. Smiling face and the bright hair and the slightly chubby hands that seemed eager always to reach out and touch.

“Ray-o!”

Sitting on the wall outside the pub, he had told her his name, his nickname, and she had shrieked it aloud, gleeful, her whole body shaking as she danced up and around.

“Ray-o! Ray-o! Ray-o!”

Without thinking he had whisked her off her feet and whirled her round, like a carousel at Goose Fair, round and round until he lowered her gradually down, laughing and shaking, excitement tinged with fear. The next time he saw her, days later, she had tugged at her nan’s hand and pointed across the street-“Ray-o!”-and he had quickly waved and walked on.

Now he threw back the blanket and the skimpy sheet and pulled on a T-shirt and yesterday’s pair of pants before climbing to the bathroom, not yet light.

When he left the house fifty minutes later, leaving through the back door, careful to avoid the dog shit on the square of weed and grass, the rawness of the air took him by surprise. He had no sense of the black Sierra, parked among others at an angle to the road, no awareness of the camera focusing over inches of wound-down window, his steps along the pavement masking its whir and click.

“I wonder if you recognize him, Mrs. Summers?”

Lynn Kellogg spread the prints across the table, a group of hastily processed ten by eights, the central one, the close-up, sharp enough, though, to pick out the ghost of the subject’s breath as it left his mouth.

“Oh, yes,” Edith Summers said. “It’s that boy.”

“Boy?”

“The one Gloria took such a shine too.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Ray-o.”

“That’s his name?”

“It’s what she called him, Gloria. Raymond, I suppose his real name was. Ray. He was a nice enough lad, not like some.”

As Lynn had been driving into Mablethorpe a burst of sun shocking in its brightness, had split the clouds that had hung over her the length of the journey. Edith Summers had been outside at the front of the bungalow, sweeping the short path that led from the gate with a long-handled brush. She had insisted on opening a new packet of digestives, brewing tea.

“What did you mean, Mrs. Summers,” Lynn asked, “when you said Gloria took a shine to Raymond?”

“Oh, you know, she would chatter on about him sometimes, she seemed to get a kick out of seeing him, I suppose that’s what it was. I mean, Raymond, he would make a point of calling out to her if ever he saw her, waving and that. Playing the fool.”

“Where was this, Mrs. Summers?”

“I’m sorry?”

“When Gloria and Raymond saw one another, where would this be?”

“Out round the boulevard, down by the school. Sometimes, the rec.”

“The recreation ground?”

“Yes, he was there sometimes.”

“With friends?”

“No. Least, I don’t think so. On his own, more like. As I recall, he always was. I never remember seeing him with anyone else.”

“And he would be where, the times you saw him in the rec?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Why? Why does this all matter anyhow?”

“Near the swings?”

“Yes, I daresay he might have been near the swings. But …”

“And did you notice him being friendly with any other little girls by the swings, or …?”

“Now, look …”

“Or was it just Gloria?”

“Look, I’m not daft, I can see what you’re thinking. What you’re saying.”

“Mrs. Summers, I’m not saying …”

“Yes.”

“All I’m interested in doing …”

“Yes, I know.”

“If he took a special interest in Gloria, if she trusted him …”

“Look, I’ve told you. He was a nice boy, a nice young man. Polite. What you’re suggesting …”

“The day you left Gloria playing on the swings, Mrs. Summers, the day she went missing, you can’t remember seeing Raymond there then?”

“No.”

“You can’t remember for sure, or …?”

“No, he wasn’t there.”

“You’re certain of that?”

Edith Summers nodded.

“Quite certain, because …?”

“If he’d been there, I would have seen him. Gloria would have seen him.” She took a breath. “If Raymond’d been there none of this would have happened.”

“Why’s that, Mrs. Summers?”

“Because I should’ve left her with him, of course. Asked him to keep an eye on her, like I’d done before.”

Divine had spoken to Raymond’s boss on the phone, not a major inquiry, hardly anything at all, certainly nothing to bother mentioning to the youth himself, but if it was possible to establish …

“You’d better come down,” the manager said.

Divine parked his car on the opposite side of the road, fifty yards down. No telling what you might get splashed across your paintwork, driving in among the delivery vans, offal on electric blue not one of his favorite color combinations.

“Mr. Hathersage won’t be long,” the middle-aged secretary told him, walking him across the yard to the manager’s office, little more than a cubicle with orders spiked in three piles on a high desk, a couple of meat packers’ calendars on the wall, the one waving a fork through her legs worth a second look.

Divine eased the door back open a crack and listened to the refrigerators hum.

Hathersage was a stocky man in a smeared white coat, fiftyish, one eye swollen, its pupil floating in yellow rheum. The hand that shook Divine’s was firm and strong.

“I’d never have took him on if I hadn’t owed Terry a few favors. That’s his uncle, like. I hope I’ll not have cause to regret it.”

“You haven’t so far?”

Hathersage gave a slow shake of the head. “Youth’s willing enough, I suppose. Not the sort to go prancing out the door the minute the second hand slips into place. Not bright either, but who is nowadays, types we get in here, job like this?”

“Reliable, though?”

“Oh, aye. What’s he done?”

Divine didn’t answer. He asked the manager to tell him about Raymond’s hours of work instead.

It transpired that some of the more skilled employees worked shifts, including nights. Raymond, though, for him it was a straightforward day, eight till four or four-thirty.

“Five days a week?” Divine had asked. “Six?”

“Five and a half as a rule, sometimes Sundays on top.”

“Regular half-day?”

“Clockwork.”

“And in our boy’s case?”

“Tuesday.”

Divine wished he could remember the day Gloria had disappeared, couldn’t even get the date straight in his head. Still, easy enough to check later on. For now, Divine glanced at his watch, checked it against the clock on the wall at right angles to the manager’s desk.

“Serious, is it? This trouble youth’s in.”

Divine shook his head. “Shouldn’t think so.”

“Nothing for me to worry about, like?”

Another shake of the head.

“Petty thieving?”

“Your cash box is safe.”

The manager grunted disparagingly. “What I got in there, take it, you might say, and welcome to it.” He tapped the fingers of a stubby hand on Divine’s knee. “I’ve had sides of beef disappearing out of here like they’ve risen from the dead. Three hundred, four hundred pounds’ worth a week. In the end we took on this security firm. Night patrols. That’s when it were going missing, like. It were one of your chaps solved it. Come by here in his Panda car, short cut over the bridge; funny, he thought, loading that time of a night. Flashed his torch on a dozen and a half carcasses bedded down in the back of a Mitsubishi estate. Chuffing security bloke holding open the boot, splitting it fifty-fifty. Feller as was behind it, been here six year, courting my lass for last three of ’em. Got real shirty, she did, when I allowed as how I wasn’t coming to the wedding.”

Divine wondered idly what she’d had in her bottom drawer: couple of sets of silk underwear and half a dozen chump chops.

“You can wait for him here,” the manager said. “I’ll whistle him over.”

“It’s okay. Take the time to stretch my legs.”

“Gets to you, doesn’t it?” the manager smiled, opening the office door.

“What’s that?”

“The smell. Wife swears if she’s born again she’s going to latch on to a vegetarian. Wouldn’t do no good, I tell her, fart twice as bad as anything I bring home with me. Not their fault, mind; beans and the like.”

Divine waited by the canal, leaning on the parapet watching an old man and a boy gazing at their rods, lines descending into the still flatness of water. In twenty minutes, none had moved, man, boy or lines. If that was all life had to offer, Divine thought, I’d soon jack it in now. He turned just as Raymond was rounding the corner, floodlights at the visitors’ end of the County ground rising up behind him. Divine made no other move, waiting for the youth to recognize him, hesitate, flustered, before making his way over.

“Is it me you’re waiting for?”

Raymond stood, shoulders stooped beneath the bargain leather jacket, stitching starting to give at several of the seams. Here and there, particles of pork fat, freckles of dried blood, clung to his face and hair.

“Off home,” Divine said. “Car’s over there, I’ll give you a lift.”

Raymond blinked at him, uncertain. “No, you’re all right. Sooner walk.”

Divine reached out a hand towards Raymond’s arm. “After a day’s work? You’ll not want that.”

“Yes. I do.” Divine’s fingers round his elbow. “The walk, I like it. Helps me clear my head.”

Divine let his hand fall away. “Suit yourself.”

Raymond nodded quickly, blinked and went to step round Divine, but the detective shifted his balance, blocking Raymond’s way. “We’ll sit in the car instead,” Divine said.

“So, Raymond, Ray,” Divine relaxing now, opening the nearside door so that Raymond could slide in, “how’s the job going? Pretty well?”

Raymond sniffed and leaned forward, staring through the windscreen.

“Get on all right with the boss?”

“Hathersage? Side from he shouts all the time, he’s okay.”

“And the rest?”

Raymond glanced around. What was he after, asking all this stuff. Wasn’t exactly like being on YTS. “All right, I suppose. Don’t have a lot to do with them, really. One or two of them, though, been there for years, think they know everything, you know how I mean?”

Divine nodded helpfully.

“Least there’s no blacks, one good thing.” Raymond’s fingers were seldom still, now pulling at the material of his trousers, now flexing, now tightening into a fist. “Wouldn’t be right, would it? Working, you know, with meat and that. Wholesale. Go down the butchers for a piece of steak, topside, whatever, you don’t want to think some nignog’s had his hands all over it, do you?”

Divine had to admit the youth had a point there.

“Where’d you keep it, Raymond? Somewhere at home, or d’you carry it with you all the time?”

Gobsmacked. “What?”

“The knife.”

“I don’t have no knife.”

“Raymond.”

“I haven’t got a knife.”

Divine staring at him, enjoying it now.

“What’d I want a knife for? What kind of knife, anyway? I don’t know anything about no knife.”

“Under the bed? Jacket pocket? For all I know you’ve got it with you this minute.”

“No.”

“No?”

“It’s in the drawer.”

“Which drawer’s that?”

“In my room.”

“Along with the socks?”

Raymond wanted to get out of the car. He didn’t understand why the police were so interested in any knife, what that had to do with anything.

“What d’you want a knife for, Raymond? Not taking your work home, trimming away surplus fat?”

“Protection.”

“Who from?”

“Anyone.”

“Girls?”

“Course not girls. What would …?”

“Had it with you that night, though, didn’t you?” Sweat breaking out along Raymond’s forehead, starting to run down on to the bridge of his nose. “What night?”

“You know,” Divine smiling.

“No.”

“The night you were with Sara; the night you found Gloria.”

“There’s no law against it.”

“Oh, Raymond, that’s where you’re wrong. Carrying an offensive weapon, intent to cause malicious damage, get the wrong magistrate, you’re looking at time inside.”

It was hot inside the car now, hot and getting hotter: Raymond could smell the warm smell of flesh, his own and others, his own sweat. “I’m going,” hand reaching round for the door catch. “I want to go.”

“You haven’t ever used it to threaten anyone, Raymond? Force them into doing something against their will?”

Raymond pulled clumsily and the door swung outwards, releasing him on to the street. At first he thought the policeman was going to come after him, haul him back. But all he did was sit there, arms folded across the top of the steering wheel, grinning at Raymond as he backed, half-running, across the street.

All the way along London Road, cutting through past the station, scuttling along the tow-path by the canal, Raymond kept looking round, all the while expecting to see Divine suddenly there, behind him and closing. By the time he had fumbled his key into the lock, dropped down on to his bed, Raymond was shaking so badly he had to squeeze his hands hard against his sides, not moving until the shirt beneath his jacket was stiff and cold.