The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime, Volume 8

Mr Bo Liza Cody

My son Nathan doesn’t believe in God, Allah, Buddha, Kali, the Great Spider Mother or the Baby Jesus. But, he believes passionately in Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Wolverine and, come December, Santa Claus. How he works this out — bearing in mind that they all have super powers — I don’t know. Maybe he thinks the second lot wears hotter costumes. Or drives cooler vehicles, or brings better presents. Can I second guess my nine-year-old? Not a snowball’s hope in Hades.

Nathan is as much a mystery to me as his father was, and as my father was before that. And who knows where they both are now? But if there’s one thing I can congratulate myself on, it’s that I didn’t saddle my son with a stepfather. No strange man’s going to teach my boy to “dance for daddy”. Not while there’s a warm breath left in my body.

I was eleven and my sister Skye was nine when Mum brought Bobby Barnes home for the first time. He didn’t look like a lame-headed loser so we turned the telly down and said hello.

“Call me Bo,” he said, flashing a snowy smile. “All my friends do.”

So my dumb little sister said, “Hi, Mr Bo,” and blushed because he was tall and brown eyed just like the hero in her comic book.

Mum laughed high and girly, and I went to bed with a nosebleed — which is usually what happened when Mum laughed like that and smeared her lipstick.

Mr Bo moved in and Mum was happy because we were “a family”. How can you be family with a total stranger? I always wanted to ask her but I didn’t dare. She had a vicious right hand if she thought you were cheeking her.

Maybe we would be a family even now if it wasn’t for him. Maybe Nathan would have a grandma and an aunt if Mr Bo hadn’t got his feet under the table and his bonce on the pillow.

I think about it now and then. After all, some times of year are special for families, and Nathan should have grandparents, an aunt and a father.

This year I was thinking about it because sorting out the tree lights is traditionally a father’s job; as is finding the fuse box when the whole house is tripped out by a kink in the wire.

I was doing exactly that, by candlelight because Nathan had broken the torch, when the doorbell rang.

Standing in the doorway was a beautiful woman in a stylish winter coat with fur trimmings. I didn’t have time for more than a quick glance at her face because she came inside and said, “What’s up? Can’t pay the electricity bill? Just like Mum.”

“I am not like my mother.” I was furious.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “It was always way too easy to press your buttons.” And I realized that the strange woman with the American accent was Skye.

“What are you doing here?” I said, stunned.

“Hi, and it’s great to see you too,” she said. “Who’s the rabbit?”

I turned. Nathan was behind me, shadowy, with the broken torch in his hand.

“He’s not a rabbit,” I said, offended. Rabbit was Mr Bo’s name for a mark. We were all rabbits to him one way or another.

“Who’s she?” Nathan said. I’d taught him not to tell his name, address or phone number to strangers.

“I’m Skye.”

“A Scottish Island?” He sounded interested. “Or the place where clouds sit?”

“Smart and cute.”

“I’m not cute,” he said, sniffing loudly. “I’m a boy.”

“She’s your aunt,” I told him, “my sister.”

“I don’t want an aunt,” he said, staring at her flickering, candlelit face. “But an uncle might be nice.” Did I mention that all his heroes are male? Even when it’s a woman who solves all his problems, from homework to football training to simple plumbing and now, the electricity. I used to think it was because he missed a father, but it’s because you can’t interest a boy in girls until his feet get tangled in the weeds of sex.

I fixed the electricity and all the lights came on except, of course, for the tree ones which lay in a nest on the floor with the bulbs no more responsive than duck eggs. Nathan looked at me as though I’d betrayed his very life.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “I promise.”

“You promised tonight.”

“Let’s have a little drink,” Skye said, “to celebrate the return of the prodigal sister.”

“We don’t drink,” Nathan said priggishly. He’s wrong. I just don’t drink in front of him. My own childhood was diseased and deceived by Mum’s drinking and the decisions she made when drunk.

“There’s a bottle of white in the fridge,” I said, because Skye was staring at my second-hand furniture and looking depressed. At least it’s mine, and no repo man’s going to burst in and take it away. She probably found me plain and worn too, but I can’t help that.

She had a couple of drinks. I watched very carefully, but she showed no signs of becoming loose and giggly. So I said, “It’s late. Stay the night.” She was my sister, after all, even though I didn’t know her. But she took one look at the spare bed in the box room and said, “Thanks, I’ll call a cab.”

When the cab came, Nathan followed us to the front door and said goodbye of his own free will. Skye was always the charming one. She didn’t attempt to kiss him because if there was one thing she’d learnt well it was what guys like and what they don’t like. She said, “I’ll come back tomorrow and bring you a gift. What do you want?”

Now that’s a question Nathan isn’t used to in this house, but he hardly stopped to think. He said, “Football boots. The red and white Nike ones, with a special spanner thing you can use to adjust your own studs.”

“Nathan,” I warned. The subject of football boots was not new. I could never quite afford the ones he wanted.

But Skye grinned and said, “See you tomorrow, kid,” and she was gone in a whirl of fur trimmings.

Mr Bo used to buy our shoes. Well, not buy exactly. This is how he did it: we’d go to a shoe shop and I’d ask for shoes a size and a half too small. Mr Bo would flirt with the assistant. When the shoes arrived I’d try to stuff my feet in and Mr Bo would say, “Who do you think you are? One of the Ugly Sisters?” This would make the assistant laugh as she went off to find the proper size. While she was gone, Skye put on the shoes that were too small for me and slipped out of the shop. Then I’d make a fuss — the shoes rubbed my heels, my friends had prettier ones, and Mr Bo would have to apologize charmingly and take me away, leaving a litter of boxes and shoes on the floor. It worked the other way round when I needed shoes, except that he never made the Ugly Sister crack about Skye. I hated him for that because although he said it was a joke I knew what he really thought.

The only time he paid hard cash was when he bought tap-shoes for Skye. He’d begun to teach us dance steps in the kitchen. “Shuffle,” he’d yell above the music, “kick, ball-change, turn... come on, girls, dance for Daddy.”

The next day Nathan didn’t want to go out. His friend came to the door wanting a kick-around but ended up playing on the computer instead. I didn’t say anything but I knew he was waiting for Skye.

At the end of the day there was nothing I could do but make his favourite, shepherd’s pie, and read Harry Potter to him in bed. I could see his heart wasn’t in it.

I wasn’t surprised — Skye had been taught unreliability by experts — but I was angry. She’d had a chance to show him that a woman could be as good as Batman and she’d blown it. All he had left was me and I was not the stuff of heroes. What had I done in the past nine years except to keep him warm, fed, healthy and honest? Also, I made him do his homework, which I think he found unforgivable. I thought I was giving him solid gold, because in the end, doing my homework and passing exams were the tools I used to dig myself out of a very deep hole. But how can that compare to the magic conferred upon a boy by ownership of coveted football boots? At his age he thought the right boots would transform his life and give him talents beyond belief. Magic boots for Nathan; dancing shoes for Skye.

Mr Bo tried to teach us both to do the splits. Maybe, at eleven or twelve, I was already too stiff. Or maybe, deep down inside, I felt there was something creepy about doing the splits in the snow-white knickers and little short skirts that he insisted we wear to dance for him. Either way, I never managed to learn. But Skye did. She stretched like a spring and bounced like a ball. She wore ribbons in her crazy hair. Of course she got the dancing shoes.

One evening he took us to the bar where Mum worked, put some money in the juke box and Skye showed off what she’d learnt. Mum was so impressed she put out a jam-jar for tips and it was soon full to overflowing.

Now that I have a child of my own I can’t help wandering what on earth she was thinking. Maybe she looked at the tip jar and saw a wide-screen TV or a weekend away at a posh hotel with handsome Bo Barnes. Or was she just high on the free drinks? Once, she said to me, “Wanna know somethin’, kid? If you’re a girl, all you ever got to sell is your youth. Make sure you get a better price for it than I did. Wish someone tol’ me that before I gave it all away.” Of course she wasn’t sober when she said that, but I don’t think sobriety had much to do with it; it was her best advice. No wonder I did my homework.

Skye showed up when Nathan had stopped waiting for her. “C’mon, kid,” she said, “we’re going shopping.”

“You’re smoking.” He was shocked.

“So shoot me,” she said. “You have dirty hair.”

“So shoot me.” He grinned his big crooked smile.

“Needs an orthodontist,” she said. “I should take him back to LA.”

“Over my dead body,” I said. “Nathan, get in the shower. Skye, coffee in the kitchen. Now.”

She wrinkled her still pretty nose at my coffee. I said, “What’re you up to? What’s the scam?”

“Can’t an auntie take her nephew shopping?” She widened her innocent eyes at me. “’Tis the season and all that malarkey.”

“We haven’t seen each other in over fifteen years.”

“So I missed you.”

“No you didn’t. How did you find me?”

“Were you hiding?” she asked. “How do you know what I missed? You’re my big sister, or have you forgotten?”

“I wasn’t the one who swanned off to the States.”

“No, you were the one who was jealous.”

“I tried to protect you.”

“From what? Attention, pretty clothes, guys with nice cars?”

I said nothing because I didn’t know where to begin.

She stuck her elbows on the table and leant forward with her chin jutting. “It all began with Bobby Barnes, didn’t it? You couldn’t stand me being his little star.”

“He was thirty. You were nine.”

“A girl doesn’t stay nine forever.”

“He ended up in prison and we were sent to a home. He robbed us of our childhood, Skye.”

“Some childhood.” She snorted. “Stuck in that squalid little apartment — with no TV or anything.”

“And how did Mr Bo change that? Did he stop Mum drinking? Did he go out to work so that she could look after us? Okay, he brought us a flat-screen telly, but it got repossessed like everything else.”

“He gave us pretty clothes and shoes...”

“He stole them. He taught us how to steal...”

“But it was fun,” Skye cried. “He taught us how to dance too. You’re forgetting the good stuff.”

“He taught you to dance. He taught me how to be a look-out for a pickpocket and a thief. You weren’t a dancer, Skye; you were there to distract the rabbits.”

“Why’re you two quarrelling?” Nathan said from the doorway.

“We’re sisters,” Skye said. “If you’re good I’ll tell you how a pirate came to rescue us from an evil wizard’s castle and how your mom didn’t want to go and nearly blew it for me.”

“No you won’t,” I said.

“Is it true?” He was as trusting as a puppy.

“Do you really believe in wicked wizards and good pirates?” I asked.

“Next you’ll be telling him there’s no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy.”

“I know there’s no tooth fairy,” he said. “I caught Mum putting a pound under my pillow and she pretended she’d just found it there, but she’s a rubbish liar.”

“She is, isn’t she? Bet you took the cash anyway. Now let’s go shopping.”

“I’m coming too,” I said, because I didn’t know my own sister and I was afraid she might have inherited Mr Bo’s definition of buying shoes.

“You’ll spoil it,” my loyal son complained. “The only thing she ever takes me shopping for is school uniform.”

“What a bitch... sorry, witch.” Skye dragged us both out of the house with no conscience at all.

A big black car, just a couple of feet short of being a limo, was waiting outside — plus a driver with a leather coat and no discernible neck.

Oddly, Mr Bo was not sent down for anything serious like contributing to the delinquency of minors or his sick relationship with one of them. No, when he was caught it was for stealing booze from the back of the bar where Mum worked. Of course she was done for theft too, thus ensuring that we had no irresponsible adults in our lives, and forcing us to be taken into Care.

By the time I was fifteen and Skye was thirteen we’d been living in Care for two and a half years. Foster parents weren’t keen on me because I didn’t want to split up from Skye, and foster mothers didn’t like Skye at all because she was precocious in so many ways.

Crockerdown House, known for obvious reasons as Crack House by the locals, was a girls’ care home, and judging by the number of non-visits from social workers, doctors or advisors, and the frequency of real visits by the cops, it should’ve been called a No Care Home. No one checked to see if we went to school or if we came back. Self-harm and eating disorders went unnoticed. Drugs were commonplace. There was a 60 per cent pregnancy rate.

I was scared rigid and spent as much time as I could at school. Teachers thought I was keen — most unusual in that part of town — and they cherished me. After a while I became keen.

Skye was the opposite.

It was only when a strange man turned up at the school gates in a car with Skye sitting smug as you please on the back seat that I realized she’d stayed in touch with Mr Bo while he was inside.

I knew that she and some other, older, girls regularly went to the West End to boost gear from shops and I lived with my heart in my mouth, fearing she’d be caught. She was never caught and she always had plenty of money. What I hadn’t been told was that she supplied an old friend of Mr Bo’s with stolen goods which he sold in the market. This friend kept Mr Bo in tobacco and all the other consumables that could be passed between friends on visiting day.

“He’s coming out today,” she told me excitedly. “We’re going to meet him.”

I looked at her in her tight jeans and the trashy silk top which would’ve cost a fortune if she’d actually bought it. I burst into tears.

“We’re not going back to Crack House,” she said. “It’s over.”

“What about school?” I wept. “What about my exams?” I was taking nine subjects and my teachers said I had a good chance in all of them.

“We never have to go to bogging school again. We’re free. He’s taking us abroad.”

“What about Mum?” Mum was still inside. She wasn’t just a thief; she was a thief who drank, and she was a bad mother who drank and thieved. Three strikes against her. Only one against Mr Bo. Classic!

“Oh, she’ll join us later,” Skye said vaguely, breathing mist on to the car window and drawing a heart.

“Is this your car?” Nathan asked the driver, impressed.

“Huh?”

“It’s mine,” Skye said, “for now.”

“Will you have to give it back?” Nathan was sadly familiar with the concept of giving a favoured book or computer game back to the library.

“Where are we going?” The last time she and I were in a car together was a disaster.

“Crystal City. I heard it was the newest.”

“It’s the best,” Nathan breathed. “We don’t go there.”

“Why not?”

I said, “It’s too expensive and too far away.”

“I know, I know,” Skye said, “and you got a mortgage to pay and your tuition fees at the Open University. Studying to be a psychotherapist, aren’t you? And both your lives gonna stay on hold till you qualify and hang out your shingle. When’s that gonna be — 2050?”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“You said hell.”

“You’d be surprised what I know. Some of us use technology for more than looking up difficult words.”

“You’ve been spying on us.”

“Cool,” Nathan said. “I want to be a spy when I grow up.”

“You can be a spy now,” Skye said. “Don’t look back, just use this mirror and if you see a car following us, tell Wayne. Okay?” She handed him what looked like a solid gold compact.

“What sort of car?”

“Black Jeep,” no-neck, leather-clad Wayne said. “Licence plate begins Sierra, Charlie, Delta.”

“That’s SCD to you, kid.”

“Clever,” I said. “Have you got kids of your own?”

“Do I look like a mother?”

“No need to sound insulted. It’s not all bad.”

“Coulda fooled me. Do you do all your shopping from Salvation Army counters?”

“Bollocks,” I muttered, but not quietly enough.

“You said b—”

“Okay, Nathan,” I said. “Haven’t you got an important job to do?”

“Of course I looked you up,” Skye said. “How the hell else would I find you? You’re my big sister — why wouldn’t I want to? I didn’t know about the kid when I started. And I must say I’m surprised you felt ready to start breeding, given the mom we had. But I guess you were always kinda idealistic — always trying to right wrongs.”

“No one’s ready,” I said.

“Hah! Got caught, did ya?”

That was an incident in my life that I didn’t want to share with Skye while Nathan’s ears were out on stalks.

Crystal City is five enormous interlocking domes. It’s a triumph of consumer architecture and weather-proofing. You could spend your entire life — and savings — in there without drawing one breath of fresh air.

Wayne dropped us at the main entrance and Nathan, who can smell sports shoes from a distance of three and a half miles, led the way.

Walking with Skye through a shopping centre was strange and familiar. We both looked around in the same way as we used to. Searching for good opportunities, I suppose — only nowadays all I was looking for were half-price sales.

Skye bought football boots, flashy beyond Nathan’s wildest dreams. They had ten differently coloured inserts for designer stripes, extra studs and a tool kit. She threw in an England strip for nine-year-olds and paid for everything with a credit card in the name of Skye Rosetti. She caught me looking and said, “I had to marry a Rosetti for the Green Card. But I liked the name so I kept it.”

I called on all my nerve and asked, “What happened to Mr Bo?”

“Oh look, shoes,” she cried and flung herself through the door of the fanciest, most minimal shoe shop I’d ever seen.

“Do we have to?” Nathan whined. He wanted to change into his England strip.

“Ungrateful little toad,” Skye said cheerfully. “Here, kid, take your mom shopping.” She handed him a roll of twenty-pound notes.

“Wow!” he said.

“No,” I said. “Absolutely, no.”

“Fuck off,” she said. “Have a good time. Meet me at the Food Court on the ground floor in an hour. Don’t be late. And kid? I want to see at least one strictly-for-fun gift for your mom. Don’t try to scoop it all — I know you guys.”

“She said fu—”

“Nathan,” I warned as we walked away, “grown ups say stuff. And don’t think we’re going to spend all that money. You don’t want your aunt to think you’re greedy, do you?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

All kids are wanty — they can’t help it. But I love the way he’s shocked by swearing. I melt at his piety. He wouldn’t believe it if I told him what I was like at his age. And I was the goody-goody one who crawled away from a smashed-up childhood via the schoolyard.

An hour later he had the hoodie jacket he’d wanted for months. He also bought a notebook and the complete range of metallic coloured gel pens. I chose The Best of Blondie CD for myself because for some reason I can’t listen to Blondie without wanting to dance. There was still a thick wedge of money to give back to Skye.

She was ten minutes late, and when she turned up she was followed by Wayne who was carrying enough bags to fill my spare room from floor to ceiling.

We sat in the octagon-shaped food court which had a carp pool and a fountain at its centre. Wayne took most of the bags back to the car.

Skye said, “C’mon over here, kid, I got something else for you.”

“Skye.” I held my hand up. “Stop. We have to talk about this. You’re putting me in a very awkward position.”

“I knew you’d spoil it.” Nathan’s mutinous lower lip began to shake.

Skye said, “Look at it this way, sis — how many birthdays have I missed? How many...?”

“Nine,” Nathan interrupted, “and nine plus nine Christmases make, um, eighteen.”

“See how smart he is? He’s a good kid who goes to school and learns his times tables, and I got a lot of auntying to catch up with. Right, kid?”

“Right.”

“But I understand your mom’s point of view. She doesn’t want me to spoil you. Your mom likes to do things the hard way, see. And I don’t want to spoil you either ’cos I think you’re perfect the way you are. So here’s what we’ll do. Do you have a cell phone?”

“We call them mobiles over here,” Nathan said bossily. “Mum’s got one but it’s old and she says we can’t afford two.”

“I can’t afford two sets of bills,” I said. “Skye, you would not be doing me a favour if you’re thinking of giving him one.” I put the roll of twenties we hadn’t spent into her hand. “You’ve been very kind, but rich relations can be too expensive.”

She stared at the money in astonishment. Then she closed her hand over it and tucked it safely into her handbag. “Okay, okay. But I’ve got two phones and they have lots of cool applications. Want to play a game, kid?”

I watched them poring intently over the phones, two curly heads close enough to touch. Nathan’s love of technology has been obvious since he first tried to feed his cheese sandwich into the VCR slot, so he didn’t take long to master Skye’s phone. I kept my mouth shut, but I was proud of him.

Suddenly I was content. I was drinking good coffee and eating a fresh Danish with my clever son and my unfamiliar sister. I was not counting pennies and rationing time. Worry went on holiday.

“Can I go, Mum?” Nathan was tugging my sleeve, his eyes alive with fun.

“What? Where?”

“Just down the end there.” Skye pointed to the far end of the mall. “He’ll have my phone and be in touch at all times. You don’t need to worry.”

“I’m Nathan Bond, secret agent.”

“I don’t know,” I began, but exactly then Skye turned her face away from Nathan, towards me and I saw with dismay that she’d begun to cry. So I let him go.

“Gimme a minute.” She blotted her eyes on her fur-trimmed cuff. “That’s a terrific kid you got there. I guess you musta done something right.”

“What happened to you, Skye?”

“Mr Bo died a year ago. He was shot by some county cops in a convenience store raid. Stupid bastard. I wasn’t with him — hadn’t been for years — but we kept in touch. That’s when I started to look for you. I thought if he was dead, you could forgive me.”

“Oh, Skye.” I took her hand. Just then I heard my son’s voice say, “Nathan to HQ — I’m in position. Can you hear me?”

She picked up her phone. “Loud and clear. Commence transmission. You remember how to do that?” She held the phone away from her ear and even in the crowded food court I heard the end of Nathan’s indignant squawk. She gave me a watery smile but her voice was steady.

He must have started sending pictures because she forgot about me and stared intently at her little screen. Then she said, “HQ to Nathan — see that tall man in black? He’s got a black and red scarf on. Yes. That’s the evil Doctor Proctor.”

“Skye?” I put my hand on her arm but she shook me off, got up and moved a couple of steps away.

I got up too and heard her say, “...to the men’s room. Wayne will be there. He’ll give you the goods. Can you handle that?”

“No he can’t handle that,” I shouted, grabbing for the phone. “What’re you doing, Skye?”

She twisted out of my grasp. “Let go, stupid, or you’ll wreck everything. You’ll put your kid in trouble.”

I took off, sprinting down the mall, dodging families, crowds, balloons and Santas, cracking my shins on push chairs, bikes and brand-new tricycles.

I arrived, out of breath and nearly sobbing with anxiety, at one of the exits. There was no Nathan, no tall man in black, no Wayne. I saw a security uniform and rushed at him. “Have you seen my son? He’s wearing the England strip, red and white boots and a black hoodie. He’s nine. His name’s Nathan.” I was jumping up and down. “I think he might’ve gone into the Gents with a tall man in black and a black and red scarf.” Terror gripped the centre of my being. “I don’t know where the Gents is.”

“Kids do wander off this time of year,” the security man said. “Me, I think it’s the excitement and the greed. I shouldn’t worry. I’ll go look for him in the toilets, shall I? You stay here in case he comes back.”

But I couldn’t wait.

He said tiredly, “Do you know how many kids there are in England strips this season? Wait here; you aren’t allowed in the men’s facility.”

I couldn’t wait there either. I pushed in behind him, calling my son’s name. There were several boys of various ages — several men too — but no Nathan, no Wayne and no man in black.

“Don’t worry,” the security man said, although he was himself beginning to look concerned. “I’ll call this in. Natty...”

“Nathan.”

“We’ll find your boy in no time. Wait here and...”

But I was off and running back to the food court to find Skye. She had the other phone. She knew where Nathan was.

Except, of course, there was no sign of her.

I found our table. No one had cleared it. Under my seat was the carrier bag containing Nathan’s old shoes, his ordinary clothes, his gel pens and my CD. I lifted his sweater to my nose as if I were a bloodhound who could track him by scent alone.

My heart was thudding like heavy metal in my throat. I couldn’t swallow. Sweat dripped off my frozen face.

The most fundamental rule in all the world is to keep your child safe — to protect him from predators. I’d failed. My family history of abuse and neglect was showing itself in my nature too. Whatever made me think I could make a better job of family life than my mother? Neglect was bred into me like brown eyes and mad hair. There could be no salvation for Nathan or me.

I was fifteen when I lost Skye.

“We’ll start again in the Land of Opportunity,” said ex-jailbird, Mr Bo. “But we’ll go via the Caribbean where I know a guy who can delete a prison record.” Skye sat on his lap, cuddled, with her head tucked under his chin.

“But my exams,” I said. “Skye, I’m going to pass in nine subjects. Then I can get a good job and look after us.”

“You do that.” She barely glanced at me. “I’ll stay with Mr Bo.”

“Looks like it’s just you and me, kid,” he said to her, without even a show of regret.

I was forced to borrow money from Skye for the bus fare back to Crack House. I had a nosebleed on the way and I thought, she’ll come back — she won’t go without me. But I never saw her again.

I sat in a stuffy little office amongst that morning’s lost property and shivered. They brought me sweet tea in a paper cup.

Skye lent Nathan her sexy phone and I’d watched him excitedly walk away with it. It looked so innocent.

She was my sister but I knew nothing about her except that childhood had so damaged her that she experienced the control and abuse of an older man as an adventure, a love story. Why would she see sending my lovely boy into a public lavatory with a strange man as anything other than expedient? She’d been trained to think that using a child for gain was not only normal but smart.

I was no heroine — I couldn’t find him or save him. I was just a desperate mother who could only sit in a stuffy room, drinking tea and beating herself up. My nose started to bleed.

“Hi, Mum — did someone hit you?” Nathan stood in the doorway staring at me curiously.

“Car park C, level five,” the security man said triumphantly. “I told you we’d find him. Although what he was doing in the bowels of the earth I’ll never know.”

“Get off,” Nathan said crossly. “You’re dripping blood on my England strip.”

“Nathan — what happened? Where have you been?”

“Don’t screech,” he said. “Remember the black Jeep — Sierra, Charlie, Delta? Well, I found it.”

“Safe and sound,” the security man said, “no harm done, eh? Sign here.”

Numbly I signed for Nathan as if he was a missing parcel and we went out into the cold windy weather to find a bus to take us home. There would be no limo this time, but Nathan didn’t seem to expect it.

On the bus, in the privacy of the back seat, Nathan said, “That was awesome, Mum. It was like being inside of Xbox. I was, like, the operative except I didn’t have a gun but we made him pay for his crime anyway.”

“Who? What crime?”

“Doctor Proctor — he hurts boys and gives them bad injections that make them his slaves.”

“Do you believe that?” I asked, terrified all over again.

“I thought you knew,” he said, ignorant of terror. “Skye said you hated men who hurt children.”

“I do,” I began carefully. “But I didn’t know she was going to put you in danger.”

“There hardly wasn’t any,” said the nine-year-old superhero. “All I had to do was identify the bad doctor and then go up to him and say, ‘I’ve got what you want. Follow me.’ It was easy.”

I looked out of the window and used my bed-time voice so that he wouldn’t guess how close I was to hysteria. “Then what happened?”

“Then I gave him the hard-drive and he gave me the money.”

“The what? Hard...”

“The important bit from the inside of computers where all your secrets go. Didn’t you know either? You’ve got to destroy it. It was the one big mistake the bad doctor made. He thought he’d erased all his secrets by deleting them. Then he sold his computer on eBay but he forgot that deleting secrets isn’t good enough if you’ve got enemies like me and Skye. She’s a genius with hard drives.”

“I’ll remember to destroy mine,” I said. “What happened next?”

“You haven’t got any secrets, Mum,” Nathan Bond said. “After that I gave the money to Skye and hid in the bookshop till she and Wayne went away. Then I followed them.”

“What bookshop?” When I ran after Nathan to the end of the mall there had been shops for clothes, cosmetics, shoes and computer games. There had not been a bookshop. I explained this to him. He was thrilled.

“You didn’t see me. Nobody saw me,” he crowed. “I did what spies do — I went off in the wrong direction and then doubled back to make sure no one was following. You went to the wrong end of the mall.”

“Is that what Skye told you to do?”

“No,” he said, although his eyes said yes. He turned sulky so I shut up. I was ready to explode but I wanted to hear the full story first.

When the silence was too much for him he said enticingly, “I know about Sierra, Charlie, Delta.”

“What about it?” I sounded carefully bored.

“You know I was supposed to look for it but I never saw it? That must’ve been a test. You know how I know?”

“How do you know?”

“Cos Skye knew where it was all along. She and Wayne went down to level five in the lift, and I ran down the stairs just like they do on telly. You know, Mum, they get it right on telly. It works.”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Only sometimes.”

“Well anyway, there they were — her and Wayne — and they got into the Jeep and the other driver drove them away. I looked everywhere for the limo, but I couldn’t find it. I thought maybe it was part of the game — if I found it we could keep it. I wish we had a car.”

“We couldn’t keep someone else’s car.” I put my arm round him but he shrugged me off. He was becoming irritable and I could see he was tired. All the same I said, “Describe the man who drove the Jeep.”

I was shocked and horrified when he described Mr Bo. But I wasn’t surprised.

Later that night, when Nathan had been deeply asleep for an hour, I crept into his room and laid his bulging scarlet fur-trimmed stocking at the end of the bed. Then I ran my hand gently under his mattress until I found the shiny new phone. Poor Nathan — he was unpractised in the art of deception, and when he talked about wanting to keep the limo, I saw, flickering at the back of his eyes, the notion that he’d better shut up about the limo or I might guess about the phone. I hoped it wasn’t stolen the way the limo and Jeep almost certainly were.

I rang the number Skye gave him. I didn’t really expect her to answer, but she did.

“Hi, kid,” she said. Her voice sounded affectionate.

“It’s not Nathan. Skye, how could you put him at risk? You’re his only living relative apart from me.”

“Did he have a good time? Did his little eyes sparkle? Yes or no?”

“If you wanted him to have fun, Skye, you could’ve taken him to the fun-fair. Don’t tell me this was about anything other than skinning a rabbit.”

“Well, as usual, you’ve missed the point. It was about making a stone bastard pay for what he’d done. Nathan was the perfect lure. He looked just like what the doctor ordered. And he’s smart.”

“If I see you anywhere near him again I’ll call the cops on you — you and Mr Bo. You’re right, Nathan is smart. He followed you too.” That shut her up — for a few seconds.

Then she said, “Tell me, sis, what present did you buy yourself with my money?”

She’d probably looked in the bag when I went running after Nathan so there was no point in lying. I said, “A CD — The Best of Blondie. What’s so funny?”

She stopped laughing and said, “That was Mr Bo’s favourite band. He taught us to dance to Blondie numbers.”

I was struck dumb. How could I have forgotten?

“Don’t worry about it, sis,” Skye said cheerfully. “On evidence like that, if you never qualify, and you never get to hang out your shingle, you can comfort yourself by knowing you’d have made a lousy psychotherapist. Oh, and Happy Holidays.” She hung up.

Eventually I dried my eyes and went to the kitchen for a glass of wine. I sipped it slowly while I opened my books and turned on the computer. I will be a great psychotherapist — I can learn from the past.

Lastly I put my new CD on the hi-fi. It still made me want to dance. Mr Bo can’t spoil everything I love.