6 December.
The distance between Albany Manor and the Crown and Sceptre, a pub tucked away in the no-man’s-land between the Yorkshire Moors and the Lake District, was about 400 klicks as the crow flew. But in other ways these two places were a million miles apart.
An imposing slate-roofed building sited where two main roads met, the Crown and Sceptre was unwelcoming from the outside and dingy on the inside. No money had been spent on it for years. The windows were frosted over; the walls and ceiling were still nicotine yellow years after the smoking ban; the bar and tables were covered with a sticky patina that no amount of cleaning would remove — not that anyone had tried.
The woman behind the bar was used to this place, and to places like it. They were her natural habitat, and she sought them out in the same way that an insect seeks out the underside of a stone. She had worked in so many down-at-heel pubs she’d almost lost count of them. She never stayed long, moving from one to the next every few months before the punters got too familiar with her.
Because familiarity was the thing Suze McArthur wanted to avoid.
Her ‘interview’ for this job had followed the same pattern as all the other ones. She’d walked into the pub at a quarter past eleven on a Monday two weeks ago, a holdall containing her few belongings in one hand, a ten-year-old boy tightly clutching the other.
Her little boy. The only reason she’d kept going this long.
‘No kids.’
Suze had ignored the bored edict from the barman and walked straight up to him. He was well into his sixties, with bloodshot eyes and body odour that she could smell from a couple of metres away. ‘I’m
… I’m looking for work,’ she said.
He had eyed her up and down, his gaze lingering around the cleavage she was displaying for the benefit of men like him.
‘Oh aye? You local?’
She’d shaken her head.
‘Pikey? ’Cos if you’re a fuckin’ pikey you can…’
‘I’m not a pikey.’
‘Too many of them round these parts.’
‘I’m just looking for a bit of casual…’
‘Where you staying then? You can’t stay here, you know.’ He paused and his eyes flickered to her breasts for a second time. ‘Not unless I ask you.’
‘I’ve got somewhere to stay,’ Suze lied hastily. ‘I just need a job, all right?’ And then, because she’d realised she was hardly going the right way about it, she’d added a bit feebly: ‘I’ve, um… I’ve got experience.’
‘Aye, I’ll bet you have, love,’ the barman leered. ‘What about the nipper, eh?’
Suze had pulled the little boy protectively towards her. ‘He’ll be no trouble, will you, Harry?’ she said, her voice suddenly a little hoarse. Harry, bless him, had remained mute — he seldom spoke — but had shaken his head at his mum. ‘He’ll sit quietly. I promise.’
She could see him doing the maths: a lone woman with a young child, clearly desperate. Perhaps she was on the run from an abusive husband, or a pimp, or the bailiffs. Either way, it meant cheap labour, and if she was really down on her luck, something else.
‘Three pound an hour, cash in hand,’ he’d said. Suze had started to protest, but he raised a palm to silence her. ‘Take it or leave it, love. What’s your name, anyhow?’
‘Linda.’ The name changed every time.
‘Oh aye, Linda Lovelace, eh? Well, I won’t ask why the boy’s not in school, Linda Lovelace. Mum’s the word, eh? But he stays out the back and he doesn’t bother the punters.’
And so the deal had been struck. It wasn’t like she was in a strong negotiating position.
Suze had lived this way for so long she’d almost forgotten how strange her life had become. Almost, but not quite. Fear was her constant companion. She woke up with it, and it lulled her to sleep at night. There were times when, exhausted or depressed, she daydreamed about giving up. Because surely enough time had passed now for her to have been forgotten about?
But then there was the website. She had only stumbled on it by accident one day when she was working in a pub near Bournemouth. There were no customers; Harry, just a baby at the time, was asleep; and so she did what she had often done — hit the internet, trying to find a picture of her attacker. She was a murderer, after all. Perhaps she’d been brought to justice. Perhaps she was safely behind bars… It was this line of enquiry that had led her to the website of the Metropolitan Police, and the page listing the force’s most wanted individuals.
Suze’s photograph wasn’t the first on that list. She was nestled between a rapist and a man wanted for possession of an offensive weapon. Her supposed crime: arson. She’d felt all the strength drain from her body when she saw that, and had quickly shut down the computer, grabbed Harry and walked out of her workplace, never to return — as if the computer would grass her up. Now and then, over the years, she had checked the page. The rapists came and went, but her photo was always there. Always staring out at her, looking younger and younger as the years wore on.
She knew she wouldn’t be staying in this new job for long, but while she was here, she worked hard: twelve hours a day, six days a week. For the first few nights she booked into a Travelodge on the outskirts of town — luxury compared to what they were used to — but that ate up her daily wage completely, leaving nothing for food. She managed to sneak a curled-at-the-edges ham sandwich into Harry’s hungry little hands at lunchtime, but she knew she had to find somewhere else to stay. Somewhere that didn’t require ID, and was free. So on the third day she and her son had left the hotel early and started walking the streets.
Suze had known what she was looking for: a derelict building, but still sound. The clue would be a closed curtain in front of a broken window. But over the years she’d developed an instinctive ability to recognise a squat when she saw one. Now she found a red-brick building on the edge of town with large, high windows with small panes, many of them smashed. It looked like some old Victorian factory and it was definitely disused. As she passed it, however, she noticed several black bin liners full of rubbish, and that told her somebody was living inside.
She and her son had become two of their number. Part of the faceless community of junkies and losers that always found their way to these places.
Their nights were spent in the squat, their days in Suze’s new workplace. The squat was anonymous; so too, in its own way, was the Crown and Sceptre. The customers were never there for a convivial atmosphere or cosy surroundings. They were there to drink. All the pubs Suze had ever worked in had regulars, who would arrive at opening time and drink their way very slowly but steadily through the day, staring at the blinking lights of the fruit machine or the flickering images of the wall-mounted TV. And though they spoke to Suze — or whatever name she had chosen to give them — several times a day, it was only to order drinks and they never looked at her with anything approaching recognition. They were too far gone for that.
The regulars were in now, about six of them, all old men, dotted around the pub, nobody speaking to anybody else. Harry was in the back room, good as gold. He had black rings under his eyes, and his face was even paler than usual. Both he and his mother had very short hair, inexpertly and crookedly cut by Suze. The short hair was easier to keep clean — important when most of your sanitary activities took place in the washrooms of the nearest McDonald’s, just about the only place you could use the facilities without some spotty jobsworth telling you to buy something or get out — and it changed Suze’s features quite considerably. Even now, whenever she caught sight of herself in a mirror, she was slightly startled by the way she looked. Which was a good thing, because if she was startled, it meant she looked very different to the young woman who had gone into hiding.
As for Harry, he was used to spending his days alone; used to falling asleep just as the pub got busy in the evening, and being woken by a weary Suze after eleven so they could walk back to wherever they were staying. Suze knew what people thought when they saw him, and that was one of the reasons she moved from town to town so often. It would only take a single bleeding heart to report them to social services and all of a sudden they would become a matter of public record.
And that was something she definitely could not risk. The very thought sent ice down her spine. She would hear a deep, masculine voice in her head. Hide, it said. Don’t stop hiding. In her mind she would see a blazing farmhouse and a dark-haired woman with cold eyes. And she would hug her child, conceived the very night everything changed in her life, and vow to keep him safe.
The TV was on as usual today, but Suze was the only one watching it. The rolling news about yesterday’s train attacks might have been sickening, but the alkies in the Crown and Sceptre only appeared concerned with their own misery. They were oblivious to the scenes, even when Suze pointed the sticky remote control at the TV and turned up the volume. As one of the punters, a skinny middle-aged guy with thinning hair tied in a ponytail, came up and demanded his second pint of the day, she caught fragments of commentary.
‘ International condemnation… no word from the Palestinian administration.’
The guy coughed as he handed over the money for his drink.
‘ Troop mobilisation across the Middle East… precautionary measure… tensions running high… ’
Suze put his change into his sweaty hand and went back to watching the screen, vaguely aware that, rather than returning to his table, he was loitering around the bar. For the third time that morning she watched the footage of a young reporter unable to cope with the horrific scenes the previous night.
‘ As we stand here, relatives of the passengers on the 16.55 are beginning to gather in a neighbouring field, anxious for news of their
… ’
‘Them fuckin’ Muslims,’ the punter snarled. Suze ignored him.
Suddenly the screen changed, taking Suze away from the repeated footage of the atrocity and back to the studio. An immaculately dressed female reporter with an earnest look on her face was speaking hesitantly, as if she’d just been fed information she wasn’t quite sure about.
‘ News just in… ’ she announced, before pausing. ‘ In the last few minutes, police have released a photograph that they believe shows two of the UK bombers moments before they boarded the fateful 16.55 train from Bristol Parkway. ’
A grainy black and white image filled the TV screen.
Suze stared up at it. And then, as if someone had suddenly flicked a switch, she gasped.
The picture showed a crowd of people — maybe fifteen in all — with two men’s faces circled in red. They both wore rucksacks, and it was difficult to make out their features with any certainty.
‘Pakis,’ the guy with the ponytail muttered. ‘All look the fucking same to me.’ He scanned around vaguely, as if he was searching for someone to agree with him.
But Suze had barely heard what he’d said. She was staring at the screen as a familiar sensation of dread crept over her body, draining away all her strength.
‘What’s the matter, sweetheart? Time of the month, is it?’ The punter chuckled at his own joke.
Suze couldn’t answer. She just stared and stared.
It wasn’t the men circled in red that had caught her attention. It was someone else, standing just behind them, with features almost as clear as if she had appeared in the Crown and Sceptre itself. A woman with dark hair, flat eyes. Older than when Suze had seen her last, but without question the same person.
Her fingertips moved involuntarily to her neck as she remembered how the woman had tried to throttle her, and the force with which Chet had pulled her off. And her insides seemed to twist as she remembered watching her from the burning house in which the man who had saved her, and who had fathered the quiet, strange little boy she loved with all her heart, had perished.
‘Oh my God,’ she muttered.
‘What’s up, sweetheart?’ the punter asked. But he didn’t get a reply.
Suze wasn’t supposed to leave the bar for long, but she had to. She turned and ran into the back room, where Harry was sitting on a battered sofa, surrounded by crates of brown ale and Schweppes tonic, carefully colouring in a Dora the Explorer picture book. Harry couldn’t read, but he would happily colour in childish pictures from morning till night. He stopped when he saw his mum, and looked up at her with big, wide eyes that were full of questions as she paced the room nervously, digging her fingernails into her palms and chewing her bottom lip.
From in here, the sound of the TV was just a distant hum. Suze continued pacing in silence, as though movement would dispel the fear in her gut. It didn’t.
‘What is it, Mummy?’ Harry asked after thirty seconds. His voice was very soft, but it was unusual enough for him to say anything without being asked that Suze immediately stopped pacing and went to sit next to him. She held out his arms and he snuggled up to her. Harry was always ready for a hug. She felt some of her anxiety fall away.
Some. But not all.
She started to shake.
‘Are you crying?’ the little boy asked. His voice was quite matter-of-fact. And when Suze didn’t reply: ‘You always tell me not to cry.’ It wasn’t an accusation. Harry spoke with such concern that she wanted to cry twice as hard. But she forced herself to get control and, drawing away from her son, she cupped his precious face in her hands.
The look he returned was serious. Not the look of a ten-year-old, but the look of an adult. It made sense in a way. Little Harry had never spent any real time with children his own age, but it caught her off guard sometimes, how much he looked like his father. It was almost as if Chet was staring out at him from behind his son’s eyes. ‘ Why are you crying, Mum?’
What could she say? How could she explain such things to someone so young? How could she share her fear with someone so innocent? She closed her eyes.
‘Mummy’s just… just a bit sad,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’
‘Because… because sometimes… sometimes there are people who do bad things.’ She opened her eyes again to see Harry’s concerned little face still looking up at her.
‘But we don’t do bad things, do we?’ he asked.
Suze blinked. Do we? she wondered. She thought of the occasional shoplifting he knew nothing about; the secrecy; the deception. She’d never told Harry about his father. She’d never told anyone what happened that night. She didn’t have anyone to tell, and even if she did, fear would have held her tongue.
Stay anonymous. Stay dark.
Whenever she thought of going to the police, Chet’s words had echoed in her head. She remembered leaving London with him, and the two police officers in the service station bearing down on them. If she made herself known to the police, she could throw her anonymity out of the window. If it had been just her, maybe she’d have done that before now. Maybe she’d have given up. But it wasn’t just about her any more. It was about her son, and nothing in the world was going to make her put his life at risk…
‘Well, if we don’t do bad things, then that’s all right, isn’t it?’ Harry interrupted her thoughts.
She looked at him. He was so earnest. So right.
Countless people were dead and Suze was in possession of important information. She had to tell someone.
Not the police. But someone.
She took Harry’s right hand in hers and squeezed it tenderly. He smiled at her — such a reassuring smile that she almost felt calm again. Like she could think her way through this.
If she couldn’t tell the police, who could she tell? Her mind flitted back once more to the night of Chet’s death. If you ever need any help, track down Luke Mercer, 22 SAS, tell him what you know. But only if you have to, Suze.
Luke Mercer. The name was etched in her memory. She had no idea who he was, or where he was. From time to time she’d thought about approaching the SAS directly, but she’d never gone through with it. After all, if the police were compromised, why couldn’t the army be? She had tried to locate him other ways — not because she wanted to get in touch, but because she knew the day might come when she did. It had all come to nothing. Luke Mercer, whoever he was, had no listing in the telephone directory, nor any mention on the electoral register. He hadn’t been married; he hadn’t died. The internet had no mention of him whatsoever. It was like he didn’t exist.
But he did exist. He had to. Chet wouldn’t have mentioned him otherwise. Suze only had one remaining idea of how to contact him, but after everything Chet had said, and after everything that had happened, the thought of doing it made her feel nauseous.
It was too dangerous. It would put Harry at risk.
Suze stood up and, with a sad smile at her son, returned to her position behind the bar. Nothing had changed. The locals were still there, in their usual places, sipping slowly at their pints and ignoring everything all around them. The TV was still on. The rolling news was still rolling.
She stared once more at the images. The scenes of devastation. For the umpteenth time she saw the young journalist breaking down on camera, unable to keep his composure in the face of such horror. And then the picture again: the two Palestinian men circled in red, and Chet’s killer, easily distinguishable in the background.
She suppressed a shudder, but remembered what Harry had just said. If we don’t do bad things, then that’s all right…
The decision was a sudden one. She grabbed her coat from where she’d stashed it under the bar and went to the back room to get Harry. The little boy looked surprised as she took him by the hand and dragged him towards the front door of the pub — just in time for them to bump into the landlord waddling back in. ‘Aye up, Linda Lovelace, where the hell do you think…?’
‘Fuck you!’ Suze spat at him, and hurried with her boy out into the street.
Half an hour later she was in a local supermarket, spending money she couldn’t afford on a pay-as-you-go mobile, choosing the cheapest one that had a camera. Suze hadn’t touched a phone all the time she’d been in hiding, and she felt uncomfortable with it as she walked out of the supermarket and continued up the bustling high street. Five minutes later she and Harry arrived at Argos, where a bank of twenty-five display TVs were showing the same channel; and after another five minutes, the picture of the bombers, with her attacker clearly in the background, was repeated on each screen.
Suze held up her camera phone to one of the TVs. It made a click and, as she examined the tiny screen, she was surprised by how well the image was reproduced. The woman’s face was perfectly clear. She switched off the phone and put it back in her pocket.
‘Can I help you?’
Suze spun round to see a suspicious female shop assistant standing there. She shook her head, grabbed Harry’s hand and hurried out. She checked her watch. Nearly half past twelve. She would wait until tonight, when Harry was asleep. Then she would play the only card she had. She just wished it wasn’t so fucking dangerous.
Mother and son started wandering back to the squat in silence. And as they went, Suze thought about Luke Mercer. Would he really be able to help her? she wondered. What kind of man was he?
And where in the world might he be now?