That wasn’t quite true. He’d needed someone when his father had run away, absconded from . . . well, not justice—it hadn’t got that far. He’d avoided a police interrogation. Disappeared. Boxer had been seven years old on the day he’d been told and it was still fresh thirty-three years later. Even now he could feel the fissure opening up in his chest.
And what had happened then? Esme had sent him away to school. There was nothing else she could do. She had a production company to run, and they’d just lost their director, the main creative attraction of the business. There were commercials to be shot all over the world. What had he done, the seven-year-old? He’d hardened up, set solid on the outside, never let anybody see inside.
Amy disappearing had brought it all back: this feeling that all he had at his centre was his own hurt. He’d noticed it more since he’d gone freelance, with less cameraderie but more time and solitude for it to pervade. And then, later, he’d been shocked to find a way of dealing with it. The first time, tracking down the Ukrainian kidnap gang member who’d abused his young Russian hostage all the way to a dacha outside Archangel, forcing the gangster out into the forest in his underpants in -22°C, watching as his shivering stopped, the body stiffened, and finding himself whole again, the blackness inside down to an invisible point. Could he ever unlearn that? Or was it a part of him, in his DNA, like a black line spiralling up the middle of the double helix, a mutated gene affecting the whole?
He rang the doorbell, unsure of his reception. He sensed her on the other side looking through the peephole. What did she see? The door opened and she pulled him in, hugged him up on tiptoe, comforted him with the closeness of her body.
Isabel supplied food and drink in the effortless way she had and listened to him, gave him her full attention while he sat in the kitchen watching her, those brown eyes beneath her straight black eyebrows always on the brink of concern. It amazed him how she appeared dressed for every occasion. He couldn’t imagine her slouching around in a big shirt and jeans. Even now on a Sunday evening she was in a tight-fitting dress, her bosom high, cleavage showing, make-up on. He couldn’t take his eyes off that slight declivity beneath her cheekbones, the one that said kiss me, that said rest your tired face here.
He told her about his fruitless day. For all the time he was talking she held his hands across the table, but it made no difference. Something had changed in him over the long day or, perhaps, as he was standing outside her house. He was mentally slipping out of her hands, as if he was hanging from them over a cliff and she was losing her grip. He’d thought he’d be able to tell her everything. But now he knew there’d always have to be the one thing he had inside held back. He shouldn’t, if he wanted to hold on to her, ever tell her that.
‘Weren’t we going to have a talk,’ he said, ‘before Mercy called about Amy?’
‘A talk?’
‘Didn’t you say . . . we needed to talk?’
She took his hand, held it to her chest and kissed him on the mouth.
‘No more talk,’ she said, and led him upstairs to her bedroom.
El Osito washed and scoured himself, thinking it would have been easier with a hacksaw, but he wasn’t about to go out and buy one and have that traced back to him. And he didn’t want anybody else involved. Nobody should know about this.
He was about to tie up each bag with its gruesome contents and put them in the shower to clean them off with water and bleach when it occurred to him that he would have to weigh them down so they didn’t float in the river. He didn’t want to go outside searching for rocks in the city. He went to his weights room. Everything had been bought over a year ago by one of his underlings from a big sports store, using cash, before he’d even arrived in Madrid. He selected four five-kilo weights and one ten-kilo weight for the torso, which he’d kept complete, hadn’t wanted her innards all over the floor.
He weighted each bag, tied it, washed it down and then stacked them by the front door.
Outside the flat was a rubbish chute down to the huge metal bins in the garage. He took the bag of his own clothes, which he’d kept separate by the door, and threw it down to make sure there were no blockages. He heard it careen down the metal tube and land in the bin below. He propped open the chute lid and went down to the garage, got in the bin and looked up. Clear. He parked his car close to the bin, went back up. He threw down the four bags of body parts one after the other. Heard them all land safely below. The one with the torso was too tight a fit and he took that down the stairs over his shoulder. He opened the car boot, dropped in the bag and then climbed into the metal bin and lobbed the others into the boot.
Picking up and dropping off drugs had given El Osito an experience-developed talent for complicated driving procedures. He had his mobile out on the seat and satnav up on the dashboard. The car itself was nothing flashy, a Seat Cordoba from 2005 with a dent in the rear passenger door and a bit of a scrape on the driver’s side.
Madrid’s M40 orbital runs along the edge of Carabanchel and very early on a Monday morning is not a busy time. He was heading for the Manzanares river, which he thought the best place to dump the bags. Not all in one place, but in five different spots. The first crossing point over the river was not ideal as it was a complicated junction with too much traffic. He came off the M40 and joined the M45 going back towards the west. He slowed as he came to the next crossing, on the outskirts of a small village called Villaverde. No traffic. He pulled in, went to the boot and dumped the first bag over the side into the water, got back in, pulled away. Fifteen seconds.
Heading south now to the next orbital through endless industrial zones, he joined the M50. The next bag went over the side at a place called Perales del Rio. He continued east and hit the Valencia road, and just outside another industrial zone he crossed the river again. Another bag. Just two to go. He had the air con on despite the cold outside, the adrenaline making him sweat. He came off the motorway, headed south on small roads, and just outside Vallequillas Norte the road crossed the river again. He kept going south to another bridge just outside Titulcia and made the final drop. It was black out there. No light. The stars were sharp. By 6 A.M. his work was done and he was heading back to Madrid. He had his buds in, listening to music on his smartphone—Shakira: ‘La Tortura’.
Boxer was lying on his back watching Isabel sleeping after making love. He’d never felt like this before. There’d always been at least a scintilla of regret as if he’d somehow misled the woman he’d been with. But Isabel had wiped out all doubt. Even the black hole left by Amy’s rejection seemed to have diminished to a healed point. In this state of post-coital certainty he was excited by the possibility that Isabel’s love might make him feel whole again. And just as he thought that, the darkness crept back in: the fear of what he would lose if she knew him for what he really was.
5
6:30 A.M., MONDAY 19TH MARCH 2012
Netherhall Gardens, Hampstead, London
Ten-year-old Sasha Bobkov woke up early on Monday morning to know instantly that he was happy. He’d got through another weekend with his mother and now freedom. The prospect of some footy with his new friend. School. Mr. Spencer, his new teacher, the gigantic rower who was so cool. Life was good.
He got up, made his bed, went to the bathroom with its gold taps, which had started looking brassy, took a shower and got dressed, putting on the new trainers which his dad had bought for him last month: Nike JR Mercurial Victory 111 Turf boys’ football boots in orange.
Downstairs he turned the radio on super-quiet, just for some company. The tumble of voices talking about indiscernible subjects had become his family. He made himself some breakfast in the fancy Bulthaup kitchen he’d cleaned last night, just for something to do on a dead Sunday evening. Despite spending months designing it, she never came into the kitchen. It was his haven. He whisked up two eggs, dipped two slices of bread into it and fried them in some butter. He watched and c
ounted as the egg frilled on the edges. On ninety he flipped them and started counting again. Out on the plate he spread a thin layer of Marmite over the two pieces, cut them up into soldiers and ate them standing at the table while reading through a book of chess openings his father had given him for Christmas.
On the way out he hovered at the living-room door. He didn’t want to look in but felt he had to, just to make sure that she wasn’t in some terrible state: on the floor, blouse off, skirt rucked up, damp patch where she’d wet herself. That had been last Friday on the way to school and it had made him late for his knockabout with Sergei. And Sergei was important to him because he didn’t go to his school. He couldn’t have friends from his own school for obvious reasons. They’d want to come home at some point. They’d want to have sleepovers. They’d get to see his world.
The living room was empty, just the usual bottles on almost every surface. He didn’t touch this room. His mother cleared her bottles away once a week in time for the recyclers on Thursdays. The seven empty bottles around the room were evidence of her weekend’s drinking. He closed the door, relieved that there wouldn’t have to be a rescue operation: no helping her to stagger up the stairs, stripping her off, into the shower, towelling her down, getting her into bed. That always took him an hour but by now he was an expert.
This was great news because it meant he had a whole half-hour to himself, time to show Sergei the tricks he’d been working on at the weekend: the top head stall, Around the Moon followed by Around the World. He picked up his football on the way out and locked the front door, all the time keeping the ball in motion from foot to foot. He turned, kicked the ball high in the air, over the garden wall, ran down the path, through the gate just in time to catch the ball on his chest and let it drop to his knees. Alternating between his left and right knees he set off marching down the quiet road until exuberance took over and he kicked the ball ahead and ran after it at a fierce sprint to get to it before it reached the corner.
The ball bounced against the curved low wall and popped up beautifully for him and he did a side bicycle kick, volleying the ball, which rocketed across the street into some railings. He half-volleyed the ball back with a satisfying smack and, when it returned, let it roll up his foot. Just as it passed his nose he dropped his head and the ball came to rest on his neck. One swift flick of his head and the ball was resting on his crown. He popped it up, swirled his head Around the Moon, caught it on his crown once more. He let it drop to his right foot, gave it a little dink and whipped his right foot around the ball, then his left foot and caught it on the toe of his beautiful orange Nike. All that practice had been worth it.
Applause.
Sasha looked up. Normally there was nobody in the street at this time. From between the parked cars on the other side of Netherhall Gardens came Sergei in his grey hoody, clapping and bouncing his own ball from his left to his right foot.
‘How long that take you?’ said Sergei in Russian.
‘All weekend,’ said Sasha.
‘Take a look at this,’ said Sergei.
He popped the ball up high and headed it even higher and then caught it dead on his neck, rolled it down his extended right arm and then across his back to his extended left arm and then back to his neck.
‘Yeah?’ said Sasha.
Sergei let the ball drop down his back to his heel and, looking over his right shoulder, he did Around the World with his right foot and then, looking over his other shoulder, did the same with his left foot. Then he back-heeled it high above his head and as it came down he dropped onto his hands, flicked his legs up and rocketed the ball into the railings.
Sasha gaped in awe. Sergei was fourteen years old to his ten, but he knew that some of the pros would have trouble with a trick like that. Around the World behind your back!
They walked down Netherhall Gardens towards Sasha’s school, keeping their balls on the move, swapping them every now and again until Sergei darted down a side street taking both balls with him. He snaked around some bollards at the bottom and sent a ball up high, which Sasha took on his chest. The second ball he swept up and over Sasha’s head. Sasha turned to chase and ran straight into the arms of a man in a thick wool coat, who threw him onto the back seat of a black Mercedes, where another man pressed his face hard into a rag in his gloved hand. The door slammed after him. Sasha didn’t hear it. Sergei retrieved both balls as the Mercedes came out of its parking spot. He got in next to the driver, pulled the door to. The Mercedes took off with a sharp squeal from its front tyres.
Mercy came awake, stretched, eyes closed, languorous as a cat. She was warm and relaxed under the duvet, still with the thrill of last night in her sex.
That fierce hug had turned into a long kiss and urgent sex on the sofa and then a much longer session in bed, followed by a strange, careless sleep to be woken by Alleyne with a plate of cheese on toast and a glass of white wine, which they’d gulped down in bed. This was followed by a joint, from which, in the spirit of recklessness, she took two tiny tokes. There was a lot of giggling and then more sex and a longer sleep from which she’d had to struggle to come round.
She ran her hands over her head and face, stretched them up into the air trying to recall if there’d ever been a time when she’d woken up caring so little about the world roaring beyond the bedroom window.
She rolled her head, knew what she would see. His back. She was just reaching out to touch him when she noticed a piece of paper curling away from the ceiling with the damp and only then did the full horror of yesterday kick back in to her mind.
What a fool am I?
Sliding out from under the duvet, she gathered her clothes, went to the bathroom. She swilled some odd taste out of her mouth with water from a tap encrusted with limescale and refused to look at herself in the demanding mirror. She had a quick basin wash just to feel bearable and had to dry herself off with toilet paper as the only available towel was of the rough and slightly damp sort found in a car mechanic’s toilet. She dressed. Had to look at herself to put on lipstick, hoped the make-up would drive out some of the self-pity from her face.
Her cop instincts, as Amy would call them, meant that she was unable to resist opening the one door in the flat she hadn’t seen behind. The room was bigger than the bedroom they’d been sleeping in and was full from floor to ceiling with cartons of cigarettes, high-end trainers, state-of-the-art headphones, Bose iPod docks and Samsung, LG and Panasonic LED flat-screen TVs. She shook her head. Fucking with a fence, she said under her breath, determined to be hard on herself.
‘Now I’m going to have to kill you,’ said a voice with so little threat in it she turned very slowly to see Marcus Alleyne standing naked in the doorway, running his hand up and down his washboard stomach. For a fleeting moment she thought about going back to bed with him, taking a break from the ugly world in which she operated, but then DI Danquah reasserted herself.
‘Just tell me where I can find Glider, Marcus.’
‘He not going to love me for sending you to his door.’
‘You said that last night.’
‘Did I? Must be all that weed making me forgetful.’
Yes, that figured, thought Mercy. The taste of it still in her mouth. The smell of it still heavy in the flat like a morning mist in the tropics.
‘I’m only interested in Amy,’ said Mercy, rolling her finger over in a repeat, ‘and Glider doesn’t have to know how we got to his door.’
‘He’s not a fool, G,’ said Alleyne. ‘He’ll work out the info chain. And then where my balls going to be?’
‘Just tell me, Marcus, or I’ll get the plods round here to take a look at this lot,’ she said, nodding into the room.
He gave her an address near the Caledonian Road in north London.
‘Is that why you slept with me, Mercy?’ he said, smiling. ‘Break me down?’
‘It seemed to work.’
>
‘You’re cruel, lady, you know that? You’re very cruel,’ he said. ‘Not to me. No, sister. You’re cruel on yourself. You need to take your foot off that pedal driving you into the dark.’
Is it that obvious? she thought, looking at him, questioning. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and brushed past him.
‘You going to call me?’ he asked, amused at this odd reversal for him.
‘Why?’
‘I like you. When you’re nice and smoothed out you’re a very likeable woman.’
‘Goodbye, Marcus,’ she said, smiling. ‘The cheese on toast was memorable.’
She turned her phone back on and left.
In the car, messages: Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.
‘Where are you?’ she asked before he could start.
‘I thought I’d go and see Esme.’
‘Ask her what rank ideas she stuck in Amy’s head?’
‘I won’t put it like that,’ said Boxer. ‘You?’
‘Work. Talk to DCS Makepeace, see if I can get some flexibility on time. Chase the UK Border Agency. Go and see Amy’s teachers and the headmistress at Streatham and Clapham High. And I’ve got an address for Glider.’
‘How did you get that?’
‘I slept around; people told me things.’
Boxer wasn’t sure how to take that—not funny enough for a joke, too ugly for the truth.
‘I got to Marcus Alleyne, broke him down,’ she said to end the silence, and gave him Glider’s address. ‘It would be better if you went round to see Glider. Alleyne doesn’t want the responsibility for sending the cops to his door and . . . he’s violent.’
Boxer called his mother, said he was coming to see her. She didn’t sound overjoyed, but then again she was someone who, if she’d felt joy, would be disinclined to show it.
Esme Boxer lived in an expensive development in Hampstead. The old Consumption Hospital in Mount Vernon. From the outside it looked like the set of a Victorian horror movie with a pointed turret on the corner, from which someone could be hurled onto the sharp railings below. Esme had a two-bedroomed apartment on the first floor. They sat in the kitchen, where she made coffee for one. Esme smoked Marlboros full strength, despising anyone who ate, drank, smoked or even spelled anything ‘Lite’, and poured Grey Goose vodka direct from a bottle she kept in the freezer into a small shot glass. She sipped, smacked her lips, took long, luxurious drags from her cigarette, which she inhaled down to her heels, and listened to what had happened to her granddaughter.