Читать книгу Sleep - C.L. Taylor, C.L. Taylor, C. L. Taylor - Страница 16

Saturday 28th April

Steve Laing bows his head and crosses himself as he crouches beside his son’s grave. He’s not a Catholic but it feels like the right thing to do. It shows respect. He touches a hand to the gravestone, tracing a finger over the cold imprint of his son’s name, and his chest burns with grief and rage. He still can’t quite believe it, that his son’s body is buried deep in the ground, six feet below him. It doesn’t feel real. How can it be? Freddy was young, he was strong, he went to the gym three times a week and played squash every Saturday. He’d had chickenpox as a kid. Broken his arm when he fell off the slide. But he wasn’t one of those kids in the park with snot dribbling over his top lip. He was healthy, hardly had a day off school. The only time Steve had had to take him to A&E was when he got so pissed at a house party for a mate’s fifteenth birthday that he ran into a glass door and knocked himself out. When he came round he claimed he’d had his drink spiked. Steve could see in the twitch of his lips that he was lying but he admired his gumption. Freddy could be a gobby little shit, always trying to talk himself out of trouble. He was loud too. He filled the house with his booming voice and his clumsy-arsed ways. Steve had lost track of the number of times he’d shouted at him to ‘keep the bloody noise down’ when he crashed into the house late at night, clattering around in the dishwasher or bashing every pot and pan together as he tried to make himself a snack after a drinking session with his mates. But he was never angry with him, not really. Freddy was all he had after Juliet had died. Fucking cancer, stealing the kid’s mum away from him five days before his eleventh birthday. If cancer were a person he’d have beaten the shit out of it and smashed its face to a pulp.

The house is quiet now. So bloody quiet it makes him want to turn on every stereo and sound system in the place and scream at the top of his voice. That’s the worst thing about death, the silence it leaves behind. But not in Steve’s head, there’s no peace there. Some days he feels as though he’s going mad, all those thoughts, buzzing around like wasps. He kept them quiet for a bit – planning the funeral and preparing for the trial – but they started up again afterwards, louder and angrier than ever. It’s the powerlessness he can’t cope with. He couldn’t save Freddy. He couldn’t grab hold of the surgeon’s knife, plunge his hand into his son’s chest and massage his heart back to life. He couldn’t speed up the police investigation. He couldn’t talk to the CPS and, other than a prepared statement, he couldn’t speak to the judge or jury. His son had been taken from him and he couldn’t do a fucking thing about it. ‘Trust us,’ the police told him. ‘Let us do our job.’ But they hadn’t had they, not really? Not them, not the CPS and not the fucking judge.

He traces a finger over his son’s birth and death dates. Twenty-four. Just twenty-four. At the funeral the vicar had said something about an ‘everlasting sleep’ that had really riled him. Death wasn’t like sleep. It wasn’t relaxing. You didn’t dream and you couldn’t be woken up. A dark cloud of despair had descended when the last of the mourners left Freddy’s grave. For most of them it would be the only time they’d visit it. They’d miss him, course they would, but they’d get back on with their lives, whereas Steve felt his had been indefinitely paused.

It was his mate Jim who’d thrown him a lifeline. ‘If you feel that justice hasn’t been done, mate, then maybe you need to mete it out yourself. If you know where she is I can send someone after her. She won’t even see them coming. If that’s what you want.’

Steve wasn’t sure if it was. He prided himself on being a gentleman. He’d never once lifted his hand to a woman. But it was different if a woman was a murderer, wasn’t it? He’d have had no qualms about hurting Myra Hindley or Rose West. And that’s what this woman was, wasn’t it? A murderer. She’d taken the lives of two young people and crippled another. She hadn’t looked him in the eye at the trial. Hadn’t even acknowledged he was there. But she will. She’ll know who Steve Laing is, and she’ll remember his son. He’ll make sure of that.