Читать книгу Dancing Jax - Robin Jarvis - Страница 15

Chapter 9

“IT’S ALL QUIET here today, but on Friday night, right behind me, outside the historic Landguard Fort here in Felixstowe, tragedy occurred – a tragedy that claimed the lives of many local young people. At nine o’clock last night several thousand were gathered here to take part in a supposed flash mob. Each of them had been invited via an anonymous email that the police are currently trying to trace. Details are not completely clear yet, but something sparked a riot and, while that was going on, a car came hurtling down this approach road, seemingly out of control. It skidded then crashed into another car, parked over there in that car park, and exploded. The second car followed moments after. You can only imagine the terror, the panic.”

A cool female voice interrupted.

“Have the police made any further statement as to how the car came to be out of control?”

The man on the screen shook his head. “Not as yet,” he said. “The forensic teams are still combing the wreckage and the area, as you can see behind me. But eyewitnesses we’ve spoken to say there was smoke coming out of the car even before the crash. Others claim to have seen flames.”

“Thank you, Justin, now we can head over to Lyndsay Draymore outside Felixstowe General where the injured and the dying were taken last night.”

The image of the suited man standing upon the sandhill, with the road behind him, was replaced by a smart young woman, in front of a red-brick, arched entrance.

“Lyndsay, what more can you tell us about this tragic incident?”

“Well, Tara, medical staff have been working round the clock, through the night here. I understand there was something in the region of a hundred and twenty casualties, impact injuries and burns being the majority of cases that had to be dealt with.”

“And I gather the death toll has now risen again?”

“Yes, within the last hour, it has been announced that two more have died as a result of their injuries, bringing the total now up to thirty-eight – with five more still in intensive care and fighting for their lives. An unbelievable loss of life in this usually quiet seaside town, here in Suffolk.”

Behind her a nurse emerged from the entrance; she looked tired and drained. Someone behind the camera must have alerted Lyndsay because she turned and almost ran over to her, eager for a word from the front line.

“Can you tell me what it’s been like in there?” she asked, shoving a microphone forward.

A startled Carol Thornbury looked quizzically down the lens that came after.

“How is the mood of the medical staff?” the reporter asked. “What can you tell us? How are the families of the injured feeling at this time?”

“Are you bloody stupid or something?” Carol snapped. “How do you think they’re feeling? Get that ruddy camera out of my face or I’ll give you a colonoscopy with it! And keep this area clear!”

Carol barged impatiently past the camera crew, leaving a thick-skinned Lyndsay smiling benignly. “As you can see,” she continued without a blink, “the atmosphere here is tense and tempers are running high. This is Lyndsay Draymore, Felixstowe General, for BBC News.”

The picture switched back to the anchorperson, perched informally against the news desk, casually displaying the shapely legs that had served her so well in Strictly Come Dancing the year before.

“And we’ll have more of that terrible incident in Suffolk on our main bulletin at six,” she purred. “You can tweet us your thoughts and condolences at the address at the bottom of the screen. Now over to our showbiz correspondent to see which pop diva has lost a size, shredding twenty pounds thanks to a new diet from…”

Martin turned off the TV. “Good on you, Carol,” he said proudly.

“She looked shattered,” Paul commented.

“Must have been a horrible night there,” Martin answered. “I’ll run a bath for her and do some toast. She’ll want something before she crashes…”

He flinched, not believing his unthinking choice of word, and the horror of the previous night rushed in again. He and Paul had returned home in a kind of dream state. The night had been alive with sirens and whirling lights and they had both fallen asleep in front of the rolling news.

The phone rang. It was Carol’s mother.

“Hello, Jean. Yes, I saw her on the news just now too. No, television always makes you look fatter than you are. Yes, it’s been awful. No, I don’t know how many were from the school, they haven’t released that information yet. Paul is fine. I’ll tell her you rang, soon as she gets back. OK, you too, Jean. Bye now.”

It was the second time she had rung. The first was at half six that morning when she had first heard about it on the radio. Other people had called: Barry Milligan had sounded irritable and hungover and his mood wasn’t helped by the fact that the rugby game had been cancelled out of respect. Gerald Benning, Paul’s piano teacher, had checked to make sure he was safe, and so had members of the family who hadn’t been in touch for years. It was positively ghoulish.

When Carol came through the door, she gave her son the biggest, chest-crushing hug he’d ever had. She had worked an extra four hours over her shift. Her face looked grey and drawn and her hollow eyes seemed to attest to the things she had seen in the casualty department.

Martin passed her a cup of tea, which she took gratefully, but refused the toast.

“I couldn’t,” she stated.

Neither Martin nor her son uttered a word while she drank it. Then, cradling the cup in her hands, she said, “I never want to go through another night like that as long as I live.”

“You were just on telly,” Paul ventured. “You were fierce!”

“That stupid, stupid woman. Why do they ask such inane, crass questions?”

“It’s what they do,” Martin said.

“I almost punched her, but you know what stopped me? I knew it’d help her flaming career and I’d end up on some cheap blooper programme that’d be repeated for the rest of my life.”

She closed her eyes and seemed to sag.

“There’s a bath waiting,” Martin told her. He had never seen her like this before. Carol always left the grimness of the job at the hospital and was able to detach herself from it. Not this time. She was too limp to manage the bath. She just wanted to flop into bed.

Halfway up the stairs, she stopped and said, in a small, defeated voice, “I recognised lots of them. Some had been your pupils, Martin. A few of them still are… or were.”

Across town, Emma Taylor sat on her bed, staring blankly at the wallpaper. Conor had gone with her in the ambulance. Both had been too stunned to say anything. In casualty Emma had been checked over: superficial burns to the back of her legs, which had been appropriately dressed and, due to the volume of more serious cases coming in, she had been discharged. Conor had been treated for the cuts and bruises he had sustained in the fight, but the sights that wheeled by while he waited never left him.

Emma’s usually disinterested parents had been loud and vocal in their sympathy, but of zero use and were more keen to find out if any compensation could be claimed. For the first time, the girl had not milked a situation to her utmost advantage. Instead she went quietly to her room, plugged her earphones in and replayed those moments over and over in her head. She hadn’t slept all night.

When her mobile rang, she didn’t hear it, but saw the flashing of the screen. She stared at it like it was something new and unrecognisable. The number was certainly unfamiliar. She picked it up and pulled out one earphone.

“Who’s that?”

“Conor.”

“How’d you get my number?”

“Nicky Dobbs gave it me. I knew you two used to go out…”

“Nicky Dobbs is a waste of space.”

“So I thought I’d…”

“What do you want?”

“About, you know. I can’t talk to anyone here about it. They won’t be able to understand.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But you were in that car – you know what happened. The police are going to start asking…”

Emma bristled. “Are you going to grass me up?” she said. “Others will have seen you in it.”

“They was too busy running for their lives. Only you and me know I was in that car. Danny, Kevin, B.O. and Brian won’t be telling no one now, will they? They’re burned and gone. We both saw Kevin flapping about on fire. So you just keep your trap shut, yeah?”

There was a silence.

“You hear me?”

“I’m not sure,” Conor said at length. “I can’t get my head straight.”

“Then try harder!” she told him. “Don’t you think I’ve been through enough?”

“Yeah, course.”

“But you want to set the law on me as well? I wasn’t even driving!”

“No. I dunno. I can’t think.”

Emma ground her teeth. “Look,” she said, “there’s no way I’ll be let out of this house today. They’re useless, but think I need to stop in so they can claim extra for the trauma. I’ll work on them tomorrow and meet you then, yeah? We’ll talk it through, yeah?”

“Tomorrow? I’m not sure I can wait…”

“Just sit on it for one more bloody day, will you!”

“OK, OK.”

“Down by the boot fair then, about three.”

“The boot fair?”

“Where else is busy on a Sunday here? I’m not going to traipse up a lonely beach with you. It’s not a date.”

“I wasn’t asking for one!”

“See you then, then.”

“Umm… and Emma…?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry about Keeley and Ashleigh.”

The girl’s mouth dried. “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks.” She ended the call and closed her eyes. Images of her two friends caught in the Fiesta’s headlights reared in her memory.

Emma snapped her eyes open and continued to stare at the wallpaper.

The rest of that day passed quietly for the shocked town.

On Sunday the papers were full of it. There were sensationalised eyewitness accounts from whoever they could get to talk about the incident locally. Half of those interviewed hadn’t even been there. There was a two-page spread with a dynamic graphic of View Point Road and the progress of the car along it, with arrows indicating where the vehicle was going to crash and explode. There were photographs of the deceased, each taken at some point the previous year – all young, all smiling. Danny Marlow had been singled out as the cause of the disaster, but none of his family, especially his brother, would give an interview so the papers had to make do with the gossip they had wheedled out of neighbours and unnamed “close family friends”.

As well as all that, there were the usual scaremongering articles on the dangers of the Internet. Sporadic, starred panels voiced the opinions of waning celebrities whose publicity agents had eagerly volunteered their clients’ condoling sound bites about the tragedy, even though most of them had no idea where Felixstowe actually was. A photo shoot had been hastily arranged for a teen pop sensation, coyly wearing a firefighter’s helmet and little else, to show her support for those brave heroes who battled the flames, while also plugging her latest single, the release of which had been specially brought forward and was available on iTunes that very day.

Barry Milligan read through every paper and cradled his head in his hands. The death toll had now risen to forty-one. Eight of them attended his school. A further twenty-three had been former pupils and twenty-seven were still in hospital. Special services were being held in churches across town that morning and he had sat and prayed with everyone else, to whatever might be listening.

Then he drove to the school. There was an emergency meeting of governors and department heads at 2 p.m. and he wanted to be the first one there. He needed to be in his office to sort out the details for tomorrow. As he approached, he saw that floral tributes and messages were already being laid outside the gate. There was another reporter hanging about, ambushing groups of sobbing girls. News editors loved intrusive images of raw grief. Snot and tears are real attention-grabbers. Barry slipped by them and entered the building.

A school after hours and during the weekend is a strange, lonely place. It needs children to bring it to life and give it purpose. Standing in the corridor, which echoed and smelled of floor polish, Barry wondered how he was going to get through Monday’s assembly tomorrow morning.

The meeting only lasted an hour; no one was in the mood to argue and everything was settled. There would be counselling available for any child who needed it throughout the week. It was going to be a rough time and like nothing Barry had ever experienced in his professional life. Downing Street had even been in touch. The Prime Minister would like to come and deliver his condolences in person and give a sympathetic yet inspirational speech to the students. Only one discreet camera crew need be present, the press office assured him. Barry had vetoed that immediately in very colourful language. The week was going to be difficult enough without an unctuous Prime Minister and his entourage having to be considered. The Headmaster’s sole duty was to the children. Publicity-hungry politicians seeking to boost their ratings in the opinion polls by exploiting such a tragedy didn’t even figure. It made Barry furious.

After the meeting and making the necessary phone calls and doing everything he possibly could, Barry returned home. He donned his favourite rugby shirt and spent the rest of the day with a bottle of twelve-year-old malt. The pubs were infested with reporters, sniffing for grime.

The rest of Felixstowe could not remain indoors any longer. The grieving town needed company: they needed to see familiar faces, to stop and talk, to share their sorrows and disbelief and give thanks if their immediate circle had not suffered a loss.

So that Sunday afternoon saw unusually high numbers wandering down to the seafront. They chatted in hushed, respectful tones while they walked past the cheerfully painted beach huts and deserted amusements, and found their steps gravitated towards the peninsula. But they demurred at completing that solemn journey just yet. Instead they stopped at the Martello tower along the way and browsed through the boot fair that was held there every Sunday, floods permitting, on the surrounding wasteland.

Conor Westlake was sitting on the low sea wall in front of the boot fair. His face still bore the discoloured marks of Friday’s fight, but they looked worse than they felt.

The gulls were floating above, shrieking mournfully and swooping down on any scraps that the chip-eaters flung their way. The sea was grey and featureless, except for the movement of the enormous container ships that sailed from the dock around the infamous headland. They were so immense they looked like drifting cubist islands. Conor checked his phone for messages, but there were none. He swivelled about on the wall and looked across the car roofs and bustling boot fair.

The tall, solid, round shape of the Martello tower dominated everything. It was one of many built during the Napoleonic Wars for an invasion that never happened and was now a Coastwatch Station. Others had been turned into eccentric homes, while the rest were crumbling. Suffolk was peppered with old defences along its sea-ravaged coast: pillboxes from the Second World War, or concrete bunkers from the First.

Conor’s grey eyes scanned the crowds. The boot fair was busier than usual. More people than ever were inspecting the unwanted junk arrayed behind the cars. He recognised several faces in there. He checked his phone again. Emma was late.

Cursing under his breath, he looked back at the sea. Yesterday had been a blank fog for him. No one at home knew what to say and the more they fussed the more he resented them. Now he felt like a can that had been violently shaken and was ready to explode at anyone who said the wrong thing. The sight of the sea was calming though; he could watch it for hours.

“I don’t have no money or nothing,” Emma said flatly. “So you can forget that right way.”

Conor looked around. The girl was standing beside the wall. He had been so wrapped up in himself he hadn’t heard her approach. She was chewing loudly.

“I’m not stopping long,” she told him, flicking her ponytail behind her with a toss of the head. “What do you want?”

“Money?” he repeated in confusion. “What are you on about?”

“You tell me, Goldilocks. Aren’t you after something to keep you quiet? That’s blackmail, you vile sicko. If it’s not money you’re after then it can only be the other and you have got to be kidding, you filthy perv.”

Conor held up his hands defensively. “Oi!” he cried. “I only wanted to talk about it, nothing else. You got it so wrong.”

Emma folded her arms and eyed him sharply. She couldn’t understand any motive that wasn’t selfish.

“So talk,” she said at length.

The boy wasn’t sure how to begin. He glanced down at the tracksuit bottoms she was wearing and guessed she was deliberately hiding her bandaged legs.

“How are they?” he asked.

Emma shrugged. “I’m not about to marry Paul McCartney,” she said.

Conor watched as three gulls fought over a generous piece of battered fish skin.

“It keeps going round and round in my head like a bit in Grand Theft Auto I can’t get past,” he said. “Nobody who wasn’t there can understand.”

“Are you confusing me for an agony aunt? I’m not Denise bleeding Robertson. You got problems with it? Go to a head doctor or chuck some Prozac down your neck.”

“Don’t you keep seeing it in here?” he asked, tapping his forehead. “Those faces – the screams and the panic…”

Emma turned away. “That’s my business,” she replied.

“But Ashleigh and Keeley…?”

“What do you want me to do, shave my hair off or something? They’re in the morgue, dead and blue, but I’m still here. There’s no amount of talk or blowing my nose going to bring them back or make it go away. No sense in banging on about stuff like that. It’ll do your brains in.”

Conor shook his head. “God, you’re hard,” he said. “They were your best mates.”

“I’m my best mate! Have you finished, pretty boy?”

“Not yet. I saw the papers today. No one knows why the car was out of control. What happened?”

Emma chewed and clicked the gum in her mouth. “Danny Marlow was driving, that’s what happened. He was a useless pillock. It was his fault – all of it.”

“Why don’t you tell someone? You should.”

“Who? The fuzz? Are you from Norfolk or what? I had a visit from them last night about that Sandra cowing Dixon. I’m not going to give them an excuse to come back and ask me a load more questions. I had nothing to do with that crash. I was just lucky to get out of it alive. The other poor pieces of toast didn’t.”

“Danny’s family would want to know. So would Kev’s and the others.”

“So what? Not my problem and it’s not yours neither.”

Conor couldn’t think what else to say. He should have known better than to try and speak to flint-hearted Emma Taylor about this. The fact that he had probably saved her life that night didn’t even occur to her, or if it did, she wasn’t going to acknowledge it, let alone thank him.

He changed the subject.

“I saw Sandra Dixon back there before,” he said, nodding towards the boot fair.

“She was lucky we thumped her,” Emma declared proudly. “She might be lying on a slab right now with the rest if we hadn’t. I told the police that last night. Not that they took any notice. She should be bloody grateful.”

“She isn’t the sort to go to a flash mob,” he answered.

“Don’t go sticking up for her! She’s so far up herself you don’t have to. And she deserved what we done. You know she said you was thick and couldn’t read a book without colouring it in. Snobby cow.”

Conor managed a grim smile. “She’s right there,” he agreed.

An elderly couple had been admiring the sea as they walked along the promenade. Drawing close, they paused when they saw the two young people and let out sympathetic groans.

“Oh, you poor lad,” the woman cried. “Your bruised face. Were you caught up in that terrible disaster?”

“Awful business,” the man added consolingly.

Conor didn’t know how to answer them, but Emma said, “Bog off, you nosy coffin-dodgers! Go find someone else to patronise or I’ll squeeze your colostomy bags so hard your false teeth will shoot out!”

The couple backed hastily away from the hostile, hard-bitten girl and walked off as quickly as they could. Conor exploded with shocked laughter. She really was relentlessly foul.

Emma watched them leave with a snarl on her lip. Then she reflected it might have been a mistake wearing tracksuit bottoms. Conor bore signs of battle; perhaps it was time she displayed her wounds too. She had a feeling she would need all the sympathy she could get, especially if that Sandra was going to make a stink. She had been looking forward to at least a week off school, but now she thought it would be smarter to make an appearance tomorrow, with her poor bandaged legs on show.

“Have we done here?” she asked the boy.

Conor didn’t think there was anything more to be said.

“So you’ll not tell anyone, yeah?”

He felt conflicted. “Not today,” was all he could promise.

“Just keep that gob buttoned,” she warned. With that, she strode away.

Conor chewed his bottom lip. He didn’t know what to do. A brazen seagull alighted on the wall and took a stalking step towards him, hoping for something to eat. Another landed beside it and came bullying forward.

“I haven’t got nothing!” the lad said, showing his empty hands. One of the gulls pecked greedily at his fingers and he pulled his hand back.

“Vicious little beggar!” he cried. “Bet your name’s Emma as well.”

He swung his legs around and jumped off the wall, into the boot fair.

The laden tables sported the usual tat: old toasters, garish souvenirs brought back from abroad, boxes of broken jewellery, rusty tools, redundant VHS tapes, typewriters, ugly clocks, unfashionable shoes, chipped vases, bent candlesticks, incomplete jigsaws, cracked crockery, vinyl recordings of cover-version compilations, empty picture frames. There was nothing here the red or blue teams of Bargain Hunt could take to an auction and make a profit on.

Conor moved through the crowd, only vaguely noticing what was on sale – until he came to a beaten-up camper van where a young woman was standing behind a wallpaper table covered in a display of old books. The same old book, with a green and cream cover.

With Emma’s spiteful account of what Sandra Dixon had said about him still in his mind, the boy stopped and picked one up.

“Dancing Jacks,” he read.

The woman behind the table regarded him oddly, shooting him warning looks. Almost as if she was telling him not to look at it, never mind buy it.

Ignoring her, he flicked through some of the pages. The black and white illustrations looked archaic to him and the thought that they really did need colouring in suddenly popped into his head.

“Ha!” he blurted. “You don’t want that,” the woman muttered. “What’s it about?”

“You won’t like it.”

“How much?”

“You’d be wasting your…”

Her voice was cut off as a movement sounded from within the van and a lean-faced man emerged from the sliding door.

“Peasant coins are all we seek!” he said with a crooked grin. “Just thirty of your shiny new pennies.”

“Thirty pence? Is that all?”

The man bowed. “For this day only,” he said. “Next week they shall be ten pounds each and after that… who knows, a hundred – a thousand, maybe more?”

Conor almost laughed at him, but something about the man’s manner commanded more respect than that. Then he noticed that the scuffed leather jacket he was wearing had been added to and was now sporting two long tails, like an old-fashioned fancy dinner jacket. There was an illustration of a character wearing something like that in the book. In fact, it even looked a bit like that weaselly man.

Conor handed the money over and walked away with the book under his arm.

The man’s eyes gleamed. Then he turned to the woman and took her hand to kiss it.

“You must endeavour to be more persuasive in your vending, my fair Labella,” he told her.

Shiela nodded slowly. “Yes, Ismus,” she said in a fearful voice.