‘Who, Joshua? Who do you and Saffyre think has been attacking women in the area?’ DI Currie asks gently.
Josh sighs and there is a moment of weighty silence while he forms his response.
Cate stares at him.
Finally he replies. ‘It’s a guy called Harrison John. He lives on Alfred Road, up the Chalk Farm end. He’s about eighteen. He hurt Saffyre when she was a child and now she thinks he’s hurting other women.’
The two DIs exchange a look. The male DI leaves the room and DI Currie turns back to Josh. She says, ‘Thank you, Josh. Thank you so much. DI Henry’s going to follow that up right now.’
‘But there’s another thing. Just …’ Josh pulls his hands down his face. ‘… one more thing.’ He looks up at DI Currie. ‘I’ve been following him too.’
He glances at Cate. Cate widens her eyes at him, He hadn’t told her this earlier.
‘That was what Saffyre said to me when she called me at one o’clock that night. She said she couldn’t come back until the police had got him, Harrison John. She said she was scared he was going to kill her. She told me to keep watching him until I caught him in the act, until I had some definite evidence that it was him who’d been carrying out the attacks. So I’ve been out at night just following him about. Waiting for him to do something. Anything.’
Cate swallows hard. She’s overwhelmed by mixed emotions: pride, fear, horror, love; she feels as though she might drown in them all.
‘Then a few days ago I heard him on his phone telling someone he was meeting a girl on Sunday afternoon, that he was taking her to the O2 Centre to watch a movie. So I went along and I sat through the movie with them and watched him and he was all over this girl and I could tell she was finding him really annoying, she kept pushing him away, and then they left and I saw him pulling this girl along the road, towards the back end of the cinema and he was trying to make out like he was playfighting with her but I could tell she wasn’t enjoying herself and so I stayed really close. Really really close. Too close. Because he saw me and he got me against a wall like this.’ Josh mimes a fist around a collar. ‘He said he didn’t know who I was or what I wanted but if he saw me hanging around anywhere near him ever again, he’d shank me. He said, I’ve seen your face now, faggot, I’ve seen your face. Next time I see you, you’re dead.’
Josh pauses. He licks his lips. He turns to Cate. ‘And that was when I wet myself.’
Cate’s eyes fill with tears. The thought of her beautiful boy being held against a wall. The terrible, inevitable heat of a bladder emptied in fear. His shaking hands forcing the damp, stinking clothes into a carrier bag, shoving it into the corner of his wardrobe.
‘I said, What did you do to Saffyre? He said, Don’t mention that whore’s name to me. She’s a dirty little skank. I said, Where is she? Where the fuck is she? He said, I don’t fucking know. Getting whatever’s due to her, I hope. Now fuck off, stalker faggot.’
Josh’s shoulders slump. Then he looks up at the detective and he says, ‘I never caught him doing anything, Harrison John. I tried so, so hard. But can you get him, anyway? Get him off the streets, please? So that Saffyre can come back. Please.’
57
SAFFYRE
Every muscle in my body went hard, every sinew tensed, every hair stood on end. My heart, which was already thumping, started to race. I could see him closing in on Alicia, his pace picking up.
I thought, Oh no you don’t, Harrison John,oh no you don’t.
I stayed back in the shadows waiting for him to pass and then I ran up behind him, hooked my arm around his neck and brought him down on to the floor. His body made a satisfying cracking noise as it hit the pavement. I kept him pinned there for a while with his face ground into the pavement so he couldn’t see me.
‘What do you want?’ he said.
I brought my mouth close to his ear, close enough to smell his aftershave, the lingering aroma of a recently smoked cigarette.
I hissed into his ear. I said, ‘Want to see something magic, Harrison John?’
I took off my beanie hat and shoved it in his mouth to muffle his screams. And then I reached down for his hand.
His right hand.
I bent it back and brought it up to his face.
Then very slowly I took each of the three fingers he’d put inside me when I was ten years old and I snapped each one in turn.
Every time he cried out in pain I said, ‘It only hurts the first time, Harrison. It only hurts the first time. The next time it will bemagic.’
‘Agh,’ he said, cupping his broken fingers, his face contorted with pain, ‘argh, fuck’s sake. What the fuck!’ He managed to overpower me then. He turned me over and looked straight into my eyes. He raised his arm as if he was going to hit me with it but then his vision blurred and he slumped on top of me in a dead faint.
I looked up and there was the face of an angel, backlit by a street lamp, a halo of red hair. It was Alicia.
‘Are you OK?’ she said. I saw the beginnings of a bruise on the edge of her cheekbone where Roan had hit her.
