DYING EMBERS an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists Read online

  Geri and Mrs Golding exchanged a dismayed glance.

  ‘And the old ones wanna prove they aren’t past it. It’s just . . . mad.’

  He carried on with furious concentration, gritting his teeth and hunching his shoulders, talking faster and faster. ‘So, he’s telling them they’ve had it this time. It’s their last chance. Anyone else gets caught at it, they’re dead.’ He flinched at this word, and went on, as if trying to take it back: ‘When I say dead, I mean they’re in big trouble, ’cos it’s not safe to walk the streets, with them sword-fighting and—’

  Geri walked over to him and placed one hand on his shoulder. He fell silent and looked at her as if she had done him a mortal injury.

  ‘It’s all right, Dean,’ she said. ‘Mrs Golding will look after you.’

  Dean walked to the front of the class, watched in silence by the others. He looked incredibly small and fragile. His breathing rasped in the silence, and he turned back to Geri as if expecting her to rescue him. He shuddered as Mrs Golding touched his arm. She looked over at Geri. Whatever had happened, it was worse, much worse than she had imagined. She understood his reluctance to leave. While he remained in class, while he remained ignorant, he could imagine anything at all — that Ryan was off somewhere enjoying himself, oblivious to the concern he was causing. Going with Mrs Golding would change all that. Instead he would be presented with the unavoidable, irrevocable truth.

  ‘Thank you, Nine S,’ Mrs Golding said, retreating into brisk formality. ‘You can carry on now.’

  Geri stared at the anxious faces of her form and they stared back. No, thought. We can’t. A line kept running through her head, “Oh where is Romeo? — saw you him today?”

  ‘D’you think it’s Ryan, Miss? D’you think they’ve found him?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mari.’ She collected herself and tried to pick up the threads of the lesson, but she was exhausted after the forays of Monday and Tuesday night, and her thought processes were slow and muzzy.

  ‘Perhaps we should—’ she began.

  ‘Three days, he’s been gone.’

  ‘Four, if you count Sunday,’ Jay chipped in, turning around to evaluate the others’ reaction. ‘Did you see the look on her face?’

  The concern was fake, but blonde hair and an open expression are gifts to a compulsive liar, and Jay Davies was becoming just that. Geri suspected him of trying to hijack the lesson in order to avoid homework — he had failed to hand any in that morning, and it was far from the first time — but the distress on the other children’s faces was genuine. What should she do? Ignore it, just so that Jay didn’t get away with putting one over on her?

  Bloody hell, Geri thought. How could she go on with the lesson? She, too, had seen the look on Mrs Golding’s face. She wasn’t bringing good news for Dean.

  ‘All right,’ Geri said. ‘If you want to talk about this, we’ll talk about it.’ She didn’t want to encourage rumourmongering or fire up hysteria, but she could see that some of the girls were already close to tears — she couldn’t just ignore what had happened. ‘It could be bad news — we don’t know that yet, but it could be — Just remember that whatever happens, Dean’s going to need our help and support.’

  At the end of the lesson Geri went directly to find Mrs Golding, but she wasn’t in her office. Geri hurried down to the staffroom. Coral Jackson was talking to two other staff at one of the clusters of chairs near the centre of the room. Alan Morgan stood at the edge of the group, waiting to put in a word. Short and neat, he always wore a brown suit, tan shirt and a green or brown tie. His skin was the colour and texture of a russet apple, and he had the dry, used-up look of a man who had spent too long in one school and felt thwarted by the limitations of his horizons.

  Coral glanced up as Geri approached and said, ‘It’s bad.’ She took Geri’s hand and pulled her to a seat.

  ‘Play with fire, expect to get your fingers burned,’ Alan Morgan chipped in.

  Geri looked around. ‘What?’

  His lips quivered, but he said nothing.

  ‘Alan, for God’s sake!’ Coral intervened, and Geri turned back to face her. ‘They’ve found Ryan,’ Coral told her. ‘A body,’ she added, before Geri could get her hopes up.

  ‘A b—?’ She shook her head. This couldn’t be.

  ‘He was identified by his signet ring.’

  Geri couldn’t take this in. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked ‘I don’t—’

  ‘There wasn’t much left bar a bit of pork scratchings,’ Morgan said.

  Geri stared, horrified into Coral’s face. ‘Are you saying he was burned?’ she demanded. ‘Are you telling me Ryan was burned to death and he’s making a joke of it?’ She jumped to her feet and Morgan backed away.

  ‘It looks like it was a terrible accident. Some kind of drugs experiment,’ Coral went on.

  Morgan moved to the kitchen area and began spooning coffee into a mug.

  Geri heard what Coral was saying but focused on Morgan. ‘And you think that’s funny, do you, Alan? Is it one huge belly-laugh that some poor lad’s got himself burned to death?’

  Morgan threw his spoon into the mug and leaned across the kitchen work top towards her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not funny — it’s bloody tragic. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t give a shite about some gluey who’s so doped up he can’t even feel his skin turning to crackling. What’s tragic is this used to be a good Catholic school with sound ideals and church-going families.’

  ‘It still is,’ Coral said.

  Morgan snorted. ‘Don’t make me laugh! They only send their kids here because they’ve got just enough idea of right and wrong to hope we’ll look out for their moral welfare. Else they’re just too damn lazy to send them up the road to the comp.’

  ‘We’ve got good kids and bad kids, like any school.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, raising a finger, jabbing it at her, ‘but it isn’t, is it? It isn’t like any school. We’re supposed to be a Roman Catholic high school, with a value placed on moral and religious development. And what do they get? What do we give them?’

  Geri suddenly saw where this was leading.

  ‘Right,’ he said, reading her pained expression. ‘We give them Personal and Social Education. Not religious instruction. Forget the Gospels — the teachings of Our Lord. Give them PSE — how to get contraceptives and what to say when your best friend tells you he’s gay. And what did we have only on Monday? Lessons on drugs.’

  ‘Lessons against the use of drugs!’ Geri exclaimed, outraged.

  ‘If they weren’t bombarded with information on how to use them, they mightn’t be so gung-ho about trying them.’

  ‘And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Alan?’

  ‘I know he was in a derelict building, empty butane refills, tubes of Bostik, plastic bags — I know he set fire to himself and didn’t feel a thing. You don’t have to be Einstein to work it out.’

  Geri opened her mouth to speak, but Morgan hadn’t finished.

  ‘Don’t you ever wonder what they get up to, when they’re out of your sight, these nice lads who say please and thank you and push their chairs in before they leave your classroom? D’you think they go home and study, help their mums peel the spuds for dinner?’ He snorted. ‘They’re more likely hanging about on street corners, terrorizing the neighbourhood, or thieving to feed their drugs habit.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here, if you hate them so much?’ Geri asked.

  ‘I’m a realist, girl. A realist.’ He picked up his coffee and swept out of the room.

  Geri wondered at a reality that made monsters out of ordinary children — children whom she knew to be as kind-hearted, as cruel, as amenable, as difficult, as pleasant and as truculent as any adult she had ever met. They were people after all.

  ‘Don’t let him get to you,’ Coral said. ‘He’s a disappointed man.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Coral,’ she said, feeling suddenly weak and confused, unsure of her ground. ‘T
he kids here aren’t bad, are they?’

  ‘St Michael’s has fewer discipline problems than most urban schools.’

  ‘I thought Ryan was one of his star students — a grade A historian.’

  ‘Like I said, he’s disappointed.’

  ‘Is it true, what he said? About Ryan, I mean?’

  Coral looked away. ‘The essentials, yes.’

  ‘He burned to death?’

  Coral nodded. ‘And there were empty tins — lighter fuel, that sort of thing.’

  For a moment, Geri was too stunned to speak. Suddenly, she blurted out, ‘But that doesn’t mean—’

  ‘I know. But’ — Coral tilted her head apologetically — ‘you have to admit, it doesn’t look good.’

  ‘What the hell does he know about kids?’ she demanded, furious that Morgan so easily discounted Ryan’s good name. ‘He bullies and blusters and calls it discipline. He’s never in his narrow life tried to imagine what it’s like for these kids — constantly faced with temptation—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Coral soothed. ‘You don’t have to convince me.’

  Geri paced, too agitated to accept her friend’s counsel to sit and talk it through. She wanted to go after Morgan, to exact and apology — to make him take back what he had said. But she had to acknowledge the wretched truth that part of her outrage was at her own misgivings: no matter what Morgan said to pacify her, he could never make her unthink the doubts he had sown in her mind. Remembering all of Ryan’s good qualities: his generous spirit, his kindness, his boundless energy and enthusiasm, Geri saw her own easy capitulation as a form of treachery.

  Geri returned to her seat and was silent for a few moments, then recalling why she had come looking for Coral, she asked, ‘What about Dean? Mrs Golding came to fetch him, but I can’t find her now.’

  ‘She took him and his mum home.’

  ‘Is he all right?’ As pastoral head of the lower school, Coral would have been present when his mother broke the news. Geri shook her head. ‘Stupid question. I mean, how did he take it?’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ Coral frowned. ‘He didn’t say anything. No reaction, nothing. He wanted to go back to class. I guess it’s shock.’

  * * *

  It wasn’t true that Dean didn’t react. When Mrs Golding took him down to her office, he knew what she would say. He knew his mum would be there, sitting in the yellow armchair, waiting for him.

  They took him inside and sat him on the matching chair, and his mum looked at him, so that he had to close his eyes to shut her out. He recited in his head, with the same fierce conviction that Liam had used, ‘On pain of death, depart.’ but she was still there when he dared to look, still telling him that Ryan was dead.

  He asked could he go back to class because if he did, he had a confused notion that everything would go back to normal; they would go on with the play and he’d try hard, offer it up for Ryan. He should have been doing that since Sunday, since he knew Ryan hadn’t come home, but first of all, he had felt smug, because Ryan almost never got into trouble and this time he was in deep. Then he had worried and fretted, but that wasn’t enough. God wouldn’t settle for that. He wanted blood, pain, sacrifice.

  His mum told him again, her face wet with tears, ‘Dean, love. D’you understand me? It’s our Ryan. He’s dead.’

  He couldn’t help it. It came into his head without him wanting it to. He thought, I suppose now I’ll get the bedroom to myself. All the time hating Ryan for not being there, hating Mrs Golding for fetching him, hating Miss Simpson for letting him go, hating his mum for telling him. But mostly hating hating hating himself.

  He bit down hard — so hard that his back molar chipped and he could feel the enamel, gritty and sharp, working its way to the back of his mouth. He swallowed. Now he had something to offer up for Ryan. A penance.

  7

  DS Garvey arrived late, puffing with the exertion of hurrying the few steps from his car, his face florid, despite the biting wind blowing off the ship canal. He wore a grubby, bile-coloured windcheater, but his suit jacket hung below it, a grey frill beneath the stretched elastic of the weatherproof.

  ‘Brass monkey weather,’ he remarked to WPC Dhar, ignoring Sergeant Beresford. ‘Who’s the supervising officer, love?’

  Vince Beresford waited while Dhar pointed out that her supervising officer was standing three paces away from him.

  The SOCOs had already packed up and gone, but Garvey nodded at a woman picking her way through the debris that spilled from the front door of the end house. Her white overalls seemed to glow in the oppressive gloom. ‘What’s forensics doing here? I thought it was just some gluey set fire to himself.’

  ‘We don’t know that till the PM,’ Vince said.

  Garvey smiled, mouthing the words silently in a mocking imitation. ‘You’ll never make a detective, lad.’ He sniffed, wiping a pendulous drop from his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Who sanctioned it?’

  ‘DCI Thomas is the SIO.’

  Garvey’s reaction was unreadable. DCI Thomas was regarded as a thorough and fair senior investigating officer.

  Garvey looked up at the row of tiny terraced houses. ‘Nice,’ he said.

  ‘They were, once,’ Vince said, glancing up at the first-floor windows. The glass had blown out in the heat of the fire and the frames were blackened and cracked. The air stank of burnt wood, overlaid by a sickeningly sweet smell which made his stomach roil. ‘Artisans’ cottages,’ he added. ‘The last in the city.’

  Garvey eyed him with amused disdain. ‘How d’you know that?’

  Vince shrugged, embarrassed.

  ‘I mean, me, I’ve lived here all me life and I never knew that.’

  ‘It’s local history, Garvey,’ Vince replied, rallying to the attack. ‘Part of your local heritage.’

  Garvey snorted. ‘Not mine, mate. I grew up on a nineteen-sixties’ housing estate, me.’

  Vince shrugged, already bored with the exchange.

  ‘Who’s the pathologist?’ Garvey asked, showing no eagerness to enter the ruin of fallen plaster and ceiling laths.

  ‘Drayton.’ Vince left it until Garvey, surrendering to the inevitable, started up the slippery pathway to the door into the dark and dripping house.

  ‘Been and gone,’ he said to Garvey’s back. ‘So’s the body.’

  Garvey turned, raising his eyebrows, brightening visibly. ‘Looks like I’ve missed all the fun,’ he said.

  * * *

  It hadn’t been much fun for Ryan. The lighter fuel had made him sick, very sick. Inhaling, vomiting, inhaling again the fumes of his own ignited vomit. The volatile gases bloated his stomach until his mouth filled with saliva and he fell to his hands and knees trembling, retching like a dog.

  And all the time, that insistent voice, persuasive, unrelenting: ‘Gooo-on, lad. Soonest begun, soonest done.’

  He wanted to scream Enough! Please, no more! But his brain had ceased to function properly, he had forgotten the words, and as the second wave hit him — hot fumes from the dancing flames, he forgot who he was and what had brought him to this. Gradually, as the butane displaced the oxygen in his lungs, he began to lose consciousness, then the toxins slowly paralysed his autonomic nervous system, and his heart failed.

  * * *

  The youth-club doors were already open when Geri arrived. Joe Langley, probably. Monday to Thursday he was there, from six thirty to nine thirty, even though his night shift started at ten p.m. Geri only came once a week, as a rule, on Thursday, but tonight she thought it would be unfair to leave Joe on his own to deal with the fallout resulting from Ryan’s death. It was difficult because she wasn’t sure how she felt herself, beyond being numbed by the news. Ryan had been a popular figure at school, a good all-round athlete, and area record holder for several track and field events — he had even been scheduled for a trial at Man U at the end of February. He was also a regular helper at the youth club, organising events and competitions and assisting Joe with football
training, so getting through the first night without him was going to be tough.

  Their customers were thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds in the main, mostly kids from the part of the estate which backed on to the school playing fields. The brick-built hall had originally been used as a store for mowers and other equipment by the grounds staff. After grass-cutting and grounds maintenance was franchised to a big company serving all the schools in the diocese, the store fell into disuse and became a target for vandals. When the local council offered to refurbish it as a community hall, the school governors had jumped at the chance. The council had stipulated that its use must be non-denominational, but it was St Michael’s pupils who attended regularly.

  The club was housed in an L-shaped building, with the entrance in the centre of the long edge of the L, pool and table-tennis tables to the left of the door, table football to the right, and bar and coffee-making facilities on the back wall, opposite the door. A jukebox, donated by parents, was sited in the foot of the L, along with four circular tables in the area the kids called the café.

  There was only half the usual number for a Wednesday night. It seemed that news of Ryan’s death had hit hard. The few who were present sat at the bar, or around the tables on the far side of the hall, talking in whispers.

  Geri shrugged off her overcoat and hung it on the stand next to the bar. She had been too busy to repair the frayed hole where she had caught it on the coat hook on Monday, so she folded it inwards to hide the tear in the lining.

  Joe was often hard to pick out from a crowd of the older lads. She found him standing in a group of four, puzzling over some problem with the jukebox. He’d had his hair done in a spiky urchin cut, a style that suited him and made him even more difficult to distinguish from the others; he looked no more than eighteen, although he must be in his mid-twenties.

  Occasionally, when he felt the need to assert his seniority, or when he went for his job interview as a security guard, and wanted to put on a few years, he would grow a thin bar of close-clipped beard down the centre of his chin, and a carefully shaped moustache. The boys called it his George Michael look.