Changeling (3 page)

In his right hand the man held a horn-handled umbrella, but he made no attempt to transfer this to his left in order to take up the proffered handshake.

‘Please, call me Lucien,’ the man said.

He turned his head slightly and appeared to glance towards the corner behind which Trey was hiding. The briefest hint of a smile played across his features. He seemed to be looking directly at Trey, although it was impossible to be certain with those mirrored lenses covering his eyes. Trey withdrew his head and held his breath.

There was a long pause as if the stranger was considering how to continue. Eventually he said in a loud voice, ‘You know, Trey, it really must be very uncomfortable being hunched down like that for any period of time. I think that it would be better for everyone if you just came out and joined us. It really is rather rude to spy on people.’

Trey shook his head in disbelief at what had just happened. The man had had his back turned to him when Trey had snuck in, and the boy was certain that he could not have caught sight of him in the mirrored reflection of the room thrown back by the windows to his left. He weighed up his options: he could leg it back to his room and pretend that he didn’t know what Colin was on about if he was asked, or he could face up to being caught and find out who this stranger was.

The frown on Colin Wallington’s face fell away into an angry scowl as Trey sheepishly stepped out from around the corner. The care worker opened his mouth to say something, but then thought better of it. He gestured for the boy to come towards them before turning back to their visitor with a sickly smile, but the man calling himself Lucien was no longer looking in his direction. Instead the mirrored lenses were now firmly fixed on Trey.

‘As I was saying . . . Lucien,’ Colin continued, ‘we really were not expecting you. This is not one of our designated visiting dates, and while we can, under special circumstances, arrange for visitation rights outside of these times, we do have a strict policy that requires a twenty-four hour notice of intent – so that we can prepare properly. In addition, as we have no way of knowing that you are who you say you are, we would need to run the appropriate checks before visitation rights could be granted. I’m sure that you will understand that as the head care worker at the home I would be neglecting my duties if I did not adhere to these rules.’

Trey watched as Colin folded his arms and plastered a ‘What-can-you-do?’ smile on his face.

A silence filled the room which would have been complete were it not for the low hum of the extractor fan set in one of the windows.

The stranger stood, unmoving, for what seemed like an age, and Trey could feel his eyes drilling into him from behind the dark glasses.

Eventually the man claiming to be Trey’s uncle slowly reached into his suit jacket and retrieved a folded sheet of paper and a passport from the internal breast pocket. He held these out for Colin to examine.

‘I have brought a birth certificate and a passport to prove my identity, Mr Wallington. And as I explained to your charming assistant, Miss Travers, I would not have come and imposed myself on you in this manner if it was not of the utmost necessity to do so.’ He slowly reached up and removed the glasses from his eyes, folding them and placing them in the top pocket of his suit.

When he turned to look back at Trey the boy felt an involuntary shudder run through him to the core.

The man’s eyes were, well,
freakish.

The irises were a light honey-brown interspersed with tiny flecks of ochre that became more dominant towards the centre of the eye, until eventually the lighter spots merged into a central ring around the black of the pupil. Trey was torn between the desire to step closer and look into these fascinating pools of colour and the more powerful wish to turn away and escape their insidious glare. Much to his relief, the tall man switched his attention to Colin.

He stepped forward, handing over the documents. Trey, unable to take his eyes off him, was amused when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Colin take an immediate step backwards in response.

‘Please, feel free to contact whichever authorities you consider necessary,’ said the tall stranger, pressing the ID papers into the care worker’s hands. ‘I fully understand the difficult position that I have put you and your establishment in by simply turning up unannounced in this way, but I merely wish to have ten minutes with my nephew here. I have some very important information that I must share with him.’

‘Believe me, Mr . . .’ Colin’s nervous fingers fumbled open the back page of the passport to reveal the stranger’s details. ‘Mr Laporte, I truly do wish that it were as simple as that. But there are protocols in place that . . .’

Trey subconsciously filtered out the rest of Colin’s speech as his mind began to try to make sense of what he had just heard. It surprised him to hear his surname associated with this man standing in front of him, because whoever this mysterious stranger was, there was one thing that Trey was absolutely convinced of: this man was not his uncle.

‘. . . rules are there for the safety of the children in our care. I’m sorry, but I really have to insist on you leaving now.’ Colin finished and held out the papers at arm’s length to return them to their owner.

The man calling himself Lucien Laporte calmly accepted the papers and returned them to his jacket pocket. He sighed and drew himself up to his full height, fixing his gaze on an invisible spot somewhere above the care worker’s head. A hard, humourles smile crept slowly across his lips as he took this in and considered how to proceed. Finally he turned to look at Wendy, the smile genuine now and displaying teeth that were perfectly white and set in a face that was at once both alarming and handsome.

‘Miss Travers – Wendy, isn’t it?’ he said in a calm voice. ‘I wonder if you would be so kind as to get me a glass of water. It would seem that my visit has been fruitless, and I would appreciate a drink before I take the long journey back home.’

Wendy flushed red and self-consciously reached down to straighten the hem of her skirt, and for one horrible moment, Trey thought that she was going to curtsy. ‘That won’t be any trouble, Mr Laporte. I’ll just pop down to the kitchen.’ She stopped at the door to look back worriedly in Colin’s direction before leaving.

The door slowly closed with a soft thud. A fly had got into the room and was noisily attacking the glass of the windowpane as it sought a means of escape. Its buzz-tap, buzz-tap attempts at freedom punctuated the silence that now filled the room.

‘Mr Wallington,’ the stranger said, ‘I am not an unreasonable man, and I have explained to you that I fully understand the position that I am putting you in, but I have just driven for two hours to get here and all I request of you today is ten minutes alone with Trey. After that I will leave and you can make whatever checks you must in order to establish that I really am who I say I am.’ His eyes dropped momentarily and he examined the handle of the umbrella in his hand. When he looked up again, he spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone.

‘I know that you have a great responsibility to the children in your charge, Mr Wallington. And I give you my word of honour that I would never do anything to undermine the trust that has been placed in you to carry out those responsibilities. I also know that you have the authority to grant me my request and I appeal to your better nature to allow me this audience with my nephew.’

‘I’m afraid that I simply cannot allow—’

Lucien cut him off with a gesture of his hand, and Trey saw a sudden intensity in his eyes that made them blaze in their sockets, like a fire suddenly flaring up upon finding a source of fuel to feed upon.

There was a perfect
stop
then. A complete and absolute cessation of
everything
. Trey involuntarily held his breath at the strangeness of the moment. An utter silence pressed in upon the room. The whirr of the ventilation fan ceased, and when Trey glanced over to see the cause of its sudden silence he spotted the little fly lying dead upon its back on the windowsill. Trey’s mouth had gone completely dry, and he thought that the sound of his ragged breathing must have been audible to everyone in that terrible silence. He looked over at the tiny dead creature again and felt peculiarly unhinged by the sight of it lying there. He swallowed, hoping that he might be able to raise some saliva by doing so. Turning his attention back to the two men, he noted the look of abject fear on Colin’s upturned face as Lucien’s voice sliced through this strange void.

‘I am an immensely rich and powerful man, Mr Wallington, and while I choose not to wield these influences like some bludgeoning weapon, I think that you should know that I have considerable sway with a broad range of those
authorities
that you alluded to earlier. I believe that they may be extremely interested to know some of the more
intimate details
about the head care worker of this establishment.’ He leaned forward so that his nose was almost touching the hooked beak of the smaller man, his eyes steely as he continued.

‘I am sure, for instance, that they would be extremely interested to find out how you have been embezzling funds from the care home’s coffers into a bank account set up in your wife’s name. They might also be disturbed to find out how young James Longton really broke his arm on the field trip to Cheshire last year.’

Colin Wallington stared back at his accuser, a look of utter horror on his face.

‘What the . . . ?’ he stammered.

‘Perhaps of most interest to them would be—’

‘Uncle Lucien, that’s enough,’ Trey said. ‘I think that you’ve made your point.’ Trey looked over at the care worker, who seemed to be unravelling before his very eyes.

There was a long pause. The nod that eventually came from the tall stranger was barely perceptible, but it seemed to Trey that the light that was ignited behind those oddly coloured eyes had already dimmed, leaving them none the less fascinating, but reassuringly less frightening than they had been only moments before.

Trey had long dreamed of seeing his nemesis reduced to a state of crippling wretchedness, but witnessing Colin cringe and flinch at each of these revelations, the look of fear and revulsion in his eyes, had been too much even for him. He felt his own face burn in embarrassment for the man and could hardly bear to look at him.

Behind him, he heard the fan click back into operation, followed by the familiar buzz-tap of the little insect throwing itself once more against the window. He could almost sense the molecules in the air resume their random collisions with each other as the Pause button that had been activated upon the universe was switched back to Play. He flicked his eyes towards the window, and the sight of the fly bouncing off the glass again caused icy fingers to trace their way down his spine. The creature had been dead. He held his breath and listened to the minuscule sound of its headlong charge into the glass. It wasn’t possible. What had just happened was not possible. He shifted his gaze back to the man called Lucien. Whatever he had just witnessed had been something to do with the visitor – he was certain of that.

Colin Wallington was covered in a film of sweat. He appeared to Trey to have become visibly smaller than he had been before this confrontation. The usual overconfident sneer was nowhere to be seen.

‘Who are you?’ Colin asked.

‘I’ve already told you my name, Mr Wallington. Now perhaps you would be so kind as to leave the two of us alone for a short while. Young Trey and I have important matters to discuss.’

The care worker hesitated before replying in a small voice, ‘As you say, Mr Laporte, I do indeed have the power to grant this meeting. However, I cannot force the boy to speak to you against his wishes, so the final decision must be Trey’s.’

He turned to Trey, a look of desperation on his face. Trey couldn’t decipher whether the man was appealing to his better nature by urging him to agree, or simply willing him to refuse the meeting to help him to salvage some small victory from the whole affair. In any case, he didn’t much care what Colin hoped he would do; he had worries enough of his own at this precise moment.

‘Well, Trey? Are you happy with me leaving you in the company of this man, your . . . uncle?’

Trey looked from Colin to the tall, bald-headed stranger. He was certain that if the man meant to do him any harm he could quite easily have done so, regardless of how many of the care staff might or might not have been present. Because of this, and because there was something about this unnerving visitor’s manner that suggested that it might truly be in his interest to speak to him, he nodded his assent.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

‘Excellent,’ Lucien said, at once reverting to the clipped, businesslike tone and manner that he had assumed during the initial introductions. ‘Thank you, Mr Wallington. I appreciate your help in this matter. Now, if you would be so kind, my nephew and I have a lot of catching up to do. Oh, and could I possibly ask you to change my order with the delightful Wendy? I would much rather have a nice cup of tea, if that is not
too
much trouble.’

Colin pushed with irritation at the displaced strands of his hair that had escaped their slicked-down confines and went to leave the room. Stopping at the door, he turned, smiling uneasily. ‘If you need any help, Trey, Wendy and I will be just along the corridor in the kitchen fixing our
guest’s
tea.’

Lucien waited until the door had completely shut before turning to face Trey: his smile was open and genuine. Trey had the same feeling of being completely disarmed that he was sure Wendy had felt when that look had been directed at her. He shook the well-manicured hand that was being offered to him.

‘Well, young Trey Laporte, where should we begin?’

‘How about you begin by telling me who you really are,
Uncle Lucien
?’

That smile came back to his visitor’s face, and he motioned for them to sit down on the sofa.

‘My name really is Lucien, but my surname – as you have already deduced – is not Laporte: it is Charron.’