No Other Darkness (30 page)

‘All right,’ Marnie said. ‘It’s all right. I understand what you did. Shall we get out of here? We can talk more, but—’

‘No.
No
.’ Smashing the torch again. ‘We’re staying here. It’s not safe. I know what’s up there. Police. Doctors. People who’ll tell me it’s
my
fault. Who’ll take away my kids . . .’

‘I’ll explain what’s happened. I’ll make sure they understand.’

‘No! We’re staying
here
.’

Clancy was rigid with hostility at Marnie’s side. She squeezed his hand in warning, needing him to stay quiet. She had to make Matt understand what was at stake here. More than his pain, and Esther’s punishment. A fourteen-year-old child, entrusted to his care, scared out of his wits.

‘We need to go, Matt. I don’t feel safe down here. Nor does Clancy. Beth and the children are waiting—’

‘He’s safer down here than he was with
them
.’

‘Scott and Chrissie Brand?’

Matt’s face twisted in a new direction. ‘He wasn’t wanted. They let him know that. Not just once, in the heat of the moment. Night after night, told that he was unwanted and unloved . . .’ He clenched his fists. ‘It shouldn’t be that easy to give up kids.’

‘You wanted to help. You wanted him to feel safe. So let’s go where it’s safe.’

‘I couldn’t have fostered him,’ Matt said. ‘Beth didn’t know that.’ His stare found Esther, through the darkness. ‘No one believed it was just
you
. No one believed I couldn’t stop it. I should’ve been able to do something, that’s what they all thought. Beth thinks it, too. Whenever there’s anything on the news about women who kill their babies, she’ll ask about the dads, as if they should have been able to do something. She can’t understand the women, let alone the men.’

Homely Beth with a toddler on her hip, making motherhood look easy, on the surface at least. Had Matt picked her for that reason? A good wife and mother, content in her
domestic role. Whatever the reason, her apathy had put the children at risk. Never once had she questioned the way her husband ran the household. It was left to Clancy to do that.

Even so, Marnie’s chest ached with empathy for Matt Reid. It was a form of blindness, her wavering recognition for this grieving man, the way a seared retina always sees the last thing that lit it. ‘You wanted everyone to be safe. That’s what I want now. Not down here. We need to go back up.’

‘No! I can’t! You know what I did to Merrick. I’d had enough of his lies. When he started on the boy . . . I’d had enough. I hit him and left him in that pit he was hoping to sell. I hoped he’d rot there.’ He flinched as he said it.

‘You made sure he was breathing, then you tied his wrists in front of him so that he could climb out of there when he came round.’

‘I hoped he’d
rot
 . . . That’s attempted murder!’

‘You turned him on to his side, into the recovery position.’

‘I tied him up.’ The same insistence in his voice as Esther’s when she refused to be allowed excuses for what she’d done, but the anger was slipping now, into something else.

‘You fastened his wrists in front of him,’ Marnie repeated. ‘That’s a very poor attempt at attempted murder. I don’t think the CPS will be very impressed.’

‘I didn’t know I was capable, of that.’ His stare searched behind her, for Clancy. ‘Is he . . .? I’m sorry. I didn’t think I was capable of sinking so low, being that person. I thought I was in a dark place before, but that? It was like no other darkness I’ve ever known.’

He was slipping into despair. Only one way this could end if he lost hope or decided there was nothing left to salvage from this nightmare.

Marnie was running out of words, afraid of sliding into
platitudes about loss and redemption. Thirst was making her dizzy, dry-tongued. She thought of all the ways you could push past this point, find a way back from grief and loss. By reaching for anger, like Adam, or for exhaustion in the guise of work. She’d opted for numbness, but Matt Reid had wanted to
feel
. He’d wanted to fill his arms and his heart, take responsibility for a new family, even for a lost boy unloved by his parents. That took extraordinary courage. She wished she could find the words to tell him how brave he’d been, how extraordinary.

The tunnel stank of the four of them.

Too human, too hurt.

Trying to find a way back.

‘Thank you,’ Esther said softly.

Matt’s head jerked in her direction.

‘For finding them. For never giving up. Thinking of them every day, all the days when I couldn’t because the pills . . . wiped them out. Thank you for being with them all that time, never forgetting or giving up. Their dad, their brave dad, who never stopped loving them.’

Matt shook his head, but he was watching her. Hearing her.

‘I took them into the fields,’ she said.

Her voice was low, steady.

‘Fred couldn’t climb the fence, but Archie helped him. He was always helping him. You remember. When Fred was funny about his food, when he wouldn’t go to sleep at night. Or brush his teeth, or get dressed. Archie was his big brother. Fred would do anything for him.’ She stopped, sounding out of breath.

Matt hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken.

Esther said, ‘It started out such a nice day. Sunshine. Then the rain came and they were happy . . . They were happy to get into the shelter. It was a shelter.’

Her voice frayed, drawing echoes into the dead space.

‘It was a game. We were playing a game. I don’t know how . . . I don’t remember where it went wrong. I was sitting with them in the shelter. They were shining their torches on the walls and I was making shadow puppets. Archie wanted me to make a blackbird, like the one outside their window. I tried, but I was never very good at shadow puppets. You were best. Fred said, “Daddy’s best at shadows, Mummy,” and I said, “He is,” and then Archie made a shadow puppet and said it was you, and we laughed. We wanted you there with us.’

A smile fractured her face. ‘In the shelter. With us. We wanted you there.’

Marnie could hear the thin scratch of Matt’s breath in his chest.

At her side, Clancy was quiet, watching Esther, watching Matt.

‘Louisa was with my mum that first day. I wanted her with us too. All of us together. It was never about me and them, shutting you out. They’d never have stood for that anyway. They wanted their dad. Archie wanted you there. I think he understood I wasn’t well. He was such a bright boy, and Matt . . . he was so
brave
. They both were, but Fred thought it was a game. Not just that first day, but later. When I took the sleeping bags and the books down there, Archie knew. I think he knew. But he would never have left his brother.’

Her face twisted in self-reproach. ‘I suppose I counted on that . . .’

The torch creaked in Matt’s fist, but he still didn’t move.

‘They were your boys.’ Her voice was swollen with grief. ‘They were your boys and I stole them from you. I killed Archie and Fred, your brave boys. I didn’t go back for them, and I didn’t tell anyone, and then I couldn’t remember, and
I don’t know
why
. I don’t. Matt . . . I can’t remember. Only one day . . . There’s only one day that’s clear. The day the rain came and we took shelter, playing shadow puppets.’

In the torchlight, her face shone with tears.

‘And Archie wanted you there with us, so he made a shadow puppet of you and we laughed because we were happy, all together.’

It was like walking into a wall of floodlights.

Outside the tunnels, Merrick’s site was filled with police. Squad cars, their sirens circling, were parked between potholes, with an ambulance. Paramedics.

Marnie pointed Clancy in their direction. She was stumbling, clumsy, gutted by exhaustion. But she’d got them out. All of them. Esther and Matt reduced to silence finally, faces ruined by tears, but out.

Someone caught her, a hand under her arm saving her from falling on her face.

‘Got you . . .’

Noah.

‘Esther,’ she managed to say, ‘and Matt . . .’

Noah nodded. ‘We’ve got them too.’

Clancy Brand sat with his big hands dangling from his knees. His appropriate adult was a thin man in spectacles who didn’t look much older than Clancy.

Marnie pulled up a chair to sit facing the boy, catching the sharp smell of the tunnels on his skin. ‘How are you?’

He nodded before moving his stare away from her.

‘I need to ask you about what happened earlier today, but before that too . . . With Terry, and Beth.’

‘Okay.’

’Why were you living with them, perhaps we can start there, instead of at home?’

‘Home was a head-fuck. Locks, alarms. I didn’t think it’d be worse with them.’

‘With Beth and Terry.’

Clancy nodded.

‘How was it worse?’

‘At least at home I could
see
the fucking locks.’

The appropriate adult shifted in silence, as if he disapproved of the bad language.

Clancy shot him a look of contempt.

‘Was Terry a friend of the family? Is that why you went with him?’

‘He wasn’t a friend. My lot don’t do
friends
. They do
associates
. People who can be counted on in an emergency. Terry was one of those.
Reliable
. He heard about me running off, and he offered to let me bunk down at his place for a couple of nights. I thought that was okay. I mean, he’s not a pervert or anything, and it was raining a lot back then. I didn’t mind the streets, but I hated the rain. So I went with him. It was okay for a bit. Then he gave me my own room, made a big deal out of it. I wouldn’t have stayed except the little kids liked having me there. Later . . . I wanted to be sure they were safe.’

‘Carmen and Tommy.’

He nodded. ‘I’d have been better off on the streets.’

He put his hands together, wedged them between his knees. ‘I knew this girl, Josie. She ran away from home, ended up on the streets. I saw her this one time, living rough, eating junk from bins, even the stuff they spray with dye to stop people eating it. She was better off than I was in that place.’

He’d had his own room with the Doyles, a warm bed, decent food. He would rather have eaten ruined food from bins, on the street.

‘I should’ve run as soon as I saw the head-fuck.’ He hugged his hands with his knees, all elbows, spiky as a cactus.

He reminded Marnie of someone she’d not seen in a long time: the girl who’d let Adam Fletcher take over her life.

‘Why did you take Carmen and Tommy to Doug Cole’s house?’

‘I could see where it was headed.
He
was getting worse.
She
couldn’t cope.’

‘But why Cole’s house, why take them there? Why leave them alone?’

‘Because it’s safe there. I thought they could play with the toys, it’d keep them happy. He’s okay. He’s a weirdo, but he’s okay.’ His shoulders shrugged. There was something else under the pretence of not caring. Bewilderment.

‘You took Esther’s pills and hid them in your room. Why did you do that?’

Clancy wiped his nose with his hand. ‘Dunno. I wanted something of theirs.’ He put his chin up, daring her to dispute what he said next. ‘I thought I could sell them.’

His first answer sounded more like the truth:
I wanted something of theirs.
Like Noah, taking his mother’s medication. Clancy wanted Marnie to think he was a tough nut. Empathy made her shiver. ‘You were excluded from a couple of schools. What happened?’

He bit his lips together. ‘The usual . . . I got a ton of crap because I didn’t have any mates, because I was a loser, and because I got on okay with the little kids and that was
weird
.’

He raised his chin again. ‘Little kids think I’m a laugh, and they trust me. But that’s weird, apparently. That’s perverted. So yeah. I got kicked out because I punched some kid in my year for saying shit about me.’ He clenched his fist and looked at it.

Marnie wondered how she’d ever imagined a likeness, however fleeting, between this angry boy and Stephen Keele. Clancy wore his anger as armour. On the surface, even at fourteen years old, Stephen was cold. All his rage driven down, hidden away. The only way to understand him, if that was what she wanted to do, was by sticking her hand in that cold fire of hate and misery and memory, for however long it took.

‘What happened earlier today, with Terry?’

‘He was freaking out. Ever since you moved us out of
that house . . .’ Clancy’s eyes went to the window, then to the wall. Tracking a line of shadow, smaller now, knotting his body tighter against the questions. ‘He’s off his head. You saw him. You know.’

‘I know . . . some of it. You took the children to Mr Cole’s house because you were scared of what Terry might do. Is that right?’

‘He was talking about taking us all somewhere safe. It was doing our heads in, not just me.
She
was stressing out. Carmi and Tommy . . . I just wanted to stop him doing anything worse.’

‘Why didn’t you stay with them, in Mr Cole’s house?’

‘I wanted a burger,’ he answered quickly; too quickly. As if he’d prepared the reply. ‘There was nothing decent to eat in the house. I got some bananas for the kids, but I was hungry. I wanted a burger.’ Nicotine stains, faded, on his fingers.

‘You didn’t want to smoke in the house, with the children?’

Clancy flushed, but he nodded.

She would warn him, later, about the two women on the estate who’d been feeding him cigarettes: Adam’s unofficial spies.

‘Then what happened?’

‘Then it all kicked off.’ Clancy curled smaller in the chair. ‘
He
came home. I saw his car. I couldn’t go back then, could I? Your lot were everywhere. So I ran.’

‘To the Isle of Dogs?’

‘Not then. Later. When he came after me.’ He lifted his head quickly. ‘He had a guy in the boot of his car. In the fucking
boot
. Did you know that?’

‘Yes. He got out. He’s okay.’ She paused. ‘How did Terry know where to find you?’

‘Merrick,’ Clancy said through clenched teeth.

‘Ian Merrick? How did Merrick know where you were?’

‘He found me. I was hiding on one of his sites. I knew all about the stuff he was into, because my dad was part of it. Buried. All that shit . . . That’s how they met. They were all going on about this new place Merrick had bought, where they used to teach kids how to climb. It sounded pretty cool. Safe. I knew where it was, knew it’d be dry . . .’ He looked at his hands. ‘Didn’t think the fucker would call
him
, did I?’

‘Merrick called Terry?’

‘Told him I was trespassing. Said he should call the police. He backed down, though. Next thing I know,
he’s
there.’

‘In the man-made cave. That’s where you went?’

Clancy nodded. ‘Where you found Merrick.’ He put a hand to his mouth, chewing at his thumbnail. ‘You found Merrick, right?’

‘Yes, we did. Can you tell me what happened? Between Merrick and Terry?’

‘He stuck up for me.’ Clancy rubbed at his face in confusion.

‘Terry?’

‘Yeah . . . Merrick was bitching about what a fuck-up I was, how everyone said so, even my mum and dad. Terry told him to shut up. They were yelling at each other. Merrick was coming out with some crap about Terry being a soft touch, a bleeding heart; said he only took me in to fill the hole in his life . . . That’s when he said he was going to show me how
men
solved problems.’

‘Who said that?’

‘Terry. Matt. Whatever the fuck he’s called.’ Clancy shifted in his seat. ‘That woman from the tunnel . . . she killed those kids.’ He wore the knowledge, everything he’d witnessed in the tunnels, like a stain on his skin. ‘His kids.’

‘She was very ill,’ Marnie said. ‘It’s called post-partum psychosis . . .’

‘I know. She had pills for it, but she stopped taking them. She should’ve kept taking the pills.’ He chewed his nail, sounding like an adult, looking like a child. ‘It fucked him up. He blamed Merrick for the bunker, said Merrick must’ve known.’

‘What did Merrick say?’

‘He said he didn’t know. He kept saying it. Like I kept saying I didn’t know where Carmi and Tommy were.’ He sucked blood from the cuticle he’d torn with his teeth. ‘That’s when he hit Merrick, with the torch. I thought he’d killed him. But he said he was breathing, he checked. He tied his wrists with a coat hanger.’ Clancy cringed. ‘He was always going on about the fucking coat hanger, yeah? It came with my uniform, I didn’t
want
it. But it freaked him out. He said you could kill someone with it. I mean,
as if
. But maybe he meant
he
could kill someone.’

He stopped, looking lost for a second. ‘I thought he was going to do it. Kill Merrick. Put the hanger through his eye, into his brain. I saw that once, on a DVD. He looked like he’d do it. I got scared. He was always angry when I was scared. Not angry like most people. He never shouted. He never hit stuff. He just . . . went quiet.’ Clancy rubbed at his eyes. ‘He had this
voice,
when he was mad. Very quiet, very
fuck-you
. He said we were going somewhere we’d be safe. He wanted to talk to me, he said, make me see what I’d done. I thought he meant Carmi and Tommy. I told him I didn’t know where they were. I was too scared to tell him. He was off his head.’

‘So you went with him, to the Isle of Dogs?’

Clancy nodded. ‘I knew about the tunnels. My dad was all over that
.
But I didn’t want to go down there. I managed to lose him on the site. And
you
. I tried to get you out of the way, like Carmi and Tommy. I didn’t know what else to do. I had to go down into the tunnels; there wasn’t anywhere else to hide.’

‘And Terry came after you.’

‘Yeah. You saw. He’d have killed me, and maybe you too, if
she
hadn’t come.’

He started chewing his thumb again. ‘That’s it. That’s everything that happened.’

He looked like a child. At fourteen, Stephen Keele hadn’t looked like a child. But he’d been brought up by parents like the Brands, who believed the world was a dangerous place where you had to prepare for the worst.

‘Tell me about your mum and dad. You’ve said you don’t want to go home. Why?’

Clancy was quiet for a bit, then he said, ‘Josie, my mate, she told me why she ran. Her dad was having an affair, only she called it
playing away from home
. She said she didn’t feel safe knowing what he was up to.’

‘Like you,’ Marnie hazarded. ‘You didn’t feel safe at home.’

Another laugh, too old to be coming out of a kid this young. She’d never heard Stephen laugh, but plenty of times he’d sounded older than his years. Cynical, because he’d been taught to expect the worst? The way Clancy had been taught.

‘They’re
safe
. If that’s what you’re worried about. That house is the safest place on the planet. It’s a fucking fortress, thanks to Merrick. Nobody’s going in or out.’

‘But you didn’t feel safe there. Like Josie didn’t feel safe.’

‘Not like Josie.’ He blinked, looking away. ‘There’s no
playing away from home
in that place. Fuck that, there’s no
away from home
. That place is
everything
. Mum and Dad’s perfect world. “Everything you need’s here.” That was their favourite line. Food, water . . . Like the whole universe is in that house and you’d better fucking like it. You’d better not complain it’s making you sick being stuck in there day in, day out. You’ll take your turn with the chores and laugh at their jokes and pretend to be part of their perfect fucking
nuclear
family, because if you don’t? If you don’t . . .’ he was crying now, ‘they’ll wipe you out.’

Wiped out. Was that how Stephen had felt when he came to their house?

‘They’ll look right through you,’ Clancy said, ‘like you’re not there. Like you were never there in the first place. Like you’re
nothing
. I got sick of being nothing. No one can live like that.
You
couldn’t.’

‘I couldn’t,’ she agreed.

I did it for you.

Was that what Stephen had meant? Did he think he was saving her from a fate like the one Clancy was describing? Places of exile . . .

I did it for you.

Clancy wiped his nose again. ‘Terry gave me grief about growing up, what it meant to be a man, but at least he never did
that
, never made me feel like nothing. You’d better not be thinking about sending me back to them, because I’ll run. I’ll fucking
run
.’

He looked at Marnie, eyes blazing. ‘You’d run too. If it was you . . . No matter how much stuff they gave you, if you had to live like that? You’d run too.’