In the meantime, as if that wasn't enough, he had his ruddy father to think of. Craig sat back on the bed and tried to think of him. And what the hell he was up to. Not to mention that stupid message:
MEN COMMITTED INDECENT ACTS WITH OTHER MEN, AND RECEIVED IN THEMSELVES THE DUE PENALTY FOR THEIR PERVERSION
What was he supposed to take from that? His father didn't like homosexuals. Well, get over it already. He had one for a son, whether he liked it or not. Tough.
With a long drawn-out sigh, Craig settled back on his pillow and stared up at the ceiling. As he did so, that elusive fragment of memory once more spun its way outward to the forefront of his mind. But this time it was different.
A sunny day, the smell of lemons. And water, running from somewhere he can't see. Something red too—what is that? There's a stretch of wood just above his eyes. A desk? A workbench? He doesn't know. A woman singing. The touch of her hand on his shoulder. And then the sound of something harsh. A slap? The hand is gone. And his father's voice pours in: Keep yourself decent.
With a cry, he shuddered back to reality. He was sitting upright on the bed, hands clenching and unclenching into the duvet. His skin felt hot and his mouth tasted sour. Jesus, he hadn't remembered anything like that before. In all the broken-up memories of childhood, he'd only ever been outside looking in. This was a first.
Jesus
. Trying to search after the pictures, trying to hold onto them or even expand them, would be worse than useless. He knew it. He'd never had any success with that. If he was lucky—or should that be
unlucky
—they'd surface more and more frequently over the next few weeks before subsiding again to give way for others, none of them making much sense. Best have a drink and forget it. Best get some sleep.
As he stumbled from the bed toward the door, he glanced down at the bedside cabinet and saw again the mementos of Michael that he'd taken from his father's house. Taken and not had the courage to explore since. The Sainsbury's carrier bag. Containing Michael's light green jacket and his engraved watch.
Why would his father still have these? He must have taken them from the cottage Michael had stayed in. He must have thought to protect his son from what had happened. But in that case why not simply get rid of them? He didn't know; the workings of his father's mind had always been a mystery. Now Craig took out the items and laid them on the bed. He was breathing hard, trying to concentrate. The jacket and the watch. Even if by some miracle Michael was still out there somewhere, the man he'd known seven years ago would never have left the watch behind. Would he? It was a gift from Peter. Something special to him. Then again, Craig hadn't known him as well as he'd thought, had he? The meeting with Eva had shown him that.
All that time ago, what had he known at all?
Closing his eyes, he gathered up the jacket and held it to his face. This was the first time he'd opened the carrier bag since he'd brought it back from Devon. He had no idea why he hadn't done it before. No, that was a lie too. The fear of what he had done to the man whose jacket he was now clutching had prevented him. But he wasn't a murderer, was he? Not a deliberate one. Paul had discounted that idea. Though Paul didn't know what else he was hiding, did he? How could he, when Craig didn't really know it himself?
No, he mustn't think like that. He'd spent so long in his life thinking and not thinking about the things he could no longer remember that now it was a habit. It was only recently, with the investigation he'd started almost by default, that the habit had started to slip. Without warning, Craig found he was rocking, there on the bed and holding Michael's forgotten jacket. Now of course, after so long, he couldn't catch any trace of his scent from it. From memory, he had almost expected the herbs and grasses he'd associated with Michael. The smell of his aftershave and the outdoors, where they'd always met.
He didn't know how long he sat there before he opened his eyes again, but the first thing he saw was the watch. Rather than face the questions the sight of it raised for him, he made it across the floor and out of his bedroom.
And almost knocked over Maddy, who was in the hallway carrying what appeared to be a bundle of curtains.
“Hey there,” she yelped. “Steady.”
And then, “Are you okay?”
Craig shook his head, finding himself unable to speak and inwardly cursing his own weakness.
“Hmm, I thought as much,” she said. “Kitchen. Coffee. Now. But I can only give you ten minutes of my precious time as the new man's due soon, lucky me.”
He obeyed. Once in the kitchen, Maddy put the kettle on, grabbed a mug, and turned to face him.
“So where's Paul then?” she said. “Not staying over tonight?”
“No.” Even to Craig, his voice sounded as if it had been put through a combine harvester and back.
Maddy looked at him, eyebrows raised, and after a few moments plonked a mug of dark, grainy liquid in front of him.
“Um, thanks,” he said.
“Well,” she shrugged. “It was the best I could do.”
“Really, it's lovely, thanks. I'm just ... no, forget it. I'm an idiot. Take my mind off it—tell me about the new man.”
She did. In record time. As Craig had thought, the new man—whose name turned out to be Andy—was the bloke she'd met at the office party. He was six months younger than she was and lived south of the river but hey, nobody's perfect, and she had no real objection to younger men. Andy did something technical in IT, but he was nearly as into fringe theater as she was and they were even thinking about taking up running together.
“Running? You?” Craig couldn't help the interruption at this point, but Maddy gave him a mock-hard stare.
“Don't knock it,” she said. “He's blond, kind, and I like him. Besides, exercise will do me good.”
“Sounds perfect,” he said. “Good for you.”
“Thanks. Now I've brought you up to speed with me, why don't you tell me what's happening with you? Though I assume this is to do with what you told us before. About your old boyfriend?”
“Yes, but God, where to start?” Craig put down his coffee and sat back. “Paul's helping me out. He thinks I might be reading more into what I remember than I should. At least, that's what he implies. Unless he's fooling himself. I don't know. Anyway, he's questioning someone tomorrow who used to know Michael. I would have preferred to be there, but I can see why that's no good. I can see why Paul didn't want it. God knows I'm assuming on him way too much, but I can't help it. I've started something—whether I like it or not—and I want to see it through to the end now. I have to. Do you understand?”
By the time Craig had finished speaking, he was leaning forward across the table, all but spearing Maddy with his eyes. Or at least that was what it felt like. And with his final sentence, he gestured to try to underline the point, and the mug of coffee spun from its resting place and teetered for a second or two on the edge before plunging to the floor. With a sharp crack the china broke into three pieces.
He swore. “My fault. I'll get it.”
But Maddy was there before him. She wiped up the mess while he retrieved the broken crockery and dropped it into the bin.
“Another?” she asked. “I might just have time.”
“No. I think I've had enough. In many, many ways. I want to know what's going on, and I want to know it soon. Whatever that may mean.”
There, leaning against the wall near the bin, he stared again at Maddy as she squeezed out a dishcloth full of coffee into the sink. She put the cloth down and returned his gaze.
“And what exactly might it mean, Craig?”
He thought for a moment. “I'm not exactly sure. It probably means getting in touch with the life I used to have. The things that happened when I was a child. Including stuff I don't remember. Right up until I left home and came to London. I'm feeling my way through all this and, honestly, it's like the blind leading the blind, with me in both roles. But I'm convinced I have to do it, or give it my best shot, so I can work out what the hell happened. To me, and my family, all those years ago. And somehow Michael is a key to some of it. No matter how crazy that sounds—bearing in mind that I only knew him really for a few days—no matter how crazy, I know it's the truth.”
When he finished speaking, Maddy didn't reply at once. Which was a relief, as Craig needed time to get to grips with what he'd actually said. If she was going to be surprised, then she wasn't the only one. Until he'd said it, he hadn't realized that was what he meant, but it was. He wanted to solve the puzzle of the dreams and fragments of nightmares, the things he couldn't recall in full, which had haunted him for as long as he could remember. And he didn't care what it might cost him. Here and now, he was twenty-four years old. He wasn't a boy anymore. He was no longer seventeen. He was a grown-up. Or at the very least he wanted to have a good stab at being one. The time to start was now.
Maddy's words, when they finally came, weren't what he'd been expecting.
She grinned at him, just as the doorbell rang, bringing with it her new boyfriend.
“You go for it, babe. It makes perfect sense,” she said. “Almost.”
Chapter Eighteen
In his new role as a man in charge of his own destiny rather than a would-be Hamlet in charge of none, Craig was primed to leap into some kind of action. Any action. Get Paul's thoughts on his meeting with Adrian, persuade him so he couldn't say no about letting him in on his interview with Peter, finally meet his father after seven years, hell, maybe even talk to the bastard, and most of all
find out exactly what he'd done to Michael
. He was all ready to do any and all of these things but this wasn't a novel and he wasn't Harry Bosch.
Because the next day he found himself in the middle of Muswell Hill, on a freezing cold February morning, attempting to look sultry and glamorous in a gallery so upmarket he probably wouldn't have dared to go in. In all three rooms, each divided by a wide archway, pale walls were dotted with enormous pictures consisting of bright swirls of color on white. Here and there, Oriental-looking sculptures and tiny rose-colored figures broke up the stark feeling. The place reeked of elegance and money. Craig hoped he would be up to it. Whatever it was.
Last-minute work like this was never, in his experience, the easiest to do. He wouldn't be first choice for the client and wouldn't be quite sure what they wanted either. Neither was he likely to see a familiar face that might be willing to chat enough to give him a clue—so he would just have to wing it. Besides, he couldn't afford to refuse a real offer of work, no matter what was going on elsewhere in his life. Refusal in this business was always the slippery slope to unemployment.
Still, if the shoot came together in the way they sometimes did, he swore that modeling could be the best job on earth, and the craziest. This morning, however, that wasn't happening. Right now, he was trying to work out the sort of smile the director—a dapper man in his fifties called Pedro—was after, and making a valiant bid not to be fired before lunch. Neither task was proving easy.
“More subtle, Craig, if you don't mind. I don't want you looking like you're out on a picnic with your maiden aunt. This is supposed to be arty, not a jolly jaunt with the family.”
Another few seconds’ silence as Craig tried to give him what he wanted, while thrusting himself next to the body of a size-eight-at-the-outside brunette in an off-the-shoulder pink T-shirt. He hadn't yet caught her name, didn't know if he needed to. The heat from the lights was already making him sweat, or that might have been his nerves. Or a hundred other things.
Then: “No,
no
, not sulky.
Sultry
. Don't you new boys know how to do that? God, no wonder I'm pouring good money down the drain on these shoots these days. Take a five-minute break, for God's sake, everyone. Maybe when we come back, Mr. Robertson will have found his groove again.”
In the restroom, Craig pissed away the remains of the morning's coffee, which was all he'd managed for breakfast before taking the bus north, washed his hands, and stared in the Art Nouveau-style mirror, practicing suitable expressions. Yes, he could bloody well do
sultry
. What the hell was the stupid bugger talking about? Craig might be a screwed-up head case and possible killer, but there was nothing wrong with his
sultry
.
Behind him, the door swung open and one of the technical guys strolled in. He caught Craig's expression in the mirror before he could close it down, and grinned.
“Hey, mate, don't let what Piss-Artist Pedro says get to you,” he said, his accent more Liverpool than London. “He's a tosser with people he doesn't know. If you can hang on ‘til he's got his first whisky down him, he'll lay off a bit.”
“Thanks.” Craig grinned back. “I was starting to think I'd lost it. You work for him a lot then?”
Asking questions in the restroom was the last great no-no of civilized society, but it was funny how the fashion world never bothered with the rules. Craig knew Technical Guy wouldn't be bothered by it, and he also knew Technical Guy was straight. Just as he'd already clocked Craig as gay. It would also do him no harm to have an ally.
“Yeah, I work for him some,” the other man grunted, heading to the urinal in the middle. “If my luck's not in, you know? Oh, by the way, the name's Douglas.”
“Hi, again, and I'm Craig,” he replied before leaving him to it. Social niceties or no social niceties, if he stayed around too long he was likely to be offered whatever today's designer drug of choice was, and Craig had never been into that scene. Not really anyway, and never now. Not if he wanted a career.
Back on the gallery floor, Piss-Artist Pedro kept up his stream of complaints about what Craig was or was not doing and how it could all have been so much better if his original choice hadn't let him down at the last minute. One or two of the other models kept giving Craig sympathetic grins, but he imagined there was little they could do about it. He also noticed Pedro still hadn't asked him to leave. It couldn't be that bad then, could it? Still, by the third change of clothes, any kind of professional veneer he was trying to keep in place had long since crumbled.