‘I’m probably stating the obvious, but your mum and her mates have considered a link between what happened to Miss Sheeran in April and Bella Barnes’ death, haven’t they?’
It takes Joe a second or two to catch up. ‘You think they could both have been murdered? By the same killer?’
‘Is it impossible?’
‘Bella was stabbed. The theory is that Ezzy committed suicide after what she did to me.’
‘But in the light of new information, I mean Bella’s murder, maybe Ezzy suffered a similar fate and her body was thrown in the river.’
Delilah hasn’t said a word about any new theories regarding Ezzy Sheeran’s disappearance. Joe feels sure she wouldn’t keep him in the dark. On the other hand, she knows how difficult it is for him to talk about what happened in April.
Torquil is watching him closely. ‘Pint?’ he offers.
Joe shakes his head. ‘I’ve got my first session back at St Martin’s. It wasn’t available on Tuesday. Exam time.’
‘Want me to come?’
Joe reaches out a hand and pats Torquil on the shoulder. ‘Mate,’ he says, ‘I’m fine.’
The look his supervisor gives him as Joe turns away is one he’s seen many times before. Usually, though, on his mother’s face.
* * *
‘But I only looked at the baby.’ A tear zigzags down the elderly woman’s cheek. Her face is so wrinkled it can’t flow in a vertical line.
‘Dora, you took the baby out of its pram while its mother was attending to an older child. You know you can’t touch other people’s babies.’
‘She hit me.’
‘The baby hit you?’
‘The mother. She snatched it back and hit me. She called me horrible names. She should have been arrested, not me.’
Behind Dora, the woman from the charity who organises the weekly drop-in is hovering. His next appointment is waiting.
‘Mothers are fierce if they think their babies are under threat,’ he says.
‘I wouldn’t hurt a baby.’
Dora’s lip is trembling and another tear spills out from the corner of her eye.
‘I know,’ Joe says, although the truth is, he doesn’t, because decades earlier, married to a solicitor and teaching at a local girls’ school, Dora lost three infants to cot death. Sympathy at the time was huge, until she was arrested and charged with the murder of her own children. The charges were dropped for lack of evidence, but the resulting depression cost Dora her job and her marriage. Long ago, she began drinking and lost her home. Now she lives on the streets and no one knows whether she is the unluckiest woman alive, or a monster.
‘You’ve been cautioned again, haven’t you, Dora?’ Joe says. ‘An incident in the shopping centre.’
‘Those girls were bullying Martin,’ Dora says. ‘I couldn’t do nothing.’
Martin is one of Dora’s homeless friends who got into an argument with some school girls. Dora, begging nearby, pitched into the fray, swinging her shopping trolley at one of the girls and giving her a nasty cut on the leg.
‘You’ll be arrested if you do it again. You could go to prison.’
‘You won’t let that happen to me.’ Dora grips Joe’s hand. Her skin is scaled and rough. ‘You have a word with that mum of yours. Tell her I wouldn’t do any harm.’
Joe sighs. No one is supposed to know his mother is with the police.
‘When can I see you again?’ Dora asks. She still hasn’t released his hand. ‘It hasn’t been the same without you these last few weeks.’
‘I’ll be here on Tuesday. How about twenty past eight?’
‘Is that your last appointment?’
It isn’t, but he’s learned from experience never to give Dora the last appointment of the evening. Getting her to leave is always twice as hard.
‘Last available. Look, I’ll write it down for you.’
He writes 8.20pm, Tuesday on a business card and she grabs at it, tucking it away in an inside coat pocket. Her sweater is a blue fleece, he sees, with insignia from the film Frozen.
‘You take care, Dora.’ He gets to his feet. And don’t hurt anyone, he thinks to himself.
* * *
‘I need some cash,’ the man in his forties says before he’s even taken a seat. ‘I need some money. A loan. I’ll pay it back.’
‘What do you need money for, Michael?’ Joe asks. ‘Take a seat.’
Michael sits on the edge of the chair.
‘Fifty quid will do it. Twenty. Can you lend us twenty?’
‘I can’t lend you money, you know that.’
Michael leans forward, letting Joe see his blackened teeth. ‘I need to go somewhere safe.’
The evening is warm, but Joe feels a cold breeze sweep through the hall. ‘Why do you think here isn’t safe?’ he asks.
‘Well, you know. That Shane fella.’
Joe sits up a little straighter. ‘Who’s Shane?’
‘You know, the fella that’s been knifing homeless people. You probably don’t know about it, what with you being sick and all for weeks. Stabbed young Bella, he did.’
‘Michael, if you know something about what happened to Bella, you really should talk to the police.’
‘I’m not talking to no fucking police. I just want to get out of here.’
‘Ok, talk to me then. Tell me why you’re frightened of Shane.’
Michael glances back, as though someone could be eavesdropping. ‘He’s not right.’
‘In what way.’
‘He watches us. While we’re asleep.’
‘I’m not trying to be clever, but how do you know if you’re asleep?’
‘We’re never really asleep. We can’t afford to be. We, like, doze. I saw him, the other night, down at Silver Street. He was staring down at this geezer like he wanted to – you know – eat him.’
‘What does he look like?
‘It was dark. I wasn’t close.’
‘How old?’
A shrug.
‘White? Black? Asian?’
‘White guy, I think. I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look. Fucking Norah, what is she doing here?’
Joe follows Michael’s gaze. His mother is standing in the doorway.
* * *
‘You’ll never find him.’ Joe catches Delilah by the shoulder. She’d been about to tear out of the hall in hot pursuit of Michael. ‘He’ll be on the other side of the city by now.’
Delilah pushes out a heavy sign of exasperation. ‘What is wrong with these people?’
‘Where do I begin?’ Joe has four more people to see and he’ll be lucky if any of them stay now that his mother has arrived.
‘And he definitely knew this Shane bugger?’
‘White guy, possibly, watches the homeless while they sleep. All I could get out of him.’
Delilah pulls out a chair. ‘You’ve got to help me out, Joe. These people of yours know Shane. If they start co-operating, we can find him before he hurts someone else.’
Joe hears the sound of the main door opening. He looks back into the hall to see the last of his evening’s appointments disappearing and remembers that Bella Barnes may not have been the first person that Shane hurt.