The Hunted, page 8
‘Money here in sack-loads,’ he said, and he nodded again, in confirmation of his initial opinion, as though he were some kind of an expert on wealth, a connoisseur of it. He almost seemed to roll the taste of it around in his mouth, as if it were wine.
‘Money here, kid,’ he said again, as if Tarrin couldn’t see that for himself. The house was big, detached and stood imposingly in landscaped gardens.
‘Got it all, see, kid,’ Deet said. ‘Got it all.’ Then his envy turned to one-upmanship, to an inner satisfaction that no matter how rich these people were, they didn’t have the one thing that only Deet could supply.
‘That is, they got it all, ’cept one thing.’
Tarrin knew his cue. He knew just what to say. ‘What’s that, Deet?’
‘You, kid. You. Kids. Children. And that’s why we’re here.’
But he was wrong. As he saw the moment the door opened. His jaw dropped and his face assumed an expression of shocked surprise. The door had been opened by a well-dressed, slim-built woman, who was plainly on the Anti-Ageing and had been for some time. She had cold-looking skin, with the faint sheen of frozen time upon it. There was a slight artificiality to her appearance too, as if a skilled plastic surgeon had done a pretty good job, but had been unable to disguise the fact that he had done it.
The woman could have been any age between forty-five and a hundred. She was immaculately dressed in casual designer clothes. A smell of expensive perfume wafted from her. And next to her stood a child. A boy. About Tarrin’s age.
‘Mr Deet . . .’
Deet was so surprised, he didn’t even bother to correct her on the niceties of his terms of address. He didn’t explain that it was straight Deet, pure and simple, with no mister attached. He just stood there and gawped and took several seconds – a long time for Deet – to regain his composure.
‘G-good afternoon, ma’am. Mrs . . .’ He checked his notebook of phone numbers and appointments. ‘Mrs Weaver, I believe.’
‘That’s right.’
Then he couldn’t help but comment. ‘You’ve got a boy already.’
As though she had no business wanting two.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I have. We have. My husband and I. This is Paul. And this is . . .?’
The two boys were staring at each other. They were of more or less equal age and height and build, only Paul was blond, and better dressed, and he seemed to have acquired that same odour of wealth, of money, that permeated the gardens and the house and its owners. The whole place was redolent of affluence and security.
‘This is . . .’
‘I’m Tarrin,’ Tarrin said. He spoke to the woman, not to the boy. The boy was looking at him with a rather cold, hostile, even vaguely malicious expression.
‘Tarrin. That’s a nice name. Well then, Tarrin, this is Paul. And Paul, this is Tarrin.’
If the adults had been waiting for the two boys to shake hands, they were disappointed.
‘Hi.’ Tarrin nodded.
‘Hi,’ Paul grunted back, keeping his hands firmly in his pockets.
‘Well, won’t you come in, Mr Deet?’
‘Well, I . . . my custom is mostly to leave you to it, ma’am. To make myself scarce for the duration of the . . . eh . . . appointment, and to reappear at picking-up time. But . . .’
‘We’re a little isolated here. I don’t know that there’s really anywhere for you to go.’
Deet had been thinking that himself when the taxi had dropped them off. There was no betting shop nearby for him to pass some time in, no cafe or greasy spoon where he could spend an hour over a cooling cup of coffee, telling the waitress how good-looking she was and what potential she had and how she should have been in showbiz. (And not exactly saying, but letting her get the impression, that he was an agent, or a film producer, or a director of some kind.)
‘Well, that’s very kind of you, ma’am.’
‘You can take a seat in the kitchen with cook, if you like. I’m sure she’ll find you something and that the time will soon pass.’
Inwardly Deet bristled at this suggestion. It seemed to put him on a level with the hirelings and the underlings and the servants in the hall. Which wasn’t how he saw himself, no sir. He was the wheeler, the dealer, the supplier, the man with the upper hand. But what the hell – he could swallow his pride this once, if it meant getting a free cup of coffee, and maybe a slice of cake along with it.
‘That’s very kind of you, ma’am. I’ll take you up on that then, if I may.’
‘Please. Won’t you both come in?’
They went inside and, as the door closed behind them, Tarrin saw that the hall was decorated with streamers and balloons and that there were cards on the hall table and on the window ledges, and that a string of letters had been draped above the stairs. They spelt out the words ‘Happy Birthday Paul!’
So that was it, he thought. That was it. It was the other boy’s birthday. And Tarrin was his present.
Deet saw the sign too. ‘Celebrating, ma’am?’ he asked. ‘Is it a birthday occasion?’
‘Indeed it is, Mr Deet. Did my husband not explain when he made the arrangements?’
‘It slipped his mind or it slipped my hearing, ma’am,’ Deet said, having recovered his usual swagger. ‘But either way is no difference. We’re here for you and it’s your hour and whatever you want to do with it.’
Mrs Weaver looked at him. ‘Two,’ she said.
‘Two?’ Deet went pale.
‘Two hours. Wasn’t that the arrangement?’
Deet got out his pocket book and checked the booking. ‘I only have you for one, ma’am.’
We specifically asked for two. One is hardly enough, is it, for the boys to get to know each other, to play together . . .’
‘Quite so, ma’am, quite so, it’s just . . .’
‘I hope you’re not going to disappoint us, Mr Deet.’
Deet saw that she was taking a sealed envelope out from the drawer of the hall table and he realized that he was going to be paid in cash, which was just how he liked it – no cheques, no records, nothing for the tax office to get its hooks into.
‘No, ma’am. Don’t you concern yourself about that at all. If it’s two you wanted, two it is.’
Tarrin stared at Deet, a pleading look on his face. Not two hours, Deet, it said. Not two hours. One’s enough, isn’t it?
It was odd that for so long all Tarrin had wanted was the company of another child, but now that the prospect was a reality, all he desired was to be out of the place as soon as possible. He didn’t like the look of Paul in the slightest. He felt panicky and his chest was tight. He didn’t like it that he had been brought here as a birthday present, a birthday treat, that he was there to be played with, to do as the other boy wanted for two hours.
Tarrin had longed for the company of another child on the basis of their being equals. That was what he had dreamed of, not this – of being some rented companion, there to please another child, to do his bidding, almost some kind of servant.
‘Deet,’ he whispered, ‘I don’t feel well. I want to leave.’
But Deet made a point of not even looking at him.
‘We do have other appointments,’ he said to Mrs Weaver. ‘But I’ll just get on my mobe while I’m sitting in the kitchen and rearrange things with our other customers, or clients, as I call them. That’ll be no problem at all, ma’am. Absolutely no problem.’
So Mrs Weaver handed him the envelope, and then she called for Maria, her cook and housekeeper, to come and take Mr Deet to the kitchen and to give him a cup of coffee if he wanted, and maybe a slice of her famous sponge cake – which made Maria smile, and she led Deet away.
‘Enjoy yourselfs, boys,’ he said as he went. ‘And play nicely now,’ he said to Tarrin, with a slightly nervous note in his voice, and an edge of warning to it.
Now, don’t you screw up, kid, his eyes told Tarrin, and Tarrin knew full well what they were saying, but he pretended not to have noticed anything, his face remained impassive, quite blank, professional.
Deet followed Maria to the kitchen. He had the forbearance not to open the envelope and count up the money in Mrs Weaver’s presence, but as soon as he was out of her sight he slit the envelope open with his thumbnail, and then, while Maria made him coffee and cut the cake, he surreptitiously counted the notes and was pleased to see that he had been paid in full, plus a little extra. He put the envelope away in his inside pocket and patted it once or twice, every now and again, just to confirm that it was still there, and that Maria hadn’t stolen it from him by some sleight of hand.
‘Lovely cake,’ he told her. ‘Great coffee.’
He would have gone on to tell her that she had missed her calling in life and should have been in showbiz, but Maria was plainly anything but a would-be film star and they would have both known immediately that he was lying – which was one person knowing too many.
So they talked of other things.
‘That their own kid?’ Deet asked Maria. ‘The boy there?’
She grinned and shook her head. ‘They bought him,’ she said,
‘Recently? Or a while ago?’ Deet asked.
‘From a baby.’ She nodded.
‘From new, eh? Mother sold him?’
Maria shrugged. Maybe she knew, maybe she didn’t; if she did, she wasn’t telling, if she didn’t, she wasn’t about to express an opinion.
Her silence was enough.
So they’d bought him from a Kiddernapper, Deet thought. For all their money and their big, big house, they were no better than he was. For all Mrs Weaver’s fine, fashionable clothes and her sweet perfume, her hands were tainted too.
‘Nice house,’ Deet said. ‘Nice coffee. Nice cake.’
‘Good,’ Maria said. ‘Glad you like it. Have some more?’
Deet wasn’t hungry, if anything he was overfull. But he wanted to get in her good books, so he pushed his plate over.
‘If I may. Too delicious to refuse.’
She smiled and cut him a handsome slice. Deet noticed that another cake was sitting on a wire rack. But that one hadn’t been cut yet. It was the boy’s birthday cake, with his name and his age displayed upon it in blue icing.
Pink for a little girl, blue for a boy.
Deet knew people said it didn’t have to be that way, but it usually was. There was no reason why a boy couldn’t have pink or a girl have blue, but mostly people stuck to the traditions, no matter how liberal and enlightened they pretended to be.
My old granny used to say
In her old-fashioned way
Pink for a little girl
Blue for a boy.
Deet smiled to himself. He’d been a child too, hadn’t he? He remembered things; he had a history, a past, memories of better days, of innocent times. Yes, he’d been a boy himself once, just playing and not caring about much really, not with any notion of what kind of man he might grow up into.
‘I don’t suppose,’ he said to Maria, ‘you know . . . how much they paid for him.’
Maria looked at him, shocked and affronted. ‘Of course I don’t know. And why would I tell you?’
‘No offence. No offence. Just wondering.’
The plan had been formulating for a long time, and now Deet could see how to make it work. People said you couldn’t have your cake and eat it. But you could. Or you could if you had two cakes – your own, and somebody else’s. One to eat and one to keep. But how to get somebody else’s cake, if they wouldn’t give it to you?
Only one way possible. Only one.
Yes, Deet had an idea for how to get the money – to pay for the PP implant, to get the kid done once and for all, and to make him into a money-spinning kid forever. In fact, there was only one way in which he could ever hope to raise the kind of money for such a costly and illegal operation.
He could see just how to do it.
Deet rubbed his hands together, as if his palms had been made itchy by a money spider walking all over them.
‘Could I trouble you for another cup of coffee, Maria?’
She poured him one from the pot.
‘Well . . . so what would you two boys like to do?’
The three of them were in the living room. Tarrin was perched uncomfortably on the edge of a sofa, with the look of a boy on his best behaviour about him. Paul was standing by the window, scowling at both Tarrin and at his mother, as though none of this had been his idea and he had never wanted any of it, and it had all been her doing.
Which maybe it had.
People buy what they can afford, even when it is not necessarily what they want. The Weavers could afford a child for the afternoon as a present for their own son on his birthday, so they had arranged it, and the present had arrived.
He’s probably afraid, Tarrin thought. Afraid and nervous. He’s used to being the only boy and doesn’t like me being here. It makes him worried, jealous, insecure. He’s used to being the only one and he likes it that way. They probably persuaded him that it would be a good idea to have another boy to play with, and he said yes, but now I’m here, he doesn’t want me, it suddenly doesn’t seem like such a good idea after all.
Two hours though. Two hours booked and paid for. They had to get through it.
‘So . . .’ Mrs Weaver’s smile was starting to look glassy. Maybe she’d had a picture in her mind of two happy brothers playing together, but things weren’t working out quite like that.
‘I know!’
Tarrin was glad that somebody did.
‘How about we play in the garden!’ she said.
This was the parental ‘we’. There was the royal ‘we’, when kings and queens said such things as ‘We are not amused’ – meaning ‘I don’t think that’s funny.’ That was when ‘we’ meant ‘me’.
The parental ‘we’ was when ‘we’ meant ‘you’. So ‘How about we play in the garden?’ meant ‘How about you play in the garden? While I sit here and do something else.’
‘Sure,’ Tarrin said, trying hard to seem cheerful and enthusiastic. ‘Shall we play in the garden, Paul?’
‘I suppose,’ he said.
‘It’s a lovely day,’ his mother reminded them. ‘You can play for a while and then we’ll cut the cake.’
‘I suppose.’
For a boy with a birthday in a house full of cards and presents, Paul didn’t seem that happy about much.
‘There are plenty of things out there,’ Mrs Weaver said. ‘The swing, the slide . . . there’s tennis, basketball, or you could play with the super-soakers.’
‘Yes, let’s do that, eh, Paul?’
‘OK.’
Mrs Weaver opened the big patio windows, the ones which went from floor to ceiling, and enabled them to step right out into the garden.
She led them outside.
‘Well! I’m going to sit here and watch while you play.’ Then she remembered something. ‘Oh, wait . . . no, you both carry on. I’m just going in to get the video camera. We’ll want to remember this, won’t we, Paul? It’ll be something to look back on.’
She turned back into the house and left the two boys alone together in the garden.
Tarrin felt uncomfortable. He didn’t like this place, he didn’t like this boy, Paul, or the way Paul looked at him. He just wanted to be out of there.
Now, don’t you screw up, kid.
He remembered the look on Deet’s face and knew that if he did screw up, Deet would be angry and life would be miserable until Deet got over it.
‘You want to play with the basketball, Paul?’
‘If you like.’
‘It’s your birthday.’
‘I said if you like.’
‘OK. Shall we shoot at the hoop? Take turns each?’
Paul didn’t say no, so Tarrin picked the ball up and bounced it around a few times on the paving slabs of the patio, then he aimed and shot at the hoop which was fixed to a side of the garage.
The ball went in and trickled through the net and fell out again.
‘You were too near.’
‘Sorry?’
Paul was scowling at him. ‘I said you were too near!’
‘Was I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where should I shoot from?’
‘There.’ He pointed to a line.
‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
Tarrin picked up the ball and went to throw it again.
‘It’s not your turn.’
‘Sorry. I thought you meant you wanted me to take it again.’
‘It’s my turn.’
‘Sorry, Paul. There you go.’
He lobbed the ball over to Paul. But the boy made no effort to catch it, and let it bounce right past.
‘What’s up?’
‘You were supposed to pass it to me.’
‘I threw it over to you.’
‘Did you?’
‘What do you want me to do? Put it into your hands?’
Paul didn’t answer. Tarrin went and got the ball and handed it to him.
‘There, then. OK?’
Paul said nothing. He half-heartedly aimed the ball at the hoop and threw it. He missed.
‘Aw, bad luck.’ Tarrin picked the ball up.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Isn’t it my turn?’
‘No. It’s mine. I get another.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well?’
‘OK.’
He handed him the ball. Paul took it and walked a few steps nearer to the hoop.
‘Excuse me.’
‘What?’
‘I think you’re over the line, Paul.’
‘What?’
‘You told me I had to shoot from behind the line. Well, I think you’re over the line.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Well, it just looks it to me.’
‘You don’t say.’ He lobbed the ball upwards. This time it went into the hoop.
‘Hey, good shot.’
‘I don’t want to play any more.’
‘Don’t you want to play?’
‘No.’
Tarrin caught the ball as it rebounded and aimed it at the hoop.
‘I said I don’t want to play any more!’
Tarrin aimed and threw. The ball went in.
