Lifers Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Jacob, Maya, Eva, Aggie, and Amelia

  It must have been quiet for him to hear the rattling.

  That’s what the noise first seemed to be: a sound like the clatter of dice in a plastic cup.

  It was coming from the darkness at the far end of Back Half Moon Street. Preston pushed himself upright against a rusting garbage can and peered into the gloom. Now it was a stuttering chit-chit sound, something about it immediately wrong.

  It made the space between Preston’s shoulder blades go cold, his back straighten, and his stomach tighten.

  Preston realized his legs were struggling for strength. It was hard to see what might be down there—it was two a.m. and ink black. Above him the outline of a fire escape. At his feet, a blown can skittered. The alley curved left and he made his way toward the bend. The building stopped a few paces ahead of him and a space with a high metal railing around it emerged from deep shadow. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance but faded into silence.

  Chitter-chit-chit.

  Preston felt panic rising in his chest. Christ. A beast at the end of the alley. Fighting his fear, he edged forward and peered beyond the fencing. Over the railings was a drop and beyond that a sunken garden, high-walled, spread out around the back of the main building. The windows were shuttered and dark. There were a couple of low outbuildings—both painted white—and a security barrier and office, lights out. Down in the sunken area, a black Lexus was parked.

  He’d never seen this place before.

  Fourteen years tracing the shape of his city, Manchester, and he’d never followed the left-hand curve of Back Half Moon. But why would you? Thousands of commuters, bankers, buskers, and shoppers would pass by the mouth of the alley every day without ever thinking anything of interest lay beyond.

  He’d never night-walked before, either.

  Everything was different at night, like turning over a stone and seeing something weird and alien underneath. Watching something that was usually ignored, usually … unwatched.

  The sound; the chitter-chit sound was still down there in the dark somewhere. Preston studied the alleyway ahead of him, letting the memory of Alice brighten the darkness, only to remember she was gone. It had been over forty-eight hours since she’d disappeared, and it was all his fault. He had to find her.

  Preston gave the buildings beyond the high fence a final furtive check. Then he shinned up and over it, lowering himself down the other side. It’s what Alice would have done—he felt sure of it.

  The sunken garden was farther down than he had thought. He let himself drop and landed in a crouch. He looked up. Over ten feet to the top of the fence; he wouldn’t be getting out the way he’d come in. He spent a moment praying he wasn’t permanently trapped on the wrong side with a terrible creature.

  His eyes adjusted to the gloom. There was the Lexus, three empty parking spaces around it. There were clipped hedges, a pool, and an urn, as well as steel planters with elegantly shaped trees in them. There were lights inlaid along the paths, half-lit, like eyes. This wasn’t a house. It was corporate. The windows were for offices, or labs, Preston thought. What is this place—pharmaceuticals? He made his way forward. The sound was louder.

  The back of the building was four stories of white paint and steel, windows of mirrored glass. On the top floor, a light was on—a surprise in the early hours of a Monday morning—and Preston could see the silhouette of piled files, papers, and a glowing desk lamp bent over as if in prayer. Someone was up there, working late. Small polished signs studded the outside of the building at shoulder height, like those brass plaques beside the doors of lawyers’ offices. As he drew closer he saw each displayed an acronym—M.I.S.T.

  His heart gave a jump. Mist. He’d seen that in Alice’s notebook.

  She’d been here.

  The sound, eerie and unnerving, was getting louder. Preston padded down a gravel path, rain falling, the green fans of uplit garden ferns glistening. He turned back to take another look around.

  Then he saw it.

  A flight of sunken steps dropped to a doorway set at cellar level, a steel fire door with one of those bars across it that made it look like it was for escape only. The door was propped open, and inside was dark, but it wasn’t inside that Preston was looking at.

  Preston was looking at the kid in the goggles.

  Two steps up from the door, hunched in a crouch on his heels, was a boy dressed in black. It was his teeth Preston could hear, clattering in his mouth. He was suffering some sort of fit, shuddering there in the fetal position as if a current was being fed through him. His feet shifted and jerked in a way that looked as if some invisible force was needling him from all sides and he was recoiling from a thousand fearsome pinpricks. His chin was pressed against his chest.

  Preston dropped to a crouch and felt his blood ice up. He didn’t doubt for a second he was seeing something unnatural. This wasn’t some sort of epileptic fit; it was something more controlled. Then there was the sound coming from the kid’s mouth, the machine-gun rhythm of his teeth. The sound he’d heard in the alley.

  Preston staggered backward, half running until he felt himself thump against the perimeter of the sunken garden. He lost his footing and sat down hard. He wanted to look away, but he found he couldn’t; he had to watch as the kid twisted and shuddered.

  It was slowing now. A moment later, he was still, curled up on his side. His teeth had stopped. Preston tried to swallow, but his throat had filled with sand. His heart felt close to bursting. Had the kid passed out? Or have I just watched someone die?

  The fire door clanged in its frame, making an empty steel echo. It had stopped raining, Preston realized. He put his face in his hands for a moment, shook his head clear, and looked at the kid again. He remembered reading that insomniacs often suffered hallucinations.

  That was it, he thought—he was going mad. Some kind of reaction to everything that had happened. First Mum leaving. Dad losing it. Now Alice going missing.

  He pressed his palms into the gravel at his feet and felt the sharp stones sting his skin. It didn’t feel like a dream or some sort of nervous breakdown. The kid—probably dead, Preston guessed—was still there, curled up like a newborn. Preston rose to standing, using the wall for balance, testing his legs. A wave of sickness climbed his body, then faded. He waited for a moment, then he made his way forward, his sneakers crunching on the gravel. His pace slowed as he reached the top of the steps leading down to the fire door, clammy fear running a finger down his back. The boy didn’t seem to be breathing.

  He looked weird. His final fit had thrown the goggles from his face. Preston checked the building. The light was still on in the top-floor office, but no one was watching. He stooped and picked the goggles up. They were still warm from the kid’s skin. They were like no goggles he’d ever seen before, the lenses enlarged to the size of saucers. Preston wasn
’t about to hold them to his face—a crazy kind of terror prevented him—but if he had, they’d have covered most of his forehead and both cheeks, almost reaching his top lip. The frames were made of something odd: black and soft and pliable but not rubber. And the lenses were weirdly thick and heavy. When Preston gingerly held them up, it was clear they were close to impossible to see through, the kind of things you might imagine an astronomer wearing to stare into the boiling heart of a star. He dropped them on the steps next to the curled-up boy, suddenly desperate to be away and clear of the building, back down Half Moon and out onto the Deansgate main road, where there were bars and bookstores and fast-food places and maybe some people at a taxi stand being normal. He should check if the kid was breathing, he knew he should. But the boy and the goggles were horrible.

  Preston made his way back to the perimeter wall. “I’m not going mad,” he said in a whisper, wiping his palms against his jeans. The clouds broke for a moment and the moon appeared. This was better. The world, which had slipped its axis and gone lunatic for a moment, seemed normal again. He was in an empty parking lot with a black Lexus in it, not on another planet. “I’m not going mad.” He leaned against the cool brickwork and wiped the rain from his face with the sleeve of his coat. “I’m not going mad,” said Preston one last time, just to be clear.

  And that was when he heard the voice.

  “Kid.”

  It was a cracked voice, deep and urgent, and it was coming from somewhere in the darkness above him. Preston looked, trying to trace it.

  “Kid,” it said again, and this time the voice had softened, as if it was taking pity. Preston realized he had a hand across his mouth to stop himself screaming with fear. His heart was bucking so hard he felt it was about to punch him open.

  Then a face appeared at the railings above him: a man with shoulder-length hair and a dark military cap. He was up and over the fence swiftly and dropped to join Preston, wincing as he straightened up.

  He too was dressed in black: close-fitting shirt and cargo pants, heavy boots, big gloves with padded silver fingers, a bag strapped diagonally across his chest. His face was deeply lined and his rough skin dusted in gray stubble. He was well over forty, Preston figured—but broad and strong. He scowled. “This is no place for a schoolkid,” the man said. He had a scratchy northern accent. “You need to go.”

  Preston was too taken aback to answer.

  The man regarded him carefully. He seemed troubled. He looked across to the open fire door, the small bundle of darkness that was the boy, and checked the light in the high office window, his face tight. He tore back a Velcro panel in the left arm of his jacket and pulled out a little radio.

  “We have a situation here,” he said into it. There was the crunch of static and chopped-up garble. The man struck his radio sharply with an open gloved hand and swore. “Say again,” he said. He didn’t talk like a cop, Preston thought; there was a scruffy roughness about him. Security guards didn’t look like this either—they were usually even beefier guys with bad tattoos and beer on their breath.

  His radio fizzed again and this time the man heard whatever answer he’d been expecting. “Exactly,” he said, and turned to Preston, pocketing the radio once more.

  “Whatever you’ve seen, kid—I’m going to need you to forget it.”

  Preston found himself stammering. “What? I haven’t seen anything.”

  The man regarded him, one eyebrow raised. “You sure?”

  Preston nodded, a little too eagerly, he knew. “Seriously.” It sounded as hollow as a homework excuse. “I’ve not seen anything. I was looking for a friend.” That bit, at least, was true. “I was following her. I thought she’d come down here.”

  The man nodded. “Well. You’ll need to be getting home.” And then he held out a palm, as if to shake. “Here,” he said. It seemed an odd gesture, a stranger in a black bodysuit in a city-center parking lot with an outstretched glove. Why did Preston take it? He didn’t know. Pressure. Fear. Stupidity. The handshake was firm and the man released a little smile of—what—relief? Something stung Preston in the center of the hand, like a wasp between their palms. He winced.

  “Sorry, kid.” The man shrugged. Then he said, “Sleep tight.”

  Preston examined his palm. There was a little bead of blood there. His head swam and for a mad moment he thought his hand had a little eye in its center like the one in Alice’s notebook. But it didn’t; he was just bleeding. “I haven’t slept yet,” he said absently. “Not since Alice.”

  Then Preston found his jaw didn’t work anymore. His perspective tipped and he fell over, conscious that the man was still watching him even as he felt the gravel against his cheek. He tried to say something and it came out a garbled grunt, like the radio. He felt himself cough. Then his eyes shut themselves and he slept.

  Preston woke late. He’d slept in his clothes. His knees were bruised and a low pain throbbed as he shifted position. For a while he lay still, staring at the ceiling of his room, a headache probing the backs of his eyes.

  He needed painkillers. He reached for a glass of water by his bed and felt his phone in his pocket as he shifted position. He dug it out, his fingers clumsy. It took him three goes to get his passcode right.

  There was a text message waiting for him and he hit the icon, blinking the sleep from his eyes. When he saw it, Preston felt a blur of heat in his chest. My God. It’s from Alice. For a second, he couldn’t breathe. He opened the text.

  Sorry, it said. Going in.

  That was it. Three days of silence. Three words. He stared at it, put the phone down, then picked it up and stared again. It had come last night, just after three in the morning. A matter of hours ago.

  “Press.” He discarded the phone hurriedly and struggled up onto his elbows. His dad was at the door. “You were late last night,” his father said. “I heard you come in but I was in bed.”

  Preston licked his lips—they were cracked—and smiled. “Sorry, Dad,” he said, reaching for the first lie that came to him. “I was at Mace’s place. Lost track of time.”

  Police Constable Faulkner straightened his back, took his cap off, and ran a hand over his scalp. He was wearing full uniform. He’d lost weight since his wife had gone, and it looked too large for him. The ironed shirt with the top button done up meant a big job: maybe a briefing or major deployment rota. The line—I was in bed—meant he’d drunk so much he couldn’t remember anything. Preston couldn’t either. They watched each other briefly, neither able to speak, neither recalling much of the night before. We need our old lives back, Preston thought.

  “It’s your interview this morning,” his father said, examining the cuffs of his jacket unhappily. “At the station, remember? With the chief detective. I’ll take you.”

  Preston swung his legs out of bed. This was the one he’d been dreading, the interview with Detective Chief Inspector Sinclair that Mace had helped him script. It was going to be mostly lies. “I’ll just be a minute,” he said. He needed to check the text again.

  But his dad stayed in the doorway. He spoke haltingly. “Just tell the truth, pal,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you getting in any trouble … ”

  Preston nodded. “The chief detective’s your boss. I get it.”

  “And I’m sorry about Alice. I really am.”

  For a second, Preston wondered if his dad somehow knew about the text. He rubbed his eyes and waved his father away. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

  Preston sat in the interview room, his head throbbing.

  He had a sour taste in his mouth. His hand hurt too. He winced, looking at it under the table. There was a bruise the size of a small coin right in the center of his palm, as if he’d been pierced by a splinter. He picked at the scab and it bled freshly. The wound was small and clean. Was it a sting? He couldn’t remember. “We’re here to talk about Alice Wilde,” said DCI Sinclair. She didn’t look at Preston as she spoke, just tapped the end of her pencil against the desk and lifted the co
rner of the folder she’d set down. Preston shifted in his seat, rubbed his palms together. He’d never been in an interrogation room before.

  Of course he knew they were here to talk about Alice. He’d been practicing. So he said, “I know.”

  Sinclair looked at him. She was a middle-aged woman with a tired face, dark eyes, and tousled gray-black hair. She rubbed her chin with the thumb of her left hand. “Mr. Faulkner,” she said after an extended blink. “This isn’t a game. It isn’t TV. I suggest you cooperate.”

  Preston felt himself blush. He hadn’t meant it as a wisecrack. He didn’t want to disgrace his dad. But ever since Alice had gone missing, he’d had trouble thinking straight—especially after last night. Especially after the message out of nowhere. Sinclair switched a digital recorder on and spoke into it: the date, the time. Then she pushed a photograph across the table, pinned it with an index finger, and spun it. “Showing Preston Faulkner a recent photograph of Alice Wilde,” Sinclair said. Preston looked into Alice’s face and felt his body loosen with fear.

  He knew the picture, of course; it was that one of them both that Mace had taken in December. There was a little wink of colored light in the background from the Christmas tree on St. Ann’s Square. Alice was pure Alice—wide warm smile, freckled nose, big brown eyes, hair pulled back and tied, woolly hat with earflaps, badge front and center, the one that said “Get Happy!”

  The picture had been cut down the middle, Preston sliced off. He could just see the shoulder of his winter coat. He’d sat next to her and they’d eaten hot dogs from the markets. Late-night shopping; maybe the Thursday before school broke up—Alice pushing her bike across St. Ann’s Square, Mace listing the worst Christmas number ones, then singing snatches of each in turn, his mock-choirboy voice making them laugh. Preston felt tears starting to come and had to look away. Crying hadn’t been part of the plan. Grip it, he told himself.