Cages by David Mark (acx book reading TXT) 📕

She stays where she is, halfway up the stairs, leaning her clammy forehead against the cool wall.

Voices again, through the bedroom door. It takes a moment to turn the mumbles into recognizable words, but quickly she catches the right frequency and listens, cold iron chains twisting around her guts, as she hears her son talk about murder, and the man she left dead on the floor six-and-a-half months before Ethan was born.

‘… put both names in together and see if there’s any connection, and if that doesn’t work I have a programme I can send them that will record the keystrokes and we can get in to it that way – I mean it’s dodgy, but old people don’t think to look for stuff like that …’

‘She’s not old, she can’t be more than thirty-five …’

‘Yeah, old, but I won’t do it if you don’t want me to. It’s not hard. Same with spyware. You can bag yourself a subject through the camera on their computer. Watch them while they’re working, or gaming, or wanking or whatever. You get some people who’ll blackmail their victims into handing over thousands just so they don’t release videos they’ve taken of them when they thought they were alone. It’s ugly, really. I wouldn’t do that. Not ever. But I know how …’

‘Just try the name. Fellowes. Not sure if it’s with or without an “e”. Try both. Then see if there’s a connection to Cox. Try “snow globe” as well. You’re sure she’s never said anything to you about all this? Griffin Cox, yes? I mean, if we can sort this out so she doesn’t have to deal with it, you’ll be son of the century, you know what I mean? Pass the folder over, I’ll go through the mags and see if his name’s in there somewhere, and …’

‘Fellowes, with an “e”. Yep. Sent down in 2009. No mention of a connection with Cox. Nasty case though. Mark Fellowes, forty-six, father of five, sentenced to thirteen years for a “terrifying” abduction … befriended a nine-year-old girl as she played in her garden in Consett, County Durham … told her he had bought a present for his own daughter and needed an opinion on whether it was OK … creepy bastard … then grabbed her and drove her to an area of parkland … “sickening” assault … oh Christ, this bloke needs stabbing, Rufus, he really does …’

And Annabeth cannot help herself. She is sprinting up the stairs as if fleeing from fire. She’s yanking open the bedroom door. Freezing on the threshold of the room. She’s looking at the computer screens, filled with newsprint, with crime scenes, with photographs: a StreetView image of the house on Chatsworth Square; a grainy shot of a smiling Walter Defreitas; a snapshot of a tall man with dark hair being escorted to a prison van outside Newcastle Crown Court. Mark Fellowes. Walter’s friend. The man she was supposed to be nice to on the night she spilled so much blood.

‘Oh, you’re awake, I wasn’t sure whether to wake you or let you carry on dozing until morning, but Ethan and me have been having a bit of a dig around, and …’

She sees the open folder on Rufus’s lap. Sees the snow globe, sitting there on her son’s desk like a paperweight.

The person she thinks of as Annabeth disappears like smoke. And the person left behind lunges at Rufus as if he were an intruder intent on harming her son. She grabs a handful of his thick hair and brings her fist down hard on his jaw. There’s a strangled yell of pain, and then she’s hitting him again, again, and he’s falling back off his chair, covering up, trying to grab her wrists, and she’s screaming, telling him to get out, to get the fuck out, as her son yells her name and begs her to stop, to please stop.

He wriggles out from under her, bleeding, his face already bruising, his jumper ripped all down the front, slipping on the glossy pages of the magazines torn from their binder, and he’s throwing himself for the open door as if fleeing a grenade. She claws at his back, skin under her nails, blood on her knuckles, up her wrist, in her mouth as she grinds her teeth and screams …

Ethan’s hand on her shoulder, her name on his lips, and she spins around, face all spit and fury, and she’s screaming at him, telling him he’s betrayed her, that he’s no right, no fucking right …

The slam of the door.

And she collapses onto the floor, all sweat and snot and tears.

Through the haze she looks at the images on the screen. Locks eyes with Mark Fellowes.

Folds her arms over her head, and weeps until she’s empty.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Dorcas answers the phone with a sigh so extravagant that it sounds to her father as if somebody has put their weight on the bloated carcass of a corpse. It’s not so much an outbreath as a one-note monologue; a passage of epic prose, richly seamed with eloquent insights into the manifold disappointments of her life in general, and her father in particular.

‘For God’s sake, Dormouse, breathe in, breathe in!’

She doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t respond. Rufus closes his eyes. Transfers the phone to his other cheek. It’s less sore, though there’s a little cut on his ear that feels unpleasantly sticky against the screen.

‘I was just ringing to, y’know …’ He stops himself, unsure how to finish. Why had he rung? What had he hoped for? She thinks he’s a prick, he knows that. She’s too busy for him. Got too much of her own life to lead. He’s the pissed-up failure who can’t even afford to buy credit for her phone.

‘Don’t call me Dormouse,’ she mutters, over the sound of whatever programme she had been streaming on her laptop when she was rudely interrupted by her joke of a dad. ‘I didn’t even