Pop Goes the Weasel | страница 124

Emilia could barely keep her hand still as she raised the camera. The boy had been sent out to buy milk and was waiting impatiently in the queue. Snap, snap, snap. The detail wasn’t brilliant, but they looked snatched and dangerous. Emilia waited some more, watching as Robert paid. Now he was leaving the shop. Emilia raised the camera again. As if choreographed, he paused as he exited, casting his eyes up to the heavens as rain began to spit. The sodium glare from the street lamp caught his face, rendering him ghostly and unnatural. Snap, snap, snap. Then he pulled his hoody up and looked almost straight at her. He couldn’t see her hidden in the gloom but she could see him. Snap, snap, snap. The young man born of violence caught on the darkened streets wearing a hoody – the uniform of violent and disillusioned thugs the country over. Perfect.

Now that she had what she needed, Emilia was going to act. She should of course ring the editor of the Evening News, but there was no way she was going to do that. There was a contact she’d been cultivating at the Mail for just such an occasion. She had all she needed – if she was quick she could get it on the front page of tomorrow’s edition.

This was her ticket out. She had the price. She had the package. And she had her headline.

‘Son of a Monster.’

Helen was still chewing on her confrontation with Harwood when she arrived at the old cinema on Upton Street. Hugging the shadows, she slipped inside via the fire exit. The building was supposed to be up for sale soon, though who would want to buy it was beyond Helen. As soon as she stepped inside, she was assaulted by a rich aroma – the smell of years of rotting wood and decaying vermin. It made her gag and she quickly put her mask on. Gathering herself, she held on to the shaky rail and made her way downstairs.

The Crown Cinema had been popular with families in the 1970s. It was a traditional picture palace, right down to the galleried theatre seating and heavy velvet curtains that concealed the screen. At least, it had been in its heyday. Its owners had gone bust during the recession in the 1980s and subsequent attempts to resurrect it had fallen foul of the out-of-town multiplexes and the arthouse cinema down by the waterfront. Now the main auditorium was a travesty of its former glory, a fractured mess of torn-up seats and building rubble.

The SOC team were grouped in a corner near the screen. The levels of activity and excitement meant progress. Helen hurried over. The phone call she’d received just after her confrontation with Harwood had been the one small piece of good news she’d had all day. She wanted to see it with her own eyes before she got carried away.