THE LOST BOY an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘And Connor’s with him?’ They were playing a verbal game of ping-pong — Weston and Calcot alternating, trying to put Lynn off, spoil her concentration enough to make her slip up.

  ‘I’ve already answered that question.’

  ‘Not to our satisfaction.’ Weston stared, waiting for Calcot to take over.

  ‘Obstruction is a serious charge, Miss Halliwell.’

  Lynn kept her eyes on Weston. ‘I’m not a criminal,’ she said. ‘And this isn’t a police state.’ Before she could finish her little speech, Calcot was cautioning her. The colour fled from Lynn’s face.

  ‘Obstruction’ll do for now,’ Calcot went on conversationally.

  ‘But if Connor doesn’t turn up soon,’ Weston said, taking up the baton, ‘you could be facing a charge of abduction—’

  ‘And conspiracy,’ Calcot finished for him.

  ‘You’re not serious!’ Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘But I haven’t done anything! I would never harm Connor!’

  ‘Give us an address,’ Weston said. ‘A location for Connor or Mr Harvey — doesn’t matter which. We’ll take it from there.’

  ‘And you can go off on your holiday,’ Calcot soothed.

  Lynn’s face was closed. She had an obdurate look that suggested she could go on as long as it took — she was not going to help them. Calcot began to understand how this inoffensive, mild-looking young woman had withstood Mrs Harvey’s despotic rule for eight years.

  Chapter 21

  Lobo liked buying stuff — not shopping — he wouldn’t call it that. Lee-Anne went shopping — tarts went shopping. Lobo bought stuff. He had been buying stuff all day, and now he felt happier, filled up with it, ‘shopped out’, Lee-Anne would’ve said. He would have said sated, had he known the word.

  He stood on the corner of Ranleigh Street and Bold Street, deciding whether to have a look in at Lewis’s on his way back, but the shops would be shutting any minute and he’d got enough for one day anyhow. The savoury-sweet smells of Chinese cooking wafted up to him on a light breeze from the restaurants of Chinatown, setting his stomach gurgling. Not that he’d be tempted. All that rice and shit. Lee-Anne made proper food. Food he could stomach. She made chips better than the chippy. Lobo felt himself weakening. He glanced down at the bags in his right hand. She wasn’t gonna like the fact he’d been and bought more stuff. He shifted his grip on the cue in his left hand, bracing himself, and headed for his car.

  He’d parked in Hope Street, around the corner from the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts — what everyone called the Fame School. Uphill all the way. Even with a following wind from the Mersey, he’d broken out into a sweat within minutes and he felt his wheeze coming on. At the corner of Mount Street, one of the regular prozzies had turned out early, hoping to catch a bit of white-collar custom on their way home from the office.

  ‘Got the time, lad?’ she asked.

  ‘I might have the time, but I wouldn’t bet on having the energy, girl,’ Lobo said, trying to control the harshness of his breathing.

  ‘I’ll give you chance to catch your breath,’ she said, following him a few steps from the corner. ‘No extra charge.’

  Lobo shook his head and hurried on. They embarrassed him, the street girls, even though this one had a nice pair of legs and he would have liked to try her out. But he was frightened of diseases — a weakness Lee-Anne played on every opportunity she could — quoting facts and figures from her magazines, telling him about the threat of AIDS and syphilis. Bloody bitch even took him to see The Madness of King George, and for weeks she kidded him that old George had gone off his head because of some venereal disease or other. Oh, she knew his weak spots, Lee-Anne did.

  He barely noticed the rest of the hike, passing the old-fashioned houses, with their balconies and vines climbing up to them — open invitation — without a second glance. He was about to turn the corner to where he’d parked the car, fifty yards from the cop shop, when a sharp whistle from behind made him turn and, on the steps of the Fame School, he saw his friend and sometime partner in crime, Dileep Khan.

  Lobo waited on the corner, grinning foolishly until he caught himself at it and matched his friend’s serious expression. ‘All right, Randy, lad,’ he said.

  Dileep had been called Randy ever since year nine — something to do with his Pakistani name, Lobo couldn’t remember. He looked past Randy to the steps of the Fame School, where a little cluster of students were posing in front of the big blue doorway. Three or four girls and a couple of lads. They seemed to be waiting for Randy.

  ‘What’re you doin’ in there, lad?’ Lobo asked. ‘Robbin’ the place, or wha’?

  ‘Nah, man.’ Randy stuck his hands into his jeans pockets and glanced over his shoulder to the waiting group. ‘I’m doin’ a course, aren’t I?’

  ‘What, like actin’?’

  ‘Actin’, singin’, dancin’,’ Randy said, forgetting for the moment his elocution teacher’s careful instruction to ‘make the “ing” sing!’

  ‘Wha’?’ Lobo roared with laughter. ‘You — dancin’?’

  Randy drew his heavy eyebrows together, so that they met in a straight line across the narrow bridge of his nose. ‘What’re you doin’ then, Lobo?’ he asked. ‘Still signin’ on?’

  Lobo switched off the laughter instantaneously. ‘Yeah, mate. Why?’

  Randy shrugged. ‘Just askin’.’ He lifted his chin, indicating the bags Lobo was carrying. ‘Have they bunked up the social since I signed off, or wha’?’

  ‘Didn’t they tell you?’ Lobo said. ‘They’re givin’ loyalty cards now. Anyone who’s been signin’ on for more than three years. Got mine last week. Twenty-five-percent discount on leading brand names.’

  Randy allowed a twinkle of amusement to escape from under his eyebrows. ‘Just my luck, ’ey? A few more months, I would’ve qualified.’

  Lobo grinned. ‘Nah. I just got lucky, didn’t I?’

  Randy nodded. ‘Win on the gee-gees, or . . .’

  ‘Or, mate,’ Lobo laughed. ‘Definitely “or”.’

  Randy tilted his head. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘If you’re so flush, how’s about buying a poor student a drink?’

  ‘I don’t know about that, mate,’ Lobo said doubtfully. ‘I don’t like to encourage spongin’ off the state, like.’ Randy punched him in the arm, and he laughed again — God, he’d missed Randy. ‘Aren’t you on your holidays, then?’

  Randy shrugged. ‘We’re doin’ this thing for a—’ He stopped himself just in time. ‘A kind of like show,’ he finished. ‘So,’ he said, ‘are you coming for a bevvy, or wha’?’

  Lobo didn’t need any encouragement to delay his next meeting with Lee-Anne. ‘Okay, I’ll just put this stuff out of sight of robbin’ bastards.’ He had expected Randy to follow him to the car, but when he turned to say something to his old schoolfriend, Khan was still standing on the corner.

  ‘Where are we goin’?’ Randy asked. ‘So’s I can tell me mates.’

  Lobo stiffened. Randy was one thing, they’d gone to school together — they’d even done the odd bit of house breaking together — but students was a different matter. Students put his back up. He couldn’t help it, they just did.

  ‘Mate . . .’ he began.

  ‘I’ll tell them the Phil, all right?’

  Before Lobo could answer, Randy had sprinted across the road to the steps, where his friends were waiting.

  Chapter 22

  Jenny knocked at Alain’s bedroom door. She waited a moment, listening, wondering whether to risk going in, when, unexpectedly, the door opened.

  ‘Alain?’ she said.

  The boy stared up at her, his huge eyes dulled with misery. He held the polar bear under one arm, and now, beneath her gaze, he shifted it to the front of his body, its head partly covering his face, forming a protective barrier between them, and in the fraction of a second it took her to notice, Jenny wondered if, at home, he had a comforter. Luke had carried around a baby duvet which he’d had since
infancy. He would suck one corner and when he was feeling tired or insecure, he would wrap it around his shoulders, even covering his face with it if he was shy of visitors. She would sneak it from his sleeping arms every so often to wash it — making sure she replaced it, clean and dry, before he awoke. Luke would be grumpy for a few hours, fixing her with a mistrustful stare, dragging it through every dusty corner until it had accumulated a satisfying layer of grime, so that it felt it belonged to him once more. Eventually it had fallen to pieces and he had forgotten it.

  Luke’s adoption had been a terrible blow to them. Of course, they had expected it, but he had been with them for so long that she — perhaps Fraser, too — had begun to think of him as their own. She had spoken to Gina after the case conference, and she had hinted that Luke was unsettled in his new home. Jenny felt that it was unfair to the child, asking him to accept two new people as his mummy and daddy, when all he could remember was her and Fraser.

  Jenny smiled down at Alain. ‘Are you ready for dinner?’

  He turned from her and Jenny had a sense of having failed him, that she had missed a momentous chance, said entirely the wrong thing, that if she had not taken the easy route and asked that trite, meaningless question, she might have known everything. Jenny had occasionally experienced this feeling before, with other children, but in each case, the contact that had begun the process of healing had eventually been made, perhaps by a different route, but it had happened, and therefore she was not too despondent. Alain sat cross-legged on the beanbag, his eyes fixed on her face.

  Had he witnessed his mother’s murder? Jenny felt out of her depth. She didn’t know what to say to him, what to ask him, how to help him.

  ‘Grandma and Grandpa Fournier are coming and see you soon,’ she said.

  The boy’s gaze never flinched from her face. Grandma and Grandpa? he thought. Will she not come? He hugged the bear closer to him, squashing its velvet-soft fur to his chest. Of course. She hates me now. They all do. I promised to look after everything. I promised!

  Jenny saw a tear fall onto Alain’s cheek. She sat beside him and put her arm around him. ‘What is it, love?’ she asked. ‘If you tell me, I’ll try to help, I promise.’

  It was that word that did it. Promise. He shuddered. ‘Do I have to see them?’ he asked. Jenny gasped at the sound of his voice. ‘Can’t you tell them not to come?’

  * * *

  Vi Harvey finally returned DC Weston’s call at six p.m. They had just about given up on her for the day. Calcot gave Weston an agonized look. She waited until he had finished the call and immediately started in with a list of reasons why he should have put off meeting up with Mrs Harvey until the following morning.

  ‘I thought you were keen to get this cleared up?’ Weston said.

  ‘I am! But I’m meeting someone later.’

  ‘Anyone in particular? Maybe I could tag along.’

  ‘No one you’d know. And you wouldn’t be welcome.’

  ‘This won’t take long. She says she’ll pop into the station on the way home.’

  ‘That’s very accommodating of her.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  They only had to wait twenty minutes. Vi jangled into the station wearing enough gold to warrant a Securicor escort. ‘You wanted to show me a picture,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you for reminding me,’ Weston replied. He sifted through the drift of papers and document wallets on his desk, while Vi made herself comfortable in the chair opposite and eyed him coolly.

  ‘Any news?’ Calcot asked.

  ‘No. But then I don’t expect Bill to telephone me every five minutes while he’s on holiday.’ She didn’t take her eyes off Weston.

  ‘You haven’t managed to get in touch with him, then?’

  She favoured Calcot with a brief, withering glance. ‘I’d have said.’

  ‘You’d have said what?’

  ‘If I’d got in touch with him. You’ve got his mobile number. Haven’t you tried?’

  ‘We have, Mrs Harvey. We have.’

  Weston coughed. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said, handing Vi a copy of the photograph of Alain.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You don’t recognize him?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Take a good look.’

  She gave it one more cursory appraisal and sighed. ‘It’s not Connor, if that’s what you think.’

  ‘No relation?’

  ‘No.’

  Weston and Calcot exchanged a look. They were no further than they had been that morning, except they had the Harveys’ nanny in a cell, and it looked like Mrs Harvey belonged in one right with her. Vi must have sensed their frustration, for she abruptly turned on the charm.

  ‘I know this is difficult for you,’ she said. ‘And believe me, I appreciate your concern, but there’s really nothing to worry about. Everything’s fine.’

  Yeah? Weston thought. Then why do I get the feeling you’re trying to convince yourself as much as us?

  * * *

  Randy could feel the tension building. Lobo had been winding the others up steadily now for an hour and a half. Two of the group had left already, unable to stomach Lobo’s increasingly offensive remarks as he got rat-arsed drunk. They were seated in the Liszt room of the Philharmonic pub. The evening light twinkled in through the stained-glass window, buffing the walnut panels of the room to a mellow golden orange.

  Peter Merembe had made the mistake of treating Lobo as a rational being, capable of being persuaded by argument. ‘I don’t know why the burden on the state should worry you,’ Peter said, with the gentlest emphasis on the word you.

  Randy winced inwardly.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lobo said.

  As a rule, Lobo was a bit of a bigot, only allowing Randy the status of honorary white because they had gone to school together. Also, Lobo was forced to sit next to him for English and had discovered that Randy had a natural facility for the subject and didn’t mind sharing ideas — even homework — with his mates. His friend’s cleverness and generosity had saved Lobo a lot of bother going through school.

  Randy tried to keep his eyes off Lobo’s new pool cue, which he had had insisted on bringing with him when he discovered it didn’t fit in the boot of the car. ‘Are you calling me a scrounger?’ he demanded.

  ‘No more than I am,’ Peter said, smiling. ‘But you claim state money, just as I do.’

  Lobo drew back his lips, baring his teeth in a warning snarl. ‘Just as I do,’ he said, mimicking Peter’s public-school accent. ‘You’ve never had to claim dole in your life, you fucking gaylord poncy black bastard!’ The angel in the stained-glass window looked on with an expression of dismay, but Peter’s smile broadened, became a grin, and suddenly, alarmingly, he was laughing — a rich, mirthful, unaffected laugh.

  Lobo turned to Randy, furious. ‘What’s he laughin’ at?’ he demanded.

  Randy shrugged helplessly.

  ‘What’re you laughin’ at?’ he said, turning again to Peter.

  Randy had expected this to come to blows by now, but Peter seemed genuinely amused. The rest of the group had shrunk back in their seats and were watching the two men warily.

  Peter sank the rest of his pint, barely controlling his laughter enough to avoid choking. He patted Randy on the shoulder as he made his way to the door. ‘I really think you should use him for your character study,’ he said. ‘There are acres of material in him. He’s absolutely perfect.’

  A low, guttural growl from Lobo, and he leapt to his feet, snatching up his cue as a weapon. One of the girls squeaked, but Peter carried on, turning left towards the main door. Lobo made to follow him, but Randy grabbed his cue arm. He was taller than Lobo, and sinewy.

  ‘I’ll fucking burst him!’ Lobo screamed, struggling with Randy. He considered a head butt, abandoning the idea because Randy had apparently anticipated the possibility and held him at arm’s length. ‘I’ll kill the bastard!’

  ‘Sit down and sh
ut up,’ Randy said, adding quietly, so as not to embarrass his mate, ‘or I’ll put you to fucking bed early.’

  Lobo eyed him, gauging the level of threat. It was touch-and-go for a minute as he paraphrased the old saying in his head: Fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t. When it came down to it, it was his degree of intoxication that decided him. He wasn’t up to chasing after the black guy in the state he was in, so he sat down instead.

  Randy stood over him for a minute or two longer, breathing heavily through his nose and trying to get his temper under control. Randy’s strong sense of personal dignity abhorred scenes. He hated name-calling more than physical aggression: at least if things got physical you could get some redress, but with name-calling, the damage was inside, like a slow burn, it went through layer after layer, flaying the skin, sensitizing the nerves for the next time.

  Lobo gradually relaxed and huffed himself into a sulk. Randy gave his friends a significant look. Within two minutes he was alone with Lobo, and the drinkers in the bar next door to them had resumed subdued conversation. The air vibrated with tension, half the clientele disappointed by the peaceful outcome of the interchange, the other half relieved and a little shaken, alert to signs of new conflict.

  Randy was among those cautiously relieved. It had cost him a lot to get into the Institute of Performing Arts — in effort, in self-discipline, even in money — and he didn’t want to jeopardize everything he’d worked for.

  Lobo slumped in his chair. Randy knew if he tried to get Lobo out of the place without making any attempt to dissipate the bad feeling, there’d be trouble of the nastiest kind.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘where’s the best place to pick up a bit of good luck these days?’ he asked. ‘In case I wanna top up me grant?’ Not that he intended to do anything about it, but he had to get Lobo off the subject of students and the best way was to get him to talk about himself.

  Lobo slid him a sideways look. ‘Supplementary benefits, ’eh, la’?’ He took a swallow of beer and shrugged. ‘Still doin’ the usual. Me and Lee-Anne. There’s some boss houses round Mossley Hill, man.’ He launched into a description of homes without security systems, gardens with high hedges and nice, quiet streets empty of people between half eight in the morning and six at night, when he stopped, looking suddenly shocked and sickened.